Chapter 33
Heathcliff
Icrouch behind the Poetry shelf as Mina faces off against that weasel Darren across my desk. He waves, but it’s not a friendly wave. “Hi, Mina.”
I knew it. I knew that slimy toenail clipping was up to something.
All the clues slot into place. How he’d mentioned in the supermarket to Mina that he’d been following Ashley on social media.
How he lives over the butcher shop and could’ve seen any comings and goings, and made it in and out without passing Earl on the corner.
How Earl found two beer cans in the bushes outside the shop.
Not just any beer – expensive American IPA.
Mina quickly shoves the drawing under the stack of books. She doesn’t look afraid, only annoyed. She doesn’t think he’s the killer.
“Hi, Darren. I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. The shop’s actually closed. I’m just doing some accounts and I want to finish up.”
I glare at Quoth, the only one who can give her the message without revealing our hiding places. His thoughts come through, loud and panicked.
I’m trying to tell her! I think that she can’t hear me when she’s distracted.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Darren says.
She sighs. “Who did you expect to see?”
“Ashley, of course.”
“Um… why would Ashley be in the bookshop?” Her nervous tone betrays her confusion.
I’m a ball of rage, my hands curling into fists, ready to crash in and save Mina.
It will satisfy me immensely to crack his spine like a copy of Ulysses and make a tasselled bookmark from his spleen.
Morrie’s hand on my thigh isn’t helping, nor is Quoth whispering inside my head. Wait, wait… we need that confession.
“This is the last place I saw her,” Darren shifts his weight to his other foot. “I thought… I thought I’d lost her forever, but when I got her message, I realised that she wasn’t really dead, so I came to see her. I came to see if she’d accept my offer.”
Keep him talking, Quoth urges Mina. She must be able to hear him now. Get him to confess everything.
“What offer was that, Darren?” Mina asks, her voice steady, her gaze not once flicking in our direction.
“I asked her to marry me. I saved all my money from working at the market, every single penny. That was how I could afford to buy those drawings. I bought some ugly knives from eBay, just because she was selling them.”
That explains the murder weapon. “But why? If you loved her so much, why did you kill her?”
“When Ashley went to New York, she took the sun and the moon with her. I couldn’t bear to be parted from her, but at least I got to see what she was doing on social media. All those famous people loved her! Of course they did, she’s amazing.”
Darren steps forward, moving closer to the desk. He could reach out and touch Mina. I don’t like that. I surge forward, but Morrie clamps a hand over my arm, holding me back. In the pale moonlight, I can just make out the planes of his face, his features unusually grave. He’s afraid for Mina, too.
We’re going to get him so he never hurts her or any other woman, ever again.
“She sent me messages,” Darren says casually.
“She needed money to promote her social media. She wanted to earn enough to get professional modelling photographs done so she could go to LA and become a movie star. She was going to be the biggest star in the world! But it would be hard, financially, while she built her new career. I decided to show her I could provide for us both. So I purchased her drawings. I bid out all the fashionable people who wanted them. She told me to get a temporary job as a server at the gala, so I spent my savings on a ticket. It was worth it to see her in person again. She told me to use a burner phone so no one could trace the exchange back to me, but I printed out all her messages. No way would I destroy any of her precious words. Once, she sent me a love heart emoji, because she felt the same way.”
Mina nods and nods. She’s trying to keep him talking, but I can tell she’s afraid because she looks like one of those bobble-headed dolls. “Yes. She did have feelings for you.”
Obviously not true, but Mina’s being clever. She’s far too much like Morrie for her own good. For once, I’m grateful for it.
“I knew it,” Darren moans, bringing his left hand up to wipe the tears welling in his eyes.
His right hand remains behind his back, clutching the knife.
“I knew she loved me. She’s always paid special attention to me, always asking me to help her with her computer or finish her homework. She needed me. She trusted me. She—”
“Darren, tell me about the night at the gala. What happened next?”
“Oh yes.” Darren glances up, losing himself in the memory.
“I met Ashley at the service entrance, after I’d served the starter course.
Ashley couldn’t stay long because she had to get back to you.
I hated you that night, Mina, because you got to be with her, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d be the one taking her to fancy galas.
I gave Ashley the cash, and she handed me the pictures, kissed me on the cheek—” he rubs a pimply spot on his face, his eyes rolling toward the ceiling.
“I was so happy to see her and to have her trust, I just threw down my apron and ran out of there. I even dropped one of the drawings on the steps outside. Can you imagine my face?” He grins happily.
“It was all worth it, just to see her. It was our first real date.”
“What did you do with the drawings?” Mina asks.
“Oh, I keep them pressed in an album under my bed,” he says. “They remind me of Ashley, and she wanted me to have them. I’d never dream of selling them.”
“You lied to me in the market. Ashley contacted you again when she decided to come back to Argleton.”
Surely this is enough? I glower into the darkness where Quoth is hiding.
Let him get the full story out. He’s a villain. They love a soliloquy.
“It was the best day of my life when I got that text,” Darren grins.
“She didn’t give me much time, so I planned as best I could.
I found a beautiful ring in Debenhams. Luckily, they were having a sale, so I could buy a new shirt, as well.
I had a bottle of American IPA imported especially to celebrate.
But she didn’t want to see me in person.
She thought it was too dangerous, so she made me put the money in a book, and then she came back for the book and left the drawings.
But I didn’t care about the drawings. I cared about her.
I waited outside the bookshop for her when she dropped them off, but she didn’t come out, and I had to go back to work.
She didn’t respond to my message about meeting up.
I get it, I mean, she’s so busy and important. But I needed to see her—”
A dark shape moves silently past the window. What’s that? It can’t be the cops already. They’re all distracted by Lancelot. If they come in here now, they’ll arrest Mina for escaping, and Darren will go free.
But luckily, whatever the shape is, it moves quickly onward. I don’t hear the shop bell tinkle.
“—I thought I’d missed my chance, but when I saw her go into the bookshop through my window that night, I knew it was the perfect opportunity.
I found her by the bookcase. I went down on one knee and told her how much I loved her.
” Darren’s mouth twitches. “She pushed me away. She told me to stop being silly, to get out, that she had to talk to you. That she had come to see you. She didn’t care about me. It was Mina, Mina, Mina.”
Darren’s cheeks redden. His jaw clenches.
My muscles twitch from the strain of holding back my desire to turn his kneecaps into whisky glasses.
“You ruined everything! You took Ashley away from me and turned her against me. She was tainted by you now, spoiled. She couldn’t be my wife, and it was all your fault! ”
“So you killed her.”
“No, you killed her,” Darren whispers. “You killed her because you wouldn’t let her go. You took my Ashley away from me. She went to New York with you and she didn’t love me anymore, and then you broke her heart so she couldn’t love me.”
“No, that’s—”
“You hurt Ashley.” Darren whips his hand from behind his back, raising the knife. He stares down at Mina, his face twisted with hatred. “And now I’m going to hurt you.”
Oh no, you’re not.
Quoth yells now in my head, but I’m already moving, launching myself heroically from behind the Poetry shelf with all the grace of a collapsing wardrobe as Darren lunges across the desk, the knife aimed for Mina’s throat—
“YOU ABSOLUTE WANK—argh!”
My foot catches on the stack of Dan Brown books that no one had thrown out yet.
The floor arrives with an enthusiasm I do not approve of. Blood gushes from my nose. I gasp for air, stunned. What happened?
What happened is that Darren hasn’t even noticed I’m there.
This is not the heroic rescue I’d envisioned.
I’m lost, briefly, in a memory – I’m overhearing Cathy telling Nelly Dean that she can’t marry me, that it would degrade her.
How she’d stomped me down into the dirt where she thought I belonged, and now I’m back there again, only this time, the woman I cared for had never made me believe I didn’t deserve her, and if I don’t get to her now, she’s going to be dead.
Darren lunges over the desk, his knife aiming for Mina’s throat.
Mina kicks off her chair, slamming her back against the wall just as Darren buries his blade into the wooden desk.
Mina wobbles, woozy from hitting her head when she slammed into the wall.
I’m trying to untangle my limbs as Darren jerks on the blade.
It’s stuck fast. Instead, he picks up the Doomsday Book and advances on Mina.
“Crooooak!” Quoth dive-bombs him, pecking at his face, digging his talons into his shoulders. Darren flings the book at Quoth, who dodges the blow. Morrie plucks the book from the air and tosses it to me, and I round on Darren just as—
—something shiny slams into him.
Darren goes down as Peaches pins him with a hoof, while Lancelot threatens him with the tip of his sword. The knight gleams like he’s just leapt from an illuminated manuscript. “Fear not!” he booms.
“No, definitely fear, fear is appropriate,” Morrie says.
“You rake! You scoundrel! You dare raise a weapon to fair Mina?” Lancelot booms while tears stream down Darren’s face. And part of me is relieved that Darren is under control, while another not inconsiderable part of me is annoyed that Lancelot has shown up to take our glory.
We’re supposed to protect Mina.
This was to be my redemption. And now he’s ruined it.
Mina’s passed out, Quoth says. I think she hit her head on the wall. I’m trying to rouse her.
Lancelot turns his gaze to her, and then to me. “Brave Sir Heathcliff, I have come between you and your love for too long. I only wished to serve, and you and Sir Moriarty and Sir the Raven have been so good to help me on my quest. I can do you this one small favour in return.”
He tugs on the horse’s reins, and the animal removes his hoof from Darren’s chest. It leaves behind a horseshoe-shaped dent. Darren groans.
Lancelot sheaths his sword. “He is all yours, Sir Heathcliff of the Bookshop. The glory of this victory shall be all thine.”
He’s… he’s leaving?
Lancelot, who always has to be the centre of attention, is letting us have this one?
“Where will you go?” Morrie asks.
“Wherever my sword is needed, or a fair maiden is in trouble. Adieu, brave knights. I hope we shall meet again.”
And, with a dramatic CLANG of his helmet against the chandelier as he misjudges the height of the ceiling, Lancelot and Peaches prance away.
What the fuck just happened?
From behind the desk, Mina groans.
“Quick.” Morrie shoves me towards Darren’s prone body. “Make it look like you’re the one who restrained him.”
“With pleasure.” I sit on Darren’s chest, pinning him with my knees and hiding the hoofprint, and slam my fist into his nose. He cries out as blood spurts over his face. My knuckles sting, and it hurts so good.
“No!” a voice behind me yells. Mina. She’s awake. She’s safe.
No thanks to this bastard.
I punch Darren again. And again.
“Easy, big guy.” It takes all of Morrie’s strength to haul me off Darren. “We’ll let the police handle him.”
I’m about to yell that the police are useless, that I have a much better punishment in mind and it involves stringing Darren’s intestines from the chandelier like party streamers and playing pinata, when the shop door bursts open and in rolls Inspector Hayes and Sergeant Wilson, flanked by two uniformed officers, and Jo.