Brothers in Blood E-Book

David Stuart Davies

• Herausgeber: The Mystery Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 380

Beschreibung

A brutal game devised by three intelligent but bored teenagers escalates into murder. Led by the charismatic and cunning Laurence, the trio of 'brothers' meets once a year to carry out untraceable, motiveless murders – for fun. Until, years later, they must murder in order to protect one of their own, leaving themselves vulnerable to discovery. This killing is investigated by Detective Inspector Paul Snow, a complex man with a secret of his own which links him to the murder. As Snow grows closer to unmasking the killers, his professional life begins to unravel in a terrifying fashion. Brothers in Blood is a dark and chilling thriller which surprises and excites all the way to the shocking climax.

Leseprobe

To Katie, as always, with love.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Part Two

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Part Three

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

About the Author

Copyright

PROLOGUE

1970

They waited.

Despite their nervousness and apprehension, they were very patient in those days. Simply because they could afford to wait. Time, eternity, the future and youth were all on their side. For them the whole unfolding nature of life was just beginning. There was no rush; such bright boys could pace themselves. The arrogance of salad days quelled all other dark concerns. Future dangers were unthought of. Here they were: ready for the big adventure. They had made the decision. It was irrevocable. Although there was no going back, equally they were in no hurry. It had to be done properly and so they were content to take their time until everything slotted neatly into place. There must be no mistakes.

It had been agreed between them that once the lucky prize winner had been chosen, the recipient of their beneficence, as Laurence referred to him, they would stick to that decision, no matter what obstacles were thrown in their way. That was part of the appeal, the thrill of the venture. After all, it wouldn’t be as much fun if it all went too easily. There had to be some difficulty, some danger to spice things up.

After all, fear was part of the drug.

And this was the night.

The first test.

One for the memory bank.

It was Laurence, of course, who had picked out the old guy and the other two had readily agreed that he seemed an ideal candidate. He looked ragged and desperate, hostel based no doubt, and with no real function in the world. A piece of shit on the heel of society. Please feel sorry for me, his grubby demeanour seemed to say to them. I fucked up my life and I just exist from day to day so I need your sympathy and generosity. Please give me money to enable me to get drunk, piss my pants, sleep in a stinking room with a lot of other dead beats and then face another day of degradation and begging. Please feel sorry for me.

There was no debate. He was better off dead.

And so they waited, the three of them, in that dingy, foul smelling boozer with the noisy one-armed bandit, crap music, grim lighting, sticky carpet and with what they regarded as the greatest collection of low life ever seen under one roof. Alex did make a comment about it being a good job P.T. Barnum wasn’t still around or he’d sign up the whole lot for a freak show attraction under his big top. These solitary creatures were glimpsed through eddies of cigarette smoke which swirled lazily about the place like swathes of grey ectoplasm, further heightening the unreality of the occasion.

Laurence was aware that they would have looked odd themselves in such an establishment if they’d gone as themselves. They would have stuck out like three vicars in a brothel. A trio of young, clean and intelligent faces would have really attracted the attention of the degenerate clientele. However, on Laurence’s instructions they had carefully dressed down for the occasion – way down, almost into the realms of fancy dress – and altered their natural appearance with greasy hair, a few fake tattoos and grimy stubble. Laurence, who had a talent for this kind of thing, was almost unrecognisable from his usual debonair and arrogant self. Their theatrical efforts had paid off for they blended in perfectly with the surroundings and no one took any notice of the three scruffy lads huddled in the darkest corner of the bar. They had become invisible men.

The other punters sat, their noses stuck in a glass, considering the ashes of their lives and only acknowledging another human being when they grunted at the barman asking for another drink.

Their chosen prize winner, whom Laurence had christened Alpha Beta, sat at the end of the bar, perched precariously on a rickety stool, nursing a pint of cheap dark beer. Apart from the moments when he took large gulps from the glass, his throat pulsating in a strange reptilian fashion, he could have been a waxwork doll. Surreptitiously they studied this creature whose face was ingrained with the grime of the street, the nose raddled and bulbous with pores like small moist volcanic craters and eyes that were rheumy, lifeless and bleak. He could have been aged anywhere between forty and seventy.

One thing was for sure: he wasn’t going to get much older.

God knows what he had been in some other life, thought Russell. He’d been a son, probably a husband, maybe a father and most likely an employee at some time. What had happened? What had he done or what had been done to him to cause the humanity to seep away? How had he become detached, amputated from mainstream society? What tragedy or what farce had brought him to the gutter? He almost felt sorry for the bastard. Well, he thought, his suffering was almost over.

‘You know he’s going to stay here until chucking out time.’ Russell observed quietly. ‘It might be best if we wait for him outside.’

Laurence shook his head. ‘That will look far too suspicious: a group of youths hanging about outside a pub late at night. We don’t want to have some diligent copper pulling up in his police car to ask us what we’re doing. No. We wait in here.’

They had drawn lots to see who was to be in charge of this particular operation and, to the relief of Russell and Alex, Laurence had won and so they were obliged to obey any decision he made. That was part of the rules.

And so they continued to wait. They waited through another two pints that Alpha Beta downed sporadically. It was nearing closing time and the clientele began to leave. Like rusty automatons, they shuffled towards the door individually, dragging their weary limbs out into the winter cold, solitary grey figures, Billy no mates, off to some grim and greasy bed somewhere. Life on the planet Scumball.

Eventually, Alpha Beta slipped off his stool and gave the barman a vague, drunken smile and headed for the door. He swaggered past their table without a glance in their direction, his eyes hooded with inebriation. As he passed through the door, the three of them exchanged nods. This was it.

It was time.

Russell grinned nervously. Fear and excitement throbbed through his body and he suddenly discovered that his hands were clammy and beads of sweat were trickling down his brow. But strangely he found that it was a thoroughly pleasurable sensation, acknowledging possibly for the first time that this was a game no more. This was the real thing.

He glanced across at the other two. Alex seemed to be sharing similar emotions: eager but anxious with a touch of suppressed fear in his fixed expression. Laurence was as cool as ever, his face almost blank apart from a hint of excitement in that feral grin that hovered briefly on his thin, pale lips.

They waited exactly one minute before following their prize winner out into the dark. He hadn’t gone far. He was less than thirty yards ahead of them, a shambling silhouette, shuffling aimlessly along the pavement occasionally muttering to himself, his breath escaping in small white clouds into the sharp air. Without a word, they followed him casually at a safe distance.

It was late November and a patina of frost was in the process of icing the pavement. In the distance, to their left, they could see the vague shapes of the town’s Christmas decorations: the garish coloured lights, the large illuminated Santas and grinning snowmen. However, the council’s Christmas cheer didn’t stretch to this benighted part of the town. This was no-man’s land, ignored and rejected by the local burghers. No fairy lights here – only the harsh yellow glare of sodium lamps.

As mere foot soldiers, Russell and Alex waited obediently for Laurence’s command. He was aware that although the street was quiet with no pedestrians in view, the road was too well lit, too busy with traffic for it to be safe to take action now. They would have to wait until the sad old bastard turned into a quieter thoroughfare, which thankfully he did after about ten minutes of shuffling.

Patiently the three youths followed Alpha Beta as he tottered down a quiet, dingy street where conveniently several of the street lamps were out of order. With suppressed excitement they pulled on their gloves and exchanged knowing glances.

‘Get ready,’ said Laurence with a tight grin, his eyes glittering eerily in the darkness.

Alpha Beta was now passing a small patch of waste ground which had an electricity substation on it.

‘Perfect,’ said Laurence. ‘All systems go. Game on.’

Extracting the hammer from the inside of his parka jacket he jogged ahead of the other two and caught up with their prize winner.

‘Excuse me, sir. Sorry to bother you, but have you got a light?’

Alpha Beta, his brain clouded with alcohol, turned slowly and awkwardly to respond to this request.

As he did so, Laurence raised the hammer high and brought it down on the fellow’s skull with great force. There was a sharp crack similar to the snapping of a stick of firewood and Alpha Beta, eyes wide with shock and confusion, made a brief gagging sound as though he had a piece of food stuck in his throat. Laurence hit him again with more ferocity this time. Alpha Beta fell silent and dropped to the ground like an old pile of clothes. Alex and Russell rushed forward and bending over the body stuck their knives repeatedly deep into the fellow’s chest and stomach. The soft flesh offered no resistance to the sharp blades.

They grinned and chuckled. It felt good.

Really good.

Alpha Beta grunted quietly while his body shuddered as it received the wounds. Blood spilled out, splattering his coat and running on to the pavement. His killers stepped back to avoid it contaminating their shoes. He rolled over on to his face and they watched for a moment while life oozed out of his body. Eventually he lay still, one glittering eye visible, staring sightlessly at a small stream of his own blood.

‘Mission accomplished chaps. Game over,’ grinned Laurence. ‘Well done.’ For a moment they gazed down at their handiwork, capturing the image in their minds.

One for the memory bank.

Then, with a quick shake of hands, the group dispersed with some speed, each making their separate way home.

PART ONE

ONE

1984

Detective Inspector Paul Snow gazed at his face in the shaving mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. He rarely did, but on this occasion his natural revulsion was stronger than usual. His skin was blotchy and dark circles shadowed his eyes. He looked unhealthy and haggard. He wasn’t sleeping well and he wasn’t thinking straight most of the time. Of course he knew why. His past was coming back to haunt him in spades; closing around him like some invisible straitjacket, clamping itself around him, suffocating him, and he had no idea what to do.

His dark cupboard of secrets was about to be opened.

He parked in his usual space in the Huddersfield police station car park and sat in the car for a while. It was still early. He could see in the distance that the sun was only just rising above the stark silhouette of Castle Hill, making the ancient tower sitting there seem as though it was on fire. Snow wasn’t ready to interact with other humans just yet and so he decided to have a walk about the quiet streets before going into the office. A peaceful stroll might help him relax – and then again it might give him pause to dwell on his troubles.

Nevertheless there was something comforting about walking about the old town when it was so quiet: shops closed, traffic sporadic and only the occasional pedestrian, usually walking briskly on their way to work. He breathed in the early morning air and felt his body relax a little.

He passed a coffee shop which was open and went inside. The coffee was thin and bland but at least it was hot. As he sat hunched up on one of the plastic stools, the coffee mug inches away from his face, he gazed at the other early morning customers and wondered what terrible secrets they harboured. Were they as terrible as his?

By the time he arrived at his office, Snow had managed to stow away his dark thoughts temporarily, and to begin thinking about the case – the case that could be his undoing. He found a package waiting for him on his desk, sent by the internal police mail. With his usual measured precision, he opened it and extracted the contents: a cardboard bound note book. What had old Daniels said? ‘Here, lad, I’ll let you deal with this. You’ll think Christmas has come early.’

Snow placed the note book on his desk, opened it and then began reading.

TWO

JOURNAL OF RUSSELL BLAKE 1968-1970

I want to make some sense of it before I forget. I’m already aware how memory can play tricks on you. And, I suppose, I want to capture that fascinating rush of excitement from those early days. In writing it down, I hope I can in some strange vicarious way, re-live that time. I know now it will never be as good again. There seemed so many possibilities then but now they’ve all drifted away. But those early days with Laurence… Oh, yes…

Where did it all begin? Where does anything really begin? In the womb, I guess, while you’re soaking up your parents’ genes as your little body begins to take shape and you are influenced by all the crap your mother puts into her body, including, of course, your father’s penis, along with the booze and the pills and such like.

But then that doesn’t really make you a murderer, does it?

Or does it? How can you be sure?

To be honest, my parents were fairly docile, fairly nondescript, fairly boring individuals, who brought me up and cared for me in a desultory fashion and failed to influence me in any way about anything. They also had the decency to die young, allowing me to get on with my life in my own way. Looking back, I think of them as rather shadowy black and white creatures in the background of my Technicolor life. It seemed to me that they lacked any real passions or strong desires and I often wonder how they ever managed to summon enough enthusiasm to create me in the first place. Perhaps the stork really did deliver me and it’s all his fault.

No, the greatest influence in my life was Laurence. And it still is. Laurence Barker. Well, Barker as he was then. God bless him – although I doubt if He would.

I was just seventeen when we met at Sixth Form College. The year was 1968 and my parents had moved from Hayward’s Heath because of my father’s boring, nerdy but fairly lucrative job and landed up in Huddersfield, the sort of gritty northern town that was very popular in the British cinema round about that time. Think Billy Liar, A Taste of Honey, Room at the Top and you’ve got it. Then the town seemed to be full of old men in flat caps and long raincoats – Lowry’s stick men fleshed out, dumpy women with tight perms squeezed into garish headscarves, sad, fat teenage boys with lank hair wearing Terylene suits from Burtons and cheap imitation Carnaby Street flowered shirts, noisy Asians who thought they were cool mimicking tabloid oafs and silly nubile girls whose main ambition in life was to get themselves in the family way and have a squawking brat to play dolls with. No A Levels or degrees for these ladies – just a pram and a stack of damp nappies. And of course a nice house on a nice estate and, most importantly, no job.

The cobbled streets, smoking chimneys and the factories were disappearing fast but there was still enough of the town’s pre-war industrial past in evidence to keep it parochial and old fashioned despite the creeping cheap plastic veneer of Sixties sophistication which was gradually invading the place. It was a small-minded, insular dump – and I hated it. But then I hated most things. Hating things made me happy. It was my hobby.

That’s what helped me to bond with Laurence. He felt like I did about Huddersfield and life. Both were a pain in the arse. Laurence had a lanky arrogance that attracted me from the start. He had what Huddersfield folk would call ‘a posh voice’ and looked like a young Peter Cook, his hair carefully combed so that it fell across his forehead, cresting his brow. His parents had been wealthy but some dodgy business deal had caused them to lose a fortune. Not only a fortune but a palatial house with grounds in the ethereal environs of Harrogate. And so like precious driftwood they had washed up on the shores of Huddersfield. Financially Laurence’s family might have been shadows of their former selves but in Huddersfield they were still rich Bentley-driving, champagne-swilling, indoor swimming-pool splashing bastards.

I knew he was a kindred soul when I first saw him at that God-awful ‘Freshers Party’ organised at Greenbank Sixth Form College to help us academic virgins bond with our fellow students. Held in what was laughingly called the common room (‘Because everyone was common in there,’ observed Laurence), the party consisted of bowls of crisps, salted peanuts, jugs of cheap non-branded cola and a boring DJ playing naff music. The other freshers, desperately trying to prove they were part of the swinging sixties, pranced about like prats, while I stood on the sidelines, bored and depressed. I was going to be sharing my life with this load of wankers for the next two years.

Laurence was standing close to the door as though ready to make a quick getaway. He was smoking, which was strictly forbidden on the college premises, and wore an expression of the highest disdain as he watched the dancers gyrating in the centre of the room. Their efforts seemed to amuse Laurence. His lips curled delicately at the edges and his large pale blue eyes flickered with contempt. He was dressed in an expensive dark suit with a white shirt and a slim black tie dangling from a loose collar. He was terribly thin, with high cheekbones and a bloodless complexion and looked rather like a young vampire. But to me he seemed glamorous and elegant and I envied his appearance.

I wandered over to him. ‘Simply spiffing party,’ I observed putting on my jokey Bertie Wooster voice.

Laurence gazed at me lazily; smoke obscuring his features for a moment. ‘Have we been introduced?’ His expression was haughty and the voice arrogant, but there were traces of humour in those clear blue eyes.

‘‘Fraid not,’ I replied, still using my Wooster voice, but now uncertain whether this tall boy with the penetrating gaze was being serious or playing along with my charade. I didn’t have to wait long.

‘You’re not Gladys Upme, the defrocked housewife and black pudding hurler from Hampton Wick are you?’ he said with a kind of camp nasal tone used by Kenneth Williams in Round the Horne.

I took the outstretched baton and ran with it. ‘That’s my brother. He’s in Rampton for sheep rustling.’

‘Good job, too. Damned noisy occupation.’

I laughed and he gave me a slow grin.

‘Would you like a little ciggy?’ He offered me the packet. I didn’t smoke but I knew it would be inappropriate to refuse. Besides he looked so good holding the little white cancer stick in his forefingers up by the side of his face that I wanted to look like that as well.

He flicked a lighter and soon I was puffing inexpertly on the ‘little ciggy’.

‘I’m Russell,’ I said.

He raised an arched eyebrow. ‘Not related to the sheep, I hope.’

I grinned and shook my head.

‘Laurence,’ he announced grandly. ‘Good to meet you, a fellow castaway in this shit hole.’ His face hardened, his features were taut with anger. ‘Do you think if we closed our eyes, all this would disappear and we’d find ourselves in hall at Oxford or Cambridge…?’ He stopped suddenly and placed his face close to mine. ‘Are you very bright?’

‘Brighter than most of the losers in this dreary dump but no more.’

‘Ah, well, we’re members of the same club then.’

He smiled and the warmth from that smile charmed me, thrilled me, and soothed me more than I am able to say.

With casual disdain, he dropped his cigarette on to the floor and pressed it into the carpet with his foot. ‘Come on, life is too fucking short to stand here watching a load of spastics trying to dance. There must be a pub around here that’ll sell beer to two bright seventeen year olds.’

Indeed we did find a pub not more than a few streets away: The Sportsman, which became our haunt, our bolthole, for the next two dreary years at college. It was a scruffy little place mainly inhabited by pensioners and grey-faced unemployed loners. The landlord, a thin, pale chap called Alf knew how old we were and where we were from but it didn’t bother him. He was happy to add to his meagre profits by supplying us with alcohol. Often was the afternoon we’d bunk off lessons and escape to Alf’s where Laurence and I would talk and talk.

That first evening in the pub Laurence and I bonded a life-long friendship and in some strange way we knew it. We forged a link that would only be broken by death.

We hated the college; we hated the teachers – second rate losers; and we hated most of the other students – unambitious dullards more interested in the minutiae of their barren lives than in developing their brains. We were good at hating. Despite all that, we both did well in our studies. This was not due to hard work on our part but merely a combination of our natural brilliance and the low expectations of the staff. Well, let’s face it, they were used to dealing with intellectual dwarfs.

We gained a reputation for being aloof – which we were – and that we were gay – which we were not. The trouble with these northern no-brains is that anyone they encounter who is not a clone of their own stupid selves is labelled as a queer, a poofter, a nancy-boy. They can’t bear the idea of anyone being different and, indeed, better than they are; and if you are, you must be some kind of pervert. Laurence and I fancied girls and indeed we talked about sex a lot but I don’t think our libidos had quite kicked in yet. We ogled tarts in magazines like Fiesta and Bounce and one or two of the girls at the college took our fancy in a purely physical way, but at that time we were more concerned about sorting ourselves out, trying to come to terms with life and what we wanted out of it and what it could offer us. There was plenty of time for sex later.

Neither of us wanted to follow the route that our fathers had taken into boring business or stultifying corporate life and the idea of marriage, a ‘nice’ house and two point four children, filled us with dread and loathing. Our boredom threshold was low; we needed some kind of excitement to keep us awake and alert. It was a discussion about this very topic that formed our first watershed moment. We were in Alf’s one Friday afternoon finishing our week’s labours with a drink or two. The pale sunlight struggled through the grimy windows throwing beams of dusty light into the room while we sat at our usual corner more than normally disconsolate with our lot.

‘I want to do something this weekend that will make a mark on the world,’ Laurence suddenly announced grandly. ‘I’m fed up with mooching around on Saturday and Sunday. We do nothing of any consequence. Nothing memorable.’

‘We could indecently expose ourselves in the market place.’ I suggested lightly.

Laurence wrinkled his nose. ‘My dear Russell, I have no desire to have my manly member placed on a police file. Besides it’s a bit nippy for that kind of activity.’

‘Well, it would be memorable.’

‘Steady, big boy! I think you miss my point… or perhaps I didn’t explain myself clearly enough. I’m happy do something outrageous and shocking as long as …’ He paused for dramatic effect and leaned closer to me, a broad grin on his face. ‘As long we are not identified. We have to be the invisible perpetrators. It must be something secret. It’s like farting behind the bushes. We produce the noise and the smell but no one knows who did it. That gives the joke an added frisson. Get it? We can crouch behind the hedge laughing our socks off and no accusing finger can be pointed at us.’

‘I don’t think I’m up for farting behind hedges this weekend.’

‘I had something a little more adventurous in mind. Something more elegant and vicious.’ He positively beamed.

‘You sneaky bastard,’ I grinned. ‘You’ve already got something in mind, haven’t you? You’ve got a plan.’

‘Excellent deduction, mon ami.’ He tugged at his imaginary moustache, slipping into his Hercule Poirot impersonation. ‘The little grey cells are on fine form today. You are quite correct. I have devised a… how shall I say...? a little divertissement for us this weekend.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘Let’s have another drink and I’ll explain.’

Our glasses replenished, Laurence set to his task. ‘Tell me, Russ, who is the most irritating, most pathetic and most despicable member of what is laughingly known as the teaching staff at the Dotheboys Hall we attend…’

‘Which we attend when Alf’s is not open.’

‘Point taken, but answer the bloody question.’

‘Most irritating…?’

‘Despicable, pathetic… loathsome.’

‘There are so many.’

‘The worst. Come on there is only one fucking candidate.’

‘Ooh, oh I don’t know,’ I said, playing with him.

‘Ha ha. Now give me her name.’

‘Oh, her name. It’s a woman is it?’

‘Don’t be a prick.’

‘You couldn’t possibly be referring to Miss Irene Black, could you?’

Laurence’s eyes lit up with triumph. ‘The very same. Old Mother Black, she of the floral dresses and curly wig.’

It was true, Old Mother Black, as she was generally known by all the students, wore her hair in the scrunchiest perm I’d ever seen, so tight that the hair did not move, not even on the windiest day. Not only that but its unnatural colour contrasted with the pale, ancient wrinkled features beneath it. If it wasn’t a wig, it looked like one. Granny Black was a dinosaur. She should have given up teaching years ago. She was fussy, incompetent and had no understanding or tolerance of young people. As a relic of a bygone age it was appropriate that she taught history. Laurence and I had a particular dislike for the old bag. We didn’t think she was up to the job. She was easily flustered, ill-prepared and unable to move from her notes. Laurence had a particular talent for bowling her a question from left field just for the pleasure of unsettling her, which he did frequently. She’d flush and dither and shuffle her papers. ‘Not now, Barker,’ she would announce distractedly. ‘We’ll come to that later.’ More shuffling of papers.

Laurence took a sip of his beer before continuing. ‘Wouldn’t you like to upset the old cow? I mean really upset her. Wouldn’t it give you great pleasure to see Old Mother Black reduced to a nervous wreck?’

I laughed out loud. ‘I’d pay for the privilege,’ I said, an image forming in my head of Old Mother Black, wig askew, on her hands and knees, blubbing for all she was worth.

‘I’ll arrange it for free.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Right. Tell me, Russ, what is Old Mother Black’s pwide and joy?

‘Her knitting bag.’

Laurence raised his eyes in mock frustration. ‘And…’

‘Ah, you mean Caesar.’

‘Hail Caesar. Indeed.’

Caesar was an ageing, arthritic West Highland Terrier that old spinster Black brought to college every day. It would sleep in the back of her Mini for most of the time, but she took it for walks around the grounds at lunchtimes and in her free periods. On some occasions she even brought the smelly mutt into the classroom where it would curl up by her desk and fall asleep. She treated the creature like the child she never had, talking to it in cutesy woo-woo language like stupid women do when leaning over prams. The girls quite liked Caesar, while the boys in the class would have taken great delight in booting the dog in the bollocks.

‘What about Caesar?’ I asked.

‘We kidnap the beast. Snatch it from its hearth and home.’

I laughed. I didn’t know whether Laurence was serious or not but the idea tickled me greatly.

‘Can you imagine the histrionics, the floods of tears? The old bag would be reduced to a quivering wreck.’ Laurence now adopted the fluttery, whining voice that closely approximated the tones of Old Mother Black. ‘Oh my Ceasar-weasar has gone. He’s been taken from his mummy. I can’t go on. I just can’t go on.’ With a little shriek, he threw his head down on the table in a comic display of mock sobbing.

One or two of the aged boozers whiling away their afternoon with a glass of mild gave us a puzzled glance before turning back to their geriatric reveries.

I giggled and joined in the improvised drama of Old Mother Black’s kidnapped pooch. I pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed it to my eyes. ‘He was my whole life,’ I sniffled. ‘I loved him like a first born, my little Ceasary – weasary.’

More looks from the pensioners as we collapsed in laughter. Silly, giddy young lads, their disapproving glances seemed to say; they’ve no idea how to behave in a pub.

‘See how much fun the idea is,’ said Laurence suddenly becoming serious. ‘But how much better when we actually do it.’

‘You’re not joking, are you?’

‘Of course not. There’s no real cleverness or thrill in just thinking these things up unless… unless you do them. Put them into practice. That’s where the real enjoyment comes.’

‘Kidnap Old Mother Black’s dog?’

Laurence nodded. ‘Precisely. However, if you’re frightened, a little chicken maybe … then I’ll have to do it on my own.’

‘I’m not chicken.’

‘Well, then, mon brave, are you up for it?’ His eyes sparkled brightly with humour and excitement.

I couldn’t resist such a look. ‘I’m in.’

‘Good man,’ he said with a grin and laughed out loud. ‘Then the game’s on.’

THREE

JOURNAL OF RUSSELL BLAKE 1968-1970

Laurence had done his detective homework in preparation for our adventure. By slipping into the college secretary’s office when she had popped out to the loo, he had rifled through the staff files and located Old Mother Black’s address. So on Saturday morning we caught a bus out to Woodcroft, a tweeville suburb of town where she lived … in a thirties bungalow called The Haven. When we saw the name on the gatepost, Laurence put his fingers down his throat and produced a gagging sound.

‘Well at least it’s not DunRoamin,’ I said.

‘DunTeachin would be better.’

There were frilly net curtains at the windows, a neat, boring lawn and a shiny brass letter box. It was just as we had imagined.

We stood across the road from The Haven, partially shielded from view by the bus shelter. Old Mother Black’s light blue Mini was parked in the drive at the side of the bungalow, but there was no sign of the old biddy herself. Suddenly I began to feel very stupid. What on earth was I doing here wasting my time on this fruitless exploit? How could we grab the bloody dog without being seen? And what would we do if we got it? It all was rather silly.

‘So now we are here, what on earth do we do?’ I said, unable to keep the note of irritation from my voice.

Laurence shrugged. ‘Haven’t got that far. It’s not going to be easy, is it? We have to get the dog away from Old Mother Black without her knowing.’

‘Well, that’s going to be impossible. She has the thing with her where ever she goes. Probably takes the beast to bed with her.’

‘That’s an avenue of thought down which I have no wish to travel… Ah, talk of the devil…’ whispered Laurence, pulling his woolly cap down as far as he could and pointing.

Old Mother Black had emerged from the side door of the bungalow with her precious Caesar on a lead. She unlocked her car and let the creature clamber into the back seat. She said something to the dog. We could not hear the words, but we recognised the simpering tone. Then she got in the car herself and after some moments while she adjusted her seat belt, checked her mirror and turned around to mouth some further soppy comments to the dog, she reversed out of the driveway slowly and set off down the road.

‘That’s our kidnapping plans up the spout,’ I observed pithily.

‘Oh, Brother Russell, you do give up rather too easily. I never said this was going to be a piece of cake. But everything comes to he who waits. It’s Saturday morning. No doubt she’s gone shopping. There are all those doggy biscuits to buy and cans of Woofy meaty chunks.’

‘Or she could have gone off for the day.’

Laurence shook his head. ‘She’d have taken stuff for the dog if she was going to be away that long. Water and its bowl and probably a tin of dog food. Nah, she’ll be back in an hour. You mark my words.’

‘I’d like to mark a part of your anatomy instead. This is a crazy plan.’

‘Of course it’s a fucking crazy plan! Is there any other type you’d like to be involved with? Something safe and predictable perhaps? Nicking Mars bars from Woolworth’s?’

‘Well at least I’d have some Mars bars to show for my efforts.’

Laurence grinned and I couldn’t resist him when he grinned. ‘So you don’t want to be in my gang now then, is that it?’ he said with mock dismay. ‘I’m not keeping you here under duress, y’know. You can bog off anytime you like. But you wait until Monday morning when the news of Old Mother Black’s tragedy is the talk of the college – oh, how you’ll wish you’d been part of it then.’

‘I am still part of it – for the moment.’

‘Right, well I suggest that we’re safe to go now and we can come back in say an hour when I predict Old Mother Black will have returned from her shopping trip.’

‘What then?’

‘We play it by ear. We wait and watch.’

‘And I thought you said this was going to be exciting.’

‘Come on, misery guts, I’ll buy you a cup of tea if we can find a café somewhere round here.’

We did find a café about a mile away in a dilapidated row of shops which had once been the hub of the little suburb of Woodcroft. Now the green grocers and shoe shop had closed down and the other premises had clearly seen better days. Obviously the inhabitants were catching buses into town to get cheaper goods in the one stop supermarket there.

Laurence did buy me a cup of tea in the quaint little tea shop which was inhabited solely by visitors from the old lady planet. The place was full of them, as though the café owner had bought a job lot. The whiff of moth balls nearly knocked us out as we entered. Even the waitress was wheelchair fodder and she seemed shocked to have customers of our tender years on the premises. She treated us with suspicion as though we’d escaped from some penal institution. No doubt to her any male under twenty five was a thug.

Eventually, we were served our tea and Laurence lit a cigarette. On witnessing this exhibition of youthful decadence there was a lot of tut-tutting from the throng of geriatric ladies, not unlike the clucking of hens at feeding time. ‘Perhaps I should have lit a moth ball instead,’ grinned my companion before blowing a glorious mouthful of smoke into the air with dramatic aplomb.

As he did so, my attention was caught by a figure passing the window. It was Old Mother Black. ‘Bloody hell!’ I exclaimed rather louder than I intended, confirming again to the aged jury that young people were the work of the devil. In a hurried whisper I relayed the news to Laurence.

‘Let’s scarper,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette in the saucer.

Within seconds were out on the street again. ‘Which way was she going?’

I pointed down the street and lo and behold there she was, emerging from the newsagents and heading towards us like a galleon in full sail. Luckily she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to take any note of her surroundings. We did an about face and began strolling at a steady pace away from her.

‘I don’t think she recognised us.’

‘Nah,’ agreed Laurence as he cast a glance over his shoulder. ‘Hey, slow down, boy. Our luck is in. She’s going into the café.’

And so she was, but even better, she had tied up Caesar to the rail outside.

We didn’t need to discuss matters. We knew exactly what we had to do. And we proceeded to do it. Casually we strolled back towards the café where we knelt down apparently making a fuss of the dog while Laurence untied its lead and then, just as casually, we walked off trailing little Caesar behind us. The dog offered no resistance. He was probably glad to get away from his simpering mistress.

‘Pity we can’t stay around to see Old Mother Black’s face when she comes out,’ I said.

‘That is a pleasure we shall have to forgo. Come on.’ Snatching the dog up and carrying it under his arm, Laurence set off at a trot. I followed.

‘Now we’ve got the stinking mutt, what do we do with him?’ I asked, some five minutes later as we continued to jog along a series of side roads, the thrill and excitement of snatching the creature having already dissipated.

‘The whole purpose of this exercise was to upset Old Mother Black, to bring the black cloud of doom to hover over – no not to hover over, to envelop her head. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘We’re not in the business of sending ransom notes and trying to extract some financial reward for our efforts.’

‘Certainly not. That involves the police and investigations which may well lead to discovery.’

‘Yup. It’s our job just to make little Caesar dog disappear.’

‘And how do we do that?’

Laurence grinned his chilling grin. ‘We bury it, of course.’

And we did bury the dog. We did it that night in strange ceremony which involved drinking several cans of beer and digging a deep hole in some woodland near where Laurence lived. He’d taken the dog home and locked it in the garden shed until nightfall when we met up again.

Armed with a large stone each, we took turns in beating the dog’s brains out. He whelped and wriggled after the first two blows but then he soon lay still as we turned his head into the consistency of raspberry jam. At first I had been nervous, well frightened really, about actually doing the deed. It had been a fun exercise up to now but actually killing the dog was perhaps taking things a bit too far. Or so I thought; but I would never have admitted these feelings to Laurence. I just followed his lead. Buoyed up by the beer, I suppressed my reluctance and joined in the ritual killing with some relish. Strangely, I found it a rather satisfying experience.

We dumped the creature into the hole we’d dug and then filled it in. ‘I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him,’ intoned Laurence, stamping down the earth with his foot. After scattering a pile of dead leaves over the grave, Laurence uttered some words of gobbledy gook, poured a splash of beer over the dog’s resting place and then with silly satisfied grins on our faces and arms around each other’s shoulders we wandered back to the road and our own individual beds.

FOUR

JOURNAL OF RUSSELL BLAKE 1968-1970

I didn’t see Laurence on the Sunday. We thought it best not to meet. We needed time to come down from our exhilarating experience; time to savour it a little. As usual, I had Sunday lunch with my parents while they bickered and then read the papers, virtually oblivious of my presence. They could never raise their game to a full blown argument, which I would have admired and enjoyed; it was all just gentle sniping and muttered undertones. I longed to lean over the table and tell them what I’d been doing the day before, giving them a graphic account and taking great delight in seeing their shocked and outraged faces. But I didn’t. Instead I sat quietly by while they snapped and moaned. Apart from that elegant bit of socialising I stayed in my room reading and doing some essay work, but after a while I allowed my mind to wander back to the events of the previous day, particularly the killing of the dog. I remember feeling a tingle of excitement as I recalled the image of the creature’s shiny red skull and its dead sightless eyes staring up at me. It’s odd that I felt no guilt or regret about our actions. In fact quite the reverse. The whole thing had made me feel alive and vibrant, interacting with the world for once in a vital fashion, instead of just being a spectator. And I had Laurence to thank for that.

I couldn’t wait to get to college on Monday morning to find out if there was any news regarding Old Mother Black and her missing pooch. I encountered Laurence in the common room before morning assembly, his face split with an enormous smile.

‘Have you heard the news?’ he said, barely able to contain his glee. ‘Old Mother Black will not be in today. Apparently she’s… sick.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Poor old thing. Wonder what can be the matter.’

‘Let’s hope it’s something serious.’

‘Let’s hope for that, certainly.’

Old Mother Black did not return to college. Ever. The distress she felt at the loss of her dog, its inexplicable disappearance, brought about a nervous breakdown and so the old dear retired due to ill health. We had, as Laurence had predicted, made our mark on the world.

We didn’t talk about the matter in any depth until some months later. Ensconced as usual in Alf’s one Friday afternoon, we came to it again. There is something about a large, quiet decrepit pub in those funereal post lunchtime hours with muted daylight just squeezing in through the grimy stained glass windows, and the place peopled with only a few punters, pensioners with dominoes and the odd out of work alkie, which gives it an air of the confessional. We had been discussing Old Mother Black’s replacement, a fit piece of stuff in her early thirties, and congratulating ourselves that it was through our efforts that we now had the pleasure of Miss Cornwall, with her tight jumpers, buttock hugging pencil skirts and flashing brown eyes, for our history studies.

Laurence leaned back in his seat apparently staring at the smoke-tarred ceiling with a beatific smile upon his face. ‘Poor Old Mother Black. We really did for her didn’t we?’

‘And that bloody dog of hers. We did for them both.’

We chuckled.

‘You are quite right, mon ami,’ continued Laurence. ‘We made the difference. We altered the course of history – only a teeny weeny bit, I grant you, but nevertheless… Through our little efforts we managed to change things. Surely that’s what we’re here for. That’s what makes life bearable, to shape things to our own ends… and in particular to affect the lives of others. We’re not like those dumbbells at college who just let life happen to them. We make it happen to us.’