Chapter Thirty-Five

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Author's note: To not leave spoilers, there is no plot reminder for this chapter.

After cuffing him and frisking him, they bundled him into the back of an unmarked vehicle which had been parked amongst the line of vehicles under the oak tree. Even despite his shock and confusion, even despite the lingering pain in his crotch from the where the rear door of the Renault had torpedoed into him, Giles was disappointed that there was no siren. No triumphant public blaring of his evil and cunning, his black contempt for society and all who submitted themselves whorelike to its folly. Just a silent crawl, almost as if he were being driven to his own funeral.

"What's your name?" Wye asked in the rear seat beside him.

He didn't reply, just turned his face to the window. Croxley Street, that comic and games shop he'd sometimes used to go to as a kid.

She had his phone in her hands, her right index finger vainly swiping and tapping. "Not going to tell me the security code either, right?"

With his continued silence, the affirmative was indicated.

"You going to have any chance of tasting liberty again, any chance at all, you better start cooperating. I'll ask you again: What's your bloody name?" Then, after several more moments of silence: "Where'd you get the rifle eh? The one you used to shoot Sophie Markham?"

Though he of course had no intention of telling her as much, the simple answer was he didn't know.

His mind drifted back to that first meeting. November. A dank and dismal afternoon after school, another E in Maths, Abigail mooning all over that brainless prat Kevin Royston while the class was forced into playing boys v girls hockey during PE. As was his habit, at final bell he'd taken himself off to the Underhill house alone to roll himself a couple of fatties, contemplate both the cruelty and futility of existence. He was halfway through the first when he'd heard the creak from the stairs. Phil, he'd thought. Trying to cadge himself yet another free high. But no, the figure who'd stepped through the door was unknown to him. An adult, in his fifties perhaps, the dying rays of afternoon sufficient for Giles to pick out a friendly smile among the facial shadows.

Shadows. Yes, it was this the main theme of the following conversation. How for both of them darkness was their natural home, Ravensby with all its hypocrisy and petty small town mores an enemy territory which they had to claim for themselves.

'I've been watching you Giles,' the man had at one point admitted. 'I see great potential in you.' His gaze had then drifted off towards the window, a disquieting grin stretching his lips. 'What if I told you I could get hold of a rifle...'

Giles could recall a shiver of dark delight, as if what they'd been discussing weren't just idle words but might actually become a delicious reality.

The verbal contract had been quickly signed, its details thrashed out to the satisfaction of both. Letter recipients and eventual victims would be chosen alternatively: first Giles himself and then the man. The Markham murder had thus been at the man's volition, the original plan having been that the girl's mother would receive the letter. Some past amorous rejection, was all Giles had been able to gather. When it came to matters of unrequited love, he was more than able to empathize. When he'd spotted Sophie in fairly intimate looking conversation with that weirdo Edwardson boy one break-time, and when his incognito after-school investigations had confirmed the nature of the pair's relationship, the decision had been made to change letter recipient. Better cover that way, nothing to link Edwardson to either of them. Both Giles' belief that the boy wouldn't be capable of going through with it, and the man's faith in Giles' judgement, had proven correct.

The rifle had been there ready and waiting beneath the overgrown dogwood bush in Underhill's back garden, just as the man had said. Beyond this, he knew nothing.

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