by Ryan Casey
This ancient woman, in her holey pink cardigan, frowned. So wrinkly I worried her face was gonna implode. “Makes wax models?”
I scratched the back of my neck and looked at Martha for reassurance. She just smiled. “Yeah. Like… like Madame Tussauds stuff. And er, anyway. This friend, I forgot his name. But I really liked his artwork and I… I really wanted to see it again. To take a few pictures of it.”
“You forgot your friend’s name?”
Jesus Christ. This old bird was sharp.
“No, he…” I forced a laugh, even though my cheeks were burning. “Like I say, he’s more a friend of a friend. A mutual acquaintance. But he said I could pop down here any time and… and have a look.”
“A mutual acquaintance told you you could pop down and have a look at his waxwork models even though he isn’t your friend?”
I forced another little laugh, as stiff as my muscles were getting. Holy shit, this woman needed to become a frigging book editor or something. No plot holes were sneaking past her.
“He’s… he’s a bald guy, if that helps.” I tried to think of any other distinguishing features from the man on Jared’s CCTV tape. “Quite… quite a shy guy. But in a polite sort of way. Wears a… a suit?”
The old woman chewed the end of an ancient looking pencil. Frowned even more. “Hmm. Well we do have a membership book. We have little photographs for our members, although I can’t guarantee some of our longer-term members haven’t aged.”
I nodded and thanked her as she reached for and pulled out a dusty leather black file that was almost as worn out as her. She squinted at it as she opened it up, flipped a few ancient pages, and landed on a section with a load of black and white photos. Wouldn’t surprise me if she was whacking out the old family album to show off.
“A hairless man, you say?”
I leaned forward, tried to get a good look at the folder. “If I can just take a look, it’ll be—”
“Member confidentiality,” the old woman said.
I wanted to tell her I could happily yank the file away from her, but I feared I might just tear her fingers off in the process.
“Yes. Yes, he was a ‘hairless’ man,” Martha cut in.
The old woman looked back down at the page. “Hmm. No hairless men here. All very thick-haired, in fact.”
I bit my lip. Tried my best not to sigh or show my discomfort. “Miss, I think it’d be really helpful if you—”
“Miss?” She spoke with a high pitched squeal. “I beg your pardon, but I am a Mrs. A Mrs with seven husbands, during my long lifetime, I’ll have you know. I was quite a catch back in the day.”
I brought my hand through my hair. Looked up and down at this wrinkly thing that barely even qualified as a person. “I’m sure.”
“Oh yes,” she said, smile cracking on her cheeks. “Used to have men queuing up for a go on these old bazongas.” She grabbed her saggy breasts, pressed them right up against herself. “Used to charge one pound a suck.”
I smiled. Nodded. Did all I could to get the image of this dinosaur’s wrinkly nipples out of my mind. And I leaned in closer towards the black file, to get a look.
“Oh yes,” she carried on. “I’d have a lad on either tit sometimes. Two in one! Say, did you ever have lads on your tits back in the day?” She looked at Martha when she asked this.
Martha blinked. “I… I don’t believe I’m as much a catch as you, darling.”
I wanted to smile. I wanted to grin along with Martha.
But Martha hadn’t seen what I’d seen in the folder.
“Gave ‘em a suck in return sometimes,” the old receptionist went on. “For a price, of course.”
“Of course,” Martha said.
“James Scotts,” I said.
Martha and the old woman froze.
The old woman squinted at me. “You what, love?”
“James Scotts,” I said. My arms tingled. “He… he’s the friend I’m on about. James Scotts.”
I still hadn’t sussed it out myself, but I knew what I’d seen.
“James Scotts? Well… we do have a James Scotts here on the membership list. But he isn’t bald.”
I attempted a smile, my mind racing. “He… Okay. Sure.”
I thought back to James Scotts, hanging from a rope, killing himself after the death of his wife.
Thought back to his panicked, terrified face when he’d approached me.
Thought of the fear in his voice.
“Well Mr. Scotts is one of our biggest visitors,” the old woman said. “Has a studio room all to himself.”
Martha stepped closer to me. Whispered in my ear, “Why would James Scotts have a wax studio?”
I wanted to answer. I wanted to, but I still hadn’t quite figured it out yet.
But I thought I had a pretty good idea.
“I think he… I think this might be it. I think this might be where… where Hose is keeping Danielle. And the others—”
I was interrupted by the chiming of my phone. I almost ignored it until I saw it was Lenny.
Lenny, not ringing with an Unknown Number.
That was serious.
“Lenny, you need to get down to—”
“Woah, woah, woah. I’m the call initiator here. I’m holding the speak-teddy.”
“José’s Waxworks,” I said. “It’s… this has to be it. James Scotts, he—he had a studio here. And Hose—he led us here. He—”
“I like the sound of your little trip to the wax museum. Sounds fun. Tell Martha to get her beard waxed while you’re there. I’ve got something, Blakey. Prints. On the fifties. And you’re not gonna Adam and believe it.”
I stepped away from the reception desk, the old woman peering at me like she’d forgotten who I was all of a sudden. “Prints? Who… what…”
“Does Damon Watts ring a bell?” Lenny asked.
“Should it?”
“No. But to me, it does. He’s only the chief pathologist in the Preston Police Department.”
Suddenly, my mind flicked back to that CCTV tape.
The bald, nervous man entering Jared’s Jewellers, clear plastic glove in hand.
“Damon… Damon doesn’t happen to have a bald head, does he?”
“The baldest in the business. And a twitch like a lab rat on acid.”
My heart picked up. Shit. Damon Watts, chief pathologist. No wonder he didn’t want us going near the police.
“But there’s something else. He’s gone.”
My heart sank.
“Gone?”
“Yeah, gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Well if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be saying he’s gone now, would I?”
I rubbed my forehead. Tried to understand the barrage of information ploughing into me. “What… how are… are you looking for him?”
“Got a team on the way to his home right now. But there’s, er. There’s something else, Blakey. Something else kooky.”
I struggled to believe that this case could get any weirder. “What?”
“James Scotts, the suicide hubby. Well, his dead body’s gone walkies.”
I looked at the middle of my palms to see if the lines were moving, to see if I was dreaming. “Gone… gone walkies? What do you mean, Lenny?”
“He’s gone, Blake. James Scotts’ dead body is gone.”
TWENTY-TWO
Even though I knew damn well I should stay away from the police, it didn’t stop me speeding over towards chief pathologist Damon Watts’ house.
Or rather, it didn’t stop Martha speeding. I wasn’t much of a driver.
“Does this thing go any faster?” I asked.
“Not legally,” Martha said. She sighed. Pressed her foot down hard on the gas of her Audi TT. She’d bought it with her massive bounty from a recent case to replace her smashed-up Fiat Punto. Insisted she “loved that car to bits.”
Loved it so much she didn’t even wave it goodbye as it was crushed in the scrap hea
p. Evidently didn’t love it when it was in bits.
I looked at my watch. Sweat dripped down my cheeks. Almost 3 o’clock.
Shit. Nearly just eleven hours to go.
But it didn’t matter.
We had Damon Watts. We had the pathologist, whose prints were on the fifties that Dodgy Donny had received, who was on the CCTV tape entering Jared’s Jewellers and buying lock picking devices and a vocal modifier.
We had him.
“Are you sure about this?” Martha asked, as she swerved around a bend and sped down the next road, dancing with the speed limit.
“Sure about what?”
“About… about going to this Damon Watts guy’s house. I mean if the police are there, is that not breaking the rules?”
“You didn’t seem too bothered about breaking the rules a short while ago.”
“Just a straight, non-sarcastic answer, hun.”
“Okay, okay. Yes, of course I’m frigging-well bothered. But I don’t see what else there is to do. And it’s not like we’re going to the police and reporting anything. Right?”
Martha’s expression didn’t change. She just stared on at the road ahead.
“I’ll take that as a ‘right.’”
We took a left onto Abercrombie Avenue. Huge trees lined the pavements, birdshit splattered all over the parked cars, of which there were many.
“Should be down here somewhere,” Martha said.
We squinted for a few moments. Peered at the semi-detached houses, looked for sign of police.
“There,” I said.
Up ahead, there was a large police van. The front door of the house was ajar. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good omen or a bad omen. For the front door to be open, it could mean that Damon Watts had just let them in. Or maybe they’d barged the door in only not to find him.
Or… shit. Maybe he was holding Danielle captive. Pressing that SawDoor against her neck.
Stuffing a hose down her trachea…
“Blake? What are we gonna do here?”
We were outside Damon Watts’ house now. There were no police officers at the van, all of them presumably inside. Damon Watts’ house looked so normal. Hanging baskets either side of the door. A freshly tarmacked drive.
“Hardly looks like the house of a psychopathic killer, does it?” I said.
“Hun, if you were a psychopathic killer, wouldn’t you want to look as normal as possible?”
“Are you saying I don’t look normal?”
“Yes. You’re way too abnormal to be an actual psycho.”
We climbed out of Martha’s car. Approached Damon Watts’ house slowly and quietly. Curtains twitched in neighbours’ houses, nosy buggers curious as to what was going on.
All the time as I walked, I couldn’t get José’s Waxwork Route out of my mind.
James Scotts had a studio there.
Why would Damon Watts use José’s as a clue? And what did that place have to do with anything? With anywhere?
As Martha and I crept inside Damon Watts’ house, I figured we were close to finding out.
Damon Watts’ house smelled musty, like old cat piss. The decor was similarly depressing—blue walls almost as cold as the iced tea I’d had earlier that seemed like forever ago now. In the back room at the end of the bland, lifeless hallway, I could hear voices. Mumbling voices.
“Police?” Martha whispered.
I nodded, and kept on moving.
I took a peep inside the first door on the left, which was ajar and over-glossed. Looked like a lounge area. This room was the complete opposite to the hallway—stacked with old clocks, dusty antiques, paintings, photographs. A little black CRT television with an aerial above it sat in the corner, and a portable Sudoku machine on the sofa.
God, people actually bought Sudoku machines?
I needed a menthol sweet to get my head around why anyone would buy a machine dedicated to bloody Sudoku when they could just go out and buy a multitasking tablet computer.
I moved away from the lounge door and got closer to the next door on the left. This was where the mumbling voices were coming from. I squinted. Tried to hear what the voices were saying, as I got closer and closer. Martha stayed beside me.
There was a crack at the side of the door. A crack, that I could just about see movement through.
I took in a deep breath. Felt my heart racing.
I had to see what was inside.
I had to know.
I leaned in towards the crack in the door. The closer I got, the more I could see.
An officer, all dressed in navy blue.
No, two officers. Both standing beside a large glass patio door.
And…
Wait.
Was that a third person?
I crept closer. Got so close to the crack in the door that I was almost pressed right up to it.
I almost threw myself right in the room when I realised the bald-headed guy in there with them was Damon Watts himself.
I stopped when I realised he was dead.
I moved away, the image of Damon Watts fresh in my mind.
He was hanging from a chandelier. He was only a few feet above ground, a plastic stool kicked from underneath him, so he must’ve strangled there for quite some time.
His glassy eyes.
His pale, stubbly skin.
“Somehow I don’t think Damon Watts is Hose,” I said, thinking aloud to Martha.
“Then what…”
Martha stopped speaking when she saw what I saw, heard what I heard.
The police officers coming out of the back room and in our direction.
I froze. Froze on the spot, then looked around. There was a door behind us under the stairs. We had to hide. We couldn’t be seen in here. I could get arrested for interfering with a crime scene. Or worse—attributed for the crime. The local police were inept, which meant they were unpredictable, and any opportunity to feign battling crime, they’d leap on it like a horny dog on a teddy bear.
And with around eleven hours left, I couldn’t let that happen.
I rushed over to the closed door opposite. Grabbed the rusty round handle, struggled to open it up, the voices and the footsteps getting closer.
“Shit. Shit.”
And then it pinged open and I was greeted with a wall of darkness.
A wall of darkness that didn’t matter, because anything was better than being caught out in the light.
Martha and I shuffled inside. Shut the door, engulfing ourselves in the darkness, as the police voices emerged from behind the door of the back room.
“I heard drowning’s the most painful death,” one of them said.
“No way. Burning any day. Apparently your pain receptors go all apeshit, makes you even more sensitive to the burns. Torture. Absolute torture.”
“I burned my fingernail once. It wasn’t so bad…”
The voices edged down the hallway, away from the back room, away from us. Martha and I stayed completely still in the darkness.
“Do you smell that?” Martha whispered.
Now the voices had gone, I could finally acclimatise myself with my surroundings.
There was a smell of something in the air. Something…
“Wax?”
I looked to my left. In the darkness, I became aware of a staircase. Steps, leading down to something.
Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to see.
I approached the steps. The closer I got, the stronger the smell got.
“Why would it smell of wax, hun? Why… what does Damon Watts have to do with José’s waxy place?”
I stepped down the first step, listened to the concrete echo.
And then I stepped onto the second.
And the third.
And the fourth.
Getting further and further into the darkness, into the unknown.
When I reached the bottom, I fiddled around for a light switch. Although I couldn’t see, I could feel that this was a rather large cella
r.
A cellar that was hiding something.
“Got a switch, hun,” Martha whispered, still just halfway down the stairs. “Brace those computer-fried eyes of yours.”
She pressed the switch.
Light bathed the cellar.
It took me a second to focus, to really see what was in the cellar.
But once I did focus, once I saw what was in the middle of Damon Watts’ cellar, I understood.
In a horrible, gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping kind of way, the pieces of the puzzle slotted together.
TWENTY-THREE
James Scotts looks at his watch and can’t believe he still has eleven hours of fun left with Blake Dent’s bitch.
He is in the bathroom now, washing himself down for the next part of the show. He likes to stay clean. Likes to stay healthy, especially when he is torturing someone. Very important to keep the stamina up. Keep the energy levels high.
He scrubs the blood from under his nails and he can’t help but smile.
Subject C, Danielle, has been a lot of fun so far. It helps that Blake Dent went to the police. Yes, he was annoyed at that, especially because of how it affected his Ecstacia acquisition plans.
But the look on Blake’s face and the begging in his voice when James Scotts pressed the SawDoor against Danielle’s fake, wax ear?
Priceless.
He looks at himself in the mirror. Looks at his dark, floppy hair, and the circles under his eyes. He is tired, no doubt about that. All this killing is tiring work.
Pretending to be dead is even more tiring work.
He rubs a towel against his face. He wonders whether the police are close to finding Damon Watts, chief pathologist, just yet. Ah, Damon. What an absolute wet lettuce. A big help of a wet lettuce, though. Soft as shit, easy to blackmail. He’d done James Scotts a lot of good—faked a confirmation of James Scotts’ death, even created a very convincing looking photograph.
And further back, too. He’d bought all James’ equipment for him. The voice alteration device. The lock-picking tools. The Ecstacia. He really was quite a help.