Tooth and Claw (30 page)

He printed out the various maps and images, just to be sure, and then bookmarked the sites so that he could revisit them later. He’d paid someone to install security software on the computer. It wasn’t just password protected, but if anyone tried to bypass the password control then the software would activate and wipe the hard disc. The person who fitted it for him had obviously assumed that he wanted to download hard-core porn from the internet without his parents finding out. He’d done that as well, but with his mother moved out of the house he felt he was pretty safe. His father used to be an architect. He had no idea how to get into computers.

Closing the system down, Carl leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He could feel the muscles in his back protesting at the strain they had been under. He needed a bath. No, he needed a cup of tea and
then
a bath.

Carl left the computer room and headed up the garden path to the kitchen. The house had a faint musty smell that he only ever noticed when he returned after a while away. He knew what it meant; it was the sign of a house built on marshy, waterlogged ground where dampness had seeped into the foundations and up through the walls. It was the smell of a house where rot was almost inevitable in brick or wood or plaster or anything that wasn’t solid stone.

His father was sitting in the lounge, reading.

‘Carl!’ he said, looking up eagerly. ‘I thought you’d gone out again.’

‘I was down in the shed. Just doing some work.’

‘Oh.’ He paused. ‘I thought I’d spend some time downstairs. Is that okay?’

Carl forced a smile. ‘That’s fine. Of course that’s fine. I was just about to put the kettle on. Do you fancy a cuppa?’

‘Please.’

Carl switched on the radio while the kettle boiled. BBC Essex would occasionally run a news item or a feature on the Catherine Charnaud murder or the bombing at Braintree Parkway, just as they had on Carl’s previous murders, and he liked to keep abreast of what was going on. It wasn’t anything vainglorious, like craving the excitement and attention that being referred to, even in passing, on TV or radio could create. It was more that he wanted to check on whether his mother was having any impact on the case, or whether she’d been brought in to consult on any others.

‘Actually, dad …’ he called out.

‘What?’

‘I was wondering … You’ve been so much better recently. Would it be okay if … if I went out for an evening?’

A longer pause this time. ‘That’s fine. You go ahead. I’ll be fine.’

‘If it’s a problem then I can put it off.’

‘No.’ Warmer. ‘You’re a good boy, Carl, looking after me. I know how much hanging around the house winds you up. You always preferred to be out in the countryside, watching the birds and the animals, to being stuck inside. It’s been difficult for you since Eleanor left. You deserve some time to yourself. Go and have fun.’

‘It’s just …’

‘It’s a girl, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Carl tried to inject a little awkwardness into his voice. ‘We met … at the supermarket. I said I’d take her to a film. We haven’t arranged a date yet.’

‘I’m glad. You go and enjoy yourself.’

The local news came on just as Carl was pouring out his dad’s cup of tea, The lead story was still the Braintree bomb, but this time there was a twist, a new piece of the puzzle. Carl concentrated, turning the volume up so that he could hear more clearly through the static.

‘… While Essex Police have stated that Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie, the man who had until now been leading the investigation, has been removed from the case. Anonymous sources within the police have told the BBC that DCI Lapslie was removed because he apparently believes he can literally
sniff out
a criminal by the odour they leave behind at a crime scene. Essex Police have declined to comment on these claims, or on the suggestion that a serial killer is at work …’

Carl dropped the cup. It seemed to fall for ever, liquid glinting
as it turned before smashing on the kitchen floor, sending the tea spilling in a steaming brown wave across the tiles. Hot water spattered against his legs, but he barely noticed. He felt sick.

‘Carl? What happened?’

‘Sorry. The cup was hotter than I thought. I’ll … I’ll clear it up and pour another one.’

Lapslie. Mark Lapslie. The police officer he had seen conducting the press conference about the bombing. Emma Bradbury’s boss. Despite the barely veiled scorn of the newsreader, and the suggestion that Lapslie had been removed from the case because he was delusional, he somehow
knew
that the two deaths were connected. Either he had worked it out, or he actually
could
smell Carl’s involvement.

Carl thought, feverishly, as he mopped up the spilled tea. He had spent long enough working on Catherine Charnaud, stripping the flesh relentlessly from her bones, that his perspiration had almost certainly fallen onto the girl’s skin. He’d also used the toilet in the house. Could Lapslie have smelled that? The bombing confused him for a moment – he had been hundreds of yards away from the site of the explosion – but then he remembered urinating on the roof of the shopping centre, squatting out of sight and relieving himself after several hours of waiting for the right moment to arrive. Had he left a scent there, a spoor that Lapslie had somehow been able to pick up?

Carl picked up the shards of pottery and put them in the bin. The thought was insane, but it kept on circling around his mind like a bloated fly lazily circling a light bulb as he continued clearing the smashed mug and the spilled tea away. Animals had incredibly acute senses, he knew. Dogs could apparently detect early-stage breast and lung cancer with amazing accuracy just by sniffing the breath of someone who has that diagnosis. People could sometimes develop their own senses to
match. He’d once heard in hushed tones about a hunter up in the wilds of Scotland whose night vision was better than a cat’s. He lived in the dark; sleeping during the day in a bedroom lined with thick black cloth to keep out the light. Nobody was allowed to smoke near him because the glow of their cigarette would disrupt his finely honed vision. To him, a starlit sky was like the noonday sun, and on a cloudy, moonless night he could see for miles when everyone else around him couldn’t see their own hand in front of their face. No, Carl believed that people could sense things, if they put their mind to it, especially if they were compensating for something else. How else could blind people read the Braille signs inside lifts, which felt no more distinct than raised scar tissue to Carl? Their fingertips must be incredibly sensitive.

Pouring out another cup of tea, the logical corollary to Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie’s preternatural abilities struck him with the force of a fist in his gut; if Lapslie
could
smell Carl, then there was something about Carl that he could smell, something that was different to everyone else. Perhaps the porphyria meant that he was secreting some chemical in his perspiration, something that the policeman could detect. Carl bent his head and sniffed his armpit as best he could. Nothing. He ran a finger across his forehead and smelled it. Still nothing. But then, people got used to smells, didn’t they? If you lived with a smell, like damp and mould, for enough time then you stopped smelling it; just as your mind automatically filtered out the sounds of traffic if you lived near a road.
Did
he smell of something, but just couldn’t detect it himself?

The haematin tablets he was on – would they help mask the smell or just add to it? Either was possible, but he just didn’t know enough about biochemistry to be able to tell, and it wasn’t like he could go and ask the doctor.

Carl cast his mind back. Nobody had ever mentioned that he smelled. His mother or father had never said anything. No doctor had ever raised it as a symptom. Nobody had ever bought him a deodorant as a way of telling him that he stank. Some of the men that he’d met in the Essex Hunt had smelled like polecats, and were taunted about it on a daily basis. There was certainly no holding back of opinions in the countryside. No animal that he’d watched, or stalked, had ever become spooked and run off because they had smelled him in the area. No, if there was something about him that Mark Lapslie was picking up on, then it was something subtle. Something that nobody else could sense, or scent. Only him.

Which meant that Lapslie, not Emma Bradbury, should be his next victim.

Carl’s main safety net at the moment was the fact that each of his murders was completely separate from the others. He needed to get to Lapslie before he convinced anyone senior in the police that he was right, that the murders were connected. He still had to humiliate his mother; ensure that she was never approached by the police again and had to come back to the house, complete the family again. But if the news report could be believed then Lapslie had been marginalised within the force. Removed. Sidelined.

As he leaned against the kitchen counter, thinking his way through the maze of logic and speculation, something else occurred to him. The story on the BBC hadn’t been based on a press release or anything formal. It had been an anonymous accusation; something only slightly more than gossip. It indicated that there was some tension within the police; that Lapslie had enemies who were trying to blacken his name, discredit him in the eyes of the public and thus in the eyes of his superiors. And that meant there was an inbuilt desire within the
police to not believe him. If he was out of the way, if he could not fight his own corner, then his beliefs would be rubbished by whoever it was that had released the anonymous statement. And Carl would be safe to keep killing until his mother came back.

That meant his plan to use the rifle to shoot Emma Bradbury couldn’t be transferred across to Mark Lapslie. Shooting her would have looked like a bizarre, apparently motiveless crime; shooting
him
would vindicate his theory about the murders being connected. He would have to make his death look accidental. His mind raced. A car accident, perhaps – a hit-and-run where he ran him over in some country lane or forced his car off the road and into a crash barrier. Tricky to arrange, and fraught with the risk that he might be seen, followed, caught. A fire at his house: Carl could break in and fray an electric cable to the point where it would catch light, or remove the screws that retained the bare wires inside an electrical plug and then pull the cable so that the wires touched and would spark when the socket was switched on. He could do it. Or perhaps just the simplest thing possible – a mugging, crushing his skull from behind with a crowbar and then taking his wallet. It happened all the time to people. Especially in Essex.

Carl thought for a moment. If there
was
something about his biology that this policeman was able to home in on then he needed to do something about it in a hurry. He couldn’t take the risk that there might be some small scrap of evidence linking him to one of the murders that could result in him being questioned by the police, if only as a potential witness, and if that happened and the man questioning him was Mark Lapslie then he might suddenly find himself in the frame for all the murders that the police knew about, and more besides. Or worse; if Carl was following Lapslie, waiting for an opportune
moment to push him under a train or smash his head in, then Lapslie might be able to tell that he was in the vicinity, and stop him.

The first thing he needed to do was take a shower. A long shower. He looked around the kitchen for something that might help deodorise him. He remembered that he had half a lemon in the fridge, kept for squeezing over chips instead of vinegar, which always caused his father’s digestion problems since the operation. He could rub it all over himself, couldn’t he? Cleaning products often advertised themselves as having lemon in them. ‘Nature’s cleaning agent’, they called it. The citric acid should cut through grease and dirt, and hopefully whatever substance it was that Mark Lapslie was able to detect. Or at least cover it up with a stronger smell.

He felt soiled. Dirty. And the worst thing was that he couldn’t even tell what was wrong. He felt like a dog that had been told it was a bad boy but didn’t understand why. He wanted someone to take him to one side and explain it to him, but there wasn’t anyone. He was on his own.

He grabbed the lemon and slipped it into his pocket, then carried his father’s cup of tea through to the living room.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘I’m just … tired. I’m heading up for a shower. I’ll do some lunch when I come down.’

He went up to the bathroom and turned the shower on as hard and as hot as he could stand, then undressed. Steam wreathed the bathroom and his naked body. Gingerly, he climbed in. The water was like scalding needles impacting all over his chest and neck. His skin turned instantly scarlet and blotchy. Bracing himself, Carl turned around, letting the water scour every square inch of his body, raising his arms so that his armpits were washed clean and then, taking a deep breath
of the tropical air, he shoved his head under the streaming water. It burned. Jesus
Christ
, it burned. He cried out, despite himself, feeling blisters rising all across his scalp but knowing that the water wasn’t quite that hot. He stuck it out for as long as he could, then jerked his head back, gasping. The relatively cooler air on his skin stung even worse for a moment. He felt dizzy, and had to grab hold of the edge of the shower to stop himself falling.

He turned the shower off and stood there for a moment, feeling the water running off his skin. Cool air infiltrated its way across his body, making him shiver suddenly. He felt like crying. Before his resolve crumbled he grabbed the lemon half from where he had left it in the soap dish and rubbed it over his chest, his shoulders, his arms, his scalp, his buttocks and legs, and then between his legs, around his scrotum, squeezing the lemon harder and harder as he went. The shower filled with the sharp, aromatic smell of lemon oil. His skin stung where the oil penetrated the pores opened by the steaming water or the small cuts that he had on his hands from building the explosive devices for the bombing.