by Ryan Casey
But this bald guy. He’d been round at Damien Halshaw’s for a reason. He was hiding something. Andrew Wilkinson taking his car to Galaxy for servicing, then this happening with a Galaxy cars employee, it couldn’t be a coincidence.
There was something this man was hiding that was so serious it had forced Andrew Wilkinson into confessing to three brutal murders that Brian didn’t believe he’d committed.
With shaking hands, Brian closed his car door. He looked in the direction of the minivan. Looked at the trees as they rustled in the cool autumn wind. Watched his frosty breath creeping out of his nostrils.
He took another deep breath, and he walked.
Every step he took down this claustrophobic little road, he thought he heard something in the thick expanse of trees either side of him. The first few times, he swung around, thought he saw movement, but then he realised he was just scaring himself so it would be better to just stay focused on the road ahead, focused on the Galaxy minivan, focused on the Galaxy employee.
He stuck his hands in his pockets, felt for the security of his phone. Pulled it out—one bar of 3G signal. Shit. Location Services was shoddy even on low 4G signal, so this wasn’t ideal.
He put his phone away. Again, ignorance was most probably bliss.
He slowed down as he got closer to the minivan. He didn’t want to risk being seen, or risk someone else being inside the van and watching him. He was pretty sure there was only one person that’d been inside it, and now they’d wandered off somewhere on their phone, but he had to be certain. He couldn’t go taking any stupid risks.
He lowered himself slightly, feeling like some kind of secret agent on an Xbox game, and he stepped up beside the minivan.
He held his breath, the wind battering his face, skewering all sense of sound and place.
He peeked his head up and looked through the passenger window.
Nobody inside.
He let his breath go. Let a few breaths go, even. Wiped his forehead. Just being here was stupid in itself. He just had to get a warrant for the search of Damien Halshaw’s garage. There was obviously something going on there. Something had obviously happened there in the past.
But this Galaxy employee. He was hiding something. He was worth following.
He looked around, looked to the right in the direction the bald guy had wandered off. There was a small opening in the fence, and a manmade footpath leading through to what looked like a… a white van? Some kind of blue Portacabin, too.
He took a final look back in the window of the Galaxy minivan and he started walking towards the Portacabin.
He stopped when he saw what was on the dashboard.
His eyes weren’t great these days, but he didn’t need great eyes to see what was written on the papers.
Andrew Wilkinson, Silver Ford Ka—Service due: Monday 6th October.
A shiver worked its way up the back of Brian’s neck, and it wasn’t just because of the cold wind.
There was something else on the dashboard too. A DVD. No—a few DVDS. Written on them in bold black marker pen, 6/10, 7/10, 8/10.
CCTV recordings. CCTV recordings from Galaxy Car Mechanics that covered an area the police didn’t know about. CCTV from the dates Andrew claimed his car had been in for servicing.
Brian felt the breeze batter him again. His heart pounded. He looked over his shoulder, over to that gap in the fence, saw nobody there.
He held his breath. If he could just get inside the van, take those documents, he could go back to the station. Prove that Andrew Wilkinson had in fact taken his car in for servicing, but Galaxy was trying to cover it up. They were trying to set him up. And he was willing to take the setup because he was worried about something even bigger than a murder charge.
Brian heard twigs snapping in the trees. Looked all around, still no sign of anyone, anything.
“Don’t do this, you idiot,” Brian whispered under his breath. “Don’t do this.”
He bit his lip. Reached for the handle of the minivan door. Prayed for a miracle.
The door clicked open.
He gasped. Adrenaline slithered through his body. He didn’t have time to think—he just reached inside the coffee-reeking van for the documents on the dashboard. Grabbed the CCTV DVDs with his quivering hands. Dropped one, reached down to pick it up again. Stuffed them in his coat pocket, closed the door.
When he turned around, the bald Galaxy employee was staring at him.
He had a crowbar in his right hand. His eyes were narrowed. Narrowed in a way that Brian knew he couldn’t talk his way out of the situation no matter how hard he tried.
“I—”
“Bag him, boys.”
Brian felt his neck jolt backwards and suddenly clammy darkness surrounded him.
He tried to shout out but it was no good. The bag around his head was tight.
He felt a kick to the back of his legs. Face smacked the ground, making his head spin and his body even more disoriented.
A voice in his ear: “Take this as a lesson not to sneak around where you aren’t wanted, pig.”
And then a hard smack to the side of his head and even more darkness…
THIRTY-ONE
Brian couldn’t see anything but he knew he was awake because of the movement.
His vision was completely black. Judging by the smell of sweat and oil rubbing against his face, the black material bag was still wrapped around his head. He could taste blood, clogging in his mouth. His ribs hurt when he breathed in too deeply, and his throat was raw and dry.
The sound of scraping and a nearby engine, as well as the movement, told him all he needed to know about where he was. He was in a vehicle of some kind. The back of a car, or… no. A van. A Galaxy van. Either the minivan or the van he’d seen in the distance when he’d been looking inside the bald Galaxy worker’s car.
The bald Galaxy worker who had been at Damien Halshaw’s house.
The bald Galaxy worker who was removing evidence that Andrew Wilkinson had ever even visited Galaxy for servicing.
Brian couldn’t stop himself shuddering.
The bald man in Andrew Wilkinson’s silver Ka that Harri Johnson had seen outside her house before it drove off and followed Janine Ainscough into the night?
A smack on the side of Brian’s head. More movement, more wobbling. He winced with pain. Tried to pull his legs apart, but they were stuck, tied together. His wrists, they were tied too. When he went to open his mouth, he realised that was taped shut. Must’ve done it while he was unconscious. While he’d blacked out.
He opened his eyes as wide as he could and tried to see through the blackness of the material over his eyes. Useless.
He was trapped.
His body, which was cold, began to shake uncontrollably. Visions of being back in that cellar on the Avenham Park case last year. The things they’d done to him down there, the things he’d seen. He’d been lucky to get out alive. Shit—he’d been lucky to get out of so many situations in his life alive.
But this wasn’t one of them. Surely now, his luck was over. There was only so much talking and fighting his way out of situations a man could do. And if this was the man that Andrew Wilkinson was willing to go to prison for a triple child murder for, then he dreaded to think what might be next.
The vehicle halted sharply. Sent Brian tumbling like a withered old beanbag across the floor, smacking his head on another solid wall. More metallic blood taste in his mouth. More colours in his eyes. Or was that light? Light beyond that bag? No. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t see a thing. He was losing orientation. He was losing all understanding of—
The scraping of a metal door at the side of the van. A cold breeze drifting its way in, making Brian even chillier. He listened for voices. For footsteps. Waited, completely still, as if he was hoping that if he stayed still enough, his captors might not notice he was there.
But they did. He felt heavy hands grab his front, drag him across the van floor, knees scraping all the way.
He winced. Tried to shake free, but there was more than one person here. They were all keeping quiet, as they pulled him along. He tumbled out of the side of the van. Hit cold, damp ground—grass. Muddy grass. Smelled a distant hint of sewerage in the air.
A kick in his ass. “Get up,” a voice said.
Brian struggled to his knees. Felt someone rooting around his ankles, pulling the ties or cuffs or whatever away. Having them removed made Brian realise just how much they were hurting. How chapped and painful his legs were.
Nothing compared to what they’re going to do to you…
No. Deep breath. Don’t fucking think like that.
Another kick, this time in his lower back. “I said, get up!”
Brian did all he could not to cry out and stood up. He shook all over. Someone gripped hold of his arms to stop him moving forward. He was completely disoriented, drowned in darkness by the black bag over his head. He had no idea what these people were going to do with him. Where they were. Nobody would come to help him, not now.
Something tugged at his hair and then there was a mass of light. In the headache-inducing brightness, he saw the blurred outlines of leafless trees, and then he felt another kick and went flying back to the ground, splatting his face in cold, stinky mud.
He rolled over. Blinked hard to try and get his vision back to full strength.
When he looked up, he saw four people staring down at him.
All of them had Galaxy Car Mechanics overalls on. Their faces were covered with black balaclavas. All of them, except for the bald guy. The bald guy with the crowbar who Brian had followed out into the wild.
Brian tried to speak but remembered he was still gagged. He sat up, hands caked in mud, head aching more and more.
The crowbar wielding nutjob crouched opposite him. He grabbed the back of Brian’s head, pulled him close so that their sweaty foreheads were touching. Brian could smell the remnants of a chicken tikka curry on the guy’s breath, and it made him want to puke.
The bald guy moved away a little. Pulled Brian’s phone out of his pocket. Waved it in front of Brian. “This your phone?”
Brian could only nod. Nod fast, shaking, while the balaclava-wearing Galaxy employees looked on, their breath frosting in the foggy, sparse woodland.
The bald guy put the phone on the ground. Lifted his crowbar, brought it crashing down into it.
Brian flinched every time a new piece of it cracked, shattered, and after seven hits it was completely broken, completely beyond repair.
Brian was off the map.
The bald guy looked back at Brian. Smiled at him, like a kid who’d just smashed up a Lego creation or stamped on a sandcastle.
Brian could only look on, rigid, quivering.
“Spose you’ve got questions,” the bald guy said. “Spose that’s why you were at the Halshaw place at all, right?”
He lowered his head, gesturing Brian to speak, toying with him as Brian’s gag blocked his words—not that he could speak even if he were able to.
The guy moved the crowbar between his dirty, oily hands. Kept that smug grin on his face at all times, enjoying the power over Brian way too much. “Problem is, it ain’t your job to ask the questions. Well, it kinda is, but everyone should know their limits. You should’ve known ‘um. Should’ve known ‘um the second I told you to piss off away from that garage. Shame you din’t listen. Shame for you.”
Brian was frozen. He wanted to think, but he couldn’t even do that.
The bald guy stood up. Pointed all around the woods. “Six years I’ve been doin’ little trips ‘ere. Different lads every time, like, but no questions ever asked. A job’s a job, right? If I’m paid to get rid of summat, paid to dispose of summat… or someone. Well, I do me job. We all do, don’t we lads?”
The three men in balaclavas nodded.
Brian wanted to ask who was forcing him to get rid of the information. Why Galaxy were so intent on a cover-up—on what the hell they were even covering up.
“Shoulda just gone back to work and celebrated with all yer pals,” the bald guy said, swinging the crowbar from side to side like a pendulum. “Catching a killer. Big deal, innit?”
Brian noticed two of the three balaclava-clad people pull Stanley knives out of their pockets. Extend the blades. Move closer to Brian.
“Shoulda just gone back. Celebrated. Had a laugh. None of this ‘ad to ‘appen. Didn’t need to kill another pig. I don’t like killin’ pigs. We’ve all got feelings, at the end of the day.”
The bald guy stepped closer to Brian. Lifted the crowbar. Placed it on his left temple, stinging Brian’s head with just a little knock.
The smug grin returned to the bald guy’s face. “You can ‘ave your fun with ‘im in a sec, lads,” he said to his Stanley knife-wielding comrades. “I get first dibs on this one.”
He pulled back the crowbar.
Brian tensed his body and held his breath.
The balaclava-wearing man on the left lifted his Stanley knife to the bald guy’s neck and stabbed it into his Adam’s apple again and again and again, showering Brian with blood, and the other knife wielder took down the weapon-less guy with the same manoeuvre, and both of them fell to the soily ground with blood spurting out of their necks, bloodshot eyes wide, gargling for life.
The crowbar finally tumbled from the bald guy’s rigid hand as he landed in the mud and let out some raspy final gasps.
The two killers stood over Brian, tiny, sharp blades covered in blood. They looked down at him, black balaclavas and blue overalls, blood dripping from their knives, like they were Halloween villains. Frosty breath clouded in front of them.
The one on the left walked up to Brian. Stuck his knife into Brian’s face, forcing him to edge back, but then he cut free the gag on his mouth and Brian puked up on the spot.
The man stepped away, stood back beside his friend as Brian shook, stared at the blood-soaked autumn leaves, listened to the twitching of the two dead men’s bodies.
“We can help you, but we need a promise,” one of the men said.
“A vow of silence,” the other said.
Brian looked up at them. His teeth chattered, but he was so emasculated as it was that he made no attempt to cover it up. “What—what do you know?”
The pair of them looked at one another. Then back at Brian.
“We know what happened at Damien Halshaw’s place three years ago,” one of them said.
“And we know who’s been killing those kids,” the other said.
THIRTY-TWO
In all his years on the job, Brian had never had to bury a body in the middle of an abandoned forest.
Burying two in one day was quite a shock to the system.
He stuck the spade in the soft earth, just like the two men in balaclavas told him to. One of them watched over him, while the other one buried their balaclava-wearing companion. Leafless trees surrounded them deep in these woods. Thick, low-hanging fog obscured Brian’s view back to the van he’d been brought here in, back to the scene of the murder.
Brian had been left to bury the bald guy who’d entered Damien Halshaw’s driveway, lured him here, and then…
Well. He’d been about to kill him. He’d definitely been about to kill him. And then something happened.
These two other guys in balaclavas, they’d killed their two companions.
They’d told Brian they knew what happened at Damien Halshaw’s three years ago.
They’d told Brian they knew the identity of the Eye Snatcher.
“His name’s Darren Hopps,” one of the men said.
Brian flinched and looked at the man who’d spoken, his hands wrapped tightly around a shovel, the smell of fresh earth strong in the air.
The balaclava-wearing man on the left—the skinnier one—nodded at the bald guy. “Right dickhead,” he said. “Wanted to get him out of the way for years.”
Brian’s shoulders loosened a little as he looked back down at the bald man’s body. He was called Dar
ren. Darren Hopps. That wasn’t the name of the Eye Snatcher. The one thing he wanted to know—needed to know—and he still didn’t have it.
Brian put the shovel in the ground again, heart racing. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. But what else could he do? He was phoneless. He was alone. He was outnumbered two to one by seemingly younger, more athletic men than himself. Men who’d just stabbed their work colleagues in the neck and left them to bleed out.
He had to admit it: he was scared.
“Never liked what he did,” the chubbier guy said, who leaned on a shovel and watched as Brian dug with his shaky hands. “Started as just odd little jobs. People coming to him to teach someone else a lesson. Cut off a finger. Pull some teeth out. Things like that.”
The thump of the skinnier guy’s shovel against the soily earth.
“And it just progressed from there really. Cutting off a bit more. And then before we knew it we were throwin’ people in the back of vans an’ getting rid of ‘em around ‘ere.”
Another thump of the skinnier guy’s shovel in the earth. Brian flinched.
The chubbier guy kept on watching, speaking in a matter-of-fact manner. “Nothin’ personal. Just business. Darren was good at what he did, and by fuck did he enjoy it. And then that Halshaw lad came along.”
Brian peeked up at the chubbier guy. “Damien Halshaw?”
The chubbier guy shook his head. “His dad.”
Brian’s knees weakened. “Who is his dad?”
The balaclavaed pair looked at one another. “Keep digging,” the chubbier one said.
Brian nodded. Put his shovel into the ground. Dug up more earth. Damien Halshaw’s dad.
The chubby guy stepped to Brian’s side. Helped him dig. “This Halshaw chap, he had, er… let’s say he had a few alternative tastes.”
Brian waited for him to continue, not wanting to push his luck by asking another question.
“See, usually people went to Darren with grudges. Ex-girlfriends wanting to give their old boyfriends a scare. Men owing other men money. All grudges, all with reason. But this Halshaw figure, he just wanted people bringing to him.”