by Paul Finch
And where was the shard she’d used?
That last question struck her like a mallet.
She’d left it jutting from beneath the killer’s collarbone. Yet it wasn’t there now – because it was in his left hand.
Sharon watched as, in seeming slow-motion, that long bayonet of glass plunged up and around, striking Sergeant Pugh in the left eye. By the time the steel blade appeared and sheared into the side of Pugh’s neck, she was already running again. She only looked back once – but this was sufficient to show her supervisor’s limp corpse being whirled around like a rag doll and launched into the Mirror Maze through its demolished window. It was also sufficient to distract her so that she blundered headlong into a low barrier, fell over it and landed upside down in a litter-filled concrete channel.
The blow to her already-wounded cranium was dizzying, but her adrenalin kept flowing, pumping her full of energy. As awareness seeped quickly back into her head, she sighted the costumed horror approaching the other side of the barrier. She lurched to her feet and staggered along the channel, following it through an arched entrance into another indistinguishable building. She ran blindly again, hands out in front. A single backwards glance showed an ungainly silhouette coming relentlessly in pursuit.
From the next corner, she spied a downward shaft of moonlight. She tottered towards it – only to be stopped short by a fearsome face apparently suspended about twelve feet in the air. Heart-pounding moments followed before she recognised it as the face of an Aztec god, and realised that she was in the River Caves. What was more, now that her eyes were attuning, she saw a framework of scaffolding standing alongside the statue. At the top of this, some kind of trapdoor hung open. Without thinking, she climbed. He would know where she’d gone – the hollow bars rang and echoed – but would he be able to follow her in his monster get-up?
At the top, Sharon hauled herself through the aperture, which in fact was an old skylight, and found herself on a sloped roof greasy with moss. She slipped as she tried to turn around, landing heavily on her bruised side. As she lay winded, she peered down into the darkened interior. His twisted form was already ascending the scaffolding with no discernible difficulty. Just like he’d ridden the Crazy Train. Just like he’d survived a deep stab wound in the chest. It was impossible, it made no sense – but it was happening.
Weeping at the unfairness of it, Sharon tried to scrabble down the roof on her buttocks and ankles, but gravity took over and she began to slide, rocketing over the edge and dropping a considerable distance before hitting another, lower roof. This one, apparently consisting of plywood and tar-paper, simply collapsed underneath her, jarring her left ankle and turning her upright again as she fell through it. Some seven feet below, her injured ankle blazed with even more pain as she hit a solid, cage-like frame, which possibly had once contained a motor or generator.
The collision flung her sideways onto an old mattress made sodden with decay – at least, she thought it was due to decay.
She sat bolt-upright as she realised that she wasn’t in this dingy place alone. The moonlight shining through the shattered roof revealed a figure seated on the floor against the wall opposite – though the destruction wrought on this poor soul made even the combined agonies of her lacerated scalp and sprained ankle dwindle. Whoever he had been, someone had hacked and slashed his face and throat to a ghastly ruin. Sharon scampered away crablike, hands sliding in pools of clotted gore, clattering through empty bottles and cans, only to slam into a second figure slumped against the other wall. This one had been propped up in a musty sleeping bag; as it now fell over her, its head detached and bounced into the shadows.
Whining and weeping, scrabbling through newspapers and rags all slimy and foul, she wriggled free and had to use a wall of rubble-cluttered shelves to drag herself to her feet. Dust and cobwebs plumed into her face, clogging her nose and mouth. There was a thunderous impact on the roof, and splinters erupted downward. A black shadow blotted out the moonlight.
Gasping, she flung herself around the walls, trying to find the door, hammering into more obstructions, jolting her injured ankle, barking her shins. She twisted as she tripped, grabbing at another shelf. It tore away from the wall, showering her with bric-a-brac, which she wildly rummaged through, seeking any kind of weapon she could find. But all that came to hand was something like a stiff tube of plastic with a grip on one end. The idea struck her that, if all else failed, she could jab this at her tormentor, maybe take out his eyes the way he had taken out Slater’s.
Dear God, Dear Christ … Geoff!
There was another heavy impact, this time on the floor behind her. She spun, hefting the ridiculous tube as though it were a knife – and only then, in the better light, realising what it actually was. Even as she did this, the interloper rose to his feet and turned his crazy, crumpled face towards her – and lunged.
More by luck than design, Sharon fell to one side, the blade bypassing her and striking a large plastic object in the recess behind. Whatever this was, it burst apart, gouts of fluid exploding over Sharon, but also drenching McKellan, sloshing not just down his costume but around his feet. The chemical stench of it brought immediate tears to her eyes – diesel. The maniac had ripped into some kind of fuel container.
She scrambled back across the room on all fours, now through a slurry of mingled blood and oil. The blade slashed over her head as McKellan twirled, gashing a huge chunk from the wall.
The door, where was the fucking door?
Clambering over a corpse, she saw it: an upright crack of light. She jumped up and threw her shoulder against it. It shuddered in its frame, but resisted. With hoarse screams, she scrabbled for a lock, sensing the presence turning around behind her. She found the latch, lifted it and yanked the door open. As she did, she spun back, pumping her thumb on the plunger built into the handgrip of the butane candle lighter.
It had to work, it had to work …
But it wasn’t doing.
Until a tiny flame suddenly spurted to life at the end of the tube.
Sharon flung it at the monstrous vision – which in less than one second was engulfed in a curtain of roaring flames.
She tottered outside, still whimpering, still weeping, beating down on herself, imagining that she too had caught alight. Only by a miracle, it seemed, had she avoided this, but still she wasn’t safe – she expected a fiery figure to come surging out. But if McKellan tried to do that, he failed, perhaps stumbling against the inside of the door, which now banged closed, entrapping what looked like a raging inferno inside the small outbuilding. Its grimy windows quickly blackened and shattered. Its wood and tarpaper exterior was already smouldering, flames licking out through every crevice.
Sharon continued to back away, not quite believing that her ordeal was over. As the fire spread over the hut’s exterior, it burned so fiercely that the heat of it dried her tears, seared her sweat-sodden cheeks. And then a hand landed on her shoulder.
She squealed as she spun around – only to see the brutish, baffled features of Mike Lewton, with Rob Ellis standing a few feet to one side. Their patrol vehicle was parked behind them. Lewton still held the bolt croppers with which he’d managed to secure access through the front gates, but he almost dropped them with shock when he saw the state Sharon was in: her hair a tangled mop of gluey blood, her face equally stained but also dirty, wild-eyed.
“He’s … he’s in there,” she stammered shrilly, gesturing at the hut.
“What? Who is, Shaz?”
She shook her head dumbly, unable to say more.
The men pushed past her towards the blazing structure. Much of the hut’s combustible material had been consumed, and the small building was now in the process of collapsing on itself. Flames still blazed at ground-level, but otherwise only a bare, blistered framework remained. Sharon stood numbed while her two colleagues tried to get closer, wafting at the pungent smoke. Ellis gave a sharp cry. “Christ! There is someone here!”
“I … I lit him up,” Sharon said, suddenly giggling.
Lewton stole an astounded glance at her.
“There’s two of them!” Ellis blurted. “Bloody hell!”
The fumes had turned foul with the stench of charred meat, but the flames continued to recede and Sharon could distinguish two blackened shapes lying in the glowing wreckage. Lewton swung back to her, face pale. “Shaz … what have you done?”
She shook her head, still giggling. “Not the winos … they were already dead.”
“You say you lit this fire? Why?”
“He was in there. He murdered them.”
“Who?”
“He killed Sergeant Pugh as well.”
“Who killed Sergeant Pugh?”
Lewton’s expression was so earnest, so honestly mortified by what he was seeing here, that Sharon now thought it better to stop sounding so amused and actually try to assist. “Blair McKellan, obviously.”
“Shaz …” Lewton shook his head. “Blair McKellan was arrested forty minutes ago. His boat ran aground near the pier.”
“Mike!” Ellis shouted.
Lewton darted back to his side. Sharon ventured over there as well, vaguely amazed by that last piece of news, though not necessarily mystified. The object of their interest seemed to be a square aperture in the middle of the hut’s scorched floor. A steel grille lay to one side of it. That made sense too, now that she thought about it.
“If there was someone else in here, that’s how he got out,” Ellis said.
Lewton kicked a heap of embers aside and crouched to get a better look. “Shit,” he breathed. “There’re hundreds of channels and culverts down there.”
“And they all lead to the sea,” Sharon said. “But that’s just about right.” The two men gazed at her blankly, at which point she began giggling again, her giggles soon transmuting to full-blown laughter. “He’s so, so angry.”
“Who’s angry?” Lewton asked. “Who the hell are you talking about?”
She made a big effort to control herself. “Who do you think? … Bubbles.”
Children Don’t Play Here Anymore
Paul Finch
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Children Don’t Play Here Anymore
Geoff slows his Chrysler to a halt on the road called Woodcock Close.
It is a cul-de-sac, as its name suggests, with a turning circle at the end and detached middle-class houses at regular intervals along its western side. Opposite these, on the east, the ground flows away downhill, a rough uncultivated pasture of brambles, ragwort and rich, thick meadow-grass. At the bottom, perhaps two hundred yards down from Woodcock Close, a dense stand of trees encloses a woodland pond. Beyond this there is a fenced-off paddock, which is periodically used for exercising dressage horses, though the stately residence to which it belongs lies half a mile to the north, only accessible from the paddock by a winding, unmade lane, and when you reach it, well concealed within a manicured spinney of sculpted evergreens; out of sight, out of mind – and thus unattached to the green and pleasant area which lies below Woodcock Close, tucked away like a secret garden.
While dreary enough in the winter – unless there is snow, in which case it becomes an exceptional sled and toboggan run – this small but hidden valley is a magical place at every other time of the year. It is no more than ten or twelve acres in total size, yet, in appearance at least, it is deep, secluded, mysterious – even though in reality it sits in the heart of the town’s sprawling suburbs, and is perhaps only five minutes’ walk from the ever-rumbling M6 motorway. Locals like us have always known it as ‘the Dell’, and probably every generation of our boys, going back to the pre-war years, waged their own battles down in its leafy heart, explored their own jungles, fought their own dinosaurs, built their own treehouses and swung on their own makeshift rope swings.
But that was then and this is now. And children don’t play in the Dell anymore.
“You know, Dad,” Geoff says as he parks, “… you don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” I reply.
“It’s not as if you’ve got anything to prove.”
I consider his words, which I hear every time we come here, and then take my stick from the footwell.
“You really expect to find something?” he asks. “After so long?”
I throw him a look – one of those short, shrewish looks I increasingly throw at people these days, and which I’ve recently made a mental note to try and clamp down on. “It … it isn’t that. You know it isn’t that.”
“I know.” His voice softens. He smiles sympathetically. “It’s become an annual pilgrimage, this, hasn’t it?”
“Something like that.” I button up my overcoat and climb from the car.
It is a cool day in early September. It would probably be warm if not for the gentle easterly breeze, which rustles like paper in the grass atop the Dell. The sun is mellow and misted in a pebble-blue sky, against which the foliage of the woodland below is bright emerald in colour, deep, succulent in texture.
“I wish you wouldn’t do it, though.” Geoff climbs out of the car on the other side. He nods at my stick and at my slight grimace of pain as I straighten my ever-creaking back. “I mean … you’re not going to be able to get up and down that hill much longer. Not at your age.”
I’m not sure whether this is an intended wind-up.
“I’m only sixty-seven, you know,” I remind him.
He doesn’t smile (which means that it isn’t a wind-up at all). “You’re a sixty-seven-year-old with chronic sciatica.”
“Well you’ll be around to help me, won’t you? If things get tough.” I use that terse, fatherly tone, which always suggests that you’re telling your son something rather than asking him.
He shakes his head as he slips his rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket. “Oh no … nooo, no. I’m not helping you punish yourself. No way.” He leans back against the car and starts to read. “I’ll happily give you a lift here … so long as you want to come, but that’s as far as it goes.”
I look at him for a long moment, before setting off down the slope.
He is a handsome enough man, my son; thirty-nine now and with a growing-up family of his own. He still looks youngish, though. His hair is jet-black and thickly layered on his scalp. He plays football at weekends and looks after himself, as his tall, spare physique suggests. People have always said he reminds them of me, but I don’t see that in him at all. If anything, his smooth, almost refined features resemble his mother’s, though the same certainly can’t be said for his attitude. Geoff has always been a man’s man, and I suppose by that I mean energetic, self-assured, cocky, confident and, generally speaking, a good provider for his wife and children. But at the same time he can be domineering, insensitive, occasionally boorish (when the drink is on him), and mildly selfish where the non-material needs of his loved ones are concerned. I can’t fault him for any of that, I suppose – the modern male isn’t nearly so progressive an animal as people like to imagine; the main difference between him and the old-fashioned model is that he makes a pretence of putting others first, but it only goes as far as that. Maybe, in that respect, Geoff is like me, however. When my family were growing up, I never saw a great deal of them, and even though that was because of work, I wasn’t half as astute at my job as Geoff currently is in the computer business he runs. At least, I didn’t make it pay as well, so at the end of the day, you may ask, what was it all for?
He senses me watching him and glances up. “Okay?”
I nod and half-smile. “Fine. Just running over a few things.”
“Once a copper, eh?”
I nod again. “Back in five, okay?”
“No problem,” he says, getting back to his reading.
*
All over Britain, I guess, and probably in other countries too, parents these days seem to be more mindful of where their children are and what they’re getting up to. The tabloi
ds and daily newsreels are too filled with lurid, ghoulish stories to render them anything else. In the UK, the murders of children by strangers are said to be lower in number now than they were in the mid-1970s, but that must be because grown-ups are simply more vigilant, less prepared to let their very young go out and play unsupervised, and especially wary of scenic but isolated spots like the Dell. In that respect, the Andrew Conroy case won’t be the only reason why kids don’t hang out around here anymore, but it certainly can’t have helped.
As I perambulate downhill, it strikes me as immensely sad how modern children are denied the youth of wild adventure that Geoff and others like him enjoyed. A wood like the one at the bottom of the Dell should not be silent and filled with undisturbed shadows; courting couples sneaking off into its undergrowth should not go unspied upon; tadpole-filled ponds like the one deep in the middle here should not remain unplundered.
But that is the way of it these days. And with good reason.
The murder of Andrew Conroy was really quite horrible. More so from my point of view, perhaps, because I knew the kid personally. He was a contemporary of Geoff’s … went to the same school and scout troop, was a member of the same swimming club. Don’t ever believe it if someone tells you that police detectives get hardened to the slaughter of the innocents. Especially don’t believe it if those police detectives happen to work in their home town.
It was his eleventh birthday, and young Andrew had gone down to the Dell to see if any of his pals were around. That was all anyone really knew about it. His body was discovered seven hours later, under a bush and covered with leaves. He’d been bludgeoned to death with a brick, then sexually interfered with. We made fingertip searches through those woods for the next three weeks, ran door-to-doors throughout the district, questioned every ‘possible’ in the town, and their families – over and over again. But to no avail. This happened in 1975, still nine years before the first DNA breakthroughs would be made, but even if we’d had that level of crime-busting technology available, it’s unlikely we’d have made progress. The killer was either too clever or too lucky. There was minimal evidence to go on. The murder weapon, which we recovered, had been thrown into the pond and thus was washed clean of fingerprints; it had been a dry summer day – the ground firm, the turf lush and springy, which meant there were no footprints; nobody living in the nearest houses had seen or heard anything untoward; public appeals for information drew a blank. No-one, it seemed, knew a damn thing.