by S. B. Caves
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, all sexiness escaping her. She covered herself with her arms, cowering. ‘What’s going—?’
He grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her off the bed. She screamed and hit the floor with a thump.
‘What have you done?’ he yelled into the girl’s face. ‘You think you can trick me?’
‘Wha—’
He slapped her hard across the face and then kicked her clothes toward her. ‘Dressed. Now!’
He stormed through the flat, pulled back the carpet in the living room, wiggled the lino free and retrieved the revolver. If that stupid fucking girl wasn’t in his room he could already be down there now, but here he was, waiting for her to get dressed because he couldn’t chance leaving her alone in the flat. He went back to the kitchen window, still didn’t see anyone in the car park. His indicator lights winked in time with the wailing alarm.
This girl, Tanya, Tina, whatever, had set him up. She’d lured him to bed to occupy him while one of her other boyfriends stole his car. Was that it? He stomped to the bedroom, the pistol cold and oily in his clenched fist. His brain fired off paranoid theories that told him to do one thing: raise the gun, cock the hammer, and blow this bitch’s head off. Who cares if the neighbours hear it? He could shoot her, call Dillon, and have the body disposed of within the hour. It’s not like anyone would know where she was. Her parents probably thought she was at a GCSE study group.
The girl had her skirt on and her blouse halfway buttoned up when he aimed the gun at her face. She froze like a deer in the headlights, her cheek blushed red where he had struck her. ‘I didn’t do anything, I swear,’ she said, with a terrified sort of defiance. ‘I just came here to have sex!’
‘Who’s down there?’
‘Down where? I don’t even know what’s going on!’
Morley didn’t have many skills. If he was honest with himself, he was an average criminal, more of a brutish thug than the mastermind he aspired to be. He’d had the clichéd sort of life one would expect from a common crook – abusive household, experimenting with drugs from a young age, crime, in and out of detention centres, prison. Yet woven into the depressing patchwork of his past was an ingrained ability to read people. It was a talent he’d developed while maturing among liars, both on the streets and behind concrete walls. Body language became a kind of telepathy to him, and he knew that most times, when a person was scared, their body would tell you what their mouth wouldn’t.
She was telling the truth. That realisation didn’t immediately dampen his desire to shoot her in the face, but it realigned his thoughts. Who the fuck is down there messing with my car?
‘Hurry up,’ he said, distracted, waving the gun toward the door.
‘I’m going,’ she said, darting away from him, slipping her feet into her shoes and snatching her backpack off the floor. He grabbed his keys and followed her out, slamming his door behind him, the sound bouncing down the hallway.
‘Do you want me to wait?’ the girl asked, her arms poised to protect herself in case he lashed out again. She had acted like such a big woman when he saw her at the petrol station that day. She had a sort of edgy maturity about her that he liked. But now she was nothing more than a dumb fucking girl and he wanted to kick her teeth down her throat.
‘Go home,’ he snarled, and bolted past her.
Chapter Sixteen
Darkness came to Frazier Avenue.
The rain tattooed against the roof. Next to the driver’s side door was Morley’s Mercedes. Jack’s face was expressionless as he examined the car’s exterior, his eyes tracing every curve and contour.
Emily felt nothing but fear. It wasn’t the thought of getting caught that frightened her, it was Morley himself. What if they bungled this? What if Morley carried a knife or a gun? She thought about that a lot. There seemed to be so many ways for this to go wrong, and very few ways for it to go right. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the notion from her head. They weren’t accustomed to this kind of thing, weren’t built for it. They had their flaws but when everything was said and done, it came down to this: she and Jack were good, decent people. They weren’t like Morley. He was a hyena. He lived for trouble, was accustomed to the effects of adrenaline on the body, knew how to manage the negative emotions that came with a life of crime.
He was a killer and they were not.
Not yet, anyway.
They sat in silence for an hour, peering through the windscreen at the tower block. Silhouettes scuttled in and out of the shadows surrounding the building, a seamless flow of nocturnal activity. So far she’d seen three young men, their faces shrouded by hoods, standing sentry. They talked among themselves for maybe ten minutes, and then dispersed, each going in a different direction.
‘All right,’ Jack said, his growly voice severing the silence. He reached down into the van door’s compartment and picked up a claw hammer. ‘I’m going to pop his windscreen, get his attention. When I do, scoot over to the driver’s side and duck down.’
His composure only added to her unease. In the darkness of the van, his craggy face looked as though it belonged to a much older man. She could have been sitting next to a total stranger in that instant. He reached for the lock on the door when she said, ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘I guess we’re going to find out.’
‘What if someone interferes?’ She couldn’t help it; she just blurted it out. She’d cooked up another disastrous scenario in her head, and it had gained weight in the silence that followed.
‘If anyone interferes, they’re probably going to regret it,’ he said, so coolly that it instantly allayed her worries. He put on his balaclava, and then he got out of the van.
Chapter Seventeen
Morley tucked the revolver in his waistband and chugged down the stairwell. The exertion filled his lungs with what felt like crushed glass and made his heart bounce painfully against his ribcage. His breath was leaving him in short, sharp gasps as he burst through the door and into the rain.
The car alarm pulsed urgently. As he neared the Merc, he saw that there was a single, jagged hole in his windscreen, the epicentre to a network of cracks. When he got closer, his eyes detected something etched into the bonnet. He squinted and saw the word KILLER keyed diagonally in foot-high letters.
Killer?
He came to a halt suddenly and pressed the button on his car keys to quiet the alarm. He stood there a moment, his breath visible as he scanned the car park.
‘Someone’s in trouble,’ he told the darkness. Slowly he dropped down to one knee and peered under the vehicles, looking for feet. He saw none, but still didn’t want to go any closer to his car. Just because he couldn’t see anyone lurking, it didn’t mean they weren’t there. He stood back up and began walking around the perimeter of the car park, his focus and his gun trained on the darkness between the street lights.
He was alone, he was almost sure of it, and yet the flesh at the nape of his neck burned. He flirted with the idea that some little bastard had popped his windscreen for a laugh, but the writing on his bonnet seemed too specific. A kid would smash the windscreen and run off laughing. They wouldn’t have the bottle to stand there keying words into the body with the risk of getting spotted at any moment.
Whose van is that? He’d smoked too much and now his mind was turning against itself. Or maybe not. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a van like that in this car park. But did he ever take notice of things like that? Yes, of course he did. He was a stickler for details.
Raising the gun, Morley aimed his voice toward the van and said, ‘Why’d you fuck with my car?’ He tried to sound conversational, as though his casual tone might coax the perpetrator out of his hiding place. The howling wind was the only response he received. He tried again. ‘I said, why’d you fuck with my car? You cowardly piece of shit.’ He did a three-sixty, and then added, ‘I know you’re still here.’
Nothing stirred. He approached the Mercedes from th
e rear. There were no crowbar marks on the boot’s lock; nobody had tried to break into it. Morley tapped the barrel of his revolver on the van windows. The tink-tink-tink sound unsettled something within the van. He heard movement, and maybe a yelp of fright, he wasn’t sure.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ he said. ‘I’m going to count to three, and if you’re not out of there by then, I’m going to put a bullet through this door. You hear me in there?’ There was another tiny sound amplified in the silence, a rustle. He thumbed the hammer on the revolver back. ‘Here we go, you ready? One. Two. Thr—’
Morley’s head exploded. Or at least, that’s what it felt like as he began to plummet. He hit the concrete like timber, the bulk of his frame pillowing the impact. His first thought was that he had been shot, and as the hot blood dribbled into his eyes, he became more and more certain of it. His body was completely numb, paralysed. A solitary thought floated through his mind like an autumn leaf caught in the breeze: So… this is what dying feels like.
Then his hands flew up to his face of their own accord, scooping blood away from his eyes. The numbness became feeling, and he was rolling onto his side, his equilibrium like a spinning top. He reached out for the van’s bumper for support, no longer thinking anything, just trying to move, to get away. Where was the gun? Gone. He was on his own.
He felt hands grab him from behind and pull at him roughly. His ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton wool. An arm wrapped around his neck and squeezed, trying to cut off his air supply. Morley managed to twist away, breaking the hold, and then flailed his arms blindly.
Morley had been pounced upon more times than he cared to remember. Once, as a teenager, he was ambushed on the street by a group of boys, and woke up from a coma three days later, handcuffed to a hospital bed with a gunshot wound in his back. He knew that if there was a rule to surviving a gang beating, it was this: don’t let them get you on the ground. Too many times in the past he’d seen, and participated in, someone getting floored and then having their head turned into a trampoline. All he had to do was get to his feet, and then he could deal with whatever fucking idiot was mad enough to trouble him.
Through blood and blurred vision, Morley saw the shape of a man – not a teenager like he had originally thought. He felt something hit him in the nose, heard the bone crunch as it broke. Don’t go down. He slammed against the van door, his hands held out limply in front of him in a parody of defence. He saw the shuddering shape swing for him, and on instinct Morley turned his back. Something hard struck his shoulder and a flare of white-hot pain shot through him. What the fuck is he hitting me with? Morley balled his hands into fists and walked backwards. He thought that he might pass out – he couldn’t even feel his legs beneath him. He wiped the blood out of his eyes, but more dripped off the curve of his brow.
‘What do you want?’ Morley said, but couldn’t hear his own voice. Oh, Craig, you are so fucked. This nutcase is going to kill you in this car park if you don’t—
The shape in front of him struck out again, and this time Morley ducked and charged the man. His shoulder crashed into the man’s midsection and the momentum took them to the floor. Morley didn’t know what was up and what was down, but he could feel the man beneath him and knew the rough location of his face even though he couldn’t see it. Morley mounted the man, wrapped his hands around his throat and squeezed with all his energy. The man bucked and clawed at Morley’s eyes, but that didn’t bother him; he couldn’t see anyway. Morley turned his head away and found the strength to squeeze harder, and this time he heard the man gargle. He felt the man’s struggles weaken, the strength pouring out of his body the way blood was pouring out of Morley’s skull. The hands fell away from Morley’s face and he heard them hit the concrete with a wet slap.
‘That’s it!’ Morley said triumphantly, even though the effort of speaking made the pain and disorientation swell within him. ‘That’s it, you fucking piece of shit. Go to bed.’
The man’s neck was still in Morley’s hands. He gave one last squeeze and then—
Black.
* * *
The hammer dropped from Emily’s grasp. She could still feel the tingle running up her arm from the impact of the blow against Morley’s skull.
That was it. She’d killed him.
She covered her mouth with her hands, all sense and rational thought scattering. She could smell the coppery tang of Morley’s blood – blood she had helped spill – and now he was lying limp and lifeless. She was sure that at any moment the wind would carry her away back to her bed and she would wake up. Another nightmare, nothing new.
A cough. She looked down, saw Jack struggling to sit up. She dropped to his side and clutched his arm.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said weakly. ‘Grab his feet.’
She looked over at Morley. Blood was pooling out of his head, painting a crimson halo on the concrete.
Jack stood up, coughing violently. He stumbled and staggered, opened the back of the van, and then wobbled toward Morley’s body.
‘Is he dead?’ Emily asked, trembling like a tuning fork.
‘Get his legs,’ Jack croaked.
‘Jack, is he…?’
‘Get his fucking legs!’
She snapped to attention and looped her arms around Morley’s feet. Jack went to his head, secured him by the waist and hoisted him up. He grunted as he sidled around to the back of the van, his face shiny with sweat. He threw the top half of Morley’s body into the van like a bag of sand, and then relieved Emily from the burden of his legs. Then Jack entered the van and dragged Morley deeper into the darkness.
‘Close the door,’ Jack said from the back of the van, and Emily obeyed.
In a daze, she rushed to the driver’s side of the van and got in. She could hear Jack moving around back there, bumping and banging. He was hacking and coughing, cursing vehemently under his breath.
The keys jangled in Emily’s grasp as she started the engine. The van roared to life, startling her. Her heart felt as though it was about to kick straight out of her chest. It seemed like every muscle in her body had melted to jelly and now she could not stop her knees and thighs from shaking. She was too anxious to drive. She sat there, looking at the glowing dials and the rain dotting the windscreen, and wondered what to do next. Drive, you idiot, her mind screamed, and some reflexive muscle memory took over. She put her foot down on the clutch and… something was wrong. With her right foot, she felt the pedals. There were only two. Where was the clutch? She turned on the interior light and looked down at the gearstick.
‘Why aren’t we moving?’ Jack yelled gruffly.
‘This van is an automatic!’
‘So what?’
‘I’ve never driven an automatic,’ she said weakly, thinking that at any second she was just going to collapse from the stress. She looked at the letters around the gearstick as though they were hieroglyphs.
‘Just put it into Drive and go,’ he said.
‘OK, OK,’ she said, exhaling shakily. She could do this, no problem. Driving an automatic was supposed to be easier than driving a manual, wasn’t it? She’d failed her driving test four times before she finally scraped through. She moved the gear stick into Drive and pressed the accelerator. The van shunted into the railing surrounding the car park. She jerked forward, almost smashing her face on the steering wheel. A loud bang echoed from the back of the van, followed by Jack yelling out. She put the van into reverse and stepped on the accelerator again. This time the van reeled back, scraping Morley’s Mercedes with a long, ugly screech.
‘What are you doing?’ Jack growled.
‘Shut up! Stop shouting at me!’ The pedals were too sensitive, especially the brake. Her feet were confused by the lack of a clutch, and she dealt with this confusion by overcompensating on the other pedals. She looked in the wing mirror, did a looping three-point turn, and sped out of the car park.
Chapter Eighteen
May sat behind the wheel, stunned. Her ja
w hung agape and she was breathing very heavily, the confusion and shock welding her to the car seat. A pressure built up in her throat and she realised she hadn’t swallowed in a very long time.
What had she just witnessed?
She replayed the scene in her head. What was it all about? Was it some kinky sex thing? Who was that woman? She was the one that got Jack mixed up in all this trouble. Yes, that made sense, didn’t it? Jack was having an affair with that tart, but she had a husband. They wanted the husband out the way, so they planned to kill him! That had to be it.
She leaned against the steering wheel, hugging it for support. What on earth was happening? She looked over at the spot where the van had been and saw blood, bright red like paint, on the ground. There was something else too. May got out of the car and walked toward the blood, intrigued and repelled by it in equal measures.
Then she saw the hammer. And the gun.
It was like a real crime scene. The hammer wasn’t of much interest to her, although it had been used to crack a man’s skull open, and that was sort of exhilarating. But it was the gun that mesmerised her. It was small and dull-looking, cumbersome almost; nothing quite so exciting as you saw on TV. Yet presumably it was a real firearm. She bent down, and with the sleeve of her coat over her hand, picked the gun up and put it in her bag without really thinking about what she was doing. She could feel its weight, its power, and her body flushed with heat.
She turned her attention to the hammer. The head gleamed with blood and had a tangle of hair caught up in the claw. Again, careful not to let her fingers touch the weapon, she picked it up and placed it in her bag. Did removing them from the scene of the crime make her an accessory to murder? She didn’t know if that was just something from the TV, but what she did know was that it gave her the tools to win Jack back. A crime of passion – so what? They could lock her up and throw away the key.