Fireflies

by Menon, David

  ‘We’re more alike than you’d like to think, you and I’ said Helen as she watched her step-daughter meticulously prepare her act of savagery.

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘We’re both intense characters’ said Helen. ‘We don’t forgive or forget’.

  Andrea had been happy to work with her step-mother whilst it was expedient. But she still hated the sight of Helen even though she’d been useful. It had been a strange set of circumstances that had brought them together. Helen had realised that the female in black who the police had been looking for after the murder of Kim Barnes in the Manchester Hilton had been Andrea. She’d confronted Andrea who’d admitted to what she’d done but Helen had promised not to inform on her if Andrea promised to help her out with something that would be beyond the law if she ever needed it. She’d made up her mind that one more affair and she would have Brian killed. It was no idle threat she’d made to him. But he’d callously dismissed her feelings and jumped into bed with Anita Patel. That’s when she called in the favour from her step-daughter. She knew she’d be able to use Andrea’s hatred for her father as a weapon to get her onboard.

  ‘Do you want me to wait until he’s coming to?’ asked Andrea.

  ‘Yes’

  ‘You really want him to know what I’m going to do to him?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘You must hate him as much as I do’.

  ‘Yes, I think I probably do’.

  ‘I’m getting revenge for my mother’.

  ‘I’m getting revenge for myself’.

  ‘You had nothing but contempt for my mother’.

  ‘Do you really want to do this now?’

  Andrea walked up to her. ‘Maybe we could’ve been friends?’

  Helen gave a half-smile. ‘I somehow doubt that’.

  Helen turned to walk towards the kitchen when Andrea lunged at her and stabbed her in the back. Helen felt the air escape her lungs as she fell to her knees and Andrea then stabbed her again but this time in the neck. The blood was pouring out everywhere.

  ‘That was also for my mother’.

  .

  FIREFLIES TWENTY

  ‘I wanted to kill’ said Andrea. ‘I wanted someone else to feel the pain that I’d always felt. I wanted them to go through all of what I’d gone through. Because you see, nobody ever said sorry to me. Nobody ever helped me dry my tears. Nobody tried to understand what I was feeling’.

  ‘And what was that, Andrea?’

  ‘My Mum had left me. My Dad had taken up with another woman who hated me’.

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  ‘Lost’ said Andrea. ‘Abandoned by my own parents’.

  ‘But you went to live with your Gran?’

  ‘Yes but we never talked about anything’ said Andrea. ‘She and my Granddad looked after me but the care was all about putting a roof over my head with food on the table and clean sheets on the bed. They never really took an interest in me as an individual person’.

  ‘And that upset you?’

  ‘I just wanted somebody to say sorry for all that I’d lost. But nobody did’.

  ‘So what happened when you met Sophie and Clarissa?’

  ‘Oh they were so glamourous compared to all the rest of us’ Andrea recalled. ‘But I was never really part of anything at school. I was a loner. I didn’t really fit in anywhere. I only had Melanie as a friend and she was another misfit who nobody else wanted to be around. Then Sophie and Clarissa took a shine to me. They wanted to make me their friend’.

  ‘They wanted to use you’.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that!’

  ‘Okay, Andrea, keep calm’.

  ‘They were my friends’ she insisted. ‘They were the only ones, the only ones who even noticed I was there so don’t you dare say that they were only using me’.

  ‘Did they ask you to kill Kim Barnes on her wedding night?’

  ‘She deserved it’ said Andrea. ‘She’d taken Malcolm away from Sophie and she deserved to get hers. I was happy to do it for Sophie’.

  ‘Why didn’t she do it herself?’

  ‘Because that’s what you do for your friends’ Andrea explained as if she was telling how she wouldn’t let her friend drive her car if she was drunk. ‘You’re there for them and you help them when someone has caused them pain and isn’t sorry for it’.

  ‘Like your father had done to you?’

  ‘Yes’ said Andrea. ‘There’s too much of that, far too much of it. People cause pain and hurt and heartache to others and they don’t care about the consequences. They never say sorry. They couldn’t give a shit and they just get away with it. I was sick of seeing all that keep on happening. I wanted to do something to put things right. I wanted people to get their own back and I started with my friends’.

  ‘How did your step-mother help you with the murders of James Clifton and Piers Jones?’

  ‘Helen organized for me to have a room at the Mayfair where I took James. I said I’d do anything he wanted sexually even though I’ve never slept with a man in my life. Helen said I could take him in through a back way at a spot where the CCTV cameras don’t cover. I gave him the rohypnol in a glass of wine and then once he was under I castrated him. I dumped the body between the rubbish bins. Back in the room Helen and I cleaned it up although there was little mess. I was very careful that way. Then the next day she closed the room off for renovation’.

  ‘And Piers Jones?’

  ‘I offered him a swig from a bottle of water I had in my car and into which I’d put the rohypnol’ Andrea revealed. ‘I drove out to the house at Saddleworth, my father was on night duty at the Mayfair that night, and took the body into the garage. That’s where I castrated him but it was my idea to sit him under that tree in the village where his stupid bitch of a mother lived. That was genius. I wanted to teach that Paula a lesson good and fucking proper. She’d taken my promotion off me and wasn’t sorry’.

  ‘You make it all sound so easy’.

  ‘It is when you’re determined. We chose their stag nights because they’re supposed to be a celebration and we wanted to ruin it. And because it all started on the stag night Malcolm Barnes had when he got off with the Kim bitch. James was easiest to lure away. Most men think with their dicks at the best of times and when they’ve had a few they’re even worse. They’d even shag someone like me when they’ve had a few. Piers was more difficult. I had to say I had car trouble and make a joke about being a useless female. He was quite sweet really but he was still being unfaithful to poor Clarissa’.

  ‘You said someone like you?’

  ‘Well I’m not exactly a catwalk model or anything. I don’t look like any of those girls you see in the magazines who get all the men with all the money. I’m not like Tina’.

  ‘What do you mean, Andrea?’

  ‘Well she could click her fingers and get a man just like that. And she didn’t even care about any of them. It was all just sex to her’.

  ‘Tina was your friend, Andrea. Why did you try and set her up?’

  ‘She was in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

  ‘In your statement to the police you admit that you planted evidence in her flat, Andrea. That was a deliberate act that could’ve seen her go away to prison’.

  Andrea looked down and for the first time showed what could be described as remorse.

  ‘And then you killed her’.

  ‘But she’d come into my personal space. She’d invaded it’.

  ‘She’d found you out’.

  ‘And that meant that she had to go’.

  ‘You let her go through the trauma of the police thinking she was the murderer of James Clifton’.

  ‘And I was sorry for that but my loyalty was to Sophie’ Andrea explained. ‘I did think the world of Tina but I had to use her to take any attention away from me because we hadn’t finished. Tina got in the way’.

  ‘And did Malcolm Barnes get in the way too? Is that why you killed him?’r />
  ‘That was just finishing off the job’.

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For Sophie’ said Andrea. ‘It was for Sophie’.

  ‘And your step-mother Helen?’

  ‘I duped her into thinking that we could work together’ admitted Andrea. ‘It was always my intention to kill her when I got the chance. She and my father deserved to die’.

  ‘The psychiatrist is convinced your daughter is telling the truth, Mr. Curzon’ said Jeff who was sitting in his office with Brian Curzon. Jeff and Rebecca had swooped on the Curzon’s house with a uniformed squad just in time to stop Andrea Kay from castrating her still drugged up father. Andrea had been arrested and charged with multiple murders and the judge at her initial court hearing had received psychiatric reports that led him to committing her to a psychiatric unit. Jeff had just played the tape of part of her first assessment with a psychiatrist there. Brian Curzon had been charged with having sex with an underage girl, Melanie Cartwright, and had been given bail pending his trial. ‘But it looks like she’ll be detained there for a very long time’.

  Brian Curzon put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know how to take all of this in, detective. I mean, watching my daughter on that tape and listening to her confess to the murder of six people including my wife’. He shook his head. ‘It really is too much’.

  ‘Your wife Helen was prepared to let your daughter kill you’ Jeff reminded him. ‘How does that make you feel?’

  ‘It’s beyond words, detective’ said Brian. ‘I admit that I’ve always been the kind of man who’s never been satisfied with just one woman. But now I’ve had one wife who committed suicide over it and another who was using my own daughter to kill me. It doesn’t say much for me as a man, does it’.

  ‘You’re not the first man who couldn’t keep it in his trousers despite wearing a wedding ring’.

  ‘But there aren’t many men like me who seem to have poisoned the minds of so many women in his life who should’ve meant everything to him’ said Brian. ‘I mean, when Andrea went to live with her grandmother I was angry with her. She’d been so nasty and vicious to Helen. I know she was still grieving over her mother and that I was partly to blame for that because I’d left her but Andrea made no effort at all with Helen’.

  ‘She was only a child’ said Jeff. ‘She must’ve been very confused and she needed protection from her father’.

  ‘Yes, I know that but … look, I did my best to explain to Andrea that I was leaving her mother but that I’d always be there for her, my darling daughter. But it wasn’t enough. She didn’t speak to me or have any contact with me for years and I admit that I made no attempt to heal the rift that had opened up between us. I thought that when she grew up she might come to her senses and get in touch. But now it seems she never stopped being angry with me and even went way, way beyond that’.

  ‘Well I don’t think it takes an expert in these matters to see that Andrea fell under the spell of Sophie Cooper and Clarissa Dalton-Wood very easily’ said Jeff who didn’t want to let Curzon off the hook. He’d let his daughter down and therefore failed as a parent in the most spectacular and horrifying fashion. ‘It was alright being friends with Melanie Cartwright but Melanie wasn’t one of the cool gang either so Andrea must’ve leapt at the chance to be in league with the two newcomers who seemed so sophisticated compared with all the others. They weren’t just cool. They were beyond even that. It would’ve given Andrea a kind of kudos with the other kids that would’ve put an end to all the bullying she’d gone through’.

  ‘And I should’ve been there for her then too’ said Brian. ‘I assume from the way you talk that you’re a parent?’

  ‘Yes’ said Jeff. ‘I have a five year-old son’.

  ‘Well I’ll be reproaching myself the rest of my life for what I’ve failed to do for my daughter. I’ve been a useless father, detective. I’ve been a useless man too. And it’s too late to change any of it’.

  ‘Just one question for you, Mr. Curzon?’.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you going to do now about the hotel?’

  ‘Sell it I suppose. I hadn’t really thought about it’.

  ‘And what about Bernie Connelly?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We know you were in business with him, Mr. Curzon’ said Jeff. ‘So why don’t you tell me all about that?’

  Jonathan Freeman was surprised to see Rebecca Stockton when he answered the door.

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’ she asked.

  Jonathan stood back to let Rebecca through before closing the door again. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘You know what I want’.

  ‘Well I presume it’s not what you used to come here for’.

  ‘Withdraw the accusations you’ve made against Ollie Wright’.

  Jonathan leaned back against the wall of his living room and folded his arms. ‘Sorry but no can do’.

  ‘You’re a liar’.

  ‘I’m telling the truth’.

  ‘Jonathan, you lie like a cheap fucking carpet’.

  ‘Well you’d know all about being cheap seeing as you were in my bed without a second invitation’.

  Rebecca slapped his face.

  ‘You get that one for free but don’t expect me not to fight back if you try it again’.

  ‘Withdraw the accusation, Jonathan’.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because we both know it’s not true’.

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Don’t try and be clever’.

  ‘You never complained about that before. You said it made a change to be in bed with a man who could show some imagination’.

  ‘Yes, well that was then and now the thought of having sex with you makes my bloody skin crawl’.

  Jonathan laughed. ‘Oh how we go out of our way to protect the poor little black boy who never told any of you that he was a shirt lifter’.

  ‘Ollie Wright has a right to privacy, Jonathan. It wasn’t your right to take that away from him’.

  ‘Look, my people know what it’s like to be victimized’.

  ‘So you victimize someone else before they’ve had a chance to victimize you, is that it?’

  ‘More or less, yes’ Jonathan confirmed. ‘You have no idea of the level of anti-Semitism out there’.

  ‘But by falsely accusing someone of it then you’re devaluing all the genuine cases. Can’t you see that? I mean, what did you hope to achieve because all that’s happened is that you’ve turned everyone in the squad against you’.

  ‘Welcome to the world of the Jew’.

  ‘Oh spare me! You picked on Ollie because he was black and he was gay and that makes you no better than any anti-Semite’.

  ‘I’m the victim of anti-Semitism every single day’.

  ‘Maybe you are’ said Rebecca. ‘Or maybe that’s just how you like to interpret any negative action against you. I mean, am I being anti-Semitic now just by arguing with you? Just because I disagree with you does that make me anti-Semitic in your twisted view? Should I condemn anybody who disagrees with me as sexist or on a crusade against Christians? Yes, there is anti-Semitism out there. And it’s vile and it’s pernicious. But what we’re talking about here is not anti-Semitism. What we’re talking about here is you being a complete arsehole’.

  Jonathan turned his face away.

  ‘You’re the bully here, Jonathan. Ollie is completely innocent. You know it and so do I. Now I’m asking you to do the right thing’.

  FIREFLIES TWENTY-ONE

  Jeff wanted to confront Bernie Connelly on his own. He drove out to Connelly’s house in Knutsford, Cheshire where Connelly greeted him from behind his large oak desk in his office.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton’ he said warmly and with an offer of his large hand. ‘As I live and breathe, which incidentally I’m still doing. Much to your chagrin I expect’.

  ‘It’s not death I’m interested in when it comes to you, Connelly’ said Jef
f who had no intention of shaking Connelly’s hand. ‘It’s justice’.

  ‘And how are you going with that? Sorry your little raid the other day didn’t come up with anything. It did rather prove though that I’m operating a legitimate business operation here. Of course I could’ve sued for police harassment but I thought no, be generous. DS Barton is still a grieving widower. I don’t want to add to his troubles’.

  ‘Don’t even think of mentioning my wife’s name’ said Jeff, his hackles rising.

  ‘Yes, it’s still painful, I get that’.

  Jeff placed the palms of his hands on Connelly’s desk and leaned forward. ‘Let’s talk about your so-called legitimate business operation. Because that’s the biggest piece of fiction there is. We’ve rounded up your associates in the hotel trade including Brian Curzon. You used them all to further the biggest prostitution ring in the city’.

  ‘What can I say? It’s the oldest profession in the world. Somebody is always making money out of it somewhere. I wish I’d have thought about doing it. I admire whoever did’.

  ‘Fucking damn you Connelly! We’ve arrested nine men and women all of whom either owned or managed a hotel in various locations across Manchester. They all paid a percentage of their earnings to you. We know that but we didn’t get it from them, not even Curzon would tell us that little nugget. None of them would name you because they were too scared. We got it from other sources’.

  ‘A certain newspaper journalist?’

  Jeff continued to stare at Connelly. ‘Sharon Bellfield is still in hospital and will remain there for some time after being beaten up by your thugs. They left her for dead but luckily someone saw her lying there in that alley and called for help. Someone who was a decent human being, Connelly. Someone who therefore you wouldn’t recognise’.

  ‘Oh such harsh words, detective’ said Connelly. He sat back in his high backed chair and dragged again on his cigar. ‘That Sharon Bellfield is quite a character. She could drink any man under the table, that’s for sure. A very tenacious young lady and no mistake. I am sorry to hear of her misfortune though. So sad to see what happens to vulnerable young women on our streets late at night. And you think I had something to do with it?’