Mesmeris Read online

  I felt myself flush, gave him my best sarcastic smile. It had no effect on his obvious enjoyment. If anything, it seemed to enhance it.

  Dad handed me a cup of tea and I flopped into my favourite armchair, the one covered in gross, faded floral fabric. I tucked my knees up, hugged myself, and tried to block out Jim’s boring voice. Delicious shivers went through me as my tongue examined the inside of my crushed lips.

  I caught Jim watching me, eyes narrowed, so decided to think about something else. My gaze roamed over the mishmash of chairs, tables, lamps, bookcases, cabinets, all jostled side by side in the cluttered room. Not one thing matched another. Dad called it an eclectic mix. Lydia and I called it ‘dead people’s furniture’.

  Jim’s eyebrows wobbled as he talked and I thanked the Lord he wasn’t a blood relation. He had a sort of ginger thing on his upper lip that wasn’t quite a moustache but certainly wasn’t designer stubble. And his teeth - they were revolting, with greenish fuzz where they joined the gums – yuk!

  He was waffling on about work as usual – not exactly riveting stuff. I managed to block his words almost completely so that only the occasional word registered. The name Howard Pitt stood out because I felt sorry for him, having such a pants surname.

  ‘Heard of him, Luke?’

  Dad frowned. ‘Can’t say I . . .’

  ‘Call themselves Mesmeris. Heard of them?’

  Dad shook his head. ‘Been a while since I . . .’

  ‘Load of nutters, if you ask me.’ Jim took a long slurp of tea. His lips quivered, slapped against the liquid as it went in. I clenched my teeth.

  Dad caught my eye. He wanted to laugh. I could see it in his eyes but he was far too polite to do so. Jim liked to talk, and Dad was one of the few people he could safely confide in. Dad said listening was the least he could do. Jim had a difficult job and Jim was a good man. Good man maybe, but boring as hell.

  ‘Your area of expertise,’ Jim said.

  That caught my attention. Dad’s area of expertise? As far as I knew, that consisted of visiting old biddies and waffling on about Jesus.

  ‘Told you that PhD would come in handy one day, didn’t I?’ Jim said.

  PhD? Dad had never mentioned having a PhD in anything.

  Jim went on. ‘Rumour is they’re moving in around here. Nice of them to grace us with their presence, eh?’

  Dad nodded, gave him a wan smile.

  ‘Just keep a look-out,’ Jim said. ‘Strangers, you know - odd-looking sorts. That boy you were with, Pearl.’ He fixed his nut-brown eyes on me. ‘Don’t think I’ve seen him before. New to the area, is he?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I stood up, not in the mood for one of his interrogations. ‘Better get on with my homework.’

  ‘Crikey,’ Jim said. ‘You’ve got ‘em well trained, Luke. Keen to do homework? How d’you manage it?’

  ‘Discipline.’ Dad hid his smile behind his mug, didn’t look at me. ‘Strict discipline.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Jim said.

  My grin faded as I left the room to see Lydia banging down the stairs, trailing a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. She’d left her bedroom door open, so we all had the benefit of her crappy, boy band music. She stopped when she saw me, hand on the bannister.

  ‘Who’s the freaky guy?’ Her eyes glittered with mischief.

  Just as I’d thought, her friends must have been on their phones to her like a shot. I didn’t mind. I liked it.

  ‘Don’t talk about your uncle like that,’ I said.

  I thought it was funny but she just did a sarcastic, ‘Ha ha! Not him, stupid - the other one.’ She didn’t lower her voice at all.

  No way was I letting her spoil my mood.

  Her blonde curls bounced. ‘Is he the one Tipper’s gonna waste?’

  ‘What?’ Tipper was the last thing I wanted to think about.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about it. They say he’s gonna get him.’ She looked positively gleeful, asking for a slap.

  The living room door still stood partly open so I put my face right against Lydia’s. On the second stair, she had the advantage. Not only could she look down on me but the stair rail between us prevented me giving her a sharp kick in the shins.

  ‘Shut it, Lydia.’ She hated her name, so I used it as an insult. ‘You don’t know anything.’ I couldn’t believe she’d managed to wind me up so quickly.

  The more I tried to shush her, the louder her voice became. ‘I know you were in the pub,’ she said.

  ‘You,’ I said, ‘stink of fags so, if I were you, I’d shut your bloody mouth before I shut it for you.’

  Dad and Jim emerged from the living room.

  ‘Having fun, girls?’ Jim said, his lip twitching, eyes amused. ‘Did I hear mention of a pub?’

  ‘No,’ Lydia and I both said.

  ‘Thought not – because you’d be under-age, wouldn’t you, Pearl?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Jim.’

  Dad looked a warning as he ushered Jim out of the front door.

  ‘Crap!’ Lydia said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why d’you think I told you to shut up?’

  She shrugged. ‘Dunno. ‘Cos you’re a cow?’

  ‘Well!’ Dad said, as he came back inside. ‘That was a fine show, girls. Thank you for that.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Lydia,’ Dad said, annoyed, ‘turn that music down and shut your bedroom door, please.’

  As she went up the stairs, she turned and stuck two fingers up at me.

  ‘Can’t you have her adopted?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dad said.

  ‘Dad,’ Lydia popped her head over the bannisters. ‘I’m staying at Becca’s, okay?’

  ‘Fine.’ He turned to me. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Miracles do happen.’

  Yes they did. It was a miracle Jack had picked me instead of Abbi. The memory of the kiss made my body feel weak, my brain fuzzy. I went to my room on the pretext of doing some work. Instead, I put some music on, lay on my bed and tried to re-live every second I’d spent with him.

  When I first lay down, I was pretty certain he liked me. Then I remembered all the stupid things I’d said and came out in a sweat. By the time Dad shouted upstairs that dinner was ready, I’d convinced myself he’d never want to see me again.

  Mum was working a late shift, so Dad and I ate in the kitchen. Despite the fact I’d eaten nothing at lunch, I still had no appetite but managed to force down a few mouthfuls.

  ‘No school this afternoon?’ Dad said.

  ‘Monday, Dad – study leave.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Study leave. That would explain the pub then.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘And you met this boy in the pub?’

  The phone rang at just the right time. Thank you, God, I thought.

  Dad went into the hall to answer it. With any luck, he’d have forgotten what we were talking about by the time he came back.

  He reappeared in the doorway. ‘Mum’s forgotten her purse. Said I’d pop it over for her. Fancy coming?’

  Why not, I thought.

  Once we were in the car, I discovered why not – because he hadn’t forgotten, and, even worse, there was no escape, trapped in the car.

  ‘So, how old is he?’

  ‘How old is who?’ Of course, I knew damned well who he meant. The weird thing was, I wanted to talk about him – but not to Dad.

  ‘The boy you met – in the pub.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ I said, as if I’d forgotten all about him. ‘Don’t know.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘But you like him, do you?’

  ‘I don’t really know him, Dad, okay?’ I folded my arms and looked out of the window.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right.’

  The sky had cleared, leaving a chilly night. The stinging air smelled of winter, sharp and clean. I imagined it blowing over the ice plains of Siberia, over the sea and straight to Gloucester. At the hospital, Mum stood outside the entrance to Accident and Emergency and shiv
ered in her thin nurse’s uniform. I noticed how young she looked, still slim and pretty, the grey streaks in her short hair unnoticeable in the dark.

  ‘Ooh, you’re a darling.’ She leaned her head in the window, gave Dad a kiss and blew one to me. ‘I’m lost without it.’ Mum’s soft Irish accent made her sound gentle when, in fact, she was anything but. She was a fiery hothead. Mercurial, Dad called it.

  ‘It’s bedlam in there.’ She said. ‘Fisticuffs again. Bloody testosterone – should be banned.’

  ‘Has its uses,’ Dad said.

  Mum giggled. ‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘Drive carefully, you two.’

  She ran back inside, waving as she vanished through the automatic doors. Dad stared after her.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He started the engine and moved out into the road. ‘I was just thinking how nice your mum looks.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I turned to look out of the window, and smiled.

  We hadn’t left the hospital grounds before Dad’s phone rang. I answered. It was Jim. He sounded subdued, not at all his usual cocky self.

  Dad pulled over and took the phone. ‘What’s happened?’

  Jim said something I couldn’t hear.

  Dad slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  Jim’s low murmur.

  Dad glanced at me. ‘Right . . . but I have Pearl with me.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dad closed his phone. He put his hand on mine. ‘Now, don’t panic.’

  I held my breath.

  ‘There’s been another murder,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Another murder? Something crushed my ribs, squeezed the air right out of my lungs. They’ve killed him, I thought. They’ve actually killed him. ‘Oh, my God!’

  Dad restarted the engine, looked over his shoulder and pulled out into the traffic.

  ‘Was it a boy?’ I was surprised that my voice worked at all. My throat felt as if someone was strangling me.

  Dad nodded. It was a boy, then – a dead boy. ‘They reckon it’s the lad they’ve been after for poor Tom’s murder,’ he said.

  ‘Spook?’

  ‘I’m not saying that makes it any better.’

  It did make it better, though - a lot better. I could breathe again.

  ‘I can’t imagine it is him,’ Dad said. ‘He must be well away from Gloucester by now.’

  Of course Dad was right. Why would Spook hang around with every copper in town looking for him? It didn’t make sense. Even so, Jack was much taller and slimmer than Spook, his hair much darker. Surely, no one would mistake the two.

  Dad waited at the roundabout and checked his mirror. ‘It’s a bit rough – Jubilee Gardens,’ he said, ‘but Jim said the lads’ll look after you.’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Jim’s ‘lads’ were a bunch of pervy thirty-something PCs who seemed to think my eyes were located somewhere in the middle of my chest. ‘I’ll stay in the car. I can play my CDs.’

  Dad gave me a sideways look. ‘Maybe. As long as you lock the doors and I can get someone to watch you.’

  ‘Great!’ I sorted through the CDs and tried to convince myself the victim would be Spook. With shaking hands, I weeded out Lydia’s rubbish music and Dad’s eighties stuff and when I looked up we were at the garages where Jack and I had been only a few hours before. That wasn’t good - not good at all. Jubilee Gardens turned out to be the grimy flats that rose up behind them. The name must have been someone’s idea of a joke. Even the miserable garages, bleak as they were, hadn’t quite prepared me for the manky slum behind them.

  Dad stopped at the police barrier and wound his window down. ‘Luke Miller – to see detective . . .’

  The copper took one look at Dad’s collar and waved us through.

  There were four dilapidated blocks in all, each three storeys high. Dad drove towards the third block along. The ground floor windows and some of the doors were boarded-up. Those that weren’t, had been smashed. Graffiti, unreadable in the dark, covered every available surface. Police officers moved along the outside walkways and knocked on doors like some TV drama. The noise was deafening - shouts, bangs, sirens, all overlaid by the buffeting throb of the helicopter overhead, its spotlight trained onto a puddle on the concrete. A small group of people stood clustered together but they weren’t looking at the puddle, they were looking up.

  ‘Oh, Lord, don’t look,’ Dad said, too late.

  I caught my breath. The puddle wasn’t water, it was blood. Above it, a body hung upside down, suspended from the first floor walkway. No coat, no Crombie.

  Dad groaned. ‘Please don’t look, sweetheart.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I lied. ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘For pity’s sake.’ Dad spoke under his breath, teeth clamped together. ‘He could’ve told me he was outside.’

  He parked facing away from the scene and got out of the car. I leaned over the back seat - had to check, to be sure. It was impossible to tell if it was Spook or not but it definitely wasn’t Jack. Too short, too stocky, and wearing the wrong clothes. It made me feel ill to look, but I couldn’t turn away.

  Thick rope bound his feet, one on top of the other, to the rail along the top of the balcony. More rope secured his wrists, held them outstretched from his body. There was something wrong with the angle of his head. I wasn’t sure what, until the spotlight hit him. The head was almost severed from the body. A dark, bloody hole gaped open across his neck.

  Nausea rose up from nowhere. I opened the car door and leaned out, trying to banish the picture from my mind. I breathed cold night air in through my mouth, in, out, until the sickness went. I’d only just managed to shut the door before Dad came back. I did my best to look dozy, relaxed, as if everything was fine.

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said. ‘We could be here all night, by the look of it.’ He looked drawn and tired and old, and I suddenly felt frightened for him.

  ‘Why do you have to be here, Dad? You’re not a copper.’

  ‘No but I studied this kind of thing at uni - religious cults, satanic sects.’ He started the engine. ‘Wish I hadn’t now.’

  Satanic sects? What the hell? It felt like we’d somehow drifted onto a film set for some crappy horror flick. Except that dead body was real. ‘Don’t get involved, Dad, please. What if these nutters come after you?’

  He patted my hand. ‘Don’t fret. I know what I’m doing.’

  But I knew he didn’t and all the way home, I thought about the body, the way the arms hung out at the sides, the way the feet were tied together, one on top of the other.

  ‘Was it Spook?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t know yet. Fits the description. Hopefully, we’ll find out tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow, daylight, school, normal life. That seemed like make-believe. This was the new reality – danger, violence, murder.

  CHAPTER SIX

  That night, one gruesome dream followed another and each one woke me with a start. By the time my alarm went off, I was exhausted. My nerves were frayed, the whole world seemed fractured and yet still, a knot of excitement grew inside me and wouldn’t settle. I took extra care in getting ready, straightened my hair, put on make-up and mascara and told myself over and over that this was an ordinary morning, a normal day.

  Tired, overexcited and strung out, I went downstairs. Everything’s fine, I told myself, everything is exactly as it always has been.

  Mum was in the kitchen.

  Well, that was wrong for a start.

  ‘Sit down, darling,’ she said. ‘You look a bit wired.’

  Wired? Where did she get that from?

  ‘Your Dad’s busy with this murder thing,’ she said. ‘I’d give you a lift but they’ve called me in – pile up on the M5.’ She stood up. ‘Will you walk with the girls next door?’

  I nodded, with no intention whatever of walking with those stuck-up cows.

  ‘Can’t believe your father;’ Mum said, ‘taking you with him. Surprised you’re not in shock.’ She glanced at me, eyes sharp.
‘You saw nothing though, did you?’

  I shook my head and drank my tea, irritated she’d mentioned it when I was trying my best to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  It was a dark morning, misty and grey. I put my hood up and strode off. At the end of the road, I saw someone standing under the trees. I caught my breath, thought for one ludicrous second it was Tipper. Of course it wasn’t. Tipper would never be alone.

  Whoever it was walked towards me. I stood and stared, open-mouthed, like an idiot. He was almost in front of me before I was sure it was Jack. I shut my mouth. He looked ill, ghostly pale in the morning light, his eyes deeply shadowed.

  ‘You okay?’ I said, and started walking to cover my jittery nerves.

  ‘I don’t feel too good this morning.’ He walked alongside me. ‘Didn’t get much sleep last night - waiting for Tipper. Coward didn’t show up.’

  ‘Just as well, by the look of you,’ I said.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t push your luck.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, I didn’t sleep much either, actually.’

  ‘Why not – dreaming of me?’ He looked so bloody cocky with his raised eyebrows and his sleazy grin.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘In fact, I spent half the night at a murder scene.’

  ‘You what?’ He stopped walking. ‘You were there?’

  ‘You know about it?’

  ‘Well.’ He shrugged and looked away. ‘I heard.’

  ‘It was by those flats,’ I said. ‘You know, where we went yesterday – by those garages.’ He didn’t seem to be listening. He looked upset. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I mean, well, not okay, obviously, not for him, but . . .’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why were you there?’

  ‘My dad had to go. I was in the car.’ I shuddered at the memory of the mutilated body. ‘Can we talk about something else, please? It makes me feel ill.’

  ‘Of course.’ He put his arm around me and kissed me, gently, softly, nothing like the day before. So tenderly, that his lips seemed to pull and tug at my insides, made my eyes sting with tears. He pulled my head to his chest and kissed my hair.

  I wanted to cry, and wished I hadn’t told him.

  ‘Do you have to go to school?’ he said.