Eye Snatcher

by Ryan Casey

  “What kind of people?” Brian asked.

  “Kids,” the skinny guy said, his shovel sinking into the ground again.

  The hairs on Brian’s arms stood up. He stuck the shovel into the ground simply to get rid of the reaction, but he made contact with something. Something that wasn’t soil.

  Something harder.

  “We weren’t comfortable then,” the chubbier guy helping Brian said. “I mean, we didn’t wanna admit what was goin’ on at first. But then after about four, five kids we started proper thinking about it. Looking at these kids—the kind of kids they were. Runaways. Kids that no one cared about. Those kinda kids.”

  Brian felt a wave of nausea engulf him as he stared down at the muddy grey thing that his spade had collided with in the ground.

  “Ah, shit,” the chubby guy said, like it was just a simple error of judgement on a normal day at work. “Dig slightly to the right. Thought we’d got a fresh spot but hey, world’s full of surprises.”

  Brian tried his best to breathe in deeply to calm himself down, to stop his head spinning, but he was struggling to look away from the bone in the earth.

  “Come on,” the chubby guy said. He hit Brian on his arm, almost making Brian tumble to his ass.

  Brian nodded and started digging slightly to the right, frozen with the surreality of it all. Delayed shock? He wasn’t sure. He really wasn’t sure.

  “And this went on for a bit,” the chubby guy said, as the skinny one started to roll his balaclavad companion into the hole he’d dug. “Four, five, six kids, like I say. And then along comes Andrew Wilkinson to crash the party just when we’re about to do summat about Darren’s involvement ourselves.”

  Brian made sure he kept on digging now. Looked away from Darren’s bloodied body. Away from the bones in the dirt. Just at the soil beneath him, beneath his shovel.

  “Andrew Wilkinson walked in on Damien’s daddy up to no good in that garage of ‘is. We didn’t see what ‘appened in that garage, but we didn’t have to. Halshaw was furious. Told Wilkinson he was gonna bring him down if he ever spoke of it.”

  The setup. The setup that Andrew Wilkinson had alluded to. He was right. All along, he was telling the truth.

  “Why didn’t…” Brian started, struggling to formulate a sentence. “Why didn’t Andrew just call the police?”

  The chubby guy tutted. “He froze. Way more freezers in this world than there are actors. And erm, well. Darren and our little trip to the Wilkinson family home did enough to scare him into silence. If destroying his life about a relationship with Halshaw’s son didn’t already do the trick. Took his little girl’s finger off for safekeeping. Promised we’d take all their tongues off if he ever spoke. Hear Wilkinson’s taking the rap for the Eye Snatcher killings? Honourable. Honourable family man.”

  Brian’s arms shook. So that was it. Andrew Wilkinson was just terrified of what would happen to his family if he ever spoke out about what he’d seen in the Halshaw garage. Damien Halshaw’s father had made sure that Darren and his goons put enough fright into him. Tore his whole life away.

  And now he was so scared of what might happen that he was willing to go down for triple child murder rather than see something else horrible happen to his family.

  “Poor git,” the chubby guy said. He winced as he pushed Darren into the hole in the mud below. “Wilko, I mean. Didn’t have the fuzziest we worked at Galaxy. But anyway, all went quiet for three years or so. Didn’t hear ‘owt from the Halshaw chap. Dropped off the radar completely. Family moved away. Didn’t need to deal with Darren ‘cause stuff got back to normal. And Wilkinson, he was keeping quiet. You know a singer and a zipper when you see them, and he was always a zipper.” He pretended to zip his mouth to show me what he meant. “But then a few days ago, when Wilko brings his car in all innocent, Darren says he’s got a job. Rendezvous point at the old Halshaw garage. Finally spills that he’s doing another favour for Halshaw. And we knew we had to do summat about him then.”

  Brian gulped some saliva down his dry throat. “What was the job?”

  The skinny guy started covering the first body with the soil he’d just dug out of the ground. The fog grew thicker in the middle of this nowhere land.

  “Weird stuff, really. Driving Wilko’s car outside these terraced houses. Driving it round some area. Area that turned out being the murder site of that third girl, y’know.”

  “Janine Ainscough,” Brian said.

  The chubbier guy clicked his fingers. “That’s the one. Anyway, we get a call today. A call about someone snooping us. That’s where you come in.”

  The skinny guy stopped digging. Stopped covering the first body.

  Brian’s head spun. His chest was tight. “Where do I come in?”

  The two balaclavaed men looked at one another. “We want your help.”

  As the chubbier balaclavad man tossed some dirt over Darren’s rigid body, Brian felt like asking what help entailed if this wasn’t bloody helping in the first place. Instead, he didn’t push his luck.

  “My help, how?”

  The skinny guy stuck his shovel into the ground and walked beside the chubbier one. The pair of them stood there, blood on their gloves, and looked at Brian like a pair of monsters in a Halloween musical. “We wanted to bring Darren down a long time. Didn’t like the Halshaw guy. So you let us walk away from ‘ere. You go back to the station and you swear you don’t say owt about what happened here. Let us go away and live our lives.”

  The way the chubby guy gripped hold of the shovel, a space in the ground still free, Brian figured he wasn’t really being asked a question or given a real option. “Halshaw,” he said. “I… I need to know who he is. Where I can find him. I need to know—”

  “Then you promise us,” the skinny guy shouted. Although his body was slighter, his voice was stronger and sterner than his companion’s. “Halshaw don’t go by that name, in case you haven’t already figured. Change of ID is easy enough to get if you know the right people. So you let us walk away from ‘ere. You go back to the station and you go out there and you find Halshaw. Say you got a hunch, or summat. From what I heard, you ain’t too bad at getting those.”

  The chubby guy sniggered, and Brian couldn’t believe how bizarre the situation had become that he was joking with two murderers after burying their victims’ bodies.

  “But if you walk away, I… How will I know? What evidence is there that Halshaw is the Eye Snatcher? Real, physical evidence.”

  The two men looked at one another. Frosty breath emerged from their nostrils. “First, your word. Promise us you ain’t gonna sell us down the river, right here.”

  Brian bit his dry bottom lip. His could sense himself getting closer to an answer. “I… Okay. I promise. You can walk if you give me something.”

  “Put your hands in the air and step back from the officer!”

  The voice came from behind the two balaclava-clad men. It took Brian by surprise, so much so that he thought it must be a figment of his imagination at first.

  The two men spun around and looked into the fog. “The fuck?”

  Footsteps approaching, snapping through the twigs. “Hands in the air. Don’t make us beat you to the ground.”

  Police. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. They were so close to talking. So close to telling Brian the truth about where Halshaw could be found. About his real identity.

  They both turned back around. Looked right at Brian, as the police footsteps snapped through dropped twigs and their blue uniforms emerged through the thick fog.

  “Sellout pig fuck.”

  Brian lifted his hands. “I didn’t do this. I swear I didn’t—”

  “On the ground! Right now!”

  Brian stared at the two men. Looked from one to the other. “Please. Who is Halshaw? And where can I find him?”

  The chubby guy tutted. As the police got closer, he pushed the shovel into the ground and he shook his head, then got to his knees.

  “Please,” Brian said,
but he knew he was too late.

  The officers pushed the two balaclava covered men into the dirt and cuffed their hands behind their backs.

  Samantha Carter stepped from the middle of the group of ten, fifteen officers.

  “Location Services,” she said, smile on her face. “Saw it cut off around here twenty minutes ago. Got worried. Thank me later.”

  As the two men’s balaclavas were removed and they were dragged away, Brian cursed the day he’d ever got himself a bloody smartphone.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Brian sat outside the station in Samantha Carter’s car. The rain had started again. Usually, he didn’t mind the sound of rain, but it was drumming down on the car roof so heavily that it felt like it was scratching its way through his brain.

  “Are you okay?” Carter asked.

  Brian held a damp cloth to his forehead. One of the many places he’d been punched or kicked by Darren and the Galaxy crew. One of so many reminders all over his body of what had happened, what had nearly happened.

  But no. He couldn’t think about what happened. He couldn’t remember the way Darren’s throat was stabbed right in front of…

  “The—the men in balaclavas,” Brian said. His mouth was dry, lingering taste of stomach acid lurking around his tongue. His vision beyond the rain-drenched car window of the high street was blurred. “They… they know who did it. They know who—who the Eye Snatcher is. Halshaw. Damien Halshaw’s dad. We—”

  “I’ve been through this already, Brian,” Samantha said. The smell of her perfume was strong as they sat in her cosy little Audi TT Coupe. “We checked for all records of Halshaw on the system. Not a trace of him—”

  “But he has another name—”

  “Brian,” Carter shouted.

  It snapped Brian right out of his frustration, his anger, right there, like a slap around the face.

  He turned and looked Samantha in her chocolate brown eyes. “We’ve got Andrew Wilkinson,” she said. “And since we got him, nothing else has happened. It adds up, Brian. Think about it. Andrew Wilkinson was at Jean Betts’ the night Sam went missing. Sam Betts must’ve wandered into Patrick Selter’s company. We’re still going through the tapes, but it adds up. He gets away. Gets away just in time for Andrew Wilkinson to kidnap him, to take him to some place where he could do anything he wanted with him.”

  Brian shook his head. “Doesn’t add up. Too many holes. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it does make sense,” Carter said. “It makes sense that Andrew Wilkinson took Janine Ainscough. His car was seen—”

  “His car was in Galaxy possession!” Brian shouted. His heart thumped. “The documents and—and the tapes. The DVDs. I saw them in the van. I saw them in Darren’s van before he took me.”

  Samantha’s smile flattened. She shook her head. “There was nothing in the van of the sort. I want to believe you, Bri. Trust me, I do. But I just…”

  “You think I’m some kind of liar?”

  “No. I just don’t think you know how to let go unless you get the answer you want to hear.”

  Brian felt his cheeks heating up. He turned away from Carter, stared out of the passenger window. Maybe she had a point. Maybe he couldn’t let go. But he knew Andrew Wilkinson hadn’t killed those three children. Okay, the link between him and Sam Betts was a tad coincidental, and yes, his car was seen in the location Janine Ainscough had been kidnapped and murdered. But what about Beth Turner? The night she’d entered those Booths toilets, that was the same day Brian and Brad had visited him at the Marriot hotel swimming pool showers. Exercise enthusiast by day and child murderer by night?

  Samantha sighed. “Maybe Andrew has an accomplice. Or maybe something else will show up. Knowing our luck in murder cases, it probably fucking will. But right now, we need to focus on the facts we have. Andrew Wilkinson is confessing to the murder of those three children—”

  “Because his family were threatened. Threatened with violence.”

  Carter raised her voice. “He’s confessing to the murder of those three children. And when somebody steps forward and owns up to something like that… Brian, you have to see it. You can’t take something like that lightly.”

  Brian listened to the thumping rain, scraping away at his mind, and he stared out of the passenger window. “You should never have come got me from those woods. I was so close.”

  Samantha puffed out her lips. “So close? Close to being fucking knifed—”

  “They were about to tell me Damien Halshaw’s dad’s real identity.”

  “In exchange for what?” Carter asked.

  Brian looked at her now. Looked into her eyes. She knew that they must’ve bribed him in some way. Some not entirely legal way.

  She nodded. Tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. “See, that’s the problem here. I’m worried about you. Worried that you’re making decisions that might seem good in the short term but are chaotic in the long term.”

  “Whatever. You aren’t my boss.”

  “No,” Carter said, raising her voice some more. “No I’m not. But thanks to me, two dangerous men are in custody. And for what it’s worth, they haven’t spoken a word about ‘Halshaw’ or anyone for that matter. As for Halshaw’s family—haven’t lived in Preston for years, and never filed a single complaint except for the one against that ruddy nonce Andrew Wilkinson. But anyway, if you’d just let those two men get away with their murders over the years, think about how many more people’s lives you’d be putting at risk down the line.”

  Brian wafted his hand at Samantha. It didn’t surprise him that the two men, identified as Steve Linder and Jamie Holton, weren’t talking. “They were looking for a way out.”

  “For how long?” Carter asked. “How long until the money ran out, until someone else came along with a nice little ‘disposal’ job for them, as you put it? How long before someone else died all because Brian McDone’s personal motivations came before the interests of a thorough police investigation once again?”

  Brian’s jaw quivered. He wanted to shout at Samantha. Wanted to tell her to piss off, to get out of his face.

  Instead, he shook his head and opened her car door.

  “Where you off to?”

  “Home,” Brian said. “Not sitting around listening to this.”

  “Home? In what car?”

  Brian leaned against the top of the car door. Remembered his car was in repairs after its tires were slashed and windows smashed some time after his capture. “I’ll get a bus.”

  He slammed the door shut as hard as he could and walked off into the rain.

  Anger coursed through his body as his jelly-like feet waded through the puddles of water. He tried to take in deep, steadying breaths of the cool autumn air, but whenever he did he was reminded of the smell of that black bag over his head when he’d been taken to the middle of the woods.

  The taste of blood from Darren’s neck as it spurted over his face.

  He kept his head down as he walked. Kept his head down as he made his way out of the police station car park, made his way towards the bus stop.

  He knew this case wasn’t over. He knew that he couldn’t just let Andrew Wilkinson go down for something he hadn’t done. There were still avenues to check. Damien Halshaw’s dad. Galaxy—there needed to be a more thorough investigation of Galaxy. Darren couldn’t have hidden those tapes and service documents too far away. Andrew Wilkinson’s wife and kid, too—they had to know something, especially after the scare tactics Brian learned about just earlier. And even Steve Linder and Jamie Holton. Brian had to speak to them. Maybe he could strike a deal. Strike up some kind of understanding.

  He sat on the damp seat of the bus stop. Smelled the familiar scent of fallen rain. His head hurt, as cars whooshed past and kicked up water. His stomach growled. He’d lost all sense of time, lost all sense of when it was he’d last even eaten.

  He wanted to power on with the investigation. He wanted to go back into the station and get the truth
out of Andrew Wilkinson.

  But as the number four bus pulled up on the kerb and opened its doors, he knew he physically couldn’t.

  He stood up. Stepped onto the bus, paid his money, went to a spare seat right at the back.

  He sat down. Closed his eyes.

  When the images of the events of the case filled his mind again, the images of Sam Betts and Beth Turner and Janine Ainscough and Patrick Selter’s studio and the blood from Darren’s neck, he opened his eyes.

  There was no respite, not even in darkness.

  It didn’t take Brian long to realise he’d taken the longest possible frigging bus route back home, but he didn’t mind. It gave him time to be alone. To not have to talk about anyone or anything.

  The bus was relatively empty. There was an old man a few seats down in a grey cardigan who reeked of piss. It would usually bother Brian, but with the things he’d seen, smelled in this current Eye Snatcher case, a bit of a pissy smell was nothing.

  Brian watched the sun make its final descent outside the window as the bus drove down Long Lane, right near where Janine Ainscough was found. Shitting hell. If he’d known this bus went past this place, which he was doing his best to etch out of his memory, he’d have got a direct route after all.

  The bus went fast, bumping over the potholed road and making Brian’s head sting even more. But stinging was okay. Stinging was better than thinking. Because all he could think about right now was the case, the things he’d seen on the case. He couldn’t think of home—there was the issue of Hannah’s pregnancy to discuss, so that was hardly a respite from work.

  The bus took a left. Drove up the A6. Drove past Ashton, past where Adrian West used to sit in his short trousers and bright socks and stare at the kids in the school opposite. Brian leaned his head against the window and looked out at the subway, a reminder of all the winding roads the case had taken, only to end up here: with someone Brian didn’t believe guilty confessing their involvement in three murders.

  He wanted to close his eyes and block out at the reminders outside his window, but he knew the images in his mind were much, much worse. So he just kept on leaning against that window. Kept on letting the bumpy roads shake him in his seat, knock his head against the glass. Kept on staring, distant, vacant, rattled.