Short Story: A Single Red Rose

I awoke from the same nightmare I had been having for weeks, switched on my bedside lamp and lit a cigarette. Sighing, I lifted my pen and note pad and began to write. I had seen it all tonight, which meant that the girl was now dead. I had seen the single red rose being placed and knew whoever it was had killed again.

I sighed. I would have to go to the police in the morning.

***

The next morning, I sat cold and alone in the front waiting office of Pitt Street in Glasgow, Strathclyde Police Headquarters. It was all over the news, of course, and pressure had been mounting on the police in recent weeks to find the man behind the murder of four young women. The police did not count the fourth, as they had not yet found her body and, as such, she was only listed as 'missing'. But I knew better. I also knew the tally was now five.

A sour-faced woman in a grey suit, nice legs, approached me and scowled "You're here about 'Charlton Heston'?"

The killer had left a note on his first three victims, signed Charlton Heston.

"Yes."

"Come this way, please."

I followed her into a small interview room and sat myself across the desk from her. Early thirties, I guessed, good skin, clean blue eyes, tidy brown bob. Attractive but still scowling.

"What can I do for you, Mrs ..." she tailed off.

"Miss Keith. Jen. Where's DI McLean, I normally see him?"

"Do this thing a lot then, do you? Help the police with their enquiries?"

I started to redden, feeling like a common tart and the dislike set in, good legs or not. "Look, sergeant..."

"It's DI, if you don't mind. DI Coutts. McLean's been transferred, so you've got me. Now, what can I do for you?" She began to drum her fingers on the table, impatient.

I counted to ten in my head. I had a job to do. Stay focussed, I told myself. "DI Coutts, I'm a psychologist but I also..." I struggled for words that she would not laugh at, "..'see' things."

"You 'see' things?" she repeated, the scowl turning to derision.

"Yes. I'm psychic," I blurted.

I could see her eyes roll 'Oh not another nutter'. "Look, Miss Keith, thank you for wanting to help but I think we'll manage."

"But that's just it: you're not managing. You haven't even found the fourth body and he did it again last night."

I had her attention now. "What fourth body?"

"Amanda Cairns, she's been missing for a month."

"And how do you know she's dead?"

"Because I've seen it. Now, if you can let me hold something of hers, I can maybe tell you where to find her."

"Whoa! Hold on, you can't just come in here and demand that!"

"I helped McLean before. Check the files. Do you remember Kylie Wright? Two year old, went missing in Govan? How do you think you lot found her? Because I told McLean where to look, that's why. I'll be there on file, as assisting psychologist."

"Wait here." She got up and left. Damn that woman but she made me mad. I knew how stupid I looked, walking into a police office and claiming I had visions. I probably would not have believed me either, but McLean had, eventually, and I was pissed that he wasn't here, that I had to go through all the convincing once more.

He had taken me out for a drink once, and we had got on well. He had called me 'a waste of a good woman' because I 'kicked with the other
foot' as he had put it, in his kind, machismo way. I noticed it did not stop him checking out my cleavage.

My thoughts were interrupted by the re-appearance of DI Coutts. She had light blusher on and it emphasised her high cheekbones. As much as I disliked her, I could not help my eyes moving to her her lips, just for a second, and thinking quickly how soft they looked.

"Okay, I've checked what you said, Miss Keith."

"Call me Jen."

"Jen. Seems you did help with the Wright murder, profile gathering."

"Well, we wouldn't want the press to hear about psychic input, would we?"

She laughed. I found her beautiful then and that disturbed me.

"So, what do you want to tell me?"

"The man you are looking for is late forties/early fifties, he's going bald, slightly over weight, lives alone or with an elderly parent, probably a mother, and he holds down a job."

"I can get that from any criminal profiler." The derision had returned.

"He's a gardener."

She became serious. "What makes you say that?"

"That's where he gets the roses."

"Roses?"

"The rose that he leaves between the victims breasts, with the signed card."

"How do you know that? That information has not been released."

"I've seen it."

"So, why does he use the name Charlton Heston?"

"He sees himself as a real man, macho, powerful, as in 'Ben Hur'. You can't get DNA because he wears a rubber suit, like a scuba-diving suit. He has a hole cut for his penis and he uses a condom, of course." I closed my eyes. "He looks ordinary, he walks with baggy trousers and a long raincoat, he has a hammer in the pocket. He's in the woods, I see a cemetery close, and the girl appears, she is about twenty, she's a big girl, fat. Walking home, drunk. He comes from behind and hits her on the head with the hammer, she falls and he pulls her into the woods, deep. Oh yes, he has the gloves to match. I see them as he drags her. He takes out a carrier bag and removes his coat and trousers, neatly. The girl groans and he hits her on the side of the head. I think I can hear her skull crack. He rapes her and sodomises her, then replaces his clothes. He takes his rose and card, pulls open her coat and lifts her jumper, she's not wearing a bra and he slaps her face. He checks the rose, like he's proud of it, before he places it on her." My eyes snap open. "Then I wake up," I say, almost apologetically.

She is staring at me. "That's it," I add.

She springs to life, pulling a small notepad from her pocket. I catch the curve of her breast in her well cut suit. "Can I have your details please?"

I give her them, realising I have been wasting my time: she still thinks I am a crackpot and, as she ushers me out, assuring me she will be in touch, I feel the urge to cry.

***

Later that evening, I opened a bottle of wine and the sadness crept in. I can never save them, I always see them too late. I sip my wine and switch on the television. The news. Strathclyde Police today found the body of a nineteen year old...I switch off. I cannot bear to listen. I have seen it all and done my bit. God bless that girl's parents.

My door knocks and I jump. I dont get visitors. Not now, not since Julie left. I open the door and say, with surprise evident in my voice, "DI Coutts, come in." I am embarrassed to be caught wearing my old blue pyjamas.

She steps in and I smell her perfume. It is 'New West for Women' and I
know it has been applied recently. "What can I do for you?" I ask, the tables turned. She has come to me, for some reason.

"Call me Kate," she smiles and I feel nervous. Or is it excited? "Wondered if you fancied a bottle of wine?" She holds it out to me for inspection. I take it and go to my kitchen to open it for her.

Returning with her glass, I find her looking at my photographs. Me with Julie. Me with my degree. Me with Julie. I wish I had got around
to moving them. Away from prying eyes. I give her the glass and tell her to sit down.

"Have you seen the news?" she asks.

"I couldn't watch it."

"We found her."

"I know."

"She's still alive."

I was sure she had been dead! So had Charlton Heston, that's why he
had left her. "Alive?"

"She's in surgery now, probably will be for hours, but we found her, thanks to you. If she had lain there much longer, I don't think she'd still be with us."

I started to cry. She wasn't dead! I covered my face with my hands and sobbed. The poor girl!

Kate came to me and held me and said "There, there." I cried into her good grey suit, making a wet patch, and I thought how good she smellled, wearing the perfume my Julie had worn, and I cried harder.

Two years since I had been held by a woman, two long hard years of loneliness and heartbreak. Now I could feel the stirrings again of want, of need, to be held.

"Feel better now?" she asked, softly.

I tried to laugh. "Yes, I suppose."

"How long have you 'seen' things?"

I sniffed and wiped my arm across my face. "As long as I can remember,
really. I cried for a week when I was five because I knew our dog was going to get run over."

"I didn't believe you, you know, when you first came in this morning."

"I know you didn't. What changed?"

"The red rose. And I saw the torture on your face when you told me
what you saw. Call it a hunch."

I laughed. "Hunches separate the good cops from the bad." She laughed
with me again and I was struck by her beauty. Maybe I could start to like her a little.

"Who's that in all the photos with you?" she nodded towards them.

"Oh," I said, feeling the old sadness when I thought of Julie, "That's my ex."
"Girlfriend?"

"Yes." Now she would panic and make an excuse to leave.

"How long were you together?"

"Eight years." She wasn't leaving!

"Why did you split up?"

"She was having an affair."

"Couldn't you see it?"

I could not decide if she was mocking me or just plain nosey. "Actually, I couldn't. I never saw the year of lies and I couldn't smell another woman's perfume on my bed. Perfect, eh? I can see rape and murder by a stranger but not the fact that the closest person to me is deceitful right under my nose."

"How did you meet her?"

"Hmm, there's the thing. I was twenty, a student and I saw her about to get into a taxi outside Queen Street Station. I ran over, screaming at her, 'Wait! Wait! Don't get in! Get out!' She didn't get it, and some fat businessman got in, laughing. 'Explain' she said and I knew she was not happy. 'Just watch' I told her. So, we did and off the taxi trundled straight into a smash, from someone jumping red lights. The car smacked the taxi about where she would have sat but the fat man was okay, just a bit wobbly. But it was her that I had seen and she wouldn't have been fine because those few seconds made all the difference."

"It must be hard for you to live with this, never knowing."

"I've got used to it. Want a refill?"

"Yes, why not? I've had a hard day."

"I bet," I smiled, straight into her eyes. Her lovely blue eyes.

I went back to my kitchen and told myself to quit it. Was I so hard up that I had to flirt with the first attractive woman I met? But, she was the first woman that I had been attracted to in two years. When I had thrown Julie out, I had been broken-hearted and vowed never to get involved again. That level of hurt I could do without. I had opened to her, told her about my gift and she had understood, because she had seen it. She had never laughed at me, she had loved me but then, in the end, it had torn us apart.

For weeks, I had seen that toddler get abducted and abused. A tragic waste of a young life. It had upset me so, and I had thrown myself into my work, to forget. I had neglected Julie and she had sought her needs elsewhere, until finally I had caught her. What had she said to me, so cold and full of hate? "I thought you would have seen the signs before now."

No, DI Coutts was wrong for me. She was a policewoman, a sceptical one, she was only here because she had a job to do. But, did that job entail bringing me a bottle of wine, holding me when I cried and asking about my personal life?

I breathed in deeply, whyever she was here did not matter, I was not going to fall for her. I walked back into her and she was sitting back on my couch, as though she had sat there for years. She ran her hands through her hair, a small unreadable smile on her face and I shivered.

It was the most erotic thing I had seen in years.

I sat, the opposite end of my couch from her, and took a sip of my own wine. I did not know what to say. I felt butterflies in my stomach, something I had not experienced since my youth and it made me ache.

"How did you find her then?" I asked, trying to fill a quiet space, to
relieve my tension.

She winked at me. "Got a map. Checked out woods, next to cemeteries. A reported missing this morning. Did not take too long. But it would have, if you had not come forward, so thank you."

"Welcome. I just wish I could have prevented it, prevented them all."

"Who's to say you haven't prevented more? When he knows this girl is alive, maybe he will panic, make a mistake."

"Don't you understand?" I shouted, standing up. "He's laughing at you,
laughing at us all. He thinks he is more clever than the police, that he'll never be caught." I stopped, suddenly. "What's in your bag?"

She went to her bag and began to open it. "It's a picture of Amanda Cairns, the missing girl, it's from her parents house."

I felt the surge. "Give me it, give me it!"

I held the picture and as the vision came to me, I spoke. "Amanda Cairns. She knocks a door and he answers. I can see him. Glasses, pencil thin moustache. She's trying to sell something and he lets her in. A voice shouts from behind 'Who is it?' and he says, pleasantly, 'A salesman, mother, don't worry, dear'. He takes Amanda into his front room. His window...She begins to talk to him, he's smiling. I don't want to look, I DON'T WANT TO SEE!"

"Tell me," I hear Kate whisper.

I know tears have sprung in my eyes. "He leaves the room, to get something, I don't know what, and she walks to the window. She's looking out at...the hammer hits her, many times. She can't scream, it's too quick, he hits her until she's dead. Then he has her.

He still has her! That's why she's not been found! He's kept her. He has her in an eight by eight box in his other front room, she's under dirt, compost, he waters her. Oh!"

"What did she see from the window, Jen?"

I think hard. What did she see? "She saw a sign. Underground."

"Which one, Jen?"

"Cessnock."

"I've got to go." I am awake. "Thank you," she says, and grabs my face, kissing me on the cheek. She takes the photograph away.

She runs out and this time it is I who is watching from my window, as I see her drive off. I hope she is not pulled over for drink-driving, I think, as I pull my curtains shut.

That night, for the first time in weeks, I went to sleep with a face forefront in my mind that was not a murderers. It was detective Inspector Kate Coutts that I saw.

***

Not the next day, but the next, I bought the newspaper on my way to work.

"Charlton Heston caught!"

"Cessnock rapist snared!"

So, she she had done it. She had believed me and they had got him, and poor Amanda Cairns, and Glasgow could sleep easy at night once more. He had kept Cairns because he had taken her unprotected, delighted at the opportunity on his doorstep. A quiet loner that would not hurt a fly, his neightbours said. I threw the paper in the nearest bin and went to my car. I was pretty sure I would see it all again, one day, and I should be happy that I would get some peaceful sleep for the time being.

So, why was my mind full of Kate Coutts?

***

It was perhaps a month, six weeks later, and I was again sitting on my couch, in my old blue pyjamas, sipping wine, watching a video. 'It's A Wondeful Life'.

My door knocked and I briefly toyed with the idea of ignoring it, before finally heaving myself up to answer it.

DI Coutts.

"Hello, you," I said, because I did not know what else to say. "Come in."

"I brought you something," she smiled, her perfume intoxicating me.

"Another bottle of wine?" I laughed.

"No," she said, moving her lips to mine, "A rose for a rose."


Written by: Karen Campbell