by Ryan Casey
“He said he’d never had one,” Stephen said.
“But…”
“Like Carter said,” Stephen said, turning to Brian, “something very weird about all this. It stinks.”
“Too right,” DS Carter muttered, pinching her nostrils as she prodded a black banana with the end of her shoe. It spewed out at the end when she made contact with it.
Something rustled to their right.
“Anyone else hear that?” DS Carter whispered.
“I didn’t hear owt. Let’s check this room.”
The shuffling sounded again.
“I think there’s somebody in there,” Brian said.
All of them stopped moving.
There was a definite rustling movement coming from behind the brown wooden door on the right. Stephen Molfer reached for a white ornament that was at his feet and moved it around in his hands like a club.
The noise continued. It sounded like there was somebody in there, trying to keep still. A kid too excited about a game of hide and seek.
Only Brian had a sense that this was much more than a game of hide and frigging seek.
Stephen lifted his finger to his mouth. Then, with the same hand, he grabbed the antique black door handle. He kept his hand rested on it for a few seconds, as Brian’s heart raced.
He lowered it, and he pushed the door wide open.
The moment the door opened, Brian realised that it wasn’t a rustling noise at all.
It was talking. Voices. Voices, but too quiet to be human. Static, almost.
“It’s a fucking TV,” Stephen said, shaking his head and smacking the vase against his palm.
Brian took a look inside the room. An old CRT television was playing, the volume low, but loud enough for them to hear. A video player looked to be linked up to it, as a little red light emanated from it. This room was dusty too, and gloomy, as the green curtains blocked out any sunlight. But compared to the other rooms, it was relatively intact. The sofas were upright. The ornaments were all in place.
“Wait,” DS Carter said. “This isn’t just any TV station.”
Stephen peered at her.
“She’s right,” Brian said, as he approached the set. On the screen, he could see Darren Anderson. He was on a beach. Water kicked up against his feet, the static from the video recording crackling. Darren Anderson was shirtless, and he was smiling. He was talking, too. Chatting to somebody in a faux-childish voice.
“What’s this crap?” Stephen Molfer said.
Darren Anderson spun the camera around. There was a woman, dark-haired, wearing a black one-piece swimsuit. She hopped as the waves crashed against her pale legs.
By her side, there was a little girl holding her hand, wearing a pink Powerpuff Girls swimming outfit. She was smiling, pulling herself into the water, dropping to her knees as the water crashed against them. All of them smiling. Laughing.
“Come on,” Stephen Molfer said, raising his hand at the TV and turning around. “Nothing to see in here. It’s just an old tape. Let’s move on to the next room.”
But Brian didn’t budge. There was something about the tape that caught his eye. He wasn’t sure how relevant it was, but it seemed curious that it should be playing, and why, especially when Darren Anderson had been so adamant he didn’t have a family.
“It’s not an old tape,” Brian said.
Stephen Molfer frowned. “You what? Come on. It’s a VCR, for fuck’s sake. It’s worthless.”
“Brian’s right,” DS Carter said. She raised her hand and pointed at the screen. “Look at the date. 1st June 2012.”
“So it’s a recent tape. So what? I don’t see anything of any worth here. Come on.”
“Wait,” Brian said. The hairs on his arms rose. He knew why it’d caught his attention. “1st June 2012. The first of the sixth, twenty-twelve. One, six, twelve. 1612. The year of the Pendle witch massacre. There’s something in this. There has to be.”
Stephen and DS Carter looked at one another, mouths slightly agape. Stephen had given up his protestations now. He turned to look at the screen. Darren Anderson laughing as the wild water splashed against him. The dark-haired, pale-skinned woman and the little girl, also laughing along.
“It can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be.”
At that moment, the recording stopped. It came to a halt, just like that, with a little click. But the image stayed on the screen. The three of them stared at it. Was that the end of the recording? There had to be more, surely?
Brian noticed a strong smell of alcohol in the room. It hadn’t been there before. It couldn’t have been. They’d have noticed something that strong.
It was only when DS Carter turned to look at Brian and her eyes froze, looking over his shoulder, that he had an idea of what had happened.
Brian could hear feet behind him. Shuffling feet, by the doorway. He turned around, holding his breath.
Darren Anderson stood at the door. He had a remote control in one hand, his finger hovering over the pause button.
In the other hand, he had a gun.
Brian wanted to say all sorts of things to Darren, but his voice had failed him.
“Now,” Darren said, staggering into the room. His eyes wandered all over the place. His gingery beard had grown, and the gap between his teeth was all the more apparent. “We’re going to…to have a chat. A chat about…about who comes into my home, and who doesn’t…” His speech was slurred as he stumbled from side to side.
Stephen stepped towards Darren. “Darren, you put that fucking gun down. We know what’s going on. We know what’s—”
A gunshot cracked through the air. It pierced and rang in Brian’s ears. He didn’t understand it at first. He knew it must’ve come from Darren Anderson’s gun.
But then, wasn’t Darren Anderson’s gun pointed at Stephen?
He looked up. Stephen was on the floor, clutching at his left thigh. Blood spewed out. Stephen had gone completely pale. He winced and cried out as he gripped his bleeding upper thigh tighter and tighter.
Darren tilted the gun in Brian’s and DS Carter’s direction. “Now…are we gonna have that…that talk, or what?”
Chapter Twenty Five
“Put the gun down, Darren. We can—we can talk about this. Please.”
Darren Anderson held the gun loosely in his hand. It looked like it might tumble out any second, but Brian didn’t want to try to disarm him. DS Stephen Molfer had already tried that, and now he was lying on his back, clutching the top of his left thigh and clenching his teeth in agony.
“We…we know you’re involved.” DS Carter’s voice was shaky but firm. “The rest of our unit—they know too. So whatever happens here, they’ll find you. But right now, you need to let that officer get to a hospital or he…he’ll bleed out.”
Darren Anderson looked at the gun in his hand, as if it were an alien object. Then, he looked at Stephen Molfer, who winced and turned onto his side. He looked back at DS Carter, then at Brian, and he shrugged. “Not a fraction of the…the pain I’ve been through.” His speech was slurred and he wobbled to the side again. “Not a fraction. No. No.”
Brian bit his lip. There was no way they were bargaining a way out of Darren Anderson’s clutches. He’d shot a police officer. He meant business.
But he was drunk. He seemed like all his walls and boundaries had been torn down, and he was showing a raw, inner core, full of hate and self-pity. A core that everyone had inside them, but that rarely surfaced.
“Why, Darren?” Brian said, taking a step back and raising his hands to show that he was offering no threat. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why your own work colleagues? Why those from Brabiner’s? And why…why Marie? What did she ever do to you? What did I ever do to you?”
Darren Anderson blinked a few times, as if he were trying to regain focus. Then, his eyes met Brian’s. A twitchy grin stretched across his face. “He said you’d be like this. Acting all innocent,
as if you didn’t have a clue.”
“Who said—”
Darren lifted the hand with the remote control in and pointed at the television screen. “My girlfriend. Dara. And my beautiful, beautiful little girl, Katie. Did you see them? Did you?”
“Fucking…nut job…” Stephen shouted between clenched teeth. He was going more pale by the second.
Darren disregarded him and stepped around him, keeping the gun pointed in Brian’s and DS Carter’s general direction. He stopped in front of the screen. It was just a black and white blur of static, with an out-of-focus beach scene in the background. Darren got on his knees in front of the television and smiled.
“Come on,” DS Carter whispered, tugging Brian’s coat. She tilted her head towards the door, which Darren had left vacant and was a good ten feet or so away from now.
“My beautiful, beautiful little girl,” Darren said. He touched the screen and slid his fingers down it.
Brian didn’t move a muscle. He hadn’t finished with Darren Anderson, not yet. The video, and the date. 1/6/2012. It had to hold some sort of significance. “Did something…happen to your family that day? Something that might’ve…might’ve driven you to do some nasty things?”
As Brian spoke, he started to form a better picture in his head of what might have happened. All this time, David Wallson, the police, himself—they’d all been following the 1612 Pendle Witch massacre lead. They’d linked the amount of money paid with the year of the Pendle Witch massacre. And sure, the links had been there. The killing locations matching the Pendle Witch trial locations. Murder weapon.
But right now, with Darren sitting on his knees in front of a television screen, struggling to focus through inebriation, Brian didn’t see a man who was trying to dig up the 17th Century to tell a contemporary tale. He saw a father filled with grief. A father who had something horrible happen to him on the 1st June 2012, and who had used the Pendle Witch links to throw the police—throw everyone—off course.
And still, Brian didn’t understand why.
After a few moments of silence, DS Carter crouched down beside DS Molfer, who was wincing and panting with pain. Darren Anderson turned to look at Brian. His eyes weren’t clouded over anymore. They stared at him with a burning intensity and focus. “Don’t you see him? The man who took my family away? The man who took my family away and…and promised me? He promised me.” He tapped the gun at the screen, each tap getting harder and harder until the glass started to crack.
Before the screen cut out, Brian thought he did see somebody in the background of the video, dressed all in black. But he didn’t have much chance to focus because Darren’s gun smashed through the scene, causing the television set to spark with electricity.
Brian gulped and backed away, raising his hands again. “You have to let us go now, Darren. There’s a man with us here who isn’t well at all. And we don’t want to hurt you. We want to understand. We know you paid Phil Mcphee to steal that medieval blade. We know you’re holding the weapon you shot your fellow workers with. We know why you were so scared of media coverage, in case anybody you’d paid off or blackmailed recognised your face. But please. Why me? Why my sister-in-law? What have we ever done to you?”
Darren pointed the gun at Brian’s chest. His hand wasn’t shaking anymore. He wasn’t staggering. He was focused. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Please, Darren,” Brian said.
“We have to hurry,” DS Carter said. She was holding Stephen’s head, supporting his body as blood oozed out of his leg. His eyes had closed and his muscles had relaxed. They had to get him to a hospital. Fast.
“What is it?” Brian asked, his heart racing. He felt like he was staring death in the face—a feeling he’d experienced far too many times in his life. “Darren, speak to me. Please. Tell me.”
A tear dripped down Darren’s cheek. “What have you ever done to me? You did this to me. You caused this…all of you. I wish…” He sniffed. The gun wobbled again. “I wish there was another way. A better way. But this is the only way. I see it now. I see it. I’m sorry.”
In what seemed like slow motion, Darren turned the gun away from Brian and shoved it in his own mouth.
Before he closed his red, tear-filled eyes, he mumbled something inaudible that Brian couldn’t make out.
“No, Darren!” Brian shouted.
But it was too late.
A loud gunshot rattled through the room, echoing in Brian’s ears.
Darren Anderson’s body slumped to the floor. The bottom half of his head was all that remained, fragments of bone having torn through his flesh, a large red crater of mashed brain and skull where his head once was. Blood had splattered across the wall behind him, thick and red. Some of the warm blood had splashed onto Brian’s face, too.
“Fuck,” Brian said. It was all he could manage. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t quite understand what had just happened. “Fuck.”
Brian sat back in the grey plastic chair and stared up at the ceiling. He had to squint a little, as the white tiles, white floor and beaming white light were overpowering for his tender eyes, especially after what they’d just seen a matter of hours earlier.
“D’you think he’s going to be okay?”
Brian looked to his side. DS Carter was in the plastic seat beside him in the waiting area of the hospital. Nurses rushed past, dressed in white uniforms, clipboards in hands. Ageing patients pushed themselves along on support frames, struggling their way to the toilets. A disinfectant stench was ripe in the air. Hospitals really were grim places.
DS Carter sighed, staring up at the light. From this side, the mole above her lip was barely visible. Not that it was off-putting in any way—she was a very attractive young woman. She played with her dark brown hair, and looked deep in thought and contemplation. “I mean…A gunshot to the leg. And the amount of time it took us to get him to—”
“He’s a tough bastard,” Brian said. He barely believed he’d be saying such words about Detective Sergeant Stephen Molfer, but times had changed. Circumstances had changed. Molfer had believed in him and put his job on the line to locate the truth of the “Harold Harvey II” case. The truth of which lay with Darren Anderson.
Who lay on a slab, half of his face blown into oblivion.
“I spoke to DI Marlow earlier,” DS Carter added, squeezing a Softmint out of its wrapper. She offered one to Brian, but he refused. “He says we’re in serious trouble. For breaching our duties. You shouldn’t even be here right now, not on Marlow’s orders, anyway. But he seems a little lenient now we’ve…well. Sort of caught Darren Anderson. Hopefully he’ll go easy on us.”
Brian sighed and shook his head. He was familiar with this feeling of dissatisfaction at the end of a case. A sense that so much had not yet been resolved. “You did this to me…all of you.” He’d never understand why Darren Anderson carried out the killings at Pendle Hill, Longridge Fell, Marie. He’d never understand what happened to his family on June 1st t 2012. He’d never have a clue what he had to do with it himself.
“It’s just so sad,” DS Carter said. Her voice was lowered, and her cheeks blushed slightly. Brian wondered whether she’d intended for that one to slip out at all.
“What is?” Brian asked, unwilling to allow her trail of thoughts to slip away.
She cleared her throat then leaned forward, cupping her hands together. “Well, Darren Anderson. Obviously something…something terrible happened to him to drive him to do what…I mean, I’m not condoning what he did, but…I’m going to stop talking and digging myself a hole now.”
Brian offered a laugh of reassurance. “It’s okay. I know what you’re saying. I’m just more pissed off that we’ll never know exactly why he did what he did. Using the whole ‘Harold Harvey’ thing as an alias. All the witch stuff can’t just have been a coincidence, surely? But hey. He’s dead. His conscience got the better of him in the en
d. We’ll never know.”
DS Carter tutted. “Right. Unless something shows up when we’re searching.”
“In which case, you’ll be in touch with Freelance Officer McDone, I imagine?” He smiled.
DS Carter narrowed her rich brown eyes. “If you aren’t in a cell for interfering with the case, then sure I will.”
“Same goes to you,” Brian said.
“Touché.”
“Um, sir? Madam? You’re here for Stephen, right?” A short lady with her brown hair in a bun waddled over. She was carrying a bit of extra baggage around her waist, and her hair looked like it had been badly dyed. Her brown shoes squeaked as they rose from the floor, like ducks quacking.
“Um, yeah,” Brian said, looking at DS Carter, who was similarly bemused. She didn’t look like a nurse, in her checkered cardigan and knee-length skirt.
“I’m Marion. His ol’ mum.”
“Oh,” Brian said. He rose to his feet and straightened out his white shirt, offering a hand to Marion Molfer. “Pleasure to meet you. How’s he doing in there?”
“He’s battling on. Chatting away as usual about what he did to the other guy, and how tough he is. He thinks I was born yesterday, he does.” She rolled her eyes, then shook hands with DS Carter.
“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” Brian said. “We should probably leave you to it now. We only dropped by to see how—”
“Oh no, you should go in and see him,” Marion said. She grinned, revealing a blackening set of dentures. “You’re Brian, right? He’s told me a lot about you. Thinks very highly of you, does our Stephen.”
Brian frowned and looked at DS Carter, before straightening his face again. Had Marion got the right Brian? “I…Well yeah. He’s a good officer. Committed.” He smiled. Commitment was the first thing he could come up with. Ironic, considering Stephen had gone against orders by storming into Darren Anderson’s house. Bad word choice, Brian. Bloody bad word choice.
“Then you should go say hello. It’ll cheer him up, I swear.”
Brian and DS Carter looked at one another. It didn’t look like this woman was about to take no for an answer any time soon.