by Michael Kerr
She fought it, but not for long. Whatever the hell he had shot her up with was too potent to deny. Her limbs became heavy, and although she was sure she could still move, she didn’t want to. It was easy to believe she was floating. She couldn’t feel the chair beneath her. Then it got weird. Space and time was messed up. She was ten again, and the kitchen began to distort, expanding out and morphing itself into her most favourite place: Regent’s Park Zoo. She was standing in front of the rails of the concrete moat that separated the elephants from the public. Two adult pachyderms were eating, blood dripping from their mouths and trunks as they tore pieces from a screaming man who was bound to a chair. It was a man who she had seen recently in a photograph that someone had shown her. But who? It didn’t matter. And the fact that the elephants were consuming a living, human meal was not disturbing. Walking away, she approached the Snowdon Aviary. The cacophony of trilling, squawking, whistling cawing, whooping birds was deafening. As she watched, the steel mesh reformed to produce thousands of holes big enough to allow the caged residents egress. The blue sky was darkened by flocks of winged absconders. Day became night, and the multifarious species of the feathered avian horde metamorphosed into bats the size and colour of Flamingos. They were all around her, a blizzard of pink, leathery-winged fury, biting at her, stripping the flesh from her bones as they bore her aloft.
“Dinner is served,” Paul said, shaking her shoulder.
Was she dreaming? Her eyes were already open, but the scene in front of them dissolved. The rose-pink bats popped like bubbles, to evaporate with tiny detonations. The kitchen reappeared, as did her captor.
“Come on, Kirstie, get a grip, girl. We’ve got crackers to pull and a turkey dinner to see off.”
“I feeel funnnny,” she heard herself say in a voice that sounded like an old record being played at slow speed.
“You sound funny. Here, try a sip of water,” he said, holding out a glass.
Was it possible to see her hand move up and grasp the receptacle before she actually moved a muscle? A second later her hand did reach out to copy the act she had imagined making. The sensation passed as quickly as it came, just leaving her feeling lethargic, as if she were moving in a thick, invisible syrup.
“You had n...no need to dooo that, you bastard,” she said, her voice having not yet regained its fluency. “I gave you no reason to...to dr...drug me.”
“No harm done,” he said. “You were thinking about trying to do me some damage and then escaping. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t have made it, but with that shit in you I can relax and not have to worry.”
“You c-c-could have chained me up,” she stammered.
“You’re right. But I wanted to try this out. Now lighten up and eat your fucking dinner before it gets cold.”
“I’m n...not hungry.”
“Kirstie, you are beginning to piss me off, big time. Keep on acting like a sulking schoolgirl and I’ll give you a lot more of what you just had. Do you want to be seriously spaced out, paralysed, and having hallucinations that would make what you just experienced seem like kid’s TV.”
“No, p...please, I’ll be good,” she said.
“That’s my girl.”
They pulled two crackers, and Hannibal whined at the sharp reports of the strips coming apart. Paul unfolded the coloured paper hats, put one on Kirstie’s head and one on his own, read out the asinine mottos, and condemned the small toys as being cheap and tacky.
They ate, and although Kirstie picked at the food and moved it around the plate a lot, Paul acknowledged that she was suffering after effects from the ketamine and was a little woozy. She looked good in the orange hat, and the swell of her breasts over the top of the low-cut dress was tantalising. The festive atmosphere and music was enhanced by the wine, and he experienced a deep sense of well-being. Life was just Jim-dandy, and he wished that it could be Christmas every day.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said as Kirstie placed her knife and fork side by side on the plate to signal that she was all done. “Would you like that?”
She heard him, but there was still a residue of the drug dulling her brain and slowing her reactions. “That...would...be...nice,” she said in stilted fashion after ten long seconds had elapsed.
He went out into the hall and selected a thick fleece for himself and a bulky quilted parka for her. Returning to where she was still sitting, hands hanging loosely at her sides, he helped her to stand and kept his patience as she struggled to find the sleeve holes of the coat. It was like getting a young kid ready for school, he supposed, half remembering his own clumsiness when his mother had held a jacket behind him, and of how he had bunched his fists and flexed his arms backwards to search for the openings.
He unbolted the front door, unlocked it with the key he had kept in his trousers pocket, and led her out into the yard.
The cold breeze invigorated her and blew away the vestigial traces of the mind-altering anaesthetic. She was at once alert and herself again, but continued to walk slowly, her arm linked through his, leaning against him as though in need of support, disguising the fact that she was taking avid interest in her surroundings. To her left was a large dog’s kennel with a bowl half-filled with water at its entrance. Twenty yards away to her right were large gates set into a diamond-patterned wire fence. The coil of razor wire that ran along its top was a daunting sight, as was the landscape outside her prison camp setting, which was bereft of anything but straggly trees and thick, dark gorse. She was out in the sticks, possibly miles away from a main road or other houses.
He led her past the crusher, with Hannibal loose and sniffing around, exploring his domain. They passed between two rows of stacked, rusting vehicles that towered like skyscrapers, creating shadowy canyons. She had visited New York with Dennis – before Faye was born – and had felt a sense of insecurity and oppression at being so deeply entrenched far below such masses of concrete, steel and glass. Her most vivid recollection was of the twin towers, as seen from the top of the Empire State Building. It was still almost beyond belief to think that those giant structures had been reduced to no more than a manmade pile of rubble; a hell on earth.
Hannibal paused, pawed at the rim of a wheel and took off in pursuit as a large rat streaked from cover and tried to make it across a bare no-mans land to the safety of another wall of stripped-out cars. The high-pitched scream cut through her. The scrap yard dog shook its head twice, and the rodent’s shrill shriek was cut short with the same sudden finality with which a heavy guillotine blade would lop the head off the pinioned victim below, to deposit it in the waiting basket.
Hannibal loped across to them, to sit and drop the plump, long-tailed rat at Paul’s feet.
“Good boy,” Paul said, ruffling the dog’s ear with his hand.
Kirstie took advantage of his preoccupation to more fully assess her environment. The last mountain in the automobile graveyard was only a little higher than the fence’s barbed top, and very close to it. She could scale the wrecks with ease, employ the thick parka as a buffer between herself and the lethal wire, and scramble down to freedom. She may never get a better chance, or even be brought outside the house again. It was now or never.
Hannibal walked away from the carcass of the rodent, his tail wagging with undisguised pride. She waited until he rounded the end of the aisle they were in, to vanish from view, then, summoning all her courage, she stepped back, spun and kicked out with all her force, transferring her weight to propel her right leg.
Paul screamed out in surprise and pain as the side of her foot connected with his kneecap, scraped down his shin and stamped onto his instep. He fell over, grasped at the source of agony, and for a few precious moments rocked back and forth on the ground, unmindful that his cheek was in contact with the dead vermin.
Kirstie should have taken the extra second to follow up and stamp on his throat. Instead, wary of the dog that would have heard his master’s scream, she ran to the bank of cars and began to scale them, finding
ample hand and footholds.
Hannibal powered back over the hard packed earth, running like a cheetah on the African veldt, full concentration focused on prey that was attempting to climb out of his reach.
Kirstie curled her fingers over the door sill of a crumpled BMW and hauled herself ever higher. I’m going to make it. Got to make it. Will make it. Climb faster, damnit. Climb...Climb...Climb! She mentally repeated the mantra over and over again. She felt ice-cold coils of fear slither up her spine, merging with a powerful surge of elation. Even if she hadn’t displaced his kneecap, he would be limping for days. The jarring jolt through her own leg had told her that she had struck hard and true. By the time he crawled or limped to the gates, she would be half a mile away and still running, every step taking her nearer to a road or house.
She felt a hard tug and the sensation of how stepping in a primed gin trap must feel. Thought that she must have got caught up on a sharp edge of torn metal, but was then dragged backwards by sheer weight.
Hannibal had leapt over six feet from the ground, grasped her ankle between his jaws, and was now swinging free, scrabbling for purchase with his claws clicking against a car’s body work, determined not to let go of his prize.
Kirstie looped her arms around the stanchion of a window frame and gritted her teeth against the pain. She looked down into the eyes of the agile German shepherd and thought that there was an almost gleeful expression in them. There was no time to think. She used her other foot to repeatedly kick at the dog’s head, which if anything, encouraged it to bite harder. Her arms ached. She could not hold on forever, and yet if she let go and fell, the beast would surely dispatch her in the same manner as it had killed the rat. This wasn’t fucking fair! She kept stomping on the top of the wide, solid head, but her blows were now without any power.
“Let go and I’ll call him off,” Paul said from where he now sat, in pain, but enjoying the spectacle. “If he has to bring you down himself, I might just let him finish what he’s started.”
She had failed, and knew it. The strength ebbed away, and with a cry of frustration she released her hold and plummeted to the ground, causing Hannibal to yelp as she landed on top of him.
“Here boy,” Paul said. “Leave.”
The dog whined in frustration. It wanted to rip the woman to bits, but was mindful of what the punishment for disobedience entailed. Being lashed senseless with a choke chain was not something it relished. It recognised emotions; could sense moods, and knew that its master was one biscuit short of a meal.
Paul held her by the back of her neck as they both limped into the house. “Take off your glad rags you ungrateful, vicious cunt,” he seethed. “I was treating you well. I had even considered letting you live and go back to your pointless existence. But you had to go and spoil it, didn’t you? Well, now you’ll live just long enough to regret ever leaving the safety of your mother’s womb.”
She stripped and, accompanied by the dog, Paul led her back down to the cellar.
Shackled once again, but now with no clothes or bedding, Kirstie hunched on the edge of the camp bed and awaited her fate. He left her under the watchful eye of his hell hound, to return with the syringe.
“You get a full dose this time,” he said. “I don’t know what it will do to you, but if you survive, you can tell me. Now lay back and try to enjoy it.”
He rammed the needle through her left nipple into her breast, emptied it and tore it free. “Sweet dreams...or delusions,” he said, laughing as he left her, to lock the door behind him and switch off the light.
Oh please, Christ, help me! she thought. Attempting to sit up was beyond her capability. Within minutes a creeping paralysis froze her limbs. She could not move a muscle. It was truly living death. The darkness was a cloying vacuum, within which she was trapped in stone-like stillness. Was her heart still beating, and her lungs able to function in the cavities of her numb chest? Would she soon lose consciousness and drift into oblivion? A part of her wanted this to be her final torment.
Time passed. She was still aware: had even shouted her husband and daughter’s names out a hundred times to pierce the silence. How could she still be able to breathe and even talk? What drug could stop all other movement?
As she fought with brave futility to move even one finger or toe, her perception began to falter. The first of many three-dimensional nightmares formed to become her only reality. She was entering a distorted world, courtesy of the mind-altering drug that flowed through her brain.
“You saved the day, Hanny. You’re the best dog on the planet, and don’t ever let anyone tell you different,” Paul said as he carved pieces off the turkey and tossed them into the air for Hannibal to catch and gulp down.
It had been a Christmas Day to remember. A Part of him admired Kirstie’s daring dash for freedom. It was an indisputable fact that a prisoner of war’s duty was to try and escape. And in a sense, she was a POW. If Hannibal hadn’t been so acrobatic and tenacious, she may have actually made it. He had never seen his best pal jump so high. He would have to buy a Frisbee and keep him exercised and in peak condition. Sitting around outside his kennel most of the time did not promote good health.
His leg was a little sore, but not seriously damaged. The kick had been hard but a trifle wayward, striking him a fraction below the knee. He applied a little antiseptic to the graze on his shin, then flexed his leg a few times. She had moved too well. It had not been the action of a rank amateur just lashing out and hoping. No, Kirstie had spun gracefully and delivered a blow that had the hallmark of training. Was she some martial art freak? He thought so, and would be sure to ask her if she survived the trip he had sent her on. Ha! She should be okay. He had guesstimated her weight and injected less than one milligram per kilo. It was all suck it and see. The Rastafarian who’d sold him the stuff had given him a rough guide as to its usual effects, but was uncertain of its precise mode of action. He was used to selling very small doses, suitable for guys who got off on date raping.
It was getting late, but he was hyper, needing more excitement. Fuck the risk, he would drive by the Highgate home of Miles Patterson, who had been the judge who presided over the trial of his dad: the old bastard who had passed what was in all but name a death sentence on him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I’VE got company,” Shirley said, looking from Matt to Beth and back again. “It’s Christmas day, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you people ever give it a rest?”
“We need to ask you one or two things about Paul, Mrs. Roberts,” Matt said. “If it wasn’t urgent we would’ve waited, but murder doesn’t take a holiday, even at Christmas.”
She didn’t ask them in, just turned and walked away from the open door, which was an invite in Matt’s book.
Beth followed him along the narrow hallway and into the lounge.
“This is Mickey, a friend,” Shirley said, introducing a small, slim man who might have been in his mid-forties. To Matt, he had the look of a guy you wouldn’t want as a neighbour or relation. His mouth had a cracked, overgenerous bottom lip set in a permanent pout, and his eyes were sneaky-dangerous. The faded indelible patterns on the backs of his hands were amateurish, probably picked up in Borstal. He had ex-con written – and tattooed – all over him.
“Your flies open,” Matt said to Mickey, having noticed that Shirley’s blouse was half out at the back, and realising that the high colour in her cheeks was due to being interrupted while serving up more than pudding and white sauce to her friend.
Mickey’s fat-lipped mouth dropped open. He showed them his back and zipped up, then headed for the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said.
“He was one of Ted’s pals,” Shirley said.
Matt nodded. The woman didn’t owe him or anyone else an explanation for having her dessert on the rug in front of the fire. “You do know that your son is wanted for questioning”, he said. “I’m here to confirm that he is suspected of committing at least three murders to date, Mrs. Ro
berts.”
“I don’t believe that. Paul wouldn’t kill anyone. You have no right to accuse him.”
“Then tell me where he is. If he has nothing to hide, he’ll be eliminated from our inquiries.”
“I’ve already told you, I have no idea where he is.”
“When was the last time that you spoke to him?”
Shirley’s mouth worked soundlessly as she thought how best to phrase a lie.
“Have you got his phone number?” Matt pressed. “If you withhold anything, then I must advise you that it could lead to you being regarded as an accessory to the murders of his next victims.”
“Next! What do you mean by that?”
Matt looked to Beth. “This is Dr. Holder, Shirley. She is a criminal psychologist. Listen to what she has to say.”
Shirley faced Beth. “Well?”
“Paul loved his stepfather very much, Shirley, and blames his death in part on everyone concerned in Ted’s rape conviction. So far, the daughter of the policeman who arrested Ted, and the barrister who prosecuted the case and his housekeeper have been brutally murdered. The foreman of the jury’s wife has also been abducted. That leaves another eleven jurors or their families at risk. Paul is unstable and out of control. If we don’t find him, then you have every chance of going down in history as having been the mother of someone as notorious as other infamous serial killers. Do you really want to have the blood of so many innocent people on your hands?”
The inflamed spots on Shirley’s cheeks faded to milk-white.
“We need to see his room,” Matt said.
Shirley said nothing, just led them back out into the hall and up the stairs. There were three doors, one open, the bathroom. Matt noted both toilet lid and seat were raised up and leaning against the turquoise cistern, undoubtedly left that way by Mickey.