Resolution (The CRIME series), page 3
You had taken your bikes, you and your best friend, Les Brodie, down the Water of Leith walkway, like you did most Saturday mornings. That ritual you had: getting up before the dog walkers. The sun was already climbing and it was really hot. You could feel it on your legs, especially your shins. You both wore khaki shorts and you had a white T-shirt with a maroon heart on it, while Les had one that was reverbing brown and green stripes, which made you feel sick to look at when you’d drunk too much juice. You were glad of the shade from the overhead trees as you walked on, now pushing the bicycles, as the path was too uneven to cycle. In any case, Les had gotten a flat tyre earlier from a puncture, and you had debated about turning back but decided against it because some big lads were meant to have put a barry Tarzan swing up on the other side of the railway tunnel on that disused single-track line from the defunct Caledonian station to Currie. The trail was practically deserted as you got to the dank Victorian passageway, with its towering, foreboding brick face covered in a rash of ivy.
That impenetrable darkness ahead.
Les and you did what you always did: gave each other a wee look to show you werenae feart, then edged the bikes and yourselves into the gloaming. You couldn’t see much, especially as you got further in. You’d look above, at those weak, orangey-yellow overhead lights, which showed up the wet gravel under your feet. Then, at the middle of the tunnel, that dreaded blind spot, where no light at either end was visible.
The voices … and then …
And then his face … that hair … those snidey feeble, manipulative, cruel eyes … cunt was thaire … cunt was thaire … then what, then what the fuck …
Nothing.
Why can’t you see?
You were running; no, you were on your Raleigh, cycling. He was coming after you … Les was still in there with the other two.
He was trying to pull you back in …
But after the tunnel …
What happened after the tunnel, when you got help from those walkers and went back with them? As you got there, you saw the broken ghost of Les emerge into the light, pushing his bike.
Nae polis.
That was what he commanded through his pain.
Nae polis.
You went hame.
Where you saw your ma.
Your ma and Uncle Jock.
You came in with your precious blue Raleigh, ready to tell her that something had happened. Something bad. But then, coming downstairs: the family friend, Jock Allardyce. The fucker looked at you and said something like: — Aye, pal.
Your mum was in the kitchen. She had been cutting vegetables on a chopping board, and started washing up. — Jock’s toilet is broken; he’s just been using ours, she told you, as she looked around anxiously from you to him. You thought she was looking at you as if you had done something wrong. But it was her who had done something wrong. — What’s wrong, son, you okay?
— Nowt, you mumbled, heading back outside. Home was now different. It had changed in an imperceptible way. The light in the kitchen seemed blinding. The sound of the dishes clattering together as your mum washed them, like duelling swords. There was no refuge here.
You went down to the shops. Wondered if you could get a bus. Somewhere. Anywhere. You walked around until it got dark and you became scared, worrying you would somehow run into those monsters from the tunnel again. Maybe they would try to get you into a car. You backed away from every motor that slowly passed you on that main road, terrified if there was a group of men in one.
When you finally got back home again, your mum, dad, baby brother Stuart and big sister Jackie were eating at the table. — Late for yir tea again, Raymond, your dad was laughing. — These gannets have got most ay the tatties. C’mon, son, fill yir boots!
You didn’t know it then, and you would only find out after your dad’s death years later, that your mother had been filling her boots with Jock Allardyce.
You left. Went up to your room. You never went to bed early but this time you did. Kept the light on in case the monsters came back.
And now the monster is back …
6
The Monster
Get up off the floor. You’re making a cunt of yourself. You can rise. You can stand. Do it. You are a man. Not a wee boy. You don’t know it’s him. It was forty fucking years ago! Get a grip. Your memory is playing tricks on you: too much nonce hunting. This guy is no old lag … that fucking beasts’ register … first on paper, then on the screen. All those faces: a sea of perverts, some confused, others knowing, all fucking deviants.
Ray Lennox has no awareness of his legs, just the giddiness in his head and nausea in his abdomen, but he is suddenly standing. The big smile he forces at Carmel feels like nothing less than pathetic, idiotic resistance. Yet he sucks in air and enquires as to what she’s drinking. But no response; her head whiplashes away following a distracting shoulder tap from someone in her group of colleagues.
And a shaky-legged Lennox walks past the man, the monster. He can only force stolen glimpses at it, each one slapping more dizziness into his head, making the sickness soar through him, hammering his teeth together.
Get a fucking grip.
It is chatting to somebody else now.
He tugs in a breath, and tags Carmel’s arm gently. — Hey you.
— Oh, Ray … so you’re back in our line of sight!
— Damn laces, Lennox looks at his shoes, — always working loose. Going to hit the bar, what are you for?
— Red wine, you select, but not Merlot, Carmel says. He smiles in forced lightness, then a chilling blast: sabotaging, rending, as he nods at the monster. It is impossible to avoid each other’s eyes. The brief acknowledgement is reciprocated by a cold, tight grin but not one of recognition. Yet the full fat lips have registered something in Lennox.
But I was just a boy. Why would he identify that young kid as me?
Lennox permits himself another glance at the monster in passing. It has turned back to Carmel.
It has the puffed-frog under-chin that many men develop with age. Its eyes dart in a startled way that hints at timidity, before blazing into a rapaciousness that intimidates. Lennox knows that one of them is an act, a pose. In a successful businessman, it could be either.
There’s nae mistaking that reptilian profile. A small tongue, playing on those tight lips. The beady eye, with those thick brows. Tunnel tunnel tunnel …
Carmel leaves her company and follows Lennox over to the bar, just as he’s caught the pressured barmaid’s attention. As he orders two glasses of Shiraz, he feels perspiration on his collar and down his back. Picks one glass up. Hand shakes so badly, has to lower it to the marble bar top without taking a sip in case she notices.
— This mine? Carmel’s crimson nails click around the glass, like a fairground arcade claw grabbing a trinket, raising it from the polished surface.
— Aye.
— Be honest: you’re not too bored?
— No … not at all. Funny though, and I didn’t want to make a thing of it in front of your mates, but I came over a bit queasy there: like I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me, and his ticklish cough is not contrived. It came back at times like these.
— Oh, how horrible. You okay now?
— Yes, the worst of it seems to have passed, Lennox sings, fighting a low asthmatic croak as he looks back towards the monster.
Why here? Who the fuck is he?
Another Geiger counter surge in Lennox’s heartbeat, as a choking rage wells up in his chest. He heaves in some air. Now he feels compromised; a fraud. All those years in Serious Crimes, trying to interview people who would be in a similar state as he is at this moment: undermined by a visceral fear and rage. Nothing prepared you for it. It was crazy. It was a drug. A poison. — Who … who is that guy you were talking to?
— Mathew Cardingworth; a very big patron of the university and of my department in particular. He’s funding our new chemical research facility, and a big project I’m heading up, Carmel purrs in appreciation.
Lennox nods. Recalls that Carmel had driven him past the new laboratories’ development site, en route to the university, near the Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club stadium.
— Very well known in these parts. He’s a local businessman. Owns this place, also has an auction room and a share in several nightclubs. But his real wealth comes from property development. He’s absolutely minted, she contends in discernible respect, even awe.
Lennox darts his tongue across his lips, buoyed by this knowledge. The monster has a name: Mathew Cardingworth.
It is real. It can be hurt. It can feel pain. And now it will feel all the fucking pain of the world. You will see to that.
Lennox looks over at Cardingworth again. Feels his body in revolt against himself: the sweating, the increased heartbeat and, most of all, the jaw spasms. Fights it down.
Fear is no longer an option: you arenae the wee laddie in the tunnel now. This is a pathetic old has-been. You have him; he’s yours now. Stalk him. Hunt him down slowly. Savour every fucking second of this forthcoming revenge – you’ve waited long enough! Now he’s here!
Suddenly, Ray Lennox has never felt so excited or alive. Bells ring in his head. Chemicals surge through his body. This is stronger than new love. This is his quest. His hunger. His destiny. And it has finally fallen into his lap. His gaze beams on Mathew Cardingworth.
Will people not notice? Stay cool.
Cardingworth heads off in the direction of the toilets.
— Are you sure you’re okay, Ray? Carmel asks.
— Yes, just going to take a leak.
Carmel nods as Lennox follows Mathew Cardingworth’s retreating figure to the back of the room and into the toilets. He stands two latrines away. Looks ahead. How easy to smash Cardingworth now, the element of surprise over an out-of-shape man, probably in his early sixties.
His shoulders are big and broad but his gut hangs over those scabby nonce genitals he now huds in his hand …
A crimson mist leaks from the back of Lennox’s brain into his vision. Obliterating this monster is essential. But it is also insufficient. This beast has to hurt. Like the one in Miami. This is my chance. It has to feel so much pain that it will welcome the respite of death.
But this is self-indulgent psycho shit. Stay calm. Breathe. You must think this through.
Lennox knows his reaction means a hugely significant something, but he still has to ascertain what. Those blurred faces in the tunnel. Three men in that long, stone passageway of torture. Which one was Cardingworth?
He hears the businessman expel the last of his urine. Peripherally watches him shake out his penis … was that the cock that I was made to … Hears the monster zip up. As it moves behind him, the hairs on his neck rise. He feels dizzy. It is too much. His overheated brain peppered with the brutal impulse to destroy. He has to explode with violence or he will pass out, suffer a seizure … His mouth cloying with thin metallic gunge. He remembers Miami … the similar scenario when such a creature was at his mercy, one he didn’t pass up. Then the Lollipop Man with Ginger Rogers … nonce justice … smash him, smash the cunt … no, it’s too soon … He heaves in a long breath.
No. Fight this. Think!
It can’t be Cardingworth. There’s a strong resemblance between him and one of the men in the tunnel, but it was forty years ago!
You were no more than a bairn, so he would have been a young guy …
This man, this strutting, foppish, old coxcomb who drips wealth and success, he surely isn’t one of those semi-destitute jailbirds who stank of cheap drink and old cigarettes. But why this dark, consecrating, visceral reaction? Why?
There was a younger one! What did he do?
Cardingworth the Monster Cardingworth the Monster washes his, its hands. Its dirty hands. Hot compressed air hisses from a machine. Its rasp persists as the toilet door squeaks shut. Lennox lets go of the breath he didn’t know he was holding on to. The piss. First trickling, then gratefully exploding, from his strained bladder.
When he’s done, Lennox heads back to the bar. Stands in a quiet corner. Observes Carmel once again in deep conversation with some friends. Colleagues. They have an air about them: slightly smug, yet unsatisfied. Knowing features tight, well-honed gym-and-diet bodies comfortable, though less than relaxed. But where is Cardingworth? He spies the monster just as he gets out his phone to dial George. At ease, Mathew Cardingworth works the room, gabby and loose with the patrons. They all seem to be his people. He is popular. Influential. — Raymond … George’s voice is tinged with impatience.
— You busy?
— You could say that.
— I’ll keep it short.
— Please do.
— What do you know about Mathew Cardingworth?
— Hold on … and he senses that George is moving out of somebody’s earshot. — He’s very wealthy, a bit of a local success story.
— Is he bent in any way?
— Other than the usual way of the rich and successful? Haven’t heard anything but I’ll check.
— Thanks, George.
There is a brief pause on the line. — What the suffering fuck is all this about, Raymond Lennox?
— Something or nothing. Hopefully nothing.
— I’m really not liking the sound of it.
— Try the sound of this then: lunch at the Ivy on me tomorrow. You killed it in Eastbourne this morning.
— Hmmpf. Twelve thirty for cocktails at the bar, table for 1 p.m., George snorts, before hanging up, but Lennox feels his business partner’s satisfaction radiate through the airwaves.
As he slips his iPhone into his pocket, Carmel approaches. — Angela called: she’s running late. Shall I get us another drink?
Lennox looks blankly at her then glances over at the monster. Once more the energy had discernibly changed. Cardingworth is again an other-worldly force. The reptilian head takes in everything, the bearing that of an untouchable emperor. But then … it isn’t like that. Cardingworth seems to be completely engaged with everyone he converses with. A shiver runs up Lennox’s backbone, seeming to dissolve vertebrae on its journey north, as that scared wee boy from the tunnel claws his way to the vanguard of his psyche. This part of him will always jostle to the fore, until he exterminates that beast. Ray Lennox nurses his wrath, burying his fear deep inside him, as a blistering rage wells up to the surface.
— Ray, are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting a little peculiar. Has the intrinsic emotion and raw sexuality of the occasion, she looks around the room of scientists, — just overwhelmed you? Carmel’s voice pulls him back into the present.
He needs to get out of here.
Later. You know who he is. Take it easy. He’s going nowhere.
Looking pointedly at her, he nuzzles, whispering, into her ear. — The truth is that you are turning me on so much. Just watching you flit around, so cool and sexy, it makes me want to take you home right now and shag your brains out.
Carmel’s harsh, evaluating look makes him fear chronic misjudgement. Then she delves into the purse in her bag, producing a ticket and handing it to him. Her throaty voice drops an octave. — Get the coats. I’ll join you outside in a minute; I just have a few quick goodbyes to say.
Happy to leave the bar and Cardingworth, Lennox retrieves the garments and orders the Uber. In the lobby, his lungs start operating normally. Carmel appears moments later.
The ride back has their mouths fastened on to each other.
You will be a man, not a boy, you will fuck her, you will fuck your younger girlfriend to your mutual satisfaction. The pair of you will walk the streets, dripping your smug, smooth sexuality. Men will envy you, think of you as a stud, as a player … like Cardingworth …
No!
You are nothing like that fucking monster! That perverted rapist of young children! How many more? How many more frightened kids fell prey to that vile creature … to those monsters?
But is Cardingworth really the guy in the tunnel? Plenty people have that lopsided grin, that oval-shaped head, those brows …
Those much-studied mugshots of sex offenders; all of them flashing now in Lennox’s mind, imprints blurred to the point of meaninglessness …
You need to look at those bastards again! If Cardingworth isn’t the tunnel man, he is somebody …
They come up for air. Carmel curves a brow. — You really do deserve a good seeing-to, after putting up with all that shop talk.
— No worries, it was interesting, and he fishes, — It looks like things are getting pretty busy at your work.
— It’s crunch time for the research facility.
— This seems a big deal. What’s it all about?
— My research involves using synthetic complements-slash-substitutes for fly ash, which we get from coal. I’m developing these to make construction tech more energy-efficient and green, but we’re way behind China. That’s why Mat Cardingworth’s land deal for the custom-built research facility into the new tech materials is vital.
When they arrive at Sussex Square, in spite of his big declaration, Lennox is now uncertain as to whether, in his preoccupied state, he can fuck anybody’s brains out but his own. Then Carmel’s hand is on his cock and it’s thickening and hardening. They quickly conjoin and their activity goes from gentle to frenetic. He hears sounds, high torturous bleats that he thinks manufactured by her, but to the alarm of them both, they are coming from him.
The subject is broached in the climactic aftermath, as they lie in each other’s arms. — Ray, you okay?
— Better than that, he gasps. — Pretty much blew me away.
And it was no lie. This thirty-eight-year-old woman was a powerhouse in bed. The force of hormones and personality dictated that this would go on for some time. That was a delicious and intimidating thought.
Surely George’s Viagra supply will need raiding soon. But behave: you’ve only known the woman a few weeks!
Right now, though, Ray Lennox’s main impediment to real romance is, as always, what is going inside his own head.
Cardingworth. The monster is here. And you will slay it. And the others.
