The Devil's Staircase (22 page)

Of laughing.

I dried myself, wrapped the towel around me, and went out to the full-length mirrors opposite the showers. The mirrors were steamed up, so I slowly rubbed one with my hands.

My face looked terrible.

I walked into the body-scrub room, which was dimly lit by the street-light from the window Hamish had obviously prised open to get in. The coating of dead skin on the floor had Hamish’s footprints on it and looked spooky. Flicking brown skin from my bare feet, I grabbed the polyester bag of clothes Hamish had brought for me, stopped, and thought for a moment.

I took the bag of clothes and went back out to
realy
look at myself in the mirror.

I looked exhausted from running. I had nothing to run from anymore. Oddly, my features seemed more relaxed now that I knew for certain. I dropped the towel to the floor and stared at myself – at the body I’d always been scared of. A good body, good shape, pretty. Looking at it you’d never know there was a worm gnawing away inside.

Reaching into the plastic bag, I grabbed Hamish’s T-shirt and put it on. The mirror had steamed up. I rubbed a patch to fix my hair, looked at my sad though relaxed face. I rubbed a bit lower to look at myself in the white T-shirt Hamish said he used to wear to bed – size sixteen maybe, nice seams, low round neck, and with a sweeping black drawing on the front of two very big eyes.

It had all gone to fuck, Hamish thought. His own fault. Should have stuck with the drifters who had less to live for. Should have stopped the squatters moving in. He felt sicker by the minute.

When Bronwyn had phoned, he’d been parked in Queensway Terrace wondering how best to deal with the body. He had his ‘working clothes’ in plastic bags on the passenger seat.

He didn’t only need to dump it, he needed to clean it, so there’d be nothing to lead the police to him. As if by magic, Bronwyn rang with the answer. The steam rooms. More chemicals and scrubbing brushes than he’d know what to do with. Hell, there might even be one of those crematorium-like furnaces.

After dealing with the body, he would run away. He’d run away before, after the year he’d done because of the tennis player in Toronto. He’d liked the girl, and had watched her often, the battered curtain of his student room his mask, but one night he followed her home and he got the year. It had felt nice, made him throb a little thinking about it now.

But no time for reminiscing, Hamish thought, as banging noises ricocheted from the boot. He needed to dump the body then drive as fast and as far away as he could.

He left the car in a lane that was dark and private, and found a window to break into. He jumped down into the concrete room and listened for her. He followed the creaking noise and when it suddenly stopped, she appeared before him, scaring the shit out of him with her screams.

The emotional outburst afterwards was unexpected, but he liked his girlfriends to have spirit, and she certainly had that now.

Why not?
he thought to himself, as he jumped back out the window to empty the car. May as well have a bit of fun before heading off. After all, it’s the middle of the night, the place will be deserted for hours. Plus, she’s asking for it with that netball skirt. Every time she leans over you can make out her cunt.

It had taken Pete a while to convince the police that his anti-establishment, joyriding background did not automatically make him a serial killer. In fact, this argument didn’t help at all, really, and if it hadn’t been for his other arguments, he may never have been released.

The first argument concerned something Francesco had told him one night in the squat. Everyone was either watching hangover TV, or off sightseeing. Bronny and Hamish were ‘doing London’ which, he reflected, had taken them all of three hours.

‘I just needed to check our availablity,’ Francesco had told Pete in the kitchen. ‘So I used my key to unlock the door to the Internet café and went in to use one of the computers. Hamish had left his terminal on. He wouldn’t have expected anyone to go in, and I’m the only other person who has a key . . . Anyway, I changed the rates and then did what any normal person does, I had a sticky beak. Nothing unusual, I suppose, to have only visited porn sites in the last few days, but when I clicked on the images he’d saved, I realised this wasn’t everyday stuff. Violent, quite specific. Would’ve taken him a while to collect.’

Francesco had apparently clicked on some of the images in his file: ‘A runner who looked like she was being raped on an athletics track, an unhappy swimmer with goggles on her eyes and two penises in her mouth . . .’

Francesco and Pete had agreed that there was something very creepy about Hamish. Something intangible. He was slippery, and just as they were conferring, Hamish had slipped into the kitchen with Bronny, then slipped out again to watch TV.

But even though Francesco had confirmed this, it wasn’t anything incriminating, not enough to convince the police of Pete’s innocence. So Pete, tired and angry at having a leather gimp mask thrust in his face as some kind of confession aphrodisiac, asked if his DNA had been tested against samples from the leather gimp mask yet. They were working on it, and on DNA from the inside of his mouth, which would be tested against swabs taken from all over the scene, but it would take a while for the results. In the meantime, they agreed, that yes, if Pete donned gloves and a makeshift plastic head cover, he could try on the bloody leather gimp mask.

‘If the glove don’t fit, you have to acquit,’ Pete said.

’Course it didn’t fit. Pete had a large head. His mother had reminded him of this often, usually after her second glass.

Okay, so maybe he hadn’t worn the mask, but maybe no one had – after all, the prints, blood and excrement on it had not been identified as yet. What else could they get on him? Time was running out. They had to find something.

And they did. In the afternoon, an officer went to his place of work and discovered a stolen purse in his locker.

‘Some cleaners had it in for Bronwyn. They’d set her up,’ Pete argued. ‘I was just trying to help her. I snuck in, took it out of her locker and hid it. I was going to return it to the owner secretly, but she hadn’t come back to the gym or steam rooms yet.’

‘Why didn’t you take it to the police?’

‘I’m allergic.’

The officers then discovered why Pete was allergic to law enforcement. Since being deported from Australia six months earlier, he’d spent most of his time associating with shady types who might help him get home again.

‘Why did you buy the fake passport?’ Vera Oh asked. ‘Because I wanted to go home,’ Pete said, checking over his shoulder to see what she was looking at.

‘Why did you jump the cruise ship in Morocco?’

‘Because I wanted to get back to Australia.’

‘Why did you fail to meet with your probation officer?’

‘Because I had a meeting with someone who said he could help me get back to Australia.’

Day and night he’d been trying. He’d met more dodgy people-smugglers and identity salesmen than most criminals, and had spent all the money he’d earned on various attempts, none of which had worked. In fact, his ideas had all dried up and he was starting to think there was no way of getting home again.

But then he’d met Bronny and there was something about her, something that seemed as lost as he was. He loved the way she cared about plants and ate with gusto and how she said
okey-dokey
when she was nervous. He started to forget about the smell of the trees and the horizon that went everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She was very beautiful and she had no idea. Natural, like the country he loved, which wasn’t over-groomed like the hedges and neat green fields of England. Unkempt almost. Dangerous almost. Raw, inhospitable, intangible and addictive.

Pete had never fallen in love before. He’d been too busy being angry – at his mother for being a drunk, at his father for being 12,000 miles away, at the world for thinking he was scum. He had no time for anything but anger and a drive in the dust under a huge open sky on a straight, flat road.

The officers were starting to warm to him, he could tell, and when the other girl in the basement was identified as Leanne Donohue from Ballarat, they just about decided to let him go. Leanne Donohue had apparently fallen off a boat in Devon five months ago. She’d been with Hamish at the time – they’d done Europe together and were apparently great mates. Hamish had helped with the search, comforted the family. He’d even gone to Australia to attend her long awaited body-less memorial service. This trip had originally been Hamish’s main alibi, but police soon discovered that he’d only been away for four days in total, and by the looks of Celia she’d been left alone for significant periods of time, so his holiday to Australia was no longer a viable defence.

Then there was the background report faxed in from Canada, completed after Hamish had been found guilty of a sexual assault charge during third year Computer Science at the University of Toronto . . .

Mr Watson has never had an intimate relationship with a woman. He admits to feelings of sexual inadequacy, saying he worries that he ‘wouldn’t function properly in that kind of situation’. He also displays callous sexual attitudes specifically targeted against women in their twenties and thirties. This callousness is evidenced in his description of the victim as ‘a fit cunt’; as well as in his description of his mother when she was younger as ‘the town whore’.

Mr Watson’s mother, a drug user and single mother, abandoned her son while he was suffering from measles at the age of twelve. He was taken into care shortly after and has had no contact with his mother since.

Mr Watson also appears to view sex as an entitlement: ‘She was wearing a tennis skirt two sizes too small!’ He does not take responsibility for the offence, denying following the victim on several occasions before chasing her in the street and assaulting her.

In the writer’s opinion, Mr Watson has no victim empathy, arguing ‘she seemed to like it’, and indeed feels he has been victimised himself – ‘My life has been ruined by that slag . . .’

Just as Pete was about to be released, the hospital rang. ‘She’s awake!’ the nurse said. ‘The doctor’s coming to check her and I’ve phoned Greg – he’s on his way.’

Vera Oh bundled Pete into a police car and sped towards the hospital, rushing along corridors and up the stairs to the second floor. But they didn’t find what they’d hoped to find – Celia awake and ready to identify her torturer. Instead they found Greg and his family wailing with grief in the waiting room.

Staring at the big eyes in the mirror, I realised that death had followed me. He had been with me on the plane, in transit, in the hostel, then under my bedroom. And he was here now, a guy with John Lennon glasses and a cute smile.

I tiptoed upstairs, checking to see if he was there. It was dark, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the relaxation area, but it was quiet, so I kept walking as softly as I could past the loungers, through the double doors, past the kitchen, and into the reception booth. Assuming the emergency number was the same as at home, I dialled 000 – which didn’t work. I tried it again, then again.

I heard a noise and hung up. Crawling out of the reception booth I found the front door and felt the lock, where I had left the key after arriving. It wasn’t there.

I could hear the shower boiler creaking. There were other noises coming from downstairs. He must be down there again, I thought. I raced into the kitchen and grabbed the large knife I’d once used to chop toasted cheese sandwiches in half. I opened the double doors and entered the dark relaxation area. I crept across the marble tiles towards the internal door leading to the pool. The commotion downstairs was getting louder – a thud, another, another, banging, something being dragged along the floor, doors opening and closing. I hated to think what he might be doing down there. The internal door would not budge, and I remembered that it had been boarded and painted on the other side. I looked around the huge room. There were no windows, no escape routes. The only way, I realised, was through the window in the body-scrub room.

I moved towards the stairs, using the huge knife as my guide stick. I tiptoed past the tear-shaped plunge pool. Specks of light danced on the water. One by one I descended the stairs towards the shower area and body-scrub room.

The noises stopped before I had reached the bottom of the stairs. I stood still and listened. Was he coming? What could I do? I looked around for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere to go and my reflection was bouncing from every mirror surrounding the pool. As I listened to his footsteps approaching, getting closer, I noticed the dark, quiet water of the plunge pool. I stepped into the freezing blackness, and slowly ducked my body and head under the water, trying not to make a splash or ripple. I held my breath with my eyes open. I could see he was walking right past me, up towards the relaxation area. I think I was crying underwater, my tears merging with it, my throat making a whale noise, a wet yell . . . and bubbles . . . shit, I was making bubbles, and I was running out of breath. I was going to get caught. He would drag me from the pool, get hold of my knife, and kill me.