Resolution (The CRIME series), page 30
— What’s up? Knowles grins. — Looks like a wee science experiment with the ex-cop and the chemistry bird got out of hand. He looks to Mona. — Happens though, toots, ay, and he waves the beaker. She shrinks back, horrified eyes not leaving the vessel he holds.
— Welcome to the acid house. Knowles smiles at Lennox. — The boys were never working for those dozy hoors, and his gaze whips to Phil. — Poor Ralphie should have been joining us. He’s in bits that he couldnae make it!
Marco laughs nervously, looking grimly at a broken Mona, confirming his double treachery. — Sorry, sweetheart, but this is more than business. Don’t give a shit about Cardingworth, but Daz and I go back a long way.
This is sensed by Lennox as a declaration to Knowles as much as to them, and that Marco is terrified of him. Perhaps even silent Balaclava Phil is. Then Chris Knowles walks in and Mona wraps her arms around herself. Tries to speak but no words will come out.
Lennox assesses the odds. Doesn’t fancy them.
Darren Knowles catches the evaluating glance. Reading his mind, he advances a few steps, as Phil swaggers towards Lennox, confident manner indicative he expects no opposition. Lennox backs away, towards the window. — Two dozy hoors and a semi-cripple against four, Knowles’s east coast Caledonian tones are now more pronounced, — I think ye might just have –
Silenced.
Lennox, insect speed belying broken frame, lunges towards the advancing Phil. In one blinding motion, grapples him by testicles and throat, charges and hurls him screaming through the rotten-framed glass window. A banshee shriek, followed by nothing.
All eyes gape in wide shock at the broken space.
Then they turn to Lennox. — Against three, he manages.
It has the desired effect of underscoring the intimidating awe. But even with the adrenaline rushes unleashed by his sudden, decisive act of violence, the effort of transitioning from being perceived as the puniest to the most dangerous person in the room makes Ray Lennox’s entire body throb in pain.
A bug-eyed Darren Knowles quickly matches his purposefulness, springing forward, his arm’s crook choke-locking the still shocked Carmel. The fat-bodied, narrow-necked beaker is extended in his other hand. — Easy, ya cunt … he warns the advancing Lennox. — Concentrated sulphuric acid makes a mess of a pretty face, but you know that, ay? He looks to Mona with a cold grin.
— Don’t hurt her. Please, Lennox begs.
— FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PRICK, Carmel screeches out, twisting in Darren Knowles’s grip.
He tips the beaker a little, balancing the muzzle over her cheek.
Lennox is frozen to the spot. Silently prays for Carmel to stop struggling.
She does.
— That’s better, Chemistry Bird, Knowles rasps. — Maybe just a wee drip at first, tootsie pie, and to Ray Lennox he now sounds like a snide Scottish grandmother, — see what it does –
— Please don’t, Lennox implores again.
Chris, manic grin, cheerleads his father with gusto, — Do it, Dad! Sizzle the farking bitch!
Then Carmel’s hand propels upwards in a devastating thrust, shoving the flask back: destructive, corrosive fluid splashes through the air followed by a sizzling sound of sausages frying as man and woman seem to fuse in an extended primordial shriek, with the beaker smashing on the floor.
It defies processing by Lennox’s long-ravaged senses. Is he observing this atrocity with eyes gaping open, or imagining it with them slammed shut? What he thinks he sees is Darren Knowles, his grip broken, jumping on the spot, holding his face as Carmel runs for the sink, frantically turning on the tap, thrusting a stinging hand under the running water to a snakelike hiss, as tendrils of vapour stream up and she wails in agony.
— OH MY GOD!
What he knows he hears is Mona screaming out.
It’s Marco who convinces Lennox he’s been observing this in clarity. It’s his stare, not at the unfolding scene, but at Lennox himself, before he turns to a chalky-faced Chris in apology. — Ain’t getting paid enough for this shit, mate. Sorry, and he heads swiftly to the stair.
Chris doesn’t acknowledge this, moving to assist his father, whose face is literally dissolving in his hands as he stamps on the ground, emanating a long howl. Carmel is crying out: — FUCKING DON’T BELIEVE THIS … her hand thrashing in the large Belfast sink that fills with water. Lennox still cannot react. It’s as if his feet are once again stuck to the concrete floor. He half expects to see Carmel’s hand skeletal as it rises out, but it’s still fleshy though a blazing red.
The concrete … it protected her …
Chris bundles Carmel to the side as he pushes his father to the sink, dunking Darren’s head into the water. Carmel jabs a finger from her good hand into Chris’s eye, then picks up the wine bottle. Only flying glass and a squeal inform Lennox – who attempts to move forward but can’t – she’s smashed it over his skull. As the blood cascades, she forces Chris’s head under the water with both hands, roaring in rage and pain. Lennox realises his coat pocket has snagged on the table corner. Tugs it violently, feels a rip, but it agonisingly holds. Synchronised with his son’s baptism, the father whips up, his eyeless countenance a ravaged mass of raw flesh. Mona, stealing across the room, looks straight at him, her mangled lip trembling.
— Ray! Carmel screams. — Help me!
Lennox realises that brute force won’t prevail. Steps back to disentangle himself, then springs forward. A strange gurgling sound seems to be coming from the chest of the blindly flailing Darren Knowles. Mona intently scrutinises, scarf now down from her face, fascinated by Knowles’s pain as he lurches zombie-like across the floor. He’s on a collision course with the advancing Lennox, who stems an instinct to punch his dissolving face. Instead tries to weave to the side, but the blinded man’s withered hand grabs his coat sleeve. Lennox fights to break the grip without touching the corrosive fluid that fizzes all over his adversary. As he attempts to hold off the flailing father, Mona moves over to the sink, kicks the back of the son’s legs. This assault paradoxically revives Chris; he breaks Carmel’s grip and shoves her, stumbling, onto her back. Then he turns and lashes out at Mona, her head snapping back under his hook as a tooth flies like a bullet from the sweeping mop of hair.
Lennox shakes off Darren, who staggers into a concrete pillar. Chris turns and charges at Lennox in blind rage. All this does is to impale the young man’s diaphragm onto a twisting, pivoting straight right, which stops his heart for a beat. Chris stands immobilised, regarding Lennox in a cheated gape, before a solid left hook to the temple and another big right to the jaw sends him crashing prone to the floor. Carmel falls onto the stunned man’s back, elbow of her good arm smashing the back of his head repeatedly, pounding his face into the concrete.
— KILL HIM! SMASH THE LITTLE BASTARD’S SKULL, Mona screams in demented encouragement, blood spitting from her withered mouth as she kicks Chris. The smell of burning flesh catches in Lennox’s throat, as he moves to restrain Carmel, screams of misery hitting a resonant pitch, tearing his eardrums.
Unleashing deranged punches, Darren Knowles pounds the concrete pillar. He can’t see anything, as his head lolls round, his face almost dissolved. Lennox’s fevered mind resassembles it as the sneering visage from the tunnel, looking at him from on top of Les Brodie, demented with threat and lust. The dance is obscene, weird and dumb, now conducted in an odd silence; Lennox considers that acid must have gone into Knowles’s mouth, working down his throat, burning vocal cords. Steps forward and boots Knowles full force in the balls, but the flailing man is in too much agony to even register it. Lennox moves back out of range of his blind swipes.
All the noise is coming from behind him.
Despite the concrete protection, Carmel’s fingers and palm are burned, and Lennox removes his irksome coat then his shirt, wrapping her hand in it. — Let’s go. He looks to Mona, who lurches towards the lift. Lennox and Carmel follow, her wincing in pain, leaving Darren, now curled up on the floor in a ball, several feet from his bloody-faced, spread-eagled son.
Chris crawls over to comfort his father, but Darren grabs out clenching him in a vice-like grip. — GET OFF … YOU’RE BURNING ME … Chris squeals, but Darren Knowles can’t hear his son, he’s just squeezing this body to him, as Chris roars out in agony, the acidic burning flesh from the senseless father scouring the face of the desperate son.
As the lift clunks up towards them, Lennox squeezes Carmel tight. — It’s so fucking sore, Ray, she winces, — but the concrete, it saved me …
— Fuck your concrete, Mona stands behind her, one eye aflame with rage.
53
The Ground Floor
In a warped, kinetic dance of descent, Mona and Carmel bicker. An edgy Lennox joins in. The insanity is ended as Mona throws her head up and screams: — OKAY! LATER!
The trio look at each other in guilty silence as the lift hits the ground floor. Lennox checks his phone, an implausibly long-winded email from George. He can’t read it all, but it seems he’s going to comply with Lennox’s request to meet.
Or so he claims.
When they get out into the car park, Phil has astonishingly survived the fall. Lennox tenses, then realises no rematch is on the cards: Balaclava Man’s hips appear to be smashed as Marco, furtive gaze flickering over everything, drags him to the back of their van. Also broken is his right arm, which trails by his side. Lennox assumes he’ll be accompanying Cardingworth’s stiff body in transit. Their desertion will be futile: fancies he already hears emergency services sirens, insinuating themselves through the swirl of sounds in his head. Mona or Carmel will have called them. He is about to get into Carmel’s vehicle with them both when a car suddenly turns into the compound.
Stops a few feet from them.
The headlights blaze in their eyes. Lennox moves towards the vehicle.
And straight away he knows the terrifying nemesis of old in the baseball-capped shades-wearing figure behind the wheel. — Get in.
He knows that he has to comply. It is the only way to end this.
Carmel cannot see past the shadow that shrouds the driver, but the menace leaks out of his figure. Stepping forward, she shouts after Lennox: — Ray!
Ray Lennox can’t even hear her. He knows what he has to do. Slides into the passenger seat and the car speeds off, almost running over Marco and Phil, who huddle for cover on the grass verge at the side of the van, Marco clutching the fence of the factory.
Carmel and Mona watch the car containing Ray Lennox turn outside the gates and vanish, as the sounds of the sirens intensify.
54
Dream #7
… so, you’re here with me now, Ray Lennox … I knew you couldn’t resist keeping right on to the end of the road … but what are you going to do now …? how are you going to stop me from tearing you apart …?
55
To: Ray Lennox rayoflight@gmail.com
From: George Marsden inquisitor@horshamsecuritysolutions.co.uk
Re: The Shitshow: How I see it.
Well, Raymond,
Thank you for keeping me in loop, he said dripping sarcasm across his keyboard like phlegm and snot. This flu is adding insult to the injury of you casting me as Mr Mushroom or Toxic Nonce. Well, I accept that my often clandestine behaviour around the fair sex might lead to suspicions of other duplicity, especially in a mind as overheated as your own!
However, this shouldn’t need saying, but from day one I’ve always been a fully paid up member of Team Lennox. So, here’s what I’ve been able to deduce from the scraps you fed me, and my own ferreting around.
Cardingworth’s family fostered children in Brighton from 1975 onwards. The first child in their care was Ralph Trench: a surly, overweight boy who had been mistreated by his last foster parents. The lives of the young Mathew and Ralph would change when they came into contact with an older teenage neighbour on the Whitehawk estate, named Darren Knowles.
Knowles had a tougher upbringing than Cardingworth, his family moving through travellers’ camps up and down the east coast of the UK, from Aberdeen to Hull. After he was found, as a teenager, sexually abusing a ten-year-old girl, he was expelled from and ostracised by the travelling community. At the age of 15, he was hustling on the London streets.
Relatives from the settled community took Darren into their home in Brighton. At 19, he befriended the swotty kid who lived next door. Mathew Cardingworth, then 15, was being picked on at school, and believed that the association with his hapless ‘foster brother’ Ralph Trench, a few years younger than him, was the root of this. Knowles was fascinated that Trench was an orphan, and how total strangers could become responsible for a child’s welfare. He taught Cardingworth to disdain and bully the boy.
But Knowles was jail-bound: arrested for the abduction and rape of a 16-year-old girl.
If anyone so intrinsically vile and with such a horrendous background can actually be transformed for the worse by their experience in prison, it was Knowles. In the nick he met the shadowy ‘Bim’, a mountainous merchant seaman with a penchant for violence and cruelty that exceeded even Knowles’s own. A multiple offender, Bim was something of an urban myth. Not much on this near throwback to the era of pirates, so all my conjecture: he hung around the ports of Europe and the Americas, picking up ships, often on forged papers. When he met Knowles in prison, Bim saw more than just fresh meat; the two men recognised they were kindred spirits. I’m guessing Bim inducted Knowles in the darker sexual arts, instilling in him a liking for the young men thoughtfully served up by the prison system. Bim shaped and refined Knowles’s warped instincts of sex as an instrument of power and control, encouraging the sadist’s gratification of abuse.
While poor Ralph Trench was socially inhibited, Cardingworth was a prodigy, going on to university in London at 17. This ought to have ended his association with Knowles, but Darren and Bim sought him out on their release from prison. I’m guessing they strong-armed Cardingworth into accompanying them and giving them a veneer of legitimacy. This was the formation of the noncing gang, Ray, of which you and Les were the first victims.
But this assault on you was too public, which made Bim and Knowles reassess their strategy. I’d guess Cardingworth proved an unreliable ally. So, they found out, probably unwittingly through young Trench, that a neighbour, Julie Wilkins, and her husband Clive, also fostered kids. They looked after a young boy, Gavin Carter, who was a friend of Ralph Trench’s. It’s probable Gavin became their first murder victim. When he was fostered out to Julie and Clive Wilkins, Trench was concerned. Clive was a chronic alcoholic who was easily manipulated by Julie, who in turn was obsessed with Knowles. When Gavin went missing, Ralph shared his fears with Mat Cardingworth. His old foster brother warned him they were dangerous people and that he should keep his nose out. I’m guessing Bim and Darren Knowles abducted, abused and murdered Gavin, before dumping him at sea.
But like their first rape, their debut slaying was sloppy. Gavin’s body washed up on the beach and made the papers. Although he was seen as a runaway orphan, and few questions were asked, Trench was convinced Bim and Darren had something to do with Gavin’s vanishing. He grew obsessed with investigating them.
Mathew couldn’t get shot of Darren, who had now also moved to London with his girlfriend, Mona Moston, 17. Mona was becoming a fashion model, and from a flat in Islington, Knowles inducted her into a party lifestyle of swinging and cocaine. The marginal, hedonistic life they led probably excited the younger Cardingworth. But Mona was less impressed, and she left Knowles due to his cruelty. Knowles took horrendous revenge on her for this rebuff, disfiguring her by throwing acid in her face.
On prison release Knowles married Julie Wilkins, who had divorced her husband Clive. She had started visiting Darren in jail, had fallen under his spell, and helped him and Bim come up with the fostering scam. They would foster children and designate them as ‘problem self-harmers’ or ‘runaways’ and first abuse them, then remove them, claiming they had absconded of their own volition.
Knowles expanded the operation, he, Bim and Julie identifying like-minded twisted men, often hooking them up with weak, pliant women, to register them as foster carers and extend the network. Social workers, often those who had drink or drug issues, and who could be easily bribed and intimidated, were bought off. The ring worked semi-successfully for years, though both Bim and Knowles had low impulse control and often succumbed to the lure of violence, particularly after their own drink and drug intake. Bim was jailed in China, spending time in a Shanghai prison for another incident at sea. He remained the group’s nominal figurehead, Knowles being his ‘operations manager’ in England. But Trench didn’t let his covert investigations slide.
Cardingworth, meanwhile, had distanced himself from both those dubious associates. He got wealthier, and made connections with powerful people, including chiefs of police. This deterred Bim and Knowles from putting the squeeze on him and they basically had a relationship of peaceful coexistence for several years.
Trench was busy seeking out information, but Knowles was hard to pin down and Bim did his vanishing act at sea. So in lieu of them, he investigated Cardingworth. He discovered financial irregularities in the campaign to buy the hospital property, and the bribing of opposition groups spokespersons and council officials, evidencing compromising payments made. Knowles in turn discovered Trench had been snooping around and demanded what he had on Cardingworth. A terrorised Trench gave up the details.
It became obvious that Cardingworth could go to prison if the bribery scandal came out and Knowles and Bim played this to their advantage. They advised him to buy the disused concrete factory, which they would manage. Thus, Cardingworth was driven back into association with two dangerous men. The stakes upped further when Cardingworth grew suspicious that they were burying bodies in the basement of the factory. He decided to appoint Trench security guard, thus implicating him in any crime.
