[Eddie Collins 01.0] The Third Rule

by Andrew Barrett

  Ros’s head throbbed. Her tongue was a small rectangle of desert sand and her watering eyes stung as though she’d used an onion-based eye bath. She glanced at her phone’s battery; it also showed three missed calls and a voice message.

  “You gonna fuck off and let us get on?” Nike-man said. One youth stepped outside, followed by a second who pushed the first down the steps and laughed about it. Another stared at her as he took a cigarette from behind his ear, nipped it between his brown teeth. Then he pulled out a snub-nosed gun that glowed in the dregs of red sunlight slanting in through the open door.

  Ros stared back at Nike-man with his gold chain around his neck matching the one around his wrist, with his trendy tracksuit matching his trendy trainers as though he was a remodelled Usain Bolt.

  He was lowlife, but even lowlifes occasionally made it big. This was his chance. He stepped closer.

  “I’m just about done, thanks.” Thanks? “Said I’d be back about now and they’ll be wondering where I am.” Out flew a nervous laugh, the sign of a woman telling a lie. The gunman aimed at her. She held her breath and thought about Eddie and what a bastard he was and how she would never talk to him again and how she would always hate him if she ever got out of this and wondered how he could walk away and allow this to happen.

  He pulled the trigger. There was a click, and a pathetic flame lit his cigarette. She sighed the breath out.

  “Look like shit there, sis. Got blood in yo hair.”

  She touched the swelling that was now barely hidden by her hair. “Banged my head, that’s all.” She smiled and in a swift movement, grabbed the remaining evidence bags, looking up all the time, waiting for them to kick out or push her to the floor. “You didn’t see someone else come in here after the police left?”

  The Nike-man shook his head, but druggy number two said, “Yeah; small white dude, fat. Snooker player’s waistcoat.”

  “Can you remember what he was driving?”

  “Don’t know. But he was carrying something under his arms, like them there.” With a pair of smoking fingers, he pointed to the paintings on the kitchen floor.

  “You want me ta carry them?” Nike-man nodded at the plastic-wrapped paintings.

  “Would you mind?”

  When Ros sat in her van with the doors locked and the interior lamp turned out, she cried. She hadn’t even taken off her dirty sweaty scene suit; content to worry about such comforts when she finally got the bloody hell out of here.

  – Three –

  Eddie’s bravado shone like the chrome on a Harley D.

  They threw the rubber car mats across the top of the fence. When Mick had said, “wait until you get in there and see the arrogant bastard” Eddie became scared.

  He could imagine Henry Deacon giving out the big come-on, and he could imagine himself obliging. He could see the anger rising inside him, and he could see himself charging at Deacon and he could see himself becoming a murderer before tonight was out. Once Eddie Collins got angry, there was no stopping him until it ran its course; might as well try slowing down a steam train by thinking about it really hard.

  That’s what scared him. If Deacon was placid, displayed sorrow at Sammy’s death, Eddie would simply go home with his tail between his legs and wrap the vacuum cleaner cord tightly around his neck.

  Mick leapt the fence first and Eddie swallowed his fear and followed. In silence they sneaked like a couple of burglars around the back of Henry Deacon’s bungalow to the conservatory. “Stay here.” Mick skulked off into the darkness.

  That darkness disappeared as Mick triggered a security light at the far side of the conservatory. Eddie heard him curse and then saw him running back. “There’s a window open.”

  “Great.”

  “Come on, let’s get on with it.”

  “Right behind you.” Eddie came out of the darkness and into the light. He could see speckles of illuminated rain landing on Mick’s hurrying shape. And as the open window came into sight, the security light blinked out and the rain fell invisibly again, Eddie wondered if this was the worst decision he had ever made.

  The white plastic window frame was a grubby grey in a darkness that was almost total. Mick looked at Eddie. “What about alarms?”

  “Won’t have it set if he’s in, will he?” Eddie said. “And the car mats are still there if the place is zoned, we’ll be long gone before the police arrive.”

  “Wish we’d worn gloves.”

  “But we didn’t!” It was almost a shout and in the stillness of the night it was very loud. Only the sound of rain falling on shrubbery and onto the conservatory roof came to his ears. Eddie stared at Mick, working himself up for the confrontation he’d dreamed of. “Come on, I’ll help you through.”

  “Okay,” Mick said, not moving from in front of Eddie’s face, “but I expect to see your ugly arse right behind me.”

  He nodded, “I’ll be there.” As Mick opened the window further and leaned in, Eddie’s fear of what he might do melted, and suddenly became appealing. Eddie listened for alarms. He knew that Mick wanted Henry Deacon dead just as much as he did. Only for different reasons. But that didn’t matter. They wanted Deacon dead; that mattered. And what Mick knew when tonight became tomorrow, he would take to the grave with him. Eddie peered left and right and then followed Mick through the window.

  The house was quiet. Eddie crouched down, and he listened for a whole minute. They were in a carpeted hallway. Dark, except for a bar of light coming from beneath a door at the far end of the hallway some fifteen yards away.

  “That’ll be the lounge,” Mick whispered.

  Eddie nodded in the darkness.

  And then Mick was gone, creeping towards the light. Eddie followed; his hand lightly skimming the wall. Mick was a barely perceived shadow and only when Eddie’s outstretched hand touched him, did he stop.

  Mick listened at a doorway on his right. “Bedroom,” he whispered. It appeared darker than the others on the hallway because it was open. Wide open. Only darkness in there. After a moment, Mick pulled away and crept towards the lounge. Eddie followed but slower, more cautiously, aware of the chances of another door opening suddenly, aware they might face a battle, aware someone might already know of their presence. Hell, the police could be parked outside already.

  Eddie needn’t have worried. The police were still twelve minutes away.

  He saw Mick’s head turn sideways as he placed an ear to the lounge door. Eddie crouched. Watched. Mick twisted the doorknob. Inside the lounge, the lamps were on and there was a muted glow from the artificial fire in the artificial hearth. Apart from that, the place looked like it had just been built, furnished, and locked up. Except for a coffee or tea stain on the fawn carpet by the leather chair, nothing was out of place; everything appeared to be perfectly arranged by a setsquare.

  Eddie stood in the expansive lounge with his hands on his hips and did a 360 turn. There were shadows, but they were transparent enough to yield everything. And there was no person here. “Now where?”

  Mick’s lips were a tight grey line, eyes squinting in frustration. He shrugged.

  Eddie let out a breath, and his shoulders slumped. “I’d psyched myself up,” he whispered. “I was gonna kill–”

  “Keep a lid on it. Start looking.”

  “Looking? What for?”

  “Dunno,” Mick said. “But he has a secret he’s desperate to share with me. And I’d hate to let him down.”

  “Hold on, hold on.” Eddie pulled Mick around by the shoulders. “I came here for a specific task. I came here to get even for my kid. I didn’t come here looking for a fucking secret. I didn’t come here to steal.”

  “What?” Mick faced Eddie full on. “Murder was fine, but you’re a bit unsure about burglary?”

  “That’s about right.”

  “And what about me? I came here to give you support, and now you don’t need that support–”

  “Then I may as well be of some use?”

  Mick st
omped out of the lounge, opening doors up and down the hallway, and any caution he once displayed had blown away on the wind.

  Eddie folded his arms and stared after Mick’s prancing shadow. “And what happens,” he whispered, “if Henry pops out of the fucking gym or snooker room and catches you rifling through his underwear drawer?”

  “Then we go back to plan A.”

  Eddie blinked. “Oh yeah.” He walked up the hallway and turned into the darkest room of all, into Henry Deacon’s bedroom.

  “Arsehole,” Mick said.

  “Arsehole, yourself.” Only a minute ago, Eddie was ready to rip heads off, and it took a while for that fury to dissipate into a cold anti-climax and a dull frustration. He understood that frustration precisely. It yielded recklessness, a need to attract fate, a need to attract Henry Deacon.

  And then he turned the bedroom light on and stood quite still. “Shit,” he whispered.

  – Four –

  Ros locked the door and yawned until tears were squeezed out between her eyelashes. Three hours she’d been here in the Normanton CSI office writing up the notes on her new laptop and plugging it into the mainframe ready for the upload at one o’clock. She booked all her exhibits into the store and the freezer, copied the photographs, and began to cry. And then she grew angry for allowing the emotion to show itself. “Damn you, Eddie.”

  The place was deserted.

  She headed back to Morley where she briefly stared at the twisted wreckage of furniture outside the office door. She signed out, collected her car, and headed home. A police car sped past her, blue lights flicking, but no sirens. She wondered where it was going at this hour.

  Ros closed her house door behind her and shuddered a long hollow sigh into the shadows. She hung her bag on the coat hook and snatched the mail and newspaper from the floor. The mail was junk, it never made it further than the recycling bin, but the newspaper, the late edition of The Yorkshire Echo, caught her attention. She didn’t breathe

  for the next two minutes as she read.

  The Yorkshire Echo. 25th June

  By Michael Lyndon

  One rule for them and The Third Rule for us

  On Friday, the 29th May, the reckless killing of two people in the Wakefield village of Outwood baffled police. One, 38-year-old Peter Archer, a father of three, was thrown under the wheels of a bus on the main Leeds Road.

  Passers-by were distraught at the sight. They reported seeing a green Jaguar speeding off from the scene.

  The second was a 12-year-old boy. Sam Collins recovered an errant football on Westbury Avenue in the village when he was struck and killed by the same green Jaguar.

  The deaths of these two people have shredded the lives of their families, but despite intensive investigations, the police have no one in custody.

  The Yorkshire Echo has discovered the driver’s identity. The driver was Henry Deacon, son of our Justice Secretary, Sir George Deacon, and we have the proof.

  We have to ask that if Henry is proved to be the driver by the police investigation, will he face the same fate that a normal member of the public would? Would he face a Rule Three execution?

  How coincidental then, that around midnight last night, Wednesday 24th June, the Morley Police Station’s CSI office succumbed to what is believed to be a vicious arson attack that gutted the building. Police are refusing to comment, but a source believes the fire was a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence recovered from the recently found Jaguar.

  – Five –

  The patrol car hurtled down Wigton Lane. With only a slight squeal of brakes, it pulled up outside a large bungalow. Both officers alighted and climbed the fence at the front.

  A hundred metres further down the street, a man watched from his hire car.

  64

  Thursday 25th June

  – One –

  “Now what?”

  “Come and see this.” Eddie stood in the bedroom, his heart rattling at the bars of his ribcage, trying to break out before the adrenaline blew it up.

  Mick came up behind him. “Fuuuck.”

  “That sums it up.” Eddie crept up to the body, keeping an eye out for signs of a trap and for possible forensic evidence; evidence he didn’t want to destroy or contaminate. No matter how disparate he and “work” were right now, he couldn’t suppress his eye for detail.

  “Aw, shit, I hate–”

  “Keep a lid on it, Mick; it won’t fucking bite you.”

  “I know, but–”

  He turned. “And don’t you dare throw up!”

  Mick shrank back towards the door.

  Henry Deacon looked like a marionette that had been abandoned half way through a show. Around his chubby neck was a black leather belt, and in the same way a tree trunk will eventually grow around the barbed wire stapled to it, so the belt similarly disappeared into the loose skin of Henry Deacon’s throat with such pressure as to force his bloated tongue out between his lips. The other end of the belt was tied to the wardrobe’s clothes rail. There were no clothes hanging on it; seemed Henry had more storage space than clothes anyhow.

  Deacon’s hands rested submissively on his thighs.

  “Is he dead?” Mick asked without daring to look.

  “Are you dead, Henry?”

  “Not the time for funnies.”

  “You deal with it your own way; this works fine for me. Death makes me laugh. Well, his does.” But it didn’t. It was just the humour trigger going onto automatic every time he stood before a human body. None of it was funny. But he couldn’t help it, wouldn’t help it; it kept the mind-monster away. Start taking shit like this seriously and they’d refer you to a shrink within a month. He’d seen it happen.

  For now, he had a body. A fresh body. Henry Deacon’s body. “Autoeroticism.”

  “In English.”

  Eddie moved around the body, avoiding the porn magazines that were spread out on the floor between and around Deacon’s open legs. His lower clothing was scattered across the bedroom floor, and his hands were shiny, his legs, groin, and shrivelled penis too. A bottle of baby oil just by his right buttock, slowly dripped into the carpet. “They get horny,” he said quietly, “and they strangle themselves–”

  “What?”

  “They asphyxiate themselves. It happens all the time.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “So?”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s reckoned that the ultimate orgasm occurs just as you’re blacking out. But sometimes they black out too quick, and by then it’s too late. They strangle themselves.”

  “Shame. In his case, I mean.”

  “Shame we didn’t get to kill him, you mean.”

  “How long, do you think?”

  “How long’s he been dead?” Eddie shrugged, looked at the face. “See the blood and mucus leaking out of the nose? In all the hangings I’ve ever been to, that usually takes an hour or so to begin.” He reached out, touched Deacon on the chest, near his armpit. “Still fairly warm, too.” And then he pinched Henry’s sleeve and lifted his arm. “No rigor yet.” He looked up at Mick. “This happened recently,” he shrugged, “between an hour and two hours ago. Approximately.”

  Mick shrank back. “You’re disgusting. I don’t know how–”

  Eddie smiled. “Did you shake his hand when you saw him earlier?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Would it have bothered you?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “So what’s changed?”

  “What’s changed? He’s fucking dead!”

  “So he’s even less likely to hurt you, don’t you think.”

  “Bugs. He’s riddled with death, bacteria…”

  “You only need to worry about shit like that when a body’s infested or putrid. He ain’t going to hurt you now.”

  Mick ventured around the wardrobe, arms folded tightly into his chest. “I need a drink.”

  “Not here, mate. They’ll–”

  “I
know, I know! I was only saying, that’s all.” He stepped closer, top lip curling with revulsion. “Why on earth would you want to…”

  Eddie put his hands in his jeans pockets and stared almost with sadness at Deacon’s corpse. What puzzled him was this: “If he was under the amount of pressure you said he was, why–”

  “Why would he be thinking about sex?”

  “You’d be thinking about running, you might even be thinking about turning yourself in, maybe going to church if you were that way inclined–”

  “Or killing yourself.”

  Eddie looked at Mick. “But how could you get horny enough to do it this way with everything going on around you? You’d drink yourself under and load your system with sleeping pills. I can’t imagine that anyone with so few happy choices would be able to think erotically at all.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, yeah it does, actually. I wanted to do it.”

  “I know.” And then Mick came nearer, was brave enough to bend at the waist and look at Deacon a little more closely. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “He was murdered. But if he was, they did a good job. I mean, on the face of it, it’s a suicide.”

  “The timing alone suggests it’s not.”

  “You and me know that. But would the police?”

  “If they read my newspaper they will,” he smiled. “Anyway, I ask again; does it matter?”

  “Depends,” Eddie swallowed, “whether you care about the man-made justice system or whether you simply care about natural justice.”

  “Yeah, he got what was coming to him.”

  Eddie didn’t look up for a response. “And what about the murderer? He’s now out there ordering himself a latte and a digestive at one of these trendy late-night coffee houses. Is that right?”

  “Two-faced git. If we’d been here two hours ago, you would now be the man ordering a latte.”