It was bitterly cold out here and George wished he’d picked up his padded anorak from the back of his office door when he’d left the hospital earlier.
Darcy had been in such a panic when she’d called to say Harrison was missing, everything else seemed unimportant.
George hurried around the back of the house and the kitchen door opened. Daniela stepped out and kissed him on the cheek. She’d approached him weeks ago, when they’d got back from the lodge, got his work address from Joel’s sister, apparently. She’d caught him on the day he was annoyed at Darcy for calling the police and the lodge manager about his non-existent complaint.
He’d bought her a coffee and she’d explained everything about who Darcy was and what she had done to her marriage.
‘I thought you had a right to know the truth,’ she’d said and George had had a lightbulb moment, realising the potential of Daniela’s involvement.
She seemed a strong character, but George liked a challenge. Destroying women was his favourite pastime, a reaction to his mother dying and deserting him as a child, psychologists would no doubt conclude. But no, he smiled to himself, he just genuinely enjoyed the power he could wield over them. Yet this one seemed different. She wasn’t soft bellied and easy to break and George respected that. Together, he realised, they could finally get rid of the problem that had blighted the last few years of his life: Opal Vardy.
He could even make a new start with a new identity abroad somewhere. Escape the terrible storm that was whipping up around him at the hospital.
‘Good job,’ he murmured, stepping into the warmth provided by the oil-filled heater. He looked at Harrison, bound and gagged in the chair.
The boy’s eyes flashed with fury and he wriggled his torso, kicking out with his feet. The chair wobbled, threatened to tip over.
‘Enough!’ George barked. ‘Stop struggling.’
Harrison seemed to double his efforts, yelling out a retort from behind his gag that translated as an angry yelp.
‘He kicked me when I walked past him just now.’ Daniela frowned, rubbing her right knee. ‘He’s a little live wire.’
In response to this, Harrison let out another aggressive yell and kicked out at George, narrowly missing his leg.
George reached for the pair of scissors on the side next to the large roll of masking tape Daniela had used to secure the boy. Harrison stopped yelling, his eyes wide with fear and trepidation. Quick as lightning, George moved the scissors towards his head, then snipped hard into the soft lobe of his ear. The blood started pouring almost immediately, and he allowed it to trickle down onto Harrison’s pale grey sweatshirt.
Colour drained from the boy’s face. He pressed his chin down to his chest so he could see the blossoming red patch on his left shoulder and began to shake and sob uncontrollably.
Daniela held a white bandage to Harrison’s ear, stemming the blood flow, and grinned at George. Both of them knew it wasn’t a serious cut, just a clean snip about half a centimetre long. But the ear could bleed quite profusely for up to ten minutes, and consequently the injury looked worse than it was.
George crouched down next to the boy.
‘That’s one ear lopped off,’ he said softly. ‘Unless you do exactly what I tell you, I’ll take the other one too. Understand?’
Fat, glistening tears ran down Harrison’s face and he nodded vigorously, fear rather than fury glinting in his eyes now.
Without warning, George reached up and ripped the masking tape from his mouth, and the boy promptly vomited into his own lap.
The boy’s life would have to be sacrificed, there was no way around that. He was old enough to tell the police exactly how he came to be here and what had happened.
It would be another death he could attribute to Opal’s mental illness. She would be here any minute thanks to his message to meet her to finally talk about the future of her child.