The Gemini Effect, page 11
“The stuff you hadn’t already told them about me, you mean.”
Rosy’s face screwed up. “I haven’t said anything that wasn’t already on record.”
“You sure? About Mason? About Jack?”
She didn’t answer that.
“I’m just not mad keen on the way your new friends go about things, is all,” Deborah said eventually.
“They’re good people, trying to do some good,” argued Rosy.
“By following me around town?” She jabbed a finger in Glover’s direction. “Creeping about, stalking people, like your inspector there.”
“I’m sure he was just…” Rosy’s sentence trailed off. Deborah could tell that even she thought that was weird.
“Doesn’t matter, they’re your work colleagues not mine – thank God! You trust them.”
“I do,” Rosy said, but had a slight hitch in her voice.
“Just – and I say this as your friend – just watch yourself, okay? There’s something fishy about all this. About Glover.”
Rosy shook her head. “Are you sure that’s not just a hang-up from Mason?”
“Probably. But can you blame me?”
She didn’t have an answer for that one either, she simply cast her eyes back in the direction of the latest body. “I just want to get to the bottom of this,” she told Deborah.
“Believe it or not, me too.”
“Made a real mess of him, of his face.”
“H-He was… he was hurting that man…”
“Hurting… hurting his face…”
“I thought someone was dying, all the racket they were making.”
Deborah swallowed dryly, pushing down those thoughts. But the timing, of last Friday’s attack, of last night’s—
“Rosy, if I tell you something, would you—”
Glover returned and Deborah shut up again, Rosy looking at her with a puzzled expression on her face. “So, any thoughts Miss Harrison?” asked the inspector.
It was Deborah’s turn to shrug. “Not really, just that it’s all very familiar territory.”
“Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, you’re welcome to tag along for the post-mortem though.” Glover looked at Rosy. “Miss Harrison is welcome to sit in, isn’t she?”
“Of course,” Rosy confirmed.
Deborah held up her hand. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Right, yeah. Not everyone’s cup of… You need a strong…” He patted his stomach.
“I’m not squeamish, if that’s what you mean,” snapped Deborah, thinking back to when she used to attend PMs and scoot when the bone-saws came out and internal organs were being removed. She’d done the same at Stuart Redbrook’s, though hadn’t been as much of a wuss as—
Fuck! Fuck his name, and fuck him.
“Are you sure that’s not just a hang-up from Mason?”
Hadn’t been a wuss at all, can’t have been to be involved in— He’d just been pretending, like he had with everything. Making sure she didn’t get near to the truth, making sure… Making her care about him.
Fuck.
“Of course not,” said Glover, the SIO on this case. Was he being sarcastic? It was hard to tell. Indeed, Deborah was having a really hard time reading this guy altogether.
“I’ve just seen enough in the past, that’s all. And I doubt it’ll give us anything useful.”
“Hey!” said Rosy. “Thanks for that.”
“You know what I mean. Stab wound with the fork, two puncture wounds. A part of the body that comes in pairs missing. It’s the same MO, you know it and I know it. Cutting up that poor guy over there’s not going to tell us anything we don’t already know, and if this is like what happened before the perp’s too smart to leave any DNA or evidence behind. And I’ll just bet he’s a—”
“Sir, sir!” They were interrupted this time by Clark jogging towards them. “We’ve confirmed the ID.”
“Excellent,” said Glover.
“Name’s Geoffrey Whittaker, lives not too far from here. Porter at the local hospital, he was probably coming back from a shift.”
“Jesus,” said Glover.
“There’s more,” Clark told him, just as Fleming came back over too. “He’s a…” The DS looked at them all in turn, stopping when he reached Deborah.
“He’s a twin, isn’t he?” she finished for him. “Another twin.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The past and present were starting to blur.
Colliding, running into each other. There was certainly a sense of déjà vu to everything that had happened recently, and was continuing to happen. When Glover had made that crack about buying the T-shirt, he’d been more right than he knew. It was like she’d visited not just this place before, but this time. Or rather she was watching a movie of it play out again, some schlocky horror flick where the bad guy—
The bad man, the man with two faces…
–—just kept coming back and back. Didn’t matter that he’d been killed before, didn’t matter that you thought you were done with it all. He needed to return for the series to continue, for the franchise to carry on. A franchise with its fans, she was starting to realise.
Uniform had continued to canvas the area where the Whittaker murder took place (Geoffrey, identical brother of Graham), going door-to-door, but Deborah knew they’d turn up nothing. If this killer was anything like the last, he’d be meticulous. Would know exactly when and where to strike, might have been trailing the victims for some time; might possess even more details about them in this age of digital information. Same went for the CCTV in the area, regardless of whether there were more cameras than ever in Norchester – all part of the clamping down on crime thing – it was a lost cause.
Indeed, some of the closest surveillance footage near Valentine Avenue was either corrupted or blank. “This happened with the original Gemini,” she’d told them back at the station during one of their meetings – in a long room, with an equally long table and a presentation screen at one end showing the mangled images. “There was some talk that he might have jammed or blocked the CCTV feed. Personally, I just figured that it had been messed about with by… by his brother.”
There was certainly a case to be made that the footage which had been acquired from the multi-storey, where they believed Stuart Redbrook had been snatched and/or killed, had been tampered with by Mason.
“Our IT people have been working on what we have,” Fleming told them, “and did manage to clean this up a little.” She pressed a button on a remote control and played another clip of a shadowy figure running across the frame, dressed in dark clothing. At one point the person even looked up at the camera as if knowing it was there, just not caring, but the face looked… strange, glowing almost.
“What is that?” asked Glover, scratching the back of his head. “Some kind of facial distortion mask?”
“There was a theory that maybe The Gemini had some sort of effect on electrical equipment. You know, like people who are prone to static shocks and such, but perhaps he could control it? Direct it?” Deborah gave a shrug when a bunch of people around that table she didn’t know all gaped at her. “I dunno. It was just a theory.”
A crazy theory, though was it any crazier than Maxwell Craine ‘absorbing’ twins to feed himself somehow? Fairy tales to frighten children. No more insane than what she’d told Clark when he gave her a lift back to the station after the Whittaker murder; he’d insisted on giving her a lift actually, though both Rosy and Glover offered.
“You okay?” he asked as they drove through the streets.
“No. Are you?”
The young man shook his head. “It does all feel like history repeating itself, doesn’t it.”
“Same shit, different day,” she said under her breath. “Let’s hope it ends a bit differently.”
“Yeah,” Clark answered.
“Robbie? Can I tell you something.”
“’Course,” he said, glancing over. “Anything, bos— Deborah, er, Debs.”
“Keep working on that,” she told him, with a slight smile. “This might sound a bit odd, but then what doesn’t about all this.”
“Tell me about it.”
It was just a saying, but she did. She told him about it, the thing she’d been about to broach to Rosy before Glover returned. The thing that had been on her mind since she’d received the message about the murder, since she’d seen Geoffrey Whittaker’s corpse. “I think… I think my boys are dreaming about the killings.”
“What?” he said, staring at her, and the pool car he was driving veered off track slightly. She pointed at the road ahead and he refocussed.
“I don’t know for sure, so promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about this.”
“I—”
“Promise me, Robbie.”
He nodded. “I promise. But what do you mean, they’re dreaming about it? Do they know what’s going on here?”
“Of course not!” Deborah realised that had sounded more defensive than it needed to be. Like he was the one accusing her of being a bad mother this time. “I’m sorry. No, they don’t. I’m not talking about dreams after the fact.”
Clark frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
Deborah sighed. “Okay, to put it into context: Jack could ‘see’ the killings when they happened last time.”
“What?” repeated Clark, sounding like a stuck record.
“He saw the murders – as they happened. Said that his brother James was showing him what The Gemini was doing.”
“His brother…? But his brother was—”
“Dead. Yep, I know.”
“That was why he was tracking The Gemini, wasn’t it. Because he’d killed his brother.”
“Correct again. But didn’t you wonder how he was so good at that? What he was doing at the crime scenes when we got there, sometimes even before us?”
“There was…” He paused, looked over again apologetically. “There was some talk that he was the killer himself.”
“I know,” stated Deborah. “I know there was.”
“That he might be involved in it all.”
“Oh, he was involved all right. Up to his neck in it, just not in the way people imagined.”
“I mean, I know now… Jack was the one who… And I’m sorry again that happened, Deborah… Debs.”
“We’re getting there,” she said, then when he looked confused, “with the name, I mean.”
“Right,” said Clark. “He was— So he couldn’t really have had anything to do with the killings. Could he?”
“Robbie, Jack was one of the kindest, sweetest men I’ve ever known. He was trying to end all this.” She shook her head. “I’m not even sure he was out for revenge, he just wanted the killings, the deaths to stop.” Deborah brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye. “Pity it took his own death to do that.”
“And Peel,” Clark reminded her.
“And Peel. Thing is, the boys are Jack’s sons. I-Is it beyond the realms of possibility that they’ve, I don’t know, inherited something from him? Some kind of psychic ability?”
“Bloody hell,” was all the response she got from him this time. Then: “Who else knows about all this? Feels like something you should be talking to Rosy about.”
“Rosy knows about Jack,” said Deborah. “Or at least what he told me about his… visions. Is that the right word to use? I’m not sure she believes it, even after all these years. But she knows. Which means Glover probably does too, as she seems to be in his pocket.”
“You really don’t trust him, do you?”
Deborah shook her head more emphatically. “Not in the slightest. Which means I can’t trust Rosy either at the moment, unfortunately. Hence the…” She put her finger to her lips when he glanced across. “Nobody knows about the boys, only you.”
“Wow. I mean, well, thank you, first off. But, like, wow.”
“None of the rest of the old lot are around, and you’re not under the SCI’s thumb,” she explained. “But also, well, you’re you. You’re Clark.”
He smiled at that. “Thanks, is what I’m trying to say. It means a lot.”
Deborah placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you.” Once she’d started, she told him the rest. About how the dreams coincided exactly with both Felicity Bailey’s murder and Geoffrey Whittaker’s; about what had happened on the video call the previous night. “Some of the things they were coming out with, it makes you wonder. Makes you think.”
“Deborah, if what you’re saying’s right, then we might be able to use it. Might be able to get to the victims before—”
She held up her hand. “I’ll stop you right there, because I know what you’re about to suggest. You think I haven’t thought of it myself?” Deborah let her head drop to her chest. “I can’t have my sons getting tangled up in all this, it’s bad enough that I let myself get drawn back in. I can’t let them be used.” She emphasised that word, to drive home the fact they were people, that they were just children. “Used as some kind of early warning system! Holy shit, my mother thinks I’m the worst person in the world as it is.”
“She already knows something’s going on, by the sound of it,” said her companion.
“Mum knows they’re having nightmares, yeah. But I’d like to leave it that way. What’s happening with them – if it even is happening – is very different to Jack anyway. He wasn’t dreaming, it happened when he was awake. And the twins, they’re both… both still alive.” She looked up and over, speaking through gritted teeth. “I plan on keeping them that way.”
“Of course,” said Clark.
She wiped away more tears. “Even after everything, even after all that chasing, all that torment he went through, Jack only ever saved one person from The Gemini. And he was badly injured in the process. I should know, I patched him up. That was the night we—” Deborah paused, stopped herself from opening up a bit too much, oversharing. This wasn’t Rosy after all.
“Jack didn’t have the resources. The means to reach the target in time. He was just one man,” Clark reminded her. “Maybe if we’d had more bodies down in those cells, some firepower…”
“You saw him. You saw that… that thing, the same as I did. Do you think guns would have stopped him, Robbie?”
“I… We’ll never know, I guess.”
Did she detect a hint of resentment there, that they hadn’t gone down to the sewers mob-handed? Did he blame her for Peel’s death, now that he knew everything about Jack? Had she been wrong to trust him with this information, with the stuff about the boys’ dreams? “Robbie. You promised.”
“I won’t say anything, Debs. I gave you my word.”
“Then that’s good enough for me,” she said, having made a promise herself recently. There was silence for a while, before she added: “It couldn’t have gone down any other way.” But Deborah wasn’t sure even she believed that. If she’d known about what was going to happen, what they were facing in those cells… Did Jack have to die? Had there been a way to save him?
Was there a way now to save others?
It was something that she was still thinking about during all those briefings afterwards, during the days that followed – and especially when during one Glover said explicitly: “If only there was some way of knowing what this creep’s going to do next!”
She and Clark had exchanged a look, both pleading in their own way – Clark for her to tell someone, Deborah hoping that he’d keep her secret – a glance she felt sure Glover spotted. But then they’d all moved on to other things.
Like the fact that Mayor Tierney was demanding to know what the hell was going on. Two murders in the space of a week, in her city? Outrageous! Clark pointed her out when she came to visit, a woman who looked a little like the ginger lady from that quiz show who was always putting people down. Reminded Deborah of a mayor character she’d created for her first thriller, as it happened; the one set in the market town. Tierney had disappeared into a side-room with Glover where raised voices could definitely be heard. When she exited, she did not look happy – had obviously decided who the weakest link here was – but then again neither did Glover.
Deborah knew that pressure was probably being put on the inspector, not just from the Mayor – as he’d taken over the case from the local lads, probably elbowing some quite senior officers out of the way in the process – but also his own higher-ups. The SCI would have a hierarchy, same as any other organisation, and right now they’d be demanding results. And as all-powerful as they were supposed to be, even they’d have a job keeping a lid on this for long – especially where the press were concerned – and then the shit would really hit the fan.
Nevertheless, Deborah still felt she was being blocked. Included in meetings, asked her opinion on things, but not fully involved. She always got the sense that she was being excluded from things, especially when Rosy was on the scene. She’d notice papers being passed back and forth between Fleming – who was still giving her filthy looks for that storm out – and Glover, but she still wasn’t being granted access to anything important.
Fair enough, she wasn’t a copper anymore. What right did she have to access what Glover called ‘sensitive materials’? But at the same time they’d brought her into the mix for more than just this, hadn’t they? To sit around doing bugger all while the killer followed their own devices and desires, executing their own plans. Not even the twins’ nightmares would help them figure all that out. Yet she needed to justify, at least to herself, all the earache she was getting from her mother about not coming home yet.
Deborah might not officially be police anymore, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t investigate off her own bat. Let’s face it, she told herself, as she sat in the bullpen being ignored once more, left with some magazines and a coffee, who would notice she was missing? Not even Glover this time, and she doubted he’d bother to trail her with all this on his plate. Things had escalated, and Deborah decided that if she was really going to help then she should get off her arse and do it. She’d never been one for spectator sports.
Rosy’s face screwed up. “I haven’t said anything that wasn’t already on record.”
“You sure? About Mason? About Jack?”
She didn’t answer that.
“I’m just not mad keen on the way your new friends go about things, is all,” Deborah said eventually.
“They’re good people, trying to do some good,” argued Rosy.
“By following me around town?” She jabbed a finger in Glover’s direction. “Creeping about, stalking people, like your inspector there.”
“I’m sure he was just…” Rosy’s sentence trailed off. Deborah could tell that even she thought that was weird.
“Doesn’t matter, they’re your work colleagues not mine – thank God! You trust them.”
“I do,” Rosy said, but had a slight hitch in her voice.
“Just – and I say this as your friend – just watch yourself, okay? There’s something fishy about all this. About Glover.”
Rosy shook her head. “Are you sure that’s not just a hang-up from Mason?”
“Probably. But can you blame me?”
She didn’t have an answer for that one either, she simply cast her eyes back in the direction of the latest body. “I just want to get to the bottom of this,” she told Deborah.
“Believe it or not, me too.”
“Made a real mess of him, of his face.”
“H-He was… he was hurting that man…”
“Hurting… hurting his face…”
“I thought someone was dying, all the racket they were making.”
Deborah swallowed dryly, pushing down those thoughts. But the timing, of last Friday’s attack, of last night’s—
“Rosy, if I tell you something, would you—”
Glover returned and Deborah shut up again, Rosy looking at her with a puzzled expression on her face. “So, any thoughts Miss Harrison?” asked the inspector.
It was Deborah’s turn to shrug. “Not really, just that it’s all very familiar territory.”
“Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, you’re welcome to tag along for the post-mortem though.” Glover looked at Rosy. “Miss Harrison is welcome to sit in, isn’t she?”
“Of course,” Rosy confirmed.
Deborah held up her hand. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Right, yeah. Not everyone’s cup of… You need a strong…” He patted his stomach.
“I’m not squeamish, if that’s what you mean,” snapped Deborah, thinking back to when she used to attend PMs and scoot when the bone-saws came out and internal organs were being removed. She’d done the same at Stuart Redbrook’s, though hadn’t been as much of a wuss as—
Fuck! Fuck his name, and fuck him.
“Are you sure that’s not just a hang-up from Mason?”
Hadn’t been a wuss at all, can’t have been to be involved in— He’d just been pretending, like he had with everything. Making sure she didn’t get near to the truth, making sure… Making her care about him.
Fuck.
“Of course not,” said Glover, the SIO on this case. Was he being sarcastic? It was hard to tell. Indeed, Deborah was having a really hard time reading this guy altogether.
“I’ve just seen enough in the past, that’s all. And I doubt it’ll give us anything useful.”
“Hey!” said Rosy. “Thanks for that.”
“You know what I mean. Stab wound with the fork, two puncture wounds. A part of the body that comes in pairs missing. It’s the same MO, you know it and I know it. Cutting up that poor guy over there’s not going to tell us anything we don’t already know, and if this is like what happened before the perp’s too smart to leave any DNA or evidence behind. And I’ll just bet he’s a—”
“Sir, sir!” They were interrupted this time by Clark jogging towards them. “We’ve confirmed the ID.”
“Excellent,” said Glover.
“Name’s Geoffrey Whittaker, lives not too far from here. Porter at the local hospital, he was probably coming back from a shift.”
“Jesus,” said Glover.
“There’s more,” Clark told him, just as Fleming came back over too. “He’s a…” The DS looked at them all in turn, stopping when he reached Deborah.
“He’s a twin, isn’t he?” she finished for him. “Another twin.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The past and present were starting to blur.
Colliding, running into each other. There was certainly a sense of déjà vu to everything that had happened recently, and was continuing to happen. When Glover had made that crack about buying the T-shirt, he’d been more right than he knew. It was like she’d visited not just this place before, but this time. Or rather she was watching a movie of it play out again, some schlocky horror flick where the bad guy—
The bad man, the man with two faces…
–—just kept coming back and back. Didn’t matter that he’d been killed before, didn’t matter that you thought you were done with it all. He needed to return for the series to continue, for the franchise to carry on. A franchise with its fans, she was starting to realise.
Uniform had continued to canvas the area where the Whittaker murder took place (Geoffrey, identical brother of Graham), going door-to-door, but Deborah knew they’d turn up nothing. If this killer was anything like the last, he’d be meticulous. Would know exactly when and where to strike, might have been trailing the victims for some time; might possess even more details about them in this age of digital information. Same went for the CCTV in the area, regardless of whether there were more cameras than ever in Norchester – all part of the clamping down on crime thing – it was a lost cause.
Indeed, some of the closest surveillance footage near Valentine Avenue was either corrupted or blank. “This happened with the original Gemini,” she’d told them back at the station during one of their meetings – in a long room, with an equally long table and a presentation screen at one end showing the mangled images. “There was some talk that he might have jammed or blocked the CCTV feed. Personally, I just figured that it had been messed about with by… by his brother.”
There was certainly a case to be made that the footage which had been acquired from the multi-storey, where they believed Stuart Redbrook had been snatched and/or killed, had been tampered with by Mason.
“Our IT people have been working on what we have,” Fleming told them, “and did manage to clean this up a little.” She pressed a button on a remote control and played another clip of a shadowy figure running across the frame, dressed in dark clothing. At one point the person even looked up at the camera as if knowing it was there, just not caring, but the face looked… strange, glowing almost.
“What is that?” asked Glover, scratching the back of his head. “Some kind of facial distortion mask?”
“There was a theory that maybe The Gemini had some sort of effect on electrical equipment. You know, like people who are prone to static shocks and such, but perhaps he could control it? Direct it?” Deborah gave a shrug when a bunch of people around that table she didn’t know all gaped at her. “I dunno. It was just a theory.”
A crazy theory, though was it any crazier than Maxwell Craine ‘absorbing’ twins to feed himself somehow? Fairy tales to frighten children. No more insane than what she’d told Clark when he gave her a lift back to the station after the Whittaker murder; he’d insisted on giving her a lift actually, though both Rosy and Glover offered.
“You okay?” he asked as they drove through the streets.
“No. Are you?”
The young man shook his head. “It does all feel like history repeating itself, doesn’t it.”
“Same shit, different day,” she said under her breath. “Let’s hope it ends a bit differently.”
“Yeah,” Clark answered.
“Robbie? Can I tell you something.”
“’Course,” he said, glancing over. “Anything, bos— Deborah, er, Debs.”
“Keep working on that,” she told him, with a slight smile. “This might sound a bit odd, but then what doesn’t about all this.”
“Tell me about it.”
It was just a saying, but she did. She told him about it, the thing she’d been about to broach to Rosy before Glover returned. The thing that had been on her mind since she’d received the message about the murder, since she’d seen Geoffrey Whittaker’s corpse. “I think… I think my boys are dreaming about the killings.”
“What?” he said, staring at her, and the pool car he was driving veered off track slightly. She pointed at the road ahead and he refocussed.
“I don’t know for sure, so promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about this.”
“I—”
“Promise me, Robbie.”
He nodded. “I promise. But what do you mean, they’re dreaming about it? Do they know what’s going on here?”
“Of course not!” Deborah realised that had sounded more defensive than it needed to be. Like he was the one accusing her of being a bad mother this time. “I’m sorry. No, they don’t. I’m not talking about dreams after the fact.”
Clark frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
Deborah sighed. “Okay, to put it into context: Jack could ‘see’ the killings when they happened last time.”
“What?” repeated Clark, sounding like a stuck record.
“He saw the murders – as they happened. Said that his brother James was showing him what The Gemini was doing.”
“His brother…? But his brother was—”
“Dead. Yep, I know.”
“That was why he was tracking The Gemini, wasn’t it. Because he’d killed his brother.”
“Correct again. But didn’t you wonder how he was so good at that? What he was doing at the crime scenes when we got there, sometimes even before us?”
“There was…” He paused, looked over again apologetically. “There was some talk that he was the killer himself.”
“I know,” stated Deborah. “I know there was.”
“That he might be involved in it all.”
“Oh, he was involved all right. Up to his neck in it, just not in the way people imagined.”
“I mean, I know now… Jack was the one who… And I’m sorry again that happened, Deborah… Debs.”
“We’re getting there,” she said, then when he looked confused, “with the name, I mean.”
“Right,” said Clark. “He was— So he couldn’t really have had anything to do with the killings. Could he?”
“Robbie, Jack was one of the kindest, sweetest men I’ve ever known. He was trying to end all this.” She shook her head. “I’m not even sure he was out for revenge, he just wanted the killings, the deaths to stop.” Deborah brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye. “Pity it took his own death to do that.”
“And Peel,” Clark reminded her.
“And Peel. Thing is, the boys are Jack’s sons. I-Is it beyond the realms of possibility that they’ve, I don’t know, inherited something from him? Some kind of psychic ability?”
“Bloody hell,” was all the response she got from him this time. Then: “Who else knows about all this? Feels like something you should be talking to Rosy about.”
“Rosy knows about Jack,” said Deborah. “Or at least what he told me about his… visions. Is that the right word to use? I’m not sure she believes it, even after all these years. But she knows. Which means Glover probably does too, as she seems to be in his pocket.”
“You really don’t trust him, do you?”
Deborah shook her head more emphatically. “Not in the slightest. Which means I can’t trust Rosy either at the moment, unfortunately. Hence the…” She put her finger to her lips when he glanced across. “Nobody knows about the boys, only you.”
“Wow. I mean, well, thank you, first off. But, like, wow.”
“None of the rest of the old lot are around, and you’re not under the SCI’s thumb,” she explained. “But also, well, you’re you. You’re Clark.”
He smiled at that. “Thanks, is what I’m trying to say. It means a lot.”
Deborah placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you.” Once she’d started, she told him the rest. About how the dreams coincided exactly with both Felicity Bailey’s murder and Geoffrey Whittaker’s; about what had happened on the video call the previous night. “Some of the things they were coming out with, it makes you wonder. Makes you think.”
“Deborah, if what you’re saying’s right, then we might be able to use it. Might be able to get to the victims before—”
She held up her hand. “I’ll stop you right there, because I know what you’re about to suggest. You think I haven’t thought of it myself?” Deborah let her head drop to her chest. “I can’t have my sons getting tangled up in all this, it’s bad enough that I let myself get drawn back in. I can’t let them be used.” She emphasised that word, to drive home the fact they were people, that they were just children. “Used as some kind of early warning system! Holy shit, my mother thinks I’m the worst person in the world as it is.”
“She already knows something’s going on, by the sound of it,” said her companion.
“Mum knows they’re having nightmares, yeah. But I’d like to leave it that way. What’s happening with them – if it even is happening – is very different to Jack anyway. He wasn’t dreaming, it happened when he was awake. And the twins, they’re both… both still alive.” She looked up and over, speaking through gritted teeth. “I plan on keeping them that way.”
“Of course,” said Clark.
She wiped away more tears. “Even after everything, even after all that chasing, all that torment he went through, Jack only ever saved one person from The Gemini. And he was badly injured in the process. I should know, I patched him up. That was the night we—” Deborah paused, stopped herself from opening up a bit too much, oversharing. This wasn’t Rosy after all.
“Jack didn’t have the resources. The means to reach the target in time. He was just one man,” Clark reminded her. “Maybe if we’d had more bodies down in those cells, some firepower…”
“You saw him. You saw that… that thing, the same as I did. Do you think guns would have stopped him, Robbie?”
“I… We’ll never know, I guess.”
Did she detect a hint of resentment there, that they hadn’t gone down to the sewers mob-handed? Did he blame her for Peel’s death, now that he knew everything about Jack? Had she been wrong to trust him with this information, with the stuff about the boys’ dreams? “Robbie. You promised.”
“I won’t say anything, Debs. I gave you my word.”
“Then that’s good enough for me,” she said, having made a promise herself recently. There was silence for a while, before she added: “It couldn’t have gone down any other way.” But Deborah wasn’t sure even she believed that. If she’d known about what was going to happen, what they were facing in those cells… Did Jack have to die? Had there been a way to save him?
Was there a way now to save others?
It was something that she was still thinking about during all those briefings afterwards, during the days that followed – and especially when during one Glover said explicitly: “If only there was some way of knowing what this creep’s going to do next!”
She and Clark had exchanged a look, both pleading in their own way – Clark for her to tell someone, Deborah hoping that he’d keep her secret – a glance she felt sure Glover spotted. But then they’d all moved on to other things.
Like the fact that Mayor Tierney was demanding to know what the hell was going on. Two murders in the space of a week, in her city? Outrageous! Clark pointed her out when she came to visit, a woman who looked a little like the ginger lady from that quiz show who was always putting people down. Reminded Deborah of a mayor character she’d created for her first thriller, as it happened; the one set in the market town. Tierney had disappeared into a side-room with Glover where raised voices could definitely be heard. When she exited, she did not look happy – had obviously decided who the weakest link here was – but then again neither did Glover.
Deborah knew that pressure was probably being put on the inspector, not just from the Mayor – as he’d taken over the case from the local lads, probably elbowing some quite senior officers out of the way in the process – but also his own higher-ups. The SCI would have a hierarchy, same as any other organisation, and right now they’d be demanding results. And as all-powerful as they were supposed to be, even they’d have a job keeping a lid on this for long – especially where the press were concerned – and then the shit would really hit the fan.
Nevertheless, Deborah still felt she was being blocked. Included in meetings, asked her opinion on things, but not fully involved. She always got the sense that she was being excluded from things, especially when Rosy was on the scene. She’d notice papers being passed back and forth between Fleming – who was still giving her filthy looks for that storm out – and Glover, but she still wasn’t being granted access to anything important.
Fair enough, she wasn’t a copper anymore. What right did she have to access what Glover called ‘sensitive materials’? But at the same time they’d brought her into the mix for more than just this, hadn’t they? To sit around doing bugger all while the killer followed their own devices and desires, executing their own plans. Not even the twins’ nightmares would help them figure all that out. Yet she needed to justify, at least to herself, all the earache she was getting from her mother about not coming home yet.
Deborah might not officially be police anymore, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t investigate off her own bat. Let’s face it, she told herself, as she sat in the bullpen being ignored once more, left with some magazines and a coffee, who would notice she was missing? Not even Glover this time, and she doubted he’d bother to trail her with all this on his plate. Things had escalated, and Deborah decided that if she was really going to help then she should get off her arse and do it. She’d never been one for spectator sports.
