Beyond Evidence (20 page)

Forty

Realisation

Jodie knew everything that was happening. She understood that what was happening was necessary and it was possible that it could save her. She allowed the girls to take over her mind but knew that at anytime she could take charge. She felt at ease with this.

"Tell me why Mark?" Jodie spoke.

Silence...

He won't speak now since Michelle scared the living day lights out of him
,
Angela said.

"Can't we have this conversation face to face?" Jodie asked, feeling her heart skip a beat at the suggestion.

Ross was still staring at the door from the other side in shock of hearing that voice.

How was it possible that he could hear that voice? Michelle was dead, killed by him.

"I can hear your thoughts you know," Jodie said.

"Aye, I'm sure you can,
" he struggled not to believe her.

"Yep, your wondering
how you heard Michelle's voice." It wasn't a question.

Ross had never believed in spirits, ghosts and goblins and all that paranormal nonsense. However, now he wasn't so sure. "Actually, I am thinking that you put on a good act. You should be
shitting
yourself right now, but you're pulling off being brave. I kind of like it," he was trying to pull off being brave himself, the unknown forces within the room and the unexplained things that had happened to him scared him a little. But he would never show it. However, this feeling quickly passed as he thought of how his plan meant that he wouldn't have to deal with them for much longer.

"Look, I'm clearly not going to escape this, so I would at least like my last conversation with a human to be face to face," Jodie was terrified beyond belief, but she put her skills to good use.

When she was a child and first discovered that she was psychic, she didn't think that her ability had a name. Jodie thought that she was just mentally deranged. Who would believe that she could talk to dead people?

It scared her terribly when she was little but she learned how to be brave and how if she faced it head on, then it would go away and she wouldn't have to be scared of it. This was how she was dealing with the situation that had presented itself now. She was going to face it head on, although she knew that it wouldn't go away,
she
would be the one that would go away. She just hoped that it would be quick and painless.

"Are you seriously telling me that you want to be in the
same room as me? A murderer?" He enjoyed the prospect.

She took a deep breath.
"Yes, I want to see you. I want to talk to you face to face."

A few moments of silence on his part passed as he considered this. Jodie on the other hand was listening to all sorts of things in her head. It frustrated
her a little as she was trying to listen to Mark's thoughts, which were quiet at this time.

***

An hour had passed silently. Jodie had heard nothing from Mark since she told him she wanted to see his face. She was beginning to think that he had decided to just leave her there, in the cold damp smelly room. But then a noise came that chilled her to the bone. She listened as Mark began pulling the nails out of the wood with what she thought to be pliers, what else would he use?

Her stomach lurched at the sound of each nail coming out of the wood, knowing that she was closer to seeing his murderous face. The girls in her head were barely making their presence known either but she knew they were still there.

Don't get too close to him
, Anna's voice came now.
I made that mistake.

Jodie nodded and backed herself against the window wall. The last nail was pulled from the wood and the last wooden slat dropped on the floor before she saw the handle turn as he opened the door. She held her breath as she watched the door open and in her head she heard a sound which resembled a growl which, she presumed was Michelle. This made her feel uneasy but she kept up the brave pretence.

Jodie was now face to face with a man that she did not recognise. "Hello Jodie."

Her face must have told a story of confusion because he then said, "Not who you were expecting?"

"Mark?" Jodie asked. She knew it was his voice, but the face was not his.

"Ross Tu
rner. Mark is just my stage name," he said it like an announcer would introduce the next programme to come on the television.

The voices in her head were going crazy, all shouting and screaming at once. She couldn't pick out any particular sentences of who was saying what but she knew exactly what it all meant.

"That's why he couldn't figure it out sooner," Jodie said aloud before she could stop herself.

"What?" he asked.

She thought about it in her head before she said it out loud,
Multiple Personality Disorder. No, if he had that then he would be denying that he had killed them. He is just a sick evil man, using another identity to fool everyone.

"You killed them as Ross but
you became Mark to cover it up." She looked directly into his eyes as the realisation came to her. The fear tore through her, making her body tingle, making her sweat and she began to tremble as he slowly approached her.

Ross
smiled harrowingly at her now. "Good girl Jodie. You should have been a detective."

The blow to the side of her face knocked her to the floor.

Forty One

Justification from a killer

Patrick pulled up outside the station and got out of the car. He stood and listened for a few moments, trying to hear something... anything.

But he heard nothing, only the early morning traffic. As he began to walk into the station, he saw a picture in his mind, a picture of the room Jodie was in. He couldn't see Jodie but he was being shown the wall with the photographs and reports that had been pinned on it.

It was like a slow motion home movie, taking him slowly from one side of the room to the other. It was at that moment that he saw the photograph of himself and Jodie, alongside information about the church. He could almost smell the dampness of the room. It was so dark and had such an evil feel to it. He knew then that this is where Jodie was, but he had no idea where this place was or how to get to it. He ran through the entrance of the station but didn't have to go very far to find Preston and Lang as they were in the reception area waiting for him.

"That was quick," Lang said.

"Roads were clear. Here..." he said handing Preston a plastic bag, "the cloths."

Preston handed the bag to Lang and Lang disappeared through a set of double doors behind him.

"So, what is the plan?" Patrick asked.

"Well, considering that we have absolutely nothing on the murderer, as much as I hate to say it then it is mostly up to you and what you can pick up," Preston replied.

"Ok, well I have been shown a room."

"A room?"
Lang said as he came back through the doors.

"Yes, a room. I don't know where it is but I know that Jodie is there."

Lang could feel the frustration building inside him, almost as if it was using his intestines as a ladder, it slowly climbed but he managed to keep it under control.

"What does it look like?" Preston asked as he led Patrick and Lang back to their office.

"It's a horrible dark green colour, very dull and damp. I could smell the dampness."

Well that narrows it down
, Lang thought to himself. Even after his experience at the church he still found Patrick hard to believe sometimes.

"There is one window but it has been blocked out, maybe by a wooden board or something. Then there is a wall and it is covered in photographs of Angela, Michelle and Rebecca. There are newspaper cuttings and reports from the murders. It's as if he has put them there to remind himself of who they were. He's one sick bastard!"

Preston was writing in his note pad as Patrick explained what he had seen.

"So you think that this is close?" Lang asked.

"Well, the guy must live locally. There is no way that he would come into Glasgow to kill someone then have to travel out of Glasgow to get home!" Patrick said.

"Yeah, that makes sense. So do you think you will be able to pick up where this place is?" Lang asked.

"Glasgow is a big place. It's impossible to think that we will find her," Patrick said.

Patrick knew that there was the highest chance that he wouldn't find Jodie. It wasn't the thought of her dying that ate away at him the most, it was the thought that she could die and he would never find her. Their mental communication cut off by her murder. The thought was slowly killing him.

***

She held her face as she looked up at him. Her cheek bone felt like it had exploded and was now burning under her flesh. He leered over her as she tried to regain her
composure, she could smell his breath and his presence felt heavy over her.

"I am sorry, but your attitude was becoming a little too cocky for my liking!" he drew his eyes away from her and allowed her to sit up straight from lying on the floor.

"Why did you do it?" she asked.

He took a deep breath and walked over to the wall with the photographs on it. Jodie noticed that he had carelessly left the door open but she knew that now was not the time to run, he was too fired up and ready for her to make that move. No, she was going to bide her time.

"Don't even think about it!" he said, almost as if he knew what she had been thinking.

"Trust
me, I am not going anywhere until you suffer." Michelle's voice came from Jodie's mouth and he spun around to face her.

"Stop doing that!" he shouted.

"It's not me, it's your victim." Jodie had no idea where her new found braveness had come from, maybe it was Michelle giving her the courage.

"
It's bullshit is what it is, you're throwing your voice," he turned away from her again.

Jodie was getting annoyed with him but she knew she couldn't show it. If the spirits weren't careful and played around with him too much he may get too angry and that would leave Jodie in a difficult situation to say the least.

Stop winding him up, keep it cool for now,
Jodie said into herself. She could see the other spirits agreeing with her but Michelle was not in a cooling off type of place at the moment and Jodie felt her energy lurch, throwing itself at him. Jodie heard her growl and for a moment Ross looked as though he had heard it too. She saw the hairs on his arms stand on end at that very moment she had heard the growl, but she acted as normally as she could in the given situation.

"You want to know why I killed those girls?" he asked.

"Not just me, they do too."

"
Urgh, would you shut the
fuck
up about ghosts!" he shouted at her and he flew over to her and grabbed her by the upper arms. "You're a fucking human and when you die, that's it. None of this spirit haunting crap!" He was shaking her now.

Her head began to hurt as he shook her, but he soon stopped and just stared into her face. She stared back, looking for Mark. The only resemblance was the voice.

"
Whores!
" he said suddenly, causing Jodie to jump. His eyes widened like those of a madman.

"What?" she asked.

"That's why I killed them. They were whores, didn't deserve to live. Simple," he said it very matter of fact.

"I don't understand what you mean," she said.

"My mother killed herself, because of my poor excuse for a human
fucking
dad!"

Jodie couldn't keep up with him, but she tried, mainly to allow more time for Patrick to try to find her.

"Ok, so why did you have to kill them because of your dad?" she said it firmly but quietly.

"Oh Jodie do keep up." He returned to the photograph wall. "Whores, Jodie. They sleep with anything that will have them and my father was anything. You see, whores are one of the reasons that my dad became such an arsehole, he drank, took coke and had sex with dirty little
whores
!" He kept his eyes on the photographs of his victims.

"You think that Angela and the others deserved to die because you labe
lled them whores." Jodie could feel she was losing her temper, mainly because she was trying to keep Michelle's energy under control too.

"Well done Jodie, that's two out of two so far,
you're getting the hang of this," he clapped sarcastically.

Jodie decided that the best tactic was to try to get him to think that she understood his mind, felt his pain and wanted to help him. So she began a dangerous game, one that if not played correctly, would end in her becoming
number five on his victim list.

Forty Two

One step closer

Somehow, they had found themselves back at Patrick and Jodie's flat in Glasgow Harbour. Patrick didn't know what had drawn him to his home, but he knew that the spirits were leading him there, so he went with the instinct.

"So, now that we're here what do we do?" Lang whispered to Preston whilst Patrick was in the bathroom.

"I don't know. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack I'll admit, but Patrick needs our support right now. And if you hadn't already realised, we have a missing person case!"

"You're damn right. We're missing one bloody killer." Lang was not at all being sarcastic. Preston was becoming irritated by Lang's constant need to criticise and mock Patrick, but he knew that now was not the time to bring it up again.

Patrick was sitting on the edge of the bath as Preston and Lang waited patiently in the lounge. He couldn't hear them whispering, he was too far away in his mind, watching the vision that was being played to him. He could see the car and which direction it was headed although the figure in the driving seat was a silhouette without a face. Patrick didn't recognise the car, but he did recognise the sticker on the back window, Kennedy and Clark Car and Van Hire.

That's the same company I hired our car from
, he thought.

Now he was in the passenger seat, next to the driver. It felt so real that he wanted to reach over and punch the figure in the face. He could hear the sound of the tires on the road and he could hear the rush of the wind hitting the car as it travelled along the A82 back towards Glasgow. Patrick realised that this person must have followed him and Jodie to Lomond Park, even followed them to the car hire office. Did that mean that he had followed them from their flat?

"Patrick, we need to know our next move," Preston's voice jolted Patrick back to reality.

"I have something," he got up from the side of the bath and went into the kitchen. He took a card from the fridge door and showed it to Preston and Lang. "The guy followed us to Lomond Park and he was driving one of these cars."

Lang took the card from Patrick. "How do you suddenly know this?"

"I saw him driving a car back towards Glasgow, on the A82 and the car had this sticker on the back window," Patrick seemed so sure now.

Preston had no other choice but to believe him, they had absolutely no other leads and this seemed to be the closest that they were going to get. "Ok. So we go to the car hire office and ask for records of every car hire purchased two days ago, we narrow it down to the male drivers and investigate them."

"That will take too long," Patrick said.

"Listen Patrick, this is all we have, you're going to have to try and be patient. Let us do our job and you keep doing yours." Lang was beginning to doubt his scepticism once more, thinking the same as Preston was – this was all that they had to work on.

They rushed down the stairs of the building and leapt into Preston's car. As they made their journey to Kennedy and Clark Car and Van Hire, Patrick tried to stay as calm as he could. If he could sink into himself then maybe the spirits would show him the destination point of the car.

They pulled up outside of the hire office and made their way inside. The weather had taken a turn in the early afternoon and the sky was now bulging with thick, dark grey clouds that were releasing large blobs of cold rain. One dropped down onto Patrick's shoulder and as it soaked through his t-shirt he instantly felt the hairs on his left arm raise. He knew that it was not the rain that caused his skin to turn cold. Angela Noble was walking alongside him, quietly but with a heavy look of anxiousness on her face.

Preston and Lang disappeared inside the office and Patrick stayed outside, waiting for his message from Angela.

"You know him," was all she said.

"You have to tell me who it is," Patrick did speak aloud but only because he knew that there was nobody else around him.

"He is close to you now, but once was not," she showed him the image of the car again, further up the road that it travelled. Then he saw the image of Jodie, gagged and unconscious in the boot, unaware of her situation. It made bile rise to his throat but he swallowed it down.

"I don't understand. Once was not... what?" he watched the car as he tried to make sense of the words that she used.

He wracked his brain, searched in his mind to unravel the words that she used to describe the culprit.

"You mean I know him now, but haven't always? Is that it?" he asked but she was gone. The image of the car was also gone, but the colour of the car stuck in his memory.

He rushed into the office and could see that a woman in a blue and red shirt was taking them through files of paperwork.

"I've got more," Patrick called out as he approached the desk.

The woman looked up a little shocked at his sudden presence. She then looked at Preston who assured the woman that Patrick was a colleague.

"What do you have?" Lang asked.

"The car was black and
I
know him, but I haven't always known him," Patrick was beginning to sound a little panicked.

"Well, who do you know that you have only just met?" Lang asked him, almost sounding panicked himself.

Patrick thought about all of the people that he met for the first time since Angela had been murdered.

"Well, it could be anyone, I meet new people all of the time through the church," he paused
. "And to be fair I have only known
you
two for a few weeks."

Lang let out a
laugh that he couldn't control. "Get serious Patrick, police officers remember?"

Patrick didn't know who to trust, but he was certain that it must have been someone from the church as he didn't socialize that much out of work.

Then, he suddenly felt his body freeze, almost as if his muscles and joints had locked simultaneously. Preston watched the colour drain from Patrick's face. "What is it?"

He didn't want to believe it, but the situation would have been too much of a coincidence for it not to be true.

"Patrick, who?" Lang urged.

"Mark,
it’s Mark."

"What's the last name?"

"He didn't give me one, when he started working the shift at the bar, we just started talking and, I don't know, I just never thought to ask. And clearly he wasn't willing to give."

Lang shook his head. "Yeah and now we know why.
"

Preston asked the woman to look for the name Mark under a black car that was hired out on the day that Patrick hired out his.

"There is nobody under that name in any of the records sir," her voice was quivering.

Patrick was beginning to lose hope after a further thirty minutes of the woman searching her computer f
or a single name when she spoke. "I have found a booking that seems to be the only one that matches your requirements. It is a black Ford Focus one point nine turbo diesel, the only black car that we hired out that day."

"That's it, what's the name?" Patrick asked.

"A Mr Ross Turner," she said.

Patrick felt a wave o
n confusion was over him. "But how can that be?"

"I'm sorry sir that is the name that I have here," she said.

"It has to be correct, he would have had to produce a driving license to receive the car," Preston said.

"Can you make a note of that address please Miss?" Lang asked.

Patrick walked back outside, feeling defeated. He stood still, allowing the rain to soak him. Angela stood next to him once more, this time she smiled.

"What?" he asked aloud.

"You're nearly there, you have almost worked it out," she faded from his vision as she spoke. He took a deep breath, hoping and wishing that she was right.

"Ok, let's go,
" Preston said as he appeared in front of Patrick.

The three men got back into Preston's car and as he pulled out of the car park, Patrick felt the butterflies begin to swarm around the pit of his stomach as they began the journey to the address on the piece of paper.