What Lies in the Dark (16 page)

But then he pauses, one couch cushion held high in his hands. Does he actually want to talk to Claire now? After what she said? She could just be calling to yell at him some more. Fletcher can picture her now, she is probably in her car, pulled in at a petrol station. So angry she can’t focus on her driving and wanting to yell at him over and over before hanging up. Typical childish behaviour of her. No, maybe he doesn’t want to talk to her, maybe he didn’t do anything wrong. The phone pauses for a moment as the answer phone kicks in, then begins ringing again. Someone definitely wants to talk to him. A cold shiver runs down his spine. The last
time someone had so determinedly rung him like this, they had found another … Finally he finds the wretched device and presses answer.

Kain hears the door bell ring and freezes mid-click. Looking up the dark dank stairs, Kain’s heart starts pounding. The bare light bulb illuminating Kain’s deep red scar and sallow features. Is someone trying to break in? Kain grips the machete tightly and swallows the urge to flee. Kain waits. The doorbell rings again. Kain wishes that they would just go away. Kain does not want to see anyone, it isn’t safe. It isn’t safe. The doorbell rings again, a voice calls through the letter box.

Go away, go away, go away, go away.

The police have questioned nearly 10,000 people in connection with the murders, have searched around 30,000 vehicles and 8,000 homes. Nothing. So maybe they are frustrated and, of course, angry. So they could be almost forgiven for the zeal with which they search the house. Everything is documented and photographed, everything. Not even the rotten festering garbage bags are left untouched. It doesn’t take them long to find Isobel Hilarie’s wallet on the dresser upstairs.

Elizabeth sits in the interview room, revelling in her role as hero of the hour, a smile plastered across her wrinkled features. In fact the whole police station has a lighter, happier feeling to it. We have got him! It’s all over, we are safe again. We have done it! I can walk on the moon sort of feeling, except in one small dark corner, where Bullface sits, nursing a hangover, pretending to supervise. This whole situation is leaving a bad taste in her mouth and she doesn’t know why.

Fletcher thinks it is all wrong. He can almost see inside Elizabeth’s mind. He has been here before with witnesses. They start saying things like,
‘I knew it, I knew he was a bad man, it was a just a feeling.’
It’s what they will babble into the waiting microphones, smirk into television
cameras. They want to be a hero, to be appreciated by an entire city, for stopping a bad guy. Which is fine except it means that that witness becomes almost … contaminated. The witness begins to exaggerate, trying to create a stronger case, trying to justify their actions. The witness then starts to lose their credibility, lose their objectivity, in their ambition to become a hero; they forget just who they are sacrificing. But then of course, this guy did have Isobel Hilarie’s wallet on his dresser, that will take some explaining.

“I knew he was no good, ever since I met the man, I knew he was no good. I told my husband that he better watch that boy. He thought I was crazy.”

Fletcher gives a forced smile, as if to deny the very notion. It is enough to encourage Elizabeth Mitchell to continue.

“I monitored his comings and goings you know.” She waves a pad of paper at Fletcher. “You see, every time he went out, one of those poor girls died.” Her voice drops theatrically with woe. Fletcher inwardly grimaces. Bullface slowly takes the notepad from Elizabeth with a barely audible thanks. Elizabeth’s face changes slightly, put out by the officer’s lack of interest in what she is saying. She is meant to be a hero! The officers should be thanking her.

“I heard him yelling one night. Just after that Taylor girl died. He was yelling at someone through one of those darn mobiles.”

“What was he saying, Mrs Mitchell?”

“It’s what first got me suspicious of him. Never have I heard a man so angry in my life, even my husband was shocked. It takes a lot to shock him you know, he used to be in the army.”

“What was he saying, Mrs Mitchell?” Fletcher repeats, slightly annoyed.

“He kept yelling about how it wasn’t his fault.” Ah finally, Elizabeth got the attention she was looking for.

They will interview his boss. The flabby man will sit there, jammed between the armrests telling them how hard it is to
get good help these days. With a smile that sickens young girls, he will tell them just what a quiet guy he is, a quiet loner. Keeps mainly to himself, talks a lot about heavy metal, a kinda angry guy. The quiet angry loner, well to tell you the truth, he will whisper, I suspected the guy myself but I just didn’t think. In the boss’s mind he has already replaced the guy, perhaps with Lisa. Lisa the girl who wears thongs behind the counter, his tongue explores his teeth thoughtfully. Lisa could definitely do with some extra shifts. In his excitement he is not quite listening to Fletcher only offering a mindless, “Yes, yes.” That John guy is now history. Don’t let the door hit you where Satan split you.

His name is John by the way. John Roberts. The only person who is surprised that he has been arrested is John himself. Everyone Fletcher interviews says the same thing.
‘John is a quiet loner. I am not surprised, Officer. I suspected him myself but didn’t think the kid would really …’
Even his girlfriend isn’t helping. Bullface has listened in partial disgust as his girlfriend drones on and on about how she met him at a bad point in her life, how she has been longing to leave him for weeks and weeks now but she is just (lip quiver) so afraid (tissue dabbed at heavily made-up eyes) of his moods and what he would do to her (more lip quiver). She is John’s main alibi but keeps saying how he wasn’t with her the whole time, or she doesn’t remember him being there that day or that she woke up during the night and he wasn’t there.

Only John’s mother actually sticks up for him. Well, kinda. She laughs outright at Bullface’s hints. “My son might be a dirty worthless slob, Officer, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone, doesn’t have the balls.”

For some people, being arrested is a relief. The pressure of not being caught, of not having to hide every little thing. The constant looking over the shoulder, it gets a little too much. Some people subconsciously might let themselves be caught, becoming sloppy and unfocused because it’s all too much to keep hiding. Some people want the opportunity to boast, it
almost kills them trying to hold back the gloating, the,
‘Look how well I did to keep you occupied for so long.’
Then for some people being caught is a surprise and they think they can talk their way out of it, they are the victim for being arrested. Try to manipulate their interviewers into seeing things their way. The woman was asking for it. I didn’t see the light change. Most try and play innocent though, the trick really is to wear them down, keep going over and over the situations waiting for something to give, waiting for the sigh to say they have given up. That is what makes a good interviewer, too many detectives give up quickly, thinking this guy isn’t going to crack. They look for more DNA evidence, more little things that are hard to explain, thinking that they should leave the guy to stew. No, Fletcher thinks, you should never leave the guy to stew, if he is guilty then he will be busy thinking just how to explain the little things that are hard to explain. Fletcher prefers to drill over and over, letting other officers find the hard-to-explain items. If they find something, well good, something to shock them with, catch them off guard, break down the now drilled defences.

Fletcher didn’t think today would end with him sitting opposite the guy, the guy they have been trying to catch for almost a year now, well eight, nine months. Actually Fletcher isn’t quite sure that this is the guy. Calm down, he keeps trying to tell himself, think through this rationally. Fletcher is still trying to calm down from the argument with Claire, keeps resisting the urge to check his phone under the table, in hope that she has already texted or even called him. Why hasn’t she already? No, he is allowing himself to be distracted, he can’t fuck this one up, no one in the station would forgive him. He can almost picture Bullface scowling at him through the glass, get on with it, she would be muttering. No, he has to do this calmly, rationally (oh why the fuck can’t she be rational for once?)

Fletcher is a little disappointed though. He was expecting a suave handsome guy, someone worthy of him. This killer has got the better of him for a long, long time, and Fletcher was expecting something more than the loser sitting in front of him. But then maybe that’s what this guy’s
problem is. He is a loser wanting to be better than everyone else. But still, the greasy pony tail, the monobrow is not what he expected from a sophisticated, highly talented killer.

John Roberts is a rock man. He lives, breathes and eats his music. He is one of the greatest living rock gods of all time … in his own mind. In reality his drum kit is dusty and he barely knows how to play. In conjunction with his job as a video clerk, he writes fantastic hair-raising reviews for a rock magazine – a magazine with a distribution of three thousand and falling. He spends his spare nights scrutinising forthcoming rock bands with names like
Two Doves are a Raven, V=New Shoes!
and
My Anus Itches.
In his mind he still has potential and he conforms to this image by always wearing a heavy black trench coat and biker boots, even in the summer. As a result he gives off a strong earthy scent, which his soon to be ex-girlfriend absolutely despises. Later officers will argue that the realisation that he couldn’t live up to what he wanted to be, the realisation that he was a nothing, could have been one of the many triggers. They will argue that they were seeking a man who seemed to be killing mainly for the power, the power over the city, over the women. A man seeking such power would have so little in his own life, which was certainly true. Fletcher would argue that this man just didn’t feel like the killer, an argument which even to his own ears is weak. Maybe the officers are blind-sided, just wanting to catch a killer, maybe they think Fletcher is prolonging his time in the spotlight.

Fletcher is aware though, of how desperately the other officers want this man to be the killer. He has read too many cases where officers have stereotyped certain offenders, almost blocking them into the role they want them to play. No one is innocent under constant scrutiny, and there are always unexplainable clues. Maybe these officers are stereotyping the quiet loner too quickly but then maybe, knowing this, Fletcher is too reluctant to see the clues that are really there.

John is glaring at him now, his scariest glare which makes him look like a cross little child. Fletcher just can’t take this seriously. There is no way this loser could kill all those women. Someone taps on the window, impatient for him to start the interview. Fletcher clears his throat. Typically he would try and minimise the offence, downplay the seriousness of the situation, but that really doesn’t apply here – ‘
Oh, don’t worry you have only killed a few women, you are looking at six months at the most, maybe a little community.’
Fletcher isn’t the type to manipulate the suspect’s self-esteem either, he just doesn’t have it in him. He asks John to confirm the basic details and explains why he is here. John grunts, but mostly he seems a little stunned.

Fletcher tries pinning him with his best,
‘I know what you did’
look. It is ineffective. He wishes Bullface was in the room, she is the better intimidator. He tries to explain to John how futile it is to deny the charges. He says something along the lines of how he wants to hear John’s side of the story.

John’s arms spring from being crossed defiantly to hands slammed into the table, beating in time to an angry scream. “No! No! No! You are not going to pin this shit on me,” John snarls.

Two officers rush eagerly in to restrain him.

Fletcher waves the officers back, trying to prove that he still has some kind of authority.

“Well you need to start talking.” Fletcher makes his voice sound tougher, more authoritative, tries to give off the impression that he is the man, the man who will listen. Behind the glass window, someone snorts with laugher, luckily unheard by John.

“What’s in the safe, Mr Roberts?”

“What safe?”

There is definitely confusion in John’s eyes but then Fletcher has been fooled before, by more convincing liars. The laugh has annoyed him, he wants everyone to know that he is still capable of doing his job just fine thank you. How dare they laugh at him, just who is back there?

“The safe.”

“What safe?” John Roberts practically growls
through clenched teeth.

“The safe in your kitchen.” Fletcher fixes him with a knowing look, John Roberts still looks very confused.

“I don’t have a safe.”

“Our officers are working on opening it now.” Fletcher tries his best,
‘it’s futile to deny’
tone, straining his ears to try and catch another laugh. He sits back and crosses his arms.

John Roberts still looks very confused, thinks that he has been arrested by a complete fruit loop. This has to be some kind of joke. He doesn’t know anything about the safe; he had inherited the house from his grandfather Arnold Mitchell, Old Arnie, being slightly paranoid of his neighbours, had hidden his most precious items in the safe. Old Arnie had died from Alzheimer’s and had forgotten to tell his dearest it was there. Officers will work for an hour trying to jam it open, breaking through the rust only to find several faded nudie magazines and a gold wrist watch.

“I don’t have a safe.” John growls again.

Fletcher looks at him again, trying to stare him down, angry eyeball meets angry eyeball. Fletcher tries to picture this face being the last one that stared down at a woman taking her last gasping breaths, but just can’t see it. Behind the glass, the other officers are becoming more and more convinced that this is their killer, after all aren’t they looking for a sociopath? Someone who is cool and calm, a good liar. Someone with a cruel streak, they are convinced that John is playing Fletcher. Fletcher being the trusting idiot, is completely falling for it – hook, line and killer.