Here we go again, Parker thinks. His fucking loopy mother.
Franklin continues: ‘She told me this when I was sitting in the wardrobe. It was very dark in there – completely black, in fact. I was often sent there. Usually it was because of something bad I’d done, but often I didn’t even know what the reason was. I think my mother just wanted me out of her sight. But there was this one time – I was eleven years old – and she sat on the other side of the wardrobe door, and she was talking to me. I think she was crying, but I wasn’t sure. She may have been drunk, too: I often saw her with a glass of wine in her hand. Anyway, she was talking to me about my father, who I never really knew because he left when I was just a baby. She told me he decided to leave after she stabbed him. She didn’t kill him, but he had to go to hospital for stitches. He said it was best for everyone concerned if he went away after that. She told him he was being cruel for abandoning his family, and he said to her that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. It’s a piece of advice she seemed to take fully on board from that point on, at least as far as I was concerned.
‘She talked to me for at least an hour that night. Most of it sounded like drunken drivel, but some of it made sense. She tried to drive home the message that people who say they love each other should mean it. They should keep the promises they make, even at the cost of some pain. I didn’t say anything while I was in that wardrobe, because I knew it would have meant greater punishment, but I wanted to ask how her words fitted with her actions. How could a mother’s love for her child lead to her shutting him away in a dark closet?
‘After a while, I heard her get up and walk out of the room, closing the door behind her. That wasn’t a signal for me to move; I knew I had to stay in that wardrobe until she came to let me out. So I did. I sat there, all hunched up, for hours on end, just staring into the blackness and thinking about the things my mother had told me. Eventually I fell asleep, and still she didn’t come for me. I thought I must have done something really naughty to be kept in there that long. I became hungry and thirsty, and then I needed the toilet. Even though I knew it was a risk, I tried calling out for my mother. But there was no answer.
‘Finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I pushed the wardrobe door open. It was the morning of the next day. I stood up and went to the bedroom door, my legs crossed because I was so desperate for the toilet. I opened the door and called out again, but I still didn’t get a reply. I assumed she’d gone out – she often did that without telling me – so I ran to the bathroom.
‘And that’s when I found her. She was lying in the bath, naked. Her eyes were closed like she was asleep. Her skin was very white, and the water was very red. And when I took a closer look, I saw the open wounds in her wrists. It was like raw meat inside: I could see bone and severed tubes.
‘It was while I was standing there staring at my mother and leaving a puddle of urine on the bathroom floor that her words started to make more sense. I realised that if you can’t fix someone’s love then there’s no point in that person existing. They may as well just curl up and die. Otherwise, they begin to infect other people. Being denied love themselves, they take it out on others. That’s why my mother acted as she did with me. She was empty inside.
‘I don’t want you to be empty like that, Parker. You need to learn the lesson I learned. I will help you do that.’
Words escape Parker. He looks up at the madman with the beatific expression and decides that any response is pointless. Franklin has moved beyond reasonable debate.
Instead, he lies there while Franklin re-inserts the gag and the earbuds, and then he watches as Franklin glides out of the room, and then he decides there is no point in continuing his discomfort because doing so will have no impact on his captor, and so he pictures Franklin rationalising while standing in that bathroom over his dead mother, and he cries as he relaxes his bladder muscles and releases a long hot gush of fluid across his thigh.
20
Stupid Love
– Lady Gaga
For the most part, Cody feels no guilt over murder victims. Blame upbringing, blame inflamed passions, blame greed, blame jealousy, blame hatred, but don’t blame him. Police officers do what they can to enforce the law, but they can’t be everywhere at once, and not everyone has the same regard for the law as he does. If they did, he’d be out of a job.
What does cause him to experience guilt, though, is when he doesn’t catch a killer who subsequently goes on to kill again. Over forty-eight hours have passed since the body of Alexa Selby was discovered. They should have found Oliver Selby before now. They should have him locked up in a cell. He shouldn’t have been allowed the opportunity to get anywhere near Ridley.
So, yes, Cody takes that as a personal failure.
The pressure has definitely intensified from above, too. Nobody likes the thought of a multiple killer roaming the streets, not least of all the higher ranks in the police force whose reputations and careers depend on results.
The thinking is that somebody is hiding Oliver Selby. Someone knows exactly where he is. Cody and his colleagues have been instructed to turn up the heat on everyone who knows him. Where possible, all interviews should be conducted face to face.
Which is why Cody and Webley now find themselves on the way to Alderley Edge, just south of Manchester. If Caldy has been the home of Benítez, Alderley Edge has seen the likes of David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo living here. More importantly in the eyes of some, it has been the area of choice for several stars of Coronation Street.
While Cody admires all the huge, luxurious houses as they flash by, he notices that Webley seems to be oblivious to the outside world.
He says, ‘You still haven’t told me.’
Webley blinks out of her reverie. ‘Told you what?’
‘Whatever it is that’s been bothering you all morning.’
She hesitates. ‘It’s nothing.’
Which perhaps ought to be left at that. But Cody knows her too well.
‘Nah. It’s something.’
He feels Webley’s eyes burning into him, and he begins to wonder what he’s done wrong.
She says, ‘Can I ask you something first?’
Uh-oh, he thinks. I’m definitely in trouble.
‘Go ahead.’
‘We’ve just had April Fools’ Day, right?’
This seems such a non-sequitur. Maybe it’s a trick question, designed to throw him off-guard.
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, well… did that put something in your head? Like maybe playing a series of pranks on me?’
‘What kind of pranks?’
‘Those flowers. You know, the ones that arrived on my desk. They weren’t from you by any chance, were they?’
‘Me? Of course not. Why would I send you flowers?’
‘All right, Cody. A simple no would suffice. There’s no need to be that negative about the idea.’
And now he doesn’t know where he is. Did he give the wrong answer?
‘Did you want me to send you flowers?’
