Bubblegum Smoothie (9 page)

I wanted to bite back but I couldn’t. Martha was probably right. But my mind was spinning. Trying to clock on to what the killer’s next move might be.

Women. One on Moor Park. One atop a police car.

There had to be a link. There had to be something.

“Have you ever tried Tastebuds?” Martha asked.

“Taste-what?”

“Tastebuds. It’s a dating website but it matches people based on their music taste. You’re into your music, right?”

I shook my head at Martha. “Martha, I am not signing up to Tastebuds.”

“I’m just saying,” Martha said, raising her hands and backing away. “Not being a very traditionally… traditionally good guy and all that.”

“Traditionally good? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you’re not really a restaurant man. You… you like your checkered shirts—”

“There’s nothing wrong with wearing checkered shirts—”

“Every day. I’m just saying. Maybe meeting a girl while rocking out to a bit of Nine Inch Nails might be more up your street than chatting someone up in a bar.”

Martha was right about one thing: I wasn’t chatting anyone up in a bar any time soon.

But the day I “rocked out” at a gig was the day I said goodbye to whatever dignity I had left.

We paid the bill and made sure we weren’t hassled into buying desserts or coffee. I’d only drunk water all night—it was free, and I didn’t want anything beyond shit pasta eating into my Fun Funds. We got up to leave. I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to get home to research a curved TV. Shit—Martha was probably right. I probably was obsessing.

But hey. I was an obsessive person. That’s just who I was.

At least now I could go home and obsess over whether I wanted a Sony or a Panasonic.

I pulled open the glass door and almost walked out before remembering my manners.

I stepped back. “Ladies first.”

Martha widened her mouth. “Wow, Blake. Holding a door for a girl. Where did you find that tip? Buy that one on Amazon?”

I shook my head and let go of the door so it swung against Martha’s back heel.

We walked down the street in the darkness. Walked past Miller’s Square, up through the town centre, where scrotes were just commencing their shitty nights out, and then we headed down past the bus station towards the multi-storey opposite the courts. Martha insisted we make the most of her parking pass there, despite there being approximately a billion other parking spots in the middle of town that weren’t as far away.

“You really should get on Tastebuds,” Martha said.

“I’m not getting on Tastebuds—”

“I can sign you up—”

“You are
not
signing me up to Taste… What are you doing?”

I noticed a flash and wafted my hand at Martha. She let out a girly giggle and tapped around on her phone.

“Wow, look at that one!” She showed me her phone. “Profile picture or what? Very accurate representation of you, checkered shirt and pissed-off face. Perfect.”

“You’re deleting that,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s your email address? I can sign you up right… Shit.”

Martha stopped speaking and I saw it too.

The blue flashing lights across the street. All of them gathered around Preston Crown Court, yellow tape stretched around it.

“What… what happened here?” Martha asked. “Nutter break free?”

A wave of nausea hit me. I tasted the stodgy pasta making its way back up my trachea. Martha obviously hadn’t seen what I’d seen. Obviously hadn’t seen it.

Seen her.

“Come on, Blake. It’s getting chilly and my ticket’s only valid ‘til—”

“Above the entrance,” I said. I pointed across the road with my shaking hand. “Above… above the entrance.”

Martha squinted. Squinted over the street at the court. “I don’t know what you’re… Oh fuck. Holy fuck.”

“Holy fuck indeed,” I said.

We stood completely still and stared across the street.

Stared at the girl, lit up by the blue police lights, an officer climbing a ladder to get her down.

“Shit. Shit.”

Stared at her gouged eyes, her sliced-off breasts, her fingerless hands…

FIFTEEN

“You can’t tell me there’s no CCTV. You just… you just can’t.”

I scratched my forehead as I shouted down the phone to Lenny. Martha and I sat inside her Fiat Punto. I could hear footsteps tapping around in the background of the police station, hear voices chattering.

“Hey, hey—I want to find this guy as much as you. More than you, in fact. Or at least equally. But when I tell you there’s no CCTV, there’s no CCTV.”

“Why is there no frigging CCTV outside the court?” Holy shit, my heart felt like it was on the verge of bursting just having to deal with this inept clown.

“Yes. Yes! Oi, McDone. Why is there no frigging CCTV outside the court?”

I listened to a grumpy voice mumble in the background.

“What did he say?”

“He said CCTV was down. Some power fault or another. Thanks, McDone. Are you gonna say thanks to McDone?”

“Why would I… Lenny, is there no backup CCTV? Nothing else covering the fucking
Crown Court
?!”

“Hey, hey, hey. Quit that tone. Don’t take that tone with me. I don’t like that tone—”

“I’ll quit this ‘tone’ when you tell me why we’ve got another unidentified victim hanging from a rope right in front of the Crown Court, with not a single witness or a single piece of CCTV footage.”

Martha crunched on some Snack a Jacks throughout the conversation. What I’d give for some Snack a Jacks right now. In fact, screw Snack a Jacks—I wanted Snack a Lockets. Snack a Soothers. Snack a Tunes.

“Power outages happen,” Lenny said. “We can’t help it.”

“No. No you can’t. But a little note for you—when there’s a killer roaming the streets and killing women, you might want to speed up your little identification processes. You might want to reduce the missing persons search times by twenty-four hours. You might want to crack your heads together and—”

“We can’t force witnesses, man. Besides, you’re the one who’s…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be catching this guy. It’s on you just as much as it’s on us. Besides, we have had witnesses. Some bloke outside the Black Bull saw a guy walk out in a black hoodtop and bump into Gus.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get my head around this circus. “You… When did you find this out?”

“Earlier. Afternoon. Soon after the—”

“And you didn’t think to tell me? Jesus, Lenny. I’m on the verge of a fucking cardiac arrest here. Thank you for your contribution.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose. I needed a break from speaking. Needed a break from Lenny’s whiny voice.

“Is there anything else I might want to know about the case, you know, important-detail-wise? Because that would be really helpful. Really quite helpful.”

“I, erm… McDone. Any important case shit? Oh it’s just, I’m just speaking to, er… the army. Yeah.”

“The army,” I mouthed. I bit my knuckles and resisted the urge to scream out. “The pissing army.”

“Yeah. No. Blake—I mean, erm, Major. No extra info.”

“So no identification on the girls. No witness reports with substantial evidence. No DNA. No prints. Absolutely bat-shit-nothing?”

“Bingo,” Lenny said. “I’d love to give you a prize for all those correct answers. Very impressive. But you’re gonna have to carry on your own little investigations. You got us to Gus pretty quickly. Shame the fatty went splat, but you did well there.”

“‘Cause of course you wouldn’t have arrested and charged him with murder because he was the easy target.”

Lenny hesitated. I heard the line crackling. “I can’t absolutely definitely assure you that we wouldn’t have locked Gus up for the murders, yes. Oh, yeah. Laters, McDone. Good guy, McDone. Grumpy shit, but a good guy. You’d like him. Both got that gloomy look going on. That dark vibe.”

I didn’t even bother to try and get my head around what Lenny said. “Ring me when you identify these girls.”

I put the phone down, let out a loud sigh, and pressed my head against Martha’s dashboard.

“Oh, er—be careful, hun. Had an airbag problem over there once. Ballooned up in poor Aunt Nora’s face. Hate for that to happen to you. I won’t ask how Sergeant Airhead was.”

“Airheaded like you wouldn’t believe.” I lifted myself away from the dashboard. Stared out into the darkness of the night outside the multi-storey car park and wondered what the hell I’d done and who the hell I’d insulted to end up bogged down in this investigation. “Get me home, would you?”

Martha started the engine. Pulled out of the car park and drove down the ramp, out onto the A6.

“You know, a million quid is a lot of money,” Martha said. “But it’s… it’s not as much as it used to be. Like, you can buy an alright house with it, but not an amazing house. And being a millionaire, it’s… it’s not as much a badge of honour as it used to be.”

“Ah, nice of you to say,” I said. “Seeing as I’ll only be getting five hundred thousand of it anyway.”

Martha pursed her lips as she indicated and turned the car. “Maybe we… maybe we drop out altogether. Better to earn the cash steadily and over time than risk our reputation all for one big lump sum, right?”

I sighed. Shook my head. “It’s not as easy as just ‘getting out,’ Martha—”

“Of course it is. You ring that budget Tom Cruise up and tell him to shove his money up his tight little asshole. Leave the professionals to do their jobs.”

“The professionals,” I muttered. “I wish I could.”

“What’s got into you, Blake? And don’t tell me you’ve had some sudden implantation of morals. Don’t start spouting that Batman shit about how the city needs you.” She put on a mocking deep voice for the last few words, which resulted in a raspy cough.

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to tell her what was at stake for me because I knew that eventually, it would catch up with her too.

But I didn’t see any other option.

“They’ve got me right where they want me, Martha. The police. They’ve… I solve this case, catch this killer, and I get my one million. Or I…” I cleared my throat.

“Or what?”

“Or… or I go to jail and I probably never get out.”

Martha was silent. She took her eyes off the road and frowned at me, as the car narrowly swerved past a honking Mercedes van. “Jail? What… What’s happening, hun?”

No choice now. No choice but to tell her. “I… ‘07 happened. 2007.”

In an instant, Martha’s face turned from plumb red to as white as a sheet, and I saw Mart as clear as ever behind the makeup. “But—but ‘07 was closed. We… A line was drawn under—”

“Sometimes lines get erased if they’re drawn in pencil.”

We were silent for the next stretch of the journey. I stared out at the street-lamps as we sped past, getting closer and closer to my flat.

Martha broke the silence. “Am I… Should I be worried?”

I took in a deep breath. I had to be honest. “After what happened, we should all be worried, yes. But immediately? No. You didn’t involve yourself with the police like I did, at least not directly. You didn’t become the lazy officer’s Yellow Pages for solving petty crime. You’re okay. For now.”

More silence. We got closer to my street, and I could tell from the silence that Martha was pissed or afraid. One thing that hadn’t changed about Mart since his nads were stripped away was the way he/she went quiet when annoyed or worried.

And if I were in her shoes, I’d be annoyed
and
worried. Couldn’t blame her.

Martha’s car pulled up on the pavement outside my house. I looked up at the window, tried to wrap my head around the last day, around everything that had happened, everything that was happening.

“We’ll catch this fucker, Blake,” Martha said. “Even if it means me opening my legs for him, we’ll catch him.”

I grinned at Martha as I opened her car door and stepped into the cool evening breeze. “Please don’t open your legs. I wouldn’t want to send him on an even more murderous rampage.”

She jolted the car forward and made me tumble out onto the pavement, and we both laughed.

“Sleep well, hun,” she said.

“You’re gonna have to stop calling me that.”

“What? Hun? What’s wrong with hun, hun?”

“Ergh! There it is again. Bugger off. I’ve got some ‘Breaking Bad’ to watch.”

She stuck up her middle finger and sped down the road, away into the darkness.

I smiled as I approached the front door of my flat. Unfamiliar feeling, to be honest. Yes, Mart might be a woman now and, yes, it was weird as shit to get used to. But Martha was good fun. Just as much good fun as Mart used to be, if not even more fun.

Holy shit. Had I gone and made myself a real living friend?

I stuck my key in my front door. Twisted the lock.

I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” humming from nearby, but I didn’t think much of it and I stepped inside.

SIXTEEN

He watches as he opens the door to his flat. Watches as he smiles, the car of his he-she
it
friend speeding away down the road. He watches him step inside his flat, scrape his shoes on the doormat, then close the door.

Checkered Shirt doesn’t even think to look over his shoulder.

The sound of “Walking on Sunshine” rumbles through his speaker system. It makes him calm. He listened to this one when the life seeped out of his third victim today.

Oh, the third victim. How much fun she’d been. Not just because of how much of a fighter she was no matter whether he was shoving knives into her body or her eyes. No, of course that was fun, but there were other little bonuses too. Today, he’d seen weeks of hard work and preparation come to fruition.

First, there was the gate at the back of the Crown Court. The gate he’d sneakily picked the lock of several weeks ago, but left to see if anyone came to repair it. Just a tester of how many people used that rear entrance.

Evidently, not many people did.

And then there was the climb to the top of the court. The CCTV blind spot. He’d made sure to deal with the CCTV too, of course. That had been more difficult, but it paid to have friends in the right places. Friends being people who took bribes, of course. All it took was the flick of a switch—the flick of a switch for five minutes—and he was free to complete his work.