Sinclair

by Ryan Green

  After taking a couple of minutes to clean up, Angus got back into the driving seat and rolled on down the road towards his usual fishing spot out by the village of Glenboig in Lanarkshire. He trussed up her body, still half naked, and then tossed her into a copse of bushes at the side of the local lover’s lane, where she wouldn’t be discovered for sixteen days, by which time almost all of the evidence that could have been found on her body had been contaminated by the local wildlife.

  The police leapt on the case, and within a month they convicted a young man and known rapist called Thomas Young of the crime. Angus followed the story in the newspapers in the months that followed and couldn’t believe his luck when the police searched Young’s flat and discovered a makeup compact that Frances had received as a gift from a friend. Young eventually died in prison, still protesting his innocence, after his final appeal had been rejected by the Crown Court.

  Anna Kenny

  On Friday nights, the Hurdy Gurdy pub in Glasgow's Townhead was overflowing with bodies. It was sometimes described by the locals as a meat market, with men and women heading in to pair off with anyone who would have them for the night, but Anna Kenny and her friend Wilma Sutherland weren't interested in romance, they were just out for a night on the town after a hard week's work at the brewery. Anna had recently turned 20, and adult life and all its responsibilities were just starting to catch up with her. She had never felt tired before, sleepy sometimes, but not the bone-deep exhaustion that comes with a whole week of non-stop work. She had never been a heavy drinker and she would have thought that the stink from the brewery would have put her off booze for life, but she was learning how vital it was to relax at the end of a workday so that you could get a decent night’s sleep and be ready for the next one. Two young men approached them in the bar, one of them younger than her and the other one a bit older, with a nice thick moustache that made her think of her dad.

  He was so relaxed compared to the younger guy that she found herself gravitating towards him despite herself. He was a bit older but not so much that it felt gross when he gave her knee a squeeze under the table. More than anything, she felt safe sitting beside him. He wasn’t obviously trying to get into her pants like his friend was doing to poor Wilma. He was laid back. If something happened, then it happened; if it didn't then he wasn't going to be pushy. It was like he already knew how the night was going to end so he didn't have to worry about it. He bought them a round and when he came back his arm settled comfortably around the back of her seat. Anna didn't even think about shoving it off. It felt good to have that warmth behind her. When the bartender rang the bell and declared the last call, the guy didn't jump on her or get weird, they just headed out the door.

  Like a gentleman, he offered her his arm, and she couldn’t think of a good reason not to take it. She said goodbye to Wilma, who the other guy was still desperately flirting with, and her gentleman agreed to walk her to George Square, where she could catch the bus home. Wilma went off in the other direction, looking for a cab so she could get away from the creep who had latched onto her. He was telling her that he grew up just along the road, as if that would impress her, when they went around the corner and out of sight. Anna almost stumbled as they walked along Lister Street but the guy, Angus, wrapped an arm around her and supported her. The streets were quiet, and the first chill of autumn was in the air, so she was glad of the company—otherwise, she might have been spooked. They were just walking past a parked campervan when he drew her to a halt. She had hoped that she could catch her bus without this awkward moment, but she already had her speech prepared: ‘Listen, mate, I’ve had a lot of fun tonight, but I’ve been at work all day and I’m knackered. I just want to get home for a kip. Nothing else. Alright?’

  Angus smiled at her, that calm easy smile he had been wearing all night. He said, ‘Hey pal, don’t worry about it. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to.’

  He leaned closer and she turned her head away from his kiss, only to realise a moment too late that he was just reaching across to unlock the campervan door. He said, ‘Look, I’ve only had a couple, how about I drive you home? Save you the bus fare?’

  She was already blushing from her last misunderstanding. She didn’t think her dignity would take another hit. ‘No thanks, I’ve got my day ticket.’

  He took a gentle hold of her arm before she could step away. ‘Come on love, I’m really enjoying your company. I’m sure you won’t even take me out of my way.’

  She didn’t feel the fear yet. The drinks all night had dampened down whatever instincts she had developed in her 20 years of life. It still felt like a conversation. “I’m no being funny, I’m just heading home. You’re no getting to neck me in the car. You’re no going to get anything from me. You understand?’

  He held up his hands and laughed. ‘I’m just offering you a ride. No funny business. Scout’s honour.’

  She let out an unladylike snort at that. ‘Aye, I can just see you in a scout’s uniform.’

  He stuck out his tongue and pulled the door open for her and she climbed in without a second thought. The smile slipped from his face the moment her back was turned. He wouldn’t need to wear that mask for much longer now.

  Once the engine was on he went through the motions of asking where she lived. He even went to the bother of heading in that direction until she was lulled half to sleep by the gentle rocking and quiet music. By the time she realised they were heading the wrong way they were almost out of town. She pointed it out to him and he kept his jovial expression locked in place. ‘Sorry love, I think I’ve made a wrong turn. Give us a minute and we’ll get back on track.’

  Ten minutes later she came out of her stupor enough to realise something was wrong. There was a shrill edge in her voice when she said, ‘I don’t even recognise any of these streets. Where are you taking us?’

  He tried to shrug it off again, but Anna wasn’t letting him off so easily. ‘Oh, that’s your game is it, drag me off to the middle of nowhere and try it on? To hell with that. Let me out here. I don’t care where we are, I’ll walk. Let us out.’

  His smile flickered. ‘I can’t go abandoning you in the middle of nowhere now, can I? Let us find the main road and we’ll get you back in no time.’

  The chill realisation of the situation that she had blithely walked into settled in her guts like a cold weight. She shouted, ‘Let me out of this bloody car. Right now.’

  In the blink of an eye, his smile vanished, and the fatherly, cheerful expression contorted into something else, something base and predatory that tugged at the hindquarters of her brain and made her want to run. ‘You aren’t going anywhere, you mouthy wee bitch. Just shut up and sit still.’

  She scrambled to unbuckle her belt and her hand was on the door handle before he said another word. It wasn't quite fast enough. His hand slammed into her chest, pinning her to the chair. He took her breast in the palm of his hand and crushed it through her shirt until she squealed. ‘Shut your bloody mouth or you'll get a lot worse than a wee squeeze.'

  She started to cry. The nice man she had left the pub with had transformed in an instant—all of Angus’ daily deceptions dissolving away as easily as a normal person would change clothes. There was a monster in the seat beside her. A cold, calculating monster who had worn the skin of a man to get close enough to strike. When her sobs turned to howls, a cruel sneer crept onto his face. He took a grip on the front of her shirt again and twisted it, ripping it off her body as she struggled and wailed. Outside there was nothing but darkness; all the lights of the city had vanished around the same time that he had revealed himself. All that she could see were the road markings flashing by down the middle of the road and the hint of the moon behind the dense clouds. There wasn’t a sign of another human being anywhere. His fingers ran over the bared skin of her stomach and she shuddered and hunched up in the chair, trying to get away from him. He started braying with harsh laughter as they sped around a bend, and her naked shou
lder pressed against the cold window, making her jump back towards him.

  He pulled off the road onto a short dirt track that ended abruptly at the gate to a field. The campervan bounced over the deep ruts in the mud and Anna was flung about without her seatbelt. The moment they stopped she went for the door again, but he caught her by the tattered remains of her shirt and dragged her back into the campervan. In the back was a bed and beside it, he had laid out some lengths of knotted rope. He had been planning this from the start. He had been planning this from before she even met him. Anna tried for the side door, but he yanked on the shirt like a leash once more, tearing away the back panel of it entirely. Anna fell to the floor, wailing. He spun the tattered cloth between his hands to make a rope. While she was still crawling, he looped it around her ankles and tied her feet together with ease. He tugged off her shoes, and as she fumbled onto her knees, he ripped off her skirt. The sleeves of her shirt came off next. He kept one in his hand and tossed the other with the discarded pile of clothes on the floor. He tore her underwear off in the same way, leaving her cut and bleeding across her ribs where the underwire came free. He ran a finger along the scratch, revelling in her scream of pain and gathering up the dark red life oozing out of her pale skin on the tip of his finger. He stared at it for a long moment, then she whimpered again, and his passions reignited. He looped the sleeve around her neck for leverage and took her there on the floor of his campervan. She screamed at the beginning but then he just tightened the ligature around her neck until it gurgled away to nothing. Soon the only sounds were the creaking of the suspension, the soft music of the radio and the rhythmic thumping of flesh on flesh. She was dead before he was finished. He took his time cleaning himself up—it wasn’t like anyone was going to come along this road in the middle of the night, and even if they did, a parked campervan wasn’t going to raise any eyebrows. He tied a knot in the sleeve around her neck and looped it through the knot between her ankles. With a grunt of effort, he could lift Anna’s corpse like a piece of luggage. He grinned—that would make things easier.

  He followed the road that he had taken with Sarah on their way to their honeymoon, the last time he had felt as satisfied as he did right now. He remembered that there was a nice big patch of empty land by the side of the road on the way to Campbeltown. This late at night, in such an isolated place, he decided to give the girl a little dignity since she had given him such a fun evening. He dug her a shallow grave on a hillside near the village of Skipness, tossed her trussed-up corpse into the two-foot-deep hole and covered it with as much dirt and gravel as he could be bothered to shovel. That was two by strangulation now. Or three if you counted the wee girl from when he was a kid. He kept track of them all in his head as best he could. He knew from his prison buddies that repeating a pattern was the surest way to have the police link up your crimes, so that if they managed to catch you on one they could hammer you for the lot. He wasn’t going to make their job any easier. If he could just keep on changing how he did these girls, the police would never be able to connect the dots. They would never be able to pin the crimes on him and he would never have to go back to jail. Angus knew he wasn’t the smartest man in the world, but as long as he planned ahead and didn’t panic, they were never going to catch him out again.

  Digging the grave paid off for Angus; the body of Anna Kenny was not discovered for almost two years. By the time that her body was discovered by a pair of shepherds there was nothing left of it except for her bones, some tiny rotted scraps that might have been the rest of her clothes and the makeshift rope still tied tightly around the bones of her neck and ankles.

  Hilda McAuley

  The divorce had gone exactly how she wanted and completely ruined her life. Hilda was only a few years off forty and newly single. It was a nightmare. She had gotten both of the kids out of the deal and she had fought for them in the courthouse like they were trying to snatch suckling babes from her arms, but the truth was that the kids were teenagers now and wanted as much to do with their boring old mum as they would have wanted to do with their lecherous old drunk of a father. It had taken her all of two weeks of being divorced to get lonely. To miss the drone of the television in the other room or the snores of a reassuring weight in the bed beside her. She couldn’t have kept her husband after all that he had done, but that didn’t mean that she had to be alone, did it? There was a whole world full of handsome young men out there and at least one of them wasn’t going to turn out to be scum. She was sure of it. All that she had to do was set her sights a little higher. Last time around she had settled for the first man to cross her path, but this time she was going to raise her standards a little. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. There were girls jostling her on either side, preening with their hairspray or fidgeting with their makeup to make sure that they were the one to land a cool man tonight. She had at least five years on the oldest of them, and when she looked back at herself after seeing all those pretty young things her dreams all came crashing back down to earth. They looked like they could be on the cover of a magazine. She looked like she could be on an advert for washing powder, if she was lucky.

  She was chubby, her hair hung limp about her face like she had just been soaked, her perm was long overdue for a do-over and the longer that she stared at herself the more she heard the voice of her mother echoing back to her from her hen party more than a decade before. ‘You’ll never do better.’

  What a curse to lay on your child, what an insult—she could never do better than that loser? She could never do better than lying awake at night wondering if he was going to come staggering in and climb on top of her like she was part of the furniture? He couldn’t do better. She set her jaw. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he had squandered it, but there was a room full of men out beyond that swinging door who would be happy to dance with her, and a damn sight more if she would let them. And with rebellion burning in her chest she really thought that she might just let things get out of hand tonight if only to spit in the eye of her mother looking down on her from heaven with disdain.

  In a cloud of her own anger, she stormed back out into the Plaza Ballroom and weaved her way through the press of sweating bodies. That one was too short. That one was balding even though he couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. That one had his hands on that lassie’s thighs and she wouldn’t trust him for a second with those shifty eyes of his. One by one she eliminated her potential dancing partners until she reached the bar. There was the usual cavalcade of smells, the fifty different brands of perfume and aftershave that the young ones slathered on all mingling together into a sharp, musky floral mess. The smell of cigarette smoke dominated even that, but beneath it all, there was a weirdly familiar chemical tang that brought Hilda to a halt as she stormed past the bar. It wasn’t gin, she was intimately familiar with that, and it wasn’t some new drink that they had just cracked open because it was reminding her of her childhood somehow. A smell like her dad in his shed getting ready to spend the weekend fiddling around with the house, something that her husband could never seem to be bothered with even when the cupboard doors were hanging off. That strange familiarity drew her to a sharply dressed man at the bar. He couldn’t have been much younger than her, with a full moustache like that. Angus met her gaze with a smile and an appreciative glance up and down that sent shivers running up her back. It had been a while since a man looked at her like that. He bought her a drink and they fell into easy conversation, tossing the odd jibe at the state of the nightlife going downhill every time one of the young ones staggered too close.

  It wasn’t long until Angus was up and dancing with her, and between the rolling lyrics of Abba’s latest hits she could just make out the constant stream of flirtation. The sweet nothings that he was whispering in her ear that hinted at so much more to come. At a night full of adventures, the likes of which she had never seen before when she was shackled to her thug of a husband and trapped in the house by a pair of kids
. This man, this Angus, he seemed like a real gentleman. He wasn’t trying to get fresh like some of the young lads were doing all around them, though she probably wouldn't have said no if he did. She knew that he wasn't holding back out of a lack of interest—his eyes were raking over her body and he was touching her at every opportunity—so she assumed that it had to be respect, which was an entirely new experience for her.

  As the night drew to a close he took her by the arm and led her to the cloakroom. He pressed a whiskery kiss to her cheek and waited as she got her jacket back, then he offered up his arm and they headed out the front door and out onto Kilmarnock Road. She had a few drinks and she was feeling brave, so she leaned in close and asked him, ‘Have you got somewhere we can go?’

  The look that he gave her in return could have started a fire. Taking her by the hand, he led her through the dark and fog-shrouded streets until they reached his campervan, hidden away up a side street. She almost laughed out loud. Here he was, all put together and looking handsome, and he drove around in a holiday home on wheels. He must have noticed her expression because he laughed too. ‘She might not look like much, but this thing is great. You can go anywhere, anytime and you never have to worry about where you are going to sleep. I drive it every weekend. All over the place. It’s a holiday on wheels.’

  He pulled the door open with a flourish, and without any better ideas, Hilda rolled her eyes and climbed in.

  She made a beeline for the bed and wet her lips in anticipation, but Angus went right through to the driver’s seat and gave her a wink. ‘Just going to take us somewhere a bit quieter where the police aren’t going to come knocking on the windows and disturbing us.’

  She laughed. ‘Taking me to lover’s lane, are you?’

  ‘I might just do that. Come on and sit up here with me. Keep me company.’