The Judas Scar (32 page)

As soon as he stepped inside he saw it was some sort of photographic studio, with painted breeze-block walls and lights on stands. The door closed behind him with a thud.

He turned and saw a man with his back to him sliding closed the bolt on the door.

‘You’re not Will English.’

‘No,’ said the man, well dressed in an expensive suit and a foppish haircut framing his pretty-boy face. ‘I’m not.’

‘Who the hell are—’

The man walked over to Farrow and the next thing he knew he’d taken a punch to the stomach. The pain shot around his body. Farrow bent double, too winded to call out. He tried to stand upright, tried to catch his breath, but then there was a blow to his head.

When he came round he was lying on the floor and the left side of his head throbbed. He tried to get up but found his hands were tied behind his back. Both his wrists and his ankles hurt. He looked down and saw his feet were also tied with a couple of brightly coloured bungee ropes. Where the hooks met they pushed into his skin. His mouth ached and he realised with horror that he’d been gagged. Fear took hold and he began to panic. He kicked his legs in an attempt to free himself, wriggled back and forth. The man who’d locked him in, who’d punched him, and who, Alastair assumed, had tied him up like this, came into his sights. He crouched beside him and stared down at him. His eyes were dark and cold, but his clothes, the way he held himself was at odds with his menacing look; he looked more like a management consultant than a mugger.

The man grabbed Alastair by his arm, hooking his hand through the crook of his elbow, and yanked him to his feet. He gestured to a chair a few feet from him.

‘Sit down.’

Alastair glared at him and shook his head as he retched at the stench of the rag stuffed in his mouth.

‘Sit.’ The man held up a Swiss Army knife, the blade open, glinting a little in the light.

Farrow didn’t move.

The man lifted his hand and brought the knife down across Farrow’s face, over the scar that ran down his cheek. The pain was excruciating and Farrow tried to cry out but the sound was muffled by the gag.

‘Did that hurt as much as last time?’ hissed the man. ‘Does that turn you on?’ He stepped closer, until his mouth was next to his ear.

‘Does that make you want to fuck me now?’

And then Farrow knew who it was and his legs buckled beneath him.

Luke Crawford grabbed hold of his shoulders and sat him on the chair. His face stung and he was aware he was bleeding profusely. Crawford spent a few moments tying him to the chair with more bungee cords that he got from a large holdall. He closed his eyes and thought back to that day. That little shit, that skinny runt – Bible Boy, Puke Crawford – humiliating him in front of his friends. He’d seen their faces when he’d looked at them, his face sliced open; they hadn’t known whether to laugh or scream. One of them – Toddy, was it? – had clamped his hand over his face to cover a smirk. Rage had balled inside him as he’d looked back at that crazy boy with his mad eyes and lunatic temper. Standing tall and strong, telling him to leave his friend alone. They’d all had so much fun with him, pressing his buttons, watching him fly off the handle, sending himself straight to the end of Drysdale’s cane. But that cut. The river of blood that had flowed. His face, he knew even then, would be scarred forever, and there he was, that little shit, bony fists clenched at his sides, knife gripped tightly, facing him like David against Goliath. He’d grabbed him, knocked the knife out of his hand and growled words he couldn’t remember. A red mist descended over him. Anger like he’d never felt. The boy needed to be taught a lesson.You didn’t fuck with Alastair Farrow.

The act itself had been quick. The others watched in a semicircle around them. Silence had fallen over them like a mantle. The only sound he could hear was a soft whimpering from Crawford. He’d hated himself, sickened but at the same time filled with such rage, a rage he couldn’t control. He couldn’t explain it. Now it seemed heinous, toxic, but then his instinct overwhelmed him, this need to dominate, to punish. When he pushed himself away from Crawford, blood from his face covering both of them, the boy had slumped on the ground like a beaten puppy. He watched with contempt as Crawford struggled to pull his trousers up to cover his pale skin that looked ghostly white against the deep browns of the woodland floor. Farrow turned away. He still remembered the revulsion he felt. Still remembered how he had used every piece of strength inside him to muster his bravado. He straightened his shoulders. Faced the others. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure about a hundred feet away. Will English. They locked eyes just before the boy fled. The look on his stricken face, a picture of disgust, shock and reproach, would stay with him forever.

Crawford finished tying him to the chair and stood up, running his hand through his hair to neaten it.

‘I am going to take the gag off your mouth. If you yell or shout, even just one syllable, I will stick this through your throat without a second thought. Do you understand me?’

Alastair stared at the penknife in his hand and nodded. Luke raised the knife and came closer to him. He held his breath, preparing for the pain that might come. He felt a sawing motion as Luke cut through the tape that held the rag in place, tugging his skin where it stuck to him. Luke pulled the rag from his mouth and Alastair flexed his jaw. He considered calling Luke’s bluff and shouting for help, but there was a look in his captor’s eye that kept him quiet.

‘You know,’ Luke said, his voice flat and soft. ‘People who rape children are the lowest of the low.’

‘Rape?’ Alastair stuttered. ‘Jesus Christ, I did no such thing. I was teaching you a lesson. Teaching you some respect. That’s how it was done back then. You know that.’

Luke laughed then, the type of laugh you might hear down the pub with the boys – an unbridled laugh of amusement. He lifted the blade. ‘This is the very same knife I cut you with that day. You left me at the foot of that oak tree, bleeding and sore, violated, alone and petrified. And you know what I did after you’d all gone? I searched for this knife. I stayed there, until it was too dark to see, until I found it. It took a long time. It had travelled some way when you smacked it out of my hand. But it was my friend’s knife, his most beloved possession. It had a message from his father, who wasn’t the nicest of men, but you know how these things are. Will loved that knife and I wanted to find it for him. When I found it, feeling with my hands in the undergrowth, I felt as if I’d won the lottery. In the end, I decided to hang on to it.’

Luke advanced on Alastair.

‘Stay away from me!’ cried Alastair, fear and anger melding into one indistinguishable rush of emotion. ‘Stay away or you’ll pay for it.’

‘I’ve already paid for it – every day of my life since that afternoon.’

‘You’ll go to prison. If you kill me, you’ll go to prison. Is that what you want?’

‘Like you went to prison?’ Luke looked at him and smiled, his eyebrows raised. ‘Not everyone gets punished for the crimes they commit. You should know that better than anyone. Not every crime gets the justice it deserves. And anyway, a bit like you, I’ve got it covered. I’m not going to go to prison. Someone else is going.’

‘Enough of this now,’ Alastair was panicking. A paralysing fear had begun to creep over him. He wanted this to stop. ‘What do you want? You don’t have to hurt me. Is it money? Do you want money?’

‘Money?’ Luke said with a smile. ‘No, I don’t want your money. I’ve plenty, but it’s kind of you to think of me.’

‘Then what?’ Farrow thought of Will, of what he’d said in the pub, of wanting to hear remorse. ‘You want me to say sorry? Is that it? I’ll say it. I’m sorry. Okay? I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Your sorry means nothing.’

As he spoke Luke Crawford walked over to him and lifted the blade. Calmly and methodically, he drew it down the other side of his face. Farrow yelled out and as he did so Luke grabbed him by the throat and brought his face close to his. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he spat.

‘That’s what you said to me as you raped me. Do you remember that? You said shut the fuck up.’

Alistair Farrow began to whimper. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I have a wife and children.’

‘I know all about your family. They seem nice. Your wife could do with losing a bit of weight but I can see she used to be pretty and your children seem nice enough.’

‘Don’t hurt my children,’ he whispered. He thought of his family asleep in their beds. Would his wife be wondering where he was? Would Diane have called the police by now? Or would she be happily snoring in bed, blissfully unaware of his plight?

‘I’m not going to hurt anybody. Except you.’

Farrow began to scream then. Luke’s hand was over his mouth in an instant. Pressing against him, squeezing so hard he thought his jaw might shatter.

‘Do you know what happened to me after you defiled me and left me in the woods to limp back to school alone in the dark?’ Luke asked him then. He loosened his grip on his face and lowered his hand, lifting a single finger as a warning not to scream. ‘I told my housemaster – I know, a bit of a telltale, that kind of behaviour would have got me into serious trouble, but I figured you couldn’t do any worse to me – and he sent me straight to the head. Drysdale said I was lying. He said that lying about things like that, spreading muck about respectable members of the school was akin to treason. But I insisted. So I was sent to the nurse and told to sleep in that bed in her office. Nobody sat with me. They turned the lights off and left me alone in the dark. No windows, no moonlight, just pitch black, like lying in a coffin in the ground. I lay awake all night feeling dirty, confused, my whole body throbbing with pain, desperate for someone to tell me I was going to be okay. I was terrified, abandoned and broken, a small child ruined – ruined, as it turns out, forever.’

As he spoke, spitting the words out like bitter poison, he flicked the penknife back and forth.

‘I tried everything I could to get on with some sort of life. I was driven. Everything I did I did so I could put what you did behind me. I studied, I kept fit, I worked all the hours I could, searching all the time for someone to love, trying to salvage my life. I thought that would make it better, if I had my own family to love and look after. Protect from animals like you. Prove to the world that life could be good. But I was wrong. What you did ruined me. You stole my life when I was fourteen years old, you
stole
my life.’

Luke came up behind Farrow, pulled his head back and stroked his fingers gently down his exposed neck. ‘My wife died because of me. Because she couldn’t deal with me. She tried to help but she couldn’t.’ He bought himself close to Alastair’s ear. ‘You know why nobody can help me? Because of you,’ he whispered, his breath hot on Alastair’s skin. ‘Because of you I can’t even help myself.’

Alastair tried to shake his head. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he rasped. ‘What have you got to gain from killing me?’

‘It’s not about what I have to gain, but about having nothing left to lose.’

Alastair Farrow pulled against the bungee cords that held his feet and hands in place as Luke bent to rummage in a holdall at his feet. He came out with some grey gaffer tape, picked up the piece of rag and pushed it back into Farrow’s mouth, then wrapped the tape twice around his mouth and head as he pulled back and forth in desperation, panic engulfing him.

Then Luke leant close to his face. ‘Do you remember what else you said to me that day?’

Farrow stared up at this man, his crazed eyes locked onto his, and his panic levels surged again. There was an eerie calm to his voice that chilled the dead, stale air around them. He looked up at him, those eyes burning with hatred, that mouth twisted into a bitter snarl. Fresh panic gripped him as he fought against the cords that tied him, tugging and twisting like a snared rabbit desperate to free itself.

Luke leant forward and whispered close to his ear, his breath hot, words creamy with intent. ‘You said:
And by the way, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me
.’

C H A P T E R    T W E N T Y - S E V E N

Harmony was tidying the cushions on the sofa when she saw the police car pull up outside their building. She went to the window and watched two men – one in uniform, the other in plain clothes – get out of the car. The one in plain clothes stretched and they exchanged words before walking away from the car. She craned her neck and saw them approach the main door. She jumped when the doorbell rang. She went to buzz them in, smoothing her hair as she did.

‘Hello?’ she said, as she opened the door to their flat.

‘Good morning, madam,’ said the plain clothed officer. His grey suit was crumpled and his white shirt greying on the edges of his collar. He was older than he’d seemed from the window, with deep, craggy lines, a large nose that had been broken on more than one occasion and a small scar through one of his eyebrows.

‘Can I help you?’ she said.

‘Does Mr William English live here?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘He’s my husband.’

‘Is he in?’ said the other police officer, a younger man with sandy hair and matching eyes and the sallow skin of a heavy smoker.

‘He’s in the garden.’ She turned and gestured unnecessarily to the back of the flat. ‘Shall I call him?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said the older man patiently. Harmony nodded. ‘Would you like to come in?’

The two men came through the front door and she directed them to the living room. They made the room seem small and overcrowded. She went to the back door and called to Will. He was on his hands and knees, wearing shorts and no top, a sheen of sweat coating his sun-reddened back, weeding the bed to the left of the lawn. They’d both been too tired to think about work, so Will had phoned Frank first thing and told him he wouldn’t be in, and Harmony had called in sick. Alice was happy that she was finally looking after herself.They’d ended up leaving Gill’s just after midday, with Harmony driving so Will could sleep, though she’d found it hard to keep her own eyes open on the monotonous stretch of motorway. They’d both gone to bed when they got back and had a few hours sleep, and when Will woke he went straight into the garden. He told her he wanted to make the most of the last few hours of sun, but she knew he was still trying to come to terms with the idea of her with Luke. He’d need time; she knew that.