The Borrowed Man

By B G Rees

Tim Rorke has been losing time. After his brother is murdered, he abandons his job as a high school history teacher, and that’s when things start to go wrong.

At first, he thinks that strong, steady voice in his head is his own, even if it is telling him to kill. And that the hand he feels clutching his shoulder is his imagination, even though the fingers leave real bruises.

He tries to pretend the things he does remember aren’t real; shooting a man at the train station, stabbing a man outside a nightclub, but deep down he knows the truth.

The truth is, his brother was a criminal and the men Tim killed were part of his operation. Now they’re after Tim, and they’re probably going to kill him.

But the most important truth is, that strong, steady voice in his head is not Tim’s, and the criminal operation gunning for him are the least of his problems...

• Language: English
• Publisher: B G Rees
• Release date: Dec 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463343739

B G Rees

B G Rees lives in regional Victoria, Australia, where it once snowed for 30 whole minutes. She lives with her partner, Ava the White Swiss Shepherd and Echo the Ninja Cat.In her spare time, if she's not writing or reading, she'll be online playing World of Warcraft.

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The Borrowed Man

By

B G Rees

Copyright 2021 B G Rees

Smashwords Edition

Cover done by GetCovers 2023

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

My brother was murdered yesterday. It was the first time I’d thought of him in nearly twenty years and it was about him being stabbed and left to die in an alley in Northbridge, Perth’s nightclub district. He’d suffered. There was a part of me that was glad of that.

I found a gun in his apartment.

I’d never been to his place before, but I walked in, went straight into the bedroom, and made straight for the shabby chest of drawers. The gun was in the top one. I felt around in the back until I touched something metallic, cold – almost greasy. The bullets were in the second drawer and I loaded them as if I’d done it before.

I stood in my dead brother, Adam’s, apartment with his loaded gun. God only knew what he’d done with it before. I thought of Law and Order reruns we’d watched as kids while mum and dad were at work and wondered what crimes I could be connected to now by adding my fingerprints to it. I shoved it into the pocket of my jacket, either somehow knowing the safety was on or not caring – all guns had safeties, right?

I had somewhere to be.

I locked Adam’s front door behind me and headed down Beaufort Street toward the city. Though I remember my route, I don’t really know how I ended up at the train station. I was a spectator watching the action from the comfort of my armchair.

Every so often I was urged to check behind me, left then right, right then left again. I heard nothing in the darkness, but something pressed hungrily against the back of my neck; the breath of something strange stalking me along the rain-slickened streets.

I heard nothing and saw nothing, yet the feeling persisted.

I wanted to turn and go back. I had no idea what had possessed me to wander alone in this part of town, especially since I had a perfectly good car sitting at the kerb of Adam’s apartment building. What had I been thinking?

I started down the ramp towards the stations on the lower level, and pulled the collar of my jacket up against my neck. Tried to tell myself it was because it was bloody cold, not to rid myself of the sensation of warm breath.

Fog spewed from below like the exhalation of some gigantic beast. Orange light speared circular sections of pavement with their haze, and dark shadows lined the walls and spread in irregular pools. A train blew past sending littered wrappers and discarded plastic bags into scurrying eddies. My breath plumed announcing my arrival.

In the shadows something shifted.

The end of a cigarette burned in the dark. The man faced me, features heavy, shoulders broad. His nose was flat and crooked in two places, as if someone hadn’t been satisfied with the first break so added another with the other fist.

He sauntered into the light. Why don’t you take a picture, mate?

He smirked, waited for me to turn tail, or at least look away. His gaze sharpened when I did neither.

Do I know you? Hey – I’m talking to you!

He was a stranger to me.

Yet when something told me he was the one, I took the gun from my pocket without hesitation. He had time to look surprised before I pulled the trigger. Twice.

So, no safety then.

The burst of bullet from gun illuminated both our faces for a moment. I don’t know where I hit him. He went down fast; a crumpled heap on the edge of the light. His cigarette fizzed out in a puddle.

With a casualness I didn’t feel, I checked over my shoulder up the pathway. There was no one there and no one came running. My ears were stunned, but soon sound began to trickle through. Rain on the tin roof, cars rushing along the highway above.

With one more glance at the man I’d shot, I put the gun back in my pocket and turned to head back up the path. On Wellington, I got onto a CAT bus bound for the other side of the city. I tucked my head low and kept my face averted from the driver. I hoped not to be recognised if say Detective what-ever-her-name-was came around showing a mug shot of me.

I assumed that would happen. I’d loaded the gun; my fingerprints were on the bullets. They had my prints – even if I’d never been arrested, you had to have a police clearance to teach in this state, complete with fingerprints.

I figured it was just a matter of time.

I stared at the rain trickling down the bus window and wondered what I’d done.

And why.

*

I half expected those two detectives to be waiting for me when I got home, as if they somehow knew what I’d been up to. It wouldn’t have surprised me. That female cop, she’d taken an instant dislike to me. No idea why. She was the lead detective, I was the brother of a man who’d been stabbed and left to die, though the way she’d treated me you’d think I was the main suspect.

I’d met her twice, once this morning when she and her partner came to tell me Adam was dead, and then earlier tonight, before I went to Adam’s, to tell me about a break-in at his place. I didn’t really notice her attitude that first time. I guess I was in a bit of shock. I hadn’t seen Adam in so long, just hearing his name was a surprise. I still didn’t know how I felt about him being dead. Or how I should feel. Should I miss someone I never saw? Someone who clearly couldn’t care less about me?

That detective was pissed because I didn’t know anything. I was having enough trouble wrestling with how I felt about Adam’s death myself, I didn’t need some cop pointing out the problems in my relationship with my dead brother.

Her partner at least looked apologetic the second time – he didn’t like bringing more bad news, I guess. Her, not so much. I got the feeling she’d been considering throwing me up against the wall and choking me until I confessed.

Though to what I wasn’t sure.

I re-hashed the conversation from earlier tonight, the one that had made me go over to Adam’s to see what kind of damage had been done.

I thought I was going to end the evening at the police station, the way she was questioning me. I tried not to think about where I had ended the evening. What happened at the train station had already started to feel a little unreal. I almost wish she had arrested me. If I hadn’t gone to Adam’s I never would have found the gun and I never- Best not to think about it.

The first thing she’d said was that Adam’s place had been ransacked, but I just couldn’t comprehend the words.

What do you mean ransacked? I asked her.

She jutted her chin out further, if that was possible.

Ransacked. As in, someone went through the place looking for something. Do you know who it might have been, or what they were looking for?

How did they get in?

Her partner looked down at his shoes, red-faced, as she sighed rudely.

Through the front door. Now-

Did they take anything?

Now how are we supposed to know? Who the hell knows what he had in there to start with? You’re his brother, you should know.

I’d wanted to ask what they’d done in his apartment then, after they’d found his body. I knew they’d searched it. Surely they’d have some idea of what had been there, apart from the drugs they’d found.

But I didn’t.

I told you yesterday, we haven’t seen each other in years. Shouldn’t you-

Listen guy, we don’t answer your questions, you answer ours. Who might have done this?

I resisted the urge to point out she’d just answered two of my questions. I hadn’t wanted to start something that might end up with me taking a ride in the back of their car, hands cuffed behind me.

I was way out of my league.

Sure, I could bust heads at school with the best of them, but nothing I’d experienced before could prepare me for my brother’s world and being questioned by an experienced homicide detective. Not that I had anything to hide. That was just it; I didn’t know anything.

I’d had no idea what Adam did for a living. All this stuff about drugs and crime rings was news to me. If I didn’t even know he was involved in that stuff, how was I to know who he was involved in it with?

All I could say again was; I don’t know.

You don’t seem to know much about your brother, do you?

I already told you, the last time I saw Adam was about twenty years ago. I still don’t think I got through to her. I wondered if she’d turn up again tomorrow to ask the same thing.

She never once took her eyes off me, as if she thought I had a knife or something under the couch cushion. I might pull it out while she looked down long enough to get her notebook out. She held that notebook up and flipped to somewhere in the middle – only glancing at it for a second in order to find the right place.

You’re a teacher?

I’d nodded and considered standing up. The way she’d been standing over me was feeling predatory. You know that feeling though, when you’ve left it too late to do or say something? She’d have known why I was doing it and I hadn’t wanted her to know she was getting to me.

I unclenched my fists and pressed my clammy palms against my jeans. Tried not to rub them.

How long have you been at Berwick Street Senior High?

We’d been through all that the day before. I didn’t want to do it again, but I think she was just waiting for an excuse to take me down to the station. She had no right and I’d be released yeah, but that wasn’t the point. I just went through it all again; it was easier.

Five years.

And before that?

That was a new one. That was when I started to worry that, not only was she rude, but that she might actually suspect me of something.

Stirling College. There’d been nothing I could do about the conclusion she’d drawn from those two very different schools. Berwick was so far down the rungs from Stirling it might as well have been a different ladder.

She nodded, as if confirming my thoughts as her partner cleared his throat. I thought he was on my side. He seemed to be trying to remind her none of this was important without actually challenging her outright.

She ignored him.

Fired from there, weren’t you?

That’s right. I’d managed to keep calm, to answer in a somewhat normal voice.

She’d been digging. I hoped she’d kept going with it and hadn’t put the shovel down as soon as she’d hit something.

You were charged with vandalism and wilful destruction of school property, isn’t that right?

I thought that’s when I lost her partner.

All those charges were dropped, there was no evidence.

She’d started to get under my skin. There was no reason for this, it had nothing to do with Adam. Unless she honestly thought I’d ransacked Adam’s place. In which case she might really think I killed him too.

Yet you were still fired.

Yes. An action for which I sued and was awarded compensation. A teenager was arrested, he was the one who claimed to have seen me there, seen my car. He tried to set me up because I gave him a well-deserved F. They had no right to fire me.

None of it had wiped the smirk from her face. She’d been goading a reaction and I’d given her one.

She’d written something in her notebook then, taking her eyes off me for longer than a second for the first time since stepping inside. Her hair was dark brown and braided, her eyes black. She might have been attractive if her face didn’t look as if she perpetually sucked on a lemon. The thought of cut slices of lemon jostling around in her pocket waiting to be pulled out and sucked on had almost made me laugh.

Almost.

She’d finished her scribbling and pinned me again with her glare.

We have no way of knowing if anything was taken. And not much chance of finding out who did it either.

Her tone suggested she didn’t much care. I doubted they’d be spending much time on it. I’d wanted to ask her if she was planning on spending as much time on my brother’s murder, but that probably would have pushed her too far.

I stood up then, anticipating their exit.

A neighbour believes they heard something at around eleven last night. She looked me up and down. Where were you at that time?

I’d almost sat back down in surprise. The idea of her thinking me a suspect had been funny, her asking for an alibi was too much. Too real. I wished I’d said something smart but nothing came. I’d wanted to tell her to get out, to physically push her out. For a moment I wasn’t capable of anything.

I’d started to realise I was in some trouble, seriously in some trouble.

Could I lobby their supervisor for different detectives to investigate the case, considering her attitude? Would that make me look more guilty? She’d watched me, watched every expression I was unable to hide.

She’d looked pleased with herself.

I was here, I eventually managed. I watched a movie on TV.

Who with? She set pen to notebook, ready to record my every word.

No one.

Watching a movie alone. Not much of an alibi, is it?

Her boldness scared me then, and even now just thinking about it. Her behaviour didn’t seem normal. I don’t know what she thought, maybe that I was all alone in the world, didn’t know how these things worked. I’d let her get away with the attitude, the baseless accusations?

Okay yeah, so maybe I would. What was I supposed to do?

I guess not, I’d replied.

We then stared at each other for several seconds.

She broke eye contact first, a fact of which I was absurdly pleased.

We’ll be in touch. Don’t leave the city. She turned her back on me.

Earlier she’d dared not take her eyes off me, then it was as if I wasn’t even worth thinking about.

After they’d gone, I examined the whole conversation. What she’d said, what I’d said, tried to make sense of it, of her, of Adam. We hadn’t been close. That was all I could think about; I hadn’t seen him in twenty years and I think he hated me.

But, let’s just be clear; I didn’t kill my brother.

Yeah, maybe we hadn’t liked each other very much and we never saw each other, that doesn’t mean I’d kill him. Why the hell would I want to? What was I gaining, a few hundred dollars from his apartment deposit? And only if I cleaned the place myself.

I knew nothing about the drugs – like the methamphetamines they found in his bathroom. They say he must have been involved in selling, considering the quantity they found. At first, I didn’t believe them. It just didn’t seem like the brother I knew.

I guess I was wrong.

That little scene at the train station had taken on a dream-like quality. The memory of it was as if viewed through a kaleidoscope – a series of distorted images which seemed to mean nothing. That couldn’t have been me. I looked at my hands, palms spread out before me. I knew nothing about guns, I couldn’t have taken one from my brother’s apartment and shot a man with it.

I wouldn’t know how.

I was a teacher for god’s sake, the idea of it was ridiculous. I tried to ignore the fact that the details of the apartment were also a little sketchy. What had I done there? I remembered the mess but not what I did with it - which had been the point of going there in the first place.

Had I cleaned it up? Got his stuff ready to remove? I should have left it until tomorrow, gone in the daylight. Maybe things would have been clearer. But just because I didn’t remember didn’t mean I’d gone out and killed a man.

To me though, thinking I’d killed someone when I hadn’t and actually having done it was just as bad. Obviously not to the guy who was dead, but if I could have such a clear memory of something that never happened, what did that say about my sanity? And why the hell would I imagine something so horrible? Did that mean I wanted to kill someone?

I had this overwhelming sense of justness, of rightness, as if the guy had deserved it. I didn’t care if I had killed him. He was bad, even not knowing him I could see that. It was all over him like a leprosy; a rotting of the soul instead of the flesh.

But not knowing him I couldn’t condemn him completely. How could I think he deserved to die? How could I assume it? I shoved it all away from me. It never happened; it couldn’t have. Tomorrow I would go to Adam’s place, clean his shit out and be done with him for good. That was the end of it. I was sure there was no dead body at the train station with a bullet from Adam’s gun in it.

As far as I knew there was no gun.

And one episode of imagining I did something was nothing to worry about. I was under a lot of stress, that’s all. My brother was just murdered, I had all these arrangements to make. That had to be it. Nothing to worry about. I was sure it wouldn’t happen again.

CHAPTER TWO

I let them in.

When you’re just a regular guy and someone knocks on your door, you open it, right? When I did the first one bulled through, just about knocking me over. My front door crashed against the little rubber stopper and bounced back.

He was big. He wrapped a hand around my throat and pushed me with it to the couch as he crossed the room. He threw me down and stood over me while the small guy, who followed him, gently closed the front door.

And locked it.

At first that was all I could think about.

They were talking, I realised. Telling me who they were. The big one stepped towards me, pretty impressive considering he was already practically standing on me. I looked up. And up.

His eyes were hard and there was no sense of any kind of emotion in them, in him. He had a handsome face, and yeah, he was big, but he was fit too. Well-muscled. Not that I usually notice that sort of thing, but it was a strange combination – not what I expected.

I think when anyone thinks of criminal types they think of the typical Hollywood stereotype – crooked nose, Neanderthal brow. You know the type I mean. But he didn’t fit it. The little guy though, he fit the other typecast – the small guy who wore a thin-lipped, constant smile, as if everything was slightly amusing.

His smile would widen when the bones started to break.

I looked back to the big one.

Who- I managed.

You’re not a very good listener, are you? He said with the tone of a man who is used to being listened to.

The smaller man shook his head and crossed the room to sit down on the couch beside me. He sat crooked and turned towards me with the air of a co-conspirator. The other guy moved back a little, as if to give his mate room.

They had it wrong. The police were supposed to play good cop, bad cop. That’s where it got its name. Though their little game seemed clichéd, I had no doubt it worked. I imagined at some point the people they visited would do anything, tell them anything.

I hoped not to reach that point.

We were sorry to hear about your brother, the smaller one said. He lost his smile for a moment trying to appear regretful. He was a good friend of ours.

I don’t think well on my feet. I had a blank. I listened to most of the little speech that followed before any synapses began firing in my brain. That was when I first realised who they were. What they were. Friends of Adam’s? I looked from one to the other.

That was when I really started to worry about what they wanted.

The big one settled back to lean against the wall opposite me. It was his turn to smile. I have an open face. I couldn’t look away from him; I could almost see what he was planning to do to me in his expression, as easily as he could read my thoughts in mine.

The smaller man put a gentle hand on my shoulder and waited until I turned before he spoke again.

Listen, we don’t want to bother you too much at such a sad time.

The smile didn’t fade. There was something feverish in his eyes, something alien. I had yet to find my voice but I was glad about it. If I had found it, I might have got myself into trouble with it. I don’t think the appropriate response there was ‘then get out’.

He continued.

But Adam had something of ours, he was keeping it for us. We didn’t get a chance to meet up with him before...well, you know.

I just stared at him. I’d been thinking maybe they were the ones who killed him, but if he’d really had something of theirs – something he’d taken either with or without their knowledge or consent - they’d hardly kill him before getting it back.

Hey, he said gently, giving my shoulder a light squeeze. Are you alright? Are you hearing me?

I nodded dumbly.

Good, good. He watched me for a moment as I stared at him.

I waited for him to continue, to tell me what they wanted, but he seemed to be waiting for something from me.

I’m not sure what you want from me, I said slowly.

He nodded, as if expecting I’d say that.

When was the last time you saw your brother?

Not for a while. I tried to keep the tremor from my voice. Tried to stifle the shaking in my hands. We never talked much.

The smaller one shook his head sadly, I don’t know why but the sight of it, coupled with that permanent snake-like smile, struck a chord in me. It frightened me more than