Peter looked over at the three hooded figures and grimaced. ‘You’re murderers, and you got away with it.’
‘Ending the lives of the other three was a necessity to try and halt the spread of Reaping Icon – he had destroyed their minds.’
‘Had he?!’
Noose coughed, the damp of the hole affecting his chest. He, beginning to accept Peter’s return to life, turned to face the hooded figures also. ‘I remember those three murders in the museum. It was like a sacrifice, the bodies all defaced and dismembered. You’re fucking evil.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Is that what I’m here for, to be sacrificed?’
‘No, you are here to assist Peter Smith.’
‘Was Reaping Icon in Lucy?’ Peter growled. ‘Is that why you murdered her?’
‘We did not murder Lucy. We did warn you, however. We tried to stop the inevitable from happening.’
‘What do you mean by that? What inevitable?’
‘Long ago, a prior life of yours was shown a vision by The Space purporting to the murder of Lucy. Can you not remember? We wanted to stop it.’
‘Then why didn’t you just tell me that?’ Peter cried out, grabbing hold of one of them and pulling them close. ‘She could have lived, you idiots.’
‘We have failed in stopping the spread of Reaping Icon, but in bringing you back there is hope,’ was their reply. Peter twisted the figure he had a hold of around and yanked the hood off. With the head exposed, they turned around to face Peter. It was Peter, looking directly at himself. He stepped back from them as the other two removed their hoods to reveal two more Peter’s. ‘Our time is complete, we must collectively die.’ They each brought out a knife and placed it against their necks. ‘Only one Peter Smith can succeed. Let us end this sick curse.’ They dragged the knives across their own throats with a severe force, blood gushing forth as they writhed around in pain and confusion. Noose tried his best to try and stop the blood flowing from one of them, ripping his shirt in half and wrapping it around the wound. It was no good, nobody could help them now. Peter felt empty, like he’d been abandoned in infancy by a troubled single parent. Noose kept valiantly on, soaked in blood and weeping in frustration. Eventually he collapsed in a heap on the floor, pulling his thin sweaty hair off his face and covering his head in blood in the process.
‘How are they you? They were all you!’
‘It’s a mystery,’ was Peter’s quick reply.
‘So what happens now?’ Noose sighed, looking up at Peter.
‘We clear your name, and we finally bring Lucy’s murderer to justice too.’
Noose stayed in his heap, exhausted. ‘Beth and Dani Henderson were the next-door neighbours of Anna, Lucy’s mum,’ he whispered, not quite wanting to go down that road with Peter. It had always been a thorny subject, and he wasn’t yet sure that Peter was ready to accept what happened to Lucy. He’d always been so good at blocking it from his mind and not only denying any part in her life, but also denying her existence altogether. Still, this Peter before him now did seem somewhat more stable than ever before. If that was at all possible. It was rather ironic that a man who’d committed suicide over ten years ago, and had somehow been delivered back to existence, could be stable. But there it was, and here Peter was. Noose struggled to his feet. Peter hadn’t replied. He hadn’t even flinched. ‘How do we get out of here?’ Noose asked him, as if Peter held all the answers to life’s questions.
‘I don’t know.’
They looked around; there was no door, no entrance of any kind. The only thing apart from the walls was the slab Noose had been lying on. Peter turned to it and pulled at it. It opened on a hinge, revealing a set of steps leading into the darkness below. The two men struggled down them, feeling their way along horrid damp clay walls as they got deeper and deeper. Suddenly the steps stopped and the floor was flat, an inch of putrid still water lying on it. They walked down it, fighting the smell and the squelching, and reached a ladder stretching up into a narrow dark tube.
‘Turns your stomach, this place,’ Noose commented, trying to picture in his mind how the figures had managed to bring his unconscious body down here.
‘I guess this is the exit,’ was Peter’s response as he ascended the ladder, very quickly reaching the top and finding a circular lid above his head. He slowly pushed it open, peeping out through it. It was a grid in the museum garden, and everywhere was dark. Lifting the grid and sliding it off, he got out and helped pull Noose out.
‘So what was it like being dead?’ Noose suddenly asked Peter.
‘For me, it’s been as frustrating as being alive.’ Peter grinned in his old way, and Noose’s spirits were lifted immeasurably. He grinned back.
‘I guess I’ll be a very wanted man, we won’t be safe.’
‘Indeed not.’ Peter took in a deep breath of the fresh nighttime air. He caught the sweet scent of the abundant museum moonflowers and for a brief moment thought how wonderful life could be. ‘We need to find somewhere to hide out and get tidied up.’
* * *
Lauren stumbled towards her flat door in her dressing gown, still half asleep and angry she’d been disturbed during some much-needed sleep. Deep down she knew she probably shouldn’t even open it, or should at the very least call out and ask who it was, but maybe she sensed who it would be. Noose had escaped from the hospital and it was all over the news. She’d been offered a police guard in case he tried to contact her, but she’d refused. Nevertheless, there was a guard downstairs sitting in his car across from the entrance to the flats. He hadn’t given it much thought when two women had approached the building, especially when they knew the code for the door and had gained access. They’d probably just been out on a late night bender, and were finding their way home at this rather late hour.
When Lauren opened the door she found these two women standing outside in the corridor. Well, not quite women, but the dark towels wrapped around their heads and the frilly frocks could have made them look a bit like women from a distance… in dim light.
‘Why on Earth are you dressed like that?’ was all Lauren could say. She was too gobsmacked, but not scared, at the sight of Peter and Noose. The latter she had helped build the forensic case against which sent him down for two counts of rape and murder, and the former she hadn’t seen for over a decade. ‘And how did you get into the block?’
‘You are even more stunning than when last we met,’ was Peter’s response. He looked upon her thin frame and strained face, lines beginning to form here and there and her skin that much paler. She was still perfect to him; she always had been. He looked for the birthmark on her neck, and felt he was coming home to where he belonged. But again, Lucy took hold of his mind and shook him. Where truly did he belong? Lucy was dead and Lauren was alive and in front of him. He could remember Lucy now, and with Lauren it was different. With Lauren it seemed to go beyond teenage lust and a coming-of-age search for sexuality. This was pain on top of pain where Lucy was concerned, because although he’d imagined them to be married at the time, he somehow felt it would never have worked out. Deep down he knew it was “young love” and a teenage fling. This made Lucy’s life all the more wasted. She had never found that true one in which to spend it with, unlike Peter who now wanted to share his life with Lauren. One life, right here and now, to live out just once with her and never to return again. He wanted to grow old with her and die, and then call it a day.
‘Where have you been all these years, why did you just ditch me from your life?’ she shot back.
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I bet it is.’
‘Trust me Lauren,’ Noose cut in, laughing nervously. ‘It really is.’
She looked at Noose, some of the blood still on his face and hands. Lauren didn’t know whether to laugh at the sight of them in dresses or scream for help from the guard downstairs. No, some gut feeling told her she would not be harmed by the pair. ‘You’re a wanted man.’
‘I didn’t kill them,’ he yet again had to cry out, almost ready to just give up and admit to the murders. It seemed that everyone already thought he’d done it, so why continue to waste his energy fighting them? ‘Look, just let us in. We have no one else to turn to.’
Lauren stepped aside, and they went in. ‘You’re not the only one on the run. That Alex who assassinated the PM just strolled out of prison. The guards let him go, apparently.’
‘What?’ Peter asked her, filled with dread.
‘Yeah, he’s got a lot of support. People are saying he was set up.’
‘Reaping Icon,’ Peter uttered.
‘Who?’ Lauren asked.
‘Things are bad,’ he replied, trying to take hold of Lauren’s hand. She snatched it away. ‘We’ve wasted enough time. I thought I’d never get the chance to see you again.’
‘You could have come to see me any time you liked in the past ten years.’
‘No. Really, I couldn’t have.’
‘Anyway, how did you get in? Security is tight around here at the moment,’ Lauren carried on, turning her back and moving quickly across the room to the window. She edged the curtain open a crack and peeped down.
‘I knew the code to the door,’ Peter said. ‘I can pull up a lot of information like that in my mind now.’
‘And we nicked the clothes off a washing line,’ Noose added.
‘Never leave clothes out overnight!’ Peter tried to joke. Lauren was not in the mood. She started trembling.
‘Lauren, are you okay?’ Noose asked her, though purposely kept back.
‘Of course I’m not bloody okay. How am I supposed to be okay when you two just waltz back into my life?’ Her tear ducts were bone dry, and she paced the room. Peter had a good look around – things hadn’t changed since last time he was here. He remembered it well.
‘We kissed last time I was in your flat,’ he said to her, pulling up the memory in his mind. He too, though, now held back from her. Their presence was just beginning to sink in. She rubbed at her forehead, flicking the air randomly as she fought these old emotions. ‘We had such plans.’
‘Did we?’ she mumbled. ‘Did we?’
Noose coughed to get Peter’s attention, shaking his head to try and deter him from pushing Lauren too much too soon.
‘Look, Lauren,’ Noose cut in, ‘can we stay here just tonight and get cleaned up? I know it’s a lot to ask.’
‘Inspector Noose,’ she started, turning to look at him. ‘Whatever happened to you?’
‘I wish I knew,’ he sighed.
‘You were so well-loved in the community.’
‘I was? I thought I was a joke.’
‘You were the best inspector that Myrtleville ever had. Now look at you, a convicted pedophile, rapist and murderer. No motive, just pure sexual depravity.’
‘You know I didn’t do it,’ Noose whimpered, about ready to give in and just go along with what people said about him. He looked for the sofa and slumped onto it, not caring if the dress rode up and showed his hairy legs.
‘The forensic case against you was watertight,’ Lauren pointed out, her gaze keeping away from Peter. He just kept looking right at her, no longer in the mood to deny his desires. ‘Somebody must really hate you.’
‘Why would somebody harm those poor girls just to get at me?’ Noose questioned, even he finding it difficult to believe. ‘They never even discovered the identity of the woman I slept with.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh for fuck sake, I’ve just had enough. I really have had enough of everything.’ His hands came away from his eyes and he found himself looking at Lauren’s carpet. There, amongst the rather worn grey-green flower pattern, was the face. It was looking right at him, smiling. He looked up to the heavens, his fist clenching momentarily. ‘I’m so tired of pleading my case. I just wish I was dead.’ Peter, reluctance not even a brief thought, came to sit next to him and put his arm around him. Lauren couldn’t help thinking it an amusing sight, the pair of them sitting there hugging in frilly frocks; a smile twitched on her lips and she made the concerted effort to push any further emotion down into the pit of her stomach. There it gurgled and bubbled away, a fierce pain striking her. She mustn’t let it show, she thought – she couldn’t let this invasion into her focused life cause any upset. ‘I’ve been so lonely,’ Noose sobbed like a little child, grasping hold of Peter’s face and drawing it close. He rubbed his friend’s cheek and drew it close, pressing his against it. Tears came to Peter’s eyes too, and the men clasped each other tight for what seemed to Lauren like an age. Their chests jerked in and out as they let it all out, neither wanting to let go for fear of the other leaving. Noose was the child, comforted by this ceaseless liver of humankind who had returned to him.
‘You turned your back on me, Noose,’ Peter cried, turning the tables to allow Noose the adulthood. ‘Last time I saw you, in the hospital, you walked out and left me.’ ‘It doesn’t matter now, Peter. None of it matters,’ Noose told him. Now Peter was the child, Noose comforting and reassuring him.
Lauren was completely at a loss as to what to do. Part of her wanted to drop her wall and collapse into the two men and feel their comfort right now, and yet the mindset kept pushing through to keep her distanced from them. She had kept herself at a distance from everyone these past few years. When she had dropped her guard and let someone in, it had ended in utter tragedy. She wasn’t prepared to put herself through that wreck again. Her body wouldn’t allow it anyway – its own innate failsafe protected her from even feeling the touch of another being. The dead could not touch her, and this was what made her job as part of the forensics team so perfect. She was utterly at home poking and prodding all those corpses. When it came to the living, hurting, mess that was now on her sofa… Well, she just physically couldn’t go to them. To touch the living – to allow herself to embrace and indeed be embraced – was to open the flood defence and ultimately drown again. Too long had she forced herself down this path. She couldn’t envisage coming back.
Time passed, and Noose had fallen asleep in Peter’s arms. He edged away, letting the exhausted man carry on his slumber. Lauren had settled onto a stool and seemed her usual distant self. She wasn’t so much settled on the stool as fixed down, no longer pacing up and down. Peter got up off the sofa, not in need of rest like Noose, and stood still across from Lauren for a moment. He had been dead for a decade, though it could so easily have been just seconds. Time didn’t exist in the waiting room. ‘How have you been?’ he whispered to Lauren. For a time she didn’t respond, staying fixed as if in a trance. To hear his voice again after so long was both pleasure and torment in equal amounts. The years had allowed all the unpleasantries to kind of fade, so that now all that really stood in her way was herself. She couldn’t really remember specifics anymore. She’d played events over and over in her head at the time, but after a while she’d just started blocking them out. Eventually she looked up at Peter. Their eyes met, but she did not alter her stern countenance.
‘I’ve been plodding on,’ she replied.
‘Life just passes sometimes, doesn’t it.’
‘Life!’ she laughed, choking briefly on what could only be a battle of suppressing any outward signs of feeling. ‘Life does just pass. It keeps on going no matter who or who isn’t in it.’ She looked over at Noose. ‘It was a big blow, what happened to Henry. It upset what we all had going.’
‘Are you happy, Lauren?’ he outright asked her, still keeping his physical distance.
‘Are you?’ she turned it back, forcing a grin.
‘I’d be happy if I could spend the rest of my life with you.’
A laugh jerked from her lips. ‘Really? So you come back after all these years, just barge right back into my life and lay that out on the table? You’ve got a nerve.’ He kept on looking at her, desperate for her to want him. ‘Took you ten years to think that one up, did it?’
‘Do you want to know the truth?’
‘What truth?’
‘I’ve been dead,’ he admitted, having to smile at her because even he found it a bit silly to say. ‘You won’t believe me, but I’ve lived many times before, both in this present form and others in the past.’
‘You’ve lost your mind.’
‘Maybe I have.’ He stepped towards her and her entire body shook, but she quickly regained her composure as he slowly sat down across from her at the table. ‘I’ve spent the last ten years just waiting in nothingness, waiting to return to the life I was desperate to depart.’
‘But, but,’ she replied, shaking her head but somehow feeling she aught to accept what she was hearing. It did, after all, sound so familiar to her.
‘I sank so low, so utterly terrible that I felt I couldn’t go on. I ended my life, Lauren, knowing full well I could never actually die forever. Always I have to come back, trapped by a gift of never ending life.’ He put his hand on the table. She looked down at it. ‘I’m just a walking, talking corpse spouting a pile of unbelievable rubbish. I am dead.’
Lauren’s hand came on the table and rested on top of his. She was trembling, and so cold. ‘You’re very warm for a corpse,’ she said, feeling his moist hot hand. ‘Believe me, I’ve touched a lot of corpses in my time.’
Peter brought his other hand out and clasped hers. ‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time, spread a lot of poison. All I want is to live out the rest of this current life with you. I don’t want to come back again, I just want one fulfilling life.’
‘And I can give you that? Really?’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘How?’
‘By just being here for me when I get back.’
She pulled her hand away. ‘Get back? You’re not leaving me again?’
‘I must stop Reaping Icon, and find Lucy’s killer. Only then will I be able to cut The Space off forever.’
‘And how will you manage all that?’ she asked him, almost wanting to think she was just humouring him, but deep down completely buying into it all.
‘I have opened my mind back to The Space, I am whole again. Its power will allow me to achieve some things.’
‘Like wooing me?’ she asked angrily, getting up and pacing again.
‘I would never trick you into anything. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.’ He too stood up, walking over to the kitchen. ‘If you don’t want me after all is, then that’s just something I’ll have to live with.’ He started opening her kitchen cupboards, eyeing up the contents within.
‘What are you doing, what are you looking for?’ she snapped, marching over to him and pushing his hand away from her precious units.
‘I’m ever so thirsty.’
At first she glared at him, but soon a smile formed. It was a genuine smile, and Peter just knew that beyond all the crap that was going on she really did want to be with him. She walked over to the fridge and, opening it, brought out a carton of milk. Peter’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as she tried to hide a little giggle.
* * *
The following morning Peter peeped out of the window to see Lauren getting into the unmarked police car. It drove off, leaving the coast clear for he and Noose to exit. Noose had cleaned himself up and, forced into a pair of Lauren’s trousers like Peter, didn’t look too bad. Luckily Lauren wasn’t really the kind to sport overtly revealing skirts and tops, so some of her more generic clothing was quite suitable for them. He stepped out of the bathroom as Peter pulled away from the window and flicked his eyes over to the laptop on the kitchen table.
‘What?’ Noose asked him, not quite with it yet.
‘Take a look.’
Noose went to the laptop, sitting down and reading with increasing perplexity what he found on the screen. ‘Barbara Davies,’ he mumbled.
‘Yes, released from prison just before Beth and Dani Henderson were murdered, and the woman you shagged,’ Peter explained rather joyously. Noose looked up from the screen, raising an eyebrow, to see Peter’s face beaming with excitement.
‘You think Barbara murdered them, to set me up?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility, isn’t it?!’
‘Is that what The Space is telling you?’ Noose snarled somewhat, highly uneasy about the deaths and his role in them.
‘I hear hints and whispers about it.’
‘Seems to me the only thing The Space is good for is giving you the security code to Lauren’s flat,’ Noose sighed. His eyes went back to the screen, reading again the news article explaining Barbara’s case all those years ago when she’d murdered Louis Sellers and James Harrington. Perhaps Peter was onto something. ‘But why, and how?’
‘Well as the investigating officer or whatever, you were responsible for putting her inside. Maybe she fancied some revenge,’ Peter surmised.
Noose looked at him again and almost smiled. For the first time in a long while he had somebody on his case, somebody supporting him. Then again, Nicola Williams had given him the key to the handcuffs in hospital. He had to focus, starting to puzzle over the logistics of what Barbara would have had to do in order to frame him.
‘She’d have had to get some of my sperm and put it in Dani and Beth.’
‘Had you had sex around the time, before the decapitation girl?’
Noose looked a little sheepish. ‘No.’
‘Wanked?’ Peter asked, feigning an air of studious indifference.
‘Probably,’ Noose reluctantly admitted. ‘A man’s needs.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I, er, I’d generally wank into a condom,’ he went on professionally, affecting a rather softer voice.
‘Would you now?’
‘I used to get these ones with a special substance in the lubrication which delayed it, you know. That way I’d last longer.’
‘What a night in for the modern, single middle-aged man,’ Peter chuckled. Noose frowned. ‘So, presumably you binned these instead of flushing as every good boy does?’ Noose nodded. ‘Barbara got hold of one or more of these out of your bin and, hey presto, your jizz gets inside those reluctant cadavers.’ Peter now sighed, dropping his light air. ‘That Barbara is a strong woman, I remember my encounter with her.’
‘Built like a brick shit house.’
‘Yes. I dread to think what horrors she inflicted on those poor women. And the child, so sickening.’ He turned his back on Noose and went again to the window, lowering his voice. ‘All just to frame you. She would have hired the one you did shag. Probably a prostitute.’
Before all this ever happened, Noose had made the egotistical mistake of contemplating such attention. For somebody to want to frame him, he thought, would mean his life and work meant something. Somebody cared enough about him to go to such lengths. Of course, when it had eventually happened, it was a great ego destroyer and not the boost he had misguidedly coveted. Such things were as they are, and he could not go back and change his prior mindset. Or, perhaps he could? He looked over at Peter, the once-dead man back to life and in his life like never before. The roles were switched; he was now the one on the run with Peter as his champion. Still, Peter probably owed him that much. Noose had helped him out of trouble more times than he could remember. This was payback – not that he wanted paying back. He’d much rather have the roles switched back again as they used to be. Perhaps that’s what had drawn him to Peter in the first place, the fact he could always play the role of champion and save the downtrodden from the unthinking and bloodthirsty mass. His desire to help people, to bring justice to the similarly downtrodden, had spectacularly backfired in his face and led to the utter collapse of his entire life. And yet, the one who, for the last ten years, he’d felt he couldn’t save in the end was back and helping to save him.
‘So, what do we do now?’ Noose mused.
‘We force the truth out of her.’
‘I don’t know what I’ll do,’ Noose admitted, ‘if I clap eyes on the one who framed me. Woman or not, I might not be able to control myself.’
‘I will be there, Noose; I’ll hold you back.’
‘Will you?’ He stood up, pouring some water into a glass and downing it. ‘Do we even know where she’s living, anyway?’
Peter smirked. ‘Of course we do. I took the liberty of accessing the online police files with Lauren’s password.’
‘Never change, do you!’
* * *
They had made their way on foot, which was still quite a struggle for Noose. However, he had certainly rallied around since Peter’s return and they both now crouched behind a hedge at the end of a field. The other side of the hedge lay Barbara Davies’ garden and house, and Noose’s anger had been steadily building.
‘I think I might kill her,’ he said calmly, getting up. Peter pulled him back down.
‘Steady, Noose. We don’t know for sure it’s her yet, do we? Besides, you don’t want to actually end up being a murderer, do you?’
‘She deserves to die after what she did.’
Peter couldn’t very well disagree with that. He knew as soon as he came across Lucy’s killer that he’d likely kill them. No, he would definitely kill them. It was justice. But for now, they were sorting justice out for Dani and Beth Henderson and the decapitated woman. Their killer did deserve to die for what they did.
The hedge was rather high – too high to jump over, and besides, that would draw too much attention – and it stretched at the back of dozens of houses. The two men lay flat on their stomachs and looked under it. It would be a squeeze, beset with thorns and rotting litter, but it was the only way to go. There was no turning back. What would greet them when they reached the house? Would Barbara even be in? They struggled under and kept flat as they just made it through. Unperturbed by the thorn scratches to their backs, the pair kept flat on the ground and pulled themselves along in the thick grass until they met the back of a shed. Sitting up against it, they took a breather.
‘So, a, er,’ Noose fumbled, wondering how best to approach the subject. Peter gave out a little yawn, which Noose caught. ‘I’m the only one who can remember you being dead?’ he asked through his own yawn.
‘Yup, pretty much,’ was Peter’s casual reply. He looked at Noose, grinning.
‘It’s mad, it’s crazy.’
‘It was necessary I’m afraid.’ He looked away at the hedge, twiddling his thumbs. ‘Without you present, the museum club may not have been able to bring me back.’
‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Peter responded sheepishly, ‘you are my strongest tie to the here and now, you were the one my entity could latch onto.’
‘So I was like a host?’
‘Yes, I was like a wasp laying my eggs in your fruity goodness,’ Peter laughed.
‘What about Lauren? You told her you loved her, shouldn’t she be your strongest tie or whatever?’
‘Things aren’t as simple as that,’ Peter shot.
‘They never are, are they?’ Noose sighed. ‘Those men, the museum men… They were all you.’
Peter, not uneasy about Noose’s ponderances, nonetheless wanted to get this latest problem wrapped up, so poked his head around the shed to clock the various windows in both Barbara’s house and the houses either side. There were plenty that could potentially accommodate a spoiler of their plans. Either way, the chance had to be taken. He mouthed ‘3-2-1’ to Noose before stepping out from behind the shed and scurrying on all fours towards the house. Noose followed, keeping up with him on pure adrenalin. Soon they had reached the house and, backs against the wall, took a breather.
‘It’s rather unfortunate, really,’ Peter whispered.
‘What is?’
‘All this, everything that’s happened and is happening to you. You don’t deserve it.’
‘Don’t I? Are you sure about that?’
Peter knew he most certainly did not, but Noose himself wasn’t so sure. Something he’d done to somebody in the past must have brought this on. If indeed Barbara Davies was the one who’d done this, then it was his fault for putting her in prison for a decade. She’d originally killed because of the one she’d loved. Was that a definite crime?
Peter slid sideways along the wall and reached the back door, trying the handle. It was unlocked. Easing it open ever so slightly, he stuck his nose into the gap and sniffed the released air from within the house. Something didn’t smell altogether pleasant, though he wasn’t a master of smells. In fact, now he took the time to question why he’d even smelt the air in the first place. It was an animal instinct, not something he should be doing. Then again, he was an animal. At present, at least. Reluctantly he reached for that section in his mind where he had tried to force his connection to The Space, trying as he’d done when working out the key code to Lauren’s flat to harness some residual energy to aid him in his quest. Silence. He looked back at Noose, who was nodding encouragingly. Peter opened the door further and slipped inside. Noose followed, standing up straight and shutting the door behind them. They were in the kitchen, the strange smell now hitting Noose’s nostrils. It gave him a short, sharp shock as it transported him back to when that young woman posing as Sergeant Helen Douglas had pulled her finger out of his bum. The sweat of the embrace, the poo from his bum… That was the smell in this house.
Peter looked around cautiously, though much brisker than Noose. To the elder man, this companion who’d miraculously returned to life looked that much more assured. Seemingly gone was the naive speed of his younger self, to be replaced by this world-worn carelessness that gave him the impetus to just step into a murderer’s house. Noose lost sight of him for a second as he stepped into the next room.
‘Oh my,’ came a call from the other room. Noose quickly followed, that smell intensifying. As he stepped into the living room, there was Barbara naked and strung up by her hands. A ball gag in her mouth and a thin wire around her neck, she shook her head violently as she caught sight of the two men. ‘She’s trying to warn us.’
‘Warn us about what?’
They heard a clicking noise and looked down between Barbara’s legs just in time to see a long sharp blade fire up from a small furry pink box and straight into her vagina.
‘Oh fuck,’ Noose yelled as blood poured from between Barbara’s legs and she moaned in agony. ‘We’ve got to get her down from there,’ Noose cried out as he stepped closer. Suddenly Barbara’s eyes widened as her head seemed to be pulled up straight. They noticed that the thin wire around her neck ran into a small box attached to the ceiling, which now began to pull the wire in. Tighter and tighter it got as Barbara’s eyes bulged more and more. And then, along with the sound of a little cog running, the wire shot back into the box with a ferocious force and cut the woman’s head clean off like it was just a piece of cheese. It dropped to the floor with a thud as her body still hung there, now quite lifeless. The two men were stunned into silence. Neither could they look at her body, nor each other. Peter stepped out of the room, his hand over his mouth, as Noose remained fixed to the spot.
The silence was soon disrupted by a thrashing at the door as it burst open and what seemed like a dozen armed police officers poured in. Peter ascended the stairs as they wrestled Noose to the floor, gasps and cries echoing the whole house as some of the officers caught sight of the horrid scene. Peter remained unmolested as he quietly lost himself in one of the bedrooms – clearly they had come for Noose, and only Noose. What a remarkable set-up, Peter thought. To those cops, Noose had been well and truly caught in the act.
* * *
Noose, his hands cuffed behind his back, was led through the Myrtleville police station reception by two bulky cops. They needed to be bulky to hold him back when, coming in the opposite direction, was his ex-wife and son. Initially Noose didn’t recognise her – her hair was white and balding, her head bent permanently to the side as the ravages of her illness had taken their toll. She sat slumped in her wheelchair, son Gary pushing her as Jacobs and Douglas walked either side. Noose was seized as he tried to get to his family, recognising his son. Gary looked back, a spiteful grin quickly forming on his face.
‘You sick pervert,’ Gary shouted out as Williams stormed through the double doors after them, panicking.
‘What the hell’s going on here? They’re supposed to be in protective custody, not meeting him in reception,’ she yelled at Jacobs and Douglas. The pair frowned, Jacobs pushing Gary out of the way and taking control of Sam’s wheelchair as Douglas tried to put her arm around Gary. He, now a handsome young man, was as tall as his father and the spitting image of him back in the day.
‘Son,’ Noose cried, struggling in the tight grip of his guards and unable to look upon his ex-wife.
‘I’m not your son, murderer pedophile scumbag,’ Gary replied with increasing venom. Noose could no longer plead his innocence – he’d had enough. He stopped struggling and went limp, slipping from the grip of the officers and falling to his knees. ‘Look what you’ve done to my mum, you vile worthless creature,’ Gary carried on, lashing out at his dad with his foot. Williams leapt to block the kick, getting caught across her knees. She too fell as Jacobs made a grab for Gary and wrestled him away.
‘What has happened to you?’ Noose mumbled towards Sam, still unable to look at her. ‘How did I cause this?’ She remained silent, her jaw fixed shut by the disease afflicting her.
‘You abandoned her, she didn’t want to live anymore,’ Gary yelled as Jacobs led him off. Douglas quickly pushed Sam away as Williams turned around on her knees to face Noose.
‘It’s not your fault, Henry,’ she whispered, pausing for a moment as their eyes met. Noose sniffed away his fit of tears as she almost placed a hand on his. The officers pulled him to his feet and she too got up. ‘She’s suffering from a rare degenerative disease. You didn’t cause that.’
‘My son thinks I did,’ were the last words Noose spoke as he was taken away. From that moment on he decided it best he never spoke again.
* * *
To scribble and scrape and