Bubblegum Smoothie (12 page)

The smoke rising, over by the police station.

“A warning of
that
,” I said, as people gathered around and watched smoke plume into the sky.

TWENTY

“You should’ve seen it Blake.”

“I saw it.”

“I—I was driving right down this road and then—and then my car shakes and the ground shakes and… Man, you should’ve seen it.”

“I saw it.”

Martha and I stood opposite the police station. Lenny was with us, and even though he hadn’t even been inside the police station when it’d gone boom, he acted as if he’d had a near-bloody-death experience.

“I could’ve—I could’ve been in there. I could’ve died in there.”

“Hopefully the gods will grant us our wishes next time,” I mumbled.

We stared at the fire teams as they sprayed their hoses at the evacuated police station. There was yellow tape all around the area, which media, passers-by and police officers gathered around. The police officers looked totally out of their comfort zone. Like they had nowhere else to go now their “home” had exploded.

“I—I felt the ground shake,” Lenny added. “Felt the wheels of my car… You should’ve—”

“I saw it!” Martha and I both shouted in unison.

Lenny turned and frowned at us. “Insensitive, you two, that’s what you are. No sensitivity whatsoever. We’ve lost a good man today. An expert pathologist.”

“Oh yeah?” Martha said. “Well, our condolences, of course. What was he called?”

Lenny shrugged. “I dunno. I didn’t really like him because he never washed his hands after handling bodies. And he smelled like old cheese.” He made out a sign of the cross on his chest. “But rest his soul, all that.”

As I stared at the firemen clearing the wreckage and debris away, I couldn’t help but feel aggrieved for my own personal reasons. The bodies—the bodies of the girls. I’d just figured out they had bombs rigged inside them, then they just
had
to go and explode. I figured if they hadn’t exploded, we’d have found their fingers inside them. Found a way to identify them.

But now they were gone. Blown to smithereens.

I couldn’t help but tip my hat to the psychopath who was killing these girls. Sure, he was leaving breadcrumbs. But they were breadcrumbs soaked in poison. Breadcrumbs that ate away at your system, that you only realised were there when it was already too late.

“So what now?” Martha asked.

Lenny gulped. Leaned against the yellow tape and shook his head.

“I… I dunno. I think we’ll be relocating across town temporarily. But shit, I love this place. Love the view from the window. It’s perfect, really.”

I looked at the shitty shops, the tramps sitting around with scruffy dogs. Hardly perfect.

“And what about the case?” I asked.

“The case?”

“The suitcase. No, what the bloody hell case do you think I’m on about?”

“Shouldn’t you be in hospital still?” Lenny asked, squaring up to me.

“That’s what I said,” Martha chirped in.

“Don’t stick up for him!”

“Okay, Blake. I’ll tell you about the case. Thanks to you, one of our girls exploded her guts all over the police station. Splattered our walls, destroyed our station.”

“Thanks to
me
?” I shouted.

“Yes. You should’ve called us right away the moment you received the envelope last night. We could’ve knocked our heads together. Figured a solution out.”

“Knocked our heads together?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “The only one who needs a knock on the bloody head around here is you. You and your inept department.”

“Guys, what—” Martha interrupted.

“Oh that’s what you think, is it? You think we’re inept?”

“I don’t think it. I know it. You’re an inept bunch of bribing—”

“Lenny, what did you—” Martha interrupted again.

“Do
not
accuse me and my department of ineptitude! We’re trying to go about our business in the right way.”

“The right way? Paying somebody one million pounds to catch a rampant serial killer? That’s the right way?”

Lenny looked either side at the crowds of people just to check nobody was looking. His cheeks flushed. He shook his head.

“Maybe I was wrong about you,” he said. “There’s me, being all kind by reaching out to you, throwing you an orange branch—”

“An
olive
branch!” I shouted, stamping my feet on the ground. “A fucking, shitting
olive
branch!”

A few people did turn around this time. They looked at me like I was some kind of crazy person. I couldn’t blame them, not really.

“Lenny,” Martha said. “What did you mean by one—”

“That’s it, Blake. This is over, right now. I’m arresting you. You’ve failed, so I’m arresting you. Arresting you on the suspicion of the murder of Grace Wallens in 2007.”

I held out my wrists. “Arrest me, then. Where’s your handcuffs?”

Lenny reached to his right. His cheeks flushed some more. “My cuffs may still be inside the station.”

“Oh. Inside that place over there? That burning ember of a place?”

“Are you making a mockery of a terrorist—”

“Guys!” Martha shouted.

It took me be surprise. Certainly made me look at her. Lenny flinched, too.

Her jaw was shaking. Her fists were clenched.

“Lenny, what did you mean when you said that ‘one of the girls exploded’?”

Lenny smirked. Smirked and frowned at me as if we both collectively agreed Martha was crazy or something. “Take a look around, sunsh… fellow. A body exploded. When explosions happen, stuff gets blown up.”

“Martha, is there a point to this?” I asked.

“One girl?” she said. “Just one exploded?”

Another pause. Another stretched-out silence from Lenny. “Well… yeah. How many girls do you want exploding? Three? Four? Nineteen?”

I fast realised what Martha was getting at. I took in a deep breath of the smoky air. Shit, I was sick of the smell of smoke. Fire seemed to be following me lately. “Wait. One girl. One girl exploded. So what about the other two?”

Lenny looked at me like I had something wrong with me. “The other two what?”

“Girls! The other two girls, Lenny. The girls who this killer killed. Gouged the eyes out of. Snipped the fingers off. What about them?”

More silence from Lenny.

And then, eventually, “Well they’re over at the mortuary so they should be fine.”

I very rarely felt simultaneously delighted, terrified and infuriated. They weren’t emotions that usually matched. But right now, I felt every one of those emotions at full intensity. 110% on the ‘tensity scale.

“So they’re… they’re still intact?” Martha asked.

Lenny laughed. “What? You didn’t think they’d exploded too, did you? God, what a bummer that’d be. Three exploding girls, zero evidence left. Ha! That explains the look on your faces. Holy shit, Blake. That was priceless. Absolutely—”

“These girls,” I said, heart pounding. The aching in my back was irrelevant all of a sudden. “Why are they in the mortuary?”

Lenny shrugged. “Dr. Parsons prefers to work down there. In fact he should be taking a look at identifying them in… well, about ten minutes or so.”

I looked at Martha. She looked back at me with a wide-eyed expression of fear that probably reflected my own look.

And then we both grabbed Lenny and dragged him by his arms towards Martha’s Fiat Punto.

“What? What are you—Hey! That’s assaulting an officer! That’s—”

“We’re going to the mortuary, you fucking idiot,” I said, as I opened the back door of Martha’s car.

“Why are we going there?” Lenny asked.

I was on the verge of explaining while slamming the car door against his spindly fingers when his face dropped. The colour drained from his cheeks, pale realisation taking its place.

“Oh,” he said.

I closed the passenger door. Martha started up the car.

“‘Oh’ indeed, Lenny. ‘Oh’ indeed.”

TWENTY-ONE

“Do we take a frigging left or a frigging right?”

We sped along in Martha’s Fiat Punto. Lenny was in the back trying to direct us to the mortuary, where Dr. Parsons was on the brink of cutting open the bodies of the second and third murder victims.

The bodies that would explode, just like the first one.

“I, erm… Adelphi Street. I’m pretty certain it’s down Adelphi Street.”

Martha swung the car to the right. “How certain is pretty certain?”

“Umm… I’d say seventy per cent certain.”

“Seventy per cent?” I shouted. “So there’s a three in a frigging ten chance that the mortuary could be on any other road in the entire frigging city?”

Lenny closed his eyes. Mumbled in concentration. “Yes. Yes, I guess it is three in ten. Or six in twenty—”

“Jesus, fuck,” Martha muttered.

“Well how am I supposed to know where a mortuary is?” Lenny asked.

“I’m through,” I said, turning away and shaking my head. “I’m absolutely through with trying to reason with you. We might as well drive around in circles and wait until we see the smoke, or feel the ground shake.”

Martha drove slowly down Adelphi Street, peering out the window at every building. “Don’t you have, like, an app for finding places or something?”

The idea pinged in my head, a lightbulb moment if ever there was such a thing. “Yeah, I… I do. Google Maps. I’ll give it a go.”

I yanked my iPhone out. My stomach sank when I saw the screen, cracked after my fall from the window of my flat last night. Not like I took Apple Care out either. Shit. Another unnecessary expense from the Fun Funds. Might as well rename it the Absolutely Anything But Fun Funds.

I typed Preston Mortuary into the search bar. Waited for the results to load.

“Well?” Lenny asked, as if I was the offending party all of a sudden.

My signal danced between 3G and GPRS. A dance between life and death, between goodness and utter shitness. Still, the “Searching…” message was displayed. Still no results.

“This bloody technology is more hassle than it’s worth, Blake. Do you not have, like, a Fodors in here or something?”

“A Fodors Guide to Preston Mortuaries?” Martha asked. “Sounds like that’d come in handy a lot.”

“Just wait,” I said. The search bar was reaching the end. I’d had a 3G signal for a good few seconds now, as Martha took a left, crept past more buildings. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this.”

The search ended.

Did you mean Preston Nandos?

I hadn’t got this.

“Preston fucking Nandos?” I muttered. “How on earth does Preston Mortuary lead to Preston Nandos?”

“Have you eaten there lately?” Martha asked.

“Well it is a kind of mortuary,” Lenny said, deadly serious. “A mortuary for deliciously prepared chicken.”

I tossed my phone onto the floor of the car. Probably made the crack even worse, but a crack was a crack, so boo-hoo. I leaned back. Brought my fingers through my hair. “We’re screwed. Absolutely screwed.”

“Alright, Mr Melodrama,” Lenny said. “I can always give them a call and ask for directions.”

He whipped out his phone.

“You can do that, can you? You have their number?”

He put his phone away again.

I stuffed my head back into the headrest. My aching shoulder and back intensified, so I pushed at them until they got worse. A release. That’s what emos did, right? Caused themselves pain to release stress and anger?

If so, I needed a bloody brick wall to drive into.

I closed my eyes. Listened to Lenny and Martha bickering and arguing. The car slowed down, then came to a halt. I knew what this meant. We’d failed. Dr. Parsons was going to cut open the bodies at his own private little studios. The bodies of the girls would blow to smithereens, destroying important forensic evidence, causing even more loss of life.

I’d go to prison for murder.

And I wouldn’t even have any Fun Funds to turn to when I got out.

“Hold up, there’s John,” Lenny said.

“John who?” I asked, my eyes still closed, every word a strained effort.

“Parsons. Doctor Parsons.”

I opened my eyes. Looked from side to side.

“Where? Where is he? Where’s—”

“Is that him?” Martha asked. She pointed out of her window.

“Yeah. That’s John alright.”

I looked across the street and I saw a short, balding man wearing a white lab coat and grey trousers. His belly spilled out from his blue shirt, which had bust a button or two. He puffed his lips, looking more like a bored McDonald’s manager than a pathologist.

He was entering The Town Hospital, a private hospital that specialised in the rich and the stupid.

“That’s not a mortuary,” I said.

Lenny scratched at his stubble. “No, no, you’re right about that. Mortuary, hospital… near enough, I guess.”

If I wasn’t in an urgent situation, I’d have turned around and smacked Lenny in his face.

“We need to get to him before he gets to the girls. Quick!”

We all climbed out of Martha’s car. Jogged across the street towards the wide glass doors of The Town Hospital.

When we got there, we were met with a pair of metal barriers and two bulky-looking guards.

“Passes, please.”

Martha and I turned to Lenny. Lenny turned to us.

“Well?” I said.

“Well I don’t have a pass.”

I bit my lip. “Lenny, you’re a police officer. You have rights.”

“I have rights,” he said, as if he was only just realising. “Yes. I have rights.” He turned to the guards. “I have rights.”

The guards looked at Lenny with furrowed brows and crinkled foreheads.

“Sure you have rights,” the one on the left said. “These rights: show your pass or you don’t come through.”

“I’m… I’m a police officer,” Lenny said. “And this place is in grave danger. Grave danger of… of something very grave.”

“Well if you’re a police officer, show us your badge.”

Lenny patted at his pockets. Glanced at me, then at Martha, then at the guards again.

“Right… right now I don’t have my badge. But I can give it to you later if you let me through now.”

The guards stepped closer to Lenny. Towered over him. “Are we gonna have to keep on askin’ you to leave or are we gonna have to start telling you?”