Hinton Hollow Death Trip

by Will Carver

  One certainty was that the victims were all facing the opposite direction that they wanted to travel. So the killer had approached them from behind.

  That’s why you have to look over your shoulder.

  But the only pattern was that there was no pattern.

  It made the plan even more idiotic and dangerous.

  She had it inside her but I was juggling with her insecurity and fear of failure.

  ‘And you support this, do you?’ Pace directed the question to Anderson.

  ‘Do you have a better idea of how to draw this monster out?’

  ‘A better idea than dangling an innocent child in front of his gun? Yes. We shut the schools, we gather evidence, we build a case and profile and we find this fucker. We don’t play games with sociopaths and we don’t unduly put people in the line of fire. Has everyone in this town lost their mind?’ He looked around the room as though somebody might agree with him.

  ‘Just one person. And he is the one we have to find.’ Anderson thought he was rather clever with his retort. ‘The people of this town are the same as they have always been.’

  He was wrong about that, too.

  EVERYBODY IS LINKED

  Constable Reynolds was back at work on the front desk. He heard the chief’s door slam shut then the gloomy figure of Detective Pace emerged from the door behind him.

  Pace had hoped to be as convincing as the councilwoman, perhaps inject some wit and insight into his response but ended up saying, ‘Well, some of us have got some real detective work to get on with so please feel free to take your ridiculous plan and shove it all the way up your arse.’ Then he walked out.

  Reynolds did not want to speak first. In truth, he was more than intimidated by the new detective; there was something that scared the young constable. He felt uneasy around Pace.

  ‘Morning, Reynolds.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Ah, there’s nothing good about it, I’m afraid.’ This made Reynolds uncomfortable. ‘Any chatter this evening?’ Pace continued. He was leaning on the front desk tapping an unlit cigarette against it.

  ‘Chatter?’

  ‘Yes. Any calls coming in that might help us with the case? Has anyone spotted Nathan Hadley? Has somebody noticed a strange vehicle? Did they write down the registration? Gunshots, people going missing, that kind of thing.’ He shook his head at the incompetency of the local force. Reynolds saw it and felt even more stupid than usual.

  ‘Nothing.’ Reynolds seemed sad about that fact.

  ‘Keep up the good work,’ Pace said, sarcastically, putting a cigarette to his mouth and walking off, lighting it before he hit the door as a small act of rebellion but also because it was impossible to ignite in that wind outside.

  ‘Wait. Wait,’ Reynolds called after him.

  Pace turned around, inhaled then blew out smoke without speaking a word.

  ‘There was something. Not tonight but a woman called.’ He had purposely memorised her name. ‘Liv Dunham. She’s supposed to be getting married this weekend and her partner hasn’t come home.’

  ‘Nerves, maybe. It happens.’

  ‘It hadn’t quite been two days when she last called but she did sound really worried.’

  ‘Has she called back since?’

  Reynolds rustled through some papers and the call log. ‘Doesn’t look that way. Maybe he came home.’

  ‘Maybe. Can you send her details to my phone? I’ll add her to my list.’

  Pace walked out of the station and back to the car. He was going to return to the Hadley residence. The Liv Dunham story didn’t seem like a lead but Pace had some personal experience with partners suddenly disappearing from Hinton Hollow and nobody following it up.

  Sure, Liv Dunham didn’t exactly fit in with the pattern, but that was exactly the reason Pace felt he should investigate. Because there was no pattern. In a small town like Hinton Hollow, everybody is linked.

  It was not about a pattern.

  It was simply a case of motivation.

  Shadows and impulse.

  NICE GUYS

  Nathan Hadley was an ordinary man.

  A working man. A business owner. A provider. He was known within the Hinton Hollow community but not on a level any deeper than the small talk one can expect in a barbershop or the back of a taxi.

  He was pleasant, softly spoken and he got on with his job every day. Cutting men’s hair with pride. Though he could have uttered a bad word against some members of his community – clients were often forthcoming with information and anecdotes once relaxed into Nate’s hydraulic chair – he never did. He was nice. A nice guy.

  The town was full of nice guys.

  He was also a father. He hadn’t felt like one the day before when he discovered his children lying dead on their backs, their faces towards a heaven he was finding little solace in as the hours clicked into the next morning.

  He had been drinking at The Arboreal, whoever had informed Detective Pace about that was correct. He’d been alone at a table. He’d been drinking Scotch even though he hated the stuff. He knew it got him drunk and he knew it got him angry.

  The homophobic teasing had always been brushed off. He knew it wasn’t true. He understood what jealousy looked like, he spent most of his day standing in front of a mirror with other men, scrutinising their appearance. But the truth is, the teasing was a form of adult bullying, and it had slowly and surely eroded the nice barber. He didn’t know but it had been eating away at him. It affected the relationship he had with his wife. And that was hurting even more after the Scotch.

  It had all been taken away from him.

  ANOTHER WAY THAT EVIL PRESENTS ITSELF

  Niceness. You know the kind.

  Anger, I can work with. See also: repression, suppression, oppression, depression and sexual frustration.

  He didn’t know about Ablett. He had no idea he’d been cuckolded. But it didn’t matter. He’d snapped. Everything had given way. Rationality. Reason. The ground beneath him.

  So Pace was left waiting all morning, watching the outside of a house that a family used to live in. Nathan Hadley, the nice-guy hairdresser did not return that morning. He had something to do and nothing to lose.

  Nate Hadley was in the neighbouring town of Roylake not feeling like himself at all. And he had something he wanted to speak to Charles Ablett about. It couldn’t wait.

  The wind had died down a little but the rain was coming.

  AMERICAN SUMMER

  When it hit seven o’clock and Nathan Hadley still had not turned up to sleep off his bad decisions, Pace assumed the recent widower had consumed too many pints of local ale and had taken a wrong turn into a ditch or he’d been blown into the woods and got lost. Either way, it ended with a devastated man covered in leaves for the night and waking disoriented. He probably would have felt equally dizzied arising to an empty house with tidy beds where his children used to sleep. When sleep was temporary.

  The other option was that he had something to do with his family’s murder and now had quite some head start on the beleaguered detective. The very notion did not sit well with Pace. He saw the reaction of a husband and father whose life had been wrenched away so swiftly and cruelly. That was not fake.

  Of course, there was a third option.

  The Hadleys were all together again.

  Pace could see the Hadleys’ letterbox close up from within his car and tried to focus solely on the bereavement of the town and Nathan and Owen and Michael so that he did not have to think of his own deprivation.

  He started the car. The sound of the engine did not kick-start his morning. It did not snap him from the reverie he was trying so desperately to avoid.

  Black flames crept around the inside of the vehicle, pulling at his memories.

  There was a confession. A signed confession over three hundred pages in length. The killer’s manifesto. Pace had it in his possession. Directions on how he had started, how he had honed his craft. How he had killed mor
e than two hundred people or, more specifically, made them take their own lives. It was all there.

  Detective Sergeant Pace could have taken the perpetrator in, with the book, and sent him away for the rest of his life. Giving the families of the victims some closure, putting an end to the movement.

  Instead, he took that man deep into Swinley Forest and left him there to die. Then burned the book and packed his bags for Hinton Hollow.

  He knew it wasn’t justice. He knew it was revenge for being on that list. He knew it was anger. And he knew it would never leave him.

  I would never leave him.

  Not after that.

  Pace scrolled to the letter M in the contacts menu of his phone and he shook his head. She was the only one who knew. He couldn’t blame the darkness, he had seen it and invited the heat of its black forked tongue.

  He had done what any other person would say they wanted to do with that monster.

  The same way that every parent would say they’d give their life for their children.

  He’d gone too far and now he could not get far enough away.

  Pace drove back to the centre of town where he punched a code into the keypad and the large white wooden gates of The Cider Orchard Bed and Breakfast pushed back smoothly to allow him to enter the stony courtyard.

  The lights were off in five of the converted barn rooms but American Summer had the main bedroom light on and the curtains were not fully shut. Pace looked at the time on his phone and wondered how many more people in Hinton Hollow were sleeping through their bleak future.

  He turned the key and entered the darkness of the Haas room. He was only stopping for a coffee. RD’s Diner wouldn’t be open for another hour and he couldn’t face the idiocy of the police station until he could trump them with something more concrete to go on.

  Pace walked across the bedroom, flicked the kettle on, ripped open three of the coffee sachets that were sitting in a tray with sugar, tea bags and jiggers of milk, and waited for the water to boil. He stood in the doorway of his rented room and stared over the rooftops of the town he once loved. Light was edging up over the woods and easing into town.

  The light went off in the American Summer suite and a woman – who looked like she was paid by the hour – stepped out and walked past Pace without even a hint of acknowledgement before exiting the premises on foot.

  One of the first people that Detective Sergeant Pace saw on that fourth day was almost certainly a prostitute. It was not his idea of Hinton Hollow life. It was grubby and indecent. And it would turn out to be the highlight of his day.

  TWO PILLS

  ‘You are through to the Tambor residence,’ the dead man told her. ‘We are currently unavailable to take your call. Leave a short message and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can.’

  Then there was a beep.

  Mrs Beaufort stopped shaking her head, the head in which she had just said, I do wish she’d get rid of that bloody message.

  It wasn’t her.

  But it was, you see. Nobody in Hinton Hollow was being somebody they were not. Out of character, perhaps, the character they had created or fought hard to convey, but everything that everyone was doing was a real part of who they were.

  ‘Good morning, May. Sorry, I know it’s a bit early but I thought you might be up. Just hoping we’re still on for tea and wedding chats this morning.’

  The show must go on.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll start walking over in about ten minutes. Should take me another good forty-five to be with you so make sure the kettle’s on.’ The true Mrs Beaufort smiled at that. ‘It might take me a little longer as I’ve only recently got out of hospital. Word probably isn’t out yet. I don’t want to make a big deal about it and get people worried.’

  Though you should have been concerned about me, my agoraphobic friend, she sniped.

  ‘I’ll bring some cake, though I know you have probably whipped up something delicious. I can fill you in on what has been happening in the village. Terrible things, May. We’re old enough to remember this happening before. Oh, and did you know the Pace kid is back? You’ll probably be introduced soon enough…’ She trailed off. Mrs Beaufort was one of those people whose voice messages were far too long, she ended up having a conversation with herself, there was almost no point in her going over. ‘Cheerio. See you shortly.’

  She hung up, a little out of breath.

  In the kitchen, the washing machine was wobbling heavily as it spun through the final rinse. She ran herself a glass of cold water and sat at the breakfast table watching the cylinder rotate and the remaining droplets of dampness hit the window then dissipate in uneven trails to the outskirts of the circle. It was hypnotic. She managed to think about nothing for a few minutes, her emaciated right hand never releasing its grip on her drink.

  Then the machine clicked twice to signify that the wash was complete.

  Mrs Beaufort put two of the pills she had been prescribed into her mouth then used the water to help swallow them. Doctor Choudary had said that she could take them as a preventative measure if she knew that she was going to undertake something strenuous. This may have been her first full day out of hospital and, yes, she was already doing what the doctor was worried she might do – take them and continue her lifestyle – but that was coincidence, she advised herself, it’s not abuse.

  She pulled the pile of baby clothes from the washing machine and into a basket that lay beneath. She then carried the basket over to the tumble dryer and filled it with the tiny, fresh-smelling garments. They would be ready by the time she got back and she could walk them down to Rock-a-Buy.

  Perhaps she’d need another two pills for that journey.

  Outside, the air was fresh and untouched by anything sinister lurking beneath her town. She breathed it in, filling her lungs with a familiarity she had always loved, and started to walk across Hinton Hollow to visit one of her oldest friends.

  It would all go downhill from that point.

  MOST MORNINGS

  Ellie Frith turned up for work at Ablett and Ablett ten minutes before she was due to start working. She was the junior letting agent. Roger had hired her. She was young and enthusiastic but not conventionally pretty. Not horrid to look at but hardly a head-turner like Jess Hadley. She wasn’t even the best qualified of all the candidates. But Roger had his reasons.

  He thought that women often flourished in a sales environment. They got great results because they were harder to say no to. He hadn’t even interviewed any men that had applied for the position. Also, the fact that she wasn’t so easy on the eye meant that Charles would probably keep his dick in his pants and get on with some work for a change.

  Ellie pushed the door back and forth, rattling it on its hinges though she could see that the lights were not on inside.

  ‘Fucking Ablett,’ she mouthed.

  Charles was always coming in late whether Roger was there or not. He’d be out drinking at Split Aces or he’d be fobbing off another of his married-lady conquests before showering in his glory and strolling into the office like his dick was a trophy.

  She took her mobile phone out and called that local hound. He didn’t answer. He rarely did. The next call was Roger Ablett. She didn’t want to call him so early as he’d arranged to come in late after scooping a sizeable sale in Twaincroft Hill the day before. It was part of his reward ritual. But she didn’t want to sit outside and wait for an hour under what looked to be a sky that was ready to split in half.

  ‘What, Ellie? What?’ Roger Ablett was not amused to be receiving one of these calls again. He knew what was going on.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Ablett, but your brother … er … Charles, he’s not here. I mean, he hasn’t turned up so I’m waiting outside and I think it’s going to rain.’ She’d delivered this message a hundred times before.

  Roger was lying in a king-sized bed that was seldom shared with another person. He peered over at his alarm clock.

  ‘It’s not even nine yet,’ he
growled.

  She rolled her eyes, pulled the phone from her face and mouthed an obscenity angrily in Roger Ablett’s direction. He’d lectured her endlessly about being at work ten minutes before opening so that she was ready to go when the doors opened.

  ‘Give it twenty minutes. If he’s still not there, call me back.’ And he hung up.

  Arsehole.

  She sat on the pavement outside Ablett and Ablett half knowing that Charles wasn’t going to come strolling along in the next twenty minutes. She thought about quitting her shitty job. She thought about it most mornings.

  She works there to this day.

  SOME TRUTHS ABOUT WORK

  People who find what they want to do never work a day in their lives.

  Then there are the people who find what they have to do.

  And the people who hate their jobs more than anything, most of them never leave.

  Roger Ablett rolled onto his side and hugged the pillow next to him. But he couldn’t get back to sleep. He knew for certain that his layabout brother wasn’t getting out of his bed any time soon and Roger would have to cover for him once more.

  A PIG STEALER

  Darren turned up for work early that day with a spring in his step and a dumb idea in his head.

  You’d think the place would have to be spotless at the start of the shift, the way chefs will clear down and clean every surface of their kitchen after a service so that the next day would start afresh and hygienic.