by Emmy Ellis
Oliver had been on edge since visiting the warehouse corpse, waiting for the next murder to occur, wondering, every time the phone rang, whether that call would be the one to send them out to another location. The deceased—Thomas Brentworth, they’d discovered—was an openly gay man. Since he’d spoken to Oliver in the warehouse, it was like he’d vanished into the place spirits went when they were happy to be dead, nothing to remain around for, no urgency to see his killer—or killers—brought to justice.
There were no clues that anyone who shouldn’t have been there had occupied the warehouse—no hairs, no fibres, nothing. The only fingerprints found were those of the men who worked there during the day, each one with an airtight alibi.
“How long do you think it’ll be before the next one happens?” Oliver asked.
“I was just about to ask you the same question. And before you say it, I know you can’t find out. It was going to be a pondering query, not a direct order for you to tell me the answer, to know the answer.”
“It’s different now, though. The feelings I get, I mean. It’s like… I asked you that question to see what you thought, because ever since we found Thomas, I’ve felt off.”
“Off? You’ve seemed all right to me.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t something I could pinpoint at first. Was just mulling shit over, thinking about whether Thomas was going to make himself known again, and it struck me just now that it wouldn’t be long and we’d hear more news.”
“Struck you like what?”
“I can’t explain it. A knowledge. As if I’d been told to watch out for the call, except no one told me, no voice, nothing like that, just a feeling.”
“Sounds to me like things are changing with you. Like hearing the voices was only the start of your ability,” Langham said. “How do you feel about that? Make you uneasy?”
“Nah, it’s all right. What’s a few new senses added to the mix, eh? I may as well have the whole psychic deal, it can only help.”
“True. Anyway, goodnight.”
“Night.” He dropped his phone on the nightstand.
The water boiler in the airing cupboard beside his bedroom gurgled like a kettle, telling him it was just after midnight, the Economy 7 kicking into life. There’d be enough hot water soon for him to take a shower if sleep wasn’t forthcoming, or maybe he’d have a long soak in the bath. Something wasn’t right if he couldn’t sleep, and it didn’t take much working out to know what. A nagging thing in his head pestered, depositing information without a voice, without pictures, just dumping it so Oliver knew about it as if it had always been there.
Someone had been killed tonight, in a warehouse.
Except it wasn’t a warehouse. It looked like one, was as big as one—he couldn’t see it, but he knew it—and those bald men had been there, preparing a lamb for slaughter.
Why, though? It had to be a ritual of some sort, didn’t it? A cult, maybe?
He closed his eyes tighter in order for the info dump to reveal itself some more.
Nakedness. Baldness. Chains? No, not yet, they would come later. The sense came of the victim obeying despite hating every second of…of what?
Oliver strained to see into the darkness behind his eyelids. To get a glimpse of what was going on instead of this appalling blank canvas where the facts were dropped into his head as simply as a penny into a wishing fountain.
Nothing.
“Come on,” he whispered. “You can do this.”
Nothing.
“Fuck!”
He gritted his teeth, annoyed with himself for not knowing more, wishing for whatever had given him the information to give him something else, for him to be able to just seek and find, to know everything so he could stop—
How could he stop what had already happened?
“They left me. It’s over. All over now…”
Oliver snapped his eyes open, his body going rigid. He got out of bed, going to the window and drawing back the curtain to look at the street.
“You still there?” he whispered.
“Where?”
“Here, with me.”
“No. Yes. I’m with you but still there. I don’t like it, don’t understand it.”
“Where’s your body?”
“I’m…I don’t know. I can’t see.”
Oliver swallowed. Oh God, did they gouge out his eyes or something?
“No. I couldn’t see anything from the time I met that bloke in the club and he put a blindfold on me outside. Said it’d be fun.”
“Which club?”
“Samerson’s.”
Oliver knew it. A gay club in the heart of the city that had live shows every Friday and Saturday night, local bands and whatnot. It had grown in popularity, by all accounts.
“What time was that?” Oliver asked.
“Early evening. Can’t remember. I’d been drinking.”
“So you can’t see where you are now?”
“No. But it smells.”
“Of?”
“Rabbit hutches.”
“What?”
“Except there’s no piss or shit, or that ammonia smell.”
“Right.”
“What time is it?”
Oliver glanced back at the bedside table to the glowing green numbers of his alarm clock. “Twelve-fifteen.”
“Oh fuck. I was meant to be home by eleven. My mum, she’ll be worrying.”
“Where do you live?” Oliver prayed he’d get the information.
“Twenty-nine Marlborough Avenue.”
“And your name?”
Energy drained out of Oliver, and he knew he wouldn’t get an answer. He stared back out of the window and down into the street, stupidly thinking that now things had changed for him he might see a manifestation of the deceased beneath the fuzzy glow of the streetlamp, a mournful expression on the face of a blindfolded man who had gone out on the piss knowing he had to be in by eleven—and not making it.
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
Oliver sighed and walked towards the bed. Grabbed his phone. Dialled Langham. “There’s been another one.”
“Aww, shit. Where is he? It is a he, yes?”
“It’s a he, but I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t know where he is.”
“So is there a point to me getting dressed yet?”
“Oh yeah, there’s a point. He told me where he’s been, that he was blindfolded and taken somewhere that smells of rabbit hutches, and I know where he lives.”
* * * *
In the hour before dawn, after going to the station and looking at the CCTV street footage outside Samerson’s, knocking on the door of a woman who was about to be told her son might never be coming home didn’t sit right with Oliver. They stood on the concrete doorstep of one of seven terraced houses, council-owned or former council housing if their fifties uniformity was anything to go by. Oliver sighed, wondering how the fuck Langham was going to play this one. The deceased—and he was dead, they just hadn’t found him yet—was Jason Drum, twenty-one years old and fresh out of university where he’d studied to become a social worker. It struck Oliver as doubly sad that a man, so newly a man, too, had wanted to spend his life helping others and now wouldn’t be able to.
The city would be a sorrier place without him.
Langham knocked again, blowing a stream of air out through puckered lips, his cheeks ballooning. A light snapped on behind the glass in the door, and a shadowy figure approached, a wide man, Oliver reckoned, over six feet tall. A chain was drawn across, and the door opened to reveal a boxer-like visage that Oliver wouldn’t want to join in the ring.
“Yeah?” the man said, hair rumpled, his cheek bearing signs of his pillow, two severe material indents, macabre slashes on his skin.
“Mr Drum?” Langham asked.
“Yeah? Who are you?”
“I’m DI Langham, and this is my associate, Oliver Banks. May we come in?”
Langham produced his ID, and Mr Drum peered do
wn at it, his ruddy face paling. Oliver felt sorry for him. It would pale further before they were finished.
“Um, yeah, yeah. Is this about the call my wife made earlier?” Mr Drum opened the door wider and allowed them access.
“Call?” Langham asked, closing the door as Mr Drum made his way down a slim hallway and waited on the threshold of a room to their right.
“Yeah, Carol phoned in about our son. Meant to have been home by eleven, only he didn’t turn up.”
Oliver knew what kind of response Carol would have been given.
‘Your son is twenty-one, madam, out on the town, probably drunk and has forgotten the time. He’ll roll in after the clubs close, no doubt.’
‘But he’s never done this before. He’s always in on time.’
‘There’s a first time for everything, madam.’
‘But this isn’t like him. He wouldn’t do this!’
‘That’s what we’d all like to say about our children, but like I said—’
‘You don’t understand! I know something’s wrong.’
‘Nothing we can do about it until he’s been missing twenty-four to forty-eight hours, love, and even then, at his age, it’s doubtful something’s happened.’
Oliver and Langham followed Mr Drum into a well-kept living room, and Oliver got his first glimpse of who he thought might be Jason. Pictures of a young man in a mortar board adorned the mantel, and photos, younger versions ranging from a baby to a teenager, dotted the mint-green, flock-papered walls. He was loved, then.
“You might want to sit down, Mr Drum,” Langham said.
“Oh God… Fuck. Um…yeah. I’ll sit down. What…what’s happened? Is Jason all right? Had an accident?”
Oliver retreated to just inside the doorway.
Langham sat beside Mr Drum on the pale-blue sofa, perched on the edge ready, Oliver reckoned, to jump up again if the tidal wave of grief sent Mr Drum roaring.
“We have recent information that may indicate your son left the club with an unsavoury character.” Langham took a deep breath. “We don’t yet know where they went after they were last caught on CCTV getting into a Transit that headed out of the city towards the villages—Strangley, Lower Repton and the like—but we have units out there looking for a van of that description, or sightings of that van.”
“Oh God. Carol…she…she knew something was up, and I told her the same as that policeman—nothing to worry about, he’d forgotten the time, he’d be back soon, and I…shit, I was wrong, wasn’t I? She said…” A sob caught in his throat. “She said she had a feeling, early evening, it was, that something wasn’t right, and I…and I told her it was indigestion from the bloody hazelnuts we’d been eating. She gets that, you know, from hazelnuts. But she said it wasn’t the fucking nuts—swore at me just like that, she did—and sat there crying. I didn’t know what to do, what was up with her, and I didn’t…” He sobbed again. “Didn’t even offer her a bloody cuddle.”
Oliver swallowed. A thick, hard ball of emotion refused to go down, and he swallowed again, his throat suddenly dry, his heart beating too fast. This wasn’t how he’d wanted things to go, watching some poor bastard discover there was a strong possibility something rotten had happened to his kid.
“Was it one of them gay-bashers?” Mr Drum knuckled a tear that brimmed over his lower eyelid.
“We’re not sure yet, although there is indication he left with a male.” Langham relaxed a little as Mr Drum flopped back. “He was in Samerson’s, met the man there.”
“D’you think you’ll find him?” Hope widened Mr Drum’s eyes. “I mean, as far I know, Jason hasn’t, you know, done anything yet, just came out to us the other week, as a matter of fact. Wasn’t a surprise, because you know your own kid, don’t you, and he’d always been different and we didn’t hold it against him, we love him just the same, and I’m thinking what a bloody awful thing it would be if he’d found the courage to tell us and went to a gay club for the first time and then this happened and then…and then…”
His tumble of words tore at Oliver’s heart, and he turned away from the sight of Mr Drum floundering for something else to say while tears poured down his face and he folded his hands in his lap.
“We’re holding out hope that we find him, Mr Drum.” Langham stood. “We have a liaison officer on the way, someone who can sit with you, talk to you until we hear more news. Would you like us to wait down here while you tell your wife, or would you prefer us or the liaison to do it?”
“I’ll tell her.” Mr Drum pushed himself off the sofa and walked towards Oliver. “Yes, I’ll tell her. Best coming from me and not no stranger. No offence, like.”
He brushed past Oliver and went upstairs.
Oliver waited one second, two, three, then closed his eyes as the wail of a distraught mother ripped through the air.
Chapter Seven
Instead of stopping where they had the previous night, Dane found the road that led to the rear of the barn.
Dane parked up and glanced across at Adam. “You ready?”
“Yeah, but it feels odd being here in daylight.” Adam was wary of them being seen poking around. After all, he’d spotted the headlamps from their cottage, so someone from their street might see them now the sun was up. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the blindfolded man and had persuaded Dane to bring him here.
Adam opened the car door and got out, thinking that if they looked in the barn and lean-to and no one was about, they could go home. It gave him the creeps, the barn being in the middle of the field like it was, with nothing in it but hay bales. He closed the door and waited for Dane, who didn’t bother locking the car up.
“Come on.” Adam headed for the lean-to.
“No, the main barn first.”
Adam sighed and walked around the front, Dane at his rear. He was surprised at the door being ajar. “You go first.” He jerked his head.
“What, you worried they might still be here? The cars have gone …”
“I know, but… Just…just you go first.”
Dane sighed, pulled the door wider, and disappeared inside. Adam took a deep breath then followed. It was quite dark with only the light through the doorway coming in. Adam squinted to get his eyes accustomed to the change. It looked the same but felt different. He supposed it would, being daytime and everything, but a niggling feeling deep inside told him something was wrong. He couldn’t explain it, didn’t think he should try to when it would only get Dane’s back up, but he wanted to go home.
“There’s… I don’t like it in here.” He jammed a hand through his hair and tugged to try to take his mind off the eeriness.
“Fuck me, Adam. It’s just a barn.”
“Yeah, but it’s someone else’s property. We shouldn’t—”
“You were the one who wanted to bloody come here.”
Adam trailed him to the rear door he supposed led to the lean-to. He swallowed, trying to get rid of the idea that they should turn around and walk straight back out. Told himself he was only feeling this way because of what he’d seen here last night. That there was nothing to worry about, no one was going to turn up and find them. No one would ever know they’d been here.
“Oh God. Oh fuck!” Dane slapped his hands on his head and danced from foot to foot.
“What? What is it?” Adam’s heart raced, and his mind joined in, thoughts of what was inside the lean-to rushing through his head at top speed. Rats?
“Don’t come in here. Just…fuck, don’t come in here. Go away. I’ll deal with it.” Dane made to step back, his hand on the door ready to close it.
Adam ignored him, pushing in to stand beside Dane, the door swinging wide. “Oh Jesus…”
The hay bale was adorned with splashes and streaks of black, like thick slashes of spun sugar. The floor had similar decoration, except there were also arcs, as though the blackness had come from a water hose or the end of an implement. A naked, blood-covered man was chained to the wooden pole in the centre
, his features obscured by the same dried darkness. Adam gasped, his breath sticking in his throat, lungs seeming to freeze with his fright. He staggered, one arm out to his side, but there was nothing to brace himself on.
The man’s chest… Adam couldn’t see any skin colour as the chains holding him up resembled a metal boob-tube. And his legs…they’d been broken. They dangled at odd angles, cracked and jagged shin bones protruding through the skin, snapped sticks in a forest of mulchy blackness. His head had been positioned so it seemed the man’s last action had been to glance at the rafters. Adam lowered his gaze. Bile raced up.
The weight went out of him, all but disappeared, and he fell to his knees. Pain raced into his thigh bones, stopping at his pelvis. He retched, trying to come to terms with what he’d seen, the image in his head starker by the second until he didn’t think he’d be able to take it anymore. But if he opened his eyes, he’d see the same damn thing. He stood, legs wobbly, his whole body shaking, and placed one hand over his mouth, then took a step forward.
He glanced at Dane, who stared wide-eyed, mouth working but no words emerging. Adam reached out and touched his arm, and Dane wrenched his gaze from the body to look at Adam.
“I knew something was wrong. Didn’t I say that?” Adam said, the words muffled behind his hand. “I had a feeling we shouldn’t come back, but at the same time I knew we had to, and when we got here…fuck, I wanted to go home, needed to go home…” He glanced at the body again and wished he hadn’t. “We have to call the police.”
“No.” Dane paled. “We’ll go home. Forget about this. This is just…this is just way too fucking much for me.”
Adam lowered his hand. “What? I don’t believe you just said that. A bloke got killed here—look at him, look at the way his throat’s been cut!”
“Shit!” Dane rubbed one hand over his mouth, staring at a spot somewhere behind Adam.
“Yeah, shit.”
Adam’s stomach muscles bunched, and he stumbled through the main barn, the journey seeming to take forever. He made it out into the fresh air, digging in his pocket for his phone, hand trembling way too hard and fast. He rang the police, a rush of words he didn’t understand careening out, the dispatcher asking him to calm down, to repeat himself from the beginning, except slower. He tried to do as he’d been asked, but the words tumbled again. He couldn’t seem to say what was in his head, in the order it needed to come out. Dane appeared and took the phone, explaining more calmly what they’d found. Adam slumped to the ground, leant his head against the brick of the barn, and closed his eyes.