Hold Your Tongue
Page 28
‘Such a shame we couldn’t have had some fun, one last time.’
His words were clearing in her head, the realization of what he said coming at the same time she saw what was in his hand. Too late. She gasped, jumping as she felt the jab of the needle plunge into her neck.
The phone dropped from her hand, clattering to the floor. The last thing Mearns saw was black.
Eve was limping for the door, aware more than ever that she was paying for all the morning and evenings she’d missed her exercises in recent weeks. Cooper almost banged into her as they reached the door at the same time, asking what the hell was happening.
‘He’s there. Elliott’s with Mearns.’ Eve watched Cooper race ahead. ‘Bring the car round. I’ll call for back-up.’ Cooper was already crashing through the door to the stairwell, not waiting for any lift, unlike her, cursing her leg as she stabbed at the elevator button and fished in her pocket for her phone.
Cooper was already at the kerb, engine running, window down, shouting to Eve as she exited the station doors into the car park. ‘Elliott’s who she’s been seeing?’
Eve moved around the car as fast her leg would allow, nodding as she opened the door, got in and started jabbing at her phone. ‘Suddenly Ferguson’s not such a bad option.’
‘You thought she was seeing Ferguson? Did she say Elliott was there?’
Eve lifted her hand to silence Cooper as her call was answered at the other end. ‘Ferguson, I need you at Mearns’ flat at the Bastille. No time to explain, but Cooper and I are en route. Get there as soon as you can.’
Eve remembered Cooper’s question as she pocketed her phone. ‘No, she didn’t say Elliott was there, but what she said was enough.’ Eve buckled her seatbelt as Cooper put his foot to the floor.
‘Eh? What did she say?’
‘Don’t let the dragons bite.’
Cooper looked towards Eve as he sped out of the car park on to Broad Street, heading up Gallowgate towards George Street, Mearns’ flat minutes away. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘That night we were at yours and I gave her a lift home. She told me that the bank of mum and dad paid for her flat at the Bastille.’
‘They do know what she does for a living?’
‘Yeah, go figure. But she made a crack about being a princess in a tower – you know, a regular Rapunzel. I said something about not needing to be saved, about how she’d probably be able to slay a few dragons on her own. When she got out of the car, I said goodnight and “Don’t let the dragons bite”.’
‘She’s telling you he’s there, that she needs to be saved.’
The car was flying across the junction at George Street on to St Andrew Street, Cooper taking the right turn on to Charlotte Street on what felt like two wheels, Mearns’ flat one street away on Maberly. Eve leaned forward, staring out of the windscreen at the dark deserted roads, willing the car to go faster. ‘I hope we get there in time.’
Chapter 51
Mearns opened her eyes and saw white. What had happened? Elliott. Dempster. Christ, how long had she been out? She tried to lift her head, but it wouldn’t do what she was telling it to. She was sitting, hard against something, her chin slumped on her chest. Her breathing was heavy, like a bull snorting, forcing air from flared nostrils. There was no other sound. She couldn’t calm herself enough to breathe any other way.
Her tongue felt thick and heavy. When she tried to force the tip of it through her lips, she felt nothing. She couldn’t see her lips, only the blurred tip of her nose. It felt like there was a knife slicing in and out of her skull. She tried to lift her hand to press it against her head, but her arm didn’t move. Was she tied? She couldn’t feel her arms, but she could feel the panic that was knotting inside of her. Imagining her wrists bound in venetian-blind cord.
Elliott, where was he? Not Elliott. Shaun Dempster.
She blinked, unbelievably grateful for the small movement, and tried to focus on what she could see. White. Her work blouse, its collar hidden beneath her chin, long sleeves pulled back out of view. Her chest was heaving beneath, but she had no sensation of burning in her lungs. Her eyeballs felt strained, like overused muscles, but movement was becoming easier to them. She was blinking faster and was able to squeeze her eyelids shut against the pain in her head.
She looked to either side of her and saw she was on the floor. Wooden flooring. The sitting room. She knew where she was. Propped against the breakfast bar, facing the window. She thought of Melanie, found in the same position but against the bathroom wall. Dempster’s first victim. Mearns knew in that moment he intended her to be his last.
She had to move.
Mearns looked up as far as she could, still unable to lift her chin from her chest. The orange light from the kitchen behind her was enough to see her legs stretching out in front of her, flat against the floor, her fitted work trousers, a perfect crease down their middle, still on. She could see her reflection in the window, looking like some drunk slouched in a doorway. Her feet, nothing tying them together, lay still when she tried to wiggle her stocking-covered toes.
Where was he?
Tears filled her eyes, further blurring her vision. Her heart was racing, her head dizzy. She tried to calm herself. Think. The phone call. What she’d said. Eve must’ve known what she was trying to tell her, would be on her way. She had to stay alive until then.
Eve was bouncing in the passenger seat as the car sped over the cobbled surface of Charlotte Street. She saw a group of teenagers on the corner ahead, smoking, craning their heads towards them, looking at the car going far too fast on a side street. Cooper slammed on the brakes as they neared the junction on to Maberly, the street where Mearns lived, the wheels’ rubber screeching as he did, prompting whoops and shouts from the smokers.
Neither she nor Cooper turned their way, concentrating instead on what they could already see of the edge of the high granite-brick wall that surrounded the Bastille, Mearns’ building, and getting ready to turn left. Eve saw the barrier and the red ROAD CLOSED sign at the last second and shouted at Cooper, prompting her colleague to pull on the wheel before slamming the car into reverse, dumping it at the kerbside by the congregated drunks outside the pub. The group cheering them on as Cooper jumped from the car and Eve followed, watching Cooper as he disappeared around the corner.
Mearns heard the bathroom door open in the hallway, then footsteps. Coming into the kitchen. Coming towards her. Passing by her. Stopping in front of her.
Her stomach lurched. She fought to look up. She managed a small movement but could only see shoes. His shoes. Boots, the thick leather tongues of them sticking out from beneath the hem of his jeans, the word ‘Carolina’ imprinted on them. An image of Helen Black’s battered body flashed into Mearns’ mind. Carolina. The C imprinted on her bruised flesh. Stamped on to her face. Why had she never noticed those boots? Had he changed into them? Mearns fought to move, mumbled instead of the scream she was trying to release. This was not how things were supposed to end for her.
Dempster crouched in front of her, low enough for her to see his face. Her heart knocked harder against her chest. He looked different. His features tight, distorted. No trace of the man who had seduced her. Was it the drugs he’d pumped into her or was Shaun Dempster finally revealing himself?
‘You look like she might’ve done.’
Even his voice sounded different. Mearns held eye contact, unable to speak but desperate to keep him talking.
‘I loved her. Too much maybe. She did that to people.’
Mearns took a deep breath, bracing herself as he moved, exhaling only when he came out of his crouching position and sat on the floor in front of her, legs bent, arms closed around his knees. Relaxed.
‘They used to make fun of me. At school. I wasn’t like them. Never was. But she understood me. They didn’t get that though, thought it was something sick in my love for her. But it wasn’t. It was pure. Good. Honest. Everything they thought, said and did to me was a lie.’
‘When I found her that day, it was like I’d died. That it was me hanging there. Her tongue was huge. Unnatural. Purple, swollen and sticking out at me, goading me to touch it. Still talking to me. Like she was sending me a message.’
Mearns was strangely glad she could hardly move her face, knowing she would’ve been unable to hide her look of horror.
‘My mother walked in that day. The day I found my little sister. And I felt like I was dying all over again when she looked at me. I knew in her eyes that she blamed me. For Susie. Even before she asked what I’d done. My own mother. Thinking I’d be capable of that.’ He shook his head, eyes still staring at the floor.
‘Of course she tried to take it back. Afterwards, when Dad forced her to apologize for what she’d said. He tried to tell me she hadn’t meant it too. But I knew that she had. That, like the boys at school, she’d always thought I was different. Not right.’
Mearns wondered if that was true or if it was Dempster’s warped memory of something that never was. Her heart jumped as he locked eyes with her.
‘You’re wondering why. Why all this. It was the rhyme you see. Above Susie’s bed. “Monday’s Child”. Gran made it and Mum hung it above her bed. It never meant anything to me, not until after Susie.’
Mearns stared.
‘She used to lie there at nights reciting that poem to me, telling me she didn’t believe that I was a Wednesday’s Child, full of woe. Trying to help me. But she was a true Sunday’s child, and I realized after she died that if she could lie – if even my Susie could lie – then anyone was capable of deceit. After she left, I used to read that poem until my eyes couldn’t stay open any more. Every night. Punishing myself, telling myself I was the odd one out, that everyone else was better than me. Normal. But slowly I could see why that poem was there. What it was she was trying to tell me. Hearing Susie’s voice as I read it. Like she was talking to me from her grave. Sending me a message. Like her tongue.’
Mearns closed her eyes, not wanting to look at him any more. Realizing how ill he was. Struggling with trying to figure out how he’d been able to hold it together as Elliott.
‘Don’t you see? She was telling me it was lies. All of it. All of them. The bullies, the gossiping neighbours, Mum. Dad. I knew then that I had to be the one to show the truth. To be the man she knew I could be.’
Mearns opened her eyes, trying to give the impression of understanding in her stare, keeping him there, looking at her face as she tried to move her fingers, her toes, anything.
‘But I needed to take my time. To grow stronger. Be ready. After Mum died, when I went to live with my grandparents I did what was expected of me, but I was planning, always planning, until the day I was able to disappear.’
Mearns tried to wiggle her fingers behind her but felt nothing. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying to her, aware of the total lack of emotion in his voice as he brushed away the death of his mother and what he’d done to his grandparents. Blind to the fact that his own disappearance was just as big a kind of lie as the ones he claimed to hate.
‘I thought it was time a year ago. In St Andrews. I went home. Saw him. Dad. I wanted to talk to him. Wanted to thank him for giving me the chance that he had. Letting me know in his own way that I was meant to go and do what I had to do.’
Did he think his father had killed his mother as a favour to him? Mearns was always amazed at how diseased the human brain could be. Did he honestly see it as a sign that he was supposed to go off and live this other life? To undertake this mission?
‘I thought I was ready then. With Helen Black.’
Mearns had known as soon as she saw his boots this evening. No. Before that, when Eve had voiced her suspicions after the visit to St Andrews – that Helen had been the killer’s practice run. She wanted to know why and it looked like he was intent on telling her.
‘Helen was a liar. One of Susie’s friends at school. Or at least she pretended to be. There was a local newspaper article in the days after Susie’s death; the reporter had talked to the teachers and pupils who had known her. Helen took the headline, going on about how she’d lost her best friend. Upset when she died and then two weeks later playing in the same bit of the playground as she always had. With another little girl. She’d completely forgotten Susie. I wanted to kill her then. That’s when I first realized that headlines lie.’
Mearns was staring at him. His voice was changing, becoming rougher, more menacing. She realized that his act of leaving a headline at each murder scene probably stemmed from that early memory.
‘She seemed the perfect fit, years later. To be the first in the rhyme, but I gave her an overdose before I could kill her the way I’d intended to. I couldn’t control it when I saw her lying there.’
Exactly as Eve had said.
‘I wanted each woman to know why she was being killed. To think about their lie in the last moments of life. To watch their tongue being taken. To think of it as a final confession. Removing the lie – their sin – if you like.’
Mearns was reminded of the words spoken by Ronnie, Dempster’s father, when they’d visited him at the hospice and asked for his version of events when he murdered his wife. ‘Call it a final confession if you like.’ Had Dempster overhead Ronnie saying that to his mother as he watched his father take her life? Had he been unbalanced even before that or was that night what pushed him over the edge?
‘I accepted I wasn’t ready. Went into hiding. But I took Helen’s dress – didn’t want her death to be a total waste.’
Mearns thought about Sarah Crawley, found wearing Helen’s dress. He wanted them to know.
‘By then I was living as Elliott, had been for a long time. Enrolled at Napier University. Journalism. Alongside Jenkins, would you believe?’
Dempster smiled, widened his eyes as if they were having a friendly little chat. As if anything about this was normal.
‘She was a cut-throat bitch with ambition even then. But I never lost that friendship. It proved useful to me when I moved to Aberdeen. She helped me see what I needed to do. Not only work for the press but to do it for the police. The biggest liars out there.’
Mearns thought about how Elliott had fought Eve’s corner when Jenkins had tried to destroy her in the press after what happened to Sanders. She wondered if he had been feeding Jenkins information about that and everything since.
‘It didn’t take me long to find the worst offender. Eve. Lying that she didn’t chase Johnny MacNeill’s son off the road. I knew her history. How close what she saw that night was to what happened to her own mother. I knew that she had lied. It was me that set up the disturbance call later – the one that sent them to MacNeill and his boys. I managed to get Eve to the pub beforehand – didn’t even have to try hard to get her to have a drink with me. She believed, still does, that a half bottle of red wine affected her. No idea what I dropped into her glass. I led her to that trap. The pictures of us at the pub were a nice touch too. One of MacNeill’s men was only too happy to play cameraman. Liars have to pay. MacNeill and I had that belief in common, at least. And she continued to lie about how drunk she was that night, about her past and why everything had affected her. She needed to pay. And MacNeill paid me handsomely for my part in that. It was a shame about Sanders, but she lied too. To cover up for Eve being drunk that night.’
Mearns couldn’t believe how easily Dempster was able to justify himself.
‘I wanted to give Eve long enough to think about her lie. Knew I had to wait, that she needed to be the officer who would work on my case. After all, only a liar would see the truth of what I was doing.’
Mearns was surprised to hear herself moan as she thought about the fact that Melanie was murdered only three days after the management decision that Eve
was allowed back on the job.
Dempster stared at her. ‘I can hear your frustration at not being able to talk. And it would be nice to chat. Don’t worry. The drugs will wear off before too long. I didn’t give you too much. Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering why the women. How I picked them.’ A note of pride coming into his voice. ‘Readily available in the job I do. Important to keep an eye on the local news. To know what’s going on around you.’
Mearns didn’t know what he meant, but she knew he was about to explain.
‘I first found Melanie through a piece I read about a local modelling competition she entered. All those grand dreams of making it in London as a model. She was beautiful. I was captivated by her photo. I could see she had the same energy that Susie had. Ryan was with her the third time I tracked her down, leaving the chemist’s where she worked. The times before I’d just observed her while she worked. Her mannerisms, interactions, the way she held herself.’
‘That night with Ryan, I could see from their body language that they were close. It reminded me of us. Me and Susie. I was jealous of what they had. I wanted to be near them. To live through them, believe that’s what Susie and I would’ve been like if we’d grown to adulthood together. I watched them many times. It didn’t take long to realize that there was more going on between them. What they had was impure. Nothing like me and Susie, but what the boys at school always accused us of. I knew then that Susie was right all along. Everyone had their secrets and their lies. That it was up to me to expose them. To show them the only way I knew how – through the rhyme. I knew Melanie would be perfect for my “Fair of Face”, and Ryan was the perfect person to frame and take the heat off me for a while.’
Mearns felt sick that he’d picked these women at random through pieces he’d read in the local paper. Making the headline fit the rhyme and then following their lives until he found something that he saw as a lie against that headline, a reason to kill.