A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  “It’s all in the two letters I carry,” he said, pulling a case off his shoulder and unzipping it on the floor. He brought out two envelopes. One had Jack’s name on it. The other had Carrie Sheridan. The detective immediately had a premonition what it would be.

  “What’s in them?” he asked as he was handed the letters.

  “I can’t tell you that,” the other man replied, taking something from his jacket pocket. “I’m merely here to deliver the letters and get your signature.”

  He held out a pad of paper and a pen. Jack scribbled on it and the man ripped the top off and pocketed it before giving Jack the copy below.

  “Have a nice day,” the man said with unintentional irony as he walked back to his car.

  Jack merely gazed down at the letters.

  He walked back inside with a look of bewilderment. Standing in the middle of the hallway, he opened the one with his own name on it.

  Tate Solicitors headed the page. Then came the confirmation of Jack’s suspicions.

  Dear Mr. Sheridan,

  We write to you on behalf of our client Renton Williams. As you are aware, he is the biological father of Tyler Sheridan and is thus named on the birth certificate. I therefore bring your attention to the next part. Mr. Williams is aware that you have temporary custody of his son due to the unfortunate circumstances of the boy’s mother, Carrie Sheridan, being unable to take care of him. Mr. Williams would like to send his appreciations for the care his son has received from you. However, he now wishes to take full custody of the boy and would like to arrange a meeting with yourself to discuss this. He understands that this may come as a surprise but wishes to assure you that he is now fully capable of taking care of his son, and, as his father, Mr. Williams has every right to.

  Mr. Williams is currently applying for an order through the courts for parental rights in which he will be petitioning for full custody of Tyler Sheridan. I am therefore primarily writing to arrange a meeting of mediation. I am also inviting Carrie Sheridan as well so that she too may be party to the arrangements we discuss. Of course I fully understand if Miss Sheridan is unable to attend.

  In mediation we will initially be discussing a period of transition between yourselves and Mr. Williams. A member of the local social services team will be present and all arrangements will be made through them. My client understands that the boy needs time to come to terms with the new arrangements of his life.

  I leave my office’s contact details at the bottom and look forward to your contacting us to begin arrangements for the initial mediation meetings.

  Jack clenched his eyelids shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A storm was building behind his eyes. He opened up the letter to Carrie and read. It was pretty much the same. Except this one added a few sentences that alluded to her unfitness as a mother.

  It appeared that after seven years of not seeing, not paying a penny for, and supposedly not giving a damn about his son, Renton Williams wanted him back.

  19

  A room full of pain. A room full of sobbing, weeping, desolate faces. A room united in grief. Anger. Despair.

  Alice stood in a conference room in Boreham mortuary with the parents of the teenage victims. She felt almost overwhelmed by them. There they were in front of her, holding each other, crying into each other, and she felt completely outside of them. Some looked in shock. Lost by it all and gazing around with blank eyes as though they couldn’t understand what they were doing in that room surrounded by so much misery. They’d been like it all night. The liaison officers reported that several of them needed sedatives to sleep. Most of them hadn’t slept at all and it showed.

  “If I can have your attention, please,” Alice said loudly.

  Wet eyes turned to her. Fourteen sets. Seven dead children. The only parents who weren’t present were Micheal Burke’s. They were still at the hospital with him.

  “Last night,” Alice began, “at approximately 8:45 p.m., what we believe was a lone gunman entered Boreham Wood and opened fire. I’m afraid your children appear to have been the target.”

  A rather angry-looking father stood up sharply. His red eyes were drowned in tears.

  “All we wanna know is who and why,” he seethed.

  “I’m afraid I cannot answer either of those questions at the time being. However, I can assure you, sir, that we’ve made initial progress with the investigation and believe we have sourced the weapon. However, what isn’t certain is who pulled the trigger.”

  This appeared to abate the man. Several of them seemed, if not overwhelmingly, then at least slightly impressed that they’d at least sourced the weapon. Or at least believed so.

  “What about Micky?” one of the other fathers said. “Micky Burke. He was left alive. Surely he told you somethin’.”

  “I’m afraid he was unable to give us a clear description of the man as he was shining a torch in his face. He only heard him speak.”

  “And he didn’t recognize him?”

  “I’m afraid not. However, I will say that—”

  “When can we see them?” one of the mothers suddenly asked, lifting her swollen face from her husband.

  Alice turned to the woman. An imploring look shone in her eyes.

  “This will be done shortly,” the detective said softly. “However, I must warn you that the bodies of your children have suffered terrible wounds due to the high caliber of the gunshots. If you’d rather remember them how they were, then by all means you have every right to sit this out. If need be, we have other ways of identifying the bodies. But if you do wish to help us confirm who they are so that we can move quickly onto their autopsies, then you are most welcome.”

  “What sort of injuries?” a mother asked. She looked terrified.

  “As you can imagine,” Alice replied, “a gunshot wound of this magnitude does a lot of damage to the body. Added to this, he has shot each of the victims in the head, meaning that we’ll have to ask you to identify them from their bodies.”

  “Oh God!” the woman cried out and was joined by several others who buried their faces in their spouses.

  Five stayed behind. The other nine joined Alice in walking the short distance down a corridor to the mortuary. Seven bodies covered in white sheets lay in a row on silver gurneys. Two mortuary assistants stood by to help. A card with a name written in marker pen sat on each body. Through identification found at the scene, including wallets with drivers licenses, they’d made guesses as to the identities of each victim. All they needed was confirmation.

  Each parent stood at the end of the sheeted body with their child’s name. Several stood on their own. Two mothers were without their husbands and three fathers stood without wives, all of them sobbing and shivering at the base of their child. Thankfully, there was at least one parent per gurney.

  Alice stood to the edge by the swinging doors. When everyone was set, she nodded at the assistants and they went along, removing the sheets.

  An explosion of noise erupted in that low-ceilinged room. Wailing, howling, shouting, cursing. The sound of utter despair bounced off every wall. Several of the parents fell to their knees the moment they saw their beautiful child so broken and destroyed. Saw for the first time their lively, boisterous son or daughter in this completely inanimate state. Pale skinned and dead. Not alive and joking. Asking to borrow money. Refusing to get up in the morning. But dead.

  Four of them instantly nodded their heads, confirmed that the body before them was their child, and soon ran from the room, howling like injured animals. The others remained. One mother took the hand of her daughter, brought it to her tearstained face and sobbed into the cold fingers.

  A father stood by the body of his son, staring down at a tattoo of a lion’s head that sat on the skin over the boy’s heart.

  “I went mad when he done it,” he said to no one in particular. “He wasn’t even eighteen yet. I couldn’t believe he’d scarred his body like that. I didn’t talk to him for a week. But I tell you what,” he loo
ked over sharply at Alice, “that boy,” he pointed down at his son, “can get whatever tattoo he wants from now on.” A tear rolled down his cheek and, turning back to the dead body, he added in a broken voice, “If only he’d get up and come home with me.”

  20

  “You sure you don’t wanna come inside and see your mum?” Jack asked Tyler as they sat in the car.

  They were parked in front of the red-brick and yellow stucco front of the Rosebank Ward. Jack leaned into the back. The boy sat there with a doleful look on his face.

  “I’m sorry, Granddad,” he said.

  “I told you before, you don’t have to feel sorry for not coming. I only brought you in case you changed your mind.”

  “Okay.” The boy lowered his eyes.

  Jack leaned back into the front and turned to Jean.

  “You gonna tell her?” she asked from the passenger seat.

  Jack instinctively looked into the mirror at the sad nine-year-old boy sitting in the back.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She needs to know. No need to protect her.”

  “Alright. Then I wish you luck.”

  Jack was escorted through the building by one of the nurses, a middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and a stern look twisting her face. Carrie was no longer near the front. She was at the back with the manics. Where the doors were locked shut and alarmed. Where it wasn’t uncommon to find dribbling women strapped to wheelchairs. Some of them were old, suffering from dementia. They were here because they had no family and there was no money for a care home. Caught in limbo, they found themselves spending their last years in psychiatric facilities instead.

  They entered a large mess hall where patients sat around watching television or playing games. Some merely sat in their wheelchairs and gazed into space, threads of spittle glimmering in the electric light as it slipped from their mouths. The windows were all covered in locked grates, so the sunlight only made it through in bursts, the diamond patterning of the grates shadowing the floor.

  Jack was glad to find Carrie more lucid than usual and not strapped to a wheelchair like she had been on several previous occasions, though he admitted her eyes were still a little dizzy. She was in a corner, stretched out on the floor of a wall recess like a cat, reading a book.

  “You wanna sit somewhere?” he asked when he reached her.

  She looked up sharply and narrowed her eyes. Closing the book, she stood up with clumsy movements and they both walked off to a small table that sat underneath one of the grated windows.

  “I’ll be leaving you both,” the nurse said and went on her way.

  Carrie leaned her elbows on the table and stared across at Jack. He couldn’t help complaining to himself that she’d lost more weight since last week. She’d been refusing food and it had become the habit of the hospital staff to force feed her through a tube. An ugly process whereby she’s strapped down. Then her head was held while a nurse threaded a tube down her nasal passage and eventually into her stomach. Then she’s pumped with a cold compound which resembles runny mashed potato.

  Her messy black hair frightened him. The staff had cut it after she’d refused to wash. Held her down as she struggled because they were tired of fighting to get her to clean herself. Now it was about an inch long in places, a few millimetres in others, and completely bald in patches. She truly had begun to look like a mad woman. It absolutely killed Jack to see it. See her once beautiful frizzy hair reduced to a tangled bob-cut.

  “No book today?” Carrie asked in a scratched voice.

  The scarring on her tongue needed an operation to reduce it, but she’d refused. The speech therapists had done their best, but without the operation, she would always sound like she was chewing her tongue when she spoke.

  “No. A letter instead.”

  He pulled the envelope from the pocket of his suit jacket and placed it on the table. She instantly narrowed her eyes at it.

  “I opened it and read it, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking up with a terrified face.

  “Appears your ex-boyfriend Renton Williams wants custody of Tyler.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He’s got a solicitor and everything.”

  “But why now? Why after all these years?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find out. But I need you to look into my eyes now, Carrie.”

  Her eyes were anywhere but. Looking off into space. A look of confusion hovered over her countenance. She was surrounded by fog. The drugs made sure of that. The impact of it all was only affecting her at around ten percent. The rest of the situation was trapped in the fog.

  “Look at me, Carrie,” Jack said firmly.

  She turned sharply to him.

  “He’s going to take the boy,” he went on slowly and solemnly. “If you don’t want that to happen, you need to get out of here. You only signed over temporary custody to me. I have no actual rights and you can’t sign those over while you’re in here. If you’re deemed unfit to care for him, Renton Williams will take Tyler away.”

  “He can’t,” was all she could say.

  “I’m going to look into him. But if it turns out that he’s clean, then the courts will deem him fit. Now tell me, those times when he hurt you, did you ever go to the police?”

  She continued to stare off into space. It was like she was trying to compute what it all meant and the struggle was breaking her inside.

  “Carrie!” Jack snapped.

  Again he had the attention of her wide, hazy eyes.

  “Did you ever go to the police?” he put to her again.

  “Not me.”

  “Who?”

  “The neighbors called one time. The cops turned up and arrested him. I had a bust nose. I was six months pregnant.” Jack shuddered when she said this. “They tried to get me to go with them but I wouldn’t. Wanted me to go to hospital and then make a statement. I refused and they left with him.”

  “What was he charged with in the end?”

  “They gave him a warning. Hundred and fifty quid fine for disturbance of the peace.”

  “Nothing regarding domestic abuse? Assault? Threatening behavior? Affray?”

  “No. Just disturbing the peace.”

  “Any other time?”

  “One other time. He broke my jaw. We were celebrating Tyler’s christening and were out drinking in Nottingham town center. We were smashed and got into a row. The next thing, I woke up in hospital. Wired jaw. The police were standing over me. Apparently I was found lying in the middle of the road by a taxi driver. He’d knocked me out and left me there.”

  “And this was reported?”

  “The hospital called the police when I got there.”

  “And it was recorded?”

  “No. I told them I fell over drunk. They told me to be more careful in the future and left.”

  Jack was shaking his head.

  “You should have said something. They’re there to help you.”

  “You really believe that?” she burst, screeching her chair forward as she jumped with anger. “Maybe you’re an okay cop, but the majority of them look at people like me and think I got what I deserved. They look at me like they would a fuckin’ rat, so don’t come here and tell me I should have told them. What would they have done, hey? What would your cop mates do? Arrest him? Get him out of my life? They’d of filed it under ‘W’ for ‘Who gives a shit’!”

  “Sure,” Jack retorted angrily. “At worst, they would have forgotten all about the girl who got slapped for cheeking her boyfriend and done like you said, filed it away. But then at least it would have been there. Would have been on the system. It would have been something for me now. Something to arm myself with for when they come knocking on the door for my grandson. For your son. I would have had a bullet to fire at him the day the courts snatched Ty from my hands and handed him over to the man who hit his mother while she was pregnant with him. But you don’t think, do you? Especially when it comes to your son.
”

  He’d enraged her more.

  “FUCK OFF!” she screamed, pushing the table forward into him.

  A male nurse standing close to the door had seen it before it even happened. He was stomping over. Carrie shot up from her chair, grabbed the edge of the table and began pounding it up and down.

  “FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF!” she cried like a rabid dog barking in his face. Jack sat there with wide eyes watching her, the table clattering up and down in front of him. The nurse quickly took her by the shoulders and Carrie turned on him, tried to smash him with a haymaker. But he knew it was coming. Blocked and grabbed the wrist. From somewhere else, Jack didn’t see where, another nurse took hold of Carrie and forced her to the floor. An alarm was going off and drowning out part of Carrie’s screams. It took both men all their strength to contain her on the floor. Contain a squirming bag of bones. A doctor emerged with a syringe and it was stabbed into Carrie’s behind. She gradually submitted to the will of the drugs and appeared to fall through the nurses’ arms, her eyes flickering and then going out.

  Jack looked around him. Some of the other patients were looking over. Some of them with blank looks, others with looks of worry. An elderly woman in the corner was being coaxed off a table by a nurse. She must’ve climbed on top when everything kicked off and was now sitting there rocking back and forth, holding her ears.

  All Jack could do was shake his head and walk out of there, taking the letter from Renton Williams’ solicitor with him.

  21

  Alice stood in the middle of a room in Lambeth amongst the vast gun collection of Tommy Lewis. They’d been bagged, labeled and categorized. It was now laid out on tables under strip lighting in a bare, yellow-walled room. Assault rifles. Hand guns. Sniper rifles. Carbines. Some older weapons. Probably antiques. A series of shotguns ranging in severity. Stacks of ammo boxes.

  “Lewis kept extensive records, ma’am,” a female ballistics expert was telling her. “Of his sales and of his personal collection. No sales matching either the hollow-point magnum rounds or the Remington Magnum have been found. He never even sold ammo of that type. Merely kept it in his own collection.”