Bubblegum Smoothie (18 page)

Or I was going completely insane.
Losing myself to obsession
, that’s what Martha would say.

Well Martha could say what she wanted.

“Okay,” I said.

I opened the passenger door again and stepped outside. Danielle was still watching me from a distance, looking at me like I was some weird extra from a horror movie.

“I’ll just take a look in here first,” I muttered.

I swung around the back of the Land Rover’s boot and lifted it open.

I heard the driver protest. Heard his engine stop, heard him swear and rattle around in the front.

But it didn’t matter. Not with what I saw.

There was a bag. A huge black bag, flies buzzing around it.

And there were more air fresheners in here, too. An even stronger minty smell.

A cover-up.

“Get the fuck away from my vehicle. I’m… Police. Yes. I’m just outside the court, yeah. Some lunatic is trying to nick my car.”

I ignored the man’s remarks and I leaned into the boot. Leaned in towards the sickly smell which emanated from the bag, which the air fresheners could not cover up.

I grabbed the side of the black bag. Watched a bunch of flies buzz away from it.

And then I felt a hand on my back and I was thrown away.

I landed on my back, tasted copper as I bit my tongue.

The driver stood over me. His face was flushed, and his fists were tensed. “Fucking lunatic! You stay—stay the hell away from my car. Yes—you! Please, help me. He’s trying to rob me—”

“Open the bag,” I shouted, shuffling back to my feet. My head was dizzy, my mouth filled with blood, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to see what was in the bag. See what this bastard was hiding.

“The bag?” The driver looked from me to the bag, his eyebrows furrowed. “Why… why would you want to see what’s in the bag?”

I stared him in his eyes. Stared at him and saw pound signs. Saw money.

“You know damn well what’s in that bag,” I said. “And if you aren’t gonna show me, I’m gonna see for myself.”

I made a lunge for the boot. Tried to reach my hands out.

But something was wrapped around my wrists. Something stopped me pulling my hands out, from getting closer to the back of the Land Rover.

“Sir, let’s take a little trip to the station,” I heard.

Damn. The police. The fucking police.

“In the bag,” I said, as the officer dragged me away from the scene. “The—the killer. The killer you’re looking for. In the… in the bag.”

The driver shook his head. Laughed in complete confusion. “In this bag?”

He unzipped it.

Emptied it.

“The only thing in this bag is my fishing equipment,” he said.

Fishing rods and wires dropped out of the bag. As too did a cracked plastic container of maggots, half of them turned into full-blown bluebottles.

“And by the looks of things, a few of my maggots turned. Thanks for the heads up.”

He tossed the fishing equipment back in the bag. Slammed the boot of his Land Rover, walked around to the front door.

I watched as he shook his head, cursed under his breath, got into his car.

Watched as he started up his Land Rover and drove away, “Walking On Sunshine” still faintly audible through the opened window.

And as the police officer dragged me towards their vehicle, I watched as Danielle turned away, looked away from me like she’d never even known me in the first place.

Great job, Blake. Great frigging job indeed.

THIRTY

He isn’t going to stop shaking for the rest of the day, that’s for sure.

He takes deep breaths. Deep breaths to make the colours go away. His car radio plays “Walking On Sunshine,” but he doesn’t hear it, not properly. It is all so muffled. All so detached, like screams—but bad screams, if ever there were such a thing.

He lets the minty smell of his air fresheners calm him as he turns off the main road and pulls down a side street. He can’t believe how close he came to everything falling apart. How close that nosey fucker Blake Dent came to destroying everything for him.

Blake Dent. His hands tighten around the steering wheel. Just the thought of his name makes him want to puncture someone’s skull.

He turns down his car radio. Turns it down so he can barely hear the music. For Blake to know he enjoys “Walking On Sunshine,” that must mean the police are on to him. Some idiot of a witness must’ve reported his car playing that song. Which means he has to be extra careful from now on. Extra careful, if he wants to finish his task.

Extra careful if he wants to finish the final three pieces of the greatest puzzle of all.

He looks over his shoulder. Looks at his back seat to check for any evidence he might’ve left lying around, anything that Blake might’ve seen. But he’s been careful. Very careful.

Just not careful enough.

He slams his palms against his steering wheel, sending more plucked pieces of loose rubber tumbling onto his knees. What was Blake Dent’s problem, anyway? If he understood what his task was—what the puzzle was all about—maybe he’d understand.
Anyone
would understand why he was doing what he was doing if they knew what his task was. Even if they didn’t want to admit it.

He turns right. Heads towards the hills of the countryside surrounding Preston. Problem is, he doesn’t need to beg for anyone’s understanding. That isn’t how he works. He is strong. He has a task, and he is going to complete that task.

No room for sentimentality. No more room for error.

He drives up the hilly road. Contemplates just how lucky he has been. Blake Dent was inches, centimetres, millimetres away from uncovering all his hard work. He was so, so close to ruining everything for him.

He was a problem. A big problem that needed sorting out, for real this time.

He stops when he reaches the Brockon Fell Nature Park. Pulls up just before the car park, which is far from full. Looks around just to see nobody is watching.

Part four of his jigsaw is going to be discovered.

And it is going to stun and confuse everyone.

He takes a few deep breaths of the minty car again, lets the smell and the taste of the air freshener calm him.

And then he opens his Land Rover door and steps outside.

He keeps his head down as he approaches the boot, the cool summer breeze brushing against him, and against the leaves of the trees. He looks left, looks right, sees noone, and he opens the boot.

The bluebottles buzz out at him and he wafts them away. Damned things. Genius idea of his to mix fishing equipment with the dead. Ah well. Even the most enlightened of individuals are flawed, deep down.

He covers his hands with clear plastic gloves. Moves away the black bag of fishing equipment, stares at the covered panel on the floor of the boot.

He inhales the stench of death. Savours it. It calms him. Brings back all the sweet memories of what he did to his fourth victim, the way he carved up his skin into fillets, the way he struggled and struggled all through the night, every second of every minute of every hour…

He takes another look to the left. Another look to the right.

Still clear.

And then he opens the compartment and is bathed in another crowd of bluebottles.

He lets the smell surround him as he lifts the bag from out of his Land Rover. Lets it surround him as he throws the bag over his shoulder, keeps the cracked plastic maggot container on show to explain the mass of flies.

And then he lifts his hood from under his brown jacket and he walks.

His mind is clear. Clear as the sun beats down on his skin, as the smell of decay and the stench of the river combine to make a beautiful symphony of the nose.

He thinks of Blake Dent. Thinks of his he-she companion.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t deviate. Sworn he wouldn’t step off the path after last time’s failure.

But he is so close to completing his task that a little fun along the way wouldn’t do any harm.

THIRTY-ONE

“This is getting all too familiar for my liking, Blakey. All too familiar indeed.”

I was back in my definite least favourite place in the world—the interview room at the police station. The station had reopened after the explosion, much to the dismay of everyone who wasn’t an officer. I’d been sitting in silence for a good two, three hours, phone confiscated and without a glass of water until Lenny showed up.

Then again, I’d rather go frigging thirsty than get another telling off from Lenny.

It was just him and me now. He sat at the opposite side of the grey table, in the grey room, which smelled of… grey, weirdly. If grey had a smell, this is exactly what grey would smell like.

He fanned out several sheets of paper. Sheets of paper that I had no idea what they were, and no doubt Lenny had no clue either. It was probably supposed to just look good. Look professional. Something that Lenny could never pull off no matter how damned hard he tried.

“Then let me go,” I said.

Lenny smiled. Shook his head. Showed off those ultra-white teeth, his fringe flopping over his forehead. “You know I can’t do that. One strike is a strike. Two strikes is… it’s a pretty big deal.”

I leaned back. Caressed my temples. They’d even taken my frigging Tunes away, which was the worst part of this entire sham.

“So let me get this straight,” Lenny said, frowning as he read through these mystery papers. “You’re wandering across the street. Wandering away from Groovy Smoothie’s nice little court case—which I hope went well, by the way.”

“It was postponed.”

“Postponed. Right. Hopefully it was a good postponement rather than a bad postponement—”

“Just get on with it.”

Lenny leaned back. Stretched out his arms until his shoulders cracked.

“I’ll take as long as I need, Blake. As long as I need.”

He waited a few seconds before talking again, as if to prove his point.

“So you’re wandering across the street. Wandering away from—”

“We’ve covered this part—”

“Right. And you see a Land Rover. You see a Land Rover. What’s so funny about this Land Rover?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Rubbed them with my fingers. “I heard ‘Walking On Sunshine’ playing. Like you said, a Land Rover was playing down by—”

“You heard ‘Walking On Sunshine’ playing. On a sunny day.”

He waited.

“Yes. And the car it—there was something off. Something wasn’t right.”

“What wasn’t right?” Lenny asked.

It was my turn to pause, mainly ‘cause I didn’t know what the hell I was going to say.

“I… Air fresheners. Minty air fresheners. Lots of them.”

Lenny’s smile twitched, and then he pouted and whistled. “Oooh, minty air fresheners. I mean, ‘Walking On Sunshine,’ a Land Rover,
and
minty air fresheners? Jesus Christ, Blake. You’ll be telling me there was a load of fishing tackle in the boot next! Oh… oh wait. Please tell me there wasn’t any fishing tackle in the boot.”

I shook my head. “Something wasn’t right. I did what you’re paying me to do.”

“I’m paying you to pursue leads. I’m paying you to do the dirty work and catch a killer. And you can call us inept for that reason—call us weak or stupid or whatever you want—but the difference between you and me is I don’t go storming into Land Rovers when I hear a bloody song playing.”

“You don’t go storming into anything. That’s why you hired me in the first place—”

“D’you know what we could do to people like you, Blake? You know what we could do if—say we did send you down for your little murderous escapade back in 2007. You know, there’s plenty of ways we could dance around the actual information. Make out as if you did something a little more, say… punishable, in prison. And say you were convicted of something, I dunno, like kiddie fiddling. Do you know how people would treat you in prison?”

I never felt intimidated by Lenny. Lenny and intimidation were two concepts that just did not go hand in hand.

But I knew he had the upper hand here. I knew that, by some bastarding piece of misfortunate, I was the man who needed to do his job, or I was the man who was going to pay by being locked away.

I wasn’t sure whether Lenny was telling the truth about how he could change the details of sentencing. But judging by the amount of police corruption I’d witnessed in my time, I didn’t want to call his bluff.

Lenny placed the papers on top of one another. Leaned forward, that annoying-as-hell smile still wide on his face.

“When we found Grace Wallens, do you want to know how she looked?”

Her name made goose pimples rise along my arms. I chewed at my tongue, wished it were filled with menthol.

“Her head was so caved in that we couldn’t recognise her, not at first.”

I tasted sick. I needed to get out of here. Needed to get away.

“But d’you know how we identified her? How we worked out who the poor girl was right away?”

I made a point of looking away. Made a point of getting the image of Grace out of my head.

Made a bad point of it.

“She told us. Because even though her head was caved in, even though her skull was the shape of a burst football that’d been kicked at too much, she was still alive. Spluttering blood, teeth all knocked out, but alive—”

“What the fuck do you want from me?” I shouted.

It took me a second to realise I was on my feet. My skin prickled with heat. I could taste saltiness on my lips—the saltiness of tears, tears that couldn’t be mine, no way could they be mine.

Lenny had leaned back. Leaned back, like the weak little parasite he was. He raised his hands. “Hey, Blake. I was just being dramatic. Just doing what they do in films, and all that. I mean, everything I said was true, but—”

“If you want to arrest me for what I’ve done, arrest me. Because I know I’ve done wrong. Every frigging day, I blot it out of my mind, but it catches up with me at some point. So arrest me, or let me go and do my job. The job you gave me.”

Lenny tilted his head either side. Mulled what I said over for a few seconds.

“Okay. I think you’re right, Blake. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that crap up. Must be a nightmare living with demons that big. Think I’d have topped myself years ago if I’d been responsible.”