Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (16 page)

“Do what?” Cawley asked, playing innocent.

“You know what.
This
,” he gestured with a raise of his eyebrows. “Don’t make it all about the job. Let’s not talk about that.”

“We were partners for--”

“That doesn’t matter,” Simpson cut in again. “It’s over now, no matter what you say. I know I upset you--”

“
Upset
me?”

“
Annoyed
you then.”

“That’s more like it.”

Simpson nodded, “But I’ve left now,” he continued, “and I’m not going back.”

Cawley nodded slowly, looked down at his cup, then at the floor; his hands; the television; back at Simpson. “So what else do we talk about?” he wanted to know. “Television, the news...do you like football?”

Simpson glared at him momentarily, trying to hide his disdain at the bitterness which flowed through Cawley’s words. He shook it off, no matter how bitter and resentful the detective was, he was helping him out. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the last person on earth he was depending on.

“Where’s your toilet?” Simpson asked.

Cawley pointed a finger towards the stairs. “Like I said, the only room up there that the bitch hasn’t stripped.”

Simpson nodded, stood, held the pained muscle in his neck and strained his rigid body. “How are things with you and the wife?”

“
Ex
-wife.”

Simpson nodded.

“She’s an evil witch,” Cawley said simply, sinking back into the couch. “Let’s leave it at that.”

18

Cawley grinned when he heard the jangling sound of a key rattling in his front door. Simpson looked across at him curiously. He didn’t like the look of amusement on the face of his former partner, there was a cynical scowl buried somewhere in that hardened face of his.

He flung himself from the couch with the rapid glee of a child preparing to answer the door to his friend. He rubbed his hands together, gave Simpson a wide-eyed glance and then headed for the door which opened just as he approached.

“Hello dear,” he said placidly.

His wife nearly jumped out of her skin. She held a hand to her chest, took a step backwards. “
Ohmygod
,” she gasped in one breath.

“Surprise you, did I?” Cawley asked, unable to hide the enjoyment on his face. He stepped forward, peeked over her shoulder, towards the empty driveway and street beyond. “Is your beloved brother not with you today? Shame, I rather enjoy his company.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked sharply, the shyness of the previous meeting gone now that there was no one there to take pity on her.

“Me?” Cawley feigned confusion. “What am I doing here, in my own house?” he shook his head slowly, keeping his gaze locked in hers the whole time. “
How dare I?
”

“You should be at work,” Sandra hissed, pointing an accusing finger at him.

Cawley pointed right back at her, “
You
should get the fuck away from my house,” he said calmly.

“
Our
hou--”

“Don’t start your shit,” he cut in. “The house is in my name.”

Sandra seemed taken aback. She looked around, flicked her eyes from the floor, to the door and then to Cawley again. “I came for my stuff.”

“
Your
stuff?”

She nodded firmly.

He shrugged. “I have a loaf of bread left in the kitchen, do you want that?”

She frowned at him, twisted her mouth into a grimace. “Don’t you get sarky with me.”

“I’ll do what the fuck I like,” Cawley said, retaining his calm, enjoying himself. “This is my house,” he slapped the keys out of her hand and held them before her like a dangled carrot. “And
my
keys. Now, I suggest you get the fuck out before I arrest you for breaking and entering.”

She opened her mouth to reply but her words failed her. She set her face into attack mode -- the expression of a rabid dog -- prepared to stare him down whilst she thought of a response. Cawley slammed the door in her face before she uttered a word.

“Buh bye now!” he yelled through the glass.

He heard her grumble, groan. Could almost sense the sound of her grinding teeth. He grinned to himself, knowing that his ex-wife would now take her anger out on her brother or her father, or better yet, on her new boyfriend who wouldn’t know what hit him when his girlfriend turned into a savage heartless bitch.

He rubbed his hands together, stretched and gave a satisfying yawn as he watched Sandra’s silhouette turn and waddle away.

The perfect start to a less than perfect day.

19

He remembered the cold, the chill that crept through his bones and split his nerves with its freezing touch. He remembered the darkness: so deep, so strong, so empty. He remembered the smell: mould and damp, a cloying stench that threatened to clog his nostrils with its insidious must. He didn’t remember much after that.

When Dexter next pried open his eyes, peeling apart a sticky seam of sleep that had sealed his matted eyelashes to his eyelids, he was in a dark room that reverberated with the hollow echoes of his pained breaths. He could see his own breath in front of his face, expelled from his dry and bloodied mouth in a thin, misty vapour.

He wiped the back of his hand over his forehead, scanned his hand and wrist for signs of blood. There were none, yet his head throbbed with an unbearable agony. He poked and prodded around the base of his skull, gritted his teeth and hissed a breath of belligerence when his probing found the source of his pain. At some point someone had hit him, beaten him into submission and then thrown him into the room. The pain in his head -- partly caused by his alcohol consumption, mostly attributed to his wound -- and the dried blood on his fingertips was testament to that, but he couldn’t remember any of it.

He remembered being inside the room. He hadn’t been able to see at the time, hadn’t registered anything of its surroundings, but he had picked up on the smell and the sense of isolation. There were no windows, no portal to the outside, so he couldn’t tell if it was night or day, if it had been minutes or hours since his abduction. He was no longer under the sedative effects of the alcohol so he assumed that at least half a day had passed.

He was alone in the room. A rusted stanchion rose out of the cold concrete in front of him, impaling the dusty ceiling above. He couldn’t move. His left leg had been shackled to the stanchion with a thick chain attached to a tight clasp that dug into his ankle and scarred a welt of red flesh.

He drank in more of the room, blinking away a blur that had cornered his vision upon waking. He was in a basement, no bigger than a dozen squared feet. It didn’t look used, was barely maintained. Dust littered the walls and ceilings in dirty grey veils. A thick pipe protruding from the wall was so thick with rust that it looked like it had been wrapped in a sheet of corrugated iron. There was a sink in the far corner but the ceramic bowl had chipped and split, even from his sitting position, on the other side of the room, Dexter could see that the mangled, grimy basin would barely be able to sustain the water that he doubted still dripped from the rusted tap above. At the top right of the room he saw the beginnings of a staircase, the rest of which was blocked by a partition wall that had been veiled with the same sheets of gunmetal decrepitude as the others.

He tried to think back to the abduction. He remembered the grinning faces and the grasping hands. He remembered Pandora’s cries and how much he wanted to -- tried to -- get to her. He was alone, cold and in pain; he was
hung-over, injured, anxious and vulnerable, yet he knew that wherever Pandora was, wherever they had taken her, she was suffering a lot more than he was. That made him feel a hell of a lot worse.

***

The grinning man smelled like her grandfather used to smell. It was a stench of strong whiskey, old clothes and a dated, overpowering cologne that she imagined was sold in rickety old shops alongside unfiltered cigarettes and cure-all tinctures. As much as he smelled like her grandfather; he didn’t look like him. Her grandfather didn’t have his narrow eyes which looked like he was constantly trying to squint away an offending light; didn’t have his crude smile, the way one corner of his lip curled upwards.

Her grandfather had a raspy voice, the result of a lifetime of smoking and heavy drinking. As a child she’d always thought it gave him a distinguished quality, adding a smoky intelligence to his voice that his mind didn’t possess. He was a good man, a kind man, but not a smart man. This man, the one that had groped her, leered at her; the one that had abducted her and dragged her here, spoke with a slimy, greasy texture. She hadn’t been able to see him most of the time, but she imagined him grinning lustfully when she heard him speak, imagined him licking his lips or reaching for his crotch.

She couldn’t remember much of the night. She remembered being struck from behind, but after that it was a chaotic blur. She had been half-dragged half-carried out of the pub. She had a partial memory of staring at the stars with her arms and legs stretched out and held at either end, her backside bouncing and grazing the cold concrete beneath her. She remembered being inside a house. It was warm, homely, safe. She felt safe momentarily, as if waking up from a horrid nightmare, but then she’d seen his face again and the nightmare continued.

Since then she had either been asleep or unconscious because now it was morning. She was lying on a bed, she could feel the soft mattress and padded duvet underneath her, pressing gently against the wounds caused by the grazing concrete. She had a blindfold on but she could see the thick orange of day bleeding in through the black material.

He stood over her for an indeterminable time. At first she hadn’t known he was there, she had been listening to the silence, trying to figure out what had happened, then she moved and he commented, greeting her with a sickly
good morning.
She jumped at the sound, startled to hear his breath -- his greasy, slimy breath -- so close to her ear.

She didn’t know what he wanted to do, didn’t know what he had planned for her. There were two of them, him and his wife, they’d both dragged her there, she was sure of that, but she doubted that the wife would play any part. She was
his
prize; his
toy
.

20

Cawley needed to get out of his house. The bare building was depressing him. It wasn’t well looked after anymore. Not only did Sandra do most of the cleaning, but what little Cawley had done he no longer had the time
, or the patience for.

During the first few weeks he made sure he found time to clean. He felt like he was getting one over on Sandra by washing the dishes, vacuuming the floor and dusting, but then he’d lost his enthusiasm. The dishes piled up for days on end, the dirt and dried food became so much a part of the pans and plates that many had to be thrown away, no amount of scrubbing or washing could save them. His house was so thick with dust that the few pieces of furniture that remained appeared to be topped with carpet fragments. Any spills onto the floor were simply covered with a tea-towel or a sheet of kitchen paper, as if the limited absorbent qualities of the materials would make the stain disappear. The house was not only sparsely furnished; it was cold, damp and dark. An inhospitable squalor.

He went to the park. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The children were still at school and most people were at work, so he had the day to himself, save for a handful of dog walkers, joggers and bleary eyed alcoholics, of which Andrew Simpson was one. His former partner had decided to join him, he hadn’t asked, hadn’t offered to keep him company or even inquired if Cawley minded his presence, he just followed him out the door.

“Lovely day isn’t it?” Simpson asked as they entered the park. A cold, unseasonal breeze washed over them, disappearing as quickly as it appeared. Cawley scolded his friend, blaming him for it. He was cursed.

“Sure,” Cawley answered without conviction.

“It must be nineteen, twenty degrees out,” Simpson noted, shielding his eyes to peer into the sky.

Cawley looked up as well, expecting the skies to cloud over. When they didn’t he returned his gaze to his friend. “You look very perky today,” he said in an accusing tone.

Simpson looked at him with wounded timidity. “Is that such a bad thing?”

Cawley shook his head. “Not bad. Just suspicious.”

Simpson shook his head disapprovingly. He sat down on a bench overlooking a slightly overgrown field, strewn with spots of scattered flowers and weeds. Three youngsters still in their school uniforms -- ties loosened around their necks, shirts hanging out -- kicked a football about. They regarded Simpson and Cawley guardedly at first, then continued playing.

“I never skipped a single day of school, you know that?” Simpson said absently.

Cawley stayed standing, pondering flashing his badge to the truant teens to scare the shit out of them. He looked down at Simpson, creased his brow. He contemplated making a cruel observation, noting the oddity of a man who never played truant once in his schooldays yet didn’t think twice about missing dozens of days at work before eventually leaving altogether. He stopped himself when he realised he had also skipped work today and didn’t have a valid reason. He skipped work because he hated his job, hated his life. Wasn’t that why Simpson had skipped all those days in the past, wasn’t that why he eventually quit?

Cawley swallowed thickly, wary of the realisation. “Me neither,” he said eventually. “I was a goody-two shoes at school. A teacher’s pet.”

Simpson looked astonished. “You?”

Cawley laughed softly. “Yep.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true. I was always the first kid to raise his hand, the first to offer to read aloud.”

“
Fuck me
,” Simpson said, stifling a laugh. “So what happened?”

Cawley shrugged. “Life.” He sat down next to his friend, looked at the youngsters playing football then at a young woman power-walking on the path behind. He sighed, a long and tiresome sigh that served to pad the silence.

“So, what’s with the positivity then?” Cawley asked eventually, noting that Simpson was still grinning as he studied his sun-drenched surroundings.

“I’m not allowed to be positive?”

“Oh, you’re
allowed
, I’ve just never seen it in you before.”

“Never?”

Cawley tilted his head introspectively from side to side, “In the beginning maybe.”

Simpson nodded, turned towards his friend, a smile still on his face. “You know, I never saw
you
in the beginning. I wasn’t around in those days. I would have loved to see you.”

“You didn’t miss much.”

Simpson disagreed with a shake of his head. “They said you were super fit, super confident; the life of the party.”

Cawley nodded approvingly.

“They said that you loved the job and everyone loved
you
.”

Again Cawley nodded.

Simpson paused, studied Cawley’s face, saw the recall behind his ageing, tired eyes as he remembered a person that hadn’t existed for a long time and would never return. “So, what the hell happened?”