فصل 08 - بخش 08

8

‘Do you want me to dim the lights a bit more?’ Howie asked.

‘No,’ Holly said. ‘This is information, not entertainment, and although the movie is short – only eighty-seven minutes – we won’t need to watch all of it, or even most of it.’ She wasn’t as nervous as she had feared she would be. At least not so far. ‘But before I show it to you, I need to make something very clear, something I think you all must know by now, although you may not be quite ready to admit the truth into your conscious minds.’

They looked at her, silent. All those eyes. She could hardly believe she was doing this – surely not Holly Gibney, the mouse who had sat at the back of all her classrooms, who never raised her hand, who wore her gym clothes under her skirts and blouses on phys ed days. Holly Gibney who even in her twenties hadn’t dared speak back to her mother. Holly Gibney who had actually lost her mind on two occasions.

But all that was before Bill. He trusted me to be better, and for him I was. And I will be now, for these people.

‘Terry Maitland didn’t murder Frank Peterson and Heath Holmes didn’t murder the Howard girls. Those murders were committed by an outsider. He uses our modern science – our modern forensics – against us, but his real weapon is our refusal to believe. We’re trained to follow the facts, and sometimes we scent him when the facts are conflicting, but we refuse to follow that scent. He knows it. He uses it.’

‘Ms Gibney,’ Jeannie Anderson said, ‘are you saying the murders were committed by a supernatural creature? Something like a vampire?’

Holly considered the question, biting at her lips. At last she said, ‘I don’t want to answer that. Not yet. I want to show you some of the movie I brought first. It’s a Mexican film, dubbed in English and released as part of drive-in double features in this country fifty years ago. The English title is Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster, but in Spanish—’

‘Oh, come on,’ Ralph said. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Shut up,’ Jeannie said. She kept her voice low, but they all heard the anger in it. ‘Give her a chance.’

‘But—’

‘You weren’t there last night. I was. You need to give this a chance.’

Ralph crossed his arms over his chest, just as Samuels had. It was a gesture Holly knew well. A warding-off gesture. An I won’t listen gesture. She pushed on.

‘The Mexican title is Rosita Luchadora e Amigas Conocen El Cuco. In Spanish it means—’

‘That’s it!’ Yune shouted, making them all jump. ‘That’s the name I couldn’t get when we were eating at that restaurant on Saturday! Do you remember the story, Ralph? The one my wife’s abuela told her when she was just peque?a?’

‘How could I forget?’ Ralph said. ‘The guy with the black bag who kills little kids and rubs their fat …’ He stopped, thinking – in spite of himself – of Frank Peterson and the Howard girls.

‘Does what?’ Marcy Maitland asked.

‘Drinks their blood and rubs their fat on him,’ Yune said. ‘It supposedly keeps him young. El Cuco.’

‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘He’s known in Spain as El Hombre con Saco. The Man with the Sack. In Portugal he’s Pumpkinhead. When American children carve pumpkins for Halloween, they’re carving the likeness of El Cuco, just as children did hundreds of years ago in Iberia.’

‘There was a rhyme about El Cuco,’ Yune said. ‘Abuela used to sing it sometimes, at night. Duérmete, ni?o, duérmete ya … can’t remember the rest.’

‘Sleep, child, sleep,’ Holly said. ‘El Cuco’s on the ceiling, he’s come to eat you.’

‘Good bedtime rhyme,’ Alec commented. ‘Must have given the kids sweet dreams.’

‘Jesus,’ Marcy whispered. ‘You think something like that was in our house? Sitting on my daughter’s bed?’

‘Yes and no,’ Holly said. ‘Let me put on the movie. The first ten minutes or so should be enough.’