Compulsion

by Shaun Hutson

  George Errington one of the chisels.

  Harry Holland the bolt-cutters.

  Even Eva Cole and Helen Kennedy had Stanley knives in their liver-spotted hands.

  And, leading them, Jack Fuller walked purposefully along the corridor, the Smith and Wesson .38 revolver gripped in his fist.

  “The police are on their way,” Ronni called defiantly.

  “I called them.”

  “You’re lying,” Fuller said challengingly.

  “Am I?”

  He continued to advance.

  “If you’re going to kill me you’d better do it now, Jack, before they get here.”

  The knot of muscles at the side of Fuller’s jaw pulsed.

  “You’ve got one bullet left,” Ronni told him.

  “I know that. I remember. You said that only three of them were live. You used one on the basement door. Another to shoot Andy.” She looked down at her husband. He had slipped into unconsciousness.

  “That’s one left for me, Jack,” she continued.

  “Use it now.”

  Fuller stood a few feet from her and aimed the pistol at her head.

  “I thought you would have understood, Ronni,” he said quietly.

  “We all did.”

  “Understood what, Jack?”

  “What we’ve done. What we had to do.”

  “We trusted you, Ronni,” Harry Holland added.

  “Especially after Janice died and then, with what happened to your own father ...” He allowed the sentence to trail off.

  They’d made us prisoners here,” Fuller hissed. Terrified of every night. Wondering what they were going to do next. And now, when the police come, they’ll make us prisoners too. Like you, they won’t understand what’s happened here.”

  “Jack, people have died,” Ronni said, tears trickling down her cheeks.

  “Don’t you think we know that?” Fuller snarled.

  “One of them was one of us. And no one cared. No one cared except us. No one helped us so we helped ourselves. And now what have we got to look forward to? Prison?” He shook his head.

  “I was a prisoner for four years of my life, Ronni. I won’t be a prisoner again. I know you can’t understand. No one can unless they’ve had their freedom taken from them. It’s the most precious thing in the world. I won’t lose it twice.”

  Ronni closed her eyes.

  Waiting for the bang. The explosion from the .38’s barrel that would end her life.

  It never came.

  She opened her eyes again.

  Fuller had pushed the barrel of the pistol into his mouth.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  She screamed his name.

  He pulled the trigger and the thunderous blast eclipsed every other sound.

  The bullet tore its way through his head, splintering bone and pulping brain with ease.

  For fleeting seconds, it looked as though someone had detonated a charge inside his skull. Portions of the cranium rose on a huge gout of blood, propelled by the heavy-grain slug.

  Fuller toppled backwards, his own blood mingling with that of Ronni’s husband.

  The corridor looked like an abbatoir.

  As if a spell had been broken, Helen Kennedy dropped the Stanley knife she’d been holding.

  So too did Eva Cole.

  Helen began to weep softly.

  Eva pulled her close.

  Ronni looked at the other residents.

  At the claw hammer still held by Colin Glazer. The open razor Donald Tanner brandished.

  The bolt-cutters.

  The chisel.

  Glazer dropped the hammer, turned his back and headed off towards the day room.

  The others merely stood where they were, looking down at the body of Fuller.

  Helen was still crying.

  Ronni still gripped Andy’s hand.

  As she felt for a pulse she heard a far off siren drawing nearer.

  SHE WATCHED THE blue lights turning silently in the night.

  Ronni stood outside Shelby House gazing blankly at the emergency vehicles parked in the drive.

  A WPC had draped a blanket around her shoulders about five minutes earlier, but the chill of the night still seemed to penetrate to the bone.

  One police car and an ambulance had arrived to begin with.

  Four more had since joined them.

  Uniformed men and women walked back and forth over the gravel drive from their vehicles carrying things, making notes.

  Every now and then, Ronni heard voices from inside Shelby House.

  Once, when she turned, she saw flashbulbs exploding just inside the main entrance.

  “Mrs. Porter.”

  The voice startled her and she turned to see Detective Sergeant David Marsh standing there.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  She nodded.

  “You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?”

  Marsh dug in his jacket pocket and offered her a Rothmans. She jammed it between her lips and he cupped his hand around the tip as he lit it for her.

  She drew hard on the cigarette.

  “How’s my husband?” she wanted to know.

  “The paramedics have been attending to him. They said he’ll make it.

  Are you going with him to the hospital?”

  “If I’m allowed to.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll need to take a statement from you soon,” Marsh said almost apologetically.

  “I understand.” She blew out a stream of smoke.

  “What about the residents?”

  “They’re giving statements now.”

  Ronni was aware of him looking at her.

  “What I’ve seen in there,” he began.

  “It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “Join the club.” She took another drag on the cigarette, then dropped it to the ground. It hissed on the wet grass.

  “What will happen to the residents?”

  “That’s not for me to say until we know all the facts.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Don’t worry about that now.” He shrugged, turning back towards Shelby House.

  “The worst thing is, I understand why they did it,” she said softly.

  “If it’s any consolation, so do I.” He wandered back up the steps and disappeared inside the building.

  Ronni stood motionless for a moment.

  When she saw two paramedics emerging from the main entrance pushing a collapsible gurney between them, she rushed across.

  Andy was lying beneath a blanket, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, a drip attached to his right arm.

  His eyes were closed.

  “Is he alive?” she asked.

  “Yes, but he’s lost a lot of blood,” one of them told her, pulling open both rear doors of the nearest ambulance.

  “Is he going to die?”

  The paramedic shook his head.

  She watched as they lifted the gurney into the emergency vehicle, then climbed in after them.

  One of the men closed the doors and banged on the side of the cab.

  The ambulance moved off up the gravel drive towards the road.

  Ronni slid a hand beneath the blanket and gripped Andy’s hand.

  She sniffed back tears.

  One of the paramedics was writing something on a chart. The other was bending over Andy, adjusting one of the leads taped to his chest. His wound had been dressed, but Ronni could still see blood seeping into the gauze that covered it.

  The ambulance suddenly lurched to one side and stopped.

  “What the hell’s going on?” said one of the men and pushed open the rear doors.

  He found the driver kneeling beside one of the front tyres.

  Ronni also stepped out into the night.

  “Bloody tyre’s blown,” said the driver angrily.

  “No wonder, is it?” He held up a piece of jagged glass he’d pul
led from the torn rubber.

  There was more of it scattered across the driveway.

  “It looks like a broken bottle. How did you miss it when we arrived?” asked one of the paramedics.

  “It wasn’t here when we arrived,” the driver snapped.

  Ronni walked past the two men into the street, glancing right and left.

  It was in the shadows opposite she saw movement.

  Two small shapes.

  Both on bikes.

  Kids. They couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve.

  One of them was drinking from a bottle of Sprite.

  As Ronni watched, he drained the last dregs, then they both cycled towards her.

  Only when they were four or five yards away did she realize what was happening.

  The empty bottle hurtled in her direction, missed by a foot or so and shattered on the pavement.

  Ronni moved back, her body quivering, her eyes fixed on the two boys.

  “See you around,” shouted Terry Mackenzie.

  “Yeah, you and those old cunts,” Liam Harper echoed.

  They disappeared into the darkness.

  Ronni stared after them.

  “Little bastards,” rasped the voice of one of the paramedics, appearing beside her.

  “Are you all right?”

  She continued to stare into the gloom.

  “I’ll bet they were the ones who put the glass across the drive,” the paramedic muttered.

  “What do you do with kids like that?”

  Ronni didn’t answer. A PENSIONER WAS hounded to death by a gang of children, who waged a terrifying hate campaign against him.

  The hate campaign escalated until gangs of youths aged between ten and fifteen gathered outside the house every night.

  The man’s son said, “My father would still be alive today if police had taken action earlier.”

  Express, 30 March 2000 CARRY ME THROUGH tomorrow, guide me along the way, If this is the youth of tomorrow, I’m running the other way ... Queensryche Recognized internationally as a master of the dark urban thriller, Shaun Hutson is the best-selling author of twenty previous novels, most recently Warhol’s Prophecy and Exit Wounds (both published by Macmillan and now available as a Pan paperback). He lives with his family in Buckinghamshire.

  Recognized internationally as a master of the dark urban thriller, Shaun Hutson is the best-selling author of twenty previous novels, most recently Warhol’s Prophecy and Exit Wounds (both published by Macmillan and now available as a Pan paperback). He lives with his family in Buckinghamshire.