BiteMarks (22 page)

“
She thinks you're fucking other people then?”

“
So I assume.”

“
That's easily solved. You're not.”

“
Yes, but I can't just come out and tell her what's really going on.”

“
That's your call, but if you don't then you'll have to accept that she's gone. In all likelihood she'd be gone if you told her anyway. Either way it's simple.”

“
Thanks. You're a big help.” I mutter, glancing out at the quiet street.

“
Look, if a person can't handle the real you, then sooner or later the whole thing's going to blow up anyway. What you had was built predominantly on loneliness and deception by the sounds of it. There wasn't any real substance beyond the desire to bump body parts together yet, and now you can't do anything to repair it without exposing yourself to somebody who might just use it to destroy your career and have you locked up. Let her go, Shane.”

Across the street a heavily bearded man in a stained brown trench-coat stumbles along clutching a smudged green glass bottle and holding animated discussion with the sky. I think about holding conversation with Karen, suspecting that I'll get about as much response as the drunk man.

She stands in front of me with arms crossed, face hard and emotions in a locked box. She is waiting for familiar words, ones she was hearing before I even learned to talk. Pleas, platitudes and promises – the language of guilt – her eyes are radiating challenge, tell me something I don't already know. I am not possessive of a great degree of tact, the words fall out like rice from a split bag, haphazard and skittering with a noise like claws on the polished floor. Her expression changes to shock, the shock is replaced by fear and then revulsion, she backs away as if I was an animal.

“
You are so right, I say.

“
I'm sorry, mate, I know how much it hurts.” He puts the car back into gear and pulls away from the curb, lost in thoughts of his own now.

It strikes me how I know almost nothing about his past. Here's me believing that I'm the closed book in this partnership, and I know little beyond the superficial about this man. Note to self, just because somebody says a lot it doesn't necessarily follow that they're actually telling you much. There are different ways to hide.

* * *

Richard Zelt is not pleased to meet us. His small wet eyes never stop moving around the room and keep returning to his watch every few seconds, as if he could somehow will the duration of our visit to a close. He is a short fat man with scant wisps of hair clinging to his flaky scalp in random clumps. I try not to think about the oily texture of his hand in mine when I unwisely shook it.

Marcus' description as we had approached – a wet sack of shit with limbs and a head – I have to admit that having spent some time in his company now, I can see his point.

“
So you're saying that you've never met anyone who matches that description?” Marcus is doing the talking on this one.

“
No, not that I can recall, I meet a lot of people, a lot of prospective tenants.”

“
I just gave you a description of a fucking albino vampire and you can't remember whether you've met him or not?” Marcus' voice is rising in volume with anger and incredulity.

“
Sorry, I wish I could be more helpful to you guys.”

Zelt giving us a what's a guy to do shrug and pasted on smile that comes out like a smirk. Marcus turns and addresses me now.

“
Shall we just lock this prick up as an accessory to murder?”

Zelt leaps back in before I can reply.

“
Murder? I haven't done anything, there are no grounds …” He's panicking badly now. Marcus gives him a look that promises copious violence is imminent if he doesn't start co-operating with us.

“
You're concealing the whereabouts of a suspected murderer, we've got serious grounds to believe that he's in one of your properties and he's distinctive enough that a jury won't buy your poor memory as a defense when they see pictures of what he did to the girl.”

I step in to offer a way out.  “Look, we're not interested in any of the technicalities of laws that you might be bending, we just want this man before he does any more damage. Tell us where we can find him and we'll ignore everything else.”

He sighs heavily. “I knew it was a terrible idea. I didn't see any teeth though guys, he didn't speak to me. Just picked up the keys and handed over some cash. Gave me the creeps but his money hasn't run out yet so I've not been back.”

“
Where is he?”

“
Here.” He writes down an address on Lucknow Drive, a stone's throw from where I live, and hands it over.

“
There was a complaint from the tenants below the other day, noises in the middle of the night, but I've not been to check it out yet.”

“
Thank you for your begrudging co-operation, Mr Zelt.

We turn and walk away clutching the precious scrap of paper.

“
I say we have somebody take a closer look at the assholes finances.” Marcus is still not amused by Zelt's initial reticence, muttering expletives as we get back in the car again.

“
Carrots and sticks.” I say.

“
What?”

“
Different people are motivated by different things, my friend.”

“
Suddenly you're the one dispensing advice now, are you?”

I give him a self-satisfied smile. “Yes, we're Yin and Yang, Marcus.”

“
What's that supposed to mean?”

“
Light and dark, complementary opposites. Balancing each other.”

He looks at me and grins then aims a punch at my thigh.

“
Bigot!”

“
Let's go lock this creature up.”

* * *

They settle on Meg's dad first. He belongs to a group of individuals who do not respond well to selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors SSRI's, a new group of antidepressants, and as a result is taking an older variant called Dothiepin. This causes him fewer side-effects, allowing him to deal with the pressures of a demanding professional life, which is at heart the main cause of his considerable anxiety and frequent bouts of depression. The drugs mean that he can continue to destroy and humiliate weaker opponents in the courtroom, and that he can continue to rape his daughter on a regular basis. This dependence provides an opportunity.

He is considered to be at a comparatively low risk for suicide, although this status is casually monitored on the frequent occasions that he returns to his doctor for a new prescription. However, the medical profession is known to get the assessment wrong from time to time. Meg's dad is a case in point, since to all outward  appearances, he'll be ending his life in around about four hours time. He'll sit down at his desk in the office that remains locked to the rest of the household, flicking through images that he's made on his computer, and he will die from an overdose of those pills washed down with a pleasingly smoky malt.

The plan itself was simple, based around the man's familiar routine. On Friday nights he returned home at his usual time and retired to his study to 'work' for a while, whilst Meg and her younger sister cooked dinner for the family. After listening to his anecdotes about the week over the food, and remembering to laugh in the right places as he demanded and expected, they would be excused from the table to clear the dishes. At this point he would once again retire to his study to 'work'; Meg believed that he was actually fulfilling other needs by viewing particular kinds of pornography.

Tonight Meg would either excuse or distract her sister from the cooking, a highly spiced Burmese style pork curry, done in two separate pans in order that she can add a dozen very finely crushed pills to the pot which would serve her dad. The tablets had already been procured and ground to the required consistency since she had known where he stored them. The sweet, spicy and thickly pungent sauce would adequately conceal the bitter taste and chalky texture; he'd never notice.

Internet searches had led us to believe that six tablets would be sufficient to kill an adult male and that twelve would take out a rhino. The pots would be cleaned of any residue by the dishwasher, which was always put on immediately after the table had been cleared anyway, and the man himself always had a few whiskeys on a Friday which would help things along just nicely too.

Meg's mum wouldn't disturb him whilst he was in his study, so life-saving medical intervention was unlikely provided that she had the guts to carry through with the plan that she had been instrumental in making. The ugly sneer on her pretty face when she talked about him and what he did to her on a regular basis said that the wounds ran deep enough to translate into murder when the time came. 

He is home now. She hears the front door close, the familiar jangle of keys on the sideboard in the hallway and then the soft padding of his steps, always a slight pause outside her room and then they continue onwards to the study at the end of the landing. Finally comes the clunk-click of the lock sliding across and into place, barring entry to everybody else whilst he sat down to do whatever it was that he did in there.

She rises reluctantly; her expression is set and unreadable as she heads down the stairs and into the kitchen. The powdered tablets are in a small plastic freezer bag in her pocket, its presence slows her progress - guilt has the heft of lead. The stairs come and go, she cannot feel them beneath her bare feet neither does she feel the warmth from under-floor heating as she steps onto the kitchen floor. 

The kitchen itself is a study in understated and expensive modern design; polished granite work surfaces reflect back the harsh spotlight beams like sun flare on a glass window. The units are oak, solid wood of course, the only veneers in this house are worn by the occupants, and the floor is tiled and heated from beneath, fat copper snakes living under slim marble slabs, the sheen of the floor bouncing light around off the highly polished fronts of  stainless steel appliances.

Meg takes in the familiar surroundings as if she is seeing them for the first time again. She removes copper based pans, a thick oak chopping board, Japanese knives and an assortment of ingredients in an automaton daze. She arranges them neatly as she has been taught, readying for the preparatory work.

Fear is a strange entity; it can smother or sharpen the senses in different circumstances and different people. Meg feels the switch between numb haze and absolute clarity like the slap of iced water on unsuspecting skin, she quickly finds herself praying for the detachment to return.

She lifts up the surgically keen vegetable knife now and begins to prepare some of the ingredients, slicing bulbs of bright green and white salad onions into slim rounds, crushing cloves of pungent garlic with a thump of her palm to loosen the brittle skin away from the sticky flesh, and scraping the small fiery seeds from a bird-eye chili pepper.

Before long her sister, Lauren, skips into the kitchen and takes up a bottle of grass-scented olive oil, adding it to the two pans and turning on the heat in preparation for the cubes of moist pink pork.

She sings snatches of a vaguely familiar pop song that's on repeat play in the charts right now, mixing up some of the words and humming the parts that she can't remember. Meg has already planned how to distract her whilst she adds the crushed tablets, and bides her time chopping the ingredients still finer until it's time to add them to the browning meat.

Lauren turns away to stir the meat with a long-handled wooden spoon which provides a suitable opening, and Meg runs the knife firmly across her palm, opening up a shallow wound that starts to drip blood onto the jet black work top.

“
Ouch, God that hurts!” 

Lauren turns around, eyes widening at the sight of flowing blood.

“
Quick, fetch me some tissues from through there.”

Meg gestures towards the downstairs cloakroom back through the open hallway door. The cut burns from the remnants of chili on the knife edge, but she ignores the glowing pain in her urgency and fumbles for the freezer bag with her uninjured hand. Finally she locates it and empties the contents into the pan for her father, followed by the finely chopped vegetables, scraping them off the board as fast as she can. She virtually throws the board back down on the side and pours in a pot of cream and a tub of pre-made vegetable stock, concealing the remnants of white powder by stirring the concoction to mix it properly.  

As if on cue Lauren arrives back with an untidy handful of hastily gathered tissue paper which she thrusts at Meg with a concerned expression. Meg smiles in thanks and wraps it around her hand a couple of times, tying the loose ends to secure the makeshift bandage in place; the leaking blood starts to show through immediately, an expanding crimson rose.

The heat is turned down after a time and lids placed on to maintain a gentle simmer, all trace of residue has gone now and the air is fragrant with spices. The two girls are joined by their mother, the table set in a trance. Silverware is laid out precisely, neatly framing black slate mats, lead crystal glasses are polished to a sparkle, pressed napkins folded and positioned perfectly. High standards are insisted on in everything that they do.