The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1)

by Andrew Barrett

  His father had moved into politics shortly after Henry had moved the earth and that was about the time his world turned into a downward spiral of strict discipline, a change of school and an enforced adulthood that frightened the crap out of him. He wanted to be a kid, he wanted to be Superman, he wanted to be Peter Pan and never grow up. But party politics forced it upon him as it forced weeklong attendance in London on his father, and weekend beatings for Henry. It was the stress of junior politics that turned Henry’s eyes the colour of overripe plums and loosened his teeth.

  The old site office and the lean-to that was the manager’s personal car parking space, was where he had ended his short relationship with wriggler-Wrigglesworth. She refused to oblige one night, a night when Henry felt particularly virile. So he punched her in the jaw and walked angrily away, massaging the bulge as he went. She landed flat on her back, out cold.

  Twenty years later, he found himself in the very same spot where she fell. It was dark again, but the moonlight was strong enough to see that the old lean-to had rather more lean than it used to, and the site office had fared equally well; its windows smashed by the creaking old building moving on its foundations. The door had warped and fallen inside leaving a dusty old shell with creepers growing through the floor and fungus sprouting in the joists. No place to bring a potential conquest now, Henry thought.

  He turned in the dust and looked at the black shape of his beautiful green Jaguar, moonlight kissing its curves, dancing in the crazed glass of the windscreen. He tutted, kicked at the dirt and opened the boot. He found the torch and stared around his steed one last time. It had killed two people today and it could kill a third – him – if he were found in its company again. And Henry quite liked his life; shitty though it was. Time to part company.

  He needed a rag of some description and spent ten minutes searching until he cursed his bad luck and ripped a sleeve from his expensive designer shirt. He took off the fuel filler cap and stuffed the sleeve into the tube as far as he could, leaving a dangling cuff. And then, wondering why he ever gave up smoking – a cigarette lighter would have been fairly useful now – he reached into the car and pushed the electric lighter into the socket. And he sat there wondering why these kinds of things happened to him; he wondered why he had a shitty father, why he had no woman, and then he smiled, “Cause you’re a wanker, Henry Deacon, that’s why.”

  The lighter popped out and Henry popped back into reality. He snatched it and ran to the cuff, pressing it hard onto the cooling coil until wisps of smoke drifted into the silent air. But that was it. Just a tiny glowing ember was all he could manage and blowing on it succeeded only in extinguishing it altogether. “Bastard!” How come the car thieves manage to set fire to things so damned easily?

  He plugged the lighter back in for a second go, and whilst it warmed up, he pulled the sleeve back out and brought it into the car, ready this time for full heat. This time it caught, this time he didn’t have to blow and the smoking cinder produced a beautiful orange flame that took quickly. “Shit, shit, shit,” Henry scrambled around to the filler, flames licking dangerously close to his suit, and pushed it towards the tube. But the sleeve was blazing now and he couldn’t get it inside. The fire was hot, the shirtsleeve curling, turning a crispy grey as he shouted and screamed for some good fucking luck for a damned change.

  And then his hand felt hot, he felt the hairs on the back curl away, smelt the singe of flesh and cried out in pain. But he kept pushing, ramming tentatively, almost not daring to touch it but having no choice, and when he finally thought it was in the tube and he’d better run to safety before the thing blew up in his face, it fell out onto the dirt. And the flames died. The world turned dark again and Henry leaned against the flank of the Jag, head in hands, wondering what to do now.

  It was a long walk to the nearest bus stop.

  Wednesday 3rd June

  Chapter Three

  Life soon caught up with Henry. He made himself think of life again as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He came back from Great Preston with only the tattered clothes he stood up in and with a blistered hand that throbbed, making ‘normal’ a hell of a lot harder to employ.

  Damned thieves, he made himself say over and over again, until he almost believed it. It was them, he thought, who hurt his hand, it was them, he said, who made me miss all my appointments.

  “There,” Julie put a coffee on his desk, and sat opposite her boss. “What happened then?”

  Henry’s good hand massaged the bandage on his left. He sipped coffee and tried out his story on Julie. “They robbed me,” his voice was hurt, his chin wobbled, but he looked her straight in the eye. If Julie believed him after all the times she’d caught him lying, then the police would be a walkover. “Damned thieves. They car-jacked me! You hear all this stuff on the news, how these thieves wait for you in multi-storey car parks, or while you’re at a red light, and then, wham! They pounce, shouting and screaming at you until you don’t know what the fuck happened.”

  Julie raised her eyebrows, but didn’t yank back on the reins simply because he swore.

  He couldn’t hide a smile, it was a smile of impending triumph, but he dressed it up nicely by adding, “I’m sorry about that, Julie, I shouldn’t—”

  “Never mind,” she said, concern etched across her face. “Go on, dear.”

  He shrugged. “Well, they hauled me out, gave me a kick in the back of the head just for good measure, and when I stood and tried to… I don’t know what I tried, but I stuck my hand back inside, either trying to get them out of my car, or trying to get me back in, I don’t know. But when I tried, they slammed the bloody door on my hand.” He lifted the bandaged hand. “Throbs,” he said.

  “Oooh, bet it does, too.”

  “Anyway, I went home.” He looked up with his best feel-sorry-for-me eyes, and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry for him. Inside he laughed. “I couldn’t stand going out, and I didn’t answer the phone,” he glanced away, “I felt… Julie, I felt raped; I thought they were going to kill me.” Was that a tear in her eye? Fucking jackpot! “I’m sorry for not answering your calls. I know you rang a thousand times, and John and Chris too.”

  “They called around a few times as well.”

  “They hate me, don’t they?”

  “No,” she said through a laugh, “don’t be preposterous. No one hates you. They thought you’d just vanished, though; with your car not being there and there were no lights on, they—”

  “I just couldn’t bear it. Has anyone been looking after my appointments?”

  “Henry,” she soothed, “always thinking about work, even at a time like this. Stop worrying, we all mucked in and took care of everything.”

  “That’s great. I owe you all a drink, eh?”

  “Several, actually.” She smiled at him, a motherly smile. “Have the police contacted you?”

  “I gave them the details over the phone, and they said they’d be in touch.”

  “And they haven’t?”

  He shook his head. “Service is appalling, isn’t it? I mean, my car could be anywhere by now. Wish I’d had a tracker fitted.”

  “Oh, you poor boy; you’ve not heard, have you?”

  “Heard what?”

  She looked away.

  “Julie, heard what?”

  “It’s been all over the news, and every vidiscreen in town is plastered with it.”

  “What, dammit!”

  “They killed two people.”

  His heart speeded up, and he knew this because his hand throbbed faster. But he kept cool, didn’t glance away, didn’t blink, and even refused to allow his eyes to widen; he’d known this was on the cards and was prepared for it. “Who killed two people?” He looked suitably confused.

  “We don’t know. Someone driving a green Jaguar knocked two people down. It happened on the same day they stole your car.”

  Henry looked shocked. Now he allowed his eyes to widen. “Those poor pe
ople,” he said as though shocked. “That’s awful; what did they do? How did it happen?”

  “I’m not sure. Except that one of them was a young boy, about ten, I think. Dead instantly.”

  “Oh my dear God.”

  “The police’ll catch them, and when they do, Henry, they’ll be on a Rule Three, and then they’ll die instantly.”

  “Wait a minute, you think someone stole my car, and then they…”

  Julie nodded.

  “Well that explains it, then.” He bit his lower lip.

  “Explains what?”

  “They think I did it; they think I ran those two people over.”

  “No.”

  “That’s why they haven’t been to see me yet; they’re gathering evidence, aren’t they? They’re formulating their plans.”

  “Henry,” she laughed again, “you’re over-reacting. They haven’t even found the car yet, so how can they gather evidence?”

  “You think I did it, don’t you? I can’t believe you, my own—”

  “Henry!” she snapped. “Calm down this instant! If you say you had your car stolen, then I believe you. And anyway, no one said it was your Jaguar that killed them; could have been another. There’s no proof one way or another, so stop fretting. When they find the car, we’ll all be able to sleep better.”

  Oh, they won’t find the car, Henry thought. Not in a million years.

  Thursday June 4th

  Chapter Four

  — One —

  Despite the sign over the lower school entrance saying Welcome to Chantry House Church of England Primary School, Sussex, Margy Bolton’s boy was a devilish little bastard.

  Class B had been on a trip to The Natural History Museum only a week ago and he’d punched two kids in the mouth before they’d even got off the coach.

  Give him a good whack; slap the little bugger round the arse, were common enough speech bubbles floating above the aggrieved parents’ mouths. But of course, you couldn’t so much as look at a student sideways without violating some rule or another, something not lost on his teacher, Mrs Brammer, who could often be seen fumbling with the lid of her Prozac.

  The kid, Greg, found himself in the ‘lonely corner’ so often they called it ‘Greg’s corner’; he’d made it his own by carving his name on the desk and into the plastic chair bolted to the floor.

  Margy was friends with Aimy Shuttleworth, Mrs Brammer’s classroom assistant. Through her, the comments always got back to her anyway. Her defence of Greg was his Behavioural Attention Deficiency, and no matter how often she had explained it to the cloakroom full of parents, she might have been speaking Old Norse for all the good it did.

  Margy knew that the Head, Thomas Jackson, had a queue of parents outside his door demanding Greg’s expulsion, and he was placating that queue with whatever good news he could, like, she suspected, ‘I’m just waiting for him to kill a kid and then he’ll take his education in a Young Offenders’ Institute’. All he had to do was justify it to the Local Education Authority and Governors.

  The school trip just about rounded things off nicely.

  The two kids’ parents had complained to Jackson, and he’d gone through his policy books.

  “And really, Mrs Bolton,” he chirped down the phone with a voice so insincere in its apology that she thought it was a joke and actually laughed at one point. But he hadn’t. He finished by saying, “Greg has to stay home until his assessment is complete and the LEA can make a decision on his future.” Now she didn’t laugh either. Now she got angry.

  She slammed the phone down. She could imagine the parents in the cloakroom, dropping their little darlings off, wondering where the ‘bastard’ was, and where the bastard’s mum was? She could almost hear them laughing victoriously.

  And she could see Thomas Jack-off coming through with a grin a yard wide on his pock-marked face, telling them he’d expelled Greg without anyone having to die after all. They would be clapping him on the back, and Mrs Brammer would wipe imaginary sweat from her forehead and mime ‘phew’, as she put the Prozac back in her drawer.

  Keeping Greg out of school would damage more than just his education. After she put the phone down, her son stared up at her as though he knew something bad had happened, and as though something much worse was about to happen.

  Who the hell would look after him now he was at home?

  “Fuck it!” she yelled, and for once Greg said nothing. He didn’t join in with the bad language. He kept deadly quiet.

  If she had to call work just once more and say that she couldn’t make it in – especially if she couldn’t make in for the foreseeable future – she could kiss her piss-arsed minimum wage job at Black Lightning Fireworks goodbye. There was a fire burning in Margy Bolton’s chest that no extinguisher on earth could put out.

  “Am I not going to school no more, mum?”

  “Tomorrow’s another day, boy.” She crouched down and rested her hands on his shoulders, “Let’s see how it all turns out once the smoke has cleared.”

  “Okay,” he said and ran off to damage something.

  — Two —

  Thursday June 4th was a hot bitch and it was still only eight-thirty. Capital Radio poured out traffic news and slipped in the odd song between the adverts, and despite the AC light glowing on the dashboard, Jo Tower sweated. Today was a momentous day, or at least it would be at ten-thirty once Ben was busy in school and she was in the meeting room at Whitehall with the stuffed shirts and fancy crockery.

  Today, she and Emily, founder members of People Against Crime, and Deacon himself would engage the support of Amnesty International as they unveiled the Independent Review Panel. Then all substantial opposition to The Rules would be dead.

  Ironically, one of the few remaining centres of opposition at home came from The Rt Revd Steven Chapman, a powerful man who sat on the Archbishop’s Council, a man who had the ear of the Primate of all England, and as the Lord Bishop of Chichester, he was the parliamentary spokesperson for constitutional reform in the House of Lords, sitting as one of the Lords Spiritual. He was a man Jo was determined to have on side, but efforts so far had been unsuccessful.

  The Rt Revd Steven Chapman was Jo’s father.

  She parked next to the Chantry House Church of England Primary School sign, climbed out into the heat and felt the sweat soak her blouse. Ben joined her, held her hand and they began walking.

  Next to the primary school, was a high school for twelve to eighteen year olds. The noise coming from that side of the fence knocked the infants’ scrawny kerfuffle aside like heavy metal trouncing a piccolo solo. As they walked, glancing at each other, someone screamed. It came from over the high brick wall from inside the upper school athletics field. It was a serious scream, not some kid playing around, and it sent a prickle running through Jo’s scalp. Ben jerked at the sound, and whimpered as he looked up at his mummy. “It’s okay, Ben,” she smiled down at him as his tiny feet padded on the footpath leading to the main entrance.

  Waves of kids entered the school grounds, hauled along a little faster by fathers wanting to see what was going on, while the mothers held back a little, making sure it was safe to take their babies inside.

  — Three —

  “Aimy.”

  Aimy stopped and turned. “Margy,” she whispered, “you shouldn’t be here; you know what—”

  “Never mind all that, Aimy, just listen to me.”

  “I shouldn’t, Margy; I have things to prepare for the class.”

  “Forget the class, come spend the day with me; I’ll take you out for a pub lunch or something. Would you like that?”

  Aimy’s eyes fell away from that stare, and they gazed nervously at the floor. “Why? Why would you ask me that?” Still she didn’t look up.

  Margy sighed, a noise that sounded like escaping steam. “You and me, we always got along well, don’t you think?”

  “But it don’t explain why you—”

  “I’m doing you the biggest favour in you
r entire life, and I’m telling you to come away from school.” There was no friendliness on Margy’s face, only a cold instruction.

  “I can’t. It’s Thursday. I always prepare the hall for Mentions Assembly.” Aimy looked into Margy’s eyes and wondered why there was no Margy inside them any longer. She looked empty. Aimy’s entwined fingers turned white. “Margy? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just take the fucking day off.” She began walking along the outer wall by the bins. And then she stopped and turned. “Meet me at the gates at nine. And Aimy,” she said, “don’t you forget, now.”

  — Four —

  Jo marched Ben past the crowd of people that had gathered to their right inside the school gates. She peered back over her shoulder but outpaced the other mums and dads as they pulled their children along, holding their hands tightly while their curiosity suffered like an ache. Whatever was going on back there must be serious. Some kid threw up on the grass missing the yellow rubbish bin by feet but managing to splash the wall and several pairs of shoes without a problem.

  A wave of children gipped, and it was Mr Sherman, the caretaker, that calmed the situation and prevented things from getting out of hand.

  Sherman marched onto the scene, and peered at the creature; it was a dead rabbit. Skinned. He felt sorry for the animal and felt horror at the kid who could do such a thing. “It’s alright everyone; go on, go about your business please. I’ll sort this mess out.” He spotted a pair of kids having a breakfast throwing competition, and shouted, “Hey you two, go to the nurse and get something for your guts.”

  “Yes, Mr Sherman,” they stuttered in unison.

  “At break time, you can bring buckets o’ water out here and you can rinse all that vomit away, do you hear me?”