by M B Vincent
She had slept, after all.
Jess woke on the rug in her father’s study. She’d crept there when she’d given up on her bed. She ached; a rug is no mattress.
The sound of Bogna’s snoring rumbled through the quiet house. Jess wondered at the housekeeper’s placidity; Bogna would sleep through a nuclear attack.
It was still dark outside. A promise of tomorrow, a faint glow, only beginning to nudge aside the night. Too early to get up. Too late to get back to sleep. Jess sat up in her dressing gown, wrapped her arms around her knees and revisited the night before.
Imagine I’d slept with Mitch and then found the map and the lollipops! She had almost called Eden, got him out of bed to listen to the circumstantial facts. In the cold dawn, those facts were threadbare. Mitch was no killer. Surely?
Murder makes paranoiacs of everybody. Suspecting Mitch wasn’t as daft as Knott’s surveillance of the lollipop lady, but it showed how jumpy Jess had become. She toed her phone towards her. Checked it. Not just for Rupert.
From downstairs came a mournful howl.
Moose was scratching at the back door. Grateful for something to do, Jess rammed her feet into unlaced Doc Martens and traipsed down to let him out.
‘Go on Moosey,’ she whispered at the back door, as if the frosty garden was a cathedral. ‘Have a nice little wee.’
The dog padded off down a tunnel of overarching trees that was deliriously green in summer but was now spiky and bare.
Jess took two steps onto the terrace and felt like a daredevil. They never went any further than the back step these days. The tranquil, dead lawn reflected the dreams she was having. About blacked-out woods and Thor and David and dead things.
‘Moose!’ she called. ‘Here, boy, c’mon!’
There were noises she couldn’t place. A braying bark. Jess had mentioned to Bogna that these new sounds ‘could almost be construed as llama-like . . .’ but Bogna had refused the bait.
Jess went to the steps that led from the stone terrace to the grass. ‘Moose!’ She studied the greige still-life all around her. Nothing stirred. ‘Moosey!’ She took one step, then another.
Standing on the lawn was transgressive.
A voice, deep, matter-of-fact, floated from the darkness. ‘Officer Goode here, miss. The dog went to the pool, I think. You can follow him if you like. You’re safe, my colleague’s down there.’
‘Right, ta.’ Jess took a deep breath. Outside the hours of daylight, Norris owned the garden. She tried not to scuttle.
Down the dead tunnel went Jess. She stepped out onto the tiled surround of the empty pool.
Just as Jess realised her activity should have triggered a security light, Norris stepped out in front of her.
‘You can run,’ he said. ‘But I’m fast.’ He held up a knife, tilting it helpfully so she could appreciate how very long it was, and how sharp. ‘Which window is yours?’
‘How long have you been out here?’ Jess’s voice was calm. Her knees, however, trembled.
‘Long enough to make friends with your dog.’ Norris bent to fondle Moose’s ears. ‘One little flick with my knife, and he’s disembowelled. That’s what I’m famous for, after all. Disembowelling.’
‘He’s just a dog,’ said Jess.
‘Yes, but he’s your dog, and that’s where the fun comes in. I was hoping your daddy would follow him out, but you’ll do. You’re as bad as them, you think I’m scum.’
She said nothing. She thought of the crow. The coffin. The fading little heart.
‘All I am to your dad and the police is a gyppo. I’m an easy target.’
‘The word, as you well know, is Romany,’ said Jess.
‘The word doesn’t matter. Calling me Romany won’t change anybody’s mind.’
‘Hand yourself in if you’re innocent. You’ll get fair treatment from Eden.’
‘They look after their own. Now that I’ve split open a copper’s head, I’m a marked man.’
Jess felt the cold. Her heart hammered beneath her dressing gown. Norris was too close. It was already a violation. ‘You know they’ll catch up with you, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. I can face that. Might as well go down in a blaze of glory.’
‘This isn’t glory,’ said Jess.
‘Who asked you? Just because you live in a big house with a swimming pool and the town’s named after your thieving forebears, you don’t have the right to poke your nose into everybody’s life. Think you’re clever, don’t you? Taking that whore to meet my mum.’
‘Louise isn’t a whore,’ said Jess. She flinched when Norris drew nearer. She saw how that pleased him. They were almost nose to nose. ‘She’s not Sif, either.’
‘No, she’s just a slag, like you, like the rest of them,’ said Norris. ‘Thor and me, we’re real men, we have munuth.’
‘Passion.’ Jess saw Norris’s disappointment that she was able to translate the Norse word. She swallowed. That knife was distracting. ‘Abonda’s worried about your heart.’
‘Nothing wrong with my heart!’ This Cut-Price Thor was offended by the suggestion he was less than superhuman.
Jess heard a passing car out on the road. She heard St Luke’s bell toll. It was all just sound effects from another galaxy. ‘There are police all over the property. One of them saw me come to the pool. He’s waiting for me to reappear.’
‘Officer Goode here, miss.’ Norris lowered his voice. He beamed at her realisation. ‘Poor old Officer Goode and his mate,’ he said. ‘They’re not well, Jess. Not well at all.’
‘You won’t kill me,’ said Jess, even though violence lapped at Harebell House like a tide of blood. ‘I don’t fit your pattern.’
‘Pattern? You and Eden make me laugh. I don’t have a pattern. I’m Thor. I’m the hammer. I’m the wolf, Jess.’
He stepped towards her.
He growled.
Jess felt emptied by fear.
Mary’s voice. From the house. ‘Where are you, you old tart?’
Another voice. Male. Anxious. ‘Miss Castle!’
Another voice. Male. Louder. ‘Man down! Man down!’
Jess turned. The rest of the world had woken. It knew she was in danger.
She turned back to Norris, but she was alone.
***
‘Stop it.’
‘Stop what?’ asked Mary, as Jess sat dazed at the kitchen table.
‘Stop flirting with the police guy. There’s a time and a place.’
‘And this is the time,’ said Mary. ‘And this is the place. Why can’t you accept my excessive sexual energy as an affirmation of life against the dark forces of death, eh?’
Jess leaned over and pulled up the zip on Mary’s camouflage onesie. ‘Because. Just because.’
The officer came back in from the garden. He was excessively handsome; it was rude for a policeman to be that attractive. His demeanour was at odds with his looks. He had the quiet earnestness of a Jane Austen vicar. ‘The injured officers have been taken to Richleigh General. DC Goode will need surgery. The perimeter’s clean again. Now, if you feel up to it, I need you to come with me, Miss Castle.’
He had inadvertently saved Jess from Norris, by turning up to ask her to attend the police station. Mary had answered the door, found Jess’s room empty, and they had raised the alarm.
‘Did you say,’ asked Jess, ‘why Eden wants me?’
‘No,’ said the too-attractive officer. ‘Best he tells you himself.’
CHAPTER 20
A STOPPED CLOCK
Still Friday 13 November
Eden said, ‘This is the call I wanted you to hear. Came in at eleven forty-five last night.’
Eden pressed the play button.
Jess closed her eyes. Cut out the visual stimuli of Eden’s office. Tried to park the news about Eddie; that could be faced at leisure, later. For now, she had to help find Norris, and make him pay.
The recording was muffled. The words hard to distinguish.
‘Whoev
er he is, ‘said Eden, ‘he sounds like he’s underwater. The accent’s peculiar, he seems to be struggling with English.’
‘Hello? Police? Eddie, it’s Eddie, he’s been attacked, he on ground, no breathe, please help him, please come to pub, come now, now.’
‘Any ideas?’ Eden was peremptory.
‘Nope.’
Knott, hovering with yet another mug, said, ‘Told you, Sarge.’
‘None?’ Eden was dismayed. ‘You always have ideas. About everything.’
‘Not this time. He’s in a right state, whoever he is. This poor sod didn’t attack Eddie.’
Eden was studiously patient. ‘I know that, Jess. But he may have seen who did.’ He accepted the mug from Knott.
‘It’ll do wonders for your poor old tum, Sarge.’ She was solicitous, as if he was on his deathbed.
‘What’s the matter with your poor old tum?’ Jess knew the answer; a constant drip-feed of lamb’s heart would upset anybody’s digestion, never mind a sleep-deprived workaholic in the throes of a major enquiry.
‘My stomach’s not important,’ said Eden. ‘Norris is. Eddie’s head wound was similar to the other victims’. Norris must have run from the pub to Harebell House.’
‘But Eddie’s attack doesn’t fit the MO.’ Jess still couldn’t look the truth squarely in the eye. In the parallel universe she preferred, Eddie was safe in bed above the pub. ‘Surely, if this was Norris, he’d have taken Eddie to the last Jolly Cook at Molton Abbot.’
Knott said, ‘Maybe he tried but Eddie wouldn’t go with him. Fancy a fig roll, Sarge?’
Eden just looked at her. Then he said, ‘Possibly Norris is frustrated by the level of protection around the Judge and made do with Eddie. After all, Eddie carried out the citizen’s arrest that led to the trial.’
Jess bit the nail on her little finger, a habit that had lain dormant since her GCSEs; this case gave her the same sinking feeling as her Computer Studies exam. ‘Plus – and I know you hate my whole fatherhood theory – Eddie’s a father. But,’ said Jess, realising it, ‘Eddie’s son is an adult, and the Kidbury Kannibal likes to orphan children.’ She saw Eden scowl at her tabloid language.
‘Blaargh,’ said his stomach.
‘You need a rest,’ said Jess.
‘I need to catch this killer. Eddie’s one of our own.’
‘Have you noticed the date?’
‘Friday the thirteenth. I’m not superstitious, Jess.’
‘Me neither. The attack took place before midnight, which makes it the twelfth. To put it another way, three days after the ninth, which was our original forecast, based on three-day gaps.’
‘You mean, maybe the killer took a break and is reasserting the sequence?’ Eden seemed soothed by the notion.
‘Could be.’ Jess, with her ragbag clothes and her ragbag mind, realised I bring him order. ‘There’s more, though, and it’s under our noses. Just out of sight.’ The truth was teasing them. Barely bothering to hide.
There was a commotion in the corridor. ‘What now?’ Eden’s face was troubled again.
A female voice, entitled and indignant. ‘You tinpot Hitlers! My lawyers will gut the lot of you!’
They heard Moretti, low, rumbling and amused. ‘In the circumstances, that’s an unfortunate turn of phrase, Ms Cope.’
***
Knott tutted. Rolled her eyes. Said, ‘Seriously?’. But Jess stayed put in the video room and watched Eden question Gillian Cope.
‘If you call me a fascist bastard again, I’ll . . .’ Eden didn’t seem sure what he’d do to Ms Cope. ‘Just don’t, please.’
‘Fascist bastard’. Gillian’s laugh sounded like a bat being sandpapered. ‘I don’t have to tell you where I was last night, and I don’t give a toss about all these sperm donor murders.’
Her lawyer, a woman in a dismal suit, opened her mouth.
‘I can handle this,’ snapped Gillian.
‘You’re right. You don’t have to tell me,’ said Eden. ‘But what you can’t do is lie to me. And you’ve already done that, Ms Cope.’
‘You hate that I’m not scared of you, don’t you? You’d rather I was shaking in my shoes.’
‘I’d rather you were honest.’ Eden addressed the lawyer. ‘As your client won’t listen to you, I’ll lay it out for her. Ms Cope, you didn’t attend the West Country Female Entrepeneur of the Year show. We’ve scoured the security tapes and the official video; you’re nowhere to be seen and your identity badge remained unclaimed. Lying about that night puts you in some jeopardy. This is a murder investigation. One of the most grisly in living memory. If I don’t hear a credible alternative to the lie you told me about your whereabouts on the night of the sixth of November, then I’ll have no option but to formally attach you to this case.’ As that sank in, Eden said, ‘You talk a lot about your brand. Could it survive such bad publicity?’
‘Are you blackmailing me?’
‘No.’ Eden folded his hands in front of him. ‘I’m making you a promise.’
Silence swelled.
The lawyer opened her mouth, then shut it again, as Gillian was already talking.
‘I wasn’t at the awards show and I didn’t throw a dinner party on Halloween.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’m proud of what I was doing both nights.’
‘Proud enough to tell me about it?’ asked Eden.
‘I attended two rallies. One in London, one in Bristol. Why the Y is a gender supremacist protest group. It’s the future. We’re ushering in the destruction of the male, and their removal from society.’ She sat back, pleased.
‘I see,’ said Eden.
‘The destruction of you.’ Possibly Gillian was disappointed with Eden’s lack of reaction. ‘We were masked, all of us. You know that film The Purge? It was like that. Pointy-chinned white masks.’
‘I see,’ said Eden. Again.
‘The Halloween rally, the London one, was on the news. It was broadcast all over the world.’
‘Was it?’ Eden sounded mildly interested. As if she was describing a nephew’s christening.
‘I went on last. Gave the keynote speech. I was brilliant. I took on the patriarchy right at the foot of Nelson’s Column.’
‘There were a number of arrests that night. You weren’t among them.’
‘My people smuggled me away when the police arrived. Look at the footage. It’s me. You can tell it’s me. Look, Johnny boy, while your first murder victim was being pulled apart in a Jolly Cook, I was a hundred and twenty miles away making a speech at Nelson’s Column. That risible phallic monument to a one-eyed, one-armed fascist bastard.’
***
The playground on Conscience Lane was empty.
The unmanned roundabout slowly turned, as if steered by a ghost.
‘Hello Darling.’ The lurcher was a furry trip hazard. ‘Squeezers?’ Jess stopped the roundabout with a gloved hand.
Stretched out on it, like an effigy on a tomb, Squeezers said, ‘I’m not here.’
Jess set the roundabout going again. Slowly. Like the wheel of the year.
Jesus, I really am seeing metaphors everywhere.
‘I’ve heard you do your comedy accent party piece before,’ said Jess, as Squeezers drifted past her. ‘I never could place it. I recognised it over the phone, even though you tried to disguise it.’
‘I didn’t kill Eddie!’ Squeezers sat up.
‘Nobody’s saying you—’
‘Down he went! Down on the hard floor. I thought, “Oh dear oh no old Squeezers is in trouble now.’ I didn’t mean no harm.’
This ambiguous blathering was the reason Jess hadn’t exposed Squeezers back at Margaret Thatcher Way. His protestations of innocence tended to incriminate him; by now, Knott would be measuring him up for the electric chair. ‘Here’s what I think happened, Squeezers.’ Jess halted the roundabout when he drew level with her. ‘You saw Eddie being attacked, and you cried out. The murderer ran off, and you called the police. But, when the assault
happened, you were doing something you shouldn’t have been, so you were too frightened to give your name.’
‘How do you know that?’ Squeezers was in awe of her clairvoyancy.
‘Because you’re usually doing something you shouldn’t.’
In the relative warmth of a bus shelter, Squeezers told his story.
‘Eddie’s a kind man. A prince. He lets me sleep in his bar. All cosy and lovely, with that nice smell of beer. Yesterday he said he’d found a hostel bed for me over in Richleigh. I did a big smile but, oh, Squeezers was miserable, Miss Jess doctor. This old noggin of mine, it gets in me way. I can’t live beside other people. I didn’t tell Eddie that. He’d be disappointed. He doesn’t know I like sleeping near him ‘cos he makes Squeezers feel all safe. So I bedded down in the hut. It’s smashing in there, my little palace.’
‘The wooden hut in the pub garden?’ It was a smoker’s ghetto that smelled of Benson and Hedges.
‘Just as I was dropping off, something made a noise in the bushes. Darling shot up. My dog is extremely intelligent and wise, as you know.’
Jess looked down at Darling who was enthusiastically gnawing her own arse.
‘Through the little window in my hut I saw Eddie checking the cellar doors. I was proper nervous in case he rumbled me. He looked around to see what the noise was.’ Squeezers gathered himself. ‘Then it came at him. Out of the darkness. A demon.’
‘A demon?’
‘I am almost one hundred per cent certain, yes, that it was a demon. It struck him. Its hand was made of iron. So I danced and I sang.’
‘You did what?’
‘Demons hate that.’ Squeezers was patient with Jess’s ignorance.
‘You didn’t get a look at the demon’s face?’
‘Sorry, no. It was not possible at that time.’
‘You saved Eddie’s life, Squeezers.’ The publican was recuperating in a hospital bed that came with its own police guard.
‘Not me,’ said Squeezers. ‘I don’t do things like that.’
‘Come on, Squeezers, let’s vamoosh.’ There was room for a small one at Harebell House.
***
‘Bogna, I told you, I’m fine.’
Bogna evidently didn’t believe Jess. She buttered another crumpet. She put another cushion at her back. She dollopped double cream into her hot chocolate.