Cemetery Lake (12 page)

because what is left is mostly skeletal. She doesn’t even look like a person any more. Just a shell. A husk. Something you’d kick to the kerb and throw out with the trash. If Bruce did this to her, then he got off lightly last night. I’d have done more than put a bullet in his head.

‘Nothing else?’ I ask.

‘What else are you expecting?’

“I don’t know. Something helpful, I guess.’

Tracey offers a small laugh and covers Rachel up.

‘Maybe we’d have had more luck if she had been found with

something. I don’t know — a piece of jewellery maybe. Perhaps even a ring.’

‘What about the other girl? Schroder said you’ve got another

one.’

‘I’m not at liberty to say’

‘She was strangled too, right?’

‘Good luck, Theo. Part of me hopes you find who did this to

her before the police do. Part of me wishes you wouldn’t even

try’

I pass the body of Bruce Alderman on the way out. It’s lying

naked on a slab of steel. There’s a hole in the bottom of his chin and another in the top of his head. For the first time it occurs to me to wonder where he got the gun from.

I hit the button on the elevator, and when the doors open

Landry is standing there. His suit is ruffled up as if he slept in it, and he hasn’t shaved since I saw him last night. Next to him is Sidney Alderman. He looks pale; his eyes are darting back and

forth as if he’s searching for something, looking past me. But then he seems to focus, to figure out who he’s looking at. He lunges forward, bringing with him the stench of alcohol.

‘You fucker,’ he yells, jumping out of the elevator and taking a swing at my jaw, but I step back, and Landry grabs the back of Alderman’s shirt and pulls him off balance. Alderman’s fist crashes into the wall, and a moment later so does his face. ‘You killed my son!’

‘That’s enough,’ Landry shouts.

“He killed my boy!’ Alderman pushes himself away from

the wall, but only as far as Landry allows him. His knuckles are bleeding. ‘Why isn’t he in jail? I saw the news, you son of a bitch, I saw what you did.’

“I didn’t kill your …’

‘Tate, why don’t you do us all a favour and get in the goddamn elevator.’

‘You fucking murderer!’ Alderman yells. Then, much more

quietly, ‘Why do you keep letting him get away with it?’

The shouting has brought both of the medical examiners into

the corridor. Sheldon looks bothered, as if the violence is about to escalate and include him in it. Tracey looks disappointed.

‘Get in the elevator, Tate,’ Landry repeats.

‘You’re a dead man,’ Alderman yells again as the doors start to close. ‘You hear me? A dead —’

I’m not sure whether I actually hear the rest, or whether my

mind just fills in the blank.

The drive to my office I spend in Alderman’s shoes, and I have a bad feeling that I’d be coming to the same conclusions he has.

I told him things were going to be hard for his son. That same night his boy ends up dead. And the following morning I’m all

over the news, looking like a damn killer.

Back at the office, I’m greeted by the onlookers who missed

out on last night’s show and try to supplement their lack of daily drama by staring at me as I walk up the corridor. They ask me

questions. They look deflated that I’m still not covered in blood.

There is police scene tape across my door. I screw it up into a ball, carry it inside and shut the door on my audience. All I can think about is how many of these people have seen the news and, thanks to a desperate reporter using desperate tactics to be noticed, now believe I pulled the trigger.

The office stinks and makes me feel a little ill. I lay a bathroom towel and some newspapers over my chair before sitting down.

I tear up a tissue, wad it up and stuff it into my nose. I plug in my cellphone, but it’s still not connected, so I wipe down the office phone with some wet tissues until it’s clean enough to use.

I phone my insurance company. It turns out I have life insurance, house insurance, contents and car insurance, but not the kind of insurance that allows for this. If a pipe had busted or the carpet caught fire, the insurance company would play ball. But when it comes to messy suicide, they don’t want to know. When I hang

up I look through the phonebook for a number I’ve never had

to call but I’ve seen perform over the years. The cleaning crew promise to come out today. They’ll replace what they can’t clean, which will include the office chairs.

When I get off the phone I look over the chair Bruce Alderman

was sitting on, then slowly I stand up and peer over the desk, as if I’m still expecting to see him lying there. All that’s there is a lot of blood. I sit back down and go through the phonebook. The first number I dial is for the wrong Martins, but the second one I get right, and Laura Martins answers the phone.

I explain who I am, and Henry Martins’ daughter remembers

me

‘So now you think differently,’ she says, ‘and another man is

dead. That witch killed them,’ she says, referring to her stepmother.

‘And the only thing on the news is these people who floated up in the water and the dead caretaker. What about my father? Why doesn’t he get a mention?’

‘They’re keeping the names out of the media for the moment,’

I say. ‘They have to, until they identify everybody’

‘Why my dad? Why choose him to take out and throw in the

water? Why not somebody else?’

‘It was just a random choice. The day the girl was murdered

probably coincided with your father’s burial.’

‘So it’s random? Just one of those things? Like a bad

statistic?’

There isn’t any answer that will satisfy her, so I don’t offer one.

Instead I push on.

‘Your father, did he own a watch?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he buried with it?’

“I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t really know’

‘Okay. Can you remember what kind of watch it was?’

‘Not really. It was old, though.’

‘Old?’

‘Yeah. He’s had it my entire life. Is it weird that I can’t remember if he had it when he was buried?’

I run some names past her but she doesn’t recognise any of

them. Then I thank her for her time. The Tag Heuer didn’t belong to Henry Martins, because it is ten years old at the most.

I switch my computer on and go through the file I was creating yesterday, tapping at the keyboard tentatively and barely touching the mouse because they have blood splatter on them. I head back into the Missing Persons website and look for young women who

went missing two years ago. Rachel Tyler’s name comes up again, and so do four others. I read the files. One of them was found two months later. The others have never shown up. I look at the photos. One of the girls was seventeen, another was thirty-two.

Could be both are in the ground in the cemetery. The seventeenyear-old, Julie Thomas, definitely shares some characteristics

with Rachel Tyler. Similar height, similar age, long blonde hair, both good-looking. Most serial killers have a type. Looks like I’ve found it, but to make sure I check for the reports of women who went missing six days earlier. There is only one. Jessica

Shanks was twenty-four years old and was reported missing by

her husband the day she didn’t come home from work. I read

through the details. The file hasn’t been reported as being closed, but I imagine sometime within the next twenty-four hours the

update will have been made.

I print out the photos, one for each of the girls. I sit them

side by side on the floor since I can’t use my desk. Rachel Tyler, Julie Thomas and Jessica Shanks. Without a doubt, the killer had a type. Somewhere in this database is another young woman to

complete the set.

I print out the files, and then I power down my computer

and unplug it all. I remove the tissue from my nose, then carry the computer down to my car: I don’t want it to get damaged by the cleaning crew, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Until all the blood is gone I’ll work out of my house.

When all the gear is loaded into my car, I return for the

whiteboard, which I wipe down with more wet tissues. I also

grab my cellphone. It has one bar showing on the power scale

— I should’ve bought a car charger too. I leave the easel behind and carry the whiteboard to my car, nodding at the people who

ask me questions on the way and ignoring their requests to stay and hang out a while to catch them up on all the gory details.

David the boyfriend lives in a house that is almost as run down as Sidney the retired caretaker’s. The place hasn’t seen as much in the way of paint over the last few years as it has rust and spiders.

The guttering has corroded away, the windows are covered in

grime, the weatherboards warped and unwelcoming. It’s in the

middle of dozens of others, each one in need of a handyman’s

touch or a wrecking ball. I can’t figure out how David still lives here. I can’t figure out how anybody could live here longer than a week. But maybe he likes it and it’s a simple case of me not getting it. Perhaps this is the stereotypical pop-culture way to live.

Derelict is the new black. Grunge is in, being broke is in, making sure the house you live in looks like crap is in. He doesn’t own the place, but rents it, like all the other students in this area, which means he slips easily into the day-to-day routine of not giving a damn about the condition of the property, and the owners know

one day they’re going to bulldoze or burn it down anyway and

don’t care as long as the rent is paid. This isn’t suburbia; most of the people living around here are university students struggling to survive. Rachel Tyler was a student. I can’t imagine her staying here for more than a few days before returning home to grab a

few things or a good night’s sleep or the chance to step out of a shower cleaner than when she stepped in.

A young guy with studs in his ears and lips and nose opens the door. He must have real fun going through the security foreplay before boarding a plane. He’s squinting because the cloudy glare is too bright for him. His T-shirt reads The truth is down there with an arrow pointed to his crotch. All of a sudden, the last thing I want to know is the truth.

‘David Harding?’

“No, dude, he’s not here.’

‘Where is he?’

The guy shrugs. ‘Studying, I think. Or sleeping.’

‘Sleeping?’

‘Yeah, man, you know, that thing you do in the morning after

being out all night.’

“I thought people slept in the night.’

‘What planet are you from?’

‘An older one. Does he sleep here?’

‘Yeah, man.’

‘So if he’s sleeping, could it be that he’s sleeping here right now?’

He seems to think about it. ‘It could do, I suppose.’

‘Then how about you put that university education of yours to

some good use and figure it out for me.’

‘Whatever, bro,’ he says, then turns and walks up the hallway, grabbing the wall twice as he goes to make sure neither it nor him falls down.

I take a couple of steps inside, figuring Stud-face here is happy for me to do so but simply forgot to extend the invite. It’s colder inside than out — probably an all-year-round feature of these houses. The air is damp, and the carpet, wallpaper and furniture could do with a permanent dehumidifier. There are posters on

the walls but no photographs of friends or family. I can hear

mumbling from the other end of the house but can’t decipher it.

It sounds like hangover talk.

I keep walking. The hallway takes me into a kitchen straight

out of the start of last century, and with rotting food lying around that could be from the same era. The kitchen bench has a Formica top patterned with yellow flowers and strewn with the remnants of fast-food packets. The coffee plunger is hot. I pour a cup just as Studly comes through. He doesn’t seem surprised at all that I’ve invaded his house and made myself at home. I figure it’s a student thing.

‘He’s tired,’ Studly says, summing up the hangover in an

ambitious lie.

‘He’s this way?’ I ask, heading out of the kitchen and back into the hallway.

‘Dude, I said he’s tired. He doesn’t want to talk.’

I turn around and stare at him, and there’s something in the

way I look at him that makes him decide he doesn’t seem to mind any more whether I go and wake David or not, as long as I’m

not bugging him. He shrugs and goes about riffling through the fridge for something that could be food.

David Harding’s bedroom is dark and smells worse than the

rest of the house. I turn the light on, but it doesn’t really help much. On the floor is a double mattress with no base. It looks like it’s had a dozen people jumping up and down on it. David

doesn’t look up. He has his head buried in a pillow.

I crouch down next to him.

‘David.’

‘Go away’

“I need to ask you some questions.’

“I don’t care.’

There are clothes scattered across the floor, pages from work

assignments and text books piled on the desk and chair. Food

wrappers and crumbs cover the carpet. I open the curtains and

let in some light. He groans a little. I roll him over, and for the first time he takes a look at me. His hair is sticking straight up around the back and the left-hand side from where the pillow has crushed it. There are gunks of sleep in the corners of his eyes.

His skin is pale, suggesting he doesn’t get out much. There is something that looks familiar about him, and I put it down to

the possibility I might have seen his picture in the papers when Rachel disappeared. He looks lost, the kind of lost only somebody in their twenties looks when they’re still at university racking up the degrees with no idea of what they really want to do in life.

‘Drink this.’

‘Go away’