Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (28 page)

Cawley nodded, keeping his eyes on the corpse’s face. He looked up, about to ask to another question, but Sellers answered for him, nodding his head to the right.

Another corpse lay against the opposite wall, slumped in a similar pose to the one by Cawley’s feet. He strangled a chunk of saliva down his throat, began to wish that he had never broken into the pub. Beside him, Simpson was wishing the same thing.

37

They passed all the beauty of Fairwood: the rich and pleasant rivers, fields and trees; the postcard-perfect houses and vibrant gardens. The people, the dark and ugly side of the town, watched on.

All the houses were empty. Every resident, young and old, was on the streets baying for the blood of the fugitives. A small girl hovered back to see, to witness their blood-soaked faces bob along the ground. It was the same girl Pandora had spoken to on the street, she recognised her through the crimson blur: the same dress, a different expression -- intrigue and delight.

They dragged them to a large garden at the back of the pub. The ones that had gone on ahead were already inside, sitting and waiting eagerly, the rest rushed in behind them, some helping to strap the lovers to the stockades that had been set up in the centre.

They didn’t put up a fight as they were locked inside, their wrists and heads bolted into place. They struggled to remain upright, could barely stand, but the stocks stopped them from slumping, forced them to use what little strength they had in their legs.

Spotlights screamed bright lights onto them from the back of the pub. Pandora couldn’t lift her neck, couldn’t shift a single muscle, but Dexter managed to crane it upwards to look at the sea of expectant faces.

It took him a few attempts, first to speak over the silence, then to find his voice, but Dexter finally managed to ask, “What is this, what do you want?”

The crowd hushed, Dexter felt like an alien brought to a distant world, a backward backwater where everyone hated him but longed to know where he was from and what he had to say. It didn’t surprise him that it was Dorothy who answered, what did surprise him was that she looked completely unharmed, unaffected from her earlier beating.

“We want you to suffer,” she told him.

He slumped, unable to hold his head. “Please,” he whimpered. “Leave her, let her go. You can do what you want to me. Kill me if you want. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“You’re both to blame,” Dorothy disagreed.

He raised his voice, annoyed and desperate. “She didn’t do anything wrong. It was mostly me. The robberies, the murder. I shouted the orders; I pulled the trigger.”

“It doesn’t matter who held the gun,” Dorothy told him. “The blood is on both of your hands.”

Dexter groaned, tried to drop to his knees but couldn’t with the shackles of the stockade tight against his throat. “Just kill me,” he told her. “Get it over with.”

Dorothy seemed to enjoy that. She laughed and, after a few seconds, the others joined in. Before long, a chorus of laughter was pilfering the silence from the night.

***

The gun was still trained on him but Cawley wasn’t paying any attention to it. He was more concerned with the corpses, struggling to understand what he was seeing.

“Why?” he asked eventually, keeping his attention on the male corpse that lay slumped just a few yards from him, his decaying scent clogging his nostrils like some sickly summer pollen.

Cawley didn’t see the apathetic shrug from Sellers; Simpson did and it made him sick. He hated the indifference with which these people viewed death, hated how they could take away someone’s life and then get on with their own as if nothing had happened. He had been frozen until that point, barely able to move let alone act, but that shrug, that cheeky smile, was enough to spur him into action. The gun wasn’t trained on him, Sellers barely paid any attention to him, so it was up to Simpson to save the day.

“You really wanna know?” Sellers said cockily, a laugh tweaking the corner of his mouth.

Cawley held his stare, saw the lack of remorse behind his eyes. It didn’t matter how or why he had done it. He wasn’t a sociopath, didn’t get a kick out of killing like a serial killer would, he was just an apathetic idiot. Someone who could easily, and without regret or a second thought, kill for money, fame or just because the other person annoyed him. He had met plenty of those types in his time on the job and he had wanted to do to all of them just what they had done to their victims; see if their apathy would remain when they were staring death in the face.

“Well?” Sellers spat, begging to unleash his story.

Cawley looked at Sellers, almost forlornly. Sellers prepared a languished explanation, but before he could speak Simpson was upon him. He moved in a blur at the corner of Cawley’s vision, barely seen by him and not seen at all by Sellers.

Simpson tackled him against the wall, taking out his gun-arm first and smacking his elbow against the door frame. The fragile bone rattled and juddered, forcing him to drop the weapon and unleash a surprised and feeble scream.

Sellers wasn’t as strong as the big man Simpson had taken out earlier, but he was craftier. He kneed Simpson in the groin just as the former detective tried to swivel around his back. The strike incapacitated Simpson, dropped him to his haunches. Sellers put him in a headlock, squeezed until the air and colour drained from Simpson’s face.

He reached down with his free arm -- keeping Simpson locked in the other -- and grabbed at the gun. The steel handle brushed his fingertips but he failed to grasp it. He repositioned himself, bent down further. It was taken away from him before he could pick it up. He straightened up, stared down the barrel of his own weapon; the gleaming eyes of Detective Max Cawley glinting above it.

“Let him go,” Cawley said softly.

Simpson felt the pressure reluctantly ease from his neck. He pulled himself free, took a few deep and satisfying breaths. He looked towards the doorway; saw the bandaged man trying to exit silently through the back door.

“Don’t you fucking move!” Simpson snapped, throwing out his hand as if cradling an invisible gun. The threat worked, the bandaged man lifted his hands to the ceiling, didn’t even turn around to see who was threatening him or what they were threatening him with.

Simpson took some ropes from the back of the storage room where they had been used to tie down a few boxes. Sellers was quiet as they tied him to a chair, didn’t flinch or attempt to fight them.

When Simpson finished restraining him Sellers he looked up at Cawley, the smile faded from his face, replaced by apathy.

Cawley nodded to the back of the room, to the female corpse; once a beautiful, radiant young woman. Her arms had been tied behind her back when she was alive, she died in the restraints, suffering the indignity of rape and torture, unable to throw out a hand to protect herself.

“Is she what it was all about?” he asked. “Did you kill them because you wanted to have fun with her?”

Sellers turned around slowly to face her. Her once strikingly blonde hair was mattered to her face, covered in blood. Her clothes had been torn; a pale breast -- dotted with dried blood around the nipple -- was exposed.

Sellers grinned, remembering what he had done. He turned away from Pandora's corpse, gave Cawley a brief and delighted nod.

“She was a pretty little thing though, right?”

Simpson couldn’t help himself. He spat in Seller’s face. The thick glob of saliva hit him above the right eye, dripped through his eyebrow before running a course down his cheek. Sellers didn’t flinch.

“She was worth it,” the barman said surely.

“There was a big bounty on their head,” Cawley noted. “Why didn’t you take it?”

A wrinkle tweaked in the corner of Seller’s eye, a thin line above his right eye that cut a distasteful furrow towards his temple. “I wanted to, believe me,” he said, lowering his brow and staring at Cawley through the top of his vision. “But they put up a fight. You saw what they did to Harry.” He nodded towards the bandaged man in the Stetson hat. “Poor fucker ain’t been the same since, gonna be scarred for life, might never want to take those bandages off.”

The bandaged man remained quiet, averting his eyes shyly. They hadn’t tied him up, didn’t think he posed a threat. His arms lay loose and useless by his side, his head was slumped onto his chest. He was breathing heavily and looking mournfully at the floor, contemplating a life of regrets behind bars.

“The fuckers pulled a gun on us; they nearly got away.”

“But?” Cawley pushed.

Sellers shrugged apathetically. “They didn’t,” he stated simply. “Car wouldn’t start. After a few minutes we all went out to ‘ave a look, ‘cept for ‘arry ‘ere who bled his shit all over my bathroom.”

Harry looked up just as Cawley turned to him. He was contemplating escape, on getting up and sneaking away whilst they were distracted with Sellers. Those contemplations were cut short when he saw the glare in Cawley’s eyes; the shotgun in his hands.

“We stayed back at first, watched him struggle. He still had the gun on us, still threatened to shoot us if we went near, but eventually…” Sellers shrugged. “We stopped giving a shit. Rex wanted the girl,” he nodded to the youngster, murmuring in his unconscious state on the floor, drooling a sticky mess down his cheek. “We all wanted the money. Rex rushed ‘im first, none of us followed, we figured ‘e would shoot. He’d just killed someone at the bank with the same gun after all, but ‘e didn’t. He seemed scared, cautious. Rex ripped open the door, tried to rip the gun right outta ‘is ‘and, he didn’t succeed, skinny fucker can barely ‘old ‘is own tiny cock to take a piss, but that was all that everyone else needed to rush ‘im.”

“Just you three?” Cawley asked.

Sellers shook his head, a long, tired gesture. “There were others, just a couple. They didn’t ‘ang around, didn’t want anything to do with it when it got ‘eated, but they ‘elped us get ‘em out of the car.”

“Heated?”

Sellers nodded slowly, looked at Cawley, at Simpson and then turned to look at Pandora. “We beat ‘em up pretty bad in the struggle. Rex was trying to kop a feel o’the lass, her fella wasn’t too happy about that. He took some stopping. Left him near death by the end, her too. She was an ‘ell of a fighter.” He cleared his throat, echoing a dry, stuttering noise through the room.

“We tied ‘em both up, then we had a little argument. The others wanted to phone the police. Us three wanted to have a little
play
first.”

The way he emphasised the word sickened Simpson. He turned away from the man in the chair, only to face Dexter’s dead, decaying body. “That’s enough,” he said, turning back, looking shaky on his feet. “We get it.”

“What happened to the others?” Cawley wondered, wanting to know more.

“They scarpered when we started on the girl. Said they wanted nothing to do with it.”

“And Bleak?” Cawley asked, nodding towards Dexter.

“We let him watch. What was left of ‘im anyway.”

Simpson hit Sellers. Hard. He delighted in the pain that screamed through his fist, from his knuckles to his elbow; delighted in the way that Seller’s head snapped back, his neck nearly breaking under the strain.

Cawley looked at his friend, at his bitter smile; at his fist which he held tight to his chest. “Feel better?” he wondered.

Simpson grinned at Sellers who was trying to squint away the pain in his head.

“Much better.”

Sellers coughed; spat a glob of blood onto the floor. “You got what you wanted as well, right?” he said through a slanted smile.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Simpson spat.

Sellers turned to Simpson, then to Cawley. “You got your killers,” he clarified. “You caught the Bleak and Bright bandits. Dead or alive, it don’t matter. You’ll be famous for this.”