The Needle House

by Robin Leslie Roughley

  He frowned, the knife eased away David's throat. 'Why should I care if she hates me, I won't be around to worry about things like that?'

  Cathy tried to fathom the meaning, but she couldn't take her eyes from his, couldn't risk breaking the contact. 'If you leave David alive then she'll question all that's happened, it will force her to see the truth and that's what you want isn't it. You want Jenna to be aware of how you were treated; you need her to know that it wasn't your fault.'

  'Don't you dare try and lay the blame on us,' Susan spat.

  Cathy turned to look at her, she was perched on the edge of the sofa her hands gripping her knees, a look of cold defiance in her eyes.

  'Someone has to take responsibility for all this…'

  'Yes, and it's him,' she pointed a quivering finger. 'Nobody made him kill those people, he did that by himself, and I resent you saying otherwise.'

  Cathy felt like crossing to the sofa and slapping her face until her hand went numb. 'I…'

  Wickham laughed. 'Save your breath, she's like me, she'll never listen,' he turned away, Cathy saw him draw his arm back.

  Then an apparition came hurtling from the darkened kitchen, grubby clothes showering filthy water as it sprinted into the room, the face black with mud, eyes wide and glaring. Wickham released the hair, David's head bounced off the floor. He snapped upright, the knife lashing out in a wicked arc. Lasser spun away to the left, for a couple of seconds he had his back turned to the killer and then he twisted and swung the bat. Wickham tried to duck beneath the blow but Lasser compensated, the wood slammed into the side of his head with a sickening crunch. Instantly, the knife clattered to the floor and he staggered to the side, one hand shot out to the floor to save him from falling. Lasser waited, resisting the urge to dash in, somehow knowing that Wickham was waiting for him to do exactly that. Instead, he reached down and picked up the knife, he saw the man's eyes narrow as if he were suddenly re-evaluating his options. Blood spewed down the side of his face, his right eye swollen shut. When Wickham looked towards Cathy, Lasser saw the void in his good eye. Any form of revenge or justification was gone, swamped by the basic urge to kill. When he began to scramble towards her, Lasser shot forward, slamming the knife into his side, the blade angled upward sliding in beneath the ribs.

  Wickham snapped his head around; his hands grabbed the front of Lasser's sodden shirt, ringing it between his fists, the water making a pitter-patter sound as it fell to the floor.

  Lasser tried to push him away but Wickham clung on, still peering up into his face and then all notion of being dissipated, he slammed to the floor. Lasser looked down at the slumped figure; he could hear the grandfather clock in the corner, counting off the seconds, feel his own heart clattering in his chest.

  When Susan began to scream, he fell to his knees, head slumped forward as the sweat and rain fell from his face mingling with the blood.

  106

  Jenna looked out across the fields; the corn had turned from golden to a sap-dead brown, a warm breeze rippled through the crop, the sound of whispering voices, a conspiracy.

  'How have you been?' Fossey asked.

  They were standing on the hillside; the needle house was a dark smudge in the distance.

  She shrugged; dark circles clung beneath her eyes, her skin taut and pale with strain.

  Fossey unscrewed the lid from the bottle and took a sip of water. 'You want some?'

  'No thank you.'

  'You know, Jenna; none of this was your mother's fault.'

  For the first time she looked at him, her eyes had the look of someone working through things internally as if everything else were being done automatically. 'She still won't tell me everything, even after all that's happened.'

  'Maybe it's because there's nothing more to tell?'

  'I can't believe anything they say,' she looked away.

  'What about your grandad, is he settled now he's back home?'

  She gave a slight shrug. 'He's OK I suppose.'

  'Have you tried talking to him?'

  'What's the point, every time I go into his room he pretends to be asleep. I mean, it's pathetic.'

  Fossey slid the bottle back into his backpack. 'You know people keep secrets for all kinds of reasons…'

  'I realise that but usually people don't die, do they? I mean, they didn't deserve to be killed and if he'd been honest from the start then the police would have found him sooner.'

  'Not necessarily, he did what he thought was right at the time, how could he have known what was going to happen?'

  'That's what she says.'

  In the distance, Fossey could see a car snaking its way along the lane, occasionally it would vanish behind the trees only to reappear a few seconds later. 'Maybe he could have done more but you can't blame him for Wickham's actions, he was a sick man with a skewed view of the world…'

  'Yes, but why was he like that? He told me about being left to fend for himself,' her voice began to rise in anger. 'Can you even imagine what it must have been like for him and then finding out he had a family so close, who didn't give a shit about him?'

  'Nobody's saying it was easy but lots of individuals have hard lives, Jenna.'

  She shook her head and turned back to the field. 'It's like I've never really known any of them…'

  'What about your father, he knew nothing about any of this?'

  'I've tried to talk to him,' her voice was heavy with anguish. 'But he just seems different.'

  Fossey placed his hands on top of the wooden gate. 'He's like you, Jenna, he's been through a lot and it takes time to come to terms with what's happened.'

  'He doesn't speak to her about it, I heard her trying to explain, and he just walked out of the room. I mean, they don't even sleep together anymore, Dad just comes in late and goes straight up to the spare room.'

  Fossey placed a hand on her shoulder; she looked towards him her eyes shining with bewilderment.

  'I know this is hard but until you start talking then none of it will get any better.'

  'I don't care anymore, I just want to get my results, and then I'm going to move away to university.'

  Fossey could imagine her trying to escape the past, yearning for a life that had been changed forever. 'Independence is a good thing but if you leave without getting this sorted then moving away won't work. I mean, your grandad's already had one scare, do you really want to leave without building bridges?' It was a cheap shot, amounting to nothing less than emotional blackmail.

  Jenna wiped a hand across her haunted eyes. 'How can I build bridges when he won't even talk to me, I tried, but it's always there, this thing that he can't or won't discuss, I mean, how can we ever get back to how we used to be?'

  'You probably can't, but you have to reach some kind of understanding; he can't talk about what happened because he's too ashamed. He let you down, in his eyes he knows exactly what he should have done but how can you turn the clock back, Jenna, you just can't do it?'

  'I know that but…'

  'He's also carrying the guilt for what happened to the victims and that's a terrible thing for anyone to burden themselves with.'

  Just for a second her eyes lit up with a kind of hope. 'Maybe you could talk to him, perhaps he might open up to you?'

  'I seriously doubt it, his only concern is you, he hasn't got the energy to think about anything else. He needs to know that you understand…'

  'But that's just it, I don't!'

  'Then start preparing the barriers.'

  She frowned, over her left shoulder the sun shimmered in yet another clear, blue sky interlaced with the vapour trail from a high-flying jet. 'I don't understand.'

  'If you can't see a way to get past all this, then you have to get used to the idea of living a life separate from your family. In order to do that you need to distance yourself from them emotionally. You can still talk to them but avoid looking for answers because there are none. Just keep things ticking over until you manage to get to away.' Fossey shrug
ged. 'It might make things easier for you in the long run.'

  She looked up at him and frowned. 'What do you mean easier?'

  'Look, Jenna, I'm not going to lie to you. Your grandad will be lucky to live another…'

  'Don't say it.'

  He held up a hand. 'I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. He's an old man, who's had a serious heart attack, what are the odds on him living another five years?'

  'You don't know that.' she sounded distraught, a flush of anger rising in her pale cheeks.

  'To ease the pain, keep them all at arm's length, you'd be surprised but it's a common defence mechanism. In fact, my own father used it when my mum was dying with cancer, you could see it happening, and he wasn't a bad man. He looked after her for as long as he could but as soon as she went into the hospice, he stopped visiting, it was as if he was trying to forget all about her. I remember he took all her clothes to the charity shop, sold her jewellery, he did everything to make the transition easier.'

  'Did it work?'

  'Of a fashion, he got on with his life; in fact, he married again which was good.'

  Jenna squinted up at him. 'But?'

  'But he always regretted what he'd done, they'd been together for twenty-eight years and he fell at the last hurdle and to be honest I don't think he ever forgave himself.'

  Suddenly an image leapt into her mind, she was a couple of years older ensconced in a small room on some nameless campus, taking her first steps on the way to independence, trying to blot out the family she had left behind. What would she do when the inevitable phone call came, her mother on the other end trying to explain that her grandad had passed away in his sleep? The clarity of the premonition took her breath away, the realisation that she was falling into the exact same trap that had caught him out forty years earlier. Keeping secrets that ultimately ate away at your soul and left you alone and broken.

  'Could you do me a favour, Patrick?'

  'Anything.'

  'Could you take me home?'

  Lasser walked over to the table, two packets of crisps clenched between his teeth, a glass in each hand, he opened his mouth, and the bags dropped, Cathy catching them both before they hit the table.

  'They didn't have smoky bacon, so I got you chicken.'

  She smiled. 'That's fine.'

  He placed her glass of wine onto the table and then slid onto the bench. The beer garden was quiet, apart from a family of four eating burgers and chips from the 'two for a tenner' menu.

  'So, when do you start back?' she asked.

  'Next week.'

  'I can't believe it's taken them so long.'

  Lasser sipped his drink, it tasted flat and sour. It was strange, but it didn't matter what he had to drink or eat it all tasted the same. 'Yeah well, you know what it's like.'

  'But suspending you, it was ridiculous.'

  'Full pay, so I'm not complaining,' he quipped, though his eyes looked troubled.

  She looked closely at him, he looked tired as if his sleep had been broken which was hardly surprising, God alone knew she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept through without waking bathed in sweat, her arms and legs thrashing under the duvet.

  'I looked for you at the funeral.'

  DCI Simms had been buried three weeks earlier, Lasser had every intention of attending, but in the end, he'd a run-in with a bottle of vodka that had left him bedridden for two days. He had woken on the morning of the funeral, vomited in the toilet and crawled back to bed. It was hardly the honourable thing to do, but in the end, he decided that turning up reeking of booze with a weeks' worth of stubble would hardly have gone down well.

  'I decided it best if I stayed away.'

  'I can understand that.'

  'So, what's been happening while I've been away?' Lasser asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  'Just the usual, Spenner got a black eye trying to tackle someone running from Tesco without paying for a box of Carling. I wouldn't mind but he was off duty.'

  'He'll go far that lad.'

  'By the way they dropped the charges against Michael Jones.'

  Lasser sipped at his tepid beer. 'Good, the boy's been through enough, what about his mother?'

  'You didn't see the papers?'

  'To tell you the truth, Cathy, I've tried to avoid them.'

  'She was front cover for a couple of days, now it's all James Wickham.'

  'That's hardly surprising.'

  'And what about you?'

  'I'm fine,' he lied. 'I rang Fossey yesterday, he said Ronnie's home from hospital.'

  'And Jenna?'

  Lasser shrugged. 'She's still trying to come to terms with what happened, he said she blames her family for a lot of what went on.'

  Cathy took a sip from the glass. 'I suppose it's hard finding out you had a serial killer for an uncle.'

  'The trouble is I keep looking for someone to blame, but I don't think it would have made any difference if Ronnie had come clean sooner. I mean, how was he to know what his son was doing?'

  'We know who to blame, boss, Wickham was a madman…'

  'I spoke to his commanding officer, according to him; Wickham was an honourable man with an outstanding military record…'

  Cathy sipped her wine. 'Well, he's hardly going to say he was a raving madman.'

  Lasser tapped his cigarette on the table, he was trying to cut down, the nicotine patch on his arm was itching, and the skin around the square plaster looked red and inflamed. 'It makes you wonder though, I mean, if half of what Fossey said was true, then James Wickham had a shit upbringing…'

  'I seem to remember you telling me that lots of people have reasons to hate the world, but it doesn't turn them into killers.'

  Lasser smiled. 'You're right, maybe I've been spending too much time with the shrink.'

  Cathy pulled a cigarette free from the pack.

  'I thought you didn't want to get back into old habits.'

  'I just fancy one, is that a crime?'

  Lasser held up his hands. 'Listen, do you fancy grabbing a curry.'

  'What now?' she looked out at the sun shimmering on the tarmac car park, the idea of tackling a Vindaloo in the middle of the afternoon seemed a daunting prospect.

  'I was thinking maybe tonight?'

  Cathy looked at him in surprise. 'You mean like a proper date, kind of thing?'

  Lasser could feel his cheeks burning and it had very little to do with the sun. 'Well yeah, if that's OK?'

  'I'd like that.'

  For the first time in weeks, Lasser smiled. She looked stunning; her black hair had been let loose spilling across her shoulder in waves, her face, and arms tanned by the sun, blue eyes bright in the shade of the canopy.

  'I never thanked you, did I?' she looked at him through a cloud of smoke.

  'That's because there was never any need.'

  She rolled the glass between her hands. 'That's twice you've saved my life.'

  He dragged up a grin. 'That's why they pay me the big bucks.'

  She looked at him and shook her head. 'What a tosser.'

  A moment later, they were both laughing.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed The Needle House, then please feel free to contact me at

  rob-roughley@live.co.uk,

  visit my website at http://www.robinroughley.co.uk/

  or my author page at Amazon Robin Roughley.

  Many thanks for taking the time to read the novel and I hope you come back for more.

  Huge thanks to Val for all her hard work in hammering the book into shape, without her it would have remained a mess.

 

 

 
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