26
Roger closed the front door and turned back to the prone figure at his feet. To his right, he spotted a white, panelled door which he assumed led into the garage, the wide, up-and-over exterior door to which had been hard to miss as he’d approached the house.
Opening the door, he groped around the inside wall, two banks of flourescents sputtering into life as he flicked the lightswitch his fingers had been searching for. A shiny black BMW sat on the pristine, white concrete floor, the lights in the ceiling gleaming off the vehicle’s sleek, polished curves. Wooden shelves lined the garage’s every wall, each crammed with every kind of tool imaginable – an Aladin’s Cave of DIY, or a treasure trove of torture – depending on your intentions.
Despite his profession, Bullock was not a big man and Roger easily dragged his slumped body into the garage and over to the wall opposite the exterior door, propping him against it. He scanned around and quickly located a claw-hammer and a box of nails, pounding several of the sharp steel points through each of Bullock’s palms, fixing him securly to the edge of the lowest shelf on the wall behind him.
Admiring his handiwork, Roger waited.
It took a few minutes, but evenutaully the pain signals firing through Bullock’s nerves reached his numbed brain, the property developer beginning to stir, and Roger grinned as he looked around for the tool he would need next.
Earlier, at the pub, he had felt the pain suffered by Chillingworth House as its floorboards were ripped up, plaster and intererior walls knocked through, electrical wiring and plumbing – the building’s very innards – wrenched from its flesh of bricks and mortar, and he wanted to make Bullock suffer the same excrutiating degradation.
Scouting around the well ordered garage, he eventually found a collection of several crow-bars propped up in a corner, rust stains covering most, hinting at their age. He selected one at random, passing it from hand to hand, testing its weight and balance until a sickly groan alerted him to Bullock’s waking.
Roger paused – he felt sure it would only be a matter of seconds before the muted groans turned into screams. Sure enough, less than a minute later, Bullock’s brain was alert and fully aware of the agony in his hands. The garage echoed with hysterical shrieks and cries as the property developer tried to understand what was happening to him, his brain too overwhelmed by pain to make any sense of his situation.
Roger stepped slowly from the corner, dragging the crowbar along the concrete floor. Bullock, his face screwed tight with torment failed to notice his attacker’s approach until the sound of shattering glass shocked his eyes wide open.
The BMW’s windscreen was criss-crossed with web-like cracks, a small hole clearly visible on the driver’s side. Bullock stopped screaming and stared in disbelief at the damage to his car, his pride and joy.
“What the fuck have you done to my car?”
It was as if he cared more about the vehicle than his own flesh and bones, any pain of his own momentarily forgotten with the shock of seeing his beloved ‘beemer’ vandalised.
“I’ve finally got your attention then…”
Roger stepped in front of the car, tapping the crowbar against the side of his right leg.
“I’ll smash it up some more – unless… you can take this crowbar from me.”
Bullock tried to stretch his arms forward to grab the tool, screaming as the nails in his palms held him firm, fresh blood pouring from the puncture wounds - the realisation that he was pinned to the wall finally hitting home like a sledgehammer to the guts.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Bullock screamed at the stranger with the crowbar, “Why are you doing this?”
“Revenge! For a…client of mine.”
The property developer’s eyes widened with disbelief. Sure, he’d pissed off any number of people over the years - short-changing them on land deals, cutting corners on building jobs, promising big bribes to certain planning officers and then reneging on the full amount - but none of those who he’d screwed over was likely to go to these sort of lengths.
“How much?” Bullock’s voice started to crack as the pain in his hands flared once more.
“How much, what?”
“How much are they paying you? I’ll double it…treble it even!”
Roger laughed. “I don’t think so…it’s not about money – it’s more of a personal thing - your atonement for the pain and suffering you caused my client.”
“What fucking client?”
“Chillingworth House.”
“What? But I bought that place from the council, for a fair price – all legal and above board.”
Bullock couldn’t comprehend what Roger was getting at. The purchase and redevelopment of Chillingworth House was one of the few deals he had done in recent years that actually had been totally legit. Ok, some of the locals had objected to the redevelopment, but he had done everything he could to appease them: keeping the original shell and reusing as much of the wood and roof slates as possible. Surely to God none of the townsfolk, no matter how obsessed they were with the old building would be this angry at him?
“Who?” he asked again, “Who could possibly be this pissed off over that?”
Roger shook his head. “You don’t understand… You can’t understand – my client is Chillingworth House - the building is alive!”
Bullock stared at Roger as if he were some deranged fucking lunatic.
“You tore it apart and it felt pain. You ripped out its guts, crushed its limbs, bled its life-force dry - and now… well, now it’s your turn.”
Roger bent down and tore at the property developer’s expensive shirt, hooking his fingers between the buttons to rip the garment from his victim’s torso. With the builder’s upper body now exposed, he placed the chisel
