by Will Carver
He won’t need to question me, because I confess, to all of it.
I wait on a bar stool in the hallway, so that he doesn’t have to waste time looking around my house. I’ll go easily. I will make it as simple as possible for him, so that he doesn’t ask any questions. So I don’t have to tell a lie. So I don’t give myself the chance to have a second thought that sees me burying Audrey in culpability.
His muscular, tired frame fills the doorway with shadow and he pushes the door open gently to meet with me face to face for the first time. I know what he looks like, but this is the first time he has seen me.
He bends at the knees slightly, widening his stance, prepared in case I attack. He holds his right arm out stiff in front of him to prop the door open and act as a barrier, should I charge in his direction.
‘Eames?’ he says, still unsure, still one step behind.
I nod at him to inform him he has something right.
‘Don’t you fucking move!’ he spits as he curses, unable to contain his wrath towards me.
I shake my head at him, as if to say ‘I won’t.’ Then I lift my hands slowly out in front of me and turn my palms so they face upwards. As if I am fake-pleading, but inviting him to place the handcuffs on me.
‘You’re just going to sit there?’ he asks knowingly.
I leave my hands where they are and nod slowly, smiling broadly.
Still, he is cautious, wondering whether this is another trick, some kind of Houdini escape act. But it isn’t. I’m giving myself up. For her.
My work is done.
I’ve reached the top.
When the squad cars arrive as backup and screech into the street with their lights rotating, it’s me they are afraid of. When the hero emerges from the doorway with the perpetrator’s hands cuffed behind his back and neighbours stare through the gaps in their curtains, those are my neighbours, that is my doorway.
Detective Inspector January David manhandles me down the pathway to his car. I know he wants to hurt me. I know he wants to kill me. He was hoping for a struggle, something to give him an excuse, but I don’t allow him the pleasure.
He presses heavily on my shoulder to lower me into the back seat, then walks around to the driver’s side, opens his door, gets in and starts the engine.
We wait in silence for a minute while the car warms up.
He has so many questions in his head to which he still needs answers. I can see him deliberating. And I feel happy that he hasn’t come out of this ordeal unscathed.
‘You want to know why I didn’t kill her,’ I tell him, like I know exactly which one of the hundreds of questions he really wants to ask.
He adjusts his mirror so that he can see my eyes.
‘This isn’t just about your whore wife, detective,’ I lie. He doesn’t even blink. ‘Isn’t it obvious? It was love.’ I lean forward in my seat, so that I can speak closer to his ear. ‘I did this all for love.’ Then I rest back in my seat, looking out the window as people emerge on their doorsteps, camera crews already arriving, police tape starting to cordon off my house.
And he thinks he has won.
The idiot thinks he has actually won.
January
I HAVEN’T HAD time to think about my father yet. I haven’t had the time to digest the fact that maybe he did still love Mum; that he probably blamed himself for Cathy all this time; that turning off the life support was the last thing he could take. I don’t have time for conjecture, though. I just want to kill Eames.
But I can’t.
I have gone against everything I ever believed in on this case. From going against the advice of my superiors to take a step back from this case, to submitting to a supernatural belief that I have had premonitions about the deaths of five innocent girls.
But it worked.
Sat before me is the man responsible for a spate of murders that has had the entire population of London looking over their shoulders. The same man who has taken my wife and tortured her to the brink of death only to spare her, twice.
We are alone.
What I don’t know is that this is the final part of Audrey’s plan. That somehow she has convinced a sociopathic death addict to incriminate himself for her fiendish scheme. She is guilty by association, an accessory to the fact. She is the criminal brain behind this diabolical magical massacre. But he plays his part to perfection.
He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t falter.
He admits to each crime.
It doesn’t matter that we haven’t looked into it further, that the answer is there for us to see. We don’t need to find out how he could possibly know the specifics of each girl around such a vast expanse like London without a database of information, because we have the collar. Our percentages are up, and that is what is important.
I just have to accept it.
I tell myself that maybe he just wants to be caught.
Maybe that is the reason he sent me the notes; he was asking me to put him away so that he could stop this.
I am portrayed as a hero, Audrey as an innocent victim caught up in my case, and Eames receives his infamy, his place in London’s bloody history.
We all get what we want, and she gets away with it.
I visit Audrey in the hospital to tell her she is safe now, that we got him, that I won’t let anything happen to her again. I don’t know whether she can hear me, but that doesn’t matter. I need to say it out loud, to hear the words myself.
The doctor tells me that she will be fine with some rest. That she is exhausted.
He suggests I do the same. I’ve been awake for days. The boundaries of reality are becoming more blurred. What I feel to be fact is not the truth.
Paulson and Murphy are outside her room when I leave.
‘Hey, Jan. You all right?’ Paulson asks. I nod, drained. ‘We got him.’ He smiles proudly and slaps my arm in congratulations.
Murphy steps up to me, ‘Look, Jan, I’m –’
‘Forget about it, Murph. We’ve all got a job to do, right?’ I don’t need an apology from him. I know why he did it and maybe I would have done the same in his position. I just want to make sure that Eames is put away for the rest of his life; that I can give the families of these girls some closure.
Something I still don’t have.
I can’t talk things over with my father.
I can’t apologise to my mother and tell her I believe her story.
What I have left is a relationship with my wife that is built on lies; fabrications that I am never supposed to find out about.
What I know is that this is only half of my life.
What Audrey doesn’t know is that something has changed in both of us as a result of this experience.
What she doesn’t know is that The Smiling Man cannot rest. He is specific to her and, while it may seem like the end, that she is smarter than everyone else, that she triumphed, the change within her that she is yet to acknowledge means that, at some point in the future, The Smiling Man will once again haunt me and this time his message will be clear.
When I finally get home the house doesn’t seem so empty; it doesn’t feel as scary. The phone in the hallway that was the tormenting messenger for so many months is now just a phone. The step where Eames stood to give delivery of the Girl 5 package is now just a step. The chair that Audrey seduced me on to forget about her guilt for a short while is now just the Chunky Cuddler sofa we like to watch films in.
The doorbell rings. I have no idea what the time is. It is light outside, that’s all I can determine. I throw my keys down next to the phone and turn back to answer the door.
A stocky man, early thirties, Caucasian, just under six feet, is stood there with a clipboard and pen.
‘Morning, sir. I have a delivery for a Mr David.’ I look at him blankly, trying to work out in my mind whether I am awake. Over his shoulder I see a minivan with a courier logo on the side.
‘That’s me,’ I say cautiously.
‘If you could sign here I have a fe
w boxes for you.’ He hands me the board. I print my name and sign next to the box where he has written 9.34. I hand it back to him.
‘Thank you, Mr David. I’ll just get your packages. There are nine of them in total.’
I start to wonder. Maybe this is Eames’ last hurrah. Perhaps each box contains the head of nine more women that we are yet to discover, I think gruesomely. But when he walks back to me with two of the heavy boxes stretching his arms to their limit, I recognise them immediately.
They are my heritage. My inheritance from Mum.
Nine boxes of journals that she has written in since 1985. Journals that she feels will be of use to me.
Right now, at this instant, I don’t hate Audrey; that feeling is months away from this moment. For now, I feel protective over her. I know how I felt when I thought I had lost her and it wrenched at my heart. I love her.
For now.
But somewhere within these journals is the key to help me develop my gift. Somewhere, amongst all the gibberish, the scribbles and the illegible handwriting, are the answers I have spent my life looking for regarding my sister. Mum always knew. And it doesn’t matter what convoluted formula Audrey cooks up to try to make me love her more, she is wasting her time. Nothing is more important to me than finding the truth about Cathy.
Everything I do is for her.
So, while Audrey lies in hospital, content with another success, an achievement in her personal life, the ordeal has changed her. Audrey is dead, and the person that remains is something different, something less. Someone so disillusioned that she can’t see herself for what she really is.
Defeated.
A complete failure.
But she’s safe. And for now, I guess that’s enough.
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Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books 2011
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Copyright © Will Carver 2011
Will Carver has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2011 by Arrow
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ISBN 9780099551034