Henderson watched the teacher’s nervous eyes dart towards him, he forced the butt of the blade into his face — pushed his gaze front. ‘Keep watching the fucking road… I know where you live and if I see you taking me the wrong way I’ll put this knife in you. Do you understand?’
There was a pause as Crawley gathered his breath, tried to adjust his tone. ‘Y-yes. I understand.’
‘Good, then do as you’re fucking told.’ Henderson lowered the Stanley knife, pressed it against Crawley’s shoulder. He had him under control now, he could see that. He felt his pulse begin to calm, his own breathing seemed less strained. He spoke softly, stretching out the intonation of his words, allowing a maniacal cadence to seep in. ‘What you don’t understand though, is that I know all about you… Mr Crawley.’
The teacher’s cheeks flushed, he was sweating, his thin hair sticking to his brow as Angela had described it. He looked like words queued on his lips but he held his mouth closed, kept his thoughts to himself.
Henderson continued his baiting of him, ‘Oh aye, I know all about you… And your type. See, there was plenty of your type in the jail; know what we called them?’
Crawley didn’t answer, kept staring at the road ahead. Two hollows appeared either side of his mouth as he frowned. His lips looked pale and thin as he ran a dry grey tongue over them.
‘We called them beasts!’ said Henderson. He let the sound of the word fill the car, it seemed to echo all around them. He liked the effect, so he said it again, ‘Beasts! That’s what we call guys like you, folk that go after wee lassies… You like the wee lassies, don’t you, beast?’
Crawley’s lower jaw started to jut, trembled momentarily. He blinked quickly as he tried to regain the power of speech. ‘Y-you’ve made a mistake. You have me mixed up with someone else…’ He turned to face Henderson, his eyes pleading. ‘This is a mistaken identity.’
Henderson laughed; he dropped his head towards his chest and then, as his laughter increased in tone and pitch, he broke into a coughing fit. He lowered the blade for a second, casually shifted it back to his other hand and then coughed over his knuckles. ‘That’s a fucking good one… No, it is, a right good one.’ The laughter halted, Henderson forced the Stanley blade hard into Crawley’s crotch. ‘After what you’ve been up to I should just hack the balls off you… Maybe I will.’
Crawley’s voice was a wail. ‘I haven’t done anything… I haven’t… I…’
Henderson gripped the blade tighter, dug it deeper into Crawley’s crotch. ‘Do I look stupid to you? Do I? Do I look like a fucking halfwit, a mug? Someone who’s likely to get something like this wrong? I checked my facts, pal… Well and truly. And I know who you are and what you’ve done. And you’re going to pay for it. Fucking sure you are.’
Crawley raised a hand from the wheel, it trembled as he wiped at his dry mouth. He replaced the hand quickly; his jaw drooped, made a sharp angle with his neck and chest. He looked uncomfortable, too hunched up to drive. His eyes narrowed, grew redder. The hollows in his cheeks deepened, became two dark declivities mimicking the outline of his eye sockets. He seemed to be disintegrating before Henderson.
He spoke, the words rasping in his throat. ‘W-we’re here… This is my home.’
It was a neat semi-detached property that looked to have been newly renovated. The front walls had been rendered and double-glazing had been added. The garden was small, a driveway sat to one side, skirted by a small white pebble-dashed wall. As Henderson looked at the house it reminded him of the homes he had seen on television, on sit-coms and soap operas. It was a home where everyday folk lived, normal people; not beasts.
‘Pull into the drive,’ he said.
Crawley worked down through the gears, pressed the brake pedal. When the car was stationary in the street he selected first gear and slowly rolled the vehicle towards the driveway, turning the steering wheel tightly. When the car came to rest he switched off the engine and sat staring ahead.
Henderson still had the blade dug into the teacher’s crotch. He twisted it as he spoke, ‘Now, here’s what we’re going to do… You’re going to get out that door there and walk towards the house. You’re going to open the door and we’re going to walk inside. If you make any funny moves, if you make any fuss, if you even think about legging it, then it will be the worse for you.’
Crawley moved his head to face him, ‘Why? What will you do?’ he said.
Henderson released a wide smile; it stretched half way up his face, tightening the lines around his eyes and creasing his forehead. ‘Well, right now, I’ll carve you a nice wee red necklace, you can rest assured of that. But I don’t think that’s your main worry.’ He looked out the car’s windscreen towards the house. ‘No, I’d be concerned about keeping my place in Happy Valley if I was you… Not many around here, or at the school, would be chuffed to know you were a beast, would they, Crawley?’
The teacher slumped forward on the steering wheel, his head rested on the rim. A slow breath exited from his mouth and then he spoke, ‘I keep telling you… You have the wrong man.’
Henderson removed the blade, slammed it hard into Crawley’s thighbone. His tone rose higher, filled with aggression. ‘Look, I’ve told you, I know who you are… You know how? Because I know someone you know.’ He brought his face closer to Crawley’s, pressed his jaw out. His speech came on a flight of spittle, ‘Did you think your wee trip out to the countryside, out to the field by Straiton, went without notice…’
Crawley jerked his head from the wheel, turned to face Henderson. His mouth was wide, his reddened eyes struggling to find their focus. ‘ What?’
Henderson bit, ‘Oh that struck a chord, eh… Fucking bet it did.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh aye, did you just forget about… Angela Mickle?’
Silence.
The name sat between them in the confined space like a small explosion. Crawley’s damp eyes widened and his teeth clattered as he drew his mouth closed. Henderson could tell he had him now, he could do what he wanted; it was like throttling someone and then withdrawing at the last moment. The moment before you choked the life out of them: at that point they were weak, almost too weak to carry on. The teacher sat limp in the driver’s seat as Henderson reached across him, grabbed the handle, and forced open the door. ‘Right, get out… You and me have got some stuff to talk about in the house.’
Chapter 30
Neil Henderson knew exactly what he wanted to do with Crawley — he wanted to kill him — but that wasn’t going to work to his advantage at this moment. As he looked at Crawley, backing away, his hands groping behind him as he bumped into the tile-topped coffee table in the centre of the floor, he wondered how a man like him had ever managed to instil fear in anyone. But he knew he had. Henderson remembered the exact lines Angela had written in her diary. He remembered how she had looked at the merest mention of the teacher’s name, the terror on her face. And she had been panicked, thrown into shock by the television news when the story about the girl they found in the field near Straiton came on. Crawley had done that — this weak, scared man who stood before him with his hands shaking and his brow wet with sweat.
Henderson gripped the Stanley blade tighter in his hand and walked towards Crawley. He had abducted him from a school playground; he thought about that for a moment, it seemed almost like fate. Like the tables being turned. This is what Crawley had done to those girls; he had captured them, taken them prisoner. But he hadn’t taken them home, or anywhere familiar. He had driven those girls into the countryside, into the dark of night. He had taken them to a place where no one would see them, where no one would hear their cries, their screams. Henderson felt moisture pooling in his hand; he shifted the blade. He remembered the time his mother’s boyfriend had taken him somewhere out of sight, what he had done to him there. He remembered the pain, the agony of it. For a moment, Henderson wasn’t there in the room with Crawley, he wasn’t himself; he was the young boy who had been taken up those stairs, watched as the door closed behind him and then cried when the door opened again and he realised the shame he would have to carry around for the rest of his life.
‘You fucking bastard,’ said Henderson.
Crawley turned away, looked towards the back of the room. There was nothing there, only the window and the curtains, a standing lamp and a small bookcase. There was no one to save him, there was no weapon he could reach for, there was nowhere to hide or to run to. He turned back towards his captor, his face draining white for a moment. His eyes roved, left to right. He jerked, his arms flew up in a spasm towards the side of his head and then
