by Ryan Casey
“Luckily for you, somebody else got in touch a real short while ago. Popped round to one of his houses earlier to find a few things out of place, door kicked in, that sort of thing. Staying elsewhere might have damn well saved his life. You might want to have a chat with him while we get things here cleared up. When you’re done, get Peterson to give you a lift up to your wife’s car and go see your family.”
Brian frowned and looked in the direction of the police car. There was a man standing beside it, with short dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He was a skinny chap, and wore skinny jeans, too, which added to the beanpole figure. Brian recognised him from somewhere, he just wasn’t sure where.
“DI Marlow said to have a chat to you,” Brian said, offering a hand to the familiar stranger. “Brian McDone.”
The man smiled and shook Brian’s hand. His hand was cold and skeletal, smooth, never done a day’s labour in its life other than wanking, no doubt. “Pleasure, Mr. McDone. Cody Ballenthine. Freelance historian. Very interested in all the local history around here.”
Brian recognised him by his name, and as he let go of his hand, he felt himself blushing. Was he starstruck? Cody frigging Ballenthine. The guy interested in the Pendle witch trials on the telly. The guy who David Wallson had been in touch with.
“Pleasure to meet you, mate,” Brian said. Mate? Too casual, too soon?
Cody shook his head, that TV-friendly grin etched on his face. “Pleasure’s mine. Shame about the circumstances. But anyway, I’m not just tagging along like a lemon for no reason.” He spoke with a perfect RP accent. Telly voice, telly looks. Was this what a man-crush felt like?
“You and David…David Wallson,” Brian said. “You were in touch, weren’t you?”
Cody nodded and his smile dropped. “So sad to hear about David. I’d actually just contacted him about some amazing research I’d come across. When he got in touch about this hunch you had that the twelfth Pendle witch might have escaped, I laughed at first, not gonna lie. I’d been over this case time and time and time again. It was only when I sat down with fresh eyes that I really realised what was in front of me.
“Twelve people were recorded dead on those fields, make no mistake about it. Twelve definitely died, according to history. Executed. Beheaded. Whatever. And one of those was a ‘MacDunn’. But when I went over some incidental crime reports from the time, I started noticing this ‘McDone’ character cropping up for acts of petty theft and the like, after the supposed ‘MacDunn’ death. And then it struck me—struck me like I was some sort of idiot. McDone and MacDunn were the same person.
“From there, well, I just researched and researched and, yep—you are a direct ancestor of this McDone chap. Sorry to disappoint you. But I couldn’t believe it when David told me that a ‘Brian McDone’ was working on the case. That’s when I added up all the facts—the ritualistic killings, the locations—and I started to get seriously worried. Shame…shame David couldn’t get that information to you in time, rest his soul.”
Brian shook his head and watched as the police and fire department continued the cleanup, barking at one another like angry dogs. “You’re a lucky man to be alive yourself, aren’t you?”
Cody puffed his lips. “Too right. I’m renovating a new house at the moment and I’ve been staying there a lot. Seems like Scott only had my other place on record.” He halted his speech and looked directly into Brian’s eyes. “I hope you realise that with the evidence I’ve got and the incidental bits and pieces of evidence the police have got, your story is going to add up in court. Without me…” He held out his hands and shrugged. “Who knows these days?”
Brian patted Cody on his shoulder and smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it. No doubt you’re going to be an asset to the wrapping up of this investigation.”
He stepped around Cody and headed towards the police car, where DC Peterson was supping a coffee.
“Where you heading?” Cody asked.
Brian turned around and smiled. “To see my family. I’m supposed to be having an engagement party tonight.” He held his hand up as the firemen clambered through the debris and coughed on the dust. “This is probably one of the more inventive ways of getting out of a party I’ve had in my life.”
Cody laughed. “All my best to your family.”
Brian nodded. “Appreciate it. You need a lift anywhere?”
Cody shrugged. “Hospitals aren’t really my thing. Much more to talk about here, anyway. They might even let me take a few photographs, if I’m lucky.”
Brian said a final farewell to Cody Ballenthine—easily the most famous person he’d met for, oh, two years or something like that—then climbed in the back of the police car. DC Peterson finished up his coffee and, when nobody else but Brian was looking, volleyed it into the bushes.
“Where to, mate?” DC Peterson asked. His cheeks were chubby, and he had a round button nose like a piglet.
“Just up the road, please. Then I’m off to Preston Royal,” Brian said. “To be with my family.”
Peterson reversed the car and drove up the dirt track, away from the abandoned care home, away from the depths of the woods.
Brian smiled.
What a surprise that bloody streaker would get if he returned to have a wash here.
Brian hadn’t ever enjoyed visits to the hospital. But since he’d ended up here with those burns on his legs that Robert Luther’s human fireball had caused, visits had got a whole lot worse.
He tried his best to avoid hospital appointments, doctor’s appointments. They brought back too many bad memories. He could just about bear visiting somebody—Stephen Molfer, for example. Anything else, and he would rather just sit on the sofa with a glass of red and relax in front of the telly. Healing, Brian style, that’s what it was.
He tried not to think too much about his last visit to this particular ward. Cassy. Price delivering the news of her passing. The frustration, the self-loathing all coming to a head when he realised Robert Luther was quite literally getting away with murder. The helplessness of being unable to do a thing about it.
His leg stung as he walked down the main corridor and to the wards at the end. The material from his black trousers was rubbing against the area where that little splash of acid had landed, and fuck, it hurt. But he’d have it seen to when he knew his family were okay. Hannah and Davey—they were his priority.
As he walked further down the corridor, he took a left into the main ward area where Hannah and Davey were supposedly resting. Doctors rushed around in white coats. There was an antiseptic tang to the place, and the white walls and tiled floors shone as if they were painted with the stuff. Brian smiled at a short, dark-haired doctor in a blue uniform before turning the corner into the ward. He wasn’t sure what sort of state they’d be in. They’d been splashed with acid too, but the main concern was the amount of sedative running through their systems.
They’d slept through the whole ordeal at the abandoned care home. Brian was thankful for that. So fucking thankful. He wished he could’ve slept through it himself. No doubt Hannah and he would joke about it in years to come. At least she wouldn’t be able to accuse him of being cowardly anymore.
He turned the corner into the ward. It was empty but for the two beds on the right.
On the first bed, Hannah was lying on two high pillows. She frowned and tried to readjust herself. She looked tired, with dark eyes and straps of exposed red flesh at the sides of her eyes, but she was awake. She was okay.
In the next bed, Davey lay.
He too was wide awake. His little locks of dark brown hair dangled onto his pillow. Vanessa was with him, holding his hand, whispering to him.
The moment was so relieving—so perfect—that Brian could’ve stood there and watched for hours and hours without being disturbed.
His family. His whole family. All okay.
“Daddy!”
Vanessa and Hannah looked over as Dave
y pointed in Brian’s direction, his similarly chapped eyes wide and twinkling.
“Hello, you lot,” Brian said, forcing a grin. His cheeks felt like wet paper. He just couldn’t hold a smile, not with the lump in his throat and the tears behind his eyelids.
He went over to Davey first and gave him a huge kiss on the head, which tipped him over the edge.
“You brave lad,” Brian said, holding his heavy, warm head to his chest. “You brave, brave lad.”
Vanessa was crying now, too. She smiled and nodded as she sniffed back the tears.
After cuddling Davey for a few minutes, Brian turned around and strolled in Hannah’s direction. He raised his eyebrows, almost as if he too couldn’t believe they were in here, today of all days.
Hannah smiled. She was crying now, too, and her smile was shaky. “I…I suppose this is one of the weirder engagement venues, right?”
Brian crouched down beside her and gave her a huge kiss on her sticky, chapped lips. He held his eyes shut, the kiss going on and on, as warmth built up inside his chest and engulfed his entire body, the hairs on his arms standing on end.
He pulled away, stroked Hannah’s dark hair, then rested his forehead against hers. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
Hannah pressed her finger against Brian’s lips. She had a bandage around her wrist from where she had been elevated above the acid bath. “Ssh. We don’t need to talk about it right now. We’re all alive and well. That’s the main thing. We’re all alive and well, thanks to you.”
She returned Brian’s kiss, and the pair of them were lost in another moment of timeless tranquility.
“Congratulations, by the way,” Vanessa said.
Brian turned around and looked at her. She had a genuinely warm smile on her face, and her eyes moved from Brian to Hannah and back.
“I’m really pleased for you both. And I’m sorry that…well, your first celebration didn’t exactly go as planned.”
Hannah rolled her eyes and tutted. “You know Brian. When is anything ever as planned with him?”
The pair of them laughed, and soon all of them were laughing; laughing and joking and enjoying each other’s company.
Better than any bloody forced engagement party would’ve been.
After a good half an hour of chatting, Brian’s phone started ringing. He looked at the screen, ready to cancel the call, but then saw it was DI Marlow.
“I’d better take this,” Brian said.
“Still hooked on his phone, I see?” Vanessa muttered to Hannah as Brian moved to the edge of the ward. They continued chatting behind his back. A good sign. When women got on well, they bitched. If that wasn’t progress, then he didn’t know what was.
“Detective Inspector,” Brian said. “How can I help?”
“Brian,” Marlow said. His voice was echoey and distant. “You’re right. All along, you were right about Scott. We’re at his place now. Some of the stuff we’ve found, it’s…well, it’s going to be very hard for him to get out of.”
A weight lifted from Brian’s shoulders. The weight of the case. The weight of not knowing. “Thanks. That’s…it’s unfortunate but great news. At least we finally have a bit of closure. Heard anything about Scott yet?”
“Well, that sofa sure messed him up bad. He’s in critical care in Longridge right now, but it isn’t looking good. Broken spine, broken neck, fractured skull. If he does survive, he’ll be a fucking vegetable, which is great news for the lot of us.”
Brian felt a twinge of sympathy for Scott. Even after all the horrible things he’d done, the thought of him sitting around for the twenty or thirty years left of his life, grief and anger and frustration burning through his mind like a hot poker…it wasn’t nice.
Fuck. He really was getting soft in age.
“There’s something else though, Brian,” DI Marlow said. He’d lowered his voice and coughed. “Something…between you and me. For now, anyway. I’ll send it via picture message. I think it’s something you’ll be very interested to see.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see. Anyway, gotta shoot. I…Well, I’ll see you around.”
“See you around.”
DI Marlow had already put the phone down before Brian had had the chance to say his farewell. Funny bloke, really. He never could read him. One minute, he was like your best mate, the next he was wrapping cuffs on you and telling you to stop interfering. Typical DI.
He looked at his phone as a picture message alert instantly buzzed through. The last thing he wanted to see was some other unknown level to this whole case. He was done with it. It had almost finished him, so the mere thought that it might have some other unknown element to it—a family member of Scott’s, another accomplice—made Brian want to pack his bags and move the fuck away in an instant.
As he opened the message, the voices of Hannah, Vanessa and Davey still chattering on behind him, the curiosity peaked.
It was a photograph of a woman and a girl. They were pale, and their hair—the woman’s dark, the little girl’s blonde—was greasy and matted. Their cheeks were drawn, and they looked bony and malnourished.
The bubble of curiosity burst the moment Brian realised who they were.
It was Darren Anderson’s family. Scott told Brian he’d kidnapped them and locked them away, blackmailing Darren Anderson to do some of his dirty work. Brian had feared the worst. He’d as good as given up on them. They’d been there for months, after all. Months.
But there they were in DI Marlow’s picture message, alive. Malnourished and no doubt traumatised, but alive.
“You done fiddling with your phone yet?” Davey said.
Brian turned around and frowned. Davey’s cheeks were red, and Hannah and Vanessa had grins on their faces.
“Y’know what?” Brian said, stuffing his phone in his pocket and walking back into his family’s direction. “I think I am.”
He sat down in a grey plastic chair between the two beds and the four of them laughed, joked and chatted some more.
After all the horrible things that had happened today—all the horrible things all of them had been through—they were strong as long as they were together.
And times would be tough. Hannah was going to be fragile after this. Just about mustered up the confidence to leave the house after her sister’s death, only for all that to be snatched away.
Davey was going to have nightmares. There was no doubting and getting away from that.
And Vanessa was going to go fully overprotective of her son. Her way of making sure she never let him out of her sight again.
But they were strong together.
If they could pull through this, they could pull through anything.
“What did happen when I was sleeping anyway, Daddy?”
Brian glared at Vanessa and cleared his throat. “You don’t want to know just yet, kid. You really don’t. Now, who’s for a burger?”
Chapter Thirty Four
Over the following two weeks, Brian took a holiday from his PCSO duties. Paid leave, classed as “stress-related” due to how close to home the crimes of Scott Collins were. He was keeping his job in the long term—that was a positive. The police had interviewed Brian a few times recently, he having worked with Scott for well over a year, but the questions were only routine. At times, the interviewing officers seemed stunned themselves that Brian had never had any idea of the sort of man Scott was.
Truth was, he hadn’t had an idea. Not at all. Scott was fantastic at wearing a face of normality, that was for certain.
He was a methodical and organised planner and killer. From the bits and pieces Brian heard leaking from the police department and in the media, he’d cleaned himself up at every scene with a horrifying precision and attention to detail. A new fear was being stirred by the Lancashire News—the fear of the killer. Were you living next door to one? Working with one? Sleeping with one? Well, you’d
only find out when your head was chopped right off and served up to the gods!
Brian and Hannah lay on the sofa watching television. It was early in the day, but they’d decided to stay in the lounge last night. “Decided” was the wrong word, actually. It just sort of happened. They’d stayed up, made love, then cuddled and chatted on their comfy sofa watching late-night quiz shows complete with sign language readers right into the night. They were like teenagers right now.
Probably the closest he’d ever come to feeling like a bloody teenager again, anyway.
Brian hadn’t slept much. He’d just sat back and stared over at the window, watching the colours of the night sky change from black to dark blue, to the red of morning and now to the grey of day. It was around 8 a.m. now. He’d have to get some kip at some point, but he just hadn’t felt it last night.
He wanted to sit there with Hannah in his arms, in front of the open log fire, grateful for what he had.
Sure, he was getting soft. But getting soft felt much better than getting old, depressed, alone.
Hannah was much better company than a razor blade to the wrist.
And that was high praise.
The sound of metal rattling in the hallway made Brian jump. Hannah opened her eyes too.
“What was that?” she mumbled, her eyes only half-open.
“Post, I think,” Brian said, his heart pumping. It was a little early for the postman, and he hadn’t heard his van, or his usual annoying whistling. He kissed Hannah on her forehead and placed her to one side with a cushion underneath her. “I’ll just go check on it.”
Stretching his legs, Brian walked out of the living room and into the hallway. The clock by the door ticked on. The roads still sounded quiet outside, ready for the business of just another working day.
On the brown, bristly doormat, there was just one sole envelope. Large. Thick, by the looks of it.
And on the front, it simply had the words, “Brian McDone”.
Brian approached it and picked it up. His name had been handwritten. The first thing he thought of was those old question marks he used to receive. Scott Collins, taunting him all along.
