The Border: The Complete Series Read online

  “We needed to talk somewhere.”

  “So you chose that place, out of all the other possibilities?”

  “Seemed poetic.”

  “You? Into poetry?”

  “You know what I mean.” He held his hands out for a moment, squinting at the palms.

  “Trying to see flecks of blood?” Caitlin asked.

  He nodded.

  “Do you still think about him?”

  He nodded again.

  “It's strange,” she continued. “Everyone's so set on thinking you killed me and the other girls, they never seem to wonder who killed old Garland Packer in his farmhouse all those years ago. Or why.”

  “No,” Ben replied, almost seeing blood on his hands again. “No, they don't.”

  She stepped closer. “Why did you come back?” she asked.

  “To spend Christmas with my family. The miserable bunch of...” His voice trailed off as anger welled in his soul.

  “You came to set things right,” she whispered. “The same as last time, except last time you chickened out, and the time before that too. You keep coming back to Bowley to set things right, as if you think you can stop all of this. Do you really think it's possible? Are you, Benjamin Henry Freeman, capable of single-handedly bringing down the Border and ending the misery that exists because of that place?”

  “Single-handedly?” He paused, staring at the town. “No, not single-handedly.”

  “Then maybe you'd better change your approach,” she continued, “because it seems to me that you could use a friend or two.”

  ***

  “You can't go to print with this!” Jane replied, following Jack through to the kitchen while holding a printout of the next day's front page. “Jack, you could put the whole investigation in jeopardy!”

  “How can putting the facts out there put things in danger?” he asked with a smile as he set some dirty dishes on the counter, ready to load the dishwasher. “Facts are facts. Lies hurt people, Jane, but the truth -”

  “Rubbish,” she continued, barely able to contain her anger. “Jack, you know exactly what you're doing. You're using the newspaper to push your own agenda.”

  “Is one word of that article a lie?”

  She took another look at the printout. “Police are close to making an arrest,” she read after a moment, “with the suspect having been identified already. A member of a well-known local family, the suspect has been away from Bowley for some time but recently returned, and his appearance in town once again coincided with a spate of murders.” She turned to him. “You might as well print Ben's photo right next to this piece!”

  “Seems to me, I have every right to do that.”

  “To your own brother?”

  “Alex will have picked him up by morning,” Jack continued, “and if he hasn't, maybe this article will spur him on to do the right thing. We all know that Ben's guilty -”

  “No,” she said firmly, “we don't all know that.”

  “You seriously have any doubts?”

  “Plenty.” She looked down at the printout again. “Some of this information isn't even in the public domain. Did Alex leak it to you?”

  “Alex -”

  “No,” she continued, “he'd never do that. Alex is old-school, he has respect for the rules. Doctor Tomlin, now he'd probably hand over anything you asked for, just for the price of a drink, but there's stuff here that even he wouldn't know. If I didn't know better...”

  Smiling as he slid some plates into the machine's lower draw, Jack waited for her to finish.

  “If you didn't know better what?” he asked finally.

  She paused. “Never mind,” she muttered, before turning and heading back through to the front room. With Jack still in the kitchen, she grabbed his laptop and opened the lid, before entering his password and going straight to his browser history. Sure enough, she saw that he'd visited the police station's secure email server several times over the previous few days, and that he'd been in her email account. Feeling a sense of pure rage building in her chest, she checked his download folder and saw scores of confidential documents.

  “What are you doing?” he asked cautiously, having reached the doorway.

  “For a man who prides himself on being smart,” she replied, taking deep breaths in an attempt to stay calm, “you're sure careless.”

  “That's my laptop,” he said firmly, hurrying over and closing the lid. “How did you even get into it?”

  “I knew you'd been going into my phone,” she told him, “but accessing police servers? You were in Alex's email too, weren't you?”

  “His password is password123.”

  “I could arrest you right now.”

  “Me?” He smiled. “Come on, don't you think you're overreacting?”

  “I could arrest you,” she said firmly, getting to her feet, “and I could take you down to the station and I could charge you.”

  “Go on, then,” he replied, holding his hands out toward her, inviting her to fetch her handcuffs. “Do it. I could use an extra little kick at the end of the story, something to really underline the fact that I put my career on the line to protect the people of this town.”

  “Jack -”

  “But think how it'd make you look,” he continued, holding his wrists together. “Power of the media, honey. We need to work together on this instead of fighting.”

  “You're really full of yourself, aren't you?”

  “Jane -”

  “If your goddamn ego gets any bigger,” she continued, stepping toward him and pushing him against the wall, “you'll end up patrolling the streets at night in a bat costume!”

  “Seriously, Jane -”

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she shouted, resisting the urge to grab him by the throat. “Are you somehow under the impression that you have the right to step in and become the law just because you don't like the way things are going with our investigation? You can't just dump everything into the public domain like this!”

  “I didn't dump everything,” he replied. “I didn't write anything about the Border, for example.”

  “The -” She froze, seeing the cautious suspicion in his eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice low all of a sudden. “In one of your files, I found some notes you'd made, and one of them stated that you'd ruled out the latest murders being anything to do with the Border.”

  “Jack...

  “And the funny thing is,” he continued, “you edited that mention out when you sent the files to Alex, which means you didn't want him to know about it.”

  “I can't believe you're doing this,” she hissed. “Going through my private records -”

  “What's the Border?” he asked again, interrupting her. “What are you keeping from me?”

  Stepping back, she shook her head.

  “I'll find out,” he continued. “You know I will. Once this murder case is over and Ben's getting the help he needs, I'll turn my attention to this Border thing, whatever it is, and I will get to the bottom of it.”

  “You have no idea when to leave things alone,” she whispered.

  “You're my wife,” he replied. “We're not supposed to have secrets from one another.”

  “We're not supposed to go through each other's email, either.”

  “You're a cop,” he continued, “you can probably get into everyone's email.”

  “No,” she said firmly, “I can't! And I wouldn't! Jack...” She paused, before realizing that no matter what she said, he was always going to go back to asking her about the Border.

  “Sit down and talk to me,” he said after a moment. “I'm willing to forgive you -”

  “Forgive me?” she shouted. “For what? For having a husband who goes through my things?”

  “Which you wouldn't even know about if you hadn't broken into my laptop.”

  “For your information,” she replied, stepping toward him, “I knew you were accessing my phone, so I deliberately left some fa
lse information in there. Some of that false information is in the editorial and the story you're going to run tomorrow, so you're not quite as smart as you think you are.”

  “But most of the -”

  “I just never thought you'd go this far,” she continued. “I thought you had some sense of perspective.”

  “Crutchlow taught me to go to any extreme for a story.”

  “I bet he did.” She paused, before heading to the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Out.”

  “It's late.”

  “So?”

  “So stay and talk to me, Jane.”

  She stopped in the doorway. “You want to know what the Border is? Fine. Go ask Mac Crutchlow. If he tells you he doesn't know, he's lying.”

  “But -”

  “Don't expect me back tonight,” she added, heading through to the hallway.

  “Are you just going to walk away?” he asked, before hearing the front door slam a moment later. “Seriously?”

  He waited in silence.

  “You'll be back,” he muttered, heading back through to the kitchen and taking another look at the printout. “Sorry, Ben,” he muttered as he read the story again, “but this is for your own good. Bowley won't be safe until you're behind bars.”

  ***

  Standing in his dimly-lit bathroom, Joe Baldwin stared in shocked, horrified admiration at the rotting heart in his right hand. He turned the organ around, marveling at the rich red meat and at the muscle structures that – although mostly collapsed – could still just about be made out. After a moment, he saw one of the ragged tears that he'd made when he'd cut the heart out of Hayley's body. He poked a finger inside and briefly tried to restore the heart to its original shape, before giving up and letting it sag in his palm again.

  “Still admiring that thing?” Caitlin's voice whispered in his ear.

  He allowed himself a faint smile as he gently squeezed the heart and then released it, almost as if he was causing it to start pumping. He imagined blood flowing in and out, and although the heart itself was cold in the palm of his hand, he remembered that it had been warm once, back when it was beating in her chest and when he'd only just cut it out. He'd seen her at the diner a few days earlier, laughing with a friend, and he realized that this same heart had been pumping away inside her body at that very moment. For a few seconds, he began to wonder whether he should have left her alone, but he quickly remembered that he'd been given no choice. If he hadn't killed Mel and Hayley, the stag-headed man would have chosen his own victims.

  And Caitlin would have gone.

  “I need you to do this for me,” she whispered. “If I don't know that you care, why would I stay here with you?”

  Hearing a faint sniffing sound over his shoulder, he turned slightly, until he could just about make out a dark shape standing nearby. The stag-headed man was watching, as if he'd come to approve of everything Joe had done so far. Turning back to look at the heart, Joe knew deep down that he was running out of time. The stag-headed man chose his victims according to his own whims, and that was how, many years earlier, Caitlin had ended up dead and naked in a tree. Even in the afterlife, she wouldn't be safe from the stag-headed man, not if he chose to pursue her. For reasons that he had yet to fully understand, Joe understood that so long as he took control and carried out more killings, the stag-headed man would leave Caitlin's ghost alone. Reaching out, he sat Hayley's heart next to Mel's, and then his gaze was drawn to the empty spot on the shelf where a third heart would fit perfectly.

  “Who's it going to be?” Caitlin whispered. “Please, Joe, I can feel his hand on my shoulder. If you don't act soon, he's going to hurt me again.”

  Ignoring her, he headed to the table and picked up the knife he'd used for the first two murders. He glanced at the stag-headed man, who stood in a nearby doorway that was almost too low for him. Slowly, the creature nodded its assent.

  Stepping out into the early evening air, Joe set off to find his third victim.

  Epilogue

  Nine years ago

  “What makes us who we are?” the priest asked, as light rain continued to fall upon the small crowd that had gathered for Caitlin's funeral. “What part of a life is set in stone from the moment of birth, and what part is shaped by our experiences and our environment?”

  Barely even hearing those words, Joe stared down at the coffin as it rested next to the grave. He'd only been signed out of hospital for a few hours, and the pain in his chest was immense, but he'd been determined to not miss the funeral. Everyone kept telling him that he should rest, that he shouldn't worry about pushing himself too hard or too soon, but deep down he knew that he had to see Caitlin's coffin for himself, and that he had to see her grave being filled in. There'd be other things he'd have to do, too, but he didn't know what they were, not yet.

  “That,” a voice whispered in his ear, “is the ugliest coffin ever. It's too wide.”

  Turning, he glanced around but saw that there was no-one looking at him. He frowned, convinced that the voice had been Caitlin's, but he told himself he must have been mistaken. Looking back at the coffin, he found himself imagining Caitlin's still, cold body in there, waiting to be buried.

  “I'm not looking forward to the worms,” the voice said suddenly.

  He turned again.

  One of the other mourners glanced at him and offered a faint, flat smile.

  He turned back to look at the coffin.

  “Wriggling through my body,” the voice continued, “and eating my -”

  “Stop!” he shouted, turning and taking a step back. Faced with a sea of shocked faces, he looked around, but there was still no sign of whoever had been whispering into his ear. “Just stop!” he shouted. “Whatever you're doing, leave me the hell alone!”

  “Joe,” his mother said, with tears in her eyes as she reached out to him, “honey, it's okay...”

  “It's not okay,” he stammered, taking another step back. “She's gone, but she's -”

  He turned again, suddenly feeling as if someone was right behind him. A moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Joseph,” the priest said calmly, “I think perhaps you'd like to address the others. In difficult times, it can be useful to talk about our feelings.”

  “She's not dead,” he replied, looking down at the coffin. “I heard her voice! She's still alive in there!” Lunging past the priest, he grabbed the sides of the coffin and tried to pull the lid off.

  It took three men to drag him away.

  ***

  “Everyone understands,” his mother said a little while later, once he was back in his bed at the hospital. “You mustn't be embarrassed, everyone knows you're going through a difficult time. Maybe you should reconsider the offer to see a psychiatrist. It might really help you to speak to someone who's trained in helping people. I mean, these people are professionals...”

  She waited for a reply.

  “Joe? Are you listening to me?”

  Staring straight ahead, Joe was watching Caitlin. She'd first appeared just after they'd got back to the hospital, and now she was sitting in the chair in the far corner, seemingly waiting for Joe's mother to leave. There was a faint, curious smile on her lips, and she was meeting his gaze with a hint of defiance, as if she was proud of herself for having come back from the dead. The only problem was that, no matter how many other people came into the room, it was clear none of them could see her, not even as she twisted her hips in the chair slightly, teasing him.

  “I'm going to go to the machine down the hall,” his mother said finally, getting to her feet. “You want anything? Tea? Coffee?”

  Again, she waited for a reply.

  Silence.

  Without saying anything else, she turned and shuffled out into the corridor.

  Joe stayed completely still, maintaining eye contact with Caitlin and waiting for her to say something. He knew there was no way she could really be there, and he'd acce
pted that the voice earlier hadn't come from the coffin. Still, the more he stared at her now, the more he felt certain that this was more than a simple hallucination. From the look in Caitlin's eyes, it was almost as if she was waiting to tell him something, or to ask him something, or to say something important. Even in death, there was a bond between them, one that he refused to ignore.

  He opened his mouth to speak to her, but no words came out.

  “Have you told them?” she asked finally.

  He paused.

  “Joe, this is important. Have you told them about the stag-headed man?”

  “They didn't believe me,” he whispered, keeping his voice low and trying not to move his lips, just in case someone passed the room and spotted him talking to himself. “They think I'm...”

  She waited for him to finish the sentence.

  “Mad?”

  He nodded.

  “Ill?”

  He nodded again.

  “Dangerous?”

  Another nod.

  “So he's still out there somewhere,” she replied, looking at the window. “The man who killed me is still free, and no-one's going to stop him. Not in this life, and not in the next. No-one cares.”

  “I care.”

  “Do you have any idea how much it hurt when he took my heart out?”

  “Please...”

  “I wasn't his first victim, either,” she continued, “but all the others stayed silent after they died. I'm lucky, I get to come back and warn you. More people are going to die if this monster isn't caught. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon, and there are people in this town who don't necessarily want things to be disturbed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don't know, do you?” She smiled. “You were always so innocent, Joe. You have no idea about the Border.”

  “But -”

  “It's out there,” she continued, still looking at the window even though all she could see was the reflection of the hospital room's bright lights. The night sky beyond was dulled. “I've been inside that place. I've been down there. The walls pulse and breathe, the people in there slither through blood. You can't see it, but there's a slit in the heart of this town, and everyone tells themselves that no blood is getting out of that slit, that the wound is too tight, but they're wrong. Sometimes it opens up and sometimes...” Finally, she turned back to him. “Sometimes people fall through, to the levels without doors.”