The Echo Man, page 1
THE ECHO MAN
A NOVEL
SAM HOLLAND
For Ed
THE ECHO MAN
HAVING ALWAYS BEEN fascinated with the dark and macabre, Sam Holland has a love of reading that was forged in the library through Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and James Herbert. A self-confessed serial killer nerd, Holland studied psychology at university, then spent the next few years working in Human Resources, before quitting for a full-time career in writing. The Echo Man is the result.
Sam can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @samhollandbooks.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
PROLOGUE
LEAVES CRUNCH UNDERFOOT. The black closes around him; he exists only in the narrow tunnel of light from the car’s headlights. He takes a deep breath in. The forest smells of wet foliage; mud; clear, crisp air. So far it has been as good as he imagined it would be. It’s all coming together perfectly.
He’s holding a woman, one arm hooked under her knees, the other around her back. She’s still fresh, and blood runs out of the stab wounds, down his white plastic trousers. He savors the warmth on his cold hands.
He looks at her fondly for a moment, then heaves her into the trunk. She lands with a heavy thud against the second body, her leg lolling out over the bumper. He pushes it inside.
Everything has to be just right.
He looks at them both, then leans down and undoes the handcuffs. Even in the darkness he can see faint red and black marks on her wrist, made while she had a body responsive enough to bruise. He’s pleased: it’ll show what he did.
He walks back to the front of the car, opening the passenger side door. He picks up the two implements left in the footwell, taking the cover off one of them. The stainless steel blade of the knife shines, clean and newly sharpened. It’s his favorite; he knows it works best for instances like this. Smaller and more precise than the one he used to kill.
He takes both instruments back to the bodies. Stops. Looks at the girls. He’s never done this out in the open before, in the dark. He doesn’t like to be rushed. But needs must.
He grabs an arm and tugs her half out of the car trunk. He straddles her body, taking a good handful of hair. Blood flows, but he knows what he’s doing, it doesn’t interfere with his process.
He changes position, pulling the body around so he can get access to the other side. Then he puts the knife down and picks up the other tool. It’s bigger, heavier. The weight is reassuring. He does what he needs to do, and then, with a final twist and pull, it’s finished.
He stands up, rearranges the bodies, then repeats the action on the second girl. This one is quicker, his technique is better second time round, and after, he pauses, standing back from the car and appraising the scene in the trunk.
It’s not perfect. He sighs. It bothers him that he can’t complete the tableau properly this time, that none of this is in the correct order, but he wants these to be found.
He shuts the trunk. With the heel of his shoe, he smashes out the right taillight. He walks over to the second vehicle, pulling off the plastic clothing, placing it in another bag to burn later. He climbs in and puts his hand on the ignition key, willing the old car to work. As it splutters into life and he drives away, he looks back at the car. From the outside, nobody can tell what lies within.
Nobody can imagine what horrors are still to come.
PART 1
CHAPTER
1
Day 1
Monday
I AM SO fucking bored.
The thought darts into her head, intrusive and distracting. She looks in the mirror above the sink. The expression on her face isn’t lust or desire—it’s boredom. Pure unmitigated boredom.
She’s bent over the taps: the soap dispenser in front of her, the hand dryer to the left. She can see the man behind her. The man that’s doing a below average job of fucking her in the disabled toilets of the community center, barely fifteen minutes after dropping their children off at school.
Her underwear is around her ankles; her skirt, pulled up to her waist. He has his hand shoved under her bra, kneading her breast like unproofed dough, the other gripping her hip as he thrusts into her.
Ethan? Evan? Whatever, she thinks. She remembers his kid’s name is Hayden. He’d said he was in the same class as Alice, pointing toward the throng of indistinguishable children running into the school as the bell rang.
He stood out among the throng of yummy mommies in tight gym gear and hurried career women on their way to work. Short brown hair, a little skinny for her liking, but decent enough. No wedding ring. That was the only sign she needed before making the suggestion. He ignored hers, the platinum band now reflecting in the stark fluorescent lighting.
She cringes as he spasms, coming with a suppressed cry, then slumping against her back. She wriggles out from underneath him and stands, pulling her skirt down, trying to preserve some sort of modesty.
He has his back to her, cleaning himself up. He drops the piece of toilet paper and the condom into the loo, then flushes it.
He refastens his belt before opening the door and peering out nervously.
“Jessica, right? Do you want to …?” he asks.
“Just go,” she says. He leans over to give her a kiss, but she pulls back.
“Thanks,” he mutters awkwardly, closing the door.
She locks it behind him and sits on the toilet. She shakes her head with disbelief, pulling her tights back on.
I’m so fucking bored, she thinks again.
* * *
Jess has a shower when she gets home, washing away all traces of Ethan/Evan. She makes a cup of coffee and takes it out to the garden.
It has stopped raining, and the winter’s air is cold and biting. She sits on the edge of one of the concrete steps, dressed only in a sweatshirt and jeans, her feet bare, her hair still wet from the shower. She knows she can’t stay out here long, but she enjoys the feeling of the cold on her body.
Their garden is large and rambling. Overgrown grass, weeds pushing their way through the gaps in the paving slabs, shrubs no more than twigs. Her husband occasionally makes comments about the mess, but she tells him she likes it this way—nature forging its own path, ignoring regulation or order.
She finishes her coffee and looks down at her feet. The flesh has turned white, her toenails blue. She’s started to shiver slightly. It’s time to go inside, and she turns her attention to what needs to be done before she picks Alice up from school.
She used to work, but the balance with the school run was a nightmare. She doesn’t miss it—she was just as bored then as she is now—but she liked the distraction it gave. Now, there is nothing for her to focus on. Nothing to do.
* * *
At school pickup she nervously scours the crowd, but Ethan/Evan is mercifully absent. She hovers at the edge of the playground, ignoring the other moms as they chat, their banalities an anathema to Jess. The door opens and the children bound out, one by one, directed by the teacher toward their mothers.
And then, there’s Alice. Her curls are escaping from her hairband as she skips toward Jess, a huge grin on her face, her school bag still massive in comparison to her tiny body. Jess pulls her into a hug, then ushers her toward the car, listening to her chatter about her day.
As she drives, she looks at her daughter in the rearview mirror. It astonishes her how she managed to create this beautiful, confident creature: unselfconscious, lithe, full of energy. The only good thing to come from her, she thinks ruefully. Alice talks about Georgia, about Isabelle, about Ned. Faceless kids Jess has never met.
“What about Hayden?” she throws back to her daughter.
Alice shakes her head. “I don’t know him,” she replies, and Jess is relieved. The last thing she needs is a forced playdate with the guy.
They get home. Alice rushes off to her toys and Jess gets on with dinner. She’s making beef in a red wine sauce tonight, chopping vegetables carefully, sautéing the meat. She hears her husband come in the front door, and Alice runs to greet him. Jess barely looks up until she feels him behind her, kissing the back of her neck.
“Smells good,” Patrick murmurs into her hair.
“Me, or dinner?” she asks, and he laughs.
She turns and watches him as he goes into the hallway. He’s taking his suit jacket off as he walks, pulling the tie from around his neck. She takes him in objectively.
Patrick’s never been slim, but lately his metabolism seems to have been getting the better of him. His shirt strains at the neck, a belly pushes over the waistband of his trousers.
She turns back to the hob. She’s not being fair, she knows. He’s devoted, compassionate, hard-working. All the Good Husband adjectives. She should be making the most of him, she thinks, pouring a glass of red from the bottle, then transferring the rest into the pan. She should be screwing him in public toilets, rather than nameless strangers. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so keen to get it elsewhere.
She goes to take a swig from the glass of wine, but her hand is slippery from the cooking and it slips, smashing on the floor.
“Mommy?” she hears Alice shout from the living room.
“It’s okay—just dropped something. Don’t come in here.”
She looks down, scowling, at the spikes of glass on the tiles, the red from the wine flowing slowly outward. One shard is curving from the floor
It feels good.
She watches a slow trickle of blood ebb away from her foot, the bright red mixing with the lighter hue of the wine.
“Jess! What the hell are you doing?”
She feels Patrick’s hands on her upper arms. He pulls her away from the mess, pushing her toward a chair. She sits down with a thump. He looks at her, his hands on his hips. She can tell he’s angry, but he doesn’t want to shout.
“You know better than this,” he says, bending down and looking at the wound. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath, wincing as he pulls the slice of glass from the fleshy part of her forefoot. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“I’ll sort it,” she says. “I’ll get Nav to come over.”
Patrick stands up and looks at her. He goes to say something, then stops himself. “I’ll get dinner finished,” he says instead.
She pulls her foot around so she can look. The edges of the cut are straight and precise, but they gape apart, blood flooding from the incision. Patrick passes her a roll of paper towels, and she roughly wraps several around her foot, then hobbles off to the bathroom.
Inside, she locks the door and sits on the closed lid of the toilet. She takes the first aid kit out of the cupboard and opens it up, resting it on the edge of the bath. It’s more than your usual household plasters—a collection of bandages, gauzes, tape: everything she might need for situations like this.
She looks at the bottom of her foot again, then sets to work, pushing the sides of the cut together, drying the area around the wound and sticking it as best she can with surgical tape. But it’s still oozing blood. Patrick’s right: it’s going to need stitches, and she picks up her phone, sending a text. A response comes back immediately.
I’m at work, Jess. I’m on nights. Go to the urgent care clinic like a normal person.
She replies: I’m not a normal person, Nav. You know that. It can wait. When’s the earliest you can come round?
Three small dots appear—he’s typing. Then a pause. She knows she pushes their friendship to the limit, but she can’t bear to go to another drop-in center. The same questions, over and over again. The same looks, the same suspicion.
Her phone beeps.
Fine. Tomorrow morning. I finish at the hospital at 8.
Then a follow-up: I can’t keep doing this.
She sighs and puts her phone down, bandaging her foot as best she can. She puts socks on: she needs to hide the injury from Alice.
When she goes back into the kitchen, Patrick and Alice are sitting at the dining table, Patrick starting to serve dinner. She ruffles Alice’s hair as she sits down, and her daughter looks up, beaming at her.
“Everything okay?” Patrick asks.
She gives him the response he wants: a smile and a nod. She wonders, not for the first time, what’s wrong with her.
* * *
They eat dinner, and Alice tells them about her day at school. It’s a ramble of words, an incoherent telling of a story, but they listen, the indulgent parents of a five-year-old only child. Patrick asks her questions at the right points as she babbles away; she doesn’t notice any hostility between her parents.
Jess runs her bath and puts her daughter to bed. She reads her a story. Everything is calm. Alice snuggles down under her duvet, and Jess gives her a kiss and a cuddle. Her daughter smells of shampoo and warmth and innocence, and she feels a swell of love in her chest. She is thankful—for the hundredth time—that her daughter is normal.
Patrick comes in after her and says goodnight, turning off the light. Jess waits in the hallway as he closes the door, but he walks past her without a word, going downstairs. She follows him into the kitchen, hovering in the doorway as he takes a beer from the fridge.
“I’m sorry, Patrick,” she says, and he nods slowly without looking at her.
He opens the bottle and puts it to his lips, downing a long swig.
“I’m going to London in the morning,” he replies. “It’s an early start. I’ll sleep in the spare room so I don’t wake you.” He pauses. “I’ll set up an appointment with Dr. Crawford.”
Without another word, he turns and goes into the living room. She can’t stand the thought of another insufferable hour with Dr. Crawford, a woman who doesn’t care or understand. She asks Jess questions she can’t answer. “What makes you want to hurt yourself? What do you think will happen if you continue to be this self-destructive?” Jess recognizes the threat implicit in the seemingly innocent question.
She hears the television turn on and the sound of football. Patrick knows she hates football. He’s telling her: Stay away. I don’t want to be near you right now.
She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t want to be near herself right now, either.
* * *
She goes to bed. She watches television in their bedroom, some true-crime documentary, but the overblown drama doesn’t provide the distraction from her own life that she hoped it would. After a while she hears Patrick clean his teeth, then close the door to the front bedroom. She wonders if she should go and say goodnight, apologize again, then decides against it. An apology means “Sorry, and I’ll try not to do it again.” Useless words, when she knows they’re not true.
She turns the television off, plunging the room into darkness.
She lies in the black, counting slowly as she breathes in and out. Her daughter is silent next door, and she can’t hear any movement from Patrick in the spare bedroom. Slowly she drops off to sleep.
* * *
As night takes over, a hand slowly pushes the mail slot open. Liquid is poured through the door into the hallway; it runs across the tiles, soaking the mat. Then something else follows: a lit match.
It falls to the floor, and with a whoosh the fire ignites.
Hampshire Chronicle
July 15, 1994
ANIMAL KILLER STILL AT LARGE—12 CATS KNIFED
A sadistic pet killer is on the rampage, estimated to have killed eight cats and injured a further four in the last two months. Other animals may have also been targeted, the RSPCA claim, citing two dogs and four rabbits that have gone missing in the same time period.
Mother of two, Michelle Smith, says her kids are “traumatized” after they returned home on Friday to find their pet cat, Stimpy, dead and disemboweled on their front porch. Anonymous sources from the police have also shared instances where pets have been found skinned, possibly while they were alive, although this has yet to be confirmed.
The RSPCA and Hampshire Constabulary are working together to find the killer, and ask any members of the public noticing suspicious behavior to call 101.
They advise any pet owners in the area to keep all animals indoors until the offender has been apprehended.
CHAPTER
2
THE GLASS GLOWS red and orange, flames lighting up the windows, turning the inside to black. Smoke claws up the walls, gray fingers reaching skyward.
With an almost silent surge across the carpet, the fire grasps at curtains, furniture—anything in its wake. Glass cracks with the heat, dark wisps creep up the stairs, skulking under doors.
It steals into her nose. The coughing wakes her, the lack of oxygen forcing her to take sharp breaths. Jess opens her eyes. It is nearly pitch black, but she can see a fog lurking at the edges of the ceiling. It hovers, a malingering specter, thick and intimidating. She coughs again, feeling her lungs starting to clog.
Suddenly, through her daze, her consciousness clicks into action. She jumps out of bed, dressed only in her oversized T-shirt, and goes to the door. The handle is cold, and she slowly opens it into the hallway.
