The Brighton Mermaid

  ‘How is it my doing? If you hadn’t killed Sirene, none of this would be happening.’

  ‘Sirene! Pah! That was always your problem, Shane, always remembering their names, talking to them.’

  Sirene . Her name was Sirene. Poor Sirene. She’s been without a name for twenty-five years because of them. And all along they knew it. They both knew who she was.

  ‘You were always acting as though they were anything other than what we needed them for. If she hadn’t run away, I wouldn’t have had to do what I did. She had everything: somewhere to sleep, food to eat, we even gave her clothes and make-up. But she still ran away.’

  ‘She was just scared, like the others.’

  ‘Yeah she was scared. She was really scared.’ Craig Ackerman’s voice sounds like that was the best part for him – her being terrified.

  ‘Yeah, Craig, and you getting off on that is what caused all this.’

  ‘No, if you’d just let me kill that bitch back in ’93, this wouldn’t be happening.’

  ‘It wasn’t only me who wanted her alive.’

  There’s someone else involved . Someone else who knew about me and wanted me alive, but who? And why?

  ‘“It wasn’t only me who wanted her alive”! You’re pathetic . You’ve been whipped by her for years. You were supposed to keep an eye on her, find out what she remembered, what she knew, not start shagging her.’

  ‘You’ve been at it too long, Craig. You don’t understand what it’s truly like to have real power. The power I’ve had over her all these years, it doesn’t compare to the other things we do. The way she looked up at me all doe-eyed and innocent, willing to do anything – everything – for me as I took her that first time. That’s power, that’s control. Terror is nothing compared to devotion.’

  ‘No, mate, until you’ve looked into a girl’s eyes and watched that moment, that exact moment when she realises what you’re going to do, that she’s not going to get away or be rescued, you don’t know power. And until you’ve held her in your hands, squeezing, watching as the horror in her eyes at what’s going to happen changes to the realisation of what is actually happening … Until you’ve watched and felt that, you don’t know power.’

  Craig Ackerman is going to kill me. He has nothing in him that will stop him doing that. And Shane won’t stop him. No one will stop him. It sounds like it’s only the grace and favour of the person they are obviously working with that has kept me alive so far.

  How many more of them are there out there? How many of them are there in this group that torture and abuse young girls? Because that’s what it sounds like – they take women, they abuse and rape them and then, it seems, kill them.

  Craig Ackerman is going to do that to me.

  My head hurts. A hangover-like feeling I haven’t had since that first night with Zach. Oh Zach . If I hadn’t been so stubborn, he may well have been there when Shane and his half-brother came for me. I want to groan, to shift to see how much of my body I can move after what I was dosed with, but I have to stay still. I don’t know when we’re going to stop, when they’re going to actually start with the killing.

  ‘He’s going to let me kill her this time,’ Craig Ackerman says. As the fog shifts, I’m starting to hear the subtlety in their words, the inflections in what they say. Craig Ackerman sounds almost gleeful at the prospect of killing me. ‘He has to let me kill her this time.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Shane says. ‘You know she’s special.’

  Craig Ackerman snorts, a sound laced with disgust. ‘They’re all special . She just didn’t end up in a room like the others.’

  ‘She didn’t end up with your hands around her neck and left in water like the others, you mean?’

  ‘There’s still time.’

  ‘He won’t let you.’

  ‘He’ll have no choice.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Shane asks. Shane sounds scared, I can hear that now. I can also hear how he masks his fear with forced bravado, clipped words and strong statements so he sounds like he is on par with Craig Ackerman. He must be terrified of his brother.

  ‘It means I’m going to fix our “investigator” problem before he arrives.’

  ‘You can’t kill Nell.’

  ‘There we go again: whipped .’

  ‘I’m not. She’s not a runaway like the others. People will notice if she disappears. They will ask questions. They will track down all the places she’s been.’

  ‘Well then, you shouldn’t have taken her, should you, Shaney?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking properly. When she passed out I had to get her out of there. Macy could have come back at any second.’

  ‘Oh yeah, the sister . Whipped by her as well, aren’t you?’

  ‘Macy is nothing like Nell. She’s been easy to manipulate and control over the years. She has all these fears and insecurities that I’ve played on. Keeps her in line.’

  ‘Didn’t you say she’d left?’ Craig Ackerman sneers. ‘Can’t have kept her that much in line. And Nell took the kids away. Whipped , mate, you’re totally whipped . And now you’ve created this “Nell problem” that I’m going to have to deal with.’

  ‘You can’t kill Nell.’

  ‘What did you think was going to happen when you called me?

  She knows about us, you think she’s going to keep quiet?’

  Shane says nothing.

  ‘You’re not going to keep quiet, are you, Nell?’ Craig Ackerman calls. ‘I know you’re awake. I heard your breathing change. You know all our plans, what we’ve been up to. And you won’t be a good little girl and keep it all to yourself, will you? You’ve got a big mouth and a misplaced sense of justice. And an idea that you deserve to tell anybody whatever you want.’

  I don’t say anything, don’t move. He’s bluffing. He can’t hear my breathing above the sound of the engine. He’s trying to scare me, probably trying to scare Shane, too. I can tell it annoys him that he doesn’t have complete dominance over Shane yet. He needs that if he’s going to get him to go along with killing me before the person they’re both scared of turns up. He needs Shane on the back foot before he starts to say whatever he needs to get him to kill me.

  ‘Don’t worry, Shaney, you’ll get another chance with her. We’ll tie her up and you can do whatever you like with her before the end.’

  That was for my benefit. To get me to show I’m awake, to scare me with the knowledge of what is coming when they eventually stop the car.

  ‘We’re not killing her,’ Shane says.

  ‘Your choice, Shaney boy, but if you want to do it one more time with her, she doesn’t get to live. No one believed the other girls but they will believe her, you said it yourself. So if you do her, we kill her. Your choice.’

  ‘We’re not killing her,’ Shane repeats, but his voice sounds much less certain of that.

  ‘Remember what you said about her first time?’ Craig Ackerman says. ‘Remember the look in her eyes? When she would do anything for you? Imagine having that power, that control back. Hasn’t it been torture all these years, being around her and not being able to claim her as is your right as her first? Listening as she talks about all those other men she’s let inside her body? You said she was easy, slept around, didn’t seem to care who stuck it to her. Aren’t you sick of her giving it away to everyone except you? You do her, we kill her so she doesn’t get to do that with anyone else again.’

  ‘We’re not … We’re not …’ Shane stutters. He can’t say it. It’s not even that he can’t say it and sound convincing, he just can’t say that they’re not going to kill me because he’s thinking about it. Craig Ackerman has found it, that weak spot in his armour that will let him in, that will make Shane think about killing me. I knew he would find it, but I didn’t realise it would be so quickly.

  ‘You’d be her first ever and her last ever. Wouldn’t that be something? Her first and last. Everyone in between would be washed away with that act.’

  Shane says nothing. He??
?s thinking about that. It’s the sort of thing that would appeal to him, I can tell. It’s not about being with me, I know that. It’s Shane’s obsession with being important. That’s why he didn’t want me to go to college. It wasn’t just to keep an eye on me, but to make sure he was my number one.

  ‘You want her again, don’t you?’ Craig Ackerman asks.

  I don’t hear his reply if he gives one but I guess he’s said yes when Craig Ackerman says, ‘I don’t blame you, bro, I can see the appeal. I wouldn’t mind a bit myself.’

  ‘You don’t touch her ,’ Shane snarls.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, she’s yours. When she came to my office, you should have seen how she was, though, all pouty, pushing her chest out. Gagging for it, she was. She made taking the DNA sample … Let’s say it raised my blood pressure. But mate, I know she’s yours. I’m just saying I can see the appeal: she’s well put together.’

  Shane is silent again.

  ‘He can’t get here for another couple of hours, he said. So when we get there, you’ve got two hours with her. Think of it: two hours to do whatever you want to her.’

  Shane doesn’t speak and Craig Ackerman leaves him to sit with his thoughts and for a time the only sounds I can hear are the purr of the engine and the whoosh of the wind passing us by. I’m guessing, as I haven’t heard any other cars or sirens that we’re heading into the countryside. I can’t open my eyes to find out where I am, and from how uncomfortable I am, I’m guessing I’m on the floor of Shane’s people carrier, although I’m not sure how they managed to get me into the car without anyone seeing.

  I need a plan.

  ‘So we’re agreed?’ Craig Ackerman says after he has given Shane enough time to think about what he’d like to do to me, but not enough time to start having doubts about the price he has to pay for those two hours. ‘You do her, I make sure she doesn’t tell anyone about it. And we tell him that it was an accident? Agreed?’

  Shane is going to rape me; Craig Ackerman is going to kill me. I have to think of it like that. I have to keep the horror of what they’re planning right at the front of my mind so I can prepare for flight or fight. Because it’s not going to be like it is in the movies: no one is going to come riding in to rescue me and neither of these two are going to suddenly find a conscience where they decide not to hurt me.

  Power and control are such strong drugs for these two and they are in their thrall. Craig’s narcotic is killing people, women in particular. It’s clear and apparent in his voice. It probably started out with having power and control over the bodies of young women, being able to force himself on them whenever he wanted, but after he killed Sirene, the Brighton Mermaid, he seems to have got a taste for it. He seems to like it. More than like it, I can hear in his voice how he craves it. He is desperate to kill me. He probably has been since he watched me standing with the Brighton Mermaid.

  Shane gets his kick from the power-and-control narcotic by controlling sex. He is right, he did have my utter devotion. I thought he was the perfect boyfriend, an absolute gentleman, and that he completely adored me. But my devotion fed his habit; he was gripped with getting the drug-like high of having a girl live her whole life around him. That’s why he lost it so completely when I kept on the path to university – I was stepping out of his control and that drove him insane.

  They’re both power-and-control junkies and I’m the source of their next fix.

  But , I think hopefully, Shane might not agree. Shane may decide he’d rather not if it means I end up dead .

  ‘Agreed?’ Craig Ackerman repeats, a bit more forcefully.

  Shane says nothing.

  ‘Agreed? ’

  ‘Agreed,’ Shane replies, and seals my fate.

  Macy

  Saturday, 2 June

  In the car, Zach encourages me to call my parents.

  I can’t because if I speak to them and speak to the children, the dam inside me might just break. I don’t want to cry on the children and I don’t want to speak and ask questions that will let Mummy and Daddy know I’m appalled that Nell has left the children with them. She doesn’t know what I know, but still, she was meant to be looking after them, not dumping them and going off.

  When it becomes clear that I won’t be calling my parents, when I sit hunched up in the passenger seat, my head resting against the door, staring into space, Zach starts to tell me what Nell’s been doing all these years. Who she’s been doing it with.

  ‘I can’t believe … Why would she do that with him of all people?’

  ‘It’s mainly his son.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then! Oh, come on, what was she thinking?’

  ‘From what I gather, she was trying to protect you and your parents.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Noble Nell. I don’t believe it for one second. She’s been obsessed with that whole Brighton Mermaid thing for years and she’s ruined all our lives because of it.’

  ‘It’s not like that, Macy. She told me that Pope was threatening to start harassing your father again. He gave her an ultimatum: he’d get the investigations on the Brighton Mermaid and Jude’s disappearance reopened by any means unless she found something tangible to prove your dad didn’t kill her and didn’t kidnap Jude.’

  That cold tingling takes over. Every time I hear the name Jude. Even people who are not her cause this reaction. I wish I could tell Zach, tell Nell, tell anyone what I saw that night.

  ‘She could have told me.’

  ‘No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t have told anyone in your family. She told me what Pope did to you all. She’s been desperate all these years to make amends for bringing Pope into your lives.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have done it. I don’t care what he threatened, she shouldn’t have done this. This makes a mockery of everything we went through.’

  ‘Are you ever going to forgive your sister?’ Zach asks.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For being Nell?’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say. How can I forgive her for being who she is?’

  ‘I don’t know, but the hatred you have for your sister is going to drive you crazy,’ he replies.

  ‘I don’t hate my sister.’

  ‘Yes you do, Macy. It’s apparent in every conversation you have about her. You resent her. And that’s the sad thing: no one, no one , knows more than Nell how much she messed up by sneaking out that night. And no one, no one , hates Nell more than Nell does. Your sister—’

  ‘You love her, don’t you?’ I cut in.

  ‘I don’t know her.’

  ‘You love her, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t … But I was starting to.’

  ‘Do you think it was the same for Shane? That he loved her so much? Do you think he’s obsessed with her and that’s why he’s taken her?’

  ‘No. Macy, it’s not like that at all. I have to tell you about Shane. It’s not going to be easy listening. In fact, most of it is bad, but you have to hear it. You have to know how serious this is.’

  I brace myself. Or, rather, I think I brace myself. But what he tells me is nothing like ‘bad’, it is horrific . It is a horror story, a relent-less nightmare that I cannot wake up from.

  Nell

  Saturday, 2 June

  The road is bumpy now.

  We’ve come off the motorway-type roads, we’ve moved along normal roads and now we’ve turned onto something more off-the-beaten-track towards, I assume, the final destination. Is this where they deliver the girls they take? Is this where they meet the man they are both so obviously scared of ?

  There is a slight incline, as though we are driving up a shallow hill. Maybe we’re somewhere in the Downs. Those green and pleasant hills that I often stare out at when I’m in Aaron’s house. They are beautiful to look at, but for me, being stuck out here in the dark is what nightmares are made of. I have many types of nightmares; finding out Jude ended up like the Brighton Mermaid is the main one, but being alone out here is one of the wo
rst. Alone in blackness, with unknown dangers coming from any angle and no way to escape – that terrifies me.

  The van rattles from side to side as they start to slow down, and the spike in my stomach leaps up to my chest. I have to do this. I have to do this or I will not survive.

  ‘She still asleep?’ Craig Ackerman says.

  ‘Must be. Never known Nell not to be talking if she’s awake.’

  They haven’t spoken for the last part of this journey; they’ve been quiet, contemplative, probably thinking through what they’re going to do.

  ‘What did you give her?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t give her anything. All my stuff is protected. Drug-laced spikes – if you touch one without gloves, it’s sweet dreams. I can’t control the dose. Her puncture looked pretty deep, though. Probably why the drug worked so quickly.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to carry her in. She is yours, after all.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The engine is turned off, the keys taken out of the ignition. They leave the van at the same time, slamming the doors behind them.

  I open my eyes, blink to get my bearings, listen to the crunch of footsteps on gravel, taste the terror on my tongue, feel the fear crawl through my veins. I hear the click of the back door being opened, the dull swoosh of it being pulled back. I close my eyes again and wait for the sensation of Shane leaning over me, his hands reaching for me, and I kick out. Aiming low, low enough to hit that soft spot.

  When he cries out and staggers back, doubled over and clutching the space between his legs, I know I got him where it will truly hurt. Craig Ackerman is by the front door of the big old farmhouse that they’ve brought me to and this is it, my two-second window to do what I do best. What I haven’t done in years, but haven’t forgotten how to do.

  Run.

  The ground is uneven and crunchy underfoot, and I stumble when I hit it. But it takes a microsecond to steady myself, to force myself upright and then to start running.