The Bat(106)

‘The second test was to see if she could tolerate pain. Nails were put through her cheeks and nose, and they made marks on her body.’

‘So? Today girls pay to have that done.’

‘Shut up, Harry. At the end, when the fire was dying she had to lie across it with only a few branches between her and the embers. But the third test was the hardest.’

‘Fear?’

‘Right, Harry. After the sun had gone down the members of the tribe gathered round the fire and the elders took turns to tell the young woman terrifying, hair-raising stories about ghosts and Muldarpe, the shape-shifting evil spirit. Pretty rough stuff, some of it. Afterwards she was sent off to sleep in a deserted place, or near the burial places of her forefathers. At the dead of night the elders sneaked up on her with their faces daubed with white clay and wearing bark masks—’

‘Isn’t that a bit like taking sand to the beach?’

‘—and making eerie noises. You’re a poor listener, Harry.’ Joseph was offended.

Harry rubbed his face. ‘I know,’ he said at length. ‘Sorry, Joseph. I just came here to think aloud and to see if he’d left any clues that might give me a pointer as to where he might’ve taken her. But I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, and you’re the only person I can use as a sounding board. You must think I sound like a cynical, insensitive bastard.’

‘You sound like someone who thinks he has to fight the whole world,’ Joseph said. ‘But if you don’t drop your guard now and then, your arms will be too weary to fight.’

Harry cracked a smile. ‘You’re absolutely sure you don’t have an older brother?’

Joseph laughed. ‘As I said, it’s too late to ask my mother now, but I think she would have told me.’

‘You two sound just like brothers.’

‘You’ve said that a few times now, Harry. Perhaps you should try to get some sleep.’

Joe’s face lit up when Harry came in through the door of Springfield Lodge.

‘Nice afternoon, eh, Mr Holy? By the way, you’re looking good today. And I’ve got a parcel for you.’ He held up a package in grey paper with ‘Harry Holy’ written on it in capital letters.

‘Who’s it from?’ Harry asked, taken aback.

‘I don’t know. A taxi driver delivered it a couple of hours ago.’

In his room Harry placed the package on the bed, unwrapped it and opened the box inside. He had already more or less worked out who it was from, but the contents eliminated any lingering doubt: six small plastic tubes with white stickers on. He picked up one and read a date he instantly recognised as the day Inger Holter was murdered, bearing the inscription ‘pubic hair’. It didn’t require much imagination to guess that the other tubes would contain blood, hair, clothes fibres and so on. And they did.

Half an hour later he was woken by the phone.

‘Have you got the things I sent you, Harry? I thought you’d need them as soon as possible.’

‘Toowoomba.’

‘At your service. Ha ha.’

‘I’ve got the things. Inger Holter, I assume. I’m curious, Toowoomba. How did you murder her?’

‘Easy as wink,’ Toowoomba said. ‘Almost too easy. I was in a girlfriend’s flat when she rang late one evening.’

So Otto’s a girlfriend? Harry almost asked.

‘Inger had some dog food for the girl who owns the flat, or should I say, owned the flat? I had let myself in, but spent the evening on my own as my girlfriend was out on the town. As usual.’

Harry noticed the voice sharpen.

‘Weren’t you taking a huge risk? Someone might have known she was going to . . . er, your girlfriend’s flat.’

‘I asked her,’ Toowoomba said.

‘Asked her?’ Harry replied, sceptical.

‘It’s incredible how naive some people are. They speak before engaging the brain because they feel safe and therefore don’t have to think. She was such a sweet, innocent girl. “No, no one knows I’m here, why?” she said. Ha ha. I felt like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. So I told her she’d come just at the right time. Or should I say wrong time? Ha ha. Do you want to hear the rest?’

Harry did want to hear the rest. Preferably everything, right down to the last detail, how Toowoomba had been as a child, when he had first killed, why he didn’t have a fixed ritual, why he sometimes only raped, how he felt after a murder, whether he became depressed after the ecstasy the way serial killers do because it hadn’t been perfect that time, either, it hadn’t been how he had dreamed and planned it would be. He wanted to know how many, when and where, the methods and the tools. And he wanted to understand the emotions, the passion, what the driving force of his madness was.