‘Penny for them.’
Lucy didn’t need to look up to know who it was. ‘Charlie.’
‘Mind if I join you?’ He squatted down, then sat, wiggling forward on his bum until he was right beside her, on the edge of the damp concrete walkway, legs dangling over the river, forearms resting on the middle railing. ‘Something smells nice. When did you last eat?’
The scent of potatoes and garlic wafted over from the Tattie Shack as Shaky Dave got ready for the sneaky-chips-on-the-way-home-from-a-day’s-shopping crowd.
A quick glance made sure this was the Charlie without a broken nose.
‘You’re not real, are you?’ Staring out across the sun-flecked water at the blade of granite rearing up into the sky with the Old Castle’s remains perched on top like a carrion crow. ‘Benedict Strachan shoved me off the train station platform, I hit my head on the track, and now I’ve got some sort of brain damage...’ A humour-free laugh barked out into the sunny afternoon. ‘And Christianson battered me over the head too, didn’t he? Two months ago.’ Just before everyone started complaining about her acting strangely. Before the headaches and the blackouts. ‘It’s like scrambled egg in there. That’s why I’m seeing things, because apparently having blackouts wasn’t enough. It had to get worse.’ Curling her lip. ‘You’re nothing but a delusion.’
‘According to Dr Christianson, I’m an externalized projection of your psyche, remember? Or one element of it, anyway.’ That bland smile of his clicked on. ‘Your very own Jiminy Cricket.’
‘Lovely.’ She let her forehead thunk against the top rail. ‘I’ve gone insane...’
‘The human mind is a remarkable hunk of machinery, Lucy. Yours has been finding ways to help you cope with everything that’s been going on. Why do you think you kept seeing Dr Christianson, out in the wild? It was showing you who to look for.’ Charlie gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘And it’s why I’m here. To help you.’
‘And what about Dr Christianson? He a figment of my imagination, too?’
‘Oh, no: he’s real. Battered, bruised, broken, and starved half to death, but definitely real.’
She pressed her forehead against the rail, increasing the pressure until the skin throbbed. ‘You were right, I’m a monster.’
‘Come on, Lucy: you had a troubled childhood; you reacted the only way that made sense to you. It’s not your fault things turned out the way they did.’ A shrug. ‘Did you kill Mr Denholm’s dog with rat poison? Yes. But it was a horrible big brute of a thing, remember? Always lunging at the fence whenever you were out playing in the garden. Snarling and growling and barking its head off. You called it “Mr Bitey” for a reason, Lucy. That animal wasn’t safe around children.’
A small bitter laugh snapped out of her. ‘It certainly wasn’t safe around me.’ Deep breath. ‘Did I really kill my mother?’
‘What can you remember?’
Lucy took off her glasses, screwed her eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I don’t know. Fuzzy images of her shouting at me the whole time. Yelling and throwing things.’ A sharp knot tied itself at the base of her throat. ‘Is that why Dad had his breakdown? Because I killed her? He was... We used to be so close before Mum died, but he could barely look at me afterwards.’
They sat there in silence, listening to the clatter of pots and pans, and the tinny strains of something coming from a transistor radio in the distance.
Her voice was so small she could barely hear it. ‘I’m going to prison, aren’t I?’
‘We need to tell DI Tudor where the Bloodsmith is, before it’s too late. When the Dunk speaks to Dr Christianson’s boss, she’ll give him a list of all the outside venues the good doctor used for his research. He’ll find out that the chandler’s warehouse was part of a study on “sensory deprivation and its impact on fear-response mechanisms”.’ Charlie pointed across the water, off to the left, in the general direction of Queen’s Quay, just visible beneath the rising arch of Dundas Bridge. ‘And when DC Fraser goes charging round there to solve the case, what’s he going to find?’
Nothing good.
She buried her face in her hands. ‘God...’
The sound of a small child’s laughter wafted over from Montgomery Park, behind them. It was joined by the crackle and fizz of chips frying in hot fat, coming from Shaky Dave’s Tattie Shack, the mournful screams of wheeling seagulls, and the lub-whump-lub-whump-lub-whump of blood pounding in her ruined head.
‘Come on, Lucy, it’s the right thing to do. Tell them where he is, tell them you’ve been having blackouts and seeing things. You won’t go to prison: you’ll go to a hospital where they can help you.’
‘What about the real you? The one I punched in the face?’
‘There is no real me. Well, there used to be, but that was a long, long time ago. The Bloodsmith, and me, we’re all in here.’ Tapping Lucy on the forehead.
Next stop: padded cell, straitjacket, and all the tranquillizers she could eat.
Maybe it would be a relief?
Say goodbye to all of this...
Mind you, there was another way to do that.
After all, it wasn’t as if anyone would miss her.
She rubbed at her aching skull. ‘If you’re me; if you can remember all this stuff that I can’t — Dr Christianson, he confessed to everything? He’s definitely the Bloodsmith?’
‘One hundred percent.’
That was something, at least. What she’d done was horrible, but it had stopped him killing anyone else. Surely that counted?
‘Why did he do it?’
The pans clattered. The seagulls shrieked. A truck rumbled by.
Then, finally: ‘That’s... complicated.’ Charlie wriggled in place. ‘Hold on, maybe this will help.’ Grunting and straining, as if he was trying to herniate himself.
She turned, grimacing at him. ‘What on earth are you...’
His face twisted and changed, getting longer and thinner as the hair receded up his forehead and turned brown, his dark-grey suit fading into a corduroy jacket and chinos. Until she was sitting next to the Bloodsmith. That bland smile turned into something far more lupine. ‘Hey, Kiddo.’
‘Jesus...’ Flinching back.
‘It’s OK, I won’t hurt you.’ A wink. ‘You want to know why I killed all those people? Well, why the real Dr Christianson killed them.’
Up close, he smelled of malt whisky and old cigars.
And he sat there, Mr Hyde to Charlie’s Dr Jekyll, as if this was all perfectly natural and normal. As if she wasn’t losing her mind.
Lucy blinked. Swallowed. Turned her head to look at the river instead. Anything other than him.
The Bloodsmith sighed. ‘I wish there was an easy-to-understand explanation: a nice clean line from “A” to “B”, but in real life there are all these tiny little steps in between that build and build and build, till you end up so far away from “A” that you can’t even see it any more. Our motivations are always complicated. Truth is, he... I miss her.’
Lucy kept her eyes on the water. ‘That’s it?’
‘Well, there’s more to it than that, but deep down inside there’s this aching void where she used to live.’ The Bloodsmith’s voice caught a little, thickening with pain. ‘I know nothing is ever going to make that go away, but the human heart is full of love, Lucy. Sometimes it’s constructive, sometimes it’s not, but it’s all love.’
‘He... you killed seven people!’
‘Six. Malcolm Louden was someone else’s fault, remember?’ There was a sad smile as he wiped away a tear. ‘I don’t want to kill them. I just don’t want to feel like this any more. Why do you think I keep begging for help? Right up there, in three-foot-high letters, belting it out again and again, “HELP ME!”’ The Bloodsmith sagged against the railing. ‘And you keep erasing it.’