It did not turn out that way. He quickly realized the[ police were after him, now knew exactly what he looked like, and weren’t all the idiots he’d once thought them. His wife no longer occupied their own old house and he had nowhere to go.
It was after several weeks that Lionel found his new home. He had stayed in several country pubs but had rarely risked more than one night in each. More often he had slept in barns, or even in the open air under bushes and trees. A cold experience but not so bad since his stolen clothes were already ruined, being covered in mud, leaves and soaking moss and no longer bothered him either.
Then he found his new home and was delighted. It was a smaller shed than the one he had so enjoyed two years before, but being half packed with hay, it kept him warm and offered a place to hide should it ever be necessary. A few rusty farm implements might be useful as tools or weapons, and the building itself was leak-free and set well back from the road on an abandoned property. At least, Lionel was fairly sure it was abandoned, since clearly no one occupied the nearby cottage, and the fields were asway with long knotted grass and weeds.
Remembering other hideouts, Lionel knew of interesting options, but travelling on foot or on bicycle didn’t encourage long treks to the other end of the county, or even further. He intended finding and eventually living in a place he had used once, not for murder or cosy tortures. But for storing some very special mementoes. But that was still some distance away. He’d get back there eventually. In the meantime, every abandoned shed beckoned to him and offered considerably more than shelter.
Having never watched his wife enjoying her television interviews, Lionel was sure that, having heard of his escape, she would have run off to a police safe-house. He knew exactly where Harry Joyce now lived. But that old bugger was rarely alone, and therefore he needed some time to plan both murders.
Snuggling into the hay with a sausage roll he had pinched from a nearby bakery while ordering a cup of tea, Lionel Sullivan had time to plot his revenge, taking time off to mentally relive some of his more detailed murders and the dalliance before and after them.
On one trip into the local village, he had bought a trio of elaborate hat pins, from a quaint antique shop, and knew he would enjoy these through the night if sleep was slow in coming.
He did not really know where he was, although he had passed several signposts on the way. Having seen the same roads so frequently as a coach driver, he had an idea that he had passed on into southern Wales, although wasn’t sure of details. But for Harry Joyce, he would have to go back the way he had come. He also needed to steal a mobile phone, for this was the only way he could imagine discovering the whereabouts of his wife. First phone her, then get rid of the phone before it could be traced and then steal another.
Plans crowded in and he slept with a smile, a frayed clump of hay decorating his almost bald head, and the hat pins piercing his left thigh. A small trickle of blood was smeared across his right thigh. The hat pins, which had amused him with some tips decorated in minute plastic flowers, and one with a puppy’s head, he had first used in a straight line up the solid flesh. When he’d popped them out to use on the opposite leg, the blood left behind had oozed with almost voluptuous repetition, and he had wiped it upwards with his thumb. Then he had sucked the thumb. Even his snores sounded satisfied.
He kissed her very slowly, both hands at the back of her waist, pressing her closer to his own body. Sylvia was not wearing the usual. She wore a shirt of turquoise paisley beneath a loose cream cashmere jumper. She was barefoot, as he was. Her long skirt, however, was navy silk.
“That gorgeous silver hair of yours looks marvellous with everything.”
“Thanks, my love. But it’s easier dragging around shops if you just look for the same thing.”
“Daft female.” Harry pulled her down onto the bed. The heaped quilt sank beneath them. “You look absolutely breath-taking. Besides, it’s only Kate and Maurice we’re going to see. Dinner with the big bad wolf’s brother.”
“Then I should be wearing a red hooded cape.”
He laughed and kissed her again. “We’ve got time,” he suggested, looking over her shoulder at the piled pillows.
“Harry, no.” Sylvia brushed down her skirt. “Look, it’s getting all creased. That’s the trouble with silk. Perhaps I should wear polyester or something. And anyway, I managed to put lipstick on a little while ago, and it took ages because of all the wrinkles. And now you’ve probably kissed it all away and I’ll have to start again. And honestly, Harry, we don’t have much time for anything. Maybe a quick glass of wine. But we shouldn’t be late. We’ve got a lot to talk about this evening with these people, especially Maurice, and I don’t want to look rude to Katie. She’s nice and I’m sure she doesn’t know a thing about Mark’s criminal activities.” Sylvia paused for breath and realised that Harry was still smiling lasciviously at her, his hands very firmly on her cream cashmere shoulders. “Harry, honestly,” she continued, looking earnest. “we can’t. I’ll have to change my skirt, and then the jumper won’t go, and I’ll have to change that too.”
Harry’s smile was more meaningful as he bent his face towards her as he murmured, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Sylvia closed her eyes.
Two hours later they arrived at Kate and Maurice Howard’s small house, only fifteen minutes late.
Sylvia wore the same shirt and jumper over loose navy silk trousers.
They had seafood cocktails followed by roast chicken and a hundred roast vegetables, finally finishing with – cake! “It’s glorious,” Harry breathed. “Every fantastic mouthful. I can’t thank you enough. We have a good cook at the manor but tend to get very similar dishes over and over. And your twin brother, Maurice? I was hoping to meet him.”
The smile did not reach the eyes. “Too busy. And tomorrow he’s leaving again. Saudi this time.”
It was a small house, and although the garden stretched to the fir trees behind, and several small Japanese ornaments on high shelves appeared both originally antique and exquisitely beautiful, there was no appearance of obvious wealth. It seemed exactly as it was, the comfortable home of a school teacher with taste and a working wife.
“I hope,” Sylvia said, raising her glass, “your wealthy brother brought you wildly extravagant gifts, and meals out.”
Kate giggled. “He bought me a bottle of duty-free perfume, and two bottles of posh wine, one of them you’re drinking now. As for meals out, he says my cooking’s better anyway, and he likes staying at home with us.”
Harry turned to Maurice. “Fishing trips? Golf weekends?”
“One of those I expect .” Maurice nodded vigorously. “He’s a nice man, my big twin. But he’s forgotten about family life. Half the time he speaks Arabic by mistake, and Kate and I sit staring at him with our mouths open.”
“So back to Dubai tomorrow? He wasn’t here long.”
“He can’t afford to be.”
“And his own house?” Morrison had explained that the team sent to trace Mark Howard and arrest him, had not been able to trace him. He evidently owned a house of some value but had never appeared there. No glimpse of him had cropped up at a single hotel across the entire area. His arrival had not been reported at any airport, and his flight out was also unknown. Golf courses, both public and prestigiously private, had not seen him. The man had melted, always supposing he had ever arrived at all.
Maurice helped Kate top up the glasses. Harry put his hand over the top and shook his head. “Or I won’t be able to drive home.”
Sylvia smiled. “I love your brother’s posh wine. I’d gladly drink all you give me. It’s a shame we couldn’t meet him. I was looking forward to seeing this perfect replica.”
“I’d hoped so too,” Kate said between sips. “But it’s a long way from Cu - um Cumbria. That’s where he has another cottage. And he’s off tomorrow. Such a shame.” Her glance at her husband seemed less casual than usual, but she smiled, adding, „he n
ever talks about business, of course. He says we’d be bored.“
In the car on the way home, Sylvia pulled up her coat collar, begged Harry to increase the heating, and said, muffled by wool, “Well, we didn’t learn much, if anything. Did this monied brother go through duty-free in Dubai or just buy the stuff before he left?”
“Is there even duty-free in Dubai? Everything’s tax-free anyway, isn’t it?”
Sylvia momentarily sat up. “There was a new unopened bottle of Taliska on the dresser by the glasses. Does that mean he went to Scotland?”
“They sell Talisker Scotch all over the place. We should buy some ourselves. I expect. And the good wine too.”
Sylvia interrupted. “Buy whatever you like, my love. But first, what about this fellow having a house in the Lake District? Kate saying Cu – and then knew she shouldn’t say it – and changed it to Cumbria. Why on earth would a money-launderer go boating on Windermere?”
“So what starts with Cu in or around Gloucestershire?”
She couldn’t think of any. They stumbled out of the car at the Rochester Manor garage and ran to the house. “They should build direct access. A tunnel.”
Once indoors and hurrying to the smaller living room, Harry said. “Tunnels. That wretched cellar in the mock Tudor house. You know, with the chimney. We have to go back there. What about scratches on the walls from girls kept there? Yes, I know, the police scrubbed the place from top to bottom, but what about in the tunnel? Under the bed? And could there be a ‘C-U‘ nearby?”
“The only place I can think of is Cumlistdowns. It’s almost in Wiltshire, I think. Forest, hills, streams, no town anywhere near.”
“Are we looking for Mark Howard or Eve Daish or the serial killer burying his corpses up the chimney?”
“Never mind. Let’s go back to the Tudor place tomorrow.”
“Safer than searching for Lionel bloody Sullivan,” Harry mumbled. “He could be anywhere by now and if you or I stumbled over him, we could be dead in minutes. I had a nightmare about it. Blood on your navy silk. Leave that butcher to the law.”
Her fingernails were long, tough, but broken. Eve gazed with strange curiosity at the back of her hands. They appeared to belong to someone else entirely. The dark and grazed knuckles, the cuts and burns, and the misshapen nails had never been hers and could not be hers now. She was on the floor where Master had left her. He had whipped her so hard, she could not stand and doubted she could walk. Yet she was so accustomed to pain now, that she divorced her mind from both the terror and the agony, and switched her brain to its meandering lassitude.
One thumbnail had grown claw-like, hooked over and as thick without even turning brittle. She crawled, not on her knees but on her elbows, and pulled herself across the floor to the bed. A sudden splinter in her buttocks made her bite her upper lip, and that swelled too. Once beside the bed, she grabbed the iron base and hauled herself half onto the sliver of foam mattress. The whole bed moved, and she fell back. Now she was more beneath the bedstead than on top of it, and the pain had reintroduced itself. She began to cry, then gulped and stopped. Crying exhausted her and gave no benefit except an increase to the misery. She had been teaching herself not to cry.
Beneath the bedsprings, the floorboards were filthy with dust, cobwebs, and stains. The stench of the room seemed far stronger. Eve saw lumps of grit and wondered if they were faeces. She didn’t touch anything, and breathed deeply, fighting for energy. When energy did not come, Eve knew she must allow herself more time. The wall beneath and behind the bed was near enough to touch, so she scratched at the old plaster, using her clawed thumbnail to write her name. The darkness was complete as usual since Master could switch her light off from outside, and usually did unless he wanted to play. But Eve was accustomed and saw better in the dark now than she had ever managed in her life before. EVE DA - , she heard footsteps and turned over, rolling as far as she could from the rusty bedstead.
But Master did not come in. She heard his voice and knew he was talking to someone else. Another voice answered, “Not now. Eat first, little one.”
Eve closed her eyes, heaved, and managed to pull herself onto the bed where the blankets and the woolly rug cradled her welts, cuts and bruises. She heard no more voices, and whatever Master was eating, it was not shared with her.
At least, severely constipated from lack of food, she was saved from the difficulty of shitting in the corner bucket.
It was the dream that woke her.
In the darkness, she had seen a face bending over her. Then the same face reappeared. Smiling, familiar, easily recognised. As she woke, the face remained. Immediately she remembered.
He had opened the car window and peeped over the rain splashed glass.
“Why, it’s little Evie. Here, hop in, I’ll give you a lift home. This weather is frightful, you must be frozen in those clothes.”
Trusting him completely, she had opened the back door and scrambled in, trying to wipe all the mud from her heels on the car’s nice clean floor.
The same man had leaned over from the front passenger seat with a half-filled bottle of what looked like red wine. “Have a drink. It’ll make you feel better and wake you up. I’ll have you home in five minutes.”
The whizz of the windscreen wipers was like a buzzing and repetitious warning. She thankfully took the half-empty bottle and drank.
It did not make her feel better, nor more awake. She felt suddenly worse and fell sideways into a deep unnatural sleep. She was not taken home in five minutes. She had never got home at all.
Chapter Fourteen
The barn was small and had clearly sat unused for a year at least. Dust hung in necklaces from the beams, spiders nested in the old broken hay bale. It smelled of dirt, damp and lost memory. Yet the hay, however prickly and dust riddled, made a good bed and far better than hard wet ground. The old bent bucket outside was an overflowing supply of fresh rainwater. The roof neither leaked nor housed rats’ nests, but there were certainly mice. Lionel, hungry, ate one alive but disliked the squirming bones and tasteless chewable hair. So he went scrounging for both food and money. He was easily able to steal the occasional wallet. One handbag proved uselessly empty, but fruit from the village greengrocers and pies from the bakery were a good source of stolen food. He ate less than he would have liked, but starving was no threat.
There seemed to be no hurry. Both his wife and Harry Joyce would be difficult targets, but he considered himself so experienced in such matters, he was confident in his own success. The escape from prison had been a great achievement, but not really hard for someone of his exceptional abilities.
So he enjoyed himself and his freedom and the cold fresh air while he nurtured his plans. His wife would be first, he decided, unless he just happened to bump into Harry Joyce without effort. But finding his wife would not be as easy as throwing her off the Eiffel Tower. He managed, well disguised by a hooded rainproof coat, to check his old home. Locked up. Empty. No police and no wife. She was in a safe house somewhere and safe might actually mean safe from him.
The vile weather made his disguise so apt that he ran little risk of being recognised, but if he was caught stealing, then the situation, and the hope would be over. He was careful. He had always been careful.
Risk was no longer on his list of self-confident games, and he did not lie naked to remember past glory, but with no woman to rape, he was satisfied to play the old games with coloured pins. So he lay back on the stale and broken stalks of straw, savoured the prickle and prick of this new bed, and stuffed one very large and long-fingered hand into the front of his trousers while remembering the past. He remembered his favourites and what he had done. He thrust one poppy-tipped hat pin into his thigh, grinned at the pain, and squeaked one guttural and then high pitched cry. No one came. He pulled out the pin and sucked the blood, scraping the point against his tongue.
When Olga flew like the bat from hell into his daydreams, he closed his eyes and told the bitch to back off,
since he was now stronger than she was. She showed her teeth, but he showed his, and she flew away into the back of his mind.
He had proved his strength escaping from prison. His size had intimidated as he wanted, and although some had been easy, like the squalid little thief who had shared his cell, and there had been luck too for that same thief was at the point of his release, others had been more difficult to win over. The small guard Pim was a pig disliked on both sides of the bars, a short but experienced sadist with a bottom twice as prominent as his head, and a special delight in spitting into the cells, and telling the inmates to clean it up.
He had waited for more than a year, but the opportunity arrived when the fool George Pim, having intentionally arranged this situation with the intention of kicking Lionel in the groin amongst other pleasures, unintentionally had left himself vulnerable. Lionel Sullivan had raped him up the arse and threatened worse. That had sealed the possibility of an eventual escape. And after some time waiting, this had worked.
Wondering whether he might one day take another girl, and dreaming of what he would then do to her, Sullivan then slept each night in peace. The house close to the barn was clearly uninhabited. Life was improving. But he missed his long collected souvenirs.
Sylvia waved to Stella Anderson, who was sitting alone at a nearby breakfast table. Harry called, “How’s the house?”
Benjamin hobbled over, having been up to the buffet bar collecting boiled eggs and toast for himself and his wife. “Seems it belongs to the police,” he answered Harry. “We’re not allowed in. Can’t even lurk on a moonless night.”
Ashes From Ashes Page 11