Profile k, p.17
Profile K, page 17
The first time his parents had reacted strangely to his behaviour was when his mother cut herself with the garden shears, causing a deep gash to the palm of her hand. He was eight, maybe nine. His father had rushed her into the house to clean the wound, and he remembered walking into the kitchen. She wasn’t crying, but she had her eyes closed against the pain and was biting down hard with her top teeth on her bottom lip.
‘Apply pressure to your mother’s hand,’ his father had instructed. ‘I’m going to call the doctor. Push down firmly. It’s just blood. It won’t hurt you.’
His father hadn’t needed to worry. He’d wandered over calmly and pressed the gauze pad down on his mother’s hand until a trickle of blood had run out and along her little finger.
It was mesmerising, the beauty of blood. The depth and complexity of it. The way it moved, almost alive, as if it had been trying to escape all along and had finally found its route. He’d peeled the gauze back to see where it had come from, and the gash was breathtaking. Inside was a river, a red tide pulsing upwards and washing her palm. He leaned down to look, and God, then he could smell it and the copper stung his tongue before he even knew what he was doing—
The slap came from behind him to the back of his head, his father stepping back to stare at him.
‘He licked it!’ his father screamed at his mother. ‘He took the gauze off your hand and he … he tasted it.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ his mother had shouted back. ‘Why would he?’
There’d been a scramble to find a clean gauze pad (he’d dropped the first one on the floor) then his parents went to get medical assistance, leaving him alone with orders to mop the blood from the floor then go to his room and not move. There were some threats issued with the orders, the details of which escaped him now, but the next hour had been his and his alone.
He’d seen blood before – his own – from minor grazes and cuts, never spilling more than a drop or two, but this was something completely different. He dabbled his fingertips in the droplets, swirling and painting, smelling and tasting, until it dried out. Then he took his mother’s pastry brush from her drawer and used it to transfer the little crimson flakes onto a scrap of foil which he folded carefully and stuck under his bed with a ball of Blu-Tack. Thrilled, but not stupid, he climbed into the shower to wash off the blood.
His father would be having words with him later that night, and he had no idea what to say. That he hadn’t planned it? That he hadn’t even thought about it? That one minute he’d been holding his mother’s hand and trying to help, and the next he’d been unable to stop himself dipping his head to taste it? That didn’t seem like something his father would want to hear.
As it turned out, his father simply avoided him for the next week. His mother had cancelled a sleepover to which he’d invited a classmate, stopped having her friends round for tea, and withdrew her hand every time he reached for her. The lesson was unambiguous. What he’d done was strange and dirty, and they were never going to look at him the same way again.
Time passed. The gulf between them lessened, and it was as forgotten as things can be when you’ve shocked your parents so badly. Everything settled for a year or more until the day a deer tried to hop over the back gate into their garden and became entangled in wire. His parents had both been out at work and he was home alone during a school staff training day. The poor creature had screamed. He’d never heard an animal scream before and it had him running from the house to see what was wrong. The gardener wasn’t around, and his parents had instructed him to call them only if it was a matter of life or death, by which he assumed they meant his own rather than some non-domesticated mammal’s.
By the time he was close enough to the creature to help, it was too late for either of them. The deer wasn’t going to survive, even if he managed to free it, and he had neither the willpower nor the ability to walk back to the house and phone for help.
The deer’s legs were awash with red, as was the wire, the fence posts, the bushes, the grass and soil. It was like a dream. Walking slowly forward, holding out his hand, he knew he had to touch it. Even if the deer kicked and bit him, it would be worth it to smell that living mineral scent and wash his hands in its flow.
By the time his parents got home, the deer had breathed its last. They found him sitting on the ground in front of the carcass, naked and red from his hair to his toes. His mother had vomited, run back to the house, taken a full bottle of sherry from the cupboard, and disappeared to the guest room for the night. His father had growled at him to stay where he was, then brought the garden hose and washed him down. Even when the water ran clear, he kept going. By the time his father finally relented, leaving his skin sore, his body temperature approaching something that felt like flaming ice, he realised that his father had been crying as he’d hosed him. It was the first time he’d understood that there might be something truly wrong with him.
There was a psychologist, then a psychiatrist, a therapist, then a hypnotherapist. He told them all the truth until it was clear that none of them wanted the truth. They wanted the lie they were being paid to extract from him. That he’d been going through a phase. That he was better. That he was considering signing up to do a sponsored walk raising money for children starving in some distant country. Good boy. Well done. Much improved. All children did strange things from time to time. It was probably because he was an only child, possibly because he’d been born by emergency caesarian section.
His parents had buried themselves in work. They were often out in the evenings and away at weekends. His time alone allowed him to indulge his fascination unseen and without judgement. Some of the memories were better than others. He’d got carried away with some raw beef and ended up with food poisoning. Then there was his attempt to see how it would feel to watch the blood flow from his own body, making a cut to his thigh that had been deeper than he’d expected, and left him passed out on the bathroom floor. There were other events over the years but worst of all – the last straw, as his mother would tell him almost daily in the five months between it happening and him being sent away to a specialist rehabilitative sixth form boarding school – was what happened with Benjamin Hoffman.
At his new college, he learned to hide his anti-social interest. His parents received nothing but positive reports from college. The cold baths, a Victorian treatment for almost any form of so-called hysteria or strange behaviour, were working. The art therapy sessions were extremely beneficial (they didn’t let him use red paint for fear of ‘setting him off’). The strict vegetarian diet had quelled his unnatural interest in meat. The early bedtimes and daily exercise routines took care of any other perfectly normal desires he might have. Onanism was dealt with by means of an ice bucket, decades before anyone thought that might be a fun challenge. The therapist insisted on full disclosure of almost any thought he’d ever had, every single memory of Jessica and all of her personal details, a thorough history of his relationship with his mother and father, and every single incident involving blood was jotted down carefully in her notebooks.
In spite of the Benjamin Hoffman event, and the damage done to his parents’ reputation, he’d come out of college with an impressive set of A-levels, an offer from the sort of university that would have made any other parents proud, and with an understanding of how to control his behaviour, or so he’d thought.
Now, there were really only a few things he wanted. One of them was probably going to get him arrested and imprisoned for life. The other was Jessica. And given that he had no intention of going near her any day soon, instead he chose women who reminded him of her. Like Chloe. Like Mae. Then there was Midnight Jones. He had the photo of her by his bed, taken at some charity fundraiser for brain-damaged kids, and he looked at it more often than he should. Did she know everything about him, or nothing at all? Could he risk going near her, given that she might already have reported whatever his profile had shown her? Could he risk letting her live? There was so much going on in his head. Too much. And it made it so very hard to sleep. But he felt more alive than he ever had before, in his whole damned life.
Chapter 25
During a lengthy cup of tea with Doris, while Midnight tried to hide the sound of her tapping heel and the fact that she was looking at the clock every two minutes, Dawn had a wonderful time. Doris didn’t ask what was ‘wrong’ with her, didn’t condescend, and wasn’t the least bit worried about the mess Dawn made eating her cake. On any other day, Midnight would have loved it. Doris lit up the room. She reminded Midnight of her father’s mum – the much-loved Granny Apples, named for her tiny orchard that had been Midnight and Dawn’s favourite place in the world when they were toddlers. Granny Apples had died shortly after their fourteenth birthdays, and left a hole in their world, or perhaps she’d always filled the hole that their parents failed to plug after her death.
Midnight liked Doris’s laugh, as loud and vibrant as her clothes. She saw the way everyone who came and went in the cafe smiled at her, whether they knew her or not. More than anything, she liked the way Doris chatted non-stop to Dawn, patting her hand and making her sister giggle. Dawn, in her own unique world most of the time, had come alive in the older woman’s presence, as if she’d always been waiting for her. By the time they were ready to leave, they’d exchanged phone numbers and addresses, and promised to meet up for another cuppa soon. Dawn demanded multiple hugs from Doris before she could bear to let her go, so Doris slipped out, very quietly as Midnight was paying, to avoid upsetting her.
As they were exiting, Dawn began waving and pulling Midnight back towards their table.
‘No, honey, we’re leaving now. We have to get home,’ Midnight said. ‘I promise I’ll bring you back next week. It’s a nice place, isn’t it?’
She tried to manoeuvre Dawn towards the door but her sister was having none of it, pulling even harder for their table. Midnight caught a glimpse of something bright pink under the table.
‘Doris’s scarf!’ Midnight said. ‘That’s what you were going back for. Hold on, I’ll get it.’ She leaned down to pick up the length of patterned cloth from beneath the chair.
‘Dos!’ Dawn said, pointing at the scarf. Midnight’s heart leapt. Dawn spoke so rarely, and she almost never learned names, certainly not those of people she was unfamiliar with. She looked at her watch. Doris only lived around the corner, and whatever else she wanted to get on with, if her sister was so captivated and happy, then that moment had to be treasured and prolonged. They could walk there, though she was grateful for the wheelchair which would make the journey faster. ‘Come on. We’ll take it back to her now.’
They made their way down a few side streets until they reached Hedgerow House. Never had a building been so inappropriately named. Doris had explained that it was made up of flats with a warden who could be called on in an emergency, but just the thought of such a vibrant soul living in such a depressingly grey structure made Midnight’s heart sink.
She checked along the row of paint-peeling doors and found 16c. Putting a smile on her face, she knocked. Doris opened up almost immediately.
‘You left your scarf,’ Midnight said. ‘We’re not stalking you!’
‘Dos!’ Dawn shouted, holding out her hands.
‘Dawn!’ Doris shouted back, bending down to give her a kiss on the cheek as if they were old friends parted for months. ‘Thank you for bringing that back to me. Come on in, you two. Sorry about the state of the place. I keep asking the landlord to do it up, but there’s always some excuse or other.’
‘We can’t stay, I’m afraid. I have a list of things I need to get on with at home.’
‘Just for a minute then,’ Doris said. ‘I have something for this lovely girl.’
They left the wheelchair outside and went in. It was cold. Much colder than it should have been, Midnight thought, looking crossly at the inadequate windows and ill-fitting door. The walls needed painting, there were patches of damp high in the corners, and the carpet was threadbare, but every inch of every surface had been spruced up with cheerful pictures, patterned blankets and pretty plants.
‘I love how you’ve decorated it,’ Midnight called to Doris who was opening and closing drawers by the sound of it in what she assumed was a bedroom.
‘Oh, it’s mostly tat, but I do like a bit of colour. They can dress me in grey when I’m heading for the grave. Until then, I want my world to be full of colour. Ah, here it is!’
She came back into the lounge and handed Dawn a long soft woollen scarf of every conceivable shade. Dawn’s eyes lit up.
‘For you, my dear. I thought you’d like it!’ Dawn clapped as Doris wound it gently around her neck, draping the ends down her shoulders. ‘Made it myself.’
‘We can’t take it,’ Midnight said. ‘That looks like it was a lot of work.’
‘It was, and I can give it to whoever I like. Now, do you have time for another cuppa?’
‘We don’t, but you’re welcome to our house any time, and we’ll make trips to the cafe a regular thing, shall we? I know Dawn would like that.’ Doris smiled. ‘And I would too. I can’t promise much in the way of great hospitality. I’m not a great cook but I have a constant supply of tea and coffee.’
‘I’ll take you up on that,’ Doris said. ‘Now get this precious one home before you both get tired out. And you’ll call me, won’t you, if you need anything? I do like to feel needed, and to get out. This place is all right, but the telly-box isn’t what I’d call company.’
Her smile faltered for the first time, and Midnight’s heart missed a beat. Lovely Doris, in spite of her natural upbeat personality and her irrepressible warmth, was lonely. She was grateful that Granny Apples never had to live in a place like that. No one should have to spend their final years in such a tiny, dismal box of a home.
‘We’ll call very soon,’ Midnight said. ‘And the same goes for you. If you ever need us, just pick up the phone.’
Many more kisses and hugs later, with an ecstatic Dawn stroking her new scarf, Midnight walked home desperate to get the connections right in her head. What was the link between Chloe and Mae?
They arrived home to a stack of post that Midnight knew she should deal with, even though the only thing she could think about was calling DI Ruskin just as soon as she found his card. It was way past time for her to share everything she knew with him. She checked the kitchen and her bedroom, then under the pile of letters, finding one from Dawn’s Care at Home Agency marked urgent. Cursing, she ripped open the envelope as she continued to wander around looking for Ruskin’s number, stopping as she got a few lines down the letter.
Dear Miss Jones,
We regret that the current economic crisis has made it necessary for us to increase our charges. Our prices will be rising from next week onwards as follows:
Hourly rate between 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. £30 per hour.
Anti-social hours fees between 6 p.m. – 6 a.m. £50 per hour …
Midnight’s heart was thumping. Other details followed, including a request for an electric wheelchair, and increased notice for late stays, but all Midnight could focus on was the money. She helped Dawn move from her wheelchair to the sofa and got her settled before doing the maths. Fifty hours a week at £30 per hour was £1,500 per week. That was without a late night or time off at a weekend. It was without holiday respite care. That came to more than £6,000 per month, which was pretty much the same as it would cost for Dawn to go into a high-quality residential home, and Midnight had sworn on her own life that she would never, ever do that to her twin. Not a chance. She and Dawn were never going to be separated.
Midnight took a deep breath and tried to calm down. With her exponential pay rise and additional holiday when she could dispense with carers temporarily, and if she stopped booking extra cover for evenings out, they could just about exist. Just about. No margin for error. No margin for the odd bottle of wine or facial either.
She looked at her sister. It was worth it. But she couldn’t lose her job. More than ever, they needed financial security. If she hadn’t had the promotion, she would never have been able to cope with the rising care prices.
Midnight checked her watch. Amber would be out of work now. If she couldn’t call Ruskin and tell him everything she knew thanks to her suddenly precarious financial position, she’d have to find another way forward. It would take more of her time and energy, but she had a skillset and it was time to start using it, although she was going to need some help at the outset. What she needed was someone who could help her understand the nature of the threat. Perhaps then she could help the police without having to give up Necto’s corporate secrets. There was only one person she’d ever come into contact with who had the skills and experience in psychological profiling required. That woman had helped Necto develop their profiling software. Midnight had seen her speak, and even been on a training course with her, she just couldn’t remember her name. It had been something unusual, and it was on the tip of her tongue.
Hey Amber, having a home day with Dawn. Sorry I missed lunch again – hope you found someone to eat with. Back tomorrow, I promise. You alone? she texted.
Just me and an enormous iced cherry almond bun I bought from the new woman they’ve got coming in to sell us dopamine through baked goods. You have to try her stuff. It’s (almost) better than sex with hot barmen, was Amber’s reply.
My iron willpower remains unbroken. She had some nice bread yesterday tho. Hey, wanted to offer a client a bespoke resource. Do you remember the name of the profiler they used to help develop the software? American? She was odd but good, Midnight prompted.
Hold on.
Midnight found DI Ruskin’s card in her wallet while she waited for Amber.
Found it. Dr Woolwine. She was weird, Amber wrote.
