The 50/50 Killer Page 31

  ‘Sir,’ Westmoreland called, ‘this is important. From the men at the scene.’

  John touched his earpiece. ‘Mark, I’ll call you back.’

  He walked quickly up to them. Westmoreland still had his head on one side, listening carefully, nodding.

  ‘They’ve found a note, sir. In the other building.’

  ‘Have them read it.’

  ‘Read it to me, please.’

  Westmoreland was silent again, listening.

  ‘“Dear Detective Sergeant Mercer,”’ he began.

  4 DECEMBER

  29 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  6.51 A.M.

  Mark

  I kept searching through the files. There was something I was missing. There had to be, because I was sure I was right. The killer had been playing a third game with James Reardon. He had made Reardon wait out there in the woods and hold Jodie captive until dawn. It wasn’t torture, but it was a sacrifice he had to make in exchange for his child’s life. The 50/50 Killer might not have been able to collect love from either of them, but Reardon would still fulfil a useful purpose in the game as a whole.

  But what Mercer said was also true: three independent witnesses put Reardon in the frame. Amanda Taylor’s boyfriend, Colin Barnes, had identified Reardon as the man who’d assaulted him and abducted Karli; Megan Cook had seen him enter the house rented by Carl Farmer; and Scott thought he recognised him from a utility visit a month or so back. They couldn’t all be lying. Together they created a web of their own, and Reardon was inescapably trapped at the centre. So I must have missed something.

  I opened the transcript of the interview with Megan. If the killer had been following Reardon for a long time, he could easily have used his photograph when setting up the van licensing and the Carl Farmer nest. One of the things he would have made Reardon do would be to deliver the mask that morning and implicate himself further.

  I scanned through the file.

  There.

  ‘Did you see him arrive?’ I’d asked Megan.

  ‘Yeah. I was on the phone by the front window.’

  She hadn’t told me who she was talking to. But I’d asked her how long Reardon had been inside the house.

  ‘I was only on the phone for a minute, and I saw him come out, so it can’t have been long.’

  Only a minute. Could it have been him, the real killer? Cold-calling her for some reason, any reason: a ploy to get her over to the window for the moment when James Reardon appeared at the house? The only sighting of the 50/50 Killer, engineered to lead us in the direction of a false suspect. So that he could wait for us there, challenge us as Mercer believed, without ever being in any real danger of getting caught?

  That still left Scott and Colin Barnes’s testimony though. Admittedly, Scott was in pieces at the moment, so perhaps his memory couldn’t entirely be trusted, but Barnes had been adamant: James Reardon had attacked him and abducted Karli. And that didn’t make sense, because my theory depended on the 50/50 Killer taking the baby and blackmailing Reardon.

  So either Colin Barnes was mistaken or else he was lying.

  I opened the file on Karli Reardon’s abduction. My heart was beating fiercely.

  The transcript of Barnes’s statement loaded. As it did, I considered one possible explanation. Maybe Barnes hadn’t actually seen his attacker at all, and because of the history with Reardon had just made an assumption. A sensible one, perhaps, but not necessarily—

  The file opened and I stopped thinking altogether.

  There it was on the screen. I stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what I was seeing.

  Something had ... It couldn’t be right. That ...

  My world dropped away.

  And somewhere, far away in the hospital, an alarm began to sound.

  4 DECEMBER

  28 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  6.52 A.M.

  Scott

  There was no flat any more. No comfortable settee to sit on. No Jodie, asleep in another room. His dreams had given up all pretence of dressing his memories in brighter clothes; the artifice had been stripped away. Now, as Scott slept, he was simply there again: back in the stone outhouse in the woods, perched on that awkward seat, cramped and tortured, with the man in the devil mask squatting down in front of him.

  ‘You’re blind to the truth.’ The man held the torch under the chin of the mask, illuminating it. ‘You don’t love her. Not any more.’

  It’s a game, Scott reminded himself. The man was the devil, which meant he had lied. Jodie hadn’t cheated on him. In fact, none of the things the man had told him were true. Not necessarily.

  But the evidence had been right there in front of him, hadn’t it? And it was true that Jodie was unhappy, so it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine her cheating on him again. He did that now: pictured it in his head. Turned the image round. Jodie and Kevin. Kevin and Jodie. It made sense.

  The man’s voice became kinder, more soothing. ‘She certainly doesn’t love you.’

  Scott shook his head.

  He thought back on everything the man had talked to him about tonight. The painting Jodie hadn’t wanted; the one-night stand with Kevin Simpson; the general unhappiness that had permeated both their lives, but especially hers, for so long now. He pictured her pacing the house, as though he’d put her in a cage. Going back and forth to the job she hated. Every morning when they woke up, it felt like a bit more of her had died. Living with him, all her lights were slowly going out, one by one.

  When had he last seen her smile? He couldn’t remember. And Scott loved her so much that it broke his heart he couldn’t show her how much she mattered to him, how important she was. Or that he could say and do those things, but they weren’t enough.

  He would do anything to make things right again.

  ‘Tell me you hate her,’ the man repeated. ‘The game will be over then. All this pain will end.’

  He would do anything at all.

  And maybe now, even if she never knew it, he could.

  ‘No.’

  The man in the devil mask looked at him, implacable.

  ‘No?’

  Scott was trembling with the cold. His skin felt dead. And there was so much pain. Perhaps because of that, he was almost delirious. It wasn’t about thinking. He felt his spirit lifting, and he said it again.

  ‘No. I love her.’

  The man settled back on his heels, tilting his head slightly. Through the mask, there was the slightest hint of defeat.

  ‘All right, then.’

  And then Scott was standing outside the stone building. The man had cut the rope tying his arms to his thighs but had left him cuffed. His legs were weak, his back bowed - half broken from the cramp. The man stripped the clothes off him and threw them into the empty storeroom.

  ‘We’ll leave these here as well.’

  He was talking about the pages in his hand. He laid them carefully on top of Scott’s clothes, showing him each in turn.

  Five Hundred Reasons Why I Love You.

  Scott felt immense sorrow when he saw that. He wished more than anything that he’d been able to finish it. He hoped she would understand.

  Two hundred and seventy-four reasons said: I realise everything’s not perfect, least of all me, but I’m still trying because I so desperately don’t want to lose you.

  He started crying. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please. Please can I see her again?’

  The email next, except he turned that over and left it with the small black handwriting facing up. Scott caught sight of the top line - ‘Dear Detective Sergeant Mercer’ - and then the man closed the door. There was a screech of metal as he pulled the bolt across.

  ‘Why?’ Scott sobbed. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  The man didn’t answer. Instead, he walked across to the fire and selected a burning log. Then he held the screwdriver up and pointed deeper into the woods.

  ‘We’re going this way.’

&nb
sp; He didn’t know where the man led him; it was too dark to see much, and he kept tripping. But the man used the burning wood to force him on: pushing it into his bare back, producing jabs of agony. Scott was terrified, frantic. He knew what was going to happen; the images came into his head without reason but with absolute conviction. The man was going to make him lie face down on the frozen woodland ground, and then he was going to take out his knife and put it through Scott’s throat, carve it out. He could imagine his screams, suddenly reduced to gargles of panic; his blood fanning across the snow.

  How would it feel, to die? To disappear from the world?

  Scott pleaded with the man, but he said nothing.

  They walked for about ten minutes and then the man told him to stop. He pointed the screwdriver at the base of a tree.

  ‘Sit there.’

  Scott collapsed against it, his bare legs splayed out in the snow in front of him. The cold burned them, but he was so frightened that he didn’t care.

  The man bound him to the tree with two sets of rope. One round his body, holding his arms in place. The other in his mouth, forcing his tongue back and holding his head up. When he’d finished, he stood in front where Scott had no option but to see him.

  ‘You asked me why.’

  The man crouched down in front of Scott and pulled the mask up over his face, resting it on the top of his head. He was only a man, Scott realised again. Apart from an awful blankness, there was nothing unusual about his face. He could have been anyone.

  ‘I am a spirit in this shell.’ The man’s words had a rehearsed air to them. ‘I feel nothing because I am separate from it. When I am done, this body will fall and I will float apart from it.’

  He leaned over, reaching out, allowing the flames on the wood to lick at the screwdriver. He turned it round, this way and that.

  Please no. Please don’t hurt me any more.

  ‘When this body falls apart, I will return in another shell to continue my collection. And another.’

  As the man took the screwdriver out of the flame, Scott’s panic intensified - but then he stared, horrified, as the man lifted the screwdriver to his own face instead. He put the spike of it into his eye and held it there. Something sizzled and crumpled, and the man turned the handle slowly, side to side, smoke curling up his forehead. When he spoke next, his voice was neutral and impassive, and Scott believed every single word of it.

  ‘Eventually,’ the man said calmly, ‘I will be allowed to take my collection home to my true father.’

  Scott woke up and opened his eye. It was difficult. Either the lid was enormously heavy or else the muscles that worked it were too numb for his nerves to find.

  So cold. He was so cold. His body was trembling and shaking, but there was no sensation accompanying the movement. He was just aware it was happening. When he had first been sat down here, the cold had burned him. Now it was as though his body belonged to someone else.

  It must be nearly morning. The sky was slowly coming to life, and far above him in the trees, birds were beginning to sing. But everything was very distant; there was no feeling in his body, only a small core of heat left, and he could feel that dwindling. He was dying from the outside in.

  He didn’t feel panic any more. Even all the impossible pain had dimmed, while the adrenalin simply sat in his veins, sluggish and frozen. His heart could barely raise the energy to beat.

  At least he could close his eye, and it was grateful for the reprieve, falling back into place. There was a breeze against his skin, but it might have been hot, cold - he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.

  Scott allowed himself to drift. The world seemed reluctant to fade away, but in the end it couldn’t cling to him and he fell back into sleep. The dreams returned, solidifying around him, only these were more like proper dreams. They were made-up, fantasies.

  In one, Jodie was standing behind him, reaching round to knot his tie.

  He smiled. He still loved her, despite everything. She was so perfect for him.

  Jodie said: ‘You don’t have to go. Not if you don’t want to.’

  And then he was on a beach he’d never seen before. He was sitting on the sand, watching the waves, listening to the sound of them swelling in and breaking on the shore. It was a gentle, rushing noise, repeated over and over.

  In his dream, Jodie was there, too: sitting quietly next to him, the wind rolling her hair. It was sunny, and it felt wonderful. There wasn’t any cold, not any more. Jodie looked at him and smiled, and when she leaned her head against him he reached over and took her hand.

  Even this was slowly fading. He closed his eyes and listened as the noise of the sea grew dimmer.

  And as Scott died, it told him very gently: Shhhhh.

  4 DECEMBER

  22 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

  6.58 A.M.

  Mark

  Was it wrong, what I was thinking?

  As I ran along the hospital corridors, yelling at people to move, I wasn’t frightened. Even though I was unarmed. Even though I knew now, from the photograph I’d seen of Colin Barnes, that the man I’d spent all night talking to had never been the real Scott Banks at all.

  I wasn’t scared. In fact, my main concern was that I was going to be too late, and I knew from the alarm that I probably already was.

  Was it wrong? Aware of all the other people the 50/50 Killer had murdered, part of me believes I should have been thinking of them - or at least of my job. I’d like to think I was bravely, selflessly doing my duty, that I was running upstairs to stop this man before he got away and hurt someone else.

  Into the lift.

  Foot tapping: come on, come on.

  Ting. Out through the doors and running again.

  ‘Get out of the way!’

  The truth is I wasn’t charging along the corridors because of my job, or because of concern for his past or future victims. Instead, I was thinking about my last conversation with him - with Scott, or Carl Farmer, or Colin Barnes. I was remembering his expression when I told him about Lise; the way he’d thanked me on my way out. I was thinking that he was the wolf of space, pulling relationships to pieces and draining the world of love.

  Most of all, I was hearing that sound again in my head. Not the noise from the audio recording this time, but the sound of his slow breathing as I made my confession, as he listened to me describing her death, and explaining how I felt I’d betrayed her. As he added her to his harvest.

  He was only a man - I knew that deep down. Just as I knew that the fourth spider web Mercer had found at the woods couldn’t really represent me and Lise. How could it? He’d left all of those before he even met me. It was impossible.

  But, regardless, that was why I ran so hard. Because if I didn’t take him down now, I was sure I would lose a part of myself for ever.

  There was a crowd around the entrance to his room - nurses, doctors, orderlies - all looking anxious, panicked. The sight of me bearing down on them probably didn’t help.

  No security guard, I noticed.

  ‘Police.’

  They moved out of the way, clearing to either side of the door.

  ‘We don’t know what happened,’ an orderly said.

  ‘One of the nurses found him like that.’

  I stepped through them. ‘Move away, please.’

  I was desperate for a confrontation, but it wasn’t going to make me careless. I kept my distance from the doorway and took in what I could of the room.

  Just inside, a woman in a nurse’s uniform was crouched over someone lying on the floor. The security guard. Where was Barnes? The bed was empty, the covers pulled roughly aside. The window was open, the blinds that had been closed all night now raised halfway. A breeze was slowly freezing the air, and the plastic rattled against the glass.

  I moved in, checked quickly around. There was nobody else in the room, nowhere for anybody to hide. He was gone.

  I put my hand on the nurse’s shoulder, crouched beside her.

  �
�I found him like this,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  It was obvious from the tone of her voice that she’d already checked him for signs of life and found none. She sounded lost.

  ‘Would you go outside?’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘I’d like you to wait in the corridor and make sure that nobody else comes in here. That’s very important.’

  She nodded slowly and stood up. There was blood on her hands; she rubbed them absently on her uniform as she walked to the door.

  Immediately, I went over to the window, shivering as I reached it. There was blood on the sill and the glass; blood on the pull cord for the blinds. Careful not to touch anything, I looked outside. We were at the back of the building, only one floor up - it was possible that he had jumped. But the stones in the wall were uneven, so he could have climbed down, his fingers and toes clawed into the gaps in the brick.

  There was no sign of anyone in the car-park below.

  I went back to the security guard.

  His head was swollen and broken, and his arm rested at a painfully wrong angle. I found that the casual brutality of what had been done to him was somehow even more shocking than the calculated burning of Kevin Simpson. It takes a surprising amount of effort to beat someone to death, and Barnes had made absolutely sure of the job. The guard had been kicked and stamped on repeatedly. There were streaks of blood on his face, a pool of it underneath his head, stains round the neck of his brown uniform. Muddy swirls all around and at the base of the wall.

  Bare footprints of blood.

  The bed. At the base, stained bandages were scattered. The covers were thrown aside, but there was no blood on the sheets, just an indent where Scott had lain for the night. Not Scott, of course, but Colin Barnes - if that was even his real name.

  I pictured him calling out, and the guard opening the door, coming in, bending over the bed to listen. Barnes punching him hard on the side of the head, then calmly pulling the covers back, getting up to finish the job. My mind constructed a whirlwind of activity. A flurry of violence: swift, hard blows; blood spattering. I felt the starry thud of a bare heel stamping into an eye socket.