Steven Dunne - Deity

Brook shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But you’re wrong — they’re not dead. It’s a game. Adele, the girl who reminds me of you, she’s smart, she’s got things to say.’

‘Maybe she’s already said them.’

‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

‘Is she smart enough to do what I did?’

Brook looked into Terri’s eyes, then down at her wrists. ‘Let’s hope not.’

Terri sat in silence, sipping her wine. Brook checked his watch. ‘I should go to bed.’

‘Tell me about The Reaper, Dad.’

Brook turned to her. The second elephant was in the room and she’d spotted it. ‘What about him?’

‘Who was he?’

‘Haven’t you heard? I never caught him. He’s still at large.’

‘I mean, what did he do? What was it like finding all those. .?’

Brook looked across at her. ‘Bodies?’

Terri nodded.

Brook was silent. ‘It was terrible,’ he said finally — Brook’s first lie to his daughter. At least, the first he could remember telling. Nineteen-ninty. Twenty-one years ago and he could remember it like yesterday. He’d felt nothing. Standing beneath the corpse of a child hanging from a rope, then the year after, a young girl tied to a chair on its side, throat cut from ear to ear. It had left him cold. No, it was worse than that. He’d felt excitement at the first one. It was just a case, another puzzle. Who and why? He’d seen too much, even as a mere thirty year old in the Met. He was dead inside, hollowed out. Looking back, that was the problem, the first step on the road to his breakdown.

‘Go on.’

‘It’s a matter of public record, Terri. I’ve got a book you can read. .’

‘I want you to tell me.’

Brook drained his glass. ‘He killed families. Cut them up in their own homes. He did it quickly and efficiently and without pleasure, like it was work, something he had to get done.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d decided that society would be better off without them. They were always petty criminal families who made other lives a misery. He figured that no one would miss them, no one would mourn their passing. Know what? He was right.’

‘North London was the first, correct?’

Brook nodded imperceptibly. ‘Harlesden, 1990. Sammy Elphick and his wife and boy.’

‘You remember their names after all this time?’

Brook just smiled at her without showing his teeth. ‘The year after, Floyd Wrigley and his girlfriend were. . killed. Their daughter Tamara had her throat cut.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Ten or eleven.’

‘God. Is that what started it?’

‘My breakdown? It’s hard to say. But it was a difficult time. You’d just been born, yet I was spending every waking hour looking for The Reaper. I became obsessed.’

‘Didn’t you have any suspects?’

Brook refilled his glass. ‘No.’ His second lie.

‘And then you had your breakdown?’

Brook sighed. ‘When your mum and I. . I came to Derby to get away, to find some peace.’ He managed a bitter laugh.

‘But The Reaper followed you to Derby.’

‘Not at first. But yes, he followed me here.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’ A hat-trick of lies. To his own daughter.

‘And two more families died.’

‘Yes.’

Terri appeared satisfied, but Brook knew she was preparing the ground or soon the elephant in the room would be shattering the windows. ‘Tony was murdered three years ago. Just before that last family were slaughtered in Derby.’

Brook looked her in the eye. ‘I know.’

Terri continued, staring off intently as though at an invisible script. ‘The police interviewed me after Tony’s murder. They were very interested in you. They said you had no alibi. They said you had motive — because of Tony and me. They said you came down to Brighton five years ago and assaulted him. You’d found out about our. . affair.’ She swallowed. ‘Is that true?’

‘Affair,’ he sneered. ‘Adults have affairs.’

‘Is it true?’ she persisted.

Brook could see his daughter was short of breath, anticipating the answer to a question long in the forging. ‘Yes, it’s true. I went to Tony’s office. I was only going to threaten him, warn him off. Guess I lost control. Two years later, after he was murdered, they came to Derby to interview me. I was an obvious suspect.’

Terri said nothing but her mind was in turmoil, willing her on, willing her to stop.

Brook put her out of her misery. ‘You can ask me.’

She took a sharp intake of breath and sought the right words. They were deceptively simple. ‘Did you kill him, Dad?’

Brook smiled now. No more lies. He looked her straight in the eye. ‘No.’

When Terri trudged back to the sofa, it was nearly two in the morning. Brook finally dragged himself up the stairs an hour before he had to set off back into Derby for his shift in Leopold Street. He didn’t sleep, didn’t even undress, just lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. Eventually he hauled himself back down the stairs to leave, slipping the new Poe anthology into his pocket.

On his way out, he spotted a note on the table.

Dad, you said this Adele was a poet and she bought the Edgar Allan Poe anthology the day she disappeared. But if she’s anything like me she’s been thinking about things for a long time. Have a look at the other books in her room. She would read poets who actually killed themselves and wrote poems to that end. They’d probably be women e.g. Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. Just a thought.

Glad we had a chance to talk and don’t worry.

You’re my immortal love now.

Love you. T x

Brook felt a childish rush of pleasure. He was loved. He glanced across at the closed door behind which his daughter slept. He wanted to sneak in and check she was safe and warm, as he’d done when she was a baby. Brook would sit for hours next to her cot just watching her, feeling the exquisite dread of the protector, the bulwark against the horrors of the outside world beyond the nursery door. He’d failed her; let her fall into the clutches of Tony Harvey-Ellis. Maybe he had another chance.

DS Morton rolled down the window. ‘You’re early, sir.’

‘Couldn’t sleep. All quiet?’

‘As the grave.’ Morton yawned.

‘Go and get a few hours’ sleep, Rob. Busy day tomorrow.’ Morton raised an eyebrow. ‘Today,’ Brook amended with a smile.

‘What time do we start at the college?’

‘Nine-thirty.’

Brook manoeuvred his BMW into the tight space left by Morton. He poured a tea from his flask and texted Noble to have SOCO gather all the artefacts like books and posters from Adele Watson’s bedroom. He wanted another look at her Sylvia Plath book.

He opened his anthology of Edgar Allan Poe, rereading ‘A Dream Within a Dream’ then skimmed through some of the other works. He alighted on Poe’s most famous long poem, ‘The Raven’, and read it thoroughly, all eighteen verses, alighting on the lines,

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;

’Tis the wind and nothing more!

Brook woke with a start, strange lights dancing around in his head. When he was able to fully open his eyes, he saw the reason why. Emergency lights were flashing across the road. He jumped from his car and ran towards the derelict house, shielding his sleep-deprived eyes from the blinding glare. He could make out a figure, walking unsteadily towards the rear of an ambulance, and quickened his pace.

‘Phil,’ shouted Brook. ‘Is that you?’

The hunched form of Phil Ward turned. He screwed his eyes to try and focus on Brook.

‘Damen?’ he slurred, swaying from side to side. The uniformed ambulanceman was helping him find the bottom step of the vehicle.