by J G Alva
Her legs lay slightly to one side, as if she were trying to hide her sex, a last grasp at dignity, even in death. It was strange how the removal of the head de-humanised the body, so that it became unreal, a shop bought mannequin. Maybe that was the point.
She had been washed again, just like the other victims, that much was obvious, even from where he was standing; there was nowhere near enough blood. Sean moved closer, having seen something, but not altogether sure exactly what it was he was looking at.
“Frank,” Sean said, calling the Forensic Medical Examiner over. “What the fuck happened to her? Is that…is that bone I see sticking out there?”
Sean pointed to a point just below where her breast should have been.
Frank Weller was in his fifties, had a full head of thick white hair, a nicotine stained off-white moustache, and a bulbous red nose. He smoked too much, drank too much, told too many dirty jokes; Sean was starting to wonder if he wasn’t creating sins to wash away the memory of all the sinful acts of others he had witnessed, and been unable to do anything about.
Frank looked to where Sean had indicated.
“Yeah, that’s bone alright. Sixth and seventh ribs. I don’t know what the hell happened – I’ll have to get her back to the lab to give you a more definitive analysis – but the skin looks like its been burnt off with acid. Right down to the bone.”
“Was she-“
“I don’t know,” Frank said, anticipating his question. “I’ve checked her, and there’s very little lividity, so my guess is yes, she was still alive while all this was going on. Enough to bleed out anyway.”
“Jesus Christ, Frank.”
He was thinking of Andrea.
He couldn’t let this happen to her.
The man who had stumbled on the body was further down the street, talking to Phil and Vic. He hadn’t seen anything. It was going to be hard to take anything he said as gospel however, as he had come across the body inebriated…was in fact still inebriated, if his uneven stance was anything to go by. No one believed he had any part in this of course, his shock was too genuine; he was just somebody else who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sean looked for it, circling the body to be on the right side; yes, it was there.
The tattoo.
Damn it.
*
Sean looked tired.
It was as if all his energy had been diverted inward, to tackle some internal assault.
“It’s not Andrea,” he said to Robin immediately upon returning to the car. “I mean, I didn’t think it was, but…”
“No birthmark?” Robin said, feeling bands of constraint easing across her chest.
“No.”
Robin slumped against the car in relief.
“Thank God,” she said. Her features twisted at the realisation of what she had just said, and she quickly re-iterated, “Jesus Christ, I didn’t mean it to sound like it did.”
“Robin, it’s alright,” Sean said.
“I didn’t want her to die, whoever she is instead of-“
“I know, Robin. I know. It’s okay.”
There was silence a moment.
“Andrea has a birthmark?” Sutton asked.
Sean nodded.
“On her inner thigh, left leg. Looks a little like Bulgaria.”
“Bulgaria.”
Sean seemed amused, of all things.
“Just a skin blemish really, but enough for identification.”
“Is there a tattoo?”
“Yes.” Sean looked back over his shoulder. “Look, I’ve got to stay on here. There’s too much to be done, and not enough people to do it. Sutton, can you get a taxi? Take Robin home? I’ll give you the money, of course.”
Sutton nodded. He looked at Robin. She regarded him warily.
“No problem. Is that alright with you?”
She debated, and then acquiesced with a nod.
Sean dug in his pocket for his wallet and had retrieved it when Robin stopped him by saying, “I have money.”
He looked inside it, looked at her, shut it, and then said, “okay.”
“How long do you think you’ll be?” She asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking at his watch. “But whatever happens, my shift starts in four hours anyway.” He turned to Sutton. “Look. I overheard some of the guys talking. The PNC spat out some case from about seven years ago. A prostitute called the police after one of her johns attacked her. Supposedly tried to cut off her head. She somehow managed to escape. They never caught the guy, but it might be worth looking at.”
Sutton raised his eyebrows.
“That’s interesting. What’s the PNC?”
“What? Oh, it’s the Police National Computer. It combines all the databases the police might normally use when looking for a suspect – you know, Criminal Records, VISOR the violent sex offenders register, Vehicle Online Descriptive Search, the Automatic Number Plate Recognition software, to name but a few – and using something called Quest, allows you to dip into each one and search against a specific criteria: physical descriptions, similarities across different cases, that sort of thing.”
“Have you got a name for this prostitute?” Sutton asked.
“Jessica Leonard,” Sean said, looking over his shoulder again. “I don’t know in what area she worked. And I overheard the guys saying that no one knows where she is now, that they’re having trouble locating her.”
“How can that be?”
“In this day and age? Fuck knows. My guess is she probably got married. That usually throws a spanner in the works. You think we’d be able to keep track of a simple name change with all this technology. Instead, we just have more forms to fill out.”
“Okay. I’ve got someone I can talk to. Maybe she can help me find this Jessica Leonard.”
Sutton then leaned into the car and retrieved the folder with the pictures of the tattoos on it. He held it up and Sean nodded for him to take it.
“Okay. Fine. Try that. I’ll keep an eye out this end. I hear any more, I’ll text you. Or something.” Sean looked harassed in that moment, and scanned the ground around his feet as if he had dropped or forgotten something.
“As soon as any details about this new body are uncovered, I’ll let you know about that too. But I’m not banking on much. We’ve got to identify her first – let’s hope it’s as easy as the last two victims. He’s washed her again, so I’m not counting on too much from forensics. But keep your phone on anyway.” Sean looked suddenly miserable as he stared at Sutton. “Andrea…Andrea can’t end up that way. She just can’t. Alright? She can’t. Do what you have to do. Whatever you have to do. Just fucking find her.”
Sutton nodded.
Sean stared at him for a moment longer, his eyes desperate, then nodded to him, and then touching Robin’s arm briefly, turned and made his way back across the road to the body, his shoulders bowed under the weight of his responsibility.
*
Sutton Mills’ car was a bright blue MG ZE-T 75 1.8 Estate parked around the corner from the museum. It was a big car, all hard lines, like a tank; like his ego, she thought. It suited him.
She was still absolutely mortified by their previous discussion…or more accurately, mortified by what she had said to him. What was wrong with her? Like Sutton, she was well versed with her limitations, her weaknesses; or at least she had thought she was. But as was so often the case in her work, how that person viewed themselves and the reality of who they really were eluded them. It was a common hazard of the human condition, and just because she was a Psychotherapist, it didn’t make her immune to it. Worse, it made her aware of those special problems, and also made her aware that there was nothing she could do about it.
Because she was part of the problem.
It was understanding where things had gone wrong, really, that eluded her. She had had a plan. The plan was the rock that she leaned on. It was what made her strong, independent, decisive. She knew what she
wanted, and she was prepared to work hard to get it. It wasn’t a particularly spectacular plan, and certainly not one that should have been too difficult to attain: perhaps ten to fifteen years carving out a career for herself; perhaps another couple of years to find and secure a man; and in the years that followed maybe there could be something of a family.
In the career department, she thought she was doing rather well: a partner of her own practice, with a good long list of clients, she was viewed with respect, was deferred to by those she worked with. She went home at the end of each day and felt good about what she was doing. What more could you ask from a career than that?
It was in everything else that she was lacking.
Her personal life was in the toilet. Four relationships in the last eight years, none of which had lasted more than eight months.
She had learned the hard way that you could not rely on men.
She still yearned to believe that they were not all like that, but was wondering if perhaps she could not simply entertain the possibility that they were, because the plan she had formulated for herself was wound so intrinsically around another that to discard that aspect of it would make the whole damn structure fall to pieces, like an unstable house of cards. That her happiness depended on another galled her; for a woman so independent, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
But she did so want a man. One who would care for her, support her, be a friend, a confidante. The best of all possible lovers.
Sutton was a man who represented all those things in the opposite sex that she had come to despise: the games, the lies, the instability, the frivolousness. Couldn’t he see what being a man was really all about?
When, for God’s sake, was he going to grow up? When were they all going to grow up?
But it was unfair to unload all of her frustrations on to him. After all, she needed his help.
It was in the relationship department that she envied – and yes, admit it – despised her sister. Someone so obviously at ease with the opposite sex, she never seemed to want for attention…and the ease with which she flitted between liaisons was so unappreciated, so taken for granted, that Robin felt shocked at her own dark thoughts about her sister.
She could admit to not being a particularly good sister to Andrea. She was never around, for one thing. She told herself that Andrea was alright, that her own career would have to take precedence until it was established, like a wild flower in a pot of dirt…but now she could not swallow this obvious fabrication. She envied Andrea’s easy, fun filled life; her barren, indignant one was, in comparison, cold and unpleasant, and of the two of them, more often than not she felt it was she who had failed, not Andrea. Being in Andrea’s company was to be reminded of that on a minute by minute basis.
She supposed it was being the oldest of the two girls that had shaped her in this way; the smart one, the responsible one, who had had to bear the weight of her parent’s hopes on her shoulders, while Andrea had only the responsibility of indulging her own pleasurable whims.
But if Robin had previously shunned her for her own ambitions, had avoided her through malice, then she would do everything she could now, to save her. This too, in a very short space of time, had become intricately woven into how she saw herself.
Sutton stopped beside the car and as he fished in his pocket for his keys he asked her where she lived.
“Kingswood,” she said. “But I’m not going home.”
Sutton stopped.
“What?”
Letting no essence of doubt colour her voice, because she would not be moved, she said, “I said, I’m not going home. I want to help.”
Sutton stared at her, and then looked up and down the street, as if for assistance.
“What is this?” He asked.
She frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it guilt?”
Robin bristled, and she felt the colour come into her cheeks; it was too close to her thoughts of only a moment ago.
“No!”
“Then what?”
Robin had trouble finding the words.
“I’m worried about my sister. I want to help you find her.”
“Are your clients mostly women?”
Robin was confused.
“What? Why do you say that?”
“Are they?”
She hesitated before answering, unhappy with the admission.
“Yes. I deal primarily with women suffering with female sexual dysfunction.”
“Then how can you possibly help me?”
Robin opened her mouth, momentarily lost for words.
“Mr Mills, I’m-“
“Sutton.”
“Sutton.” She paused to compose herself. “I am not some ninny. I’m a trained Psychotherapist. I studied for four years to get my Masters in Psychotherapy – that’s four hundred and fifty hours of theory, skills and practice – I’m a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and I am a partner of my own practice. You don’t think that recommends me?”
Sutton sighed.
“Robin, I’m not sure that you understand what’s really going on here. This is not a dry mental exercise, a puzzle, a ball to be unravelled. We’re not sitting in a room cultivating a dialogue. This is about people, sometimes very unpleasant people, that are doing things that are very very wrong. I know you want to help. I would feel the same. You may think you have experience, doing what you do, but I guarantee that you have not seen anything like this in your entire life.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Whatever it takes to find your sister. Which will probably involve some things that will make a moral Psychotherapist very uncomfortable.” He looked up and down the street again; his expression was thoughtful. “Do you know how I got into this? Helping people like this?”
She shook her head.
“Someone who I thought was a very good friend of mine stole a very expensive painting from a mutual acquaintance. When I discovered my friend was the person responsible for the theft, he tried to kill me rather than give up the painting. We had been friends since we were boys. Do you understand what I am trying to get at?”
She opened her mouth to speak, stopped, then closed it, before admitting, “no.”
“That standing in the way of people’s desires can be a dangerous thing. When someone has given so much effort to something that is so obviously wrong, then it is not difficult for them to go even further, to do more wrong, to keep that object of their desire…because once they have embarked on such a course, once they have crossed that line into the dark, any subsequent sin seems dim and unimportant in comparison.”
He stared at her, as implacable as a stone wall, until Robin heard herself muttering desperately, “please.”
“Dr Sails-“
“Please. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to.” She shook her head, and looking down at herself found that her hands were held up beside her, as if surrendering; she felt empty, useless, impotent. “Please.”
He would not be moved. She could see it in his face, that cruel face, could see it in the hard lines of his jaw, the steely look in his eyes; this was a man who could not be coerced, could not be reasoned with. He was a brute.
She felt all the energy drain out of her as if at the opening of a sluice gate. How could she leave now? How could she go home and just sit, waiting for something to happen? The thought terrified her.
“Alright,” he said. “Get in.”
*
“Did you and your sister not get on?” Sutton asked, as they waited for the lights to change.
Robin turned to look at him.
“Why do you say that?”
Sutton checked the rear view mirror.
“There was something in your voice when you were talking about her,” he said. “Something…derogatory.”
The lights changed, and they passed through the junction. The streets were deserted.
Robin shrugged, looking out o
f the passenger window.
“We got along fine actually. It was just…”
“What?”
Robin shrugged again.
“I don’t know. I always thought she was a little…frivolous, I suppose.” She turned to Sutton, trying to muster a smile. “I blame my parents, of course. They let her get away with far too much.”
“Frivolous?”
“She wasn’t,” Robin admitted. “Not really. She was just…nice. Just a nice person.”
They came to the roundabout just down from the University of Bristol Union building and sped across it.
“You don’t like nice?”
Robin pulled a face.
“Nice is good. Nice is okay. It’s just…nice people never get anything done. They don’t want to do anything in case they upset people. Honestly, the amount of nice clients I used to have to treat who couldn’t take control of their lives because they were pulled in so many different directions by what was expected of them by other people…it was unbelievable. That’s Andrea. She’s just…nice. Happy to drift along.”
“There’s nothing wrong with nice,” Sutton said.
“No,” Robin said. “But good’s better.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
Robin shook her head quite emphatically.
She watched the University of Bristol Union pass by on her left, a dark grey office block, deserted in the early hours of the morning. They were coming into Clifton Village.
“No. Good people get things done. They get the right things done. You can be good but not necessarily nice. In fact, it’s almost a prerequisite.”
“Aren’t we coming up to your sister’s flat?” Sutton remarked.
“Yes,” Robin said, in a small voice. “I was trying not to think about it.”
They climbed to the breast of the hill, and Victoria Square appeared around the bend, to their right, a big square of old Oaks and Silver Birches, surrounded on three sides by lines of four storey terraced Victorian houses.
“That’s hers, on the end,” Robin said, pointing.
They drove passed it in silence.
“I’ve got something that will take your mind off things,” Sutton said, looking in his rear view mirror.