by JD Kirk
“If Clyde found out you were planning to leave and take Bennet with you, do you think that could have driven him to kill Fergus?” Sinead asked. “Hypothetically, I mean. I’m not asking you to say if you think that’s what happened, just if you think that it’s theoretically possible for Clyde to do something like that?”
“Do I think he could kill?” Lana whispered. She glanced at the mirror, then at the door, like she was terrified he might be standing there, watching and listening. “I do. I know he could.”
Another look passed between Tyler and Sinead. Both detectives shifted their weight a fraction forward.
“What do you mean?” Sinead asked. “How do you know?”
There was a hysterical note to Lana’s voice when she replied, the words reverberating around inside the half-empty mug.
“Because of what he said,” she choked out. “Because, he told me he’d done it before.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ross Lyndsay teetered on a pair of child-sized crutches, the foot of his strapped-up leg hovering an inch or two above the pavement outside his house.
He hopped in a half-circle at the sound of yet another car door closing, and jerked in fright at the sight of DCI Logan striding towards him, his coat billowing behind him in the wind like Dracula’s cape.
In the hospital, the detective had seemed like a very large man indeed. Out here, in the open, he was a monster. A hulk. Had it not been for the condition of his leg, Ross’s instinct would have been to make a run for it before he was eaten alive.
There were four uniformed officers within a hundred yards—one standing guard outside his house, while the others went door to door, asking the neighbours if they’d seen anything suspicious. Ross took little comfort from this, though. The detective was their boss, after all. If he decided to pick Ross up and throttle him, they were unlikely to intervene.
To the little man’s surprise, the ogre in the overcoat was far more affable than he’d been on their two previous encounters.
“Jesus, can we get Mr Lyndsay a seat from somewhere? The man has a broken leg,” he said, scowling at the uniformed constable standing guard outside the front door.
With a nod, the officer turned to enter Ross’s house, only to be abruptly halted by a barked order from the DCI.
“Not from in there! Think, man,” he said. “Go ask a neighbour.”
The constable blushed, nodded again, then scurried off to knock on the door of the house across the driveway.
“Sorry about that,” Logan said. “How’s the leg?”
Ross’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, sensing a trap but unable to work out what it might be. “It’s… sore.”
“I’ll bet,” Logan said. “We’ll get you a seat. You remember DS Khaled?”
Ross gave a tilt of his head in Hamza’s direction, just as the DS arrived at Logan’s side. “Uh, yes. Hello.”
“Mr Lyndsay,” Hamza said. “How’s the leg?”
“He says it’s sore,” Logan said, answering for him.
“I’ll bet,” Hamza replied.
“We’re getting him a seat,” Logan said.
“Good stuff. Take the weight off a bit.”
“Aye,” Logan agreed. “Take the weight off a bit.”
Ross looked between them both, convinced they were talking in some sort of code that he couldn’t decipher. Before he could even try, the questions came.
“What happened?” Logan asked, indicating the house with a jerk of a thumb.
“What? Oh. I don’t know,” Ross answered. “I just… I got a taxi home from the hospital. The door was open. Or… not open. It was half-closed. Resting against the frame, sort of thing. Like, as if it had been opened, but then—”
“We get the picture,” Logan said. “Someone had forced it?”
“Yes. Yes, someone had forced it,” Ross confirmed. “I opened it, listened for a bit to see if anyone was there, then I went in.”
“And?” Hamza prompted.
“And… it was a mess. They’d trashed the place.”
“Who’s they?” Logan asked.
Ross frowned and gave a half-chuckle, like this should be obvious. “Well, I mean… the burglars.”
“The burglars?”
“Obviously. Who else burgles houses?”
“So, it was a burglary?” Logan asked. “What did they take?”
Before Ross could reply, the constable arrived with a dining room chair and set it on the pavement beside him.
Several seconds passed while Ross made a meal of lowering himself into the seat, somehow almost breaking his other leg in the process.
Once he was safely installed on the seat, Logan asked the question again. “These burglars, what did they take?”
“I don’t know,” Ross admitted. “I didn’t really check. I phoned the police, then got a call back to go outside and wait. They could have taken anything.”
“Telly still there?” Logan asked.
“Yes. I think so. Yes.”
“Unlikely to be a burglary, then,” Logan said. “Just you wait there and rest your leg, Mr Lyndsay. We’ll go take a look. Would you like a cup of tea?”
The thought of the hot beverage made the little man realise how cold he was, and he shivered. “Yes. That would be lovely.”
Logan turned on the constable, all scowls again. “Have you no’ even offered the man a cup of tea?” he barked.
“Um, no, sir,” the constable confirmed. “Sorry.”
“What is this, Nazi Germany?” Logan demanded. “Get back to that neighbour and get her to rustle you one up.”
The look that the constable fired at the house next door spoke volumes about the welcome he’d received on his previous visit. He didn’t protest, though, and instead trudged sullenly back up the path, and gave the door a knock.
“Right, we’ll leave you in this officer’s capable hands,” Logan told Ross. He reached into his coat pocket, produced a pair of latex gloves, and snapped them over his shovel-like hands. “DS Khaled? You’re with me,” he announced, then they both headed up the driveway to Ross Lyndsay’s front door, nudged it open, and vanished inside.
Lachlan stood in the doorway of the large but ramshackle house he shared with a few other Inverlochy Castle Hotel staff members, one eye welded shut with sleep, the other blinking furiously as it tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.
“Can I come in?”
It took Lachlan’s sleep-fuddled brain a few seconds to get to grips with the question, then he grunted and stepped aside, making room for Bennet to come scurrying in.
Bennet was still in his school uniform, although he’d taken off his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt.
Something about his presence there was ringing alarm bells for Lachlan. A klaxon rang in his head, warning him that…
Shit!
“What time is it?” he asked, suddenly wide-awake and on full-scale alert. “Fuck! I’m meant to be on at three.”
“It’s just after one,” Bennet said.
It took a few moments for Lachlan’s panic levels to drop back down from DEFCON 1, then he closed the door and ushered Bennet through into the living room.
“Is everyone else out?” Bennet asked, taking a seat on a cast-off couch that sagged pitifully beneath his weight.
Lachlan looked around, blinking. The surge of adrenaline that had forced him fully awake was dwindling rapidly, and he seemed vague and confused as he tried to work out the answer to Bennet’s question.
“Yes?” he said, unconvincingly. “I don’t… What time did you say it was?”
“Just after one.”
Lachlan shrugged. “Then, yeah. I think so.” He moved an overflowing ashtray from the arm of one of the room’s three mismatched armchairs, and took a seat. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“It’ll be lunchtime now. Or near enough,” Bennet replied. His hands were clasped together, squashed between his thighs. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”
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“Yeah,” Lachlan said. There was an accusation there, but then he dismissed it with a sigh and an, “It’s fine. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Bollocks. There’s something,” Lachlan insisted. “You’d better not just be after a lift somewhere or something…”
Bennet said nothing. His thighs pressed more firmly inwards, squeezing his hands together like they were in prayer.
“Jesus. What is it? What’s happened?” Lachlan asked.
Bennet met his gaze for a second, maybe less, then he jumped up off the couch again and made for the door. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come. Sorry.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Lachlan urged, getting up to intercept. “There’s obviously something bothering you, mate. What is it? Is it your dad? Has he done something?”
Bennet shook his head. His eyes were constantly on the move, darting here, there, and everywhere, refusing to settle on any one thing.
“Talk to me, mate,” Lachlan encouraged. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“You know that teacher? Fergus. PE. The one the police were asking about last night?”
Lachlan nodded slowly. “Yeah. What about him?”
Bennet swallowed. Every part of his face twitched in turn, like it was fighting to stop him saying what he was about to say. Like it was trying to suppress the awful, terrible truth.
Somehow, though, the words made it out. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he whispered.
And then Lachlan staggered backwards and fell into another armchair as Bennet told him everything.
It wasn’t a burglary. Not in the conventional sense, anyway.
There were three TVs in Ross Lyndsay’s house—32 inchers in the bedrooms, and a bigger one hooked onto the wall in the living room. None had been taken.
The same went for the Sky box, the PlayStation, an iPad, and a collection of boxed action figures which, as far as Logan knew, might well have been worth a fortune.
The place had been well and truly trashed, though. Cushions had been torn open, their stuffing strewn across the room like innards and body parts on a medieval battlefield. Pictures had been taken down and smashed, light fittings hung from wires, and every drawer, cupboard, and cabinet in the place had been gone through in a hurry, their contents scattered and broken on the floor.
Mattresses had been sliced open. Furniture had been smashed. Carpets had been pulled up, and curtains pulled down throughout the whole house.
It was Fergus’s bedroom that had taken the worst of it, though. Not an inch had been missed. Even the light and power sockets had been unscrewed and prised from the wall. A bedside alarm clock had been smashed, exposing its sparse innards.
“They were thorough, I’ll give them that,” Logan remarked, turning slowly in the centre of the room.
Hamza stood by the door, taking a few photographs on his phone and scribbling a few notes. “Aye, someone was on a mission, alright.”
“Vandalism, you think?” Logan asked.
“More likely someone was looking for something, I’d say,” Hamza replied, and Logan rocked back on his heels a little, pleased by this observation. He was good. He wouldn’t stay Detective Sergeant for long.
“Aye. Well spotted,” Logan told him. “Someone was on the hunt for something.”
“The question is what?” Hamza asked.
“And did they find it?” Logan wondered. He took another look around the room. “Not in here, I don’t think. I reckon they hit this room first. This is where they expected to find whatever it was. They were more thorough in here. The rest of the house was turned over quickly. They went to a lot of effort in here. And, given that they got to the point they were lifting lino in the kitchen, I reckon they left empty-handed.”
“Any ideas what they might have been after, sir?” Hamza asked.
“Aye. A pretty good one.” Logan indicated the light switch that dangled from the bedroom wall like a broken cuckoo from a clock. “Something small enough to fit in there.”
It took Hamza a second or two, then it hit him. “The key.”
“The key. That’s my thinking, too,” Logan said. “Someone turned this place upside down so they could get their hands on that key.”
“Must be pretty important.”
“Aye. To someone. We any closer to finding out what it opens?”
“Not sure, sir,” Hamza admitted. “Tyler was running with that. Want me to phone him?”
Logan stood in silence for a while, taking a final look around the room. His gaze painted every surface, cataloguing the room and everything in it.
“No,” he said, once he was done. “We’ll check with him when we’re back at the office. We’ll let Scene of Crime in to check this place over. See if they can find anything that’ll help us figure out who trashed the place. I assume they’re on their way?”
“I’d have to check, but I think so, sir,” Hamza confirmed.
Logan grunted and ushered the DS towards the front door. “Right, well, let’s fuck off before Geoff Palmer gets here,” he said. He’d seen what he needed to see and didn’t feel any need to stick around for the next part. “His is the last bloody face I want to see.”
This wasn’t quite true, he realised a moment later when he emerged from the house to find a sour-faced black woman in a pristinely white shirt and polis tie waiting for him by his car.
“Aw…shite,” he muttered, but not quite quietly enough.
“Yes. Deep shite, Detective Chief Inspector,” said Detective Superintendent Mitchell. “And you’re up to your neck in it.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bennet stood by the door, contemplating making a break for it while he waited for Lachlan to say something. To say anything. To offer some sort of response to the bombshell Bennet had just dropped.
When he did finally speak, it was nothing especially constructive.
“Fucking hell, Benny,” he said. He was sitting on the arm of a chair now, the shock of the last few minutes having all but knocked his legs out from under him. “I mean… fucking hell. That is… I mean… That is…”
Bennet wrapped his arms around himself and took a backwards step towards the exit. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have told you,” he said.
“Too fucking right you shouldn’t!” Lachlan said, then he raised a hand to stop the younger man leaving. “Wait. Wait. Hold on. I just… Give me a minute to process it, eh?”
Lachlan ran his hands through his hair, then down his face. He was awake now. Fully awake. Perhaps more awake than he’d ever been. Bennet’s confession had been like an electric shock to the brain, driving away all drowsiness and bringing the world into pin-sharp focus.
“Have you told anyone else?” he asked.
Bennet shook his head. “No. God. No. Of course not. I shouldn’t have told you, either. I just… I had to tell someone. It was eating me up.”
“Aye. Aye, I can imagine,” Lachlan said. “But, I mean… Still, Benny. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. Not really,” Bennet admitted. There was a faint whistling sound as he inhaled through his nose, then he spat out the question he’d come here to ask. “What should I do? Should I tell anyone?” He looked down at his feet, dreading the answers he was about to get. “Should I tell the police?”
Lachlan groaned, ran his fingers through his hair a few more times, like he was trying to backcomb it, then nodded. “You have to, don’t you? They’re bound to find out. They might already know, and be looking for you now, for all we know.”
Bennet shook his head. “They’re talking to my mum.”
“Shit. They’re not blaming her, are they?”
“What? No!” Bennet said. It was clear, though, that this hadn’t really occurred to him, and his brow creased in concern as he lowered himself back onto the couch. “I don’t think so, anyway. Why would they blame her? She didn’t do anything!”
“You have to say something, Benny,”
Lachlan urged.
Bennet shot a look to the ceiling, or to somewhere higher still. “But… what’ll happen?” he asked. “If I tell them, what’ll happen?”
“I don’t know,” Lachlan admitted. “But better you tell them than they find out some other way. It’ll look better if you go to them, than if they have to come looking for you.”
“I’m scared,” Bennet whispered. “About what’ll happen.”
“I know, mate. I don’t blame you. But, it’s the best way. In the long run.” Lachlan checked his watch. “Listen, I need to start getting ready for work, but why don’t you hold off here until school’s over? Maybe go talk it over with your mum, then the two of you can go talk to the police together.”
“You’re going to work?” Bennet asked.
“Well… aye. Coleen’s already gunning for me. She doesn’t need much of an excuse before my arse is out the window.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Bennet asked, his eyes narrowing. “You won’t go running to the police?”
Lachlan glanced at the door. It was the only way out of the room, and it was directly behind Bennet, so Lachlan would have to pass him if he tried to leave.
“Course I won’t,” Lachlan said. “No offence, mate, but the last thing I want to do is get mixed up in it all. I mean, I’m always here if you want to talk… but, I’ll be honest, it feels a bit out of my league, this.” He smiled. It was kind and wary at the same time, like he was dealing with an injured wild animal. “Talk to your mum, though. Wait here until you think she’ll be at home, then go tell her what you told me. She’ll know what to do. She’ll understand.”
She wouldn’t, Bennet knew. Of course, she wouldn’t. How could she? How could anyone? He barely understood it himself.
She’d hate him, once she knew what he was.
And what he’d done.
“It’s going to be OK, Benny,” Lachlan assured him.
“You can’t possibly know that,” Bennet replied. “Nobody can.”
“No, mate, I suppose we can’t,” Lachlan conceded, after a moment’s pause. “But honestly… what’s the alternative?”