by Rob Sinclair
I’d picked up my phone and called the one person to whom I could turn in the dire situation. I’d called Callum O’Brady. No-one else would have listened to me in my hour of need. O’Brady helped me because he knew I would forever be in his pocket from that day. I’d put my life in his hands.
O’Brady knew what to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d had Mickey Egan clean up after a murder. First Egan had the scene expertly cleaned, removing any trace of fingerprints and handprints from Alice’s neck, but also sterilising much of the bedroom, making the scene look like a professional had covered his tracks.
Then he’d arranged Alice’s naked body suggestively on the bed, an indication that the killing may have had a sexual motive.
Then came the white feather, such a simple idea. It did its job. It kept the police guessing.
Finally there were the witness sightings of a man behaving suspiciously near our house. Faked, obviously. O’Brady had got one of his men to hang around outside our house that night, acting overtly suspicious in the hope that a busybody neighbour - when it was later realised a murder had taken place - would inform the police. Which is exactly what happened. Using ambiguity over the time of death and when I’d finally called the police to report the murder, we created a convincing set of unexplained events.
Without Callum O’Brady and Mickey Egan, a master of death, I’d never have got away with it.
Hayley Lewis? I still didn’t know why Egan had killed her or for what purpose he had staged the scene so similarly to Alice’s – perhaps O’Brady was planning to set me up. I would never know the answer to that.
I shook my head and turned on the tap, then splashed my face with cold water, feeling renewed focus and energy. I wiped my hands and face dry, then walked back out into the bedroom.
I stopped.
My heart sank as I looked over at the bed where moments ago I had been choking the life out of my second wife.
Not because of a moment of unexpected grief. That wasn’t what I was feeling at all. I had a problem. A big problem. Gemma was no longer there.
CHAPTER 61
I cursed my stupidity. Why hadn’t I checked the body? I’d been too caught up in my moment of contemplation.
I saw three options as to where she’d gone. She could have run straight out the front door. She might be hiding somewhere, waiting for help to arrive – which I had to assume was coming following Dani’s phone call. Or she was hiding and waiting for her chance to attack. Did Gemma have it in her to do that?
The way the wardrobes were arranged in our room, with numerous shelves and inner drawers, I doubted she’d be hiding in there. And there was nowhere else in the bedroom she could have fitted.
As I crept across the bedroom floor I was filled with anger. At Gemma for thinking she could still win out.
Over my dead body.
I reached the door and cautiously peered out onto the landing. All of the other upstairs doors were open, just as they had been when I’d come up the stairs minutes earlier. There was nothing to indicate that she’d gone into any of those rooms.
I moved up to the banister and peered over the edge, looking down to the hallway below. I could see Dani’s feet. She hadn’t moved. I was sure she never would again.
That was a relief. It also made me question whether Gemma had yet made it as far as the downstairs. If she had, wouldn’t she have screamed or shouted when she’d seen Dani’s body?
As quietly as I could, I moved through each of the other three bedrooms. No sign of Gemma anywhere. I crept back toward the head of the stairs where the door to the bathroom was ajar a foot or so. As I neared the entrance, I’d already convinced myself that she must be hiding there.
I decided on a different approach. Rather than creeping into the room, I would explode into it. Take back the element of surprise she’d been hoping for if she was lying in wait for me.
I stood and counted to ten, trying to get my racing heart and my breathing, heavy with anticipation, back under control. Then I thrust open the door and jumped into the room. Ready to attack.
But I needn’t have bothered. It took me only a second to realise that the bathroom was empty.
Just where the hell was she? Could she really have made it downstairs and out of the house already?
As I went to turn around, to head back out of the bathroom, she finally gave herself away. I heard a creaking floorboard. It had to be her. I spun around and stepped back out onto the landing and caught sight of the moving figure in the corner of my eye.
I turned and dived toward her. Gemma screamed as I crashed into her. I pushed her back and pinned her against the wall. My hands immediately clasped her throat. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time I was going to finish Gemma off for good.
But I was too focused on punishing her. I should have expected what was coming. I spotted her hand arcing toward me, the shining metallic object in her grasp, too late.
My hands, gripped tightly around her neck, put up no defence as she plunged the nib of the fountain pen into the side of my neck. The fountain pen Alice had bought me as a present on our first anniversary.
Gemma jerked the pen out and I screamed in pain, immediately releasing her. I whipped a hand up to the wound, from which blood was already pouring.
She thrust the pen toward me again. At least my hand was there to protect my neck the second time around. The pen sank into the flesh on the back of my hand, becoming wedged between the bones there.
I yelled and launched my head toward Gemma. I caught her square on, forehead to forehead. There was a loud thwack and everything in front of me bounced and became blurred.
I’d never head-butted anyone before. I thought in that moment I must have misjudged it. It did at least take away some of Gemma’s fight. I heaved my wobbly body up and off Gemma and yanked the pen out of my hand, shouting out in pain again.
Gemma crawled up the wall, trying to get away from me. I was snarling. Demented with anger. Gemma, on the other hand, looked petrified. But sometimes looks can be deceiving.
And looks had always been one of Gemma’s biggest weapons.
She sprang into action, launching herself at me. We grappled for just a few seconds. I quickly realised just how weakened I’d become from the wound to my neck, which was gushing thick blood all down me. I should have been able to overpower her, but I struggled for control.
Then all of a sudden I felt something tug at me from behind. A short, sharp yank on the neck of my jumper. With my body moving backward from the unexpected pull, I went to place my foot behind me, but it connected with thin air.
I began to tumble …
As I crashed and banged downwards, I saw two figures at the top of the staircase. Gemma. And Dani.
I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Everything was spinning. I tried to get up but couldn’t. The world around me felt so distant.
I opened and closed my eyes a few times as I looked up at my wife and my sister. Neither said a word. Gemma just sat down on the top step, pulled her knees into her chest and stared, while my sister stood alongside her, glaring down at me.
A flicker of light caught my attention. I looked up at the ceiling. A blue light. Flashing intermittently. Its beam was coming in through the small frosted window on the front door. My eyelids were heavy.
I gazed back at Dani. Then at Gemma. The look on her face had changed.
As I closed my eyes one last time, I saw her smile.
CHAPTER 62
‘Are you sorry for what you’ve done?’
‘What do you mean by sorry?’
‘Well, I asked you before about regrets. But what I’m trying to get at is whether you feel any remorse for your actions?’
‘Remorse?’ I said. ‘I feel a lot of remorse. I’m remorseful that I won’t get to see my children growing up, for example. I love them more than anything. But it’s more complicated than just saying I’m remorseful for a specific action.’
I looked arou
nd the room. At the prison officer standing at the thick metal door. Over to the small window that had a sturdy metal grate in front of the glass. I looked down at my hands, cuffed together. I looked at my prescribed clothing, the only attire I would likely ever know.
‘Am I sorry?’ I said. ‘Look at where I am. Of course I’m sorry.’
‘So you’re sorry that you were caught. Is that it?’
‘No, that’s not it at all. When I look back, I see my whole life has been filled with regret and remorse. I’ve made so many mistakes, and each only plunged me further into the mire. Kind of like a snowball running down a mountain – it starts off small, and with each roll it picks up speed and grows and grows, and eventually you have a boulder the size of a house. It causes an avalanche of snow that thunders down and destroys everything in its path. That’s my life. That’s the only way I can explain how it got so out of control. I was always so busy trying to rectify the past mistakes that I just kept on making more and more.’
‘But it sounds like you only regret that you didn’t end up with the happy life you’d craved for so long. What about all the people that you hurt? The people you killed? What do you feel for them? For those who loved them?’
‘I was sorry for Alice. Killing her was a mistake, a huge mistake. I regretted it immediately, and I’ve regretted it every day of my life since. I knew I would never get over it. It destroyed my life.’
‘And Egan and O’Brady? The others who died in that car?’
‘They deserved it. They would have killed me. O’Brady was a despicable human being.’
‘Yet he helped you in your hour of need. He helped you to cover up the fact that you’d murdered your wife.’
‘It was the only thing I ever asked of O’Brady. He got back more than his fair share from our knowing each other. He milked me for years.’
‘And what about Gemma and Dani?’
‘They both lived to fight another day, didn’t they?’
‘But you tried to kill them both.’
‘I tried. I failed.’
‘You don’t feel bad for trying to kill your sister and your wife?’
‘No. They were responsible for what happened to me. For what I did to Alice. It was my hands that took her life, but it was their actions that caused it.’
‘You still believe that?’
‘I’ll always believe that. You asked if I have regrets. Yes, I have regrets. I regret that I wasn’t able to kill them too. In fact, I wish I’d done it years ago. Rather than going crying to O’Brady for help and spending the next seven years of my life in misery, I should have ended it there and then, wiped out the lot of them.’
‘Some would say that your lack of remorse is quite startling.’
‘It’s not really. Everyone dreams of punishing the people who’ve wronged them. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.’
‘People may say such things in passing or think about hurting others, but very few people would justify hurting and killing others in real life the way you have.’
‘The only difference is that I decided to take control. Where other people wallow in their own self-pity, at least I tried to make things right. You know, I never wanted any of this. I didn’t want my wife to cheat on me, or my sister to turn her against me. I didn’t want to strangle Alice in a moment of madness. I certainly never wanted to meet a man like Callum O’Brady. And I never wanted to end up in a place like this.’
‘You don’t think you deserve to be in prison?’
‘I think it’s inevitable, given the path I chose. Do I think it’s fair? I’m not sure on that one. I know I committed crimes, and I understand there are consequences. Whether or not I agree with those consequences is another question, and I’m not sure I know the answer. I don’t want to be here. The prospect of spending the next fifty years locked up isn’t exactly appealing. But I’ve got plenty of time on my hands to figure that one out.’
We both went silent for a few moments while she caught up with her notes. I stared over at the prison guard, who was glaring blankly into space in front of him. He never once twitched, never once looked over. I wondered whether he, whether any of them, ever bothered to listen in to these conversations. I wondered what went through their minds.
‘It’s been suggested that you acted with diminished responsibility,’ she said.
‘Suggested? It was the crux of my lawyer’s defence.’
‘But the jury didn’t believe it.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘What do you think? Do you believe you were acting with diminished responsibility?’
‘Do I think I’m insane, you mean?’
‘That’s not the correct terminology, but yes, essentially that’s what I’m trying to find out. That’s been the purpose of these sessions.’
‘You’re asking me whether I think I’m insane? How could I ever answer that? And how would you know what to make of the answer? It’s like asking someone whether they’re a liar.’
She thought about that for a moment. I knew the comparison wasn’t exactly the same, but it wasn’t far off.
‘If I admit I’m insane,’ I said, ‘doesn’t that take some forethought and knowledge of what insanity is? Which would then suggest that I’m cognisant of my behaviour, which means I’m not insane. If I say no, then what the hell am I? A psychopath? Aren’t psychopaths insane?’
‘Well, this is where the terminology isn’t helping the question.’
‘It was your question.’
‘And whatever answer you give is valid. It’s not a trick.’
‘But I don’t know how to answer it.’
She jotted down another note and then sat back in her chair.
‘Just one more question,’ she said. ‘What I want to know is why you committed these crimes? And I don’t mean the answer about getting revenge against people who wronged you. That’s a motivation. I want to know how you can reconcile actually taking the actions. What is it inside you that made you kill those people?’
‘My father told me a fable when I was younger,’ I said. ‘I think it comes from the Native Americans or some other similar culture. The story goes that there’s a battle inside us all between two wolves. One is evil. It represents anger, resentment, greed, lies and jealousy. All of the bad things in humanity. The other is good. It represents happiness and joy, peace, hope and kindness. Empathy.’
‘You think there’s good and bad inside us all? That’s what you’re saying?’
‘Yes. Anyone is capable of doing the things I’ve done.’
‘But not everyone does.’
‘No, not everyone does.’
‘So why you?’
‘Because one wolf always wins out in the end.’
‘And what makes one wolf succeed over the other?’
‘It’s simple. In the battle of good over evil, the wolf that wins is the one that you feed the most. And really, there’s nothing more to life than that.’
THE END
A note from the author
Thank you for reading Dark Fragments. I do hope you enjoyed it and would be very grateful if you could write a review. It needn’t be long, just a few words. Reviews make a huge difference to writers and help other readers discover new books.
Look out for the return of DI Dani Stephens - more details coming soon...
To find out more about my previous releases, just head to www.robsinclairauthor.com
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Acknowledgments
I'd like to keep this short and sweet and thank all of those people who have helped and supported my writing career so far. Hopefully you know who you are, but a special mention has to go to my parents, whose (almost) unwavering support has driven me for many years, my wife, for tolerating me and letting me get away with murder (not literally), my editor, Charlie Wilson (aka The Book Specialist), who never fails to tell me when my writing is a load of crap, the team at Bloodhound Books, who I am sure will help make this book the biggest success it can be, and finally all of the readers and reviewers and bloggers who have taken the time to read my work (particularly those who keep coming back for more).
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31