by Jackson Lear
Karl Thesslen, the deputy principal of St. Bart’s, pegged her from the check out line. He nodded a simple, ‘hello’ because she looked familiar. She curtly nodded in response. Then it clicked. His eyes darted to the side before quickly looking back. Claire saw it. She felt it, too. She pushed her trolley into the next aisle as quickly as she could, all in an attempt to settle her nerves. The aisle held curry sauce in front of her and pasta sauce at the far end. It also had just one other person in it. A man with a five day stubble.
Her stomach coiled in on itself as she recognised him from one of the most awkard nights of her life. James McIntyre.
His lips curled into a smile as he pushed his trolley forward. “Hello Claire.”
He smelled like dust and mildew. “Hello.”
He, on the other hand, breathed her in like he could smell every hidden inch of her. “How have you been?”
“Fine.” She ran through her mental checklist of everything that was still missing from her shopping trip. She had chicken, she had vegetables. She even had a few toiletries, but she was missing everything from the frozen section and had been forced to ditch everything in the Indian and Italian aisle. Every meal was going to have to be a flavourless dish until the next shopping run.
She turned and headed for the checkout line as quickly as possible. An old man was busy unloading his groceries onto the small conveyor belt at an alarmingly slow pace.
McIntyre pushed his trolley along and stopped behind Claire. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”
Claire studied the only other operating cash register, but this one looked like it was the fastest.
“I’ve been fine as well,” said McIntyre. “My knee gives me grief every now and then, but at least I can still walk around. Sometimes need a cane. Helps me with a disability discount, though. I could help you with it now, if you like.”
Claire forced a polite smile to the surface while her eyes fired off a definite: go fuck yourself. “That won’t be necessary.” She turned and stared back at the old man in front of her, commanding him to go faster. Unfortunately for her, he had chosen that line because there was a nineteen year old girl behind the register. A pretty young thing with streaks of electric red in her brown hair and an eyebrow ring that just screamed ‘harlot’.
“How have you been?” asked the old man, to the check-out girl.
Claire felt a wet shiver creep down her shoulder blades.
“Come on, everyone can use a discount every now and then,” said McIntyre. He ran his eyes over Claire’s half-empty shopping cart. Hair dye, toilet paper, tampons, and two packs of painkillers sat on top.
“I’m okay, thank you,” said Claire, without turning around. She kept her right hand stretched, wincing against the pins and needles that was sure to come if she had to slap McIntyre across the face. Some vile comment about her parenting skills was building up behind his cracked lips, all because she couldn’t raise a son to have the decency to report the discovery of a dead woman in a tunnel.
The old man grinned at the check-out girl. “Long day?”
“It’s going alright,” murmured the young lady.
“Are they treating you alright here?”
McIntyre allowed his eyes to stroll over Claire Baxter’s child-bearing hips and up to her waist. “Do you ever see much of Zoe these days?”
This was going to be a double shot of pins and needles, no question there. “Not really.”
“Me neither. Every so often I wonder what’s become of her. She’d often come by for a drink and a smoke and need to unwind a little. She was always down for a laugh. Shame that she pretty much dropped off the face of the planet.”
She could feel his eyes clawing at the back of her neck, tugging at every strand of hair until he pried it loose. “She moved to Tokyo.”
McIntyre raised his eyes. “Really? I never knew that. It’s funny, the things you learn about people after all these years.”
Claire drew in a deep breath, hoping to block out the two men surrounding her.
“What’s she doing in Tokyo?”
“Working.”
“Oh, what are you studying?” asked the old man.
“Art.”
“Really? What will you do with that?”
McIntyre leaned in and gently smelled the back of Claire’s neck. She spun around and collided with his outstretched arm.
“Sorry,” said McIntyre, as he reached for a pack of gum next to the register.
“That’s unusual,” murmured the old man.
Claire raised both hands in an instant as a clear sign to back the fuck away. But before launching into an outburst of anger that would only draw more attention to herself, she caught the slightest hint of a grin from McIntyre. Losing all control was exactly what he wanted, leaving her as nothing more than putty in his hands. She would be forced to apologise and make it up to him, and everyone in the supermarket would talk about it.
The panic rolled through her, causing her to retreat inwards. Her vision narrowed, her breathing quickened with bursts of adrenaline, and her flight instinct kicked in. She left her trolley exactly where it was and hurried for the closest exit. She would never be able to come back to this supermarket again.
What she didn’t see was McIntyre poking through her shopping cart, past her tampons and nylon stockings. He picked out the perfume she had placed on top. He added it to his own trolley and pushed hers out of the way. Later that night he dabbed Claire’s unbought perfume onto her panties and held them against his lips. Then he watched her scrub herself in the shower, thanks to the phone she bought her son with the words of caution, “Be careful with this.”
58
Josh
Samantha had come up with a few suggestions to help the dialogue flow again between Josh and Hannah. First on the list was that they share dinner together every night. Second was that Josh was to keep everything related to Catherine Shievers under lock and key for no less than a month. And as far as Hannah was concerned, that’s exactly what Josh did.
If Toads really did kill her then maybe he stuffed her into many jars and spread them all over Luxford without anyone realising it.
But even the dead animals were reported back in the day, so finding a pint of blood with a human liver inside was going to be noticed.
Josh brought what notes he had to work and perused them during his lunch break. Annoyingly, Toads’ camp didn’t appear in any aerial image.
Ian confirmed there was an old car, a blue tarp, rubbish, several crates, and lots of glass jars lying around, but the whole area was obscured by a thick canopy of trees. According to the satellite pictures there wasn’t even a creek, just a mass of countryside leading to the train tracks.
And yet linking Catherine’s disappearance with Zofia’s death was the only thing Josh had going for him. But there just didn’t seem to be any link at all.
Until …
Josh bolted upright. His computer screen jostled from the impact of his knees hitting his desk.
Ian said there were jars lying on the ground, a tarp, several plastic creates, a haphazard work bench, and a rusty car to sleep in.
A car that hadn’t moved in twenty years.
Josh headed into Woodards with an inspired smile before quickly tapping against the manager’s office door. Anthony looked up, glanced back in surprise, and waved Josh inside.
“You look like you’re in a good mood,” said Anthony.
“Yeah, I took a half day at work,” said Josh.
“Lucky you.”
“No kidding.” Josh clapped his hands together and rubbed them with glee. “I know where Catherine Shievers is buried.”
Anthony shook his head with a deep-seeded groan, hoping that he had just misheard his friend.
“I know, right! All this time and I think I figured it out.”
“So she hasn’t actually been found, yet?”
“Not quite. I was sitting in front of my computer at work, not thinking about anything in par
ticular, as you do, and then boom! If I had to hide a dead body where it would either never be found or where the blame would be thrown unquestionably onto someone else, someone who couldn’t adequately defend themselves due to a severe lack of mental faculties, I know exactly who to blame and where to hide the body.”
Anthony peered at Josh suspiciously. “Are we talking about Catherine or just theoretically?”
“One hundred percent we’re talking about Catherine. And Toads is the patsy.”
“He didn’t do it?” Anthony asked.
“No. He was thirteen at the time, he …” Josh trailed off when he caught a pained look in Anthony’s eyes. They were both met with a visual of Ian and his friends dragging Zofia into the tunnel and hanging her up like an angel themselves. “Toads didn’t do it. But with all of the dissecting of animals and weird shit going on he was a decent enough fall guy. You remember Ian’s description of where Toads lived?”
“Yeah.”
“There was a car. A Datsun. A rusted out thing that was sitting with its belly on the ground and hadn’t moved in twenty years. Catherine is buried under the car. I know she is! That’s where I would put her, buried in the middle of Toads’ home.”
Anthony dropped his attention away as he thought it over, but he did not burst with joy like Josh had hoped for.
“This is it!” said Josh. “As soon as it hit me I told the office that I was leaving after lunch and I hurried over here as quickly as I could. I need your help in actually digging her up.”
Anthony heard a mix of horror and screams from Gemma ring through his ears. “No. Tell the police. You saw how bad it got for Ian and the boys when they did something on their own and delayed telling them.”
Josh dismissed it with a simple wave of one hand. “We’re talking about the same police who had no idea Zofia was missing in the first place, the same police who can’t even find Toads right now. It’s been three weeks since she was found. Have they even had a single sighting of Toads in that time? No. It’s time for us to rise and shine.”
Anthony stared back with a pained look stretched across his eyes. “I thought you were on the mend with Hannah.”
“We’re working through some things, but that has nothing to do with this. I guarantee you Catherine’s there. One hundred percent. The police have other priorities and so they should. After all, they’re trying to catch a murderer.”
“You said a moment ago he was a patsy.”
“For Catherine? Yes.”
“What about Zofia?”
“No clue, though I’m veering towards the ‘it was probably the same person who killed Catherine’ line of thinking.”
Anthony shook his head for the umpteenth time that day. “Let the police find Toads first. Then we can go rummage around the campsite without the risk of stumbling onto him as he’s hiding. Or onto the same person who has no problem with killing two people.”
“This might help the police find whoever’s doing it! And it might be enough to summon reinforcements and speed up their capture before they do something stupid. Now then, we need a winch, something you can strap to a tree and drag the car off Catherine’s body. I’ll especially need a friend to show me how to do that safely. I can’t risk snapping a heavy chain into my face and crippling me, leaving me bleeding with no one to come and get me to an ambulance.”
“Oh come on,” said Anthony. “I have work. And you see this diary here? It tells me I have a meeting in two hours. If you’re this sure then just tell the police.”
“All right. But before I do I might have to ask Amanda.”
Anthony’s eyes narrowed quickly. “Fuck you. She has more sense than that.”
“She does, but I either convince you or her to help me, and I’d prefer your help.”
Anthony blew out a long breath and held an icy glare at his friend. There was a time in his life when heading down to the creek would have been cause for celebration. But as the years rolled by and aches and pains started to settle in as a permanent fixture in his life, the one grimace that never went away was Josh’s unending sense of adventure. At last, Anthony shook his head.
“I don’t say this all that often, but this is a stupid idea, doing it ourselves. Neither of us know how to handle Toads if he comes at us. I mean, he did try to kill Warrick.”
“He chased Warrick, that’s all.”
“He was kicking and swiping at him.”
“Warrick wouldn’t have seen any of that if he was running away. He’s a paranoid kid who thinks everything’s trying to kill him. He was chased, though. That much is certain.”
Anthony shook his head. “I’m not about to go snooping around an actual crime scene which you think is home to one deranged lunatic while it is simultaneously the dumping ground of dead bodies for a second deranged lunatic, not when neither of them have been caught. For fuck’s sake, if Toads chased Warrick then he knew about Zofia. And you want to dig through his home, for hours on end? What if our deranged murderer decides that today is when it is absolutely necessary to check the burial grounds of his first victim?”
Josh shrugged. “Then I’m going to need someone to keep an eye out while I’m digging otherwise I’ll be in a lot of trouble. So grab a shovel, we’ve got some actual work to do.”
59
Anthony
Anthony crossed into the valley for the first time in twenty years. The river they once climbed over in a battle of life and death was now a stream. The slopes took three paces to climb instead of six. And the trek from Josh’s car to here took only a couple of minutes, instead of an hour from Fielding Street. It didn’t seem all that long ago when they all snuck through the trees in the dead of night, with the electrifying sense of being well and truly out of bounds. Patrick had run straight smack into a tree. Amanda shuddered through a face full of a spider’s web. Even to this day Anthony spasmed awake at seeing dissected toads and hearing the screams of desperate creatures. Josh … had never seen the inside of a hospital.
Josh patted his friend on the shoulder. “Ready to find a dead body?”
Anthony shivered as an early autumn chill took him by surprise. “We shouldn’t be out here.”
“You said that already.”
Anthony raised his binoculars to his eyes and tried to study the gaps between the thousands of trees littered around him. The falling leaves sparked another twitch of nerves, like someone was pulling away and watching a pair of intruders in his homeland.
Josh glanced up at the barbed wire angel marking the boundary of Toads’ grounds. They were certainly in the right area.
“You remember how often we used to come out here?” Anthony asked.
“I’m sure it was just once or twice. Certainly never up this end. Down there, maybe, but the stream used to be stronger along here and we would never have made it across.”
Josh shifted his backpack and wished the winch wasn’t as heavy as it was, but it was the only thing from Anthony’s store that was guaranteed to work. He pulled out his phone and checked the GPS coordinates.
“Right. Seven hundred and twenty metres that way is the tunnel where they found Zofia. Nine hundred metres that way is where they think Toads lives.”
Anthony checked the time. “If we’re going to rummage around where Toads lives then we’re going to do it and leave within two hours, okay?”
“Okay,” said Josh.
They bumped fists to make sure they were both in this together. Josh was the first to climb up the embankment. He kept low to the ground and searched for any sign of human movement. Considering how often the police had gone over the area in the last few weeks, any murder-suspect would be insane to still be here. Unfortunately, Josh and Anthony had a pretty good idea of just how bat shit crazy Toads really was. He certainly wasn’t afraid of the police nor of jail. He just did whatever he wanted without any consideration of the consequences.
Anthony wrestled against the straps of his heavy backpack as he climbed up next to Josh. After thirty seconds of car
eful observation he gave them the all-clear.
They headed forward, towards the tunnel, if for nothing else than out of curiosity. They had no concern for the tunnel or Zofia, only that she was one dot waiting to be connected to several others. But how often would they see the famed Tunnel of Angels within Luxford? Certainly never again, especially if Gemma and Hannah found out about what they were up to.
Josh and Anthony scampered forward. Seven hundred metres later they caught sight of the entrance to Zofia’s chamber. The grating was new and there was a large, shiny padlock making sure no one could sneak inside. Not that it would stop the determined few if they wanted to. All someone needed was a heavy duty bolt cutter and they could climb in anyway.
It was certainly strange to see a total lack of police presence. There was nothing to indicate that they had been there, investigating the crime scene inch by inch. Then again, it had been almost a month since Zofia was found and there probably wasn’t any need to keep returning to the site.
Anthony lifted his binoculars back up to his eyes and paid particular attention to the surrounding cliff face, looking for anywhere that could hide a full grown madman.
Josh glanced up and down the tree line, stared at the ground, and breathed in the air. “Feels a lot different now. Those three were out here, two of them together and the other just plain stupid. This is where it all went wrong for Warrick.”
A train barrelled along to their right. It didn’t take long to piece together the kid’s most terrifying few minutes. He had stumbled out of that tunnel over there, ran for his life along this clearing, and tumbled down that slope to the right. It headed directly for the train tracks which led him towards London.
Anthony ran his fingers over the ungraffitied rock face. “There’s a pretty good chance no one had been up here in ten years. Maybe even twenty. If they had, Toads would have moved away.”
Anthony looked back over the scene, allowing his imagination to get the better of him. Given the gruesome nature of finding Zofia strung up like a Christmas decoration, and of the disembowelled animals stuffed in jars right in front of her, the police would have gone through everything and catalogued it all. Sniffer dogs would have canvased the land, the whole site would have been picked over by professionals looking for bones, dropped bits of animals, foot prints, blood, and anything else that was unspeakable. They would have followed Warrick’s path down the slope and would have found the tracks of the man who chased him. It was entirely possible that the police did find something and were simply holding onto that to snag the murderer.
