04-Mothers of the Disappeared Read online

  I looked at the envelope. A sick feeling built in my stomach.

  ‘Five years,’ the old bugger says. ‘Five years since I offered you the chance to come and work with me …’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Do you like taking photographs?

  The kind of grubby work that gave the investigative gig a bad name. The equivalent of scouting for cheating spouses or, worse, hacking phones for desperate showbiz journos.

  And yet this was the test he gave me.

  Clever, when you thought about it. Had the dual effect of testing my loyalty and alienating me from potential allies on the other side.

  What I wanted to do was throw the assignment in his face, and him out the door. But instead, I walked out calmly, with the assignment in hand and the stain on my soul.

  I was in.

  At least, I had my foot in the door. Now I just had to make sure I could squeeze my whole body through what gap there was.

  Getting the images he wanted was easy enough. All I had to do was book a room for the night at the Apex. I told the guy on the desk that a friend had stayed before, really liked this room on the top floor, and if there was any way he could give me the same one, I’d be grateful. A simple lie. Worked easy enough, too.

  The room was good. Inside, I set myself up for the evening, figured I might have to wait a night or two to get what I wanted. What Burns wanted.

  I set up the camera via the air conditioning, snaking the endoscope camera through the pipes, feeding it slowly until I came up against the grille on the other side.

  The other end was connected via USB to a laptop. I positioned the machine where I could see what was happening, then turned on the TV and settled in for the night.

  They came in at around 10 p.m.

  I noticed the movement, got up, watched the images on the laptop. The frame rate was a little jerky, but it did the job. They kept the lights on low, but it was enough. I didn’t have to adjust for night vision.

  They moved with the slightly awkward gait that came with a little too much wine for dinner. I was glad there was no sound. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say to him just before she kissed him.

  The camera recorded everything.

  At a certain point, I figured I had enough to satisfy Burns, stopped the camera taking images.

  There was a dead weight in my stomach.

  I knew what Burns really wanted. There was a very good reason he had handed me this assignment. And you don’t want to upset the client by failing to give them what they really want.

  I started the camera again.

  They were done. Finished. Lying in bed together. If either of them smoked, they’d probably have sparked up.

  Or not.

  The room was, after all, non-smoking.

  I left my room, went next door, hammered hard enough to wake the dead. Took about thirty seconds before Griggs answered. He was wearing the complimentary hotel dressing gown. His features crinkled with an unasked question.

  I punched him in the face. He fell back. I walked inside.

  Susan was out of bed, on her feet. ‘Steed!’

  I shook my head, grabbed Griggs by the shoulders and pushed him against a wall. ‘There’s a camera in the duct. Recording all of this. No sound. But it sees everything that’s going on.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘You wanted me to get on Burns’s good side, this goes a long way.’

  ‘Do it, then, you prick!’

  I punched him in the stomach. He doubled.

  Susan grabbed my shoulder, spun me round. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you … I didn’t …’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. I lifted my hands. I would only take this so far, and it would stretch credulity for me to attack Susan as well. ‘It’s fine.’

  I backed off.

  Susan looked ready to say something.

  Griggs slowly started to straighten. Coughing hard.

  I went back to my room, pulled the camera roughly back through. Killed the feed.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said, as though Burns was in the room with me.

  And sent him the file.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I spent most of the next day killing time. A package arrived with a disposable mobile enclosed. A note from Griggs attached. The note detailed drop points and contacts. The mobile was only for use in emergency situations.

  After Dot was done for the day, I hung around, checking and double-checking old emails. Flipping case files. Feeling nauseous. Thinking about what I was about to do.

  I had to be certain. Know that this was the right thing.

  Getting close to Burns as Griggs wanted would mean abandoning every principle I’d ever had. It wasn’t just about adjusting my behaviour for a few minutes or hours, it was about losing myself to a life I detested.

  I had to be sure.

  Griggs’s initial approach had been to intimidate me with Kellen’s threat of investigation and incarceration. When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to seduce me, using Susan. And again when that didn’t work, he’d appealed to my sense of morality, such as it was.

  Everyone has their own unique moral compass. There are lines that some people won’t cross, which others wouldn’t even consider an issue. We all answer to ourselves in the end. No God. No eternity of damnation. Just our own conscience.

  All I wanted was for the guilty to be punished, the innocent to be protected. Or, if it came to it, avenged. The means to that end used to be important to me. But principles can only take you so far. It’s the intention that counts.

  Right?

  Maybe Burns and I weren’t so different after all.

  When we were at her father’s house, two days earlier, I’d asked Susan why she hadn’t approached Burns, why Griggs hasn’t asked her to be the one to get close. After all, she’d have been perfect. She’d be able to finish her father’s work, and all that anger over his death would play perfectly into why she would be looking to work with a man like Burns.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ she told me. ‘Last year, I did things that … I hated myself, Steed, for what I did. I left one man to die, tried to kill another in cold blood. All because I was angry. Needed to hurt someone like I’d been hurt myself.’

  I listened to her confession. We both knew that I understood. Because I had done the things that she had stopped herself from doing. Because I had crossed the lines that she could never bring herself to step over.

  I closed down the PC, went to the window and looked out to the street. Across the way, the Benefits Office was closed, but a couple of old jakeys were hanging round near the disabled ramp sharing a bottle out of a bag and laughing at something only they would ever see the humour in.

  The skies were clouding over. Night was stealing across the city.

  Night time was when I’d always felt at my most comfortable. The daylight hours were an obligation; a concession to the majority. I’d work them if I had to, but when the sun went down, I was at my most awake. When I was young, my parents had told me I was a night owl, that I’d be best getting a job as a nightwatchman. They weren’t far wrong.

  Griggs had this strange idea that all I needed to do was break a few laws to prove that I was on the old man’s side. My confrontation with him at the hotel would show that any trust we might have had in each other was broken, and more importantly so was my relationship with Susan. But Burns wasn’t daft. No matter what I did, he’d smell a rat. He wouldn’t trust me without good reason, and if my descent seemed too fast and convenient, he’d know something was wrong.

  He would test me again. But not in the way that Griggs might expect. Burns wouldn’t ask me to take point on an armed robbery or beat up some poor schmuck who got behind on payments. He was too smart for that. He would test me in other ways, without me even knowing what he was doing. Burns liked to think of himself as a master manipulator, as a man who understood the human condition. All self-taught, of course. He was working class made good. He was what he believed other people a
spired to. Had pulled himself up to a position of power through hard work and sheer determination. And all the way, he’d tell you, he took care of his own. Because in this world, that’s what you have to do.

  He believed it, too. There was no acting with Burns when it came to his own motivations. He genuinely believed that he was working for some greater good, that all the things he did were out of necessity, that he was some flawed hero in his own bloody story.

  He wanted people like me to realize that about him. Why he kept insisting that we were somehow the same. He was looking for vindication. God knows why he chose me, but he did. That was what made me the ideal person to become Griggs’s stooge. More than Susan, maybe even more than Ernie.

  But like I said, the old man wasn’t stupid.

  He’d expect me to fight what was happening, at least for a while.

  And he’d expect me to sacrifice something for the greater good, as he saw it. One of my principles, perhaps. He’d dress it up like his way was the only truly moral choice.

  I started to close up, shutting down the computer, checking that nothing was left on that didn’t need to be.

  Figured a beer might help me make sense of things.

  When I went out into reception, I heard someone knocking at the door.

  ‘We’re closed,’ I shouted. ‘For the evening.’

  They insisted. Rattling at the door, then battering it with their fists. Like they couldn’t figure out why we weren’t open at their beck and call.

  I sighed, went to the door and opened it. ‘If you call back tomorrow, you can make an appoint—’

  I stepped back.

  Taylor rammed the door open with his shoulder, pushing against my weight. He had the element of surprise, knocked me off balance.

  I stumbled a few steps, knocked against Dot’s desk, managed to right myself.

  That was when I saw him come at me with the hammer.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I twisted back, felt the hammer rush past where my face had been a second earlier. Which was good, meant that he was off balance. I let my momentum carry me, taking the weight on my hands, balancing on the desk, and raising one leg swiftly. Caught Taylor a good one in the balls.

  He didn’t drop the hammer, but he stepped back, posture crumpling, instinct making him try to protect himself. I took the opportunity to increase the distance between us, moving behind the desk, trying to regain some semblance of control.

  This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to kill me in my own office. Five years back, I’d watched my then secretary shot in the stomach by two psychos who had threatened my life moments earlier.

  Maybe it was the building.

  Or just these offices.

  Taylor straightened up, his features crooked. This was the man as he really was: a monster. A machine of violence and hate and ugliness.

  He was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in three days earlier. He hadn’t shaved. Hadn’t slept either.

  He was ready to kill me. I still wondered why he hadn’t before.

  ‘Think you can do it?’

  He hesitated, still holding the hammer, body a bear-trap of tension. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Kill me.’

  ‘I’ve killed. You know I have.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Little boys. Kids too innocent to defend themselves. Big fucking killer that you are.’ Sure, taunt the man with the hammer.

  He was breathing hard. Barely able to keep control over his own body. Kept licking at his lips, then swallowing.

  ‘You got lucky,’ I said. ‘Before. Element of surprise. So put down the hammer, and we’ll see how this plays out in a fair fight.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mr Fucking Hero, eh? What do you know?’

  ‘I know that you’ve lived with all this for way too long. You tried to tell me the other day how it was a sickness, a compulsion.’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘I think you tried to tell me something else, too. Your mother. When I mentioned her …’

  ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’

  ‘Did she hurt you?’

  ‘You don’t fucking understand.’

  ‘And your father?’

  He swallowed hard. His breathing got heavy, catching in his chest. The long hair had started to matt against his face, caught in the sweat that poured out of him.

  ‘Did they know what kind of monster you were? Your first kill came after your mother’s death.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘You can get help, Taylor.’

  ‘Too late for that. Too many …’

  ‘How many?’

  He dropped his head for a moment. I could still see his eyes. They were moving from side to side in a strange kind of way. His lips were moving, too. And I realized: He was counting.

  I remembered the dream. All those faces staring back at me from the walls. The presence outside the room that I could sense coming closer with each tick of my watch.

  I had felt terrified, then. Adrenaline pumping.

  Fear was close to answer.

  Do we ever escape who we are?

  Taylor had never been able to escape his own sickening compulsions. No matter how hard he tried to become a respectable man, what he had done was always there. Even if he told himself that he would never act on those urges again, the possibility was still within him that one day he would. He could change his behaviour, but who he was inside would never really change.

  In that sense, we were the same.

  We both tried to deny who we were, but could never escape the truth.

  He was a monster. I was driven by rage.

  At the monsters of this world. The ones who hurt others for no reason other than they can.

  He was still counting his victims when I rushed him. He tried to swing with the hammer, but it was too late. I grabbed his wrist, swung him in a strange parody of a waltz and slammed that arm down against Dot’s desk. He caught the edge of the wooden top with the back of his wrist. His fingers spasmed, let go of the hammer.

  I followed up fast, slamming my forehead against the soft bridge of his nose. He cried out and went limp. I pulled back, let him slump to the floor. The hammer was still within his reach. I kicked it away and stood over him. My breath came heavy, my chest tight with exertion.

  ‘Not so tough when they fight back, are you?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You ever been in a real fight?’

  He looked up at me. His nose was broken. Blood soaked his upper lip and down his chin. He spat and said, ‘Cunt.’

  ‘Get up,’ I said.

  He climbed to his feet. He was unsteady.

  ‘Sit down.’

  He did so, taking Dot’s chair. Glared at me. Didn’t bother trying to wipe the blood away from his nose. Right now he probably didn’t feel it so bad. He’d be running on the post-adrenaline spike. The pain would settle in later when he had time to process what had happened. Right now he was humiliated more than anything.

  It was about to get much worse.

  ‘This what they did to you? What you wanted to do to those kids? Make them hurt like you did?’

  ‘You’ll never understand.’

  I picked up the phone.

  ‘Calling the police?’ His voice sounded stuffed up. Like he had a bad cold. Between words he snorted, clearing his airways as the blood gathered.

  I ignored him, finished dialling, listened to the tones on the other end of the line. Finally, a man answered. I didn’t recognize him. All I said was, ‘Tell him it’s McNee. Tell him I have a gift.’

  When I hung up, I looked over at Taylor.

  He didn’t look so cocky any more.

  He looked like a man who’d just realized his nightmare was real.

  The big man didn’t come himself. I hadn’t expected him to make a personal appearance, of course. He didn’t take risks. That was how he’d evaded arrest for so long.

  The two men who came to the office were burly, dressed like bouncers, lo
oking like they’d rather be in shellsuits and trainers. But Burns was a businessman through and through, preferring his associates try to dress properly. Intimidation through professionalism.

  ‘Who’re these guys?’ Taylor asked. His plummy tones had vanished. His voice had taken on a rougher accent, betraying his roots.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Neither did the two thugs. They hauled him to his feet.

  ‘I thought you were going to call the cops!’ Taylor said. ‘I thought you were calling the fucking cops!’

  My mobile buzzed from the desk.

  A text message.

  Number withheld.

  An address.

  Nothing more.

  I watched as the thugs frogmarched Taylor out the front door. He was protesting the whole way, wriggling like a fish caught on a hook. His protests were shaky, terrified. He had expected the comforting arms of the cops. Instead, he was being taken somewhere by two men who looked like they could crush his head with one hand.

  He was frightened.

  Good.

  I waited until he was out of earshot, down the stairs. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited into the bowl.

  When I was done, I sat down on the floor and slowed my breathing. My muscles ached.

  There was no turning back, now.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Murder House.

  That’s what we used to call it.

  On the outskirts of the city, a crumbling Victorian presence, with overgrown gardens and decaying facade. I’ve never seen it for sale, never been sure who owned it. It was one of those buildings that didn’t really change, that people knew existed but never paid attention to.

  Perhaps because of its history.

  Some buildings become their history. They become entwined with a particular narrative and the more years pass, the more that narrative takes hold of the building, becomes part of its very structure.

  That was the Murder House.

  I dare you to knock on the door.

  I dare you to look in the window.

  I dare you to go inside.

  We were kids. The idea of a house haunted by a gruesome murder was irresistible. But none of us knew the real truth. All we had were half-heard and half-remembered whispers.