Deadly Thyme

by R. L. Nolen

  Or had Mrs. Butler, out of curiosity, stumbled upon someone ransacking the caravan? So many unanswered questions. What a muddle.

  If only she would wake up.

  What would he do about Trewe? Confront him about the money and then let the cards fall where they may? After all, it isn’t likely the man would deny having the money. The bank records were clear. On the other hand, the detective chief inspector had done absolutely nothing suspicious in all the weeks of observing him. But since Trewe found himself with an officer from Complaints on his doorstep, he more than likely has shut down any wrongdoing. What a conundrum—a double muddle.

  Jon made his way back through the claustrophobic corridors to Mrs. Butler’s guarded room. He nodded at the tall, thin constable standing outside. There were no other beds save Mrs. Butler’s. It was surprising Trewe had arranged to have her in a private room. Her poor mother could do with a bed instead of the chair she had slept in.

  A doctor was bent over Mrs. Butler. He straightened when Jon neared. The quiet form on the bed murmured something he couldn’t hear. She was still asleep. One cheek was swollen, the skin around both eyes was bruised dark brown, and yellow-green streaks connected the swollen cheek with her nose. Her head was wrapped. It hurt to look at her. This fragile woman had taken a beating.

  She was still beautiful.

  Stop, he thought, don’t think like that. He couldn’t stop his heart doing a triple flip-flop.

  The doctor left and from beside the hospital bed Jon watched Mrs. Butler, lying so still in the bed. Machines beeped. The room smelled of antiseptic and laundry soap. Jon sighed, shook his head and went to sit on a chair in a darkened corner, his head in his hands. She had not regained consciousness. Who could have hurt her? Was it his fault? Why was she at his caravan? Over twelve hours had come and gone. If she did not come to by this evening, the neurologist would do further tests to determine if there was a bleed in her skull forcing this lack of response.

  Jon scooted his chair closer to the bed. He couldn’t sit. He stood and leaned over her. Any response would be preferable to this human shell bound and bandaged, hooked up to beeping machines, with tubes splayed like wheel spokes from her form. At least she was breathing on her own.

  Everything was undone. Nothing was safe any longer. Nothing. Ruth floated sideways, turned over, reaching with both hands to grasp … what? … something she was forgetting … She had to remember. Oh yes, the past. She wanted it back, wanted it back more than anything in the world. She longed for it so much she could taste it. It was bitter. Her past was not her imagination, and she was not hysterical. Don’t lie. No, she was intolerably honest. Her thoughts twisted obsessively as she tried to figure things out. Somebody was a killer. Hysteria hadn’t produced a murderer, and she hadn’t imagined the dead girl’s body. There was another mother out there, missing her daughter. So what did this real, flesh-and-blood killer look like? What kind of work did he do when he wasn’t killing? Had she spoken to him today?

  She was flying. A face closed in. This was what the killer looked like. Jesus wanted her to forgive. I know, she thought, but I can’t.

  She fell a long way and landed on a cloud. Her head throbbed. It took a long time to think of anything besides the smoke and the heat. The smell hurt her nose. Smoke and lava flowed as frightened villagers ran for their lives, their homes engulfed in flames. She watched. Her skin hurt. She needed water. Her mother’s face loomed over the mountain and spoke, “Buy the Pink Lux Shampoo. Run, the volcano is dangerous.” She ran into the smoke. There was a man blocking her path. He smelled like breath mints. A curtain moved between them. She pulled it aside and saw a lion in a corner, baring claws. What? A child! She jumped between them. She swung her arm to hit the lion, and a tearing pain shot through her and made her sick to her stomach.

  She woke up, not recognizing anything. Why was the clock upside down? And who put her in shackles? “Where am I?”

  Jon bent over Ruth. Her eyes had opened and she mouthed something he couldn’t make out. His face was no more than ten inches from hers.

  Ruth’s eyes opened wide. “Scary face.”

  Jon backed away. “Oh! Thanks! Now it’s back to the ego shop for repair. I’m happy to see you awake. You gave us a scare.”

  “He had a scary face,” she whispered through dry, cracked lips. “He called me …”

  “What? Mrs. Butler, what did you hear?”

  “Why can’t I be still?” Her voice was barely audible. She winced with a spasm of pain. “Everything floats. Make it stop.” She opened her eyes. Closed them. “Make it stop,” she whispered.

  “Make what stop?” he whispered back.

  “The world.” Her eyes opened and sought his. She stared at him for a moment. Her mouth formed a lopsided smile. “You’re no angel.” She closed her eyes again, and before Jon could react, she began breathing deeply—asleep.

  Shaken, Jon stared at her for a moment.

  A rough voice whispered, “Mr. Graham! What happened?”

  Jon hadn’t heard Trewe enter the room. “She was awake briefly.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That I wasn’t an angel.”

  “I could have told her that.” Trewe tugged Jon’s sleeve and motioned him away from Mrs. Butler’s side. “Why are you here? I have a uniform guarding the room.”

  “What happened to Mrs. Butler concerns us all. Besides, I couldn’t sleep. My bedroom’s in a bit of a mess.”

  Standing in the doorway behind Trewe, the uniformed officer’s face was pink and his brow furrowed.

  Trewe swung around to the young constable. “Has anyone else tried to enter this room?”

  “Just Mr. Ketterman, sir. I turned him away. I didn’t think you’d mind the Detective Inspector—”

  “You’re not paid to think,” Trewe almost hissed. The patient stirred. Trewe glanced in Ruth’s direction, then back at the officer. He whispered, “No others without contacting me. And that is final!” Trewe closed the door in the constable’s face. He turned back to Jon. Mrs. Butler’s mother stirred. Trewe watched her for a moment. His voice a whisper again. “Is this her mother?”

  “Yes.”

  Trewe glanced at Mrs. Butler, and shook his head. “Perstow tells me you chased the bugger off.”

  “Seems so.”

  “He could have killed her.”

  “Probably his intention.”

  “Mr. Graham, tell me why there were six monitors in the caravan you say you were staying in.”

  “I can’t pretend I don’t know what you are talking about. I was sent here with the Regional Crime Squad on another matter.”

  “I know. From Complaints. Truth out, is it?”

  “You don’t seem at all surprised, Chief Inspector.”

  “It’s about my department isn’t it? Oh, you don’t have to tell me.” Trewe rubbed his chin. “I’ve already talked to your super. It was time we had a few things out. Though he had no answer for me.”

  Jon wondered what Bakewell had said and why Trewe sounded so bitter. He glanced at the sleeping beauty again. Trewe looked at Mrs. Butler’s mother and then at Jon. “I’ll just have a brief word with her mother before I leave. I won’t be back by noon for our meeting. I’m not sure I’ll be in my office until later. I’ll give you a ring.”

  Jon went to the door. “I’ll be waiting.”

  A lone young man, dressed in black from head to toe, strolled along the cliffs. A breeze carried a faint, dried-shellfish scent. Tugging on a multi-pierced earlobe, he watched the sun transform dark clouds to pink sheets, floating above a glistening, purple sea. He was trying to unlock his creative spirit by listening to Mozart on his headphones. When his foot came down on something hard, he didn’t give it a second thought until he happened to glance down and see it was a videocassette.

  “What’s this?” Brushing aside the dyed black hair that hung over his face, he picked it up. No markings. He thought it might contain something interesting. Why else would it be lyin
g here with no one about? After meeting up with his mates, he would slip home to view it. He could maybe add it to the other interesting tapes he had hidden in his room away from his mum’s prying eyes.

  He did not peek over the edge of the cliff, so he failed to see the other videocassette trapped in a crevice, gutted and exposed, film blowing like streamers in the wind, or the DVDs smashed to smithereens reflecting the light like so much glitter.

  By virtue of not looking, he was spared from viewing the human body, split and broken among the tapes and DVDs. That sight would have destroyed from his mind all the benefits of the Mozart.

  The hollow echo of dripping water never stopped. With a terrible foreboding Annie was finally able to slip the scarf from her eyes. He wasn’t there. She’d already figured out that she was in a cave. She hated the nose-numbing cold and the smell of wet stone. The dark was darker than anything she’d ever experienced before. Daylight was dim. Light came from an opening about fifteen feet from her, the one with the grass and leaf mat over it. The door was a flimsy nothing. The freezing wind blew in with force and, finding nowhere to go, sat down with her to stay and tickle her shins with ice-fingers.

  The walls were rough and pitted. In the pits were jars. There were tons of jars. A metal band around her wrist was melted to a chain that was bolted to the wall, or she would have left long ago.

  She shivered, teeth clattering. Despite the archaic, oil heater ticking on and off, it only teased her with warmth. Unlabeled cans were stacked against the wall. She wondered if they were food cans. She didn’t have an opener. She could bash one on the rock to open it, but what if it wasn’t food? He hadn’t brought her anything to eat today. A gnawing pain gripped her tummy. She could eat anything, but there was nothing.

  The skin under the plaster strips on her arm itched, but if she scratched, it hurt. There were holes in her skin that she imagined were needle marks. What had he done to her?

  The dripping sound came from the ceiling where droplets formed and fell into a puddle at the center of the cave. All around her were rags and pieces of material. The mattress with the loose button lay beside her. It had been on top of her when she first arrived. It stank. She was sure the brown stains must be blood. Whose blood was it? Thinking about it made her head hurt worse.

  She tried to see everything she could before pulling the scarf back over her eyes. The creeper told her to keep it there. Her head hurt when she shifted around, so she lay still and thought about tearing the metal cuff off and finding real clothing that wasn’t rags—or something to eat or some shoes that fit.

  Time passed in centuries. She hated the nights, alone in the cave, thinking about the creeper. It’s what she called him because it is what he did. She couldn’t figure out the days. The fuzziness in her mind must be from her fall. She’d had a fall—that’s what he told her. The fall gave her a concussion. He said her mother wanted her to stay with him while she healed.

  That was crazy talk.

  She still had her thin windcheater. There was an old quilt. She worked hard to stay on the dry side of the quilt. It wasn’t easy because the damp coated everything. He’d left an anorak there beside her, and woolen socks, and trainers that were too big, but it was better than having no shoes, because her feet were the coldest part of her—her feet and her hands.

  She pulled the scarf over her eyes. Just in time. Soft rustling.

  26

  As Jon didn’t need to be in Trewe’s office until later, he went to secure anything salvageable from his wreck of a caravan that was now cordoned off as a crime scene. What the fire didn’t get had been slashed or smashed beyond recognition. Graphite smears and glass shards coated everything. A few of his books he could dry out or repair, and he had more in his car. He knocked on Perstow’s rear door again and had a brief natter. “Did Mrs. Perstow hear anything last night?”

  “Not a thing, sar. The wife said all was quiet till the ball of fire from the caravan drew her attention; it didn’t make a sound that she heard. She saw a flash o’ light, and soon after, you raised the alarm at the back door, just as I arrived home.”

  After asking for recommendations and then directions, Jon took himself to the Hasten Inn B & B with only a change of clothes and the toiletries kit he carried in his car at all times. The bed and breakfast was a quaint affair, set in a sturdy white house at the top of the village. Those flats-to-let and B & B’s closer to the police incident room were fully booked with the teams of police. They came from all over Devon and Cornwall to help with the search and the investigation.

  After a brief wash, he took a nap, then decided to check to see if there was any change with Mrs. Butler. He had to find out what took her to his caravan after dark. He picked up WPC Craig in order to question the patient without complications arising if Trewe were to discover a second visit in one day.

  He entered her hospital room and the first thing he noticed was the new wrap-bandage that encased the top half of her head and that there were far fewer tubes sprouting from her arms. The entire side of her lovely face was starting to turn purple. He greeted her with, “You’ve got two, lovely black eyes.”

  “Oh, thank you. Not only is the man observant, but complimentary, too.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  Ruth closed her eyes and then opened them again. The tendency to smile was curtailed because moving any muscle on her face hurt something awful. He sounded like a policeman, but didn’t look like one, wearing a casual shirt and jeans. He wore jeans like he was born in them. Despite the pain, she wanted to keep looking. Allison Craig was standing by the door. What were these two up to? She said to the man, “I assume you’re police, too.”

  “Detective Inspector Jon Graham. I’ll leave my card.” He put a card next to the flowers on the stand by her bed. “I brought WPC Craig with me. I met your mother this morning.”

  “My mother said there was a policeman here earlier. Why did you come back?” She closed her eyes again. It took such effort to keep them open. “I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve already told Detective Chief Inspector Trewe. The attacker said, ‘you stupid policeman,’ then … He must have realized I wasn’t who he thought I was. He yelled or screamed, or someone did. He hit me. I punched him away, but he must have knocked me out.”

  “I’m the policeman who lived there. At the risk of sounding blunt, why were you there?”

  “I didn’t know about the camper. I was restless. I was curious about the view of the shore from Perstow’s shed. There’s a little wood deck. Oh! Sounds crazy in the daylight, doesn’t it? But the nights are my worst time. I can’t stop thinking about things. I keep asking myself how I could have prevented this.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She looked at him then. He had a nice nose in a Romanesque way and sensuous lips on a generous mouth that curved up on both sides in a natural smile. Dark eyelashes, why did men always get the good lashes? Not handsome, interesting maybe, nothing more. “The sergeant showed Annie and me the view last summer. I hadn’t seen it at night. But when I arrived … When was it? … last night … I couldn’t help but be curious about the camper—excuse me—caravan at the bottom of the garden, so I walked over to it. The door must have hit me. That’s the only way he could have grabbed me. I know how to defend myself. Both Annie and I have taken self-defense. I used to teach kick boxing.”

  “That is impressive.”

  “I’m sure I look impressive. Great at self-defense, right? What is it you wanted to ask?”

  “Do you have any idea why that man would have been there?”

  “No idea. Except he was angry at you.”

  “Why? Did you recognize him?”

  “No. He called me the stupid policeman. Then …” She looked into his green eyes, and she knew instinctively that she could trust him. “It sounds mad …”

  “Tell me.”

  “As I walked up to the camper—er, caravan—I heard the person inside say that the American woman was the devil. The
voice was a loud whisper. It was the voice on Annie’s mobile. I knew I would know that voice again. Before I could get away, he was lashing out.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. I’m sorry he hurt you, and I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

  “My daughter isn’t dead,” she said. She leaned deeper into her pillows and closed her eyes because it was hard to keep them open. Thank you, Lord, for such a calming voice to listen to.

  “I must go, but I have one more question, Mrs. Butler.”

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you walk the cliffs at night?”

  She blinked to clear her view. Wow, where did the sudden tears come from? “I walk the cliffs because I need to get out of the house to clear my head and think. I thought we were safe here.” Wiping the tears made her face hurt even worse than it had. “When this happened I thought he had found us. But the thing is—he died. Two weeks ago.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “Who died?”

  “My ex-husband. I’ve been hiding from him. That’s why we came here.” She looked into his eyes. She saw a sudden sadness coming from them. Her free hand, as if it held a will of its own, moved to his hand and grasped it. His hand tightened around hers. She could sink into those eyes. “I thought it was safe. I guess I got real complacent.”

  He must have suddenly become aware they that were holding hands. He let go and took a step back, his face flushed. “Pardon me … I’m sorry.”

  Ruth closed her eyes again. It hurt too much to keep them open. Something still nagged at her—someone not there. “Where’s my mother?”

  “I understand she’s resting at your house.”

  “If this happened to my daughter, and then to me, my mother isn’t safe.”