Marked

SIX

She is no longer sure what to do with her time.

When there was hope, she could stare for hours out of the window and picture Megan walking back to the house. She could tell herself that it was an episode with an end. One of those crazy things that hormone-filled teenagers go through in attempting to understand themselves and their place in the world. Megan would return.

Now that has gone. The window holds no interest for Nicole. The world beyond this house holds no interest. It is dark and it is filled with evil and it destroys. The chair remains where the detective put it, back in its rightful place. A tiny attempt to restore order in a home where normality has been ripped to shreds.

The crying won’t stop. Whenever she thinks all her reserves of tears have been squeezed out of her, her body seems to manufacture more, and five minutes later the valves are open again. Her head is pulsating with pain at the effort of dealing with the grief.

She is tired, so tired. But she cannot sleep. Not yet. Not until she collapses with exhaustion.

She doesn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. When her mother phoned, she had to tell her the dreadful news. There was little conversation: it was mostly mutual wailing and silent sobbing. Her mother wanted to come over; Nicole ordered her not to.

Steve has his own ways of dealing with this. Or not dealing with it. She can hear him upstairs now. Loud animal grunts as he lifts his weights. Before that he went on a five-mile run. He hasn’t trained this hard for years.

She remembers little of the hours that have passed since the visit from the detectives. That time is a hole in her life, devoid of content. Her anguished mind pushed everything else away. She saw nothing, heard nothing, was not even conscious of time. She could have been dead.

Now, she tries to find things to do. Little jobs to occupy her mind. But Megan is there. She will always be there. Nicole will wash the dishes and see Megan take them from her to dry them. She will switch the kettle on and hear the tiny clinks of crockery as Megan fetches down the mugs. She will tidy the bathroom and smell Megan’s body spray.

Her head is so filled with Megan. Her life is so empty without Megan.

Outside, it continues to rain. Lord, how it rains.

She hears a steady thud, thud, thud. Steve coming downstairs. Much more heavy-footed than usual. There is anger in those footsteps.

He comes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator and takes out a carton of orange juice and drinks straight from the carton. A manly dismissal of social niceties. She would rebuke him for it, normally.

She watches him drink. The bobbing of his Adam’s apple. The fluttering pulse in his neck. The sheen of perspiration on his face and pumped-up arms. She can smell the sweat. She can feel his pain.

‘You should take a shower,’ she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

He drains the carton and tosses it into the flip-top trashcan.

‘I’m not going to let this rest, Nicole.’

She folds her arms and leans back against the counter. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The police. I’m going to call them later. I’m going to call them every couple of hours if I have to. I’m going to stay on their case until they catch this sonofabitch.’

‘Steve, you don’t have to-’

‘You know what I’ve been thinking? A private eye. We should get a private eye on this. I don’t care how much it costs. We’ve got to find the bastard.’

She keeps her voice soft and low. Soothe the savage breast, and all that.

‘We don’t need a private detective. Let the police do their job.’

‘Boy. I tell ya. If I could just get my hands on that. .’

He doesn’t finish his sentence. Just puts his hands out and tightens them around an imaginary neck. She can see his tendons flex. She can sense the power in that grip and the satisfaction he is getting from his envisioned deed of vengeance.

Like many men she has met, Steve does not deal well with emotion. He was brought up by a very competitive sportsman of a father. Crying is weakness. Forgiveness is weakness. Surrender is weakness. The stereotypical view of manliness was one of the things that attracted her to Steve in the first place, and there has been many a time she has been grateful for the reassurance and feeling of security it has brought her.

Not now, though. She heard him crying earlier, but it wasn’t enough. He didn’t purge himself. He kept too much inside, where it will fester. Where it will gnaw away at him. And when he does release it, it will be at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and for the wrong reason. Watching him now as he chokes the life from his invisible victim, she feels not a little afraid.

She walks across the room and puts a hand on his arm. It’s like oak. Hard and unyielding. He needs to yield. He needs to give a little. Otherwise he’ll break.

‘Steve,’ she says. Calm. A whisper. ‘That’s not the answer. It won’t change anything.’

He looks at her, but seems blind to what he sees. It’s as if he doesn’t recognize her. She wills the tension to leave his body, the coldness to leave his eyes. She needs him, and she longs for him to need her in return. Because what are they without that?

‘I need a shower,’ he says, and he walks away, and she stays in the kitchen and stares at the space where he stood and she wonders why everything she holds dear in her world is being taken away from her.

LeBlanc sits at his desk, staring at Doyle, who is pouring himself a coffee on the other side of the squadroom. He’s still not sure what happened at the tattoo shop. What got into the man? Why was he behaving like that?

Or maybe that was the true Doyle. Maybe that’s the way he is with people.

‘How’d it go this afternoon?’

The voice is low. Conspiratorial. LeBlanc turns to find Schneider watching him. Schneider is a bull of a man. Stocky and menacing. His steel-gray hair is cut close to his skull, giving his head the look of a bullet. He chews his gum behind a smile that doesn’t ask you to be his friend.

‘How’d what go?’

Schneider chin-points toward Doyle. ‘Working with Irish. You two get along?’

LeBlanc looks at Doyle again. He would like to say yes to Schneider’s question. He would like to say that, contrary to all expectations, Doyle is beyond reproach. An upstanding cop of the highest caliber. A true team player who sticks to the rules.

But he finds that the words catch in his throat. They linger there so long that Schneider makes up his own answer, and his smile broadens into something that could stop a heart.

‘A piece of work, ain’t he? You want my advice, you should ask for another partner on this case. Doyle is no good. He’s a bad cop. Working with him is like walking through a minefield. Just make sure he doesn’t make you go first.’

Schneider sidles away then, but he leaves his thoughts behind. They trickle into LeBlanc’s head and begin to simmer.

Doyle opens the first of the files on his desk. It’s the autopsy report. Pages of medical jargon, plus some photographs. The parts of the report that Doyle is able to decipher tell him nothing new. The photographs, on the other hand, mesmerize him.

He starts with the head. Placing his hand over the area beneath Megan Hamlyn’s chin, he tries to imagine her whole. Tries to picture her as the young pretty girl that she was just a few days ago. It’s difficult. The face in front of him is a mess. God knows the pain she went through.

He flips through the other photographs, then pulls out one which gives a close-up of the tattoo. It’s superb work, all right. You can see the serenity in the angel’s face. The wings have a soft, fluffy quality to them that makes them look like they’re made from real feathers. The angel’s robes have pleats and folds that make them seem as though they could really move. Whoever did this worked for a long time on it. They spent ages staring at this young girl’s flesh. Touching it. Talking to her. Getting to know her.

But this whoever has a name, doesn’t he?

Stanley Proust.

Oh yeah, a name to remember. A name seared into Doyle’s brain. A name that causes Doyle to clench his fists and grind his teeth every time he thinks of it. He’s like Pavlov’s dog with that name. The mere mention of it causes him to salivate at the thought of eating Proust alive.

He lost it in that tattoo shop. In the cold light of hindsight he accepts that the way he acted there was unprofessional. God knows what LeBlanc must have thought.

In fact, he realizes, it’s probably a good thing that LeBlanc was there. I don’t know what I might have done to Proust if I’d gone there alone. It wouldn’t have been pretty and it wouldn’t have been right. But damn it if that man doesn’t deserve a little harsh treatment. If LeBlanc knew what I know. .

‘Doyle. LeBlanc. In my office.’

Doyle raises his head to see Lieutenant Cesario looking straight at him. Set against his permanently tanned features, Cesario’s teeth light up the room with their whiteness. But this is no welcome smile, no invitation to a coffee morning. It’s more the rictus of the big bad wolf inviting two little piggies into his den.

Doyle closes the file, sighs and gets up from his chair. He sees the questioning looks from LeBlanc as he joins him.

Doyle says, ‘What have you done this time? Don’t be looking to me to save your ass.’

They get into Cesario’s office, and the lieutenant motions LeBlanc to close the door. Cesario is as smartly turned out as he usually is. Not an unintentional crease anywhere. Doyle would be willing to bet he irons his socks. His undershorts too.

Cesario is a recent addition to the precinct, and Doyle still finds it difficult to take him seriously. Not that the guy’s done anything wrong — after all, he’s the one who gave Doyle the opportunity to work on the homicide of the bookstore girl — but something about him doesn’t sit right. He’s a little too perfect, too glossy. His hair doesn’t move. His eyebrows look drawn on. It’s like he’s an actor playing the part of a cop in one of those ridiculously glitzy TV shows.

Doyle snaps a glance at LeBlanc, who is also impeccably attired, then drops his gaze to his own garb. Okay, he thinks, maybe I’m the odd one out here. Maybe if I dressed like these guys I wouldn’t attract so much flak.

His sartorial musings are interrupted by Cesario: ‘I just had a very long phone conversation. A conversation I’da preferred not to have. You wanna guess who it was with?’

Doyle can guess. He decides it’s wise not to admit it.

‘I’ll tell you,’ says Cesario. ‘It was from a man called Stanley Proust. A man I’d never heard of before today. But I think you know him, don’t you, Cal?’

‘We’ve, uhm, crossed paths.’

‘Uh-huh. Care to tell me why you went to see him today?’

‘He’s a suspect. On the Megan Hamlyn case.’

‘I see. And why is he a suspect?’

Doyle sees the files in front of Cesario. He reckons the lieutenant already knows the answer to his question. Doyle figures he’s got nothing to lose.

‘Because he’s a murdering scumbag. Because he puts tattoos on young girls and then he abducts them and rapes them and tortures them and kills them. That’s why.’

‘Hold on. Rewind this for me, would you? You know all this how?’

‘I know it because I’ve investigated him before.’

‘Yeah, that’s all on your record, Cal. Remind me how that went again. You must have got the goods on Proust that time. I mean, for you to be so sure about him on this occasion. How long did he go down for?’

Doyle shifts uncomfortably. ‘He didn’t go down for it.’

‘Oh? And why was that? A technicality in the court case, maybe?’

Doyle says nothing.

‘There was a court hearing, wasn’t there, Cal?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly. You mean no. In fact, Proust was never even formally booked, was he, Cal? And the reason he was never booked was because you couldn’t produce any evidence he did something wrong.’

‘It was him,’ says Doyle. ‘He did it last time, and he did it this time. I know it.’

‘Nobody else knows it, Cal.’ He turns to LeBlanc. ‘Do you know it, Tommy? You were there today. Did you come to the same conclusions as your partner regarding the guilt of Mr Proust?’

LeBlanc clears his throat. ‘I, uh. . this is all new to me, Lieutenant. I don’t have the same background knowledge of Proust that Cal has.’

‘Oh, really? You mean your own partner hasn’t even brought you up to speed? He hasn’t made you privy to all the important information on someone he regards as a key suspect in this case?’

Doyle sees LeBlanc redden a little. With embarrassment, probably, plus at least a soupçon of anger at his partner.

But Cesario hasn’t finished hammering a wedge between them. ‘Didn’t Cal tell you what happened last time? About his obsession with Proust? About being officially warned to lay off the guy? About him then ignoring that directive and finding himself being taken off the case? Hasn’t he told you any of this?’

The answer, of course, is no. But LeBlanc can’t admit to that without also admitting that his partnership with Doyle isn’t all that it’s supposed to be. So he claims the Fifth.

Cesario aims his weapons at Doyle again. ‘Jesus, Cal. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand you. I get given this squad hearing all kinds of negative things about you, and most of the time you prove to me they’re unfounded. Then you go and do something stupid like this, and all my doubts come jumping back again. When are you going to start thinking about the consequences of your actions?’

‘I’ll bear it in mind, Lou,’ says Doyle. He gets up from his seat.

Big mistake.

‘Sit down, Detective! I am not done with you.’

Doyle sits again. Thinks, This is not going well.

There is a moment’s silence while they wait for the echoes of Cesario’s roar to die away. Doyle realizes they must have heard it out in the squadroom. Schneider is probably having the time of his life.

Says Cesario, ‘Tell me what happened when you went to see Proust this afternoon.’

Doyle shrugs. ‘I asked him some questions. He answered them. We left.’

‘That’s all? No pressure tactics? No need to twist his arm a little to refresh his memory?’

‘Why? What does Proust say?’

‘He says you frightened the living daylights out of him. He says he doesn’t want to go into detail or put a complaint on record, but you came on real strong with him. Any truth in that? You think maybe you overstepped the mark?’

Before Doyle can answer, LeBlanc pipes up. ‘Proust got a little overexcited, Lou. His behavior became threatening. At one point we had to restrain him physically. My opinion, we used minimum force.’

Cesario looks at LeBlanc in surprise. Doyle feels a little surprised too, given the ankle-high rating he must now have in LeBlanc’s eyes.

Cesario addresses Doyle again. ‘You got a good partner there, Cal. Treat him like one. Show him what a good cop you can be when you want to.’

To Doyle it sounds like the sermon is over, but after what happened last time he thinks he should check.

‘We done here?’

The way Cesario looks at him makes Doyle realize his response was perhaps a little curt. Maybe a more deferential ‘Yes, sir’ would have been better. Never ask me to be a diplomat, he thinks.

‘Not quite,’ says Cesario, as though feeling the need to punish Doyle for his impudence. ‘I want to make things clear before you go. From now on, Proust is off-limits, understand?’

‘What? That’s crazy. He’s a suspect, Lou. No, scratch that. He is the suspect. How am I supposed to work this case if you tie my hands like this?’

‘You bring me something concrete to implicate him in all this, then maybe I’ll change my mind. Until then, you back off. If we need to talk to this guy, then fine, Tommy does it. Without you present. I’m not giving this guy a chance to sue my ass for ignoring his complaint. And if you hassle him again, I’ll take you off the case and glue you to a desk for the rest of your days. Do you get what I’m saying to you, Cal?’

Doyle doesn’t answer. He can’t say no, and he doesn’t want to give Cesario the satisfaction of hearing him acquiesce.

Cesario says, ‘Now get out of my sight, the pair of you. Run this like you would run any other case, preferably without letting prejudice cloud your judgment.’

Doyle stands up and heads for the door. LeBlanc is right behind him. As soon as they get back into the squadroom, LeBlanc starts up.

‘Cal, you got a few minutes for me? We need to talk.’

Doyle doesn’t want to talk. After the verbal assassination he’s just been through in Cesario’s office, talking is the last thing on his agenda. He heads toward where his coat is hanging on a rack, still drying off.

‘Cal, are you listening to me? I said we need to discuss this.’

Doyle glances at Schneider, who has tipped his chair back on two legs. His arms are behind his head and there’s a stupid smirk on his ugly mug. Doyle wishes like hell for those chair legs to snap.

He grabs his coat and starts to put it on as he heads out the door.

LeBlanc calls after him. ‘Where the hell are you going? Why are you doing this, man?’

And then Doyle stops listening. He doesn’t want to debate and he doesn’t want to listen.

He just wants to act.

Proust is at work when Doyle gets there. A shirtless guy is having a mermaid tattooed on his upper arm. He’s big, but it’s mostly flab. Doyle walks across the room and casts his shadow over Proust.

‘We need to talk. In private.’

The bare-chested client nudges Doyle’s arm with the back of his hand.

‘Hey, asshole. We’re busy. Come back another time.’

Doyle gives the man his best look of disdain, then turns again to Proust.

‘Let’s go out back.’

Another nudge, harder this time. ‘You deaf or just stupid? I said come back later.’

Doyle looks at the man again. ‘You touch me one more time and I’ll break every finger on your hand. And then I’m gonna take that tattoo gun and write “Nil by Mouth” across your forehead. Might help you shift some of that ugly fat you’re carrying.’

‘Right, that’s it! You fucking piece of shit.’

Incensed, the man starts to shift his bulk. His pallid flesh quivers as he struggles to raise himself from the reclined chair.

Doyle puts his left hand around the man’s throat and forces him back into the chair. His right hand whips out his detective shield and suspends it two inches in front of the man’s nose.

‘Don’t get yourself so worked up, fatso. You’ll give yourself a heart attack. At the very least you’ll get your ass kicked before I throw you in the slammer.’

‘You didn’t say you was a cop.’

‘Yeah, well, think of it as a test of your social skills. You got a failing grade, by the way. Now do you wanna stay and appeal the decision, or do you wanna go get a coffee for ten minutes while I talk to Michelangelo here?’

‘I, uhm, I could do with a beer.’

‘Sure you could. There’s a good bar on the corner of this block. They don’t even have an anti-obesity policy. Take your time.’

Doyle releases his grip, then helps the man out of the chair. He waits until the man has dressed and left the building before he turns his burning gaze on Proust.

Proust backs away a little, cowering just as he did on their previous encounter.

‘Cut the act, Stanley. There’s nobody else here to see it.’

‘What act? I’m not acting, man. You’re here to scare me. You wanna hurt me.’

‘I’m not here to hurt you. Not this time. I’m here to warn you.’

‘W-warn me about what?’

‘It’s not gonna work, Stan. Calling up my boss. Putting in complaints about me. All you’ve done is made me mad. It ain’t gonna stop me coming after you. In fact, you’ve just started a whole new ball game. From now on, I only come here alone. No partner to see what I might do to you. And that way, I can deny I was ever here. You haven’t made yourself safe, Stan. You’ve made it a hundred times worse for yourself. Think about that before you try to jam me up again.’

Proust shrinks back against the counter. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t touch those girls. I never even met them. You’ve got it all wrong about me.’

Doyle steps forward. Gets right in Proust’s face. So close he can smell the onions he must have had on his sandwich.

‘It’s just you and me now, Stanley. Nobody can save you. Start being afraid.’

Doyle stands there for a while. Allowing time for this moment, this threat, this promise, to burn itself into Proust’s consciousness.

When he finally turns and leaves, he feels himself trembling. He runs through the rain and gets into the car. He looks at his hands. They’re shaking, and he has to grip the steering wheel tightly to stop them.

He wonders what he’s becoming.