II
She doesn't see dead twelve year old girls. She sees Molly, every time. And she'd told him she needs to solve this because she knows it's her case, knows that no one else here is going to understand. She's known it since her daughter started talking to her, and told her.
'Never going to catch him, Mum. Are you coming home soon?'
'Molls...'
'You should sleep, you'll get wrinkles. Don't they have eye cream in 1982?'
'I can't sleep. I miss y...'
'Never mind about that. He's here. He's been to see you.'
'Molls?'
But there was only a kitchen half-lit from the sitting room lamp and she's spilling the coffee granules from her spoon, melting them under her bare toes, the hem of the too-big man's shirt tickling her thigh.
It had only taken a glance to place him and gauge his state of mind; the way he hadn't approached the corpse and was sunken into his coat had told her everything she needed to know. He's giving up and he'll be lost soon, melted away under the scrutiny of a hundred pairs of eyes calling him a failure. It's unfair, it's not his fault. How could anyone solve this? But she has no space for feeling sorry for him and maybe it's even inevitable; she does, at some point, have to go home. And he's not real. None of them are real. The dead girls aren't real. Only Molly is real and what Molly tells her, that's all she can let in.
The building next to the last body hadn't helped. She'd been told to go there and wait and she had but nothing had happened. Oh, he'd shown up but she'd been half expecting that anyway because he usually does at some point. After he'd left, nothing. She'll go back again tomorrow night, probably, maybe, definitely. Until then, she'll stay up and wait for her daughter.
He replaces the phone receiver and it rings again; he picks it up and says words, puts it down, hand hovering for three seconds before it rings again, picks it up, says words, puts it down. His ears buzz so loudly he can barely hear a thing but it doesn't stop the Super, the press, Ray, Chris, his mother, the next door neighbour's bloody cat from calling, walking in, saying things and leaving to make room for the next. He doesn't know how they do it. It looks busy out there, that other world that isn't this glass-walled cubicle with darts trophies on the shelf and a team picture signed by every member of the Man City 1976 League Cup winning squad, but they've got no leads so he doesn't know why.
'Should have slept last night, Guv. You're no use to anyone.'
He pours himself a Scotch. Under the desk, there's an unnamed muscle in his thigh that won't stop twitching and the alcohol is burning his throat, already raw from two packs a day for the last four weeks. Four weeks today. A lifetime.
'Fuck off, Sam.'
The matter-of-fact tone must have done the trick because when he whips his head round to the corner, there's no one there.
They've turned the radio off because no one needs to hear an hourly news bulletin calling them useless and no one's in the mood for synthesized pop. She works to the backdrop of rustling paper, people murmuring and his resigned and tired voice on the phone in the office which she hears like the rumble of tyres a mile away on a quiet road; always there, on the approach, quiet and vague until the car appears and pastes you to the tarmac.
'New profile, Bolly?'
She hadn't heard him open his door. When she looks up, his head is framed against black and white checks; for a moment, she can't make out his features.
'Half an hour.'
He nods and disappears. She stares at the ceiling until the lines between the tiles blur and mesh, like the squares have made a sky of black and white and no space for any other colour in between, stretching off into oblivion.
'She'll find the answer. She knows more than she can explain.'
'Thought I told you to fuck off.'
'Oh yeah. Sorry, Guv.'
It comes in at three in the afternoon, on the dot. They know it's real and not one of the hundreds of calls from panicked parents whose daughters have stayed too long chatting to mates after school because it's Gene's phone that rings. Members of the public aren't privy to his extension number but that doesn't seem to stop this man.
The instant the second hand ticks round and drops the long hand onto 12, it starts. People are watching. This has happened four times now. He ignores them and lifts the receiver, listening to a regular beep that he can't place.
...beep....beep....beep...come on you bastard show yourself....beep....beep...
There's never a voice, they can never trace the number. But it's their countdown; in precisely twelve hours, another girl will be killed. He closes his eyes, almost too weary to do this again. But they have to try, they can't just sit here and wait.
He puts the phone down and looks up to a roomful of expectant people who all look down at the floor when he nods.
'Right you lot. You know the drill. Get every copper you can lay your hands on and tell 'em they're spending tonight on watch. Ray, organise numbers and spread them over the patch, I want every single person knowing where they have to be the instant they walk through the door so they can turn 'round and bloody well walk out again. Shaz, get those maps out. There has to be some waste ground around 'ere we haven't found yet. Every plod on day shift is going out in precisely five minutes to start looking for potential dumping grounds.'
No one says, because they don't need to, that finding where he's going to dump the body isn't going to stop the girl from being killed. They might catch him, afterwards, but it'll be too late for the victim. He tries not to think about it. His mind started telling him a week ago that they're never going to find him when he's snatching the kid, the district is just too big, too many little girls. If he would leave any kind of clue they'd have something to go on but so far, nothing.
He stands suddenly, pushing his inadequacies away. Ten drawn faces look back at him; for the first time, he notices that hers is absent.
'I'm going to see the Chief Super. It's about time he got off his arse and got the schools closed.'
Three o clock. Surely that can't be a coincidence? If that's when he calls, they're presuming that's when he takes his next victim, after school. It only fits with three of the seven kids who've been killed and that's why no curfew or school closures have been allowed. But this has gone far enough. He has to do something.
'And then I'm meeting with the other London forces. Ray, you're in charge until Madam shows her face again – actually, when she does, tell her to go and wait in Luigi's for me.'
He almost says that she's completely useless at the moment anyway so she might as well fuck off home, but he stopped all that public dressing-down of his officers a few years ago. So he just picks up his coat and leaves, letting his boys get on with the work that they all know isn't going to do any good.
She wanders the streets, reading the graffiti on the walls. There's a tune under her breath that she doesn't hear, just hums along (oh baby when you talk like that...) as Molly skips ahead of her, losing her from sight as she turns down an alleyway.
'Molls?'
(you make a woman go mad)
'Come on, Mum!'
She rounds the corner at the end of the alley, opening onto a flat space that slopes down to the river. Molly is nowhere in sight but that slips her mind as two things register; one is that she's looking over at the O2 stadium and the other is that a man is standing with his back against the wall, leg bent and smirking, all small, wiry muscle and short hair.
There's blood on his hands.
'...you.'
Yeah. Hello, Alex.
'How is this...am I home?'
What do you think?
It looks like 2008. But he doesn't look like he belongs here and she's still wearing her white leather jacket; she's suddenly very aware of those stupid curls brushing against her cheek in the breeze, and the too-large bangles that should have been tossed as soon as the clock hit midnight January first, 1990.
'What's going on? Am I mad? Have I died? Tell me.'
How should I know?
'Where's Gene?'
A shrug.
'Is it you? Are you killing those girls?'
He spreads his hands, blood dripping (...beep...beep...beep) and laughs, pushing off the wall with his foot.
See you, Alex.
When she looks down the alley, there's no sign of him, or of Molly and the O2 stadium is once more a patch of empty air. She stands, looking down at the ground, until the police radio in her pocket crackles and Ray's annoyed voice can be heard.
'...go...Luigi's...for the Guv.'
She turns him off, swivels on her heel and walks. Night is drawing in and it's bitterly cold but she doesn't feel a thing. She just watches the stars, numb, head lost in the cloud of frozen breath that hangs around her face as she moves. It's a mile before she starts to cry and another before she finds she can't stop.
'Where the bloody hell is she?!'
'Dunno, Guv. I gave her your message.'
'Alright, Raymondo.' His chest hurts when he sighs, too tight from all the smoking and stress and not enough sleep. 'Get on out there and pray we find this bastard tonight. I'll find her and meet you out there.'
Ray's face says he should just forget about her but he can't do that. She's not at Luigi's obviously, not at home. He rings Evan White but he hasn't seen her – at least he can tell the man to keep Alex Price in his sight at all times, d'you get me? and then there's no other place he can think of. Unless...
He never wants to see this damn place again. Why would she keep coming back here?
'Drake?'
His voice is hard and bitter, even to his own ears. He doesn't care. She can't keep doing this. Even the sound of her tears from the next room doesn't move him. He's too old, too tired. He shouldn't have to be a babysitter.
'Get up.'
She's crouching, bent in on herself, face to her knees. It looks like she's been crying for a long time and he doesn't know whether the shaking is from her sobs or the cold.
'Bloody get up, woman!' He drags her by the arm, too hard, too rough. She's limp and when her face turns up, there's mascara running a river down her cheeks.
'I can't. I can't, Gene.'
She tries to cry into his chest, he can't bear it and slaps her across the face. The leather of his glove makes a dull thwack as it connects, not hard but hopefully enough to snap her out of it. She just shakes her head, hopeless; he pushes her back against the wall by her shoulders and turns her chin so she has to look at him. When she does, the angry words wither to dust in his throat. Not because he's not angry but because there doesn't seem to be any point. He's never understood her and he's not about to start now.
'What's wrong?'
'We can't stop it. He's not...from here. I don't know what he wants.'
He's dead.
'Bollocks. Shut your mouth, Alex. ' He's thought a thousand times that he doesn't know what this man wants, doesn't know where he's from, doesn't know how to stop it. But when she spells it out he can't stop the denial, the hard, painful rage that burns up through him and spills out of his mouth.
'Shut up, just shut up. You're my D.I. I need you. We haven't got time to fall apart, we haven't got time for this shit. Just shut up you stupid fucking...'
She's kissing him, biting his lip. The peeling paint on the wall is flaking off and falling onto her shoulders like snow, like dandruff, caught in her curls and getting lost against the impossible whiteness of her leather jacket. He tastes blood and pulls back, sees himself painted on her lip like they're on a page, stuck there by the rough stroke of an uncaring child's paintbrush.
Not like this, no, not like this.
Her body is cold under her clothes, all pointed angles and jutting bones. His gloves bump up over her ribs on the way to her tits, her leg too tight as it wraps around his waist. She weighs nothing, tastes like copper and mint and wine, too light in his arms as his bulk presses her to the bricks, too cold as he shoves inside her, her cry too loud in the empty space filled with the ghosts of dead children. He closes his eyes to block them out, block her out, gasping for breath as he fights for release, to be free of all this, wanting to just be himself again. She's shuddering, scraping his neck and pulling his hair, exposing her throat for his teeth, allowing him to vent his anger on her body. When she comes it's with a strained squeal that pierces him through the chest, almost hurts, almost kills him. The little death that never kills you, just traps you until you wish you hated it, hated her.
She doesn't cling to him, doesn't try to kiss him. It would be better if she did.
'We have to go.' He's tidying himself up, looking down, ashamed of himself. 'We've got to find him.'
She just shakes her head, wordless. But when he turns and starts to walk towards the car she follows him out, her white jacket shining next to his black coat, his golden hair catching the starlight and reflecting it onto her dark curls.
By the side of the house, a man watches them walk and grins, his smile too wide, teeth too bright. He makes no sound and leaves no breath in the air, a ghost with copper-red stains on his hands and stars in his eyes.