The meanest Flood (26 page)

‘You must’ve upset him big time, which you’re good at, upsetting people. But this one, I can’t imagine what you did to him. Maybe you should write down everybody you’ve ever got under their skin. Try to think of the guy in the world you’ve given the most grief to. You might’ve robbed him or screwed his wife and he’s been nursing it for years. It’s grown in his mind like a brain tumour, so now all he can think of is revenge.

‘You can bet he’s not getting on with his life, this guy. He’s so obsessed about setting you up for a life sentence he’s forgotten to have relationships. If he’s married, his wife’ll never see him. This’s what I think we’re looking for, Sam. I might be wrong about one or two of these things, but most of ’em will be right. Mainly it’ll be somebody you’ve taken to the cleaners and now they’re coming back, looking for a bite at the cherry of revenge.’ Sam laughed.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Cherry of revenge,’ he said. ‘This from the guy who criticizes
my
English?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Geordie said. ‘Revenge is sweet. Cherries is sweet. Nothing to laugh about.’

‘All right, let’s not get waylaid here. Anything else about this guy?’

‘Oh, yeah, there’s the biggie. The knife he’s using, sword, whatever it is. Some huge implement. In psychology terms it’s a penis substitute, like a car, but it’s not a car, therefore the guy’ll probably have a crap car.’

‘You been reading those books again.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been reading those books again. This weapon, whatever it is he’s using, it’s about power. Cars, bullets, guns, rockets... anything that’s powerful and makes a lot of noise, something you can use to poke with or stick in somebody... can be penis substitutes. Guys who use them or have obsessions about them, they’re either impotent or might not be impotent but they certainly worry about it. So somebody who kills women with a sword, that’s gotta be significant. This is a guy who doesn’t understand women. Might be a misogynist. Has trouble getting a hard-on.’

‘And there’s one other thing,’ Sam said. ‘The guy’s manipulative. Always moves me into position before he closes in for the kill. That could be one of his strengths, the way he manipulates people. Could be something to do with his job. What kind of job could that be, where you manipulate people? Is he a politician? Some kind of manager?’

‘Yeah,’ Geordie said. ‘But he doesn’t just manipulate people, he manages the whole scene. He manipulates events as well.’

‘So think about jobs that involve all that,’ Sam said. ‘Could be in the Army or the Navy?’

‘Another thing too,’ Sam said. ‘Because he’s into manipulating the scene, he makes himself vulnerable.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘He has to get me into place before he can kill the next victim.’

‘Seems like he’s managed that fairly easily up to now,’ Geordie said. ‘He got you here, to Norway.’

‘That’s right. He did. He told me Holly would be next. And he knows enough about my character to realize I’d come here to protect her.’

‘Which means he’s sussed you,’ Geordie said. ‘How does that make him vulnerable?’

‘Because he can’t be sure I’m here.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He’s guessing I’m here,
hoping
I’m here, but he doesn’t know. Before he can kill Holly, he has to see me.’

‘Right,’ Geordie said. ‘You might’ve gone to Scotland. He’s given you the clues, and he knows you’re a detective, hopes you get it, that there’ll be enough to lure you here.’

‘But he has to
see
me,’ Sam said. ‘If he doesn’t see me here, then Holly’s safe. He won’t touch her.’

‘Does that mean we’re going home? I haven’t seen the Munch Museum yet.’

‘No, we’re staying. We can play him at his own game. He’ll be watching Holly’s flat, hoping to see me going in there.’

‘Which means we watch the street, Calmeyers gate,’ Geordie said, looking for the guy who’s watching the flat.’

‘You got it, Sam said. ‘That’s exactly what we do.’

21

‘You can sit there until you decide to give me some civilized answers,’ Ellen said.

Marilyn was seated on a high stool at the end of the kitchen table. She’d stopped crying but her eyes were red and she was sniffing and blowing her nose into the remains of a man-size tissue.

‘It’s that Danny Mann character, isn’t it?’ Ellen said. Marilyn nodded her head. ‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been following him? Stopping him in the street?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Marilyn, I’m not going to beat about the bush here. The signs are all too clear. You’re not taking your medication. You’re clearly obsessed with this man - all that stuff on your bedroom wall. Two or three times lately you’ve stayed out all night, or most of the night. You’re weepy and erratic in your behaviour.’

‘Only when you go on at me.’

‘Correction, not only when I go on at you. Usually you behave like this when the chosen man of your dreams doesn’t know what is happening to him and tells you to get lost.’

‘God!’ Marilyn said, getting off the stool. ‘I don’t have to stand for this.’

‘Oh, yes, you do, my girl. Sit on that stool now or I’ll ring the doctor immediately.’

‘And what’ll that prove?’

‘It’ll prove that you’re not taking your medication, that you’re highly emotional and unstable, and will probably lead to another spell on a locked ward. You know exactly what it means, Marilyn. We’ve been here before, remember?’

‘I’m not listening to this,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things to do. I’m going out.’ She flounced across the room and pulled at the door, which remained closed.

Marilyn turned on her mother.

‘You can try the front door, too, if you like,’ Ellen said. ‘And the windows. You are locked in here with me, and that’s the way it’s going to stay until I know exactly what’s going on. It’s for your own good, Marilyn. If you think about it, I’m only doing what’s best for you.’

‘This’s ridiculous, locking a person in her own house. There’s laws, personal rights laws. You can’t treat me like a criminal. Civil liberties are involved here, Mother. I could contact Amnesty International. I’m a prisoner of conscience.’

‘No, you’re not, Marilyn. You’re a prisoner of your own making. I want to hear the whole story and I’m not prepared to compromise until I do. Sit on the stool and talk.’

‘No. I don’t have to.’

‘OK, my girl, I’m going to ring the doctor.’ Ellen walked to the kitchen door and opened it.

‘Stop! What do you want to know?’

Ellen closed the kitchen door and stood with her back to it. ‘Sit on the stool.’

Marilyn climbed back on the stool and dabbed at her eyes with the saturated tissue. ‘This is unfair. It’s not right.’

‘Never mind that. Danny Mann, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been following him?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I knew it. Stopping him in the street, going to his house?’

‘Not in the street. I had to talk to him. I had to go to his house, Mother. I don’t know where he is.’

‘Start at the beginning.’

‘We met in the theatre.’

‘In Nottingham. I know that, I was there. And it wasn’t a meeting, Marilyn. You helped with one of his tricks. There was another woman helped him the same night, and two gentlemen. You were already fixated on him before that night. You had his picture on your wall. We only went to Nottingham because you were obsessing about him, remember?’

‘I remember what I remember,’ Marilyn said. ‘And you remember what you remember. The trouble is that you think what you remember is what happened.’

‘No, Marilyn, the trouble is that as soon as you stop taking the tablets you make up an alternative reality inside your head. I take it that this man has not encouraged you in any way whatsoever, that he has probably asked you to stop bothering him. Therefore the tears. Am I right?’

‘No, you’re wrong. Danny loves me. He’s been testing me.’

‘What does that mean? Testing?’

‘He sent me into the dark in Leeds, to see how I coped.’

‘Goodness, Marilyn, was that where you stayed out all night? In Leeds?’

Marilyn nodded. ‘It was magic. Danny was there all the time, on the edge of things. Invisible. He was watching over me.’

‘I can hardly believe you’re saying these things. You know what it’s like in Leeds at night. A couple were killed there last week, in their own home.’

‘Danny wouldn’t let anything like that happen to me.’

‘I’m going to see him, Marilyn, explain about your illness. We don’t want him calling the police.’

‘You can’t see him, he’s disappeared.’

‘He’ll be on tour or something like that. He’s a theatrical. They go away all the time.’

‘He’s not on tour. He only had one bag. He flew to Norway.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I followed him.’

‘To Norway? You couldn’t have.’

‘Not to Norway, I followed him to the airport, Newcastle. Saw him checking in.’

‘When was this?’

‘Three days ago. He got a taxi to the station and I followed in the car. He got on the Newcastle train and I got on it too, at the last minute, and didn’t have a ticket. That was the problem.’

‘So when the guard came to inspect the tickets, you said?’

‘I told him that my boyfriend had our tickets.’

‘And he didn’t believe you?’

‘I took him to Danny, and Danny said he’d never seen me in his life before.’

‘He didn’t remember you from the theatre?’

‘It was a test. I have to be worthy of him.’

‘What happened about the ticket?’

‘I had to show them some ID, and the guard gave me an invoice with the amount on. I have to pay it in thirty days.’

‘Carry on. You’re on the Newcastle train.’

‘Danny got on the Metro and went to the airport. I went with him. I tried to explain about the ticket, said I was sorry to put him in the spotlight, asked him to forgive me. He said to wait until he got back from his trip, that he’d sort everything out then.’

‘Are you sure he said that, about waiting until he got back? Seems to me in a situation like that he’d be wondering why a strange woman was attaching herself to him.’

‘I’m not a strange woman, Mother.’

‘I’m sorry, Marilyn, I’m your mother after all but this is one of those times we are going to have to agree to disagree. If you take your medication and get yourself together, though, you’ll stop being such a strange woman and go back to your normal self. Then we can draw a line under all this. But if you don’t I’m going to call in the doctor, and when this magician chap comes back from Norway, I’ll have no option but to go and see him as well. Do you understand me?’

22

Weird things happened to Ruben the first Wednesday after Katherine was killed. He got up at the usual time in the morning - 4.30 a.m. - and went down the depot. He loaded his van with crates of milk and drove to the Marple Square Estate. Not many people around at that time in the morning. Some houses with lights showing, people trying to con the local burglars that they were wide awake.

The estate had a bad name and it was true there were a few wide boys about and some of the kids ran wild. You asked people who didn’t live there and they’d tell you the place was riddled with crime, robberies and violence; you listened to the Nottingham intelligentsia and the media and you’d imagine Marple Square was terrorized by gangs of drug-crazed vandals ripping down trees and spray-painting their neighbours’ houses and cars twenty-four/seven.

But it wasn’t so bad. Occasionally Ruben would put milk on a doorstep and when the woman came to collect it for breakfast it’d be gone. But that wasn’t once a week, not even once a month. Two of his customers had been burgled while he was doing the round. One of them lost a video and a wide-screen TV and the other had the house stripped of everything, including a freezer full of pizzas and sausages and onion rings. An old black guy had been mugged coming out of the post office with his pension, and a group of Asian teenagers had tried to set fire to a pub. There must’ve been other incidents that Ruben hadn’t heard about but altogether he didn’t think it was worse than other estates. If he compared it to Hyson Green, where he had been a kid in a high-rise, Ruben would’ve classed Marple Square as crime-free.

When they’d let him out of the joint Ruben had gone back to have a look at Hyson Green and they’d torn all the high-rise flats down. Looked like a good place to be now. Lot of life on the street, made you feel like you were part of something. Only Ruben wasn’t, because he didn’t live there any longer. Ruben wasn’t part of anything any more, not until he met Kitty Turner, and then he became part of the world.

He must’ve delivered about half the milk when it happened. He’d dropped two bottles of semi and collected nine empties from the same step. He’d stuffed the empties into crates and got back behind the wheel of the van. What he’d have done normally, he’d have turned the key in the ignition and pulled forward a hundred metres, parked outside number thirty-nine. But he didn’t do anything. Instead he sat behind the wheel and looked out through the windscreen. Didn’t see anything particularly, didn’t feel anything, and nothing was going on in his mind.