Those who broke the boy: The Sons of Charlemagne Book One

by Richard Hathway

  “In hindsight, I should have just had him killed and replaced him but I was dealing with a lot of death at the time and I thought there might be an easier way.”

  “Who else were you killing at the time?” Sally asked.

  “I wasn’t killing anyone dear girl, this isn’t a mafia movie. No, we were having some transportation issues and a lot of girls were turning up dead. Damn nuisance that all was, a lot of money and effort just to end up with a shipping container full of dead girls. And then I have to deal with getting rid of them! Bloody shame. Anyway, I dug into this chap but he was squeaky clean, no drugs, no affairs, no embezzlement, nothing. It was blind chance that I was working late one night and as I left I saw him chatting to one of my girls in the square! There I was thinking I’d have to kill him and he was into hookers all along! Anyway, long story short, I got him to the office for a meeting and told him I knew. He said he wasn’t bothered, that his wife knew everything and without proof there was nothing I could do. I have to hand it to him he was very convincing. On an impulse, I offered him a girl. I don’t know why, must have liked him I suppose, like I said I didn’t much fancy killing him. I offered him a girl, anything he liked, his to keep gratis if he made the deal happen. I’d lost so much merchandise one more wasn’t going to hurt. He pretended to be horrified for a few minutes while he worked out if I was joking or setting him up. I took him to the window and showed him Brunswick Square. I pointed out and named all the girls, the pimps and the dealers. I told him if he gave me exact specifications of what he wanted I could have that girl here in three weeks.”

  “Supply and demand huh?” Sally muttered.

  “Quite. I thought he might go for something a little more European but there you are, no accounting for taste I suppose.”

  I could feel the anger within me bubbling and boiling but with it came joy. I was angry, I wanted to kill this monster that traded in human life like lettuce and considered spoiled produce in the same way. My demon was looking forward to the release of violence, joyful at the prospect. I struggled against the rope holding me to the chair and it began to loosen a little, not enough yet, but a little meant more was to come.

  “You really should stop writhing about like that, you’ll do yourself a mischief. You’re going to be dead soon enough so if I were you I’d try to relax and savour your last few minutes on earth. He was the same of course, you all are, kicking and screaming and trying to save yourselves. That’s why you’re here at all isn’t it? A pathological need to save people, you wanted to save the girl, your American friend wants to save you, you both want to save yourselves. All rather tiresome in the great scheme of things.”

  “Why was she a mistake?” Sally asked, looking him in the eye. “Why was she a mistake if she sealed the deal?”

  He smiled, laughed a little even.

  “Ha! You see, the right questions! She’s rather good isn’t she? Yes, she was a mistake. Trade in certain items must be kept to well vetted and trusted individuals for obvious reasons. I was too caught up in sealing the deal, didn’t think a Bristol councillor with a taste for those from the dark continent could cause me any trouble. I failed to appreciate that he was not sufficiently embedded into the organisation to see the paramount importance of secrecy. I allowed him to own a breadcrumb. A breadcrumb that could lead back to us. As indeed it did, for you. So you see that if by my actions my business, and by extension the whole organisation, can be exposed by a boy and a yank then she was very definitely a mistake.”

  My head was spinning with the implications. We hadn’t exposed the Sons of Charlemagne at all. At best we had temporarily inconvenienced a minor thug, a drug dealer, a pimp. All the research, all the effort and deception, all the pain and the certainty of death was all for nothing. He would kill us both and no-one would know anything about the Sons of Charlemagne. I sat silent and dejected, confined to the chair both physically and with the weight of my despair. It was over. The girl was dead and soon we would be too. It was Sally who spoke to him.

  “So you killed this guy because he got sloppy. And you’re gonna kill us because you can.”

  “No my dear, I killed him because he killed her. Or, more precisely, you killed him when you called me. I had no idea he had killed the girl until I got here. He was shocked to see me at his door and explained that he hadn’t called me. I asked him about the girl. He told me what happened and why, quite the overreaction in my opinion, and I’m afraid from then on his fate was fixed. I must admit until I heard your footsteps on the gravel out there I was having some difficulty deciding what to do with him. Neighbourhoods like this you see, too many twitching curtains to be dragging a corpse about the place. But you two have presented quite the eloquent solution. The boy is local so he will die here.” He picked up a bloody knife from the kitchen counter.

  “This is the knife I killed our friend with. His blood is already on here, yours will be next.” He waved the blade lazily in my direction.

  “Then I shall remove my fingerprints, add yours and then his. The police will find you both dead. Here’s the clever part. They will find your blood on top of his, his fingerprints on top of yours. The logical conclusion will be that you cut his throat and he managed to stab you before he died. The police will struggle with motive for a while, until they receive an anonymous package with evidence of him sexually abusing you. It’s a little sordid but I find an accusation of this nature leads to the sort of high emotion which doesn’t require much fact to form an opinion. Of course, there will be those curtain twitchers who will recall seeing us my dear,” he briefly turned to Sally, “but in all likelihood, we will be assumed to be fellow abusers or something equally squalid. It’s amazing how quickly these things snowball. No matter though, I will never be identified. You, I am afraid, will be found dead. Suicide is probably best. I hear the Sea Walls are a popular spot for such things.”

  With that he picked up the cricket bat from the corner near the door and, using it like the butt of a rifle, smashed it into Sally’s face. She let out a brief howl and then fell silent. I sat silent and still. I had accepted my fate. I knew I was going to die and somehow that was O.K. I had no fight left in me.

  My demon had other ideas. He talked in whispers inside me. He told me that if we were going to die we were not going to die quietly. We were going to fight. We were going to take him with us. I looked around for an advantage, something, anything to use. He had cut the ropes that bound Sally to her chair and as she slumped forward he caught her and laid her gently on the floor. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just let her unconscious body fall to the floor. My demon told me that he didn’t want to have to clear up the blood from her face that would go all over the floor.

  “He needs to keep the place clean of him and her.” he whispered from inside me, “So you need to cut him. His blood here might lead the police to him. The hearth has a vase in it, you can throw yourself to there from here.”

  I understood perfectly. At that moment my demon and I synced. It was no longer me and him, it was us. As the Son of Charlemagne stood and walked towards the counter for the knife we took action. We pushed up on my feet as if to stand, impossible of course in those bindings. The movement gave us just enough to throw ourselves sideways onto the hearth. We crashed against the low stone hearth and, as our body cried in protest of more pain, the chair broke against it. The vase shattered and we rolled away from the debris. Our limbs were now no longer bound and, though we had pieces of the chair still bound to our wrists and legs, we grabbed a piece of broken vase and leapt at him. He had the knife in his hand and as the broken glass slashed across his left cheek he plunged the blade deep into our stomach. We fell against him and tried to scream but our mouth was silent. We looked at him and he smiled as he pulled the blade from us.

  “Perfect.” He said.

  He let us fall to the floor and as we lay there he picked up the pieces of the broken chair and the rope he used to tie Sally. He disappeared briefly, removing evidence to his ca
r. When he returned, he pulled us to our feet.

  “Your American friend and I are leaving now. So sorry that it had to come to this.”

  With that he picked up the knife again and, pushing us against the counter for balance, he reached into our mouth, pulled our tongue out and sliced as much of it off as he could reach. We tried again to scream but were left gurgling and grabbing at the counter to stay upright. He leant in close and whispered in our ear.

  “No-one speaks of the Sons of Charlemagne.”

  And then he was gone. He picked up Sally, draped her arm around his shoulder and dragged her away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We know exactly when we felt at peace. The moment when the contradictions of nature and nurture reconciled. The itching in our brain falling near perfectly in rhythm with the constant nervous rebellion of muscle and bone crawling under our skin. We moved with purpose and grace. Our breath became ours, not some unwelcome necessary intrusion into the heavy, ugly shell we inhabited but did not own. And we saw. We really saw. Our eyes moved to our command. No longer staring into middle distance and dulled by the grimy drapes of depression the windows to our soul let in the light of the world. What dazzling, wonderful, disgusting light! It shone so brightly on what he had done. It looked like Christmas, though Santa would have no cause to visit here this year. Dark Crimson across the forest green walls and pooling on the French Oak floor. We looked at the broken vase in the hearth, an anomaly in the story he had constructed. We sat on the Italian breakfast stool, slid the knife back into its rightful place in the chrome block, another anomaly, felt the coolness of the marble worktop on our palms and sighed.

  We know exactly when we felt at peace. As the wound to our stomach spilled our blood across us, staining our shirt and slowly seeping down our trousers we closed our eyes and waited for death. Our tongue lay on the floor, blood stained like a murdered mole rat. At some point, we laid our head on the marble. Dizziness was taking over from adrenaline and in those final moments we saw her face again. “Thank you for trying” she whispered. We almost didn’t hear her over the sound of approaching sirens.

  They saved us. They stopped the bleeding and got us to the hospital in time. It was close but we were not destined to die in the hospital in which we had been born. They saved us.

  And after the intrusion of the healing came the clamour of the people for justice. Their people. Their story. Their judgement.

  We were silent through it all and have been silent since we were brought here. We lose each other for a time when the pills take over but they can’t keep us apart for long. We have been watching, learning, waiting.

  We are told that escape is impossible.

  Everywhere is secure.

  But not everywhere.

  Not the hospital wing.