Day 23

The fury of the kiss

Every bay is filled with the cars of Saturday morning shoppers.  They’ve had to drive around twice before they found an empty one, ignoring the spaces right outside the video store and adjacent fast food joint, that are too far from the main shops to carry the groceries and won’t be in high demand until tonight.   Ed was beginning to get impatient, thinking they’d miss the time, when Nathan spotted one.

“There, white car pulling out.”

Ed sits with the indicator on and swings in right behind the Ford Falcon immediately it leaves the bay.  Nathan gets out and walks towards the entry to the shops.  Ed stays in the car.

This time, they talk about music again.  Peter’s been listening to the Hilltop Hoods.  He thinks it’s funny when Nathan admits he’s never heard of them.

“What, don’t you listen to the radio?”

“Yair, must be a different station to yours, but.”

They chat for a while and then Peter says he has to go. He’s got to get to the shops. Nathan says, “See you again mate,” but he knows they’re sunk.

They hadn’t thought about the boy going up to the shopping centre proper.  Neither of them had talked about it.  Nathan thinks about calling after the boy, but he knows this won’t work, will draw attention to them.  He stands, torn between wanting to follow the boy and going back to Ed to ask what to do next.  But he knows that following the boy is not an option, it would bring him in range of the cameras at the shopping centre proper.  In the end, Nathan goes back to the car.

“He’s gone to the shops.”

“What?”

“The kid, he’s gone up to the shops.  I didn’t follow him, didn’t want to be seen.”

“That’s good mate.  We don’t need that.” Nathan blushes at Ed’s praise.

“So, what’ll we do then?”

Ed doesn’t speak as he licks the paper on a rollie, sticks it together and puts it in his mouth. “Let’s sit tight here for a bit, see what happens,” he says, lips clamped on the unlit cigarette.  Ed brings a match to the straggly ends of tobacco and lights his rollie.  The two men sit silently. Nathan begins to sweat as the temperature in the car rises.

After about half an hour Nathan sees the boy walking down the hill away from the shopping centre and back towards the video store.  Ed sees him at the same time.

“Quick, get back over to the video shop.  Let him think you’ve been looking at videos.  Talk to him again.  See if you can get him to come with you.”

Nathan opens the car door and gets out, as instructed.

“Hello again.”

“Hello.”

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You must get hot walking everywhere on hot days like this.”

“Yes.”

“Want a ride home? Save you the walk. My car’s just over there.”

“OK.”

It was that easy.  And now the boy’s following him towards the car.  And Ed.

Ed says nothing as Nathan opens the back passenger side door of the Mazda and sees the boy in, shuts it behind him.  Nathan gets in the front, next to Ed.

“This is Peter. I said we’d give him a lift home, save him walking in this heat.”

Ed pulls out of the bay without saying a word.  A car pulls in straight after them.

The ebb and flow of life at the shopping centre continues on as the two men drive the boy away towards the highway.

“Urr, this isn’t the way to my house.”  It’s the first thing the boy has said since he got into the car.

“It’s OK,” Nathan says, “We just need to go to our place first to pick up a few things.  Won’t be long.”

The boy sticks his earphone back in and goes back to listening to his i-Pod.  Ed eyes him in the rear vision mirror.

Sitting in the house, the boy is uncomfortable but says nothing.  Ed goes into another room leaving Nathan to do the entertaining.

The house reeks of stale cigarette smoke.  It’s tidy, but grimed with dirt, not so much the result of good housekeeping as the limited domestic activity of the two male occupants.  They rarely cook and the only dishes in the sink are coffee cups and a sticky, fingerprinted glass.  The floor of the house is boards covered with occasional faded rugs, fibres showing where once there were patterns.  The furniture is matching; clapped out chairs with spindly legs looking like they’ll give out at any moment.

Nathan looks nervous while his mate is out of the room.  He sits on the edge of his chair, matching the boy’s posture.  As the boy looks around the room, searching, scanning the details, expectant of their departure and the continuation of his journey home, Nathan’s eyes and head follow.  The man wracks his brain for something half intelligent to say.

The air in the house is heavy with smoke particles and the heat of too many days in a row of temperatures over thirty-five degrees.  All the windows and doors are shut.

“What’re you listening to?” is what Nathan comes up with in the end.

“Ur, nothing at the moment.” It’s true, the boy doesn’t have his earphones in.

“Yair, I know that, mate,” Nathan’s irritation is quick to show, “but what’ve you been listenin’ to lately, on your, on your machine.”

“It’s an i-Pod. Want to have a look?” Nathan’s flash of anger has passed the boy by.

“Sure, mate.” Nathan leans further forward towards the boy.

Peter holds his i-Pod out facing towards Nathan, giving him a look.  Nathan half gets out of his chair and then realises that having a look means exactly that to the boy.  He settles himself back on the edge of his chair and looks across the room at the tiny machine with its even tinier screen.

“Yair, nice, mate. So, what’s on it?”

Before Peter can reply to Nathan’s question, Ed comes back into the room and Nathan is relieved, though his adrenaline-fed heart rate steps up because he knows what’s coming next.

For a moment, Nathan wants to ask, to beg Ed not to go ahead.  For a moment, Nathan opens his mouth to speak, to shout, to scream out loud.  For a moment, Nathan hangs on the edge of this thing they’ve been planning.

Then, Nathan lets go. Shuts his mouth and lets himself fall into it, his fear of Ed greater than his will to do the right thing.

Ed grabs the boy they’ve known as Peter by the wrist.  It’s a quick, sharp movement.  If you weren’t watching closely, you’d hardly notice it.  The boy yelps with the pain of Ed’s grip and gets a crack across his head as a reward.  The boy’s yell of pain is followed by another blow and each sound after that is also matched with another blow, and another.  And another.

Until the boy is silent.

Nathan is silent.

The room is silent.

“Come with me, you little fucker.”  Ed breaks the silence as he drags the boy from the seat by the wrist that he’s never let go of while his other fist has been going about its business.

The boy can’t move quickly enough.  He’s being dragged across the room, taking one of the rugs with him.  He is dazed from his beating and tears are tracking down his face.  His mouth is open but silent.  His eyes are screwed shut.

Ed drags the boy into the bedroom the men have prepared for him.  Nathan stays sitting in his seat in the lounge room.

Ed swings the boy onto his back and fixes his hands and feet to either end of the bed using the handcuffs the two men purchased from an adult shop especially for this purpose.  He rips the boy’s shorts and underpants down his legs exposing him.

When Nathan comes into the room, Ed’s standing watching the boy, silent.  As Nathan comes alongside Ed, he can see that he too is exposed.  A while after Nathan’s entered the room, Ed turns to him.

“Don’t fucking let me down,” he says, then turns and leaves the room, adjusting his clothing as he walks.

Nathan and the boy are alone.  Nathan stands still and silent for many minutes, looking and not looking at the boy.

The boy moves, trying to find comfort on the bed.  The movement brings Nathan back from his reverie.  He gets out a flannel from the chest of drawers at the side of the bed on which the boy is a specimen.  Nathan sits on the edge of the bed and uses the towel to wipe the blood, snot and tears from the boy’s face.  Gently, tenderly he cleans the boy, wiping the towel over the boy’s smooth skin, never making human contact, not touching the flesh with his own.

When he’s finished, Nathan stands again, steps away from the bed, pauses and steps back again towards the boy’s head.  He balls up the flannel, leans forward and pushes it, one handed, between the boy’s teeth.  As he straightens, Nathan sees a grimy corner of the flannel sticking from the boy’s mouth.  He hesitates for a moment, wondering whether to push it in, keep everything tidy.  In the end he decides against it.

Nathan shifts his attention from the flannel to the boy’s face. The boy’s blue eyes are wide and terrified, rolling in his head.

As he leaves the room, Nathan doesn’t look back at the boy.  He closes the door on his way out and returns to sit in the lounge room with Ed.

Time passes. Neither man watches how much.  The heat in the house rises.

“Get us a cuppa, mate,” Ed says, a rollie stuck in the corner of his mouth.

Nathan gets up and walks into the kitchen.

Late that first night, in another one of the house’s bedrooms, Ed kisses Nathan fiercely, squeezing his cheeks until his mouth comes open like a gold fish and pushing his tongue past Nathan’s lips and teeth, deep into his mouth.  After the fury of the kiss, Ed pushes Nathan back onto the bed, hitches his legs up and apart, and grunts quietly as he brings himself between Nathan’s legs, palms pushing down on Nathan’s shoulders.

The first time he’d come in ages

Detective Senior Sergeant Frank Lambert got the missing persons call from uniform.  Young boy missing for twelve hours.  Usually they’d wait twenty-four hours, but when it’s a kid you have to start looking early, every moment counts.  Like they always say on the TV cop shows, it’s most often resolved very quickly, the kid’s usually gone to visit friends or family and not come back.  Sometimes they wander off and get lost.  Usually, they come back of their own accord, in their own time.  Sometimes, it takes a bit of hunting around.  Sometimes, though, the kid doesn’t come back.

Frank starts by going through the forms that were emailed from uniform.  Usual details.  Kid’s name, Peter Johnson, parents (divorced), address, time he went missing, where he went missing, what he was wearing, photo.  Frank puts the form on his desk and leans back on his chair, stretches and stifles a yawn.  The hum of the office air conditioner in the Saturday evening quiet of the station is almost enough to put Frank to sleep, but not quite.  He’s not much for sleeping these days, but he’s always tired.

It’s been like this since he worked on the investigation of the night club serial killer a few years back.  The case is still open, but the task force set up to investigate was disbanded a while ago.  They all knew the public servant had done it, but the rules of evidence wouldn’t let them close the investigation.  Frank had worked on the detail watching the guy’s every move for a month, three shifts around the clock.  He’d seen each of the five girls’ bodies, seen what that lowlife had done to them, and he just couldn’t get them out of his head while he sat in the unmarked car, knowing nothing would happen.  That’s mostly why they watched, so the bloke would know they were onto him and wouldn’t go out and kill another one.  They knew, he knew, there was no chance of a conviction, so it was the only way to stop him.

Frank stopped sleeping when he was working on that case.  At first he would lie in bed, trying not to disturb Diana.  He tried to keep still, and she was great to begin with.  She didn’t mind him putting on the TV, reading, just lying there still, but not still, buzzing with the fury that wouldn’t leave him, would never leave him until the piece of shit was put away.

After a while, Diana began to let Frank know she couldn’t put up with him awake in their bed any more.  At first it was just little things.  The way she’d lay there stiff and awake, flinching when he reached out to touch her.  The way she’d sigh every time he moved, turned on the light, rolled over, fluffed the pillow, turned back onto his other side, turned on the TV.  The way she’d hold her ground when he’d try to move his body close to hers, sticking out a knee or an elbow to mark the edge of her territory.  The way she’d reject his advances when they first got into bed, telling him she was just too damned tired.

Finally, she told him to leave the bedroom if he couldn’t sleep; go and see someone because she thought he had a problem and, though she loved him, she couldn’t live through it with him any more.

Well, he wasn’t going to do that.  He didn’t need to see anyone, he just couldn’t sleep.

Frank had turned to their home computer to do some research, try to find that profile or similar case that could provide a fresh insight into the killings.  Of course, he didn’t find anything.  The Internet is filled to the brim and overflowing with crap, a sewer of digital excrement of all odours and flavours.  But Frank didn’t know that when he first went looking.

Every word he put into Google to try to find the information he was looking for led him, sooner or later, to porn sites of all different kinds.  He began to have a look just out of idle curiosity at first.  Every site had teaser pictures on the home page, every now and then a sample video.  He felt himself getting hard the very first time he really stopped to look at a series of pictures.  They were grainy stills from a video, ‘Bad girl cum slutz,’ or something equally stupid.  The picture that really got him was the close up of the guy just entering a girl on all fours.  She was a smooth-skinned beauty with a gold chain around her naked waist and impossibly high heels.  The guy’s cock was enormous.  It looked like it would split her in two.  Frank looked at the picture with his hand inside the pants of his pjs.  Almost before he knew it, he could feel the stickiness of his ejaculation on his hand.  It was the first time he’d come in ages.

  

Frank hopes the kid’s just gone missing, visiting friends, forgot the time.  That’s what usually happens.  It’s not often there’s an actual disappearance.  Frank doesn’t think he can cope with anything bad.  And then he spares a thought for the kid, too:  “Fuck, I hope he’s OK.”  He wonders if he’s said the words aloud, but it doesn’t matter, there’s no one else in the Detectives’ office to hear him.