A Heart in the Right Place Read online

  Nick took the feet. Tony grabbed Oz by the shoulders. It was so much easier lifting Oz with two people, although Nick was certain the body had deteriorated considerably in the hours since he last saw it. The blood had dried and crusted around the wounds: they had to peel the body off the carpet.

  “Oh wow,” muttered Tony when the full extent of Oz’s self-inflicted injuries became clear. “Power tools you say?”

  “Mmmm,” nodded Nick, not wanting to dwell on it.

  Tony tutted. “This would not be covered under the manufacturer’s guarantee.”

  “I don’t think he was planning on taking his Bosch power drill or the scraping little buffing thing—”

  “Dremel.”

  “—back to the shop. He really meant to do himself some harm. Best not to look, eh?”

  Tony grunted in agreement. “Over there. In that outbuilding.”

  They staggered along a path littered in leaf-mould towards the low, functional looking building attached to the side of the house. Nick guessed with a spot of loving care and the cleansing light of day, the woodland farmhouse would look quite charming. Sadly, in the deepening dusk, with nothing but cobwebs and shadows at the windows, it looked like the setting for a cannibal hillbilly horror movie.

  “You’re sure this place is empty?” said Nick.

  “I think someone might already have been out to greet us if it wasn’t,” said Tony. “It’s not like we’re popping round with a little housewarming gift, is it?”

  Pickles jumped up and clamped her jaws around Oz’s exposed ankle, forcing them to put the body down for a moment and detach the dog.

  “Bad dog, Pickles!” said Nick, shooing her away.

  As Pickles ran ahead to explore the outhouse, Nick realised they had another problem. One of the boars had been bold enough to step forward and investigate Oz’s exposed organs. Now it was buried, snout deep, inside the corpse.

  “No! Stop it! Surely boars are supposed to be vegetarians?”

  “Omnivores, I think,” said Tony.

  “We can’t let them get a taste for human flesh!”

  “A taste? It’s just having a snuffle.”

  “They’ll turn on us. There’s hundreds of them. Look!” Boars flanked them on every side, sniffing the air.

  Tony rolled his eyes. “Come on, Nick. Bit of focus, please.”

  They hefted Oz up again, dislodging the boar. They continued the slow journey to the outbuilding, turning Oz around to go feet first as they approached the mildew covered door.

  “I think I can get the latch with—” Nick waggled his elbow. The latch was rusty; the first try scraped his elbow. He let out a brief whimper. His stomach lurched as he saw blood drip from his elbow to the concrete apron in front of the door. “I’ll probably get tetanus now!”

  “This body is quite heavy,” remarked Tony.

  “I know, dad.”

  “Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be.”

  Nick lifted the latch on the second attempt. The door swung open. They carried the body indoors. It was some sort of preparation area: with stainless steel counters and large chest freezers. Large hooks hung from the ceiling and industrial catering machines hulked in the corner like dead robots. Tony nodded to the far side of the room and they managed to lift Oz onto a counter, so the boars wouldn’t be able to reach him. Happily, the boars didn’t seem all that keen on crossing the threshold.

  “It’s an abattoir,” said Nick.

  “Hardly,” said Tony. “A processing room of some sort. Their killing shed will be somewhere else.”

  “Whatever. I’m not sure this is the kind of place I want to be hanging around if there’s a killer in the woods.”

  Tony chuckled without humour. “Hardly five star weekend accommodation.”

  Nick located a light switch, surprised when it worked. Kirkwood had clearly not moved out completely. It smelled a little musty but was otherwise wipe-down clean and ready for work. He looked at the rack of meat cleavers and other blades hanging on a far wall. The butchery tools sparked a worried thought.

  “Dad.”

  “Hmm?”

  “This business all seems to be about Oz’s heart, yeah?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, some parts fell out back in Birmingham.”

  “Fell out?”

  “I’m not sure which. What if he hasn’t got his heart? What if they get really mad and come after us?”

  Tony sighed. “They’re probably going to do that anyway. We need to cover our tracks and get out of here. Let’s have a quick look and see if we can tell what’s missing.”

  To Nick’s horror, Tony approached the counter and dug his hands into Oz’s abdominal cavity like a ghoulish lucky dip.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed.

  Tony nodded downward. “Looking.”

  “You didn’t even put any gloves on!”

  “Did I need to?”

  Nick liked to pretend he didn’t get squeamish easily. Even if it wasn’t true, he’d been more than a little intimate with a corpse that morning: manhandling it into his boot. However, the sight of his dad having a merry shufti around Oz’s innards turned his stomach. “But what about infection?” he said.

  “I don’t think Oz here is worried about catching anything. And I’m not going to catch anything from Oz as long as I wash my hands after.” He pushed chunks of Oz-meat out of the way like an open-the-flap book for serial killers. “I think that thing there is a kidney, from the position and shape, yes?”

  “Oh, Christ. We’re doing Guess the Organ now?”

  “Is it a kidney or not?”

  Nick nodded. “I suppose.”

  “The big thing here must be the liver. Look at the colour of it, and there are teeth marks. Would it be fair to say Pickles had a hand in this?”

  Not a hand, no, Nick thought. He really didn’t want to barf in front of his dad. He tried hard to concentrate on something other than the grisly Show And Tell his dad was performing.

  “If we look higher up, there’s some damage, but the ribs have stopped it going too deep. See, these white bones? I think that’s the heart behind them. Yes, look! It’s very like a lamb’s heart. Used to get those in the butchers, probably still can if you go to the right places. Your mother would know. It’s not too badly damaged, apart from this blade stuck in there. We’ll leave it where it is, I think. Nice blade too. Criminal waste.”

  “Of a life or a blade?” asked Nick.

  Tony withdrew his hands. “And now, I wash my hands, see?”

  He went to a sluicing sink and turned on the water. The nozzle sputtered before a powerful spray came out.

  Nick breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m just going to get some essentials out of the car. If the boars try to eat me, I’ll let you know. You know: Oh no, dad, the boars are eating me. I told you they’d developed a taste for human flesh.”

  “Sarcasm, son.”

  “Well spotted, dad.”

  “If you’re worried, you might want to distract them. Give them something to eat.”

  Nick stopped in his tracks. Was his father actually suggesting they should pull out some of Oz’s spare organs to entice the boars away? How far would one person’s innards actually go? Then he realised his father was pointing into the corner of the room at a sack labelled FINEST QUALITY PIG PELLETS.

  “Oh. Yes,” said Nick. “Great idea.”

  He tried lifting the sack but it was heavier than it looked, and he spilled a large pile on the floor. Instead, he filled his cupped hands with pellets and went outside to scatter them, well away from his car. He was disturbed to find one of the boars lapping at the tiny puddle of blood from his scraped elbow. He shooed it away, more convinced than ever these were man-eaters who were just biding their time.

  He retrieved his bag from the car and contemplated what else to take. He had quite a few useful things in here. The first aid kit could be handy, especially for his grazed elbow. He didn’t have a great many tools, but t
here were cans of WD40 and tyre foam. Which one would be most useful? He couldn’t decide so he tucked them both under his arm.

  “Pickles!” Indoors, Tony was trying to catch the dog. He stepped outside. “Damn dog, it’s way too excited with all of the boars and whatever else is out in the woods. She’s run off somewhere.” He approached the car. “You ready to go yet? What’s this?”

  Nick juggled the items he’d taken from the car. “If we really have to destroy my car, there are things that don’t need to go up in flames.”

  “You know you can get more WD40 when we get out of here? We need to take the bare essentials and travel light.”

  “Right you are. I’ll just grab the whisky,” said Nick.

  “Not an essential.”

  “Ah, but we could always use it to start a fire; or as a Molotov cocktail.”

  “Interesting fact. Whisky as an accelerant is ineffectual, unless you heat it first. In a Molotov cocktail it almost certainly won’t work.”

  Nick looked at the bottle and sighed. It had caused him so much grief to get hold of it, he felt it still had a part to play. Plans. All his weekend plans had come to nothing, spectacularly so.

  “Right, I’m done,” he said, resigned. “Will the car explode if we, um, take off the petrol cap and put a lit rag in there?”

  “I’m sure we can do better,” said Tony. “Check out that plastic hopper trailer round there. I think it’s red diesel.”

  They went to the trailer at the corner of the building. It was covered in several months’ worth of forest crud, and weeds grew thickly around its wheels, but there was definitely some liquid inside it. Tony experimented briefly with the valve tap mechanism. He sniffed and nodded.

  “Red diesel, or something like it. That’ll do.”

  “Need containers,” said Nick. “Maybe there are some in the abattoir place.”

  “It’s not an abattoir.”

  “Whatever. There were fridges at the back and a walk-in freezer. Bet there’s some tubs or something.”

  “Let’s be quick about it. That woman can’t be more than half an hour behind. If she saw which direction we went, she’s bound to come here.”

  “And a burning car – a burning classic car – would totally pinpoint our location,” sniffed Nick.

  “We’ll be well on our way by then.”

  Tony led the way back into the meat prep building, scanning the room. Oz, laid out on the container, looked surprisingly at peace. For an instant, Nick was jealous. Tony headed over to the large freezers at the back. Nick looked up at a shelf.

  “Will creosote burn?” asked Nick, pulling down a tin.

  “Creosote?”

  At that moment they both heard a noise from outside. There were enough boars to account for any amount of random noise, but this was a very deliberate sound: like a stick dragged across railings. They looked to the door, knowing someone was outside.

  “Hide,” whispered Tony.

  43

  By the electric light spilling from the doorway and the glimmer of the Moon above, Finn could see a trail of blood from the car to the outbuilding. Her future victims were inside. She dragged the trowel taped to the end of her splinted arm across the rough, cracked plaster on the outside of the building, knowing they were already spooked. She smiled in the certain knowledge they would be a damned sight more by the time she’d finished.

  Finn entered the outbuilding and saw the body on the counter. It was utterly mutilated. It looked like they had tried to have sex with a woodchipper. Had her two targets done this? She would ask them once they were under control.

  “Oh my,” she said in a loud, pantomime voice. “Where could the naughty boys be hiding?”

  There were various fridges and hulking pieces of machinery in the room. Plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in. There was also what looked like a walk-in freezer. The door was open a crack. A stupid place to hide, but people were idiots at heart.

  She moved forward, trowel arm at the ready, preparing to draw the silver werewolf blade Adam had given her if needed.

  The old guy, Tony, stepped out from between two fridges, a meat cleaver held in both hands. “We were expecting you,” he told her.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Col told us you were coming.”

  “Knowing something and being prepared are two different things. It’s Tony, right?”

  Tony nodded warily. He pointed at the body with his cleaver. “There’s Oz. That’s what you came for.”

  Unconcerned by an old man with a blade which was too big for him, Finn looked at the corpse on the counter again. She was familiar with death, she’d seen a lot of bodies, but she was more experienced with the transitional phase: the moment between life and death, and the immediate aftermath. It was rare for her to look at a body which had given up its ghost some time ago and had time to settle; to lose any semblance of life. This thing was a riot of dried blood and sallow flesh. Beautiful in its own way; perhaps doubly so in the Moonlight angling through the window above. What it didn’t look like was a werewolf.

  “Where’s the other one?” she said.

  “What?” said Tony.

  “Your son. The dreamer.”

  “Does it matter? There’s your body. You can let us go now. We were going to torch the car, destroy the evidence and then just be on our way. It would be like we were never here.”

  She gave him a frank look. “They say when death is approaching, when you’re about to die, all illusions are stripped away and you see life as it really is.”

  “Do they?”

  She nodded. “You’re dying. Honestly, do you think you’re going to walk away from this?”

  Tony nervously adjusted his grip on the cleaver. “You want to know what I think? I’m thinking why has this woman taped my folding trowel to her hand?”

  44

  Despite his terror, Nick was thinking the same thing. Wedged into the space between some sort of industrial mincing machine and a storage unit, he watched her enter and thought this really was a terminator brought to life. She was silver from elbow to wrist with a shining blade on the end. It had taken him several terrified seconds to realise the silver was duct-tape and the blade his dad’s folding trowel. It genuinely defied explanation.

  The tone of her conversation with Tony was alarming from the outset. Dad had been right. She wasn’t going to let them leave and, in a straight fight, cleaver-dad had little chance against trowel-lady. Nick needed to act. He knew that. But what did he have? There were no weapons within his easy reach. There was the first aid kit and the tyre foam kit on the nearby counter; neither were weapons. In his hand he still held the can of creosote. WOOD TREATMENT. PROTECTS EXTERIOR WOOD AGAINST ROT AND DAMP. DOES EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN. What it didn’t say was if it could be used against homicidal woman with trowel hands. But it was heavy. Enough to stun someone. There were two of the Carver boys and only one of her…

  He leapt into action before he could change his mind. He ran at her swinging and yelling. The yell was a mistake. It just advertised his presence a full second before he got to her.

  The woman turned, almost lazily. Nick swung the tin at her, and she easily side-stepped. Barely needed to move. Tony gave her a shove and raised his cleaver to strike. Nick wanted to strike back, but his hand was still being carried by the momentum of the heavy can’s initial swing. The woman whirled on Tony. With a cinematic metal-on-metal ching! she knocked the cleaver from Tony’s grasp with her trowel hand, punching him in the face with her fist. Tony staggered back.

  “No!” yelled Nick. He swung the tin in a return arc.

  The woman spun, ready to disarm and probably disembowel Nick. What she probably wasn’t ready for was being coated in pungent chemicals. The lid came off the creosote and it emptied across her chest and face, slapping around her hand in a sticky dark tidal wave of wood preservative. As she stepped back in surprise, it ran down her body, front and back.

  Her eyes slitted open agains
t the acrid chemicals, just in time to see Nick swinging the empty tin towards her face. Her nose made a horribly and wonderfully satisfying crunch as he whacked her one. Her feet skidded from beneath her. She fell onto the open sack of FINEST QUALITY PIG PELLETS. The bag of rich and meaty animal food exploded beneath her, throwing pellets and dust into the air. Despite her nearly useless tape-and-trowel arm, the woman rolled and folded and sprang to her feet. There was suddenly a knife in her left hand, her good hand.

  She stepped forward and with casual ease, sticking the tip of the blade into Nick’s shoulder. It was almost gentle: like she was testing a joint of meat to see if it was cooked. But – by fuck! – it hurt. Nick cried out and dropped his empty tin. She backed off, getting both Nick and Tony in her arc of vision. Tony was holding his nose, eyes woozy.

  The woman dragged a sleeve across her eyes. Her biker leathers and jeans were coated in the sticky creosote, and she’d picked up a crusty coating of boar feed. Brown and knobbly. She looked like she was going to a fancy dress party as a Ferrero Rocher. A terminator dressed as a Ferrero Rocher. As images went it was confused at best, but this world of corpses and criminals was new to Nick, so what did he know?

  “Enough of this!” she roared, swinging her blade between them. “Sit!”

  “Sit?” said Tony.

  “Sit!”

  They sat obediently, backs against the chest freezer. Fear gripped Nick. He just knew he was going to do exactly what he was told. The woman pulled cable ties from an inside pocket and held them in front of Tony.

  “You. Put this around his wrists and pull tight. Do it properly, I’m watching.”

  Tony tied the wrists of his son.

  “Now, you do his.”

  Nick fumbled with his bound hands.

  “Ow, that’s tight,” hissed Tony.

  “She said to do it properly,” Nick hissed back.

  Satisfied, the woman put the knife down and trussed their ankles with more cable ties. “If either of you try anything…” she began.

  “We really won’t,” said Nick.

  She looked around, spotted the sluicing sink, and spent some time trying to wash the creosote from her hands and face. When she was done she had mostly succeeded but the brown gloop still covered her head and upper body. It was like a weird inverse of someone blacking up.