He turns his head-torch on.
The copse is comprised of pine trees and that’s not ideal for his purpose but near to the middle in the densest part he finds a good one with nice thick branches. He puts Muncy up against the tree half-expecting him to wake up at any moment and the fight to start all over again.
Rutter throws the rope over a branch fifteen or twenty feet up and it takes three four five attempts to get it right but he manages it. He loops it and pulls it tight so it’s plumb.
Double ties it. Jerks it.
The other end he loops and ties in a slipknot and then he puts it over Ray Muncy’s head and then he stands back and pulls on the rope. He loops the rope around his good shoulder and under his armpit and walks backwards with it. He digs his feet into the soil and heaves and hoists. His shoulder screams but he takes a short intake of breath and then another and he jerks at the rope and the dead weight jerks with it. Ray Muncy slowly rises. His feet leave the ground. He is a marionette now just like his daughter was when she was down that drain. Like her he hangs between two worlds; between ground and sky. Animation and decomposition.
Ray Muncy is rising. Look at him thinks Rutter. Daft bastard. Of course it was me you silly sod he says again.
His voice sounds strange. Faraway but yet loud in his ears.
Who’s the smug one now eh? he says. Try digging into my life now. You thought I was just some loser but who lost this game? You were right about one thing though Raymondo: I’m the one they call when they want a job done properly. Me – not you. Me.
He pulls and heaves until Muncy is hovering in his own space then he ties the rope around the trunk. Double triple quadruple ties it. Muncy hangs with a soppy look on his face. The rope creaking.
Rutter looks around the copse floor. He find a large stone and rolls it twenty feet through the dirt and then sets it below Muncy’s slowly turning body then he takes a branch and as he walks backwards he uses it to sweep away any markings or disturbances. It’ll remove Muncy’s imaginary footprints too he thinks but to hell with it. The world will never catch up with me.
He’s about to leave but then he stops. Puts his bag down. Opens it. Takes out his penknife. He walks back to the tree. To the shadow of Muncy’s swinging body. He leans in and starts scratching at the trunk.
The blade forms the crudest of calligraphy. It reduces the lines of the letters down to diagonals – like scars in flesh. He digs and drags and levers and scratches. Chips and gouges. He steps backs then leans in and scratches some more. Muncy creaking behind him. Above him. The torch lighting the way. He steps back again. Admires his handiwork. On the trunk it says:
WAS ME
I SORRY
I DID IT
11
MACE STRETCHES OUT across some chairs in an anteroom and sleeps for a couple of hours. His body is tired but the coffee fills his dreams with chattering spectres and images of flesh projected across screens. Voices drill through his sleep. Accents and faces and noises overlapping. Of policemen. Of TV presenters. Music. Women with their faces blurred obscured pixelated. Rubbed out. Dank cellars. Dark corners. Shadows. Smoke. Wide eyes. Hairless torsos.
There are glimpses of his own past too: nightclubs. Sweat. Strobe lights. The saunas. Eyes. Fingers. Torsos. Endless nights. Endless men.
When he wakes it is just beginning to get light.
Brindle is not there so he wanders the open-plan office. He passes between desks which are empty except for thin laptop computers and empty plastic cups and phone chargers. There are whiteboards with notes written on them in blue and green marker pen that make little sense and there are other informal areas containing sofas and low coffee tables.
Mace tries doors into cupboards or maybe corridors or unknown rooms but they are locked so he walks to the window and looks out across the industrial estate as the sun begins to rise. Its rays reflect and gleam off the squat metal buildings. His phone beeps. A message from Brindle.
I had to leave and you should too before the cleaners arrive at 6.30am. There is money on my desk for a taxi. Prepare your story asap. Don’t speak to anyone. The exclusive is yours. I’ll be in touch later. Best wishes, Detective James Brindle. PS – don’t touch anything. There are cameras.
Mace snorts at the observance of the traditional grammatical rules usually ignored by others in text messages. He snorts at Brindle’s sign-off too – as if he would not know who it was messaging him shortly before 6am. And he smiles at the detective’s terse tone. Admonishing him even from a distance.
He stands for a moment longer watching the sun spread across the flat dull tarmac and he thinks about Steve Rutter and Melanie Muncy and Roy Pinder and Larry Lister and how they all link up. Yet he knows there are so many details still beyond his reach. Things still obscured and hidden or buried – perhaps forever.
He thinks about the story – his story – and how of course it is too big for the Valley Mercury and really he is too big a writer for the paper too and maybe that was what Brindle had seen in him that first night in the Magnet at Christmas: unrealised potential. He knows if he handles it correctly he can still be the one to break the biggest Yorkshire crime story since the Ripper. He Roddy Mace will have the scoop the exclusive the definitive account– and even when it goes national which it will within hours maybe minutes of Rutter’s arrest – he will still have more information than any of the nationals could dream of; the full back story about other murders and other victims and the cinema and Rutter’s mother and corrupt police and girls and vice and money and the strange and haunted geography of the valley and its surrounding villages and hamlets. And that this could generate work for him for weeks months or years to come and if he plays it right this could be the making of him; this could be his ticket back out into the wider world – back to London maybe – back to national bylines and big features and travel and awards – back to – what exactly? Anxiety excess exhaustion emptiness alienation loveless fumbles in dark nightclubs to the banging pulse of bass drums and mournful mornings waking up sick and sticky in strange rooms in Zones 5 and 6 and the long journey home. The cold empty room. The noise of neighbours never seen heard muffled through damp walls. Abject emptiness.
No thinks Mace. Not that. Not that again. No.
No: a book is where he needs to be. He needs to put it all into a book. Just as he always threatened he would. He could become a proper writer finally. Here was the opportunity. The valley has given him something; that something he was seeking when he left London.
Only now though does he realise that after today things in the valley will never be the same again. When the first edition hits the stands that will be it: his words will bring the world to this murderous outpost. It will be forever tainted by Rutter. By the whole lot of them.
The sunlight stretches right across the forecourt of Cold Storage now. Mace sees movement down there. He sees a blackbird pecking and tearing at something. It stiffens its neck and levers backwards. A worm pulled tight in its beak.
He needs to get his notes in order. That’s what he needs to do. He needs to straighten up and get to the office. He needs to dig deeper than he has ever gone; to tell the story of Rutter and the cinema and Lovely Larry Lister and everything. He needs to get back to town. He needs to speak to Dennis Grogan. He needs to tell him to clear the decks and get ready. He needs to end this beginning and begin the ending. There are so many things to consider.
Mace turns to Brindle’s desk. He picks up two twenties that are as flat and clean as everything in Brindle’s flat clean life.
He calls for a taxi.
ONLY WHEN THEY near the farm does it occur to Roy Pinder that he does not know Skelton’s first name. He does not know where he lives or what else he does in his life beyond vice and violence and serving Mr Hood who he knows even less about. How he wonders did it come to this? After all these years he doesn’t know anything about him. This disparity – he now realises – is all part of the control game. Maybe he is not even called Skelton. Maybe it
is a nickname bestowed upon him because he looks like a skeleton. Hood he knows even less about. Hood is nothing more than a blurred black shape. An absent yet powerful presence. Hood is a feeling that Pinder gets. The feeling is fear.
And only when they near the Rutter farm does he finally regret his twenty-year involvement. The gatherings and the films and the men and the drink and the women and the money and – yes – the kids. Pinder regrets it not because his wife is being held somewhere and indeed may already be dead nor because he is being forced to commit murder or be murdered himself nor because his police career may well be over. Neither is it because some junkies and prostitutes and some tearaway kids who no one cared about anyway were snatched and used and filmed and killed and dumped.
No. He is full of regret because he knows the best days of his life are now behind him. Whatever happens after this will seem boring. Tame. And that will be hard to deal with.
How do you intend on doing this? asks Pinder.
Not me says Skelton. You.
I told you I can’t. I can’t do this.
Mr Hood says so. It has to be you. And it will be you.
What if I don’t?
If you don’t we have an associate in Russia. A middleman.
What does that mean?
He sells material to the oligarchs and the war generals. You can imagine how extreme they like it if they’re coming to us to get their entertainment.
Pinder looks at Skelton and swallows. He does not say anything.
Your wife will be kept alive for weeks says Skelton drily.
You wouldn’t.
I think you know we would.
I thought all that business was over says Pinder. I thought all that ended when the Odeon X closed.
Mr Hood has business interests all over. The X was just one tiny cog. It was a property move that’s all.
But why now? Why all this now?
You know why. Because of Larry Lister. Because of Rutter. And because of Brindle. The charges against Lister were going to stick and Muncy was the only one who would have talked. Brindle would have made sure of it. Rutter stopped us getting our hands dirty. That’s all.
When Pinder says nothing Skelton continues.
So now you take care of one pig man and I’ll worry about the other.
You’re going after Brindle?
Mr Hood doesn’t like worrying about the possibility of people meddling in his interests.
But if I do Rutter how do I know you’re not going to kill me straight afterwards?
You don’t says Skelton. You don’t know that.
I wouldn’t say a word if you just let her go. Let my wife go and then I’ll get rid of Rutter.
You’ll do it now says Skelton. Today. This morning. Come on Roy: you’ve had your fun all these years – surely you knew it would come at a price? All those specialist parties Roy. Imagine if the press got hold of some of the photos Mr Hood has in his collection? You balls deep in underage runaways. Well. It wouldn’t look good would it?
Pinder swallows again and says: but how will I do it?
Skelton sighs.
For fucksake.
He takes a gun from inside his jacket.
BRINDLE SHOWERS AND changes and then returns to Cold Storage. He worries that Mace will still be there; that he will have done something stupid like bought a four-pack and settled in. Turned the office into a rave.
Before he leaves he spends a full ten minutes touching light switches and checking the gas hob and opening and closing blinds and taking sips of water and locking and unlocking the front door. He feels that his rituals take on an even greater importance because today is a big day. The most important yet.
When he finally gets to work Mace has gone.
It is a little after 7am and they are both in their separate offices and at their desks: Brindle preparing the paperwork needed for another search team – frogmen this time – and an arrest warrant and then a list of everything else that might follow. Mace frantically trying to make sense of the reams of notes that he has taken. He makes a list of likely stories that he may need to write. Drip-feeding it out will be the best way – first via the Mercury and then maybe a news agency. There is way too much for a local weekly paper to handle. He could place this stuff with every broadsheet and tabloid and website in Britain and beyond.
He thinks of the salient points. Murders. Missing bodies. Pig farmers. Corrupt police. Showbiz. Pornography. And worse.
The thought of it all makes his head spin and knowing that Brindle will see this process through to its dire conclusion and that his role as reporter is to document it all somehow only makes it spin even faster.
Mace wants a drink. He wants to switch off his computer and leave the office and walk across town and back to his flat to climb under the duvet with a bottle or two and stay there forever. He wants to ignore it all; shirk responsibility. To forget everything. Ditch the story. Kill the opportunity.
Part of him wants to do this. The other part wants to write every detail; to craft sentences that tell of sordid desires and the diabolical acts of men. To dig deep and map it out; to chart Rutter’s life just as cartographers once charted this brutal land. Every bump and divot. Every dark corner and undulation. To put it all in order and start to make sense. He is scared of what else he might find.
At 11am in Cold Storage James Brindle walks over to the desk of Chief Superintendent Alan Tate. He has a file under his arm and his hair looks particularly well oiled. His shirt especially white. In the file are photos and maps. There are old case files and newspaper cuttings. There are pictures of Steve Rutter and Melanie Muncy and Margaret Faulks and Aggie Rutter and Larry Lister and Roy Pinder and pictures of the farm and the reservoir and the campsite and town and the Odeon X. There are print-outs from internet forums and ownership deeds and business accounts and files on Lister and reservoir plans and there are warrant forms. There is everything he needs to present the case for the arrest of Steven Rutter. Everything is ordered. It has a narrative now. It makes sense. Things have moved beyond the moors and down to the village and the town and then the city and ultimately all the way into the living rooms of the nation.
They talk for a moment. Tate gestures over to a conference area in the corner. Coffee table and sofas. Modern policing. They sit. Brindle talks. Papers are spread out before them. They wave away anyone who dares to approach them.
At 1.30pm Brindle stands and stretches and Chief Superintendent Alan Tate follows him. Tate clears his throat and then whistles. Heads look up from screens.
Stop what you’re doing he says. Stop everything.
THE LIME HAS worked. He can feel it burning his throat and nostrils even from under the double-wrapped tarp.
After hanging Ray Muncy Rutter went home and it was still dark so he relit the fire and he slept in front of it for a couple of hours and then when he awoke he wasn’t sure where he was for a few moments then he made some tea and drank the tea and ate some biscuits and some sardines and some nuts and then he made some more tea.
Rutter repacked his bag with more food. He has also packed more rope and a spare jumper and a torch and a paring knife and a machete. Another tarp. Water and his tobacco and his lighter.
It is not yet morning when he turns the dogs out. He opens up their pen and coaxes them into the yard where he has piled what was left of his meat supply from the freezers. The hanks and hocks and sides will defrost slowly. Will feed them for days. They’ll feast on the defrosting mound for days and then after that they’ll be on their own.
He goes to the chicken coop to turn the chickens out but the few remaining hens are now dead. Slack and lifeless.
Rutter reaches in and pulls them out one by one and then Rutter throws them on the pile of frozen old meat.
He fills a couple of buckets with water and stands them next to the meat pile and then he thinks about burning the house down – just filling it with petrol and throwing a match in and illuminating the night sky – but he doesn’t burn
the house down and instead he just turns and walks out the back way. Away from the house. Through the yard and past the barn and up the hill and away. He tells himself that he won’t look back and he doesn’t.
ALAN TATE WANTS to send the whole team but Brindle persuades him otherwise. He uses what he has as strategic capital. As leverage.
Are you sure about this? Tate asks.
Yes says Brindle though he no longer knows whether he is or not.
It won’t be like last time?
No. It won’t be like last time.
Alan Tate knows Brindle. He understands him. He knows the need for trust; knows that all those detectives working out of Cold Storage are different. They are the special ones. He knows that Brindle is negotiating the situation around to the way in which he wants to play it. He knows that Brindle is a strategist.
Because it seems like you’re unduly fixated he says.
Unduly fixated?
On this Steve Rutter.
I’m always unduly fixated on murderers says Brindle. You know that. I thought that’s why I’m here. In this department I mean.
We can’t afford another fuck-up. Not after last time.
I won’t fuck up.
And what about the girl’s family. They live close by don’t they?
Yes.
They’re going to need to be informed says Tate. We can’t just drop this on them. They’re going to need to be prepared. We all are. Are you sure these links to the other cases exist.
Yes.
You’re not just making leaps?
No says Brindle. I’m not just making leaps. I thought you knew me better than that. Knew my methodology.
I do says Tate. I do. Which is why when you messed up at Christmas –
That was a blip says Brindle. That mistake had to be made in order to get us to this point today. Sometimes that is the way it works. It’s a process. Sometimes when you go down a blind alley you turn left instead of right when you leave it. But you have to go down that blind alley to make that decision. I’ve trailed Rutter every moment since then. I’ve watched him and I’ve fleshed out the profile. The case is much stronger now. So much stronger.
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