Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (17 page)

Cawley glared at his friend.

“You know what I mean.”

Cawley shrugged, turned away again. He didn’t want to go over it with Simpson. They weren’t too dissimilar, but he didn’t want him to know that.

When he didn’t answer, Simpson changed the subject, trying his best to avoid the silence. “How are things with work?”

Cawley sighed. “Same old, same old.”

“Clarissa?”

“Still a bitch.”

“How are things with Bleak and Bright?”

“Going nowhere. Not even in our jurisdiction anymore.”

“You sure of that?”

Cawley nodded, sensing the interest in his friend’s words. “You know as well as I do that the chances they’re still in the country, let alone the county, are next to nothing,” he said, hoping to pull Simpson in, if not to lure him back then to show him what he was missing.

He turned on the seat, wrapping his arm around the back, lifting his leg under him, his full attention on Cawley. “You see, I don’t think so,” he said, offering his own theory. “I was thinking about it last night. If I was them, if my face was everywhere, I’d
never
try to leave the country.”

“It’s the sensible thing to do.”

“Exactly, so it’s what everyone will be expecting. Everyone’s on full alert, all airports and train stations are being monitored. Hell, they’ve already arrested half a dozen people just because they sorta looked like them. What chance would the real bandits stand of going unnoticed?”

“So what, you think they’re still in the country?”

Simpson nodded. “Maybe even in the local area.”

Cawley gave a slow nod of his head. “The thought had occurred to me.”

“But?” Simpson said.

“But I have nothing to go on. If they still were hanging around, waiting for the dust to settle, then it would be a matter of time before they had to resurface. They would need to eat, drink…” He shrugged. “There’s been nothing yet. Nothing concrete anyway.”

“There must be something to go on.”

Cawley paused to study his friend’s face. He wasn’t supposed to discuss the case with anyone, but he doubted it mattered. Simpson was still a detective at heart, he knew what he was talking about, knew enough about the job to offer some insight. Cawley also felt good talking to him about it, he had missed being able to discuss the job with someone other than his evil wife or his demonic boss.

“Nothing,” he submitted. “I’ve been running after crazies. There’s a shit-tonne of them phoning up saying they’ve seen the bandits. You know what it’s like, they all want their fifteen minutes, they all want to fuck us over. Then you get the ones who try their best to help, drag us halfway across the county just to tell us they saw someone who
may
have looked like one of the criminals, only he was older, shorter and possibly a dog.” He shook his head, a smile creeping onto his face. “We even had Bat-shit Barnes on the phone.”

Simpson looked amused; a mental image of her, and all of her previous exploits, was all it took. “What’d she say?” he wondered. “Have the spirits been talking to her again? Or was it the toaster this time?”

Cawley laughed soundlessly. “She said she saw them up at Rosie’s Point. Said she walks her dogs up there.”

Simpson didn’t laugh. “And?”

Cawley looked perplexed. “That’s it,” he explained. “I left after that. I couldn’t take the smell, or the bullshit, any longer. God knows what cock and bull nonsense she would have come up with. Probably that she saw them paragliding on unicycles, or--”

“So you think she was lying?” Simpson asked, looking confused.

“Of course she was, she’s insane. Why would she expect me to believe that she walks for nearly an hour, bypassing countless fields on the way, just to give her non-existent dogs some extra grass to piss on?”

“She
does
go to Rosie’s Point.”

“What?”

Simpson nodded sternly, locking Cawley’s gaze in his, realising his partner had potentially made a big mistake. “I had a friend who lived near there, I used to see her out there all the time walking her dogs.”

Cawley looked stumped, his mouth agape. “You’re shitting me?”

Simpson slowly shook his head. “I think you better go and see Barnes again.”

21

Dexter picked at the welt around his ankle. The red skin wrapped around the edges of the shackle like a macabre frame, the skin underneath pressed tight against the bone. The sharp pain and the mundane activity took his mind off other things, things he couldn’t bear to think about.

A noise interrupted him. A hollow echo of distant, approaching feet. He’d heard a number of heavy footfalls over what he assumed to be the last few hours. The noises came from above, some soft, some heavy. These were different though, louder, closer.

He heard a floorboard creak, heard a hissed breath of frustration. He looked towards the bottom of the staircase, the source of the noise. Another footfall; another creak on old wood; another displacement of antique dust. A cough: soft, polite, gentile.

His heart pounded in his chest, a forceful mixture of trepidation and anger.

The legs came into view first: naked, chubby calves; short, thick thighs. A pair of sandals through which poked ten dumpy digits that curled in on themselves, the nails coated with faint traces of cracked red varnish.

They halted on the second last step and shifted their feet awkwardly, the shape of their short sandals marking an imprint in the dust. They
hesitated; he could hear them taking heavy breaths. Then they turned around, headed back up the stairs. He stared at the bottom stairs as he listened to the woman creak her way back to the top and gently swing the door closed behind her.

His heart settled in his chest. He returned his hands to his ankle, his fingertips shaking violently as he plucked and rubbed the flesh. Eventually he gave up, throwing his hand violently in a gesture of disgust and despair. He leaned back, rested on the cold unforgiving concrete floor and stared upwards.

The dust on the ceiling unsettled as soft footfalls on the floor above worked their way across the room, paused at the far end and then walked back to the centre where they settled with one heavy thump.

Dexter closed his eyes and tried not to think about Pandora, but he couldn’t stop the images of her from flooding his mind.

***

She needed to use the toilet. Her bladder was full and she had been struggling to hold it in for so long that her entire body ached from the effort. She was waiting for the moment when the sweaty perverted man tried to rape her, she was saving it for him, if not to discourage him then just to piss him off and win herself a small victory. But she couldn’t hold it any longer.

She didn’t want to wet herself when he wasn’t there. She didn’t want to lie in a pool of her own quickly drying urine, didn’t want to have to suffer the stench and the discomfort of the liquid waste from a night of drinking soaking into her clothes and into the bed.

She thought she was alone as she writhed and twisted uncomfortably on the bed. She had heard the man leave a while ago, had listened to his footfalls fading as they distanced themselves from where she lay. She thought she had been asleep since then, she remembered seeing Dexter, remembered being somewhere else. She had been dreaming, something unpleasant, something violent and chaotic -- she remembered screams and shouts and sweat and blood -- but nothing to do with the people currently holding her hostage. She had to have fallen asleep at some point, and if she was asleep then she wouldn’t have been able to hear him returning to the room to leer at her again.

She felt the presence of someone else in the room long before they approached her. She thought it was him again and cringed at the image of his face ogling her as she twisted in discomfort. Then she heard a female voice; soft and reassuring.

“Are you okay?” it asked.

She hadn’t really seen the woman. She briefly remembered her from the pub, had a few glimpses of her in her tormented memory, but those glimpses had been overrun by the images of her sadistic husband.

“I’m going to take away your gag,” the voice explained in a pleasant tone. “Don’t scream.”

Pandora stopped writhing, letting the elderly abductor know that she would cooperate. She felt her small fragile hands on her face, felt the wrinkled tip of her fingers as they brushed her mouth and peeled the gag from between her lips.

Pandora breathed in deeply, as if sucking in oxygen for the first time in a long time. She gasped, rasped and then licked her dry and cracked lips, running her slightly moist tongue over the cuts and welts.

She felt the old woman back away. She smelled like soap, unscented and sterile. Her breath lingered near Pandora, she caught the stink of morning coffee and milk; sweet, soured and musty.

“What’s wrong?” the old woman asked.

“I need the toilet,” Pandora said, surprised at her voice, which no longer sounded like her own.

There was a pause as the woman weighed this up. “One or two?” she asked eventually.

“One,” Pandora said, suddenly dreading the thought of ever plumping for the second option.

“I’ll get you a pot.”

Pandora shook her head violently, her closed eyes pleading with the woman through the blackened veil of the blindfold. “Please,” she said. “Let me have some dignity.”

There was another pause, then the woman relented. “Okay,” she said softly. “But don’t try anything.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Pandora flinched when her wizened hands rested upon the bare flesh of her stomach. Until then she didn’t realise that her skin was exposed, that her blouse had been torn so heavily that the majority of her torso showed. The old woman moved her hands slowly towards Pandora’s arm.

“I’m going to help you up,” she said, taking her hand and tugging gently.

“I need to see where I’m going,” Pandora pleaded. “Please. Take my blindfold off.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

She was silent.

“Please. I won’t look at you.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Then what is?”

Another pause. Her hands were still on Pandora’s elbow, seemed to be pushing more into her flesh by the second. Pandora thought she had the old woman where she wanted her, thought she could appeal to her human side just as she could appeal to her female side, but her next words quickly diminished any hope.

“Do you want to take a piss or not?” she spat bitterly.

Pandora choked on her words. Felt the pressure of her fingertips digging dangerously into her arm. “Okay.”

She dragged her upright, the caring tone in her voice now completely gone. She helped her to her feet. Pandora felt woozy, struggled to remain standing. She moved towards the old woman for balance and support but the woman moved away, keeping Pandora at arm’s length whilst her hand clenched her elbow tightly.

She managed to remain standing and staggered behind the woman as she led her to a nearby bathroom, probably an en suite.

“I can do this myself,” Pandora said hopefully, as she felt the touch of tiled floor beneath her feet and the ceramic of the toilet with her outstretched hand.

“No, you can’t,” the old woman insisted. “Take your pants off.”