Page 45 of Pride
“Did you hear about the murder last night?” I asked him; thoughts of what I’d seen this morning seared into my brain like an unwanted, painful brand to my psyche.
He took a breath and didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “The Bell case? Yeah. I heard a bit about it. The chief of police is one of my closest friends, so I usually hear about that kind of stuff before it hits the news.”
“And what exactly did he tell you?”
“That he was found nailed to a wall with his insides hanging out. That there were no signs of forced entry, and nothing appears to have been stolen.”
“Apart from his life,” I replied and stopped myself from adding, ‘and his pride’. I didn’t want to disclose that I knew more about the case. “Nobody deserves to die like that.”
“You’d think,” he replied, saying it in such a way that made me think he didn’t mean it.
“The guy was butchered,” I stated. “Of course he didn’t deserve it.”
“No, he didn’t,” Alex reiterated. Then, after a beat, he added, “The people whose lives he destroyed didn’t deserve it either, though.”
“What are you talking about?” My heart started to pound a little faster in my chest as I waited for him to elaborate.
What the fuck did he mean by that?
“I don’t condone violence,” he said. “Really. I don’t. But that guy had a lot of enemies.”
“Why?”
Alex proceeded to fill me in on what he knew about Sirius Bell.
“He was the CEO of Hemford Pharmaceuticals. In case you don’t know, they were involved in a scandal a few years ago. They approved cancer drugs that shouldn’t have been approved, or rather, Bell signed off on what he knew was a dangerous drug to market. They forged their test results and sold a drug that killed a lot of cancer patients. A lot of kids, Emma. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, babies. Every death was unnecessary. He had blood on his hands. After he was found out, he dissolved the company, went to ground, then reappeared a few years later, running another company.”
“Rebulous?” I asked, stating the name of the company Mr Gold had told me about.
“That’s the one. And according to some people in the know, he’s been thieving from that company for years, or rather, from his staff. The pension pot they’ve all been paying into is non-existent.”
“That’s awful,” I replied. “But why wasn’t he arrested? Surely, if the police knew he’d forged documents, he’d have been held accountable? And as for stealing from his employees...”
“Because money talks,” he shot back. “It can get you out of a lot of trouble, if you know the right people to pay off.”
I didn’t doubt it for a second.
“You think he deserved it?” I asked and watched Alex closely as his jaw ticked, and he flexed his hands on the steering wheel.
“I didn’t say that. I just meant there’d be a long line of suspects for that case.”
I started to think about the scene the killer had left behind. The killer who’d taken the guy’s heart and left it in my living room to then steal it back when I dumped it in my bin outside. The killer who had cracked a man’s ribs open, slit his throat, sliced him from top to bottom, and nailed him to a wall.
And then it hit me.
How had he nailed him to a wall?
One man on his own would struggle to pick a guy of Bell’s size up and do that. Bell wasn’t a small guy. He had to have had help. He couldn’t do that alone.
S.K.A.M. had to have an accomplice.
Someone who worshipped him.
Who’d follow him blindly and assist in any way he could.
Somebody who thought he was untouchable... and justified in what he did.
I prayed to God that I wasn’t sitting next to that someone.
