Justice for the Damned (33 page)

‘He’s starting to get on my nerves,’ said Tyler. His declaration drew a surprised glance from Doug. It was the first time he had known Tyler to express his feelings about anyone or pretty much anything.

‘I thought you had no nerves.’

Others had said that before. And like Doug, they’d been wrong. Tyler had feelings, but showing them was a luxury he hardly ever allowed himself. He’d regretted his words the instant they were out of his mouth. The world was a shark pool. And the sharks were constantly watching for an opening to move in for the kill. No doubt, at that moment they circled a fraction closer. Lowering his inscrutable mask back into place, Tyler fastened Margaret’s wrists and ankles together with plasticuffs. ‘Help me lift her.’

‘Where to?’

‘The boot of your car.’

‘Why my car? Why can’t we put her in the Range Rover?’

‘Because you’re a cop. You’re less likely to be stopped.’

Doug popped the Subaru’s boot and they lowered Margaret into it. Tyler jerked his chin at Jim. ‘Now him.’

‘It’ll be a tight squeeze. What if they suffocate?’

Tyler shrugged. ‘Quickly. We don’t have much time.’

They packed Jim into the boot back to back with Margaret. Doug had to lean heavily on the lid to get it shut. Tyler tried Stan again. This time his phone rang, but he still didn’t answer. ‘What the fuck’s he playing at?’ wondered Doug.

Tyler took out his knife. ‘Let’s go find out.’

As Edward trudged back to Southview, he hugged his arms across his shoulders, his bald head bobbing like a cork on a rough sea. Everything was falling apart. All his plans, all his years of hard work, all of it was falling apart. There would be no Cabinet position, no moment of greatness. But worst of all, there would be no respect. He would be held up for the public to revile, ridicule and spit at like some sort of Victorian grotesque. The thought made the ground seem to tremble as if it was giving way beneath his feet.

Mabel Forester was waiting in the hallway, glass of sherry in hand. ‘My God,’ she breathed as he stepped into view in his shirt, socks and underpants, blood smeared over his forehead, his eyes swollen and bleary. ‘What happened?’

Edward made no reply. He kept his gaze on the floor, suddenly afraid of what he might do if he looked into his mother’s eyes.

‘I asked you a question,’ Mabel continued more sharply, catching hold of Edward’s arm as he stepped past her.

‘Please, Mother, just leave me alone. Please…’ Edward trailed off as though he didn’t have the energy to continue.

‘No, I won’t leave you alone. I want to know what’s going on. And I want to know now.’

His voice faint, almost unintelligible, Edward said, ‘She’s gone.’

‘Speak up, boy. And look at me when I’m talking to you.’

Slowly, but inexorably, Edward raised his eyes to meet his mother’s gaze. ‘You lied to me.’

‘What are you talking about? Lied about what?’

Edward’s voice suddenly burst from his throat. ‘Everything!’

He yanked his arm free, sending his mother staggering into the coat stand. She lost her grip on the sherry glass and it fell with a crash to the floor. For a moment, they stared at each other as if both too shocked to react. Then Mabel’s piercing blue eyes flashed with a terrible light. Flinching from it, Edward turned and started upstairs.

Mabel’s voice rose in a shriek of rage. ‘How dare you turn your back on me! Get back down here.’

Edward’s footsteps faltered, but didn’t stop. His mother’s anger terrified him, although not as much as what he felt building inside him. It wasn’t the hunger, but it was something born of the same frenzy. With every word she hurled after him, it welled up further, like rising floodwaters, threatening to engulf him. He clutched the banister, heart pounding, head reeling.

‘Look at you,’ shouted Mabel, pursuing her son. ‘Sometimes I have to ask myself how I ever gave birth to something so pathetic.’

‘I’ve wondered the same thing too,’ said Edward, his voice half choked. ‘I even thought about trying to find out if I was adopted. Then I realised it makes no difference whether or not you’re my real mother, either way you created me. You made me what I am today. Everything that’s happening is your fault.’

Mabel caught hold of Edward’s arm again at the top of the stairs and wrenched him around to face her. ‘You know who you sound like? Your father. He was incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions too.’

‘Lies. Lies. All of it lies! I… I…’ Edward stammered off into silence, unable to bring himself to say the words in his head, knowing his mother would consider them the ultimate betrayal.

‘Go on, say what you’re thinking.’ Mabel’s voice was goading. ‘For once in your life, have the courage to speak your mind.’

Swallowing the words even as he spoke them, Edward said, ‘I went to see my father, and he told me the truth. He didn’t walk out on you. You walked out on him.’

Edward tensed, expecting to feel the sharp sting of a slap. But his mother didn’t raise her hand. Her face showed no trace of surprise, only contempt. A swell of realisation broke over him. ‘You knew.’

‘Of course I knew you’d been going to see the
bastard
.’ Mabel hissed the word with pure venom. ‘I know everything about you, Edward. You’re my beautiful baby boy. I wasn’t about to let him
poison your mind against me.’

Edward shook his head as if trying to throw off a bad dream. His voice came distant and dazed. ‘It was you. You killed him. You took him from me.’

‘I’ve never taken a thing from you, Edward. All I’ve ever done is give, give, give. Without me you’d be a nothing, a nobody. Just like your father was. And what thanks do I get for it? You sneak off behind my back to see him.’ Mabel’s ranting voice gathered momentum like a boulder bouncing down a hillside. ‘And what makes it even worse is, you chose to believe
him
over me. Mind you, I don’t suppose I should have expected any different. You’ve always been more like him than me. A weak-minded fool. That’s what he was. And that’s what you are. Do you hear me?’

But Edward didn’t hear her any more. He only heard the floodwaters whooshing and roaring in his ears, urging him, compelling him to shut the old bitch up once and for all. Suddenly, without thought, he wrapped his hands around the loose, turkey-like flesh of her throat and began to squeeze. Her mouth opened and closed spasmodically. Her eyes swelled as if they might pop out of their sockets. She tried to twist free of his grip, clawing at his hands. But he was too strong. Gradually, a bluish-purple tinge seeped into her face. Then her eyes glazed over and her arms dropped to her sides. He kept on squeezing. He knew from experience that a victim’s lungs and blood stored enough oxygen to keep them alive for several minutes even after unconsciousness set in. When he finally released her, she tumbled like a cloth doll to the bottom of the stairs. Like someone in a trance, he descended towards her, took hold of her arms and dragged her into the kitchen. He opened a drawer and lifted out the heavy cleaver the housekeeper used for dismembering the chicken carcasses.

He pulled his mother’s tongue out of her mouth and sliced it off. He flung the pink worm of flesh away, turned her onto her face and positioned her arms at her sides. He tore off her wig, exposing short wispy grey hair and a liver-spotted scalp. Then he began to hack at her neck. He’d watched Freddie dismember enough corpses to know it was crucial to start the beheading from the back of the neck. If you started from the front, the windpipe and surrounding flesh, arteries, muscles and ligaments slowed the blade’s momentum, making it difficult to severe the spine. His blows were inaccurate. The first few failed to break anything more than skin. But finally the blade lodged between the vertebrae. He jerked it free. It took him several more whacks to find the same spot. His mother’s spine separated with an audible pop. After that, it was like carving a tough joint of beef.

A slick of blood spread from Mabel’s corpse as Edward cut through the final scraps of skin. Clutching her head in both hands, he went to the living room. He placed the head in the centre of the mantelpiece, sightless eyes facing him. It took a moment to get it to balance upright. Then he opened his mouth and all the words that had been pent up in him for so many years came pouring out.

‘I’ve tried, Mother. All my life I’ve tried to be what you wanted me to be. But it was never enough. Nothing I did was enough. Was it? You poisonous old bitch. I hate you. Do
you
hear
me
? I hate everything about you. I hate your mouth, I hate your hands, I hate your breasts, I hate your stinking cunt, but most of all I hate your voice.’ He clamped his hands over his ears, as if even now he could hear his mother yelling at him. His own voice took on a childish tone. ‘Yes, Mother. No, Mother. Three bags full, Mother.’

Edward jerked his gaze towards the empty space at his side. ‘What was that? OK, I’ll ask her.’ He looked at the decapitated head again. ‘It’s Wendy Atkins. You remember her, don’t you, Mother? She wants to know why you didn’t try to find out if she was telling the truth. Nothing to say? Well, it doesn’t matter because I know the answer.’ He turned back to the empty space. ‘I used to think she was protecting me. But I was wrong. She wasn’t protecting me, she was protecting herself. You see, Wendy, she was terrified that if the truth came out about what I did to you, then the truth about what she was doing to me would follow it. Isn’t that right, Mother? I said, isn’t that right, Mother? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’

Edward put a hand to his mouth as if to contain a laugh. But there was no laugh in his small brown eyes. There were only tears. Suddenly, he shook his head so hard he almost lost his balance. ‘No, Mother. I won’t accept responsibility. I won’t. I won’t. Why should I? You did this to me. Yes, you did. Yes! You! You!’

The undergrowth was flattened where first Melinda then Stan had trampled through it. Here and there, spots of dried blood were visible. Tyler and Doug followed the trail to the fence. ‘Resourceful girl,’ remarked Tyler, eyeing the belt. He effortlessly scaled the fence. Doug followed somewhat more slowly. The trail was less obvious on the short grass of the field, but despite this their pace quickened. They no longer needed to see signs of Melinda’s passing to know where she was headed. The distant rooftops made that obvious.

When they reached the crag, Tyler stood scanning the landscape. Once again, he phoned Doug. But instead of putting the phone to his ear, he listened intently to his surroundings. The only sounds to be heard were the calls of birds and the sighing of the wind through the crag. They descended the gully.

Doug stopped suddenly. ‘Do you hear that?’

Tyler nodded. Putting his finger to his lips, he hunched low and crept towards the guttural gasping sound.

Stan was still alive, but his eyes were no longer open and his gasps were rapid and shallow. ‘He must have fallen,’ murmured Doug, grimacing.

‘Or been pushed.’ Tyler dropped to his haunches and searched Stan’s pockets. ‘His phone’s gone. His gun too.’

Doug cast an uneasy eye over their surroundings, as if expecting to see the missing gun trained on him from behind a nearby bush or rock. ‘We need to get him to a doctor.’

‘He’s beyond that.’

‘You can’t know that for sure.’

‘Do you hear that bubbling sound? His lungs are punctured and filling with fluid. He’ll be dead before we can get him back to the car.’ Tyler’s words were a flat, emotionless statement of fact.

‘Fuck! So what do we do? We can’t just leave him here like this.’

‘No, we can’t.’ Tyler reached into Stan’s jacket again and took out his wallet and the Range Rover’s keys. Sheathing his knife, he moved to pick up a heavy stone.

Doug’s eyes widened with horror. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

‘Making it as difficult as possible for your lot to identify him.’

‘You’re crazy!’

Ignoring Doug, Tyler hoisted the stone high over Stan’s head. ‘Don’t,’ warned Doug, jerking his pistol towards Tyler. ‘We’re going to carry Stan to my car. I worked with him for over ten years. He showed me the ropes when I was a rookie. That might not mean anything to someone like you, but it damned well does to me.’

Tyler stared at Doug, no trace of fear in his eyes. ‘You do realise your colleagues are probably already on their way here? And we’ve got to deal with Forester and his mother. Think about it, Doug. We can’t let them live. Not now. We can still make it through this, but we’ve got to move fast.’

A spasm jerked at Doug’s face as he turned Tyler’s words over in his mind. Tyler subtly adjusted his grip on the stone, readying himself to hurl it at Doug should his words not have the desired effect. Releasing a heavy breath, Doug lowered his gun and nodded to say,
Go on, do it
. He turned away as Tyler brought the stone down on Stan’s head. There was a crunch of bone. Stan’s limbs twitched, and twitched again as Tyler heaved the stone back upwards and downwards. When Stan’s face had been reduced to a shapeless pulp, Tyler tossed the stone aside and began to climb the gulley.

Doug looked at Stan. ‘Goodbye, mate,’ he said, swallowing a nauseous lump. Then he hurried after Tyler.

They sprinted back across the fields and through the woods. Doug jumped into his Subaru and accelerated fast towards the gate, no longer caring about the suspension. Tyler followed in the GTI. When they got to the gate he hopped out and picked the padlock. He took a petrol canister from the GTI’s boot and handed it to Doug, along with the keys to the Range Rover. He told Doug where the Range Rover was, adding, ‘Burn it out then head for the farm.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll see you there. Don’t wait for me.’

As Doug pulled away, Tyler removed a Beretta pistol from the GTI’s glove compartment. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out, half expecting it to be Edward Forester phoning for an update. But it wasn’t Forester. He put the phone to his ear and waited for the caller to speak.

‘I thought you had this fucking situation under control.’ The voice that came down the line was deep and commanding and very angry.