Neil White - Beyond Evil

Sheldon looked down at his shoes. They were worn and scuffed. He could feel the ground through his soles, cold against his feet.

How had he got to this? Pushed out of the station on forced leave. He had only tried to do what was right, to track down a killer. Why wasn’t that enough?

The view held his attention for a few minutes, the rumbles of a diesel engine reaching him as a bus struggled up a hill. Cars threaded through the town. A train ran along the valley floor, Manchester-bound. The trains will keep running, the people will keep praying, and then his life would get lost in the fade of time, so that nothing about Alice Kenyon would matter anymore. Nothing about him would matter anymore.

Sheldon put his head back and looked up, let the blue sky swirl above him, the view broken only by the occasional wisps of cloud. There was nothing of his life up there, just infinite emptiness. None of the failures, or the obsessions. For a moment, he felt a tight grip around his throat as he realised how his life was turning out. There was no real way forward.

He stepped forward to the wall. He looked ahead and not down, just towards the roofs of distant buildings, and all he had to do was keep on walking. The stones scraped his hands as he lifted his foot and let it settle on the wall, and then the other one, so that he was crouching and the view below opened up in front of him.

The ground was just stone a hundred feet below. As he looked down, he thought he could hear voices telling him to jump, that the ground would end it and bring him peace. But the voices got louder. He looked round again. There was a woman behind him. She was young, with long red hair, her face kind but worried. She looked like Alice.

‘Are you all right?’ she said. She looked scared, a tremble to her voice. ‘I saw you come up. I was at the back of the church.’

He didn’t have the answer to that. He hadn’t seen her. His eyes welled up with tears, or maybe it was just the sharp cut to the breeze.

‘You shouldn’t do what you’re thinking of,’ she said, her voice softer now. She brushed her hair away from her face, the wind sending it into a tangle. ‘Things get better. They always do.’

He swallowed.

‘Why should you care?’ His words came out thick with emotion.

Her hand went to her mouth. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, just to calm herself. When she opened them again, she said, ‘I just don’t want you to do it, not here, not in front of me. Just step down. Please. For me.’

Sheldon looked at her and the young woman reminded him not just of Alice, but also of Hannah, his daughter. He couldn’t let her remember him like this. He wiped his eyes and took a step back so that he was off the wall, level with her again. He looked at the floor for a few seconds and clenched his fists, trying to hold back the tears. But he couldn’t. They rolled down his face, his mouth quivering. He looked at her and said, ‘Thank you.’

His pace was quick as he walked away. She was right. There was so much still to do. He looked back just once, and he saw her watching him leave, her arms folded around her chest.

Sheldon headed swiftly down the stone steps, and when he burst out of the stairway and into the open spaces of the church, it felt like he’d been given another chance.

He ran out of the church and looked towards the town. All he could see were the stone buildings and slate roofs, dark and moody, but they were just facades, because behind those buildings was the rest of the town, and somewhere in there was the killer of Billy Privett. And as Sheldon thought of Billy, he remembered Alice Kenyon – as if he could ever forget her. The thought of the empty days ahead scared him, but of course they didn’t have to be empty. He could fill them. He could keep looking for Alice’s killer. And Billy’s.

As he crossed over the road, he walked with more purpose. He knew where he was going next.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlie went straight to his apartment, a long run from Amelia’s house. He was sweating and feeling sick, but speed was more important than appearances. He needed to get in and out quickly without being noticed, knowing that he needed to do something with the knife. Perhaps return it to the knife block and then call the police – provided that the two clients in suits had gone. He knew that was the riskiest option.

He sank to his knees when he got into his apartment, panting hard from the run. All Charlie could hear was the peace and quiet of his home. The hum of his fridge. The sound of the television from the apartment below. He closed his eyes, just to take stock, but his head was filled with the image of Amelia once more. That told him that he had to keep moving.

He went towards the bathroom, but the sight of his living room made him pause when he went past. It was just as he had left it the previous morning, with beer bottles and an empty pizza box. There was just one boozy night between then and now but suddenly it seemed like a different life so that just worrying about some untidiness seemed like bliss.

He went to the bathroom and rinsed his hands and face, not sure what forensic traces he had picked up at Amelia’s, like traces of her blood. He scrambled in the cabinet above the sink for a grooming kit that Julie had bought him a few months earlier, a hint that he had ignored. It had ended up at the back, pushed behind mouthwashes and razor packets. He pulled out the nailbrush and scrubbed his fingers under the hot tap, not sure what he needed to scrape away but feeling that it would be a good idea to do it.

When they were clean, he paused with his hands on the sink, his hair hanging down, sweat dripping onto the porcelain. Once more he thought of Amelia, but he willed himself through it. He didn’t have time for that.

As he looked in the mirror and stroked at his beard, he knew he had to look more respectable, not like a drinker bogged down with worry. Those that look guilty are guilty, experience had taught him that. But guilty of what? That was the problem. He had no idea. He just knew that it would all look bad to an outsider. A shave was a gamble though, because for every second he spent in the bathroom, it was another second with Amelia’s knife in the apartment.

As he held the razor, he thought of the people who might have seen him at Amelia’s house. He needed to look different. It was worth the gamble.

His hand shook, and so he took a few deep breaths to steady the tremble, not wanting to give himself away with nicks and cuts. He watched in the mirror as haggard was slowly replaced by smooth, some remnants of his younger days creeping back as the grey-tinged whiskers ended up in the sink. He couldn’t do anything about the graze though, and it just added to the redness in his cheeks. When he’d finished, he pulled on his other suit, still creased from the weekend, and went to the dishwasher, taking a step back as the steam assaulted him when he opened the door. The knife was there, hot and clean.

He picked it up using a paper towel and dropped it into a plastic bag. It was time to take it back. He paused for a moment, aware of the risk he was about to take, and had a last look around the apartment, wondering when he would return.

As he turned towards the door, Charlie glanced out of the window and down towards the street. He jumped back. The two men were there, getting out of a car, the same ones he had seen outside Amelia’s house and at his office.

Why were they there? Who were they? Had someone spoken to them, one of Amelia’s neighbours? Perhaps they had recognised his car. He had left it just a short distance along her street.

Charlie went behind the curtains and peered around the side. The two men were looking up towards the apartment. He hid behind the curtain again. It was no coincidence. It was time to go.