by S. B. Caves
She entered the bedroom. The quilt was curled in a heap on the bed and the pillows were askew. He couldn’t even make the fucking bed in the mornings. She removed her towel, grabbed her pyjamas off the chair and slipped into them without drying herself. Then she got into the bed, pulled the quilt over her and closed her eyes.
She knew almost immediately that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The house was too quiet now that Roger had settled back into the rhythm of his work and this left too much invitation for her mind to roam. She thought about the hammer, the gun, the windows of the tower block. She thought about Jack, how he had turned to stone the moment they pulled up to Frazier Avenue. And she thought about Morley, how she had struck him in the head, the way he had folded on the concrete, the puddle of blood, so much blood. Without treatment, he would surely die from that head wound. Or maybe Jack had already killed him now that she wasn’t there to keep him at bay.
That’s what you wanted, her mind whispered. For Kate, remember?
She’s my sister. I love her. And she didn’t deserve what she got. She did not deserve it.
She reminded herself that Kate was the innocent one in all this, that it was her life that had been snatched away by Morley. It didn’t matter how much of a coward Emily was, Jack was right: Morley deserved to die.
It was no good. She sat up and turned the TV on, hoping a bit of background noise would help lull her to sleep. She flicked to another channel and was about to lie back down when something caught her eye. It was the news. The reporter was speaking into a microphone, live at the scene of a crime.
He was standing outside the Frazier Avenue estate.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was risky as hell, and Dillon didn’t think the girl would fall for it, but he had to keep reminding himself that he was dealing with a teenager and not the adult she pretended to be. When she answered his message, it occurred to him that she might be trying to set him up, to lure him straight into the hands of the law for questioning. But given his choices, he wasn’t in much of a position to do anything else, and he couldn’t give her time to settle. He had to pounce.
He watched Tara get off the bus, her long hair bouncing on her shoulders, her face oddly unsettling beneath badly applied makeup. She wore knee-high boots and a red bra was visible through a flimsy, see-through blouse; a schoolgirl dressed up as a streetwalker, shivering because she probably didn’t own a coat that went with the ensemble.
Dillon flashed his headlights at her. She didn’t wave or give any indication that she had seen him, concentrating instead on remaining upright in those ridiculous heels. While he waited for her to wobble her way to the car, he poured a clumsy line of coke onto a CD case and hoovered it up. His synapses exploded like fireworks, and he could almost hear his nerves crackling beneath his skin. An aftertaste of washing powder lingered at the back of his throat. He coughed, sneezed, and scratched his nostrils furiously.
He leaned across and opened the door for her, wondering whether she would need help getting in. If the circumstances were different, he would have found her baby giraffe strut hilarious, but as things stood, he had very little to laugh about. When she was settled in the passenger seat, he released the handbrake and broke away from the kerb with his tyres screeching and the exhaust belching black smoke.
‘How’d you manage to get out?’ Dillon asked. It wasn’t on his original list of questions but curiosity got the better of him. There’s no way she would have been able to sneak out in those boots, so her parents must’ve let her go willingly.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked flatly, examining her face in the wing mirror.
‘I mean, you would’ve had police all over you, and now you’re out here like nothing happened. Your parents just let you go?’
‘My mum can’t tell me what to do,’ she said. The sentence was edged with annoyance, as though she were indirectly hinting that he couldn’t tell her what to do either.
Keep it up, he thought, putting more weight on the accelerator and flying through an amber light that was a millisecond away from turning red. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what her mum was like, and if his intuition was right, she was either strung-out high or black-out drunk.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Thought we might go to the drive-through. You hungry?’
‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
‘Because you’re worried about Craig?’
‘Yeah. I still can’t get used to thinking of him as Craig, and not Jerome.’
‘He was using that name to try and protect you,’ he said, turning off into a retail park that boasted a selection of fast-food restaurants. He wasn’t surprised to see that the Clucky’s car park was virtually empty; he hadn’t eaten there since getting food poisoning as a kid from one of their greasy chicken burgers, and all he ever heard were horror stories of workers performing malicious acts on the food. He slotted the car in the space furthest to the back, and could smell the sweaty odour of the menu through his closed windows.
‘You sure you don’t want nothing to eat?’ he asked, turning the engine off.
‘From Clucky’s?’ she lifted a tweezed eyebrow and shook her head. ‘No thanks.’
‘All right, then let’s get down to it.’
A smile tugged at her lips. She leaned back into her seat, the leather squeaking beneath her skirt. ‘Get down to what?’
‘What happened last night?’
The smile dissipated. She rolled her eyes and expelled a short, exasperated breath. ‘You’ve been watching the news, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘There you go. Everything you need to know.’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
She huffed and shook her head, as though this was all a terrible inconvenience to her. ‘I thought you said you knew where he was. I thought you said he wanted to see me.’
Dillon pressed the button to lock the doors. ‘You saw who took him. I don’t care about what they’re saying on the news. I want to hear it directly from your lips.’
‘Did you just lock me in? Open the doors. Open these fucking doors or I’m going to scream.’
Dillon grabbed her by the throat, his fingers tightening around her windpipe. ‘You fucking listen to me. You’d better drop this bad girl routine and tell me exactly what you saw, and if I even think you’re lying I’m going to break your fucking neck.’
Tara watched the colour drain out of the world. Tiny black ants scurried across her vision and she felt something pop inside her skull. She reached up to his hands and tried to pry his fingers loose, but his grip was like a vice. Just as she teetered on the brink of oblivion, he released her. She coughed violently, desperately trying to suck in air, the muscles in her neck throbbing painfully. Her lungs constricted, stomach muscles tightening.
It was a few minutes before she could form words. By now, the windows were misty with condensation from their breath, and she could no longer see outside to appeal for help. She watched him snort cocaine off a CD case and could just about make out the devilish appearance of his bloodshot eyes in the gloom.
Without further delay, she told him what she knew. She told him that Craig heard his car alarm go off, went outside, and was ambushed by a man and woman. The man wore a mask, the woman didn’t, but it was too dark to make her out clearly. She thought maybe the woman had brown hair, but it could have just as easily been black. After that, a woman from the estate tried to help her, but left before the police arrived, not wanting to get too involved.
Dillon listened to every word, his face an unmoving, stone mask. When she was finished, he said, ‘You really haven’t told me anything, have you?’
‘I did,’ she said hoarsely, massaging her tender throat. ‘That’s all I know.’
‘The woman, the one that hit him with the hammer. You think you would recognise her again if you saw her?’
‘I d… don’t,’ she hacked and winced from the pain. ‘I don’t know.’
&nbs
p; ‘Well, we’re going to find out, you and me.’ He turned the key in the ignition, starting the car.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I have some ideas of who might have him. So you’re coming on an identity parade with me. And you’re not going anywhere until we’ve found the people that have him. So that foggy fucking memory of yours better get a whole lot clearer, fast.’
He blazed out of the car park, wiping his nose on the heel of his hand.
In a weak, childish voice he heard Tara say, ‘But I’ve got school tomorrow.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jack was sitting on a chair in the doorway of the oiling room when Morley regained consciousness. It began with a gurgle, then a few feverish, incoherent words, like a man talking in his sleep during a particularly nasty nightmare. Then, slowly, Morley’s eyelids opened. He blinked rapidly and then squinted at Jack, trying to focus his jittery vision.
‘Where am I?’ he tried to ask, but it left his mouth in a long, fractured croak. He tried to move against his restraints and Jack watched the confusion animate his face. Jack smiled, vaguely amused at the man’s expression. Morley’s pupils swelled to pennies, and as he strained to move, his waxy white skin became an angry shade of plum. Jack had washed the blood off Morley’s face and replaced his bandage, after applying a line of superglue to the cut on his scalp. He’d thought about trying to stitch the wound closed with a needle and thread, but he knew he would butcher it.
‘You’re tied up,’ Jack said. ‘You should try and relax or you might pass out again.’ Jack stood up and grabbed a packet of pills and a bottle of water from the workbench. ‘These are called co-codamol. They’re painkillers. They should help with your headache.’
‘Where am I?’
‘Tablets first. I need you thinking clearly.’ Jack broke two co-codamol out of the blister packet and approached Morley. ‘Open up.’ Morley’s mouth remained resolutely closed. ‘Your head hurts, doesn’t it? These won’t get rid of the pain completely but they’re very strong. I take them for my sciatica. Open up.’
Morley’s eyes burned with hatred. ‘You’re trying to poison me.’
‘You’re still a little bit muddled up from the blows to your head. But I can assure you that I didn’t go through the trouble of getting you here just so I could poison you. Now do you want the pills or not?’
The pulsing pain in Morley’s head sent shock waves through his spine. The floor tilted like the deck of a sailing ship in rough seas. His mouth was scorched dry, and he wanted the water more than the drugs, really. Reluctantly, he opened his mouth and received the tablets and the blessed, cool water.
‘They’ll kick in after about twenty minutes or so. Don’t worry if your chest starts to feel funny. They give you heartburn.’ Jack sat back down in the chair and took a gulp of water for himself.
‘Where am I?’ Morley asked huskily for the third time.
Jack could see the cunning gleam in those green eyes, could almost hear the cogs in his damaged head clicking away.
‘You’re in a warehouse.’
‘Why am I here?’ Morley asked, barely moving his lips.
‘We’ll get to that.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Do you think you’re interrogating me?’ Jack said, unable to conceal the smile on his lips. ‘You may be used to throwing your weight around, Craig, but you don’t call any shots here. You’re tied up and I’m not. You’d better make peace with it now.’
A thick cord bulged in Morley’s neck. His mouth was turned down in a sneer. ‘Who are you?’ he growled through gritted teeth.
‘WHO ARE YOU?’ Jack bellowed back, his voice exploding in the silence of the warehouse. Morley’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but beyond that, no fear registered on his face. He did not look around the room for anything that might help him. Instead, he kept his attention firmly fixed on Jack. With the rope pressed against his inflated neck, his breathing sounded phlegmy, and he opened his mouth to inhale deeper. ‘Who are you? That is the real question.’
‘I’m an innocent man tied up in a fucking warehouse,’ Morley said.
‘That’s not who you are,’ Jack said, his calmness contrasting eerily with the volatile outburst. ‘Let me explain how this is going to work. I’m going to ask you questions, and when you lie to me, or I think you’re lying to me, I’ll hurt you. Simple enough, yes?’ He went into his pocket, withdrew his folding knife and pulled out the blade. He ran the serrated blade of the knife over the scored surface of the workbench, curling off a thin rind of wood.
‘I don’t know what you want,’ Morley said. He was sweating now, beads of perspiration rolling down the ridges of his ruddy face.
‘I want to know who you are,’ Jack said.
‘I’m nobody.’
Jack used the tip of the knife to dig out a chip of wood from the bench. ‘I’m only going to be able to hold my patience for so long. You can keep trying to mess me around, or you can start talking your way out of this awful situation you find yourself in. So I’ll ask again. Who are you?’
‘My name?’
‘I know your name. Your name isn’t who you are.’
He tried to shake his head on instinct, and grimaced as the rope chaffed the skin on his throat. ‘I don’t understand the question then,’ he said.
‘Who is Craig Morley?’ Jack asked, blowing splinters from the knife. ‘Imagine this is a job interview, not that a bag of shit like you has any idea what that would be like, but let’s pretend. Tell me some trivia about yourself, some defining characteristics that make you who you are.’
Morley’s lips moved wordlessly, and now his eyes drifted around the room like a fly, never settling on anything for longer than a heartbeat. Jack knew he was trying to formulate an answer, do anything he could to gain some ground. Jack clapped his hands together loudly, disrupting Morley’s concentration.
‘Who is Craig Morley?’ he said again.
‘I’m…’ He sucked in air. ‘I’m just a normal guy.’ Jack’s face was as cold and hard as the ground Morley sat on. Dull pain chipped away at the base of his skull, making him jerk involuntarily. ‘I’m a dad. And I have a girlfriend.’
Jack nodded, but his face remained grim and unreadable. ‘So you’re a father. How many children do you have?’
‘Two.’
‘Boy, girl, what?’
‘Two girls.’
Jack nodded once and put the blade of the knife away. Morley exhaled. ‘You have both your kids with the same woman?’
Morley tried to nod. The rope strangled him. He winced and said, ‘Mmm.’
‘Didn’t fancy marrying her?’ Jack asked. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not marking you on this.’
Morley’s tongue slithered out of his mouth and licked the sweat away from his stubbly upper lip. ‘We plan to. Some day.’ It was a lie. Monica hated his guts and he hadn’t seen the girls in over three (or was it four?) years.
Jack seemed satisfied with the answer. ‘So that’s Craig Morley, is it? Father, devoted partner, generally all-round decent human being. Would you say so?’
Morley could see that Jack had set a trap for him but he wasn’t brain-damaged enough to go bumbling into it. He knew that all he had to do was keep his answers simple and direct.
‘We’ve all got our flaws,’ Morley said.
‘That’s certainly true, Craig. What would you say is your main flaw?’
Their eyes met in a moment of silent understanding. Morley could sense the oncoming violence the way animals could sense an earthquake before the tremors started.
‘Listen,’ Morley began, craning his neck so that the rope wasn’t pressing down on his Adam’s apple. ‘You’re obviously upset with me about something, and I think you’re gonna hurt me no matter what I say. So why don’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to have done wrong?’ He stared at Jack, and perhaps in some insane way he was trying to psych him out. ‘I don’t even know who you are. You don’t work for Dekkers, I can see that for my
self. But…’
‘Here is what I’d say your main flaws are.’ Jack stood up and rolled his shoulders. ‘Firstly, you’re a scumbag, aren’t you? If I had to guess, I’d say you were a drug dealer, which makes you a piece of shit, but maybe that’s all you’re really qualified to do. After all, with an arrest record like yours, employers aren’t exactly going to be climbing over each other to get at you, now, are they?’ Jack saw a spark of recognition fly behind the man’s eyes. It was as good as an admission. ‘You’ve probably done a whole list of horrible things. But if I had to sum up who Craig Morley is, I could do it with one word.’
‘Killer?’ Morley said. ‘That’s what you keyed on my car, wasn’t it?’
‘Bingo. You’re a killer. A cold-blooded, soulless murderer.’
Morley closed his eyes.
And then he smiled.
‘Who am I supposed to have killed, Columbo?’
Jack cracked his neck to the side and rolled his shoulders again. A nerve in his back went numb from the tip of his spine down to his buttocks; sleeping on the floor had been an awful idea, but the pain, which would usually stop him in his tracks, was barely even noticeable. He left the oiling room and returned with a framed picture of Kate that showed her smiling and toasting the camera with a glass of wine. It was a photo he had snapped when she had accepted his wedding proposal.
‘This is who you killed. Katherine Belinda Bracket. My wife.’ He held the frame in front of Morley’s face and watched his expression carefully. Morley analysed the woman in the photo.
‘I have never seen her before in my life.’
‘You’re a liar,’ Jack said coldly.
‘I am a liar. And you may be right about a lot of things, but this isn’t one of them.’ He looked up at Jack fearlessly and said, ‘How did she die?’
‘You fucking know how she died,’ Jack shouted, and the effort left him breathless. His chest rose and fell, his fists shaking at his sides.
