‘And you think she’ll thank you for nosing through all this personal stuff when she comes home. She’ll go berserk.’ Clare sat on the other side of the bed and began packing all the bits of paper back into the box. ‘Yuck and gross. Susan drew some weird pictures. That one’s creepy.’ She threw the picture of the incubus on the woman’s chest back in the blue box and slammed the lid down. ‘There. We need to put this back where it came from ASAP.’ She placed the box on the bedside table and lay next to her mum.
‘Do you really think she’ll be mad at me?’
‘If you put the box back tomorrow, she won’t know.’ Clare began shuffling around.
‘You okay.’
She pulled out a string of red liquorice. ‘This yours?’
‘No, it was in Susan’s box. We best put that back too.’
Twenty-Three
Friday, 15 November 2019
A chunk of wood falls from above as I emerge from the dark, dragging the plastic sheeting across the fallen wooden beams. Snapped pool cues and broken chairs adorn the floor. The skylight has long shattered and only the moon’s milky light leads the way. I don’t use a torch here, it’s not like the back end of the building where the snug is, cocooned away and backing onto a thicket of unruly shrubbery.
Long past its use-by date, the building has been gifted back to nature and nature has claimed so much of it already. The moss is alive and adorns the corners of every room. Damp penetrates every wall. Cold, dank and unloved, just like me since you three ruined my life, especially you Susie.
‘Not far now,’ I whisper as I drag the body over the threshold, through sludge and tree branches, sweat mixing with the dust ingrained within the lines of my face. ‘Nearly there.’
I stand still as I hear footsteps crunching ahead. Dropping the body, I pull the knife from my back pocket and then exhale as you stand in the moon’s light. ‘Finally. I could do with a hand. Grab the other end.’
Twenty-Four
Every step crunched in the almost frozen grass. It had been a chilly night, so chilly Mike had made sure his boys were both wrapped up as much as they could be for their morning walk. His wife deserved a little time to herself to get up and dressed and Dobby their Old English sheepdog deserved a brisk walk alongside the River Arrow. Mike had spent many a sunny day there fishing with the boys. He loved living where they did as it had everything a young family needed. ‘Keep away from the water,’ he called out as Billy was trying to poke the river’s edge with a stick. At five, the twins had already learned to swim but Mike knew all too well what freezing cold water could do to a person. ‘Dobby. Dobby!’
He listened for rustling. With Dobby’s huge frame, he was hardly a dainty flower, especially as his wife constantly fed him scraps and treats.
‘Daddy, I can see him. He’s over there playing in the bushes.’
Mike uncoiled the dog lead. Maybe it was time they headed back and had some breakfast before school. Time flew on their little walks. ‘Dobby. Come on, boy.’ He whistled and waited for the dog to respond.
The dog’s booming barking almost shook the ground.
‘I’ll get him, Daddy,’ Billy said.
Dillon carried on walking along the path as Billy snapped twigs and cracked leaves to hurry to Dobby. As he had done on many occasions, Billy would gently guide the dog back by his collar. Dobby had once been good at coming back and responding to commands but he’d slowly been losing his senses. That dog now sensed nothing, being almost blind and almost deaf. Mike shivered knowing soon his two little boys would be exposed to the end of life cycle for the first time. Mike bought Dobby a week after he bought his first home, long before getting married and having the boys. He would miss Dobby more than anything when the time came. He shook those thoughts away, Dobby wasn’t going anywhere for ages yet. He may not come to the call and continuously bumped into things, but he still had that smiley look about him, if dogs had smiley looks. Mike nodded and smiled to himself. Dobby was definitely a smiler.
‘Daddy, Dobby won’t come.’
As soon as Mike heard the dog growling, he ran. ‘Just step away from him, I’m coming.’ A branch slapped Mike on the forehead as he ran the gauntlet, over deadwood, trying not to slip on iced-over leaves and moss. Holding his hands out, he destroyed the jewelled web that a spider had spent so long creating. Billy was standing slightly away from Dobby, his little blue hat just covering his fine black eyebrows. His linked mittens both on, keeping his little hands cosy. Mike leaned in to clip the lead onto Dobby’s collar and gently pulled the dog back. Dobby refused to budge. ‘Dobby,’ Mike yelled, slowly losing his temper. He had to get back now. Time, which they seemed to have so much of in the early morning, was fast running out. He and his wife had to be at work soon and he wasn’t going to allow Dobby to make the whole family late. He tugged again. The dog continued barking as Mike pulled him back. ‘You’re in my bad books today, Dobby. Don’t think you’ll get any treats when we get home.’
Dillon ran after them along the trodden path, staying back a little as Mike held his hand up. ‘Daddy, can we go home, I’m hungry?’
Mike’s gaze followed Billy’s and rested on the leg that was sticking out of the bushes. Mottled, pale flesh with a bluish twinge covered the bottom half of a naked body. ‘Get back, boys – now!’ He couldn’t let his children see the body but one look back at Billy said it all. Billy’s light brown cheeks had a rosy tinge to them only a moment ago but now that healthy tinge had gone and the little boy’s gaze remained fixed on the man as he stared with his mouth slightly open.
The children ran back towards their father, Billy crying and Dillon constantly asking him what the matter was. Mike knew that talk about death would come sooner than he’d anticipated. Billy and Dillon may only be five years old, but they weren’t stupid.
He held his hand over his mouth as he took a step back and held his phone to his ear. ‘Police, please.’ This was going to haunt them all for a long time.
Twenty-Five
‘Right, Briggs has put the appeal out and I know the calls are already coming in. Can you monitor those closely, O’Connor?’ Gina grabbed a croissant from the batch that O’Connor had brought in, another one of his wife’s bakes. As per usual she’d skipped breakfast knowing full well that the station would be littered with junk food as it always seemed to be. She glanced at her email. Nothing had come from the drive-bys of Dale Blair’s house. ‘Anything so far?’
O’Connor clapped his hands, releasing crumbs all over the floor before licking jam off his fingers. ‘A possible sighting at the shopping centre. Another at the park, oh and another at the industrial estate, two sightings on a bus and another driving through Cleevesford High Street. I sense this day is going to be a challenging one. I mean, you’d think she was Houdini if the public have got it right. I’ve been going through her friends list on social media, the ones she and Dale had in common. There are a fair few but no meaningful interactions are showing up. I’ll keep going through the list. Wyre and I split it as there are so many people to go through. I’ve also emailed them to you.’ He rubbed his shiny head, almost polishing the patch that his fingers were massaging.
‘Great, keep up the good work. Going back to the appeal, eliminate the obvious and look into the others.’ She glanced around and noticed Smith sitting at his desk, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Smith, can you coordinate uniform in following up on some of these potential sightings? You okay?’
