Beneath the Blood Moon
Copyright © 2020 Darren Wills
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: 0116 279 2299
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks
ISBN 978 1838597 467
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
malevolence – the quality of causing or
wanting to cause harm or evil.
Dedicated to Ivar William Clarke (b. 15.05.2019).
Thanks to Mark Anson for his original idea.
Contents
After The Watershed
Birthwrong –Around 35 Years Ago
Sunshine Days
Good Sport
Here Comes The Night
Malevolence
Happy Family
An Uncertain Midnight
Malevolence
As It Should Be
Malevolence
As It Is
Malevolence
Intrusion
Malevolence
Whitby
Malevolence
Where And How?
Time Won’t Wait
The Unfamiliar
Staring At The Walls Of Heartache
Electronic Mail
Car
Malevolence
Solitude
Malevolence
Stumbling
Kate
Always Time For A Green Day
Malevolence
Staff Matters
Malevolence
Birthday – July 26Th
Malevolence
August Is A Wicked Month
Malevolence
Wickedness
JD Clover
Boomerang
Not Quite Paradise
Ban Taa
Daughter Dearest – A Family Portrait
A Mother’s Ruin
A Trying Time
Malevolence
Revelation
Leoni
Malevolence
Understanding?
Times-A-Changing
Malevolence
A Cat’s Tale
Remembering
Tensions
A Steady Unfolding
The Return Of The Police
Paperwork In November
Malevolence
JD On Divorce
For Better Or Worse
Malevolence
Malevolence
The Disappeared
Memories
Sunny Vale
Joggers Lane
Malevolence
Confrontation
Energy Time
In The Eye Of The Hurricane
After The Revolution
Malevolence
After The Watershed
I had killed her, and I was glad I had killed her.
“I have to remind you that you have been arrested on suspicion of murdering your wife, Laura Walker. I will warn you again at this point that you should not say anything in your defence that you won’t choose to rely on in court, since anything new you give in evidence will cause an adverse inference to be drawn.”
“I’m innocent.”
I lowered my head in desperation, but immediately realised that they might see this as some sign of guilt. I raised it again. I suddenly had the same attitude to these two that I had towards incompetent managers at work and, at the same time ironically began to feel like a misunderstood teenager in one of my classes. “You’re just not getting it.”
“Not getting what?”
“It’s not how it looks. I’m no murderer. I’m a teacher, for god’s sake.”
“And that makes you innocent?” Sarcastic smiling filled half of the room.
“Teachers do carry out serious crimes sometimes. Teachers can sometimes be quite murderous.” This was the junior of the two detectives, bespectacled and playing bad cop to his colleague’s worse cop.
“Boston, two years ago.” Taylor, leading the interview, now interjecting, had a knowing look on his face that was simultaneously irritating and intriguing.
“What?” Like so many times recently, I was in a world of confusion.
“Worked in a high school in the States. Maths teacher in Massachusetts. Pretty normal guy like you supposedly. Killed his entire family with a shotgun.” There was no emotion in the policeman’s voice, like he was reading out a shopping list. “Bacon, bread, and a bit of mass murder.”
“Well not this teacher,” I protested, albeit lamely. My wrists were aching from the harsh rubbing of the restraints, but I put that stuff to one side.
The senior Detective shook his head doubtfully. “No, Dominic. A job doesn’t stop you pulling a trigger and taking a life. Counts for nothing. On the contrary, could be that the pressure of the job might have been the thing that sent you over the edge. There’s a bottom line here. The circumstances more than suggest that you shot your wife.”
“But I didn’t.”
He was undeterred. “You’re looking at a life sentence. You do know that?”
I was undeterred too. “That’s not what happened.”
The senior detective, a superintendent according to his introduction, continued. “OK, if you say so. In your case, Dominic, we have a gun, gunshots, a dead body and a phone call made by you announcing the fact. Besides that, we have strangulation marks on the poor woman’s neck.” He paused, looking down at his sheet for something else to remind me of. He looked up. “You need to start co-operating with us now, if only to help yourself in the certain event of a court appearance.”
By co-operate, he clearly meant confess. “Granted – all those things. I’m still innocent.”
The officer gave a sigh of frustration. “Will you start then by telling me about your relationship with Laura. What’s been going on?”
I couldn’t help myself. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but it was such a difficult question to answer in a clear succinct way. Instead, out came a loud uncontrolled laugh that I found difficult to stop, and which caused the two officers to turn and look at each other with mutual concern. “I’m sorry, but the answer to that question is so crazy. I did try to explain some things in the car.” I looked at both of their hard faces, full of their refusal to understand, before I spoke again. “The truth is, you need to know about Laura.”
“Tell us about her.” Taylor was naturally doing most of the questioning. Detective Superintendent Taylor, to give him his full title, had arrested me at the house, handling me aggressively, almost pulling off my arms to secure me despite my clear willingness to be arrested. I had him down as a rugby-playing Tory kind of a man, probably h
ad a BMW, a Saab or some other car with plenty of poke, yet he was someone who was going to have to find a more imaginative side to his personality and do some serious listening if he was to own the truth. Was that going to happen? These people were notorious for not listening.
“She was beautiful.” I sat up straight in my seat. Worst case scenario for me – I was easy pickings for a police statistic, a solved crime to help a policeman in his quest for promotion. Worst case scenario for them – I might make the water muddy and create too many shades of grey. Or would they cling to a falsehood for the conviction? Of course they would.
“Did you love her?”
“I loved her.” I made a point of fully facing them. How would either of these two have coped? How would either have felt on this side of this table? Whatever could or couldn’t have been, Taylor looked really comfortable in his state of relaxed supremacy I couldn’t help thinking how things might have turned out differently if I had been a bit like him at certain times. Wisdom builds well on soft gullible errors, it seemed. I was betting that neither Taylor nor his junior had ever had a gullible moment in their lives.
Taylor leaned forward. “Of course you loved her. That’s why you killed her. You couldn’t have her, so nobody else could. Was that how it was?”
“Not at all.”
“Come on now. Had she betrayed you, Dominic? She was leaving, wasn’t she? Is that the way it went?”
“That’s not what happened. I think you need to start listening to me. This isn’t going to be one of those easy convictions.”
“Are you serious? I’ve never seen anything more straight forward and obvious.”
“No, you’re wrong. You’re going to have to do some actual investigating to get to the bottom of this one.” He would have to play his police tricks for a long time if he was hoping to prevail; I was light years beyond them. Another time distant from now, that kind of approach would have worked, but I had been through too much.
Taylor continued. “Was anybody else at your house today?”
“Nobody. Apart from Leoni.”
“Leoni who?
“Again, I tried to tell you about her on the way here. I never knew her surname. She was staying at the house.”
“Staying at your house and you didn’t know her name? How’s that work?”
“It’s easy. I never saw anything with her full name on, however hard to believe that is. You do need to find her though. She can unlock everything.”
“How long has she lived at yours?”
“A few weeks. I don’t know that much about her, but my neighbours will confirm what I’m saying.”
“Tell us more.”
She has brown curly hair, is about five feet two, and around thirty-five years old, I think, perhaps a bit younger. She was a big part of it all. You need to locate her.”
“How was she important in all this?”
I tried to tell them, but about three or four sentences in, Taylor interrupted me. His eyes were glass, showing no sign of a response. “When was she at the house today?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t know the time. She left when the shooting started.”
“So you’re admitting the shooting?
“Of course I’m admitting it. But I’m not guilty.”
I knew this truth of mine sounded outrageous, and their furrowed brows communicated how they thought so too. The Detective Sergeant, who had been introduced to me as Hawksworth, wasn’t saying much, but was making detailed notes of everything I said. It was clear to me that both he and his superior needed to drop the disbelief and abandon the visible concern about my mental health. They needed to listen more and consider things outside the box marked ‘how things appear’. I was doomed otherwise.
Taylor continued. “Did anybody else visit the house this afternoon, or this morning, even? No friends of yours? Laura’s family?”
“She has no family. Not now. They’re all distant or dead. Dead now.” I allowed a decent interval of seconds to elapse. “They’re worth considering though, in view of what happened. In fact, you need to look into what happened to George and Lillian. You need to talk to Leoni’s brother about that.”
Taylor again leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what. You tell us all about all three of them, Dominic, and we’ll decide whether they’re worth considering or not.”
Before replying, I was distracted by my reflection in the glass opposite. I didn’t look good – tense and disheveled. I was clutching this Styrofoam cup as if it was all that sustained my existence. It was different, drinking with hands secured – like a religious ritual. I knew what was happening. I was in the frame for murder and they were probably going to hang me out to dry.
“Are you going to reply to the question, or leave us hanging?”
“Laura’s family? Yes, I want to tell you all about them. Totally relevant.”
“How were they?”
“Well, they weren’t her natural parents. Laura never knew her natural mother. Didn’t even know who she was. She was adopted.”
Taylor was clearly irritated. “I think we need to know about Laura’s death, not her childhood, not even what happened to her parents. That doesn’t really help us to understand why she died, does it?”
“That’s just it,” I said, knowing my voice was becoming higher in pitch and betraying my inability to control myself. I had been keeping myself so calm up to that point. “That’s the crux of it all. I was not responsible for the killing of my wife.”
“And Leoni’s brother. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. I believe he killed George and Lillian though. He has a drug problem, I think.”
The two officers looked at each other, before Taylor spoke. “OK. For the purposes of the recorder, we are postponing this interview. We are just off to check on a detail or two.” They left the room.
An appropriately miserable time for my appropriately melancholy situation. On this miserable autumn evening, where the rain was battering the pavements and roads outside, here I was banged up in Sheffield Police Headquarters, this mish mash of concrete and glass in the heart of the city. Here I was, handcuffed like a criminal in the center of the town that had been home to my first infant squeals, had formed the background for my early steps as a toddler and had been the setting of ninety-per cent of my life experiences. Here I was, going through shit.
I had always been more than reluctant to leave Sheffield. This was the town I had returned to after university, where I had spent my largely hap py childhood, where I had enjoyed school, the shops and the parks, where my mother and father were buried, where the shops, parks and concert halls that had shaped my youth and informed my adulthood were located. My football team, Sheffield Wednesday, lived here too. I had always thought this was the right place. Sheffield had meant life, history and everything.
At this moment, it meant nothing. Thirty-eight-years-old, in this unimagined situation, I was a man whose nearest moment to notoriety had been ruthless and vigorous apple stealing from neighbourhood gardens, some treacherous knock-a-door-running and the unscrupulous copying of music from the internet. In short, I was hardly a serial killer or one of the Great Train Robbers. but here I was, in the frame for murder. I had no solicitor. They had offered it, but I had shaken my head. If they didn’t believe my truth, I was fucked, and no amount of clever words or legal assertions would help me.
As I sat wondering how events could unfold the way they had, the door of the interview room opened. The two detectives re-entered.
The questioning continued. “OK, so tell me, Mr. Walker,” said Hawksworth, opening the batting for this innings. “What happened? How come there’s a dead body and a gun with your fingerprints on it?”
“I don’t deny that, but there are lot of details you need to know first.”
“Give us the details.”
“I don’t
know where to start.”
Hawksworth carried on. “You said that Laura’s childhood was important? What happened then that figures in this?”
Taylor gave his colleague a reprimanding look then turned to me. “Ok. Let’s start with that. Why is ancient history relevant to you killing your wife? We’re all ears.”
“First of all, I never killed her. I would never do that. And it is relevant. Totally. George and Lillian adopted her, brought her up…Oh God, the poor bastards. Look what happened. They doted on her. George worshipped the ground she walked on. We all loved her.”
“I can appreciate that but we need to get to the truth. Would you like to tell me how you gained possession of the gun that was used to kill Laura?”
“Forget the gun,” I said. “The gun’s not the thing.”
“But Laura’s dead.”
“Yes. She probably is.”
Taylor allowed a half smile to appear on his face. “Not much probably about it. She’s on a slab in our mortuary.”
They were going to have to listen to everything I had to say, but I could feel myself overheating. I was in no rush, but everything that was relevant had to come out in the right order if I was to avoid being charged.
“What is the thing if the gun’s not?” asked Hawksworth.
“You’re not going to believe me, are you? I didn’t hallucinate this. I’m not a dreamer or a psycho, whatever you may think. I didn’t create this nightmare.” I looked into Taylor’s eyes in the most challenging way I could muster. “Have you checked out Sunny Vale Nursing Home yet?”
“Why would we?”
“I told you in the car. Weren’t you listening to me then, either?
“We thought you were hallucinating, or at best, rambling.”
“Why would I ramble? I was under arrest. I was trying to explain myself.”
“It sounded too ridiculous to even consider. You were in quite a state when we picked you up.”
“For God’s sake, somebody has to believe me. Somebody has to listen to what I’m saying.” I looked into the cold judgmental eyes of the senior detective. I couldn’t see any signs of belief there.