by Steven Dunne
‘No sign of a Dodge Ram 250,’ said Drexler.
‘Care to give me odds it’s been stolen, Mike?’
He smiled. ‘No sale.’
A slightly built middle-aged man seemed to appear out of nowhere and strolled across the lawn to greet them. Drexler and McQuarry exchanged a private smile of recognition. But instead of the full head of wiry red hair from his passport photograph, the man’s shaved head was as it was on Caleb Ashwell’s CCTV monitor.
‘Detectives, what can I do for you?’ he said in an approximation of an English accent. He smiled at them, though his shrewd black eyes didn’t seem to be in sympathy with his mouth.
‘FBI, sir. This is Special Agent Drexler and I’m Special Agent McQuarry.’
‘Special agents, how thrilling,’ he said with an effort to be impressed. ‘Just like in the movies.’
Drexler flipped open his notepad. ‘And you are Mr Victor Sorenson?’
The man grinned, perhaps distracted for a moment by an echo from the past. ‘Professor Sorenson in fact.’
It was well past midnight but the fire still blazed in the old oil drum in Stinger’s overgrown backyard. The air was cold and a fog was forming, but the heat radiating towards the four figures slumped on two decrepit sofas served to incubate the occupants. Stinger’s younger brother had gone to his room to play computer games, shortly after Stinger’s mum and her boyfriend Ryan had staggered off to bed. Stinger, Banger and Grets were close to coma and stared unblinking at the hypnotic flames.
Jason would have liked to turn off the boom box but that wasn’t a runner — Stinger was on a major wreck and Jason knew from experience that he’d not let up until every drop of booze was drunk and every ounce of dope smoked.
‘Turn it up, blood. This track kicks ass,’ slurred Stinger, head lolling back on the bigger of the two sofas.
‘Turn it up yourself, bitch.’ Banger leered at the others, waiting for them to acknowledge the comic genius in their midst.
‘It’s pretty loud already,’ observed Jason, regretting his comment at once.
‘So? The fuck are the neighbours gonna say?’ said Stinger, stumbling to the boom box nestled on the bonnet of his dad’s demolition derby car. It was rotting on bricks in the backyard until someone on the estate took a chance and bought new wheels for their own vehicle. ‘The last time Osama came round to complain, Ryan gave him a right slappin’, innit?’ Stinger turned up the gangsta rap a couple of notches and slumped back down as they all started nodding to the beat.
‘Bet he weren’t happy though,’ observed Banger before dissolving into hysterics — he was on a roll.
‘And granny next door never puts her head outside after dark no more,’ added Stinger. He threw another fencepost onto the fire. Sparks flew off into the night sky.
‘Not unless she wants croaking like that other old bitch,’ nodded Grets. They all laughed but there was a tension in their throats, and each felt the need to run his drunken eye over the others to make sure it hadn’t been noticed. The moment passed and they were able to reposition their masks of invulnerability. But there was disquiet in their demeanour as each reflected on the night Jason’s family had been slaughtered just a few doors away, the night the four of them had murdered an old woman for money and drugs but awoke to find their thunder stolen by The Reaper, Annie Sewell’s death a mere footnote. Narked at first, each had since come to realise that the sensational events at the Wallis home had kept the Sewell murder out of the limelight and left them free to continue numbing their lives.
Jason stared into the flames and remembered that night with something approaching shame. The face he could never forget — the old woman begging for her life, or at least a little dignity. That night she kept neither.
Thank Christ nobody knew. Not true. That leng, DI Brook knew. He’d come round his aunt’s, got him loaded on cheap whisky. Brook had warned him, tried to make him ’fess up and name names. Had he imagined it? But he hadn’t imagined being tied up. Being threatened. One thing Brook said, Jason would never forget. The Reaper was still out there, waiting for his chance — unfinished business. Trouble was, he didn’t seem keen to finish it. Well, maybe tonight was the night and Jason was ready. Ready to make payment. Ready for an end to misery and fear. Ready to stop being a victim and start being a player. Ready for fame and a place in history.
Banger took a long draught of cider and offered the dregs of a two-litre bottle to Jason. He held a hand up to refuse, so Banger drained the rest, and threw it into the oil drum.
‘It’s late. I should peg it,’ said Jason, trying to sound casual.
‘Chill your beans, man. It’s early. Don’t be dread. This party’s for you. You can crash here. I asked my mum.’
‘Cheers, Sting. It’s been sick. But I got stuff to do tomorrow.’
‘So what? I got college. Ain’t going though. It’s boring.’
‘Me neither,’ piped up Grets.
‘Yeah, but I promised my aunt.’
‘So? Anyway, you’ll never get a white cab this time o’ night.’
‘I was gonna walk.’
‘Oh my days. It’s bloody miles to Borrowash. And you’ll be crossing enemy blocks.’
‘Yeah, well. When you’ve done time, walking outside at night, when you’re locked in … well, it’s something you think about.’
‘Thought you said it was easy time,’ accused Grets.
‘Look, I’m bladdered…’ began Jason.
‘The fuck you are,’ spat Stinger. ‘You’ve hardly had a drop. And you passed the spliff after one draw. We used to have to taser your ass to get it off you. Innit, Bang?’
‘No doubt.’
‘He might not be used to it,’ explained Grets.
‘That’s no excuse.’
Jason eyed Stinger. ‘Can’t yer take a joke, bredrin?’ he said eventually, finding his party face again. ‘Pass me that bottle. Let’s get this party started, fam,’ he said, downing a litre of rust-coloured liquid in one go.
‘That’s the Jace we know. Don’t neck it all, bitch.’
Chapter Nine
Brook looked at his watch. One am. He was early. Good. Another hour and he would know. The chill wintry air had turned to fog and clung to the potholed roads and bald grass verges of the Drayfin Estate. The noise of his car cut through the still air with a deliberation born out of Brook’s desire to move quietly through the streets, as though not being noticed meant that he was somewhere else. He didn’t want to be here, that’s for sure, revisiting his past, a past that he thought he’d conquered once and for all. But The Reaper was calling him. Even in death, Sorenson would never let go. Brook should’ve known.
He turned slowly onto the road he’d been on so many times in his dreams, eased past number 233, not looking at the Wallis house, just knowing it was there. It had a presence even now.
Parking around the corner, he stepped from the car and gingerly closed the driver’s door, leaving it unlocked — a rare deliberate act on the Drayfin. He walked back through the gathering fog to the scene of The Reaper’s last atrocity — a path that perhaps The Reaper himself had once taken — and ran his eye over the former home of the Wallis family, as it materialised out of the gloom like a ghost ship.
The house was boarded up and, unusually for the Drayfin, had stayed that way. No need for the council to brick up the doors and windows. Nobody came near the place — no kids, no tramps and certainly no neighbours. The house was a lure only for passing ghouls, unlikely tourists who craved a glimpse at infamy, assuming they could find the place in this sprawling, redbrick jungle. Even then such visits were made only in daylight.
Brook stood before the house and turned again to see if his presence was being monitored. It appeared not. All neighbouring houses were dark, all streetlights inert and broken. Even the faint light of the moon had taken the evening off. Brook felt himself in the grip of a black hole, being drawn towards the Wallis house, unable to pull away, his orbit decaying, his body and mind hurtl
ing towards the stench of evil that still lurked there.
As he stepped over the splayed front gate, Brook pulled his dark coat tightly round him and yanked up his collar. He approached the front entrance slowly and, as he moved, he heard something that the deep recesses of his memory had warned him to expect: music. Brook stopped to listen, glaring at the house to search for an opening. The years began to melt away, and Brook remembered standing at the front door of Sorenson’s London home, minutes before their first meeting, listening to the aria from La Wally leaking out of the window in his study above.
Then he realised that the music was not coming from the Wallis house. Nor was it a song for The Reaper. The pulse of this music came from elsewhere. Brook looked around, sensing the direction — a neighbouring home, maybe even a garden. Some kind of rap music. The music of violence and confrontation, guaranteed to irritate and cow anyone over thirty, especially at this time of night and in this place. Even this late the self-centred who blighted the urban landscape saw fit to inflict themselves on long-suffering neighbours. Mind yer own business. It’s a free country. We can play our music loud as we like. What yer gonna do about it?
Brook returned his eyes to the Wallis house. He moved to the door he’d last opened on the night of the murders. It was now a piece of chipboard. It had been wedged open, recently by the look of it. The gap was too slight for Brook to get through, so he forced the board further open and ducked through the enlarged gap. In the same instant, he snapped on a small torch to check the floor for scurrying rodents.
The hall was just as he remembered. No carpet now but the wallpaper was the same grimy flock. The door into the murder room was gone, taken away by forensics to eke out possible evidence from the bloody smears on the handle. There’d been no prints and no clues on the door, on anything. The carpets had eventually yielded a footprint and a shoe size, but neither Brook nor Inspector Greatorix, who’d taken over the inquiry after Brook’s suspension, had ever found a suspect or even a pair of shoes to seek a match.
Brook stepped into the room in which Mr and Mrs Wallis and their daughter Kylie had been killed. No, not killed, slaughtered like animals for the table, almost as ritual. Their throats cut from ear to ear, their life blood everywhere except their veins.
The armchairs on which the Wallis parents had died were gone, so too the once-white rug on which Kylie and her unborn child had been butchered. Even the wallpaper sporting the bloody daub ‘SAVED’ had been torn away. The room was completely bare. Brook stepped further in, wincing at the explosion of sound that his shoes created on the uncovered floorboards.
His veins turned to ice at the sight of the bottle of wine sitting on the fireplace, exactly as it had the night the Wallis family had faced The Reaper. Next to it were two wine glasses. Both were grime- and dust-free. He was expected. He forced himself to step nearer. The bottle was uncorked and full. He stared at the label. It was a Nuits St Georges, the same as it had been two years ago. Brook picked up a glass with his gloved hand and sniffed it. Clean. This time The Reaper hadn’t had a celebratory drink after doing his work. His work. The Reaper was dead. And what work was there for The Reaper in an empty house?
‘Sorenson’s dead,’ Brook muttered softly, clenching his fists.
A creaking noise from above made Brook drop the glass. It shattered at his feet. He abandoned all pretence at stealth and hurtled out of the room, bounding up the stairs three at a time and tearing into the bedroom above the living room, flashing the torch wildly to be sure he wasn’t about to be attacked. But the torch was unnecessary. There was already light. A candle in a holder burned in the corner and had been alight for some time, judging by the knot of melted wax around the stem. Brook gazed into the centre of the room at a small mattress; next to it sat a small camping stove and a few unopened tins.
Brook nodded sadly and stepped closer. How many years since he’d been in Laura Maples’s bleak squat in London? Twenty? And now here in Derby, in reproduction, it was just as he remembered it. But instead of her blackened, bloated, rat-infested corpse before him, Brook saw only the framed picture of the girl, resting on the mattress.
‘Laura,’ he said before he could stop himself. He kneeled to look at the likeness of the bright-eyed schoolgirl, staring back at him. It was the same photograph he’d used in her murder investigation in the early nineties. The one plastered over the London Evening Standard and printed onto flyers in a futile effort to find her, then her killer. It wasn’t the face ravaged by hungry rats, the face that tormented Brook in his sleep.
Well, the dreams had ceased for a while because, where Brook had failed, Victor Sorenson had found Laura’s killer and had executed his family for the offence, offering her killer up to Brook as a gift. A gift. To show Brook that The Reaper’s work, the destruction of entire families, was righteous and just.
‘Who’s doing this?’ he muttered to himself. He said it again, only louder, lifting his head to project to a nearby listener. His voice bounced around the bare room without receiving an answer. ‘Sorenson’s dead!’ he shouted this time.
He picked up the picture frame and examined it more closely. The picture was a photocopy. The necklace with its silver hearts still winked at him, but Brook was able to draw comfort from the artifice. He pulled the picture from the frame and slid it into his pocket, then listened to the house exhale around him. The pulse of the rap music throbbed faintly outside. He looked at his watch again. Ten past one. Fifty minutes to wait for The Reaper. He wasn’t coming, Brook knew that. Sorenson was dead — he’d seen it with his own eyes. But someone was pretending to be Sorenson, someone was tugging at Brook’s memories of the Maples case, and he was determined to put a stop to it. He bent down to blow out the candle and sat behind the door to wait in the dark.
The man felt the heat from the blaze in the oil drum. He looked at the teenage boys slumped on the old sofas, all four bodies contorted and unmoving. Empty cans, paper plates and glass bottles were strewn at their feet, cigarette ends littered the ground. He turned to the old car on bricks, the portable CD player on the roof, its display drawing his eye.
The man listened to the music. It was soft and beautiful, guaranteed to soothe. He wanted to close his eyes and let his mind drift, but he knew he had to stay focused. He returned to the sofas and crouched down to examine his dark shoes and black trousers by the light from the fire. They were flecked with the stains of drying blood. He stood slowly and prepared to leave.
He glanced at the blood-smeared scalpel on the ground and picked it up as carefully as he could manage with his gloved hand. He placed it on the arm of the sofa next to Jason Wallis, watching where he placed his feet to avoid brushing through more blood.
As he prepared to move away, he noticed something in the boy’s hand. He hesitated, then slid the mobile phone from Jason’s blood-spattered grasp before moving the boy’s hand to rest over the scalpel, pleased with this sudden inspiration. He squinted at the phone in the poor light. It wasn’t a model he was familiar with and it looked complicated. He thumbed at a number but his hands were clumsy in the thick black gloves so he peeled one off and dialled again.
At first the man said nothing when the voice at the other end of the line answered. He hadn’t thought what he might say. He glanced around at the four bodies, clothes saturated with blood, massive wounds deforming the throats which had once carried oxygen to now inert lungs — all except the Wallis boy, whose injuries weren’t immediately visible.
When prompted again on the phone, he answered briefly through the material of his balaclava, then threw the mobile onto Jason’s lap, deciding he had stayed longer than he should. He started to walk away but as he did so he heard a groan behind him. The man froze and turned slowly around. Jason Wallis was stirring.
The boy opened his drunken, drug-addled eyes and gawked at the man, without really taking in what he was seeing. He tried to speak but couldn’t. For a second the man fancied he saw the boy smile. He opened his mouth to try again.
‘I’m ready,’ breathed Jason and attempted to lift himself. Instead he slumped back onto the sofa, his eyes closing as he returned to the depths, oblivious to the spouts of darkening blood from his friends dotting his face and hair and soaking into his clothes.
Brook woke with a start. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock. It was time. He stood to stretch his aching legs as quietly as he could, listening for any sound from downstairs. He remembered the rap music and wondered why it was no longer pulsing, so he walked over to the window. The large piece of board covering the window had a couple of improvised catches holding it in place. He loosened the bent nails to allow the board to fall into his arms and put it down before leaning out of the glass-free window to look out over the quadrangle of high fences at the back of the block of houses.
He heard the music clearly now but it had changed; it was soft and melodic. He searched his memory banks and peered into the night. There was a bonfire in an old oil drum, two or three doors away. Brook could see the glow of the dying embers crackling and fizzing in the soft breeze. To his surprise he could also see a car and what looked like a couple of old sofas positioned around the improvised brazier. He fancied he could see the heads of several people on the sofas, their feet stretched out towards the heat.
He could even see the display of a CD player as it played, could see the lights through the fog, rising and falling with each note. He listened for a second to the soft tinkling of the piano. ‘Clair de Lune’, of course. Debussy. Something beautiful. Something …
Brook stiffened. His face set he turned and walked purposefully down the stairs and out of the house.
Sorenson led the two agents towards the cabin, his hands gripped resolutely behind his back. On nearing the house, he gestured towards a covered patio which had a large glass-topped table supported by a heavy wrought-iron base in the shape of a quartet of nymphs. On the thick glass sat a chrome-plated coffee pot and three cups and saucers.
