From A Poison Pen: A collection of macabre short stories

by Smythe, B. P.

  Donald bowed his head. It was the end of the line and he knew it. The inspector motioned to the police constable.

  ‘AD17, take him down.’

  The constable jerked forward. He put his arm around Donald’s shoulders and suddenly, without warning, turned him round and launched his head into the bath water. Donald kicked and gurgled for breath while the others stood transfixed in shock for a second. Then all hell broke loose.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what’re you doing?’ the inspector shouted. The two detectives tried to pull him off,

  ‘Stop it you, fool or you’ll drown him.’

  The WPC tried to help as well. However, AD17 was too strong for them. Donald kicked and choked as surges of bubbles rose up. The kicking got weaker as AD17’s hands, clamped around Donald’s neck, shook with intense pressure while strangling him.

  Without thinking, the Inspector smashed the electric drill over the constable’s head. Then he smashed it again. This time the head broke off and hung down into the bath water with sparks and green pneumatic fluid spilling out.

  ‘Oh my God,’ the WPC put a hand to her mouth in shock.

  The Inspector shouted,

  ‘Don’t let its power-pack fall in,’ but he could see it was too late. With an enormous white flash, AD17 burst into flames and Donald’s shirt melted into his skin from the arcing of the current.

  The Inspector yelled,

  ‘Somebody get an extinguisher for Christ’s sake!’

  Detective constable Pritchard ran out onto the landing and saw one under a table by the stairs. He grabbed it, and checking quickly that it was suitable for electrical fires, ran back in and sprayed the sizzling inferno.

  It took over five minutes for the smoke to clear with the bathroom windows open.

  All three of them stood there in shock. Finally, Inspector Royston scratched his head. ‘

  What the fuck happened?’

  Detective Constable Pritchard swallowed hard and then nervously said,

  ‘I think, sir, when you told it to “Take him down,” it must have thought you meant into the bathwater.’

  The Inspector sighed.

  ‘This is the third time it’s played up. I’ll have to let the Chief Constable know, Fujimoto Electronics have a problem with the android voice recognition or something.’ Then he considered, ‘Mind you, the two women they made us looked pretty real.’

  Lovers Leap

  The phone box stank of urine. The hand dropped the coins and pressed the numbers. The roving brown eyes stopped as they took in the descriptive graffiti daubed on one of the panels. As the dial tone kicked in, she waited, and then a voice.

  ‘Hostel.’

  ‘Oh! Can I speak to Raymond…Raymond Cutler, please?’

  ‘You’ve come through to the public phone, but one minute, I’ll knock on his door.’

  She heard the footsteps retreat and then a sharp couple of knocks. Silence for a while followed by a muffled exchange. Footsteps approached and she heard the clatter of a receiver picked up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Raymond, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, who’s this?’

  Former care home help, Raymond Cutler, just released from prison after an 11-year stretch for manslaughter and living in a halfway house with no job or money, was clearly in a bad mood. This, together with standing in a freezing hallway in his vest and underpants and being woken up at ten in the morning, didn’t help the situation either.

  ‘It’s Myra. Long-time no see.’

  ‘Myra who?’

  ‘Myra…Matron, Myra Scargill of the Nescotte Care Home, remember?’

  Silence for five seconds then,

  ‘Jesus Christ, Myra! How’d you get this number?’

  ‘There was a small column in the Echo on our release, with a brief history of the Old Bailey trial. Newspapers! If there’s dirt, they’ll dig it up. When I got out, prison authorities gave me some addresses, halfway houses, youth hostel stuff. I guessed you’d be in one of them. So I phoned around and bingo!’

  ‘So, what do you want?’

  ‘Now - now, come on, Raymond, you could be more friendly.’

  ‘I’m not in a friendly mood. I’m living in a shit hole with no job and no money and most of it’s your fault.’

  ‘Don’t blame me, Raymond. I went down for eleven years as well, remember. We both did things we regret. Still, most of those old wrinklies we slapped, deserved it - with their constant bloody whining. It was just our rotten luck that some of them pegged out and it all backfired on us. If it weren’t for that other care helper, Jennifer Wesley, we’d have got away with it. That cow’s evidence sealed it.’

  ‘Spare me the history lesson. So, like I said, what do you want?’

  ‘To meet; got a little business proposition for you.’

  ‘No thanks; last time I worked with you in that care home I spent the next eleven years doing porridge.’

  ‘Come on, Raymond, you want to get even with that Wesley bitch, don’t you? Make some quick money as well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not on the phone, Raymond. Too risky. Meet me in Dino’s café round the corner from you on the parade. Say, three o’clock this afternoon?’

  *

  Dino’s was empty apart from an elderly couple sharing an apple strudel and talking about their grandchildren. Myra and Raymond had ensconced themselves in a rather tatty vinyl-seated booth by the wall, well out of earshot. They ordered two teas and a couple of slices of fruitcake.

  Considering they’d been sent to prison back in 1998 for eleven-years, they both looked well, apart from their pasty skin colour, which was to be expected. Forty-three year-old Myra at 5-foot-10-inches with her stocky frame and long dark hair still looked intimidating, and ironically, she was the spitting image of her former work colleague, Jennifer Wesley, whose evidence had helped send them to prison.

  Raymond on the other hand, had lost some weight, although he could afford to. He’d started his sentence with a two stone tyre around his waist. However, revolting prison meals and the exercise yard had seen to that. Now at forty-one years of age, fair-haired Raymond with his cold, blue eyes, pointed features and trim six foot shape, looked like a man who could take care of himself, and in prison, there had been times when he had to. Some of the inmates with elderly relatives still reckoned abusing old age residents’ in a care home was top priority for a beating or a gang-bang in the showers.

  ‘So that’s the plan, Raymond. What do you think?’

  He was wary.

  ‘You honestly reckon you can get away with impersonating Jennifer Wesley.’

  ‘Look, I’ve seen her; she’s never moved from that flat. I staked it out for the last two weeks. Do you know what? After all these years, we still look the same. That’s in my favour too.’ Myra nibbled at her piece of stale fruitcake. ‘And remember, she told that friend of hers, Glenda, who worked in the kitchen at Nescotte, that she’d been left those Australian mining shares in her mother’s will. Over a thousand of them.’

  ‘How do you know where the shares are now? Whether the mother’s still alive? It’s been eleven-years.’

  Myra leaned in closer.

  ‘I phoned the sanatorium. You know the one where she was always visiting Gladys, her mother?’

  Raymond nodded.

  ‘Said I was a friend of Gladys’s daughter and that she’d asked me as a special favour to come and visit her mother. They said yes, no problem. That confirmed her mother is still alive.’ Myra took another bite of fruitcake and then continued. ‘The rest was easy. I just phoned the same flat number and she answered - pretended I was from the sanatorium office. Told her we’d just done a stock take and found her mother’s shares. Then asked if she still wanted the office to keep them?’

  Myra took another sip of her coffee.

  ‘I knew I was chancing my arm. Thought she’d smell a rat, especially if she was holding the shares hers
elf, or they’d been sold. But, she never even asked for proof of who I was. All she said was that she’d forgotten all about the shares and, for security reasons, thought it best if the sanatorium kept them.’

  Myra sipped her coffee and then added excitedly.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Raymond, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was like taking sweets from a baby.’

  ‘But to kill both of them? The mother and the daughter?’ Raymond said, looking worried. ‘You think it’ll work? Do you think we’ll get away with it?’

  Myra rolled her eyes,

  ‘Raymond, of course we will. I told you I followed her. She doesn’t live with anybody and she has no other family apart from that mother and probably not many friends either. Our Jenn’ was always a bit of a loner. Those shares are now worth a fortune. I checked in the Financial Times or something.’ She took a copy from her shoulder bag and laid it out in front of him. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing with her finger, ‘they’re nearly ninety-three-pounds each.’ Then she said with excitement, ‘We can sell ’em, get into the big money.’

  Raymond looked at her with a frown, still unconvinced. Suddenly, Myra grabbed his jacket lapel and dragged him closer. With her nose in his startled face, she said angrily,

  ‘Or do you always want to live in some fucking halfway house for ex-cons, on benefit, looking for part-time work if you can get it?’

  *

  This was the fifth time a blue Ford Escort had followed Jennifer Wesley. She had parked as usual in her numbered car space at the side of her apartment block in Basildon. It was 7:30 p.m. and still light. The evening rush hour had gone and the A1235 was now quiet.

  She had been to the sanatorium to see her mother. Jennifer always stayed with her for about an hour. Usually, this included feeding her some tea - broken up sandwiches dipped in soup was Gladys’s favourite. There was never a lot of conversation. Gladys had suffered from senile dementia for years and sometimes wouldn’t recognise her own daughter.

  The twenty-five minute drive home this Thursday evening had taken in a local newsagent, so that Jennifer could buy a Weekly Advertiser. Still unemployed, she would sit in the car with the paper on her lap, scanning the care home appointments. She wasn’t too worried, as she had received an adequate redundancy package from her last employment.

  It had been big in the newspapers. After all the notoriety over the years with resident’s deaths, resident’s abuse, arrests, convictions, bad press and finally, unacceptable maintenance costs - Nescotte Care Home had closed its doors. This year in April 2009, the regional and government funding that had gone towards its running costs had been refused.

  With her head in the newspaper, Jennifer Wesley had no idea she was being followed. On her previous journeys, Raymond had used a telephoto lens from the car so that they could study her clothes, makeup and hairstyle. Unbeknown to Jennifer, her double, Myra Scargill, was sitting next to Raymond, ready to step into her shoes.

  The Ford Escort slowly pulled into the car park as Jennifer Wesley set the central locking on her Fiat Uno. With light traffic and no pedestrians, he took a chance. The window came down as Raymond, in disguise with sunglasses and a beard, leaned out and asked for directions in a very posh voice.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called, ‘I’m looking for Southend Airport. Can you help me please?’

  Jennifer looked over and saw the man holding a map. As she approached him, she saw the female passenger and felt reassured.

  ‘Do I keep to the A127?’ He thrust the map towards her and pointed to a spot with his finger.

  Jennifer squinted and leaned in the car window to get a better look. It was the last thing she ever did.

  It took a split second; the knife concealed behind the map slashed at her throat. Jennifer Wesley coughed, a large bubble of blood appeared from her left nostril while she looked at the man in disbelief, not quite able to comprehend what had happened. It was all in slow motion. She looked down at the blood spurting in jets onto her coat and then her eyes wandered to the grinning man, to the map, all bloody.

  Jennifer began to stagger. Raymond’s hand reached out and grabbed her coat lapel as she began to slide down his car door. She hung there. To an outsider it still looked as if she was having a chat to someone in a car.

  Myra Scargill got out and slowly walked around to the other side. She put her arm around Jennifer’s shoulder and supported her, as if they were chums, and leaned in. It looked like they were both chatting to the driver. Myra held her up until she was sure it was all clear. Then Raymond climbed into the back and unzipped the body bag.

  Within fifty seconds, Jennifer Wesley lay sealed up on the back seat covered with a blanket. They planned later when it was dark to transfer her to the boot.

  Raymond quickly sponged the blood off the car door and then carried on nonchalantly whistling as he worked, cleaning the wing screen and mirrors. Plastic sheets had been laid to save the upholstery and minimise possible forensics, but to be sure, the hired Ford Escort was booked in for a valet the next day.

  When all was finished, they parked. With Jennifer Wesley’s flat keys, they’d found themselves a new home.

  ‘I like the kitchen.’ Myra walked around, opening and shutting unit cupboards.

  Raymond called to her,

  ‘There’s a laundry room.’

  Myra walked through a small doorway to see a sink, washing machine and tumble dryer.

  Raymond had found a large chest freezer. As he held up the lid, he grinned at her.

  ‘Guess where Jenn’s gonna stay?’

  Myra burst out laughing.

  ‘We’ll have to charge her rent.’

  Raymond peered inside then looked up.

  ‘How can she pay if we’re gonna freeze her assets?’ They collapsed laughing out-loud together. Raymond, his face contorted in mirth, wiped tears from his eyes. Myra carefully dabbed her mascara, trying not to smudge as she hitched with laughter. Then they quietened down.

  ‘And guess what I’ve found, Ray?’ With that, Myra took his hand and led him out down the hallway. With her free hand, she pushed open a door. ‘Look, a double bed.’

  Raymond grinned as Myra put her arms around him.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘have those prison years curbed your urge? Or does an old lag still like to shag?’

  Raymond kicked the door closed and manoeuvred her to the bed.

  *

  Nearly dug, the hole had taken over one and a half hours. The silence as the spades stopped was overwhelming, only peppered by the light nighttime traffic and the hum of pylon cables.

  It was three in the morning with a very slight drizzle. The June Kent weather had been kind to grave diggers on this early Sunday. The muddy field just off the A20 yielded few stones, and the soil was not too soggy either. The added weight of water at the end of a shovel could double the time and be very tiresome.

  At nearly two-foot, six-inches deep, Raymond’s foot rested on the shovel.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he gestured Myra to stop. She willingly dropped her spade. Their panting slowed down. Perspiration billowed in the car headlight beams.

  Something rustled behind them. They both instantly froze. Ears pricked up like a fox - waiting, then nothing.

  ‘Must have been some animal,’ he said to reassure her. ‘Calm down. No one can see us here; we’re well covered by the ridge of trees.’

  With his spade, Raymond patted the sides of the hole while Myra rested. She poured herself a coffee from the thermos.

  ‘Do you want one?’ she said offering a cup.

  ‘Something a bit stronger, I think.’ From his inside pocket, Raymond took out a hip flask; his head went back to come forward with a wince as the brandy found its way. His arm moved into the car beam to check the time. ‘We’re doing OK.’

  Their wellingtons were heavy and clogged as they laboured their way back to the car boot.

  A scuffle and screeching in the distance turned their he
ads in alarm.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ Myra yelled. She looked at him in panic.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said quietly, ‘probably, an early morning snack for a fox or something.’

  They went back to business as they lifted Jennifer’s body from the boot.

  Myra couldn’t look at the face. Although, like Raymond, she’d seen and dealt with death many times at the home, this was different. The dried blood around the gash in the neck looked as though she was smiling.

  He saw she was looking queasy and offered the hip flask.

  Myra sat on the edge of the car boot and sipped the brandy, then handed it back to him.

  ‘You OK now?’

  Myra nodded,

  ‘I’m OK. Just come over a bit funny.’

  Raymond waited until she was ready to carry on. Then it was back to business.

  They took a leg each and pulled the body, the arms trailing out behind as if being prepared for the last crucifixion.

  ‘Thank God, it’s fully defrosted,’ Myra panted to Raymond.

  The smell of the damp earth was beginning to clog their senses. At the edge of the grave, they laid the body down. Then Raymond, with some exertion, rolled it over until it toppled into the pit. Thwump!

  Jennifer Wesley lay face up in her last resting place. A sad, pitiful figure as her eyes reflected off the headlights, glassy and staring, with the long dark hair matted to her face from the slight drizzle. A discarded doll at the bottom of a toy box, Myra thought. She had once been somebody’s favourite. Now, not even a memory.

  Raymond glanced at his watch.

  ‘We’ll have to get a move on,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to meet up with an early morning yokel doing his farming rounds.’

  They were at the boot again. Their legs buckled under the hundredweight bag of builders’ lime. Each holding an end, they staggered, stumbled and cursed in unison until they reached the side of the pit. Together they tossed the heavy parcel onto the high piled mud.

  The spade came down with a slash! cutting the bag. Raymond scooped out and carefully spread the grey dust over the body, like a loving mother tossing icing sugar on her child’s birthday cake. It was beginning to work already. The fine-drizzle reacting with the lime, bubbles forming on the face. The mouth was open with its last fixed grin. Perhaps a look of thank you, he thought…hope I haven’t caused you too much trouble being so heavy.