A Killing Moon (11 page)

‘Shopping.’ Jake snapped on the light. It didn’t work.

‘The lecky ran out in the middle of
Pointless
,’ said Nick.

‘Here.’ Jake tossed a couple of coins on to the kitchen counter. Nick moved out of the darkness and picked them up. He knelt before a small cupboard and slotted them home before turning a switch on the meter. The light and the TV came on.

‘Where’ve you been?’ he repeated, staring hard at his cheap plastic watch to be certain of his facts. ‘It’s gone eleven and I’m hungry.’

Jake slung a groaning carrier bag on to the kitchen counter. ‘Glad to hear it.’ He tipped out a dozen cans of economy beans, a pack of sausages and a loaf of bread. ‘Get a couple of tins open and put the rest away.’

‘Sausages,’ breathed Nick in wonder. ‘You bought meat.’

‘No guarantees,’ grinned Jake, pulling out the tin opener and tossing it to Nick. His smile dissipated. ‘I’ve got to go out again after we eat.’

‘But it’s past bedtime.’

‘It can’t be helped.’

‘Where?’

‘Just out,’ said Jake. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll lock you in.’

‘No, I’m coming with you.’

‘You can’t. Get the frying pan out . . .’

‘I’m coming with you,’ repeated Nick. ‘I’ve been cooped up here all day.’

‘It’s not safe,’ insisted Jake. ‘You can watch telly.’

‘I’ll scream the place down and then the social will come round and cart me off,’ insisted Nick, panting with determination.

‘You’d like that, would you?’ snarled Jake. ‘End up in some poky residential again. No computer games – fighting over the TV remote with some skell who’d beat you to a pulp just for looking at him funny.’

‘At least I’d get to go outside,’ growled Nick.

Jake bent down to stack tins on top of the yellowing newspaper in the cupboard, avoiding Nick’s gaze. A moment later, he relented. ‘Maybe you should be there. See what happens when you fuck with a Tanner.’

Nick grinned. ‘Fuck with a Tanner.’

‘Listen,’ said Jake, grabbing him roughly by his T-shirt.

‘Gerroff,’ complained Nick, finding his sulk again.

‘I said listen!’ repeated Jake, forcing Nick to meet his eyes. ‘No matter what you see tonight, you don’t speak and you never mention it after. And you don’t get in the way. Got it?’

A little after midnight, Jake and Nick made the short journey to Arboretum Street, where they spotted Max’s white van parked up. Jake scoured the ground, eventually bending to pick up a half-brick from the road.

‘What you doing, Jake?’

‘Shut up!’ hissed Jake as he approached the driver’s door. He raised the brick above his head, preparing to launch it through the driver’s window, but something gave him pause and, puzzled, he lowered his arm and allowed the brick to drop at his feet. He peered into the cab and tried the handle.

‘It’s not locked,’ he hissed in Nick’s direction. He bent into the cab and emerged holding a set of car keys, grinning at his brother. ‘What a dick.’

‘What a dick,’ repeated Nick, giggling.

‘Get in,’ said Jake, climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. ‘We’re gonna have some fun.’

Thirteen

Time passed, not that Caitlin had any way of marking its passage. Hours felt like days and days felt like weeks and her routine never varied. Every two or three days, a new plastic bag with water bottles and cooked chicken or sometimes fish would appear by the locked door. At less frequent intervals, a bucket of cold water would also materialise. As Caitlin was well supplied with bottled water, she assumed this was for washing, and the block of chemical-smelling carbolic nestled at the bottom of the bucket confirmed it.

By now she had begun to believe her captors were watching her, at least part of the time. It was too much of a coincidence that the door to the barn would only ever be opened when she was collapsed in fitful slumber in the straw, exhausted from fruitless hours spent crouching in readiness, sharpened stake in her hand.

So she abandoned waiting by the door and kept the stake concealed in her pocket during waking hours but in her hands while she slept. Instead she concentrated her efforts on her body language, hoping to appear as servile and beaten as possible. She even took to reading the bible when the ambient light was bright enough.

‘Getting my head right, boss,’ she would shout occasionally, aping a Paul Newman film she’d once watched with her parents. Regret pulled on her stomach. How she’d reviled her home life in Belfast, but now she yearned to be there, safe and warm, getting ready to go to church after a hearty fried breakfast.

One morning – she assumed it was morning – she woke to find her bag of supplies and a bucket of water as before. But this time something was different. Steam was rising from the bucket. The water was hot. She hurried over and plunged her bare feet in one at a time, closing her eyes to the pleasure of the warmth caressing her toes.

‘Thank you,’ she shouted, remembering her strategy, then stepped out of the bucket and proceeded to wash her face while the water was still fairly clean before returning her cooling feet to the bucket and washing them thoroughly.

She made her way back to her bed in the straw, taking the food and drink with her, and devoured a chicken leg, barely stopping to chew, then washed down her meal with water. As she lowered the bottle, she noticed something. Her hands were much freer. The hot water had softened the binding on her wrists, making the leather pliable. Glancing around, she sank into the straw as though going to sleep, but instead held her hands to her mouth and worked at the strap with her teeth.

The strap gave slightly and she stifled a yelp of excitement. She repositioned her mouth and sank her teeth into the leather, gripping as tight as she could before slowly yanking her head back. Her heart gave a leap of joy as the strap moved out of the buckle, the prong was dislodged from the hole and the binding unfastened.

She removed the strap with a heartfelt sigh of pleasure but resisted the urge to stretch out her arms. Instead she squeezed out the last of the Savlon on to her chafed wrists and settled down to wait, the wooden stake gripped in her palm.

A noise woke her, and Caitlin opened her eyes without moving, still clutching the stake in her fist. She could hear the metal door being pulled slowly open. Enough for one person to slip into the barn. There was no sound of the door closing again.

She closed her eyes to feign sleep. Her hands were hidden underneath her prostrate body and she manoeuvred the wooden stake into a stabbing hold, waiting, all her senses supercharged.

When she could feel the warm breath of someone peering down at her, she lashed out in the darkness with all the force she could muster, thrusting the wooden stake as hard and accurately as she could in the presumed direction of her captor.

A high-pitched squeal rent the air and Caitlin felt the thin blade snap in her hands as it met the resistance of bone. Dropping the remaining shard, she leapt to her feet and, loosing off her own shriek, grabbed hair to fling the shadowy form between her and freedom to the ground. Running at full pelt, she aimed a sharp kick into her captor’s midriff, registering a satisfying yelp of pain before dashing towards the starry canopy of a clear night.

At speed, the concrete floor was treacherous, and she slipped and stumbled her way towards the partially open door as best she could on bare feet. Once there, she stepped through into the sweet cold air and pulled the door closed, the handle clicking on to a latch. There was an open padlock on the ground with a key protruding, so for good measure she fumbled it into both rings, snapped it shut and flung the key off into the darkness.

‘Enjoy your stay, fucker,’ she hissed at the metal door.

She flicked her head left and right, but despite the full moon, an escape route wasn’t easy to pick out. On a whim, inspired by her religious upbringing, she turned right instead of left and hurried along the side of the barn towards a five-bar gate, and beyond that a small track that stretched out into the gloom.

The briefest glimpse over her shoulder reassured her that she wasn’t being pursued, so she vaulted the gate and sped off down the slippery downhill track, slick with mud, until she came to a cattle grid lying between her and the road. She didn’t hesitate, stepping determinedly across the cold bars in her bare feet, leaping from the last rung on to slippery tarmac.

She was at a T-junction. The road wound uphill to her left and downhill to her right. Again she shunned the Devil’s hand and turned right, hurtling along, making light of the occasional pothole trying to snap her ankles as she struck out into the night.

After nearly a mile of good progress, she paused for breath, and in so doing realised that her feet were raw. She’d reached the bottom of a dip and saw moonlight bouncing off a babbling river through some trees. She was debating whether to head for the river and open country, where she could at least walk on grass, when she saw headlights moving towards her from the opposite direction to which she’d come.

She let out a yelp of delight and ran towards the vehicle, waving her hands wildly in the air.

‘Stop. Please stop. Help me.’

As the headlights approached, the vehicle slowed until it was about twenty yards away. Caitlin stepped into the middle of the road, wondering what she was going to say to the driver. But as her sore feet left the muddy bank, she gasped at the sound of wheels spinning and looked up in horror to see the vehicle hurtling towards her.

She braced to leap for the bushes at the side of the road but was a split second too late, and as she left the ground, the wing of the vehicle clipped her left leg, sending her spinning through the air. She landed with a sickening crunch on the bank and lay spread-eagled, her limbs splayed lifelessly about her.

Slowly, deliberately, the driver’s door opened and a man stepped casually around the vehicle to gaze at Caitlin’s stricken body.

‘Bitch been getting some exercise.’ He stooped to press his mouth into Caitlin’s inner ear. ‘Good girl. Don’t want you letting yourself go just because you’re spoken for.’

He put a hand on her brand mark and squeezed. No reaction. She wasn’t faking. He strode to the van and opened the back doors, then returned to pick up Caitlin’s inanimate form from the roadside, tossing her unceremoniously inside before chuckling his way back to the driver’s seat.

Fourteen

23 April

The white van turned on to Meadow Lane at the edge of the River Derwent in Derby’s city centre, the roar of the adjacent weir instantly audible. Jake Tanner closed the driver’s window but, unable to abide the smell from the rear, opened it again at once. He looked across at his brother fiddling with the radio.

‘Turn it off, Nick.’

Nick grinned when he found a station he liked, started writhing to the beat. ‘I love this song.’

‘Turn it off!’ shouted Jake. Nick’s sulk was immediate, bottom lip pouting, eyes cast down. ‘Someone might hear,’ reasoned Jake, not taking his eyes from the road. Not mollified by the explanation, Nick jerked an arm to turn off the radio, making his displeasure apparent.

Jake scanned the horizon. It was even darker here, in the shadow of the underpass, with not a soul stirring in the small hours. He was glad he’d thought of it. If he’d remembered the layout right, it would save them a lot of hard foot-slogging cross-country.

‘Camera up there, Jake,’ muttered Nick, scanning the dark building on the left, with its squat sixties ugliness and gated barbed-wired car park. He waved up at it.

‘The hell you doing?’ spat Jake. ‘Stop that.’

‘Can’t have no fun,’ said Nick, scowling.

Jake didn’t bother to explain. That was what exhausted him the most – explaining. He extinguished the van’s headlights as it rolled gently past the
Derby Telegraph
complex on the north bank of the river towards its destination.

‘You’ve turned the lights off,’ pointed out Nick.

Jake tried to tune his brother out, stifling the urge to drive the van off the road and into the river and let the sweet black water close over his head. ‘Keep your hood up,’ he muttered, looking for the dirt track he knew was at the end of the cul-de-sac. ‘And don’t stare at the cameras.’

‘Why’d you come down here, Jake? I don’t like it. It’s dark.’

‘Did you wanna dump the van in the countryside in the middle of the night and walk miles back to town?’

‘Why not? There were horses.’

‘Horses?’ Jake repeated in disbelief. ‘It’d take all night walking across the fields.’

‘We could have walked along main roads.’

‘Yeah?’ replied Jake, the sarcasm rising. ‘And get seen legging it by any passing traffic, maybe even a cop car. Then we’d be proper screwed.’ The younger man started to smile but remembered his annoyance about the radio and shrugged. ‘If we stay in town, Nick, we’ve got a chance of getting away clean,’ persisted Jake. ‘We leg it over the footbridge into the park and then we’re just two more punters walking the streets.’

Nick’s grin finally emerged. ‘Screwed,’ he sniggered.

Jake didn’t answer; concentrated on guiding the van off the tarmac and on to the grassy scrub of a short, purposeless trail penetrating no more than two hundred metres into the overgrown wasteland that encroached along the north bank of the Derwent. Beyond was Pride Park – the only industrial estate in Britain named after one of the seven deadly sins – a soulless mix of ultra-modern office blocks and half-empty new-builds dotted around Derby County’s football stadium, crawling to completion after the recession had sunk its teeth into the local economy.

Once they were hemmed in on both sides by undergrowth, Jake flicked the headlights back on and followed the track to the arch of an ancient brick-built bridge, applying the brakes a few seconds later as the track petered out on this appendix of a road. The van was now out of sight of the main drag, halted in front by robust thorn bushes and flanked by the damp bricks of the bridge.

He turned off lights and engine, and darkness and silence enveloped them. He opened the driver’s door to illuminate the cab. ‘Let me see your hands.’

The younger man waggled his gloved fingers.

Jake stared at the stains on his own bare hands. The dried blood was black on his fingertips. ‘Get a rag from the back and stuff it in the petrol cap. Quick as you can.’

‘Why do I have to go in the back?’ wailed Nick. ‘It’s smelly.’

‘’Cos I’m wiping . . . Forget it,’ replied Jake, pulling out a handkerchief and smearing it around the gearstick and steering wheel, knowing it was probably hopeless. His dabs would be all over the back of the van too. Only the purifying caress of fire would do the trick. Nick didn’t move.

‘Get out then,’ seethed Jake, jumping out and rubbing his handkerchief over the door handle. ‘I’ll do everything for a change, shall I?’

No answer from Nick, so Jake quietly closed his door, threw the ignition keys towards the river and hurried to the rear of the van. Nick slammed the passenger door.

‘What the fuck!’ hissed Jake.

‘Soz,’ whispered Nick. ‘Hand slipped.’

‘Get the petrol cap,’ ordered Jake. He pulled open the back door. The smell of death hit him as he leaned in, and he swayed back out for a breath of air. Without looking at the corpse, he reached into the van and rummaged around the dark interior, careful to avoid the cold, clammy flesh wrapped in polythene.

Long-forgotten smells from his first summer holiday job made him gag. The putrid aromas he remembered from his days sorting surgical gowns and theatre sheets at the old hospital laundry were unmistakable. Blood-soaked garments arrived at the laundry in hazard bags and were washed separately from regulation laundry such as sheets and hospital-issue nightwear.

The odour of ageing blood mingled with the putrid stench of faeces and urine, the inevitable consequence of dying patients no longer able to control their bodily functions. Foul Money, they’d called it on his payslip –
£3.27
a day extra for handling the essence of the dead.
More than I’m making tonight
.

‘Found any tools?’

‘Forget the fucking tools,’ spat Jake under his breath, the last of his patience spent. ‘Go wait by the footbridge and give me a shout if you see anyone.’

Nick blew out a relieved breath, glad to be away from the smell. ‘You can rely on me, Jake.’

‘Yeah, right.’

While Nick scampered off into the darkness, Jake held his breath and leaned further over the body to feel around for the small billycan he’d seen in there. He also located what felt like an old towel.

Standing upright, he shook the can, glad to hear the deep slosh of liquid inside. He opened the cap, poured the fuel generously over the towel, then emptied the rest of the liquid into and over the van, glad to swap the odour of putrefying flesh for the pungent fumes of petrol. He closed the back doors softly and stepped around the van to wedge the towel in the fuel tank’s spout, fumbling for his lighter and igniting the soaked material. He waited a moment for the blaze to catch, then turned to run back along the track.

Before he reached the safety of the road, he heard a distant shout above the crackling and spitting of the flames.

‘Look out, Jake!’

An overweight man in a snug brown uniform stood across his escape route. ‘All right, fella,’ said the security guard, shining a torch into Jake’s hooded face. ‘Stop right there.’

After a split second to consider, Jake put his head down and raced towards the guard’s ample midriff, bulldozing through him and knocking him to the floor. The guard grunted in pain as he fell. Jake stumbled on but fell over a flailing arm and ended up on the ground as well. A hand grabbed his ankle but he kicked it off. At that moment a muffled explosion rent the air, and as soon as he was able, Jake scrambled to his feet and sprinted away, leaving the guard spluttering and swearing after him.

A few seconds later he joined Nick, who was mesmerised by the flames.

‘Wow! Look, Jake. It’s like New Year.’

‘Come on,’ shouted Jake, spinning him round. Together they sprinted across the footbridge to be swallowed up by the darkness of the deserted riverside park on the opposite bank.

Fifteen minutes later, a grim-faced Jake slowed from a jog to a walk.

‘Did I do good?’ asked an expectant Nick, barely out of breath. Jake kept his eyes glued to the pavement, panting. ‘Jake. Did I do good?’

Jake wheeled round on him and grabbed his collar, pulling Nick’s shocked face to within an inch of his own. ‘
Look out, Jake!
Shout my fucking name, why don’t you? Jesus, the fuck are you using for brains?’

‘I-I’m sorry, Jake.’ Nick was ashen. He hadn’t done good. ‘I di’n’t think.’

Eventually Jake’s grip slackened and guilt rushed in. His brother wasn’t to blame. He’d been starved of oxygen at birth and his brain had been affected. Their late mother had taunted him with it during those small windows between her drug and alcohol binges when she was alert enough to string two words together.

Got a mental case for a son. Can’t believe the dopey fucker’s mine
.

Nick had finished school three years ago with no qualifications and no prospects.
No prospects
. The phrase his teachers had used. Nick should be in a special school, they said, but his mother – an alcoholic prostitute and drug addict – couldn’t face the social stigma. Jake hadn’t needed extra English lessons to see the irony.

He thought about his own days at school, followed by the parents’ evenings he’d attended in place of that drunken, whoring bitch. Evenings spent watching Nick’s teachers shake their heads in frustration before washing their hands of him. Worse, they’d remind Jake what a promising student
he’d
been and ask after his career. Career? What was the phrase he’d heard about that washed-up footballer? A great future behind him.

Well, that’s where my future is, if I even have one after tonight
.

Jake smiled at Nick to reassure him and slung an arm playfully around his brother’s head. ‘Sorry for shouting. You did good, Nicky. Just got to be more careful in future. One slip and we get fucked over by the system for the rest of our lives.’

‘Fucked over,’ laughed Nick, relishing the obscenity’s harshness in his throat.

‘Careful,’ repeated Jake. ‘Try remembering
that
word, Nick.’

‘Fucked over,’ repeated Nick, still chuckling.

Jake sighed and continued briskly past the window of Marks & Spencer and on up the hill towards home, Nick keeping step beside him. He felt around for the cigarettes, his first pack in weeks courtesy of Mr Ostrowsky’s advance. He threw one into his mouth, able now to confront the kernel of self-reproach flourishing inside his gut. He looked hopefully across at his brother.

‘Got a light, Nick?’

‘I’m not allowed matches,’ said Nick gravely. ‘You said.’

‘That’s right, I did.’

‘And you said you’d stopped. Can’t afford smoking, you said.’

‘That’s right, I did.’ Jake returned the cigarette to the packet and threw it at a pile of blankets in a doorway, the image of the explosion and his collision with the security guard playing over in his mind.

‘Where’s
your
lighter, Jake?’ asked Nick.

Jake exhaled deeply, remembered the sickening force with which he’d hurtled into the fat jobsworth standing in his path, remembered being on the ground, remembered the hand that had held the lighter as it opened.

‘I don’t know.’