by Emmy Ellis
They reached home and went inside. Now it felt familiar, like a home should. Welcoming. The warmth was lovely, and he shrugged off his coat, letting the air embrace him. He drew one of the living room curtains across and spotted a car pulling up outside, the headlamps dousing and the interior light going on. Langham had stuck to his promise of a police guard, then.
Adam closed the other curtain then turned. It was best to just forget the copper was out there and try to have a normal evening.
Dane stared blankly. “It’ll be all right, you know, bruv.”
* * * *
In bed, the covers drawn up to his chin, Adam sighed and stared at the cream slice of illumination coming in from the hallway. Yeah, he’d been spooked enough to leave the landing light on, not wanting the demons of the night to come and get him. Yet they were here anyway, in his head, flickering like so much badly spliced movie footage, one scene cutting to the next in jagged pieces.
“Fuck!” he whispered and got out of bed.
He padded downstairs to make some tea, sat with it at the kitchen table, and mulled things over. Was the barn killing an isolated case? Was it linked to just the warehouse murder? Were both linked to the Sugar Strands case? Was the latter even possible? The first two didn’t pose any threat unless he and Dane identified the men and they had to appear in court or their names were dragged into it. If more men were involved, they could come after them, try to shut them up. But that was a bit far-fetched, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like they lived in gangster land.
But people from the city do.
He clamped his jaw and blotted that thought up as though it was just a spill that could be cleaned away. He did the same with every frightening thought he conjured while examining all the possibilities, and by the time he was done he felt better due to one thing—this time they had the police on their side, actually following things up. This time the case was possibly so big his welfare wasn’t classed as something that could be ignored then forgotten. The authorities wouldn’t want another victim on their hands, another person’s death or disappearance to explain to an already outraged public.
No, he was safe here in this situation.
As though to convince himself of that, he got up and went into the dark living room. He pulled one curtain back a bit and peered outside. The police officer was still there, reading by the looks of it, head bent with a flashlight wedged into one of the spaces in his steering wheel. Idly, Adam wondered if it would be the same copper out there by the time he peeked out again tomorrow, or whether they would silently change over while he slept—if he finally managed to.
Chapter Nine
Adam did sleep, thankfully, from around three a.m. until eight. They were due at the farm at ten, their job for the day clearing up pig shit, he imagined, but it was better than hanging around here where he’d let his mind wander to things it was best it didn’t wander to. He’d only deal with stuff as it presented itself now, and he was lighter of spirit, his shoulders less heavy.
Dane had left him sitting at the kitchen table, going out to the shop a neighbour had set up in her back room. Lower Repton really was like something out of the past, stuck in its ways and refusing to move on. A shame, then, that the ugliness of the twenty-first century had breezed through, turning everything upside down and giving the residents a massive dose of reality. Shouting in its violent voice that life had moved on, and would you look at that, murder even happened here.
The sound of a key scraping in the lock had Adam turning around. Dane walked into the kitchen, folded newspaper tucked under his arm, a carton of milk in hand. He didn’t look happy, a rigid frown firmly in place, his mouth downturned.
“What’s up?” Adam asked, refusing to allow the knot of concern in his belly to grow into something more sinister.
“Fucking journalists, that’s what, and whoever tells them this shit.” He slapped the newspaper on the table and went over to the side to make coffee with jerky, un-Dane-like movements.
“Shit,” Adam said.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to read the news. Was it sensible to read whatever had been printed? Or was it true that what you didn’t know didn’t hurt you?
“What’s it say?” he asked, thinking it might sound better, gentler coming from Dane. “I mean, is it really bad?”
Dane brought two mugs over and placed them on the table. He slumped into a chair and leant back. The wood creaked. “It doesn’t mention us, if that’s what you mean.” He flexed his jaw. “Not our names anyway.”
“What d’you mean? What’s the problem?”
“They’re calling it the Queer Rites case. It insinuates we’re in on it.”
“Like how?”
“That two new residents from Lower Repton—I mean, come on, who isn’t going to know it’s us?—went to the barn to get their jollies then backed out.”
“We can deny it—”
“What, deny we’re new? Deny the fact a bloody copper’s out there in his car? I tell you, I nearly gave the shop woman what for when she pursed her chicken’s arsehole lips at me and gave me one of those looks. Bloody old cow.”
“What looks?” He didn’t need to ask, he knew exactly what looks, but he was stalling, diverting the conversation away from what the news leak could actually mean for them. Moving again. Hiding.
“Oh, you know the kind. I thought we’d found a good place to be at last, but people around here won’t be any different to those we left behind, I’ll bet. We were stupid to think they weren’t the same as every other fucker.” He let out a big sigh and rubbed his forehead. “If it was a bigger place we could’ve got away with it, said it was someone else they were on about, but it isn’t, and we can’t. This is just one street, for Pete’s sake. I’m half expecting us not to have a job when we get there. Villagers don’t take kindly to outsiders dicking things up.”
Adam hadn’t thought of that, but the farmer, Sam Rhodes, was a nice bloke. But supposedly being ‘involved’ in the barn thing might change his opinion. “We should just take the newspaper up there and show him, tell him what happened. Tell him we’re not here to cause trouble…”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying.” Dane took a sip of coffee and cringed. “Ugh, I forgot the bloody sugar. But yeah, at least that way we know where we stand instead of waiting for him to find out, get the hump, and sack us.”
Adam glanced at the clock on the microwave. “All right, we’ll go now.”
“We don’t start for another hour.”
“So? We’ll be showing we don’t expect to discuss it on work time—providing we still have work there when we’ve finished telling him.”
“Right. Okay. Fuck it, let’s get it over and done with.”
* * * *
“All right, lads?” Sam nodded in his usual manner, propping a shovel against an outhouse wall. He wiped his meaty hands down his dirt-stained jeans then crossed his arms over his chest. “You ready for it today? Looks like it’s going to bloody piss down again. It’ll make the pig shit all sloppy, but what can you do, eh?” He glanced at the sky and frowned.
Had he heard the news and wasn’t bothered, or had he yet to go in for his break and read the paper—if he’d even bought one, that was? Adam couldn’t tell. Sam was his normal self.
“Yep, ready for it,” Dane said, “but you might not be after what we’ve got to tell you.”
Sam lifted his chin. “You on about that barn murder?”
“Yeah.” Dane handed him the newspaper.
Sam took it, sliding it under his arm. “I had the police up here.” He pinched one side of his jaw between finger and thumb. “Asked me whether I’d seen a Transit hereabouts. Then they came back this morning. Told me my barn’ll be out of use for a bit cos someone had been killed there.”
Shit, it was his barn?
“Your barn?” Dane said, eyes wide.
“Yeah. Bit of a bugger that, because I’d only just got it cleared out ready to store stuff in. Course, it isn’t the poor bastard’s
fault he got killed in there, is it, so there’s not much I can do but suck it up and wait.”
“You read the paper today?” Dane nodded at it and chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Yeah, and what a right load of old crap that is. Reckon this one needs to join mine. In the bloody fire. Look, lads, the only thing that would bother me is if you were in on the killing, and somehow I don’t think that’s right, do you?”
“No.” Adam was relieved he’d finally found his voice.
“’Sides, the coppers told me all about it.” He clapped once. “Right, no use us gas-bagging. The chickens need a good clear out, and there’s a right big layer of pig shit accumulated over the weekend. You good to be getting on with that?”
“Yes,” Adam said.
“On you go then.” Sam turned to pick up his shovel. “Oh, and while we’re at it, don’t you be worrying about those down in your road. I’ll soon sort them out. Reckon the only ones who’ll give a toss and believe the rags are the old biddy opposite and the one who runs that little shop. Fishwives with nothing better to do, the pair of them. I’m off for a cuppa.” He held up the paper. “And this’ll go some way to warming my toes in the grate while I’m at it.”
Sam traipsed towards his house.
“Well, that was easier than we imagined,” Dane said, setting off for the chicken shed.
“You want me to work with you in there, or shall we do the job separately?” Adam called after him.
“On my own,” Dane shouted. “Don’t fancy company today.”
* * * *
Showered and dressed in clean clothes, Adam lounged on the sofa while Dane finished cooking dinner. Adam’s muscles ached—Sam hadn’t been joking about the accumulation of shit—and he closed his eyes only to snap them open again when sleep crept up way too fast. He was shattered, a combination of the day’s work and the shock from yesterday, he reckoned. He’d ignored the second edition of the newspaper when they’d arrived home and avoided the local news channel on TV. The last thing he wanted was a reminder of what he was trying to forget, but it wasn’t that easy, what with the elephant in the room.
He stared at it, a large, two-layered box of Milk Tray on the coffee table, deposited on their doorstep while they’d been at work, wrapped in bright pink paper with a matching bow. Sam had left the farm during their lunch break, saying he had some old biddies to sort out, and had winked when he’d come back, confirming everything was hunky-dory.
“Ought to have been a writer,” Sam had said. “Had them eating out of my hand with the tale I told them. As far as they’re concerned, you’re heroes, got it?”
Adam smiled at the memory and slid the box towards him. Part of him thought he’d choke if he ate any of them, knowing the gift had only been given because someone respected in the community had ensured the rumours were squashed. He had no doubt in his mind that if Sam hadn’t visited their street today, quite a few residents would have given them the silent treatment, made things awkward until they eventually moved away.
Still, chocolate was chocolate, but scoffing it wouldn’t solve his current problem of Dane giving him the cold shoulder all day. He knew what his brother was thinking: if they hadn’t moved here, they wouldn’t be involved in this crap.
Chapter Ten
Oliver leant his head back against the passenger seat as Langham drove away from Mr and Mrs Drum’s for the second time. They’d been to deliver the awful news—well, Langham had delivered it—and left a crumpled couple to try to come to terms with the fact their son was dead and no, they really didn’t need to view the body if they didn’t want to, but if they did, it might be best to wait a day or two.
Wait for Hank to make Jason pretty again.
“That was…horrible,” Oliver said. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”
“Be thankful you don’t have to. I, on the other hand, have it on my list of regular to-dos.”
“Every job has its shit points.” Oliver massaged the bridge of his nose, hoping the headache that taunted in the back of his skull would fuck off before it had the balls to shift to the front.
“And we’ve got a shitty point ahead of us now.” Langham veered out of the housing estate and headed towards the city’s innards.
“Hank?”
“Yeah, Hank, but you can wait outside in the corridor if you’d rather.”
Did Oliver rather? He wasn’t sure. The morgue hadn’t been his favourite place last time, but as with the Sugar Strands case, this one had got to him. It had something to do with him being in the thick of it again, seeing the case unfold, the officers working around the clock to get some kind of lead, and he wasn’t sure he should be enjoying, if that was the right word, the change from mere informant to being Langham’s ‘associate’.
He thought about his editor boss’s voice earlier, filled with glee that Oliver wouldn’t be coming in to work because he had to assist the police. The barrage of questions—“Do you have anything you can give me yet? You got some information for me before we go to press?”—got Oliver’s goat. That was the way of the world, humans had the urge to know every gory detail, but the fact his boss did this for a living and revelled in all the juicy nuggets he could get his hands on wasn’t quite right in Oliver’s opinion. Would he rather be making endless cups of tea for the journalists or sitting beside Langham now, on their way to see a jolly man who cut open corpses in order to find out how they’d died?
The latter, definitely, although not the going to see Hank part, not seeing Jason Drum laid out on a metal slab, the top of his head cut off as Hank weighed his brain. Oliver wanted to help solve the case, that was all, to give the dead justice so they could move on.
Jason hadn’t spoken to him since they’d been to see him at the barn. If it was some kind of ritual killing, then the way Jason had been murdered was an escalation. Thomas hadn’t been harmed—discounting strangulation by a thick chain, of course—and there had been no whipping marks on his body, no signs he’d been mistreated prior to his death. But with Adam’s and Dane’s witness statements and the proof on Jason that he’d been whipped until he’d bled, whoever had done this had upped the ante.
What the fuck would these men do next? And when? How long would they leave it between Jason’s murder and the next? Would Adam hear voices from a future victim, and would Oliver be given another info dump—before the person was actually killed this time?
If only that would happen.
Langham pulled up to the morgue’s back doors, and the jarring, throaty squeak of the handbrake being lifted pulled Oliver out of his thoughts.
He made a snap decision. He’d go inside the examination room, not wait in the corridor, but only in case Jason wanted to speak to him again.
* * * *
Jason had remained silent, a bloody mess of peeled-back torso, thanks to Hank, and whip slashes. Hank had confirmed the cause of death—another chain strangulation.
Oliver sat in Langham’s car now, on their way to a house that would hopefully give them the results Langham hoped for. The Transit had been found, an everyday white bugger with a dented left side and a wonky rear number plate. It sat outside a Mr Littleworth’s house, him being the owner, although it had recently been stolen then returned if Mr Littleworth was to be believed. Oliver wondered why the man hadn’t reported it as stolen. He asked Langham what he thought.
“He didn’t even know at first it had been taken, apparently.” Langham cursed as a driver in a green Ford cut him up.
“So what made him realise?”
“The dent in the side. Said—damn these bloody red lights!—it’d been in pristine condition when he got out of it after work Saturday evening.” Langham jerked to a halt and stared mutinously at the line of stopped cars ahead. “I swear to fucking God the fates are against us whenever we start getting leads.”
Oliver nodded absently, eyeing the lucky sods opposite who cruised across the T-road in front of them, their traffic lights gloriously green. “So it was taken,
used to transport Jason, then returned…when?”
“I can only assume the same night, because Adam said that when they’d been at the barn that night there were only cars parked out the back.”
“They must have switched vehicles, used Mr Littleworth’s van on purpose. They know what they’re doing, the fucking bastards.”
Their light turned green, and Langham released the handbrake, moving forward slowly, then with greater speed as the traffic got moving. “Yep. Took Jason out of the city to where the CCTV stopped, then transferred him to a car—all of them outside the barn were Fords, Renaults, or Volkswagens according to Dane. He couldn’t make out definite colours, just that they were dark. Adam, even though he used a torch, couldn’t remember either. Bit of a shit, that, but we can’t force them to recall all the details however much it’d help us. Whoever was driving the van must have continued on through Lower Repton and reentered the city from that end, took the van back into Littleworth’s street that has no CCTV, and left it there as though it had never been gone in the first place.”
“Apart from the dent.”
Langham nodded. “Apart from the dent. Ah, here we are. Wedgewood Road, and number seventy-five is right about…here.”
Langham parked, then they both got out. Langham immediately went to the van, fixed in place by a couple of closely parked cars, to give it a once-over. He flashed his pocket torch over the side. The dent was pretty big and deep, as though another large van or similar had smacked into it. Hopefully, they’d get some paint transfer, something to go on so they could locate the driver of the mystery vehicle and find out where the accident had taken place, whether a glimpse of the person driving Mr Littleworth’s van had been spotted.
Langham strolled up the path leading to Mr Littleworth’s house, a semi-detached that spoke of a hefty mortgage or that Mr Littleworth, if he’d paid the bank off, was a wealthy man. Oliver steeled himself to meet someone like Cordelia Shields, a woman they’d encountered in the Sugar Strands case, all posh toff with a clipped accent and an air of superiority. When the door swung open after Langham had pulled the bell cord, Oliver’s expectation was completely dashed. If it was Mr Littleworth standing before them, he was a working man who had grafted hard to get this kind of home, his roots remaining embedded. A white vest covered a protruding belly, a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms bagged on his legs, and his white-sock-encased feet poked out, a hole in each toe. Oliver shifted his gaze upwards. The man had a day or more’s worth of stubble, dallying on becoming a beard, and dark semicircles as plump as orange segments hung beneath his eyes.