Hold Your Tongue

by Deborah Masson

  ‘Ronnie says it didn’t help that the mother had always made it clear that Susie had been the favourite, that she went to pieces the way she did after losing her. Ronnie tried to be there for Shaun, thought he was coping. Susie was born on a Sunday. Bonnie and Blithe and Good and Gay.’

  ‘Beautiful, carefree, good and happy.’ Mearns translating it for them, starting to buy in to what Eve was saying.

  ‘Everything Shaun loved about Susie too. Everything he’d always felt he wasn’t.’

  Mearns nodded. ‘Why the killings?’

  ‘I think it’s fair to say we’re dealing with a guy who is seriously mentally ill. Whatever the reason is, it makes sense to him. The same as any crime, any murder is justified in the eyes of the wrongdoer. Only he can tell us that.’

  Cooper leaned forward. ‘I don’t know. All seems a bit far-fetched to me.’

  ‘Maybe, but think about it. Not about the tongues and the rhyme. About how these women are being tied up. What they’re being tied with.’

  ‘Venetian-blind cord.’ The cynical note in Hastings’ voice was gone.

  Eve looked at them one by one. ‘Susie Dempster, Shaun’s sister, was found hanging with venetian-blind cord wrapped around her throat.’

  Chapter 48

  Then

  He’s found her, but she’s not playing any more.

  Warm wetness trickles down the inside of his leg, soaking his sock, pooling around his feet, a dark stain spreading out across the carpet. He doesn’t move. Stands there. Staring.

  Her tongue is sticking out. But not like all the times she’s teased him, wanting him to chase her.

  No. Not anything like that.

  Her head’s tilted to the side, like she’s listening. Listening out for him. Wondering if he’s going to find her. If he’ll seek her out.

  She’s staring at him, her big blue eyes bug-like, jutting out, like her tongue. Not normal. He takes a step towards her, imagines her jumping towards him, giggling in that tinkly way that she does, telling him it’s all some silly joke. But she doesn’t.

  She’s getting closer. He’s not aware of his feet moving, cold trouser material clinging to his leg. He stops when he sees the cord. Pulled tight against her tiny, smooth neck. Holding her there. Upright. Her skinny small body half-hidden, milk white against the brightly patterned curtain, pale beneath the lurid purple of her face.

  He sees the garden through the slats of the blinds. Blinds new to the window. Modern. His mother’s idea. Rain batters against the glass, blurring the wet lawn where normally they would have been playing, hiding amongst the rose bushes, ducking behind the hedging. He wishes more than ever they’d been out there today. His eyes flicker as a bird flies past the window. Movement as normal out there. Not frozen. Changed for ever, like in here.

  He’s right in front of her, can smell the Vosene shampoo in her long straight hair. He lifts his arm, stretches out his hand, stops mid-air.

  He wants to touch her. To touch it.

  Repulsed by the swollen tongue, too big for the small plump lips it hangs from, but unable to stop looking at it, to get rid of the need to feel it. He wants to stuff it back in. To make things the way they were. To make her the way she was. But he knows it’s too late for that.

  He drops his hand to his side, her bloated face blurring in front of him. Nothing to do with the rain this time. He feels tight. Rigid. Like he’s being squeezed by some giant fist and will surely burst. Wanting to explode. To be nothing, which is what he is and will be without her.

  And then he hears it. Shrill and raw. Outside of him but inside too. He’s screaming. Sobbing. One hand grabbing her chubby cheek, the other pushing at her too-long tongue – pushing it, forcing it, trying to put it where it should be.

  She can’t leave him. He won’t let her.

  He’s panting, hears footsteps in the distance, rushing towards him. Someone else screaming. His mother. He turns to her, heart lurching in his chest, his hand still clutching flesh, pulling his little sister ever tighter against the cord.

  What he sees when he looks at his mother makes him let go, gives him something else to grapple with. Something that confuses him – terrifies him. Clear and confirmed only when she speaks. Barely a whisper, her voice someone else’s.

  ‘Oh God. What have you done?’

  Chapter 49

  Sunday, 22 December

  Eve dabbed a finger on the underside of the dresser to check that the last coat of varnish had dried and was no longer tacky. Satisfied, she prepared to sand again. She lifted the face mask from beneath her chin, paused and found herself staring at the cork board. Who was she trying to kid? There was no escaping. The women staring out at her from the wall wouldn’t let her and the truth was, she didn’t want to. Another week had passed. No developments to speak about, apart from Dr Shetty being convinced Eve was getting stronger every day. What a joke.

  Sunday. D-day.

  When no news had come, Hastings ordered her to go home at the end of another long day – to get some rest, something to eat. She’d gone along with it, had told Cooper and Mearns to do the same – nothing they could do sitting in the office – knowing herself that neither of them would have a stomach for food or a mind for sleep.

  She’d come out here as soon as she got home, but she knew she could’ve brought a sleeping bag to the office, the amount she’d been here lately. Not that it had got them anywhere. Not when they were looking for a ghost. They’d checked on every Shaun Dempster they’d managed to find, knowing it wouldn’t be the one they were looking for but doing it anyway. No trace since the missing-persons report had been filed. Fourteen years ago. When Shaun was sixteen years old – six years after his father murdered his mother. For all they knew, Shaun was dead too, as his grandmother believed. But Eve had to believe that teenage boy was responsible for what was happening – that he was living off radar – or they had nothing.

  She looked at each woman in turn. Melanie, Lexie, Jenkins, Sanders, Sarah and Shelley. A blank space next to Shelley. Space for the planned seventh victim and one that Eve felt helpless to save. No idea where Shaun was. No clue as to who he would target next. She thought about Ronnie, about all the hopes and dreams he’d had for his son, about his failings and his guilt. How hard it must’ve been phoning Eve to turn in his son. Ronnie had called from his hospital bed every day since, desperate to know if there was any progress.

  It was strange, but part of Eve wanted to be able to tell him they’d found his son, that he was responsible after all. But another part of her wanted Ronnie’s dream to come true, for all this to be a terrible mistake. To give him some peace at the end of a shit life. Eve kept staring at the photographs, frustrated. Not a clue where to start trying to find that peace for Ronnie. Too late even if she did. No matter how many hours she’d put in. Sunday. Another woman tonight. The last line of the rhyme. Would it stop then? How could they even try to save whoever was in the killer’s sights when they didn’t know where he was?

  She lifted her mask again, adjusted the strap of her dungarees, went to fetch the sandpaper and stood looking at the dresser. Being here was wrong. This was all a crock of shit. She threw the sandpaper to the floor, yanked off her face mask and walked to the door. There was no way she was staying home.

  Mearns slipped off her shoes, wriggling crushed toes in sheer stocking soles before padding the short distance across the heated wooden floor from her front door to the kitchen. She opened the fridge, pulled a bottle of white out and closed the door with her foot as she reached to the cupboard above the black marble worktop for a wine glass. She laid them on the kitchen worktop, opened the drawer, hesitated on lifting the bottle opener, wondering whether a drink was a good idea, knowing what day it was, aware she could get a call in the early hours. She’d wanted to stay at the office, but, between Hastings and Eve, she’d eventually given up arguing. She looked at the wine glass. One wouldn’t hurt, to help her relax. She opened the bottle and poured.

  Mearns turned to
the sink, a breakfast bar behind it separating the kitchen from the living room. Across the spacious open plan was a floor to ceiling arched double-window looking out over the city. She loved the layout, could see her reflection in the glass from where she stood in the lit kitchen, the space between there and the window still in darkness.

  Mearns jumped as she felt her mobile phone vibrate in her pocket. She walked towards the window, fingers curled round the wine glass, walking around the coffee table in the centre of the room, her other hand fishing her phone from her pocket. It was him. It would be. She sighed. Unsure what to do. Thinking he might be what she needed to take her mind off things, ignoring the doubts that she was using him for nothing more than that.

  She typed a reply with one thumb saying she was home, pocketed the phone again and then pressed her forehead and nose against the freezing window, her breath clouding the glass, snow falling outside once again. She felt small against the large frame, looking out to the deserted roads and buildings below. It looked like a scene from a Christmas card. All white and glittering in the streetlights that bounced off the snow in the dark. Christmas. Days away. The thought of that, of today’s date, stirred something in her memory, something she couldn’t grasp. She could see the odd set of lights twinkling here and there behind windows, the outline of Christmas trees. Her flat felt bare in comparison. Maybe she should have made an effort, but in her job you didn’t get the chance to feel festive.

  She looked out to the small balcony outside her window, if you could call it that: enough space to stand outside, wrought-iron railings surrounding it. She could count the number of times she’d been out on that balcony since she moved in – feeling unsafe any time she had, avoiding leaning against the railings as she had no idea how long they had been there or when they’d last been maintained.

  There was a thin line of snow balanced on the railing, a white carpet on the balcony floor. She had a sudden urge to touch it, to stand out in the cold air, to feel free and part of something else for a moment. To forget about the stuffy office, the ongoing case, the bodies, the blood. To be surrounded by white. By nothing.

  She lifted the brass handle of the window, shunting it with the heel of her hand as it stuck, wine sloshing in the glass in her other hand. Mearns pulled the heavy window in towards her, hinges creaking as she did. A blast of cold air stung her cheeks, making her feel alive. She stepped out on to the balcony, icy cold seeping through her stockings, snow turning to slush between her toes. She gasped, feeling a little stupid. The outside car park was below, more parking hidden beneath the building. Headlights bounced off the cars as another turned into the gap between the high red-brick wall. It was him. She smiled, despite herself, as he parked – even waved to catch his attention as he got out of the car. He looked up, waved, probably thinking she’d lost it standing out there.

  Mearns stepped backwards into the flat, closed the window and went to get a second wine glass from the cupboard. She didn’t care that her feet were cold and wet, or about the puddles of water she was leaving behind her, dotted along the floor, as she walked. All she cared about was that he was on his way and she’d decided he was what she needed.

  Chapter 50

  The office was dead, overhead strip lights buzzing in the silence. Eve sat at one of the incident-room desks working through the mounds of paperwork she was always being told was essential but that she found to be essentially pointless. Still, the monotony went halfway towards numbing her brain to anything else. She picked up her vending-machine coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste as she swallowed, nothing else in her stomach. She heard a noise from far off down the corridor – the creak of a door opening, the echo of it closing. She waited, staring at the door, and relaxed as she saw Cooper appear.

  ‘About as hungry and as able to sleep as me?’ Eve sighed as Cooper nodded, taking the desk by the door.

  ‘Needing a hand with anything, boss?’

  Eve pointed towards the pile of envelopes she was working through. ‘You could help me out with the mail backlog.’

  Cooper picked up a batch of envelopes and headed over to his desk, both of them knowing that while they muddled along with the mundane, another woman could be dying at the hands of Shaun Dempster.

  Mearns stood at the open door to her flat, a glass in each hand, her heart quickening as she heard the double door in the corridor squeak open before swishing shut again. She smiled as he came into view, let herself be gripped in his embrace, wine in the raised glasses in her hands above his shoulders slopping over the sides and on to the hallway carpet.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ she smiled, teasing him as she walked backwards into the flat, pulling him with her, one hand free of a glass.

  He stared deep into her eyes – that look that made her want to keep on meeting him. ‘I was hoping I wouldn’t be leaving until morning.’

  ‘Presumptuous, but I like it.’ Her voice was throaty, surprising her like it always did in his company. She stepped around him, closed and locked the door, wanting this to feel real, for her world tonight to be about living. To forget all about death and their search for a ghost.

  Eve and Cooper worked in silence, both their minds on the same thing. The need to be doing something but no way of knowing how to start or where to be tonight. That knowledge physically hurting, knotting their stomachs and spreading throughout them, the strain heavy, limbs rigid, everything clenched and no way of release.

  Eve banged yet another sheet of paper down on one of the growing piles in front of her and lifted the next envelope. The scrawl on the front of the recycled brown paper was almost illegible, Eve taking a minute or two to make out that it was addressed to both herself and Mearns. Something pricked her memory. She turned the envelope over in her hands and ran her thumb beneath the gummy overlap, the contents spilling out on to the desk. Eve frowned as she picked up the sheet of notepaper, the same thin scrawl scratched across, a paperclip fixing something to it. She peered at the note, struggling to read it too.

  ‘Photograph as promised. Such beautiful kids, Nancy Morrison.’

  Eve’s mouth went dry. She was unsure why, questioning her blood pumping, rushing through her veins, the knot in her stomach tightening ever more as she lifted the paper to expose the photograph beneath. Something felt wrong. It was a family photograph. What she took to be a mother, father, daughter and son. Her eyes skimmed across the faded faces, feeling the pulse throbbing in her neck, honing in on the son, her breath catching as it did. Eve’s heart hammered, making her feel sick. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  She was aware of Cooper’s head snapping up from his desk, saying something to her, could feel herself pushing back her chair, stumbling over to his desk, never lifting her stare from the small boy’s blurred and faded face on the old photograph in front of him – the realization of who it was as sharp and as clear as if it had been taken that day.

  Mearns pulled away from the kiss, sighing as she did. ‘Shit, sorry.’ She walked over to the sofa to where her mobile phone lay ringing, the sitting room still in darkness, seeing the reflection in the glass of the domineering arch window, of where he still stood in the lit kitchen. ‘Mearns.’

  ‘The photo.’ Eve sounded panicked, wired.

  ‘What?’ Mearns didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘Nancy Morrison. She sent us the photo.’

  Mearns’ heart skipped, remembering the old woman’s promise, wondering what Eve was about to say. She jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder, too caught in the call to have noticed him walking towards her in the reflection of the window. She raised her hand, made herself smile to soften the abrupt request for him to give her a minute. He stepped back, turned towards the kitchen.

  ‘And? What? What is it?’ She could feel Eve’s urgency over the phone.

  ‘We know who Shaun Dempster is.’

  ‘What?’ Mearns was trying to make sense of what was being said.

  ‘We were looking for a ghost. Shaun Dempster’s dead. At least that
’s what he wanted everyone to think.’

  ‘You’re not making any sen—’

  ‘He changed his name.’

  Mearns was frowning, looking out at the blackness, hearing wine being poured into glasses behind her. ‘What?’

  ‘We know him.’ Eve sounded gutted.

  Mearns swallowed, her voice a whisper, trying to deal with this new information. ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s Elliott. It’s Elliott Jones.’

  Mearns took the glass being offered to her, returning his smile, hoping he couldn’t see her hand shaking. Elliott cupped the side of her face, leaned in and kissed her cheek before walking away again.

  ‘Mearns?’

  Her legs felt like those of a newly born foal. She gripped the phone tighter against her ear, having to hold on to something, anything. She had to think, go over what she’d said to Eve so far. ‘That’s a shame. Sounded like it could’ve been a good lead. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

  ‘What? … Mearns?’

  ‘OK. Good night.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Don’t let the dragons bite.’ She forced a laugh, watched Elliott walking over to her. She tensed as he looped an arm around her waist from behind, nuzzling his mouth into the side of her neck. Mearns closed her eyes, everything inside her wanting to pull away. She held her breath, trying hard not to run, hoping he hadn’t sensed anything in her words to Eve or in her body language.

  She opened her eyes as he raised his other arm, bracing herself for him cupping her face as he always did. Her lips trembled as she tried to smile when he spoke.

  ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  Her skin crawled, tears springing to her eyes for who she thought the man in front of her had been, now knowing who and what he was. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice cracked, her head churning with how she was going to break free of him.