The competition rules stated:
To enter, submit one piece of crime fiction: 500-1000 words
Your piece must contain all of the following ingredients:
At least one corpse, or part thereof
One darkened room
At least one Nordic reference
Blood
The misuse of at least one kitchen utensil
A telephone that rings unanswered
THE BEACH HOUSE by Helen Grant, posted here and on Wattpad, was the winning story. The 2nd prize was won by Matthew Wright with AND THE HILLS SANG WITH BLOOD and the 3rd prize by Marina Marinopoulos with JUST DESERTS.
* * * * *
THE BEACH HOUSE
Too damn early. There was a flat
bright quality to the early morning light that made his eyes hurt. All the
black coffee in the world wasn’t going to help. He’d grabbed a kanelbulle, a cinnamon roll, as
breakfast on the hoof, but it was sitting half-eaten in a bag on his lap as he
drove. He’d taken one bite and lost interest. It was difficult to get pissed in
Sweden with the cost of alcohol, but he’d managed it, and now the early
sunshine made him feel as though his cranium were being x-rayed.
Shortly before the Haverdal
turning, he tried phoning again; once he got to the crime scene, there’d be no
chance. It rang a few times, then went to voicemail again. This time he left a
message.
“Christina? It’s me, Alexander. Call
me back. Please.” He paused, sighing.
“I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have pressurised you. Don’t tell him now, or not
ever if you don’t want to. Just call me back. I love you.”
He forced himself to turn his
thoughts to the call-out, to prepare himself mentally for what he was going to
have to look at. It was incongruous somehow: violent death in such a quiet and
affluent place. He drove past opulent villas that posed as simple beach houses
with their corrugated walls painted white or blue or red ochre. Robotic lawn
mowers moved in silent trajectories across their perfect lawns.
The house he wanted overlooked the
sea. There were other vehicles there already, including an ambulance waiting
patiently, siren off. Alexander parked on the street. He put on his protective
gear, wincing as he bent to pull on the shoe covers; when he leaned forward the
throbbing in his head intensified to an excruciating extent. Then he ducked
under the tape and walked up to the front door, which was guarded by a
uniformed officer with a grim nauseated expression on his face.
A bad one,
then.
Inside the house, hooded and
overalled figures were at work, looking strangely out of place amongst the
expensive and deliberately understated furnishings. Someone recognised him.
“Inspector Rasmusson.”
Alexander nodded, then followed the
woman into a spacious living room. The activity at the other end told him that
that was where the body lay. The taste of the black coffee was like ashes in
his mouth. He delayed the inevitable viewing for a few moments by asking who
had called the incident in.
“Nosy neighbour?” he asked, but the
woman shook her head.
“Nothing to see from outside. The
blinds were down at both ends of the room. It was dark. Even if someone had
been able to peep in, they probably wouldn’t have seen anything.”
“So?”
“Phone call, apparently. Guy said
he’d killed his partner and was going to kill himself. Wouldn’t give any
names.”
“Who does the place belong to? Do
you know?”
“A couple in Stockholm. It’s not
them. The place was being let out to holidaymakers. Someone’s trying to get
hold of the agent to find out who.”
Alexander nodded. He didn’t want to
think about this, didn’t want to look at the remains. He wanted to check his
phone again, see whether Christina had tried to call him back or maybe left a text
message. He wanted to tell her he’d been an idiot, and whatever fragment of her
life she was prepared to give him, that would be enough. I love you, he wanted to tell her.
There was only one way to do that,
though, and that was to get the job over. He went to the other end of the room,
where two of those otherworldy-looking suited figures were kneeling by the
body.
One look was enough.
“Satans helvete,” he swore. So much blood – but that wasn’t the
worst of it. The half of the cinnamon bun that he had eaten threatened to come
up again. “What the hell did he do to her?”
“Stabbed her with a kitchen knife,”
said one of the men, looking up. “The other injuries were probably post
mortem.”
“How do you know?” asked Alexander
queasily. He’d seen some pretty bad stuff before, but nothing like this.
“Would you lie there and let
someone take off your face with a cheese grater?” asked the man.
“That was what he used?”
The man nodded. “And took off the
hair with kitchen scissors. It’s like he wanted to obliterate her completely.”
It was a point of honour not to
show nausea in front of the crime scene examiners, but as soon as he could get
away, Alexander went out for some air. From outside the house, he could see the
curve of the beach and the sparkling surface of the sea. It looked idyllic, a bizarre
contrast with the bloody horror he had just seen. It made him want more
urgently than ever to speak to Christina, to grasp what happiness he could. With
shaking fingers he pulled up her number and pressed the green call button.
When he heard her phone begin to
ring at the other end of the line, he heard simultaneously a ringing from
inside the house. He might not have made anything of this – everyone carried
mobiles, after all – except that as Christina’s phone went to Voicemail, the
ringing from indoors stopped abruptly.
That was
strange, Alexander said to himself, doing his best to disregard the
cold churning in the pit of his stomach. He called Christina again. By the time
he heard the second answering ring from the house, he was on his way back
inside. Voicemail again. He called a third time, stumbling into the living
room, barely taking in the faces that turned towards him, open-mouthed as they
heard him screaming out a name, over and over. Christina, Christina.
And still the phone rang on
unanswered, from the pocket of the body.