by S. B. Caves
Jack eased himself down and sat on one of the boxes. ‘Are you finished?’
Morley yawned and split his lower lip wider. ‘If I told you I killed your wife because she embarrassed me in front of my friends, would that work for you?’
Jack stiffened. A small, sharp breath escaped him. ‘What did you just say?’
‘What if your wife was walking down the road and I was acting up, showing off in front of some girls, maybe trying to get a bit frisky with one, and your wife tried to tell me off. And maybe I didn’t like being embarrassed, so the next day I knocked on your door and stabbed her.’
‘Is that what happened?’ Jack roared and got to his feet, ignoring the distress flares shooting up his spine. ‘Is that why you did it?’
‘Or,’ Morley began, his voice smooth and calm, unruffled by Jack’s temper, ‘let’s say I knocked on your door and killed your wife as an initiation.’
‘Wh-what?’ The panic and confusion pulled Jack’s face into a dumb, slack mask. ‘What do you mean, “an initiation”?’
‘Like a gang initiation. You’ve seen that on TV, haven’t you? These gangs, they get kids to join by maiming someone, or killing them.’
‘What gang?’ Jack asked desperately, raking his fingers through his hair. He straightened up, took a deep breath and swallowed painfully. ‘Craig, tell me the name of the gang. I want the leader’s name.’
Morley looked to the ceiling and clicked his tongue, mulling over his thoughts. ‘Or, maybe the twin sister, the woman that was with you before, maybe she was in love with you. And maybe she was jealous of your wife and she wanted her dead. So she paid some little piece of shit with no morals to knock on your door and stab your wife. There it is, job done.’
‘No.’ Jack shook his head. ‘No, she wouldn’t.’
‘Maybe it was one of those things and maybe it was none of those things. But I can’t tell you because I had nothing to do with it.’ He spoke firmly, making direct eye contact with Jack. ‘I want you to listen to me, Jack, and I want you to really think about this.’ He watched as Jack started panting like a dog. ‘Jack, by now you have some idea of who I am. But what you probably don’t know is what I can do. The police didn’t catch your wife’s murderer, and do you wanna know why?’
Jack opened his mouth to say yes, but then clamped it shut stubbornly. He did not want Morley to be the one granting him favours.
‘Some boy stabs your wife all these years ago and there are probably a dozen people that know he did it. But they’re not talking, especially not to the police. Nobody gives a fuck about your wife, so why should they go to the police and get themselves in trouble for something that doesn’t have anything to do with them?’ Jack stood there, chest heaving, his eyes like loose ball bearings rolling around in their sockets. ‘That same handful of people that know the boy that killed your wife are still out there. One or two of them might’ve moved on, but the rest will still be in the same streets, doing the same shit, going to the same nightclubs and bars.
‘Jack, I need you to really concentrate on what I’m about to say to you.’ He scooted forward as much as the rope would permit. ‘You might not believe it, but I have a lot of influence out there. I’m not just some little wannabe hustler. If you let me go now, I’ll round up the people who know the boy that killed your wife. I’ll have his name within a week, and I’ll have him caught three days after that. I’ll catch him for you, Jack.’
Jack frowned, his eyes skittering back and forth rapidly.
‘If I… if I let you go, you’ll kill me,’ Jack said absently. He was standing not six inches from Morley and yet seemed very far away. ‘You won’t let me live after all this.’
‘You’ve done me wrong, and you do deserve some payback. I’m not going to try and butter you up. I’m very fucking angry with you, but, given your situation and the fact that apart from splitting my fucking head open, you haven’t treated me too badly, I’m willing to be reasonable. Now, I’m not going to let you off the hook entirely. If you let me go and I catch the bastard that murdered… what was her name again?’
‘Kate,’ Jack said softly, and then exhaled, making a thin, whining sound.
‘Kate. If I do you this favour and catch him for you, then you’ll need to do me a favour in return. That way, I don’t have to think about coming back to hurt you, I can just chalk this up to a big misunderstanding.’ When Jack didn’t respond, Morley continued. ‘She didn’t deserve what happened to her. Nobody deserves to be murdered without any good reason. Trust me, Jack, getting this fucker would be like a good deed for me. But we have to sweep all this shit under the carpet.’
Jack nodded. ‘She was beautiful,’ he said thickly, as though the words had fought their way up from the base of his stomach. ‘We loved each other so much. It wasn’t fair. None of this is fair.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Morley said, getting to his knees. He looked like a dog begging for a treat. ‘I don’t know how you managed to keep yourself together for all these years. If someone killed the mother of my kids, I’d…’
‘She was pregnant,’ Jack said, pressing his fists against his forehead. A cry escaped his lips and he struggled to get his breathing back on course. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’
‘Oh Christ, that’s awful,’ Morley said, shaking his head. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, that’s just… what a monster. What a fucking evil monster. Jack, look at me, mate.’ It took a long time for Jack to look through his fingers at Morley. ‘Let me help you. Let me catch him.’
They stared at each other in silence for a long time.
‘I need a cup of tea,’ Jack said. He walked to the oiling room door then turned and said, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Tea?’ Morley faltered for a second. ‘Yeah. Sure. Why not?’
‘How do you take it?’
‘Milk, three sugars.’
‘Three sugars,’ Jack laughed lightly. ‘It’s a wonder you have any teeth left.’
‘I know,’ Morley smiled. ‘I’ve got a mouthful of fillings.’
Jack nodded and walked off.
* * *
Morley angled his ear toward the door and listened to Jack’s progress through the warehouse. He heard the slow, thudding footfall up the stairs. It seemed to take him forever to climb them. Then Morley’s eyes rolled to the ceiling as he heard Jack directly above him. He exhaled and it felt like every breath he’d ever taken came out at once. The relief was almost orgasmic, and far greater than that he had felt when he finally managed to saw through the ropes. He’d done it; he’d cracked the bastard, had him making cups of tea for him. With the relief came an almost delicious sense of pride. He had been worried that this mad man would actually kill him, but Morley had outsmarted him at his own game. He’d won.
Not quite. He still had to get him to untie this rope, and once he did, Morley would snap his neck. He’d seen it done in plenty of films and thought himself more than capable of the task. He’d let Jack cut the rope off his wrists and then, as he was undoing the rope around his feet, he’d reach forward, clasp Jack’s head between his hands, and twist as hard as he could.
He was sure that he would be free soon, and that knowledge went a long way toward soothing the dread that had slowly been building inside him. He could feel the anxiety fading, his muscles uncoiling. His heartbeat went back to a steady, healthy drumming as opposed to the constant sledgehammering he’d felt since the car park.
The conundrum he had found himself in had kept his mind occupied. Now that he had solved this particular riddle, he found that he had freed up the mental bandwidth to focus on the pain. His skull sang in a dull, endless choir that blurred his vision. He wondered if that hammer had broken up the plates in his head, and whether there were any bone chips stabbing into his brain. Wouldn’t that be just his luck? He’d escape from this warehouse, take two steps outside and then die of a brain haemorrhage.
He had sweated so feverishly that he was dehydrated, his tongue rough and dry, his thro
at coated in sandpaper. Maybe he wouldn’t twist Jack’s head off straight away. Maybe he’d have that cup of tea first.
The clanging on the stairs distracted him. It wouldn’t be long now. His toes curled in anticipation and he felt a tingle of excitement in his groin that made him shudder. Was he getting an erection at the thought of freedom? Yes, he thought he was.
Jack opened the oiling room door holding the steaming kettle. He did not have any cups.
‘You thought you could confuse me, didn’t you?’
‘What’s going on?’ Morley watched ribbons of steam coiling out from the spout of the kettle.
Without another word, Jack walked over to Morley and poured the hot water over his head.
The screams that left Morley’s mouth as his skin blistered did not sound human. It reminded Jack of the awful, hideous shrieking of the foxes that fought in his garden in the middle of the night. Morley’s guttural screams made his voice change octaves until his throat seized up and would no longer permit sound. He writhed and rolled on the floor, strangling himself with the rope, his face a painting of abject terror. He made one last piping noise, a whistle almost, and then trembled.
When he passed out, Jack smiled.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Emily had never been to a restaurant so fancy in her entire life. Perhaps it was because she had never had a partner that thought her worth the expense. As she sat down at the table, enveloped in the dreamy piano music, she couldn’t help but laugh to herself at the irony. She had always wanted to go somewhere like this, but now that she was here she had absolutely no appetite. She didn’t think that she would be able to keep a starter down, even the pretentiously small morsels she’d seen the woman at the neighbouring table eat.
She felt woefully underdressed in her jeans and scoop neck top, but consoled herself with the idea that people might think she was too hip to make such an effort. In her current state, she could pass for a stressed-out journalist, or maybe some kind of fringe celebrity that wanted to let their hair down. But when Bernard arrived in an expensive-looking suit, she felt less like a celebrity and more like some kind of cheap escort he’d picked up at a gritty bus station.
A waiter made a beeline for the table and asked in a French accent too thick to be natural if Bernard wanted a drink. Bernard picked up the wine menu, scanned it briefly, and ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
‘You look lovely,’ he said to Emily, unfolding his napkin and placing it in his lap.
She couldn’t tell if he was needling her or not. ‘So do you. That’s a nice suit.’
‘Armani,’ he said with a shrug to indicate that it was no big deal. ‘Have I kept you waiting long?’
It was close to two in the afternoon. He’d told her to meet him at one.
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Have you ordered any food?’
‘No, I don’t think I’m going to eat.’
‘Yes you are,’ he said, looking over the food menu. ‘We’re going to have lunch and enjoy ourselves. That’s the reason we’re here.’
She said nothing. The waiter returned with the wine and poured a drop for Bernard to taste. He savoured it, and nodded for the waiter to continue pouring.
‘Madam?’ The waiter angled the bottle over her glass.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and the waiter filled her up.
When they were alone again, Bernard said, ‘How about a toast?’
‘Sure,’ she said wearily and held up her glass.
‘How about we toast to new beginnings?’
She nodded and clinked his glass, then gulped the wine. She couldn’t tell if it cost ten pounds or two grand.
‘So what did you want to talk about?’ she asked.
‘Let’s eat first, enjoy ourselves.’
‘What’s the big mystery?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘Bernard, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but this isn’t cute, what you’re doing.’
‘I see.’ He put his glass down. ‘You just want to dive right in, do you? Well, I can see why. You’ve already sort of admitted guilt by meeting me, haven’t you?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Let’s face it. You wouldn’t have agreed to meet me if I didn’t have a carrot dangling over your nose now, would you?’
‘I invited you for coffee the other day, didn’t I?’
‘Oh yes, coffee. And let’s not forget the bored and disinterested way you sat there, staring at your phone, gulping down the coffee quickly to hurry the process up. All you wanted was information about’ – he paused and gave her a grin dominated by his front two teeth – ‘you-know-who. Which brings us on to the next point of business, doesn’t it?’
The waiter returned with a smile. ‘Would we like to order food now?’
‘Yes, please,’ Bernard said, happy as a pig in shit. ‘I’d like to have the steak, rare, and my friend here will have the cassoulet.’
‘Ah, very nice,’ the waiter replied, without jotting the order down. ‘Any appetiser for you?’
‘No.’ He looked over at Emily. ‘We’d like to get right down to it, please.’
‘Absolutely.’
The waiter left with the menus.
Emily said, ‘So you saw Craig Morley all over the news. I told you he was a nasty piece of work, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did. What was it you said again? Your friend was seeing him. I’m assuming this is the same friend that filed the police report?’
‘No.’ Emily shook her head. ‘He was cheating on her, obviously.’ She looked down at her lap, wringing the napkin in her hands. ‘I’m just happy this came out now, before my friend got too involved with him.’
Bernard nodded, unable to shake the grin. ‘I just found it all very strange; didn’t you?’
‘Well, yeah, of course…’
‘You come to me wanting details about you-know-who,’ he said, blurting over her, ‘and a couple of days later he’s the biggest story in the country. Have the police questioned your friend?’ He had an arrogant, knowing look about him that made her want to throw her wine in his stupid face.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, surely you spoke to her? After all, you were so concerned about her well-being before. I took that to mean you were really good friends.’
‘Frankly, Bernard, I don’t think it’s any of your business.’
‘I’m afraid I’d have to disagree. You’ve made it my business.’
‘How?’
He lifted his glass, swirled the wine, and sipped. ‘Did you see the news last night?’
‘No.’ She had actively been avoiding it. It was childish but she didn’t want to face up to her involvement. The less she knew about the escalation, the quicker she could forget the whole thing.
‘I don’t know. I just find it all a little bit… convenient. You come to me asking about Craig Morley, and then someone gives a description of a man and a woman’ – he made the slightest gesture toward her with his hand – ‘kidnapping him. Then everybody wants to find Mr Morley. That puts me in a strange predicament, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Because, indirectly I suppose, I have something to offer this case. The ethical thing to do would be to talk to my sergeant and tell him that you came to me asking about Mr Morley.’
‘You could do that,’ she said, pouring more wine into her glass, ‘but then you’d have to admit that you breached data protection. Then you’d lose your job, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’d say that it came out in passing conversation, a momentary slip of the tongue. I’d get a slap on the wrists. But of course, if I said that you might be a person of interest in this case…’
‘A person of interest?’ She laughed. ‘Why? I asked you to check his record out because I was scared for my friend’s life. That’s it.’
‘That may be true. But the police would probably want to question you a
nyway. And you never know’ – he shrugged, feigning innocence – ‘you might have information that could really help the investigation. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make a difference. If you’re worried about any possible ramifications of you snitching, I can assure you whatever you say would be purely confidential.’
She looked away from him and saw a handsome man and an elegant woman enjoying what appeared to be their first date.
‘Yeah, right. I’m sure that there’d be no way of people finding out I gave a statement, same way there should be no way of finding out Craig Morley’s arrest history.’
Bernard’s mouth turned down at the corners, his buck teeth resting on his lower lip. His eyes gleamed slyly.
‘You could help put a very dangerous man behind bars with your information.’
‘I’m not talking to any police, Bernard.’
‘I thought you’d say that.’ He leaned forward. Emily flinched back. ‘But you know what? I am going to talk to the police, because now I know you’re hiding something.’
The uneasiness stirred inside her as though he had woken some dormant sickness. She did her best to appear indifferent with a shrug and a shake of the head. ‘Bernard, what is it you think I’ve done?’’
‘I have a theory,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘I’m sure it’s fascinating.’
He gulped the last mouthful of wine from his glass and then dabbed his lips with his napkin. ‘I think that you were the one that was seeing Craig Morley, not this imaginary friend of yours.’ He paused, pleased with himself, and added, ‘Would you like another bit of insider info? They haven’t made this public yet, but the girl who made the call about the kidnapping was only fifteen years old. That’s why they can’t identify her.’ He covered his mouth and chuckled as though he’d just delivered the punchline to a joke. ‘That must sting a little bit. He was fucking a schoolgirl, not even of legal age.’