by Stephen Laws
“What?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Pasco fixed his eyes deliberately on Cath. “What do you say we have a party? Would you like a party, Crip?”
“A party? Yeah?”
Pasco turned his gaze back to Cath. “You be nice, Nothing Girl. And we can pass the time. And no one will get hurt. And the Mexican farmer can watch, and if he’s really good he might get to play at the party as well . . .”
“Tully!”
Drew’s yell had an immediate effect.
Tully’s head snapped up, raising the gun.
Pasco glared at Drew in rage.
“You said that we’d be all right if we co-operated,” said Drew tightly. “But if you don’t get that leg seen to, you’re not going to last the night. And in the meantime, your lunatic friend is just going to do whatever the hell he likes. Do yourselves a favour, Tully. Just get the hell out of here.”
Pasco started to rise from his seat, anger flaring. Drew was on his feet first, enraged and ready to go, aware now of Cath’s hand on his arm.
“Let me have him,” Pasco said.
“Come on and try it,” said Drew through gritted teeth. “I’ve had all I’m going to take from you.”
“Sit down, both of you!” Tully snapped, grimacing again as he struggled with the belt around his thigh. The towels packed in around his thigh were now completely red.
Neither man moved.
“Now!” yelled Tully.
Pasco sat back.
“Pretty please,” Tully said—and Drew reluctantly sat back again. On the other side of the room, Crip watched intently with his mouth open. When Drew had finally settled, still rigid and angry, Tully turned to Pasco.
“I told you to behave yourself.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just sit here? We got a whole fucking night of just sitting here?”
“Have another drink, and think about tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, yeah. If that bloody boat is still there.”
“Shut up.”
“Right—shut up, do this, do that. I’m telling you, Tully. I’m getting pretty fucking sick of being told what to do. If you’d listened to me when I said . . .”
“What’s that? In the bag.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean. That bag in your lap.”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, Pasco.”
Pasco picked up the bag from between his legs, began fiddling with the drawstring like a schoolboy who’d been caught by a teacher with stolen goods.
“Nothing.”
“You tell me nothing again, I’ll put a bullet in your kneecap.”
“All right, all right—that leg of yours has turned you mean. It’s a keepsake.”
“Show me.”
Pasco’s expression slowly changed. A smile crept over his face as if a new and deeply appealing idea had occurred to him. “Anything you say, Tully. You’re the boss. I really have to hand it to you. You know how to do the bossing. And I really have to hand it to you . . .” Pasco pulled the bag open, took what was inside and tossed it across the room to Cath.
Startled, Cath caught it—then cried out and dropped it in horror and disgust. It hit the floor with a curious flopping sound.
“Oh my God,” said Cath, backing into Drew. He held her, and looked down at the thing as Pasco burst into mocking laughter.
It was a severed human hand.
“See what I meant?” laughed Pasco. “Got to hand it to you! Get it? Got to hand it to you!”
Crip was laughing too. “Hand, yeah! Hand!”
“Good Christ,” Drew said—recognizing that hand, just as Cath had done. The elaborate, over-ostentatious rings on each finger were only too familiar.
“Kapler Dietersen,” said Cath, struggling to control her nausea.
Suddenly, Pasco wasn’t laughing anymore. Tully was sitting higher, the mask of pain on his face now more alert, more dangerous.
“Shut up, Crip!” Tully snapped—and Crip was silent again.
“What did you say?” Pasco asked.
“Kapler . . .”
“Cath, no!” warned Drew.
“ . . . Dietersen.”
“You know Kapler Dietersen?” Pasco’s humour and drunkenness seemed to have disappeared immediately. “How the hell do you know Kapler Dietersen?”
“Shit,” said Tully.
“They know him, Tully. They only fucking know him! What the hell are we going to do now?”
Tully shook his head angrily. “I knew after we offed him you were doing something. When I was checking those cases. You idiot!”
“I always take something. Always take a keepsake after a job. You know that.”
“I’ve told you not to do it. Told you!”
“Yeah—well, done it now, haven’t I?”
Tully raised the gun to Drew and Cath. “Crip? Take them both upstairs, in one of the rooms. Me and Pasco have to talk.”
“Don’t you wanna talk to me as well?”
“Crip—just do what the hell you’re told.”
Sulking, the child-man moved to Cath, reached to take her arm. Angrily, she swatted it away.
“Go with him—and don’t cause any trouble. Now.” Drew and Cath moved on ahead, Crip following up the staircase behind them—looking back like a child being sent to his bedroom.
“So what do we do?” Pasco’s voice came up the stairs behind them as Crip pushed them both on ahead into the bedroom. “They know—knew—Dietersen. That changes everything, doesn’t it?”
They were the last words that Drew and Cath heard as Crip slammed the door shut behind him.
THIRTY THREE
It crouched beneath the kitchen window, the storm wind ruffling its sleek black fur—-and listened to the hated voices inside. The wood of the cellar storm doors had been gouged and splintered by its claws, the sounds disguised by the storm, but the doors had remained steadfastly secure. It knew that its mate and cub had sensed its presence, faint scent-traces of fear and anger and hope leaking through the cracks of the unyielding doors before being whipped away by the wind. Enraged and frustrated, it had circled the house several times looking for another way in and found none. From within the kitchen, it could hear the emotion in the sounds that the Two-Legs made. It could sense the fear and the anger, serving to further enrage it.
It raised its head to the lower rim of the window and shrank back when another black-furred face reflected back at it. It knew what this was; had experienced the unnatural nature of glass before. Something to be seen through, like water when it drank from a stream and could see its own face. But invisible and dangerous; witness the jagged scar on its hind leg when it had once tried to enter the lair of a hated Two-Legs last summer, spurred on by the smell of cooking food. There was no entry here.
Snarling, it circled the house once more, hugging the ground and blacker than night.
There were still no openings, no means of entrance.
Enraged beyond control, it flew back through the night to a place where it could vent its anger. The storm wind seemed to carry it through the air as it cleared a broken fence, landed and rebounded with incredible grace—and threw itself at the remaining henhouse.
The flimsy wall, already weakened by the storm wind, instantly shattered. The roof slithered aside and the fowl within squawked and chattered in terror as it savaged and ripped, feathers and flesh shredding and flying in the wind. The taste of blood, even this thin and miserable blood, goaded it into frenzy. The small and terrified life, which disintegrated between its jaws and its claws, fired its own blood and slaked its ferocity.
In seconds, everything living was destroyed.
Standing stiff and erect in the ruins of the henhouse, chest heaving with exertion and the taste of blood in its mouth—it turned to look back through the night at the farmhouse. It knew from experience that the Two-Legs would not stay in there for long. Soon there would be a way in.
>
When that moment came, there would be richer blood to taste.
THIRTY FOUR
“Shouldn’t have told me to shut up,” sulked Crip, looking back at the closed bedroom door.
“No, he shouldn’t,” Cath said, catching Drew’s eye. He was leaning against a chair and by the look on his face, ready to do something drastic at any second.
“Wasn’t for me, they couldn’t have done it. Any of it.”
“Done what, Crip?” said Cath carefully, moving to sit on the edge of the bed and still anxiously looking at Drew.
“The robbery.”
“There’s money in the suitcases?”
“You don’t know nothing,” Crip said. He leaned against the wall, attention still fixed on the closed door. “There’s more than money in them suitcases. There’s drugs and stuff.”
“Three suitcases, Crip,” said Cath. “So that means there should be one for you. Three of you, and three suitcases. One each.”
“Yeah . . .” Crip pushed himself from the wall, walked in a circle head down; then stopped again to stare at the door. “Yeah!”
“Like you say, they couldn’t have done it without you.”
Drew moved around the chair, sat down carefully—aware that Cath was trying something.
“That’s right,” continued Crip. “They need me. ’Cause I’m not scared to hurt people if I have to. I don’t do it for no reason. But Pasco and Tully, they know they just gotta ask me to hurt somebody and I hurt them. That’s what I do.”
“So they shouldn’t cut you out like that,” Drew said, catching on. “Send you away. That’s not right.”
“They think I’m stupid. You think I’m stupid?”
“No,” said Cath and Drew together.
“I know stuff. I know what was happening with that Kapler . . . what’s his name?”
“Dietersen,” Cath said. “Kapler Dietersen.”
“Yeah. Him. See—he was buying drugs from this guy. Cash for the drugs. Tully, he got to know. Got them contacts, see? Got brains. He found where that Dieter—what’s his name again?”
“Dietersen” Cath said.
“Yeah—he got to know where he lived. Got to know when that guy was coming with them drugs. So—we turn up. We off the guy and the Deeter-thing guy. And we get the money and the drugs. Tully knows this guy with a boat? So we do the job, we gotta drive to the coast and meet the guy with the boat. That’s not far from here, right? I like the coast. My gramma used to take me to the coast. So the boat guy’s gonna take us across to someplace with a funny name like Scandy—something . . .”
“Scandinavia?” Drew said.
“That’s him. Anyway, we got the stuff but know we gotta get out of the country ’cause we gonna off some people. Definitely that guy you just said with the funny name ’cause Pasco says him and Tully got shafted by him on some other deal that they had. Anyway, we do the zero on him and the drugs guy and I got to off three or four others, I forget how many . . .”
Cath felt nausea rise, felt sweat trickling down her back. The bedroom window was rattling in its frame as if the glass might implode at any moment. When she looked back at Drew, he was gripping the chair rest with both hands so that his knuckles seemed to gleam white. His face was set.
“They shouldn’t be sending me up here like that. I know what they’re talking about. Know what they’re gonna do. They think I’m just fucking stupid. But I know.”
“You’re right,” Drew said, trying to disguise the effort in his voice. “They’re not treating you properly.”
“Telling me to shut up all the time like I don’t know nothing. I know something. I know when I can say stuff and when I shouldn’t say stuff. It’s like me telling you all this stuff now. It doesn’t matter, does it? I know what they’re talking about down there, know what’s gotta be done. See, I can tell you this stuff ’cause it doesn’t matter your knowing. ’Cause Pasco and Tully are deciding you both gotta be offed.”
“Offed?” Cath said, with cold terror.
“Yeah. You know—killed. Well, it makes sense, don’t it? Pasco gone and showed you the funny-name guy’s hand, and you knew who it was and stuff. So they’re probably deciding how you’re gonna be offed. But look, you’re a nice lady. So I’m not gonna let Pasco do to you what he’s done those other times. I didn’t say anything when he made me watch it them times. But I didn’t like it. What he said before about having a party? I wouldn’t have joined in. No, when you’re offed, I’m gonna do it. And I promise I’ll do it really quick.”
“You’re very kind,” said Drew, his white mask of a face still set and cold.
Crip smiled widely, and meant it. “You’re a nice fella, too. You and her—you listen and you’re kind.”
“You going to do me quick as well?”
“Anything you want!” beamed Crip, nodding his head.
“They still there?” Drew asked.
“What?”
“Pasco and Tully. I can’t hear them.”
“They’ll be talking quiet so I can’t hear I bet.” The smile was gone from Crip’s face again, the sulkiness returning.
“Maybe they’re not there anymore, Crip.”
“What?”
“Maybe they sent you up here so they could get you out of the way.”
Crip stared at Drew’s face intently, his baby-face frown creasing the skin of his brow.
“They keep you up here with us—and they sneak away with those cases—and leave you behind to take all the blame.”
“You think they’d do that to me?”
“They sent you upstairs, didn’t they? Told you to shut up.”
Crip nodded his head, moved back to the door and placed his ear against the panel to listen.
“I can’t hear anything.”
“They’re gone, Crip! They’ve taken those suitcases and they’ve left you behind.”
Crip made a sound then, deep down inside. It was a keening, moaning, sobbing sound of a child in distress. He stood back, shaking his head in denial—and then wrenched the door open so that it banged hard against the inner wall. He blundered out onto the landing.
“Don’t you leave me! Don ‘t you dare leave me!”
Drew leapt from his chair and slammed the door shut. Cath heard the snick of a lock, and then Drew swept up the chair he had been sitting on and jammed it under the door handle.
“What do we do?” Cath hissed.
“The window!” Drew grabbed her arm as they rushed to the bedroom window. “We’ve got to get out of here now! There’s a drainpipe and a twenty-foot drop, but we’ve got to risk it.”
Beyond the bedroom door, Crip was still bellowing—but now there were other raised voices as Drew slipped the catch on the window and yanked it up.
The window jammed when it had been raised no more than nine inches.
“Shit!”
The storm gusted into the bedroom.
Now there were sounds of heavy footsteps from the landing beyond as Drew struggled with the bottom frame of the window. Cath lunged forward, shoulder-to-shoulder with Drew, gripped the frame too, and heaved upwards with all of her strength. The window juddered up halfway and the wind was tearing at their clothes. Behind them, the bedroom door handle began to rattle furiously.
“Go!” shouted Drew above the storm. “You go first! Just get down there and away as fast as you can.”
Cath squeezed through the frame, could see nothing but wild and raging darkness. But her terror had over-ridden any fear she had of heights as she straddled the windowsill, now groping to the side and finding the pitted metal of the drainpipe. She seized it with both hands; her lower body swung downwards and outwards from the sill. She cried out into the storm when her hip slammed into the wall. Her fingernails raked flakes of paint from the corroded drainpipe as her bodyweight dragged her down. Drew lunged out to grab her forearm until she had steadied. Legs kicking, Cath began to lower herself, hand over hand.
Drew looked back to the bedroom door, the
lock and jammed chair shaking under the onslaught from the other side. It had to be Pasco and Crip. Tully would not be able to move, must still be downstairs. But who had the gun?
Drew slid sideways into the window frame, was squeezing himself through and reaching for the drainpipe when there was an animal bellow of rage from the other side of the door. He snapped his head back to look.
Just as an entire upper door panel splintered and cracked. On the second blow, the panel flew into the room; followed by a meaty fist and forearm. Drew had a fleeting glimpse of Crip’s wild and bestial face—glittering eyes fixing on him—and then he swung out into the storm, gripping the drainpipe with both hands. The clamps fixing the drainpipe to the to the wall screeched, the pipe juddered and came away from the wall under their combined weight—and now Drew was dropping fast, one foot on each side of the pipe as it was dragged from its supports. Rust and corroded iron sliced his palms as he descended hand over hand.
Below, he saw Cath hit the ground, tumble aside on all fours. The drainpipe cracked and screeched, the upper half now completely away from the wall—and Drew kicked and twisted wildly in the air, flailing to keep from falling directly on top of her. The drainpipe snapped at its halfway point, pitching Drew aside and away from her.
When he hit the ground on his side, the pipe shivering away into the darkness, the breath was slammed from his body. His brow and temple throbbed anew with sick pain where Pasco had kicked him. Cath was beside him now, pulling at his arm. On his knees, still winded, he heard the juddering crash and splintering of the bedroom door and of the chair being dragged aside.
Two heads were suddenly silhouetted in the window.
One of those heads vanished quickly again.
Pasco—seeing them—and now dashing downstairs.
Drew dragged himself to his feet, using Cath’s arm and shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she shouted above the storm.
“Come on . . .”
