The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1)

by Andrew Barrett

  For a wonderful moment, Christian dared to hope that he could take off from here, maybe go far south into Cornwall, or far north to the highlands of Scotland and begin all over again. He could take on a new name, to go with his new, shortened and dyed hair, maybe put a couple of earrings in and a nose stud or something, anything to prevent people from making a connection between him and number 1313.

  Thursday 25th June

  Chapter Forty

  — One —

  The nausea was gone but the smell of vomit and bleach was still strong, and that was because at some point Eddie had managed to escape the bath and now lay face down on the bathroom floor, a bottle of bleach on its side a foot away. He could still hear running water but realised it wasn’t the shower anymore. A zipper jerked and the toilet flushed. Mick stepped into view. “Thanks,” Eddie said.

  “What for?”

  “Taking a piss less than a yard from my face.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t piss on your face. You splashed puke across my shirt.”

  “I’m surprised you could tell.” The bathroom floor was saturated. Water squelched in Eddie’s clothes and dripped from his hair as he clambered to his knees elegantly like a warthog taking a shit. “Changed it, I see.”

  “Yeah, well your wardrobe is a little on the sparse side.”

  Eddie propped himself up on the edge of the bath, preparing to stand. The t-shirt Mick had borrowed was dark blue and had the West Yorkshire Police crest on its left breast. “You’ll look good walking down the street in that, suits you.”

  “Up your arse.” Mick left the bathroom.

  Eddie stood, swayed a little, but at least his eyes worked now and they focused properly. Walking was the next big challenge. It was as he rested against the bathroom doorframe, waiting for his heart to calm, that he came up with his plan. He turned it this way and that, considering it for a minute or two.

  The next decision was to include Mick or go it alone?

  Eddie staggered from the bathroom, and despite proudly keeping his head perfectly level, his damned legs only seemed to work sideways. That settled it then; Mick was in. There was another factor in Mick’s favour: he knew where Henry Deacon lived.

  — Two —

  Eddie put the phone down and took the damp towel from his hair, throwing it towards the bathroom. He felt guilty about leaving Ros like that. But he’d tried to ring three times now, left a message the last time, expressing how bad he felt, and that he’d make it up to her. He promised to treat her better from now on. He liked her, and had no right to trample her like that. Flowers wouldn’t do it, but a nice evening out, a flick and a meal might go some way towards making amends.

  It was a little after eight on Thursday night and Eddie crammed buttered bread into his mouth, and swallowed black coffee as though he wasn’t going to drink for a week. An hour passed before normality settled into Eddie’s world. He stared at Mick, pleased that he was at last staying in focus, “There are three stages, I think, to being a piss-head.” Crumbs clung to his wrinkled shirt.

  “Is this Wisdom According to Collins?”

  “Sobriety,” he said, “is smack in the middle. Inebriation is above it, and hangover or withdrawal, whatever you want to call it, is below. See?”

  “That it?” Mick stubbed out his cigarette, dumped it in the kitchen bin, and rested his backside against the sink, arms folded, waiting for the next morsel of divinity.

  “When I wake up in the morning, regardless of whether I’ve had a drink the night before—”

  “You’ve always had a drink the night before.”

  Eddie was working on his balance, and he reckoned in another half an hour he’d have it cracked for sure. “Fair point. Anyway, when I wake up in the morning, I have to drink just to get to sobriety. Does that happen to you?”

  “I keep a bottle at the side of my bed. When I wake up, my friend, I’m already sober.”

  Eddie nodded, finding the idea most agreeable. “You ever thought about quitting? The booze, I mean.” From here, he could see into the lounge, could see the empty rum bottle. Next to it was an empty vodka bottle.

  Mick poured another coffee, took Eddie’s mug and refilled it.

  “After what we just put away, you should be pissed, and I have to say it’s fucking annoying that you’re not.”

  “I am. But I control it better. You’re still a beginner. I’ve been like this most of my adult life and my kidneys are old hands at railroading the poison. I am one of life’s perpetual piss-heads. I cannot go an hour without something. Well, if I do, I start to feel groggy—”

  “Hung over, the stage below sobriety.”

  “Whatever, Frankenstein.”

  “You mean Einstein.”

  “I know what I mean. And the answer is of course I tried,” Mick said. “I try every day of my stinking life because every day of my stinking life I think this’ll be the last one. I think my kidneys, good as they are, will just say ‘fuck you’ and shut up shop. Or my ticker will resign and I’ll hit the pavement like an alcohol balloon. I always think to myself, Mick, when you get a moment to have a word with yourself about this, you are going to have to convince yourself that it’s probably doing you no good at all. Could even be harming you.”

  Eddie laughed.

  “But I never get the chance to have that conversation. I think I avoid myself.”

  “I try to stop too. But I enjoy it.” And then Eddie noticed his trembling hand. “Well, I used to enjoy it. Now it’s a habit and whenever I find myself getting low, I drink because it stops me getting lower. It gives me stability. And they’re right; it does help you forget.” And as Mick nodded his agreement, Eddie’s eyes sank towards the floor and he contemplated breaking the news.

  This could be it; this could cause them to go their separate ways.

  Mick never questioned Eddie’s desperation to get back to sobriety so quickly. But the odd look in his eyes told Eddie that maybe he knew already. “You were having that dream again, weren’t you?”

  Eddie was startled. “Fancy a drive?”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  — Three —

  They had driven around Wakefield for twenty-five minutes and Mick was getting naffed off with him, but Eddie couldn’t muster the courage to ask him outright. He mentally challenged his friendship with Mick, and each time he practiced asking the question, Mick slammed on the brakes and kicked him out of the car. He was worried. But some things in life are worth ending your life for, he repeated to himself. And he believed it wholeheartedly. Thing was, Mick may not.

  “Out with it.” Mick pulled the car up quickly without indicating. The car behind swerved, tyres slipping on the wet road, horn blaring. Casually Mick gave it the finger, turned his head to Eddie and asked, “It’s Henry Deacon, isn’t it?”

  Eddie paused. “Do you think I’m a tit?”

  Mick stroked his chin, and Eddie could hear the bristles scrape against his hands.

  “No need to give it so much thought.”

  “You have every right, Eddie. I don’t blame you at all, not one bit. But what’s done can’t be undone, poor Sam is still dead, and afterwards, he still would be. And I know you can’t put a value on something like this, but do think it’s worth it? Really?”

  For a long time Eddie said nothing, watched the spits of rain falling on the screen, join with others and in the dazzling light of approaching cars, watched them trickle downwards before the wipers obliterated them. At last, he said, “You keep a bottle at the side of your bed and have a swig or two through the small hours until daylight comes and you take a couple of gulps before your breakfast and after your shower. And before you set off for work, it’s like a bolster to have a cupful?”

  “You been spying on me?”

  “It’s like that with me and my kid. Has been for weeks. Except during the night, I don’t sip gracefully, I gulp bucketfuls of his memory, and I cry. There’s no wailing, no sobbing. Just t
ears. I do that all night, like a drip-feed only in reverse. And in the morning the tears stop. But the thoughts don’t. After my breakfast I take a bath in those thoughts, I lather myself up with hatred.” Eddie looked forward through the screen, the pearls of rain out of focus, the streetlamps sharp yet hazy. “Sound like a prick, don’t I?”

  “You sound like a grieving father who wants…” Mick stopped.

  Eddie looked at him. “Don’t you be afraid to say it too. I think it all day and all night and, hell, I’m still afraid to say it.”

  “Comes down to trust, my friend.”

  “I trust you. Ever since—”

  “Ever since the first nightmare?”

  “In one.” Eddie looked hopefully at Mick. “You up for it?”

  — Four —

  There was a phone ringing somewhere and she wished to God that someone would answer it. Her eyes flickered, and opened.

  It was approaching twilight, and she was still in the damp terraced house where that girl’s body was found. And worst of all, she was alone. Ros’s eyes grew wide and along with the pain in her head came the memory of why she was here. She’d been examining the scene alone, and while she was packing up, there was a noise from up in the kitchen, and foolishly she had come up the cellar steps.

  The noise had stopped by then, and she thought the wind had picked up while she was below ground, and it had chased rubbish into the kitchen, or it was pulling at the plastic bags on the paintings and then…

  The phone was still ringing.

  She fished it out of her trouser pocket and glared at the screen. It flashed up a name: Jeffery. “Hi Jeffery,” she pulled down her facemask.

  “Ros—”

  “There’s no need to worry—”

  “I’m sure you’re doing a great job, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “What’s up?” She rubbed her eyes, felt a little further towards the back of her head. Her fingers came away with blood on them.

  “I have some bad news.”

  “I am so not in the mood for bad news.”

  “We found a burnt body in the office.”

  She held her breath. She’d seen enough bodies to fill a decent sized graveyard, bodies didn’t worry her. But what did was the way he solemnly said ‘we found a body’, as though it was personal. “Go on.”

  “Is Eddie there with you?”

  “Who is it, Jeffery?”

  * * *

  Ros called Eddie four times but he didn’t pick up. Maybe it was just a poor signal. She sat on the bottom step watching a spider ensnare a small fly in one of its myriad webs. At first they thought Stuart had started the fire for some reason, though they couldn’t understand him even being there. Jeffery had told her about the bottles of liquor they found in his pockets. Obviously Eddie’s name had come straight to Jeffery’s mind, and if she was honest, it had come straight to hers too.

  Were they saying Eddie had knocked Stuart out and planted the bottles as an elaborate double bluff before setting the place on fire? But that was preposterous! The whole scene was wrong because it meant that Stuart and Eddie had met at the office when neither of them was scheduled to be there. And it meant Eddie had the bottles with him to plant on Stuart, which meant it was all pre-meditated. But why would they choose to meet? They wouldn’t. They loathed each other.

  And then Ros remembered what Eddie had said at the garage while they examined the Jaguar. Something about a bullet hole in Stuart’s face.

  When quizzed, Jeffery had given no further information. Everyone who worked there was a potential suspect for what could turn out to be a murder. But Eddie more so than anyone else.

  Her immediate relief at never having to endure Stuart’s rancour again was tempered with a sense of guilt at her own callousness, and that life was just a case of working your way through a list of bad news.

  She stood and leaned against the crumbling wall but her head banged, her neck ached, and her knees clicked. And now she was freezing; the sweat inside her plastic suit and nitrile gloves had cooled and soaked into her clothes, and every time she moved it was like lying down in a puddle.

  It was nine-forty. She had been unconscious for almost three hours, and it felt like it. Trembling, she looked around for the torch, but remembered it had been down in the cellar and turned on. “Flat by now.”

  The camera! Shit, no, please don’t let that have been stolen, I have all the evidence in there, and there was also the money from above the doorframe. She felt around the floor, kicked the camera bag, opened the zip, felt the bulge of the camera and the tamper proof bag with the roll of cash inside it.

  And then she checked around for the dozen or so paintings she had propped against the wall. Only two left. Fourteen stolen? Fifteen? “Bastards!”

  Ros found the van keys, slung the camera bag over her shoulder and then screamed as though she’d been shot.

  “Hello.”

  Ros fell backwards as the youth opened the steel-skinned door.

  “Yo, don’t worry. Everything’s cool, sis.”

  Thursday 25th June

  Chapter Forty One

  — One —

  “How do you feel?”

  Eddie peered through the windscreen at the front of the bungalow and the big white car on the drive. And he could see a six-foot wire fence at both sides of the property disappearing towards the back before the shrubs and trees blocked his view. “How do we get inside?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Mick’s tone was flat, lacking conviction now they’d travelled all the way out here to Alwoodley. Great, Eddie thought. “You know you don’t have to take part. I’d never ask you to do…”

  Mick stared at him. “I know that, you think I don’t know that. Well, I do, okay. But I want to hear from you what you’re going to do once you get in there.”

  “Depends if he’s home.”

  “His car’s on the drive, let’s assume he’s home. What are you going to do?”

  There was silence for a long time. The second hand on the dashboard clock was the only noise, and Mick moving in his seat. Then Eddie farted. Mick opened Eddie’s window and turned on the fan.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Ah, you noticed.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Thought the fart would do.”

  “Alas, no. Do try again.”

  “I want to ask him questions—”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “You wanted me to answer you, so shut up while I try and deliver.”

  “Carry on.”

  “I want to know what it felt like to run down another human being. I mean, I’ve hit a small dog before and it made me shake like hell afterwards, you know, the shock?”

  “What happened?”

  “What? I took it to a vet. Broken legs and fractured pelvis.”

  “Did it live?”

  Eddie breathed loudly. “Does it matter, I’m trying to make a point here and you’re asking about the fucking dog!”

  “Sorry!”

  “It lived! It still lives on a farm in North Yorkshire, it’s called Rex, it has a pension and its very own kennel. He’s old now, and he’s deaf in one ear, but he lives life to the full. Every Christmas both of his sons bring presents like socks and miniature bottles of whisky. His master shares the traditional drumstick and sage and onion stuffing. He can’t chase the cat around the Christmas tree anymore because of an ingrowing hangnail, but at least they have fun—”

  Mick slammed the car door, and Eddie did likewise, following Mick at a slower pace, but one he could maintain without falling over sideways. “Wait,” he said. “Wait,” he called. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to take the piss.”

  “What?”

  “Okay I meant to take the piss, you were annoying me—”

  “Why’re you going in there?”

  “I want to know how—”

  “Why are you going in there?”

  “I want to know why—�
��

  “Why the fuck are you going in there!”

  “I want to kill him!”

  They stared at each other.

  Even from here, they could hear the second hand in the car ticking. Nothing moved in this affluent neighbourhood.

  “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Eddie swallowed. “So now you do. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t feel the urge to…”

  Mick put his hands in his trouser pockets, and his jacket peeled back to reveal the police insignia on his chest. “I’m not going to the police. And frankly, I’m more than a little pissed off at you for thinking that of me.”

  Eddie’s eyes hit the pavement.

  “But I understand you asking. I would have asked it too.”

  “You don’t have to take part, Mick.”

  “But I’m allowed to if I want?”

  Eddie nodded, “Why not. I must admit though, I’m not prepared for it.”

  “Obviously. If you were, you’d have gloves and those white suits and whatever else.”

  “But I’ll be asking him first; I really do have questions for him.”

  “Just a warning, Eddie, don’t try to make him feel guilty by telling him Sammy’s past, or what he was doing that day, or how well he was doing in school. It won’t work on him. He has no emotion. All it’ll do is make him angry.”

  “Good. I’d like him to be angry.”

  They went back to the car and pulled the carpet mats up out of the front footwells, locked the doors and walked around the block, away from Henry Deacon’s bungalow, coming around the back of the property and through the trees and bushes of a dark woodland nearly fifteen minutes later. The lights were on but they saw no shadows against the curtains, and there was no one in those rooms that had no curtains. It looked good as far as not being detected was concerned.

  And it was about now that Eddie got butterflies. He hadn’t expected them as he followed Mick down the scrubby embankment to the rear of the house. Approaching the chain-link fence, he took out his emergency bottle and unscrewed the lid.