Arabs should have completed the job? Or could he penetrate the hide of flesh and see me beneath it? He had, after all, seemed to sense my presence before.
No time for me to ponder such things. He was drawing the crawling car to a halt. Beginning to open the driver’s door…
But I was there, I was outside the entrance to the police station. Oh no, steps to climb! Two sets of steps to climb!
I called on every last ounce of willpower I had left. Had to make it, had to climb. One—step, two—step… Was he behind me? Oh God, he had to be. It would only take a moment to leave the car and run across the pavement, catch hold of me before I’d even climbed the third step.
“Fee—feb…” I said aloud, expecting to feel rough hands on me, hands that would drag me away, back into the Hillman, the back seat or the boot.
“Four—feb…”
Why couldn’t I feel his touch? Why was he taking so long?
“Fife—feb…”
More steps, at the bend, keep going, one step, two step, three, four, keep climbing, pull on the rail, lift one leg after the other… God, so heavy, filled with quick-drying cement… but keep on, not far, not so far—
I was there, I was at the top! I swayed in surprise. The double doors were in front of me, although the light shining from inside was getting dimmer. I knew that it was not the fault of the lights themselves, but because the eyes I was using were gradually closing down. I noticed a shadow inside, a man with a huge elongated black head and I suddenly understood why Moker hadn’t left his car to come after me: it was a policeman wearing a helmet, standing on the other side of the glass, and he was pulling one side of the door open for me. He must have watched my stumbling ascent of the stairs and my pursuer had noticed him at the last minute. Moker had probably driven off before I’d even reached the last step.
The policeman—God bless his pointed head!—was waving me through and inspecting me more closely. I was aware of him snapping his head and shoulders back sharply, no doubt because of my unpleasant odour.
His voice was muffled because of my growing deafness, but I heard him call out “Visitor for you, Sarge!”
I fell against him, and I think his reaction was to push me away, but a sense of duty prevailed. A strong hand gripped my arm and I heard him say as if from another room: “Christ, what happened to you?”
I was too busy preparing the words I was about to speak to answer his question. Regaining my balance, I lumbered away from him towards the front desk counter where I could just make out the top half of that night’s duty officer.
I collapsed against the counter and said, “Fumbod… murded… moo…”
33
I didn’t have much left to give.
The body was growing heavier and colder. The knees were buckling. The sight was fading. I heard only white sound in the ears, and then nothing. The chin was sagging, the eyelids drooping, starting to close. There was precious little time left and so I summoned all the will I had, which wasn’t much.
I said to the duty officer: “I wish… to… rep… report a murded—a murder. Mine. The… killer… is called… Al… Alec… Moker. He murded—murdered… the others… too…”
Then the woman’s body gave out.
34
I’d left her lying on the floor of the police station’s long, brightly lit reception area, surrounded by uniformed men and women, one of whom—the duty officer himself—was trying to resuscitate the corpse with mouth-to-mouth and heart massaging. No point in hanging around as far as I was concerned: I’d given them the murderer’s name, and I only hoped they’d understand what I’d said. Bit of a waste, otherwise.
Leaving the body was far easier than entering it. I just kind of pulled myself from it, picturing myself somewhere near the room’s ceiling, the way I used to when going out of body. Instantly, I was away from the still woman, looking down at the scene from a corner. I didn’t linger. The woman was well and truly dead and there was no way they were going to bring her back.
I pictured Moker’s rotten dingy flat and in a flash I was through the police station’s wall and gliding across town towards Shepherd’s Bush. In no time at all, it seemed, I was there, floating down the basement steps and passing through the paint-chipped front-door.
The place was empty, but something told me I would not have to wait long. And I was right. I’d already scouted the grubby rooms again, looking for I don’t know what, just curious, I guess, as to how this monster lived. Most of the food in the dirty kitchen was in tins, the rest in packages. A well-worn food blender stood on the small counter by the sink. There were no photographs anywhere, which may have been reasonable as far as Moker was concerned—would he really want to look at mug shots of himself?—but there also were none of family or friends (friends? Was it likely? Maybe it was a little cruel of me to think so, but I thought he could only be an outcast, a pariah). There was a calendar on the kitchen wall, and a date was ringed on that month’s page. Although I’d lost track of the days, I was fairly certain that it was today’s date that had been marked—it seemed about right—and I wondered whether, if I had the power to turn back the leaves of the flip-over calendar, I’d find other murder dates indicated. I felt sure I would. The interesting thing was that no other date in that month was ringed, which seemed to me to be further evidence that Moker was not the one who had recently killed me.
Scuffling footsteps outside on the steps, and I knew the beast had returned to its unwholesome lair. I sank back into the darkest shadow I could find.
A key scraped into the lock, the door swung open with a tired creak, and the slouched black shape that was Moker entered. Disgusting snufflings came from behind the thick woollen mask as if he’d had to walk or run some distance from his car and was out of breath. He slammed the door shut behind him and leaned back against it, his chest heaving as he fought to calm himself. Had I managed to panic him? When he saw his victim lumbering into the police station had he realized somebody else had taken over her body? I was sure he had caught sight of me in the car park when he was in the out-of-body state and before entering his dead victim; yet he hadn’t seen me when I was first inside this flat, although he had seemed to sense my presence. So did that mean he could only see me when he, himself, was out of body? Maybe I’d soon find out.
Slowly the serial killer unwound his scarf and dropped it to the floor. His trilby hat followed and, once again, his true horror was exposed to me, the hole in his face deep but, at least, shaded. If anything, the aura around him had increased both in foulness of colour and malevolence. A strange mewing sound came from him as if he were trying to express himself and it grew in volume as he advanced towards me, swinging his arms in front of him, hands grabbing at the air.
I cringed away from him, confused by his attack, now unsure whether he could see me or not. But he stopped short, his head turning towards the opposite corner. He went for it, arms flailing, and gave out a hollow and ill- formed kind of roar when his fingertips felt nothing but the air itself. Nevertheless, I dodged around the table with its untidy heap of newspapers and cuttings, keeping it between us.
Moker shuffled through to the kitchen area, turning on its light as he entered. A few seconds later he was out again, turning a sharp right and bursting into the bedroom. The light came on and I could hear him raging and throwing objects about. That he was searching for me, I had no doubt, and I only felt slight relief in the knowledge that he could sense me but still not see me. Storming out of the bedroom, he came to an unsteady halt on the opposite side of the table, his grotesque head continuing to point this way and that. A couple of times he stared so forcibly towards me that I was sure I was visible, but on each occasion his attention was quickly diverted elsewhere.
The grim aura around him seemed to bristle with small shards of angry brightness, like sparks from bare cable. His chest rose and fell, and his sore, husky breathing was distressed, as if he were about to sob; drool and spittle glistened at the ravaged edges of his facial malformation. Finally, his body movement—the twitching of his arms, the heaving of his upper body, the restlessness of his head—ceased and he stared down at the littered tabletop.
A step forward brought him to the edge of the table, and he leaned over it to begin searching through the newspapers, knocking some of them onto the floor with violent sweeps of his arms, rummaging through the remainder for something specific. He soon found what he was looking for.
