by Wes Markin
He managed two more thrusts before he had to spit out stomach acid.
Gasping for air, with bile running down his chin, and tears burning his cheeks, he went again and again …
Get …
It felt as if his ribs had turned to jelly but he could hear the wood splintering.
Busy …
He screamed at the top of his lungs. The pain was excruciating.
Living.
The chair smashed against the wall, and Paul collapsed backwards into the broken wood.
Fuck you, Reginald.
Yorke and Gardner searched Robert Bennett’s entire house. The only crime being committed here was against cleanliness. The kitchen and lounge were loaded with dirty crockery. There was a similar theme in the bedrooms, except the crockery had been substituted with piles of unwashed clothing.
Gardner looked in the bedroom wardrobe. ‘Women’s clothes? He said he lived alone …’
‘Maybe he lived with someone,’ Yorke said. He pointed at an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. ‘And they left when they’d had enough of his mess?’
‘I’ll grab a couple of those butts,’ Gardner said. ‘We can try to match the DNA on them to the bottle.’
Yorke nodded and Gardner pulled out a plastic bag.
Outside, they circled the property. They looked in an old, large shed, which was barely accessible due to the piles of old farming equipment that had been dumped in there. Some of it had toppled over and partially blocked the inward-opening door.
No Samuel Mitchell or Paul Ray.
‘What has the bastard done with Samuel?’ Gardner said.
‘Let’s go and ask him,’ Yorke said as they headed back towards Jake’s car. By now Jake would have read Robert his rights and installed him in the back of the car. ‘And let’s hope he’s unsettled enough to spill his guts.’
Paul rolled clear of the wood. His entire body burned, and his vision swirled.
He crawled, coughing up fluids. He hoped it was vomit but it could have been blood for all he knew. The force of those blows necessary to break the wood had been staggering.
But the bastard had taken his hand, and he’d rather die than stay and let him cut off another piece of him.
He lifted himself up onto his knees. He rocked back and forth with his head raised.
Focus, Paul, focus.
His vision swirled like mad. Was he concussed? Probably.
It was now or never.
He rose to his feet. Slowly, so as not to fall, but with determination, because now was not the time to fail.
He began to walk. Now the chain wasn’t tense against the wood, it slipped free of his ankles.
He reached down and picked up a chair leg with his remaining hand. The break had left the wood sharp and pointed.
Just try and stop me, he thought, and I’ll put the stake right through your heart.
Yorke held the car door open with one hand and looked down at Robert Bennett. It wasn’t just the fierce skin condition which made him sick. He was bent slightly, and looked burdened, rather than angry, over his current predicament.
‘Where is he, Mr Bennett?’ Yorke said.
Robert sighed. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘We have CCTV footage proving that you were at the Mitchell Farm at 2.48 p.m. on Wednesday. We also have a witness who saw you driving away from the property at approximately 3.00 p.m. But, more importantly, and far more pressingly, a young man called Samuel has gone missing from that property. Do you know when that young man was last seen, Mr Bennett?’
‘Let me guess … around the same time you saw me on the CCTV footage?’
‘Correct. So, tell me where he is and let’s end this problem before it gets even worse than it already is.’
‘But you have another problem, detective.’
‘And what is that, Mr Bennett?’
‘It wasn’t me on the CCTV footage, and it certainly wasn’t me driving away from the Mitchell farm because I have been here all week. I haven’t moved.’ Robert reached up to scratch a patch on his face but then thought better of it and lowered his hand. ‘It itches like mad when I go out.’
‘What is wrong with you anyway?’ Jake said from behind Yorke.
‘Papillon-Lefèvre syndrome, or PLS for short. It’s rare and you’ve probably never heard of it.’
‘I haven’t,’ Jake said. ‘It’s not catching, is it?’
‘No, and I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.’ He opened his hands and showed the scaly patches on the skin of his palms. ‘It’s also on the soles of my feet. It affected everything holding my teeth in place. I lost them all at seventeen. As you can imagine, I’ve never been much of a hit with the ladies. Sometimes, I get horrendous skin infections on my face which is why I’ve got this gunk all over it.’
‘Who do the women’s clothes in the wardrobe belong to?’
‘My wife. That’s why you find me in this melancholy mood. Took her forty years before she decided she’d finally had enough of waking up next to this.’ He gestured at his face.
‘This is your last chance,’ Yorke said. ‘We need to know where Samuel Mitchell is. If you tell us now then it will end much better for you. I can assure you of that.’
‘I am seventy years old, detective. Even if I had the energy to abduct a young man, why would I?’
‘Well, that’s another question I hoped you would answer.’
‘You are not listening to me. I don’t want to say anything else until I get to the station and I have a solicitor. Your colleague here just said that was my right, and I’d like to take him up on it.’
Yorke slammed the door.
Paul Ray staggered through the house. His vision continued to swirl, and his entire body still felt as if it was being incinerated. On a number of occasions, he bumped into the walls. He had no coordination.
Stay conscious. Just stay conscious.
He banged into some furniture and something smashed on the floor behind him, but he had no idea what it was.
Ahead, in his broken vision, he saw the front door. He readied the sharp chair leg and opened it.
There was someone standing there.
He couldn’t see clearly enough to tell if it was Reginald, so he didn’t take any chances.
He thrust the chair leg at the figure.
4
LACEY RAY LIVED for these moments.
Always had done, always would do.
And because she knew the importance of these moments, and knew they defined her, and knew if she got one wrong, it would end her, she was meticulous in planning and executing them.
She paused for a second to consider how she would feel if it did all come to an end. Not sadness, because she didn’t really experience this emotion, and she was reasonably sure she’d never experienced it. Feelings had always been a tricky one for her.
She expected that she would feel longing. Longing for the pleasure in these moments. Yes, that was it. If they ever put her in a cage, she would feel longing. After all, she was compelled to do what she did.
She’d read enough on the subject, and around her own sociopathic condition, to know that this was probably linked to sexual gratification. But that didn’t bother her. She’d traded in sex; she’d manipulated with sex; on occasion, she’d enjoyed sex. Sex was a means to an end. A means for control and pleasure.
If she took sexual gratification from killing bastards, then so be it. She smirked. There were worse things in the world.
She reached down and stroked Tobias’s face. He looked up at her. He was adopted. Some would say ‘stolen.’ Yet, despite the biological differences, they shared so many similarities. She smiled at him.
In a greasy apartment block, they stood by the lifts on the sixth floor. They were next to the window looking out over the Port of Southampton. As was usual, the containers were piled high, and the adjacent cruise port was busy.
Tobias wasn’t tall enough to see out of the window, but h
e was content to stand quietly and wait. Impatience was not one of Tobias’s weaknesses, despite his five years.
Their backs were to the lifts. In the reflection on the glass window, she’d earlier watched the two oily bastards she was hunting emerge from the lift and shuffle past her, without paying her any attention.
Yes, it would have been easy to swoop on the two meat sacks there and then, but it was all about the moment. And that hadn’t been it.
Now, over ten minutes later, she looked down at her phone screen, which was connected to a little camera in the room that the two oily men, and another of their kind, resided.
The moment was almost here. She could feel the desire building within her.
She watched the screen. There was no sound and Tobias could not see it. Not that he would have tried to sneak a peek, he was lost in his own little world, waiting for her to activate him.
The camera pointed in on their film set. Ironic, she thought, how I am filming you filming.
A young woman, mid-twenties at a guess, was tied to a metal bed which looked as if it had been stolen from a hospital. The mattress had been cast to one side and she was lying on the metal slats, wearing only her underwear.
Lacey had used a high-resolution spy-cam and so could see that the girl’s mascara was running. There was a gag forced into her mouth.
She looked exhausted and had clearly given up on trying to get free of the metal bed.
Two of the meat sacks approached the bed wearing clown masks and nothing else; the other one moved in a circle around the scene with a handheld camera. He had no need to wear the mask. He wouldn’t be in the movie when it hit the internet.
One of the men, who was so overweight that his belly hung over his genitalia, was holding a flick knife. The other man, marginally slimmer, stroked her face.
The woman jerked her head away. The man slapped her hard.
Lacey took a deep breath through her nose, and out through her mouth.
It was almost time for her to go.
Starting at her cheek, the fattest man ran the knife down the restrained woman’s cheek and over her neck until he reached her red bra. He ran the tip of the blade over the centre of her bra, where the underwire would be, then across her breast to the strap. He cut through and threw her bra to one side.
Lacey looked away from the mobile and at her reflection in the window.
She ran a hand over her shaved head, turned her face to one side, so she could see the head of the jaguar tattoo on her neck, which finished just below her ear. She took off her denim shirt. Underneath, she was wearing a white vest, so she could see more of the jaguar which ran down her side to her torso.
Her entire left arm was a tattoo of fire.
She looked back at the camera and saw the fattest man laying his knife on a small, metal table just behind him.
Lacey knew that eventually, when they’d finished, he’d go back for that knife. The little man spinning around the room with his camera wasn’t just filming torture porn. This was a snuff movie. Lacey stroked Tobias’s head. He looked up at her.
‘It’s time. Exactly as we discussed.’
He nodded.
She kneeled to kiss his cheek. ‘While Mummy is in there, you stay out, and you do not come in until I tell you. Understand?’
He nodded again.
Tobias stroked the jaguar tattoo and sat on the floor.
‘Good boy.’ Lacey headed off around the corner.
Rhys Phoenix lowered the camera. ‘What the fuck was that?’
He was ignored. His actors continued.
There was another knock at the front door.
‘Someone is at the fucking door. For fuck’s sake, stop!’ Phoenix hissed.
The men backed away, grunting. They pulled off their clown masks and scowled at Phoenix. He laid the camera on the wooden table by the knife. ‘Don’t make a sound. I’m going to look.’
Fortunately, the room they were filming in was shielded from the front door by a partitioned wall, so when he opened it, no one would see what was going on. He rounded the partition and then peered through the peep hole. He could see a tall, slim and heavily tattooed woman. ‘What the fuck?’
Had they been too loud? Overheard?
Shit! He needed to know the answers to these questions before continuing. He opened the door. ‘Yes?’
The woman had tears in her eyes and her arms crossed behind her back.
‘Are you okay?’ Phoenix said.
The woman didn’t reply.
What was happening here? This wasn’t a setup was it? He leaned forward and looked left and right. Nobody.
Then, an idea crept into his mind. There was no CCTV camera on this corridor. This woman could be sucked into this black hole and no one would ever be the wiser—
He saw a flash of movement and felt a stinging pain in his neck.
The woman pulled her hand away and took a step back. She was holding a syringe.
Phoenix pinned one hand against his burning neck and threw the other hand out at the bitch. He managed to grip her jacket and pull her in close before his vision started to close in. Then, it was quick. He tried to speak, but couldn’t, and before he knew it, the blackness he’d wanted to offer to the woman, swallowed him instead.
Lonnie Bates wondered why it’d gone silent.
One moment Phoenix had been engaging a visitor and the next moment, there was nothing.
‘Phoenix?’ Lonnie said.
No reply.
‘Where the fuck has he gone?’
Clive, his older brother, grimaced. ‘Go and take a look!’
‘You’re closer to the door.’
‘Fuck that, I’m naked and you’re the one closer to the clothes.’
The young woman on the bed was crying. She was trying to say something through the gag.
Lonnie wandered over to the edge of the room and got dressed. Behind him, he could hear Clive talking to the young woman. ‘Be quiet.’
Lonnie picked up the flick knife off the table. ‘Just in case.’
‘Don’t go stabbing anyone in broad daylight,’ Clive said.
Lonnie headed around the partitioned wall.
Phoenix was lying face-down on the floor. His legs were still in the room.
‘Phoenix, man, are you okay?’ Lonnie said. He moved slowly and cautiously with the knife extended. ‘Is anyone there?’
No reply.
Lonnie stepped over Phoenix and out of the room. He felt a stinging sensation in the side of his head, and everything slipped away.
Lacey was surprised at how easily the heavy ice pick slid into the rapist’s brain once she’d pieced the side of his head. She let it continue slowly on its trajectory until it bumped to a halt on the other side of his skull.
She noticed the fact that she still had an inch to spare on the pick. She could probably opt for a smaller model next time; it would be easier to conceal.
It had been an easy kill. Barely a sound made in the ambush, and the bastard had been dead before he could cry out.
She stepped around the front of the dead rapist before he fell and slid her arms around his large stomach and back. She then lowered him slowly down onto the other dead man. Only when the two bodies were stable beneath her, did she pull the ice pick from his brain. She did it slowly to reduce the sucking sound.
‘What’s going on?’ the other rapist said.
Lacey didn’t respond.
‘Where’s Phoenix and Lonnie?’ he shouted from behind the partition.
There was no way she was going draw a third out so easily.
She stepped over the bodies.
Standing behind the partition, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She could smell the bastard on the other side and wanted so badly to kill him.
She knocked on the false wall.
‘Who’s there?’ The man said.
She knocked again.
‘Who’s there?’ His voice sounded more distressed this time.
‘If you lie face-down on the floor with your hands behind your head, I will let you live,’ Lacey said.
There was a pause while he digested this surprising option. ‘What? Who are you?’
Lacey smiled. ‘Consider me a friend.’
‘A friend. I don’t fucking know you.’
‘Not your friend, moron. Friend of the young lady you have tied to the bed.’
‘How do you …?’
‘Look up, corner of the room, above the partition.’
‘What the—’
‘Is it blinking at you? Smile, you are on camera.’
‘Fuck … no … no!’
‘So, are you going to take the option?’
‘The option?’
‘To lie face-down on the floor with your hands behind your head?’
‘Of course.’ He then clearly faked sounds of movement. ‘Yes, doing it now.’
‘Good.’ As Lacey walked to the edge of the partition, she smiled and thought, you could have made more of a convincing attempt to lie you pathetic stain on humanity.
When she turned around the partition, he was standing in front of the captive woman, naked.
Lacey’s arms were crossed behind her back. The ice-pick was in her preferred right hand.
He sneered. ‘You are an ugly looking bitch.’
‘Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever been called that,’ Lacey said, ‘But I guess if you are going to try a new look, you’ve got to be prepared for the criticism.’
‘Lesbians always do talk a lot of bullshit.’
‘You know what the worst thing is about you not getting down on the floor?’
‘No, tell me,’ he said, taking a step towards her.
‘Is not the fact that I now have to kill you, I was going to do that anyway. It’s more the fact that I now have to watch a morbidly fat man swinging his grotesque bollocks in my direction.’
He took another step. ‘I’m going to do more than swing them at you, sweetheart.’
She revealed the ice pick. ‘Even after I cut them off?’
He came quickly for a fat man, swinging an arcing roundhouse punch with his left hand. Despite having good speed and aim, Lacey was quicker and more precise and swooped to the side.
