by Jack Jordan
I reached the first floor and stopped.
My door was ajar.
The wine bottles smashed on the hard floor. Wine leaked from the bag and pooled around my feet. The shrill sound of smashing glass echoed up the stairwell.
The lock was faulty. It must have clicked open. The landlord must have checked the property while I was at work and forgotten to shut the door behind him. But all the excuses I tried to conjure faltered before I’d even finished the thought in my mind. I knew the truth. I knew it was him.
I pushed the door open all the way, listening to the squeal of its hinges, and stepped inside.
I tried to remember how the flat had looked that morning, whether it was me who’d left the mug on the dining table, who had plumped up the cushions on the sofa. I heard the sound of running water.
The tap was on in the kitchen, overflowing from the sink and pouring down the cupboards and onto the floor.
I rushed through the flat and snatched at the tap. The metal scorched my skin. I jumped back and slipped, slamming down onto the wet floor with a splash. My hand was red raw and shaking; hot water spat over the edge of the counter and onto my face.
I jumped up, my clothes soaked through, and snatched a spatula from the utensils pot to breach the water, a tea towel to grip the tap. I dislodged the blockage in the sink and watched the water slowly disappear. When the water was gone, I saw what had caused the blockage. A mass of pubic hair had been lodged in the drain.
I stumbled out of the kitchen, water soaking into the carpet at my feet, a stranger’s pubic hair coating my fingers. He had been right there in my house. I felt tears slip down my cheeks and left them there. I heard more water and looked behind me at the kitchen sink, doubting whether I had stopped the leak at all. I listened out for the direction of the sound: it was coming from the bathroom.
I shot towards it and stopped in the doorway, flinching back at the stench.
The toilet had overflowed. Toilet paper and excrement floated in the film of water on the floor. Faeces had been smeared across the white tiles. Both taps were running.
I stepped backwards, shaking my head and dislodging fresh tears, and checked my bedroom.
The bed had been disturbed. Just that morning I had pressed the sheets flat with my hands, but now they were bunched together as though someone had been writhing amongst them. A pair of my boxers were on the bed. My top drawer was left ajar. I imagined him there, my underwear pressed to his nostrils with one hand, the other beneath the waist of his jeans.
I couldn’t stay there a second longer. I snatched my phone from my pocket to call the police and bumped into someone in the hall.
‘Is this your doing?’ the man asked. It was the tenant from the flat downstairs, Eddie; the odd man from the basement was standing behind him on the stairs, looking at me. I could never remember his name; he was one of those people who were instantly forgettable. ‘Well?’
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. I looked down at my hands, the stranger’s hair on them.
He stepped inside the flat.
‘Wait!’
He glanced over the kitchen, stared up at the ceiling to check for water damage to confirm whether the leak had come from my apartment or the one above. He passed through to the bathroom and stumbled back at the smell.
‘Jesus, what the hell?’
‘I can explain,’ I said, except I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain any of it.
‘And what about this?’ he asked, and pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. He thrust it towards me. His brow was knitted together, his lips formed into a snarl.
I took it from him and unfolded the paper to see one of the edited photos of me. This one was of me in the pigsty, being defiled by the beasts. I instantly felt ill again.
‘I’ve got kids, you sick fuck.’
‘I didn’t do it. I—’
I stepped backwards and felt something beneath my heel. The man from the basement had followed behind us. I was standing on the tip of his boot. He smelt of stale sweat and something sour.
‘I need to call the police,’ I stammered, and headed outside the flat. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. All I could smell and taste was the excrement staining the air. I covered my mouth and gagged.
‘What’s this mess?’ the old woman said, coming down the flight of stairs. She stood before the broken wine bottles. ‘Someone could seriously get hurt.’
‘I’m sorry, I was—’
‘What’s the commotion?’ she asked, her interest peaking. She peered through the open door over the tops of her glasses, moved to go inside.
‘Can people stop walking inside my bloody flat without asking?’ I snapped, loud enough for the men to hear.
‘You’re paying for the damage to my place,’ Eddie said as he stepped out onto the landing.
‘It wasn’t me!’
‘It came from your flat, you’ll fix it.’ He looked at the woman. ‘You opened your post yet?’
‘No, I do that after my dinner.’
‘Don’t open the brown envelope signed by hand – this guy’s got a funny way of making friends with his neighbours.’
‘I didn’t do it!’
Eddie headed down the stairs. The man from the basement was still lurking inside my flat. He had wide eyes like a doe; the top of his shaved head looked too big for the slimness of his jaw and chin.
‘Out!’
He scuttled out, tripping over the bag on the floor and kicking broken glass along the hall.
The woman was heading down the stairs. I heard her file through her post as I slammed the door shut behind me.
Furious tears burnt in my eyes. My chest felt tight, ready to explode. I took my phone from my pocket and called the officer on the contact card, just as the woman screamed in the lobby. I wondered what photo she had received, and a reel of them filled my mind. I ran to the sink and vomited, just as the officer picked up on the other end of the phone. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand and rambled into the receiver, bile on my breath. When I had finished I sat down on the sofa and buried my face in my hands, the sound of Officer Lycett breathing calmly down the phone.
‘We spoke to him, Finn,’ he said. ‘He told us that you’re harassing him, not the other way around.’
‘What?’
‘He has asked to press charges for harassment.’
‘That’s insane!’
‘We need to sort this out once and for all. Would you meet him?’
My heart stopped.
‘What?’
‘Face to face, at the station. We can sit you both down in the same room and get to the bottom of this.’
I took a deep breath, tasted the foul stench of him in the air, the sick on my breath. How could I meet the man who had done this?
‘Finn?’
The police would be there to intervene should anything happen. I would be protected. If I wanted this to end, I had to look him in the eye.
‘Finn? What do you want to do?’
‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘I’ll meet with him.’
THIRTY-ONE
Rose stood before her father’s front door with the box of post beneath her arm. It had been a week since the ad was printed in the paper, and it had taken her as many days to face her father again. Every time she saw or thought of him, she remembered Jay floating in the water, remembered whose hate had put him there. But there was no escaping him now. The PO box she had opened for potential leads from the newspaper advertisement had been close to bursting with envelopes, a shoebox taped shut. The clerk had huffed and sighed as she bagged them all up before telling her to empty it sooner next time. But Rose had been too excited to care: she was walking out of the post office with dozens of potential leads.
She rang the bell and looked up and down the street. The day was cold but fresh. By the time she left it would be night-time with numerous shadows for strangers to lurk in. She had read Finn’s journal so many times that she was starting to think like him,
fear his fears.
Rob had stopped calling. She wanted him, but if he was close to Seb and his officers, there was a chance that he was just like them. It didn’t matter if he was kind to her if he tortured others behind her back.
The door opened. Her father stood in the doorway, bloodshot eyes peering out at her from beneath sagging lids. He looked worse than he had before. But when he recognised her, life seemed to seep back into his eyes.
‘Rosie,’ he said.
‘Rose,’ she corrected.
‘Yes, sorry. Rose.’ They stood awkwardly on either side of the threshold. ‘Come in.’
He moved aside for her to enter. The hallway had been cleared of boxes, the carpet vacuumed. Only the dust on the skirting boards and the smears on the mirror gave any indication that she was staring at the same house she had fled from just weeks ago.
‘You’ve tidied up,’ she said, unable to hide the admiration in her tone. He shut the door behind her.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
Silence swelled between them.
‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘Coffee.’
She followed him to the kitchen.
The counters were almost clear; the only stains that remained were the ones that had baked into the material. The sink had been emptied and bleached, the floor freed of debris. But even though she could see the floor, she still looked around for any sign of mice, listened out for the tiny clip of their claws.
‘Just a couple more rooms to do now,’ he said over his shoulder as he boiled the kettle, arranged two mugs on the counter. ‘Please . . .’ he signalled the table in the centre of the room. She took a seat and admired the room.
‘Well done,’ she said. It sounded forced. Giving him even a sliver of kindness felt too much of a betrayal.
The kettle boiled, silencing them both. They had never been good at talking to each other; the only thing they had ever had in common was the same blood running through their veins and dark memories of the past. If they hadn’t been family, they would have made the perfect strangers.
‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’
‘You don’t need a reason to come and visit me, Rose,’ he said as he stirred the coffee and placed it before her. ‘You’re welcome any time.’
He turned back to squeeze the teabag against the side of his mug with the teaspoon, like he always had.
‘I need your help,’ she said.
She listened to the spoon twirl in the mug and clink against the sides, and thought of her mother standing before the very same stove making her and Jay hot milk before bed. Her throat thickened. Everything she looked at provoked a memory.
Tony took the seat opposite her, mug of tea in hand.
‘I found a journal written by a missing man. He wrote of being stalked, and how the police did nothing to help him. I’ve been looking into it, trying to find out what happened to him, but I discovered that this is much bigger than just one missing man. There are more. I posted an ad in the newspaper and numerous families have come forward. I want to find out the truth about what happened to them, but. . . I can’t do it alone.’
They sat in silence for a while, the words sinking in.
‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘I didn’t expect that.’
‘I think the police have swept the missing cases aside because the men were attracted to men. I spoke to an ex-police officer, and he told me about how the whole force is built on institutionalised homophobia, and spoke about the harassment he received himself. He tried to help me and got hurt.’
‘Hurt?’
She nodded, and sipped her coffee.
‘Are you sure this is something you want to get into?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. I can’t stand by while another innocent life is. . .’
They both looked away at the mention of him. Whatever happened, Jay would be between them, pushing them apart.
‘Are you doing this because of him?’ he asked.
You can’t even say his name.
She took another sip of coffee. It burnt all the way down.
‘It won’t bring him back.’
‘I know that.’
It wouldn’t bring Violet back either, but doing something good, saving someone else, felt like a small step towards finding herself again.
He nodded solemnly and looked down at the box by her feet. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Responses I received from the newspaper ad, and the police files on the other missing men. I met with their families. At first, I thought the only connection between Finn and the others was the awful treatment by the police, but the families seem to think they might be connected by the same man who stalked Finn.’
‘A serial killer?’
‘I don’t know. Only two are confirmed dead.’
‘What do you believe?’
She took another sip of coffee. She didn’t know what to believe.
‘I certainly think there’s more to it.’
‘Then we’d best get started.’
She couldn’t help it: a thankful smile pulled at the corners of her lips. He smiled back with water in his eyes.
Her eyes had blurred over. So many words, never enough sleep. She read and read until they streamed and yawns tore at her lungs. She sat before the fireplace in the living room, her feet dead beneath her weight, and looked at the opened letters arranged in piles: possible leads, no leads, hate mail.
She hadn’t expected that. Vile words etched onto paper, sick individuals hoping Finn had suffered in death, was burning in hell because of who he was. They had been directed towards her too: she was an enabler, a freak, a kid-killer. Every time she thought she had finally been forgiven, the town reminded her of her past. She hadn’t mentioned her identity in the ad, which meant the town was starting to talk, her name spreading through the streets in whispers. She wondered what the police were saying about her.
Tony sat in the armchair, his eyes moving down the pages of the police reports. His head had bobbed as the monotony of reading tried to drag him under, until he made a fresh pot of coffee and filled each of their mugs. Before reading the police reports, he had read the journal from front to back and looked up at her stunned, his face a shade whiter.
Rose stood, groaning from her aching joints, and stared at their work spread out on the floor. Photos of the men from the files and the locations where their bodies were found or where they were last seen, a map of the town with red crosses marking each key location: home addresses, last known whereabouts. She stared at the photos of the victims, and each of them stared back at her. If she was going to make sense of it, she had to spew the crowded thoughts from her mind and speak them aloud.
‘Andrew’s son, Johnny, was the first to go missing in 2005,’ she said aloud, staring at his photo. She heard the ruffle of paper behind her as her father sat up in the chair, followed her hand as she traced the road on the map. ‘He was last seen walking down Military Road, heading out of town. The police report said Johnny and his father had an argument before he left the house; the police believe he ran away. But he was only nineteen and had nowhere to go, no other family to stay with. Andrew didn’t know of any friends his son had out of town. Neither his phone nor his bank card were used after he went missing. He simply vanished.
‘In 2009, Jamie went missing. He used to walk across the fields to and from work. A dog walker saw him cross the stream in the woods and over the open field, but no one saw him leave. The police searched the woods and found nothing. They pinned him down as another runaway.’
Lucy’s son Phillip stared up at her from the floor. He had his mother’s smile, the same jaw and chin. She thought of the pain in Lucy’s eyes, the garden groomed to within an inch of its life.
‘Phillip was found dead in 2011, in the woods by the riverbank, with cut wrists.’
‘How could he cut one wrist, and then the other?’ Tony asked.
They both had to be thinking of Jay. He had only cut himself once; the damage he had done would
n’t have permitted another. She thought of the red water splashing against her jeans, the starkness of his bloodless skin. Her stomach twisted.
‘Exactly,’ she replied, and coughed to clear the croak in her voice. ‘But the two victims before him just vanished, and suddenly we are meant to believe the killer changed tactics.’
She looked at their youngest victim, the youthful glow of his eyes, the freckles on the bridge of his nose, the puppy fat still clinging to his cheeks. A lump formed in her throat.
‘Annette’s grandson Zach had just turned eighteen when he was found in 2013. He had his whole life before him, but the police believe he took his own life. His body was found a mile from the bridge, naked on the bank with broken bones from the current. He didn’t leave a note.’
Jay didn’t leave a note, she thought. He didn’t need to. We knew he ended his life because each one of us failed him in one way or another.
‘Adam was admitted to the Lakes three years ago. He was found wandering in the same woods, almost like it’s the killer’s hunting ground. He didn’t speak of the man who harassed him, but admitted enough for us to know that he was scared into submission, harassed until he broke.’
Adam, the man I killed.
Even saying his name aloud brought pain to her chest. She knew deep down that she wasn’t responsible for Adam ending his life – if someone was going to commit suicide, they would find a way to do it – but having been the person to give him an out, to give him a reason to believe he was allowed to die, would stay with her for ever. She looked away from his photo, considered kicking it under the sofa so as not to feel his eyes on her.
‘And then there’s Finn.’
She ran her hand through her hair.
‘What I don’t understand is why the police didn’t investigate Finn’s claims more seriously. They say they had insufficient evidence, but his flat was crawling with it. The stalker left pubic hair and faeces and fingerprints all over the place, and yet the police didn’t even test them for a third party.’
‘They believed Finn was mad from the off,’ Tony said.