Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (17 page)

“What do you expect me to do?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “Shoot myself?”

He sat still, his breathing slow and steady, listening for any sort of response, but all he could hear was the wind howling around the outside of the house.

With his free hand he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and pressed the small button below the screen. The display lit up and he was surprised to see that he had a full signal. He saw the time and froze. It was six thirty.

He had checked the time as he had left the tunnel back at Blackwall, and it had been a quarter to seven. He could not understand how it could possibly only be six thirty.

He touched the BBC icon on the screen and a small clock appeared. The air felt as though it had frozen in his lungs. It
was
six thirty, but the date was the twenty-fifth. He realized he must have fallen asleep and now it was almost dawn.

He thought of the man that had been standing in the room tormenting him, and assumed it had been a dream. He looked at the handgun he held in his right hand. The handgun was definitely real. A nauseating sensation was creeping up from his stomach. He had to phone Jenny and let her know that he was alright.

There were three messages on the phone, two from Jenny and one from an unknown number. He considered ignoring the messages and phoning Jenny, but he felt that knowing whether she was worried or just angry would prepare him.

Forewarned is forearmed
, he thought and listened to the first message: “I thought you said you’d be home by 11:00. Where are you? Call me.”

Not too worried
, Melvin thought.
Slightly annoyed maybe
.

He listened to the second message: “Where are you? The police are here. What happened? Wherever you are just phone me.”

Mervin stared at the phone taken aback by the last message. Why had she called the police? He could not understand why the police had gone to the house. He was sure they must receive hundreds of calls every week about people not arriving home when they were supposed to. They would never get anything done if they ran after every report.

He listened to the third message expecting to hear Jenny, but instead it was a man’s voice: “My name is Detective Inspector David North. Please phone me on 077 9060 2543.”

Mervin felt his skin crawling. He was late getting home. He knew he was
very
late, and he had not got home, but a detective inspector seemed a bit over the top.

He returned to the BBC website and scrolled down. The top story was titled “M25 Murder Hunt.” He tapped the line and the story appeared.

A cab driver was brutally murdered in his cab on the M25 on Christmas Eve. Traffic was brought to a standstill in both directions by heavy snowfall. The body of Frederic Baker was discovered by police checking on vehicles stranded by the snow. CCTV recorded a man believed to be Mervin Shaldon from Kent getting into the cab in Walthamstow in East London. Police have said that Mervin Shaldon is wanted for questioning, and they have said that he should not be approached. He is believed to be armed and dangerous. Anyone with any information should contact… …

Mervin felt cold. The article had not said how the cab driver had been killed, only that he had been
brutally murdered
. He looked at the handgun and felt that he knew how the cab driver had been killed. He wanted to phone the detective inspector, but he was holding the murder weapon and he was sure the man that had left it on the floor for him to pick up had not left any prints on it. He was also sure that the same gun would be found to be linked to a murder at an east London petrol station exactly twelve months ago.

At least I’m not burning
, Melvin thought, but felt little comfort from the thought.

He shuffled his bottom across the floor to the window. He placed his mobile phone and the handgun on the sill and pulled himself up putting all his weight onto his good ankle. He looked through the window at a snow covered field. In the distance he could see lights from a built up area. He could not tell whether it was a town or just a cluster of houses, but there would be a phone, and he needed to phone his lawyer.

He was sure that the moment the detective inspector knew where he was there would be a team of armed police speeding towards him, none full of the joys of Christmas, all wanting to get the job done and return to their tinsel decked station.

His lawyer was Max Westengburg, and although he was a corporate lawyer, he would be able to bring some control and order to the situation. He knew he would not get far with his twisted ankle, and there was no point trying to lose the gun when the area would be carefully searched by an army of police officers. An enthusiastic young constable eager to impress fishing the murder weapon from a ditch or bush would make him look more guilty than if he just handed it to the police. He had done nothing wrong, so he had nothing to hide. He did not believe it would be that simple, but he was out of options.

Slowly he transferred his weight onto his other ankle, his muscles tensing ready for the pain that he knew would follow. There was a dull ache, almost a numbness, but it was bearable. He knew that walking across the deep snow would be a different proposition altogether, but if he was careful, he knew he could make it.

The snow was no longer falling, but the wind was whipping waves of snow up from the ground and spinning it around like mini cyclones across the field. To the west the sky was getting lighter, thinning clouds painted like dark streaks across a grey canvas.

He made his way to the top of the stairs and looked down. He had never imagined something as simple as walking down a flight of stairs would ever seem like such an obstacle.

He hopped down the first three steps, wincing with every jolt, and sat deciding it would be easier to work his way down on his bottom. It felt very undignified, but he did not care. He held the mobile phone in his left hand and the handgun in his right, and he felt so tense he was worried that if the phone rang, he would accidentally answer with the gun and put a bullet in his brain.

Is there a bullet in the gun?

It had not occurred to him to check to see whether the gun was even loaded. He knew nothing about guns. He had never held a handgun before. Apart from television, he had never even seen a real handgun before, although he knew it was a revolver from the cylinder and it looked like a very old revolver.

He did not expect the front door to open without a struggle, but it opened without so much as a squeak. He stepped out shivering as the icy cold wind surrounded him and he was suddenly blinded by a bright light. He instinctively raised his right hand to shield his eyes and a voice boomed at him: “Put the gun down and put your hands on your head.”

Mervin lowered the gun and squinted his eyes. There were police standing about a hundred yards away. He could not count how many there were, but he could see that they were armed, and he guessed they considered him to be armed and dangerous.

Without thinking he stepped backwards into the house and closed the door. He expected the phone to ring, and when it did not, he could not think of any reasons why they would try phoning him. The house was empty. They would be able to take him out any time they wanted.

He turned and nearly fell. The walls had been damp with strips of wallpaper peeling away, but now there was no trace of decay. He looked down and saw that the floor was carpeted.

He hobbled through the doorway into the sitting room. A fire smoldered in the large stone fireplace, a man and a woman sat on a large sofa, their mouths wide open as though caught by surprise, blood streaked down their faces from bullet holes in their foreheads; one each between the eyes.

The voice boomed at him from outside: “Come out with your hands raised above your head.”

He felt as though he was going mad. When he had entered the house it had been in the slow process of decay. The house had been empty. He tried telling himself that he was dreaming. He bit his tongue and felt pain.

He walked across the room and stopped in front of the man and woman on the sofa. Their eyes stared at him, glazed and frozen at the moment of death. The expression engraved on their faces was not surprise, but terror. The expressions of people given just enough time to know that they are about to die.

Mervin frowned as he realized that he recognized the man. The last time he had seen the face was as he had walked him to the door and shown him out onto the pavement on his last day at the bank. His name was Robert Selwyn and he had been his manager. The man he had blamed at the time for pushing him out and introducing him to the depressing world of unemployment. He had only met his wife once. That had been at the company’s Christmas party, and he remembered the face.

He raised his phone and scrolled down to “Jenny.” He phoned and the call connected immediately. Before she could say anything, Mervin said, “I didn’t do it.”

A man responded: “Leave the gun in the house and walk out the front door with your hands raised above your head.”

“Are you Detective Inspector David North?” Mervin asked.

“Yes.” There was a brief pause, and then he continued: “Can I talk to Robert Selwyn?”

Mervin did not know how to respond, and then asked, “Can I talk to Jenny?”

There was another pause, this time longer, and then he heard Jenny’s voice: “Why?” she asked. “Why did you do it?”

“Someone set me up,” Mervin responded, but he did not know what he could do to prove it. If even Jenny thought that he was guilty, he had no chance of persuading Detective Inspector David North and his team of officers directing their firepower at the house.

“They spoke to the landlord of a pub in Walthamstow and he said you were there last night. When you left you left a videotape behind. It showed you talking to two men last Christmas Eve. You said you were going to kill them both.”

“There’s no audio on CCTV,” Mervin said, and wished that he had not said anything.

“The police have people that can lip read. Why did you do it?”

Mervin ended the call. He had no memory of talking to anyone other than the man that started the nightmare and Ben Mudd, but he also had no memory of getting home.

“I didn’t do it,” Mervin said to himself. “I’ve never owned a gun.”

He thought back to the petrol station. He had not been drunk when he had walked into the petrol station, and he remembered the conversation with Jack Thomas. He did not even know Justin Bonner let alone where he lived.

He wondered whether the man that had done such a spectacular job of destroying his life was watching the house waiting to see how his game played out. He was sure that he would be, but he could not help but feel a deep and sickening sense of confusion. How had the man got to the cab driver? He supposed he could have been following, but he could not understand how he could possibly have predicted the snow storm bringing the traffic to a standstill, and his wandering away from the motorway and stumbling upon the house of Robert Selwyn.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember back twelve months. A pain started building between his eyes, intensifying with every passing second. He saw Jack Thomas standing behind the counter in the petrol station. His mouth was opening and closing, but he could not hear the words. A hole appeared between his eyes and, for a moment, he stood, his mouth stuck open, then dark blood poured down his face and he collapsed out of sight.

He opened his eyes and realized that he was shaking. He was going to be sent to prison for the rest of his life and he could not see any way to avoid it. All he had was a hazy memory of a man in a pub he would not be able to describe. The only way to avoid prison would be a high security psychiatric hospital.

Heart beating fiercely in his chest, he raised the gun and pointed the nozzle into his mouth. His forefinger tensed against the trigger. One way or another his life was over, but if he pulled the trigger he was accepting defeat. Everyone would see it as an admission of guilt. He lowered the gun and decided he was going to clear his name. Out of all the wrongs of the world, the one thing he always believed was that, whatever happens in life, eventually the truth always outs.

He walked towards the doorway back out to the front door and kicked something on the floor. It fell over making a dull metallic sound. He looked down and saw a large green jerry can. The cap was missing and the smell of petrol filled his senses.

He looked at his clothes and saw that they were soaked in petrol. The smell attacked his senses and he gagged. He hobbled out to the front door and opened it and started towards the light still directed at him.

The voice boomed once more: “Put the gun down.”

Melvin tossed the gun away and continued forward and, through his streaming eyes, he saw three people approaching.

“Don’t shoot,” Mervin shouted.

The three men reached him and he stopped. He raised his hand and rubbed his eyes to clear the tears that had formed and saw one of the officers pointing something at him. He thought it was a handgun, and then time seemed to slow as he saw two small metal darts launch towards him, fine wires trailing back to a Taser.

Mervin tried to move out of the way, but not quickly enough. The glow of the sun appeared on the horizon and fifty thousand volts coursed through his body, his petrol soaked clothes igniting. He fell to his knees as his muscles contracted uncontrollably and, as his burning clothes stuck to his body, he looked up and saw the face of the tormentor looking down at him and smiling through pointed teeth and a tangled black beard, eyes glowing points of red and horns twisting into smoke.

The pain was intense, and he knew he was going to die. He knew he was going to die condemned in the minds of all who knew him.

* * *

One Year Later

Jenny reached the end of the driveway and saw that the gatehouse was occupied. It had been one of Mervin’s plans to renovate the old Victorian building and rent it out to rich holidaymakers from the city. When he had died, she had sold the building to raise some quick money.