Strangers

14

The processing brought back all kinds of foul memories Scott thought he’d buried forever. It was a different police station with different officers who wore different badges and spoke with different accents, but their routine and intent was immediately familiar and the helplessness he felt took him straight back to that day. The noises. The smells. The way they looked at him and spoke to him, at him. And in his gut it felt just the same too. He knew what he’d done to that poor little girl as soon as he felt the van hit her and bump over her tiny, fragile body, and he knew what he’d done to that pervert last night too. But should he have just let that freak wave his dick at Tammy until he’d got bored? Christ, imagine what they’d have said if he’d just sat back and not done what he’d did. No, he’d had to do it. He’d been right to do it.

After the frantic activity of the last hour, time had now slowed to an unbearable crawl. All kinds of thoughts ran through Scott’s mind as he waited in the cell, all kinds of buzzwords and phrases he’d heard used before: reasonable force, self-defence… but nothing fitted his circumstances. He was fucked. He kept thinking he should try and put up a fight to clear his name, but what good would that do him? It was fighting that had got him here. Part of him thought he should just accept what was coming, to confess to whatever they charged him with in an attempt to cooperate and hopefully reduce the hell he knew he was inevitably facing. Just get it over with…

And then things changed again.

Everything suddenly stopped being quite so uncomfortably familiar and became even more uncomfortably unpredictable. He knew this wasn’t how things were supposed to be, that the police were turning a blind eye and playing fast and loose with procedures, but why? Was it, as he suspected, a clichéd case of locals closing ranks to deal with an outsider who, they’d decided, had harmed one of their own? Or was this just the way things were done up here? Whatever the reason, it was playing out like a scene from a bad TV drama: just him and a plain-clothes officer facing each other in a grey and featureless room. The door was slightly ajar. There was someone waiting outside.

‘I need a lawyer,’ Scott said, remembering the TV routine. ‘I’m not saying anything until I’ve got a lawyer.’

‘On his way,’ the officer said. He looked to be in his mid- to late-fifties, grey-haired, with a bulbous, purple-tinged, drinker’s nose. Scott could see straight through him, trying to act all casual and matey, like he’d just decided to stick his head around the door on the off chance Scott felt like a chat or maybe confessing… save them all a load of hassle. This guy really seemed keen to live up to all the clichés: world weary, jaded, been around the block a few too many times… Scott might have risked taking the piss if he hadn’t been so bloody frightened. This your last week in the job, officer? One final case to crack before you hand in your badge for good? Do you keep a bottle of whiskey in your desk drawer? Do you live alone? Wife got bored and found someone else because in all your twenty-plus years together, you’ve always really been married to the force…

‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s Detective Inspector Litherland. I thought we might try and help each other out, Scott. Your brief’s going to be a while getting here. That’s the problem with living somewhere like Thussock, as I’m sure you’ve already discovered. It takes forever to get anywhere.’

‘I’d rather wait.’

‘Your prerogative, of course. Don’t be too hasty, though. You scratch my back, and all that shite…’

‘Nice. What is this, Taggart?’

‘You’re in no position to take the piss, sunshine. I’d be very careful if I were you. Believe me, you’re in a shitload of trouble right now.’

Scott bit his tongue. He knew the detective was right. He swallowed hard and looked away, not wanting him to see how nervous he was. But then again, it wouldn’t have taken a body language expert to work that out. The back of his shirt was drenched with sweat; dark, wet rings under both armpits. He constantly chewed the ends of his fingers.

‘Okay, Scott,’ the detective said, ‘I’ll lay things on the line for you here, just so you know what we’re dealing with. Graham McBride is dead, and we’ve several witnesses who saw you beating seven shades of shit out of him shortly before he died.’

‘No comment.’

‘I’m not really asking for your thoughts just now, sunshine, I just need you to listen. Absorb and understand, okay? Now, as I was saying, you were seen kicking seven shades of shit out of Mr McBride—’

‘He was harassing my step-daughter. He had his dick in his hands for Christ’s sake. He was wanking himself off. She’s not even seventeen… what would you have done?’

‘Calm down, Scott, I’m not here to—’

‘Sure I punched him a couple of times, but I didn’t do enough to kill him.’

‘Medical expert, are you?’

‘No, I—’

‘Or is it that you checked Mr McBride was okay after you finished beating him up? Oh no, that’s right, you didn’t. You left him at the side of the road, barely even breathing.’

‘It wasn’t like that. I didn’t—’

‘Slow down, and calm down. Take your time. As I said, listen to me first, then we’ll talk. You see, my biggest problem right now is that it’s not just Mr McBride we’re talking about here. Poor old Graham’s not the only death we’ve had to deal with recently.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘Think carefully, Scott.’

‘I told you, I—’

Litherland raised his hand, silencing Scott mid-sentence. ‘Remind me again, how long is it that you and your family have lived in Thussock?’

‘We moved here last Saturday.’

‘By we, I take it you mean your family?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what about you? How long have you yourself been up here?’

‘I came up about a week and a half earlier to get the house straight. Wait, what are you saying? Do you think I—?’

‘I’m not saying anything. My job’s not to suppose, it’s to prove. You see, I’m just trying to work out what’s going on around here. Look at it from my perspective… until these last few weeks, there’d only been one murder here in eight years. Now in the time since you first got here, seven people have died. Heck of a coincidence.’

‘And that’s all it is, a coincidence. I don’t know anything.’ He stopped, still trying to make sense of all of this. The woman in the woods, Potter, the girl in his garden, that nutter Graham McBride… ‘Wait… seven people?’

Litherland picked up a folder full of papers, then sat down opposite Scott. If he was trying to intimidate him, it was working. ‘Giles Hitchen,’ he said.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘You sure? Think carefully, lad.’ The detective pulled out a glossy photograph from the folder and passed it to Scott. He looked at it briefly, then put it down on the table. A young guy sprawled across a pavement on his back, his head and shoulders hidden in the hedgerow, legs naked and drenched with blood. What was left of his shredded penis hung between them. The gore was astonishingly vivid: a crimson scrawl across the monotone.

‘I don’t know anything about this,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen this man.’

‘Joan Lummock.’

Another photograph, this one even worse. A woman in her late fifties, her skin discoloured by the first signs of decay, lying on a bed of blood-soaked leaf litter. He recognised the location from TV reports he’d seen. This was the woman they’d found in the forest last weekend. Again, same as the last picture, she was naked from the waist down. What was left of the rest of her was hard to make out; a vile, bloody mess instead of a vagina. Scott could barely stand to look.

‘I don’t know anything,’ he said, simply and emphatically.

‘Took us a while to find poor Joan,’ Litherland continued. ‘She’d been missing a day or so by the time we got to her. None of this ringing any bells?’

‘I heard about her on TV, but that’s all.’

A third photograph. A dead man in walking gear, anorak on top, waterproof trousers wrapped around one ankle. He was slumped against a wall inside a particularly cramped looking house, his groin eviscerated.

‘David Ferguson. Retired. Recently widowed. Father of four. His youngest, Karen, did admin work here at the station for a while. David was found like this up at the youth hostel near Glenfirth.’

Scott looked into the dead man’s face, his lifeless eyes staring at nothing. His glasses were at an awkward angle, half-on, half-off. It was easier to focus on them than on the rest of the bloody corpse.

‘How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t know anything about this.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘I swear!’

Unperturbed, Litherland continued. Another photograph, this one depressingly familiar. ‘Shona McIntyre. You must remember poor Shona?’

‘Of course I do. She’s the girl Ken Potter—’

‘—she’s the girl you found in Ken Potter’s garden,’ Litherland said, correcting him.

Next photograph. Barely a body to be seen in this one, but Scott knew exactly what it was. Parts of Ken Potter lying on and around the train track.

‘Notice anything?’ Litherland asked. When Scott didn’t immediately respond, the detective elaborated. ‘See, we thought old Ken might have been responsible for some of what’s happened, but it’s not looking likely. Look at his legs, Scott.’

Scott held the photograph, his hands shaking. It was hard to make out any of Potter’s remains. ‘Can’t see his legs.’

Litherland took the photo from him and tapped his finger next to a bloody chunk of flesh beside the tracks. ‘That’s a foot, see?’

Scott saw. It was like one of those old ‘magic eye’ optical illusions he remembered – pictures hidden in patterns. Once he’d been able to make out part of it, the rest of the image seemed to come sharply into focus. There was a bare foot, an ankle, then the bottom of a leg, crushed and dismembered below the knee. It almost made him gag.

‘I see it.’

‘He was half naked, just like the others. We’re waiting on confirmation, but it’s looking like he was dead before the train hit him.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Happened on a stretch of track not far from Barry Walpole’s yard. You’ve been working for Barry, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

Before Scott could finish his sentence, Litherland showed him another photograph. A young woman. Dyed hair, faded pink. Tattoos. Lying in the corner of someone’s lawn. Mutilated like the rest of them. He felt like he was going to vomit.

‘Angela Pietrszkiewicz… think I’m saying that right.’

Scott looked away. ‘I’ve never seen her before. I don’t know who she is…’

‘You sure about that? Angela was found yesterday morning. Mother of two, she was. Two little kiddies. Neighbour heard them crying, then we found Mum a couple of streets away. We did door to door enquiries. Only lead we got was that she was heard talking to some bloke…’

‘I was at home with my family all day yesterday. Ask them. I was with them the whole bloody day.’

The detective paused ominously. ‘Yes, but I didn’t say she was killed yesterday, did I? I said she was found yesterday. We’re estimating the time of death as being sometime Saturday evening.’

‘I was at home again.’

‘You sure, Scott?’

‘Yes. Course I’m sure.’

‘Thing is, with Thussock being such a small and close-knit community, folks tend to notice things that’re out of the ordinary. You and your family, you’ve been attracting more than your fair share of interest just by virtue of being here. No fault of your own, of course, that’s just the way it is.’

‘I was at home, I swear.’

‘You’ve quite a distinctive car. Ordinary, but distinctive. Blue Zafira, isn’t it? Seven-seater? One black wheel arch?’

‘Yes…’

‘Noisy old thing, eh?’

‘What of it?’

‘Well I’ve a number of folks who’re saying they saw your car driving around the estate where Miss Pietrszkiewicz lived on Saturday evening, around the time we think she was probably killed.’

‘No… no, that’s not right.’

‘Oh, so they’re all lying are they?’ He glanced at a page of notes. ‘Jean Morris of Strathway Crescent says she saw a “large blue car driving up and down the road at speed”, said it was making “a heck of a noise, like its exhaust was knackered”. And do you know Dez Boyle?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Well he seems to know you. Dez says he saw you driving around there too. Think very carefully, Scott.’

‘Wait… Tammy, my stepdaughter.’

‘What about her?’

‘She was at a friend’s house. I picked her up in the car.’

‘And what time was that?’

‘I don’t know… around half-eight, I think.’

‘And where exactly does your daughter’s friend live?’

‘Wayfield Close.’

‘Backs onto Alderman Avenue, that does.’

Scott shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Miss Pietrszkiewicz was found on Alderman Avenue. Litherland paused, looked at Scott again. ‘So tell me, did you drive straight from your place to Wayfield Close?’

‘Yes.’

‘You positive?’

‘Yes. Wait… I might have taken a couple of wrong turnings… that estate’s like a maze. I got a bit lost.’

‘So you didn’t drive straight there?’

‘You’re twisting my words. I went straight to the house. I hadn’t been there before and I took a wrong turn, but that doesn’t mean I did anything to that woman.’

‘You can see where I’m coming from though, can’t you Scott? Here’s me telling you about a murder on Saturday evening, and that you were seen in the vicinity, and there’s you telling me you weren’t there, but wait, maybe you were there and you were just driving around the place on your own.’

‘I wasn’t just driving around…’

‘I think you were. It’s not the first time, is it?’

‘What?’

‘Angela Pietrszkiewicz was a sex worker, Scott. You’ve a history of using prostitutes. Done for kerb crawling near to the Hagley Road in Birmingham. You dirty little bastard.’

Scott put his head on the desk. This was getting worse by the second. ‘That was a mistake,’ he said. ‘It was almost ten years ago. It was a one off.’

‘Hardly. Mrs Morris said she’d seen your car before, a week or so back. Had you been that way before? Perhaps before the rest of your family arrived in Thussock?’

‘No comment,’ he mumbled.

‘I think you’d been to see Angela previously, hadn’t you, Scott? I think you paid Ms Pietrszkiewicz for sex.’

‘No comment,’ he said again, because lying was safer than telling the truth.

‘So, apart from taking advantage of vulnerable young women, paying for sex and cheating on your wife, are there any other bad habits you think you should tell me about? Because there is something else interesting on your record…’

‘Stop it. You’re just twisting everything. This is all circumstantial. You’re trying to make me out to be some kind of—’

‘I’m not trying to do anything,’ Litherland interrupted, ‘except find out who killed all these people and stop them before they kill anyone else.’

‘I need my lawyer,’ Scott mumbled, barely able to form cohesive words now.

‘I really think you do.’

‘I had nothing to do with any of this.’

‘What about Graham McBride?’

Scott started to sob involuntarily. He tried to stop himself, but that just made it worse. ‘We had a fight,’ he managed to say. ‘I already told you.’

‘That you did, aye. We know you were involved in his death, though whether you caused it or not is something the coroner’s going to have to decide, and we should have her findings shortly.’

‘What would you have done?’ Scott asked, pleading almost. ‘He exposed himself in front of my step-daughter. I did what anyone would do. Are you a parent? Do you have kids?’

‘That’s irrelevant. But for the record, yes, I do have kids and yes, I’d have certainly done something if I’d caught a man flashing at my daughter. I’d maybe not have killed him, though.’

‘But you know why I did what I did, don’t you? I saw red. You do these things for your kids.’

‘Not so good with other people’s children though, are we, Scott?’

His heart sank. A few barely suppressed tears became an uncontrolled flood. ‘This has got nothing to do with what happened back home. I made a mistake and I’ve been punished for it. Believe me, there’s not a day goes by when I don’t—’

‘When you don’t what, Scott? You see, I’m having trouble tying a few things up here. You’ve a history of lying to the police and—’

‘And I’ve paid the price for that. Jesus, please…’

‘You knocked a girl down and killed her, then just drove on.’

‘I panicked.’

‘Doesn’t change what you did.’

‘I was gone for a matter of minutes. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what to do. I turned straight around and drove back but by then…’

‘By then other folks had got to her. By then it was too late.’

‘It didn’t make any difference. She was already dead. I did it. It wasn’t my fault, but I did it.’

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you moved to Thussock.’

‘How could we stay in Redditch? She lived on the same street as us, for Christ’s sake. We knew her parents. I’d got people throwing paint at the house, people badmouthing me all over the place.’

‘Hardly surprising.’

‘I’m not going to argue. If I could turn back time I’d do it in a bloody heartbeat. My business went down the pan… I lost almost everything.’

‘Not as much as the family of that poor kiddie though, eh? Or the relatives of any of the people who’ve died round here recently either.’

‘I didn’t do any of this. I punched that guy in the face, yes, but I didn’t have anything to do with any of the others.’

‘Then who did? I tell you, Scott, it’s causing us some real problems. We’re a small rural force, and our resources are stretched as it is.’

‘Then stop wasting them on me.’

Litherland looked at him for a few seconds, weighing him up. ‘This killer,’ he said, ‘whoever he is, is a devious little fucker. He’s not leaving a bloody trace, you know. Not a single clue. No footprints, tyre tracks, fingerprints… So you can see why we’re following up every lead, and why you’re so interesting to us.’

‘This has got nothing to do with me,’ Scott sighed, exasperated, wishing he could find some way of convincing the detective but knowing he probably wouldn’t.

‘Sick little bastard, we’re dealing with here, Scott,’ Litherland continued, not finished yet. ‘I do hear what you’re telling me, but I can’t dismiss your involvement. You saw poor Shona’s body so you know how sick what’s happening here really is. These people have virtually been bled dry, their bodies mutilated. Excuse my language, Scott, but I think you can probably understand how bloody angry this is making me. I’ve innocent people being abused then murdered in my town, and I’m gonna put a stop to it.’

‘It’s horrific,’ Scott said, ‘but I don’t know how else to tell you… it’s got nothing to do with me. You can’t accuse me of—’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything yet. I’m simply pointing out my concerns and asking you to clear a few things up. Surely you can see where I’m coming from? I might not have all the forensics I need yet, but alarm bells are ringing as far as you’re concerned and you’ve said little to convince me otherwise. Look at it this way, the killings only started after you arrived in Thussock.’

‘It’s coincidental.’

‘Lot of coincidences, though. You’re the one who found Shona, Ken Potter died not far from where you’re working, you’re seen driving around on Saturday evening when Angela Pietrszkiewicz was killed and you’d already paid her for sex, you’ve confessed to beating the shit out of Graham McBride…’

‘It’s all circumstantial. It’s not even that, it’s just bullshit. I want my brief.’

Litherland stood up, pushed his chair under the table and collected up his gruesome, blood-spattered photographs. ‘Fair enough, Scott. I’ll have you taken back to your cell, then we’ll do this all over again when the duty lawyer arrives.’