56
I’m sitting with Simon in the hospital, waiting for his mother to arrive. I’d phoned her from the ambulance. Told her not to worry, her boy was safe, but he did need some medical assistance.
Her panicked breathing down the line in response suggested to me that my advice was wasted.
The medical staff shooed me aside while they gave Simon the full check-up and closed the wound. Luckily, the doctor told me, there had been no major trauma. No vital organs had been hit and Simon would make a full recovery.
Just as Leonard intended, I’m sure.
My phone sounds an alert. It is a text from Helen Davis.
I answer. Notwithstanding the unfathomable appetites of a serial killer The cup of tea was a lie, but I was sure it would help reduce any panic and ensure she would arrive at the hospital not having caused any injuries of her own.
I pull back the curtain and walk over to Simon’s bed.
‘Oh. This is like déjà vu all over again.’ I smile.
His answering smile is genuine, but tinged with pain. ‘Yeah, that time Aileen’s dad gave me a doing.’
‘You guys have certainly been put through it,’ I say and grip his forearm. ‘You just need to be there for your mother. She’s had to endure two great losses in her life. Having you by her side will be a great comfort.’
‘That’s just it,’ he says, face brightening, eyes large. ‘What if…’ He shakes his head. Knuckles a tear from his cheek. ‘Never mind. Tell me what I need to know about that guy, Leonard?’
I wonder for a moment where he is about to go, but park the thought and answer his question. I have to impress upon him the danger he was in.
‘He’s a very dangerous man who has murdered a lot of people, and you were quite possibly his next target,’ I reply, while thinking I’d probably bumped him down to number two on the list. A surge of anticipation in my gut lets me know that his attempt would be welcome. We needed to sort this out once and for all. ‘How did you guys meet?’
‘I work as a counsellor on a website that helps bereaved twins. He was one of my clients. He seemed so genuine. Only another twin could understand what that kind of loss might mean.’ He stops speaking as he thinks this through. ‘How could he have fooled me so completely?’
‘That’s because he was speaking the truth,’ I reply. ‘His twin brother died when he was just a kid. It has – understatement of the year – screwed him up badly.’
‘But why me? Why home in on me? And how did he home in on me?’
I think about my visit to the church in Perth. The priest’s story about the twins there who had died within days of each other. Both seemingly accidental. With Leonard around, nothing was accidental. I think of him at the orphanage. He was never the cleverest of boys, but he had street smarts and a survival instinct that was uncanny.
The job as parish handyman would be his first stroke of luck after he fled from the bodies in Bethlehem House. Fitting in to that kind of environment would have been simple for a man with his cloistered background. I remember the postcard he sent to McCall. Gone hunting, was all he wrote. So, his second piece of luck was finding a target. The twin brothers. And that had sparked off a new purpose.
‘It’s me,’ I say to Simon. ‘I’m the reason he found you.’ And I realise the truth of it as the words sound out of my mouth. ‘Our paths have crossed before. I’m the only one of his previous targets who survived…’
‘Holy shit,’ Simon interrupts.
‘I like to think of myself as his nemesis,’ I say airily, aiming for a moment of levity. Fail spectacularly. ‘The press seem to like me.’ I hold my hands out to the side. ‘Fat, grizzled detective guy. And the suits had me fronting the press briefings for Aileen’s murder. The man’s a ghoul, so he would have fixed on that. And when he found out that you, the early suspect, was a twin, that would have set his pulse soaring.’ I pause. Shake my head. None of this would stack up in a court of law, but the range of the man’s thinking was there, undeniably.
‘You have an online presence? An interweb shadow footprint thing?’ I ask.
Simon grins. ‘Of course. Who doesn’t?’
‘Jesus. You kids have no idea how dangerous this stuff could be in the wrong hands. Does any of your online stuff mention about you being a counsellor on this website?’
His eyebrows crowd together as he thinks this through. ‘Possibly,’ he replies. ‘Probably,’ he goes on to assert. ‘Bloody hell, that’s quite a leap.’
‘Yeah, so, he tracks you down…’ I make another connection. ‘Oh fuck. He’d have been watching your house. He will have seen Ian Cook deliver his poison pen letters…’
‘Do you think he killed Ian?’
‘I’m pretty damn sure of it,’ I reply, thinking it through. ‘And,’ I carry the thought on, ‘I’m pretty sure he would have had a hand in the hunt through the city for Matt, before he drowned.’
‘No.’ Simon has his hand over his mouth.
‘It all worked out beautifully. Probably better than he could have ever imagined. He made his previous twin killings look like an accident and then a suicide…’ I’m getting ahead of myself here. There’s no evidence to back up this theory, but I feel it as truth. ‘The priest said he was a great comfort to the second brother in Perth. So, he would have enjoyed the proximity. The grief…’
‘No,’ says Simon. ‘He would have got off on the man’s grief?’
‘Anything’s possible with this guy,’ I say.
Simon shivers.
‘Did you know there was an online hunt for Matt? People posting his whereabouts like a Facebook lynch-mob?’
‘No!’ says Simon, his face long. ‘No,’ he repeats. Hides his face in his hands as he cries and contemplates his brother’s death.
‘I’m sure they didn’t want to kill him. They just wanted to vent. People rarely take their online shit into the real world. Like all bullies, they’re cowards. But somehow, this one got out of hand, and I’m pretty certain Leonard would have had a hand in that. How I can prove that one, I’ve no idea.’
Simon falls back onto his pillow. ‘I can’t take all of this in. it’s too much. It’s … fucking obscene.’
‘There’s just one thing I need to know,’ I ask. I see Simon and Leonard on the bridge. Their posture. The apparent link they had already forged. The physical similarity. The way Leonard had pulled him into a hug before wielding the knife.
This had become something other than a hunt for Leonard.
Simon looks at me with a question in his eyes. ‘Who’s John?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Leonard. He said, “Sorry, John”, on the bridge. Didn’t occur to me as strange at the time. I was kinda busy trying not to bleed,’ he jokes. Then sobers. ‘Who’s John?’
My phone sounds another alert. Helen Davis.
I thumb and press send.
‘That’s his brother. He died when we were just kids.’
‘We?’
I grimace. ‘We have a shared history.’
‘God, that’s creepy.’
‘When were you born?’ I ask, not quite sure why I need to know.
‘1992.’
I do the figures. ‘That’s the year John died.’