Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I thought I’d make risotto. It’s goat’s cheese and mushroom, and I’ve made a rocket salad with balsamic to go with it.” Lucy poked her head out from round the kitchen door as soon as I got in, pulling off my shoes and wanting a bath and a sleep and no conversation.
I’d avoided her since Atlas had given me the photos, not sure what to do or say because I was living in her flat and in the middle of a murder enquiry, the most high profile I’d experienced since the missing boy, and dealing with that as well as breaking up with Cavan because he and my flatmate were over-friendly seemed too much to deal with.
So I was hiding. A freeze response. If I didn’t move, they wouldn’t see me. I hadn’t returned Cavan’s calls and my responses to his messages had been brief.
“Amazing - ”
“You are going to have some, aren’t you? I promise the mushrooms aren’t magic and I haven’t seen you for ages. It’s like I don’t have a flatmate.” Her beam was full-on, a little too much to be sincere.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. This case is manic.” I put my shoes away, stretching out my feet like I was about to tumble on the mat, somersault, twist, move. Only I couldn’t. Not here, not anywhere.
“But you still need to eat. Honestly, this risotto is amazing and I’ve got an amazing bottle of white wine to go with it. Fancy a glass?” She was still propping open the kitchen door.
I actually did. “Please. That’ll be lovely. I’ll get changed and be with you.” There was no way out of this. I’d expected her to be at her Pilates class and confident I could get to cook something slightly nutritious and then into bed before she got home.
I felt ambushed.
“Cool. It’ll be ready in ten.” She scurried back into the kitchen and I headed into my room, throwing off today’s clothes into the washing basket, which was something I needed to attack sooner rather than later. Or drop it off for a service wash – a better idea.
I threw on sweats and a cropped T-shirt, and pulled on an oversized zip up hoodie that I figured had once belonged to Jalen, the name of the boxing gym faded on the back.
Lucy was sat down at the table, two bowls of risotto steaming on the place mats, two glasses of wine freshly poured, the glasses covered in condensation at the bottom.
It looked like too much of an effort.
“How’s the case going?” she said as I sat down. “Are you going to catch him soon? I’m running out of money for taxis.”
“We will.” Maybe tomorrow, maybe when we had the names of the boys there’d be a link with the comments on the women’s social media accounts and we wouldn’t have spent the last couple of weeks chasing down a dead end.
I tried the risotto, almost burning my mouth.
It was good, just the right amount of crunch and rich with the goat’s cheese. “How’s school?”
“A lunatic asylum as normal. I do worry about how that generation are going to run a country one day, but maybe it’s just the kids at my place.” She sipped her wine, food as yet untouched.
“How’s Cavan?”
“Oh, Cavan? I think he’s okay. He was delivering some of the training tonight but I haven’t really seen much of him.” She looked over at the kitchen door, some imaginarily convenient noise.
She was lying.
“I think he might be coming over later. I thought a few decent orgasms might help my stress levels.”
She blanched.
It wasn’t true. I couldn’t think of much I wanted less than Cavan turning up here now, but I wanted to see her reaction.
She was waiting for him to end it with me; he’d told her he would, but until he did, she was the other woman, and that was not a role Lucy would want to play.
“Oh, well, keep it down.” She tried to laugh.
“How was the date you had last night? What was he called?” I carried on eating. Lucy’s guilt food was good, and it’d been ages since I’d eaten something that wasn’t out of a plastic wrapper.
“Kayden,” she nodded. “It was okay – not sure I’ll see him again though.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “No chemistry.”
“Shame. What else has been going on in the real world?” Awkwardness was creasing the atmosphere into something unbearable.
“The flat next door’s up for rent. Matty and Den are moving to the Northern Quarter so they’re closer to work.
So we’ll have new neighbours. And Caroline and Heath have split up.
” She started to tell me what had happened from Caroline’s perspective and then gave her own.
I half listened, not really knowing Caroline and Heath that well, and what I did know I wasn’t that keen on.
I’d need to move out. I couldn’t carry on living there knowing that she’d gotten involved with the man I was seeing. We weren’t the best of friends, but that didn’t mean Cavan was fair game for her.
“This wine’s nice.” I topped our glasses up, filling a lull in the conversation. “Where’s it from?”
“Just the deli on the corner. Mia, are you really keen on Cavan? I just wondered because you don’t spend loads of time together, and I think he thinks you’re not that bothered because you don’t really text and all that.”
I wondered how long she’d been working out how to ask me that.
“It’s early days, but I like him.” Or I did until I’d seen those photos.
“I’ll hopefully have some time off after this case has finished so maybe we can spend a bit more time together.
” I checked my phone. “I don’t think I want him to come round tonight though.
I am shattered.” I stood up, picking up our now empty bowls.
“I’ll clean up. You cooked – it was really nice of you, thank you. ”
“You’re welcome. Maybe we should try and do this more often?”
“We should.”
Neither of us meant it. And I think we both knew it would never happen anyway.
I sat in bed afterwards, showered and exhausted, knowing that I’d be going through the ordeal of packing and moving soon when I just wanted to rest and grab a few days back in Anglesey, or maybe somewhere abroad and hot.
The news was on TV, covering the murders.
I watched the reporting, the clips of the interviews, and then the presenters discussing the case, the theories, what the police should’ve done to prevent a psychopath from taking the lives of four women.
There was an expert on the show, introduced as an expert on criminal profiling, and then the camera cut to Daniel, dapper and attractive in his brown suit, the studio lighting catching his cheekbones and strong jaw, making him look movie-star handsome and sophisticated.
I stared at ceiling while adrenaline coursed through my veins, wondering why and hoping what he’d choose to say would be useful rather than career building.
“Professor Daniel Fletcher, thank you for joining us tonight. What can you tell us about this killer? How much longer is it going to take before they make a mistake, because that’s surely the only way the police will be able to catch them.”
I watched the screen as Daniel explained about organised killers and possible motives, the trajectory of a serial killer as they spiralled and what might be their motivation. It was generic and interesting, pop psychology and the presenters were at least pretending to be fascinated.
They cut to the next story, the possibility of more teacher strikes, and I turned the TV off, wondering why Daniel hadn’t told me what he was doing, unsurprised that he had.
A serial killer in Manchester was going to give him an even bigger platform from which he could be adored.
He was talking about how the killer could be caught, but they both knew that wouldn’t happen.
The planning for this had been much longer in the making, constructed with precision.
The sites next to water had been scoped out over months, using drones so repeatedly going there didn’t provoke suspicion.
Then there had been fashioning a meeting, a blast from the past. Fancy seeing you here, what a coincidence, shall we have a coffee? I know, let’s not swap numbers and then we can’t cancel, we have to be there.
It worked.
They didn’t remember what they’d done. It didn’t matter to them that they’d blocked someone in the cellar of an abandoned house after taking all the clothes.
Maybe it was because they’d gone on to do bad things and there were so many that this one wasn’t memorable, or maybe they’d just forgotten because it hadn’t been a Big Thing.
Big Things.
There had been lots of Big Things, so the psychiatrist had said. Big Things chipped away at us; Big Things shaped how we responded to small things. Big Things needed to be reflected over.
The man on TV had stopped talking about the murders now.
That was good, because it was enough for today.
Hearing on the radio about Dolly’s body being found had been rather stressful.
Some of the other people in the building were talking about it too, sympathising with the women who’d been killed, but they didn’t know why, did they?
They didn’t know what those girls had done.
This was how you dealt with Big Things.
The knife was in the dishwasher, and it wouldn’t be used for another few days now. The Big Thing was nearly dealt with.
When it was over, leaving here would be a possibility. Everything would be finished at the same time, so it might be a good idea not to hang around Manchester for much longer.
That was a plan. There was a bigger one, anyway, a new job in September, but relocating to that area at any time would look reasonable and it was good when things looked reasonable.
But before that could happen, there was more to do. These walls would learn more secrets for another week or so.
Dolly being found had taken the police a while, longer than expected. It didn’t matter, in fact, it was a stroke of genius really, but it hadn’t been the plan.
There’d be another one for them to find tomorrow, if they were awake, or someone was. Really, you’d think there’d be more vigilance on the waterways.
But that was the problem. There’d never been enough vigilance.
If only they’d been watching then. None of this would’ve happened.