These were the people he’d shared copies of Playboy and Penthouse with. The same people he’d bragged to about losing his virginity. The same people he went camping in the Lake District with, getting drunk on cider and falling in Lake Windermere, rescued by an equally drunk Paris. These were his friends. He couldn’t think badly of them, but this … it was madness.
He withdrew the chloroform and the cloth from his pocket and walked towards Hatchet Man. The least he could do was to make sure he didn’t suffer.
Wolfe held the axe out, barring Prosper’s path. “I think we should do this while he’s conscious,” he said.
“You are joking? Tell me you’re joking.” Prosper fought to stop the bile rising in his throat.
Wolfe grinned. “It’s got to look authentic. We want his face to show the pain, the fear. His face is the canvas that’ll give the photograph authenticity. If he’s unconscious, he won’t feel it. Besides, we owe it to Jerel to make the bastard suffer.”
“Wolfe’s right,” Paris said, dabbing his nose with the cloth.
Prosper looked at Ty. “Tell me you don’t agree with them, too.”
Ty shrugged. “He raped Jerel’s wife.”
“Who the fuck’s Jerel?” Hatchet Man asked.
Ignoring him, Prosper said, “Am I the only sane one here? Have you all gone mad?”
For the first time, Prosper saw real fear in Hatchet Man’s eyes.
“Look, I don’t know what this is about, but you’ve got the wrong man,” Hatchet Man said, his tone pleading. “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. We’ll forget all about it. Please, just let me go.”
“That’s it. I’m out of here,” Prosper said.
He started to walk away and a hand grabbed his shoulder and squeezed like a vice, halting him in his tracks. He grimaced and spun around to see Wolfe wearing a stony expression, eyes narrowed into slits, knuckles white as he gripped the handle of the axe.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Wolfe said. “We’re in this together.”
Prosper grabbed Wolfe’s hand to pry it off. “I told you, I’m not having anything to do with the rest of this crazy idea.”
“You’re already in too deep.”
Prosper looked at the axe propped on Wolfe’s shoulder. For an insane moment, he feared his old friend was actually going to strike him with it.
Ty and Paris stood in front of the doorway, barring his exit, their expressions resolute. Paris clenched his hands into fists, his stance that of someone who wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Out of my way,” Prosper said. “I’m out of here.”
Paris shook his head. “We need you. We’re in this together. All of us.”
Prosper rubbed his cheeks, unable to believe how it had come to this.
He wanted to stop them, but more afraid for himself than Hatchet Man, he nodded and stepped back into the room. They were like wild animals. This was insane.
“Ty, Paris, let’s do it,” Wolfe said.
Ty and Paris strode across the room and crouched down either side of Hatchet Man.
“Undo the straps on his arms,” Wolfe commanded as he stood over them, omnipotent, axe raised above his head.
Ty licked his lips, expression turning pensive. Paris nodded at him, then grabbed Hatchet Man’s arms to restrain him while Ty undid the bindings.
Hatchet Man struggled, nostrils flaring, but Paris kept a tight hold, his teeth bared as he used all his strength to keep the man under control. Prosper stood across the other side of the room, chewing the skin from around his nails.
Once he had finished untying the fastenings, Ty grabbed Hatchet Man’s arm, and with Paris’s help they pushed him flat to the ground and positioned their body weight on his arms to stop him moving, holding him spread-eagled, like a sacrifice.
Wolfe grinned. Then he swung the axe. Prosper watched it descend as though in slow motion like the second hand of a clock. As the blade bit into Hatchet Man’s shoulder, it made a sickening crunch, followed by a precise thud. Hatchet Man screamed so loud Prosper thought his throat must have torn.
Paris lay on a severed arm, and Hatchet Man instinctively rolled towards Ty who was violently sick. Paris reacted quickly and grabbed the severed shoulder. Blood pumped out, splashing all over him. Prosper watched in awe and horror as it gushed from the stump like a fireman’s hose.
Wolfe cocked his head as though relieving stressed muscles, and yanked the axe out of the floorboards. Then he turned towards Prosper and held the axe out like a gift, a grotesque present.
“Prosper, you’ve got to join us. You’ve got to play your part.”
Prosper gagged. Hatchet Man screamed like a baby.
“I ... I can’t.” He shook his head.
“Can't, or won't?” Wolfe demanded. He stood with his feet planted on either side of a river of blood, the muscles in his neck stretched taut, the veins in his forearms standing proud as he held the axe out.
“Do it,” Paris said, blood dribbling down his chin to splash into the growing river on the ground.
Ty wiped vomit from his mouth, his hand visibly shaking. He gagged. “Hurry up.”
The severed arm lay like a grotesque worm beside Paris. Prosper looked at the axe. Blood dripped from the blade. The room started to spin, a crazy merry-go-round in a fairground of horror.
He staggered forwards. In the gloom, his friends’ faces looked sinister, more monster than human.
Wolfe passed him the axe. It felt heavier than he imagined, no doubt weighed down by guilt.
He looked down at Hatchet Man and saw eyes wide with fear and pain look up at him. Nothing else seemed to exist at that moment. Just the two of them. Hatchet Man’s bravado had been stripped bare, leaving him helpless. The man didn’t deserve this, did he?
“Please. For god’s sake,” Hatchet Man screamed.
“What if it had been Natasha?” Wolfe said. “What if this bastard had raped your wife?”
“Hurry up. Do it, Prosper,” Ty urged, head turned away from the bloody spectacle.
“What if this monster had broken into your house, and raped your wife?” Wolfe continued. “What if the filthy beast pawed Natasha’s breasts, ripped her bra off and nuzzled on her tits? What if he’d forced her skirt up, then torn her knickers off? What if he’d stuck his filthy diseased cock in Natasha? What if he wanted her to suck it first, threatened her with Leon’s life if she didn’t do as he asked? What if he came in her mouth, then stuck his cock in her ass and vagina? Come on Prosper. For the love of God, this sick bastard raped Jerel’s wife.”
But Prosper couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a killer. He lowered the axe, letting the head rest on the floor.
“I can’t,” he said.
Without warning, Hatchet Man roared and possessed of a strength verging on the supernatural, he twisted out of his captor’s grasp and lurched to his feet. Teeth gritted, he charged towards Prosper.
Ty stood and gave chase, almost slipping in the blood that still surged from the severed stump, sowing the ground with red seeds. Paris followed a few steps behind.
Letting out a scream almost as loud as Hatchet Man’s, Prosper swung the axe around in a powerful arc to defend himself. Taken by surprise, he misjudged the distance and the blade almost hit Ty. As the axe struck Hatchet Man’s side, it jarred Prosper’s arm, sending a jolt through him like an electric shock. He felt the blade puncture flesh and shatter ribs with a sound like snapping branches and Hatchet Man staggered back, his face scrunched up in pain before he crashed to the ground.
The only person screaming now was Prosper.
CHAPTER 23
A crescent moon grinned down as Prosper skulked along the alley between
Pearl Street and Cushing Road. When he thought about what he’d just done, bile rose in his throat – he couldn’t believe he’d been a party to murder. But it was too late now. The deed was done.
He recalled the looks on his friends’ faces as they set about mutilating the corpse. While Ty and Pa
ris looked almost as sickened as Prosper, Wolfe seemed to relish in carrying out the disfigurement. It was as though some sort of switch had been thrown, allowing him to hack at the corpse with hardly a flicker of emotion. He said after that he treated it like one of his sculptures, as though Hatchet Man was made of marble, and that he just ignored the blood. Prosper wished he had been able to do the same.
What with the drunken man as a potential witness and Hatchet Man’s and Paris’ blood left at the scene, things hadn’t gone even close to plan. Skulking along the alley, he felt like the criminal he now was.
He kept looking around, furtive. Satisfied he was alone, he hurried to where the blood had dripped and took the bottle of hydrogen peroxide out of his bag, thanking God for 24 hour chemists. He didn’t know whether it would work the same as it did on clothes, but he hoped it would suffice to remove the surface stains. Of course, he knew no matter how much he scrubbed, he couldn’t remove all traces, especially on a porous surface like the road. A proper investigation would undoubtedly uncover residue.
After pouring the liquid onto the stains, he took a scrubbing brush out of the bag and got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed. The loud sound of the brush scratching across the ground echoed along the alley, making him wince with each stroke.
As he worked, he couldn’t get the picture of Hatchet Man out of his mind and the pungent smell of the peroxide stung his nostrils, increasing the nauseas feeling that the memory induced. He recalled the blood. Gallons of the stuff, the smell of it horrendous. And the screaming that pierced his eardrums. He didn’t think he would ever forget that sound, but it was nothing compared to the memory of striking Hatchet Man with the axe. He had felt the bone jarring crunch of the blade chopping through flesh; splintering bone with an audible snap, the life going out of the man’s eyes as he crumpled to the ground. And then there was Wolfe’s expression as he worked at mutilating the corpse, his lips upturned in a manic grin.
Prosper froze as a door banged somewhere. His heart beat fast and his eyes flitted within their sockets as he looked around, barely seeing his surroundings.
A car drove past on
Pearl Street, sending nefarious shadows scurrying along the alley. He started scrubbing again; heard what sounded like a door opening ... or closing. Every sound made by someone that could know what they had done…what he had done.
Finishing as quickly as he could, he stood up, took a large bottle of water out of the bag and sluiced the area down. He gave his handiwork a cursory glance and then scuttled away.
There was no longer any blood on the road, but the blood on his hands went too deep to rub away so easily.
CHAPTER 24
Prosper lay staring at the ceiling. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Hatchet Man’s face looking back at him. How could they have done what they did? It was inhumane. Barbaric. It made them no better than the Oracle himself. Nobody deserved to be butchered like that.
He recalled again how easily Wolfe found it to mutilate the corpse. Watching him work was when Prosper realised how little he really knew about his old friends and what they were capable of.
Gallons of blood had gushed out after the initial blows, and poor Ty and Paris were soaked in the stuff. And then there was the sound as Wolfe sawed through Hatchet Man’s limbs, the rasp of the saw blade as it gnawed through bone was one of the worst things he had ever heard in his life.
The memory made Prosper’s stomach churn. He leaped out of bed and ran to the en suite bathroom. He turned the light on, narrowing his eyes at the brightness, and then hunched over the toilet and retched. Vomit gushed out of his mouth and he coughed, causing it to spurt out of his nostrils. When he stopped retching, his nose and throat burned as though coated with acid and he spat bile out.
“What’s wrong?” Natasha asked from the bedroom.
“Nothing. I must have a bug or something,” Prosper shouted back. He wiped vomit from around his mouth and then stood up, flushed the toilet and leaned over the sink, running the tap and splashing his face with cold, invigorating water. He cupped his hands and filled them with water to swill around his mouth.
When he looked up, he saw his pale reflection in the mirror, the surface of which still bore traces of the condensation from the prolonged shower he took when he arrived home. For a moment, he didn’t recognise himself. He appeared different, aged, his skin more sallow than usual, almost waxen. He would swear he was looking at a stranger.
After drying his hands, he brushed his teeth to get rid of the taste, then he turned and stood on his tiptoes to reach above the medicine cabinet. His fingers closed around what he was looking for, and he pulled down the Beretta pistol he had taken out of Hatchet Man’s jacket. He turned it over in his hands.
“Are you sure you’re OK,” Natasha asked.
Prosper put the gun back where he got it from, turned the light off and returned to the bedroom to crawl back underneath the duvet where he lay, shivering.
Natasha put her arm around him. “You feel freezing. What’s wrong?”
He glanced at the digital alarm clock on the cabinet beside his bed, dismayed to see it was only three o’clock. “I told you, it must be a bug.”
“You’ve been tossing and turning all night. Kept waking me up.”
“Well I am sorry if my being ill interfered with your beauty sleep,” he snapped, rolling away so that her arm slipped from around him. “Tell you what, I’ll go sleep in the spare room, shall I?”
“There’s no need to be like that. I was only saying.”
“Well don’t.”
“Is it me? Have I done something to upset you? You’ve been funny with me for weeks now.” She spoke softly.
“No, it’s nothing. Now stop going on about it will you. I need to get some sleep. I’ve got to get up for work soon.”
She rubbed his shoulder, her hand warm against his cold skin. “You can’t go work if you’re ill.”
Prosper wished that was true. “I’ve got to. There’s a madman out there killing people. I can’t afford to have time off.”
“One day won’t hurt.”
“Tell that to his next victim.”
She kissed his back. “I’m worried about you. You’re working too hard. You need some rest.”
Prosper felt a lump in his throat that no amount of swallowing helped budge. He closed his eyes to see Hatchet Man glaring at him in the darkness and he opened his eyes again to stare at the wall.
Tell that to his next victim. What an ironic choice of words, he thought, especially when he knew exactly who that next victim was as he had just helped kill him. With one swing of the axe, he had turned into a murderer.
CHAPTER 25
“You look almost as bad as yesterday,” Jill said as Prosper entered the room. “Where’ve you been? We’ve got another photo from the Oracle.”
Prosper looked at Jill and frowned, hearing her words as if in a dream. With two nights sleep to catch up on, pretending nothing had happened was proving harder than he imagined. His eyes felt heavy, the lids drooping, but he hadn’t been able to grab more than a couple of hours sleep since helping kill Hatchet Man a couple of days ago.
“The alarm clock didn’t go off. I overslept,” he said for want of a better lie. “So where’s the picture?”
Jill stared at him. “Looks more like you under-slept to me. Anyway, the photograph arrived less than an hour ago. We sent the original away for forensic tests, but we made copies.” She held one out.
Prosper rubbed his face with his hands and felt coarse stubble grate against his palms.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” Jill asked.
“I’m fine,” he said. “You should have contacted me.” He held out his hand to take the photograph, although he already knew what to expect. He wondered whether he looked or acted guilty.
“You look like shit.”
Prosper nodded. “Cheers. I’m just tired.”
“I thought you said you overslept.”
“Too much s
leep can be as bad as not enough.”
Jill pursed her lips and seated herself on the edge of the desk opposite, her skirt riding up slightly and exposing her bare legs. Prosper averted his eyes and looked at the photograph, although he would rather not have. He’d already seen it. Jesus, he’d been there when it was taken.
The memory of the other night returned in a river of blood and bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it back down and forced himself to remain calm, professional.
The picture showed Hatchet Man, or what remained of him. Naked, his limbs had been severed and reattached so his arms replaced his legs and his legs replaced his arms. The limbs had been reattached using thick twine sewn through the ragged stumps; the same twine then used to sew his ears, eyes and mouth shut, like Frankenstein’s monster gone hideously wrong. Wolfe had placed a few serial killer portraits around the corpse, which were supposed to simulate the Oracle’s mystic clues.
A label was attached to the photograph: SEE NO, SPEAK NO, HEAR NO, courtesy of the Oracle.
“The man’s name is Mack Taylor, otherwise known as the Hatchet Man,” Jill said over his shoulder.
Prosper frowned. “How have you put a name to the face so quickly?”
“He’s got form and Mike Holmes recognised him after arresting him before.”
Prosper dropped the picture on the desk and stood up, rubbing his face with his hands and taking deep breaths to calm his nerves. “Are you sure it’s the work of the Oracle?”
“As sure as we can be. Look, you can just about see the other bodies in the background.” She pointed at the photo as if to emphasise her point.
Looking at the picture, Prosper realised that if he didn’t know the truth, he would think the Oracle really had committed the crime. It was perfect. Too perfect.
“So what do we know about this ...?”
“Mack Taylor. Well, he’s a petty criminal, involved in drugs, prostitutes, that sort of thing. He was once charged with rape, which is where Mike remembered him from as he was the arresting officer, but the case was dropped through lack of evidence. But he was previously charged with aggravated assault and served fifteen months, and on another occasion he was charged with burglary.”
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