The Death Collector

by Neil White

  His phone buzzed again.

  How many have you had? Hugh is a bad influence.

  I was keeping up with him.

  LOL. A lot then.

  Enough to make me wobble. I just wanted to text.

  I’m glad you did.

  He was outside her apartment, looking up at the shadows of the television against her white blinds, flowers on the window sill.

  Are you still there? she texted. I could come and meet you.

  Where’s Simon?

  There was a pause of a few minutes, as Joe swayed on his feet. It’s complicated, came the response eventually.

  That text made Joe close his eyes. All he had to do was ring her bell and she might let him in, and a memory of one of their nights together came back to him. Kim’s soft murmurs, the warmth of her skin, her hands pressing into his back.

  But there was Simon. Joe didn’t mess around with attached women. He had felt the sting of infidelity himself. He wasn’t going to inflict it on someone else. Complicated wasn’t the same as being single.

  He typed, Shame. I’m in the taxi, heading home. He paused before tapping the send button, and he looked up at the sky as it went, his words bouncing between the phone masts and ending right above him, where Kim was waiting.

  Okay. Another time, came the response.

  He walked away, and although with every step it felt like he was making the wrong move, he kept on walking.

  Thirty-one

  For Carl, the evening had been one of waves of images and sounds, fading in and out, tiredness and hunger making it hard to stay on his feet. He was able to press his hands against the wall to give himself some support, but he was weakening.

  He thought of his mother. He had to stay strong for her.

  The darkness enveloped him, magnifying the noises, something for his mind to lock onto as it swirled around, lost in some half-sleep, unsure if he was dreaming. He could hear steady breaths sometimes, as if someone was watching him closely, bathing him in their warm breath. Perhaps it was just a draught finding its way in from somewhere and mixing in with his own semi-consciousness.

  Other times, he heard sounds above him. The knocks of sharp heels on a wooden floor, the creak of a chair, the distorted wail of a song. Laughter. Then it had fallen silent. Carl had tried to listen out, to keep himself awake and focused, but it had got harder as the hours passed. His head was bathed in perspiration, his clothes sticking to his chest.

  Then the cellar door opened.

  Carl flinched. He stood up straight, set his feet apart. The rope dug into his neck but didn’t tighten. There were loud swishing noises, the sound of something heavy being dragged, and then grunts of exertion.

  Carl knew what it was before he saw it. He closed his eyes, not wanting the truth to be confirmed, but the sounds that filled his head were somehow worse. The sickening slap of bare flesh against stone steps echoed round the cellar, making him open his eyes.

  The man was pulling someone, although he was visible only as a slow shadow in the light that streamed down from the open doorway. He had his hands under the person’s arms and the body jolted as he made his way down the steps. When he got to the bottom, Carl saw that it was a woman, naked. The man dragged her across a few feet more and then laid her gently on the floor. The faint light caught beads of sweat and made them glisten. It was Carl’s first proper look at his face. He saw a glare in his eyes that made him shrink back.

  The man looked down at the woman’s body and said, ‘Just meat now.’

  He started to pace, a moving shadow against the light. His hands went to his head, running over his hair, fast and edgy, his pacing getting faster.

  Carl stamped his foot, angry for her, screeching through his gag.

  The man looked up, surprised, almost as if he had forgotten Carl was there. He stepped over to him and pulled at the knot on the gag at the back of his head. He reached into Carl’s mouth to take out the rag that had muffled his screeches of horror.

  Carl put his head back, swallowing, his mouth dry. ‘What have you done?’

  The man gripped Carl around the jaw, forcing his head upwards. He didn’t say anything at first. He took deep breaths through his nose and pushed Carl’s head back.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ Carl said, gasping.

  ‘You started this,’ he snarled. ‘You came looking for me. Well, you’ve found me now. Do you like what you see?’

  ‘You killed her,’ Carl said.

  ‘No, you killed her,’ the man said, gripping harder. ‘Don’t you see that? You interfered, brought it forward. Look at her.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  The man gripped Carl’s jaw harder and moved to one side. ‘Look!’

  Carl blinked away a tear. He couldn’t see much. Just a dark outline on the floor.

  ‘She’s just a piece of meat now,’ the man said. ‘All stiff and pink like pork. There’s no soul, nothing special. We all come down to this in the end. Slabs of meat.’

  Carl looked again as his eyes got used to the faint glow of light. He could make out her pale skin, her limbs flaccid, and fought against the rise of bile in his throat.

  The man pushed Carl’s head back again, knocking him into the wall. Carl rocked backwards. The rope dug into his neck. ‘So what do I do with you?’ the man said. ‘I can’t let you go.’

  ‘You can. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

  ‘Why would you do that? You’ve nothing to lose by talking. Not like her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You want a lesson in life? How’s this: we all pretend. Take Emma here. If all she wanted was fun, why choose me? Fun is transient, meaningless. We were more than that. No, I’m more than that, and she said she was too, that she wanted more than just a fling. We connected. I was the man for her. I made her laugh, was the witty and intelligent guy for her. I could be whoever she wanted me to be. That’s how I am. Emma wanted to feel the strong arms of someone round her, just a trace of the passion she used to feel for her husband. I gave her that, but still it wasn’t enough. How could she say that?’

  ‘But if she was married, she was never going to be yours.’

  ‘You’re so naïve,’ the man said. ‘Marriage kills passion. It burns out the fires until there is nothing left except resentment and loneliness and bitterness. People who pretend otherwise are lying to themselves.’

  ‘My parents were happy,’ Carl said.

  The man shook his head slowly. ‘No, they weren’t. They just pretended they were for your benefit, to keep you feeling safe and secure, so you didn’t have to worry about all the shit that heads your way in life. I mean, how often did you hear them laugh, and I mean really laugh?’ Carl didn’t respond. ‘Never is my guess. Emma was the same, and I was going to rescue her. I wanted to show her a different way, to explore all her dark corners. We all have them, you know, those hidden desires we won’t tell anyone. All she had to do was expose herself to me, show that it wasn’t just some romp, that it was no cheap thing. She had to give herself to me, surrender everything. Let me know her every thought, every fear, so that I had her completely and she was unable to go back.’

  ‘And once you had that?’

  ‘I’d let her go.’

  ‘Dump her, you mean.’

  The man laughed, although it came out as a sneer. ‘What else would there be for me to see? I brought her out of herself, found the real Emma. It was my gift to her.’

  Carl’s mind was racing. The man seemed less hostile in this frenzied state. If he could keep him talking, perhaps there was a way out. ‘It sounds like a game,’ he said. ‘You make her love you just so you can mistreat her. But she would have given up everything she had for you, ruined her own life.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t give herself up, so I had to rescue her twice over.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I rescued her once, when I showed her the real Emma, but do you think I could let her go back to her life, the one she had? Emp
ty, soulless. It would kill her from the inside, except she wouldn’t even know she was dying, because it would be slow and lingering. But still she clung onto it, always scared, because one wrong telephone call from me, a careless word in someone’s ear and all she had would have been gone. Her home. Family.’ He smiled, as if he was proud of himself. ‘So I’ve rescued her again. She’s free now.’

  Carl looked over at Emma’s prone form and anger crept in. ‘You don’t collect,’ he said. ‘You destroy, like those people who say they love butterflies when really they just want them dead and pinned inside a frame. If you can’t destroy a person by breaking them, you kill them.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you collect, you don’t give away.’ He cocked his head. ‘Maybe I’m not a collector? Perhaps I’m just a thief? I like to collect other people’s things.’

  ‘But it won’t last for ever,’ Carl said. ‘They might trace her to you and they’ll come down here and find me.’

  The man clenched his jaw before yanking on the rope and drawing it tight. ‘You’re not making a convincing case for being kept alive.’

  Carl gasped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, panic clear in his voice. ‘I won’t say anything like that again. But it’s a good question. How do you know they can’t trace me to you?’

  The man’s eyes flickered at that. ‘Can they?’

  ‘I found you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Ha! That’s what you’re holding out for? The rescue. The white knight on his charger. So let’s speed things up a bit.’

  The man reached for his waistband and Carl heard the same swish as he had earlier in the night, the sound of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath.

  He waited for the blade to appear under his chin again. It didn’t. It came at him lower down, just above his knee.

  The man leaned in so that he could whisper into Carl’s ear. ‘Can you feel the knife? Just one thrust. How long would you last on one leg?’

  ‘Don’t hurt me, please,’ Carl said, tears running down his face.

  ‘These walls are filled with memories. I’m going to lose them all now, because of you. Shouldn’t I let you share my pain?’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t have to be like this.’

  Carl shrieked as the blade pierced the skin on his leg and moved down towards his kneecap. Blood soaked his trousers. It felt like flames as the knife was dragged through his skin, until the man pulled it out eventually and wiped the blade on Carl’s clothes.

  Carl gritted his teeth in pain.

  ‘There, I’m helping you,’ the man said. ‘Your legs might give up a bit sooner now. If this is hell for you, that cut might end it more quickly by getting you swinging. Until then, think of the pain you’ve caused. If you’re still around the next time I come down, I’ll help you a little more.’

  ‘No, please, don’t,’ Carl said, sobbing, desperate to bend down but prevented by the rope.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ the man said. ‘I’m giving you the power, making it your choice when you go. A lot to take in at your age, but you have no idea how much pain you have caused me. I’m just spreading it around.’

  With that, the man pushed the gag back into Carl’s mouth and turned and walked out of the cellar, slamming the door shut at the top of the stairs. Carl tried to stay balanced on one leg, sobbing, swaying, feeling the rope grip a little tighter.

  As the darkness settled around him, the silence broken only by his own sobs, Carl could think of nothing else but the agony radiating from his leg that prevented him from putting his foot down.

  It would all be over soon.

  Thirty-two

  The low rumble of tyres almost numbed Sam to sleep as he completed the last part of the journey onto the moors.

  The argument with Alice was still in his head, but it had been pushed away by the compulsion he felt to find out why the crime scene troubled him. For Sam, the location was important, even if Hunter disregarded it and was interested in no one else but Sarah Carvell’s husband. Charlotte’s words stayed with him: X marks the spot.

  The drive was becoming all too familiar now. This was his third visit in twenty-four hours. It was his first time at night but the climb and swerve were just the same. His high beam swept the sky as he got higher but once the road levelled out it spread over the moorland, catching the eyes of the sheep that dotted the fields. Rabbits darted across the road before disappearing back into the heather. Despite the wildlife, it felt like he was completely alone, far from everywhere.

  His car lights caught the sign ahead that heralded the arrival into Yorkshire, the pull-in just behind it. The steady hum of his wheels on tarmac turned into the crunch of dirt and gravel as he came to a stop.

  Stepping out of the car, the first thing he noticed was the cold. The wind felt like it had gathered pace as it rolled across the open countryside with no trees to break its path. He shivered and pulled up the collar on his coat. He knew he was going to be there for some time and suddenly wished he had brought something warmer with him.

  Then there was the silence.

  His footsteps crackled like small fireworks. A sheep bleated. There was a car in the distance, but Sam knew it was a few miles away. He looked upwards. He was away from the orange glow of the city and all he could see were the glorious silver pinpricks of stars against the dark blanket of night sky.

  He opened the car boot and took out a sack of logs that he had stored in his garage, for the garden heater he had bought the year before. He had wanted something torso-sized and it was all he could find. He decided not to use a torch at the start, as he guessed that whoever had carried the body would not have wanted to be seen. He hoisted the sack into his arms and started walking.

  The ground was soft, with large puddles of water where the spring rain was too much for the peat soil. It was slippery underfoot and the heather grew in such clumps that Sam almost went to the floor a few times in the first fifty yards. He worried about breaking an ankle and spending the night there in agony. But it told him what he needed to know: whatever had made the killer take this path must have been important.

  Sam struggled for a bit longer before he stopped and put the sack down. He was out of breath and his back was straining from holding the sack and struggling to stay on his feet. His feet had slithered on the soft ground and the logs that weren’t heavy soon felt that way. He looked back. His car was just a dark block, an outline, and as he looked at his feet they were just shadows. It was truly dark. There would be no need to go any further to dump a body and yet there was still a way to go to where the body was found.

  Then there was a car. The headlights were long streaks as the engine noise grew steadily louder. Sam stopped to watch. It wasn’t travelling fast but the beams were on full. The road got brighter as the car got closer and as it passed his own car he saw that the beam didn’t reach him; the slight rise of the land at the roadside soaking up the light.

  A passing car would not have seen whoever dumped the body even this short way onto the moors. There was no need for the killer to go as far as he had, which meant that he did it for a different reason. Sam was more certain now that the location was significant.

  He went back to his car, dragging the logs this time, and sat in the passenger seat. He checked his watch. Three a.m. It wouldn’t be light for another couple of hours. His shoes were wet, his trousers too, and it would be a few hours before it would get warm again.

  There was a flask of coffee behind his seat, just to keep him awake so that he could drive. He poured a cup and the moorland faded from view as steam misted his windscreen.

  The time passed slowly. He thought about sleeping, but it was too cold for that. He huddled in his seat, his arms folded tightly, watching the slight hint of daylight to the east turn into the slow spread of dawn. The hills opposite turned blue before they faded slowly into a light mist as the first creeping rays of sunshine played with the dew that glistened on the slopes. Now was the time.

  He stretched when he got out of the ca
r, his joints popping some life back into his body. He was getting to the difficult part.

  He went to his car boot again and took out a spade, before setting off across the moors once more. His trousers were still wet and his soles squeaked as he walked, mud clinging to them from his earlier effort. He had expected birdsong, the usual early-morning clamour, but there was silence, as if it was a landscape where nothing moved. He concentrated hard as he went, keeping a look-out for where he was. There were few distinguishing landmarks but if there was any point to what he was doing, he had to get the right spot.