Ben gulped, closed his eyes and prepared to say the words he didn’t want to cross his lips.
‘You know I like you, Eve. It’s been about a day that I’ve known you and I think I may even love you,’ he said.
She smiled.
‘But, I met you at the wrong time in my life,’ he continued. ‘I wish we’d met a couple of months ago, even just a week ago.’
‘Ben, we discussed this,’ she said. ‘We can get through your problems, and my problems, we’ll take on the world together.’
‘I’m going to help you get your life on track,’ he said. ‘I want you to go back to university, or at least find the thing that you are most passionate about, and don’t let go of it.’
‘That’s you,’ she said. ‘It’s you I’ve been waiting for.’
Ben stood and walked to the door, he held the handle.
‘You won’t see me again,’ he said, sadly. ‘I can’t explain why right now, but I wish you all the luck in the world, my darling.’
‘What?’ she yelled.
Eve marched over to Ben and they stood face to face.
‘You’re really gonna give this up? After one day?’ she screamed. ‘You can’t see how special this is? How special you are to me? How good I could be for you?’
Tears welled up in Ben’s eyes.
‘Then fuck you!’ said Eve, as she swung her knee forward and caught Ben in his groin area, sending him crouching down in agony.
‘You hurt me,’ he wailed.
‘You met me in anger management, Ben,’ she said sharply, just millimetres from his ear, before opening the door and shoving him out.
Eve slammed the door shut and threw herself onto the bed, tears flowing freely, as Ben staggered onto the street outside, the pain in his groin slowly subsiding.
He was a long walk from his mother’s house, but they needed to talk, so he began the journey.
37
Neighbours had gathered around the cordoned off driveway, bright police lights had attracted them like moths to a candle.
Summers examined the body whilst Kite was inside the house, along with a female officer, trying to calm down the distraught Tanya.
There were two explanations that rattled around Summers’ head.
Firstly, The Phantom had killed David Reynolds, using his typical methods and disappearing into nothingness, as he always did, and as per usual, leaving no trace of his ever being there, except the mutilated body leaking blood everywhere. The problem with this theory, was that the frequency of The Phantoms killing had shot up from around two a year to two a day. Certainly not an improvement to the situation, although, the more murders committed at a higher pace could, in theory, lead to a mistake being made on The Phantoms part. That was the only silver lining she could think of.
Secondly, there was more than one killer. Was there a copycat? Or maybe The Phantom was in cahoots with someone else? Maybe it was
The corpse that lay in front of her certainly looked like a victim to The Phantom to the untrained eye. It wasn’t a robbery, as David still wore an expensive watch that he must’ve forgotten to take off before his run. It was also unlikely to be an argument, as none of the neighbours so eager to be involved by attending the crime scene had heard or seen a commotion of any sort, not this evening or any evening involving David or Tanya in the time they had lived there.
But, his throat was sliced, this was new. And although The Phantom did sometimes stray from his preferred methods of killing, using a screwdriver instead of a knife for example, this didn’t sit right with the detective. But then, if it was an accomplice and not a copycat, this wouldn’t have happened either.
So could it be a copycat? What were the chances?
The murders had been on the television and in the newspapers, on and off, for years now. Obviously the last couple of days this had turned into full blown coverage again, and it was hard to not know all about The Phantom and his unfortunate victims. If somebody felt the urge to murder, would using the techniques that they had likely read or heard about in the last couple of days be the preferred method? It had worked wonders for The Phantom, after all.
Summers concluded that if it was a copycat killer, there was a good chance that the forensic team would find evidence of some sort, as not everybody could be as careful as The Phantom, not in the heat of battle, when the blood is pumping or the mind is racing and a major crime is being carried out.
Kite walked out of the house and informed his boss that neither he nor the female officer could get much out of Mrs Reynolds for the time being. They had agreed that Tanya be escorted to a cousin’s house on the edge of the city then collected in the morning and brought to the station for a formal interview.
Kite added that the heavily pregnant and hysterically upset Tanya, in his opinion, could not and would not have been responsible for the death of her husband. Summers took his word for it, for now, although she would make her own mind up tomorrow at the station.
Finally forensics arrived.
The first thing they did was erect a large, white tent and try to stop the area being contaminated any further than it already had been, also so they could get on peacefully with their work without being hounded by the public or the press who were bound to arrive shortly.
Summers noticed she had a touch of blood on her shoe and slowly moved away from the head of forensics, who would quite rightly give her a good telling off for potentially contaminating the crime scene.
As per usual, there were no witnesses to offer any useful information to the investigators, and no cameras on the residential street meant that there wasn’t much point in the detectives hanging around.
It had been a long day, so Kite drove Summers home, before retiring for the night himself.
38
Ben sat at the kitchen table, drinking out of the wine glass his mother had poured for herself before evidently passing out. She was sat on the chair opposite him, her arms and head rested on the hard wood table, unconscious from the alcohol.
He’d been crying again, over the situation he found himself in, the loss of what once seemed to be a bright future. And he cried over pain he now felt in his heart, the heavy ache he carried in his chest since leaving Eve’s apartment. He’d never believed in love at first sight, thinking it was only ever lust that could grab somebody’s attention that quickly, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Was twenty-four hours enough to fall in love? It was for Ben, he believed that now. And it was real love, the kind of love where you would sacrifice for that person to do the right thing, even if it meant breaking the two hearts that until that moment had bonded as one.
He’d also cried over the ever-increasingly complicated relationship between him and his mother.
For years she’d had problems, mental problems, she’d been prescribed all sorts of medication to balance herself out, but hadn’t taken the pills as routinely as needed, even with her husband placing the pills and a glass of water beside her bed in the morning, and next to her dinner plate in the afternoon. Was she deliberately disobedient? She started refusing the treatment altogether.
It was almost as if someone was telling her not to take the medication. On one occasion, Mr Green found around a month’s worth of pills under his wife’s side of the bed, which led to him to try and force the tablets into
