Joe Coffin Season One

by Ken Preston

  He had returned, and filled in Steffanie’s desecrated grave, hiding the evidence that it had been tampered with.

  And he’d done a good job. Looking at it now, no one would know that she wasn’t there anymore.

  But Michael’s grave.

  That was different.

  Tom approached it slowly, hardly able to believe his eyes. He knelt down beside the hole in the grave, soil scattered around it, like whoever had been digging had been working furiously, in a panic, or a rage.

  Tom placed his hands on the ground, beside the hole, and leaned forward, peering into it. Someone had ripped the coffin lid open, splinters of wood lying in the empty casket.

  Little Michael’s body was not there.

  Tom lay on his back beside the grave and closed his eyes.

  Had someone come and stolen Michael’s body?

  Or had the little boy come back to life and dug himself free?

  peter goes home

  Brenda Marsden sat up, her heart hammering, blood pulsing through her head. The heavy duvet slipped off the bed, and Brenda shivered. The cold prickled at her flesh. Had she screamed when she sat up, so violently wrenched from her sleep? She took a deep breath, trying to calm her heart, still thumping away in her ribcage. Was she having a heart attack?

  With a trembling hand, she reached out to her bedside cabinet. Fingers fumbled with her lamp’s cable, until she found the switch, and flicked on the light.

  She squinted in the sudden glare, placing a hand over her eyes. The bed sheet felt clammy and cold. Had she wet herself? Was that why she had woken up so suddenly? Had it been her mind’s futile attempt at stopping her body from betraying her, from embarrassing her?

  Brenda ran the flat of her palm over the damp sheet. No, she hadn’t pissed in the bed, after all. She’d been sweating as she thrashed about beneath the heavy, winter duvet. She remembered feeling hot and feverish, kicking out, pushing and pulling at the cover, as though trying to fight her way out of a nightmare.

  Already the details of the dream had fled, leaving her only with a sense of having been utterly terrified. The terror still lingered, in her chest, in her stomach, the ends of her fingers tingling, and the inside of her mouth thick and sticky.

  She pulled the duvet off the bedroom floor and over herself, wrapping it around her body like a protective cocoon.

  Only a dream. I just need to calm down, forget about it.

  Brenda peered at her clock. Her eyesight was getting worse. Every day now it seemed like her visible world was shrinking, imprisoning her in an indistinct blur of light and shadow. She should go to the optician, but what would they do? Just try to sell her some glasses, that’s all. Like everybody else in life, they wanted her money. The bloody government, the council, all those bloody salesmen on the doorstep, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, even the men she sometimes had up here in her bedroom, and they paid her, they were all the same. If it wasn’t her money they wanted, it was her body, or her eternal soul.

  Bastards, all of them, ready to screw you over at the first chance they got.

  Brenda picked the clock off the bedside cabinet and peered at its glowing figures.

  5:06 AM

  She put the clock back and chewed on a nail. Not much chance of her getting back to sleep now. Once she was awake, that was it, she was awake for hours. That was always the problem with having Peter around. He’d wake up in the night, having a nightmare, or crying because he’d wet the bed. And he’d wake Brenda up, bloody stupid kid.

  Why did he have to do that? He was too old to be scared of the dark anymore, and he bloody well knew where the clean sheets were kept, didn’t he? It was about time he started looking after himself a bit more, was what she’d tell him.

  But no, the stupid little boy insisted on waking her up, wanting her to tell him that there weren’t any monsters lurking in the wardrobe, or under the bed. Wanting her to change his sheets for clean, dry ones.

  Brenda picked up a packet of cigarettes off her bedside cabinet and pulled one out. No point in even trying to get back to sleep now. She lit the cigarette and took a deep drag, savouring that first giddy moment as the nicotine hit her bloodstream.

  Bloody stupid Peter, most probably just like his bloody father, whoever the hell he was. What the hell did he think he was playing at? Him and that other boy, Jacob, they were hiding out somewhere, playing at being silly buggers. None of this stupid fuss with the police had been necessary, but Laura, she had to go and get them involved.

  Her being Tom Mills’ wife and all. You’d have thought when you were married to the Slaughterhouse Mob, the police would be the last people you’d call. But no, Laura had to get them looking for the kids, creating a bloody storm in a teacup if you asked Brenda, and now here she was, Public Enemy Number One, according to the papers.

  Oh yes, she knew what the police thought of her, and she’d read the newspapers, all those bloody editors sitting in their swanky London offices, ranting on about what an unfit mother she was. What was it The Daily Mail had said about her? ‘Brenda Marsden is a shabby symbol of the state of our once proud nation’, or some such bloody shit.

  All a load of bloody bollocks, that’s what it was.

  Brenda took another drag on her cigarette, and then held her breath. Listening.

  For a moment her chest had contracted, her stomach tightened, the oppressive fear from her nightmare sweeping over her once more. It was her imagination, it must have been. The wind, perhaps, playing tricks with her hearing, with her nerves.

  Because surely she couldn’t have heard Peter calling for her from his bedroom?

  Brenda sat perfectly still in the bed, smoke from the cigarette, held between two fingers, drifting past her face.

  Nothing, just the empty silence of the house.

  God, this house can be bloody lonely at night, she thought. Although the boy had been nothing but a bloody nuisance and a drain on her pocket ever since he came along, at least he was a bit of company sometimes. Like in the evenings, when her men friends were back home with their wives, it was nice to have the lad around then.

  He had a right tongue on him, that was for sure, giving her cheek so much she sometimes couldn’t help but give him a slap. It was for his own good, that mouth of his was going to get him into trouble one day. But he could be funny, too. Some of the stories he told her, making them up on the spot like that, he’d have her crying with laughter by the end.

  Bloody hell, Brenda, the way you’re going on, anybody’d think you were missing the little sod.

  She took another drag on her cigarette.

  Brenda jumped as she heard a clatter from outside, and bottles rolling along the drive.

  Cats, she thought, as her heart picked up its galloping pace again. That’s all, just the bloody cats.

  A long, grey column of ash had grown on Brenda’s cigarette, threatening to collapse onto her duvet. She tapped it into the ashtray, the one with the portrait of Elvis in the base. Her first husband had been an obsessive fan of Elvis and tortured Brenda by playing his records all day long. He’d hated that ashtray, said she shouldn’t be stubbing her cigarettes out in the King’s face.

  Bloody hell, he couldn’t even see that’s why she’d bought it in the first place.

  And why she still hung onto it all these years later.

  Another clatter of rubbish from outside startled Brenda, and she dropped her cigarette on the duvet. She snatched it up and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  I’m going to kill those bloody cats, she thought, climbing out of the bed. She twitched the curtains aside, and peered through the gap, down into the darkness of her garden. All she could see was her distorted reflection in the glass.

  Pulling on her slippers and a faded dressing gown, she headed downstairs. In the kitchen, in a cupboard under the sink, she found a torch. She hadn’t used it in years, but when she flicked the switch it gave out a weak, yellow light.

  She unlocked the back door and stepped outside.


  Silence.

  Brenda swung the torch around in a slow arc, past the small, derelict shed, more holes in the roof than there was actual roof, past the overgrown lawn full of weeds, and the engine block left behind by one of her boyfriends. He’d promised to come back for it, but Brenda had given up expecting him.

  And there, on the flagstone patio, was her dustbin, lying on its side, the contents strewn behind it in a wide arc.

  Not a sign of cats anywhere.

  Brenda turned back to go inside.

  I’ll pick all the rubbish up later.

  The skin on her neck and arms goose pimpled as she heard the slow shuffle of footsteps in the dark. She swung the torch back around, her other hand clutching at her dressing gown. There was no one in the garden, no one that she could see at least.

  But she had heard something.

  “Who’s there?” she said.

  Another sound, like someone laboriously dragging a heavy weight, inch by painful inch, along the ground.

  Whoever, whatever, was making that noise, they were coming closer. Brenda stepped back, her heel catching on the lip of the doorstep. She fell, tipping backwards. Her arms shot out and pinwheeled around as she tried to regain her balance, or grab onto the door frame. The light from the torch swung around and around, casting crazy, kaleidoscopic shadows across the walls, transforming the kitchen into a lunatic funfair ride from a black and white horror movie.

  Brenda fell on her bottom, and the shock sent the torch flying from her hand and skidding across the kitchen floor. The bulb flickered wildly, and then died, plunging her into darkness.

  “Oh no, oh no, no, no, nononononoooo…!”

  She scrabbled around on the floor, disorientated in her terror, trying to find the door. She had to shut the back door before that thing, whatever it was, got inside the house. She swept her hands wildly across the dirty linoleum until her knuckles smacked against the edge of the doorstep.

  Crying out in pain and fear, Brenda slid her hands up the open door until she found the handle, all the time expecting the clawed, deformed hand of a nightmarish monster from the depths of hell to seize her wrist. Crying with relief, she pulled at the door and slammed it shut, her shaking fingers finding the key and twisting it locked.

  Something heavy and ponderous thumped against the door, and Brenda screamed. There was another thump, and then the slap of something flat and wet against the glass. Brenda pulled herself backwards, her bottom sliding along the floor, staring wide eyed at her back door. There was little to see, other than vague shadows, and the suggestion of movement in the darkness.

  She screamed again when she hit her head against the table. Whatever was outside seemed agitated by her scream and began pawing at her back door. Brenda turned over, reaching out to get on her hands and knees, when she found the torch. She closed her hand around it and picked it up.

  The torch flickered into life again, the beam suddenly growing steadier.

  As if pulled by an outside force, unable to command her body to stop, she slowly turned around, casting the light on her back door.

  A white face was pressed against the window in the upper half of the door, blood from a gash in the cheek smeared against the glass in a long, wide streak. Round eyes stared at her, the pupils so big and black, they seemed to take up the whole of the eye sockets. On either side of the ghastly head, two hands pushed against the glass, the fingers splayed out.

  There was a squeaking sound as it shifted position slightly, leaving more bloody smears across the window. It opened its mouth, and pressed a red, pointed tongue against the glass, and licked at the blood.

  Brenda screamed.

  That thing outside was her Peter.

  She screamed and screamed and dropped the torch from nerveless fingers. It hit the floor, the bulb giving up again, and leaving her in darkness once more.

  Sobbing hysterically, Brenda started crawling away from the back door, into the hall and then up the stairs.

  Outside, the lifeless thing that used to be her son continued licking frantically at its own blood smeared across the windowpane.

  it's all bullshit

  When Joe Coffin woke up, his eyes were full of grit, and his head felt like somebody had punched a metal spike through it.

  There were no curtains in the flat, and the morning sky was a clear, sharp-edged blue. Coffin dragged himself out of bed, and rummaged through his holdall for some clean clothes, squinting in the sunlight. He pulled on a T-shirt and jeans.

  In the bathroom he splashed cold water over his face. He ran his tongue over his teeth. They felt fuzzy, sticky. Yesterday he had meant to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste. He walked into the kitchen and found the whisky bottle. He rinsed a small amount of whisky around his mouth before swallowing it.

  The clock on the kitchen wall said the time was ten past eight. He would have liked to have slept in for longer, but the sunshine had prodded him awake. He prowled around the flat, in and out of the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living-room. Not sure what he was looking for. Not sure he was looking for anything.

  He headed downstairs and outside, the cold morning air like a slap in the face, bringing him fully awake. The street was busy with rush hour traffic, the pavement with mothers taking their children to school. Coffin walked to the corner shop. He scanned the newspaper headlines and stopped.

  Coffin picked up the newspaper and unfolded it, so he could read the entire headline.

  BRUTAL GANGLAND MURDER IN CITY

  Coffin gripped the newspaper, his fingers tightening around the edges, scrunching the paper into his palms.

  He scanned through the story, looking for any details about the two kids, about any possible connection the police were looking at in relation to his family’s murder. As usual, the police were remaining tight-lipped.

  “Hey, are you buying that paper, or not? This isn’t a library, you know!”

  Coffin looked up from the newspaper, at the shopkeeper, standing behind his counter, rolls of fat stretching at his shirt. Greasy hair, pasty skin, full, wet lips, he looked to Coffin like someone who deserved a good kicking. Coffin could imagine doing that, saw himself taking out all his grief and misery, all his anger, on this piece of shit.

  The man, as though reading Coffin’s intentions in his eyes, took a step back, his eyes widening.

  Coffin walked over to the counter, and leaned on it, upsetting a display of lottery tickets, which crashed to the floor.

  “What did you say?”

  The man backed up again, into shelves of cigarette packets. He was shaking so badly he upset the displays, and the packets began falling, bouncing off his shoulders and his huge stomach.

  “I just asked if you were buying the paper, that’s all.”

  Coffin leaned over the counter, grabbed the shopkeeper by the collar, and hauled him forward until their faces were only inches apart.

  The fat man clutched at Coffin’s wrists, tried to pull himself free. He might as well have been trying to prise open a locked door with his fingers.

  Coffin stared into his wide, frightened eyes. Tears were gathering on the lids, quivering and ready to spill down his cheeks. Coffin grabbed the man’s face in one hand, squeezing his cheeks together, so that his lips stuck out in a comical pout.

  How easy it would be to keep on squeezing, until he felt the bones of the skull cave in beneath the pressure, heard the crack of bone just before the man started screaming.

  The bell over the shop door tinged.

  Coffin let go, and the man staggered and fell back on his bottom. Breathing tortuously, his hands massaging his face, the shopkeeper stared up at Coffin. He looked about ready to burst into tears.

  Coffin picked up his newspaper and walked outside.

  As he walked, he continued reading. There was no mention of the girl that Coffin had told to get out. He regretted letting her go. If she went to the police, she could easily identify him. Maybe she had already gone, and the police were keeping quiet.

&n
bsp; No, Coffin couldn’t figure that one. The cops would have said they were pursuing an important lead, or some bullshit like that. They had to say something to justify their existence.

  It bothered him about those two kids, though. Coffin never would have named them as the killers. They didn’t fit the picture in his head. Coffin should never have listened to Tom Mills, he should have trusted his instinct. He thought about what Craggs had said, about Chinese whispers, about Tom looking after Coffin’s interests while he was in jail.

  Here was another detail that bothered him. Joe Coffin and Tom Mills had never had much time for each other before now. What Coffin had hated the most about his divorce from Laura was that she married Tom Mills. The guy was a complete waste of space, always had been. What had compelled Laura to hook up with him was beyond Coffin’s ability to reason.

  The divorce with Laura had been amicable, and they remained friends. So, Coffin had kept out of the way, and not criticised Laura for her choice of partner. If she wanted to marry him, that was up to her. But then Jacob arrived, and Coffin saw a change for the worse in Tom, an aggressive streak he had never displayed before. It was like he suddenly had this monkey on his back, nipping and scratching at him, whispering in his ear, goading him on to increasingly nasty outbursts.

  Coffin had been ready to rip Tom’s arms off when he found out about the assault on Laura. But Craggs had forbidden him from interfering, had calmed him down, saying he would deal with it.

  Mortimer Craggs insisted on visiting Laura, taking Tom with him. Coffin came along, too, giving Tom the dead eye the whole time. Tom begged for Laura’s forgiveness, cried his eyes out in front of everyone.

  Coffin knew it was all bullshit. Tom didn’t care what Laura thought, didn’t give a shit about the bruises on her face, the stitches in the back of her head. The dramatic display of regret was for Mortimer Craggs, and nobody else.

  Craggs didn’t like it when the organisation that was the Slaughterhouse Mob didn’t run as smoothly as it ought. Craggs had founded the Slaughterhouse Mob and been its leader ever since. He demanded fierce loyalty from every member of the Mob, and that included the wives.