Where Wolves Fear to Prey (Manor Park Thrillers Book 1)

by G H Mockford

  He lowered me down and let go of my throat, and then collapsed onto the floor. A roaring howl burst from his lips and his whole body shook as he cried in front of me. He was a broken man. He’d been desperate, it was obvious now, and he didn’t know what to do. The one time his daughter needed him, really needed him, and he’d failed her.

  There was a hard knock on the front door. Paul went quiet and looked at me. The knocking came again, loud and impatient. Maybe whoever it was had been knocking for a while. We probably wouldn’t have been able to hear them over the struggle.

  ‘Mr Blackmore, it’s the Police. Is everything ok?’ I guessed they were shouting through the letter box.

  Paul got to his feet, glanced at me and trudged upstairs. He stopped where he'd tied the vacuum cleaner cable around the banister and undid it without saying a word. My arms fell into my lap.

  ‘Mr Blackmore, please answer the door. We just want to know if you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Paul shouted as he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his arm. He disappeared from view and a few moments later I heard a rattle of keys come from the kitchen.

  I walked to the bottom of the stairs and watched Paul go past. I started up the stairs after him, knowing what I was going to say and do. The front door opened and in came the sound of pouring rain.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Blackmore. We’re sorry to come so early, but we’ve had reports of a disturbance,’ came the voice of a female police officer.

  ‘Morning, officer…I…’ Paul began.

  ‘It’s ok, officer,’ I said from the top of the cellar stairs, careful to keep my tied up hands out of view. I had completely forgotten about my vomit covered suit and tie. Luckily the thick curtains were still drawn, and the room was quite dark.

  ‘Sir?’ the police officer’s male partner asked.

  ‘We came home a little worse for wear,’ I said. I was tempted to add a little chuckle, but knew I wasn’t a good actor. Paul turned and looked at me. I could see the confusion in his eyes. ‘We both crashed into the kitchen table as we came in. It was a while ago now. I’m sorry if we woke the neighbours or alarmed anyone.’

  ‘This true, sir?’ the policewoman asked. Paul nodded. ‘Your lip looks a little swollen, sir. Would you like us to come in?’

  ‘No, you’re all right. Like he said, we were drunk. I smashed my face on the fridge. It’s okay,’ Paul said, pointing back to the kitchen so the officers could see the fridge and table. ‘We’re all right now. I’ve sobered up.’

  ‘Sir?’ the policeman said to me.

  ‘No, we’re okay now,’ I said, knowing it was true.

  Twelve

  The two police officers turned away from the door, and Paul closed it behind them. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he nodded his head.

  That one gesture told me all I needed to know. I came out of the cellar and walked to him with my wrists up, the rest of the flex coiled up and held in my hands.

  ‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ he said. I followed him, and he got the carving knife he used to cut the gardening twine hours before and used it on the flex. ‘Going to need a new Hoover, I may as well as get a new set of knives too,’ he said without any humour.

  The flex dropped to the floor, and I looked at Paul’s face. His mouth was a mess, and there was blood down the front of his t-shirt. I could only assume the darkened living room hid it from the police.

  I wondered what the time was, and looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. Its hands were surrounded by photo frames at jaunty angles. Each one was filled with pictures of a teenager, who I assumed was Charlie, or Charlie and Paul. They were too far away to get a good look at so I couldn't identify her. At the top, above the twelve, and with pride of place, was a picture of a beautiful woman. I could only assume it was Paul’s departed wife.

  It was 8:30; a new day was beginning and the events of the last ten hours seemed to be slipping away like an elusive dream.

  Paul filled the kettle and asked me if I wanted tea or coffee. I wanted to laugh, partly in relief, but mostly at the bizarre twist this tale was taking. A man who seemed fit to kill me was now making me a coffee. A part of me wanted to run, to get away, but I knew I’d managed to convince him of my innocence. If I tried to leave, it might put me back to square one.

  Thinking he might need some space, I took the coffee and went into the front room. The keys were still in the door. I stood looking at them. They were the one thing that had prevented me escaping, what, an hour ago? Now they were left in the door. I walked to the sofa, sat down, and reached out to put my cup down on the coffee table which was littered with magazines.

  My thoughts turned to Sarah. What would she be thinking? I must have scared her, sending that help message in the middle of the night. And now I hadn’t answered my phone. Was she still trying to ring me? Had she visited my house? Called the police?

  Paul came and joined me in the front room. He was just about to sit down when front door opened and Charlie, or Char as I knew her from Drama Club, walked in with a skinny young woman in tow.

  Thirteen

  Sarah stood in the shower and let the hot water work its magic.

  Once she'd finished, she climbed out into her marble walled wet room and grabbed a warm towel off the rail. Wrapping it around her, she took another and dried her hair. Sarah walked into her bedroom, let the towel drop to the floor and smiled at what she saw.

  Walking naked across the room, she picked her phone up off the bed. He still hadn’t rung back. She’d rung several times since her first call, and each time it went straight to the answer phone. To add insult to injury, he'd now decided to turn his phone off.

  Or maybe someone else had.

  Sarah tried to think of people who would want to hurt him. She couldn’t think of anyone, but then she hardly knew him. After making the first phone call, she had kept swaying from one opinion to another. She was over reacting, surely? Why would someone hurt him? Freeman was just an English teacher. He was a little arrogant, opinionated and, even though, he would never admit it, entirely too much in love with himself. As much as she hated to admit it, she did like him.

  I’m thinking about him in far too much detail, she thought as she opened a dresser drawer and slipped on an expensive pair of knickers. She dug out a matching bra and put it on and turned to the wardrobe and admired herself again. The lacy turquoise fabric looked good against her naturally tanned skin. It was the leftovers of a three-week Caribbean holiday she had treated herself to before she started at Bryon Comp.

  Sarah threw open the wardrobe doors and ran her eyes over her clothes. She picked out a pair of jeans with strategically placed rips, a floral print top and a red, double-breasted, three buttoned leather jacket. Having dried her hair and applied only the make-up that was necessary, she got dressed.

  In the open-plan kitchen and living area, Sarah had her usual breakfast – a mug of coffee – and stood looking out of her first storey Lace Market apartment window. St Mary’s church stood majestically outside in the early morning rain. Putting her feet up on the coffee table, she sunk into the sea of pillows on her corner group. She put the coffee down and tried ringing Freeman again.

  It went straight to answerphone.

  She thought about ringing his house, but, when she checked, she only had a mobile number. Come to think of it, she didn’t know the address of his house either. But she did know how to get there.

  Fourteen

  ‘Dad?’ Charlie said, stopping in the door. ‘What’s happened?’ She dumped the pink Republic bag she was carrying by the door and ran round the back of the sofa to get to her father.

  ‘Nothing, I’m all right. I just fell over,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

  I was certain Paul had said Charlie had gone away for the weekend, so it was a bit of a shock to both of us when she turned up. It was when Charlie crouched before her father she noticed me for the first time. She looked at me for a second. I suppo
se it wasn’t every day you came home to find a teacher in your front room.

  ‘Mr Freeman?’ she said, before returning her attention to her father.

  ‘What did you fall over? Someone else’s fist?’ she said, reaching out to touch her father’s face.

  He shied away. ‘I’m all right, Charlie. Stop fussing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jak…’ she said looking over the sofa at the skinny friend, leaving the sentence unfinished. The young woman looked familiar like I had taught her in the past. She looked a few years older than Charlie, eighteen perhaps.

  ‘No problem, I’ll text you later,’ she said, as she turned and left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ Charlie said, tapping her father’s knee before she got up and left the room.

  ‘I really should be going, Paul,’ I said, taking the opportunity to leave.

  He nodded simply. ‘What happens next, Mr Freeman?

  ‘What happens next, is you talk to Charlie,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know what you meant, Paul. I won’t be going to the police.’

  He nodded. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I appreciate you covering for me earlier. You didn’t have to.’

  ‘I know. I did it because I can tell you’re a good man. I think you’ve suffered enough. Look after each other.’

  And with the largest sense of relief I have ever felt, I left.

  Fifteen

  Idrove through the streets of Manor Park and Sneinton. Paul had obviously driven my car to his house with me in the back, and then left it parked outside. It was a good job the police weren’t looking for it. I pulled out onto Carlton Road and headed for Gedling.

  I'd been driving for about ten minutes when all of a sudden I began to shake. The car lurched as my foot trembled on the accelerator. A quick right turn and I parked in the nearby Tesco.

  Turning off the ignition, I sat for a few moments trying to calm myself down. I rested my head on the steering wheel and felt my shoulders quake.Then a tear rolled down my cheek.

  I wiped my face and checked myself in the mirror. Where the diary hit me, I had a slight black eye, and I looked a little grubby. I got out of the car and went to the boot. My suit jacket came off, and I replaced it with a coat I kept in the boot. Zipping it up to cover up any last remaining sick, I went into Tesco. I paid for the cider and biscuits I'd picked out, ignored the strange looks from the checkout girl, and headed back to my car.

  I waited for a few minutes and then took one of the bottles of cider and used a bottle opener that was on my car keys. It said ‘World’s Best Teacher’ on it. It had been a present from a kid before he left. I checked for police – a station was just around the corner – and removed the lid from the bottle.

  The smell of the fermented apple juice filled my nose, and I felt my worries begin to disappear. Then I was pouring it down my throat like there was no tomorrow. It was spilled out the corners of my mouth and down my chin. I only stopped when I needed to breathe, but found that I had downed the entire bottle.

  The sound of a car door shutting beside me drew my attention, and an old woman gave me a disapproving look through the window. I gave her an embarrassed smile in return. Starting up the car, I headed toward my one bedroom terrace house and the normality I craved.

  Sixteen

  I could feel my eyelids getting heavy, and my body was going to have to surrender to its demands for sleep. Fearful of my tiredness, I drove my car around the corner, and then I saw her.

  Sarah Alec was stood outside my house, and while I was happy to see her, right now she was the last thing I needed.

  I changed down into first gear far too early. With the revs too high, the car lurched forward, and I stalled outside my house. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what I assumed would be a tirade of abuse. I opened the car door and got out.

  I was right.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been, mister? I can’t…’ The words died in Sarah’s throat as she took in my dishevelled appearance. ‘What happened to you?’

  I propped myself against the car as she came around the front of the bonnet. Her hand reached out to touch my sore face. I stepped out of the way and began to look for the key to my front door. As I reached for the lock, my vision blurred and I completely missed the hole. The keys slipped from my grasp and clattered to the footpath.

  ‘Freeman? What’s happened?’ she asked again, bending down to pick them up for me. When I didn’t reply she said, ‘Alex?’

  I looked up at her. With that one word, she had gained my full attention. No one at school, in fact no one at all apart from my family, calls me by my first name. I was called Freeman, always have been and probably always will be.

  Sarah opened the door and threw it back to let me in. It crashed into the back of the armchair that I had managed to squeeze behind it. I felt good to be home, amongst my own things: my six octave piano (a full size would never fit); two bookshelves filled to bursting with crime fiction; a two seater sofa, the aforementioned armchair; and a fireplace. There was no TV. The only pieces of technology I allowed myself were a record player and an iPod dock.

  I collapsed into my chair; it fitted around me, shaped to my body by the hours of marking, reading and drinking cups of coffee. Then I did something I wouldn’t normally do - I put my legs up on the coffee table.

  ‘Alex, will you please talk to me. What’s happened?’ I could hear Sarah was caught halfway between concern and exasperation.

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think what to say. I decided to put the emphasis on her. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, shocked at the tiredness in my voice as the words slurred together.

  ‘I came looking for you. Let me make you a coffee or something.’

  My eyelids began to feel heavy again, the last of my energy had gone getting into my house, and I felt exhaustion sweep over my body.

  Seventeen

  I was awoken by the sound of keys in my door, then forced awake when it slammed into the back of my chair.

  It was Sarah.

  ‘Hello sleepyhead,’ she said with a smile. She closed the door and held up two orange carrier bags. ‘I got some things in as I didn’t think you’d be up to cooking. You’ve missed lunch,’ she said as she disappeared into the kitchen, making herself at home. She’d only been here once before, and that was a planning meeting for work, but it felt surprisingly normal. ‘I’ve got some stuff for high tea,’ she chuckled to herself. I could hear her rustling in the bags. ‘Go and get a shower while I get the stuff ready. None of it needs cooking. Cooking’s for Sundays,’ she said, laughing.

  I started to get up and discovered that I had a pillow behind my head and the throw, which usually covered my sofa, was over me. Sarah must have done it. It felt nice to have someone to look out for me. I’d been alone in this house for what…three years?

  ‘Look, you really don’t need to do this…’ I started to say, when I realized how ungrateful it sounded, and sure enough she appeared in the kitchen door. I expected her to look angry, but instead she looked disappointed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, it’s just…’

  ‘Just what?’ she said folding her arms.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Thank you,’ I added, wishing I could either sink into the chair or rewind time. Instead, I settled for changing the subject. ‘I’ll get that shower.’

  ‘I’ll leave, you probably need some space,’ she said, as she quickly spun on her heel and disappeared back into the kitchen. I heard her putting things back into the carrier bags.

  ‘Sarah, I’m sorry.’ I tossed the throw to one side and walked over to the kitchen, colliding with Sarah as she came through from the other side. I felt myself tread on her toes, now literally as well as metaphorically, and she dropped the shopping to the floor as she cried out.

  I bent down to pick up the bags. So did she. Our heads cracked.

  A sharp yelp
escaped her lips as she bounced back. As she reached up to touch her head, she lost her footing on the polished, hardwood floor. I reached out to grab her, my long arms easily reaching and catching her around her slim waist, but it was too late; she was past the point of no return.

  We both crashed down to the floor.

  We lay there, and I was uncomfortably aware that I was half on top of her. Her perfume drifted up my nose. She smelled fantastic. I, on the other hand, must have smelled of vomit and fear.

  I looked into her eyes, waiting for the backlash and began to scramble off her saying, ‘Oh God, I’m sorry…how embarrassing…are you all right?’

  There was silence for a few moments and then the sounds of sweet laughter filled my living room. I reached out my hand, and she took it. Hers was gentle and soft. I helped her back up to her feet.

  ‘You bloody idiot, Freeman,’ she said slapping my arm as she continued laughing. Again I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about what I had said, nearly knocking her out or landing on top of her. Hell, it was probably all three.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again for want of anything else to say.

  ‘You certainly know how to show a lady a good time! No wonder you’re bloody single!’ She laughed and headed toward the sofa, flopping down onto it.

  I stood next to my piano, rubbing my head.

  ‘Go and have that bloody shower for god’s sake. You stink,’ she said, leaping back off the sofa, brushing past me, grabbing the bags and putting the Danish pastries, which had fallen out, back in. I watched her go into the kitchen and then did as I was told.

  Eighteen

  Either Paul had beaten me more than I thought or I'd somehow pulled something during our struggle in the kitchen because it wasn’t easy to get my clothes off. Not without any pain anyway. I ached all over, and I felt stiff.