More Short Fuses

by Stephen Leather

  ‘We’ll get better food, a room of our own, and do you know what the wonderful thing is, Mr Hewson?’

  Hewson frowned at her, trying to comprehend what was happening. He tried to lift his right arm but all his strength seemed to have gone.

  ‘It won’t cost us a thing,’ continued Mrs Duffy. ‘Not a penny. Everything we have can go to our families. We will finally be able to help those that we leave behind, instead of being a burden on them.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘Now, we’ll have to get started, we don’t have too long. Mr Wilkins, do you think you could clear the table, please?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Wilkins. He cleared the tea things off the coffee table and placed them on a sideboard. A woman in a frayed dressing gown and pink slippers helped him. Once the table was clear, Mrs Duffy went over and stood in front of Hewson. ‘Now, let’s get him onto the table. Be careful, we don’t want to hurt ourselves.’

  The residents shuffled closer to Hewson. He tried to raise his hands but they wouldn’t move. ‘What are you doing?’ he whispered.

  They grabbed him by his legs and his arms, pulled him out of the chair and carried him over to the table.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘Nice and easy does it.’

  They placed him on the table. Mrs Duffy produced four lengths of cord from her handbag and then placed it on a chair.. ‘Use these to tie him down, just in case,’ she said, handing out the cords.

  Mr Cohen had retrieved his tripod and was fixing the video camera to it, taking care to keep the MP in the frame.

  Mr Wilkins took two of the cords and began tying Hewson’s ankles to the legs of the table. Mrs Bolton and another of the women bound his wrists. Hewson tried to struggle but it was as if his whole body had gone numb.

  He twisted his neck to look at Mrs Duffy. She was smiling down at him. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Hewson. This will soon be over.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. His voice sounded as if it was coming from the end of a long tunnel.

  ‘We’re going to do what we have to do to be sent to prison,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘We’re going to kill you.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Hewson.

  ‘Oh yes, we can,’ said Mrs Duffy.

  ‘You’re not killers,’ said Hewson. ‘You’re not murderers.’

  They finished tying him to the table and stepped back. Mrs Duffy inspected their handiwork and nodded approvingly. ‘Well, strictly speaking, while we will all be convicted of your murder, individually we won’t be killers.’

  Hewson frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said, his voice trembling.

  Mrs Duffy smiled. ‘It makes perfect sense,’ she said, ‘It was Mr Billingham’s idea.’ She looked over at a man with a grey beard and totally bald head who nodded with pride. ‘Mr Billingham was a solicitor, he knows the law.’

  ‘The trick is that none of us will actually inflict the killing blow,’ said Mr Billingham. ‘We will all stab you at the same time and withdraw our knives at the same time. Twelve knives. Twelve wounds. You will bleed to death, yes, of course, that’s the idea, but no individual will bear the guilt.’

  ‘You’ll all be guilty,’ said Hewson, close to tears.

  ‘Yes, again, that’s the plan, don’t you see. The courts will find us guilty.’ He chuckled. ‘Mrs McDermid said that we should all plead guilty but we mustn’t do that because then we’ll get a reduced sentence and that would defeat the whole point of the exercise.’ He was wearing thick-lensed spectacles and he took them off and polished them with a bright red handkerchief. ‘We will be found guilty, but we won’t feel guilty.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ spluttered Hewson.

  Mr Billingham put his glasses back on. ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘It seems to me to be no more nonsensical than you saying you don’t feel guilty about what your government has done to the old people of this country. And you don’t feel guilty, do you? You don’t feel the least bit guilty for the way you mollycoddle convicts at the same time as you take us for everything we have. Well, as Mrs Duffy said, enough is enough. Once we’ve done this, the Government will take care of us. Our troubles will be over.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Hewson, tears trickling down his cheeks.

  ‘Yes we can,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘We can and we will.’ She stood up, took the scarf from around her neck and used it to gag Hewson. He thrashed his head from side to side and tried to keep his mouth closed but Mr Billingham pinched his nose and when he was forced to breathe, Mrs Duffy slipped the material between his teeth and tied it at the side. ‘Really my dear, there’s no point in you struggling,’ she said, patting him on the cheek. ‘It’ll soon be over.’ She looked over at Mr Cohen. ‘Do check the camera, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘It would be terrible to not get it on tape. We’ll need to show the judge that we all knew exactly what we are doing. We don’t want anyone saying we were crazy.’

  Mr Cohen went over to the camera and peered it at. ‘It seems fine,’ he said.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘Now, do we all have our knives?’ She opened her handbag and took out a large yellow-handled kitchen knife. Mr Cohen pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and carefully unfolded the blade.

  ‘I thought I might use one of my knitting needles,’ said Mrs Pinborough. ‘Do you think that will be okay?’ She had a soft, wheezy voice, her eyes were almost obscured by the folds of old skin around them.

  ‘That’ll be fine, Mrs Pinborough,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘But just the once, remember. We all stick a knife – or a needle – in him, then we pull it out and that’s it.’ She looked over at Mr Wilkins, a small, portly man whose bald head was dotted with dark brown liver spots, giving him the look of an antique globe. ‘We don’t want anyone getting carried away in the heat of the moment,’ she said.

  Mr Wilkins nodded. He did have a bit of a temper, everyone knew. He had once thrown his tray of food against the wall in the dining room and had once bitten a nurse who had tried to force an anti-depressant into his mouth. ‘I understand,’ he said. He was holding a steak knife with a wooden handle.

  Mrs Duffy beamed. ‘Well then, let’s get this done and then we can all go to our rooms and pack. I have to say that I will miss you all, but hopefully at least some of us will end up in the same prison and we can carry on with our bridge games. Now please, gather around.’

  The residents shuffled towards the table, knives at the ready. Mr Wilkins helped Mrs Pinborough up from her chair and over to the table. She was clutching a knitting needle in her right hand.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Hewson, his voice muffled by the scarf. ‘It isn’t fair.’

  ‘I can see how you would think that,’ said Mrs Duffy, patting him on the shoulder. ‘But it’s perfectly fair from our point of view. Now, please, just relax and it’ll soon be over. You’ll move on to a better place, and so will we.’ She looked around the group. They all had their knives held high. Mrs Pinborough was holding her knitting needle with both hands now and she was staring at Hewson’s groin. ‘Ready, ladies and gentlemen?’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘On a count of three. One, two, three..’

  They all struck as one. Mr Wilkins let out a whoop of triumph but stopped when Mrs Duffy flashed him an admonishing look. They stepped back, then filed out through the door into the corridor as Hewson’s lifeblood pooled over the table and dripped onto the threadbare carpet.

  If you enjoy dark stories, why not check out Stephen Leather’s eBook bestseller The Basement. A serial killer is loose in New York, torturing and killing helpless women. Two cops are on the case, but will they catch the killer before he kills again?

  THE GHOST KIDS

  I never used to believe in ghosts, same as I don’t believe in Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, or UFOs. I’m a mechanic, I work with my hands, and I always figure that if I can’t hold it or hit it with a hammer then it isn’t real. That was before I met Nid. Don’t get me wrong, Nid isn’t a ghost, she’s as real as you can get, a tall lithe twenty-two year old f
rom the north-east of Thailand and one of the fittest girls you’ve ever seen dancing around a chrome pole.

  Nid was dancing in Tilac Bar in Soi Cowboy when I first saw her. She was wearing a tartan bikini top and a little white skirt and judging by the reflection on the shiny dance floor, no underwear. She had high cheekbones and a supermodel’s legs and more moves than a Russian chess grandmaster. I was with my mate Jules, he’s a London cabbie for nine months a year and a coked-up sex tourist for the rest of the time. I’d fallen in with him the previous year and this trip we’d flown over together. We had both been in Bangkok for two weeks and I had one more week to go. Jules was planning on staying for two more months and was going to head down to Pattaya. We were sitting by the toilets with Singha beers in our hands and love in our hearts. Nid knew that we were watching her and she played up to us, dipping and twisting and flashing her dark eyes. First at me, then Jules, then back to me. I figured she was covering all her bases as she wasn’t sure which of us would be paying her barfine. That’s how it works in the go-go bars, you buy the girls drinks and they get a commission and if you want them to leave with you there is a barfine to be paid, usually just over a tenner. You have to pay the girl on top of that, of course. Nothing comes free, right?

  When her dancing shift was done we waved her over and she sat down between us. She looked just as hot close up, perfect skin, a taut body, and whiter than white teeth. She smelled good, too. Damned good. It still wasn’t obvious to her which of us was going to take her out, she gave us both the benefit of her sexy smile and we both had her fingers brushing our thighs.

  I could see that Jules was up for it but I really wanted to be the one that left with her, so the next time she was up dancing I switched our rounds to tequila shots and got half a dozen down him before she came back. He’s not the world’s best drinker so he was hardly able to stand and I thrust a thousand baht note into her hand and told her that I wanted to pay her barfine. Jules was too drunk to argue and I left him barely conscious, head back against the wall, as I left the bar hand in hand with the lovely Nid.

  She took me across to the Penny Black, a short-time hotel where you get an hour and a half and reasonably clean sheets for about a fiver, but they were full and there were two Japanese customers with girls queuing up. Nid squeezed my hand and flashed me a smile. ‘We go your hotel?’

  I pulled a face because I was sharing a room with Jules to save money and we’d both agreed not to bring girls back.

  ‘You want to come to my loom?’ she said.

  Okay, she said ‘loom’ but I knew what she meant and I was surprised. Most bargirls won’t take their customers back to their rooms because nine out of ten of them live with their Thai boyfriends or husbands.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, which was pretty much the most blatant act of looking a gift horse in the mouth that I’ve ever committed.

  ‘No problem,’ she said, and pulled me to a taxi. We climbed in the back and she spoke to the driver in Thai and off we went, with the lovely Nid spending most of the time rubbing my thigh to make sure that I didn’t lose interest.

  I’m not sure where we went,. We headed down Sukhumvit and then made a right, that much I know, but as she kept sticking her lips onto mine and playing hockey with my tonsils, I didn’t spend too much time looking out of the window.

  She lived in quite a modern building with a keycard entry system and potted plants either side of the door. The lift was clean and according to the notice in a frame on one wall, it had been serviced only three months ago. Nid lived on the ninth floor. There was no Thai boyfriend in residence, but half a dozen large cuddly toys lined up along a shelf over the bed, all staring at me accusingly as if I wasn’t wanted.

  There was a wardrobe and a dressing table and a desk with a flatscreen television and a new MacBook computer on it. Around the mirror above the dressing table were photographs of Nid on various beaches and at Thai beauty spots, always alone, and always making a cute face with her finger and thumb under the chin. She was alone in the photographs but I was pretty sure that it had been a customer, or more likely a string of customers, who had taken the pictures. I got the feeling that Nid had a lot of admirers, and somebody must have paid for the television and computer.

  ‘You want shower?’ she asked and gave me a pink towel with Hello Kitty on it. The bathroom was tiny, just a toilet and a shower head and a washbasin. I gave myself a quick shower and when I came out of the bathroom she was wearing nothing but a skimpy towel. I made a grab for her but she slipped past me. ‘I shower first,’ she said.

  I lay back on bed and looked up at the ceiling. It was my fifth trip to the Land of Smiles and my first visit to a hooker’s bedroom, though I couldn’t help but wonder how many other customers had been invited across the threshold. There was a small wooden shrine to the right of the bathroom door, painted red and gold with a small brass jar containing incense sticks. There was a small pile of wrapped sweets next to the jar, and a couple of tangerines. A blue plastic dog and a small doll were standing either side of the shrine.

  There was remote control on the bedside table so I grabbed it and flicked through the TV channels while I waited for Nid to finish showering. She actually had decent cable, all the Thai channels obviously but she also had HBO, Cinemax, Fox, BBC and CNN, more channels than I had back in the hotel.

  The bathroom door opened and Nid reappeared, wrapped in a fluffy yellow towel. ‘You okay?’ she asked, slipping off the towel and tossing it on a chair.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Big okay.’

  The next couple of hours passed in a blur, partly because the tequila shots and partly because it was like being in my own private porn movie. Nid was awesome, there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do and she showed me a few tricks that were totally new to me. She moaned and she groaned like I was the best lay in the whole wide world, and while at the back of my mind I knew that she was a hooker and I was paying for it, it still felt as if she was genuinely enjoying herself. I don’t remember which of us passed out first but I’m pretty sure it was me.

  I woke to find Nid already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me. She smiled and brushed my hair away from my eyes. ‘You want McDonalds?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ I asked sleepily. I squinted at my watch. It was just after nine.

  ‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘I get McDonalds.’

  Only in Thailand, right? You pick up a go-go dancer, she takes you home and gives you the best sex of your life, and then she goes and gets you breakfast. While Nid went of to get my McMuffin and coffee, I luxuriated in a warm half-sleep, cuddling her pillow. I was just drifting off when something pinched my leg. I flinched and sat up, wondering what the hell was going on. It hadn’t been an insect-bite, I was sure of that. I pulled up the sheet and looked around but there was nothing there. I figured I must have imagined it so I lay down again. I was just drifting off to sleep when it happened again, only this time it was my arm. I yelped and rolled out of the bed, gathering the sheet around me. I felt a bit of an idiot, I have to say. I mean, I was alone in the room, right? So nothing could have touched me. I looked under the bed and there as nothing there. Obviously. And I checked the bathroom, even though I knew I was alone in the room. I heard giggling but it was faint so I figured that maybe it was from another room. I pressed my ear to the walls either side but didn’t hear anything.

  I got back into bed and snuggled under the sheet. I was drifting off again when something tickled my ear. I rolled over and after a few seconds there was a tickling sensation on the other ear, as if an insect was brushing against it. I sat up and looked around but there was nothing to swat. Just then the door opened. It was Nid, with my breakfast.

  She could see from the look of confusion on my face that something wasn’t right so she sat down on the side of the bed and asked me what was wrong.

  ‘Something pinched me,’ I said. ‘While you were gone. And it kept tickling my ear.’

  She laughed. ‘Is that all?
That’ll be Nok and Som. My children.’

  I didn’t understand. There was no way that Nid could have had children. Her stomach was washboard flat and totally unlined and her breasts were damn-near perfect.

  ‘They’re just playing with you,’ she said. She handed me my coffee and McMuffin but I didn’t feel like eating.

  ‘What’s going on, Nid?’ I said. ‘You don’t have kids.’

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me the whole story. Apparently she was at a temple six months earlier and a monk had come up and spoken to her. The monk had told her that two ghost children had been living at the temple for the past year or so, but that they had chosen Nid as their new mother. The monk had said that the two children, a boy called Som and a girl called Nok, had been standing either side of Nid, but she couldn’t see them. The monk said that the two children had died in a car crash along with their mother and father. A drunken truck driver had piled into the side of their truck and it had burst into flames The parents had died immediately, the children had survived for another two days in intensive care before passing away. According to the monks, the spirits of the children had stayed behind. They had found their way to the monastery but now they wanted to live with Nid.

  Nid asked the monk why and he said the children had said that she seemed like a good person so Nid agreed to allow them to live with her.

  At that point I really had to stop her. I asked her why, why had she believed the monk and why had she agreed to take two ghosts into her life? She couldn’t really explain herself. I know that ghosts are important to Thais, they do tend to believe in them and there are always stories of dead family members coming back to give their relatives winning lottery numbers, and nonsense like that. Nonsense? Well, yes, that’s what I thought it was when she told me the story. Now I know different, of course.

  Anyway, Nid explained that’s why she had toys in her shrine and bigger toys around the room. They were for the ghost children. And she always left sweets on the shrine for them to eat, but she balanced it with fresh fruit because she thought that would be better for them. She explained that there were ghost children everywhere. A lot of ghost children liked to be in cars so often they would stay with a taxi driver and that was why when you got into a taxi in Bangkok you would sometimes find children’s toys along the rear window.