Текст книги "The Gift of Death"

Автор книги: Sam Ripley

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

She had been left by the father of her child on the same day it had been conceived. And today – the day she had discovered she was pregnant – she had found a dead baby floating in the water outside her house.

As she opened the door she felt an overwhelming sense of terror, as if a murderer was stepping into her home. The skin on the back of her neck prickled.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘The body is on the beach. This way.’

3

He sat in his car, watching for signs of life. Or what passed for life these days. Los Angeles seemed to attract scum like a decomposing corpse bred maggots.

City of angels? City of sinners, more like.

A metropolis of immorality, where baseness, lust, passion, violence and crime ruled. America had embraced the spirit of self-expression, of self-esteem. Which was all well and good, he said to himself, until it had mutated into the cult of self-interest. People seemed to think they could say and do whatever they liked these days, without due regard for others. Young girls wore slutty dresses and talked like porn stars. Gays congregated in warehouses and rutted like animals. And those folk in the film business all seemed to be high on one drug or another. If LA was supposed to be the ultimate expression of America then what hope was there?

He sighed to himself and took another swig of mineral water. At least that was pure. He was as clean inside as he was out, without spot or stain or sin. He was careful not to ingest anything full of nasty chemicals or toxins. He didn’t touch coffee, alcohol, junk food, sugary drinks, anything processed. He liked nature and natural things. Farmer’s markets. Organic fruits and vegetables. Pulses and grains. Nettle tea. Good wholesome cuts of meat. He didn’t trust fish, as you never knew what got spilt into the ocean. His stomach turned as he thought of the kind of filth that floated in the sea. The scum on the waves just reflected the scum on land. Dirt-bags like Raymond Cutler, the lowest of human pond life.

To the outside world he looked kind of normal. A clean-cut guy, well-built, mid-forties. Divorced. With a couple of kids who lived with their mom. A hard-working executive with a steady job in one of the banks in Century City and a home in Westchester West. But what nobody knew – except a few of his sick buddies – was that Raymond liked little girls. Late at night, home alone, Raymond loved nothing better than to search the internet for images of cutesy-looking girls in various explicit poses. Bending over, showing their assholes. Opening their legs to reveal their vaginas. On all fours being penetrated by one man orally and another from behind. They were some of the less disgusting ones. He didn’t like to think of some of the other photographs that Raymond downloaded. Those pictures of tiny children, babies even.

He swigged some more mineral water, trying not to let those images dirty his brain. He had to remain clean, above it all. He closed his eyes for a moment and took some deep breaths. Meditation was good for clearing one’s mind, protecting oneself from the polluting effect of those around you. After a few minutes he felt he had centred himself, ready for the job in hand, a task that had to be done.

At four a.m. – the time the two men had agreed – a light came on in one of the rooms inside Raymond’s house. It was the sign he had been waiting for. He got out of the car, took a black satchel out of the trunk and put on a pair of gloves. He walked down the driveway, past the neatly clipped lawn and up to Raymond’s front porch. He didn’t need to knock or ring, as Raymond was already standing there, the door open for him.

The house was neat, functional, bare of personal possessions. The typical rented home of a newly-divorced dad.

‘Have you got it?’ asked Raymond, almost whispering, as he closed the door.

‘Sure, and it’s something you’re gonna really enjoy,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’ said Raymond, licking his lips. ‘This way.’

Raymond led him down a corridor, past a bathroom, to a small study at the back of the house. In the far corner was a desk, on which stood a PC. He noticed that the screen saver was a picture of two kids – a boy and a girl, Raymond’s kids. Could Raymond not see what was staring him in the face? The sickness of it all? How could he look at the picture of his children one minute and the next, at the click of a mouse, stare at the obscene images of somebody else’s kids. He felt the anger rising inside him, but he had to control it, hold it in check just for a few more minutes.

‘Here you are,’ he said, handing Raymond a DVD. ‘Your little piece of paradise.’

‘I’ll get you something in return next couple of weeks, promise,’ said Raymond, beads of sweat breaking out over his forehead.

‘I’ll just hang around to make sure it works,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a couple of instances where there have been some glitches. Pixelation. Freezing. Don’t know why.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Raymond, placing the DVD into the computer.

The machine made a whirring noise, a sound that Raymond had come to associate with the delights of anticipation. He hoped the disc worked okay. He couldn’t wait until he was left alone. The thought of it left his mouth dry. A five-year-old girl with five different men.

‘Can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it,’ said Raymond, as he watched the screen come to life. ‘And great that us guys can stick together. Online you never know who’s out there snooping. Cops, feds, whatever.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said. ‘Best if we keep this amongst ourselves. A select few.’

‘Is this okay? Is there a problem?’ said Raymond, leaning over the desk to look at the computer. ‘It seems like the disc is stuck or something.’

‘Try pressing control, return and shift all at the same time. That should fix it.’

As Raymond’s fingers hovered over the keyboard he felt something prick his arm.

‘Hey – what the fuck –‘ he said. He tried to form more words – then he tried to shout, to scream – but nothing. It was like his throat and voice box had been paralysed. He looked at the man next to him, implored him to help, but he just stood there, smiling. Had he had a stroke? What was that other thing he had seen on the medical channel the other day? An aneurysm? A blood clot? He tried to reach out to his friend, but found that he could not move his arm. Then the man took hold of his shoulders and sat him down on the chair in front of the desk. He was going to help him. He would know something had gone wrong, he’d call 911 and get him into see a medic. He had medical insurance – his company had a great plan – so that wouldn’t be a problem. His friend would be wise enough to take out the disc from the computer. He wouldn’t want to be found with that kind of material on him, would he?

He looked at the man standing before him, but it was hard to focus on him. His body felt like jello, sort of numb all over.

‘This way,’ said the stranger, taking the disc out of the computer. ‘We don’t want to leave a mess, do we?’

He heaved him out of the chair and supported him as he manoeuvred him out of the study. He was taking care of him, after all, thought Raymond. Making sure he visited the bathroom before the ambulance turned up.

‘Okay, Raymond, this way,’ he said. ‘Just sit down in here while I get the rest of my stuff.’

Why was he sliding him into the bath? He only needed to pee, for god’s sake. Nothing more than that. Where was he going? Was he calling 911? But he couldn’t hear his voice.

The man came back into the room carrying his rucksack, out of which he took what looked like a case for spectacles or some kind of slimline camera. He must have one of those fancy new mobiles, thought Raymond, with email, internet, MP3 and camera all in one. As his friend opened the case, Raymond saw a flash of reflected light. He tried to focus on the object in the case, but it kept slipping out of view. As the man walked towards him Raymond realised his friend was carrying a scalpel.

Again, Raymond tried to scream, but no matter how hard he tried he could not utter a sound.

‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ said the man. ‘That’s a purely rhetorical question, as I know you can’t answer me. So let me fill you in. By the way, just so you’re up to date and running with what’s going on, I’ve injected you with a drug that renders you paralysed and unable to speak. That does not mean, however, you will not feel pain. I think you’ll find that your nervous system will register every little cut that I’m going to make into your skin. Let’s see, shall we?’

Raymond tried to struggle, but he remained as immobile and inert. Only his eyes seemed to register the terror.

The stranger began by cutting the clothes from Raymond’s body, occasionally letting the scalpel graze his skin. He worked quickly and efficiently and, in a matter of minutes, had stripped Raymond down to his underwear. Blood seeped out of the tiny cuts on his body, gradually turning his white boxer shorts a deep shade of red.

‘That’s better, we can see what we’re working with now, can’t we?’

The man looked Raymond up and down like a piece of meat, ready to be carved and butchered.

‘You’re most probably wondering what I’m doing and why I am doing it,’ he said, calmly. ‘By now you’ll have probably worked out that I am not one of your net buddies nor do I regularly visit web sites devoted to the abuse and exploitation of small children. In fact, you and your sort disgust me, do you know that?

‘And it’s about time somebody taught you a lesson. You should realise that you can’t go about satisfying your every whim, satiating your sick appetite for filth and obscenity with as little thought as a kid reaching for another cookie from the cookie jar. There have to be consequences, you see. You have to be punished. You do understand that, Raymond, don’t you?’

With one quick flick of his wrist the stranger cut Raymond’s boxer shorts from his tubby waist. He picked up the swathes of the blood-soaked material – they reminded him of something from his childhood, the jolly red ribbons at an Easter parade – and dumped them with the rest of the clothes in a large black refuse bag which he had placed next to Raymond in the bath.

‘You see, Raymond, I’ve been watching you,’ he said, staring down at his victim, his penis a shrivelled, bloodied snail almost curled in upon itself. ‘Listening into a few of your chat room exchanges. And what you’ve been doing just isn’t right. Looking at the pictures of those poor kids. Night after night masturbating over those images. Swapping sick photos with your pervert buddies. But why choose you, I hear you think. Good question, Raymond. You’ve never actually touched a child, never done anything with a kid. True. But I always think prevention is better than cure, don’t you? And it would be awful if you ever did anything to hurt little David and Jo-Ann. Yes, that’s right, I know the names of your kids. And your wife, Toni. So you see, what I’m doing now is actually for your benefit, Raymond. You see the logic, right?’

With his gloved hands the stranger manoeuvred Raymond on to his back. He took hold of his hairy legs and pushed them forwards, so that Raymond’s knees were almost touching his face. Drops of blood from his groin dropped on to his cheeks and a stream of dark red liquid ran into the corner of his mouth.

‘Can you taste that, Raymond? How d’you like the taste of it? Nice, eh?’ He smacked his lips in mock appreciation, as if he were pretending to eat a delicious strawberry sundae. ‘My guess is you are in quite a bit of discomfort at the moment. Your skin is stinging, your cuts smarting, and this position isn’t doing your back any favours. But did you ever imagine what it was like for one of those poor kids? Being bent over as if they were a rag doll? Prodded, poked, fucked and fingered just for your delight. Not much fun, I’m sure you’ll agree. So you see, Raymond, I just wanted you to appreciate that. Just so you know what I’m doing here isn’t completely without rhyme or reason. Okay?’

Raymond repeatedly tried to close his eyes. If only he could pretend he was some place else. He tried to think of that beach he’d been to with Toni and the kids a couple of years back. In the Bahamas. The breeze on his skin. The feel of sun on his skin. He tried to push back the pain that was gradually consuming his body. If only he could get through this, he promised, he would never look at those pictures again. Holy God, he wouldn’t. If only he could tell this deranged madman that. He’d erase those discs that he had hidden at the back of the cupboard in his bedroom. He’d even go to the police and give the cops the names of his internet buddies. Yeah, he was prepared to snitch on them, if only he would let him go.

Fuck. What the fuck was that? He felt something sting in his groin. He couldn’t move his head to look, but he felt the warm flow of blood on the inside of his left leg. He felt his heart race, couldn’t catch his breath quickly enough. What the fuck was going on?

‘Just brace yourself, Raymond. Be brave. And just think, I’m helping you become the best you can be.’

The stranger wiped the blood from the scalpel, pausing for a second as he examined Raymond’s midriff. He moved closer, taking up Raymond’s shrunken penis in his gloved hand. He pushed the scalpel into the skin at the base of the organ, circling it with a ruby red ring. As he began to cut through the membranes, hacking away at the stringy tissue, a spurt of blood streamed upwards into the air, a bloody ejaculation.

Raymond’s body started to shake as it went into involuntary shock. A couple of more strokes of the scalpel and all that was left of Raymond’s genitals was a pair of testicles and a bloody stump.

‘That’s my boy,’ he said. ‘You did good.’

He looked at the pathetic thing sitting in the palm of his hand. To think that this slug of an organ used to cause all those problems, he thought. Not any more. Raymond had been cured and cleansed of his sins.

He set the dismembered penis to one side as he started to clean up the bathroom, wiping down surfaces of blood and bleaching the bath so as to try and lessen the amount of clean-up that had to be done. His mother had always told him to be as neat and as tidy as possible and, even now, he didn’t want to let her down. By the time he had finished the only messy object was Raymond himself, a mass of fat and hair and blood. There was just one finishing touch. One thing lacking to make the scene complete.

He went over to Raymond. He was still breathing – just. Then he opened Raymond’s mouth, picked up the flaccid penis and stuffed it inside. He gathered together his things, checked he had not left anything behind, and let himself out. As he drove away into the night he felt a pleasing sense of a job well done.

Sin eats itself, he thought, and smiled.

4

The smog of Los Angeles hung low over the city. The haze transformed the low-lying urban sprawl into something approaching a mirage, a fragment from a half-remembered dream. Nothing was what it seemed in this city, thought Kate. Appropriate really, considering its main industry was the manufacture and export of illusions.

Sure it was dirty, crime-ridden, superficial, traffic-bound, and, in parts, pretty ugly. Yet no matter how many times she had tried to leave LA – her college days in New York and in London, a summer in Paris, a couple of years working for her doctorate in Manchester, England – she always returned back to the city. Who said of LA, ‘there is no there there’? She couldn’t remember, but whoever it was summed it up pretty well. Perhaps that was why she liked it, she thought. It was a place you could make your own, shape it according to your own desires and fantasies. That and the fact that she had grown up here.

Her closest friends knew that her mom had once been big in movies and that her father had composed the scores for a dozen or so famous films. But it wasn’t something she liked to talk about. Josh had always accused her of being something of an inverted snob. But it wasn’t that, far from it. She was proud of her parents’ achievements – neither of them had come from particularly wealthy backgrounds; in fact her mom’s family had all been in service in England. In a city that worshipped the motion picture industry like a religion or some kind of cult – and in which folks would have looked up to her parents as if they were minor deities – Kate didn’t want to create an artificial divide between her and potential friends. She hadn’t told Josh about her parents until they had been dating at least a couple of months. He had repeatedly bugged her with dinner invitations until she had no choice but to finally gave in.

‘What’s the big secret?’ he had joked over dinner at that restaurant up in the hills.

‘Those no big secret. I told you they were in the entertainment business.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What did they do?

‘Both worked in the film business. Sort of on the edges.’

‘Doing what?’

‘You are curious. I can see why you became a detective. Did you always want to be a cop?’

‘Don’t try and change the subject. I’ve done enough talking about myself. Now it’s your turn.’

‘Okay, I take your point. But it’s no big deal, honest. My dad is a composer, Saul Cramer, he’s a bit frail now, and my mom was an actress.’

‘Does she have a name?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What’s she called?’

‘You probably won’t have heard of her. Hope Ashley.’

‘You mean the Hope Ashley? As in The Night is Day and The Silent Lie? I thought – ’

‘Yeah, you thought she was dead, right?’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. Just that I didn’t know she was still around, living in the city.’

‘Yep, she’s still around and just as crazy as ever.’

They had both laughed then. Had that been when she had felt she was falling for him? She pushed the memory out of her mind. What did it matter now? He was no longer part of her life. Another man she could confine to history. And what about the child? He had made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to be encumbered with a baby, it was just one commitment too many. She could cope by herself. And even if she couldn’t she wouldn’t go running back to him.

‘Darling? Darling, where are you?’ It was her mother, calling from inside the house. The tone was theatrical, the accent upper-class English, a product of elocution lessons, RADA and a life in front of the cameras, the kind of voice that today you never heard outside of old movies. ‘Gosh, I was getting worried for a moment there. How are you feeling? Are you all right?’

‘Yes, mom, I’m fine,’ said Kate.

‘I know, but I keep thinking of what you must have gone through. The shock. How awful it must have been for you.’

‘Yeah, it was a bit of a shock. But honestly mom, I’m fine.’

She saw her mother – still fine-boned and something of a beauty in her seventies – give her that concerned look, like she was trying to peer beneath her skin.

‘Mom, I said I’m fine. You don’t need to use your freaky X-ray vision.’

‘Darling, I don’t know what you mean. The things you say,’ she said, laughing. ‘Quite extraordinary. But good that you can joke after seeing such a horror. I thought you’d seen the last of those kind of things when you packed in that grisly job of yours.’

‘Mom –‘

‘I know you’ve told me to hold my tongue. And I will, darling. But I’m so pleased that you don’t have to do that kind of thing anymore. Taking photographs is much, much better. But God knows why you chose to go into that line of work in the first place. So macabre. Sends shivers down my spine just thinking of it. Probably your way of rebelling against your father and me. Yes, I know, I know, I’ll keep my peace.’

Hope looked at her daughter, sensing there was something on her mind. Kate seemed tired, drawn somehow. Understandable considering what she had been through – that awful break-up with Josh – and now with what she had seen. And yet – yet she was sure there was something she was not telling her. She sat down at the circular wooden dining table, drawing a chair into the shade of the umbrella and moving slightly closer to her daughter.

Kate remained in control, her face impassive. She was fine, of course she was. But then she felt her mother’s kindly, brilliantly blue eyes searching her face for signs of unhappiness. She couldn’t hold it in anymore.

‘Oh, mom,’ she said, her face melting with sadness.

‘Darling,’ said Hope, embracing her daughter. ‘I know, I know. Let it out. Awful, just awful.’

Kate sobbed on to her mother’s shoulder just as she had done as a little girl.

‘To think of that little thing in the ocean. Who on earth could do such a thing?’

After a minute or so Kate looked up from her mother and wiped back the tears. That’s it, she thought to herself, I’ve had my cry, now pull yourself together. She swallowed the wave of sadness that threatened to sweep over her again and bit her lip. She had to tell somebody.

‘M-mom,’ she stuttered. ‘There’s something else. I’ve got some news.’

‘I knew it, I knew there was something. It’s not Josh again, is it? If I ever get my hands on him I’ll wring his scrawny –‘

‘No, well, yes, sort of,’ said Kate, taking a deep breath. ‘Mom – I’m pregnant.’

Hope did not know what to say. She knew her daughter was desperate for a child. But now? After what Josh had done? After he had left her like that? She waited for Kate to speak again, careful to take the lead from her.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said again, tears starting to well in her eyes. ‘That’s great news, isn’t it? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’

Kate laughed, a sour, bitter laugh that soon turned into a sob. Hope let her daughter cry, holding her as her body shook.

‘I’m sorry, mom,’ she said, determined to pull herself together. ‘Honestly, look at me, making a fool of myself.’

‘Darling, don’t be silly. It’s good to have a little breakdown now and again.’

Kate smiled as her mother stroked her hand. ‘But you and Josh – you’re not back together again?’

‘God, no,’ said Kate, snorting with derision. ‘I wouldn’t go back to him if my life depended on it.’

‘So – when – how?’ he mother struggled for the right words.

‘It must have been the last time we went to the clinic. Just before – before Josh decided to – ’

‘Oh my god. Darling. What are you going to do? I mean – ’

‘I’m going to have it, no question about that. I know the circumstances aren’t ideal. But I don’t have the time to wait around for another good-looking bastard to fall in love with me.’

She laughed at her daughter’s sardonic sense of humour. She had always been a touch cynical, even when she was a little girl. She could always see through people, perhaps at times too much so, and as a child she had not been the most popular kid in school. Hope remembered once, when Kate had been in seventh grade, getting an irate phone call from one of the other parents at the school – a screenwriter, she recalled – complaining about her daughter. Apparently, the other girl had been bragging about being given her very own pony for her birthday. Kate, annoyed by the spoilt kid, had turned around to her and told that her parents had only bought her a pony because they felt guilty about not spending enough time with her. True, but hardly diplomatic, and the girl had gone home in tears, accusing her parents of not loving her enough. That had taken some smoothing out.

‘Well, darling, you know I will do everything I can to help.’ She suddenly realised she was going to be a grandmother. Now it was her turn to feel tears sting her eyes. ‘If only your father could have been here.’

‘I know, mom. I know.’

‘He would have been so proud.’

They fell silent for a moment, as they watched a couple of swallows swoop down from the palm tree to drink from the swimming pool. Los Angeles rumbled and sweated beneath them, but here in the hills the breeze from the mountains felt clean and sweet.

‘About the child,’ said Hope. ‘I – ’

But she was cut off by the ringing of her daughter’s cell phone. Kate took it out of her jeans pocket. It was Josh. She stood up and walked over towards the pool, the sight of rippling water suddenly unnerving her.

‘Hi, Kate here,’ she said, pretending not to know it was him.

‘Kate, it’s Josh,’ he said. He sounded under pressure, strained. She wondered what was wrong? Was he okay? Then she realised that she was supposed not to care any more. Caring was for a time when they were still together.

‘Hi,’ she said, trying to sound as indifferent to his call as possible.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Really.’

‘Look, I can’t talk for long. It’s been a hell of a night. One of the men in the white collar internet child porn ring we had been tracking has just been found murdered.’

‘Why?’ Even though she no longer had anything to do with the investigation of crimes she found it hard to step away completely. ‘What happened?’

‘Are you really sure you want to know?’ There was a pause on the end of the line. Josh could visualise Kate giving him one of those withering, don’t patronise me stares that she seemed to specialise in. ‘Okay, okay. The victim was found in his bath in his house in Westwood, naked, covered in blood. Looks like the perp cut off the guy’s penis, before – before shoving it into his mouth.’

‘God.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Do you know anything else?’ She couldn’t help herself. Her job had gotten into her blood.

‘We’re not sure yet. There are a few other cuts to the body, mostly surface. But no signs of forced entry, so it seems like he must have known the killer.’

‘So the victim was an abuser? He’d served time?’

‘That’s the weird thing, no. No abuse that we know of. Mr Respectability, well on the surface anyway. Worked in a bank in Century City, divorced with two kids.’

‘But you were investigating him?’

‘Yeah. Downloading child porn, swapping images, those kind of things. Sorry. Anyway, that’s not why I called. It’s about the baby.’

Kate felt her heart beat faster, her face flush. How did he know? Who could have told him?

‘She’s been identified. Sara-Jane Gable.’

She felt a sudden sense of shame.

‘Only child of Susan and Joseph Gable of Los Feliz. Both 28 years of age. Married for two years. He’s an electrician at one of the TV studios, she was a make-up girl before having the baby. Nice kids. It’s not official yet, but we don’t think they’re suspects.’

‘So someone stole into their house and took the baby?’

‘Seems like it, yeah. No prints were found, not much in the way of forensics. You can imagine how they must be feeling.’

‘God, poor things.’

‘Anyway, we got a call from the mother. Seems like she – well, both of them – want to meet you. To ask you a few questions. And, I think, to thank you for trying to save their daughter’s life.’