The Death Pictures (28 page)

‘Dear Brian,

I am so sorry to trouble you, but you should be aware of some most unacceptable events which are unfolding within your constabulary. It is my unfortunate duty to have to complain in the strongest of terms...’

Edward Munroe felt himself relax as he wrote. He bet himself a box of Havana cigars that his escort would be gone by tomorrow.

He didn’t know whether to rage, be shocked or feel sick. So they thought he was a paedophile.

Will Godley had seen the neighbours gossiping in the street. Little gangs of two or three chatting, sly and secretive, pointing over to his house, the patrol car outside, the policeman sometimes sitting inside reading a book, sometimes leaning on the bonnet.

It was the man’s cheerfulness that irritated him most. Always that bloody ‘Good morning, Sir!’ or ‘Good afternoon, Sir!’ or whatever. And it was the sarcasm too. ‘Just doing my rounds, sir…’ his rounds which consisted of Will Godley’s home, or outside the dockyard while he was at work, or even the pub when he fancied a pint.

He could have handled it if it hadn’t been for the graffiti he’d found sprayed on his wall this morning. Yellow paint, appalling handwriting and even worse spelling, but the message very clear.

‘PEEDO’

He could hardly believe it. He’d had to sit down on the wall to look again. Surely they didn’t think? They couldn’t think..? Him, a devoted Dad to his kids, a man who’d be even more dedicated if the bloody courts and system would give him a chance. Him!

But he could see how it would add up to the locals. Some here knew he had kids but didn’t get to see them much. He’d moaned about that enough down the boozer. And then there was this police watch on him. Yes, he saw how it could look.

He knew what it was all about, of course, but he wasn’t giving them that DNA sample. Sod them. He owed the system nothing – it owed him – and he wasn’t going to help them, not in any way whatsoever. Why should he? He’d done nothing wrong. Quite the opposite. Sod them.

He wasn’t putting up with this. It was harassment and he knew just what to do about that. No point in complaining to the cops, they were all in this together. But he knew a better way, to embarrass them and force them to leave him alone.

He took a can of lager from the fridge, lit a cigarette and opened the packet of writing paper he’d bought from the corner shop. Letters of protest to
The
Wessex Standard
, the
Western Daily News
and the TV. They’d love a story about a waste of police resources at a time when they should be devoting their efforts to catching the rapist. That would do it.

Steven Freeman scarcely bothered checking his mirror for the police car. He was content it would be with him, like the guardian angel it had become. And yes, there it was, a couple of cars back in the traffic.

He’d relaxed now, worked out they had nothing on him, nothing at all. Otherwise they would have arrested him, wouldn’t they? They were just trying to push him into a mistake. Well, they were out of luck.

They were taking the piss out of him, so he’d decided to turn their little game around and take the piss out of them. Night shifts were always the most lucrative in taxiing. The turnout from the pubs and clubs left the city awash with fares. Working ten at night to four in the morning could make you a pretty penny, but there was a price.

He’d stopped doing them, got sick of the aggro. The rows about the fares, the threats and fights, the people who sprinted off without paying. But now he was back on nights and raking in the cash without any hassle at all. He turned the radio up as the guitar of T. Rex’s ‘Get it On’ rang out. Good driving music. It was amazing how well your passengers behaved with a police escort right behind you.

One of the modern wonders of the world it was often called, and Dan couldn’t disagree.

He hadn’t been to the Advent Project for more than a year and was amazed how it had grown. As Environment Correspondent, he’d seen it rise from a sludge-filled china clay pit in an overlooked part of Cornwall to become one of Britain’s finest attractions. Every time he visited he wondered at the huge bubble domes, their plastic skin and the lightweight silver metal web that anchored them together. Inside thrived a living and ever-changing theatre, the bursting trees and plants, towering into the air, a spectrum of dizzying colour in leaves and blossoms and blooms.

Dan hardly noticed the jungle of the tropical zone crowding around him. His interest wasn’t what was on show, but what could be hidden. The answer to McCluskey’s riddle. He sat down on one of the tyres – part of the rubber display – and looked around, wondering if the solution could really be here.

To his side, a waterfall cascaded and crashed from the rock face fifty feet up at the peak of the dome. Its cooling spray split the sunlight into floating rainbows and wafted a welcome relief from the cloying humidity of the air. Wax-leaved plants waved contentedly and spots of vibrant red and yellow flowers crept up the cliff. A slow snake of people trundled past, pointing, touching and talking, all struggling to take in the spectacle.

So McCluskey was a big advocate of Advent. It meant a lot to him. So what? Was there something here that would help? Was the answer here? Dan leafed through the prints of the pictures and his notes, more covered with question marks than anything else.

The grid references he thought might have existed in the pictures didn’t mean anything in Advent, or anywhere near it. Nowhere at all in fact. He’d wondered if the PIN numbers might have something to do with the range of interactive exhibits they had in the visitor centre, but nothing tallied. On a whim he’d even checked the pay phones for numbers containing 225, but found nothing. So he sat, stumped again. Still, it was a beautiful place to be baffled in. He wiped some of the waterfall’s drifting spray from his face and tried to force his mind to find the elusive inspiration.

What about symbolism in the pictures? Was he taking them too literally, looking for grid references and PIN numbers? Possibly, but he’d always had the feeling the answer was in the numbers and he’d learned never to ignore his hunches.

Hang on, picture four. What was picture four? Dan fumbled it out. The drooping clock in the desert landscape. The next dome was the Mediterranean zone. And that looked like a desert. It was worth a try. It had to be. He picked up his papers and made his way towards it.

A very different feel to this dome, he thought. The air was drier and the plants less lush, built to survive, not flourish as they had in the tropical zone. Spidery fronds against the sandy earth, bare rock faces with only splashes of dry green clinging on grimly. He checked picture four again. It did look similar. He felt another growing excitement and checked himself. Don’t get too enthused. OK, it looked similar, but it was still a huge area he was facing here. Where to start? Where to look? And what for? Did he expect the answer to be here, or just another clue? Or anything at all?

Dan walked slowly up a path, past some copper sculptures of grazing goats. His feet crunched on the sand and gravel. There was a snake in the picture forming an S shape, but no goats. He looked around. What could the S signify? Just ahead was a children’s interactive exhibit, a board with letters on, letters you pushed to light up an area on the display. A possibility? He hurried down.

A couple of children stood pressing the buttons and he felt an urge to push them out of the way, but resisted it, waited. They quickly got bored and wandered off. Dan reached out and pressed the hexagonal S key.

A display lit up, a message. S is for sand. It looks difficult to live in, but some manage. Cacti love it and snakes slither across it.

He stood back, pressed it again. Cacti and snake, just as in the picture. It had to mean something. He stared at the board, pressed the button again.

A voice rose behind him. ‘Excuse me?’ Dan turned. A youngish man holding a boy’s hand, waiting politely. ‘Do you mind if we have a go?’

Dan mumbled an apology and stood aside, still staring at the board. McCluskey had to have been thinking of this place when he painted it. He was sure of it. Was there anything on the board that could help? He followed the alphabet. Animals, Burrowing, Cacti, Desert. No, nothing he could see. So what else was in the picture?

It was the simplest of the ten. Was that significant? Was McCluskey saying the answer was simple, that it was here, that all the other pictures were diversions? Dan hissed in exasperation.

Cacti feature in the picture, two of them together. Dan walked slowly around the dome. There were cacti everywhere, but only one place where two stood close together, almost intertwined like new lovers. He felt another surge of adrenaline and checked around. No attendants. Dan hopped over the low wooden fence, bent down and quickly examined the ground. No, nothing buried here. He stood up, his eyes running over the firm green of the plants’ flesh and their angry needles. Nothing written here, nothing attached to the cacti. Nothing at all as far as he could see. Cursing he rejoined the path, ignoring the curious looks of the other visitors.

A little further along there was a pond, a big one, more like a small pool, plants dangling thirsty fronds into its still waters. And there was a pool in the picture… He walked over and stared at it, slowly scrutinised the area around, but could see nothing. No obvious S shapes, no numbers, nothing. Even the displays about how water was a precious commodity in the Mediterranean climate didn’t offer any hope.

Dan sat down on a wooden bench in the middle of the dome and looked around him, then down at his prints of the Death Pictures. Nothing. Not a bloody thing. It was tantalising though. It couldn’t be a coincidence, that some of the features here matched the pictures, could it? If the answer wasn’t here, McCluskey must have been thinking of Advent when he created the riddle. There could be a clue here he was missing, or… He remembered what Ed had told him. McCluskey loved getting one over on people. It could just be an intricate joke.

What were his instincts telling him? He knew he believed there was something here. But what? Or was that just wishful thinking? Hoping his journey wasn’t wasted. But it wasn’t wasted, was it? He hadn’t been for a while and it was a good day out.

Dan smiled knowingly, shook his head. He could con many people, but never himself. He stared up at the silver spider’s web of the dome’s supports and felt a tug from the swamp. It was still there, lurking darkly on the edge of his mind, waiting for its moment.

No, not now, he could hold it off. He had this quest to complete. He was here to find the answer to McCluskey’s riddle and he was sure there was something in Advent somewhere. But where? He waited, tried to think, but the stage of his mind remained obstinately empty, no matter how hard he worked to usher ideas onto it. Well, if all else fails, have an ice cream and a wander.

Dan ambled down a sandy hill to the little wooden stall in the corner of the dome and checked what was on offer. A vanilla tub would do nicely, good brain food and fresh, Cornish produce. They were strong on that at Advent, always tried to source their food and drink locally.

He queued behind a couple of old ladies, wearing raincoats despite the dry heat. Then he saw it. A number 559, tiny, ingrained on the base of one of the dome’s metal supports. He’d never have noticed it if he wasn’t so close to the edge of the structure and part of the number hadn’t been flecked with green paint.

Dan strode over and checked the next support. 560 was etched on it. So each was individually numbered. That made sense. He remembered from reporting on the building of Advent that all the supports were different lengths and shapes, depending on what part of the quarry they were designed for. The whole thing had been built from a kit of parts, like a giant model.

He felt his pulse quicken. The ice cream forgotten, he checked picture four. A three-figure number in here? Where? Nothing obvious, it had to be the clock. The drooping hands on a quarter past nine. 915…

He’d been feeling good this morning. The weekend with Annie and Tom had gone beautifully. The whole day together on Saturday, to the beach at Bigbury and blessed with spring sunshine, a kick about in the sand, some rock-pooling, then lunch and a drink at the pub on Burgh Island. Perfect family life and for once his pager hadn’t bleeped its disruptive electronic burble.

The McCluskey case was sorted. The rapist case was… on hold? In the process of being sorted…? Well, whatever, they were doing all they could. His family was keeping it from his mind and he had a chance to try to repair and rebuild the relationship. He hardly dared to believe, but it seemed to be working.

He’d stayed at home – his old home – on Saturday night. He’d cuddled up with Annie in the enveloping, king-size bed, their first joint buy when they moved in together, and tried to forget that cold and lonely one-bedroom flat he was forced to rent.

They’d looked in on Tom before they’d gone to bed. The boy’s hair was sprayed out on his pillow, as always. Adam smiled. His dad’s influence that. His hair could be impossible to shape up in the morning. And that sleeping smile on his son’s face, he saw so much in it. The smile of a contented boy, knowing his father was there to love, help and protect him. In that moment, holding Annie’s hand, them looking at each other, he resolved to make his wife and son his priority. Not his job. Not any more. It was just like the time when Tom was born. He could only remember it as a valium haze of family contentment, centred on that tiny, wrinkled face. Nothing mattered except Tom and Annie.