Little Triggers (12 page)

Larkin smiled, mock-modest. “I try.”

A shadow came back into her eyes again. “His references … he once said, joking-like, if we ever tried to get rid of him …”

“I know,” said Larkin. “And I shouldn’t have to remind you, I’ll be the one doing the media manipulation on this one. So don’t worry.”

Jane’s smile was back in place. Larkin studied her. The anxious
frown that had been hardening her features had receded to allow a different range of emotions to take centre stage. She looked bright, positive, more like herself.

She was dressed in a long sleeveless denim dress with an open-necked collar, buttoned up the front, with stacked canvas sandals and small, round sunglasses perched on her head. And she was awakening in Larkin feelings long since repressed. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was showing obvious delight in what he had to say to her: a boost for the ego if nothing else, but it was still good to feel appreciated by such an attractive woman. She even smelled good. Larkin was feeling exhilarated – and scared.

“Hey,” she said, “did you hear about that fire in Bensham the other night? He was a journalist, wasn’t he?”

Larkin explained; Jane immediately apologised for her lack of tact.

“It’s not your fault,” said Larkin. “You weren’t to know. He was my partner. We weren’t close as it goes – but yeah, it is a loss.”

She didn’t mention Houchen again. Instead she looked at her watch and told him it was time for her to go and pick up Alison.

He walked her down to the bus stop on Grainger Street. Their conversation had slipped into a different gear since they’d stopped talking about Noble and Houchen: they were chatting easily, strolling along the pavement; to all intents and purposes like any other young couple. Larkin looked up. A perfect sun in a cloudless sky beamed down on Saturday-afternoon shoppers, busy buying merchandise to improve their homes and their lives. He smiled at Jane; she caught his glance and smiled back. Wordlessly, she slipped her arm through his. He didn’t remove it.

They walked like that for a while.
Sometimes it all seems so easy
, thought Larkin.

Eventually, they reached the bus stop and stood in silence, somehow indecisive. Waiting not only for the bus, but for something else as well.

“Listen,” said Jane, hesitantly, “what you doin’ tonight?”

Larkin gave a sad smile. “I’m busy.”

A light went out in Jane’s eyes. “Right. Sorry.”

“No, I mean it,” he said. “I am busy. I’m working for you,
remember? Tonight’s the only night I can do what I have to do.”

She perked up a little. “Another night, then.”

“Yes,” said Larkin. “Another night.”

The bus, a bright yellow double-decker, chose that moment to arrive. But as Larkin prepared to say a matey goodbye, Jane turned to him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him full on the lips.

The kiss shocked Larkin’s mouth open and he felt her tongue quickly dart inside. Then she pulled away from him and went to board the bus. She turned and gave him a last little wink, while the other people at the bus stop pretended not to notice.

“Give us a ring!” she called.

“I will,” said Larkin, grinning broadly.

The bus pulled away. And Larkin stood there, dumbfounded, smiling like an idiot. As he walked back up the hill towards Greys Monument, he made a conscious effort for once not to walk in the shadows cast by the tall, Georgian buildings, but to stroll in the sunlight.

He sighed.
Why
, he thought,
can’t my life always be like this?

The man breathed a sigh of relief. It was all under control. His earlier, dark mood had disappeared, evaporated like spit on a griddle. In its place was a kind of euphoria.

He had a lot to be euphoric about. For one thing, the boy’s body still hadn’t been discovered; the frisson he felt from knowing where it was while the search went on high and low was something to be savoured. In addition, chicken was on the menu for the weekend. During the last few days he’d had an almost permanent erection, thinking about the pleasures that lay ahead.

Safe in his cocoon of confidence and power, the man allowed his mind to wander again. Back to his life before power. Back to when he was the victim …

After their parents’ death, his brother’s name changed; and with it, his brother. His brother became soft, hugging his new parents, laughing with his new brother and sister, allowing himself to feel comfortable in his new home.

The man hated what his brother was becoming: safe, secure and, most of all, distant. The man wanted – needed – his brother, and deep down, underneath the layers of hate and rage, he wanted what his brother had. But he would never admit it.

Despite his mother’s death, his life hadn’t improved. Shunted from one unwilling relative to another, he had finally ended up at the thin end of the wedge, in foster care. His new ‘parents’ did their best but with three children of their own and a low income, fostering was a way of making ends meet rather than healing broken lives. In fact, they had already given a home to one foster child. Maxwell.

Right from the beginning, Maxwell had taken exception to the
presence of the younger boy. Perhaps he thought he was being usurped; that the new addition to the household would receive whatever limited share of their carers’ attention had previously been reserved for him. To retain his power, stamp his authority on the situation, he became tormentor, torturer, and the younger boy his victim. It started with sly kicks, pinches, blows that could almost have been accidental. Then, as Maxwell grew in confidence, the casual violence became more extreme, more deliberate. He would beat the boy rigorously, scrupulously, being careful to leave marks only where they wouldn’t show. Beating became part of the boy’s daily routine. Maxwell knew by now that the boy was too scared of retribution to carry tales. And, having reached an age when sex governed every waking and sleeping moment, he took the next step.

He would wake the boy in the middle of the night, in the tiny, claustrophobic bedroom they were forced to share, and force his penis down the child’s throat. The first few times the boy had struggled, trying to pull his head away, unable to breathe; but his frantic movements had simply driven Maxwell to a greater pitch of sexual excitement and he had grabbed the boy and pumped all the harder. Eventually the boy had learned that if he lay still and passive the pain and fear would diminish. It reached the point where he was hardly frightened at all, even when Maxwell turned him over and buggered him until he bled. He knew he was powerless, a natural victim. Why fight it?

But one day, he snapped.

He didn’t have friends, playmates. Even the three children in the family didn’t want anything to do with the fostered boys. He did, however, have some idea of how boys his age were supposed to behave, and so he had been trying to make a swing. He had carried a rope to an old oak tree in a nearby wood, had thrown it over the sturdiest, highest branch he could reach, shinning up the tree to secure it. As he pulled the knot fast, he suddenly stopped, gazing at the rope as if seeing it for the first time. The rope wasn’t just a plaything – it could be an instrument of life and death. A hangman’s best friend.

Quickly, he turned his knot into a slipknot, testing it with his hands to make sure it ran smoothly. Then he placed it over his head, around his neck. He climbed on to the branch where the rope had been tied and perched there, knot tight, arms outstretched. As he prepared to launch himself into the air, into the unknown, a single
thought ran round his head: would his brother do it like this?

But then, suddenly, he realised. If he killed himself, Maxwell had won. His power would be unlimited. As for his brother, he had his happy new family now. Would he even care?

A kernel of anger began to germinate inside him and he allowed it to grow. He tugged the rope from round his neck and threw it down, leaving the empty noose to dangle from the branch. He climbed down from the tree, tears on his cheeks; for the first time they were tears of rage, not terror and shame. He walked away deeper into the forest. From that moment he began to plot his revenge.

He wouldn’t be the victim any more. Now he would be the master. He turned back and saw the rope hanging, swaying gently in the breeze. Through the tears, he could just make out the ghost of a boy swinging from side to side, head at a pathetic angle.

When he saw Maxwell again he would be ready.

That night, after the customary beating – which Maxwell seemed to use as a kind of foreplay – it was business as usual. Maxwell, as always, pulled his erect penis from his pyjamas and shoved it into the boy’s mouth.

The boy took the swollen cock between his teeth and bit down, as hard as he could.

Maxwell screamed and tried to withdraw, but the boy held on, grinding his teeth backwards and forwards, deeper and deeper. He felt his mouth flood with blood. Still he didn’t let go.

Eventually Maxwell, on the point of blacking out, stopped struggling and the boy released him. Maxwell stumbled off the bed, groaning and whimpering like an injured animal. He fled the room, pyjama bottoms round his ankles, his penis hanging flaccid and mangled between his legs, to tell his foster parents what the boy had done.

The boy rose from the bed also and went to the bedroom. Spat blood from his mouth into the sink. Looked in the mirror and saw his eyes. He didn’t recognise them. They belonged to a different person, to the person he had become.

The incident was dealt with quietly. Maxwell was given urgent medical attention; the boy was removed from the household as soon as
possible. No action was taken, but his case notes went with him. The authorities knew that he had savagely attacked an older boy, and that the attack had been of a sexual nature. Although the case notes stated that the boy may have been provoked – the foster carers’ children backed him up on that one – they conferred a new status on him. No longer did people look at him with scorn or pity. The balance of power had shifted. Now they looked at him with fear.

This had been the man’s first lesson.

Eventually he went away to university, left his past behind. He never saw Maxwell again.

At university he carried his new-found confidence before him. The pathetic victim had long since been left hanging on the old oak tree. He worked hard on his new persona: the rugby captain, the keen cricket player. He was tall, strong, charismatic. Even popular. People said he was a natural leader.

Over the years he perfected the precise science of human manipulation. And so successful was his new persona – his mask – that acting the part became effortless, requiring no thought. He was heading for the top and nothing could stop him.

But alone at night, in his dreams and fantasies, the scared, humiliated little boy he had once been came back to haunt him. He would wake bathed in sweat, trembling, robbed of the power he had fought so hard to achieve.

Soon he learned to be ready for the dreams. As the boy appeared, naked and vulnerable, the man was there to meet him. He would take hold of the boy, beat him till he huddled in the corner, utterly defenceless. And the the man would force himself upon the boy, repeating the unspeakable scenes he had enacted with Maxwell all those years ago. And then he would wake to find his heart pounding and his belly sticky with semen. Another small epiphany: one which convinced him he was now the powerful one.

After a while he would seek out these fantasies during the daytime. He told himself that he was merely keeping the past at bay, but he knew that wasn’t true. He revelled in images of sexual torture, scenes in which his victims, however bloodied and battered, were nevertheless somehow liberated by their tormentor, just as he had been.

Yet, satisfying though they were, the realisation was growing within him that fantasies alone would not sustain him forever. The dreams had awoken needs in him which had to be fulfilled. Soon he had gained enough power for that to be possible. For his dreams to become reality.

Larkin stood at the corner of the sodium-lit street, dressed entirely in what he hoped was inconspicuous black: Levis, long-sleeved T-shirt, rubber-soled canvas shoes. Staring out into the gloom, his face was a mask of inscrutability but his demeanour belied his true feelings. He was hyped up, adrenalin shooting down his body like pulses down a wire, readying him for fight or flight.

The street consisted of semi-detached maisonettes dating back to the twenties and thirties, two storeys tall. Overgrown gardens, rusted gates. Heaton Park to the right, Heaton Road to the left. Noble’s home.

Larkin took deep breaths, trying to slow his heartbeat down. He knew he would be no use to Ezz in an excited state. He scoped the area, checking for observers. None. Good. He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. Most of Noble’s neighbours would be either inside their homes draining their minds into the TV, or out draining the dregs of Saturday. The street seemed to have a pall of thwarted ambition hanging over it.

Larkin looked down towards Heaton Park. The streetlights barely penetrated the deep lakes of darkness cast by the trees. As he watched, one of the shadows detached itself from the main clump and flowed along the street towards him. He blinked his eyes hard, not sure what he’d just seen. As he watched, the liquid shadow came nearer and began to assume human features. Zip-up bomber, tracksuit bottoms, kung-fu sandals, woolly hat pulled down hard. All black, absorbing the darkness. Ezz.

Larkin knew the burglar had cased the area earlier in the day: checking for hitherto unknown flatmates, identifying the make and strength of the lock, scrutinising the windows, noting any other
security arrangements Noble might have in place, calculating the best odds for entry. He had observed the habits of the neighbours, seeing if anyone lived on the upper floor of Noble’s building, at either side, opposite; and if they did, what potential trouble they could cause. He never left anything to chance. If there had been even the remotest chance of the situation going belly-up, Larkin knew Ezz wouldn’t be here.