Human Frailty, a Detective Mike Bridger novel

Human Frailty

A Detective Mike Bridger
novel

By Mark
Bredenbeck

Copyright 2013
by Mark Bredenbeck

Book design by Mark Bredenbeck

Smashwords edition

“This book is a work of fiction.
Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, governments, events or locales is entirely
coincidental.”

“All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The
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or via any other means without the permission of the author is
illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized
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electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the
author’s rights is appreciated.”

You make me cry,

to show your love for me.

You make me scream,

so you know I feel.

You make me bruise,

to put your mark on me.

You make me hide,

so that no one cares.

You make me fear,

so life doesn't belong to me.

You make me bleed,

so that I may die.

Make me cry.

Looking out of the window into the darkness
he watched, fear and anticipation of the arrival. The later it got
the worse it usually was. Things he had no control over, making him
feel useless, scared, unloved.

He had no protection from it, no one who
looked out for him. He was constantly frightened.

It had been going on for as long as he could
remember; hurt that never ended, even after it ended.

The gate squeaked on its rusty hinges, the
sharp sound of the latch closing sending a shiver down his spine.
He heard footsteps on the path, the sound of heavy boots.

The key turned in the rusty door lock, the
sound that preceded it all.

"Why the fuck is this bloody house so cold?"
The sound of his voice echoed in the bare hallway outside his
door.

He knew to keep the lights off and pretend
to be asleep.

"Where the fuck are you bitch? Why can't you
keep a fucking heater on?"

He heard noises in the room next door as the
walls were paper-thin. She was moving around, slowly, woken from
sleep, resigned to her fate.

He heard the song on his
father
’
s
lips, out of tune and slurred.

"How was your night
dear?
”
Her
voice sounded timid and far away.

"What do you care? The house is fucking
freezing, what have you been doing all night?"

"Your tea is in the oven if you want
it."

"Why would I want it after
it
’
s dried
out in the oven? It’ll taste like shit."

The sound of bottles clinking in a crate
came through the walls. "I'll have to make do with one of these."
he heard his father say.

"Ok love, I'll go back to bed now if that's
alright? I'm a bit tired."

The anticipation was giving him butterflies.
Maybe it would be different tonight.

"Sit down", the drunken anger in his
father's voice made him jump in the darkness of his room. "Keep me
company; you never talk to me anymore. It makes me feel like you
don't want me."

Silence…

The sound of glass breaking broke the short
silence. He heard a chair crashing onto the floor, wood
splintering.

"I said sit-the-fuck-down."

His mother
’
s stifled scream signified the
beginning.

Hiding under his blankets, he tried not to
listen.

The cries came through the walls; the walls
shuddered with the impact and then the noises stirred dark pictures
in his mind. The pictures frightened him more than the actions, so
he had to see, to block out the pictures.

Crawling out of bed, he opened the door
slowly; the hallway was dark. The only light was coming from the
kitchen. The light inside flickering as the bulb swung on its
cord.

Crying and swearing, anger and emotion, it
all poured out into the hallway in great big puddles of blood, the
images in his mind distorting the reality.

He watched as a shadow fell across the open
kitchen door, then he saw a body fall. His mother was lying prone
on the floor, eyes staring into the darkness of the hallway, into
the darkness in his head, eyes showing only fear and
self-preservation.

The eyes told him it
was
his turn now;
he looked back at a mother with no love.

He tried to melt back into the darkness;
maybe he will not see.

He heard the sound of bottles clinking in a
crate, the demon drink; it would give him a reprieve, if only for a
while.

Go back to bed. Get some sleep and then get
up in the morning, it will be okay in the morning.

He knew when he got up that song would be on
the radio, the same one she always played. The tune was stuck in
his head.

Don't cry sissy… Father hates any sign of
weakness.

He was walking in the cold light of morning.
The air was chilled; his breath was coming in clouds of fog. It
certainly had not started today, but it would end soon enough.

He could not remember much about the first
years of his life. Apparently New Zealand in the 1970's was not an
especially memorable decade, people having just come through the
swinging sixties and were worn out.

The beginning of the decade had seen the
Vietnam War in full swing, the country protesting against its small
contribution clashing with the police. The Beatles had broken up,
finishing their world domination of popular music.

The end of the decade had seen the Beehive
in Wellington completed and occupied by Government, Air New Zealand
flight 901 crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica killing 237 people
and 18 hectares of land slipped 48 meters down the side of a hill
in Abbotsford, Dunedin, destroying 69 homes.

The life people had was a simple affair with
fathers working and mothers at home with the kids. You knew
everyone on the street by first names, often visiting for social
occasions. Fathers competing with each other over the dinner table
about who was earning more or what model Ford Cortina was in the
driveway. Mothers would exchange recipes or swap baby stories,
simple things for simple people.

It was the sort of shit; he thought sourly,
that you only see on TV, where the real world did not exist, at
least not his. His had been a world of reality, of hard lessons
learned at a very young age, a world of violence, pain, and hurt.
Violence in those days kept itself in-house, liberal amounts of
makeup or simply staying indoors hiding the marks of obedience.
Husband and wife never wanting outside involvement for their own
very different reasons, and the police were always too busy with
other things. Alcohol fuelled the violence in a new generation of
men with no war to fight, the ugly side of human nature finding its
outlet.

He knew now that violence was the great
leveler, it spread across the social divide, infecting homes of
rich and poor alike, but back then he thought it had been just his
to endure.

New Zealand in the 1970's was still trying
to throw off the shackles that bound it to Mother England. Like an
emerging petulant child, the country and its citizens not in total
control of their lives, laws or emotions.

It was into one of these homes that he was
born. He did not choose to be born; he did not choose the life he
had with them. He did not choose to cause any trouble...

Of course, mother should not have seen
him as trouble; mother should have loved him with all her heart.
Mother should have been there for him, in times of pain and
hardship, nurturing and caring for him
…
as mothers should.

Closing his eyes against a cold gust of wind
the thoughts turned over in his head, his only memory of her was
the bitter thought of a useless bitch.

She was useless for choosing father in the
first place, selfish, only ever thinking of her. She never gave him
a second thought. Was that a mother?

When Father was there, she would hardly
notice him, spending her time as far away from father as
possible.

When his father was not there he used to see
mother dancing in the lounge room. It was a pathetic one-sided
dance. She would be holding herself, eyes closed, quietly humming
the only tune he remembered, lost within her own head. A family
fractured by fear.

In those moments, he would feel the need to
go to her, tell her it was all right, that he was there, but he was
only a child. The first and only time he tried, he remembered she
had opened her vacant eyes and stared straight through him like he
was not there. He had tried to speak but the words did not come.
Mother had not said anything either, just turned and walked away,
leaving him standing in the cold emotionless room. A child
lost.

Eventually, he could see why his father had
to do what he did, why he punished her. She was not a good mother,
she did not care what happened to him when she went and hid in the
bedroom like a sniveling cow, noises like an animal in pain
emanating from behind the door. She needed telling, repeatedly. It
was the only way.

Things changed when mother hid, it was then
he had to endure. It was not as if he minded the pain his father
turned on him, it was almost constant, constant enough to be
bearable, if not predictable. It had only cemented his hatred for
the pair of them. He took his beatings like a little man, wearing
the bruises as a badge of honor. He remembered the fear.

At first, he did not understand the
violence his father used, but then, as he got older, it molded his
thinking, wiring his brain. He had become accustomed to it,
perception turning to disbelief, then to denial, and finally to
hatred. Hatred directed at his mother for not protecting herself…
or him. He had been only young at the time, his mind not yet
developed enough to understand, but he remembered a strange sort of
pleasure, little electric shocks with every blow. Watching
his
mother flinch,
trying not to cry out.
He had often found himself
waiting with anticipation of a night for when father got home,
anticipation for his favorite show.

Better than sex, he remembered his father
saying this on one occasion to no one in particular, there had been
no one else in the room but him.

It was only later as he had gotten older
that he understood the word sex, watching his mother and father in
the bedroom, connecting schoolyard gossip with what he had been
audience to.

He had watched mother lying on her back with
his father on top in a drunken rage, holding mother by her arms,
pressing her face sideways into the pillow, pushing himself up and
down in an unnatural rhythm.

He had watched his father, hitting mother on
the face, the body, and the other bits that he did not yet
understand. Mother would just lie there and take it, not fighting
back, her eyes on the verge of oblivion, another night closer to
her fate.

He had watched often, each time a different
show with the same ending, his young mind taking it all in.

He remembered vividly when it happened
though, that was what had put him here in the cold today, it was
when his father finally bled the boil he had spent years trying to
lance. The night his father
’
s version of love climaxed in such a frenzy
that mother was unable to stop herself sliding into the oblivion
that she had for so long been looking into. The defeated grey light
in her eyes slowly fading. His father, not even aware of the change
in her, had rolled over and gone to sleep. Mother was never to
wake.

He remembered watching that night, as they
had acted out the strange tragedy; he was standing in the darkness
of the hallway, watching as the players had put everything they had
into their performance. At the final curtain, he had gone to her,
sat with her. He had felt her skin go from warm to cold, and
watched her as her body paled. He knew she had gone. Her final
selfish legacy was leaving this world without a second thought for
him; she did not care a toss.

Mother really was a selfish bitch. The
thought rattled around inside his head, stoking his hatred. Selfish
bitch; she was a selfish bitch, la-la la- la-la. It was almost a
tune to him now; he had been living with it for so long.