The Killing Games

by Antony J Woodward

  They were walking through the town’s biggest park, under a clear night sky. The air was starting to cool as Autumn began to draw in, but Chris didn’t seem fazed by it. Pierre on the other hand was clutching his coat together and could feel his teeth chattering a little.

  They had parked in the car park and was having a little stroll around the fancy little sculptures the local council had installed. There wasn’t a single soul in sight, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a few lurking about in the dark. Central Park was something of a popular cruising ground for gay men. Pierre was sure somewhere in a bush nearby there’d be two men having a secret fuck. He felt, a little surprisingly, at home here. Walking arm in arm with his boyfriend, he perhaps was home here. With his own kind perhaps.

  He’d experimented with cruising a year ago, but while the anonymity and danger of it was a turn on, those very two things were also a bit of a turn off. It had grown dull and his sex life had grown stagnant. Only reinvigorated when he met Chris, because no sex had ever compared to the sex he’d experienced with Chris, it was like a whole different level.

  Maybe he finally understood the difference between “fucking” and “making love”?

  Beside him Chris plodded on, all day he’d been distant and occupied with his own thoughts. The party last night had upended him, and not in a good way.

  The missing parcel of drugs was just a straw that broke the camel’s back.

  “I think it’s Alexis…” Chris offered breaking his silence.

  “What is?”

  “Who took the drugs… She’s the only other person who knew about them.” he recalled her visiting with Sam. She had been present when he and Samuel had discussed it.

  “Why would she take them?” Pierre shrugged.

  “Come on, it’s Alexis. There’s no rhyme nor reason to her… She wants more leverage to blackmail me,” Chris answered flatly.

  “Blackmail you?”

  “Into killing Le Bont…” Chris reminded him flatly, “We need to do something about her.”

  Pierre nodded. “Well we’ll figure it out in the morning. We’ll go talk to her, find out if she’s-” he stopped when a twig snapped nearby. The path was sparsely lit with streetlights and left huge pockets of shadows. “-she’s the one who stole it…” Pierre finished the sentence but his attention was on the source of the sound. “Then we’ll figure it out, I promise…”

  “Okay…” Chris agreed. He’d ruminated enough for the day, his head was thick with thought and he was exhausted. He was no closer to the perfect plan to escaping this dangerous web of secrets, but at least he had a plan about the missing drugs.

  “What’s the dirtiest sex you’ve ever had?” Pierre asked. He wanted to change tack and push the conversation off Samuel. They meandered slowly deeper into the park.

  Chris was surprised by the line of questioning, but he felt free enough to answer it.

  “Probably fucking my half-brother and his sorta-boyfriend…” Chris recalled the threesome between he, Jesse and Kieran. Kieran had started out as a conquest for Jesse before he become a boyfriend, despite Kieran having desires for Chris. Of course Chris had indulged him in them desires, but ultimately Kieran had sided with Jesse, for reasons he never understood. Not that it mattered, because now he was ruined after a police investigation found reams of child pornography on his laptop. Data that Chris had planted there, as part of a deal with someone else.

  It felt like ancient history, but it wasn’t that long ago.

  That lifetime that he felt had fell between his life here in Melun and the one he left behind in England, wasn’t any more than a few months at best.

  “Your half brother?” Pierre cried in surprise.

  “It’s a long story…” Chris shrugged.

  “I’m all ears…”

  Chris thought for a moment, then decided that Pierre was unlikely to be disturbed by this revelation. “My roommate at Callinghurst, Jesse Mullamworth, was my half-brother. We had a bit of a sexual relationship…”

  “Wow. Did you know?”

  “I did… he didn’t… at first.” Chris could recall the look of surprise on Jesse’s face when Chris gate-crashed Christmas Day.

  “Something tells me he didn’t take it well…” Pierre’s intuition was correct. The revelation had derailed Jesse spectacularly.

  “No, he didn’t. But that was the point… I was getting back at my father…”

  It was the first time Chris had ever broached his parents since their first date and Pierre was acutely amazed. It meant that the walls around Christopher Bourgh were finally down.

  “Well my dirtiest was this old guy right here in this park. I have no idea what he looked like but he smelt of spunk, beer and cigarettes. I fucked him in the ass, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first guy that night…” Pierre confessed. He had contemplated probing further about Chris’ parents, but he decided he could wait. He had all the time in the world to learn those answers. Whatever answers they were, they would be worth that wait.

  “That’s… dirty,” Chris didn’t have any other word. He was kind of disgusted and nonplussed simultaneously.

  “I got checked out after of course, but yeah… definitely the dirtiest. Ok, new question: what’s your best childhood memory?”

  Chris didn’t flinch like he usually did when questions probed too deep, “I don’t have one.”

  “What? Why not?” Pierre hadn’t meant to dig deep, he’d hoped it was just a light and pleasant conversation to talk about. A distraction from the “big problem”.

  “Because my parents weren’t very… good.” Chris answered hesitantly, “What’s yours?”

  “My dad took me out one day, took me to this rundown farm and he taught me how to shoot…” Pierre’s warmth was a little infectious and Chris wished he had a nice story to share too. But he didn’t. His childhood had been empty, cold and lonely. Something caught in his throat, words never said before. Something remarkable happened, developing before Chris could understand it. He opened up like a flower after the last touch of frost had finally left. “My father left when I was young, and my mother never forgave him. And I reminded her too much of him…”

  “Shit, I’m sorry.” Talk about supplexing down on a raw nerve!

  “They’re dead, and I don‘t think I even care…” the answer was so flat it took Pierre by surprise. They turned the corner and began heading back towards the car. It seemed the midnight stroll had done Chris the world of good, he seemed to be relaxing for the first time all day.

  “My mother was killed on Christmas Eve, some hitman shot her to death with a machine gun…” Chris didn’t need to picture the scene, he dreamt it often enough, “and my father. Well I killed him, after destroying his life…”

  The dark confession was greeted by a silence as Pierre respectfully absorbed this information. “You killed him because he left you with your mother?” he ventured.

  “He abandoned me. Started a new family, chose the mistress who was pregnant with his child…”

  “That was Jesse?”

  “Yeah…”

  Pierre saw a dark poetry in the confession, a wicked tale of revenge that no doubt had been meticulously planned. That didn’t surprise him at all, it was one of the qualities that he admired in the English boy. Dark will and determination.

  They were nearing the car-park. A black van had pulled up since they’d left the car.

  “How did you do it? Kill your father?”

  “I shot him, point-blank…”

  Pierre nodded because he didn’t know what to say.

  “Thank you,” he eventually said.

  “For what?”

  “For opening up to me. I know how hard that is, so I just want to say thank you…”

  Chris now felt uncomfortable, because he didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? He’d opened up and now someone was expressing their gratitude he had done so. A boy who seemed to like the dark murky depths of his soul. It was all rather nove
l, and strange.

  They’d reached the car park. They separated as Pierre took the lead, rooting in his pockets for his car keys.

  In a blur of moments too quick for a sluggish Chris to comprehend the van doors slid open and a man jumped out. Chris only saw a smudge of black before he saw the tall imposing man had a gun pointed at him.

  “Get in the van!” this stranger roared angrily.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  Chris hesitated.

  “Get in the fucking van!”

  “Wait!” Pierre tried to interject but instantly the gun was training on him.

  “Shut the fuck up,”

  “Leave him alone,” Chris found his voice.

  “Get in the van or I’ll kill your little friend,” the man sneered. His features were difficult to make out in the gloom of the car park, but the sound of his voice sounded Germanic.

  Chris snapped, he threw himself forward at the stranger. He butted his head swiftly against him but the guy was too strong, he staggered back for a moment before returning forward. There was a tussle on the spot as the man tried to overthrow Chris. Pierre joined the fray trying to wrest the gun from the assailant’s hands. The German was twice the weight of Chris and eventually he managed to swing him towards the van, before he could finish the job and wrench Chris inside it, he had to get rid of Pierre. He lashed out with a fist but the blow missed Pierre by a wide margin, infuriated he lashed out with a kick. This time he caught the boy and he toppled. Pierre hit the deck in a spray of gravel.

  There was no time to react to Chris’ lunge, he was suddenly being showered in swipes and claws aimed for his face. He had to stagger back to protect his eyes, he swung a fist and missed. Then he swiped out again, this time he caught the long haired boy. For a moment Chris thought he might black out, his vision went completely black and his grip on reality seemed to loosen. He hit the gravel with a thump.

  Chris heard the hammer of the gun being drawn, but then he only heard a grunt of pain. Pierre was already back on his feet and he’d socked him straight in the cheek. Chris tore off the floor and tackled the German backwards. They fought on the spot, both of them trying to overpower the other.

  There was a dull thwip suddenly, a sound of something slicing the air and then the German’s flesh exploded in Chris’ face. Blood and tissue sprayed out like a fine mist, and even in the gloom Chris could see a dark bullet hole. There had been no accompanying gunfire. Another shot hit the hitman, narrowly missing his own head. He ducked, landing with the German. Pierre scrambled to the floor, grabbed the pistol and was suddenly firing pistol rounds in the general direction of the mystery shooter. He fired five clean shots, then held back. There was no return of gunfire.

  Suddenly the silence of the park swallowed them up, the ferocity of the violence already lost to time. Chris’ ears were ringing from the gunfire, he turned to Pierre. The look of concentration on Pierre’s face was astonishing, he looked like a professional holding the gun before him.

  “Get him in the van…” Pierre snapped into life.

  Chris helped his boyfriend lug the cumbersome weight of the dead man into his own van.

  “You drive?” Pierre asked quickly.

  “Yeah…” Chris didn’t understand his line of questioning. Who the hell was this guy stood before him? Pierre had switched into a different mode, a completely surprising and efficient mode. Like he was a soldier and his training had kicked in.

  “Drive my car.” he threw Chris his keys. He climbed into the van. “Follow me,” he said as he pulled the door shut. Chris rushed to Pierre’s car, unlocked it and climbed in. He started the engine and soon both vehicles were leaving the car park. The roads were quiet and they were well away before the police arrived to investigate the sounds of gunfire.

  ---------------------------------------

  Pierre was leading Chris down the country lanes on the outskirts of Melun. He was finding Pierre’s car to be very light and unwieldy, like it had a mind of its own. A shopping cart sprang to mind. He kept a decent speed behind the black SUV and finally his brain cleared enough adrenaline away to think.

  Who was the German stranger with the gun? Another hitman? It occurred to Chris that he’d been undisturbed by any hitmen for quite the while. He shouldn’t have been so complacent, obviously the German had been stalking Chris for a while and had followed them both to the park. If only Chris hadn’t have been so wrapped up in the missing drugs dilemma he might’ve noticed, and then Pierre might not have been put in jeopardy.

  He considered it a lesson learnt, he needed to be more vigilant.

  Yet it seemed Pierre was very capable of handling himself. Before he could finish the train of thoughts Pierre turned on an indicator and the SUV pulled onto a dirt path. Chris followed after. In the faint light of the moonlit sky Chris spied a pair of buildings coming up. Where was Pierre leading him? They drove for a little longer and eventually pulled up to a barn house. A very large and impressive villa was only a short distance further on.

  Pierre didn’t cut the engine as he climbed out of the SUV.

  He came to Chris, “park my car over there. I’m just reversing this into the barn.” he pointed to a space near a tree. Chris was just about to argue when Pierre swiftly turned away. He set about opening a pair of large barn-doors. Chris parked the car, he climbed out and witnessed Pierre reverse the SUV into the barn. Automatic lighting came on and the inside revealed itself to look something like an abattoir. Pierre parked the van, he then hopped out. He gestured for Chris to come inside and he hit a lever that began to pull the doors closed.

  The term abattoir was definitely the closest one Chris had for the barn. Majority of it was lined with white tiles and concrete. Metal hooks and saws hung on railings overhead. Pierre opened the van door and grabbed hold of the dead man.

  “Help me get him out!” Pierre was struggling with the weight of him. Chris joined and the two of them dragged him out where he landed roughly on the tile floor.

  “What are we going to do?” Chris finally found his voice. He felt a little bewildered.

  “I didn’t wanna hang about for the police, did you?” Pierre’s tone was plain and nonchalant, like this was just a simple problem. Chris opened his mouth to argue, but he couldn’t find the words. Pierre was down on his knees and he began emptying the man’s pockets. A cheap disposable mobile phone, a set of keys, a wallet and a vape. Chris opened the wallet but inside was just cash, there was not a single shred of ID. Pierre noticed, “Who is this guy?”

  The two boys looked at the German’s face. It was very square and squashed up, with beady eyes and a flat nose. His neck completely consumed his chin. He was ugly before the two bullets tore into his face. The first shot created a hole that had been torn into his cheek just beneath his right eye, while the second bullet had perforated a clean whole through his Adam apple.

  “Do you know him?” Pierre turned away and walked towards the large vats on the furthest wall. They were made of plastic and filled with some form of liquid.

  “No,”

  “Then why did he want you to get in the van?” Pierre had noticed that Chris was the primary target. It was an audacious move for the German, to jump both of them together. Desperation? Over-confidence?

  Chris watched Pierre slowly prise a lid off one of the plastic vats. He then walked to the opposite wall and removed a pair of step ladders. “He was a hitman,” Chris answered.

  “I gathered that much, but why you?”

  “There’s a contract over my head…” Pierre froze mid-step.

  “There’s a contract on your head and you never thought to tell me?”

  “Oh I’m sorry, it hasn’t come up in conversation. It’s not like I introduce myself saying ‘hi I’m Chris, did you know I have a bounty on my head?’” Chris argued.

  “How long has it been in situ?”

  “Ever since I came to France…”

  Pierre went to a different wall and he removed a pair of rubber gloves from a li
ttle locker, he found a second pair.

  “So how many hitmen have come after you exactly?”

  “Four?Five? I don‘t know…” Chris shrugged, he was too tired and raw. He couldn’t concentrate enough to recall the exact number. It was all mushed together like his brain.

  “Jesus Christ… How did you survive?” Pierre was gob smacked, Chris gave him a long look.

  “It’s me remember…”

  “Good point,” Pierre nodded. “Here, put these on…” He tossed a pair of gloves to Chris. “We need to get him in that…” he pointed towards the vat. “Wait, you’re the John Doe killer…” Pierre halted stooped over the dead German.

  “Yeah,” Chris answered.

  “Fucking hell… A serial killer and a serial killer killer…” Pierre remarked jokingly.

  Chris ignored him but offered a slight bemused shrug.

  And the two boys set to the task. It was hard as the man weighed more than them, and hoisting a dead body up a set of stepladders and into a plastic barrel was not easy. Chris was tired and all he wanted to do was go to sleep.

  “Careful!” Pierre shouted as Chris rocked the barrel a little. “We don’t want any of that getting on us…”

  “What is it?”

  “Acid.”

  “We’re gonna melt the corpse?!” Chris sounded almost horrified, but he was more surprised than anything else.

  “Best way of getting rid of dead bodies…” Pierre confirmed.

  Chris stopped, “So how many dead bodies have you got rid of exactly?”

  Pierre stopped, turned to his partner and honestly didn’t have a number to hand. “Fifty?”

  “Fifty?! What the hell? Are you a fucking serial killer…?”

  “It’s a family business, people sometimes come to us when they need… a body to disappear…”

  “A family business?” Whoah, now who’s turn was it to air their skeletons!

  “Come on, ask me questions later. Lets get him in the vat…” Pierre urged him. It took some difficult manoeuvring but eventually they managed to roll the body into the vat. It didn’t, however, hiss and fizz like Chris expected. Pierre then set about putting the lid back on the vat, before returning the gloves and step ladder to their places.