Read Keeping Online

Authors: Sarah Masters

Tags: #Erotic Romance Fiction

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BOOK: Keeping
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Why didn’t they provide tea cozies here? Another thing to add to his irritation list. Maybe he’d ask Cheryl when he went home.

* * * *

Diary entry #308

Quote of the day: The man who can successfully hide a multitude of emotions, making others think he feels the complete opposite, is a clever man indeed. I am clever.

In the car on the way back from Morrison’s, I got to thinking about Conrad going to the newspaper. What a cock! If they don’t take him seriously that’s fine by me—I want to play with that detective for a long while to come—but if they do, I might need to be a bit more careful. The voice told me not to worry, that there’s nothing to worry
about,
but you can never be sure, can you?

I asked what the voice’s name was as I drove along Hipwell Road, said I wasn’t happy keep referring to him like that, and he replied that if I needed a name, Mr Clever would do. I wanted to laugh, to tell him he was just as much a dick as Conrad but sensed that wasn’t a wise move. Mr Clever gets prickly sometimes, snaps at me when I won’t do what he wants, when he wants, and as I’m at a crucial part of the bitch’s place in my PeRsoNal JouRnEy, I can’t be doing with anything going wrong. If Mr Clever decided to stop instructing me, letting me know when it’s safe and when it isn’t, I’d be fucked, wouldn’t I?

I must admit, his advice in telling me to wear a disguise when I took CherYL was genius. He said I must do that with every slag in the future. That detective’s boyfriend might have the means to speak to her and get my description. The newspaper said that Oliver bloke not only hears the voices of the dead but now has the ability to speak to people who are alive—using his
mind.
How insane is
that?
I don’t believe a sodding word of it, but there you go.

So when I got back to my flat, I had to come in here and get the disguise out of my bedside drawer. It’s just a mask. You know, the one I got from eBay yonks ago, that supplier from Hong Kong. I remember the package took ages to arrive, and back then I’d wondered if I’d have it in time for that Halloween party the knobs down in flat sixty-two were holding. I think, if I recall right, that’s detailed in
Diary Entry #168
.

I thought I’d quickly scribble a few words down before going in to see her. She was being noisy when she heard me arrive home, so I now I have to teach her a lesson with the needle. Back in a minute…

I taught her that lesson all right. That calling out doesn’t get you anywhere.

She’s gone quiet now. Good girl.

* * * *

David opened the bedroom door and peered around it. Cheryl was where he’d left her, on the mattress. She’d messed the sheets instead of getting up to use the baby’s potty in the corner. That wasn’t very nice. He’d have to clean them now.

Or maybe he ought to make her do it. Perhaps she wouldn’t shit the bed again.

“Get up,” he said, his words muffled behind the latex. Sweat beaded above his upper lip and he got a shiver of pleasure down his back from it.

She lifted the top half of her body and stared at him, seemingly uncomprehending. Was she thick? He didn’t think she should be, not being a newspaper secretary. She ought to know a thing or two, know her onions as people were fond of saying.

An annoying phrase, that.

“I said, get up!”

He sounded menacing and it gave him a thrill to watch her scrabbling to her feet, unsteady where she’d been sleeping on and off. That medicine he got from the bloke down The Stick was brilliant. Made a person off their face. It was wearing off now, what with her calling out the way she had been, and she was due another big dose. But first she needed to clean those sheets.

“Now pick up those sheets and come with me. Make sure you fold them around your mess. I don’t want any of it on my floors.”

He left the room, waiting for her in the hallway. It struck him that if she’d shit the bed she’d also crapped in her clothes. He had nothing here for her except what the other girls used to wear. Those garments would have to do, or she could go naked. Whatever.

She came to stand beside him and he turned his nose up. She didn’t smell too wonderful. In fact, she smelled like that Yorkshire Terrier had when he’d snapped its neck.

“You need to have a bath. You can put the sheets in there with you. They’ll need bleaching, and so do you. Bleach is such a fine cleaner, you know. It’ll scour any impurities from your skin. Might burn a bit, but if it burns then you know it’s working. The bathroom is this door here.” He walked to it and pointed. “You have ten minutes. I will be standing outside. It’s pointless to check whether you can escape from the window because we’re several floors up. Plus”—he’d said that last word in a growl—“I’ve locked it, so again, pointless. Just have your bath and I’ll come and get you when your time is up. Three, two, one— Go!”

He flung open the door and pushed her inside. She staggered forward into the toilet cistern, banging her hip on it. A corner of the sheet dangled in the toilet.

“Look at what you’re doing, Cheryl,” he said, nodding at the loo.

She glanced at it.

He glanced at his watch.

“Nine minutes left. Get on with it.” He shut the door and stood in front of it, spreading his legs and folding his hands over his chest. He felt like a god, all powerful, and smiled, his cheeks bunching, the skin there touching the underside of the mask. Slippery from the condensation inside.

Nine minutes was a long time when you were waiting. It dragged by, and David almost went in there when she still had fifty-two seconds to go. But he never went back on his word if he could help it. He’d told her he’d go in there when her time was up and he wasn’t intending to do otherwise.

Mr Clever said,
“Do you not think it odd that there have been no splashing sounds from in there?”

David frowned.

“Do you not worry that she has a sheet in there, one long enough to hang herself with?”

David cleared his throat.

“Do you not wonder whether she didn’t run a bath at all and has stuffed that sheet in her mouth in the hopes she suffocates herself?”

David looked at his watch again and saw it was time to go into the bathroom. Mr Clever had worried him, though, given him pause for thought. There
hadn’t
been any sounds of water running. Had he zoned out again and just hadn’t heard it? She
might
be behind the door, waiting for him to enter. She
might
have killed herself. He pondered on how he should handle this. Then realized he’d broken his word. She’d had eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds.

He yanked down the door handle and stared at her on the floor beside the toilet, intending to give her more than a piece of his mind—the whole damn chunk of it was ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue, the words it held ready to spill.

Cheryl was asleep, her face pressed against the pedestal, the sheet clutched in both hands and drawn up in a bunch beneath her chin. The stench was evil, what with the bathroom being small and the window being closed. He sighed, bent down to take the sheet away, to peel her disgusting clothes off and put them in the wash. The machine would do the business on a ninety-degree cycle, but he couldn’t fit her in there too. No, she’d need a bleach bath.

Yes, asleep or not, she needed that bath.

Chapter Three

Langham was in his office, going over the missing women’s files. Eleven-fifty in the bloody morning and he was flicking one page after the other, seeing nothing he hadn’t seen before, spotting nothing that would help him out. He was antsy, pissed off that they were dealing with someone so scrupulous, so cunning. It wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with men like this, not by a long shot, but by now, after five women had been found, something usually stood out, helping them break the case.

He ran everything through his head, the gnawed end of a biro between his teeth. All right, the killer had stuck to the same methods so far, abducting, keeping them from two to six days, drugging then dumping. Why had he kept some longer than others? Langham scoured the dates to check whether a pattern cropped up but he just couldn’t see anything of importance there.

“Get a fucking grip,” he muttered, taking the pen from his mouth and stabbing at the desk blotter with the nib. “Think. Go through it.” He took a sip of long-cold tea and grimaced. “No bloody good. Can’t think with cold tea.”

He left his office, walking down the hospital-like corridor past the vending machine, resisting the urge to buy a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate. Maybe a can of Coke. At the end, he leaned on the wall and stared into the main working area, satisfied the others were actually doing their jobs and not piss arsing about. Heads were bent, fingers tapping on keyboards, hands lifting coffees to lips.

“They’re dumped on weekdays,” he murmured, pushing off the wall and going into the small kitchen. “So it looks like weekends mean something. Like he works them. Probably lives alone or is keeping them in another location other than his home.” He filled the kettle and put it on to boil. There was coffee in the percolator, but it’d already be stewed by now, not something he fancied on an empty belly. That stuff had the ability to melt his stomach lining.

He propped his elbows on the counter and held his forehead in his hands. Stared at breadcrumbs some lazy bastard hadn’t wiped up. The casing of a straw from one of those Ribena cartons. The empty packet of sugar—Starbucks, whose wages ran to bloody Starbucks?—a splatter of coffee marring one corner, drying the paper and the sugar inside into a crinkled clump. He cursed himself for letting his mind idle, for allowing himself to be distracted by lackadaisical housekeeping from his fellow officers.

The kettle snapped off, the riotous bubble of the water drawing him back to the reason he was in here. Billows of steam huffed out of the spout, and he lifted the kettle from the stand and lost himself in the inane act of making tea. He stared at the cup as he squeezed the teabag, seeing it but not, going through the motions but hardly aware he was doing them. It helped him to think, staring—something Oliver had gotten the wrong end of the stick with when they’d worked the Sugar Strands case.

Langham smiled at the memory. Oliver had been contacted by the dead, desperate to take off running, anywhere and everywhere, to do something to help track their killer down. But Langham had stared at the carpet, trying to work something out—couldn’t remember what it was now—and Oliver had taken it for him not being interested. Not caring about the victim or the case.

Of course he fucking cared. This job was his whole life—or had been until he’d admitted his feelings for Oliver and allowed him into his life as his other half. Everything bad that happened in this God-forsaken city, this sometimes filthy, depraved city, was his job to clean up. Not just him, the cases were too many for him to take control of alone, but that small portion that landed on his desk? Fuck yeah, he cared.

Possibly too much.

Tea made, he returned to his office, pushing the door open then going inside, taking a sip at the same time. Hot. Lovely.

Oliver sat in his chair, his feet propped up on the desk, as usual, Langham’s files pushed aside like so much refuse—as usual.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Langham glanced at the wall clock. “It isn’t lunchtime yet. Nothing interesting going on at the newspaper? No tea to make for the editor?” He walked over to him. “Shift your arse. Get your own seat.”

Oliver rose then walked to the seat opposite. He plopped down and gave Langham one of those looks—the kind that said he’d received information. Relieved but feeling guilty for it, Langham sat in his chair and leaned back. Whether it was data for the missing women case or something entirely different it didn’t matter. So long as a case got solved with Oliver’s help, that’d be all right with him.

“What have you got?” He studied Oliver’s face for signs he’d seen something horrific.

“Cheryl Witherspoon.” Oliver clamped his jaw, the muscles there undulating beneath the skin.

She clearly meant something to Oliver, what with that flickering tic, but Langham had never heard of her. Not that he could remember, anyway.

“Who?” Langham swiveled his seat and opened a desk drawer, pulled out a packet of biscuits, then put them on the desk, wincing as crumbs scuttled out and spread far and wide, one of them getting stuck in a groove in the wood next to a small outcrop of dust. “Want a cookie?” He took one for himself, examining it for foreign matter, fluff and whatnot from the drawer. He needed to buy one of those little plastic boxes to put his opened food in. He’d bet the cookies would be soft now, what with the air getting to them. Still, they’d fill the gap—his stomach needed something in it or he’d come over all woozy.

“No, no I don’t.” Oliver was pale. Eyes hooded. Jaw muscles still flickering.

Not good.

“She wasn’t at work again today,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “Didn’t think anything of it. She’s pulled sickies before if she’s tired from working two jobs.”

“Aww, fuck.” Langham sighed, the name glaring bright pink neon in his head now. “Not Cheryl from your office?”

“Yep.” Oliver scooted his chair forward and rested his forearms on the desk. “I feel a bit sick.”

Langham put his cookie back down. “I imagine you do. Dead or alive?”

Oliver stared at the crumbs. “Alive when she spoke to me. Now? Fuck knows. No contact for an hour. She was…she was having a bath.”

Langham picked up the cookie again, bit off a chunk and chewed. At times like this it was better to let Oliver get it all out. Difficult, though, for Langham to keep quiet, to not push for information. When people contacted Oliver while Langham was there, Christ, it was hard to keep his mouth shut and wait for Oliver to repeat what he’d been told. Langham was finding it tricky now, and far from wanting to appear as though he didn’t give a toss by eating a cookie, it would give Oliver a sense of normality and balance him. Prodding for too much too soon might make Oliver transfer a sense of urgency, of panic to the dead, which, in turn, might make the dead float off to wherever the fuck they’d come from. Who knew whether they got alarmed like they had when alive? Who knew what conditions were needed for them to even get through to Oliver in the first place? If the atmosphere changed, or the tension, they might lose their tether and not be able to say what they’d wanted to say. Waste of their effort. So, Langham kept quiet as much as possible.

BOOK: Keeping
11.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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