Pike, although happily fostering for as long as he could remember a deep hatred of rich people and everything associated with them, did on occasions allow himself the self-indulgence of feeling, and he took for granted, looking, quietly regal – but only when he thought nobody was watching.
He had been feeling uncomfortable at the thought of lamping. The night of the murders, with the strange eyes staring at him, had given him a few sleepless nights. But the local butcher had asked him for a couple of dozen rabbits and he’d used the magic word. ‘We’re talking “cash” rather than “please”.’ That was all it took for him to overcome his fear. Besides, he had his gun and his dogs, and surely, no harm could come to an armed man in the British countryside. Particularly one who was on his own turf.
Slowly, he pulled over in the bottom corner of his largest field. His fields were small by modern-day standards. His land had never been flattened into vast corn-growing plains, as had a great deal of farms in the south of England. Pike’s smallholding hadn’t changed since medieval times, and he was proud of that fact.
The other side of the hedge from where he parked, there was a small stream, the noise of which would help to drown out any sound that he may accidentally make, which might in turn scare the rabbits away. Not that he would be likely to make such amateur mistakes, of course – Pike was an old hand at lamping, and was capable of moving through crisp dry undergrowth without any sound.
With his rifle loaded and resting across his lap, he made a sweep of the field with the roof-mounted lamp; Russ and Lurch both jumped up, keenly looking out of the side window following the beam of light.
‘Shit,’ Pike muttered to himself. ‘Nothin’ there, where’s them fuckin’ rabbits then?’ The dogs heard and maybe they noticed his irritation. Russ ignored him as usual, but Lurch detected the change in the tone of his voice and looked back and forth from master’s face to beam of light, as if to say “Don’t blame me, you can’t get me for this one.”
Pike was puzzled, the weather was perfect, and there should have been plenty of rabbits out nibbling away for most of the night. Usually this field was home to at least fifty or so. He told the dogs to be quiet and to keep still. He grabbed a large torch and his gun and left his Land Rover to walk along the hedge for a few hundred yards.
He thought that possibly the sound of the engine had startled the rabbits and they had bolted underground. His plan was to use stealth and creep up on them. Although underfoot was dry and firm, Pike always wore rubber Wellingtons – he was, through past experience, well aware that if there was anything undesirable to step in, then he would be the one to find it. The boots made walking tiresome, but at least his feet were always dry and clean.
After three hundred yards of shining his torch up and down the field and still nothing to be seen, he stopped to roll a cigarette. Had there been any rabbits this would be okay, as he was downwind from where they should have been. Temporarily blinded by the glare from his lighter he felt slightly disorientated as he screwed up his eyes waiting for his optical nerve to kick back into gear.
As he let the smoke slowly escape through his mouth and down his nostrils, he tried just one more sweep of the torch before giving up for the night. He regretted this decision almost immediately. Across the other side of the field he saw a pair of eyes reflecting the light back, but they, like the eyes on the night of the murders, were in the wrong sodding place and were too high off the ground and moving as if the head of the person was slowly rotating. Pike panicked, his heart thumping heavily against his ribcage. At first, he was paralysed, not being too sure which way to run. Then, suddenly, the desire to run became overwhelming, but he had lost his bearings, and he ran into the hedge.
The barbed wire didn’t stop him – he fell over it headfirst and crawled where the rabbits couldn’t go. It was the brambles and blackthorn that not only stopped him from reaching the next field, but also prevented him from going anywhere. He tried to reason with himself, but it didn’t work, so he settled for panic again. He had lost the torch along with his rifle and, unfortunately, it must have either broken or switched itself off as it hit the ground.
The night seemed to close in on him as he thrashed around collecting thorns in most parts of his body. Instinctively, he closed his eyes to protect them from ending up like olives on cocktail sticks. His fear and will to survive, closed down the pain receptors in his brain. His heart beating wildly, he was in a near state of collapse brought about by rapid breathing.
Hyperventilating momentarily caused him to stop and assess the situation. He knew he had to regain his bearings and his control; gradually he talked himself into being calm. Convincing his body to stop producing so much adrenalin he started to feel pain; thorns were everywhere, even in his groin.
Stuck in a half-crouching position, seemingly surrounded by an impenetrable wall of thorns and in total darkness, he reached into his trousers pocket, took out his lighter and flicked it on. The light it provided was just enough to allow him to see in his immediate area of about two feet in any direction.
This made Pike feel even more isolated and more vulnerable – it, whatever it was out there, could now see him, but he couldn’t see it. His father, told him stories of when he was a soldier during WWII, of how he was taught that if you use a torch at night, then you are not the only one who can see. They, meaning the enemy, could see you. Better to bump into the odd tree than get killed. Was someone trying to kill him – closing in on him? More waves of panic started to overwhelm him again as he started the tedious task of trying to free himself from the hedge.
Several minutes passed before Pike managed to back his way to the fence and freedom. Once he was safely out of the undergrowth and back in the field, he started to crawl around looking for his torch, which to his immense relief he soon found. It was with his rifle but was not broken; the thing had indeed switched off when he dropped it.
Fully armed and dangerously angry, Pike quickly flicked off the safety catch and plucked up the courage from somewhere to shine the torch in the direction of the eyes. At first, it seemed that they had disappeared, then as before, they slowly appeared as if the person was looking in the other direction and turning to look towards him.
Pike raised his gun towards the eyes and lined up his sights.
‘Right, you fucker, I’ve ‘ad enough of you, you’ve ‘ad it now, you bastard.’
The silenced gun barely made any sound at all, and Pike immediately ran across the field to inspect whom, or whatever he had killed. He wasn’t a clever man, but as he ran, he started to imagine what he would have to say to the police if he had killed someone. Shining his torch carefully on the position of the shot, he slowed down cautiously as he approached the spot where he expected to see a body. But all he found was a length of string hanging from a tree and a large turnip lying on the ground with a neat hole between a couple of cats eyes that must have been gouged from a stud in the lane.
Pike would have laughed if he had not been in considerable pain and bleeding from so many different places. Puzzled, he turned to head back to his car. In the distance he could hear Russ and Lurch barking and noticed the interior light was on. Enough is enough, he thought to himself. What a fuckin’ awful night. He sighed, and started to jog across the centre of the field.
The dogs had stopped barking, but he could see Lurch’s tail in the air as if he had his head down and was eating something on the back seat. Pike shone the light in the side window and could see that the dogs were eating a dead rabbit that had been hacked to pieces.
He opened the door slowly and stared speechless – then he heard a slight noise behind him causing him to turn suddenly. Frozen with fear at what he saw standing six feet away, urine crept down the inside of his pants. A large human form, it appeared to have rough skin covered in bumps and grooves with a small hole for a mouth and a couple of hard eyes that didn’t seem to blink.
Pike wanted to raise his gun and shoot it, but was unable to move other than shake. He s
tood frozen as the humanoid shape moved closer; holding a rabbit snare with both hands and quickly slipping it over his head. Pike’s eyes bulged, staring with disbelief as the wire suddenly tightened around his neck. Still paralysed, his Wellingtons filled up with urine as his eyes rolled up and his lips turned blue.
He was found two days later with the snare still around his neck and his head shoved down a rabbit hole. Something had eaten most of his face. Russ and Lurch had finished the rabbit, and were ready for more.
Monday, May 27, 8.00AM
Saxon trudged across the field with DS Parker; jackets left in his car, both were wearing one-piece paper overalls with bags over their shoes and rubber gloves. And they were hot; the heat wave had arrived with flying colours. There was even talk in the village that there would soon be a water shortage. Ten years ago, during another equally hot spell, the local pub had run out of lager, nearly causing a riot. Right now, what the two policemen wanted more than a hot stinking walk across a field to poke around a hot stinking corpse with the probability of not finding any clues, was at least a couple of pints of cold lager.
Pike’s Land Rover had been fenced off with crime scene tape – the dogs had been rescued just in time, if one of the windows had not been left slightly open they would have surely cooked in those temperatures.
‘Who found the body, Parker?’ Saxon asked automatically.
‘Dog walker, nothing sinister as usual – an old chap who comes out here once a week or so. Thank God for dog walkers – where would we be without them?’
‘Very true, where indeed.’
They walked beyond Pike’s car, through a gap in the hedge, along a short path that followed the stream and over a small makeshift bridge. They continued on guided by the sound of the SOCO people, fighting off mosquitoes the size of small mice. As they cleared the trees and looked to the other side of the valley, thirty yards up the path was Pike’s body, spread-eagled, face down with his head in a rabbit hole. Dr Clarke and Jake were just finishing their initial examination after SOCO had examined Pike’s clothing, hair and nails. Parker was the first to speak.
‘Sir, why the hell does our killer have to be so theatrical – I mean, why doesn’t he just do the normal thing and just leave his bodies lying around, or stuffed in car boots or even just buried?
‘There’s the man who can probably answer your question better than I, Parker,’ said Saxon, pointing towards Professor Ercott who was wandering around the fenced-off body of Andy Pike, making notes and sketches, and occasionally talking into a small tape recorder. Parker wandered over and repeated his question to Ercott.
‘I’m glad you asked me that very interesting question, young man; it’s a fascinating one too. Firstly, the killer always has time to arrange his victims, because he plans absolutely everything down to the finest details. I dare say, that you will have noticed that all of our victim’s heads have been hidden or covered in some way. Well, the reason is usually very simple. The face covered is normally a sign that the killer knew the deceased and can’t bear the thought of being looked at by his or her victim. However, I don’t think that is the case with our man – I am convinced now that it is a man, a very strong man: I think Pike was killed by his car and then carried here by the killer – no, our man has none of these feelings of guilt; just hate, and he wants to confuse us as much as possible. As I think we shall see, he will continue to change his MO with each murder.’
Saxon cut in, taking a cigarette from Parker’s hand as he was about to put it in his mouth.
‘What about forensics – anything at all?’ He didn’t expect a thing.
Ercott’s eyes lit up.
‘There is one thing, Commander, but you won’t like what I’m going to ask you to do.’ Ercott looked over his glasses at Saxon and motioned him to follow. He lifted the tape to allow the two policemen to approach the body.
‘Now, Commander, and you, young man, come on; he won’t hurt you, he’s dead. Kneel down next to the unfortunate Mr Pike and smell him – I know he’s a bit smelly but there is another pong apart from the usual decaying flesh.’
Saxon and Parker looked at Ercott with a lot of disbelief, and then at each other with even more.
‘You have to be bloody joking.’ Parker would have none of it and suggested that it would be better if he and his commanding officer just took Ercott’s word for it.
Saxon wasn’t too impressed with the idea either, but he trusted Ercott’s judgement, and knelt down and took a cautious sniff. At first, he almost gagged but held on.
‘Rubber, I can smell rubber. Go on, Parker, smell it, you may have to back me up in court one day.’
‘Oh, sir, for Christ’s sake, must I?’
‘Get it over with, Parker, don’t be such a wimp.’
Parker reluctantly gave in and took his sniff, then dashed off to the bushes to throw up. He returned several minutes later with a cigarette in his mouth.
‘Sorry, sir, can’t abide the smell of rotting bodies, but the rubber smell is there, I agree – quite strong too.’
‘Well done, Parker.’ Saxon put his hand on Parker’s shoulder and walked around the body to speak with Ercott.
‘Ok, Roger, so what are we looking for, a man wearing a scuba-diving suit or some kind of fetishist who covers his body in condoms? He should be easy to spot whichever one he is.’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Paul. Maybe he used a rubber tarpaulin to cover the body while he carried it. Don’t really know.’
‘What makes you think Pike was killed over by his car?’
‘I didn’t spot it myself; sorry to say, it was one of the SOCO girls, nice young thing too. Anyway, she noticed that dent in the back of his head. You will find that the corner of Pike’s Land Rover with a bit of his scalp hanging on it, is a perfect match for that dent. Dr Clarke agreed with me when I spoke to him earlier, that combined with the wire around his neck, that blow would most probably have killed him. There are also a few traces of him being dragged a short distance before being hoisted up onto the killer’s shoulders.’
‘And footprints, or are we looking for flipper marks?’ enquired Saxon.
Ercott smiled but otherwise ignored the joke. ‘Sorry, Paul, no footprints, ground’s too dry, and if there were any over there by the stream, he must have gone back and cleaned up afterwards. He’s thorough – I’ll say that for him.’ Ercott wandered off cleaning his glasses.
Sergeant Green, a short fat policewoman, one of the SOCO team, approached with a dog handler.
‘Commander Saxon, could you come and take a look at something we’ve found at the top of the field?’ She led him back across the stream, past the Land Rover. By the time they reached the area where all the interest was emanating from, they were sweating and exhausted. The dog handler showed Saxon the remains of the turnip with the cat’s eyes, telling him that the dog had picked up a scent that started at Pike’s vehicle and it seemed strange that there should be a direct line of scent between the Land Rover and the turnip with eyes. Saxon could only agree and suggested that the hole through the middle of it could be from a bullet. It didn’t take them long to find a hole in the trunk of the tree that lined up perfectly where a bullet would have travelled from the Land Rover.
Saxon pondered. ‘So these cat’s eyes could have convinced Pike that someone was watching him from up here; the hovering eyes. He must have been seriously spooked to take a pot shot at them, and while he was doing that, the killer jumped on him and snared him, banged his head on the car to finish him off.’ Reasonably satisfied that they had interpreted the evidence correctly, they stripped off their overalls and walked slowly back to Saxon’s Discovery.
‘Next time we have a situation like this, Parker, please remind me that I have a four-wheel-drive sodding car and that we can drive to the crime scene.’
Parker was too hot and still feeling too sick to laugh or answer.
Thursday, May 30, 9.20PM
Jake Dalton parked his car, grabbed his takeaway c
urry from the passenger seat and made his way across the private car park to his apartment. He’d lived in Brighton Marina for three years; he liked it and to his delight found it to have a friendly village atmosphere. The correct balance of white-haired weekend sailors, London yuppie executives, and local Brighton residents had been reached successfully. It was surrounded on three sides by the English Channel, which occasionally tried to crash over the fortress-like walls, and reclaim the land. And with a garage, some fishing tackle shops, fast food and supermarkets, and easy access to the pleasures of Brighton, he was content.
The light was starting to fade; gone 9PM but still oppressively hot. Even the seagulls were taking it easy, just the odd shriek in contrast to the screaming aerial display that usually greeted him. Jake punched in his security code and entered the communal hallway. Finding it unusual that the light didn’t work, he fumbled at his front door juggling curry, briefcase and keys. As he touched the lock with his key, the door moved slowly open.
Putting everything on the floor, he cautiously pushed the door inwards and reached inside for the light switch. His mind racing and his body ready to fight he burst into his apartment. ‘Shit, bloody little bastards!’ he shouted, not caring who heard. His next-door neighbour James did hear and appeared at Jake’s door.
‘You all right, Jake? What’s happened?’
‘Sodding kids that’s what. Look at the graffiti, got to be kids with all that shit on the walls.’ He reached in his pocket and took out his mobile and started to call the police.
‘Well, I’m amazed, sorry, mate, I’ve been working all day just the other side of that wall and I haven’t heard a sound. The state this place is in you’d think that there would have to have been some noise,’ James said almost apologetically, scratching his head.
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