by Ryan Casey
“I’m not undermining the pain you’re going through. Believe me, I’m not. But I just…I want you to know that I saw a light.” His voice faltered. “I…When I thought I was at my lowest, I pulled myself up again and I fought back. And it was hard. Fuck—I was knocked back time and time and time again. But…but here I am. Here we are, in this lovely house with our amazing lives. You pulled me through. You gave me my strength. I…I want to do the same for you.”
Hannah’s eyes met Brian’s. Tears were running down her cheeks now, as if she was realising the truth of his words, waking up from a long, hard nightmare.
Brian gulped. His hands started to shake. “So, Hannah, take these fucking flowers out of my hand and let me be here for you, okay?”
After a few seconds of complete stasis, Hannah pulled the flowers out of Brian’s right hand.
He gulped again. He’d imagined the next part a thousand times in his head. He wasn’t sure how well-timed it was, but fuck. Vanessa had got him thinking. He was a family man. He was a man back on the right track. This was right, it really was.
As Hannah took the flowers away, Brian lowered onto one knee and reached into the pocket of his leather jacket.
He pulled out a purple, velvet-covered square box.
Hannah’s tired, bloodshot eyes widened. The flowers shook in her hand as her grip loosened.
“Hannah Wootherfood,” Brian said. He cleared his throat. He could barely look her in the eye. This was nothing like he’d imagined. Fuck. What was he doing? How could she possibly say “yes” to him? “I, er…Will you marry me?”
Hannah dropped the flowers to the floor and wrapped her arms around Brian’s shoulders. “Yes,” she said, whimpering and crying, her hot tears dripping down Brian’s back. “Oh God, yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Brian was glad Hannah wasn’t looking, because his eyes were streaming with tears too, as they held their heads close to one another in the entrance area to their house.
But they were good tears. Happy tears. At last, something to smile about. Something he hadn’t fucked up.
He’d watched him in Longridge, and really, it couldn’t have gone any better.
First, he’d watched him take the card from his ex-wife. Idiots, the pair of them. The ex-wife bitch should’ve known she’d sent the card, and the ageing murdering scumbag fuck should’ve known he’d already received a card.
But fuck. He’d fallen for it. Thank fuck.
He stared between the hedges at the front of the semidetached house. A suburban dream house. But inside, nothing but misery. Tears and misery and grieving. Just what they deserved. Just what they deserved for all the pain they’d caused.
But then he’d seen the scumbag fuck go into the jewellers and buy a ring. Platinum. Wasteful cunt. Wasteful, materialist, clichéd cunt. Just like the rest of his family. Just like all of them. Scum.
There was a positive, though, and that’s the way he’d been grinning as he left the jewellers. The way he fumbled around to slip the ring into his pocket. A proposal. A planned proposal. Perfect. Just what he needed.
He looked from left to right. The road was completely clear. A few houses down the road, he could see a kid playing a video game in his bedroom. At the end of the street, which led out to Sharoe Green Lane, traffic drove by, unaware. Completely unaware. Just how he liked it.
He pulled the letter out of his pocket and smiled as he read and reread it. This was perfect. A perfect way to congratulate the newly engaged. Everything was falling into place. He’d gone quiet for a few days in the aftermath of the funeral, lay low, evaded the pig cunt fuck cunts for all this time. It was easy. Fucking easy. He should’ve done it years ago.
He folded the letter, licked the envelope, and pulled up his hood. His heart raced. What he was doing was risky. It would look so risky. He knew for a fact there were cameras on this road, but being discovered was a part of the next step.
And it wouldn’t matter anyway. Not if he timed everything precisely.
He approached the front door of Misery House and placed the envelope under a stone beside the door. His skin crawled when he heard them inside, loud voices, that bitch moaning. Forgetting a death by fucking. Sick cunts. Deserved all that came their way. Filth.
He looked to both sides, being sure to keep his head low, then walked off the drive, across the street, and back into the hedges.
The fact that they were screwing meant that Brian hadn’t given Hannah her first card yet.
But the second envelope was more exciting. So much more exciting. He almost got hard thinking about it.
Happy fucking engagement, you filthy cunts.
Chapter Nineteen
The following morning, Brian knew things were on the up because he couldn’t feel Hannah beside him.
He smiled, as the warmth from the autumn sun shone in through the window onto his face. She’d got out of bed to see to her freelance journalist work again. He could just picture her, right now, flicking through the day’s newspapers and underlining the most interesting stories with a thick, solvent-smelling marker pen, preparing reports of her own.
He climbed out of bed and threw his smart white shirt and blue tie on, as well as his navy blue trousers. He stared at himself in the mirror. He was getting greyer by the day, but it wasn’t an unhealthy grey. It actually kind of suited him, he thought.
Stepping away from the mirror and out of the bedroom, he jogged down the stairs. He still couldn’t hear Hannah in the kitchen, rustling her papers or whistling through the gap between her two front teeth. In fact, the papers were still on the doormat.
A small speck of dread hit Brian. If she was out of bed, then why hadn’t she collected the papers? They’d been pushed to one side slightly, as if they’d been inspected but ignored.
He was supposed to be back at work in a couple of hours, too. He hoped there wasn’t something else on her mind. He hoped she hadn’t done something crazy like had a second thought about his proposal.
No. Stupid thoughts. Stupid, the lot of them. She was taking things one step at a time, that’s all it was. One little step at a time.
He felt something nick his chest. He reached into his pocket—it was the sympathy card Vanessa had given him. As he walked towards the kitchen, he started to open it, clearing his throat. He could see Hannah at the table, holding what looked like a standard bill, or even some junk mail.
But the way her eyes stared at it. They were hazy. Taken aback.
“Morning, honey. Everything okay?”
Hannah glanced at Brian and blinked a couple of times, as if she was returning to the room. Her hand was still as it held the paper, shaking ever so slightly.
“Han?” Brian said, putting the opened card to one side and approaching her with hesitation. “What is that?”
Hannah gulped and let out a nervous sigh. It was then that Brian realised how pale Hannah had gone. He’d been used to seeing her pale since her sister’s death, but last night, the shag they’d had returned a bit of colour to her cheeks.
“Let me see that,” Brian said. He grabbed the paper from Hannah, who sat with her eyes still staring into space. The paper slid from her fingers.
When Brian flicked it over, he knew immediately why Hannah had gone so pale.
It was a photograph. Full colour. Clear definition.
The photograph was of Marie with a long blade to her neck, fear in her eyes, bruises on her cheeks and blood dripping from the question mark on her forehead.
Fuck. So the killer had etched the question mark onto her before killing her. Poor girl. Poor, poor girl.
Underneath the photograph, there was writing in red felt-tip pen. Brian had to read it a couple of times to take it all in, and even though it eventually made logical sense, he was still stumped.
Eleven little rats lost their lives,
Flushed right down the drain.
But one little rat ran away to hide,
Then returned to cause some pain
.
Brian read the writing over and over, in a complete trance state. It was only when Hannah spoke that he remembered she was in the room with him, and she’d…shit. She’d seen the photograph of her sister.
“Why…why would somebody do this?” Hannah said, tears rolling down her face. “What does it mean, Brian? What does it mean?”
Brian clenched his teeth together. “Where was this? Where did you—”
“By the door,” Hannah said. “I went out to get the milk delivery and it was just there, with a question mark drawn on it in that same red pen.”
The question mark.
Brian turned to look at the kitchen worktop. Sympathy cards were scattered across the surface. One of them had a drawing of pink flowers on. They’d received that card from Vanessa, he knew that now.
Brian’s stomach sank even further. If he had received a card from Vanessa after all, then what was the new card Vanessa had given him?
He grabbed it. It was clear, with no picture on it.
Inside, there was another question mark, drawn with red felt-tip.
“Right,” Brian said, storming towards the front door, his cheeks flushing. “I’m going to take these to the police right away and I’m going to make sure whoever did this puts a stop to it.”
“Please stay, Brian,” Hannah begged. She sat with her arms wrapped around her, shaking as goose pimples sprouted on her skin. “Please stay. I…I can’t be alone. I just can’t. Not after this. Not after—after what I just saw.”
Brian opened the latch on the front door. He knew that he should stay here with his fiancé. He knew that was the “right” thing to do. But he’d received a message directly to his doorstep. And the card that Vanessa had given him. The killer must’ve slipped it into her bag at some point. The question marks that he’d thought were directed at him clearly were.
This was personal, there was no denying it.
“You just wait there, Han,” Brian said. “I won’t be long. I promise you. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve handed this stuff over. I need to do this. This ends, right here.”
Without looking her in the eye again, he opened the door, slipped outside, and quickly slammed it shut.
He drove at a much quicker speed than usual. It reminded him of being back on duty as a Detective Sergeant, speeding down the street while cars parted, just like the water did for Moses, or whomever. The photograph and the poem—the sick, twisted poem—sat on his passenger seat, still in view. He’d rung Vanessa about the card but she knew nothing about it. He was riled up and heat was pumping through every inch of his body, but he was excited, too. Optimistic.
Firstly, the killer had provided a photograph of the murder weapon. DI Marlow had informed him that they had suspicions that some sort of machete was being used, but now they had a clear shot; they could put out a search for known distributors of these weapons, both on the high street and online. It was a large net to cast, but a net nonetheless.
Secondly, the killer had left some handwriting. Which meant that the police could get to work on some handwriting analysis and see if any known matches came up. Again, it was a very long shot—handwriting was unreliable—but it was a shot all the same.
The best shot would be courtesy of CCTV. Somebody must have left the envelope at Brian and Hannah’s doorstep, so hopefully they’d come up on CCTV. After the CityWatch fiasco a couple of years ago, he didn’t want another wild chase for a killer all because of council inadequacies.
But it seemed too simple. Why would the killer reveal himself? Why would he go to all the trouble he’d gone only to show up nearly two weeks later and give it all away? It didn’t add up.
As he approached the main road that led into the city centre, he went over the poem again and again in his head.
Eleven little rats lost their lives, Flushed right down the drain…
Simple. A reference to the eleven that the “Harold Harvey” imitator had already killed. “Rats” suggested that the poet held clear feelings of disgust towards those he’d killed. The idea of them being “flushed right down the drain” backed that up.
But one little rat ran away to hide, And returned to cause some pain…
The last line sent shivers across Brian’s arms. If eleven had been killed, and one returned to cause pain, then perhaps the writer and killer was referring to the 17th Century killings.
Perhaps only eleven witches had been executed, and one had survived, somehow.
But if that survivor returned to “cause some pain”, then why was the killer picking off people in a Harold Harvey-esque manner? Wouldn’t he despise everything Harvey did?
And what the hell did a 21st Century killer have to do with it?
Another question niggled at Brian’s consciousness as he pulled in to one of the many free parking spaces in front of the police station and applied his handbrake.
What the fuck did any of this have to do with him?
He grabbed the photograph and the attached poem, as well as the envelope, which could also be traced, and stepped out into the cold, rushing towards the police station.
It was as if a gift from heaven had fallen into his hands.
He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.
The sound of telephones echoed through from the main offices as Brian stood waiting for the desk officer to put her own phone down and listen to what he had to say. She had short, dark hair, and glasses dangled from her neck. Brian didn’t recognise her. In fact, he wasn’t sure he trusted her with what he had to report. He wanted to see DI Marlow. Talk to him directly.
After a few more moments of chatting at a leisurely pace, the desk officer put down the phone and smiled at Brian. “Can I help you, sir?”
Brian cleared his throat. He was wearing his PCSO uniform ready for work, but clearly she didn’t recognise him, not like the other officers did. Bloody new recruits. Head in the clouds, the lot of them.
“I…I’m Brian McDone. A former Detective Sergeant. And I have something that I think Detective Inspector Marlow would be very interested in seeing.”
The woman didn’t flinch. “That’s great. Well, pass it through and I’ll make sure he gets it this afternoon when he finishes his hard street duty.” She glanced at his PCSO badge. “No offence.”
Brian’s cheeks warmed up. “Look—it’s…it’s to do with the massacres. The Pendle Hill and Longridge Fell killings. And the…Longley fields, too. It could prove very important evidence.” He gestured the envelope in her direction.
“Oh, well,” she said, spinning over to the computer and chewing the end of her Bic biro pen; a habit that went right through Brian. “Those cases are being monitored by the Lancashire unit. You’ll want to be in touch with the head of the overall investigation, which is…” She clicked around on the keyboard and peered at the screen. “Chief Superintendent Harrison from Blackburn police department. Would you like a contact number?”
“No,” Brian said. He shook his head and looked over at the office doors. Doors he used to walk through every day without even being questioned. “Listen,” Brian said, taking a deep breath and leaning in to the desk. “Is DI Marlow in?”
The desk officer widened her eyes and shrugged. “I’m not supposed to say whether…”
“Well, this is important. Very fucking important. If you watch the news, you’ll know damn well that eleven people have been brutally murdered in the Lancashire area within the last month. Heads sliced from their necks. One of those victims was my…my sister-in-law. And right here, I believe I have evidence that this killer is trying to reach out to me in some way. Trying to contact me. I’ve no idea how or why, but they’ve left enough clues that we can at least get an idea of who it is. So, if you don’t bring me DI Marlow right this second, I’m going to walk on through those doors my-fucking-sel—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a voice muttered somewhere behind Brian.
He recognised
it. Whiny. Raspy. He turned around, and his suspicions were correct. Stephen Molfer.
“First day back at work and shouting your mouth off at our desk staff already? You must hold a real grudge, Brian.”
Brian took a deep, steadying breath, and stepped over to Stephen Molfer. Stephen was wearing a leather coat, zipped up over his suit. He had a steaming coffee in hand, and a new, thick-rimmed pair of glasses. He might’ve looked as punchable as ever, but now wasn’t the time to fight him. Now was the time to beg him, if anything.
“I would mention this little incident to your supervisor, but I suppose we’re old friends, so I can—”
“Ste…Detective Sergeant Molfer.” He raised the envelope and the photograph towards him. “I know we’ve hardly been best buds in the past, but right now I need your help. Massively.”
Stephen Molfer’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his coffee, then raised it again, taking a sip, trying his best not to look too curious about Brian’s offer. “Go on.”
Brian closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. “I received this on my doorstep either this morning or some time last night, I don’t know. It’s a photograph of Marie Wootherfood. I believe it must’ve been taken just before she died. She has the…the question mark cut on her head.” He held out the photograph, and Stephen Molfer choked on some of his coffee.
“And you can see the torsos in the background, just about. But then there’s this poem. It talks about eleven ‘rats’ being killed, but one getting away. I don’t know, but I think the killer is trying to tell us something. Is there a chance that back in the 17th Century, one of the victims got away?”
Molfer paused for a few moments, scratching his liney forehead. “I…Brian, this is crazy. All of it. I don’t know what to make of it. But—but the 17th Century lead has been investigated. The killer probably was a copycat, but nothing more. There’s certainly no message, not that we can find, anyway.”