Nobody True (26 page)

He was patient, this nasty psychopath. So very patient. Just when I thought he must surely give up his vigil, that the rest of the cars in the car park were here for the night, we both heard the clatter of what could only be a woman’s high-heeled shoes coming from the direction of the curving ramp. Amplified by the low concrete ceiling and walls, the sound grew louder by the moment. She came into view.

From a distance she looked tall and slim, slimmer even than the previous woman who had used the stairway and EXIT door to access this floor, and as she drew nearer we saw her hair was long and falling in bangs around her face. She entered a pool of light and I groaned inwardly when I saw her pleasant, although not stunning, features. I knew there was a good chance she would pass the Moker test of attractiveness.

In the front seat, Moker shifted, and I noticed that the knitting needle was held in his hand once more. As before, his free hand slowly reached for the door handle.

The woman passed by the front of the Hillman and failed to notice her stalker in the deeper shadows of the old car. She wore narrow, silver-framed designer spectacles which in no way detracted from her appeal—far from it: they seemed to render her even more vulnerable. Her lips were finely drawn, her nose strong but not obtrusive. Her breasts, beneath a thin cream blouse, spread apart the front of her unbuttoned check jacket, while in her left hand she carried a plastic Safeway’s bag and a briefcase (probably after working late, she’d done some late-night supermarket shopping). I noticed that she wore no wedding or engagement ring; perhaps she was a career woman with scant time for romance.

The situation was perfect for Moker: the dark, lonely location, the victim alone and unaware, her looks favourable, the shadows a welcome ally. Slowly he removed his hat. God, I prayed for somebody to come through the EXIT door, or down the ramp; I prayed for another vehicle to come down looking for a parking place. But I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Circumstances were too bloody ideal for murder.

The woman, whom I judged to be in her late twenties or early thirties, headed towards a dark-coloured Mazda sports car, which was isolated behind a pillar about twenty yards away. She gripped its key in her right hand, her arm extended as if singling out the car. I could tell she was nervous from where I watched, and what lone woman wouldn’t be in this still graveyard of a place, parked vehicles like metal mausoleums in the artificial dusk. While the woman cautiously looked about her as she walked, Moker silently waited before quietly slipping out of the Hillman. He unwound the scarf from his disfigured face.

The prey had almost reached her car when he followed on tiptoe, soft shoes (for the first time I noticed he wore grubby cheap-looking sneakers) soundless on the concrete floor. She leaned forward to insert the Mazda’s key in the lock and Moker hurried his steps, coming up behind her, pulling her round to face him, her eyes widening in horror, her mouth opening to scream, but his left hand reaching up to gag her, the hand holding the deadly thin weapon sweeping upwards to strike beneath her left ribcage.

It had all happened so fast that I was still in the car, frozen there because I knew what was about to happen, only released from the stupor when the long needle sank through the blouse into her flesh.

Yet even as I sat there stunned, a memory came back to me, something the police detectives had discussed at the crime scene in the hotel: the police surgeon had mentioned that two weapons had been used on me, one an axe or chopper, and something that made a hole through the heart. A needle—a long thin needle—was the weapon used. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but he was obviously talking about a common knitting needle, of which Moker had plenty. The news cuttings that Moker had collected indicated his fascination for the killings, but the collection of knitting needles in his possession had to confirm that beyond all doubt he was the guilty party.

Passing through the closed passenger door I sped towards the horrendous tableau, the woman held tight against her assailant’s body, his hand no longer clamped over her mouth as she shivered in his grasp, the vicious needle pushing in deeper and deeper, its point sliding into her heart.

I ran at him, howling, wanting to tear him to pieces, but only too aware that I could not even touch him. I believe I was hot with rage at that stage, because my vision was scorched, the scene before me unclear. He held on to her, in almost a lover’s embrace, their bodies locked tight. Quickly her struggles diminished so that her arms and legs began to quiver as life fled from her body. So fast, so easy. So contemptible.

She became still, only one foot occasionally twitching, and Moker allowed her to slip to the floor. Holding her shoulders, he knelt with her, his right hand still pressing the thin steel shaft into a point just below her left breast so that it entered her heart. Soon, even the twitching foot lost all movement. She was dead and I yelled in frustration and anguish.

Then I saw something rise from her still body, something that was neither ectoplasm nor vapour, but perhaps a combination of both. It was only inches high and was like some silky ethereal mist, pale enough to be translucent, rising as a wisp of smoke would from a spent match. Within a moment it was gone and I knew the woman’s soul had left its host.

Moker looked around, scanning the shadows for any movement, the ramp for any approaching lights. Except for us the car park’s lowest level was empty. He continued to press the honed needle in further until its flat round base plugged the wound. Surprisingly there was little blood, because the minute hole was effectively sealed; only a small bright seepage of blood ringed the needle’s blunt end. Aghast—no, mortified—even though I’d known this might happen, I thought what a sad and brutal way to die. So sudden and so terrifying those last few seconds of her young life; but then, the consolation was that the ordeal had been so swift. I stared down at her blanched face, her mouth set in a final grimace, her eyes only partially closed behind the wire-framed spectacles, all shock gone from them.

I could hear Moker grunting, the noise as repellent as the man himself. Rising from his crouch, he picked her up easily and swung round towards the old Hillman, the body limp in his arms. I forced myself to walk along behind them, aware that further horror was to follow—hadn’t he mutilated his victims?—but somehow resolved to see this nightmare through. God only knew what I could do to change things, but the spirit of my father had urged me to return to this killer. There had to be a reason.

And yes, there was further horror to follow, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. In its own way, it was far worse.

29

To my surprise, Moker lifted the dead woman onto the back seat of the veteran Hillman. To my further surprise, he climbed in after her. What was this? Was he now going to violate her corpse, just as he had violated the corpses in the mortuary? Or was this where he intended to mutilate his victim? There were no dried bloodstains that I could see in the car, so it was unlikely he’d used it for that purpose before.

I sat in the front passenger seat and twisted round to watch, nauseated, frightened, but morbidly curious. Maybe I was still looking for a way to interfere, to stop this maniac.

Moker took out a large cotton cloth, perhaps just an oversized handkerchief, and stuffed it up the woman’s blouse, laying it over the wound to staunch what little blood spread around the flat base of the knitting needle. Then he buttoned the jacket tight over her breasts, the cloth held against the wound, and I cringed when I saw that his bulging eyes burned with some fervour.

Even though I was there to witness what happened next, I still could not believe it.

Moker sat back in the rear passenger seat and closed his eyes, the dead body slumped against the car’s opposite corner. I waited, mystified, caught up in what was taking place. Was this an extra way of getting his kicks, sitting with the person he’d just killed, enjoying the corpse’s company as it grew colder? That he was a deviant of the lowest kind, there was no doubt, but this loitering with the victim beat all common sense. Certainly there wasn’t much danger of being caught in the car park—anyone who did come along would be unable to see into the back of the car because of this level’s inadequate lighting—but why take the risk anyway? And if he was going to cut the body up, he’d hardly do it in his own vehicle. Even with the blood beginning to congeal there would still be a terrible mess. I didn’t understand and could only watch him as his breathing became deeper, the sound it made more disturbing. Soon he was sleeping and the rough-knitted muffler he’d rewrapped around his face billowed slightly with every escaping breath.

And then it occurred. At first I thought I might be imagining it, but the more intensely I gazed at Moker, the more certain I became that his image was wavering.

Something was leaving him.

I admit it, I was even more frightened than before and, because of it, I hunkered down almost into the footwell under the windscreen. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have had—any physical discomforts in my condition, but I became cold. Very, very cold. And although I was hunched down, I could still see over the top of the front passenger seat, could still see some peculiar kind of transformation in Moker. I cowered down further, lest he discover me somehow, and watched as his head and shoulders became blurred, as though something thin and vapoury was smothering them, while a kind of nebulous mist—no, no, a kind of weak ectoplasm—was emerging from him so his image was indistinct behind it. And as this diaphanous cloud rose into the air, I saw that it was now taking on some sort of form. And the form was of Moker himself, but without the scarf and hat, without the grimy raincoat he always seemed to wear, without any clothes at all.

Although the image was unclear and ever-forming, I could make out the pits and scars to his body (I wondered if the old wounds had been self-inflicted), the malformed bones and surprising plumpness of his chest, and I wondered how a person could exist with such afflictions and could come to terms with such hideous defects. The substance was rising upwards, breaking free of the man himself, rising like a ghost from the grave, and Moker’s body was sliding sideways as if its lifeforce was deserting it. Finally, Moker’s empty body slumped against the rear seat’s corner. As Moker’s real eyes were closed, so too were the eyes of his fluctuating self-image, but I remained hidden all the same.

The substance—ectoplasm, animus, essence, I didn’t know what to call it—continued to build until I thought it might disappear through the roof of the car, but as the bare head—it had traces of wispy hair—touched the ceiling, the whole thing began to float sideways, towards the corpse in the other corner. This emanation was both fascinating and horrible, unusual and frightening, even though I’d left my own body many times in similar fashion in my past life (although I was sure that my spirit had never been visible like this, otherwise somebody would have mentioned it!). The ghosts at the séance parlour hadn’t scared me as much, because there was nothing threatening about them. This was different, there was something malign about the phenomenon I was witnessing, and I felt non-existent hairs on the back of my neck prickle, goosebumps rise on my arms. If I hadn’t been dead, I’d have run for my life.

This is when it happened. This is when I saw something I never thought possible. Of course I’d read the books and watched the films about demonic possession, but only hokey or over-imaginative writers and film-makers were responsible for such scenarios, while this was a real man, albeit an abnormal one, whose soul was stealing another person’s body. Death had emptied the woman’s body of its soul and now a different soul was taking its place, filling the vacuum. As I watched, the vaporous issue from Moker was entering the corpse on the back seat, creeping into it, smoothly but bit by bit, nothing hurried, no sudden possession, just a steady ingress, the hazy but discernible “mist” gradually sinking into the body until the nebulous features of Moker had completely disappeared.

After a few moments—but very long moments—the corpse’s eyes snapped open wide and looked into mine.

30

When the corpse spoke, its voice was strange, forced as if remembering the process. It was female, but there was an underlying hoarseness to the tone.

“I… know… you,” she said.

I jerked back so fiercely that I went through the dashboard and landed in a heap beneath the car’s engine. Stunned, I remained there for a few beats, at least out of sight of the Hillman’s two back-seat occupants; then, rather than stand and be in view again, I rolled out and crawled around the Celica that was parked next to Moker’s car, keeping low, afraid of being noticed, coming to rest behind the Celica’s furthest front tyre.

How was it possible for this woman to see me? Wait—the spirits at the séance had. In fact, most had been frightened of me. But… but… this woman’s eyes had fully opened and had looked right at me. Did it mean she wasn’t really dead? But that long, sharpened knitting needle straight through the heart—who could survive that? But then Moker’s spirit had left him and entered his victim’s body, so did that now mean he was dead? Think, I urged myself, think it through. Hadn’t I once had the power to leave my own body without being dead? I was almost an expert of the out-of-body experience, but had this man Moker developed his own ability to a level where he could use a body once its true tenant had left?

I peered over the Celica’s bonnet, squinting to see into the shadows of the Hillman. It was very dark, but there was movement in there. I kept low, nervous of being caught again. I heard rather than saw the rear door open and I ducked down out of sight. Cautiously I raised my head again, moving along the Celica’s bodywork so that I could watch through its windows without too much exposure.