by Steven Dunne
‘One of the reasons.’
‘How in the hell you know what we was going to do? ’Bout the coffee an’ all?’
‘Let’s just say I had a feeling.’
‘Bullshit. Are you police?’
Brook fixed Ashwell with a wintry eye. ‘You’re going to wish I was.’
‘Why? What you going to do? Nuth’n. You’ve had your fun. Now take our money and get on out.’
‘You’d make a great salesman, Mr Ashwell.’
Brook pulled off his black gloves. He had a pair of latex gloves underneath. Then he stood, zipping his boiler suit up to his neck. ‘I’m sorry I’ve got no great art to remind you,’ he said. A cutthroat razor gleamed suddenly in his hand.
Ashwell saw it and began to talk a little faster, grinding his wrists against the handcuffs. ‘Remind me of what?’
‘Of how wonderful the human race can be if it aspires to greatness instead of evil. Ideally, you should die beneath a beautiful painting, with wondrous music as your companion to oblivion. Alas…’
‘You’re gonna kill us over a few dollars? You’re gonna kill my boy?’
‘You killed Billy years ago. I’m just here to make it official.’
‘I ain’t killed no one.’
‘Really? Tell me, did you kill your wife before you murdered the humanity in Billy or after?’
‘My wife?’ screamed Ashwell.
‘No matter. The chronology is hardly an issue now.’
‘You son of a bitch…’
‘So what happens to the children in your operation?’
asked Brook, to forestall another rant. ‘I hope it’s quick and painless.’
‘Children?’
‘You know, the children who don’t drink coffee — the children on holiday with their parents who could identify Billy. And the other people in the vehicle who can remember what happened to them — the people who can remember being robbed, the people who can remember the car crashing, the people who can remember Billy turning up to help, the people who can remember being towed back here, who know where you’ve parked their car, with all the other cars in the clearing out back.’
Ashwell smiled his green and yellow smile and thought for a second. Then he seemed to come to a decision. ‘Oh, those people.’ He seemed to drift off for a moment, remembering secret pleasures. ‘Well, that’s why I choose tourists like you, Mr Brook, on holiday, hundreds of miles from home. It could be months before some of those people are missed. And even when they are reported missing…’
‘Of course. They’re travelling. They could be anywhere,’ nodded Brook, his mouth beginning to harden.
‘Exactly. And if the crash ain’t killed ’em, we bring ’em back here and have some fun. We party with the wives in front of their menfolk. They don’t like that.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘Then we kill the men in front of their families. They sure do make a hollering. We kill the little ’uns straight off usually but if the kids are old enough, we keep ’em a while and show ’em a good time. I get to bust the girls then give ’em to Billy when I get bored. If we get a real squirrelly little bitch, I invite my brother Jake over for a blind date.’ Ashwell sniggered. ‘They’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to butcher. That’s what Jake says.’
Brook walked over to Ashwell’s chair. ‘I hope Jake’s already dead because I’ve got a lot on at the moment.’
‘Ain’t no call to take on so, Mr Brook. We kept the sweet stuff for you. Got plenty of money left. Lot more than two hundred dollars. You can have it all. And don’t forget we got you on camera, Mister Brook.’
Brook circled slowly round behind him.
‘I bought some gas and left,’ said Brook. ‘No harm, no foul.’ He moved directly behind Ashwell so that the cuffed man had to strain to keep him in view.
‘We got your licence plate too.’
‘Same answer,’ whispered Brook in Ashwell’s ear.
Ashwell’s head was yanked back so his Adam’s apple strained at the skin of his throat. Brook placed the blade of the razor onto the submerged blue of the carotid artery.
‘We got a mic in that camera, Mr Brook,’ squeaked Ashwell. ‘They’ll know your name.’
‘Oh, I doubt that.’ However, Brook appeared to hesitate as he processed this new information. Ashwell waited, hope seizing him. ‘See, that’s the other reason I didn’t give you my credit card. My name’s not Brook,’ said the man. He began to hum the Requiem … then sliced cleanly into Ashwell’s flabby neck.
Chapter Five
Damen Brook opened his eyes but remained motionless in his sleeping bag. The trees near the tent were creaking under the wind’s assault and an owl hooted off in the distance, but the noise that had woken him had not been one of nature’s sound effects. He looked at his watch — two in the morning. Maybe a car at the bottom of the field had woken him — but at this hour and in the depths of the Peak District? It seemed unlikely. He felt around for his water bottle and took a short drink.
He closed his eyes but reopened them at once. Someone or something was definitely moving around outside his tent. He lifted his head from the makeshift pillow and followed the source of the noise. Beyond the mound of his feet, framed by the moonlight, Brook could see a shadow on the other side of the canvas. The paper-and-comb noise of a zip unfastening sent Brook scrabbling for his torch. Flicking it on he trained it on the tent’s flap, but this didn’t halt the unfastening — it merely hastened it.
Fully alert now, Brook sat up and cast around for a weapon. He reached for his walking boots but the mention of his name turned his muscles to solid ice.
‘Who is it?’
‘Damen. Damen. It’s me.’ Brook didn’t recognise the little-girl voice. ‘Laura.’
Brook’s heart, already working hard, went into overdrive. Sweat dotted his forehead. ‘Laura?’
The flap opened and a pretty young girl popped her head through the gap.
She smiled at him and proceeded to crawl into the tent on all fours. ‘Laura Maples. You must remember,’ she grinned. Her skin was pale and she wore nothing but the briefest silk night slip, which did little to conceal her small breasts as she climbed onto his sleeping bag. ‘I’ve come to thank you for Floyd,’ she smiled and proceeded to unfasten his sleeping bag.
‘What?’
‘You must remember Floyd,’ she said. Her smile vanished and she massaged her neck briefly, then showed her fingers to Brook. They were covered in blood. ‘I do.’ She moved towards him, recovering her smile, and climbed on top of him.
Brook shone the torch onto her unblemished peach-fuzz face. He felt a hand pulling at his sleeping bag. ‘Stop.’ He grabbed her hand — it was icy cold.
‘Please, Damen. Just once for love.’ She pushed his arms down and kissed him with her frosty lips. Brook could feel her soft flesh trembling in her too thin slip and tried to pull away, but she pressed closer to him for warmth, her tongue beginning to search for his.
A stench so foul Brook thought he might retch made him push the girl away and he swung the torch back to her face. The blackened skull and orbs of her eye sockets glared back at him and he shrank back to the wall of his tent, almost collapsing the frame. The broken beer bottle protruding from her neck glistened in the artificial light, grimy panties still dangling from its neck — testimony to her killer’s final incriminating act.
‘You’re not real,’ shouted Brook. He darted the torch this way and that, searching for her corpse. She had gone. Brook heaved a sigh. A second later he felt the movement at his feet and knew at once what it was. He scrambled to pull the sleeping bag off his legs but the seething, roiling mass of rats struggling for air at the bottom of his fetid bed gouged and scraped their way to freedom over his quivering torso.
Brook sat bolt upright and took several huge gasps of air. When his heart returned to near normal, he poked a bleary head out into the sharp, cold air of the morning. Although only wearing underpants and T-shirt, he spilled out onto the sopping grass and raised h
is six-foot frame to its full height, welcoming the fingers of dawn massaging their faint warmth into his face.
He closed his eyes and rubbed the fatigue from them. It had been years since he’d dreamed of Laura Maples, dreams he thought he’d left behind forever. Her killer, Floyd Wrigley, was in the ground — Brook had seen to that — and his nightmares had been buried with him. Or so he had thought. Two nights in a row. He heaved a final huge sigh. Something was wrong.
He looked at his watch and scrabbled back inside the tent, emerging with a box of matches inside a plastic bag. The first two matches he removed failed to ignite, but the third obliged, and Brook slid it under the kettle of his one-ring camping stove and made some tea.
Brook returned to the tent, dressed quickly, then packed his sleeping bag, camera and other meagre possessions into the side of his rucksack.
He then set to work taking down his quick-erect tent. He worked rhythmically, occasionally looking around as he folded, but there was no landowner or farmer to complain this early in the morning.
Brook packed his stove, kettle and mug and struck out down the path that would eventually spit him out into the small hamlet of Milldale, on the River Dove in Derbyshire’s Peak District. Forty minutes later he was standing on Milldale’s ancient footbridge, admiring a nearby heron and feeling the warmth of the low sun spread its balm.
He clambered up the steps to the municipal toilets. After an icy wash, Brook gazed at his bleary face in the cracked mirror. He then set off up the path next to the river that would eventually take him to his home in the village of Hartington. He walked steadily, ignoring the hunger gnawing at his tight belly and feeling quiet pleasure at the newfound strength in his legs and shoulders. Two weeks of wild camping, walking fifteen miles a day and eschewing alcohol and cigarettes had left Brook feeling as fit as he had in years. But the dream of Laura Maples gnawed at him. What did it mean?
Brook power-walked the last mile into Hartington and up the small hill to his front door, stopping only briefly to get a pint of milk and a loaf of bread at the corner shop. As he was extracting his keys from a side pocket, his eye wandered to the small, lavender-scented front garden of Rose Cottage next door. He noticed that the ‘To Let’ sign, which had been there for many a month, had now been taken down and laid flat along the side wall of the cottage. At the same time, he noticed that several upstairs windows had been opened to air the place out.
He unlocked his front door and stepped into the porch, kicking the large pile of unopened mail to one side. As soon as he entered the inner door he heard the urgent ping of the answer phone alerting him to messages. Two weeks away, two messages. He pressed the play button.
‘Hello, sir. Hope you’ve had a good holiday wherever you’ve been.’ It was DS John Noble. ‘I thought I’d give you the rundown on The Reaper book. It came out on Tuesday and got a fair amount of attention. Brian Burton was interviewed on East Midlands Today apparently — I didn’t see it. Surprise, surprise, he has a go at you in it, about the way the investigation went, you know the routine, and the BBC rang up to find out if you or the Chief Super wanted to be on with him. The Chief’s said no. As he doesn’t know you all that well, he’s fretting that you might get sucked into saying the wrong thing. Don’t worry, I told him you don’t talk to anyone if you can help it, least of all journalists …’
Brook smiled at this and muttered, ‘No comment!’
‘Anyway…’ The message cut off at this point but was picked up again in the next one. ‘It’s me again. Just to say I’ve taped the interview for you if you can face it. I’ve also left a text on your new mobile just in case you actually manage to take it with you, remember how to turn it on and have learned how to access your messages. Unlikely, I know. See you tomorrow. Oh, BTW,’ Brook rolled his eyes, ‘Jason Wallis was released a couple of days ago. Thought you might want to know.’
Brook’s expression hardened. ‘So you’re out at last, you murdering little coward.’ He made some tea and took a sip while glancing through the side window at the memorial to his slaughtered cat. He reflected on the night two years ago when he’d risked everything and played The Reaper, holding Jason hostage, confronting him with his crimes and threatening to cut his throat unless he turned himself in for the murder of Annie Sewell, an old woman in a sheltered home.
He looked back to the cat-shaped stone. He’d underestimated Wallis. A week later Jason and his crew had come after Brook, wrecking his down-at-heel flat and killing his cat.
Brook smiled suddenly. ‘The Reaper’s dead, Jason. Did I forget to tell you? For all you know he could be waiting round the next corner or passing you in the street. It could be anyone. It could be me. Sweet dreams.’
Brook finished his tea and deleted the messages. He took out his brand new mobile phone and turned it on, confirming there was a text from Noble, but didn’t bother to read it. He wasn’t comfortable texting but had no desire to endure the how-was-your-holiday conventions of a phone conversation so he painstakingly tapped out: ‘Jason Wallis. Did anyone inform the Ottomans?’, making sure he took the time to add the capital letters and question mark.
A few minutes later Noble replied — ‘who’ — without punctuation or a capital letter.
Brook was disheartened on two fronts. ‘A pity we don’t remember the victims as we remember the criminals,’ he muttered and switched off the phone.
Then he booted up his computer and went to take a shower.
Special Agent Mike Drexler drained his espresso then turned his attention to the orange juice. He took a long slow sip and grinned at his companion.
‘Yummy. I never imagined things could taste like this and I could feel this good on top.’
Special Agent Edie McQuarry flashed him a sarcastic smile and exhaled tobacco smoke over him. ‘A month away from the weed and you turn into some kind of goddamn evangelist. It’s sickening.’
‘I got news for you, Ed. I haven’t had alcohol for three weeks either.’
‘Well, give the man a prize. While the rest of humanity is out getting drunk and laid, you’ll be able to stay home nights and brush up on your macrame.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve no idea but my sister says she does it on her coffee mornings.’
‘Sounds kinky.’
‘Well, if you ever get a hankering to wear a poncho I’ll hook you up.’ McQuarry eyed her partner before taking another long pull on her cigarette and twisted her mouth to exhale the smoke away from the other tables. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned sisters.’
Drexler looked up. ‘Ed, it’s been ten years now. I’m over it.’
‘Glad to hear it. So how’d it go last week?’
‘How’d what go?’
McQuarry raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s October, Mike. And I’m your partner.’
Drexler smiled bleakly into the distance. ‘How do these things usually go? You place the flowers, wipe the dirt off the headstone, say a few words. “Hey, sis, let me tell you about my year.”’ He smiled at his partner. ‘Gotta keep busy standing over the dead.’
‘You visit your mother?’
Drexler’s smile was a mask behind which words were carefully selected. ‘What’s the point? She doesn’t know who I am. I barely know myself. Since Kerry died…’ He shrugged. What else was there to say?
Opposite McQuarry, a large woman sitting next to her even larger husband and two grossly overweight boys, caught her eye to purse her lips in disapproval, before opening them to fork in a mouthful of syrupy pancakes.
Drexler followed McQuarry’s gaze to their table. ‘If anyone complains I’m going to have to arrest you.’
‘We’re outside, goddamn it, Mike. What more do they want?’
‘It’s a public place. There are laws.’ Drexler tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t maintain it.
‘My first smoke of the day ruined.’ McQuarry stubbed out her cigarette, then briefly examined her left hand.
‘How is it?’ asked Drexler.<
br />
She grinned at him, then flexed her hand more vigorously, trying not to wince at the discomfort from the scar tissue. ‘Good as new, Mike.’
Drexler nodded. A tension rose within him and McQuarry knew what was coming. ‘Listen, Ed…’
‘If you’re gonna start that crap again, Mike, we’re gonna have a problem. You’re my partner. You saved my life. I got cut ’cos I got careless, and if it hadn’t been for you I could’ve been filleted by that piece of shit. End of story.’
Drexler managed a smile. ‘Okay. You won’t hear me mention it again. But I never got to say thanks, you know, for still wanting to saddle up with me and backing me in front of the Board. I owe you.’
‘You don’t owe me shit, Mike, it was a good shoot. Just how many more times aren’t you ever gonna mention it?’
Drexler returned her grin. ‘Coupla hundred.’
McQuarry drained her coffee and they both stood in unison. Drexler counted out a few dollars and dropped them on the table. She eyed the morbidly obese family as they passed their table. ‘You know, I don’t complain about lardasses encouraging me to weigh my heart down with fat,’ she said, a little more loudly than was necessary, as she stalked away from the restaurant.
They walked down Placerville Main Street through the morning sunshine, back to their dark blue Chevy. They’d been partners in the FBI for nearly three years and were comfortable in each other’s company. Drexler was thirty-three, slender and tall with curly brown hair, a handsome face and a lopsided smile.
McQuarry was thirty-eight and two years away from being a fifteen-year veteran. She looked younger, or so Drexler always told her, and despite his occasional teasing she saw no reason to disbelieve him. Her hair was also brown, but darker and shinier, and she tied it in a ponytail when on duty. She was a foot shorter than Drexler and full-figured, though she tended to think she was overweight and had been ‘careful’ with her diet for most of her adult life.