Michael Fowler - Heart of the Demon

Within seconds his dad was snatching off the broad leather belt that he always wore to hold up his work trousers, wrapping the buckle of it into his palm. He watched his father unleash it with such ferociousness across his mother’s back, before winding it around her neck. He could see her eyes bulging, fingers trying to pull it away from her flesh, mouth gaping, trying to force out words. Instinctively, he found himself crouching cat-like, before launching at his father, pulling at his hair and ears, and clawing at his face. He couldn’t understand why his father’s once embracing arms turned against him. He was slung against the wall. The pain was intense, and as the blood trickled down his face, the last thing he could remember was the screams of his mother tearing into his eardrums.

He awoke in a sweat, shooting bolt upright. He was wringing wet and there was a damp patch on his bedding around him. How many times had that dream come back to haunt him. So many nights he had lain awake. Scared to go to sleep because he had to re-live the nightmares of his past.

He leaned back against the wooden headboard, breathing deeply, rubbing the tension out of his neck and shoulders. Then, as always, he closed his eyes and conjured up the images of his childhood.

For the first ten years of his life he didn’t have a care in the world. He had a loving, doting mother, and a proud father, who shared his passion for photography. In fact he had built him a dark room, and spent many happy hours helping him to develop his photographs. His father had worked at the local pit, and he could recall the many occasions walking down his street with his mother to meet his dad strolling over the pit pony fields, breaking into a jog for his father to sweep him off his feet and throw him over his shoulders for a ‘piggy-back’ home.

Then she had spoilt it all.

His mother had screwed that fat and ugly Jimmy Carson, and father had left home.

He remembered how his once so-called mates called his mother a whore, and he had quickly lashed out, venting his anger so deeply on one boy that DC Newstead had come round and told his mother to sort him out, or he’d do it for her.

She had punished him with his father’s belt just as severely as she had been beaten with it herself.

But he had been determined not to cry, even as the blood had trickled from the weals on his back.

Father never came back.

He would never forgive her.

He slipped down the bed, curling up, pulling his knees into his chest, and wondering, like he constantly did, if that was the reason why he kept doing these gruesome things.

Fresh images sprang into his mind. The glint of his knife flashed before him. It was so vivid, as though he was still holding it. Then visions of the girl, throwing up her hands, gasping and screaming in terror entered his head. He was plunging the blade down, again and again, burying it in her chest and head. Her blood was everywhere.

He shot bolt upright again, springing open his eyelids, struggling for breath. He had drifted off again, dreaming the nightmares, which were becoming more regular. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for years. Why did he keep doing these things? He couldn’t answer his own thoughts, he only knew that whilst doing them the rush of pleasure and the feeling of supreme power overwhelmed him.

* * * * *

Immediately after speaking with Susan Siddons that previous morning, Hunter had set out to trace his old CID buddy Paul Goodright. A quick telephone enquiry revealed he was now attached to the Task Force Firearms Unit and he tracked him down on his second call.

Within minutes of catching up, and without revealing too much, he impressed upon him that it was urgent that they should meet. Between themselves, they arranged their liaison that evening in the snooker room of Hickleton Club, which they had both frequented so regularly when they had worked together, and where Hunter thought the likelihood of bumping into another cop would be highly remote. If in fact they did bump into someone they knew it would merely look as though it was two old partners having a quiet drink together; ‘chewing the fat’ over old times.

Hunter hadn’t recognised Paul at first. His features had taken on such a dramatic change. He was completely bald and he was a lot stockier, virtually all muscle, obviously from intense weight training.

“Long time no see. What’s happened to the old barnet?” Hunter quipped as they shook hands.

“This.” He ran a hand over his shiny scalp. “I’ve been going thin on top for years so eighteen months ago I made the decision to shave it off. Makes me look quite macho don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

Paul Goodright steadied his cue over the snooker table, scanning his eyes along the green baize to the triangle of red balls at the far end of the table.

There was a loud staccato retort as the frame of balls exploded. The white ball spun quickly away from the sides of the table and returned to the bottom cushion.

There was a glint in Hunter’s eye, as chalked his cue and strolled towards his first shot. ‘The perfect plant into the top right hand corner pocket’, he thought. With cue steady in hands he smashed white into red, causing it to disappear, as he had expected. It had been quite some time since he had last played snooker. During his early district CID days he had played the game on an almost daily basis, and had once been a member of a club. However promotion into a very busy department and the need to spend family time with his two football-playing sons Jonathan and Daniel now ate into the majority of his free time.

Hunter potted the black ball and then glanced around the table for his next shot.

“Still not lost the old touch Hunter,” said Paul, swilling the last dregs of his beer around the glass before swallowing it in one gulp.

“Another?” he offered raising the empty glass, and when Hunter nodded he turned towards the bar.

Hunter’s break of twenty-five finished, when the white ball miscued into a pocket, and Paul hurriedly put down the freshly pulled beers and snatched it up.

“Thank Christ for that” he announced, plonking it back in the D at the foot of the table, “I thought I wasn’t going to get a look in.”

Hunter smiled and slid the metal marker along the scoreboard fixed to the wall. “Sorry about the secrecy yesterday Paul, but I never trust works’ phones.”

“Me neither. When you said you needed to speak with me about finding the body of Carol Siddons, after she had been missing for fifteen years, and then hanging up so quickly, I have to confess I was more than a little puzzled. I was going to ring you at home last night but I’ve deleted your number from my mobile. I spent most of the night racking my brains over what you did say about her being reported missing back in nineteen-ninety-three. I just can’t remember that job at all.”

“You won’t, because where Carol Siddons was last seen wasn’t our area back then. You’ve heard that we’ve discovered a mummified body haven’t you?”

Paul nodded. “I guessed it had something to do with that.”

“Yeah, yesterday morning we found out that the body is that of Carol Siddons.”

“So why do you need to speak with me?” Paul quizzed, bending over the green baize, sighting up his shot.

“Remember when the CID car got nicked all those years back?”

“Not much.” That night ruined my life and my career. Even though you backed up my story about me radioing in to check up on a suspicious noise which was coming from the back of the shops, and then coming back to find the car had gone, my days in CID were numbered.”

“Well it’s come back to haunt us again,” Hunter responded, a serious note in his tone. “You more than me.”