by Ryan Casey
Brian stood beside Annie in Joe’s lounge. Or at least it looked like it might once have been a lounge. There were lounge-like traces to the place—an imitation fireplace smeared in dust; an old television set that looked like it’d been dragged through a time warp from the 1980s. Old purple carpet, upturned at the sides of the walls where the flowery cream wallpaper flaked away and revealed grey marks of damp and mould.
“I guess it does,” Brian said.
He wished he’d never spoken.
Because it made him want to take in another breath.
And inhaling this rancid air was something nobody would want to do, not willingly.
The floor was covered in mice. Piles of mice, literally. Brian thought he’d seen his fair share of animal cruelty over the road at Harry and Carly’s place, but this took it to whole new levels of weirdness.
Heads snipped away. All of them missing.
Some of them tied together.
But the worst part about all this was that of the mice joined tightly at the tails, faeces had clogged up in the knots. Which meant that some of them were alive when they’d been tied up this way.
“Guess we know what he does with his mice now,” Annie said.
Brian thought about responding. Didn’t want to risk too deep a breath of this sickening air again.
He walked around the lounge, past the pile of mice. Over towards the blue curtains in front of the window—the window the kid Brooklyn told them about.
The man in the window.
He pulled apart the curtains, dusty and covered in holes, moths fluttering around behind them. He looked through the dirty, unwashed window, out across the street, right through to the apartments where Harry and Carly lived.
Question was, what did Joe have to do with them?
Why was their bathroom filled with dead animals?
What the fuck was going on in this street?
“Rat king,” Annie said.
Brian let go of the curtain. Turned around. “Hmm?”
Annie crouched down and looked at the mice closely. Her paling face had reached new levels of pale. “Read something once. Old German folklore about rats that get intertwined at the tails by blood, dirt, shit, that sorta thing. Bad omen, apparently. Sign of a plague.”
Although Brian wasn’t superstitious—he believed much more in the cruelty of humanity than he did in any world beyond this one—he couldn’t deny the raising of hair all along his forearms.
“These aren’t rats though,” Brian said.
“Alright, rat expert. If you say so. Mouse king, then. But whatever. Still don’t fucking like it. First the bathroom across the road. Brooklyn saying he saw young Joe sneaking around collecting mice from the streets. Then this. We need to speak with more people. Find out if the Galbraiths had anything to do with Joe. And of course, we need to find out where Joe’s got to. Find out more about him. Fast.”
Brian nodded. He looked back down at the pile of mice, all in various forms of decomposition. The air was thick with the taste of damp rot. “How long must this have taken him?”
“I dread to think,” Annie said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to ask him sometime soon.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“What this has to do with across the road.”
Annie frowned. “Erm, look around. Animal cruelty? Hardly an everyday thing.”
“But I still don’t get what this has to do with Harry and Carly. It’s … it’s like we’ve got the pieces of the jigsaw but we’re looking at ’em from upside down.”
“Nice analogy.”
“Thanks. I’m full of them.”
“Hey, what’s this?”
Annie pointed over by the fireplace. Something’d caught her eye in there. Something that Brian hadn’t seen.
Something she was reaching towards.
Which naturally made Brian feel incredibly uneasy.
“Wanna be careful where you’re shoving your hand,” he said. “Need to get this place reported in so we can properly get on with—”
“A syringe?” Annie said.
Brian didn’t get her at first.
But then he saw it.
Saw the syringe in her hand.
The syringe that was filled with deep red blood.
“One heck of a syringe,” Brian said. “Could explain a lot—”
“Under the rocks,” Annie said.
Brian didn’t get her again. “What’ve you …”
But Annie was already pulling the imitation coal away.
Pulling it out of the fireplace.
Throwing it onto the floor, not a care in the fucking world for the preservation of the scene.
“Annie, I think we should call this in. Don’t want to risk tampering evidence, anything like that. Just not worth it.”
“I’m not tampering with any evidence,” she said.
She threw back the final piece of coal.
Turned around; raised her eyebrows.
“I’m finding it,” she said.
Brian saw what was inside the fireplace and he had to step a little closer.
Just to understand what he was looking at.
And he still wasn’t any closer to truly understanding even when he was directly opposite.
“Think we know what he does to his mice now,” Annie said.
She was right.
Because of what lay under the rocks in the imitation fireplace.
The pile of bulky syringes.
All filled with blood.
Twenty
Joe Kershaw felt like he’d done a bad knew he’d done a bad and it made his head hurt made his head hurt so much just wanted everything to go away.
He stood at his mum’s door. He’d run down here. Didn’t like running but he had to get here as quick as he could, he knew that. It was starting to rain now as the night came along. He usually liked the nights. Liked looking out the window and seeing the foxes and the badgers and the cats. And he liked watching the mice, too. The little mice move around and wriggle in the street.
But he knew he shouldn’t. He knew it was wrong.
And he knew Mum was going to hate him if she found out what he’d done.
The door opened a few seconds later and Mum was standing there. Shorter than Joe. Grey eyes. Old leathery skin and wrinkled hands and face that everyone told Joe he’d get when he was older. But he didn’t want that. It scared him because he still felt young now even though he was thirty-seven. He still wanted to be a kid again. A school kid. Play in the playground with his friends.
Friends he wished he’d had.
“Oh, Joey! What a lovely surprise.”
Mum wrapped her hands around Joe and Joe liked it, loved that feeling, always did feel nice, always made him feel better. He put his hands on her back. Didn’t like touching her today though. Something about her. Her thin dressing gown felt hot and warm. Made Joe take his hands right away.
“You okay m’boy? You look awful pale and awful twitchy. Come in. I’ll make you yer favourite cocoa.”
And then Joe looked over his shoulder, down the road both sides. No police. No one watching him. Not even the man that sometimes watched him. That sometimes spoke to him. Joe didn’t know his name so he called him Horace. Horace was his friend. Horace gave him nice things.
But the problem was nobody else believed in Horace.
He followed his mum towards her kitchen. It was so clean in here. So clean and bright and Joe didn’t like it cause he liked places when they weren’t clean and bright; he liked places when they had what people called PERSONALITY. But this didn’t have PERSONALITY. His home had PERSONALITY but his mum’s didn’t. His mum’s house never had PERSONALITY.
Only when Dad used to leave his beer cans lying around, spilling out onto the carpet.
Only when Joe did a bad.
Pushed the stand away from the car that Dad was working under.
Listened to the sound of his screams.
The
n his head splitting.
Splitting like a coconut.
Juices running out.
That had PERSONALITY.
“Well, I’ve got Galaxy and Cadbury’s and—and even summa that cheap stuff from ALDI. You ever been ALDI? It’s really good. Save a lotta money there. You should … Joe, what’s wrong?”
Joe, what’s wrong?
Three words he didn’t want to hear.
Not now with the weird feeling inside him.
Not now knowing he’d done a bad.
’Cause it meant Mum knew he’d done a bad too.
Mum who he loved.
Mum who he couldn’t do a bad to, not again, not ever again.
So he did the one thing he’d learned from television and books.
He lied.
“I’m okay, Mummy,” he said. “A Cadbury’s please.”
Mum looked at him through narrowed eyes. She was so skinny. So thin that sometimes Joe dreamed about just walking over to her and snapping her like a twig—
“There is something wrong,” Mum said.
She leaned against the kitchen door.
“Joey, you tell your mum what’s wrong.”
Buzzing in his hands. Buzzing spreading up his arms and into his shoulders and his chest. He wanted to tell Mum because he needed her help. She was the only person who could help him. Only person who loved him.
She knew he’d killed Dad. She knew he’d enjoyed hearing his head crack open.
She’d enjoyed it too.
“I’m—I’m—”
But he couldn’t tell Mum ’cause he’d done a bad thing and when he did bad things she got mad, so so mad.
“Have you done something?”
Something. The word. The words like BAD THING.
He tried to lie but he couldn’t ’cause the buzzing was in his mouth now, moving down his throat, tightening and tightening and Mum looked angrier but skinnier like he could go there and snap her and—
“You tell me what you’ve done, Joe,” she said, walking towards him just like she did when he’d come into the lounge after killing Dad. “You can talk to me. You know you can talk to me, my precious boy.”
But she’d said that last time and he had but he’d seen what it’d done to her, seen how it made her look at him different, how it made her eat less and less and less until …
She touched his arm.
Joe flinched.
Then he let it rest there.
His heart pounded. The ticking of Mum’s watch felt like it was getting louder, louder, filling Joe’s skull and making him want to scream.
“You can talk to me Joe,” she said, smiling with her thin lips. “About what you’ve done. About the bad—”
He lifted his right hand and he punched her.
Hard.
He didn’t know why he’d done it at first. Only that he had to do it ’cause she couldn’t say the words, she couldn’t ’cause he couldn’t lie and he had to stop her getting it out of him.
She looked up at Joe. Blood on her chin. Tooth poking through her lip. Tears in her eyes. “Joey, what’s—what’s—”
But he couldn’t hear her talk ’cause it made the buzzing and the voices in his head get louder so he crouched down over her and he hit her again, again, again, every time right in her bony face, harder and harder with every swing, harder and harder until his knuckles hurt so bad he had to switch to his other hand, then wrap his hands around her throat, then bash her head into the floor.
And at first, when she finally stopped moving, when she stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating and she went to sleep all bloodied and bruised, Joe could only think of one thing.
The bad thing he’d done.
For Horace.
But suddenly that didn’t seem to matter as he crouched over Mum’s dead body.
All that mattered was the new bad thing he’d done.
The bad thing he’d never escape.
As Mum lay dead, her watch ticked and ticked and ticked.
Twenty-One
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”
“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with my driving?”
“Everything.”
Brian put his foot down on the accelerator of his car. Truth be told, he thought he was going a decent speed, but Annie had been sure to remind him what everyone seemed to enjoy reminding him lately—that he couldn’t drive for shit. He’d spent too long without owning a car. Or maybe it was just something to do with him getting older.
No. Scrap that thought. Nothing to do with him getting older.
He had to keep on telling himself that.
“You even know where Lansdown Hill is?”
“I know where Lansdown Hill is,” Brian said, anger building up in his chest as he tightly gripped the steering wheel.
“’Cause if you don’t—”
“Look, we’ve got his name. We’ve got his mum’s address. Now just … just let me drive in peace. For God’s sakes.”
Annie went quiet for a moment and Brian couldn’t be more relieved. He was still trying to soak in everything that’d happened this long, drawn out first afternoon—now evening—of the case.
And the latest twist of news came from DS Finch just after they’d left Joe’s house.
A neighbour who revealed his full name to be Joe Kershaw.
Who revealed they used to know his mum, a bitter old widower who lived on Lansdown Hill in Fulwood. Who revealed Joe was a serious problem child with a whole host of past issues.
And who was convinced they saw Joe running that direction just moments before Brian and Annie went in to search his house.
“Least one good thing to come out of this is that Kershaw’s a nutcase.”
“How’s that a good thing?”
Annie lowered the mirror and looked at herself as Brian manoeuvred swiftly through the traffic. “Well, the mice. The animals in Harry and Carly’s. The murder method. It explains his motive.”
“How does it explain his motive?”
“Do you have to question everything?”
Brian smiled. “Actually, yes.”
“I’d heard you were like this.”
“Like what?”
Annie paused. Glanced at Brian. “Probing.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Sometimes you need to know when to stop. When to … to just accept things. For what they are.”
Brian indicated, turned off Lightfoot Lane and headed down towards Lansdown Hill. “Maybe I am probing. But until anyone’s caught as many criminals as me, they can’t really knock me.”
Annie flicked up her eyebrows. Little smile at the corners of her mouth. “Touché,” she said.
Brian nearly smiled back.
Then looked away before he could get too friendly. Too close.
Because too close always meant danger for the people nearest to him.
He pulled up outside number eight, the house the neighbour said Joe’s mum, Trudy, lived at. They’d got HQ to check the records and confirmed she lived here.
“What’s the plan then?” Annie asked.
Brian unclipped his belt. “Knocking on the door could be a start.”
As he stood, Annie grabbed Brian’s arm. “Don’t you think we should wait?”
He wanted to respond right away. But Annie’s hand on his. Warm. It made him think of those he’d got close to in the past. Those he’d got pally with.
He pulled his arm away. “Wait for what?”
Annie glanced out the car window at the row of semi-detached houses on this quiet suburban street. “Just … I dunno. Just see if we see anything. Anything weird.”
Brian grabbed the handle to the door. “You heard what Finch told us. About what Joe can be like. Without his medication.”
He saw Annie’s face turn as Brian reminded her of the information Joe’s neighbour had given. His anti-psychotic drugs. And the things they’d been told down the line about his past —being sectioned, violent schizophr
enic episodes. Brian had fought a few schizos in his time. Sad state for them to be in. Couldn’t help but feel pity.
But shit could they punch.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t want to leave Mummy Kershaw too long.”
“Especially if she has a pet hamster,” Annie added.
Brian couldn’t help but laugh.
Felt fucking awful for doing so.
They walked up the driveway towards Mrs Kershaw’s house. Real nice spot. An area a few of Brian’s friends used to live by when he was younger. Quiet. Not quite completely rural or urban; just the right balance. Plenty of shops and pubs close by. But also a fair few decent country walks just around the corner. Similar to the area he and Hannah lived in now, but a little … well. More expensive.
Maybe when he got his retirement money.
As long as he kept on behaving.
Doing his job.
Didn’t cross the line.
They walked up the garden pathway to number eight. The garden was really quite something. Filled with bird baths of many forms—concrete, metal, plastic. A few of them had toppled over into old flower beds. The grass was long and covered with dandelions. Sure fit the bill of a place where an incapable old woman lived. Just a pity her animal-hating son didn’t give her a hand around here from time to time.
Annie and Brian got to the door.
“You wanna knock or—”
Brian knocked before Annie even had the chance to finish.
“You really are allergic to fun aren’t you?”
Brian looked around the street. Avoided eye contact with Annie intentionally. “I’m on a case.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“Is that what this is to you?” Brian said. “A big fucking joke?”
Annie lifted her hands. “Hey. Whatever shit you’ve got going on, don’t take it out on me. I’m just … I’m just trying here, y’know? Just trying my best.”
This time, Brian did find himself looking into Annie’s eyes.
And in them he saw something.
Not confidence. Not the cockiness she liked to flaunt as readily as she could.
No, he saw a shyness. A timidness.
He saw fear.
And when he saw that, he couldn’t help but open his mouth and say: “I’m sorry.”