I would talk to him about the murder, he thought. I would want to find out what he thought. This answer, the right answer, seemed to light up his mind like one of the illuminated boxes on The Weakest Link. He knew also that it had to be now, right away, while the subject still lay open between them. If he returned to the matter later it would just look weird.
“It makes you think though, doesn’t it?” he said. “That guy really is still out there somewhere.”
Croft swallowed the last of his kebab then used the greaseproof paper to wipe his fingers. “There are always men like that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many you catch, there will always be more.” He crushed the paper between his hands and dumped it into a waste bin at the side of the road. “Do you suppose he’s really all that different from you?”
Kip shuddered inside his skin, the kind of quick involuntary movement he sometimes experienced just before falling asleep. It was as if Croft had read his mind, yet the way he had twisted his thoughts, turning them back on themselves so they pointed at him instead of Croft, filled him with outrage.
“You can’t tell me that a guy who does stuff like that is normal?”
“What’s normal?” Croft said, smiling. “Everyone has a side of themself they don’t want other people to see.”
“But this is different. This sicko killed someone. He murdered a little girl.”
“Soldiers kill little girls every day. You don’t see many of them getting arrested for murder.”
Croft was staring at him intently, in a way that made Kip feel uncomfortable. The look was back, the fixed, crazy wilkolak look, not as bad as before but enough to remind Kip of what it had been like to glimpse that side of him, the side he didn’t want other people to see. It occurred to him suddenly that it was his job that had made him that way, his work as a forensic photographer, that the sight of the dead and dying had unhinged him somehow, the way it had with soldiers in Vietnam. Kip had gone through a phase of watching ’Nam films, although he had grown tired of them in the end because they only ever seemed to show one side of the story. Nonetheless they might help explain Croft. For people like the ’Nam vets, killing was just another fact of life; they stopped being able to tell what was normal and what was not.
“Did you ever have to photograph a murder? A proper murder, I mean, with blood and everything?” Kip’s heart pounded with a strange excitement. He was surprised and ashamed at how much he wanted to know the answer to his question. Perhaps he’s right, Kip thought. There’s a monster in all of us.
“Plenty of times,” Croft said. “Do you want to see the pictures?” He moved a step closer, so close that Kip imagined he could feel the heat from his body, even though he knew it was just the night air he could feel, the warm night air mingled with the sharp scent of diesel. For the first time he felt really afraid. He knew there was nothing innocent about Croft’s question, that it was indecent somehow, as if he were asking Kip if he wanted to go to a porn film with him, and the worst thing about it was that he wanted Kip to know this, he wanted to make him complicit.
Kip realized he hated Croft, that he loathed him in the way he loathed dog turds, or butter beans, with a vertiginous, sliding repulsion that grew out of instinct and not out of reason. Yet still he could not look away. It was the same as with the dead rat, the spoiled milk. It was not just because Croft knew how to use a camera that Kip felt drawn to him; he was drawn to Croft because Croft had seen terrible things.
“That would be great,” he said. “I’ve been looking at some forensic stuff online actually. I was thinking I might want to get into it. Once I’ve finished college, I mean.”
“Are you sure about that?” Croft said. “Most of it’s pretty dull.”
Kip shook his head. “Not for me. I like the idea of it. I like the idea of never knowing what’s coming next.”
Croft laughed. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. Mind your back.” He drew a ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket, and a small scrap of paper. When Kip examined the paper later he discovered it was a receipt from the DIY store at the bottom end of Lee High Road, that Croft had bought two tins of white emulsion and a bottle of turps. Croft placed a hand on Kip’s shoulder, bending him forward and resting the paper on his back just below the left shoulder blade. Kip could feel the Biro moving over the paper, the pressure of Croft’s hand firm and even and slyly insistent. Kip fixed his eyes on the pavement. The flagstones were filthy. The whole of Lee High Road was like that, but it couldn’t help it. Most of the dirt was caused by traffic fumes.
“All done,” Croft said, and Kip straightened up. Croft handed him the paper, which Kip saw now had an address written on it, and a mobile telephone number. “I’m busy over the weekend, but you can come on Tuesday afternoon if you like. We can have a chat and I can show you some photos. Don’t forget to bring your camera.” He slipped the Biro back in his pocket. “See you, then.”
He walked off without looking round, heading back the way they had come. Kip took a few steps after him, thinking that he could trail Croft, see where he went, then realized he didn’t need to because he had Croft’s address already on the scrap of paper. It occurred to him that he could go to the police now, that he could tell them everything. He could have Dennis Croft arrested within the hour.
He knew almost at once that he wouldn’t do it. If he went to the police he would be forced to explain himself, to tell them why he had Croft’s address, why he suspected Croft of being the killer in the first place. He would also have to tell them who else knew, and that meant Sonia. He imagined a cop car drawing up outside the Vardens’ house, Timothy Varden demanding to know what the hell Kip thought he was doing getting his daughter mixed up with a paedophile. It would be like telling his father he knew about Grace Hemingway, tearing his world apart in all the wrong places.
He also had the feeling that when the police went to arrest him, Croft would no longer be there. It was a feeling he couldn’t explain but that he trusted completely, a deep itch, the same feeling he had sometimes during a game of Harris, when he knew the person sitting opposite had the ace of spades.
Still further back in his mind he was nagged by the sense that none of these things explained his refusal to act, that the real truth was that he didn’t want Croft arrested just yet, because he was keen to get a look at his photographs.
All he knew for certain was that he wanted to talk to Sonia. He turned left into Brandram Road, walking until he was out of earshot of the main traffic. He keyed Sonia’s number, convinced that she would not answer, that she was out with friends, or that she had left her phone in her bag and wouldn’t hear it ringing. She answered on the third ring.
“Hey,” she said. She sounded happy, and he seemed to catch a trace of her scent, the fresh, tangy scent of the pine soap she used with something else running beneath it, the dense musky smell that came from her armpits and between her legs. He wondered what she had been doing when he called.
“Hey, Son,” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. What’s the matter, Eddie? You sound weird.”
His dad called him Ed, his friends called him Kip, his teachers all called him Kiplas. Only his mother and Sonia called him Eddie. He had hoped that hearing Sonia’s voice would make things better somehow, would get rid of all his crazy thoughts about werewolves and Dennis Croft being a murderer, but instead it was just making things worse. He couldn’t get rid of the idea that she was in danger. He wished there were a way of keeping her safe without having to tell her anything. If he told her she might think he was going nuts.