Where the Birds Hide at Night

Gareth Wiles

Copyright © 2014 Gareth Wiles

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

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A special thanks to my friends Claire and Ross

I Am Dead

Icon's Request

A Matter of Dark

Noose flopped back in his seat and thought: Sod off world, I can't be arsed with you today. There was good reason for thinking this. He'd had a lot on his plate lately – the remains found under Neville's bed being identified as Peter Smith and the murder of Inspector Kennedy, to name but two. He just wanted to put the whole thing behind him, and move on. It was all rather inconvenient, this whole affair, especially seeing as it involved the murder of a fellow inspector at the station. Kennedy had been chopped up into little bits and dumped in a plastic recycling bin outside the local Myrtleville supermarket. Peter, of course, had been dead for years. A colleague dead. A friend dead. A little upsetting, really.

He checked his watch, catching a brief reflection of his awful grey face in it. He hadn't been living these past few years. He'd been existing, in a word, drawing in enough oxygen through his vacant maw to sustain continued existence. It
was
a maw – he felt within himself a culmination of a lifetime's worth of failure after failure. He'd failed his colleague, he'd failed his friend and, above all else, he'd failed his family – failed them so many times. He felt he'd become just like Peter Smith, turning his back on everything that had proven too much of a challenge. Thoughts of his family now came to the fore in his mind – something he didn't want to think about right now. Perhaps he was angry. Yes, he
was
angry. All those years Peter was missing he'd been able to paint him as some sort of victim of fate in his mind. Now his body had turned up – his final position on this planet confirmed – Noose brought back all the bad Peter had done. That he may well have been murdered by Neville, and a victim after all, was not what Noose was thinking about. He was thinking about how Peter had torn his family apart. The obsession with that man had cost Noose dearly. And, here he was obsessing again. No, he had to clear this whole thing from his mind. To think about his family, then – and not Peter – was perhaps a good idea.

A potential ending to Noose's day was going home, alone, right now or staying here in his office. He could trawl through all the documents on his desk, re-reading the same old files about the same old people. That Lucy Davies' killer was still at large troubled him again momentarily, but she was just one person in a long list of names that swirled around his head. Just names, labels, now. Another option to see Noose out for the evening was going out to a bar. This was alien to him – he had long given up socialising. The last real socialising he'd done was with Peter, and that hadn't exactly been the height of human interaction. That name again! Noose just couldn't shake it from the forefront of his mind. Perhaps the biggest trouble of this whole debacle was that Peter had clearly died never knowing who had murdered Lucy. He just knew Peter would have been in touch had he discovered the culprit. Unless, of course, the person had also done Peter in too. No, Noose just didn't feel that was what had happened. For some reason he sensed Peter had taken his own life. Did any of it matter now? For a detective inspector, Noose felt strangely disinterested in solving crimes at this very moment in time. All he wanted to do was get the weight of life off his back. It was all bogging him down a bit.

Slowly he got up from his desk and ambled towards the door, stretching his hand out to take a hold of the handle. He looked down at his hand, the fingers unable to flatten out without due effort. All his fingers on both hands curled in towards the palm when not in use. Age, perhaps? This worried Noose… this terrified him. He was getting older, and his life was shit. No, he wasn't really bothered anyway. Everybody's life was shit if you gave it some thought. Nobody had the perfect life. Even if they believed they had, something always came along to spoil it. Noose had been witness to, and experienced firsthand, all that. His job had allowed, or should that be forced, him to see all manner of horrors. Always he'd been left, when those who'd either been the victim or the criminal had buggered off, to his own devices. Memories, forever in his brain, accumulating. Each family Noose came across had only lost, say, one individual. But, he had to experience this over and over again, day in and day out. Endless people. Of course, it was their actual loss of a loved one and their suffering would continue for the rest of their lives. It was confined to them, though. For Noose, standing back and looking in, it had left him with an overwhelming anguish towards humanity. Hatred, if you will. Humans just didn't help themselves, and it was supposed to be his job to help them – help they mostly didn't want. He opened the door and stepped into the corridor. Superintendent Hastings was standing there, about to have walked in. His bright white hair caught the fluorescent tube of light on the ceiling and shone down, causing Noose to pull back. Lost in his own little thoughts, it was the only indicator to the man that his superior officer was trying to get his attention.

‘Another bloody murder,' Hastings sighed, thrusting a sheet of paper in Noose's face. Noose was away with the fairies, moving his weight from one leg to the other as he pondered his existence in his office doorway. ‘Henry you twit,' Hastings barked. ‘A corpse, delivered to death by the hands of a fellow man,' he went on.

‘Or woman,' Noose uttered.

‘What?'

‘Delivered to death by the hands of a fellow man… or woman,' Noose went on, scratching his head. ‘That's exactly what Peter would have responded with.'

‘I haven't got time for this, just get down there and get on the case.' He pulled the paper away as Noose started to look interested. ‘You
are
up to this, are you not?' He turned and rubbed his chin. ‘Considering all the shit that's been hitting the fan around here of late, I do wonder.'

‘It's a very large fan, Sir, but I can cope,' Noose responded, snatching the paper from Hastings' hand. He quickly scoured it and suddenly gasped. Confounded, he read the dead body's address again.

‘Something wrong, Henry?' asked the tired, and rather old for the job, superintendent.

‘Nothing, just this address. You do recognise it, don't you? It's next door to-'

‘I'm well aware of the location, coincidental or otherwise.' Hastings placed the fingers from both hands around his neck and moved his head from side to side as a pained look befell his reddening face. Despite his age, his face was not sagging or especially wrinkled. He'd clearly been lucky, or just led a healthy life. Whisky was something he enjoyed consuming regularly, though it appeared to have done him little harm. A stiff neck, then, appeared one of the few signs of advancing years. ‘Just go and sort it out, will you. It'll get your mind off the Kennedy case.'

‘Yes, thanks.' He started down the corridor. ‘Who's on that?' he called back as an afterthought.

‘Nicola Williams.'

Noose blinked heavily.

* * *

Pulling up outside the house, for a moment he stayed in his car. Looking across as police officers cordoned off the area and Lauren made her way inside the building with her toolbox, Noose cleared his throat and spoke to himself: ‘Come on, Henry.'

‘Sergeant Helen Douglas,' a gentle voice called out. Noose turned and looked out of his side window to be met by two piercing green eyes staring intently at him. He got out and slammed the door shut, making his way to the house as Helen followed. ‘I'll be working alongside you on this investigation, Sir,' she continued. Noose wasn't particularly happy – all his other sergeants had met awful ends. He kind of didn't want to get attached to this one from the outset, so the best thing was to be very cold towards her. Luckily, too, he had developed an inability to recognise beauty – it had gotten him into a lot of trouble in the past – and so hadn't registered his attraction to this young woman.

‘Call me Noose.' An officer lifted the police tape and the pair walked up the path.

This semi-detached house did not loom large physically by any means, but to Noose it felt terribly encroaching. All he could do was keep up his pace, focus forward, and enter. Once inside, he thought, the house next door could not see him. He was right, for once safely in the hallway he lightened up tenfold and turned to Helen.

‘This is my first murder case as a sergeant,' she said with a little trepidation. ‘I've been trained to brace myself for a horrible sight before I enter the murder scene, but I've witnessed a lot of awful things.'

‘Mutilated genitalia?' Noose questioned lightly, grinning. ‘Decapitated bodies where the perpetrator has excreted down the exposed neck?' he continued, trying to shock her.

‘Much worse,' she replied softly, her short and lightly tubby frame remaining so fixed as to somehow leave Noose feeling intimidated. He backed away from his new sergeant, bumping into Lauren, who rushed past clutching her mouth with a gloved hand. She collapsed at the door, vomiting all over the step. As Helen went and put her arm around the heaving pathologist, Noose stepped into the room she had just galloped out of. Initially he was stunned, unable to register the sorry sight. He turned away, crying in despair.

‘Who could do that? Just a child,' he sobbed. Helen got up and came for a look.

‘Must be some sick, sick pervert on the loose, Noose,' she sighed whimsically at the bloody chaos. Her glibness did not register with him, he was too lost in sorrow.

Lauren got up and turned to face him. They both almost looked through each other, like they were hoping to see something more than just each other – something less hollow. There was nothing else to be seen. Everything else was gone, it was just the two of them now. Never really that close, or that distant, it felt false to try and manufacture some sort of bond or connection between just them now. There was something between them though, something remaining in the rubble left in the wake of Peter and Sergeant Noble. No, Noose didn't fancy Lauren. Far from it – he wanted to father her, to somehow protect and guide her. Still, it wasn't his place and regardless of his desires she didn't seem to need fathering. If anything, she was stronger than him. Perhaps he wanted her to mother him? Mother, or smother – anything to put him out of his misery. Speaking of attraction, he now focused on Helen and allowed himself to take her face in for the first real time. He desperately needed a distraction from the disgusting murder scene he had seconds ago been subjected to. Helen was indeed rather appealing, he thought for just a second, not allowing himself to venture too far down such a road as developing emotions for the woman. Well, to him she wasn't even a woman – she was a girl. Half his age. He felt so old, and yet he wasn't. He felt he'd lived for an eternity. Too long.

Helen turned and the last of the autumn evening sunlight pouring through the front door caught her chubby cheeks. They were quite hairy, in a way – fair, downy hair. The shade had hid any such nuances to her face, and Noose again allowed her physical form to occupy his mind. He wished to be given the opportunity to explore more of her hidden features, be they physical or even mental. After all, he still considered himself a purveyor of
whole
women. This was his attitude, anyway. It was still very much the object that he thought of. She smiled at him as her eyes flicked down to his mouth.

‘I've never seen a worse sight,' Lauren uttered, composing herself in readiness for going back into the room. She rubbed at her eye. ‘Eyelash,' she mumbled, rubbing harder and harder until it was bloodshot and extremely sore.

‘Where are the parents? Who found the body?' Noose asked almost rhetorically, staring out of the door. A police officer came from upstairs, his face as white as a sheet. Lauren just flicked her eyes towards the stairs and Noose cleared his throat, turning to them.

Up he went, Helen following closely behind. Another officer was standing on the landing just outside one of the bedrooms. He nodded to Noose, uttering ‘Sir,' before moving aside and ushering the inspector in. Inside lay the dead little girl's young mother – naked and violated, with her tights tied tightly around her neck. Noose stared down at the faded pink carpet, his vision blurring as he pressed furiously on his temples with his thumb and index finger. ‘Danielle Henderson. Single mother. Father of the child is in prison for rape,' the officer informed him. ‘Next door neighbour discovered the bodies.'

Noose got his mobile phone out and sent Hastings the text message: “2 corpses”.

* * *

As Noose stepped out of the house a voice called to him from next door: ‘Nearly twenty years my daughter has been dead. Twenty years and you got her killer acquitted.'

‘Peter's dead too,' Noose called back, his shoulders sinking.

‘So I've heard. Even in death he taunts my family still.'

Noose turned to face his aggressor. She, who could once have been a tall smart woman, stood stooped in her doorway with greasy dyed brown hair. Her white roots pierced from either side of the wonky parting atop her head and caught Noose off-guard. He felt somehow responsible for this mess in front of him and tried desperately to block her from his mind. She couldn't have been more than very late fifties by now, but looked a lot older. Noose did not exactly register her features, he was more concerned with bottling the sensation of dread and pity clutching at his brain.

‘I understand you discovered the bodies?' Noose questioned her for confirmation.

‘Yes,' Anna Davies replied, her eyes red and moist. ‘Two more young lives taken away so horribly, just like my dear Lucy.' She tried to straighten her back, keeping her glare on Noose, hardened to the fact her daughter was long gone. ‘Dani is like a surrogate daughter to me… was. Beth was the most wonderful granddaughter I could have wished for. Both gone.' She dropped herself onto the low wall separating the two gardens and sighed. ‘I guess I just wasn't meant to have a family.'

‘I was sorry to hear about Arwel,' Noose replied automatically. He, of course, had slit his own throat about a year after his daughter Lucy had been murdered.