50/50 Killer (7 page)

Floor Two. The overhead lights made her skin look amber. She pulled a couple of wide-eyed funny faces at herself as the lift clicked down to Ground Floor. Then she smiled at her reflection. Not like a friend, exactly, but sort of.

You're not the worst person in the world. You're just human.

The doors
tinged
, opening onto a back corridor near the lobby. As she stepped out, she felt a vibration in her handbag, and she stopped between a radiator and a fire-extinguisher to retrieve her phone.

Quick, quick, quick.

The display read [1 message received] and she clicked green until it appeared. It was from Scott. She'd been waiting for this all morning, but instead of reading it, she pressed red to cancel and went to [create message]. Her phone stored a text message once you started to write it, and she'd composed a message to him earlier on. It was a general 'how are you, hope your day's going okay, I love you' kind of message. It appeared in the display now and she pressed [send], imagining Scott receiving it at home, imagining they'd texted each other at the same time.

She clicked through and read his message. It was pretty much the same thing he wrote every day, and more or less the same as she'd written to him. She smiled at the number of kisses he'd put at the end, felt a little sad, then locked her phone and put it back in her handbag.

On a normal day, she might have written him another text immediately - one of their 'what a coincidence, texting at the same time, great minds think alike' messages. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. The little bit of fake magic she'd injected felt even more like cheating than it usually did.

Instead, she pressed [play] on the remote and headed towards the main lobby.

By the time Jodie stepped out onto the busy street, the music in her ears was crunchingly loud, and a couple of people glanced at her, obviously wondering what on earth she thought she was doing to her hearing. She ignored them and looked above her, annoyed by the weather, put her hood up, then made her way left. The familiar route out of the centre, back towards the suburbs. Business as usual.

It was a miserable lunchtime. The sky was like something that might form over an industrial factory, too grey even to make out the clouds. As she moved out of the centre, the trees were shuffling in discomfort, twitching at the touch of the rain. The people on the streets hustled around her, shoulders huddled, faces full of pain: all moving more quickly than they would if it was sunny. A miserable day; let's get it over with.

For Jodie, trapped in that office, most days were miserable, and it was another reason for her lunchtime ritual. She'd learned over the years that music was the best way of separating yourself from everything, of carving a little '
you
' space. If you turned the volume up high, you didn't need to think about anything except the song in your ears. The disappointing real world faded out around you. The rain didn't matter, your shitty morning at your even shittier work didn't matter; even the drab fucking city you lived in wasn't so bad. Altruism aside, this was the main reason Jodie volunteered for the sandwich run. It gave her an opportunity to assert some control over her life by absconding from it.

The music changed at random to a song she didn't like: some hideous ballad that must have crept on as a result of her collector mentality. She clicked the remote, skipping it. A heavier song came on. Better.

But it was proving harder than normal to escape into her head. Whatever she tried to think about, her mind kept returning to Kevin and Scott, and what she'd risked losing because of her stupid,
stupid
actions yesterday.

Jodie skipped another song, then another.

A few moments later, still trying to find a track she wanted to listen to, she reached the edge of the waste ground. From the sky, she imagined, it would look like an ulcer on the land, pale and ridged and unappealing, nestled against the mouth of the main road. It was mostly old gravel, dotted here and there with clusters of bushes and trees. Around Valentine's Day, travellers came, bringing a fair with them. The rest of the year, people parked and brought their dogs.

The road skirted it, but that way took longer: it was quicker and easier to cut across. Scott would be worried if he knew she went this way every day, but even with nobody around you were still close enough to the road to feel safe. And, as she'd already established, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

Jodie moved round the old, rusted barrier and set off. In the distance, she could see a council estate of square grey houses; behind them there were the woods, and then the haze of the mountains. Like the rest of the city, the estate looked sodden and frozen. Once she was on the waste ground, the day seemed even more grim than before. The ground was grey in the cold. It was a wind-trap here, too. The air was icy and painful. It kept surprising her from the side.

She was halfway across, taking a path between old, skeletal bushes, when she heard it - something in the music that shouldn't have been there. It was a real-world noise, like a siren; an ambulance or a police car in the distance.

She clicked [pause] on the remote control. The music disappeared but the sound remained.

A baby crying.

Jodie stopped walking, more alarmed by it than the sound perhaps warranted. She looked around, but there was nobody ahead of her, nobody behind. Suddenly, the cars on the road sounded a long way away, and where she was standing the only noises were the baby crying and the creeping patter of the rain.

Her skin prickled. It was coming from the right, she thought, on the other side of the bushes. But there were no adult voices to go with it. No sound of activity. Apart from the bushes moving in the wind, the waste ground was still and desolate.

The rain picked up a little and the baby began screaming. It was like an alarm going off, and it set light to some instinct deep inside her. She found herself pulled a step closer to the bushes.

'Hello?'

Nobody replied.

Jodie blinked rain out of her eyes and took another step. She wanted to investigate but something held her back. What if she made her way through and found the baby with its mother? People didn't appreciate you nosing like that: it implied they were bad parents. So she hesitated for a second, but then the screaming became more high-pitched, like a car engine changing up a gear, and she thought, Fuck you if you're there, you
are
a bad parent, and she began to push her way between the bushes.

'Hello?' she called again. 'Ouch. Hello?'

Still no answer.

It was muddy here, and the sharp branches poked at her, catching on the cable of her headphones. But it took only a couple of seconds to break through. There was a gap between the bushes and it was there, resting in the mud like an abandoned picnic basket, that she found the source of the cries. The baby was bundled up in a pink blanket, lying on its back and screaming in anguish. Its face looked like a small, red rose.

'Oh, God,' Jodie said. 'You poor thing.'

Quickly, she detached her iRiver and stuffed it into her coat pocket. The situation was unreal: she wanted to pinch herself. This was something that happened in movies or newspapers, and yet here it was, happening to her. Some awful person had abandoned this child out in the cold and the rain. Jodie had never thought of herself as the maternal type - never got on with the babies she'd met - but now, without hesitation, she stooped to pick it up.

As she did, she felt a vibration against her hip. The phone in her handbag. Another text.

Not now, Scott
, she thought, glancing down at her side.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man in the bushes to the right. He'd been standing completely still, but now he was moving towards her. Jodie's first thought was Oh, it's the father, but then she caught sight of his face and the mental signals changed, confused. He was wearing a pink devil mask: big eyes, strands of lank black hair. It shocked her into a single moment of stillness, and that was all it took.

The man was holding a bottle of gardening spray. It sloshed as he raised his hand, then hissed as the mist clouded into her face. Her nose and mouth wrenched themselves closed; her eyes shut tight. Ammonia. Everything was burning. She was on her knees, coughing, her hands fluttering against the mud. And then he kicked her in the head and she was on her side, stunned by the ferocity of it. She managed to open her eyes - and then suddenly she was looking at the sky. Watching the rain materialise above her, without any real comprehension, as the grey sky sparkled and went white.

3 DECEMBER

17 HOURS, 25 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

1.55 P.M.

Mark

It felt strange to take full charge of my own team, no matter how small. The main reason was that I was painfully aware the grapevine would have been in full swing, and that the three officers appointed to me would know this was my first assignment. The reality of that hit me as I approached the van where they were waiting, and I encountered a bundle of nerves like a tripwire across the path. I took a deep breath and stepped over it. All I had to do was be myself and play it by ear. Myself ought to be good enough, after all.

Fortunately, the three officers - Davy, Ross and Bellerby - seemed determined to behave well. They listened attentively as I outlined the case and indicated the areas we needed to concentrate on, and then split the four of us into two pairs to tackle opposite sides of the street. I also told them that any suggestions they had would be welcome, a comment I'd appreciated hearing in the past. I figured it would sugar the pill before I finished up by repeating Mercer's instructions.

'Make sure your cameras are on at all times.'

They looked at me like I was stupid.

'I know it's obvious,' I said, 'and I know it's standard. But it's also Mercer's specific orders.'

They glanced at each other, but did their best to hide it. Once again, I realised there was a lot going on here that I was too new to be included in. This time, I didn't mind. Whatever the reason, at least they understood it wasn't me who was being a dick.

'Let's get on with it.'

The door-to-doors went as well as could be expected. Everyone was shaken by what had happened, and they were all keen to help in any way they could. Murder isn't common, after all: most people's experience of it is confined to films or reports on the news, not having it occur next door. Simpson's death had given his neighbours a stark and shocking reminder that it happened in the real world, too, and consequently of their own vulnerability. Identifying a reason why he had been singled out would help to dislocate them from the horror, and yet none of them had a single suggestion why someone might do this to him. For all they knew, his death could easily have been theirs instead. It was a frightening idea to deal with, and I wished I could have reassured them for certain that it wasn't true.

We canvassed the entire street, missing two houses where nobody was home, and in those cases we left messages and flagged them for follow-up. But nobody could recall any altercations: no fights or confrontations, no public bust-ups. Simpson had seemed a nice enough guy, they said. None of them knew if he was seeing anyone. They noticed different girls occasionally, but not recently. The whole time, they looked desperate to find something else to say, and I did my best not to look desperate to hear it.

It wasn't all bad news. We ended up with two separate witnesses recalling a white van in the street the day before. The first sighting was just after midday, at which point it had been parked further down the road; the second was around eight o'clock in the evening, when it had been outside Simpson's house. Neither witness saw the occupant arrive or drive away, and we had no number plate or make to go on, nor any specific markings. But it was something.

At number fifteen, the house opposite Kevin Simpson's, we got more. The occupant, Yvonne Gregory, was brief but specific. Yvonne was retired and had been at home yesterday afternoon, watching television. During an ad break, around quarter to five, she had gone through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. From there, she had a clear view of Simpson's house through the window. I knew this because I went in to check, leaning on either side of the sink as she told me about the girl.

'She was leaving his house.' Yvonne gestured across the road. 'I remember that she turned back and waved to him from the end of the path.'

'What did she look like?' I asked.

'Oh, she had brown hair, to here.' Yvonne chopped her hand at about shoulder length. 'She had a raincoat on, and a handbag, I think. And headphones, too.'

'How old was she?'

'She was quite young. Perhaps your age, Detective.'

I saw that she was joking with me. I smiled.

'Have you ever seen her before?'

'No, no.'

'Is there anything else you can remember?'

Yvonne thought about it for a moment.

'She looked a little upset, I thought. Well, not upset, exactly. More as though there was something bothering her, if you see what I mean. She looked troubled.'

Doesn't everyone?
I thought.

So we came away with a basic description of a vehicle, and also of a girl who'd been at Kevin Simpson's house, probably shortly before he was attacked. None of it would stop the case in its tracks, but nevertheless I was pleased, and as I made my way back to the department to file the reports and attend the briefing, I felt a lot more positive. Even the irritation from Mercer's over-specific instructions had faded. Obviously, I wasn't just going to slot into the team right away: I needed to prove myself first, and the morning's interviews were a first step in the right direction.

But it turned out that my report would have to wait for a while. When I arrived at the office, the rest of the team were already focused on something. A digital recording was being played and something close to Hell was unfolding in the air.

'Are you listening to me? We're going to play a game about love.'