Jessie Keane - Ruthless

‘Do it,’ said Rufus.

‘Rufe, I daren’t…’

‘Do it,’ he said, and this time his voice was loaded with hurt and rage.

His hand shaking, Rory reached for the phone and dialled. They all waited, holding their breath. Then Rory stiffened.

‘Don? He’s gone,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been to his room and looked. Rufus is gone. He must have got suspicious and done a runner.’

There was an angry sound from the other end of the line.

‘I know that,’ Rory shouted. ‘Don’t you think I know that? But I’m telling you, I just checked his room and he’s not there.’ Rory’s eyes met Orla’s. She jabbed the knife at him: Go on .

Rufus gave her a look. Let him speak .

‘He was talking about moving on to the States,’ Rory babbled. ‘He was keen on the idea, my guess is that’s where he’s gone. So I can’t help you any more. You’ve to let the boy go.’

The angry voice jabbered away. Rory’s eyes grew wide with panic.

‘What do you mean, “we’ll see”? I’ve done all I can do. Rufus has gone, that’s all I know. I can’t… hello? Hello? ’

The line had gone dead. Trembling, Rory replaced the receiver.

‘He’ll kill him for spite,’ he mumbled, his eyes vacant with fear. ‘He will. He won’t let him go.’

‘Rory…’ started Rufus, wanting to comfort his old friend, to say that he had done what any father would have done in the circumstances, that he wasn’t to blame.

But Orla moved in with the knife and before Rufus realized what was happening, she lunged hard, sticking it squarely in Rory’s midsection.

Rory let out a breathless scream of pain and shock. Orla yanked out the knife, blood flying in a wide spurting arc, spattering the front of her nightdress. And then she struck again, plunging it up to the hilt in Rory’s windpipe. He sank to the floor, the blade embedded in his throat, gurgling, blood bubbling and foaming on his lips. Then Rory’s eyes turned up in his head and he toppled sideways, hitting the ground with a thump.

Rufus stood frozen, sick with shock, unable to believe what he had just seen. Orla had killed Rory. He blinked, shook his head. He couldn’t take it in. He hadn’t thought for a moment that she would actually use the knife or he would have snatched it off her. But she’d done it. She’d killed his friend.

Orla was breathing hard. Spattered with blood, she sat down on the bed, staring at the corpse at her feet.

Not a word was spoken for a long, long time. Rufus was shaken and filled with cold horror. He wanted to wring her neck with his bare hands. His eyes kept returning, again and again, to Rory, lying there dead on the floor.

But… but he loved her.

Didn’t he?

Then she looked up at him, and she smiled.

‘You see?’ she said, happy to be vindicated. ‘I told you he was not to be trusted.’

When he could force himself to move, to acknowledge that this nightmare was real, Rufus went down to the barn and fetched a tarpaulin, praying that neither of Orla’s parents would wake up and ask what was going on. Because what could he say? Your daughter has just knifed my best friend? But all was quiet, thank God.

He carried the tarp to the bedroom and was sickened to see that during his absence Orla had reclaimed her knife from Rory’s throat, and was wiping it clean on the front of the dead man’s shirt.

Between them, they wrapped the body and all Rory’s belongings – Rufus kept the Land Rover keys to one side – in the tarp and heaved the bundle down the stairs and outside to the little stand of woodland not too far from the house. Then Rufus fetched a shovel and started digging. He’d go down four feet, he reckoned, that would be deep enough to stop the foxes getting poor Rory out again.

He dug. And he wondered if Don was going to show up at any second, thinking that Rory had duped him – which was the truth – and then the game would be up, he’d be caught.

The way Rufus was feeling tonight, he would be glad of it. He was sickened by what Orla had done, killing a man without a qualm. And he had lost the only true friend he had in the world. So if Don were to show up, yes, Rufus would be relieved. It would mean an end to all this running, all this hiding. He was tired of it. Tired of life. Tired of the whole awful, shitty mess.

He buried Rory, filled in the grave, stood there and mumbled a few words of blessing over the poor bastard. Then he went to Rory’s Land Rover, which was parked up in one of the outside lean-to spaces, and moved it into the far barn, locking the door behind him so that no one could just wander in and see it there.

As he walked back to the house, he wondered what would happen to Rory’s kid.

He’ll kill him for spite , Rory had said.

And he might. Don was hell-bent on taking revenge on Rufus, and he’d been thwarted yet again. There was every likelihood he’d kill the boy to punish Rory. And that would be another death on Rufus’s conscience.

Bone-weary in body and spirit, Rufus went back into the house. While he’d been busy at the grave, Orla had been clearing up in Rory’s room. The metallic stink of blood had been replaced by the smell of pine disinfectant. Everything was clean, and tidy. It was, he thought, as if Rory had never been there at all.

They sat up the rest of the night. Rufus felt as if he would never sleep again. Orla had changed her nightdress for a clean one, and the blood-spattered winceyette gown was soaking in the washing machine. She seemed almost chatty, sharing a glass of whisky with him.

‘I told you, you see? You wouldn’t listen. I’ll tell Ma tomorrow that he’s moved on, don’t worry about it. I was right, you see. All along, I was right.’

‘Yes. You were right.’

But you’re not right in the head, are you?

He’d never seen a woman kill before – let alone kill so dispassionately, as if she hadn’t a feeling in her entire body. His instincts had been telling him all along that something was wrong with Orla. She seemed devoid of emotion. She killed in cold blood. She painted mad pictures. She found sex repellent. She hated babies. She had no time for anyone, and seemed constantly to anticipate attack from any direction. When he looked at her face, he no longer saw her beautiful green eyes. All he saw was the chilling taint of madness.

‘I’m sad that Redmond died,’ said Rufus, draining his glass and refilling it. ‘Because I can see what it’s done to you.’

‘I’m sad about that too,’ said Orla. ‘I’ll be sad until my dying day over the loss of him.’

‘Orla… is that all it is? Is that what’s made you this way?’

Orla took the bottle from him and topped up her own glass. ‘What way is that?’ she asked, smiling.

‘Cold,’ he said. Frigid. Frigid and fucking dangerous .

‘Cold?’

‘You… don’t want to make love,’ he said by way of explanation. And that’s the least of it .

Orla let loose a heavy sigh. ‘Ah, are you still going on about that? I can’t help it. I just don’t like it very much, that’s all.’

‘Yes, but why? Have you never looked into it, asked a doctor maybe?’

‘No. Because I don’t have to.’

‘Why is that?’ He wanted to hear the truth of it. A voice inside him warned that prodding her into some sort of confession might be dangerous, but he was past caring. He’d been staying all this time, living with the constant fear that Don would show up, thinking that was the worst thing that could happen. Little did he know. Nothing could have been worse than the horror he’d witnessed tonight, the loss of Rory, the sheer God-awful weirdness of Orla.