Who Dies Beneath

by L. J. Hutton

  “Whaaa... What I’ve done? What do you mean?”

  “Oh you know, Damien. All those women you’ve hurt. All the women you brought here. Out to where you knew they wouldn’t know where to run to. The ones you pinned to the ground and had your foul way with. Them. They are the ones you need to pay for. The ones whose lives you have ruined.”

  “Whaaa...?” he screamed again. “What do you...?” Images were pounding into his mind, sensations of being raped, he was being immersed in someone else’s terror. And yet Damien was so utterly self-obsessed that he just kept shaking his head as if wriggling out of the way of what Pelydryn was showing him.

  “Phfaah!” she declared in disgust. “It’s no use. He’s incapable of learning. He’s worse than a mad dog and twice as dangerous if he’s allowed to leave here.”

  That was the point that the spoilt brat in Damien came screaming to the surface in his distress. “You can’t touch me!” he shrieked. “Do you know who my father is? Do you? Huh?” And he turned towards Pelydryn swinging his fist with considerable force.

  As he did so, Claerwyn, on the other side of him, reached out and grabbed hold of his jacket, spinning him back the other way just as Tarian-derw lunged. The keen blade of the sword sliced through Damien’s middle like a knife through butter, and for a moment he stood frozen, transfixed on the blade. Then with a whimper, he collapsed back against the sapling as the sword was pulled out of him.

  “Why?” was the last word he said, but the three stood and watched dispassionately as his blood slowly puddled around his seated body, propped up still by the apple tree.

  Chapter 11

  BILL’S FIRST STOP WAS Hawthorn House Hotel the following late afternoon. As he drove up the long driveway from the road, he had to admit that it was a pretty spot. The house itself was a fairly standard late Georgian, or early Victorian, gentleman farmer’s country pile, elegant and undoubtedly expensive to build in its day, but not exactly remarkable either. You could put it into any of the glossy magazines which ran features on country homes and hotels and be hard pressed to tell it from any others of the era. The staff were welcoming and friendly, and Bill found that Offa’s View was a room up on the top floor at the end of the corridor, and although there were only six bedrooms up here, it was the one where people would be least likely to hear anything going on in there.

  “Is this why you liked this room, Damien?” Bill muttered, as he leaned on the window sill and looked out across the hillside. “Nice and quiet for you?”

  The other room next door along this shorter side of the building had its door standing open still, housekeeping having only just finished work on it, and so as soon as the coast was clear, Bill nipped in to have a quick look around. A large antique wardrobe stood against the adjoining wall, and when Bill went back into his room, he could see that the hotel had cleverly staggered the placement of it and the similar one in his room, so that between them they formed an effective sound dampener between the rooms. The room at right-angles to his was separated by his en-suite, and presumably the en-suite of the other room, so again, there was an effective sound barrier between the two. But then, Bill reminded himself, the worst that had been done to the women who came here with Damien probably hadn’t taken place in this room. That had been somewhere else, somewhere he had yet to find.

  For this evening, though, Bill just wanted to absorb the atmosphere of the place. What sort of people came here? Were the Farrahs, with their pretensions and airs and graces the odd ones out? He soon found out when he went down to dinner. The hotel wasn’t full by any means, but three pretty normal-looking couples were at other tables, and there were two men sitting at a table, but with laptops open, obviously business men who had met up here to discuss something. Nobody came across as being frightfully full of themselves, but if Bill had been hoping for the best of Welsh food from the restaurant, he was soon disappointed. The entire menu seemed to be French nouvelle cuisine – something which had Bill vowing to eat out the two following nights.

  “Can I take your order, sir?” a waitress who couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen asked, breaking his ponderings.

  “I don’t suppose you do anything more substantial?” Bill asked hopefully.

  The girl smiled wanly. “No, sir, that’s the full menu.”

  Bill’s heart sank even lower, especially looking at the prices of the starters, let alone the main courses. “In that case, I’ll have the soup of the day and the smoked salmon on toast to start with.”

  “Soup plus a smoked salmon and crudités,” the little waitress recited back, scribbling furiously on her pad. “And for your main course?”

  “The trout on rice with blanched almonds, please.”

  She vanished off to the kitchens, but when she came back to lay his soup spoon, and to offer him a bread roll so small Bill could have eaten it whole, she whispered,

  “You might want to try the pub in the village. They do steak!”

  “Thank you!” Bill whispered back. “You’ve saved me from starvation!”

  That brought a smile to her face, and Bill knew he’d made a contact there who might just answer the odd question if asked in the right way, as long as she didn’t feel pressurised.

  But the ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s from the other tables told him that other people were more in awe of the menu than he was, so had that been one of the pretensions the Farrahs had liked to foster? Had they come here so that they could go home and brag about the menu, rather than enjoying eating it? The food, when it came, was beautiful but just far from the normal portions Bill consumed, and he knew he was going to have to stock up at breakfast the next morning or he’d be fading away by the time he’d walked a few miles. He was also glad he’d brought a flask with malt whisky in it, because one look at the prices on the wine list had him going with a bottled beer, though it was also a continental brand he’d normally never touch with a barge pole.

  The light had gone by the time he left the restaurant, and so he could only take a walk around the immediate outside of the hotel before venturing into the small bar area off the lounge. The very enthusiastic and extremely camp young barman did his utmost to talk Bill into having one of his speciality cocktails, but one look at the array of luridly coloured liqueurs and shots behind the bar had Bill firmly demanding a Glenfiddich, being something which was familiar and not laced with chemical colourings, if not his favourite malt. He only had the one, though, having discovered that the chatty barman had only come to work here five months ago, and therefore wouldn’t have ever come across Damien, so there was no reason to spend more money when he wasn’t getting information.

  Back in his room, he decided to have an early night, but settled down on the comfortable sofa that was provided to read for a while. There was no point in rummaging down the side of the leather chesterfield’s cushions in the hope of left items, because Bill trusted his colleagues to have been thorough in their searches at the time of Damien’s death, and so he did his best to ignore why he was here for tonight. Whether it was preying on his mind even so, once he was in bed, sleep prove long in coming, and as he lay there watching the stars through the open curtains, he couldn’t help but think of the succession of terrified women who had spent a night in this room.

  How bloody scared of him were you all by this time? he wondered. Did he show his true colours to you the moment he got here? Or did he flash the cash down in the restaurant, making out that he was regular enough here to be able to ask the chef for some special or other? Was it only on the second day that you began to wonder what on earth you’d let yourselves in for? And did you bring your wives here, Damien? Was that when you first realised just how nicely isolated you were here?

  He must have dropped off to sleep at some point, because the next thing he was aware of was something which was either an incredibly vivid dream, or something being shown to him. It was as though he was in someone else’s body, walking away from the hotel, which he could see when he looked back over his sho
ulder. His dream self was filled with a growing unease, and the part of his consciousness that was still Bill knew that this must be one of the women Damien had brought here.

  It was dark, and too chilly to be planning some romantic love tryst outside. He knew that this other self was wearing a coat, a heavy coat, and that was why ‘she’ was so bemused by them walking farther and farther away from the hotel. The dream-self turned and looked towards the person whom the Bill side realised must be Damien, and yet the dream side put no face to the man beyond a general outline. Bill himself knew what Damien looked like, so why hadn’t his subconscious filled in the details of Damien’s features if it was just a dream?

  The dream-self and the faceless man carried on walking, Bill realising that ‘she’ was becoming increasingly frightened as ‘she’ realised that the ground was getting more uneven and lumpier – ground she wouldn’t be able to run over without hurting herself. And then, ahead of them, ‘she’ began to see the waving outlines of small trees, trees barely her own height, and there was a self awareness that she wasn’t a particularly tall woman.

  “Now then, gorgeous,” an oily male voice said in ‘her’ ear, yet with Bill’s consciousness able to feel his hot breath, “let’s see if you live up to what you promise, you little cock-tease.”

  The Bill side of the dream heard the other side’s horrified, “What?”

  “Oh come on, you’ve been leading me on ever since you met me,” the nasty voice continued, and the dream-self was aware of being pulled into a hard embrace from which ‘she’ couldn’t break free, but also of the hard thrust of the man’s erection even through the wool of ‘her’ coat. “Come on, then sweet cheeks,” and there was the sensation of a hand snaking up her skirt and tugging at her knickers.

  “Nooo!” Bill heard the dream-self squeal, and felt her terror and her knowledge that she was about to be raped.

  Bill had never been a man to underestimate the horror of what it must be like for a woman to be raped, but even for him it was a sickening jolt to realise just how powerless this woman was when confronted with the weight and strength of Damien Farrah. It didn’t take him long to get her down onto the ground, and the detached part of the dream which was still Bill realised that Damien must have done some sort of basic unarmed combat training, even if it was only a self-defence class, for him to know how to get someone down on the ground quite so effectively. The dream woman was starting to cry and trying to call out, and then in the dream Bill felt the hand clamp down over ‘her’ mouth even as he felt the first thrust of Damien inside of ‘her’.

  ‘Her’ thrashing around achieved nothing, pinned as she was beneath his weight, and the dream side of the woman began to fade as Bill felt her gasps for air becoming weaker. As she suddenly blinked out of existence, Bill woke, sitting up on the couch, sweat pouring off him, and gasping for breath that he didn’t really need. The pungent smell of Damien’s sweat and arousal was cloying in his nostrils, even though there was nothing here in the room for him to smell, and it was all he could do to keep swallowing hard and not dash into the bathroom and throw up. And already he knew that this was an ‘experience’ that would linger with him for a very long time.

  But even worse than that, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that somewhere out there, there was a body which had yet to be found. A woman who had been the first of Damien’s victims. And he was sure that she must have been the first one after the last of his wives had left him, if only because after that he’d been more careful to make sure that they lived, though whether it could be said that any of them had survived their encounters with him was another matter altogether.

  It took longer than he expected to get to sleep again, and in the morning when his alarm went off to make sure that he was up in time for breakfast, he felt drained and lethargic in a way that was unusual for him. Yet one other thing lingered with him from that weird dream. He was sure the real woman had been observed. Somebody, somehow, had been out there on that night, and that somebody had seen what was happening and had, at that time, been unable to intervene and save this woman. It was someone Bill had a funny feeling might be the mysterious woman who had lured Damien to his death, but as he’d said to Nick, finding enough proof of that to take to his colleagues was a whole other matter.

  Luckily, a bracing shower, and then a brisk walk around the outside of the hotel before breakfast, did much to restore him to normality, especially as it was a sharp and chilly morning with the first real nip of autumn in the air. To Bill’s disgust, the chef’s idea of a full English breakfast fell very short of his own, and he was already envisaging having to stop at the first pub he came to around midday to fill the growing gap he was feeling around his middle. Long before any of the other guests had finished lingering over their breakfast coffees and teas, Bill had gone back up to his room, donned his walking boots and grabbed his waterproof in the small rucksack he used on such occasions, and was ready to start exploring before the October sun had had chance to warm up the land.

  His first objective was to try and retrace his dream-self’s footsteps of the night before, and for this he was having to rely far more on instinct than he would normally have liked. The first time he turned around and looked at the silhouette of the hotel’s roof-line, he realised that he was too far over towards the drive. The chimneys were too separated and needed to be more in line with one another. And so as soon as he could turn westwards without trampling over the flower beds, he did so, finding that there was another path leading away from the hotel, and this time the roof-line was more as he recalled it from the dream.

  He didn’t have to get far away from the buildings before the garden path turned into something far rougher, and the rutted surface again reminded him of what the woman in his dream had experienced. Soon it was barely a track at all, but it was heading steadily uphill towards where he knew the plantation of small apple saplings lay. Yet there suddenly came a point when Bill instinctively knew that the woman he’d connected with last night had not got as far as. It made him turn around and go back a way until he felt he was more at the spot where she had fallen. He had no doubts that this was the spot, but equally, he couldn’t see how Damien could have disposed of her body here. There was a small dip in the land, to be sure, but not enough that you could leave someone here and not expect them to be discovered.

  That was a new complication, because it meant that Damien must have taken the body somewhere else to get rid of it. But where? Even looking at the map, there was nowhere which immediately jumped out at him as being an obvious deposition site. Behind him, going into the woodland which surrounded the hotel, he could see that there were pools. But could Damien have carried the woman that far? It would have required nerves of steel, because to get to there, Damien would have had to pass uncomfortably close to the hotel. And it wasn’t rough woodland, either, but ornamental small trees and decorative shrubs, well-pruned and probably looked after by the hotel gardener, so simply dumping a body under a tangle of brambles wouldn’t have been an option.

  On the other hand, remembering the sensation of the woman’s coat, and how dark it had been just after what he thought had been dinner, it could have been winter time, or at least early spring or late autumn during a cold spell. That would have decreased the risk considerably, especially if it had been inclement weather during the day. Most guests would be glad to cluster around the large open fire Bill had seen lying waiting to be lit in the guest lounge, and if it hadn’t been cold enough this week to warrant it, there surely must have been many winter evenings when it got cold enough for a log fire to be welcome. And for most people, who lived with modern heating systems, the novelty of an open fire was quite enough to keep them inside when they’d probably already consumed a bottle of wine between a couple.

  “You poor lass,” Bill breathed softly. “You didn’t stand a chance, did you? This monster had it all worked out. And if he wasn’t planning on you dying, he’d certainly worked it all out enough in advance that he k
new he wasn’t likely to be disturbed. What’s the betting you two were amongst the earlier diners, so that he knew it would be a while before the waiting and kitchen staff left for the night?”

  That would make sense, and then when the unexpected had happened, Damien hadn’t panicked precisely because he knew he had time in hand. Looking at his watch, Bill then turned towards the pools, keeping his pace slowed down to what he thought Damien would have managed with this woman over his shoulder – and Bill was fairly sure he must have hoisted her over his shoulder. Carrying someone in your arms was fine for a short distance, but even a lightweight person could weigh incredibly heavy after a short while if all their weight was at the front of your body. And although Bill had had the impression of a smaller woman, given that Damien like him had been six feet tall, that didn’t necessarily make her that petite either.

  By the time Bill had reached the first of the pools, he reckoned it was about a third of a mile from where the woman had died, and even heavily laden over rough ground, had probably not taken Damien much over a quarter of an hour. No great challenge, but more than enough distance to carry someone, and that made him think that Damien would have used the first pool he came to. Even so, he walked on to the second pool, but seeing that it was definitely smaller confirmed his belief that Damien had already known the grounds of the hotel very well beforehand.

  Where did you put her? he thought, turning around to scan the place. Would you risk throwing her into the water, and then trying to make out that she must have slipped in and drowned? No, I think you were already too much of the accomplished predator for that. I reckon you’d had plenty of practice at keeping things quiet with your ex-wives. You were no novice at this, Damien. The only thing that was new for you was disposing of a body, rather than ushering a distraught woman out of the hotel before anyone started asking awkward questions.