Bubblegum Smoothie (22 page)

My heart pounded. The sounds from the waiting room faded away, all my awareness honing in on this document, these names.

There were just three more names.

The accuser, Jenny Chipps.

The subject of the case, Daley Chipps.

And then, in big bold writing at the bottom of the document, the defendant:

Jed Chipps.

I stuffed the documents under my arm and sprinted out of the waiting room.

I heard people shouting at me. People telling me to stop.

But those voices didn’t matter. They were irrelevant.

Under my arm, I had the answer.

I had the motive.

I had the killer.

THIRTY-EIGHT

I stormed into the police station. My heart pounded as I made a beeline for the main desk. I had to see Lenny. The documents under my arm, I had to report them right away.

I had to know I was right.

There was a queue at the desk even longer than the queue back at the court. I stood behind seven or eight people and waited. Waited, as the desk lady took ages chatting to the chubby woman at the front of the queue. I looked around. Every sound and every voice was intensified. Everything was out of focus, distant.

I had the answers in the papers under my arm. I was sure of it.

The queue moved forward one. More smiles from the desk lady. More slow-paced chatting.

“Shitting hell,” I mumbled. I had to get through the desk. I had to get to Lenny. I’d tried ringing the dumb bastard nine times, to no avail.

The queue didn’t move for ages. My arms tingled with the significance of the names on the paper.

Peter Adkins as prosecutor.

Melissa Waters, Christina Wilfrieds and Hannah Jenkinson, all members of a public jury.

Not prostitutes or escorts, not like I’d thought.

Just random members of a jury. That was their connection.

And the person being prosecuted?

I gulped.

Jed Chipps.

The queue moved forward a little more. Again, more smiles, more filling out of documents taking ages.

“Come on,” I muttered. I noticed a bald, dark-skinned officer walking through a door to the side of the desk. The door looked like it was passcode locked, but it was closing very slowly.

I looked at the front of the queue. Then over at the door. Nobody was looking at me. I had to make a break for it. I had to try something.

I took a deep breath of the sweat-stinking air and powered over to the door at the side of the desk.

I didn’t look either side. I didn’t look behind me. I just stared at the bold NO ENTRY sign and made my way towards it.

I was getting in here. I was finding Lenny.

When I grabbed the handle of the door, stopping it from clicking shut, I heard a few voices—a few protestations—behind me and around me.

I ignored them and pushed through the door.

I found myself in what looked like an office for a call centre. All white shirts, black ties, people twiddling phone cables around their fingers while chewing on pastries and pies.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, sir.”

I walked into the office. Looked everywhere for Lenny. He wouldn’t like this, but I had to find him. I had to find him, tell him what I knew.

I felt something grab my arms. And then something else. Hands, tightening around me.

“I need to see—”

“Sir, if you don’t step out with us now, you’re under arrest.”

I felt myself being tugged away. Craned my neck, looked everywhere for Lenny, but to no avail.

“Come with us, right this minute, sir.”

I kept my legs firm. “I need—I need to see—It’s about the—”

“Hold it, boys!”

I heard a door close to my right.

Lenny walked out. His fringe was dripping water, and the flies of his black trousers were badly zipped up. A bit of his shirt had caught in his flies and poked through.

A few officers sniggered, but Lenny didn’t seem to notice.

“We’re taking him out, boss,” the officers restraining me said.

“No,” I said. “You—you need to—”

“I’ll take him,” Lenny said. “You leave him with me.”

A slight pause from the officers behind me. “But sir, we’ve as good as got him now—”

“You heard what I said. Leave him to me.”

The hands holding me loosened. Lenny walked up to me, grabbed hold of my right arm with his bony fingers.

“Come on, sir,” he said, pulling me back out the door.

“Your flies are undone, sir,” I said.

The office erupted in laughter. Lenny blushed, looked down at his flies, and quickly rearranged. He looked back at me, jaw shaking and eyes bloodshot, like he was considering bollocking me right there.

It was nice to feel I had something of the upper hand in this case for once.

Lenny dragged me out and bundled me into the lost property room at the other side of the desk.

“Are you gonna tell me what this is about, Blakey? Walking into our offices like that? Making
me
look a fool?”

“I think you do a decent enough job of that without my help.”

“Watch it, or you’ll be getting £100,000.”

I held the papers out in front of me.

“Oh I dunno about that,” I said.

Lenny looked at the papers, then at me. “What… what’ve you got there?”

I flicked through the papers. Wondered whether this was going to work, whether Lenny was dumb enough to take the bait. “Only the answer to the entire case.”

Lenny’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. On a piece of paper? Like, all written out for you?
Diaries of a Killer, Volume One
?”

I shrugged. Put the papers back under my arm. “You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”

Lenny looked away. Wiped a finger’s breadth of dust off the old VCR player stacked behind him.

I had him. I knew I had him.

“Go on then,” he said. “I’ll take a look.”

“It’ll cost you one million.”

“Bullshit. We discussed—”

“One million, like we agreed. Or the killer kills someone else and you have a right old mess on your hands.”

Lenny’s serious face flickered into a smile. “So you want to go to prison, do you? Want to spend a lifetime in a cell with Brutus? He’s big, hairy, and he likes asshole. He likes asshole a lot.”

“You can send me wherever you want,” I said. I was speaking on adrenaline now, the words flowing out of me like a menthol-inspired symphony. “And you can haunt me about Grace Wallens and 2007 forever. Because I accept it. I accept what I did was wrong. I was hired to capture a serial fraudster and con artist, yes. I fell in love with her, yes.” My throat welled up with the weight of what I was about to say. “And because I didn’t bring her in on the night I was supposed to, she—she was murdered. Murdered by someone she stole from, yes.”

I saw Grace in my mind. Saw her blonde hair, her pretty smile, as she lay beside me.

“But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t murder her. I’m guilty of anything but that. So you give me the million—the million you promised me before this whole thing started—or I take these documents and I put them through that frigging ancient shredder behind you.”

Lenny looked pale. He scratched at his neck, struggled for words. “What’s… what’s stopping me arresting you? Taking those documents from you right—right now?”

I smiled. Shook my head.

“Don’t be fucking dumb, Lenny. You’ve no idea how easily I could take you down with me. No idea how many recordings I might have of our conversations over the years.”

Lenny went even more pale. Seemed to go a little grey in the space of a few seconds, too.

Yes, I was bluffing, and yes, an intelligent officer might’ve recognised that.

Fortunately for all parties concerned, Lenny wasn’t intelligent.

“Fine. A million. But that’s it. A million and we’re done. Not having you recording any more weird tracks of me.”

I nodded. “I’ve recorded that too, just so you know. In case you go against your word. Wouldn’t want my friends paying you a visit now, would you?”

Lenny couldn’t hold eye contact with me, not anymore.

“So—so what’ve you got?” he asked.

I placed the documents on the table, my heart picking up again at the urgency of the situation.

“I found this over at the court. Don’t ask how, but I found it.”

Lenny scanned it. Ran his finger down the names. “This is… these are the people who’ve been murdered.”

“Yes, they are.”

“This… Melissa Waters. She must be the first victim.”

Wow. Lenny was on form today. “I believe so.”

He scanned the document some more. Scanned it, muttered under his breath, like he was adding up what it all meant in his little peanut brain.

“Jed Chipps,” he said.

“Jed Chipps indeed. Heard of him?”

Lenny sighed. He looked up at me. “I… I arrested him.”

“Arrested him? What… what for?”

Lenny’s face went so pale that I swore he was going to barf in the next few seconds. Hopefully not all over the frigging important documents.

“He… It was a few years ago now. 2010, I think. Wife reported him for violent behaviour towards her and her kid.”

Nerves jangled through my stomach. “Were the wife and kid called Jenny and Daley, by any chance?”

More paleness on Lenny’s face, as he nodded. “He… These names. These people. These are the people on the jury of his sentencing. His prosecutor. He…”

“What happened with his wife and kid in the end?”

Lenny shook his head. “I—I don’t remember the ins and outs but… but they put a restraining order out. I remember that because I locked him in a cell again last year when he’d been released. First thing he did was… was go to Jenny’s house and demand to see his kid.”

The pieces of the puzzle were adding up in my mind.

Adding up, and making me feel pretty sick in the process.

“You don’t think he’s… he’s carrying out revenge killings, do you?” Lenny asked. “Of all the people who—who stood against him?”

I looked back down at the papers. Looked at the names, Jenny Chipps and Daley Chipps.

“We need to get down to Jenny’s house right away,” I said.

Lenny nodded like I was his superior. “63 Moss House Avenue. I… I think you’re probably right.”

I lifted my phone out of my pocket and went to leave the lost property room. Hovered over Martha’s name, my hand shaking.

“He wouldn’t kill his wife and kid, would he?” Lenny asked. “Like… who would do that?”

I listened to the dialling tone ring. I wanted to tell Lenny that nobody would do that, because it was sick, it was wrong.

But I couldn’t.

“I think Jed Chipps might if we don’t get to Jenny and Daley right away.”

THIRTY-NINE

Jed Chipps leaves his house feeling fresher than ever.

He heads down Moss House Avenue. Looks at all the trees, all the green leaves, the sun shining down brightly. It is a beautiful day. A beautiful day for the conclusion of his journey. A perfect day to complete his puzzle.

He looks at the bungalows at either side of the road. Looks at the well-kept gardens, the fountains and features in each and every one of them, like the neighbours were having some kind of competition.

He smiles, takes in a deep breath of his minty air fresheners, and he feels alive.

He hasn’t been down Moss House Avenue for quite some time. Not since a restraining order was placed on him by that bastard prosecutor, Pete Adkins. And his kid, Daley… he hadn’t wrapped his arms around him, tucked him into bed, since that twattish jury all voted in favour of his imprisonment.

His skin heats up at the memory. Those evil bastards, interfering in his life, pretending they knew him. And sure, he did knock Jenny around a bit. And okay, okay, he might have given her one too many black eyes, might’ve tightened his hand around her throat until she was blue during sex a couple of times.

But he was just letting off steam. Letting off steam is better than the alternative.

Well, for anyone but him, anyway.

Killing is a very fitting alternative.

He slows down as he approaches number sixty-three. It’s 7.45, so Jenny and Daley will probably still be in bed. Or just getting out of bed, eating their breakfast.

Anything is fine by him. As long as they are home.

If they aren’t, well… He’ll find another way. He is in way too deep to worry about the technicalities.

His hand shakes and he plucks at the steering wheel, his body craving for a release. He has been this way as long as he can remember. Even when he was a young kid in primary school, he enjoyed locking his classmates into cubicles, shoving their heads down the toilet while they spluttered away.

Animals were his first passion, though. He started small, tearing the legs off spiders, one by one.

And then he moved onto rats, field mice, pet hamsters. While his whore mum fucked whichever random man she’d let between her slutty legs and creaked on the bed, he snipped at the rodents’ little paws, made them squeal.

He smiles. He’s always liked cutting, whether with knives or scissors. He’s always liked squealers, too.

His love for squealers intensified when he stuffed a sharp kitchen knife into his drunken Mummy’s chest one night.

The way she’d howled, as she tumbled down the stairs and broke her neck.

The way she squealed…

He stops the car. Stares through the window of the bungalow. He can’t see any movement inside. But there is a car in the drive, a red Astra, so he knows someone is home.

He wonders for a moment whether Jenny has a new husband. Whether she’s given Daley a new daddy.

He kind of hopes so. He’s looking forward to making someone else bleed.

He takes a few deep breaths. Lets the mintiness of the air fresheners calm him down. He doesn’t understand why he is feeling so much anxiety. Then again, he’s always struggled differentiating between anxiety and excitement.

He’d realised that back when he attached some crocodile cables to his nipples in the high school toilets. Masturbated while blood and pus seeped out of his teets.

“Dangerous,”
Jenny had called him.
“A threat to your own child,”
the prosecutor and the jury had echoed.