by Max Hardy
‘Is that the place built on the old quarry?’
‘It is. Full of water now, like a big lake. It’s where they got the stone to build the bases of the rail bridge.’ he said, pointing to the large iron structure that they were approaching. ‘Down right now, onto Battery Road.’
‘I’ve never been this close to it before, it’s huge. What’s it like living in the shadow of that monstrosity?’
It was Bentley’s turn to pause, looking at the bridge pensively. ‘You know, living around it all the time, you don’t see it as a monstrosity, you just see it as part of the fabric of your life.’ he eventually answered, sagely. ‘Pull up that gravel track to the left and drop me off in front of that house.’
Tait parked the car up where he had instructed and looked out of the window at the derelict garden, then up to the dark, foreboding house, noticing one light on in a bedroom window, the shadow of a large torso standing looking out.
‘Looks like someone is up waiting for you.’
Bentley looked up too and sighed. ‘Aye, you’re not the only one who has to explain why they are late. Thanks for the lift. See you in the morning.’
‘No problem, I’ll pick you up about eight.’ Tait answered as Bentley climbed out of the car, letting Jackson out of the back.
Bentley watched her reverse out and then drive away, Jackson heading off into the overgrowth of the garden for a sniff. He turned and looked up at the bedroom as the shadow moved from the window, the light going off.
‘It’s not the bridge that’s the monstrosity I live in the shadow of, it’s that bastard.’ he mumbled to himself as he headed off up the unkempt garden path and opened the front door.
Pastor Bentley was standing there, his face full of fury, a walking stick raised in his angry hands. He lashed out with it, hitting Bentley across the top of the arm, grabbing his coat and dragging him into the house as he did, using the full force of his large frame. Bentley cowered, and hunched his way into the hall as Pastor Bentley slammed the front door closed, locking Jackson outside.
‘It’s one o’clock in the morning Fenny. No call again Fenny. Your sister made supper especially for you and now it’s cold Fenny. It’s not good enough boy, not good enough at all. Where have you been? Fucking that tart in the car? Or is that what you would like to do? Are you going to masturbate about her later? You sick, twisted animal. Into that kitchen now.’ he fumed as he whacked Bentley across the back while he staggered into the kitchen.
‘It’s not like that father, it’s not like that at all. You know what my job is like, you used to do it. I don’t know when I am going to get home. I told you last night, there is a big case on and we really do need to be worried about it.’
‘That doesn’t stop you picking up the phone and telling us where you are. That’s even more important if you think there is something to worry about. When I was on the job I would always ring one of you and let you know I was going to be late. Now sit down there and eat the tea that Desiderata so lovingly made you. We have a lot to talk about. You have a lot to get done tonight.’
The anger dissipated from Pastor Bentley almost instantaneously as he sat down in the kitchen booth in front of Bentley’s tea plate and a notepad, the top page of which was full of notes.
Bentley slid in the other side, still wincing under the pain of the walking stick blows. His head was bowed, not able to look Pastor Bentley directly in the eyes. He took the silver foil off the top of his tea plate, then closed his eyes and said grace automatically.
‘I’m sorry Father. I should have called. There is no excuse. I will stay under the stairs tonight as punishment. It is what I deserve.’ he grovelled as he started to eat the cold meal in front of him, his face perking up slightly as he took the first mouthful.
‘Delicious, as always. Is Dessie in bed?’
‘No, she is dropping off. She left this afternoon and won’t be back until tomorrow.’
Bentley’s face sank again as he dropped his cutlery, rummaging around in his pocket for his phone. ‘Oh shit. We have to call her, we have to bring her back and abort this now Father. Someone knows.’
‘It’s too late for that Fenny. What do you think someone knows?’
‘Because I received an anonymous text message from someone saying just that. Take a look!’ Bentley said animatedly as he opened the message and showed it to Pastor Bentley.
‘We Know.’ Pastor Bentley read out loud. ‘That still doesn’t answer my question: what do they know?’
‘That’s not the only thing Father. There was another murderer exposed today. He has killed five women, allegedly, although I know he can’t possibly have killed one of them. Sunni Bhalla was on that list.’
Pastor Bentley’s expression turned thoughtful, ruminating on the name. ‘Sunni Bhalla. Two thousand and four, if I recall correctly.’
‘Yes Father. They know we have done something and they know that something involves Sunni Bhalla and Heather Scott. It is far too dangerous for us to do anything else at the moment.’
‘I disagree. I think it is far too dangerous for us to stop. She is in another country now. If we don’t follow through on this, her boyfriend is going to start asking where she is and if we haven’t finished the job, it is more likely that it will come back on us. Have you learnt anything more today about the woman you think might be doing this?’
Bentley shook his head dejectedly, looking up beseechingly into his father’s eyes, seeing that there was no way his mind was going to be changed.
‘We saw Rebecca Angus on a raid tonight. She escaped into the Leith area. I don’t know how she would know these things but I still think she has a score to settle with me.’
‘You leave whoever that is to me. I will watch your back. What I need you to do tonight is finish the job. I have her boyfriend’s movements for the last twenty four hours.’ Pastor Bentley said, pushing the pad into the middle of the table, so Bentley could see it.
‘Between 20:08 and 22:15 tonight he was in Leuchold Woods. It’s a well known dogging area. If beating women up wasn’t enough of a depravity, he also seems to be a voyeur. He was watching a group of people have sex from a discreet distance, masturbating.’ He emphasised the last word, shooting Bentley a disgusted look. ‘A few people where passing when his van entered the park and a few more when it left. I am almost positive no one saw him while he was in there. That’s where you need to plant the evidence.’
Chapter 21
The man was struggling ineffectually as the two women, one dressed as a Pierrot clown, the other a Choupoao, an old Chinese Hag Clown, dragged him over the varnished oak floorboards into a room furnished as a normal study. He had a coarse grain sack over his head and tied around the neck. His orange Kashaya robe was starting to unravel, exposing the body underneath, which was naked and barefoot. His hands were tied behind his back with barbed wire, the prongs on the wire penetrating the soft flesh of the wrists, drawing droplets of blood.
The Clowns pulled him into the middle of the room and dropped him onto a Persian rug. His legs started to kick out, trying to get leverage and balance as he squirmed, muted groaning and stifled shouts coming from within the sack over his head. The Choupoao leant over and with an animalistic growl, threw a powerful sideswipe with her left fist, connecting with the side of his head, which jarred sharply. He stopped moving.
Pierrot quickly walked to a writing desk at the side of the study and grabbed a role of barbed wire from the top of it. She turned back to the rug, where Choupoao was forcing the Monks legs into a lotus position. Pierrot started to roll the barbed wire around the legs, pulling it tight to hold them in position. Choupoao then lifted his torso up from the floor, undoing the barbed wire tying his hands, and tore the robe away from his body, leaving him naked. She then positioned his arms on his restrained knees. Pierrot secured the wrists around the knees and swirled the remainder of the wire around his torso, right up to his neck. She pulled the sack cloth off, revealing a bald, young man, his mouth wide open a
nd filled with an orange rag. His eyes were fluttering, consciousness starting to return. She finished by looping the last of the barb wire around his neck and pulled it as tight as she could, the whole length of it digging further into his naked body, causing obvious pain, enough for him to awake and scream almost silently into the orange rag.
They both pushed him into a sitting lotus position. Pierrot returned to the desk and retrieved a folder from it, passing it to Choupoao and then sat down in a leather bound chair, spinning it to face the back of the Monk. Choupoao walked around in front of him, then sat down cross legged, placing the closed folder on the rug between them.
She placed the palms of her hands together then raised them slightly in time with her head tilting forward until they touched her eyebrows and the tip of her nose.
‘Namaste Chodak. Your Karma Mudra would like to speak to you tonight. Although Namaste probably isn’t the right greeting at all because that is the last time I will ever bow to you. It is the last time I will ever call you Master Yogi.’ she said with vitriol and disdain coursing through the words as she leant over and removed the rag from his mouth.
His face was contorted with agonising confusion. Every time he tried to move, the barbed wire dug deeper into his skin, ripping the flesh. ‘Chinnamunda, what is this, why have you done this to me?’ he asked, pleading.
She laughed, a wicked laugh, throwing her head back with venom as she answered. ‘I now know why you gave me that name. The same name you gave the others. She is the goddess who decapitated herself. Do not plead, do not beg. There will be no forgiveness, only revelation.’
‘Chinnamunda, you are confusing me with this aggression, this anger is not like you.’
‘How old am I Chodak?’ she questioned abruptly, ignoring his statement.
‘Another strange behaviour, what is the relevance of your age to this?’ he asked her, looking down at his bindings.
‘Of the most important relevance. What is my age?’ she reiterated firmly.
Pierrot rose from the seat behind him and grabbed the barbed wire around his neck, pulling it tight, causing him to scream. She leant right up to his ear and whispered into it calmly. ‘This isn’t a debate. This isn’t a discussion. Answer the ladies questions, or you will suffer a millennia of hellish torments.’
Chodak froze on hearing those words, the confusion falling from his features, to be replaced quickly by a steely realisation. ‘You are forty three.’
‘Tell me the age when women display the unlimited manifestation of demons Chodak, tell me which demon is forty three.’ Choupoao demanded.
‘Thirty nine to forty six years old. You are Garuda Mug.’ he answered dispassionately.
‘Human beast, you are to be crushed today.’ she hissed, gnashing her teeth as him wildly. ‘Today I must devour your flesh.’ and with her tongue trembling she finished: ‘From your body I will make the drink of blood!’
‘You have read the sacred texts I see. Remember your vow of absolute silence to your tantric master. Remember the penalty. If you break your vow, it will be you who will dance with insanity, it will be you who will live a millennia of torments.’ he threatened with cold, harsh words.
‘The same millennia of torments you have exacted on demons thirty nine to forty two.’ she retorted, raising her voice as she picked up the folder in front of her, opening it and taking out the top picture.
‘Dawn Evans, aged thirty nine: Dog Snout.’ she spat, placing the picture on the floor in front of him.
The picture was of the room they were in, the writing desk and leather chair clearly visible in the background. In the foreground, a transparent plastic sheet covered the Persian rug. Glistening blood, congealing in pools gathering in the folds of the plastic was visible where the head should have been. Where the head should have been was a gaping, open, bleeding stump of a neck, riven strips of skin flopping from where the head had been sawn off. Blood was spattered down the naked body, all the way down to two more gaping holes where her breasts should have been. The white of ribs was visible through the hacked breast tissue that remained. Her two arms spread out slightly from the body, the hands palm up. In each hand was placed, nipple up, the severed breasts. Blood flowed down her chest to her stomach, pooling in her belly button. Past her belly button, her legs had been raised, the feet pushed nearly all the way to her buttocks, the knees forced wide, as near to the floor as was possible without touching it. Her groin was forced in the air, and sticking out from her vagina, which had been ripped by hand to accommodate it, was her bloody, severed head, staring lifelessly out of the photograph.
He said nothing, just looked from the picture up to her, eyes ablaze with tempered fury.
‘Laura Mason, aged forty: Sucking Gob.’ She placed another photograph of a different woman, in exactly the same state beside the first.
‘Stephanie Andrews, aged forty one: Jackal Face.’ Another photographic atrocity was placed in front of him.
‘Gemma Cole, aged forty two: Tiger Gullet.’ She placed the last photograph down next to the others, all of the severed heads pointing towards him, their dull lifeless eyes watching him as he looked down upon them.
‘All they ever wanted to do was understand Tantra. All they ever wanted to do was explore the divine energies with a yogi who could transform that erotic love into divine power. They all believed in you. They believed in the sacred oath, believed in the power of your gods and look how you rewarded them. They were your mudra and you betrayed each and every one of them, you ruled them with a fear of a millennia of hellish torment if they even whispered a single word about the sacred rites. Sacred rights that are a hypocrisy to the celibacy of monks, a hypocrisy to Buddhism.’
‘You are demons, old haggard, menacing and cursing demons that would lead the uninitiated astray. Tantra is not for your kind, yet you would look to sully it with your wickedness, your selfishness. Chinnamunda would rejoice in ridding the world of such grotesques. She would dance on your rotting corpses.’ He spat defiantly, flexing his muscles against the barbed wire, gritting his teeth under the pain.
Pierrot tightened the wire once more, leaning close into his ear again. ‘Well let’s see what the rest of your faith make of that, let’s see if they agree with you because later on today, we will be showing each and every one of them the atrocities you have enacted in the name of their religion. The world will see your barbarity.’
Chapter 22
Bentley stared intently at the dust devils riding on the sliver of light shining through the crack of the under stair cupboard door. The sliver came as the morning sun shone through the dirty Fanlight above the front door, affording his dark prison a first glimpse of the new day.
He didn’t move, just continued to follow the dancing dust. He listened to the heating pipes of the old house groaning, the main pipes running down the wall behind him on their way back into the cellar. They carried tales from the rooms in the house, tales of people moving, tales of people chatting, tales of people living. This morning they were lifeless apart from the natural creaking of the house as it stretched in the dawn light.
His father thought that locking him under the stairs was a punishment. Bentley had accustomed his mind early in his childhood that it wasn’t. The dark confined space with its slat of a bed covered in a worn candlewick blanket was a world of possibility, his imagination using the blackness as a blank canvas to paint out the life tunes that the pipes played to him. He would hear his sister playing with her dolls, his father reciting sermons, his mother…forgetting that he was in here when ‘Uncles’ called around.
Still no sound. He knew that Dessie was still away but thought that his father would be around. Then he heard a low growl from just outside the door. It was Jackson in his kennel. The growl turned into a series of broken, timid barks and Bentley raised his head off the blanketed slat, listening for a knock on the front door. Jacksons bark turned menacing just as a loud bang echoed down the hallway, followed by the front door slamming off the wall and
urgent voices shouting instructions.
‘First two, rooms to the left, second two, the right, third two upper left, fourth two upper right. GO, GO, GO!’
Bentley sat upright and put his ear to the door, listening intently, his face a mask of sheer panic.
‘It’s his sister we are after, but when you find Bentley, bring the waste of space directly to me. Tait, take that yapping mutt and put it in the back of the car for the moment.’ Cruickshank ordered as she walked into the hallway after the main body of police officers.
‘This is a throwback to the seventies. My granny’s house used to be decorated like this.’ Cruickshank continued as she walked down the hallway towards the kitchen, looking into each room as she passed them, watching the officers searching. She turned as she reached the kitchen entrance and paced back towards the front door. ‘Too quiet gentlemen, I can’t hear you sounding off!’ she shouted up the stairs as she passed.
Tait came running back from the car and joined her in the hall.
‘Upper left clear!’, ‘Upper right clear!’ came the blaring retorts from upstairs, followed by the same from downstairs, the officers done with searching returning to the hallway.
‘No one at all, not even Bentley?’ Cruickshank asked, surprised.
‘No one Ma’am.’ reiterated Sergeant Calvey.
‘Take the guys and search the outhouses. Check any basements and double check any cupboards. They shouldn’t have been expecting us, but you never can tell. Tait, let forensics know they can come in and begin processing. Get them to start in her bedroom.’ she ordered, walking towards the under stairs cupboard as everyone dispersed. She pulled the door open and took a step back in surprise as she saw the cowering, terrified form of Bentley staring back at her from the corner of the cupboard.
‘Jesus Bentley, what are you doing in there! Get yourself out now. Were you hiding?’ she shouted, her voice raised, more in shock than anger. She took in the small bench and the blanket as Bentley unfurled to his full height and girth as he stepped out of the cupboard, his generally brusque demeanour trying hard to tame the terror in his eyes as he stood and faced Cruickshank.
