Chapter 16
It was nearly three in the morning when Rane and Lamont closed the back door and crossed the little patch of grass that served as a lawn. Washing hung damp in the dew. They manoeuvred the climb with ease, the grease of a thousand palms smooth on stalwart branches along the way. A ledge hung like a petulant lower lip on the face of the cliff and they cautiously moved along it to the rear of their neighbour’s house. Dropping from the ledge they crawled through the weeds and waited by the tool shed. There was suggestion of life inside the house. A row of wooden steps led to the back door and through the tinted glass a noiseless moon was shining.
‘Try the door.’ whispered Lamont nervously.
Rane slowly turned the handle and waited. Lamont was breathless beside him. No response came from within the house. The door opened easily and they went in, on tiptoes toward the light at the end of the passage. Rane tapped Lamont on the shoulder and pointed to the kitchen on the right. They moved in, awkwardly, trying to find the cutlery. Rane pulled on a drawer and it creaked slightly as it edged from its stubborn cabinet. An assortment of table knives, forks, spoons and chop sticks lay in tidy compartments.
‘Rane!’
Lamont murmured softly with a different anxious vibration. Rane swung about and stepped lightly to where Lamont stood by the sink. A big snapper had been scaled and cut and the newspaper was soggy with blood. A large fish knife rested alongside. The blade was honed and the double-serrations on its upper edge were caked with meat, scales and blood.
‘God!’ Rane uttered with shocked discovery.
Lamont felt the chill of discovery. His predilection for revenge against the outrage upon his sister spurred him to lift the grisly weapon. It was heavy and it imbued him with wrath. Rane offered his hand and Lamont made a wry face as he gave the knife to his friend. They each took a deep breath and stalked their fate down the passage.
Maurice Murphy sat in front of the soundless beaming television as though he were baby-sitting a mute friend. His face was nondescript with hair cut short in a business-like style. Though he was far younger he looked every inch a man in his early forties and his waist had begun to thicken.
Rane grimaced at the sight of those enormous hands resting on the lap. The man’s fly was open and the material of his trousers around the groin was awash in a white gluey substance. Bloodstains covered his wrists and forearms.
They avoided the beer cans as they placed one foot after another onto the parquet floor and inched toward the man. He stank of fish. ‘He’s dead drunk!’ said Rane in a subdued tone as he lifted a floppy arm and immediately dropped it as blood stuck to his fingers. He stared closely at his fingers then said sharply, ‘Get some cord or something, Monty!’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Tie him.’ answered Rane. ‘Try him. Judge him. Sentence him.’
Lamont searched the house and returned with nylon fishing line. He saw that Rane had wrenched the man’s sock from the right foot and had jammed it into the gaping mouth. A tie formed a tourniquet around the head to keep the sock secure.
Maurice Murphy shuddered belligerently when he was awakened from his drunken sleep. The fog of alcohol had numbed his brain and he thought stupidly of getting to work on time. He began to choke as he tried to breathe through his mouth. He shook his head then abruptly stopped. Nylon cut deeply into his neck. His outstretched wrists and ankles were bound to the wicker chair in an attitude of a cheery grandfather welcoming his grandchildren into his embrace.
His eyes winced as he saw his erectile organ exposed between his thighs. At first he was afraid his captors had done something horrible to it, but then he remembered with relief that the bloodstains on his precious flesh were from the fish he used for gratification.
Suddenly he tasted the sock and he wretched. With nowhere to go the fetid vomit retreated down into his gullet, causing repeated vomiting. He heaved violently against his bonds and putrid slobber squirted out his nose. His trousers became damp as his colon squeezed itself of its contents.
‘The pig stinks!’ cried Lamont with revulsion.
Rane wagged the fish knife before the shrinking face of Maurice Murphy. ‘You remember my sister?’
The hopeless eyes blazed in their confusion. Strips of blood appeared where nylon cut into his flesh. Spaghetti-like discharge seeped from his nostrils and spumed into the folds of the sock in his mouth.
‘They say murder is the ultimate expression, sort of like the ultimate thrill.’ said Rane with another voice. He shuddered and looked again at the man who killed his sister.
Lamont stared at Rane and then at the knife. ‘Finish him, Rane.’ He nodded his head slowly with emphasis. ‘Yeah!’ as if he were reinforcing an earlier decision, ‘finish the cunt!’
Rane’s eyes stayed with Lamont’s for a while before he too nodded slowly his decision.
‘There pig! You heard the jury.’
The bounded neighbour rocked the wicker chair as his anal region expelled its excrement of fear. They looked from the ugly victim to the scene where Alan Bates is swinging a pram of sorts around his head while Janet Suzman was either crying or laughing. They did not know which. Rane went forward and switched it off. When the coarse silver flicker of the tube imploded, Rane swung the fish knife in an underhand arc. The blade and its serrations sank deeply into Maurice Murphy’s fly.
Maurice Murphy felt the thud against his body. Then he felt the jolt of the blade between his legs. Then he arched his body in a futile attempt to get away from the pain. The chair toppled back. He wriggled in agony as his restrained ankles struggled in the air. The wicker chair rocked from side to side as he tried to free his wrists from the arms of the chair.
‘He’s taking this lying down, mate.’ said Lamont and they sniggered nervously.
Maurice Murphy was thrashing his head and the cord was burying itself further into his flesh. His pain was a passage of steam through his loins, burning the flesh that had loved pleasure. Suddenly the pain changed direction and moved slowly up his body to his stomach. A squelch emitted now and then from the bubbling bright red mess as Rane sawed through the flesh. Maurice Murphy was being gutted by his own fish knife.
‘Aw for fuck’s sake, Rane, take it out!’
Lamont began to panic. He was sick and his vomit passed easily onto the floor. He stole a glance at the neighbour and shut his eyes. ‘He’s still alive!’
Maurice Murphy groaned dreadfully as the serrated blade tore its bloody way to the surface. His body was profuse with perspiration. Rane wiped the knife carefully down his victim’s face and with his other hand removed the sock from the man’s mouth. Looking at his neighbour for the final time he plunged the fish knife between the man’s teeth and thumped the hilt until the head of the man was held in crucifixion to the parquet floor.
Rane and Lamont left Maurice Murphy like that, a grim testament to revenge.
