by Wes Markin
‘I understand well enough,’ James said, grabbing his trousers from the floor. ‘That last fella you told me about at the bar? The one that left you broken-hearted? He had a lucky escape. I understand that!’
Topham sat up. ‘Enough!’
James pulled on his trousers. ‘Enough? The meter has run out, darling. I don’t have to do what you tell me to do anymore. I’ll decide when enough is enough.’ He fastened his belt. ‘Yes, that last fella was so lucky. What was his name?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Neil! That’s it! Well, this Neil must have seen through you.’ James turned his back to Topham and knelt over a chair at the end of the bed to grab his shirt.
Topham swung his legs off the bed. ‘That’s not what happened.’ He rose to his feet.
‘So, you do want to talk now?’ James pulled his shirt on and turned around. He flinched when he saw Topham standing a metre in front of him.
‘How many times do I have to ask you to fucking leave?’
James began fastening the buttons on his shirt. ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m leaving, just like everyone else in your life has left you. Just like Neil did.’
Topham clenched a fist. ‘Do not say his name again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s dead, that’s why.’
James’s eyes widened.
Topham closed his eyes. He could feel his heart bashing against his ribcage. In his mind, he could see the words written on a card by Christian Severance, a mute man who had seen Neil’s corpse: There were bits of him everywhere, Mark. He’d been stabbed thousands of times.
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Hey … I’m sorry.’
Topham reached up to touch the hand. ‘Neil? Is that you?’
Then, in his mind, he could see the words written on the second card by Christian Severance: And she was still doing it when I left. Stabbing him. Again and again.
He opened his eyes. Of course, the man in front of him was not Neil. He was just someone else in the way. In the way of everything.
Topham struck James on the side of the head. It was a crushing shot, and the young man went down to his knees. Topham threw another arcing punch. This time James’s nose cracked, and he fell sideways to the ground.
Topham looked down at his groaning victim. Blood was streaming out of his nose and over his mouth and chin. He knew he should walk away. Right now. James posed no threat, and Topham was behaving dangerously out of character.
But, the release! He ached to feel again what he’d felt with the last two blows.
He lowered himself down over the young man and drove his fist into his chin. James’s head snapped back so hard that it would surely leave a mark on the parquet floor. Blood was running up his face now and into his eyes.
‘Please … please … I can’t see!’
Inside, Topham pleaded with himself. Stop … stop … stop!
He hit him twice more and then, breathless, rolled off him.
Barely a minute later, Topham glanced over at James, and started to cry.
Paul Ray looked down at his right hand.
He knew it was a dream, but he was glad to have it back again, if only for a short while. Life without it was going to be tough.
Above him, a raven swooped from the blackness of the treetops into the moonlight. Paul followed its path with his eyes. It turned him all the way around and he stared with both wonder, and horror, at the restored Ray farmhouse. Was he here to burn it down again? He realised that nothing would give him greater pleasure.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Son?’
He turned to face his father, but instead faced another raven, hovering several metres in front of him. ‘Dad?’
The raven squawked and rose higher into the air, turned, and flew away from Paul. It glided slowly. It wanted to be followed. Paul obliged.
As he neared the twisted tree where Reginald Ray currently fought for air at the end of a rope, Paul increased his pace. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this because, dream or no dream, he wasn’t about to save the life of this vicious killer.
Paul drew up alongside the six men. He assumed these were the soldiers who had executed his ancestor. He knew the tale well enough. The woman with them must have been Gladys, Reginald’s young wife.
Starved of oxygen, Reginald was now going into a desperate frenzy.
Despite knowing what his great-great-grandfather had done, watching him die gave Paul no pleasure. Because he was a relative? No, that had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was the fact that he knew that this death, this moment, did not close off the vile atrocities wrought by his diseased line. They had continued and, even now, might be continuing through his auntie, Lacey.
And, back in reality, who was the man pretending to be Reginald? The one who had taken his hand? Was he, too, another descendent of his grim family? Surely, to look so like this hanging man, he must be.
After Reginald had died, the raven swooped for his protruding tongue. Paul looked away in disgust and noticed that all the soldiers had disappeared. He was completely alone again.
When he looked back at Reginald, he saw that his body was covered in ravens, head-to-toe. The birds were consuming him.
Paul closed his eyes. I am ready to wake up now, I really am …
He opened his eyes and gasped. An empty noose swung from the branch. He felt someone tapping him on the shoulder.
‘Son?’
‘Dad?’ Paul turned, feeling relief swell through his body.
But it wasn’t his dad. It was Reginald Ray.
His eyes had been pecked out, his ears had been chewed into little stumps of flesh and most of the skin had been stripped from his face. He was a mess of blood and bone.
Reginald wrapped his arms around Paul and pulled him in close. He rubbed his wet, exposed flesh against Paul’s face. ‘We are blood, Paul. We are blood.’
Paul tried to pull away, but he felt locked in.
‘We are blood …’
Paul opened his eyes, and saw his mother sleeping in the hospital bed adjacent to him. She’d paid for them to share a room overnight.
She was awake and sat up when she saw he was disorientated. ‘Paul, are you okay?’
‘Can we go home tomorrow?’
‘Well … I’m not sure … the doctors wanted to observe you for a few days—’
‘Please Mum … I need to get on with my life. Put this behind me.’
Paul already knew what the answer would be. His mother would do anything for him. He loved her dearly for it. Whatever was wrong in his life, she was the antithesis of that. She made everything so much better.
‘I’ll speak to them in the morning,’ Sarah said.
Paul lay back, smiling. ‘I love you Mum.’
‘And I love you so much, Paul.’
Paul was soon asleep again. And this time, he didn’t dream.
It was another late one for Gardner. This was her routine. Three nights a week. She waited until Barry and Anabelle were asleep, drank a glass of wine to slow her racing thoughts, and slid her notebook out from behind one of the kitchen cabinets.
She had no real need to hide this notebook. Barry knew about it and vowed never to read it. He was true to his word about everything which was one of the reasons she’d hooked up with him in the first place. Anabelle wasn’t a worry either; she was far too young to be perusing her mother’s CBT diary.
But still, these were her thoughts, and they felt incredibly private to her. More private even than her own body, which she was happy to share with her husband. But not these thoughts. No. Not these. So, she kept it hidden, regardless.
I think, therefore I am was written across the front of the notebook. It was the words of the great philosopher, Descartes.
Gardner had written underneath the proposition: I am what I think.
She always smiled when she saw that. I’d give these philosophers a run for their money.
She ran her hand down the front of the diary. This i
s me in this diary. If I choose what to think, then I choose what I am.
She opened to a page from earlier in the year:
By shooting Robert Lock, I saved an innocent boy’s life. If I’d lowered that weapon, refused to commit this act, an eleven-year-old boy would never have grown up. This is unacceptable for me as a mother and is unacceptable for me as a police officer. If I’d spared his life, they would have tried to treat him, help him. But at what cost? The life of a young boy. Unacceptable. And if I’d shot him in the arm, or leg, and maimed him, I’d have given him chance to finish what he’d started with Ewan Brookes.
She wiped tears from her eyes. It had been a tough time, but she now believed, wholeheartedly, every word on the page. Every one of those new thoughts.
She ran her finger down the maladaptive thoughts, of which they were many: you could have handed the gun to someone else … you could have tried again to calm him down…
Each one came with an alternative thought now, but she didn’t need to read them. She knew the new thought. Not just off by heart, but just through believing it, and thinking it.
She moved forward to a later date, following the near fatal attempt on her life.
It was someone else’s decision to stab me. I didn’t choose to be stabbed. Therefore, it is not my fault. I have chosen a job to help people, and my intentions that day, as they are every day, were to help. I wanted to help someone whose life was in danger. I was not sacrificing my life, I was not choosing to leave my daughter without a mother, I was simply choosing to be altruistic. I would do this again, and my husband would support me in this decision.
She moved forward in the book until she reached a blank page.
She wrote down a couple of thoughts that she’d had today which caused her anxiety levels to rocket.
What if I’m ever in the same situation as Holly and Ryan Mitchell? Sitting there while someone explains that my child’s body has been found? If I wasn’t so bloody busy all the time, would I be able to offer Anabelle more time and safety? Would this prevent such terrible things ever becoming a reality?
She wrote down a list of emotions each of these thoughts made her feel: paranoia, guilt, terror etc.
Then, she started to write down more palatable thoughts: Statistically, the chances of your child being murdered are extremely slim. No parent can watch their child twenty-four hours a day.
Her phone started to ring. The screen indicated that it was Topham.
‘Mark?’
‘Shit, Emma. I need to come over. I need to talk to you.’
She looked down at her CBT diary, and then thought about her family in bed. ‘What’s happened? Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’
Topham explained what he’d done. She was on her feet before he’d finished.
‘Is he okay?’
‘Yes. I think so. Black eyes. Bloody lips and nose. I gave him a lot of money. You think that’ll keep him quiet?’
‘I don’t know.’ She wanted to scream down the phone at him, but she kept the edge out of her voice.
‘I want to come and stay there, Emma. I’m afraid. I lost control.’
Which is precisely why I can’t have you here, Gardner thought. I’m not bringing violence anywhere near my family, no matter how much I care about you Mark.
‘I went blank. I felt nothing. It’s scared me.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In the hotel room. I don’t want to be alone, Emma.’
‘Listen to me, Mark. Where’s your car?’
‘At home.’
‘Well, at least you’re not driving pissed again. Right, you put on your clothes, and you get yourself home. I’ll meet you there. You need to put distance between yourself and that place immediately. Chances are he won’t go to the station. He’s a prostitute. It’s not good for business. But the longer you stay there, the more chance those that run the hotel might put in an emergency call. Do you understand? How pissed are you?’
‘I sobered up quickly. Please meet me at home.’
‘I will Mark.’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘I know you are, Mark. Now, do as I say.’
After she hung up, she returned her diary to its hiding place, and phoned for a taxi because she’d had too much to drink.
As she sat there, waiting, she tried to think up ways of helping Mark, but she was at a loss. She didn’t think a diary like hers would cut it right now.
He was spiralling out of control.
9
THE NEXT DAY, Yorke was first through the door of Wiltshire HQ, and so was the first to receive an update on the DNA recovered from the water bottle found around the back of the maze at the Mitchell farmyard.
It was Louise Tenor from the lab.
‘In plain English,’ Yorke said down the phone.
‘Do I ever give it to you in any other way?’
‘No, you don’t. That’s why I always come to you first.’
‘You’re too kind, Mike. It’s good to have you back. Here it is, in plain English. We ran the DNA against the DNA we have in the database for the deceased Lewis Ray. They are related. We also have a match between the same trace and Robert Bennett’s DNA.’
Yorke took a deep breath.
‘Are you okay? It’s as you expected, isn’t it?’
‘Not sure. I was starting to change my mind.’
‘Really?’
‘I guess that this match is certain?’
‘Unless he has a twin brother, yes, I—’
‘Come again?’
‘Twin brother.’
‘Wouldn’t the DNA be different?’
‘Yes … but let me explain. Originally, we were taught that the DNA in identical twins would be the same. But things have moved on since then. Traditionally, we only compared parts of the DNA sequences – the elements we know to be particularly variable from person to person. We still do this in most cases. That’s why you get your results so quick! However, there have been some cases where identical twins have been suspects and we’ve had to sequence the entire genome of each to look for subtle differences that come from genetic mutations and environmental influences. It is expensive and time-consuming. They’ve got more tests on the way that can pick up these epigenetic changes quicker, but we haven’t got access to them just now. But I guess the chances of there being a twin involved in this case are slim anyway?’
Nothing would surprise Yorke right now. Especially considering the peculiar time discrepancy between Robert Bennett walking out of the entrance of the Mitchell farm, and then kidnapping Samuel five minutes later from the back of it. ‘I would like to get the DNA to a lab that has access to this faster testing. Is that okay?’
‘Well, it will be expensive, so you will need it signing off.’
‘It’ll be done, Louise.’
It was DCI Emma Gardner’s incident room. All eyes were on her.
Yorke knew there was nothing to worry about. She could handle it. Yorke had given her enough experience of leading cases when he was DCI. Today, he could watch her with pride.
Yes, she looked worn out, but wasn’t that true of all effective leaders working in the world of law enforcement? She steered the ship every second of the day on a case like this, simply because every second counted.
How did the old saying go? You can sleep when you’re dead. Or in the case of a murder investigation, you can sleep when no one else is in danger of becoming dead.
He smiled at her and she smiled back. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about her but, God, was he ever so proud?
As she addressed her audience, and weaved from image to image on the whiteboard, Jeremy Dawson from HOLMES 2, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, struck the keys on his laptop rapidly; the shiny layer of sweat on his face was testament to his dedication to not missing a single beat in this investigation.
Yorke liked Jeremy and was pleased to see that he looked as if he was finally growing up, and no longer appeared like a sixteen-year
-old on work experience. Gardner had told him earlier that things were getting serious between him and another HOLMES 2 operative who had assisted on the Christian Severance case nine months previously.
Yorke looked around for Topham but couldn’t see him. He remembered their little chat at the crime scene yesterday. He hoped that he’d finally decided to take some time off and grieve.
His eyes settled on Jake, who was gulping back coffee, desperately trying to pump some life back into himself. Was anyone sleeping around here?
He was far less happy to see DC Luke Parkinson. The man had been persistently disruptive during the Severance investigation, and Yorke had reacted inappropriately by launching his phone out of the window in this very room. Their relationship had soured further when Parkinson had attended Yorke’s arrest outside the brewery, and they’d come to blows. Parkinson sneered at him.
In a way, Yorke thought, he’s probably glad to see me. It gives him chance to gloat.
Gardner finished her recap of the previous day with the identity of the victim in the septic tank at the Crime Scene. Once she’d been through the grisly details of how someone had worked long hours with a saw to reduce fifty-eight-year-old Peter McCall to tiny parts, she unleashed some information that Yorke had only heard ten minutes previous when Gardner had greeted him at the incident room door. ‘After Peter McCall’s family in Southampton was informed of the widower’s demise, interesting information came to light. He is descended from a man called Lionel McCall.’
Looks passed between officers. Yorke knew that every single one of them would be trying to recall where they’d heard that name before.
Gardner relieved their frustrations. ‘Lionel McCall is one of the six soldiers who executed Reginald Ray in 1918. Peter was his great-grandson.’
The looks continued and Yorke noticed that more than a few faces had lost their colour.
‘It could be coincidence but the first thing we will be doing this morning is compiling a list of every living descendent of these six murderers, or heroes, as some folk believe. We then must contact every single one. I have put three officers on this task. You will find the assignments taped to the whiteboard as per usual.’
