Chapter 110
I WAS DRAWN straight to the device around his neck, a clumsy thing secured with more silver duct tape that pulled at the loose skin around his throat. A plastic water bottle turned sideways sat under his chin, sloshing with pale brown, almost tea-coloured liquid. I could see wires and fixtures making bumps and veins in the tape around the top and bottom of the bottle. Inside the bottle, awash in the liquid, were more wires crisscrossing each other, tightly wrapped in black electrical tape.
The unprofessional look of the device added to the already deep lack of comprehension I was experiencing. I stood before the man in the chair and looked at the thing around his neck and couldn’t believe that it was in any way dangerous. It was so messily constructed, so awkward, that my only concern at that point was the gun on me and the man’s rapid breathing, threatening a heart attack.
I looked at the girl with the gun. Of course it had been her all along. From the moment I met her, she’d been desperate to make me and everyone around her aware of her searing dissatisfaction with the town, its people, her father, everything.
She was more than dissatisfied. She was angry. Over dinner her disgruntlement at her father’s racism tumbled off her lips like spittle. Her eyes had implored me from across the table. But I’d been uninterested. And that’s the automatic reaction she’d received most of her life, I imagined. A default dismissal of whatever bugged her. Pretty girl. White girl. Student. What could she possibly have to complain about? She flicked the gun towards a nearby chair and I went to it and sat down.
‘I decided I wanted to use you for Day Zero when I found out you were in town,’ Bella began, smoothing her hair down with long, slow strokes. ‘It was so amazing, you coming, you being right in the middle of all this. I knew it was a sign. I’ve been watching you and the case with your brother from the beginning. I watched the footage of you going up to the courthouse for the first day of proceedings. You looked so distressed. I remember thinking at the time – you’re going to be the victim in this that nobody understands. You’re going to be the forgotten one. The forgotten victim.’
She glanced at her father. I followed her eyes, watched sweat rolling down his temple.
‘There will be people who sympathise with your brother,’ Bella said. ‘And there will be people who sympathise with the dead girls. Their families. But right in the middle of it all, there’s you. Nobody sympathises with you. Nobody believes you. I know what that feels like.’
She went to the dining-room table and carefully plucked up a tattered yellow envelope, thick as a dictionary. I noticed another gun on the table. Theo Campbell’s gun. Bella must have taken it the night she stopped the older officer on the road on the hillside, probably with a ruse similar to the one she’d used on me. Helpless, Bambi-legged. The one who needed management. She tossed the envelope onto the ground at her father’s feet. Dez winced. The liquid in the bottle at his throat sloshed.
I took the hint and slowly went to the envelope, picked it up and returned to my chair. Calm movements were essential. Don’t antagonise her. Don’t challenge her. Just listen, keep alert for something you can use. Something you can bring out, nurture, the key to stopping it all. Because this was a clever young woman. Cunning, manipulative. Not the kind of killer who would have carelessly left her diary full of murderous plans in a blazing red backpack at the local rest stop. That’s why the bag was red. Why the bag was otherwise empty. It was a red bag or a fucking neon sign. STOP ME. She wanted to be caught. She wanted to be listened to. She had chosen me to stop her.
I opened the envelope, only now realising how badly my hands were shaking. The photographs inside were jumbled together, corners sticking out everywhere. I slipped my fingers in, pulled out a handful.
The first picture was of a young boy sitting with his back against a bare rock wall. He couldn’t have been older than ten. Naked. Legs splayed. Another young boy had his head resting on the boy’s thigh, face turned inwards, just centimetres from his genitals. Both were clearly unconscious.
I let the pictures fall to the floor one at a time. The same faces. Different faces. Boys and girls in their teens. Some youngsters, tweens. Some of them were simply splayed out, on their own, mostly in the light of a fire. On sand. On rock. Curled on their sides on beds of dry grass. Some of them had been entwined awkwardly together. Heads leaning sloppily on bellies and shoulders, gaping mouths in the dark.
A man began appearing in the photographs. His bulging, white, bespeckled belly. His pale thighs. Dez.
A sickness was rising steadily in my stomach, pressing at the back of my throat. I’d seen pictures like this many times in my work.
‘What are you going to use me for, Bella?’ I said.
‘To get my message out.’ She smiled.