by S. B. Caves
‘You’re not going to talk your way out of this.’
‘I know. You said that already. It’s just, something confuses me about the story you just told me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. You still haven’t told me why you think it was me that stabbed your wife.’
‘It’s you because I saw you.’
Morley looked at the floor, his face stoic with concentration. ‘When did you say this happened again?’
‘You know when.’
‘And you saw me running into the back of a car? What did I look like?’
‘Don’t fucking play mind games with me,’ Jack growled, flexing his fingers. ‘You think you can outsmart me? You think you’re going to confuse me?’
‘Jack, why don’t we assume I’ve done a lot of drugs over the years and my memory might not be so great.’
‘This isn’t a court of law. You’re not going to get off on a technicality.’
‘I know. I know. But if you want the truth out of me, why don’t we just assume that my memory is all fucked up?’
Jack left the oiling room. He came back a moment later with a laptop in one hand and a nail gun in the other. He set the laptop down on a box and clicked play on the video.
Morley’s dragon eyes squinted for a second, his mouth hanging open stupidly. Then he frowned, before a wry smile tugged at his dry lips. ‘I haven’t seen this in a long time.’
‘Money Up Front,’ Jack said, and then, to Morley’s surprise, Jack began lip-syncing the words to the opening verse.
Morley tried to clear his throat but there was no saliva, so instead he swallowed painfully, and said, ‘I don’t know what—’
‘This is my favourite part,’ Jack said, cutting him short. ‘Money up front or I’ll be at your door with the blade out. Pay what you owe or I’ll carve your face out. You must have realised that you rhymed “out” with “out” when you wrote this, didn’t you? You’re not exactly Eminem, are you?’
‘I was only a kid. I was just… I was just talking, you know.’
‘Just talking? That’s not what it sounds like to me, Mister Flashy. In fact it sounds very specific, doesn’t it?’
A single bead of perspiration ran down the bridge of Morley’s nose. ‘No. Come on, you can’t be serious.’
‘You came to my door and you stabbed my wife. I’ll be at your door with the blade out. That’s what you say in the video. You meaning to tell me that it’s just a coincidence, is that it?’ Jack was spitting as he spoke.
‘No, I mean… yeah, it is. That music shit was just a phase, everyone was doing it. My friend, he had a studio and… we’d say all kinds of stupid shit and—’
Jack snatched the nail gun off the workbench. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘No,’ Morley said.
‘It’s a nail gun.’
‘Look, you said you saw me through your curtains and then you went into the hallway and I was in the back of a car. You said I looked at you and smiled.’ He heard the low squeak as Jack’s hand tightened around the nail gun. ‘When I was running away, what did I look like?’
Jack’s lips pressed together tightly, his nostrils flaring to accommodate the force of his exhalations. ‘You had your trousers hanging off your arse.’
‘What else?’
Jack raised the nail gun and fired. There was a loud thud behind Morley’s head as a nail flew out and thumped into a box.
Morley’s face remained impassive. ‘You saw someone from behind, running into a car. You can’t describe them better than that?’
Jack walked over to Morley and crouched in front of him. Face-to-face, Jack could smell the stink of the man; his sour breath, his salty sweat.
‘You laughed at me,’ Jack said, so quietly that even in the silence of the warehouse Morley had to strain to hear him. ‘You laughed because you thought I’d never catch up to you. But you didn’t think past tomorrow, did you? You thought you were invincible. Now here you are. You don’t have a smile for me now, do you, Craig?’
‘No,’ Morley replied, without meeting Jack’s eyes.
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘There isn’t much to smile about.’
‘That’s exactly right. You knocked on my door, and when my wife answered, you stabbed her in the neck and ran off like a little coward.’ He pressed the nail gun against Morley’s bandaged forehead. ‘You will tell me why you did it.’
‘When am I supposed to have killed your wife? Will you tell me that at least?’
‘You’re a snake and you think lying will save your skin. But it won’t.’
‘Are you saying this all happened back then, before I made that video? I was a kid! Look at the size of me in that video. I couldn’t have run down your driveway if you had paid me a million pounds.’
‘You want me to kill you, don’t you?’
‘No. But you’re going to anyway. Even though you know I’m innocent.’
‘Innocent? How dare you?’ Jack shook his head and laughed darkly. ‘Innocent? That offends me. It offends me that you would apply a word like that to yourself. You have never been innocent of anything in your entire disgusting life.’
‘Fine. I’m a bastard. I’m a worthless piece of shit. But I didn’t kill your wife.’ Morley’s lips curled at the corners and his face seemed to brighten and come alive. ‘And I think you’re starting to realise that, aren’t you?’
Jack pulled the trigger on the nail gun. Morley made a sound that was something between a scream and a grunt, and then laughed airily. Jack looked at the nail gun, perplexed. It was jammed. Colin had probably been dicking around with it, shooting cans on his lunch break or something. Thank god it had jammed, Jack thought. That momentary loss of control almost blew everything.
Jack set the nail gun down. He went into his pocket, opened the blade of his knife and brought the tip to the dark flesh beneath Morley’s eyes.
‘I could live to be a thousand years old, Craig, and I’d never forget these pretty green peepers of yours. I bet these eyes have got you into trouble a lot in the past, haven’t they? Wouldn’t take much to pick you out of a fucking line-up. Isn’t that right, Flashy Boy?’ Gently, Jack prodded the tip of the knife toward the rim of Morley’s eye. ‘I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you.’
The knife pricked the thin membrane of skin just beneath the lashes. Craig turned his head away from the knife and felt the blade slice across his cheek. He screamed. It was more from a release of tension than from the sting of the cut. ‘I didn’t do it! I can prove it! Just give me the chance to prove it!’
‘It’s too late for words now, Flashy.’ He grabbed hold of Morley’s throat and squeezed. ‘I’ll start by taking your eyes.’ He pinned Morley’s head in place and brought the blade nearer. Morley writhed and tried to twist his face away, kicking his legs. Jack had the blade a millimetre from Morley’s eyeball when there was a banging on the warehouse door. Immediately Jack’s hand clamped over Morley’s mouth. ‘Not a sound,’ he whispered, listening.
There was another banging at the door, and then the bell rang.
‘Jack! It’s me.’
He heard Emily’s voice and glanced down at his wristwatch. It was only five in the afternoon. She was early. He placed the knife atop a nearby box, stood up, grabbed the masking tape gun and taped over Morley’s mouth before going to the door.
When he opened it, she quickly sidled past him, removing the hood of her jacket. Her face was wild and flushed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. A sound travelled out of the oiling room; Morley was screaming through the masking tape.
‘How long has he been awake?’ Emily asked, her face a painting of panic.
Jack closed the door behind her, locked it. ‘A couple of hours. I’ve just been talking to him.’
‘And?’
‘He’s saying just about everything he can to get out of it. He’s going to take some softening up.’ He looked her up and down, saw the tiredness in her bloodshot
eyes. Her hair was frizzy and uncombed, and for the first time he saw silver threads at the crown of her head. How had he not noticed she was going grey? ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We have a huge problem.’ She was about to say more when Morley’s muted screaming became fiercer, more animalistic. ‘He’s making so much noise. Someone’s going to hear.’
‘Do you wanna speak to him?’ Jack asked.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I just want him to shut up.’
Jack nodded, signalled for her to follow him. They walked to the oiling room. Through the open doorway, Emily saw Morley writhing and straining against his restraints. Beads of sweat rolled down his angry red face and dripped off the edge of his jaw. He twisted and bucked, but could not find any wiggle room that might help his cause. Morley’s eyes fixed on Emily and he was nodding as though trying to convey his need for help. Yet when he saw that she was in no rush to assist him, the screaming and thrashing began to ebb. Finally, realisation dawned on him and he began to tally together what he was seeing. She wasn’t an ally. She had been there last night when they snatched him out of the car park. His face slackened, his shoulders slumped, and he became still.
‘Flashy Menace, meet Emily,’ Jack said. ‘Look familiar? She should do. She’s Kate’s twin sister.’
Morley shook his head, his eyes pleading with Emily. She looked away, and Morley started babbling behind the tape. The noise drifted out of the room and created a jagged acoustic in the warehouse. Jack shut the door and locked it. On a stack of boxes that lined the outside wall of the oiling room sat an old, battered radio with a broken cassette deck. Jack tuned it until he picked up ‘When Doves Cry’, and turned the volume up, drowning out Morley’s protests.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They walked away from the oiling room and Jack said, ‘He’s so slippery. He knows every trick in the book. Maybe I underestimated him. He’s a lot smarter than I thought he would be.’
‘Jack, we need to talk.’
He nodded. ‘Shall we go up to the office?’
They went upstairs to a small, cluttered office that housed one desk, two office chairs and a laptop. ‘Shall I make some tea?’ Jack asked as Emily sat down.
‘No, forget the tea,’ she snapped. ‘Just sit down.’
He recoiled from her reaction ever so slightly, and then eased himself into the chair.
‘You didn’t get any sleep, did you?’ he said.
‘I didn’t get a chance. I was a little bit occupied by the fact he’s all over the news.’
Jack’s casual, almost bored expression hardened into steely concentration. ‘What?’
‘I got home and turned the TV on. There was someone else with Morley yesterday. They saw everything.’
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘Of course there wasn’t.’
‘Jack, he was with a girlfriend and she saw us take him. She phoned the police—’
‘There wasn’t anyone else there,’ he butted in.
‘You need to be quiet and let me finish,’ she said, closing her eyes and raising her hands to touch her temples. The stress was congregating in the centre of her forehead and had been trying to burrow out all day. ‘His girlfriend phoned the police and gave a description of us. So far, I think all they have is that it was a man and a woman that took him. But she must’ve told them that he had a gun on him, so they raided his flat. You know what they found? Eight kilos of heroin so pure that they’ve linked him to all kinds of criminal organisations across Europe.’ She paused for breath. ‘Now they’re out there combing the city for him.’
Jack thought about it. Emily could not read his expression. Eventually he shrugged and said, ‘It makes no difference to us. In fact, it only makes things easier, doesn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That fucking piece of shit downstairs is not just a murderer, he’s a drug pusher too. So it isn’t just our lives he’s ruined. Who knows how many others he’s brought misery to with these drugs?’
She closed her eyes against the tension in her skull. Her frustration only fed the migraine. ‘No, you don’t get it,’ she began as calmly as she could. ‘This changes everything.’
‘It changes nothing,’ he replied immediately.
‘Jack, he’s got half the Metropolitan Police trying to find him so that he can give up the source of the heroin. And it gets better,’ she said, her voice rising to a manic pitch. ‘Imagine who else is looking for him – the people that want to make sure he doesn’t get questioned. You see what I’m getting at?’
Jack was quiet for a very long time. He seemed to be contemplating what she had said, but there was no worry or alarm in his face. He stood up and said, ‘Well, I’m going to make tea. I haven’t had one all day and I’m gasping.’
He walked out of the office, crossed the long, bare stock room, and went into the kitchen. Emily had to grit her teeth together to contain the scream of annoyance that was lurking in her throat. She went to the kitchen and saw him eating a digestive biscuit placidly.
‘Why aren’t you taking this seriously?’ she demanded, slapping the counter so hard that a teaspoon jumped. ‘Do you know what could happen to us? We could get thrown in prison for years or we could get horribly murdered. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
He waited until he’d swallowed the mouthful of digestive before saying, ‘It leaves us in about the same position we were in anyway.’
‘No, it doesn’t. What planet are you on, Jack?’
‘Look, don’t start getting all spooked on me now, Em. You can handle this. I never would have chosen you if I’d thought you couldn’t.’
She flinched. ‘Chosen me? What’s that supposed to mean?’
He shook his head irritably and then pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I mean… fuck’s sake, I haven’t slept properly, my mind’s turning to mush. What I’m trying to say is I wouldn’t have got you involved if I didn’t think you were strong enough. There, is that better? Kate’s your sister. I just thought you’d want to be involved.’
‘Yes, I know she was my sister, Jack. You don’t have to keep beating me over the head with it.’
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Calmly he said, ‘They’ve made a big fuss about him on the news this morning. And yet here we are.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ She shook her head. Then quietly, to herself: ‘What have I got myself into?’
‘If they had any real leads on Morley, then they would have got him by now.’ He walked up to Emily, placed his hands on her shoulders and softly said, ‘I’ve changed the plates back on the van. Nobody knows he’s down there except us.’
The kettle clicked, distracting Jack. He poured hot water into the cups he’d prepared. ‘We just need to stick to our original plan. We find out why he killed Kate, and then we make him disappear. And think of it this way, Emily. By taking him out of this world, we could be helping put away these disgusting drug dealers that prey on innocent people like Kate.’
She wasn’t convinced, but Jack’s calmness was almost contagious. Maybe if she did manage to get some sleep she would be able to think straight, and perhaps this whole thing would make sense to her again.
‘Did he admit it?’ she asked wearily. ‘Did he say anything at all that made him sound like he was the one that did it?’
‘Morley? No, course not. But I could see it in his eyes when I described what happened. I saw the panic, the fear. He’s been involved with people that are far scarier than me, Emily. And he’s probably talked his way out of far scarier situations.’ He grabbed the teaspoon, drained the teabag and tossed it into the bin. ‘This man is a different animal to us. We have to bear that in mind.’
‘You’re not at all worried about him being on the news this morning, are you?’ she said, and almost laughed at how absurd a notion it was.
‘Right now, all I care about is getting what I need from Morley and then getting rid of him.’ He smiled, but it was a caricature; like a robot
giving their interpretation of what a smile was supposed to look like. ‘You know something? This news could help us.’
‘How?’
‘He’s not afraid of me, but I’ll bet he’s afraid of whoever that heroin belongs to. Might give him the kick up the arse he needs to start talking.’
‘There’s one other thing,’ she said. It was something she had been thinking about all the way over to the warehouse, a piece of the jigsaw that didn’t adhere to the rest of the puzzle. ‘They didn’t find his gun. Or the hammer.’
Jack paused mid-sip. ‘So?’
‘Well, I mean, they didn’t say they found them. Normally they would, wouldn’t they? They’d say the police recovered a gun and a hammer at the scene of the crime. But they didn’t.’
‘So what are you getting at?’
‘You have your fingerprints and Morley’s blood on that hammer. That’s enough evidence to implement you in the kidnapping. And that leaves the question, doesn’t it?’
‘You’re gonna have to spell it out for me, Emily, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’
‘If they don’t have the hammer and the gun, then who does?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
May had almost eaten her way through a whole tin of chocolates but she didn’t feel the least bit guilty. In school, she’d struggled with her weight and had shuffled her way through a plethora of diets, never quite having the willpower to stick to one long enough to see any change. She had always been pretty and the rest of her body developed early, which gave her an advantage over the flat-chested girls in her school year. Adolescent boys were drawn to her large breasts, which had ballooned by the time she was fourteen. She discovered makeup and after getting past the fear of allowing a boy to fumble around with her, she began to rather enjoy it. Of course, her new-found reputation didn’t ingratiate her much with the other girls in her year, but by then she didn’t care.
The weight was no longer an issue – until she was married. The second she said ‘I do’, she opened up the floodgates for a torrent of abuse. If there was fluff on the carpet then she was a lazy fat pig who didn’t do housework. If she went shopping and had forgotten to buy something as simple as bacon or the specific kind of bread he liked, then it was because she was too busy buying snacks to eat on the way home like the greedy fat bitch she was.
