by Rosie Harris
Deborah Jackson was halfway down the stairs when the phone rang.
SIXTEEN
Dennis Jackson was still as tall and good-looking as she’d remembered, Maureen Flynn thought as she watched him walk across to meet her. Maturity suited him. He had filled out, his shoulders had broadened, and it had given him an added confidence that showed in his stride and the way he carried himself.
Laughing to herself, she slung her cumbersome brown holdall bag over one shoulder, trying not to let herself appear weighed down by it, and walked across the gravel to meet him.
‘Mrs Maitland? How very pleasant to meet you!’
His smile was so warm, his handshake so enthusiastic that for one shattering moment she thought that he had recognized her, or had mistaken her for someone he knew.
Then her nerves steadied as she realized he was into a well-rehearsed string of patter that he obviously dished up whenever he was showing a female client over a house.
Dennis Jackson really was going to be devastated by what she had planned, she thought smugly as she acknowledged his welcome with a cool smile.
She allowed him to show her over the entire house, enjoying a feeling of power as he exerted every ounce of charm. She pretended to be impressed as he extolled the many advantages to be gained from buying such a property. Then she insisted on seeing the kitchen again. Smiled politely at his whimsical joke about it being ‘the heart of the home’ and let him precede her down the hallway.
The sand-filled cosh was right on the top of her holdall. When he moved forward to open the door she brought it down on the back of his head with unerring force. His anguished groan was loud, but brief, as he collapsed on to the floor by her feet.
Once she’d checked to make sure he was out cold she’d slipped the bolts on the front door before starting on the next step of her carefully planned procedure.
Removing her dark-grey suit and her white blouse, she left them in a neat pile on the stairs and changed into what she thought of as her working clothes: black tracksuit bottoms, a black T-shirt, black cagoule and trainers.
Also inside the holdall she’d packed two lengths of stout rope. Using one of these she tied Dennis Jackson’s legs together above the ankles and secured the other end of the rope to the door handle. Then she’d tied his wrists with the other piece of rope and fastened the spare end around one of the cupboard doors.
When she was satisfied that he was securely tied down, and unable to move, she looked for something that would hold water. The only thing she could find was a discarded milk bottle, so she filled that from the cold tap and dashed it into Dennis Jackson’s face.
His eyelids flickered with shock, and within seconds he was groaning noisily, and staring up utterly confused.
Maureen stood looking down at him. ‘Do you remember me, Dennis Jackson?’ she asked.
He shook his head. His eyes were bewildered and dark with pain. ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ he gasped. ‘I’ve never seen you in my life before.’
‘Oh, yes, you have. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t! Never for one moment, so think carefully, Dennis Jackson. Think back. Sixteen years ago!’
He winced and closed his eyes as if it was painful to focus them. His breath was coming in quick whining gasps.
Afraid that he might slip back into unconsciousness she refilled the milk bottle with cold water again and stood over him, trickling it on to his face.
He choked and spluttered as it fell into his half-open mouth.
‘Come on, try again,’ she ordered. ‘Benbury Secondary School.’
His eyelids lifted, and the shock in his dark eyes was like that of a trapped animal. ‘My God! No . . . it can’t be?’ He felt as if he was caught up in some terrible nightmare. Her face floated in and out of his mind with every breath he took and every beat of his pulse.
She laughed triumphantly. ‘So you do remember!’
‘Only that we were at school together,’ he mumbled hoarsely.
‘Is that all?’ Viciously, she jabbed the toe of her trainer into his side. ‘Try harder!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What else is there to remember? I’m sure you’re not the kid I made pregnant . . . That was Sally Philips.’
She jabbed at him harder, watching him flinch as her trainer made savage contact with his ribs. ‘Try thinking about the day when you had the results of your A-levels,’ she prompted.
Fear and recognition mingled on his contorted face. ‘It’s you, isn’t it . . . Maureen . . . Maureen Flynn?’
She nodded, her stare never leaving his face.
‘So . . . so what are you trying to do? Why tie me up?’
‘You tied me up.’
‘No . . . never! It wasn’t me. You’re confused.’ He tried to bluster, but the impact of her trainer again with the base of his ribs knocked the breath out of him and left him gasping and crying out in agony.
‘You not only tied me up, but you encouraged the others who were there in the hut to rape me, and after that you did the most unspeakable things to me,’ she reminded him in a savage voice.
‘My God! Brian Patterson was right after all,’ he groaned. ‘He tried to warn me . . . said there was some connection between Sandy’s death and John Moorhouse’s.’
‘And you didn’t believe it?’ she sneered.
‘Why the hell should I? You never said much at the time . . .’
‘Because I was petrified by what was happening!’
‘But afterwards . . .’ His voice grew fainter, and she had to lean closer to catch his words. ‘You never did a thing about it then, or said a word to anyone!’
‘I told my parents. They were so outraged that my father sold our home and we moved out of Benbury. You ruined their lives as well as mine.’
Dennis Jackson’s breathing became more laboured. ‘But it all happened years ago . . . nearly twenty,’ he protested.
‘Sixteen to be exact. And all that time I’ve hated you, hated myself and felt shamed by what happened to me.’
‘We were only kids,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t know any better. We were all high! We’d had too much to drink, and we were excited about passing our exams.’
‘I have nightmares about what took place in that shed. I can feel your hands on me, touching me, invading my body. I can hear your voice urging the others to rape me.’ Her voice dropped to a sibilant whisper. ‘Most of all, Dennis Jackson, I remember the indignities I suffered at your hands.’
He braced himself to make one last plea for forgiveness. ‘It was high spirits . . . we were only experimenting.’
The vicious jab of her foot into his solar plexus silenced him.
‘Experimenting, were you?’ Maureen’s lips curled scornfully. ‘That’s exactly what I’m about to do! Experiment!’ She drew a knife out of her brown holdall. ‘I’m going to experiment on you, Dennis Jackson, the same as you did on me.’
As she bent over him, wielding the sharp-bladed kitchen knife, he screamed. Quickly, she smothered his cries by clamping the brown holdall hard down on his face.
With his hands and feet tied by ropes, and secured, his struggles were ineffective. He pleaded with his eyes, rolling them from side to side, but Maureen only laughed.
‘You always were a dirty bastard, and I don’t suppose for one minute that you’ve changed, so a dose of your own medicine won’t come amiss,’ she told him disdainfully.
Dennis Jackson writhed in terror as she inserted the tip of the knife inside his shirt, ripped a gaping hole in the material, and then scored a deep gash across the front of his belly.
His eyes bulged, he gasped for breath, tears trickling down his purpling cheeks. He twisted his head from side to side to dislodge the brown bag, but each time he seemed to be about to succeed she rammed it down on his face more firmly.
With tantalizing slowness, she flicked his shirt aside with the point of the knife, then, hooking the knife inside his waistband, sliced his trousers from waist to crotch.
�
�I want you to appreciate every moment of this,’ she told him softly. ‘You always enjoyed anything perverted, but this will surpass even your most sadistic dreams,’ she promised, kicking the bag away from his face.
He lay snorting and gasping like a beached whale, groaning in agony while his belly contracted, as though racked with cramp or pain. Too late she realized he had lost complete control of his bodily functions.
Exhausted, he lay there in his own filth, howling and screaming like some tormented animal. Bile rose in her throat as the stench infiltrated her nostrils, and she knew she would never be able to erase this moment from her mind.
His eyes now were tightly closed, and because she was afraid he might be drifting off into unconsciousness she dashed another bottle of cold water into his face, making him splutter and choke.
‘That’s better. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the final stage of my retribution, because I think it’s the most exciting piece of the action,’ Maureen taunted as she poised the knife tantalizingly above his face. ‘Are you ready?’
With a deft movement she bent over him. The knife flashed, plunged, and then made a slashing cut in one swift stroke.
Dennis Jackson’s eyes opened so wide that they seemed to encompass his entire face. His mouth gaped as he gave an unearthly scream of mingled pain, panic and outrage that seemed to surge up from deep inside him.
The cry was so terrible that Maureen wanted to clamp her hands over her ears to try and shut it out before it imprinted itself on her brain for ever.
She knew she mustn’t do that. If she did, she would lose her nerve, and then she would be unable to finish the task she’d set herself.
It was time for the finale. She must act quickly, before the blood already pumping from his groin defeated the purpose of her final act. Swiftly, before someone outside heard his terrible anguished screams and came to find out what was happening.
Clutching the knife with both hands she plunged it into his belly, into his chest, and then into his throat.
She stepped clear as blood gushed in half a dozen fountains. His glazed eyes stared directly at her as one last choking escaped his lips.
She turned away, temples thumping, head spinning, stomach churning. Blindly, she stumbled through the kitchen door into the hallway, gasping for air.
Stripping off her black T-shirt, black jogging bottoms, and her trainers, she bundled them into the black plastic bin bag she’d brought with her, along with the knife and lengths of rope.
Naked, she dashed upstairs to the bathroom, where the cold, stinging shower cleansed and revitalized her. Dripping wet, she went downstairs to the hallway and dried herself on her white cotton blouse before putting on the grey suit she’d been wearing when she arrived.
She couldn’t bring herself to look again at the body. All she wanted to do was get out of the house.
The other murders she’d committed had left her with a feeling of vengeful pleasure, but this time she was filled with revulsion for what she had done and a feeling of apprehension. She was afraid that at any moment she would lose control.
Thank God there was no one else, she told herself. It wasn’t that she felt she had gone too far: it went much deeper than that. It was the tumultuous elation she felt at having accomplished her mission.
Dennis Jackson was the last. She’d saved him until the end because he had been the instigator of what had happened all those years ago, and she’d been determined to inflict on him the ultimate degradation.
And she had! She shuddered as she recalled his maimed, disfigured body.
‘He deserved it! And he was the last one!’ She repeated it aloud, over and over again, trying desperately to convince herself.
At the back of her mind she wasn’t sure. It was true Dennis Jackson had been the instigator of her traumatic sufferings, but the man who had revived those terrible memories had been Philip Harmer.
Could she let him go free? Wasn’t he equally as guilty as any of the others?
He was the one who had set in motion this chain of reprisals when he had jilted her. He had incited the desire for revenge that had taken over her life when he had abruptly withdrawn his proposal of marriage.
If only she had gone on guarding her guilty secret instead of complying with his demands. By confessing to everything that had happened in her life prior to meeting him, the humiliation she’d been subjected to when she’d been raped at eighteen, had been revived.
Her head was throbbing, her pulse racing as she drove out of Englefield Drive. At the corner with Barr’s Road she narrowly missed a red car, and the realization of what the outcome might have been had they collided made her shake with fright.
Instead of turning out into the main road, Maureen pulled tight into the kerb to take a breather. As she did so, she saw in her rear mirror that the red car had turned into the driveway of the Willows.
Sweat rivered down the nape of her neck. She’d felt so traumatized by the time she was ready to leave the house that she’d found it hard to concentrate, and she wasn’t sure if she’d shut the front door securely.
What if she hadn’t? Her scalp crawled.
On the brink of panic, and anxious to distance herself from the Willows, she revved the car engine, let out the clutch, and shot out into Barr’s Road to a cacophony of horns from other cars as she cut across their path.
She hadn’t even noticed if it was a man or a woman driving. She wondered why they had turned into the Willows, since it was empty.
Perhaps it was someone delivering leaflets, she told herself. Even so, if she hadn’t shut the door properly, and if they actually went inside, then in a matter of minutes they would raise the alarm and call an ambulance, and probably the police as well.
Once officials arrived on the scene all hell would break loose. There’d be a fearful hue and cry. There was no time to lose. She must decide now what to do. Would it be best to go straight home and lie low, she wondered. She could lock the door, leave the lights off, and pretend she wasn’t there.
Or would it be better to make a run for it? Not to go anywhere near her own home, but drive in the opposite direction and carry on until she was a hundred miles or so away from Benbury and Dutton?
Where would she stay if she did that, though? She didn’t want to spend the night in her car, and she could hardly book into a reputable hotel without a suitcase.
Maureen was suddenly filled with a sense of impending disaster. Even at this moment the police might be setting up road blocks. Supposing they stopped her and asked to look in the boot of her car!
She felt a tightening in her throat. The moment they saw the bulky black bin bag they’d be suspicious. And once they looked inside it that would be the end!
She drove faster anxious to put as many miles as possible between herself and Benbury before the police started to take action.
Her nerves felt raw. Her left eye was twitching so fast that she had to keep putting her hand over it. She’d planned Dennis Jackson’s murder with such care and precision that she refused to believe it was all going to go wrong. She’d felt such elation when she’d turned into the driveway of the Willows and seen the dark-green Mercedes pulled up in front of the house, and known that Dennis Jackson was already there waiting for her.
She shook her head, like a dog coming out of the river, trying to clear the kaleidoscope of memories. The important thing now, she told herself, was to concentrate on the present. She must decide where she was going, and how she was going to dispose of the black plastic bag of incriminating evidence that was in the boot of her car before she was stopped by the police and interrogated.
SEVENTEEN
‘Calm down, Miss Lowe. If we are to catch the person who carried out this dreadful crime we need your help.’ Ruth spoke in a low, soothing tone. ‘I want you to try and tell us exactly what happened.’
June Lowe’s grey eyes were wide with fear as she looked from Inspector Morgan to Sergeant Hardcastle and back again.
‘I don
’t know what happened . . . I wasn’t here . . . I found him like . . . like . . .’
‘And you say you found the front door open when you arrived?’ queried Paddy.
‘Yes!’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
‘Why were you here?’
‘I . . . I came to remind Mr Jackson that he had promised his wife he’d be home early.’
‘So you expected to find him here?’
‘I . . . I wasn’t sure. I knew he’d come here earlier to show a client round—’
‘And the client’s name?’ interrupted Paddy.
June lifted her shapely shoulders in a hopeless shrug. ‘I can’t remember. Metcalfe . . . or Maitland.’ Her face brightened. ‘Yes, that was it. Maitland. Margaret Maitland.’
‘Would you know this woman if you saw her again?’
June Lowe shook her head. ‘She made the appointment over the phone . . . She didn’t come into the office.’
‘So you haven’t an address? You hadn’t sent her details of the property?’
June shook her head.
‘So you knew Mr Jackson was coming here to show this woman around, and so you dropped in on your way home from work to remind him he was supposed to be home early.’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Couldn’t you have phoned him?’
‘I did try to get him on his mobile! There isn’t a phone connected in the house . . . It’s been empty for quite some time.’
‘And you got no reply from his mobile,’ repeated Paddy.
‘No. I tried more than once. And I phoned his home, but I couldn’t get a reply from there either. Mrs Jackson must have gone out and forgotten to leave the answerphone on.’
‘So you came here to remind him about his promise to be home early, and you found the door was open.’
‘Not wide open. Just off the catch. As though someone hadn’t closed it properly.’
‘And you thought Mr Jackson might still be inside.’
‘His car was in the drive so I thought that the client had left and he was locking up. Quite often they want to go outside and look around the garden so you have to open the back door, or the patio doors,’ she explained.