Grind Their Bones (27 page)

A serial murder case doesn’t end for those involved with the apprehension or death of the offender, since there are still so many evidential loose ends to tie up and other potential victims to identify in order to give surviving friends and relatives their imperfect closure. However, I knew from the updates that Geeta Badal and Lee had been relaying to me in hospital that those lines of enquiry were in capable hands, and that we were getting that much closer each day to putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. I looked forward to pitching in too, when circumstances would allow, but first I’d have to go through the remaining absurd formalities to clear my own name of wrongdoing in respect of the death of John Reimoore by my hand.

Chapter 89

Lee had continued to stay at my place while I had been lying in a hospital bed, and it looked like he’d be a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future too. He’d initially promised during one of our long visits to stop trying to find a new place until I was back up and running again, but over the last few weeks the conversation had tentatively moved towards the possibility of us pooling our collective resources and finding something new and bigger for both of us to live in on a permanent basis. The prospect was exciting but also a little scary, so our compromise had been to spend six months checking that we didn’t drive each other crazy before we took the leap.

It felt strange walking back up my own driveway again, but comforting to be back in control of my own schedule. I’ve never been a very good patient. Once I was inside I saw that Lee had neatly stacked up my mail on the dining table and thoroughly spring cleaned the whole place, and I smiled at a note that he’d left with ‘tonight’s menu’ scrawled onto it. Moving through the lounge I also noticed that all signs of the orange stains from Emily’s spaghetti throwing escapade were gone, God only knew how, but the carpet and upholstery was pristine, and I felt the prickling of joyful tears coming on.

‘Detective Sergeant Lee Mead, I love you very much indeed.’

I announced to the empty space, lifting up the first bundle of mail and sifting through for signs of anything interesting.

I made my way into the kitchen for coffee and a mooch around the fridge, recognising some of the envelopes as bills and others as junk, and depositing the junk ones directly in the bin. Several more were unfamiliar, and I opened them to find that not only had I apparently won a large cash prize in a competition that I’d never entered, but I was also due compensation for an accident that I had no recollection of having been involved in too. Both of those swiftly joined their friends in the recycling bin as well.

I discarded what was left of the pile on the worktop and sorted out a mug of coffee, making it strong and sweet and settling on a biscuit after an appraisal of the fridges contents turned up nothing of interest that would serve as a snack. A sudden unexpected clattering of the letterbox made me jump and spill some of my coffee on the floor, and I swore loudly, throwing a cloth down and using my foot to mop up the worst of the mess. The post gets later and later these days, it used to come first thing in the morning. I was flustered and embarrassed by my reaction, not wanting the unwelcome reminder that I wasn’t quite in the rude health that I wanted to kid myself I was.

I pulled myself back together quickly, discarding the cloth in the sink and trotting briskly back through into the hallway to retrieve the mail. Only one letter awaited me, lying face down on the mat, and I stooped to pick it up, turning it over in my hands. As soon as I saw the writing on the front I dropped it back to the floor again as if it was tainted, feeling the tension returning to my body and finding it hard to catch my breath. The handwriting was the Grey Man’s scrawl, I recognised it from all of the other scenes. Hundreds of times I’d run through the contents, so often that I knew I couldn’t be mistaken. I rushed to the window to try to catch sight of who had delivered it, but was greeted with the sight of a leather clad figure on a motorbike roaring away into the distance.

Trembling, I forced myself to lift it for a second time and tore open the envelope, taking the letter to the dining table and sitting down to read.

What is the colour of pain? Sometimes I’ve convinced myself that it’s the red of spilling blood, or the purple and pink of viscera, but then I change my mind and I settle on the absence of colour that is black again – the void into which we all must pass one day.

My father taught me important lessons and gave me his name, as his father had done for him in turn before that, the chain stretching both back into the past and onwards into the future, and in doing so he secured a legacy.

You won’t appreciate the sentiment, given to imperfect thoughts. But  some of us are born special, with special minds that give us the permission to take the lives of others, if it pleases us to do so – hunters one and all – everybody else is prey.

As I write this I have the feeling that someday we’ll meet again, in this life or the next. My legacy will outlive me and perhaps revisit you someday if I cannot.

Grey Man

Chapter 90

It was three in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and after numerous calls, messages left and a lot of very much against the grain pleading, Emily was finally sitting opposite me in a coffee shop in Leamington Spa. She kept her over-sized dark glasses on indoors and had not returned my smile of greeting when I’d arrived, but at least she was here, which gave me the chance to say what I needed to say to her.

‘You’ve lost weight again, sis, there’s practically nothing left of you now!’

I tried to break the ice gently as a waitress took our order of two skinny latte’s and scurried away to fetch them.

‘I’ve not had much appetite recently, and neither has David after everything that’s happened.’

Her reply was a flat monotone, nothing moving on her face except her mouth, and I wondered whether she was heavily medicated at the moment and if that was why the glasses had stayed in place. This time I damned well wasn’t going to pry though.

‘I can imagine. I’ve not been feeling on top of the world myself. How has he been?’

I tried to remain impassive while I looked for an opening to get through to her without tipping her over the edge again.

‘What do you care? You hate him, he told me about how you got your boyfriend to beat him up when he came round looking for me, and don’t deny it, I saw the bruises at the time when he came to see me in hospital, right around the time you stopped bothering to visit.’

An unmistakeable trace of bitterness crept into her delivery this time, and I saw how cleverly he’d been manipulating the situation.

‘Just so you’ve got your facts straight, Lee only hit him after he’d assaulted me and forced his way into my house. If I was malicious then I could have had him locked up for either of those things, but I didn’t do so, and I was told by the hospital staff that you had specifically asked them to stop me from visiting you. No prizes for guessing who really engineered that situation now are there?’

I quickly reached out across the table and pulled her sunglasses off her face, expecting to see glazed eyes but seeing livid purple and green bruising instead.

‘Give them back NOW!’

The sentence started out as a hiss and ended in a shout as I gave them back to her, and the other occupants of the café turned to stare at us. Emily angrily arranged the glasses back over her face and immediately stood up to leave, grabbing her handbag off the table. The poor waitress arrived with our drinks at that moment and froze in place, not sure whether to put them down or not.

‘It’s okay, just drop them on the table for us please.’ I said and offered a strained smile as I set off in pursuit of Emily.

‘I suppose those bruises are my fault too, on account of how I killed his psychopath father. Is that what he tells you?’

I grabbed her arm and saw her look down at the scarring where my sleeve had ridden up.

‘Emily, there’s a good chance that David’s guilty of worse than being an abusive husband, and I need you to listen to me on this, even if you still decide not to have anything else to do with me afterwards.’

She stopped trying to pull away now, and I saw a tear on her cheek creeping out from under the bottom of the shades.

‘I received a final letter from John Reimoore a few days ago, which somebody posted on his behalf after his death, and I think that same person is the one who threw a severed head at me outside Lee’s house before that. I can’t prove it yet, but I believe that at the very least David’s been involved in helping his father in the commission of some of these recent offences.’

I let go of her arm and cupped her head in my hands.

‘If I’m right then he’s crazy, and a significant danger to you too, and I need you to help me by removing yourself from harm’s way. Remember what you told me about what you felt he was capable of before?’

A long moment passed in which she stared blankly at me, and then she reached up and pulled my hands away, pressing them firmly back against my own chest.

‘You’re the one who’s crazy. David is not a monster just because he was fathered by one, and I want you to stay the hell away from us.’

She said, turning her back on me and walking out of the doors and slowly up the street. I watched as she stopped beside a leather-clad figure on a motorbike and put on a helmet of her own, climbing on behind them and holding around the drivers waist without looking back. The figure in leathers raised an open hand towards me in mock greeting, and waved once before setting off, leaving me stood powerless to stop them with the words of a dead killer replaying in my mind.

What is the colour of pain? I settled on the absence of colour that is black again – the void into which we all must pass one day. My legacy will outlive me and perhaps revisit you someday if I cannot.