Mitchell, D. M.

by crime The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery

  You’re getting to be a sad, lonely bastard, he told himself, rising from the stairs and wading into the choppy sea of humanity.

  The woman watched him keenly, from a distance, tucked away at the back of the room, a glass to her face primarily to help mask it. He looked so handsome, she thought, quite the ladies’ man. A little nervous, unsure of himself, but that was no bad thing in a person. And so talented. What wonderful photographs.

  She saw him look in her general direction and she turned away, pretended to look at one of the prints on the gallery wall. When she raised her head and glanced over her shoulder he had melted into the crush of people. Not yet, she thought. I can’t meet you yet; but it has to be soon, she thought. Very soon.

  A tiresome, middle-aged man engaged her in conversation, but she saw through his game and abandoned him with scarce a word. He laughed sheepishly into his glass and flitted to an altogether more willing pretty flower.

  She picked up her two framed prints, which had been wrapped in paper for her and then made her way to the exit. She was headed off at the pass by the gallery owner.

  ‘Leaving already?’ Clive said.

  ‘I have what I came for,’ she replied.

  ‘They will give you great pleasure,’ he said, nodding at the prints under her arm.

  ‘More than you’ll know,’ she said.

  ‘I can introduce you to him,’ he said. ‘You showed interest earlier…’

  She held up her hand. ‘No thank you. Perhaps another time.’

  ‘You look familiar…’ he said, his fingers waving briefly in front of his chin. ‘Have we met before?’

  The woman cocked her head slightly and her lips broke out into a warm smile, but he noticed there was sadness deep in her eyes. ‘Dear me, Mr Foster, that is such an old chat-up line!’ She walked past him and to the door. Here she paused and turned back. ‘Can you tell him one thing for me?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Tell him his sister was here.’

  ‘Sister?’

  She went out, onto the street. He watched her retreating figure, bemused, till someone called out his name and he switched off from her as if she had never existed.

  She stepped into the taxi waiting for her. ‘Take me to Camden,’ she told the driver.

  He tried to make conversation along the way but she ignored his efforts and in the end he gave up. She had the prints on her lap. Every now and again she’d unconsciously pass the flat of her hand over them.

  ‘Pull over and wait here for me,’ she said at length.

  As she left the prints on the seat and got out he wound the window down. ‘You sure this is the place, miss? I mean, it’s not the kind of place you ought to be out alone, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘I’ll be no more than fifteen minutes. Please wait for me.’

  The street was deserted, the buildings dark and close together, looming over her, the sound of her footsteps hollow and incongruous in the still night. In the background was the ever-constant drone of traffic.

  She saw a man separate from the shadows of a wall and head towards her. ‘Do you have them?’ she asked.

  ‘The money?’

  She nodded, holding out her hand. He studied her through narrow, distrustful eyes. He gave her a brown envelope. She rifled through the documents inside.

  ‘High quality, as ever…’ he said.

  ‘They should be. It cost me enough,’ she observed. She appeared satisfied. Handed him a thick wad of cash. ‘It’s all there,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I trust you.’ He slipped the money into his pocket. ‘Always a pleasure.’ She didn’t answer. She turned on her heel and left him. ‘Till the next time,’ he called after her.

  There will be no next time, she thought. At least, not with you.

  She got back to the taxi and the driver seemed relieved to see her. ‘Take me to Camden tube station,’ she said. When eventually they arrived there she got out and leaned towards his window. ‘There’s three hundred pounds,’ she said. ‘You never saw me tonight and you never drove me to Camden.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said, taking the money. ‘Never set eyes on you.’

  She headed through the turnstiles and took the escalator down to the tube.

  The evening was drawing to a natural close. Clive Foster was wearing his Cheshire Cat grin, which meant the exhibition had gone well. He went over to Gareth to congratulate him and discuss business.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, waving goodbye to a young couple leaving the gallery, ‘the woman of whom I spoke about earlier – the pretty one…’

  ‘They’re all pretty to you, Clive,’ Gareth observed wryly.

  He thought about that and nodded. ‘Anyway, it was your sister.’

  Gareth frowned and then laughed hollowly. ‘I don’t think so, Clive.’

  ‘That’s what she said to me. She said to tell you your sister has been here. What is it, are you two not on speaking terms or something?’

  ‘Clive, I don’t know who she was, or why she should say that. She was pulling your leg. I don’t have a sister. I never have.’

  ‘That’s rather bizarre, then,’ said Clive. ‘I know now why I thought I’d seen her somewhere before – she bore a distinct likeness to you.’

  * * * *

  10

  Billy Crudd

  Manchester, August 2011

  Billy Crudd had big plans. So many plans his head was fit to burst with them all, like they were bored and angry teenagers confined within the constraints of a stuffy classroom, staring out of the windows, craving freedom and causing trouble purely because it broke the grinding monotony. Lots of fists pounding on the glass of his skull, things demanding to be let out. They taunted him in bed as he lay awake at night, and all but screamed at him as he stuffed yet another tin of baked beans into the ever-hungry maw of a dull stretch of supermarket shelving. Plans. Plans designed to hoist him out of this drudgery, to scoop him out of the shit that was his miserable life.

  He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, swept away the mist on the mirror with the palm of his hand, but it crept back like grey fungus and his reflection remained blurred. Not that he particularly wanted to see himself in the mirror. He knew he was not blessed with good looks. His hair, at only twenty-eight years of age, was already as patchy as a lawn in a drought, and he blamed his fucking dad for that; in fact he blamed both his parents for ever bringing together their woeful combination of genes and passing the obnoxious concoction on to him. From his mother, oily, spotty skin, overly large, uneven teeth, a chin that was a little bit too long; from his dad that sorry thatch on his head, a pigeon chest and thin frame on which muscle refused to accumulate in spite of his many, if sporadic and failed, attempts with weights and muscle-bulking drinks.

  He brushed his teeth. A quick ten seconds because what was the point? They weren’t up to much anyway and were more fillings than enamel. He glanced at his watch. He had to get a move on if he wasn’t to be late again. He’d already been called into Slimer’s office – Slimer being the supermarket manager – and warned with some ferocity about being five minutes late again. Five fucking minutes! Damn that clocking-in machine. It used to be fine until they cracked down on workmates clocking in for you if you couldn’t quite make it in time. And the last thing he wanted to be told was that there were plenty of people on the dole who would gladly do his job if he didn’t want it. ‘Christ, Billy, you only live five fucking minutes away!’ Slimer had growled. ‘There isn’t even half an excuse you could give me!’

  Well, thought Billy Crudd, they could have their fucking job. It wouldn’t be long before he would be able to tell Slimer he could stuff his job where the sun doesn’t shine. He smiled at the thought, playing the scene in his head like he was the hero in his own movie, standing there and telling the jumped-up gobshite all the hateful things he’d stored up, the same way he’d stacked those crummy shelves with crummy foreign food year after stinking year, and laughing at his manager’s terrified, beaten f
ace as he spun haughtily on his heel and strode proudly out of his poky little office.

  Yeah, Billy Crudd had plans. Just needed the money and his scheme would take off and fly, taking him with it.

  Money, unfortunately, was the only sticking point. What he needed he just couldn’t earn at Speedy Save supermarket, not on minimum wage. Neither could he afford to escape living with his parents and rent a place of his own. He could hardly save the deposit needed for a flat, let alone pay the hugely inflated monthly rents they were asking these days. Since the housing crash, with people unable to get mortgages, the rental market had gone ballistic and landlords had been quick to sniff profits and raise their rates. People were paying small fortunes for stinking dives that nobody wanted a few years ago. So he was stuck with them for now; stuck with his parents and stuck with the name Billy Crudd.

  His real name was William Krodde, his Dutch grandfather coming over to England after the war. No one at school could be bothered to pronounce it properly, so they called him Crudd or Cruddie, a nickname that stuck. Anyhow, it suited him that no one thought he was part foreign. He hated all those fucking foreigners coming over and taking all the English jobs, scrounging off benefits and sapping the National Health system. He conveniently ignored the fact that his own father hadn’t worked in ten years and knew the system well enough to claim a raft of state benefits. He played up his inability to get about, yet Billy had seen him active enough to know that was a lie. But so what? The system was fucked-up anyhow, and the government didn’t give a toss about you. You have to take care of yourself, son, he’d told him in a rare moment of paternal advice giving, and if that meant at the expense of someone else then that suited Billy Crudd too.

  It was 9.30pm before he put on his works uniform – white shirt, black trousers, black shoes – and stuffed the horrible lime green coat he was forced to wear into a Speedy Save carrier bag. His dad was stretched out on the sofa; the news on the TV was playing to itself. Fresh rioting had broken out in London. Good for them, he thought. The fucking government, driving everyone deeper into poverty with their bastard austerity measures, deserved to get a stiff kick in the ministerial balls. If he were there in London he’d be joining in too, helping himself to a new TV. He could do with another TV.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said, but his lardy lump of a father didn’t hear; he was asleep, his rounded belly rising and falling like a partially deflated balloon.

  His mother was out at bingo, squandering hard-earned money, his dad said. Mainly mine, thought Billy, still incensed that his mother had recently increased his board because the electric and gas bills had shot up and she had ranted that it was all the fault of him playing all day, every day, on his Playstation.

  ‘It doesn’t use gas, you silly mare!’ he’d said, but she gave him a wallop for being cheeky and made him feel like that weedy little kid all over again. He hated that. He desperately wanted to get out before he took an axe and did them both in. He’d read about such cases and could understand why someone would do that. Another movie played in his head as he left the small terraced house; a horror movie, blood splashing everywhere, his dad’s head rolling down the hallway like a bowling ball…

  As he trudged through the largely deserted streets, the sun set to gasp its last and let night have a go, a couple of police cars screamed by him, lights flashing, sirens blaring. He didn’t pay them much attention; there was always something going down in this part of Manchester. In his opinion it was a slum, a blighted, sleazy dive of a place where there were two sets of people: those who did their best to escape the vice and those who came in to find it.

  Speedy Save supermarket reflected the aspirations of the locality. It was owned by a decent Asian family called Patel, but stuck in a place where your Tesco or Sainsbury wouldn’t be seen dead. It dealt in lots of foreign food bought on the cheap, dented cans and out of date packets to pad out the precious few brand names on show. It was doing OK. People round here couldn’t afford to be choosy. Most of them were on the dole, and anyway a good wash would remove the fishy smell and green tinge from the chicken breasts.

  It was a good business model, thought Billy enviously, and one that he was keen to emulate. This was his Big Plan; to own his own small food store somewhere. He’d spent time chatting to the girls in the office, got to know a few supplier contacts, and reckoned if he had enough behind him he’d be able to set up shop too. But it wouldn’t have a name like fucking Speedy Save. Billy wanted it to sound class, even though it would basically purvey the same kind of suspect crap. He didn’t know yet what that name was going to be as he wasn’t hot on words, but that was the least of his worries. He needed the readies and no bank was likely to offer it to him, even less so since the bastards had stopped lending money to anyone these days. So he’d lined up a meeting with someone who would give him a loan, no questions asked. A big risk, for some maybe, but not for him. His business wouldn’t fold because he knew exactly what he was doing. His business model was foolproof.

  The approach to the side door of the supermarket, past the main entrance, was always a time of dread and bottled up anger. The thought of facing another night working alongside all those zombie shelf packers on the graveyard shift grabbed at his intestines and gave them a squeeze. The place had its fair share of weirdos and night appeared to bring them out. It was only because it was one of the few jobs on offer around here that Billy took it on in the first place. That and to escape the dole-dishers who were forever on his back. Sponging off the government was something his father might be accomplished at, but he’d never acquired the same skills. He was glad to shrug them off, petty, bureaucratic bastards that they were.

  The store was run for Mr Patel by Slimer (real name Derek Pritchard, or ‘Prickhard’ as the office girls laughingly called him behind his back). Mr Patel turned a convenient blind eye to his store manager’s dodgy employment practices and the night shift hid any number of illegal immigrants and tax dodgers, mixed in with one or two guys with severe mental health issues you didn’t want to explore with them in a lonely place. You didn’t choose to work nights at Speedy Save, not if you had anything about you. It was a sort of saloon bar for the desperate. Billy, well he was just biding his time till the Big Plan took off.

  So he was immensely glad when into the gloomy squalor of his dreary existence came Beth Heaney. It was a year ago now. Fresh-faced, quiet, youthful, ball-achingly attractive Beth.

  He fell for her straight away. So too did the rest of the morons who drooled like slavering Rottweilers on heat whenever she came near. She caught the attention of Slimer, too. He sometimes worked nightshift – a version of worked which looked a lot like sleep – and his eyes were out on stalks, his tongue scraping the dust from the floor whenever he was around her. Which was as often as he could be in the first few weeks. Like some kind of jailer he organised his aisles according to where they appeared on his scale of hard case. He liked her so he put her on the soups and gravy aisle with a harmless old timer called Bernie. Bernie had been a Jap prisoner during the war and never talked to anyone. Slimer put all the quiet ones here. Nobody but nobody wanted to be put on toilet rolls and bleaches because that’s where the weirdest of the weirdos were. Duty of care to his staff, Slimer said. So Beth got soups and gravy with Bernie, until she refused to play game with his lecherous advances and he stuck her next door to the Aisle of the Damned. She didn’t bat an eyelid though, which impressed Billy. Just kept herself to herself, shrugged off the lewd comments like it was acid rain and she was waterproof, till it didn’t rain comments any more.

  Beth sat alone in the canteen at break times, she in one corner of the room, Bernie in another, and small groups of weirdos in between. Billy avoided talking to her for a full month, as he avoided talking to any pretty young woman. Their very presence tied his tongue up in knots. But there was something about this woman that had sunk its soft hooks into him. He became increasingly besotted with her. The calm, unruffled way she carried herself only added to her allure. T
hen one evening he marshalled every ounce of courage, which even on a good day wasn’t much, preparing himself for the inaugural meeting by paying particular attention to wearing a clean shirt, combing through his thinning hair a dozen times, and brushing his teeth for a full two minutes without stopping.

  At break time he took his flask of coffee and plastic sandwich box and sat down at her table, opposite her. He felt all the weirdos’ eyes burning at his back, heard the phrase ‘get in there my son’ and ignored them.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, hardly daring to look in her eyes. She glanced up from her half-eaten sandwich, smiled politely, nodded in greeting and bent down to eating again. She had copies of the Times and Guardian spread out on the table in front of her. ‘Reading in stereo?’ he quipped.

  ‘I like to keep up with events,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a Sun man myself,’ he admitted.

  ‘I prefer words to pictures,’ she returned.

  Ouch! He jerked back a little as if punched, then saw that she wasn’t serious, or if she was she made it look like it was harmless. He laughed, too loudly. ‘Yeah, right, pictures!’ he said. The pause hung around for a little too long to make it comfortable. ‘I’ve got egg,’ he said, snapping the lid off the box and a strong farty smell confirmed it. He cursed himself for talking a load of crap. It wasn’t what he’d rehearsed. She’d think him some kind of retard or something, he thought. One of the weirdos. ‘Can I buy you a drink from the machine?’ he asked. ‘It tastes like shit but it’s warm and wet.’

  She pointed to a cup of tea. ‘Already fixed, thank you.’ Her accent was hard to pin down. Not Mancunian though. Not from around here.

  ‘I bring my own,’ he continued, unscrewing the lid of the flask. He almost screwed his eyes up in pain at his abject failure to kick-start a proper conversation. The ice remained resiliently unbroken. All the best lines he’d been mulling over for weeks had been wiped clean from his head, as if her presence was like a very strong magnet put too close to a computer hard drive.