The root of all evil
an excerpt

Bob the Builder died because he lived in the wrong house. A tiny old terraced house, one of four on the tiny old road, with no front garden and a door that opened straight onto the pavement. A sheer chalk cliff darkened the street and horseshoed round to form a cul-de-sac. His back garden sloped down to the bank of the river, and it was this picturesque feature that got him killed.
One night in January, a car sped along the main road on the far side of the river, skidded on the ice and plunged into the water. Police arrived in minutes, but they found no sign of the driver. They cordoned off the area, knocked on the doors of the houses and woke those residents who hadn’t heard the bang of metal on concrete water, but the driver had gone, along with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in used notes.
“Good luck to him,” said Bob the next morning. He hunched his shoulders against the cold and waited for his windscreen to thaw.
“Wish he’d dropped a few quid our way,” said Steve, the boy from next door. He poured a kettle full of water over his own screen and set the wipers going before the new water could freeze over the old.
“How was your Mum?” asked Bob. “Can’t have been easy for her, all the people milling around here last night.”
“She stayed in her room. I wouldn’t let the police go near her.”
“You’re a good lad,” said Bob and he drove away.

Late October. Bob pulled up outside his house, and climbed out of the van, his keys in one hand, a polystyrene wrapped kebab in the other. He kicked the van door shut and stopped as the car pulled up alongside him.
“Bob Preston?” asked the woman in the driver’s seat.
“Who wants to know?” asked Bob. Seconds later he was bundled into the back seat of the car, a Hessian sack over his head and his arms pinned under him.
“Bring his van,” said the woman, and his keys rattled. The car door slammed shut. Bob struggled. “Make him quiet,” said the woman and Bob knew no more.

* * *

Laurie stepped out of the car and smoothed her skirt down over her legs. She hooked her hair behind her ear, cocked her head slightly and grinned in the most girlish way she could. She could see Jim drooling.
“You’d better bring him,” she said and she walked towards the garage, swaying her hips for effect. At the garage, she bent at the waist, keeping her legs straight while she fiddled with the lock at the base of the door. A quick glance told her Jim was staring at her bottom. She smiled, satisfied and pulled the door upwards, then watched Jim tie Bob to the chair in the middle of the otherwise empty garage.
“Shouldn’t he have come round by now?” she asked.
Jim sniffed. “Depends. I did hit him.”
Laurie gritted her teeth. The man’s stupidity never ceased to amaze her. “You don’t know your own strength,” she told him, her voice deliberately even. “Let’s see if this wakes him up.” She reached in to her bag and pulled out a bottle of eau de cologne. “Pull the door closed.”
Jim did so. Laurie crouched at Bob’s feet and waved the pungent bottle under his nose. For long seconds, he didn’t respond and she looked at his chest, made sure he was still breathing. Then he coughed, stirred, moaned and opened his eyes.
“Hello, handsome,” she whispered.
Bob pulled against the ropes holding him to the chair. “What the hell is this? Let me go.”
She laughed softly. “You don’t mean that. Don’t you like a bit of bondage?” She pulled her skirt up and straddled his lap, put her hand between his legs and laughed again. “I think you do,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“Well, that depends. I mean, I could be the best wet dream you ever had. Or the most excruciating nightmare.” She unzipped his trousers and pushed her hand inside. The terror in his eyes did not stop his penis hardening under her fingers. “There,” she whispered. “That feels good, doesn’t it?”
She gritted her teeth and dug her nails into him. He jumped against his bonds and yelled his agony.
“Did that hurt?” she asked. “Funny. I didn’t feel it. Never mind. Maybe later, I’ll kiss it better. Or chop it off.”
“What do you want?”
“Where’s Glen?”
“Who’s Glen?” His question ended on another shout of pain as she dug her nails into him again.
“Glen Martin,” she said. “My husband. Idiot who drove into the river behind your house last winter.”
“I don’t know him,” said Bob.
“Come on. You don’t really expect me to believe that? You know him. Or you did. And I know you did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not the brightest spark in the fuse box are you? Flashing the cash like you have been?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been watching you. Last year, you were driving round in a dented old rust bucket held together with string and duct tape. You couldn’t pay your suppliers on time. Then in May, you get a brand new van, and you go up in the world? How’d you manage that, I wonder?”
“I got a bank loan.”
“Yeah. Right. And that’s what you told all your mates? I don’t think so. I heard you.” She mimicked Bob, showing off. “I’ve done a couple of big jobs. I’m in the big league now.”
“That was bull shit,” said Bob. “Impressing the birds, that’s all.”
Laurie glared at him.
“I wasn’t going to tell them it was all on tick, was I? Please, let me go.”
“Where is Glen?”
“I swear, I don’t know.”
She nodded. “You do like S and M, don’t you?” She stood up and reached for her bag. “These old fashioned hat pins are wonderful, you know. Got as many uses as a Swiss army knife.” She pulled out a long, sharp pin and held it in front of Bob’s face. “Glen,” she said.
“I don’t know him,” sobbed Bob. “Please. I don’t know him. Let me go. Please.”
Laurie knelt on the floor and traced the point of the pin across the soft skin of his scrotum. His sobs turned to screams.
“Glen,” she said again.
Three hours later, his agony ended.
Laurie looked down contemptuously at the pool of blood beneath the chair. “I hope someone’s going to clean that up,” she said. “Because I’m not.”
Jim stared at the dead man in the chair. “Did you mean to kill him?”
Laurie gave him a sidelong look.
“I thought you were only going to frighten him. Ask some questions, get the answers. He can’t tell us where Glen is now.”
Laurie closed her eyes and counted to ten, pushed patience into her voice. “He was never going to tell us where Glen was,” she said.
Jim nodded. “He was a brave man,” he decided. “If you threatened to push a hat pin into my balls, I’d tell you everything you wanted to know.”
So would he have done, thought Laurie. “He didn’t come across as brave to me,” she said. “Way he begged for his life there.”
“Yeah,” said Jim.
She sighed, heavily. “Well, it narrows the search, anyway,” she said.
She thought about the four houses that backed onto the river. One had been empty at the time of Glen’s crash. The police had searched it thoroughly, and satisfied themselves he had never been there. One belonged to a lady in her nineties. Almost blind, deaf and walking with the help of a zimmer frame, Laurie doubted she even knew about the crash, let alone helped the stricken driver. Which left only one person to ask.
“The woman in number two,” she said. “We can ask her tomorrow.”
Jim nodded. “What are we going to do with him, though?”
“Put him in his van. Drive him out of town, crash it into a tree or something and make sure it goes up in flames. I want a burnt out shell and a dental records job. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” said Jim.
Laurie looked down at the garage floor. “Clean up that blood first,” she said.