Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

‘Move and I’ll kill him!’ he panted, tightening his hold.

Gardner was clawing at the constricting arm, his face congested, but he didn’t have the leverage to pry it loose. I felt a surge of hope as he dropped one hand to the gun at his belt. But he was already losing consciousness, his coordination failing as his brain was starved of blood and oxygen. As I watched his hand limply fell away.

Stooping under the agent’s dead weight, Kyle jerked his head towards the treatment room where we’d found Sam.

‘In there!’

I was still trying to force my mind to work. How long had Gardner said it would be before the first TBI agents arrived. Half an hour? How long ago was that? I couldn’t remember. Broken pieces of mirror crunched underfoot as I automatically took a step towards the small chamber. Then I saw the massage table, its leather straps open and waiting.

I stopped.

‘Get in there! Now!’ Kyle roared. ‘I’ll kill him!’

I had to moisten my mouth before I could answer. ‘You’re going to kill him anyway.’

He stared at me as though I’d spoken a different language. The pallor of his face was even more noticeable now, shockingly white against the black stubble and bruised skin under his eyes. A greasy sheen of sweat filmed his skin like Vaseline. He was wearing what looked like a medic’s uniform, although it was so filthy it was hard to tell.

It could easily have passed for a security guard’s.

‘Do it!’ Kyle yanked on Gardner’s neck, jerking the TBI agent like a doll. I couldn’t tell if he was still breathing, but if the pressure was sustained much longer there’d be brain damage even if he survived.

I bent and picked up a piece of broken mirror. It was long and thin, like a knife. Its edges gouged my palm as I gripped it tightly, hoping Kyle wouldn’t see my hand shaking.

He watched me uneasily. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Let him breathe.’

He tried to sneer, but it was as brittle as the shard of mirror. ‘Think you can hurt me with that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But do you want to find out?’

His tongue darted out over his lips. Kyle was a big man, fleshy and heavily built. Just like York. If he dropped Gardner and rushed me I doubted I’d have a chance. But his eyes kept going to the glass shard, and I saw the doubt in them.

He slackened the chokehold enough to let Gardner draw a few rattling breaths, then tightened it again. I saw him flick a look at the doorway.

‘Just let him go and I promise I won’t try to stop you.’

Kyle gave a wheezing laugh. ‘Stop me? You’re giving me your permission?’

‘His back-up’s going to be here any second. If you go now you might—’

‘And let you tell them who I am? You think I’m stupid?’

He was a lot of things, but not that. Now what? I didn’t know. But I didn’t think he did either. He was sucking in breaths, stooped and flushed with the effort of supporting Gardner’s weight. From the corner of my eye I could see the gun on the agent’s belt. Kyle obviously hadn’t thought of it so far.

If he did…

Keep him talking. I gestured towards York’s body. ‘Did you enjoy it, mutilating him like that?’

‘You didn’t give me a choice.’

‘So he was just a diversion? You did that to him just so you could get away?’ I didn’t have to try to put contempt into my voice. ‘And it didn’t even work, did it? All that for nothing.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ The shout made him wince, as though in pain. He glared at the undertaker’s body. ‘Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how much time I spent on this? How much planning? This isn’t how it was supposed to be! York was my way out, my happy fucking ending! he’d have been found with Avery’s wife, some loser who’d committed suicide rather than be caught. End of story! I’d have left Knoxville afterwards, started out somewhere new, and now look! Goddammit, what a waste!’

‘No one would have believed it.’

‘No?’ he spat. ‘They believed the photographs I left at his house! They believed everything else I wanted them to!’

A pulse had started to beat in my temple at the mention of Sam. ‘And if they had, what then? Murder more pregnant women?’

‘I wouldn’t have had to! Avery’s wife was so full of life! She was the one. I could feel it!’

‘Like you could feel it with all the others? Like you did with Summer?’ I yelled, forgetting myself.

‘She was Lieberman’s pet!’

‘She liked you!’

‘She liked Irving more!’

That shocked me to silence. We’d all assumed that Irving had been targeted because of the TV interview. But Kyle had been present that day in the morgue when the profiler had flirted with Summer. The next day Irving had gone missing.

And now Summer was lying in the dark as well.

She only smiled back at him. That was all. For Kyle’s ego it had obviously been enough.

I felt sick. But Kyle had become distracted enough to relax his grip on Gardner. I saw the TBI agent’s eyelids start to twitch open, and said the first thing that came into my mind.

‘What had you got against Tom? Was he such a threat?’

‘He was a fraud!’ Kyle’s face twisted in a spasm. ‘The big forensic anthropologist, the expert! Basking in the glory, playing jazz while he worked, like he was in some pizza bar! Hicks was just an asshole, but Lieberman thought he was something special! The greatest mystery in the universe right under his nose, and he didn’t have the imagination to look beyond the rot!’

‘Tom knew better than to waste time searching for answers he couldn’t find.’ I could hear Gardner wheezing again now, but I daren’t spare him a glance. ‘You don’t even know what it is you’re looking for, do you? All the people you’ve killed, these bodies you’ve… you’ve hoarded, and what for? There’s no purpose to any of it. You’re like a kid prodding something dead with a stick—’

‘Shut up!’ Spittle sprayed from his mouth.

‘Do you even know how many lives you’ve wasted?’ I shouted. ‘And why? So you can take photographs? You think that’s going to show you anything?’

‘Yes! The right one can!’ His mouth curled. ‘You’re as bad as Lieberman, you only see the dead meat. But there’s more than that! I’m more than that! Life’s binary, it’s on or off! I’ve stared into people’s eyes and watched it go out of them, like nicking a switch! So where’s it go? Something happens, right then, at that moment! I’ve seen it!’

He sounded desperate. And suddenly I realized that’s exactly what he was. That was what this was all about. We’d been wrong about the killer’s identity, but Jacobsen had been right about everything else. Kyle was obsessed with his own mortality. No, not obsessed, I realized, looking at him.

Terrified.

‘How’s your hand, Kyle?’ I asked. ‘I’m guessing you only pretended you’d stabbed it on the needle. Tom thought he was doing you a favour asking you to help Summer, but you were only hanging round hoping to see one of us get stuck, weren’t you? What happened, did you lose your nerve?’

‘Shut up!’

‘The thing is, if you were just pretending, how come you went so white? It was when I asked about your shots, wasn’t it? You’d not thought about infections from any of the people you’d killed until then, had you?’

‘I told you to shut up!’

‘Noah Harper’s tested positive for Hepatitis C. Did you know that, Kyle?’

‘Liar!’

‘It’s true. You should have taken up the hospital’s offer of post-exposure treatment. Even though you didn’t prick yourself on one of the needles, it was still an open wound. And there was all that gore on your glove. But then you weren’t planning on staying around, were you? Much easier to stick your head in the sand than accept you might be infected by one of your own victims.’