She moves away. I can hear her trolley moving away and then she’s speaking to someone. Who’s she speaking to? Is she telling tales on me?
Seconds later, footsteps come closer. Maybe it’s the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes. I don’t want to see her. No, I don’t.
The voices inside start to shout. ‘Yes, you do! Yes, you do!Yes, you do!’
I moan and kneel before my bed, with my head resting on the cool duvet. I grab the pillow. ‘Stop it.’
‘Don’t trust her. You can’t trust her.She’s evil … like all of them … she’s EVIL!’
‘No, no no no no no no…’
‘Come on, Rory, it’s all right. You’re OK.’ The nurse’s hands grip my shoulders – not hard – but I don’t like it. ‘No, no no no no no no…’
‘It’s OK, Rory, it’s OK.’
‘No, no no no no no no…’
I pull away but the voices go on.
‘You can’t talk to her, Rory. She’s not to be trusted. She’s the devil, she’s evil.’
The nurse pulls at the pillow. ‘Let go, Rory. You need your meds. Let go of the pillow. Let’s take your meds and then we’ll go outside, and you can draw. Jimmy’s outside. He’s in the garden.’
‘You can’t trust her.’
Jimmy. I like Jimmy. He doesn’t keep speaking to me. No voices when I’m with Jimmy. ‘Why do you draw her?’
Just a little prick. In my arm, it’s OK.
‘Do you fancy her?’
Be quiet … I’m going in the garden. My arms let go of the pillow. The nurse helps me to my feet.
‘There, there, Rory. You’re OK now. You’re OK.’
‘You can’t trust her.’
I pick up my drawing things. The nurse waits as I count my pencils and my pads. She waits while I count them again and then when I nod, she walks with me into the garden and sits me down at my favourite spot.
I wonder why the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes hasn’t come back? She must be dead, just like all the others.
Chapter 52
Scotland
As planned, Gus had slid into the back seat behind his mum, so that he wouldn’t be able to catch her eye in the rear-view mirror. That had been a huge miscalculation on his part though as it meant that every time he lifted his gaze, he could see Sadia’s face. He’d kept his sunglasses on and although she couldn’t see him watching her, he was all too aware of the worried glances she kept flicking in his direction.
Studying her face, he saw that, despite her shorter hair and the trail of worry lines across her forehead, she was as beautiful as she’d always been. He wondered if there was a man in her life and then chastised himself. What was he thinking? It was none of his business. He settled back, folding up his jacket to use as a pillow, closed his eyes and leant on the glass, trying to catch-up on some of the sleep he’d lost the previous night. It didn’t work. Carlton kept up a relentless chain of nonsensical chit chat which – much to Gus’s disgust – both Sadia and his mum seemed to find extremely amusing. Rustling in his pockets, he found some earbuds and popped them in his ears in the hope that it would dull their voices – no such luck.
They’d just fallen into a silent lull and Gus thought he might be able to doze off, when Sadia’s phone rang. She answered. Even with his eyes closed, Gus could tell she was smiling. He could visualise her exact expression as she spoke – her dimples, her sparkling eyes, her lips curved in happiness. He strained his ears, wishing he could be a better man and observe her privacy, but he was just too damn curious and that really pissed him off. ‘Have you missed me?’
Gus scowled – and in his head mimicked her voice, have you missed me?
The conversation continued for a few more minutes and ended with Sadia’s, ‘I love you too, but I’ll see you later. Can’t wait.’
Gus’s chest tightened. Sadia was clearly in a relationship – not just any relationship – she loved this guy. It was none of Gus’s business so why then did he feel like punching this guy’s lights out? He pushed his head harder against the fabric of his makeshift pillow and tried to block out the conflicted emotions drifting through his mind.
Instead, Gus, in order to take his mind off more personal things, had gone over the murders in his mind. He became more and more convinced that when they got the PM results back from Jez Hopkin’s body, they’d reveal that he, like all the other victims, had been manually strangled. So, what was this killer playing at? On the one hand he was an all-out ritual killer. Gus paused in his thoughts and tried to plump up his makeshift pillow. Perhaps that was the mistake they were making – perhaps he was just setting them up. Maybe the ritual was just the killer’s warped way of linking in Corrine McGuire.
Of course, that then led to the big question WHY? Why link in Gus’s mum and foster brother – it could only be because it was personal to the killer. However, they’d already ruled out Rory. Robertson’s older brothers had been looked at too, but one was dead and the other lived in Australia. Neither had any offspring, so that line of enquiry had died out there and then.
Gus’s mind kept drifting back to the sketch of his mum being taunted at school. Was it possible that someone from then had held such a strong grudge against his mother? They were only children! It seemed unlikely. Corrine claimed not to have known any of them very well and, so far Police Scotland had ruled out most
