Two-Way Split (21 page)

Don closed his eyes as Robin swung round. Relaxed, he felt Robin press the knife into his palm. Still relaxed, he felt Robin fold his fingers round the handle and give his hand a friendly pat. Now with the knife firmly in his grip Don considered slashing the pathetic creature's face, but Robin had already scurried away.

Thunder rumbled in Don's ears. A blanket of nausea fell over him and he sank to the floor. Hammers pounded his skull. A vice squeezed his brain.
Shit.

After a while, he raised himself onto his hands and knees and scrabbled over to Carol, ignoring the pain pulsing through his body like a surging electrical current. He pulled back her blouse, revealing three shallow cuts. Squiggly red lines that ran down towards her pubic hair. Robin hadn't got far with his spelling. The L was complete, albeit faint and much too small. He had carved a semi-circle of the O. The O should be a rectangle, though. An oval was too difficult to form properly at the necessary depth. Straight lines were much easier. Especially when…

Carol Wren coughed.

At first he thought he'd imagined it, but, as he stared at her, her chest bounced and she coughed again. Her whole body stiffened. She wheezed as she drew breath. Don's head cleared. He shuffled behind her and grabbed both ends of the cord still wrapped around her neck. Her eyes sprang open and she looked at him, confused and terrified, pupils darting from side to side. She opened her mouth to scream. He pulled with all his strength. Amputated her scream. She beat the floor with her heels. Kicked a shoe off. Her eyes begged him to stop.

He stopped only when the ligature had bitten so deeply into her neck that in places the white cloth was hardly visible.

Carol Wren's eyes bulged. Red-flecked. No longer begging him to stop.

Don lifted her head out of his lap. He moved his legs from under her and gently lowered her head to the floor. He stood, slid out of his coat, removed his shoes and socks. She was dead now. It was unlikely there would be much blood, but caution never hurt. He didn't want to end up walking home with blood all over his clothes. Bare feet cold on the floorboards, he stepped back onto the rug and pulled his jumper over his head. He took off his shirt and removed his trousers. Almost free. Nobody here to see his scars.
He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his underpants. Stopped. Ridiculous to think that he could strip naked. He unhooked his thumbs. Ridiculous. It didn't matter that she was dead. She was
here
.

He prised her legs apart, knelt between them and opened her blouse.

At least he could do
this
. He placed the knife over the first of Robin's marks. The blade sank into her stomach as he pressed down on the handle with both hands. He dragged the knife about three inches towards him. When he pulled the blade out, the skin instantly closed around the cut. He shoved the knife in once more and jiggled it from side to side as he slid it along the length of the incision. This time, when he removed the blade, the clean edges of the cut remained a millimetre or so apart. Satisfied, he started on the foot of the L, his mouth hanging open as he concentrated.

10:55 am

Pearce dialled the number on the business card as he strode along the pavement.

"Eye Witness Investigations." The voice sounded familiar. "How may I help?"

Pearce joined the queue at the bus stop. "Who is this?"

"Eye Witness Investigations. I already said."

"You the guy with the busted nose?"

There was a slight delay before the man replied, "Who am I speaking to?"

"The card," Pearce said. "You wrote on the card." Instinctively he turned it over. "You said you knew his name."

"Ah."

"Who is it?"

"Ah. Well."

"You going to tell me?"

"Well, maybe not over the phone."

Pearce glanced at the half-a-dozen bodies crowded inside the bus shelter. No one was showing an interest in his conversation and, in any case, the almost constant traffic noise at the nearby crossroads prevented him from being overheard. Still, the PI was probably right. You never knew who might be monitoring your calls.

"I'll come to your office," Pearce said. He flicked the card over and studied the address. Not far. Half an hour's walk, maybe. "Should be with you in ten, fifteen minutes." He hung up without waiting for a reply. If the appointment wasn't convenient, too bad. He'd make it convenient when he got there.

Looking along the long stretch of road leading towards Meadowbank, he saw no sign of an approaching bus. If he had to wait too long, he'd hail a taxi. No sign of a taxi either, mind you. He could always steal a car. Or a bike. He'd have to be careful not to get caught nicking it and landing back in jail, though. Jesus, what was he thinking? He couldn't take risks like that. He was tired and his thoughts were jumbled. He kept thinking of his mum, feeling her in his arms, seeing the blood leech from her body, her face pale, lips dry, her breathing shallow.

Pearce didn't believe in God. He didn't believe in eternal life. He didn't believe in immortal souls. He had nothing to help him deal with this. She was dead, like Muriel. Whatever that meant. He had no idea. Death happened to other people. He couldn't afford to dwell on this, so he flicked the switch in his head and annihilated his thoughts. He closed his eyes and saw his mother in the ambulance, a look on her face he'd never seen before and never wanted to see again, not even in his head.  He opened his eyes. He'd learned enough on the inside to know that impatience only led to mistakes and regrets. Impulse criminals were the ones most easily caught and he really didn't want to get caught because if he got caught there would be nobody to avenge his mum's death and then where would he be? Nick a car? Sod that idea.

Another flash of her face in the ambulance. He felt ice in his bones.
Do something.

A quick check of the bus timetable told him that the number five was due in four minutes. He could wait that long.
Plan. Think ahead.

The business card. The fact that it belonged to a private investigator gave the claim on the reverse some kind of credence. You might expect a private detective to know something other people, including the police, might not know. Yeah? Okay, you wouldn't necessarily expect it, but you would concede that it might be possible. Shit. He wanted the PI to give him a name. He wanted the name to be the name of his mother's killer. He wanted it badly. But how could the PI possibly have come across that information? And if he had, where had it come from? How reliable was the source? How was the PI going to convince Pearce that the name he supplied was the right one?

Well, Pearce thought as he stepped onto the bus, he'd find out soon enough.

He sat upstairs, looking out onto the wedge-shaped incline on the left that spanned the length of Royal Terrace. A scattering of wooden benches, one of which had been tipped on its back, helped it pose as a park. A tall man, suit trousers tucked into green rubber boots, weaved around a couple of muddy patches, even though his boots were already filthy. Ahead of him, ears pinned back, tail up, a collie paused for a moment before disappearing into the trees.

As the bus turned onto Leith Walk, Pearce's phone rang. He answered it, thinking it might be the PI. It wasn't.

Ailsa said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" She didn't reply, so he repeated the question.

"You know," she said.

"Know what? What are you talking about?"

"Christ." She paused. "That you'd been in prison. Why didn't you tell me?"

He said, "Not something I want to brag about." The bell rang and the "stopping" sign lit up at the front of the bus. A tall, bald man in a shabby brown suit shuffled towards the stairs, arms pinned to his sides as if he was wrapped in tight bandages.

"You think I want to read about it in the papers?"

"What have they said?"

"That you just got out of prison."

"That's it?"

"After ten years."

"They say why?"

"Not a peep. Left me guessing. What did you do, Pearce?"

"Now's not the time."

"Want me to guess? Let's see. Ten years." The tall man's bald head disappeared down the stairs. "That's a long time. So, something serious. From what I know of you I'd say it isn't corporate fraud, so I'll plump for either armed robbery or murder." She waited. He didn't say anything, so she said, "Well?"

"It's not that simple."

"I'm sure it's not."

"Stop it, Ailsa. Don't be sarcastic."

"Don't be – Jesus." She hung up.

He sat for a moment, stroking his chin with his knuckles, noticing that the bus had stopped outside a shop that sold wedding dresses. A fat woman wheezed up the stairs, her conical head poking out of a pink coat, the thick lenses of her glasses magnifying her hazel eyes. As the bus stuttered into life again she reeled forward, the hems of her red trousers brushing the toes of her bright orange trainers, and staggered into an empty seat. She turned, a dusty yellow handbag clutched to her stomach, and looked at Pearce. He stared at her until she muttered and looked away.

He dialled Ailsa's number. She didn't reply. He tried again. Still no reply. He left a short message to say he'd try again later.

The bus was crossing the South Bridge when his phone rang again.

She said, "I'm pissed off. Really pissed off. I can't—"

Pearce said, "I killed somebody."

Her voice changed. "What? How? Who? I mean, why?"

"Can it wait? I'll explain when I see you."

She was silent for a while. Finally she said, "I don't know about that. This kind of changes things a bit." She blew hard into the mouthpiece. "I felt safe with you until I heard about this. Now, I don't know. Was it an accident?"

"You don't get ten years for an accident."

"Didn't think so." Her breath rattled down the phone. "He must have done something terrible for you to have killed him."

Pearce said nothing.

"Well?"

"He was responsible for my sister's death." The garishly clad fat woman turned to stare at him again. "I'm on the bus," he said into the phone. "I can't talk now. Tell you later, okay?"

The silence that followed seemed to last forever. At last Ailsa said, "Just one thing. Are you dangerous?"

He considered the question for a moment and said, "I like to think so."

"I mean, should I be scared of you?"

"Either you're scared or you're not."

"I'm not. But maybe I should be."

"That's for you to decide." It was his turn to hang up.

The fat woman puffed her cheeks. She looked like an overgrown baby. Her cheeks deflated and she said, "You'll catch cold. You should put on a jacket." She turned round and looked out the window.

The bus crossed over the High Street and rolled up the shop-lined South Bridge. As it approached Nicholson Street one of the many constructions to have taken place during Pearce's incarceration appeared on the right. Years ago his mum had sent him a postcard of the new theatre. While he was in prison she took it upon herself to keep him in touch with the outside world (which, to her, meant Edinburgh). The distinctive glazed façade of the Festival Theatre was hard to forget. It looked insubstantial, fragile. Behind the glass small groups sat around tables in the ground floor café. Eating and drinking, chatting and laughing. Untroubled, carefree, contented. Ignorant of the pain of losing a sister, of losing a mother, of having failed to protect either of them. Pearce wanted to jump off the bus and lob bricks through the glass at the smiling wankers, smash some horror into their cosy lives, shatter the brittle membrane that divided joy and pain.