Bloody Mary Read online

  BLOODY

  MARY

  Ricki Thomas

  A Wild Wolf Publication

  Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2011

  Copyright © 2011 Ricki Thomas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First print

  All Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  E-Book Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-907954-17-7 (paperback)

  www.wildwolfpublishing.com

  Also from this author

  Hope's Vengeance

  Unlikely Killer

  I dedicate this book to Dave, to honour a lovely man. And also to my Mum, my brother Alan and his wife, Bek. And, as always, to my children. Thank you to everybody who buys this book.

  Preface

  I watched them all. My nearest and dearest, forever loved, and never forgotten. I watched as their bodies, one by one, were fed through the curtains ready for the heat of the incinerator. Except for the one lonesome body, who had escaped the blood-thirsty day, and, not unreasonably, wished she hadn’t. Because now she was alone in the world, too scarred to hope or believe; too scared to love or trust again.

  I wanted so badly to hold her, hug her close and tell her it would be alright, but I knew that would just be feeding her false hope, and that wasn’t my way. So I continued to watch her drown in her sorrow, vilify her body as punishment for things which weren’t her fault, and, ultimately, lose the final chance of joy she had left to her.

  When I began my plot of vengeance a year and a half earlier, it was never meant to end this way…

  Chapter 1

  The History of Revenge

  Manipulation. That’s what I was good at. Manipulating peoples’ minds, more specifically. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bad person, it’s just when you’ve had the two people most precious to you cruelly taken away, through no choice of your own, it leaves a lifelong and overwhelming hatred towards the world. Towards the people surrounding you, the bustling public, people you thought to be friends who turn out to be purely acquaintances with a need to gossip about you viciously when your head is turned. And the most vitriolic revulsion to those you once loved, but had made that choice to take your precious gifts, your first borne. My twins.

  After that, nothing is forgivable. Nothing. So I decided I was going to achieve what I wanted throughout life, and if that meant messing with peoples minds, carefully controlling them until they did what I wanted them to do, be it money gain, marriage, or murder, then so be it.

  When I first set eyes on Harry, I was instantly in love. He was a gentle man, yet suave, sophisticated, and the best part of all was how he exuberated intelligence in such an unassuming manner. I was visiting Birmingham University on a rare open day, with a view to studying there, when his striking looks and easy manner struck me. Mesmerised, I walked over to him for a chat. A lecturer in criminology, not that it was the course I was interested in, he was a lot older than me, which made him more of a temptation, and less of a challenge. Or so I thought.

  I wanted him, but when I locked eyes with him flirtatiously and made the suggestion, it seemed he didn’t want me, said he was married with a family, but I wasn’t going to let that deter me. Instead, I just took a more subtle approach, following him to find where his social haunts were, appearing in places ‘coincidentally’, using my young, even childish feminine charms to tempt him to stray. And when I finally found him at a restaurant with his wife, I knew I’d win the game if I persisted for long enough.

  She was plain, Beryl. Nervous, fidgeting with her greying hair, her fingernails, stuttering her words in her lack of confidence, her whole demeanour tiny, even pitiful, and I instantly despised her because she had what I wanted. But in contrast I was young, my petite figure athletic and pert, my mane of black hair glossy and flowing. And I knew that my striking blue eyes twinkled with cheekiness like the blinking stars at night. She was no competition.

  The day after I knew I was going to succeed in winning the battle, I turned up at his office, knowing from our last conversation that he would be working late. I’ve never been a follower of fashion, far too individual for that, but, think about it from my point of view, why would you not wear tiny hot-pants if you were determined to win a man. For the first half an hour I left my long coat on, sitting beside Harry, discreetly inching towards him, twirling my hair through my fingers, batting my eyes innocently as he unassumingly answered the question I’d asked him for help with.

  It was when he stood and turned his back, preparing a glass of juice for each of us from the tray on the filing cabinet, that I went in for the kill. Standing, I dropped my coat to reveal my lean legs beneath the tiny denim shorts, and as he turned, I stretched my arms up seductively, feigning a yawn. His deep brown eyes, glistening in the low light of the desk lamp, nearly popped out, and he began to falter, his words tripping over themselves as he tried to look away, anywhere else but at the body I knew he’d soon be taking. I sidled up to him provocatively, softly stroking his fingers, and his stuttering silenced. I knew he finally wanted me. And he had me.

  The trouble was that my wiles only worked that one time, his rejection of me after that single perfect evening was devastating. If I ‘accidentally’ saw him in the places he socialised in he would disappear, if I came to his office his secretary would make his excuses, and after a few weeks I had no choice but to accept that our first night of lovemaking was also to be the last.

  It was two months later, Christmas had been and gone, taking the New Year with it, that my mother began to become concerned. ‘You’re not eating enough’ she would state, ‘you’re not working hard enough for your exams’, or ‘you need more sleep’. And when my eyes, frequently tearful from the pain of losing my first love, became sunken and hollow, her worry increased. ‘What’s made you like this, Mary? Why are you so sad, so unhappy?’ And finally ‘If this carries on I’m going to have to take you to the doctor’.

  Then something dawned on me, and the smile returned to my eyes. The classic symptoms, the expanding waistline, the unexplainable ‘knowing’ feeling emanating from within me, I realised with glee that I would never lose my Harry after all. I had him inside me, a part of him that would never spurn me the way he had. I was carrying his child.

  It goes without saying that I hid my pregnancy for as long as possible, it was nineteen eighty and unmarried mothers were frowned upon. And if you add the fact that my parents were devout Catholics, perhaps you can understand my need for deceit. But mother realised when I was seven months gone, and the vitriol she and my father spat at me was frightening. Before I knew it I was sent away to a distant aunt I’d never even met, and hidden indoors while the bump I was so proud of, so full of love for, grew to bursting.

  The pains started, and my aunt calmly drove me to what I believed was a hospital. I was wrong. It was a home run by the church. During the first couple of days after the birth of Anna and Andrew, as I proudly named them, I cherished their sweet faces, tiny hands and feet, marvelling with wonder when I cradled them in my arms. The members of staff were uncaring and abrupt, but that didn’t hinder the unbelievable love and protectiveness I felt towards my babies. I knew motherhood would be hard work, but I would have done anything for them.

  Then the fateful, and totally unexpected, day came. It all seemed so normal to begin with, the nurses taking my babies to the nursery for a sleep. But I never saw them again. My parents had signed the adoption papers without even giving me a
chance to prove myself as a mother. And by law they had every right to: I was fifteen years of age.

  When I was discharged back to my aunt’s care, my father soon pulled up in his Vauxhall Viva and we travelled back to our home in Birmingham in silence. I had already decided that I was going to visit Harry at the university and see if he could help us to get our babies back. Little was I to know that my parents had already found him a couple of months before, knowing he was the father after demanding I tell them, and strongly warned him never to come near me again. I cried copiously all the way home when I discovered he’d left his job, relocating to another university, the details of which personnel couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give me.

  I had no choice but to continue with life, re-attending school, and leave behind the brutally painful yearning for my children. But the venomous seed of hatred was planted deep inside my heart now, and I intended to get my revenge no matter who suffered in the process.

  Two years passed, during which time I flunked my exams, and let myself go physically. My hair, now cut short, dulled to a matt black through lack of care, I no longer used cosmetics, and my clothes, due to unhappy weight gain, were a necessity rather than a tool for attraction. I no longer cared about anything except loathing anyone and everyone around me. And plotting my future. The first stage came when I landed a job in a small garage as a receptionist. The work was tediously boring, answering the phone, filing, making tea, but that wasn’t the point to me, it was part of a cleverly designed plan. As was flirting with Reg on the first day.

  I made the clumsy process of courting me easy for him. He wasn’t a clever man, and had no idea of my ulterior motive to putting up with his acne covered face, greying teeth, and greasy, shaggy locks. We became an item, and soon after he met my parents. My father, a habitual penny-pincher, was impressed by his work as a car mechanic, and I could hear the cogs whirring as he questioned Reg insistently on his job. It wasn’t long before the question was out, and a date was made for Reg to service the Viva.

  It was equally easy to persuade Reg to tamper with the brakes, tearfully fabricating a story about my father sexually abusing me from a young age. So at the age of eighteen my initial plan came to fruition: I became an orphan when the Viva skidded from a bend into a tree, both parents dying at the scene of the accident. If Reg ever found out, it wasn’t from me: I’d already dumped him. And the monotonous tedium of the garage.

  With no qualifications I would never find a job that would inspire my mind, but the meagre inheritance from my parents was too paltry to see me through more than a couple of years, so, realistically, I needed a husband to support me. Quickly. Harry had been my first love, and I intended him to be my last. Never would I let somebody under my skin again to reject and humiliate me, so I settled for the first decent offer, and, just shy of my twentieth birthday, I married Kev.

  At first he appeared to be a hard working character, soon relocating us to Derby town centre when he found a position supplying him with more money. The early days for me passed in a swirl of nappies and baby sick as I produced three sons for him in quick succession, but just after the last was born, Kev was made redundant, and money became tight, our savings dissipating rapidly. It was only a matter of time before we faltered on the mortgage and lost the house we’d bought. The council made it difficult to re-home us, and we spent more than a year in a dingy bed and breakfast, during which time Kev spent more and more time at the pub, abandoning me and the kids for want of the quieter life in that smoky, soggy hovel.

  By the time we were finally given a placement in a two bedroom flat, the damage to our marriage was irreparable. We stayed together, regardless, but living separate lives, his spent mostly in the local, mine dragging up the children with little money, and little hope. Except for the chance to find my only love, the man who had cruelly spurned me, and his revoltingly timid wife, who had, god knows how, been his choice over me all those years ago. With nothing more to hope for in life, I wanted revenge.

  Over the years the boys grew up to be men, if you could call them that. With their father’s laziness being their role model, they became thugs who preferred crime to work, and I had no respect for any of the men I lived with. Eventually I had enough, I had to lose Kev from my life.

  Now, without hindrance from that drunken bum of a husband, one by one I kicked the boys out, preferring not to keep in contact. With everyone gone, I trundled through the tedium of each day, managing on a pittance of a hand out the benefits agency awarded me weekly, scraping the pennies together for food and bills. It was now that I discovered reading. And through reading, I discovered Beryl again. The wish for retribution that had been simmering for nearly thirty-one years was finally a possibility.

  Chapter 2

  Lucky for Some?

  In the small parade of shops closest to the block of flats I lived in was a grungy charity shop, the type that smells cloyingly of stale body odour as you step through the door. With such a low income it was the only place I could replace my tatty clothes as they wore through from overuse, but soon I began to frequent the section devoted to cheap second-hand books. I began with novels, but soon tired of the cheesy tales of the type of life it appeared likely I’d never have: career girls falling in love; single mums falling in love; happy families enjoying love. I think you get the picture. So on the hunt for something more gripping one day a book stood out from the others, a book explaining how to read tarot cards.

  With an equal measure of scepticism and curiosity, I handed some small change to the lady behind the counter and took it home to study. After skimming through the pages over a period of a few days, it dawned on me that it could be a potential money-making opportunity to learn the card meanings in depth, then advertise cheaply under a different name to give people daft enough to believe such rubbish a chance to give me their money in return for me telling them what they wanted to hear. So I bought a cheap deck of cards.

  Being a quick learner, it took no time at all to memorise the pages, and a cheap advert in the Derby Evening Telegraph, under the guise of ‘the Mystical Madam Mary’, led to my first ‘reading’. I didn’t charge much, and the woman was pleased enough to start recommending my services, so, along with a weekly advert, visitors for my ‘talents’ slowly began to increase.

  The extra income, undeclared, of course, gave me two main opportunities: first, I could pay the bills and even have the heating on in winter; and, secondly, I could purchase more materials to do with the occult. Over the next few years my living room, albeit cluttered due to my reticence to clean the house, was littered with spiritual goodies, which gave the place a believable atmosphere, and more books on subjects similar to the tarot cards. I became practised enough to offer my fortune-telling services with runes, dice, tealeaves, palms, auras, and crystal balls. In short, although never wealthy, life was manageable.

  I remember the day with clarity, the shock of seeing Beryl’s unmistakable face as she appeared on my doorstep imprinting every sound and sight onto my memory. It had been a glorious July, and the late afternoon was still sunny and warm, but despite the cheery atmosphere, there was nothing bright about Beryl. She’d obviously aged over the past thirty years, but better than I had, and I felt a pang of jealousy, before the impending distaste that I wouldn’t have fared so badly if Harry hadn’t destroyed my life. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition in her eyes, but why would there be? She’d only met me once and I was now the opposite of the striking fourteen year old I’d been then, the day before I screwed her husband.

  I moved aside and she entered my flat, her eyes flicking about the murky hall as I guided her to the living room. We sat at the purple-cloaked table and I regarded her, realising I was about to have some much-needed fun. She had phoned my number that afternoon, distress apparent in her voice, and was obviously relieved when I said I could see her at six. She gave her name as Mrs Waller. Now she was here, the anguish was still palpable as she fixed her worried eyes on my face. “I’ve never done anything l
ike this before.” She admitted this with embarrassment.

  I turned aside and removed the cover from the crystal ball, lifting it before me. Beryl seemed confused. “I thought you read the tarot cards, that’s what I came here for.”

  I pulled a few expressions, which I knew were crowd pleasers, and waved my hands slowly. “I will read your tarot, but my spirit guides are asking me to use the crystal ball for now.” I had mastered the art of the mysterious voice and tone over the years. “I can sense your name begins with a B … Be … Bella … no, wait … Beryl. Are you Beryl?”

  She was visibly taken aback, gasping her ‘yes’, and I wanted to laugh, but I restrained myself and persevered. “I can see a man. Fair hair,” I kicked myself mentally as I realised he had probably gone grey by now, “dark eyes, I think he’s your husband, and the letter H is coming to me … Harr … Harry. Is it Harry?”

  “Harold. He likes to be called Harold.” Amazement littered Beryl’s soft voice.

  The ‘consultation’ with the crystal ball continued, and from the depths of my memory I recalled Harry mentioning in passing once that he had a young son. I couldn’t remember his name, but I could fish for that, most clients managed to give away answers without realising it. “I can see another man, younger, maybe mid thirties, his name … his name … oh dear …”

  “That’ll be my son, Steve.” The affirmation came with a light smile, registering briefly until the anxiety returned to her eyes. “Can you see my daughter, Sophie? It’s her I’m here for.”

  So that bastard Harry had continued to fuck his wife after ruining my life. I could feel the fury rising up through my body, I wanted to lean across the table and squeeze the life out of the bitch before me, but first I had to get to Harry. He needed his comeuppance too. “Your daughter lives in Derby too?” I was probing subtly, but Beryl missed it.