The Mermaids Singing

FROM 3" DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 017

When I clocked Sergeant Merrick in the Sackville Arms, I thought I was going to pass out. I’d only gone there because I knew the detectives from Scargill Street use it. I wanted to hear what the gossip was among the murder squad. I wanted to hear them talk about me and my accomplishments. The last thing I expected was to see so familiar a face staring out at me.

I was sitting unobtrusively in the corner when I saw Merrick come in. I debated whether to leave, but I decided that might make me noticeable. The last thing I wanted was for him to recognize me and follow me for whatever reasons of his own. Besides, why should I let a policeman drive me away from my lunch break?

But I couldn’t stop the churning in my stomach in case he caught sight of me and moved across to speak to me. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I just didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Luckily, he was with two of his colleagues, and they were too busy discussing something – me, probably, had they but known it – to pay much attention to anybody else. I recognized the woman from the papers. Inspector Carol Jordan. She looks better in the flesh than in print, probably because her hair’s a lovely shade of blonde. The other man I hadn’t seen before, but I filed his face away for future reference. Carroty-red hair, pale skin, freckles, boyish features. And of course, Merrick, head and shoulders above the others, some kind of dressing on his head. I wondered how he’d come by that.

I’d never hated Merrick the way I hated some of the others, even though he’d taken me into custody a couple of times. He’d never treated me with the contempt they had. He’d never sneered at me when he arrested me. But I could see he still saw me as an object, someone not worthy of respect. He never understood that when I sold my body to sailors it was for a purpose. But whatever I did then is irrelevant now. I am different now, I am a changed person. What happened back in Seaford feels as irrelevant and remote as something I’d seen at the cinema.

In a strange way, being in the presence of the very officers who are trying to track me down was quite exciting. I got a real buzz out of being only feet away from my hunters, who didn’t sense their prey. They didn’t even have enough sixth sense to realize there was something extraordinary happening, not even Carol Jordan. So much for women’s intuition. I see it as a sort of test, a measure of my ability to delude my pursuers. The notion that they can catch me is so absurd, it’s unthinkable.

I felt so strong after that encounter that the next day’s paper hit me like a blow with a sandbag. I was walking through the main computer room when I saw an early edition of the Sentinel Times lying on some junior engineer’s desk. FIFTH BODY IN QUEER KILLER’S RAMPAGE screamed out at me.

I wanted to rage and shout, to throw things through windows. How dare they? My handiwork is so individual, how could they mistake some blundering copycat’s body for one of mine?

I was trembling with suppressed fury when I made it back to my own office. I’d wanted to ask the engineer if I could have a look at his paper, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I wanted to rush out of the office to the nearest newsagent’s and snatch a copy off the counter. But that would have been unforgivable weakness. The secret of success, I told myself, was to behave normally. To do nothing that would make my colleagues think there was something peculiar going on in my life.

‘Patience,’ I told myself, ‘is the cardinal virtue.’ So I sat at my desk, fiddling with the intricacies of a piece of software that needed rewriting. But my heart wasn’t in it, and I know I wasn’t justifying my salary that afternoon. By four o’clock, I could stand it no longer. I grabbed my phone and dialled the special number that broadcasts Bradfield Sound to callers.

The story was the lead item on the news bulletin, as it ought to have been. ‘The body of a man found in the Temple Fields area in the early hours of the morning is not the fifth victim of the serial killer who has brought terror to Bradfield’s gay community, police revealed this afternoon.’ As the newsreader’s words sank in, I felt my anger depart, the hollowness inside me whole once more.

Without waiting for more, I slammed the phone down. They’d got something right at last. But I’d gone through four hours of hell because of their mistake. Every hour I’d suffered would be an hour added on to the agonies of Dr Tony Hill, I vowed.

Because the Bradfield police have now committed the ultimate absurdity. Dr Tony Hill, the stupid man who hadn’t even recognized that all my crimes belonged to me, has been appointed the official police consultant to the serial-killer enquiry. The poor, deluded fools. If that’s their best hope, then they clearly have no hope.