The Last Weekend

by Julie Morrigan

  Chapter 22

  DeadManWalking led the way, Pied Piper-like, and the others followed behind. He went out of the sitting room, diagonally across the entrance hall and into the kitchen, where he paused while he looked around. ‘Let’s try in here,’ he said and stepped into the dry goods store.

  ‘I checked this all out earlier,’ said Mayfly. ‘There was nothing.’

  DeadManWalking came back out and scanned the kitchen walls, then shook his head. ‘You’re right; nothing.’

  ‘Is that a cockroach?’ said Technogeek. He shuddered.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There, on the wall.’ He pointed at a spot on the wall at the back of the room and DeadManWalking walked over to it.

  ‘It’s a hole,’ DeadManWalking said. ‘A keyhole!’ He ran his hand over the surface. ‘There’s a door, here, but it just blends in with the wall.’ He pushed at it, and there was some give, but it didn’t open. ‘Locked.’

  ‘Any sign of a key?’ said Indigo.

  ‘Not in the door,’ said DeadManWalking.

  Mayfly was rummaging through the drawers and SpeedKing was looking inside cupboards. They came up empty-handed.

  ‘Here, let me have a go at it,’ said JacktheRiffer. He grabbed the steel from the knife rack, and a frying pan. He positioned the end of the steel into the keyhole, then whacked the end of the handle with the base of the frying pan a couple of times and waggled the steel around inside the lock. ‘Try it now,’ he said.

  DeadManWalking pushed the door and it bounced back and swung open.

  ‘Nice one!’ said SpeedKing. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘There’s a staircase going down.’ DeadManWalking fiddled about on the wall just inside the doorway. He found the switch and the staircase was flooded with light. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

  He descended, and the rest of the group filed down behind him.

  At the bottom of the stairs, to the right, were the lift entrance and two doors, one with a glazed panel.

  ‘So that’s where the lift comes down to,’ said Indigo. He visualised the layout above and realised where this area sat. He tried opening the door with the glazed panel, but it just rattled in the frame. ‘Locked,’ he said. He peered through the glass. ‘Another staircase. I wonder where that goes up to?’

  ‘What’s that other door?’ asked Mayfly.

  Indigo opened it and stepped inside. ‘It’s a big cold room,’ he said. Looking round, he saw slatted shelves and a pile of body bags. ‘It looks like this is where we would have ended up, if the weekend had gone according to plan.’

  Mayfly looked in through the door but didn’t enter the room. ‘No one here, though.’

  ‘Makes you wonder where Reaperman is,’ said Indigo, coming out and closing the door behind him.

  To the left of the staircase they’d just descended was a storage area, somewhere it appeared old furniture went to die. Beyond that was a large rack for wine storage – empty – and further on again, a door stood ajar.

  DeadManWalking headed towards the open door. Stepping through it, SpeedKing at his shoulder, he saw what they’d been looking for. The office was sparse, functional, housing as it did nothing more than a desk, a couple of chairs and a filing cabinet, but they reasoned that it should yield some information that would prove useful.

  ‘You check the filing cabinet,’ DeadManWalking said to SpeedKing. ‘I’ll take the desk.’ They set to work.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked JunkieScum.

  JacktheRiffer craned his neck to see. ‘It’s a small office,’ he said, ‘there’s not enough room for anyone else to get in, but they’re searching it now.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Won’t be long before we at least know where we are, then.’

  ‘Here,’ called SpeedKing. ‘Bills and shit.’ He emerged from the room triumphant, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He started to flick through them. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘We’re somewhere near Grantown-on-Spey. We’re in the Grampians; we must have headed roughly north-west from the airport.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Mayfly, impressed.

  ‘I biked round here a few years back. Tore through the Highlands on a Harley. Great fun.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘Good work,’ said DeadManWalking, as he came out of the room to join the others. ‘It’s a start, at least.’

  ‘Did you find anything else?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Just this,’ he said, and held up a laptop bag. ‘Battered laptop and charger. Assuming it works, we can check what’s on those memory sticks, if we want.’

  ‘Technogeek was hoping to find a computer of some sort,’ said Monkeyboy. He looked around. ‘Where is he? He was right behind me when we came down the stairs.’

  ‘I don’t see him,’ said SpeedKing. ‘Hey, Technogeek! Where are you? Come on out, man!’

  Moments passed, but there was no response.

  ‘He was behind you, yes?’ said DeadManWalking.

  ‘Yes.’ Monkeyboy went white and swallowed. ‘And now he’s gone.’

  ‘Holy shit, people, how the fuck did we lose somebody?’ JacktheRiffer looked around frantically. ‘Did anybody hear anything? See anything?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Monkeyboy, and the others also shook their heads.

  ‘You don’t think he could have gone to the bog or anything, do you?’ asked JacktheRiffer.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, not without saying something to someone. Not the way things are. He’d know we’d worry,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Jesus,’ said SpeedKing, ‘this killer’s a ghost. He’s taken Technogeek from under our noses and we have no idea how, or why, or exactly when.’

  ‘I think we know why,’ said Mayfly. ‘He’s dropped a hint or two with regard to that.’

  There was a clanking noise followed by a faint humming sound.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Monkeyboy.

  ‘I think it’s the lift,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Oh, shit, poor Technogeek. Christ, he was just a young man. What the fuck he was even doing here …’ Monkeyboy rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Okay, people,’ said BlackWidow. ‘We’ve got what we came down here for. Let’s get back upstairs. Stick together. Hold hands, or at least grab onto the person in front. We have to organise a search, and I don’t want it to be for more than one of us.’

  The group trooped upstairs behind BlackWidow, each holding onto the one in front.

  ‘There’s a knife on the floor here,’ BlackWidow said, as she stepped back into the kitchen. ‘Maybe this is where he was taken.’

  They headed back across the entrance hall into the front sitting room.

  ***

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Technogeek was shaking with fear. He was tied to a chair and his head hurt, and he wasn’t sure either where he was or how he’d ended up there. The last thing he remembered was being in the kitchen, about to follow Monkeyboy down the stairs they’d found. In front of him now was a man dressed in black, a balaclava covering his features. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m your deliverance,’ the man said. ‘You want to die; that’s why you’re here, right?’

  Technogeek swallowed, but said nothing.

  ‘Well, I want to kill you. Seems like we’re a perfect match.’

  ‘I don’t want … I don’t want … this.’

  ‘Tough shit. That fella you kicked in the throat didn’t want what he got, either.’ The man had a knife in one hand and a metal skewer in the other. ‘Which shall I use first?’ he said to Technogeek. ‘Knife to cut your eyes out or skewer to the brain. Any preference?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Technogeek. His green eyes were wide open, glinting in the glow from the overhead bulb. ‘Please … I’ll do anything if you—’

  His pleas were cut off as the man grabbed him by the hair then stuck the skewer in his ear and rotated it.

  ‘Skewer first, then,’ he murmured, as Technogeek flopped forward in the chair, dead. Blood flowe
d from his damaged ear. ‘Now, let’s get those pretty eyes out.’

  Chapter 23

  ‘We need to look for Technogeek,’ said BlackWidow. ‘Who’s with me?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we check the laptop first, see if we can somehow get online?’ said DeadManWalking.

  ‘Getting online won’t save that poor boy. We need to find him and rescue him, if we can,’ said BlackWidow.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s any point in searching,’ said SpeedKing. ‘We know what we’re going to find and it isn’t going to be pretty.’

  ‘We might get to him in time to stop it happening,’ said Mayfly. ‘Besides, how would you feel if you had been taken and no one even bothered to look for you?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel anything,’ said Monkeyboy. ‘I’m pretty sure I’d be in no state to feel anything. I just hope if he does get me, he’s quick when he … you know.’

  ‘Do you think Reaperman or Scaredycat suffered?’ asked Mayfly. ‘I can’t bear the thought of that. This whole thing, it was supposed to be quick, no fuss, no pain.’

  ‘There you go again,’ said JunkieScum. ‘“Reaperman”, “Scaredycat”. They were people, you know? We’re all people. Hiding behind stupid names, I know, but we’re still people.’ She got up and started searching the room. ‘Where is it?’ she muttered to herself. ‘Where the fuck is it?’ She spotted what she was looking for, seized her prize and went back to where the others sat.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ripping open the envelope she held. She took out the papers it contained and riffled through them. ‘Tracey Thomson, that was her name. Not fucking Scaredycat. Tracey. And I’m Caz.’ The fight went out of her and she sat down suddenly in the nearest chair. JacktheRiffer knelt beside her and took her hands in his.

  ‘Hi, Caz,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m John. Pleased to meet you.’

  She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Hi, John,’ she said. ‘Good to meet you, too.’

  ‘Well, that was a fine little outburst,’ said DeadManWalking. ‘I hope you feel better for it. Of course, it achieved absolutely nothing. Scaredycat or Tracey or whatever she’s called is still dead and poor Technogeek is still missing.’

  ‘Cut her some slack, man,’ said JacktheRiffer, rocking JunkieScum gently and stroking her back. ‘We’re all scared, you know? We deal with it in different ways.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said BlackWidow. She turned to DeadManWalking. ‘And you deal with it by growling at people.’

  ‘Okay, point taken.’ He ran his hands through his hair then rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Indigo, SpeedKing, are you up to searching for Technogeek?’ asked BlackWidow.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What about you, honey?’ She looked at DeadManWalking. ‘Count you in?’

  He sighed. ‘Why not. We owe him that much, don’t we.’

  ‘Count me in, too,’ said Monkeyboy, as he hefted the cleaver.

  ‘And me.’ That was Mayfly.

  ‘Okay,’ said BlackWidow, weighing it up. ‘Now, we know he’s not downstairs and there ain’t no way any of us is going outside before daylight, so bearing in mind our bedrooms are all locked, that leaves this floor and the second floor.’

  ‘How about if the three of us,’ Indigo pointed to himself, SpeedKing and Mayfly, ‘start from the top, and you three,’ he pointed to BlackWidow, DeadManWalking and Monkeyboy, ‘search down here?’

  BlackWidow nodded. ‘That sounds like a plan to me. You two stay put and stick together,’ she said to JacktheRiffer. ‘That girl’s in no shape to go searching this house.’ She stood up. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘What do you think we’ll find?’ asked Mayfly, as she, Indigo and SpeedKing climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Indigo exhaled noisily. ‘Me, I’m hoping we don’t find anything. Unless it’s Technogeek running towards us with the news that he went ninja on his abductor.’

  ‘Yeah, that would do,’ said SpeedKing. ‘Super freaky spectre knocked out by lanky geeky gamester. That I would like very much.’

  ‘When JunkieScum and I searched these rooms this morning, we just looked for Reaperman or signs that someone was living there. Bearing in mind that concealed door in the kitchen, I think we should take more care this time and check the walls. Don’t forget, another staircase comes out in the basement.’

  ‘Don’t forget the windows I saw when I was outside, either. I reckon there’s definitely an attic. We need to find out how to get up there, at some point,’ said SpeedKing.

  ‘Are the keys in the doors, like they were with the bedrooms we’re in, when we got here?’ said Mayfly.

  Indigo nodded.

  ‘Well, then, I think we should lock the rooms behind us after we’ve checked them and take the keys away with us,’ said Mayfly. ‘If someone’s coming and going via the rooms on this floor, that might just make things less convenient for them.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Indigo. ‘Let’s do that.’

  They checked all the rooms carefully – first the four bedrooms, then the large storage area, then the first of the two bathrooms – but found nothing. As they exited each room, they locked the door behind them and passed the key to SpeedKing.

  ‘Well, it’s been all clear so far and this is the last room,’ said Indigo, as they stood outside the second bathroom. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  They went in and checked everything over. ‘Nothing,’ said SpeedKing. ‘I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.’

  ‘Relieved,’ said Mayfly, ‘no doubt about it. Come on, let’s get back to the others.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Indigo, ‘I think I see something.’

  ‘Where? What is it?’ asked Mayfly.

  ‘There’s something pushed in behind the mirror on the wall above the washbasin. I can just see a fragment of something. I’m not sure what it is.’ He tried to prise it loose. ‘Damn! My fingers are too big or my nails are too short or something.’

  ‘Here, let me,’ said Mayfly. He stepped aside to let her in and she managed to grip the fragment with her nails and tease it further out. ‘It’s an envelope.’ She pulled it free. ‘It looks like Technogeek’s declaration,’ she said, examining it.

  ‘Didn’t he say his was missing when DeadManWalking found the others?’ said Indigo, and Mayfly nodded.

  ‘Open it,’ said Indigo. ‘See if there’s anything else in there with it.’

  Mayfly tore the envelope open and took the papers out. ‘Nothing,’ she said, just the declaration.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said SpeedKing. ‘Look, there’s something written on the back, there.’

  Mayfly turned the declaration form over. ‘It says, “Look in the toilet cistern. You’ll find something interesting.”’ She looked at the other two, a feeling of dread in her stomach.

  ‘You know that’s not going to be anything good, right?’ said Indigo.

  ‘Maybe we should get the others,’ said Mayfly.

  SpeedKing shook his head. ‘That’s just putting off the inevitable. It won’t be any better or worse just because more people watch. Come on, let’s get it over with.’

  Slowly, tentatively, SpeedKing lifted the lid of the toilet cistern. As he raised it up, he saw there was a clear plastic bag fastened to it with Blu-Tack. Mayfly reached out and took hold of it, and pulled it loose from its fastening.

  ‘It’s a memory stick,’ she said. ‘The others were sealed in the envelope with the paperwork, remember?’

  SpeedKing shrugged. ‘So this one wasn’t. The envelope wouldn’t have fitted behind the mirror with the memory stick inside. It’s not sinister, is it? It’s just been done like this to unnerve us.’

  ‘It’s worked. He’s been here. The killer.’ Mayfly flinched, then looked around the room.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said SpeedKing, ‘he’ll be long gone. He must have been up here while we were all in the sitting room deciding what to do.’

  Indigo was peering into t
he cistern. ‘Folks, there’s more.’

  ‘Where?’ said SpeedKing.

  ‘Look, there’s another lump of Blu-Tack just above the water line. There’s another bag in there.’

  ‘But we’ve got the stuff now. There is nothing else,’ said Mayfly.

  Indigo fished out the bag. He looked at it in disbelief, then horror. ‘Oh, fuck! Fuck! Get out of here, get the fuck out now and lock this room behind us!’

  ‘What is it, love?’ Mayfly looked over his shoulder before he could hide the bag from her. She cried out in shock, then ran.

  Chapter 24

  The three of them tore back down the stairs. The people searching the ground floor heard the commotion and, within minutes, everyone was back in the front sitting room.

  ‘Okay,’ said BlackWidow. ‘I need you all to calm down and tell me what it is that you saw.’

  Mayfly still clutched the paperwork they had found that had led to the discovery of the plastic bags in the cistern. She also had the dripping bag containing the memory stick.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened?’ said BlackWidow.

  ‘We found that,’ Indigo pointed to the letter, ‘tucked in behind the bathroom mirror. It said to look in the cistern, and we did, and we found that.’ He pointed to the memory stick in the bag Mayfly held. ‘Then we found something else.’ Indigo swallowed. Panic was just below the surface and he was trying to keep a lid on it.

  ‘What else did you find?’ said BlackWidow.

  ‘We found …’ said Indigo. ‘We found another bag in the cistern.’

  ‘What was in the bag?’ said BlackWidow, patiently.

  ‘It was his eyeballs,’ exclaimed Indigo. ‘It was Technogeek’s fucking eyeballs! In a fucking plastic bag in a toilet cistern.’ He was shaking.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mayfly. She put her arms round Indigo, buried her face in his chest and held him tightly to her.

  DeadManWalking made a sound like a balloon going down. JunkieScum whimpered. BlackWidow rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Mayfly, honey,’ she said. ‘I don’t dispute you saw some eyes in a bag and that it was a hell of a shock, but they could have been anything. They could be false. They could be animal’s eyes. What makes you say that they’re Technogeek’s?’