Bloodstream (6 page)

It was almost a shrine.

‘She wanted to be famous,’ Karen said, shaking her head. ‘That was her goal and nothing was going to stop her. When that show came up, she auditioned again and again for it. Honestly, I didn’t think she’d do it when they picked her but she was determined. Told us that it was what she wanted, so we went along with it.’

‘After the show finished,’ Rossi said, her voice still low. ‘What was it like for her?’

A breath from Karen. ‘She changed. Not that most people noticed, of course, just people who knew her. Little things. The way she talked, the things she said. That kind of stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘Her accent, for one. She was brought up over here, on the Wirral, but all of a sudden she had this broad Scouse accent, like she was from one of those council estates over there. I suppose if you’re on a show about Liverpool it’s required, but I never liked it. She went to nice schools over here, we made sure of it. Not that she ever did very well academically. Always had her head in the clouds.’

Murphy had become bored of looking round the room. ‘What did you think of her relationship with Joe?’

There was a change in the atmosphere then as the temperature dropped a degree or two.

‘That one,’ Karen said, her voice different to the soft, lyrical one she used when she spoke of Chloe. ‘He was never right for her. I’m telling you now . . . it’s his fault. He will have done this to her.’

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about love.

It kills you.

The death which follows love around, as if it’s a constant companion, it is the worst of them all. It hurts the most. The feeling of utter desolation, the loneliness that follows. When love dies, a piece of you goes with it.

He used to wallow in that feeling. Every relationship he had, destined to end in the same way. Bitter acrimony and regret. The endless days which stretched out into his future, alone and isolated.

Livid. A growing sense of irritation which became anger, acidic as it became bile in his throat.

Love is violent.

It was never his fault.

‘Have you seen the way they’re falling over themselves to talk about this shit? You would think it was Kate and Prince bloody William that had been murdered.’

He turned the laptop screen towards her, shaking his head as she turned away with a sniff.

‘Do you think they really loved one another . . . you know, deep down? Or were they just stuck with each other. In it for the money.’

He didn’t get an answer. Just a pathetic look. The one she gave him more and more these days.

She was Number Four on his list of great loves. He numbered them, wanting to make them something more than just simple names. They deserved more. They deserved their own significance.

The first one, she had been his favourite. His first love. Number One. Two decades later and he still remembered the way she smiled, white teeth glittering back at him. The front two jutting forward just a little. You never forget your first love, that’s what they say.

Alison King. The name came forward in his mind, jarring him. He erased it and thought of Number One. That’s all she was now. A number.

They had met in high school, the first day, eleven years of age and weary of the new environment. She was small in stature but big in everything else. Loud, funny, popular.

He had loved her before he even knew what the feeling was.

For three years she had no idea of his intentions. He engineered time to be spent together, lesson projects that he could work on with her, made friends with people who could get him closer to her. Found out all the things she liked and mirrored them.

He played the game.

At fourteen, they were almost on speaking terms.

He pined for her, a yearning deep inside he couldn’t get over. Would think of nothing but her for endless hours. At first, it was just to spend time with her, to be in her company, her presence and nothing else. As his voice began to break and hair began to grow in new places, he thought of other things. What it would be like to brush her lips with his own, to run his fingers through her hair. To stroke her back softly, gently, with his fingertips.

To see her close her eyes.

At fifteen, there were meetings. The school were worried about things they were being told about. That he was scaring one of their pupils. One of their female pupils. And they weren’t going to allow it to continue. His father had been called in to be made aware of it. He was to change classes, no longer with
her
any more. No contact. They wouldn’t hesitate to call the
police
if they had to.

The disappointment etched across his father’s face was enough for him. The beating he’d received later the final nail.

It was her fault. She hadn’t accepted his love. Had chosen others ahead of him. It didn’t matter that he had exposed their lies to her, that he had pleaded with her to open her eyes to the things that went on behind her back. That it was he who would be the right
man
for her. He’d watched as she flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder and looked at him with pity. Not love. It didn’t matter how many times he followed her, sitting outside her house for hours. She didn’t understand. Didn’t care that the
boy
who she so loved did terrible, disgusting things when not around her.

The boy had been his revenge. And he’d liked it.

An accident. It’s so easy to make it look like an accident. Something that couldn’t be helped. Wrong place, wrong time.

He remembered the
boy’s
face as he’d gone under the water of the River Mersey for the final time. The knowledge that he had lost. That the better
man
had won. The sun still shining down on them, as the evening began in that end of July heat.

The
boy
had been known to do stupid things. Swimming alone off the prom and getting into trouble wasn’t out of the norm.

No one had ever known.

He left her alone after that. The love had died. Withered away by her betrayal. The anger dissipated by the knowledge he had taken a piece of her without her ever knowing.

He had never really thought about the fleeting nature of his feelings back then. When he was in that moment, it felt like everything in his life was geared towards that first love. He thought about her constantly. The first thing he thought about when he woke up, the last thing before he fell asleep. Her face, her body. The thought of being next to her. Just breathing in her scent. The warmth of her, near him.

He moved on. Once that love had died, he grew up a little more. Met someone who had an interest in him. She was Number Two. Lost his virginity to her in a fumble of teenage limbs and disappointment. That love began to die when she moved away to a different city for university. He thought about how close they had been, driven apart by distance and jealousy. The new guy she met there had got rid of him. Killed that love he had.

Number Three – Jane – was someone he now didn’t need to think of. Gone, after months of planning and courage. Best forgotten, given how it had ended.

Number Four . . . Number Four could be the one. It was early in their relationship, but he could sense something. It was different from the other three, of course. He was a changed man.

He had a mission.

He had to show her what happened when you took that love and destroyed it. Show her – Number Four – that everything could be different.

He had to show Number Four what real love was.

It all went back to Number One. He had tried to find her recently, but couldn’t trace her at all. She had been everything to him. He could have been everything to her, but she threw it back in his face.

He had still wanted her.

‘Are you not talking to me tonight?’ he said, his voice breaking into the silence between him and Number Four. He smiled and breathed in a few times. ‘You know I’m doing it for you. It’s all for you. These people . . . they don’t deserve what we have.’

He leaned closer, ignoring the fact that she cowered away from him. He placed a kiss on her cheek, ran his fingers through her hair. ‘You’re so beautiful. You do know that, don’t you?’

He moved back, away from Number Four, leaving her to attempt to crawl into a ball, away from him, the chains holding her to the radiator limiting her movement. She looked past him, a pleading look coming to her face as she spied the bucket in the corner. He slid it closer to her with his foot, unlocked one of her arms, then turned away.

‘I’ll be everything to you. Once I’ve finished, there will be no doubt. You will love me, the way it’s supposed to be. You’ll never leave me, never want anyone else.’

He crinkled his nose and stepped closer to the window, looking at the empty street outside. He spied a couple walking in the distance, the gap between them closing as they moved away. He imagined an arm slipping around a shoulder, a hand slipping into another, a stolen kiss under a flickering street light.

‘You will be mine. Forever.’

Murphy was tired. Damn tired. He waited until Karen left the room – excusing herself to go to the bathroom – before talking quietly to Rossi.

‘Same thing. It’s always the same bloody thing.’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ Rossi said, standing up and going over to look at the large picture of Chloe above the mantelpiece. ‘Could just be that she didn’t like the relationship between them and is now just venting.’

‘There’ll be something. I reckon it’s what you suggested. Spurned ex or bit on the side. This knobhead has been playing away from home and got them both killed. We see stuff like this all the time.’

‘Not sure about that . . .’

‘Domestic issues turning violent. We see it all the time. Arguments over petty, small things boiling over and becoming all about power.’

‘I’m not really following your logic here.’ Rossi picked up a small photo frame from the mantelpiece, inspected it then placed it back.

‘I don’t know the whole thing yet,’ Murphy said, throwing his hands up. ‘Joe is just another one, I bet. The dominant one in the relationship . . . every relationship he has. Always in control . . .’

Murphy stared off past Rossi to the more tasteful shot of Chloe in the far alcove, pretending he saw only innocence in the eyes looking back at him. He thought about the endless parade of destroyed relationships, people desperately clinging on, unwilling to give up. Those changed forever by domination, all the women he had come into contact with during his time on the job. The scared, the lost, all terrified to speak out because they knew he couldn’t stop it.

‘It’s something for us to look at,’ Murphy said, fixing Rossi with a stare.

Murphy could see the familiar darkening of the eyes in Rossi – the slight dip in the shoulders at the possibility of another woman becoming yet another statistic. Someone who couldn’t get away, couldn’t fight back, couldn’t save her life. Wasn’t allowed to.

The familiar story.

‘Let’s see if we can get any more out of her,’ Rossi said, pointing towards the door which had been left ajar – hearing footsteps descending down the stairs towards them.

‘Why do you say that about Joe, Karen?’ Murphy said, once they had settled back down into their previous positions.

‘The way he was. He was never right for her, I knew that . . . we all bloody did. She changed with him. Was totally different. I brought her up to be independent. To never make the same mistakes I made and become the trophy wife. I have a job now, but for years my life revolved round my kids. I didn’t do anything for myself, everything was about this house, my husband and kids. He never forced me into it, understand that. It was just the way I allowed things to happen. My husband is a good man – not Chloe’s real dad, but he always treated her as his own. Chloe was going to be different. She was going to be her own woman.’

‘What happened to Chloe’s father?’ Murphy said, ticking off the possibility.

‘Died when Chloe was two. Got drunk and drove into a tree in the lanes near Frankby. She doesn’t remember him at all.’

‘And she was different?’ Rossi said, now looking towards the woman and not writing in her notebook.

‘Yes. With the few boyfriends she had before, she was in control, always. They’d swap and change all the time.’ Karen gave a small laugh, cut off before it had time to have any effect. ‘Chloe would drop boys for the smallest things. The tiniest issues and they were gone. Not this one. He walked all over her. Treated her terribly. You must have heard some of the rumours?’

Murphy shook his head, whilst Rossi gave no response. Karen shrugged her shoulders and waved a hand as if it didn’t matter.

‘They were all true,’ Karen continued. ‘He was off out on his own all the time. Left her at home, crying down the phone to me. I tried, at first, to get her to see sense, but that wasn’t going to work.’

Silence grew for a few seconds. Murphy opened his mouth to speak, before Karen continued in a voice so low and angry.

‘He hit her once. Well, once I know of, anyway. When he’d come in drunk and had been due home hours earlier. Didn’t even bother calling her, just turned up in the early hours. They argued, and he slapped her. Broke down immediately, of course, saying he’d never do it again and all that
shit
they always say. She believed him, in the end. I told her to get out there and then. That it would never be just one time, but she didn’t listen. She needs him. Needed him. I don’t know why.’

‘When was this?’ Rossi said, Murphy not for the first time impressed at how she could swallow the fire back and ask the right questions.

‘About six months ago. Chloe has never mentioned it since. The bastard got her, didn’t he?’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ Murphy said, leaning forward to close the distance between them. ‘But we’re going to find out, OK? We’re going to find out what happened to Chloe.’

And he believed it.

They left Karen with the family liaison officer. Rossi checked in with the station as Murphy wrote down a few notes he would probably never read. The DC who Rossi spoke to sounded harassed from what Murphy could hear over the radio.