The 50/50 Killer Page 26

  The screen blinked again and everyone moved a fraction closer to the road.

  He’s still being careful ... It’s what he’s being careful about that’s changed.

  Careful to escape us until dawn. To see if we could find him before then and save Jodie McNeice’s life.

  Earlier on, the idea had seemed outlandish. But if not that, why these woods? Why let Scott go? I was aware of a sinking sensation inside myself. Something was wrong.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I didn’t want to talk to Officer Bates any more. I minimised the window, leaving the connection open, and sat there breathing slowly, trying to get a grip on myself.

  There was nothing I could do. It was out of my hands.

  I repeated that to myself. I didn’t believe it.

  I was meant to be preparing a summary for Hunter - the facts of the day - but instead I was staring at the map. The screen updated: everyone moved a little further away from her. From Jodie and Reardon.

  We’re going to find her.

  All tiredness had left me now. In fact, my heart felt wired to the mains. It was pounding hard, the way it did whenever I thought about Lise and what had happened that day; the same racing, sinking feeling I got whenever I relived the event in my head, building inexorably towards the loss of her, the absence.

  Jodie’s going to be fine.

  I promise.

  I found myself reaching out to the desk, picking up the photograph of Jodie that we’d taken from Scott’s wallet.

  It reminded me. We only take photographs of the happy times; so in themselves they tell us nothing. Scott carried this around without knowing Jodie was having an affair. I wondered what secrets lay hidden behind the picture taken on the Roseneils’ wedding day. I wondered what secrets Lise might have kept from me.

  Still staring at the photograph of Jodie, I thought about Lise. In the canteen, Greg had guessed I didn’t have a girl to drag cross-country with me, but in reality nothing could have been further from the truth. The fact was that she’d been with me every minute of that journey, just as she had every other day for the last six months. She’d surfaced in one form or another throughout the day. After my first interview with Scott, I’d been worried I was empathising with him too much. In reality, it was inevitable.

  I closed my eyes.

  The image that came to me was of Daniel Roseneil. His bruised, downturned face as he gave that faltering testimony; the peaks of horror emerging from the mist of his memory. After watching that, I’d told myself that I didn’t blame him for not remembering. I’d been thinking about how often we tell someone we can’t live without them, that we’d die for them, that we’d do anything. About how rarely we’re called on those promises. When it came to the victims left behind, I didn’t blame any of them for allowing themselves to forget. Of course I didn’t.

  I opened my eyes, looking at the photograph of Jodie again.

  Scott was different from Daniel in one way, wasn’t he? Different from me, too.

  My hand twitched, as though it was about to do something of its own accord.

  Scott hadn’t lost her. Not yet.

  All Mercer had wanted was a bit of faith; I realised, too late, that I’d found some. Jodie is alive in those woods. The panic intensified. The screen blinked, the circles almost all at the road now, and it grew even stronger.

  This time I let my hand go where it wanted. My fingers found the edge of the desk, and I used it to push my chair back, stood up too quickly. I might be about to get myself into trouble, but I didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to stand here and do nothing. Not again.

  Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

  For the first time all day, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  4 DECEMBER

  2 HOURS, 15 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  5.05 A.M.

  Scott

  ‘You’re not here,’ Scott said. ‘I know what you are and where you’re from. You were never here.’

  In the dream, he was back in his front room, sitting on the settee, feeling the comfortable, familiar sturdiness of it supporting him. There was a large clock on the opposite wall - that shouldn’t be there. The minute hand was ticking round, but it was going too quickly. He could literally see it moving.

  Six o’clock.

  One minute past six.

  Two minutes.

  The man in the devil mask - only a man, a man in a mask - was squatting in front of him, leaning his elbows on Scott’s knees. He had never been here in the flat with him. The man was a memory from that other place, from the stone building, where he had hurt him so badly. As the night passed, he seemed able to invade every thought and memory Scott had.

  Five minutes past six.

  The weight on his legs was familiar, as were the things the man kept saying. His dreaming mind was dressing the memories of the stone building in thinner and thinner cloth.

  ‘I’m not here?’ the man said, and then glanced left and right, before looking back. ‘Tell me where we are.’

  ‘In my front room.’

  ‘At home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where you live with Jodie?’

  Scott didn’t say anything, because it occurred to him: Jodie ... where was she? It was twenty past six. She should have been back from work by now. He looked to his right and saw that the living-room window was open, the curtains wavering slightly. A second later, a very cold breeze touched him, and he began to shiver uncontrollably.

  Jodie wasn’t here at the moment, and he told himself not to think about it. She was simply in another part of the flat.

  ‘It’s all right.’ The man noticed his confusion. ‘She’s in the room next door, isn’t she?’

  He thought about it and nodded slowly. Yes, that was right. Jodie had gone to lie down. She’d come back from work looking so sad that he’d immediately asked her what was wrong. Nothing, she’d said, dropping her handbag on the chair and then collapsing next to him. He’d tried to coax it out of her. Bad day? Want to talk about it? She hadn’t, and they’d just sat there for a while.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ he said.

  The man in the devil mask inclined his head. ‘You had an argument.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You did, but you don’t realise it.’

  Scott shook his head - but actually he wasn’t sure. Perhaps the man was right. All he could remember was that they’d been sitting there and, as happened so often, he hadn’t been able to make the right gesture or say the right thing. Maybe he’d felt so frustrated and powerless that, rather than just not saying the right thing, he’d ended up saying the wrong one instead.

  It happened too much. But she was so unhappy! And it frustrated him that there seemed to be nothing he could do. Her moods were immune from him. She came home unhappy; he could do nothing. The next day, the same; and the next. Every day rhymed with the last.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the man reassured him. ‘It’s what happens.’

  ‘No.’

  The curtains wavered again. The pressure on his knees increased as the man leaned forwards conspiratorially.

  ‘Why is she through there, then?’ he said.

  ‘She’s had a bad day.’

  ‘She’s unhappy. Do you know why?’

  Scott shook his head. He wished he did. If he knew what was wrong he could do something to change it and try to make her happy again. He would do anything, if only he knew that it would help.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you?’ the man said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember when we talked about her fucking Kevin Simpson in that dirty little hotel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It hurt when it happened. But you’re over that now, aren’t you?’

  He nodded slowly.

  In the time afterwards, it had felt as though there would never be a single minute when he wouldn’t think about it, never mind a day or a week, but eventually that minute had
come. And then the day, and then the week. Now he hardly thought about it at all.

  ‘Don’t you think that she’s over it, too?’ the man said.

  Scott just looked at him.

  ‘You felt hurt. Now that’s faded. And it’s the same for her. When it happened, she felt so guilty that she was prepared to give up everything she’d worked for just to save her relationship with you. And because the guilt has faded, she regrets that decision.’

  Scott shook his head. ‘No.’

  The man said, ‘Whether you like it or not, she no longer feels guilty. She doesn’t hate herself. All that’s gone. But the choice she made. She gave something up for you and she has to live with that every day.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She does.’ The man nodded. ‘She works at a job she hates and then she comes home to you and your stupid paintings. There’s no guilt any more, only loss. And she’s started resenting you for that.’

  ‘It was her choice. I didn’t force her.’

  ‘She doesn’t love you, Scott. She’s not worthy of your love in return.’

  He started to cry again. ‘She does still love me.’

  ‘I know what she thinks better than you do.’

  Scott looked down and saw that the man was holding something. Not the hot screwdriver this time, not the knife. It was just a single sheet of paper. But for some reason he found that even more terrifying, and he pushed himself back against the settee.

  The world blurred slightly; the room grew darker and colder, and his shivering intensified. The man was little more than a black shape in the shadowy air, light from some unidentifiable source flickering across his red mask.

  He put the piece of paper close to Scott’s hands and shook it gently. Take this. For a moment Scott didn’t. The cold had robbed him of dexterity, and the fingers of one hand looked twisted and wrong. But the man pressed it into his other hand and, involuntarily, he gripped it.

  Scott turned his face to the ceiling and prayed to God to make this stop, but everything above him was lost in darkness.

  ‘You think she just had a bad day at work,’ the man said. ‘But that’s not what really happened.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ He started crying. ‘That’s all it is.’

  ‘Read that, then,’ the man told him. ‘Here.’

  The man picked a torch up off the floor, switched it on and moved it round, holding it close to Scott’s ear so that the light shone back, forming a ring on the page like the stain from a coffee cup. Halos of beige and brown spread out. The man tilted the torch and the circle became an ellipse.

  ‘Read it.’

  Scott closed his eye and shook his head. But for some reason the words started coming to him anyway.

  I think maybe I’d like to see you. I do feel bad about it, because I’ll have to lie to Scott, but I think it might do me good.

  How could this be happening? But then he realised he was dreaming. It didn’t matter what he did, how tightly he shut his eye. The words were on the page and the page had already been read.

  Can you get the day off tomorrow? Though, having said that, I’m sure one of your hundred skivvies will hold the fort for you!

  He opened his eye. Yes, he thought, Jodie and Kevin. He remembered now.

  I could call in sick and come round. Would that be okay?

  The man peered round the edge of the paper. ‘She was fucking Kevin Simpson again.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He flicked the light to Scott’s face and then to the page again. Directing him. There was something on the back of the paper, Scott noticed. Curling black script, handwriting. He wasn’t meant to see that.

  ‘This is how much she loves you,’ the man said. ‘You put up with her, suffer for her, worry about her, and she goes and fucks somebody else.’

  But Scott was distracted: he was trying to make out what was written on the back of the page. It was all in reverse, but he caught one word here, another there.

  The man seemed to realise this, and he took the torch away.

  ‘Your relationship means nothing,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘She cheated on you. You’re stupid to think you love her.’

  ‘She would have told me!’ Scott was sobbing. He wouldn’t believe it. ‘She would have told me.’

  And just like that, the man in the devil mask was gone.

  Scott looked around.

  The front room had become lighter again. The clock was gone. Everything seemed normal. But the silence: it was heavy and full. It was as if something had disappeared and taken the volume with it, but soon it would return, louder and more violent than before.

  Get out.

  For a moment, a spell had been cast on him. His hands wouldn’t move; his legs wouldn’t. Then he was on his feet, stumbling towards the corridor, his mind insistent as it reasserted control. All that was over; it was done with. There was no man. Not any more. No hot screwdrivers or hammers or knives. He was safe at home with Jodie—

  The bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe and looked at her. She was lying facing away from him on the far side of the bed, her legs curled up, her chest rising and falling gently as she slept. She would have told me. Light from the hall rested on the floor and the corner of the bed, but it didn’t quite reach her. The room was so quiet and peaceful that it formed a knot in his throat. For some reason, even though she was right there, he knew she was unreachable. Gone from him.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  There was no response, just the same steady breathing. He walked over to join her. The bed creaked with his weight, then he swung his legs up and moved across to lie behind her, his chest against her back. He put his arm round her and pressed his wet face into her hair. She didn’t wake up.

  ‘No matter what you’ve done,’ he whispered, ‘I love you.’

  And in her sleep, she reached up and took hold of his hand.

  4 DECEMBER

  2 HOURS, 10 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  5.10 A.M.

  Mark

  Everything was more straightforward; the clear sense of purpose I felt had removed almost all the pressure and tension that had been growing in me throughout the day. Even making my way through the hospital corridors was simpler than before. It seemed less busy, easier to negotiate. Maybe it was because this time I put myself in the middle of the corridor and walked. People could move around me. We all had similar business to conduct here on some level, after all.

  When I arrived at Scott’s room, I nodded to the security guard, and then walked in, closing the door behind me. Scott was asleep, although nowhere near as peacefully as before. He was lying on his side, his face contorted in an uncomfortable frown.

  Dreaming. Probably nothing good.

  I walked across, touched his shoulder—

  ‘Wha—?’

  —and he jerked awake, frightened and confused. I left my hand there for a second, and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring look.

  ‘It’s okay, Scott. It’s only me.’

  I moved away and took my seat on the chair. He breathed heavily, then rolled onto his back and took a moment to compose himself. Finally, with some effort, he levered himself up into a sitting position.

  ‘Bad dream?’ I said.

  He ignored me. ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘No.’ I avoided the false assurances I’d given him earlier on. As things stood, it wasn’t a case of ‘Not yet.’

  I said, ‘We’re having some problems with that.’

  ‘Problems.’

  ‘It’s a difficult area to search. A lot of ground to cover. And in this weather, in the dark, it’s proving difficult.’

  Immediately, he looked nervous.

  I pressed on anyway. ‘So we’re going to need your help. We’re going to need you to tell us a bit more than you have done until now.’

  ‘But I’ve told you everything I remember.’

  ‘I know you have.’ Be patient with him. ‘And you’ve done well. But
we need to go a little further.’

  He shook his head at the prospect. I stared at him impassively. In our last conversation, we’d talked about the game the killer played, and he’d asked me: So I betrayed Jodie? There was no definite answer I could give to that, not even now, but deep down Scott knew the truth. And he’d had a couple of hours alone to dwell on it. His mind was telling him to keep his back to what happened, and now here I was, threatening to make him turn round.

  ‘If we don’t find Jodie soon,’ I said, ‘there’s a good chance we won’t find her at all.’

  ‘But I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

  I was sympathetic, but there was almost a petulance to him.

  ‘What else did the man talk to you about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I just looked at him, letting him know that he wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. It was in his face that he could remember something. Even if he couldn’t, he was going to have to try.

  The tension in the silence steadily increased, but I was implacable. In the end, I forced him to break it.

  ‘All I know is, we talked about Jodie.’

  ‘That’s not all you know. I appreciate it’s hard, Scott.’

  He started to cry. ‘I don’t know.’

  My instinct was to back off, but that was no good. I kept looking at him - the same implacable expression as before - and settled back in the chair, trying to dilute my expression with some compassion, some understanding.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re afraid of.’

  He shook his head and looked away.

  ‘You’re scared that you left her to die,’ I said, ‘and you don’t think you’ll be able to forgive yourself for that, or else you think people will judge you for it. I understand more than you think. But Scott, look at the window. It’s not dawn yet.’

  I leaned forwards.