The Locksmith by Linda Calvey (reading in the dark .TXT) 📕

‘For love . . .’ was all she said, taking his arm and letting herself be led away to the house.

‘When you’ve undressed her, put everythin’ in a black bin liner. Her shoes, her handbag, everything’,’ Alfie added. He was already dragging the body onto the floor.

‘Go!’

Archie led Ruby up to the main bathroom where there was a wet area and a roll-top bath. She was shaking violently now, but let herself be taken.

Slowly, carefully, as if undressing a small child, Archie peeled off her clothes. Ruby barely noticed. In her mind’s eye she was still at the scene of the crime, witnessing what would inevitably be coming next.

As Ruby stepped into the shower, as the rivulets of blood ran from her body, swirled in the plug hole and disappeared, she knew what her husband’s twin would be doing.

In her mind’s eye, she saw him strip George’s body, putting his clothes and shoes into a bin bag. She saw him take another, smaller bag, and fill it with his rings and his gold chains, all covered in his blood. She saw him shave his head, pull out his fingernails and toenails with pliers before pulling out her brother’s teeth and placing them in the same small bag. She could almost hear the crack of splintering bone, the grunts of the effort required to rip apart a human being, one she still loved dearly despite his terrible crime against Cathy.

Ruby stepped out of the shower and let her husband pat her down, before stepping into a bubble bath for the final part of her cleansing.

‘Thank you,’ Ruby murmured at last as she sank down into the sweet-smelling water.

They heard a sound. An electric chainsaw. It was a strange sound for the depths of the night but she knew exactly what it was being used for.

Alfie would’ve laid down thick plastic sheeting on the floor, then dragged George’s remains onto it. The final part of the macabre theatre of her brother’s death was playing out. He would have to saw off his limbs, cut the trunk into several parts, and cut everything; his arms, legs, body, neck, spine, into bits small enough for the pigs to digest.

In Ruby’s mind there was no other way they could hide the body. George’s body would be taken in large sacks to the pig farm that lay just outside London, in Essex. Pigs couldn’t digest fingernails and toenails, something to do with the protein in them, so they would pass straight through them. That’s why the nails, hair and jewellery would have to be disposed of another way. She knew that Alfie would then take a car on the Woolwich Ferry and throw those remains over the side, letting the water carry away the evidence.

Archie asked, softly this time, ‘Why did ya do it, Ruby?’ His face looked ghastly in the light thrown down by the ceiling spotlights.

Ruby turned to the man she loved. She wouldn’t lie, she didn’t need to. She said bleakly, ‘I had to. I killed my brother because if I didn’t then you and yer brother would’ve tortured him first, you would’ve made him suffer for what he did and I couldn’t bear that. Truly, it was the kindest way. It was an act of mercy.’

CHAPTER 40

Come ’ere, darlin’, yes that’s it, one foot in front of the other! What a good boy you are, you’ve taken your first steps. Oh, George, you beautiful boy, come to me, come to your big sister. The little boy gurgled with delight at his prowess, walking alone, wobbling from side to side in a shaft of sunlight. Ruby realised she was back in her old family home in Star Lane. The kitchen was the same, clean but basic with the yellow Formica table and the small yard out back. For a moment, just a mere moment, Ruby could sense her parents there too, though that wouldn’t have been right. Surely they were dead by then? Perhaps she could feel their ghosts looking over their third child, the one left to Ruby and Bobby to bring up. Ruby felt puzzled, but she knew they were there, watching over her, asking her to look after little George, to protect him, to shelter him . . .

Ruby awoke out of her dream, the smell of burning leaves seeping into her bedroom. She yawned, trying to shake off the unsettling memory of her little brother taking his first steps unaided, the dream she’d plunged into upon falling into a dead sleep. Even though she was now awake, she could almost feel George with her, how warm he’d been in her arms as a baby, how much he giggled when he realised he could walk by himself. She wanted to stay there, in that strange dream state, far away from what awaited her.

Ruby got out of bed slowly and walked to the window. Archie wasn’t beside her and his half of the bed felt cold. Perhaps he hadn’t been to bed at all.

In the garden she could see her husband was tending to a bonfire, heaping the piles of autumn leaves left by the gardener a few days previously onto a smouldering fire. From where she was standing, she could just see the cuff of the silk dress she’d worn last night peeking out at the bottom.

Ruby shuddered and turned away. She felt panic rising inside her and a sudden urge to throw up. Instead, she started to cry for the loss of the brother she loved so dearly, whose life she had taken so effortlessly.

Would she ever move on from this? Would her love for him, her guilt at being the one who killed him, ever be fully erased? She doubted it. She knew this guilt would become part of her. All she could feel then was the emptiness of life without the boy she’d brought up. She’d failed him, she knew that. She’d tried so hard to be