Rohypnol took roughly 30 minutes to fully act on the body and render the recipient if not totally unconscious then in a state of almost complete paralysis, unable to move anything save perhaps their eyes. In the intervening time, the drug had the effect of making the user appear very inebriated. It had the added advantage of being virtually undetectable after a couple of hours in the body.
She took less than 15 minutes to succumb and begin to look as if she had had that one drink too many, the one that tipped her from tipsy to outright drunk, giving him the perfect excuse to make apologies to the barman and offer to escort her home safely. She readily agreed.
Her apartment was indeed nearby, only a five-minute walk from the bar. He had to prop her up as he unlocked first the outer door and then the one into her flat. Once inside, it took less than a minute to discover the bedroom and dump her on the bed. Moving swiftly, he went back out to the hallway and opened his briefcase. First, he removed his clothes and placed them neatly by the front door, then he donned the paper overalls that had been folded neatly in the bottom of the case, and finally pulled on his surgical gloves. He had long ago realised he didn’t need to physically touch his women in order to fulfil the Quest. Once suited, he headed for the kitchen in order to find a suitable knife.
He took his time, she wasn’t going to scream or fight, so he could carry out his work with quiet efficiency. He enjoyed it far more when he wasn’t rushed or hindered by flailing limbs. He took satisfaction from the little grunts of pain and slight twitching of her arms and legs – she was clearly at least semi-conscious – as the knife carved The Burning Bush into her thighs.
He allowed the pace to increase over the final half an hour or so – cutting, slashing and stabbing in an ever more frenzied and brutal fashion, with each thrust of the knife delivered with more force than the last, thrashing at the flesh and hitting bone and sinew. Eventually he threw his whole body behind every stab and cut such that the blood frothed and boiled beneath him.
Finally, he fell on the knife as it sunk into her torso just below the sternum. With a sigh of contentment he was finished – sated for now.
Dropping the knife on the bed, he went back into the hall to his briefcase, his kit. Carefully removing several items he returned to the bedroom. His first job was to remove any stray hairs that might have made their way onto her body, paying particular attention to her hair, both head and pubic. Using a nit-comb he went through each area with care and precision. Satisfied he had removed as many of these as possible, he used tweezers to pull several hairs from one of the vials he’d placed on the floor next to the bed and then placed them on and around her body. Deciding against using the semen from another of the vials on this occasion, he instead inserted a syringe into a vial of blood, and added this to the wash of already congealing blood all over the bed.
Happy the job was done he returned to the hall, removed the blood-spattered overalls and placed them inside a plastic bag in his case. Before pulling on his clothes he found a convenient full-length mirror in the hall and checked everywhere on his body for blood. Happy he was clean, he pulled on his clothes and let himself out the door.
Back outside it was easy to locate one of the local parks. Heading towards it he mused on how odd it was that men seemed to not notice his features – other than the obvious dark hair, dark eyes and an approximate height – so he knew it was highly unlikely the barman would remember enough about him to aid the police in their search. And even with a decent description he would be long gone, back in good old Blighty.
He wondered idly how long it would take for her to be reported missing and for her body to be discovered. Not that he really cared – he now knew she wasn’t The One. She hadn’t assuaged The Urge, so the Quest would have to continue.
Arriving at the park, he was relieved to see it wasn’t yet gated and locked.
‘Pleasant evening for a stroll,’ he murmured quietly to himself as he entered the park, and allowing himself a small, satisfied smile, he straightened his tie and began to whistle softly.
Chapter Ten
Charlotte had turned the home office upside down searching for any further letters from Julia that Marcus might have hidden. She had virtually dismantled the wardrobe that his case had been sitting on top of, had lifted the carpet and turned out every drawer of the filing cabinet. She had to restrain herself from ripping the cushioned chair open, electing instead to examine it minutely, using the angle lamp from the desk to gain extra illumination, to try and spot any flaws in the stitching or covering.
Her whole afternoon’s efforts had yielded precisely nothing.
There was nowhere left to look in the room. Her frustration grew and morphed into the anger and hurt she had felt on discovering the existence of Julia. Lifting the lamp she still held in a white-knuckled grip, she smashed it against the edge of the desk. It broke at the hinge that allowed the top to be manoeuvred around. With so little destruction wrought on the lamp her frustration grew further, but she could see nothing else she could take it out on.
Like a retreating tide the desire to smash everything in the house slowly ebbed away. She stood with head down, still breathing hard but at least a little more evenly, with the broken lamp still in her hand. She stayed like that for what felt like an hour or more but in reality was only maybe 10 minutes. Gradually, she felt an element of calm return. The anger and sense of betrayal, the anxiety and frustration were not so much dispersed but more hidden. They were what she felt a psychiatrist would call ‘supressed’. They were still there, as they had been every day since finding the notes, but were now a roiling, shapeless and directionless mass somewhere at the back of her mind.
The whole fruitless exercise had been sparked by an earlier visit from DC Handley. He had shown up at her door with what turned out to be one of their forensics team. Her initial reaction was one of confusion and horror. What on Earth were they looking for? It all seemed a little over the top for a missing person.
DC Handley had quickly assuaged her trepidation by explaining that it was simply for elimination. That should they find anyone with a resemblance to Marcus they could determine relatively quickly whether it was him or not. She relented and let them in.
The forensics officer, whose name she had been given but had forgotten almost immediately, had then scoured the house. He appeared to bag certain items, most notably Marcus’ comb and razor. DC Handley had then asked if there was anything in the house that Marcus tended to handle that she did not, explaining that they may be able to gain fingerprints. The only thing she could think of was the toolkit under the stairs. Although she used some of the items in there it had been Marcus who undertook the majority of the repairs and DIY around the house. Handley had seemed satisfied that that would likely do. Finally, he had the forensics officer take her fingerprints, in order to differentiate hers from Marcus’.
They had eventually left, apparently satisfied with their finds. The exercise, however, had set her to thinking. She hadn’t really thoroughly searched the house herself. The police had a few months ago when she first reported Marcus as missing but they didn’t know the house like she did. Maybe she would spot something they hadn’t. And so her trawl through every room, ending in the office, had begun.
Her internal clock, so common to many mothers, chimed – the children would need collecting soon. Placing the lamp carefully back on the desk, she began to mentally collect herself.
She never wanted the children to see her distressed in any way. The problem was, of course, that she was distressed. So in the time since Marcus’ disappearance she had found she had become a consummate actress as soon as Melissa and Callum were in sight, acting out a part and yet feeling very different inside. With this realisation, she found her thoughts turning to Marcus’ actions in the weeks, months and years prior to his disappearance. Had he been doing the same – playing a part while hiding what was really going on? She realised she had no idea, and not for the first time in the last few days she wondered if
she had ever known her husband at all. On current evidence, it would seem not. She found this incredibly hard to reconcile in her own mind. They had been together for the best part of 12 years; a part of her felt she knew him in a way that was instinctive, that made her feel she could almost read his thoughts. She felt she should have been able to predict even his most erratic of behaviours and, perhaps, his deepest thoughts.
And yet, as with every time she had tried over recent months to reconnect with the details of her married life with Marcus, her mind simply went blank.
Returning downstairs, she sat for some time in the living room trying to clear her mind and relax a little before collecting the children. As she did so various random thoughts began occurring to her. These were vague at first – just jumbled half memories and feelings, small and inconsequential things that lacked any coherence or, even, relevance.
Slowly, however, she found certain elements started to coalesce into something approaching coherence or maybe a sort of logic that wasn’t logical. She tried to dismiss them – they still didn’t make complete sense – but her mind kept pulling her back to them. She began to feel rather than think that there might be answers in there somewhere. That sub-consciously, at least, her strongly analytical and intellectual mind had quietly been pulling the information it craved from the deep, long-forgotten recesses of her memory. And now, it was starting to share its conclusions with the conscious part.
Her thoughts continued to swirl around for a little while and then began to form into something verging on the tangible, only to slip away again, back into the general whirl of thoughts, like a wisp of smoke merging back into the plume from a fire. These odd fleeting moments of clarity led her to believe that there may be something in this after all. That perhaps she needed to let her brain work this through, allowing it to eventually present its conclusions in a way that would be relevant and meaningful.
For that she needed time and space and peace and quiet. She called her mother – hoping she would be able to collect and keep the children with her, possibly overnight – claiming to have a severe headache, very likely from stress, and just needed to rest for the remainder of the day. Her mother agreed without question or protest. She knew how much the last few months had taken their toll on her.
With the children taken care of she decided to sit back, try to relax and let her brain simply carry on sorting through whatever it was trying to get at. She did her best to not interfere, not attempting to latch onto any thoughts or feelings that welled up in her mind, but allowing them to pass into whatever region of her mind they needed to, simply allowing this process to take its course.
It became a rather surreal experience – a strange wander through her own psyche, almost meditative. She was an observer in her own mind not an active participant. She started to notice things happening; there was a slow but steady stream of memories moving through her mind as though her brain was replaying them, sorting and selecting or discarding them as it saw fit. Another part of her brain was working through half-recalled feelings, picking out those that had felt uneasy, unsure or questioning of a situation. The whole process appeared to be centring on a single point, coming together to form a series of conclusions and generating further pertinent questions. This might be a long list, she realised.
She glanced at the clock on the wall – an hour had passed already. She started to feel restless, needing to get up and walk around a little. An aimless wander around the downstairs of the house didn’t make her feel any better. In fact it made her more restless. Finding herself standing in the hallway, she reached for her coat, bag and keys and headed outside.
Once outside and down the drive she realised she hadn’t a clue where she was going to go. Maybe just around the block, a walk and fresh air would be all she would need. As she walked, she passed the bus stop near the corner of the road. She went to continue past it, but something made her stop. Turning back, she pulled her phone from her bag and checked the app that gave bus numbers and times from any given stop. There was one due in five minutes which would be stopping at the tube station. On what felt like a whim she decided to wait for the bus, with still no clear idea as to where she was going. She was still considering this when the bus hove into view. As she extended her arm to hail it her final destination sprang into her mind, with no warning or forethought, just a clear and certain idea of where she should be.
The bus took only 10 minutes to reach the station and from there it was a 30-minute tube ride into central London and Embankment station. After a short walk around the corner she was in front of the cosy little bar where she and Marcus had shared a number of pleasant evenings together since that early date she recalled so vividly.
She hadn’t been there for several months now. It was probably six months ago that they had persuaded her mother to babysit and come here before going on to eat at an over-priced and not particularly good Italian. That was three months before Marcus had disappeared. She felt that perhaps sitting where they had sat then – just the two of them, feeling they were the only two in the bar when in reality they were surrounded by office workers all noisily enjoying a post-work drink – might just bring other recollections to mind.
Six months ago, they had found a small corner table and sat side by side, Marcus turning his chair so he was facing her with his back to the rest of the bar. The babble of voices and movement of people had seemed to vanish, as if a smoked glass window – like those in the back of a limousine – had descended from the ceiling and cut them off from everything else. They had talked quietly for an hour or so, although she couldn’t now recall what about – work probably, the children certainly and maybe thoughts and plans for the future. Had they talked of the future?
The bar was very different at this time of day. It was only just three o’clock, after all, and there were only six or seven people in, mainly sitting in pairs plus one customer on his own. The couples were huddled over their tables, conducting muted but rapid conversations. The lone drinker, a middle-aged man looking careworn and worn out, was sitting propping up the far end of the bar, nursing what looked to be a large gin or vodka. She realised she could be making a big assumption and it could just be water in his glass but she doubted it somehow.
Due to the lack of people, and also because not one of them had so much as glanced up as she had walked in, she felt comfortable enough to head to the bar, get a drink and sit on her own – something she would never normally countenance.
The barman looked vaguely familiar as she approached him. She couldn’t be certain but she was fairly sure he had been one of two working there on the last evening she had been in. She smiled to herself as she thought about how she stereotyped DC Handley as having a look that could only say ‘policeman’ and wondered if there was a look that said ‘barman’. If there was then this guy would probably fit the bill. He was youngish without being baby-faced, with a mop of unruly brown hair and a haze of got-up-too-late-to-shave stubble on his chin and cheeks.
He smiled the professional, warm smile of a bartender comfortable in his niche. When he asked what he could get her, she realised she hadn’t a clue what she wanted to drink. Embarrassed, she stared blankly at the back shelf and then the optics behind and above the bar.
She almost settled for the clichéd woman-on-her-own drink of G&T or a white wine spritzer, but then noticed a bottle of Glen Mhor and recalled how Marcus had extolled its virtues the last time they were here, dismissing the more recognisable single malts on offer. She even remembered how to pronounce it correctly and smiled when the barman had no idea what she had asked for. Still smiling she directed him to the correct bottle and ordered a double with no ice.
As he set the drink down in front of her he said with a chuckle, ‘I wouldn’t have put you down as a whisky connoisseur, if you don’t mind my saying.’
‘Oh? And why is that?’ Charlotte replied. She couldn’t, at first, work out why she felt so pleased that he had spoken to her until it dawned on her that she hadn’t
had a simple, pleasant and meaningless chat with another adult in what was probably weeks but felt like years.
‘Well, your accent was a bit of a clue,’ he replied with a shrug, ‘and frankly, you just don’t look the sort.’
Her smile broadened a little as she asked, ‘And what sort are whisky connoisseurs normally? The Scottish thing is pretty lame – plenty of English people enjoy whisky, you know – and if you’re going to pull the racist card why not the sexist one as well? Women are also capable of enjoying a good whisky and determining which ones they like.’
He grinned and gave a short ‘hah’ of a laugh and raised his hands. ‘Fair cop,’ he said. ‘You’re right, of course, but it’s just the vast majority of whisky buffs I get in here, and there are a few, tend to be middle-aged, pompous men who wax lyrical about their choices, naming the town where the distillery is located and even the water source, and so on and so on….’ He waved his hand in a circular motion and pulled a face that very articulately indicated the tedium of it all, before continuing. ‘I have to say, though – not one of them has pronounced that one in the way you did. How do you say it again?’
‘You pronounce it something like glen-vawer, although I confess I’m probably making a mess of that. My husband’s a Scot, from the same part of Scotland as the whisky. He told me how to say it.’
‘I’ll remember that for the next time the pompous arses are in,’ he said with another grin. ‘Anyway, enjoy.’ With that he turned away and headed to the lone customer at the end of the bar. ‘Ready for a top-up Charlie?’
Charlotte lifted her drink and headed for the table she thought of as her and Marcus’ and deliberately sat exactly where she had before.
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