This Is How You Die Page 15

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Son, I have some bad news.”

  Lester rolled his eyes. She always started the conversation like that; it was her way of saying hello.

  “Of course you do.”

  “It’s your kids,” she said, before immediately pausing.

  Lester felt his heart stop. The kids had cited the fact that he was an asshole and they never wanted to see him again as their reason for leaving, but he was happy to watch them go. If nothing else, it would keep them away from their poisonous friends.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice turning dry.

  “They’re with me now.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “I didn’t know if you knew, so I just thought I would tell you.”

  “I did know. I—”

  “I mean, they don’t seem very happy with you. In fact, they have quite a lot of bad things to say—”

  Lester moved the phone away from his ear and let her talk to herself. She wasn’t deaf, but anyone would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. She rarely listened to anything that anyone had to say and always liked to make drama out of everything. It was a diet of daytime crime dramas that did it, coupled with the fact that she had fuck all else to do but scare the living shit out of people.

  “Mum!” he said, cutting her short. She had broken into a conversation about something else entirely, a neighbor who was either terminally ill or dead. That was her favorite topic and, considering she lived on such a small street and had such a fascination with the macabre, Lester had always wondered if he should be investigating her as a potential serial killer. “You said you have some bad news about my kids, what is it?”

  “The kids? The kids are fine. I wasn’t talking about the kids, I was talking about Mrs.—”

  Lester hung up. He had no interest in her neighbors. If he had known them when they were alive then he would have maybe cared, but he had no idea who these people were. His mother knew that, and she just wanted to vent. Now she would take it out on his kids, telling them all that she couldn’t tell Lester. The thought actually pleased him a little; it would teach them for running away and thinking they could hole up with their grandmother for a few weeks. When he was struggling to explain to their teachers why they weren’t at school, and when he was being threatened with fines because of their truancy, he would take solace in the knowledge that they had suffered.

  He smiled at his thoughts and their misery, but that smile quickly turned into something else.

  The grandparents. That was the answer he had missed. That’s where kids go when the parents are at work. That’s who brings them up, providing all the services of a nanny for none of the cost. Herman’s father’s parents were out of the picture before Herman was born, but his mother’s parents had never been mentioned, and it was the mother’s side that usually took the responsibility. It had been the same when he was a child and it had been the same for his kids, as well.

  If they lived nearby, then that’s where they would have taken Herman while they were at work. From the stories he had read and the documentaries he had seen, the grandparents were never featured. He could recall mentions of Herman’s father’s parents, but never of the other side of the family.

  “So what the fuck happened to grandparents?” he asked himself out loud.

  He went straight back to the station. Officer Matthews was still at his desk, talking to one of the other slouches who had spent the morning pretending to work and trying to hide the fact that he had actually been playing online poker. The officer shared a joke with Matthews, no doubt at Lester’s expense, before walking away.

  “Herman’s grandparents,” Lester said, getting straight to the point as he stood over the officer’s desk. “What happened to them? Were they alive at the time?”

  Matthews inhaled deeply, the breath whistled through his teeth. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “Well, the dad’s side died before he was born, but on the mother’s side he had a grandmother who lived through it.”

  Lester was shocked to hear such a nonchalant answer. “You’re kidding me?”

  Matthews beamed like a chubby kid who had finally broken into the cookie jar. His pathetic job was finally being validated.

  Lester ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand, why am I only hearing about this now?”

  Matthews shrugged.

  “You didn’t say anything before.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “So, did she look after him when he was a kid?” Lester demanded, irritated to be in the company of the incompetent officer.

  “Possibly,” he said with a shrug. “We never asked. It wasn’t really our case.”

  It wasn’t his case because they left it to the ones who actually knew what they were doing.

  “So why was there nothing in the news, why does no one mention her?”

  “She is frail and very old, plus she rarely saw him after his parents split. I guess she never got on with his father. We decided—well, in truth we didn’t have much say in the matter, but we helped—that it would be best if we kept her out of the picture. She lives in a quiet neighborhood, a retirement community really. If we mentioned her link to him then they’d be queuing up halfway down the street, bugging her day and night. Poor old cow is too old for that shit.”

  “You said is. She is far too old. You mean to say she’s still alive?”

  Matthews sat back in his chair, his chubby ankles on top of the desk again, his hands folded over his bulbous stomach. The smile on his face indicated that job satisfaction was a rare occurrence for him, and he was going to milk this for all it was worth. “Of course she is.”

  “Well?” Lester said, his eyebrows raised, his tone already annoyed. “Where the fuck is she?”

  7

  River Acres was a peaceful and picturesque part of suburbia. Here there were no hooligans roaming the streets; no domestic violence waiting behind closed doors and occasionally spilling out of open windows; no children playing in the street, kicking balls against cars and windows and into gardens. There was no loud music either, but if you walked down the empty pathways, passing the rows of bungalows set back from small and flowery gardens, you would be greeted with the noise from dozens of television sets.

  This was where the old and infirm came to die. The people who lived here weren’t capable of much activity and they certainly weren’t capable of causing a nuisance. Police cars did come here, but only because of burglars, door-to-door cons and, on one occasion two weeks ago, to arrest a ninety-year-old woman who decided that stripping naked and going for a powerwalk around the block would work better than her medication ever could.

  Lester had been briefed on the area by a local cop, a man who laughed at the suggestion that a place as dull as River Acres could be holding something so vital to Lester’s case.

  “You came all the way to our quiet little town to find the quietest little spot, what gives?”

  Lester didn’t need to tell a local gossipy officer what his motives were, not when the people who needed to know already knew. He was a long way from home, but this wasn’t a fleeting visit.

  Lester hated River Acres as soon as he drove down the empty road that cut a line through the middle of rows of identically drab houses. He hated it even more when he stepped out of the relative quiet of the car—with the engine roaring and the radio turned down—into the complete silence of the street. It was too quiet, too creepy. Death walked these streets, and in a single year you’d see more ambulances and hearses parked outside these doors than you would cars, indicating that the grim reaper was closer to the residents of River Acres than any of their family members.

  He stopped outside one of the houses and listened. He could hear the television blaring through the front door and although the curtains were tightly shut—despite it being early afternoon—he could see the lights from the set flickering through a small gap. He checked a slip of paper in his hand, double checked the n
umber by the door, and then buzzed the intercom.

  When he didn’t receive an answer, he held his finger down on the buzzer until he did. An old voice trickled down the line, sounding half-asleep, half-dead, or both.

  “Who is it?”

  “Is that Mrs. Johnson?”

  “It’s Ms.,” she said bitterly. “And I’m not buying anything.”

  He heard her click off. She sounded old and frail, and although he had expected as much because of her age and the area in which she lived, a part of him, knowing who she was related to, had anticipated something a little more lively and a lot more feisty.

  He sighed to himself and held the buzzer again until she answered.

  “I told you,” she snapped. “I don’t want any of your shit. Now fuck off and piss on someone else’s doorstep.”

  He grinned to himself. That was more like it.

  “I promise, I’m not here to sell anything. I’m with the police.” He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, knowing that if they were capable of hearing him then several dozen old men and women would be turning off their TV sets and dragging their chairs in front of the window.

  “Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?”

  She clicked off and he waited. He heard her turn off the television. The noise of a daytime mystery was replaced by the grumblings of a woman who was talking to herself, but was probably too deaf to realize it.

  He heard several bolts yank open, followed by at least two locks. It took her a good five minutes before she opened the door and when she did she was already on her way to the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea, sweetie,” she said with her back to him.

  He had his badge ready to show her, but she didn’t ask. She didn’t even look at him.

  “Thanks,” he said meekly, stepping inside the house. He closed the door behind him, seeing several curtains twitch in the houses across the street.

  ——

  The elderly woman beamed at him as he sat sipping his cold cup of tea. There was a good chance that it had been hot when she poured it, but by the time she made it across to him, stuttering and struggling with every step, it was tepid and half empty. There was an equally good chance she was senile and had made it with water from the tap, or that she had simply given him a cup that had been left by a recent visitor, but he didn’t want to seem impolite so he drank it and pretended to like it.

  “Do you want a biscuit?” she asked, holding out a biscuit tin with shaking hands. The tin looked at least fifty years old and was as dusty and frail as she was.

  “Oh,” he said in feigned delight. “I don’t mind if I—” he recoiled when she opened the tin and exposed contents that looked as old as the tin. “I’ll pass, thank you.”

  “There’s some chocolate ones in there,” she said.

  “Oh God, I sincerely hope not,” he whispered under his breath. On closer inspection, he saw a thick brown, clay-like substance stuck to the bottom of the tin that had at one point probably been chocolate.

  “I’m not much of a biscuit lover,” she said as she pulled the tin away. “I just keep these for the guests.”

  “You don’t get many guests these days?” he asked.

  “Sorry?” she said, turning to him and pointing her ear at him.

  He sighed. “Nothing, it’s nothing important.”

  She smiled and settled back in her chair before saying, “Although I don’t get very many guests these days.”

  Lester rolled his eyes and took another sip of tepid tea before putting it to one side and vowing to leave it alone.

  “I’ve come to talk to you about your grandson,” he explained.

  “My son-in-law? Ah, I thought so, he’s a sly one. Good man, though.”

  Lester paused, but decided against pursuing that. He knew nothing about Herman’s father. “No, your grandson,” he reiterated. “Herman.”

  “Who?”

  “Herman!”

  “Ah, of course. Lovely kid. Are you a friend of his?”

  “No. I’m a policeman.”

  “So you said, dear, but are you a friend of his?”

  “No. We’re not friends,” Lester told her, struggling to imagine a boy like Herman ever having friends. There were people who believed his lonely upbringing was what caused him to do what he did, that he had taken all he could take until he decided enough was enough, but Lester believed otherwise. Lonely children were not murderers. You needed to have something in you, something dark, sinister, and yet at the same time empty, to do what Herman had done.

  “That’s a shame. That boy needs a good friend.”

  Lester decided that she didn’t need to hear his theory. “Maybe.”

  “He’s a mischievous little fucker, isn’t he?”

  Lester raised his eyebrows. He didn’t know what was more surprising, that she had sworn out of the blue, or that she had just referred to one of the nation’s most notorious spree killers as mischievous.

  “So,” she continued. “How can I help you?”

  ——

  Lester got all that he needed from Mrs. Johnson. By the time he left her house, the skies were turning an eerie shade of gray. It was only afternoon but without the streetlights above him—pinning an orange halo around him as he stood, documents in hand—he wouldn’t have been able to see his own hand in front of his face. This was the sort of weather The Masquerade would thrive on. Lester felt a stab of regret at that thought. He had left his home, his territory, one that had been torn apart by this killer, to come to this piece of purgatory. The people he was paid to protect and serve were now in the hands of a sadistic killer, but Lester knew there was no risk of The Masquerade doing anything while he was away, because he knew that the masked killer would soon follow him.

  Lester was now more convinced of his theory than he had ever been. He had little doubt that The Masquerade and Herman were the same, and the evidence that he now had would convince others, as well. This was a crucial time, a time when revealing such information could be very costly and could anger one very disturbed individual, but he had to tell several people, and eventually one of them would leak that information anyway.

  Lester had been quick to dismiss false rumors that The Masquerade had targeted him in the past, but as he stood under the eerie glow of the streetlight, watched by countless senile eyes, and with his own eyes perusing the documents from the old lady, he had a feeling that the rumor would become much more widespread and much more real very soon.

  PART 3

  1

  Are you going to buy that?”

  Above the creased rim of the paper, I studied the questioning glare of the shop assistant, his arms folded smugly over his chest, his eyes glaring at me over spectacles that had slipped down his colossal nose. A laminated tag on his shirt declared his name was Scott, but by his body language and facial expressions, he clearly thought he was God.

  I furrowed my brow, wondered where his motives lay. “Maybe.”

  “You have to buy it then.”

  I stared at him for a moment longer. His dark eyes bore the shadows of a superiority complex borne out of a lonely, friendless childhood, his only acquaintances probably an older, promiscuous sister or a workaholic mother.

  I dipped my eyes back to the pages, paying him no heed. I didn’t have time for a stuck-up narcissistic cunt with an Oedipus complex and no grasp of social etiquette. I had gone in to check the local papers, to skim through the personal ads and pick up one that had what I was looking for. But he was making that task very difficult.

  I heard Scott harrumph, the sigh of the well-to-do and the pretentious social elite. Of which he was neither.

  “Are you going to buy it then?” he pushed in a childish, contemptuous tone.

  I peered above the paper again. His arms were still folded, his eyes still bearing down on me, asking what right I had to be in his world—how dare I think I was as good as he was?

  I wanted to jump over the counter and split his arrogant head open on the till, to squee
ze the life out of the little pompous prick. But I didn’t. I remained calm.

  I began to explain myself. “I just want to see—”

  “—You have to buy it,” he ordered.

  When he interjected, I found myself shooting him an instinctive and fleeting stare. A look of utter contempt, a look that fully expressed my desire to rip open his throat and paint the shop with his blood. He didn’t appear to catch it.

  “But first—”

  “—You have to buy it.”

  I closed the paper and folded it up. I hadn’t seen the personals section. I wasn’t even sure it had one.

  I pulled some coins out of my pocket, counted up the required amount, and placed them on the counter. Scott the Snobbish Assistant didn’t even glance at the money; his eyes were fixed on me.

  “There’s a good boy,” he said when I finished, a mocking smile on his thin lips. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

  I absorbed his comment without even flinching. It didn’t matter, I’d have my revenge. I’d follow him home to his one-bedroom dilapidated flat; to the single pet—the derisive, callous feline or the tuneless, institutionalized bird. To his meals for one, his energy drinks, and his expired milk. To his spacious collection of fantasy books and dusty academia. To his bedroom, devoid of the brain-numbing atrocities of television, and stale with the spent force of a million angry matriarchal masturbations. And there, among the collections of comic books and manga pornography, I would open his larynx with a Stanley knife and watch his pointless existence soak into his Spiderman bedsheets.

  “What’re you fucking staring at?”

  The bespectacled narcissist was glaring at me, his arms unfolded and ready to fight, his glasses pushed back to the bridge of his nose.