by Wes Markin
His skin looked loose, hanging free, and she closed her eyes to stop herself staring at him. Another day, trapped in here with him, and he would start to bloat. Then the odour would really kick in and the insects would make an appearance.
She started to cry. What could she do? Severance had shown her the murder weapon. Silence was her only option. If the mutilated corpse beside her didn’t show her that he meant business, nothing would.
She closed her eyes and remembered the day her father had emerged from jail. This time, the first time, he’d gone to jail, she’d forgiven him. Why? Because she adored him. Always had. She’d clutched him hard outside the jail walls. Begged him to be her father again. Accepted his countless apologies - that he’d loved the boy, but knew he’d done wrong.
‘Do you still love him?’ She’d asked.
‘Of course not,’ he’d lied.
She opened her eyes.
Why? Dad, why? Why couldn’t I be enough? Why did you have to go back?
She thought of the bloody knife, the note pinned to the plastic coffin, and his disfigured face.
Why did you create this monster?
A sudden thought occurred to her.
She lifted her knees, so they were just beneath the lid, and shuffled partway down. When she was within reach, she manoeuvred her hand over the corpse’s destroyed genitalia and clutched his jeans. She tugged them up his legs to the point she could investigate the pockets.
She pulled out a wallet first. A collection of credit cards and a couple of points cards for various supermarkets. All labelled with the name: Alex Drake. There were also a couple of VIP cards for various strip bars.
She continued to root through his pockets but could only find a collection of keys. When she brought them up to her face to examine them, adrenaline shot through her.
A red Swiss Army knife hung from the keyring.
The young lady doused in perfume seemed timid. She stood at Amanda Werrell’s office door with her face lowered slightly, and although she smiled, there was a slight tremble in her lips.
‘Come in, Ms Lang, I’m so glad you could make it today.’ Werrell stepped to one side, allowing her visitor the space to enter the office. ‘I know it isn’t under the best circumstances, but I’m sure we can get to the bottom of what’s bothering Alicia.’
Ms Lang entered the office, clutching her pink handbag tightly.
Werrell lifted her glasses and rubbed her eyes as she rounded to the other side of the desk, concerned that the mother of this child would see the evidence of her earlier tears. That would be unacceptable. Her position as head of this school was a strong one. She should appear unshakeable.
They both took their seats and then Werrell pointed at the phone on her desk. ‘Would you like me to phone through for a coffee, or a cup of tea, perhaps?’
Ms Lang shook her head.
‘Well,’ Werrell said, ‘let me know if you change your mind.’
She nodded.
Werrell opened up the folder. ‘Over a fortnight ago, I suspended Alicia for two days for swearing at a senior member of staff. We spoke on the phone about it and you seemed to accept our decision?’
She nodded again.
‘Well, things had been going smoothly. I received a couple of glowing reports from Maths and French. Unfortunately, this morning, it happened again. She swore at another member of the senior team.’
The mother didn’t respond.
‘Sorry, Ms Lang, did you just hear what I said? It happened again. Your daughter swore at Mrs Friars after being asked why she’d been sent out of her English classroom.’
Still, no response. The situation was beginning to feel rather peculiar to Werrell.
‘She is in isolation, and I am going to issue another suspension. Can you please indicate your feelings over this matter?’
Ms Lang pointed at her mouth and slowly turned her head from side to side.
‘Sorry, I don’t understand…’
From Werrell’s desk, Ms Lang picked up a pile of post-it notes and a pen. She started to write.
The phone on the desk began to ring. With her heart thumping in her chest, Werrell picked it up and placed it to her ear. ‘Yes?’
‘Sorry, it’s Clark, we just wanted to let you know we have Alicia in reception, when you’ve finished your meeting with Ms Lang—’
‘Clark, what did Ms Lang say to you at reception?’
‘Well, nothing, but I guess you’d know that by now, wouldn’t you? Dentist has left her mouth a little worse for wear – she communicated with me using handwritten cards…’
Ms Lang handed a post-it note to Werrell.
The handwriting was messy but she was able to read it: im not ms lang
The phone slipped from Werrell’s hand.
10
YORKE GAVE A salute, as he always did, to Dionysus, God of Wine, pictured above the door to The Wyndham Arms. To say that Dionysus looked like the fawn from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wouldn’t be inaccurate. This pub housed the Hopback brewery, responsible for the finest tipple known to man – Summer Lightning.
To his disappointment, Yorke found Harry Butler, ridiculously early, in the front parlour. So much for making this my territory, he thought.
Harry was chewing his way through a pint. Yorke suspected it was Crop Circle, Harry’s favourite. A clean flaxen-coloured beer brewed with flaked maize. Yorke chewed his lip. The smell of beer was strong in here. It was always a real test of his willpower.
‘Sorry, Mike, should have made it a coffee shop. I just remembered that you would never drink on duty.’
‘If you’d left your phone on, Harry, I might have been able to remind you of that.’
When Yorke sat opposite Harry, he was surprised to see how dramatically his hair had thinned. His face was also gaunt, and his eyes sunken.
‘Before you ask … chemotherapy,’ Harry said.
‘I’m sorry, Harry.’
‘Don’t be. Had a noticeably low count of something or other last check they did. It’s going well enough.’
‘Well enough for you to drink that?’ Yorke pointed at his pint.
‘It’s always going well enough for that!’ Harry smiled. ‘There’s a time when you would have agreed with me on that one.’
‘That time was long ago.’ Yorke looked at his watch. ‘Can we make this quick?’
‘Why? You came early – it’s not even one o’clock yet.’
‘I’m short on time. The fan is wallowing in a lot of shit right now.’
‘Congratulations by the way.’
Yorke looked confused.
‘The ring on your finger.’
‘Thanks, Harry, but really, can we push this forward?’ Despite his need, his desperate need, to be away from the man who had failed him, guilt prickled him, and not just because of the cancer. Harry had lost his wife in violent circumstances, and nobody was ever coming back from that experience. Not properly. ‘Don’t take it personally, Harry … it’s just time I don’t have.’
‘I get that,’ Harry said. ‘I remember it well. One of the hazards of the job …’ He took a mouthful of beer. ‘I miss every one of those fucking hazards.’
‘William Proud?’ Yorke leaned forward. ‘You drop that name on me … you might as well drop a bomb on me.’
‘Remember I told you a long, long time ago, Mike, that I’d put it right?’
‘And I told you that I didn’t want you to, remember that?’
Harry reached down beside him and lifted an A4 sized brown paper envelope. ‘Then I guess you won’t be interested in these then?’
Yorke reached out and Harry pulled them back. Yorke tried to keep his voice down. He failed. ‘Not now, Harry. Seriously. Not right bloody now.’
‘Michael, it’s been a fair old time!’
It was Kenny, a seventy-plus local legend, who frequented most of the Salisbury public houses, most days, and was considered a good-luck charm by nearly all the landlords. If old Kenny stopped by
for a pint, takings were sure to increase before the night was through.
Kenny swayed at the end of their table. The last dregs of beer were sloshing around in the bottom of his pint glass. And fortunately, thought Yorke, not down the old man’s cords as witnessed on previous occasions.
‘Has work been murder?’ Kenny smiled. He wagged his finger. ‘Get it, murder?’
‘The old ones are the best, Kenny,’ Yorke said.
‘That’s what everyone keeps saying about me.’
Yorke faked laughter. ‘I’ve been busy. You? Kenny? How are you?’
Kenny took a step back, held his arms out and twirled. ‘Well, I’m still fucking here, aren’t I?’
Yorke smiled and looked over at the envelope in Harry’s hands. Harry was staring right at Yorke rather than Kenny.
‘And the secret of my success is …’ Kenny slurred with a thick Wiltshire accent. ‘Go on, what do you reckon it is?’
Yorke said, ‘Fuelled by the Lightning?’
‘Nah … well … maybe that’s part of it … rather, it’s the freedom I allow myself.’ He stroked his forehead. ‘In here. I don’t carry anything that doesn’t need to be carried. A friend of mine says I’m a minimalist.’
Yorke thought a minimalist was someone who kept his possessions to a minimum, but he chose not to challenge Kenny’s train of thought.
‘I learned a long time ago Michael that even the smallest thing.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Can make you go boom! So free your mind. That’s the secret. Always has been and always will be.’ He smiled, opened his hand to bid farewell, and turned to leave.
The smallest things can make you go boom!
How true that sounded right now. How long had he been carrying this? His dead sister? Could he have even saved her? Had he not tried so many times before she died?
Free your mind.
He looked up at the door out of the Wyndham Arms, and considered standing up, and walking away.
Then, he looked back at Harry and said, ‘Give me the sodding envelope.’
He tore open the envelope and emptied the photographs on the table.
Every photograph was of William Proud – his sister’s killer.
‘He’s back,’ Harry said, ‘and I’m going to kill him for you.’
The young woman’s lips twitched, and a tic flared up on the left side of her face. She clutched the handbag so tightly in her lap that her bony hands resembled the legs on a hunched tarantula.
‘Let me help you,’ Werrell said, showing her hand to the woman, before moving it slowly over the table. Just when it seemed that Werrell would succeed in running a reassuring palm down her arm, the woman thrust her chair back and bared her teeth.
Werrell pulled her hands back and held them in the air. ‘I only want to help.’
The woman clicked open her handbag and reached inside. Werrell took a deep breath and stood. ‘I think we should—’
The last word stuck in her throat when she saw the knife the woman was holding. Then, before she had decided how to react, the woman was on her feet. She cast the handbag aside, drew the knife above her shoulder, and lunged.
Werrell managed to sidestep, but the tip of the blade tore through her cardigan and into her shoulder. The knife didn’t stick, and the woman floundered on the table. Werrell raised her eyes to the office door. She circled the desk and scrambled across the office. The wound in her shoulder was burning.
She practically tore the door off its hinges and threw herself out the room, spinning as she went, so she could grab the handle.
The woman was already on her feet, knife raised again, and charging.
Werrell slammed the door closed and listened to the knife thud into the wood. She looked down at the lock on the door and swore. The fucking key was on her desk.
Werrell gripped the handle in both hands as her assailant tugged at the door. Despite appearing frail, the woman was anything but. The door came ajar. Werrell took a deep breath and wrenched back with all her might. The door closed. But the driven woman dragged it ajar again.
As they wrestled with it, the burning in Werrell’s shoulder intensified, and she gasped when she glanced down to see the arm of her cardigan glistening with blood. The knife must have bitten deeper than she’d realised. She was bleeding freely.
Even though her hands were drenched in sweat, she maintained her grip, but she knew that once that blood reached her hands, it was game over. She’d slip free and her assailant would be on her.
‘HELP! HELP!’
The door opened.
‘FUCKING HELP ME!’
The door banged close.
Recent budget cuts had left her school short on staff and, as she glanced down the bare open corridor, she cursed the government.
Her best bet was the reception, to her right, and the police officer that those detectives had promised.
‘AMANDA?’
She looked up. Pauline Thompson was leaning over the second-floor balcony, looking straight down at her.
‘PAULINE, HELP ME. THERE’S A FUCKING MAD WOMAN WITH A KNIFE IN HERE!’
Several students came alongside Pauline, mirroring their teacher’s same gormless expression.
‘NOW!’
Pauline finally responded and bolted for the stairs. She could hear a build-up of nervous chatter. Children and teachers were emerging from the classrooms above. She looked at the reception. The door was still closed. ‘SOMEONE TELL RECEPTION!’
The office door opened further with each aggressive tug, and Werrell caught a glimpse of wide eyes and bared teeth. ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’
She managed to close the door, but now her blood had found her palm. When the woman pulled again, the door handle skidded free.
The woman flew backwards. Werrell seized her moment. She turned and ran for the reception. Above, she could see Pauline had reached the first floor, and was just starting on the second flight of stairs.
‘THE RECEPTION!’ Werrell pointed forward as she sprinted. Behind Pauline, other members of staff followed, continually shouting back up to the balconies, instructing the children to keep their distance and remain where they were.
Despite the chaos, Werrell could hear the breathing of the woman behind her. Shit. She must have been close. She couldn’t look. If she did, she’d lose ground and then she wouldn’t just be hearing the bitch’s breath, she’d been feeling it on the back of her neck. She gritted her teeth. Reception was only a hundred yards or so away.
And then the most wonderful thing happened. The reception door opened and the detective from earlier was standing there with wide eyes.
She was saved. Fucking saved. That vile woman was going to jail for stabbing her.
She glanced up. Children’s faces, on both floors, were looking over.
Then she tripped.
Yorke kept his voice to a whisper. It was early and quiet in the pub, but there was still the barman to consider. This was one conversation that mustn’t be overhead.
‘Have you lost your mind, Harry? You just informed me of your intention to commit a crime.’
‘Yes, on your behalf.’
Yorke struggled not to explode. ‘What the hell are you talking about? On my behalf?’
Harry finished his pint in two gulps and threw his hands out over the photographs of William Proud, and dragged them back. ‘You’ve lived without justice for too long, Mike, because of me. Let me get it for you.’
‘How are you going to get justice from the inside of a prison cell, Harry?’
‘I’ll never see the inside of a prison cell, Mike, look at me!’ He dragged his t-shirt down from the collar to reveal his chest. His ribcage was bursting through his sallow skin.
‘The chemotherapy … you said it was working!’ Yorke said.
Harry released his t-shirt. ‘Stopped it months ago. Too busy…’ He grabbed a handful of photographs and shook them. ‘Finding this fucker.’
Yorke massaged his temples. ‘This is lunacy.’
‘Yes,’ Harry said, ‘it is. But I’m dying, and before I die, I want to make it right.’
Yorke took a deep inhalation through his nose. ‘All of this for my forgiveness?’
‘I don’t want your forgiveness. I wouldn’t expect it. My actions have tortured you.’
‘So it’s just for you, then? A selfish man’s last selfish act.’
‘Is that really how you see it, Mike? Could it also be because this fucker doesn’t deserve to draw breath? He’s destroyed many lives, and it’s time for it to stop.’
‘You are not walking out of here to kill a man. Not with my knowledge and complicity. It does not matter who that man is … I won’t let it happen.’
‘You will, Mike, you have no choice.’
‘Listen to yourself! You have always had a tendency towards the ridiculous, but this is a whole new ball park. I’m going to arrest you…’
‘And I’m telling you now that if you arrest me, you will never know William Proud’s location. He’s slippery, as well you know, and he currently resides under a different name. It has taken me years to find him. Do you really want him in the wind again? If you arrest me, Mike, I will not give you his address, I will die with it in custody.’
‘That doesn’t sound like atonement to me!’
‘If you cannot grant a dying man’s wish then you don’t deserve it. It seems you are not the man I thought you were.’
‘If you truly knew me, Harry, you would know where I draw the line. Accepting murder? I mean, why are you even telling me this if you’ve already made up your mind?’
‘Because, tonight, both William Proud and I will disappear from your life forever and I wanted you to know that. I never want you to wonder again where the man who killed your sister, and the friend who betrayed you, are. You don’t deserve to live in doubt. My last action is to give you closure.’
Gardner took in the scene quickly: many students looked down from the two balconies above; several members of staff were scurrying down both flights of stairs; Amanda Werrell was kneeling on the floor; and the young woman, who had walked nervously past her and Yorke a short while ago, was wielding a knife at shoulder height. ‘STOP! POLICE!’
