The Dead City (Ophelia book 2) Read online

  ***

  “Fuck!” Miles shouts, throwing the screwdriver to the ground as he steps back and sucks blood from his hand.

  Nearby, one of the other students laughs.

  “Yeah,” Miles mutters, wiping a little more blood onto his shirt. “Hilarious.”

  I've spent the past few minutes sitting on a stool, watching as Miles screws together some kind of metal sculpture that's supposed to eventually house a video screen. I have no idea how his final project is going to work, but it's amusing to watch as he sweats and curses his way through the job. I'm not here solely for fun, however; I'm trying to get a better idea of the way all the third year students are working as their final show approaches, and so far every single one of them seems to be suffering some kind of crisis.

  Apart from Victoria, of course, whose spot in the open-plan studio remains completely empty.

  “It's not gonna be ready,” Miles says after a moment, staring at the pile of metal he's been trying to screw together. “I've completely fucked it up. I need to come up with something else.”

  “First crisis of the day?” asks Bryony, a student nearby who has spent the morning adding texture to some kind of paint-based project.

  “I'm serious,” Miles continues. “It's a disaster. There's no way I can make this look good by Thursday night.” He pauses for a moment, before turning to me. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should keep going,” I tell him, “and not give up.”

  “Listen to her,” Bryony adds with a smile, “for she speaks the truth.”

  As Miles gets back to work, I wander over to take a look at Bryony's project, which seems to be taking the form of several huge canvases, each of which has been daubed with thick layers of brightly-colored paint. In fact, it's the texture of the pieces that seems most interesting, as she keeps adding more and more paint, creating little mountains and valleys across the surface of each canvas. It's almost as if someone has spilled color all over the moon.

  “You like?” she asks after a moment.

  “It's colorful,” I reply, feeling as if I'm not in a good position to act as an art critic.

  “I came to this place three years ago with dreams of being the next big name in painting,” she continues, with a faint smile. “Now look at me, desperately adding blobs of color as if I'm some kind of cheap David Lucas clone. It'd be okay if I didn't also happen to be massively in debt. These paintings aren't really very much for me to show after three fucking years, are they?”

  “They're good,” I tell her, even though I'm a little surprised that her entire display seems to consist of nothing more than these three paintings.

  “They'll do,” she replies. “They'll get me through the show, and they might even get me an A if Mike Wallace is drunk enough by the time he starts giving out grades, but do you wanna know the sad truth?” She turns to me. “Monday morning, I start work at a coffee shop down the road. Three years at this place, twenty grand's worth of debt, and I'm gonna work in a fucking coffee shop. Doesn't that strike you as being a little shitty?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Liar.”

  “Sorry.” I turn and look at the empty space where Victoria should be working.

  “I hope she fails,” Bryony says after a moment.

  “Why?” I ask, turning back to her.

  “Because she's so completely up herself, she thinks she doesn't even have to communicate with the rest of us. I don't know what the fuck kind of project she's working on, but I really hope she screws it up. I know that makes me sound bad, but you should see the stuff she's done in the past. It's basically crap. We're not talking about some kind of tortured genius here. Vicky Middleton is just a talentless little rat running around this place, bringing the mood down wherever she goes.”

  “What if she steals the show?” I ask.

  Smiling, she adds more paint to one of the canvases. It's clear that she fully expects Victoria to do badly.

  “I guess you heard about all those body parts that were dug up nearby,” I continue, figuring I should at least try to dig for information. “I heard they found, like, a whole bunch of different bits that the killer didn't need, just a little way from this building. It's pretty gross.”

  “And those sick photos,” she replies, still smiling. “They're like something from a horror movie. Hell, they're better than a horror movie, 'cause with the photos you know that they're totally real. The thought of all those innocent people being kidnapped and then cut up... It's kinda horrible to think that we live in a world where that could actually happen. Although...”

  She pauses, before glancing around as if she's worried that someone might overhear us.

  “You're not a competitor,” she adds. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure, but -”

  “Swear on the life of someone who's important to you.”

  “I swear on my friend Laura's life,” I reply solemnly.

  “I don't want anyone else here to know,” she continues, grabbing her phone and hurrying over to me, “but I need an outsider's opinion. What do you think of these?” Tapping at the screen a few times, she brings up a series of images. When she turns the phone toward me, I'm shocked to see that she seems to have painted versions of the leaked photos showing the stitched-together body.

  “What am I looking at?” I ask after a moment.

  “Those photos that got online,” she explains in hushed tones, “were really freaky, and I got to thinking that maybe I could paint them. I don't want anyone else to see, 'cause they might steal the idea, so I'm working on them at home. I still don't know if I'll put them into the show. I mean, they might be kinda controversial, but maybe that's the whole point. Do you think it's sick?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Really?” she replies, sounding disappointed. “Are you sure? I was definitely trying to make it seem sick.”

  Staring at the painting on the screen, I'm shocked by how bad it is. I mean, there's absolutely nothing appealing about it at all, yet it's clear that Bryony believes that this is the work that's going to make her a big name. I don't know whether to pity her or whether to be annoyed that she wants to exploit the tragedy for her own benefit.

  “I guess they're pretty disturbing,” I continue. “Some people are definitely gonna get worked up.”

  “Am I a bad person?” she asks. “It's not like I killed anyone. I just took a bunch of leaked photos and turned them into art. They were already out there, and everyone's seen 'em by now. Sure, people are gonna pretend like they're appalled, but that's precisely the kind of bourgeois reaction that I want to kick in the balls. People go through these shows on rails, so you have to shake them out of their stupor. No-one's gonna be expecting to see something so horrible transformed into art.”

  “Don't you think that maybe they're already art?” I ask.

  She frowns. “How?”

  “Never mind.” I take a deep breath. “I think you're definitely going to get a reaction if you put these paintings in the final show.”

  “And do you think people will be shocked?”

  “Probably.”

  “Fucking better be,” she adds, putting her phone in her pocket. “It's a type of found art, really. Some sicko killed a bunch of people, and I'm totally against that kind of thing. But now the photos have leaked, there's no reason why a forward-thinking artist shouldn't use them as inspiration. If you wanna get noticed these days, you have to do something really shocking. I sure as hell don't wanna be working in that stinking coffee shop any longer than I have to, so I figure I don't mind causing a bit of a stir if it means getting my name out there. Whoever killed those people and stitched them together, they did me a big favor. An artist should be inspired by everything in the world around them, right? So why not something horrible like this?”

  “I'm not going to argue with you,” I reply, mentally striking Bryony off my list of people who could potentially be involved in the murders.

  “Just keep it to
yourself,” she adds. “This is my idea, and I don't want anyone copying me. I want them all to be shocked when I unveil the paintings on Thursday night. I want to literally see their jaws drop. I mean, hell, if I pull this off I might even end up getting some coverage from a few of the big art sites.”

  “Hey!” Miles calls over to me. “Wanna grab a coffee or something?”

  “If you tell him,” she hisses, “you're dead!” A moment later, she smiles. “Just kidding. But seriously, not a word.”

  A few minutes later, as we head through to the cafeteria, Miles starts explaining why he thinks Bryony is going to screw up her exhibit at the final show. It's kind of shocking to realize that while everyone in the third year studio acts as if they're all best friends, in private they're each more than happy to bitch about one another's work. In fact, the whole place seems to be more like a shark tank than a school, and I can't help thinking that maybe Victoria Middleton is right to try to distance herself from the toxic atmosphere. By the time Miles and I have got our coffees and found a table, he's pretty much cycled through every student in his group and explained why he hopes they screw up their final year projects.

  “What about Bryony?” I ask.

  “That bitch? She just slathers paint onto the canvas and acts like she's doing something new. I've got zero respect for anyone who spends their time slavishly copying the old guard. Nice girl, though. Her Dad's loaded, but she's never gonna make it as an artist. Too unoriginal.”

  I can't help but smile.

  “I've got a secret weapon,” he adds. “I'm gonna blow the rest of those losers out of the water. They're literally gonna dry heave when they see what I've used for inspiration, and Mike fucking Wallace is gonna just be, like, totally shocked. He thinks he's seen it all, but I'm gonna break new ground.”

  I watch as he grabs his phone from his pocket and brings up a photo, and then he smiles as he holds it up for me to see.

  “Cool, huh?”

  I force myself not to laugh as I see that the photo shows a crude sculpture of the stitched-together corpse from the leaked images. The photo's a little grainy, so it's hard to make out exactly what materials he's used, but there's no denying that he's attempted to create a representation of the murder victims and their horrific fate. Apparently Bryony isn't the only third year student who thinks she can shock the world by incorporating a little controversy into her work.

  “People are gonna be totally blown away,” he continues, putting the phone away. “Fuck it, though. Sometimes you just need to shock people, right? Just make sure you don't tell anyone about my idea. I wanna surprise them all when I pull the covers off.”

  Smiling, I look down at my coffee, and for a moment I imagine what it'll be like on Thursday night if all the third year students turn out to have had the same 'original' idea. It's kind of funny to realize that in their desperation to be controversial, they're all converging on basically the same idea. Taking a sip of coffee, I realize that I can strike Miles off my list of suspects too. Like Bryony, he lacks the necessary imagination to pull off such a striking murder.

  I'm looking for a genius.

  “You know you really look familiar,” he continues. “Are you sure there's no way we could have -”

  “No way at all,” I tell him, getting to my feet. “I swear. And now I have to go. I'm late for something.”

  Before he can answer, I walk away. That's the second time he's claimed to recognize me, and I'm starting to get worried. I need to get this job done and get the hell out of the college as fast as possible.

  Laura

  “What exactly are you planning?” I ask.

  “I just need to check something out,” Ophelia replies over the phone. “It's no big deal. I'll be home in a few hours.”

  “Have you got anything that might be useful?” I continue, as I stir some pieces of chicken in a frying pan. “I'm starting to feel like we're looking in the wrong place, and forensics haven't been able to come up with a damn thing.”

  I wait for her to reply.

  “Ophelia,” I continue, “are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I'm here,” she replies. “I'll tell you about it later. I don't know, but I want to poke around.”

  “It's dark outside,” I tell her, “and the college is closed. I hope you're not -”

  “Breaking and entering?” she asks. “No sweat. Nothing like that. I'm merely expanding my undercover activities to include a little after-hours work, that's all.”

  “Ophelia -”

  “And now I've got to go,” she continues. “I'll see you in a few hours!”

  I open my mouth to reply, but the line goes dead. I guess I should have known that she'd take this all very seriously, but as I set my phone down and get on with the job of making dinner, I can't help worrying that she might get in too deep. A more responsible person would never have let her get involved in the first place, but I guess I'm just getting desperate. With only two days left until the final show, I'm still no closer to coming up with a suspect. Originally, I assumed that the killer was leading us to the art school as part of some game, but now I'm worried that it was simply an attempt to distract us and keep us busy. Or maybe he just wants to draw a bigger audience for the final unveiling.

  “When's dinner?” my mother calls through from the front room.

  “Not long!” I reply.

  “I hope it's better than the shit you made last night!”

  “Mum -”

  “I'd have been better off eating out of the garbage,” she continues. “I would have thought, Laura, that you might have made an effort, seeing as you had a friend staying. Why does she spend time with you, anyway? Are you paying her? It can't be for the pure pleasure of your company.”

  I pause, shocked by how nasty she can be these days. She always used to be so kind, and she never, ever swore. Her Alzheimer's is getting worse, though, and her mood can change rapidly; tonight she seems to be particularly badly affected. Even though I know it's nothing personal, I can't help but feel frustrated as I pour some sauce over the chicken. At this rate, I might actually end up reconsidering the doctor's advice. Mum's going to need to go into care at some point, so maybe it'd be better to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. Then again, I don't think I could do that to her, not yet. Sure, she can be cruel, but when she's more herself, she's much nicer.

  Glancing over at the table, I spot the latest unopened bottle of whiskey. Keen to get it out of sight, I take it to the drinks cabinet and place it next to the bottle I took yesterday. I'm building up quite a collection, although Ophelia's words are still ringing in my ears: she's right, I'm going to get caught one day. No-one can keep doing this kind of thing forever, and when it happens, it's going to ruin everything.

  Lost in thought, I almost don't notice that my phone is ringing again. Grabbing it from the side, I see that Nick is trying to get hold of me. For a moment, I consider letting the call go to voice-mail, since I'm too tired to go over the details of the case yet again. Finally, I realize that I might as well get it over with.

  “Hey,” I say as I answer, “I was going to call you later when I've -”

  “There's been another murder,” he replies, interrupting me.

  “Another -” I pause, my blood starting to run cold. “Where?”

  “The church hall by Ashbury Park. I'm there now.”

  “I'm on my way,” I tell him, figuring I can leave my mother alone for a couple of hours, “but Nick, are you certain it's the same killer?”

  “Oh yeah,” he replies. “Trust me, it's definitely the same killer.”

  ***

  By the time I get to the church hall an hour later, heavy rain has begun to fall. Getting out of my car, I hurry along the dark street and finally I reach the police cordon that has already been set up at the front of the building. After showing my badge to the officer on duty, I make my way up the steps and into the cold, echoing entrance hallway.

  “This way,” Nick says, gesturing for me to
follow him. “Did you like my Taggart impression on the phone, by the way? There's been a murder! Did I sound Scottish there?”

  “What have we got?” I ask, trying to stay calm.

  “The janitor called it in,” he replies as we enter the main hall. Several uniformed officers are over by the stage, while a SOCO team is already getting ready in the corner as Dr. Maitland speaks to someone on the phone. “The hall was in use from five to six for netball practice, and then the janitor came in at half six to get the place ready for a choir group that was due at eight. The guy was starting to clean up when he noticed a spot of blood on the floor. He wiped it up, carried on working, and then at the end he noticed the blood was back. So he wiped it up again, then a couple of minutes later it came back, and so on until he realized what was going on.”

  “Where's the body?” I ask as I reach the front of the hall. “Did you have it moved already? I wanted to -”

  Before I can finish, a drip falls from the ceiling and lands a few feet away, leaving a little red splash on the floor.

  “We haven't moved the body yet,” Nick replies. “We haven't even got close to it yet. We're waiting for some equipment. Specifically, some scaffolding.”

  Slowly I look up, and that's when I see it:

  High above us, fixed somehow to the ceiling, there's a dead, naked body arranged in some kind of crude star shape. From down here, it's impossible to make out the details, but there seems to be some kind of writing on both the body itself and part of the ceiling, along with a crudely-drawn set of wings running from the tops of the figure's shoulders.

  “Recognize him?” Nick continues.

  “What do you mean?”

  He takes out his phone, turns on the camera, and then uses it to zoom in on the corpse's face. There's something unnatural about the skin, almost as if it's slightly waxy, while parts of the cheeks have been sliced open, causing the rest of the face's skin to sag down a little, hollowing the eyes and mouth. The whole thing looks so strange, it takes a moment before I realize that I do recognize him.