I want it to stop! But it’s there and it won’t go away. It won’t stop. It keeps coming out. Instead of white, minty paste, it’s all maggoty and green and stinks like sewage. It’s beginning to write inside my head. A toothpaste crayon calling me a LIAR! A sludgy green paste yelling LIAR at me. It’s banging around in my head, like an echo bouncing around, rattling in there trying to escape.
My head falls forward and I rest my brow on my drawing as the toxic paste writes the word again and again in my mind: LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! At last, eyes still shut, I realise that keeping quiet didn’t work last time. Not speaking got me hurt. Not speaking made the headaches and the weird burly colours blind me. It was only when it all burst out of me like a river bursting through a dam that it eased. Only then did the voices stop, the heavy pain go away.
Instead of that though, the other voices come. The ones that smell like lavender, the ones that get into my heart and twist and twist till I think it’s going to explode right out of my chest. Again, and again, in purple, the scented voice, all sad and disappointed – disappointed in me – asks ‘Why? Why? Why?’ till they give me something to make it stop. But, deep down inside, even now, I know I shouldn’t have spoken.
I lift my head up from the paper and gather my things together. The LIAR voice is fading and so is the lavender voice. They’ll come back. Just like the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes. They’ll all come back, and I’ll be the one to suffer then, because I’m to blame. I’m to blame for everything. It’s all my fault. That’s why she stole the drawings, that’s why she keeps asking me about Helen, about Coco. I can’t stop myself drawing her. My beautiful Helen swaying from the rope, her eyes accusing … ‘Not Again.’ I spit the words out, dribbling a little and still my pencil draws that horrid image. Where is the lavender voice now? No sooner does that thought occur, than the nasty one takes over. ‘You did that, Rory. You did that.First your mum and then your wife. Murderer!’
Chapter 16
Bradford
Sebastian Carlton was fascinated by the sketches and had barely uttered a word since Alice pinned copies of them on the board. The only responses he’d given to any of Gus’s questions were, ‘patience’ and ‘hmmm’, neither of which were satisfactory for Gus, who was impatient to find a crack in the case.
According to Alice, his mum had been tearful and his father stoic during the interview. Alice had tried to brush over the fact that the first two envelopes had been disposed of by his mother and focussed on the other three which appeared to have been posted from South Lanarkshire, all postmarked at intervals over the past few weeks.
What particularly interested Gus was the information that Compo was pulling up regarding Rory Robertson’s crime. Gus couldn’t get the idea that Rory’s fate had been sealed the moment he had found his mum’s body. In the seventies, mental health support after such a trauma was largely absent. That poor boy would have had to struggle with nightmares and flashbacks of that horrid day with little or no support. Being no stranger to dark nightmares, Gus knew that the worst thing that accompanied them was the overwhelming guilt. As an adult, Gus had almost succumbed to his pain, he could only imagine how that poor child, Rory, had coped for so long. Greg, Gus’s friend had killed his wife and son after coming off his medication and Gus knew that the man who committed those awful atrocities was nothing like the loving husband and father Greg had been for most of his son’s short life. Never far from Gus’s thoughts was the guilt that he hadn’t done enough. Hadn’t supported his friend more, hadn’t realised when he was unravelling. That ghost would always haunt him.
The similarities between Rory’s mum’s suicide, his wife’s murder, and their current case were too close to be ignored, so Gus set Taffy the task of chasing down the original investigative officers. With any luck they’d be keen and eager to share their thoughts on the case. Meanwhile, he was needed upstairs to discuss how they should play this out in the press. Although he resented the influence the press had over any major investigation, he recognised the importance of getting them onside from the start. He was just glad he wasn’t the one who had to flirt with them – especially not that little gobshite Jez Hopkins.
****
By the time Gus returned to the incident room after updating DCI Chalmers about the unexpected turn the investigation had taken, Carlton had pinned duplicate photos of the sketches, the five sent to Gus’s mum and the one left at the scene, on the expanse of white wall at the back of the room. Now, he was busy scribbling notes on multicoloured Post-it pads and dotting them around the different sketches. Loathe to interrupt the psychologist when he was so obviously in the zone, Gus stood, arms crossed over his chest, and studied the detail of the sketches.
The first featured a group of children, skilfully drawn, although clearly by a more childlike hand than the other images. Initially, Gus saw a sea of faces and then one stood out to him. Set a little to the side, not quite part of the group was a small girl, head bowed, scruffy shoes topped by socks, one pulled up to her knee the other furled around her ankle. Gus was fascinated by her – drawn to her. The slump of her shoulders spoke of heavy sadness and when his gaze moved to the other children
