Eye Snatcher (22 page)

“And we know who’s been killing those kids,” the other said.

In all his years on the job, Brian had never had to bury a body in the middle of an abandoned forest.

Burying two in one day was quite a shock to the system.

He stuck the spade in the soft earth, just like the two men in balaclavas told him to. One of them watched over him, while the other one buried their balaclava-wearing companion. Leafless trees surrounded them deep in these woods. Thick, low-hanging fog obscured Brian’s view back to the van he’d been brought here in, back to the scene of the murder.

Brian had been left to bury the bald guy who’d entered Damien Halshaw’s driveway, lured him here, and then…

Well. He’d been about to kill him. He’d definitely been about to kill him. And then something happened.

These two other guys in balaclavas, they’d killed their two companions.

They’d told Brian they knew what happened at Damien Halshaw’s three years ago.

They’d told Brian they knew the identity of the Eye Snatcher.

“His name’s Darren Hopps,” one of the men said.

Brian flinched and looked at the man who’d spoken, his hands wrapped tightly around a shovel, the smell of fresh earth strong in the air.

The balaclava-wearing man on the left—the skinnier one—nodded at the bald guy. “Right dickhead,” he said. “Wanted to get him out of the way for years.”

Brian’s shoulders loosened a little as he looked back down at the bald man’s body.
He
was called Darren. Darren Hopps. That wasn’t the name of the Eye Snatcher. The one thing he wanted to know—needed to know—and he still didn’t have it.

Brian put the shovel in the ground again, heart racing. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. But what else could he do? He was phoneless. He was alone. He was outnumbered two to one by seemingly younger, more athletic men than himself. Men who’d just stabbed their work colleagues in the neck and left them to bleed out.

He had to admit it: he was scared.

“Never liked what he did,” the chubbier guy said, who leaned on a shovel and watched as Brian dug with his shaky hands. “Started as just odd little jobs. People coming to him to teach someone else a lesson. Cut off a finger. Pull some teeth out. Things like that.”

The thump of the skinnier guy’s shovel against the soily earth.

“And it just progressed from there really. Cutting off a bit more. And then before we knew it we were throwin’ people in the back of vans an’ getting rid of ‘em around ‘ere.”

Another thump of the skinnier guy’s shovel in the earth. Brian flinched.

The chubbier guy kept on watching, speaking in a matter-of-fact manner. “Nothin’ personal. Just business. Darren was good at what he did, and by fuck did he enjoy it. And then that Halshaw lad came along.”

Brian peeked up at the chubbier guy. “Damien Halshaw?”

The chubbier guy shook his head. “His dad.”

Brian’s knees weakened. “Who is his dad?”

The balaclavaed pair looked at one another. “Keep digging,” the chubbier one said.

Brian nodded. Put his shovel into the ground. Dug up more earth. Damien Halshaw’s dad.

The chubby guy stepped to Brian’s side. Helped him dig. “This Halshaw chap, he had, er… let’s say he had a few alternative tastes.”

Brian waited for him to continue, not wanting to push his luck by asking another question.

“See, usually people went to Darren with grudges. Ex-girlfriends wanting to give their old boyfriends a scare. Men owing other men money. All grudges, all with reason. But this Halshaw figure, he just wanted people bringing to him.”

“What kind of people?” Brian asked.

“Kids,” the skinny guy said, his shovel sinking into the ground again.

The hairs on Brian’s arms stood up. He stuck the shovel into the ground simply to get rid of the reaction, but he made contact with something. Something that wasn’t soil.

Something harder.

“We weren’t comfortable then,” the chubbier guy helping Brian said. “I mean, we didn’t wanna admit what was goin’ on at first. But then after about four, five kids we started proper thinking about it. Looking at these kids—the kind of kids they were. Runaways. Kids that no one cared about. Those kinda kids.”

Brian felt a wave of nausea engulf him as he stared down at the muddy grey thing that his spade had collided with in the ground.

“Ah, shit,” the chubby guy said, like it was just a simple error of judgement on a normal day at work. “Dig slightly to the right. Thought we’d got a fresh spot but hey, world’s full of surprises.”

Brian tried his best to breathe in deeply to calm himself down, to stop his head spinning, but he was struggling to look away from the bone in the earth.

“Come on,” the chubby guy said. He hit Brian on his arm, almost making Brian tumble to his ass.

Brian nodded and started digging slightly to the right, frozen with the surreality of it all. Delayed shock? He wasn’t sure. He really wasn’t sure.

“And this went on for a bit,” the chubby guy said, as the skinny one started to roll his balaclavad companion into the hole he’d dug. “Four, five, six kids, like I say. And then along comes Andrew Wilkinson to crash the party just when we’re about to do summat about Darren’s involvement ourselves.”

Brian made sure he kept on digging now. Looked away from Darren’s bloodied body. Away from the bones in the dirt. Just at the soil beneath him, beneath his shovel.

“Andrew Wilkinson walked in on Damien’s daddy up to no good in that garage of ‘is. We didn’t see what ‘appened in that garage, but we didn’t have to. Halshaw was furious. Told Wilkinson he was gonna bring him down if he ever spoke of it.”

The setup. The setup that Andrew Wilkinson had alluded to. He was right. All along, he was telling the truth.

“Why didn’t…” Brian started, struggling to formulate a sentence. “Why didn’t Andrew just call the police?”

The chubby guy tutted. “He froze. Way more freezers in this world than there are actors. And erm, well. Darren and our little trip to the Wilkinson family home did enough to scare him into silence. If destroying his life about a relationship with Halshaw’s son didn’t already do the trick. Took his little girl’s finger off for safekeeping. Promised we’d take all their tongues off if he ever spoke. Hear Wilkinson’s taking the rap for the Eye Snatcher killings? Honourable. Honourable family man.”

Brian’s arms shook. So that was it. Andrew Wilkinson was just terrified of what would happen to his family if he ever spoke out about what he’d seen in the Halshaw garage. Damien Halshaw’s father had made sure that Darren and his goons put enough fright into him. Tore his whole life away.

And now he was so scared of what might happen that he was willing to go down for triple child murder rather than see something else horrible happen to his family.

“Poor git,” the chubby guy said. He winced as he pushed Darren into the hole in the mud below. “Wilko, I mean. Didn’t have the fuzziest we worked at Galaxy. But anyway, all went quiet for three years or so. Didn’t hear ‘owt from the Halshaw chap. Dropped off the radar completely. Family moved away. Didn’t need to deal with Darren ‘cause stuff got back to normal. And Wilkinson, he was keeping quiet. You know a singer and a zipper when you see them, and he was always a zipper.” He pretended to zip his mouth to show me what he meant. “But then a few days ago, when Wilko brings his car in all innocent, Darren says he’s got a job. Rendezvous point at the old Halshaw garage. Finally spills that he’s doing another favour for Halshaw. And we knew we had to do summat about him then.”

Brian gulped some saliva down his dry throat. “What was the job?”

The skinny guy started covering the first body with the soil he’d just dug out of the ground. The fog grew thicker in the middle of this nowhere land.

“Weird stuff, really. Driving Wilko’s car outside these terraced houses. Driving it round some area. Area that turned out being the murder site of that third girl, y’know.”

“Janine Ainscough,” Brian said.

The chubbier guy clicked his fingers. “That’s the one. Anyway, we get a call today. A call about someone snooping us. That’s where you come in.”

The skinny guy stopped digging. Stopped covering the first body.

Brian’s head spun. His chest was tight. “Where do I come in?”

The two balaclavaed men looked at one another. “We want your help.”

As the chubbier balaclavad man tossed some dirt over Darren’s rigid body, Brian felt like asking what help entailed if this wasn’t bloody helping in the first place. Instead, he didn’t push his luck.

“My help, how?”

The skinny guy stuck his shovel into the ground and walked beside the chubbier one. The pair of them stood there, blood on their gloves, and looked at Brian like a pair of monsters in a Halloween musical. “We wanted to bring Darren down a long time. Didn’t like the Halshaw guy. So you let us walk away from ‘ere. You go back to the station and you swear you don’t say owt about what happened here. Let us go away and live our lives.”

The way the chubby guy gripped hold of the shovel, a space in the ground still free, Brian figured he wasn’t really being asked a question or given a real option. “Halshaw,” he said. “I… I need to know who he is. Where I can find him. I need to know—”

“Then you promise us,” the skinny guy shouted. Although his body was slighter, his voice was stronger and sterner than his companion’s. “Halshaw don’t go by that name, in case you haven’t already figured. Change of ID is easy enough to get if you know the right people. So you let us walk away from ‘ere. You go back to the station and you go out there and you find Halshaw. Say you got a hunch, or summat. From what I heard, you ain’t too bad at getting those.”

The chubby guy sniggered, and Brian couldn’t believe how bizarre the situation had become that he was joking with two murderers after burying their victims’ bodies.

“But if you walk away, I… How will I know? What evidence is there that Halshaw is the Eye Snatcher? Real, physical evidence.”

The two men looked at one another. Frosty breath emerged from their nostrils. “First, your word. Promise us you ain’t gonna sell us down the river, right here.”

Brian bit his dry bottom lip. His could sense himself getting closer to an answer. “I… Okay. I promise. You can walk if you give me something.”

“Put your hands in the air and step back from the officer!”

The voice came from behind the two balaclava-clad men. It took Brian by surprise, so much so that he thought it must be a figment of his imagination at first.

The two men spun around and looked into the fog. “The fuck?”

Footsteps approaching, snapping through the twigs. “Hands in the air. Don’t make us beat you to the ground.”

Police. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. They were so close to talking. So close to telling Brian the truth about where Halshaw could be found. About his real identity.

They both turned back around. Looked right at Brian, as the police footsteps snapped through dropped twigs and their blue uniforms emerged through the thick fog.

“Sellout pig fuck.”

Brian lifted his hands. “I didn’t do this. I swear I didn’t—”

“On the ground! Right now!”

Brian stared at the two men. Looked from one to the other. “Please. Who is Halshaw? And where can I find him?”

The chubby guy tutted. As the police got closer, he pushed the shovel into the ground and he shook his head, then got to his knees.

“Please,” Brian said, but he knew he was too late.

The officers pushed the two balaclava covered men into the dirt and cuffed their hands behind their backs.

Samantha Carter stepped from the middle of the group of ten, fifteen officers.

“Location Services,” she said, smile on her face. “Saw it cut off around here twenty minutes ago. Got worried. Thank me later.”

As the two men’s balaclavas were removed and they were dragged away, Brian cursed the day he’d ever got himself a bloody smartphone.

Brian sat outside the station in Samantha Carter’s car. The rain had started again. Usually, he didn’t mind the sound of rain, but it was drumming down on the car roof so heavily that it felt like it was scratching its way through his brain.

“Are you okay?” Carter asked.

Brian held a damp cloth to his forehead. One of the many places he’d been punched or kicked by Darren and the Galaxy crew. One of so many reminders all over his body of what had happened, what had nearly happened.

But no. He couldn’t think about what happened. He couldn’t remember the way Darren’s throat was stabbed right in front of…

“The—the men in balaclavas,” Brian said. His mouth was dry, lingering taste of stomach acid lurking around his tongue. His vision beyond the rain-drenched car window of the high street was blurred. “They… they know who did it. They know who—who the Eye Snatcher is. Halshaw. Damien Halshaw’s dad. We—”

“I’ve been through this already, Brian,” Samantha said. The smell of her perfume was strong as they sat in her cosy little Audi TT Coupe. “We checked for all records of Halshaw on the system. Not a trace of him—”

“But he has another name—”

“Brian,” Carter shouted.

It snapped Brian right out of his frustration, his anger, right there, like a slap around the face.

He turned and looked Samantha in her chocolate brown eyes. “We’ve got Andrew Wilkinson,” she said. “And since we got him, nothing else has happened. It adds up, Brian. Think about it. Andrew Wilkinson was at Jean Betts’ the night Sam went missing. Sam Betts must’ve wandered into Patrick Selter’s company. We’re still going through the tapes, but it adds up. He gets away. Gets away just in time for Andrew Wilkinson to kidnap him, to take him to some place where he could do anything he wanted with him.”

Brian shook his head. “Doesn’t add up. Too many holes. Doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it does make sense,” Carter said. “It makes sense that Andrew Wilkinson took Janine Ainscough. His car was seen—”

“His car was in Galaxy possession!” Brian shouted. His heart thumped. “The documents and—and the tapes. The DVDs. I saw them in the van. I saw them in Darren’s van before he took me.”