Beneath the Boards

by David Haynes

  Beneath the Boards

  By David Haynes

  Edited by

  Storywork Editing Services

  Cover artwork by

  MM Illustrations

  To find out more about David Haynes and his books visit his Blog

  macabrecollection.blogspot.co.uk

  or follow him on twitter

  @Davidhaynes71

  For Sarah and George

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  1

  Stokes knocked on the door and waited. Four unanswered phone calls and three unreturned text messages had left him with no choice.

  “Just answer the door,” he whispered.

  Natalie Sutton was a mess. In almost every part of her life she had, at one point or another, made the wrong decision.

  Do you want to start smoking cannabis at thirteen, Natalie? “Yes, sir.”

  Do you want to have a baby at fourteen, Natalie? “Yes, please.”

  Do you want to have another baby at sixteen, Natalie? “Of course! Who wouldn’t?”

  What about starting a relationship with a man twice your age? He’s a real catch; he’s beaten every woman he ever knew to a bloody pulp. “Oh, go on then, if you insist.”

  He exhaled loudly and banged on the door. “Natalie? It’s DC Stokes, can you open the door please?”

  He knew she was in. He’d had a quick look through the lounge window on his way up the driveway. The TV was on and kids’ toys lay strewn about. There was even a half-eaten chocolate biscuit on the carpet.

  He crouched and pushed the letterbox open. “Natalie, I only want to ask you a quick question, that’s all. Just open up and I’ll be out of your hair in two minutes.”

  He’d worked in the Domestic Violence Unit for the last eight years and in that time he’d investigated just about every crime imaginable. He’d also dealt with the unimaginable ones too.

  ‘High Risk’ – that was the designation given to the victims he worked with. These were the women who appeared on the front page of the newspaper when they’d been murdered by their devoted boyfriends, husbands and lovers. These were the women he wanted to protect.

  He had six other women on his workload and they all needed his help, but there was high risk and then there was Natalie Sutton. She courted violence; she sought it out wherever and in whomever she could. He’d been visiting her for the last six months, trying to make her see, trying to make her understand that there was another way to live. He’d backed her when the other agencies wanted to close the door on her and take the baby into care. He believed in her and he believed he was right.

  He walked back to the lounge window and cupped his hands around his face. For a brief moment he looked into his own eyes and saw seventeen years of policing staring back at him. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  The room was the same as it had been just a couple of minutes ago. The half-eaten biscuit, the beaker lying on its side with a purple stain spreading across the carpet. Someone ought to clean that up before it...

  The smashed mobile phone.

  The cracked television screen and a thin mist of blood up the wallpaper.

  Stokes unclipped his radio and lifted it to his mouth. “NA, this is DC Stokes. Can I have another unit to join me at 18 Scarsdale, please?”

  “Received. What have you got?”

  Stokes walked quickly to the front door and tried the handle. It didn’t move an inch.

  “Not sure. Send someone with the big key.”

  “Received. One unit en route to you now.”

  There were times when things weren’t exactly as they first appeared and there were times when they were spot on, or as near as damn it. He’d been a copper long enough to know this was the latter.

  The intelligence on Natalie was that she was in a relationship with Shane Young. He was a nasty, violent shit and Stokes had sent him to court seven years ago for trying to demolish his previous partner’s face with a hammer. Shane Young was not the right man for Natalie Sutton, not now, not ever.

  He ran around the side of the house and pushed open the wooden gate. The backyard was a mixture of dog crap, abandoned dolls and rotting marrow bones. The smell was powerful but nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Natalie!” he called out.

  Stokes paused at the patio door and unclipped his baton from the covert harness. He’d been bitten by both dogs and humans before and it was nasty. A sight of the baton usually calmed...

  A smear of blood and handprints on the inside of the patio doors which were slightly ajar.

  “NA from DC Stokes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “There’s blood inside the property and signs of disturbance. What’s the ETA for uniform?”

  “They’re en route. Do you need them to come code blue?”

  “Yes.” He kept his voice as level as he could but already the adrenal gland was doing what it did best.

  How long could he stand there waiting for assistance? He should wait, he knew he should. He should stand down and wait for the uniform lads to come with their wailing sirens and stab-proof vests. But he couldn’t and he wouldn’t.

  He gripped the plastic handle and slid the door open.

  “Natalie? Are you okay?“ He cocked the baton over his shoulder and listened. There was nothing, not even the sound of a two year old playing. He glanced at the blood on the door and stepped further into the room. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and blood. It smelled of violence.

  The kitchen door was off the lounge, just beside the patio doors and he stepped toward it. The kitchen was an arsenal for someone with the wrong mentality. However he was feeling, he needed to check the rooms systematically, starting with the kitchen. He took another step and froze.

  He could hear the sound of a child crying upstairs. It wasn’t a full heartbreaking howl but it was a forlorn whimper. It was the sound of a child used to being ignored; the sound of a child who knew nobody would come however long she cried.

  He needed to get up there quickly, before any more blood was spilled. Natalie was vulnerable enough but the little girl needed taking out of this situation. Whatever had happened here, whatever was happening here was toxic and it was time to put a stop to it. His heart was beating like a drum and although he’d been in these situations before, it never felt good. It never felt right.

  He took a step forward, toward the hallway and the little baby upstairs when a great roar sounded from behind him. He turned just in time to see the snarling face of Shane Young smash into his own face and knock him backward.

  The kitchen. He hadn’t checked it.

  The little girl had disturbed him before he’d had a chance to check properly. His eyes immediately filled with tears and for a moment his vision was gone. It was enough time for Young to drive a fist into his face and knock him and his baton to the grubby carpet.

  As soon as he hit the floor, Stokes rolled to the side. He couldn’t see anything but he was damned if he was going to make it easy for Young. He just had to last long enough for the uniform to arrive.

  “I’ve always wanted to do a pig.”

  Stokes blinked and cleared his vision enough to see Young coming toward him with a knife in his hand. He looked around for the baton but it had rolled to the other side of the room in the initial assault. He still had his gas but there wasn’t enough time to unclip it, let alone point and spray it. Think fast, Stokesy, think
fast.

  He rocked onto his knees and lunged forward, colliding with Young’s shins. The move shocked the other man and he stumbled backward and went down. As soon as he landed, Stokes drove one of his own fists into Young’s nose, sending an arc of blood over them both.

  Young yelped and tried to push the knife toward Stokes’s neck but he batted it away easily, sending it skidding across the threadbare carpet. He drew back his fist and punched the man again and this time the fight went out of Young completely. Stokes reached into his harness and pushed the red button on the top of his airwave radio.

  “More units to 18 Scarsdale!” he shouted.

  A mixture of sweat and blood dripped off the end of his nose and landed on Young’s cheek. Even though the fight had lasted only a matter of seconds, he was exhausted and already his muscles were aching.

  He unclipped his cuffs and rolled Young onto his side. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of assault, Shane. You do not have to say...”

  “What have you done to him?”

  Stokes looked up into the bloodshot and bruised eyes of Natalie Sutton. “Are you all right, Natalie?”

  She stared back at him. “If you’ve hurt him I’ll...” Her words were distorted to the point of being almost unrecognisable. Her chin was covered in blood and her vest was a crimson bib. She opened her mouth to say something else, revealing two missing teeth and another which dangled precariously.

  “Why didn’t you answer my calls?” Stokes finished handcuffing Young and rose slowly to his feet. Forty-three was too old to be fighting with anyone and every inch of his six-foot frame ached to the point of pain. He’d feel this for the next week.

  Natalie looked down on her boyfriend and started to cry. “Look what you’ve done to him. He said you lot were bullies and...”

  Stokes took her gently by the shoulders. “Did he do this to you, Natalie?” She looked vacantly at him. It was the look of someone who had nothing, nothing at all.

  “Nat...?”

  The searing pain in his side stopped him in his tracks. At first he thought might be having a heart attack but the pain was much lower than that. It was somewhere beneath his ribcage. He gasped and tried to steady his breathing.

  It was probably just a bad stitch, he really ought to start going to the gym again. Maybe after today he...

  He looked down and saw a red bloom spreading across his white shirt. Instinctively he dropped a hand and touched the cotton – it was warm and sticky. Natalie’s lost and desperate eyes met his own and as he opened his mouth to ask her why he was bleeding, a second burst of terrible pain exploded in his side. It squeezed every molecule of air from his lungs.

  “Do it babe, do it again!” The sound of Young’s shrill voice echoed in the room. Stokes caught sight of Natalie’s arm thrusting forward again. This is it, he thought, and allowed his legs to collapse under him. Gutted by someone I was trying to protect. The irony of it all.

  The sirens screeched and then squealed in the distance and the child upstairs screamed in perfect harmony.

  2

  Stokes turned the key and pushed the door open with his foot. The hinges creaked like the bones of a tired old man. He waited for a moment and stepped inside. Never again would he cross a threshold, any threshold, without feeling that someone was waiting for him on the other side. He touched his t-shirt just above the scar. “New start, Stokesy. New start.”

  Light flooded into the room from the French Doors and he walked over and looked out. Lake Stormark looked grey and lifeless in the late-afternoon light. It was completely deserted except for a flock of geese that ran along the shoreline cackling at each other. Stokes watched them until they disappeared from his sight. The cottage was nearly two hundred miles away from his old life but it might as well have been on another planet.

  “Everything all right, Mr Stokes?”

  He jumped and turned around. He’d forgotten about the estate agent.

  “Fine. Everything’s fine.” The words tripped off his tongue like a well-rehearsed line from a script.

  She took a step into the house. “You won’t find a view like that very often.”

  Stokes didn’t need to turn around again. This was his fifth visit to the place and his first as more than merely a visitor. The view had been imprinted on his mind after the first visit.

  “The spares, I told you I’d find them.” She tossed a bunch of keys across the room at him. “I’m not sure you’ll ever have to lock the door though. Not around here.”

  “Thanks, thanks for everything.” He wanted her to leave now. Not because he disliked her but because he wanted to be alone with the house for the first time. It belonged to him now.

  An awkward silence developed before the estate agent turned away. “I hope you’ll be happy here, Mr Stokes.”

  “I hope so too.” This time he meant exactly that. He wanted to feel happy again and this little place was the key to it, he was sure.

  He pushed the door shut behind the estate agent and locked it. He might not have to lock the door but he needed to, each and every time.

  “New start, Stokesy. New start.” If he repeated the mantra enough times it was bound to stick at some point. The words bounced off the empty walls and crashed into each other, jumbling them up. They were meaningless unless he really meant it and although he might want to believe it was a new start, it wasn’t. Not quite yet anyway.

  He slid his back down the door and sat on the floor. One year. One year to the day since he’d been inside that house. One year to the day since he’d been sliced open and felt the agony of cold steel cut through his body as if it were made of nothing more than jelly. Instinctively he reached inside his t-shirt and touched the scar. Three inches of new, raised skin, that was all there was to show for it. Nobody would ever know it was there and yet it ached each and every day. Each and every day the ache reminded him of what had happened. And with each passing day, the scar grew. Not on the outside where everyone could see it and understand it, but on the inside, inside his mind. You couldn’t patch that up. You couldn’t stitch that up with a surgeon’s needle and thread any more than you could fix Natalie Sutton’s life. Some things were just meant to be and somehow or other you just had to get used to it. You had to live with it.

  “This carpet has got to go.” He jumped up. The floral pattern wasn’t him, he wasn’t sure it was anyone really. He looked around the room, the only room, downstairs. There was a fair bit of work to do to make it a home, his home. He rubbed his hands together, just as he’d seen his dad do when faced with a serious job. That suited him fine. A bit of DIY was just what the doctor ordered.

  Well, that wasn’t quite right, the doctor had actually ordered a dose of anti-depressants and rest, but what the hell did he know? Not a lot as it happened. What he really needed was a proper doer-upper by the lake in the middle of nowhere and a very early retirement on a full pension. That was apt to put a smile on your face. At least for a while.

  There weren’t many items of furniture which fit in with the ‘new start’ regime but the black leather recliner was one of them. He put his back against it and shoved it across the carpet toward the French Doors. The only reason it had survived the lifestyle cull was because it felt like it was made for the lake house, made for parking right in front of the doors and reclining on. It had been designed exclusively for staring across the lake while trying desperately not to think about the way the knife felt as it slipped through his body.

  He pulled the doors open and collapsed into the chair. It might be another week until the new bed arrived but he had a feeling it wouldn’t get much use. He pulled the lever and raised the leg support. A cool breeze washed over him and carried with it the sounds of geese and the pine trees stretching their long slender necks on the far side of the lake. One day he’d forget about Natalie and all the sordid violence that went hand in hand with her life because that’s what was supposed to happen. Eventually it would happen, eventually.

  He lifted a hip flask
from his jacket and raised it to the lake. “Here’s to you, Stokesy. And here’s to your new start.” He put it to his lips and took a sip of Scotland’s finest.

  He slipped it back inside his pocket and pulled his jacket around his body. He’d get up and close the doors shortly but for now he wanted to listen to the sound of the world going about its business without humans interfering.

  *

  Someone was poking him with a stick and the sharpened point was right on his scar. There wasn’t much pressure at the moment but it was increasing slowly. He flinched and tried to push it away but his hand slipped through it as if it wasn’t there. How could that be? He could feel the cool wood against his skin as it made a small indentation above the scar. He kicked out again. Who was trying to hurt him like this? He couldn’t see through the fog, but he wasn’t just going to let it happen, not again. He put his head down and ran as fast as he could but his legs didn’t seem to want to move and the point of the stick was scratching him now, picking away at the doctor’s finest stitches and teasing them out. He had to stop it happening and he had to do it before the stick broke the surface and everything came tumbling out in a terrible crimson tangle. He kicked out again and shouted...