This Is How You Die Page 12

  Lester shook his head and moved onto the second bedroom. This bedroom had a door, but it wasn’t locked. It was smoky and it stank of booze, must, and sweat. Damian was in there with a girl, sitting on the edge of the bed with a bong in his hand as she watched eagerly. He looked up when his dad entered—he was about to take a hit, his lips open and the bong poised.

  Lester ripped the contraption from his son’s hands and tossed it to the other side of the room.

  “What you doing?” Damian screamed. “I paid for that.”

  Lester didn’t answer, and when his son yelled and kicked with the energy that had eluded Richard Mass, Lester overpowered him and dragged him to the floor.

  “You’re embarrassing me!” he spat. “Get your fucking hands off me.” Damian managed to release his arm and he swung for his father, catching him on the leg. Lester ignored him and dragged him a couple of feet as he continued to hurl abuse and kick out.

  After the third or fourth kick, Lester let go and stood over him. Damian was silent and still in anticipation as Lester, frothing with anger, eyes burning with an intensity that Damian had never seen in him before, towered over him.

  Lester stood on his son’s arm and this time Damian didn’t flinch. “You move an inch and I will break your fucking arm,” Lester warned. “Do you understand?”

  Damian nodded.

  “I’ll be right back, but if you run away from me, then you better make sure that I don’t catch you. Do you understand me?”

  Damian nodded again.

  “You can’t treat him like that!” The girl who had been on the bed with Damian was now standing in the doorway, defending her fling.

  “It’s okay, Shelly,” Damian said, his attention still on his father.

  “Get off of him before I call the police,” she continued. “Or his father, he’s a policeman. So you better watch out.”

  “This is my father,” Damian said, swallowing thickly. “Please, just go back in the room. I’ll be okay.”

  She gave Lester another fearful look and then disappeared.

  Lester ducked into the other bedroom to see that the boy’s stained boxer shorts had been removed and he was several minutes away from raping the girl. She wasn’t going to scream, kick, or run, even though she had the chance, but she clearly didn’t want to be with him and she looked disgusted as he approached her and tried, with increasing agitation, to get what he wanted.

  The boy had his back to Lester as he entered the room, but Lester saw the fear and the disgust in the girl’s eyes. She was his daughter’s age and he saw some of Annabelle in her, which angered him even more. He thought of Sparky doing the same to her, forcing her, trying to get his own way. He saw red.

  Lester grabbed the boy by the hair and yanked him off the bed. He heard the hair rip and the boy scream as he was pulled off the bed. He fought with him, his arms and legs kicking and swinging, but Lester silenced him by throwing him headfirst into the wall. The thud was loud and dull, strong enough to remove a chunk of plaster, which rained snowy debris onto the filthy carpet and onto the naked body of the boy beneath it. He groaned in agony and squinted away the pain as a large cut opened in the middle of his forehead and made a mess of his already messy face.

  “What have you done?” the girl screamed.

  “Excuse me?” Lester said, baffled. He took a step back as she raced around the bed to attend to the young man who had tried to sexually assault her.

  “He tried to rape you,” Lester reminded her.

  “So?” she spat, her disgust now directed at Lester. “I can deal with my own problems. What gives you the right to come in here and beat up my boyfriend?”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “He tried to fucking assault you.”

  “So?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Ah, baby, I’m so sorry.” She bent over her fallen beau and used his discarded boxer shorts to wipe away the blood.

  Lester shook his head in disbelief, realizing that out of pity alone, he had probably helped the dirty little pervert get what he wanted from his psychotic girlfriend. He left them to it and returned to his son, who was still lying in the hallway.

  “Now, are you going to play nice and come with me?” Lester asked. “Or do I have to drag you all the way home?”

  Damian held up his hands and slowly rose to his feet. “You win, Dad,” he said. “I’m all yours.”

  4

  Are you fucking kidding me?” Atwood slammed his fist on the desk loud enough for everyone in the office to hear, heavy enough to topple a small glass of water. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he barked.

  Standing in front of his boss with a vacant expression, Lester merely shook his head. He was wondering the same thing. Maybe his kids, his job, and his life had finally gotten to him, maybe it was The Masquerade, maybe he had just ceased to give a fuck.

  Atwood brushed the empty glass to the floor before wiping his hand on the seat of his pants and dropping a sheet of paper on the spillage. He stared at the paper as the water slowly seeped into it, turning it translucent. Lester watched his boss’s face the whole time and noted, oddly, that he seemed to calm down. Eventually Atwood flopped back on his chair.

  It was early morning and the room outside his office was buzzing with activity; tired, hung-over, and eager detectives sat at their desks or hot-footed it around the office, all pretending not to be staring, not to be trying their best to eavesdrop. Many of them couldn’t believe what was happening. They had seen their boss angry before, but not at Lester. He was an exemplary worker, the one who did everything by the book and never stepped out of line.

  “Who do you think you are?” Atwood asked. There was malice in his question, but he spoke calmly, almost through gritted teeth.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “You heard me,” Atwood said. “And don’t call me sir. I know you don’t give a shit about me, about what I think and about the orders I give you. If you did, you wouldn’t have taken the piss out of me last night.”

  Lester nodded politely and kept his attention fixed on the floor, where it had been for most of the morning. His boss had had an early start, and for most of that time, he had been trying to reach Lester, getting angrier and angrier. When Lester finally did show, ambling into work an hour late, Atwood was at his boiling point and had practically dragged Lester into his office.

  Last night, when Lester was being shouted at and then ignored by his children, when his daughter was calling him worse than shit and his son was worrying he would die of embarrassment—if his friends didn’t get to him first—the police were called to Richard Mass’s house. When Annabelle and Damian were conspiring in Annabelle’s room, concocting a plan to run away from home, and while Lester was downstairs drowning his sorrows with a large bottle of blended scotch, Mass was telling the police everything that had happened, along with several things that hadn’t. When Annabelle and Damian were making plans to move out of town and stay with their grandmother, and when Lester was unconscious on the sofa, drooling like a sick dog, Atwood was waking to news that one of his detectives had gone rogue.

  “You’re lucky,” Atwood told Lester, who didn’t feel very lucky at all. “Mass is an addict, a waste of space, and a liar. He is also the biggest idiot we’ve ever come across, and that’s what’s saved you from being locked up instead of him.”

  Atwood couldn’t have been more correct in his assumption of Mass, but it was one that Lester had also made. In his anger and his disbelief, Mass had immediately phoned the police, telling them it was an emergency. He had hoped they would catch Lester before he left, giving him the satisfaction of watching the police arrest one of their own, but his haste had been his downfall. He didn’t have enough time to hide his drugs, nor did he have enough time to inform his friends he had invited the enemy to his door.

  It began as a simple investigation, but it resulted in a raid involving several police ve
hicles and a forensics unit. They arrested Mass and a number of his friends, with many of them facing serious charges of possession and possession with intent to supply. Mass had also attempted to grow his own supply of cannabis, and while the product of that attempt was pathetic at best, it was still enough to add another tick to his rap sheet.

  “What he says still has to be recorded,” Atwood warned. “I can disregard most of it, and I don’t think too many people will ask questions about that, but you’re still in deep shit.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you though?” Atwood wondered. “I mean, why? Why did you do this? This job has been like a second home to you for over twenty years, this is your life now, why would you risk that?”

  “Maybe that is why,” Lester said. “Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m sick of this.”

  “Maybe?”

  Lester shrugged. “Maybe it’s just because my kids hate me, my wife is dead, and I missed Eastenders last night. Maybe I don’t really know why.”

  Atwood nodded slowly and then picked up a pen from his desk. He tapped it idly against his chin and then against his desk, watching it absently. “What do you want me to do?” he asked eventually, the pen now immobile.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With your job, Keats, with your fucking job.”

  Lester smiled. “You could give me a raise.”

  Atwood managed a half smile, his face twisted. It looked like he’d had a stroke during the point of orgasm. The expression was enough to wipe the smile from Lester’s face.

  “I can’t keep you here,” Atwood said. “I think you need a break.”

  “You’re suspending me?”

  Atwood nodded and for the first time that morning, Lester felt a stab of panic. Not because he was losing his job, or because he would be going back to an empty house filled with nothing but pictures of times gone and all but forgotten, but because he was finally getting close to The Masquerade and he didn’t want to throw that away.

  “Please, don’t.”

  Atwood looked confused. “Pardon?”

  “I know I fucked up, but I need this job.”

  “You’re a strange one, Keats. First the blasé attitude, the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ expression that you’ve worn for weeks, and now this? What gives?”

  Lester sighed. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his theory until he had something more substantial than a feeling, but he sensed his chance would slip away if he didn’t open his mouth.

  “It’s about The Masquerade, sir,” he began, bringing a half-smile to Atwood’s face as he grew more animated. “I have a theory that I want to test.”

  “Go on.”

  Lester sat on the end of Atwood’s desk, turning his half-smile into a brief look of revulsion, but Atwood was too intrigued to stop him.

  “Do you remember the spree killer a few years ago, the kid who dressed up as Santa and—”

  “Murdered a bunch of kids, set his house on fire. Of course I remember,” Atwood said slowly.

  “Exactly,” Lester said. “There was no trace of him after that. Some assumed he died in the fire or killed himself some other way, but there was never any proof. They had him pinned as a loner, a spree killer getting revenge on the kids that had bullied him, so it made sense.”

  “Okay.” Atwood shrugged. “What’s this got to do with The Masquerade?”

  “Very little, truth be told.” Lester hopped off the desk and paced up and down in front of his boss, firing an accusing stare out of the office window as he did so, making sure that none of his nosy colleagues were listening in. “But I remembered something that the mother of three of the victims said. She said that when he killed her son and her husband, he sat down next to her and talked to her.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “She said he was bitter, cynical, that he hated the world and wanted the world to know it. She said he was also very intelligent for his age, but that she had never seen or heard anyone so twisted in her life.”

  Atwood nodded. “And you think that this guy is The Masquerade, right? Because he talks to his victims?”

  “Exactly.” Lester had stopped walking and was standing in front of his boss’s desk, taller and prouder than he had stood for a long time.

  Atwood wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t fail to notice the detective’s manner or the look on his face. “You know that this doesn’t mean shit, right? These are killers, psychopaths—”

  “—Sociopaths.”

  “Whatever. They want to control their victims, they want that power, that dominance. They’re like Bond villains, only they actually go through with the murder.”

  Lester nodded. “I understand that.”

  “And these killings happened, what, one hundred miles apart?”

  “Yes, but we don’t get that many sociopathic serial killers. It’s not farfetched to assume that Herman left town, got as far away as he could, laid low for a bit, and then resumed his work.”

  Atwood paused for a moment and then asked, “And what if it is him? What does that mean, we still don’t know where he is. If Herman’s file is still open then we’re still looking for him anyway, what difference does it make?

  “If we expose him then we strip away his mask, we take away the thing that has defined him. Then—” Lester shrugged. “I guess we just wait for him to make the next move and hope he fucks up.”

  “He hasn’t put a foot wrong yet, what makes you think exposing his identity will make him do so?”

  “Just a feeling, sir.”

  Atwood nodded and then laughed a little. “This is fucking crazy,” he said. “But I’m with you on this. If you’re prepared to do the legwork, then you can investigate this. I’ll give you time off, let the men above me think I’m punishing you, and in that time I want you to investigate this Herman kid, see what you can dig up. How does that sound?”

  Lester grinned from ear to ear. “Perfect.”

  5

  Whitegate was a metaphorical hole in the ground, and one that few residents ever escaped. It was a rural town, far from the hustle and bustle of the major cities, and a short drive to a bigger town where the shopping centers, cinemas, and other amenities of modernity made day-to-day life a little less shitty. Lester had never been to the town before, but he knew he hated it before he stepped foot in it. His mother actually lived not too far away from here, in a nearby town. That wasn’t where she had always lived and, thankfully, it wasn’t where Lester had been forced to grow up. But the place she now called home was a stone’s throw from this madness, this depravity. He had never understood why she moved, and he had never really cared either. She probably did it just to piss him off. He wouldn’t have been surprised.

  After the incident at Mass’s house, Damian and Annabelle had run away to spend some time with their grandmother. They had threatened all night and, while he didn’t think they would follow through with their threats—because they rarely followed through with anything that required effort—they did just that. Their grandmother’s house was far from a haven, but it was a long way from their friends, a long way from the drug dealers, the boyfriends and the bad influences, so Lester was happy. They’d actually done him a favor.

  There were towns like this all over the country, towns that had once flourished, but were now home to the unemployed, the unambitious, and the uneducated. If Britain truly was broken, these were the towns on the fault lines.

  This was where delinquency was applauded, ambition was questioned, and intelligence was viewed with suspicion. As Lester sat in his car outside the main shopping street—a collection of boarded-up and poorly maintained shops, vomited onto the landscape by an unenthusiastic deity—he watched the people traipse up and down and tried to imagine what Herman had thought when he witnessed these same sights.

  A group of kids, no older than thirteen, were waiting outside a newsstand to harass anyone who entered into buying them booze. On the other side of the road, a heavyset man leaned ag
ainst a lamppost with a dog on a tight lead. Whenever the dog moved, he yanked the lead, obviously enjoying the squeal that followed before berating the dog for making a sound. Several feet ahead of him, two women stood in the middle of the road chatting, oblivious to the old man in the car who had to slam on his brakes so as not to run them over. Both of the women were smoking despite the fact that one of them was heavily pregnant, the bulge clearly visible due to her insistence on wearing a tank top several sizes too small.

  “Excuse me, mate, you got a light?”

  Lester turned to see a kid looking up at him.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said under his breath, half expecting the young one to hold up a bowl and ask for more food.

  “What?”

  “Should you be smoking at your age?” Lester asked.

  “I’m fifteen,” the kid—no older than ten—lied, somehow thinking that made everything okay.

  “In that case, you should stop smoking, it’s stunting your growth.”

  The kid glared at him before Lester walked off with a smile on his face. He had seen it all before. There were kids like that everywhere, but in towns like Whitegate they weren’t the exception. Kids needed to look up to their parents, but when their parents were hanging around street corners getting drunk, committing petty crimes and generally being a drain on society, there was no hope for them.

  Lester didn’t care. He wasn’t there for them and he certainly wasn’t there to feel pity for Herman or to understand what he had done. He was there for Irene, for her children, for her husband, and for the others who had perished. He was there to learn everything he could about Herman.

  Irene Henderson was a difficult woman to track down. She had lost everything important to her. Her husband and her youngest child had been brutally murdered in front of her; her eldest child had been butchered like an animal near the dead bodies of his friends. He knew she wasn’t a particularly smart or ambitious woman and had been content with what little she had—her biennial holidays in Spain, her nights out with the girls. Her family was her life, so when that was taken away, she didn’t have much left to live for.