The Rule of Fear

by Luke Delaney

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked, despite knowing exactly what she meant.

  ‘Between us,’ she said. ‘It’s never felt like that before for me.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he admitted.

  ‘Is that what it feels like to make love instead of fuck?’

  ‘I think so,’ he told her. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Then,’ she asked hesitantly, ‘do you love me?’

  ‘Bring that thing over here,’ he ignored the question. She lit the joint, spinning round like a ballerina and floating back towards him, but as she went to sit next to him he took her in both hands and again made her sit astride his lap so he could feel her touching him. Her hips instinctively began to rock backwards and forwards until he stopped her. ‘Just sit still,’ he told her, resting his hands on her shoulders and allowing them to slide down her body before wandering wherever they pleased. ‘I just want to look at you.’ She swayed slightly from side to side at the feel of his touch, placing the joint between his lips and allowing him to take a deep draw before doing the same herself – watching his searching hands before looking into his face – his eyes telling her he’d gone to a different, enchanted world.

  ‘What?’ she asked him with a smile.

  ‘You,’ he answered.

  ‘What about me?’ she pressed.

  ‘You’re so fucking beautiful,’ he laughed. She moved in his lap, making him wince with pleasure as she blew a long plume of smoke into his face that he willingly sucked in and held in his lungs. ‘What you doing hiding on this estate? You should be conquering the world.’

  ‘I’m only seventeen, remember,’ she reminded him, smiling with sweet sexuality.

  ‘Going on twenty-five,’ he teased her.

  ‘You grow up fast around here,’ she told him.

  ‘I noticed,’ he said, letting his hands move to her breasts, feeling her large dark nipples pressing into his palms. She moved again and felt him begin to swell between her legs.

  ‘You need some more of this,’ she insisted, leaning forward and placing the joint between his lips, the end burning brightly as he drew hard. They were quiet for a while as they enjoyed the increasing effects of the cannabis and looking at each other’s bodies.

  ‘So why haven’t you?’ he finally spoke. ‘Why haven’t you got out of here – become a model or actress or something?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Mum needs helps with my brother and sister, I suppose.’

  ‘She’ll cope,’ he told her. ‘You need to look out for yourself.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ she replied. ‘I’d need money. Somewhere to live. Someone to look after me.’ She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said, suddenly looking deadly serious.

  ‘And what about your pretty policewoman girlfriend I know you’ve got hidden away somewhere?’

  ‘Over,’ he told her coldly, but truthfully. ‘Was probably over the first time I saw you.’

  ‘Why so sure?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I just knew.’

  ‘Were you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘although I think she thought we kind of were.’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘As good as.’

  ‘How was she about it?’

  ‘Fine,’ he shrugged. ‘She knew it was over – that we were just going through the motions.’

  ‘And you think we can be a normal boyfriend and girlfriend?’

  ‘Who wants to be normal?’

  ‘So you won’t be introducing me to your parents any time soon?’

  ‘Why the fuck would you want to meet them?’ he asked, laughing spitefully. ‘Sitting around a fucking dinner table feeling them watching us, making their disapproval as obvious as they can. Fuck them. Fuck everybody. With you by my side I can do anything.’

  ‘You mean take over the estate?’

  ‘To start with,’ he admitted. ‘Then I’ll expand.’

  ‘You could upset a lot of dangerous people,’ she warned him.

  ‘I’m a cop,’ he reminded her as he stroked her thighs, feeling the strength of her youth. ‘No one’s going to fuck with me.’

  ‘You won’t be a cop for long if you carry on like you have been,’ she told him, taking a drag on the joint before placing it between his lips for him to do the same.

  ‘I don’t have to be,’ he explained. ‘I’m planning on making a lot of money very quickly – then we disappear.’

  ‘Where?’ she asked excitedly, her shoulders dancing. ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘Haven’t decided yet. India maybe? South America? Somewhere where money talks and we can live like a king and queen for life on a few hundred thousand. So long as it’s far from here I don’t care.’

  ‘You can earn that much that quickly?’ she questioned, sounding unsure.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘If you’d seen how much cash that fool Astill had in his flat you wouldn’t doubt me. If a clown like that can earn that sort of money, imagine what I can do. That uniform’s like my shield. Out here it makes me fucking Superman. I can do anything I want. Soon every dealer within three miles will be working for me or paying me off. That sort of money adds up quickly.’

  ‘Which is why some very serious people will do anything to keep control of it,’ she told him.

  ‘Even fuck with a cop?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he assured her.

  ‘And what about your own kind? What about other cops? What if they come after you?’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he smiled confidently. ‘I know what to look out for. I’ll see them coming before they can do anything. But I need to make it as fast as I can. The longer it goes on the greater the chance of something going wrong. That’s why I need to keep a hold of the drug trade across the estate. It’s the only way I can make enough money fast. We won’t be millionaires, but we could have enough to make a start somewhere else. I don’t like it. If there was another way maybe I could try it, but there isn’t. Things have already gone too far. I need to move fast. At least there are no victims here – just people who want to get high.’ Even as he spoke he knew he was being self-delusional – trying to in some way excuse his actions, but even his damaged mind couldn’t be entirely fooled by his own lies.

  ‘People don’t smoke crack just to get high,’ she told him. ‘They do it to escape from life.’

  ‘Their choice,’ he answered coldly, ‘and it’s our best chance.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, leaning forward as if she was going to kiss him before veering away and resting her chin on his shoulder – one hand wrapped around his neck while the fingers of the other walked down his back until they found the first of the two thick scars that decorated his skin, ‘because I won’t spend my life visiting you in prison, or worse. I’ve seen too many women on the estate waste their lives doing that.’

  ‘Losers who got tied up with other losers,’ he told her. ‘That won’t happen to me … or you.’

  ‘So,’ she teased him, ‘you’re indestructible then?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Is that how you survived whatever it was that caused these?’ She ran her finger over the scar so he would know what she meant.

  ‘Oh,’ he said casually; for the first time in a long time he’d forgotten the scars were even there. ‘Those.’

  ‘I noticed them before,’ she admitted.

  ‘Hard not to,’ he smiled slightly.

  ‘I was gonna ask about them, but didn’t know whether you wanted to talk about it. Most of the blokes round here, if they had scars like this, would walk around with their shirts off all the time – to make sure everyone could see them. But you never said nothing about them, so I thought maybe you didn’t want to talk about them.’

  ‘You want to know how I got them?�
�� She shrugged as if she suddenly wasn’t really interested. ‘You sure you want to know?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell me,’ she lied.

  He sighed and took the last of the joint from her, inhaling and burning it down to the cardboard filter before stretching for the nearest ashtray and stubbing it partially out. ‘I was on foot patrol on the other side of Canning Town when I got a call about a domestic kicking off not far from where I was.’ It was the first time he’d spoken about it to anyone other than a doctor or therapist since it happened. ‘It was supposed to be the last thing I dealt with before heading off on my sergeants’ course. Ironic. Unlucky. Call it what you will. Anyway, I made my way to the scene, expecting the usual shouting match and pathetic accusations. I already had it in my mind to nick the male and leave the woman – give them a little time apart to cool down before they declared their undying love and ran back into each other’s arms – the usual domestic dispute shit.’ He fell silent, images of the fateful day suddenly rushing quickly into his mind, strong and vivid.

  ‘But?’ Kelly brought him back.

  ‘But when I got there the house was in complete silence – no shouting, no screaming – nothing. I knew something was seriously wrong. I just felt it – like an evil presence or something, I don’t know.’

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged, ‘for a while. I just stared at the front of the house trying to work out what the fuck was going on.’ He felt his throat swelling as the memories threatened to overwhelm him before he managed to continue. ‘Turned out I didn’t have long to wait.’

  ‘Why?’ Kelly encouraged, somehow sensing the importance of him being able to tell her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A girl,’ he stammered slightly, ‘about ten maybe … She came walking out of the house – looking straight at me – making straight for me. She had on this white dress, only it was turning red. The blood was turning it red. I think I went towards her … I can’t really remember, but she ended up falling into my arms. I’ll never forget those eyes. Jesus, I’ll never forget those eyes just staring up at me. Then he came from inside – like something from hell – knife in his hand and covered in blood. He came at us – not so much me, but the girl. He wanted the girl. I turned my back on him to shield the girl and he gave me these.’ He looked over his own shoulder at the scars he couldn’t see.

  ‘Who was he?’ she asked, her mouth suddenly dry and her voice faint as she realized she was listening to something real and close – not something from a film or a news item about a distant land.

  ‘Her father,’ he told her without emotion.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he thought his wife – the children’s mother – was going to leave him and take the children with her.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘No. They all died for nothing,’ he explained.

  ‘They?’ Kelly seized on it.

  ‘I went inside the house,’ he told her, as if he was a child telling a friend about something he’d done as a dare that no one would believe, watching her eyes dance with the possibilities of horrors he was about to describe. ‘I beat the shit out the father and cuffed him – and then I went in the house.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she swallowed hard. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Downstairs was clear, so I went upstairs. The blood was pissing out my back – made it feel like I was climbing a mountain, but I eventually got to the top.’

  ‘What was there?’ she asked, stroking his scars.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘Except the bloody handprints and smears on the walls. I knew that whatever I was going to find wasn’t going to be good, but I had to know – had to see it with my own eyes. If there were more children inside, I figured I might still be able to save them.’

  ‘Was there?’ she asked, afraid what the answer might be.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quickly and firmly, as if he was breaking bad news to someone. ‘There were more.’ He felt her body tense against his. ‘You don’t have to hear this,’ he explained. ‘I had to go into the house. You don’t.’

  ‘I want to,’ she almost whispered into his ear. ‘Tell me what you found upstairs.’

  ‘In the first bedroom I found a girl,’ he told her without emotion, as if he was reading from a report. ‘I later found out she was twelve years old. He’d strangled her and laid her out on a bed face up – arms crossed across her chest. No blood. No knife wounds. He’d tried to kill her clean – as if that somehow made it all right.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Kelly swore quietly. ‘He must have been insane.’

  ‘That’s what he tried to tell the court,’ said King, ‘but they didn’t believe him and neither did I. He just couldn’t handle the thought of losing them – of his wife and kids being with someone else. The only insanity he had was the insanity of jealousy, but that doesn’t work in court.’

  They both thought silently for a few seconds before she spoke again. ‘His wife?’ she asked. ‘What happened to his wife?’

  ‘I found her in the next bedroom,’ he explained, ‘on the double bed she probably shared with the man who killed her – tangled up in the white sheets, although they’d turned red by then. He gave the wife special attention. Went to work on her with the knife. More stab wounds than you could count. You could see the hate in what he’d done to her. He blamed her for everything – although she’d done nothing.’

  ‘You should have killed the bastard,’ Kelly said, harsh words spoken softly into his ear.

  ‘If I could have made it back downstairs I probably would have,’ he admitted, ‘but I passed out. Blood loss caught up with me.’

  ‘So he killed his wife and daughter,’ Kelly summarized, ‘and almost killed the little girl you saved.’ She sensed his hesitation – the flickering of his muscles as he tensed and she knew there was more. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘That’s not all, is it?’

  He tried to speak, but the words became trapped in his constricting throat – forcing him to swallow hard several times before he could talk without his voice trembling.

  ‘No,’ he managed to tell her. ‘No. That’s not all. In the room with the mother, sticking out from the side of the bed, I saw a foot.’ He felt her hold her breath while he described what happened. ‘It was the teenage boy. Turned out he was fifteen years old. He walked in on his dad stabbing his mum to death. How he didn’t just freeze or run from the house, I’ll never know. But instead he tried to save her – tried to drag his own father from her, and it cost him his life. Later we found out this was when the girl I saved walked in and saw what was happening. The father momentarily turned from the boy to stab her once in the abdomen, but the boy was still fighting to save his mother and sisters, so he had to turn his attentions back to the boy and that’s how the girl escaped outside. He saved her.’

  ‘And so did you,’ she gently reminded him.

  ‘Maybe,’ he tried to agree, although he’d never felt like he had – always questioning the world he’d abandoned her to, with no family other than a murderous father and physical scars to always remind her where the cause of her emotional pain came from. Saved her from one hell only to deliver her to another. ‘But the mother and the boy weren’t the worst,’ he said – talking to himself now more than Kelly. ‘I went to the last bedroom and that’s where I found her – like her sister, lying face up on the bed, arms crossed over her chest, eyes open, staring at the ceiling in her best white dress. Her tiny throat crushed. She was so small. Only six years old. Somehow she still looked alive, but she wasn’t. That was the worst. For me that was the worst. It’s the one room I can’t get out of my dreams. She was so tiny.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kelly whispered and kissed his shoulder, tracing the thick ridges of his scars with the tip of her finger as he pulled her even tighter to him – holding her in a silent embrace that seemed to last forever.

  King sighed deeply. ‘It only feels right when I’m here with you. Out there, nothing makes much sense
any more. Here, with you, I can sense time passing, you understand? Out there one day turns into the next and days turn into weeks and weeks into months, but I can’t feel them passing. I can’t even remember how long I’ve been here for.’

  ‘Quiet,’ Kelly whispered and pulled him closer. ‘I love being with you.’

  ‘I love being with you,’ he replied sleepily. ‘Sure your mum won’t be coming back?’

  Kelly suddenly stiffened and pushed herself away from him as she remembered something she had to tell him that couldn’t wait any longer. ‘Fuck,’ she began, excitement etched across her face, the horror of King’s monologue swept away by her urgent need to tell him. ‘My mum,’ she said, shaking her head at the confusion she knew she was creating. ‘I almost forgot to tell you – Swinton – it wasn’t him.’

  King felt the blood rushing from his brain as the dizziness of disbelief swarmed over him making the here and now feel like a distant dreamland; Kelly’s words seemingly echoing and reverberating around the room until he was sucked back into the present and reality.

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Swinton,’ she repeated. ‘It wasn’t him that touched up that little Bickley girl or the others probably.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ he demanded, desperately gripping her by her shoulders as if getting ready to shake the truth from her. ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘The girl spoke,’ she explained. ‘She finally told her mum who it was and you won’t believe who she said.’

  ‘Who?’ he asked impatiently. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Only my mum’s fucking boyfriend,’ Kelly almost laughed. ‘It was Chris. Chris O’Connell. I always knew there was something wrong about him.’

  King was momentarily unable to speak as the images of the beating he’d given Swinton spun in his mind, making him feel dizzy and nauseous – any and all justification for kidnapping and torturing him turned to dust by Kelly’s revelation. All the others he’d fucked over were dealers, would-be rapists or thieves, but Swinton now appeared to be nothing more than the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time – something proper investigation, something the rule of law would almost certainly have established.