He cited being a poor father, was this Arthur’s father? It would be eerily poignant if he had killed his own son, then his father. Was Jane Doe his mother? Was Arthur purging his entire family and expecting me to do the same to him?
I shuddered with excitement at the thought.
Shame washed over me with the acceptance that I wanted to kill Arthur. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a killer but was almost being baited into being one. I felt the world expanding around me like my dreams, a sudden loss of air and fumbled helplessly for my watch. I quickly pressed the button to reveal the photo of my mother and felt a wave of calm soothe my soul. This hunt was dangerous. I felt myself being twisted, warped, and ashamed like Mr Hardiman.
The name didn’t match though. Arthur Hardiman? Did he change his name to Henderson?
Did the father change his name out of shame for his own spawn or out of shame for his past?
Too many questions right now and I needed a quiet place to ponder. I allowed forensics to do their bidding and headed back outside to the car. I felt trapped, battling new emotions, and desires to inflict pain on Arthur. The sound of my brogues against the marble hallway reminded me of the echo in the police station when I walked past the statue. Justice and equality. Those two words kept me mildly sane.
It was still quite early, but I needed some quiet time. I slid into the car and had a desire to drive straight home. I didn’t care if the Chief disciplined me for going AWOL. I needed some peace. My mind full of possibilities and questions, no real answers. I placed my hands on the steering wheel and lay my head against my wrists, exhaling loudly.
Slight raindrops started to crash on the windscreen. I closed my eyes and took in the sound of the dewdrops. The purity of the rain, the peacefulness, the silence in my mind…
A crash of thunder jolted me awake. Talk about sleeping on the job. The rain was torrential and must have shielded me from any wandering colleagues going in and out of the crime scene. I could barely see out the car. I looked at my watch and to my surprise; four hours had passed in what felt like mere seconds.
Six missed calls, two from the Chief, and a text from Michael who had clearly folded at trying to call me. His text was a simple offer for a beer later as he wanted to chat about the case I’d left him. I needed one about now actually. I responded to his text to say I would meet him at the usual spot later.
Despite everything I had seen, I was more concerned about meeting with Arianna the next day. She needed to talk to me and there was pain in our voices as we spoke. A mutual love. Conflict filled my brain; my desire to want to see Arianna now, combined with the desire to find Arthur and put a stop to these killings merged my heart into chaos. Maybe something as simple as a beer would help.
Our local, just a five-minute walk from my house was the destination. I walked there in the rain, wise enough not to drive as I knew Michael was prone to plying me with one too many. As I walked down the pavement, splashes from the puddles started running up the leg of my trousers. I looked up at the sign of the bar: The Queen’s Head. It was swaying in the wind, with droplets forming all around it. It wasn’t much to look at and was fairly seedy, but it was close to home and a convenient drinking hole.
The barmaid, Kirsty, was always a welcoming sight. She wore red lipstick, tight tops, and her ever-so-pretty face religiously welcomed the patrons. A number of months after Arianna had left; we had a little fling after closing time. A rather rough individual was getting a bit too close despite repeated protests and I drunkenly defended her honour, flashed my badge, swung my fists, and forced the ruffian to leave.
I wasn’t usually prone to fighting and wasn’t even a violent person, but I was in a dark place, plagued by Arthur’s taunts, Arianna’s departure, and a desire to get pissed beyond mortal contention. With a slightly bruised fist to my assailant’s ego, I turned back to my drink and raised a glass to Kirsty.
I presumed her desire to have me was driven by the fact that I’d always treated her with respect. I never once leered over her, though did fire a sly compliment her way a few times. We had arguably become good companions, with her occasionally stopping off after her shift and sharing a drink with me. There was nothing much to it other than that one evening.
After getting rid of the scumbag, I was the only one left in the bar. My proverbial white charger primed and ready outside, I gallantly raised myself from the barstool I had frequented most of the night. Kirsty followed me to the door and thanked me. Only, her thanks translated into a click that killed the silence. She locked the door. Before I could react, her wanting eyes and a passionate kiss powered my drunken libido. It was nothing short of an animalistic coupling, fuelled by whisky; no words were spoken.
I ran my hands over her tight body, sat her on the pool table and spread her legs. As anticipated, she wasn’t wearing anything under her skirt, so I quickly used my fingers and tongue over her pretty little sex. Minutes later, sheer sexual frustration followed, and we became one. It was the most aggressive sex I’d ever had; egged on with the guttural moans she released as I drove into her. It was quick and frantic and over as fast as it had started.
I did stop drinking there for a short while, almost out of embarrassment for the mess left on the pool table. Truthfully, my heart ached as I wasn’t over Arianna and didn’t particularly want Kirsty to get the wrong end of the stick, or pool cue as it may be. I bumped into her a number of weeks after our tryst and she said she was disappointed I hadn’t been back and wondered whether it was her fault.
With a pang of guilt at her beating herself up, I lied, denying there was an issue and that I was working a case that had swamped my time, committing that I’d pop in again soon. She hugged me, thanking me for that evening once again, and that if it made me feel any better, we could forget it even happened. An element of relief swept over me, as some things were better left forgotten.
It was an incredibly erotic night with Kirsty, but the guilt of it was intensified as a mere few days after the frantic tryst with my tempting barmaid, Arianna came to the house to pick up some items she left behind. I hadn’t seen her in about seven months or so and in a most unusual show of charm, I said I still loved her. A long story short, we ended up making love, passionately and without protection. We weren’t together when my dalliance with Kirsty happened, but my feelings for my wife were still so powerful that it made me feel like I was cheating. Perhaps not cheating in the traditional sense but cheating on my own heart. Cheating on what I truly wanted.
Alas, I made a promise to go back to the bar and I swanned in, shaking off excess rain, scanning the room in the process. It wasn’t particularly busy that night; a few patrons playing on the pool table raised a sly smirk from my face, thinking back to before.
“Hey, handsome, you’re back,” Kirsty exclaimed before pouring my usual. She hit me with a double and said it was on the house for her favourite customer. I raised the glass to her, and she gave me a sexy wink with her red lipstick in tow.
“Well, now my feelings are hurt, Kirsty. What makes him so special?” said Michael, who was propped up on the bar stool next to my usual spot.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll take it off the next twenty you give me when you top up?” she retorted, causing Michael to sheepishly laugh.
“I wasn’t expecting to hit the strong stuff early, I only came in for a beer,” I jested to the seductive barmaid. She responded by skilfully taking the cap off a bottle and sliding it in place next to my glass.
“Thank you, Kirsty.” I placed money on the bar to cover it. She left it there, ignoring it as though I was welcomed to another freebie.
“So, what makes you need a drink so much today, Michael?”
Like an excited child, he took a swig of his drink and started to talk about the file I had left about Richard Weston, the mechanic who had been killed. He talked about how he followed the tip off, jumped down the proverbial rabbit hole, and started to question anyone and everyone connected to the victim.
M
ichael said he followed the coaching I had provided about baiting techniques in interview, he had managed to close out the case in half a day. He said one of the apprentices he had taken in was the one to commit the crime. He had turned up the heat and played on the murderer’s emotions by building up how great a man Mr Weston was, taking in all these kids off the street, and how it would take a special kind of bastard to want to hurt him.
Michael said he let on that it was like a wounded dog being nursed back to health by a vet and then proceeding to bite and maim them. He said that as he watched the disappointment and anger building up in the killer’s face, he kept pushing and pushing until he managed to break him and get a defeated confession.
“I couldn’t do it without you, mate. I don’t know how you can piece things together so quickly and effortlessly. You’ve got a rare talent my friend!” He raised his glass.
“I’ve been promised the option to fast-track to detective for the way I closed that case, Sebastian. So, tonight is almost a celebratory drink, as much as a thank you.”
“Does that make us even?” I jested, referring to the fact he saved my life from Arthur in the warehouse.
“It’ll take more than THAT to make us even! How is your case coming along?”
“It isn’t… it’s the most challenging, infuriating, and exhausting case I have ever worked on.”
I knocked back the double whisky I had been given, admitting defeat. A few bursts of laughter from around the room echoed in my head as I tilted my head back. Patrons merely having a good time and sharing jokes, in a brief element of madness, I knocked the glass back onto the bar loudly, with a short scream. “Shut up!”
The room fell silent. People looked in my direction, before moving back to a whisper, and sound filled the room again.
“Sebastian,” Michael said empathetically, sensing my own defeatism.
“Sorry, this is just getting to me. I’m not seeing sense. This case has slowly become my life. I’ve lost my wife and I seem to be losing my mind. Chin chin!”
I chugged the beer and before long, Kirsty had topped up my whisky glass. She put her hand on mine and smiled. Her hand was so soft. How I longed for it to be my wife.
“What is eating at you so much with the case though, mate?”
“Him. Arthur. That scumbag mutilates his own son, rapes his own flesh and blood in front of the mother–”
Kirsty yanked her hand away from mine, struggling to listen to what happened to little Sebastian. She went back to tending the bar and serving the men at the other end by the pool table.
“Then kills an older woman and older man, who I presume symbolise a mother and father. It doesn’t make sense. The old man had written some cryptic entries in his journal as if forced to do it in front of Arthur. The woman? I can’t see the motive or whether they are connected. It feels like they are, mate, but it’s nothing more than fucking speculation at this point.”
I downed the new glass, slammed it on the bar, and motioned for Kirsty to top it up by slapping another twenty on the bar.
“Every crime scene is like a picture or a movie that I have to reverse engineer to find the hidden meanings. Flowers, ‘X’s, riddles. This bastard is fucking with my mind and what kills me is that I know I can figure this out. I know I can find this motherfucker. But Michael, what’s worse is I want to see him burn. I want to see him bleed.”
Michael looked on in astonishment, with a few earwigging customers sitting nearby in darkened booths adjusting their line of sight to my general direction. Some faces looked familiar, people I clearly shared the bar with on previous days without so much as taking in their names or faces.
“You’ve got to be careful, mate. It’s just another case and you know what happens when you get too invested.”
I barked at Michael for generalising and comparing it so much.
“Just another case!? What do you know? Marching up and down the beat, only getting a whiff of the big time because I help you!”
I felt guilty at the admission, even if it was the truth. Michael was clearly hurt at the outburst.
“Michael, I’m sorry. That was totally out of line. As you can see, it’s getting to me. The images etched in to my brain aren’t going anywhere. He’s a sick fucker and I would honestly love to see that c-word burn.”
I dared not to utter the c-bomb; even though my wife and I weren’t together, I knew she hated it.
“Listen, Sebastian. I know this means a lot to you. Don’t worry about it. No offence taken. I’ll help you. If I make detective, we’ll hunt this guy together.”
I smiled at the fact that I clearly had a good friend, even if I was an extreme introvert and didn’t particularly make much effort. Michael was a good guy. My barking at him probably made him feel inadequate with my scathing testimony about his abilities, or lack thereof.
“You’ve got something in you, mate. You do. You’ll easily make detective. What I said earlier was out of frustration, I truly do apologise.”
Kirsty came over with a top up.
“From the gentleman in the booth! You’re popular tonight, sugar!”
I turned over my shoulder. It was the man that helped fix my car that morning. I raised my glass in his direction with a smile and asked Kirsty to reciprocate, and that his next one was on me, reciting the story of how he’d sorted my car.
“Listen, Michael…”
He listened intently. I told him how I was running on empty; physically and mentally exhausted. I told him from a sheer position of weakness and slight drunkenness, that I was having anxiety attacks and didn’t know what to do. I referred to only feeling that helpless when I was a child and some of the time in the orphanage.
He sat and listened intently, realising he was learning a lot of new information about me. Kirsty looked on almost in sadness and pity; like she wanted to hop over the bar and embrace me. I felt vulnerable enough where I would have allowed it.
Michael patiently listened to me talk and then told me that after his time in the armed forces, he went through phases just like it. He said that having witnessed some of his friends take a bullet or get blown up; he felt he had experienced his fair share of pain. He told me specifically of a younger gentleman who had signed up like a typical patriot, wanting to fight for his country. He said the younger man, whom he and the squad referred to as ‘Buck,’ as in young buck, was a constant reminder of the youthful enthusiasm they all shared.
They were on a tour in Afghanistan when they were tasked with defending a small village from assailants who were raiding and pillaging to try and draw out allied forces. Michael said that Buck would keep the entire camp laughing and joking by reciting silly anecdotes and how he intended to propose to his high school sweetheart on his return. By this point, Kirsty was listening as intently as I was, perched over the bar with her head in her hands, flickering the occasional glance at me. Michael talked about how Buck kept them all grounded, despite everything going on, and the entire squad felt primed and ready to take on the world.
One night on watch, Buck confided in Michael, telling him why he joined the forces. Buck, realising that his lesser redeeming qualities might be enough to put off a good woman, felt that signing up would teach him some of the basics in life. I quizzed what sort of basics Buck meant and Michael told me he was always prone for being quite tardy, and ill-prepared, even turning up for a drill with his shoes on the wrong feet once.
Michael couldn’t hold back his laughter as he thought of Buck marching up and down the camp with his shoes on the wrong way and how it caused a slight limp in his walk. The drill sergeant refused to let him change them over as a punishment. It was nice to see Michael laugh, and forget about some of the external frustrations we were having.
Buck continued to confide in Michael that night, saying he had just written a letter and was going to send it in the morning to his sweetheart but alluded to not being too strong with words and needing some help. Michael could still remember most of what Buck told him. He r
ecited most of the young man’s letter to us at the bar. It was beautifully simple. A commitment of love, longing, desire, and hope. It made me think of Arianna.
Before he had a chance to finish reciting the letter to Kirsty and me, Michael welled up. An incomplete letter, a message of hope diminished in a second. Buck was reading the letter to Michael when a bullet hit him in the neck. Michael struggled to continue but said that Buck’s last words were to have him promise to deliver the letter before dying in his arms.
He said his own panic attacks started to happen after he left the forces and delivered that letter. He said he would often get choked up and start to feel like the world was caving in, that he couldn’t breathe. I felt transfixed to Michael as his symptoms were similar, but not exactly the same as mine.
Michael cited that no matter how much good was in the world, or how many good people; there was always a dream shattered by another person’s unjust action. How apt, and how true he was with that statement, as I thought back to my childhood and the loss of my parents.
We shared a bond that night. I felt closer to Michael, and to Kirsty by proxy. I opened up about my earlier anxiety attack and that it was Arianna’s phone call that brought me crashing back to earth with a sense of calm. Kirsty tried to listen in on occasion whilst serving other people; and almost sounded disappointed when I told them that my wife and I had agreed to meet. Whatever faint hope she had of us rekindling our meaningless tryst was shattered by my words.
We sunk a few more whiskies and kept the conversation flowing. I’d never known me to be so free in conversation, but the anchor on my feelings was being lifted. The weight removed. It felt good to finally talk. Time was flying, drinks were flowing, and the night grew quieter as patrons left. The man from the booth behind me stood up, tapping me on the shoulder as he left and thanked me for reciprocating with the drink. I thanked him again for fixing the car and went back to sharing stories with Michael.
Michael was entirely positive about meeting Arianna, going so far as to bring it back up.
Dancing With Devils Page 9