Red Mist

by Jan Swick

  He put her there. He cast an image of her, standing in that spot. His memory clad her in the last outfit he had seen her wearing: jeans and a white woollen pullover, completely alien to this environment. She glowed like a beacon. She was smiling at him, her hand out to receive his. But then he realised it wasn't him she was smiling at. A man who was nothing but a black shape, like a 3D silhouette, walked past him and into the spot, and it was this faceless creature she smiled at. She took his hand. Her killer, in the moments he became so. Matt blinked and both visions popped out of existence.

  He turned in a circle, taking in the whole station in the flickering candlelight. His heart fell. His brain froze. He knew his theory was bullshit. He had wasted his time. He had hit a dead end. He went to his knees.

  Outside the zone. He had assumed that Karen had been killed in the zone, since the girls didn't work outside it, and then transported to the wasteground and dumped. And so here he was, looking at what he had hoped had been the site of her murder. But he knew he'd been wrong. No way she was killed here. Easy enough to put her in a car - the pimp's car was parked with its rear nicely hidden in darkness - but how could a killer have carried a body past the other spots, the other prostitutes, up the tunnel, outside? Unseen? Not possible. One way in, one way out, maybe guarded by one of the pimp's cronies during peak periods.

  Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a balled-up plastic bin liner, taken from the pimp's house. Shook it out, even though he knew he was wasting his time.

  Twenty minutes later, Matt left. Made his way up the tunnel. Stopped outside the ticket office, door now shut, to grab the jacket and baseball cap he'd taken off the pimp. Dumped right there by the door. He shrugged on the jacket and slipped the cap on his head. Thirty seconds after that he was back in the world. He kicked closed the iron door, made his way to the pimp's car. In his hands, a full bin liner. Everything from Karen's spot. He'd swept it up with his hands. All the debris, all the dust and grime and dirt: anything that could hold a clue. All of it had been collected into a pile and put into the bag. That section of platform was clean. You could eat your dinner off it. The rug had been folded, folded again: a neat envelope to hold anything on it. Both went into the back of the pimp's car. Matt slammed the hatch and pulled his baseball cap low. Headed for the driver's door. Stepped out of the shadows and into the light. Waited there a good ten seconds before getting inside.

  Anyone watching an hour ago would have seen a car arrive and a guy get out. Just one guy. Black jacket, baseball cap. If they were still watching right now, they would be looking at the same guy. Black jacket, baseball cap. Guy comes, guy leaves, no big deal.

  Matt found a deserted street and parked. He got the stuff he needed from the boot, hit the central locking button and slammed the driver's door, keys left inside. Pulled his cap low again, started walking. As soon as he turned the corner, he stopped and quickly stripped off the coat and cap. He turned the coat inside out, balled it up with the cap inside, grabbed his bag and folded rug and made the half-mile journey to his Mondeo, parked a street over from the pimp's house. He threw the stuff in the boot and took off.

  Past five in the morning when Matt pulled up outside his parents' house. No lights on. He wasn't going to wake them.

  He noticed that their wheelie bin was on the pavement. All the bins were. Collection day, he realised. Good. He got out, got the balled jacket and cap from the boot and crossed the road. Lifted the lid on his parents' full bin, moved aside a split bag of crap and shoved the coat and cap deep down.

  He slept in the car. Before he drifted off, he thought about his sister. He'd been close to her body dump site, yet hadn't visited. Why? It had been three days. The police would have long finished their analysis of the wasteground. The area would be back to normal by now. There might be nothing but a bunch of flowers on a tree to show that anything bad had happened there at all. It couldn't hurt to go see, yet he hadn't.

  Matt let his mind calm. He did this by imagining what he was very tempted to do. Get up and go back to the bedsit above the takeaway, kick the door in and rouse the big fucker, Jake, from sleep. Make him stand and turn around, and then boot that fat bastard right in the ass to return the favour.

  He imagined it real-time. He drove the streets in his mind, having imprinted them in his memory. If he'd wanted to see the dream concluded, he should have driven faster, because he was asleep before he'd even reached Alfred Road.

  *

  He woke to a loud rumbling. Groggy eyes found the dashboard clock. 7.44. Two hours' sleep.

  The rumbling was a large refuse collection truck rolling his way. Guys in yellow hi-visibility jackets were dragging the bins to the back of the truck. All heavy hands and noise and no finesse, as if the guys hated being up so early and wanted everyone else awake as well. Hydraulic arms lifted the bins and emptied them into the back of the vehicle. He watched as a tattooed monster lugged his parents' bin over, waited, and returned the empty bin to the pavement. Incriminating evidence gone. Job done. Matt closed his eyes and went out, instantly.

  He woke to a rapping on the window. His eyes flicked open slowly. Eyes saw the clock. After ten. At least he'd grabbed a few more hours. He shivered, cold.

  His mother was at the window, smiling in at him. Hair bunched up on her head. Make-up. Smart clothing. Ready for the day. She held a cup of tea. He saw the steam rising from it. He wondered how long she’d known he was out here.

  He sat up, jabbed the button to run the window down, realised his error, turned the key in the ignition and tried again. The glass whirred downwards.

  "Do you want this out here, Matty? You could come in."

  There she was again, being cautious with him. Same way you'd treat some valuable, antique, but still-live grenade. One wrong word and he'd spin the wheels in a screeching cloud of smoke and vanish, that was her thinking, he suspected.

  He went with her into the house. He saw his dad was up, but in his pyjamas. He grinned, remembering them. "Jeez, mum, dad had those pyjamas when I was last here."

  Dad was on the Xbox again. "Washed them since," he said with a wink at Matt. Then her cursed as something noisy happened on screen. Went frantic with the controller. Mum rolled her eyes.

  In the kitchen he saw the items for a full English breakfast, but in wrappers. One box of eggs, a packet of bacon, a loaf of bread, a tin of beans. Arranged on the worktop.

  "I can make you breakfast," she said. He said yes, please. Mum always got pleasure out of cooking for people who were hungry. Same as some surgeon who'd removed a tumour from a guy's brain. Equally important in mum's eyes.

  While he ate, she told him a few inconsequential things. How much the neighbours had paid for their extension. Her new favourite TV programmes. She skirted around family affairs until he was chewing the last of his bacon. Then she started slowly. She mentioned Joseph, Danny's baby boy. The scrapes and hilarity he got up to. How much she liked Lucinda, the woman who'd finally rooted Danny. But not Karen. She mentioned Danny's good job down in the City. But not Karen. She mentioned her sister, how her husband had died last year. But not Karen. Then she mentioned his old room - storage now for her materials, but better than staying in a car, if Matt so chose. If he was here for another night or two. But not Karen.

  By then he'd had enough. He went straight in: "Mum, I'm sorry about Karen."

  She held it together, but he saw the effort. She took his empty plate and turned to the sink to wash it. To hide her face. Matt rose from the table and hugged his mum from behind. It felt weird for the first few seconds because she was stiff, holding back the emotion. Then she relaxed, and he relaxed. They stayed that way and he found himself looking at the taps in the sink while she washed dishes. The taps were old, old as the house, but the handle on the cold tap was newer. Fixed twenty-five years ago. Danny had come into the house thirsty, yelling for Matt to get away from the sink, and Matt had thought it would be funny to tighten the cold tap so Danny would have to drink warm water. It had been funn
y until the point when the handle had broken off. He and Karen had both been sent to their rooms, and then Karen had gotten annoyed at Matt for getting her in trouble when she had nothing to do with the tap thing.

  Old memories, dulled and fuzzy, as if not really real, but they were. All of them. Thousands of them. And every one had this house and this woman at the core. Both felt a little new to him, but they weren't. He'd grown up here and she had made it happen. He just needed time readjust, like riding a bike after time out of the saddle.

  Finished with the dishes, she held his hands in front of her stomach. It felt comfortable. He immediately started to feel tired. He glanced out the window, at the yard where he'd played with Karen and Danny, and then at the old clock on the wall near the fridge that was still three minutes fast so that if anyone was ever running a couple of minutes late, they'd get there on time after all. It all slipped into place, like reality in the waking moments after a deep sleep. He hadn't settled any other place he'd been and it wasn't because he liked to move about. It was because he'd left this place too quick, for all the wrong reasons.

  "I'm back, Mum. To stay for a while, if that's okay. I'm not running off again." He wanted to add something about Karen, how he'd stay for her, for the funeral, but felt it wrong to do so, to give specific reasons. Better left as was, with all reasons encompassed but unsaid.

  She squeezed his hands again, then moved out of his grasp and faced him. "Earn your room, young man," she said, but she was smiling. She nodded at the sink, where his dirty plate lay. Just that one overlooked piece of crockery, as if saved for him. He saluted her and set to washing up.

  "And don't break the cold tap," she said, and he nearly burst into tears.

  "Karen got sick of her husband just after you left," Danny said. He spoke his next few sentences over the course of a thirty-four break. They were at a dim snooker hall full of jobless yobs. "She used to go out with the girls a lot, and he didn't like it, said she was acting like some kid trying to reclaim her teenaged years. So he dumped her. But that was her plan, she told me. Make him sick of her so he wouldn't chase her if she ended it. Make him end it." He laughed. "Stopped washing and stuff. Wore shitty clothes that smelled. Worked a treat. Half a year, he was gone. She applied to university and got in based on grades from some access course a few years back. She moved into one of those shared student accommodation places and got a part-time job." He was on the blue. Easy straight into the side pocket. Hit it way too hard, all anger, and missed by a whole foot. "Some fucking job," he snarled.

  Danny told him more. Matt barely spoke for three frames - forty-five minutes. He was happy to listen, to remember, and to see Karen's smiling face in his head. It beat picturing her dead and strangled, as his mind kept trying to. His father would have that image burned into his soul, because he had identified the body, according to Danny. But Matt would never again see her that way, he promised himself.

  "We honestly never had any idea she was selling herself, Matt," Danny said as they racked the balls the for the next frame. "She told us she worked in a pub and there were always photos and posts on Facebook to back it up. We never doubted."

  His face was a little imploring, as if he thought Matt was judging him. Blaming the family for Karen's turn to prostitution.

  "Two years she was on the game, but she was never like those other ones. Never into the drugs and stuff. It wasn't a lifestyle for her, she wasn't trapped into it. It was just money. To pay for uni."

  Matt nodded, but knew otherwise. When he was on Karen's Facebook profile yesterday to print a photo, he'd seen a lot of posts, most sent from a computer at the university. But they were old posts, from more than a year ago. Matt believed she'd quit her course, but hadn't told her family. Prostitutes could make a lot of money. He believed she'd been swept up by bullshit talk from someone like that pimp of hers, or other girls. Talk of riches, whatever. He didn't know about drugs, though. He hoped not. Didn't matter now, though.

  "She hid it," he said. "Don't feel guilty."

  Danny put his cue on the table. Faced Matt across the table. "Mum told me to bring you here, Matt. Look, the Liaison Officer is coming to the house tonight. The woman the police sent us. For support." He looked awkward talking about this. "She wanted me to tell you you don't have to be there. Do you want to be there? We can stay here until she's gone, if you want. That's what Mum wanted me to offer you."

  He wondered why she'd say that. Then figured she must be worried he'd find it hard. The Liaison Officer must be coming to give them an update on the investigation. Maybe that was why she'd not mentioned Karen. He'd heard she was dead, Mum knew that, but maybe she believed that was the extent of his interface with this horrible thing: just the knowledge that his sister was gone, not the gruesome details of her demise. Mums, ever protective, even towards guys in their thirties, even towards former soldiers. He loved her a little bit more for that.

  "I'll be there. For Mum. Don't want her worrying about me. We should all be there for this."

  They continued to play. Danny's mood got blacker as he got drunker and dwelled on everything negative. Dad had started to retreat from reality, he claimed. Was spending most of his time in the bedroom, poring over forums on the Internet, reading about the lives of people who'd had their world shattered by murder. It eased his pain, Danny claimed, to wallow in others' pity, as if underlining the badness in the world made it okay to have your soul torn apart. As if Dad was trying to accept it by accepting that such hell happened to many and only the immensely lucky ones escaped unhurt.

  "Maybe he's just reading about how others coped," Matt said. But Danny shook his head: no.

  Then he moaned about the liaison officer. Mum treated the woman like an angel sent to ease pain, but Danny didn't like all the questions the woman fired. She was more interested in solving the murder, he claimed.

  "Maybe she knows that's the best way to give us some kind of closure," Matt said. But Danny shook his head: no.

  Then he shook like a cold man. Throwing off his dour attitude, maybe, because in the next second he was smiling. "She's coming at six. Three hours. Just enough time for me to demoralise and degrade you on the table."

  Trying to change the subject. Matt launched himself at that opportunity. "Bring it, rich boy. Get the pints in first."

  They played the rest of the game in silence.

  Before they got in the taxi, Danny went and got his laminate photo from his car. He kissed his BMW and told it he'd be back tomorrow. Matt used to the opportunity to lean towards the driver and tell him they were taking a detour, and to just drive there and not mention it to the other guy.

  Both brothers were drunk. Matt had decided he needed to be a bit drunk for what he was going to do. He didn't think he could interrogate the Liaison Officer if he was sober. And that was his plan. He knew the police would keep their cards close to their chest with regards to how much they actually knew. Or didn't know. And it was the didn't know stuff Matt was interested in. To get the information he needed from her, he required two things. One was Dutch courage, because he might piss this woman off, maybe his mother, too, if the conversation turned sour. The other was deeper knowledge himself. That one he was going to take care of right now.

  Matt was in the back seat. Danny got in beside him, handed him the photo. Matt took it, didn't look at it. Put it in his lap, told the driver to go.

  "What do you want that for?" Danny asked. Matt just shrugged at him.

  "Stop here," Matt told the driver. When the car slowed and stopped, Danny looked out the window.

  "What's here?"

  Matt told the driver to wait. Kick back and read something. Keep the meter running. He got out and Danny followed. And that was when Danny understood where they were. Matt realised that while Danny knew where Karen had been found, he had not been here.

  "Matt, what do you know?"

  Matt said, "Nothing. Wait in the car."

  Edding Street was popular with people leaving or heading to Arkdale Shoppi
ng centre, half a mile north of here. It was past six p.m., yet the street was fairly empty. As they'd driven south, past a junction, the residential section had given way to the walled rear yards of shops on their right and a business park on their left. The yards were grimy, littered with trash and discarded stock from the shops, the gates either broken or jammed open by rubbish. Out front the shops were shiny and smart to attract the customers, but no such care was needed back here. The streetlights were too few and too weak and the whole street seemed bleak, like somewhere long-forgotten. A good place to hunt a victim. A bad place for a victim to be.

  The other side was neater. The business park. Trimmed hedges out front, with shiny glass offices behind small car parks. Light industrial units of metal and brick poked up from behind the offices. They were parked outside the office of a joint supplying animal foods, but the area Matt was interested in was next door. A big square emptiness, like a pulled tooth in a healthy mouth. Whatever business had stood there was long gone, even the building. The area, some sixty feet across, was weed-covered, pitted concrete, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The only eyesore that side of the road. With the office building gone, the industrial units to the rear were left exposed.

  The northern residential section would see activity after dark, but it was a different story here because the shops and the offices were shut. It was lonely and deserted, and Matt wondered if the police would have had any luck in finding witnesses.

  "This isn't the way to do cope," Danny said from behind him. "This is like what Dad's doing, immersing himself…"

  Matt shut his brother's voice out. He'd read all about how to cope with a loved one's death in the few hours before he'd left for London. He'd done that not for the sanity of his own mind, but to present the correct image to his family. Keeping mementos, talking to the lost sibling as if they were standing right by you, and making time for yourself – those might be helpful strategies for some, but not Matt. What he needed to do was observe and analyse and solve the problem. He'd erode his own grief using revenge, plain and simple. He was not here to view the place where the body had been found simply to try to ease his pain through acceptance.