by Alan Gorevan
Wall stepped out the door of the big house. He was frantic. He clawed at his cheeks, running the fingernails from his cheekbones down to his jawline. A bad habit that he’d had as a teenager. He hadn’t done it once for over a decade, but now he just couldn’t help himself. His chest felt constricted. Ken followed him outside, and tried to calm him down, but Wall wasn’t listening. He was wrapped up on his own thoughts.
“Donnelly couldn’t have held out all this time. Why would he? I… I was wrong.”
Ken shook his head. “He did it. I’m sure he did. He’ll crack once he sees our surprise.”
Wall squeezed his eyes shut. “I cut off his fucking fingers, one at a time, and he stuck to his story.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. You’re right. I’m right. Even the cops are right. Everyone knows the little shit did it. We’ll make him tell us.”
Suddenly Wall burst forward and grabbed Ken by the shoulders.
“Don’t you understand? He didn’t kill Valentina. If he did, he would have told us by now.”
Ken shook himself free. He pushed his brother back.
“Get a grip, Barry. He’s tougher than he looks. You said it yourself. That’s all.”
“No.” Wall clawed his face again. “Someone else did.”
“Impossible. You know the evidence all points to him.”
“I nearly killed him, and he admitted nothing.”
Ken cocked his head. “Do you hear that?”
Wall listened. A helicopter.
“They’re coming,” Ken said. “They’ll be cautious about coming in. We still have some time. Not a lot, though.”
Ken started to walk towards the stables, but Wall turned and went back to the house. He opened the door with a kick of his boot.
“Hey,” Ken shouted, halting in his tracks. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring him, Wall entered the house. In the kitchen, he put his fist through the microwave’s door. He opened the door of the fridge, and then slammed it shut.
He made his way to the hall.
Stupid.
The rage was overtaking his rational mind, and he didn’t care. If he was wrong about Donnelly, everything he’d done since Valentina went missing was a mistake. Heaping pressure on Byrne to make Donnelly talk, trying to kill Donnelly, torturing him now, taking Byrne’s kid… even killing the barrister and that stupid, pompous judge.
That stupid pompous judge had been right. And Wall had been the idiot. He unleashed an animalistic howl of pain and frustration.
Ken was behind him, his hand on Wall’s shoulder.
“Barry, please, calm down.”
“Fuck that.”
“You’re destroying my house!”
Wall reached the hall, where the dart board was hung on the wall. Joe Byrne, Aidan Donnelly and Judge Roberts all stared back at him.
What if they were all good people – and he, Barry Wall, was the monster?
He drew back his arm and launched his fist at the board with all his strength.
Wall’s knuckles connected with the dart board, passed through the back, and punched through the wall behind. Wall stared at the hole. He pulled the dart board away and dropped it on the floor. He realised that a plywood door was blended into the wall. The dart board had hidden the handle.
“What is this?”
“It’s the basement,” Ken said. “Come on, let’s check on Byrne.”
Wall had known there was a basement. On the other side of the kitchen, there was a doorway down to it. He hadn’t known there was another entrance. One that was concealed.
Wall opened the door.
Wooden stairs disappeared downwards into the darkness.
Ken said, “Come on, Barry, we have more important things to do.”
“I didn’t know the door was here.”
Ken shrugged. “You weren’t in the mood for a tour of the house, remember? Your exact words were, ‘Don’t give me the estate-agent bullshit’.”
Wall descended the steps one at a time, moving slowly. He stood at the bottom, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He saw that there was a small window near the ceiling. The basement wasn’t completely submerged, but it was dim. Suddenly the room blazed into light. Ken had flicked on the light switch. A workbench stood on one side of the room, with a small steel box on top.
“What’s that?” Wall said.
He walked over to the box.
Ken said, “It’s nothing. Let’s go back upstairs.”
Wall glanced at his brother, then lifted the lid.
*
Maureen squirmed and wriggled. She was exhausted. After struggling for twenty minutes, she’d only managed to worm her way a few inches towards freedom, at the end of the rug which was wrapped tight around her. She still had a long way to go.
Claustrophobia had never troubled Maureen during her sixty years on Earth, but she could feel the condition sizing her up now.
She rested for a moment.
She knew she had to hurry, that no one was going to release her. No one was going to look for her here, wherever here was.
If she was going to get away, she needed to make it happen herself.
Was Aidan here too? Maureen hoped not.
She resumed her efforts, ignoring the discomfort and the stifling heat, forcing herself to move towards the end of the rug, inch by painful inch.
Faster, she told herself.
Before that man came back.
Chapter 94
When Boyle walked outside and shut the door behind him, Joe knew he wasn’t going to come back. Joe had to get Christopher out of there himself. Joe had known Boyle was corrupt, that he’d taken bribes, but he had no idea he was happy to see him and Christopher die.
Joe turned to Donnelly.
“Any tips for getting out of handcuffs?” Joe said. His voice was muffled by the clear plastic bag over his head.
“What?”
“People slip out of handcuffs all the time, right?”
“Why would I know anything about that?” Donnelly made a disgusted sound.
Joe knew that when you were putting cuffs on a suspect, the optimal position was right on the bone that juts out at the wrist. Not above it, not below it. Firmly on it. But that was not what Ken had done to him.
“You’ve got small hands,” Donnelly said, squinting at him from across the room. “Maybe you can slip out if you keep trying.”
“They’re not small hands.”
Joe swallowed. He could make out, in the dim light, the bandaged stumps on Donnelly’s hands.
Joe struggled to use his left hand to pull down the cuff on his right. It was awkward and he wasn’t getting very far, so he brought up his leg and pushed against the cuff with his foot. The cuffs still weren’t passing over his hands. Metal ground against bone, the sensation setting his teeth on edge.
“Up there,” Donnelly said, nodding to the shelving unit beside him. “There’s a tin of oil on the shelf.”
Donnelly kicked out at it. It took a few kicks to shake the shelf, and make the bottle of motor oil fall to the floor. Once it was there, he kicked it towards Joe, who drew it closer with his foot, until he could take it in his hands. The tin was light.
“It’s empty.”
But he unscrewed the top anyway and tipped the bottle upside down. A single drop fell out. It missed the cuffs and fell on the floor.
“Damn it.”
He kicked the air and pulled madly on the chains.
Christopher said, “Keep going, Dad! Maybe you can pull the chain off the wall.”
Joe lost his temper and roared at him, punctuating each word with a kick of his feet and a savage pull against the chains.
“I. CANNOT. BREAK. METAL. CHRISTOPHER.”
With an explosion of pain, his right hand slipped out of the handcuff as he gave an especially angry pull. He sat looking at his free hand in astonishment.
“Well done,” Christopher said.
Donnelly looked impressed too. “Fair play, Joe.�
�
Joe got to his feet. With one hand loose, he was able to reach the shelf beside him with his foot. He spied a pair of bolt-cutters. Hooking them with the toe of his shoe, he pulled them towards him. They fell on the floor within reach.
“Yes,” Christopher squealed.
Joe grabbed them, managed to cut the chains holding him. He tore the bag off his head, relieved to finally be able to breathe unconstrained.
He freed Christopher and then Donnelly. He had to help Donnelly to his feet. Joe could hardly stand to look at his bloody bandages.
“Take my son, and go out onto the road and look for help. Don’t look back.”
Christopher’s mouth fell open.
“Dad, come with us.”
“Go ahead,” Joe said. “I need to finish this.”
“But, Dad, I hear a helicopter. That might be help coming.”
“Even if it is, they might be too late. I have to stop that psycho.” Joe turned to Donnelly. During the last few minutes, Joe had been thinking about the torture the young man appeared to have suffered at the hands of the Walls. If he had known where Valentina was, surely he would have told them already. “Aidan… maybe… maybe I was wrong about you.”
“Now you believe me?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I was just trying to save a woman’s life. But I went about it the wrong way. Really, I apologise.”
“Apology accepted,” Aidan Donnelly said after a moment.
It pained Joe to think that Donnelly was a bigger man than he was. But whatever. He’d faced a lot of hard truths lately.
“Go,” he urged them.
Donnelly had lost a lot of blood. He needed to get to a hospital fast. Once out the door, Donnelly set off for the gate. In the doorway, Christopher stopped. He lowered his voice so Donnelly wouldn’t hear.
“That other detective? What did he mean? He said he found something in your car.”
Joe decided to be completely honest.
“John Kavanagh’s body… It’s in the boot of my car.”
“What? Why?”
“Your mother told me what happened. That she was protecting you. Well, I came along after it happened. I found the body.”
“Didn’t you tell anyone?”
“No, you would have got into very bad trouble if I had.”
“You hid his body to protect me and mum?”
Joe shrugged. “If anyone asks, you know nothing about what happened to Kavanagh or where his body is. I just want to get you to safety, ok? Don’t worry about me.”
Christopher ran to Joe and gave him a hug.
“I’m sorry for being a crappy father,” Joe said.
That just made Christopher hug him tighter.
“I’m sorry for being a crappy son,” Christopher mumbled into Joe’s shirt.
“You’re not. I’m proud of you.” He meant it.
Christopher looked up at him. “I heard Ken on the phone. He said something about a dead kid. And something about money. A bribe.”
“Later,” Joe said. “We can talk about that when we get out of here. Now go. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Christopher set off running after Donnelly. Joe turned the other direction. He headed to the house, to end this.
Chapter 95
Ken watched his brother open the trophy box, his most prized possession. It was something he’d never planned to share with anyone, but now that Barry was here, looking at it, Ken was riveted, absolutely fascinated to see how he’d react. Barry didn’t say anything when he looked inside first. Then slowly the skin on his cheeks seemed to sag and a choked breath came from his throat. His voice was very small when he spoke at last.
“What is this?”
He lifted up a necklace with fake opals and a metallic chain. That one had belonged to Susan Keogh, the second woman Ken murdered. He was still a beginner at that stage, and had made some mistakes, but he’d got away with it all the same.
Ken walked over to the other wall where his tools hung from hooks. He selected a claw hammer.
“What’s this?” Barry said again. He still sounded confused but there was a certain dawning realisation in his tone. He picked up a necklace with a bright yellow sunflower pendant. “Did – did you take this from Valentina before she died?”
“Who said she’s dead?”
“What?”
When Barry spun around, Ken smashed him across the side of the head with the hammer. The blow knocked Barry to the floor and left him looking even more dazed. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his head. He groaned, then rolled on his side and looked up with an idiotic expression on his face.
“What are you doing?” Barry said.
The detonator for the remaining portion of the explosives sat on the worktop. Ken hadn’t expected to have to use it so soon, but it seemed that the time to go was rapidly drawing near.
“Just what I have to do.”
“I – I don’t understand.”
“I think you’ll find it’s pretty simple.”
Barry shook his head. “It was you?”
“Don’t take it personally.”
“You took Valentina?”
“In fairness, you’re better off without her. She was only a prick tease. And you know how it is with girls like Valentina – they look so firm and juicy until they turn thirty and then they inflate like a fucking airbag. You’re left with a ball of lard that just gets rounder every year. I’d say Valentina was in her prime when we had her. It would have been all downhill after that. She wouldn’t have been any fun.”
Ken had thought she would have been easier, even if she was a raging Catholic. Ken had wanted to fuck her ever since Barry married her. He bided his time. Valentina wasn’t the only woman in the world, after all. Then there was that June weekend last year, when Barry and Valentina were getting the house painted. Ken had been after Valentina all week and she still hadn’t put out. He was the one who had put them in touch with Aidan Donnelly, recommending the painter to Barry.
A year or two earlier, Barry would have done the painting himself, but now he was too full of himself, what with his gym and his Z-list Hollywood clients and his whole big man schtick.
Ken knew Aidan was a dope, twenty-four years old, with about twenty-four brain cells, and an unshakeable conviction that the world was run by lizards, that aliens were behind 9/11, that the government drugged the population with chemicals in the water supply. A cocktail of conspiracy theory bullshit.
Ken had an idea he could use him.
Boy, was he right.
The day he killed her, Ken sent Valentina a few texts to get her excited. Then he’d gone to the house.
Donnelly had finished the painting and was loading gear into his van. Ken chloroformed him and tossed him in the back.
Then he waited.
Valentina was a curious bitch and Ken and knew she’d be annoyed if Aidan seemed to be hanging around in her driveway.
Sure enough, after just a couple of minutes she came out to check. She’d already called Barry, of course, but he hadn’t answered. Ken knew his brother had a packed schedule that morning.
Ken had pushed her back into the house.
She put a good fight. Tried to claw at his face up good, but Ken wore a balaclava so she couldn’t leave any visible marks on him, and so any neighbours, if they saw anything at all, would not be able to describe him.
He dragged her to her own bed. To her credit, she never gave up. Never stopped trying to get away, even when Ken threatened to kill Barry unless she was quiet.
He remembered her screaming, “Get your dirty hands off me.”
Ken had to gag her in the end. Once he’d fucked her, he took her downstairs.
“My dirty hands? Let’s take care of your dirty hands,” Ken said.
He was glad she was already gagged because she tried to scream the house down when he got the garden shears.
It wasn’t easy to take her fingers. He had to beat her around a little to s
top her squirming. He arranged the fingers in the garden as a joke. Barry always had hated mushrooms, the sight of them poking up through the soil like strange little creatures.
Ken left the garden shears in the bedroom. He figured Barry would find them there.
He took Valentina and Donnelly in Donnelly’s van. He’d driven them to a quiet place, then transferred Valentina to his car. It was a piece of crap he’d bought cheap for occasions like this.
Before driving her back to his place, he transferred a few tantalising clues to Donnelly’s van. Her underwear. A few other pieces of evidence for the forensics team to find. Then he left Aidan there, after splashing him with a bit of gin. Ken had no doubt that he’d soon be found.
After dropping Valentina to his place, he left her, with some reluctance, in order to go back to Barry’s house, and collect the car he’d driven there in. All the driving and changing cars had been a bit convoluted, but he’d had to do it.
Then he’d gone back to his house, and enjoyed a little more time with Valentina. She was still alive, and he fucked her again. He didn’t have to gag her this time, and it was funny the way she tried to fight him off with her stumpy hands. But all good things must come to an end, and Ken had to get back to the city centre, so he had finished her off with a pickaxe.
He’d showered, headed back to his office, and waited for Barry to call. It had been an exhausting day.
“What did you do with her body?” Barry said.
Tears were streaming down his face.
“She didn’t go very far.”
“How far?”
Ken had never seen his brother look so pathetic.
“Not far at all.”
“Where did you bury her?”
“I didn’t bury her.”
“Tell me what you did,” Barry said miserably.
“It’s the cycle of life. Every creature is prey for another. We’re all eaten up and shitted out the other side. But you can take comfort. Not everyone will be so delicious.”
Barry’s voice went as high as a little girl’s. “You don’t mean… you couldn’t mean… you ate her?”
Ken laughed. “Of course not. Why would I want to eat her? You ate her.”
*