Bubblegum Smoothie (15 page)

“Wow, you really have gone full-on sensitive,” Martha said. “All this time taking orders from Lenny given you a forced personality transplant?”

“Not really,” I said. I noticed a silhouette walking towards the door. “I’m just trying to get my million in the most organised manner possible.”

“Sure you are,” Martha said, as the silhouette behind the door rattled at the locks. “You keep telling yourself that. I know you’re not all cold underneath. You can’t be.”

“You’d be surprised.”

The door opened. Martha and I were greeted by a short, grey woman. She looked old—way older than a mother of a standard twenty-four-year-old. But maybe I was just generationally skewing my stereotypes. Here in 2014, bloody eleven-year-olds were pushing three, four prams at a time, while their twelve-year-old husbands sat at home gulping a Stella. Maybe Mrs Wilfrieds was just the standard fifty-something-year-old mother.

“Mrs Wilfrieds?” I said.

She nodded. She was wearing a grey dressing gown. Her eyes were purple and puffy underneath.

“We’re… we’re detectives Kole and Holloway from the police station.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually used Lenny’s name to gain illegal access to this house. Not sure whether I was being stupidly reckless or recklessly stupid, if there was even a difference.

“May we come inside?” I asked.

Mrs Wilfrieds stared out into space. Stared at the trees, which blew in the cool summer breeze.

“You said you wouldn’t bother me. Said you’d leave me alone. On the phone.”

I gulped. So that’s how she was going to play this—difficult. Oh well. I’d dealt with other difficult people in my life. Unless behind that withered old face, there was a Ninja-Mum hiding.

I doubted it.

“It’ll only be for five minutes. Of course, no problem if not. We understand if you need time. We’re just trying to build up as good a picture about your daughter as we can. But of course, no worries. We’ll come back another time.”

I turned away. Martha came with me, mumbling some questioning curses under her breath.

I counted down from five in my head as I walked down Mrs Wilfrieds’ driveway. Waited for her to ask me back. She’d ask me back. That’s how these things always worked. I hoped to shit I still had it.

I knew I probably didn’t still have it when I heard the front door click shut behind me.

“Good job there, genius,” Martha said. “Winner of the least persistent person ever goes to…”

“Well d’you want to have a go?” I asked. “See how much better you get on. She’s tough, this woman.”

“Oh, that woman?” Martha asked. Her eyes were wide. “The ancient woman who you just turned your back and walked away from? What did she do, hun? Use her special mind powers on you?”

I waved a hand in Martha’s face.

She dodged it. Sighed. “Okay so now we’ve tried your way. Let’s try my way.”

“Good luck.”

Martha brushed down her green jacket and walked back to the front door of Mrs Wilfrieds’ house. I hung behind her as she hit the door, as Mrs Wilfrieds returned, and I waited for her to do the speaking.

“Mrs Wilfrieds. Us again, I’m sorry. There’s just something—”

“If you’re gonna be this persistent then you’d better come inside,” she said.

She turned around and walked into her house.

Martha looked at me. Shrugged. “Just the power and influence I have,” she said.

“Power and frigging influence,” I muttered.

We walked inside Mrs Wilfrieds’ house. It was deadly silent. I mean, I liked the peace and quiet, but this place was beyond that. No matter whether I was in the corridor or the kitchen, I could hear the sound of a clock ticking away. Taking a peek at her ancient refrigerator, her massive CRT television, it gave me shudders. A snapshot of someone uneducated in the ways of modern technology. A snapshot of what I might become if my Fun Funds went to waste, and if I didn’t catch the killer soon.

If I didn’t go to prison in the meantime, of course.

Or end up dead.

“So you told us earlier you haven’t been in touch with Christine much since… since three years ago.”

Mrs Wilfrieds made herself a cup of tea. Didn’t bother asking if Martha or I wanted one, which I figured was forgivable considering her daughter had just been mutilated and killed. “No. No we didn’t.”

I sensed animosity in her voice. An animosity I couldn’t believe the police hadn’t picked up on themselves. Although actually, of course I could. “Is there a reason for that?”

“For what?”

“For you not being in touch much?” Martha cut in.

Mrs Wilfrieds sipped at her tea. Shrugged. “Parents and kids, they drift. She always was a daddy’s girl, anyway. It always was ‘Dad, this’ and ‘Dad, that.’ Even when he was riddled with motor neurones’, she’d still always rather get into a car with him behind the wheel than me.”

“You must be a shocking driver,” I said.

Nobody saw the humour in it.

I blamed spending too much time around Lenny lately for that ill-fated joke.

“Do you know of any boyfriends or jobs or anything like that Christina might’ve had?”

“Boyfriends?” Mrs Wilfrieds puffed out her lips. “She stopped liking boys a long time ago. As for girlfriends, well. I can write a list if you want me to, but I fear we’ll be here a long time. As for jobs, well, Christina always was a bit of a wayward soul. Preferred to work when she needed the money, and only when she needed the money. Of course that was much easier when dear Daddy was around. His death forced her to go out there and actually take some responsibility for once in her life. Just a shame she… she…”

Mrs Wilfrieds sniffed. She dabbed at her puffy eyes with the sleeve of her white cardigan.

I dipped my head and gave her a moment. Gave myself one too. All I’d learned was that Christina was a lesbian and that she took a similar attitude to work as myself. She got money when she needed it.

But already I figured she wasn’t getting her money from professional bounty hunting or working behind a smoothie stall.

“Do you know anything about the nature of her work?” I asked, as Martha examined a photograph on the mantlepiece. Christina, looking all young and pretty, with her mum and her dad, who was a lot older. Happier times, by the looks of things.

Although with two members of that photo dead, one with MND, the other murdered, that wasn’t hard.

“Oh, teaching music nerds to play the trombone or something. Her stuff’s in her old room. She… she dropped it by just a week or two ago, actually.”

“Wait,” I said. “Christina visited you a week ago?”

Mrs Wilfrieds frowned. “Well we weren’t completely detached. She dropped by just for a few minutes. She looked so thin, though. So thin, and she was carrying all her music equipment. Said she was keeping it here for a while.”

I wished I’d brought a notepad with me to jot this down. At least it might make me look more authentic.

“Did your daughter seem in danger?” Martha asked.

Mrs Wilfrieds shrugged. “She just… she was just… she was just my Christina.”

Another round of tears. Another pause.

I looked up the stairs. Looked up to where Christina kept her “music equipment.”

“Is there… Christina’s old room. Is there any chance we could… we could take a look around?”

“You can show me a search warrant. Then you can take a look around.”

Fuck. Just when I thought we were actually getting somewhere with this stubborn old thing too.

“Well, the, er… you heard about the explosion at the station, right? The… the warrant printing device, it—”

“We’ll just take a look,” Martha cut in. “We won’t touch anything. We just want a look around. We want to catch this killer as much as you do.”

Mrs Wilfrieds shook her head. Shook her head, opened her mouth, closed it again, like she was coming up with her excuse to say no.

“A minute. A minute to scan it. And then I want you back here with your warrants next time.”

I looked at Martha. She looked back at me.

“First door on the right. Well, go on. Your minute’s started.”

Martha and I clambered up the worn-down green carpet of the stairs. I saw the wooden door to the first room on the right, threw myself at it, probably a little too enthusiastically.

But that was okay. I knew exactly what I was looking for.

Christina’s room was that of a typical late teen who’d just never got around to redecorating when her twenties hit. Pink curtains. Fluffy animals all over her pink bedsheets. Stacks of DVDs, chick flicks, girly romances.

And in the middle of her bed, a long black leather music case.

I stepped up to it. Stepped up to it and released the clips, while Martha looked around the room.

“See anything?” Martha asked.

I pulled back the lid of the case.

Couldn’t stop myself smiling.

“Oh yes. Instruments, alright.”

Martha stopped her search and joined me in looking. The trombone case was filled with dildos and other sex toys. Like, filled to the brim with them: rabbits, anal beads, all in different colours, shapes and sizes.

Oh, and a shitload of condoms. Definitely not femidoms either.

Martha whistled. “A trombone teacher, then. Freelance. I’m guessing the men she met with owned their own trombones, right?”

“I’m betting she wrapped her lips around their trombones judging by this stash, yeah.”

I stared at the pile of sex toys. Grinned, not because of the scale of the collection, but because of what it meant.

Christina Wilfrieds was an escort. She had to be.

Which meant the other two girls—the other two victims—might just be linked by the prostitution trade, too.

A lead. A motive. Something to work with.

I was just about to leave the room when Mrs Wilfrieds stepped inside.

She looked over at the box of sex toys, her face blushing.

“Mrs… Mrs Wilfrieds,” I said. “We didn’t—we didn’t want you to find out in this way—”

“Me neither, old Blakey.”

A man’s voice from behind Mrs Wilfrieds.

A very recognisable man’s voice.

Lenny stepped from behind Mrs Wilfrieds. Stared at me, then at Martha, then at the sex toys, his grin widening by the second.

“Or should I say, ‘Detective Kole and Holloway’?”

TWENTY-SIX

He has had such a stressful day that he considered gutting his fourth victim back in his Land Rover.

But he didn’t. He dragged the victim into his garage, down into his cellar, like he always does. Stick to the plan. That’s what he must keep reminding himself. Because when he doesn’t stick to the plan, accidents happen. Bombs don’t explode with as much power as they should. People—irritating, nosy bastards—stick their pig noses in where they aren’t wanted.

He is finished with deviating.

All he cares about now is finishing his task. Finishing his duty.

And the finishing starts right here with his fourth victim.

He sits opposite his fourth victim. He already has the light on in the cellar, so that when the victim comes around, they’ll see him. They’ll see him and they’ll understand, right away, what this is.

They’ll understand what all of these killings are about.

He looks at his victim. Short dark hair. Big flabby belly. Stumpy little penis between his legs.

He isn’t attracted to men. He doesn’t think of men sexually, not the way he thinks of women.

But that just means he can have even more fun taking out his disgust on this filthy pervert.

Men wouldn’t be his first choice to kill. Not usually—animals, women and children are much more exciting, in that order, or all at once. But he has a task at hand. A job to finish.

And it’s not that he objects to killing men either. He just doesn’t find them as exciting as animals, women, children. They put on a show of bravado. They pretend to be tough.

But again, that can work in his favour.

He just has to be even more cruel to men to make them squeal.

This victim, who he has chained up by his wrists, no gag on his mouth, completely naked in the middle of his cellar, starts to open his eyes. He starts to shuffle around, not really focusing, not yet.

But he will. He will focus. And when he does focus, he’ll understand right away.

He’ll remember.

He watches as his victim orients himself with the room. Watches as he blinks, as sweat drips down his forehead. It reminds him of his first kill. Well, his first
significant
kill, anyway. A boy. Only thirteen or fourteen, he was. He’d offered him a lollipop then stuffed a chloroform cloth in his face. Felt the life drift out of his little body.

He didn’t know what to do at first. Didn’t know where to go, what to do with him.

So he let instinct take hold.

Let instinct take him to an abandoned old garage.

Let instinct lead him to a cabinet filled with sharp knives, with flesh-piercing and bone-cracking scissors…

What he did with the boy after he’d killed him was completely out of his control. But he’d buried him over Longridge Fell. Buried him in the wastelands where nobody would find him. Where nobody had found him to this day.

He returned there with each and every one of his victims. All thirty, forty of them. He’d lost count by now. And nobody cared about those victims anyway. Whores. Runaways. Tramps.

Except these seven. These seven are different.

He watches as his latest victim blinks fast, as tears crawl down his fat cheeks. His victim hasn’t looked at him yet. Not properly.

“What… where…”

And then he looks. His victim looks right into his eyes. They hold a stare for a few seconds, maybe longer. It makes him hard down below, makes him hard and angry and makes him salivate over all the parts of his victim’s body he is going to peel away, at all the screams he is going to force from him…

“You—you—”

“So you remember me then?” he asks.

The victim’s lips quiver. He tries to move his hands, but his wrists are attached by the metal chains. He tries even harder to move, but to no avail.

“You… Please. What the fuck is this? Come on, man. Come on.”

“You’d do the same to me, wouldn’t you?” he asks his victim. “In fact, you
did
do the same to me, in a way.”