It was obvious that KK had had a thing about knives. It was his killing weapon of choice.
Without realising it, Peter's mind drifted to thinking about knives. For a few moments he wondered just what it must feel like to actually cut someone else's throat. Trying to understand just what on Earth there could be that was so attractive about the experience. Then he thought back to two nights ago, and how he had become obsessed with watching the killing scene in the Gladiator film.
He thought about that moment again. Replaying in his mind, the moment that the knife penetrated the Emperor's throat; the look on his face, that startled gaze during which the Emperor had realised that he was about to die, but could do nothing about it.
Then he thought about it again. And again.
A strange thought occurred to Peter. "If I were to kill someone, how would I be most likely to do it? With a knife?"
He thought again about Big Wee Rab. "If I ever saw him again, would I kill him? And if I had to, could I cut his throat, just like in the Gladiator film?"
He shivered.
It was almost as if the thought had induced a physical reaction within him. Whatever the cause, or the origin, the reaction broke the train of thought.
"Bloody hell, what on Earth am I thinking about!" Peter stood up, shouting. "Shit, this is really beginning to drive me mad!" Peter punched the sky, shouting loudly, "I can't do this anymore. Piss off, KK, just leave me the fuck alone!"
The phone rang. Peter bent down and picked it up from the stone in front of him where he had placed it, while waiting for Alex to ring back.
"Alex? Hi, thanks for calling back. I'm in a wood just outside of Knuttsford. I promised you that I'd keep you in the loop. How soon can you get here? I've just found another body...!"
Peter went on to explain that he'd started to excavate the grave and that he'd stopped as soon as he had found the body, ...but that the grave was now opened and exposed and someone needed to get down here immediately, before it started to rain or got dark!
"I know you still don't trust me, and deep down you probably still think that I'm the murderer, but I don't want to work with anyone else on this. I haven't got the energy to go through being arrested again. How long before you can get here?"
.
--------------------
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As the helicopter circled over head, Peter waved at the field where KK had committed the murder, and a few minutes later the chopper touched down.
Alex jumped down first, running across to Peter. He was followed by three other officers and the lady coroner that Peter recognised from Ironbridge.
Peter put out his hand to welcome Alex, but Alex just looked at the hand as he walked past towards the road.
"Walk with me," he instructed loudly, forcing Peter to catch up with him.
"Slow down, Alex. I'm knackered. I've been digging all day long..."
"Listen, I want to speak to you out of earshot of the others. Your DNA came back. It doesn't match the DNA from the blood. However, that does not really prove anything. It doesn't mean that you didn't commit the murder, or that you are not an accomplice. It just means that we do not have any evidence to pin you to it. That's all."
"Bloody hell Alex, I didn't do this, when will you believe me?" Peter said, grabbing the policeman's right arm, stopping still and forcing the policeman to turn around and face him. "If I was guilty, give me one fucking reason why I would be digging up any bodies I'd put there, and then giving them straight to the police?"
"I haven't figured that one out yet, Peter, but I just cannot accept this clairvoyant story that you keep producing. Clairvoyance doesn't exist. You know that, I know that. Her Majesty's Police Force knows that!"
"I knew you would say that!" Peter shouted back at Alex, trying to diffuse the situation, unsuccessfully. Alex didn't get it.
"Please take me to the body. If you have found one then we will have a lot of work to do before dark."
.
They walked in silence, the other officers and the coroner following quietly and dutifully behind.
When they got to the waterfall, Peter pointed at the grave, and said to the coroner, "Please excuse the vomit at the back of the hole. That's my stomach contents and my DNA. I got a bit of a shock..."
Alex and the coroner jumped down into the hole, took a look at the skeletal hand, covering their noses as they did so, looked into the hole through the rubber matting, then climbed back out.
The coroner took one serious look at Peter, then walked past him, pulling out her phone from her jacket and immediately starting organising another full-scale night-time field excavation.
"So Peter, how the hell did you find this one?" Alex demanded, obviously angered by what he had just seen.
"I was just following instructions. Initially I got it wrong, went to the wrong waterfall- 'The Grey Mare' on the other side of the hill-, but then one of the locals told me about this place, and bingo, here we are."
"What? You expect me to believe that you just turned up, decided to dig a hole here, and bingo, you found a body?"
"Sort of like that."
"Don't take me for a fool Peter. I'm not an idiot. Who told you to look here?"
"The clairvoyant...."
"Enough, Peter, Stop! No more of that clairvoyant crap, do you understand? That's all bullshit, and we both know it. You want to know what I think? Yeah? Well, I'll tell you then...There IS no clairvoyant. There is just you. YOU are the clairvoyant!"
Peter looked stunned.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean, no one else is telling you what to do here. No one else is giving you any spirit-world guidance on 'How to choose a forest and dig up your very own corpse.' We had your phone tapped, and you haven't really been calling anyone, and almost no one has been calling you. Same goes for when you were in Ironbridge. You never called with anyone to discuss this shit, apart from your girlfriend Susie. The only one you talked to about all of this was yourself!"
"You tapped my phone? You don't have the right to do that?"
"You're making me angry now. You'd be bloody surprised what we can do. This is a murder case now and this is England not Braveheartland. Our job is to catch murderers and thieves, not shake their hands and give them a cup of tea!"
"So you think I'm a murderer?"
"Honestly? Off the record, I don't know what to think. All I know is that this is all pretty weird."
Peter walked away from the grave, his hands behind his head, looking up at the sky.
"Come back here!" Alex shouted.
"Or what? You'll arrest me again? Come on, just do it. I'll be out before midnight and I won't talk to you again," Peter shouted back. He visibly took a deep breath.
"Alex, there is of course, another way...You help me, and I will help you!"
"To do what?"
"To find the others!"
"What others?"
"The other bodies!"
"What other bodies...Bloody hell, how many people have you killed?"
Peter just stared at Alex.
"Blame me one more time, and I walk. Do you understand?"
Alex was quiet. He turned around, and started walking in a big circle around the grave. When he came back, a male police officer stepped forward, and said something to Alex. Alex bent forward, letting the officer talk quietly into his ear. He nodded a couple of times, looked at his watch, said a couple of things back to the officer, and then came back to Peter.
"Let's go. They don't want you around anymore. We mustn't contaminate the scene."
"What? Why? It was me that dug the fucking hole? My DNA, my stomach contents is already all over it!"
"Come with me, Peter, please..." Alex said, touching Peter's arms and gently coaxing him to move ahead back down the path towards their cars.
"Peter, I'm not arresting you. But now we are both a lot calmer, I would like to request that you drive me to the station, and there I need to take a statement from you. Okay? Will you
come?"
Peter was silent. He looked first at the constable, then also at the coroner who was staring at Peter.
"Yes," he finally agreed.
.
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.
It was 8 p.m. They were sitting in a cell at the back of Knuttsford police station. An officer was sitting with them, a tape recorder was going on a table beside them, and Alex was asking Peter to explain the process that led to the discovery of the body -without mentioning anything to do with a clairvoyant.
Peter was getting incredibly uncomfortable. They hadn't charged him with anything, and officially this was just an interview, but they had told him that they would help create a statement for him from his words and what he said in answer to their questions, and that he could read, edit and sign it later.
Alex was beginning to repeat some of the same questions twice. Peter knew that things were getting awkward: up until today, he had been sticking to his cover story about the clairvoyant being the source of all his knowledge. He had not yet told them the truth: about his kidney transplant or KK.
Peter knew that to repeat any mention of the clairvoyant in this environment would be a mistake. It was not the truth, and he should never sign anything on paper that attested that it was, because he could later be charged with wasting the police's time and diverting the course of justice.
Peter could also tell that Alex was straining at the leash, desperate to ask Peter why he had killed the lady.
Suddenly, it all got too much. Peter stood up.
"Are you going to charge me or not? If not, then I am walking out right now. This is ridiculous. I have not done anything. I came to you, remember? And I've got more to tell you, but I'm not going to say another word, while you are keeping me under suspicion."
He stood up and walked to the door.
The police officer with Alex shot an urgent glance at the constable from Ironbridge. Alex nodded his head lightly.
The other police officer got up, opened the door for Peter, and Peter walked out.
"Where are you staying Peter?" Alex shouted after him, as he left.
"The Fox and Hounds. Come and see me when you are ready to apologise and want to work with me, not against me. If you haven't come by tomorrow night, I'll catch the first stage out of town..."
"It's not a joke, Peter. This is serious."
"Don't you think I know that Alex? You have no idea just what a nightmare this really is for me." Peter turned and walked back into the room, where Alex was still sitting.
"Listen, Alex. Get off your bloody high horse, and forget your hang-ups about clairvoyance and the spirit world. Try to adopt a little bit more of an open mind, okay? Life is a mystery, death is a mystery, it's all a fucking mystery. There are things that we will never understand. Ever. I don't know why some fucking madman would kill a beautiful woman and put her in a grave beside a beautiful waterfall. I have no idea. I can't understand that one. But for some reason, I just knew, I knew, the body would be there. And now all I want to do - all I've ever wanted to do - is to find the bodies, find the others, identify the killer, and find some peace...are you going to help me or not?"
Alex stared at him.
"How do you know it's a beautiful woman?"
"I just do. The coroner will confirm it. Ask her. The victim will have red hair. Sorry, she will have had red hair. She was killed just where the helicopter landed. And your policeman are right now walking all over the crime scene, trampling over the evidence. Screwing with the scene of a crime. I wanted to tell you, but you wouldn’t fucking listen. Think about it, speak to your wife, change your attitude and come and apologise to me. I want to help you. But come before I change my mind..."
Peter turned and walked out the room.
Chapter Seventy Seven
.
.
Knuttsford
May 5th
The Fox and Hounds
7.00 p.m.
.
.
Peter hurried up the stairs at the back of the pub, let himself into his room and lay down on his bed. He was knackered. For a moment he thought about just going to sleep, but then the pangs of hunger won, and he realised he had to go and get some food.
First of all though, he needed to shower. He needed to scrub the grave out of his skin, out of his pores, out of his mind. He looked at his fingers, remembering the moment that he had touched and lifted the skeletal hand of the murdered woman out of the grave. He shuddered.
He washed himself thoroughly in the shower, and then scrubbed and scratched at his hand for five minutes before he convinced his sorry self, that he was definitely clean.
Then he lay down naked on his bed for a few minutes, thinking.
His phone rang.
"Peter? Hi, it's just me. How are you?"
"Susie, thank God it's you. I really need a friendly voice right now. I just found my second body. Dug it up myself...well, not really, but I found the grave, dug it up and pulled out the hand of a woman. Then I called the police, and they wanted to arrest me again. They still might. It's been a nightmare."
"Sounds like it...I'm sorry I'm not there to help you and be with you. How are you coping? Are you well? Would you like me to come down and be with you?"
Peter thought about it, remembering the touch of her skin and making love to her a few weeks ago.
"Susie, I think I would like that. At the moment though, it's probably still best to wait and see what happens. I don't know where I go from here. Maybe I'll end up coming back to Edinburgh. I’ll see you then. But are you okay? Why are you calling?"
"I'm fine...I was just thinking about you. And I need to talk to you. I've been doing some more research on the cases of all the other people who have been having similar experiences to yours. Yesterday I decided to send out a questionnaire to everyone who had responded to our article. I only sent it out yesterday afternoon, but I've already got a ton of replies. -These people really want to talk about their experiences and to share stuff!-. Anyway, Peter, I think I hit the jackpot. I was looking for a commonality between all the cases, something that might be tying everyone together. I mean, why has all of this just started happening now? Why not last year, or the year before? You won't believe it, but I think I've cracked it. I think I know the reason why...and you won't believe it but..."
There was a loud knock on the door, and a women's voice asked "Peter, are you there?" It was Carolina.
"Sorry...Susie...I've got to go. Someone is knocking on the door of my room, and I'm naked. I just stepped out of the shower...I've got to go...Sorry..."
"I miss you Peter. Look after yourself. Call me as soon as you can...we really need to talk. It's important...!"
"I miss you too. Bye..."
Peter jumped off the bed, pulled on a fresh T-shirt, grabbed a large towel and rushed to the door.
Carolina was standing on the other side. Peter could have sworn that she looked more attractive today than yesterday. Had she made more effort? Put on more make-up?
Almost without thinking about it, his eyes wandered downwards, drawn to her bosom and her cleavage which seemed more visible today than yesterday. Larger. More voluptuous.
"Carolina...Hi...Come in..." Peter said, opening the door. He saw her look down at his towel, and for a second he wondered if he saw some colour appear in her cheeks.
"Should I come back...?" was all she said.
"No. Come in. I'll put some clothes on. I've just had a shower."
She stepped inside the door, and as she stepped past him, she brushed his skin and Peter felt what could best be described as a current of electricity shoot through him. He breathed in, smelling her perfume, simple yet sophisticated...and from out of nowhere, Peter felt an overpowering sense of arousal. It startled him.
Holding the towel tightly, he closed the door and stepped into the room after her.
She was standing in the middle of the room, looking at him.
He walked up to her.
She was smiling.
Peter stood in front of her.
Neither said anything.
Carolina moved a little closer, tilting her head up slightly towards him.
Her eyes were questioning him. Peter never spoke. He simply looked back into her eyes, and for a moment he felt as if he could see deep into her soul.
Instantly he could see she was lonely. So very lonely.
"Peter," she said. "Yesterday...today...now?" Peter lifted a hand and cupped one of her cheeks. "Who are you Peter? Why am I so attracted to you?"
Peter leant forward slightly. He kissed her gently on her forehead.
Carolina closed her eyes, and exhaled.
He touched her chin with his forefinger, lifting her face up. There was a tear beginning to form on the edge of one eye. He bent forward and kissed it away.
"Peter...what is happening? Why..."
Peter kissed her eyes. One at a time.
Soft, light kisses on her eyelids.
He kissed her on her nose, hesitated, then kissed her on her lips. Softly, tenderly.
He pulled back, looking at her, waiting for her to respond.
Her eyes opened, and he saw her pupils look and focus on first one of his eyes, and then move to the other, examining him, searching him, looking for something.
Her arms went up behind his back, pulling him towards her, and she kissed him back.
Her lips opened slightly, and Peter felt her tongue taste the edges of his lips. His tongue met hers, and for a second they both hesitated, a momentary pause before the passion erupted within them both.
He felt her leaning against him, could sense the warmth and feel the weight of her breasts pressing against his chest.
His response was immediate, an incredible longing, a need to be within her. He started kissing her passionately, one hand tangling itself in her hair and holding her head gently but firmly so that he could kiss her exactly as he wished, the other reaching behind her back and pulling her hips firmly against his.
He felt her hands exploring his chest, and he could feel her mould herself into him.
Peter started kissing her cheek, her ear, her neck; his hand left her back and moved round to her front, slowly beginning to fondle and touch her left breast...
Knife After Death: A chilling crime thriller Page 13