Girl 4

by Will Carver

  But I can’t tell him.

  Paulson has shown me that he can be trusted, but I can’t take the risk that actually he can’t. I can’t do anything that will jeopardise me getting out of here. Getting to Eames. To Girl 6.

  Getting to Audrey.

  I know that they can’t keep me here much longer. They have nothing on me apart from conspiracy and circumstance. It’s not like I’m on suspicion of blowing up Parliament. The death of Girl 6 just means that I can get out an hour earlier.

  ‘If she wakes up while I’m in here, you keep Murphy away from me when I get out,’ I say half-menacingly, half-joking.

  ‘I’ll keep him away from you anyway, I think.’ And he laughs. ‘Hang in there, Jan.’

  He closes the hatch to the real world and leaves me stranded on the floor, legs still flailing, pins still pricking; but the sensation is wearing off and allows me to sit up.

  By the time I’ve regained full control of my body, clambered back to the edge of the bed and resumed my position of despair, the door opens and the dimwit duo arrive to take me back upstairs for further questioning.

  The two barbarians drag me back into the interrogation room to continue their predictable pantomime. I wonder if the police investigating Cathy’s disappearance were like this. If they were this useless. I haven’t slept again, knowing that Girl 6 will be dead shortly.

  As the questioning recommences they restart the recording, again stating my name and dictating the time. When I hear this I know that she will be gone soon.

  And I have let her die. That isn’t any different from pulling the trigger myself or firing the arrows or feeding the cigarettes.

  ‘It took you two hours to get back from Canary Wharf?’ the taller, balder idiot asks.

  ‘Haven’t I answered that already?’ I sigh, rolling my eyes.

  ‘Just answer the question,’ his sidekick adds, getting more involved today.

  ‘Do you want the same answer as before or something different?’ I joke sarcastically, knowing that the two dummies across the table from me don’t have the composure to handle my insolence.

  ‘Don’t get smart,’ bald cretin bleats.

  ‘Just answer the question,’ groans Detective Halfwit in support.

  I laugh.

  Looking unhinged. Looking guilty.

  ‘I stopped for coffee. No, no, wait, there were Tube delays. Actually, I walked it … on my hands. I’ve told you I can’t remember.’ They look at me in dismay, disgusted, for wasting police time. They are the ones wasting police time, I think angrily; Murphy is the one wasting police time. Having me cooped up inside this room talking the same conversation with Inspector Imbecile and his moronic man-friend – that is a waste of fucking time. They have me sequestered like a common criminal, forgetting everything I have done for this department, ignoring my commitment to the force, to the law and justice. They are disregarding me on a personal level, neglecting my record, stripping me of any influence I once had. Meanwhile the real killer is still out there on the streets plotting his next victim.

  Conspiring to make Girl 4 his Girl 7.

  *

  ‘Shall we call it a day, lads? I’ve got nothing new I can tell you,’ I ask after this cat-and-mouse game has continued for a while. I am not expecting their response.

  ‘You like to drink?’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ This is a cheap blow aimed at agitating me, shaking me up. And I know it’s come from Murphy.

  ‘Is that why you can’t remember where you were?’

  ‘I found my wife hanging by fishing line from the ceiling of a theatre. Her face was bleeding into a plastic coffin and she hasn’t woken up since.’ I speak through gritted teeth, alternating my gaze between the Neanderthals. They know they have got to me. I know I’m lying. I was drinking before that happened. I use Audrey as an excuse to vindicate my actions.

  ‘Maybe you put her there,’ the schmuck assistant proudly says, directly to my face.

  I react instantly, innately, backhanding the plastic cup full of water in front of me. The liquid sprays out across the desk, temporarily compromising the vision of Detectives Simpleton and Nitwit. Almost in the same movement I launch myself forward, diving across the table, my arms outstretched, fingers stiff like talons, and grab the insensitive chump who insults my wife; one hand on the chest of his shirt, the other on his throat.

  His chair falls backwards as I land on top of him, forcing his neck into the ground. His jughead partner still battling with the shock, rubbing his eyes to clear them. I only have a brief second to perform one swift punch to the face before my other arm is yanked up behind my back, my thumb locked into place and my own face forced to scrape along the carpet.

  The lummox I attacked stops the tape, clarifying the time and reason for terminating the interview. Then he kicks me in the ribs as my right cheek begins to form a red burn mark from grazing the floor.

  They both utter some masculine obscenities in my direction until someone knocks on the door loudly. I stop struggling at this point.

  It’s Paulson, and Murphy is stood behind him, partially obscured by my angle down low.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Paulson barks, exerting some authority, even though he has none in this matter.

  ‘He attacked me,’ the dipstick whimpers.

  ‘Get him up off the floor. Now!’ Paulson orders, coming into his own. ‘He’s not the guy we’re looking for.’

  ‘What?’ The detective glances at me with his best impression of a withering look, trying to warn me not to get any ideas. ‘How do you know that?’

  Murphy finally steps out from behind Paulson’s large frame. ‘We’ve just found another girl. Get off him. He’s coming with us.’ It looks as though he has retained some of the confidence that inflated him after his backstabbing false accusation, but it will take a lot more than releasing me to redeem him in my eyes.

  The bald ignoramus on my back releases his grip and eases the weight on my lumbar region. Still, I wriggle as if the struggle is two-way and, when I get to my feet, I straighten my rancid coffee-covered shirt as if to say, ‘Told you so.’

  ‘Jan, we should get going. You really need to see this,’ Paulson urges.

  I look almost pityingly at the two arseholes who have done their best to rattle me for information over the last two days. ‘Thanks, fellas,’ I say triumphantly, ‘that was a memorable couple of days. Really,’ I joke, and hold my hand out to the sap I attacked, a bruise already forming around his right eye. They were just doing their jobs. I guess I know that.

  He doesn’t shake my hand.

  I smile, the better man, and head to the door.

  ‘You.’ I point my finger a few millimetres from Murphy’s nose and see him go cross-eyed as he tries to look at the tip. ‘You fucked up.’ His eyes tilt upwards to look at mine.

  ‘I know, Jan, look –’

  I cut him off before he starts some kind of shame-faced, heartfelt apology. ‘You’ve wasted enough time. Come on.’ I motion for them both to follow me. Walking out the door I push my shoulder into Murphy, nudging him back slightly. He accepts this and they both follow me downstairs – Murphy, I sincerely hope, with his tail firmly between his legs.

  The car journey to the garage in which Girl 6 has been discovered is silent, apart from the screams and obscenities that I shout with my eyes in the rear-view mirror at Murphy, who sits, sheepishly remorseful, on the back seat.

  We pull up outside the garage, which is closed. It hasn’t been tampered with or taped off yet. No crowds have formed; no newspapers are aware yet. They have done what they should have done with Girl 5 and come straight to me.

  Nervously, I lift the door on its rails, with painful knowledge of what I will find inside. The light from the street lamps is enough to confirm what I already know.

  The outline of her body depicts her in the same position as The Smiling Man in my vision. The same way I remember it looking as a child. I swallow hard on revulsion at the grim scene.r />
  ‘So, who have we got here, then?’ I camouflage my real thoughts, voicing the expected response out loud.

  ‘It’s, er, Girl 6, Jan,’ Murphy warbles in my direction.

  ‘I know that much, Murph. I can count. I mean, what is her name?’

  ‘Blaine. Her name is Stacey Blaine,’ Paulson confirms, taking out his notepad.

  Blaine. I say the name in my head a few times, while deconstructing the image before me.

  I rub my rough, dry hands across my stubble, as if washing my face. I was hoping that I’d got it wrong, that the dreams meant nothing in the end, but this is the last clue I need.

  I know the killer.

  It is so clear to me now.

  The way that each girl died. The reason I got involved.

  It all points towards my father.

  Girl 4

  WHEN THE ALARM sounds I know it’s the end.

  Eames is here for me.

  I have been conserving my energy for this moment, not showing the nurses that I have regained consciousness, because I don’t want the hassle that would inevitably follow.

  What do you remember?

  Can you see his face?

  Would you be able to recognise him from a photo?

  I don’t need all that right now.

  I just need to get out of this hospital.

  Despite numerous practices and training sessions, an alarm of any kind invokes panic and trepidation in even the most composed people. One of the guards instantly heads into another room, a quieter room, to make the call to January informing him of the current situation.

  I pull the tubing away from my nose and arms; my left hand still has a one-inch tube protruding from it as a result of the anaesthesia. It hurts when I rip the tape away that is holding it in place.

  Then the power goes out.

  I know he is here.

  *

  The lights flicker back on and a million beeps alert the staff that the back-up generator has kicked into action. But the short lag causes pandemonium for visitors and the alarm continues to exacerbate the situation. Anybody could walk in and out of the building without being noticed amid the panicking rabble.

  The second guard looks back and notices me struggling. His instinct tells him to find a doctor, find someone who can help.

  His instinct is wrong.

  The doctor that he finds in the hallway among the crowd of bemused medical interns and flapping family members is not a doctor at all.

  My arms tire and my eyelids grow heavy. I know he is near, but I can’t stay awake. I can hear everything, though. I hear the guard return with someone. It is a voice I have heard before.

  ‘She’s not safe in here. I need to move her to another room,’ he says, sounding concerned. Like he knows Eames is here too.

  The guard lets the doctor take me away.

  He lets Eames take me away.

  ‘Stay here in case this guy comes looking for her. I’m taking her to Level Three, Nuffield Ward, room two-forty-three. You got that?’ he asks.

  ‘Level Three, Nuffield, two-forty-three,’ he repeats back to him, back to the killer’s face.

  He wheels me down the corridor at break-neck speed, obviously ignoring the crowds hovering around the halls. To an onlooker it gives the impression of an emergency, but when we get in the lift I feel the sensation that we are going down to the ground level rather than up to Level Three.

  Still drowsy I sense each fluorescent bulb pass over my head, seeing the white through my eyelids. I count them down the corridor – four … five … nine … twelve – then I am hit with a blast of fresh air that blows my smock up around my waist. Almost kindly he pulls it down to preserve my dignity.

  I notice the surface below my trolley-bed change, becoming rougher as we bobble over the tarmac to the car park. The air outside reinvigorates me, but still the oxygen will not pump to my muscles.

  He picks me up over his shoulder and places me inside the car, buckling my seatbelt with almost parental concern.

  The door slams as he gets in the other side.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs David. This will all be over soon.’

  Eames has me again.

  January

  WE DRIVE BACK to the station and I’m apprehensive. The last time I opened up, when I went against my better judgement and discussed The Smiling Man, it backfired. His appearances support my idea, but I’m starting to realise these visions are for me alone.

  Taking a breath and keeping my eyes on the road, I suggest that I may know who the killer is – that it may, in fact, be my own father. They are silent to begin with. I look over at Paulson, flabbergasted in the passenger seat. He puffs his cheeks out and curses in disbelief. In the mirror Murphy deliberately avoids my gaze, but after my false arrest they owe me the chance to follow my hunch. We still have some work to do. We need to conduct a little more research to determine the truth.

  We head for the incident room, each settling into our usual chairs, falling into our accustomed poses, surrounding ourselves with the standard police paraphernalia; computers, notepads, whiteboard and, most importantly, coffee, plenty of coffee.

  While Paulson and Murphy clear their desks, check for any messages and generally hunker into position ready for the task at hand, I channel into my own thoughts, focusing with precision on what I know, what I don’t know, and what cannot be known.

  What I do know is that my father – the man that I saw smiling through the window of my mother’s eventual room of enforced rest – was not the same man that I knew as a child. He was a bitter, twisted man who took pleasure in the torture and suffering of his wife and only son.

  For over a year he has been trying to regain contact with me; in the process he has tormented my wife with sinister phone calls, possibly designed to terrify her.

  What I remember of my father as a child was the fun, the entertainment; that was his job. He would tour the south and east coasts performing his brand of humour, impressions and magic. Often left in our mother’s care, Cathy and I were always ecstatic when he returned home from a trip. But the day Cathy went missing was the day his love died.

  It died for me, because he blamed me; she was in my care.

  It died for Mum, because she was insistent that she knew Cathy was all right, that she had been visited by an apparition who could confirm this.

  It died for his work, because you can’t make jokes when all you feel is pain and despair. You can’t impersonate others when you no longer know who you are. And you cannot perform illusions when your own sense of reality has been distorted out of all proportion.

  Finding Girl 6 in that position, I was immediately reminded of my father.

  I remember a trick he would always perform to baffle Cathy and me. He would move over to the corner of the room, turn his back on us, but on a slight angle, put his legs close together, his arms out so that he looked like a giant Jesus, and he would levitate. He would fly.

  At least that’s what we thought as kids.

  Obviously, he was disguising his left foot with his right foot. Simply by pushing himself up on to the toe of his left foot and keeping his right foot flat, parallel with the ground, he could give the illusion that he was six inches off the floor.

  When The Smiling Man last appeared to me, and as I finally saw Girl 6, I was reminded of this fantastic moment in my childhood when I still had parents. When I still had a sister.

  This trick has developed over the years and technology has improved it, whether this is through camera trickery or magnetised shoes with secret trouser openings, people recognise this trick. Many would associate it with the modern street magician David Blaine.

  Summoning the performer’s name ignites a dormant section of my mind.

  I focus, delving into the recess, hoping to trigger the response I need. Searching for the grain that will initiate a trail of thought that leads to solution.

  And it registers.

  Something clicks.

  Stacey Blaine.
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  She wasn’t chosen to die at the hands of this deranged man because she had a link to any of the other girls; she was simply born with the wrong name.

  They all were.

  I move towards the whiteboard and in bold letters inscribe the surnames of all the girls. Under Girl 6 I write Stacey BLAINE. Under that I write David Blaine. Under that I write, and underline, Levitation.

  Across the rest of the board I frenetically write each girl’s number and her name, with each surname in capital letters.

  PENN, MORETTI, MULLICA, DAVID, PENDRAGON.

  ‘I need you to look these names up in relation to magic and magicians,’ I instruct without turning around. ‘I want to find out if each one is known for a specific trick and, if they are, I want to know what it is called and whether it relates to the way in which these girls died.’ I am focused, purposeful. I tell Paulson and Murphy to hit the Internet and start researching. We split the research into three. Murphy looks for Girls 1 and 2; Paulson has 3 and 5, while I take … Girl 4.

  For a few minutes, the room is quiet with concentration; only the hum of computers is audible as we weave our way through cyberspace. I see Paulson’s and Murphy’s shoulders hunched over their keyboards, their heads leaning close to the screens as if this will get the information to them quicker. Eager, intent, determined; on my side. I briefly savour the feeling of being back where I belong.

  As we unpick the individual riddles of the case, our collective revelation is exhilarating, but, for me, also terrifyingly chilling.

  Firstly, The PENDRAGONS were a duo most famous for their Metamorphosis act. A routine which sees a man lock a woman inside a chest, which is sealed with a padlock and sword. For added difficulty she is placed inside a large red sack, which is tied tightly with rope before the lid is closed on her.

  The man then takes a large sheet and stands on top of the locked chest. He throws the curtain up in the air in front of him, but is only out of sight behind the fabric for a split second. As it drops, the woman that was originally secured into the case, tied up in the bag, is now stood in place on the chest, looking more glamorous than when we saw her last. Opening the case reveals the man now fastened in the red sack. This happens before an audience in a matter of seconds.