Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  ‘Everything’s been sorted out.’ Emma turned back to Charley, who was directly behind her in the narrow passageway, to make sure that she was following. ‘And I don’t know about you, Charley, but I could use a cup of hot coffee and a …’

  The words dried on her lips as she saw the other woman’s expression. Charley was standing stock-still, unable to move. She was staring over Emma’s shoulder, and her face was twisted into a frozen scream of sheer terror.

  Emma spun around again, just in time to see Joseph Valentia’s powerful arm lash out towards the light-switch and plunge the entire crypt into blackness.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THE boy was listening to Uncle Mac on the wireless when the nuns came to take Lizzie away.

  ‘Uncle Mac’ was the best programme in the whole wide world. Uncle Mac played all the songs that children liked to hear, and every Saturday morning he played the boy’s favourite song, ‘There once was an ugly duckling …’.

  But today he could hardly hear the wireless at all, because of the shouting in the hallway. Shouting and crying. He ran out to see what was going on.

  He was too scared to go forward, but if he peeked around his mother’s legs he could see Lizzie, her green eyes all shadowy-under and wet with tears, clutching a battered old suitcase and wearing a navy-blue raincoat that was far too big for her. There was a nun there, the biggest nun he’d ever seen, a mountainside of black and white, with a big hairy mole on her fat cheek, and arms as broad and muscley as the fishermen’s down at the harbour. She was grabbing at Lizzie’s arm and ordering her to come along. Outside on the drive, an old Austin Seven was bleeding black oil onto the white gravel.

  The boy couldn’t understand why they were taking Lizzie away from him. Lizzie was the best nanny in the whole world. She’d play games with him all day, and never get tired. At night she would sing his favourite song while she tucked him into bed. And she would always say good night the same way, in her funny accent: ‘Night-night, ducks. It’s time to go to sleep.’

  And then her freckly face would split into a big smile under that funny red fringe. Lizzie had the reddest hair in the whole wide world. It looked exactly like the red bits in strawberry ice-cream.

  The boy watched them take her away from him and he burst into tears.

  His father told him to stop crying. He said Lizzie had to go away to a special home because she’d done a very sinful thing and now she had a baby inside her and she had to be punished.

  And because of this, he told the boy, Lizzie would never be able to come back to him. Never, ever.

  The boy struggled out of his arms and ran off to hide in the closet. He heard the car drive away and he cried and cried and cried until there was no crying left.

  And then a familiar sound floated out from the wireless, almost as though it were deliberately mocking him. It was his favourite song. Lizzie’s song. The one she always used to sing to him at bedtime.

  Quack

  Get out

  Quack, quack

  Get out

  Quack, quack

  Get out of here …

  THERE was no time to move. There was no time to scream. Totally blinded in the sudden darkness of the vault, Emma heard Valentia’s footsteps rush along the passageway towards them. She was hurled sideways against the wall by a shove so powerful it knocked the breath from her lungs. She felt Valentia push past her. She heard the impact of fist connecting with bone, then the crumple of a falling body and a nauseating crack as Charley’s skull hit the solid limestone floor.

  Valentia didn’t even pause in his frenzied attack. Emma felt a forearm lock around her throat from behind. A sweaty palm clapped over her mouth and a thumb and forefinger pinched her nostrils, totally cutting off her breath. Emma, panicking, was powerless to resist as Valentia dragged her backwards along the tunnel, away from the entrance. There was a scrape of wire mesh against rock and then, to her utter terror, she realised that he was forcing her into the side-tomb at the end, the crypt where the four corpses lay in their open coffins.

  Valentia’s breath came in short, heavy rasps as he twisted her around and forced her backwards and downwards on to the ground. She felt her shoulder-blades crush painfully against the rock floor. She felt the heavy, solid wood of the coffins pinning her in on either side. Then two knees on her chest as Valentia knelt on her with all his weight, keeping his hand firmly clamped over her mouth. He had released her nostrils, but with his heavy bulk pressing down on her chest it was still virtually impossible to breathe. Emma thrashed from side to side in panic, but it was pointless. It was as though her body was being held in a vice-grip, with pressure bearing in on her from all directions.

  She gave up and lay there in near-despair, trying frantically to snatch enough air to stay alive. A minute passed – two, three, five, ten, she couldn’t tell how many. All she knew was that every one of them seemed like a lifetime.

  It would have been like a nightmare, except that no horror that had ever been visited upon her in her worst sweat-soaked, sheet-twisting dreams could ever have equalled the dreadful reality she was experiencing. She was locked in a silent, protracted hell in which every second of this breathless torture dragged on to eternity.

  The only thing that kept her sane was that the Reverend Malindi had said he’d come back. He’d promised …

  There were footsteps on the gravel path outside.

  Hang on, Emma pleaded silently to herself as she fought to snatch each tiny, precious gasp of breath from the lifeless air. Hold on. It’s nearly over.

  ‘Hello?’

  The clergyman’s voice echoed uncertainly around the darkness of the crypt.

  ‘Anyone down there?’

  Inside herself, Emma screamed an answer with all the force of her lungs. But she was unable to produce a sound.

  ‘No, of course there isn’t,’ the Reverend muttered in obvious annoyance. ‘Thank you for letting me know, ladies.’

  He tutted petulantly to himself. There was a scrape of heavy metal against stone as the shutters began to close.

  Emma squirmed and struggled to scream. But Valentia’s knees bore down on her even harder than before, and his thumb and forefinger pinched her nostrils viciously. But, despite it all, she managed to produce a tiny, strangled moan that reverberated through the chamber.

  The scraping abruptly stopped. She could tell from the faint glow of reflected moonlight that the lid had remained open.

  ‘Closing up, now,’ the Reverend Malindi said self-consciously. ‘Midnight vigil is over. Locking up now.’

  Emma’s pulse raced with renewed hope. Had he heard her?

  As if in answer, a torch-beam played along the length of the main vault, up and down, up and down. But at that angle, it couldn’t shine into the side-crypt at the far end. The beam flickered past the tomb entrance and then died away, revealing nothing.

  As it swept past, Emma had a brief glimpse of her chamber of horrors – the coffins on either side of her, Charley’s crumpled and unconscious body lying in a corner, the bullish silhouette of her captor kneeling on top of her and trying to control the rasping of his own breath.

  Finally there was a satisfied grunt from the Reverend Malindi. And, once again, the shutters began to close over the hatch.

  Valentia relaxed slightly, easing his weight off Emma. The fingers unlocked her nostrils.

  This could be your last chance. Do it! Now!

  Emma summoned up every ounce of strength and bucked her entire body, trying to throw Valentia off. She sank her teeth into the flesh of his palm. Valentia hissed silently as he recoiled from the source of the pain, falling backwards away from her. She was almost free.

  She reached out to either side for the leverage she needed to pull herself upwards. Valentia realised what she was doing. He recovered and lunged forward again, his knees viciously driving all the breath from Emma’s weakened body.

  Her hands continued to grope for some hold, any hold. The metal hatch continued to close,
but now the noise seemed very, very far away. It was drowned out by the rushing of the blood in her head as she felt herself drifting towards unconsciousness.

  The last thing she heard was the sound of the padlock snicking into place to close the vault, and the footsteps fading away into silence.

  And as she slipped towards unconsciousness, she felt, to her unspeakable horror, the sensation of her own hand grasping for support at the leathery fingers and long, sharp fingernails of a four-hundred-year-old corpse.

  ‘OKAY, let’s go right back to the beginning and reassess what we’ve got,’ the Bear said wearily. ‘We’ve located the holistic healer who treated Charlotte at his centre. He says she left alone, on foot, at around ten-forty-five. He said she seemed very down, very depressed, sounded suicidal.’

  ‘And he let her walk away like that?’ Ian Arthur shook his head incredulously.

  ‘He tried to persuade her to stay overnight. She refused.’

  ‘We should be checking the river,’ suggested Mary Smith pragmatically. ‘Get the sub-aqua fellas in at first light.’

  ‘Okay, but that won’t help us find Emma right now,’ said Sauvage. ‘Let’s keep our eye on the ball here, folks. Ian – try the phone company again. See if they’ve had any luck tracking down the last messages on Emma’s mobile.’

  ‘Right.’ Arthur began dialling.

  ‘And Hunter?’ Sauvage looked up.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stop bloody pacing up and down. Wearing a hole through my floor won’t help us find Emma.’

  Hunter stopped pacing. ‘He’s got her,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Who has?’ Sauvage knew perfectly well who Hunter meant.

  ‘Valentia. He’s followed Emma and kidnapped her. It’s obvious.’

  ‘Just calm down, Hunter. Speculation doesn’t help. It just makes things worse.’

  ‘I won’t calm down. Why didn’t you put surveillance on him?’

  ‘Orders,’ said Sauvage curtly.

  ‘So it was okay to put surveillance on me, a journalist going about his lawful business, but it’s not okay to put surveillance on a murderer who’s targeting an innocent woman?’

  ‘If you think you can do any better,’ said Sauvage with dangerous calmness, ‘you’re welcome to try.’

  ‘Right. I just might do that.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Arthur yelled. ‘Sorry, Hunter,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘But the phone company has traced the last message logged on Emma’s mobile. Listen.’ He pushed a button to rewind a tape, then pressed play.

  All four held their breath as Charley’s disembodied voice filled the room.

  ‘I’ll find somewhere I can have a long talk with the man upstairs …’

  ‘The man upstairs. God, right?’ yelled Mary, searching the Bear’s shelves for a reference book. ‘She’s gone to church! You got a Catholic Directory, Bear?’

  ‘Church? At this time of night?’ asked Sauvage, digging out the volume from a cardboard box and tossing it to her.

  ‘Why Catholic?’ demanded Hunter. ‘She’s a New Age hippie. She could have gone to any church – Methodist, Baptist, Hare Krishna temple, mosque.’

  ‘No.’ Mary was shaking her head firmly. ‘Valentia raised his daughter as a Catholic. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Especially when the Grim Reaper’s knocking on the door.’

  She drew asterisks beside several churches.

  ‘These are the ones within walking distance,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ said Sauvage. ‘Mary, get on to Uniform and ask them to check all these out, one by one.’

  ‘No, it’ll be faster if I do it myself.’ Mary stood up and threw on her cord jacket. ‘If that’s okay by you.’

  Sauvage nodded. ‘Fine. Keep in touch every fifteen.’

  ‘Will do.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘Want to come, Sherlock? Better than standing there like a spare prick and getting on everyone’s nerves.’

  Hunter grabbed his coat and followed her. He felt he should be pressing his point harder, that Charley could have gone to any of the nearby Anglican churches – St Patrick’s, Christ Church, St Michan’s – but he was tired of being shouted down; and anyway, these people seemed to know their job.

  MARY Smith raced along the deserted quays at 70mph, the engine of her Golf roaring in protest as she expertly switched down through the gears and did a handbrake turn into Parliament Street. She ignored the red light at Dublin Castle, her tyres shrieking as she turned right and powered the Golf up the hill towards the Liberties.

  ‘Where to next?’ Hunter shouted above the din.

  ‘St Jerome’s. Near the Guinness plant.’ She paused for only an instant at the junction with Winetavern Street before crashing the red light and tearing up Thomas Street. Seconds later, they skidded to a halt outside a grey Victorian church.

  Mary was already halfway up the granite steps by the time Hunter had disentangled himself from the seat-belt. She battered the heavy wooden door, then disappeared down the side of the darkened building, looking for any sign of life.

  ‘Dead as a doornail,’ she said decisively as Hunter joined her in the entry.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We can tick this one off the list as well. What’s next?’

  His voice trailed off. Mary Smith had stopped in her tracks at the entrance to the side-alley. She was looking over Hunter’s shoulder towards her Golf and sighing petulantly, as though she’d just been given a parking ticket. ‘What a pain in the neck,’ she breathed in irritation.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Hunter turned around impatiently, to see two hefty men standing beside the Golf. One was fiddling with the electric wiring. The other was standing guard, idly swatting his left palm with a huge metal monkey-wrench.

  ‘We’re borrowing your car,’ he said with calm insolence.

  Mary was walking towards him. She seemed unperturbed.

  ‘I’m in a hurry, sonny,’ she said. ‘Toddle away while you still can.’

  The insolent expression flickered with sudden doubt. The hot-wirer paused and looked up.

  ‘Right now, please,’ said Mary Smith.

  The man with the monkey-wrench glanced at Hunter, summing up his potential as a street-fighter, then back at Mary. He gave her an X-ray stare, summing her up in a different way.

  ‘What we might do is, we might take you with us,’ he said. ‘Have some fun.’

  Hunter clenched his fists and glanced at Mary, expecting to see some sign of fear in her eyes. Instead, she was smiling happily, almost rapturously.

  She moved closer to Monkey-Wrench Man and ran her forefinger down his front, from chest to waistline.

  ‘I love men like you,’ she said huskily. ‘So strong, so masterful.’

  The car thief stared at her, open-mouthed.

  She moved her hand downwards.

  The other man finished hot-wiring the Golf and grinned.

  Mary’s face was only inches from Monkey-Wrench Man’s. Suddenly her eyes turned hard and cold. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can steal all the cars you want,’ she whispered. ‘But don’t threaten women. It’s not nice.’

  Monkey-Wrench Man’s scream of agony echoed off the granite wall of the church as Mary Smith’s vice-like grip locked around his testicles, squeezing and twisting. She kept squeezing. He kept screaming.

  ‘Jesus! Let him go!’ The other joyrider was spooked by the strange, detached smile of triumph on Mary’s face. He leaped across the bonnet of the car. ‘Let him go!’

  Hunter intercepted him as he lunged towards Mary. He was in no mood for reason, either. His fist shot out and caught the joyrider square on the side of the face. Blood spurted out of the man’s nose. He fell down, scrambled to his feet, and ran off with a final, disbelieving glance at Mary Smith’s expression.

  ‘Mary!’ Hunter ran up to her. ‘Come on. Let him go.’

  She didn’t respond.

  The car-thief had stopped his angry screaming. He was weeping and whimpering, begging her to stop.

  ‘Mary!
’ Hunter was shouting into her ear, yelling in a frantic bid to get her attention.

  ‘Mary! You’ve made your point! Now let’s go!’

  She ignored him, refusing to leave whatever strange internal world she was inhabiting.

  Hunter tried another approach. ‘Mary! You have a job to do! You’re under orders. The Bear’s counting on you!’

  Those words got through to her. Eventually, reluctantly, she let go. The joyrider collapsed in a heap, moaning softly.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, glancing contemptuously down at him. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  She jumped into the driver’s seat and revved up the engine.

  ‘Sometimes I love my job,’ she said.

  SHE was alive. Thank God, she was still alive. Her chest hurt like hell. She could tell it was badly bruised; she might even have broken a rib. But it didn’t matter. Emma was grateful just to be able to breathe. Even the musty, gaseous air of the crypt felt good as she drew it painfully into her lungs.

  She opened her eyelids just enough to allow a sliver of vision. She was out of the side-crypt, lying on the floor of the main passageway. The vault was lit from below by the car torch, which had been positioned on the ground with its beam pointing upwards, casting elongated shadows on the crusted limestone ceiling. Charley’s motionless body still lay in the corner. Her hair was caked with limestone dust, and blood from a serious head wound was seeping into the dry, powdery dirt of the floor.

  For a moment Emma thought they were alone, that Valentia had found a way out of the crypt and abandoned them. But when she heard an eerie whispering, she knew she was wrong. She opened her eyes fully and, with infinite caution, turned her head.

  Valentia was sitting, curled foetus-like, in the middle of the vault, his back propped against the wall, staring directly at her and rocking gently back and forth like an insecure child.

  Emma held her breath, scarcely daring to move. She knew that he was looking not at her but through her, at someone else whose face only he could discern.

  He saw that she was awake.