Blood Men: A Thriller

LISTEN TO THE VOICE. SHANE KINGSLY. 23 STONEVIEW ROAD.

I drive home, but the only voice speaking comes from the radio. The news comes on but the announcer ignores the bank robbery and doesn’t mention anything about the men being caught. I end up pulling in behind another slow-moving truck so I take a different way home, getting caught instead at a set of roadworks where the street has been ripped up and there’s dust and dirt in the air. There are exposed pipes and wiring and machinery but nobody around, the workers off for the Christmas break, the roadworks now in limbo until sometime next month. Tiny bits of gravel shoot out from beneath the tires of the car ahead of me, hitting the windscreen but not chipping it. My cell phone rings. I recognize the number.

“You went to visit your dad again,” Schroder says. “Want to tell me why?”

“He’s my dad. I don’t need a reason other than that. And I certainly don’t need to give a reason to you.”

“You sound different, Edward.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You sound like you’ve been thinking about things, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the kind of things you’ve been thinking.”

Somehow I think Schroder is the kind of guy who might like what I was thinking—problem is I can’t share with him. “Are you ringing to tell me you’ve caught the men who killed my wife?”

“We’re working on it.”

“I thought so. So why are you calling, other than to bust my balls for visiting my dad?”

“To remind you not to get any bad ideas.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I think you do. I think you’re so lost right now you’re turning to your father for advice, and trust me, he’s the last person you want to be turning to.”

“I keep thinking if you spent less time worrying about my life, you’d spend more time on catching the people who ruined it.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Edward.”

“To who? Nobody knows who I could do anything stupid to anyway!” I say, and I hang up. He doesn’t call back.

Back home I sit at the dinner table and smooth the piece of paper out, pressing it flat against the wood, pushing my fingertips and palms onto it as if ironing out the wrinkles. My house is still empty. No shadows, no presence, my wife even less here today than she was yesterday. I have a name and an address and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Not once did I even think of giving that information to Schroder when I was on the phone, and weighing it up now I’m glad I didn’t. It wasn’t Schroder’s wife who got killed. Does that mean I’m listening to the voice?

I listen for it now. There’s nothing.

I can’t go through what I went through last night. Can’t drive to this man’s house and . . . and what?

Let me help you.

And there it is.

“No,” I say, and the word sounds empty in my empty home.

We can do this.

“No.”

Then let me do this for you.

I go online and search for Shane Kingsly. He shows up pretty quick, he’s made the news on and off his entire life. Nothing big—not in the taking-a-life way of being big. He’s done plenty of shitty things. Plenty of theft convictions. He has some assault charges, and a couple of drug possession charges. Not all the statistics are here to tell me how many years he’s spent in jail on and off. His last sentence was for two years after he held up a service station with a shotgun. It doesn’t say when he was released from jail, but it must have been early for being a model prisoner—which I guess is easy to do when there aren’t any service stations or shotguns in prison. This man was one of the six, but he wasn’t the one who planned it. Is this the man that killed Jodie? He may well be.

When the phone rings it’s my father-in-law.

“When are you coming to pick Sam up?” he asks. “She misses you.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying. I’m on automatic now. “I’ve been busy. I’ve been at the police station all morning.”

“Do they have . . . any news?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you okay, Edward? You sound weird.”

“I’m fine. Can I talk to Sam?”

“Sure. Hang on a second.”

“Daddy?”

“Hello, honey. Daddy-Nat and Gramma taking good care of you?”

“We’ve been putting up a Christmas tree,” she says. “They let me help. It was so cool. Will Santa bring something for Mummy this year?”

I sit down, my legs weak. I suddenly realize that I have no idea where our cat is. I can’t even remember the last time I saw him, and I’m not even sure if I’ve been feeding him or if he’s even still alive. Jesus—the monster didn’t get him when I was drunk, did it?

“Daddy?”

“Not this year, honey. I’m going to come and see you, okay? Tell Daddy-Nat and Gramma that I’m on my way.”