Approaching Zero (27 page)

“I should have called for backup,” Spinoza said.

“With that nutcase in your radio.”

“I could have used my mobile.”

“Bit late for that now.”

The red light was glowing brighter with every step they took and Spinoza no longer needed the phone to lead the way. He double checked what he already knew—that he wouldn’t be able to get a signal down there—and placed it back in his pocket. When they reached the end of the tunnel, they were greeted by the source of the light—a cheery neon sign that wouldn’t look out of place on the top of an American dinner. It simply said
Bones
.

“Get the feeling we’re in the right place.”

Kathy didn’t answer.

“You ready?”

Spinoza reached out his hand to this new handle, but a noise in the distance made him jump. Someone was in one of the buildings above them—maybe the clay house, maybe one of the other old buildings. There was no way of knowing.

“All sorts of shit-kickers hang out in these places,” Spinoza reassured her and finally opened the door. Neither of them was expecting what lay beyond—not least the music that hit them as they entered the sprawling chamber. It was music to be sick to, spinning uncontrollably on a carousel—Wurlitzer music that tasted of popcorn and candy floss but sounded tinny and misplaced in the dimly lit urban cave.

“What the hell is this place?” Kathy asked, her mouth wide open as she took in the view around her, which was some kind of shrine or homage to the fairground. Carousel horses of all colours were suspended in animation along the wall, accompanied by enormous illuminated fairground letters, art canvases, hundreds of canvases, and signage. Kathy could also swear that she could see a pair of dodgems in the back of the display. Rag dolls were strewn around the room, lying across the horses and on the floor beside them in disturbing heaps as if they had been involved in horrific accidents.

“This is…”

Kathy looked to Spinoza, but he didn’t have the words to finish off the sentence. “I know,” she said as they further explored the scene, which got weirder and weirder with each new feature they observed—a life-size toy soldier with his head missing; plastic animals positioned to perform unspeakable acts on each other; a candy floss maker full of dolls’ heads, a mess of hair and plastic. And still the eerie, sickly music continued, working through a repertoire of old folk songs.

“Look,” Kathy said and pointed to the ground. The trail was back and leading them around the corner.

“Right, let’s get moving. We need–” Spinoza began, but what they needed would forever go unspoken as he was forced to stop speaking. Kathy turned to him to see the source of his sudden silence and found him looking down at his hand on his chest. Blood was spurting through his fingers and dribbling onto the daisies beneath him. They hadn’t even heard a gunshot.

“It’s okay,” Kathy told him and helped him onto the ground. His eyes were bulging and his teeth grinding together, desperately trying to hold onto the little life left inside of him. “Just hold on,” Kathy said, but the panic in her voice was evident. She took off her top, leaving her in only a white vest, and began to tear it into shreds. She managed to move his hands from the wound and could see that it was oozing scarily. “I’m going to bundle this up,” she said and pushed as much of the fabric onto the gunshot as possible. She then tied a length around him to keep it in place, causing him to wince with the pain, but he didn’t look as if he had the energy to express the extent of the agony he must have been feeling. Kathy knelt beside him and said, “I’m so sorry, Spinoza.”

Spinoza took a deep breath and tried to speak, but couldn’t. He tried again and managed to say, “My name’s Chris,” then his eyes drooped and he was no longer conscious. Kathy felt for a pulse and could feel one there, but only faintly.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated and then was on her feet again. “So this is what you do is it, you coward?!” she shouted and her voice echoed around the space. “Couldn’t man-up and take us on!” she screamed and then the fear hit her and she threw herself against the wall. She had Brady to think of. She couldn’t make herself an easy target. However, as she dared herself back onto the trail, she knew she could have been shot anytime if he had wanted it. She was alive because he wanted her alive and she would have to progress knowing that every step she took could be her last.

As she turned the corner, the light changed again and a toxic yellow was emanating through the brick hallway, which was also cluttered with canvases leaning against walls and other art supplies in pots and plastic boxes. Walking further along, deeper into this maze, the music behind her became faint and then all was silent again but for the sound of her heavy breathing and the words that she was muttering to herself, willing herself forward, although she couldn’t keep her body from trembling and her heart had all but exploded out of her chest. Finally she turned another corner and was in another chamber of sorts. This one was much smaller and contained a sloping arts table covered in notes and sketches, which were also dotted on the walls and floor. The room also contained canvases in the process of becoming paintings, mostly nudes, and smelt toxic somehow, bleachy. It was a smell that caught in the throat. A thick, velvet, blood-coloured curtain was draped over one whole wall of the studio and Kathy was in no hurry to find out what lay behind so she walked around and her attention was drawn eventually to an enormous glass cabinet, spanning almost the full length of the adjacent wall. What she saw there were tiny, ivory sculptures, about fifty of them, each a child in various positions of play: swinging on a swing, kicking a ball, dancing energetically, sleeping in an ivory bed. They were incredibly life-like miniatures, so intricate and detailed, beautiful even, but their position behind the glass—imprisoned for all time—started a familiar tightening in Kathy’s stomach.

“So what do you think?” A low, deep voice said behind her and she snapped around to see a man standing in the doorway. She had no idea what she had been expecting—a costume of some sort perhaps, after all of the fairground weirdness in the room before? Some kind of monster? Makeup? A terrifying smile that spread out over his whole face while he spoke the most terrifying words? Fangs? Fur? Inhuman height or weight or an ominous limp or facial tick? She had no idea who was behind any of this, but if she had to paint a picture of the man who had orchestrated eleven abductions—nine murders—he would not look like the man in front of her. He was just, well, normal. He had two arms, two legs, and was dressed in dungarees that were splashed with paint—at least she hoped it was paint. His eyes told no stories of the evil beyond and his arms hung at his sides as if they had caused no harm in their entire existence. The only quirk to him was the beard that had become so fashionable with young people of late—a full Victorian strongman beard. It was soft and well looked after and made him look softer if anything. His brown hair was also well looked after and he just looked like an average guy, well-spoken, but average—average weight and average height. He was younger than Kathy had imagined, somewhere in his mid-twenties, but there was nothing about the sight of him that caused her alarm other than his presence itself.

“You like those?”

Kathy looked back to the display of children. “This is what it’s all been about, hasn’t it?”

“You’re too clever for me, my dear.” The man held his hands up in front of him.

“Where’s Brady? What have you done with her?”

“All in good time,” he said softly and Kathy took in the full length of him once again.

“Who are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but if you need a name we can go with Joe.”

“Joe, why have you done this?” Kathy surprised herself by how freely she was able to talk to him.

“You’ve seen my past work, Kathy. Three years I spent putting together the fairground exhibition, painting, creating installations, making a comment on life the way I saw it. But nobody wants a vision of life, Kathy. No one wants art anymore.”

Kathy wanted to answer this but she didn’t know where to begin.

“Have you got any idea how much one of these sculptures sells for, Kathy?”

Kathy shook her head and looked back to the cabinet.

“I sold one last week for one point five million pounds. I know!” he continued, taking in her shocked expression. “Sculptures of children made from the bones of murdered children. Of course it’s not something I can take to Christies, but the world has an undercurrent that I’m only just starting to understand, Kathy, transporting trinkets and information, money and the bones of dead children.”

It was only as he said these words that Kathy began to see the kind of character seeping through that she might have expected. She had encountered this before too many times through her work—the sheer lack of empathy, the classic stamp of the psychopath.

“And you killed these children?”

His face flushed with offence and he took a step towards Kathy. She jumped more than she would have liked, unable to hide how terrified she was.

“Of course I didn’t kill them,” he said, looking as if he had a nasty taste in his mouth. “I could never kill a child. No, I just put it out there: carte blanche for Paedos. Funny huh! It’s that underground network chattering on and on again. Word gets out and soon I’m picking up bodies left, right and centre. I had three piled up together at one point. I couldn’t move for materials.”

“Materials!”

Joe took another step forward with his eyebrows raised and Kathy protested no further. She took a step back and realised just at that moment that she couldn’t smell him. This didn’t surprise her; it simply backed up his story. He was no paedophile, but his was a twisted and cruel kind of evil. She then quickly tried to focus her mind to pick up the thoughts running through his head and gain some kind of advantage, but predictably, all she found there was the daisy skull. It was now bright and vibrant, as if she had been working to a radar and had now hit gold. “And the daisy skull?” she asked.

“Ah, that—would you like to sit down, Kathy? Can I get you a drink? I’ve got tea, coffee, nothing stronger, I’m afraid. I might have a few herbal teabags floating around.” The offer was all the more eerie because he meant it as a kindness.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Joe nodded and continued. “I’ve travelled widely. It was actually while in Indonesia that I stumbled on the idea for this exhibition. I also met a man who became my first buyer. We struck up quite a relationship and he put more buyers my way—all raging paedos of course, but wealthy paedos. The best kind. Anyway–”

“So you’ve been doing this a while?”

Thump! Kathy didn’t have time to block him or react. She barely saw him move before his fist was in her face and she was on the floor. The force was so ferocious and she fell so hard that there was no time to put her hands out to break her fall. The pain was immediate and never ending, as if she had been smashed in the face with a mallet. He may have looked like an average guy but there was nothing average about his strength and speed.

“Please don’t interrupt, Kathy,” he told her calmly and then continued to tell his story as if nothing had happened while Kathy mopped at the blood exploding from her lip and pulled herself against the wall. “Yes, I’ve moved around quite a bit. It’s amazing how careless folk can be with their children and then what do they do? Just make more.” He was laughing now. “Anyway, back to the story. Because of the nature of my, let’s say, product, I was put in touch with Aadidev Bhat. He’s something else. Have you met him?”

Kathy could barely focus on the words now let alone answer him.

“Smells a bit like boiled cabbage, though, which is weird because I didn’t think Indians ate that kind of thing. I regret meeting him now, of course, because he’s brought the police to my door. Well, my runner would, had you spoken to him, he was always a weak string of piss. Anyway, I was able to make a bit of extra money on the side supplying him with odds and sods that I didn’t use in the sculptures. But when I met with him the second or third time he told me that a psychic would come looking for me. That’s you, Kathy.”

Still no answer, so he shrugged and continued.

“And he taught me the blocking technique, which, as you can see, I’ve been practicing.”

“How… does it work?” Kathy managed to say.

“Oh, I assumed you would know. It’s about projecting conflicting images—the daisy and the skull—life and death. The rest is a bit more complicated and took quite a bit of mastering, not to mention a potion from the man himself, which probably contained some of my bones. Funny huh! To be honest I thought it was all bollocks to begin with, but I’m an artist and there was great theatre to the whole thing. And then you showed up with Suri.”

Despite the pain, Kathy tried to keep her face as still as possible to mask the way she felt at the mention of Suri’s name.

“I’ve got a guy on his way to her right now, in case you were wondering. It’s amazing what people will do for money, and I’ve given this guy a pretty indecent set of instructions.”

“You bastard! You hurt her and I swear–” but his fist was in her face again before she could finish her threat and she was thrown against the wall.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” he ruminated, but didn’t elaborate. And then he said, “Of course I’ll be miles away before they find all the bodies. It’s been fun though, hasn’t it?”

Joe turned his back on Kathy, so confident was he of his safety, and idly leafed through the notes on his desk as she struggled to focus herself back in the room and remain upright. “I knew it was you when you went to the Spooner interview, but I thought you’d like the theatre of the ‘daisy killings,’” he smiled. “What a dick Spooner was; he would have ratted me right out if he had known anything, but I was too smart for that anyway. I didn’t work directly with the grunts you see. They plasticked up the scene and I came and took it all away while they went for a little stroll. Anything they did know was protected by the daisy skull—I hope you’re noting all this down for that little list of yours, or perhaps you’ll write a paper about it while you’re on your pretend sabbatical.