Thorn In My Side (22 page)

'Yes…'

The door banged
open. Two of the men from the car came in and made a beeline for
Danny. He pressed his back against the wall. Yet again there was
nowhere to run.

An hour later,
Brother Josh looked over the rim of his glasses at Brother David.
Slowly he gave a barely noticeable shake of his head. Seeing this
negative, Brother David’s lips set in a firm line.

'Brother Josh,'
he hissed over the body of the young man, 'if you wont help me,
I’ll do it myself. Can’t you see it has to stop now? We can’t go on
any longer. This might be the only chance we’ll ever get. At the
very least…' Pausing for a moment, he looked down at the body. He
sighed. Covering his mouth with his hand, he looked at Brother
Josh, his blue eyes brimming with tears. 'I can’t go on any longer.
We have to help ourselves. The outside world will never find out
what’s happening unless we do something now, before we have to bury
any more of the young.'

'If we take
action now, and they find out about it, how many will they kill,
eh, Brother David? Think about it. The Leader has no conscience at
all. He cares about no one. And certainly not his own soul.'

'How many will
they kill if we don’t?' Brother David leaned on his shovel and
wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked across the graveyard. In
the last year there had been eighteen deaths, seven brothers and
eleven teenagers. Two of the brothers had been murdered. The rest
had committed suicide, unable to live with the hurt and destruction
they had to deal out every day. Of the eleven teenagers, three had
been flogged to death, five had died from drug abuse, a couple from
sheer exhaustion, and one had managed an ingenious suicide by
climbing to the roof and throwing herself off.

The graveyard
was lit by the light coming from the two drug sheds which were
joined to the great hall, where children as young as twelve were
still working at this late hour. They would work until they
dropped. Then a brother would pick them up and carry them to a
corner, and wake one of the others to take his or her place. The
manufacturing process never stopped.

Brother David
couldn’t work out if these were the lucky ones or not. Those who
were considered pretty enough, boys as well as girls, were shipped
out to God knows where. He’d overheard one of the Leader’s men
saying that the next shipment bound for Africa must have only
blue-eyed blondes. His heart ached for them, an actual physical
pain. It had lodged there the night The Leader had arrived and
murdered two brothers by his own hand. He shuddered at the thought
of where these children were going, and what sort of life they were
destined for.

There were only
six true brothers left. The rest were The Leader’s men, a dozen,
sometimes more. These masqueraded as brothers, and saw to the daily
running of the place. They dealt with the odd necessary visits from
the outside world with alarming skill, which led Brother David to
assume they had done this kind of thing before.

'It’s got to be
now, tonight. Who knows what might happen tomorrow? You or I could
be dead on a whim of that madman, then there will be no one to warn
the outside world. It will go on and on with no end.'

Brother Josh
sighed. Resigned to the fact that Brother David would go ahead
without him, and with the knowledge that it would be impossible for
one man to carry out the plan, he nodded.

Slowly,
grim-faced, Brother David prised open the dead man’s hand. He
tucked the folded piece of paper inside and gently, as if the dead
man could feel, closed his fingers around it.

'Are you sure
he’ll understand it?' Brother Josh watched the dead man's fingers
being curled around the note. 'It just looks like a load of
gibberish to me.'

Brother David
nodded. 'He’ll understand. He’ll come.'

Moving to the
man’s shoulders, he lifted them as Brother Josh lifted the feet.
Together they carried the body over to the wall, and hid it amongst
the thick ivy that climbed up and over, tumbling to the grass verge
on the other side.

They hurried
back to the shallow grave and began to fill it in, shoring up the
inside with rocks to make it look like someone was buried in there,
and covering the top with soil. After they were finished, they
carried the spades into the garden shed. They waited for a while
until one of the many clouds passed over the full moon, then,
leaving the shed, they crept silently back to the body. They picked
him up, Brother Josh in the lead, with the man’s legs round his
waist, and Brother David bringing up the rear, again carrying the
dead youth’s shoulders. Reaching a gate in the wall, hidden by the
years of thick overgrown ivy, they passed through, pausing only to
rearrange the ivy behind them.

They had a good
few miles to carry the body. Walking on the road would be no good.
Even at this hour there would be cars passing. They’d thought of
putting the body over a bike, but dismissed the idea. Pushing a
heavy-laden bike through field after field would be practically
impossible. They would have to do it the hard way, and carry
him.

Brother David
was still young and strong, but Brother Josh knew he was way out of
condition, too many pies and far too much mead. They managed, with
frequent stops, to pass over three large fields. When they laid the
body down for the fourth time, Brother Josh, after stretching and
getting the kinks out of his neck, caught a breath and said. 'It’s
no good, Brother David. We aren’t going to make it back before
someone realises we’re missing.'

'Of course we
are, Brother Josh. Take heart in the fact that we are crossing the
very ground that St Cuthbert walked on, from Lindisfarne to Durham.
The very cave he rested in isn’t so far from here. Remember the
monks who, two hundred years later, carried his body over the same
ground. For seven years, they wandered. We don’t even have to carry
this poor young man for seven hours.'

Brother Josh
hung his head. 'You’re right, brother. I’m sorry, it… it’s just
that...'

Brother David
rested his hand on Brother Josh’s shoulder. 'You’re weary, Brother
Josh. It’s to be expected, after all that has happened. Not many
would have the strength to go on… But we must see this through, too
many young lives depend on us.'

'You’re right,
as usual. But if we don’t make it back, the madman will flog the
children as a lesson to the others. In fact, if he thinks he may be
in danger, he’ll probably kill them all.'

'We’ll make
it.'

Brother David
looked so confident that it gave Brother Josh new heart and the
strength to carry on. 'So… you’re absolutely sure the message will
be understood by him only?'

'Certain. The
man it’s intended for is a very good man, with a strong heart, and
an even stronger back. He will understand that everything has to be
kept quiet. He’ll come, I swear he will. And he’ll bring help. Then
all this will be over. I promise you, by everything I believe in.
He won’t let us down.'

Brother Josh
smiled as he bent to the task. 'What are we waiting for?'

The Patterson
household were up early. Mike noticed the lights, upstairs and in
the kitchen, as he passed the house with Tiny. He thought of Jill
as he and the dog walked along the beach. She certainly was a
good-looking woman, but it seemed as if she hated him. Of course,
this made him all the more determined to make her like him.

'But how?' he
muttered, throwing a stick for Tiny. The dog caught it just before
it entered the water. Bringing it back, he dropped the stick at
Mike’s feet. This went on for a good five minutes, until the last
time Tiny dropped the stick, Mike didn’t pick it up. Tiny waited,
wagging his tail, then gave a bark to remind Mike that the stick
was there. Mike, though, was busy, his hand up to shade his eyes
from the rising sun. He was watching a helicopter coming into
land.

'Now that
doesn’t look good,' he muttered, as the helicopter headed towards
the field between Aunt May’s house and the castle. 'Come on, boy.
Home.'

Quickly he
strode off. He was nearly there when the helicopter landed. He
watched as Jill Patterson ran out of her house, making a straight
line for the helicopter. A policeman he recognised jumped out of
the helicopter. Passing Jill, he gave her a brief nod, and headed
towards Aunt May’s.

'Oh-oh.' Mike
broke into a run. 'I’m here, Jim,' he shouted, just as the
policeman raised his fist to bang on the back door. Hearing him,
the policeman dropped his fist and waited, grim-faced, until Mike
reached him.

'What’s up?’
Mike asked, his eyes on Jill, who obviously knew what was going on
by the way she quickly scrambled up the helicopter ladder. Then he
realised he’d left the house without his mobile.

'There’s been
another body found, same state as the last one, Mike,' Jim said. He
was deeply tanned from his holidays. Mike remembered him saying he
and the wife were taking their first trip abroad.

'What, another
scourging?'

'Yup… Only this
time, he has a note in his hand.'

'Male!'

The officer
nodded. 'Aye, and the note's addressed to you.'

'Me?' Mike felt
a shiver rush up his spine. 'What does it say?'

'Nobody can
understand it.'

'OK, give me a
minute.' As the officer nodded, Mike quickly went into the house.
It looked like Aunt May and Smiler were still in bed. Mike hurried
up the stairs, struggled out of his joggers and T-shirt at the
door, and threw them into the laundry basket so as not to incur
Aunt May’s wrath if she saw them on the floor. He was never so tidy
at home.

After splashing
water over his face, he dressed in a dark suit and white shirt,
grabbed his mobile off the dresser, slipped it in his pocket, put
on his watch – a present from Aunt May that he was never without --
and ran back downstairs. Hastily he got pen and paper from the
sideboard, and left a letter propped up on the mantelpiece telling
them he’d left early. Locking the door behind him, he hurried to
the helicopter.

He sat next to
Jill, who gave him the briefest of smiles. Even that seemed an
effort Mike thought. He could smell her perfume, tried guessing
which one it was for future reference.
Women like it if you give
them a bottle of their favourite.
But he couldn’t quite place
it. If needed, he would ask Aunt May.

He liked the
way she had her hair done in a French plait, which suited her. He
noticed that tiny hairs on the back of her neck were still damp
from the shower.

She must have
felt his eyes on her. Turning to look at him, she said, 'What?'

'Nothing,' Mike
replied innocently. 'Just looking at the view over your
shoulder.'

'Huh.' she
said, facing away from him.

'So, what’s all
this about then?'

'You know as
much as I do. The body of a young man has been found in the back
yard of the police station.'

Hmm,
Mike thought,
that’s more than I know.
'So, it’s been dumped
overnight?'

'I guess
so.'

He sat back,
'Has anyone read the note?'

'Aye,' Jim said
from the front seat. 'But like I told you, nobody can make any
sense of it at all.'

Smiler sat at
the table, a knife in one fist and a fork in the other. His hands
rested on either side of a plate of bacon and eggs. He stared
forlornly at the wall in front of him.

'Eat up,
sunshine,' Aunt May said. 'They’ll get cold. And there’s nothing
more disgusting than a bloody cold fried egg.'

Smiler turned
his blank expression towards Aunt May. She hesitated on her way to
the table, carrying her own plate of bacon and eggs in one hand and
a teapot in the other. She’d seen the same expression many a time
when she’d nursed during the Falklands War, dealing with
shell-shocked soldiers and sailors, and then later, when she’d
dealt with abused children. She knew that it didn’t always need a
loud bomb to shellshock the human spirit, be it young or old.

She put
everything on the table and said gently, 'What’s up, son? You look
like you’ve seen a bloody ghost.'

Smiler’s
expression changed to one of total panic as he blurted quickly,
'She can’t go.'

'Who
can’t?'

'She can’t go.'
Agitatedly, he began popping his knuckles over and over, so fast
that his hands couldn’t deal with the speed at which his brain was
working. Out of synch, they dropped to his side as he repeated,
'She can’t go. It… it’s day two.'

'Who can’t? And
what do you mean, it’s day two? Do you mean you’ve been here two
days? Smiler, you aren’t making much sense this morning, love. Eat
up, eh.'

But Smiler
stood up and pushed the plate away from him. 'I have to warn
her.'

'No, Smiler.'
Aunt May was as adamant as he was. 'Breakfast first, then we’ll
talk. OK?'

'But----'

'No buts.' She
pushed his plate towards him.

Obediently,
Smiler started to eat. When he had cleaned the plate, he looked at
Aunt May.

'OK,' she said,
'spill the beans, sunshine. Tell Aunt May your problem.'

'I…' He
swallowed hard. How was she going to take this? Would she throw him
out? After barely two days living here in a proper home, the last
thing he wanted was to be back on the streets. Dare he tell her the
truth? He hesitated a moment longer, then blurted out quickly, 'I
see things.'

She leaned
close and said with great interest, her head cocked on one side
like a nosy little sparrow, 'You mean, like psychic visions sort of
“see things”?'

He bit his lip.
'Yeah.'

She laughed,
and Smiler’s heart sank. But only for a moment, as she said,
clapping her hands, 'Great, tell me more.'