As if by Magic (19 page)

‘But she broke into your flat?’

‘I don’t know who else it could be – they tidied my room.’

Rowlands’ expression was nothing but confusion. ‘What?’

‘I know, freaky hey?’

‘How did they get in?’

‘No idea but she must know about locks and escapology. She thinks I killed a bunch of animals and dumped them on her lawn, then threw paint over her house.’

‘Why didn’t you report that she’d broken in?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘What’s the point? She would be careful enough not to leave anything that makes it obvious it’s her. If I said anything to Jason, Jack or the Super, they’d think I was stirring it up.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Honestly? I don’t know– but I’ve spent two days talking about pizza, so tea tonight is sorted.’

Rowlands waited for a moment as an officer passed by. ‘I’m serious Jess.’

‘What can I do other than keep an eye out for psychos? I told you so that, if I’m not where I’m supposed to be at any given time, you can at least try to give me a call to make sure all is well.’

Rowlands shook his head. ‘How long are you going to do that for? If you’re right and she killed those people, then she’s dangerous. You should tell someone.’

‘I have – you.’

Realising he wasn’t going to win the battle, Rowlands nodded reluctantly. ‘All right, just don’t do anything stupid. If Jack is going to put you undercover in a uniform in the pizza shop, I don’t want anything jeopardising that.’

Jessica laughed and punched him gently on the arm. ‘You want to see me in a pizza delivery uniform? If that’s not sexual harassment, I don’t know what is.’

She spent the rest of the day catching up on work for her other cases. The truth was, at least from her point of view, there really wasn’t much going on. Neither the vandalism nor the pizza robbery would have made an impact on their workload at most other times.

She didn’t know if she should be intimidated or not. She was fairly sure Brenda was responsible for the killing of two people, whether directly or not, but she was cunning and clever. That would usually mean she wouldn’t do anything in public but none of that accounted for the way Jessica had gone out of her way to try to wind her up, coupled with the fact Brenda was already convinced Jessica was responsible for the attacks on her home. Whether her barely-concealed anger would drive her to do something reckless, Jessica didn’t know – but she also didn’t see how telling Reynolds, Cole or anyone other than Dave could help.

Having not left her desk all afternoon, Jessica was relieved to see that, for once, the sun was out for her journey home and the traffic was surprisingly light. Jessica stepped into her flat braced for the worst. She stayed just inside the front door listening but couldn’t see or hear anything other than the regular hum from the nearby main road.

Jessica had just entered the living room when she felt a hand roughly wrenching her arm. She tried to turn but, before she could, something sharp was pressed into her neck and, as the stun gun chattered noisily, Jessica could do nothing but slump to the floor.

TWENTY ONE

‘Manners, Ms Daniel, are the most important thing in life,’ Brenda said as Jessica stared up from the floor. Her vision was hazy, with everything fading into one another but she could see Brenda dressed entirely in black and standing mere feet away.

Brenda dropped the taser into a bag looped around her arm and stood with her legs slightly apart, glaring down disdainfully. ‘I thought you were going to be such fun.’

Jessica’s vision was gradually beginning to clear, the dark blur clearly becoming Brenda. The woman tutted and sighed, then reached into her bag and pulled the taser back out before pressing it to Jessica’s neck a second time.

The pain was hard to describe; like a tingle that started in your neck but instantly overtook your entire body. Jessica felt her eyes rolling into her head and her legs flailing involuntarily before Brenda withdrew it again.

‘It’s only on a low setting,’ the woman chided, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If I wanted to do some proper harm, I would have had it on the same setting I did for Gordon and Nicholas. It’s quite an ingenious little thing actually – not even a hundred dollars.’

Jessica wanted to reply but her tongue wasn’t responding. Instead she felt a trickle of drool dribbling down her chin. Brenda reached into her pocket and took out a tissue, shaking her head and wiping it away like an annoyed mother. She then sat on the corner of Jessica’s sofa looking down at her.

‘You’re a hard one to figure out, Ms Daniel. I’ve done a bit of reading up about you. I knew you’d be clever but I simply can’t abide the things you’ve said and done to me. I took quite enough from my former husband, I’m afraid.’

Brenda reached into her bag and Jessica thought she was going to take the stun gun back out. Instead, she pulled out a dagger. She twirled it expertly in her hand as the sun glinted from the blade.

‘Before show time, Balt and I used to warm up by throwing these,’ she said. ‘It was part of the act a long time ago but people want to see new things.’ She flipped the knife into the air and caught it by the handle after it had made two full turns. ‘Believe it or not, I always had the better aim. Balt was good, he never hurt me, but I just had the eye.’

Jessica managed to shuffle slightly but her arms and legs still refused to move and her lips were paralysed.

‘One of the things you learn when you work with a magician is about anatomy. Sometimes you end up in enclosed spaces, so you have to know how much air is in there with you when you’re designing the equipment. Then you find out about muscles to help with the bending and flexibility you need to fit into places. It’s a lot more technical than most people realise.’

Finally, Jessica managed to say something, but what she thought would be a sentence about not doing anything silly, actually came out as a weak babble of syllables. Brenda wearily reached into her bag and stunned Jessica again.

‘Did your mother never tell you to speak only when you’re spoken to?’ she said strictly, putting the device back in her bag and then looking Jessica up and down. ‘As I was saying, you learn all sorts of interesting things about anatomy. What are you? Early-thirties? Nine stone or so? Relatively healthy, although I couldn’t help but notice the food cartons in the kitchen. I’d guess your resting heart beat is probably around sixty to seventy beats-a-minute. Perhaps more if you don’t do any exercise. It’s probably a bit faster right now, of course. Each time it pulses, it is taking oxygen around your body.’

Brenda crouched next to Jessica, putting her bag on the floor and running the knife along the centre of Jessica’s chest. Even through her clothes it felt cold, but Jessica couldn’t move her head enough to look down at it.

‘People think that if you stab someone in the heart, it kills them instantly but there’s very little that will kill someone straight away.’ Brenda pressed the point of the knife into the side of Jessica’s breast. ‘Others will tell you that you’ll bleed to death but what does that even mean? There’s still blood in your body. What really happens is that the blood stops travelling to your brain. Within a few seconds, you’ll pass out because there’s no cerebral blood flow. People get confused because they think that means you’re dead but it doesn’t really. You don’t actually die for another minute or two.’

The woman was so close that Jessica could sense her acrid perfume. Some smells naturally made her think of other places and times, but it made her think only of blood. Brenda was whispering in her ear, with the knife still pressed between them.

‘It’s all about placement,’ Brenda said gently moving the tip of the knife a few millimetres along Jessica’s breast. ‘If I pressed here, for instance, death would take a little longer.’ She shifted her arm until the blade was resting on Jessica’s stomach. ‘This one would be particularly painful. If I missed the main aorta, it would take a reasonable amount of time but you might actually suffocate through choking on the blood, rather than anything else. That would hurt.’

Brenda rocked backwards, moving the blade back towards the centre of Jessica’s chest. ‘This is the money shot, of course, right in the centre. It’s a bit messy but relatively painless.’

She withdrew the knife, picking up the stun gun and pressing it to Jessica’s neck for a couple of seconds. Jessica wasn’t even sure if it hurt any longer; she simply felt numb.

‘I know it might seem a bit over the top,’ Brenda said. ‘You dump some animals on my lawn and write some rude words and I do all this – but I’ve had enough of letting people walk all over me. I suppose I should thank my ex-husband for that. I know you said it wasn’t you but, well, you would, wouldn’t you? At least we can be honest with each other now.’

Jessica croaked the word “not” but couldn’t manage “me”, not that she thought it would make much difference. She was trying to work out how long it had been since arriving home but she couldn’t move her head enough to turn towards the clock on the wall. She guessed around ten minutes, which should surely be enough? Brenda was never going to be one to hurt or kill her quickly; she was a show-woman and telling her how clever she had been was the one thing she could not resist.

Brenda continued to talk but Jessica forced her ears to focus beyond the woman. It might have only been a few extra minutes until she eventually heard the familiar creak of her front door being pushed open. Brenda stopped and turned to face the living room door as a man’s voice called “hello” from the hallway. Brenda carefully dropped the knife in the bag before taking out the stun gun and pressing herself against the wall next to the door.

‘Hello?’ the voice sounded again, louder the second time.

Jessica wanted to yell out to tell him to be careful but she couldn’t force her voice to work. She managed to rock herself into a more rigid position as the person called out again, and pressed both palms to the floor in an effort to push herself up. She twisted her head enough so she could watch Brenda, whose eyes were wide in confusion. As she noticed Jessica moving, she quickly stepped across the room. For a moment, Jessica thought she was going to use the knife or, at the very least, the stun gun. Instead, Brenda crouched next to her, leaning in so Jessica could feel the vibrations of the woman’s breath on her ear.

‘I’ll be seeing you Ms Daniel.’

With that, she strode into the hallway and, as Jessica finally staggered to her feet, she heard a cry of surprise, the buzz of the stun gun, and the slamming of her front door.

TWENTY TWO

‘So let me get this straight,’ Rowlands said as he sat across from Jessica in the station’s canteen, ‘You were saved by laziness and the fact you can’t cook?’

Jessica poked at the baked beans on her plate with a fork. ‘It doesn’t sound quite so impressive when you put it like that. I prefer to think of it as forward planning.’

Rowlands didn’t seem convinced. ‘You phoned the pizza shop before you left the station to try to ensure the delivery guy would be at your home as you arrived back from work.’

‘We’d spent two days talking about nothing but pizza,’ Jessica said. ‘It was like subliminal advertising!’

‘But he wasn’t there when you got home?’

‘I knew he was only going to be a few minutes, so I left the door on the latch.’

‘And he ended up interrupting Brenda?’

Jessica continued to play with the beans, wondering if there were any more fragments of chip hidden underneath. ‘That’s right. I didn’t know it would be Wayne himself but he did say he hadn’t given up the job. She ended up stunning him and rushing out. I was starting to come around by then and she wouldn’t have had the element of surprise on me. I suppose it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.’

‘What did they find at her place last night?’

‘Nothing; I don’t think she went back after being at mine. It always seemed a little empty, so I suppose she’s got somewhere else to hide away.’

‘Does that mean Jack and everyone believes you now?’

Jessica shoved the plate away, deducing there was nothing left she wanted to eat. ‘Wayne picked her photo out and, because they’re sending two people out to every delivery now, there was a second kid in the car who saw her come out. Once they had that and my statement, they raided her house. They still can’t connect her to the other murders but they can have her for breaking and entering, assault on a police officer, attempted murder or any number of other things. Jason went crazy when he found out what happened. There’s a warrant out for her but we’ll have to see. I doubt she’ll be back anytime soon. We’ve spoken to Balthazar and he says they both had a long-running feud with Nicholas Peterson that dated back to some dispute over money. We’re also getting Helga Imrie later today. She gave Brenda an alibi for the night her husband was killed and what would have likely been the same night Nicholas went missing. Jack was reluctant before but I think the Super is pissed off with the whole thing. They haven’t got anything concrete but Helga might not feel so secure with her godmother on the run.

‘Are you worried?’

Jessica reached for the comfort of the already-empty plastic cup that had tea in it up until a short time ago, wrapping her fingers around it. ‘I don’t know; the strange thing is that I never felt as if she was going to really hurt me. Even with the knife and the taser... it’s hard to describe. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was just going to take off anyway. I think she was bored of it all.’

‘You want another?’ Dave asked, nodding towards the cup.

‘Not from the machine. I’m sure the taste is getting worse – it’s like WD40 mixed with gone-off milk.’

Rowlands smiled and shook his head. ‘Why are you back anyway? You could have had a week off for this?’

‘Three reasons,’ Jessica said. ‘One, I’m here to meet the new girl. She’s called Isobel and I’m pretty certain she’s going to provide better company than you. Two, I had to finish the paperwork for this bloody pizza thing seeing as I figured it out, and three, I need you to give me a lift.’