Blood Bought

by Robin Roughley

  Reaching the lights in Ashton he pulled up and waited for them to change, the cigarette burning away between his fingers, his face thoughtful.

  Seconds later they changed, and he went quickly through the gears as he left the town centre and drove past Haydock racecourse, glancing at the banner on the gates advising people to ''Book Your Christmas Party NOW''. He suddenly realised Odette would probably be spending Christmas with her new man, plunging his newly-found outlook back into the pits.

  Reaching the duel carriageway that ran all the way from Liverpool to Manchester, he turned left and hit the gas again, his eyes narrowed against the glare of headlights on the opposite carriageway.

  When he came to the lay-by on the left he pulled into it and turned off the lights.

  He grabbed his damp waterproof jacket and metal torch from the passenger seat, where he had dumped them when he swapped cars, before climbing out and setting the alarm.

  A few seconds later, a truck went hurtling by, the huge tyres throwing up a mass of dirty, oily spray that blew into his face and patterned his clothing. With a scowl he swiped a hand over his face and dashed across the dual carriageway, leaping over the crash barrier before making his way to the other side.

  He looked towards the trees on his left, he could see the path he had emerged from shortly after finding Minnie's shoe, the grass still flattened by the trail of officers and the SOCO team who had searched the woods.

  When he saw headlights of a car pulling in behind his own in the far-side lay-by, he moved into the covering of the trees.

  The interior light blinked on and off three times and he felt the disgust flicker inside.

  The seconds ticked by and then the light came on again when the door opened, a man climbed out, looking right and left before heading towards Lasser's car and peering in through the side window.

  He turned and looked across the road to the trees, Lasser moved further back into the shadows. Seconds later, the man ran across the road, by the time he reached the central reservation, Lasser had turned and was striding away along the path, wet ferns brushing against his legs as he moved swiftly through the undergrowth.

  Stopping, he turned and cocked his head, his eyes fixed on the gap in the trees that led back to the main road.

  When he saw the darker shadow appear he crouched down and shuffled left, deeper into the ferns.

  Seconds later, he heard the familiar sound of feet brushing through the foliage as the man drew nearer.

  He stopped ten feet away, Lasser could hear his breathing – quick and shallow.

  'Anyone here?' he hissed in a voice fraught with anxiety and trembling excitement.

  Lasser held his breath, the figure walked by, the sound of his progress diminishing.

  Counting down the seconds, he eased upright before moving back to the path, turning left he followed the trail, his eyes moving left and right searching for any movement, his ears alert for any sound.

  Gradually the ferns began to lessen, and he caught a glimpse of the man ahead, he had come to a halt in the area where the mattress had been.

  Lasser paused and raised the torch, his finger hovering over the button.

  When he switched it on, the man spun towards him, his eyes widening in the savage beam, his right arm thrown up to cover his eyes against the glare.

  Lasser stormed forwards as the man staggered back.

  'Try to run and I'll catch you and you will be fucked,' he barked as he closed the man down.

  'Promises, promises,' the voice was high-pitched and quivering with anticipation.

  Lasser came to a halt in disgust, the light trained on the man who looked to be no older than twenty-five or six, his stick-thin arms dangled from a T-shirt that had a logo on stating that ''All meat is murder''. His face was peppered with freckles, his wiry, ginger hair sprouted out in all directions.

  'Are you having a bastard laugh?' Lasser fired back.

  The man shivered and then he actually smiled and Lasser looked on in dismay as he started to rub a hand against the front of his jeans.

  'I promise if you let me run then I'll let you catch me,' the man said as he leaned forwards and licked his lips.

  'Catch you?'

  'Then you can do what you like to me, anything you like, and I won't scream… unless you want me to.'

  Lasser moved forwards, his hand steady, his teeth gritted in burgeoning anger. 'Like to be chased, do you?'

  'I don't like it, I love it!' he replied, throwing his arms wide and shaking his hips. 'The more the merrier!'

  When Lasser thrust out a hand and grabbed the front of his T-shirt, the man nodded his head rapidly, his eyes lit with arousal.

  'You can hit me if you want to, I mean, really hit me.'

  Lasser fought the urge to slam his fist into the man's face. 'You've been here before, haven't you?'

  For the first time, he saw a look of confusion pass over the young man's face. 'Once or twice,' he admitted.

  'So, you know that a woman was found a few hundred yards from here, dumped by the side of the road, strangled?'

  The confusion turned into fear, but without the hidden thrill in his eyes. 'Look, who are you?' he asked trying to pull back.

  'Just answer the fucking question, there was a mattress here and a mountain of used rubbers and I want to know if you were involved?'

  'I don't know what you mean,' the man whimpered.

  'Name?' Lasser demanded in a hiss.

  'Alan Cummins.'

  'You know all about this place and the people who come here, don't you?'

  Cummins licked his lips but this time there was no pouting involved just the growing taste of terror.

  'I've been here before, but I don't know about any of the other men, I swear I just come and they use me and…'

  'Use you?'

  Cummins shuffled his feet in the grass. 'I can't help the way I'm made, I try not to come to places like this but look at me, I can't get anyone to love me and when I come here they make me feel special and…'

  'They abuse you, don't they?'

  Tears sprang into the young man's eyes, his bottom lip quivering. 'Sometimes, they chase me and bring me back to the mattress and then they take turns with me.'

  'What about the twin lengths of rope hanging from the branch?'

  'Some of them like to tie me up and beat me,' Cummins spun around and yanked up his T-shirt.

  Lasser gasped as he saw the angry scars on Cummins back, some were old, others new, the skin had been thrashed, the scabs yellow and brown.

  'Jesus,' he whispered.

  Cummins turned back towards him, the tears spilling free at last. 'I try to stop them, but they never listen, the more I scream the harder they beat me. They think I like everything they do but I don't, I promise I don't.'

  Lasser sighed and his hand slipped away from Cummins shirt. 'Have you ever seen any women here?' he asked, aiming the torch at the ground between them.

  'Never.'

  'What about men, how many are we talking about?'

  Cummins wiped the tears from his cheeks. 'It depends, sometimes half a dozen, but if the weather's hot and dry there can be twenty or more turn up.'

  Lasser absorbed the information, the anger cranking up inside. 'You said you liked to be chased?'

  'I don't know why but I do.'

  'Just here?' Lasser asked.

  'No, other places as well.'

  'And how did you arrange it?'

  Cummins tilted his head towards the towering trees, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed the distress. 'Word of mouth, or with places like this there are always people here, it's close to the lay-by so they can park and just walk into the woods.'

  'Right, come with me.'

  'But…'

  'My name's DS Lasser and I want to know everything about the people who come to this place. And you're going to tell me.'

  'But I've already told you, I don't know who they are, it's always dark and…'

  'Don't fuck me about,
some of these pricks will want you to look at them while you're giving them a blow job, plus you will have seen the cars that park in the lay-bys, the regular doggers who can't stay away.'

  Cummins closed his eyes as he realised he would have to tell this copper all about the life he led and the people he came into contact with.

  For the briefest of moments, he considered making a break for it but then he realised that the man named Lasser would simply run a check on his car and find his address and then…

  He thought about his parents sitting at home, no doubt watching some gardening programme, both thinking that he had gone to visit friends for a night of gaming and chess.

  He pictured his mother answering the knock at the door and this tall detective with the dark eyes would be on the doorstep. His mother would invite him in and then her world would crash as she learned about the true nature of her only son.

  'I'll tell you anything you want to know,' he gasped.

  'Good lad,' Lasser said as he turned and beckoned for Cummins to go ahead.

  The young man with the shredded back eased past and Lasser followed, his mind still trying to comprehend what Alan Cummins had revealed.

  Somehow, the revelations had left him feeling tarnished, contaminated with the horror and filth, inside the anger continued to seethe.

  41

  Bannister's eyes widened as he pulled onto the station car park and found Lasser leaning against the pool car, smoking a cigarette.

  For once, the rain had stopped, though it only looked like a temporary reprieve, the clouds hung heavy in a squally sky, the stiff wind pushing them southwards.

  Parking alongside, he switched off the engine and climbed out. 'What are you doing here this early?' he asked as he closed the door and held out a hand.

  Lasser passed the pack of cigarettes over and watched the DCI spark up, releasing the smoke in a sigh of satisfaction.

  'I wanted a word before the meeting gets underway.'

  'Oh right, I thought you must have wet the bed again.'

  Ignoring the sarcastic comment, Lasser started to tell Bannister about finding Alan Cummins in the woods, the DCI snapped up a hand and Lasser closed his mouth.

  'Hang on, the last thing I told you was to get home and some rest.'

  'I know, but…'

  'And now you tell me you were wandering around the bloody woods looking for weirdos.'

  'Look, are you going to let me talk or not?'

  Bannister took a hurried pull on the cigarette, his face pinched. 'Go on, I'm listening.'

  Lasser explained about Cummins and the savage scars on his back, about the times he had visited the woods and been chased, ending in rough sex with countless men.

  Bannister's eyes widened with each new revelation, and then he started to shake his head in disbelief when Lasser told him about Cummins being tied to a tree before being buggered and whipped with a branch found in the undergrowth.

  'Did he have any names for us?' Bannister asked hopefully.

  'No, he…'

  'Descriptions?'

  Lasser nodded. 'He said he would recognise some of them.'

  Bannister rubbed at his short-cropped hair. 'Something, I suppose.'

  'According to Cummins two of the men looked alike.'

  'Good, good,' Bannister said as he flicked ash to the ground.

  'He said that one of them had the Liverpool FC emblem on their forearm and the other one had the Man United red devil on his arm in exactly the same place.'

  Bannister's head snapped up, his eyes widened and then his face lit up with glee as he hurriedly took another pull on the cigarette. 'When we interviewed the Fellows brothers they both had their shirt sleeves rolled up – and they had the same bloody tattoos you've just described.'

  Lasser felt the tension rise as Bannister dropped the cigarette to the floor and screwed his heel onto the remains.

  'And you're sure about this Cummins character?'

  Lasser glanced over the field of turned black earth that bordered the station. 'Believe me, he held nothing back, his parents thought he was out playing chess – he still lives at home – and they know nothing about his real life.'

  'You threatened to tell the parents the truth about their son?'

  Lasser nodded.

  'Good lad!' Bannister beamed.

  Lasser hadn't felt good as he grilled Cummins in the car, telling him exactly what would happen if he didn't cooperate, but then he had thought of Minnie Burrows and his sympathy levels for Alan Cummins had dropped.

  'Right, we need to run this by Carole, see what she has to say about it all, but it will give us reason to keep the Fellows longer, that's for sure.'

  'Well, if the brothers had been in the woods then it means they could have been involved in Minnie Burrows death and they killed Archer for their own purpose rather than taking cash for killing him.'

  Bannister nodded thoughtfully. 'There may be a lot more people involved than we first thought, one or two of them could be high flyers who still paid the Fellows to kill Archer.'

  Lasser took a final drag on the cigarette. 'The only problem with that is that Cummins swears he never saw a woman involved in any of the sex.'

  Bannister looked disappointed and then his face hardened with determination. 'It's a start and we'll grill the bastards until they crack. It's one thing having an alibi on the night Archer took the long fall, but this widens the scope to delve deeper.'

  Lasser nodded in agreement.

  'OK, we'll have a quick word with Carole and then play good cop, bad cop.'

  'Who do you want me to be?'

  Bannister grinned at him. 'Come on, Lasser, bad cop fits you to a T.'

  'Sorted,' Lasser said, and they headed towards the station entrance, faces set with matching looks of determination.

  42

  Odette looked at the image of Clem Bartle on his Facebook page, he was posing for a selfie, one arm cocked, the bicep bulging, his tanned face split by a huge grin. Then she thought of Bartle in the shallow pit, the lower part of his face obliterated by the chunk of brick lodged into his open mouth, his eyes wide and glazed, the blood slick on his chin and neck before dripping onto his T-shirt.

  'It's the same guy sure enough,' Doc Shannon said.

  They were sitting in his office, the desktop before them as Odette scrolled down the page that showed more images of Bartle posing with his body on show.

  'I wonder if I'll ever end up looking like that.' Shannon pondered with a sigh.

  Odette looked at him and raised an eyebrow. 'Would you even want to?'

  A hint of colour tinted the doctor's cheeks. 'Well, not exactly like that but it would be nice to get fit.'

  'You are getting fit, you've lost a lot of weight and look better for it.'

  'Really?'

  'You know you do, and the more you lose the more you will want to keep it off, so you'll perhaps start to jog or…'

  'I hate jogging, my brain bounces about too much.'

  Odette smiled. 'Well, there are other ways to get fit, you could join a gym or perhaps go swimming – that's a great way to keep fit.'

  Shannon pursed his lips and nodded. 'Not thought of swimming.'

  'Now, what can you tell me about Bartle?' she asked.

  'Well, he had the same concoction of steroids in his body that Clark had.'

  'When you say ''the same concoction'' do you mean…?'

  'Exactly the same, which suggests they got them from the same source.'

  'So, they could have gone to the same gym and used the same supplier?'

  Shannon thought for a moment before nodding. 'It's possible but these days you can get anything off the internet, steroids tend to be blended, that way they are meant to be safer for the person taking them.'

  '''Meant to be safer''?'

  Shannon stroked his beard. 'It's like any other drug bought online, they are probably perfectly fine but you're relying on the individual sticking to the daily intake and of course some don't do that.
They want faster results or want to train harder, so they take more. Although Clark and Bartle had the same drugs in their system Clark had been using larger quantities, probably to build muscle but as with any drug there are consequences to abusing the intake.'

  'Yes, well, neither of them has to worry about side effects now, that's for sure.'

  'Quite.'

  'And I take it the cause of Bartle's death was the brick to the face?'

  'Correct. I found some bruises on his chest and stomach, though I think he got those from the initial fall onto the bricks below. He did have one on his right shoulder blade and I think that was the first projectile thrown at him, perhaps as he was trying to get out from the pit. The one that lodged in his face shattered five teeth and split both top and bottom gums. I suspect he was on his back when the brick was thrown, anyway he was unconscious and basically he drowned in the flow of blood from the damage to his mouth.'

  Odette grimaced. 'Nasty way to go.'

  'So, what's your next move?'

  'Well, I've got Sally Wright getting Bartle's address, so I'll go to the house and then try to find out if he was using Thorpe's gym with Clark.'

  Shannon nodded before lifting an apple from his pocket and taking a bite. 'If Lasser's right and they are linked then whoever did this won't stop, they'll be looking for another victim to take down.'

  'I know,' Odette replied as she closed down the Facebook page and rose to her feet. 'Well, they won't be caught by me sitting here, so I'd better get a move on.'

  'When will you be seeing the new boyfriend again?' Shannon asked out of the blue.

  'He's a friend, nothing more than that at the moment.'

  Shannon winked and tapped his nose. 'Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.'

  'And which secret is that?' she asked.

  Shannon shrugged. 'It's just a figure of speech but I want an invite to the Lakeside wedding.'