Beggars Banquet [The Rolling Stones]

6. Street Fighting Man

Cotchford farm, Hartfield, East Sussex.
Tuesday, the 2nd July
10.03 p.m
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Warning: as the summary said there will be deaths in this story (6 to be exact), so if you are uncomfortable with that, there's still time to leave. 👿👿👿

Keith was the first to get to Mick and Charlie.

He had run like the devil himself had been after him, only to wish he had never bothered to find out what had got the singer in such an uproar. The guitarist had seen a lot in his life and he liked to act tough, but the sight before his eyes disturbed him more than anything he had ever come across... The dead body they had found in the pool nearly seemed harmless in comparison. Drowning might not be a pretty death for the one that well drowned, but it wasn't as unsettling for the one who found the body. The man had looked asleep, and had nearly something peaceful about him, but this... This couldn't have been further away form peaceful than possible.

Blood and other substances Keith didn't want to know the origin off were smeared all over the floor along with glass and some remains of furniture... that all lined up to a corpse. The body was...  there was no other world than slaughtered. It was hard to identify anything and Keith certainly didn't want to take a closer look. He already felt bile rising in his throat and Keith looked away before he like Mick emptied his stomach on the floor as well. 

The singer looked awful and Keith couldn't even manage to make a stupid joke about it, because he didn't feel any better than the Mick looked like. The man hadn't simply been killed, it looked like somebody had made sure over and over again that he was really dead... And from what Keith had seen... well recognised, he had a very strong suspicion why... There wasn't much left intact of the body and the blond hair had turned red from the blood, but the haircut, the disheveled dandyesque clothes, hell even the body structure... The dead could probably have been Brian's twin, especially in the dark.

Blimey. 

"Fuck! Fucking fuck fuck!" Keith cried out, simply at loss for better words. The evening had gone from bad to worse and then to even worse in hardly two hours... and there were still 2 left, before they finally could get away...

"We-we should just leave, close the door... and go back to the others," Charlie whispered from next to Mick. Keith hadn't even acknowledged the drummer, who seemed so pale that he could probably pass as a ghost...

Mick feebly nodded and Keith helped the singer up from the floor. He really seemed unwell and if Keith had felt a bit better he might have felt pity for Mick, but Keith had his own worries... The wildest theories were going around in his mind and at the same time it seemed awfully blank... beside one thought: They needed to get away... fast... and for that they needed Miss Jones.

"Did you find Miss Jones?" Keith asked as he put Mick's arm on his own shoulder to support the singer. He suspected the answer, but he wanted to be sure. 

"No..." Mick mumbled, "But we haven't checked everything yet... There is still one bedroom and a bathroom left..."

Keith sighed, this was just what he had feared, but then again it couldn't get worse than this, could it? he thought. "Let's check the rooms quickly and go back down... and then decide what we should do... I don't think we have much other choices at the moment."

Finding Miss Jones would definitely help a lot, the only other choice they had would be, try like Anita to make it through the storm to the closest village and get help. Running away sounded very tempting and with every second it did more, but as long as they had no idea what exactly was happening, getting away held as many dangers as staying here did... Hopefully Miss Jones indeed had some answers...

"Let's check the bathroom first, that should be the quickest..." 

Nobody objected to Charlie's request.

Keith was already slightly surprised that no one of the others had bothered to look for them... They must have heard Mick's scream as well. The girls probably had been too scared and Frank... maybe Anna had asked him to stay, though Keith doubted it, it seemed still a better idea than that Frank knew what was up here and therefore didn't bother to come upstairs...

Keith shock his head. 

He was definitely going paranoid. Frank had been with Mick earlier and later on with him, how should he have been guilty for this... murder? That thought lead to a different one- one Keith preferred he never had, if Frank wasn't to blame, who was? The only two people that had enough time and the possibility to murder anyone were Miss Jones.... And Tom. The violence with which the man had been killed made Miss Jones a very unlikely suspect... and what reason should she have had to kill a man that looked like Brian...? None... or at least none Keith could come up with.

And if the man Charlie and him had found in the pool earlier was indeed Mr. Lewis... 

Depending on what he had found out, he could perhaps have been a treat to Tom as well. Everything fitted frighteningly good together with Tom as the suspect, beside two things that made no sense.... the identity of the man they had just found and why he was here in the first place were still a mystery as was Miss Jones disappearance. They had all been in the dinning room together when she had yelled out... There still had to be more to this than just Tom wanting to cover up everything once more... If they found the cat, Keith knew he wouldn't stop at anything to finally get the truth out of him...

Though it never should come to that. 

A single gasp escaped Charlie's lips, followed by a hard gulp from Keith, when they opened the door to the last bedroom.

The guitarist couldn't believe his eyes and wished in that moment for nothing more than to wake up and realise all had been only a horrible  nightmare...

It wasn't... All was very real and Keith could only ask himself why... why them... what the fuck was going on..., while starring at the sight before him:

Tom hanging on the ceiling lamp a few feet from the ground.

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