HEALTH CONSCIOUS THE HAVENDENE INSTITUTE CERTAINLY IS. RICHARDS HAS BROUGHT WITH HIM A TROUPE OF PHYSICAL FITNESS INSTRUCTORS FROM THE STATES AND NO EXPENSES HAVE BEEN SPARED FITTING OUT THE MANOR’S THREE GYMNASIUMS, TWO SAUNAS, LIBRARY, GUESTROOMS AND RESTAURANTS.
BUT AT £250 A NIGHT AND £380 FOR A COMPLETE WEEKEND, THIS IDYLLIC HAVEN MAY BE A LITTLE ON THE RICH SIDE FOR MOST OF THE REGIONS HIGHLY STRUNG EXECUTIVES.
The piece was accompanied by a grainy black and white photograph of Richards with his hands wide, as if offering the old manor behind him, or possibly himself, for worship. The way the camera caught him left his oleaginous smile looking almost as sincere as a used car salesman’s.
Kristy read the article again, disappointed more than anything else, with what it didn’t say. She pressed the copy button on the fiche.
“Well, here it is in black and white… There’s got to be a connection.” She folded the page and put the copy in her pocket.
“Got to be,” Kelso echoed, “but what? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? What ties Rogan, Kenyon and Richards?”
“Who the hell knows? I’d say the best thing we can do is ask Dr. Brent Richards that exact same question. But first I want to ask the Oracle to scour his records for everything we have on the good doctor.”
– 20 –
The lazy background whisper of saxophone drew a fresh breath, swelling to rise above the irregular crack of pool balls.
Alex Slater sat in the backroom of The Railway House nursing an empty glass of beer. Sighing, he looked at his watch for the third time in ten minutes: ten to nine. There was nothing worse than sitting alone in a bar watching other people have a good time. He lit himself a cigarette in sympathy.
A fly fizzled and died on the phosphorescent bar above the quiz machine as money chunked out into the metal try; another village Mastermind cashing in on too many hours spent in front of the TV. He exhaled smoke.
Half a dozen leather-clad bikers with the same demonic ‘Satan’s Slaves’ logo airbrushed in reds and blacks on their backs gathered around the pool table. A ragtag bunch of beatniks clustered around the snug’s only other table, their conversation full of politics and street corner philosophy. One of them seemed preoccupied with the idea that bedrooms didn’t have enough corners. Every time he made whatever he considered a telling point he would jab the tip of his finger at one of the listeners, as if to say ‘point proved’.
At the far end of the snug the green plastic ‘fire exit’ sign above the double doors had been modified to include bright red flames eating the stick man alive.
One of Satan’s lank-haired Slaves returned from the bar balancing four pints in his massive hands.
Alex looked at his watch again: eight minutes to nine.
Still no sign of Beth Tanner. He knew she wasn’t coming. He felt uncomfortable, surrounded by people he didn’t know, waiting for someone who didn’t want to know him.
The distressed leather of his thrift-store aviator jacket didn’t give him the casual renegade-come-freedom-fighter look he was after. The battered brown leather left him looking like an oversized orphan out of his depth even in a safe little country pub like this.
Last night, with his head still full and reeling from the sheer shock of hearing the word ‘father’ linked with his name, Alex had made the long walk home, counting the cars lined up against the kerb and the lights burning like electrical insomniacs in row after row of houses. A normal walk. A comfortable walk. Routine. Until the corner of Dipton Walk and Juniper. Something, a blacker shadow crouched within the shadows of the roadside trees, the smudge of an urban ghost maybe, had snagged in the corner of his eye but as soon as he tried to focus on it, it was gone, swallowed by the deeper, hungrier shadows.
The feeling of watching eyes followed him all the way home.
The phosphorescent strip light sizzled as another fly went to meet its maker in fly heaven.
Alex drained the last of his lager and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. One of the Slaves moved out of his way to let him through to the toilets.
The floor beneath the basins was splashed with puddles of water, the overflowing sinks stuffed with wads of paper. The single small window into the alley was veined with a spider’s web of cracks. Of the two cubicles, one had no paper and the other hadn’t been flushed in a long time. He opted for the porcelain trough.
The door opened behind him causing Alex to check who had followed him in. His heart sank; the reflexive clamp of his hand enough to stem the yellow river abruptly. A Slave stepped up beside him and unzipped.
“Nothing like a good piss is there?” the Slave sighed.
“Yeah,” Alex agreed as the dam broke for a second time.
“Christ but I needed that. Could you imagine what it would be like if someone told you you couldn’t ever piss again?”
Alex didn’t want to think about it. This kind of prick-in-hand intimate toilet conversation made him squirm. He didn’t want to think about anything except getting out of the toilets and into the dubious anonymity of numbers offered by the snug.
When he got back to the bar the music had changed. An old Simon & Garfunkel number. He didn’t know what it was called but it was pretty catchy. Alex was leaning against the bar waiting for Jim Beckett to pour him a refill when Johnny Lisker walked in. Eddie McMahon and Dave Lockley came in behind him.
“Three bottles, amigo,” Johnny told the barman, laying a crumpled up tenner on the counter. He was dressed in his usual uniform, torn jeans and a plain red tee-shirt, and, in his left ear, a runic cross – identical to the one dangling from Alex’s ear. Johnny took a swig from the bottle of bitter ale as soon as Beckett placed it on the counter and pocketed his change. McMahon and Lockley took their beers to the bench seat over by the pool table and put their feet up.
There was something about Johnny Lisker. He burned danger as naturally as fire burned heat, and as often as not, equally spectacularly.
“Oh man, oh man,” Lisker whistled to himself. “Something in here sure smells bad. Could even say it stinks of shit, eh Alex?” He rubbed at the rash of stubble sprouting on his chin with stubby fingers and smirked. The fingers of Lisker’s right hand ended with shrivelled nails, the fingers themselves cut short just above the tip of the first phalanx. He swilled a mouthful of beer and locked horns with the biggest, ugliest Slave he could see. Without a word, Lisker pushed away from the bar and sauntered over to the pool table.
“You got a problem, pal?” The Slave wanted to know. He sat on the edge of the pool table, waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, now that you come to mention it, I do.” Johnny almost whispered, his voice gloved in that terrible certainty of violence.
The Slave sighed and looked over his shoulder at his audience of leather-clad disciples. “Seems like Fingers here has got himself a problem.”
“Yeah? Ask the freak if he wants help solving it, Butch.” The piss-lover from the toilets said. He had picked up one of the pool cues and seemed to be weighing it in his hands as he walked around the table.
“Fuckin’ prick,” McMahon muttered, sniffing as if there was a bad smell under his nose. “Stinks of shit in here. You crapped yourself, biker boy?” he started to stand but the Slave brought the fat end of the pool cue down on the top of his head before he was even halfway out of his seat. The sheer weight of the overhead blow sent McMahon’s face slamming into the table. A sunburst of thick viscous crimson flowered from a crack hidden by his hairline. The blood trickled down his slack face like melting butter.
Someone screamed. One of the beatnik philosophers scrambling to get out of the snug before it exploded into a free-for-all.
As Pool Cue toed Eddie McMahon’s face for signs of life, Johnny Lisker launched himself at a distracted Butch. The Slave dropped his shoulder and threw an overweight right fist but Lisker slipped beneath it easily and butted his head up into the biker’s face. Butch’s eyes glazed over blankly as Lisker stepped back. The Slave’s nose was
a mess of blood and cartilage smeared across his cheeks. He staggered, clattered into a stool and went sprawling. Before anyone could react Johnny Lisker hurled himself forward, something flashing silver in his hand as he slammed a fist into the Slave’s stomach.
The sound of breaking glass. Dave Lockley was lashing out with the stem of a broken bottle, slashing at the Slave’s trying to pin him. Keeping them at bay.
Pool Cue stared into Alex’s face. The Slave’s eyes were empty. It was the most frightening moment Alex had ever experienced. There was nothing in there. The lights were on but there was definitely nobody at home. His swing was wild, the butt-end of the cue sailing over Alex’s head. Alex shaped himself for a volley and hammered a booted foot into Pool Cue’s groin. The biker dropped like a stone.
By the pool table Lisker was knelt over the fallen body of Butch, stabbing his fist into the Slave’s face over and over. The blood was streaming from his mouth and nose and pooling in his blackened eye sockets. Snot bubbled from his flaring nostrils as the life was literally being beaten out of him.
Alex heard someone yelling for someone to call the police: Jim Beckett. Then the landlord was in the thick of it. He grabbed Dave Lockley by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Beckett slammed his fist into Lockley’s gut. Behind him, some of the mill workers were piling into the fight.
Alex didn’t wait. He crashed into the fire doors at full tilt, slamming the quick-release bar and pitching them open and then he was sprinting over cobbles so black they could have been made from charcoal. Johnny was right behind him. It was the survival instinct.
He could hear shouts behind them, but they were getting further away with every step. Arms pumping, Johnny passed him before they reached the main road.
The signpost for the High Street dripped with shadows. The sluggish breeze couldn’t match their speed as they charged down the dark street. Around them, windows of shops blinked blindly. Before them, the night looked as black and dark as a pit, the High Street losing itself to the night long before it was reborn as The Spine Road on the far side of the village. A dog barked somewhere. Alex didn’t have the energy to spare a look either left or right as he ran the length of Brewer Street and into the heart of the lower village with its pocket-sized gardens and neatly trimmed hedges. The humidity burned raw in his throat. It was all he could do just to run.
Halfway down the street Johnny threw himself over a low hedge and lay on his back, panting.
A police siren cut through the darkness but it was streets away, heading back the way they had come.
Struggling to catch his breath, Alex ran on. Johnny was three houses away, standing behind the hedge with his head down. As he got closer, Alex could see why.
A thin sheen of blood, oddly colourless in the streetlight, filmed the three-inch blade of his open knife. The colourless blood splashed halfway up Lisker’s arms and across the front of his red tee-shirt.
Alex’s brain refused to make sense of what he was seeing, but eventually it had to admit defeat. For the second time in two days Alex Slater’s comfortable world was pulled out from under his feet. And again he found himself asking: “What are we going to do?” He had no idea how he had managed to get himself into the middle of this mess.
– 21 –
Barney Doyle threw the disposable needle and its wrappings away and closed the draw on the insulin bottle for another day. He’d been living with the diabetes for forty-seven years. Longer than he’d been living with Evie. And still the three-times-a-day injections made him feel like he was no better than a common junkie.
The black and white curse of being a Police Sergeant. Drugs were drugs were drugs by any name.
Motes of dust drifted lazily in the shaft of streetlight that had somehow squirmed between the slats of the blinds. The only real noise in the room was the creak of his chair as he shifted his weight in it. Lever-Arch files and report pads lined one wall, like his personal Scheherazade telling the stories of a thousand and one crimes. The worst of which, still, after eight years, told the story of Hannah and Holly Shelton in photographs. Hannah facedown, hands and feet tied behind her back with surgical tape, the back of her dress slit with a knife, panties pulled aside, blood between her legs and down her back from the fifty-seven knife wounds cutting a frenzied swath from the neck down, and Holly, in her own bed, eyes, lips and tongue gone, mouth forced open with bottom of a broken wine bottle. He didn’t know how Ben Shelton could get up in the mornings. Not a day went by when he didn’t find himself imagining how it must feel, how he would feel, coming home to find Evie like that. He could only ever see himself curling up and waiting for death because without Evie there would be nothing worth living for.
Barney was alone in the stationhouse, rereading a battered Morris West paperback when the phone rang.
“Doyle,” Barney grunted into the receiver. Shadows drifted through from the waiting room. He plucked a strand of white hair and rolled it between his fingers.
“Barney, its Jim Beckett. There’s been a fight. I think Lisker’s killed someone.”
“What the hell? Slow down, Jim. What happened?”
A pause on the other end of the line as Jim Beckett drew a steeling breath, and:
“Some stupid fight got out of hand. Lisker’s knifed some kid and Eddie McMahon’s in a bad way. Maybe fractured his skull.”
“Ambulance is on its way. I’ll have Sam and Charlie with you in two minutes, so just sit tight.”
– 22 –
Mike Shelton put the letter back in the plain white envelope.
The simplicity of the gesture had an air of finality about it.
Three short lines from the bank saying that they were taking away all that he had left. Taking away the walls that contained every one of his memories of Hannah and Holly. Foreclosing on the loan. Taking back the garage. The place would be going up for auction in twelve weeks.
He put the letter on the table and went upstairs, dark thoughts swallowing him as he climbed. There was a door up here he never opened because to do so opened a wound so wide and so deep it might never heal. Holly’s playroom. He opened the door and went inside for the first time in almost eight years.
Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved. Over time the room had taken on the stale musty air of a shrine. Now it was a haunt for spiders and for his personal ghosts. At the foot of the bed, unopened, were Holly's Christmas presents. Mike stood there looking at his daughter's old rocking horse with its one good eye, until he couldn't stand it anymore. The horse had been carved by his father as a gift to his only grandchild. He had started carving the horse's head the day Mike had told him Hannah was pregnant.
He almost backed out, unwilling to stay in this time capsule of hurt. He knew too well the stories each and every object in the room had to tell. The china-faced dolls and the Victorian pram she used to take them for walks in. The posters on the wall worshipping pop stars whose careers were as dead as his little girl. The air was thick with silence; the sort of silence he could imagine drowning in. For a second he remembered the horse rocking gently, Holly sat astride it and giggling. It was a cruel illusion.
Mike sank to his knees. Pieces of red and yellow Lego were piled in a mountain before him, the beginnings of the wall Holly had been making still in place. He started putting some of the plastic bricks together, building another row of her wall.
"I thought you might want to play," he whispered to the ghosts in the room, "before they take you away from me." Mike threw the Lego brick he was holding at the rocking horse in frustration. "Angel," he pleaded. "Please come and play with daddy… I'm so lonely without you… and there's all of these toys for you to open… new toys, see?" He looked at the wooden horse, desperate to see it rocking. A faint mewling sound clogged in his throat. "Why won't you come back and play with me? Why? I loved you so much… I'm so lonely… I don't want it anymore. I don't want to be alone. I hurt so bad, angel. I hurt everywhere. I'm coming apart without you and mummy."
– 22 –<
br />
Later.
Alex Slater was about to speak when he realised where Johnny had led him. A wide avenue, tree-lined and poorly lit. They skirted the garden and headed around the back. The big house on Mulberry Lane was completely dark. A narrow fenced off passage wriggled between it and its neighbour, leading to a bolted gate.
Johnny was still grinning. His mouth reminded Alex of a dog's: all teeth.
The bolt was halfway down the gate's back but Johnny boosted himself up and over with ease. He slipped the bolt and let Alex in.
"Home sweet fucking home." Johnny joked.
Alex felt like a ghost creeping towards a long abandoned haunt. They used to play fight in this backyard. Along a rubbish strewn wall which opened onto an empty coal shed and an outside toilet there were plenty of signs to suggest a new game was being played out here. The faded labels on a scatter of discarded glue pots and the few crinkled 2-mil syringe wrappers mingled with lemon zest and orange rinds, cigarette filter tips and crushed fruit flesh. Sweet wrappers and crisp packets did their best to mask the nature of the game in progress but enough of the horror showed through.
Johnny Lisker was developing into a new breed of monster. One that became more lethal with each new mutation.
Johnny's house was the shabbiest along the lane. The backyard was overgrown. The long grass smothered the seat of a rusted slide. Days old washing hung limply from the line crossing the yard, still waiting for a breeze to come by.
The key was under an upturned flowerpot.
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