The 50/50 Killer Read online

  ‘No.’

  Pete was there beside him. He put his hand on Mercer’s arm—

  ‘It’s okay, John.’

  —but Mercer twisted and threw it off, staring at him.

  ‘Can’t you see them?’ He pointed down the aisle.

  Pete was always a little hangdog, a little put-upon, but his face now was more full of sadness than Mercer had ever seen. He couldn’t meet his boss’s eyes, faced down instead, his jaw flexing at the corners.

  ‘John.’ He spoke quietly. ‘Please come and sit down.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’

  He looked down the aisle. The men were moving very slowly, like dead men would walk. All looking at him with empty eyes.

  Pete put his hand on his arm again. ‘John, it’s me - it’s Pete.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I do.’ Pete put his arm around him. ‘I do understand.’

  Mercer hesitated, lost for a moment, then hugged him, beginning to cry.

  Pete held him and whispered, ‘It’s okay. Let’s go.’

  Pete led him down the aisle. Mercer tried to keep his eyes closed. When he opened them, even for a second, he saw pale faces close to his own, watching him pass. He allowed Pete to lead him, Greg and Simon falling in behind. Halfway down the aisle, he felt Eileen touch his arm on the other side. People moved out of the way for them.

  And like that, huddled together for protection, they walked out into the light.

  PART ONE

  One of the first things you learn is that an important element when beginning an investigation is to keep an open mind. And, to an extent, that’s true.

  For example, you should never assume anything when you arrive on a scene, no matter how obvious or clear-cut it may seem. Every unattended death should be considered (and investigated as) murder until it has been definitely established otherwise. Your first job is to assess the evidence available to you and make deductions purely on the basis of that. The facts must always determine the direction of the case, and you must allow them to lead you where they inevitably go.

  That much is true; but, as any experienced officer will tell you, there is always room for instinct. As the years pass, you develop a finely tuned inner voice that you learn to listen to even when others cannot hear it. And, within reason, there is no harm in following this voice where it takes you.

  From Damage Done, by John Mercer

  2 DECEMBER

  14 HOURS UNTIL DAWN

  5.15 P.M.

  People rarely go into their attics. Kevin Simpson was no different.

  He’d been up once when he first moved in - put his head and shoulders through the dusty hole, shone a torch around, and had the usual notions of doing something with the space while knowing deep down that he never would. Then he’d retreated down the precarious ladder and largely forgotten about it.

  If he’d gone up there today - four years after that brief initial exploration - he would have found the devil, crouching in the corner, bathed in grey-blue light.

  The devil was almost entirely still, focused on the small monitor in front of it, listening to the feed from the surveillance equipment in the house below through an earpiece. Simpson wouldn’t have been sure what he was seeing at first, and he would probably have thought that it wasn’t real, that the devil was just an incongruous statue, squatting motionless on its haunches. As the light flickered across the implacable face, it might have looked a little like a dead man in a dark room with the television still on.

  But Kevin Simpson, like most people, rarely went into the attic. The devil had spent days up there without being disturbed. It had slept directly over him, keeping its food in one bag, its waste in another. It had spied on him.

  This day, it had spent its time watching and listening to the couple moving around the house below, unaware of its presence high above. The girl had arrived at quarter past nine in the morning. They’d drunk coffee and eaten together. They’d talked. The girl had eventually left at four fifteen.

  Everything they said and did, the devil heard and saw.

  When the girl had gone, it waited.

  And waited.

  Now, finally, it unfolded itself from the corner, the light off the monitor casting elongated spider shadows from its limbs. The most important items - the rope, the lighter fluid - were secreted downstairs in Simpson’s spare room. But it took the hammer with it as it crawled nimbly along the beams to reach the trapdoor.

  The latch and the mechanism on the steel steps had been oiled one day while Simpson was at work. They opened without a sound, and a wedge of light from the hallway below appeared in the attic, illuminating the grey, curling cobwebs in the rafters overhead.

  And the devil descended.

  There wasn’t a moment when Kevin Simpson woke up; his return to the world was more a gradual hardening of awareness. He kept his eyes shut throughout. It seemed sensible, although his thoughts weren’t together enough for him to be sure why.

  Even without his consent, the sensations around him grew stronger.

  The wet slop of heat all over his body.

  A dull pressure encasing him.

  The chill of air on his face ... but he could also feel sweat beading on his forehead and the sides of his nose. The temperature: it was like being in the sauna at the Leisure Club.

  Water was rushing and splashing. Hot, churning bubbles were bustling around his toes.

  I’m in my bath.

  Immediately, he hated himself: if I don’t think it, it won’t be true.

  But there was no taking it back, and Kevin reluctantly became aware of other sensations. The world, though still out of sight, appeared around him. He could tell he was lying down, could tell he was naked and submerged in water. The hard porcelain at the back of his neck; the bath tight against his arms.

  An awful, throbbing pain in his shoulder ...

  That was when he remembered the intruder. There had been a man in his room, the man had attacked him, and—

  Panic reared up and he tried to thrash, but there was rope binding his arms to his sides, and his feet were locked together, too. Water sloshed up his nose. He tried to cough but couldn’t - Jesus, there was something over his mouth as well. The panic became a shrill ringing in his heart. Desperately, he blew out through his nose and then sucked air back in. Bitter, salty liquid in his mouth. He swallowed quickly, trying not to be sick.

  ‘Keep calm, or you’ll drown yourself.’

  At that, Kevin held completely still. He kept his eyes closed, too.

  A burglar.

  If Kevin didn’t think about how he’d been sitting there after she’d left, trying to write an email to her, he could convince himself that was it - he’d disturbed a burglar. Never mind that he’d turned round and seen the man standing in the doorway behind him, or that the man was wearing a devil mask and carrying a hammer. The man was only after money, and he had been forced to tie him up. Soon he would take Kevin’s things and leave.

  He heard a screech as the taps were turned off, then nothing but the hushed noise of the water in the pipes. It sounded as though the veins of the house were boiling behind the plaster.

  ‘Open your eyes.’

  He didn’t want to, but did it anyway. The bathroom was filled with steam. He could see the greasy, wet sweep of it across the mirrors on the cabinet doors. It was on his forehead, too, trickling down his temples.

  The man was sitting on the closed toilet beside the bath. He was wearing that same hideous mask: pink, rubbery skin; clumps of black hair stuck at the chin and tufting the head; horns made of what looked like old bones.

  The devil. Kevin just stared at him.

  ‘That’s better,’ the man said, nodding.

  Kevin realised he was lying tied up in a bath of hot water, at the mercy of this terrible stranger. This stranger, wearing that mask.

  A mistake, he thought. It has to be a mistake.

  The man reached down between his feet and picked up a
hammer. Kevin felt his panic growing stronger, but this time he kept as still as possible.

  Don’t drown.

  ‘I’m sorry about this.’ The man stared at the weapon curiously, as though he wasn’t sure what damage could have been done by it. ‘It’s possible you’ll come out of this alive, and if that’s the case I’m sorry I had to hurt you. It was necessary.’

  Possible. Necessary.

  ‘Nod if you understand.’

  Kevin nodded as best he could. A mistake, he kept repeating to himself. If the stranger would only remove the gag and let him speak, he’d be able to explain.

  The man put the hammer down.

  ‘I know who you were emailing,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching you both for a long time.’

  Oh, Jesus.

  ‘And I’ve read all the other emails you’ve written to each other. I have all your passwords. I had keys cut from moulds I took of all your locks. See?’

  The man held up an enormous bunch of keys and shook them. Kevin’s eyes flicked from one to another, but they were flashing too quickly and he couldn’t make out which of them might be his. Not all of them, certainly. It didn’t matter. He nodded anyway.

  The man put the keys on the floor.

  ‘Sometimes I come into your house when you’re not here. I go through your things. I read your letters. I sleep in your attic. I follow you to and from work.’

  Not a mistake, then. Kevin stared at the man and thought back desperately, trying to remember seeing anything, anyone suspicious. There was nothing. You simply walked along, didn’t you? Never paid much attention to the people around and about. A clever person could follow you easily.

  ‘You’ve never seen me,’ the man said. ‘I’m very careful. But I’ve seen you. I’ve been watching you all day. Both of you.’

  Kevin nodded carefully. Sweat ran down his forehead into his eye, and he blinked it away. The water lapped at the sides of the bath.

  The man in the devil mask reached down to the floor and picked something else up. A red and yellow tin.

  Lighter fluid.

  Kevin’s stomach went cold and dead and hard. He tried to recoil but couldn’t move. Instead, he was aware that he had wet himself.

  The stranger clasped his hands together, holding the tin between them. It was the kind you might squirt onto an outdoor barbecue to make the flames roar. The man was pointing it vaguely in Kevin’s direction. He inclined his head and - despite the mask - somehow he looked thoughtful.

  ‘We’re going to play a game about love,’ he said.

  3 DECEMBER

  EIGHT MINUTES AFTER DAWN

  7.23 A.M.

  It was enough.

  Simpson’s body was still twitching in the water, but he had ceased any kind of struggle. Through the smoke in the room, the devil could see that most of Simpson’s hair was gone and that the skin on his sightless face had scorched and burst. He didn’t appear able to breathe any more. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon. These things were always a matter of degree.

  The devil turned off the digital recorder and checked the display.

  Eight minutes and fifteen seconds of audio. It would need only a fraction of that.

  The bathroom stank, and the devil was glad to move back out onto the landing and shut the door on the mess within. Overhead, the wires hung down from the smoke-detector it had broken before ending the game, so that the air would remain unalarmed by Simpson’s passing.

  There were a few more things to do before the devil could leave. On the few occasions it had left Simpson alone, it had removed all traces of its surveillance equipment from the house. That didn’t really matter at this stage, of course, but the activity had helped to keep it occupied while it waited for Simpson to regain consciousness. It had also checked his computer for emails. It wondered what the girl who had been here yesterday was doing right now.

  Sleeping, probably, oblivious of what she had done.

  That wouldn’t last.

  There were still a couple of items to collect. It headed downstairs, putting the digital recorder in the pocket of the overalls as it went.

  It would need the recording when it came time to make the phone call.

  3 DECEMBER

  22 HOURS, 40 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  8.40 A.M.

  Mark

  Given how much I missed her, I guess it was strange I hardly ever dreamed about Lise. There had probably been only a handful of occasions in going on six months, and even then I didn’t dream about her exactly. She was always conspicuous by her absence. Just as she was when I was awake.

  The dream that morning was no different. I was sitting on the beach in my shorts, staring out towards the horizon. My skin was wet and peppered with sand, and I was shivering. The sea in front was calm and serene, the waves rolling slowly in, the water gently unravelling. Curls thinned out, stretching up the shore, before retreating with a quiet hiss. Above me, the sky was blue and blurry, whitening until it met the flat sea in the distance. A strange grammar of birds formed italic sentences against it.

  That was all.

  Harmless on the surface, but as I woke up it left me feeling crushed; there was a physical sensation of despair pressing down on me. For a moment, I didn’t recognise the almost empty room around me. What ... ? Then I remembered the move across country. The flat, the job. I began to rub the sleep from my face, and my hand came away sweaty.

  Christ, Lise, I thought.

  You pick your days to visit.

  And then I paused, because something was wrong. It only took a second to place it. There was music playing in my new bedroom. That was wrong because I had dim memories of different music playing earlier on, before I’d drifted back into the dream. I rolled my head sideways and glanced at the radio alarm.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. It wasn’t quite enough. ‘And fuck.’

  I should have been fresh out of the shower and powering up the coffee machine over an hour ago. I closed my eyes.

  You really pick your days to visit.

  A lesser man might have jumped up immediately, expanding on the whole ‘shit and fuck’ subject matter at a louder volume, but some things are more important than being late. And so, instead, I lay there for a few more seconds, breathing deeply and clinging to the dream as it faded from me. The heavy feeling of despair remained, and it wasn’t great, but sometimes despair is better than nothing. Sometimes it’s the right thing to feel.

  You pick your days to visit, I thought.

  But you’re always welcome.

  And then, finally, I scrambled out of bed and into the corridor, trying to remember where on earth the bathroom was in my new flat.

  At nine thirty, exactly half an hour late for my first day, I drove into a car-park of crackling gravel and chain-link fences.

  Weather-wise, it was a miserable, shitty morning - and therefore an appropriate backdrop for my current frustration. The sky was filled with dirty smears of cloud, like snow after a day of slushy footprints, and it couldn’t decide whether to rain properly or not, so it just occasionally darkened and spat. The grass verges dotted around the car-park were churned to mud. On the way over here I’d listened to the local radio, and the weather forecaster had cheerily explained there was good news and bad news. The rain would stop by late morning. But he promised snow for later.

  At the far end of the lot, the police reception building sat squat and low. There was a network of buildings behind it, connected by beige concrete walkways, and what little glass there was reflected the dark sky and gave away nothing. A month ago, when I came for my interview, I’d thought that the department looked more of a place to commit a crime than report one. It was like an abandoned mental hospital.

  I killed the car’s engine, and the rain created a more intimate patter on the roof. It settled on the windscreen, gradually blurring the view.

  Late on my first day. I couldn’t have been any more unprofessional if I’d turned up in a fucking clown suit. My right index finger tapped a
bsently on my left elbow for a moment, but there was nothing I could do, and so instead of dwelling, I gathered myself together, then got out and made my way across the tarmac towards the entrance.

  The reception area was typical of its kind: black ceiling above, fuzzy carpet below, and pale breeze-block walls keeping order in between. There were pamphlets tacked to noticeboards - Protect your bicycle! - and a row of orange plastic seats in a small waiting area where nobody was waiting. From outside it looked like a mental hospital; from within, a leisure centre.

  The reception desk was opposite the door. There were two reasonably attractive girls sitting behind it, and the one on the left smiled at me as I approached, so I smiled back. She had light brown hair tied back in a neat ponytail, and sparse makeup that she’d applied well. The other girl was busy on her headset, taking calls.

  ‘Hi, there. I’m Detective Mark Nelson. I’m the new member of John Mercer’s team.’

  ‘Ah yes.’

  She reached to one side and came back with a clipboard.

  ‘Mercer’s new lackey. We’ve been expecting you.’

  ‘Traffic was bad,’ I lied.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry.’ She passed me the clipboard. ‘You need to sign some things for me.’

  My name was printed at various points on the sheet, and I worked my way down, putting my signature next to each. The girl studied me the whole time.

  ‘This is your first assignment, isn’t it?’ she said.

  I smiled without looking up. ‘Word travels fast.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  I genuinely wasn’t, because there was bound to have been speculation about anyone John Mercer appointed to his team, never mind me. Partly it was down to his status, which was as close to celebrity as a working cop generally got. Apart from being a well-known, well-respected police officer inside his regular working hours here, he was also sought after for lectures and talks, consultancies, articles, papers, even occasional television appearances.