Carnal Acts

by Sam Alexander

  Later she drove to the field where Wayne Garston’s foreign labourers had been working. They were back, even though it was the weekend. The overweight ganger was leaning on the gatepost. He didn’t look happy to see her.

  ‘No rest for the innocent?’ Joni asked, getting out of the Land Rover.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your work force. Don’t they get time off?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Look, I’m not supposed to talk to you. I’m calling Mr Lennox’s office. Oy, where are you going?’ Garston hurried after her into the kale field.

  ‘I’m going to talk to the women, Wayne.’ Joni gave him a slack smile. ‘Find out if you’ve been having it away with any of them.’

  The look on his face was as good as a signed confession.

  ‘You sleazy pus bag,’ she said, drawing up her shoulders. ‘I’m going to break your back.’ She went into a fighting stance.

  ‘You canna do that,’ the ganger said, taking a step back. ‘There are witnesses.’

  ‘Who’ll all testify that you attacked me.’ She grinned. ‘Or do you want to take a chance on that?’

  It was obvious Garston was no fighter.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, eyes down. ‘The Albanians will rip my tongue out if they find out I’ve talked.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the Albanians,’ Joni said, straightening up. ‘I want to hear about Dan Reston and his wife.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him recently. Or spoken to him.’ He glanced at her. ‘I keep away because of Cheryl. She’s even crazier than he is.’

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have heard that they’re away on holiday?’

  Garston laughed. ‘Them? They never go anywhere. Dan runs the estate. The Favons can’t do without him.’

  ‘And what about Cheryl? Can they do without her?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Last I heard she was doing stuff in the Hall.’

  ‘So why is it you keep away from her exactly? What did she do to upset your sensitive soul?’

  The ganger’s eyes were down again. ‘She raped me.’

  Joni blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me? She tied me down one night when I was in their place. I can’t remember where Dan was, we’d been boozing. He was probably shagging a sheep. Cheryl got on top of me and bounced up and down until … you know.’ He turned away. ‘Jesus, it was horrible. Not just because she’s heavy and ugly as sin. She bit me on the neck. It didn’t heal for weeks. Here, look.’ He turned down his collar.

  ‘Nasty,’ Joni said, taking in the rows of deep indentations. She pulled out her phone and took a photo before he could react.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he said, covering himself up.

  ‘Comparison purposes,’ Joni said. ‘Anything else you want to tell me about the Restons?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It’ll be good for you if we arrest them with your help.’

  ‘I’m no rat.’

  They all said something like that. ‘Of course not. But I’ve had bad reports about them. Besides, if Reston goes down, the factor’s job would be up for grabs. You’re already halfway there with the workers you supply.’

  Wayne Garston looked as if he’d been kicked up the arse. ‘I never thought of that.’ He came closer and Joni’s nostrils filled with the stink of old and new sweat. There was something worse in the wind: the reek of greed. ‘Now, Dan, he’s a cunning bugger and a careful one. But he’s got a weak point. You promise to put in a good word for me if I tell you?’

  Joni nodded, fingers crossed in her mind.

  ‘All right. He was ill last year. Cancer, I heard. Did something to his …’ Garston pointed to his groin. ‘He can’t get it up any more.’

  ‘I wasn’t hoping he’d come on to me, Wayne.’

  ‘No, not that. He’s got even nastier since then. I heard he kills animals by hand. And he eats bits of them raw …’

  Joni swallowed bile.

  ‘A friend of mine saw him take down a sheep,’ the ganger continued. ‘His dogs were with him, of course.’

  ‘The Dobermans?’

  ‘You know about them? Make sure you don’t let them get anywhere near you.’

  Joni walked away, calling Heck. They had to nail the Restons before someone else’s throat was ripped out.

  132

  Evie Favon heard the dogs barking. She went to one of the windows at the front of the Hall and watched the Dobermans run across the grass towards the hedge at the bottom of the slope that led to the moor. It was early in the morning and neither of her parents was up. She went into the hallway and took the binoculars from her father’s shooting jacket. Back at the window, she saw Dan Reston – the man who was supposedly on leave in the south with his wife – drive the red pickup over the uncut grass. When the dogs reached the hedge, they leapt straight in and disappeared for a time. Then they reappeared in open ground, heading for a clump of silver birches. They flew backwards before the sound of the shots reached her. She moved the binoculars and saw a figure in camouflaged hat and clothing move up the hillside. The man – she presumed the figure was male – was carrying a rifle and had a pack on his back.

  Dan Reston had driven up to the hedge, got out and pushed himself through. She heard his wails as he approached the dogs’ motionless bodies. He ran towards the armed man and then stopped when the rifle was pointed at him. She focused on the camouflaged man’s face and saw with a quiver of surprise that it was grotesque. Then she realised that different coloured stripes had been painted on it. She couldn’t make out the features, but she saw the lips move. Dan Reston walked backwards to the Dobermans. He dropped to his knees and cradled their shattered heads. When she looked again, the shooter had disappeared into the pine forest that covered the hillside to the east.

  ‘Did I hear shots?’ Victoria asked, from behind her.

  ‘I don’t know, did you?’

  ‘Grow up, Evie. You know what I mean.’ Her mother was in a white kimono with black zigzags across it.

  ‘I heard two.’ She handed Victoria the binoculars.

  ‘Oh God, Dan’s dogs. Did you see who did it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evie clammed up.

  Victoria grabbed her arm. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Calm down. Yes, I saw him. No, I don’t know who he was.’

  Her mother lit a cigarette. She was even paler than she usually was in the mornings. ‘Dan will be impossible now. Those dogs meant everything to him. Especially since…’

  ‘What?’ Evie demanded, when no more words were forthcoming.

  ‘Since his operation. Prostate cancer. He was lucky to survive, apparently.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You had physical problems of your own in the winter, darling. We didn’t want to bother you.’

  Evie took the binoculars back. The factor was now lying on the ground between the Dobermans, his face and clothes covered in blood.

  ‘Yuck.’

  ‘Let me see. Oh, hell. I’d better wake your father.’

  ‘So he can go and roll in the gore too? Is that another quaint family tradition?’

  ‘You really can be a pain in the arse.’

  ‘You think so?’ A dark curtain descended over Evie. ‘I wonder why. My mother told the police she’d fucked my boyfriend.’

  Victoria wasn’t taken aback. ‘Before you were with him, darling.’

  ‘So? Now I know why you were eating him with your eyes when he was here this week.’

  ‘Get a grip, girl. I finished with him before he went back to the Abbey for the summer term.’ Victoria smiled crookedly. ‘I’m surprised Nick didn’t tell you about it.’

  Evie slapped her mother’s face hard. ‘Bitch.’ She lifted her crutch and pointed it at Victoria. ‘Stay away from me!’

  ‘You’re overwrought, Evie. You need some time in a home.’

  ‘Fuck you! That wasn’t all I heard. You and Father lied to the police. You said Dan and Cheryl weren’t here. Why? What have you done?’

  ‘W
hat have we done? The Restons are the ones the police want to talk to.’

  ‘But you’re protecting them. Why?’

  Andrew Favon appeared at the end of the corridor. His remaining hair was tousled. ‘What on earth are you two screaming about at this hour?’

  ‘Look,’ Evie said, handing him the binoculars and pointing.

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘I’ll handle him,’ Victoria said, walking away. ‘Take Evie’s crutch and lock her in her room.’

  Andrew looked surprised, then did as he was told.

  Evie was no match for him physically. As soon as the key turned, she started to think about how to get out.

  133

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ Heck yelled into his phone. He was on the Roman Wall west of Cawfields and the wind was strong. He ducked down behind an escarpment. ‘That’s better. What were you saying?’

  Joni told him what Wayne Garston had told her about the Restons.

  ‘Lovely pair,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I just called Big Bertha. She confirms that the bite on the headless man is from a Doberman.’

  ‘At least Reston didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Maybe he drank his blood.’

  ‘Look, Joni, you know this isn’t going to get Mrs Normal to give the go-ahead for a warrant to search the Hall and estate.’

  ‘What if the Restons have got Suzana Noli and your friend Forrest?’

  ‘There’s no evidence to suggest that.’

  Joni paused before speaking. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, sir.’

  ‘I’m not exactly over the moon about it myself, but we have to work by the ACC’s rules. Listen, go home and have a quiet evening. I promise you a lively lunch tomorrow, OK? And we can slip away to talk things over.’

  Joni accepted that with ill grace and cut the connection.

  Heck clambered down the slope and took refuge in a stand of trees. A teenage couple, cheeks red and laughter shrill. There was no doubt what they’d been up to. The girl didn’t look much older than Kat. Heck shuddered. The idea of his daughter being pawed by some callow youth was awful, but he could never make it clear to her. Contrary as she was, she would run straight for the nearest pair of arms.

  Sitting on a fallen tree, Heck tried to get his head together. There was a dull pain in his belly, as so often after he’d been walking. Tackling the Albanian had only been a stage in the fight to overcome his fear. Since the operation, he had gradually learned to trust his being as a whole, accepting that the physical and the mental were intertwined. Now he could see that his work – especially the murder cases – was testing and gradually improving his resilience. A lot of the time in the MCU he felt he was floundering as people pulled him in different directions. Joni was convinced the Favons and their employees were at the heart of things. Morrie Simmons put everything down to the Steel Toe Caps and their opposition to the Albanians. He himself was trying to coordinate their efforts. Pancake Rokeby, who’d drawn the short straw for Saturday, had called him from the office earlier. Michael Etherington’s phone records had arrived, by some miracle given it was the weekend. He was collating incoming and outgoing calls, but had found nothing suggestive so far. The general’s computer was also devoid of anything significant, apart from the contents of his grandson’s computer, which suggested he was set on finding out who killed the lad. Things were at a standstill. Then he had a thought. The reason for that was Mrs Normal. The chief constable would be in on it too. They didn’t want their crony Andrew Favon investigated unless convincing evidence of wrongdoing came to light. But how were he and his teams to find evidence if they weren’t allowed to work the way they would with ordinary people? Fuck the rich and powerful.

  Heck got up slowly to avoid straining anything. He reckoned they had most of the information they needed, but putting it all together was proving difficult. He would call Dan Reston again when he got home, but Favon’s man had been keeping his head down. That made him uncomfortable. He had a feeling something bad was about to happen and Reston was his, and Joni’s, prime suspect – but the bugger had vanished. As had Michael Etherington. Was there a connection?

  As he walked on the Wall, Heck came out of his black mood. Luke would be waiting to bowl him some leg breaks and Ag would produce the usual Saturday high tea, cream cake and iced buns included. Tomorrow Joni would come to the family Sunday lunch. The rest of the weekend would be good.

  134

  Suzana was hungry. No food had appeared for what she guessed was close to a day. Water wasn’t a problem as she could drink from the tap in the bathroom. She lay on the bed in the dark, listening carefully. Occasionally there were shouts – a man’s voice – from below. Perhaps he wasn’t being fed either. What had happened to the pig in the woollen mask? She had heard wheels moving across the gravel outside and had screamed, but nothing had happened. Were they being left to die? As she dropped in and out of consciousness, it came to her that this wouldn’t be such a bad way to reach the end of things. At least the pig hadn’t done more than peer at her when she was naked. If he kept away and she didn’t have to use the knife on him, she might never have to bear a man’s weight on her again, feel a man inside her.

  The knife. She put her hands between her legs and eased it out. The other option was to use it on herself now. That would guarantee her escape from captivity, from the world. She slid the blade out from the plastic casing and put it against her throat. One swift movement, that was all it would take. She shivered as the longing for death gripped her. She heard seductive words – no more suffering, no more running, no more abuse. She gripped the knife harder and made a small cut on the side of her neck. She felt a warm trickle and put a finger against it. Then she got up and went to the bathroom. There was no mirror and the light from the blacked-out window was minimal, but she could see a contorted image of her face on the showerhead. She drew a line of blood across her forehead, then dabbed spots and dashes on her cheeks and nose. She smiled and the witch-like creature grinned back at her malevolently. For the first time in many months, Suzana laughed.

  The blood from the cut soon dried up. She washed the blade and put it in her pocket. She no longer felt the need to hide it inside herself. She wasn’t going to commit murder on her own body. The pigs, so many of them, had done what they wanted to it. She had endured that and she wasn’t going to give up now.

  The man in the mask might not come back, but if he did he would regret it – in the seconds before death pulled his soul from the gaping wound she would make in his flesh.

  135

  Joni slept badly again. This time she wasn’t bothered by dreams or visions, but her body seemed to be out of control. When she went to bed, she started shivering and had to wrap an extra duvet round herself, even though the night was warm enough. Later, she woke to the sound of an owl’s calls and found herself bathed in sweat, despite the fact that she’d kicked off both duvets. She thought she must have a virus and took her temperature with a digital thermometer. It was normal. She drank two glasses of water and sat looking out over the dark space of the garden, the lights from the Abbey to her left. She opened the window and heard the soughing of the wind through trees planted by monks in the Middle Ages. Suddenly she felt very far from home.

  As if she had a home. She’d never been back to Hackney after she left for Oxford. She would arrange to meet her mother in the centre of London, usually in art galleries, though her taste in art had outstripped Moonbeam’s permanent miring in the sixties. Likewise Oxford: it wasn’t a place she liked revisiting, and certainly not on the gaudy nights intended to extract funds from alumni. She hadn’t been in Bari or Marseilles long enough to feel attached to them, and they were tainted by the love affairs that had ended when she left. As for the flats she’d owned in south London, they never felt like home, mainly because of the hours she worked. So where did she belong? In Corham? She’d only been there for a few months and, though she found the town pleasant enough, she hadn’t begun
to put roots down.

  Joni felt a hollowness in her abdomen and a quickening of her pulse. She thought she could hear faint voices on the breeze, voices speaking in a strange form of English. She closed her eyes and saw a figure in dark clothes, his face unnaturally white. When he came close enough that she could smell the decay on his breath, she saw that the cheeks and forehead had been smeared white, and the mouth was wide in a lipless grin. She was shocked to feel her libido rush back. She slid the fingers of one hand under her T-shirt and played with nipples that were already hard. Her other hand moved under the waistband of her sweatpants, past the scarring, and found the wetness she hadn’t experienced since she’d left London. In a matter of seconds she shuddered in a prolonged climax. As her heart rate returned to normal, she was sure she heard laughter fading into the dark.

  She sat there until the cool of night finally got to her, then closed the window and went back to bed. Sleep refused to arrive, so she lay there thinking about what had happened. She felt pleasantly sated and distinctly more alive than she had been. She shouldn’t have cut herself off from her body for so many months. But then her conscious mind began to reassert itself. She thought of Suzana and the missing farmer, of Michael Etherington – was he really going to avenge Nick? And the Favons – haughty and high-handed, but plagued by the same weaknesses as lesser people. And Dan Reston. Was he the key to all the mysteries?

  The thoughts continued to swirl, some of them making sense, some of them bordering on the fantastic. Joni didn’t think her new-found clarity was only because she’d relieved months of sexual tension. Something she was near to understanding was going on. Near, but still it eluded her…

  Joni slept for a few hours and then couldn’t sit still. She arrived at Heck’s place half an hour early to find him, his father and the kids in the back garden, throwing a tennis ball around at speed. Even the old man had a good eye, moving his body as soon as the yellow sphere headed in his direction. Joni watched them over the fence for several minutes before Kat spotted her.