Last Goodbye_An absolutely gripping murder mystery thriller

by Arlene Hunt

  ‘I got the lab to tell Malloy it was a false read.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired of all the bullshit; maybe to keep good kids like Malloy from turning into people like you and me.’ Quinn rocked back on his heels, exhaled long and with some relief. ‘I think a change is coming, Travers. I’d like to think she might be part of it.’

  Dominic Travers folded the paper and put in his pocket.

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘This dog is too old to learn new tricks.’

  Dominic grunted. ‘Trick or not, I won’t forget this.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  ‘So long, Quinn.’

  Quinn watched Travers walk across the yard, massive, brooding, a weapon of mass destruction launched on a course that nothing on this earth could possibly stop.

  On the drive back to the city, he examined his own psyche. It was, he decided, like the inner tube of an old wheel, threadbare in places, patched together in others, softer than it should be, but still rolling. And as long as he could roll, he would keep on going.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Dy Anderson ended a long and triumphant conference call, leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands.

  Nothing, he thought, nothing beat deal-making, nothing beat the thrust and parry of talking money. He would never grow tired of it.

  His stomach rumbled, a reminder that he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. Maybe he’d go celebrate at that new restaurant down in the Docklands; he deserved it.

  He left his office and walked through to reception, feeling lighter than he had done in years. Dublin was small, too small. The future of entertainment was the burgeoning market in East Asia.

  He called goodnight to the cleaning lady emptying bins into her trolley, but she was wearing earbuds and didn’t hear him. He could hear the tinny sound of music as he passed by.

  In the car park, he was annoyed to see that two of the strip lights were broken. He made a note in his head to call maintenance about it when he got home.

  Halfway to his car, something hit him on the back of the head, something hard.

  He grunted and went down.

  When he came to, he was in the boot of a moving car, bound and gagged.

  He flexed his muscles, but whoever had tied him up knew what they were doing: there was little to no give anywhere.

  It felt like a long time before the car slowed. He heard the rumble of wheels on a grate, and then it sped up again, but slower than before, and the terrain was rougher.

  A few minutes later, he heard the crunch of gravel and felt the car slow to a stop. A dog barked; no, more than one. A door slammed, and he heard feet on gravel, more barking, high and excited, followed by silence.

  It was very cold, and before long his muscles began to cramp. Pins and needles followed, and no matter which way he tried to move, his limbs ached.

  Furious, he yelled behind the gag.

  No one came.

  Time passed.

  The need to urinate became an issue, then a need, and then he had no choice. With the release came humiliation as the heat spread down his crotch and pooled under him.

  If … no, when he got free, he would make his captors suffer; oh, how he would make them pay for this.

  At some point he dozed off. When he opened his eyes again, he could detect faint traces of light between the minuscule gaps. Not long after that, he heard the dogs again and footsteps drawing close. A car door opened and something popped close to his ear.

  Light blinded him as strong hands reached in and pulled him out. He hit the dirt with a wallop and tried to get to his knees. His captor kicked him over onto his back and dragged him across the gravel by his ankles.

  Two dogs – he saw now they were German shepherds – danced around him, barking with excitement.

  Hands grabbed him again and lifted him, depositing him onto the back of a flatbed truck. He heard a voice say, ‘Up!’ and the dogs were beside him, panting. He tried to flex his muscles against his restraints and realised he was weaker than he could have imagined.

  The truck started up and they drove around the side of an old farmhouse and through a clump of tall fir trees before setting out across open ground. Anderson could do nothing but wince at every bump and watch the clouds drift across a red-streaked morning sky.

  Finally the truck stopped and the engine was shut off.

  His captor came to the back of the truck, hauled him down and dropped him for a second time onto the ground.

  This time he stayed down. His eyes travelled from mud-encrusted boots, up a pair of legs and a torso to a hard, cold face.

  ‘My name is Dominic Travers,’ the man said.

  Anderson frowned, confused.

  ‘Andrea Colgan was my daughter. She was pregnant with my grandchild when she was murdered. I believe you know something about that.’

  Travers left Anderson with the dogs watching over him and walked to the ancient oak tree. His great-great-great-grandfather had planted the tree with an acorn taken from a war-torn blood-soaked field in Poland, or so the story went. It was sturdy and forbidding, a great giant, and a favourite resting place in summer when the sun beat down.

  Travers rested his hand on the gnarled trunk, tracing his thumb over a name grown silver in time. Andrea. He had hung a swing from a low branch for her as a child and she had spent many an afternoon swaying back and forth on a warm breeze while he drank tea from a flask. Those memories were stored in a private place in his brain and he cherished them. When Andrea got too old for swings, and no longer came to the farm, the swing had rotted from neglect and fallen away. He supposed he could find parts of it still if he cared to look, but he did not.

  Now a different item swung from the branch, and it was this that he turned his attention to.

  The gibbet cage too had been in the family for a long time. It was a peculiar item, long forgotten about in one of the sheds. He had found it years before during a renovation and kept it, more out of a strange morbid curiosity than anything else. Now he wondered if it had been destiny. Certainly this medieval contraption would bring him what he sought most.

  He dragged Anderson to the base of the tree, ignoring his repeated efforts to bargain and plead from behind the gag. Using a sharp hunting knife, he sliced through the man’s bonds, then kneeled on his chest and began to enclose his limbs inside the bars.

  Before he clamped on the helmet, he removed the gag from Anderson’s mouth and pocketed it. Anderson immediately began to babble, though his voice was rusty, dry, his vocal cords strained.

  ‘You have this all wrong, I didn’t do anything to Andrea, she was—’

  Travers drew back his fist and punched him square in the face, so hard his nose broke on impact. Anderson blacked out.

  Travers grabbed the metal sides of the helmet, brought them around Anderson’s head and bolted them into place. Blood dribbled down Anderson’s throat, causing him to gag and cough as he came round again.

  ‘Stop, please … wait …’

  Travers locked the helmet to the chest cage and yanked Anderson forward to check the D-ring on the back of the contraption was secure. He grunted with satisfaction and hooked the ring to a chain hanging from the branch. Using a simple hand pulley, he winched Anderson to his feet and kept winching until he dangled eight feet off the ground, spinning lazily in the air.

  Anderson grabbed the chest bars, spat blood to one side and glared down at him.

  ‘You can’t do this, I have rights.’

  Travers wiped his hands on his jacket, then walked back to the truck, put his dogs in the back and drove away.

  In many ways, the first day was the worst, because Anderson felt sure Travers would come back, but it was not to be. On the second day he suffered through a deluge of rain and a biting wind that chilled him to the bone. He screamed for help until his throat was raw and his voice was all but destroyed. By nightfall he was completely exhausted, but as the te
mperature plummeted, he found he was unable to stop shivering. By midnight, his entire body was racked with pain.

  Numerous times throughout that second night his bowels loosened and voided, filling the material beneath his buttocks with a hot stinking mess that slowly dribbled down his legs.

  His spirits rose slightly at dawn’s first hesitant light. Surely Travers would return. Then he would confess, oh yes, beg for his life.

  He would do anything.

  But as each hour passed and the sky went from light to dark again, hope dwindled.

  He dozed. His tongue grew dry and swollen, and after a while it hurt to move it. His eyes felt gritty, and when he tried to focus them on anything for too long, his vision shimmered and became grey around the edges. That night the cold was unbearable, and he shivered and rattled so badly his bones felt like they were crumbling to dust. Foxes crept out from the woods and watched him from the hedgerows, noses twitching at his rancid stench. Nearby an owl hooted and he wept to hear it.

  He understood that he was dying. His tongue was so swollen he was having trouble breathing, and his skin felt odd and shrunken. He no longer made urine, and staying awake for more than a few minutes at a time was impossible. The skin around his fingernails cracked and peeled and the nails themselves grew loose. His teeth ached, but he no longer cared about those.

  Around noon of the fourth day, a raven landed on a branch nearby and cocked its head in his direction. He stared at it blankly, trying to remember what kind of thing it was. After a while it flew away, but later that afternoon it came back, and this time it wasn’t alone. Through cracked eyelids he watched the birds march back and forth on the branch, fluttering their coal-black feathers as they assessed the situation.

  When he woke again, one of the birds was tearing a long sliver of skin from the ring finger on his right hand. He tried to bat it away but the effort was too much. All he could do was rest his forehead against the bars and close his eyes.

  His heartbeat grew erratic.

  Sleep took him. Pain brought him round. He flinched, drew his hand back as a bead of blood appeared and dripped onto the bars. The raven hopped onto a branch nearby to consume his flesh. It cocked its head, ruffled its feathers and watched him until he could no longer keep his eyes open. He heard the sound of wings beating against the bars, a querulous croak, and then he heard no more.

  Dominic returned the following weekend and lowered what remained in the gibbet cage onto a tarpaulin he’d spread on the ground. One of the dogs, the big male, sniffed at it, then cocked his leg and urinated on it.

  Dominic threw the remains onto the flatbed and drove across the farmland to a pit he’d dug to the rear of the property, near the old walled garden next to the greenhouse. He backed the truck up, threw the carcass into the hole and, using a small digger, filled the pit in. When he was done, he scattered the earth with grass and wildflower seeds, then he smacked his hands together, whistled to the dogs and drove back to the house.

  It was done.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The sun was low in the sky by the time Roxy, unused to driving around this part of the country, found the entrance to the private nursing home.

  The car crawled along a long, narrow driveway flanked by brambles until she reached a set of high metal gates set into an eight-foot wall. She let the window down and directed her voice to the wall monitor. After identifying herself and showing her badge, the gates opened inward. She noticed there were a number of CCTV cameras pointed at her as she drove into the courtyard.

  She parked, got out and followed the signs to reception, where again she gave her name and showed her identification.

  ‘Well now.’ The receptionist, whose name tag read Imelda, studied her ID carefully. ‘In all the time she’s been here, you’re only the third visitor she’s ever had.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Her husband used to come a bit at first.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Had a real way about him, you know?’

  ‘Mm,’ said Roxy, wondering how on earth Imelda had missed the news about Milton.

  ‘He’s a doctor himself, ever so handsome. He was always so keen to hear about her, how she was doing, if there was any sign of improvement at all. Used to think it was a crying shame when he stopped coming, but then I realised it didn’t seem to bother her none, so why should it bother me?’

  Roxy unwound her scarf.

  ‘A friend of hers came, Maureen I think her name was, but she only came the once. Awful upset she was when she was leaving.’ Imelda sighed. ‘It’s just, you know, you’d like to think they’re not forgotten.’

  ‘Yes,’ Roxy said. ‘You’d like to think that.’

  She followed Imelda into a large, bright salon. A number of people sat in comfortable chairs, their lower legs draped in colourful blankets. Most were sound asleep, but a small group were gathered around a large television watching a black-and-white movie with the sound turned down low. Roxy wondered how on earth they could hear a word until she passed by and saw their expressions and understood that words were not important; familiarity was.

  ‘She’s probably in her room,’ Imelda said. ‘She doesn’t like to be in the salon with the others. I think it makes her anxious.’

  On they walked, down a short hall with walls covered in a cheery mural of daisies and sunflowers. They stopped outside a door marked ‘N’, the last on the left.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Imelda said, her hand resting on the handle. ‘But are you a friend of hers … from before?’

  ‘No, we’ve never met,’ Roxy said. ‘But I have a message for her.’

  ‘Oh?’ Imelda looked confused. ‘Well, I hope you understand she’s quite unresponsive. We’ve been trying, but she’s in her own little world most of the time.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Roxy said, suddenly tired of talking to Imelda. ‘Shall we?’

  Imelda knocked as she opened the door.

  ‘Nadine, honey, you have a visitor. Look now, somebody has come to see you, isn’t that nice?’

  Nadine was in a wheelchair by the window. Roxy walked towards her and looked down. She would have been a beautiful woman once; certainly the foundations were still there in her bone structure – her high cheekbones and aquiline nose – and her cornflower-blue eyes rimmed by long black lashes. But the skin around her throat sagged and her cheeks were hollowed to the point of sunken, and when Roxy fetched a chair and sat down, she saw that Nadine’s eyes were blank and listless.

  ‘If you need anything, anything at all, there’s a bell by the side of her chair.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Imelda backed out of the room and closed the door. Roxy glanced out of the window, staring into the deepening shadows, then leaned forward and took one of Nadine’s hands in hers.

  ‘You don’t know me and I don’t know you. I didn’t even know you existed until a few weeks ago.’ She cleared her throat and leaned a little closer. ‘I want you to know that your husband, Gregory, is in jail.’

  She looked at the motionless woman, saw the gentle rise and fall of her chest, felt how loose her fingers were, how papery her skin.

  ‘He can’t ever hurt you again; he can’t hurt anyone again.’

  A sigh, so slight she might have missed it, but she had not. She leaned closer still and lowered her voice in case Imelda had not gone far. Nadine’s fingers tightened around hers, not much, but enough.

  ‘I want you to know that it was a woman who took him down. I want you to know that he underestimated me, but I did not underestimate him.’

  Was that a flicker of triumph in Nadine’s eyes? Or was Roxy projecting, making something out of nothing?

  ‘I want you to know that I’m sorry he was allowed to operate for so long.’ She put Nadine’s hand back on her lap, where it lay unresponsive and still. ‘I want you to know I’m sorry no one believed he was cruel to you. He was a piece of shit, but now he’s going to spend a long time behind bars.’

  Feeling stupid, even
indulgent, Roxy rose and began to walk towards the door. She had only taken a few steps when two words caused her to stop.

  ‘Thank you.’

  It was soft, barely a whisper, barely a breath.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Roxy said without turning back.

  She found Imelda in the salon, straightening blankets and pillows, fussing gently over her charges.

  ‘Oh, you’re off already then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hard, isn’t it? Sometimes you don’t know if they can even hear you or not. But I think they do.’ She touched the hair of a sleeping woman, stroking it softly, almost absent-mindedly. ‘Twilight, they call it. I used to think it was a strange expression when I started here first, but now I think it suits them.’

  Roxy walked past the television watchers, then stopped and turned round. ‘One thing I wanted to ask you about. The flowers, the roses?’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘It’s a standing order from her husband. She gets a delivery every month.’

  ‘Can you change it?’

  ‘I … Well I suppose I can. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Daisies, carnations, pick whatever you like.’ Roxy wrapped her scarf about her neck. ‘But not roses, anything but bloody roses.’

  THE END

  Did you enjoy Last Goodbye? Then get ready to meet another dangerously twisted serial killer in Last to Die.

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  Last to Die

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