Concrete Evidence (49 page)

              “Just to prove how clever he could be?”

              “More likely to torture Harris mentally.” Alec shrugged. “And to prove to himself and us how evidence can be manipulated.”

              “Think about it,” Stirling said looking over her shoulder. “It’s the ultimate nightmare for a criminal. Knowing the police have concrete evidence to nail you to a crime, yet you know that you didn’t do it. Imagine how that would feel when they slammed the cell door closed.”

              “Can’t say I’ll lose any sleep over it.” Annie nodded and shrugged. She couldn’t disagree with him but she had no sympathy for Harris. “Justice comes in many forms. As long as it comes, I’m not too fussy how it happens.”

              “I want to be there when Barton when gets his,” Stirling grumbled. “The bastard has led us a merry dance indeed.”

              “What I wouldn’t give to see that happen,” Annie agreed although she doubted that she would.

****************************************

He finished his whisky in one gulp and felt it burn his gullet as it went down. Calling it whisky was an affront to every malt on the planet. It was made locally and would have fit into the firewater category of spirits. He could feel his head spinning and the voices around him were becoming garbled echoes. Their black faces leered at him from the stools along the bar; huge smiles seemed to melt into one. They were friendly enough but there was a sense of danger beneath the smiles. Each time he wandered around the back to the ditch, which they called the toilet, he kept one hand on his knife. The roof of the bar was made from thatched reeds but there were no walls. He could hear the sea lapping at the shore but there were no lights on the beach. The sound of the waves was reassuring but he couldn’t see it. Beyond the beach bar it was pitch black. There were no lights on the narrow mud roads, which hugged the coast. He gripped the arms of the chair and pushed himself up. Dizziness rocked him again and he had to close his eyes until it faded.

              “Are you leaving already?” the barman grinned. His white shirt was open to the chest, revealing a chiseled black chest. Dark sweat patches were spreading beneath his arms. “Have another whisky!” The men at the bar jeered and encouraged him but he had had too much. Way too much. He knew that they didn’t want him to leave because he had been buying all the drinks for the last few hours. They were less likely to mug him if he shared his wealth freely. Not that it was much money to him. They were poor locals. A round of drinks was a day’s wages to them.

              “I need to go,” he bumbled.

“Tomorrow, we see you?” the barman called.

“Yes, tomorrow.” His voice was thick and slurred. He staggered across the bar towards the Jeep. The door was unlocked and he wrenched it open and climbed in. He knew that there would be no police around. When the sun went down, the Gambian police retreated to their stations in the towns. After dark, the streets were too dangerous, even for the police.

Barton fumbled for the keys and started the engine. He crunched the gearbox but eventually found first and the Jeep lurched forward into the night. “Shit,” he mumbled when he realised that he couldn’t see. “Put your fucking lights on,” he mumbled to himself. The headlights flicked on and illuminated the road. Swarms of insects hurtled towards his windscreen and splattered on the glass. As long as he kept the sea on his left, he knew that he would eventually reach his hotel. It was a half hour trundle along the narrow pitted roads, where he wouldn’t be able to get out of third gear. Deep ruts had been carved into the red mud by passing traffic and tropical rainstorms. He couldn’t stop the vehicle from lurching from one side to the other. The rocking sensation made him feel sick. He could feel the acidic whisky rising and he tasted thick yellow bile at the back of his throat. He retched and felt hot sticky vomit landing on his crotch. The smell reached him and made him vomit again. He felt the goo landing on his feet and dribbling between his toes. It made his flip-flops tacky and uncomfortable. His stomach retched again and he heard the bile splatter in the foot-well. He had no idea how many times he was sick. His focus was keeping the Jeep on the track. He had been driving for over forty minutes when he realised that he hadn’t reached hotel.   

Barton pulled in and looked around. There was no sign of the coast, just jungle on either side of the road. He swore beneath his breath and found first gear again. He checked his watch but didn’t know how long he had been driving for. The engine roared and the Jeep lurched forward at speed. He gripped the steering wheel tightly as he pushed the vehicle through the gears. The ruts became deeper and the Jeep bounced up and down violently as he encountered a series of potholes. Suddenly, the mud track ended and he was faced with a wall of vegetation. The front wheel hit a large rock. He felt the vehicle veer to the right and he yanked the wheel in the opposite direction. His momentum was too great and he hit the trees at speed. The Jeep broke through the undergrowth and careered over the edge of a ravine. Barton was thrown about like a leaf in a wind tunnel as it tumbled and somersaulted down the rocks and through the tree canopy into the valley below. It didn’t stop until it landed on its roof at the bottom.               

              When he came to, Barton was struggling to understand what had happened. The sun was up and he could see himself in the rearview mirror.
When you look in the mirror, what looks back at you?
He could see bone protruding from his left thigh and his right arm appeared to have three elbows, each bent in a different direction. His back was twisted at an acute angle and a piece of metal had punctured his torso from the kidney to his right hip. The whisky was masking some of the pain but not much. As his brain calculated the extent of his injuries, it suddenly realised the amount of agony he should be in and he was hit by a wall of pain. He opened his mouth and screamed but there was no one to hear him. All those years of hunting and killing his prey, flashed through his mind. He was too intelligent to be caught, too clever to die like this. He had spent months learning ancient scripts to make it possible for the police to track his murders abroad so that he could bask in the glow of his victims’ agony. He wanted the credit for killing them but only when he was ready to claim it. His intelligence was supreme as was his addiction to pain. Other peoples’ pain. But now he was wallowing in a sea of agony. His own.  As the agony increased, so did his desperate attempts to escape the wreck. The more he moved, the more intense the pain became. At night, the insects and rodents came to feed. They didn’t care that their meal was still twitching. His screams echoed off the walls of the ravine for three days before his heart finally gave up.

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