Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (21 page)

“Again?” he asked, unable to hide the quiver in his voice.

Cawley held his eyes a moment longer. He glanced at a notepad. “Mr Sellers, right?” he asked.

The bartender nodded.

“And these three?” Cawley wondered, gesturing to the other three.

“Nothing to do with ‘em,” Sellers was quick to interject. Too quick.

“Excuse me?” Cawley said, elongating every syllable.

“They don’t know anything; they weren’t ‘ere.”

Cawley hadn’t been interested in the other three. He figured that the bartender was the key, but after noting their reactions when he interrupted their meeting, he became very interested. He turned to look at them. One of them had some heavy bandaging down the side of his face, a visible cut at the top of his nose and matching black eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“None of your concern,” the third one, the one who hadn’t flinched under Cawley’s stare, answered. He was younger, much younger. Cawley recognised him as the kid from the bar during his last visit, the one barely old enough to ride on the big boy rides at the theme park, let alone old drink.

“Not you,” Cawley said. “Zorro here,” he gestured towards the man with the black eyes.

“I don’t know nothing,” the wounded man answered.

“Really?” Cawley said, looking interested.

“Really. I wasn’t even here.”

Cawley grinned. He could hear the bartender sigh. “You weren’t?”

“No,” Zorro opened his mouth to add more, then he noticed the looks of disgust he was receiving from the others and he silenced himself.

“You weren’t here, you don’t know anything and yet you clearly know what I’m here for.” Cawley opened his notebook and took some notes, nothing more than a few doodles, but enough to keep the wounded man worried.

“I--I…”

“I told ‘im,” the bartender jumped in. “Of course I told ‘im. I told everyone. Not every day you get some famous criminals in ‘ere, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” Simpson chimed, looking around. “Looks like just the sort of place they’d want to hang out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sellers quizzed.

Simpson grinned, shrugged, and was immediately disliked by the bartender.

“So, what do you want to know?” Sellers quizzed. “I told you everything.”

***

He hadn’t slept. It was hard to sleep in the dark, cold basement, but it wasn’t just because of his discomfort and his pain.

He was waiting.

He had drifted off -- staring into nothingness and trying to retain focus -- when he heard her descend the stairs again. The same chubby legs tapping softly on the creaking rungs, the same pudgy toes poking through dust-covered sandals.

She also wore the same smile, but now he could see through it. He knew that there lay a sadistic and devious woman behind that red, joyous face; something sinister behind her Stepford charm. He’d always said that the worst evils rested in the quietest places. Sadism and deviousness wasn’t at home in the slums, the dilapidated
, poverty-stricken tenements; the true evils hid behind suburban smiles and middle class ideals, there waited the perverts, paedophiles, serial killers and other sick individuals who wore neighbourly masks for the world and exposed their secrets in the shadows.

This woman, with her checkered apron and her beaming smile, was the sickest kind. Rosemary West, Myra Hindley; the women behind the men; the women who displayed  innocence to the world while mastering their husbands’ sickening games behind closed doors.

This time she didn’t offer him an ammonia-drenched sandwich, but she did come bearing treats. She had a tall glass in her hand which she held in front of her. Another offering.

“I came to apologise,” she said, sounding genuine. “What I did was wrong,” she tilted her head to the side like a begging dog, gave him a sorrowful smile which sucked in a dimple on her cheek. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“Really?”

She nodded fully. “It was my husband. He’s a good man but…” she allowed herself to trail off thoughtfully. “Anyway,” she said, returning from a momentary trance. “I brought you this. I figured you must be thirsty.”

She offered the glass. Dexter took it and raised it to his lips, noticing her eager stare as she watched him purse his lips and prepare for a drink. He halted before tipping the glass; she looked disappointed.

“It’s good,” she said. “It’s freshly squeezed,” she told him, adding, “orange juice,” almost as an afterthought.

He looked into the frothy liquid. It certainly had some orange juice in it, but he doubted that was all it contained. It was so tainted that it didn’t even smell of orange juice and had lost most of its orange colour, which was probably why she’d chosen to pour it into an opaque tumbler.

“Thanks,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could. “Could you loosen my leg first?” he asked, gesturing to the aggressive red welt around his ankle. “You don’t have to remove it, just loosen it. Please.”

She was smiling at the glass, at his face. She turned to the leg, stared at it, then back at the orange juice, waiting for him to take a drink. “Okay,” she relented. “But you drink up, you need your strength.”

He nodded, smiled, pursed his lips as she took a long key from her kangaroo pouch, her eyes on him all the while.

She put the key in the lock and adjusted the shackle, staying out of range of his free foot, in case he decided to swing it at her. He watched as she readjusted the shackle, loosening its tight grip on his ankle without freeing his foot.

She turned towards him when she had finished, ready to insist he drink his juice. He lashed out. He threw the tumbler as hard as he could, aiming for her face. The base of the tumbler hit above her right eye, splintered a spider web fracture down the sides of the glass.

She toppled backwards; the glass fell at her feet and shattered into deadly shards. He crawled over them, ignored the sharp pains in his shins as the glass dug into his flesh.

She saw him coming and tried to scramble away, to get out of his limited reach, but he quickened after her, fighting against the tide of the heavy shackles and his tired body. He grabbed her by the foot, tried to pull her into his radius, a gleaming fire in his eyes as he tasted revenge.

She kicked out like a wounded animal, aimed her free foot at his head and landed a few shots. Her sandal came off in his hand; he threw it away, clawed at her naked feet as she continued to kick. She caught him on the bridge of the nose with her heel, he felt the appendage break, heard the snap, felt an instant rush of blood pour down his face. But he didn’t stop. He knew that if he let her go then he could be signing his and Pandora's death warrants.

She didn’t scream but she squirmed. Dexter grabbed at her shins, her thick calves grasped so tightly that the flesh bulged out of his fingers like dough from a baking tin. He clawed further up as she struggled to get away. He worked onto her thighs, onto her groin. He was rabid, growling and spitting like a broken, desperate dog. He reached out for another handhold, grabbed a large breast. He squeezed, pulled himself further up.

She was petrified, her face a picture of horror. He looked into her eyes, reached his hands onto her throat. Then he saw the fearful orbs shift upwards, looking at something, someone, above her, above him. The anger and the desperation deflated when he realised that someone was standing above them, then he felt the foot in the side of his ribs, strong enough to fracture a few of the bones and knock him off her.

He rolled over, clutching at his chest. He tried to roll further away, sensing more attacks, but the chains stopped him, forced him to stay where he was. He was kicked again and again; pummelled like a boxing bag.

Through the haze of his own fading anger and the rush of his agony, he saw the grinning faces of his abductors standing above him, both of them delighting as they kicked his beaten body. They took turns, spurred each other on, even stopped to regain their breath a few times. Eventually they left him a beaten, broken mess on the floor.

He groaned, pushed himself upwards through gritted teeth. He could hear their footsteps above him. They moved on, back to their warm house, their innocent lives -- the monster in the basement now reduced to a wreck.

But Dexter wasn’t alone and hopeless anymore, his kidnappers had forgotten something.

He scrambled over to the broken glass. The liquid, a sickeningly pale orange juice that had been cut with some sadistic poison, probably from the woman’s own body, had spilled everywhere. It seeped into Dexter’s clothes as he dug through the mess of glass for the biggest, thickest shard he could find.

He was in agony, he was desperate and he didn't have many choices left. He looked down at the shackle around his ankle. They had taken the key, pocketed it after delivering their own form of vengeance, but he still had a means of escape. He gritted his teeth, readied the shard above the welted skin on his ankle and prepared to hack off his own foot.

26

Cawley consulted his notepad. “You said they arrived at around twelve--”

“I never said that,” Sellers was quick to interject. “I said one, mebbies two.”

Cawley eyed him momentarily and then nodded. The fact that he remembered his earlier story didn’t prove it was real. If the lie was important enough there was a good chance he had rehearsed it to perfection.

“Okay,” he continued. “They saw the report on the television, smashed up the place and then left?”

“That’s right.”

“Were you here?” he asked, quickly turning to Zorro who stood at the bar anxiously nursing a pint of cider and hoping that he wouldn’t be called upon.

The bartender answered for him, “No, he wasn’t ‘ere,” but Cawley had already seen the beginnings of a nod from Zorro, already knew that the bartender was lying for his friend because he didn’t trust the
dim-witted individual to lie for himself.

“You look pretty beaten up,’ Simpson offered. “How did you manage that?”

Zorro looked from Cawley to Simpson and then at the bartender before turning his attention back to his cider and saying nothing.

“He doesn’t have to talk to you,” Sellers said.

“Did you do that to him?” Cawley wanted to know.

“Lovers’ tiff?” Simpson offered.

“Fuck you,” Sellers spat.

Cawley couldn't hide the grin. “What about you kid?” he said, turning to the youngster.

“He was ‘ere,” the bartender began.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“I saw it all,” the kid said cockily, clearly more confident of his lying than his injured friend.

“You saw the fight?” Cawley asked.

“What fight?” the kid answered suspiciously.

“You’re trying to catch us out,” Sellers noted. “It’s not going to work.”

Cawley laughed. “Catch you out?” he repeated. “When you’re telling the truth, what’s there to
catch out
?”

The bartender looked momentarily stumped, a reply whirred its way around his head but Cawley interrupted him before it could form. “Look, whatever dodgy side-line you have here, I don’t give a shit. You’re hiding something, that’s obvious, but I really don’t care. I just want to catch these guys.”

“We’re not--”

“Don’t bullshit me.” Cawley leaned on the bar, crept his face closer to the bartender. “You’re not telling me something. What is it?”