“That’s why you closed it down?”
“Couldn’t have someone come across it accidentally.”
“You killed her?” The question is a stupid one. I’m handcuffed to a radiator bleeding from the head; Lenora Blackwood clearly isn’t alet’s discuss and move past thissort of person.
Leaning in closer, her beady eyes trained on my face, she states, “We cut her up into little pieces down here and buried her beneath the fountain out front, so I could walk across her remains every day when I looked out at the lily field and drank my morning coffee. Safe in the knowledge that no one would ever know what nosey Isadora Cardeen had discovered.”
The flicker of excited callousness that twists her lips when my mouth gapes at her admission makes my stomach plummet.
“And then you came along. Just as enticing, just as belligerent, just asnosey,” Simon adds as he steps up to flank Lenora.
“Big words for a dickless bag of shit. Your queen bitch here let you kiss her feet too?”
That earns me a slap. I hadn’t even seen her approach she moved that quickly. I know it was worth it when Lenora grinds her teeth in frustration as she rubs at her stinging palm. I decide I'd happily throw all the belligerence I can muster her way if it means royally pissing her off.
Simon approaches the TV on the wall opposite me and slides the silver DVD I’d found in the records room into the player, cranking up the volume to the maximum.
I watch as the heavy-set man chases the scantily clad girl around his office, pulling on her pigtails and yanking her backto his body as he tightens the noose of her school tie around her throat. She’s wearing a shirt tied in a knot above her belly and open enough to expose her cleavage, the obscenely short skirt barely covering her arse, but it’s clear this is a woman in her late twenties.She outruns him, and he settles in his chair in defeat.
‘Play with me, Daddy, please. I’ve been a very bad girl,’the auburn-haired woman on the screen whines petulantly with a thick brogue accent when the balding man widens his legs and beckons her over, done with the chase as he lets out heavy rasping breaths. Nursing his glass of whiskey, hungry eyes hooded as he watches her seductively bend over so her arse is presented to him, offering herself up for a pretty price I’d guess. The man’s sickly green aura stinks of ill-gained riches and abuse of power at every turn.
One minute and forty-three seconds of graphic lacklustre sex as she rides him reverse-cowgirl-style in his chair—her face disinterested now he can’t see her, her lips parting forooohs, andaahhsas she sells her part of this exchange where needed. The girl is quickly paid with a wad of crumpled notes and shooed out of the office. Ezra’s father does up his pants and falls back into his chair, lighting up a post-coital cigar in celebration for that mediocre fuck.
Back in the records room, I had intended to press play when Ezra came into the shot, but it was something else that had piqued my interest. My eyes flick to Lenora, knowing by her wide intense eyes that she sees the same thing I had.
Before I knew who he was, I had realised that the man from the photos of previous owners of Blackwood hanging on the wall upstairs was the same man in the video. You can only make out the back of Lenora’s head in shot, but when she takes a seat opposite him and kicks her feet up onto the desk, she’s wearing the same expensive red-soled shoes with the alligator skin she’s wearing right now. We both look down at her feet in unison asrealisation dawns on her pinched-lipped face. This was the proof that Isadora had that would exonerate Ezra.
On the screen, a lurking Simon creeps in through a door behind the man like the weasel he is. Lenora pauses the tape as Simon raises the axe in preparation above the man’s head, that twisted gleeful grimace lighting his face.
“And we all know what happens next,” Lenora mutters flatly as she turns to face me, unpausing the video again.
The brutality lasted for seconds, not minutes like you’d expect; it was over quickly, and once the deed was done, the CCTV cut to a similar shot of the same office, the dead man still very much dead, the time stamp noting the hours that had passed and an unconscious Ezra on the floor with the bloody axe in his hand.
“Now there’s no disputing anything—you really have seen everything.”
The levity in her tone is misplaced as she scowls my way.
“Call the boys, tell them to get Ezra and head down here,” Lenora orders Simon. He whips out his phone, and I try to wiggle myself into a better position to get onto my feet. He levels the bat with my face in warning, nudging my shoulder, coaxing me back down to the ground. Caressing my cheek with the bloody end of it, I obediently rest back down on my knees. I mentally weigh up my lack of options, unwillingly enlightened by the epic fuckery of my current situation. I don’t know how many concussions I have left in me, but the idea of that bat connecting with my skull again is enough to keep me pliant for now.
“You think they’ll be up for this?” Simon snorts, unconvinced as he types out a message, satisfied for now that I won’t give him any more bother.
“If they want to get released, they’ll do as I say.
”
A minute or so later, Simon’s phone pings with an incoming message, and all eyes are on him again.
“Caleb said he isn’t in his room.”
“I wonder where he might be,” she caws studiously like this is all some game, and she’s the grand master piecing together the clues.
I wouldn’t mind playing a couple of games of hopscotch on her face.
“Tell them to check her room, kick the door in if you have to. Someone went against protocol and installed a shiny new lock.” She beams, letting me know I have no secrets from her.
“So you watched Simon kill a man; one more sick prick with a call girl addiction to add to the pile. You don’t need to involve Ezra. Clearly, he has no idea about any of this,” I comment, hoping it will save him from whatever she has planned.
“Looks like you’re just not getting it, Cara. But you will.” Her face splits into a sinister grin, and the sass in me dies. “Get those off her, and get her on the table.”
