The monster was not connected with anything. He was just a monster.
Kip came out on to Manor Lane and crossed quickly into Manor Park Gardens. The sky was a high, dense blue, the sun dripped white light on the water. People sprawled on their backs in the grass, reading paperback thrillers. Kip knew he was invisible here. It was even OK to take pictures. He took a few shots of the fountain, a Dalmatian dog, some kid on a skateboard, but he knew already that the photos would not be much good. The park was not his thing. He preferred the tatty shop fronts and crumbling facades of the terraces on Lee High Road. He turned to go, walking across the grass in the direction of the park exit on Old Road. Then he saw the monster, sitting on one of the benches facing the lake.
He stopped where he was, raising the Nikon cautiously as if afraid the man might take flight, then fired off seven, eight shots, using the zoom lens to capture him in profile. As he lined up the final frame the man turned his head slightly, giving Kip a better view of his face. Seeing him again, Kip thought he looked less like the photo fit, less like a cornered rat and more like a ruined accountant who had just been fired. It was definitely him, though. Kip recognized him by his jacket. He appeared to be watching the ducks, plump mallards, a male and three females, dipping in and out of their limber reflections in a way that made the real ducks look blockish and unnatural as decoys. Kip wandered slowly in his direction, pretending to look at the lake. There were three children on the wooden landing stage, throwing bread crusts from a plastic bag. A horde of ducks surged towards them across the water. Kip slipped the Nikon back into its case and sat down on the bench. He watched the children, who had started to argue over who was in charge of the bread, and smoothed the leather case of the Nikon with the tips of his fingers. The park was full of people - onlookers, witnesses - and yet he could not escape the thought that he had put himself at risk somehow by coming here.
He turned to glance at the man beside him. He tried to make the glance seem casual, but was aware even as he did so that the movement was too rigid, too snatched, to appear anything but unnatural, the inept glance of a spy who was new on the job. The monster was staring right at him. His eyes were grey, the colour of tap water with a single drop of black ink dispersed in it. His expression was perfectly calm.
“Hello,” he said. “I’ve seen you before, I’m sure. You’re the boy with the camera.”
Kip seemed to feel two worlds colliding, the world he saw through the lens of the Nikon spinning and crashing through the wall of reality like a wrecking ball through the shell of a condemned tower block. He noted the monster’s clean, almost polished-looking nails, the small scar at the corner of his mouth that made it look as if someone had cut him there once with a razor blade. The idea that he was the watched instead of the watcher was enormous and fundamental and somehow awful.
He felt the air go out of his lungs, as if the world had expanded outwards, crushing his chest. Oddly enough it was the same feeling he’d had the first time he saw Sonia’s naked breasts.
“I’m going to be a photographer,” he said at last. “That’s why I have the camera.”
He saw the man’s lips twitch, and Kip waited for him to laugh at him, or else demand to see the photographs he had taken. That was what people did, if they were interested at all that was, and then Kip would either have to refuse or hand over the Nikon, let the man see the multiple images of himself that were now locked inside the camera’s memory, that final close-up, the sunlight flashing off his glasses and into the water.
Instead of asking to look at the pictures the monster smiled, his ridged and slightly yellowed incisors clearly visible.
“I thought as much,” he said. “I recognized the signs, you see.” He leaned back on the bench, his arms locked across his chest, his skinny wrists snaking out from the sleeves of his army jacket. Kip could not tell if the man was trying to patronize him in some way or if they were having a proper conversation.
“What do you mean?” he said. “The signs?”
“I mean I was the same at your age. Things were different then of course, none of this digital rubbish. I had a Minolta SR-7 and it weighed a ton. I didn’t give a damn about that though. I took it everywhere with me. I got so used to the weight of it around my neck I felt wrong without it. Have you ever used film? A film camera I mean, rather than digital?”
Kip shook his head. It was a subject that embarrassed him, because his reactions were based on feelings and not experience. He knew that some people were obsessed with film, some of the younger photographers even were obsessed with it, and with something they called the tangibility of the image. Kip thought it was a load of crap. He liked to think of the Nikon as an extension of the eye, an optical application, the closest thing to actual seeing that there was. He loved the cleanness of digital, its lack of pretension. The idea of film, with its cumbersome processes, the unnecessary delay between the act of taking and the act of seeing, was something he hated.
He might have known the monster would be a film user. Everything about him suggested it, even his clothes.
“Are you a photographer then?” Kip said. “Do you work for the magazines?”
“I used to be. Not for the magazines though. I did other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff? Would I know your work?”
“You wouldn’t know my work at all. I worked for the police, as a forensic photographer. My work, as you like to call it, has the curious distinction of never having been seen outside a courtroom.”
“You mean, you used to go and photograph crime scenes, things like that?”
The monster nodded. “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds though, believe me. You see these American cop shows and think it’s all about being rushed to the scene of some murder or other. Actually it’s about having to get out of bed at two in the morning to take pictures of a sales rep who’s managed to get his legs crushed in a motorway collision. It wasn’t exactly the career I imagined for myself. Actually I got into it by mistake.”
“By mistake?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“That’s a long story, too. But my dad died last year, left me a bit of money. Not a fortune, but enough to give me some breathing space. You never know, I might even treat myself to a new camera.” He sighed and stretched out his arms, cracking his knuckles in a way Kip found nauseating. “You should keep at it,” he said. He got up from the bench. “You might even have what it takes.”
Kip stared up at him, not moving. He hated the way most adults had of making you feel like a moron, almost as if they resented you for their own failures. It occurred to him that it might all be bullshit anyway, that the monster was trying to lure him with the talk of his defunct Minolta the way he had lured Rebecca Riding with sweets or Jackie magazine. Even here he was out of date; most perverts these days used the internet. He wondered why he hadn’t used some of his father’s money to update his wardrobe.
There was a restlessness that hung from him, baggy and shapeless as his ill-fitting jacket. Kip felt certain he was the killer, as he had felt certain when he first saw the man coming out of the garage. Instead of being afraid he felt a tense, nervous pleasure, knowing that he was ahead of him again, the watcher now instead of the watched.
“I’m Edwin Kiplas,” he said suddenly. “Everybody calls me Kip.”
“Dennis Croft,” said the monster. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”
Croft held out his hand and Kip took it. Croft’s hand was dry and rather small, but he had a strong grip, the wiry fingers grasping his own as if he meant to try and stop him getting away. Kip thought of Rebecca Riding and felt a tremor go through him. Then Croft was gone, striding along the tarmac path that skirted the lake then cutting across the grass towards the Manor Park library. Kip watched him merge with the other walkers, become one of them. In less than a minute he was out of sight.
Kip waited ten minutes and then foll
owed him. As he came out of Old Road on to Lee High Road he looked both ways along the street, half convinced that Croft would be lying in wait for him, but there was no sign of him. He wondered what Croft had meant when he said he was sure they would see each other again. His words seemed to hang in the air, like a threat or a curse.
~ * ~
After supper he went to his room and browsed the internet for information about forensic photography. There was a careers website that told him most forensic photographers were non-professionals, police officers with only the most rudimentary training in the use of a camera. Of the others, those who had actually set out to become photographers in the first place, most worked for specialist agencies. Kip supposed that Croft had been employed by one of these agencies; he couldn’t imagine him as a cop, of any description. He was too evasive, too much of a loner. You could say he had loner written all over him, that he was a loner archetype.
The agency guys were pretty well paid, because like doctors they were always on call. The careers website listed this as one of the job’s main disadvantages, but Kip found he liked the idea. He thought a job that was that unpredictable would be difficult to become bored with. One of the agencies, a firm called Trulite Legal, had posted a series of photos of an office block gutted by fire. The photographer was named as Andrew Watson and the crime was a suspected arson. Kip liked the light in the photos, the strange dead whiteness that made the burned out windows look like portholes into outer space. Most of all he liked the way the pictures showed what was there and didn’t tamper with it.
When he Googled Dennis Croft there were no relevant finds.
At a little after 11.30 he heard his mother coming upstairs. It was only then that he realized his father had still not come home. His computer whirred, fanning itself in the darkness. He could sense Lynn outside his door, listening to see if he was still awake. After a moment she sighed and moved away. A floorboard creaked. Kip jumped off his bed and went to open the door. His mother was standing right outside. She gazed at him stolidly, her expression caught midway between surprise and despair.
“You should be in bed,” she said. “I thought you were asleep already.”
“Where’s Dad?” said Kip. The question hovered in the air between them, bobbing weakly like a deflating balloon. The hall light glowed a dull orange, reminding Kip of the light in the Midwestern motel rooms Stephen Shore liked to photograph. Kip stared at Lynn Kiplas in her quilted dressing gown and felt envious of Shore’s talent, the way he had of making the most casual Polaroid snapshot look like the opening of a murder mystery. Kip had always hated Lynn’s dressing gown, which was made of horrible fake mauve satin and reminded him of some naff sitcom set in an old people’s home.
She had clearly been crying. Kip didn’t know what he wanted most: to hug her or to slap her face. He became suddenly aware that he was dressed only in his underpants, that he was more or less naked in front of her.
“He’s at Toke’s,” Lynn said. Lyonel Toklin was his father’s business partner. “They’ve been playing cards and drinking, you know what those two are like once they get started. Anyway, he’s not fit to drive.” Her words sounded stilted, a speech she had prepared beforehand. Kip couldn’t decide whether her lying was a sign of courage or idiocy. He took a step towards her, meaning to put his arms around her, but she flinched away as if afraid he might hit her.
“Go to bed now,” she said. “And make sure that computer’s switched off.” She moved away towards the end of the landing. Kip watched her go into the bedroom then closed his own door with a bang. He picked his jeans off the floor and fished his mobile out of the pocket then brought up his father’s number and depressed the call button. The call went straight to voicemail, which Kip knew meant precisely nothing. Andy Kiplas didn’t like mobiles. He kept his phone on during work hours because it would hurt the business not to but as soon as he was finished for the day he switched it off. For the first time Kip saw this behaviour as thoughtless and selfish.
Andy’s pet name for Lynn was the Gipsy Moth.
Kip realized he hadn’t called Sonia that day or even messaged her. He supposed that made him as bad as his father. He felt a sudden, almost urgent need to speak to her, not about his father or monster but about Andrew Watson’s photos of the burned-out office block, how the pictures looked to him like stills from a documentary about hell.
Still, it was too late to call. He sent a text message instead, sleep well and the letter K and then an x. He did not expect a reply, but a moment later his phone buzzed and there was a text from Sonia, the word goodnight accompanied by the little red heart graphic she sometimes used to sign off her messages.
The thought that she was awake and thinking of him made him start to get hard. Right after the second time they had sex he had jokingly asked Sonia what she wore in bed at night, and she had laughed, and said that when the nights were muggy like this she didn’t normally wear anything except a pair of knickers.
He put his phone on to charge. He thought of the picture he had given Sonia, the photograph of the monster that she said she was going to mount in a clip frame. The idea of Croft on Sonia’s writing desk or bookshelf looking down at Sonia’s naked body made him feel queasy, and once again he found himself wishing he had never given her the photograph in the first place.
~ * ~
Two days later Rebecca Riding was on Crimewatch. They showed the same photo again, Rebecca Riding in her red school jumper and with the gap between her teeth, and then they staged a reconstruction of what they called her last known movements. A small girl wearing a red cardigan came out of the school gates on Manor Lane and trotted along Northbrook Road towards Manor Park. Just before she crossed to the park side she stopped to talk to another girl, a child actress playing the part of Rebecca Riding’s friend Tanya Baker. The actress playing Tanya said she had to go home and change out of her school clothes but that she’d meet Rebecca in the park by the swings in ten minutes’ time.
Then there was an interview with the parents of the real Tanya Baker. They looked dazed and spoke slowly, like people who had narrowly avoided being involved in a major road accident. After the interview with Tanya’s parents they showed the photo fit of the monster again and repeated the number of the police hotline. Any information at all, they said, might turn out to be of vital importance in the search for the killer. Kip thought the word killer sounded worse even than the word murderer. Murder always sounded rather grand, something planned out in advance and with at least the semblance of reason to back it up. Killing was just an action, simple as that. A killer was brutal and thoughtless and probably stupid.
With Dennis Croft it was hard to tell where the murderer left off and the killer began.
“Just think of it,” said Lynn Kiplas. “Those poor people.”
“I’m going out,” Kip said. He left the room quickly, before his mother had a chance to ask where he was going. As he unlatched the front gate he saw his father walking towards him up the road.
“Where are you off to, then?” said Andy Kiplas. “Anywhere exciting?”
“Just out.” His father looked clean and smelled fresh, as if he had recently stepped out of the shower. His plaid shirt had been recently ironed. He spoke jauntily, with a kind of mock casualness, and Kip thought of the Toklins’ dog, which always expected to be made a fuss of even when it had stolen the Sunday joint right off the table. He tried to imagine how it would be if his father left home, meeting him at the site and going off for supper somewhere, to Pashka’s Kitchen in Brockley perhaps, where they would eat potato latkes with apple sauce and his father would tell him in blow-by-blow detail about his latest building project.
He thought he could cope with that. It was going to end up like that anyway when he went to college. But the thought of his mother alone at home made him feel trapped and scared.
He thought of packing his bags and leaving, just him and the Nikon, then realized he would never escape this shit, not ev
en if he went to Australia.
For Christ’s sake, Dad, he thought. It’s your problem. Leave me out of it.
“Fancy a couple of rounds of Harris later?” his father said. Harris was a variant of rummy, something he and Toke had invented. The game was named after Bomber Harris, though the reasons for this had vanished into the past.
“OK, Dad, maybe. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back though.” He stepped carefully around his father and went off up the street.
“I’ll save you a beer, then,” Andy Kiplas called after him. Kip didn’t answer. He felt for the Nikon around his neck then realized he had come out without it. Not that it mattered much. It was now almost dark, with just a narrow strand of pink chafing the horizon. Kip did not know where he was going exactly, only that he had needed to get out of the house. He decided to walk as far as the Lewisham clock tower and then turn back. Lee High Road was quieter now. The traffic was always lighter after the rush hour, and there were occasional moments of complete hiatus. Kip loved the houses on Lee High Road because they were always interesting to photograph. Most of them were pretty rundown, tottering decrepit terraces constructed from the dirty-looking yellowish brick his father said was called London stock. They reminded him of the Polish war widows in Pashka’s, with their camphor-smelling clothes and their vanished hero husbands, their double rows of pearls hidden beneath their moth-eaten cardigans. There were still bomb sites along Lee High Road but not as many now as there had been. Mostly they had been built on. The Lewisham end of Lee High Road had suffered most but even that was being done up. It was all hairdressers and cafes now. Kip fingered the loose change in his pocket, wondering if he had enough for a burger or a sausage sandwich. Men and girls slid by in loud gaggles, pushing aside the darkness with their laughter, the glare from the bars and the street-lamps pooling in orange light slicks on their garish clothes. Kip liked being on the streets at night. There was a restlessness in people, the sense that anything might happen at any time. He wished he had brought the Nikon.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 Page 32