by Vogel, Vince
In the center of the headlight beams, he saw a man-shaped silhouette with something crouched beside it. Billy’s eyes adapted a little more, and he made out a blond-haired man standing at over six feet tall with a Staffordshire bull terrier sitting by his side. The man was stroking the dog’s head as he and the beast glared at Billy. It was then that Doyle spotted the large hammer in the man’s hand.
“And what is that I can do for you?” Billy asked, squinting his eyes at the stranger.
“You killed my sister,” came a voice from the dark.
“I’ve killed many sisters.”
“Was she alive when you nailed her to the cross?”
“None of them were alive by then,” Billy replied in a matter-of-fact way. “I’d already set them free. Having hurt them so much in my life, the least I could do was give them easy passage into death. I merely euthanize them. Send them into sleep and away from the madness of men like me. Once they are dead, I do something divine with their beauty. I create a symbol for all the world to see and to know for sure that it is sick. So very sick.” He shook his head at this point. “The crucifixion of Christ was meant to be man’s redemption, but in the two thousand years since, mankind has only gotten worse. Even the teachings he left us have become twisted by our own petty animalism.”
“Your petty animalism,” Dorring corrected, pointing his finger at Billy. The speech had bored him, but he’d let Billy have his moment.
“No one is sicker than I, friend,” the animal man agreed.
“Do you recognize me?” Alex asked.
“Should I?”
“My name is Alex Dorring.”
“Means nothing.”
“What about John Dorring?”
“More guessing games?”
“He was a cop. Your father had him nailed to a cross fifteen years ago.”
“Ah!” Billy exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. “My first.”
“It was you who nailed him to the cross?”
“Yes. Father said I could do with him as I pleased. So while the others held him, I put nails through his hands and ankles into a makeshift cross we’d put together. I’d always wanted to do it. Used to imagine myself as a Roman centurion nailing up prisoners. It was such a thrill.” His voice was becoming more and more excited. “I was twenty at the time. At home from university. The moment I did that, I knew who I was. No more fucking around. I was born. I looked at myself that night and never felt prouder. I was a flaming sword.”
Alex grit his teeth together, clenched the handle of the hammer, and marched over to Billy, the dog staying put. Where the elbow joint was spread across the bark, Alex held the nail to the pink flesh, glanced at Billy, and smashed it through into the wood. Billy cried out and Alex gazed into his eyes while the afflicted man struggled instinctively to pull his arm away. But it was no good. All he did was move along the nail, the joint splitting apart. Alex took another nail and placed it on the palm, pressing it to the tree. He glanced again at Billy, who had gone deathly pale, a gentle smirk quivering on his face, then drove the nail through the hand. Another cry flew out of Billy’s mouth and unsettled the night birds in the trees.
“This is all very—” Billy began, but Alex plowed another nail through his forearm, cutting the words from his mouth as he split the bone. Dorring then worked along the arm—bang—one after the other, until five nails pinned it to the wide old oak, blood trickling down between the grooves of the bark. “Please,” Billy weakly muttered while Alex made his way across him to the other arm. Again, he started at the elbow joint, then the hand, and then along the arm, Billy only letting out short cries now as the shock numbed him to it all, his dull eyes gazing into the headlights, the moths of rain still playing in the beams.
It was as his eyes searched the light that Billy spotted two silhouettes sitting in the car, one in the front passenger’s seat and the other in the back. Both figures appeared to be studying him, but he couldn’t see their faces.
“Who is that?” he spluttered as Alex crouched before him and prepared to drive a nail through his thigh. Alex never answered and hammered the nail into Billy’s upper leg. It wasn’t quite long enough to get all the way through into the tree, so Alex began smashing manically at the spot and obliterating the leg, the femur bone shattering as he smashed it away under the heavy blows of the hammer, Billy’s ghost-white head bobbing up and down. “Who is that?” he repeated pitifully once Alex had finished that thigh, the leg almost hanging by nothing more than a thread of flesh. Dorring pressed a nail to the other leg and did the same, feeling nothing for each blow, taking almost no satisfaction from the act. He would have buried more nails into him, but it was all getting boring now.
Having plowed the nail into the leg and smashing it into a similar state as the other, Alex stood up, beads of sweat dripping down his face and washing away with the rain.
“Hard work, huh?” Billy mumbled through his delirium, his colorless lips quivering into a half smile.
Alex came right up to Billy so that their noses were touching, and he took his chin with his hand. The other hand reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a box cutter.
“For all the pain you and your ilk have caused this world,” he said, and with that he sliced deep across Billy’s abdomen and opened him up. He then stuck his hand inside, Billy convulsing as Dorring gripped his guts and tugged at a handful so that the intestines spilled out onto the floor between them. Alex stepped back and rejoined the dog, who’d watched the whole time. Crouching down, he stroked the back of its neck and ushered it forward. Needing very little encouragement, the dog rushed to the pile of intestines and began chewing away at the endless bloody sausages, tearing at them and pulling more from Billy’s open belly.
“Please,” Billy muttered the whole time, his face so white that it shone in the darkness. “Please. Just shoot me. Please. I beg you.” Alex simply kept his eyes fixed on him. “I can tell you who killed your father.”
“I know who killed my father.”
Billy shook his head.
“Oh no you don’t. I only nailed him to the cross. I can tell you the man it was that slid the blade across his neck. All I ask is for a little clemency in exchange for my confession.”
Alex pierced his eyes at Billy for a moment. In truth, he was a little put off by the sight of it all and had begun to hear the dirge of humming emanate from the trees. While going to work on the killer, he’d occasionally spotted the reproachful faces of his loves among the darkness, their sad eyes watching him.
“Okay,” he said, getting his gun out and approaching Billy.
“Put the gun to the side of my head,” Billy stated weakly when Alex had come to him, stepping over the dog who was busy feeding. “I’ll whisper it to you.”
From the car, Chloe and Danny watched as Alex pressed the pistol to the side of Billy’s head and his ear to the killer’s mouth. She wondered what was happening. Suddenly the side of Billy’s head shot off, and Alex began walking away from him back to the car.
“Why’d you put him out of his misery?” Chloe exclaimed when he got back in.
“He’d suffered enough.”
“He killed your sister.”
“He won’t kill any more. Plus, he told me something.” Alex got out his phone and began searching someone. When he’d found them, he put the phone down, started the engine and said, “We have one last person to visit.”
71
The rain was laying off now, the worst of the storm having passed, but it was still difficult for Jack to spot the numbers on the houses through the gentle patter and darkness. They were all large plush places, stone facades with tall pillars, ivy covering many of them, all detached with conifer trees lining their front gardens, a litany of cars in the driveways. As he drove steadily along, Jack had had to unwind his window and pop his head out to see their numbers.
Eventually, he found the place he was looking for and pulled into the shingle drive, parking up next to an olive-green Jaguar. His leg
s were heavy as they crunched across the stones, and his heart thumped in his chest. By the time he reached the large red door, he felt out of breath. With a trembling finger, he pressed the bell and waited.
The door opened and before him stood Tommy Bishop. He was a stout man of early sixties, with neat gray hair on his long face and a purple tinge like wine to his cheeks. He was wearing a navy pinstriped white shirt with a green cardigan over the top and gray trousers.
“Jack!” he exclaimed in his thick Yorkshire accent.
“Tommy, we need to talk,” Jack said coming inside.
“Couldn’t we talk on the phone?” Tommy enquired as he closed the door behind them.
“I’m sorry, but we couldn’t.”
Jack removed his coat and shoes, and Tommy guided him into the kitchen.
“Take a seat, Tom,” Jack said when they reached the table.
“Telling me to take a seat in my own house, Jack? This sounds serious.” Having said this, Tommy sat himself down and eyed Jack suspiciously. “What is this, Jack?” he added in a solemn tone. Jack took a seat opposite him round the table and gazed at the deputy commissionaire. “Come on, Jack, you’re worrying me. What’s the matter?”
“Where’s Catherine?”
“At her sister’s in Leeds. Why?”
Jack’s tongue stuttered a little as he attempted to say what he wanted. Eventually, it came out.
“How long have you been working with the Doyles, Tom?”
Bishop didn’t flinch a muscle, but his expression darkened, something about the eyes narrowing ever so slightly, and Jack knew.
“What makes you say that?” he asked solemnly.
“I always wondered who it was that gave the Doyles that information on me and Col. On our families. I mean, they knew everything. Where we lived. Where Beth worked. Carrie’s school. That’s not stuff you can easily get your hands on. I knew it had to be the bent copper at Scotland Yard, but I never thought it’d be you.”
“And what makes you think it’s me now?”
“Stop it, Tom. Stop it. I know it’s you. You covered up the Buntingford gypsy camp fire all those years back. No one ever heard that the two bodies had been crucified—wasn’t in any of the reports. That’s because you stopped it. Someone came to you with it all, and, for that, you threatened them.”
“The old woman,” Tommy said with a grin. “I knew we should have ended her.”
“Why, Tom?”
“Do you know how long I’ve been a copper, Jack? Since I was eighteen. I’m sixty-three now. That’s forty-five years. And do you know what I’ve learned in that time? That there’ll always be crime. Always. So long as there’s something to be had by it, and so long as the world offers very little in exchange for keeping to the law for the average man, there’ll be crime. And look at it now. Look at the shit out there on the street. It’s even worse. I took the lesser of two evils and kept one set of criminals going while taking on the others with their help. The information I gathered from the Doyles did more to keep things calm in this city than any police force.”
“What about now, huh? They’re running around blowing each other up.”
“Well, that’s about to end. The Doyles and the Earles are finished. The brother—this Alex Dorring—has seen to that by the looks of things. But there’ll always be someone else to creep out of the woodwork and take their place.”
“And you’ll ally up with them?”
“I won’t be allying up to anyone, Jack. You’ve got me. Hook, line, and sinker.”
Jack shook his head, and the flash of a thought struck his brain. His eyes once again struck Tommy’s face.
“What about John Dorring?” he asked.
“A shame. Good copper. But too puritanical in his beliefs. We offered him a route to look after his family, and the silly bastard spat in our faces. Wouldn’t take the easy money. So in a simple act of Darwinism, we killed him.”
“And nailed him to a cross,” Jack interjected.
“That were the Doyles’ idea. That little shit Billy Doyle. Said he saw John as a martyr. Wanted to go the whole hog and turn him into one. They threw him in front of the station to make a point to anyone else with similar ideas. I tried to stop them, thought it were bloody reckless. But they got carried away.”
“Is that what Billy’s doing now? Getting carried away?”
Tom shook his head.
“Billy’s a sick boy, Jack.”
“Have you been passing on information to him?”
“I’ve helped him out. But that doesn’t make me compliant.”
“And this is the lesser of two evils, is it?”
“Those girls won’t be missed. They were never of any worth. Shipped over for the only industry that predates the industrial revolution: the sex industry.”
“What about Becky Dorring? She had a mum and brother that loved her.”
“And a stepfather that abused her by all accounts.”
“That doesn’t make her any less of a person.”
“But she was suffering, wasn’t she? Anyway, Billy Doyle assured me he didn’t kill Becky Dorring. That’s why I’ve been all for you going up the blind alley of looking into her. Don’t tell me it were looking into Becky that led you to me?”
“It was, Tom.”
There was a silence between the pair for a minute as they each gazed at the other. Jack sensed that Tommy was sizing him up, and, in truth, he was doing the same to the deputy commissionaire. He felt a little trepidatious about Tommy’s sudden confession.
“Well, what now, Jack? You gonna take me in?”
Bishop held out his wrists, and Jack waved them away.
“I need a drink,” Sheridan said.
“There’s Scotch in the cabinet. I’ll get you some.”
Bishop got up from his seat and walked to the drinks cabinet. Meanwhile, Jack sat in his chair and sighed. His head was a mess. All he wanted was a drink to calm his nerves and to hopefully assist him in making some sort of decision. Bishop rejoined him, placed a glass in front of each of them, and then plonked the bottle in between.
“You got ice?” Jack asked.
“In the fridge.”
Jack picked his glass up and made his way to the tall American-style refrigerator. He opened up the door and saw that there was an ice dispenser. He bent down with his head almost inside and clicked his glass underneath, the cubes spilling into it.
“Who else knows about this?” Bishop asked.
“No one. Just me.”
“Another hunch, huh? Good old Searcher.”
“Something like that,” Jack said, feeling a presence behind him.
A coiled-up tea towel suddenly fell over his head and tightened around his throat, Bishop’s fists digging into the back of his neck. Jack dropped the glass and tried to stand, but a knee came crashing down into his spine and kept him there. His hands scrambled at the garrote around his neck, and he felt his windpipe closing up, the blood rushing to his face and his eyes threatening to burst from the skull. With all his strength, he forced his way up, and the two men fell about across the kitchen. As they swung past the sink, Jack grabbed ahold of the edge of it to lever himself. Bishop tried to force him back down, and Jack held on with all his might, trying to smash his head back and catch Bishop in the face. But it was no good. Each time he caught nothing but air. Looking at their reflection in the window, Jack saw the dead-eyed look on Bishop’s face while his own was deathly red, lips blue, eyes wide and staring down the barrel of death. His legs went weak, and stars maneuvered from the edge of his vision and began to form a cataract in the center. Losing consciousness and realizing that he would soon be dead, Jack thought about so much in that final second. About his mother. About Marsha. Carrie. Beth. Col. He began to feel at peace in regards to them all and slowly let go, feeling as though he were stepping out of the bitter cold and into a warm bath.
As Jack sunk into unconsciousness and death, he saw someone else reflected in the kitchen window. Someone th
at he took for an angel. He watched while the angel came behind them and placed something to the back of Bishop’s head. The next thing, Tommy’s face exploded all over the window, and Jack felt himself pulled slowly to the floor by a dead weight, the garrote loosening around his neck and air flooding into his lungs.
Jack found himself on the floor coughing mercilessly, his vision gradually clearing, the stars retreating. In front of him, he saw the dead eyes of Tommy Bishop staring up at him, lying on his side, blood seeping from a wound in his head. Jack heaved himself away from the body, pushing his back up against the cupboard, wondering what would happen next. A man with short blond hair and blue eyes crouched down in front of him, and Jack studied the face with terrified eyes, wondering when his own bullet would crash through his head.
“It’s been a long time, Jack,” the man said.
Sheridan slowly realized he was looking into the face of Alex Dorring.
Alex struck out his hand and helped Jack to his feet.
“Where’s that bloody Scotch?” the detective said, going over to the kitchen table where Bishop had placed it before attempting to garrote him.
He sat himself down, twisted the cap off, and slugged a load down. Alex came and sat down where Tommy had been positioned only a minute before.
“So you figured it yourself, then?” Alex said.
“Yeah. Bits and pieces. What led you to Tommy Bishop?”
“Billy Doyle told me it was him that had killed my father.”
Jack glanced down at Bishop’s corpse and shook his head.
“It gets worse,” he muttered to himself.
“You know who killed Becky?”
“Do you?” Jack put back, turning away from the body and taking another glug of liquor.
“Billy Doyle.”
Jack eyed him carefully and handed the bottle across. Alex took it and began sipping from the neck.
“How’d you know that?” Jack asked.
“He told me.”
“What, he just came out and said it?”
“Not quite. I had him tied to a tree, and he more or less confessed.”
Jack took the bottle back and was about to say something when someone else entered the kitchen. He turned sharply toward the person and froze. Though the hair was black and she’d aged several years since the arrest photos, he saw none other than Gemma O’Brian walking in through the door. She came beside Alex and placed her arm across his shoulders. Jack immediately recognized a bond between the two and got the impression they’d spent some time together. Suddenly, like a rush of mountain water running through him, Jack felt everything slot into place.