What the fucking hell is he on about? thought Mrs Green.
Why the fuck is he making me do this on my own? Pathetic bastard! thought Natalie.
Ben stood from his chair, grabbed the plastic bag from the floor, and left the room without saying another word. He pushed the door up but didn’t close it completely. He stood, waited, listened.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ll never marry my boy. It is not his destiny! Stuck with a dirty fucking whore like you, you slimy bitch!’ said Mrs Green, full of venom.
Natalie calmly leant forward and placed her elbows on the table.
‘You, Mrs Green, are going to be a grandmother,’ said Natalie, matter-of-factly.
There was a moment of silence as the mad woman in red relaxed back into her seat. Thoughts flooded her head, but she gave nothing away as the two women, both filled with so much hate, nastiness, cruelness, so many lies and so much selfishness, stared hard into each other’s souls.
Then Mrs Green surprised even herself, and broke into a half-smile, then slowly, a full smile.
‘Then, my dear,’ she said, pouring wine into her glass then raising it toward her soon to be daughter-in-law, ‘here is to the little miracle. Welcome to the family’.
Natalie felt smug. She had no idea that winning the old witch over would be so easy. Why hadn’t she faked a pregnancy before? Because she didn’t really care, she guessed.
Ben, still the other side of the door, had heard enough.
46
Ben walked along the corridor and stepped into the red room, the room where his father would not only come to do the paperwork for his business, but the place he came to shut himself away from the troubles that had surrounded his life in recent years.
It saddened Ben to see what his mother had done to this room. She had created some kind of sick and twisted hell-hole of a shrine, an overdose of the colour red with pictures and articles serving as reminders of the deaths that had plagued this city over the years. What was his mother thinking when decorating part of her home like that? She’d destroyed one man’s hide-away, to create another person’s place of worship to the devil.
He saw his reflection in the mirror hung on the back of the door and didn’t recognise the menacing smile that came back at him as his own, but as the smile that belonged to the monster that had been growing within, the monster that had been planted inside of him at birth and flourished throughout his life until finally, just days ago, had taken control, even if for just those few moments and taken lives.
Ben knew that he and the monster were one, and would grow more so over time. He remembered sitting on the girl, under the bridge, her head battered to pieces beneath him, her blood on his hands and sprayed onto his face, he remembered how good he felt, how free.
But he wasn’t free.
It’s the man in the mirror who was becoming free, and although Ben had crossed that line between good and evil for a brief moment, he knew that it wasn’t right to let this carry on. He had to stop the man in the mirror, that monster within, that genetic flaw causing all these problems. He had to stop himself.
Ben pocketed the key from the inside of the red room door and stepped back out into the corridor, and then, carrying the plastic bag, he made his way upstairs.
He stepped into his old bedroom, the place he had always felt at home, the room where he played with his toys and imagined he was in another world and did all the things that innocent young children would do when they had their own room and no siblings to play with. He realised how his imagination had blossomed when spending that much time on his own.
Nothing had really changed in his bedroom since he had moved out. There were still posters of his preferred rock bands and movies on the wall, still the same bed sheets and curtains. The only real difference had been the extra books and boxes that had been dumped into the room that wasn’t really used for anything anymore except storage.
Ben made his way to the big window and pulled it open, letting the fresh air from above the garden flood the room.
He looked down and saw the cat that his mother had hated for so long, rolling around in the grass towards the back of the lawn, then he realised that it wasn’t rolling around for fun, or relaxing in the limited sunshine that the day had brought, it was struggling. The cat had been investigating the new substance in the garden, maybe eaten or inhaled too much, and its body wasn’t coping with the toxicity that came smuggled within the powder.
Ben didn’t know about the poison, as he watched the cat fight for its last breath, clawing it’s way under a bush where it seemed to give up one of its nine lives, maybe it’s last, but he knew his mother was to blame for the demise of this cat, just like he now knew that his mother was to blame for the deaths of many others.
He placed his bag down on the small table by the window and stepped up onto to it to take a look at the hinges joining the window to the main window frame. He gave it a shake, there was hardly any movement. It was strong enough. He pulled out of the bag a length of rope and tied one end around the window frame, triple- knotting it for efficiency.
Ben stepped back down onto the carpeted floor and took his phone from his pocket along with Detective Inspector Summers’ card and the two envelopes.
He dialled the mobile phone number printed on the card.
The phone rang…
47
Just twenty minutes into the stakeout and Kite was already bored, half-snoozing behind the steering wheel. He jolted to life when Summers’ phone started ringing. She didn’t know the number and turned off the radio before pressing the ‘Answer’ button.
‘DI Summers,’ she said.
‘Hello, detective,’ said Ben.
Summers thought she recognised the voice but had to confirm.
‘Err, hello. Who is this please?’ she asked, before fumbling with the phone and turning it onto speaker mode.
‘It’s Ben, Ben Green,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘You said to call if I had any information that may help you in your enquiries, so, well, here I am, calling.’
Kite opened his mouth to speak but Summers reacted quickly and placed her hand over his lips. This was her show, she was in charge. Kite leant across her, gently opened the glove box and pulled out a digital audio recording device. Summers was happy to see Kite had come prepared. He pressed record, and Summers went on with the conversation.
‘And what is it you’d like to tell me, Mr Green? What information do you have for me?’ asked Summers. ‘Would you like us to collect you? We could go to the station and talk about things.’
‘Oh no, that’s ok, there’ll be no need for that,’ replied Ben. ‘In fact, I think I know exactly who The Phantom is, and I may be able to get you a confession. Would you like that?’
Summers and Kite looked at each other, ‘is this guy for real?’
‘Go on,’ said Summers.
‘Firstly,’ Ben continued, ‘I am not The Phantom. I know you think it’s me, but it’s not.’
‘Ok,’ said Summers.
‘But, I am not innocent,’ said Ben. ‘I’ve got some problems in my head and sometimes I do crazy things.’
‘That’s ok, Mr Green. We all do crazy things sometimes, it’s normal,’ said Summers, ‘we can get you help for that, Ben. I can call you Ben? Is that ok?’
