Bloodstream (21 page)

‘He’s removed the pictures, stuck them to the wall, and left his message. Why?’

Murphy slipped past the SOCO lifting fingerprints off the wall and walked back out onto the landing, Rossi stepping backwards to allow him past. ‘He wants to explain what he’s doing? Usually the case, isn’t it?’

‘For some, yes. I’ve read a bit more about serial killers in the last few years. You know, since they started turning up more often in our fair city.’

‘A little light reading before bedtime, Laura? I bet that was fun.’

Rossi headed into the main bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed as Murphy followed her in. ‘It was, actually. The American ones are really interesting, as it happens. The various methods, motives, psychopathology– ’

‘I believe you,’ Murphy said, interrupting her. ‘I think I’ll stick to just catching them for now.’

‘Doesn’t seem to be anything in here,’ Rossi said, opening the bedside drawers. ‘Not even a sex toy to make us giggle.’

Murphy looked around the room. ‘A couple of photographs will have come from here. I’ll get them to sweep the whole place. He must have left something behind this time, surely?’

‘Beginning to think that’s what we’re going to need.’

‘A mistake?’

Rossi stood up and faced Murphy. ‘Isn’t that usually the way we catch these people?’

Murphy hesitated, then closed his mouth.

He didn’t want anyone to hear him agreeing with her.

He tried to be as still as he possibly could. Standing on the stripped floorboards, flakes of wood poking into the soles of his bare feet. When he stood like that, breathing slow and steady, he could almost be somewhere else.

When he spoke, he did so in almost a whisper. Loud enough for Number Four to hear, giving himself the comfort of knowing there was someone to listen to him speak.

‘Some people think there’s no reason for anger to play any role in a loving relationship. Those people have never been part of something real. I know different. I’ve seen it. You only have to walk the streets on a Friday or Saturday night in town to see that. The anger caused by love. Spilled tears, spilled blood. The guy who becomes so incensed by another bloke daring to look at his missus for longer than a split second that he decides to do something about it – the endless tales of deaths occurring from a single punch not acting as a deterrent. The alpha male showing his dominance. The women fighting each other over perceived slights, over men who will forget their names by the next morning. The couples who scream and shout at each other in the middle of town, walking past Primark and Burton, where they’d shopped with smiles on their faces only hours earlier. Wearing the outfits they’d bought as they tear into each other. Saying words they can never take back. Insults and viciousness spewing forth with every syllable.’

His breathing rate increased. He tried to slow it before he spoke again.

‘And no one cares about the people who see them do this. About the strangers silently judging them as they pass them by at three in the morning. Couples who are on their way for the night bus, both wordlessly thanking their lucky stars that it isn’t their turn to be the ones stared at.’

He crouched down, his weight shifting to the balls of his feet. He rubbed his hands together, generating some warmth in them. Number Four was already shivering in the coolness of the room, as spring refused to bring with it any warm weather.

He could see her, reflected in the remnants of a broken mirror propped against the wall. The ghost of wallpaper surrounding it. Peeling and coming away.

There was a story he told when he was in ‘normal’ mode. When discussions at work or somewhere else became political or such like. It was well rehearsed, one he felt comfortable telling.

He had been driving down Scottie Road, just as it turned off and became Stanley Road and faded off into the distance towards Everton. Keeping to the speed limit, watching for police with nothing better to do on a Thursday night at one a.m. than pull him over for doing a few miles an hour over thirty. The roads were almost dead – a couple of other cars dotted around here and there as town was left behind him, but the streets otherwise quiet. It had been a warm summer evening, and he’d had the windows down in his car, rather than wasting petrol on air conditioning. A warm breeze entered the car, cooling him as he drove.

Over the low voice of Pete Price’s radio show, he’d heard the shouting before he saw the people doing it. He had begun to search out where the noise was coming from as the lights ahead turned to amber too soon for him to speed up and through them.

The couple were young. That had been his first thought. The girl possibly not even eighteen – her shaven-headed companion had the look of someone who had left school early and recently.

He’d watched with bemusement for a few seconds, not really paying them much attention as their words drifted around him. Mostly coarse and uneducated. Both of them unable to profess their anger in any other way than to scream and swear. He had been unable to work out what they had been arguing about, but the lad had been the angrier of the pair, so he’d begun to concoct a story in his head: infidelity or a slight on his character.

When the smack came, it took a moment or two to realise what had happened. The lad reeled back as the girl had gone for another slap. Then the lad raised a hand and punched her on the side of her head. Only a low wall had stopped her from falling. The lad was in her face by the time she’d stumbled, his words lost as he raised his fist and smacked it into her head again and again. She wasn’t on her feet long before she slid down the wall onto the floor.

He remembered the feeling as his stomach flipped, watching as conflict had turned to violence in front of him. He’d got out of his car on instinct, leaving it idling as he approached the pair.

By the time he’d got to them, the girl was lying on the ground – the lad about to volley her in the legs for a second time, his face a blank mask, droplets of sweat cascading down it as he prepared to inflict even more damage. The girl was crying, sobbing, curled into the foetal position.

He remembered the feeling of disgust at the sight.

As the lad had drawn back his foot, he had tackled him to the ground. Pinned the lad’s arms behind his back before he’d had a chance to react, pushing his face into the concrete. Used his whole weight on him, forcing him further and further down. The lad tried to kick out, but was outmatched and didn’t have the strength he possessed. He’d given the lad a swift dig to the kidneys and side of the head to stop him struggling.

It had been almost too easy.

He had turned to see if the girl was able to get up, his mind working away as he prepared to tell her to ring the police, to get help. Get this lad who was underneath him away from her.

As he’d turned, he’d felt a stinging blow to the back of his head which sent him dizzy. His head turned to fog for a few seconds, causing him to relax his grip on the lad underneath him.

He’d staggered a little, looking to see where the blow had come from.

‘Get off him, get off him.’

The girl was on him, hands on his shoulders as his head cleared, pulling at him and making his balance fail more. He’d ended up on his side looking confusedly back at the girl, as she helped the lad to his feet.

‘
I was trying to help you.
’

‘You’ve hurt him, you fucking prick. Look what you’ve done.’

He’d stood up, feeling the back of his head as he stared at the girl who by now had the lad on his feet, a dazed look on his zit-scarred face.

‘Fuck off now, or we’ll call the bizzies. His family will fucking do you.’

He’d walked back to his car, which was still standing alone at the lights, got in and driven away, passing the couple as they limped home arm in arm.

When he told the story, it was always greeted with the same shocked expressions and shaking of heads and the silent agreement that there was nothing you could do for someone in that situation. That she loved him more than she loved herself. Endless platitudes excusing the violence the lad had displayed, or the bleeding hearts of defence for the girl and her reaction to the man trying to help her.

He told the story again, the endless shadows listening along, as the well-rehearsed story came forth from him. Number Four closed her eyes as she listened, holding on to the radiator for a warmth that wasn’t there.

‘That was their relationship. That was the way they showed love for each other. There’s no other explanation for it. Love is just too close to anger and conflict. Why can’t we change this? What can I do to make this different? Better?’

Love and anger go hand in hand.

Violence was just the outcome.

‘Everyone uses violence now. It’s everywhere. It surrounds me. Surrounds everyone. We live in violence, so it’s only right that it has become a part of the most intimate aspect of our lives. Love. We consume anger and conflict, and violence is the result. Cruelty and sadism are used as a form of entertainment. War and terror are beamed into our living rooms, to be commented on and devoured.’

His words didn’t comfort him. Spoken into the darkness, louder than a whisper now, they echoed back at him.

He was sick of it all. Wanted to make it stop, but didn’t know how.

‘That’s my mission now. I have to stop it all. I have to use violence against them, when there is nothing else that can be done. I want it to end. I have to make you see that violence can be a force for good.’

He made her watch the video he had produced. Turned her face towards the screen, so she could see what his love for her had created.

‘It’s easy,’ he said, wiping away the tears which fell down her cheek, onto her jawline. ‘A dummy email account, a dummy Twitter account. Fake details, a fake persona. That’s what all those
trolls
do, isn’t it? Hiding behind anonymity. I’m just using the same process.’

He closed the lid on his computer and put it to one side. Tiredness swept over him, his eyes threatening to close of their own accord. Return him to normality.

He walked back into the other room, lay down on the mattress there and slept. Waiting for tomorrow to come, when he could be someone else instead for a few hours.

Whilst the world around him changed.

She waited for him to leave before she began to breathe normally. The smell of him, it stuck at the back of her throat. The sickly sweet smell of his fading aftershave disgusted her.

She couldn’t move that much, could sleep upright only in short bursts, the pain in her arms when she awoke worse than ever. Pins and needles, needles and pins. Everything hurt. Everything felt wrong.

The duct tape across her mouth would need replacing soon. He hadn’t let her drink since that morning and now there was pain in her stomach from hunger and thirst.

Her thoughts no longer made much sense. She knew why she was there, what he wanted. He wanted her. She just didn’t understand why she was being shown videos of people being murdered. Why he would rant at her about love, as if it would make a difference.

She hated him.

He had never called her by her name. She wasn’t even sure he knew what it was. She recognized him, of course: a regular from the shop where she’d worked. Someone she had thought of as normal.

How wrong you can be.

Now, she was just a number to him. Number Four. She knew Numbers One and Two were still alive, as he couldn’t find them. She knew Number Three had been dead at least two weeks or three.

It could be days . . . she had no idea any more.

She was waiting for him to kill her now. Number Four. Then, there’d be a Number Five, a Number Six. Because no one could give him what he wanted.

She wasn’t a number. That’s what she held on to. She was a real person, with real feelings and thoughts.

She couldn’t be reduced to a single digit. She wasn’t a number.

She was Amy Maguire.

@LiverpoolLid82
First #ChloJoe, now there’s another couple. What’s going on in Liverpool??!

@Smithy_Says18
I was fine with it just being those two off the telly. Don’t want us normal ones getting it. #serialkiller

@RedAndProudWayne
Bet it’s get nothin to do with #ChloJoe. Someone tryin get attention. #RIPChloJoe

@ScouseNotEnglish1
Scared to leave the house now. People gettin killed everywhere. #Liverpool

@EvaDunning30
It’s like something on telly this. Police everywhere in Tuebrook.

@TuebrookGuyKev
Just asked police when I can get back in my house. Told me ‘when we’re finished’.
#Ipayyourwages #Wannagohome

@FitzyPatrick1
I hope they catch whoever did this soon. #Scary

Emily Flynn had come out of catatonia and into pragmatism. There were things that needed to be done, things that needed to be sorted out. There were arrangements to be made. It hadn’t been long since she’d had to do the same thing for her mother, so she knew the things that would fall upon her to organise.

She was still Hannah’s mother. Whether she was gone or not.

The big bear of a detective, who had his best
we’re really sorry
face on, was beginning to annoy her. All po-faced and concerned. Scratching at his beard every time she asked him a difficult question.

It had all been too easy lately. No issues or crisis to sort out. All three of her children happy and settled at the same time for once. Now . . . there was this.

‘When can you let me see her?’

Another hem and haw from the large detective. No set time, or straight answer. Just more obscuring of the facts.

At least Millie was being spared this part, Emily thought. She’d been picked up by Hannah’s sister and ferried away to safety.