Cucumber Coolie (8 page)

“I don’t follow. And… Please, Martha. Time’s running—”

“All this about ‘using your mind’ and—and this: ‘I’m expecting big things from you, hero’. It seems personal. Like he knows about what happened with Chipps.”

I nodded. “Right. So the killer knows who I am. But that isn’t hard. Not to blow my own trumpet or anything.”

“But it’s the
language
, hun. He’s goading you. Challenging you, like this is all a game. There’s… he says this about looking around. About the route being nearby. He wants you to chase him.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, not out of amusement but out of frustration. “Wish he’d bloody give me a headstart. How am I supposed to chase someone when I don’t even know where he’s frigging gone?”

Martha looked back at the camcorder screen. Rewound it back to when the killer stuck the syringe in my neck as I snored like an idiot on Danielle’s sofa.

“Right now, all I know is that if I don’t figure out how to play this looney’s little game before 2 a.m., Danielle’s gone.”

Martha glanced at her watch. I knew she was trying to be subtle about it, but I got her. She was counting down the minutes. Counting down the seconds as they ticked away, as I got nowhere towards figuring out what the hell to do next.

“This police threat. I think he’s bluffing.”

“Why so sexist, by the way? ‘He’ this, ‘he’ that.”

“Darling, have you seen this guy’s gloved hands? No woman has hands like that.”

I nodded at Martha’s hands. “You do.”

She raised them. “That’s right. I’m a psychopath who wants your cute girlfriend all to myself. You got me. But anyway. He must be a guy. He lifted you up to Danielle’s bed after all. No offence to your beer belly or anything.”

She did that serious thing with her face that took me a few seconds to figure out she was joking.

“So anyway,” she said. “This police threat. I think it’s bullshit.”

“And your little hunch is based on…?”

She chewed on one of her nails and squinted at the note. “Why would a killer specifically not want you to go to the police?”

“Erm… because they don’t want to be caught?”

“No, no. That goes without saying. But for this guy to dedicate a full line to the police in here… I dunno. It seems desperate to me. Like they’re trying to scare you away, or something. I mean, what happened to the second guy? The guy who did take the tape into the police?”

“I… I figure the killer offed the wife or girlfriend when he went to the police.”

“You figure?” Martha asked. “From what I saw of it on the news, there was no mention of the guy receiving the second tape at a different time to this Scotts bloke, or anything like that.”

I pondered what Martha was saying. Truth be told, even pondering was difficult right now. “I shouldn’t have got drunk last night. I… I should’ve just stayed at home.”

“Bollocks. And what then? You’d have gone around to Danielle’s and found the letter in the middle of the afternoon. Even less time to save your girlfriend. Chin up, hun. We’re brainy. We can work this out.”

I wanted to believe Martha so, so bad.

“So what do you reckon?” Martha asked.

“Reckon to what?”

“Ringing the police—”

“Out of the question. He wouldn’t dedicate a line to it if he wasn’t serious.”

“So who is this guy?” Martha asked, raising her voice. “Billy Binoculars watching you at all times? Come on, Blake. We’re PIs. Bounty hunters. We should know a scare tactic when we see one. This guy lays down the rules. When have we ever played by the rules?”

I leaned back. Closed my eyes again. “Since my girlfriend got kidnapped.”

Martha went quiet. “I… You should get some shuteye.”

“Shuteye?!”

“Just five minutes while I… while I watch this tape again. Figure out our next move.”

I wanted to protest and I wanted to argue, but I figured five minutes of mental rest were probably better than five minutes of umming and ahhing about the next step.

I tried to count sheep. Listened as Martha tapped around with the camcorder.

“We’ll find her, hun. I promise.”

I gulped down a sickly batch of regurgitated menthol. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

I saw Danielle’s face in my mind, dancing around my thoughts, smiling and laughing and—

A knock at the door.

It made me jump off the sofa and right onto my feet. I looked to my left. Martha was still on the floor playing about with the camcorder.

“How long was I…?”

“A minute or two,” Martha said. She tilted her head in the direction of the door. “Well aren’t you gonna get that?”

Feeling very sickly, I stumbled over the cold hard floor of my lounge and towards my flat door. I tried to think who it might be. A small part of me hoped that it was Danielle. That she’d escaped this nutbag, and we could start our new lives. Together.

I lowered the handle, praying and praying for a miracle.

I got the exact opposite.

“Blakey! So what’s this gift then, hmm?”

Lenny, who was dressed in a navy blue suit jacket and black trousers, pushed past me and looked around my lounge.

My arms tingled and my throat tightened. The police. Lenny was the police. “Lenny, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get out!”

“Woah!” Lenny said. He raised his hands, sly grin on his face. “Alright there, Bernie Bipolar. You know how quickly I ran down here when I got your text? Very quickly, I’ll have you know. Very quickly on the quickometer. Oh, hey Martin.”

“Martha.”

I shook my head, the voices crowding my thoughts. “Wait—a text? What text?”

Lenny narrowed his eyes. “The… the text about the present you got for me. The… You know. Thanking me for being a top friend and all that. Blake, are you okay? It’s just you… you look pale and… and with all this Ebola going round at the minute, I’ve got to ask. I even have a surgical mask, y’know? Just in case I’m out in public and someone Ebola-ish walks towards me…”

Lenny’s words drifted away.

I stared at Martha, and she looked back at me with guilt in her eyes.

By her side, my iPhone rested.

“Is somebody gonna tell me what the hell this is about?” Lenny asked. “Because if this is a windup, well I’m not in the mood for windups. We got another victim in that weird Hosey mystery. Hell, why am I telling you anyway? Probably read about it on your BlackBerrymobiles or whatever.”

I took a deep breath. “About that, Lenny.”

Lenny looked from me to Martha then back again. “You… wait. Please don’t tell me you’re ‘fessing. Blake, no. Don’t do this to me. You’re a good guy. I—”

“I think you should probably watch this,” Martha said.

She handed the camcorder to Lenny. Half-smiled at me.

I didn’t know whether this was an idiot move or not, but it was
a
move, and that was something.

Lenny hit play. “This better not be… well, anything erotic. I have a low threshold towards erotic stimuli these days. Got a hard-on over a Polo mint the other week.”

Okay, definitely an idiot move.

FOURTEEN

“Shit, Blakey, I… I don’t know what to say, really. You are in the shit.”

I covered my eyes as Lenny finished watching the tape. I couldn’t bear to see his reactions throughout it. Feared if he made any little joke, any little wisecrack, I might just give
him
a bloody crack. A crack across the nose.

“You didn’t tell me about your bird. She’s cute.”

I bit my tongue and moved my hands away from my eyes.

“So what do you think?” Martha asked. She sat beside Lenny on my sofa. I was a little pissed at her for inviting Lenny around. But I suppose she was only trying to help.

Besides, involving Lenny was only
just
police involvement, right? He was barely an officer, really.

Lenny pouted and whistled. “Well I think it looks very much like the mode operation of our pal Hose.”

“Modus operandi,” I said.

“Yeah, that. So basically what happens is this: you’ll get another tape tomorrow morning showing your pretty bird here being—”

“Okay!” I stood up and shook my head. “Lenny, I didn’t frigging invite you here to act an idiot. I didn’t invite you here at all. We need your help. Anything you can give us. But this has to stay quiet. This… news of this third kidnapping can’t break.”

Lenny narrowed his eyes. He moved his fingers across his closed lips, zipping them shut, then mumbled something.

My heart raced. The taste of menthol clung to my tongue. No amount of it would be enough to calm me today. “Have you… have you got any news on the first two girls? Like, anything? Witness reports, anything like that?”

Lenny mumbled. Kept his mouth shut.

Martha punched him on the arm. “You can open your mouth now, sugar.”

He unzipped his mouth. “So when I come to you for help with my promotion, you go all popstar on me and throw a diva fit? But when you need my help…”

“Lenny, don’t play this game. You owe me big time.”

“I think it’s you who owes me, Blake. And that goes for you too, Martin—”

“Martha,” she said.

“I gave you your career breaks. Paid you a million quid to share. And what do I get in return? Sidewards glances and… and pure rudeness.”

Martha went to speak, but I interrupted.

“This isn’t a game, Lenny. Someone I care about a lot has been taken. And I… every second we waste bickering about who the frig owes who is a second she—she spends in pain.” I took in a deep breath to stop my voice shaking. “I want your help. I’ll repay you with a bloody cake or something. Just please. Is there anything you can tell me about the case?”

Lenny squinted. “Lemon cake?”

“Five bloody lemon cakes if that makes you happy.”

He smiled. “Got yourself a deal. Right, the case. The old case…”

I felt the first smidgen of relief I’d experienced all day.

“Denise Scotts kidnapped early hours of Thursday. Hubby tries to solve Hose’s little cryptic clues himself. When he gets the second tape through showing his wife’s murder on Friday morning, he tops himself. Meanwhile, a second girl is kidnapped early hours Friday, probably after Hosey-boy murders Denise Scotts. Janet Wilding, she’s called. Pretty girl, actually. Nice ginger hair. Perky tits—”

“Ditch the details, babe,” Martha said.

“Sure. Anyway, her husband Dave, he decides to pay the police a visit. We look at the tape. Look for DNA on the tape, look for prints, CCTV outside their house, things like that.”

“And?” I asked.

“Nothing. Well, of course we see a guy dressed all in black wandering into the Wilding household around 1.30 a.m. Friday. Then leaving with a very heavy looking bin bag. But nothing on the DNA front. No prints. Nothing like that.”

I sighed. Squeezed the bridge of my nose. “So you’ve absolutely no idea what’s going on.”

“Oh we have an idea what’s going on. Judging by the two tapes, Hose likes… what was the fancy way Officer Bates put it? Ah yeah. Physically torturing his victims, psychologically torturing the victims’ other halves. Poetry, right? Pure poetry.”

“So he’s a game player, in other words,” Martha said.

“Game player. Yeah. I like that. Good one.”

Martha winked at Lenny.

He looked away and blushed.

“So nothing on the clues?” I asked. “Nothing on… on all this about the answers being nearby, and about ‘looking around’?”

Lenny shrugged. “Not really my department. We took swabs and blood from Dave Wilding, though. Pathologist took them from James Scotts’ body too. Figured we’d take a look what Hose injected into them. So that’s something you might wanna think about having done down at the station too.”

“No chance,” I said. “I’m not coming near the station. Not with Hose’s threat. Bad enough you being here.”

Lenny raised his eyebrows. “Compliments accepted. But hey, you’re a clever bloke. As are you, Mart… Martha. You’ll figure something out I’m sure.”

He stood up and walked across my lounge and to the door.

“So that’s it?”

Lenny stopped. “Well I don’t have anything else for you right now. And it’s nearly 12, and my stomach’s rumbling like mad for a Meatball Marijuana sub.”

“Marinara,” Martha said.

“That’s what I said. So yeah. Don’t fret. Take a chill pill, and all that. I’ll be in touch.”

He lowered the handle of the door.

I couldn’t help but storm over there and slam the door shut.

“Hey!” he said. His eyes widened as I stared at him. “This is kidnap, technically. I could arrest you for—”

“I’ve got fourteen hours,” I said, my heart pounding. “Fourteen hours to save somebody I bloody care about. Don’t screw this up, Lenny. Please.”

Lenny raised his hands. His stomach rumbled like mad. “When do I ever screw anything up, Blakey?”

I didn’t even want to start.

I let Lenny leave my flat and I walked back to the sofa and plonked myself down.

Martha was silent at first. She let me just sit there with my hands over my face. I was tired. Exhausted. Figured I’d never feel healthy again. Worst part of this case is that I was helpless. There was nothing. No evidence. Nothing to go on.

And yet, the killer said to “look around.” He suggested the answers were out there to be found.

There had to be something.

“You can have five minutes if you—”

“Load that tape up again,” I said. I leaned forward towards the camera. My eyes stung with tiredness.

Martha looked at me with concern. “Hun, I’m not sure another viewing will—”

“I need to watch it again. Just do it.”

Martha rewound the camcorder and started again from the beginning.

I stared intently into the static. Freeze-framed every little shot.

The approach to Danielle’s house.

The killer stabbing me in the neck with a syringe.

Then doing the same to Danielle.

I watched it all. Beginning to end, then beginning to end again.

It was only on the fourth viewing that I noticed something I hadn’t before.

It was on the back seat of the killer’s car. In the final shot, when he pointed the camcorder at Danielle, lying flat and partly covered by a bin bag.