Bubblegum Smoothie (23 page)

He chuckles. He chuckles because soon, everyone will know who he is. How dangerous he is.

People might think more carefully before stripping a father of his child in future.

He opens the car door without looking left or right, without even lifting his hood up. There’s no need for him to be anonymous anymore. There is no need to hide.

He only has three pieces of the puzzle left.

Three pieces, then everyone will understand.

Two of those pieces are in this bungalow.

He approaches the side door. He doesn’t see anybody in the kitchen. For a moment, he panics. Wonder if maybe Jenny might be out, or if that slippery bitch might’ve stayed at some fake husband’s house.

His nerves are calmed when he hears her soft voice.

“Get your bag packed, Daley,” she says. “Don’t want to be late for the zoo.”

Her voice is just as he remembers. It eases him even more. Makes him think about the times he spent with Jenny on the beach, rubbing his hands through her smooth hair, pressing his lips against hers, staring into her inviting blue eyes.

Six years and the bitch never realised he couldn’t really give two shits about her. Looks really were deceiving.

He places a hand on the bronze door handle. Hopes to God Jenny is still just as complacent with her door-locking as she used to be. Not that it’s a problem if she isn’t—He can always just ring the doorbell.

He turns the handle.

The door opens.

He can’t stop myself smiling as he steps inside his wife’s kitchen. As he inhales that homely smell that used to welcome him back from work every day. He looks on the walls, see a calendar hanging up from 2009. A calendar with birds on that she has been recycling for five years.

Always was a cheap bitch.

He steps through the kitchen. He can hear her rustling in the lounge, Jenny shaking the contents of her handbag as she searches for her car keys. Always losing them, she was. Always losing them, then whining at him with that cunty voice.

That cunty voice that he’s going to silence forever.

He moves into the hallway. Feels the soft cream carpet under his feet. On the walls, there are pictures of my boy. Pictures of Daley, looking all grown-up, with his curly brown hair. On one of them, he is wearing his Bolton Wanderers kit.

He walks up to this photograph. Rubs his thumb against it. He can feel something welling up in his eyes. Tastes salt on his lips.

All the years he’s lost.

All the years with his son that his bitch wife, those bastard prosecutors and that idiot jury took away from him.

Because he’d never lay a finger on Daley. He cares about Daley. Daley is the only person, the only
thing
beside killing, he ever cared about.

Oh well. He’ll have all the time in the world to spend with him soon.

He turns to walk into the lounge and he freezes.

Jenny is standing at the door. She is wearing a black t-shirt and tight blue jeans, and carries a black leather bag over her shoulder. A bag that
he
bought the bitch all those years ago.

Her eyes are wide. Her dark hair is darker than he remembers. Dyed black.

Trashy whore. Always was.

They stand and stare at one another in silence.

He gets hard when he see the tears well up in her eyes, when he sees her cheeks blushing, like they always used to when she knew he was going to beat her.

“Jed, what—”

“Don’t make a sound, Jenny. Not yet.”

He pulls the long combat knife out of his pocket and steps towards Jenny.

“You might want to save your vocal cords for the next part.”

FORTY

“Does this thing seriously not go any faster?”

“Jesus, Blake. Give me a chance here. There’s speed limits on the road. Rules to adhere to.”

I bit my lip as I sat in the passenger seat of Lenny’s Mini Cooper, which smelled of coffee and rotting fruit. “Aren’t there rules? Police officer rules you can avoid on the speed limit? I’m sure there are rules.”

Lenny shrugged. “Come on, Blakey. You know me well enough by now. You actually expect me to have a bloody clue?”

I tilted my head. “Valid point.”

I rubbed my hands together as we approached Moss House Avenue. Looked at the digital clock on Lenny’s dashboard. Eight-fifteen a.m. I felt like I was preparing for the biggest exam of my life. I wasn’t sure why nerves were circling my stomach so much. Jed Chipps wasn’t necessarily at his wife’s house just as Lenny and I discovered he was the killer.

But there were only two names left on that court document. Two names left on his list.

I thought back to what Jed told me after he’d slashed a knife across my face.

“Let me get on with my work…”

“I’ll be finished soon…”

“The answers are written already… You’re just not looking in the right places.”

Somehow, I didn’t think Jed Chipps was going to slow his pace all of a sudden.

“Take a left down here,” I said.

“Alright, alright. Calm yourself. We just walk to the door, check Mrs Chipps and Chipps Junior are okay, then we give them a nice little ride to protective custody once backup gets here.”

“And then what?”

Lenny shrugged again. “We wait and hope ol’ Jebadiah Chipps shows up with a bloodlust right in time for a heavily armed team to catch him.”

Lenny turned down Moss House Avenue.

“Honestly, Blake. I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s not like he’s just gonna turn up the second we…”

He stopped talking.

I saw what he saw a split second later.

“Oh shit,” he said.

Jed Chipps’ Land Rover was parked on the pavement outside Number 63.

“Plan B?” I asked.

Lenny slowed down. Pulled up just behind Jed’s Land Rover. Both of us craned our necks, tried to look through Jenny Chipps’ lounge window, but it was no good.

“I’ll call for backup. We need to take this seriously. Jed Chipps is a very dangerous man. We don’t want to do anything stupid here.”

I lifted my phone and called Martha. Quickly explained the situation and told her to get her lazy butt down to Moss House Avenue. I wasn’t sure what good Martha being here might be, but I figured I might need her for backup of my own, just in case Lenny the slimeball tried anything too crafty.

Besides, I had plans of my own.

“So we just wait here?” I said. “Wait here while—while Jed could be doing anything to his wife? To his son?”

Lenny shook his head. “Oh don’t get all conspiracy theory on me. Backup’s on the way. The best option is to hold our position. To not get involved and… and risk being gutted in the process.”

“Just leave the other guys to deal with it, right?”

Lenny smiled. “Right. Not keen on getting any scars on my pretty face any time soon… Hey! Where are you going?”

I jolted out of Lenny’s car. Slammed the door shut without responding. I could hear him protesting, hear him shaking around, but I let him.

He could follow me or he could wait in the car.

I was going inside, whether he liked it or not.

I couldn’t just sit and wait for backup when a murdering nutbag could be torturing his wife in her own home.

Call it growing a conscience, or whatever. It just felt like the morally right thing to do.

Damn. “Morally right.”
Who am I?

I jogged down Jenny Chipps’ driveway, loose tarmac kicking up under my feet. I approached the back door. Saw it was slightly ajar, which made my stomach weigh down like I’d swallowed a bag of stones.

Jed Chipps was inside.

I pushed through into the kitchen. Looked around, oriented myself with the place.

I thought about shouting. Thought about calling out a name. But I didn’t want to get Jed’s attention. I wanted to get in here as quiet as I could, catch him in the midst of whatever he was doing.

Sure, I didn’t have a weapon on me. I’d have to improvise.

But shit—hadn’t I been frigging improvising all my life?

I stepped through the kitchen. No matter how hard I tried to be quiet, my feet echoed against the hard tiles. I breathed in deeply. Breathed in, looked to my left, looked to my right, as I moved through the kitchen doorway and into the hall.

I stopped when I stepped inside.

At the bottom of the hallway, a little boy of about six stood. He had wavy brown hair and was wearing an England football shirt.

Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Hey, kid,” I said. Shit. How was I supposed to speak to a kid? “What… You’re Daley, right?”

The kid didn’t nod. He just stared at me as I approached. Stared at me with wide brown eyes.

“It’s… it’s alright now, boy. I’m not going to hurt you. Your mum. Is she… is she around?”

The kid stared on.

My stomach sank again, and I figured it’d be doing a shitload more sinking before I wrapped up this case, then a whole load of sinking after.

I realised the kid wasn’t looking at me. Nope, the old looking
beyond
me trick. I was gonna have to sharpen up at my “looking beyond” detection skills. They were causing me some real problems.

I felt the presence of someone behind me now. The same presence that I’d felt behind me in Martha’s house. Shit—when had my life become such an 18-rated pantomime?

I thought about recycling my old spin and kick trick.

Instead, I clocked the blue-patterned flowerpot from the cabinet beside me, grabbed it, and swung around.

Jed Chipps was facing me. Smiling.

His hands dripped with blood. His black hoodie, which he wore so proudly at every crime, was stained.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Blake Dent,” he said. “You should’ve just left me to finish my work in peace.”

“What? Left you to kill your wife? To kidnap your kid? Is that what this is, Jed?”

Jed didn’t look remotely surprised that I knew his name. His expression didn’t change a bit.

“You know, I kind of respect you,” he said. “You’ve certainly done a better job than the police department in pursuing me, whatever you are. Some kind of PI, I figure.”

“Bounty hunter. Compliments accepted. Tips welcomed.”

Jed laughed. “It’s just a shame it’s me you’re pursuing. A shame you weren’t on my case when my son was taken away from me. When I was denied access. Maybe you’d have seen the wider picture.”

I gulped down a lump in my throat.

“The only picture I see is a murdering nutjob who’s going to jail for the rest of his life.”

Jed tutted. “Shame.”

And then he swung his black Doc Martens boot out and kicked me in the shin.

I didn’t want to fall over. No part of my body wanted to fall over. But I did anyway. I fell over, dropped the flowerpot, hit the ground and smacked my face on the floor. I tasted copper in my mouth as I bit my tongue.

Jed rolled me over.

“I gave you a chance, Blake Dent,” he said. He lifted a long, bloody knife out of his pocket. I heard Daley whimper and cry as he stood at the bottom of the hallway. “I gave you a chance, and you didn’t listen. This is what I do to people who don’t listen.”

“I’d think about the police outside before you bring that knife down!”

Jed stopped. Froze in mid-air. I wasn’t sure whether opening up about the police was a good thing. On the one hand, he knew backup was either outside or on its way. He had an opportunity to rethink.

On the other hand, I could’ve kept my mouth shut. Let him take his time stabbing me to death. Hope for backup to walk in while he’s in the act.

Nah. First option definitely better. Always the first option.

Jed brought the knife closer to me anyway. Pressed the sharp end of the blade against my Adam’s apple.

“You’re a pest, Blake Dent. A nosy pest. A nosy pest who sticks their face where it doesn’t belong, just like those girls I killed. Meddling, they were. No idea about my life, not in the slightest.”

I took in shallow breaths as Jed held the blade down on my Adam’s apple. Where the hell were backup? And where the hell was Jenny, anyway?

“You can stop this. Stop this right now. Don’t… don’t let your son see this.”

I knew the words were ridiculous the second they came out of my mouth. I knew it even more so when I saw the smile on Jed’s face.

“You’re fun. I’ll give you that. A lot of fun.”

He lifted the knife.

I watched it come down in slow motion.

I rolled to my side.

Rolled to my side as it came further down. Yanked myself back to stop it landing anywhere but my neck, my chest…

I felt it slam into my leg. Felt a sudden burning sharpness at the bottom of my right thigh.

And then I heard an engine.

Jed looked up. He tugged the knife out of my leg and backed away from me.

“You weren’t bluffing about the backup. Ballsy, I’ll give you that.”

He rushed over to Daley, who sobbed away.

“Come on, son,” he said. He grabbed his hand. “We… we have to go.”

“But Mummy—”

“We’ll be with Mummy soon. I promise.”

He stepped over me as I clutched at my burning leg. Luckily, he’d only caught the edge of my right thigh, so hopefully no major arteries were pierced or anything like that.

I said luckily. It frigging stung like hell, for what it was worth.

“Been nice knowing you, Blake Dent,” Jed said. He smiled at me. A genuine smile of affection. “We’ve had a lot of fun together. Be thankful my kid’s watching or I’d have even more fun with you. All the best.”

And then he took off, dragged Daley along with him, and disappeared out the back door of the bungalow.

I clutched my leg. My head felt weak, dizzy, as I stared down at the blood. I could hear shouting outside. Hear engines starting up, slowing down.

And then I heard a crunch. The squealing of brakes. The sound of a collision.

I lifted myself up, biting my lip through the pain in my leg. I hobbled back through the kitchen, then back out the door. The collision. It had to be Jed. The backup, they’d rammed him. Stopped him leaving.

When I reached the bottom of the driveway, almost keeling over with pain and lightheadedness, you guessed it—my poor stomach did its sinky thing again.