Corpse Road

by David J Gatward

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ Harry asked.

  For a moment, Liz had said nothing, her face serious, lips tight.

  ‘Liz?’

  She had turned to him then, no less serious. ‘This is where we go back to your whole “become the prey” thing . . .’

  After Liz had explained her idea, Harry had decided that if anyone was going to do it, then it was going to be him. It wasn’t dangerous as such, but he still didn’t want Liz being responsible for trying to get a bite from a murderer.

  Having helped Harry download Facebook onto his phone, Liz had then given him a quick How-To on the ins and outs of social media etiquette, as well as the log-in details she’d set up. Then she had headed off home, leaving Harry not exactly sure what it was he was doing, but intrigued as to whether it would be effective. And everything was worth trying, so he’d figured he’d give it a go.

  So, back in his flat, with dinner eaten, Harry had started to search through the wild camping group that Kirsty had been involved with. He’d quickly grown bored of it, baffled by how people could seemingly spend hours on something like this, just commenting on other people’s comments and photos. No, it wasn’t comments, was it? It was their status and postings, or something.

  Dear God . . .

  Harry considered what it was he was trying to do. That being, to see if he could find someone in the group who had given Kirsty the idea of camping in Swaledale. As far as he was concerned, the chances were slim, but it was better than doing nothing. And if that person was indeed the murderer, then it was worth a try.

  Liz had given him a few pointers, questions to ask others, things to say, but so far he’d gotten nowhere. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He’d learned a fair amount about wood-burning camping stoves, witnessed a few arguments about land access between people who had obviously never met, and even taken part in a discussion about the best things to cook in a Dutch oven. But so far, he was no further on than when he’d started.

  Harry switched his phone off and dropped it onto the coffee table in front of him. It landed next to the envelope of photos which had been pushed through his letterbox the day before, he assumed by the two men Liz had told him about.

  Reaching for the envelope, Harry slipped the photos out once again and shuffled through them. Each one was of his brother, Ben, in prison, oblivious to this invasion of his privacy. Harry assumed the photos had been taken on a phone smuggled into the prison. It didn’t take much, what with bent guards and now the rise in the use of drones to drop packages over prison walls.

  Harry grabbed his phone again and hit a number he’d not called in a while. It went through to voicemail, which wasn’t a surprise, considering it was getting on to late evening. Harry left a message and hoped that Alice Firbank, the detective superintendent who had sent him up north from Bristol in the first place, would call him back as soon as she listened to it.

  Yawning, but still pretty wired, Harry decided against going to bed quite yet. His brain needed time to process, and sometimes the best way to allow it to do that was to watch some bollocks on the television and to have a mug of tea. So that’s exactly what he did, making himself a brew then sitting down to watch, of all things, the darts.

  Harry wasn’t sure when he’d dropped off, only that the darts had been replaced by two overly tanned and enthusiastic men trying to convince him to buy a piece of fitness equipment, which appeared to comprise of little more than some elastic straps to attach to the back of an office chair, and that the reason he had woken up at all was because his phone was ringing.

  Groggy from dropping off, Harry grabbed his phone and tried to pull himself together enough to talk to his superior officer, impressed that she had called him back, despite the hour. But the voice that came back to him was Matt’s.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yes, what?’ Harry replied. ‘I mean, what is it, Detective Constable? I’m assuming you know what time it is?’

  ‘I think we’ve found Daryl,’ Matt said.

  Harry woke up as if someone had just set his feet on fire. ‘Really? Where? Has he been brought in for questioning?’

  There was a brief pause before Matt replied and it was enough to worry Harry.

  ‘What is it, Matt? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Well, we won’t know it’s him until the fire’s out,’ Matt said.

  ‘What? What fire? What are you on about?’

  ‘His car was found half an hour ago,’ Matt explained. ‘Someone had set it on fire. And it looks like Daryl is still inside.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  By the time Harry arrived, whatever fire had been burning was long ago dead. As was the person sat in the driver’s seat of the car. Daryl, he assumed, though it was pretty difficult to tell, now that he was the crispy colour of a joint of meat after a day or so in a hot oven.

  Harry had headed over in his own vehicle this time, instead of being picked up by one of the team, and was rather happy with the cheap little 4x4 he’d purchased a few days ago from Mike the mechanic. It wasn’t exactly luxurious, but it did the job, and that was fine by him. Posh, expensive cars made him feel uncomfortable.

  The scene before him was one of quiet resolve, the fire engine now no longer in use, the fire itself fully out, but the crew still working to clear things up and make sure the road was okay.

  The car, which was now little more than a burned shell, a skeletal beast showing metal ribs and the roasted remains of its insides, was parked up in a layby. The traffic officers who had been first on the scene had shut off half of the road and were standing out in the middle of it directing any drivers heading by. Not that there were many so late in the night, which was now, Harry realised, early morning. Harry saw as well that the Scene of Crime team was standing by, their vehicles parked a bit further up in the same layby. There was no way they would be able to get access to the vehicle until it was safe enough to do so. Harry could hear metal still popping with heat as it cooled, so it would be a while yet.

  Climbing out of his vehicle, Harry strode over to stand with Matt, who had given him a rather awkward wave from behind the cordon tape now surrounding the scene. The air was still thick, not just with the smoke from the car fire, but the smell of it. There were notes of burned rubber and scorched grass and mud, and petrol. But behind all of that, the scent that really added the tang of horror to the scene was that of a barbeque put out by the rain, of charred meat dampened by water and still steaming. And it was.

  ‘So where am I, exactly?’ Harry asked, trying to ignore the smell.

  ‘Hurgill Road,’ Matt said. ‘Makes its way over from Richmond and down on into Swaledale.’

  ‘Swaledale?’ Harry said. ‘Really?’

  ‘You’re thinking the same, then?’ Matt said.

  ‘Bit of a coincidence,’ Harry said, but deep down he thought that was really all that it was. ‘And we think it’s Daryl?’

  Matt nodded over at the car. ‘The number plate checks out. It’s definitely his. And seeing as he buggered off in it last Friday, I can’t see it being anyone else.’

  ‘So it’s definitely him?’ Harry asked. ‘We’re sure about that?’

  Matt didn’t answer directly. Instead, he led Harry under the cordon tape and over towards the vehicle. Up close, the heat was still noticeable and the reek of what had taken place was even stronger.

  ‘It looks like he was strapped to his seat,’ Matt said, pointing through the driver’s door with the bright beam from a small but surprisingly powerful torch. On the ground in front of the door lay the remains of what had once been its window, now shattered by the heat, a carpet of scattered diamonds, stars fallen from the black sky above.

  Harry leaned in for a closer look and at first couldn’t see anything, then his eye caught the glint of metal around the corpse in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Someone chained him in?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Matt replied. ‘Which pretty much tells us he was alive when, well, you know.’

 
; Yeah, Harry did know, and he immediately locked down his mind, keeping it from painting a lurid picture of what had happened to poor Daryl.

  Some of the SOC folk have had a nosy and they reckon it wasn’t just chains, either,’ Matt added.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Look at the way the body is,’ said Matt, pointing at the horrifying remains, teeth bared in a death throes grimace of absolute terror and agony. ‘See how it’s really pulled back in the seat? And the head, that’s all pulled back as well, like it was tied to the headrest, but there’s no chains there, you see?’

  ‘So, what are you saying?’

  Matt breathed long and slow, a sigh of disgust at what humans could do to each other. ‘One of them told me that they think it was probably Gorilla tape or something. The chains would’ve held him to the seat, no doubt about that, but they think that he was strapped in with tape as well, around his body, around his head. To stop him wriggling about, like.’

  ‘Wriggling about?’ Harry said, repeating Matt’s choice of words. ‘Why the hell would someone want to stop him doing that? It’s not exactly like he’s going to do anything else, chained into his own car and smelling the petrol that he probably knew was about to be lit!’

  Matt allowed the beam of the torch to move up the body to the head. ‘So that whoever did this could do that,’ he said, then his voice fell almost to a whisper. ‘Look at his forehead, boss.’

  It took a moment for Harry’s eyes to actually see what Matt was referring to, but when he did, his eyes widened in shock.

  ‘Shitting Hell . . .’

  Harry was staring at scratch marks carved into the charred forehead of what he assumed to be the body of the man he had spoken to only a couple of days before. He couldn’t make out what they were, exactly, but they were deep and clear and he dared not think about the pain that Daryl would have felt as they’d been cut and chiselled into him.

  ‘Yeah,’ Matt said. ‘That. Pretty awful, right? I mean, who the hell does that? And why, boss?’

  ‘Any idea what they are, exactly?’ Harry asked. ‘I think I can make out a letter or two. Is that a C on the left side?’

  ‘Can’t work out what it says, if anything at all,’ Matt answered. ‘But it does look like it could be a word or a name. Frankly, I’m still just having trouble dealing with the fact that it was done at all.’

  Harry stepped back to try and take it all in. ‘So, if it is Daryl, Kirsty’s husband,’ Harry said, ‘and I think we can pretty much assume that it is, then odds are that whoever did this has to be the same person who killed Kirsty.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Matt said. ‘Why, though? That’s what’s getting me right now. Why would they do what they did to Kirsty and then do this to her husband? What the hell are we dealing with here? And just what kind of enemies had they made to end up like this? This is Wensleydale, for God’s sake! This kind of shit belongs in Mexico with those mentalist drug cartels, not here!’

  There was nothing that Harry could say to make any of it better. They had another corpse, someone killed in a truly horrifying fashion, and they were still no closer to finding who was responsible for Kirsty’s death.

  Harry moved away from the grisly scene and headed back under the cordon tape and over to his vehicle. He stared out over the view in front of him. To his right, he saw the lights of Richmond flickering and blinking in the darkness like the distant lamps of ships on a black sea. To his right, the dale was darker, stretching off towards the low, hulking shapes of the Swaledale fells, which stood as silent watchers to the lives which came and went at their feet.

  ‘What time is it?’ Harry asked as Matt came to stand at his side.

  ‘Getting on for four,’ Matt answered. ‘And dark, too, if you don’t mind me saying. Too dark. Sun’ll be coming up soon. Needs to hurry up.’

  ‘You okay here?’

  ‘Of course,’ Matt said. ‘You heading off?’

  ‘Not exactly, no,’ Harry said. ‘Thought I’d take a drive down to Swaledale, do some thinking, have a mooch around Gunnerside.’

  ‘Well, if you go up onto the fells again, you make sure you’ve a torch with you and a fully charged phone. I don’t want to be having you snapping an ankle then dying of exposure.’

  ‘The torch on my phone will have to do,’ Harry said.

  ‘Well, it won’t, not if I’ve got anything to say about it,’ Matt said, then held out his hand. ‘Here, take this.’

  Harry saw that Matt was handing him his small torch.

  ‘Sure you don’t need it?’

  Matt shook his head. ‘Two is one, one is none, if you know what I mean.’

  Harry did, thanks to his old Paratrooper days. ‘You’ve a spare, then?’

  Matt gave a nod. ‘Three is better, so I’ve another in my jacket and one in the car.’

  Harry took the torch. ‘How did yesterday go, by the way?’

  ‘We knocked on doors, learned bugger all,’ Matt said. ‘No one saw anything, and no one’s been shot at with those little plastic balls, either.’

  ‘What about that Mr Harker you mentioned?’ Harry asked. ‘Gary’s story check out?’

  Matt gave a nod. ‘Yeah, all good. Lovely old bloke, too. Insisted on making us a pot of tea and some sandwiches. By the end of it, he’d managed to persuade us to take his rubbish out, get his television tuned in properly, and have a go at fixing the clock in his lounge!’

  Harry smiled briefly, but his eyes were still on the terrible visage of Daryl, welded to his car by the searing heat which had killed him, and the smile faded. ‘And you can fix clocks, can you?’

  ‘I say fix, but it just needed winding up, is all,’ Matt said. ‘Turns out it’s the only clock the old lad has in the house, and he’s just a bit forgetful and doesn’t always remember to wind it up. It was running a few hours fast. Easy to sort out.’

  Harry opened the door to his car. ‘Give my regards to the surgeon and pathologist, won’t you?’

  Then he was gone, pulling away from the nightmare of Daryl’s last moments, and heading back towards the place where the dead man’s wife had hers.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Ultimate Gentleman, now washed clean of the acts he had committed just over an hour ago, was once again bathing in the glory of what he was doing.

  You rock!

  Served that Chad right!

  Ha! The Stacy and the Chad together in Hell! Burn, bitches!

  The adoration was intoxicating, and he was drinking it in as quickly as he could, chugging it down like he was shotgunning a can of beer.

  You carved him real good, Man!

  Smell that Chad meat BBQ!

  I love the smell of Chad in the morning!

  As the praise kept on coming, and the views of his video and the photos he’d posted continued to climb, he knew then that what he was doing was good work indeed. No, it was better than good work. It was the best work. Important. Vital.

  He stood up and stretched, his dressing gown sticking just a little to his still-damp body. He could still smell the faint hint of petrol on his skin, hiding behind the masculine scent from the shower gel he’d used to scrub himself clean, but he didn’t really mind. If anything, he liked it, because it reminded him of what he’d done, confirmed his greatness.

  He sat back down and glanced once again at his computer screen.

  We’re gonna get what’s owed us because of you, man!

  Wish I’d been there to hear that Chad scream!

  Incel Rebellion is NOW!

  They were right, he realised. They were all going to get what was owed to them and, yes, the rebellion was now! Not just because of him, but because of the others, his brothers before him, who had shown him the way. They had stood up and stood out, burned hot, and shown the world—humanity itself—that the status quo just wasn’t fair. It needed to change. It would change. And from here on in, he was going to tell them how. He would show them the way.

  Sitting down again, the Ultimate Gentlemen opene
d a word file and started to read. At the last count, it had been closing in on ten thousand words. But he had a lot to say and it all needed to be said. This was his everything, his life’s work, his reason for existing at all, put down in writing.

  His manifesto!

  His Sermon on the Mount!

  It was time! He knew that, now. Time to share his vision with the world, because his work had only just begun, and he was, right there and then, raising an army!

  As he loaded up the file, ready to send it to his followers, the Ultimate Gentleman had never in his entire life felt so happy. All he needed now, was one more Stacy to really get this party started. And boy, did he have the sweetest of fruits to go and pick . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Having driven away from the crime scene, and on down the road into Swaledale, the world around him a slumbering place of shadow and night, Harry had found himself to be considerably more tired than he’d realised. Thinking he could just push on through, he’d kept going, only to find his vision starting to get shaky. So, with the road ahead of him becoming dangerously blurred, he pulled over as soon as he could, kicked his seat back so that he could stretch his legs, and then lay the back down so that he could properly rest. He’d then reached up to switch off the engine, deciding at the last minute to leave it running, so that the heater could keep him nice and toasty. And lying there in the dark, Harry’s eyes fell closed all too easily, and he slipped quietly into a dreamless sleep.

  When he woke, the first thing Harry saw was the huge face of a cow staring at him over the wall to the side of where he had parked up. The big brown eyes of the beast seemed to be sizing him up, analysing him.

  Harry gave the creature a wave.

  ‘Morning!’ he said, sitting up. ‘Don’t suppose you’d be able to rustle me up a decent mug of coffee, would you?’

  The cow stared back, its eyes still on Harry, who was pretty sure that so far it hadn’t even blinked.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ Harry said, and opened his door to let out the foul, stale air from inside the car, and get himself a lungful or two of the considerably sweeter-smelling stuff outside.