The Teacher: A shocking and compelling new crime thriller – NOT for the faint-hearted! (11 page)

‘Thank you, sir.’ Adrian left the office and went to the incident room, grabbing Ryan and Kevin’s files from the front desk.

‘Stay away from Ryan Hart!’ Morris shouting across the room, everyone looked at Adrian, who was already thumbing through the reports.

Adrian’s stomach lurched as he looked at the photographs of the crime scene. Everything about it was wrong. The room was immaculate, all apart from the bed where Kevin’s body lay in several pieces, all rearranged but still in the shape of a human being, if not in the correct order. The feet were on the wrong legs and the hands on opposite sides, too. There was something almost biblical about the scene, a sense of ceremony. A point to be made. As Adrian finished studying a picture he would hand it to Grey, whose face was in a constant state of grimace.

‘Damn!’ she muttered. ‘Ryan had some real daddy issues.’

‘It’s too much. It’s overkill.’

‘You aren’t wrong. This is the very definition of overkill.’

‘I didn’t get on with my dad either, but this?’ Adrian took a deep breath and looked out the window, something was niggling at him. A memory?

‘You don’t think it was Ryan, do you?’

‘I don’t know, Ryan’s a lowlife but I don’t see him removing all of his dad’s organs.’

‘No?’

‘He might make someone disappear, but to actually do that … this … it’s …’

‘You think someone else did it, as a message for him? Like a rival drug dealer type thing?’

‘No love lost between Ryan and his father; there are plenty of other things that would upset him more. That dog, for a start. Some old duffer ran over his last dog then mysteriously ended up in critical condition over at Wonford Hospital. We could never prove it was him but it was, he told me as much. If you wanted to upset Ryan Hart, you would kill his dog not his dad.’

‘Plus where are the organs?’

‘Exactly!’

‘I mean, removing them is weird, do you think it’s some black market thing?’

‘Kevin Hart was a fat old diabetic alcoholic; his organs were barely worth anything to him, let alone anyone else.’

‘So why then?’

‘I don’t know, but I do know I need to speak to Ryan again.’

‘Miley, are you trying to get me fired?’ She smiled.

‘We got him!’ Daniels burst into the incident room holding aloft a photograph. ‘CCTV got him down on the quay at 11:45, not at his mate’s playing poker.’

‘Go pick him up,’ Morris said, clapping his hands together with a note of finality.

‘The quay’s a bit of a way from the vic’s house,’ Adrian said.

‘You need to get back in the gym, son,’ Daniels cackled. ‘All that time off has made you soft. I can do that in ten minutes.’

‘Yes, all right, Robocop, you are amazing but you’re missing the point. This whole crime scene took a long time, it’s meticulous and pristine. There were no prints, not even Hart’s, so the whole place was cleaned. Even the blood doesn’t tell us anything, he must have cut the body up in the bath or something because we are missing a good couple of litres. He would have had to get there, kill and dismember his father, clean up the crime scene, without leaving any forensics anywhere and then get back to the poker tourney well within an hour. No. Whoever did this took their sweet time about it.’

‘The point is we’ve broken his alibi. If we keep digging into it we’ll find out the rest, it’s enough for a warrant to search his place at the very least,’ Morris said rubbing his forehead, clearly frustrated with Adrian. ‘Daniels, why are you still here? Go pick that bastard up!’

‘Uniforms stationed outside his place just knocked on his door, sir, no answer. I think he’s given them the slip,’ Fraser said reluctantly.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ DCI Morris snapped through his teeth.

‘Let me talk to him, sir, when you find him,’ Adrian offered, knowing full well he was pushing his luck.

‘No, in fact, you can go home for the rest of the day. You too, Grey.’

‘But, sir?’ She threw her hands up in the air, ultimately knowing there was no point in arguing.

‘You have got to stay out of this one. I don’t want either of you here when we bring him in, we cannot let him get away with this one.’

‘What did I do though, sir?’ Grey asked.

‘Grey, I’m sorry. Drive around, chase up on some old leads, do anything anywhere that isn’t here. I want you both out of the way.’

Grey huffed and shot Adrian a look that would cut through glass. She walked out. He grabbed his jacket and car keys and followed. Adrian came out to see Grey leaning on his car smoking a cigarette, she offered him one, and he took it.

‘This is bullshit.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Fuck sorry, tell me about Ryan.’ She handed him her lighter.

‘He’s been in the system for ever, started out in some crappy chav gang and gradually moved himself into some kind of power position.’

‘I thought his dad was loaded?’

‘Yeah, but his parents kicked him out when he was about fourteen, kept getting pulled up for vandalism and criminal damage. The final straw was when he got done for selling rock at his posh private school, his parents ditched him, didn’t want him to ruin their daughter’s chances, his sister’s. Said they didn’t want his junkie friends hanging around her.’

‘Any abuse?’

‘No doubt. Kevin Hart’s a big bull of a man, well, he was. He had a temper, I’m sure Ryan got his unfair share of it.’

‘Sexual?’

‘He had plenty of hospital reports from when he was a kid, cracked ribs, broken arm, you know, a lot of bike accidents, never a hint of anything else as far as I know.’

‘Maybe Ryan just cracked.’

‘And did that? Takes more than a couple of broken bones to turn you into the kind of person who would do something like that.’ Adrian knew what it was to take a beating from your father – he had the scars to prove it, psychological and physical. He took a drag on the cigarette and turned away, trying to avoid eye contact with Grey. He had told her about his father’s habit, but unless you ever cared about someone with a methamphetamine addiction you couldn’t understand. There were no words to convey what it was like to come home from school at thirteen years old to find your father cutting into himself with a vegetable knife, trying to dig the imaginary beetles out from under his skin. Within a year the person you once loved and knew became something else, a demon of sorts, with a low rasping voice that said the most hurtful and obscene things. There was a difference between the high-functioning alcoholic he had grown up with and the man he watched slowly wane into nothing. The only saving grace was that his father managed to avoid arrest and so Adrian had the option of joining the police. He could feel Grey’s eyes on him so he got in the car to avoid further scrutiny. ‘You coming?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’

The Monster

Parker had always known what he would do, he couldn’t really remember if he had decided on his chosen career path or if it had decided on him, it had felt somewhat inevitable. He had been around museums his whole life. His father had been an archaeologist, his mother a photographer and so they travelled the world excavating sites and uncovering interesting artefacts. His parents had died in a car crash when he was ten and he had moved in with his grandfather. He hadn’t lied to Abbey about that childhood visit to this museum, although maybe he hadn’t quite been honest with her – that was something he did, told half-truths to spare people from the reality of his youth.

He sat in his kitchen eating his toast while Sally bounded around expectantly; she knew it was almost time for her walk. Sally had saved Parker’s life and had been his companion for almost seven years now. It seemed stupid but she had given him purpose, a reason to stay alive, to keep fighting. The only child of an only child, Parker didn’t have a loving extended family after his parents died. Without Sally he would have given up on himself. He needed that dependence, he needed that love, that feeling of being needed. Before Sally he had never known what it was to love. It had always been a mystery to Parker, the feeling of being bound to someone, putting someone else’s wellbeing before your own. Before Sally, Parker had been full of hate, hate for himself, hate for his life and hate for the world. Sally had made him feel like he was worth loving. She had shown him that the world wasn’t entirely hateful.

He grabbed her lead from the coat hook and smiled as her excitement went up a notch. It was beginning to rain a little outside; when they got home she would fill the house with that damp smell he found so distasteful.

He found himself standing outside Abbey’s building as the light drizzle turned into a downpour, shielding his head with the morning paper. Increasingly he found himself walking Sally on this route. He wondered if he should buzz her flat, the kiss had meant something, hadn’t it? He was unsure of which flat was hers. Compelled, he pressed a few buzzers but there was no response, it was very early on a Saturday morning, everyone was probably asleep. The rain got heavier with every passing moment and they needed shelter, he could hear Sally’s unimpressed whimpers urging him to get them inside. His skin was freezing beneath his clothes. He stood back and looked up; trying to guess which window might be Abbey’s. He walked to the alley by the side of the building and saw a fire escape attached to it; Sally followed him loyally up the stairs. They reached the second floor and Parker peered through the window; it was Abbey’s lounge, she was asleep on the sofa. He watched her for a moment, had it not been for the rain and Sally’s disapproving look he would have stood on the metal staircase and watched her for longer, but he felt guilty for even allowing himself this small indulgence. He knocked on the window and saw Abbey stir. She looked at her front door so he knocked again, finally she looked in his direction, at first she seemed scared until the state of him made it obvious he was no threat, not to mention poor wet Sally staring at her helplessly through the large window. She rushed over and opened it.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as she threw a large blanket over Sally before she had a chance to shake herself out all over the living room.

‘Sorry! Underestimated the weather, totally didn’t dress appropriately.’ His long woollen coat was soaked right through, she took it from him and went to get a towel.

The rain started to thump against the window even harder and Parker was relieved they were now inside. It would have taken them at least half an hour to get back home.

Abbey gave Parker a towel, cold water dripped down his back from his hair. His clothes were stuck to him and he was starting to shiver. He threw his newspaper on the coffee table; it was wet through, barely worth keeping.

‘I’ll get you a dressing gown, you can put your clothes on the radiators, if you want I can switch the heating on for a bit.’ He did want, the longer he stood inside with these sodden clothes on, the wetter he felt. Sally had already made herself at home, shaking and curling up on the ground, looking very sorry for herself indeed.

Parker started to undo his shirt, conscious that his skin was a shade paler than white, but so wet that he didn’t care, the rainwater ran down his legs, he could feel his toes puckering from the moisture his socks had absorbed. He kicked off his shoes and bent down to remove his socks. Abbey returned with the dressing gown and he stood up quickly.

‘Thank you, sorry about this, it was just drizzle when we left our place, I thought we might get away with it.’ He had planned to walk past Abbey’s place anyway, it was just dumb luck the weather had forced his hand and made him ring the doorbell and climb the fire escape.

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ Abbey’s gaze was fixed on something behind him, a haunted look across her face. He grabbed the gown and when she had gone to the kitchen he looked to see what had spooked her. He saw the large mirror behind him. He was also shocked at the sight of his back, something he actively avoided looking at; it had been a long time.

The deep, ridged pink scars seemed more pronounced than he remembered, maybe due to the fact that his skin was so white in comparison. The long burrowed lines that stretched across his back in every direction had been no accident, there was no explaining it away as something small or trivial, they showed the malicious intent that had driven them. He quickly put on the navy blue dressing gown before removing his trousers, grateful that Abbey was a sensible girl and his humiliation had not been added to by anything too feminine. He hung his clothes on the radiator and sat himself on the sofa, he tried to control his breathing, he could feel his heartbeat quicken and he was feeling guilty that he had come here at all. It was as though he had forgotten, or willed himself to forget. He’d thought for a moment that he was normal, like any other man; that’s how she made him feel. Or maybe he had wanted her to see, perhaps deep down he was somehow thinking she might understand. That invisible string between them was pulling at his subconscious, making him do something different.

She held out a mug of tea when she returned and he concentrated hard on making sure his hand was not shaking when he lifted it to take the drink from her. She perched next to him on the sofa. He hoped to pull the conversation away from anything too personal.

Parker tried not to shiver, desperately focusing on the heat from the tea in his hands and not the fact that he was almost completely naked. He knew she was burning to ask him about his scars. He could almost see the unsaid words looming in the air in a thought cloud. He had come here for some reason, he could have turned around and gone home when the rain came down. He could have walked past her place. He could have done a million things to ensure that she didn’t see what she had seen. Maybe a part of him had wanted to let her know that he understood whatever she was hiding from him; that he could see past the person she was pretending to be, and show her that there was more to him too. He wanted to make it easier for her; it was too late to pretend.

‘They don’t hurt, they just look bad. That’s all.’ He breathed out.

‘Who did that to you?’

‘It’s not important, it was another life.’

‘Can I see?’ He was taken aback by the request, he could see she was a little taken aback by it herself. He stood up and took the robe off, his back facing her, completely naked, in her living room. Strangely he was more self-conscious about Sally seeing him like this, even though the dog was clearly more interested in the bowl of leftover bolognese Abbey had put in front of her. He stood so straight, almost like he was undergoing some kind of military inspection. Could she tell he had stood like this so many times before? He had been afraid to move, afraid of the punishment for disobedience. He kept his eyes fixed on the distance as he remembered the countless occasions when he had been instructed to stand to attention in his old life, remembering each lashing he had received, in a room so completely different to this one, devoid of any goodness. He relaxed his shoulders, stopping himself from conceding to his muscle memory, fighting against the dissociation that came with the stance.

The deep grooves in his back could not fully demonstrate the extent of the pain Parker had experienced, the full extent of the humiliation he had endured. He tried not to flinch as he felt her warm fingers on his back, knowing she meant him no harm. Her small hands began tracing their way across the lines that merged, crossed and blurred into one big monster, like a brand. She traced along the ripples on the surface of his skin where his torn flesh had clung to the instrument with each application, before it was ripped away only to be employed over and over again. He turned around, still aware of his nudity but wanting to look at her, to see the twisted look of horror on her face when she realised what sort of man he was. But there was no disgust, just sadness. She was crying, crying silent tears for him.

‘Shhh, it’s OK,’ he comforted her. ‘I’m OK.’ He put his arms around her and he could feel her warm face against his cold skin, against his heart. Seeing his scars was not easy for anyone, he knew that. Of the handful of times anyone had seen them this was the first time he hadn’t felt penitent. Instead he wanted to reassure Abbey that the worst was over; this moment wasn’t about him. Abbey reached for his gown and helped him to put it back on. He fastened the tie and sat down. Abbey climbed on to the sofa next to him and pulled him close to her, stroking his hair. He had no answers for the questions he could tell she wanted to ask, not right now. It was true that his scars were no longer painful to touch but to talk about them was another matter entirely. The emotional damage ran through to his very foundation. He was nothing but damage, he was nothing but hurt.

‘You don’t have to tell me what happened,’ Abbey whispered softly as her fingertips trailed through his hair. ‘But if you ever want to, I’m here.’

Part of him wanted to get out now but Sally was snoring contented on the floor, her paws resting on Abbey’s feet. He didn’t want to leave the comfort and warmth of Abbey’s embrace, he couldn’t remember the last time he had been held like this. Probably not since his parents had been alive. The rain still pounded against the glass and Parker concentrated on the rhythm of the precipitation until his eyelids grew heavy. He allowed sleep to take him over, if only to escape the conversation he knew was surely inevitable now.