Time to Die

by Alex Howard

  He knew then they wouldn’t be calling for help. His hopes faded and reality set in. Hanlon would say, yes, they could call for help and with a high court judge barring the door which copper would dare enter the premises? They’d need a search warrant and what magistrate would issue one based on their evidence? Enver thought, maybe we could stretch the PACE section 18, which permitted an inspector to search premises if the suspect was in custody. They could claim Bingham qualified, albeit indirectly, and hopefully if they found the boy they’d be home and dry. Then he thought, and if Conquest has him elsewhere, we’ll be found guilty of causing Bingham’s torture. We have broken so many rules, so many laws, we’d make police history and not in a good way. No, there was no question of outside help. They’d be doing this the hard way. Hanlon’s way, as she’d doubtless intended all along.

  Hanlon slithered backwards on her hands and knees, Enver following, and they dropped into the gully where the stream was. They followed its path down to the beginning of the beach where it trickled across the pebbly sand, into the sea. On the island they could see lights in the window of Conquest’s house. The lodge to their right was about five hundred metres away from where they stood, ablaze with light. Enver guessed they would be practically invisible in the gloom.

  A sand dune screened them from view of the house. Hanlon turned to Enver. She looked at her watch. ‘What time do you make it?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten past eight,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. I’m going over there.’ She pointed to the island. In an Iron Man triathlon, Hanlon could swim 2.4 miles at sea in an hour and a half. This was only half a mile, but there would be currents and the sea was choppy. Still, she reckoned she could do it in half an hour. On the plus side, the salt water would be buoyant and she certainly had all the motivation she needed. ‘If I’m not back with the boy by ten, call for backup. You can get a signal from the car, but my phone’s dead down here, have you got a signal?’

  He took his phone out of his pocket and checked. No signal. ‘No,’ he said bitterly, thinking, we wouldn’t have this problem in London.

  ‘How are you getting over there, ma’am?’ he asked, feeling stupid.

  Hanlon stood up and unzipped her tracksuit jacket. She took her training shoes and socks off, then her T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She was wearing nothing now but black Lycra shorts and sports bra. Her supple, muscular body gleamed palely in the fitful moonlight. Enver suddenly thought with a shock, she’s unbelievably attractive, and then smiled at how ridiculously inappropriate the thought was. Then he smiled again at the cliché of the ugly duckling’s transformation into a swan, like in a film when the unattractive girl turns out to have been a stunning beauty all the time. He should, by rights, now gasp in amazement and say, ‘My God, Detective Inspector, you’re beautiful.’ Of course, he thought, Hanlon was perfectly aware of how attractive she was. She just didn’t choose to show it. He thought too, thank God it’s not me having to take my clothes off, I can’t imagine DI Hanlon swooning in delight at the sight.

  ‘Why are you grinning like that, Sergeant?’ she said in an irritated voice.

  ‘I was just thinking you’re a very beautiful woman, ma’am,’ he said, with mock solemnity.

  She nodded her head in her Hanlon equivalent of laughter. It was an almost Whiteside comment and it cheered her up more than she could say. ‘I know that,’ she said, matter-of-factly. She stuffed her clothes into the small bag. It was obviously waterproof. She turned and said in a warning tone, ‘Ten o’clock.’ He nodded and watched Hanlon as she walked down to the beach and slipped into the water, as sleek as a seal or a porpoise.

  A mile or so away from them, the unknown man whom Hanlon had named the Joker was examining the Volvo with a flashlight. His brow was furrowed thoughtfully. He was 90 per cent sure it was hers, but he was a man who liked to know. If it was Hanlon’s, then he was sure he could guess her next move. He walked over to the barbed-wire fence and by the light of his torch looked carefully. Hanlon’s light feet had made no trace on the ground, but he could see in the bent grass the marks of shoes and some deeper prints from a heavier weight than the detective inspector’s. There on the fence was a torn piece of cloth caught on a barb of the wire. He smiled grimly and nodded to himself.

  He climbed over himself, first breaking open the shotgun he was carrying for safety purposes. The two copper shells gleamed in the moonlight. He himself was no longer young and he was cautious with firearms. He didn’t want any accidents.

  He walked down to the stream and in the mud by the side of the water he saw the confirmation he was looking for. There they were, the two sets of footprints he was expecting. He smiled to himself. The Volvo had been a neat touch and he congratulated her forward thinking. She’d guessed he would investigate any stray vehicle, and she had nearly had him fooled. The Volvo was perfect. He’d been checking for either her Audi or a car he would associate with that fat idiot sergeant. He snapped the shotgun closed and slid the safety off. He was not the kind of man who underestimated Hanlon.

  35

  Half an hour later Hanlon emerged from the sea, downwind of the jetty, just in case Conquest had brought his dogs. She was bitterly cold and her body ached with effort. Natural swimming, as opposed to a pool, is by its very nature unpredictable. She had guessed before she entered the water that it would be tough, but the current had been stronger than she’d imagined and the sea viciously choppy. It was only as she reached a few hundred metres from shore and entered the protection from the offshore breeze of the lee of the island that the water became calmer and she could relax. It had been more of a battle than she’d anticipated.

  She was now about a hundred metres from the simple, blockstone jetty. The rocks around her were large and black, their surface a mixture of slick, slippery stone and cheesegrater-rough barnacles, fringed with iodine-smelling bladderwrack seaweed. She felt her way to the dryness of the tideline, careful not to cut her feet on the sharp edges of the mussels that were attached to the boulders, unzipped her bag and quickly put on her clothes and shoes. Now she pulled a ski mask over her head, so that only her eyes were visible. On her hands were dark, fingerless gloves. There would be no white flash of skin colour to give her away. She was completely invisible in the shadows. She studied the house in greater detail while her heart rate slowed after the exertion of the swim.

  Like the lodge on the mainland, it was brightly lit by spotlights. She couldn’t see or hear any dogs, which she was grateful for. The building was Victorian, fairly unremarkable. She guessed it would have half a dozen bedrooms upstairs. She had no way of knowing how many people it contained. The two front rooms had lights on behind drawn curtains. The front of the house gave on to a lawn and a grey stone balustrade with a stone staircase, both mottled with patches of lichen, which led down to the illuminated jetty. The side and rear of the house were in darkness.

  Hanlon made her way to the back of the house. The fact that there were lights on in the front rooms led her to think that was probably where Conquest was. She guessed that one would be a living room with a sea view, it was the obvious place for a lounge; the other, she had no way of knowing. She crept round the side of the house. The hill she had seen from the shore of the mainland was directly behind it. The house was practically built in to the rock, snuggled up to it as if for comfort. She guessed that the winds coming from the sea would be so strong that it made sense to position the house in the lee of the high ground. It was this shelter too that protected the small harbour and made it viable.

  She climbed up the hill through pungent low bracken and tall grass – the gradient was practically sheer – on hands and knees until she was parallel with the eaves and guttering, and looked again at the back of the house.

  From her current position, she could see into the windows of three rooms at the rear. One, on the right, was in darkness; the one in the middle was brightly lit. It had no curtains and its windows were frosted glass. Obviously a bathroom, she thought. The third set of wind
ows on the left were curtained. They’d been drawn but not fully and, from where she was crouching, some six or seven metres away, she could see the end of a bed and a pair of naked legs. As she watched, the legs swung off the bed and in a sudden movement the curtains were drawn back. There, framed in the window, the open robe exposing his stick-like limbs and naked chest with its sparse, grey hair and pendulous, aged, man-breasts, was the figure of Lord Justice Reece.

  He lifted up the sash of the window about thirty centimetres and lit a cigar. It was sizeable, about the length and thickness of a candle, and she could see its tip glow red periodically as he puffed on it. Momentarily she wondered why he was leaning out of the window to smoke it, like a guilty schoolboy. Then she saw the plastic circle and flashing warning light of a smoke alarm on the ornate ceiling with its moulded decorative plaster friezework. She guessed that any smoking inside the room would trip the alarm.

  Reece turned round as if summoned by someone, so she could see his back, and the door to the bedroom opened. As she watched, the muscular back of a freakishly tattooed shaven-headed man came in, carefully walking in reverse, pulling a trolley. It was like room service in a hotel, except lying on the trolley, without moving, was the body of a fair-haired boy. Her heart beat faster; this had to be Peter. She saw the man speak to the judge and the latter point to the bed. The tattooed skinhead lifted the boy carefully as if he weighed nothing, the huge muscles standing out on his body like an anatomically correct drawing, and laid him gently down. Then he withdrew from the room, taking the trolley with him and closing the door. There was a bolt on the door and she watched the judge as he pushed it home to make sure he wouldn’t be disturbed. He stood looking at the boy, one hand playing gently with himself, the other holding a glass of red wine that he sipped carefully. He shrugged off his robe and Hanlon saw his flabby, elderly buttocks, their loose skin swaying as he walked round the bed like a predator eyeing its prey, on his spindly legs. Then he turned and went to the curtains and pulled them across. As he did so, Hanlon saw he was fully aroused, the shaft of his tumescent penis swollen with heavy, dark blue veins.

  She unrolled herself from the crouch she was in and slipped gracefully down the hill to the back of the house. Below the lighted window of the bathroom was a thick drainpipe. As she had hoped, it was the same age as the house, made of cast iron. It wasn’t a modern, thin plastic one. It would easily take her weight. She pulled her shoes and socks off, tied the laces together and hung the shoes over her neck. She started climbing the drainpipe. Its surface was pitted and corroded and it provided a wonderful non-slip surface for her powerful grip, while the rough stone of the walls of the house gave her purchase with her toes and the soles of her feet. Like all climbers, she leaned hard into the surface she was climbing up. She excelled at climbing. She had that wonderful mix of a head for heights, balance, mental and physical, and huge strength. Hanlon could do one-armed push-ups and she could also pull her own body weight up by her fingertips on one hand. The ascent for her was ridiculously easy.

  She hung from the window ledge of the bathroom by the fingertips of her right hand and reached over with her left hand to the ledge of the bedroom. Then she tightened the muscles in her arms and pulled herself up so she could see through the crack in the curtain. The judge had lifted the boy’s T-shirt up to his chin and was staring lustfully at his naked chest. He leaned forward and gently stroked the boy’s nipples. He sat down on the bed next to the boy and licked his thin lips. Hanlon placed her shoes on the window sill and slid silently into the room, lithe as a snake. As she did so, she pulled a length of cord from the right-hand pocket of her zipped top. At each end was a loop. She slipped her hands through these loops. The judge’s back was to her. His tongue extended as he bent his head forward to lick the boy’s body. As he did so, in one swift motion, Hanlon threw the cord over his head, around his neck, planted her knee in the judge’s back and pulled. While she did this, her hands crossed over each other and the cord bit savagely into the scrawny neck. She stood up, pulling the judge with her, the man making almost inaudible choking sounds, his eyes bulging, his erect penis, a bulging, blue-veined pole, maintained by two Viagra, incongruously dancing and jerking in front of him as they moved, in an obscene shuffling dance. His hands clawed ineffectually at the cord which closed his windpipe, cutting off his air supply. Then his knees gave way as he lost consciousness and he slid to the floor.

  Hanlon checked her watch, five past nine. She went over to the boy and examined him. He seemed unhurt, there were no visible injuries and there were no marks on his wrists to suggest he’d been restrained. He was breathing comfortably and deeply; he’d obviously been drugged. On the bedside table was an unfamiliar type of syringe with a very small needle and next to it was a small, black, plastic machine about the size of a pack of cards. She remembered that the boy was diabetic; this then must be his insulin and the machine for checking his blood-sugar levels. Well, if all went to plan, she’d be able to get him into the hands of a doctor soon enough and if things didn’t work out, then maybe he’d be better off not waking up. She knew that Conquest would never release him alive. His body would either never be found, or be dumped somewhere prominent with the number eighteen written nearby.

  She slid her arms under the boy and lifted him up, then laid him gently down on a rug on the floor. She looked at the now empty bed. It had a sturdy wooden headboard and the posts which formed the legs at the bottom rose in twin carved wooden columns above the mattress. There were buckled restraints attached to both headboard and posts so a body could be tied down on the bed, legs and arms splayed out. She picked the judge up and secured him tightly, face upwards, like a skinny, wrinkled starfish. He stirred and moaned.

  There was a jug of water on the table next to a bottle of red wine with a faded label, and a mirror, a razor blade, a silver straw and a folded bag of what she guessed was coke. Next to the table was a shoulder-high, Victorian, ladies’ screen with three hinged panels so you could conceal yourself whilst undressing or dressing. She looked behind it and there on a dainty ormulu table with ornately gilded legs was a mask and a studded codpiece. Her lips curled in contempt. She picked the mask up and looked at it. The mask’s eyes were covered in a kind of gauze so you could see out but not in. She guessed that the judge was too cowardly to meet the gaze of his victim. He had to hide behind a disguise. Above this table was another set of drawn curtains. Hanlon opened them a crack and looked out.

  These windows overlooked more lawn surrounded by a wall which had a section of fence and through there, in a field partially lit by the house’s floodlights, she could see a large animal. A pig was standing looking in her direction. She was aware of movement behind it and guessed that maybe there were more pigs in the field. Narrowing her eyes, she could just make out in the moonlight a couple of rudimentary shelters for the animals to provide shade from the sun.

  Satisfied, she closed the curtains and picked up the jug of water. She also selected a couple of items from a coffee table that contained sex toys. One of these was a ball gag. She leaned over the judge and pinched his nostrils closed. He automatically opened his mouth to breathe and she inserted the black rubber ball into the opening, releasing his nose, then slid the straps round his head and secured them tightly. She slowly tipped the water over the judge’s face and his eyes flickered and opened as he regained consciousness.

  Then, as his oxygen-starved brain readjusted itself, he focused on Hanlon. His head jerked wildly as he struggled in his restraints and he made muffled noises behind his gag. She held one of the nipple-clamps she’d taken from the table in front of his eyes and watched as they widened slightly. She leaned forward and positioned it over the judge’s left nipple and then started screwing it tight. She watched as his eyes filled with tears and his body tautened with pain.

  ‘Good. I can see I’ve got your attention,’ said Hanlon. ‘When I take this gag off you’re going to tell me how many people there are in this house, do you understand?’ She sc
rewed the nipple clamp tighter and the trickle of blood running down his chest intensified. ‘Another turn on this and you’ll be able to wear a nipple ring.’

  The judge nodded frantically. Hanlon showed the judge the razor blade she had taken from the table. The judge now looked absolutely terrified. ‘Don’t try and scream for help,’ said Hanlon. ‘If you do, I’ll cut your throat.’ She pulled the ball of the gag down. Reece swallowed nervously.

  ‘Three,’ said the judge. ‘Me, Conquest and the girl, Clarissa.’

  Hanlon replaced the gag and took hold of the clamp. She screwed it as tight as it would go, completely through the soft flesh of his nipple. The judge’s body bucked against his restraints. Blood trickled down his chest through the pierced nipple. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ said Hanlon. She stood up and walked to the table. She picked up a paddle and returned to the judge. His erection had subsided now and she could plainly see the wrinkled sac of his scrotum. Three times she slammed the paddle into his testicles. The judge writhed and whimpered through his rubber gag.

  ‘I’d tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God, if I were you,’ said Hanlon.

  The judge nodded frantically. She removed the gag. Lord Justice Reece was crying with pain, tears pouring from his eyes, and mucus dribbled thickly from his nose. His chest heaved as he sucked in air to vainly try and dampen the fires of agony that burnt in his groin and chest. It was hard to know which hurt more.

  ‘Four,’ he gasped. ‘Me, Conquest, the girl and Robbo. I swear. I swear it’s only the four of us. Please don’t hurt me any more.’

  ‘Robbo will be the skinhead?’

  The judge nodded. Hanlon was pleased. It was better than she could have hoped for. Only four. And one of them was tied to a bed. Not that the judge, bereft of a supportive legal apparatus, was much of a threat to anyone. She guessed it was maybe the first time in his life anyone had deliberately hurt him. He would have no point of reference. He could hand it out, but he couldn’t take it.