Book Read Free

BiteMarks

Page 16

by Drew Cross

“Different people are motivated by different things, my friend.”

  “Suddenly you're the one dispensing advice now, are you?”

  I give him a self-satisfied smile. “Yes, we're Yin and Yang, Marcus.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “Light and dark, complementary opposites. Balancing each other.”

  He looks at me and grins then aims a punch at my thigh.

  “Bigot!”

  “Let's go lock this creature up.”

  * * *

  They settle on Meg's dad first. He belongs to a group of individuals who do not respond well to selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors SSRI's, a new group of antidepressants, and as a result is taking an older variant called Dothiepin. This causes him fewer side-effects, allowing him to deal with the pressures of a demanding professional life, which is at heart the main cause of his considerable anxiety and frequent bouts of depression. The drugs mean that he can continue to destroy and humiliate weaker opponents in the courtroom, and that he can continue to rape his daughter on a regular basis. This dependence provides an opportunity.

  He is considered to be at a comparatively low risk for suicide, although this status is casually monitored on the frequent occasions that he returns to his doctor for a new prescription. However, the medical profession is known to get the assessment wrong from time to time. Meg's dad is a case in point, since to all outward appearances, he'll be ending his life in around about four hours time. He'll sit down at his desk in the office that remains locked to the rest of the household, flicking through images that he's made on his computer, and he will die from an overdose of those pills washed down with a pleasingly smoky malt.

  The plan itself was simple, based around the man's familiar routine. On Friday nights he returned home at his usual time and retired to his study to 'work' for a while, whilst Meg and her younger sister cooked dinner for the family. After listening to his anecdotes about the week over the food, and remembering to laugh in the right places as he demanded and expected, they would be excused from the table to clear the dishes. At this point he would once again retire to his study to 'work'; Meg believed that he was actually fulfilling other needs by viewing particular kinds of pornography.

  Tonight Meg would either excuse or distract her sister from the cooking, a highly spiced Burmese style pork curry, done in two separate pans in order that she can add a dozen very finely crushed pills to the pot which would serve her dad. The tablets had already been procured and ground to the required consistency since she had known where he stored them. The sweet, spicy and thickly pungent sauce would adequately conceal the bitter taste and chalky texture; he'd never notice.

  Internet searches had led us to believe that six tablets would be sufficient to kill an adult male and that twelve would take out a rhino. The pots would be cleaned of any residue by the dishwasher, which was always put on immediately after the table had been cleared anyway, and the man himself always had a few whiskeys on a Friday which would help things along just nicely too.

  Meg's mum wouldn't disturb him whilst he was in his study, so life-saving medical intervention was unlikely provided that she had the guts to carry through with the plan that she had been instrumental in making. The ugly sneer on her pretty face when she talked about him and what he did to her on a regular basis said that the wounds ran deep enough to translate into murder when the time came.

  He is home now. She hears the front door close, the familiar jangle of keys on the sideboard in the hallway and then the soft padding of his steps, always a slight pause outside her room and then they continue onwards to the study at the end of the landing. Finally comes the clunk-click of the lock sliding across and into place, barring entry to everybody else whilst he sat down to do whatever it was that he did in there.

  She rises reluctantly; her expression is set and unreadable as she heads down the stairs and into the kitchen. The powdered tablets are in a small plastic freezer bag in her pocket, its presence slows her progress - guilt has the heft of lead. The stairs come and go, she cannot feel them beneath her bare feet neither does she feel the warmth from under-floor heating as she steps onto the kitchen floor.

  The kitchen itself is a study in understated and expensive modern design; polished granite work surfaces reflect back the harsh spotlight beams like sun flare on a glass window. The units are oak, solid wood of course, the only veneers in this house are worn by the occupants, and the floor is tiled and heated from beneath, fat copper snakes living under slim marble slabs, the sheen of the floor bouncing light around off the highly polished fronts of stainless steel appliances.

  Meg takes in the familiar surroundings as if she is seeing them for the first time again. She removes copper based pans, a thick oak chopping board, Japanese knives and an assortment of ingredients in an automaton daze. She arranges them neatly as she has been taught, readying for the preparatory work.

  Fear is a strange entity; it can smother or sharpen the senses in different circumstances and different people. Meg feels the switch between numb haze and absolute clarity like the slap of iced water on unsuspecting skin, she quickly finds herself praying for the detachment to return.

  She lifts up the surgically keen vegetable knife now and begins to prepare some of the ingredients, slicing bulbs of bright green and white salad onions into slim rounds, crushing cloves of pungent garlic with a thump of her palm to loosen the brittle skin away from the sticky flesh, and scraping the small fiery seeds from a bird-eye chili pepper.

  Before long her sister, Lauren, skips into the kitchen and takes up a bottle of grass-scented olive oil, adding it to the two pans and turning on the heat in preparation for the cubes of moist pink pork.

  She sings snatches of a vaguely familiar pop song that's on repeat play in the charts right now, mixing up some of the words and humming the parts that she can't remember. Meg has already planned how to distract her whilst she adds the crushed tablets, and bides her time chopping the ingredients still finer until it's time to add them to the browning meat.

  Lauren turns away to stir the meat with a long-handled wooden spoon which provides a suitable opening, and Meg runs the knife firmly across her palm, opening up a shallow wound that starts to drip blood onto the jet black work top.

  “Ouch, God that hurts!”

  Lauren turns around, eyes widening at the sight of flowing blood.

  “Quick, fetch me some tissues from through there.”

  Meg gestures towards the downstairs cloakroom back through the open hallway door. The cut burns from the remnants of chili on the knife edge, but she ignores the glowing pain in her urgency and fumbles for the freezer bag with her uninjured hand. Finally she locates it and empties the contents into the pan for her father, followed by the finely chopped vegetables, scraping them off the board as fast as she can. She virtually throws the board back down on the side and pours in a pot of cream and a tub of pre-made vegetable stock, concealing the remnants of white powder by stirring the concoction to mix it properly.

  As if on cue Lauren arrives back with an untidy handful of hastily gathered tissue paper which she thrusts at Meg with a concerned expression. Meg smiles in thanks and wraps it around her hand a couple of times, tying the loose ends to secure the makeshift bandage in place; the leaking blood starts to show through immediately, an expanding crimson rose.

  The heat is turned down after a time and lids placed on to maintain a gentle simmer, all trace of residue has gone now and the air is fragrant with spices. The two girls are joined by their mother, the table set in a trance. Silverware is laid out precisely, neatly framing black slate mats, lead crystal glasses are polished to a sparkle, pressed napkins folded and positioned perfectly. High standards are insisted on in everything that they do.

  The three figures weave around each other like ballroom dancers, well rehearsed in their craft. The movements are silent, with neurotic adjustments and re-adjustments of cutlery and glassware from the supervising mother. Faces are blank as kabuki mas
ks; there is an eerie robotic quality to the scene that might be beautiful in another setting. The lights are dimmed moments before he graces them with his presence, he makes an unhurried show of scrutinizing the set up before signaling his approval and taking a seat.

  A lightening bolt of pure fear sets Meg's hands trembling. She takes deep breaths to steady them and then dishes up a large bowl of the adulterated aromatic curry. She carefully transports it through to the dining room, the heat edging slowly towards uncomfortable on her fingers by the time that she sets it down in front of him. He inhales deeply enjoying the exotic scents, deep, rich and sweet, and then takes up his fork and savors a first mouthful.

  * * *

  None of this is how I'd envisaged that it would be. In the colorless Gothic nightscapes of my thoughts and dreams I was always alone; the case thrown open by a genius glimmer, a sudden realization of the devious significance of the Fanged Man's pathology thrown up by the link that I feel with this monster that uncovered his dark lair. Instead, the flat is stunningly normal, the dark green wax sheen of ivy clinging around sash windows, with children playing out in the street in front – a bright blur of color and laughter presided over by smiling women with tired eyes.

  For the first time I am starting to realize how much I've needed this investigation and all of the run off from it. There's nothing like extra purpose to distract you from the banality of your everyday issues. Now I am a little shocked to find that the whole thing may be about to end and the realization is already a disappointment of sorts. I think about Cristal's words to me from her hospital bed, her face torn to shreds but the visible eye burning with desire for vengeance. She had asked me to find the man who had done this to her and kill him.

  “Do you think he's in?” Marcus looks rattled his speech a fraction faster than usual.

  “There's an upstairs window open, so I reckon so. Most people in these parts are careful about security if they want to hang on to their possessions for any length of time.”

  “Do you think somebody like this is scared of things like burglars?”

  “He's just a man. Whatever evils he commits or has suffered and whatever madness lurks in his head, that's all he is. He may not feel things exactly like you do, but he functions well enough to have made it this far.”

  “Since you understand him so well I'll follow you in.”

  Marcus pats me on the shoulder and gets out of the car. The downstairs neighbor intercepts us before we're halfway up the path, a harassed looking woman with a black eye and a missing front tooth. She's probably only in her mid-thirties, but carrying the years like a heavy wooden cross.

  “It's about bloody time.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I take it you've come about the freak upstairs?”

  “Is he in?”

  “I'd say so, judging by the noises from the other night. Besides, I haven't seen him go out since.”

  “Noises?”

  “Are you two a bit slow? I reported all of this, it sounded like they were killing a cat or something up there.” Marcus looks at me, he caught the plural too.

  “He doesn't live alone then?”

  “I didn't say that, just that he wasn't alone the other night.”

  “We'll head up there and check it out then.” I accompany the statement with a congenial smile of professionalism.

  “If it's not too much trouble for you,” her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  She looks at Marcus, giving him an approving appraisal and smiling a gap-toothed smile. “Of course you could always stop in when you're done if you like … ”

  “I'm flattered but I need to see what's going on upstairs first.” He gives her a quick smile and follows me up the concrete steps to Dodd's flat.

  “It's all right, Marky boy, I don't mind covering for you while you check out how the other half lives.”

  “I hope he bites your neck when we go in,” comes the muttered reply.

  “Oh, don't be like that.”

  The conversation dies at the doorstep, good natures banter and smiles fluttering away on the breeze, no pretenses now. In case we'd been in any doubt that this was the place, the wooden door has been decorated with bloody fingerprints. The prints form the shape of a single deep red eye, with the glass circle of a spy-hole in the center serving as a pupil. I see you.

  I reach out with my thoughts, trying to sense the vacuum presence of this half-crazed man, in many ways my double but in others a different species. I feel nothing. Will you try to fight me, or will you gaze into the darkness in my eyes with your own and see that it's all over for you now?

  “Mate?” Marcus points at the window on the front of the flat, at the fat iridescent flies careering in as others weave out drunk and gorged.

  I drive my shoulder into the hard door, smudging off old blood with my white shirt and smashing the flimsy lock away from its housing. The interior is bare and squalid, the floorboards exposed but not like the ones where I live, these are dirty and untreated absorbing light where mine reflect it and they rob the small space of all vitality. There are sharp carpet gripper strips exposed and still nailed in place along the skirting boards. I kick open the internal doors as I go, door handles slamming back off furniture and walls, no need to shout out our presence even if I could speak right now he'll already know that we're here.

  Strangely, the first thing that I notice in the room is not the blood or the mutilated body, although I am of course aware of its presence on the floor, it is the sun streaming through the open sash window. A fat orb weaver spider is in the center of the opening, its web kissed into golden threads by the light. Flies lay placid in the aftermath of gory banqueting, some are too bloated to fly and rest stupidly on the sill, others are stuck to adhesive threads unable to struggle, wheezing and awaiting a silk cocoon and the vampire sting of an eight-legged death.

  Marcus' intake of breath as he enters the room pulls me back away from the details. The shushing sound coming from his pursed lips could be the beginning of an expletive or an attempt to soothe us both in the face of this obscenity. The grotesque thing laid out like an exhibition piece before us had once been Brett Dodds – the Fanged Man. That was before the machetes reduced him to a bloodied inhuman carcass.

  He is naked, on his knees, but body slumped backwards and mouth open wider than should be possible, inch long fangs bared in a simian scream. A closer inspection reveals the slits in the corners that stretch the agonized grimace into this cavern of gore, and the chop of a blade into the spinal column at the base of the brain that allows the head to loll backwards and the jaws to hinge open so unnaturally. This is tableau – a display for us to find. The frenzy controlled by men who know death's face like their own.

  I am reminded of clinging images from the past that stopped me in my tracks; a triptych by Francis Bacon, slaughterhouse chic in those tormented forms. Here are the purple brown aromas that the cruel compelling art only suggested – we are all only meat in the end. The soundtrack a buzzing drone that if left would strip him back to featureless bone. Here is your monster, a psychotic abomination composed of claws and teeth and madness wrapped in skin, now stripped and butchered. I can see the self-inflicted scarring on his chest, a livid phoenix carved into the flesh, a short rebirth and then death again.

  They tracked him down first, doors opening for them that would slam in the face of a uniform. Now they taunt you with your failure, denying you this chance at some sort of closure, showing you how easily they can take this life away and by implication how easily they believe they could take yours too.

  I am in a trance now, nothing else here except me and that dead man that could have been me in a different existence. Looking into his pale filmy eyes I see reflected the white lenses of the smiling murderer who I know did this. The swelling rage inside me is colder than the broken body of Brett Dodds.

  Chapter 15

  I cannot hear the world around me in the aftermath of the discovery of Brett Dodd's body. I have a vague awareness of
a voice that must be Marcus, a slight pressure on my shoulder that could be his hand, but the words are lost in the ether and only the impressions of tone and cadence remain. I feel like the hand is holding me upright and clutching me to the soft insubstantial tendrils of the real world at the same time. Please don't let go, I want to say, I might not be able to come back if you let me drift away; but my lips are sealed as if stitched shut and my tongue is stuck fast to the floor of my mouth like a pin to a magnet.

  I help to cordon off the scene, retreating outside and retrieving police tape from the car, a mute on the exterior, accepted by the arriving Criminal Investigation Department and Crime Scene Investigators, as shock at the horrors inside the flat. I am aware that it is not the case at all, that I needed to catch Dodds myself, to look into his eyes whilst there was still light in them and see for myself whether there was something in them that I recognized I wanted to catch him, to visit pain on him if he decided to fight, to kill him if it meant exorcising certain demons. Most of all I needed to show myself that he wasn't like me at all.

  The scene quickly becomes clogged as more people arrive, death drawing a different swarm now to displace the first. In my eyes it plays out like time lapse imagery; everybody bustling, smoking, talking and joking at a speed ten times my own.

  There are fragments of conversation gradually pulling me out of the silence, emerging from those that are processing the scene as well as from the speculating crowd that is beginning to gather at the edge of the police cordon. The words buzz into my consciousness as I try to chase them away; I don't want distraction now I need space to think through things clearly.

  "Apparently it's the psycho that's been ripping up the tarts in there."

  "So what's happened to him then?"

  "Don't know, but there's a crime scene van, so either he's dead or they've just found a couple more under the floorboards." A nasty appreciative laugh from the others listening to the self appointed reporter in the crowd.

 

‹ Prev