Something Evil Comes

by A. J. Cross

  ‘You procured a six year old girl for Delaney.’

  He stared at her. ‘It was a job. A favour I did for Delaney. You’re judging me but you’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Delaney wasn’t into sex. Not like most of us know it. He liked to look. That’s all it was. That was his thing.’

  Something clicked inside Hanson’s head: Delaney excusing himself to go and answer a phone she hadn’t heard ring, leaving her in his study feeling odd, cold and uncomfortable. “Take your coat off”, he’d said. Now she knew. He’d gone to the next room to watch her.

  ‘What he most wanted was a young girl. He had some sort of brush with the law years back. He wanted a girl young enough to accept him and what he wanted. Someone who would submit and never complain.’

  ‘Why keep her in the abject conditions I’ve seen up there?’ asked Hanson, holding on to her anger, needing to prolong the conversation.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. Delaney’s housekeeper had responsibility for looking after the kid from the start. The kid got to thinking of Delaney as some kind of uncle. It worked all right except that that stupid cow, Gorridge left keys lying around, sometimes forgot to lock the place.’ He pointed upwards to Honey who buried her face in Hanson’s coat. ‘But it didn’t matter. By the time she was about twelve, thirteen, they started to let her out occasionally. She never ran. Never tried to get away. What does that tell you? She felt alright here.’

  Hanson’s voice shook. ‘She was not “alright”. She formed a bond with Matthew and you took that away from her by killing him.’

  He gripped the brass tight. ‘I told him she was Gorridge’s niece. It took him ages to grasp that she wasn’t. And what does he do when he does realise? He comes to tell me about her. Said he was worried. Ask me what I thought he should do.’ He came closer. ‘Matthew was a naïve pushover. I guessed Foley was the same. I started to frighten them off. Delaney had told me about vandalism at the church. I talked to them about it. Played up the satanic bit, gave them some plant crap said to protect people from the devil. It worked on Foley. He believed all of it, but I underestimated Matthew.’ He glanced up the stairs. ‘By then he’d got it bad for her. He wouldn’t listen to me. He still hadn’t worked out how she came to be here but I knew it wouldn’t be long before he did.’ His eyes settled on Honey. ‘Or she told him.’

  Hanson stared at him and somewhere inside her head a dam breached. Her voice shook. ‘You abducted her, took her away from her home, her family, her life. So that Delaney could keep and groom and use … You bastard.’

  He gazed at her, mock-shocked. ‘Oh, dear. You seem upset.’

  ‘There were never any attacks on Matthew, were there? You invented them.’

  ‘I thought it a good idea to have a couple of suspects available, just in case Matthew’s body was ever found. Delaney had told me about the crypt. He helped me put him in there. I thought that was the last of Matthew. That he’d be in there for keeps. And he would have been, but for those idiots breaking in!’

  His words triggered a memory. ‘You were at my house.’

  He gave her a dismissive look. ‘Not me. That was Gorridge, wanting to scare you off. A woman who runs on jealousy, rather than brains where Delaney’s concerned.’

  ‘Tell me how you live with yourself,’ she whispered. ‘You destroyed your own brother.’ Above their heads, Honey whimpered.

  ‘I call it collateral damage,’ he snapped. ‘He just knew too much.’

  She gazed at him, shaking her head. ‘That’s not true. You resented Matthew way before that. You saw him as wasting his opportunities. Yet for every opportunity he threw away or back in your father’s face, he was rewarded with more. That’s how you saw it. You had to work and work to get your father’s recognition, his approval, but it was never, ever enough, was it? The time, the love, kept going to Matthew who was—’

  ‘A bloody waster!’ he screamed at her, his face livid. Above them, Honey began to sob. To keep him talking was her and Honey’s only hope. ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you. He never did anything that mattered. He just carried on, doing what he wanted to do, working at no-account jobs and never giving a damn about anything. And the old man? He just took it!’ He came closer, pointing at her face with the bloodied brass. ‘What you just said is right. Dad rewarded him for being an idle, selfish sod. And me? I had to buy my first car. Off my own father who was worth millions. Buy it!’

  Hanson looked directly into his eyes. ‘You could never be sure, could you, that if you’d done the same as Matthew he would have loved you as much as he did him?’ She studied the good-looking face, the well-cut clothes, the styled hair, smelled his cologne. He’d struck her inside the church, this resentment-filled man whose primary love was for himself. Yet, she knew it wasn’t quite so simple, so clear-cut as that. ‘Matthew was wearing his scarf when he was found in the crypt. It wasn’t bloodstained.’

  His eyes narrowed on hers. ‘So what? I just threw it onto him. No loose ends to worry about.’

  She gave a slow headshake. ‘You placed that scarf around your young, dead brother’s neck. A last subconscious gesture of caring. Despite the rivalry you felt towards him and all that resentment, once he was dead you felt something else for him, didn’t you? Something your resentment couldn’t allow you to admit.’

  She saw his face flare as he heard what he dared not acknowledge to himself. Honey screamed as he came for Hanson, face contorted, the sunray brass raised. ‘People, families, the church. I see them all for what they are. They’re all a sham, including you. You haven’t caught me. You didn’t have a clue.’

  Keep him talking. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes. But you didn’t know it was me.’

  ‘You’re right. I didn’t know for a long time. I should have realised much earlier.’

  ‘Liar! You and your police pals didn’t have a clue. Admit it!’

  ‘I did think it was your father.’

  He gazes at her. ‘The great Brad Flynn. Why?’

  ‘Because of what I saw in the crime scenes. The control. The calculation. But then I changed my mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The rage I was seeing got me thinking. And then I knew.’

  He pointed a finger at her. ‘No. No, you didn’t. I don’t do that kind of stupid, immature stuff. I’m a player. A cool negotiator. Like him but better. More.’

  She watched him raise the brass above his head, face contorted as the front door exploded into pieces. Hanson rushed up the stairs to Honey, held her as she screamed and shook and officers filled the hall, Corrigan first, his fist making contact with Dominic Flynn’s jaw, sending him unconscious to the floor. Giving his hand a brisk shake, he came up the stairs two at a time, knelt in front of them.

  ‘OK, Red. You can let her go now. Gus has brought a couple of non-uniform female staff with him. Let them take her.’

  Hanson shook her head. ‘I can’t. I can’t open my arms.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The jubilation from Upstairs was still evident but it had quietened now. Hanson was with her two colleagues inside UCU. They knew all that she knew. They’d talked it through until the words ran out. Hanson was thinking of their struggle to find motive in this case. In the end it had been a mix of motives reflecting the needs of each of those responsible to varying degrees. Delaney’s greed. Brad Flynn’s ambition in introducing him to Dominic and creating a deadly synergy within which both Delaney and Dominic stripped people of their money. Now there was justice for Matthew, for Callum Foley and Alfred Best. Will Graham and Zach Addison were awaiting sentencing for their drug offences. Eunice Gorridge had been charged with aiding and abetting abduction. Spencer Albright had reappeared in the last few hours and made a statement about seeing a young girl inside Delaney’s house. ‘He was a Father. I knew that wasn’t allowed’, following which he’d made himself scarce. Very wise. At the local hospital Mr and Mrs Mahoney were
anxiously awaiting their first meeting in eleven years with their daughter. Hanson knew that what they were facing wouldn’t be easy, but at last Honey – Rosie – was going home. Exhausted, seeing the same in her colleagues’ faces, Corrigan occasionally flexing the fingers of one hand, she stood, every muscle screaming. She put on her coat, shouldered her bag and went to the door.

  She’d reached the car park when she heard someone coming after her. She turned. It was Corrigan. He stood in front of her, gentle fingers on the place in her hair where Dominic Flynn had struck her inside the church. She leant against him. He folded his arms around her, then let her go. She walked away then turned to him.

  ‘Ring me, Corrigan.’

  He looked at her for what felt like a long, warming time. ‘I was already planning to.’

  She walked to her car in the cold, clear evening and got inside. She needed to see Maisie. And Charlie. He was leaving soon. Going back to Worcester. She started the engine.

  We all need to go home.