Awake In The Dark Read online

  “Who is it?” Harriet asked, finishing up with her customer.

  “Oh, so now you’re interested.”

  “Is it Stephen?”

  I put the phone back in my pocket. “No.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  I shook my head. Grunted.

  “Have you called him?” she asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  “You’re rubbish, JJ,” Harriet told me. “It’s a wonder you’ve got any friends.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  “For now.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You going somewhere?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “You could come with me. We could take off right now. Buy a ticket for the first plane out of Stansted and see where it takes us.”

  “You’d never do that.”

  She looked offended. “How do you know what I’d do? You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  Appearances were deceptive. No matter how small and fragile she looked Harriet Brisley was full of fire and confidence. But she did look upset, and now she was deliberately ignoring me.

  So maybe I’d gone too far with that comment. “Sorry,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Just don’t forget about the lock up,” she said. “I’m relying on you.”

  1.2

  Back home I ran upstairs to the studio, which took up the whole second floor of my house. Cat was asleep on the top step of the middle landing and there she stayed, unruffled, as I vaulted over her. I guess she might have half-opened an eye to signal her annoyance, but I didn’t see it.

  The paint-splashed MacBook sat on a desk at the front end of the studio and I fired it up. While it booted I rang the hospital back on the mobile. There was no answer and I didn’t have the patience to keep trying. Jenny was my sister and she’d been in St Cecilia’s for about five years. The last conversation I’d had with Doctor Pandghani, her consultant, had mostly involved him trying to persuade me that Jenny should come and live with me. But I couldn’t do that. I just … Maybe one day, but not right now.

  I cut the call, switched on a desk light and twisted it up at the wall behind the desk.

  This was where I pinned all my newspaper cut-outs, articles and blogs on the Camden Killer. I just called it The Wall.

  There was a baseball bat on the desk, an unwanted present from Stephen from his trip to the US, and I knocked it to the floor with a clatter. Then I spread the newspaper out and opened it up to pages five and six.

  The spread was a Google Earth print of North London, focusing on Camden Town, Chalk Farm, Kentish Town – with Hampstead Heath to the north and the top corner of Regents Park to the south. Box-outs with photographs and text were linked by arrows to the locations on the map where the bodies of the Camden Killer’s victims had been found. On the following pages was a long, ‘story so far’ of the Killer’s progress. It told me there was an interactive version on their website.

  Content with the paper copy I spent the next ten minutes removing the pages and pinning them up on The Wall, moving the other stuff around into a new configuration.

  The MacBook had already chimed and when I was done with the paper I sat down, opened up Safari and clicked through to my Twitter homepage.

  The Camden Killer was the number one UK trend again. Grief junkies and moralistic armchair guardians loved to tweet. As did the jokers.

  @Jonny_Sticksmith: this guys a nutjob! String the fcker up!

  @MallonSexxy: Another girl dead. My thoughts go out to her mum & dad. CK must be stopped

  @Justinfan_Billy: I heard this one was wearing a mask like no2? Is this true?

  @TheRealCK: Your all gonna fckn diieeeee!!!!!

  @Justinfan_Billy: its so sad. police need to find this dick

  @Sh1tPolice: check this out: bit.gl/QXWooj … anyone been selling roses to the freak

  @JLK121: @Sh1tPolice is that true?

  @TheRealCK: yeh is troo an Ill do it again motherfckers

  @welshgardener: prick

  @LJK121: why would you put a nail in her head? I wish I hadn’t read this

  @Sh1tPolice: and this one the police dont want u to see goo.gl/c.3p

  @derek_hammer: CK for prime minister!! LOL!

  A hundred and fifty new Tweets arrived in while I spent a few seconds scanning through the crap. @Sh1tPolice was a regular on the CK Tweets. He (or she I suppose) kept finding stuff which the real police never published, and posted a lot of links to various blogs and rumour sites. I wondered if he actually was a police.

  I clicked through one of his links and found a blogger who went on about how the police hunt was lacking motivation.

  I mean they’ve only just acknowledged publicly that they have a serial killer on their hands. What they need to do is look at the geography, look at the victims and find out what they all had in common because there must be something that each one had that has marked them out as a target…

  “No no,” I whispered under my breath. “They’re all different.”

  I wrote this on the comments below the blog then I clicked through the previous comments. There seemed to be a general agreement that victim number three had had a nail hammered into her forehead. There was something about flowers too: irises or roses stuffed into her belly.

  There was nothing on the recent fourth victim yet, but I guessed that there’d be something on the blogs by the end of the day. I’d keep an eye on it.

  The Mirror’s double-page spread took centre place in The Wall. I leaned back in the chair and looked at it.

  The locations were all centred on Camden Town. So it seemed obvious he lived or worked here somewhere. But if that was true, why hadn’t the police found him yet?

  I went back into Twitter and entered the conversation with:

  Every victim is different. Other than the fact that he killed them, these

  people have nothing in common

  The responses came in seconds later:

  @Tranny_Pam: nothing in common that WE know about…

  @Sh1tPolice: The police don’t know either.

  @Bryan_Proctor: @JJX - are you saying the killings are random?

  Maybe. Whoever the Camden Killer is, he’s no ordinary serial murderer

  @TheRealCK: That’s right mthfckers!! Im 1 craaaazee cnt!!

  @Sh1tPolice: Someone switch that prick off

  I went back into the blogs, keeping an eye on the tweets coming in, sending out new ones whenever I found something interesting.

  I hadn’t realised how much time had passed until my phone pinged with a text from Harriet:

  >Market closing in 1hr. U coming or do I come beat you up for bein a loser?

  1.3

  The landlord Harriet rented her storage from in Kentish Town had decided he wanted to knock the units through and sell them off to a coffee shop franchisee willing to pay him a ton of cash for the freehold. He’d given her notice but Harriet, being Harriet, had left it until the last minute to sort something out and now it was too late to get anything decent for what she could afford. She didn’t have much stock but her flat was already crammed wall-to-wall, so I’d said she could use my old lock up in Tufnell Park to put it all in. Before the debacle at Lambeth and when I ran the stall, when I actually had a career, I used to store some art in there.

  Jhavesh drove us up when the market closed down at six. It was cold and dark when we set off. Smell of fireworks in the air.

  “Where is it, Jay?”

  “Under the bridge, mate,” I said. “Straight on.”

  The van rattled towards the bridge and mounted the kerb just as a high-speed train screamed over the top.

  I stepped out as the last of the train disappeared and its echoes rumbled away above us.

  “Love this place,” Harriet said sarcastically as I helped her out, almost lifting her to the pavement. She’d been sucking on extra strong mints in the van and her mouth was so close I could almost taste them.

  “Do you want to put your stuff in here or not?” I said.

  The door on Jhavesh’s side crashed shut, its noise booming down the street like a gunshot.

  He joined us, lighting up his first cigarette since Harriet had objected to him smoking in the van. “It’s my bloody van!” he’d told her in outrage. He’d had to wait nonetheless.

  “All right I’m grateful,” she said. “If it’s safe for you then it’s safe for me, right?”

  Jhavesh mumbled, “Place is prob’ly full of crackheads, man.”

  “No. It isn’t,” I said. Harriet stared at me. “Seriously, it isn’t! Look, I’ve been storing my art here for years, even when I had the stall and nothing’s ever gone missing. It’s safe. All right?”

  “With all due respec’, JJ,” said Jhavesh. “Who’s gonna teef your paintings?”

  “Funny.”

  He grinned. “Come on,” he said, moving to the back of the van. “Let’s get this stuff out before the zombies come for a look.”

  The lock up was one in a row of arches built into the ancient bricks of the bridge. The road was blocked off for development on the other side of it and no one came here now.

  Illumination drifted slowly down through isolated cones of light cast by a line of street-lamps. A thickening, evening fog seemed to make the light-cones solid and the artist head in me wondered, if I touched one, could I phase into a slow universe of crystallised light?

  “Does it always stink like this around here?” Harriet’s voice pulled me back into the real world.

  “That’s what I was finkin,” called Jhavesh. “Place is rank, man.”

  I walked towards the lock up, pulling the key from my pocket.

  “‘fraid so. Not usually this bad though. There’s probably a – ” I looked down to where the padlock on the lock up
door was dangling loose. A fat, lazy fly sat on it, seemingly half-dead in the cold. “Shit.”

  Jhavesh came up behind us with the first few boxes. He dumped them on the pavement by our feet, cigarette flapping on his lips. “‘sup, crew? Shit, mate, seriously… Smells bad.”

  “Someone’s broken into his lock up,” Harriet told him nervously. “I said it wasn’t safe didn’t I?”

  Jhavesh pulled the fag out of his mouth and vented smoke. He looked unsettled and in truth so was I.

  I pulled on the lock up door and it scraped along the ground. When it was open far enough the smell really hit us. So did the flies, disturbed by the door.

  “Oh my Lord!” swore Jhavesh, who was standing full on.

  I covered my face with my hand and turned away for a minute.

  “Jesus!” gasped Harriet, backing away.

  I looked into the lock up but it was too dark to see anything. The light-switch had never worked. “Jhavesh, give me the torch.”

  “Mate, you don’t want to go in there. Someone’s dog’s died, man!”

  “Just get me the torch!”

  “What torch?”

  “I said to you make sure you got a fucking torch!”

  “Just wait, man! Jesus!” he sounded hysterical but he went back to the van nonetheless and returned a minute later with a naff plastic torch.

  “Is that it?”

  “It’s a torch! Sorry it ain’t up to your exacting standards.”

  I took it off him, switched it on and moved into the lock up, pulling my coat collar over my mouth and nose with my other hand.

  “Jason, don’t go in,” whispered Harriet. I felt her tugging at my sleeve.

  The dead thing wasn’t a dog. It was a man with a blood-soaked sack over his head.

  “Shit..!” I gasped, almost jumping out of my skin.

  At first I thought it was someone just standing there. In my lock up, in the dark. Hands behind his back.

  I pinned him down with torchlight and moved in closer. Flies buzzed and dive-bombed my ears as I walked towards the body. They crawled over the figure, lending it a creepy animation. Eventually I was able to keep my hand steady and I could see that he was covered in streaks of dark, dried blood. It had run from head to toe to describe a chaotic landscape, like the satellite map of an ancient river system etched into his skin.

  I guess most people would have turned around by now but I had to see more. It was just a body, right?

  Lengths of wire were looped around it, tying it to a pillar, keeping it upright. It was pierced by arrows. Must have been twenty of them? Thirty?

  No. More than that. Christ they were sticking out everywhere: from his neck, his arms, legs, his chest and his belly, creating shadows that wheeled around him as I moved the torch to get an idea of what exactly I was looking at. There was something weird going on around his belly so I shone the torch at it and saw that his guts were spilling out, crawling.

  Fuck. That was nasty.

  I caught my breath and I stepped closer.

  They weren’t arrows.

  They were… I leaned inwards… Paintbrushes?

  Paintbrushes honed to knife-sharp points and rammed deep into his flesh. Bristles sticking outwards.

  It was horrible to look at. Like overkill from a slasher movie.

  I flicked the torch upwards.

  The sack covering his head had a clown face painted on it: Xs for eyes and a sad, sad mouth like some kind of suicidal Pierrot. I let go of my collar. I held my breath and reached out to the mask. I gripped it and started pulling it.

  It gave easily at first, sliding over the crown fluidly. Then it seemed to get stuck, snagging on something.

  “Jason!” called Harriet, her voice cutting harshly into my world.

  I ignored her. The only thing that mattered right here and now was that I was sharing a space with someone who had been killed amongst my old art. Stuck with paintbrushes and tied to a post so that he looked like the Biblical martyr Saint Sebastian.

  So who the hell was it?

  The flies got agitated. Diving into my face and crawling over my hands and wrists. Trembling, I slid the hood up as far as I could and shone the torch right into the face.

  “Fuck me….”

  I tried to step away. Tried to pull my eyes away from the face but the ground seemed to give and I ended up stumbling and crashing to the ground, knocking things everywhere.

  I dropped the torch and I ran out of the lock up choking, gasping for air, shaking off flies both real and imaginary.

  Jhavesh was by his van smoking vigorously, finishing a call to 999 and his hands and face were shaking like mad. First time I’d ever seen him this rattled. Harriet was closer to the entrance and she was just staring into the lock up, frozen in place like a pale statue.

  I leant against the side of the van as another train screamed above us, making me jump.

  “Aw shit! Shit shit shit!” I hit the van. Boom!

  Jhavesh walked up to Harriet and took her gently by the shoulders. He was still shaking and I wondered who was comforting who.

  Harriet turned, broke away from him, and then came at me with an expression like she was accusing me.

  “That’s Stephen!” she said, sounding hysterical. “Jason, that’s Stephen Craine?”

  I think I nodded as I bent and panted for air, hands on my knees, face aimed to the ground. “Yeah,” I gasped. Don’t know if she heard me with all the sirens going on, getting really loud now.

  Yeah… that was him all right…

  That was Stephen Craine.

  1.4

  The police swooped down in cars and vans. Blue lights filling up the space under the bridge. They taped off the street, split the three of us up and started asking each of us questions. I saw Harriet looking in my direction a few times when she was being quizzed. Jhavesh too. An hour later the two of them were free to go but for some reason the police thought it was worthwhile taking me to the station.

  1.5

  DC Burrows was an arsehole and I didn’t like him from the start. He was a youngish, red-haired CID copper with an intensely freckled face. His white shirt was too short on the arms so his skinny, hairy wrists poked out a good few inches from the cuffs. His stainless-steel D&G watch looked good but it was too big for him. And from the way he talked I got the impression he was trying to impress the woman sitting next to him.

  She was his senior: Detective Inspector Hershey. A tall woman around late-thirties wearing a faded trouser suit and a white blouse in need of a good ironing. Her face was dominated by a pair of big, bulging blue eyes. They were quite intense to look at, but cold. Unlike Burrows’ ginger crewcut, Hershey’s hair was dark and straight, tired-looking. It hung like curtains around her head and she kept pushing it back over her ears while she studied the contents of a folder full of papers.

  I got the feeling that everything about her was considered, calculated, misleading, and I didn’t trust her an inch.

  Burrows and I were going through the formalities.

  “… you don’t know where his parents live?” Burrows was saying.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “You said Stephen has a brother?”

  “David, yes.” I cleared my throat.

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “No.”

  “Got a phone number?”

  “No.”

  “Did Stephen have any other family? Any cousins? Uncles, aunts, great aunts?”

  I was shaking my head.

  Burrows continued, his voice increasingly sarcastic. “Anyone else we could contact that you know about?”

  I shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t know.”

  “Any other friends?”

  “Sure. I guess so. I never mixed with his immediate social circle, so I don’t know them.”

  “Work colleagues?”

  “Probably.”

  “Where did he work?”

  “He was an accountant?”

  “Yeah but do you know the name of the company he worked for?”

  “No.”

  Burrows sighed. “All right. So he was an accountant. Was he a supervisor? A clerk? A department head..?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Big office? Small office?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And he was a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”