Bloodstream (41 page)

‘I did this for you. For us. I had to prove that there was a chance for us to love each other and do it right. All of those people – liars and enablers – they meant nothing. They’re not as strong as we’re going to be. You can tell them. If something happens to me. You can tell them that I was just proving my love, our love, was stronger. One last time. Tell them I had to bring you here, so no one could get in the way of that.’

Ben crouched down next to Number Four. ‘We’ll have new names. You won’t be a number any more. Okay? We’ll be together, just you and me. No one will get in our way. It can still happen. I just have to finish this. Stop the lies one last time. Then, it’ll just be me and you, right?’

He raised his hand to her face, stroking away tears which rolled down her cheeks. ‘You’re so like her, just like Number One. This time, everything will be the way it was supposed to be.’

The pain was unlike anything Amy had experienced before. The hunger was not the issue any longer. It was the agony of being chained to a radiator, her limbs cramping, twisted into awkward angles. The pain increasing if she tried to break free.

Her voice had gone hoarse from shouting, now barely a whimper escaped from her throat. Not that it mattered anyway, with the tape across her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had even a sip of water.

He was going to kill her. She didn’t know when, but that was what was going to happen. Everything screamed this fact at her. She had tried to escape, tried to talk her way out of the situation. It didn’t matter.

But he wasn’t going to break her. She wasn’t going to die the way he wanted her to.

The clothes she was wearing hadn’t been changed since she’d been captured. They now hung off her, her already small frame now emaciated.

He wanted love from her. That’s all he asked for. He would talk about things they could do together, places they could go.

He would talk about the things he would do for her. The things he had been doing to prove to her that love could be the way he imagined. Amy didn’t want to listen, but there was no choice. He talked about the people he had murdered. In her name.

The love they shared would be different. She was going to see that, he’d said. He was going to change it all, across the world. Everyone would soon think the way he thought, he’d explained to her. He was going to show them.

She just wanted to go home.

There was a moment, a couple of days before that night, when she’d hoped it was over. He had arrived late at night, dressed in black and still sweating. He had removed the tape covering her mouth and poured water into her. He’d even given her a few bites of a sandwich.

She’d asked to be let go, but he hadn’t listened. He’d cut off a new piece of tape, placing it over her mouth as she’d bucked and tried to move away from him.

‘It’s not working. There’s too many of them. They’re all sick. You’re the only one who can understand. This is what love can do. I have you here, with me, that means something. But them out there, they don’t care. They don’t get it. I can’t make you see, can I? I can’t do enough to show you.’

She was going to die. He was going to finally do it. As he’d paced round the room in front of her, the echo of his footsteps had made her flinch and she’d closed her eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’

He’d left her there. He hadn’t been back in the room since then, although she’d heard him in one of the other rooms in the flat. Now he’d returned. He was in the room that had become her tomb.

There was something different about the way he spoke, the way he moved. He seemed misty-eyed as he looked down at her.

When he started speaking, she wished for silence.

She hoped he would never return.

Hoped that she wasn’t going to be left there to die.

In and out of darkness, flashes of light, consciousness, confusion. His body being moved, lifted, something going around his wrists. The sound of breathing, close by, wet exhalation on his neck. The smell of sweat, musty and cloying, hitting the back of his throat.

The room spun out of control before slowly righting itself. His head felt heavy on his neck, as if it had been replaced by something too big, too cumbersome to be normal. Murphy squinted against brightness shined into his eyes, then the light was snapped off.

Candles. He remembered them dotted round the hallway. Into his dining room.

His eyes began to focus, blurred visions of what was familiar. The display unit against one wall, the photographs on the wall, his wife sitting opposite him. Only an outline of her body, the features still not coming into focus.

Murphy tried to move, his hands resting against the base of his spine, bound together. He was unable to stir his feet into action, there was a restraint around them too.

He tried to speak, the sound nonsensical to his ears. He felt the tape across his mouth, stopping him from talking aloud. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The room spun once more, the pain in his head growing each time he moved. Feelings of nausea hitting him like a wave.

‘You with us, Detective?’

A voice in the shadows. Permeating the thickness of the atmosphere surrounding him. Each second becoming more and more clear. His eyes opening and closing of their own accord.

Murphy remembered in stages. The text message from Sarah. Walking into the house, the sight of candles, the smell of wax burning. The tea lights Sarah had bought months before, laid out along the laminate flooring in the hallway. Taking off his jacket and shoes.

Walking into the dining room.

He remembered the view in front of him as he’d walked in. Sarah, bound to one of the chairs they had picked out in a furniture shop a year earlier. Duct tape across her mouth, shaking her head, trying to speak to him.

‘You’re really heavy, took all my strength to lift you onto that chair. Almost didn’t think I’d make it.’

He wanted to answer, but couldn’t. Cramp hit his legs, the pain causing him to convulse and attempt to stretch out. But there was no give in the ties binding him to the chair, only his fingers able to move.

‘I had to do this, I really did. I’m sorry it’s not my usual well-thought-out way of doing things. I don’t like to hit people in the head before we start. Everything can go wrong straight away with head injuries. I’ve seen them in my line of work. One punch can destroy a life. One unnoticed kerbstone, or missed stair, sending you over. A slip is enough.’

Murphy looked towards the shadow where the voice was coming from. The unmoving figure blending into the walls.

‘This doesn’t work if you can’t speak to each other, so I’m going to remove the tape covering your mouth, David. Do you mind me calling you David?’

Murphy stared into the darkness, calculating his next move. His mind was still not firing correctly, thoughts colliding with each other. He shook his head slowly, expecting another wave of nausea to hit him. His body had settled a little, only his heart hammering against his chest gave him the sense something was happening inside.

‘If you shout or scream, David, I’m going to start slicing into your lovely wife. Do you understand that?’

Murphy nodded a little more forcefully, turning his gaze back to Sarah. Her head was down, her shoulders hitching every few seconds. His heart rate increased, every fibre within his body on alert, wanting to cross that room and hold her.

‘Good, I can do that then.’

The slight figure emerged from the shadows, crossing the short space between them and appearing in front of Murphy. The baby-faced form of Ben Flanagan, standing a foot away, looked down on him with an expression of interest. His face lit up by candlelight.

A hand gripped the side of his head, whilst the other tore away the tape covering his mouth. Murphy sucked in air, his breaths shallow and quick. He looked up to see Ben now standing close to Sarah, his empty hands now holding something against her face. It shimmered in the light and he saw the silver of a blade.

‘What do you want?’ Murphy said, coughing as he reached the last word.

‘I want to go back,’ Ben replied, smoothing down the hair on Sarah’s head as she continued to look down. ‘To not make the mistakes I made last time. It was the drug, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s something we can talk about later. You just have to let us go.’

‘I thought it was. I didn’t have a choice really. Once the drug had been decided on, I had to use it. I thought I’d given just enough so it wouldn’t show up afterwards. I guess I gave that last girl too much, didn’t I? Didn’t cover my tracks well enough, obviously.’

‘Why . . . why are you doing this?’

‘When you all turned up at the pub earlier, I was ready to hand myself in. End this whole thing. It’s been difficult this past week . . . but I can’t leave Number Four now. Not after everything we’ve been through. Then I remembered you. I know you, Detective. I’ve seen you. There was one last game I could play and stop you in the process. I can show Number Four that I was right.’

‘Number Four?’

‘She doesn’t understand. None of them did. They don’t listen to me. I only wanted to show them all that I was the better choice all along. That if they’d given me the chance, I could have shown them that.’

Murphy’s eyes were becoming more used to the darkness within the room, the outline of the room clearing. ‘This isn’t the way, Ben.’

‘Don’t use my name,’ Ben said, his voice echoing back from the walls. ‘That’s a trick. I’ve seen it on telly. I’m the one in control here.’

‘Of course you are, I’m sorry,’ Murphy replied, hoping his voice sounded sincere. He couldn’t take his eyes off the blade held against Sarah’s throat, pressing closer as Ben had shouted back at him. ‘You’re the Man in Black.’

Ben giggled, a high-pitched noise which made Sarah flinch. ‘Ridiculous, I know, but I didn’t know what to call myself. I needed something, though. I needed people to listen. I needed to show you all. Teach you about love. You’re not doing it right. You know that, I hope? All the mistakes you’ve been making. You’re corrupting it. Defiling it with your lies and your secrets. It’s wrong. You’re all wrong.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve been following you, David. I wanted to see what you did when you weren’t trying to find me. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing. Your little journeys. You came close to finding me just from those. So close.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Murphy said, his hands beginning to shake behind his back. He felt the familiar weight against his lower back for an instant. A reminder.

‘Don’t you think it’s best you tell your
wife
about this? What you’ve been doing? What secrets you’ve been keeping?’

Murphy lowered his head. ‘There isn’t anything you know about. Nothing you would understand.’

‘It’s not for me to understand, is it? I’ve been here a few hours now, speaking to little Sarah here. She doesn’t know anything about what you’ve been keeping from her. She’s totally in the dark. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘I was going to tell her,’ Murphy said, looking across at Sarah who was now staring at him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, which scared him. ‘It’s nothing that deserves this.’

‘Why hide it at all then? Why not tell her what you’ve been doing? You were supposed to be concentrating on me and my work, but instead you’re driving round the city talking to people left, right, and centre.’

‘You want me to tell Sarah? I’ll tell her. No problem at all . . .’

‘No, that’s not the way . . .’

‘I don’t need to be tortured,’ Murphy said, looking at Ben now. ‘I can tell her anything. I know she’ll understand. That’s what love is, Ben. You have it wrong. You mistake it for power, when it’s nothing like that.’

‘You have no clue, do you?’ Ben said, the knife in his hand pressing further into Sarah’s throat. ‘You don’t know what real love is.’

‘I know it better than you. You’ve never experienced it in return, have you? You don’t know what it’s like to have someone love you back. How can you do this, not knowing that feeling? How can you take that away from people?’

Ben’s hands began to shake, the knife in his hand slipping away from Sarah’s neck, before being pushed back against. Murphy strained at the bonds tying him to the chair as he heard Sarah moan against the tape across her mouth.

‘No. You’re wrong.’

‘Okay, okay. Don’t hurt her. Just keep talking to me.’

‘You need to tell her now. The truth. Or I start cutting her.’

Murphy breathed in, his mind now almost as clear as it had been when he’d first entered the room. He shifted in the chair, just a little further forward. ‘There’s a girl I used to know,’ he began, looking at Sarah, who was fitfully blinking as he held her stare. ‘Back where I grew up. She lived round the corner from me. She got in touch recently, as her daughter has gone missing. Amy Maguire. Just about to turn nineteen. You know who I mean?’

There was a slight nod from Sarah.

‘The case was with Liverpool South, but it got shunted across to us. When it did, I met with Stacey, Amy’s mum. She told me something . . .’

Murphy hesitated, unsure how to continue.

‘Keep talking,’ Ben said, his childish tone sounding odd in that room. ‘Tell her everything.’

‘When we were about seventeen, eighteen, we slept together. One night, that’s all it was. She thinks Amy might be the result of that one time. I don’t believe it’s true. Stacey’s desperate to find her daughter, but with her being missing, I can’t be absolutely certain. When the bodies of Chloe Morrison and Joe Hooper were discovered, the case went back to Liverpool South. I was keeping an eye on it, speaking to people and that.’

‘I was keeping an eye on it,’ Ben said, mocking Murphy’s voice. ‘You kept the possibility that you had a daughter from your wife. That’s not good, David. Who’s saying that’s all that happened? Maybe old flames were rekindled when this mother came back on the scene.’

‘There was nothing like that going on,’ Murphy said, his jaw clenched, teeth grinding against one another.

‘We’ll never know, will we? That’s the problem with keeping secrets and lying. How can we ever really know the truth. What do you think about that, Sarah? Do you still trust him? How could you? He’s lied to you. Kept things from you. Is that the sign of someone committed to the relationship?’