Who Dies Beneath

by L. J. Hutton

  Bill grinned back. “Of course!”

  “Well if you want me to bring the geo’ phys’ equipment over to start looking for burial pits, give me some warning! I’m at home for the next two weekends.”

  Damien

  March

  DAMIEN PULLED HIS TOP of the range Jaguar into the car park of Hawthorn House Hotel, and seeing that there were no guest spots available at the moment, drove in to the manager’s reserved spot. The damned man would have to suck it up. After all Damien was the paying guest here, and if they wanted his money, they could bloody well accommodate him. No way was he going to take the Jag’ into that rough overflow car park, and then get his Santoni patent leather, five hundred pound, shoes scuffed in the walk back to the hotel! Screw that!

  He got out and smoothed his Ralph Lauren chinos and Armani leather jacket, before reaching into the boot and pulling out the Louis Vuitton weekend bags. For a moment he paused and admired himself in the wing mirror. Looking good, man, he told himself with a smirk. Bringing out all the big name labels for this chick! God, she’d better be good after all the run-around she’d given him. He’d got the coke safely stashed in his inside pocket ready for tonight, but he was already so high on anticipation, for once he wasn’t tempted to have a snort to get himself in the mood.

  Swaggering across to the front door, he was so busy admiring himself going past in the large gilt-framed mirror, that he missed the grimaces and rolled eyes of Kerry the receptionist and Rick the under-manager when they saw who had walked in.

  “Thank God he hasn’t got the woman with him as yet,” Kerry said with quiet relief. “I hated it when he drags some poor bitch in who’s looking at him all doe-eyed. You just know she’s going to come down to breakfast looking like she’s been hit by a truck. Why the hell hasn’t one of them reported him for rape?”

  Rick gave a sniff of disgust. “Too bloody scared of him, I suspect. If he can get us into trouble through his family connections, you can bet he’s already dropped some hint that the chief constable’s a mate of his dad’s. Doesn’t have to be true, of course. They just have to believe that he can drop names and get any charges dropped. Bloody hell, I’d love one of them to stand him up. Wouldn’t that be a treat, eh?”

  “Oh please, yes! And let it be this time!” Kerry answered, as she turned aside to pluck the room key from off its hook so that Damien couldn’t read her lips. “She’s not here yet, so there’s hope!”

  Damien came and leaned over the top of the desk far more than was necessary. “Hello, gorgeous,” he said with a too-familiar wink at Kerry. “Still looking good. You’re breaking my heart, you know.”

  Swallowing hard as she felt her stomach turn, Kerry pasted on a thin smile. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr Farrah.”

  “Oh come on, lovely, you know it’s Damien. Can’t we drop the formalities?”

  “And have you complain that we were too disrespectful?” Kerry dared to answer back, managing to force a coquettish smile at him to soften her words. “Now, now, Mr Farrah, we couldn’t have that, could we? ...So here you are, the key to Offa’s View, as always.”

  “Bottle of Boli’ ready to come up, properly chilled?” he demanded, that nasty edge still there under the oily charm.

  “Ready and waiting, Mr Farrah,” Rick told him to divert him from his inspection of Kerry’s cleavage. “We haven’t taken it up yet as we were waiting for you and your guest to arrive first.”

  “She’s not here yet?” The mask of civility was gone in a heartbeat, but Kerry developed a paroxysm of coughing and fled for the office door, before her smothered whoops of delight could give her away.

  “No sir, just you at the moment,” Rick replied, for once not having to fake his broad smile, though Farrah got no clue as to the real reason why and wasn’t watching him anyway.

  Standing alert, like some hound seeking out his prey, Damien’s gaze ran across the seats in the lounge, and strode to the door through to the bar to make sure she wasn’t in there either. Clearly he wasn’t happy with his date’s absence.

  Rick coughed, primarily to dispel the bubbling laugh that was refusing to go away. “Shall I bring your bags up...?” He never got the ‘sir’ out. Damien had snatched up his bags and stormed off to the staircase. “Well that’ll be a ‘no’, then, your snotty lordship,” he giggled, then couldn’t contain himself any longer and shot into the office, to join Kerry in laughing themselves silly at seeing someone get one over on their worst and most arrogant guest.

  In his room, Damien stormed around furiously for several minutes. Damn the bitch! She had him by the short and curlies, and no mistake. He didn’t even have a fucking mobile number for her! How had he let that happen?

  Because you can’t think of anything but how you’re going to screw the arse off her, that’s why, his subconscious told him. You’ve got a permanent hard-on whenever you’re with her. She’s got you by your dick, and at that point you agree to whatever she says. Fucking hell, man! Grow some balls! Or rather, since they’re part of why you’re up here looking like a right sad prick, get a spine! When have you ever let a mere woman lead you? Shit, you had more control over your bloody wives than this! You’ve got to teach her a lesson this time. Show her who’s boss!

  Managing to pull himself together a fraction, he rang down and told Rick that he’d have the Bolinger up here and opened anyway, then went in to the shower.

  When Rick came up to the room, he took the ice-filled bucket over to the dressing table, then swore softly. Bloody Farrah! Typical of the man to cut his coke with a razor blade on the polished wood and mark it! Then heard the panting coming from the shower and departed in disgust. Downstairs, Kerry asked,

  “Was he parading about in just a towel again?” that being the reason why none of the female staff ever did room service for him nowadays.

  Rick shook his head, then laughed. “He’s wanking himself stupid in the shower with God knows how much coke up his nose already.”

  “Yuk!” Kerry responded, wrinkling her nose in revulsion. “I’d better break the bad news to Ben that he’ll be waiting table tonight. At least he’ll only get verbal abuse. I can’t ask Chloe to serve him after the last time. Can’t we ask for him to be banned?”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Well the next time you take a bottle up to him, have your phone on you. If he’s got his drugs on display like that again, photograph the bloody things and then send it to head office. Surely even they won’t want a drugs arrest here?”

  Damien’s mood hadn’t improved by the time that dinner came around and there was still no sign of Pelydryn. Every dish the unfortunate Ben brought out got sent back to the kitchen for some false reason or other, infuriating the chef so much that it took all of Rick’s persuasion to stop him from quitting on the spot. So it was with huge sighs of relief from all of the staff, that Damien quit the dining room and stormed out to smoke a joint on the lawn. He’d also managed to upset the other guests so much that the staff were far too busy soothing ruffled feathers to notice the woman who appeared out of the shadows of the bushes on the lawn’s edge.

  Despite the gloom of the late March evening, her golden hair seemed to positively radiate sunshine, and as she walked a few steps towards him with that seductive sway of hers, it was almost as though she had her own hidden spotlight shining on her.

  “Where have you been?” Damien demanded aggressively, even as he felt himself becoming aroused just by the sight of her. What was that fabric her dress was made of? It seemed so sheer he ought to have been able to see straight through it, and yet just where it mattered, he couldn’t see a thing. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

  “Well then, you’ve got me,” she said with a smile, and that funny sort of Welsh accent of hers.

  Yet as Damien hurried towards her, she turned and began walking away from him, almost seeming to dance across the grass, and keeping just out of his reach.

  “Keep up!” she teased, and even through his coke- and booze-add
led brain, Damien vaguely registered that something was wrong.

  Did she actually speak those words? Had he seen her lips move? The trouble was, his frustration was doing nothing to help keep his libido in check, and every wiggle of those slender hips of hers was turning on his body further, and his brain off. And was that actually perfume? If it was, he’d never smelt the like before. But then it seemed to be inside his head more than in his nose.

  The arrogant side of his psyche was now little more than an appalled onlooker, as he stumbled along behind Pelydryn like some lovesick sixteen year-old, chasing this elusive female. All his vows of controlling her had vanished somewhere behind his designer-brand flies. All his big talk was gone, overtaken by his wholly animal need to take her and penetrate her, no matter how low he had to abase himself in order for her to allow him to do that. He was in such a state that it was all he could do to keep to his feet, and when she began calling out in some weird language he couldn’t understand, even with the way the words seemed to flow to inside of his head, all he was conscious of was their seductive tone.

  He wouldn’t have been half as thrilled if he’d known what she was really saying.

  “Are you there, Tarian-derw?” she called, knowing that her brother wouldn’t call out in words that this foul beast behind her could understand. The call of a skylark, which would not naturally have been out after dark, farther up the hill told her that he was, and not too far ahead, either.

  After she had told Tarian-derw of seeing how Damien had assaulted that woman in the fields, they had all watched for him coming to this place again. And over the months they had built up a picture of a very violent and dangerous man indeed. The fact that the people at the hotel had never found the body of the woman he had smothered was worrying, and the more they watched him, the more they were convinced that here was a very accomplished predator indeed.

  It was hard for them to get close to the hotel during daylight hours because of the increased risk of being spotted. But Pelydryn and her sisters had taken it in turns to watch from within the trees, each of them at some point getting a glimpse of the terrified women who stumbled out into the daylight the morning after Damien had completed his coup de grace of the previous night with them in the field. Something about his warped and perverse mind found extra excitement in raping other women on the spot where he’d already killed one, of that they had become certain. And though one of the women had been alert enough to struggle even before he had got her up and away from the hotel, he was still strong enough to be able to overwhelm her.

  That was the night when one of them had tried to distract him. Having seen his preference for blonde women, it had been Claerwyn who had run down the hill to him and called out. But he had already had his trousers down around his ankles, and been between the woman’s wide-spread legs, even if he hadn’t been inside her yet, and his animal instincts were such that Claerwyn’s allure was nothing compared to what he knew he already had. Even Claerwyn throwing stones at his bare behind had done nothing to stop him, and she had been forced to stop for fear of hitting the woman.

  And then when he was spent, he had staggered up from his victim, roaring his rage at being interrupted. Barely pausing to hoist his trousers back up enough to be able to walk, he only buttoned the top and then came stamping unsteadily in Claerwyn’s direction, not even bothering to cover himself up. The foul verbal abuse he flung at her, and the threats to beat her senseless, were the final straw.

  “We cannot hope to distract him if he has another woman with him,” Claerwyn had said, when they had returned to their home and were discussing what to do. “If Tarian-derw skewers him then, the danger is that he might twist even so, and we hurt the very woman we are trying to save.”

  “I agree,” Pelydryn had said. “I think we need to lure him to us. We cannot endanger another. And unfortunately, Claerwyn, he got a good enough look at you, even in the night, that he might recognise you. He’s a big man, and while you’re strong, the last thing we need is for him to get you alone and become violent with you. A sexual attack you could undoubtedly fend off. But if he is violent with you from the moment you meet, that could be disastrous.

  “It would be different if you could risk meeting him for the lure in a place where he would not dare behave in such a manner. But we cannot be seen in public. And we cannot guarantee that we could draw him into the woods where the rest of us might lie in wait. One of us is going to have to venture out and meet him on his own terms, and I suspect it will have to be me. After Claerwyn, I’m the one who next fits his choice of woman.”

  That was how Pelydryn had come to be the one who had crossed Damien’s path, as he’d lingered at the hotel for an extra couple of nights after spending the late January weekend here with his parents. He’d thought he was taking time to gloat over how successfully he’d kept under everyone’s radar so far. He had no idea that the hunter had just become the hunted.

  And so now, Pelydryn was luring him farther and farther away from the hotel. Whilst they were getting closer and closer to what Damien thought of as his ‘killing ground’, it only inflamed him more, and so when she went beyond there, he was past being rational about anything. On and up the hill she went, drawing him in her wake as if by an invisible rope, until they came to the small plantation. Ideally they would have liked to bring him to a mature specimen of the trees they had an affinity with, but that just wasn’t possible. Search though they had, there wasn’t a mature apple or crab-apple tree within at least a mile of this place, and although Pelydryn had Damien captivated for now, they all knew that there was only so long she would be able to sustain that for.

  It would have been different if they could have got him to meet out in the wilds where they truly would have had a free rein, but Damien had resisted any such suggestion from Pelydryn, and she had reported that she had not wanted to push too hard in case he lost interest in her. As long as he met no other woman, she could guarantee to keep stringing him along, but what none of them wanted was for this violent sexual ‘carnivore’ to find easier ‘meat’ back wherever he went to. For they all knew that Pelydryn would only be able to draw him in once. Her allure would not be half so enticing once he’d been distracted, and been able to actually satiate himself fully with another in a way that he’d not yet been able to with her. It was now or never, and they would have to improvise as necessary.

  “Come on,” she teased him, seeing Damien flagging slightly behind her. He had to follow her just a bit farther, he had to, and she lifted the hem of her diaphanous gown suggestively.

  In the darkness within the grove of saplings, Tarian-derw watched Damien’s stumbling, panting progress, and sucked a breath in through his teeth in disapproval.

  “What kind of warrior is that?” he asked in disgust of nobody in particular.

  Claerwyn patted him on the arm as their other sister, Helyglys, on his far side laughed softly and said,

  “He’s no warrior. But tonight he will know what it is to feel the kind of fear he’s been so quick to hand out to others. ...She’s nearly here. ...Just a few steps more. ...Aah! And here he is!”

  As Damien staggered to a halt, barely an arm’s length away from Pelydryn, he realised that her smile wasn’t half as welcoming or seductive as it had been back in the garden.

  “You fucking bitch!” he snapped, and swung a fist in her direction, missing her easily and almost overbalancing in the process. But that only infuriated him more. “Think you can lead me on like this do you? Well it’s just you and me out here, you Welsh cunt, so you’ve really fucked up!”

  “Alone am I? I wouldn’t be sure of that,” Pelydryn said with such absolute confidence that it brought Damien up sharp.

  What had she done? Set some kind of trap with a boyfriend? Well if she thought she was going to get away with mugging and beating Damien Farrah, she was very much mistaken. He could handle himself with the best of them, his over-bloated self-confidence told him. He’d show them. And then when he was away from h
ere, he’d call the police, and then they’d find out how far his father’s contacts went. Right up to chief constable, that’s where! They’d be the ones up before the magistrates, not him.

  But then he felt his bowels turn to liquid as the scariest looking male he’d ever seen stepped out of the gloom. How big was that bloody sword he was carrying? Oh come on, his inner voice screamed. Who the fuck carries a sword these days? What are you some kind of religious nut? ...Oh my God! Oh my God! Is he really pointing that thing at me? Why did I never find out how to get hold of a gun?

  What’s he saying? ...Oh my God! ...No, what’s she saying? What women? ...Who? “...What? ...Who was she? I can’t remember! ...When?...” It was a mark of how panicked Damien had become that he’d completely lost track of the point when his thoughts had become screamed questions. “Her name? ...Their names? I don’t keep track of them. They’re nothing, why would I remember them?”

  And all the time he was backing up, finding that he was up against first one sapling, which he snapped off in his fright and determination to get away from that god-awful sword, whose all too sharp tip remained pointing straight at his throat, and then another more substantial sapling that stopped him in his tracks. He couldn’t turn aside, because there was the woman to his right, and another who he vaguely recalled from somewhere else to his left. And for the first time in his life, Damien was frightened of a woman, not least because these now didn’t look like any woman he’d ever come across – not even the hard-faced whores who his idiot brother thought it was okay to shag and then beat up. These two, somehow fully visible on this blackest of nights, as if weirdly lit up from within by pinpricks of starlight, had the look of women who knew how to handle themselves in a fight; which made it all the stranger that he’d found the yellow-haired one so sexy up until a few minutes ago. Why was that? What had happened?

  “You have to pay for what you have done,” his seductress said from so close to him that he jumped, having not heard her step in.