Running Stupid: (Mystery Series) Page 7

  “Well … Yes.”

  “It’s hard for people to understand, and I understand that.” He looked up from the cards, right into Jester’s eyes. “Everybody wants what they haven’t got. For example,” he started. “Everybody wants to be rich when they grow up, right?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Everybody wants all the luxuries that money can provide. But,” he tapped the deck of cards on the table to emphasise his words. “In striving to achieve wealth, they miss out on all the things that life has given them. Things that money can’t buy: love, family, happiness.”

  “That much I understand,” Jester said.

  “Right,” James explained, “now switch scenarios. I grew up rich. I didn’t have all the simple luxuries that everyone takes for granted. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t loved, and my family was too interested in money to show me any attention. I grew up dreaming to be like other people; when the rest of the world dreamt of a high-life full of money, champagne truffles and nonstop parties, I dreamt of a simple family life.”

  “But dreams never turn out the way you expect them,” Matthew noted. “For the people wanting riches, they get their riches but they lose love, happiness and family. No one gets what they want. How did you know this path was the right path?”

  “I didn’t. I just took a chance.” James smiled and began to deal the cards. “Life is all about luck, young Matthew. I got lucky.” He finished dealing the cards and then faced Matthew. “What about you? How’s your life?” he said with a smile.

  “Ha!” Matthew laughed exaggeratedly. “Put it this way,” he paused. “Have you ever seen The Twilight Zone?”

  “I watched the occasional episode as a child.”

  “Well, that’s the way my life is going at the moment.”

  “Everyone has their problems, son,” James said sympathetically.

  “Some bigger than others.”

  James studied Matthew momentarily. “If there is something you wish to discuss, I have a perfectly good shoulder to cry on.”

  Matthew laughed softly. “It’s okay,” he said blandly. “I’m sure everything will turn out all right. Things have a way of sorting themselves out. What goes around comes around, right?”

  James merely shrugged his shoulders.

  Jester sighed, tapped his cards on the table, and then spread them in front of his face. He was in for another loss.

  ***

  They ate tea after a half an hour of playing cards. Matthew found himself sitting down to a feast of freshly baked, home-cooked delights. Due to the arrival of the unexpected guest, Mary had cooked up a pot of her ‘special’ soup, ladling litres of the vegetable broth into Matthew’s bowl. Every time he finished the bowl, he was brought a refill from the pan, which sat on a simmering heat in the kitchen.

  He ate almost half a loaf of bread with his soup, as well as two portions of cherry pie. An intense hunger had gripped him hard as soon as he sat to eat. Before that, he’d been sure he could plod along for days without food.

  After eating, Mary and James cleared the table – refusing Matthew’s help, insisting that he was the guest and it was their job to look after him. They draped a wool cloth over the table top and then laid out four place mats; one for each diner and one for the centre of the table.

  Leaving James and Matthew to their topical banter, Mary returned ten minutes later, cradling a large tray. She rested the tray on the table and slowly began removing its contents.

  On each mat, in front of each person, she placed a cup, a saucer, and a silver spoon. In the middle of the table she put a large teapot, steaming with hot black tea; a tray of assorted biscuits, rich tea, digestives, bourbons, custard creams; a small jug of milk and a cup of sugar cubes. After returning the empty tray to the kitchen, she sat down to join her husband and their guest.

  “Thanks a lot,” Matthew said. “The dinner was wonderful,” he said, filling his cup with tea, milk, and, to the surprise of his hosts, four sugar cubes. “You’ve been really nice. You don’t meet many people like you anymore. I thought society had completely sucked the kindness out of the world, but,” he looked at the pair and smiled. “I guess not,” he finished.

  “We like to please our guests,” Mary said gently.

  “I thought you said you didn’t get many guests?”

  James shot an awkward glance his wife’s way. She stumbled on her words before answering, “We don’t. But like I said, we have our nephews and nieces. They come often.”

  Matthew smiled and took a small sip of tea. “Have they been recently?” he queried.

  “Not for a few years,” Mary quickly answered, but her words were overlapped by those of her husband’s.

  “Not recently,” he said, his voice raised. He frowned, his features twitched, and then he said, “Like Mary said, not for a few days.”

  Matthew looked up to see the married couple smiling at him. Their eyes almost transfixed on him. “Uh-huh,” he nodded slowly, feeling ill-at-ease all of a sudden. “You know, it’s getting late. Maybe I should get going.”

  “But you haven’t finished your tea,” Mary said, her voice as warm as ever.

  “I know, but,” Matthew paused. James had stood and was walking out of the room, heading in the direction of the front door. Matthew arched his neck, trying to see what he was doing whilst still speaking to Mary. “If I don’t leave now, you’ll never get rid of me,” he joked.

  Mary smiled, and for a moment her eyes locked with Matthew’s. There was something deep inside those hazel orbs that didn’t seem right. Jester shrugged it off and stood, still facing her. “Thank you so much for the food, and the arm thing,” he stopped smiling and stopped speaking. Mary was sitting with her head resting in her hands, and the posture made her look completely innocent. But Matthew saw that she wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze fell over his shoulder, behind him.

  He felt a warm breath on his neck. It rushed through the small prickly hairs which all stood on end. Before he could turn around, something hard clipped the back of his head with skilful and deadly precision. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  11

  When he woke, he woke to needles in his brain. Tiny men inside his head were giving him acupuncture. His head throbbed violently, the pain orchestrated from a spot at the back of his skull. He opened his eyes slowly and painfully. Strips of light slid into his vision, burning his pupils and sending searing pain through his brain.

  “What the …” he mumbled.

  “Good morning!” the voice was bright, alert, and friendly.

  Matthew Jester turned to the source of the voice. “James,” he croaked, slumping his head to one side. “What the hell is going–” he paused, studying the appearance of the middle class farmer. “What are you wearing?” Matthew asked cautiously.

  James smiled and he walked closer to Matthew. He suddenly felt an urge to move his body, burst into life. He was seated on a simple wooden chair, his hands tied behind his back, and with a rough, sturdy rope tying his ankles together.

  “Wiggly wiggly worm,” James said playfully. “If you wiggle too much, the birds will see you.”

  Matthew continued to struggle, shifting his hands and feet erratically, trying to break free of his restraints.

  “Mary, dear,” James shouted, ignoring Jester’s efforts to break the ropes and free himself from the chair. “Our guest is awake,” he directed his voice away from Matthew, past a flight of stairs and towards an open door at the top.

  Matthew could see they were in the basement. He knew that the open door led to the passageway, right next to the kitchen. “What’s going on?” he demanded to know.

  James smiled. “We’re just going to play a few games. The sooner you stop wiggling, the sooner we can start.”

  Jester threw his body at the ropes again. His wrists and ankles were grazed and bleeding; blood trickled down his wrists and onto his hands, making a line for his middle finger which steadily leaked droplets of blood onto the floor below.

>   “Please stop,” James said quietly.

  Jester sneered at the man and continued to thrash about.

  “Stop,” James said, his tone sterner.

  “Let me fucking go!” Matthew bellowed.

  “Can you please–”

  “Just let me fucking go!”

  “Stop your fucking wiggling!” a hard backhand slapped across Matthew’s face, and his head snapped to one side.

  Matthew sneered and spat a glob of blood at the feet of his captor. James smiled back.

  Soon, Mary, the ever clean well-presented housewife, descended the stairs to the basement and stood beside her husband. They looked at Matthew through awe-struck eyes.

  Matthew Jester stared back. Both of them had changed their clothes. They both wore surgical gloves, masks, and hair nets. Covering James’s body was a pair of well-worn overalls. He’d turned from lumberjack into a painter, but Matthew was confident that the red marks on the overalls were not paint. He quivered at the thought and turned to Mary. She had taken her craziness seriously, because aside from her surgical head and hand gear, she wore a long green surgeon’s robe. It was immaculately clean, and even bore a name tag, with the name Mary Whittall inscribed in bold letters.

  “So,” Matthew said tiredly and after much deliberation and silence. “Anyone up for a game of cards?”

  ***

  “Why are you doing this?” Matthew wondered. The couple had been standing in front of him staring for the last five minutes. They spoke only to each other, conferring in whispers that Matthew couldn’t hear.

  They remained standing, smiling silently.

  “Tell me,” Jester demanded. “What did I do wrong?”

  Mary took a step forward. “You were stealing apples, you naughty little boy,” she spoke to him like a headmistress would to a pupil.

  “I was lying,” Matthew stressed. “I wasn’t really stealing apples.”

  “You lied to me?” Mary questioned, seemingly offended.

  “I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Matthew said and kicked at the restraints in anger. “Because…I don’t know,” he conceded.

  Mary nodded. “A liar and a thief,” she confirmed.

  “What?” Matthew snapped. “How can I be both? Work it out. If I stole apples, I was telling the truth, and if I didn’t then I was lying, but ... I didn’t steal anything so I’m not a thief.” Matthew lolled his head over to the one side. “I think,” he spat, his head throbbing.

  “A thief and a liar,” James confirmed.

  Matthew slammed his head forward in frustration. “Were you even listening?”

  “Honest people with honest lives, honest jobs, and honest families grow them apples,” James explained.

  “Bollocks,” Matthew spat. “Some fucker plants the seeds and then nature does the rest.”

  “The only thing worse than a dishonest person is a dishonest person who steals from an honest person,” James explained, choosing not to pay heed to Jester’s words.

  “What? Fucking hell, you’re giving my bollocks a headache, you are. What has gotten into you?”

  “I am a simple farmer.”

  “Simple, yeah, that bit I understand.” Jester spat more blood, watching it splatter on the floor. “Let me go,” he said softly.

  “You broke the law and you need to be punished.”

  “Look,” Jester said tiredly. “If this is about the court case and CNN and all of that shit, then I’m sorry. I didn’t actually say those words. They edited me, cut me, made me out to be the bad guy. I’m not–” he paused when he looked at his two captors: they were completely unresponsive.

  “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  They shook their heads simultaneously, smiling eerily as they did so.

  “Okay,” Matthew said, defeated. “So you’re just … crazy?” he evaluated, nodding to himself. “Well, I’m pretty much fucked, aren’t I?”

  He looked at the two smiling faces, not expecting a response of any sort, but to his surprise and worry, they both nodded. Jester thrashed against his restraints. He thrashed until the rope re-sliced his flesh and then began to cut through open wounds. Mary looked at her husband, smiled, and then departed, scurrying up the stairs and into the house as Matthew continued to fight.

  “I’ve asked you more than once to stop wiggling,” James Whittall said calmly.

  “I’ve asked you more than once to let me go,” Jester spat.

  “Please stop,” James said calmly.

  “No!” Jester bellowed.

  “What do you expect to happen?” James quizzed. “If you break free right now, what do you think will happen?” He looked at Jester, who had stopped moving. From inside a kangaroo pouch on his overalls, James produced a large machete. “Do you think you could just run past me?” he asked.

  Matthew looked at the knife. “Em...” he mumbled unsurely.

  “That’s better,” James declared with a smile on his face. He turned to see his wife walk back into the basement, her steps slow and purposeful. She was holding something in her hand with great care.

  When she descended the stairs, Matthew practically choked on his own saliva when he realised that the object she held was a large syringe. She smiled a merry, psychotic grin at Matthew.

  “This is just to relax you down a bit,” she informed him.

  Matthew squirmed as she grew near. “Get that fucking thing away from me!”

  “Now, now,” James said from his wife’s side. “My wife knows what she is doing. Please let her do her job.”

  “What! You’re fucking crazy!” Jester shouted.

  “This will help with your anger, as well,” Mary said, smiling. She inched closer to Matthew, waiting for her husband to join her by her side.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Matthew begged as James wrapped his arms tightly around him, pinning him to the chair.

  “This is for your own good.”

  Mary plunged the needle into his arm, pushing the clear fluid into his veins. When she finished, she smiled at him, removed the needle, and took a step back.

  “What did you give me?” Matthew asked, turning to James Whittall.

  “A small sedative,” James said blankly. “It will stop you squirming and make our job a lot easier.”

  “What do you mean, your job?” Jester said, looking worried. “What exactly is your job?”

  James smiled. “Well ... it’s more of a hobby, really.”

  Matthew studied the strong features of the man in front of him as the sedative began to take effect, caressing its way through his body. James Whittall stood tall and proud with a broad smile on his face, a smile that suggested happiness, contentment, growing excitement, and pure idiocy, but Matthew knew the man wasn’t an idiot: he’d spoken to him. He was clean, well-spoken, and rational.

  The full effects of the sedative floated through Jester’s mind. His head began to feel heavy, his limbs relaxed to a comatose state, and his eyes struggled to remain open.

  “That was quick,” Matthew heard James Whittall say, his voice distant but clear.

  “I gave him a strong dose,” Mary Whittall said, entering the room again.

  “How strong?” James queried.

  “Thirty,” Mary explained.

  12

  Jester poked around in the silence of his mind. The next thing he heard was James’s voice. “Free him,” he said sternly. “He’s out like a light. He won’t be waking up for some time.” Matthew noticed a change in his tone, his excitement growing. “Free him and we can enjoy the games all the more.”

  Moments later, Matthew felt hands on his arm. Fingers traced across his skin, drawing an invisible line along his forearm and down his wrist before stroking the wounds caused by the rope. When the fingers finished playing in the blood, they were removed. He heard a sucking sound as Mary licked the blood from her fingers.

  Despite the pain in his wrists – made worse by the probing finger –
Jester didn’t squirm. He didn’t move at all, keeping his eyes firmly closed and his breath slow and steady.

  Soon the same hand that had enjoyed his wounds freed him from his restraints. The rope was cut by the large machete brandished earlier, and the frayed rope fell to the floor. Jester allowed his arms to dangle, hinting that he had no control over his limbs. The large knife then sliced through the rope around his ankles, the sharp blade nicking Matthew’s soft flesh. He jerked instinctively, murmured something incoherent, realised his mistake, and then returned to his comatose state.