Tommy came out of his coma several times during the next day, and each time Slade was there, right by his side, and each time he looked more impatient than ever. My new best friend, Tommy thought dreamily. But did he bring me flowers or grapes? Then he’d be off again, drifting, falling. Once he woke momentarily to find Slade had metamorphosed into Trish, with tears and a concerned face to boot, but next time he surfaced it was Slade again, and there certainly weren’t any tears.
The final time he came round, Slade was still there, sitting at his hospital bedside. A nurse was bringing him a cup of coffee and Tommy thought how normal everything seemed, and how much he wanted a coffee too. Then memory from the day before crashed in, slamming any vestigial feelings of comfort or contentment right out of the park.
He opened his mouth to speak. One word: Jasmine. It came out clogged and indecipherable, but the nurse had seen he was awake and was darting forward to check all his vitals. Slade put his cup down and stood too.
“How is he, nurse?”
The nurse checked Tommy’s temperature. Then spoke to the patient, ignoring Slade. “It’s okay. You’re alright. You’re quite safe now.”
Tommy tried again, this time with partial success, “Jasmine…”
He looked up at Slade.
“You need to give him some space, Detective Inspector,” the nurse said. “He might be awake but he’s been through a terrible ordeal. I’ve already told you all this. He’s certainly not ready for your questions yet.”
But Tommy was struggling to sit up. “Jasmine!” he said again, louder and stronger. “Slade: I need to know, has she been found?”
Slade put a hand up to the nurse. “I’ll be gentle, don’t worry.” He stepped closer to the bed. “You mean Jasmine Paal?” He was scrutinising Tommy with his steely blues. “She’s the only person unaccounted for, I’m afraid. And I can’t say whether that’s good or bad news. She a special friend of yours, son?”
The nurse handed Tommy a cup of water and he sipped at it slowly at first, then downed the lot. He said, “what do you mean, ‘unaccounted for’?”
“Just what I said. She’s not among the dead, and she’s not among the survivors. She either ran and is hiding somewhere in a state of shock, or they took her.”
Tommy was trying to get out of bed now. But the nurse definitely had other ideas about that. She forced him back under the covers.
“Oh no you don’t. You need rest. Your body is recovering from shock. You’re not leaving here until tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
Tommy fell back against the pillows. He was exhausted, that was true enough, more drained than he’d ever felt, but he couldn’t just lie here while…
“Are you sure she’s not…among the dead?” he managed to ask Slade at last.
Slade nodded. “Look son, I know this might be hard to believe, but I’m not actually here to give you a kiss and a get well card.” The nurse shot him a filthy look which he ignored. “If you want your friend found alive and well we need to get on this as soon as possible. Which means we need to find out as much as we can about the attackers, and from where we’re standing you’re the best witness we’ve got.”
“You said there were survivors?”
“Three. A prop guy, head of wardrobe and a cameraman. They were lucky. They didn’t listen to whoever thought it was a bright idea to hole up in a flimsy cabin.”
Tommy thought of Lana, how brave she’d been, and what Cropsy had done to her.
“I got one of them,” he croaked. “I burned the bastard…”
Slade looked impressed. “Was that you? Good work. You’re not as useless as I thought—er, sorry, nurse.” He waved a placatory hand at the nurse as she checked Tommy’s monitor one last time and then withdrew from the small private ward. “Yeah, we’ve got him in the morgue, but there’s not much to go on. The other survivors said there were four of them, all dressed in masks and costumes.”
Tommy thought about that, thought about the way Cropsy’s mask hadn’t so much melted as vanished completely, leaving a normal, albeit burned man behind.
“I don’t think they were costumes.”
“What’s that?” Slade frowned. His cell was ringing but he ignored it.
“I said, they weren’t costumes. They were real.” He knew it was insane, and voicing it aloud only made it sound even more so.
“I don’t get you.”
“They were characters from video nasties—no, that’s not right either…” he struggled to express what was half-buried in the tired fog of his brain. “They were real. Like they’d just stepped out of the films, or been summoned from them. I know that sounds crazy but if you’d seen them, if you’d seen the way Cropsy…” he paused, struggling for breath and conviction, “changed back into just a normal bloke after—after I burned him…”
“Cropsy?” Slade looked interested and sceptical all at once.
Tommy rested his head back on the pillow. But only for a second, one precious second of rest, before he was lifting it again to ask the question he couldn’t let go. “That doesn’t matter now. I’m guessing you found more video nasties at the murder site. But you need to be out there searching for Jasmine. That’s what matters.”
“And where do we look?” Slade frowned at Tommy. “You think my boys are sitting around playing with their dicks? Why the fuck d’you think I’ve been wasting my fucking day nurse-maiding your ass when I should be helping the squad lead the search? Because I think you’re cute? Fuck’s sake, wind your neck in and start giving me something to work on. Like for a start, everything you’ve got on these jokers, cos you obviously know a hell of a lot more than you’ve been telling us so far.”
Tommy sighed, and his head fell back again. Of course Slade was right. He did know more, and now seemed the right opportunity to spill. He thought of the director with the Mr. Bland face. He thought of Anthropophagous the Beast, Bigfoot and Cropsy. “Get me a tea, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
And he did. Or at least, most of it. He told Slade about the audition at the Factory for the low budget film, he told him all about Mark, how he’d begun to think he was involved, the way he’d enthused about the Snuff Film to end all Snuff Films,—including Hamm’s insistence it was all faux—, about the ringtone that tied him in with Andy Hill’s murder, about the fact he was always there when someone got killed (at this point Slade had interrupted with “a bit like you, eh?”) He told Slade how Mark had showed brave in the end and gone out to try to stop the killers, how they’d…he’d swallowed the rest of his tea almost in one gulp before he could continue about what Bigfoot had done to Mark. He told Slade all about the killers and the individual video nasties from which they came, how they had been more than copycat killers, more like the real deal. Here Slade had put on his sceptical face again, but that was fine, he could wear that face as much as he liked just as long as he found Jasmine.
He was about to tell Slade about Mr. Bland too, about the face mask he was wearing, but something made him hold back on that info. Some misguided sense of loyalty maybe, (loyalty to whom—a father he’d never liked?) Or maybe it was trust issues: Slade was not the most sympathetic of audiences. Were those the motives that kept his mouth shut? No, not those, or not exclusively those—more the feeling he just might need to keep some cards close to his chest…
Slade took it all in. He got on his cell and gave orders to Whitley to check out the factory, to check out the film’s website for any clues. Then he popped his phone back in his jacket and sat down again, his eyes never leaving Tommy.
“Why you?” he said.
“Why me what?” But Tommy averted his eyes, pretending there was still tea left in the bottom of his cup.
“Why were you the only one left alive in that ward? Any ideas? Because I’m a good fucking listener.”
Tommy sighed. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t understand it all himself. Not by a long way. He knew there was a personal aspect to all this, that had been made obvious to him last night. The face mask was just the culmination of a long list of clues. But he wasn’t ready to talk about his family life to Slade just yet.
“Maybe because I killed one of them? I don’t know. Maybe because they didn’t expect us to fight back…” That was flimsy, and he knew it, and Slade knew it too. The detective said nothing for a moment.
Tommy thought of a way to change the course of the conversation. “The body of the killer… Cropsy. Have you identified him?”
“Hey, who the fuck’s asking the questions here? The bozo in bed or the one with the badge?”
“The bozo with the badge,” Tommy said quickly.
“I’ll let that fucking go.” Slade almost smirked. “Yeah, Romanian national. Jezak Pincker. Mean anything to you?” Tommy shook his head slowly, wincing when it made his skull ache worse. “He was renting a house where we found another murder victim. A Vicky Hebworth…” he stopped talking when he saw Tommy’s reaction. “I take it you know her?”
Tommy felt sick. He reached for the polystyrene cup of water, realized it was empty. Slade didn’t offer to refill it for him. “Go on,” he said.
“She was the girl in the audition video. The one Mark said was fake. And now I’m beginning to think he really believed that too. I met her on another film set. She went missing—”
“Six weeks ago. Yes, we know all that. Why didn’t you come to us with all this before?”
“Like I said, I thought it was fake. Bad fucking taste, but fake. That’s why I walked out of the audition.”
“And why do you think you were invited there in the first place?” His eyes were like a terrier’s who has just spotted a squirrel nibbling a nut slap dab out in the open.
This time Tommy stared him right back in the eye, “Maybe so they could do the same to me as they did to Vicky.” Then, emphasising each word: “I don’t. Fucking. Know.”
Tommy thought of something. “How did they manage to get away? Surely three sick fucks who looked like freaks and who were probably splashed with blood would stand out a bit in Wiltshire at silly o’clock in the morning?”
Slade looked a little uncomfortable. He stood up from his chair, walked to the window, gazed out at the Bristol traffic. “They must have taken the opposite direction to us down the lanes and gone to ground. They could’ve just parked up in a sleepy town—Malmesbury, for instance, only a few miles away—and we wouldn’t have known. We had no visual on any vehicle—although we’re assuming they had one judging from the damage done to the Swindon squad car.” He coughed. Tommy imagined he’d practised this speech a few times before standing in front of his Super. “The chopper was too late getting to the SOC. I set up an APB as soon as we got there but it was—”
“Too late?”
Slade turned slowly back to face him. His eyes were more dangerous than any criminal’s right then. “You think I’m not taking this seriously?” His voice quavered slightly as a sudden spurt of rage threatened to engulf him. “They took one of my best officers and they crucified her upside down on a fence, for fuck’s sake!” He put his hands on his hips and breathed in sharply. Then, “I’m going to nail these fuckers! I’m promising you that.”
Tommy could almost believe him. Then he thought of Anthropophagous peeling off Rona’s right breast like he was tearing off a particularly juicy hunk of raw steak, and his bowels contracted. Wherever Jasmine was right now—if she was even alive—she was going to need a lot more help than this anachronism of a detective could ever provide.