‘Didn’t have any choice, did I?’ Shifty rubbed a hand across his face, pulling the chubby cheeks out of shape. ‘A solid day of interviewing child molesters. Going to take a massive heap of booze to get that taste out of my mouth.’
Alice nudged him, setting the bottles clinking again. ‘Might be able to help you there.’
The automatic doors slid open, and we stepped out beneath the awning, ranks of trolleys sitting chained together on either side.
‘OK.’ I made it as far as the line of large plastic crates filled with bagged firewood, kindling, and four-litre containers of antifreeze — apparently available at ‘BARGAINTASTIC PRICES FOR ALL THE FAMILY!’, because whose kids didn’t love antifreeze? I settled my backside against the logs and stretched out my right leg, foot throbbing like a malfunctioning microwave. ‘Get the car and I’ll wait for you here.’
Alice peered out at the rain, hauled her hood up, then turned to Shifty. ‘David, do you want to join us for dinner? We’re going for a sitty-downy pizza with loads of salad!’
‘Time is it?’ He checked his watch and deflated a couple of inches. ‘Yeah, why not? Supposed to have clocked off hours ago anyway.’
‘God, I needed that.’ Shifty wiped the froth from his pint off his top lip, smiled and let loose a happy belch.
They’d given us a pretty decent table — for quarter to ten on a Friday night — by the window, looking out across the road to the big Victorian glass slug that was Oldcastle Railway Station. All lit up and glistening in the rain. A row of taxis sitting outside it, their drivers huddled in a bus shelter, smoking fags. Working on cancer and hypothermia all in one go.
‘A toast.’ Alice raised her large Shiraz. ‘To not dying in a serial killer’s basement!’
I clinked my Irn-Bru against her glass, then Shifty did the same with his pint and we all drank.
‘Speaking of which.’ Shifty held his hand out, palm up in front of me.
‘What?’
‘You know fine, “what”. The photos you traumatised Satsuma Joe with, back at the supermarket. They’re evidence.’
‘I forgot I had them, OK? We nearly got crushed to death and washed out to sea. And since when do you care about evidentiary procedures?’
‘Since Professional Standards decided to make me their special little project. Now hand them over.’
I turned in my chair, picked my phone off the windowsill — attached to its new charging cable, stealing the restaurant’s electricity. Battery now at a whole ten percent.
‘Ash, you can’t keep stuff like that.’
My phone went back on the windowsill. ‘You can have them when I’ve taken a copy.’
‘It’s not—’
‘What, you’re going to bail before your starter arrives and hotfoot it back to the station with them?’
He frowned for a moment, then shrugged those wide shoulders of his. ‘No point letting good food go to waste.’
Didn’t think so.
Alice helped herself to a breadstick, the words coming out in a wave of crunching and crumbs: ‘Do you think Bear would let me do some behavioural evidence analysis for DI Malcolmson?’
‘Our Glorious Leader? Without a cost centre to write it to?’ Difficult not to laugh at that. ‘Not a chance in hell.’
‘What if I did it in my spare time, though?’
‘Then you’re undermining a potential revenue stream.’
She scrunched herself up and fluttered her eyelashes at me. ‘Pleeeeeeeease?’
‘You’re a grown woman in your thirties, don’t do that.’
‘Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeease?’ Really hamming it up now, hands clutched sideways under her chin, brown curls cascading either side of her beaming face.
‘OK, OK.’ Anything to make her stop.
‘Good.’ She shifted her cutlery and napkin out of the way and made come-hither gestures. ‘Let’s see the photos, then.’
‘Sure you want to do that right before you eat?’
‘The iron’s hot, we might as well strike with it.’
I snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and eased the photos from my pocket. Still connected to that mouldy piece of string by the tiny clothes pegs.
Shifty winced. ‘You could at least’ve put them in an evidence bag!’
‘Crushed to death and washed out to sea, remember?’ I laid them out in front of Alice, one after the other, putting them closer together, so they’d all fit in two lines. ‘And if it wasn’t for us, no one would even know they existed. So don’t be a dick.’
Eleven Polaroids. Each one showing the last horrific moments of some poor sod’s life.
Shifty bared his teeth. ‘Jesus...’
A row of creases formed between Alice’s eyebrows as she frowned at the pictures. ‘Victims are male and female, so maybe Gordon Smith’s bisexual, because there’s always a sexual element with this kind of serial killer, even if it’s not expressed at the time with the victim present, because what’s the point of killing someone if you can’t fantasise about it before and afterwards? Of course maybe it’s death that turns him on and he’s really only torturing people to heighten his and...?’ She looked up at me, eyebrows raised.
‘Caroline. Smith’s wife was called Caroline.’
‘Thank you.’ Back to the photos. ‘He might be doing it to heighten their arousal. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had sex on that mattress in the basement, right after they killed someone, or even while their victims were dying. They’ve gone to all the trouble of abducting and torturing someone, who needs Viagra when you’ve got a rush like that — the power of life and death, someone screaming in agony while you—’
‘OK.’ Our waiter appeared behind her, looking about as comfortable as a dedicated hipster can when forced into a red-white-and-green waistcoat, dress shirt, and non-ironic bowtie. ‘I’ve got an insalata caprese, antipasto misto platter, and a garlic bread with mozzarella?’
Alice wheeched her napkin over the Polaroids before the waiter could recognise what they were. Pointed at Shifty. ‘Garlic bread, Ash is the antipasto, and I’m the salad.’ Taking the plate from him before he could interfere with the horror show currently taking place beneath her napkin. ‘Thanks.’ Then knocking back three big gulps of wine, finishing the glass and holding it out for the waiter. ‘And can I have another large Shiraz, please, actually better make it a bottle, no point messing about, is there? That’ll be great, excellent, mmmmm, this all smells delicious!’
The waiter’s smile looked very uncomfortable, squashed between his handlebar moustache and big beard, as he backed away from our table like it was a rabid dog. ‘Yes, wine, definitely.’ And he was gone.
She passed her plate across the table to me. ‘Can you look after that? And don’t eat my mozzarella. Or my tomatoes. Or basil. Actually... don’t eat any of it.’ Then peeled her napkin back, exposing the bloody images again. ‘These were from one side of the shackles, weren’t they?’
‘The string closest the stairs.’ Somehow a platter of mixed meat didn’t seem all that attractive, not when the Polaroids were sitting there. ‘All I could get.’
‘I wonder if there’s a “before” and “after” for each of the victims? One wall is them alive, the other is them dead. With sex and torture in the middle.’
Great wafts of garlic oozed out of Shifty’s starter as he tore a big bite from his huge slice of cheese on toast, white strings looping from his mouth back to the bread, like the ones in the basement. Mumbling through his mouthful. ‘You think he rapes them?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. I worked on a case in Boston once — got to go over as part of an exchange programme, it’s a really nice city, lovely people, but by God it’s cold in winter — anyway there was this guy, Chuck Reich. He would abduct men, tie them up, and stab them, but not because he was trying to kill them, he’d stab them in the stomach or the thigh or the buttock and use the holes he’d made to... you know... pleasure himself. It was the screaming he liked the best. Maybe Gordon and Caroline were like that?’