The Brighton Mermaid

  ‘But there’s more?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, there’s more. Look—’

  ‘Just tell me, Zach. I’m a big girl, just tell me.’

  ‘To the outside world, it looked like he learnt his lesson from that first conviction. He came out of prison a reformed character, he attended a perpetrators’ course, all the while protesting his innocence, and then went straight. Got a job, settled down to a normal life, got himself a girlfriend.’ Zach points at me. ‘But in reality, he had just learnt to use a condom, found out how to skew other forms of DNA collection. Especially since back then it was still quite new when used in forensics.’

  ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘It’s nasty stuff, stuff that eats away at your soul. It gave me pause and I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing for years. I don’t think you should hear it. And even if you want to hear it, I don’t want to say it out loud. It’s the sort of thing that haunts me. But suffice to say, he was never convicted again. He was arrested a few times, accused even more times, but there was never enough evidence and he managed to cast far too much he-said-she-said doubt to secure anything that the CPS were happy to proceed with.’

  Was it Shane with the Brighton Mermaid, then? With the others? Did he do that to all those women? Did he kill them? But where does Craig Ackerman come into it? Why would Shane bring him into all of this, by sending me his way, especially if he doesn’t have anything criminal attached to his name?

  ‘How many women were there?’ I ask Zach.

  ‘You don’t want to know, Nell, you really don’t.’

  ‘I do. I really do.’

  ‘There were enough, all right?’ he snaps. ‘There were enough of them for me to not understand why they didn’t manage to find a way to get him off the streets. He is absolute scum. But he chose his victims well, I suppose. Most of them had breakdowns, those being the ones who actually went to the police. But part of me wonders if they just didn’t think it was worth it back then. If, because Shane’s victims were the type of young women who were routinely disbelieved and dismissed, the police just let it go.’ He rubs his hands over his eyes. ‘I’m sorry for snapping at you. This whole thing has made me incredibly angry and it’s not like I can do anything about it because it’s not my patch … I hate to think of all those girls and young women who didn’t get anything close to justice because no one cared enough.’

  Zach hasn’t told me anywhere near everything. And Shane was doing this while we were together. While I was in his bed, while we were, I thought, having amazing sex, he was off doing this as well.

  ‘Is it my fault?’ I ask. ‘Was I just not enough for him and he had to go off and do that?’ Zach will be honest. Even if he doesn’t want to say it, he will find a way to tell me if it was.

  He takes his hand away from his face and frowns at me. ‘No, no, of course not,’ he replies. He snakes his arm around me and pulls me close. ‘It was not you at all. You know as well as I do that sexual assault and rape is nothing to do with sex, it’s all about power and control. It’s not your fault in any way, shape or form, and he started well before he met you.’

  ‘But if I was enough for him, shouldn’t he have stopped when he was with me?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that, Nell. If he’s pathological enough to be doing that in the first place, no one, no matter how wonderful they are, is going to stop him.’

  I like being held by Zach. It’s comfortable and familiar, something I grew used to very quickly. We sit in silence for a long while, mainly because I know when I speak again this magic will be broken and he’ll be a police officer and I’ll be someone who has deep emotional ties to a prolific criminal.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell Macy all of this. It’ll destroy her,’ I say as I sit up, out of his hold, away from his heat.

  ‘I know,’ he mumbles. ‘I’ll tell her if you want? I’m used to delivering bad news.’

  ‘No,’ I say and shake my head. ‘I have to tell her. I owe her that. I can’t believe he’s been sneaking out and doing that all these years. It’s mind-boggling.’

  ‘From what I could see, it doesn’t look like he’s done it in a while,’ Zach says.

  ‘But you just said he was pathological, so why would he stop?’

  ‘I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know that he has, but there have been no reports in years of assaults that fit his MO, most notably what he does to skew the DNA harvesting and the theft of jewellery.’

  ‘Theft of jewellery?’

  ‘That was something he always did, since the very first time, and not something he’s likely to have changed – he steals a piece of jewellery from each of his victims. Trophies, if you will. He either rips it off them, or scares them into giving it to him. He often goes for things that mean a lot to them: antique rings, lockets and the like. If they have nothing like that, he’ll take whatever they have – even if it’s just a cheap plastic watch, a hairclip or a lock of hair. Anything. No one has really complained of that in years. Even if the other circumstances seem similar, that seems to be missing.’

  ‘Jewellery,’ I mumble. This is what Pope said had linked the mermaids. Each of them had an item of jewellery missing. So it was him. He did do it.

  I feel like I’ve been punched again. Shane is a rapist. Shane, who I spent two years sleeping with, is a rapist. Shane, my sister’s partner, is a rapist. Did he move along the coast, doing what he did? But to cover his tracks, did he start to kill? The Brighton Mermaid was the earliest type of these bodies to be found – was she his first and it escalated from there? Is Craig Ackerman his helper as well as his sibling?

  ‘Do you know something, Nell?’ Zach asks me.

  ‘What would I know?’

  ‘You’ve got that look on your face that says you’ve just worked out something. What is it?’

  I look over my once-upon-a-time paramour, the man I could have loved, the man I could still fall in love with if I stop holding myself back. I could tell him, let him in, but I know I’m going to do that really annoying thing I do that my dad does, too: I’m not going to tell. It’s too soon. I don’t want to say it to Zach and for it to become swallowed up in what could become a much bigger investigation.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ I say.

  Zach pushes his tongue deep into his cheek and his eyes harden.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ he eventually says.

  ‘Both. I don’t know what there is to tell, but if I did, I still wouldn’t tell you. I’m sorry. I know you’ve gone above and beyond with all this, but I’ve just got a couple of things to work out first, then I can tell you. Maybe. Possibly.’

  He shakes his head in despair because he knows whatever he says won’t make a difference. ‘You’re going after him, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. And I’m not. I’m going to go after those trophies, the jewellery he stole. They may not link him directly to the Brighton Mermaid and all the other mermaid-like women that were found, but there will be items from the other women. The ones who didn’t become mermaids, the ones he brutalised and stole from but never got justice.

  ‘Oh, Jeez,’ Zach sighs. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. I should have known that telling you would do nothing but make you go towards him, not away from him.’ He shuts his eyes and shakes his head. ‘He’s dangerous, Nell. Stay away from him. If he’s the one who’s after you right now, then that should tell you how deadly the man is. For all we know, the reason why he hasn’t had any complaints made against him recently is because all his victims are dead.’

  ‘I’m not going after him.’

  ‘Look, tell me whatever it is and it may be enough for me to trigger an investigation, historic or current.’

  ‘I can’t do that. If I do that, and they go and talk to him, it might tip him off and allow him to cover his tracks.’

  ‘Nell … Promise me. Promise me you’ll stay away from him.’

  ‘I promise you, I will stay away from him.’

  Zach closes
his eyes again and holds himself very still as though listening for something, possibly the lie beneath my words. ‘All right,’ he says when he opens his eyes. ‘Give me your phone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just give me your phone.’

  I do as I’m told.

  ‘Please put in your passcode and then get up the “find my phone” or “find my friends” bit.’

  ‘No way!’ I say and snatch back my handset. ‘That means I have to sign in to location services and the cloud and I don’t do that.’

  ‘I will sign in to my cloud on your phone so I can find you.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘It’s that or I go and have an “off the record” chat with Shane.

  Your choice.’

  Trapped . Once I’ve made sure nothing will automatically upload to his cloud, I give him my phone ready for him to sign in.

  ‘Text me,’ he says as he types into my phone. ‘When you get into trouble – because it’s a given that it’ll be when you get into trouble – text me “H”, just that, “H”, and I will come and find you.’

  ‘I won’t need rescuing because I’m not going to do anything stupid.’

  As he hands me back my phone, he glances at my adorned wrists. ‘And get rid of those bracelets,’ he says. ‘They’re too noisy, they’ll get you into trouble.’

  ‘I’m not going to do—’

  ‘Keep in regular contact.’

  ‘Honestly, I’m—’

  ‘“H”, just send me “H”, and I’ll come find you,’ he repeats.

  ‘Honestly, Zach, you’re worrying for no reason. I’m going nowhere near him.’

  I mean it as well. I absolutely mean it.

  Nell

  Saturday, 2 June

  I’ve never really been in Macy and Shane’s bedroom before.

  I came in a few times to leave clothes on the bed, to find the note that Macy left when she ran away, but not properly. I’m standing in here now, looking around and wondering at the secrets it holds.

  In the time since I saw Zach, I’ve felt nothing but sick at the thought that my sister and I have both slept with someone like Shane. Macy’s children have grown up with him as a father figure for over half a decade.

  I lay in the middle of my bed last night, wide awake, so many different thoughts firing off in my brain, connections and revelations lighting up pathways across my mind like the lights coming on after a blackout.

  Shane and the Brighton Mermaid.

  If it was him, then so many things would make sense. It would mean that he came for me, wooed and dated me because I was one of the girls who found the Brighton Mermaid. When I left for university, and then wouldn’t get back together with him, he must have got with my sister to stay close. Not for me, but to find out what I knew.

  If it was him, then he must have done all those other things: the mugging, the dead rat – he knows how bordering on phobic I am about rats.

  If it was him, then I’ve slept with a serial killer. My sister has slept with a serial killer. Every time I think that, an almost uncontrollable nausea rises inside.

  But what if it wasn’t him? What if Shane has nothing to do with the Brighton Mermaid and it’s all a coincidence that those files were taken and he used to steal jewellery from the women he … he… I couldn’t even think it, the thought was so horrible. What does Craig Ackerman have to do with it? Maybe it’s all him. Maybe Shane is being controlled by Ackerman and he has tried to protect Macy, protect me in all of this. Maybe being with Macy transformed Shane but Ackerman had some dirt on him and Shane had to play along or lose everything.

  These doubts, these connections that could be coincidences, are the reason why I need to find those trophies. If I find them, there may be DNA on them that will link them to any of the other mermaids, and then I’ll know.

  I wanted to come earlier, but I had to go over to Mum and Dad’s to check on the children, seeing as neither Macy nor Shane was around and I hadn’t seen them all week.

  I stand at the door to their bedroom, just inside the threshold, with my shoes on. I know Macy doesn’t allow shoes in the house, but I can’t be here for long, I can’t be taking my time to unlace my shoes and then lace them back up again. From what I can see, Shane is away for a few days – there was a lot of post behind the door when I came in and the house doesn’t look like it’s been lived in at all.

  Their room has a large bed, neatly made, of course, and everything is immaculately tidy. Macy and Shane are both neat freaks, and that was one of the first signs of Macy having a breakdown – she stopped picking things up and didn’t care. Even now, with Macy gone, Shane has kept their bedroom pristine. I look around at the room. If Shane is who Zach has told me he is, then he will keep his trophies near to give him a constant thrill. Like an alcoholic taking a sneaky tot of their favourite tipple right in front of everyone – they get the hit of alcohol and the added kick of no one knowing what they’re doing.

  Where would he hide them? I face the bed, a big, ornate sleigh bed with a thick mattress. Surely he wouldn’t put them in there? No, any cut or slit in the mattress could be seen by Macy. As I am looking at the bed, to the left is a bank of white wardrobes with a combination of drawers, cubbyholes and sliding sections for accessories. I remember when Macy was designing it, how happy she’d been because it was her dream come true to have space and room for everything.

  I stare at the wardrobes. It seems too obvious but people talk about hiding things in plain sight all the time. Maybe he’s put the items in Macy’s jewellery drawers? No. For someone with Macy’s OCD tendencies, she would notice. And she isn’t really a jewellery person; I sometimes think she refuses to wear it as a way to mark out how different we are.

  I miss the familiar jangle and tinkle of my bracelets on my wrists; without them, I don’t sound like me. But Zach is right, they make me conspicuous.

  I don’t sound like me without my bracelets, but I can hear my heart. It’s racing in my chest. I don’t know when Shane will be back and I do not want him to find me here. Not in the house, and definitely not in his bedroom. My heart, its loud, drumming beat, is like a timer counting down the seconds till he comes home. On both sides of their bed there is a set of drawers, small, white, with small chrome handles. Not in there – too much chance of Macy finding them.

  Maybe under the carpet, under a loose floorboard?

  To the right of the bed, in the huge window bay, is the big old leather love seat in front of the large shutters. Those shutters were another thing that made Macy so happy; another dream house item she was able to tick off her list. She picked an antique silk colour instead of white after having me go over and over and over the samples with her.

  I feel so sad about this house. That period when she was doing it up, picking out the decor and planning each room, was the one time in our lives that Macy and I were pure friends, totally sisters. We worked together without any animosity hanging over us. I was her sounding board and she was the most excited I’d ever seen her. This house and its contents are about to be ripped away from her. Once she finds out about Shane, she won’t be able to live here.

  This is why I am here, why I need the trophies. Not just to solve the mystery of the Brighton Mermaid and the other mermaids; I will need them to prove to Macy that this isn’t just about me trying to ruin her life. Again. She will convince herself that it wasn’t Shane, and if it was, it is all in the past. If I have the trophies, I will have something solid to show her. But where?

  I’m sure they’re in here. They are somewhere that he can control access to. Only Macy is really in here on her own and no one I know goes through their own bedroom on a regular basis. If it is tidy and clean and comfortable, you very, very rarely search through every nook and cranny.

  I look at the light brown leather love seat – large, squat and dominating the window bay. It was Shane’s from before I knew him. He’s cared for it, treated the leather to keep it soft and new-looking. He’s had it reupholster
ed a couple of times to keep it useable, I’d guess. I seem to remember, back in the day, he told me that his parents had given it to him. He kept it in his tiny bedroom then, too. It was ridiculous, squeezing it into his bedroom in his first flat. When I slept with him when I returned from university, it was in that flat’s bedroom too.

  The love seat .

  Everything else in this house is new. He used to joke sometimes about how he had nothing left from his old life when he moved in with Macy. ‘She’s made me get rid of it all – except my car and my love seat. And even the car’s going to be upgraded to one that will fit all of us in.’ I knew he was exaggerating. Yes, he got rid of all his things when they moved here together, but he hadn’t seemed bothered about any of his other possessions except this thing that has been in all the bedrooms of his that I’ve been in.

  The trophies have to be in the love seat.

  The light brown leather is so soft, the filling gives way immediately when I climb onto the seat and start pushing my hands down the sides of the base cushion. Nothing, not even a stray coin or pieces of fluff. He obviously clears it out regularly to make sure no one takes too close a look at it. Next I move behind it and then shove it forwards. The stitching at the back is very secure, nothing out of place, nothing that suggests there is an extra flap or secret compartment back here. It must be underneath. I move round to the front of the seat, push it back into place, being careful to line up the foot marks exactly where they have indented the soft, pale carpet. Then I get down flat on my back and slide my hand under the seat. I run my fingers along the smooth, slightly cold material underneath and nothing seems out of place. Along the edge, I can feel the straight, hard frame of the seat, then my fingers catch something. A patch of material that is folded over like a hem.

  My heart almost stops in my chest.

  I didn’t believe Shane had trophies from the crimes he’s committed, keepsakes from his assaults, which would further cause his victims distress because that missing something would always be on his victim’s mind. These items were an abstract concept that I knew deep down I’d never really find. My fingers open the seam, which is held together by Velcro, and slip inside. I have to withdraw my fingers and then push my whole body closer and my shoulder further under the love seat to be able to put my fingers deeper into the cavity.