Bubblegum Smoothie (3 page)

I examined the photograph. Tried to get my head around it. My mouth cried out for lozenges, at the same time begging to vom them out.

The girl’s eyes had been removed. Judging from the blood around her mouth, so too had her tongue. As had her breasts. Her head had been shaved. And her fingers—well, there were none. Her hands were like those of an alien, each and every finger snipped away, bleeding out.

“Please tell me this happened
after
death,” I said.

Lenny squinted. Opened and closed his mouth, taking a breath, as if he couldn’t work out whether to tell the truth—that this girl had been tortured and mutilated before her death.

“So she was tortured,” I said.

“Badly,” Lenny said. “Her eyes and tongue were removed. Her fingers were—”

“I can see, Lenny. Any sign of penetration?”

The corners of Lenny’s mouth twitched, like he was a high school teenager who’d just discovered a naughty word in a dictionary. “Yes,” he said. “Quite… quite roughly, to put it in Rayman’s terms.”

“Layman’s,” I said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. So you’re DNA profiling? Checking for semen traces? Have you IDed the girl?”

Lenny looked like he’d been pummelled with an array of bullets, question after question.

“We… We’re looking into it. Investigating every angle. But it’s very hard to fingerprint without any fingers.”

“So no witnesses? Nobody come forward?”

Lenny shrugged. “We’ve got the reconstruction people working at her face. Not literally. Sorry. Bad taste. And um… and forensics are investigating her body for the obvious signs—blood, skin, hair, saliva—”

“I know how it works,” I said. “What I’m struggling to get my head around is why you need the help of a guy who runs Groovy Smoothie when you’ve got all these wonderful staff members and all these wonderful facilities.”

I knew damn well why, really, but I was just using any leverage I could to piss Lenny off. He kind of deserved it after dragging me in here, blackmailing me. But it was obvious why he’d come to me. The Preston Police Department was inept. It had been for years. It’d been one PR disaster after another, and since the budget cuts set in, things had got worse.

That was the official word, anyway. Truth was, things had always been bad all over the country. Every city had its experts at catching filth, and those experts very often weren’t the people in the police department. They were those on the outside. Bounty hunters. People like me. The police outsourced, then took the credit.

I’d caught petty criminals before. Captured burglars, rapists, hit-and-run thugs. But murder… murder wasn’t an area I was familiar with.

“The cuts,” Lenny said. He shrugged, tapping his finger inadvertently on the girl’s cut-off breasts, oblivious to the awkwardness. “The cuts affected us. We don’t have the manpower or the budget to work a murder investigation like this, not anymore.”

“Did you say you don’t have ‘the guts’?” I said.

Lenny opened his mouth to correct me, but he clearly caught on to this one.
Well done, shitface. You’re learning.

“So let’s get this straight. You want to pay me one million—a whole one million pounds—to catch a criminal because you don’t have the
money
to do so?”

Lenny nodded. Smiled. “That’s exactly what we want you to do, Blake.”

I wasn’t sure whether he was too dumb to realise the hypocrisy of his words or whether he was just so used to bullshitting that he’d actually started to believe them.

I sighed. Thought about going home, lying down and watching some more “Breaking Bad.” “I… I don’t know if—”

The interview room door slammed open. A short officer with an acne-covered pig-face stormed inside.

“Detective Inspector Kole,” this spotty officer said. God, no wonder the department were struggling. This guy looked barely out of his teens.

“Can’t you see I’m busy here, Kyle?” Lenny said. He deepened his voice, forced a serious face.

It didn’t work. Not on me, anyway.

It had the kid rattled though. “I—I’m sorry. It’s just…” He panted. Placed his hands on his knees.

“Spit it out, boy,” Lenny said.

Kyle lifted his head. “There’s another. An… Another girl. Another girl like the one earlier.”

Lenny’s mouth opened. “What… Where?”

Kyle’s jaw started to shake. His face was losing colour by the second. Come to think of it, he did smell a bit… vomity.

“She’s… she’s outside. On—on top of the squad car,” Kyle said.

And then he puked out his guts all over the interview room floor.

FOUR

Officer Kyle Whatever wasn’t lying about the murdered girl sprawled out on the squad car.

The parking area outside Preston Police Station was cordoned off with yellow tape. A couple of officers were struggling to connect the tape, as they’d run out of it with a small area still to cover. To solve the problem, a short, chubby officer stood holding the tape, acting as the bridge between the two parts. Idiot.

Lenny escorted me outside. I still had my cuffs on, and I wanted to ask him to remove them, but I figured I’d get a look at the girl first.

And a look at her I got.

She was completely naked for a start. Just like the girl in the photograph. Only unlike the girl in the photograph who’d been found on Moor Park, this girl was laid out atop a squad car.

I held my breath as I got closer and immediately regretted clearing my airways with lozenges just earlier.

The girl’s eyes had been plucked out, just like the other’s. Blood had run from the holes, dribbled down her cheeks like over-frothed milkshake. There was something bloody, like a sponge, stuck in her mouth. But it only took me a few moments to realise that it was the remnants of her tongue.

“Shitting hell,” Lenny said. He’d put his sunglasses back on even though it was dark, and was covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. Lucky man. “Plenty in common with the other girl alright.”

I got closer to this woman. Noted the sliced-off breasts, the torn vagina.

And then I noticed her fingers. Or rather, the lack of them. All of them snipped away, although this woman looked like she’d had even more of a struggle.

“I think we can definitely conclude we have a serial killer on our hands,” Lenny said, his voice muffled by his sleeve.

“D’you reckon?” I said.

“Well, two women found in similar circumstances, fingers snipped, eyes gouged… Oh. Oh I see what you’re doing. Sarcasm. Good job. Very good. Very sensitive.”

I looked up at a streetlamp, which illuminated this woman’s body like she was on a stage. And then I looked down, looked past the yellow tape and the panicky officers. Over by the street, specks of light rain hit the journos who had already heard the news, some way or another.

That “some way or another” was no doubt the tip-offs from the police. Well, snitching paid good, so why not?

“Get forensics down here then get her inside for a look,” Lenny said to a dark-haired officer. She nodded, disappeared outside the tape. Lenny looked at me and shook his head as if this was all one big inconvenience to him. “What d’you reckon, ey? Spidey senses tingling yet?”

“They might come close to tingling if I wasn’t cuffed up.”

Lenny nodded. Smiled and nodded. No sign of letting me out of my cuffs. Dick.

I crouched down beside the girl, looked at her skin. Bruises lined her left side, like she’d taken a beating before she’d died. And there were little slits, too. Little indentations, piercings, in her skin.

“This could be something,” I said.

“Jesus, on it already? You’re something special. I tell you, why don’t you join the police? You wouldn’t even have to run a job as a smoothie salesman if you were in the police.”

I pretended not to hear Lenny’s shit-headed suggestion and I nodded at the little slices on the side of the girl’s belly.

“So what am I looking at?” Lenny asked.

“Seriously, how are you a police officer? What d’you think you’re looking at?”

Lenny squinted. Scratched at his recently shaven beard. “I… Well it looks like stab wounds to me.”

“Bingo! You’re getting there, Lenny. They might let you carry a baton next.”

“I already carry a…” He paused again. Sighed. “Okay. Okay. You really need to tone down the sarcasm, Blake.”

“So we’ve got stab wounds,” I said. “Other than that, we don’t have a whole lot else. Obviously check the usual—DNA, semen, the lot. But also check out those stab wounds for me. Try and get the weapon identified. Then I might be able to help you.”

Lenny smiled, as if he’d forgotten he was standing next to the second mutilated corpse of a woman found within a day. “You’re something else. Superhuman. Absolutely superhuman. I’ll get the stab wounds checked. Then what?”

I waited a few seconds, let him hang on for my reply. Even though I was in my handcuffs, I knew I was the one with the leverage. I knew people who knew people who sold knives. People who stocked illegal weapons, backstreet stalls, things like that. I owned a few self-defence weapons of my own. But there’s no way the police knew who those people were. No way whatsoever. So all of a sudden I’d gone from a blackmailed man in handcuffs to a man in handcuffs with a plan.

“Like I said. If you identify the type of blade, I might be able to help you. I might know a few people who sell blades they aren’t supposed to sell. And they sell so few at such a profit that I’m sure they’d remember a face and a name with a little… push.”

I waited another few seconds. Watched Lenny’s cheeks blush as forensics photographed the scene, poked and prodded at the body.

“Or we’ll find it’s just a general knife and we won’t be able to identify it, and then I’m not sure I’d remember who those friends of mine are after all.”

“I could arrest you, you know?” Lenny said. “I could arrest you right here for simply
knowing
illegal arms dealers.”

I smiled. “I know you could. But you won’t. You’re stupid as fuck, but you’re not stupid as fuck enough to do that. Not now we know we have a probable serial killer on our hands. Or ‘on your hands,’ I should say. Speaking of which…”

I shook my wrists. The cuffs were sinking into my skin, chapping my flesh. Way too warm a night to be stuck in cuffs, that was for sure.

Lenny looked to his left, over to the officers chatting to the journalists.

“Oh come on, Lenny. Nobody gives a damn who I am. Just look at them. They hardly know I’m even here.”

Lenny looked to his right, then over his shoulder, the rain coming down heavier now.

Then he reached behind my back and stuck his key inside the lock of the cuffs, struggling to undo them.

“I hope you’re better at undoing bras than you are uncuffing convicts.”

Lenny continued to struggle. “I… I don’t uncuff convicts,” he said.

“Or undo many bras, come to think of it.”

The cuffs came loose and Lenny yanked them away, scratching my left wrist in the process.

I shook my arms. Enjoyed the airy feeling around them, the feeling of freedom.

“I’d best be off,” I said. “Get my flights to Panama booked for tomorrow morning. One way, no return.”

“Don’t you even—”

“Relax, Lenny. Relax. You know where I am and somehow you know my number. Bit creepy. Anyway, let me know about the identification.” I walked past Lenny, away from the mutilated girl and towards the yellow tape and the car park exit.

“What do you… what do you do next?” he asked.

I turned around.

“I get in touch with an old friend. Goodnight, Lenny. Sleep well. And, er… You’ve got dogshit on your trousers.”

Lenny looked at his trousers. Arched his leg up, hopped around, as I walked off smiling.

I really shouldn’t have been smiling while walking away from a murder scene.

But shit. One million quid wasn’t such a bad thought, even if I was going to have to split it with my very distinctive colleague.

I wondered how she was doing. What she’d been up to. How much of a cut she’d want. Five per cent? Ten per cent?

As long as I could still afford a curved TV, life was good.

FIVE

He watches the police gather around the woman’s body. Watches the shock on their faces, the horror in their eyes, and he is turned on. It gets him excited. Makes him want to squeal.

But he must keep his calm. He must stay cool. He’s only getting started.

As he watches from across the street, he can’t believe his luck. His skin is on fire. Every single breath storms and races through his body like it is filled with a beautiful invigorating potion.

He can still smell her blood on his body even though he has washed it off.

He can’t believe how lucky he has been. Or how skilled he has been. Capturing the first girl, that was easy. Almost too easy. But he’d had so much fun with her. Even though he’d dreamed about the many ways in which he could enjoy her before ending her life, during ending her life,
after
ending her life, nothing had come close to the real thing.

He’d had a plan. He’d had a plan to pick off all seven of them over a specific period of time.

But he was so buzzing, so invigorated, by the first that he just couldn’t resist going on and capturing the second.

And she was just as easy. Maybe even easier. He’d seen her in her garden, crouching down and picking weeds out of the ground. He’d looked around. Felt the adrenaline pump through his body.

And then he’d hit her over the head and he’d dragged her inside his Land Rover without so much as a scream from her.

He crouches behind the window and stares outside. More police officers are swarming now, as too are journalists. All of them are filth. All of them are nasty filth, nasty filth that deserves to be punished.

But he has punished enough for one day.

And he needs some fun for tomorrow.

He sees a slender man with greying hair in handcuffs. He is looking at the body of the girl. He isn’t like the other police officers. He is wearing a checkered shirt and blue jeans. And he doesn’t look as puzzled as the other officers. Doesn’t look as affected.