by Ryan Green
They drove for about half an hour, still keeping up the light-hearted banter that had served them both so well back in the dance hall. In the lulls in the conversation, she stared at him. Drinking him in with her eyes. He was younger than her, more vital. Whatever reserves of energy people were born with hadn’t run so dry in him yet. When you compared a man like this to her husband, she wondered that it had taken her so long to divorce him. Angus was handsome, and he was smart enough that she didn’t feel like she was drawing teeth. He seemed to give exactly the right answer to every question. Even the ones that she didn’t ask out loud, like, ‘Is this going to happen again?’ and ‘Could this be the start of something real?’
It had been a long time since she had felt hopeful. Even when she was wrestling through the divorce it had always been lost in the minutiae of court dates and arguments and the ever-present dread about money. Hope was as new an experience to her as respect had been. She felt like she owed a lot to Angus before they had even begun, just for taking her out of the horrible place she had been in her mind. He pulled off the road somewhere up by Port Glasgow and into a quiet little lane where she could see a couple of other parked cars. One of them seemed to be rocking gently from side to side. She blushed despite herself. She knew what she had come here to do but now that she was facing it, it felt sordid.
Angus took her by the hand and led her to the back of the van. She had taken off her jacket already but now her handbag and shoes joined it on the passenger seat. He laid his hands on her and she felt them shaking. He was just as nervous as her! She smiled up at him, finding her courage again, and reached out to undo his belt buckle. He pulled away from her, almost startled. Then he reached down to undo his trousers himself. Feeling daring, Hilda stripped off her own top, exposing herself to a man who wasn’t her husband for the first time since teenage fumbles back in school. He reached out a hand and ran it down her shoulder, setting her shuddering all over again. She closed her eyes, savouring the sensation. Which was when he hit her.
The first blow was right in her jaw. It must have stunned her, because the next thing she knew he was on top of her, inside her, and her bra had been torn off. He was crushing her breast in his hand and it was that pain that had dragged her back up from the blissful state of knowing nothing. She drew in a lungful of air to scream and he hit her again, in the eye. She let out a yelp of pain but before she could get a word out he hit her again. And again. His fists fell on her in rhythm with his other movements, battering every bare bit of skin. He had his belt wrapped around one of his hands and he hit her twice as hard on that side when he didn’t have to worry about marking his knuckles. Each blow to the head set her ears ringing. Each blow to the body knocked the air from her lungs. He hit her and hit her until she couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. All that was left was the thumping of flesh against flesh. Then darkness.
Angus was thrilled—he had never beaten someone to death before. He was tired and aching by the time that he was done but it was a small price to pay for the rush of power he had felt each time his fist collided with that dozy old cow’s face. He had finished somewhere in the middle of the beating, but it had felt so good that he just kept on going. He could see the glint of her cheekbone through the bloody wound on her cheek. He could see the bruises already blossoming all over her pallid white flesh. A patina of colour that he had worked into her over the last hour. He had made her look like that. He had made her flesh swell and discolour with his own two hands. He groaned as his knuckles cracked. This sort of thing might have to be saved for special occasions in the future; it took its toll on him too. He was so tired and spent that he didn’t even consider the shovel in the closet. He hauled Hilda’s body out the side door and tossed her off the side of the road without another thought. Why bother putting any work into hiding her? It wasn’t like the police cared. They hadn’t even started asking questions about the other ones yet.
The next morning some children were sent to pick brambles across the road from the West Ferry caravan park where they had been spending their October holidays. They found the bloodied and beaten corpse of Hilda in the midst of the bushes, in the centre of a halo of her torn and discarded clothes. Her shoes, handbag and coat were missing. Kept as mementoes of Angus' most exciting kill to date.
The World’s End
Gordon and Angus headed out on one of their ‘fishing trips’ just like every other weekend, and as soon as they rounded the corner they started laughing. It wasn’t that they took any great pleasure in lying to Sarah, after all both of them had some measure of affection for her, but it was just so damned easy. Every time they told her the exact same story and even after the truth had filtered back to her about their exploits about town, she still just accepted the lie without a second thought, happy that her husband and brother were getting along so well when all her previous boyfriends had been on the receiving end of Gordon’s fists before too long. She was a forgiving soul and if the two men had anything like a functioning human heart between them they would have been riddled with guilt for treating her like a prop in their games.
They’d had good hunting in the nightclubs of Glasgow over the last few months, with Gordon getting off with a different lassie near enough every time Angus was there to work as his wingman. Angus had a charm to him that Gordon had never quite managed to muster. Even when Angus brought him along on decorating jobs you could see him working people over—it was like an art form. The people that he couldn’t win over he just navigated around without a flinch. Snubs that would have left Gordon in a rage washed over him like he just didn’t care what other people thought of him. Angus was everything that Gordon wanted to be. For his part, Angus appreciated having the extra set of hands around in case he needed to do some heavy lifting, and he liked having someone trustworthy around to tell whatever lies he had fabricated this time. As for the parts that he didn’t want any witnesses for at all—people screwed in private. As shameless as Gordon was with his hands all over the poor women in the nightclubs, even he took them someplace secluded before they really started going at it. There had been plenty of nights where he had left Gordon to find his own way home and gone off to do his own business, just as there had been plenty of nights when Gordon had copped off with some girl and left Angus to fend for himself. They might have been friends, in as much as either of them had friends, but they went out with a purpose that they intended on fulfilling and they wouldn’t let sentiment get in the way.
As good as Glasgow had been, they were starting to become familiar faces, and while Gordon didn’t mind his reputation, Angus didn’t need anybody connecting him with the missing girls that everybody seemed to be chatting about. It was less than an hour’s drive to the heart of Edinburgh, a place that was familiar enough for the men to feel confident but different enough that they would have fresh pickings. They left early enough that Gordon didn’t even complain about the length of time it took them to get through. He just sat in the passenger seat of the campervan, sipping on a tin of beer and working his way through a packet of cigarettes in comfortable silence.
The old town of Edinburgh looked like a different world, like you were going back through time to medieval times. All the concrete of the modern world faded away and the old stone of Arthur’s Seat seemed to loom up about you, carved into the vague shapes of buildings, but still fundamentally stone in a way that modern buildings weren’t. They got parked a few streets away from the main thoroughfare and walked up the Royal Mile in the late November drizzle. It would be time to start thinking about Christmas soon; some of the tourists and late-night shoppers wandering around them had already gotten the drop on their shopping, nipping into the whiskey shop for a special something or going further afield into the warren of side streets to seek out jewellery shops or other specialists. Angus would have to bring some extra money home if he wanted to keep Sarah and the brat happy. It would mean less time for trips like this, but it would only be a brief interruption to his schedule of worldly pleasures,
and if he was smart about it, he would only need to put on a little bit of extra decorating work and a little extra time out in the ice-cream van to cover up all the spare change he was picking up from knocking the crap out of people and stealing their purses, or the envelopes of cash that he got handed every time he delivered one of the more willing girls into the waiting arms of his pornographer buddy. It was hard to strike the balance between the money he was raking in from his criminal enterprises and the legal income that he needed to show to Sarah and the taxman. After years of his comings and goings being ignored by both, he was starting to get lazy about it, and he knew from his time inside that laziness would catch you out as surely as an eyewitness.
There was a longstanding tradition of a pub crawl down the length of the mile, and while both of them already had a little buzz going from the drive over from Glasgow, it was going to need topping off pretty promptly if they wanted to keep on partying all night. They made it to the top of the long slope and looked down. It was so steep that you could trip up and roll all the way to the old gates of the city if you were unlucky enough. Angus pretended to shove Gordon, drawing a cackle from the younger man, before the two of them ducked into the first of many bars that they were going to be visiting that evening. This high up the hill they didn’t even bother to look at the women, although there were already a few of them out and about. There were work nights out and the usual crop of day drinkers, but none of them were ready to go off for a tumble so early in the evening. There was a reason they had parked at the foot of the hill. It was like the stupid animal documentaries that Sarah put on for the kid because they were ‘educational’. Angus wasn’t going to go flinging himself into the midst of all the healthy specimens that could make a run for it, he would wait to pick off the weak stragglers at the end of the night. The ones who were too drunk or too young to know better.
It was a waiting game, but it was one that the men were more than familiar with. They kept themselves topped off with drinks and engaged in as much inane conversation as they could stomach. They spent enough time with each other that the silence was easy, but men sitting in silence drew attention, so they had to keep up the chatter. Sports usually handled most of the conversational heavy lifting, along with some shared acquaintances and stories about the family. When there was a long enough lull in the conversation, they got up and moved on to the next bar where they would start the cycle all over again. By the third pub, they had started to do a little bit of flirting, just to warm up. By the fourth, Angus was starting to put a little effort in, passing the friends of his chosen girls along to Gordon almost as an afterthought. If one of these girls had taken him up on his sly glances, then he probably wouldn't have said no. It wasn't the plan, but who gave a damn about a plan when the girl was right there?
Angus did his best to keep himself on the plateau where he was drunk enough that everything was fun but not so drunk that he slurred his words. Finding the balance over the course of an hour was easy enough but minute to minute there were some hiccoughs, which he blamed for his failure to get one of the girls on the hook. He skipped the next round of drinks and let the cold harsh edges of sobriety creep back into the periphery of his vision. All the passions that the booze damped down came back to torment him in moments like this, when his blood was up and there was no ready and willing outlet for his fury. He grabbed Gordon by the back of his collar and pulled him out of the conversation he had been inveigling himself into. He didn’t let his anger or disappointment show on his face, but the empty expression, the mask of humanity was almost worse for Gordon to look at. At least when Angus was angry an ending was in sight. When he was unhappy, it was completely out of Gordon’s control.
Gordon knew his brother-in-law had a troubled past, and he liked to imagine that some dark event in his history was what kept bringing misery back around on him rather than it just being some inherent flaw in his makeup. Sarah knew what Angus had done in the past, he was sure of that, but his sister was a good person and she was still happily married to the man, so it had to have been something that happened to Angus rather than something that he had done himself. That was the only thing that made sense to Gordon, even if it made him uncomfortable to think of Angus as anything less than he was right now: the pinnacle of everything a man might want to be.
Out in the street, the rain had finally petered to a halt and that seemed to be enough to bring Angus back up from his sudden pit of depression. He slipped a smile back onto his face and flung an arm around Gordon’s shoulders. It was going to be a good night, Angus could feel it in his bones. He knew it was going to be a good night because he was going to get exactly what he wanted. He always got what he wanted. He was entitled to satisfaction, just the same as every one of the other morons strolling down this street in the dark. They might find their satisfaction a bit easier, but it was the same thing and it wasn’t fair that he had to work so much harder than them before he could feel happy. Gordon just needed a couple of pints and a girl to lay hands on and he was content for the week. Wasn’t Angus allowed the same? He bumped Gordon with his shoulder, sending him staggering into the gutter with a yelp and a laugh. The two of them made their way down to the last pub of the night, the last one on the mile; The World’s End.
Inside, it was standing room only. The owners understood that volume drove their business and they were selling pints and bottom shelf liquor for only a pound. With two hundred bodies crammed into that tiny pub from dinner time onwards, they could afford to be generous. Angus let himself get drunker here, get sloppier than he would have dared earlier in the evening. By this time of night, it was expected, and it was easier to endure the constant bumping and elbows with a fine alcoholic haze over the whole thing. He spotted more than a few good prospects in the crowd, girls who were young enough or drunk enough to be viable entertainment for the rest of the night. He couldn’t say that he cared whether or not they were pretty, although it was always a bonus. The pretty ones started off more defensive though, and he wasn’t sure that he was in the mood for the thrill of the hunt tonight. Sometimes he just wanted simple satisfaction. Then the crowd parted, and he saw the two girls huddled around a tiny table at the back wall. Young, isolated and pretty enough that Gordon would be pleased. Angus pressed his way through the crowd and the wall of noise until he was close enough to give them his patented grin. ‘There aren’t many tables about, do you girls mind if we share?’
The prey looked nervous and sheepish, they weren’t sure what this was, whether it was a come on or some other sort of trick. That was good. He wanted them off balance. He wanted them confused. They couldn’t fend him off if they didn’t know what he was after. Angus gestured down at his work clothes. ‘No funny business girls, I’ve just been on my feet all day. I’ll get the next round in, shall I? What are you having?’
This was the only moment of real risk, leaving the slightly tipsy Gordon to watch over them and drive away any competition while he got the drinks. Gordon was reliable enough, but he hadn’t perfected his patter the way that Angus had. He couldn’t talk a girl who said no around to a yes, or a girl who said yes around to more. The best you could hope for with Gordon was that he could keep things neutral. He made it back to the table without much incident and discovered the three of them chatting away like old friends. Good work Gordon, he had earned a treat tonight. Angus slipped into the conversation like a scalpel, so sharp you didn’t even notice him cutting in. They went through all the usual topics that the men had heard a dozen times with the other women in the other bars—practice really did make perfect. The girls were laughing and smiling much more often than they weren’t, and the few missteps got covered with the next joke so quickly that the inebriated teenagers didn’t even have a chance to notice them. During one of their loudest outburst of giggles, Angus leaned in close and hissed in Gordon’s ear, ‘Which one do you want?’
Gordon shrugged. ‘Both look good to me, mate.’
Angus grinned. ‘You want both? You want to swap a
bout?’
Gordon looked intrigued. ‘You think they’d go for that, do you?’
Angus laughed, blending back into the girls’ conversation. ‘You think it is up to them?’
The last call bell rang not long after, but the girls showed no signs of being tired. They got a last drink in and when Gordon started fumbling towards inviting the girls somewhere else, Angus cut him off with another inane story. The time wasn’t right yet, they had to strike in the moment when the girls were at their most vulnerable, not when they were safe and warm in the back of a pub filled with friends. The crowd started to thin, and the barman kept glancing back at their table, which they took as a sign that it was time to move along. Still, Angus held back, and Gordon followed his lead. The girls were weaving and stumbling on the way to the door and Angus could feel the moment of opportunity approaching—one would stumble, and he would catch her and imply that they weren’t safe to get home alone. He could see it all lining up in his mind right now. As one of the girls—he never bothered to learn names—stepped out of the front door of the World’s End, the opportunity arose. She started to fall but even before Angus started to dash forward to catch her an alarm bell started ringing in the back of his mind and he turned away, as if lost in conversation with one of the other patrons. A policeman had stepped up and caught the girl, less than six feet from where Angus was standing. He could hear his blood roaring in his ears. He hadn’t been seen. He definitely hadn’t been recognised because there was no roar and outcry. He was still invisible. He was still safe. After the policeman had turned away he saw Gordon swoop in to take the girl by the arm and share a laugh with her. That was good. That was what Angus should have done if he hadn’t been so shaken by the sight of that uniform.
Angus offered his arm to the other girl like a gentleman and led her out into the street. He gave them a moment for the cold and the dark to really sink into their skin, for them to realise what they would be stepping off into all alone, then he asked. ‘Hey, we’re heading off to a party next. You two are coming, right?’
