My Last Confession (20 page)

It was very much the other way around.

Billy had been there that first time, after the banana incident, when the mad-psycho C-hall rapist had taken Jeremy in his cell; ripped his jeans to the floor with the nod of a pervert officer yonder, and loosened him with polyunsaturated.

Billy hadn’t wanted to be there. He’d cowered on his top bunk, looking down towards the poor fellow on the concrete, his face pushed hard into the cold floor. He let his Sandhill tough-nut guard down for a second, caught the poor guy’s eyes to show sympathy, to ask forgiveness for not doing anything, and what he saw scared him more than the prospect of being next.

Jeremy was smiling.

When Mad Psycho was done, Jeremy scraped himself from the ground and asked the thug if he was finished. He then head-butted the brute directly in the forehead, punched him seven or eight times in the nose, hard and fast, one, two, three, and so on, kicked his groin, and flung the limp man over the bottom bunk. Jeremy then pulled the man’s head back by the hair, and pushed himself inside. Billy’s top bunk banged against the wall with the seven or eight thrusts it took for Jeremy to come, and as the final drive was driven, Jeremy’s knees trembled …

‘Next time ahhh … sk,’ he said before he kicked the
flaccid man out of the cell to seek medical attention, and looked at Billy, who was shivering like a child on his
little
top bunk.

The incident had been successful for Jeremy in many respects. Gave him status, and an idea of how to make her his.

Initially, he had it all sussed in prison. Had expensive dodgy lawyers working on his guilt-ridden mother for the alibi. So all he had to do was wait. He knew he’d be out soon, knew that the bitch would get it one way or the other.

Then Krissie came along and he realised it would be a good idea to work towards a heart-wrenching report, just in case. So he told her of unloving parents, and oh shit, here we go again, he said to himself in his cell after meeting her that first time, thinking hard about her tight little bottom and those perfect white teeth. Here we go again. He always fell in love too easily, always loved too hard. He found out exactly who her boyfriend was, where they lived, and how he might go about getting her trust and affection. He was a great businessman, Jeremy, and he knew that the best way to get someone to like you is to get them to do you a favour.

Billy did as Jeremy told him while he was in prison … Don’t move or I’ll slice your face with this carefully fashioned razor-bladed toothbrush … Get her to bring it in or I’ll smash your head like this …

The ‘Glasgow kisses’ that smashed Billy’s nose and forehead and chin hurt.

Even more, the angry digits that prodded him in the middle of the night.

And, just in case Billy had decided against the plan,
Jeremy rang him once a day after he was released, with the same advice … Do it, and the money is yours, all £30,000 of it … All you need is my pin number and you’ll be sniffing cocaine so hard you’ll cause a tsunami. No one will get hurt, your friends will be fine, but do it, or Rab here will pay you a visit after court tomorrow … won’t you, Rab?

When Krissie found Billy on the night of the opening, he was shivering in a similar way to that day in C hall, but for different reasons. He was coming off the junk and his folks had placed him under house arrest.

‘Yeah, Chas came,’ said Billy. ‘I’m sorry I did that to you, Krissie. See what this shite does? That’s me, never again.’

He took a drag of his cigarette.

‘What did he do? Where did he go? Was he okay?’

‘He just asked me and I told him.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘About Jeremy, that it was him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Got me to take the photos, and that horrible thing at Robbie’s nursery – sorry, the guy uses every little bit of information you give him, be careful Krissie, what else did you tell him? He said he’d kill me if I didn’t and he said he’d give me a daft amount of money. By the way, the gear in those fag packets, it was just washing powder.’

‘Jesus Christ. But why?’

‘He wanted to see if you would do him a favour.’

After visiting Billy that afternoon, Chas’s first thought was to make Krissie safe. He had to protect her. He
needed
to get to her straight away.

She wasn’t answering her phone as a taxi took him to their flat. He ran from the cab to the front door. As he reached the top floor, he noticed the storm doors were open. He stepped inside the small vestibule and something banged into the back of his head, something from the darkness inside the vestibule, and it hurt so much that it was almost a relief to lose consciousness.

Jeremy had a vague idea of what he wanted to do. It would be creative, as always, and symbolic. After making sure there were no neighbours about, Jeremy waited for his bait to arrive. He knocked him out, and pushed the floppy man up through the hatch in the ceiling of the close. He then pulled himself up into the attic, and landed on the unconscious body. Taking a few breaths, he gathered his composure, and then the materials he’d needed to make it work.

The attic was about twenty square metres, with an apex of seven feet. One side of the sloping wall had been covered in makeshift white plasterboard. An old coat was hanging on a large hook at the top. On the floor was a fake Christmas tree, some insulation, some old
bits of wood, washing line and a large box of tools. Perfect.

Jeremy lifted Chas’s limp body and secured the neck of his designer jacket on the hook that was bolted right through to the wood behind the plasterboard. It ripped a little, so he relieved some of the weight by placing a piece of wood between his legs and bolting it to the beam at one end. He tied his hands together in front of him with some of the clothes line, wringing his wrists with the last knot.

Chas woke with a jolt and kicked his legs into Jeremy’s stomach.

‘Well, hello,’ Jeremy said, gathering his wind. ‘You must be Chas.’

Chas kicked his legs out again and then yelled. He was wriggling on the white plasterboard like a spider about to be washed down the drain. His toes were inches from the ground. Eventually, he calmed himself with several shaky breaths, realising he’d have to do some fast talking, improvise.

‘Krissie told me she loves you. She told me this afternoon,’ Chas said. ‘There’s no need for all this. She’s yours. Hasn’t she tried to find you to tell you? She said she was going to go to you. If you let me down I’ll give you her mobile number, and you can go to her.’

‘Krissie told me you were clever …’ said Jeremy. He then pounced from the floor so suddenly that Chas didn’t have time to react. Jeremy pounded Chas’s head with his fist.

‘But I don’t think you are,’ Jeremy said to Chas’s drooping head, as he tied his feet to the beam on the floor.

When Chas woke everything was dark. There was a
moment of unawareness, a warm waking yawn, but it didn’t last long, because he tried to open his eyes and he couldn’t.

‘You’re as pretty as a picture,’ came Jeremy’s voice, which was very close to him but somehow separate.

Chas realised he’d been blindfolded with one of the prickly branches of the fake Christmas tree. He tried to move his hands, but over twenty lengths of super-strength clothes line had been strung around him – from neck to toe – and then secured to the wood surrounding the plasterboard. Chas wriggled and cried a cloth-covered cry. He was going to die.

Jeremy perused his work, smiled, and wrote ‘Portrait of an artist as a dead man’ on the bottom right of the plasterboard. He was very pleased with his creation.

‘If you think you can keep her from me with those painter’s hands of yours, you’re wrong,’ he said, smiling.

Chas felt a cold jagged metal against one of his hands in front of him. Then, to his horror, he heard the engine of the cordless jigsaw groaning into action.

He’d tended towards nice once, Jeremy. When he was two he’d cuddled his mum and she said he was her best boy and he said she was his best girl and nothing could ever tear them apart. When he was three she made him mashed potato with sausages and tomato ketchup and he said thanks, best girl, and she smiled back at her boy. And when he was four, he tried to help that time with Bella, he was kind of good then too. Just trying to help.

It was after that he became not so nice. After his father left him. After his mother stopped loving him, unable to touch or look at him, unwilling to discipline or support him. Year by year he became a little bit less nice, one time so angry that Katie his kitty ended up buried to the neck behind the tennis court and then mowed. Later there was the girl in second-year literature who chose Flaubert over him. And the time his Thai cookery teacher got a new favourite – Russell, who made great curry puffs, before and after he died. It didn’t happen often, because he avoided love and cocooned himself in success: hiring,
firing
, driving the profits higher, successful busy important property. Then he met Amanda, and it seemed to start all over again.

She offered herself to him, alone, four hundred miles from her home, and while his feelings for her were
nothing
compared to his love for his mother – indeed no one
had ever come close – she was his, and he was hers.

He was hers after his mother disappeared out the back exit of the hospital, so desperate to not see him that she actually ran as she hailed a taxi. He was hers when he drove through the suburbs, on the motorway, through Glasgow, along Loch Lomond, Loch Long, Loch Fyne and the canal. Hers as he parked the car outside their honeymoon lodge, as he crept towards the front door with flowers and bubbly, and hers as he heard a noise inside that made him stop.

He looked through the window, and then dropped the lilies on the ground.

He waited all night by that window and watched as two women undressed and made love. He’d seen it many times before, wanked to it in real time and in memory, but this was not good. He was not part of this. This was betrayal. He’d been betrayed many times before, most of all by his mother. He began to feel the anger that he sometimes felt. He breathed with it and fed it with
constant
watching. He watched them curl and cry and cuddle. He watched Amanda wake and get dressed and drive her hire car away.

Then he entered the honeymoon lodge, walked quietly into the bedroom and said, ‘You must be Bridget.’

She covered herself up.

He moved in towards her, smiling.

She tried to get off the bed.

He stabbed her in the stomach.

She screamed.

He stabbed her in the stomach.

She cried.

He tied her up.

She whimpered.

He cut her carefully.

She dribbled.

He ripped.

She fainted.

He cut.

She bled.

He ripped he stabbed.

She died.

What would Chas do? Where would he go? He’d want to find the bastard and kill him, that’s what, just as he’d done with Sarah’s stepfather all those years ago. He was like that, Chas. Impulsive and a sorter.

I rang home and his mobile, but there was no answer. Where would Chas have gone next?

He’d have hunted high and low for Jeremy.

Perhaps Jeremy had discovered his mother had arrived to help him. Perhaps he’d gone there.

I phoned the police to tell them what had happened, but they didn’t seem overly worried about it. They’d look into Jeremy’s alleged behaviour in prison. But so what if my boyfriend had been missing for a few hours?

Angry and terrified, I drove to the Clyde View Apartments fifteen minutes after leaving Billy. Anne Bagshaw was waiting anxiously.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t give him a lift, in the end. I thought he might have come here himself.’

‘No. He doesn’t know I’m here. It was a surprise, remember?’

I decided not to tell her what I knew: that he’d been violent in prison, and had done everything he could do to get close to me. I didn’t tell her I thought he might want to hurt my partner. If I did, she might help him get away.

‘Can you let me know if he contacts you? Ring this number. He left something at the prison that he might want,’ I lied.

‘Of course,’ Mrs Bagshaw said.

‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone? He’s ended it with Amanda. He seemed different somehow, Anne, seemed to have taken a shining to me for some
reason
. He knows I’m spoken for, although maybe I
confused
him – I was having troubles for a while – he was very embarrassed when I told him I’d never intended to make him think anything would ever …’

Anne seemed shocked, rightly so, I supposed. He’d
fallen
for his social worker and broken it off with Amanda.

‘Oh God,’ Anne said, slumping into a seat under the window, looking as though her mind was racing at a million miles an hour. ‘If he’s taken a shining to you, then perhaps he’s looking for you. Perhaps he’s gone to your house. Did you tell him where you lived, anything about yourself?’

She was right, of course. I had told him things about myself. Where I worked, about my flat in Gardner Street, and an image of the name on the buzzer flashed before me. He’d have found it, no problems, whether I’d told him or not. And what was he capable of, I wondered. Was he guilty of killing Bridget McGivern after all?

‘One other thing, Krissie,’ Mrs Bagshaw said as I turned to leave, looking up at me from her chair under the window. ‘As soon as you see him, tell him I’m here. Tell him to come. First thing. Tell him I’ve prepared his favourite meal, as a celebration – mashed potatoes and sausages, with ketchup?’

God damn it, I was so close to screaming at her.
Fucking idiot. Your son is crazy and you’ve set the
fucking
table and mashed the fucking spuds?

‘Will you? Tell him his best girl said so?’

That last bit sent a chill through me. All this stuff about best girls – it was clear she was as mad as he was. I had to get out of there.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And likewise, if you see him first. Ring me on this number.’