by Peter Laws
The fragments of that work flickered awake in Matt’s memory.
The part where Saint Augustine complained of toothache. The part where he shared the turmoil he had felt at age thirty-two when he couldn’t decide if he should convert to Christianity or not. But it was the other moment that sank in now. One which had been bubbling in his subconscious ever since he’d seen that word lurking in those two text messages.
He recalled an old painting from the centre pages of that book: a halo-headed St Augustine baptising his friend, a non-Christian called Verecundus, just moments before he died. And how Augustine wrote how good it was, how desirable, for that young man to have died so soon after baptism.
Because that way, he had no time to lose his faith. No time to be polluted. He had died pure. And when Verecundus opened his eyes again, he would open them on heaven.
And there was another picture beyond that, long forgotten, but really just tossed into the outer rims of his subconscious – or was it just his imagination? It was hard to tell which. But he could see it, clearly. A picture of him and Chris discussing that chapter over a beer and Chris so, so animated, with froth on his lip, hands gesturing, saying, ‘Wasn’t that noble of Augustine, Matt? Don’t you think that was wise? To baptise someone just before they die? He did Verecundus a wonderful favour. Heck … and eternally speaking, maybe it’d be more loving to baptise everybody alive then kill them straight after. That’s a fast track to paradise, that is.’
Matt suddenly realised he was leaning against the wall, hand scraping through his hair as he stared at the paper. He couldn’t think of any better way to say it. ‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Holy shit.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Matt sat back in the creaky chair, heart tapping a frantic little rhythm in his chest. Despite the generous sloshing of milkshake he’d just gulped down, he was conscious of the utter sandpit dryness in his throat. There was an entire section of his personality that wanted to walk out of the room and avoid what might be the truth. To run from this. That Chris Kelly’s twisted obsession with baptism might have led to murder.
Not like these pictures might show anything … but still.
‘You okay, Mr Hunter?’ Paul said, blinking a lot.
‘Just show me the pictures. Quick.’
‘Okay. I’ve lined it up for July 7th. But like I said, the camera takes a shot every five minutes, so that’s 288 pictures a day.’ Paul ran his finger up and down the wheel on the mouse. ‘Just scroll through them and it shouldn’t be too hard to spot anything out of the ordinary.’
‘How often do you check these?’
He pulled a face. ‘To be honest with you, I stopped checking the KFC room months ago. Once they brought that incinerator in, there wasn’t much point. You can’t really build a case of cruelty to dead animals. People barely give a damn about the live ones. So we’ve been concentrating on the other barns.’
Matt took the mouse in his hand and pulled it nearer to him.
‘Oh, and it’ll be quicker to go through than you think. Remember half of those shots are going to be jet-black once the lights go out. I can’t afford night vision. So you’ll probably only have about 144 shots to check on, for each day. Just skip the black ones.’
‘Understood. I’ll get started, then.’
Paul went to lie on the bed and pulled out a book called The Economics of Killing. ‘I need to read this for a seminar. You don’t mind music, do you?’
‘Not at all. Go ahead.’
Paul leant over to the speaker dock by his bed and hit shuffle on his iPhone. ‘Everybody Knows’ by Leonard Cohen started up while Matt tore the wrapper from his chocolate. He broke a huge chunk of it off in his teeth, like he was a mountaineer setting off on a long, undesirable journey. Then he started to scroll.
He couldn’t help it, but after a while he was pulling those pictures down to the beat of the song. At least it was slow enough to let him get a decent look at each picture.
For the most part the barn, or rather the KFC room, was empty. Yet every now and again there’d be a busy day, when Dale Jennings would reverse a flatbed truck into shot. It was odd seeing time jump in five-minute increments. In one picture the back of the truck was bulging and covered in polythene. Then in the next the plastic was gone and voila. Pile of pigs! Sometimes three, maybe four. One by one they vanished from the truck.
There was some sort of harness attached to the incinerator. In a few of the shots Matt saw the oven door wide open like a hungry black mouth. Trotters (what a truly hideous word) stuck out as Dale stuffed the bodies in with his bare hands. Matt could imagine the feel of those muddy hooves, scraping his palm.
A few scrolls on and the truck had been moved away. Then Dale was on his knees with a brush. Then standing, wiping his forehead. Next. Cleaning the gauges. Next. Scrubbing the truck. Next. Nothing again. Just that hungry spaceship sitting there like something from Area 51.
He could speed up during the nights when the shots turned into solid-black squares, and after a while he developed a decent rhythm.
The phone moved to a new song, then another. As the scrolls went on Matt had to force his eyes to concentrate. He used all his energy to resist the voice in his head: What the hell were you expecting? A little black flower of paranoia was growing in his gut. Unfurling. Get back in your car and see Miller and talk to him about Chris Kelly. Do it now! Because you’ve been away for way too long, Matt. Cos what’s that phrase? Absence makes the heart grow … suspicious as fuck.
Johnny Cash started singing the Nine Inch Nails song, ‘Hurt’, and the sheer melancholy power of it made Matt want to stop scrolling and rest his head on the desk. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. And just as Cash sang that first line, Matt spotted four light-coloured squares whizz by under his fingers, in amongst the constant parade of black ones.
His index finger started to push instead of pull, scrolling back up to those shots that he’d just missed.
He froze.
Almost yanked his hand back from the mouse.
Matt sat up so quickly in the chair that he almost sent his milkshake flying across the desk. ‘Oh, no.’
Cash was singing that the only real thing in life was pain.
‘No, no, no …’ He ripped his phone from his pocket and it slipped to the floor with a bump. He grabbed it.
‘Er … what’s going on?’ Paul sat up onto his elbow.
‘I’m impounding your computer and the hard drive.’ He jabbed at the keys on his mobile, searching for Sergeant Miller’s number.
‘Like hell you are. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
Matt clicked on the number and nothing happened. ‘Dammit. Where can you get a signal in here?’
‘You’ll need to go back out to the window on the landing, by the vending machine. We get dropouts in the rooms. It’s the bricks—’
‘Are there any other members of your team receiving this feed?’
‘A few. But just the live shots. I’m the only one with the archive. And, like I say, we don’t check that room any more.’
‘Then I need you to make multiple copies of the pictures on the screen right now and any others like it that you find.’ Matt sprang to his feet. ‘On printouts, on whatever memory sticks you have, on the Cloud. We cannot lose this.’
Paul was about to say something but once Matt got out of the way he started staring at the screen with a wrinkled look of confusion on his face. ‘What’s the big—’ His eyes stretched wide with shock. ‘Jesus Christ, is that what I think it is?’
‘Whatever you do. Do not delete it.’
Paul’s hand flew to his face, and when he spoke his voice seemed to fluctuate in pitch. ‘Oh, my God. That’s hideous.’
‘Make copies, now. And then start scrolling for more.’
Before he left the room Matt thought for a moment and held up his phone just in case. He took four quick shots of the four separate pictures on the screen, all from the same fifteen-minute period.
The first was just
the empty incinerator room, but with the main light suddenly on. The time code read July 22nd, 3.03 a.m. The next shot was a figure pulling an odd-shaped bag, his back to the camera. The third: the figure again. Half in shadow, cupping his hand around his mouth, obscuring his face but showing clearly that he was calling back to someone else, out of shot.
And then there was the fourth picture, the money shot, that had Paul wanting to gag.
The camera quality may not have been perfect but this robotic click of a webcam had managed to catch a horrendous moment in time. It was obvious what it was. Matt just knew, from the baldness of what was being held, as sure as he knew who it was that was holding it.
In front of the gaping mouth of the incinerator, two hands held what looked at first like an odd-shaped pumpkin ready to carve. But a couple of blinks reprogrammed the brain and showed the reality of it. Just Tabitha Clarke’s hairless, staring head. And in the splash of the light bulb, the gentle eyes of Chris Kelly’s son, Ben, who gazed down lovingly at it. He was crouched by the incinerator like a mad monkey with its prize, as both faces glowed in the light of the flames.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Matt wasn’t asthmatic but right now he genuinely felt like one as he breathlessly waited for the bars on his phone to stack up again. He hung out of the open window and then, finally, caught one bar of signal. He kept the phone completely still and quickly called Miller. Outside the sun had finally drifted lower in the sky.
When Matt told him what he had just seen on the computer, Miller had to ask him to repeat it.
‘I’m telling you, Terry, it’s his son. It’s Ben Kelly.’
Miller said nothing for a moment. ‘Why don’t you come down and we’ll talk about—’
‘Dammit, Terry, I know you found Nicola’s teeth in the fox. And I know why he ripped them out. They’d have gotten caught in the grille of the machine,’ Matt snapped. ‘I have no idea why they were dumped on my drive but I swear to you I had nothing to do with that. Or the emails. Or any of this.’
‘Then come back and we’ll talk—’
‘I am! I’m coming right now. But you need to find Ben Kelly, because I’m not the one you want. When you see what I’ve seen you’ll—’ He broke off.
‘Matt? Matt? Are you still there?’
‘Right. I’m going to hang up, and then I’m going to text you the pictures. Then you’ll know.’ Matt was about to press End call when he stopped. ‘Wait, I forgot. There’s something else. In one of the shots, Ben’s calling back to someone out of the frame.’
‘You’re saying someone else was there, helping?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘You think it might be Cardle?’
‘Maybe. It might even be Chris. Both even? I just don’t know. But he’s definitely calling to someone.’
‘Send me those pictures. Now. Then get back to Hobbs Hill,’ Miller said. ‘And I swear to you Matt. If you’re not back here within the hour, I’m going to issue a manhunt for you. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘You mean you haven’t already?’
Miller paused. ‘Just come back, now.’
‘I’m on my way. Stay by your phone.’
Matt quickly texted the pictures, thumbs shaking as he did it. Then he raced back to Mears’s room and grabbed some of the paper copies and a memory stick that he’d already made. ‘Good. That’s good. Have you got a bag?’
Paul looked so traumatised that he could barely speak. He just nodded to a Nike backpack on the bed.
Matt grabbed it and folded down the MacBook. He stuffed it inside, along with the hard drive. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get this back.’
‘It’s got my coursework on it,’ Mears said, then gave a grim laugh at how trivial that sounded.
‘You’ll get it back,’ Matt said again. ‘And thank you. You may have just saved my life.’
He raced down the stairs, jumped the last few steps and ran towards the car, holding the backpack tight with one hand and clicking his key-fob in the air like a laser gun. His car blinked its welcome-back eyes and Matt climbed inside. He slotted his phone into the holder and put the car into hard reverse. Just as he pulled away he thought he saw two of the campus security guards talking into their walkie-talkies and pushing through the door of Paul Mears’s building.
He wondered if they were looking for him.
He kept his lights off until he reached the main road then the phone rang again. Rigged up through the stereo system, Miller’s loud voice boomed into the car.
‘Bloody hell, Matt.’
‘You got the pictures?’
‘Yes. We’re heading over to Ben Kelly’s house now.’
‘Good. I’ll meet you there.’
Miller paused and Matt knew that his initial reaction would have been to tell Matt to stay away. Yet he’d clearly just seen the fact there was someone with Ben in the photograph. Who’s to say it wasn’t Matt? So Miller was choosing to keep him close, no matter what.
‘Yeah, good,’ Miller said. ‘Meet us there. It’s the big house on Ashley Hill right at the top. You won’t miss it. It’s got a neon cross on the roof.’
‘Okay.’ Matt clicked the phone into dial mode. He tapped on Wren’s name and waited for her to answer as he hugged the curves of the road.
‘Matt?’
‘Wren, hi.’
‘Why’s your phone been off? I’ve been calling.’
‘Sorry. I’ve been busy.’
‘Great. Did you finish your chapter?’
‘Wren, listen … you should stay over at Oxford tonight. Go to Premier Inn or something.’
‘Huh? Why?’
‘I can’t talk right now, but I’m okay. I just don’t think it’s safe here tonight.’
‘Matt …’
‘Go anywhere. Stay at a posh place, whatever. Just don’t—’
‘We’re here. We’re already at the cottage.’
For a second he drifted, and saw the lines in the middle of the road rumble under the car.
‘Your policeman friend, Miller … he called me up and asked if I’d come back early. He wanted to ask me some questions about that fox we hit the other day.’
He closed his eyes.
‘I’ve been trying to call you. Now tell me what’s going on.’
He felt a breath catch in his throat. ‘Don’t freak out.’
‘I’m already freaking out. I want you back here, now. And I want to know what’s going on with you.’ She suddenly sighed and when she spoke again her voice was small and uneven. ‘Plus me and Lucy have had this huge fight.’
‘Wren. Listen to me. There’s a manhunt on tonight in Hobbs Hill and I don’t want you or the girls there. Get in the car and get away from that place. Drive to a Travelodge or something. Drive back to London if you have to. But get away.’
‘You’re scaring me.’ Her voice had a clear tremble to it and when he went to speak he realised his had too.
‘It’s going to be fine. Just get the car and get going. Don’t pack.’
‘Okay,’ she said quickly. And then, ‘Who are you looking for?’
He took a breath. ‘We’re looking for Ben Kelly. I think he dumped that fox on our drive last night. And he’s certainly involved in the murder of Tabitha Clar—’
There was a shuddering yelp from the phone. It sounded loud and weird and wrong.
‘Wren?’
Silence.
‘Wren? Are you still there? Wren? Wren?’
The white lines on the road, swerved again.
There was the sound of sudden movement on the other end of the line, a swishing of material and the clomping of feet.
‘Wren? What the hell is going on?’ he shouted and suddenly remembered again that he was driving a car. The intensity of the conversation was making him slow down. He slammed the accelerator into the floor and sped forwards down a long, straight stretch of road. He shouted at the phone as it hung in its plastic holder. ‘Wren! Dammit, answer!’
> An agonising few seconds passed, then she came back on the phone.
‘She’s gone. Amelia’s there but Lucy … she’s gone.’ Another rush of movement. The sound of what seemed like a window creaking open. The rushing stomp of feet across the landing and the shout of Lucy’s name. Up and down the stairs again. All through the speakers of the car. It was like he was listening to some obscure and badly recorded radio play. Wren’s voice came back loud, falling into a desperate breathless panting. ‘The church. The youth group. She told me today that she met with Ben.’
‘And what happened?’
‘She met him at that youth group pizza thing after the big baptism. She said she and him walked in the woods. She was upset about the fox and so she showed him where we buried it …’
Something collapsed in his chest.
‘She was angry with you but he defended you. He said that you killing it was a good thing. That you were a merciful person. Then she said he prayed for her. She said she wanted to meet him again,’ Wren swallowed a frantic breath. ‘I told her he was too old for her. She got upset and said me and you were anti-religion. She wants to be baptised.’
‘Call the police.’
‘… I’ll kill him.’
‘The police, Wren. Call them now.’
‘Yes … yes, okay.’ The phone clicked off.
The car plunged into silence and he tried to contain the lurching nausea in his gut. He gripped the wheel tightly, as if it might suddenly spin uncontrollably out of his hand.
Someone made a desperate moan in the car and he realised that it was him.
Outside the sun was finally going down, grabbing all the darkness it could muster and flinging it like a sheet across the world. Across Hobbs Hill. And in the distance, the now-growing sound of the waterfall sounded nothing less to him than a thousand little girls, screaming.