Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
‘Ruth, we need to go now,’ I heard Carlota’s voice order from the outside the toilet.
‘Coming,’ I replied as I still tried to make some sense of this really messed-up version of You’ve Got Mail. It certainly wasn’t a dreamy, swoonworthy Nineties Tom Hanks on the other end of this line.
The idea that the TellTale Killer might have been lurking there on the dark web all this time, watching his admirers from a distance – that made a chilling kind of sense to me.
He wanted to see people guessing and theorising how he had gotten away with it.
I bet he saw this as his personal fan community that he had secretly been a part of, like Tom Cruise turning up to Mission Impossible’s opening night in a baseball cap and a fake moustache, nodding along as people whispered about how great he was.
I had attempted to look at the photo of the corpse closely in the short time I had, zooming in as much as I could to try and deduce who it could have been.
Of course, I would have known instantly if it was Greta, but it also didn’t seem to be any of the three females of the six original victims. This was someone new, he was still killing.
‘Ruth. Now,’ Detective Carlota barked again from outside the toilet.
‘Sorry. It’s the burritos! Extra spicy!’ I blurted out. What a ridiculous thing to say, it was ten in the morning.
I stuffed my phone back into my trouser pocket as quickly as I could, and tried to arrange my face in the mirror into something I hoped looked innocent.
I needed, just for the moment, to clear my mind of what I had just seen if I was going to avoid any more of Detective Carlota’s suspicion that I was behind this.
I know she’d said I wasn’t a suspect, but I couldn’t shake the feeling this was just her playing good cop, trying to guilt me into a confession of my recreation of the heart scene in Temple of Doom.
Did she know I knew? Did she think I knew that she knew?
It was all far too complex for my already, frankly, feeble mind.
While I still had access to the DarkCell forum account I’d been using for the past two years, I silently thanked every long-forgotten lucky star that I had thought ahead.
By posting with a secondary account before posting the photo to cover my tracks, using a fake email and routing everything through a VPN, at least, I hoped, my identity was protected.
I didn’t know how skilled the TellTale Killer was when it came to tracking someone down on the internet.
As I unlocked the toilet door, Detective Carlota was standing just inches away.
The door swung open and almost hit her square in the face as though she had been trying to peer through the subatomic particles of the door to see exactly what I was doing in there.
I don’t think she would have even believed me if I told her.
‘Ruth, I need to talk to you alone. I’ve found something.’
Nervously, I followed Carlota a few feet away from the loading bay to the car park outside where small specks of snow were beginning to descend from the blank white sky above us. ‘God’s dandruff,’ I knew Greta would call it.
I watched as officers herded a few reporters away; Tasha was among them. Clearly, others had had the same idea she’d had, craning for a glimpse of whatever might be happening inside the parlour.
‘What else did you find?’ I asked Detective Carlota, who seemed unbothered by the mild tussle between the journalists and the police.
‘Not a lot,’ she said evenly. ‘Nothing here looks out of the ordinary and, between you and me, forensics haven’t seemed to find anything major as of yet.’
I lifted a hand to my mouth and let out a tiny belch. It tasted of mild, temporary relief.
‘There’s a scalpel unaccounted for,’ Carlota said matter-of-factly, outstretching a hand to watch one of the small flakes dance through the air, drop and then melt on the centre of her palm.
‘Okay?’ I said as I felt my guts start to move south, while I continued to try and feign some level of perplexity and look unfussed by her statement.
Inside, I was working very hard not to panic.
I had forgotten all about that fucking scalpel.
In the rush to clear up before Uncle Phil got back, when I was extracting Justin’s heart, I had thrown it out with the soiled kit and it would have gone for incineration the next morning.
‘Do you think that means anything?’ I asked, faux naif.
Detective Carlota grimaced. She didn’t meet my eye; she kept watching the snowflakes flutter down from the heavens, as if I was only present as a spare body to bounce her own predetermined thoughts off.
‘Your uncle. He seems like a nice man,’ she said. I didn’t think it was meant as a question, but I hurried to agree.
‘Yes, yes, he is. Absolutely,’ I responded.
I was maybe a little too keen in my affirmation that Uncle Phil was a buoyant ray of sunshine.
She let out a soft grunt, followed by the deliberate exhale of a mind made up.
‘I’m going to bring him in for questioning, Ruth.
Something isn’t right here: a scalpel is missing from where Justin’s body was kept, where only a few people had access.
Tell me, frankly, do you think your uncle is simply getting too old and careless – that he innocently misplaced a scalpel and Camborne and Sons has become a crime scene through simple ineptitude?
Or do you think he had a hand in it? Do you think he’s a part of this whole sick operation?
I mean, can you see how bad this looks for him? ’
I was stunned. I had no idea how to respond.
Every word I could think of might incriminate me or, worse, damn Uncle Phil for something he hadn’t done.
Did Detective Carlota know exactly what she was doing, pulling my strings like some crazed puppet master?
Or was this all in my head? Maybe my view of things was skewed by the guilt and anxiety gnawing constantly at me.
‘I don’t understand, why would you bring him in for questioning?’ I asked, a little dumbfounded, while ignoring the question she had asked. ‘Come on, you know he didn’t have a part to play in all of this. This is a sweet old man. He is the walking definition of harmless.’
‘You’d be surprised by how many people seem harmless,’ Carlota said stoically, her tone cool and unruffled.
‘Look, I know it seems harsh, and I don’t take any pleasure in this, but if the TellTale Killer is back, then the only way to catch him is to apply a bit of pressure on people who I think could be involved, which in my opinion, is everyone who works here. ’
It was the way she tilted her head slightly, as if to catch more of me in her peripheral vision, that unsettled me.
It felt as though she were studying my reaction, testing how I would respond to what she was saying.
Surely, deep down, she knew Uncle Phil couldn’t have been involved.
By now she knew him; honest, decent, incapable of operation: Hearts and Crafts.
All I could do was trust the justice system to recognise it too, clear my dear old uncle, and somehow avoid dragging me into the mess I had created.
Maybe that was a bit too much to ask, though.
‘I’m just terrified things are going to get worse,’ she muttered just as I realised that the silence between us had continued to stretch.
‘Worse?’ I asked, confused by what exactly she meant by that.
‘I don’t think it’s him behind this, the real killer,’ Carlota said, her eyes still fixed on the snowfall.
‘I know the press want us to believe it is – or maybe they’re just chasing a last-minute payday to kick off the financial quarter.
But I really don’t think this is the same man I was trying to track down two years ago.
There’s something different about this.’
‘So, what do you think will happen?’ I asked, trying to find the actual solid point of what Detective Carlota seemed to be musing about, get her to land the plane so to speak.
‘Serial killers don’t like copycats, Ruth,’ she said, angling her eyeline ever so slightly towards me.
‘If they think someone’s imitating their work, they get emboldened.
They escalate. Twenty million Brits consume the news every day, what are the bets the TellTale Killer is one of them.
If you’re a serial killer with a precise and enact methodology for every victim, wouldn’t you be a bit pissed off if someone was trying to imitate you? How would you even respond?’
I thought about answering that. Thought about telling her all the different cases where serial killers had inspired copycats.
But then I hesitated, because explaining just how much I knew would probably only end up proving her point.
And because I had remembered the message that the real killer had sent me earlier, it felt like there was an active grenade nestled in my pocket that was rapidly leaking gunpowder.
‘Look, I just want you to know, Ruth…’ Carlota began, her voice purposeful and steady, ‘… that if you ever want to talk to me about anything, anything at all, then you know where I am. You know, I’m only a phone call away.’
I watched her carefully and saw her tongue nervously trace the inside of her teeth as she hesitated, searching for the right words to say to me next, but her gaze looked like she was still staring into the vague middle distance rather than facing me direct.
Was this a tactic she used with people she suspected of crimes?
‘And look, if you are involved in this somehow, Ruth, then you need to know that I’m here to help.
I always have been, darling,’ she said earnestly.
It felt like this was the first time she had actually been sincere for our whole conversation, but there was still an ever-so-slight edge to how she spoke, a cold, sharp warning to me maybe:
You’re in too deep, get out now.
I can’t tell you how close I was, right in that moment, to confessing all of my secrets to Detective Carlota.
I could only imagine the sweet release and lightness of not having to keep it all to myself, to finally have someone I could confide in, to tell me how idiotic I was being and what I should do now, and to prevent Uncle Phil from having to go through the stress and anxiety of being questioned.
But I knew I couldn’t. I knew any chance of the TellTale Killer facing justice died the moment I opened my mouth.
So I held back and kept my lips pressed tightly together as if they were a barricade holding my confession at bay, even though it felt like my whole world was spiralling quickly out of control like a Reliant Robin caught in an ice slide.
I knew she knew I was involved somehow, and she knew I knew she knew, which, frankly, was a lot for both of us to get our heads round.
The thing was, I also knew that if she ever fully clocked everything I’d done, I’d be arrested on the spot.
I knew Carlota was a stickler for rules, for procedure, so even if it meant forfeiting her best shot at catching the TellTale Killer, I felt like she wouldn’t hesitate.
That being said, I knew – more than anything else in the world – she wanted to catch the TellTale Killer.
Maybe almost as much as me. I often wondered whether she wanted to do it because she hungered for the justice of this vile human being, or because she wanted to recapture her glory as a police detective. Probably a bit of both.
‘Thank you, Detective Carlota. I appreciate that,’ was all I managed to reply.
I could see from her face, still not facing me, that that was not the answer she had been hoping for. A sigh, barely audible, escaped her lips.
‘I wouldn’t tell Uncle Phil about the questioning yet – best to prevent him worrying longer than he needs to.’
Then, without even saying a goodbye or even a casual ‘see you later’, Detective Carlota simply tightened her coat around herself and strode off across the car park, then drove away.
In another story, Detective Carlota might shine as the valiant, no-nonsense hero, the Telltale Killer would twirl his serial-killer moustache, and I’d be shoved into the morally smudged supporting slot.
I’m not wild about that particular billing, but someone has to give the plot a proper kick up the backside.
The moment Detective Carlota’s car disappeared from sight, the realisation hit me with the force of a freight train: the message I’d just received was still waiting for some kind of response.
I swiftly hurried back to the toilet, ready to use the burrito excuse again if anyone asked. I haphazardly locked the door shut and yanked out my phone. My fingers darted across the screen to boot up the chat again.
I knew it was reckless. I knew it was idiotic.
But at this point, reckless and stupid decisions seemed to be the only ones I was making.
If the TellTale Killer had really reached out to me, incensed that I was stealing his thunder, if he was foolish enough to reveal he was the true mastermind behind the murders, this was my chance, perhaps the only chance, to catch him.
This was the kind of opportunity I had dreamed of for the past two years.
I couldn’t encrypt my own writings on my computer, I had to do it by hand.
I could almost feel my heart pulsating and vibrating in my throat as I found some paper – well, a Camborne and Sons promotional leaflet – and a pen that I had left in the pocket of my work blazer.
I quickly began encrypting my response. I wasn’t paying attention to the words I was forming, only the letters as the ink scribbled across the background of Uncle Phil’s very professional-looking headshot where I’m sure he had photoshopped some more hair onto his scalp.
‘Isn’t mockery the sincerest form of flattery after all?’ I replied to him. ‘What’s next?’
It only took a few moments. I smoothed my palms over my thighs, waiting for a response, not sure whether to stay perched on the loo or risk creeping back into the office, when I felt my phone buzz with his reply.
‘Just you wait.’