“Five,” Alex snaps.
“There is none holy like the Lord.”
“Four.”
“For there is none besides you.”
“Three.”
“There is no rock like our God.”
“Two.”
Clement looks up and glares at Alex.
“I’m coming,” he sighs.
The relief on Alex’s face is obvious as he watches Clement slowly get to his feet. Taking a few steps back, he keeps the pistol trained on me as Clement shuffles out of the shed and comes to a halt just outside the door.
“Seems God didn’t listen,” Alex sneers, his confidence returned having salvaged the situation.
Clement takes a step forward, reducing the space between them to maybe ten feet.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he replies. “But if I were in your shoes, I’d be scared shitless.”
“Of God?”
“Nah,” Clement replies, taking another step forward. “Of me.”
Sensing the big man might be getting too close for comfort Alex swings the pistol towards Clement who responds by looking up to the sky. Instinctively, Alex’s eyes follow, and for a second both men are staring up at the dark clouds. One of them blinks first.
Clement’s right arm suddenly snaps forward like a whip. There’s precious little time for my eyes to catch up let alone for Alex to react. Before either of us can begin to process what just happened, it’s too late for one of us.
Alex’s right arm drops to his side like a piece of wet string the pistol slipping from his grip. As his face contorts in pain, he looks down and his eyes widen when he realises the full gravity of the situation. Protruding from his jacket — dangerously close to his heart — is a knife handle.
His legs buckle and he collapses to the ground. Even if my hands weren’t tied, there is no first aid I could administer to save him. I now realise Clement was only buying time with his prayers; an ideal opportunity to remove the knife from his boot and cut his ties. I should have known, and now it’s too late.
Two days. Two men, dead.
This time, however, the man I shared a bed with last night is responsible.
“What the fuck?” I scream at Clement. “Why did you do that?”
“It was him or us, doll,” he shrugs, helping me to my feet.
“But … you didn’t have to kill him.”
“I didn’t kill him. I threw a knife his way and the rest was just bad luck.”
He then steps across to Alex’s corpse and casually extracts the blade from his chest. A quick wipe on the dead man’s jacket before using the murder weapon to cut my hands free.
Ignoring the pain in my arms, I scamper over and squat down to check if, as I fear, Alex really is dead. I try to find a pulse, and listen for breathing, but find neither.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” I cry.
“People die. Sometimes they deserve it.”
I look up at him. “How can you be so cold? He’s dead for Christ’s sake.”
“What do you want me to say? Sorry for throwing a knife at a bloke who was about to shoot us?”
“He wouldn’t have shot us.”
“You know that do you?”
Whatever Alex was guilty of he didn’t deserve to die. Neither, I suppose, did Terry Brown. Yet, both men are dead and, indirectly, some of the blame for their premature deaths rests on my shoulders because I wouldn’t back down. From the moment I pulled into that car park at the stables in Surrey, I set off a chain of events which delivered us here. If I’d only driven on by, I’d never have known Clement existed. And if I’d never met Clement, Jaydon would have stolen my handbag and phone, and I’d have been none the wiser about the Clawthorn Club. I wouldn’t currently be stood in a windswept garden in Dorset, and Terry Brown and Alex Palmer would both still be alive.
We are both culpable for their deaths, but one of us more than the other.
“What is it with you and death, Clement?”
“Huh?”
“That poor woman at the stables in Surrey — she also died with a knife sticking out of her chest, didn’t she?”
“She was a fucking nutjob and died because of it. I didn’t kill her.”
“Just a coincidence then?”
“They happen.”
“They do when you’re around apparently.”
“What you sayin’?”
The bliss I awoke to this morning now feels tainted. And the man who created that bliss isn’t perhaps the man I thought he was.
“You didn’t have to kill Alex,” I murmur, repeating myself.
“I ain’t gonna stand here freezin’ my bollocks off if we’re just gonna go round in circles. The bloke is dead, and if you want me to be honest, I’m glad, cos it means I ain’t going nowhere.”
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Don’t ignore my question. What do you mean by that?”
“It don’t matter. It’s over, and we can get on with our lives.”
I wave my hand towards Alex’s corpse.
“Do you honestly think we can just move on and pretend nothing happened … after this?”
“Why not?”
His complete lack of contrition troubles me. It doesn’t, however, surprise me — we are from very different worlds. Naively, rather than being concerned about his casual propensity for violence, I romanticised it. I felt safe in his company and savoured the thrill of his devil-may-care attitude. Fuck, I even encouraged him, while ignoring his warnings about what I was getting myself into.
There’s as much of Alex’s blood on my hands as Clement’s.
“This is a nightmare. I wish to God I’d never heard of the fucking Clawthorn Club.”
Clement steps towards me but wisely thinks twice about putting an arm around my shoulder.
“Listen, doll,” he says. “You’ve gotta remember who the bad guys are here. I told you, right at the beginning, that we were dealing with some dangerous people. You can’t blame yourself for any of this — it was always us or them, and they lost.”
“But I … I didn’t think people would die.”
He risks putting his hand on my arm.
“You look frozen, and you’re probably sufferin’ from shock. Let’s get you up to the house, and we’ll work out what we’re gonna do.”
I don’t want him to be nice to me — there’s enough conflict raging in my head as it is. Part of me wants to run back to the car and drive as fast as I can back to London. Another part of me wants to scream at Clement for putting me in this situation.
“We can have a nose around while we’re there,” he adds. “Weren’t that the whole point of comin’ down here?”
“I don’t know. It feels so … unimportant now.”
“Give it a few days and you won’t feel like that.”
“Won’t I?”
“Nah, you won’t. You’ll wish you’d taken the chance to find some evidence of what those fuckers did over the years. And if you don’t do it doll, someone else will.”
A few droplets of icy rain sting my already-raw cheeks. It’s encouragement enough to make a decision.
“Okay,” I sigh. “But what about Alex?”
Clement looks down at the lifeless body. “Don’t think he’s goin’ anywhere.”
34.
As we walk up the lawn towards the house, I weigh up our options.
“Do you think we should call the police?”
“No, I bleedin’ don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve told you: I don’t trust ’em. And there’s a dead bloke in the garden which is gonna take some explaining. We’ll spend the next six months being interrogated until they find somethin’ to pin on us.”
“So, what? We just look around the house and then drive back to London?”
“Yeah. If you do find anythin’, you can still write your story but nobody needs to know where you got the evidence. Who’s gonna know we were even here?”
“Well, no one, but
I’m not so sure I want to write the story now.”
“Are you shittin’ me? That was the whole point of this weren’t it?”
“Yes, but that was before … before people died.”
I know journalists aren’t necessarily renowned for their high moral values, but the thought of profiting, both financially and career-wise, from the death of two men doesn’t sit right.
“And what about all the people who’ve suffered cos of the Clawthorn Club? What about that Stacey bird — don’t she deserve to know the truth about how her old man died?”
“I suppose.”
“Doll, listen: we did the right thing, and yeah, a couple of wrong’uns died along the way, but sometimes bad shit happens to bad people — they knew the risks.”
“And what about you, Clement? Are you bad?”
“That ain’t for me to judge.”
“Who then, if not you?”
We reach the end of the lawn and he points to a set of patio doors at the back of the house.
“We’ll try gettin’ in there,” he remarks, leaving my question unanswered.
I don’t have the energy to push, and plod wearily after him as he stomps across the patio slabs.
It’s no surprise when Clement tugs at the handle and the door slides open. Notwithstanding the homeowner owning a pistol, rural communities tend to be less concerned about opportunistic burglars.
He beckons me in and slides the door shut. The silence and warmth are both welcome, although I’m still not sure how I feel about nosing around a dead man’s house. I’d voice my concerns but Clement will only say Alex is unlikely to complain.
We’re stood in a modest-sized kitchen fitted with dated pine units. It is unremarkable in every way, and if there is any evidence of the Clawthorn Club in the house, it’s unlikely to be amongst the cereal packets and dried pasta. Nevertheless, Clement opens the fridge and has a quick nose before reaching in and extracting a plate containing a sausage roll. One bite and half of the sausage roll is no more.
I glare at him.
“What? I ain’t eaten since breakfast.”
Ten minutes ago he was extracting a knife from the chest of a dead man, and now he’s casually munching on that dead man’s evening snack.
“Waste not, want not,” he adds, popping the other half into his mouth.
I roll my eyes and nod towards the only door. A thought occurs.
“Shit,” I hiss. “What if there’s someone else in the house?”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know — what about whoever Alex was supposed to meet at two o’clock? And there’s no way he could have moved you to the shed without assistance so someone else must have been here at some point.”
“Where are they now then? Why aren’t they in here trying to stop us nosing around?”
It’s a valid question, and one I can’t answer.
“Maybe there was someone here and they left. Think about it, doll — why didn’t they come outside and help matey deal with us in the shed? It would have been a damn sight less risky if someone else was there to cover his back.”
Perhaps he’s right. You only have to look at Clement to know what a threat he poses, and even armed it would have been a reckless decision dealing with him alone unless there was no other choice. Ultimately, the point is made by the fact Alex is now dead and we’re not.
“I guess so.”
“The Tallyman is gone,” he adds. “Let’s just find what we came here for and be on our way.”
“Alright,” I concede. “Just be careful.”
Clement closes the fridge and beckons me to follow him through the kitchen door.
We enter a hallway with the front door at the far end and three other doors: all shut. My sodden trainers squeak on the parquet flooring as I take a few tentative steps forward. Alex wasn’t exactly known for his love of contemporary interior design, but the floral wallpaper and bland prints of rural scenes make the space feel particularly jaded, old-fashioned even.
Clement opens the first door which turns out to be a cloakroom.
We continue up the hallway towards the front door. Reaching the end, we have three options: one of the two doors opposite each other, or the stairs up to the first floor. I suppose there is a fourth option in that we could open the front door and leave, but no matter how dreadful this afternoon has been, I’ve nudged my own curiosity awake now.
Clement opens the door on my right and a waft of warm air escapes what is clearly the lounge. Again, the furnishings are dated but the open fireplace, thick carpet, and soft lighting from a standard lamp provide a cosy feel. Memories of wintry afternoons spent at my nan’s old bungalow flood back.
“Nothing like a real fire,” Clement comments. “Don’t see ’em so much these days.”
The glowing embers suggest Alex was enjoying a roaring fire earlier as we froze to death in the shed. My pity for his untimely demise wanes a touch.
Above the fireplace hangs a painting of a lake surrounded by rolling hills. There are two pillar candles and a brass carriage clock on the mantelpiece, and a couple of generic prints hanging from the walls. It’s noticeable there are no photos of family members displayed anywhere.
“There’s no other motor outside,” Clement remarks.
“Eh?”
I turn around to find him gazing out of the lounge window towards the driveway.
“If there was someone else still here, where’s their motor?”
“Okay. Point taken.”
Clement then makes for the door while I hang back a few seconds to savour the warm glow of the fire a little longer.
I catch up to him in the hallway just as he’s opening the final door.
“This looks more interesting,” he says over his shoulder.
I follow him into what was probably a dining room, but is now a study. The same size as the lounge, and decorated in the same drab manner, an oversized desk stretches across the back wall with a filing cabinet and bookcase lined up on the adjacent wall. There’s a well-worn armchair in the corner with a reading lamp for days like this where natural light is in short supply.
I flick the main light switch and head straight for the desk where two mobile phones have been discarded — our mobile phones. I can only guess Alex wanted to see what information they held before destroying them. I hand Clement his and slip mine back into my coat pocket.
Turning my attention to the desk itself the first impression is that it’s not the kind of desk where any real work is done. There’s no in-tray, no files or folders, and no paperwork of any kind — just a basic computer, a desk lamp, and a pot of pens. Something tells me it’s only ever used to browse the web and pay the odd bill. I move the mouse and the screen comes alive.
“Shit,” I murmur.
“What?”
“It’s password protected. There’s no way of finding out what’s on here without that password.”
“Guess we have to go old school then.”
Clement approaches the filing cabinet and tugs at the top drawer. It doesn’t open.
“Locked.”
“Great,” I groan. “This day just gets better and better.”
“Gimme a minute and I’ll have it open. No password required.”
He then dips a hand into his pocket and pulls out the knife. If it wasn’t so tragic, I’d have to laugh. One minute he’s wielding it as a murder weapon the next he’s using it as a handy tool to unlock a filing cabinet.
As he fiddles with the lock I turn my attention to the bookcase. The shelves house a broad range of books including many of the classics from the likes of Orwell, Dickens, and Hemingway. There’s also numerous biographies — many of which were penned by journalists. It’s a crying shame their wisdom never rubbed-off on Alex — we might never have reached this point.
A metallic clunk interrupts my browsing.
“Got it,” Clement says.
I return to his side as he slides open the top drawer. It contains several dozen ha
nging files; each with a plastic tab at the top labelled with just three capital letters. The first file is labelled AJB, the second AMR, and the third BSO. Scanning the rest of the tabs the filing system appears to run alphabetically.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Clement asks.
“Only one way to find out.”
I extract the first file and open it up. All it contains are three sheets of paper with no more than a few paragraphs of text printed on each sheet. We stand silently and read the first sheet.
“Shit,” Clement murmurs.
“Shit indeed.”
The same three letters on the tab are repeated throughout the text, and it soon becomes obvious those letters are initials. Whoever AJB is, or was, their first favour is listed in detail, along with the initials of who received it. It seems AJB provided an advanced warning about the annual financial statement of a major bank. That statement included details of significant losses, and the recipient of that information was able to sell their shares in that bank before the bad news became public and the shares plummeted in value. Essentially, AJB was guilty of insider trading.
“This what you were hoping for, doll?”
I move on to the second sheet and quickly digest details of a favour AJB received, and the initials of who granted it.
“It is … almost.”
“Almost?”
“I’m going to guess these files list the specifics of all the favours granted and received by members of the Clawthorn Club. However, there’s no mention of anyone’s full name.”
“So?”
“How many people in the country have the initials AJB?”
“Fuck knows. A lot?”
“Precisely. Whoever devised this system was clever enough to ensure the files were useless from an evidential perspective. AJB might have been doling out financial secrets but there’s no conclusive way of knowing AJB’s true identity.”
“Triffic. We’re wasting our time then?”
“I’m afraid … wait.”
“What?”
The realisation, when it suddenly arrives, is so overwhelming I can scarcely catch my breath. Slack-jawed, I look up at Clement but he clearly hasn’t made the same connection.
“These files,” I gulp. “Are useless, unless …”
I take a moment to let a sudden rush of adrenalin settle.
Clawthorn (Clement Book 3) Page 30