The Torment of Others (16 page)

Jan shook her head. ‘There’s always more, Dee. We all know that. Stuff you think isn’t important, stuff you think is too important. Who did she score from?’

Dee looked panicked. Her eyes swivelled towards the counter, where Carl Mackenzie was leaning, mug in hand, talking to the girl behind the counter. ‘I dunno,’ she mumbled.

‘Course you do.’ Jan followed Dee’s glance in time to see Carl heading for the door, throwing a nervous glance in her direction.

‘Was that Carl Mackenzie going out just now?’ Jan asked.

‘I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. And if it was, what of it? It’s still a free country, isn’t it? People can have a cup of coffee wherever they want, can’t they?’ Dee was talking too much, Carol thought.

Jan clearly agreed. ‘Sandie scored off Carl, didn’t she?’

Dee snorted scornfully. ‘Sandie wasn’t a low-life. I don’t know who she used, but it wasn’t Carl, OK? You stay off his back, he’s harmless.’

‘That would be because he’s dealing to you, would it?’ Jan drawled wearily.

‘Fuck off. Look, she might have got some stuff off Jason Duffy now and again, but that’s all I know.’

‘Did she have a pimp?’ Carol asked.

Dee shook her head. ‘There’s less poncing round Temple Fields than you’d think. Her lot saw to that,’ she said, gesturing towards Jan with her thumb.

‘We cleared out a lot of the pimps a while back,’ Jan said to Carol. ‘We made it clear we were going to nail their earnings under the Proceeds of Crime legislation.’ She turned to Dee. ‘I’d have thought you lot would be grateful to us for getting them off your backs.’

‘We’d have been a fuck of a sight more grateful if you hadn’t tried to get the punters off the streets at the same time,’ Dee said bitterly. ‘You’re the ones who pushed us off the main drags and into the side streets. And now it’s all happening again.’

Carol felt the rapport she’d started to build with Dee slithering away out of her reach. ‘We want to stop it happening,’ she insisted.

‘Yeah, well, I’ve told you all I can.’ Dee pushed her chair back.

Carol tried a last desperate appeal. ‘If you remember anything at all, however insignificant it seems, it could be important for our investigation, Dee. We’re here to help.’

Dee snorted. ‘Yeah, well, it’s not helping me earning a living, sitting in Stan’s being clocked talking to the dibble. I’m out of here.’

She grabbed her skimpy denim jacket from the back of her chair and stalked off. Carol looked after her, fed up and puzzled. ‘She was a lot more co-operative with Kevin last night,’ she said.

Jan shrugged. ‘Maybe she prefers men.’

‘She seemed edgy about Carl Mackenzie.’

Jan looked bored. ‘She scores from him. She doesn’t want us taking him off the streets. He’s harmless. Mental age of about ten. The girls treat him like a pet.’

‘You think Dee was telling the truth? About Sandie not using him?’

Jan considered, rolling her drink between her palms. ‘Probably. If Sandie bought off Jason, she wouldn’t have been using Carl as well. They’re both street dealers for the same middleman. Plus, what’s Dee got to gain by lying about it?’

‘Like you said, it keeps her source on the street, where she needs it,’ Carol pointed out.

Jan pulled a dubious face, making her look like a pouting cherub past its sell-by date. ‘I can’t see it. I’ll check the overnights, see if he’s been spoken to, if you like.’

‘That’d be good. And if he hasn’t, maybe you could have a word.’ She’d skimmed the reports herself that morning, but she couldn’t remember the detail. ‘Same goes for Jason Duffy.’

Carol knew she was clutching at straws, always tempting when an investigation didn’t throw up solid early leads. She was beginning to have a bad feeling about Sandie Foster’s murder. It was showing all the hallmarks of a case that was going nowhere fast. If they didn’t get a break soon, Carol’s squad would be transformed from great white hopes to scapegoats. And that wasn’t something she thought she could handle right now.

He’s big news. Front page of the evening paper. He can’t read well, but he can manage big headlines. He wasn’t
expecting it to be like that, not with Sandie being just a whore. The cops must be pissed off, he thinks. Big headlines about murder make them look bad
.

He can tell by the way the streets are full of them, talking to anybody they can get their hands on, that they don’t know where to look. They’re desperate to find what he knows isn’t there. He knows it’s not there because he did it exactly as he was told
.

He’s proud of himself. He can’t remember ever feeling like this before. There must have been a time when he did something right, something he could hold his head up about. But when he searches his fucked-up memories, nothing surfaces
.

The Voice understands that. The Voice is proud of him too. He knows because when he got back to his place last night, there was a reward. A small parcel was sitting on top of his TV/video combo, wrapped in nice shiny holographic paper with a big gold ribbon round it. It was so beautiful that he almost didn’t want to open it. He wanted to swagger round with it so people would realize he was the kind of person who got special presents. He didn’t, though. He knew that would be stupid. And he’s trying very hard not to be stupid these days
.

Instead he sat on the bed for ages, turning it over in his hands. Eventually, he decided to unwrap it and see what was inside. He had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to be sure. First, he untied the ribbon, forcing his clumsy fingers to go slow over the knot rather than ripping it apart with his teeth or cutting it with his Swiss Army knife. Then he folded up the paper and ribbon carefully, before putting it away in a drawer
.

Inside was the reward he expected. A video cassette. With sweating hands, he slid it into the slot in the video, reaching
for the remote to turn on the TV. And there it was, in all its glory. His first mission, his first cleansing. This time, he didn’t lose his erection.

PART THREE

Three weeks later

He used to have nightmares when he was a kid. He hasn’t thought about them in years; they stopped once he started spliffing. He can’t recall the last time he went to bed without at least one joint humming in his veins, so likewise he can’t recollect the last time a bad dream woke him screaming and quivering between the sheets. But he does remember how there was always someone towering over him, mouth opening and closing, spewing violent words. He seemed to shrink under the attack, while the shouting figure swelled like a monster in a manga comic. He could never make out the words, but they seemed to strip the very skin from him till he felt raw and bleeding
.

What made it worse was that he had nothing to make it better when he woke. There was no comforting memory of gentleness or kindness to set against the sound and fury of his nightmare
.

It’s hard to believe how much things have changed. Now he falls asleep lulled by the rockabye rhythms of the Voice. He wouldn’t mind betting that if he gave up the weed, he’d sleep like a baby these days. Not that he’s about to give it a try. He likes life without nightmares too much to take a chance
.

Tonight, he’s making plans. The Voice is in his head, telling him it’s time to move again. Time for the next chapter of the lesson, according to the Voice. Time for another cleansing
.

Tomorrow night, he’ll come home to find his supplies neatly laid out on his bed. Tomorrow night, he’ll get set, just like the last time. He tries not to think of the target as a human being. That way, his head won’t get tangled up like it did with Sandie right at the end, when he started to feel like he maybe shouldn’t be taking her life away, when it all went muddled and only the memory of the Voice kept him going
.

This time, he won’t think of her as someone with a name. He’ll just think of her as rubbish that has to be got rid of before it poisons the world he has to live in. Then he’ll ride the dragon all the way to glory. He’ll be a hero, just like in the movies. Blood and glory. Blood and glory and the Voice
.

Chapter 3

Once upon a time the only way respectable people could buy sex toys was to send off for what catalogues described with bizarre coyness as a ‘cordless neck massager’. But by the first decade of the twenty-first century almost every fair-sized town in the United Kingdom had at least one emporium dedicated to the fulfilment of most imaginable sexual desires. They’d started as seedy shopfronts with blacked-out windows regularly picketed by protesters ranging from evangelical Christians to women reclaiming the night. But they’d rapidly progressed to well-lit, inviting retail palaces, shelves stacked with everything from whimsical fake-fur handcuffs to implements whose functions mercifully eluded most of the customers who were intent only on having a good night in.

There was about most of these stores a relentless cheerfulness. The Pink Flaming-O was typical of the breed. It occupied a double-fronted shop that had once been, ironically, a toyshop, at the less fashionable end of the main shopping street in Firnham, one of the half-dozen satellite towns that circled Bradfield. The windows were painted opaque shocking pink to avoid offending those citizens of Firnham who steadfastly maintained their lack of interest in its contents. Given that most businesses at that end of Deansgate had a life expectancy of somewhere between six and eighteen months, and given that the Pink Flaming-O had been thriving for four years, the assumption had to be that the town boasted enough people with a lively interest in the wilder shores of sex to outweigh the censorious.

Certainly there was no lack of custom towards the end of a late autumnal Sunday afternoon. A pair of teenage girls were giggling incredulously at a display of outsize dildos, but the other half-dozen customers were giving far more serious attention to items as various as cock rings, anal-sex kits, bondage equipment, inflatable love dolls and penis pumps.

As the teenagers moved on to wonder at the range of clitoral stimulators, their place by the display of dildos was taken by a customer who had been browsing a rack of videos. A hand gloved in black leather reached out for one of the display models, a lurid scarlet latex imitation penis. Strong fingers tested its pliability and, satisfied, replaced it on the shelf. The hand picked up a boxed example of the dildo and carried it across to the counter, picking up a couple of pairs of handcuffs and ankle restraints along the way.

There was nothing sinister in the cash transaction, nothing to rouse a moment’s suspicion in the mind of the shop assistant, who was frankly more interested in Bradfield Victoria’s prospects in that evening’s premiership match than in the putative sex life of his customers. It was probably as well for his peace of mind that he had no idea that within forty-eight hours, his merchandise would have been transformed into the accoutrements of murder.

The customer walked out of the shop and turned down a side street that led to a busy supermarket. Fifteen minutes later, a blank-eyed checkout assistant rang up a basket of purchases without thought. A loaf of sliced wholemeal bread. Half a dozen premier pork sausages. Four toilet rolls. A bottle of vodka. And three packets of razor blades.

The Voice was ready.

Carol surveyed the stack of cardboard cartons, her good spirits evaporating. It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer. But now she was faced with a couple of dozen flatpacks, and she knew that what lay ahead of her was a long evening of splintered fingernails and muttered oaths. Still, she told herself, it would be worth the effort. The builder had made a good job of turning the basement into an attractive flat. The acrid pungency of fresh paint still hung in the air, but that was a small price to pay for having her own space again.

Carol pulled the cork on a bottle of Viognier, sloshed it into a glass and savoured the cold freshness of the wine as it slid down. It had become a familiar ritual at the end of the working day. After Michael and Lucy were in bed, she had taken to sitting by the window, Nelson wrapping himself round her legs. With her bottle and her glass for company, she would process the fruitless activities of the day and try to avoid thinking about what lurked in her personal shadows. She knew she was growing too reliant on the comfort that came from the wine, but the only alternative that suggested itself was the talking cure, and she had little confidence that she could find a therapist she would respect enough to trust. She could talk to Tony, of course. But she needed his friendship too much to want to turn him into a therapist.