by Shaun Hutson
‘John was one of the reasons I had to get away,’ Sue said, raising her eyebrows.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
Sue exhaled wearily wondering whether she ought to burden her sister with her worries but knowing that she had to tell someone. She couldn’t carry on bottling up her feelings.
‘He had an affair, Julie.’ The words came out with ease.
She went on to explain what had happened. The letter. The discovery. The row.
How she blamed him for Lisa’s death. Julie listened intently, her face impassive.
‘That’s why I had to get away,’ Sue continued. ‘To give myself time to think, to decide where I go from here.’
Julie still didn’t speak.
‘I don’t know if I can ever forgive him,’ said Sue. ‘I don’t even know if I want to.’
The two women regarded each other silently, across the table. Sue feeling slightly drained after relaying the revelations of the last few weeks, Julie not sure what to say.
The silence was broken by the sound of the back door being flung open.
Craig Clayton bounded in, spreading dirt over the kitchen carpet as he bounced his football. He was smiling happily, the football strip which he wore covered in mud, just like his face. He saw Sue and bounded towards her.
She held out her arms to grab him, lifting him up onto her knee and kissing his muddy cheek.
Julie could see the tears forming in her sister’s eyes.
‘How’s my favourite nephew?’ Sue asked, hugging him.
‘I’m all right,’ he beamed and slipped from her grasp, heading for the sitting room.
‘Boots off, football kit off, and into the bath,’ Julie said. ‘Look at the state of you. I’ve told you not to come into the house with your boots on.’
‘But Mum, Mark’s just as dirty as I am,’ he told her as if that information would somehow pacify her.
‘Well it’s a good job you didn’t bring him over here with you then, isn’t it. No dinner until you’ve had a bath.’
He shrugged and looked at Sue as if expecting her to offer assistance but when she only smiled he turned and stalked back outside to remove his football boots.’
‘Kids,’ said Julie, smiling. ‘Sometimes…’ She allowed the sentence to trail off, feeling suddenly awkward.
‘I’m going to change,’ Sue told her, getting to her feet. ‘I know where the spare room is. You take care of Craig.’ She smiled and walked through into the sitting room then beyond to the hall, where she picked up her case and climbed the stairs.
Julie sat at the kitchen table a moment longer then went to see how her son was managing with his football boots. Outside, the first spots of rain were beginning to fall.
Twenty
She woke with a start, propelled from the nightmare with a force that shook her and left her trembling.
Sue sat still in the darkness, trying to calm her laboured breathing, worried in case she’d woken anyone else in the house. The silence which greeted her seemed to indicate that she hadn’t. She lay back down, her heart still beating fast, perspiration glistening on her forehead despite the chill in the room. She shivered then swung herself out of bed and closed the window.
The rain which had begun as a shower had turned into a full-scale downpour with the coming of night and Sue stared out into the gloom for a moment, noticing lights on in other bedrooms in other houses on the estate. Aware suddenly of her own nakedness she reached for her dressing gown and pulled it on, realizing that she would not be able to find the comfort of sleep so easily now. Instead she walked, barefoot, from the bedroom and out onto the landing, passing Julie and Mike’s room. She paused to listen for any sounds of movement, any indication that she’d disturbed them.
Silence.
She repeated the procedure outside Craig’s room, pushing his door open slightly to look in on him.
Clad in pyjamas with pictures of motorbikes on them, he lay cocooned underneath his quilt, his mouth slightly open, his breathing even. Sue stood looking at him for a moment longer. He was just two years older than Lisa. A healthy, strong boy. Sue carefully pulled his door closed and made her way downstairs.
Craig’s eyes snapped open, his mind instantly alert. He heard footsteps on the stairs which he knew didn’t belong to his mother or father. He lay beneath the quilt, only his eyes moving.
Sue snapped on the light in the kitchen and sat at the table while she waited for the kettle to boil. When it finally did she made herself a cup of tea and drank it slowly, gazing into empty air, listening to the steady ticking of the clock on the wall behind her. As she got to her feet to return to bed she noticed that it was 3.11 a.m.
She drifted off to sleep after about ten minutes, the pattering of the rain on the window an accompaniment to her steady breathing.
The door to the bedroom opened soundlessly and Craig stepped inside, his gaze never leaving Sue.
He moved to within two feet of the bed, looking at her, watching as she moved restlessly. But even her movements did not prevent his silent vigil. He remained beside the bed.
Julie had heard the movement and eased herself out of bed, careful not to disturb Mike.
Now she made her way down to her son’s bedroom and peered round the door.
She saw that the bed was empty.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, swallowing hard. She turned and headed for the spare room. Craig was still standing beside Sue looking down at her, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest.
Julie crossed to him and gripped his shoulder firmly.
He turned round and looked at her, smiling. Then he looked back at Sue.
‘No,’ Julie whispered, shaking her head, trying to coax him out of the room.
He hesitated then allowed himself to be led away.
Julie glanced at her sister, ensuring that she was still asleep. Then she closed the door and ushered Craig back to his own room.
He climbed back into bed and slid down beneath the quilt.
Julie knelt close by him and once again shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘Not her.’
Twenty-one
He would kill them.
That was the only answer.
He had lain awake thinking about it, even at work the idea was constantly with him.
Somehow Hacket was going to kill the men who had murdered his daughter. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know when. All he knew was he was going to kill them.
Of course there was the matter of practicality. If the police didn’t know who they were then how was he to find out alone? And, even if he succeeded, what then? What if he found them and actually managed to end their lives? It would mean arrest, imprisonment. No jury in the land, no matter how sympathetic they might feel to his predicament, would be allowed to bring in a verdict of not-guilty once he was tried. But Hacket didn’t seem to care about that. The thought that by ending the lives of his daughter’s killers he would effectively be ending his own life made little impression on him.
What had begun as a vague wish had begun to turn slowly but surely into an obsession. Scarcely an hour passed that he did not think about finding and killing the men. He considered how he would make them suffer. Plotting and planning ways to rid the world of them. He revelled in his own inventiveness. He rejoiced in his capacity to imagine what he might do to them. Castration.
God, how he would love to draw the knife so slowly around the scrotum of the one who had penetrated his daughter. To slice through that soft flesh and expose the reeking purple egg-shaped objects inside. He would cut them free one at a time then, while the bastard bled to death, Hacket would push the knife into his anus. Split his bowel. And finally he would take the penis, that vile member which had violated his little girl and he would insert the point of the knife into the slit in the glans and he would push. Push until he sliced the organ in two, cutting slowly and carefully, finally severing it at the root.
Jesus, the thought was a good one and
, as he lay in bed gazing at the ceiling he smiled to himself.
At first he had been horrified that such thoughts should have found a home within a supposedly educated and civilised mind like his own but then, as the thought of his dead daughter flashed back into his mind more vividly, the sight of her tiny body on that mortuary slab, he had actively pursued the thoughts. Each method of torture and death had been dredged from blacker regions of his mind until he felt as if he were pillaging the thoughts of some degenerate sadist.
He enjoyed the thoughts.
He would destroy their eyes.
The organs with which they had first looked upon his little girl.
Hacket thought how he would take the blade and cut across the glistening orbs, or else he would carve them from the sockets.
He would cut off each of their fingers in turn.
Cut off their ears.
Shatter their knees with an iron rod then methodically break every bone in their bodies.
Make them eat their own faeces.
The thoughts tumbled around inside his mind, each one to be savoured. Punishment for him would be meaningless. Nothing the law could do to him could make him suffer more than the death of his daughter.
And, perhaps, he thought, with vengeance would come forgiveness. When Susan saw what he had done to the killers of their child she would love him again. She would want him back.
He knew now, more than ever before, that his only hope of atonement lay in finding and killing the murderers of his child.
He swung himself out of bed, reaching for the bottle of whisky on the cabinet beside. He drank straight from the bottle, some of the fiery liquid spilling down his chest. The amber fluid burned its way to his stomach and he sucked in a deep breath, holding the bottle before him. He grinned, seeing his own distorted image in the glass.
If madness was a mirror, then Hacket was indeed studying his own reflection.
Twenty-two
It all had an appalling familiarity about it.
The flowers in their cellophane wrappers, the empty words of the priest. The tears.
And the grave.
The inevitability of Tom Nolan’s death made the event no less traumatic and Hacket found that, even though he hadn’t known the man that well, he was fighting back tears as he stood at the graveside beside Sue, Julie and Mike.
Sue stood motionless, gazing down into the grave as if trying to read the brass nameplate. Hacket thought how serene she looked but he realised that what he had mistaken for serenity was something bordering on shock. He felt like waving a hand before her to see whether or not she would blink.
Julie was crying softly, comforted by her husband who kept her in his arms throughout the ceremony.
Grey clouds rolled by overhead, spilling a thin curtain of drizzle onto the tiny band of mourners. There were others standing nearby although they seemed reluctant to move closer to the grave for fear of intruding. Hacket guessed they were friends of Tom’s. One or two of them were crying also but their anguished utterances were carried away on the wind which whipped across the cemetery.
When the time came, Sue moved forward and gently tossed a handful of earth on top of the coffin then stepped back to stand beside her husband.
Julie did not move.
The vicar finished speaking, offered his usual perfunctory words of condolence then waddled off back towards the church to greet the next cortège which was just passing through the cemetery gates.
More pain, thought Hacket.
Even death had become like a production line.
‘I’m going to take Julie back to the car, Sue,’ Mike said, leading his sobbing wife away. He nodded to Hacket who managed a smile.
Sue continued looking down into the grave.
‘I know this isn’t the right time,’ Hacket said, self-consciously. ‘But can we talk?’
‘Just give me a minute,’ she said, without looking at him. Hacket nodded and turned, walking slowly towards a seat beneath a tree away to his right. He brushed some fallen leaves from the seat and sat down, watching Sue who stood gazing down into the grave. Hacket could see her lips moving and wondered what she was saying. Her father’s death didn’t seem to have hit her as badly as Lisa’s. Perhaps the end of his suffering had been something of a relief to her, he thought although he decided not to mention it. Instead he waited as she walked towards him.
He brushed the seat with his gloved hand and she finally sat down.
‘Thanks for taking care of the funeral arrangements, John. I appreciate it,’ she said, quietly.
‘I knew you wouldn’t be in any state to do it. I owed you that at least.’
‘It doesn’t earn you any gold stars,’ she said, a slight smile on her lips but also he saw the tears in her eyes.
He moved towards her, wanting to hold her, she held up a hand as if to keep him at a distance. Hacket clenched his teeth.
‘I’ll be OK,’ she said, quietly. ‘What did you want to talk about?’
‘I wanted to know when you’re coming home.’
‘I’m not.’
Hacket swallowed hard. Was that it, he wondered? The final pronouncement on their current state of affairs?
‘You mean it’s over between us?’ he asked, almost incredulously.
‘What I mean is I can’t come back to that house, John. There are too many memories there.’
‘So what will you do? What will we do?’ he wanted to know.
‘I’ll stay with Julie for the time being. I know I can’t do that indefinitely, but…’ She sighed. ‘Like you said, this isn’t the right time to talk about it.’ She moved to get up and Hacket reached for her arm, holding it for a moment.
She pulled free from his grip, glancing at him for a second. He saw something akin to hatred in her eyes and lowered his hand.
‘Julie needs me,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go.’
‘I need you,’ he said, trying to control the anger in his voice. ‘We have to talk, Sue.’
‘But not now,’ she repeated, walking away from him. He watched as she strode down the narrow path towards the tarmac area which served as a car park. He saw her climb into the back seat with her sister, then he looked on as the car turned and sped away.
Hacket stood alone for a moment, the wind whipping around him, then he too turned and headed back towards his car. There was so much he had wanted to say to her. To tell her that he would sell the house and move to Hinkston, that they could start afresh if she’d have him back. So much to say. But, more than words he had wanted to hold her, just to feel her in his arms for a moment.
He’d been denied even that simple pleasure and, as he climbed into the car and started the engine, he began to wonder if it was one which was to be denied him forever.
He’d lost her.
Hacket was convinced of it.
First he’d lost his daughter, and now his wife. There wasn’t the appalling finality of loss with Sue that there had been with Lisa but he was still sure that their relationship was over. She might as well be dead.
He sat alone in the sitting room of their house, a glass of scotch in one hand, his head buzzing from the amount he already drunk. Half a bottle remained from the full one he’d opened just an hour earlier.
Hacket looked around the room suddenly realising how much he hated it. Sue was right, it held too many memories. But it held them for him too, couldn’t she see that? But he couldn’t run from them. He could never escape the memories no matter where he went because the thoughts which tortured him were inside him. Eating him away as surely as the cancer had eaten away at Sue’s father. And yet still he clung to the hope that revenge would be his salvation.
He took a long swig from the glass, some of the fiery liquid running down his chin.
Hacket let out a roar of rage and frustration and, as he did, he squeezed with even greater force on the glass.
It shattered. Thick shards of crystal tearing into the palm of his hand. Others flew into the air along with a
mixture of whisky and blood which spurted from the savage gashes. He dropped the remains of the glass and slowly turned his palm to look at it. Glass had lacerated the flesh in several places and thick crimson fluid pumped from the wounds. A piece of crystal the size of his thumb had punctured the palm and was still protruding from the flesh. Hacket reached slowly for it and pulled it free, holding it before him for a second before tossing it aside.
He studied his bloodied hand then slowly raised it to his face and, with measured movements, he drew the torn and bleeding appendage across each cheek until his face was smothered with the thick liquid.
He sat motionless, like some war-painted Indian brave, the throbbing pain in his hand growing worse but dulled by the amount of whisky he’d drunk. The smell of blood was strong in his nostrils. He could feel the life-fluid congealing on his cheeks, while, by his side, it dripped from his slashed palm.
Hacket smiled then laughed. Stupidly, drunkenly.
And slowly the tears of laughter became tears of despair.
Twenty-three
To say that the dining room of The Bull was small would have been an understatement. It consisted of five tables and, as he pulled his chair out and sat down, Stephen Jennings tried to visualise the place full of diners. He doubted if that ever happened.
The Bull was what people like to refer to euphemistically as ‘homely’. In other words, it was cramped. A small, family run hotel (even the description seemed rather grand for somewhere as modest as The Bull) in the centre of Hinkston, it was cheap, immaculately clean and friendly. He had stayed in dozens like it and many much worse. Jennings had worked for the past three years as a rep for a company of jeans manufacturers. It wasn’t the greatest job in the world but it got him around the country and he had a company car and a reasonable salary. However, now approaching his twenty-seventh birthday, he was wondering if the time had come to move on. Better himself, as his mother always liked to say. She was also fond of saying that he should settle down and marry, something which he had definitely not given any consideration to. He’d been in an on-off relationship for the last eighteen months, although his time on the road seemed to ensure that it was more ‘off’ than anything else. Still, he was too young to settle down, he kept telling himself. Too old to rock and roll, too young to die, he thought, and smiled to himself.