Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) (23 page)

He pushed himself up into a sitting
position and felt around on the floor until he found the flashlight. He took a
deep breath and switched it on. He was in a small room that couldn’t have been
more than eight feet square. The walls and the ceiling were lined with rough timber
and the floor was dry and dusty. In the top right-hand corner there was an air
vent and he could feel the warm, dry air coming from it. There were no lights.

The only furniture in the room was a
single metal bed along the back wall. He quickly switched off the flashlight.
He didn't want to look at what was on the bed. He thought he knew what it was
but he didn't want to have to look at it. He leaned his head against the wall
behind him and tried to calm down. It was impossible. He could feel panic
rising inside him. He bent forward and pushed his thumb hard into his swollen
ankle. The sudden pain made him gasp but he kept on pushing until he couldn't
stand it any longer. Then he switched the flashlight back on and shone the beam
onto the grotesque tableau laid before him on the bed.

The mummified corpse of Robbie
Clayton - who else could it be - sat upright on the bed leaning against the
wall. His skin was a mottled brown color, leathery and split in places where it
stretched tightly across his cheekbones and chin. His nose was shrivelled, his
lips shrunken over yellowing teeth. The eye sockets were empty and gazed
silently at the small figure that lay across his lap. His son - Daniel Clayton.
Evan swallowed a lump the size of his fist. His throat was scratchy and his
eyelids felt hot.
It must be the bang on the head.

The mummification of Daniel's
smaller body was more advanced, the dried tissues of his body had become
powdery and started to disintegrate, parts of his skeleton now visible. There
was no smell, the drying process long since complete.

They hadn't been merely imprisoned,
they had been immured. It was likely that Robbie had starved to death but his
son had not. Evan blinked rapidly and rubbed the back of his hand across his
eyes. He could see from the obscene angle of his head that the child’s small
neck had been broken - broken by the despairing hands of his grief-stricken father
to save him from the horrors of a slow, lingering death by starvation or
dehydration.

He switched the flashlight off again
but he might as well have not bothered. The horrific scene would be burned into
his memory forever and could not be dismissed by the simple flick of a switch. He
was almost glad that forever for him was unlikely to last very long.

He sat and contemplated his future,
or, to be more precise, lack of one. He was sure Hendricks planned to leave him
here to die just like the others. He couldn't let him go now. The easiest thing
was just to lock up all the doors and come back in a couple of months or years
and brick up the hole again. For all he knew he might have already done just
that. He’d conveniently left the key in the ignition to his car so Hendricks
could simply dump it somewhere. He would join the ranks of all the other
missing persons, if anyone even noticed he wasn't there any more. Just like Robbie
Clayton before him, he had found Daniel Clayton and paid the ultimate price for
his perseverance.

The thought of what had happened to Robbie
compared to the vile rumors that had been spread around town about him made
Evan despair. If he could only have escaped he could set all that straight as
well as giving Linda Clayton the closure that had eluded her all these years.

His thoughts were interrupted by the
sound of the crowbar being jammed between the ply and the doorframe. His mind
raced with the possibilities. Had Hendricks come back already with bricks and
mortar to seal him permanently into his tomb? A brief glimmer of hope crossed
his mind - perhaps Guillory had suspected that he would return and had come
back himself? But if that was the case, surely he’d have called out.

It could only be Hendricks and this
would be his one and only chance to escape. He only had seconds to prepare
himself before the makeshift door was pulled away again. The screeching of the
nails echoed round the room, setting his teeth on edge like fingernails raked
down a chalkboard as, one by one, they were prised out of the wooden frame.

The floor all around him was
littered with broken bricks. He swept the beam of the flashlight across them
and saw two broken bricks still joined together with mortar, their edges sharp
and jagged. He picked them up and hefted them in his hand. Together they must
have weighed a good ten pounds. Heavy enough to make a decent weapon that was
for sure. 

Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he pushed
himself up onto his feet. There was certainly nowhere to hide but he didn’t want
to make it too easy for Hendricks. He stood off to the side of the steps and
flattened his back against the wall. His head was about level with the bottom
edge of the hole. If Hendricks wanted to shoot him he’d have to poke the
shotgun in which would give him a chance. Not much of a chance, but better than
nothing. Grasping the rudimentary weapon in his hand he waited.

By now the plywood sheet had been
worked away from the frame a few inches and a faint light spilled in from the
basement room behind it. Unfortunately there was more than enough light for him
to see the sickening scene on the bed just a few feet away. He closed his eyes
and concentrated on what was going on outside.

With a final protesting screech the
board was pulled away completely and light flooded in.

'You still in there?’ he heard
Hendricks say. ‘I thought you might like some company. Oh, and just so you
know, if I see anything appear in that hole, I’ll shoot it.'

Was he completely insane?
Had he come back again just to
shoot the breeze with Evan, before sealing him in again? Had he come back to
gloat? Evan had to distract him somehow.

‘Introduced yourself to your
roommates yet?’ Hendricks said and sniggered. ‘Although I don’t think they’re
very talkative.’ The snigger was replaced by a full-bodied laugh. More than
anything he’d ever known, Evan wanted to smash the bricks in his hand into
Hendricks’ face and stop that obscene noise.

'You're a monster,' he said. 'A sick
monster.'

Hendricks stopped laughing and
pulled himself together. 'I know you won’t believe me, but it wasn't me, it was
Adamson.' He sounded like a pathetic child in the playground.

'You would say that, wouldn't you?
It's always someone else's fault with people like you. The way I hear it, it’s
the story of your life.'

'See, I said you wouldn’t believe
me, but I'm telling you the truth. Doesn't matter what I say now; you're never
going to repeat it to anyone.'

'So where is he now?'

'Don't worry; you'll be seeing him
again soon.'

Through the hole, Evan heard
Hendricks snigger again.

'So what happened?'

'Why do you care now?'

'Call it a last request.'

Hendricks seemed to be giving the
request some consideration. 'Okay. Just don't think you're going to get a last
meal as well. I’m afraid the room service isn’t great where you’re staying. Ask
the other guests.' He laughed again at his own sick humor.

'So what happened?' Evan asked
again.

'I was trying to get my life
straight. I'd had some bad breaks and I wanted a new start.'

If it hadn't been so sickening, Evan
would have been amused to hear him describe his stay in prison for statutory
rape as a bad break.

'I'd done some time in prison...'

'What for?'

'You don't need to know. It got
overturned anyway.' His candor obviously had its limits. 'When I got out I came
back here and tried to make a new life.'

'You changed your name.'

'How the hell do you know that?'

'I heard Adamson call you Jason.'
Hendricks seemed satisfied. Evan could almost feel him relax again on the other
side of the wall. It was so bizarre talking to him like this, sitting not six
feet from his victims as if they were just two people having a normal
conversation.

'Stupid bastard,' he hissed. Evan
assumed he meant Adamson, not himself. 'He's the cause of all this shit. He
ruined everything.'

Evan inched sideways to try to see
where Hendricks was but the angle was all wrong. He inched back again and waited
for him to continue.

'I came back, got a nice easy job as
the school bus driver and everything was going just fine. I had a new identity,
regular money and this nice house to live in.'

With a secret chamber to get up to
whatever you wanted.

Evan was aware he was getting a carefully
edited version of events; the gospel according to Carl Hendricks.

'What happened?'

'Jack Adamson happened, that's
what.' There was real venom in his tone. Evan heard a thud that sounded like
Hendricks kicking something solid on the floor. Then it struck him. Hendricks
had either killed or knocked out Adamson and carried or dragged him back to the
basement room. That's what he meant when he said he thought Evan might like
some company. He was going to dump him in the room with Evan before sealing it
up for good.

'He just turned up one day. He'd got
out of prison again a few days before and he had nowhere to go. Been sleeping
rough.'

'I'm having trouble seeing you as
the Good Samaritan.'

'I owed him.'

'It must have been a hell of a
debt.'

A thought suddenly crossed Evan's
mind. 'What did he do, save you from all the other cons when you were inside?'

Hendricks didn't say anything and
Evan knew he was right. He decided it was time to start pushing him a bit
harder.

'It makes me wonder what you were in
for if you needed protecting from the other prisoners. It's not like you're so
pretty they were after a piece of your ass.'

'You can wonder what the hell you
like. You're going to have plenty of time for thinking.' He sniggered again.

Once more Evan felt the urge to
smash the bricks he was holding right into his grinning face, turn it into a
mass of blood and broken teeth.

'I think it's because you were in
for interfering with little kids.'

'You shut your mouth or I'll shut it
for good.'

'Was it little boys? I think it
probably was. You seem the sort to me. You can't handle women, can you - not
grown ones anyway. Can’t you get it up?'

On the other side of the wall he
heard Hendricks rack the slide on his shotgun.

Maybe not quite so hard
.

'Okay, okay,' he said, 'just get on
with your story. Adamson turned up and you gave him a room...'

Hendricks didn't say anything for a
minute and Evan reckoned the immediate danger of being shot had passed. He
relaxed slightly.

'I thought he'd learned his lesson,'
Hendricks said after a while. 'He'd had a really rough time in prison and I
thought that was the end of it.'

'But it wasn't?'

'No. I had a few beers after work
that day and when I came home I found him here with the kid. I couldn't believe
it. Less than a week since he'd got out of prison. Stupid bastard.'

There was the sound of another kick.

'How did he do it?'

'I had an old campervan at the time,
just sitting in the barn going rusty. He didn't have a car so I let him use it.
He picked the kid up as he walked home from school. Bundled him into the back
and that was it.'

'And you told the police you never
saw the boy leave the school campus to throw them off the scent.'

'Something like that. I didn't see
him leave that day, as it happens.'

'Convenient you remembered that.
Helped ensure they spent the whole time chasing their tails.'

'The police don't need
any
help doing that.'

Evan agreed with him wholeheartedly
but didn't think it was an appropriate time to get into a discussion about the
shortcomings of the police force.

'Why did you protect him? Why didn't
you turn him in?'

'Like I told you, I owed him. I
couldn't do that to him.'

Evan thought he knew a more
persuasive reason. 'Nobody would have believed you weren't involved, would
they? Not with your record.'

'No, they wouldn't, the
sanctimonious bastards.' He was starting to work himself up into a frenzy at
the injustice of it all. 'I hate this shitty country sometimes. They all talk
about rehabilitation - what a crock of shit. You only ever get one chance and
then your card's marked forever. I fought for this country and look what I got
in return. Bastards.'

'You'd have got another chance if
you'd turned him in. Proof that you were a reformed man.'

'I wish I had now.'

'Now that you've killed him anyway,
you mean.'

'He's not dead; not yet anyway.' The
matter-of-fact way he said it chilled Evan's blood. He was starting to think
Hendricks really was insane. On the one hand he was deeply hurt by the
injustices he’d suffered at the hands of the penal system, and on the other he’d
buried two people alive and was about to add two more.