The Society Of Dirty Hearts (A crime thriller novel)

by Ben Cheetham

  “Yes you do,” Eleanor shot back, her eyes shimmering with barely contained tears. “You matter to your parents, and to me.”

  Julian looked at her apologetically. “I’d better go. Thanks for your help.”

  Eleanor lowered her gaze from his. He continued to stare at her a moment, knowing suddenly and with absolute certainty how wrong he’d been to leave her. Then he headed for the front door. Mike followed him. “A piece of advice Julian, don’t go repeating what you’ve said here to anyone.” His voice dropped. “And do me a favour, as long as you’re going to be involved in this – whatever this is – keep your distance from Ellie, will you?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Julian assured him. “I only came here tonight because I needed her help.”

  Mike reached for a pen and paper, and scribbled down his mobile number. “Well, if you need any more help, or you just want to talk, or whatever, you can reach me on that number anytime.”

  “Thanks.”

  A look of concern came into Mike’s pale eyes. “And for Christ’s sake, Julian, be careful. You may not care much about yourself right now, but there are a lot of people around here who’d suffer if you did something reckless.”

  Julian thought about his mum. He nodded. “I will be.” He returned to his dad’s car and drove home.

  Chapter 13

  The instant Julian pulled into the driveway, his dad stormed outside with rage in his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing taking my car without asking?” he yelled as Julian got out of the car.

  “I needed it.”

  “For what?”

  “There was something I had to do. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not bloody sorry,” spat Robert. “You’re a selfish little shit, you always have been. You don’t think of anybody but yourself. What if your mum had taken ill and needed rushing to the hospital? What then?”

  Letting out a sigh, Julian handed over the car keys and made his way past his dad into the house. Robert stamped after him. “Don’t you dare walk away from me.”

  Julian’s mum and Wanda watched from the kitchen doorway. Christine looked as though she didn’t know what worried her more – her son’s pale bruised face, or her husband’s furious purple face. Putting his head down, Julian headed for his bedroom. Robert grabbed his arm and yanked him around to face him. “I said don’t walk away from me.” He thrust his face toward Julian’s. “I’ve asked you several questions, and you’ve answered none.”

  “Let go,” said Julian, a tinge of colour rising to his cheeks.

  Robert jabbed a finger into his breastbone. “Not until you’ve answered my questions.”

  “Let fucking go.”

  “No. I’m sick of your games, Julian. We’re going to get to the bottom of all this right here and right now.”

  Julian clenched his fists, his eyes set hard, mirroring his dad’s. For a full thirty seconds, they stared at each other. Then Julian brought his fist down on his dad’s hand, knocking it away. Robert’s eyes widened, more in shock than pain. Turning, Julian made for his bedroom again. With a cry of indignant fury, Robert lunged after him. Julian tried to dodge his grasp, but his dad caught hold of his t-shirt. The two of them staggered and toppled over. The breath whistled between Julian’s teeth as he hit the floorboards. Winded, he twisted and vainly tried to shove his dad, who was several stones heavier than him, away.

  “Answers,” Robert shouted.

  “Fuck you,” Julian shouted back.

  “Stop it,” said Christine, her voice shrill and quivering. “Stop it, stop it, stop-” She choked off suddenly and her head slumped back, teeth clenched, body taut and shaking.

  “Christine,” Robert gasped, scrambling across to his wife, holding her arms and legs steady while Wanda cradled her head.

  “Phone an ambulance,” Wanda told Julian.

  Heart going like crazy, he jumped up and dashed off to breathlessly do so. He’d seen his mum have seizures before. Most lasted only a few minutes, and passed without causing lasting harm. There was always the chance, though, that one could lead to further paralysis, even death. By the time he got off the phone, the spasms had subsided and Wanda was checking to make sure Christine hadn’t swallowed her tongue.

  “Can you hear me, darling?” asked Robert, trying and failing to sound calm. A barely audible grunt from Christine brought a loud breath of relief from him.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Julian asked, arms hugged around himself.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Wanda said, as the fingers of Christine’s right hand slowly curled and uncurled.

  “You see,” Robert hissed in a whisper, eyes flashing at Julian. “You see what happens when you behave-”

  Wanda silenced him with a, “Shh,” and a warning finger to her lips. She wheeled Christine into the lounge, spread a blanket over her lap, and fetched her a glass of water. Christine slurped at it, spilling most of it out of one side of her mouth.

  “How do you feel?” asked Robert.

  “Like I’ve been wrestling a gorilla,” said Christine, her voice stronger, but slurry.

  “The ambulance will be here soon.”

  With difficulty, Christine shook her head. “I don’t need it.”

  “Now come on, Christine, don’t start that again. You need checking over, just to be on the safe side.”

  Christine looked at Julian. “What happened to your face?”

  “Nothing. I had an accident, that’s all,” said Julian, wincing inwardly at the lie.

  “What kind of accident?”

  Robert shushed his wife. “We can get into all that later.”

  When the ambulance turned up, Robert tossed his car keys to Julian. “I’ll ride in the ambulance. You follow.”

  At the hospital, the usual doctors ran the usual battery of tests. Julian and his dad sat in the waiting room, tense, unspeaking. Over and over, Julian kept thinking, if there’s anything wrong with her, it’ll be my fault and I’ll never forgive myself. From the occasional glowering looks his dad cast at him, it was clear he would’ve agreed with that line of thinking. Morning dragged into noon, and noon into afternoon. A doctor came to tell them that the seizure didn’t seem to have caused any immediate problems, but they’d given Christine a sedative to help her sleep off its after-effects. A long, deep breath swelled from Julian’s stomach, puffing his cheeks. The doctor led them to Christine’s bedside, where they stood looking down at her, Robert holding her good hand in both of his. For a while, all thoughts except thoughts of his mum had been driven from Julian’s mind, but now Mia’s face rose into his consciousness again. Thinking about her made him feel almost as helpless as the sight of his mum. But he knew he had to do something – no matter how useless it might prove to be – and the only thing he could think to do was find Jake, find out what he knew.

  “I’m going,” he said. “I’ll be back later.”

  Without looking at Julian, Robert held out a hand. “Keys.”

  Julian handed over the car keys. He stooped to kiss his mum’s forehead, whispered, “I’m sorry. I love you,” in her ear, then left. He caught a bus home, answered Wanda’s questions about his mum and grabbed a bite to eat, before heading out into the forest. Rumour had it that Jake was hiding somewhere in the sprawling, congested tangle of trees. If he was, Julian knew, it could take days, even weeks to find him. By which time, there was a good chance Mia would’ve been found too – one way or another. Still, he had to try. Anything was better than the agony of just sitting and waiting for something to happen. He took Henry with him in the hope that he’d warn him if anyone was around. He hiked along the sandy trail, hurrying past the spot where he’d found Joanne Butcher to the derelict sawmill.

  The sawmill was a brick building with a partially collapsed corrugated iron roof. A wire fence with signs that said ‘No Trespassing’ surrounded it. The fence had been pulled up and pushed down in numerous places. Julian peered through a door hanging off its hinges into a dank glo
om. The mill had long since been stripped of its machinery and anything else of any worth, but a sappy smell of cut lumber still lingered, only faintly detectable underneath the sour-ammonia reek of old urine and the heavy wood-smoke scent of a recent fire. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the walls were papered with graffiti and the concrete floor was littered with leaves, cigarette butts, broken glass, beer and aerosol cans, and other rubbish. At its centre, a torn, stained mattress was pulled up close to a circle of ash. “Anyone in there?” said Julian.

  Silence was the only reply. Cautiously, Julian approached the remains of the fire and poked around in them with his foot. The ashes gave off a faint heat. Henry sniffed at something behind a corrugated panel propped against a wall. Julian pulled him away and saw that a rolled up sleeping-bag was stowed there. He sat on the mattress, figuring that whoever the sleeping-bag belonged to would show up sooner or later. The gloom had deepened to twilight when Henry suddenly sprang up from where he’d been lying and barked. Julian rushed to the doorway. There was no one to be seen. “Jake, this is Julian Harris,” he called, his voice echoing back eerily from the trees. “I need to talk to you about your sister.” When no reply came, he added, “And about your mum.”

  A minute passed. Henry darted to the rear of the building, barking. Julian ran after him, crunching leaves and glass underfoot. He stumbled and had just managed to regain his balance when something hit him in the back, knocking him to his knees. Jake’s scowling face loomed at him through the murk. “What the fuck do you know about my mum?” he said, one hand clutching Julian’s throat, the other raised and clenched.

  Before Julian could reply, Henry buffeted into Jake, teeth flashing. The boy reeled aside and the dog’s teeth closed on the air with a snap. “No, Henry,” commanded Julian, scrambling to grab the dog’s collar. Henry strained momentarily to get at Jake, then settled back, eyeballing him. “Good boy.” Julian turned his attention to Jake, whose knife-like eyes glared at him from a face as pale as his knuckles. There was a coiled tension about his wiry but muscular frame, as if at any second he might spring to strike or flee. “I don’t know who’s told you what, Jake, but I’ve got nothing to do with Mia’s disappearance.” Jake’s face was unreadable, except for his eyes, which narrowed in a way that suggested he wanted Julian to further explain himself. Julian was struck by how much he looked like his sister. If he’d grown his hair and slapped on some makeup, they would’ve been almost impossible to tell apart. “I’m here because I want to find out what’s happened to her and I need your help,” he continued.

  “Why the fuck do you care what’s happened to Mia? What’s she to you?”

  There was that question again. With every asking, it seemed to assume more significance. “I don’t know exactly. I only knew her a few days, but, well she…she…” Again, Julian reached for but failed to grasp the words he wanted. He heaved an exasperated breath.

  “You fuck her, did you?”

  “No.”

  Jake spat out the side of his mouth. “Bollocks you didn’t.” His hostile voice brought a growl from Henry. Julian shushed him.

  “Believe what you like, but it’s true. I care about your sister as a friend, and that’s all.” But that wasn’t all there was to it. Julian knew it, and, from the glint of suspicion in his eyes, Jake knew it too.

  “And what about my mum?”

  “The thing is…well, it looks like…like…” Each word weighed like a rock on Julian’s tongue. It looks like your sister’s thrown herself off the same bridge as your mum did. He thought the words, but didn’t know how to say them.

  “Well, fuckin’ spit it out then.”

  “Maybe we’d better sit down,” Julian suggested, and not just out of concern for Jake. A great wave of tiredness had suddenly come crashing over him.

  “What for?”

  Without replying, Julian moved to sit on the mattress. Jake remained standing a moment, eyeing him uncertainly. Then, with the wariness of a cat, he approached the circle of ash and dropped down on his haunches. He dug at the ash with a stick, found some glowing embers amongst the grey wood and fed in several handfuls of leaves and twigs. As flames crackled into life, Julian looked at Jake’s intense, suspicious eyes, looked at his androgynous teenage face, and dragged the words out one by one. He told him about what he’d found at the bridge, about what Tom Benson had told him, and about the newspaper article. Except for maybe a slight thinning of his lips, Jake’s face gave no clue as to his emotions. “So she’s gone and done it,” he said, when Julian finished. His eyes shifted to the flames, taking on a familiar blankness. “She always said she would one day, but, fuck, I never believed she’d actually do it.”

  “You mean she spoke about jumping off the bridge?”

  “All the time. It used to do my head in. She said she wanted to feel what Mum felt, see what Mum saw when she hit the water. I told her, you won’t feel or see nothing ’cos you’ll be dead.” Jake gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, his gaze drifting further.

  Doubts crowded in on Julian. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Mia really had killed herself. He pushed the doubts away. He had to keep telling himself there was more to it, because at least that way there was a chance, however slim, that she was alive. “I don’t believe she’d do it.”

  Jake’s eyes blinked back to Julian. “Why not?” His eyebrows knitted together as Julian gave him the rest of the story, flicking apart when he heard the part about Mia’s change of image and the Mercedes. “Let me get this straight in my head. You reckon Mia’s either faking it, or this Mr Ugly dude – who might be my dad – did my mum in and made it look like suicide, and has now done the same thing to my sister.”

  Julian nodded. “Don’t suppose you’ve any idea who Mr Ugly is?”

  Jake looked at him as if to say, what the fuck do you think? “Whoever the fuck he is, he’d better pray I never find out. ’Cos I’ll cut his cock off and feed it to him.” There was a quiet menace in his voice that suggested the threat wasn’t empty bravado.

  “Well is there any way Mia could’ve found out who your dad is?”

  “If there is, she never told me about it. All I know is he’s supposed to be an older dude. Probably one of those pervs who can’t get their dick up unless they’re fucking little girls.”

  “And what about the man and the woman in the Merc? Any ideas about them?”

  Jake rocked back onto the mattress. He took out a cigarette, lit it with a stick from the fire, and ran his tongue over his wolfish canines. “You say the woman was a red-head, big tits, looked like she’d been around.” When Julian nodded, Jake’s face wrinkled into a thoughtful frown. “Could be Ginger. She works behind the bar at the H-Bomb.”

  “The H-Bomb? Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s on the other side of town. It’s The Outlaws’ place.”

  “Who are The Outlaws?”

  “They’re bikers.” Jake squinted sideways at Julian. “How long you lived in this town?”

  “All my life.”

  Jake snuffed contemptuously, but for an instant a kind of bitter longing showed in his eyes. “Fuck, you must’ve led a sheltered life.”

  “I suppose I have,” admitted Julian. “So what makes you think the woman I saw could be this Ginger?”

  “She’s the only person I can think of who looks anything like you say. And Mia and Jo used to go to The H-Bomb with Weasel sometimes. There’s something else n’all.” Jake sucked uneasily on his cigarette, as though the something else disturbed him. “Ginger’s not just a barmaid, she’s also junkie whore.”

  Julian frowned too now. “So if it was this Ginger I saw, does that mean Mia was…” He hesitated, loathe to suggest to Jake that his twin sister was prostituting herself.

  “Pulling tricks,” said Jake, reading between the lines. “I can’t think of any other reason for Mia to get in a car with Ginger done up like some slutty little girl. Can you?”

  Julian’s earlier doubts returned to haunt him. I
f Jake was right, Mia’s disappearance surely had nothing to do with her father. Like an extension of his nightmare in a waking state, an image rose in his mind of Mister Ugly leering at Mia, sniffing, licking. He shifted his gaze to the fire, clenching his teeth, suppressing a shudder. Another thought ran like a cold sickness through his brain. What if both me and Jake are right? What if Mia had been prostituting herself and somehow chanced to discover that her ‘trick’ was also her–

  Julian abruptly checked the thought. No, that was too twisted, too nauseating to even contemplate. But what if? What if? He couldn’t hold the shudder in any longer. It passed convulsively over his frame.

  “You okay?” asked Jake, an edge of suspicion back in his voice.

  Julian nodded, uncomfortable under Jake’s searching eyes. “What about Joanne Butcher? Were the rumours about her true?”

  “Yeah, probably. Junk’ll do that if you let it get on top of you. And she was using way, way too much.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “A couple of days before she went missing. We got high together. She phoned me, said she had some good junk. Fuck knows where she scored it from, but it wasn’t the usual watered-down shit you get round here. One hit knocked me on my arse, and I only smoked it. Jo was shooting the stuff up. I tell you, I didn’t even blink when I heard she’d OD’d.”

  “How do you think she ended up in the forest?”

  Jake shrugged. “Maybe she was looking for me. She knew I used this place.”

  “But you weren’t here.”

  “Obviously not,” said Jake, a little rise of irritation in his voice. “I move around a lot. Keeps the coppers off my track.”

  Perplexed, Julian wrinkled his brow. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t she phone and find out where you were before coming out here?”

  “She was a junkie. Junkie’s don’t make no sense.” Jake eyed Julian with the look of a wary animal trying to work out the motives and strength of another. “You know what don’t make no sense to me. You, you don’t make no sense to me.”