Buried Slaughter (28 page)

Scott hit the pause button on the portable silver cassette player, cutting out the music completely.

“You let them go,” Brian said. His body pented up with rage. His mind was fuzzy. He paced in Scott’s direction. “You stop this fucking around and you‌—‌”

“I wouldn’t come a step closer if I was you,” Scott said. He grabbed a rope that was tied to the ground. As he did, Hannah and Davey both wobbled. Davey’s feet edged closer to the bath of steaming murky liquid.

Scott gasped and shook his head. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. The scratches from the runaway cat he’d got a couple of weeks back, before this whole fucked-up thing started, was pink and sealed under his eye, partly scarred over. “Your fiancé and your kid are elevated above two plastic bathtubs filled with hydrofluoric acid. The only thing keeping them up there‌—‌alive‌—‌is this rope, which is in turn attached to the rope around their wrists. If I yank this rope at any time, the pair of them will fall to a very painful death. So think carefully about your next step, Brian. Think very carefully indeed.”

Brian wanted to take another few steps forward, but he was frozen on the spot. The sight of Hannah and Davey, elevated above what he now knew were hydrofluoric acid baths, was finally starting to hit home. This was serious.

Scott raised his bushy eyebrows. “So you’re going to keep your distance, okay?”

There were so many things Brian wanted to say, but he couldn’t process them. Scott‌—‌his work partner. His friend. He’d only considered inviting him to his engagement party earlier that day. This was wrong. So wrong.

“So, you asked me ‘why?’” Scott said, pacing from side to side, but staying close to the rope. “And to be perfectly honest with you, I’m a little disappointed with you. I told you why. I laid out all the clues for you to solve. And yet, here we are, you staring at me with those fucking vacant eyes.” He shook his head. “Shame.”

“What the fuck is all this about, Scott? You…‌you can let Hannah and Davey go. You can still walk out of here. We…‌we can.”

Scott burst into a chorus of laughter. A chorus of laughter that Brian had so often shared. “You think I can walk out of here after what I’ve done? After all the things I’ve done? No. I’ve left the clues I needed to leave now. I’ve served my purpose. Brian, I don’t
want
to leave this room. In fact, the only thing that matters in my life anymore is right here, in this room. This moment, right now. This is what I’ve been building towards. What I’ve wanted all along. Right from the moment I brought that medieval sword through the neck of the first archeologist’s neck.”

Brian felt like a sword had swung through his own body when Scott said those final words. “It…‌It was you?” he said, stuttering. “All along, it was…‌”

“Oh, come on, Brian,” Scott said. His tone was snappy now, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Keep up. Yes, I killed Davidson Archeological Contractors. Yes, I killed the Brabiner’s group at Longridge Fell.” He paused. Peered at Brian. “Yes, I killed that sister-in-law of yours. Had the most fun with her. The closer they get to the family, the more fun to be had.”

Brian could tell that his mouth was dangling wide open, but he felt detached from his physical body, as if he were in the room, listening in to a conversation that he really did not want to be the centrepiece of.

“I had to kill that journalist, too. Shame though. He was alright, I guess, in the end. But it was what he knew. He was on the verge of ruining my big surprise. He came this close to ruining the final event,” Scott said, a tiny gap between his thumb and index finger. “But hey. What’s got to be done has got to be‌—‌”

“Why, Scott?” Brian said. His voice was shaky and his throat was dry. His mind spun with the sudden reality‌—‌the danger‌—‌of the situation he was in. “Why would you…‌you wouldn’t kill all those people. There’s no reason. There’s…‌”

Scott shook his head again, but a smile tugged at his clean-shaven cheeks. “That’s where you’re wrong. And you know you’re wrong. You’ve just spent a fortnight chasing this ‘Harold Harvey II’ figure. You’ve seen the sums of money‌—‌the 1612 link, the eleven killings, the runaway rat scum…‌Yeah, you were right about it all. You just didn’t make the final link, that’s all. The final, crucial link.”

Brian’s eyes were watering so much that his vision was blurred. A strong sweaty smell radiated from his body. “The runaway. You…‌You’re the runaway? A descendant of the runaway? But‌—‌but then why are you doing this? Why go under the Harold Harvey name? Why‌—‌”

“I’m the runaway?” Scott said. His nostrils twitched. “How fucking dare you insult me like that.”

“Then who are you?” Brian shouted.

Scott looked up at Hannah and Davey’s bodies, elevated above the bathtubs, as if he were doing something as casual as pondering a mathematics question. Then, he turned back to Brian, the anger washed from his face. “In 1612, Harold Harvey took twelve witches out into a field and put an end to their miserable lives. That’s the official story, anyway. In truth, eleven of them died. One of them got away.” He stepped around the front of the baths and leaned against one of them, like a teacher at a desk telling a story. “One of them managed to escape, somehow. Crawled away, like a little rat, it did.”

But one little rat ran away to hide…‌

“Now, nobody heard from this little rat for six years. People got on with their lives. Harold and his family got on with their lives in peace. Had a beautiful wife‌—‌pregnant‌—‌and a beautiful child. Joseph, I believe. Beautiful name.

“But one day, when Harold’s sitting around in his writing chair, aged sixty, his wife in the kitchen, his children playing with one another, somebody breaks into his house. Now, Harold has family over, too. A sister-in-law of his. And the first thing he sees when he leaves his writing office to check on the disturbance is that little rat from six years ago holding the head of his sister-in-law.”

But one little rat ran away to hide, and returned to cause some pain.

“Now at this point, Harold is terrified for his family. He runs into the living area to see to them, but anyway, one thing comes to another, and eventually Harold is restrained by this…‌this rat.” He spat when he said the word rat, dribbling down his chin. “Harold is restrained and his wife…‌his pregnant wife, Isabella, she’s stripped naked by this rat and raped. Fucked and fucked and fucked. And then…‌” Scott choked up and wiped his eyes. “And then the same thing happens to his son. The same fucking thing. This rat. This fucking awful rat. The horrible things he does. The horrible things he puts them through.”

Brian was stunned to silence by the outpouring of grief from Scott. The outpouring of grief about something, as horrible as it was, that happened four hundred years ago.

“And…‌and then this rat does a horrible thing. A horrible, horrible thing. He makes Harold Harvey choose, he does. He makes him choose between his wife and his child. His wife, carrying an unborn child, and his child. Can you imagine being given that choice? Can you imagine the grief this poor man felt?”

“Scott, I‌—‌”

“Shut up. Shut up. I am not finished.” He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “After minutes, hours, maybe even days, Harold finally chooses. He chooses his child. He chooses his little Joseph. And that’s when he loses his wife. And the rat crawls off to the sewers, just like that. Gone. So he…‌he tells little Joseph exactly what has happened. Little Joseph who has been forced to witness his mother’s death. Little Joseph who had unspeakable things happen to him at the filthy claws of the rat. He writes little Joseph a letter of it all. Makes Little Joseph swear to keep hold of it. To pass it down through the generations until the family of this little rat are identified.

“But little Joseph grew up to be a good man, in spite of what happened. A noble man. And he saw the spawn of the rat, upon occasion. Yes, the rat spawned. But that was a good thing. It meant that he’d spread his filthy sperm and propagated the family. That was good, because it meant that one day, revenge could come, but only when somebody strong enough to seek it came along.”

Scott was about to continue, but then he held out his open palms and nodded in Brian’s direction. “Any questions now? Any more half-hearted, self-pitiful ‘whys’? Or is it starting to make sense now?”

Brian’s throat felt like a vice grip was wrapped around it. His arms buzzed with adrenaline and fear. Scott was insane. Completely insane. “I don’t know what you think I have to do with this, but‌—‌”

“Brian, you are everything to do with this,” Scott said, smiling. “You
are
this. The rat spread its filthy spawn and the generations went on and on and on, and so too did Harold Harvey’s secret letter. It’s only today, four hundred years later, that the two families should come together again, after deviations all over the world.” Scott held up a crinkled, ancient-looking yellow piece of paper. The writing on it was fading away, and it was barely readable at first glance.

But there was one word he could definitely read clearly, right from all these feet away, through his watery eyes and in the dim light of the room.

“Little Joseph named the little rat. Added it to his father’s letter. And it didn’t take me long to find you when I knew what I was looking for.”

But no matter how much the little rat run,

One day, today, justice is finally done.

Scott folded the paper up and stuffed it back in his hoodie pocket, but the name was clearly engrained in Brian’s vision, still there when he blinked, and when he looked around.

McDone is the rat.

Brian noticed a movement in the corner of his eye on the left of the room.

“Ah,” Scott said, smiling as he looked up at Hannah and Davey. “Just in time.”

Hannah’s foot, dangling down towards the bath, started to twitch.

“It’s time for you to choose, Brian,” Scott said, holding on to the rope. “Choose like Harold Harvey was forced to choose. I want you to feel the pain your rat ancestors caused my ancestor. I want you to feel it‌—‌live with it‌—‌for years.”

Brian shook his head. He was a descendant of the “rat” that Scott described; all this time, it was all so personal. All just one big moral lesson for him. One twisted 17
^th
Century grudge.

“And when you’ve chosen‌—‌when you’ve made your choice‌—‌one of your family members will suffer unimaginable pain. You’ve got…‌Let’s say fifteen, twenty minutes. No choice, and the pair of them go plunging into the acid bath. I hope you’re ready, Brian. Clock’s ticking.”

Brian’s entire body was frozen as he stared at Hannah’s feet, wiggling between the tightly wrapped tape around her ankles.

He had to make a choice.

There was no other way out.

Chapter Thirty Two

“What’s wrong, Brian? Cat got your tongue? Ha. S’pose I shouldn’t be the one making cat jokes after that fucking bitch’s cat scratched my face that time, right?”

Brian stared at Scott, who grinned and chatted just as if he was a friend.

And yet, Hannah and Davey were beside him, hovering above those bathtubs of hydrofluoric acid. He understood the little kitchen weights around Davey’s stomach now. They were keeping the weight evenly distributed. So if one of them were to be lifted off, the other would descend to their fate.

A belt of death.

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Scott said, pointing at Hannah’s twitching foot. “It’ll be a while before she properly comes round. But that doesn’t matter. I want her to feel the pain. I want you to see her pain, and I want to see that in your eyes. That grief. That understanding.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Brian said, shaking his head. “Fucking deluded, Scott. All this shit over something that happened like, four hundred years ago. Completely fucking crackers.”

Scott smiled. He seemed unaffected by Brian’s cursing. “History decides the innocent from the guilty.”

The words sounded so familiar in Brian’s mind, and that’s because he knew he’d heard them before. Out on that field, when the killer had stood over him, he’d said those words. “All this time, it was you. All this fucking time.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Scott said. “Getting access to the medieval sword was particularly tricky. I knew I needed to plan very carefully for that. And hey‌—‌the Mcphee guy came good in the end.”

Brian kept on checking on Hannah and Davey as the rope above them swung, the weight distribution falling out of sync every now and then.

It only took a nudge. A slight nudge, and one of them would go flying into a pit of hot acid.

“Darren Anderson,” Brian said. “He was your accomplice, wasn’t he?”

Scott laughed. It was a singular, high-pitched cackle. “Accomplice? Jesus. Give me some credit. No, Darren Anderson played a very important part, but I’d hardly call him my accomplice. I just made sure he got a few things I needed. A public face, to take the blame should my whole…‌operation fall apart. He got me into the Pendle Hill excavation site. Hey‌—‌he even got me this here acid, in fact.” He pointed his finger at the acid, coming close to dipping it in.

“Why would he do that for you? Why would he put his entire life on the line?”

Scott reached up for Hannah’s smooth, bare leg and stroked it, like an owner stroking their pet. “The things a man would do for their family. Right?”

In that instant, Brian got a very strong idea of what had happened to Darren Anderson after all. His family. His wife and daughter. 1/6/12. The desperation in Darren’s drunken eyes. “You kidnapped his family?”

“I wouldn’t say I ‘kidnapped’ them. More…‌placed them in a very safe place. A place where they would be perfectly fine, should Darren carry out his side of the deal. But should he fail, well. I’m still making my mind up about his success. Ah, well. They’ve been good these last few months, and Darren’s just been too afraid about what I might do to them to go to the police. Far too afraid. Exactly what I wanted. Cowardly piece of shit. They should have enough food and water in their system to last another couple of days. Perhaps. Now, I love to digress, but your clock is ticking. I count ten minutes. Make your choice, Brian.”