CUSTARD PIE By Vallon Jackson

Part six in the ongoing endeavours of our feckless and anonymous Wile E. Coyote killer's attempts at ending the days of his nemesis (to read the previous slices type PIE in the search bar)...

CUSTARD PIE



The times I’ve wanted to smash the sanctimonious prick over the head with the heaviest thing to come to hand...

But, the problem is, I know that Robert will swat me like a fly, so I always bite my lip, let it go, then continue plotting to do away with the wife-dabbling son of a bitch in a more elaborate scheme than indenting his skull with my laptop. All my previous attempts had failed, but how long could it go on?

Derailing a train, smashing a delivery truck through a building, cutting the ropes on a sandbag, pushing him off a cliff, tampering with his parachute during a charity jump...all had failed miserably to kill him. Mind you, I hadn’t enough fingers or toes to count on to tally up the others that had died. Good job I worked at an accountancy firm, where the spreadsheets allowed me to keep up.

I’d made my own Pie Chart to record my failures. Jeez, it was a big pie, with not a sliver missing where I’d had any success. I’d need an awful lot of custard to serve that beast up with, but I supposed I’d enough of the yellow stuff trickling through my veins to do the trick.

I had to stop being so cowardly. I had to man-up to Robert The Red, tell him what I knew – that he’d been dipping his dongle into my wife’s input slot – and that I was going to kill him for it. Of course, doing that would also mean manning up to everything that I’d done in the meantime. I wouldn’t get another chance at him if I was locked up in prison for mass murder.

There’s always a get-out isn’t there? That’s what I told myself. I couldn’t have at him the way I wanted to, because then I’d have to own up to killing my wife, as well as all the others. So...I wasn’t a coward; just being a pragmatist.

I once told Robert that.

Hey, Robert, I’d said, are you a pragmatist like I am?

Dunno about that, he’d replied. Me...I’m more the grabmoretits type.

He had that right, the arsehole.

Lately he’d been pawing the breasts of the latest temp, a skinny little thing with silicone–augmented assets and she seemed taken with the fiery-haired Lothario. She was sensible enough to recognise him for the creep he was, but also dumb enough to think it would get her a permanent position. The only permanent things that Becky would get from a dalliance with Robert were a tick on his conquest list and a dose of Chlamydia.

I thought about warning her, but knew that she’d mention it to Robert. If he thought I’d spoiled his fun he’d likely kick my butt from one end of the office to the other. So I let it go. Decided instead to try something different. I’d tried all the inventively-violent ways of killing him I could come up with, now for something a little more...not cowardly... sneaky. My Pie Chart had got me thinking. That afternoon I Googled certain sites, making sure that all trace of my surfing was hidden just in case anyone pried later. It’s surprising what you can purchase over the internet. Seems the buyers market extends somewhat to those who wish someone dead.

My stuff came in an anonymous package to an anonymous PO Box I’d set up. Mr Anonymous, that’s me.

The next day I put my scheme in place.

Robert was bent over Becky, supposedly checking her work for the purposes of a job appraisal, but I could see his gaze was down her top, and there was a lot of injudicious guiding of her hand on the mouse going on. The old elbow-titting trick Robert had perfected over the years. Sick perverted git that he was.

The delivery bloke walked right into the office.

Package for someone called Robert, he called out.

The red-headed stud perked up. That’ll be me, he announced, Robert with the huge package. He smirked at the looks we all gave him, then eyed the package like maybe the guy was delivering a decree nici and Robert had been named as co-respondent.

You’ve a secret admirer, mate, said the delivery bloke, handing over the beautifully-packaged custard tart I’d slaved over.

You got that right, matey, Robert said with a wink towards Becky. Becky flushed red, but didn’t deny it. I hid my shark’s smile behind my palm as I ducked down to my own work. One thing I did know: almost as much as he liked filling wives’ holes, he also had a penchant for stuffing his own pie hole. He bragged to the girls that his huge muscles required the sustenance, as did his stamina. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Greedy git would eat the lot and not offer a slice around.

I left the office on my lunch hour, grinning like a maniac, knowing full well that Robert wouldn’t be there when I returned.

True enough, when I got back there were a few white faces, and a hush over the office. It was a bit like the reaction that seeped through our work-place when poor Jim Bunk jumped from the plane with his chute strings undone. They were a sensitive lot at our firm.

What’s happened? I asked.

Ben Butler – who Robert called Ben Butt-wipe to his face – leaned over from his desk to whisper conspiratorially. Looks like there’s been a little problem for our pal, Robert, he said.

Oh? I hope he’s OK, I said, feigning concern.

You know that pie that was delivered...?

Yes. YES. YES.

Ben said: Well, Robert has this nut allergy, you see.

Shit...I hadn’t known that.

What about it? I demanded.

Well, Ben whispered, Robert said it smelled like almonds and wouldn’t touch it. He gave it to Becky, said she needed to get her strength back after they spent an hour in the stationery cupboard.

He gave it to her...

Yeah, apparently she was gagging for it, Ben leered.

Not that! The pie?

Yeah. Ben shook his head sadly. But Becky must’ve had a nut allergy as well. Or she was severely Bulimic or something. We could hear her puking all the way out here! By the time Rob got an ambulance here it was too late for her. Poor girl was dead.

How is Robert? I kept the expectation out of my voice. But I already knew: my wonderful pie scheme had failed to kill him ‘cause it friggin’ smelled like almonds. That’s the downside of arsenic, the internet had warned.

He’s fine, Ben said. He didn’t touch a crumb, remember. In fact, he followed Becky to hospital ‘cause he got his eye on a pretty paramedic. Knowing him, he’ll come back with another story for the boys, eh?

Yeah, and we’d have to listen to it. Over and over and over...till I went even more nuts.

BIO:
 
Vallon Jackson is the alter-ego of a published thriller author who sometimes also goes nuts and comes up with another entry in his PIE saga.

WANDERING FINGERS By Vallon Jackson

Wandering Fingers

“Take your hand off my ass before you lose your fingers.”

“There’s no need to be like that, I’m only stroking it.”

“I’m warning you...”

“Aaw, stop being a spoil sport, will you?”

“You guys just never learn, do you?”

“OOOWWWW!”

“Problem?”

“Yes, your fuckin’ donkey just bit my hand!”

BIO:

Vallon Jackson is the pseudonym of a published thriller author – probably the worst kept secret on the blogosphere. Occasionally his mind wanders from his latest book...sometimes in odd directions.

MISCONCEPTIONS by Vallon Jackson

MISCONCEPTIONS

I sat in the room, doing the old Sam Spade bit waiting for the femme fatale to knock, and thinking to myself, ‘There has to be a better way than this?’ I couldn’t think of anything. A man past forty, whose waist size exceeds his age, needs something kind of sedate to get by on. Couldn't think of a better way to make money. Or amends.

The room wasn’t a PI’s office. In fact it wasn’t even much of a room. It was a box at the end of a damp corridor above a pole-dancing club with rusty poles. It was more like a storage closet, plaster board tacked onto a wooden frame, no paper, no photos or diplomas in frames, just boxes of stacked junk lining the walls and an old Formica-topped table and two plastic chairs. I’d sat in chairs just like them at school back in the eighties. They were uncomfortable then; now that my arse had grown much bigger they were torture. I was itching like crazy and all I wanted to do was get up and pull the material of my shorts out of my crack. But I held the nonchalant pose of a noir anti-hero; people kind of expected it when they arrived.

The femme fatale arrived. She didn’t knock because there was no door. She just leaned in and scowled at me like I was something filthy. She wasn’t far wrong, I suppose. I looked back, and maybe the sour look on my face told her everything. Femme fatale she wasn’t; she’d a face like a hog and the body to match.

‘You can’t be Ward?’

Well I sure as hell wasn’t Sam Spade, but I didn’t quite get her meaning.

‘Why not?’
She came into the room uninvited and sat on the other chair. It squealed and little wonder. She pressed her hands into the thick rolls of flesh on her upper-thighs, giving me a head-to-heels inspection. By the look of things she wasn’t impressed. The feeling was mutual.
‘I heard you were meant to be something.’
I looked down at my gut hanging over my belt. I was more of a man than I used to be that was for certain. But meant to be something? Fair enough I was no oil painting, but who was she to complain?
‘Depends what you want,’ I said and she snorted.
‘Well it’s a good job I ain’t looking for a wild time.’
That pissed me off, but I didn’t say. She wasn’t exactly my type either, but she was carrying the money I wanted, and like I already said, I was there to make a living. Every job has pro’s and con’s. Seeing as I could think of nothing that suited me better, I just took the bullshit as a necessary evil.
‘You said on the phone that you’d do whatever I asked...’ She was obviously happy now that I was what she’d come looking for. She wasn’t the least nervous. Maybe it was my lack of response to her sarcasm that reassured her; an undercover cop would have argued his case more, to get her to incriminate herself before pulling out his cuffs.
‘Only one thing I don’t touch.’
‘Yes, you said. Kids.’
I nodded. ‘Kids.’
‘So you do have some standards.’ She was eyeing my rumpled suit, her mouth twisted into a sneer, and I guessed she was confusing standards with morals. That was OK; a body like mine didn’t carry a nice suit well, so I just made do with an old one. I didn’t dress nice, and I didn’t kill children – some legend I’m graced with.
Not that I was squeamish about doing a child, but they carried too much fuss along with them. You could kill a man, a woman, and it barely hit the papers these days. But do a kid and there was a national outrage. Doesn’t do much for your career chances if the entire country is looking for you, and I had a living to make.
‘I don’t want you to harm a kid; not unless you have a limit on mental age?’
I held up the flat of my hand, surprising even myself. ‘I don’t do handicapped people either.’ I pinched my lips round the un-PC term, but I wasn’t sure what the acceptable moniker for someone soft in the head was these days. Should have said I’d never killed anyone with mental health issues before, not any in the clinical sense. Plenty of whack jobs and nut-cases mind you, but that’s not the same.
The femme grunted and it suited her.
‘I was making a joke. My husband still thinks he’s a teenager the way he’s running around.’
I got her this time, but didn’t say. So she’d cottoned on that her husband was having a good time, looking elsewhere? Can’t say I blamed him too much. Still, she was the cash cow so I tried to look sympathetic without putting the emphasis on ‘cow’.
‘You still sure you want me to kill him?’
‘That’s what I’m paying you for. I don’t want a frigging half-baked job. Put a bullet in his brains to make sure.’
‘I was just checking. See, maybe after you think about it, you’ll have a change of mind.’
She shook her head and I caught a whiff of cheap fragrance and sweat. ‘That bastard is screwing everything in a skirt that he can find. And I’ve got the proof. Bastard gave me a STD and then tried to say he got it off me!’
I could understand her outrage, I mean, what were the chances of that?
She gave me the beady eye, still didn’t care for what she found. ‘When you’ve done it, how’d I know you can keep your mouth shut afterwards?’
‘I was just going to ask the same thing.’ We stared at each other, my hard eyes on her limpid ones. When she didn’t offer anything, I said, ‘I’m not in the habit of confessing my sins. I’m taking it that once he’s out of the way you want to start a new life. You aren’t gonna speak if it means your new life is in a cell not much bigger than this shit-hole.’
She looked around the cramped room. Then she shrugged; a roll of fat bulging out of her collar. ‘I could live with that,’ she laughed, ‘if it means getting him out of the way. Really, though, I can’t live with him any longer.’ She placed a pudgy hand over her heart. Her eyes rolled back and I was looking at the vein-marbled whites. ‘I solemnly promise I won’t say a word to anyone,’ she said in a sing-song voice. ‘So? We have a deal?’
‘When I see the cash,’ I told her.
She dug an envelope out of her coat pocket and slapped it down on the Formica. I tried to weigh the contents with my eyes. Couldn’t, so reached over and lifted the flap. Plenty of purples, not enough gold notes. ‘Looks a little light to me.’
‘Half now, half on completion.’
‘That isn’t the way I work.’
‘How can I be sure that you’ll even do the job? For all I know you could just pick up the cash, walk away, and that’s the last I’d ever hear of you.’
‘Sometimes you have to take things on faith,’ I told her.
‘You don’t look like a professional hitman to me.’
‘What were you expecting? Matt Damon?’
‘I should be so lucky,’ she snorted. She started picking at a scab on her chin and I thought no one with a face like that has that kind of luck!
‘You’ve heard my credentials,’ I said.
‘Only what you told me on the phone.’
‘I don’t do kids, I don’t do handicapped folk and I don’t do lies.’ My legend was growing.
‘You don’t do much exercise either,’ she said with a wicked smile, the old kettle and pot argument raging on.
‘These days I hardly run for a bus,’ I acquiesced. ‘But I don’t have to. A bullet’s quicker than any man.’
‘How many have you killed?’
‘You’re sure you want to hear?’
‘I want to know I’m going to get value for money.’
‘Thirty-three,’ I said.
She adjusted her weight on the chair, covering a sniff of disdain with the creaking of the plastic.
‘You still doubt me?’
‘Can’t blame a girl for being nervous with her hard-earned cash, can you?’
‘OK. You want proof?’
She patted her opposite coat pocket. I didn’t look; I was still watching the flake of scab hanging off her chin. ‘I have the rest of the money right here. Show me something that will convince me that you’re really up to the task and you’ve got a deal.’
‘That’s fair,’ I decided.
I lifted my silenced Sig-Sauer from under the table and pointed it at her tremulous gut. I pulled the trigger.
The thud of the bullet pounding her flesh was louder than the gun’s retort.
The femme took a moment to realise she was dying. She looked down at the hole I’d just put in her coat, then up at me.
‘Will that do it?’ I asked.
Her mouth hung open, a string of saliva tethering her tongue to her dentures. She blinked slowly and there was disbelief in her eyes. Maybe it was because I’d shot her, or maybe she still doubted me. That damn flake of scab still waved at me and I used it as a target. Scab and chin disintegrated together.
‘So I guess we’ve got a deal?’ I asked her. Her head was nodding, her floppy neck riding the ripples still shuddering through her body. The nod was enough to seal it for me.
I jostled myself out of the chair, thankfully unhitched material from the crack of my cheeks and went over to her. Her arms had fallen to her sides, but her girth pushed them away from her. She reminded me of that spoiled bitch that blew up with juice in Willy Wonka’s factory. I dipped a hand in her pocket and pulled out another envelope.
I flicked through the notes. They were all there.
I pushed both envelopes into my pockets and walked along the cramped corridor to the far end, ignoring the pain in my knees. The corridor was long and I was puffing by the time I reached the far end. Maybe the femme was right and I should be in better shape for this game. I dabbed perspiration from my forehead before pushing open a door: I had to look the part. There was another room, not much bigger than the first.
The femme’s husband was a little squirt with glasses and a comb-over. His jumper was a market stall special, all diamond patterned down the chest, the two for the price of one type you buy on special offer. Black nylon trousers, white socks for frig sake! Couldn’t see how someone like him could be living the double life his wife claimed, but she was right in a way. Just shows you that looks can be deceiving. People look at me and don’t credit me with much either.
‘It’s done?’
I looked down at the little man. His eyes looked huge behind the glasses. He was sitting in the chair where I’d left him earlier while I prepped for his wife’s arrival.
‘Just like you asked,’ I reassured him.
‘Did she suffer?’
The malignant gleam in his eye told me the answer he was waiting for.
‘Yeah, she suffered.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘She deserved it. Did she tell you I gave her a sexually transmitted disease?’
‘Yeah, you called it right.’
‘Bitch. It was her who gave me the clap. It was her who was sleeping around.’
I didn’t comment. It was beginning to sound like I was stuck in the middle of the Jeremy Kyle show.
‘What else did she say?’ he asked. “Did she have any idea that...”
‘She was sure you were being unfaithful to her; chasing all these young skirts all the time.’ I laughed at the absurdity of it.
He laughed with me. ‘You think I’d stand any chance with a young girl?’
Decorum isn’t my main strength. ‘Not a chance.’
To his credit he didn’t take any offence. ‘Crazy bitch has accused me of running after girls for years,’ he said. ‘She’s made my life hell and I think it was all guilt over her own infidelity. Did she admit to having someone else?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘She must have said something.’
‘She did. She asked me to kill you.’
‘What?’
I just smiled at him and he shook his head.
‘Good job I met you first, then,’ he said, blinking mole-like. ‘I can’t believe she’d want to kill me. But it would make sense, I suppose. She wants me out the way so she can sleep around any time she likes. What a bitch!’
I shrugged, held out my hand. ‘Forget about her; you don’t have to take her shit ever again.” I snapped my fingers. “Money on completion; just like we agreed.’
The man pulled out a thick envelope and I took it from him. Didn’t bother counting the notes, because I knew he was good for it.
‘A deal’s a deal,’ he said, smiling.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
I shot him in the head, just like I’d agreed to do for his wife.
But that wasn’t the main reason.
The little squirt should have mentioned it when first we met. I wiggled my trousers out of my butt again, exhaling at the chaffing-pain. ‘That’s for giving me the fucking pox, lover boy.’

***

BIO:

Vallon Jackson is the pen name of a published thriller author who likes to let his imagination roam occasionally. Sometimes in odd directions.

PIE IN THE SKY by Vallon Jackson

This is the latest in the PIE series following the feckless Wile E. Coyote antics of our nameless narrator and his quest to end the days of his philandering nemesis, Robert the Red...
(To read previous episodes, put PIE in the search blog bar above)

Pie in the sky

I wish that Robert had just kept things to himself, but he’s always the braggart and couldn’t help sharing the sordid details about his latest conquest.

I just happened to know that Miriam was married, happily or otherwise, to a guy at my squash club called Jim Bunk, and I happened to like Jim.

I thought about tipping Jim about his wife’s illicit rendezvous with Robert, but in the end I let it go. Robert’s dalliances had already made a killer out of one man and I didn’t want to send poor Jim down the same dark path that I’d trodden these past few months.

When I discovered that my red-headed work mate had been dipping my wife behind my back, I’d made it my mission to send the bastard screaming into his deserved place in hell. It was just a pity that I was pretty useless when it came to murder; that or way too good for my own good. My tally up until now?
My wife. check.
A train load of commuters. Check.
A hairdresser and her lunchtime appointment. Check.
The master of ceremonies at a corporate gig. Check.

It took me that long to realise that I was just being too grandiose for my own good. I had to keep things simple. My next attempt on Robert the Red was while we were out on a team building exercise. Split from the rest of our workmates, high on a cliff-side, I’d seen my opportunity. A quick shove and that would have been that. Robert would have been even redder than usual.
The problem was that my inherent bad luck had kicked in, I’d stepped on a slimy stone and it was me who went over the cliff-side. Only Robert’s quick thinking had saved me. He grabbed my ankle and held me dangling there over the chasm while I almost wet my pants. Blissfully unaware of how I’d ended in that precarious position he reeled me back to safety.

Against my better judgement – and eating humble pie - I felt I owed the prick my life. And by that very virtue, I now owed him his.

Except when he came into the office telling me all about his night on a pool table with Miriam Bunk, well, my old hatred returned ten-fold. It was all I could do not to attack him there and then, but I didn’t think that the staple-gun I was holding would be enough to finish him with; the cheap bit of office tat had a habit of sticking after every third click.

Robert had noticed my red face, but he’d misread it.

You think I did a bad thing? He asked.

I nodded. She’s a married woman, Robert, I said.

Yeah, but by all accounts, the only thing Jim Bunk serves up these days is a half-arsed volley at the squash club. I was doing both of them a favour. I keep telling you, he’d said, you have to dip your fingers in as many pies as you can, to stop them growing stale.

Was that why my wife had turned to Robert? Wasn’t I showing her the attention she needed? Maybe that was because I was working so hard to keep her in the nice things that she needed. Exactly how Jim did for his ungrateful wife.

I walked away from Robert before he could read the murder that had returned to my eyes.
I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next.
I was too busy plotting.

Next day, at the office, I announced my idea for a charity event. Knowing that Robert would leap at the chance to impress the ladies with his idea of derring-do, he signed up immediately to take part in the parachute jump.

For my idea to work, I needed to up the numbers, and I sent round a memo to drum up as much interest as possible. We ended up with twenty people in total, plus a couple others who unfortunately missed the deadline.

That meant two planes, because to keep any suspicion falling on me, we had to go up separately.
Of course, there’s always a buddy system in operation and I paired up with Robert, checking his harness and chute was properly secure.

I was on the first plane. Robert waved me off and up we went, ten of us in the back of a plane.
I was papping in my jumpsuit, but I had to go through with the jump. How couldn’t I do it when it was all my idea? I did notice that mine wasn’t the only white face among the first group, or of those left on the ground that would follow us up. The only ones looking brave were those who’d been late in answering my memo and didn’t get a chance to take part. Even my friend Jim had turned out to wave us off.

Coming down was joyful, and I almost forgot what was about to happen.

But then I saw the second plane take off and soar into the milky blue sky and a grim smile pasted itself across my face.

I alighted at the designated landing zone, then with my nine elated work-mates and the others who’d come to support us, we all stood around watching as a string of black dots were flicked out of the bowels of the second plane. We were all oohing and aahing, as you do. Watching as the black dots blossomed chutes and began the slow drift to earth.

Then the murmurs began, then a swell of panic as everyone became aware that one of the black dots was having trouble, its chute tangled in a funnel of cloth that did nothing to slow its hurtling decent. I hid my smile behind my hand, as I rolled my eyes in feigned horror with the rest of them.

The black dot grew limbs, and they were flailing wildly at the air as if trying to grab at the fabric of heaven.

It plummeted like a rock and hit the ground a hundred yards out. I swear I heard the crunch of bones all the way across the airfield.

People screamed and began running towards the puff of dust that marked Robert the Red’s less than salubrious downfall. I didn’t know why they were hurrying, because there would be nothing anyone could do for him. But I was in more of a hurry to get there and I overtook the lot of them. I pulled out my penknife and started cutting away at the cloth and lines that shrouded the steaming mess beneath (in truth covering up the fact that I’d already snicked through a couple of the guide-wires while doing the final check of his chute) as though I was trying to offer emergency help.

People finally arrived around me, and I felt hands tugging me away from the splattered wreck of humanity. It’s no good, someone cried, he’s dead.

Robert, oh my God, Robert, I moaned to add some validity to my fake grief.

Then, at my shoulder, my nemesis said; Jesus, I’m glad I pulled out at the last minute, otherwise that might have been me.

I turned around and squinted up at Robert.

How? I asked him.

Well, after we spoke about it, I felt a little bad about doing Jim Bunk’s missus. I knew it was his lifelong ambition to go sky-diving, so I let him take my place. I feel sorry for the poor bastard, but I’m glad that I found another pie to dabble today.

He nodded over at the jump instructor’s girlfriend who appeared at the door of the office looking flushed and a little rumpled.

BIO:
Vallon Jackson is the pseudonym of a published thriller author who likes to have a little fun with his imagination when he isn't writing his latest book.

COLD AS THE GRAVE by Vallon Jackson

Cold as the Grave

Big, red-faced Jimmy stepped through the open door, stamping his feet and blowing into his cupped palms. His coat was done up to his chin and he had a woollen hat pulled low, but he still looked frozen. “I guarantee you, boys, there’ll be more snotty noses than standing cocks tonight.”

He came into the kitchen, still blowing warmth at his blue hands. “I’m telling you, boys. You know it’s fuckin’ cold when your dick shrivels up like a prawn vol-au-vent!”

No one answered him. No one laughed. They’d already heard Jimmy’s lurid take on the cold snap on three separate occasions.

“Close the door, will ya?” Bobby was hunkered down in front of the oven. The door was open and the meagre blue flame inside was the only source of heat in the old house.

“Thought all the power and stuff was off?” Jimmy moved towards the oven holding out his palms.

“It is, but the oven’s Calor gas. There was a li’le bit left in the bottle.” Bobby shoved him away. “Fuckin’ hell, Jimmy, I can feel the cold coming off ya! You a fuckin’ ghost or summat?”

“Gotta admit, I feel like I’m about three days dead.”

Jimmy and Bobby both looked around at the latest speaker.

Johnny Boy stood up and walked over to Bobby and shoved him side-ways. “Stop hoggin’ all the fuckin’ heat.”

“Yeah, move it,” Jimmy added.

“Tosser!” Bobby called Jimmy, but he reluctantly gave way to the older man, his face twisting as he was shunted away from the small flame.

Johnny Boy was a man in his late-forties – heavily built, his jowls drooping and his hair turning grey at the sides – a bit of a misnomer at any stretch. But he was also the hardest of the three and neither Jimmy nor – especially – Bobby would argue too stringently. Johnny Boy put his arse to the oven, lifting the tail of his coat to warm his lower back. He stood there smiling at the other two but there wasn’t the slightest mote of humour in his eyes.

“Is he there yet, Jimmy?”

Jimmy shoved his hands in his pockets and fiddled round like he was adjusting his underpants. “I froze me fuckin’ bollocks off, but it was worth it. The grass was right. He does use the dump across the way as a squat. He’s there, Johnny Boy. Alone.”

“Good.” Johnny Boy allowed his coat to drop as he transferred his hands to his own pockets. He pulled out an illegal semi-automatic pistol: an imported SIGMA, but neither of the other two would know that. From his other pocket he pulled out a magazine and slapped it in place. He racked the slide. “You two packin’ like I told ya?”

Bobby pulled out a sawn-off shotgun with a chopped and taped stock. Double barrelled. A farmer’s gun adapted to fit under his armpit. He clicked it open and fed in a couple 12 bore cartridges.

Jimmy said, “I’ve a pick handle. Don’t trust meself to pull a trigger, my hands are so cold.”

“Keep rubbing your balls like that and the friction’ll set em on fire,” Bobby said.

“I’m not rubbin’ me balls,” Jimmy said. “I’m still trying to find ‘em!”

Bobby laughed this time. “Heard you often have that problem with your dick.”

“You wouldn’t like it as a wart on the end of your nose,” Jimmy said right back. Another of his sadly over-used rejoinders.

“Shut up,” Johnny Boy grunted. “Fuckin’ idiots that I have to work with...”

He led them out of the house and into the biting cold. It was dark outside, no moon, no stars, just a heavy mist that covered everything. The mist dampened down the sound so much it felt like they were walking through some sort of void between worlds.

Johnny Boy felt the mist clinging to his face, turning to ice crystals on his eyelashes. He rubbed a palm across his jowls and they felt like they were as tight as a virgin’s arse. He exhaled, and a cloud of frozen breath streamed around him.

Three days dead, he thought. It was as cold as the fuckin’ grave, right enough.

But soon things were gonna hot up.

A faint glow poked through the mist. Yellowish – like piss spreading in a swimming pool. They had to move closer before they could make out that it was the light from the living room in the derelict house opposite.

“Can you see him?” Johnny Boy whispered.

Jimmy pointed, using the pick handle he’d picked up from outside their hiding place. “Saw him in there about five minutes ago. Dunno where he’s at now.”

Johnny Boy nudged Bobby. “You’re the smallest. Sneak over there and see if you can see him.”

“What if he sees me?”

“You’ve got a fuckin’ shotgun, what’re you afraid of?”

Bobby sniffed a dew drop from the end of his nose. “It’s fuckin’ Jack Dunn we’re talkin’ about. Bad bastard. Even with the gun I don’t want to go up against him on me own!”

“He’s not fuckin’ bullet proof,” Johnny Boy snarled, but even he wasn’t so sure that he’d be here without Bobby and Jimmy backing him up. “Fuckin’ big man killer for hire! Maybe the cops couldn’t prove he was the one who capped my cousin, Ronnie, but I know it. An’ he’s gonna pay. Now git over there and see where he’s at. Soon as you give us the nod we’ll be on him like stink on shit. Right, Jimmy?”

Jimmy didn’t answer and Johnny Boy turned, searching for him in the mist. All that remained of his passing was a faint swirl in the mist.

“Where the fuck has he sneaked off to?” Johnny Boy did a slow pirouette where he stood. There was no sign of the big man. Just his pick handle lying on the ground. “I don’t believe this; the fucker’s bottled it!” He turned back towards Bobby. “Well, it’s just me an’ you, Bobby, but don’t worry we can still do this...”

Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

“Bobby? Bobby! Where the...”

Johnny Boy gripped the butt of his SIGMA, but now the gun didn’t seem the equaliser that he’d originally thought. In fact it felt woefully inadequate. A bit like he felt, really.

He took a slow step back, turned, and was about to leg it.

A form reared out of the mist in front of him.

Johnny Boy couldn’t make out the face of the man. It had nothing to do with the cloying mist, but everything to do with the sawn-off shotgun barrels jammed against the bridge of his nose.

“Going somewhere, Johnny Boy?” Jack Dunn asked.

Johnny Boy didn’t even think about lifting his gun. If anyone cared to listen he’d have told them that his fingers were too cold to pull the trigger anyway. The truth was, he was decidedly warm. At least he was in his trousers when he pissed himself.

It was shameful, pissing himself like that, but he didn’t have long to worry about it.

The shot-gun was reversed very quickly and the stock slammed against the side of his head.

***

It was three days until they were found. The slaughterhouse had closed on Friday evening, so it wasn’t until Monday morning before the staff arrived and found Johnny Boy, Jimmy and Bobby trussed together in the meat locker.

Three days dead.

The constable had to step aside for the Detective Sergeant who arrived at the scene.

“What have we got?” the DS asked.

“Three of them this time.”

“Same gang?”

“Yeah,” the constable said. “You think that Jack Dunn did them?”

“We’ve no proof that there’s even a person called Jack Dunn, constable. You ask me, it’s just a story these scrotes put out to cover for the murders in their little turf wars. And if I were you I’d just keep on thinking that way.”

The DS stepped inside the meat locker and immediately shivered.

“Bloody Baltic in here,” he muttered, rubbing his hands together.

“Minus thirty,” the SOCO investigator said from the centre of the room. “They were still alive when they were tied up in here, poor sods. It looks like they froze to death, Sarge.”

Yeah, the DS thought, thinking about Jimmy’s words that he’d overheard as they planned to kill him, I know there were more snotty noses than standing cocks that night.

****

Vallon Jackson is the pseudonym of a published author. Not all of his work features vigilante action.

GIVE UP THE GHOST by Vallon Jackson

GIVE UP THE GHOST

Before the accident I didn’t give much credibility to mediums or spiritualists or psychics. I thought it was all a load of rubbish to be honest. However, Christine was more of a believer than I and often said that if she was to die she’d come back and prove that there was indeed life after death. I had no argument for her there, I just didn’t believe that the ‘mystics’ were anything but a group of charlatans playing on the grief of the living to coin in a healthy buck. I didn’t say there was no afterlife, only that I doubted that anyone truly had the ability to communicate with those that had past on.

Many evenings we’d spend in our darkened living room, watching Spook Chasers on TV and while Christine would yelp and hide behind a pillow I’d cringe at the lamentable goings on of the resident spiritualist medium, Del, while he went through another questionable ‘possession’. There were some things that kept me watching – Eve, the presenter, when she wasn’t screaming, was eye-candy so I didn’t complain. Not much.

Christine believed. She told me that she saw her mother after the old lady had died. She apparently came to our bedroom and patted Chris on the foot when she was in bed. I told her that it was just wishful thinking, or maybe a waking dream or something.

'So you don’t believe in ghosts?'

'I believe in ghosts, Chris, I just don’t believe in mediums.'

'If I die before you,' Christine said, 'I’m going to go to wherever the Spook Chasers team are appearing and prove it to the world.'

Her words stuck with me.

Even after the accident.

I kept an eye out, listened, heard that the team were doing a ‘Live’ from a castle in a nearby town. More than anything I wanted to talk to Christine again. This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. Or to prove my theory to the contrary.

So there I was an audience member, sitting among the crowd of on-lookers as the cameras rolled and Eve did her piece to camera, complete with atmospheric lights, spooky music and an ankle-skimming coat right out of a Hammer production.

They segued into a commercial break while a table was readied, and they went directly into a séance, Del mumbling some disjointed mumbo-jumbo about white lights and protection. Some of the crew, the action boys who were forever being assailed by poltergeists in the show, were larking about off camera, before joining them all-solemn-like as the cameras began rolling again.

There were a couple knocks and bangs, but we were in an old place that was falling down round our ears. Could have been anything.

Then it was Del’s turn to lark about.

I wasn’t very hopeful. He told Eve historical facts that I’d already learned from tourist brochures. Then he stopped suddenly, his head jerking side-to-side like a chicken as a supposed message came in from the other side.

'We’ve a woman here,' he said. 'She’s sitting over by the window. She’s holding her stomach. Oh, dear. Oh, Lord...'

'What is it, Del?' Eve’s eyes were almost popping out of her head as she stared at the blank space Del indicated. I followed her gaze, hopeful, but saw nothing whatsoever.

'Give me a little more, Bob,' Del exhorted.

I had to think about who he was talking to, then remembered. Bob was his supposed ‘spirit guide’. Aren’t spirit guides supposed to be a swami or Native American Shaman or something equally esoteric? Bob – Del’s guide – was apparently a nineteenth century miner from Yorkshire. Maybe that was meant to add credibility, but it didn’t sit with me. Couldn’t see a ghost in a pit helmet however hard I tried.

'Oh, the poor lamb. She’s in pain, she has blood on her shift!' Del began shivering, his eyes rolling up in his skull.

Eve cried out, flinching back from him. Right on cue. 'Did you hear that?'

When no-one responded, Eve was adamant. 'I heard a noise like a woman’s scream,' she said. She glared at the rest of the team challenging them to disagree. Some of them nodded along with her.

I’d heard something too, but it was the siren of an ambulance in the nearby town as it barrelled through congested traffic. I glanced at the other audience members but they were too rapt on Del’s shenanigans to make sense of the truth.

'He killed my baby,' Del squeaked out in a Mickey Mouse voice. 'Don’t let him get me!' Then Del threw himself off his chair and began convulsing on the floor while all the team gathered round him shouting at him to ‘come forward’.

Yeah, I thought, come forward and take a bow, Del. It was about the best acting I’d ever seen. Or the worst.

As he shivered on the floor, making more squeaky noises, I decided I’d had enough.

Del was the biggest fake imaginable and he was sucking everyone into his little fantasy act. Everyone but me, thanks very much.

There was no chance of ever speaking to Christine through the likes of him.

I got up from my chair, made quickly away while everyone’s attention was on that big cheese, Del, and made my way outside.

I was so disgusted, felt so cheapened, even if I’d proven my theory.

I was in such a hurry to get away I didn’t even bother with the door, just walked directly through the castle wall.

...

Vallon Jackson is the pseudonym of a published author who likes to have a little fun with his imagination when he isn't writing his latest book.

HUMBLE PIE by Vallon Jackson

This is the fourth in the on-going series following the anonymous Wile. E. Coyote killer and his hopeless attempts at murdering his nemesis, Robert. For previous episodes, put PIE in the search blog bar.

Humble Pie

I’m not really the physical type, so the idea of a weekend spent building rafts and scaling gorges while wet through and thoroughly miserable isn’t my idea of a good time. Add the discomfort of sleeping in a tent pitched on rocky ground to the fact that I had to share the damn thing with the red-headed lothario, Robert, and you’ll get a good idea of how peed off I was.

Bad enough that Robert is a gobshite who loves the sound of his own bragging, and he stinks like a donkey’s armpit after a couple pints of stout, but the git was also responsible for knocking off my wife, Roxy, for months.

I put a stop to that.

I skulled Roxy and drove her and her car in front of a train.

Since then it’s been a mission of mine to send Robert to a similarly gruesome fate.

The problem is, three times now I’ve failed to kill the self-proclaimed God’s gift to womankind.

My only saving grace was that Robert had pulled with Becki – a temp who thought she’d extend her contract if she sucked up to one of the bosses. So I had the tent to myself for most of Friday and Saturday night. Free from Robert’s farts and the homicidal thoughts I had every time he lifted his leg and let rattle. (I wondered what the police would find most unusual: the tent peg rammed through his skull, or the carabiners clamping his butt cheeks together?)

Sunday night was going to be different though. Becki had a christening to attend, and it was unlikely she’d come back to our moorland base for the final night. Unless Robert found another pie to dabble his fingers in, I was going to have to spend about the worst night imaginable. The only other female with us was Big Jan, and I doubted that Robert’s charms would win her over. Not when her partner Fifi was waiting for her at home. Robert wasn’t one for crew cuts, baggy football tops and jeans strung with chains, but he’d even bragged once that – if he so desired – he could turn even Jan.

I thought about telling Jan his plan. Let her snap his neck for me.

But I hadn’t. I didn’t want Jan to get in trouble for killing the son of a bitch.

No, Robert was my problem to deal with. I owed him big time.

We were out on the moor, orienteering.

While Jan and Craig, and Billy and James, went off following a map and compass, hunting for the coordinates our ‘team leaders’ had marked out, me and Robert went the other.

To hell with that for a lark, Robert announced after about two minutes. I’m off down the village for a pint.

We’re not going to pass the course if we go AWOL, I told him.

Like I care? There’s a hot bit of crumpet serving behind the bar. Gonna try my luck. Are you coming or not?

I looked fondly at the desolate hillside that led all the way down to Bilgefoot. It was sufficiently craggy, full of loose rocks with sudden drop offs. It would be a great shame if poor Robert just happened to slip, fall of the cliff and splatter on the rocks below. No way could I allow him to attempt the treacherous path alone.

Of course I’m coming. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

See, Robert said as he smoothed down his copper wire hair, I told the others that you had hidden depths. For such a wimp you've a real sense of adventure.

Robert shoved me in the shoulder. Good pals us.

I get the bird, you get the collie dog, he laughed. That’s the only other hot bitch in Bilgefoot.

Ha-frickin-ha!

We set off, rucksacks lightened by dumping all the unnecessary gear.

We’d come so far in Land Rovers, hiked in the remainder. Bilgefoot was a good three miles off and it was a long time since either of us had walked that far on level ground, let alone over hills.

We’d barely made it a mile when the rain came down in torrents. The rocks underfoot grew very slick, but Robert went over them like he was born to the mountains. I huffed and puffed to keep up, swearing I was going to take up my gym membership again.

Cold pint, hot fire, even hotter barmaid, Robert cajoled me along. And if you’re up for it, you can stroke the hot dog. Bet you’re good at that seeing as you’ve abstained from women since Roxy died.

Very funny you sick heartless pig!

We were on a narrow path over a hundred foot drop off.

What a tragedy if Robert slipped now. There would be nothing I could do for him. He’d fall all the way down, and if he didn’t smash himself to pieces on the rocks, the exposure would kill him while I spent the afternoon in the bar. Stroking the dog.

I was just about to shove him in the small of his back. Send him into space.

But the guardian angel that looks after Robert was working overtime. How it managed to jam that slick stone under my own boot had to be divine intervention.

Aaargh, I yelled, slipping.

My arms wind-milled, grabbing at air but found nothing. Off the cliff I went, with a tuck and a roll, then I was doing a swan dive through the sky.

As I flipped Robert grabbed me by my jacket collar. I dangled there with my heels over space, but then Robert yanked me up and set me back on the trail.

Excitement getting to you, me old mate?

Good God Almighty, I stammered, you just saved my life Robert.

Aah, it was nothing. You’d do the same for me.

God damn it if I didn’t have to eat humble pie.

For now...

LOST CAUSE by Vallon Jackson

LOST CAUSE

“So what are you thinking of charging her with, Constable?”

“I want to throw the book at her this time, Sarge. She can’t keep on getting away with it all the time.”

“The judge takes one look at her and he’ll throw the case out.”

“Don’t let the blond curls and cutsey turned-up nose fool you, Sarge. She’s a bad one, alright. This is the third time that we’ve had her in here this month.”

“I agree that it’s time we started looking at some sort of intervention. Before she gets out of hand and does some real harm. But-”

“Burglary with intent...is that not bad enough?”

“OK, slow down, Constable. Before we get her out of the cell I want the full facts.”

“She broke into the house, Sarge and...”

“Wait a minute. She broke in?”

“Well, not exactly. Door was open, but that’s beside the point. She still entered a dwelling as a trespasser with the intent to cause damage or to steal. That’s as good as burglary when you go by the definition...”

“Don’t start quoting definitions at me, son. I’ve forgotten more definitions than you’ll ever know.”

“Sorry, Sarge.”

“Carry on, and let’s keep this brief shall we? There’s no solicitor here, just us real men.”

“OK, well, she broke..eh, entered this house when the owners were out. She went all the way through the place, broke a chair, ate some food.”

“And that’s where you’re getting the criminal damage and theft angle from?”

“Well, yes, Sarge. It’s right isn’t it?”

“In a way, yes. What does the Crown Prosecution Service say?”

“I haven’t consulted with them, yet. I trust your opinion, Sarge.”

“Huh...you were trying to tell me my job a minute ago.”

“I know. I was over-stepping the mark. Sorry, Sarge, I just don’t want to let the little bitch get away with it again.”

“Language, Constable. You know that’s not the way I run my custody suite. Now, carry on. What else did she do?”

“Well, apparently bounced on every bed in the house and then...”

“Don’t tell me. She didn’t defecate in the bed again?”

“Not this time, Sarge. No. She just lay down and went to sleep.”

“...and that’s how you caught her?”

“Yes, Sarge. Mr and Mrs Bruin came home and there she was. All tucked up like there was nothing the matter. She hit them with her usual story: y’know the one about being lost?”

“Obviously they didn’t believe her?”

“No, so she just gave them a load of verbals and did a bunk.”

“She did a runner?”

“Yes, but I got her.”

“Good work, Constable.”

“Something else we might want to keep an eye on, Sarge. When they found her she was in the baby’s bed.”

“Was the baby in the bed at the time?”

“Well, no, but you still have to admit it’s a little weird.”

“Weird but not enough to put her on the sex offenders register just yet.”

“I was thinking...”

“Forget it, Constable. We can’t go with that around here. You know that.”

“Sorry, Sarge. I forgot for a minute.”

“Once upon a time it was different...but not now. Any way, never mind. Go bring her from her cell. Maybe you’d better get a female to go with you.”

“I can handle her, Sarge.”

“That’s not my concern. Sweet-looking little thing like that, you know how the defence are: if they think you’ve been in her cell alone? I wouldn’t put it past them to shout sexual assault. Can see the headlines now. And her with that cute little face like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth...”

“Wasn’t butter, Sarge.”

“Eh?”

“Wasn’t butter she ate, it was breakfast cereal.”

“Ha! Very funny. Just go and get her.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Wait on. Before you go...for the charge sheet, how do you spell Goldilocks again?”

THERE'S NO GLAMOUR IN THIS TINSEL by Vallon Jackson

Here's some 'cheerful' stuff to lighten your day (Yeah, right. Have you forgotten where you are?)


There’s no Glamour in this Tinsel

People talk about bucket lists; y’know, the things you want to do before you kick the bucket? Well, the way things were, my bucket only needed to be about the size of a thimble, ’cause there was only one thing on my must do list.

I wanted to take Vic Newsome kicking and screaming into hell with me.

See, when I was diagnosed with this creeping sickness, my girlfriend was real upset. Poor, Melanie. And Vic, being my best buddy in the whole wide world, thought he was doing me a service by consoling her. Right! You know how those things go. Half a dozen vodkas later and Vic has Mel in the palm of his hand. Literally. One thing led to another and a couple of weeks later Mel’s getting sick on a morning and complaining that she’s getting a bit puffy round the middle. I knew the baby wasn’t mine. Since I’d been taking the meds and the other treatment, we hadn’t slept together. My excuse was the radio active glow coming off my new shiny head. Not that she’d ever admit it but I think that Melanie was repulsed, as though she would catch the dreaded ‘C’ off me.

We split up, of course.

Mel went to see Vic, but this time he wasn’t the consoling friend. He told her to fuck right off and get rid of the baby. Which she promptly organised at the local clinic. Her appointment with a bent coat hanger was for today.

In my eyes, Vic advocated murder.

Well, what’s good for him is good for me. An eye for an eye and all that shit.

So that’s why I lured him round to my pad, plied him with a couple of drinks laced with two dozen of the surplus morphine sulphate tabs from my medicine cabinet. It wasn’t like I was going to need them anymore, was it?

Vic’s a big lump of a lad, and could skull-drag me from one end of a bar to the other even when I was hale and hearty. Shit, when we were growing up, he did it enough times. Dunno why I thought that bastard was a friend. But, tough guy or not, the overload of morphine tablets kind of evened up the score. In fact the asshole couldn’t even lift a hand to stop me from battering his face bloody. Maybe I should’ve halved the dosage of morphine ‘cause it didn’t look much like I was hurting him. In the end, I didn’t have the strength to beat him to a pulp and collapsed on the settee next to him.

He would only last a couple minutes more. But I wouldn’t be far behind him. I downed the rest of the surplus morphine with a tumbler full of whisky.

When I was young I dreamed of my amazing future. I was going to be rich and famous. I was going to celebrate my glorious life, party every day. But the dreams died. The tinsel dimmed and lost its glamour. Now I was sitting next to my oldest friend, spattered by his blood, dying of a drug overdose and of the malignant cells that must by now have invaded my brain. The carnival music that used to play in my head had become a funeral dirge.

It took a few rings for the phone to register in my brain.

Part of me thought that it was Melanie ringing. She would tell me that her tests had been wrong. She was further into the pregnancy than she’d thought. There was no way she was going to terminate our baby. That would have been a mixed blessing, and I was pleased to find that it wasn’t Mel. It was my doctor calling with some amazing news.

The fuckin’ cancer’s gone into remission?

Shit...

DUNN DEAL by Vallon Jackson

Be careful what you agree to...

DUNN DEAL


‘It‘s all a question of finding the right price, isn’t it, Mr Dunn?’

Now there was the, uh, twenty thousand pound question. To someone like Dunn, twenty thousand pounds wasn’t that much. By the time he paid off his helpers, arranged transport, set things up, sourced a throwaway weapon, he’d be killing a man for something in the region of two grand. For that he could barely put a new set of wheels on his car. But then again he needed a new set of wheels for his car.

‘Thirty grand,’ Dunn said.

‘Ten.’

‘Meet me mid-way and we have a deal.’

‘Done.’

It was as easy as that. Or at least wangling his fee was. Killing the mark might prove a little more difficult. Except Jack Dunn wasn’t one to experience moments of insecurity. He was fully confident in his abilities to kill one old man, even if he was surrounded day and night by his gang of knuckle-dragging henchmen.

Dunn organized the hit for a Tuesday evening. In his estimation Tuesdays were none-days in the scheme of the weekly calendar. Whoever did anything important on a Tuesday? The mark would stay home, confident that he was safe in his fortified mansion house in the Essex country-side, and therefore his guard would be lowered. He’d be in his slippers, a whisky-laced coffee at hand, watching some inane crap on TV. His retainers would be as sloppy. Whoever important had ever been murdered on a Tuesday evening?

Dunn and two others arrived at the estate. Johnny Watt was their getaway driver and wouldn’t be involved in the hit. Richard Small – now there was an unfortunate name if ever there was one – was only there to see to the security precautions. Guy who went by the name of Dick Small had to be a computer nerd because Dunn didn’t think he’d have had much of a social life growing up. Shame on his parents for not taking the abbreviated name into consideration when they christened him – or maybe they just had a nasty sense of humour.

While Watt kept the getaway car ticking over and ready for a hasty retreat, Dick got busy with the laptop he’d brought, patching into the alarm system at a junction box on the side of the mark’s house. As soon as he gave Dunn a thumb’s up, he unplugged his leads and jogged back to the car. Now Dunn was all alone. Just the way he liked it. Brand new Michelins here we come, he thought as he pulled out his Glock and screwed on the suppressor.

The front door was too obviously guarded, so he slipped around the side of the building. In his balaclava and boiler suit he was as indistinguishable as the bats flitting along the eaves in search of insects, and almost as silent. His Magnum boots – a quality purchase for one in his trade – barely made a sound on the gravel path that ran along the back of the house to the entrance to the kitchen. Dunn hunkered down, then glanced through a window. He saw a big man in tight t-shirt and jeans eating Heinz beans directly from a can. Now, Dunn thought, that’s just not HP. He chuckled at his own joke.

In the next instant he stepped to the door and swung it inward. He placed a single round through the big man’s chest. Then, as the man slumped to the floor surrounded by a pool of blood and beans, Dunn took careful aim and put another round through his skull. Blood sat on the quarry tiles like crimson mercury.

Dunn left the man where he was lying, moving immediately into a service corridor. Light spilled from the living quarters at the front of the house. Dunn could hear the chuntering voices of people in TV land. He crept along the corridor and at the end he took a quick peek to either side. There was another man – this one in a white jerkin over his shirt – bending over a desk in an alcove. Dunn took careful aim and fired. The bullet took the man in the base of his skull. He’d used 9mm rounds – without the benefit of steel jackets this time – because there was less likelihood that the rounds would pass directly through the target and cause further damage. The man pitched dead over the desk, his hands sliding some of the paperwork he’d been busy with on the floor. A mess like that was no problem, not compared to the alternative.

He spun around. Another man was rushing towards him from the front of the house. The man – a muscle freak by any definition of the term – should have brought a gun if he had any hope of stopping Dunn. But he was too stupid or too confident in his ability to intimidate for that. Dunn smiled faintly at the brute, then shot him in the heart. As big and muscular as he was he still went down like a whore on crack. Dunn was a firm believer in tradition. A double-tap was the accepted method for a hit, so he obliged, putting another 9mm round in the back of the man’s skull.

Then he stood listening. Apart from the talking heads on TV no one else made a sound. He turned from the dead man and headed for the living room. There he found the mark. The old man was propped in his easy chair, and sure enough he had on his slippers and a mug of Irish coffee to hand. The canisters of oxygen and the tubes running from them and into his nose didn’t give Dunn a moment’s pause.

‘Wasn’t expecting you so soon,’ said the mark. His voice was whispery and laden with phlegm. ‘Did you have to pick tonight to do the job?’

‘Could think of nothing better to do on a Tuesday evening.’

‘You don’t think you could see fit to give me another half hour do you? I wanted to see which one of these young beauties is going to be Britain’s Next Top Model.’

‘Got my ride waiting outside,’ Dunn said apologetically. ‘When we did the deal you said you didn’t want to know when I was going to do it. Didn’t think you’d have a favourite TV programme to worry about.’

The mark shrugged his knobby shoulders. ‘Pretty girls. Even an old man like me likes to look now and again. Fifteen minutes..?’

‘Sorry, but a deal’s a deal.’

‘If I give you more money?’

‘Can’t do it. You know me: when a deal’s done it’s a done deal. You said I had to kill you in a way so that it didn’t look like suicide. This way your wife gets your inheritance and you get to keep your reputation as a tough old bastard. Not even your dodgy heart could take you down.’

The man nodded whimsically. ‘I suppose you’re right, Dunn. But just let me get a look at this here beauty in the bikini first, huh?’

‘Deal.’

The mark turned his head to the TV. He nodded at the gazelle-like grace of the girl on the screen. Dunn shot him in the back of the head.

PIE = MC SQUARED by Vallon Jackson

The return of the master of disaster, our old friend the Wile. E. Coyote killer is up to his hopeless tricks again... (To read previous entries, enter PIE in the 'Search blog' bar)

PIE = MC SQUARED

Three months ago I killed my wife Roxy. I panned her over the skull with an iron bar then parked her car on a level crossing which resulted in the derailing of the 07.25 West Line train and thirty five more murders. All of their deaths were inconsequential when really I was trying to kill my business partner, Robert of the red hair and the nasty habit of dipping his fingers in too many pies. Robert thwarted my plan by not boarding the goddamn train ‘cause his perpetual finger-dipping meant he was off visiting his latest conquest, Charmaine, instead. He’d decided to leave Roxy alone that morning out of the goodness of his heart – seeing it was our wedding anniversary and all.

Two months ago I’d tried again. This time I slipped the handbrake on a truck and sent it through the window of the hairdressing salon ‘Hair of Superiority’ flattening everyone inside, only to find out that the queen of bleach actually ran her business from a store three along at ‘Superior Hair’. Robert and his ruby locks had survived yet again. The driver of the truck is awaiting his day in court where he’ll be lucky if he escapes prison.

I was getting to wonder that Robert was one of those lucky bastitches that have a guardian angel watching over him. If that was the case, that goddamn angel must have been sick of watching his pale butt bounce up and down over the latest woman he was dabbling. Either that or said angel was of the fallen variety.

My days had become filled with plans for doing away with my work buddy. I’d considered and discarded the usual ideas of guns and knives because...well, quite frankly I didn’t want to end up in prison for the rest of my days. When he went he had to go in a fashion that looked entirely accidental.

Being half-decent businessmen – in the correct sense of the term – we were occasionally requested to attend conferences. I hated the blooming things, but Robert being Robert, he always seen them as ways to hook up with new women. He booked us into at least three or four a year. I usually made my apologies being a happily married man but this time I had no excuse.

Roxy wouldn’t want you to stay single all your life, Robert told me. You have to get out there. Start dipping your fingers in a few pies and see what comes of it. Knowing me I’d pull out a plum.

He was surprised when I agreed to attend the annual get together at the Hoxley Annual Trade Emporium (HATE for short). Not that I wanted to listen to big-mouthed Alan Sugar wannabes all weekend, but the building was a lovely old place with a working stage where some of the local amateur dramatics groups still performed. Under my unassuming exterior I am quite the dramatist, I suppose.

We got there on a Wednesday morning, and by lunch time Robert had pulled with a woman called Angie whose hairspray arrived three steps before she did. Under the make up she was ten years older than she admitted to and I guess she was flattered by the big red-head’s advances. She even agreed to a threesome until she saw me. Then there was a lot of whispering and screwing up of faces. I saved her the trouble, saying I had work to be getting on with. I had the onerous task of writing the thank you speech that Robert was due to give later in the day. After that they disappeared off for a little lunch together. I supposed that pie was on the menu - unless it was past its use by date.

Two hours later Robert returned, hiking up his trousers. He was grinning and looking exactly like a ginger tom. He smelled like one too. He accepted my mumbled congratulations, then took from my hand the idiot cards I’d prepared.

I joined the applause from the side of the stage as Robert stepped out to shake hands with Master of Ceremonies, Burt Wigglesworth, who announced Robert the Red then relinquished his post at the podium and stood grinning up at him like a sycophant.

Robert’s speech went down a treat – he was such a clever orator apparently.

I didn’t go there with the intention of killing him. Far too public for that. But I couldn’t help myself. The opportunity was staring me in the face while I stood in shadow at the side of the stage. I was such a non-entity in the room that no-one would swear afterwards that they saw me standing there where the ropes for the sand bag pulleys were rigged. It would simply be a tragic accident at a most inopportune time.

As Robert drolled on, I tugged at knots; calculating angles and the rate of velocity when propelled by gravity and the subsequent impact force generated, those kinds of things.

The sandbag fell.

Seems I never was very good at mathematical problems.

The sandbag hit Burt Wigglesworth the MC square on the crown of his head, flattened his skull into his neck, then squished him like a bag of suet across the boards.

ANOTHER SLICE OF PIE By Vallon Jackson

Back by popular demand (at least one person asked), the further adventures of our feckless Wile .E. Coyote killer...

Another Slice of Pie

My wife, Roxy, died in a head on collision with a speeding train.
Actually, she probably died a couple hours earlier when I smacked her round the head with an iron bar because she didn’t come round during the time I parked her car on the level crossing and waited for the train to arrive.
Then she was dead and so were about two dozen others on the train when it derailed and went to pieces all along the line. Sadly, I missed killing my work mate, Robert, who should’ve been on that damn train. He out-foxed me, but he wasn’t going to get away so lightly next time.
I’m not a bad man by nature, but it was Robert and Roxy’s affair that tipped me over the edge and turned me into this killer. Turns out they’d been having an affair behind my back for years. I heard the whispering after Roxy’s funeral, the little nods and winks from the congregation when Robert stood next to me at her grave and laid his arm over my shoulder. The facetious, smug son of a bitch said he was sorry for my loss. He’d lost too, but his were crocodile tears.
He wasn’t bothered by her passing; he had his fingers in lots of little pies.
Latest little sweet pastry he’s been knocking off is Chantelle down at the hairdressers on the high street. He even has an appointment booked in: regular as clockwork. 2 pm every other Thursday.
Today’s Thursday and it’s 13.55.
He left the office earlier than normal. I gave him a few minutes so that he wouldn’t spot me following him, then I made my way into town and stood on the steep incline opposite Chantelle’s salon, ‘Hair of Superiority’. I couldn’t see inside but I didn’t really have to. The Closed for Lunch sign had gone up but there was movement behind the smoked glass window. Him and Chantelle getting jiggy with it.
I didn’t plan to kill him today but I was offered an opportunity I couldn’t ignore.
The huge UPS van was left idling on the hill while the driver ducked out and headed off with a bundle under his arm. Them guys are in and out so fast that they never bother locking the door.
I leaned in, pulled my sleeve over my hand, and then disengaged the hand brake.
I watched distractedly as the van began a ponderous roll backwards. Then it picked up speed and it was a rolling battering ram. I stepped back into a doorway even as a brown streak shot past in pursuit, the driver shouting out in dismay.
He didn’t get to the truck in time. It crashed right through the front of Chantelle’s and didn’t stop until it rammed right through to the back wall. There’d only been a couple of brief shrieks but they’d curtailed the moment the truck had come to a halt.
Down on the high street the driver was holding his head in his hands. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod...
Poor bugger, I could almost feel sorry for him. He was going to catch all the shit for this. But I couldn’t help smiling as well.
Other people were descending on the scene.
Some braver souls went inside the wrecked shop, but came out almost as quickly, faces ashen. One of them was sick on the pavement. I walked down and stood beside the vomiting man.
What happened? I asked him as I patted his back.
They’re dead. Flattened. God help ‘em. Then he was sick again.
I muttered consoling sounds, to him. Then turned away.
Just as Robert came out of Charmaine’s Salon, 'Superior Hair', three stores along.

SAFE by Vallon Jackson

Just one of them random thoughts that come now and again...

SAFE

Maureen was street savvy enough to know that she was in danger.
She had been warned about walking home from the nightclub, dressed in her micro-skirt and boob tube. But all the other girls were the same: why should she go out dressed like Miss Jean Brodie? You’ll attract the wrong kind of men, her mother had scolded her, that’s why. Well, the wrong kind were the right kind in her estimation. She wouldn’t end up in a ditch like her mother warned, she’d end up having her night out paid for.
It had been a good night. Up until the point where she’d went down on her knees in the back alley behind the club. After that her beau had suddenly realised he had to be somewhere else – when he found out that she was only fifteen and not nineteen as he’d thought. The git hadn’t even sorted her some taxi money.
She set off walking. Grabbed a kebab full of crinkly salad and all that red hot stuff she hated. She left a trail of bits like Hansel and Gretel, though the trail wouldn’t lead her back to where she wanted to be.
To get home, she could go the long way round or she could cut through the housing schemes. Rough neighbourhood, or not, it cut out almost a mile. A mile less in high heels won her over.
But now she felt that she was being watched. She heard the occasional scuff of shoes as someone followed her. Caught sight of a shadow ducking into an alley when she glanced back.
She felt in her handbag for something to use as a weapon. Brush, lippy, Durex, not a whole lot more. She hadn't thought to bring her steel comb with the long handle before leaving home.Too busy supping her dad's stash of QC for that.
She’d seen a programme on TV about women’s self-defence. Aim for the vulnerable spots, she remembered. Well, she’d already done that once tonight, she giggled. Better advice was to not make a victim of herself. Walk tall and in command. Look like you mean business. Easier said than done with too many vodka’s on board. If you’re afraid, go to a house with the lights on. Knock on the door and ask for the occupants to call the police.
She heard a clatter, jumping in fright. Quickly looking around she was sure she saw someone slink back into the darkness.
She looked around. Where the hell was she anyway? Couldn’t remember the name of the road. Was it Cornwell or Crumble Street. Something like that!
There was a light on at number 25.
She walked quickly to the door, noticing a spade propped against the wall. The occupant looked like a keen gardener. Probably an older man or woman. SAFE.
Maureen knocked, heard movement from inside.
The woman who answered the door was frumpy. Dark pudding basin hair and round glasses.
“Help you?” she asked.
Maureen glanced back over her shoulder.
“There’s someone following me. Would it be okay to call the police for me?”
“Come in, come in,” said the woman. Moira saw that the house was a little shabby. Looked like there were kids inside. SAFE.
The woman ushered her into a living room and there was a dark, wavy-headed man sitting in front of a late night movie. “Fred,” said the woman. “This poor girl is being followed. Go out and see who’s hanging around while I phone the police.”
“Okay,” the man said, winking at Maureen. He had a jovial, almost comical look. A bit like a monkey. “But I wouldn’t bother phoning the police. It’s probably nothing. Just some of the local kids trying to frighten you.”
“Probably,” Maureen admitted.
“I’ll go and take a look. You just sit here and Rose will look after you.”
Rose smiled at her.
Lovely folk, Maureen thought. She didn’t care what people said about the estate, there were still nice people around. Especially here at...ah, that’s it! 25 Cromwell Street.
SAFE.

CRIME OF THE CENTURY By Vallon Jackson

Here's a little flash fiction for you about a highly trained detective and his hunt for a master criminal...

Crime Of The Century

Leticia Wiesel could fool everyone else but not Detective Simmons.

He knew her type. Her slight build and elfin features, complete with big baby blue eyes twinkling behind her spectacles, gave her the innocent look that people associated with kindly grandmothers. She could come and go about her business with impunity, and never have a suspicious eye cast her way. But Simmons was too good a detective for that.

He knew her for what she was: A career criminal who’d avoided prosecution only because no one suspected that she could do any harm. She was slippery and cunning, years and years of experience behind her making her a master of her craft. A professional.

Simmons had been after her for months now. The tricky devil had been too subtle on too many occasions to count, and had until now continued with her nefarious criminality. But he had her now. Bang to rights, as the saying goes.

He watched her, blending in where she wouldn’t notice him. Waiting for the final step that would incriminate her fully in the crime.

She was canny: eyes darting, searching for surveillance, mindful of anyone who might be offering her more than passing notice. Her body language – though too subtle for one untrained to notice – said that she was only seconds away from committing the crime. She was a professional, but so was Simmons when it came to reading a criminal’s intention.

He could stop her now before the crime was complete. But he wanted her too much for that. He watched as she took one final look around.

Simmons felt the adrenalin bubbling.

Then the deed was done, and Simmons felt his knees weaken at the realisation that finally Leticia Wiesel would be uncovered as the terror she was.

Freakin’ A! You’ve got her, Simmons!

All thoughts of disguise or subtlety gone now, Simmons raced after Wiesel, pulling out his ID.
Wiesel felt him coming, spinning round and staring up at the big man holding out his badge like it was a handgun.

She didn't try to escape. Too coy and sure of herself for that.

“What can I do for you, young man?” she asked sweetly.

Simmons sneered down at her. Her sweet, little old lady act didn’t work on him. No way.

Full of vim, he said, “I’d like you to come back into the store, madam. I believe you have a block of butter that you haven’t paid for.”

SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Vallon Jackson

Here's a horror tale to get the slightly darker themes rolling. But it's also a crime story and (hopefully) thrilling...

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The fireworks went off in his skull when Lucy Chalmers showed Gerry Brook the body in her car. It was a man. He had a single wound at the centre of his skull, as though some trepanning enthusiast had gone at him with a hammer drill.
Outside of a hospital bed, it was the first corpse Gerry had ever seen. The dead man was an anomaly that his confused senses couldn’t make sense of.
“Is he dead?”
Lucy blinked her large blue eyes at him. “Yes, Gerry. He’s been shot in the head. What do you think?”
Moving closer, Gerry got a whiff of the blood that was turning the seat cover coppery. It was the same smell that wafts from the steel bins at the rear of the butcher shop where he worked. There was a slow plop as semi-jellified blood dripped into the growing pool in the foot well.
“Who shot him?” Gerry laid a hand on the open window frame, then snatched it away as though avoiding a snake’s fangs. Fingerprints, he thought. Not good to place his fingerprints at the scene. He didn’t want the blame for this!
Lucy opened her handbag and showed Gerry a gun stashed between her Radley purse and the other indescribable objects that only women carry.
“You, Lucy?”
“Yes, me,” Lucy said. She gave him the kind of look reserved especially for him in these moments of supreme idiocy. “You know that I had no other choice.”
“But…the police?”
“The police wouldn’t help me. You know that. I went to them and they thought I was nuts!”
“I meant that the police will now be coming after you.”
“Not if we get rid of the body,” Lucy told him.
“We? You want me to…” Gerry shook his head wildly. “No way! I’m not getting involved in a murder!”
“This isn’t murder, Gerry. He was a monster. A thing. I’ve just stopped something very evil.”
“But how could you know that?”
“You’ve seen the news haven’t you, Gerry? All those bodies turning up with their throats ripped out and drained of all their blood?” She pointed at the dead man. “What do you think was responsible for that?”
Gerry peered into the car. A slow ooze of blood welled out of the hole in the man’s skull like something inside was pushing its way out. “But what if you’re wrong, Lucy? What if he’s just a man?”
Lucy ignored him. “We must see to things properly. Immolation’s best.”
“You want to burn him?”
“To ashes. But we must decapitate him first. Bury his skull in salt so he can never come back.”
Gerry rubbed trembling fingers over his face. “Shouldn’t we ram a stake through his heart as well?”
“That’s just nonsense from the movies.”
“Immolation and decapitation isn’t? It looks to me like a bullet through his brain did the trick.”
“That has only killed the vessel that carries his spirit. To finish him once and for all we most force a disincorporation of them both. Otherwise he’ll just come back in another body.”
Gerry dropped his hands by his sides and blinked at her. He’d never heard the term disincorporation before. Lucy wasn’t even sure that she had used the correct term. “I heard that once: something to do with sundering the flesh from the soul. Could have been incorporeal…”
Gerry gawped at her.
“Any way, it doesn’t matter. We have to get on and do this before nightfall.”
“If he’s what you say he is, how could he be out in the day time? Shouldn’t he have burst into flame or something?”
“That’s another myth from the movies. So is turning into a bat, or becoming smoke so he can get through a crack under a door.”
Gerry looked at the dead man. His blued lips were peeled back in a grimace of horror. “I suppose the sharp teeth are made up as well?”
Lucy tapped a manicured fingernail against one of her own incisors. “We all have teeth made for cutting, Gerry. They don’t have to be any sharper than our own to break the skin.”
Gerry tested his own teeth with his tongue. He nipped himself a little too hard. He pointed at a crucifix around the man’s neck. “What about that?”
“They originate from all faiths, Gerry,” Lucy leaned down to study the cross hanging just beneath the dead man’s chin. “Maybe he was Buddhist or something.”
Gerry wasn’t known for his sharp mind, but even he twisted his face at Lucy’s logic.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucy said. “He’s the same one who has been following me. Every where I went he did, too. He was staring at me like he was sizing me up. He was planning his attack I’m sure, but I’ve stopped him.”
Gerry stood alongside the car. “I can see his reflection in the mirror, Lucy.”
“More myth,” she said. “Now are you going to help me or not?”
“Yes, I’m going to help you. It’s just that I’m frightened, that’s all.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Gerry. Not if we disincorporate him like I said.”
Gerry bunched his hands in his pockets. He fumbled with a heavy object that tugged down the front of his hooded top. “That’s why you asked me to bring a meat cleaver, huh?”
“You’re a butcher by trade. Cutting it up should be no different than a side of pork.”
Gerry glanced around quickly. The alley they were in was deserted but the brooding eyes of windows stared down on them. “You want me to do it here?”
“Of course not. We’ll have to take him somewhere more remote.”
Gerry squirmed. “You want me to drive that car? It’s all bloody.”
“We can shower afterward,” Lucy said. She gave him the other look she reserved for him. “Together if you’d like.”
***
A man’s corpse proved not so different from a side of pork when Gerry got down to business. Once the head was removed and the clothing stripped away, the man’s slightly rotund body, all pink and hairless did bring to mind the countless pigs he’d dismembered over the years. Lucy saw to the head, taking it away and burying it in a hole that she filled with rock salt from a container they found at the side of the road. The salt was for gritting the road surface when the weather grew frosty, but it did equally well in salting the earth.
Gerry concentrated on chopping the man to manageable chunks of meat and bone. Then he dumped them in an old oil drum, sloshed them with petrol and threw in a burning rag. Black oil and a smell not unlike cooked pork fat surrounded him.
That done, he turned and saw Lucy walking back towards him. How she managed to remain spotless after carrying the bloody skull on its stump of neck amazed him. He was splashed with gore all down the front of his jacket and he was scarlet to the elbows. He was also feeling a little pleased with himself. Kind of empowered. Lucy made him feel like that. He was also as randy as hell.
“You should dump your clothing,” Lucy said. “Throw them on the fire and get rid of the evidence.”
“You want me to strip right here?” Gerry’s breath quickened exponentially.
“Why not? No one is here to see us.”
“But the shower?”
“It can wait.”
Gerry tore at his clothing while Lucy watched him coyly, the tip of her tongue caressing one eye-tooth.
***
Afterwards Gerry wanted a cigarette.
Standing bare in the forest glade, the smoking oil drum throwing heat on his sweat-slicked skin, he looked down on Lucy. She was as naked as he, lying in the grass and looking up at him with her deep gaze. Her clothes lay in a loose pile beside his discarded underwear and amongst them was her handbag. He could see the butt of the gun, her Radley purse and a pack of JPS poking out the semi-open bag. She’d given him cigarettes before when he’d wanted one and he reached for the pack. Beneath the pack was what looked like a man’s wallet.
“What’s this?” he asked. Lucy just watched him steadily.
Gerry teased out the wallet. “Is this his? We should throw it on the fire.”
Lucy sat up slowly, watching as Gerry’s curiosity got the better of him and he opened the wallet.
“Oh, fuck!”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” Lucy said.
“But…but…he was a police man?”
“They come from all faiths,” Lucy reminded him, “and all kinds of backgrounds. It makes no difference that he was a police man.”
Gerry stared at the warrant card with the man’s identification and photograph. Detective Sergeant Crowley. “This is the same officer you said you spoke to when you went to the police station. The same man who you said brushed you off when you said a vampire was responsible for the killings.”
Lucy nodded. “He was looking at me funnily.”
Gerry's jaw dropped open and he turned slowly to look at the flaming oil drum. “You killed an innocent man, Lucy. And I helped you get rid of him.”
Lucy stood up silently and took a step towards him. She reached out and placed a palm on his shoulder.
“He was suspicious of me, Gerry. He followed me. I had to stop him.”
Gerry spun around and stared at her with wide eyes. “You shot him, Lucy! Where did you get the gun?”
“I took it off him.”
“You took it off him?” Crowley had been a big man, trained and used to dealing with violent offenders. Lucy was a slip in comparison.
“It was easy,” she said. “He thought that all he had to do was wave that stupid crucifix at me. He had more faith in Jesus than he did his Glock. So I showed him what was more powerful.”
Gerry was caught in that stunned immobility that comes with terror.
“It’s true, Gerry. Vampires do exist. And DS Crowley knew it.”
Gerry shook his head wildly.
“Of course, he didn’t know all that Hollywood stuff is just nonsense,” Lucy went on. “Vampires aren’t supernatural beings, just a different strain of humanity. Crosses don’t work, sunlight doesn’t burn, they do cast reflections and they have nothing at all to do with bats. The only thing that Bram Stoker got right was their lust for blood. They must drink to live. Through a hole in the neck or from a bullet wound in a skull, it doesn’t really matter.”
Gerry tried to step away from her but felt himself rooted to the spot.
“Oh, that’s something the movies have got right,” Lucy said, “the vampire’s ability to mesmerize a victim. I’ve been doing that to you since the moment we met.”
Gerry wanted to shout but his mouth wouldn’t work. His eyelids widened as Lucy took a step towards him.
“Plus, about the teeth?” she said. “I lied.”
The last thing that Gerry saw was the widening of her mouth, her glistening fangs lengthening as she launched herself at his exposed throat.
*

PIE by Vallon Jackson

Another short crime story...

PIE

Like the 07:25 West Line train I went off the rails.
I didn’t realise but my life was on a steep slope onto jagged rocks and I wasn’t even trying to climb back up.
Now everything was a mangled wreck, and like the shattered train and the bodies inside, there was no way of putting it back together again.
Roxy and I had been married for almost seven years and I thought that things were great between us. She sure put on a good face whenever I was around her. She said that she loved me more than ever and I believed her. The first I knew of her infidelity was when I came home early from a business trip. I was going to surprise her, but instead it was me that got the surprise. It was only afternoon but the bedroom curtains were closed and my business partner, Robert Armstrong’s car was parked outside.
A brave man would have gone right inside and confronted the two of them. But I didn’t. I hid myself in the lonning across from the house and waited for two hours until Robert came out of the front door. He looked flushed and freshly showered, his ginger hair darker than usual. Roxy stood in the doorway and waved and she looked flushed and freshly showered too. She was wearing the silk negligee I bought her for our sixth wedding anniversary.
I gave it two more hours then went inside. Roxy kissed me and asked how the trip had gone. I told her I was tired and just wanted to go to bed. She came with me and we lay side by side. She tried to tuck in beside me but I moved away: I could smell his stink on her.
I didn’t sleep. I suspect that Roxy didn’t either but we didn’t speak about it.
Next day at work I saw Robert. I wanted to smash him in the face with something heavy. But I didn’t. Robert was a big guy and he’d have eaten me alive. Instead, I told him all about the business trip and how I’d won the contract we’d been after. He congratulated me. I asked him what he’d been busy with while I was away. Just a little project I’ve been looking at for a while, he said. You know me: I like my fingers in a few different pies.
Yeah, well that was my pie he was dipping into.
As the weeks passed, it seemed like Robert was wangling it so I made more and more trips into the capital. He had other things he wanted to get on with. And he trusted me to do the right thing. The bastard.
Each time I came home, I could smell him on the sheets and on my wife. I even checked the plughole in the shower and I know as sure as hell that I’m not red down there. The curly hair wasn’t Roxy’s either, for some reason she’d taken to shaving herself bare. It wasn’t a preference of mine. Robert was a fan, though.
On the eve of my seventh wedding anniversary I hit bottom. I came home and found Robert’s car in my drive this time. He was moving in, trying to take everything that belonged to me – even my frigging parking space.
Again I waited in the lonning across the way. Waited until he’d gone. He didn’t stay late because he had an early start the next morning. I knew because I’d made his travel arrangements. I booked him on the train because he liked a drink after business was concluded and couldn’t drive back.
I didn’t sleep again that night. Roxy slept like a baby, though. We got up early because we were going out to celebrate seven glorious years together. We took Roxy’s car but I drove. Roxy wasn’t capable, considering I’d crushed her face with an iron bar.
We arrived at the crossing at 07.25. The West Line train would be pulling out of the station a few miles away and picking up speed as it hurtled toward its final destination. It gave me just long enough to park Roxy’s car astride the line, and then manoeuvre her across into the driving position. I knocked the car out of gear, then revved the throttle so that the engine became flooded with fuel. I was clever, I made sure that the seat was far enough forward and that the mirror was tilted for Roxy, and that I cleaned my fingerprints from the steering wheel. I made sure that her prints were the last ones on the electric window button and on the door handles. Then I smacked her face hard against the steering wheel to make a good blood spatter on the windscreen.
I stood and watched until the 07.25 rocketed into view. The barriers dropped, but they were useless being either side of Roxy’s car. When the train hit, her car went to pieces and so did Roxy. All my precautions were probably for nothing, but I wasn’t about to take the chance some sharp-eyed CSI investigator would see through the tragedy. The train didn’t fare much better. It caromed off the rails, rolling against an embankment and splitting apart. The carriages concertinaed and some went airborne. The wreckage and the dead were strewn across the fields. No one was moving.
I was just about to turn away when my phone bleeped.
It was a voice mail message from Robert.
Meeting’s cancelled, he said, something more important has come up and I’ve had to stay home. Sorry about the inconvenience. I guess it’s too late to get a refund on the train tickets, huh? You know me: I’ve got my fingers in too many pies at once.