Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  “Gabe!” his mother cut in. Christ, I thought, she’s worried about his language? She really hasn’t thought this through.

  “It wasn’t your husband who sent those texts,” I said. “It was your little boy, Gabriel.”

  “But why? Gabe?”

  “Because he gets off on it,” I said. “He’s been manipulating both of you for years. He got your husband sent to prison, and you would have been next, and he would have been free.” Social Services wouldn’t have had a hope of controlling him, I knew. They would have had no idea what sort of creep he was—any more than his mother did, even now.

  “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I’m sorry if I wasn’t there for you. I’ll get you help, I promise.”

  The way she talked it was as if I’d caught him shoplifting chocolate. He doesn’t need help, I thought. He needs sedation and a home where he can’t sneak out at night and burn people alive while he watches, fondling himself.

  “Mrs. Bisham, it was Gabriel who burned down that pub. Where that squatter died. He tried the same stunt again last night, and I only just made it out alive.”

  “It can’t have been Gabe—he’s only fifteen, for God’s sake—”

  When I was fourteen and coming up for trial I’d been assessed by psychologists, and now I remembered all the questions they had asked.

  “When Gabriel was young, were there any unexplained fires at your home?”

  “No,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “What about the cat?” I said. “The one that got doused in lighter fuel?”

  Bisham’s hand flew to cover her mouth, but her son merely giggled.

  “He’s accused me of murdering someone, and you’re upset about that stupid cat? Priceless.”

  She looked at him in disbelief, as if she’d given birth to a baby that was inside out but still alive somehow. Then she steadied herself, and tidied her clothes, and stood up straight. I realized the veneer of the hard-nosed businesswoman was all that was holding her together. She was pretending to herself that this had been a particularly challenging human resources problem, but now the issues had been identified we could address them and move on.

  “Thanks, Finn,” she said. “Would you let me deal with this?”

  “How?” I said. I didn’t say, Your son’s a psychopath. They set fires, torture animals, and from there they graduate to murder. You can’t fix this by grounding him.

  “I’m going to call the police,” she said. “And we’ll face them together.” She actually put her hand on her son’s shoulder to reassure him. Gabe had stopped smirking, I noticed, and wore the expression of a kid lost at an amusement park.

  “I’m sorry, Mum,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you, or anyone.” It was the least convincing performance I’d ever seen, but it seemed to satisfy his mother.

  “Where did Nicky Hale go?” I asked him.

  He smiled at me and sighed, as if he had genuinely liked her. “Who gives a toss?” he said. And I thought about Nicky, and the torrent of crap he had sent her way. Gabe Bisham had tormented her as if she had been a small animal, but at a safe distance—if he had tried anything face to face, Nicky would have crippled him. It wasn’t Gabriel who had hurt her physically, or any friend of his. I doubted he even had any real-life friends … although he’d probably make a few in prison.

  The phone in my pocket shivered and started to ring. I’d thought it had died hours ago. I answered it, my gaze locked on the brat.

  “Finn Maguire,” I said.

  “Hello, Mr. Maguire.” It was a woman’s voice, soft yet brisk. “We’ve been given your name as next of kin.”

  “Sorry—who did?”

  “There was a road traffic accident this morning, involving a Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn?”

  I was miles from home—not that I had a home any more—so I caught a passing bus, but it moved more like a hearse. At every stop some parent got a baby buggy jammed in the door, or some pensioner had to root for a bus pass at the bottom of their tartan shopping bag, and before long I was wishing I’d tried running all the way. Eventually the hospital loomed ahead, the same grey hodgepodge of concrete boxes I’d been so glad to leave that morning after Susie said goodbye. As yet another teenage mum wrestled her buggy and brats and her shopping towards the doors I dashed in front of her and hit the pavement running.

  I didn’t stop to try reading the signs in the hospital grounds, but headed straight back to casualty. It wasn’t empty now: it was late morning on a Saturday, and the waiting room was packed with crippled weekend footballers and amateur DIYers who’d drilled holes through their hands. Eventually I learned that Winnie and Delroy were upstairs in the HDU, whatever that was, and I ran for the lift.

  Like the bus the lift seemed to stop at every opportunity to slowly empty and refill with overworked staff and confused punters. I tried not to curse under my breath every time someone pushed the “door open” button to let extra passengers aboard. The doctor who’d called me on my mobile had been vague, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but my sense of dread grew deeper as the lift stuttered slowly upwards.

  HDU was on the seventh. I checked the sign facing the elevator as I stepped out, and paused to work my way through the wording. High, Dependency, Unit. Male wards to the left, female to the right. I looked around for a nurse or a workstation.

  Delroy was sitting by Winnie’s bed, his crutch lying on the floor by his chair where he had let it fall. He held Winnie’s right hand in both of his, and his head was bowed, and his lips were moving. If he was praying, it was bad, because he’d sworn Winnie would never catch him praying. But for now his wife was unconscious and perfectly still, lying on her back with her hands loosely by her sides and a clear mask over her nose and mouth. Breathing gear hissed and clicked by her bedside, and machines with digital numbers glowing green pumped plasma and colourless liquid into shunts in her left arm. When I looked at her my throat tightened, because her face was horribly discoloured and swollen where it wasn’t concealed by bandages or the oxygen mask. Delroy’s left wrist was in a cast, I saw, when I reached out and touched his massive right arm.

  “Delroy, hey.”

  He looked up at me, and tried to form a smile, but it was too much effort. The paralysed left side of his face looked like someone had taken a cheesegrater to it. He said nothing, and I didn’t ask how Winnie was doing because it would have been a stupid question. I looked around for another chair and dragged it over, its rubber feet squealing loudly in protest until I lifted it the rest of the way.

  “It was an accident,” Delroy mumbled at last. We’d been sitting there five minutes, or maybe ten, watching Winnie doing nothing, listening to the life support machines hiss and click. “I was walking her to the bus stop. On my way to the club where I do my therapy. We heard the car behind us but thought nothing of it until we realized it was right on top of us.” He shook his head. “Driver had mounted the pavement—must have been tuning his radio or God knows.”

  “Did he stop?” I said.

  Delroy shook his greying head, and rubbed his face with his uninjured hand like he was trying to wash the horror away.

  “Did you get a look at the car, or the driver? Did anyone?”

  Delroy shook his head again and stared at the floor.

  A hit and run? What sort of a rat would …? A dark thought seeped into my mind like some foul fluid.

  “Delroy? You’re sure it was an accident?”

  He winced and sank his face into his hands. How the hell would he know, I thought, if the car came from behind, and didn’t stop?

  All afternoon the machines hissed and clicked and every so often beeped, and nurses would materialize to check Winnie’s charts and change the drip bags. They brought us cups of tea that sat and went cold, and murmured to each other outside the curtains in medical-speak about volumes and liver functions. Time had slowed to a crawl. There was a window nearby but the lower half was frosted and the upper half showed a sky so overcast and grey it w
as impossible to tell where the sun was or what hour it might be. My phone had finally died, but there was nobody for me to call anyway; the only people who mattered were here with me at this moment. Delroy and Winnie had relatives in Birmingham and more in Jamaica, I knew, but when I asked Delroy if I should contact them, or a member of Winnie’s congregation, he just shook his head, as if he couldn’t cope with anyone else’s presence right now.

  Eventually I needed a piss, and went to find a loo; the first one I found had a sign that read “Staff Only” but no members of staff were around, and I didn’t particularly want to wander through the hospital in search of an officially permitted peeing place. I pissed, washed my hands and shook the water off, and for good measure stopped by one of the antibacterial gel pumps that were dotted around the ward and squirted a splash of that onto my hands. As the alcohol in the gel evaporated, chilling my skin, I heard two nurses at the nearby desk talking in a language I could understand for a change.

  “Are those policemen coming back?”

  “Don’t think so. They said he had given them enough to go on for now, that they needed to find more witnesses.”

  “What did this guy say?”

  “The husband?”

  “No, the driver, when he stopped he said something, apparently.”

  “I thought it was a hit and run?”

  There was a sudden harsh, short buzz from under the counter.

  “That’s Ling, in five—BP’s dropping—”

  They hurried from their workstation, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking urgently, away from where I stood listening against the cool corridor wall.

  “Delroy?”

  “Do you think she needs a drink? She must be thirsty. She’s been here so long, not even a glass of water …”

  I glanced at the fluids oozing down the pipes, keeping Winnie hydrated. Delroy understood what they were for as well as I did; he just felt helpless, and wanted to do something.

  “No, Del, I think she’s fine.”

  “She’s so still … I wish she’d wake up, even if just to nag me, you know?”

  “Delroy … what did the driver say to you? When he stopped?”

  “He never stopped. It was an accident.”

  “I know he stopped. What did he say to you, Del? Why won’t you tell me?”

  For the first time in ages he looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and weary but full of fight.

  “I know you, Crusher. You’ll think you have to set things right, go picking fights out of your league. Winnie wouldn’t want that. Violence begets violence, she’d say.”

  “Yeah, and you used to say, they come at you hard, come back harder.”

  “In the ring, Finn, not in the real world, for God’s sake—”

  “What did he say, Del? The guy who ran you and Winnie down?”

  Del was about to answer when one of the machines—I wasn’t sure which—started to beep, and then another, overlapping in a deafening, tangled electronic racket, and Winnie opened her eyes.

  I knew immediately that this parting wasn’t going to be peaceful or poignant. Winnie was terrified. She seemed to be choking, and her eyes bulged in terror. She didn’t know where she was or who was with her or what was happening. Delroy squeezed her hand and tried to talk to her, but she stared at him in confusion and fear like she was sinking into a mire of chaos and darkness and pain.

  I stood there, useless and helpless, until I was pushed aside by one nurse, then another, and now an army of nurses in scrubs descended, shouting statistics and readings at each other, and one tiny Chinese nurse ushered us all the way out of the room, murmuring reassurance, while the curtains closed around Winnie. The nurse pressed Delroy’s crutch into his hand and hurried back in, shutting the door behind her. As I watched through the wired glass the frantic activity around Winnie’s bed seemed to slacken, and I saw the lead nurse glance at her watch. I caught her grim look to a colleague and the tiny shake of her head, and saw them slipping on that emotional armour medics use when they’ve fought twenty rounds and lost.

  Delroy wasn’t watching any of this. He had slumped into a chair and was staring into space as if he no longer understood what he was on this earth for or what he was meant to do. But I knew what I was there for, and what I was going to do.

  “What did he say to you, Delroy?”

  “Finn, let it go. You’ll do something stupid, wind up back in prison, and everything you’ve achieved, everything your father gave you, all that will be for nothing.”

  “It was Sherwood, wasn’t it? Just tell me.”

  “I didn’t hear him, I’d banged my head, I was looking around for Winnie—”

  “Del, for Christ’s sake—!”

  Delroy’s shoulders drooped. “ ‘Mr. Sherwood says hello,’ ” he whispered.

  The door of Winnie’s room reopened gently and a nurse emerged—a doctor, I realized, when I saw the DR on her name badge. She was twenty-something, ash-blonde and beautiful, with skin as smooth and perfect as a doll’s, but her face was set in a solemn professional mask.

  “Mr. Llewellyn? I’m very sorry.”

  Night had fallen by the time I left the hospital. Saturday night, I remembered, when I saw and heard drunks in the distance hooting at each other as they staggered from one pub to the next.

  Delroy had wanted to stay with Winnie until the undertaker came, but I couldn’t do that. He made me promise to go home, and I said I would, but I didn’t tell him that I had no home any more, so I couldn’t go home if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t suppose Sherwood would be in his office at this time of night, but I’d wait for him until he turned up, however long that took. His office was only forty minutes away, if I ran at my usual pace.

  I made it in just over thirty.

  ten

  I’d already decided that if Sherwood wasn’t in, I wouldn’t wait—I’d break in somehow and find his home address and hunt him down. If I had time and no alarms went off, I’d shit on his desk too, before I torched the place. I was going to find that prick, and no matter how many Neanderthal bouncers got in the way I was going to hurt him, permanently. For the rest of his miserable life he’d wake up every morning and see in the mirror what I’d done to him and wish he’d picked another line of work.

  The alley beside the old snooker hall was empty and stank of cat piss and cheap cigars. Sherwood’s car was parked up in its private parking space, so maybe he was around after all, but I wasn’t going to lurk in the shadows and wait for him to come out. I walked up to the alley to his office and raised my foot and kicked one door, hard. It burst open like it hadn’t been properly locked, banged off the wall and bounced idly back. The stairs beyond stretched up towards Sherwood’s moodily lit landing, but no one came down to challenge me. Just as well for them. From above I could hear Frank Sinatra belting out some old song about moonlight and romance, so loudly no one upstairs could have heard me. I stepped inside, let the door swing shut behind me and pounded up the stairs, two at a time.

  The landing was deserted and the door at the end was ajar. That’s where the music was coming from, and I paused to listen, to get an idea of how many people I might have to deal with inside. My eye fell on that classical painting of a hay cart fording a stream I had noticed on my first visit, and I suddenly understood why it looked so out of place. It had come from Nicky’s house—it was part of that set hanging in her library. Anderson must have borrowed from Sherwood too, and fallen behind on his repayments, and Dean and his boyfriends had confiscated it the same way they had taken Delroy’s telly.

  I couldn’t hear any conversation or movement beyond Sherwood’s door. Was there even anyone there? I felt sure there was, or that someone had only just left—but why leave the place open like this? Now I noticed a smell too, slightly foul, like a toilet that hadn’t been flushed, mingled with something else, something stale and salty. My cold fury started to subside, and I found myself wondering if Delroy had been right, and I had rushed into something I couldn�
��t handle. Hell with that, I thought—I’m here now, let’s dance. But I tugged my sleeve up over my hand before I reached forward and pushed the office door fully open.

  Sean the Wardrobe was the first thing I saw, lying face down on the floor, his head towards me, one arm trapped beneath him and the other flailed out sideways with its palm upwards. He had been clutching his belly when he fell, like he’d been shot or stabbed. Now he was staring at the carpet with a sightless bloodshot eye and his nose was squashed flat into the pile like someone had stamped on the back of his head. No sign of Dean though, not yet.

  On Sherwood’s big shiny desk a briefcase perched at an angle that suggested Sean had been about to pick it up before being rudely interrupted. It was shut, but one catch had been flipped open. I reached for the other—it would take only a squeeze of my thumb to pop it, so I could lift the lid and see what was inside. But I held back. Something told me it was full of money, and I had stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago. The cheesy swing music came to a roaring crescendo of brass and then stopped, and in the brief pause before the next track started I heard dripping, from the cupboard or toilet or wherever that door behind Sherwood’s desk led to. Then the next Sinatra track kicked in, all jaunty and cheerful: love was here to stay, apparently. As I crept forward I noticed the odour getting thicker—a smell of shit mixed with mouldy vegetables, and under that an odour that reminded me of that shop in the high street my mum used to take me into sometimes on the way home from school … the butcher’s shop.

  The music was coming from a CD player on a sleek smoked-glass unit near the door. By now Frank was making my ears hurt so I hit the power switch with my elbow. Silence fell, broken only by that faint dripping, and the buzz of a bluebottle that flew past my ear and through the door ahead of me like it was hurrying to a party. I shoved the door open with my toe and looked in.

  It was a bathroom, but a huge one like a showroom display, with a shower cubicle filling one corner and beyond it a glass basin mounted on a plinth under a mirror surrounded by LEDs. Beyond the basin was the loo, and on it sat Sherwood in one of his designer suits, tilted forward on the seat lid, staring down with a look of surprise. Someone had tied him there, wrists behind his back, with a thin wire that looped up and round his throat. Then they’d slit his belly open, so his guts spilled into his lap and overflowed down the legs of his blood-sodden trousers.