A Stranger's Grave Read online

  Most people, if they found their family dead on the kitchen floor...most people wouldn’t know what to do. They might think to call the police, but for the moment after any kind of massive shock the body shuts down. The mind shuts down. A person in that kind of situation, sometimes they’re strange. Like, right, what do I do? Call the ambulance, check for a pulse, call the police, check the house, who do I phone? Who do I phone?

  They shut down, though, whether they become active or inactive, whether they scream or cry, whether it’s a hard thing they see or something that’s kind of expected, like at the bedside of an elderly relative, watching them breathe their last.

  It’s natural, to shut down. Natural not to know what to do.

  Elton knew precisely what to do, because he heard a sound from upstairs an instant after seeing his wife on the kitchen floor with her skirt pulled up over her waist and livid red marks around her throat. He knew in the second it took to reboot, the time it takes other people months, even years.

  It was in that instant, during those couple of seconds it took for Elton’s mind to reboot, that he died. A living man walked into the kitchen, a dead man walked out.

  Ran out. Up the stairs, two at a time. Anger flowing, adding strength, but tempered, too, because he was cold and dead inside already, something inanimate but with purpose still, purpose beaten into it, like steel shaped into a sword. Inanimate, but ready to be wielded.

  He shouldered the bedroom door aside, where the presents were. In the morning, they would’ve been under the tree in the front room that Elton and Georgia had spent an evening decorating with baubles and soft lights that kind of looked like snow when they weren’t lit.

  Those presents that Georgia had wrapped so beautifully, with such love, they were unwrapped in a tattered pile.

  That didn’t make Elton angry because dead men don’t feel. Emotion flees a body in death, leaving nothing but a shell.

  The shell of Elton Burlock looked down at a skinny man kneeling among the presents. Two things struck Elton: That the murderer looked disappointed, unwrapping his presents, and that somehow his expression should have been more grateful. The second thing was that the skinny man had a long, narrow face. Like a knife.

  Later, it turned out he’d hit three houses down the street.

  But he only killed Georgia. Only killed baby Francis.

  A skinny man, shoulders bony, shock on his face. Knife on the floor beside his hand, which he picked up reflexively when Elton burst through the door. Maybe he’d held that knife on Georgia, knowing she was alone. Watching the house. Maybe he’d seen her, wanted her. Maybe a spur of the moment thing.

  He couldn’t have weighed more than 160 pounds. Elton weighed around 210 at his heaviest, probably 200 now he was married and wasn’t training as much. His muscle definition was the same, but he ran more, swam more. Didn’t feel he needed to hit a bag or the weights so much. His muscles remembered punching. His mind, dead, remembered punching, like a memory the dead held onto, like his dead body was a ghost that couldn’t let go of the past.

  ‘No,’ said the man holding the knife. He could see what was coming and that it didn’t make a difference, that knife. ‘Hold on...’ voice shaking as he pushed himself to his feet ‘...it wasn’t...’

  Elton crossed the room. The guy didn’t even try to stab him. Probably shock at the speed, maybe just that he wasn’t really a fighter.

  Skinny guy, turned out later he was selling what he took and buying crack, relatively new and rare back in the eighties, but not unheard of.

  He had a history of mental problems that wouldn’t matter for much longer.

  Elton ignored the knife completely and hit the skinny guy with a left uppercut. The coroner later found that four ribs on the left side of the burglar and rapist and murderer’s chest were shattered. Six on his right, when Elton hit him a second time as the man flew backwards, while he was still in the air, with his stronger right hand. The blow had probably sent the man into cardiac distress, though his heart didn’t stop right away.

  Elton knew he was going to kill the man, so he stopped. The guy was doubled on the floor, no breath, struggling, his legs kicking.

  Elton picked the man up by the throat and dropped him, swinging his right fist again and breaking the man’s left cheekbone and both sides of his jaw.

  In some distant part, a memory from the life Elton left behind in his kitchen, he understood the cracks he was hearing were bones breaking.

  Elton could feel himself smiling, and knew he was going to kill the man so he stopped again, catching the man before he fell. The skinny man's face was slack and his breath had stopped.

  *

  22.

  Elton knew he was going to kill the man, so he massaged the man’s heart back to life, inside the skinny man’s shattered ribs, because it wasn’t done. Do a job ‘til it’s done, and he always did. He pumped hard on the man’s chest, pinched his nostrils shut every fourth or fifth beat and breathed for the dead man.

  The man’s heart still kicked in his chest when Elton took his pulse. Erratic, but working the best it could, so Elton just breathed and stopped pumping, pushing his own air into the man’s lungs. The man’s lungs rose and fell at the borrowed breath, until his chest rose and fell on its own.

  Elton wondered if one of those ribs hadn’t punctured a lung. Didn’t matter. The skinny guy was as dead as Elton, breathing through blood or not.

  He dragged the murderer down the stairs by his ankles and dumped him next to his wife.

  With all his strength he stamped on one hand while the man was unconscious, breaking it, shattering it completely. Leather soled shoes on a soft weak hand.

  Then he stamped on the other hand and both knees. On the first knee the man woke up but Elton still stamped on the second knee.

  It was the man’s scream that made Elton’s neighbour call the police. His wife hadn’t screamed, because the knife-faced man had threatened to kill Francis while Georgia watched unless she...

  He knew it all. He didn’t need to see how it had been, because he knew anyway, like he could see it played back in his head, on replay, like it would be forever, even though he was dead. The memory would be a ghost that followed him through the veil of spirit.

  The memory of what had happened that night, what was yet to happen...it was right there before him. Before knife-faced man.

  Elton stood and watched. He might have been laughing. He didn’t ever remember that part. The man was screaming, unable to hold anything. If you hurt something, you hold it. If both your hands are broken, you’ve got nothing to hold with. There’s no comfort. Just pain.

  Somewhere, Elton knew this.

  He turned the man’s head to one side, so he was looking at Georgia and Francis, so he knew why, knew what was going to happen. The man tried to crawl away and Elton kicked him back where he was, so he could see.

  Then he took a cleaver from the magnetic strip above the bread bin and below the high cupboards, right by the chopping board.

  ‘No,’ said the skinny murderer, but Elton didn’t hear it. Blood was pounding so hard in his ears he didn’t hear anything.

  He walked back to the man and swung the cleaver so hard it went straight through the man’s neck and stuck fast in the floorboards underneath the linoleum. The linoleum had a pattern on it that seemed random but wasn’t, couldn’t be. It was designed. Someone had thought it out.

  It was premeditated.

  *

  23.

  Any one of those injuries alone and Elton might not be sitting in an interview room, waiting. Except maybe for the head on the floor. The head on that linoleum floor was inescapable. It followed him in his dreams, even. Waking or sleeping, he’d never forget the way the man’s eyes looked at him as he died.

  When forensics had removed the cleaver, the guy had to plant both feet either side to get enough leverage on the handle to pull it loose.

  They’d measured how deep a gouge the blade had made in the wood.
r />   They’d counted the broken bones in the skinny guy’s body, whose name was Declan Freeman, once upon a time, before he got into crack and began to suffer from mild schizophrenia. Lividity on the chest showed clearly the marks of resuscitation, and there was saliva – Elton’s – around the man’s mouth.

  If the man had just died from the beating, Elton might have got off. Might have. The press would have wanted it. As it was, the beheading was why he got five years.

  Extenuating circumstances, only five years.

  You bring a man back to life to kill him hard, you go to jail. Elton didn’t fight it. He wanted it.

  Five years, hard time. But it wasn’t hard enough for Elton. He made it harder, as though he’d wanted to punish himself. Not for killing the man who murdered his family. Not for a stupid car with faulty electronics. No, he wanted to punish himself for failing, for the guilt he’d always feel because he hadn’t been able to be there for the two people he’d loved more than anyone else in the world. His wife, who’d been there for him and saved his life, and Francis, his beautiful daughter, whom he loved, too, without any reservations, right from the second she uttered her first wail.

  Hard time, easy time...either way, Elton was a killer, and the policeman that came into the interview room knew it, because he wore cuffs on his belt, plainclothes or not, and had his buddy in tow.

  Elton wasn’t getting home for his dinner, he knew that now. But he might be able to get a cup of coffee, and policemen drank coffee and drank good coffee.

  Best case? Twenty-four hours, and plenty of coffee.

  No sense in bitching about it. Elton didn’t fight any more. He wasn’t that guy. Not anymore.

  *

  24.

  DI Terry and DI Francis sat opposite Elton. It hurt that the guy was called Francis, but not as much as he expected. It wasn’t something they’d planned out. It was just the guy’s name. Just the way it went. There was no such thing as coincidence. Shit just happened, and if it happened to you it was just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  A second degree in philosophy, and that was what it boiled down to.

  He wasn’t cuffed. Free to hit, free to stand, should he want to do either. He didn’t, because he didn’t want to give them any kind of reason to cuff him or keep him any longer than he had to stay. They’d have some things to hash out. Elton knew that. He didn’t need to make it hard, though.

  Whatever they asked, he figured, he’d give up. Didn’t matter because he hadn’t killed the kid in the cemetery. He’d killed a murderer, in 1985, but that didn’t bear on this directly (though it would, no matter what he said, indirectly) and there was no point in being anything but a realist about it.

  ‘So,’ said DI Terry. ‘How’s it go? Something like...’ he made a show of thinking, while DI Francis stared at Elton. ‘The kid’s spraying swastikas. Some kind of neo-Nazi. You find him. Figure it’s your turf now. Getting on a little, but you feel like you’ve still got something to prove. You’re a hard man. Still a hard man. You find the kid. Maybe you try to warn him off, first. He rears up. You hit him and hit him hard. Try to dispose of the body, but you’re disturbed. Someone...maybe the girl...comes back. She’s scared. Maybe you scared her, maybe she’s worried because she can’t have her decent hard working parents knowing who she’s been fucking...sound good to you?’

  Elton shook his head.

  ‘Sounds like a heap of steaming shit, DI Terry, and you know it, because it doesn’t work. It’s nowhere near working.’

  ‘How do you get there, then, Mr. Burlock?’

  Elton sat forward in his uncomfortable chair. DI Francis shifted, like he was concerned, just a little.

  Still a dangerous man, thought Elton. He sat back. He didn’t want to give them a reason more than they had already.

  Sitting back, he held out his knuckles for them to see.

  ‘Bare knuckle, you’d see marks. Bruising. If the kid got hit, it’d be bruised like mad. You know how hard I hit a guy once, because you were gone long enough to read my record. You probably read the court reports, too. Maybe not the whole thing, but enough. You split it between you and compared notes while I was waiting. Can I get a coffee?’

  ‘No,’ said DI Francis.

  ‘You took samples from me. Didn’t find anything. Didn’t find anything physical to tie me to the kid.’

  ‘Maybe he was fucking you. You cleaned your cottage top to bottom...’ Francis laughed at that.

  ‘Doesn’t work because you’ve got no DNA, no hair, no prints. Nothing. If he was in my cottage, which I guess you’ve gone over ten times in the last...’ Elton checked his watch. Shit. ‘Three hours.’

  DI Terry nodded for Elton to go on. Give them enough rope, Elton figured he was thinking, but it didn’t matter how much rope DI Terry gave him, because Elton had a thick neck. The rope’d snap before he did.

  He wasn’t new to this, and the difference between now and the first murder? He knew he’d done that one. No way he’d done this one, unless he’d done it in his sleep.

  ‘Time of death, too. You know there or thereabouts how long the boy was dead. You can find that out, right? You could in 1985. You can probably figure it out down to the minute now, the way technology’s moved on. You got the court reports and my record through by email. You’re all linked up, now. All the agencies.

  ‘Maybe you don’t like playing ball with each other, but you talk now. First hours of a murder investigation you’ll be running around like headless chickens.’

  ‘So?’ said DI Francis, looking like he wanted to hit Elton. Elton didn’t care. He’d been hit enough times before, and by people who hadn’t broken their wrists on his face.

  ‘So you know this is shit. Yes, I killed a man. Yes, I cut his head off with a cleaver. He raped and murdered my wife. He killed my daughter. Premeditated. You know I didn’t fight it. The only question there ever was? How much time I’d get. And I still didn’t fight it. Maybe it was enough or maybe it wasn’t, but the long and short of it is you’ve got nothing to tie me to the boy. Might have been his girlfriend. She left him with his cock hanging out. Maybe it was something else, something you don’t know about yet, but you’re looking at me and wasting your time. You could be doing something useful.’

  ‘Oh, we’re doing something useful,’ said DI Francis. ‘You’re solving a murder for us. You’re smart, right? Two degrees. Clever man.’

  Francis shrugged, looked at Terry.

  ‘Come on, John. Let’s fuck off. All sown up. He’s not our man.’

  ‘Alright?’

  Elton didn’t even bother to ask if he could go, because they were fucking with him, and no matter what he said or what they knew, he wasn’t getting home before twenty-four hours. Not because they seriously suspected him – he knew he was right and though they might not like it, twenty-one hours down the line he’d be walking out of the station.

  No, they were going to hold him the full twenty-four hours partly because he was a murderer, a long time ago, but mostly because he was smarter than they were, and nobody likes a smart arse.

  *

  25.

  Twenty-four hours with DI Terry and DI Francis. Elton got some coffee, eventually a sandwich. He didn’t try to talk them around any longer. Just gave in and rode with it.

  Twenty-four hours, round the houses.

  Back and forth. They needed DNA. They took his shoes. They took his prints. They read him his file even though he knew the sequence of events that lead him to this room better than they ever would, and what was more, he understood it. Understood why he’d brought the guy back to life so he could kill him again. They’d never understood that in court. No one ever had. But he knew, and that was good enough, because that’d been the only way to get the job done.

  The coffee was good. Hot, in a mug. The mug was just the right size for his hands. They printed him and gave him a wipe for the ink, but the ink still stuck to the white ceramic mug. No paper cups. He was grateful for that
. They could have given him one of those crappy paper mugs and made him scald his hands.

  'Helping with enquiries' they called it. It didn’t fuck up his position at all, because they weren’t sure enough to charge him. If they charged him with murder, he’d lose his job, even if it was unfounded. He shut up except when they asked him questions, because as he sat there in the interview room on his uncomfortable chair, he had a lot of time to think.

  He didn’t come to any earth shattering conclusions about who’d killed the kid. But he did think about his job, and his cottage, and he came around to thinking that he liked both an awful lot.

  So he didn’t do anything that would piss them off enough to charge him.

  They couldn’t, because they had the wrong man at the right time and absolutely no evidence to tie him to the murder. Not even Elton’s record could give them something they didn’t have, and that was enough for a court to go on.

  Best they could do was a search order, and they didn’t find anything in his cottage either. He knew because about twelve hours into his interview DI Francis went out, came in, looking pissed off like he’d just found out someone was fucking his wife.

  With nothing to go on, they had no choice but to let him go.

  *

  26.

  They didn’t forget. Neither did Elton, same as no one ever does, because the dead always live on, even if it’s only a memory, and someone, somewhere, keeps a ledger, and in that ledger there’s a balance of accounts.

  Elton knew his wasn’t paid, but he wasn’t taking out credit for this one.

  John Upbright’s murder wouldn’t go away, because Terry and Francis wouldn’t forget, but they’d never solve it either, because you can’t charge the dead with murder.

  *

  Laid to Rest