by J. M. Hewitt
“Braith, come here please,” he called.
Mark shuffled obligingly into the kitchen.
“You understand that this mess needs to be cleaned up, that’s why I am here, yes?”
Mark shot a look at Roland. It was a churlish glance, like a child who had been told on.
“You’re here because he called you,” Mark said. His voice was quiet but loaded with venom.
In the kitchen area, Roland shied away.
“He didn’t call me, I was doing my rounds, saw the door open. It is my job to keep an eye on things that may escalate out of control, and Mark, I think we can agree that this got out of control, can’t we? Hmm?”
Mark nodded. A tiny, almost imperceptible nod, but it was there. He agreed. He knew that the Colonel was his only chance now, and that was good. The Colonel needed compliance and a meek, sorry attitude if his plan was to work.
“We cannot tidy up this mess. One body, maybe, but three, not a chance.” The Colonel took a long, steady look around the apartment. “This whole place is going to have to disappear, and as the curators of this inconvenience, you will help me. Yes?”
Again, that nod from Mark. The Colonel allowed himself a little smile. The power of a name, of a figure such as he, not just with down and outs like Mark Braith or simple Roland, but police officials, judges, anyone in authority, well, it made all this nasty stuff worthwhile.
The Colonel smiled as he outlined his plan. And Braith was so far gone, and Roland was so simple, the Colonel knew that neither of them realised that they wouldn’t only be cleaning up the mess they had made in the apartment, but they would also clean themselves up at the same time.
The Colonel clapped his hands together again.
“Now listen carefully, this is what we’re going to do.”
It took a couple of days for the Colonel to get everything he needed for the Big Clean Up. He couldn’t shop locally. In spite of who he was he couldn’t risk being embroiled in this thing. So he got out his old car and drove west over the border and he shopped in towns like Duisburg and Aachen and Weeze. It was a good two day trip, and Mark and Roland had been instructed to remain in the soon to be demolished apartment and make sure nobody entered. It was risky; the Irish brothers were popular, people stopped by their place all the time, all hours of the day and night. The Colonel knew this; he’d been keeping an eye on them. He kept an eye on all of those who had the potential to bring more filth to his town. And none of them knew it.
On the third day after the massacre the Colonel drove back to Scheveningen, his car loaded with his wares. Under the cover of moonlight he carried everything up to number 1058 and tried the door. It was locked.
Good, he thought, as he rapped sharply three times.
The smell hit him when Roland cracked open the door and peered out.
Though it was fierce and fetid, the Colonel didn’t react. Instead he settled his gaze on Roland, taking in his red rimmed eyes.
“How are you, Roland?” he asked, kindly.
“Awful,” Roland whispered. “I–I can’t stay in here.” Two fat tears sprang from the corners of his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.
The Colonel patted his arm. “It will soon be over. Bring these bags in, then we’ll have it all sorted out.” He looked around the room as he entered the house, pleased to see that the kitchen area had been cleaned up, all the plate and used cups had been put away. He smiled with pleasure, the place was almost liveable.
“Did you do this, Roland? Did you tidy up?”
Roland, his fears and tears seemingly forgotten at this sudden and unexpected praise, nodded eagerly. “Yes, I did. Is it okay?”
The colonel patted Roland’s shoulder. “It’s more than okay, it looked wonderful. You did a great job.” His eyes narrowed. “Where is Mark?”
Roland pointed towards the bathroom.
The Colonel drew Roland further into the room. “And he has been … all right? He hasn’t been out?”
“He hasn’t been out, but he had some girlfriends in.”
The Colonel very nearly blanched at this information, but he took a deep breath. “And these girlfriends … did they use the bathroom?”
Roland shook his head with fervour, reminding the Colonel of a dog. “No, I wouldn’t let them in, I guarded the door.”
The Colonel nodded as he began to unpack the bags. Carefully he laid out lengths of wires. “Those paper bags, unpack them all, lie them out on the counter. I’ll check on Mark.”
“Um, Colonel?”
“Yes?” he asked as he washed his hands and looked around for a towel that didn’t have stains on it.
“What about Miles?”
The Colonel paused before pulling a small handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his hands.
“What do you mean, ‘what about Miles’?”
“He really needs help, it’s been three days, he really needs to go to the hospital.”
The Colonel froze. What was the boy saying? Did he think Miles was alive? Impossible, the Colonel had seen the bullet hole in the man’s shirt, for goodness sake. No, the child was dreaming, hoping and wishing. Of course, that was it. After all, Miles had always been the boy’s favourite of the brothers.
But, best to check …
“Stay here,” he instructed Roland. And carefully he moved over to the bathroom and pushed open the door.
If it were true, if Miles were still breathing, the Colonel would soon put that right.
61
THE DOCTOR & LEV
HOLLAND SPOOR
14.7.15 Dusk
Lev stops screaming after Elian and tenses his whole body as the door at the top of the stairs scrapes open. Silently, trying not to move the front of his body, he twists and pulls and yanks at the rope around his wrists. He glances over at Roland. The boy draws in a huge breath, one that will emerge on the exhale in a scream. Lev shakes his head at him. The doctor thinks Roland is dead. He might not be much use, the boy, but if they can get the element of surprise on the doctor they might stand more of a chance.
Frantically he tries to convey this to Roland as the door closes again.
“Pssst!”
Roland looks at Lev.
“Shhh, you’re dead,” hisses Lev in a stage whisper.
Roland seems to misunderstand, takes it as a new threat as his eyes pop wide.
Lev drops his chin to his own chest, lets his head loll, pokes his tongue out of the side of his mouth for good measure. Looking up, he nods at the boy.
And, oh God and hallelujah, the kid seems to understand, as he slumps his own head backwards. Lev isn’t happy with this, he can clearly see the rise and fall of Roland’s chest, but it is darker over where the boy sits, and the doctor’s tread can now be heard on the stairs.
It isn’t ideal, nothing about this fucked up scenario is, but it will have to do.
And to Lev’s surprise, when the doctor reaches the last step and comes into view, he doesn’t notice that one of the people he has locked up is missing.
“It’s tiresome, all this work,” says the doctor as he comes to stand in front of Lev. “I’m getting older, I should be thinking about retiring, but how can I, when people like you are still in my town, messing it up, bringing it into the gutter?”
Lev stops wrestling with his ties for a moment and looks up at the doctor. The man is getting old, he can see it now, how the hell did he manage to bring him and Roland down here? And what does he mean when he says Lev is messing up his town?
“I’m not sure what you think I did,” Lev says cautiously. Does the doctor know about Joy and her untimely and unfortunate death? But how can he know? And if he does, why wouldn’t he just call the police like any other, normal citizen?
“You are infecting the girls, making them full of filth, making me have to give them antibiotics.” The doctor purses his lips, folds his arms. “It’s not on, it’s just not on. Not here, not in my town.”
Does the doctor think Lev has given them an S.T.
I? For some reason Lev is affronted by this. “I didn’t! I’m as clean as a–”
“Not like that!” the doctor barks, and at the sound of his raised voice Lev hears Roland make a little ‘peep’ sound. He keeps his eyes on the doctors face, prays he hasn’t heard the proof that his victim is still alive.
“No, that idiotic thing you do, with the knife, do you realise how much infection that causes in the girl’s bodies? It is irresponsible, it’s stupid.”
Lev feels his mouth hanging open. “You done this because I done that? But the girls agreed, they were up for it, I never forced them!”
“But where does it stop? It doesn’t stop, it escalates you see, son. Don’t think I don’t know, don’t think I haven’t seen people like you before. Twisted … sick …”
Lev sits up straight as another thought comes into his head. “Did you kill them, Gabi and Cilla and …” he tails off as his mind goes blank. “And the … other one?”
“Amber. Her name was Amber,” snaps the doctor. “And she was a law unto herself, so dirty, so dirty.”
“And Gabi and Cilla?” Lev presses the doctor, unable to believe that this man has killed those girls just because they let Lev cut him.
But the doctor has reached the end of his confessional it seems, and as he walks over to the wall to Lev’s right, Lev knows without a shadow of a doubt that this man, this man who calls himself a doctor, is severely unstable, mentally gone. And if Lev wants to remain alive, he needs to get his hands free. Quietly, and trying to keep as still as possible, he starts to struggle with his binds once more.
The doctor walks over to the edge of the room to collect himself. Why is he explaining himself to this foreign loser? The doctor sighs, it’s all getting too much, too messy. His clean ups are not as clean as they once were. He has been too complacent, doing his work too close to home. In his home, for God’s sake. Well, soon it’ll be over. The troublesome girls who cost him medicine and soap and who don’t appreciate his help are gone. The woman who is supposed to be on his team but who behaves no better than the girls she is supposed to look after is gone. And these boys, this foreigner, Lev with his weird, infection encouraging cutting will soon be gone. As will Roland, the simple one, the one who always manages to be in the middle of the trouble, the one the doctor tried and failed to clean up over a decade ago will also be gone. As will the little mixed race girl, the one who filled him with such hope in her lovely mannered way, only to let him down when he realised that she, too, must have been cavorting with all sorts of men to have to come to him for the nasty tests to be carried out, and even then, she hadn’t learned her lesson, seeing as he has been watching her prancing all over town in her tiny shorts, flashing those big emerald eyes at everyone, hanging out with all the other dirty girls.
Just asking for it.
Well, she asked, she got.
But it pains him, because she’d been so sweet at first, before he knew her story.
Yes, it is painful, so he should get her out of the way first, and quickly. And then, with the other two, with her gone, he will be able to enjoy exacting his revenge.
He opens the small doctor’s case that he keeps down here. Casts his eye over the instruments. He doesn’t clean these ones, he has no need to. Gently he caresses a scalpel that is almost as old as he is. The skin on the pad of his finger moves bumpily over the rust that coats the blade. Plucking it out he holds it up and turns to face the girl.
For the first time, before he’d even registered that something was wrong in his basement, he realises how quiet she has been since he came down the stairs. Now, seeing her chair, overturned and empty, he knows why.
She has gone.
Lev gives up concealing his attempts to free himself as the doctor stalks up and down the basement. He kicks out at Elian’s chair.
“Where is she?” he spits at Lev. “Where is the girl?”
Lev shakes his head helplessly. “There was nobody there when I woke up,” he says, desperation clear in his lie.
“Rubbish!” shouts the doctor. “Absolute, plain, nonsense!”
Even when he is angry, when he is utterly, downright furious, his language is that befitting the persona he puts on, thinks Lev. But he’s about to blow, and I’m still–
Lev’s thoughts shudder to a halt as his hands burst free. He wants to bring them round to his front, to examine them, to rub at his wrists to get the blood flowing again, but he suppresses the urge, links his fingers behind his back instead, trying not to let the elation show on his face.
Instead he sits, as calm as he can manage, wondering when to make his move, wondering what the doctor is going to do, for surely he is going to do something. To Lev the doctor looks like a pressure cooker, his feet are moving on the spot in a strange dance, his arms and head are twitching.
Something’s gonna happen, thinks Lev, I need to be ready, because any second now the doctor is going to do someth–
Again Lev’s mind goes blank as the doctor finds an outlet. Raising his hand, Lev sees the scalpel that the doctor clutches for the first time. And oh, thinks Lev, that’s the end of that old fantasy, with that blade that is practically dripping with rust. But what is he going to do? Lev’s body tenses of its own accord as he mentally prepares himself for the blow, and when it doesn’t come another thought comes, a magical one, that maybe the doctor will turn the blade on himself.
But the doctor spins around, fury coming out of his mouth in an odd ‘yak-yak-yak’ sound, and the doctor turns, and plunges the scalpel into what he thinks is the already dead form of Roland.
Oh no, thinks Lev, as Roland’s eyes fly open and his mouth forms a tunnel from which a silent scream emerges. Oh no, oh Jesus Christ … this is where it ends.
Roland finds his voice as the blade pierces his shirt just above his stomach, and of all the noises in all the violent ends that Lev has witnessed, he has never heard a sound like this one. And the doctor, stunned by the dead man who has come back to life, is stilled.
Lev lurches to his feet, knowing this is the time, the only time, and even as he is moving across the room something tells him that the doctor may have locked the door at the top of the stairs, and if Lev reaches it and can’t get through, he’ll have to come back down, and the doctor will have had time to hide in the shadows with his scalpel hand at the ready. And Lev can’t believe he thought all of that in less than a second, and he knows he is functioning on pure adrenalin now, and so he heads for the tiny door which Elian had escaped through earlier, knowing that he will be letting the doctor know their escape route, but he can’t see any other way, and like Elian before him, he feels like he is flying too as he covers the few feet between his chair and the door.
He clutches at the side of the door and pulls it with all his might, not expecting the trapdoor to be as light as it is, realising he is almost falling back towards the doctor who seems paralysed. Feet scrambling like a cartoon Lev clears the low step into the tunnel. Should he close the door behind him or will it waste precious time?
Forget it, just … fucking … RUN, he instructs himself, screams at himself and he doesn’t know if he shouted the words or if they are in his head.
But collect yourself a little, says a soothing voice inside him, because you are fucking panicking and you will run straight into a wall and knock yourself out and when you wake up he’ll be standing over you with that dirty scalpel, slicing, slashing …
“Wooooo,” shrieks Lev, the thought doing nothing to make him more careful, instead lending wings to his feet that are already carrying him faster than they ever have before.
And as he turns the first dark corner, he takes comfort in the fact that he cannot hear any footsteps behind him. The only sound he registers is the noise of his own heavy breathing, and Roland’s screams of agony that chase him down the tunnel.
62
ERIK FONS AND ALEX HARVEY
HOLLAND SPOOR
14.7.15 Night fall
“He’s not answering, but it looks
like …” Erik, his hands cupped to the window frame of the doctor’s home, tails off before finishing his sentence.
Alex breathes out sharply, an exhalation of annoyance and impatience. Time is ticking, something, maybe his detective’s sixth sense, maybe his love for her, tells him that Elian needs him.
While Erik stalks around the front of the property, pushing at the door handle, looking through another window, Alex leans against the iron railing that leads up to the doctor’s house and remembers.
She had climbed down the tree that she had been sheltering in after she had made her escape. Silently she had stood with her back against the trunk of the old, dead, tree and looked at the people who surrounded her. He had run his eyes over her, lingering on the blood that had soaked into the material on her lower belly and that stained her upper legs. He had known then what had been done to her, and he had known he should have rushed to her, taken her in his arms and made her see that he would never, ever, force himself on her like that. He should have shown her the not often seen gentle side of him, for he did have one, and he should have touched her with tenderness and love.
But he hadn’t.
He had hesitated too long, and when he finally did go to her she had seen the angst on his face – had she mistaken it for disgust? – and she had been all tough and businesslike again.
Alex pushes himself off the railing that lines the doctor’s path and stands up straight. He won’t do that again, if they find her this time he will put his arms around her and no matter how much she protests or struggles he won’t let go. He will make her feel his love.
And a sense of urgency hits him with all the force of a sledgehammer.
“Erik, enough, get in this house, right now.”
At the sound of Alex’s tone Erik turns to face him, a quizzical expression on his face. Alex knows how he sounded, for so far this trip in Erik’s company, Alex has been polite and professional. But there is no more time for fucking around. And even though they don’t know what the doctor’s part is in all this, Alex knows that the doctor is the linchpin of these girls, and if anyone can point them in the right direction, it is him.
