“Melanie Deeprose, yes.”
“It’s been worrying me because it didn’t ring true. The authorities don’t normally allow psychology students to talk to serial killers who are doing a life term. So I checked with the prison, asked a mate of mine to look into it. He’s only just got back to me. Listen Jack: Van Meer has never had any visitors.”
“It must be a mistake.”
“No mistake. No one called Melanie Deeprose has ever visited Edward Van Meer. He’s had no visitors at all. She’s been lying to you.”
“Come on, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Jack, summat’s wrong.”
Outside the rain dripped from the gutter into the street, a steady tick tick tick.
”For some reason, this woman’s been lying to you. Jack, if you’re on your own you’d best take care. Where are you?”
“Deal.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I was supposed to be meeting–”
I felt the knife at my throat first. Then the hand on my wrist, twisting the arm up behind my back.
“DROP IT!”
A harsh, breathless, choking bark in my ear. I dropped the phone. From the corner of my eye I saw a foot move forwards and stamp hard down on it with the heel, splintering the plastic. A black shiny leather shoe. I felt my pockets patted down and the gun removed.
“Move!”
I shuffled forwards, through the darkness to the far side of the room, then through a door and down a lot of steps, stepping down blind. The knife’s blade never left my throat, and I felt a tiny thread of pain as the blade bit, ever so gently, into my flesh as I finally had to swallow the flood of saliva that was forming unbidden in my mouth.
After stumbling down the remainder of the stairs, I finally found I was walking in water. There was a guttering candle fixed somewhere, giving out a flickering light, illuminating this cellar area, which appeared to be flooded to a depth of a couple of inches. I could feel the freezing dampness and drag of water soaking over my shoes and into my socks.
As I contemplated how to make a bid to escape, I was swivelled round by the shoulders, the water at our feet splashing up and soaking me. Then I felt the thrust of the knife’s blade into my stomach.
For the first few seconds I hardly realised what had happened. It was as if everything had descended into clear slow motion, as if I was looking down at someone else dying.
But only for that blink of time. After that reality snapped back. Instinctively I tried to pull the wound closed, blood oozing out across my fingers, as I sank down to my knees in the freezing water. I was panicking.
Next I felt my wrist snatched and my arm pulled out sideways, the cold touch of metal, the grab and crush of handcuffs on my wrist and a lot of clanking and clicking. Then the same thing happened with my other arm, wrenching the wound open as my body was stretched out. I tried to stand, but fell forwards, my outstretched, pinioned arms preventing my movement any higher than a crouch, pinning me tight against the wall.
And in the flickering candlelight I saw who was doing this to me.
Edward Van Meer.
Chapter 11
FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST
The room smelt of dampness and mould. Swirling shadows and images flashed around as Van Meer directed his torch beam at the walls, and I caught glimpses of green algae, moss and seaweed clinging to the soggy brickwork and rotten timber. How had he found me here, when it was Melanie Deeprose who’d arranged the meeting? Was he following her? Was Melanie being held somewhere else, and he’d forced her to phone me? Was she already dead?
I saw him bustling around, taking candles from his pockets, inserting them into holders fixed to the wall and lighting them. The ghastly scene, illuminated by more flickering yellow candlelight, was straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe novel. Green slime and mould on the walls, the sounds of trickling water all around and brooding shadows that leapt and cavorted like unhappy dancers. My worst nightmare was standing in front of me. That dapper, diminutive slim figure in the dark pinstriped suit, the trousers now absurdly soaked to the crotch. Short neat silver hair, rimless spectacles, beaky nose. The face that had dominated my nightmares for years.
Then, when it didn’t look as if things could get any crazier, I thought I smelt something that overrode the overpowering seaweed and woodrot smell. A brand of perfume that I knew from somewhere, an oppressive awful scent that had bad associations. And when I looked at Van Meer’s face close up, to my surprise I could see that it didn’t really even look like Van Meer. It didn’t look like anyone at all, because the skin was as smooth and shiny as an alabaster mask.
“Haven’t you worked it out yet, Jack? No wonder you were crap as a BIA.”
The voice. The voice was all wrong. There was no aristocratic decisiveness, no ring of schoolmasterly authority that I remembered so well. It was lighter, higher, less ponderous somehow.
Not a man’s voice at all.
Slowly, the person removed his wig and a tightly fitting cap that covered some smoothed down blond hair, that he fluffed out with his fingers. Then he took off his glasses. Lastly, with some difficulty, he peeled away the corner of a plastic, presumably some kind of latex, mask, carefully eased the rest of it from his face and dropped it into the water around our feet. That’s when I recognised the pale thin features, the straggly hair and lined, hag-like mouth.
Melanie Deeprose.
“Honestly, I gave you enough hints,” she said. “I discussed Van Meer, but I never once mentioned what happened in the months before you started on the Van Meer investigation.”
“Before I started?”
“Even the name I used, Melanie Deeprose. Deeprose was a clue, you fool. Deeprose and Gallica. Martin Gallica. Rose Gallica is a species of garden rose that comes in shades of red, maroon and deep crimson. Deeprose. You never made the connection.”
“Who are you?”
“You didn’t even know that Martin had a twin sister, did you? Martin and Melanie. We weren’t identical, but our faces were quite similar. But I don’t suppose you even looked at the face of the man you killed, did you?”
“I think of his face all the time.”
And it was in front of my eyes. However, the last time I saw them, Martin’s eyes were wide and popping, his mouth torn open in a silent scream. But it was the same tight mean stretch of skin, heavily lined at the sides: the mouth that was in front of me now.
“We have the same eyes, the same hair. The same expressions.”
“I thought I knew you from somewhere. I thought…” I winced with the pain, wondering how long it would take before I died.
“You killed him and you never even contacted us. You never said a word about it, you just told your story to the police, that my brother stepped out in front of your car and you couldn’t stop. And they let you off, as if my brother’s life didn’t matter.”
“The insurance people, the lawyers,” I felt light headed, pictured the blood running down my legs into the water. “They wouldn’t let me speak to anyone.”
“Shit!” She pushed her face up against mine, almost close enough to kiss me, then deliberately spat in my face. “I saw you in court. Telling the judge what happened. All the sympathy you got, when nobody gave a damn about me. For God’s sake I was the victim! Who the hell ever cared about me?
“Martin was just an accident who just happened to walk in front of you, wasn’t he? An inconvenience to you and everyone else. All the fancy barristers, the police officers, the bloody stuffed suits in court! What you did to Martin that night wrecked my life. And then, not long afterwards, when I was trying to work out how I could punish you, I saw your name in the newspaper. The hero who’d caught the serial killer, who’d buckled under the strain and gone into a psychiatric hospital. I was so happy. I wanted you to rot there, to never ever escape, to sink into a deep depression, so bad that maybe you’d take your own life. I even got a job there for a while as an orderly. I was hoping to find some way of causing you
pain, but I never managed to get close enough to you; but I had it all planned. And I dressed up as Van Meer a few times, do you remember? Finally I’d decided you’d probably suffered enough, in fact you weren’t really suffering at all. So it had to end. I was going to find a way to creep into your ward and smother you in your sleep, or trip you up on the stairs, or find a way of maybe injecting you with a drug that would kill you. My plans hadn’t gone too far, they were in the early stages. But then you recovered, you got out, you carried on with your life as if nothing had happened.”
I could see there was no point trying to reason with her. And I was getting weaker, so I didn’t even try.
“After Martin died my life was over. I had blackouts, nervous trouble, I lost my job as a cordon bleu chef, because I couldn’t get up in the morning, I couldn’t keep appointments. I became so depressed that nothing seemed to matter. I took Prozac for a time, that helped, but all the while this cancer of hatred was eating away at me. You see, Jack, I lost everything because of you. My mum died not long after Martin did, she died of a broken heart – that can happen you know, it really can happen, when someone gives up the will to live. Dad left us when Martin and I were tiny, and Mum brought us up. She told us that the three of us were everything in the world, that we’d always have each other, we’d always be there for each other. And you destroyed us all, you bastard, you destroyed us all!
“So I was determined to make your life a living hell, then when you were at rock bottom, destroy you. After you got out of hospital I decided that I didn’t want you to die quickly. I wanted you to suffer, to go through misery, for years, to suffer so badly that you took your own life. Then I thought of something much better. To try and make you believe that Van Meer was following you, so that you doubted your own judgement. So the stress could build and build and you’d be back there, in that hell of despair when you were in the hospital, going through your own private hell before I stepped in to kill you. I followed you dressed like him, I appeared everywhere I could, and I prayed that it wouldn’t take much to send you over the edge. When I phoned you I knew I was safe by pretending that I was visiting Van Meer in prison and I wanted you to come with me. Because I knew you wouldn’t come. At the same time I was sure it would upset you, it would get under your skin, and that’s what I wanted most of all. I didn’t want you to die. I wanted you to live forever in that psychiatric hospital, drugged up, confused, in a living hell for the rest of your life, so that your only escape was if you killed yourself. I wanted you to suffer, to pay for the misery you made of my life. And I nearly succeeded. Then bloody Van Meer actually did escape and I had to change all my plans. I had no choice but to catch up with you and kill you before he did.
“But there is some justice in the world. Because you see, you are going to suffer, Jack. This is a smugglers’ cave, dug out in the 17th century for hiding contraband from the excise officers. But since then an underground stream, fed by the sea, altered direction. So now, every time the tide comes in, the water gets up to four feet deep in here – same with all the houses in this road, they’re all due for demolition now. You’re already bleeding from where I stabbed you, but I didn’t cut you deeply – it was just a flesh wound, I was only aiming to slow you down. Now you’re chained to the wall and your arms are stretched out so far you can’t stand up any higher than kneeling. In about a couple of hours the water will be a foot above your head, and there’s nothing at all you can do about it. Listen to the sea, Jack, just listen to the water... That’s going to be the last sound you ever hear.”
There was a faint roaring sound, and a swoosh far away, and around our feet I was aware of the gentle lapping of the water. But I realised it was appreciably deeper than when we’d first come in, perhaps six inches now. About halfway up the wall there was a spurting spray oozing a steady stream of seawater, adding to the pool around our feet.
“Apparently at one time the smugglers used to take informers down into this cellar,” Melanie went on. “They chained them to the wall – using the same hasps I’ve used for you, and beat them senseless, to force them to say what they’d said to the excise men. Then they were killed in here and taken out in a boat and their bodies dropped into the sea.”
“He ran out in front of me. There was nothing I could do.”
“What?” She yelled, swivelling round to stare at me.
“Martin. He ran out in front of my car, I couldn’t stop in time.”
I felt the tears running down my face, tears of misery and fear and pleading, and also genuine sorrow for what I’d done.
“Well, Jack, you can think about that night now. You can try and remember your feelings when you killed him.”
Melanie’s face hovered above me, gaunt and bony, apparently bloodless in the flickering candlelight. “You’d like me to stay with you now, wouldn’t you? Because nobody wants to die alone, anything’s better than that, even dying in the company of your very worst enemy.”
“I’m sorry. I truly am sorry…”
For a moment she stood there, watching me, and she slowly smiled. “How I’ve longed to hear you say that, Jack. How I’ve longed to hear you say that. Would you like me to let you go?”
“Yes. Please. Let me go.”
“Beg me. Beg me for your life!” Her eyes were alive with excitement.
“I beg you, please, please, please, let me go.”
“Again!”
“Please please please please!” Tears were running down my face as, without any vestige of pride left I desperately begged for my life, saying the same words over and over: “Please please please…”
There was a bright flush on her cheeks, and I was vaguely aware that her mind was somewhere else, somewhere a long way away, a dreamy look in her eyes. Abruptly I stopped pleading for my life.
“Go on, Jack. Beg me!”
So I begged all over again. This crazy interlude went on for a while, Melanie still staring into my face, a strange expression like pain was contorting her features. Her breathing was faster and faster until she half closed her eyes for a few moments and gave a small sigh. Then her breathing returned to normal. Now she was more relaxed, her smile broader than ever, flicking the hair back with her fingers as she moved further away, watching me carefully. She fumbled in the pocket of the man’s suit she was wearing and produced a key and moved towards one of my hands. The wrists appeared to be handcuffed to chains, which were, in turn, padlocked to large iron hasps set into the wall.
“I think you’ve suffered enough Jack.” She sounded truly contrite. “I wanted to scare you. I thought I could go through with it, but if you’re truly sorry, then…” she sounded sad, regretful. “I thought I could do it, but now it’s actually come to it…”
The water was much deeper now, above my feet and halfway up my ankle.
She moved to the padlock fastening the chain attached to my right wrist to the wall and began to insert the key. Then she deliberately pulled the key out and held it in the palm of her hand.
“No, Jack. Do you know what? I think I’ve changed my mind,” she said brightly. “Think I’ll leave you now.” She turned back and faced me, a smile twisting her features. “You know Jack, I really got off on the thrill that gave me, the sheer power in my hands, to hear the hope in your voice when you thought I was going to relent. It’s too bad I can’t do it again, but it wouldn’t work because you wouldn’t believe me this time, would you?” She laughed to herself, a demonic shriek in the semi darkness. “Oh Jack, you should have seen the hope, the pathetic desperate hope in your eyes when you thought I was going to let you go! Because I’m not. You’re going to die down here, you’re going to drown like a miserable rat. Nobody lives anywhere nearby, I doubt if they’ll find your body for a while, but probably in a month or so someone might come across it. I believe drowning is a terrible death. First of all your body fights against inhaling water, then you can’t stop the reflex that makes you take breath, but of course you can only inhale water. The lungs fill up and you cho
ke, quite slowly I believe. There’s great pain as your lungs practically burst.”
She held the keys in front of my face, dangled them there and smiled into my eyes. And then dropped them in the water at my feet.
“You killed Shelly didn’t you?” I yelled at her. “You followed me there, thought she was my girlfriend, so you came back and killed her. As another way of torturing me.”
She gave an enigmatic smile, a half nod, as she moved away. Then, with splashing footsteps, she disappeared and I was alone, with only the guttering candles for company. I must have passed out for a brief period, perhaps it was through loss of blood. When I opened my eyes, I panicked on realising where I was. The water was up to my chest now. I tried to pull myself higher, to push myself up the wall as high as I could. But my wrists were fastened tightly against the wall, making it impossible to get any higher than a few inches.
Think!
The handcuffs on both wrists were so tight they were cutting into my skin, so no way could I pull my hands free. Attached to each pair of handcuffs was a short length of chain. And I could see vaguely that the end of each length of chain was padlocked into a large rusty O-shaped hasp set into the brick wall behind me.
Something was at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t think what. I struggled to think what it was, until the water was up to my shoulders. Within a very short space of time it would be up to my chin, then over my chin and running into my mouth. I’d close my mouth for as long as I could, then it would dribble into my nose...
No, don’t go there.
Masonry walls.
There was something at the edge of my memory that I tried to catch hold of. It was to do with when I was working for Koger Runnion, a building firm that specialised in making alterations to listed buildings. Once we were asked to fit security gates and window grills to a Tudor manor house, and Mark, my boss, had told me something I’d never forgotten.
Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1) Page 19