by Ray Clark
“Who are you?” Gardener demanded.
“Giles Middleton, General Manager.”
“Like you, Mr Middleton, I have absolutely no idea.” Gardener continued walking as he was talking, trying to show Middleton that he neither had the time nor the patience for his pomposity.
“I’d like some answers to my questions, young man.”
“So would I,” replied the SIO. “And at this moment, mine are more important than yours.”
Gardener pointed to the station entrance. “You see that tape there?” Such was his annoyance at the intrusive little man he spoke very slowly, a trait he’d had all his life. Shouting the odds was not his style. When Gardener became really upset, he would talk very slowly and with care so that he made sure you understood every one of his words.
“That means no one but my sergeant and I are allowed beyond that point. You stay at the bottom of the steps and you do not come into the station. Do you understand?”
Middleton pointed again. “Now you look here–”
“Do you understand?” repeated Gardener.
Middleton opened his mouth.
“Say one more word, and I’ll arrest you for causing an obstruction.” Gardener turned and met PC Robin Nice, one of the officers he’d seen outside the shop in Bramfield the day before.
“What do you have for me?”
“Female, mid-to-late twenties.”
“Female?” repeated Gardener. “Any identification?” His heart sank. He could only think that they had finally discovered Sonia Knight.
“No,” replied Nice.
“Where is she?”
“The waiting room.”
“Is she conscious?”
“Yes she’s conscious, but I get the feeling she’d rather not be.”
“Why?”
“You need to see for yourself.”
Eager to stop wasting time, Gardener and Reilly followed Nice onto the platform, noticing PC Steve Graham waiting at the top of the ramp. On their left was a ticket booth, a frame to stand by, a poster advertising the services and timetables of the trains, and a plaque presented to the residents of the town for opening their doors to evacuated children in World War II. On the right stood a London & North Eastern Railway board with timetables, and more plaques. Before turning left to the waiting room, Gardener glanced to his right, along the tracks. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but everything appeared normal.
But it wasn’t, was it?
Nice told them that no one had been inside. The door was open, and Gardener glanced beyond.
The girl was naked, sitting in a chair. Her arms were behind her, her legs intertwined with the chair’s. As Gardener could not see any restraints, he quickly came to the conclusion she had somehow been bonded to the frame so she couldn’t move. The chair was high-backed, like those found in most dining rooms, only taller. A plain white envelope was pinned to each wing. But for the girl in the chair, the room was bare.
Closer scrutiny revealed the female was completely hairless, her head, between her legs, even under her arms from what he could tell.
Her lips had also been sewn together, like Alex Wilson’s.
“Is this how you found her?” he asked Nice.
“Middleton found her. Called us immediately. Obviously, she can’t speak, but I have the feeling she hasn’t been conscious very long.”
“Have you tried to speak to her?”
“Only a couple of questions that she could have nodded or shook her head to, but she hasn’t communicated at all.”
Gardener and Reilly quickly suited and booted, using the scene suits they had brought with them, and stepped gingerly into the room.
The girl’s complexion was ash grey, and she was lean and fragile. As he slowly walked towards her, she opened her eyes so wide that he thought they were going to fall out. Her body started to shake, thus demonstrating the means by which she had been held in place.
She had been glued to the chair.
Gardener had never, in all his life, seen someone so frightened. He couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of an ordeal she had suffered.
Apart from the stitching to the lips, he could see no further scarring, which he hoped was a good sign. The girl tried to move from the chair, but it was impossible. The chair scraped along the floor as she retreated a couple of inches. Gardener sensed that she was trying to move away from him. As he drew closer, he noticed the female jerk her head ever so slightly down towards the floor.
“I want you to do something for me,” said Gardener. “If you can’t move, please blink your eyes once.”
The girl calmed a little, and blinked to indicate that was the case.
“Is your name Sonia Knight?”
She blinked once. She then tried to move her head again, blinking furiously as she did.
“Something’s rattling her, boss,” said Reilly.
The Irishman leaned further forward, and Sonia Knight pushed away with her feet so hard the chair nearly went over. Reilly grabbed the leg to prevent that from happening.
Knight was growing extremely agitated. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and angled them down as far as they would go, glaring down at her side. Gardener slowly stepped around the chair. Strapped to it was a mobile phone.
At precisely that second it rang, and all hell let loose.
Sonia Knight jumped as hard as her situation would allow, the chair leaving the floor by at least six inches. Even though her lips were sewn together, she let loose a spine-tingling mewl. Gardener sensed that if it had been at all possible, she would have screamed loud enough to wake the dead. He stepped back very quickly.
The phone rang again, and Sonia Knight frantically tried to part company with the wooden frame.
She must have succeeded in some way, because Gardener heard a tearing sound, and the skin on her arms gave a little. He glanced down, noticing how far it had actually stretched despite the fact that it was still connected to the chair. A bloodstain marked the area. Sonia Knight was lathered in sweat, her body shaking violently.
“Sean, call an ambulance. If we don’t do something soon this is going to be fatal.”
Gardener reached out for the phone, and Sonia Knight flinched, struggling to keep out of his way. He put his hands up in surrender. “It’s okay. Please, try to keep still. I’m not going to hurt you.”
As soon as Reilly called the emergency services, the phone strapped to the chair chimed again. It rang only once, but that was enough.
Sonia convulsed, and with a stomach-churning, ripping sound she managed to free her limbs. Splashes of blood landed across the floor and splattered both officers. The chair shook so hard it left the floor a number of times, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remove herself completely.
Sonia brought her hands to her mouth with arms that were torn red-raw, her fingers trying to work at the stitches binding her lips. Gardener reached out to stop her, to try and calm her and keep her from hurting herself further.
As he restrained her, a picture entered his mind of the man they had seen when they arrived.
“Oh my God, Sean.” He glanced at his sergeant. “That man we saw outside posting letters. Go and see if he’s still around. Take the car if you have to, but find him.”
Reilly left without question. They had worked together for so long, that when Gardener asked him to do something even in a situation so intense, he did it without question. He knew his superior would have a bloody good reason.
Gardener reached down and grabbed the mobile attached to the chair, but it didn’t move. It was held in place by a fancy round bracket that covered all of the buttons, which in turn was held in place by two screws drilled into the wood,
He called out to Steve Graham. “I need a screwdriver.”
Graham suddenly disappeared as if by magic.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Nice.
“We need to get the phone away from the girl.”
“Why?”
“No time to explain,” replied the SIO. “Just trust me.”
Gardener wondered where the ambulance was. He noticed Sonia Knight was shivering. It had to be shock, because he doubted she was cold. He removed his suit jacket, intending to cover her, for what use it would be.
The phone rang again. And kept ringing.
Knight hit the roof. The pain barrier must have been indescribable. She jerked hard against the chair. He heard another ripping sound, and one of her legs came free, the wound so severe he could see bone.
More blood and further muffled screams invaded the enclosed space. Even with her mouth sealed, the girl was capable of a sound so guttural, it had to have emanated from deep within her bowels.
Knight put her hands to her mouth, then her head and her ears. The poor girl seemed to have no idea what she wanted to do. She stood up on her one free leg and tried to shake the chair free.
Still the phone kept ringing, accompanied now by a siren outside, closing in on the small country railway station.
Nice entered the room in an effort to try and restrain Knight. She proved to be a real handful, as if in some bizarre, surreal parody of a dance with him. Graham approached with the screwdriver Gardener had asked for. Knight quickly lashed out and caught him square on the jaw, sending him back towards the waiting room door. The screwdriver fell out of his hand and rolled towards Gardener. Still the phone kept on ringing, and Knight continued screaming behind the stitches, skipping all around the room, trying to put distance between herself and the chair, regardless of the pain.
A paramedic appeared in the doorway, the expression on his face one of complete disbelief.
As the phone rung on, Gardener suddenly realized it must have been tampered with, so it would continue to do so without diverting to the messaging system. That meant if she was in the same situation as Wilson had been, it would continue to create the most unbearable pain for her. He had to stop the bastard ringing.
Suddenly, Sonia Knight finally released herself from her prison. She had literally torn free of the chair, which fell to the floor with a clatter. She turned her back to them. Her body glistened with blood and raw muscle, resembling a freshly skinned carcass hanging in a butcher’s window.
Gardener noticed that the mobile phone had abruptly stopped ringing during the confusion. But no sooner had that thought entered his head, when it started again.
Sonia Knight turned back around and fell to her knees with her arms in the air, her hands clenched in fists. Her screech of agony was heard in full, her pain so great, she had torn her mouth completely open. Gardener couldn’t tell which was her bottom lip, and which was the top.
But it was the view inside her mouth that would be the stuff of his nightmares for a very long time to come.
Chapter Twenty-five
Robert Sinclair stepped out of the shower in his en suite bathroom, and quickly dried himself down.
He loved the summer months, when he could rise at five-thirty, slip into a jogging suit, and go for an early morning run. His house bordered the stream, so he usually left via the back garden and onto the bank.
From there, he ran all the way into Bursley Bridge, which was approximately a mile and a half. Once around the town, through most of the streets, and finally back to his house on the path that bordered the main road.
In the winter months he had a different procedure. His training was undertaken in the gymnasium he’d had built, complete with treadmill, cross-trainer, and a variety of weight machines. As far as he was concerned, his body was a temple, and should be treated accordingly.
Sinclair loved routine. Always had. He liked his breakfast at seven-thirty, to start work at eight. He had an hour at two for something to eat, and then worked through till six. He ate an evening meal – prepared by his housekeeper – at seven, and eventually retired for the evening around ten o’clock. As a trainee doctor, it had never been possible. Given the position he held now, treating private patients, it was much easier to dictate the times and terms on which he would see them.
Having dried and changed into casual clothes, he went down into the kitchen, pausing only once on the staircase to check the time on the grandfather clock. He stepped into the kitchen.
He was ready for the most important meal of the day, which was usually something healthy. Miss Bradshaw never let him down. However, the expression on her face told him that his routine today was about to go AWOL, something he would find difficult to deal with.
“Oh, Mr Sinclair. Dr Ross has just phoned from the clinic. He wants to speak to you immediately.”
Sinclair knew better than to question his housekeeper, because Iain Ross would not have told her anything. The only reason he would call so early was because they must have suffered another setback with Christine Close. Something he didn’t relish hearing.
Sinclair sipped his green tea.
“Here, take this,” said Miss Bradshaw, passing over a small container. “I know you’ll want to leave immediately, but it’s very important that you eat.”
“Thank you. I really had better go. It must be urgent.” Robert Sinclair left the kitchen, went upstairs, and changed into a suit.
Twenty minutes later he was walking into the Ross & Sinclair Foundation. He headed straight for his office, where he found Iain Ross waiting for him. The surgeon was immaculately dressed in a pale blue designer suit with white shirt and blue tie. He was standing by the fireplace. As always, the logs and paper were set, ready for someone to strike up a match.
“Robert,” said Ross. “Good to see you. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Is it Christine?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Ross poured a fresh coffee from the machine in the corner of the room, offering one to his colleague, who declined. “She had two more seizures during the night. I’m afraid she’s unconscious. But she’s been given pretty large doses of phenytoin. She’s comfortable.”
Sinclair had asked Ross to administer the best treatment available, in the hope that it would have bought her some more time. He’d known from the start that he could not guarantee anything. Nothing he did now would work, apart from sedatives and anti-epileptic drugs.
“Is she on a ventilator?”
“Yes,” replied Ross.
Sinclair sighed heavily. The end was in sight. The machine would help her to breath, but the question was, for how long? Someone would eventually have to make the heart-breaking decision of turning the ventilator off. And the only person who could was Gary.
Sinclair didn’t think he was strong enough yet. Gary needed to know, but, for the moment, he would rather keep the details to a minimum.
“Has Gary been in to see her?” he asked Ross.
“Not yet,” replied Ross, sipping his coffee.
“In that case, when he does show up, will you bring him straight into the office? I need to be careful with this one.”
“Would you like me to tell him?”
“No thank you, Iain. I think you’ve done enough already.”
Ross left and Sinclair sat in a chair at his desk, his head in his hands.
Chapter Twenty-six
Gardener stood facing Andrew Jackson’s office door at St. James’s Hospital. Reilly had taken a seat. They were waiting for the doctor’s answer regarding Sonia Knight’s condition. He didn’t hold out much hope.
Since leaving the railway station, everything had been a blur. The only way for the medics to transport Sonia Knight was to silence her completely with a sedative, something they were reluctant to do because they had no prior knowledge of her condition. In the end, it had been Gardener who had made the decision. Without it, they were never going to be able to do what was necessary.
Before following the ambulance, he had called out SOCO and ordered the place to be completely sealed and ripped apart, much to Giles Middleton’s utter horror.
Gardener turned to face his partner, and once again inquired about the man they had seen posting letters. “You couldn�
��t see him anywhere?”
“No, boss.”
“Can you remember anything about him?”
“Not really,” replied Reilly. “Only his clothes. A long, dark green wax jacket and black boots. Never saw his face.”
“Me neither,” replied Gardener.
It was possible he was clutching at straws. The man could have genuinely been there posting letters. But it seemed odd.
“I shot a look in both directions. Had to make a decision. I reckoned he was local, ran past our car and up to the cottages opposite. So I knocked on a few doors, annoyed some people because of the early hour, but I didn’t come across him. By that time I knew I’d made the wrong choice.”
“Wasn’t your fault, Sean. If we’d had more men, we could have split up and done a thorough search.”
Reilly stood up and joined Gardener near the door. “I took the car around the town after that, but it was obviously too late.”
“It’s not easy to drive and look at the same time, is it? He could have been anywhere by then. If he’d been down one of the side streets, you’d have had no chance anyway.”
“Are you convinced he’s our man?”
“Not really, but I can’t see why else he would be there,” replied Gardener. “It’s just too coincidental.”
“I’m inclined to agree. Perfect spot to watch us go in, and then send a signal to the victim’s phone. Once the pandemonium started, he could just do one.”
“Call me paranoid,” said Gardener, “can you remember how many cars there were when we pulled up?”
“I think so.” Reilly pulled out his pad and opened it to the page where he had registration numbers. “There were only four, these are the numbers.”
Gardener chuckled as he removed his own pad from his jacket pocket. “We’ve been working together too long.”
“Tell me about it.”
They compared notes and the vehicle details were the same.
“So, if the same amount of cars were there when we arrived and left, it’s possible that he is local.”
Reilly thought for a moment before responding. “I didn’t check the car park of the pub opposite.”