The Dying Place

by Luca Veste

‘Yes. We do. And …’ Murphy was interrupted by a fast-approaching DS Brannon barrelling across towards them.

  ‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ DS Brannon said as a greeting. ‘We may have a problem.’

  Murphy shook his head, his brain seeming to rattle in his skull. ‘Go on …’

  ‘Kevin Thornhill has been reported missing by his wife.’

  Murphy frowned. ‘The youth club guy?’

  ‘Yes, the youth club guy,’ DS Brannon almost sneered back. ‘I rang one of the volunteers, who says she turned up for work but couldn’t get in. Kevin usually opens up at nine …’

  Murphy didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. ‘We can’t really be dealing with that kind of thing right now, Brannon. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve got six people on the board.’

  ‘You don’t think it could be linked?’ DS Brannon said, looking towards Rossi as if for support.

  Rossi looked away.

  ‘Look, if you want to have a quick run down to the youth club, be my guest. But at the moment, we’re concentrating on what we have here.’

  DS Brannon looked as if he was about to argue, before thinking better of it and leaving without another word. Murphy stared after him, his eyes blurring as they gazed for too long.

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’ Rossi said, snapping Murphy’s attention back.

  ‘And probably nothing more,’ Murphy replied, turning back towards the board. ‘We can’t be wasting time on stuff like that.’

  ‘Still …’

  ‘Enough,’ Murphy snapped, causing a few heads at the surrounding desks to lift up in interest. ‘Concentrate on what we have here. It’s plenty to go on.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I was just saying …’

  ‘I know,’ Murphy said, cutting her off with a raise of his palm. ‘We’re all knackered, but let’s not start on each other. Now, where were we?’

  Rossi looked at him for a second before speaking. ‘George Stanley.’

  ‘Ah. Yeah. We need to speak to him again.’

  ‘Maybe you should … we should, take a break first. Get a couple of hours’ kip or something?’

  Murphy sighed, then looked towards DCI Stephens’s office. He could see her through the open blinds, talking on the phone. No doubt she was speaking to the Superintendent, trying to placate him.

  ‘You go first. We’ll take turns. Get back here between twelve and one though. I’ll take the afternoon shift.’ Rossi didn’t wait for him to change his mind, just turned on her heels, grabbed her coat and left.

  He watched her leave. Jealous that she was about to get a few hours’ kip.

  Murphy snapped to attention as the buzzer sounded. He pushed open the door to the ward at the hospital, the doors locked to keep out stragglers, but also coming in handy as an extra deterrent now that George Stanley’s story had turned out to be true.

  Outside Stanley’s private recovery room sat two bored-looking constables in uniform. They gave him a nod as he arrived.

  Murphy’s weathered and bearded face was all the ID he needed these days.

  He entered the room to find DC Harris playing cards with George Stanley, who was sitting up in his bed, holding cards in one hand, having to place them down to pick up another one from the deck.

  Harris stood as Murphy entered, but Stanley barely looked up at him as he crossed the small space.

  ‘Just passing the time, sir,’ Harris said, guilt fleeting across his face. Murphy shook his head to let him know he hadn’t been doing anything wrong.

  ‘Bet it’s getting boring being in here, isn’t it, Mr Stanley?’ Murphy said, taking Harris’s seat and letting the DC lean against the windowsill.

  ‘Yep,’ Stanley replied, still staring at the cards in his hand. The plastic bag on the drip running into a cannula on his hand was almost empty, the tape holding the tube in place turning up at the edges. ‘How long do you reckon I’ll be in here?’

  Murphy shared a look with Harris. ‘I thought you might want to stay in here a bit longer. Given where we’ll be taking you when you’re recovered.’

  Stanley stopped splaying his cards and dropped them to the bed. His face fell, his chest hitching up a little. ‘Oh, right. Yeah,’ Stanley said finally, voice catching in his throat. ‘How long do you reckon I’m looking at?’

  Murphy blew out a whistle. ‘Could be a long time. Kidnapping, abduction, false imprisonment, assault, torture … that’s before we even get to the murder part.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that …’

  ‘Dean Hughes was murdered whilst you watched, George. Do you understand that? And then there’s the others. You were a part of the whole thing.’

  Tears sprang up in George Stanley’s eyes. ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen …’

  ‘Yeah, well it did,’ Murphy replied, standing up from the seat. ‘And now you’ll have to face up to that. Before we get there though, you can start making amends.’

  Stanley nodded slowly, rubbing his eyes free of tears with his good hand. ‘How?’

  ‘We need to find him.’

  George Stanley began shaking his head, before Murphy cut in.

  ‘I don’t want to hear anything about you not knowing where he is or any of that bollocks.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stanley replied in a quiet voice. ‘What … where do I start?’

  ‘At the beginning. The first meeting you had with him. Who was there?’

  ‘I saw him a couple of times, with the old guy in the pub. He was just there, you know? One day. He spoke to the auld fella like he’d known him for a while. Soon, there were five of us. It was obvious really who was leading the whole thing, but we were just excited at first.’

  ‘Who was leading it?’

  George Stanley breathed out, long and loud. ‘Alan Bimpson. We just went along with what he was saying.’

  Murphy leant on the bed stand, not taking his eyes off George Stanley. ‘Tell me about the first.’

  ‘The auld fella was having problems with some teenagers hanging around his house. He’d come into the pub shaking most evenings. They were terrorising him. He’d been to your lot loads of times, but nothing had been done. At first I thought we were just going to knock a few heads together, but they wanted more.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Alan and the auld fella.’

  ‘What was the auld fella’s name?’ DC Harris said, the sudden interruption causing Murphy’s head to snap towards him.

  ‘I don’t know. People used to call him Major, like that guy from Fawlty Towers. Remember that show?’

  Murphy ignored the question. ‘So, the Major comes in telling his tale of woe. Some kids are messing up his garden or whatever …’

  ‘They were doing worse than that.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Murphy replied, dismissing Stanley. ‘You think you’re all going to beat up some kids …’

  ‘They were hardly kids …’

  ‘And instead you, what?’ Murphy said, ignoring George Stanley’s interruption. ‘You kidnap them and lock them up at a farm?’

  ‘Well … they already had one there.’

  Murphy shook his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We found out later that Bimpson and the auld fella had picked one up already. Some lad who they caught trying to break into a house or something. He was the boy we put outside the church. Dean Hughes. We came in for the big lad.’

  Murphy thought about the victim tied to the rack. ‘Black guy? About six two?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Murphy nodded. ‘So, he could take Dean Hughes alone, but needed help with the bigger lad. Sound about right?’

  George Stanley nodded.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘It … we took a few more,’ Stanley said, his chin tucked into his chest. ‘I watched, mostly. We had cameras set up and that.’

  ‘Yeah, we found those.’

  ‘Just to see what effect we were having, nothing more than that. There was no paedo
stuff going on or anything.’

  ‘Well done you,’ Murphy replied, holding back a round of mock applause. ‘What was the plan? Beat the shit out of them, until what … they gave in and became choirboys?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  Stanley lifted his head. ‘We thought it had, but Bimpson made fools of us. One of the first ones they brought in, he was a changed guy. Respectful, disciplined, willing. We were going to let him go.’

  Murphy laughed once. ‘I don’t believe this …’

  ‘It’s true,’ Stanley replied, his voice raised. ‘They never saw our faces, barely heard our voices. It was done like clockwork. Bimpson was supposed to take him home. We’d keep an eye on him of course, but that was the plan.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He never made it. Bimpson killed him. We found that out the other night.’

  Murphy was struggling to keep up with the story. Tiredness and incredulity scrambling his synapses of understanding. ‘Right … and your story is he killed Dean Hughes?’

  ‘Well … we were all there, but it was him who took it too far. The lad wouldn’t listen. He’d never listened. No matter what we did, he was still the same disrespectful little bastard he had been since we picked him up. He was only quiet when he was in the Dorm. When we tried to teach him, he turned. Bimpson just lost it. But we were all involved.’

  ‘What happened to the auld fella … the Major?’ DC Harris said, again surprising Murphy with his question.

  ‘Bimpson told us he died of a heart attack. Wasn’t exactly shocking, as he was getting on a bit. We never saw him after we took the first lad. He was always ill.’

  ‘So Alan Bimpson was closest to the old man then?’ Murphy said, sharing a look with DC Harris.

  ‘Oh, definitely. He’d talk about him all the time.’

  ‘And he never mentioned an actual name?’

  George Stanley shook his head. ‘It never came up.’

  Murphy waited a beat. Tears had dripped down George Stanley’s face as he talked, but his voice had remained calm.

  ‘You’re not sorry. Are you?’

  Stanley looked up and caught his stare. ‘Of course I am …’

  Murphy laughed, once, loud. ‘You enjoyed giving them something back. Getting revenge for your boy.’

  Stanley’s hands were shaking, small movements which Murphy would have missed if he wasn’t watching him so closely.

  ‘They did terrible things to people,’ Stanley said after a few seconds’ silence. ‘It was time they got a taste.’

  ‘You understand it’s gone too far?’

  Stanley nodded. ‘No one deserves to bury their child. I know that better than anyone. This’ll help though, right? They’ll know I helped.’

  Murphy stood up straight, the now-familiar crack in his back accompanying the movement. ‘I need to find him. We need to know where he is.’

  Stanley looked towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know where he lives, or where he might be. I thought he was chasing me, that’s why I hid in the woods. He’s not all there now.’

  ‘You’re telling me …’

  ‘He changed. He was going downhill for weeks. More violent with them, less willing to listen to reason.’

  Murphy moved closer to the head of the hospital bed, leaning on the safety railing so he was only inches from George Stanley’s face. ‘Tell me.’

  The tears were flowing more freely now. George Stanley’s shoulders shuddered in time with each drop.

  ‘I don’t think he’s finished.’

  The Youth Club

  The youth club was quiet, the evening session long over and a new day on its way. The only sounds he’d heard as he entered the building were birds beginning their morning calls.

  He shouldn’t even be there. There’d been a phone call at his house from his primary investor, as he liked to call himself, telling Kevin he had to urgently speak to him. Four o’ damn clock in the morning.

  Kevin Thornhill was sitting in his office, sweating in the crowded space, beads of perspiration emanating from somewhere on his forehead and then roving down his face, gravity doing its job.

  But it wasn’t warm in there. It was cool enough that he needed a jacket. He would have put one on – if it wasn’t for the six foot two, stocky-shouldered, crew-cut, scarred-face man pointing a rather large shotgun at his chest.

  There was fear. Of course. Kevin could feel it trickling down his trouser leg. But there was also something else. A knowing. There were facts he could understand, even as bile rushed up his throat, threatening to escape. And with that knowing came the knowledge that this was it. This wasn’t something he could talk his way out of. There’d be no going home, going back to normal. Not for him.

  When they say that time stretches out for you when you’re in a life or death situation, they’re lying. Kevin Thornhill could feel every minute, every second, passing him by. Passing by with his inaction, his ineffectiveness. His body’s refusal to talk, to negotiate. The silence grew around him, cocooning him, restricting him. His breath grew short, shallow, in and out, in and out. Hitching finally, as his body began to react in different ways.

  They talk about a fight or flight reflex. Kevin Thornhill wasn’t responding to either.

  They were right about being frozen.

  Frozen, scared shitless.

  His brain still ticked over. Thoughts banging into each other in there. Bumping and banging and running into each other in there. Inside, where it didn’t count. It was adrenaline, something told him that. A word coming out of the ether in block capitals. Adrenaline. Then it was his son and daughter. Pictures, not words. They were much younger than the twenty-somethings they were now. It was them at five and seven. Ten and eight. Newborns.

  They talk about your life flashing before your eyes. They were wrong. He couldn’t think straight enough to put things in order of his life history.

  He thought of his wife long after the word adrenaline. Then felt a pang of guilt that she wasn’t one of the first thoughts he’d had.

  He wasn’t saying anything. The man with the gun. Pointed at his chest. He was mute. Just staring, staring, staring … almost right through him.

  The knowledge of what was to come That’s where it came from. The staring eyes. The calmness, the ease with which he faced him down.

  The difference in him, the man he thought he knew.

  Another word … acquaintance.

  Benefactor.

  Family.

  Kevin tried not to think of what they’d called him after his first talk with the kids.

  Nutter.

  He almost winced at the word.

  Maybe they should have taken that jokey nickname a little more seriously.

  Still he stared. And Kevin Thornhill couldn’t help but stare back. Lost in the man’s gaze as his brain ticked ever on. Words, pictures.

  Why couldn’t he talk?

  At least babble a little?

  Beg for his life, for the sake of his family? If he loved them he would, surely? Why couldn’t he make himself talk?

  Fear, fear, fear. He’s afraid. He knows, he knows, he knows.

  He was going to die.

  Finally, the man Kevin Thornhill knew as someone other than Alan Bimpson spoke.

  ‘You told them about me.’

  Not a question. Kevin Thornhill’s brain – seemingly the only working part of him now, other than his bladder – told him that. No inflection at the end of the sentence, no question mark.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It just means less time for me to do my work.’

  Kevin Thornhill opened his mouth. He didn’t remember sending the signal for that to happen, but it was there. He tried to speak, but instead his mouth just gaped and closed.

  ‘No need for you to say anything, Kevin. I know everything you want to say.’

  His voice was so calm. They could have been discussing something dull or routine. If
Kevin Thornhill had had even a semblance of hope at that moment, he might have believed everything could still be okay.

  ‘You’ve been trying to help these kids. I know that. But you know the reality of the situation.’

  The man Kevin Thornhill knew as someone-fucking-better-than-this-Alan Bimpson … took a short step forward, his hardened, unshaven face coming even closer.

  ‘You know the truth. You can’t stop them. They’ll never change. You know why? They don’t want to. They’re happiest making others unhappy. That’s what they do for fun. They laugh at you, Kevin. They come here for the free stuff, the roof over their heads when it’s pissing down outside. Then they leave here and go out on the streets and carry on doing what they always do.’

  He wanted to shake his head. Say no. That it wasn’t true. That they were doing good work there. Helping to give these kids a chance at a different life.

  But Kevin Thornhill still couldn’t speak.

  ‘I decided you’d be the first only a couple of hours ago. Take away the ridiculous notion at the source. Drive them out like rats, make my job easier. They won’t understand, not really.’

  A moment of silence.

  ‘Of course … I say the first, but there have been others. All leading to this. My final act. I want you to understand, I’m not doing this because I want to. Not really. It’s just that … they’ll blame you. Think you had something to do with it all. I can’t have that. Your kids deserve better than to be put through that kind of attention. This is just so they can have a better life. They can mourn you, but then get on with their lives. You’ll never have to look them in the eye and wonder if they believe you. That you didn’t know who I really was. What I really am.’

  Kevin Thornhill swallowed. Another part of him finally coming to life. Acidic, sour, bitter, burning the back of his throat.

  He so badly wanted to talk. To say anything. His brain had given him a million and one things to say, but they wouldn’t come out.

  They would think he tried. His family wouldn’t believe that he just sat there, mute, frozen, unmoving. Afraid. He’d always presented himself as someone who could face down anything. He wasn’t a fearful person. He’d lived through worse things, he’d always say. Lived in dodgy places, dealt with dodgy people. Scary people.