The school yearbook is open beneath my fingers, displaying her class photograph. Friends are behind her and beside her. Some of them haven’t changed at all since 1988. Others have grown fat and dyed their hair. And just one or two have blossomed like late flowering roses amid the weeds.
Surprisingly, many have stayed in the area. Married. Had children. Divorced. Separated. One died of breast cancer. One lives in New Zealand. Two live with each other.
The TV is on. I flick through the channels but there’s nothing to watch. A rolling banner catches my attention. It says something about a manhunt for a double killer.
A pretty, plastic woman is reading the news with her eyes focused slightly to the left where an autocue must be rolling. She crosses to a reporter who talks to camera, nodding sagely with all the sincerity of a doctor holding a needle behind his back.
Then the scene changes to a conference room. The dyke detective and the shrink are side-by-side like Laurel and Hardy. Laverne and Shirley. Torvill and Dean. One of the great show-business partnerships is born.
They’re talking to reporters. Most of the questions are being answered by a senior policeman who has a bug up his arse about something. I turn up the sound.
‘… we’re dealing with a pervert and a coward, who targets the weak and vulnerable because he can’t get a woman or hold on to one, or because he wasn’t breastfed as a baby.’
‘The profile Professor O’Loughlin has drawn up doesn’t pass the so-what test in my opinion. Yes, we’re looking for a local man, aged thirty to fifty who works shifts and hates women. Fairly bloody obvious, I would have thought. No science in that.
‘The Professor wants us to show this man respect. He wants to reach out to him with the hand of compassion and understanding. Not on my watch. This perpetrator is a scumbag and he’ll get all the respect he wants in prison because that’s where he’s going…’
The media circus ends in uproar. The plastic woman moves on to another story.
Who are these people? They have no idea of who they’re dealing with and what I’m capable of. They think it’s a game. They think I’m a fucking amateur.
I can walk through walls.
I can unlock people’s minds.
I can listen to the pins fall into place and the tumblers turn.
Click… click… click…