It was at that moment that I realised maybe I really wasn’t suited for a life of crime. Clearly, I was less good at deception than I had believed.
‘How was Uncle Phil?’ I asked trepidatiously.
She scoffed.
‘He was moaning about your aunt, of all things. I knew he’d had nothing to do with this; I just thought you might take the chance to tell me what I wanted to know. Did you really think I didn’t notice how anxious and cagey you were at the morgue on Monday? You think I’m that unobservant?’’
‘Well, no one else seemed to notice,’ I said, genuinely bewildered. I thought I had been such a good actor around her.
She slumped back into the sofa, still looking quite incredulous from what I had told her.
After a moment, she held out her hand, presumably for my phone, and I passed it over obediently; this was the woman who hadcurrentlydecided not to arrest me after all.
However, I had to admit telling her the truth felt unexpectedly liberating. I knew prison was probably not far off the horizon now, and I wondered idly whether Uncle Phil’s job offer would still be there after I had served my sentence.
‘I never wanted to lie to you, Cis,’ I said, hoping my tone portrayed the earnestness I genuinely felt. I thought using her first name may have more of an impact too. ‘I promise I only did it because I couldn’t stand the thought of Greta being forgotten.’
‘I know,’ Carlota said with yet another weary sigh, visibly flinching at the photograph of the numbers carved into the cadaver as she flicked through my phone. ‘That was exactlywhat worried me.’ She dragged her gaze from the picture, eyes scrunching as she tilted her head upwards as if this was how she attempted to will the disgusting images she saw on a daily basis out of her brain.
She grimaced before talking again. I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind at the moment; truth be told, I don’t really think she knew.
‘Every lead is yanked out of my hands. Every scrap of evidence that turns up is taken away. And now the police are panicking because they know the real TellTale Killer is back, and they haven’t the faintest idea where to start. Every time I know I can help, every time IknowI can make a difference to the case, I’m told to stay back. To stay in my lane. No matter how hard I try to do things by the book, no matter how much I give, I’m told to shut up and sit quietly in the corner. And now there’syou.’
She exhaled sharply. And, with my limited grasp of human interaction, I knew I probably shouldn’t interrupt her even though she wasn’t actually talking. She was a woman driven to the very edge, her obsession for rules, guidelines and procedure unspooling thread by fragile thread.
I waited for her to finish whatever internal monologue she was lost in, but she just sat there, back ramrod-straight on Bill and Ben’s immaculate white sofa, fingertips pressed into her palms, while I watched the sun begin to slide down the windowpane behind her.
Thing is, I think everyone has their limits, the point where they finally tip and do something completely and utterly reckless. For me, it was the case going cold. For Carlota, I sensed it was years of being shunned and overlooked, of knowing she had the capability to make a difference and being denied the chance. And now, at last, she’d finally snapped.
‘I know I can catch the TellTale Killer and the IACP guidelines on alternatives to arrest let me delay charging someoneifit helps with a wider investigation.’
I googled it later: IACP stands for International Association of Chiefs of Police.
‘So, for the moment, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I can’tsay I won’t arrest you at some point, though, Ruth. What you’ve done is… pretty fucking terrible,’ Detective Carlota said cuttingly, but there was more fatigue and exhaustion in her tone now than anger or frustration.
‘I can’t refute that,’ I admitted, heart slightly sinking while I clung to the faint distant hope Detective Carlota might settle for a knowing scowl and a slap on the wrist as punishment. I guess no such luck. ‘So, what do we do now, then?’
She set my phone on the table.
‘We reply,’ she said jabbing her finger in the direction of my phone. ‘We keep up the ruse we’re a serial killer, we tell him it’s done, see what he says next and wait for him to slip up. Those guys at the station are panicking, Ruth, because they don’t have any kind of idea who this could be. But now, you or…we, I guess, have a direct line to him. This is huge.’
I was a little stunned at the brazenness of this detective. But I suppose, in some ways, she was just as keen as I was for the TellTale Killer to get what he deserved, we just had very different strategies on how to do it. I unlocked the phone and opened DarkCell, ready to reply to the killer and see what he would say next. That was when a stair creaked above us; we both jerked round, half expecting an officer had sneaked inside the house to catch us in the act of messaging the most famous serial killer of the decade. But it was only Ben. He looked more fragile than usual today.
‘Hiya, love,’ I called. Damn it, there it was again. ‘Nipping down for milk?’
‘Yeah,’ he murmured. He always did this if he couldn’t sleep. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as he shuffled to the fridge, filled a glass to the brim with semi-skimmed, spilled some across the worktop, cursed, then dawdled around looking for where he left the kitchen roll while Carlota and I waited in a kind of a tense wordless limbo. She offered a thin, hold-that-thought, how-long-do-you-think-he’s-going-to-be smile as we heard the repetitive sound of the kitchen towel going back and forth on the worktops, squeaking like a very tiny mouse with a case of the hiccups.
‘I suppose I’ll have to brush my teeth again,’ Ben chuckled to himself. ‘I hate doing that.’
‘How was the rest of the treatment?’ I asked, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing it would only keep him here longer, but I couldn’t help myself. I had this lingering feeling that Ben wasn’t convinced by chemo, that he didn’t believe all the chemicals coursing through him were worth the extra years they promised.
‘It was okay,’ he remarked, not assuaging my suspicions, and then ambled back upstairs. ‘’Night,’ he added, door clicking shut behind him.
As soon as we heard that sound, Detective Carlota and I magnetically hunched back together around the phone. I typed the message:It’s done. I have his heart.I thought I’d flip the gender as one more probably vain attempt to distance myself from my crime. I looked to Detective Carlota to confirm she was happy with it and then jammed my finger onto the ‘send’ button on the screen.
‘No, Cis, step aside. No, Cis, this one isn’t your forte. You let him escape once, let someone with more experience handle it.’ Detective Carlota echoed what I presumed were previous remarks of naysayer colleagues in a kind of weary sing-song while she stared at my phone. ‘You know why, don’t you, Ruth?’ I had a medium-to-strong assumption this was another rhetorical question, so I kept the pin in and stayed silent. ‘It’s because I fluffed it before, let him vanish, and they’re convinced I’ll drop the ball again. But no one knows more about this case than me, and maybe, well, you.’
I waited, not wanting to speak in case she had more to say but the reply from the killer arrived almost instantly:Good. I want you to send it to Jago Jones.
