Eye Snatcher (12 page)

Things that Brian’s mind was too tired to focus on right now.

“You should get some rest,” DC Arif said.

Brian spun around. Nerves flared up inside him. “You don’t tell me what I fucking—”

“You’ve been acting shitty for days now. And Marlow’s hardly taking kindly to you wandering off on another solo mission of yours down an alleyway. I’m just trying to help you, mate. I suggest you go home. Spend some time with Hannah. Then come back here fresh tomorrow. Seriously. You don’t want to bump into Marlow right now, especially not with your…”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. He tensed his jaw. “With my what?”

Arif scratched the side of his head. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, say it. You mean with my past. With my age. And with my condition.”

Arif sighed. “I don’t mean to—”

“You know what, I will go home. I will go fucking home. Good luck, Arif. Try not to suffocate on fucking croissants while I’m gone.”

He barged past Arif, banged into his shoulder. A few other officers around him looked at him, whispered to one another.

His cheeks boiled as he marched towards the exit door, towards the pouring rain outside, towards the fading late afternoon sun.

His vision tunnelled, and he still felt that knife pressing against his neck.

Brian parked just down the road from his house and turned off the engine, turned off all the lights.

He sat there and stared out into the darkness. Listened to the light patter of rain drop against the roof of the car, making him feel sleepy as he closed his eyes.

But when he did close his eyes, he still saw himself there on the ground with Adrian West holding the knife to his neck.

He still saw himself not acting.

He opened his eyes because those thoughts made his stomach tingle. It wasn’t like him. He knew it wasn’t like him. But since the heart attack, since that reminder of his mortality, he’d become weak. He saw mortality more clearly. Saw it staring him in the face.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket with his shaking hand. Figured he’d browse the internet. Browse it to distract himself. Because he needed something to distract himself right now. Anything to distract himself.

And his usual distraction, his home life with Hannah, that wasn’t a distraction anymore. It couldn’t be. Not now Hannah was pregnant.

He felt more knotting in his stomach and he wondered if he’d ever get these shitty thoughts out of his head.

He had two missed calls. Both from Hannah. One at around three-thirty, another half an hour ago at six. He knew he was in the wrong. In the wrong for going silent on her when she’d told him she was pregnant. In the wrong for getting up extra early for work this morning, leaving without saying goodbye, or even making her morning coffee.

He didn’t know why he was acting the way he was. Just that he was scared. Scared of this case. Scared of what happened to Sam Betts, Beth Turner.

But mostly, he was scared of being a dad. Scared of bringing another Davey into this world. Because he’d failed Davey. He’d failed Davey way too many times in his life. He couldn’t be a letdown to another kid. He just couldn’t.

He turned over. Reached onto the backseat. Saw the shopping bag. Saw the bottle of vodka inside it.

Saw the pack of razor blades underneath.

He felt a longing. A longing to turn the knotting in his stomach to real pain. Real pain on his body, to let it all out. It was bottled up like a fizzy drink. He was bubbling over. So close to bubbling over. And the only thing that could help him was a release. A release he hadn’t had for so, so long.

He reached into the bag, heart pounding more and more as he did. He grabbed the pack of razors. Turned it around in his hands. Went to open it up.

And then he tossed them to the other side of the car. Threw the bottle onto the other seat as well.

He leaned against the steering wheel and he covered his eyes with his hands. His breathing got quivery. A coldness worked its way up the back of his neck.

He could be strong. He could be.

He just wasn’t ready to be yet.

Brian’s head wasn’t much clearer during the following morning’s briefing, but he had to pretend it was after yesterday’s flipping.

He stood opposite a whiteboard. Little pieces of the case were all drawn up onto it, several police officers including Arif, Finch, Carter and Richards were his audience, all in for a nice Sunday at work. Gotta love shifts.

“So Sam Betts goes for a walk on Wednesday night. Someone takes him. And then something happens between Wednesday evening and Friday morning that ends up taking Sam from the Westhaven Road dirt track to the old Whittingham hospital.”

Brian wrote up a few little notes on the wall, savouring the solventy smell of the whiteboard marker while officers shuffled about behind him.

“Meanwhile, Beth Turner goes to stay at her friend’s place on Friday. Called her parents to tell them her bus had broken down Friday morning. But there’s no record of a 22 breaking down. Besides, we saw her on CCTV entering the Booths toilets at nine p.m. Friday night. Half an hour later, our pal Adrian West pops in and leaves with blood on his hands.”

“His alibi’s tight,” DI Carter mumbled as she crunched on some salt and vinegar crisps. “He’s a patient at New Blue Brook. His social worker, Jed Green, he was in a scheduled meeting with him at the time of Sam’s disappearance.”

“And what was he doing wandering around Booths at nine on a Friday night?”

“Slipped the radar,” Samantha said. “Took a bus down to Booths near where he used to live or something. Didn’t show up again ‘til you came across him at that bus stop.”

Brian squinted at the whiteboard. Squinted at the note about the “weird man with the funny socks” who always sat around that bus stop watching the school kids. “Does Adrian slip the radar a lot?”

Carter shrugged. “His alibi’s tight. He’s a schizo perv but if you ask me, I don’t think he killed Sam or Beth.”

“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t see anything,” Brian said.

Carter shook her head. “Good luck getting anything out of him. Like draining water from a stone.”

Brian nodded. Looked back at the whiteboard. Tried to figure out the missing link, the missing pieces. There had to be something.

“The coat at the dirt track. Beth Turner’s coat.” He pointed at a photograph of it on the whiteboard. “Something’s not right there. We searched the kidnap scene on Friday, after finding Sam Betts’ body. We found Beth’s coat. But Beth Turner was still walking around when we found her coat.”

Brad rubbed the sides of his face, trying to add things up. “So what? You’re saying Beth fled the killer, or something?”

Brian squinted at the coat. The stab mark in it. The blood. And then he looked at the photographic still of Beth Turner entering the Booths toilet. She wasn’t limping or wounded, anything like that. She wasn’t wearing the coat, either.

And then he looked at the stills from the following day. Beth’s butchered, raped, eye-scooped body propped up on the toilet, earring missing.

“I’m saying she knew who the killer was. And she was going to those toilets to meet him.”

A few mumbles, of discontent or agreement, Brian couldn’t tell.

“What about the earring?” Brad asked.

Brian looked at the photograph of the earring they’d found in the subway opposite where Adrian had been watching. Sam Betts’ silver piercing. That was the biggest mystery at the moment, aside from the identity of the bloody killer. Why had Sam Betts’ earring been ditched in that subway opposite where Adrian frequented, of all places? Why had it been ditched at all?

What was the killer trying to tell them? Because this went beyond mere complacency. It was a trail.

“I’d like to speak to Adrian myself,” Brian said.

Carter shook his head. “Not possible. He’s back at New Blue—”

“I don’t care where he is. I want to speak to him. The toilet, nobody leaves that toilet, right?”

“Nobody other than Adrian.”

“And the CCTV. Nobody’s seen leaving those toilets after Adrian?”

Finch flicked through a few of the pages. “Nope.”

Brian looked at the picture of Adrian leaving the toilets, blood on his hands. Tried to squint through the little gap in the door.

“I think someone was in there. When Adrian left that bathroom. I think there was still somebody in there. Do we have the stills from outside Booths?”

Finch scuttled around with his nervous hands. Opened a few more pages, dropped a few on the floor, got a few sniggers directed at him.

Brian went over. Snatched them away from Finch. Flicked through them all, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.

“Gotcha,” he said.

The other officers gathered round. Brian’s heart pounded.

“Three-thirty a.m. See that?”

He pointed at the darkness of the photograph. Pointed outside Booths.

“I don’t see—”

“Compare it to the last photograph. Look. There’s light there, and then… a blur. Right outside that window. And what window’s that?”

Finch’s jaw dropped. The others looked on in awe.

“The bathroom window,” Brian answered for them.

They flicked through more photographs. Flicked until they got a shot of a car leaving a few minutes later. Registration blurry on this copy, but nothing they couldn’t get expanded.

“Get that blown up,” Brian said, throwing the photographs onto the table and tapping at the car.

“Where are you going?” Brad asked.

“I’m off to get some answers from Adrian.”

New Blue Brook Hospital was just outside of town in a nice little rural area called Goosnargh. Thick evergreen trees guarded the massive compound from the eyes of the public, which especially helped the owners of the rows of terraced houses just outside the hospital. Gave them the illusion that they lived somewhere safe, even though they did actually live opposite a bunch of psychopathic wackjobs.

Brian drove down the long, winding driveway that led to the entrance of New Blue Brook. He passed patients, most of them pretty normal looking, pretty happy and chatty. He wondered what happened to the days where mental patients used to dance—when they really were crazy.

That said, the ones that were completely crazy were probably locked away, never allowed out into the public.

Shit. And somehow Adrian West
was
allowed out.

Brian pulled up in one of the free spaces by the doorway and stepped out of his car. The cool air brushed against him, a glimmer of warm autumn sun touching his skin. He could hear people chatting and shouting to one another from inside the place, and could smell the fumes from the hospital’s canteen.

He took a few deep breaths and headed towards the big glass opening area, where sliding doors let everyone inside.

He smiled at a few people on his way in. They smiled back at him. There was a weird friendliness about the place. A falseness, even. He wondered if all these smiles were just a show, a fallacy, and behind closed doors, things were just as bad in a looney bin as they always had been.

He stepped into the reception area and looked around. Adrian West was in the Bridgewater section apparently, which was for those they were reintegrating with society gradually. He took a look at the signs above the doorways as people brushed past him, scanning themselves in through the doors. Alderbank. Plymouth. Bridgewater. There on the right.

Brian held his breath and walked towards the door. There was someone ahead of him—a man with an eighties ‘tache and thinning hair—heading in that direction. He followed this guy, who smelled of piss. Kept close behind him. Tried not to look around. He was getting in here—he was finding information out about what Adrian had really seen in the Booths toilets that night—without his social worker or lawyer poking their nose in.

He stayed close behind the guy in front, so close that he got a whiff of his wee-smelling hair, and he stopped when he pulled out his keycard. Pressed it up against the scanner.

The door opened up. Brian held his breath.

“Just hold that for me,” he said, smiling at the guy in front as he scooted through.

The guy looked at him. Looked at him like he recognised him but he couldn’t tell from where.

And then he nodded and held the door.

“Sir, you need your pass to go through there.”

The voice made Brian’s shoulders slump right on the spot. He didn’t turn around. Pretended he hadn’t heard anything. Stepped through the door.

“Sir, you—”

He slammed the door shut, pulled up the hood of his coat and ran.

He waited until he’d turned a few corners before he stopped running. The people in Bridgewater, they weren’t giving him funny looks, not like he expected. He was in a canteen area. Some people were playing chess. Others sat on comfy sofas and played Xbox. By the doorways to the bedroom corridors, guards in blue shirts stood and looked on, oblivious to Brian’s presence.

Brian kept his head down and scanned the area for Adrian West.

He heard footsteps behind him. Heard mumbling, something about someone sneaking in here. When he did, he quickly scooted around another white-walled corner, into another recreational area.

It was there that he saw Adrian West sitting by the large window and staring out at the autumn leaves as they blew through the communal garden.

Brian had a quick look around—nobody watching—and he walked over to Adrian. He lowered his hood. Grabbed a wooden chair at the table and perched himself down opposite Adrian.

Adrian didn’t even look up at him. He was just smiling. Staring out at the garden and smiling that weird grin of his as he looked at the garden, at the birds.

“Adrian, I… I need you to tell me if—”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

Brian looked out at the garden. Looked at the forlorn trees, the unkempt grass. “The garden?”

He looked back at Adrian.

Adrian was looking right at him, twitchy smile and all. “I remember you. You were there yesterday. You were there after the beautiful red.”

Brian heard footsteps scraping across the squeaky tiles just around the corner. Voices, concerned voices, as security searched for him. “I need to know what you saw in Booths, Adrian.”