Dying Light

29

The woods were deep and dark, the faint slivers of sky visible between the trees fading from tarnished silver to graveyard black in the dying light. A cough rattled feebly in the small clearing, a wet, sick sound that finished in a dribble of blood. With a small start, Colin Miller realized it was him. He’d been somewhere... somewhere dark and warm, but now he was back. Cramp in his legs, cramp in his shoulders, numb everywhere else. He’d stand up in a minute. Just as soon as the feeling died down. Just as soon as his shoulders and legs stopped hurting. Just as soon as... darkness.

Sparks of white and yellow exploded through his head, shoving him back, tipping the lawn chair over, sending him crashing backwards into the leaves, his arms and legs still strapped to the seat. Unable to move. And then the real pain starts, not the cramp — that’s nothing, this is like fire! Like someone’s taking a blowtorch to his hands. Burning his hands! He opened his mouth and screamed.

‘Evening, handsome. Nice to see you’re awake.’ A pause, filled with Colin Miller’s screams, then, ‘Pick him up, will you, Greg? And see if you can’t get him to shut up.’

Large hands grabbed the front of Colin’s shirt, dragging him up until the lawn chair was back on its feet. He screamed again, but something hard smacked into his cheek and the taste of fresh blood filled his mouth. The cry faded to a whimper.

A face loomed out of the growing darkness: cropped white hair, perfect teeth, eyes like holes carved in marble. ‘There we go! That wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ Miller didn’t answer and the bastard from Edinburgh just shrugged. ‘OK, Greg, you can untie his hands.’

Oh God, his hands! Someone fumbled with the cable ties holding his wrists to the back of the chair, and then they were free... He pulled his hands round to see how badly they’d been burned. And screamed again as it all came flooding back. The searing pain of flesh parting, the noise of bones and cartilage snapping apart.

‘Oh Christ, again with the bloody screaming?’

This time Greg didn’t need to be told, just balled up a fist and smashed it into Miller’s face. He crashed sideways to the ground, still attached to the chair by his ankles, sprawling out on the forest floor, staring at his ruined hands. Sobbing.

‘Now then, Colin, there’s just two more items on the agenda before we’re finished here. First one is this...’ Chib dropped down and stuck a photo into Colin’s face. Blocking his view of the stumps. It was from Miller’s wallet: Isobel, standing on the balcony of a hotel in Spain. There was a smudge of blood in the top left corner, where Chib’s latex glove had touched it. ‘Good-looking woman. Now, Colin, if I even think you’ve been hanging about with the police again, I’m going to finish the job on you, and then I’m going to make her very, very ugly.’ He took the photo back, kissed it and slipped it into his inside pocket. ‘Item number two is just a wee matter of tidying things up.’ Something hard and cold bounced off Colin’s face, then another one, and another and another. Chunks of fingers, each a single bone long, raining down from the sky. ‘I want you to eat them.’

Miller stared, trembling, at the pale cylinders lying in the dirt. Four of them were just the tips — fingernail to first joint; three were the middle section; two were from the base — still trailing the tendon that was supposed to lie across the knuckle. Nine little bits of piggies go to market. ‘I... I can’t!’ He sobbed. ‘Oh please God, I can’t...’

Chib smiled down indulgently. ‘Now now, let’s have less of that. You eat them up like a good boy and we can all go home.’

Colin reached out with fumbling hands. Trying to pick up the pieces of his own fingers, the remaining digits slick with blood. Feeling the bile rise again. ‘Oh fuckin’ God, my hands... my fuckin’ hands...’

‘I’m running out of patience, Colin. Either you eat them, or I snip off another joint and make you eat that as well.’ He waggled the poultry shears in the reporter’s face, the stainless steel clarted with blood. ‘The longer you mess me about, the less fingers you got.’

Two bits: a tip and a middle section lying in the palm of his shaking, blood-clotted hand, their flesh cold and white. The ends dark red-black, bone and cartilage showing through. ‘Oh God... They could... they could put them back on! They could stitch them back on!’ A hand grabbed the hair on top of his head and pulled it round until he was looking up at Chib Sutherland’s smiling face.

‘You know what: maybe they could.’ The smile grew wider. ‘I’m a reasonable man. Why don’t you pick three bits to keep? That’s a whole finger’s worth! Call it a gesture of good faith. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’

Tears were streaming down Colin’s face, making streaks in the dirt and blood. ‘I can’t...’ Voice small and broken. Then a shriek as Chib grabbed his left hand by the wrist and pulled it up, opening the shears wide and clamping them around the top joint of the index finger.

‘Now you choose your three bits, then you eat the rest of your fucking fingers. Understand?’

Crying like a frightened child, Colin picked up the remains of his butchered hands and did as he was told.