The Family Lie

by P L Kane

  She’d fumbled with the door, with the locks, hands slick with sweat. Desperate to get out there quickly and not succeeding. Then suddenly opening it, nearly falling out, falling down those metal steps on the outside of the caravan.

  Tripping instead and falling forward, almost hitting her Beetle that was parked there. Almost knocking herself out, but managing not to. What if the fire reached the car? she thought to herself. It would go up like a rocket, shrapnel everywhere. Would tear through the sides of these caravans flanking hers.

  She had to—

  Wait, no. Bella had used the side of the car to get herself upright, dragging herself along it towards the human fireball. Only—

  Only it wasn’t there anymore.

  That couldn’t … She could still smell the charred flesh, could still hear the crackling. Had the figure staggered off somewhere, maybe fallen through the barriers there and dropped down onto the beach, into the water now the tide would be in?

  Bella made her way to the spot where she’d seen it, tried to examine the ground. But, of course, the flaming figure had taken all the light with it. ‘W-What?’

  She was aware of more illumination now, from different sources. Her neighbours flicking on lights inside their own abodes, wondering what all the racket was outside. Too late, they were all too late. There was only her out here now, the figure was gone – and still she was wondering where to? They were too late to rescue that person. The one who hadn’t been a part of her nightmare, that had been real but she’d wished was a dream and seemingly had her wish granted.

  Real, not real. A dream? No, it couldn’t have been! But there was no sign now of—

  How could she possibly tell anyone about this, they’d think she’d gone gaga for sure. Had she? Was that what was happening? How would she know? An early form of dementia, a result of what she’d been doing all these years? In touch with the departed, had that done it? Had that been a part of it all along? No …

  Scared, more of what would happen if anyone found her outside like this, she’d raced back to her own caravan, locking herself inside. She wouldn’t tell anyone about this, Bella decided; would keep it from people, especially Ashley. Couldn’t tell him, couldn’t take him up on his offer of somewhere to stay now regardless. How could she?

  Keep the real, the waking nightmare a secret.

  And with it, what she’d seen that night.

  Chapter 22

  He’d kept a certain part of it to himself. Kept it secret.

  The waking nightmare, the thing he’d thought – hoped, wished – had been only a nightmare, but turned out to be real. What Mitch had been through was real: holy crap! Though it hadn’t been a patch on what the victim had experienced.

  Not imaginary, not a cider-fuelled hallucination.

  Real.

  A real-life death. No, that made no sense. And Mitch had needed to make sense for the statement, the witness statement. Telling Wilkinson what he’d seen the previous night, who he’d seen out there on the village square: tied, chained to the monument. Mitch had unlocked the door, flung it open just in time to see the man’s face. He’d thought it was the cat meowing, but it was actually screaming. The man had been screaming because he was burning to death.

  Sheldon. Neil Sheldon, out there roasting alive. In spite of everything, he’d looked over at Mitch and caught his eyes, begging to be saved. To be in time to save him. Mitch began to rush towards the figure, but had absolutely no idea how he was going to do that. His dad hadn’t kept a fire extinguisher in the house, as far as he knew, and filling a bucket of water – assuming he could find one – would take too long. That man was dying out there!

  But what could he do? Smother him with his own body?

  No, but he could smother him with blankets or something. Mitch went back into the house, racing upstairs and stumbling, because he still wasn’t that coordinated, and headed to his mum and dad’s room, dragging off the blankets that resided on top. That weren’t really needed because it was summer, because it was so hot (it was hot all right!). Weren’t needed unless you had to put someone out who was on fire.

  He’d dragged them from the bed, down the stairs, where they’d snagged briefly on a tack or something, and he’d had to tug at them and rip them before he could be on his way. When Mitch got back outside – how long had that taken? Even longer than the water would have done probably – he was amazed to see that there were still no other people coming out of their homes. Why weren’t they helping? Were they even awake? How could you sleep through that screaming?

  It was only now that he realized the screaming had stopped. Ceased because Sheldon’s head was completely on fire, and his vocal chords had probably burned away. He was in no fit state to scream anymore, and Mitch had to hope that he wasn’t feeling anything either. He got as close as he could with the blankets, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to put this guy out. Wasn’t smothering anything anytime soon. Sheldon was past all that.

  Lights were coming on in the surrounding houses, Mitch saw. People were emerging out into the night at last. Some had had the same idea as him, grabbed sheets or whatever and brought those with them. Others had gone to the effort of filling buckets, which they were passing along to throw onto the figure to try to put him out. Mitch recalled something then, that the shock of doing such a thing could kill a person as quickly as the flames themselves, but in the end it made no difference. Sheldon wasn’t moving. He was slumping, held in place by those chains which had kept him rooted to the spot while the fire did its worst.

  Dead, and perhaps mercifully so.

  It was murder, there was no getting around the fact this time. Sheldon hadn’t done this to himself, hadn’t bound himself to that monument and then set himself on fire! How? He wasn’t bloody Dynamo or David Blaine.

  Mitch had been about to ask if anyone had rung for an ambulance, as he couldn’t, but again there wouldn’t be any point. There’d be no medical drama, last minute resurrections here, no pumping of Sheldon’s chest and him taking a deep, coughing breath. They’d be carting him off to the morgue, where Mitch’s dad was currently residing. A friend, a twin for him there.

  Then he’d heard the sirens and realized that someone must have called for the emergency services, though bizarrely it wasn’t an ambulance that showed up first. It was Wilkinson. The fastest Mitch had ever seen him get anywhere, though he guessed if the old sergeant had been told there was a man on fire in the village square that should warrant some degree of haste. But just Wilkinson, on his own again with no backup. He’d clambered out of the police car, which was just as archaic as its driver, and made his way over to Mitch to ask what the situation was.

  Mitch hadn’t even been able to find the words to answer him, had simply held out a hand as the flames were being dampened down. It was only at this point that Mitch thought to himself all the water they were chucking on Sheldon would also wipe out any forensic evidence at the scene of crime. But it was too late anyway, far too late for a lot of things. For Sheldon himself definitely.

  By the time an ambulance did arrive, which didn’t look in much better nick than Wilkinson’s car, with Larson in tow, it was all over bar the shouting – which Mitch didn’t have the energy to do on this occasion. He’d tried that all along the line, and where had it got him? There’d be no attempt to set up a cordon, or get any CSIs in to do a proper study. It would be yet another crime the people here would want to handle ‘in-house’, and he’d be stonewalled from the get-go.

  Larson had made a stab at being professional, the same as last time he’d seen him, when Mitch had asked if he thought an accelerant had been used.

  ‘I would have thought so,’ the doctor replied, eying up the corpse – which was black, wet and, frankly, disgusting.

  ‘Same as my father.’

  The doctor had nodded. ‘I’ll need some time with the body to ascertain what exactly was used though.’

  And that had been it: said body had been let down and
placed on a stretcher by the ambulance man – Mitch was loath to call him a paramedic, because for starters he wasn’t dressed like one, more like something from the ’60s or ’70s so no chance of any kind of Casualty heroics anyway – then loaded up into the ambulance itself, presumably to be taken to Green Acres Hospital. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Larson had told Mitch, who’d been joined by his uncle and aunty. She was busy making tea for him and the other people gathered, because it was good for the shock apparently. Mitch couldn’t help noticing her look of disappointment when she sniffed his breath again, and realized he’d been drinking. Except he hadn’t been, not much. Sheldon’s partner – wife? – would probably need something a lot stronger when she eventually found out about all this. He’d heard someone say, Nuttall he thought, who’d been talking to Wilkinson, that she was away at the moment.

  ‘Nasty business,’ were his Uncle Vince’s only words on the subject.

  Yeah, waking to see a guy tied up and burning to death? Probably qualifies as nasty, among other things.

  Denise had been present too, but hadn’t come over when she saw he was with his relations. Just held up a hand, a concerned expression on her face. And Mitch couldn’t help thinking then that actually she was quite a sweet person, always had been. That she really did care about him. Thought also that he should probably put her in the picture about Lucy, and not give her any false hope. Any more false hope.

  Then Mitch had spent the best part of the morning making his statement at the police station, Wilkinson periodically asking him to repeat sentences so he could write them down at the same pace he did everything: glacial. But Mitch didn’t see any point in getting mad, not anymore. Didn’t see any point in questioning their methods here, the way they’d handle something more horrific than most of the stuff he’d seen out in the city put together. Didn’t see how it would help to state again the parallels to his dad’s death – that was obvious wasn’t it, to anyone other than Wilkinson apparently – or to rant and rave about it. He’d only be told that what he thought was unreliable because he’d been drinking (which begged the question as to why he’d been asked to give a statement anyway). Mitch was beyond all that now, knew what he had to do. And that was not take a blind bit of notice of the authorities in this place.

  What he had done was use the phone at the station to try to get through to his station house back home, to get hold of Vihaan at least to see if he might be able to help from that end. Somewhat predictably, he hadn’t even been able to connect – his call dropping as it was ringing out.

  Don’t slam it down, he thought to himself. What would be the use of that, either? He should just thank Wilkinson and go about his business. The business of getting to the bottom of not just what happened to his dad, but now poor Neil Sheldon.

  It was the reason he’d kept part of all this to himself. Kept it secret – in the aftermath and during his long-winded statement to Wilkinson – kept it to himself, so he could follow it up. Something that in the heat of the moment (very poor choice of words) he’d almost forgotten. About what he’d seen.

  About who he’d seen that night.

  Chapter 23

  He knew where the man lived.

  Mitch had seen him there, had encountered him there. So after he’d grabbed a quick lunch – Helen had left him a salad in the fridge, and he’d fed some more of that tinned meat to Cat, who’d returned once all the fuss had died down in the square and didn’t fancy anything else on offer – he’d got on his bike and headed off again.

  He’d been warned, been told to be careful, told not to go looking for trouble – by so many people. But Mitch thought to himself: sod it! This needed doing, needed looking into. Maybe he’d gather some evidence? He might not have been thinking straight, probably still wasn’t, but he knew what he’d seen. Who he’d seen.

  That face, casting a glance over his shoulder as he made himself scarce. As he made his exit, having done this in the first place. Who else could it have been? There’d been no one else around! Everyone had been in bed, hadn’t even turned on their lights or come out of their houses until it was way too late to save Sheldon.

  Must have gagged him or knocked him out or something while he was chaining him up and dousing him with whatever accelerant had been used (petrol?), but then the flames had kicked in and Sheldon had begun screaming for all he was worth. Again, too late. He’d been a dead man even before Mitch had clapped eyes on him. An intentional act. A cowardly act. A terrible act Mitch didn’t think anyone had in them. He was wrong.

  As for motive, there was plenty of that too. Loads of it, in fact. Revenge for one, retaliation for what had happened in the run-up to last night. But, of course, it was bigger than that. So, what about all this was a good idea? Coming out here to snoop when he suspected that man was a cold-blooded killer? What did he hope to achieve?

  Mitch had no idea, just knew he had to do something. That whatever he did, it would be a million times more than Wilkinson would be able to muster. By the time that man realized who was responsible and came to ask questions, if the sergeant could even be bothered, their suspect might be halfway around the world. Not that anyone ever seemed to leave this place. Apart from Mitch himself, he’d left, hadn’t he? Had cause to. Then again, being wanted for murder – a double murder? – was probably more of an incentive to bolt.

  Something told Mitch that the guy whose property he was on, covering the distance along the track, wasn’t the running kind. Wouldn’t bolt even if there was a lion after him: would instead just stand and fight the beast. So he needed to be careful.

  He left the bike about halfway up, walking the rest of the way. Mitch would sneak in and have a look around the place, if he wasn’t spotted beforehand, that was. And it seemed he was going to be lucky in that respect, to begin with at any rate, because there wasn’t a soul around. Not anyone he could see, at any rate.

  What he was expecting to find was anyone’s guess. Cans of accelerant? There were definitely cans of petrol lying around, but then was that so unusual here? Probably not. He crept over to the nearest building, still unseen – no one had come out to stop him yet, call over to ask what he was doing, so that was something. It was big – huge, in fact – and made from wood, but had a chain just like the one that had held Sheldon looped through the handles of the door with a padlock attached. Mitch tried the door, found that it would open a crack – enough for him to get his fingers into, lever it open a bit more and peer inside.

  From what he could discern it was just as big inside, but it was too dark to see right to the back. Storage for something? Wouldn’t be unheard of out here, but what? As his eyes narrowed, he thought he saw a light back there. A glowing of some sort, but he couldn’t be sure what—

  There was a sudden pain in his fingers. Mitch tried to pull back but found that he couldn’t. It was like his hand was stuck to the slatted wood, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. Not stuck to the wood, but jammed in the gap. A gap that had been forced shut, kicked by a booted foot which was still pressed up against the door. Jesus, that hurt – felt like his fingers were going to be cut off completely. Too late now. It was too late to go back, too late to reconsider his rash actions.

  Then just as suddenly as it had been there, the boot was gone again and the pressure was lifted. Mitch yanked his fingers out while he could, and jammed them under his arm to try to ease the pain. He looked up and over, tears in his eyes. Saw the watery outline of a man, someone who was no less huge than the barn he owned. The barn Mitch had been investigating without authority. He blinked away the saltwater, and it was only then that he saw what the farmer, Granger, was holding – training on him, on his head – the butt wedged in his shoulder. A double-barrelled shotgun.

  ‘What d’yer think yer doin’?’ asked the man with the humongous sideburns in a gruff voice, forcing Mitch to look at his face instead of the weapon he was holding. He took in the rest of the giant next, who had the same clothes on as the other night, except the tatty
jumper which he’d taken off to reveal a chequered shirt that was full of holes too. ‘I asked yer a question!’ The man’s cheeks were ruddy, not because of the hours that he worked out here in the fields, but because he was angry once again. Mitch noticed the purple veins in those cheeks now, running from the fellow’s nose. A drinker then, not that he could talk lately.

  ‘I …’ said Mitch, his mind racing, not expecting to have this conversation just yet and certainly not after having had his fingers trapped in a barn door. He figured it was best to just tell the truth. ‘I saw you, Granger.’

  The farmer’s right eye turned into a slit. Mitch hoped he wasn’t aiming that shotgun, preparing to fire. Especially as it moved down slightly, the barrels pointed at his chest rather than his head. Actually, he wasn’t sure which would be worse: a shotgun blast to the skull or the heart. Which would kill him the quickest? It depended on how good Granger was with it, he supposed. ‘Saw me?’ he asked, voice still sounding rough as sandpaper.

  ‘Come on, let’s stop playing games here, shall we?’ Mitch took out his hand, flapped his fingers up and down, then experimentally made a fist and opened it up again to check none were broken. The injury was still killing him; he just hoped Granger’s next move didn’t finish the job. ‘Sheldon. Last night.’

  Granger let the gun fall again, and this time the barrels were pointing at Mitch’s crotch. The worst of the lot, definitely. The farmer said nothing in reply.

  ‘I saw you heading off, after he was attacked.’

  ‘Don’t know what yer talkin’ about,’ the larger man finally answered. ‘Hey, yer that bloke from t’other night in the pub.’ He said this last bit like he’d only just recognized Mitch as the person who’d restrained him.

  ‘Yeah, when you were about to beat seven bells out of Neil Sheldon. Guess you found another way to shut him up. Once he’d finished screaming, that is.’