Jasper's Brood

By J K Nottingham

It Takes a Killer . . .

Foster is not Jasper’s father. He’s the assassin who killed his family. Jasper was eight years old when he was kidnapped and raised by a killer. Not only raised . . . trained.

To Raise a Killer . . .

Jasper has now been a trained assassin for decades. Not only does he kill for a living, he has continued in Foster’s footsteps – raising a ‘family' of his own. Lost souls of the departed. Children who should be dead. Saved by Jasper.

To Raise a Killer . . .

Now, Jasper must contend with the imminent return of his most accomplished protégé, Gulliver. He decides to tell him everything - his life, how he came to be the man he is now, and what has happened to the family since he left. Only, there is someone else out there determined to stop Jasper and find the lost and missing. And they'll stop at nothing to bring an end to what Jasper has built.

Cormac McCarthy meets North-East England in this unforgettable novel, with a fresh and exciting voice from a debut author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Black Spring Press Group
• Release date: Sep 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839786396

Book preview

One

Saturday, 5 January

The man who killed my family

Dear Gulliver,

On the night my family died, I’d run away from the beach house, and they feared I had drowned.

I wanted that.

I was eight years old.

I hid among the dunes for hours, slinking from one patch of wispy grass to another, watching the coastguard desperately running up and down the shoreline shouting my name. As if my parents had not already spent two hours doing the same thing.

And my brother, Craig, was there too.

He was ten.

He didn’t shout my name as though he believed I would really answer. He lolloped along the shoreline where the others ran with every ounce of energy they could muster. Craig looked tired anyway; tired from fending off all the competition from the other Under-Tens Champion tennis players. Tired from all the attention he had to endure at the party my parents had thrown in his honour.

Was I jealous?

Of course, I was jealous.

It was never supposed to happen like this. Craig was good at everything, I’d made my peace with that, but he never made it to the absolute top of anything. Someone older or more experienced always knocked him out.

However far he got, he always had to lose eventually – but there I’d be, looking up to him anyway.

Not this time.

This time he didn’t need me at all. I was eight years old and redundant.

I was also frozen.

When I started this little game, I hadn’t banked on taking it so far. The sun was still out – low in the sky and inspiring the onset of a warm wind, but still definitely t-shirt and shorts temperature. The wind turned hostile very quickly, and by the time the beach was beginning to attract ‘helpers’ who actually just wanted to know what the fuss was about, I was feeling as sorry for myself as I thought I would if I really had been washed out to sea in the dark. I was so cold I began to believe I really was lost – and I began to think that perhaps, as I must seem quite believably pathetic here in the cold, if I could just manage to slip past the zombie beach combers and into the water, I might be able to roll out of the breakers convincingly enough to fool them that my imagined ordeal had been real.

But Craig knew.

Dragging his heels.

Perhaps he even knew I was hiding up in the dunes.

He never looked my way, but he stayed close and there was never any chance I could break past him to hit the fierce, rolling black waves. Silently I wished he would just go away, I wished Craig would stop casting a shadow over everything I did, and I retreated a little over the land side of the dunes. Silently, I wished Craig had died before I was born, and I started to trip along the bottom edge staying in shadow, mindful that folk in their beachfront houses might see me if the light caught me well enough.

I wished I was the first child my parents had had, and then I started stomping my feet in petulant aggression. I imagined I was a giant, and with every step my parents grew smaller, and my brother faded.

Then, to my horror I realised I wasn’t alone on this side of the dune. A man was there beside me a few paces down, striding in the same direction. His stride was massive, purposeful. He clearly didn’t think I was anybody to concern himself with, so my fears were quelled. This was not my father, this was not the coastguard, this was not my father’s friend Jerry or the local snooker hall proprietor or his customers. They were all still combing the beach, shouting at the waves, hoping for a miracle.

Hoping to be heroes.

There would be no miracles on the beach that night. I sighed with relief and carried on acting out my gigantic fantasy, but I kept one eye on the man.

He was the tallest man I had ever seen.

I was eight.

Since then, of course I’ve seen taller men.

I’ve killed taller men.

He was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with a tuxedo over the top, buttoned once at the front and sticking out at the back, riding the crest of his buttocks because the tux was too small. He wore a baseball style cap with a cartoon on the front and that was why I was looking at him, there was writing on it I wanted to see. I continued my striding leaps in tune with the tall stranger, straining for a glance at his cap.

Then, I stamped down hard onto a broken bottle.

The pain was respectful enough to linger in the wings, awaiting such a time as seemed reasonable to launch itself into a spinning pirouette towards me. That time turned out to be well over thirty seconds; enough time for my slight vocal cords to muster a shriek, and my muscles to throw me violently backwards. I lay for a brief moment with my eyes shut tight, clutching my foot, and dreading the sound of approaching people called by my shriek, but there was only the whistle of that hostile wind, so I forced open my eyes and picked up my right heel to examine the deceptively clean looking glass-wrought gash. These were the final few seconds before pain took its cue, and I spent it curiously sliding my nail underneath the flap of skin, and lifting it upwards as far is it would go. Sand, and ooze came out, green glass specks glinted there too. Green against the deepest red, like pistachios on raspberry sauce, and the white of the bone flashed impossibly far from the surface of my heel.

The tall man was off in the distance. His rhythm hadn’t faltered, and a few strides later, seconds only, he’d been enveloped by fingers of mist lying low in the gully.

The pain in my heel suddenly just splintered over my head like a hurled porcelain teacup.

Focused, vicious.

My blood was pumping onto the sand – the white dunes streaked with red, me still holding my heel, torn between squeezing it tight to make the pain retreat a little, or standing up and running to… where?

I was stranded.

And my breath was betraying me. Trust me, you find out what it is to really cry from physical pain when your breath won’t leave your lungs without riding on the back of a pathetic kind of whimpering, nevertheless loud enough to carry upon the wind, whipped away into the night seeking the nearest willing ears.

Being alone and renegade wasn’t fun anymore. T-shirt and shorts flapped in the bitter wind, just to demonstrate how thin they were and how inadequate to maintain my life throughout the freezing night to come. I pictured them finding my body, with the trail of blood stiff and jutting from my heel like someone skewered me with a raspberry ice pop. It seemed like a real enough conclusion to my ordeal. A two-headed silhouette, briefly outlined atop the dune, pausing there to look out to sea.

The last time I saw my parents.

Scanning their surroundings for any tiny sign of me even though it was too dark to see anything that wasn’t clearly outlined against the sky.

Then Craig, head bobbing as he ran to join them, his silhouette then subsumed into their bodies.

Together.

I hollered to them. I shouted. I screamed.

But the cruel wind snatched away my words, and threw them back in my face un-heard.

I cried as the heads of my parents gradually became one with the dunes.

Back to their beach-side cottage.

Did they cry for me there?

What was the plan?

My mother to stay and look after Craig?

My father to tool up like Rambo?

Search through the night?

Scoop me up in his arms and carry me to safety?

It was a long time to be alone.

I curled into a ball drawing my knees up inside my t-shirt. I grabbed my wounded heel with my hand, so my palm sank painfully into stickiness, and every time I moved even a millimetre the grains of sand and specks of black stuff between my hand and the gash worked their way deeper inside and scratched their way further towards their new home hollowing out little caverns inside my flesh, forever.

To move my foot, excruciating.

To attempt to walk or even crawl, unthinkable.

Of course, I never heard the shots.

But I know exactly what they sounded like; I’ve heard the same more than a hundred times since. A click and a swish instead of a bang. A dull thud instead of a loud crash.

A coroner’s report told me years later, that my mother had taken the longest to die. Her throat was pierced in an awkward manner that stopped the blood flowing out quickly. Her death was even more physically painful than it was supposed to be, but still silent, wordless. She would have had to watch my father and my brother both bleed to death on the kitchen floor in front of her, while she wondered whether she would actually die, or not.

She died.

With my father and my brother. She died. And while I lay shivering, quaking from head to foot and believing I was bleeding to death, almost fainting from the pain, my parents and my brother were, actually, bleeding to death.

Life is funny, isn’t it, Gulliver?

And in my delirium, when strong arms scooped me up and I could smell that this was not my father, I reasoned it must be the coastguard.

I thought somebody from the houses with their lights on had spotted me huddled into a sand recess that I’d dug out with none of the skill a dog possesses to do the same.

Worse than a dog, me.

People can’t survive in the wild – not comfy people.

Spoilt children.

Bundled between the folds of a coarse blanket and swung along like a rubbish sack on its way to landfill. I was scooped up without explanation. Even curled up in sand the slightest movement had been overwhelmingly painful so now, my raw wound scraping against rough woollen, sand filled weave, I simply screamed, and writhed, and clutched my foot desperately trying to hold it away, and tried in vain to make somebody hear.

And breathlessly, I shouted,

No. Stop. Please. No. Stop.

It was when I was slung onto a spongy surface and heard car doors slamming next to my ear that I was able to fling away my cocoon, and found myself on the back seat of a very cold car with shiny leather seats.

I sat there with my fingernails digging deep around my wound, and panted.

Tears streaming.

At the wheel was the tux-wearing tall man.

I whimpered but couldn’t get words to form.

He just crunched the car into gear and started driving. I managed a stuttered syllable.

Wha, wha, wha…

And the tall man said,

Jasper, if you don’t want to be dead as well as kidnapped, shut up.

His name was Foster.

Two

Sunday, 6 January

How I Killed Your Parents

Last night I slept on my plinth in the Crypt for the first time in weeks.

I dreamed of our past glories, but I woke up screaming, and probably scared the children.

All because yesterday I took delivery of your blood-soaked herald, Gulliver, and I couldn’t face a night alone in the caravan.

I thought you loved that dog?

I shuddered to imagine your thin lopsided grin as you prepared it, and that one pointy tooth that always protruded. To me you were always a little absurd.

Goofy, even.

I hope a part of everyone can see a monster in such light.

Well, thirteen years I’ve longed to see you again, so come back and finish me off, if you feel you must, Gulliver.

Don’t misunderstand; I’ll fight you even though the idea breaks my heart.

Pitting your youth against my broken body with middle age only a rear-view memory, only a fool would throw their chips behind me.

In case I don’t prevail, I’m going to tell you everything.

It is not my intention, Gulliver, to bring back bad memories. Foster neglected my needs on many different levels whatever his motivations toward my welfare. I want to tell you about your parents, to bring you out of darkness, not from any misjudged idea that you might stop hunting me if I enlighten you; I’m unburdening myself just as much.

This might be hard to learn, Gulliver. Even before your mother met your father, your mother was working for businessmen; hotels during lunch breaks, brief liaisons early in the morning, late night after drinks, sending them on their way ready to go to war with each other.

Ready to rule the world.

However it happened, whatever she charged, that was your mother, Gulliver, and before they were married, your father was her client.

The man who paid me to kill your mother had collected an obsessive amount of data. He’d been waiting, plucking up the courage to engage my service.

It’s never the right thing to do. But I’ll do it. Don’t smoke, don’t eat fast food, don’t ride without your helmet, don’t drink beer instead of water for three days straight when you’ve run out. Never the right thing to do, but someone, somewhere, benefits.

He waited so long that your mother married your father and had you.

He waited out the years, dreaming of your mother’s demise.

All because he spent the night with her.

Just once.

But once was enough.

Your mother saw an easy opportunity.

Extort a handsome sum from the guilt-filled family man.

Cash for silence.

But he didn’t bite.

He called her bluff.

No bluff.

Now his wife and children live in Florida.

Your father messed it all up for himself by arriving home too early.

How could I know he’d lever you out of school in record time that day?

Why did you have to pick that particular day to be extra compliant in putting on your coat, your scarf, your gloves?

All my research confirmed you were consistently a nightmare – giving him the run around for at least twenty minutes; hiding in cupboards, launching missiles from the stairwell, sneaking all manner of contraband into your pockets.

Unwrapped sweets.

Other kids’ asthma inhalers.

The hamster.

Not that day.

I’m not saying it’s your fault.

Seduction came so naturally to your mother; why shouldn’t she use her natural gifts to save her life at the crucial moment?

I’m not proud of myself, Gulliver.

Your mother’s attention was intoxicating.

Perhaps I let my guard down.

Difficult to say, though.

You know those times when you feel you’ll let this play out as far as you safely can, see how far it might go before you end it?

Because you can end it.

Any time you want.

It’s a power thing, right? I know you’ve played those games, Gulliver. Heck of a self-esteem booster in the moment.

But in truth, if it wasn’t for your father…

Well, I’m sure I would have regained control of the situation before…

But anyway.

There he was.

A moment to absorb the scene.

A howl of rage that I instinctively assumed was aimed towards me, and then he was lunging at her, his thumbs bound for her neck.

Curious, isn’t it, Gulliver?

What causes a man to crack…

I had to make a split-second decision: which one of them gets to see the other die? I figured I’d be merciful to your father. From the look in his eyes it seemed he wanted her dead as much as my client did.

So, I obliged.

Seconds later he was with her on the bed, their blood pooling together in the centre of the mattress.

Gulliver. I am sorry.

If I’d known you were outside the door – I would have protected you.

Are you more like your father?

Or your mother?

Gulliver?

Well, you looked more like your father as you launched yourself around the door frame with your little fingernails clawing at the air between us.

To stay eight would be wonderful.

Eight is a perfect age, you’re old enough to appreciate that life is good, intelligent enough to make your own fun and choose your friends with discernment, while also secure in the knowledge that anything as scary as a meaningful exam is still years away, nobody is expecting you to work for them, nobody is expecting you to feed them, nobody expects you to do anything except be eight years old.

I tried to preserve that for you, Gulliver.

Even when you filed your teeth into little points and burnt off all your hair so it would never grow back – I still told myself I could preserve your innocence.

Of course, I was aware of the similarities between taking you home with me, and Foster scooping me up fourteen years previously.

But it was a different thing altogether.

For a start, you knew right from the beginning it was me who killed your parents. You knew because you saw us there, you saw their blood and you could only draw that conclusion.

Hang on. It’s not what it looks like, son.

I wouldn’t have insulted your intelligence.

Do you know how long I had to live with Foster before the truth was revealed? The truth that I wasn’t just kidnapped and crippled, but I was kidnapped, crippled, and orphaned? Almost six months, Gulliver. Six months of hoping for the wrong thing, not just that I would be returned to my parents and my brother, not just that things might go back to how they were before, but that I would be able to ask them to forgive me. Do you understand how utterly devastating it was for me to find out that I could never be forgiven? I could never say sorry to my brother – my brother who always looked out for me, who put his neck on the line for me again and again, made sacrifices and took beatings in his role as the eldest, my brother who I couldn’t allow to enjoy a moment of glory that didn’t involve me in some capacity. The acid churning in my gut, of my risible selfishness from the day they died, has never left me.

I live with it.

Gulliver, don’t you see? I was never supposed to kill you.

I didn’t spare you.

Foster spared me.

He spared me when he first saw me beyond the dunes, and when I fell on the bottle, and when he passed me on his way back to his car.

Gulliver, for whatever reason, this man, this killer, decided that he wouldn’t kill this child, this eight-year-old boy, even though he was contracted to do so.

I wasn’t saving you from anything except growing past eight without a strong parental figure in your life. I was destined to remain Foster’s prisoner because I could otherwise become his downfall. But you, you hadn’t even seen my face – there was nothing about self-preservation in what I did – it was selfless, and I’ll stand up for that statement before the Crown, before my Creator, before my mother’s headstone. My intentions were pure. I wanted to make something right from all that wrong.

I know you didn’t appreciate the black plastic bag or the sock I stuffed in your mouth.

Please understand, it was the fastest way out of there, to get you as far away from the bloodbath as possible, but I know it never really left you, and you know what? Me too.

In times of moral quandary, I can still smell your mother’s perfume.

Three

Monday 7 January

Jack, in a box

Foster said very little in the few days after he kidnapped me – on his kitchen floor he silently laid out my camping mattress and sleeping bag.

Threadbare carpet.

Cigarette-smoke stained walls.

The flat was three rooms – a bathroom with no bath or shower, just a purple, yes purple, toilet with a matching sink, and one of those carpets that moves when you stand on it because it was just laid across old, pitted lino rather than fixed in place. Then there was a bedroom, which was Foster’s domain – I was only allowed in there on very special occasions, like when he was excited about showing off a new rifle, lining me up as quarry through the sight. Foster’s bedroom was quite large, especially compared to the kitchen, but it only had a small, wire-framed single bed in it, with no wardrobes, only clothes on hangers hooked over the picture rail.

There was one picture, the only picture in the entire flat. It was difficult to get a good look at it because whenever I was in Foster’s bedroom I was there for a reason, I had to concentrate on what he was telling me, but my glances over time told me it was a picture of a little boy who would have been about my age when I arrived there. He was standing in a field wearing Middlesbrough FC kit and grinning. The picture was tiny – lost within the stippled light pink wall, slipped down slightly within its stylish frame covered in an intricately pattered fabric of burnt umber.

Yes, Gulliver, that frame.

Then there was the kitchen, where I slept. I say kitchen, it doubled as a living room I suppose because there was an armchair in the corner that was so old you could hear the padding crunching beneath you as it turned to dust inside the covers. The fridge, oven, and sink all sat next to each other along one wall. No lino or tiles denoted that this was the kitchen area – the threadbare carpet continued, and the fridge and cooker sat on top of it, with a sink crudely screwed onto the wall above – a plastic waste pipe tacked to the wall and running out of the house by the shortest route with no attempt at concealment.

Of course, I noticed very little of this when I was eight – back then it was just a place – I took it all for granted, but you don’t sleep on the floor in a room that isn’t really yours, for ten years, without noticing a lot of details.

The first time Foster called me Martin, I hardly noticed. In the course of ten years it only happened another four times, but two of those were in the first year.

That first time, as always, it was when his guard was down because he allowed himself to get exasperated. I would learn quickly that the low rumbling sound I could hear when I was exasperating Foster, was his teeth grinding against each other. A glance at his face, and there was the vein – raised from his jaw to his temple.

I have told you already, Gulliver, that Foster was a tall man. Even after living on his floor like a dog for two days, I still only had an impression of him as a tall man. I knew his voice was unexpectedly high, but I only knew that because of the warning he’d given me on the back seat of the Allegro. He hadn’t actually spoken to me since. I hadn’t attempted to talk to him either – I was stiffly, clammily, terrified, so I lay there in my sleeping bag tensing all my muscles.

I was still bleeding copiously from my heel – I could feel the slight wetness, but it went numb after a few hours, so I resolved to forget about the gash.

That was a mistake.

I’ve borne the resultant pain for the rest of my life, but at the time I felt like I had no option.

By the second day I seriously needed to pee. I was writhing in my sleeping bag, Foster sighed, and broke his silence.

Toilet.

He said, standing over me and gesticulating over his shoulder with his thumb. I looked up gratefully, into his unblinking eyes, and I felt relief when I couldn’t see malice behind them. I leapt up hastily, only partly from the urge to pee; mostly from wanting to do Foster’s bidding, to make him feel I was on his side. But as soon as I leapt up, I knew something was wrong. My right foot was sluggish – and it felt wet again.

I looked down and saw why.

The sleeping bag had become fused with the bloody mess of my heel – creating the illusion that the material was actually a part of the flesh. In standing up so quickly, I’d ripped open the wound and it was pumping my blood out onto the threadbare kitchen carpet.

I hesitated, and looked up at Foster