The Border: Part One (8 page)

“Rough old night,” he continued, as he started to cut into the bread. “Rough as a can of -”

Hearing the door open, he glanced over just in time to see a young woman stepping into the diner. In her early twenties, she seemed a little lost and vacant, although her haunted expression hinted at something deeper. Unable to take his eyes off her, the stranger watched as she made her way to the counter and placed an order, and he couldn’t help but notice the thick bundle of cash she quickly rifled through as she headed over to take a seat in the corner.

“You wanna sit with me?” he asked.

No reply. She was clearly lost in a world of her own, too intent on counting her money to even notice that he was trying to get her attention. For a moment, he simply watched her, struck by the contrast between her businesslike way of handling the notes and the fact that her hands seemed to be trembling. A few seconds later, she cursed under her breath and started counting again, and then the same thing happened not long after, as if she was having trouble concentrating.

“Hey,” he said, waving at her, “you okay over there?”

She glanced at him, and for a moment she seemed a little defensive, almost as if she was startled that anyone had noticed her.

“Sorry,” the stranger continued, “I didn’t mean to pry, I just…” He paused, watching as she stuffed the money back into her bag. “It’s just a little quiet in here, don’t you think? I can actually hear myself think for once, which isn’t much fun, I can tell you. The stuff I’m thinking is… Well, it’s not particularly fascinating. I never knew I was such a boring fucker.”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, before setting her bag on her knees and starting to root through the contents.

“You should get a note-counter,” he added.

She glanced at him.

“You know, a money counter? Like they have in banks. One of those’d whip through a little stack on notes in no time.”

No reply.

“Just a suggestion,” he told her. “I thought I’d be helpful, that’s all.”

Without saying another word, she looked back down into her bag. After a moment, it became clear that she was trying once again to count the money, this time while keeping it out of sight.

“Can I ask you something?” the stranger continued, leaning so far back on his chair that it seemed in danger of tipping over. “Serious question. Do you know where the action is around here? ‘Cause I went to the only bar in town last night, the Monument, and it was dead as all hell. Like, there was only one other guy in there, and trust me, he wasn’t in the mood for talking. Seemed to have a rod up his ass, actually, about this dead chick from a few years back. So is there some place that I don’t know about? You know, somewhere all the interesting and cool people hang out?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, taking her phone from her bag and checking for messages.

“Huh,” he continued, “so there’s no like… underground clubs in town?”

She turned to him.

“Somewhere interesting,” he added. “I don’t care if it’s edgy or modern, or old-fashioned, or full of posers, or real grubby, or what kind of music they play, I don’t care about any of that, all I ask is that it’s interesting in some capacity. I mean, the bar on the town square is fine enough, I guess, if that’s what you’re looking for, but sometimes a guy wants something more… Yeah, more interesting.” He waited for her to reply. “Then again, maybe this is the wrong kind of town for interesting nights. Maybe I’m flat out of luck.”

“Maybe,” she replied, before looking back down at her phone. She clearly didn’t want to talk, as she tapped away at the screen and carefully avoided looking back at him.

“You’re bleeding,” the stranger said suddenly.

“What?”

“Your leg.” He pointed down, to where a trickle of blood had run from under her trouser-leg, onto her ankle, and over her sandals until it reached the floor. “Sorry, you just… You didn’t seem to have noticed, but you’re definitely bleeding.”

“Katie!” the waitress called out. “Food’s up!”

“Thanks,” Katie replied, getting to her feet and hurrying to the counter. Once she’d placed her food on her table, she turned to the stranger as if she was about to say something, and then she paused for a moment before heading through to the bathroom.

“Huh,” he muttered, turning back to look at his food, and then glancing out the window at the town square, where people were already out and about in the crisp morning air. “Well this place doesn’t change much, does it? No matter how much of a chance you give it.”

VII

“That’s not what I meant,” Jack replied, following Jane into the driveway as she headed back to the car. “I just thought you might want to talk about it a little more.”

“I don’t have time,” she said, opening the door before turning and quickly kissing him on the cheek. “Sorry honey, this might be an all-nighter, I can’t let Alex deal with it all by himself, not when it hits so close to home. You know what he’s like when anything to do with Caitlin Somers comes up, he takes it very personally. Thanks for making dinner, though. Those were some damn good pancakes.”

“You need to slow down or you’re gonna crash,” he told her as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “You’re pushing yourself way too hard.”

“I’m pushing myself just the right amount, thanks,” she replied, pulling the door shut and, a moment later, starting the engine. She waved at him as she reversed onto the street, and then she drove away, heading back to the police station.

“Great,” Jack muttered, turning and making his way back inside. “Once again, I’m gonna have to pick up the pieces when everything goes to hell.”

***

“There were fourteen separate knife wounds,” Doctor Tomlin explained as he made his way around the table, where Mel’s naked body lay following the autopsy. “Five in the head and neck, four in the upper torso, and five in the belly and groin areas.”

Staring down at the corpse, Alex couldn’t help but look at the thick Y-shaped cut on the dead woman’s chest, left behind after the autopsy. He’d seen plenty of bodies in the course of his career, but somehow the younger ones were always the worst, and at just twenty-six years of age, Mel Armitage was the second youngest he’d ever witnessed. Only Caitlin Somers had been younger, all those years ago, and he still saw her dead body every time he closed his eyes. Sometimes, even when his eyes were open.

“Have you had any…” He paused, before turning to Tomlin. For a moment, he couldn’t remember what he was about to ask. “Uh…”

“Any what?”

“Any…” Still struggling, he tried to think of something, anything he could ask. These blank moments had been happening more frequently over the past few months, and he was still learning to cover them up. “Have you had any luck identifying the weapon?”

“It was a knife with a serrated edge,” the doctor replied, as Jane hurried through from the next room. “Based on the size of the entry wounds, I’d say around five inches long, maybe the kind of thing you’d use for hunting. The attack was quite frantic, some of the wounds have tear marks from where the killer hurried to pull the knife out again and it got snagged on her skin. I imagine he broke a sweat, at least.” Reaching down with a latex-gloved hand, he slipped a fingertip into one of the knife wounds on Mel’s belly. “See? More of a tear. Our guy obviously isn’t a surgeon.”

Alex nodded.

“Sorry I’m late,” Jane whispered to him.

“How long would it have all taken?” Alex asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the corpse for a moment. His eyes lingered on the thick, black staples holding her chest closed, before finally he turned to Tomlin. “Would this have -”

Tomlin waited for him to continue. “Would it have what?”

Alex paused, again struggling to remember the question he was about to ask. After a moment, he realized Jane was waiting too.

“Would it… Would it have taken a long time?” he asked finally. That was it. He thought. Maybe. Hopefully.

“It would have been quick,” Tomlin replied. “The initial assault, at least. After that, with the blood loss, I’d imagine she lost consciousness within thirty or forty seconds. Most of the wounds probably occurred after that point.”

“A small mercy,” Alex whispered.

“Not really,” Jane pointed out. “Thirty or forty seconds, that’s a long time, especially if you know you’re… I mean, she probably
did
realize, at the end. It’s quite possible that she -”

“Okay,” Alex said, interrupting her. “I think we all get it.”

“I just mean -”

“We get it,” he said firmly.

She paused, before stepping closer to the body. “I noticed some of her fingernails were broken, does that mean there was a struggle?”

Tomlin nodded. “Good catch. Yes, she seems to have made an attempt to fight back, although there was no useful material under the nails themselves. No DNA, no threads, just a little cement dust from the ground.”

“What does that mean?” Alex asked.

“Maybe she tried to crawl away,” Jane suggested. “Maybe she was trying to drag herself away from the killer, which suggests he stopped for a moment and then resumed his attack, perhaps when he realized she wasn’t dead. If that’s the case, it seems likely that she struggled and -”

“Yes,” Alex said firmly.

“And that she -” Pausing, Jane realized that she’d made her point.

“We need to find the murder weapon,” Alex continued. “The killer’s probably long gone by now, so we have to act first.”

“With all due respect,” Jane replied, “how do you
know
he’s long gone? Or she, or whatever… It could just as easily be someone from around here.”

Alex shook his head. “There’s no-one in Bowley who’d do something like this.”

“With all due respect -”

“There’s no-one,” Alex replied, interrupting her again. “I know the people around here. Christ, Jane, you do too. There’s no-one in this town who’d be capable of doing something like this.”

She paused. “Maybe there is.”

He sighed.

“You can’t be sure it’s someone who just passed through,” she pointed out, before stepping closer to the table and peering at the knife wounds on the dead woman’s belly. Her lips moved slightly, as if she was talking to herself under her breath as she looked along the corpse. Finally, she began to frown.

“Anything you’d like to share with us, Ms. Freeman?” Tomlin asked after a moment.

“Only that…” She paused, before grabbing a notebook from her pocket and drawing the outline of a human figure, and then adding marks to represent each wound. “Just give me a sec, will you?”

“I’ve already taken photos,” Tomlin told her.

“Hang on.” Hurrying out of the room, she left them standing on either side of the table.

“Is she always like this?” Tomlin asked.

“She’s pretty good at what she does,” Alex replied. “I usually find it’s better to let her get on with things. Unfortunately, she had a tendency to be a little…”

“A little what?”

Alex paused, trying to pick his words with care. “Touchy-feely.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“We just need to catch the bastard who did this,” Alex muttered. “Don’t need to know whether he wet the bed as a kid and didn’t feel like Mummy loved him.”

“Check this out,” Jane said, hurrying back through and holding up her notebook along with a page from the file on Caitlin Somers’ death showing the injuries that the seventeen-year-old had sustained during her murder nine years earlier. “Spot the difference?”

Taking a closer look, Alex immediately realized what she meant: with just a few minor variations, the fourteen stab wounds on Caitlin’s body were basically in the exact same pattern as the stab wounds on Mel, as if the killer had deliberately tried to replicate the injuries.

“This doesn’t prove conclusively that it’s the same killer,” Alex said after a moment. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“Sure,” she replied, “but it definitely proves it wasn’t just a random attack by some passing stranger. At the very least, it was someone who knew about Caitlin Somers’ murder. Right?” She waited for him to say something. “Alex? I’m right, aren’t I? I have to be.”

He slowly nodded, before suddenly turning to look over at the door.

“You okay?” Jane asked.

He waited, as if he expected someone or something to appear in the doorway. Finally, he turned back to Jane. “I, uh…” he began to say, before pausing for a moment. “Yeah,” he continued after a few seconds. “Let’s get back to the office.”

Turning, he headed to the door.

“You’re going to catch the bastard this time, aren’t you?” a female voice asked.

Stopping, Alex turned back to look at Jane. “What did you say?”

“Sir?”

He looked at Tomlin, and then at the body on the table. “Nothing,” he muttered, before heading out.

***

“Absolute nonsense,” Audrey replied, sipping at her gin and tonic through a straw, “it will be
wonderful
to have Benjamin home for a few days. The poor boy deserves to spend Christmas with his family for once, after all those years on the road. Well, wherever he’s been.”

“Mum, it’s not that we don’t want him to come home,” Jack said with a sigh, “it’s just that -” He sat back as the waitress set his coffee down, and then he waited for her to head back into the cafe. The last thing he wanted was to be overheard talking about such a sensitive matter. “I didn’t say that we don’t want him here, I just said that Beth and I… We have certain reservations.”

“You were always too hard on him.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.”

“Of course it is.” She took another sip, as her gold earrings glinted in the afternoon sunlight. “I remember when you were all just little babies, and the two of you would cut Benjamin out of your games, even though he was the eldest. Honestly, you and Beth have no idea how much of a little club you set up as children, excluding your brother at every possible opportunity.”

“He -”

“I used to see him sitting out in the garden by himself when you two had gone off to the corner shop alone.”

“We always -”

“And although he never complained, I knew what was going on. It wasn’t nice of you. And why did you do it, eh? I never understood.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “Instinct, maybe?” He paused for a moment, as he realized that although there was perhaps a hint of truth to what she was saying, there was no point trying to mount a defense. “You’re probably right,” he added finally. “I’m sure Christmas will be great. In fact, Jane and I were thinking that instead of having Ben stay with us, maybe you’d like it if he slept in
your
spare room?”

She shook her head as she drank more gin and tonic.

“It’d be a good way for you to spend time with him,” he pointed out.

“Aren’t we having Christmas at Beth’s this year?”

“Yes, but -”

“So he can stay with her. Or with you. It makes no sense for him to be with me, I’m all the way out there on the edge of town. He wants to be in the center, so he can see his friends.”

“What friends?” Jack muttered.

“There you go again. Sniping at your brother.”

“Then there’s Dad,” he replied.

“Let me guess. Your dear alcoholic, pornography-addicted father isn’t exactly jumping for joy at the news?”

“That’s an under-statement. In every regard.”

“I’m not surprised,” she continued. “He’s probably deeply ashamed. One would hope so, anyway.”

“Mum -”

“You know what he did to Benjamin!”

“He was just doing what he thought was right!”

“Nonsense,” she spat back at him, as her tone hardened a little. “No parent should ever do that to a child. It showed a complete lack of trust and a total, utter lack of respect. He was basically showing poor Benjamin how little he actually cared for him.” She sighed. “I was so angry when I found out. Not just regular angry, the way I often got around your father, but that day… I was livid.”

“There were certain…” Jack paused, before realizing yet again that there was no point getting into an argument with his mother on the subject. “I think Dad’ll come to Christmas,” he continued finally. “It might not be some great family reunion, but at least he’s willing to be in the same room as Ben.”

“How magnanimous of him.”

“It’s just…” Pausing, he checked his phone, but there was still no message from Jane. “This is turning out to be a great Christmas so far, huh? A murder in town, everyone on edge, Ben coming home…”

“That poor girl,” Audrey replied, “I can’t imagine what her parents must be going through. I heard she was left in a bin behind the bar, like common trash.”

“That’s what I heard too.”

“What else do you know?” she asked. “Come on, you must know more than they’re saying on the news so far.” Leaning forward, she snapped her fingers. “Gossip, boy. Give me the gossip.”

He shook his head.

“What has Jane told you?”

“Almost nothing.”

“Oh, come on -”

“I’m serious,” he continued. “She’s clammed up. She says she can’t trust me with information in case I put it in the newspaper.”

“Which, to be fair, you would do.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You should bring her over here and I’ll get her tipsy,” Audrey replied. “Oil her up and she’ll soon spill the beans.”

“Jane’s not like that,” Jack told her. “She takes her job seriously. A little too seriously, sometimes. She doesn’t leak to the press, not even when the press is her husband.”