Bubblegum Smoothie (21 page)

“Yeah,” Lenny said. He forced the most awkward smile possible. “I, er… it’s good cat litter. Very… very littery.”

I wanted to disappear through a hole in the ground.

“Wait, I thought you owed Lenny money?”

Lenny’s eyes widened. He smiled his trademark white-toothed smile and then nodded.

“Bye,” he said.

He scooted off and left me to dig myself out of the hole of shit he’d buried me in.

I turned back to Martha. She was glaring at me with her squinty eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t squinty-eye me, please.”

“I’ll squinty-eye you as much as I bloody want to squinty-eye you, hun. What’s going on? What’s wrong with the money?”

I leaned into my hands and told Martha everything. About the Groovy Smoothie court case being postponed, about my confrontation with the Land Rover driver—who I
did
make very clear to her was in fact the actual perp.

I watched her squinty eyes get even squintier when I told her. Watched her roll the white hospital sheets in her hand, waited for her to grill me.

After I’d stopped speaking, she simply said: “You did what you could, darling.”

Hearing Martha say those words did actually make me feel a little better about myself. Even the “darling” was forgivable in the circumstances.

“The killer’s getting more complacent,” Martha said. “We’re making ground on him faster than he can run. We’ll catch him and we’ll get our money.”

Martha was right. We were getting closer to the killer.

I stared outside the hospital window. Watched the rain pour from the grey, stormy sky.

A solitary magpie flew from rooftop to rooftop.

THIRTY-SIX

He leans back in bed and he knows tonight will be the very last night of his life.

He holds a bundle of papers above him. He likes to look at them every night, just to remind himself what he is working towards, what he has planned for weeks, months.

He likes to remind himself so he’ll enjoy the killings even more.

He flips the first page over.

The pretty young face of Melissa Waters stares back at him. He licks his lips as he remembers the sounds she made when he pushed the screwdriver into her pretty auburn eyes. His nipples tingle with delight when he remembers snipping away some of her long ginger hair, wrapping it around his penis…

He had fun with Melissa Waters. She was punished suitably for her role in destroying his life.

He licks his finger and turns the page.

Gets even harder when he sees the picture of Christina Wilfrieds, taken from a distance.

Christina was a lot of fun. Even more fun than Melissa. He’d got more involved in her. Beaten her until she was blue, and then beaten her some more until she was a bloody pulp.

But the best thing about Christina was her squeals. Those orgasmic yelps that just took the killer away to another dimension. Screams that would forever be a mainstay on his iPod “Calming Tracks” playlist.

Yes, Christina was a great screamer.

He flips the page.

Not as great a screamer as Hannah Jenkinson.

Now Hannah, he’d treated her different to the others. He’d left her longer. Drawn her murder out. He usually liked to get the job finished after an hour or two of non-stop torture. But Hannah… she’d kept him up all night. There was so much of her to explore—so many pressure points, so many places he could stick a knife inside her, make her scream without killing her.

Shit. If he had a grain of sympathy inside him, he might’ve pitied her.

Instead, he gets off over the memory of what he’d done.

He flips over to the fourth page and can’t help laughing when he sees Pete Adkins.

Adkins might be the only man he’s killed on his quest so far, but don’t accuse him of being sexist, or misogynistic, or anything silly like that. Those accusations are plain insulting and inaccurate. No, the gender of his victims has nothing to do with his tastes or prejudices.

As much as he does prefer killing women, granted.

His murders are all a part of the task. All a part of a bigger stand against those who have destroyed his life. If they were seven men, he’d have just as much fun with them, cause just as much pain.

So that’s a note to the rampant feminists. The killer isn’t biased against women.

Not today, at least.

He flicks over the next page, salivating at the prospect of his next killing—the fifth, and the final of its kind. Because the final two are extra special. The final two are like the boss level on a video game.

The fifth is like the mini boss.

He looks at her face. Strokes a finger against her dark hair, touches the corners of her smile.

His cock gets harder. So hard that it is poking out of his grey boxer shorts.

He is going to have the most fun with her. She is his reward for his success so far.

And sure, he has encountered obstacles. Nosy bastards like Blake Dent, his he-she
it
friend. But they’re nothing, not really. Besides, there are worse ways to punish them than killing them.

He will haunt them forever when his task is complete.

He closes the papers. Places them on his bedside table, next to his glass of water. He always gets thirsty in the night, even though he pisses the bed when he glugs too much.

He sets his Postman Pat alarm clock that somebody once bought him as a joke for seven a.m.

He closes his eyes.

Imagines the screams of his fifth victim.

Tomorrow, he will complete his jigsaw.

Tomorrow, the journey will end.

And nothing will stop him.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Mr Dent, we’d really appreciate it if you could show just the slightest bit of interest. Groovy Smoothie’s future depends on it.”

I yawned as I sat at an oval desk at the court. I’d been called yesterday to go back, Groovy Smoothie’s hearing re-arranged for today.

Which was all fair and well, if it didn’t mean two bloody seven-a.m. starts in a row. Mr Justice tutted when I yawned. He was one of the people reviewing my case. Bald, in his late fifties, and with stone-grey eyes void of any humanity. He leaned over some papers and ticked a few boxes. I wasn’t awake enough to worry about what the papers were.

“So tell us about this… this crushed fruit concoction of yours,” Mrs Witts asked. She was terrifying, in truth. Grey hair tied back, glasses shaped like teardrops that I had no idea actually had any place in real life. And looking at the lack of lines around her mouth, I’m not sure she’d ever smiled since birth.

I scratched the back of my head and battled with another yawn. “It… the smoothie I made—”

“Of the bubblegum variety?” Mr Justice asked.

“Yes. The Bubblegum Smoothie. It was—”

“What were the ingredients of the Bubblegum Smoothie?”

I gritted my teeth together. Thought about fucking with these people—saying something like, “Colonel Kentucky never tells!”

But they didn’t look like jokers. They were more like the smoothie police, arresting me for crimes against crushed fruits.

“The smoothie contained a banana, four strawberries, one cup of orange juice and one Nature Valley Oats ‘n Honey pack. And, um… and blue food colouring.”

“Blue food colouring?” Mrs Witts asked, looking up from her documents, pen still resting above a checkbox.

“Yeah. You know. Edible ink that turns stuff blue.”

“Brand, please?” Mr Justice asked. Shit—it was like a ping-pong game of questions between these two.

“Brand? I er, I dunno. I don’t think it had a brand.”

Mr Justice and Mrs Witts looked at one another like I’d just shot their pet cat.

“Is that a problem?”

“Where did you purchase this blue food colouring?”

I couldn’t help smiling in disbelief. There was a killer on the streets. A killer who had murdered three women and one man, brutalised the bodies. A killer who tried to blow up a police station, a private hospital, burn me alive
and
stab my friend to death.

And here I was being grilled on which brand of food colouring I purchased.

“Do you even remember where you purchased the blue food colouring?” Mr Justice asked. He said the words “blue food colouring” like it was some kind of alien object.

I shook my head. “No, I erm… the market, maybe? Somewhere like that.”

They looked at one another again. Looked at one another in that weird robotic way, which was starting to creep me out.

“Why?” I asked, my eyes watering with fatigue. “Some kind of law against that?”

“There is, actually,” Mrs Witts said.

Out of nowhere, she slapped down a sheet of paper in front of me. It was so filled with words that there was no way I was reading it any time soon. Too early for words. Way too early for words.

“Article 83748.98, Section 19383.39474. ‘Side-street crushed fruit salespersons must not use unbranded ingredients in their products.’”

I frowned. Looked at the paper. “Wait, there’s actually a law on that?
That’s
an actual thing?”

“Unfortunately for you, yes,” Mr Justice said. He interlocked his fingers and sat up straight. “And it’s a law we take very seriously, what with the recent rise of crushed fruit salespersons.”

I shook my head. “Can’t sell anything unbranded? So what, a banana has to be branded? A frigging strawberry needs a brand imprinted on it to be passed for sale?”

They gave one another the robot look again. Even more horror spread across their faces when they looked back at me. “You mean you
do not
use branded fruit, either?”

I laughed in disbelief. The farce went on and on a little while longer, forwards and backwards between their stupid Articles, their stupid Sections, then back to me and my defence. I wished Pete Adkins hadn’t dropped dead on me. No way could he have been as much as a psycho as these two.

Or maybe he was. Maybe that’s what got him killed.

“Mr Dent, the fact stands that you used unbranded fruit and unbranded food colouring in your ‘Bubblegum Smoothie,’ which subsequently caused a number of severe allergic reactions around the town. Added on to your previous misdemeanours, like the Chicken Shake that gave a young lady salmonella—”

“Hey, that was never proven—”

“—we have no option but to strip your Groovy Smoothie license permanently, as well as ban you from running a crushed fruit enterprise, or any other sole proprietorship, for a total of three years.”

They closed their papers. Stared me in the eyes.

“You… you can’t do that,” I said. I pictured life without Groovy Smoothie, life without
any
business. No extra job to pay the bills, while the Fun Funds supported my expensive shit. Hell, I might have to find myself a real job. But after I was caught stealing a top-of-the-range camera from Currys many years ago, I didn’t fancy my chances.

“We can do, we are doing…” Mr Justice stamped down on the paper. “And we have done.” He pushed the papers over to me. “Take these to the desk. If you fail to do so, we have prosecution rights.”

I wanted to lean over this table and grab Mr Justice by his stupid black tie. Tighten it until the silly bugger went blue.

But I didn’t. I’d already lost enough pride and dignity in the last few minutes.

I grabbed the papers. Stuffed them under my arm. Stood up and walked to the doorway.

“And Mr Dent…” Mrs Witts said.

I turned around. Forced a smile, although doing so was akin to torture. “Yes, madame?”

She scanned me head to toe. “A word of advice: Slaters. They tailor suits perfectly well. I’d advice a trip there next time you have an important meeting. Goodbye.”

I felt my cheeks getting hot, and suddenly became very aware of the baggy, oversized suit I’d borrowed from Martha, which she’d kept from her Mart days.

I wanted to throw a load of expletives at Mrs Witts. But again, I figured I’d better behave.

I lowered my head as I exited the interview room. I made my way down a long, quiet corridor towards the hum of the waiting area. So Groovy Smoothie was lost. So too was my entire money-making strategy. I was screwed, let’s face it. Royally screwed. I’d be lucky to afford a CRT television, let alone a curved screen.

I stuffed a blackcurrant Soother in my mouth. Waited for the menthol to ease some relief into me.

It didn’t.

But I sucked at it anyway.

I pushed through the double doors at the end of the corridor and headed to the desk. There was a queue there—a line of three people, all looking similarly glum, all holding papers of their own. I leaned against the desk. Looked around the waiting area at today’s new intake of scrotes. Baldie dressed in burgundy trackies. Short woman with her belly hanging out of her fluorescent pink vest. Wow—and Mrs-Pigging-Witts had the gall to hound me about wearing a slightly oversized suit. She’d have a hissy fit at some of these scruffy bastards.

I puffed out my lips, tried to blow some cool air onto my face, as I waited for the desk to free. Guy at the front was taking ages, arguing with the dark-haired receptionist, his whiny voice like a malfunctioned helicopter.

I looked down at my papers. Flicked through them—flicked through all the words, pretending to read them, pretending to take them in…

Then I noticed something.

A page at the back of my papers. No—three pages, all stapled together, but separate from the rest.

The first thing I noticed was the note at the top of the first page: F.A.O. MR PETER ADKINS.

My first instinct was to hand the documents over. It was distasteful to meddle with the belongings of a dead man.

Okay. Maybe that was my second instinct. My first was to pocket the papers to see if I could connect the dots between the dead Pete Adkins and the other victims.

But then I read a little more.

I skimmed through the first two paragraphs. Something about a case where Mr Adkins was prosecutor.

But it was the names that stood out. The names that stood out more than anything.

Melissa Waters.

Christina Wilfrieds.

Hannah Jenkinson.

All members of a jury.