Where the Birds Hide at Night (11 page)

Peter slid sideways along the wall and reached the back door, trying the handle. It was unlocked. Easing it open ever so slightly, he stuck his nose into the gap and sniffed the released air from within the house. Something didn't smell altogether pleasant, though he wasn't a master of smells. In fact, now he took the time to question why he'd even smelt the air in the first place. It was an animal instinct, not something he should be doing. Then again, he
was
an animal. At present, at least. Reluctantly he reached for that section in his mind where he had tried to force his connection to The Space, trying as he'd done when working out the key code to Lauren's flat to harness some residual energy to aid him in his quest. Silence. He looked back at Noose, who was nodding encouragingly. Peter opened the door further and slipped inside. Noose followed, standing up straight and shutting the door behind them. They were in the kitchen, the strange smell now hitting Noose's nostrils. It gave him a short, sharp shock as it transported him back to when that young woman posing as Sergeant Helen Douglas had pulled her finger out of his bum. The sweat of the embrace, the poo from his bum…
That
was the smell in this house.

Peter looked around cautiously, though much brisker than Noose. To the elder man, this companion who'd miraculously returned to life looked that much more assured. Seemingly gone was the naive speed of his younger self, to be replaced by this world-worn carelessness that gave him the impetus to just step into a murderer's house. Noose lost sight of him for a second as he stepped into the next room.

‘Oh my,' came a call from the other room. Noose quickly followed, that smell intensifying. As he stepped into the living room, there was Barbara naked and strung up by her hands. A ball gag in her mouth and a thin wire around her neck, she shook her head violently as she caught sight of the two men. ‘She's trying to warn us.'

‘Warn us about what?'

They heard a clicking noise and looked down between Barbara's legs just in time to see a long sharp blade fire up from a small furry pink box and straight into her vagina.

‘Oh fuck,' Noose yelled as blood poured from between Barbara's legs and she moaned in agony. ‘We've got to get her down from there,' Noose cried out as he stepped closer. Suddenly Barbara's eyes widened as her head seemed to be pulled up straight. They noticed that the thin wire around her neck ran into a small box attached to the ceiling, which now began to pull the wire in. Tighter and tighter it got as Barbara's eyes bulged more and more. And then, along with the sound of a little cog running, the wire shot back into the box with a ferocious force and cut the woman's head clean off like it was just a piece of cheese. It dropped to the floor with a thud as her body still hung there, now quite lifeless. The two men were stunned into silence. Neither could they look at her body, nor each other. Peter stepped out of the room, his hand over his mouth, as Noose remained fixed to the spot.

The silence was soon disrupted by a thrashing at the door as it burst open and what seemed like a dozen armed police officers poured in. Peter ascended the stairs as they wrestled Noose to the floor, gasps and cries echoing the whole house as some of the officers caught sight of the horrid scene. Peter remained unmolested as he quietly lost himself in one of the bedrooms – clearly they had come for Noose, and only Noose. What a remarkable set-up, Peter thought. To those cops, Noose had been well and truly caught in the act.

* * *

Noose, his hands cuffed behind his back, was led through the Myrtleville police station reception by two bulky cops. They needed to be bulky to hold him back when, coming in the opposite direction, was his ex-wife and son. Initially Noose didn't recognise her – her hair was white and balding, her head bent permanently to the side as the ravages of her illness had taken their toll. She sat slumped in her wheelchair, son Gary pushing her as Jacobs and Douglas walked either side. Noose was seized as he tried to get to his family, recognising his son. Gary looked back, a spiteful grin quickly forming on his face.

‘You sick pervert,' Gary shouted out as Williams stormed through the double doors after them, panicking.

‘What the hell's going on here? They're supposed to be in protective custody, not meeting him in reception,' she yelled at Jacobs and Douglas. The pair frowned, Jacobs pushing Gary out of the way and taking control of Sam's wheelchair as Douglas tried to put her arm around Gary. He, now a handsome young man, was as tall as his father and the spitting image of him back in the day.

‘Son,' Noose cried, struggling in the tight grip of his guards and unable to look upon his ex-wife.

‘I'm not your son, murderer pedophile scumbag,' Gary replied with increasing venom. Noose could no longer plead his innocence – he'd had enough. He stopped struggling and went limp, slipping from the grip of the officers and falling to his knees. ‘Look what you've done to my mum, you vile worthless creature,' Gary carried on, lashing out at his dad with his foot. Williams leapt to block the kick, getting caught across her knees. She too fell as Jacobs made a grab for Gary and wrestled him away.

‘What has happened to you?' Noose mumbled towards Sam, still unable to look at her. ‘How did I cause this?' She remained silent, her jaw fixed shut by the disease afflicting her.

‘You abandoned her, she didn't want to live anymore,' Gary yelled as Jacobs led him off. Douglas quickly pushed Sam away as Williams turned around on her knees to face Noose.

‘It's not your fault, Henry,' she whispered, pausing for a moment as their eyes met. Noose sniffed away his fit of tears as she almost placed a hand on his. The officers pulled him to his feet and she too got up. ‘She's suffering from a rare degenerative disease. You didn't cause that.'

‘My son thinks I did,' were the last words Noose spoke as he was taken away. From that moment on he decided it best he never spoke again.

* * *

Never one to normally blow his own trumpet, Alex nonetheless felt incredibly full of himself as he strode up to the Edwards' house and knocked on the door. Inside, Ruby and Arthur had spent the last few days following the news about Alex's miraculous walk-out of prison. Now, with that knock at the door, their tenuous bubble had just been burst. The blinds twitched as Alex knocked again.

‘There's a crowd outside,' Ruby whispered to Arthur from the window. He, sitting on the sofa, kept his eyes fixed on the TV.

‘I just don't know what overcame me,' the guard from the prison explained in an interview on the news. ‘I just cannot reason why we all stood aside and let him get out.'

‘Could it be he exerted some form of mind-control over you?' asked Newsman Richard Hart.

‘It almost felt like I believed in him somehow, that he was doing it for me.'

Richard turned to the camera and, with the unerring devotion he'd paid to his craft for the last fifteen years, delivered in a monotonous fawn: ‘Something truly remarkable is unfolding in our country. Not so very long ago we had the televised suicide of Neville Jeffries, purporting to be following the word of Peter Smith and The Great Collective. Now, Alex – the man convicted of murdering our Prime Minister – claims to be a part of this Great Collective. What is it, and how might we all reap the benefits?'

‘I'll just reap what I've sown, thank you very much,' was Arthur's response, ‘down on the allotment.'

Again the knock came at the door. Louder this time. ‘I know you're in there,' Alex called out.

‘Katie's not here,' Ruby yelled back. ‘Go away.'

‘I'm not here to see Katie.'

‘Well we don't flippin' well wanna see you,' Arthur grunted.

‘Locks cannot stop me. Open up, and an expensive repair bill can be avoided.'

At this half-hearted attempt at menace, Arthur smelt the spending of money and so leapt to his feet and rushed to the door. He unlocked it and opened it slowly. Alex walked straight in, pushing Arthur aside, and locked the door behind him.

‘What do you want?' Ruby fumed, pointing her finger at the young man.

‘Firstly, I want to apologise,' he said sincerely, lowering his head and looking up at the gobsmacked couple. ‘I'm completely innocent, I never killed the Prime Minister.'

‘To be honest, we never believed you did,' Arthur admitted, going to sit down again. ‘You always were a weak sort of lad,' he carried on, putting his feet up on the sofa. Alex merely smiled at this.

‘It's all a conspiracy, and I was the random fall guy they chose to stitch-up. People are beginning to believe that now.' He moved to the window and briefly looked out at the gathering followers. ‘People are beginning to see that now. People are beginning to see that I speak the truth, that I can show them the way.'

‘And what way is that?' Ruby wondered with frustration in her voice, ‘this hocus pocus malarkey they're all spouting? The Great Collective and all that shit?'

‘It is not shit, Ruby,' he replied. Ruby was a little surprised at this – after all, Alex had always addressed her as Mrs Edwards despite her encouragement to drop the formalities.

‘Well, you've apologised. You can go now,' Ruby finished, taking hold of him and trying to march him to the door. He pulled himself from her grip and outstretched his hand, taking control of her body and making her step back. For a second she lost her breath, terrified at her loss of power. Arthur hadn't seemed to notice.

‘I have one more thing to ask of you,' Alex continued. ‘You people, my in-laws, once harboured Peter Smith in this very house.'

‘Yes,' Ruby sighed. Arthur looked up and cleared his throat. ‘He spread his poison through my family, just like you're trying to do now.' She felt herself released from Alex's ensconcing flow but remained fixed to the spot.

‘I am not here to spread poison – I am here to warn you of his return.'

‘Oh God no,' Arthur lamented, ‘I thought we'd seen the last of him.'

‘You were wrong. He is back, and wants to destroy me.'

‘Destroy you? Why?'

‘I took his place in your family.' Alex turned away from them, smiling. ‘I became what he never could – your surrogate son. He is raging with anger, sick with perversion. Surely you read that book he wrote, the one Neville died for?'

‘No,' Ruby uttered, stepping closer to Alex. ‘But, they're saying you are like Neville, a follower of that book, part of The Great Collective.'

‘That book is inconsequential – the ravings of a sick mind. I follow my own path, and want to spread only the truth.'

‘Which is?' asked a confused Ruby, stepping yet closer to her son-in-law.

‘That there has been too much hurt in the world,' he said quietly, turning to face his mother-in-law. ‘I was framed and put inside by the hatred of Peter Smith and his suicidal followers. His book is poison, Ruby, poison.'

‘You used to call me Mrs Edwards all the time.'

Alex moved in, arms outstretched, and hugged her. She embraced him. ‘I never had a family of my own. I'd call you Mother, if I could,' he went on. Arthur stood up and rushed to the pair, joining in with the hugging. ‘Father,' Alex whispered in his ear.

‘Katie has been so distant from us for so long,' Ruby wept, her tears soaking into Alex's t-shirt. ‘All we ever wanted was a loving child.'

‘I love you, Mum,' Alex told her.

From then on, she was completely his.

* * *

Being alive does have its merits. Somebody who's been dead as many times as I have is able to say that with some conviction. In fact, everything I say is said with conviction. I've said a lot of things in my lives – some of it memorable and worthy of merit, some of it not so – and yet eventually not one single word will be remembered. Even in this current flux of apparent immortality, I will fade eventually and be gone for good with nothing to show for it. Already, there's nothing to show for it. I lost Noose to the cops again at the first hurdle, and Lucy remains dead. Yes, I keep coming back don't I! That tiresome recycling of this irksome body and life. Still, as I said, life does have its merits. One of those seemingly very few merits is the ability to experience happiness, even if it is fleeting. I can honestly say I
have
experienced brief passages of happiness. Very brief, but certain. The beauty of a woman, the scent of a flower; there is some pleasure in life. That chance, hope, of continued happiness is the ultimate goal. Now that I am returned to this previously perplexingly perverse period in my existence, I want to make a go of it. I am ready, complete – desiring the base and most important of human experience: pleasure. To clear Noose, find Lucy's murderer and stop Reaping Icon would solve all that which currently holds me back. Then, I could move on with Lauren and live out a somewhat average life. Average may seem an awkward, arrogant affront to what I could have – endless life after life and ultimate power at the helm of The Space – but once you have tasted that, you don't want to again. Trust me, the human mind is just too underdeveloped and backwards to be able to cope with such might. I want for normality, and I would hope to get it.

* * *

‘You shouldn't have come here,' were the words Norman Trout managed to force through his bloodied lips. His face, coarse with age and general lack of attendance, hid just in the shadow cast by his desk lamp. Hunched next to him, I wiped the blood and snot from my own nose. We'd had quite a game of fisticuffs. ‘It's got nothing to do with me.'

‘Well somebody did it.'

‘Yeah, Noose fucking did it,' Trout sighed, as though saddened by the apparent revelation of Noose's criminality. He crossed his head, moving it into the light. He looked desperate somehow – desperate for something I knew not. I too was desperate, and he was my reflection. I looked deep into his very being, looking for the truth. All that lay there was grey smoothness. His bent fingers grabbed at a notebook on his desk. ‘I'm writing a book,' he said, smiling. ‘You wrote a book, didn't you?'

‘Apparently,' I responded, unsure. I certainly knew Peter Smith had written a book, but was that this Peter Smith – the man I was right now?

‘I read it, I'm in it.'

‘What are you after, a cut of the royalties?'

His tired eyes slid up and down as they took in my face and body with mild, quelled, annoyance. ‘You come into my house, my home, pick a fight with me and accuse me of stitching that twat Noose up.' He took a deep breath, opening the notebook in his hands. ‘My book is also about my life, tweaked in places like your book.'

‘Tweaked in your favour.' I felt sure the book I'd been credited with wasn't in my favour. Trout just smiled.

‘Hello,' he began, reading the first page of his book. ‘My name is Norman Trout. I am dead.' He looked up from the book, squaring his eyes at mine. ‘Metaphorically speaking.' I edged forward to try and read his book for myself. He closed it and placed it back on the desk, his hand resting on top of it. ‘Because, the dead cannot actually communicate. Can they? And, your own brother as your prosecutor? Why do you feel he's prosecuting you?'

I stood up and stepped back. ‘Okay, you didn't set Noose up. Someone did, I must continue my search.'

‘You and that bastard destroyed me,' he yelled, grabbing hold of his book and throwing it on the floor.

‘You destroyed yourself, Trout,' I calmly replied as I walked away. ‘You broke the law.'

‘Oh whoop-de-doo,' he screeched, getting to his feet and waving his arms in the air as I stopped in the doorway and turned back, wondering if I owed him anything. ‘Call the fucking cops, why don't we? Naughty boy Norman!' He slapped his own wrist and eyed me with apparent scorn. But, there was something a little too theatrical about it. I just couldn't accept any emotional depth from this man. ‘I'm just a minor, throwaway character to you, aren't I?' he carried on, ‘Not even a supporting role – just a stock providing a means to an end.' He laughed. ‘What's this now, eh? Is this my two page cameo in your new book? Resurrect old Norman Trout for a laugh? Well let me tell you, dick head; you're the biggest waste of a reader's time there ever was.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Is that so?!' he mocked, affecting a girlish voice. ‘It's all in your head – you were never dead.'

I turned away and left him.

* * *

If this was the space to resurrect one-time characters from my life, then the next cameo was to be Simon Berre. The man who had, several years prior, chained me up in his office and had me beaten to within an inch of my life for meddling in his affairs had fallen on similarly hard times to Trout. He was another waste product of the justice meted out by Noose and myself – the list was potentially endless – and another possible culprit for stitching Noose up. He was not a hard man to find, having managed to somehow rebuild his construction company after we'd destroyed it. However, unlike back in the day when his rich wife had poured her dead daddy's funds into it at Simon's whim, it was now nothing more than an estate car and half a backyard. Having had a good look around said backyard, I found myself face to face with an emaciated, grey-bearded man. Stinking of booze and fags, he coughed and asked what I wanted.

‘I am Peter Smith,' I told him, stepping into the light. He studied my face, puzzled.

‘Am I supposed to know you?'

For a moment I actually questioned myself, wondering if it was the same man. No, this most certainly was Simon Berre. ‘Don't you remember me?' He looked again, then turned away with a cough. ‘Your daughter Michelle, the murders, all those years ago – I helped Inspector Noose solve the case.'

He turned back, slow and unsteady. ‘Noose?' he again questioned, seemingly full of confusion. ‘Michelle is dead,' he said coldly. ‘She fell out of a hotel window.' He rubbed his beard. ‘What do you want? After a news story?'

‘I came here because Noose has been framed for murders he did not commit.'

‘Like Michelle tried to frame me?'

He seemed so distant, so lost and equally carefree. His family were gone, his business was all but gone – his brain was gone. ‘Do you know anything about it?' I asked him half-heartedly, realising he probably knew little about anything. He was just another scar Noose and I had left behind.

* * *

As I stepped out of Berre's yard and onto the pavement, a figure ahead dashed behind a wall. I played dumb, walking forwards, pretending I hadn't seen them. Suddenly, as I passed, I spun around and dashed behind the wall myself. There, awaiting me, was a rather tubby timid-looking man who must have been in his late twenties. He was crouching on the ground with his back to me with his balding head provoking me to slap it as I zoned in on its lack of complexity. But, I resisted, instead hauling him to his feet and spinning him around to face me.

‘Oh God,' he whined, his eyes scrunched shut. ‘You're gonna beat me up now, aren't you?'

‘That depends,' I replied, a flash a pleasure at his squirming replaced by shame. I let him go and he opened one eye to peek at me. ‘Who are you, and why are you following me?'

‘I am Justin Bates BSc.,' was his jovial response as he outstretched a hand towards mine, all his fear seemingly vanished. I shook it. ‘I'm on the case of who framed Inspector Noose.'

‘I see. Why?'

‘Because he's innocent.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Because he wouldn't have done those horrible things.' He clasped hold of the tight collar of his pink shirt and pulled at it. ‘He's a good man.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘If nothing else, percentages – there have been a number of crooked cops in Myrtleville, that makes Noose more likely to be good than bad. Probability. Science dictates it.' He straightened his back. ‘I have a degree… in science.'

‘He could be bad by proxy,' I pointed out. Sickness can so easily spread, after all.

‘Well, I have scientific evidence to prove that Noose definitely didn't do it.'

‘Well why haven't you been to the police with it, and why are you following me?'

‘The police never believe me, but you might.'

‘Go on,' I said with some skepticism. Indeed, this man himself could have been the killer.

He fumbled in his trouser pocket and brought out a smartphone, holding it close to his face as he squinted at the screen with his fingers thrashing at it. ‘I too suspected Barbara Davies as the perpetrator of the crimes, and was tracking her moves.'

‘So you saw who strapped her up and killed her?' I queried with growing interest.

‘Not exactly. I saw somebody exiting the house from the front a few minutes before you and Inspector Noose entered from the back.'

‘Who?'

‘Well I was hiding some distance away, behind a neighbour's hedge. I didn't get a close look.'

‘Was it a man, a woman? Was it
you
?'

‘Me? Don't be ridiculous. It was a man, but he was wearing a hood.'

‘It's a start, I suppose,' I sighed.

‘Well if you let me finish I will tell you my actual piece of evidence,' he shot back, waving the phone in my face and grinning proudly.

‘Which is?'

‘A connectivity signal for the person's phone – the one they used to wirelessly trigger the device which killed Barbara.'

‘What? How?'

‘Well, in layman's terms,' he smirked, ‘clearly he had the same top of the range brand phone as me, which can all link together with their own local area network. I saw him get the phone out as he walked off into the distance, and when I went on my phone's local device connection option, it was asking if I wanted to pair up with his device.' He turned the phone's screen to show me. On it read “crocbrenspear”. ‘We all have our own unique username.' For a moment I was puzzled, pondering over any clues this could actually give us. The Space was silent – I was treading on Noose's own toes with this one – there was no guide for me. Was I instead destined, and not Noose himself, to be the person to bring to justice the one who framed him? ‘You're not thinking of taking the glory away from me, are you?' asked Justin. He snatched me from my near daydream as I re-focused my vision on him and caught a displeased look on his face. ‘I can see the cogs working,' he carried on, ‘like me you've worked out exactly who it is, and now you're going to toss me aside to go it alone from here.'

‘You've worked out who it is?'

‘Yes, it's quite easy. You mean to say you haven't?' he gloated arrogantly. He had the sort of smooth chubby face you could repeatedly punch if you didn't know any better. Sadly, I knew better. ‘Inspector Noose brought his family up in Myrtleville, right?'

‘Yes, what of it?'

‘In Wales – crocbren is Welsh for gallows… noose.'

‘Yes. And spear?' The answer came to me as I asked – an answer so horrible I just wanted to block it from reality. In some ways it was almost better that Noose
had
committed the murders all along. Gary meant spear.

* * *

I was not in want of the glory of capture. Nor was Justin. He presented the evidence to Nicola Williams, happy not to mention my name – as I'd requested – and she sent the armed squad around to arrest Noose's son. They say the surprise arrest gave his mother the fatal heart attack that sent her on her way, but in all honesty her heart must have split in two when the truth suddenly dawned on her. Besides, she had so suffered with her increasingly crippling condition. Gary Noose tried desperately to get to his mother as she slumped out of her wheelchair and came crashing to the floor in a limp mess, but the cops wouldn't allow it. He was a dangerous killer after all.

* * *

He was brought through the police station reception, where Justin tells me he came face to face with his father – the man he'd framed. Noose still just wanted to embrace his son, unable to accept the truth. Gary uttered not a single word, and nor has his father. I know that Noose now feels responsible for the murders, just as if he'd committed them himself. That his past actions towards his family could have driven his own son to do such heinous things would be something he could never recover from. As I attempt to start my own new life, I feel that Noose's is over. He may live for many more years, but the heavy shadow of these events will weigh heavy for the rest of them.

* * *