Bone Machine

by Martyn Waites

  Conscious of any accusations of bias or lack of sensitivity to what might be perceived in certain sections of the media as an unsympathetic victim, they had investigated her death thoroughly. And come up with nothing. The consensus was a mad punter who, unless he was caught doing something similar in the future to another prostitute, would go unpunished.

  With no progress after a month and other cases eating up budget and manpower, Lisa Hill was gradually forgotten. Marked ‘open’, left unsolved.

  Fenton gave the name some thought, said he didn’t think so, but at this stage they couldn’t rule anything out.

  A question about bringing in a profiler. Fenton making a face in reply, mentioning budget, saying they would see how they went.

  Then on to possible suspects.

  Nattrass had talked about Michael Nell, Ashley’s boyfriend. Photography student. Not a nice person. Handy with his fists, especially where the ladies were concerned. Miserable and moody. Liked things rough. Previous for drunk and disorderly. Rich dad to protect him, bail him out. Untouchable, or so he thought.

  Questioned twice and both times seemingly unconcerned about Ashley. Not worried. With no alibi for Ashley’s disappearance. Nattrass said she had felt he was hiding something. Covering. Turnbull had nodded, corroborating.

  Light had caught Fenton’s eyes. Made them shine. He asked Turnbull and Nattrass to pay Nell a visit.

  Then a closing speech from Fenton warning the team to guard against complacency, not to assume that Nell was the murderer and to keep working as many avenues as possible. No one had been convinced. The eyes had given him away.

  In the car, Nattrass had asked him if he wanted to go home, get some sleep.

  Turnbull had turned to her. Saw her tired and drawn face, imagined he was her mirror image. ‘Do you?’

  Nattrass hadn’t answered. Turnbull had started the car. Not saying another word.

  Just drove, aware of the photo of Ashley in his jacket pocket, over his heart.

  ‘You ready?’ said Nattrass, hand on the door lever.

  Turnbull looked up, put the photo away, nodded.

  Nattrass stayed where she was. ‘Emotions are running high and neither of us has had any sleep.’

  He turned to her, challenge in his eyes. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning I don’t want you going maverick on me. You’re a professional. You’re a policeman. We do this properly. Understood?’

  Turnbull, reluctantly, nodded.

  Nattrass opened the door. ‘Then let’s go. I’ll lead.’

  Up the garden path. The house looked like any old building given over to multiple rental occupation. Especially by students, thought Turnbull. The first time they had been away from the embrace of their overprotective middle-class families. The first time they had had to cook, clean and look after themselves. The paintwork needed updating, the front garden relieving of its weed collection. A battered Peugeot 206 sat in front of the house.

  ‘Takes you back,’ said Nattrass.

  ‘Not me.’ Turnbull almost spat the words out.

  Nattrass ignored him, tried the bell. No sound.

  ‘They probably haven’t worked out how to buy a battery,’ said Turnbull. ‘Or rewire it.’

  Nattrass turned to him. ‘Wait in the car.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She shook her head. Knocked on the door. Waited. No reply. She knocked again.

  Eventually they heard movement from within the house. Someone making their slow, unhurried way to the door. It opened.

  ‘Hello Michael,’ said Nattrass. She reintroduced herself and Turnbull to remind him who they were, showed their warrant cards, then asked to be let in. Nell moved aside, let them into the hall.

  Music, loud and indie, came from one of the downstairs rooms. It sounded to Turnbull like the stuff his older brother used to listen to in the sixth form in the early 1980s but guessed it was probably modern.

  Turnbull looked at the young man. Tall and thin, his sleeveless T-shirt exposing wiry, muscled arms etched with dark, swirling tattoos, his hair shaggy and tousled, his lips falling into a pouting sneer so mannered and practised it had become natural. Turnbull looked into the boy’s eyes. They stared back with mocking cruelty. Turnbull wanted to slap him on principle.

  ‘I suppose you’ve heard the news?’ Nattrass, her voice impassive, spoke.

  Michael Nell shrugged. ‘What news?’

  Nattrass looked around the cramped hallway. Posters for bands covered the woodchipped walls. Arctic Monkeys. Maximo Park. ‘Could we come in, please?’ she said above the noise. ‘Perhaps sit down.’ She began moving up the stairs, towards where she remembered his room was.

  ‘Not up there,’ Michael Nell said. ‘It’s not convenient.’

  Nattrass looked around, her eyes hard and flat. ‘I think it would be best.’ Her tone brooked no argument.

  She went up the stairs, Michael Nell reluctantly following. Turnbull brought up the rear. They reached Nell’s room. Nattrass placed her hand on the handle. Nell seemed agitated.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Just a minute.’

  He slipped inside the room, closed the door behind him. They heard the sound of voices, hushed yet urgent. Then frantic movement. Nattrass and Turnbull said nothing, exchanged a glance. The door opened again. A girl came out; small and dark, her hair sticking out at angles she had never intended, her clothes creased and clutched around her. She kept her eyes downcast as she made her way rapidly down the stairs and out of the front door.

  ‘Hope we weren’t disturbing you,’ said Turnbull.

  Nell reddened.

  ‘Perhaps you’re not interested in what we have to say.’ Nattrass walked into the room, sat down on the unmade bed. Turnbull stayed standing, looked at the CD case lying beside the player. The Arctic Monkeys: ‘Whatever You Say I Am That’s What I’m Not’. I’ll be the judge of that, mate, he thought. He scoped the room. Turnbull’s idea of a typical student house. Posters and cards Blu-Tacked to the walls, cheap furniture, textbooks and discarded clothes. Shelved books. Piles of magazines. He checked the titles: Skin Two. Bizarre. Tattoo. Some less commercially minded but sporting similar themes.

  ‘May I?’ He picked one up, gestured to Nell, who shrugged.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said.

  Turnbull began leafing through one.

  Nell sat down next to Nattrass. ‘This is all over the newspapers and TV by now; we thought you would have heard. We discovered a body last night. And I’m afraid it’s Ashley.’

  Nattrass watched, unblinking, as Nell took in the news. He looked down, nodded. Sighed. ‘You sure?’

  ‘We are.’ Nattrass kept up her scrutiny.

  ‘Aw, Jesus.’

  The two of them turned, looked up at Turnbull. He was staring at a magazine, his face violently twisted with distaste. ‘What the fuck’s this?’ he said. ‘Extreme body modification? What’s wrong with these people?’

  Turnbull scanned, through narrowed eyes, pictures of split tongues, artfully amputated toes and fingers, tattooed and sliced penises, castrated bodies, heads with horns implanted. He had never seen anything like it. Nattrass looked again at Nell. The student had his eyes cast down but couldn’t disguise the smile on his face.

  ‘You have some interesting tastes, Mr Nell,’ said Nattrass.

  ‘I like transgression,’ said Nell proudly. ‘I don’t belong in the boring straight world. I want a more interesting life for myself. On the extremes.’

  He looked at Turnbull, enjoying seeing the distaste on his face.

  ‘There are some photos over there.’ Nell pointed to the bookshelves. ‘Some of mine. Have a look. You might enjoy them.’

  Turnbull’s face showed what he would have enjoyed doing to Nell more than that. He turned to the shelves.

  ‘Right,’ said Nattrass, ‘to continue. I’m afraid the body we found was Ashley. Do you have anything to say?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Nattrass shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Like, you’re
sorry, how did she die …? Anything like that.’

  ‘OK. How did she die?’

  ‘She was murdered, Mr Nell. And I have to ask you: what were your whereabouts last night?’

  Nell gave a noise that could have been a snort or a laugh. ‘You’re kiddin’.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Nattrass. ‘Where were you last night between the hours of eight o’clock and midnight?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘And can anyone verify that?’

  ‘Yeah. You saw her on the way out.’

  ‘You don’t believe in letting the grass grow, do you?’ said Nattrass, unable to keep the distaste from her voice.

  ‘Like I said, I’m different from other people.’ Nell tried to sound nonchalant but just came over petulant and fearful.

  ‘Boss.’ Turnbull spoke. There was urgency in his voice that he was trying to disguise. ‘Can you come and look at this a minute?’

  Nattrass stood up and crossed the room. Turnbull was holding out a sheaf of ten by eights, struggling to keep his face blank. Nattrass looked at what he was pointing at. And audibly gasped.

  The photo was grainy, blurry, and showed a girl, early twenties, dressed in black with what appeared to be an audience in the background, with her eyes and mouth sewn together. Blood running down her face.

  Neither Nattrass nor Turnbull could speak for several seconds as they tried to process the information and decide how to proceed. Eventually Nattrass cleared her throat, plucked the photo from Turnbull’s hands.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Turnbull sounded relieved.

  Nattrass took the photo, crossed to Nell, resumed her position on the bed next to him. She showed him it.

  ‘This one of yours?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said proudly. ‘Took it in a club in Amsterdam.’ He looked at Turnbull. ‘Kind of club you’ve never been to.’

  Turnbull was leafing through the other photos. They showed bondage, pain, humiliation. Some taken in the same environment as the other; some taken in anonymous rooms lit by bare bulbs. Most taken in what looked like the same studio. Women in various stages of undress. Humiliation. Turnbull stopped again. His heart skipped a beat.

  Another woman, her eyes, mouth sewn shut.

  ‘You take all of these?’ Turnbull asked, holding them up, holding his voice steady.

  ‘Every one.’

  ‘In Amsterdam, or nearer to home?’

  Nell smiled. ‘Right under your noses. You’d be amazed at what goes on.’

  Turnbull said nothing.

  ‘So is this,’ Nattrass said, her voice as calm as she could make it, ‘part of your transgressive lifestyle? Hmm? Something you do for – what? Kicks?’

  Nell looked up to her, his eyes challenging. ‘So what? Yeah, it’s a scene I’m into. And it’s pretty extreme, yeah.’ There was pride in his voice now. ‘But I doubt it’s something you can understand.’

  Nattrass and Turnbull shared another look. An unspoken, almost telepathic form of communication they had worked up between them in the years they had been partnered together. They exchanged almost imperceptible nods.

  ‘Oh,’ said Nattrass, ‘I can understand. Better than you think.’

  She stood up, towering over the student. Turnbull moved to the side of him so he couldn’t make for the door.

  ‘Would you like to come down to the station?’ she said. ‘We’d like a little chat.’

  Nell laughed, sneered. ‘Don’t be stupid. Fuck off.’

  ‘Then, Michael Nell,’ said Nattrass, her voice as professional and uninflected as possible, so that there could be no mistaking what she was saying, no later legal argument claiming she had behaved improperly or technically incorrect, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Ashley Malcolm. You do not have to say anything …’

  Turnbull tuned out. He had heard it all before.

  Nell’s face changed. The artfully constructed mask slipped away, to be replaced by surprise, then fear. It looked like the only true feelings he had expressed in the time they had been in his room.

  ‘No, no …’ Nell let out a high-pitched scream, made a dash for the door.

  Turnbull was on him, arm up behind his back, wrestling him down to the floor. He wanted to lash out; get in a few well-placed kicks and punches, claim self-defence later, but managed to refrain. He would do this properly, like a professional. He, too, was mindful of legal technicalities.

  ‘You calm yet?’ Turnbull said. ‘You gonna give me any more trouble? Eh?’

  He gave Nell’s arm another twist for good measure. Nell squealed.

  ‘Good. Come on, then.’

  Turnbull escorted him out of the room and down the stairs, ignoring his pleas, his protestations of innocence. He was breathing heavily, flushed with exhilaration.

  He thought of Ashley, on whose behalf he was fighting for justice. Her picture over his heart.

  He smiled. A good day’s work.

  7

  The Historian stared deep into the mirror. He had been there so long he had lost all track of time. But time was a concept he didn’t believe in anyway. No past, no present, no future. All events happened at once.

  When he was younger, he would spend hours staring into the mirror. He would start off with his own features, memorize every pore, follicle and vein. Count his blink rate. Shave his face, trim his sideburns with a small pair of scissors. Then, that done, he would begin to look beyond himself, let his eyes trail around his outline, pull focus on items with differing reflected depths behind his face. Look into the distance as far back as he could. If he stared long enough, he thought, another world might be glimpsed, a reversed world where everything was the opposite of his own; where pain was pleasure, love was hate.

  Like in Leazes Park as a boy, trying to gain the trust of a squirrel he wanted to feed and tame, he had stood, all stony and statuesque, expression neutral and passive, waiting for the creature to approach him. The thrill he had felt on it coming close, how trusting it had been to the promise of food, he could have done anything to that squirrel. Caught it and kept it, poisoned it, ate it. Anything. He never forgot that stillness, the power that could be derived from it. Like an American Indian hunting, hiding in plain view. So still as to be invisible.

  And the longer his unthreatening pose went on, the more likely it would be that the mirror-world inhabitants would reveal themselves. He longed for the day when they would invite him in, let him step through the mirror into that other world, live there for ever.

  But that world had never existed. Or if it did, he had never found it. So instead he stared at himself.

  His gaze flinched, his concentration faltered; he saw behind him the shadowed protrusions that grew from the walls behind him and around the bath and felt a sudden stab of loneliness. The protrusions were all over the house. Hard plastic, porcelain and metal. Depressing in their functionality. Prosaically clinical. Representations of capture rather than release.

  A sadness swept over him. She was gone. And all he had left were those hard reminders. Reminders of what he had lost, what he was conducting his experiments for. His lower lip trembled, his eyes became moist and he felt himself starting to go again. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not now. He needed strength. He ignored them, just stared at himself. Looked inside himself. Conquered his emotions.

  He smiled.

  The Historian had watched the news constantly, bought all the papers, local and national. Read them until he could almost recite them. They left him feeling both elated and angry. Elated because the world was witnessing his brilliance. Angry because it had been viewed with close-minded dullness. The police had clumped all over the graveyard, talked to the camera in reductive, prosaic terms about barbaric acts of savagery, witnesses, lines of enquiry and appeals for help. The journalists were no better, with their shock-horror headlines, mock-appalled faces and clichéd reporting. All missing the point. Ignoring what was to him obvious and beautiful. And important. Historically importan
t. He felt like an artist whose masterpiece is misunderstood and ridiculed by those who could never hope to accomplish what he had. He should have expected that reaction, but he was still upset by it. Still, it was better than the last time. But then it should be. He had got better.

  But there was the unexpected compensation. The arrest.

  He couldn’t believe his luck. The police weren’t giving out any details, but he had assumed, from newspaper speculation, that it was the girl’s boyfriend.

  Michael Nell. He smiled at the irony. Then felt a sudden stab of fear.

  Michael Nell. He could say something. Do something. Mention the studio, mention the models …

  He breathed deeply, tried not to let his imagination run away from himself. Tried to be calm. Shrug the thoughts off.

  What could Nell say? What could he tell them? Nothing. Nothing that would lead the police to him directly. Nothing that would make them take more of an interest in him. He would be ready for them. Have a story. Play the part. Let them go away with nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing. He repeated the word over and over, stretching out the sound, letting it soothe him. Give him succour.

  Nothing.

  There was no pressure on him. He could plan for the next one without looking over his shoulder all the time.

  And there would be a next one. Because he wasn’t finished yet. The voices in the shadows wouldn’t allow him to be, for one thing. Plus his work wasn’t completed; he hadn’t found the answer he was seeking to that one all-important question.

  And, if he was honest, he had enjoyed it so much he wanted to do it again. That was the thing that had surprised him. That an experiment, a scientific exploration, had given him such a thrill.

  In fact, he had never been so excited in his life.

  He stared at the mirror, ignored what was behind him, saw beyond it: let the phantasmagoria of the last few days dance once again before his eyes. Felt the familiar tingling in his groin. He had to relive that moment.

  Her death must have been painful: she had thrown her body around, convulsed and pulled as much as her restraints allowed. Even when the knife was sliding in and out, bringing with it more and more blood, taking away more and more of her life, she hadn’t given up. The blade thrusts, initially patient and measured, sometimes even playful little nips, had given way to hard, sharp hacks and slashes in his rush to bring on her final act, his need to see it.