by Will Carver
It is not the same handwriting as the Eames grid-references that arrive the day after a killing. I see that straight away.
Taking a pen from my breast pocket I lift the bottom of the plate upwards off the note, so that I don’t tamper with the scene. I don’t want my prints on this. Not after the recent suspicion surrounding this case.
It is not a suicide letter.
It’s a letter to my sister.
Cathy, you were the best thing in my life; you were the worst thing in my life. If there is somewhere that we go after death, I hope you are not there to meet me.
I drop the plate back down over his message.
It’s not the fact that he freely admits my sister was far more important to him than me or my mother. And after the way he wasted his life, after the way he waited for the instance to reap a moment of dual vengeance by legally euthanising my mother in front of me, I can’t bring myself to care that he topped himself later that same day.
What really hurts is that it wasn’t him. He can’t be Eames. He has a concrete alibi for the last two deaths.
What we know is that these murders were most certainly all based on the works of some of the world’s greatest magic tricks.
What we don’t know is who planned and executed this series of slayings. We still don’t know who Eames is.
‘Murph, call this in,’ I croak, turning my gaze away from my rotting father and his rancorous note. ‘Get someone to pick this sorry sack of shit up.’ And I walk out of the flat.
My phone rings again. In my daze I don’t look who is calling.
‘David,’ I bleat abruptly, announcing myself to the caller with a tone of dismissiveness.
‘Inspector?’ It is the guard from the hospital. ‘We’ve had a power failure at the hospital, but the backup generators have kicked in until we work out what happened.’
I think I hear him gulp.
‘Okaaaaay.’
‘Mrs David woke up.’ I panic at this news. ‘She was scared and disoriented and one of the doctors suggested moving her to a safer, more secure room.’
I feel as though he has more to say, that this chaos is leading to something.
‘Nobody talks to her until I get there!’ I bark my orders at the young officer, still raw from finding my last living relative festering in his secreted bodily fluids.
‘It is still bustling here and we are having difficulty finding which room she has been moved to.’
It’s at this point I see The Smiling Man looking up at me from the bottom of the stairwell. He is wagging his finger at me in the same way he did at the speakeasy the night before my wedding.
I take my phone, the guard at the other end talking still, calling my name, and I launch it down at my tormenter, screaming, ‘What do you want from me?’ He disappears before it strikes him and smashes to pieces behind where he stood.
And I know that she is gone.
I have let her down again.
I realise that Girl 6 was a part of the magic, but, like all tricks, it is leading to the final reveal. Every illusion requires some degree of misdirection in order to successfully accomplish the desired outcome. Girl 6 was the misdirection.
While we were busy dealing with another dead girl, while we were pinning the murder on my dead father, Eames, the illusive, deceptive orchestrator behind these atrocities, was setting up his final act: to make my wife disappear for ever.
In my mind I visualise the whiteboard.
I write Girl 7, Audrey DAVID, David Copperfield, Death Saw.
I know where he will take her; I feel it.
I know that I can stop him.
What I don’t know is that it is too late to save my wife.
Girl 4
I OPEN MY eyes gradually, allowing the light in glimmer by glimmer.
I knew he would be waiting for me at the hospital. I can feel his presence. I sensed him a moment ago, touching me, navigating the contours of my body with his fingertips, telling me that I am special, without even saying a word. Silently declaring his love.
At first all I see is a smile, then through the beeping horns and revving engines his baritone voice greets me.
It’s Eames. I knew it would be.
I don’t say anything at first, I’m still a little weak. I notice his head flick to the right to keep an eye on what is in front of us, then snap back to the left, to where I am slumped, waiting for me to react.
‘You …’ I pant, taking a breath before I try again. I see his eyes widen in anticipation. He fidgets in his chair.
I close my eyes again for a few seconds, to recharge. When I reopen them the car has stopped at a red traffic light and all his attention is fixed on me.
I try to speak again. ‘You … you’ve done it,’ I gasp, trying to focus on his eyes, but all I see is his smile.
‘I’ve done it,’ he responds, his smile broadening.
‘All of them?’ I ask, puffing out air on the question mark.
‘They’re all dead. He should have found the sixth girl by now.’ And he laughs subtly when mentioning January.
‘Well done.’ And I force a smile of my own.
I have just enough energy to pick my right arm up and place my hand on his thigh. Looking forward at the traffic leading back to the theatre, I drop my head back on to the head rest.
Everything is going according to plan.
Girl 1
I THINK FALLING asleep after making love is a wonderful experience to share. It’s the waking up that is often a disappointment. I’ve been out and met men, a lot of the time as a result of a speed-dating night, and everything goes well. I take them home, we drink wine and have sex. But when I wake up, they have gone. Escaped before we even give it a chance together.
Eames is different.
I fall asleep because he drugged my wine and, when I finally wake up, I am still handcuffed to my bed, which has been tipped vertically so that I am standing up, naked, with a tall blurred figure in front of me and a smaller blur sat on my Börge chair – in black – in the corner of the room delivering her instructions.
I don’t know who she is.
I don’t know why he is listening to her.
When he hands me the gun I see her as the threat, not Eames; she is controlling him, but my vision is impaired and my motor skills have diminished, so when I shoot at her it misses. It goes high. I hear it slug the wall behind her.
I don’t have the strength to squeeze the trigger again. Even if I could, it wouldn’t matter. That was the only bullet.
Then he tells me to look at him. As things start to come into focus I see Eames standing directly in front of me with a gun pointing at my face. The red light from the laser guide blinds me temporarily as he moves it down from my head to my mouth, his hand shaking.
‘If you can catch it, you live,’ he says in a monotone, completely removing himself from the emotion of the situation.
‘What? What are you talking about, you sick freak?’ I scream. The woman in the corner laughs at me.
‘Open wide,’ he says, unflinchingly cold.
Before I even have time to figure out what he means, I’m dead.
I’ve set her plan in motion.
Girl 2
‘DON’T MOVE,’ HE says, skulking around in front of me. ‘Stay perfectly still.’
Then my stomach starts to burn.
As I look down towards the pain, there is a sensation that someone has released acid inside my body, and an apple falls off my head in front of me.
I cry and whine like an injured dog.
I call out to a God that I don’t believe in.
Eames strolls over to me, visibly disappointed that I am still alive, and I realise that today, the day I thought everything changes for me, things are looking up, is the day it all ends.
He brings another apple over and tries to balance it on top of my head again. But I shake it off.
‘Stop moving!’ he says abruptly.
But I don’t.
He sl
aps me round the side of the face and grabs my chin like a vice. Bringing his face close to mine, I can still smell the sex on him. He tells me, ‘If you stay still, you just might get out of this alive. OK?’
I nod lightly and he places it back on top of me, takes his spot on the other side of the room, turns his back, loads the arrow and places it over his shoulder, pointing directly at my head.
To the right I see someone else. She is outside the window looking in. I want to get her attention so that she can help me, but I’m afraid of what might happen to me if I move.
She is staring at Eames. Like she knows him. Her face moves closer to the window. She is beautiful. Smooth white skin. I wonder whether she is an angel.
Then I feel my shoulder tear open and I scream, the apple falling to the ground once more.
My natural reaction is to grab the painful area, but as I try to bring my right hand up I am quickly reminded that I am fastened to the pole in the kitchen as the handcuffs cut further into my wrists.
The angel at the window sees me now, the blood pouring out of my shoulder and trickling down my naked breast, the hole in my stomach, the tears in my eyes. I look straight at her, pleading with her to take me away from here, to a better place where I can feel no pain.
She smiles at me. And the pain goes away.
Then her smile transforms. What was once something of comfort has now become something of pleasure and enjoyment. She wants this to happen to me.
And the agony returns.
Eames continues his routine once more, this time striking me through the thigh.
I just want it to end.
And, with his next arrow, it does.
The angel gets what she wants.
January
I SEND PAULSON and Murphy back inside to wait with my father’s rotten corpse after they rush out to confront my brief outburst. Plodding wearily down the stairs, dejected at the discovery of my dead suspect, I head towards the remnants of my phone.
As I bend down to pick up the pieces, I drop to one knee and black out. I don’t fall over. I don’t collapse. I’m just somewhere else. Somewhere dark, but familiar. And I see flashes of myself, in the chair, The Smiling Man in front of me. But something is different.
What I don’t know is that The Smiling Man is trying to tell me something pertinent to the case that I missed in the first two visions.
That Eames was not alone.
That someone was there with him when he committed these obscenities.
That I need to look at it from a different angle.
While I was tied to the chair with the bullet between my teeth, another chair appeared by my side, another chair that The Smiling Man charged at. This part of the prophecy was important. This was the part of the scene that we overlooked.
This was the chair that Audrey sat in while Eames carried out her instructions to shoot Dorothy Penn in the mouth. The bullet in the wall that disappeared, that The Smiling Man swallowed, was aimed at Audrey.
The Sleep-Easy Eye Cover that he ripped from my face was the same as the one that Audrey tore off her own eyes when I woke her up, sweating over the nightmare.
All of these details that I missed the first time appear more vivid on second inspection. But I’m still learning. Still discovering which information to siphon.
What I don’t know is that he was telling me it was Audrey all along.
In my second vision, as The Smiling Man backs across the room and I hear the glass smash, what I don’t know is that he was telling me to look outside the window. He was alerting me to the fact that somebody saw what happened, somebody watched it.
He was trying to show me Audrey again.
When he appears to me before Amy Mullica chokes on hundreds of cigarettes, he is trying to point me to Audrey. He pulls a chunk of my hair out as he unblindfolds me, just as Audrey did when she ravaged me on the sofa.
Am I channelling The Smiling Man this time or is he still directing me?
When The Smiling Woman visited, I saw the blood between her legs as a link to Richard Pendragon being emasculated. What I don’t know is that Audrey has been secretly trying for a baby and that her next period will be missed.
What I do know is that The Smiling Man appears to me only when a girl is going to die. He shows me his beaming face to let me know I have twenty-four hours to save her. If I am awake and he appears to me it is always with the wagging of a finger and it always coincides with Audrey being taken.
What I don’t know is that she is not taken at all. She is giving herself as part of the larger project.
What I don’t know is that The Smiling Man is my guide to solving the case. Where he comes from, I do not yet know. I don’t know whether I have created him or whether he is sent from another world or time. But he is a guide, not the answer. We must work together. He is specific to this case only; he has never appeared to me in relation to any other crime. My mistake is that I associate his appearances as a link with Eames, but he is only connected to Audrey.
I snap out of my trance with more information than before, but no more answers. Still in my kneeling position, it is as if no time has passed.
What I do know is that Audrey loves me more than anything in the world and I keep letting her down.
What I don’t know is that she thinks she is doing this all for me.
Eames
WHEN AUDREY WAKES up it makes it feel even more worthwhile. We have done this together. I know that she feels something for Detective Inspector January David, but right now, he isn’t here; that doesn’t matter.
Just think how stupid he’ll never feel that his wife completely betrayed him for their entire relationship. Think how lucky he’ll feel not knowing that we were together until they were married. What a great man he will feel like not knowing that he could only pacify her for fourteen months before she came back to me for something extra. Something exciting. Something that gave her life meaning.
This is as much mine as it is hers.
She never had to kill anybody; I took care of that part. She just had to tell me who and how. But we both win something and lose something in this deal.
Nobody will ever know that she conceived the idea; nobody will ever know her orchestral superiority; but she will gain the worship of Detective Inspector January David. As his guilt grows, so will his need to protect.
I will have my place in history; my name will be known, even revered by those who wish to be like me. But I lose her. I have to let Audrey go. Tonight will be the last time I ever see her dark curls and succulent lips. Her rounded hips and solid calves.
She does it for him.
I do it for her.
When someone goes through their entire life without any help from another person, when they live on instinct alone, when there is nobody out there who puts them first, before themselves, that’s me. That’s who I am.
When someone is born into this world alone, when they do not understand the emotion of love or the concept of family, do not let that be an excuse.
I know who I am.
This is not for fame or philanthropy. It is not creative or artistic.
It’s just what I know.
It’s all that I know.
Girl 4
HE HAS DONE incredibly well. Of course, I had to sit with him through the first stage, to keep a tight leash on the venture. Making sure everything ran smoothly. So, for the first girl, the dreadfully tacky Dorothy Penn, I was in the room with him when he pulled the trigger.
What is important is that I have not physically murdered anyone. It all had to be committed by Eames to work. That is how I planned it and that is how it has been.
In control.
Always.
Someone else does the legwork.
With the second girl I loosened my grip, knowing that I could not be there for the third girl as it was the night before my wedding, giving me an alibi. Obviously for the rest of the killings I was either the pretend victim or incapacitated, but for Carla Morett
i I needed to watch, to make sure that I had the right man to finish the job. A man with a passion for what he does and an increasing lasciviousness for me.
The drugs lasted long enough for him to leave her and fetch the crossbow. I could have brought it, but allowing myself to become an accomplice would be sloppy.
Every detail covered.
His finest work was Amy Mullica and made up for his mistakes with Girl 2. This is why I met him at the hotel afterwards, to give him his reward, to make him believe we had a relationship. By the time I realised I wanted to restart what I thought was over, he had done all the groundwork.
So he deserves the recognition he will receive when the final act is complete.
January’s father was the key. Jan told me that his father had always blamed him for his sister Cathy going missing and I wanted to give him closure on this.
So that we could get on with our lives.
Without the constant guilt his father unjustly placed on his shoulders weighing down our relationship.
So I set him up.
It was easy. Easier than building a multi-million pound company from nothing; easier than convincing a man of strict moral and law-abiding code to have something else in his life other than his commitment to work; easier than making a baby.
I knew him. Despite never meeting him I knew about him; Jan would often talk about his father. Only once did he talk of his mother.
The magic angle seemed obvious. How poetic for a once-revered entertainer to come out of retirement only to complete the greatest trick of all time. To take a handful of the world’s most famous illusions and distort them into a series of conjuring feats all leading to a harrowing denouement where his act of revenge would be complete.
He would take away his son’s life, just as he believed his son had done to him by allowing his daughter to be taken.