me, Thomas – is that Thom-arse or Tom-ass?’
More laughter, the other men enjoying Keller’s impending humiliation. Keller continued to try and ignore them.
‘So what are you, son, an arse or an ass?’ Locke turned to face his audience, pleased with his wit, his daily ritual of destroying Thomas Keller bit-by-bit almost complete. ‘I’m waiting for an answer, Thom-arse, and I don’t like being kept waiting, especially not by little cunts like you.’
Keller felt the shame crawling up his back, hatred and fear swelling in his belly in equal measures. He felt his skin tingling, growing hot and sweaty, his face and the back of his neck glowing red, super-heated by his crushing embarrassment and feelings of uselessness. He heard Locke moving closer to him, readying himself to spit more venomous words into his ear, but still he couldn’t find the strength to turn and face his torturer. He cursed the power for deserting him, the power he felt when he was with them, alone in his cellar with them. If he had that power now he would tear Locke apart. He would tear them all apart. One day, he promised himself. One day he would turn and face them, and then they would all be sorry.
Locke’s mouth moved in close to the side of his face, the smell of stale beer and tobacco unmistakeable. Keller tried to lift his arms to pigeonhole the letters, but they refused to rise.
‘Are you a queer, Thom-arse?’ Locke demanded. ‘Me and the boys reckon you’re a fucking queer. Is that right? Because we don’t like working in the same place as a fucking queer. Some of the boys are worried you might give them AIDS. They reckon you dirty faggots are all disease-ridden. Is that right, Thom-arse? Are you infected?’ Locke’s face, twisted with bigotry, was inches from his.
‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller managed to stutter, barely a whisper.
‘What?’ Locke almost shouted into his ear, flecks of spittle pricking the side of Keller’s face.
‘I’m not a homosexual,’ Keller repeated a little louder, wishing he had a knife in his hand, imagining how he would spin on his heels, keeping the knife low and tight to his own body, flashing it across Locke’s abdomen, stepping back to watch the red streak spread across the fat bastard’s belly as his intestines slowly tumbled out like eels from a fishing net, with Locke struggling to push them back into the cavity of his gut, a look of horror replacing the smug expression on his face.
‘What did you say, queer?’ Locke snapped, making him jump as he yelled into his ear. ‘Can’t you faggots speak properly?’
Without warning, Keller turned on his tormentor, the imagined knife in his hand slashing at the soft flesh of Locke’s over-sized belly just as he’d planned. The movement was enough to make Locke jump back, fear flashing across his features for a split second. Keller had never dared turn to face him before. He would make sure the little faggot never did again. His fingers curled into a well-practised fist, miniscule scars bearing witness to the teeth he had punched in the past.
Keller waited for the blow he knew would come. Instead he heard a voice demanding, ‘What’s going on here, men?’
The strong calm voice that carried a trace of Jamaican belonged to the shift supervisor, Leonard Trewsbury. He peered at Locke over the top of his bifocals, refusing to be intimidated by the younger, bigger man. The man who he knew detested being supervised by a black man.
‘Nothing for you to worry about, Leonard,’ Locke pushed.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ the supervisor warned him, knowing Locke would back down. ‘And you can call me Mr Trewsbury.’ He maintained eye contact with Locke, daring him to give him an excuse to put him on report or, better still, dismiss him altogether. ‘OK, everybody, let’s get back to work,’ he ordered.
Eyes glaring and vengeful, Locke slunk back to his workstation.
Trewsbury pulled Thomas Keller to one side. He liked the boy. Keller kept himself to himself and worked hard. He came to work on time and was always looking for and willing to do overtime. What he did with his money was a mystery. Trewsbury never asked and Keller never told.
‘You shouldn’t let them push you around,’ Trewsbury told him.
‘It’s all right,’ Keller lied. ‘It doesn’t bother me. They’re just joking.’
‘That’s not what it looked like. Next time Locke or any of his cronies bothers you, you let me know, OK?’
‘OK,’ Keller agreed, the pounding in his heart mercifully receding, the throbbing pain of self-loathing and rage easing in his temples.
‘Good man,’ said Trewsbury. ‘Now let’s get back to work before we fall too far behind to catch up.’
‘Sure,’ Keller replied, trying to sound cool and in control. But inside his soul, where nobody could see, the images of his revenge were playing out cold and cruel, bloody and excruciating. When he was with Sam, when they were finally together as they were meant to be, as he knew she wanted them to be, she would give him the strength to be the person he knew he really was. And then he would make Locke and the others regret their tormenting. He would make them all regret everything they had ever done to him.
Sean turned on to the access road in Norman Park, Bromley, heading towards Scrogginhall Wood. Only in a city would such an insignificant patch of forest be given the title ‘Wood’. His car bumped along the uneven track, bouncing him around inside and causing him to swear out loud. As he passed between the wooden posts that marked the entrance to the car park, he saw there were a number of cars parked there in addition to the police vehicles he’d expected to see. Presumably their owners hadn’t returned from walking dogs or liaising with their extra-marital lovers. He hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to let any vehicles be taken away. One could belong to the man he hunted. He could be lingering in the trees, watching the police, laughing at them. Laughing at him.
He spotted Donnelly sitting on the boot of his unmarked Vauxhall, which was parked next to the uniform patrol who’d found Louise’s red Ford Fiesta. An AA man was standing by in his van, waiting to be given the order to use his box of tricks to open the abandoned car.
Sean pulled up at a forty-five-degree angle to the car that was now a crime scene, blocking any other vehicles from driving too close to potentially precious tyre tracks or footprints. He swung his feet from the carpet of his car to the surface of the car park, disappointed to feel a rough mixture of compressed dirt and solid stone connecting with the soles of his shoes; not a promising surface for recovering useable prints or tracks.
Catching sight of him, Donnelly flicked his cigarette as far as he could away from the found car, aware of his own DNA soaked into the butt, not wanting to end up the subject of ridicule at the next office lunch for having contaminated the crime scene.
Sean made a beeline for the car, calling out to Donnelly while scanning the ground. ‘Let’s start tightening things up a bit, shall we?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning securing the entire area as a crime scene, not just the car itself. And not dropping fag butts close to the centre of it.’
Donnelly looked in the direction of his discarded cigarette, disappointed by Sean’s lack of appreciation for the distance he’d managed to flick it.
Sean tugged the rubber gloves he’d produced from his pocket over his hands, all the while surveying the ground around Louise Russell’s abandoned car, a mute mechanical
