A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery

by Vogel, Vince

  “And that’s where you took Becky?”

  “Yeah. It was a nice house. One of them old-fashioned types with globes and bookshelves and plates in cabinets. I wanted to take her somewhere nice.”

  “Tell me what happened that night?”

  “Once me and Pat got the idea, Pat followed her for a few days to stake her out. I knew her address, because she gave it to me when she left Rampton. So he followed her and found out that she spent three hours every night round this girl’s house studying, always the same time, traveling across the heath on her bike to get there and back. All I did was wait for her.”

  “I bet she was surprised to see you,” Jack remarked.

  Gemma’s eyes went sad, and a fresh set of tears percolated from them.

  “She was happy,” she sobbed. “She jumped off her bike and held me in her arms… and cried. And I cried too. It felt so good, and so much of me wanted to turn around then and not go through with it. But it was the only way. The only way I could make the Doyles pay properly for all the bad things they’d done in their lives. I wanted to send somethin’ after them far worse than any Doyle. I wanted to send a real demon. I wanted her brother.”

  “So you led her out of Arradine?”

  “Yeah. I had a car parked up at the side. She chained her bike up, got in, and we went away. The whole ride she was so happy and kept chattin’ while I drove us along, all the time with me knowin’ what was about to happen. She wouldn’t stop goin’ on about how it was meant to be, how it felt so right that we’d bumped into each other like that, and how we were gonna carry on as before. As sisters. The second I got her back to the place, I did it. I couldn’t stand to listen to her hope anymore. I put three crushed Rohypnol in her drink and waited for her to fall asleep. And then I… I…” Her eyes glimmered with an inner terror, an inner realization at her own demonic potential. “I injected her with heroin, exactly the same as Billy had done to those other girls.” Gemma gazed at Jack but appeared not to see him. “I spent the next half an hour throwin’ up in the bog. I’ve never felt worse than I did then. I’d killed another person. An innocent person. I promised her that it was for her, whispered into her ear after I’d done it. But somethin’s changed. Ever since, somethin’s not been right in me.”

  “It’s called guilt, Gemma,” Jack put to her.

  “Gemma, please stop,” Patrick pleaded with her.

  “Pat had nothing to do with it,” Gemma suddenly put to Jack, her eyes coming back to life.

  “What were his prints doing at the crime scene, then?”

  Both Pat and Gemma’s faces were invaded with looks of terror.

  “How’d you get his prints?” Gemma asked.

  “Pulled them off the crime scene at Bayfield Road. It’s what ultimately led me to your gran.”

  “You spoke to Nan?” Pat exclaimed.

  “I have. She doesn’t know what it’s about. We spoke mostly about the fire at the camp. You two managed to get another of your so-called enemies tonight. The dirty cop that Alex killed for the murder of his father was also the man that covered up the murders of your parents. But let’s get back to Pat’s prints being all over the kitchen cupboard doors.”

  “He only cleaned up,” Gemma insisted. “Nothin’ else. Just cleaned up for me. It was me that killed her and me that nailed her to the cross.”

  “Then that still makes him an accessory to murder. But we don’t need to talk about that now. First, we need to go into the other room and have a chat all together with Alex.”

  “You’re not tellin’ him?” she cried out.

  Jack got up from his chair.

  “We have to,” he said.

  Gemma got up and barred his way, Patrick also standing sharply from his chair.

  “Gemma, he deserves the truth,” Jack told her.

  “He’ll kill me. No.”

  With that, she pulled a pistol out of the pocket of her leather jacket and jabbed it into Jack’s ribs. He stepped instantly back from it, his eyes stuck on its glinting end.

  “I told you and that’s it,” she said forcefully. “I don’t want to shoot you, but me and Pat are leavin’ here with Alex.”

  Helen was holding on to her forlorn son when the door suddenly swung open and Gemma came barging into the room with Patrick lingering behind her.

  “Alex,” she said, a frantic tone to her voice, “we have to go.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, noticing the frightened look on her face and one of his guns clasped in her shaking hand.

  “We have to go now.”

  Jack pushed through them and into the center of the lounge.

  “Alex, you can’t leave with her,” he said.

  “Shut up!” Gemma screamed and aimed the gun at him.

  “Chloe, what are you doing?” Alex wanted to know.

  “Gemma?” Helen uttered in a bewildered tone.

  Since the girl had walked into the room, the mother had studied her hard and recognized her almost immediately. The girl’s face and voice were so similar to Becky’s old roommate whom she’d seen countless times when visiting her daughter in Rampton. Gemma glanced at Helen, tears glistening upon her cheeks, and quickly looked back at Alex.

  “Please, Alex,” Gemma pleaded. “We have to go.”

  “Why are you here?” Helen enquired, confused to see Gemma standing before her with a gun.

  Alex turned his head to his mother.

  “How do you know her?” he asked.

  “She was at Rampton with your sister.”

  “What?” Alex muttered, gazing back at Gemma with confusion.

  “Please,” she muttered, her face creasing into purest melancholy, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Alex stood up from the couch, looking at Gemma and then at Jack.

  “What’s going on, Jack?”

  “It was her, Alex. She’s—”

  In a flash Gemma lurched forward and smashed Jack on the crown of the head with the butt of the gun, sending him reeling back into the book cabinet. He crashed into it and slid to the floor, before coming to rest sitting at its base, holding his bleeding head. Gemma aimed the gun straight at him, a vicious scowl replacing her sad expression.

  “Don’t say another fuckin’ word,” she snarled at him.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked, coming behind her and gently placing his hand on her arm, attempting to push her aim away from the detective.

  Helen remained on the couch, watching it all with a terrified look, and Patrick stood in the doorway, looking like he was about to bolt any second but unable to leave his sister.

  “Chloe, lower the gun,” Alex gently whispered into her ear.

  The scowl dropped and she immediately relented, turning around sharply and throwing her arms around him. She began to weep terribly into Alex, repeating that she was sorry.

  “What are you sorry for?” he asked her, his own arms holding on to her.

  Gemma took her head away from his chest and looked up at him with shimmering eyes.

  “I only wanted them to pay,” she said. “All I could think about for the last four years was them payin’. I wanted it so much that it kept me alive when I was at my lowest. That thought of seein’ them suffer stopped me from throwin’ myself in the canal for real. It was hatred so strong it kept me going.”

  “You’re making no sense, Chloe.”

  “My name’s not Chloe. It’s Gemma. I lied to you from the beginnin’. I’ve lied to you always. I was never supposed to meet you. I thought I’d watch it all from far away. But then you pulled me out of the water and took me with you. I meant to leave. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave you. You’ve done more for me in three days than any man has done for me in my entire life. I owe you everythin’.”

  “You’re still not making a shred of sense.”

  “I killed Becky,” she wept. “It was me. I did it so that you’d come here and punish the people who killed my family. Who killed your dad. Evil men that deserved to die like they d
id.”

  “But Billy killed Becky.”

  “No. He killed the others. I killed Becky.”

  She threw herself back into his chest and continued to sob. But Alex’s arms retracted from her, and his eyes widened, his face taking on a fierce look of utter bewilderment. His mind appeared to freeze over, and nothing made sense as he watched her weep into him. He glanced over at Jack, who watched everything from the floor, and the old detective’s face appeared to confirm what she had just said.

  “No,” Alex muttered, maneuvering his hands to her shoulders and pushing her away. “No. Why would… You can’t have…”

  She reeled back from him, and her face contorted into a mask of purest grief. Looking at him with heavy eyes, the gun still dangling in her hand, she observed the look of horror on Alex’s face as he gazed at her, a look bordering on revulsion. The embers of her former anger were stoked by his expression, and a fire of sudden resolution engulfed her.

  She lifted the gun up and aimed it at Alex.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Alex didn’t raise his hands, didn’t protest. He’d become accustomed to having a gun held on him and felt no different now. He continued to look at her with a terrible confusion fighting away in his head.

  “What have you done?”

  “I don’t even know anymore,” she said, and a manic look flitted across her face. She threw herself forward into his arms, placing the gun to one side of his head and her own head to the other temple, the two of them standing in front of the lounge window. “We’ll die together,” she declared. “You and me forever.”

  As Jack watched on in horror, the front window cracked, Gemma jolted out of Alex’s arms, a cloud of blood burst into the air, Patrick shouted out, his petrified eyes following his sister all the way to the ground, Helen screamed, and Alex merely stood there covered in blood, entranced by what he saw.

  “Fucking hell,” Jack muttered, instantly jumping and looking up at the window to see if another shot would fly through it, before returning his eyes to the others.

  Alex threw himself on the floor and scooped Gemma up in his arms, crouching with her and gazing into her eyes. Blood seeped from her mouth, and her throat was torn away by the bullet that had come through the window. It reminded Jack of Danny King.

  In those last moments, she looked up into Alex’s blue eyes as they bled tears for her. Jack would later recall how at peace she looked in that final few seconds in his arms. When she had said she loved Alex, Jack truly believed it. How terrible it was that they had met under such cruel circumstances.

  Patrick got down on his knees beside them just as his sister’s eyes went completely blank. He bowed his head down and cried pitifully over her. The boy had nothing now and was all alone in the world.

  Jack’s attention was taken from the sad scene when he heard the front door open. His heart racing, he looked over at Helen, who was stuck to the spot on the couch, her sore eyes fixed upon the dead girl, her mind clearly caught in a whir. Jack felt an inner urge to go to her and protect her. But in truth he had no idea what was happening and found himself unable to move a muscle from the floor.

  Into the lounge walked a tall man with dry blood caked to his black hairline, an angered look on his blank face and a pistol in his hand. He instantly pointed it at Alex.

  “192,” he said, “you’re leaving with me one way or another.”

  Dorring never looked away from Gemma’s pale, dead face, his hand simply moving over her eyelids and closing them. Jack got the impression that it was only him and her to Alex now.

  Patrick looked up from his sister and aimed a terrible scowl at the agent. Crying out like a wounded animal, he went to launch himself at the man but got no farther than a few feet. Jack shuddered as Patrick flew onto his back, the shot passing straight through his head, Helen screaming out again.

  Still Alex never looked up from Gemma, and the agent came around him, taking a syringe from his pocket.

  “No more cuffs,” the man said, before ripping the plastic point protector from the needle with his teeth. Alex didn’t move a muscle as the agent came around the back of him and slammed the needle into his neck, never even flinching as it sunk into his flesh. The agent pressed down on the plunger, and Jack watched as Alex’s mortified face gradually softened and Gemma’s head slipped out of his hands.

  “Leave him!” Helen screamed at the agent when he went to lift Alex.

  “Helen, don’t,” Jack insisted, the agent instinctively putting his gun on her.

  She froze in terror and shoved her hands over her mouth. Seeing that she wasn’t hostile, the agent put his gun away, lifted Alex onto his shoulder, and left the house. A few seconds later an engine roared and car tyres screeched out of there. Alex was gone. Nothing left but the dead brother and sister stacked in the middle of the lounge carpet. Like their parents, they had died together.

  Jack gazed over at the bodies, shaking his head gently, his heart pounding away. Outside, the rain had ceased, the clouds having passed, and a gentle silence reigned in the room. In the window, the white light of the moon shone over it all, and Jack slowly got up.

  He walked over to Helen, took her hand, and without saying a word pulled her up from the couch. They stepped over the bodies and walked out of the house, both in shock, neither understanding what they had been witness to.

  When they reached Jean’s door, both of them crumpled into each other’s arms, and Helen sobbed into him, her knees going weak and the poor woman slowly falling to the floor and taking Jack with her. This was the scene that awaited Jean when she opened the door.

  EPILOGUE

  Though it had been raining all morning, the clouds had now parted and sunshine broke down upon the cemetery, illuminating the tombstones in patches of golden light.

  In the center of the stone garden, a crowd had gathered around a freshly dug hole, waiting to inter yet another lost soul into the earth. Desolate faces gazed forlornly at the closed black coffin hovering above the hole and listened indifferently to the echo of the priest’s voice as he gave his eulogy. It was a sizable crowd containing many young women at the start of their adult lives, each one teary-eyed, some inconsolable, all staring at the box containing the young soul who would never see adulthood. Among their numbers Lauren Chalmers wiped away incessant tears while her mother held her dearly.

  Jack stood behind Helen with his hands gently placed upon each shoulder. They were closest to the coffin, the mother’s body trembling, her eyes pouring with tears as she glared at the casket. Jack couldn’t help looking around at all those mourning faces and wonder where the justice lay in any of it. A nineteen-year-old girl looking forward to university, her eyes faced forward into the coming sun, lay dead in a box. Where was the justice in that?

  In truth, Jack failed to see justice in any of this affair. Anna remained the only one of Billy’s three victims to be identified, and her family in Ukraine had balked at the repatriation costs. Therefore she’d been cremated by the state and her ashes thrown wherever. It appeared that a similar fate awaited the two remaining Jane Does. Then there was Tommy Bishop. Although Jack appreciated Alex’s intervention, he still believed that Bishop had escaped justice in death. In many respects, Bishop had caused it all. He’d murdered John Dorring, and he’d allowed the Doyles to carry on their twisted lives. Everything that had transpired started with the day he let the gangsters think they were above the law.

  Soon the priest ended his eulogy, and it was time to lower the coffin. Jack gripped Helen’s shoulders as the mechanism began gently placing Becky into the ground. The mother held strong and watched the black coffin go all the way down. Jack then let go of her as she bent down, took some earth and scattered it on the box. He did the same, and when he looked up, he noticed that Helen was walking away through the field of tombstones. Almost everyone there stood watching the forlorn mother meander through the graves, finding it odd that she appeared to be leaving. Jack jogged off and caught her up.

&
nbsp; “You not gonna wait and see everyone?” he asked her when he had.

  “I can’t, Jack,” she sobbed as she walked through the graveyard. “I know I’m supposed to thank everyone for coming, but I can’t. It’s so unfair. To see those other girls—all Becky’s age—and know they’re all going to go on and live the lives that Becky should have, it’ll finish me. Am I being selfish?”

  “Not at all, Helen. Not at all.”

  Jack walked her out of there, her family still standing by the graveside looking after them and wondering where she was going. She couldn’t face any of it. All she wanted was to go home. Her mother—Becky’s grandma—was putting on a wake at her house, but Helen couldn’t even face that, and when they reached the car park, she asked Jack to drive her home. He did as she requested, never querying the decision of a dead girl’s mother on the day of the funeral, and he drove Helen back to the house she once shared with both her daughter and husband, both of them now gone. One to the ground, the other to a prison cell.

  Back at her redbrick house, Helen made them both a cup of tea. Dressed all in black, as you’d expect, they sat together on the couch mournfully, sipping tea in silence for some time before either of them spoke.

  “I want to show you something,” Helen eventually said.

  Jack looked over at her from the other end of the couch.

  “Okay,” he replied.

  They both got up, and Jack followed her out into the back garden. She led him up a stone pathway that traveled through the center of a cut lawn and stopped in front of a four-foot-tall ash sapling planted at the back.

  “Me and Becky planted this when we first moved in here,” she said to Jack proudly. “A new start we called it.” Her face suffused with sadness, and her voice trembled. “The tree and me are all that’s left now. Some new start.”

  She began to sob, and Jack took her once more by the shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry, Helen,” he said, not knowing what else he should say.