by Will Carver
Order. Chaos. Order regained.
But life isn’t really like that. Especially in a place like Hinton Hollow where the community is, at once, disconnected, yet inextricably linked to one another.
And this isn’t your story, is it? It is mine. It is Evil’s story. And, of course, Detective Sergeant Pace’s story.
I would love to tie things up for you. I would also like for people to have more empathy and to be kinder to one another, so that evil may continue to exist but in a more diluted form, where things like this do not have to come to pass in order for people to be reminded what it means to have humanity.
Again, I am not sure that will happen. I do not yet know if what I did will make a difference.
So, here is a version of the end.
AN ORDINARY MAN
Oscar Tambor was pronounced dead at 9:37 on that fifth day.
Liv Dunham identified the body.
‘And you’re absolutely certain?’ Pace hated asking that question but she had only glanced at him.
‘We were due to be married this weekend. We’ve been together a long time, Detective.’ She was irritated. It felt like an accusation but the man lying on the floor had been shot in the face, his features had been disfigured.
Liv had no idea who the woman was who was lying dead next to him. The one with the hole through her chest.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Dunham, I have to ask. Does Oz have any distinguishing features on his body? A tattoo? A scar? A mole? Has he been circumcised? I know this is hard.’ He was simply being thorough. He had to be. Anderson had fucked up. Another mother had been killed due to poor preparation and negligence. Pace was not going to make any more mistakes.
‘It’s him, Mr Pace. It’s him.’ All the while she was shaking her head and looking at the other woman.
Pace’s first thought had been some kind of lovers’ suicide pact. He had convinced himself that he should be looking towards Charles Ablett, the man who had courted these women before killing them. He expected that Liv had been the cheater in the relationship. Perhaps it had been Oz. Maybe it was his final fling before the big wedding, a last shot at freedom with something strange. An older woman.
On closer inspection, there was no sign of a weapon.
This had been an execution.
He was trying to see the connection. It had to be related. Everything was. But it didn’t quite fit. All the male victims had been shot through the heart and all the female victims had the bullet strike them in the face. This scene was the reverse of that.
Was it symbolic?
Was he creating a pattern that did not exist?
Anderson entered the room, pushing past the local constabulary. They had travelled several towns east to Barkmere, just across the bridge into Oxfordshire. The incident had been flagged up to Constable Reynolds as being similar to those that had occurred in Hinton Hollow that week. There was the usual friction concerning jurisdiction on arrival, but Pace could be very persuasive, particularly in person, when his presence was palpable.
‘I’ve got the details on our lady friend, Pace,’ Anderson said in his usual heartless manner. Pace gestured for one of the other officers to come and take Liv away.
‘What do we know?’ Pace asked once Liv had been escorted outside.
‘Laney Isaacs. Forty-nine. Widow. No mortgage. Part-time position at the job centre. One child. A son, Harvey. Trying to get hold of him now.’ He was reading from his notepad. ‘Doesn’t really fit the description of the victims from our town, does it? We could be knocking down Ablett’s door right now.’
The warrant had finally come through to search Charles Ablett’s home in connection with the Hinton Hollow murder investigation but it was followed closely by the information they were given about the scene they were standing in.
‘Apart from the widow who was shot in our town. In her house. Who just happens to be the mother of the man lying dead on this floor.’ Pace screwed his face up in disbelief.
He turned away from the inspector and crouched down next to the bodies. Liv had told him that she’d had another call, that it had been Oz and he had said he was coming home. What could he have meant by that. He’d asked Liv to wait for him.
‘You knew Oscar Tambor, right?’ Pace asked Anderson without turning around to look at him.
‘Sure. The wedding was a big deal. I didn’t really know him personally but I knew of him.’
‘And this is Oscar Tambor?’ He pointed at the sad-looking corpse.
‘Liv said so, didn’t she?’
‘I’m not asking Liv, I’m asking you.’ Pace could feel the tall man with the moustache lean over him.
‘Sure. I’ve met him a couple of times but he’s not someone who lives long in the memory, you know? Kind of nice, kind of humble. Nothing remarkable.’
Detective Sergeant Pace spun slightly on his heels, turning to face Anderson.
‘Just an ordinary man, some might say.’
‘What are you getting at, Pace?’ The inspector’s eyes were reduced to curious slits.
‘It’s not clean.’
‘Well, that happens when people get shot, blood tends to go everywhere.’
‘That’s not what I mean. The other murders left nothing for us to grip hold of and run with. Terrified kids with visions of monsters implanted into their minds do not make the best witnesses. May Tambor was left undiscovered for days, so why was the front door left wide open for a neighbour to wander into at this address?’ He was speaking out loud to himself more than he was involving Anderson in his process.
‘I’m still not sure I know the relevance.’
‘I’m saying that something doesn’t fit. There are no real mistakes that I can see, this is linked but it’s not the same. All the murders have been cold but there is a difference between not caring what the police might find at a crime scene to this. It’s all too deliberate. It seems fake. Like he wants us to be here, seeing what we are seeing.’
Pace stood up. He looked around the room. The spatter of red on the walls and television, which was still turned on, a news channel advertising itself. There was the unmistakable scent of ready-meal containers in the kitchen, wafting in to mask the aroma of death that no longer registered with the detective. Some faded rectangles on the wall where pictures had been taken down or moved. And an ashtray filled with grey-and-white dust but devoid of cigarette butts.
It all felt conveniently placed.
‘Why would he want to do that?’ Anderson questioned.
‘If I had to guess, I’d say he’s telling us something. That the motivation behind this murder was different to the others.’
HE WAS SAYING SOMETHING ELSE, TOO
It was over.
He was finished.
THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS AS THEY SEEM
Liv Dunham sat in the back of Detective Sergeant Pace’s unmarked car. Anderson would remain in Barkmere and locate Harvey Isaacs. He was trying his best to make up for his mistake the day before. Pace was letting it happen. Maybe when this was all over he’d let Anderson know that he would never be able to make amends. That these things stay with you forever. They change you. They make you into somebody new. You can’t escape. You take that darkness with you wherever you go.
For now, he’d let him think that he was being useful.
Pace was driving Liv back to Hinton Hollow. He looked in the rear-view mirror, just as he had done with Mrs Beaufort. He expected more tears. She’d said it herself, they had been together for a long while. They were due to get married that weekend. Perhaps her suspicions matched his.
‘I’m sorry, Liv,’ he said earnestly from the front of the car.
She said nothing but was looking into his mirror to make eye contact.
‘Don’t read anything into what you saw at that house. Things are not always as they seem. We will get to the bottom of this and uncover the truth. Until then, you need to remember only the Oscar that you knew.’
These were the tricks he had tried when Julee d
isappeared.
She did not speak for the remainder of the journey and Pace didn’t push her any further.
The car pulled up into the spot that Pace had left it in the first time he had visited Liv’s home. She made the same mistake that most people did and tried to let herself out of the car. Pace got out and unlocked her door from the outside.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘Wait.’ He reached out and grabbed her arm. She snatched it away. ‘I’m sorry. Look, here is my personal mobile number. Don’t hesitate to give me a call if you remember anything that you may have left out of our conversations.’
IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW
This is how Pace had met Maeve.
He was working a case.
Her husband had died. He gave her his card.
And, one day, she called him.
‘Yeah, sure.’ She dismissed him. ‘It’s over now, though, isn’t it,’ she told him and started walking off again, screwing the card up as she walked but not throwing it away.
‘Ms Dunham,’ he called after her. ‘Ms Dunham.’ He repeated it louder, shorter.
She turned.
‘Call me if you get any more strange phone calls.’ The embers of his eyes glowed. She saw something in him that she had not noticed before and he saw that on her face. She was cautious – scared, perhaps – of what the detective thought he knew.
SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE
As soon as the door was closed behind her, she felt safer. And she let it all go.
There was sadness there, of course. Years of her life, perhaps the best part of it, the formative years, the things she’d supposedly missed out on because she had this long-running relationship. She wept for the loss of that and she cried for the people who never understood and would never feel the way she had felt about Oz. They would never know that pleasure and passion. That made them unlucky. But they would never feel this hurt and that made them unlucky too.
Because what she was feeling was real.
TO APPRECIATE TRUE PLEASURE
You must experience true pain.
This is not one of those vice/versa instances.
This is why pain endures and pleasure is fleeting.
The situation seemed like a nightmare. Kidnapping. Guns. Murder. Death. The gloom that had descended on everyone around her. The surrealism of the wider world gave Liv Dunham’s more actuality.
She felt bruised and crushed. And alone. She hadn’t felt that way for longer than she could even remember. It was terrifying. Oz had always been there with her. What would she do now? She couldn’t go to Paris or Provence alone. She didn’t want to. She wanted him back.
But there was also a confusion in her mind, as her back rested against the inside of the closed front door. He had called her. He had told her to wait. He had said that he was coming home. Was that a mistake? Did he mean to call that other woman? That old bitch he was lying next to. Was that his home? Is that where he went? To die?
It just did not sound like Oz at all. He wasn’t like that. He wasn’t rebellious or even adventurous. He wasn’t boring or safe either. He was something else. Reliable. Honest.
Liv started to think that perhaps none of it was real. The dead kids, the mothers with holes in their faces, the creepy new detective. None of it.
She was no longer crying, though she couldn’t remember when it had stopped. She was exhausted. She hadn’t slept after Oz’s call because she was waiting. Just like he said.
In a daze, Liv walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. She didn’t check to see whether it had enough water, she just pressed the button. On the table by the phone, flowers were dying in a vase. They had been there since Sunday. They should have lasted longer but they’d been sagging for days. It reminded her that her reality was that she was now alone. She would not be getting married.
Liv opened the drawer where her address book was kept – all her contact details were in her phone but she kept a hard copy – and she turned to the page where the florist’s details were written.
I really ought to start cancelling everything, she thought. It would keep her busy. It was necessary. She started with the flowers because they would be the easiest, Maggie would be the most understanding.
As she went to pick up the phone and make her first horrifying confession, it rang.
She picked it up and said nothing.
No sound came from the other end of the line either.
Liv felt inside her pocket for the scrunched piece of card she had been given by the detective and wondered how he could have possibly known that this would happen. That she would receive another call just like the ones she had been receiving all that week.
‘Hi. It’s Oz. Want to talk?’ a voice eventually said.
‘What is this? Some kind of sick joke? Who are you?’
‘Liv, don’t hang up. It’s me, Oz. I promise.’
‘But I…’
‘I can explain. Meet me. Tomorrow. Forget about Sunday and all those people. Just you and me. Okay? Liv?’
It sounded like him. He apologised for the passport incident. She’d only told Detective Pace and Mrs Beaufort about that.
‘Liv. Are you there?’ he asked, sounding slightly distressed.
‘What happened?’
‘Meet me tomorrow and I’ll tell you everything.’
THE REWARD FOR SUFFERING
He couldn’t tell her everything over the phone.
It was something like this.
Laney Isaacs heard a knock at her front door. Dinner was in the oven. She was upstairs and wasn’t expecting Harvey home for another thirty minutes. Harvey, her son who still lived at home though he was approaching his mid-thirties. Harvey, that perfect little boy she had always treasured so highly. Harvey, the man who felt he could not leave her after his father had died. She wouldn’t cope.
It had been nine years since he had passed.
Laney opened the bedroom window to see who was at the front door – Harvey’s room was at the back where it was quiet, he’d never been a great sleeper.
‘Oh, Harv. It’s you. You’re a bit early. Forgotten your key? Give me a sec and I’ll come down and let you in.’ She didn’t even let him answer.
She was talking out loud to herself about his key and arriving too early and how she wasn’t ready. Laney Isaacs wrapped her dressing gown around her, tied the belt around her waist and bounded down the stairs.
She could see her son’s face through the window. He didn’t look well, not like himself at all. She opened the door.
‘Everything all ri—’
He barged past her, his head hung low and he coughed.
She closed the door.
‘Harv. What wrong?’
He pulled out the gun from his belt and held it to her face, telling her not to scream otherwise he’d blow a hole straight through her skull.
Like May Tambor, she had hoped that the truth would never arise, that only she would have to live with what she had done and not have to confront it. But, in life, the only reward for suffering is more suffering, or, if you’re particularly unlucky, justice.
‘It’s you.’ She spoke quietly, her voice somewhere between fear and realisation.
‘It’s me. Whoever the fuck I am.’ He waved the gun to the left, instructing his mother to move into the living room.
He closed the curtains and told her to sit down.
‘You don’t look that old. I guess you really were young when you had me, eh? At least May told the truth in the end.’ It would have felt alien for Oz to refer to the woman he had called Mother for over thirty years as May, but this was not the real Oz Tambor standing there and it wasn’t Harvey Isaacs, it was the shadow that lingered somewhere between both of them.
‘I’ve been known as Oz for as long as I can remember. Did I ever have another name?’ His arm was starting to ache so he brought the gun down to his waist.
Laney Isaacs shook her head.
‘Couldn’t even be bothered to name
me. Sounds about right. Didn’t want to make an attachment, I guess.’
Laney tilted her head to one side. She wanted to speak, to say that it wasn’t like that. She was young, too young, and she was about to have another baby. She could have stuck it out, asked for help, she could have given them both up, but she didn’t. She split the brothers apart. She was a teenager and she fucked up. Twice. The Tambors could help. They could keep it quiet. Make it all go away. She chose herself and she had regretted it ever since.
Now she was going to pay for her mistake.
They all were.
Oz was not interested in gaining closure. He did not want to hear her reasoning. He did not like her. He did not want to get to know her. It was her fault that he had shot May Tambor. The blood of Jacob Brady and the Hadley family was on her hands, not his. That is what he told himself. And maybe what he believed.
He did have one question for her, though.
But it would have to wait.
MOTHER?
Harvey Isaacs was a liar, too.
Maybe it was hereditary.
He was a year older than the brother he knew nothing about and, as it happened, in a similar position to Oz in his personal life. He was going to take the next step with his girlfriend. The trouble was that Laney had no idea that Harvey had even been seeing anyone. He had his own secret.
Harvey told himself that he wasn’t telling his mother because he thought it would hurt her, but truthfully he was afraid that it would hurt him. He’d given up on relationships before because he couldn’t bear what it was doing to his mother. Not this time.
He’d stuck around for nine years to support her when his dad had died. It was time to move on. For both of them. She was young enough to still have a life. She didn’t need to run out and find a man straight away, but she had to, at least, attempt to get past the hurt. And she had to do it alone.
Besides, Harvey had news.