Wanting (7 page)

He nodded—yeah, it was a cult—and closed his eyes tighter in order for the info dump to reveal itself some more.

Nakedness. Baldness. Chains? No, not yet, they would come later. The sense of the victim obeying despite hating every second of…of what?

Oliver strained to see into the darkness behind his eyelids. To get a glimpse of what was going on instead of this appalling blank canvas where the facts were dropped into his head as simply as a penny into a wishing fountain.

Nothing.

“Come on,” he whispered. “You can do this.”

Nothing.

“Fuck!”

He gritted his teeth, annoyed with himself for not knowing more, wishing for whatever had given him the information to give him something else, for him to be able to just seek and find, to know everything so he could stop—

How could he stop what had already happened?

“They left me. I had to do those things, and they left me. It’s over. All over now…”

Oliver snapped his eyes open, his body going rigid. Before he woke Langham, he eased away from him and got out of bed, going to the window and drawing back the curtain so he could look outside at the street.

“You still there?” he whispered.

“Where?”

“Here, with me.”

“No. Yes. I’m with you but still there. I don’t like it, don’t understand it.”

“Where are you? When you’re there?”

“I’m… I don’t know. I can’t see.”

Oliver swallowed.
Oh, God, did they gouge out his eyes or something?

“No. I couldn’t see anything from the time I met that guy in the club and he put a blindfold on me outside. Said it’d be fun.”

“Which club?”

“Samerson’s.”

Oliver knew it but had never been there. A gay club in the heart of the city that had live shows every Friday and Saturday night, local bands and whatnot. It had grown in popularity, by all accounts.

“What time was that?” Oliver asked.

“Early evening. Can’t remember. I’d been drinking.”

“So you can’t see where you are now?”

“No. But it smells.”

“Of?”

“Rabbit hutches.”

“What?”

“Except there’s no piss or shit, or that ammonia smell.”

“Right.”

“What time is it?”

Oliver glanced back at the bedside table to the glowing green numbers of their alarm clock. “Twelve-fifteen.”

“Oh, fuck. I was meant to be home by eleven. My mum, she’ll be worrying.”

“Where do you live?” Oliver prayed he’d get the information.

“Twenty-nine Marlborough Avenue.”

“And your name?”

Energy drained out of Oliver, and he knew he wouldn’t get an answer. He stared back out of the window and down into the street, stupidly thinking that now things had changed for him he might see a manifestation of the deceased beneath the fuzzy glow of the streetlamp, a mournful expression on the face of a blindfolded man who had gone out on the piss knowing he had to be in by eleven—and not making it.

“Jesus fucking Christ…”

Oliver sighed and walked towards the bed. He pressed one hand to the mattress and used his other to gently rock Langham awake.

Langham opened his eyes quickly, bolting up to rest on one elbow, the hair at his temple mussed where it had rested against the bed.

“There’s been another one,” Oliver said.

“Aww, shit.” Langham got off the bed and began dressing. “Where is he? It is a he, right?”

“It’s a he, but I don’t know where he is.
He
doesn’t know where he is.”

“So is there a point to us getting dressed yet?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s a point. He told me where he’s been, that he was blindfolded and taken somewhere that smells of rabbit hutches, and I know where he lives.”

* * * *

In the hour before dawn, after going to the station and looking at the CCTV street footage outside Samerson’s, knocking on the door of a woman who was about to be told her son might never be coming home didn’t sit right with Oliver. They stood on the concrete doorstep of one of seven terraced houses, council-owned or former council housing if their fifties uniformity was anything to go by. Oliver sighed, wondering how the fuck Langham was going to play this one. The deceased—and he
was
dead, they just hadn’t found him yet—was Jason Drum, twenty-one years old and fresh out of university where he’d studied to become a social worker. It struck Oliver as doubly sad that a man, so newly a man too, had wanted to spend his life helping others and now wouldn’t be able to.

The city would be a sorrier place without him.

Langham knocked again, blowing a stream of air out through puckered lips, his cheeks ballooning. A light snapped on behind the glass in the door, and a shadowy figure approached, a wide man, Oliver reckoned, over six feet tall. A chain was drawn across, and the door opened to reveal a boxer-like visage that Oliver wouldn’t want to join in the ring.

“Yeah?” the man said, hair rumpled, his cheek bearing signs of his pillow, two severe material indents, macabre slashes on his skin.

“Mr Drum?” Langham asked.

“Yeah? Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Langham, and this is my associate, Oliver Banks. May we come in?”

Langham produced his badge, and Mr Drum peered down at it, his ruddy face paling. Oliver felt sorry for him. It would pale further before they were finished.

“Uh, yeah, yeah. Is this about the call my wife made earlier?” Mr Drum opened the door wider and allowed them access.

“Call?” Langham asked, closing the door as Mr Drum made his way down a slim hallway and waited on the threshold of a doorway to their right.

“Yeah, Carol phoned in about our son. Meant to have been home by eleven, only he didn’t turn up.”

Oliver knew what kind of response Carol would have been given.

‘Your son is twenty-one, madam, out on the town, probably drunk and has forgotten the time. He’ll roll in after the clubs close, no doubt.’

‘But he’s never done this before. He’s always in on time.’

‘There’s a first time for everything, madam.’

‘But this isn’t like him. He wouldn’t do this!’

‘That’s what we’d all like to say about our children, madam, but like I said—’

‘You don’t understand! I know something’s wrong.’

‘Nothing we can do about it until he’s been missing twenty-four hours, love, and even then, at his age, it’s doubtful something’s happened.’

Oliver and Langham followed Mr Drum into a well-kept living room, and Oliver got his first glimpse of who he thought might be Jason. Pictures of a young man in a mortar board adorned the mantel, and photos, younger versions ranging from a baby to a teenager, dotted the mint-green, flock-papered walls. He was loved, then.

“You might want to sit down, Mr Drum,” Langham said.

“Oh, God… Fuck. Um…yeah. I’ll sit down. What…what’s happened? Is Jason all right? Had an accident?”

Oliver retreated to just inside the doorway.

Langham sat beside Mr Drum on the pale blue sofa, perched on the edge ready, Oliver knew, to jump up again if the tidal wave of grief sent Mr Drum roaring.

“We have recent information that may indicate your son left the club with an unsavoury character.” Langham took a deep breath. “We don’t yet know where they went after they were last caught on CCTV getting into a Transit van that headed out of the city towards the villages—Strangley, Lower Repton and the like—but we have units out there looking for a van of that description, or sightings of that van.”

“Oh, God. Carol…she’s…she knew something was up and I told her the same as that policeman—nothing to worry about, he’d forgotten the time, he’d be back soon and I…shit, I was wrong, wasn’t I? She said…” A sob caught in his throat. “She said she had a feeling, early evening, it was, that something wasn’t right, and I…and I told her it was indigestion from the bloody hazelnuts we’d been eating. She gets that, you know, from hazelnuts. But she said it wasn’t the fucking nuts—swore at me just like that, she did—and sat there crying. I didn’t know what to do, what was up with her, and I didn’t…” He sobbed again. “Didn’t even offer her a bloody cuddle.”

Oliver swallowed. A thick, hard ball of emotion refused to go down, and he swallowed again, his throat suddenly dry, his heart beating too fast. This wasn’t how he’d wanted things to go, watching some poor bastard discover there was a strong possibility something rotten had happened to his kid.

“Was it one of them gay-bashers?” Mr Drum asked, knuckling a tear that brimmed over his right lower eyelid.

“We’re not sure yet, although there is indication he left with a gay man.” Langham relaxed a little as Mr Drum flopped back. “He was in Samerson’s, met the man there.”

“D’you think you’ll find him?” Mr Drum asked, hope widening his eyes. “I mean, as far I know Jason hasn’t, you know, done anything yet, just came out to us the other week, as a matter of fact, wasn’t a surprise because you know your own kid, don’t you, and he’d always been different and we didn’t hold it against him and we love him just the same and I’m thinking what a bloody awful thing it would be if he’d found the courage to tell us and gone to a gay club for the first time and then this happened and then…and then…”

His tumble of words tore at Oliver’s heart, and he turned away from the sight of Mr Drum floundering for something else to say while tears poured down his face and he folded, refolded, folded, refolded his hands in his lap.

“We’re holding out hope that we find him, Mr Drum.” Langham stood. “We have a liaison officer on the way, someone who can sit with you, talk to you until we hear more news. Would you like us to wait down here while you tell your wife, or would you prefer us or the liaison to do it?”

“I’ll tell her,” Mr Drum said, pushing himself off the sofa and walking towards Oliver. “I’ll tell her. Best coming from me and not no stranger. No offence, like.”

Mr Drum brushed past Oliver and went upstairs. Oliver waited one second, two, three, then closed his eyes as the wail of a distraught mother ripped through the air.

Instead of stopping where they had the previous night, Dane found the road that led to the rear of the barn. Although Adam wanted to fuck here again, he got the shivers at the thought of those men travelling this same road with the humming orgy going through their minds. How had they felt approaching the barn? Had they been excited or quietly controlled? Had they done something like it before? From the way they’d acted, Adam believed they had. No way could something so organised just occur like it had. And where had they planned their ritual? What—had they sat around some dining room table, notebooks in hand, all of them scribbling every so often so they wouldn’t forget how things would go? Did they have to practise in order to get it just right?

He felt sick at his thoughts, uncomprehending that so many men had the same ideas, the same wants. How the fuck had they all met? And who suggested such a thing—and, more to the point, who responded that ‘hell yeah, that’s a good idea, let’s go and hum naked, whip some bloke, then fuck, all in the same room’?

Dane parked up and smiled, glancing across at Adam, who managed a wan smile back.

“You ready?” Dane asked.

“Yeah, but it feels odd being here in daylight.” Adam was wary of them being seen poking around. After all, he’d spotted the headlamps from their cottage, so someone from their street might see them now the sun was up. “What do we say if we get caught?”

Dane chuckled. “Well, if we get caught doing what we plan to do, I don’t think we need to say anything.”

“I s’pose. But should we risk it, being new here and all that?”

“Who the hell is going to be coming out here on a Sunday afternoon?”

“Dunno.”

Adam opened the car door and got out, thinking that if they looked in the lean-to and he didn’t feel weird in there, they could fuck then go home. This was the only time he would agree to come back here. It gave him the creeps, the barn being in the middle of the field like it was, with nothing in it but hay bales. He closed the car door and waited for Dane, who didn’t bother locking up.

“Come on,” Adam said, heading for the lean-to.

“Oh, no. Not in there. I want to go in the main barn.”

Adam sighed and walked around the front, Dane at his rear. He was surprised to see the door ajar. Had he thought whoever owned the barn had been in on the act last night and would have secured the place after they’d finished? He frowned as that feeling came upon him again, the same one he’d experienced last night when he thought he’d had a panic attack. He tensed, suddenly reluctant to step inside.

“You go first,” he said, jerking his head at the door.

“What, you worried they might still be here? The cars have gone, man…”

“I know, but… Just…just you go first.”

Dane sighed, pulled the door wider and disappeared inside. Adam took a deep breath then followed. It was quite dark with only the light from the doorway coming in. Adam squinted to get his eyes accustomed to the change. It looked the same but felt different. He supposed it would, being daytime and everything, but a niggling feeling deep inside told him something was wrong. He couldn’t explain it, didn’t think he should try to when it would only get Dane’s back up, but he wanted to go home.

“There’s… I don’t like it in here,” he said, jamming a hand through his hair and tugging to try to take his mind off the eeriness he was experiencing.

“Fuck me, Adam. It’s just a barn!”

“Yeah, but it’s someone else’s property. We shouldn’t—”

“It didn’t bother you last night, did it?” Dane moved to stand in front of him and drew him close. “Look, I understand your nerves, I really do, but this has to stop. We’re safe here, all right? No one will hurt you.”

“I know, but this isn’t about that. I feel…like we
really
shouldn’t be here. Like…oh, I don’t fucking know. I can’t explain it. I’m uncomfortable.”

Dane cupped Adam’s cheek and rubbed his thumb beneath his eye. “Probably because it’s daytime. If it makes you feel better, we’ll check the lean-to as well. Then you can let me fuck you properly.” He dug a hand in his pocket then held it up. “I have lube!”