The Nightmare Place (8 page)

Ten

I slept fitfully after the nightmare, so got up early, and found myself arriving at the department a little after seven o’clock. The sun was just appearing above the horizon: a pale thumbprint pressed on to the sky, the edge burning where it touched the land. A new day. A fresh sheet of hours to fill. I tried to tell myself it would bring a breakthrough of some kind, but there had been too many days now, and none of them had, and I felt despondent.

Despite the early hour, the incident room was half full. The night-shift workers were stretching, ready to get home, and several I recognised from the day team were already at their stations. None of them paid me any attention as I poured a coffee, then sat down at my desk. There was a pile of actions and reports in my tray, but I doubted any of it would be important. If there had been a key development, someone would have called.

Obviously, I worked through it anyway. There was a note from pathology that the post-mortem was being rushed through and would take place this morning. I checked my watch. It would actually be in progress now, so fingers crossed we would have the results by midday. Forensics would take longer, of course, but the previous scenes had given us little in that regard, and I wasn’t about to get my hopes up there.

Next, I found a compendium of witness statements, although to call them that was to mischaracterise them. It was just more of the same from yesterday afternoon: interviews with Sally Vickers’ friends, family and neighbours, none of whom had reported any concerns in the time leading up to her murder. Assuming Sally had been stalked in advance of the attack, she either hadn’t been aware of it, or hadn’t reported it to anybody. Turning a page, I was betting on the former. Our man was too careful for that …

Or was he?

I read the final sheet in the tray for a second time. This one wasn’t a witness statement. Some enterprising officer had dug back through reports on Sally’s neighbourhood and found something potentially much more interesting. There was a nursery at the bottom of her street, and a week ago, staff there had alerted the police that someone had been spotted loitering nearby. He was described as a physically large man, possibly in his thirties, with a beard and wild hair. A sweep was done over the following few days, and an officer had identified the individual and confronted him. The man denied he’d been in the area before, and claimed to have just stopped to check his phone while out walking. In the event, there wasn’t much the officer could do, but he made it clear that it would be wise for the man to absent himself from the area in future. But not before he’d identified him. The man had given his name as Jonathan Pearson, which had been verified from the driver’s licence he was carrying.

Don’t get your hopes up, Zoe.

But it was impossible not to. I turned to my computer and pulled up a search for Pearson, establishing quickly that he had no criminal record of any kind, certainly not for child-related offences.
So why were you there, Jonathan?
From another database, I accessed an online copy of his driver’s licence, and studied the photograph there. He was exactly as described: a full beard, and long black hair, which for this picture had been tied tightly back into a ponytail.

I scrolled down until I found his address – and read it with a slight start. Paydale Lane. Right in the heart of the Thornton estate, where I’d grown up. Just a coincidence, of course, but not a pleasant one. I didn’t exactly relish the prospect of going back there.

I scrolled up again to view Pearson’s face, then took a moment to stare into his eyes. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I felt a tingle inside.

This is something
.

I checked my watch: just after half seven. Chris would be in shortly, and I knew I should wait for him before heading out. Apart from anything else, the thought of going into Thornton alone didn’t fill me with joy. Regardless, though, I should wait.

Should.

You might miss him, though.

That was true – Pearson could be heading out to work soon. And that was really all the excuse I needed. I searched around the desk for a pen, and quickly scribbled a note for Chris.

Time to go back home.

As I approached it, my impression of the Thornton estate now was that it looked more like a campsite than a proper part of the city. I saw the generators first, stored in long corrugated-iron crates, behind chain-link fences topped with curls of razor wire; then came the initial spread of houses. They were uniformly ugly – flat-topped, single-storey concrete blocks, with pale faces and grey pebble-dashed sides – and weren’t so much terraced as oddly conjoined: stuck together in random clusters of twos, threes and fours. The breaks in between formed a web of thin roads and footpaths, all but indecipherable to non-residents.

I kept to the main road for a while, driving past the face of the estate. The verges were dirty and unkempt, with circles and squares of grass missing, where the council-provided bins and poles had been uprooted. It was less than a mile, but seemed to go on for ever. Just before I reached the end, I indicated left, and took the last turning that would take me into the estate proper.

On the journey over, I’d been trying to kid myself that it was no big deal, but of course, now that I was here, that wasn’t remotely true. The place hummed with familiarity; so little had changed that it felt as though no real time had passed. I remembered the grey fronts of the houses, cracked with disrepair and dotted with fans in meshed cages that looked scorched and burned. Broken pipes spattered water directly on to the flagstones, while sickly brown stains stretched down the walls from the rotting wooden canopies above. Many of the windows I drove past lacked curtains, and some were plastered with overlapping sheets of old newspaper. With the car window wound down, I could hear the muffled sound of televisions and radios, the louder noise of raised voices. I might as well have grown up here yesterday.

The road finished in a misshapen nub of tarmac, where I found space to park up. Wooden fences ran along one side, with a single break for a footpath. Beyond, I could see more houses. They looked like they had a second storey, but I knew it was an illusion: the estate was constructed on a slope, and the buildings ahead were just built on higher ground.

I locked the car and headed up the footpath, then took one of the many jagged stone staircases that criss-crossed the estate. It’s deceptive, from the outside, just how extensive Thornton really is. The sensation came back to me now – how easy it can be to lose yourself here. The further in you go, the more it feels like you could wander through an area that is only a mile or so square without ever reaching an edge. Living here, it sometimes seemed that the area kept shifting around, reconfiguring itself to prevent you from leaving.

Occasionally washing lines spanned the paths, with towels and clothes draped over them like curtains, and the smell of wet fabric and cheap washing powder was another reminder of childhood. There were memories everywhere here, and they emerged in my head fleetingly, like half-heard snatches of laughter. The slight breeze seemed full of ghosts.

It’s just a place, Zoe. No better or worse than any other.

And remember, you pulled yourself out of here.

Jonathan Pearson lived close to the centre of the estate, whereas I’d grown up in a house on the edge. I’d deliberately parked at the opposite end; I had no desire to walk past my old home. It would either look the same, or be very different, and either way, it was nothing I needed to see. Because the voice in my head was right: I’d worked hard and pulled myself out of this place, this life. There wasn’t anything left for me here.

Except one thing, of course. And about five minutes after I’d left the car, close to Pearson’s street, I took a ginnel that led me away from it. A couple of turns later, the land opened up ahead of me, and there it was.

Like everything else here, the waste ground was almost exactly the same as I remembered it. In fact, my nightmare had preserved it so accurately that I felt a shiver despite the heat, and had to suppress the urge to pinch myself. But no, this wasn’t a dream. The sky was a normal colour, and there weren’t any clouds. And it was empty: no figures of any kind standing there.
Don’t,
I thought suddenly. It was irrational, and I didn’t know why, but the thought came anyway

Don’t.

I stood there for a few moments longer, willing a memory to come. Just some indication of what had happened here that I couldn’t remember, and that only ever came out in my sleep. But it wouldn’t.

Quarter past eight now.

Just do what you came here to do.

I turned and headed back into the body of the estate. It only took another minute to locate Pearson’s house, and as I approached it, I could hear the sound of the television from the open window out front. Someone was home, then.

I took out my phone and dialled Chris’s number. He answered immediately, and sounded annoyed with me. Understandably, I supposed.

‘You’ve got to do everything yourself, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ I said, although of course he was right. ‘You weren’t in, and I decided it was too important to wait.’

‘Bullshit. Zoe—’

‘Give it a rest, Chris. It might not even be anything.’

‘Then why was it too important to wait?’

‘Because it was. And I don’t need a chaperone. Anyway, look: I’ve called you now that I’m here. So you can escort me by telephone, can’t you?’

‘Zoe—’

I moved the phone away from my ear and knocked on Pearson’s door. My intention was to play it as a follow-up from the nursery incident at first: nothing serious that might alarm him. But in truth, I was glad to have Chris on the line. Just in case.

I heard bolts being withdrawn, and then a moment later the front door opened. I recognised the man immediately from the photograph online. The beard was gone now, but the wild hair remained. Of course, the picture had only shown his face.

‘Jonathan Pearson?’ I said.

He nodded, and my heart sank a little. At about five foot six, Pearson was shorter than me, and he was dressed in pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt that revealed how skinny he was. Not only would I have been able to overpower him with one hand, there was no way on earth he could be the guy the nursery workers had seen, and that the officer had stopped and interviewed. You would have had to be blind to describe this guy as physically large.

I lifted the phone to my ear again.

‘Stand down, soldier.’

‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘It’s not our guy. I’ll be back in soon.’

I ended the call, realising that what I’d said wasn’t quite right.
Pearson
might not be our guy, but I was certain that the man who had been spotted in Sally’s street was. The question was, how had the bastard got hold of Pearson’s driving licence?

‘What’s this about?’ asked Pearson.

‘Detective Inspector Zoe Dolan.’ I did my best to smile at him, although the sinking feeling had started to be replaced by frustration and anger. ‘I think we need to have a little chat, Jonathan.’

Eleven

It always happens like this, after the monster has come. He tries to forget, but after a while, it simply gets too much.

Because he is a man who loves very deeply indeed, and he never truly leaves anyone behind. In this way, he is not so unlike other people: normal people. Doesn’t everybody mourn lost relationships to some extent? Whether it’s with hatred, fondness, confusion, guilt or forgiveness, surely everyone looks back. However hard we try, it’s impossible to unremember for ever.

In other ways, of course, he is very different indeed.

During the time he spends with someone, he is often happy. He thinks of them in the morning when he wakes up, and smiles to himself, content with the knowledge that he has them in his life, however obliquely. He anticipates the first sight of them that day, and makes plans for what they might do: dancing together at a distance. For a certain amount of time, he is able to pretend. When reality does intrude, it does so completely and utterly. The realisation of who and what he is can crush him: reduce him to nothing but a fat, heaving curl beneath the covers in a pitch-black bedroom. There is no light in the world at those moments, and yet somehow he sees himself all too clearly.

When the relationship is over, it feels much the same, only bleaker. He can walk the streets and go to work, and for lengthy periods of time he is able to forget what he has done. The woman is no longer in his life, of course, but that absence is only the vaguest of pressures at the back of his mind. Perhaps there is an odd quality to the sunlight and the air, as though the world has subtly shifted on some emotional level, but he functions.

Until he remembers.

Who he is. What he is.

Then every minute aches, and it seems impossible to imagine that he can bear an hour. He does, of course, and days somehow pass. What he experiences is not simply depression and self-hatred, but despair. True despair, he knows, is not so much an emotion as a vacuum. It is the feeling of God turning His back on you. Running through it is the knowledge that the things you have done can never be undone or made right. If a glass rolls across a table, you can catch it and roll it back along its path to where it started, but if it tips over the edge and smashes, that can’t ever be reversed. The glass will forever be broken, and you will always be the man who broke it.

Even worse than the knowledge are the memories. He can still see everything that happened very clearly, and in his mind, the images play over and over, the most awful parts vivid and present. How could he have done that to them? The hate he felt for them makes no sense any more. It’s the memory of an emotion, and the memory doesn’t fit.

He lies in his bed, sometimes for days at a time, trying to stop himself from feeling anything at all. He calls in sick to work. And he
is
sick. Sometimes he wonders if people can sense it from the street – if the house stinks from the disease of him. He wakes up and imagines the women standing there in the corner of the bedroom. What’s left of them.

It always happens like this. After a while, it simply gets too much.

Of course, this time it’s different.

This time, he’s killed her.

He saw the flyer while he was working at the university.

The contract was only for a week. He brought sandwiches in with him, and took to spending his lunch hours in the Union bar. The building was old; you walked in through the run-down entrance, and then down a set of stairs, and the bar was built into a large wooden booth at the centre. He would buy a couple of pints and sit, drinking slowly, losing himself in the chatter around him and trying not to think.

He could feel the students’ eyes on him, because he was conspicuous in his overalls and obviously didn’t belong here. He was too big not to notice, and with his bedraggled hair and unshaven face, he looked as if he had walked out of a wilderness. Whereas they were all so young and small, with their supple bodies and smooth faces. The pupal stage of an entirely different species: none of them would grow up to be like him. He tried not to look back at them. When he did, the person staring tended to turn away very quickly indeed.

The notice boards outside the bar were peppered with flyers and posters. Many were professionally done, advertising club nights. His gaze tracked across the images of young men and women in various states of undress, disco balls glinting, clusters of multicoloured bottles arranged like skittles. An alien world to him. There were also printed and hand-scrawled advertisements: rooms to rent; rooms wanted; lifts offered; musical instruments for sale. Notices for sports clubs. It was a cacophony of the small details of other people’s lives. Like the students themselves, there was an air of naïve, puppyish hope to it all. Nobody would want most of these things, but they’d put them up anyway.

And then the flyer for the helpline caught his eye.

It was on the third and final board, tacked to the edge: a simple glossy black sheet with the image of a bright red telephone – an old-fashioned one, with a circular dial – and big white text.

MAYDAY.

A problem shared …

We are here just to listen.

He stood there for a few moments, staring at the flyer, considering its message.
We are here just to listen.
Could that be true? His thoughts circled the idea, pondering the words and their meaning. He knew, of course, that such helplines existed. And they were confidential, weren’t they? At least, they were when it came to the standard calls – the abuse, the depression, the loneliness. But would that be the case with him? For the special things he would talk to them about?

He ran his hand over his rough stubble. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

Once the idea had settled in his head, though, it wouldn’t leave. How good it would be to talk to someone.
What if
, he thought,
what if I could?
That would be something, wouldn’t it.
A problem shared
. Because that was the point. It had always been bad in the past, but this time it was intolerable: the burden of the woman’s murder was too heavy to carry. Perhaps if he
could
share that with another human being, it would bring him some degree of peace.

He didn’t know.

After standing there for perhaps a minute longer, he looked carefully both ways, saw that nobody was watching, and plucked the flyer from the board. It felt like he was stealing it as he folded it away in his pocket and left. It tingled there, the possibility of some kind of release. He found himself almost huddling over it.

If he was going to do it, he realised later, he would need to be very careful.

He would have to make plans.

And so now he sits outside on a bench and prepares.

It is early afternoon, and this end of the park is mostly deserted. Across the spread of sunlit grass he can see clusters of people sitting, and a few others wandering along the dappled stone paths by the overhanging trees. There is a bandstand in the centre, and a couple of young men in shorts are on either side, arcing a frisbee to each other between the old green poles. A man is walking his dog; every now and then he throws a ball that’s as bright and red as an apple, and the animal tears off across the grass. He watches them all: normal people doing normal things. They have nothing heavy to carry.

From the bench, he has a good enough view of the park to see that there’s nobody nearby. Nobody close enough to overhear the conversation he is about to have. It is far from ideal, of course, but his options were limited and he needs to be safe. When he’s not using the phone, he intends to take out the battery and SIM card. In case he’s wrong about the call being confidential, he won’t risk using the phone at home, or anywhere there might be CCTV that could catch him. He drove for a while before finding this park. It will do. If he phones again, then next time he’ll choose somewhere else.

He looks down at the phone in his hands.

The plastic feels polished and awkward, as though it might slip from his grasp like a smooth pebble. He purchased it, along with a pay-as-you-go SIM card, from a dirty newsagent’s just outside the city centre. It came pre-loaded with a thousand minutes. No need to enter credit card details or talk to a salesperson or set anything up. He doesn’t even need to know his own phone number. He paid for everything with cash.

And now, his heart leaping, he turns the phone on and forces himself to calm down. One last check around, but there is nobody nearby. All anyone in the distance will see is a man talking on a mobile phone, having an emotional conversation. If they see anything at all.

He takes out the flyer, unfolds it, and dials the number, then presses the phone to his ear as it rings.

‘Hello,’ a woman’s voice says. ‘This is Mayday. My name’s Jane. How can I help you today?’