Keeping (15 page)

“Fuck off, you.”

Langham ended the call, chuckling. The smile was wiped off his face, though, when he thought about all those women before Cheryl, what they’d been through. He had no idea what that was until Cheryl told them what had happened to her.

He thought of The Stick then, and how he didn’t recall anyone updating him on a visit there. He frowned and stood, suddenly annoyed with himself for not asking at the meeting, annoyed at Fairbrother for not mentioning it in his summing up. Or had he just not heard that bit? He left his office, heading for the main one with thunder in his thoughts—just in case someone needed a bollocking.

Chapter Eleven

David needed to force himself out of bed before depression got a stronghold on him. If he wasn’t careful he’d slip back to how he used to be—a mess of uncertainty, the past swirling around in his head, none of it going down the damn drain because he couldn’t seem to pull the plug. But he’d managed it, hadn’t he? Focusing on the women meant he’d had other things to think about, and his past had faded away, only remaining on the peripheral of his mind. Cheryl had done something to him, though. He thought it might have been her saying he didn’t get on her nerves or whatever. She hadn’t said what the bogey woman had always said. Or was it him leaving her at her final resting place that had been wrong? He’d made a mistake somewhere but couldn’t think what it was. That bad dream had muddled him up, made him worry.

He couldn’t think now. Was better off just getting up, having a shower. The water would help clear the fog and maybe he’d see where he’d fucked up—if he even had. See, that’s what those dreams did to him.

Under the water, each stream needle-like when it hit his skin, he thought over Cheryl’s transportation and delivery. Knew exactly what the problem was then. He hadn’t waited long enough, hadn’t checked that she’d actually drowned. But that rustle behind him had… No, it hadn’t frightened him, it
hadn’t.

“It did, David. Stop lying to yourself.”

“What should I do?” He turned the water off and reaching for a towel. He stood on the bathmat, shivering despite the terry cloth swaddling him. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink, seeing remnants of his dream in his mind and blatant fear in his eyes. Where had his self-confidence gone? It was Conrad’s fault. He’d started it—the insecurity, the questions. And his last comment, the one about that copper finding him. Shit. That wouldn’t be very nice.

“It’s coming on for four o’clock. Second edition of the paper should be out by now. You ought to get dressed, go out for a walk, pick up a copy.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

He dressed hurriedly then glanced around his flat before he left, knowing he should clean but wanting to read the paper more. Would she even have been found yet, so far out as she was? He didn’t think so, didn’t reckon she’d be found for weeks. And weeks would be good, because when he took another woman, brought her back here, then went through the whole thing again, she’d be found before Cheryl if he placed her where the others had been. They’d think he’d been on a break. It’d throw them off. And when they finally found Cheryl and discovered he’d killed her first…

David smiled at that. Got a bit of confidence back. Yeah, he was the one in charge. He’d have tricked the pigs and they’d end up looking like a right bunch of tossers.

Out on his street, he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and walked to the corner, glancing right and left before crossing the road and heading toward the little newsagents down the way a bit. The bloke behind the counter got on his nerves—nosey cunt, he was—and always asked what David had been up to, as though he
knew.
Stared at him oddly too, his head tilted and a look in his eye that seemed to snake right under David’s skin and make him shudder.

“Fucking prick,” he said as he entered the shop.

He walked straight to the paper stand, pleased to see a stack of second editions on the floor beside it but annoyed they still had the crisscross of string over them where no one had bought a copy. If she’d been found and her story was on the front page and no one had seen it… He took his keys out of his pocket, selected his penknife and cut the string. It sprang back then oozed to the floor, and he stared down at the front page. He’d made the lower half again—only the lower fucking half—and he resisted the urge to kick that sodding paper pile and punch the shop owner in the face.

Instead, he calmly lifted a paper then strolled over to the counter.

“Nasty business, that,” the shop owner said, nodding sagely. “You’d think they’d have found the bastard who’s doing it by now, wouldn’t you. I mean, he’s done it often enough for them to have found some sort of evidence, surely.”

David drew some change from his pocket and handed over a quid. Waited for the man to ring it up and give him his change—but he didn’t seem in any hurry to do so.

Come on, Tosser, hurry up.

“Got to be a right strange sort to do something like that, haven’t you,” Tosser said.

David shrugged.
Don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean to shrug.

“Who in their right mind would go about killing women, though, eh?” Tosser went on, jabbing one porky finger at a button on his till. He paused. “Got to be a nutter.” He shook his head. “Got to be.”

David didn’t want to fully take in what he’d said—
nutter, nutter, nutter
—so blinked a few times and concentrated on the packets of cigarettes on the shelf behind Tosser. He inhaled deeply, a big fuck-off suck of air, then blew it out, his breath lifting one corner of the front page of his newspaper. Tosser finally finished ringing the sale up and gave David his change. David stared down at it, the fifty pence glinting from the strip lights above, then he thrust it in his pocket and picked up his paper. Left the shop while Tosser prattled on, knowing he’d be called all the names under the cloud-covered sun once the door closed after him.

He raced back to his flat. He never read the paper while he walked, preferring to read it in the comfort of his own home, scanning the articles at rapid-fire speed the first time then slowing on the subsequent go through, savoring everything, reading between the lines—around the lines, behind the fucking lines—to see if there was some hidden message there. There never was. Just straight reporting. Boring reporting.

Home. He didn’t bother taking off his coat. He sat on his bed and positioned Sally next to him so she could see too. He smoothed the paper on his knees and before reading, took in the size of the article. Full bottom half. The headline was larger than before, about twenty-six pt, he reckoned, all in black caps.

ANOTHER VICTIM, ANOTHER ISLAND IN THE STREAM

They’d found her? Already? Jesus Christ!

He read fast, the words seeming to tumble over one another on the page, dancing, running away from where they were supposed to be and stopping somewhere else. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again to read at a slower pace.

Another body was found in the early hours of this morning by a farmer looking for one of his stray cows. Cheryl Witherspoon had been missing for two days and it is estimated she was left at the stream—farther up from the other victims—between one and two a.m.

How did they know that? How did they always get it right?

As with the other victims, Miss Witherspoon had not been subjected to sexual abuse. However, she was drugged, but, unlike the other victims, she wasn’t killed before she was placed in the stream.

Detective Langham, lead officer on this case, said, “I don’t feel the man responsible will have enough courage to approach another woman in the near future. From what we have seen he needs time to recover between abductions, almost as though he is weakened from dealing with what he has done. A weak man, very weak.”

Why did that Langham repeat himself? Was he stupid? Or did he think the readers were stupid and they wouldn’t get it the first time? And David wasn’t weak. No fucking way was he. He clenched his teeth and read on.

“I would suggest remaining vigilant, especially if you’re a female dog walker, but I wouldn’t change your day-to-day life. The man we are looking for, despite coming across as frightening due to abducting women then killing them, is actually a weak-willed individual who possibly suffers from an inferiority complex.”

There it was again. Weak. Bastard.

“Profilers have suggested he has been made to feel useless in the past, therefore, his taking women is a form of control, something he can use to make himself feel better. What we will also probably discover when he’s caught—and he will be—is the fact that he lacks guts. He possibly thinks he’s brave, but I believe he’s far from it. If he was brave, he’d take another woman tonight, wouldn’t he, to prove me wrong.”

David’s face burned. Reading about himself like that was more than a little disturbing. How did they know so much just from the bodies and where he’d put them, when he’d taken them? How did his personality come into it? He rubbed his temple, unable to understand where they’d gotten their information from—accurate too. He
did
need time between selecting women. He
had
been weak-willed in the past,
did
have an inferiority complex, but what they
didn’t
know, the cocky bastards, was he was none of those things now. The women had seen to that.

“What do you think, Sally?” he whispered. “Shall I show them I’m brave? That I have the courage to bring another friend home tonight?”

He glanced at her, and his movement jostled the mattress, sending Sally sprawling backwards, her stiff legs sticking up in the air. Her dress lifted, exposing her naked, private garden, and he hurriedly covered her up, pleased she didn’t have that messy redness like the women did. Her eyelids clicked as they opened and closed. He sat her on his lap, her feet beneath the newspaper, and let her read the article for herself.

“You agree, don’t you, Sally?”

He thought she nodded, thought she gave him the thumbs up, and that was good enough for him. A glance at his alarm clock on the bedside cabinet told him he had just enough time to clean before going out and making friends with another woman and her dog. As he polished and bleached, hoovered then mopped, he thought about how all those women looked like Mother after he’d bleached them. They changed right before his eyes from the minute he took them to the second he laid them in the stream water, and that’s what Mother had done, hadn’t she? After Dad hadn’t woken up on the night of the ‘Sally in the Fire’ incident, Mother had become worse. After Dad had been taken away, Mother muttering about the cost of a funeral and how she’d been left with her useless prick of a son, she’d gotten worse.

Still, David had put
her
in the stream in the end. Sixteen years old, he’d been, but he’d managed it well enough. She’d tried to speak to him when he’d bleached her—his way of trying to remove the badness in her, on her, to make her clean so she’d be the nice woman she’d once been—but the medicine had made her words slurred. He hadn’t intended to kill her. Not until she’d managed to speak coherently after he’d spent some time cleaning every part of her.

“You fucking piece of shit, David.” Her words had been slow, dragged out. “I hate you. Have always hated you. You…you should have been a girl. A clever girl. You’re a useless bastard with no spine. And now look at you, in that bra and those…knickers. And that doll. What the fuck…do you…think you—?”

He hadn’t allowed her to finish. Had pressed his hand to the top of her head and kept her submerged. She’d flailed. She’d splashed him until he’d been soaked, but she’d given in eventually and had gone still.

“That’s enough thinking,” he muttered now. He put his cleaning things away in the cupboard then walked around the flat to check it was sufficiently clean for when his new guest arrived. “Time I add a bit to my diary, have something to eat, then tootle off out.”

He’d prove that Langham pig wrong.

* * * *

Diary Entry #310

Quote of the Day: Coward? Weak? Big mistake calling me those mean things

I’ll admit I’m relieved. Thought I’d made a right mess of things, didn’t I. Turns out, even though she was found quicker than I’d expected, she’s dead. I don’t even want to think about what state I’d be in if she hadn’t died. I mean, she could have told them all sorts, couldn’t she. If they know shit about me just from when I kill and where I put them, then there’d be a whole lot more if she’d been able to blab about my mask. And Sally, she’d tell them all about her, and I don’t want Sally discussed.

I’m going to go out tonight. Fuck yeah. I reckon they’ll be expecting me to collect a woman in a couple of
days
—they’d say I’m
escalating
—but they won’t be bloody expecting me to do it tonight, will they! Not after I’ve only just got rid of one. Not when they think I’m weak.

Saying I’ve got no courage pissed me off. Reminded me of Mother calling me a useless bastard with no spine. She’d paid for that, and now some other slag is going to pay for it too. Damned if I’ll let them—females, and those pig coppers—make me feel like Mother did. I’m getting better, finally being me, and I won’t allow them to fuck that up.

Dinner. I need a bit of dinner. Something light. Don’t want to chuck it up when I kill a dog. That’s the worst part, the blood. It smells funny, like when you were a kid and held your coins too tight and it left that scent on your hands. Then you accidentally licked your finger and tasted the copper. Yeah, like that. And that blood’s hot when it splashes on your hand. Because that last dog was such a big fucker, it took a few stabs before I got it in the right place where I could lift the knife and slice between its ribs. I just have to hope there’s a woman out tonight and that her dog is smaller than the last one. Yeah, the big one had been soppy, but it had bared its teeth at me after I’d stabbed it the first time, and if I hadn’t kept on stabbing as quickly as I had, I reckon it would have sunk its teeth into me, no problem.