Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

Royle stared at the photograph.

It was a startling image.

His vision blurred; tears filled his eyes. For a moment he thought he might even faint.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took a minute just to clear his head. He had to focus on what was in front of him and ignore any other references or connections his mind came up with. This was not a Victorian death study; it was a photograph of a missing little girl, perhaps the last one ever taken of her. In the photograph, Connie looked the same age she’d been when she went missing. So it wasn’t a recent shot; this had been taken at least five years ago.

He tried to remain calm. He owed the family his full attention. He owed them that, at least.

Was this some kind of sick joke, carried out by local kids on the anniversary of the girl’s disappearance? The idea was feasible, but to Royle it just didn’t feel right. There was more to this than what was immediately on show, some kind of reason hiding beneath the surface. Why would anyone go to the trouble of constructing the weird scarecrow and obscuring its face with the image of the missing girl? It didn’t make sense; it was overly complicated for some nasty practical joke.

But who else could it be? This family had no enemies. Quite the opposite, in fact; they were well liked, and most people in the area empathised with them for what had happened to their only daughter.

“Craig…” Mrs Millstone’s voice was still quite far behind him. She was afraid to come any closer. Maybe she expected the scarecrow to come to life and start hobbling along the path towards her?

“Just a minute…” He let out a long breath and stared at the image pasted over the scarecrow’s face. He committed the face to memory, even though it was already there, along with the rest of them, burned into his brain like a brand.

He turned around. “The photo… Is it one of yours?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t been too close, but I was close enough to know that I didn’t recognise it. Why would we have a photo with scribbles on her eyelids, anyway? It’s… it’s awful, like something out of a horror movie.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to check.”

She nodded. “Can we go inside now?” She turned away without waiting for an answer. “I’ll make another cup of tea.” Her voice was tiny, like that of a child. She was clinging to the everyday rituals of making tea, offering her guest refreshments, and in truth she was clinging to her sanity.

Royle followed Mrs Millstone along the uneven cement path, resisting the urge to look behind him to check if the scarecrow had moved.

He knew it hadn’t. That was silly. It would be impossible.

But still he couldn’t bring himself to look and see.

“OKAY, MARRA. JUST keep me posted. You know you’re always welcome back here.” Erik Best stared at the wall, distracted, as he spoke on the phone. There was a crack there, in the plaster. He’d never noticed it before, but it started at the corner of the double door frame and made a rough diagonal line up towards the ceiling. There were ragged cobwebs around it, but there was no sign of any spider.

He said goodbye to his friend Marty Rivers, who was now living in London for the foreseeable future, and walked across to the doorway. He peered at the crack, wondering how it might have formed. The house wasn’t new, but it was in good repair. He’d spent a fortune on having that doorway widened and glass doors installed, about six years ago, when he decided to invest some money in the property. It shouldn’t be damaged. The workmanship had been top notch. He’d handpicked and supervised the workmen himself.

He stood on his tiptoes but was still too short to reach the top of the door frame. He shook his head and turned away, pacing across the room to the front window.

“Marty, Marty, Marty…” The guy had been his best bare-knuckle fighter and one of the most reliable men on his payroll. Something had happened a few months ago, up at the Needle — one of Marty’s old school friends had been stabbed by a piece of shit kid from the estate. He’d died on the spot. Marty had gone down to London to speak to the friend’s pregnant missus, and now he’d decided to stay there, to become some kind of surrogate dad to the imminent arrival. Erik had put out feelers to see if any names came up regarding the stabbing, but so far nobody was talking.

He looked out at his garden and tried to gain pleasure from what he saw. The plot was huge; the boundary fence adjoined a small wooded area, beyond which was a private field. Erik had made a lot of money over the years and this place was his haven from the stress of his business world. He knew a lot of dodgy people, consorted with all kinds of low-life criminals and high-class scumbags, but he’d not once invited any of them into his home. It was out of bounds, and hopefully out of reach. A man like Erik Best tended to make enemies, and the less those enemies (or even friends) knew about his private life the better.

Private life … now there was a phrase. These days, the only private life he had time for consisted of sex with the kind of slappers who worked in the low-rent pubs and clubs where he arranged security, or the occasional orgy with some punters from the fights. The middle classes; they always got horny after watching bloodshed. In the past, he’d enjoyed a lot of action that way, but these days all he wanted was safety and security, someone to hold in the night.

Abby Hansen had once offered him the kind of lifestyle he now craved. When she’d been raising Erik’s daughter, little Tessa, he’d kept his distance, but as soon as the kid went missing he wanted to be part of their lives. It was just like him to want everything after the offer had been withdrawn. His timing had always been off in matters of the heart.

We never know what we’ve got until some fucker takes it away , he though, watching a small grey squirrel run across his lawn. He wished he had a gun in his hand, just to shoot something that was alive. Make it dead. It was a primal urge; a deep-rooted instinct. To kill. To destroy.

Few people had known that little Tessa Hansen had been Erik’s child until she went missing. Even the bloke Abby had been living with at the time of her disappearance — his name eluded Erik, like so many other things lately — didn’t have a clue. He thought the girl was his own. The truth had only been let out into the open because of a traumatic event. They’d only fucked a few times, and she’d fallen pregnant easily. One drunken night when she puked up her pill; a tiny life conceived during a booze-inspired grapple. More of that bad timing, he supposed… what he would give to be able to be her father now, to raise her and teach her about the world. But it was not to be.

He turned away from the window and sat down in his favourite armchair, craving a few grams of coke. He was trying to cut down on the drugs, but the opposite seemed to be happening: he wanted more and more, relying on pills and powders to give him succour from the shitstorm around him. He knew it was bad form, and that his body would be suffering, but somehow he just couldn’t manage to kick those bad habits. Indeed, ones he thought he’d overcome years ago were returning with a vengeance.

When his mobile started to ring, he almost ignored it. But it was one of the business phones, and he tried to make it a rule that business always came first — even before his so-called fucking private life.

He took the phone from his shirt pocket and thumbed the answer button. “What is it?” No pleasantries for Erik Best; no pleases and thank yous. Just straight business talk.

“Erik… I mean, Mr Best. It’s Hacky.”