Tooth and Claw (8 page)

‘That’s … reassuring.’ He paused for a moment, thinking.

‘I don’t suppose you can tell us anything about the tools that were used or the technique that the killer displayed?’ Emma asked from behind them.

Dr Catherall laughed lightly. ‘You are hoping that I will say “The killer used a number five surgical scalpel, and displayed a great deal of medical knowledge”, aren’t you?’

‘A girl can hope.’

‘This isn’t the Jack the Ripper investigation, Detective Sergeant Bradbury. No, whoever did this could have used any small knife, from a common kitchen knife to the kind a fisherman uses to gut and descale a fish. There are no defined marks on the bones, apart from some indeterminate scratches. I am afraid you will
not be able to classify your killer thanks to some unusual weapon. And cutting through skin and muscle tissue until you find the bone and then scraping it away takes no more skill than de-boning a chicken carcass.’

‘Make sure Sean Burrows and the CSIs check the knives in the kitchen,’ Lapslie said to Emma. ‘There’s always the chance the murderer used whatever was at the scene to commit the crime with. Same goes for those plastic ties – they might be from the garden or a toolbox. And let’s see if we have a budget to call a profiler in. Find out for me who the current favourite is within the department – I think we’re going to need an expert view on the psychology of the killer. This murder has all the hallmarks of something very simple and domestic, with the exception of the way it was done, and that worries me.’

‘There is one thing that occurs to me,’ Dr Catherall said tentatively.

‘What’s that?’

‘The meticulous way that the mutilation was done, associated with the way it has been almost presented to us, makes me think of an artist working on a canvas. Is it possible that whoever did this regarded it as a work of art?’

‘But why keep her alive while he was doing it?’ Emma asked.

Dr Catherall gazed up at Lapslie, her eyes filled with something dark and sad. ‘Because every artist needs an audience,’ she said.

The darkness outside the house was something oppressive, palpable. It seemed to press against the walls and windows like some rough beast trying to infiltrate its shadowy claws through any cracks. The sounds of the wind gusting against the exposed sides of the house were the sounds of the beast moving, adjusting its position, trying to get a better grip on Carl’s home and find a different way in, testing the strength of the walls, wondering if it was strong enough to just tighten its hold and break the house into fragments and let the darkness spill in everywhere, victorious.

Carl Whittley sat hunched up on the sofa of his darkened living room, listening to the beast outside. In his mind the beast was as black as tar, and its skin was rough and covered in warts. In his mind the beast’s skin erupted in blisters, and each blister was an eye, the pupil slotted like a goat’s. He knew he was being foolish, that he was ascribing sentience and purpose to something as natural as rain and sun, but he couldn’t help himself. The beast was out there, and it wanted him.

Sometimes he feared that he was going mad. He worried that the loneliness was gradually etching away at his sanity like rain washing away the mortar between the bricks of his mind, leaving the whole edifice unsteady and ready to topple. It was the darkness that did it; in the daylight he could push the fears to one side but at night they clustered in, crowding him and making him jump at the slightest sound.

In the bedroom above, he could hear his father shifting position. The colostomy bag made sleeping on his side awkward, but when he slept on his back he started snoring and kept waking himself up. As far as Carl could tell, his father hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for years. That was the trigger that had driven his mother away: first to a separate bedroom, and then to a separate house. And all Carl had to lure her back with was guilt, and the promise of a family dinner.

After testing his bomb in the wilds of the Essex salt marshes, Carl had driven into the nearest town to stock up on food and bottled water. No alcohol and no dairy or wheat products. They all aggravated his father’s condition, and it wouldn’t be fair of Carl to buy those things and then keep them to himself. No, he had promised himself years ago that whatever his father ate, he would eat. He didn’t want his father to feel as if he was being treated as anything special.

Standing in the checkout queue, waiting for the stupid woman ahead of him to separate her shopping into various plastic bags – one for frozen items, another for fruit, a third for cans and dry goods – and then delve around in her handbag for her debit card and then again for her loyalty card, Carl began to feel a prickling on the back of his neck. Someone was watching him. He turned his head, slowly, taking in the people in the queues to either side of him. Nobody was looking in his direction, but they seemed poised, edgy, as if they’d only just turned away as his gaze scanned across them. He tried looking down and then back again quickly, trying to catch them out, but they were too quick for him. He glanced behind him, at the people in his own queue. One or two of them were looking at him and frowning. He glared back and they lowered their gaze, flushing.

He felt like calling them out, asking them why they were
watching him, following him, but he knew they would deny everything and pretend they were just there to do their shopping. It wouldn’t do any good, and they knew he was on to them now, which meant they would be doubly careful in future. He would just have to make sure he was even more watchful.

There was a travel agent’s concession in the supermarket; an area just past the checkouts where a woman sat at a desk surrounded by brochures and posters showing blue skies and white beaches. While waiting for the incompetent checkout girl to find the barcodes on his items, Carl had found himself mesmerised by the posters. What chance did he have to take a holiday with his father the way he was? If he was out of the house for more than an hour his father would complain loudly and bitterly about what might have happened.

And there was the woman at the desk; crisp white blouse and navy blue jacket, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her fingers were thin, he noticed, the nails lacquered in blue, and she wasn’t wearing a ring.

After he had paid, he walked over and pretended to be interested in one of the brochures.

‘Thinking of a holiday?’ she asked brightly.

He smiled back. ‘I could do with one right now,’ he said.

‘We have some good last-minute deals on at the moment. What kind of thing were you looking for? Complete rest on a Caribbean beach, cultural excursions to historical sites in Europe or all-out adventure holiday in Asia?’

‘I’m flattered you think I’m capable of an all-out adventure holiday.’ He grinned to take the cheesiness out of the words.

Unconsciously her gaze flickered up and down his body, taking in the flat stomach that he took so much pride in and the way his T-shirt exposed his muscular arms, then frowning slightly when she saw the leather driving gloves he was wearing. He felt
himself blush. ‘I don’t think you’d have any problems surviving,’ she said after a moment, smiling slightly and brushing the hair from her forehead. ‘Paragliding? Snorkelling perhaps? I think I’ve got a caving expedition in Borneo in here somewhere, although you’d need extra insurance for that one, and you probably need some previous experience of caving as well.’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking more of a relaxing break. Suitcase full of books, iced coconut milk and lots of sun cream, followed by long dinners and cocktails as the sun goes down.’

She seemed to shiver slightly, and straightened up in her swivel chair. ‘I’m sure we can find something like that. Holiday for two, is it? Or are you on your own?’ Her gaze was challenging.

He was so caught up in the dream that he almost went along with it, but somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear his father’s voice, asking what he thought he was doing. He sighed, and closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘Actually, I’m looking after my father. He’s … unable to do anything for himself. I’d need something that I could take him on as well.’

She retreated abruptly behind a transparent sheet of professionalism. ‘Well,’ she said primly, ‘we don’t do many holidays for invalids and their carers. It’s not really our core business. I’m sure you could find something on the internet, if you tried.’ She wouldn’t even meet his gaze. He could feel the disappointment and the contempt she felt for him, bitter and corrosive. He wanted to slap her, but he knew it wouldn’t change anything. What was he thinking, anyway? It wasn’t as if he could ask her out, take her for dinner, spend evenings and even nights with her, not when he had to go home and make sure that his father was safe, and that his colostomy bag didn’t need changing. He was tied to home by invisible chains. Dragged down by the stone.

‘Well, thanks,’ he said, and left.

In the car, on the way home, Carl had noticed that his arms and cheeks were itching. It got so bad that he pulled the car over and parked in a lay-by, then checked his face carefully in the mirror. His first thought was that he’d been bitten by insects out in the salt marshes, but there were no raised red areas. He slipped his gloves off. The skin from the backs of his hands to his elbows was blotchy, red and hot to the touch. The illness that was affecting his fingers was starting to spread up his arms now. He made a note to go and see his doctor again. The man would lie to him – that’s what doctors did – but Carl could force him to prescribe something.

He had started the car and driven back home, wondering all the time what was happening. It hadn’t been this bad before. Maybe it was a reaction to the chemicals in the Semtex. Or perhaps this wasn’t just a relapse, but a worsening of the symptoms. It could be a chemical reaction to something in the house – washing powder perhaps, or a cleaning product, or the disinfectants he had to use when he was helping to empty his father’s colostomy bag.

In the house, Carl pulled himself into a smaller bundle on the sofa, feeling the burn on his arms where the rash was still throbbing. He knew that he should be planning his next move, deciding where to put the bomb that he would build, but he couldn’t find the energy. Inertia pressed his back into the sofa. Moving required too much effort.

The bomb led him back to the TV presenter, and before that to the taxi driver, and before that … His mind drifted backwards, over the various murders that he had committed, back to the first one at a Countryside Alliance demonstration. He’d not planned it – the murder had been a spur of the moment action, violence created by the energy and aggression of the
riot going on around him. Carl had never forgotten that energy. The screaming, the crack of the guns as the police released their plastic bullets into the crowd, the smell of the boy who’d set himself alight with the petrol bomb. The sheer exhilarating sense of unleashing the violence that bubbled within him, of letting himself go, of finding an expression for the anger that gnawed at him, and nobody noticing.

And then there had been the expanding cloud of CS gas that had spread over the rioters. Within moments his nostrils had been prickling and he could feel a catch at the back of his throat. His eyes began to itch violently, and he had blinked several times to try and clear them. But he’d come prepared, and had managed to pull the plastic bag with a dampened handkerchief inside from his pocket and hold it over his mouth. He needed to move, and quickly. CS didn’t just get into the body through the mouth and nose – it could be absorbed through the skin, if it was moist enough – and it hurt. It really hurt, to the point where you couldn’t do anything else apart from think about how to stop it.

Carl had been swept along with the crowd, wet handkerchief clenched tightly to his mouth. People were choking around him, and he could feel his eyes burning. A teenager in front of him stumbled and fell. Other people kicked him and stepped on him in their panicked attempts to get past. Carl bent down to try and get him back on his feet. His face was covered with a balaclava, and he pulled it off, needing to see whether he was breathing, whether his eyes were open. He was about the same age as Carl. His nose was freckled, his hair blond, and Carl suddenly had an overriding desire to smash something into his young face, disfigure it beyond recognition. It was like a scarlet wave sweeping over him, and like a swimmer too far from shore he found himself buffeted by forces beyond his control. He
reached for a half-brick on the ground, fingers closing round the rough, gritty edges. He glanced up. Nobody was looking at them. The rest of the crowd were too busy looking forward at the police or back in the direction they were retreating to pay them any attention, and the sheer press of bodies would shield them from the media cameras ahead.

Anything that happened there, in that little space, was private. Secret. Just between the two of them.

He raised the half-brick and brought it down on the teenager’s nose. Skin cracked open revealing red, wet tissue and white bone. The kid’s hands came up to protect himself. Carl smashed the brick down again and blood spattered across the kid’s face, covering the brown freckles with crimson ones. The hands fluttered weakly. Carl raised the brick again and hammered it down on the kid’s forehead. Something seemed to give way; the smooth expanse of flesh buckled, dented, crumpled inwards.

And then Carl dropped the brick and moved off into the crowd, expecting at any moment to feel a hand on his shoulder. But nothing came.

Nothing ever came.

He felt his breathing returning to normal, and his heartbeat gradually slowing. There was no sound from outside – the near-storm appeared to have abated – but it was still dark. Dawn was some time away.

Carl let himself sink back down into the sofa’s warm, slightly damp embrace. He knew he should head for bed, or at least check on his father, but the effort of getting up and climbing the stairs seemed far too hard. He closed his eyes and let himself slip backwards into a restless and thankfully dreamless sleep.