Didn’t she scream?
She couldn’t. I made sure she couldn’t. When I took my hand off her throat, she told me she was expecting someone. That he’d be there any minute. I had to laugh. Was it Danny Cook? I asked her. I laughed at the look on her face. ‘I’m Danny. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ She wasn’t. Then she did start to scream so I grabbed the fireside poker and hit her with it.
That hadn’t been the plan. I’d intended to string it out. Make it last. See how she coped with it. It was over far too quickly. One smash. Job done. And when I hit her, her face changed. She didn’t look like the same person anymore. In that split second, I lost all interest in her. I made sure no one was around, and I left.
Weren’t you worried you’d be seen going in?
No. I don’t worry. And she was trying to make sure her neighbours didn’t see me, so she told me to use the side door.
How can you do this, Matthew? How can you kill people and make it sound like it barely matters?
It doesn’t make any difference to me. They’re only victims.
They are people.
Not to me.
You don’t like people?
No. I don’t think I ever have.
There must have been someone. A wife, your parents, children?
Doesn’t mean I liked them. Not really. Not like they meant something. They were just there. Like furniture.
How could you marry someone if you didn’t feel anything for them?
People are different. I feel differently, doesn’t make it wrong.
Did your wife know that you didn’t like her?
Pause.
I didn’t say I was married.
But you were. You pretty much said that.
Pause.
I didn’t say it. I have people in my life. Everyone has. That’s all I meant. They are fittings and fixtures.
She made a note on the pad in front of her. Was married.
Matthew, why did you lose interest in her after she didn’t look as she had before?
It had been minutes since Marr had typed the line and the delay in answering perhaps suggested it took him by surprise.
What?
You said she didn’t look like the same person.
I don’t remember saying that. You must have got it wrong.
I’ve just reread it. That’s what you said.
She just looked different. From what she had before.
I don’t believe you. Who didn’t she look like anymore?
Her. She didn’t look like herself. Ellen Lambert.
Who did she look like?
Goodbye.
And he was gone. The green light went out, the line went dead, and her potential lead disappeared.
CHAPTER 28
Narey and Dakers sat back in their chairs, rubbing at their bruises. The man knew where to land his punches, jabbing at their consciences, throwing right hooks at their sense of morality, each one leaving a mark.
They sat in silence for a few minutes until Narey pushed herself out of her seat, distancing herself from the computer, and paced the room.
‘Talk to me about this guy, Lennie. Tell me who he is. What he is. And try using words I can understand.’
Dakers grinned lazily. ‘I’ll try to keep it simple. And remember, I’m still guessing.’
‘Aren’t you always?’
The psychologist stopped and tilted his head to the side as he considered. ‘Yes. Of course I am. But my guesses are better than most people’s because I’ve studied and practised for over thirty years. It’s like the golfer says . . . the more I practise, the luckier I get.’
‘Get lucky, Lennie. Please. We need to nail this guy.’
‘I’ll try. Okay, so my best guess is that Marr wanted us to find Eloise Gray’s body. We know he killed her somewhere else. Somewhere he’d said that we’d never find, and so, presumably, where no one would find the body. Instead, he placed her in a building on a public street. Sure, it’s abandoned, but it’s known that kids go in there and mess with the place. He wanted Eloise to be found. So, the question is why.’
‘And?’
‘And I think our Mr Marr is a guy who’s into power and into being in control. He has no doubt that he’s smarter than us, superior to us. His twisted morality is right; our understanding of how things should be is wrong. He’s an arrogant dick but his weakness is that he needs us to recognise it. There’s no point in having all that power, no point in being control, unless other people know that you are.’
‘If he’s so superior, why does he feel the need to prove it? Why does he need us to tell him how smart he is?’
‘He needs the confirmation of others. He knows he’s the emperor but he needs us to bow before him.’
‘We’re missing something, Lennie. We must be. It’s been bugging me for a while now. There are answers in what he’s told us, or not told us, and we haven’t seen them. I can feel it.’
Dakers nodded. ‘Okay, I can buy that. So, what do we do?’
‘We read it all again. His conversations with the Americans, and the interviews we’ve done. All of it. It’s in there somewhere.’
Dakers huffed only slightly. ‘Then let’s do it.’
Everything had been transcribed and printed in multiple copies. It was all there to be read on screen, but they were both of an age that they absorbed more of what they were reading if they were holding it in their hands.
Narey noticed that Dakers had three blank sheets next to the transcripts. He headed one Truths, one as Deceptions, and the third was topped by a large question mark. As he read, he stopped every few moments and jotted down a couple of lines on one or other of the sheets. She had to force herself not to look to see what was going where, and to concentrate on what she was reading.
She waded her way through Marr’s boasts and the gratuitous details that were designed to sicken her, through the denials and the evasion, the truth and lies. It went on and on, every word pored over, every phrase and nuance examined. For two hours she trawled through it all, a second time and a third.
Every phrase made her think of another that she’d read earlier and previously. Each connection made her wonder and made her doubt herself. The words became a snow-storm, the sentences a whiteout. Eventually, she couldn’t see letters for looking at them.
Before she knew it, she’d pushed herself out of her chair and pushed out of the room, the door hitting the wall as she sought fresh air and fresh ideas. She was aware of Dakers calmly looking on, a bemused smile on his face, as she charged by him. She kept pushing, past people and around people, until the cold of the night kissed her cheeks.
She paced and breathed and briefly wished that she smoked. Instead, she strode round the car park until she had stored up enough oxygen to fuel her brain for another round. She stubbed out an imaginary cigarette with the ball of her foot, crushing it into the tarmac, and spun on her heel.
‘Better?’ Dakers asked without looking up as she re-entered the room.
‘Let’s find out.’
She settled herself again, renewed if not refreshed, and began reading through the transcripts of each interview for a fourth time. Like before, her gaze kept drifting occasionally to Dakers’ lists, as if they might be the map to the treasure she sought. She managed to stay in the chair for all of ten minutes before she got out of it again and stood behind Dakers, reading over his shoulder and seeing the three lists full, from the top of each page to the bottom. Truth. Deception. Question mark. It was all there. She just had to see it.
She saw his shoulders sink and heard him let a soft sigh escape, exasperated by her standing there. He slowly turned until he was looking at her.
‘Okay, so tell me, what are we missing?’
Narey began to answer but stopped herself, a different response forming in her brain. She held up a single finger, a plea for a moment to think. She then wagged it a few times and turned, moving quickly to the other side of the room.
Dakers watched her go
to another file and pull out sheets of paper. He crossed his arms and let her work, knowing when to talk and when to shut up. He remained silent as she came back across the room, slower now, and stood in front of him with the paper in her right hand. With her left, she pushed her hair back as if giving her head more room to think. She closed her eyes and grimaced.
‘Okay,’ she began slowly. ‘Talk this through with me. I need to know I’m making sense.’
‘Go for it.’
‘On your lists,’ she nodded towards the sheets of paper, her eyes still closed, ‘tell me where you’ve placed the conversation where Marr explained how he met Brianna Holden.’
Dakers didn’t have to look. ‘Deception.’
‘Tell me why.’
‘He employed negation and equivocation; he skirted the subject. I’d no doubt he wasn’t telling us the truth, or at least not the whole truth.’
‘And what was your understanding of why he was doing that?’
The question made Dakers pause. ‘That he was trying to deflect from admitting he used the online dating sites to target his victims.’
‘Yes, that was what I’d thought too.’
‘And now you don’t? We know that the mystery man her sister spoke of, this Greg Hurst, met her online. We know he ticked all the boxes, just the way Garland and Marr operated.’
Narey nodded. ‘Sure. That’s not in doubt and it’s not what he was hiding. We know that Marr has admitted to doing that with the others, so why be so coy this time? He’d nothing to gain from it. So, that suggests to me that he was hiding something else instead.’
Dakers looked thoughtful. ‘Okay. It makes sense so far. Go on.’
‘You asked what we were missing, right? Well, I think it’s all about omission. And not just in what he didn’t tell us during that interview.’ She held up the sheets of printout that were in her right hand. ‘So, these are the lists of names, profiles, likes and dislikes that they found in Garland’s computer.’ She placed the sheets of paper in front of him. ‘There’s the names of Marr and Garland’s targets in Scotland, along with the names of the pseudonyms they used while they were catfishing them. Including Brianna Holden and Greg Hurst. And there’s the various personal preferences that Marr and Garland had mined from social media. Tell me what you see.’
Dakers looked confused and Narey sighed impatiently. ‘Okay, let me make it easier. It’s about omission. Tell me what you don’t see.’
He looked again and almost immediately let out a short gasp of irritation. ‘There’s no list of likes and dislikes against Brianna Holden’s name the way there is with the others.’
‘Correct. Which leads me to one conclusion, but I don’t want to lead you to it in case I’m wrong. I want to hear it from you.’
Dakers stared at her, exhaling hard. ‘Marr already knew her. He pursued her online but he didn’t meet her there. He already fucking knew her.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I’m sure of it. There was no need to make a list of Brianna’s preferences. No need to list what she did or where she worked. He already knew it all.’
CHAPTER 29
‘So, you think you know the guy she chatted to online. Greg. But that he wasn’t Greg. He was someone she already knew. From before? Like an ex-boyfriend or something?’
Narey hadn’t wanted to tell Kayleigh McGrath much more than she had to. However, the invitation to remember Brianna’s former boyfriends led to an obvious conclusion. One that freaked the hell out of her sister.
‘That’s sick. That’s creepy as fuck. Oh my God. Imagine . . .’
She saw the sister’s own demons hurl themselves at her, seeing the horror of it etched on her face, turning pale under her fake tan as she imagined Brianna’s secrets being used by the last person that she’d hope would have them.
When she was finally ready to talk, Kayleigh wanted to scream out the name of every guy that Brianna had ever dated or anyone that had asked her out or showed an interest. Yet part of her shied away from it, defending her sister’s memory and making sure Narey knew Brianna wasn’t some kind of slut.
‘I know,’ she assured her. ‘I’m not judging, believe me. We’ve all had exes from before we were married, we all had to kiss some frogs. None of that matters. All I need to know is who is in Brianna’s past, not why. Let’s go through it. Tell me anyone you remember. Leave no one out.’
It was a slow process. Names known, names forgotten, names never known. Boyfriends, neighbours, work colleagues. Brianna was an attractive, outgoing young woman and so had more than her share of what Narey’s granny would have called suitors. Predators, Narey thought. Potential predators at the very least.
Kayleigh did most of her talking, most of her remembering, perched on the other end of a series of cigarettes. She inhaled like she was sucking on life before nervously blowing it out the open window of the flat.
‘There was a guy named Bruce Devlin. This is going back years though. Just after high school. Braw-looking guy and he knew it. Bit of a ladies’ man. Brianna fancied him much more than she ever told him. Kept him dangling, you know? They went out for about six months on and off until Bri got drunk one Saturday night and got off with some guy whose name I can’t remember. Devlin found out and that was that. His ego couldn’t handle it.’
‘Where’s this Devlin now, do you know?’
Kayleigh frowned. ‘I think he joined the army, but that was ten years ago. More, probably.’
‘Did she ever date or know anyone by the name of Tam Harkness?’ It was a long shot and Narey knew the answer she expected, but it had to be asked. Kayleigh looked blank and when Narey described him she shook her head firmly. ‘Doesn’t sound like her type at all.’
It didn’t. Brianna’s exes seemed to be a collection of good-looking chancers and wide boys.
‘This one guy, Ricky McKenzie, he was a drummer in a band. Long dyed-blonde hair, always wore a vest top to show off his muscles. Crap drummer but he looked the part. Loved himself to death. I think he got Bri into a bit of drugs, nothing heavy but enough that they were wild together. Last I heard he was living in London, playing in pubs. Probably looks like shit now.’
‘Who ended it between them? Ricky or Brianna?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know. Probably Brianna though. It was usually her.’
She dumped Danny, the amateur footballer, after three weeks. She dropped Jack the barman after one. She dated a computer programmer named Lee Fairley for two months before deciding he was too boring and went out with his best mate Aaron instead. She was just young though, Kayleigh insisted, nobody would have thought twice about a man doing the same.
‘How did Lee Fairley take it?’ Narey asked.
‘Not too well? Called her every name under the sun and said he hoped she walked in front of a bus. His poor wee heart was crushed.’
Narey’s skin prickled but she kept her voice even. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
Another shrug. ‘No idea. Probably went home and never showed his face again.’
It was an unusual enough name. She’d find him.
‘What about Kevin Monteith, the man who went on trial for Brianna’s murder? Tell me about him.’
Kayleigh sighed heavily. ‘He lived just a few streets away from us in Shawlands. He was a couple of years older than Bri and had always been interested in her. Wasn’t shy at letting her know either. He’d stand at a street corner and say “Awright, gorgeous? How you doing today, beautiful?” That kind of shit. The harder he tried, the more Brianna ignored him. Poor sod never gave up though. He must have asked her out half a dozen times and she always said no. He became properly annoying, pushy and then abusive. After Bri was – after she died – her handbag was found in Monteith’s car. They were sure he’d killed her. Plenty of people told them how he’d acted with her and how she’d snubbed him.’
‘Including you?’
‘Well, yeah. They asked me and I told them. The cops were so sure that Monteith had killed her and I wasn’t going
to doubt them. I guess what we told them about Monteith just made them more certain. They were adamant they were right. Right up until they were wrong.’
‘Any of the guys that Brianna dated, or any of them that knew her . . . did they know Monteith? Someone framed him. It would make sense for it to be the person that killed her.’
Kayleigh’s face twisted. ‘Christ. I don’t . . . Well, Bruce Devlin would have known him. Danny Whatsisname – Danny McDaid – would have known him too. Probably. Monteith and Lee Fairley know each other for sure. They both used to drink in the same crowd in the Granary.’
‘Anyone else?’
The sister tilted her head to the side and huffed. More secrets to spill. More names to make Brianna look bad.
‘Bri once went out with this French guy. Martin. Although he pronounced it Martan. I know for a fact that Kevin Monteith knew him. They got into some kind of fight at Sweeney’s one night. Bri told me about it. Said she’d hoped Martin knocked Monteith’s head off.’
‘Do you know Martin’s second name?’
‘No. Never knew it. Oh, and there was this mechanic she dated a few years ago for a couple of months. Big handsome guy called Sean. Monteith is a mechanic as well so they maybe knew each other.’
‘Maybe.’
And maybe Monteith was known to Davie, the barman at Sweeney’s. Or to Phil, who DJ’d at Bar Soba. Or Mick or Mike, she couldn’t remember which, who Brianna met in Ibiza and was in love with until the flight home.
One thing was for sure. She was known to the man calling himself Matthew Marr.
CHAPTER 30
Narey’s gaze switched between the monitors. One with the young man twitching uncontrollably, his left leg kicking out despite not being awake. She knew the medical opinion was that his heart rate was increasing, racing like a rabbit on the run. He was asleep but in overdrive.
Watch Him Die Page 17