Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (29 page)

Cawley didn’t reply, he kept his eyes locked on the sadistic killer in front of him.

“So will I,” Sellers said with a wide grin.

Cawley turned the gun around, struck the killer across the side of his head as hard as he could. He felt the vibration through the gun, felt the impact reverberate from Seller’s skull, through the weapon and into his wrist.

“Bastard,” he hissed silently, stepping back and smiling as he watched Sellers’s head slump unconsciously onto his chest.

He looked around; at Dexter and Pandora, dead and decaying; at their unconscious killers, scattered around the room; at the bandaged man, looking grim by the exit; at Simpson, looking sick as he stared at Sellers.

“Now what?” Simpson wondered.

“We should burn the lot to the ground,” Cawley said simply, hearing a barely audible squeak from the bandaged man in the corner.

“Should?”

Cawley nodded, shook it off. “Should, but can’t. There’s a phone in the bar,” he said with a nod. “Phone it in, let someone else clean this mess up.”

38

“You’re already dead,” Dorothy said once the laughter had faded and the bemused expressions remained creased on Dexter and Pandora’s face. They both strained their necks, finding the energy to fight against their weakened muscles.

“You’re mad,” Dexter told her simply. “All of you,” he flicked his eyes around the room, taking in as much of the insanity as he could. “You’ve lost your minds.”

Dorothy smirked, raised and dropped her eyebrows.

“What is this place?” Dexter asked, finding his voice. “What has happened to all of you?
Who the fuck are you
?”

“We’re nobody,” Eric said, stepping forward, standing beside his wife.

The clerk at the petrol station, the one who had led the chase, moved alongside him. “Because of you,” he noted.

“
Excuse me
?” Dexter felt angry, bitter. He had given up but was finding some fight again. He didn’t want to go down to a gang of weirdoes, didn’t want his life to end because of inbreeding and crossed wires -- because a small town mentality, similar to the one he had grown up with, had morphed into something obscene and psychotic.

“You stopped us from living,” someone added from behind him. He strained to see them but couldn’t twist his neck muscles enough.

A child, a young girl, no more than ten or eleven, stepped forward. “You killed my granddad,” she said soberly.

Dexter felt her words touch him. They didn’t sound as crazy as the rest.

“The guard at the bank?” He asked, his voice breaking as the fight faded again. “That was your granddad?”

She nodded, held his stare with eyes that despised him.

His face creased as the memories returned. Something wasn’t right. “But he was young, he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. He couldn’t have grandchildren.”

A woman in her early thirties stepped forward, planted a motherly arm on the young girl’s shoulder, stared at Dexter with despicable eyes. “He
didn’t
have; but he would have.”

He stared at her for a moment, waited for an explanation. His face dropped when one didn’t come. He turned to Dorothy, to Eric, to anyone that would make any sense.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Dorothy was hailing the others, gathering them around the front of the stocks so they could witness the humiliation for themselves. They knocked them, slapped them and ran curious eyes over them as they passed and huddled around. Pandora winced as she felt a few hands on her face and her back, a couple of them ran through her hair, against her cheek. She could feel their heat, smell their odour. She tasted the sour sweat on the hand of one as he trailed a finger across her cheek and lingered for a moment on her lips.

Dexter heard her squirm, tried to see what was happening, but couldn't manoeuvre himself enough.

“If you touch her I’ll--”

“You’ll what?” Dorothy suddenly snapped, snarling as she stepped to the head of the huddle. “You’ll kill us?” she grinned. “I told you. We don’t exist.
You
don’t exist anymore. Look around you.” She threw her arms over her head, gesturing to the room of crowded people -- packed in like revellers at a festival, all looking at Dexter and Pandora with eager, desperate and vengeful eyes. “We are the descendants of the man you killed. The ones who didn’t get a chance because
you
took him away. This is our home, this is where we’ll always be: stuck in a place that doesn’t exist in a time that doesn’t exist. But you know what? That doesn't matter, because you’re here with us.”

She moved forward, until she stood in between Pandora and Dexter, who both craned their necks to see. She lowered her voice, bent over, her hands on her knees, turning her head to look at each of them in turn.

“This may be our home; but this is
your
hell. You’re forced to live with your mistakes, forced to repeat them whilst we watch and make things as hard and as miserable as possible.”

They didn’t hear anymore, didn’t comprehend anything else that was said.

The riot started, the torture began.

The town had their fun with what was left of Dexter and Pandora. They tortured them, humiliated them. Everyone had their turn, and when they finished, when Dexter and Pandora were left in barely human guises -- lifeless and bloodied on the floor -- the town of Fairwood returned to their homes; ready for another day.

39

Sellers was still grinning when they removed the ropes, replaced them with handcuffs, read him his rights and bundled him into the van. The others had regained consciousness by then and didn’t share his apathy. The youngster was close to tears; he didn’t express any remorse for the deaths of the two fugitives, but did seem very concerned about how his stepdad would react to the news of his impending imprisonment.

The bandaged man and the big man went silently, taken away in separate vehicles.

The press were already arriving, someone had tipped them off and they were crowding around the pub in their droves, the flash of cameras fused with the lights from the police cars to create a carnival atmosphere.

Someone had the sense to erect a line of tape before the throng arrived and a few officers held back the excited gaggle of journalists and cameramen who tried to snap their pound of flesh.

Cawley ignored the calls from the press, tuned them out completely. He felt Simpson’s hand on his shoulder, felt his fingers dig into the flesh.

“Looks like that’s my call to leave,” he heard him say. He didn’t know what he was talking about at first, didn’t react when he felt Simpson brush past him. He watched him scuttle away to mix with the other officers who gathered around the scene, looking complacent and bored as they tried to look busy. Then he heard a shrill and annoyed female voice and he understood why Simpson had left.

“Cawley!” the harpy snapped. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, what the fuck have you been doing?”

His heart sank. He lowered his head, turned to face the wall of high-pitched noise.

“Cawley! What’s wrong with you?” Superintendent Clarissa Morris asked, her face askew, her bony hands on her bony hips. “I’ve been trying to phone you all day. Again!”

Cawley sighed. He had left his phone at home. He didn’t need it ringing during the break in and had no desire to talk to his boss, the only person likely to try ringing him.

“Have you been avoiding me?” she barked.

Cawley raised his head, couldn’t stop the sly smile that wormed his way across his face. He nodded, slow and long.

“Excuse me?” Carissa snapped, her eyebrows raised so high that they disappeared under her fringe. “You
were
ignoring me?”

“Yes, sir,” he said with an assured nod.

He saw her nostrils flare, saw her hands tighten into fists and grow white under the pressure as she pushed them tighter into her hips. “May I ask why?” she said through a clenched jaw, the words squirming out of her mouth.

“Because I can’t stand you,” he said simply.

“Excuse me?” she stuck out her jaw as she spoke.

“You heard me,” he said, his head now raised. “You annoy the hell out of me. You’re an evil, manipulative fucking bitch and I despise every moment that I’m forced to spend around you.”

She opened her mouth to object but he hadn’t finished.

“You’re a horrible, demonic witch and no one likes you.” He was shouting now and the throng of people around him, the officers in close proximity, and the press, who were pushed further back, all silenced their activity to hear what he was saying. “I know this all boils down to me rejecting you at the Christmas party, and for that I’m truly sorry, but there isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make me want to sleep with you.”

She growled but she’d been thrown from her stride. She tried to react, to regain her control, but he pushed on, now within an inch of her, so close he could smell the sour coffee on her breath.

“You can sack me all you want,” he told her. “I don’t care. I don’t want to spend another day in the same building as you.” He left one long stare with her, turned and departed with three dozen admiring eyes on his back.

“You’re fired Cawley!” Clarissa said as loud as she could, looking around as she did so, making sure everyone had heard just how loud and assertive she was. “You’ll never work another day in your life!”

Cawley laughed softly to himself but he didn’t turn around. Instead he raised an arm, popped up his middle finger and left the gesture with her.

40

A year later.

Cawley stared into the still, amber liquid in his glass. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the thick tumbler, stroked a bead of moisture from the rim and then leant back in his chair. He ran his hand through his
hair; it hadn’t been washed for a couple of days and hadn’t been cut for much longer. He sighed through tightly pressed lips, looked towards the ceiling.

His mouth was dry; his head was tired, aching. He closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly and then quickly opened them to watch the blue stars dance around his vision. He checked his watch, checked the clock on the wall for confirmation and then stood.

The barman watched him stand, gave him a curious smile. “Leaving so soon?” he asked.

Cawley nodded in his direction, threw some money onto the bar, dug his hands into his coat pockets and left.

The day was bright but cold, he sunk his head underneath the lapels of his jacket, kept his head away from the sharp wind.

It was the day of his anniversary, a year since he’d found the dead bodies of Bleak and Bright. He’d spent most of the afternoon in a dark and dank bar, sipping from a glass of whiskey and watching the clock.

He crossed the road with his mind elsewhere and was nearly clipped by a pissed-off boy racer in a flash hatchback.

The youngster stopped the car beside him, rolled down the window and thrust his angered, pimpled face outside. He formed the beginnings of an outburst, saw and recognised Cawley’s face and then apologised, ducking back inside the car.

Cawley sighed, allowed himself a cheeky smile. He could never get used to that, but he didn’t despise it as much as he used to.

“Making more friends I see?”

He turned at the sound of the voice, allowed the half-smile to contort into one much bigger, much wider, when he saw the woman standing there -- a soft smile on her pretty face, a cheeky glint in her blue eyes.