The Sister(118)

He blew across the surface of the steaming liquid and continued to read.

He’d noticed over the years on his travels that someone was kidnapping little boys; he’d stumble on the odd headline, hundreds of miles apart. They always started the same. Boy Missing.

None of the boys were ever found. He hoped this kid would turn up safe and sound, but he had his doubts. If police suspected a serial killer of children was at large, they were keeping quiet about it. He clenched his fists so hard the knuckles popped.

Criss-crossing the same old roads, he noticed things and he’d look at people more closely. He was more wary of familiar faces than the unfamiliar ones. He developed an expertise in body language, another of the few skills he’d picked up from his father and learned to sense if someone was watching or masking an interest in him. You feel that, boy? Those people over there are talking about us.

The same feeling came over him in the café. It was a type of radar, and the two men hunched over on the table in the far corner, blipped onto it. He’d seen them around before. His memory for faces was without equal. Glancing back at the front page, other headlines covering years flashed in his mind’s eye.

The two were always there. Unable to believe he’d never made the connection before, he’d always thought they were just travellers on the lookout for places to rob. He’d known from the look of them they were up to no good, but now he knew exactly what they were.

They were staring back at him; their own radar had kicked in. Something in the way he looked at them gave him away. They exchanged looks, trying to act as if nothing was happening. They talked urgently, occasionally shooting a look in his direction.

What he saw in them, they saw in him. The cold eyes, the sense of detachment and something else, too. The stranger was utterly without fear.

He checked the heat of the coffee, and took another sip, openly watching them.

They were talking about him.

He’d learned to read lips as a boy due to his mother’s speech impediment and pieced together what they were saying.

A further quick exchange passed between them so close across the tabletop their faces almost touched. They whispered urgently.

‘We can’t wait any longer, it’s too risky.’

‘Are you sure that isn’t him?’

‘Don’t be f*cking stupid! He’s not one of us.’

‘Let’s just go. That guy over there...he’s making me nervous.’

They stood up and left.

He drained the last of his coffee. It made him want to piss, but he daren’t go for fear of losing the two men.

Outside they entered a large, dirty white van. He followed at a distance for miles. Eventually, they turned off the main road, driving in the darkness down ever narrowing roads, until they reached a farm track.

Five minutes later, they pulled up outside a run down house surrounded by old shipping containers.

The stranger had switched his lights off as soon as he’d turned onto the track, navigating by moonlight alone. He pulled up two hundred yards away and observed from his car.

One of the men retrieved a small figure from the back wrapped in a blanket. The other looked around furtively as he slammed the back doors of the van shut. The two men hurried inside with the boy. Dogs barked excitedly. He could tell from the depth and resonance of the barking they were big and there were at least two of them.

Sprinting as fast as he dared in the darkness, he got to within a few yards and then walked the remaining distance on the sides of his feet. He pressed his back against the wall outside the house, next to the door they'd entered.

The low growling informed him the animals had sensed his presence.

Damn dogs! He hadn’t fully recovered from the bite he’d received before Christmas. That one had come out of nowhere. Its owner had trained it to go for the nuts. He winced at the painful memory. One day he’d go back for the owner, for what he did to him.

Damned perverts probably think the animals are excited about having a child in the house. No time to lose.

He kicked in the door. Rottweilers! The first leapt at him. He buried his knife to the hilt into its head, killing it instantly. He snatched at the knife, pulling up on it hard to retrieve it. The dead dog’s head and shoulders rose from the floor. The knife wouldn’t come out. It was stuck in deep, right through the bone. No time! The second one was on him; hot breath and saliva sprayed his face as he grabbed a front leg. Side stepping away, he pulled and lifted, swinging hard, he smashed it against the wall. He felt its leg break or dislocate; it didn’t matter which. He stamped hard on its neck.

Face down on a table, trussed up and crying; the sound muffled by a gag; the boy was trying to turn round to see what was happening.

‘Look away kid!’ The stranger commanded.

At first, the men were slow, caught by the shock of how quickly their first line of defence had failed, but now they closed in on the intruder. He stood stock still, ready. They rushed in from both sides as if they'd rehearsed the move, but they could never have anticipated violence on the scale about to be unleashed upon them. The two of them were used to dealing with no more than a child’s resistance, and the stranger annihilated them easily with a short series of heavy blows. His gloved fists hooked and hammered away, like a butcher tenderising steaks.

The boy was frozen, stunned into silence, unsure what would become of him.

‘Don’t turn round, kid.’