The Murder Code (18 page)

‘What about finding them?’ I said.

‘How much scope have we got?’

He meant money. ‘Given what we’re dealing with here,’ I said, ‘as much as we need.’

‘That’s what I figured. Okay. Well, the obvious stuff we can do is look for landmarks. At first glance, there’s nothing, but there might be something there that helps us pin down the areas to look at. For starters.’

‘And then?’

‘This is the expensive part. We can recreate a map of the terrain from the video. It won’t be perfect, by any means, but you’ll basically end up with an overhead diagram that maps the layout of the trees and the land. Geographically precise, and possible to cross-check against existing satellite data.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Sadly, it’s not an automated process. You’ll need officers doing it by hand. And obviously, with tree cover, it won’t be exact.’

‘It’ll give us an idea, though: maybe rule out some areas at the least.’

‘Yep.’

It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.

I said, ‘I’m also interested in something a bit more … oblique. We have the what, and can work on the who and where. But
why
?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why make the video?’

‘That’s one for the psychologists, I think.’ Renton shook his head. ‘I mean, you do occasionally see this kind of thing. That’s a generic “you” by the way, as this is one of the most extreme things I’ve come across in my whole career. But serial killers, some serial rapists, they do take videos. To relive it, I guess. And child pornography rings, obviously.’

To relive it.
If his letters were to be believed, that just didn’t seem like our man. He wasn’t interested in the murders themselves so much as using them as a test. Why video them, then? Was it just this one, so he could prove the letters really were from him?

Or was it something more?

I said, ‘Have you ever seen a snuff film?’

‘No.’ Renton was silent for a moment. ‘Not officially, anyway. Officially, they don’t exist.’

‘What do you mean, “officially”?’

He gestured at the frozen image on the screen.

‘Well, this is what many people would call a snuff movie. It’s a film of somebody being murdered. That’s rare, but not unheard of. And there are thousands of videos of people dying on film—beheadings, accidents, CCTV footage. But to be a snuff film officially, the footage has to have been filmed for distribution, for financial reasons.’

‘To be sold for profit?’

‘Yes. And nobody’s ever found one. It’s one of those myths that sounds macabre enough to be true, but obviously isn’t when you think about it. There’d be too much risk involved: killing somebody on camera and distributing it. And there’s no need to do it. You could create the same thing with actors and special effects. Hollywood does it all the time.’

‘That’s not
real
, though.’

‘No, but if you want real death on camera, it’s already there, risk-free. You’ve heard of Daniel Pearl? Or the Yellow Man? You just don’t go to the trouble—the vast trouble—of creating something new and trying to find a market for it.’

He was right, of course. Filming a murder is one thing. But how the hell do you then go about selling it? It’s not like you can advertise it in the back of the paper.

‘At the same time,’ Renton said, ‘something about it rings a bell.’

I frowned. ‘Pardon me?’

He frowned, then shook his head.

‘The clip. I don’t know what it is. It reminds me of something. I don’t know what.’

I leaned forward. ‘Another murder?’

‘No, no. Believe me, if I’d seen something like this before, I’d remember it. No. It’s something else. I’m not sure what.’

‘A movie?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He shook his head again, as though dismissing the idea, and I leaned back slightly, disappointed.

He sounded far away. ‘It’ll come to me.’

I
T TOOK ME A
long time to fall asleep that night.

Beside me, Rachel slept fitfully, snoring gently, fidgeting, her bump resting on the maternity pillow. It was a warm night too, and even lying on top of the covers I was sweating. But it wasn’t really any of those things that kept me awake: it was the thought of those bodies, still lying out there somewhere, exposed to the wilds, waiting to be discovered.

That and the thought that there might be more of them now. If not yet, there would be soon. But then, maybe not. If the murders were random, there was no guarantee the dump site would be added to, and no guarantee that it wouldn’t.

When I did sleep, I dreamed I was outside a house.

It was a two-storey building on a long, wide road that stretched far out ahead and behind. The homes here were all the same: wooden and rickety, hand-made almost, each one sitting in its own fenced-off square of dirty scrubland. Nothing grew out here. There was a slight breeze, and dust billowed across the tarmac around me, as though a car had dropped me off and then sped off spinning its tyres. Above me, in the sky, clouds sped past impossibly quickly.

The house was painted red, but the colour had faded. I walked up to the front door and pushed; it swung silently open and I stepped into a small hallway. To the right, there was a lounge, with threadbare settees and a wooden cabinet that seemed wrong, although I couldn’t work out why. To the left, a dirty kitchen, with ridges of solidified fat on the counter curled around absent cups and plates.

In front of me, a dark staircase led up to the first floor.

I stood there for a moment, listening.
Feeling.
At first, the house seemed silent, but it wasn’t. There was something. Not a sound so much as a heartbeat. A slow, thudding pressure, as though somewhere, behind a closed door, a drum was being sounded.

I started up the stairs, my skin itching.

On the landing, there was a corridor that ended in a bright, arched window that must have faced out over the rear of the property. Leading up to it was a long strip of frayed red carpet, not wide enough to meet the mouldy skirting boards on either side. In front of the window, motes of dust whirled impossibly quickly, like a cloud of midges, forming half-glimpsed fingerprint patterns in the air.

I started walking slowly along the corridor. As I did, the heartbeat grew louder.

There were three doors. The first was open on to a bathroom. Everything inside was blue and green and shimmering; it was like peering into an artificially lit underwater cave. I turned away and kept walking.

The second door, on the other side of the hall from the other two, was closed. As I reached it, I realised the heartbeat sound was coming from the room behind.

I stood there for a long time, facing it.

Then I reached out and pushed it open.

Immediately, the heartbeat stopped. Light from the corridor fell into a small, dark room that was little more than a cell. It was stripped down and empty—but only of fixtures and fittings. Sitting in one corner, hugging her knees, was a woman in a bright white nightdress. Her dark hair fell over her bare knees and thin shins.

She appeared to be sobbing, but making no sound at all, as though behind glass. When I breathed in, there was the faintest scent of honey in the air.

‘Hello?’ I said.

The motions of sobbing stopped. For a moment, she was very still.

‘Hello? Are you okay?’

She lifted her head very slowly, revealing her face.

‘Oh,’ I said.

She was a very beautiful young woman—or had been once. The skin of her face was bright white, framed with black hair. Her right eye was swollen shut so badly that it looked like her eyebrow had simply been underlined.

Emmeline Levchenko. A memory or a ghost, assuming there’s even a difference, finding its way into my nightmare. An image of her back when I could have—
should
have—saved her, and failed.

A still second later she came screaming at me.

A
S THE COFFEE MACHINE
begins rasping and spitting, Jake kicks Marie Wilkinson in the stomach.

She rubs her hand gently over her belly and whispers
shush
to him, but it doesn’t do any good. Quite the opposite. It feels like the little scamp starts doing cartwheels in there.

The image makes her smile.

In the first few months of the pregnancy, it had been difficult to believe there was the beginning of somebody inside her. Certainly, she hadn’t been able to imagine how it would feel at thirty-four weeks: that it would be impossible
not to
imagine it, this new life inside her that was now only weeks away from being an actual baby.

Through her twenties, when she’d very adamantly not wanted children, it had been this aspect she’d always found the most terrifying to contemplate. The sensation of something growing inside her. It had made her shudder. There was childbirth itself to fear, of course, but the idea of becoming an incubator had always seemed far more alien. So it had surprised her how quickly she adjusted—how much, in fact, she’d come to like it. And although there is still the birth itself to be afraid of, she’s almost come to terms with that as well. A part of her is even looking forward to it.

As she rubs her stomach, smiling at Jake’s movements, she thinks:
I can’t wait to meet you.
He’s so active. It feels like he’s full of joy, doing pirouettes in there out of sheer excitement. When she dreams about him, he’s one big smile. The aches and pains of pregnancy are uncomfortable, but she pictures her body as already holding him—embracing him, just as it will when he arrives—and it feels like she can put up with the discomfort forever if needs be.

Fortunately not.

Not long now.
It’s easy to imagine he can understand her thoughts.
You get yourself ready, little man, because you’re going to love this world.

As the machine dribbles out the last few trickles of coffee, she senses Tony enter the kitchen behind her. He is busy, as always, rushing to get ready for work. Hair damp from the shower, shirt slightly untucked, still doing the tie he doesn’t really need for the work but wears anyway.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ she says over her shoulder.

‘Hiya. Coffee—thanks. You’re a star.’

‘Well, if you haven’t time for breakfast, you’ve got to have something.’

‘Tell me about it.’

She pours him a cup. There’s enough for a second in there; she might treat herself when he’s gone. At first she scrupulously avoided everything she was supposed to, but she’s relaxed a little as time has gone on. An occasional cup won’t hurt. The advice seems to change every few weeks anyway.

‘Did I keep you awake last night?’ she says.

‘Not that I’d ever tell you. How’s Jake?’

‘Active this morning. It’s the smell of coffee. I told you.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’

Freshly brewed coffee is her favourite smell, and while it’s probably her imagination, she’s noticed Jake respond to it a few times too.
Confirmation bias,
Tony has told her, meaning she was looking too hard for patterns and remembering the times he started jumping inside her more readily than the times he didn’t. Her husband is far too sensible, but she loves him for that almost as much as for the sense of physical security he gives her.

As if on cue, he embraces her from behind, rubbing his hands gently over her bump. This close, she can smell drifts of his aftershave, and beneath that,
him.
He has always been manly without ever seeming to try. Big and solid. The kind of man who can carry anything you set down in front of him, do any job you give him.

Jake kicks against his hand.

‘Feel that?’ she says.

‘Yeah.’

‘Going to be a footballer, I reckon.’

‘Either that or a right little thug.’

She pats his hand gently, and he moves away, reaching around her to get his coffee.

‘Well, I hope you and Jake are going to look after each other today.’

Marie smiles again. ‘I’m sure we will.’

‘Got anything planned?’

‘Just pottering.’

‘Good.’ He looks troubled. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

‘We won’t.’

She’s pleased by his use of the baby’s name. The pregnancy wasn’t planned, and it took them both a little time to come round to the idea—Tony more than her. To begin with he always referred to it as ‘the baby’, and even after the scan showed it was a boy, and they’d discussed and agreed upon a name, he still seemed to find it hard to get his head around the idea of
Jake
. It was easier for her because she could feel him in ways Tony couldn’t. A few weeks ago she’d had a brainwave and invested in a home ultrasound device—just a cheap, simple thing, but using it seemed to have made a huge difference. Tony had heard his son’s heartbeat properly, and after that, it was rarely ‘the baby’ any more and always Jake.

Tony drains his coffee almost in one.

‘Don’t burn yourself, sweetie.’

‘I won’t. Asbestos mouth.’

He kisses her on the forehead. She tilts her head back and he kisses her more fully on the mouth. As they embrace, Jake continues his activities.

Tony says, ‘My unborn son is already kicking me in the wallet.’

‘Get used to it.’

‘Yeah.’

It’s a sore point, probably, as she knows that’s his chief worry. But he stays in the embrace for a reassuring moment longer before moving away, grabbing his coat.

‘Okay. I’ve got to run or I’ll be late. You look after yourself, okay?’ He frowns. ‘I’m serious.’

‘Me too—don’t worry. I’ll be good.’

‘No need for that. Just be careful.’

Marie sticks her tongue out at him.

‘Love you,’ he says.

‘Love you too.’

And then he’s out of the door, closing it behind him. She hears him running down the path and the gate clattering.

A part of Marie breathes a sigh of relief. She loves Tony’s company, of course, but she could certainly get used to this being-alone-in-the-house-with-Jake business. It feels like her territory now. Her maternity leave has only just begun, and it feels good. No more random hours. The house is hers.
Within a couple of weeks,
she thinks,
you’ll probably be going stir crazy.
But in a couple of weeks there won’t be time to do anything much other than care for Jake. And she can’t wait.