White Phantom: Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Four days had passed since the police had been round. The atmosphere in the house had been strained at best. Beth was still furious with Jennifer. She'd gone so far as to give her one month's notice to sort her life out and find somewhere else to live. Jennifer had come back at her with all the usual lines about going to the police and each time Beth had called her bluff and told her to go right ahead.

The night that she had come home from Maggie's and in the aftermath of her rage, Beth was prepared to confess and go to prison for her crimes, as long as Jennifer was taken off the streets, too. But as she had lain in bed that night, aware that, for the time being only, she had thrown the police off the scent, self preservation once again kicked in as it had the morning after she had killed Marc. It was over six months since Marc had died and there had been no repercussions. She had done some terrible things in tandem with Jennifer but, again, they had walked away without being apprehended.

The colder the scent became, surely the more chance she had of returning to some kind of normal life. She had stood up to Jennifer now, had refused to be bullied, and despite all of her threats and promises, Jennifer hadn't gone to the police and turned Beth in – because to do so would bring about her own downfall and there was no way that Jennifer was going to do that. For the first time since Marc's death, Beth began to think of a future that didn't contain either Jennifer or a police cell.

Jennifer had once told Beth that they had to stay together to keep an eye on each other because neither one of them could ever trust that the other was keeping her counsel. She had used this as her meal ticket, had embroiled Beth in more and more trouble so that their lives had become tangled and intertwined. She had kept Beth malleable with threats and innuendo. It had taken her until now to understand that she'd been so stupid.

Jennifer had never had the slightest intention of going to the police. For months, Beth had believed that the girl truly didn't care and would have trotted off to the police just for the attention and acclaim that it would bring about for her. Beth felt that she could see with unclouded vision for the first time. Jennifer was far too self-serving to ever risk giving herself in and unless she did, she could never accuse Beth of anything. What was to stop Beth from throwing Jennifer onto the street? She'd almost done it there and then, but she'd given her a month's grace to board up the big house on Springfield Road, because she could not do anything with it as long as Marc was in residence. She'd told Jennifer in cold hard terms that she had thirty days to find herself a job and a flat and to move out because she was no longer prepared to have her under her roof.

Relations between them had been unpleasant. Jennifer had wheedled and cajoled, had sulked and cried, and had screamed and shouted. Beth's only retort was to throw the local paper down on the table, open at the property section.

Beth let herself into the house after finishing an evening shift. For once she wasn't greeted by the blare of Jennifer's music. She walked through the living room, dropping her bag by the chair. Jennifer was sitting by the light of the lamp. She didn't have the television on, she wasn't reading and she didn't have the snake draped all over her. She was just sitting with an odd expression on her face, contemplating Beth. Walking straight through to the kitchen and putting on the kettle, Beth barely gave her a glance.

‘I hope you've spent the day looking for a job,’ she shouted through, as she spooned coffee into a cup. ‘Do you want a brew?’

‘I think you'd better come in here, Beth. I've got something to tell you.’

‘Not interested, Jennifer. Couldn't give a shite what you've got to say unless it's something to do with employment and flats.’ She tapped the spoon on the edge of her cup and, picking the coffee up, wandered back into the living room and plonked herself down in her chair by the fire. She reached across and picked up the remote and was pointing it at the telly when Jennifer threw something across the room to her.

She caught it and frowned in puzzlement. ‘What's this?’ she said, turning the child's coat over in her hands. It was a tiny blue anorak. On the inside, stitched neatly just below the loop was a nametag that read, Barry Park.

‘It's Barry's coat,’ she murmured, still confused. ‘Has Maggie been here? What did she want? Oh, God, what have you said to her? What's going on, Phantom?’

Jennifer ignored all of her questions and instead said, conversationally, ‘I'll tell you what, Beth, you want to have a word with Maggie about that nursery she's sending Barry to, the security's pants.’ She smirked at Beth and threw her mobile phone across to her. ‘Anybody could just walk in off the street and snatch one of those kiddies. I thought after all of that Dunblaine malarkey that they had to keep the gates and what-not locked by law. I'll tell you now, that one doesn't. I could have been anybody. Heck I could have been a –’

Beth's face had drained of colour. She was still looking at the photograph on the front of Jennifer’s phone and felt the dread crawling along her spine as the implications of her words sank in. She cut in on the girl's ramble, ‘What have you done?’ she asked. ‘Is Barry here? Is he upstairs? Have you taken him? Oh, Jesus, Maggie'll be frantic if anything's happened to him.’

She glanced again at the phone. The picture showed Jennifer kneeling down beside Maggie's youngest son. She had her arm around him and she was smiling. Barry looked anxious. In the background of the tiny snap Beth could clearly see the private house that was the day care centre that Barry attended two afternoons a week in preparation for going to school. In the photograph, Jennifer had a copy of the local newspaper in her hand.

‘You can't see the date on that picture it's too small but if you want to scan it into your laptop you'll see that it's today's.’ Jennifer said. Beth flung the phone to the floor and pounded up the stairs. She checked her own room, Jennifer's, the bathroom, but the child was nowhere in the house. She didn't know whether to be relieved or even more scared. Jennifer had been at the school, she'd been in the cloakroom, she had managed to get Barry on his own long enough to take the photo. How had she done that? Had she said that she was a family friend come to pick the child up? Surely the proprietor wouldn't just let one of her charges go off with a stranger on the mother's supposed say so? Beth was confused.

‘You're bluffing,’ she said uncertainly, as she went back into the living room and sat down tentatively on the edge of her chair. ‘You haven't got him at all.’

‘Did I say that I had him?’

‘No, but –’

‘Well then. Of course I haven't got him.’

‘Oh, thank God for that.’

‘Mind, you might want to just give Maggie a bell. I think you'll find that she could really use a friend about now.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Beth and she began to cry. ‘What have you done?’

‘Then again, maybe the police will want her to keep the phone lines free. You know... just in case.’

Beth clenched her hands together to prevent them from shaking. ‘What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?’ She was speaking quietly in a dull monotone. ‘Oh Jennifer, please, tell me what's going on. Where's Barry?’

‘I'm sorry, Beth, he had a little accident. But it's all your fault. You pushed me to it with all this talk of jobs and moving out. You made me do it.’

‘No,’ Beth moaned. ‘Please, just tell me that he's all right.’

‘Er... ’friad not. It's very tragic, really. Cars and roads and that. Kids being allowed to wander off willy-nilly, anything can happen to them.’ She threw another object across the room.

Beth caught it and wiped at her streaming eyes so that she could focus on it properly. It was something in a plastic bag. She took it out, one of her T-shirts. It smelled of her perfume. She recoiled in horror as she held it up and saw the huge blood stain across the front. Her mind tried to tell her that it might still all be an elaborate joke, that it might just be tomato ketchup. But she knew that it was blood.

Jennifer silently handed over a second bag. Beth could see what was in it before she'd even taken it. It was a large kitchen knife – her kitchen knife, the one with the broad steel blade. That too was bloodstained. She saw something attached to the clear edge of the blade. It looked like a tiny piece of sinew or muscle.

Beth clamped her hands over her mouth but was vomiting through her fingers before she'd even made it out of the door.

She came down in clean clothes ten minutes later. She was pale and tearful. ‘You know that you can't beat me, don't you, Beth?’ said Jennifer coldly.

‘I really am going to the police this time. This had nothing to do with me. I can prove it.’

‘Can you? You see if you look at the knife it's not a moulded sheath, the handle's fastened on with screws. I very carefully unscrewed the handle and attached it to a piece of wood that I had ready. Afterwards, well I just re-screwed the handle to the blade. Whose fingerprints do you think are all over that knife Beth? Okay, they might be a bit smudged with my gloved ones, but yours will still be there. They'll be able to find them. Whose is the bloodstained shirt? Who has just fallen out with her best friend? People have killed for less, you know.’

‘The nursery, it'll have security cameras. They'll have caught you on tape.’

Jennifer laughed, ‘I doubt it. But even so, we do everything together, don't we, Beth? If it all comes out I'll just tell them how you forced me to take him for you. It'll be your word against mine, Bethie.’

Beth slumped forward on the edge of the chair. ‘Oh, Jesus, it’s his birthday next month.’ She began to cry again.

‘We're going to have to go to the big house tonight. We'll stay in the vault. We can monitor anybody coming, then. If the police know anything they'll come straight here for us and then... if they're very clever they'll go there. But at least there we can be prepared for them. They'll never find us in the vault but we can keep an eye on their comings and goings until we decide what we're going to do.

Beth felt herself shutting down. She'd been here before. She knew how the numb mode went, and it was allowing herself to be led astray in that condition, that had got her into this mess in the first place. She needed to do what was right this time.

‘I'm not going, Jennifer. You'll have to take that knife and use it on me to stop me. I'm going to hand myself in and tell them everything.’

Jennifer laughed again. ‘I don't need a knife to stop you using that phone, mate. I'm leaving here in two minutes and you're coming with me. I don't have to force you. It'll be your choice. Can you imagine what women in prison do to a child killer? How do you think they'll treat you when they find out that you took a toddler and stabbed him over a hundred times before dumping his little body on waste ground, just to get revenge on his mother over a silly squabble?’ Jennifer handed Beth her coat and she put it on.

‘He's not in the vault, is he?’ Beth sobbed later as they walked up the stairs of the big house. ‘Please just promise me that Barry's not in the vault? I couldn't bear that.’

Jennifer activated the mechanism to open the vault door. ‘Oh, stop snivelling,’ she said and pushed Beth inside.

Once they were locked inside the vault Beth lay on one of the bunks, the one furthest way from Marc's decayed body and cried silently into the pillow. She wasn't crying for herself, she was crying for Maggie and little Barry.

‘Oi,’ Jennifer was talking to her but she ignored her. ‘Oi, look at me.’ Jennifer repeated.

‘I can't stand to look at you. You disgust me.’

‘Your choice. Anyway, thing is, thought I'd let you know you'd better get your head down. We've got a big day tomorrow. We're going to kidnap Colin. So be ready.’
Beth couldn't believe what she was hearing but then after murdering a small innocent child, why wouldn't Jennifer want to try her luck again. ‘You crazy, deranged animal.’

‘Just be ready in the morning to do exactly what I tell you.’

‘Why, Phantom? Why more hurt and more pain? What do you think you’re going to do with him?’

‘Look, just shut up with the questions, all right?’ Jennifer spat. She was getting rattled.

‘You're on your own. I'm not going to do anything with you.’

‘Oh, yes, you are, my friend. Because, you see, I'm going to throw you a big, fat lifeline. What if I could make it all right again, eh? What if I could help you out of trouble, just like I did last time?’

‘You didn't get me out of trouble. All you did was lead me slap bang into it.

‘Ah, but what if I could turn back time?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Now, don't be miserable, Beth. Let me show you how I'm going to help you. What if I could turn back the clock to three thirty this afternoon?’

Beth raised her head.

‘What if,’ continued Jennifer in a sing-song voice, ‘What if I sneaked into that house thing that pretends to be a school and nicked the kid's coat and then waited outside for them to have their playtime. There's only about three kids. The teacher-come-housewife woman nipped in with one of them, didn't she? What if I just took little Barry's photo and then legged it. What then, eh? Beth. What if Barry's safely at home with his dad and that fat bitch, Maggie? Wouldn't that make you happy?’

Beth wasn't falling for it, but all the same her heart was pounding. She'd gladly have given her life at that moment to know that Barry was safe and sound at home where he should be. ‘But the T-shirt, the knife, all that blood.’ She began to cry again. ‘I know you've killed him. Barry's dead and you're just playing your sick mind games.’

‘See, now that's where your right.’

Beth began to wail. Wasn't it enough that Jennifer had done something so evil without having to brag about it?

‘You're right about the mind games, anyway.’ She continued, ‘See, I have to play this one to keep you in line. I need you to do exactly as I tell you. You've had a little power trip lately, Beth, and I have to show you that it's not on. Maybe I killed the kid... maybe I didn't. You're stuck in this vault, away from the real world. You don't know what's happening out there, and I'm not going to give you access to the television to show you.

‘Stop it, Phantom. Just stop it. You're torturing me. Please just tell me, is Barry alive or dead. What about the knife?’

‘Stage props darling. It's amazing what you can do with a big piece of bloody steak from Tyson's, the butcher. Did you like the little touch of the piece of sinew cut off and stuck to the blade?’

Beth's eyes opened wide. Again, hope welled up inside of her. ‘Is he alive?’ she whispered.

‘That's what I can't tell you. If you do exactly what I ask of you tomorrow, I promise you, I give you my word faithfully, that tomorrow night I'll tell you the truth. Prove it, if it turns out that the kid's alive. But… you've got to do what I say. At the moment, as far as your concerned the kid's dead. Perhaps he's not dead, perhaps he's very much alive, but I've got him locked away somewhere. Possibly somewhere in this house. You don't know, do you, Beth? But to have any chance of saving him you have to play the game. My game. Do exactly as I tell you and who knows, maybe by this time tomorrow we'll have turned back time and he'll be alive and well and eating spaghetti hoops at his mum's table. Your call, Beth.’

Beth put her head down on the hard pillow and closed her eyes. Tears streamed from beneath them. She shut out Jennifer and the world.