Dark Choir Read online

  “Why hasn’t he brought Gould up to the house to give me the once over then?”

  “It’s all about secrets mate. Who’s got what on who. Looks like Gould’s still scared you’ll spill the beans about what he tried to do to you when you were a kid.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. That’s how Widdowson controls him. Or rather did. Other boys weren’t as lucky as you.”

  “And I never did give you that knife back.”

  “Don’t think I want it back if it’s been near his bits.” They both laughed. Laughed at how inappropriate their conversation was and to release the tension of the last few hours.

  “Someone should stop Widdowson,” said Dan, humour suddenly gone. “Someone should really put him out of action.”

  “Looks like someone is. The thing is, he’s not going to go down without one big bastard of a fight.”

  Thirty-Four

  Jackie O’Shea was sure someone was following her. As she walked along the darkened road, she heard a hollow scrape she mistook for footsteps. She turned and realised the hollow scrape was simply the sound of dead dry leaves as a cold, sharp wind blew them over the road, scratching across the tarmac. As she walked, they followed her, but every time she stopped and turned, they stopped then started again once her back was turned. A sudden gust tossed them into the air.

  Since her dog had been killed and that word daubed across her wall, she’d been on edge. Edgy enough to believe the leaves were following her.

  It wasn’t just the thought of someone watching her, but something watching her. Everything from black cats crossing her path to blackbirds swooping in the garden made her edgy.

  She wasn’t the only one. Angela Teal had rung her when she’d heard about Grinch to say that someone was watching her. They’d left the same message in the condensation of her window. Since then Teal had rung Jackie dozens of times in varying states of distress. Sometimes it was mild concern. Other times it had been full blown hysterics. The last one had been at three in the morning.

  Half an hour ago she’d rung in a state of panic. The worse she’d ever been. Jackie could hardly hear what she was saying. Among the sobs and wails Jackie had made out that someone had actually got into her house. She lived two streets away, so Jackie had put on her coat to dash over there. What gave Angie’s fear plausibility was the sound coming from St. Vincent’s again. She heard that the night Grinch had been killed, when she’d seen that that…that…him, up in the woods. She’d heard that sound, that weird singing, a lot lately.

  Before this she’d never talked to Angie, not had much to do with her. Up on Blackthorn Ward Angie had not had many friends. She wasn’t well liked by Jackie, Jason, or any of the others. The rumours had always been rife. She’d had Shelly over to her place every weekend and they’d shared a bed. There was no way Jackie would have shared a bed with any of them. Stephen, Nigel, Lindsey. None of them. They pissed and shat themselves, for fuck’s sake. After Ann Prendergast had accused her of fingering Shelly, some people were even more off with her. Jackie didn’t give a shit. Angie did her job and as long as she did that, she could finger who she liked, but it was beyond her why anyone would want to do that. Angie had never had a laugh. Jackie had never seen her smile.

  After Widdowson came to them with that report, they all knew they had to stand together until it all died down and Prendergast was out of the way. Widdowson had a killer way of getting rid of Prendergast. Jackie had done her bit, written a witness statement, even appeared at that case hearing along with Jason and the others. Prendergast had been sacked, and they all kept their heads down ’til it blew over.

  Truth be told, Jackie found Angie to be a bit of a wet blanket. Walking into her house was like walking into a ten-year-old’s bedroom. There were horse pictures on the wall and My Little Ponies on the mantelpiece. Angie was fucking weird.

  Jackie arrived at her ground floor flat located in a small square court of similar social housing type properties. The lights were off, but that was nothing new. Despite all her My Little Pony shit, she liked to watch porn. She watched porno’s in the dark and, last time Jackie had been over, asked if she wanted to watch one with her. No fucking way.

  She took out the spare key and let herself in.

  “Angie?”

  A dark hallway met her, the gloom broken only by a sliver of pale, shifting light which drew Jackie’s gaze as she saw the living room door was ajar. Jackie pushed open the door.

  The squealing and grunting of one of Angie’s porno soundtracks, the flickering light from the screen. All Jackie could see was flesh moving like some contained animal writhing in a tank as the porno played across the screen.

  “Angie,” Jackie called above the noise. She flicked on the light and a scream tore over the grunts.

  Angie was behind the TV, crouched naked as if trying to force herself into the wall. Jackie grabbed the remote from the floor where it lay face down and shut off the TV.

  In the naked light of the bare bulb, Angie appeared as a pale, wounded blob. She was breathing hard, staring at something that wasn’t there, her mind unhinged.

  “Angie, what the fuck happened to you?”

  Her mouth was cut, her lips bleeding. Jackie helped her to stand and saw between her legs, fresh scratches could be seen around her pubic area. As she got to her feet and stumbled forwards, Jackie saw more scratches and cuts around the sizable crease of her rear end.

  “Has she gone?” she said, looking around in real fear. “Jackie. Has she gone?”

  It was past midnight by the time Jackie got any sense out of Angela. She sat nursing a cup of tea in a bathrobe.

  “What happened, Angie? Who was it?”

  “I don’t know.” She took a sip of her tea. “I got all horny again. You know how it is. I wanted to watch one of the films her and me used to watch. One of our special ones.”

  Jackie did not want this fat, infantile blob going into details of her solo sex life. Or what she’d got up to with Shelly all those years ago.

  “Just get to the point. Where did they get in?”

  “That’s it. I had the lights off, the film on, and I was on the settee. I looked up and they were standing there.” She pointed to the corner by the TV. “I saw her standing there. She was a ghost. She came forwards, really fast and…oh no…I…”

  “Keep it together. What did they do?”

  “She was on top of me. She put her fingers in my mouth, pulling, hard. Then she hurt me down here. She was so strong. I couldn’t stop her.”

  “How did they get out? Which door?” Jackie had checked the windows and doors, so they must have left by the front door.

  “She was a ghost. She didn’t need to go out by any door.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? She must have been waiting for you in here then gone out the front door afterwards, and it locked itself again when it shut.”

  “No. She was a ghost.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Angie looked at her with those weird, pale blue eyes of hers. “Because once I’d spotted her standing in the corner, she walked right through the TV to get to me.”

  Jackie needed a drink. She sat in front of the TV in her own bungalow downing her sixth can of Special Brew. She had the lights on. In the space about the wall she could still faintly make out the word ‘choir’ under where she’d painted over.

  Angie had begged and begged to take her home with her but there were limits. She didn’t want that podgy lesbian in her house. Jackie had wanted to call the cops, but Angie didn’t want them to come for some reason.

  She had wondered why someone would finger-rape Angie, then the penny dropped with ice-cold clarity. It’s what she used to do to Shelly. Someone was taking their revenge on Shelly’s behalf.

  Finishing the can, she chucked it in the bin where it slipped to the floor from the pile of other cans in the bin.

  Jackie knew what had happened. Someone had got hol
d of that report. Some nutter. They’d got hold of it and were tormenting them all now. Or rather, some gang had got hold of it and were trying to blackmail them. This was a message. Good luck with that. Jackie had fuck all in her bank account. Still, despite her bravado, she had to admit this scared her. Something was going to happen. Something really fucking bad. She felt it in the air.

  The TV droned on. Jeremy Kyle and some low life who’d cheated on his wife. She let her eyelids close.

  When she woke, Jackie found herself in darkness. The TV was blaring, the sound full on with just white noise on the screen, but from the speakers she could hear that singing. That awful wailing. Her eyes flicked up and just behind the TV the figure of a man stood.

  “Shittin’ hell!” she cried. She knew that face. In the flickering light she made out that hollow hole where the eye should be, the toothless mouth. He screamed, louder than what was coming from the speakers, and she didn’t mistake that scream. It was the same scream he made when she’d put him under the shower all those times so many years ago. But he was taller, more filled out. He was bigger.

  The figure swept the TV away from him in one swift movement and piled towards her. Jackie screamed as he seized her around the throat with his strong left hand then drew back his right fist.

  He held her face up to him as sharp, accurate blows spat pain into her nerves, hitting her cheek bones and jaw, cracking her nose and bruising her eyes.

  Disbelief fought against pain and she was beginning to wonder when this would stop, both her hands trying to force away the hand that clutched her throat.

  She fell back and the lights flicked on. He’d not only let go, he’d disappeared. Gone just as suddenly as he’d arrived.

  Jackie caught sight of her face in a mirror that hung from the wall. The reflection was a bloody mess. Cuts and gashes across her face, bruises forming across her throat.

  Panicked, she screamed and dashed out through the door of the bungalow, heading for Angie’s house, terror driving her need for human contact. As she ran leaves followed her, pushed along the ground by an icy wind.

  Thirty-Five

  Alison drove them to the Berrymoor psychiatric unit. Lindsey gurgled and occasionally gave whoops of glee at something she saw out of the window. Dan nervously fingered the dashboard.

  “So how is Karl now?” she asked.

  “He’s back home. Nothing broken. He was more concerned about the museum than himself.”

  “Did he call the police?”

  “The people that did this were the police.”

  “Well, the thing is, Dan, Gould and his ilk can only get away with this for so long.”

  Dan had told her all about his conversation with Ann Prendergast. Ann had said the only one of the abusers to mention the choir was Connor Pendred. Dan assumed he would be off limits as he was locked up in a secure unit, but Alison seemed to think Dan had a good chance to talk to Pendred. People in secure units were allowed visitors. What did Dan have to lose? Pendred might offer up one last bit of information, a vital piece of the jigsaw Dan could pass onto Karl. The curator had said he wanted to go on investigating this mystery once he fully recovered.

  Dan was leaving on Wednesday after they’d dropped Lindsey off at her new home at Willow House. After that the house would be Widdowson’s. A depressing thought, indeed.

  However, right now Dan was scared about having to pretend to the staff at Berrymoor that he knew Pendred.

  “Are you sure they’ll let me in?”

  “You’ll be fine. Just say you’re one of Widdowson’s church lot and they’ll let you in.” She grinned. “I reckon.”

  “Have you been here before?”

  “I’ve worked shifts here.”

  “Is there a button on the wall to press if Pendred goes nuts and attacks me?”

  “They’ll give you an alarm to clip on your belt.”

  “Ha ha. Your funny.”

  Alison raised her eyebrows and he knew then she wasn’t joking. She turned into the car park. Squat buildings spread out across the site buffeted by conifers. The place didn’t look sinister, unlike St. Vincent’s up the road. The single storey buildings were modern and could almost have been office buildings.

  Once parked, he got out of the car. “I won’t be long. They probably won’t let me in, anyway.”

  “Third on the left,” she smiled. “You can’t miss it.”

  Dan walked down the path to the third building. The place seemed quiet enough, almost peaceful. Dan had never been into a mental hospital before. He didn’t know what to expect and the prospect of entering a place populated with people with unpredictable behaviors unnerved him. That coupled with the fact that he felt as if he was about to commit fraud by pretending to be from Widdowson’s church to get to Connor Pendred had him actually sweating with anxiety when he pressed the buzzer of the heavy-looking metal and glass front door. The door opened automatically and he found himself in an airlock. There was a thin man with spectacles behind a Perspex partition waiting for him.

  “I’m here to see Connor Pendred,” said Dan.

  “Are you from the church?”

  “Yes,” he lied. The man handed him a clip-on black attack alarm. Alison really hadn’t been joking. He clipped it to his belt.

  Dan couldn’t believe the guy had just let him in without asking for ID or anything.

  The first door closed behind him and he heard it click locked. The inner door opened and a young man in a checked shirt greeted him. Dan read the care assistant’s name badge and saw his name was Phillip Scaife. Dan explained who he was here to see and the care assistant led him down a corridor.

  A sudden yell from one of the rooms ahead caused Dan to start. Scaife didn’t even blink and ignored the noise. The screaming stopped and, as they passed the room, Dan saw a young Asian woman sitting on a bed clutching a teddy. To his right, opposite the bedroom doors they were passing, a scruffy man in a stained coat and dirty bobble hat sat on one of the low windowsills that ran along the corridor. He was rolling a cigarette and stopped to stare intently at Dan which made him feel more than uncomfortable.

  They passed another care assistant who was arguing with a large man wearing an army jacket who had big bald patches on his head as if he’d been pulling his hair out.

  “I want a fag?” the man snarled to the other care assistant.

  “You can’t have one, Alex. Not for another hour. You know the rules,” said the care assistant.

  “They’re my fuckin’ fags,” he yelled. “Fucking give them to me!”

  The argument intensified as they passed.

  “He’s been a bloody nightmare this last week, Connor has,” said Phillip. “Really freaked out, so he might not want to see you. He either won’t shut up or he’ll be catatonic. He’s been in his room, which is strange. Usually he’s the big man in the lounge or the smoking room.”

  They turned down another corridor of bedroom doors. Some were open with music emanating from them, others were shut and silent. In one room, a woman was sobbing uncontrollably. In another room, Dan saw a woman arguing with herself or perhaps some invisible tormentor, he couldn’t tell.

  Dan’s unease increased, and he actually wanted to turn back and leave this place. It didn’t help when a guy in a hoodie passed him and hissed. Somewhere else someone was shouting. Further down the corridor someone was singing. The atmosphere here was intense but what bothered Dan the most was the casual attitude of the guy he was following. He acted as if all this was normal. At last they reached Connor Pendred’s bedroom.

  “Connor,” said Phillip.

  “Piss off, cunt.”

  A short, wiry man with a shaven head and piercing blue eyes sat cross legged on the bed. He had an amused look in that slightly drugged gaze. He eyed Dan as if assessing his unease. It felt as though those blue eyes could almost read his mind.

  Everything he’d seen so far in this place was just a warm up to meeting this guy. Dan w
anted to run, be as far away from this man as possible. The guy oozed a kind of explosive menace that put Dan right on edge. Dan couldn’t put a finger on it. Was it his facial expression, those blue eyes, or his body language? Dan just knew this guy was not to be trusted.

  “This is Dan. He’s from the church.”

  “He can piss off, too.”

  Dan was about to walk off when Phillip said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  What? He was going to leave him alone with this psycho? Paralysed with a sort of awkward terror, Dan watched Scaife walk off back down the corridor. The psycho was still looking at him intently from his place on the bed. For long moments the two men shared a heavy silence. Dan stood frozen in the doorway.

  “Well, come in if yer coming. Don’t stand in the door like a cunt.”

  Reluctantly, Dan entered and immediately spotted a faint outline of the word in the paintwork. Pendred followed his gaze.

  “So, you’ve had a visit as well then,” Dan said without thinking.

  “They’re coming for me. None of you bastards understand. Why’d Widdowson send you? Why didn’t he come here himself?”

  “I’m not from the church. Look, I’ll get straight to the point. You know something about…well…the choir? The Dark Choir?”

  A friendly smile crossed his lips which made Dan shiver. Dan took a quick look to the door to estimate how easily he could get out if needed. This guy was dangerous.

  “Well, fuck me. Where you come from then? They spoke to you, have they?”

  Spoke to him? Dan was about to ask him what that meant when Pendred suddenly burst into song.

  “When the Dark Choir sing, you better block your fuckin’ ears.”