A Killer Came Knocking

by S. B. Caves

  ‘I’ve been looking at houses in Bournemouth. You always said you wanted to retire there. And I found this one place I’m sure we can afford, and—’

  ‘No, Roger,’ she said painfully. They went to Bournemouth every year for Valentine’s Day, always staying at the same hotel by the sea. She had loved that tradition.

  ‘What is it, Em? What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I’m leaving and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘I deserve a reason, Emily. Don’t I deserve that much at least?’

  She started to pack, vaguely glad that she could take some underwear after all. ‘We haven’t been working for a long time now. You know that and I know it. Why don’t we just leave it there?’

  He left her to pack in silence for half a minute or so, before saying, ‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, too quickly to sound casual.

  ‘When you came back the other day, you know, that day you stayed out all night, I saw you had blood on your hand. I didn’t really connect anything until I had time to think about it.’

  ‘I didn’t have any blood on me,’ she said flatly.

  ‘All this weird business with Jack just turning up out of the blue. And then this other guy.’

  She froze. ‘What other guy?’

  ‘He knocked this morning looking for you. At first I thought he was a homeless man. He was pale as a sheet and had these scary bulging eyes. He was skinny too, like a rake. And before he started talking I thought he was some kind of cripple knocking around for money or something, because he walked funny and—’

  ‘You spoke to him?’ she asked, dropping a bundle of T-shirts to the floor.

  ‘Yeah. He asked if you lived here and I said you used to, but now you didn’t.’

  ‘What else did you tell him?’

  Roger grabbed the pillow, placed it on his lap. He looked down at the carpet and said, ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘Roger. What did you tell him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Roger whined. ‘I asked him why he was looking for you and he said he couldn’t tell me. But he said it was a life or death situation. I almost laughed at that until I realised he was serious.’ Roger tittered, hoping it would change the look on Emily’s face, as though she might suddenly see the funny side in all this. ‘The way you had been acting lately, I didn’t know what you were up to. So I said if he wanted to speak to you he should try getting in touch with Jack.’

  Emily thought she felt the room spin.

  ‘What was I supposed to tell him?’ Roger yelled defensively. ‘I had this feeling that he was telling the truth, that this might actually be a life or death situation, and… look, I haven’t done anything wrong, Emily. I’m not going to keep being your answering service and forward all your post. This is what happens when you break up. Sometimes there are loose ends and—’

  Bernard’s laughter cut through the noise in the crowded room of her mind. Bernard, who had been to the house once before for dinner and knew her address. Bernard, who she had used to get information on Morley and then taunted when he tried to turn it to his advantage. Surely she could have played him better, held him off for a little while until she had room to move, instead of firing off that text message. Had Bernard set the dogs on her? Had he paid someone to harm her, to—

  Life or death situation.

  —kill her?

  ‘Shut up a second, will you? When you say you told him to get in touch with Jack, what do you mean?’

  ‘I gave the guy Jack’s business card. I found it in your jeans the other day when I went to do a load of washing. Don’t know why I kept it really, but I suppose it came in handy.’

  The blood drained from Emily’s face.

  ‘Em, are you all right?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I am.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Dillon hadn’t been sure of how to approach the warehouse. The name on the business card said Jack Bracket, and that was all he knew about the man he assumed had helped kidnap Craig. It had all started to add up on the drive over. This woman Emily and this silly prick Jack had snatched Craig off the estate and they were keeping him at the warehouse. Why, Dillon didn’t know, and so far as he was concerned, he didn’t care.

  He’d had quite a battle trying to wrestle the woman out of her car. Fearing that he was going to force her legs apart or maim her with acid, she kicked and clawed at him until, for one insane instant, he thought she was going to overpower him. He got behind the wheel and left her bawling and screaming by the side of the road, waving her arms to try and flag down help. Like everything else, it had been a mess. Now, he reached in his pocket for the polythene bag. There were a couple of grams left, enough to dust each nostril and give him a kick up the arse when he needed it, but now wasn’t the time.

  He could feel himself tumbling. He placed a hand on the wall to steady himself, his other hand coiled around the car jack. His heart flapped in his chest like an angry bird. His first thought had been to ring the buzzer and crack the head of the first person that opened the door. From there, he would sweep through the warehouse, swinging the car jack like a battleaxe until he found Craig and… and nothing. It was a ridiculous delusion. Even if he had a whole ounce of coke to throw him into a berserker frenzy, he knew it wouldn’t work. His borrowed bravery was vanishing, and Dillon knew he couldn’t rush into this. He had no idea what was on the other side of that warehouse door.

  The twilight was deepening, the shadows stretching across the industrial estate. Dillon withdrew from the door and continued backing up until he reached a large commercial waste bin opposite the warehouse. If there was ever a time when he needed to think things through, to assess the situation and not go in there raging like a nutcase, it was now. Carefully he crouched down behind the bin, the car jack clanging noisily off the metal. He cringed away from the noise, expecting someone to come rushing out of the warehouse to investigate, but nobody did.

  He watched and waited, and thought about his daughter.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Emily jumped out of the Uber, grabbed her case from the boot, and raced up to the warehouse, the soles of her trainers kicking up pebbles from the uneven concrete. She stumbled to a halt and thumbed the intercom, before battering the door with her fists. She bent down, flicked the letterbox open with her fingers and shouted through. ‘Open the door! It’s Emily!’ Her words echoed off the boxes and bays, ricocheting around the warehouse. For an awful moment, she thought Jack might not be there, but when she whirled and saw his van still parked by the side of the building, she unleashed another flurry of thumps on the door.

  ‘Jack, open up!’

  The lock turned and she barged through the door before he had it fully opened, the suitcase toppling over on its side.

  ‘What’s got into you? Are you soft in the head or something?’ He followed her down the aisle, struggling to keep pace with her. He caught her by the elbow. ‘Hey, I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Has anyone been here today?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you think I mean? Has anyone knocked on the door today?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Why?’

  ‘Were you here the whole day?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s the matter?’

  She turned away and continued down the aisle. She reached the oiling room. The door was locked.

  ‘Open it,’ she snarled.

  ‘Wait a minute. You can’t just come kicking and screaming at that door. There are other people in those warehouses out there. Are you listening to me?’

  ‘No, you listen to me,’ she fired back, slapping the oiling room door. ‘Open the door! Are you deaf?’

  ‘Let me know when you’ve finished your little hissy fit.’ His face was beet red and he was breathing heavily through his nostrils. He palmed his beard and said, ‘Are you going to keep rabbiting on or…?’

  ‘We need to get him out of here, d
rop him off somewhere, and… just smooth this whole mess over before it gets any worse.’

  ‘What’s with the suitcase? You planning on doing a runner?’

  She swallowed. Her forehead burned and the veins in her temples throbbed. ‘I’m leaving, Jack. Someone knows. I came here to warn you and that’s it. I’m going.’

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘About what we did.’ She shook her head. ‘I went back to my house today to get the rest of my stuff and Roger said someone had come looking for me. And Roger gave them your business card, so now they know I’ve been hanging round with you and could be on their way here right now.’

  ‘Calm down,’ he grunted.

  ‘Fuck calming down! This is no time to be calm. We have to get Morley out of here. Someone is coming after me… us!’

  Laughter tumbled out of Jack. It was high-pitched and erratic, a frightening, jagged sound. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, grabbed a nearby stepping stool and sat down on it. ‘I’m not buying it. I’ve been here all day and nobody has come knocking. And if anyone does decide to turn up, we’ll deal with it.’ He stopped, his head cocking to the side. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. Could she still trust him now, after everything that had happened between them, after all her doubts? ‘Right now the only thing I know for sure is that I helped kidnap Morley, I helped hurt him, and he could be innocent.’

  ‘He isn’t innocent!’ Jack bellowed, his face vibrating with rage. His complexion darkened and a thin white foam formed in the corners of his mouth. He began to rasp for breath, wheezing with the effort.

  ‘What I’m saying is that I’m not a hundred percent sure any more. And I only ever wanted to do this if I was completely certain—’

  ‘He confessed.’

  Jack’s words cut her sentence short. Her mouth snapped shut with an audible click.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she sputtered. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘About an hour ago,’ he said.

  She looked at the oiling room door uncertainly. ‘Open it. I want to ask him for myself.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s dead.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A plastic bag covered Morley’s face, sucked in at the mouth from where he’d gasped for air. Emily stared at the body, stunned to silence. She expected to be able to think something, or to have some kind of emotional response, but she came up short in both departments. Instead, she just stood there, wavering on the spot like a tall blade of grass in the breeze.

  It was all over.

  ‘So that’s it,’ she said, barely aware that she was talking at all.

  ‘Almost. We still have to bury him.’

  Her stomach flip-flopped. She closed her eyes and tried to will the rising tide of panic to settle.

  ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘You don’t think you can?’ Jack barged past her, picked up the hatchet from the windowsill, and hacked through the ropes. Without the bonds to support its weight, Morley’s body flopped down and made a sickening slap on the concrete. ‘You just want to leave me to do all the heavy lifting, is that it?’

  For some reason her nostrils had only just scented the wretched aroma of bodily waste, and she gagged, covering her mouth. The stink got right into the back of her throat, coated her tongue.

  Jack bent down, grabbed hold of Morley’s ankles and began to drag him toward the doorway. About halfway across the room, he stopped and hissed, muttered something about his back through gritted teeth, and then continued dragging him. ‘Get out of the way,’ he said, and Emily moved. He brought the trolley over and with an effort that made the veins stand out in his head and neck, lifted Morley’s carcass onto it. When he was done, he stood up and used the front of his jumper to mop the sweat from his brow.

  ‘You think I’m going to bury him alone?’ Jack said. ‘You thought you were just going to pack a bag and leave me in the lurch to deal with it by myself? No chance. We’re in this together until the end.’

  ‘What did he say, Jack? Why did he do it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the van. We’ve got work to do.’

  ‘I want to know now,’ she said, almost screaming with frustration, her fingers raking through her greasy hair. ‘I want to know why he killed Kate.’

  He whirled on her, pupils ablaze. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he growled. ‘Stop acting like a spoiled brat and let’s get him in the van. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. I can tell you everything on the way.’

  ‘No. No more. I’m not going with you. I’ve done my part.’

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ he countered. ‘You haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Yeah? If it wasn’t for me, Morley would have got away in the car park, and he would have escaped when you let him cut through the ropes. I saved you both times.’

  ‘Yeah, bravo.’ He clapped condescendingly. ‘You hit him with a hammer after I’d already stunned him and fucked his head up so he didn’t know up from down by the time I tried to question him. No wonder it took him so long to start talking sense.’

  ‘You rushed into this. You went charging in without knowing the truth and you made me believe it. I was trying to help.’

  ‘Yeah, big help you were too. And you can stop trying to pin this whole thing on me, making everything my fault. You’re a grown woman. I didn’t put a gun to your head and force you to do anything.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘And you can’t force me to do anything now.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. But maybe you should think it over.’ He gave her a mirthless grin and pointed to the corner of the warehouse. A CCTV camera was trained directly on the oiling room. ‘You’ve been on camera the whole time. So you can go and jet off into the sunset and leave me to do the rest of the dirty work, but god forbid I don’t get that grave dug by morning and someone sees me standing in the open with a dead body at my feet.’

  Jack opened the warehouse door and walked out to the van. Beyond the bright glow cast by the motion-sensor spotlight, the industrial estate was a black void. He opened the passenger door and was about to climb in when he thought he heard something off to the right. It had sounded like the crunch of gravel underfoot. He stopped, turned his head and peered into the darkness. Had that been a fox? Had it been anything at all? No, perhaps not. Perhaps all the evening’s excitement had his senses fuddled. He stood there a second longer, head slightly cocked in the direction from which the sound had come, and heard nothing except the gentle stirring of the wind. Now that the adrenaline was beginning to ebb, he was tired and feeling dopey. His mouth opened wide to accommodate a series of yawns, and then he got in the van. He began to reverse so that the back doors would lead directly to the warehouse entrance, which would make hoisting Morley’s body aboard that much easier. He did not turn on his headlights as he reversed because he only had to move the van back about ten feet.

  If he had turned on his headlights when he entered the van, they would have shone directly onto Dillon, who was waiting by a large commercial waste bin, wielding a car jack like a baseball bat.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Jack had one foot across the warehouse threshold when he heard the crunch of gravel again. This time, however, it was faster, like something running toward him. The shock of the sound set off a flashbang of panic inside him, but before he could fully turn around, something heavy struck him in the crook between his neck and shoulder. There was no immediate pain, only a whirlwind of confusion that gathered around his thoughts as he buckled awkwardly to the floor. His cheek slapped against the concrete and instinctively he began to roll onto his back so that he could see what had attacked him. Had he not reacted so quickly, the car jack would have come down even harder against his spine. Instead, it struck the floor with a loud metallic crescendo that rang through the warehouse.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Jack said, his hands coming
up to cover his face. ‘Wait a second, please!’

  Dillon had the car jack raised over his head, gripping it with both hands. He was about to bring the thing home against Jack’s skull when he saw the body. He stopped, lowered his arms, but did not let go of the jack.

  ‘Oh Jesus above, help me now,’ Dillon murmured, hardly aware that blood was dribbling from his left nostril and tracing over his top lip. In a daze, he walked over to the body piled atop the trolley. He exhaled long and hard, and his head began bobbing forward. At first, Jack thought the man was going to be sick, but Dillon was actually trying to swallow. ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘Just wait a second, will you?’ Jack said, pressing his palms against the floor to get up into a sitting position. A raw ache throbbed through his shoulder and he thought his arm might collapse beneath his weight. ‘Can I explain? Will you give me that at least?’

  ‘You killed him?’ Dillon’s voice was dull and lifeless, and now he was sucking in air, gasping for breath. He reached out to touch the bin liner that covered Morley’s face, but retracted his hand. ‘Is this him? Is it Craig?’

  ‘You have to let me explain,’ Jack panted.

  ‘Is it him?’ Dillon whacked the jack against a metal pillar.

  ‘Yes,’ Jack replied, patting his fleece pocket. Thank god above. He had his knife. ‘But you need to let me explain.’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to explain,’ Dillon said, nodding. ‘You’re going to explain it all. But not to me.’ He removed a phone from his pocket and thumbed the buttons, glancing up every couple of seconds to check on Jack. Jack didn’t move from the floor, but his hand crept toward the zip of his fleece pocket.

  Dillon placed the phone up to his ear and wiped away the rogue tears that had begun to seep from his eyes.

  In the silence of the warehouse, Jack could hear the phone ringing through the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ Dillon said when he got an answer. ‘Listen to me. I’ve found Craig, but you need to get here now. No, you don’t understand.’ He stopped, a look of pain tugging his features into a scowl. ‘It isn’t what you think… Do you really want me to say it over the phone? Just, please, come down.’ He paused, pacing back and forth. ‘The address? Yeah, hold on.’ He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached into his pocket, removing the business card he had received from the man at the address that Mikkel had given him. ‘You have a pen? All right, it’s—’