Tracking him down has taken a lot of digging, and some dumb luck. The police refused to tell me where he was, as did his former lawyer. And there was no trace of him anywhere on social media. So I lied when I contacted victim support services and pretended to be a relative of Daisy Barber, concerned that my niece’s killer had been released and was living within the local vicinity. My dumb luck came in the form of the kind soul I drew for that call, whose empathy for my loss and outrage over my current situation inspired her to not only confirm that he was indeed living withinfifty miles of the scene of Daisy’s death, in Basingstoke, but let slip he’d secured work at a DIY store three streets from a school. Ten minutes of Google Maps triangulation and a confirming telephone call later, and I’d located him.
Now, I’m pretending to consider paint samples from a spectrum of colour cards, flicking through fifty shades of grey and black. The colours mirror my mood. I keep stealing glances at Dad. The tattoos scattered about his arms and hands seem faded and blurred. I struggle to make them out from this distance. I wonder what the designs are and if he’s the reason I’ve been inked too. Many of mine were conscious choices, like the chorus to Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘Bobby Jean’ because it reminds me of a song Mum would play. The semicolon on my wrist symbolises the number of times I could have ended my story with a full stop but carried on regardless. The enso symbolises how life is in a constant flux and that everything must eventually end.
There are others I found through surfing the internet or flicking through the tattooist’s portfolio, such as the girl hiding her face behind a white flower, a night sky with lightning bolts (despite my irrational fear of electrical storms), and the Grim Reaper hovering over a clock, whose hands are at ten minutes to six. I’ve also included some of my own drawings that I don’t really understand the origins of. Random stuff like a candle flame and a grid of random numbers.
I begin studying Dad’s mannerisms for shared traits. Do we walk the same? Are we both left-handed? Does he tug at his right earlobe when he’s deep in thought? Does he feel the same guilt I do for taking another life? I doubt it. Because I think he took three more.
Helena explained Dad had been released from prison on licence. Jails were overcrowded and he’d been a model inmate. So while he was technically still serving his sentence, it was now in thecommunity instead of at His Majesty’s pleasure. I was surprised to learn that no one had protested it until I learned Daisy Barber’s parents had died in the intervening years. I assume no one tipped off the tabloids, otherwise I’d have found online long-lens shots of him passing a school or a playpark and a story reminding the public what a danger he was to every child in his radius.
A customer approaches him, and Dad’s smile catches me off guard. It makes the dimples in his cheeks more visible. Mine are the same, although my smiles are few and far between these days. I’m conflicted as to how this should make me feel. A few days ago, I was alone in the world. Now, there is someone here I can relate physically to. Only, it’s a child killer.
Dad leads the woman into the next aisle along. I wonder how she might react if she knew what he’s done.
Anger begins to boil inside me. The same way I felt when that man in the car park was trying to kill me.
When Dad reappears I’m dwelling on what else we might share aside from our career prospects, which are unlikely to extend further than stacking shelves for a little above minimum wage.
I hate that I am a reflection of this man in so many ways. I also hate what he did and the aftershocks his behaviour has delivered, and still delivers.
He needs to know this.
He is a physically intimidating presence, and the relentless drumbeat of my heart echoes in my ears as I start towards him. And then, from deep within, a confidence I didn’t know I possessed surges to the surface. I stride over and he steps aside as I pick up one of the five-litre cans of emulsion he has stacked on a shelf. He watches as I lift it above my head, turn and hurl it down the aisle away from us. My throbbing ribs serve as a sharp reminder of what I’ve put myself through to get here today.
The lid bursts open upon impact and paint leaps out, covering the floor and splattering products on shelves in a sunburst of brilliant, silky white.
I turn to glare at him, and he stares back at me, bewildered by what’s happening. I know he has caught the rage in my eyes.Oureyes.
‘Oops,’ I say. ‘Sorry, Dad.’
Chapter 50
Laura
Laura stares from the passenger window of her car at the building on the opposite side of the road. She absent-mindedly taps her fingernails against the door handle. It’s midday and the upstairs curtains remain closed, which suggests he is either too lazy to open them or he worked long into the night and is catching up on sleep. She dials his number, but like it has over the last six days, it goes straight to voicemail. She has yet to leave a message. It’s frustrating, not knowing why he’s not answering. Is he simply ghosting her? That’s what people are calling it nowadays, or so Laura’s youngest daughter told her when her eldest, Effie, stopped answering her calls.
Her patience worn thin, she exits her car, slamming the door shut. ‘Bloody fuckwit,’ she says aloud as she crosses the road and makes her way up a short driveway to his front door. The front garden is unkempt, with an old leather armchair dumped in the centre of it. She suspectsCountry Livingmagazine won’t be begging for a photo shoot here anytime soon.
No sound comes from the doorbell so she knocks three times. No answer. She looks over her shoulder to check she’s not beingwatched by a nosy neighbour, then slips around the side of the house towards the rear.
It’s as messy back here. It could be a scrapyard, with all these spare car parts littered about. Again, there is no answer at the back door, so she takes a tissue from her pocket and uses it to turn the handle. It opens. Careless, but unsurprising. He’s not struck her as a detail person. Just as well in this case. She quietly lets herself in, leaving it slightly ajar should the need arise for a swift exit. It’s happened twice now elsewhere, and luck won’t always be on her side.
She’s always had a heightened sense of smell, and her nose crinkles at the odours in here, a fetid combination of weed, barbecue-flavour pot noodles and, yes, the unmistakable tang of the regular masturbator. Laura spies a mobile phone lying on the kitchen table, which suggests he’s here.
‘Garry?’ she calls in something more than a speaking voice but less than a shout. Not a word in reply. She scans each room of the ground floor, hesitating at the bottom of the stairs. She’s reluctant to go up there in case an even worse stench is readying an assault on her nostrils.
‘Garry? Are you awake?’ she calls. Nothing. She sighs and climbs the stairs. A cautious sweep of two empty bedrooms and a filthy bathroom follows before she returns to the kitchen. ‘Where the hell are you?’
Nobody leaves the house anymore without their mobile, she thinks, but then she recalls she warned him not to take it on the job she assigned him. ‘If the shit hits the fan, it can be used to trace your movements,’ she warned.
But that was days ago. His continued silence suggests all hasn’t gone according to plan.
She switches his phone on but the battery is dead. The charger lies next to it so she plugs it into the socket and, after a wait ofseveral minutes, it bursts into life. His code is, predictably, set to six zeros – probably as high as he can count. But she isn’t using him for his brain.
Curiosity takes hold and she scrolls through his phone. He’s part of a few WhatsApp groups where like-minded Neanderthals share home-made pornographic video clips with each other. The main thing is, she supposes, that he’s found his tribe.Oh, no.Garry is featured in one video, and she can’t help but watch as he high-fives a fellow tattooed gorilla over the back of an unconscious woman they are top-and-tailing. Laura might have some sympathy for the woman if she hadn’t been wearing such hideous knee-length, white PVC boots.
Scanning the rest of his messages, she’s pleased to see he has followed her advice and erased all correspondence between them. Then she deletes the logs of all her calls.
An app on his home screen catches her eye. It’s called Find My Car Key. She glances out of the window and realises there’s no sign of his vehicle, a garish purple Vauxhall Astra she remembers he souped up with styling kits and a chrome exhaust. He really is the man that taste sidestepped. She opens the app and doesn’t have to wait long before it pinpoints to the nearest ten metres where the keys, and he, most likely are.
