Beneath the Boards
Page 18
She stood and looked out of the window. All this time she’d been in the house, she’d never seen what was on the outside. A few ducks waddled in the water just below the house and in the distance, just across the lake, a group of trees were swaying in time with the breeze. It was beautiful.
She sat down by the window and looked at her hands. There was no skin visible anymore, just thick, dark blood. She lay back and crossed her hands over Jim’s chest. He didn’t deserve to be found down there with them. Besides, when the last of him went wherever it was destined to go, she didn’t want anything tethering him to the house. He was better than that.
She closed her eyes and felt the last of him go.
She fell from his body and slipped through the boards, back to the darkness she loved; back to see Mummy and Daddy.
18
C.S.I. Cunningham packed away the scene lights and sat on the case. He needed a drink and he needed one now. He’d been drinking a lot recently, too much and it was fast becoming a spiteful little habit. He popped a mint into his mouth and licked his lips. As far as scenes went this was an absolute beauty, probably a once in a lifetime job, but all he could think about was that drink.
The ex-detective found by the window upstairs was the start but none of the uniform boys had expected to find the other three in the cellar. The dead copper had got a hole in his guts so deep you could see part of his spine. He never got sick at the sight of human atrocity anymore but the whole place smelled of death. He’d once been called to a house where two brothers had killed each other, but as soon as he’d come inside this place he knew there was more than two dead bodies in here. A house didn’t smell this bad for no good reason.
He’d photographed them all in situ and then individually from every angle imaginable. Two of the major crime boys had come out of the cellar retching at the moment he’d been photographing the detective. It had made him smile. All that bravado counted for nothing when you were faced with human beings whose heads had literally been smashed into fragments. There were things you couldn’t un-see.
They were taken away, one by one. One man had a windpipe so full of dirt they’d need a pneumatic drill to unblock it. He was lucky.
The level of violence used on the other two was unparalleled in his experience and certainly in the experience of the young DI. The scene lights had lit up drops of blood on his lower lip as he chewed it furiously. It wasn’t as if they could be identified from dental records either. They didn’t have any teeth left.
They were covered in writing, that’s what really messed with the Inspector’s hypothesis. What was all that writing for? The vicar was covered in it too.
Writing wasn’t quite correct though, was it. Tattooing?
Etching probably came closer to the truth. The bodies of the two, one male and one female, had been etched with bloody writing. It was clear a knife hadn’t been used, the letters had been ground into the skin, not cut and not sliced. No, it had been something sharp and probably jagged. Something like...
He shuffled his boots in the dirt. Something like a precious stone, a gem perhaps. He stooped and used his fingers like forceps to pick it up. He rolled it using his thumb and forefinger. It was perfect, so clean and...
“Ouch.” A little bead of blood pooled in the tip of his thumb. Surface tension gave it flawlessly smooth and rounded edges. If you had enough time it might do the job but it was too small, far too small. Nevertheless it was beautiful. He slipped it inside his pocket.
The DI had closed the scene down yesterday but it would be a long time until this mess was concluded, if ever.
How long must it have taken for someone to etch that much graffiti into the flesh of three people? A day? Two perhaps. The word ‘dead’ had been scrawled into their foreheads in capital letters and the marks ran the deepest of all. The word was probably superfluous given the circumstances.
But the others, what were they supposed to infer? Were they accusations?
Murderer, adulterer, weak, cuckold, faithless, hate, fear, spite, witch. The words went on and on and on but none of them had good connotations. Someone didn’t have much time for these three. The ex-detective with blood poisoning on a colossal scale would probably be made to wear this one in the report but that didn’t feel quite right. It didn’t fit.
Besides, the child’s bones they’d found pre-dated him by several years. He hadn’t put them down there, that was for absolute sure.
Cunningham stood up and rubbed his eyes. It would be nice to get back up into the light again. Back into the world of the living, so to speak. It would be good to get away from the rats and their infernal scratching too. He hadn’t seen any, thank God, but there had to be a nest down here from all the noise they were making.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
He picked up the final case and headed for the hatch. None of the others had wanted to stay down here any longer than was necessary but it wasn’t all that bad once you got used to it. He pushed the case through the gap and patted his pocket. Even in the gloom of the cellar the little gem had looked stunning, but he’d take it back home and have a look at it in the daylight. It was perfect.
“Goodbye, rats!”
He climbed up and looked out onto the lake. Given the history of the place, he might be able to pick it up for next to nothing at an auction.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
He sunk his hand into his pocket and touched the little jagged jewel. He’d have to get rid of the rats though. They sounded like they were upstairs too, they sounded like they were everywhere.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
The End