The Eyes of the Accused: A dark disturbing mystery thriller (The Ben Whittle Investigation Series Book 2) (11 page)

Frank Crowley parked in the street outside his mother’s house and switched off the engine. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d pulled a bird like Maid Madeline. After all these years, he’d finally hit the jackpot. Picked a winning ticket. Struck oil. Rolled a double six.  

Don’t get too carried away, Frankie-boy. She hasn’t even given you her phone number yet, or told you where she lives.

Okay. So there was an element of truth in that. But it was important to give a girl some breathing space. Let the implications of what he’d told her sink in and settle.  

And she hasn’t called you since you dropped her off at Dalton’s Bakery. That’s three nights ago by my reckoning.

She’s probably been busy washing her hair and doing all the things girls have to do. Like reading soppy romance novels and dreaming of happy-ever-afters.

Or fucking her boyfriend.

Shut up! She hasn’t got a boyfriend.

And you know that for certain, do you? A pretty girl like that, all by her lonesome when she has most of the male population to choose from.

Madeline’s not a slut.

We’ll see. If you want my opinion, most women are.

Frank ignored Doubting Voice. He rang his mother’s doorbell. It was parky enough to turn nipples to icicles. The snow looked like it might even settle this year. He couldn’t think of anything better than spending Christmas Day with Maid Madeline. They could walk in the snow. Have playful snowball fights. Build a snowman. He imagined Madeline turning her head towards him, her lips inviting him to dine at the kissing table.

‘Who is it?’ His mother shouted through the letter box, destroying Frank’s beautiful imaginary landscape.

He jumped back. ‘It’s me, Mother. Frank.’

‘What’s your middle name?’ Agnes Crowley asked, resorting to the security question they’d agreed to implement after the break-in.

Frank leaned closer to the letter box. ‘Arthur.’

‘What’s your date of birth?’

‘It’s me, Mother! Who else is going to know my middle name? Let me in, for God’s sake. I need to take a leak. This bloody weather always upsets my bladder.’

‘You ain’t coming in until you answer my question.’

‘The third of July,’ Frank hissed. ‘Half past bloody three at the John Radcliffe hospital. Happy now?’

Agnes wasn’t. ‘What year?’

Frank felt like reaching through the letter box and poking her in the eye. ‘1960.’

She opened the door and looked Frank up and down like he was part of a police line-up. ‘You look haggard, boy.’

He stepped inside the dingy hallway. ‘Thanks. You certainly know how to cheer someone up.’

Agnes followed her son into the lounge. ‘I’ve got a bit of lamb for supper. It’s only one of those Bernard Matthews Pot Roast things.’

Frank’s tummy rejoiced. ‘Sounds great.’

‘Wash your hands. I’ll see how it’s getting on.’

‘I thought I might go upstairs first.’

‘Why?’             

To check my money and the Golden Egg, you nosy old bat
, Frank thought. ‘Because—’

‘You went up there last time. It ain’t changed. It still gets damp in the winter and stinks of piss.’

‘I miss being at home,’ Frank said. A fact partially aligned to the truth.

‘Don’t be daft. You’ve got your own home.’

‘It ain’t the same. That tin shack will be the death of me.’

‘Stop whining, boy. You sound like Peter Hastings’ dog when he ties it up in the backyard.’

‘It hasn’t even got any proper heating.’

‘What? Peter Hasting’s backyard,’ Agnes joked.

Frank didn’t see the funny side. ‘It’s colder in that bloody tin shack than it is outside.’

‘Is that my fault?’

Frank thought it was, considering the heartless cow had kicked him out in the first place. ‘No, Mother.’

‘No. But you always want to blame everyone else, don’t you?’

‘That’s not true.’

‘I remember the time you nearly set fire to this place—’

‘I got drunk and fell asleep with a cigarette. It was an accident.’

‘If Ronnie hadn’t fitted a smoke alarm, we’d have both been ashes by now.’

Frank wondered when Golden Boy Ronnie would get brought into the conversation. ‘You’re exaggerating a bit there. If I remember rightly—’

‘How can you stand there and claim to remember anything? You were three sheets to the wind, boy.’

Frank elected not to argue. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry don’t cut no ice when you hit an iceberg, boy. I suppose flashing to that child was an accident as well?’

Frank looked away. ‘I was drunk.’

‘Drunk? Really? You do surprise me.’

‘I’m—’

‘You’re consistent, I’ll give you that much. Consistently useless. You should be grateful me and Ronnie clubbed together to buy you that mobile home. Me being on a pension an’ all.’

‘You actually paid money for it?’

‘Don’t be smart, boy. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘You ought to spend a winter in there. See how you—’

‘Never mind your cheek. I don’t want you going upstairs. I want you down here where I can keep an eye on you.’

Frank almost stamped his foot. ‘Now you’re being daft.’

‘Ronnie says you can’t be trusted. He reckons you had something to do with the break-in.’

Frank’s heart jumped on a pogo stick. ‘He...  said... what?’

Agnes plucked a strand of hair on her chin. ‘He said it was mighty suspicious that his photo was the only one that got smashed. Said it looked like somebody stamped on it.’

Frank swallowed hard and looked away.

‘And the solid silver candle sticks he bought me for my birthday got nicked. Said it looked too personal to him.’

Frank’s right eye began to twitch. ‘He’s just being paranoid.’

‘He reckons you’re hiding something up in that room of yours. Reckons you staged the burglary to scare me.’

‘Why the hell would I want to scare you?’

‘To get more security.’

‘That’s crap.’

‘Mind your mouth boy.’

Frank looked away, lest the truth was written in his eyes. ‘Sorry. But it is.’

‘Answer me this: why have you got an industrious-sized padlock on the bedroom door?’

Frank grappled for an answer. ‘It’s industrial. Not “industrious”.’

‘Don’t play word games with me. It’s still a bloody padlock.’

Frank remembered the time his mother had read out the details of Brother Ronnie’s new home. She’d called the kitchen suspicious instead of spacious. It was the one and only time he’d ever laughed with Ronnie. ‘You can tell Ronnie from me that he’s wrong. I ain’t got nothing to hide.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Francis Crowley. Your eye’s twitching.’

Frank blinked hard, trying to dislodge the twitch.

‘You’ve got too much of your father’s blood in you. Bad blood. That no-good bugger used to twitch and jerk when he was lying’ to me.’

‘I ain’t lying.’

‘No? And I ain’t a pensioner.’ Luckily for Frank, his mother changed the subject. ‘I reckon we’ve got rats up in the attic again. I heard the buggers scurrying about up there the last few nights.’

‘I don’t see how. I blocked up the hole last year.’

‘Happen the little sods gnawed another one.’

Frank groaned. He was hardly in any condition to go crawling about in attics. Especially when his back was playing up. And then a thought. A good one. The loft hatch was in his bedroom. Now he had a valid reason to go up there. ‘I’ll take a look after dinner. Put some bait down.’

As they tucked into their meals, Frank decided to tell his mother about his newfound love. ‘I’ve met a girl.’

His mother stared at him, open-mouthed, a forkful of cabbage hovering just below her chin. ‘What girl?’

Frank’s chest swelled. ‘Her name’s Madeline.’

‘Why would any girl want to go out with a lunk like you?’

Frank ignored the insult. ‘I think it’s the real deal. We’ve been out for a meal and everything.’

‘A meal? With you?’

Frank elected not to tell her that the meal constituted a bag of dry-roasted peanuts in the local pub. ‘Why wouldn’t she? I scrub up well.’

‘Has she got something wrong with her?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘A couple of inches missing on the ruler?’

‘Madeline’s beautiful.’

‘I hope you haven’t been going near schoolkids again. For everyone’s sake.’

‘She’s not a schoolkid.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty-something.’

‘Good heavens, boy, she’s young enough to be your daughter.’

Frank resorted to the only cliché he knew to fit the subject. ‘Age is just a number.’

‘Is that what the police said when they arrested you for flashing to that child?’

‘That was different,’ Frank squawked. ‘Madeline isn’t a bloody schoolkid.’

‘You watch your mouth. I won’t have swearing at my table.’

‘I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy for me. That’s all.’

‘When am I going to meet her?’

‘Soon.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘In Feelham.’ The truth. ‘Near Carnegie’s Hall.’ A lie, designed to impress.

‘From the good end of town, then?’

Frank pushed his plate away and patted his stomach. ‘Yep.’

‘Do you want pudding?’

‘Later. I’ll nip upstairs first and take a look in the attic.’

‘Not like you to go rushing around straight after your dinner.’

Crowley grinned. ‘I want to get up there while I can still fit through the hatch.’

Agnes didn’t laugh. ‘Do you want me to come with you. Pass the extension lead up to you?’

‘No.’ A little too quick. Like his heart. ‘I’ll manage. You clear away the dishes and get that pudding ready.’

He left the table before she could object. He climbed the stairs, fished a small brass key from his pocket, and unlocked the padlock securing his bedroom door.

You’re huffing and puffing enough to blow that door down, Frankie-boy. Dumb Quack might say you’re a heart attack waiting to happen.

Frank ignored the warning and opened the door. The room smelled as if someone had dumped a sack of rotting refuse in there. A dozen different coloured moulds bloomed on the bare cream walls. Frank had considered leaving the window open to let the room breathe, but the last thing he wanted to do was invite an opportunist thief to climb in and make off with his life’s work.  

He walked in and closed the door behind him. He sat on the bed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. The mattress springs creaked beneath his weight. ‘This time next year, I’m gonna be somewhere warm. Me and Maid Madeline on a tropical island. A golden beach a million miles away from this grot-hole.’

Something moved in the attic above him. Frank ignored it. He wasn’t going up there. Not in a month of Sundays. The rats were welcome to the bloody place. He’d hit his head on a rafter last time he’d been foolish enough to drag himself up there. And almost put his foot through the bedroom ceiling. Not to mention getting a bellyful of splinters as he’d crawled across the joists to reach the eaves. He’d just tell Mother he’d set some traps and leave it at that. She was hardly going to haul her bony backside up there to check, was she? 

He turned his mind to fantasies in an effort to block out unsavoury thoughts of rats. He imagined making love to Maid Madeline on a hotel balcony, the hot sun on his back, the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore below them. He imagined an orgasm ripping through his body as vast and powerful as the ocean itself.

Are you sure you know how to fuck a girl, Frankie-boy?

Frank ignored Killjoy Voice. Just because he was still a virgin didn’t mean he had no experience of women. No, sir. He had enough videos of Tina stashed away in his mobile home to educate him in the ways of female fulfilment. He’d spent many happy hours watching Tina help herself, so-to-speak, with a rather large dildo. He’d also been treated to several episodes of love’s young dream, as Tina and her new boyfriend went at it like spring bunnies in a meadow.

All in all, this had been a bloody good year. The only thing spoiling it was the fact that Brother Ronnie was still alive. How dare the swine suggest to Mother that he’d set up the burglary?’

You did!  

Frank wasn’t interested in what his conscience had to say. ‘I’d like to cut his brake pipes and watch him career out of control down Constitution Hill.’

One day, in the not too distant future, he’d have enough money to hire a hitman to blow Golden Boy off the face of the earth. Maybe torture him a bit first. Wipe that smug look off his chops, one cut at a time. Take out his eyes with an apple corer. When he was done torturing him, douse him in petrol and set him alight. Right in front of his Barbie-doll wife. Show her the true meaning of an eternal flame.