Danuta Reah - Only Darkness

Sarah was combing her hair in front of the mirror in the students’ cloakroom, prior to going home. She could smell the smoke from Leanne’s cigarette as Leanne and Rachel chatted over a cubicle door. Sarah stared into the mirror, and wondered if her face was too fat. She was thinking about Nick. Was she attractive enough? When she looked in the mirror she thought she was, but sometimes she caught sight of herself unexpectedly and saw someone frighteningly plain. She was seeing him on Friday. She put away her comb, anxiously looking at her reflection.

‘… essay title?’

‘Sorry?’ Her hand jerked a bit. Leanne was beside her, energetically back-combing her hair.

‘Have you written down that essay title?’ Leanne bundled her hair up on top of her head. ‘Look out, world,’ she said. She usually relied on other people to keep her up to date with assignments. ‘Are you coming to Adam’s party on Friday?’

Sarah felt the usual pang of exclusion. ‘He didn’t ask me,’ she said.

Leanne was applying colour to her eyes. ‘You don’t listen, do you? He asked everybody in the group. You can come with me and Raich if you want.’

Sarah was cautious. Leanne made her nervous. ‘I can’t, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing Nick.’

‘Bring him.’ Leanne fastened a clip into her hair. Sarah bit her fingernail. Nick could be difficult with other people. He didn’t like students.

‘OK, I’ll ask him,’ she said, not meaning to. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t ask him, tell him,’ said Leanne, running the tap over her cigarette end and discarding it in the basin. ‘See you.’ She and Rachel left.

Sarah went back to her contemplation of the mirror. Now Leanne would want to know why she wasn’t there on Friday. She couldn’t say that Nick didn’t want to go. They wouldn’t ask her again. Maybe she should suggest it to him. It was the kind of thing he liked, though Sarah preferred quieter places where her soft voice wouldn’t be drowned out by loud music and shouting. Maybe if they did that they wouldn’t have an argument. She ran a tentative hand over the bruise hidden by the scarf on her neck.

Mick Berryman’s mind shut down on him. He needed a break. The clock on the wall said six, but it hadn’t been altered since the clocks went back weeks ago. He’d been at it for over ten hours. He could go home, put his feet up, but he decided to go over to the Grindstone for an hour or so. He needed a drink and he needed some quiet.

The pub, like most of the pubs in Moreham centre in the early evening, was almost empty. There were a couple of old men at a table in the corner, and a solitary drinker at the bar, reading a paper. As he crossed the room, he realized that the man at the bar was Rob Neave, and slowed his pace for a moment.

It was eighteen months now since Neave had left the force. He’d been one of the most talented officers in the division, following Berryman up the promotions ladder. They’d worked together, and they’d spent a lot of time at this bar. They’d made a good team. He couldn’t understand why Neave had left what had been a promising career, getting his promotion to DI six months before he gave it all up. But after Angie, Neave had gone to pieces. His colleagues had rallied round in support, looked after him, got him drunk – not that he’d needed any help with that at the time. Finally, Berryman had advised him to go on sick leave and get some help, even though that would put a blight on his promotion prospects. But Neave wasn’t interested.

‘The fact is,’ he’d told Berryman, ‘I just don’t give a bugger about any of it any more. I just want out.’ Berryman was beginning to understand that feeling now, though he hadn’t been able to understand it then, the same way he’d never been able to understand Neave’s obsession with Angie – oh, pretty, he’d give you that, but weird. He couldn’t have stood it for a week.

He hadn’t seen Neave for nearly six months. Claire had had a go at him – ‘Why don’t you ask Rob round for an evening? We’ll feed him up, have a few beers, it might cheer him up.’ Claire had developed a soft spot for his ex-colleague. He’d phoned, but the offer had been declined, as Berryman had known it would be. Without the job, they had lost their common ground. He went up to the bar. ‘Want another one in there?’

Then he couldn’t think of anything to say. Berryman had been with Neave when he and Angie first met, and it had been Berryman who had seen him at the end. She stood between them like an unspoken ghost.

Neave looked pleased to see him, but turned down the offer of a drink. He still had almost a pint in his glass and it looked as if he had been spinning it out for a while. They exchanged bits and pieces of news, the talk halting and awkward. Looking around for topics, Berryman glanced at the paper Neave had been reading when he came into the pub. It was the Moreham Standard. It was open at the two-page spread about the Strangler.

Berryman groaned. It had got in the way of his thoughts all afternoon. The police should be doing this, the police aren’t doing this, Christ, what did they expect? Magic? Neave glanced at him, saw what he was looking at and gave him a sympathetic grin. ‘Giving you a hard time,’ he said, rather than asked.

‘They want my balls on a plate,’ Berryman said gloomily.

‘Yeah. Then Mystic Meg could gaze into them and give you the answers.’ Neave looked at the paper again. ‘Is it right? You’ve got nothing?’

Berryman decided to talk. He knew he could trust Neave to keep his mouth shut. ‘This bastard really knows what he’s doing,’ he said, after a moment. ‘He’s not made many mistakes. We’re getting nowhere. Four of them now, and we’ve got nothing.’

‘Nothing? You must have something. He’s got to leave something behind.’

‘Oh, we’ve got stuff that’ll help when we catch him. If we catch him. We’ve got lines of enquiry we haven’t used up yet, but we’ve got nothing to tell us who he is. It’ll be a Yorkshire Ripper thing again. He’ll do it once too often and we’ll have him. This kind of thing doesn’t help. It just gets people panicked, and it puts out information I don’t want putting out.’ He tapped the article headlined, I saw the face of the Strangler. ‘That’s rubbish. It’s just speculation. Stupid bitch.’

Neave looked at the article. ‘He works at the college,’ he said, indicating the name of the writer. ‘She probably forgot he was a journalist when she talked to him. She was worried about it. She asked me what she should do.’ He intercepted Berryman’s look and grinned again. ‘I told her to talk to you lot. I didn’t tell her to sell her story.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘You’re worried about it though. Was it him she saw?’

‘I don’t fucking know. Whole of South fucking Yorkshire knows, but I don’t.’

But the fact was, Berryman was worried by Debbie’s story. ‘One thing we’ve got is that we know where he picked up the first one, Lisa Griffin. He left her by the track just outside Mexborough station. That’s where she was headed for, and we had witnesses who put her there. He’s learned something since then. We don’t know where he killed the others. They were dumped on the line away from any stations. There were two things we found – fingerprints we can’t account for, on her bag. I’m not saying they’re the killer’s, but they’re there. Also, broken glass. We don’t know why. He’d taken the lights out on the platform near where we found Lisa. We found broken glass on the others as well. Kate, Kate Claremont, there was glass in her hair. And there were bits of glass caught in Mandy’s dress.’

Neave looked off into space, his eyes half closed. ‘Is it lights he doesn’t like, or is it glass? Reflections? Does he need the glass? Does he use it on them?’