Beyond Evidence (3 page)

"It's just your way of not giving it up completely!" she would laugh.

He decided his lack of sleep over the last few weeks definitely was worth it and lit the cigarette. He drew deep on the tip and savoured the nicotine that would sail through his body within moments and held it for a few seconds.

This will calm my nerves surely,
he thought to himself. He exhaled slowly. Patrick's sleepless mind began to wander now that he felt more relaxed. He thought about the dreams he had been having and about the random women in them. They were women he had never met before, women he did not recognise.

He thought about them, all three of them. Their distressed mannerisms, tattered appearance and obvious fear in their eyes were what made him question the dreams. Of course, everybody dreams at night, but not everybody's dreams kept them awake for most of the night. He felt almost sure that it had to be something to do with his ability to communicate with the dead but he had never experienced it this way and in mass volume like this before. One of the women was around his age. She was small, about 5ft 1" and well dressed and she would just appear to him. She wouldn't say anything but just look at him, however as the nights went on her appearance and manner changed. Her clothing became tattered, her hair was hanging all around her face and she had bruising all around her neck and shoulders. She reached out to him and tried to speak, but all that came out was a croaking, gasping sound. The weeks drew on and as the dreams continued a second woman had appeared. At first she was just like the first woman, very well dressed and pretty. She looked in her late twenties or early thirties at a push. Again no words were spoken, just looks exchanged and as the nights went on, her appearance and manner also changed with her hair hanging around her face and her clothing soiled with what seemed like grit and oil, as if she had fallen on the pavement on a rainy day.

Her injuries seemed similar, but she also had scrapes and grazes on her face. She reached out for Patrick too, as if asking for some kind of help. Her voice was almost non existent. She clawed at her throat as if she were suffocating and gasping for air. The dreams didn't frighten him as such, they just woke him at all times of the night and got his mind ticking about who they were and why, night after night they continued to contaminate his sleep.

He drew deep on the cigarette again and turned to face the sliding glass door, pushing the faces from his thoughts. Patrick put the cigarette out in the ashtray and went back inside. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. Having a smoke had worked, he felt very relaxed and sleepy. As he was drifting off to that place between awake and sleep, he heard an unfamiliar voice draw out his name. It was a raspy voice, almost like someone with a bad throat infection or laryngitis.

Patrick.

He opened his eyes and sat up straight on the couch. Everything looked the same. The room was of medium size for a city apartment. The sofa was positioned in the corner of the sitting room and there was a large rectangular mirror on the wall above it. The television was on the opposite wall and a glass coffee table sat in the middle of the room.

Something felt different. He was cold due to leaving the sliding door open by a quarter of the way. It was July but it was also Scotland, the seasons don't play by the rules here. He stood up and took the blanket off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around himself as he sat back down. He felt a slight breeze on the back of his neck and the hairs stood on end so suddenly that he stood back up immediately. Patrick told himself it was because he had left the door open. He was facing the television and when he looked at it there was a face looking back at him, it was the face of the first woman who had been in his dreams. He couldn't decide whether he had actually fallen asleep on the couch and this was another dream or if this were his reality in all its fine form.

Her face was partly covered by her hair which seemed wet and straggly. As he looked on, his stomach was beginning to do somersaults and he felt slight nausea setting in. He spun around quickly to see if the woman was behind him, where she should be
in the reflection. Before he could do anything the face reappeared in the mirror which he now faced, with the most expressionless look on her face. Patrick had never felt so frozen with fright but unusually he didn't feel any different. It wasn't like in the films where the character see's a ghost and the temperature drops and you can see your breath in front of you. The room was of normal temperature and he definitely couldn't see his breath in front of him. He tried to stay as calm as possible but he couldn't move. He was routed to the spot with fear. He had encountered spirits appearing to him many times before, but never something so graphic and sudden like this. He took the deepest breath he could so he could shout out for Jodie, whilst keeping his eyes on the woman in the mirror. She seemed to be getting closer, as if walking out of the mirror toward him. Patrick was absolutely helpless with fear of not knowing what was going on, his body began to shake and he was breaking out in a cold sweat. The woman was no longer in the mirror. She was standing by the edge of the couch, her head was slumped forward but her eyes were on Patrick. She took slow, eerie steps, closer and closer. A hand was placed upon Patrick’s shoulder and he leaped two feet in the air.

"Wow Patrick it's me," Jodie spoke with a startle in her voice at his response.

"Wh, wh, where is she?" he stammered.

"Who baby? Where is who?"

"The woman," Patrick was now walking around the room putting on all of the small lamps.

"Patrick it's just us here. Are you ok? You must have had a nightmare," Jodie spoke with calm a manner.

Patrick thought to himself at that moment. He shouldn't be getting so jumpy at this sort of thing, he'd dealt with it since he was a child. But he had never in his life felt so on edge about spirits before. He couldn't get her face out of his mind. She was making him shiver at the thought of it. Those dead eyes looking up at him, her pale and beaten face made him feel nauseous again.

Patrick realised he was walking around in circles in the sitting room and Jodie was looking at him with concern more than fear. He stopped his panicked walk and sat down on the edge of the couch where the women had stood before Jodie had disturbed her.

"Can't you feel her? You have a spiritual sense too Jodie, can't you feel a presence? She...they have been here for weeks."

Jodie sat down slowly on the cushion next to the arm of the couch and took his hand.

"No babe, strange as it seems for me not to sense this sort of stuff, I really don't see or hear anything."

Patrick stood up and walked back out to the balcony to catch his breat
h. It was now approaching five a.m and he was wide awake with the entire goings on in his head. Daylight was setting in and he looked out on to the expressway again. There were only a handful of cars and a few delivery trucks, quietly whizzing past the apartments where Patrick stood. The sun was rising slowly to the right as he looked out and there was a haze of cloud all around the buildings that stood beyond the road. The clouds seemed to burn out the higher up he looked and the sky was a whitish blue colour. He thought how peaceful it would be up there. If only he could get some peace for a few hours so he could sleep and get his head together.

He turned so his back was to the road and called into Jodie who was still sitting on the cushion next to the arm of the couch, "I'm going to head out for a bit, just a walk to clear my head, I have something to post anyway and I'll pick up a newspaper and some rolls on the way in."

Jodie looked up and just smiled. She wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him. She had never seen him react this way about his ability to see and hear things before. It scared her deeply.

"Ok, I'm going back to bed for a bit. Take your keys in case I'm asleep when you get back." He walked past Jodie and stopped to kiss her on the forehead before leaving the sitting room. Patrick picked up his cigarettes from the table and went to the bedroom to change into jeans and a t-shirt. As he left the apartment he quietly closed the front door behind him.

Four

The Turner's

The kettle began to whistle on the hob. It was an ear piercing sound that he was sure no one else enjoyed. It reminded him of the way his mother would make tea in the mornings before he had to leave to go to school. He knew most people had electrical kettles nowadays but he was happy enough to use the boil on the hob type. He poured the boiling water into his coffee mug and stirred. His mind went back about twelve hours and he was positive someone would have found her by now. He looked at the photograph of his mother in the frame on the small kitchen wall and said aloud, "See mum, I'm making it better."

Ross Turner thought about the clothing he had gotten rid of in the last eight weeks. Three black shirts and three pairs of trouser which he had put into black bin liners and discarded at the local tip, where most people got rid of the rubbish they no longer needed in their lives. His bet was that the Police would never think to look there if they ever got a lead on their suspect.

Hundreds of people probably dumped their rubbish in that tip every day. Even if they did get a lead, they would never find any traces of those dirty whores on him if he had discarded of the evidence. He picked up the newspaper he had bought earlier that morning and saw the headline, ‘Third female found dead in city.'

He sipped at the coffee he had poured for himself.

Well isn't that sad. What's the world coming to with one less whore?
he thought with a sadistic
smirk as he read the rest of the article.

The girls face was on the front page, just a small one taken from her
facebook profile. She was pretty, with brunette hair which curled around her face. She had hazel brown eyes, sun shimmered skin and a pretty smile stretched across her small face.

"Hmm, no name yet I see. Well I'm sure we will have something for you soon mum!" Ross said aloud as he flicked the
page and began reading something on the other side about house prices falling by a further 0.5% due to the economic climate.

He flicked again, reading the rest of the newspaper, as if the news on the front page were just news. To everyone else in Scotland that morning it would be, but to Ross it was yesterday's news. Or last nights anyway! Ross Turner was a thirty year old single man who lived on his own in a flat in the
Partick area of Glasgow. It was a sandstone building which had stood for years. It had two bedrooms however he only used one for himself, he wasn't one for flat sharing. He much preferred his own company. Life had dealt him a bad hand over the years and he had learned to be his own best friend and to trust no one. He was fast becoming a man who was hell bent on revenge for his mother, Maria Turner.

Ross Turner had grown up in and around the North of Glasgow all his life. He lived with both his parents, until he was old enough to choose to get away from his abusive father.

As a child Ross' father subjected him to the sight of young, undignified women rolling through the door with him at all hours of the morning. Ross knew exactly why they were there and so did his mother. These women disgusted Ross. They would come into his home with his drunken father stinking of booze and cigarettes and disappear upstairs for an hour or so. When they left his father would beat Maria black and blue until he got tired and went to bed. His name was Billy Turner. Ross absolutely despised his father in the end. He would never forget the screams and pleas from his mother as Billy Turner vented his drunken state on Maria.

As a child, Ross would stick his fingers in his ears once those dirty women left his home because he knew what was coming next. The beatings became few and far between as Ross reached his middle teens. Ross threatened his father with the Police if he beat his mother and for the majority of the time it worked, but
there would be the occasional night where Billy Turner had had one too many and Ross wasn't there to help Maria. Ross left school and went to university for a three year course to undertake a degree in photography and make up artistry and whilst he was away Billy Turner wreaked havoc on poor Maria Turner.

This time he was in such a drunken rage that he raped her and broke her collar bone and as Maria tried to get away from Billy, she ran from the bedroom to the top of the stairs and as she descended Billy pushed her and she tumbled to the bottom causing her to break her ankle. He kept her cooped up in the bedroom like an animal for weeks on end, giving her
paracetamol for the pain in her ankle and collar bone. He didn't dare call an ambulance. That would have gotten him into trouble and he wasn't prepared to go to jail. The women still came and went most days. Maria had no idea who they were. Not prostitutes surely, he didn't have that much money. But he did have a charm that only Maria could see through. Maybe these women just fell at his feet the minute he opened his mouth. In all fairness that's how she ended up marrying him.