Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set

by Tony Hutchinson

  Stuart McFadden knew from experience that Mat would be in a coma in ten minutes but it was best to wait. He figured two hours should mean everything was quiet. McFadden popped the headphones into one ear, climbed into his sleeping bag and put his phone on shuffle.

  Golden Slumber, the Elbow cover-version, filled his head.

  He smiled at the night sky.

  Mat Skinner’s slumber would be permanent.

  Monday 15th December

  Ed gripped the door handle as he swayed: drink, lack of food and lack of sleep, a dangerous combination.

  Outside the taxi driver tapped his horn.

  Sam moved unsteadily past him towards the front door.

  Ed grabbed her wrist, pulled her towards him. Their mouths locked on each other’s before their eyes reacted to what was going on.

  In the end McFadden gave it three hours before he made his move, darting across the site head kept low, each stride taking him closer to the caravan. Standing outside he could hear deep snoring. He climbed the few steps onto the decking.

  McFadden took his rucksack off his back, fished inside and found what he was looking for, a small screwdriver and a yellow duster.

  He wrapped the duster around the blade - no point leaving striation marks for the forensic team - and forced open the patio doors.

  The police would never establish how long the doors had been damaged, even if they were still capable of being examined. Both owners would be dead and nobody else, to McFadden’s knowledge, knew the caravan even existed let alone made visits.

  He stepped inside, smiled at the snoring and turned on his head-torch. He saw scatter cushions, statues of Greek Gods with lampshades on the top of them. He crept towards the open plan kitchen and turned on every gas ring on the cooker.

  The snoring was rattling around the caravan.

  Dead to the world and you soon will be.

  He closed the patio doors behind him, not tight but tight enough, and walked away.

  Mat wouldn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning, not with LPG gas, but he was a creature of habit, Stuart knew. As soon as he woke he would reach for his cigarettes like every other certified chain smoker and then…BOOM!

  Mat dead, problem solved.

  The police would establish the pub he had been in, find a witness or two who recalled how pissed he was, possibly find the hob in the debris and discover the gas rings turned on.

  The presumption? A drunk who forgot to switch them off and blew himself up when he sparked a cigarette.

  No tears shed by the police.

  Job jobbed

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sam turned on the car radio, glanced in the mirror and shuddered. She looked as bad as she felt; pale eyes like the proverbial piss-holes-in-the-snow, cramps in her stomach. The price of too little sleep, too many cigarettes, and too much wine. She was furious with herself for putting the washing machine on when she was half-cut. The new red t-shirt had ruined the whites, delivering a garish collection of pinks when she went to unload.

  A dodgy washing moment she could handle. But that kiss? She was furious with herself. It was passionate, electric, and exactly what she didn’t need. Not while Ed was still married, still living in the marital home, still with Sue. Thank God he’d got in the taxi.

  She changed down to first gear and swore under her breath. She hadn’t got out of second for the last mile, the roundabout a never-nearing mirage on the horizon. Another day, another miserable rush hour and every prospect of an awkward silence with Ed at journey’s end.

  Maybe get a take-away tonight, Sam thought, mentally changing topic. She imagined a Chinese or something fiery from the new Indian she had been waiting to try. She could already smell the spices as she turned up the radio.

  Police in Seahouses are investigating an explosion on a caravan park. An eyewitness described hearing a huge explosion at around 7am this morning and rushed outside to see the remains of a holiday home on fire.

  It appears that one caravan has been totally destroyed and those nearby damaged. It is not yet known if anybody has been injured.

  Police and the fire brigade are on the scene and we understand that the few visitors on the site have been evacuated as a precaution.

  There will be more on this breaking story in our next bulletin.

  And now the weather…

  Sam turned the radio off. She already had enough on her plate.

  Harry Pullman was shaving in front of the bathroom mirror, luminous blue blobs of fallen gel bright against the grubbiness of his white sleeveless vest.

  His feet stopped tapping as Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ ended and his head jerked towards the radio, the blunt razor nicking his top lip.

  Police in Seahouses…

  The white towel matched his vest in terms of colour. He pressed it against his lip and dashed into the bedroom, pulling on a shirt and jeans before working again at the trickle of blood.

  All he could think about was Mat and his caravan. Was it Mat’s? If it was, who was behind it? Luke? Someone else?

  He sat on the edge of the bed, lit a cigarette, and put the packet and lighter next to his Samsung Galaxy on the bedside table. He needed to think and was still sitting like some Rodin mickey-take when his mobile danced a Northern Soul slide across the MDF.

  He glanced at the screen. Number not recognised.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘That you Harry?’

  McFadden.

  ‘Yeah,’ Harry said.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ Harry believed in playing dumb. It always served him well.

  ‘Billy’s been snatched. Mekins is gone and now Mat’s been killed.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Harry said.

  ‘Phone box just outside Berwick.’

  Berwick? North of Seahouses. What’s your game?

  Harry didn’t respond, inhaled on his cigarette.

  ‘We need to talk, Harry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘What happens next.’

  ‘What’s happened to Mat?’ Harry said, trying to work out where this was going.

  ‘Caravan explosion. You not heard it on the news?’

  ‘The news never mentioned anyone being dead.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘When do you want to talk? Harry said. ‘And where?’

  A pause, the noise of traffic and a distant siren on the line.

  ‘Soon as but away from Seaton. How about Berwick?’

  ‘You must be joking,’ Harry almost laughed. ‘If Mat’s dead in a caravan in Seahouses…how do you know he’s got a van up there anyway? First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Long story,’ McFadden swatted the question away.

  Harry said he was happy right where he was; no way was he going further north than his front door.

  ‘Meet me here in the pub,’ he said. ‘Nothing suspicious about that.’

  Stuart McFadden wasn’t sure.

  ‘Think about it Stuart,’ Harry said, rummaging under the bed for a pair of socks. ‘You’re up in Berwick for whatever reason. If Mat’s in that caravan it’ll look a lot more iffy if you’re in that neck of the woods rather than down here. Why are you up there anyway?’

  Harry already knew the answer.

  There was only one way Stuart McFadden could know Mat was dead and it wasn’t that he’d heard it on the grapevine. The Marvin Gayes of Seaton St George wouldn’t be up yet let alone singing.

  ‘Harry, the Skinners are finished,’ McFadden beginning his move. ‘Billy snatched and that’s down to Mat. Revenge for Mekins.’

  ‘Mekins?’ Harry said. ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Billy ordered it after the shit Mat and Mekins pulled at your gaffe,’ McFadden told him. ‘Mark’s like a rabbit in the headlights. Luke won’t be able to pull this together. Either somebody in Seaton takes over or outsiders come in.’

  Harry said McFadden was jumping to a lot of conclusions but yeah, they should meet, he would li
sten to whatever was on his mind.

  Harry checked the time. 8am. ‘See you about eleven then?’

  Stuart McFadden said he was on his way.

  Harry pulled on his socks. He needed to make a few calls.

  ‘Do you want to explain that?’ Sam said, throwing a photograph at Elgin, the embrace with Linda Pritchard not lacking in passion.

  They had brought him to Seaton police station and after some huff and puff he came quietly. Whatever reception Ed had faced at home last night, or whatever had happened this morning, it hadn’t affected his mood. When they had met at the nick that morning the silence Sam feared had never happened. Ed had spoken straight out.

  ‘Listen,’ he had said as soon as Sam shut the passenger door, turning to face her from the driver’s seat. ‘Last night. It was what I wanted, it’s just with Sue…’

  Sam had found a smile, said she understood, and that wasn’t drink the devil’s own work.

  And that was it, at least for now, their world one second out of kilter and next spinning on its old familiar axis. Sam would later acknowledge her relief was shaded in disappointment.

  Now in the interview room, John Elgin’s adam’s apple moved around his throat like a golf ball spinning in a cup. ‘How dare you spy on me!’

  Typical politician, Sam thought. Back to the wall so go straight on the attack.

  ‘No-one’s been spying on you Mr. Elgin, at least nobody from the police, but now this has come into our possession it is quite interesting don’t you think?’ Sam with a light touch, polite even.

  Small blisters of sweat spread across Elgin’s brow.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t dragged me here to talk about an innocent little cuddle…’

  ‘Mr. Elgin,’ Sam interrupted, leaning towards him, voice a little sharper now. ‘I’m not interested in whether it was an innocent little cuddle or not. What interests me is that the woman you’re cuddling is the wife of one of your grandson’s abusers.’

  Elgin’s tongue ran around the inside of his mouth.

  Sam sat back. ‘How long have you been on cuddling terms with Linda Pritchard?’

  ‘It’s not what you think?’

  ‘What is it then?’

  Elgin rubbed his eyes and sighed.

  ‘That poor woman was trapped in a loveless marriage. She knew what her husband was… his words trailed off.

  ‘Yet did nothing to stop it,’ Sam said, not a question but a fact.

  Elgin threw his shoulders back and raised his voice, happy to be back on the attack.

  ‘What could she do? Report it to your lot! That would have got her a long way. You only became interested in her husband once he was dead. We all know what happens to uncorroborated allegations of sexual abuse and besides, nobody had made a complaint to my knowledge.’

  Sam wanted background, wanted Elgin to calm down and talk and maybe let his guard down.

  ‘When did you meet Linda?’ she asked him.

  Ed had picked up the photograph and was staring like it was a masterpiece in an art gallery.

  He wasn’t interested in the cuddle. What was it about Linda Pritchard?

  ‘Just answer the question,’ Ed said, still locked on the snapshot.

  Elgin sighed: ‘About four months ago at some meeting.’

  ‘Which one?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I go to a lot of meetings.’

  Ed finally looked away from the photo.

  ‘Surely not that many where you meet a future cuddling partner,’ he watched Elgin go red. ‘Where did you meet?’

  Another sigh, heavier this time, Elgin looking at the ceiling, sitting back in the chair, his body language reaching for an air of indifference

  ‘Travellers Group Meeting. Linda is interested in their…plight.’

  ‘And did you know then that her husband had abused your grandson?’ Sam said.

  ‘Of course not! What are you suggesting?’ Elgin pushed against the table and was on his feet. ‘Oh I see. I’m like a foreign agent on a mission. Get close to the wife, get close to the husband.’

  ‘Sit down John,’ Ed said, leaning back into his chair, stretching his legs and putting his hands behind his neck. ‘You’re making the place look untidy.’

  Elgin’s defiance lasted five unconvincing seconds before he sat back down.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew Jeremy Scott?’ Sam said.

  The swift change of direction - deliberate on Sam’s part - did its job. Elgin was unnerved.

  ‘What?’ He floundered, head shaking. ‘I don’t know him.’

  Sam leaned in close again.

  ‘John this is getting tiring and I am starting to wonder why you feel the need to continually lie.’

  Elgin sat in silence, nerves jangling like wind-chimes in a stiff breeze.

  ‘Yesterday I went to your old school. Not the one here.’

  She paused, allowed Elgin to digest her words, waited for a reaction.

  Elgin stared at her.

  ‘The one in Hamble. St Augustine,’ she told him.

  This time she got a reaction. Elgin couldn’t have looked more shocked if Sam had plugged him in and hit the on switch.

  ‘What?’ he barely managed the word.

  ‘We spoke to one Mr Stirling, the head now but a young teacher in your day. He told us you were pretty good on the piano.’

  Elgin was breathing hard, looking for the escape hatch.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  It was Ed’s turn to jump to his feet.

  ‘Throw him in the traps,’ looking straight at Elgin. ‘I’m sick of listening to this shit.’

  Sam rose slowly to her feet.

  ‘You might be right,’ she said, an air of something close to boredom on her face. ‘What do you think, John?’

  Elgin’s resolve left him so quickly he swore he heard it snap, his head dropping in the same moment. ‘Could I have a glass of water please?’

  Ed sat back down. ‘How about a cup of tea? Sugar?’

  ‘No sugar. Just milk.’

  By the time Elgin was sipping his third cup he had told them everything about his time in the clutches of Jeremy Scott.

  Sam and Ed had listed to many an adult relive a childhood ordeal but it didn’t get any easier.

  ‘You have no idea what it was like,’ Elgin said now. ‘You can’t have, not unless you were abused. The stale smell of cigar smoke before and then that mix…semen, piss, blood…I can still smell it now. It’s with me wherever I go.’

  They watched Elgin bow his head and clear his throat, another victim wrongly carrying the guilt.

  ‘You’ve got to remember back then children weren’t often believed,’ Elgin told them. ‘The schools themselves, the institutions where it was happening, society as a whole, they all have to take some responsibility for that culture.’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘The school didn’t abuse me but they let it go on. My mother told the headmaster…’

  He paused, lost in the memory of the nightmare.

  ‘Guess what happened? Nothing. The reputation of the school was all that mattered.’

  He wiped his left eye and fell silent, the tiredness bone deep.

  Sam offered Elgin a break but he wanted to go on, to get it over with and get out.

  ‘You were a boarder at the school?’ Sam raised her eyebrows.

  Elgin nodded. ‘That’s right. I was six when I went there and left when I was about thirteen.’

  ‘I’m puzzled, Sam told him. ‘Please don’t think I’m being rude, but boarding school and all the fees I imagine go with it, but you live in a former council house.’

  Elgin took a deep breath and explained.

  He grew up knowing his grandfather had been a wartime ‘spiv’ in London and a good one, good enough to buy a small shop in a wealthy area of Southampton when the fighting finally stopped.

  Ration coupons meant there was still a thriving black market and Victor Elgin so
ld more goods under the counter than he did over it.

  By the time John Elgin was born to a single mother, his grandfather owned mini-markets, clothes shops and even a couple of small hotels. Victor idolized him and he wanted for nothing, nothing until he found the courage to speak about Jeremy Scott.

  ‘My grandfather refused to believe that a man of education and standing like that would abuse young boys,’ Elgin remembered crying at his grandfather’s reaction.

  Stop telling tales boy!

  ‘All he wanted was for that school to get me to university, get the start in life he never had. He always had notions of me being an officer in the Royal Navy.’

  Elgin wiped his eyes, his hands shaking as picked up his cup.

  ‘I think he fancied me being the First Sea Lord.’

  He sipped on the tea.

  ‘When my mother said my happiness was more important than his idea of my career it all kicked off. Things were said between them and wounds were opened that never healed.’

  Elgin never saw his grandfather again. Victor had married a secretary a third of his age who inherited everything when he died.

  ‘My mother did her best for me,’ Elgin said. ‘We moved up here to make a fresh start but it was hard. Mum was used to having a private income. Up here she ended up spending the rest of her life working in shops. Ironic really.’

  He shook his head, took another deep breath.

  Elgin might have left a nightmare behind but his rebooted childhood still wasn’t easy, his accent and his manner making him an easy target for bullies in a very different kind of school.

  But Elgin was proud he had come through, learned to fit in and pushed his old life as deep down as it would go. He had even spent hours working to lose his accent.

  ‘You adapt to survive,’ he said, while Sam and Ed sat in silence, letting the story go.

  ‘I reinvented myself. I’m still reinventing myself...a Labour councillor living in a council house, a man of the people. Can you imagine if the press found out I went to boarding school, that my grandfather was a spiv who made boatloads of cash? They’d have a field day.’