Chapter 57 Hugh

57 HUGH

SEPTEMBER 10, 2001

He lit another cigarette and opened the window of the guesthouse, blowing the smoke out into the cool night air. They were in a tiny room on the ground floor with a queen bed, booked under Hugh’s name, of course. No mention of Darcy on the guest list. She was just nineteen, and he fifty-eight. He had learned the hard way not to attempt to pretend that they were father and daughter. It had backfired last time and now he was on the sex offender list.

He sucked on his cigarette, enjoying the breeze on his bare chest. His belly was a deflated football hanging over the waistband of his jeans. He had lost so much weight that he had developed tits, his nipples hanging on the ends of loose skin like joke Christmas decorations. Age and illness had stolen everything from him, but Darcy looked at him with eyes like hearts from the old Tom and Jerry cartoons. She saw him as the figurehead of a movement, the leader of a cult. The Cult of Hugh, she joked sometimes. He liked the sound of it.

But in this last chapter of his life, he felt disappointed. He’d wanted to be famous, hadn’t achieved the accolades he deserved. Even his “kids,” as he called them, didn’t seem interested anymore. Not as devoted. They were children whom he’d taken under his wing, loyal followers who saw him as a father figure. They stole for him, mostly, so that he could pay his rent. His main kids, Rob and Harry, had been thick as thieves with him in the old days, even calling him Pop. But he saw very little of them these days.

“We should get an early night,” Darcy said, glancing at the dark street outside. “We’ve got an early start. The ferry leaves at seven, so we need to get out of here by five….”

He stretched out a gnarly hand. “Come here.”

The streetlight outside lit up her face in a golden glow. She was like an angel: lustrous chestnut hair, brown eyes flecked with flame, bee-stung lips. She clasped his hand in hers and looked at him with a flicker of worry.

He sighed and flipped the rest of his cigarette into the street. “There’s no easy way to say this,” he said.

Darcy sat on the other side of the windowsill, opposite him, her knee touching his. “You can tell me,” she said, her face open and asking.

“You’re not going to like what I have to tell you,” he said. “But I need you to do something for me.”

She nodded. “OK.”

“All right. Last week I went to see the doctor, and what he had to tell me wasn’t very good.”

A fold of concern appeared on her brow. “What did he say?”

“He said that the reason I’ve been unwell for a while is not indigestion, like I thought. He says I’ve got some tumors in my liver, and some in my spine.”

Her mouth fell open. “What?”

“Cancer,” he said. “I suppose I should have taken better care of myself. Got checked out sooner.”

She shook her head, those young, unjaded eyes filling with tears. “If this is you trying to break up with me,” she said quickly, “I don’t care about the age difference. And I don’t care that you lied about it. I understand why you did.”

“I’m not trying to break up with you,” he said.

“I love you,” she said. “Please don’t do this.”

He touched her cheek with his hand. “I’m telling you the truth. The hard truth. They say I won’t see my birthday.”

She straightened, her face falling. “That’s two months away.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. Which is why we can’t go to France.”

“Swear to me,” she said, petulant. “Swear you’re dying.”

“I swear it,” he said, coughing into a fist. “I’d much rather be getting on a ferry with you than sitting here, I promise you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I only got the prognosis last week,” he said, rubbing his face wearily.

“You’re lying,” Darcy said, her voice tight with anger, and he did a double take. She was a fiery one, he reminded himself of that. “You want to break up with me. You want to be with him .”

“ Him ?” he said, bewildered.

She pouted. “You know who I mean.”

“No I don’t.”

“Rob,” she said, her gaze darkening. “You want him instead of me.”

Hugh gave an amused chuckle. So Darcy was jealous of Rob . It was true that Rob idolized Hugh, but they hadn’t slept together. Rob was an errand boy. A kind of son, or nephew. Hugh had met him five years ago, when he was a lad of fourteen, got him selling drugs and recruiting the odd girl. For a reason he’d never quite understood, Darcy loathed Rob. They rarely spoke, but she looked daggers at him whenever he came into Hugh’s home. But now he knew: she was jealous.

“I’m not lying to you, Darcy,” he said.

She looked up at him, seeing the yellow hue in the corners of his eyes, the dots of sweat on his forehead. He could tell she didn’t believe him.

“Nothing goes the way I want it to,” she said after a while.

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” she said. “I wanted this. I wanted us to move to France, get a house, keep chickens.”

He laughed. “That sounds nice.”

“And we’d grow vegetables in the garden. We’d get married, and you could stay home with the kids while I went to work.”

“Very modern,” he said. “A house husband.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And now it’s all gone.”

He got up, plucking his jacket from the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, wary.

He pulled out his wallet and opened it, removing a twenty-pound note. He handed it to her. “Look, I want you to go home,” he said. “We’ve had a bit of fun together. But now you need to leave. Tell your parents you ran away with your nineteen-year-old boyfriend, like we discussed.”

She blinked, confused. “I wrote it in my note to them….”

“Good. But go back in the morning. You can get the coach from the bus station first thing. Tell them you decided to come home.” Tears were brimming in her eyes again. “It’s for the best. I don’t know how long I’ve got left, do I?”

She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. She looked like her heart was breaking.

He put on his coat.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“I’ll go and find us both some food. I could do with some fresh air.”

“You want me to come?”

He shook his head. He needed some headspace, some quiet.

OUTSIDE, HE WALKED SLOWLY, TAKING his time and pausing at street corners to gather his strength. Yes, he was ill. Walking even short distances took it out of him. And he was getting sicker by the day.

He bought two cans of Coke and a pasta salad in a plastic box for Darcy. He headed back slowly, too, feeling scared for the first time in his life. What would death be like? He had often thought about suicide, had had many days since his youth when the urge to end it all had nagged at him. And yet, this felt frightening. He had no control over it, and the end could be painful. It could be humiliating.

THE AIR HELD A DIFFERENT quality when he returned to the guesthouse: a new smell, he thought, and a weight to it, like the aftermath of heavy storms.

He ducked his head into the reception area to check on the owner.

“Evening, Mike,” he said.

No answer.

At first, Hugh thought Mike had fallen asleep on his chair behind the desk.

“Mike…,” Hugh began, falling quiet when he noticed the red splash on Mike’s polo shirt. He stepped forward.

Mike’s throat had a wide gash in it, his head tilted to the side against the wall, his eyes staring, seeing nothing.

Hugh stumbled backward, then turned on his heel and rushed to his room at the back of the ground floor. “Darcy!” he yelled. “Darcy!”

There had been a robbery, he thought. In the time that he’d been out at the shop, someone had broken in.

When he reached the room, the rickety door was open. No sign of Darcy. His heart thumped in his mouth. Had they taken her?

He turned and headed upstairs, frantic with worry. He glanced up and saw that the door to room six was open. Blood rushed in his ears.

“Hello?” he called. “Are you all right in there?”

Hugh glanced in, then stepped inside the room, his knees weak. A man was lying on his bed, his mouth open, both hands covered with dark blood.

“Oh God,” he said, staggering out of the room. Where was Darcy?

The door to the room opposite was open, and he lunged into it, glancing quickly at the scene inside: a man, also still in bed, a smear of blood on the wall above him.

Hugh felt like he was watching himself from above, running from room to room.

A noise drew him to room four. Thank God. Darcy was in there, just inside the door. She had her back to him, facing a man with black hair who was emerging from the en suite. “Hey,” the man said, reaching out to her. Then, seeing Hugh appear behind her, he gasped, reaching out to grab Darcy protectively. But she spun away from his grasp, swiping at him with a knife. It all happened so quickly—the knife Hugh saw flashing in Darcy’s hand, the younger man’s mobile phone that was suddenly flung into the air, crashing down on the old granite fireplace and splintering into pieces. The dark bloom of blood on the man’s T-shirt, soaking the fabric and reddening the man’s hands.

Nobody spoke, though the room felt to Hugh as though a peal of thunder had clapped above their heads, the smell of lightning in his nostrils. He watched as the man clutched the wound at his abdomen with a look of pained horror, blood beginning to pool in copious, startling amounts on the floor.

Amid his confusion, Hugh recognized the knife that Darcy was holding. It was his knife, the hunting knife that Hugh always kept with him for protection. She must have dug it out of his suitcase to defend herself.

Hugh felt as though his veins had filled with iron, fixing him firmly to the spot. He was unable to speak or move, his eyes wide as he looked on at Darcy, young, sweet, slightly mad Darcy, stabbing the man a second time. The young man staggered backward, his face collapsed like he might cry. Hugh clapped his hands to his mouth, astonished, as the man sank to the ground.

Darcy dropped down to the ground next to him, and Hugh managed to flip the switch that had held him frozen to the spot in order to lower himself beside her.

“Darcy,” he murmured, reeling. “Darcy.”

The man was still groaning on the floor next to them. He had curled up in the fetal position, unable to move, a glossy puddle of blood next to him. A glance told Hugh that he was dying.

“Are you all right?” Hugh asked Darcy, looking her over. She had a dab of blood on her forehead, and her hands were covered with it. She was trembling, her teeth chattering.

“I don’t know,” she said, weakly. “I don’t know….”

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No. I was just so… angry….”

Hugh finally registered that she wasn’t injured, that the blood wasn’t hers. And the look on her face… he’d never seen it before. He suddenly felt very cold.

“Who killed all these people, Darcy? Where are they?”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I did,” she said, meek as a lamb. “I killed them.”

Hugh felt something inside him tighten, a revulsion and a curiosity from some deeper part of himself lacing together. The gears of his mind turned quickly, shifting in another direction. “Get washed,” he said, pulling her to her feet. He stood over the man, who was groaning.

The knife was still in Darcy’s hand, and Hugh took it from her.

“Go,” he said.

ONCE SHE’D GONE HE STOOD over the man. A strange thrill to look down at him, helpless, his eyes pleading. But there could be no witnesses, and it was probably kinder just to finish him off, Hugh reckoned. He slid the knife into the man’s chest, once, twice.

With a rattling exhalation, the man fell still, his unblinking gaze on the stained ceiling.

Back in their room, Hugh turned on the shower and set out a change of clothes for Darcy. When she stripped down, he took her bloodstained T-shirt and jeans and bundled them into a plastic bag, then zipped them into her suitcase. A quick scan of the room to make sure all her belongings were packed up, her shampoo bottle, her toothbrush. All traces of her gone. As if she had never been at the hotel.

Satisfied that the room was clear, he headed quickly down the hall and checked the guest list that he had signed when he checked in. Shit. There was one name left.

One more person to arrive tonight.

Briony Conley.

Car headlights shone outside.

He squinted nervously through the blinds and saw a taxi pulling up out front. Someone was getting out. A woman. The last guest. Quickly, Hugh shoved Mike’s body into the storeroom behind the reception desk, moving the chair to hide the bloodstain on the wall.

A girl pushed open the door to the guesthouse. It was late, and she seemed unsure if anyone was in.

“Sorry,” Briony Conley said. “The taxi took me to the wrong place.”

Hugh smiled uneasily and turned the guest register around so she could locate her name.

She looked at him warily. Shit , he thought, his heart hammering in his chest. Did he have blood on his hands? He hadn’t checked. What if she decided to make a run for it? He’d have to go after her and kill her, too.

But she stayed put, stifling a yawn. He ticked her name off the list, handed her a key, then listened to her go upstairs to her room. If she noticed anything amiss, she was probably done for, he thought darkly. Maybe he should kill her and get it over with.

The girl shut her door, and all went quiet. Hugh’s heart was hammering from the exertion. He badly needed a smoke. And then a long sleep.

Hugh waited a few moments before heading quietly to his room, where Darcy was getting dressed. Good , he thought with a sigh. She had showered all the blood away, her clean clothes showing no sign of the stabbings.

“I need you to go now,” he said calmly, picking up her suitcase.

“What?” she said, panicked.

“You’re going to go home. You’re going to tell your parents that you changed your mind about your nineteen-year-old boyfriend. Got it?”

She started to protest, but he raised a finger to her lips.

“You will do as I say,” he said. “There should be a night bus at two a.m. Go.”

Her face folded. “But I love you,” she said.

He kissed her on the forehead and made lavish promises that he had no intention of keeping. He would be in touch. He would see her again. The lies settled her, made her compliant, as lies typically make people.

And so, he sent her out into the night with her suitcase.

At the front window, he lit another cigarette with trembling hands as he watched her to make sure she headed in the direction of the bus station. Then, as curious as he was sickened, he headed upstairs, his stomach churning as he revisited the grisly scenes behind each of the bedroom doors.

No one had survived. All but one had been stabbed in their beds, sound asleep. A frenzied, furious, determined attack. No, not frenzied—Darcy would have had to have been as calculating and quiet as a tiger moving through grass.

His breaths heavy and his shirt soaked through with sweat, Hugh stood outside room three, listening to the sound of light snoring behind the door. The young woman who had checked in was oblivious to the carnage that surrounded her.

Picking up the hunting knife, he slung on his jacket and headed out into the night. He would wait until morning, once Darcy was far away, before turning himself in.

I don’t know what came over me, officer. I blacked out, then found I’d killed them all.

I just lost it.

Yes, officer. I did it.