by Vince Vogel
They hit the water. John closed his eyes and used every last ounce of energy to wrap his limbs around Conway as he struggled to get free. He wrapped all around him as they sank down through the cold depths of the water, down into the darkness until it enveloped them and they could see nothing.
The others stood above at the edge, watching as the final breaths floated up to the surface in bubbles.
“Dad?” Jess cried gently.
Dorring turned from the water. She was the only one not watching it. Her tear-drenched eyes stared across the manicured lawn at Tina, who still held him in her arms.
She turned to Dorring and he shook his head. She glared at him for a while and her eyes went blank. Then they filled with fury and came back to life, anger flooding and contorting her face. She turned sharply on Frank Jordon, who sat on the ground whimpering.
“I love you,” he said pathetically when their eyes met.
The girl marched over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders of his pajamas. With every ounce of strength, she began dragging him the few feet to the quarry’s edge.
“No,” he whimpered, struggling lamely. “Please, Jess. Don’t. Please, I—”
With everything she had, spurred on by the hatred and fury burning in her, she hauled the old man off the side of the quarry and he dropped into the water. Standing beside both Dorring and Barker, she watched as the old man struggled to keep afloat for almost a minute, until his head dropped underneath the water and he became no more than a shimmering shadow that gradually shrank out of sight.
“Where’s my mum?” Jess asked Dorring.
“I don’t know.”
“I wanna see her. Take me to her.”
“Okay.”
Jess walked from the edge towards Tina and the dead body of her father. While she did, Dorring turned to Barker.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
“I’m a detective.”
“Who’re you with?”
“I was with him.” He nodded down into the water.
“He was decent."
“Yes, he was. A very decent man.”
“Are you gonna chase me?” Dorring asked next.
“Would I get very far?” Barker asked back.
Dorring merely grinned.
“Then you better get out of here,” the detective said. “Take the girls. You can protect them better than I can. Because I get a feeling that there’s others out there that are gonna come for them. Come for you too.”
Dorring nodded and stepped away from the quarry edge. Barker watched him go. Watched him take the two distraught girls into the manor.
Then he sighed and turned back to the calm waters of the lake.
“Oh, John,” he groaned.
67
Dorring and the girls jumped into the front of the Transit. He heard police sirens from far away. He gathered that the noise had eventually reached the ears of someone who was willing to report it.
Nevertheless, the sirens were coming from the main road to the north. All Dorring had to do was take the southern road to make sure he was moving away from them.
As he drove, Tina and Jess held each other as they trembled, sobbed and sniffed.
“Where're we going?” Tina asked.
“I’m taking her to her mother,” Dorring replied blankly.
They reached the cottage, having only seen a single police car speed past them the other way. Thankfully, there were no bullet holes in the Transit and it was probably taken for a standard work van.
When they turned onto the dirt track, Jess removed herself from her friend. She sat forward in the seat, her wide eyes taking in the dilapidated cottage at the end.
It clearly hadn’t been painted or looked after properly in the ten years she’d been away from it. The white walls had faded gray under the sun and rain, and weeds grew up its sides in anticipation of covering the wooden, one story building over completely.
“Wait here,” Dorring said to the girls. “I’ll make sure it’s safe.”
Dorring got out of the van and held a Beretta M9 in his hand. It didn’t have a suppressor, so he was assured of its stopping power. It had been the only pistol Georgie Petrescu could source.
He reached the front door. It was locked. He listened for a minute and heard nothing from inside the property, only the sound of the birds chirping in the dusk sky as they returned to their nests. He went to the kitchen window and peered inside.
Nothing.
He listened some more.
No sound.
So he returned to the door and kicked it in.
Only a thin wood panel, it easily flew back on its hinges. He glanced back at the girls sitting in the front of the van, watching him through the windscreen. Then he returned his gaze to the empty hallway and stepped inside the place.
The door at the end was partially open. A breeze was blowing through the gap and it cooled his face as he walked through it until he reached the threshold to Molly’s bedroom.
He pushed the door open fully and gazed inside.
The curtains were billowing about. But it wasn’t this that caught Dorring's eye. What he stared at lay on the bed side by side. The large figure of Molly Rawly and the smaller figure of her sister, May. They lay on their backs with their eyes closed, holding hands, fingers entwined.
Dorring came beside Molly and checked her neck for a pulse. There was none. Leaning over, he checked May. None there either. Both women were dead.
There was a note on the bedside table. He picked it up and read. It was written in what he gathered was Molly's own handwriting.
The loss of my daughter and the betrayal of my husband have left me no choice. I can’t go on in a world so dark with the shame of what he did.
It was signed Molly Rawly. Another note sat underneath. This one was from May.
For ten years I have cared for my sister. She has been my life. Therefore, I am taking the final step holding her hand so that she will not fade from the light alone.
It was signed May Griffin.
An empty bottle of pills stood on the table as well. It all looked a cut and dried case of double suicide. The police would come, find the scene and quickly fill out their reports. The coroner would agree and the two women would disappear from memory. Only names on a record.
But Dorring knew better. He’d set up similar scenes.
This was a government job done by government men.
He left the cottage and got back inside the van.
“Can I see her now?” Jess asked.
“She’s not here,” he said coolly.
“Then shouldn’t we wait?”
“No. We have to keep moving.”
And with that, he started the engine and reversed back down the dirt track and onto the road.
68
It was a week later when Detective Sergeant Bob Barker pulled into the carriageway of a nice manor on the edge of London. He’d been there once before and took a few seconds to admire the ivy coated facade before he got out and approached a man washing a car close to the entrance.
“May I help you?” the man asked.
He was cleaning a silver Mercedes coupe, dressed in a suit, but with his tie off, collar undone, rubber gloves and an apron, sponge dripping from his hand.
“I was told Mrs. Carter would be in,” Barker said to him.
“Mrs. Carter is. May I ask your business?”
“I need to speak with her about her late husband. Is Mr. Kline with her?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Good,” Barker said, marching past the man and entering the doorway of the house by himself.
The butler tossed the sponge in a bucket of soapy water and followed after him, struggling to catch the detective up as he reached the doors to the lounge.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you see Mrs. Carter without an invitation,” he said as he caught Barker at the door.
The detective turned a stern face on him as he held onto the handle.
“There are
some things in life,” Barker said, “that do not require an invitation. This is one of them.”
The butler went to reply something, but before he had the chance, Barker was walking through the door and up to a red chaise longue where Jaqueline Carter and Peter Kline sat. Their eyes widened the moment they saw the detective approaching them across the room.
The tall figure of Peter Kline stood up, a horrified look on his face.
“I'm sorry,” he said in a supercilious tone, “but I’m sure you’re supposed to arrange a visit and not simply turn up at one’s home.”
“Sit down,” Barker snapped at him. “Sit down and pour yourself a drink. You’re gonna need it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Then follow this.” Barker pointed his eyes at Mrs. Carter and then his finger. “She murdered her husband. It was her who sliced the knife across his throat. Not the girl. She was merely a witness.”
“On what grounds are you accusing Mrs. Carter of this?” Kline asked.
Barker slid a hand inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He threw it down onto a glass coffee table.
“Look inside it,” he said.
Jaqueline Carter merely stared down at the envelope, her hands up by her chest, fingers fiddling with the pearls of her necklace. Kline leaned forward and scooped it up in a bony hand, ripped open the edge and pulled out the contents. The first thing was a photograph. It was a street. He recognized the car. It was the same Mercedes coupe that the butler was currently cleaning.
“That’s a still from CCTV,” Barker pointed out. “It’s Mrs. Carter’s car parked on Maiden Avenue. Do you know where that is?”
Kline didn’t say anything. Merely glanced up from the photo.
“Then let me inform you,” the detective went on. “Maiden Avenue got its name from the medieval sex trade. It’s surrounded by roads and neighborhoods named after its old ties to the sex industry. Maiden Avenue is parallel to Cock Lane. They’re both in Belgravia. Cock Lane is where the Belgravia is. The men’s club her husband was murdered in. That image was taken the night he was killed. The video clearly shows Mrs. Carter leaving it and then returning later on, looking rather flustered.”
“It proves nothing,” Kline said.
“It proves you lied about her being with you all night. Proves she was in the same area as her husband when he was killed. She certainly has motive.”
“It’s nothing,” Kline said.
“Then look at the next item.”
It was printout of a text message conversation. Kline’s eyes widened when he saw who it was between. Himself and Mrs. Carter.
“How did you get this?” he bawled, turning his furious eyes on Barker.
“The car being on Maiden Avenue contradicting Mrs. Carter’s earlier statements was enough to get the judge to issue a warrant. Then we went to your mobile providers and managed to get hold of transcripts of both your text messages to each other. I especially like the part where you advise her to burn all her clothing and bathe in bleach. You often give legal advice like that?”
“Get out!” Kline shouted. “Get out of here! I won’t have this! Get—”
He was stopped when he saw the two uniformed constables standing in the doorway. Then he turned around and saw the others through the windows coming around the back of the property to the French doors. Their squad cars had pulled up on the drive not long after Barker.
“It’s okay, Peter,” Jaqueline Carter said.
Kline glanced at her and then back at the detective before throwing himself down in the chair and looking as worried as his girlfriend.
Gazing up at Barker with tears brimming in her eyes, Jaqueline Carter said, “I spent the past twenty years living a lie. Lying to myself about the deviancy of that man. Lying that I lived off it like some parasite. That I owed my position and my safety to a terribly preternatural man. That in truth I was no better than him. When I followed him to that place and gained access, found him in that room with that girl, all those years of lying to myself crashed down on me. I still can’t even remember killing him. It was more instinct than anything else. The next I knew, he was on the bed, blood everywhere and the girl screaming. Then I left and called Peter.”
“Jaqueline Carter,” Barker said, “I am arresting you for the murder of Charles Carter. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defense if you do not mention something you later rely on in court…”
69
Later that day, Barker stood in the pound of a police station amongst the incessant barking of innumerable dogs. An officer of the dog unit was walking him through an aisle of cages, some of the animals barking in his face as he went past, others merely watching him.
“She’s a nice little dog,” he was saying as he led Barker to a cage at the end. “I was thinking of taking her home myself. You know, so she won’t have to spend her last days here. I was sure glad when they said someone was gonna take her.”
They reached the cage and the officer kneeled down before it.
“Here girl,” he said softly.
The back of the cage was coated in shadow. Eventually, the dog emerged from the darkness with stiff movements. Barker was reminded of John. The dog reached the front of the cage and the officer scratched her head.
“She’s all yours,” he said, turning over his shoulder.
70
The sun was down by the time Barker reached his destination. It was in the middle of the countryside and down the end of a dirt track, the cottage hidden within the trees and basking in the moonlight shadow.
When he pulled up, the curtains of a downstairs window rustled rapidly and the door burst open. The two teenage girls ran out of the house and up to the car.
They opened the back door and Jess burst in on the old sheepdog that lay on the back seat. The dog gazed up at her for some time as the girl smiled, tears sparkling down from her eyes as she looked at the gray hairs in the dog’s fur. Something suddenly came alive in the dog’s milky eyes. A fervent restlessness worked through her bones and she got up from the seat. When she was standing, her tail was wagging furiously and she began whining. Her whole body wriggled along with her tail as purest joy went through the animal. Jess crouched at the door and the dog leaped forward, licking the girl all over. She closed her arms around the dog and it couldn’t stay still in them.
Barker came beside Tina.
“Where’s Dorring?” he asked.
“He’s gone to see someone,” the girl informed him.
71
Lloyd scratched at the scarring on his face. It was hot in the barn and it itched madly when he sweated. Even the alcohol he’d drunk did nothing to numb it. The place had cleared out half an hour ago and he was there to lock up.
He sat on a bale of straw and sipped a bottle of ice cold beer. Behind him, the ground was covered in straw and men’s blood. There’d been three fights that night. None of them up to what old Otis used to be capable of.
“To you, Otis Rawly,” he said, holding up his beer to the light bulb hanging from the tin roof. “One heck of a fighter.”
Otis Rawly was dead. There’d been one hell of a commotion that he’d gotten himself involved in and it had somehow ended with a lot of dead people at old Frank Jordon’s place, including the old coot himself. “Looked like a battlefield after a war,” old Constable Watts had told him in the pub the day after it had happened. “An’ you should’ve seen what we found under the place,” Watts had gone on.
Old Jordon had been found out to be a dirty old monster.
This was the part that worried Lloyd. And not just because of the potential of losing his job.
“Lloyd,” someone called from the door.
He glanced up. There was a floodlight on in the yard outside and all Lloyd could see was the silhouette of a large man in the glare.
“Who is it?” he called back, shielding his eyes with a hand.
The man stepped forward. Lloyd’s eyes widened when he saw who it w
as.
“Dorrin’, as I live and breathe,” Lloyd said, holding up the beer. “Come take a seat on this bale here. I got some beer. Have a drink with me. They said you ended up in the lake over by the quarry with the rest of them.”
Dorring didn’t say anything. He merely came over and took a seat on the bale right next to him. He then shoved a heavy arm around the skinny farmer’s shoulders.
“How’re you doing, Lloyd, my old mucker?” he said.
He felt Lloyd cringe underneath him.
“I’m good,” the farmer said, staring at Dorring through his drunk eye. “They said you was dead. You an’ Otis.”
“Oh, Otis is dead, Lloyd.”
“What about his girl? They said she got killed by Jordon’s freak, Conway.”
“Oh, she’s alive and well,” Dorring replied, glaring into Lloyd’s one remaining eye.
“That’s good then,” Lloyd drawled.
The two men stared into each other’s eyes for several seconds until Lloyd became uncomfortable with it and reached down to grab a beer, sliding from underneath the arm when he did.
“A beer?” he said, holding the bottle up to Dorring.
“There’s something you should know about me, Lloyd,” Dorring said, standing up and glaring down at the skinny man. “I never drink before a fight.”
His face had turned into a malevolent scowl and his fists were at his sides. Lloyd spotted something moving in the glare of the outside floodlight and looked up. It was Maria. But not as he’d ever seen her before. She was holding a rifle and it was aimed at him as she slowly entered the barn.
“What is this?” Lloyd muttered, turning back to Dorring.
The latter took the beer from his hand. Lloyd was so confused that he let it go without trouble. He didn’t yet realize the trouble he was in.
“What is this?” he repeated, looking up at Dorring. “Why’s she got a gun?”