Cold Heart

by Sean-Paul Thomas

  “What the hell is this? How dare you grab my hair like that? In front of all my friends. Do you know who I fucking am?” Betty screamed. “How many fucking Instagram followers I have?”

  Estelle leaned in a little closer to Betty. Intimidatingly closer in fact.

  “Where… are… my… sister’s… ashes?”

  “What the fuck? Fuck you. Who the fuck even are you anyway?” Betty cried, still not getting to grips with the severity of her situation. With one flick of her wrist, Estelle made her understand completely. She sliced off Betty’s pony tail without even blinking or taking her gaze away from Betty’s fearful eyes. She threw the severed blonde ponytail across the bedroom where it landed on top of a vase of roses.

  Betty looked absolutely mortified. A rage was burning inside her. She couldn’t even speak; she felt so violated by the action. In her memory it was the most traumatic event that had ever happened to her in her short, young superficial life. Even more tragic to her than losing her own mother at ten. Estelle didn’t give her the time of day though to vent her pent-up anger and frustration.

  In another swift movement she placed her small sharp knife right up against Betty’s left ear.

  “I’ll give you something to put on fucking Instagram. Now I’m only going to ask you this one more time. Then I’m going to slice both your ears off because it seems like you don’t like using them anyway.”

  “No, wait—please!” Betty cried and pleaded.

  “Where. Is. Gayle’s. Ashes?” Estelle asked, very slow and very deliberate.

  Betty still appeared greatly traumatized. Like she was desperately trying to process everything that had happened to her in the past few moments, but it was all way too much for her to comprehend. She was at a party. She was the bloody host of the damn party, for Christ’s sake. She was drinking, socializing, and having a good time—being the life and soul of her own shindig while her boyfriend was out watching the bloody stupid football.

  Now, in the span of a minute she had lost half of her gorgeous, beautiful hair that she’d been growing since childhood and spending thousands upon thousands of pounds on over the years to keep it in top, pristine condition. And now she was about to lose her ears too, all because some crazy, demented, psycho homeless bitch had gatecrashed her party.

  “Betty, please?” David finally intervened, recognizing the true extent of Betty’s superficial shock. “Where did Luke put Gayle’s ashes? Are they still here in the Apartment or someplace else?”

  Betty suddenly focused all of her attention on David. It seemed to do the trick. Seeing him. Remembering Gayle. Yes, Gayle… Gayle. Luke’s other bit on the side. Dead Gayle. She remembered now. It had brought her back to reality with a sickening thud.

  “Yes… yes… They’re in the bathroom. We...Luke... He… He liked to use them as a doorstop…”

  David shook his head and rubbed his eyes in utter disbelief that Betty had actually mumbled that last part out loud. It was most likely due to the shock and adrenaline mixed with the booze and drugs in her system. His only hope for the girl was that Estelle hadn’t heard or cottoned on to the doorstop remark. But every damn word had resided with Estelle. Of course, it had.

  Estelle, still gripping her knife, suddenly pulled her hand away from Betty’s ear. She hovered her fist in the air for a long, hypnotic moment before punching her square in the jaw, knocking her out cold and sending her sprawling back onto the nearby bed. David continued to shake his head and covered his mouth, still saying nothing.

  Estelle kicked open the first occupied bathroom door that she came to. Inside, another young randy couple were enjoying some fun and frantic sex.

  “Hey, what the fuck?!” cried the young woman perched on top of the basin with her skirt hiked up around her waist and her long, smooth legs wrapped around a young man’s thrusting hips.

  Estelle ignored the couple, who remained in the heated throws of passion, as she glanced all over the bathroom for any sign of her sister’s urn or any similar-looking container that might contain her remains. When she was done searching, she turned back to face the couple who were still shagging away like there was no tomorrow, like the abrupt intrusion hadn’t even happened.

  “Are there other bathrooms around here?” Estelle calmly asked.

  The young woman, caught up in new heights of pleasure and passion, directed Estelle with a shaking, waving hand to the far end of the hallway as best she could.

  Estelle kicked open the second bathroom door situated at the other end of the dark hallway. This time three young men, all suited and booted, were huddled up inside the smaller bathroom sniffing cocaine from the top of what looked to be a bright red urn. The men, annoyed at the interruption, quickly changed their tune from pissed to pleasantly amused when they saw Estelle peering in at them.

  “Hey, gorgeous!” said the vaguely familiar suited man. “All you had to do was knock, sweetheart.”

  The other two suited men both chuckled at that.

  “Jesus Christ, you make one sexy-arse-looking zombie.” The first man continued, before glancing past Estelle and over at David who was loitering around in the hallway behind her. Estelle then recognized the first suited guy. He was the business man from the bar in Springburn earlier that day who David had sold some drugs to.

  “Hey. Davy!” The man screeched in excitement before turning to address his two other friends, both of whom were still trying to snort their share of coke from the lid of the urn. “He’s the guy who sold me this most excellent fucking cocaine.”

  David frowned and shook his head. He knew what was coming next. He was about to lose a good customer for life once Estelle had finished with them. Estelle stared intensely at the urn, trying to ignore the drugs spread out all over the top of its lid. Before any of the men could utter out another word of jest, Estelle casually whipped out her knife—her universal passport and calling card.

  “Could you pass me my sister, please?” She calmly and politely stated.

  The three men all froze where they stood, paralyzed with fear. Not one of them could pry their eyes away from the knife or Estelle for the life in them. Slowly but surely, they each begun to recognize that the blood, cuts, and bruises all over her body were for real and not part of some fancy-dress cosmetic make up. Without saying another word, the first suited man clumsily wiped away the cocaine from the lid of the urn before nervously handing it over to Estelle.

  “Thank you so much.” Estelle said, cool as a cucumber. She then turned around and left the bathroom. David gently nodded at the three speechless men before following her back down the hallway.

  Estelle walked out of the apartment carrying Gayle’s ashes under her arm. Out on the landing hallway, as she made her way towards the stairwell, she smashed a nearby fire alarm. The siren began beeping out frantically. Then the sprinklers kicked in, both inside the apartment and out, drenching everyone who happened to be underneath one. The majority of the wasted party revelers didn’t even seem to care or mind in the slightest as they continued to dance away into the night. For most of them, the spraying water from the ceiling above seemed to be adding to the experience.

  It was raining lightly now on the streets outside. Estelle lit up another cigarette as she walked back up along the quiet housing street. She carried her sister’s urn with one hand now while smoking her newly lit fag with the other. David wasn’t too far behind her as he trailed her down Gray Street then out onto the much busier Argyle Street.

  “Estelle. Please.” David finally pleaded from behind just as soon as he’d caught up to her. “Will you just stop and talk to me for one minute? Please?”

  To his astonishment, Estelle did stop. She came to an abrupt halt right in the middle of the busy pedestrian walkway.

  “You betrayed me.” Estelle calmly stated without even turning around to face him. “And you probably betrayed Gayle too, am I right? You’re lucky I don’t slash your fucking throat to pieces right here in the middle of this fucking street.”

>   “You’re wrong. I never betrayed Gayle. And I saved your life back at the stadium too. They’ll kill me for that. I’m a walking dead man in this city now, Estelle.”

  And he knew they would kill him. In one stupid moment of madness, he’d betrayed his new friends for his oldest one, putting his wife and kids’ lives at a great and terrible risk. Yet it was a decision he didn’t even regret. Yes, he’d betrayed Estelle, but once he’d seen the tide turning and Estelle overpowering the gang, something inside him had just snapped. Perhaps it was guilt or remorse over Gayle. Perhaps it was something even deeper and darker than that. Or deep, buried feelings of a lost but never forgotten first love. Even if those feelings were never truly returned.

  He could’ve just let Luke shoot Estelle where she stood in those toilets and everything would be over by now. In fact, he knew he should’ve let him shoot her in the long-term cause and effect of things still to come. But in the moment of truth, his feelings for her, the torch that still burned brightly for that teenage delinquent who had stolen his heart then slashed it into a million tiny pieces all those years ago, had completely overwhelmed him.

  Estelle turned fully around to face David. Her eyes wide and glazing. For one slight moment under the dim street lights and glare of another passing car in the rain, she looked like some evil, soulless, lifeless demon not of this earth.

  “…Then it’s what you most likely deserve.” Estelle coldly replied.

  “I helped you get Gayle’s ashes back, for fuck’s sake!” David continued to plead, clutching at straws.

  “You were like an older brother to her, you fucking arsehole!” Estelle roared back at him, taking a little step closer. “I thought you would have at least looked out for her. After all these years.”

  “I tried to, Estelle. I really did.”

  Estelle held up her sister’s urn.

  “Looks like you tried really fucking hard.”

  “Fuck you!” David snapped. Now he was the one who’d finally had enough of her shit. “Fuck. You. She turned so wild after you left. She did whatever the hell she wanted. Whenever she wanted. Regardless of the fucking consequences. Just like someone else we all know.”

  Estelle fell silent again. She lowered the urn and backed away from David. It was the only thing she could do before she did something that she really might come to regret. She was leaving. She didn’t need this weasel fuckwit in her life anymore. If she had the slightest gut feeling that he might have something to do with Gayle’s death, which she strongly believed he didn’t—surely to god he didn’t—then he’d be dead and gone to the wind all ready.

  “Goodbye, David. Unlike Gayle, it seems you have a chance to get out of this mess alive. So good luck with that. Run for the fucking hills and don’t ever come back.”

  Estelle turned and began walking away again. An anger began brewing inside David. He looked pissed as hell. Pissed off like he’d never been before in his entire life.

  “You were her big sister by blood, Estelle—fucking blood!” David roared at her from the middle of the street and through the pouring rain. His crass, angry tone turned the heads of some nearby passersby from underneath their umbrellas. “You were supposed to be the one to look out for her. You were all she had left in the world and you fucking abandoned her, and for what? For fucking what, aye? Where the fuck have you been all this time, you fucking hypocrite?”

  Estelle abruptly halted in her tracks. She turned back around with a look of death to face David. Deliberately slow and calmer than a gentle sea breeze, she lowered her sister’s urn down onto the pavement by her feet and left it just sitting there. Then she pulled out her knife and went straight for David like a rabid bat out of hell.

  Panicking like he’d never panicked before, David screamed to the high heavens, before whipping around and sprinting off into the night like his life depended upon it. And it most likely did. God only knew what an enraged Estelle would do to him if she caught up to him now. He ran fast and hard, directly across the busy main road and into the thick and fast oncoming traffic, just to get away from the crazy-eyed force of nature. Getting mowed down by a bus or a rickety old Ford Escort seemed to be a better fate and more humane way for him to leave this world.

  Estelle stopped on the pavement curb and watched the little short-arse fucker run. She truly believed in that moment that she would have killed him if she’d caught up to him in time.

  Cars skidded and horns honked as David finally made it all the way across to the other side of the main street. Even then, he didn’t dare look back. He sprinted off down another side street and out of Estelle’s line of sight for good.

  Estelle took in another deep breath. She then spat down hard upon the wet road and turned back towards her sister who was still sitting up on the far pavement waiting for her, right where she’d left her in the middle of the footpath.

  Chapter 11

  Detective Jonas sat at his desk inside his office at the Greater Glasgow Police Department on Steward Street. It was that time in the evening and the place was almost deserted exactly the way Jonas liked it. Despite working for one of the biggest police departments in Scotland he wasn’t much of a people person as he crept through middle age. He’d been divorced going on five years now and with no children to call his own; the older and fatter he got, the more he counted his lucky stars for that little sidestep of fate. Kids, their upbringing and the way they may turn out in adulthood these days, with all the human rights under the sun going in the favor of delinquents, always seemed like such a random unbalanced lottery to Jonas.

  He’d dealt with kids and delinquent teens for the majority of his working life and the more time he spent in their arrogant, ungrateful, self-entitled company the less he failed to understand why people kept giving birth to the little shits. Most kids under the age of eighteen these days were a law unto their own. Untouchable to the adult hand. The amount of high school teacher suicides he’d investigated over the last decade, because the teachers just didn’t have the rights anymore to discipline the kids running the high school asylums, was off the charts, a worrying statistic for the Scottish education system.

  He couldn’t think of a worse job in the country now. High school teacher. Who the hell would be dumb enough to go into that profession? A one-way ticket to an early grave if ever there was one. And the kids did everything in their new age powers to exploit that well-known fact.

  The only person of interest in Jonas’s life was his elderly mother. His father had died of lung cancer almost a decade ago. Then one year after his own messy divorce, tragedy struck again and his mother was diagnosed with M.S. Multiple Sclerosis.

  Of course, Jonas did the decent thing and immediately moved back in with his mother. It was almost like old times again during his childhood, only now Jonas was the one looking after her, cleaning up after her, doing her laundry, cooking her food, helping her shower, and dress—even wiping her arse like she had done for him as a toddler, as she went through the various sickening and horrific changes of her muscle-wasting decease.

  At first Jonas dealt with her condition with relative calm and ease as he balanced both his mother’s part-time care and his own full-time job with the police. But as her condition gradually worsened and the speed of her body and muscle wastage accelerated, Jonas found himself hiring full-time carers to take the brunt of the burden off his hands before throwing himself head first into his work. Christ, he had to find some way to pay off the massive rising debt for his mother’s care, along with the purchase of every new, hopeful medical drug and extortionately overpriced pill that came onto the market and had even the slightest chance of helping and easing his mother’s insufferable condition.

  This was why Jonas began to get his hands dirty on the job. Taking money from pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers at first, just to turn a blind eye and keep out of their way so they could get on with their illegal activities on his patch and on his watch. It gave him a nice little side income in the process to help out wit
h his mother’s never-ending medical and care bills.

  Word swiftly got around on the street that Jonas was dirty though and a cop on the take, yet somehow the news and rumours never made their way back to his superiors, most of whom were just as corrupt as him anyway, or if word had made its way to the top, then someone up high was ignoring his new side income and ventures.

  But for every nasty scumbag Jonas made a deal with and let off the hook, there was always another piece of trash around the next corner he’d swiftly put away for a very long time without even a second thought. Jonas chose his seedy, underworld clients with great care, which was perhaps why he was able to get away with his shady, sinister dealings for so long. Until earlier last year, someone up high finally did come a knocking on Jonas’s door. But not with the handcuffs and prison time Jonas had been expecting. No, this certain hierarchy bigwig came with an offer that he couldn’t quite refuse while delivering more money into his dirty pockets than Jonas had ever seen before, even if he was to serve two lifetimes as one of Glasgow’s top-ranking police detectives.

  Jonas continued to study the computer screen. He was checking some restricted files that his high-ranking detective status allowed him general access to. The files in particular were all regarding one recently deceased Gayle Munroe.

  Jonas studied the file hard. Up and down. Over and over again. Looking for something that he might have missed the first time around. The brief gist of those files were that Gayle was an only child. Her mother died of a drug overdose when she was eleven years old. Her step-father died too on the exact same night, stabbed multiple times in the throat, face, and neck by a house intruder or because of a suspected drug deal gone wrong. No one was ever suspected or apprehended for that brutal crime though according to the file and brief statements. And shortly after their funerals, with no immediate family to look after her, young Gayle was punted into foster care effective immediately.