The Unblemished, page 6
A Marlboro red in the corner of his mouth, his apron cracked with the patterns of dried blood from his previous patient, Losh assesses the girl, who is gagged and restrained on the bench with half a dozen nylon ties. He’s spilling ash on her thigh as he unwraps the curved amputation knife from a fishmonger’s flimsy carrier bag and drops to his knees. Losh curls his arm under the leg so that the sharp, inner curve is resting on the top of the flesh, the tip a mere few centimetres from his own nose. He executes the coup de maître swiftly, cutting deep, sweeping the blade around the leg, bringing the hilt of the knife sharply back to him, and standing up in the same motion. Meat parts; bone is the wet tooth glistening up through a bloody grin. Her body arcs in shock and pain; two of the nylon ties sink through her skin. He quickly saws through the femur and repeats the operation on the other leg.
Manser is as hard as a brick by now. There’s no time, no point in suturing the hot, spurting wounds. Losh is transferring the three grand into a money belt around his waist while Manser is losing himself to the feel of her, slick and denuded, flapping around his hips.
‘You want these leftovers, or what?’ Losh asks.
He encloses his hands around her stumps as he comes. If she’s at all conscious, he doesn’t see, can’t see. Losh is long gone by the time he returns to the world. So is the girl, usually. Sometimes they cling on for a while, as if something inside them was inspiring hope.
He wants the Hickman bitch for his number four.
Salavaria, he thought.
Manser parked his S-Type at the leading edge of the deep forest. If he listened hard he could hear the faint shush of traffic on the M1, a mile or two south. He reached inside the car for a plastic lunch box and a black leather document wallet. He put these in a rucksack and slung it over his shoulders. He had collected the sandwiches from Losh that morning, as he always did, once a week, on the day of his visit to Fetter Woods. Six days’ worth of photographs in the wallet had all been printed directly from a memory stick the previous evening. He set off into the trees.
Salavaria.
He was still impressed by his feats, achieved in a different decade, a different century. Manser’s murders were almost a by-product of his intent, an unavoidable side effect of his need. Death was not the goal for him, and it had been a surprise to discover that Gyorsi Salavaria’s crimes, in this way, were similar to his own.
The monster’s lair announces itself about two miles into a part of the woods where the canopy is so dense there is permanent twilight. The first indication is a single, lichen-covered block of stone in a clearing that is really nothing of the sort. There are no well-established trees here, just a swarming pile of shrubbery that looks as though it has been dumped rather than rooted. Foundations are visible through the moss. More stones. Move deeper and the stones find some kind of form. They climb to a point where they create impressive shadows in the dappled sunlight. They are enough to warrant a window frame, albeit naked. Spiders’ webs so thick they create the illusion of frosted glass stretch across the gaps. A shattered doorway stands at the head of a flight of steps turned green with lichen and time. Manser strides up them, recognising his footprints from his previous visit, one week before. The rucksack is hot now against his back despite the time of year; he is aware of sweat ringing his neck, the waistband of his black trousers.
It is still a strange feeling for him, as used to this place as he is, to walk a corridor that has no ceiling. It feels faintly ridiculous, and not for the first time he has the peculiar sense that he has never before been here, that there is nothing to see, that the ruins will turn back to rubble as he proceeds, that the trees will take over once more, that there will eventually be a road leading away.
Insects cling to the walls like strange decoration, the dead carapaces providing the only sounds as he strides forwards, crunching underfoot.
Out of the confusion of stone and creeping vegetation, he sees faces where there are none, surging from the shadows like something exuded. The walls develop greater height, and now parts of a ceiling appear. Rooms suddenly stitch themselves out of the fabric of green and black. Things skitter within them, either too blind and damaged to reach the open doorways, or more preferring of the thick gloom. He thinks he hears singing, but it is over almost before he can identify it as such.
At the end of the corridor, a windowless room with its door hanging off the hinges. Out of the dark, one hand reaches to curl around the splintered, rotting jamb. It grips so hard that the knuckles whiten in an instant.
Gyorsi Salavaria says, ‘I like what you bring me, Malcolm.’
He thought back to their first meeting, arranged after Salavaria had written to him, specifically to him, expressing his admiration for his crimes and wishing to meet him face to face.
‘Why?’ he had mouthed, unable to summon a squeak of sound when he stood before the great man for the first time.
‘Do you know what it is like to float in a bath of blood?’ Salavaria had whispered in reply. ‘To sleep in a bed with corpses that cannot close their eyes? Do you know the feeling, when you take something as incontrovertibly positive as life and turn it, with your own hands, against everything that is outlined in its code, to oppose what nature intended?’
Ostensibly this was no longer the man who had torn an unborn child from the womb of Emily Tasker and partially devoured its face while the mother haemorrhaged to death. His withdrawal from the game had apparently ruined him, left a husk that was so fragile it would be blown away by the breeze. But Manser never bought that. He saw Salavaria’s strength. The body might seem to have dwindled, but there was sinew there, and force, and the brains and blood that powered it were stronger than ever.
Today though, he could see that something was seriously wrong. Salavaria was sitting in a steel chair fastened to the floor with rusting bolts. His chin rested against his chest, his grey hair tumbling forwards. He appeared exhausted. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes. Manser wondered if there was an illness he had not been told about. He wondered if guilt had come charging into this vulnerable body, after all this time, and had finally broken him. He couldn’t believe that.
Manser waited. He had cleared his throat, said hello, the first time he had visited and had not been acknowledged for another five minutes. Salavaria knew he was here. And Manser, after all, was no stranger to waiting.
Thirty years on, still, with some frequency, the bones of his crimes were picked over by the carrion eaters who published the red tops every morning. There was a regular froth over the fact that he had escaped arrest for so long, usually when a new editor was appointed. Or the flames of fear were fanned with an article on the most dangerous men in the UK still at large. Salavaria – or rather, because they did not know his real name, The Picnic Man – featured prominently in those. Some ventured that he must have died; it was the only answer for the sudden end to the sequence of killing. Some said that if he was still at large, then he must be a harmless old man now, whose reputation was being stoked by lurid journalists.
But a new generation was unmoved by his crimes, despite the tabloids’ sanctimonious outrage. Salavaria was old school. He was slowly being forgotten.
‘I smell lunch,’ Salavaria said. His voice had never lost its Romanian accent, the slashed vowels, the unusual intonation, the unexpected pauses and stresses. Perhaps because nobody ever spoke to him. He had chosen this life of voluntary solitary confinement; it made for a dull existence if you liked to converse. Salavaria did not seem to mind. He had books, a radio, and these had kept him sane. If, Manser reasoned, you could call someone sane who carried slices of thymus around in peach paper on the off chance he grew peckish. But then, who was Manser to cast judgement on sanity? He chuckled lightly to himself; Salavaria raised his head. His eyes were the palest green, like the iridescent flash of mould on a shaving of ham. When they favoured you, it felt like you were slowly being reamed out. Thick white eyebrows beetled at the slightest change of expression. His face appeared sucked in, as if something had deflated him, but the skeletal appearance was offset by the shining beauty of his skin. It was elastic, uncreased, as smooth and colourful as that of someone half his age.
‘You find something funny?’
‘Not really,’ Manser replied. ‘Just my twisted mind.’
‘Your twisted mind is what I rely upon,’ Salavaria said. ‘Don’t ever attempt to straighten it out.’ Salavaria winked at Manser, who again felt a surge of pride that he had been chosen above all others. He felt affection, maybe even love, for the man and slid the greaseproof packet across the table.
‘I’ll try my best,’ Manser said.
‘I’m famished,’ Salavaria said. His hands shook as they lifted one white triangle with its insert of pinkish meat. As he bit into it, his eyes rolled back into his head.
Just like a shark, Manser thought.
He could not watch him finish the sandwich. Not because of the animal way he devoured it, although that was shocking enough, but because it disturbed even him to see slices of a woman he’d slept with the previous night being consumed. This was Jacqueline Kay, or at least a part of her, a student he had picked up in a pub on the Finchley Road six days earlier.
You need to fast them, Dr Losh had advised him at the start. Forty-eight hours is best but you can get away with half that. Just give them a little water, that’s all. It was part of his thrill, his fetish, he supposed, that he must wait for them to be physically prepared for the traumas their bodies had to be subjected to. Salavaria was an extremely demanding person but he didn’t care how the meat was treated after his delicacies were harvested. Manser might have been able to dispense with Dr Losh had Salavaria been happy to eat cold cuts from a cadaver, but he was adamant that his slices of buttock and breast be carved from a warm donor.
Manser’s prick stirred as he recalled the way he had slid, unhindered, into Ms Kay that morning, the expression on her face of dulled shock that her body was still being ravaged, that she was still having to endure this. When does it give up? she seemed to be asking. When is enough too much?
Now he heard the balling of the greaseproof paper and a clearing of the throat. Manser returned his attention to the other man in time to see him dabbing crumbs from the tabletop with the tip of a finger. A comma of grease on his chin provided the welcome break to a terrible sentence.
Salavaria’s eyes were glazed. His voice was content, sated, a little sleepy when he said: ‘Thank you, Malcolm.’ And then: ‘Do you have the next menu ready for me?’
As Manser fiddled with the straps and buckles on the old leather wallet, he totted up their atrocious total so far. Five years, nine victims. Salavaria was insistent he feed once every six months. He had not yet fully divulged the reasons for his proxy return to murder and Manser was grateful for that. He did not much care to know. It was enough that they were in league. He was pleasing a legend and being allowed to pick through the leftovers for as long as was hygienic. Dr Losh was a competent if slapdash surgeon and a great help when it came to disposing of bodies, and body parts. It was a brilliant system; he just had to make sure he remained careful, and travelled widely in order to choose potential victims. Don’t defecate where you masticate, Salavaria had warned him, early on.
This philosophy informed the latest batch of ‘applicants’, as Salavaria referred to them. From the wallet Manser extracted two dozen black-and-white images, all taken in landscape mode, all 6" × 4". None of the targeted subjects was aware of being photographed and all of them were of a graininess to suggest they had been taken at long range. Four from the tennis courts of a sixth-form college in Sunderland; eight from a café in central Bristol; two on the beach at Cardiff; three at a funfair outside Leicester; five on the ferry across the Mersey; and two at a service station on the M6.
Salavaria placed one of this last pair to the side. He held its mate with trembling hands. ‘This one,’ he said, falteringly. ‘This one … how … who …’
Manser thought he was trying to establish how someone at a service station could be tracked. All of his applicants would have been followed to determine an address, should they need to be acquired at a later date. He thought of explaining this to him, but Salavaria finally spat out a complete question. ‘Who is she?’
‘She’s the daughter of some cunt I nailed once,’ Manser said, and immediately apologised for his language. But Salavaria did not seem to be aware of his indelicacy. ‘I know where she lives,’ he went on, quickly. ‘Her mother, that’s her in the other picture, she’s on tick up to her tits and I’ve been giving her some heavy about it. Well, I was until she upped sticks.’
‘You mean you don’t know where she is?’
‘I’ve got my contacts. It won’t be long. What? You want her on toast?’
‘Not her. I want the girl.’
Manser shifted uncomfortably. He was hoping Claire could be his little bonus once the latest victim was selected. It wasn’t even an in-focus shot of her: Sarah had been the option he had authorised. It bothered him too that Salavaria’s mask was slipping. He had never displayed any signs of weakness before, but here he was with tears in his eyes. His fingers trembled as they held the edges of the print. Manser wanted to say something, but he felt he didn’t have the words Salavaria needed to hear, the depth of feeling. Now he seemed to be muttering to himself. Within seconds he had turned from everybody’s bogeyman into wittering bag lady; granite to sandstone.
‘Her,’ Salavaria said. ‘I want her.’
‘Consider it done,’ Manser said, battling to keep the irritation from his voice. He tried to look at the good that might come of it. He could at least finish his business with Sarah Hickman, teach her some manners, some lessons. Maybe even introduce her to Dr Losh, and his mattress, with its protective plastic sheeting. He could let her watch while he had Claire stumped, and –
‘But I don’t want her … spoiled in any way.’
‘Gyorsi. We have a deal.’
‘The deal is now changed,’ the old man said, looking up at him fully for the first time.
‘But I don’t understand,’ Manser persisted. ‘What good is she to you in here? What good is she to you at all? You can’t risk coming back to normal life. You wouldn’t last a second.’
Salavaria’s eyes were those of a man half his age. He said, ‘I am coming back. But in order to do so I must change.’
Salavaria spoke at length, in great detail and without pause for breath, almost as if this were a speech he had prepared and learned over many years.
He told Manser what he needed and what Manser would do. By the end of it, Manser was in tears.
4. MISTER PICNIC
TWO YOUNG OFF-DUTY police officers, glory-seeking constables so eager for a trophy collar they hadn’t called for reinforcements, got lucky. They were suspicious of this wiry man in his jeans and pullover, his iron-grey ponytail tied neatly off at the back of his head. They didn’t like the way he hung around the sixth-form college, or tried to chat to female students as they waited at the bus stop.
They lost him for a while, then one of them thought they saw movement by the wooden fence surrounding a field. Locals tramped across it in order to collect chestnuts in Thinways forest each November. They followed the figure through deep snow to a crumbling stone platform in an abandoned North Yorkshire train station where they found him trying to swallow the heart of ten-year-old Jemima Cartledge. The rest of her body lay in the snow nearby, ringed with an ugly spattered circle of blood and faeces. He’d attempted to set fire to her corpse but her clothes were too damp. Her singed hair sent an unbroken line of thin smoke into the cold blue sky.
‘Kill me,’ he’d begged them. They hadn’t, so he had dispatched the two of them, informing them of his retirement as they breathed their last red gasps into the snow.
November 18, 1976. The Picnic Man. Gyorsi Salavaria. The final bow.
He thought of that moment of his ending every day. He should not have allowed it to happen. He had been weak. He’d had no faith. He should have kept going, knowing that he would need to remain at the peak of his fitness, both physically and mentally. This was not the kind of thing you just tossed off, like a hobby. It took an enormous amount of psychological steel to turn a living creature into a dead thing. And now it was time to return to it. His enforced hibernation was at an end. They expected him to turn it on, go back to being the monster, the phantom, the slippery Picnic Man.
Everything that had occurred since then – the TV coverage, the stupefaction that his reign of terror was suddenly over, this long period of hiding, the self-doubt, the late-night radio phone-ins where lonely women had asked for his hand in marriage – all of it seemed to have come from a time before his retreat. Only that moment seemed to exist within his memory with clarity. Everything else was lustreless, befogged. He supposed that time in the snow, with a throat full of warm blood, was the last time he had felt alive. Thirty years withdrawn. Happy fucking birthday.
He could and should have gone on. He had endured a moment of stupid weakness and it had deposited him in a self-imposed exile, a hell.
Once upon a time he had pranced clear of anybody with his scent in their nostrils: young, intelligent, hungry, he was a man whose senses had become super attenuated. A fly seeing the approaching swipe almost before it has been launched. The police had been moving through syrup. But he had allowed himself to be found cheaply, for a momentary lack of confidence. He thought his people had abandoned him, were unimpressed with his work; they had simply read the situation much better than him, with the coldness and logic that he had yet to learn. His exposure might lead to his capture, which in turn could lead to their being discovered. And so they had created some distance. Shedding the emotive side of himself, the human part, had shielded him from understanding the situation. He understood that now. Any warmth or sympathy that existed within him before his self-imposed exile had shrivelled and was as useless as a vestigial organ or limb.
