Bloodstream

by Luca Veste

  To see her close her eyes.

  At fifteen, there were meetings. The school were worried about things they were being told about. That he was scaring one of their pupils. One of their female pupils. And they weren’t going to allow it to continue. His father had been called in to be made aware of it. He was to change classes, no longer with her any more. No contact. They wouldn’t hesitate to call the police if they had to.

  The disappointment etched across his father’s face was enough for him. The beating he’d received later the final nail.

  It was her fault. She hadn’t accepted his love. Had chosen others ahead of him. It didn’t matter that he had exposed their lies to her, that he had pleaded with her to open her eyes to the things that went on behind her back. That it was he who would be the right man for her. He’d watched as she flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder and looked at him with pity. Not love. It didn’t matter how many times he followed her, sitting outside her house for hours. She didn’t understand. Didn’t care that the boy who she so loved did terrible, disgusting things when not around her.

  The boy had been his revenge. And he’d liked it.

  An accident. It’s so easy to make it look like an accident. Something that couldn’t be helped. Wrong place, wrong time.

  He remembered the boy’s face as he’d gone under the water of the River Mersey for the final time. The knowledge that he had lost. That the better man had won. The sun still shining down on them, as the evening began in that end of July heat.

  BOY DROWNS IN MERSEY ACCIDENT

  The boy had been known to do stupid things. Swimming alone off the prom and getting into trouble wasn’t out of the norm.

  No one had ever known.

  He left her alone after that. The love had died. Withered away by her betrayal. The anger dissipated by the knowledge he had taken a piece of her without her ever knowing.

  He had never really thought about the fleeting nature of his feelings back then. When he was in that moment, it felt like everything in his life was geared towards that first love. He thought about her constantly. The first thing he thought about when he woke up, the last thing before he fell asleep. Her face, her body. The thought of being next to her. Just breathing in her scent. The warmth of her, near him.

  He moved on. Once that love had died, he grew up a little more. Met someone who had an interest in him. She was Number Two. Lost his virginity to her in a fumble of teenage limbs and disappointment. That love began to die when she moved away to a different city for university. He thought about how close they had been, driven apart by distance and jealousy. The new guy she met there had got rid of him. Killed that love he had.

  Number Three – Jane – was someone he now didn’t need to think of. Gone, after months of planning and courage. Best forgotten, given how it had ended.

  Number Four . . . Number Four could be the one. It was early in their relationship, but he could sense something. It was different from the other three, of course. He was a changed man.

  He had a mission.

  He had to show her what happened when you took that love and destroyed it. Show her – Number Four – that everything could be different.

  He had to show Number Four what real love was.

  It all went back to Number One. He had tried to find her recently, but couldn’t trace her at all. She had been everything to him. He could have been everything to her, but she threw it back in his face.

  He had still wanted her.

  ‘Are you not talking to me tonight?’ he said, his voice breaking into the silence between him and Number Four. He smiled and breathed in a few times. ‘You know I’m doing it for you. It’s all for you. These people . . . they don’t deserve what we have.’

  He leaned closer, ignoring the fact that she cowered away from him. He placed a kiss on her cheek, ran his fingers through her hair. ‘You’re so beautiful. You do know that, don’t you?’

  He moved back, away from Number Four, leaving her to attempt to crawl into a ball, away from him, the chains holding her to the radiator limiting her movement. She looked past him, a pleading look coming to her face as she spied the bucket in the corner. He slid it closer to her with his foot, unlocked one of her arms, then turned away.

  ‘I’ll be everything to you. Once I’ve finished, there will be no doubt. You will love me, the way it’s supposed to be. You’ll never leave me, never want anyone else.’

  He crinkled his nose and stepped closer to the window, looking at the empty street outside. He spied a couple walking in the distance, the gap between them closing as they moved away. He imagined an arm slipping around a shoulder, a hand slipping into another, a stolen kiss under a flickering street light.

  ‘You will be mine. Forever.’

  Chapter Five

  Murphy was tired. Damn tired. He waited until Karen left the room – excusing herself to go to the bathroom – before talking quietly to Rossi.

  ‘Same thing. It’s always the same bloody thing.’

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Rossi said, standing up and going over to look at the large picture of Chloe above the mantelpiece. ‘Could just be that she didn’t like the relationship between them and is now just venting.’

  ‘There’ll be something. I reckon it’s what you suggested. Spurned ex or bit on the side. This knobhead has been playing away from home and got them both killed. We see stuff like this all the time.’

  ‘Not sure about that . . .’

  ‘Domestic issues turning violent. We see it all the time. Arguments over petty, small things boiling over and becoming all about power.’

  ‘I’m not really following your logic here.’ Rossi picked up a small photo frame from the mantelpiece, inspected it then placed it back.

  ‘I don’t know the whole thing yet,’ Murphy said, throwing his hands up. ‘Joe is just another one, I bet. The dominant one in the relationship . . . every relationship he has. Always in control . . .’

  Murphy stared off past Rossi to the more tasteful shot of Chloe in the far alcove, pretending he saw only innocence in the eyes looking back at him. He thought about the endless parade of destroyed relationships, people desperately clinging on, unwilling to give up. Those changed forever by domination, all the women he had come into contact with during his time on the job. The scared, the lost, all terrified to speak out because they knew he couldn’t stop it.

  ‘It’s something for us to look at,’ Murphy said, fixing Rossi with a stare.

  Murphy could see the familiar darkening of the eyes in Rossi – the slight dip in the shoulders at the possibility of another woman becoming yet another statistic. Someone who couldn’t get away, couldn’t fight back, couldn’t save her life. Wasn’t allowed to.

  The familiar story.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get any more out of her,’ Rossi said, pointing towards the door which had been left ajar – hearing footsteps descending down the stairs towards them.

  ‘Why do you say that about Joe, Karen?’ Murphy said, once they had settled back down into their previous positions.

  ‘The way he was. He was never right for her, I knew that . . . we all bloody did. She changed with him. Was totally different. I brought her up to be independent. To never make the same mistakes I made and become the trophy wife. I have a job now, but for years my life revolved round my kids. I didn’t do anything for myself, everything was about this house, my husband and kids. He never forced me into it, understand that. It was just the way I allowed things to happen. My husband is a good man – not Chloe’s real dad, but he always treated her as his own. Chloe was going to be different. She was going to be her own woman.’

  ‘What happened to Chloe’s father?’ Murphy said, ticking off the possibility.

  ‘Died when Chloe was two. Got drunk and drove into a tree in the lanes near Frankby. She doesn’t remember him at all.’

  ‘And she was different?’ Rossi said, now looking towards the woman and not writing in her notebook.

  ‘Yes.
With the few boyfriends she had before, she was in control, always. They’d swap and change all the time.’ Karen gave a small laugh, cut off before it had time to have any effect. ‘Chloe would drop boys for the smallest things. The tiniest issues and they were gone. Not this one. He walked all over her. Treated her terribly. You must have heard some of the rumours?’

  Murphy shook his head, whilst Rossi gave no response. Karen shrugged her shoulders and waved a hand as if it didn’t matter.

  ‘They were all true,’ Karen continued. ‘He was off out on his own all the time. Left her at home, crying down the phone to me. I tried, at first, to get her to see sense, but that wasn’t going to work.’

  Silence grew for a few seconds. Murphy opened his mouth to speak, before Karen continued in a voice so low and angry.

  ‘He hit her once. Well, once I know of, anyway. When he’d come in drunk and had been due home hours earlier. Didn’t even bother calling her, just turned up in the early hours. They argued, and he slapped her. Broke down immediately, of course, saying he’d never do it again and all that shit they always say. She believed him, in the end. I told her to get out there and then. That it would never be just one time, but she didn’t listen. She needs him. Needed him. I don’t know why.’

  ‘When was this?’ Rossi said, Murphy not for the first time impressed at how she could swallow the fire back and ask the right questions.

  ‘About six months ago. Chloe has never mentioned it since. The bastard got her, didn’t he?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Murphy said, leaning forward to close the distance between them. ‘But we’re going to find out, OK? We’re going to find out what happened to Chloe.’

  And he believed it.

  They left Karen with the family liaison officer. Rossi checked in with the station as Murphy wrote down a few notes he would probably never read. The DC who Rossi spoke to sounded harassed from what Murphy could hear over the radio.

  ‘Media?’

  ‘Of course,’ Rossi replied, pulling her seat belt on. ‘This’ll be big.’

  Murphy’s teeth tugged on his bottom lip. He allowed himself a small jot of sharp pain before snapping his own seat belt on and starting the car. ‘We’ll deal with it.’

  ‘You think it was him then?’ Rossi said once Murphy had turned round in the road and headed back towards the Wallasey tunnel.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’

  ‘Not the last either,’ Rossi answered with a sigh, her face turned towards the window. ‘I don’t think this is murder-suicide.’

  ‘It definitely doesn’t look like that. Could be something related to him, though. The “bunny boiler” angle?’ Murphy slowed down for traffic lights as they turned from amber to red.

  ‘Just . . . that scene doesn’t fit. Domestics are almost always in the home. Away from public view. This, in some derelict house, miles from where they live, I can’t see it. If Joe did it, why is he the one injured? If someone else did it, why do it in that house, rather than in their one?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. I once worked a case where the guy did it in a hotel. Called his wife, told her to meet him there, then did it in plain view of everyone at reception. Didn’t give a shit. She died, he survived the carving knife he took to his own wrists.’

  ‘He pleaded not guilty, right?’

  ‘You know the case?’ Murphy said, realising the lights had changed to green a second too late, earning him a beep from the car behind him.

  ‘No. I just know the way these things go.’

  They fell into silence as they made the five-minute trip back towards the tunnel entrance, down the slip road off Gorsey Lane and back towards the city. Traffic was lighter than Murphy was familiar with; his trips when he had lived across the water had always taken place early morning, when it seemed the whole of the Wirral escaped like rats from a sinking ship into the proper city. Only a smattering of cars were taking the trip now.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Rossi said as they entered the tunnel. ‘Do you think it’s him?’

  Murphy took one hand off the steering wheel to scratch at his beard. ‘No, I didn’t answer that question.’

  ‘Well, do you think it’s him? You got angry enough back at the house about him and now you’re going all “introspective” on me.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just bloody tired of hearing the same story, that’s all. We’ve had too many domestics lately.’

  ‘Can’t disagree with you there.’

  ‘It would probably be easier in a way if it was something like that. I’d be just making stuff up and guessing at the moment though.’

  ‘Doesn’t usually stop you.’

  He couldn’t argue with that. ‘I suppose not. Gut feeling?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I think there’s something more to this one. Something I really don’t want to consider.’

  ‘That there’s more?’

  ‘Maybe. In the past and to come.’

  Silence grew in the car once more. Murphy turned on the stereo, the sound of Pink Floyd filling the car a few seconds later.

  ‘Do we have to listen to this?’ Rossi said, reaching over and turning the volume down.

  ‘What, you want to listen to the shite that’s around these days?’

  ‘This is old music. Older than you, I would bet.’

  ‘That’s beside the point. This is classic stuff.’

  Rossi sighed, then reached over and turned the volume down even further. ‘Can you still hear it?’

  Murphy couldn’t really, not over the noise of the traffic as they travelled through the tunnel, but decided against any further argument.

  ‘I don’t know how to best broach this . . .’ Rossi said, the change in subject abrupt enough for Murphy to notice. ‘Only, I know it’s coming up to two years since Peter died.’

  Murphy didn’t respond at first. He thought back to that night, his godson tied up and helpless. A man with a gun to the eighteen-year-old’s head, ranting at Murphy as he stood there watching.

  The smell of gunpowder and blood.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We haven’t spoken about it in a while, that’s all. I was just wondering if there’s anything I should be wary of saying.’

  ‘I’m doing all right. Better than I thought I would be. The counselling helped a bit. Things with Sarah are sorted. I wish I could speak to Jess, but she still won’t speak to me.’

  Jess – Peter’s mother, and Murphy’s friend of twenty years. Still blaming Murphy for not doing enough to save his life.

  ‘Good. I’m glad you’re doing okay.’

  ‘I have to. He wouldn’t want me to wallow in self-pity. He looked up to me. I’ve got to keep going, otherwise I sully that.’

  ‘Sully?’

  ‘Word-of-the-day calendar at home. You missed the day I used “discombobulate”.’

  Rossi laughed, then turned back to her phone. Ten minutes later they were pulling into the car park behind the station. There was already a significant media presence gathered, waiting to hear more news. Murphy knew – had too much experience to not know – that there would be more TV crews up at the crime scene itself. Battling against each other to report the same news. Repeating similar information on an hourly basis, desperately waiting for something more.

  Murphy had a feeling it would be him giving it to them before too long.

  He parked up and the pair entered the drab building, nodding to the harassed-looking receptionist and passing their ID cards over the security scanner. Murphy gave a longing look towards the lifts before ascending the stairs behind Rossi, taking two at a time to catch up with her.

  As Murphy and Rossi walked past the normally quiet offices they could hear conversations between small groups as they discussed the morning’s events. Continuing down the corridor, Murphy ignored the surreptitious looks he and Rossi received. He held up a hand to someone he knew in the drugs squad when they called out his name, but carried on
walking.

  Eventually they made it to the sanctuary of their own corner of St Anne Street.

  ‘Wondered when you were getting back,’ a voice said from behind one of the computers. ‘Interview with the mother go okay?’

  ‘As well as they always do,’ Murphy replied, taking off his suit jacket and loosening his tie a little. ‘I trust you’re doing the necessary.’

  DC Graham Harris manoeuvred himself round and stopped his wheelchair at the end of Murphy’s desk. ‘CCTV, witness statements, home owners contacted, brief press release signed off saying the usual. All in hand.’

  Murphy gave Harris a nod and switched his computer on. He glanced towards Harris as he turned to speak to Rossi. Felt that familiar twinge of guilt as he allowed his eyes to settle on his chair before turning away.

  Harris had been injured on the night of Peter’s death. Murphy had taken Harris with him to chase up a loose end, which had ended for Harris with the blast of a shotgun. A knock at an uninspiring door and the world turns, spewing out a random series of events which can change lives in an instant. Murphy had survived without a scratch, but Harris couldn’t say the same. He had been peppered with shotgun pellets, which had resulted in a severed spinal cord, making his legs as useless as Murphy in the moments following the shooting. Doctors had saved Harris’s life, but not his full mobility.

  Harris had returned to the job as soon as he’d been able to, determination overruling any word from a girlfriend who hadn’t lasted much longer. Murphy had asked for him to be on the team before anyone else . . . even Rossi, though he would never tell her that. He wanted that reminder of what his poor planning had cost, sitting there day after day, to drive the point home into his thick skull. Harris had turned out to be a great desk jockey as things had turned out, relishing the minute details better than Murphy or Rossi could arguably have done.