RECRUITED: A Mike Humber Novella (Demon Series Book One) (12 page)

‘Fine,’ she mumbles. ‘Are we going?’

‘Going?’ I ask her.

‘To the café at six?’

‘I am,’ I reply, ‘well, not going straight there but yeah, I’ll be near it.’

‘Me too.’ She nods seriously.

‘Er, yeah listen,’ I step closer, ‘you should go home, it’s probably gonna be a trap with a shit ton of plain clothed police waiting to apprehend the murderer they’ve been tipped off about.’

‘It won’t be.’ She shakes her head and looks exhausted but resolute. ‘He’ll meet you.’

‘What makes you think that?’

She smiles a grim expression of distaste. ‘His ego for a start, and like you said, he wants that element of control and the satisfaction of looking you in the eye…and me,’ she adds with a faraway look, ‘the thrill he’ll get from that is too much to resist…so yeah, he’ll be there.’

I think quietly for a second and realise that despite being driven by fury to kill him, this woman has spent a lot of time and energy working out how this man ticks and she’s right. His ego is too big, his vanity is too much to allow him to scuttle off. He allowed himself to get caught last time and took a vicious beating knowing he’ll walk away.

‘Nah,’ a sudden thought pops into my head, ‘he knows we’ve got the footage, if anyone sees that he’s fucked.’

She gives me a curious look, ‘I thought you knew him?’

‘Knew him? I only met him once and that didn’t go too well.’

‘No,’ she says with a twitch of a smile, ‘I mean I figured you would have, er…’ she shrugs and thinks for the right words, ‘analysed him or something, you know, worked to understand the offender profile and…’

‘Oh, yeah that was done. But we only had a tentative profile until we…or rather
I
got his name and then went for him…the clever bastards in the offices would have analysed him after but by that time I was arrested, suspended and then bailed…and then kicked out…and I became an alcoholic…addicted to sleeping pills…’she watches me closely, ‘and other stuff,’ I add with a shrug.

‘It’s about power,’ she says intently, ‘the thrill of having that power over someone else. To control them completely…’ She becomes wistful as though trapped in a faraway memory. ‘He wants that power over you,’ she looks up sharply, ‘over me, that’s the thrill for him. That’s the addiction and his vanity and self-assured belief just serves to drive him to take that risk. For him it’s worth it. You could turn up with a gun and shoot him but he’ll take that risk for the pleasure of seeing you destroy yourself again…and there’s always the chance you’ll miss.’

Heavy words that sink into my mind and I know she’s right. John Williams is everything she just described and more. I look over at the stunning woman who I just witnessed murder someone in the most brutal way possible. What they did to her to drive that rage for so long must have been bad. It got to me enough just dealing with the many victims and their families, but it never actually happened to me, my grief was vicarious but not direct.

A sense of admiration for Elizabeth comes over me. That first, she refused to ever let go of that desire for revenge and second, she was prepared to do the dirty work herself when she could have arranged it with ease having so many ex-military on her company’s books. It even explains the lust she had last night. She was with a very flawed but inherently good man who defeated the bad guy. The man who stood up to them and did the unthinkable in this modern society. The lust wasn’t because I’m a killer but because I was…because
I am
stronger than they are.

‘Fuck,’ I shake my head, ‘we’ve got a few hours to…’ I stop myself from saying it.

‘Kill?’ She finishes the sentence with a wry smile. ‘Let me guess? You need a coffee.’

‘Read my mind.’ I stand up and exhale slowly.

‘Well, Mr Humber,’ she stands up too, ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes. We do that first and I’ll buy you the best coffee in Bruges…before we go and meet the devil.’

‘That,’ I smile, ‘sounds like a deal.’

Ten

The hotel is the worst I have ever known but water is water and from this shower it comes out hot and fast. I go first on the basis that Elizabeth will probably want a longer soak than me.

I’ve seen death in all its forms. Natural. Murder. Suicide. Accident. People who have jumped in front of express trains and been spread like butter over a quarter of a mile of track. Drowning. Poisoning. Gunshots. Stabbings, lots of stabbings. But I’ve never seen a man anally raped with a tyre iron and then forced to eat his own shit from the end.

You know when something is bad because the mind tries to blot it out and I keep finding myself thinking of mundane things, like if I have a clean t shirt left and if we should get food before we meet Williams. It takes force to mentally make myself think directly about what I did, what I witnessed and everything else that’s happened. I force my mind to process both of the killings, how I did it, how it felt at that time and now. I analyse and examine every emotional reaction and what’s more I allow those emotions to come and go without restriction.

Right and wrong. It was wrong to kill. It
is
wrong to kill. But it was right for the circumstances. Wrong but right. Their victims may hear about the deaths of those men and feel a sense of relief that they’ll never be touched again.

We had a saying in the police. You can never measure what you prevent. It was always about the worth of a uniform copper on foot patrol. Sometimes he or she would go for a whole shift and do very little, but what did they prevent? Who saw them and decided not to do a bad thing that day?

There are children in this area now who fate had chosen to be the victims of those predators but who now will never be molested by them. They’ll never know. Nobody will ever know. I’ll know.

Shower over and she steps past me while I start brushing my teeth and the strength of human nature shows evident as despite all the fucked up things in my head, I can’t help but let my eyes fall to her naked backside as she steps into the cubicle.

‘Something funny?’ She peers round with a puzzled look at my suppressed chuckle.

‘Nothing.’ I rinse my mouth out and the smile that was forming ends abruptly when I see the haggard fucker staring back at me in the mirror. I look past my reflection to see her staring at me with interest. Her elbows up covering her breasts as she stands with her back to the shower letting the jets soak her hair back.

‘So,’ I stare at her reflection, ‘how does it feel?’

‘Being a killer?’ she asks with a sigh. ‘I don’t know…I’m tired,’ she says flatly, ‘but…’

‘Go on.’

‘I feel good about what we did.’ She looks down at the water drumming on the shower base. ‘But I feel bad too…good, bad…no,’ she shakes her head slowly, ‘that’s not right. I’ve thought about it for so long and built my company up so I would have the resources and means to do it. Now it’s over,’ she says flatly, ‘years of my life…years of seeing Alison suffer…and then it was done in a few minutes flat. He was alive and now he’s dead.’ She stops and stares into the middle distance then with habit of hand she starts washing her arms, armpits, chest and stomach. ‘He suffered,’ she remarks, ‘I mean, it wasn’t him that did those things to me…Verhoeven I mean, it was Williams. But Verhoeven did it to others so…fuck, Mike. I don’t know how I feel. Disgusted, definitely disgusted. Happy? Not yet. Relieved? Yeah, yeah but not because we killed him but because he can’t do it again…I’m gabbling.’ She looks up at me and shrugs.

‘No,’ I blurt too quickly, completely entranced with the whole of the woman. Of her thought processes and the apparent honesty with which she speaks.

‘Mike?’

‘Yeah?’ I turn at the door.

‘What we did yesterday, last night,’ she pauses and a look of intense worry crosses her face, ‘how you made me feel,’ she says slowly, ‘were you thinking about Tessa?’

How the fuck do I answer that? What do I say? Fuck me this all too much for my tiny mind.

‘Will you do it again?’ she asks in a voice barely more than a whisper. ‘We’ve got time,’ she adds quickly as though trying to convince me. ‘Christ.’ She stares at me in horror. ‘I must sound like a monster…we just killed a man…and I’m asking for sex…’

‘It’s okay,’ I say softly and the tears burst from her eyes to join the rivulets of water cascading down her face.

Eleven

Side by side we walk in silence through the heaving crowds moving towards Markt Square. A beautiful summer evening and the air is warm and filled with the white noise of people living their lives.

Elizabeth and I made love with a gentle intensity and hunger that built with a slow burning passion. It was distracting, absorbing, fulfilling and somewhere in the back of my head there was a connection being made between seeing death and feeling life. I didn’t think about Tessa.

We got ready and worked together to clean the room down, using anti-bacterial wipes on every surface. The bedding was scooped up into a pile and taken out into the corridor to be dumped outside the door of another room. Not a perfect crime scene sanitation but functional at the very least.

Now the time is here and we walk towards a man that shaped the whole of Elizabeth’s life and the last few years of mine. Every action has a reaction and the woman beside me is a direct result of the actions he took. The man that walks with her, the bearded haggard washed up ex-detective, ex-alcoholic, ex-drug addict fucking clichéd walking disaster is a direct result of his actions. Our lives. Separated but connected by invisible strands that wove our futures until this day. This day. We are walking to see the man who has dictated our entire existences and still he dictates. He called so we come running. He taunted us with messages and summoned our presence. Control. The expectation of control. The perception of control. The belief that we had a choice to come here when all along it was his decision.

We feed from the wide boutique store lined road into the vast square and both look towards the landmark of the famous tower. Our eyes sweep in synchronised harmony to the café opposite with the ubiquitous deep green awning.

Control. The control others have over us. The perception of it. The idea of it. We live our lives in subservience to that control, to that expectation. We’re here because he said so. Because his vanity and thirst for power and control, and his intelligence allowed him to make these decisions knowing we’ll trot like sheep and sit like children to bask in fear and awe at his magnificence. Fuck it. We might as well drop to all fours and put collars on our necks and roll on our back to spray subservient piss in the air.

‘You okay?’ Something in my voice snaps her head round, her eyes look wide then narrowed.

‘Mike,’ she says slowly, ‘your face? What’s going on?’

We’re almost there, but metres away from entering the café blocked from our view by a press of tourists and in these last few seconds the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as a deep shiver runs through my core. The air seems heavy and charged with static and my inner voice of survival screams to run away. Nerves and the after-effects of getting pissed again.

As the Red Sea parted for Moses, so the crowd does so for us and there he is. John Williams. Older but unmistakable. A man of average height and with a heavy build. A man with an ingratiating smile and charm. A man with short cropped brown hair flecked with grey that gives him the appearance of a kindly uncle. John Williams the destroyer of lives. John Williams the manipulator. John Williams the child rapist on his own at a table with two empty chairs just waiting to be used by the sheep we are.

He looks up and smiles as though old friends he greets. Genuine delight on his face. My hand reaches down to take Elizabeth’s and I give her a reassuring squeeze, ‘everything will be okay,’ I whisper across, ‘I promise.’

She nods and although her face is impassive, her eyes show a battle of fear, rage, trepidation, nerves and a desire to flee. Every action has a reaction. I look into her eyes and see those emotions. That action dictates the reaction.

John Williams is a cunt and I’m not a fucking sheep. I cross the last few steps with powerful strides as my body floods with adrenalin-fuelled rage. He smiles a witty puzzled look but then I stop. I was going to hook his chair out and slam him down then start the beating but the expression on his face tells me he’s waiting for that…wanting it. I won’t be played again so I come up short and stand over him while I glare down into his soft brown eyes.

He smiles knowingly, goading. Taunting me to do it but the gentle hand of Elizabeth rests on my arm and that touch takes me back just enough to let some oxygen into my brain.

‘So close.’ Williams smiles wryly.

‘It’ll happen,’ I mutter as Elizabeth sits down and I follow her lead. ‘In a few minutes,’ I say between gritted teeth, ‘I will either kill you,’ I drag the chair in closer to the table, ‘or I will restrain you and effect a citizen’s arrest during which time the footage of your…’ I struggle to phrase it, ‘while
the footage
is passed to the local police. I just haven’t decided which one yet.’ I look up and see not a flicker of fear or concern on the features of the man that has invaded my nightmares for so long. Elizabeth is silent, watchful and the years of business stand her proud as she shows neither fear or concern.

His humorous brown eyes twinkle with mischief as he glances between us like that kindly uncle waiting to hear if I proposed. ‘Look at you two!’ he beams, ‘such a nice couple.’ His voice is deep and rich, baritone and the kind of voice you’d expect to be giving after-dinner speeches.

‘Drinks?’ the busy waiter asks brusquely.

‘Ah,’ Williams chuckles, ‘I shall have a pot of tea and my two young companions will have coffee…er…’ he glances at me, ‘unless you’d prefer a vodka that is?’ he asks openly. ‘I heard you fell off the wagon.’

I clear my throat. ‘Coffee is fine,’ I say to the waiter but don’t take my eyes off Williams. The last time I saw him was during the footage of him and just the thought of it sends a surge of pulsating fury through my body.

‘Steady now, Mike.’ He looks straight at, straight through me. ‘Can’t be good for your health getting all worked up like that. Mind you,’ he smiles ingratiatingly, ‘all that exercise you’ve been doing, fit as a fiddle these days aren’t you, Mike?’

‘Stop.’ I cough to clear my throat again. ‘Stop saying my name.’ My voice comes out too high pitched and too strangled.

‘Given up the vodka and sleeping pills,’ he continues conversationally, ‘addicted to exercise now eh? Still, all those calories burnt off and you still can’t sleep. Can you?’ He speaks softly yet his voice carries easily in this busy place. ‘And you,’ he switches to Elizabeth, ‘you look radiant, my dear, absolutely radiant. How is your dear sister? Not so well I understand? Locks herself in all day doesn't she? But mind, you do look glowing which is probably the after effects of your afternoon love making.’ He smiles kindly to both of us. ‘And,’ he winks at Elizabeth, ‘Mike didn’t think of Tessa this time.’

‘Enough you prick,’ I snap, ‘mind games don’t…’

‘Mind games?’ he asks softly. ‘No, Mike. Not mind games. Not this time. Just the truth,’ He adds casually.

‘The truth?’ Elizabeth asks coldly. ‘What truth?’ She adds when he doesn't reply.

‘I’m leaving soon,’ He says snootily with a disdainful look around. ‘This place bores me terribly.’

‘Fuck you.’ The snarl is out before I can stop it. ‘Dirty fucking cunt…’

‘Ah there’s the old Mike.’ He gives a wan grin but suddenly looks tired and drawn. ‘However, I can only say that the last day or so has been an unexpected pleasure. A fitting end to my time here. De Smet,’ Williams waves a casual hand, ‘was mediocre…’

‘Mediocre?’ Elizabeth asks in a choked whisper. ‘We saw what he did…’

‘Oh no no,’ Williams cuts her off, ‘not that, I never meant that. His death is what I meant.
That
was mediocre. I somewhat expected more from Mike. Strangling,’ He tilts his hand back and forth as though weighing it up, ‘so so…the bleach was good but the fire killed him off too quickly. Personally I would have let him recover a bit before I did the bleach and then waited before I set fire to him…but then,’ He rolls his eyes, ‘the silly arse went and fired his gun so you had very little time.’

‘Surveillance?’ I can’t help but ask.

‘Verhoeven though,’ William’s chuckles, ‘oh now that. That was good.’

‘How did you…’ Elizabeth starts to say.

‘Honey trapping him in his own car,’ William’s ignores the interruption, ‘but then,’ He offers Elizabeth a questioning glance, ‘if you don’t mind the feedback, why the rush? I mean you had him in a forest clearing and all the time in the world?’

Elizabeth shoots a glance at me and for a second I catch myself trying to figure out how he saw everything. Then I realise this is just another form of control.

This time
I
tilt my head to one side and smile. ‘So you enjoyed it then?’ I ask lightly. ‘Your turn is next.’

‘Oh I enjoyed it immensely,’ He says with sincerity. ‘Verhoeven was a useless prick always flapping about getting caught and how we should stop…He was a gibbering wreck when he heard about De Smet and of course I had some fun with that,’ William’s chuckles.

‘Why are we here?’ Elizabeth asks bluntly. ‘To give you an audience?’ She shakes her head firmly. ‘You have five seconds to tell us why we’re here or…’

‘Or what?’ He asks gently and leans forward. ‘And what happens after five seconds? Do you let Mike get me? Been there. Done that. Got the t shirt,’ he smiles.

‘One,’ Elizabeth counts.

William’s sits back and smiles.

‘Two.’

He chuckles lightly.

‘Three.’

‘Oh I love ultimatums.’ He smiles gleefully.

‘Four.’

‘We’re getting closer to five,’ he says.

‘Five…’

William’s looks about calmly, ‘…and nothing,’ He holds his hands up, ‘you got to five and nothing happened.’

‘Mike,’ Elizabeth says.

‘My turn,’ Williams’s cuts in with a knife edged voice, ‘my greatest pleasure is taking a man, a good man,’ he speaks fast and brutal as that soft image melts away, ‘and ruining him. And when I say man I mean it in the sense of a human being, not a man per se. A woman, a man…’ He shrugs, ‘either way. But it’s the degradation of seeing them fall that pleases me oh so very much.’

The way he speaks, the animation of his face and pitch of his voice is mesmerising and both of us are drawn to just listen.

‘Truth be told,’ The anger abates as quickly as it flashed across his face and he sighs, ‘I used to get a kick out of murder but that waned, then adult rape but,’ He shrugs with distaste, ‘ a natural progression one might say…to child rape that is…’

‘You utter…’ I start to seethe but he holds a hand up.

‘But the kick, the kick of any of those things can never stand up to the emotional destruction that grief and loss cause. It wasn’t the child that pleased me, it was the pain to the family and…’

‘I’m not listening to this.’ I start to rise.

‘Sit down, Mike,’ He snarls, ‘or shall
I
count to five.’

‘Count to ten for all I give a fuck.’

‘One,’ he locks eyes on me and all trace of humour is gone to be replaced by a steely eyed man with a depth of look in his eye the like of which I have never seen before. A distant scream rips through the air followed by a soft thump. Waiters rush to the front of the café and patrons stand up to see what caused the noise.

‘Two,’ he doesn't blink but keeps me rooted to the spot. Another scream but from a deeper voice followed by a muffled whump that cuts the wail off instantly. Screams fill the air as people start rushing towards the tower. The static charge in the air feels heavy but the temperature drops instantly by several degrees.

‘Three,’ he continues and the breath from his mouth mists in the sudden chill. This time I glance round just in time to see something falling down from the tower. Something fast and heavy, something that screams as it falls and then dies when it lands.

‘Four,’ my eyes on the tower and the crowds of people surging towards it. Another body seems to just drop from the highest point and down it plummets with increasing velocity and a gut flipping scream.

‘Five,’ another person falls and the crowds throughout the square are screaming with panic. Waiters run from every café as the diners disgorge to get a better view.

‘Six…’

‘STOP!’ I yell but it’s too late and yet another falls with a low groan that sweeps through the crowd. In the distance I can see the waiters sprinting flat out for the door while shouting at the attendant.

‘Do I have your attention?’ His voice is cold and distant yet commanding with a resonance that seeps deep into my gut. Elizabeth sits down and in my shock I don’t recall seeing her stand up. Her face is deathly white and her eyes large with creeping horror.

I sit down slowly with my eyes fixed on John Williams but he looks different now. Less the kindly uncle and more, more something else and I can see his hands gripping the edge of the table so hard it turns his knuckles white.

‘Who is up there?’ The café is empty now, everyone else having raced towards tower. ‘You’ve got someone up there,’ I add with care to avoid any anger to seep into my voice and therefore avoid any provocation for his accomplice to kill again.

‘No,’ he says dully but his eyes remain fixed on me, ‘you were my favourite, Mike.’ He says slowly, almost drunkenly. I don’t reply but watch him speak while I try and figure out what the hell I can do. ‘A good man,’ He slurs, ‘a good man that came after a monster and a good man that did what any good man would do and he fought the monster…but your society let you down,’ He switches his gaze slowly to Elizabeth, ‘the monster that destroyed your childhood...the monster was caught but then given money and released,’ He sags into the chair but slowly brings those terrible eyes back to bear on me, ‘you have suffered, haven’t you.’ It almost seems painful for him to speak, like the energy is draining from him by the minute. ‘Your wife left you, your friends deserted you…your job…your life…and then the mental anguish.’ He lets out a tired but content sigh. ‘Oh and that debacle at Huntington House,’ He gives a wan grin, ‘now that was a treat.’