Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation (35 page)

Gavin Stottart stood in front of Emma. He had something in his hand; something big. Lapslie recognised him from the Festival Hall, where he had been standing behind his father. Now, alone, he seemed larger, more in control.

He brought his hands around in front of him. He was holding
a conical clown’s hat in one hand, bizarrely coloured in candy-coloured red and white stripes. In the other he had a saucepan. Whatever was inside steamed, and smelled like road works.

‘I’d thought about infecting you with necrotising fasciitis,’ he was saying in a very quiet, distressingly sane voice. ‘It’s surprisingly easy. All I have to do is take a swab from inside my throat, make a cut in your stomach and stick the swab in the cut. The bacteria will just … eat away at your skin. It’s so fast you can watch it happening, watch your fat and muscle just … disappearing. The pain is apparently phenomenal. But it’s too fast, and once it’s started it can’t be controlled, so I chose something else for you. It’s called ‘pitch-capping’. It was developed by the British Army in Ireland in the eighteenth century. It’s a pretty simple concept. I pour melted tar into the hat, like so.’ and he tipped the saucepan up, pouring the tar into the hat in a black, glutinous stream. The hat sagged under the weight and the heat. ‘And then I put the hat on your head. The tar will settle into your hair. The burns will be – oh, indescribably painful. I’ll be recording the sounds you make all the time. Every scream, every cry, every whimper. It will all be captured. And then, when the tar has solidified, I’ll pull the hat off. Apparently, according to the historical records, it’ll pull your scalp off with it, and I’ll be recording that as well. I’ll be interested in seeing whether the noises you make then will be different. And the beautiful thing is, you’ll probably survive, and then we can try something else. Maybe the Iron Maiden.’

He reached out with the hat towards Emma’s head, intending to turn it over quickly and slam it on before any of the tar could escape.

Lapslie fired at the hand holding the hat.

The blast shocked the boy. He whirled around, dropping the hat. Tar splattered down his crotch and his legs. He clapped his
hands to his eyes. ‘Jesus
Christ
!’ he shouted, but the heat of the tar suddenly seared through the cloth of his trousers and he screamed, high and shrill and long.

Emma glanced over at Lapslie with terror in her eyes.

Bizarrely, Gavin began to laugh. ‘Oh God, the colours!’ he said, and then screamed again as the black, molten mass of his trousers clung to every curve of his skin. ‘Oh God, the incredible colours. This is it. This is what I was looking for. This is
perfect
!’

He fell backwards, panting and whimpering with the agonising pain.

Lapslie moved across to free Emma with a pocket knife. She clung to his arm as he pulled her from the chair.

‘Thanks, boss,’ she breathed. ‘I was … I—’

‘I know,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I know.’

A sound made him turn around.

Gavin Stottart had pulled himself up onto the mixing desk. His hands were covered with black, steaming tar, and his was smearing it on the sliders as he tried desperately to capture the sound that he had been seeking all his life – the sound of his own screams.

The sea was a sheet of rippled glass extending from the concrete of the flood barrier out to the infinite horizon. There was no mist this time, and Emma could see black objects floating on the water, far away, that might have been birds or might have been boats. It was difficult to tell. She appeared to have lost her perspective somewhere along the way.

The birdwatchers were still there, still with their telescopes and their binoculars. They were still wearing the same anoraks and holding the same thermos flasks. She could swear they were even waiting for the same bird to appear. She hoped it was worth it.

One bird among many, looking to the casual observer just like all the rest. Wasn’t that just like police work? You came up with a profile, identified a suspect, arrested him as a criminal, but to anyone else he just looked like one of the flock. Nothing special at all.

She could hear someone climbing the concrete slope behind her. She had a little bet with herself that it was Lapslie, come to see if she was ready to return to work. It wouldn’t be Dom, that was for sure. He was content to wait for her to come back to him. That was his style.

A gull cried out overhead, and she flinched. These days,
anything that sounded like someone in pain made her heart beat fast within her chest and her mouth go dry.

A figure joined her and stared out across the water. She turned her head, and was mildly surprised to find it wasn’t Lapslie or Dom, or anyone else she might have expected. It was Professor Peter Wilkinson from Essex University – the man she had asked about genetically engineered wheat, all that time ago. He was slimmer and taller than she had remembered. His North Face jacket whipped around him in the North Sea wind.

‘They said I might find you here,’ he said, still staring out into the distance. When she didn’t reply, he went on: ‘Various people told me you were in various places. I tried them all. This was my last option.’

‘It’s like the end of the world, here,’ she said quietly. ‘Which is kind of what I want.’

‘I want to help,’ he said. ‘I know some of what happened from the newspapers, and some from what people have told me. You don’t need to tell me anything, but I do want to help.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because I like you,’ he said simply.

She thought about Dom McGinley, and about what he might think, might say, might do, and then she thought, what the hell? This is the end of the world. I can do what I like here. No consequences.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think what would help right now is hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream, followed by ice cream.’

A pained expression crossed his face. ‘I wasn’t expecting to go that far,’ he said, and then smiled.

She smiled too. Perhaps it
was
all going to be all right.

Perhaps.

The drug thorazitol, used to treat Mark Lapslie’s synaesthesia, was invented for this novel. No such drug exists in reality.

Thanks to: Andrew Lane, for research, ideas and editorial assistance; Cat and Marc Dimmock, for encouragement and comments at a critical stage of low willpower; and to the indefatigable Robert Kirby, for champagne cocktails and much else. Continued thanks to John Catherall and Dain Morritt, for the use of their names. And a wave to Alec Charles, for adding academic credibility.