by Ryan Casey
But he needed to confront Phil Mcphee first-hand. He’d killed his sister-in-law. Made his fiancé’s life a misery. Brian was solving this. It was personal now.
He opened the car door and slammed it shut, keeping his head low as he approached the front door of the Grey Goose pub. Women pushed prams up and down the pavement. Hooded kids who should’ve been at school jogged past, punching one another when they caught up. A tingling sensation worked its way up Brian’s arms with every step he took towards the Grey Goose pub and its flaky white painting. What was he going to do? Say? He was being foolish. Acting like a frigging idiot.
But he needed to do this his way.
He opened the door to the pub. The locals turned around—old men with pints stacking up beside them, red-cheeked and whiskey-nosed. Behind the bar, a young bartender with his hair shaven at the sides but long on top. Brian chewed his lip and walked towards him.
“What can I get you, mate?”
“Actually, I was hoping I could speak to the landlord.”
The bartender’s forehead wrinkled up. “Is he expectin’ you?”
Brian smiled. He was easing into this now. “He’s an old friend. Tell him Brian’s here, and he’ll know the name.”
The bartender stepped away from the bar and walked through the door leading to the kitchens, his dark eyes still focused on Brian. “Give us a sec.”
Brian nodded. He looked around the pub. One old local with a fat red face burst into drunken laughter as his little bald mate cracked a joke. A woman with dark, scraggy hair supped on a vodka coke in the corner. All old people in here, always. What a tomb. But something else caught his eye too—the paintings of the medieval battlefields. How the fuck they’d let that one slip them by the last time they’d been in here, Brian had no idea. Phil was a war buff. Probably the only thing he was a buff at, other than theft.
“Tony ain’t in at the moment.”
The bartender had leaned around the door and was shaking his head. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more ‘elp. Now, d’you want a drink?”
“How about Phil?” Brian asked.
The bartender’s eyes flicked to the room at the back. His lips were sealed. Brian could tell he was hiding something back there.
Or someone.
“Phil’s…Phil’s not ‘ere either. Look, mister, I’ve got to serve you a drink if you want to—”
“What you so twitchy about?” Brian asked. He walked along the bar so he had a better view of the door.
As Brian moved, so too did the bartender, blocking Brian’s view.
“If you don’t give up, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the bartender said, raising his voice. As he did, a chunky bald man in the corner of the bar narrowed his eyes and stepped from his stool.
“‘E causin’ bother?”
“He’s back there, isn’t he?” Brian said, pointing at the door. “Why doesn’t he come out here? He can speak to me or he can speak to the police. Hear that, Phil? Either way, you’re fucked. So you might as well come out here and talk this out with me. Just don’t bother bringing a sword out with you.”
Brian felt a pressure on his right. It was the chunky bald man. He was quite a bit shorter than Brian, but underneath his white t-shirt, he looked solid. Not somebody he wanted a punch from any time soon, which might be soon considering how his fists were tensed.
“Time to get t’fuck out of ‘ere, you fuckin’ homo,” the man said, pushing Brian back even further.
The bartender sulked back and watched as the chunky bald man continued to edge Brian further and further out of the pub. This thug was testing Brian’s patience, he really was, but he had to ride it out. He wasn’t a police officer anymore. He had as little right to scrap as everybody else.
But then he remembered something. He looked underneath his black coat and saw his PCSO badge. He could use this to his advantage. He just had to play it right.
He unzipped his coat just at the chunky bald man was about to give him another push out of the door.
“I suggest you keep your hands off me, get back to the bar, and finish your drink. I might not have the power of arrest, but I have the power to make sure my friends in the police know damn well that you’ve assaulted a colleague of theirs.”
The chunky bald man looked stunned. His yellowing eyes widened. He lowered his arms and staggered back to the bar, completely slumped. Wow. PCSO badge had come to good use after all.
“Now,” Brian said, approaching the bar again, “you get Phil Mcphee out here right this second. I want to talk to him.”
The bartender glanced over Brian’s shoulder. It was only a momentary glance, but it was enough to suggest to Brian that something out there had caught his attention.
“I’m sorry, mate,” the bartender said. “Phil Mcphee isn’t here right now. Like I said.”
His eyes flickered outside again.
Brian turned around.
At first, he wondered what it was the bartender was looking at. But then, as he looked closer, he saw exactly what it was.
Across the street, a man had a red hoodie zipped right up, hands in the pockets of his grey jogging bottoms. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the pub, and his eyes met Brian’s.
Phil Mcphee.
Brian jogged towards the pub door, the entire pub watching him now, and ran outside, back into the cold wind of Longridge. The fucker must’ve slipped out through the back.
When Phil Mcphee, at the other side of the road, looked over his shoulder again, he saw Brian was outside the pub.
It was at that moment that he started to run.
If there were any doubts about Phil Mcphee’s guilt in Brian’s mind, they were now gone.
Brian just had to hope he could catch him before he slipped away forever.
Brian ran up Berry Lane. He was keeping his eye on Phil, who sprinted as fast as he could up the hilly road, dodging passers-by. Brian was keeping up with him, but he needed an opportunity to cross, and he just wasn’t getting it right now, as the cars flew down at an unforgiving speed.
Eventually, Brian spotted a gap in the road. He looked over his shoulder—nothing coming up the hill either. He jogged onto the street and crossed the road.
As he did, he heard a bell ringing.
“Watch it, stupid fucker!”
A cyclist swerved past Brian, almost knocking him from his feet. Brian jumped back into the street, holding his hand up to apologise as the bike rode past.
A horn honked at the side of him. A red car was speeding in his direction. Fuck. He was causing real havoc. He ran onto the pavement as quickly as he could and looked up the hill.
His stomach sank. His hold-up in the road had distracted him so much that he couldn’t see Phil Mcphee’s red hoodie anymore. Fuck. He jogged up the street regardless, past the NatWest Bank, overtaking the bike he’d had the altercation with, which was slightly awkward.
Brian turned his head to look down the first side street beside Natwest. It was a row of terraced houses. He peered down it, slowing his jog. He couldn’t see Phil anywhere, and there was no chance he’d have found the time to run to a front door, get a key out, open it and close it in the time Brian had taken his eye off the street. No chance.
He panted as he moved up the hilly road, past the Lloyds Bank, and took a glance down the next street.
Beside the church—the churchyard where David Wallson and he had examined Harold Harvey’s headstone—he caught a momentary glimpse of red slipping around the side.
“Got you, you fucker.”
Brian jogged up the road that led to the church. There was no getting away for Phil Mcphee now. And even if the police did arrive at the Grey Goose some time soon, they’d have a search on their hands, too. Brian was going to get a few moments alone with this man. The man who’d terrorised his family. He needed to understand the personal question marks directed at him. The killing of Marie, and the mental torturing of his family about it. He
needed to understand.
He slowed down as he jogged around the left-hand side of the church. The long grass was damp and squelched under Brian’s feet as he stepped through it. Lines of headstones—nameless, older ones first—sprouted up from the ground. There was a fresh smell in the air; what Brian called an earthy smell after it’d rained on moderately humid days. He kept close to the mossy side wall of the church, looking over the stone wall and at the fields to see if Phil had gone for a jog in that direction.
“St…Stop there.”
Brian adhered to the command, but more out of shock than anything. He spun ahead.
Phil Mcphee was in front of him. His red hood had fallen down, revealing a freshly shaven head. The hood dangled on his ears, the wind pushing it further and further back.
He was holding a gun.
Most likely the gun that had shot down those poor innocent workers at Pendle Hill. Shit. How had he overlooked that, too?
“Don’t move a muscle,” Phil said. Brian could see that he was crying, or had been crying at some point recently. He didn’t look comfortable with the weapon. His hands shook as he gripped it. His legs, which were covered by muddy grey Adidas jogging trousers, couldn’t stop twitching, as he stepped forwards and backwards, side to side. He didn’t look like a confident, methodical killer. He didn’t look like a killer at all, in fact.
“Phil, I know about the weapon. The executioner’s sword. Rare 17th Century piece, I believe. Taken from Leeds Royal Armouries—”
“Shut your mouth,” Phil said. His tone was nasty, and he lifted the gun. It was at that point that Brian realised how peculiar the gun was, too. And why.
“I’m assuming that gun there is an ancient piece too. Interested in weapons, aren’t you? Didn’t think that’d come back to haunt you at some point?”
Phil Mcphee stopped pacing and walked directly at Brian, the small pistol aiming at his head. He stopped a couple of feet in front of Brian. His hood had fallen completely from his head now. His cheekbones looked gaunter than ever, his face even paler than usual. “I said, shut up,” Phil said. “It ain’t what you think. I fuckin’ swear to you. Now get on your knees.”
Brian, who had his hands raised, realised that he was going to have to comply with Phil. He’d taken enough of a risk heading out here on his own. He couldn’t risk standing up to an insane murderer who had a gun pointed at his face.
“That’s right,” Phil said, as Brian kneeled down. The squishy mud seeped through his trousers, sending a cold, wet shiver around his shins. “Now you’re gonna let me run. Understand that? You’re gonna let me run and you ain’t gonna say a single word about this.”
Brian looked up at Phil. He had the gun pointing at his face, but his finger wasn’t even on the trigger. A few specks of rain fell down on them, as Phil curled his lip underneath the few top teeth he had remaining, fidgeting and twitching. Something wasn’t right here. Not one bit.
“Phil, the police are going to come looking for you soon. And they’ll find you, you can be sure of that. You’re number one suspect in the Pendle Hill and Longridge Fell killings. Murder weapon matches the one you stole from the Leeds Royal Armouries. They believe you also killed my sister-in-law. And you’ve been sending strange messages to me. Apparently.”
Phil lowered the gun, seemingly less by choice and more by reaction. He frowned. “I…I’m a suspect? Fuck. That fuck. That fuck.” He smacked the side of his head and groaned.
“But I don’t believe you did kill them. At first, I thought so. The evidence pointed in your direction. But I think you’re too sloppy to even come close to pulling off a stunt like this killer’s. No offence.”
Phil shook his head. He was crying again, his face blotching with red marks as he did. “He just wanted that one thing stolen. That one fuckin’ thing. And I thought it’d be easy and that’d be the last of it and fuck…I just needed the cash. I never thought…I never thought he’d use it. Thought he must just’ve been a collector, y’know?”
Brian rose to his feet, slowly. Wet mud slid down his legs. “Who’s ‘he’, Phil? You need to co-operate with me here, because I understand that something much deeper is going on. The police…I can’t promise they’ll think the same. They want this investigation finished. Wrapped up. That’s not good news for you.”
Phil curled his head into his hands. The gun looked so out of place now. Brian felt that if he acted quickly, he’d be able to knock Phil to the ground, take the gun from his hand and hold him down.
But all of a sudden, capturing Phil didn’t seem like a priority anymore.
“Phil,” Brian shouted. He looked over his shoulder and saw police cars heading down the road. Police cars that were heading for the Grey Goose. Police cars that would eventually find them both. He couldn’t be caught interfering, not again. He’d lose his job. His livelihood. Everything.
“You need to talk to me, Phil,” Brian shouted, towering above Phil as he stood in front of him. “Who was he—”
“He was just a normal guy,” Phil shouted. He looked Brian in the eye now. Some saliva spat from his mouth and peppered Brian’s face. “Just a…a normal guy. Looked a bit more stuck-up than the usual lot, but we get that sorta crowd every now and then.”
Brian had to gulp to steady himself. “What did he want?”
“Like I said,” Phil said, looking nervously over Brian’s shoulder. “Offered a lot of money to me to do this little job for ‘im. Weird money. And he just wanted it to be me, too. No one else involved. So I agreed. I agreed to it, y’know?”
“You actually saw this guy? What did he look like?”
Phil closed his eyes as if he were trying to force the memory back into his head. “I dunno. Brown hair—lightish brown, like. Normal height, maybe a bit smaller than me. Standard bloke, really. But it was the money he offered that I found most weird about ‘im.”
“So you’ll have CCTV in the pub?”
Phil shook his head. “Brother got into a bit of a scrap the night before. Only minor, like. So he wiped it. Snapped the discs just in case. Fuck. Fuck.”
Brian could hear commotion at the bottom of the road. “Fookin’ ‘ell, he’s got a ruddy gun!” an old woman shouted. Fuck. He had to hurry with this before the police caught on that something was amiss.
“You said something about the amount of money. What do you mean? Quick—”
“Dead funny amount ‘e gave me. £16,120, I remember it exactly. Just seemed a weird amount. Never mind the fact he made me write out some weird poem about rats and stuff.”
Brian couldn’t speak for a good few moments. £16,120. 1612. The year of the Pendle witch killings. The same modus operandi as “Harold Harvey II”, who gave Davidson and Brabiner’s archeological firms £160,120 each to carry out the archeological jobs.
And the poem. That explained why the handwriting matched Phil Mcphee’s. Shit. This had to be their man. It had to be.
“Oh, summat else I remember about him too. Know I’m not one to talk, but he had this mega gap between his front teeth. Dead yellow ‘is teeth were, too. Must’ve gone to same dentists as me and me brother.”
Brian churned up inside. Butterflies flapped around his stomach like they were on steroids. The whole world seemed to fade into the background, every limb in his body freezing. “A…a massive gap? Like, bigger than normal?”
“Bigger than any gap I’ve seen,” Phil said. “Anyway, gotta shoot, officer. Well, run off, anyway. Not shoot. Hopefully.”
Phil Mcphee ran across the graveyard like a rabbit running down a street. Brian didn’t even attempt to stop him, as he hopped the stone wall and jogged across the fields and into the distance.
He didn’t try to stop him because he knew he wasn’t their man. Or his man, rather.
His man had light brown hair, was slightly shorter than average, and had an unusually large gap between his front teeth.
His man had avoided all media coverage at all costs, h
ence Phil’s not recognising him.
His man was the only credible witness to the Pendle Hill massacres.
The only survivor.
His man was Darren Anderson.
Chapter Twenty Two
All of a sudden, Brian felt very alone, standing there in that churchyard. Phil Mcphee had done a runner. He could hear voices down the gravelled pathway—commotion, an old woman kicking up a fuss. He knew the police would be down there, and no doubt up here soon, too.
The wind blew his greasy fringe up so that it tapped his wrinkly forehead. He took a few steps back towards the road, away from the towering church, still not totally focused.
Darren Anderson had paid Phil Mcphee £16,120 to steal an executioner’s sword from Leeds Royal Armouries.
As Brian sped up his walk, keeping his head low so that hopefully no one would pay any attention, the little niggling clues of the case began to click together in his mind. Darren Anderson was the only survivor of the Pendle Hill massacre. If that wasn’t enough of a giveaway as it was, then there was his reluctance for his face to be shown in the newspaper. He must’ve known that people like Phil Mcphee had a chance of identifying him otherwise.
He turned onto the street. An old woman with skin as tough and hard as a rhinoceros, and a big beak of a nose, peered at him as she leaned on her walking frame. “You okay, my love? Police’ll be ‘ere soon. No need t’panic.”
Brian smiled at her and walked away, continuing up the hill, away from the church and away from the Grey Goose pub. He knew he’d left the red Fiesta right outside the pub. DI Marlow or Stephen-frigging-Molfer would be on his case in no time. Shit. He just needed to walk until he knew he was clear. Buy something from the shop. Pretend he was doing something remotely normal, goddammit.
And then he had to get to Darren Anderson’s place on Beech Drive, now he was sure.
When he got there—only then—he’d call the police and have them join him.
