by Michael Kerr
Laura ran straight at him, hit him in the groin with all the force she could muster, fist clenched in an underarm swing, then elbowed past him and bounded up the steps, her legs rubbery, shaking, threatening to give out. She threw the door shut behind her, slammed the bolts into place and headed for the kitchen door.
Leo felt a sudden, sickening agony spread through his compacted testicles and flare up into the pit of his stomach, before he fell sideways grasping at the main source of tribulation, to strike his head on the concrete as he gagged on the chemical mix he had inadvertently imbibed. He heard the door above him close, and the bolts shoot home: Knew that he’d blown it, but could not have foreseen the woman’s attack against him. Christ, he’d come to rescue her, and been half-blinded and kicked or punched in the balls as reward. He got to his knees, reached up to grip the edge of the sink and pulled himself upright, immediately vomiting and collapsing back down to the floor on all fours, where he stayed until the pain dulled and the retching subsided. Standing again, he turned on the tap, cupped water to his eyes, rinsed out his mouth, and tried to assess how deep the shit he had got himself into might be.
Laura stumbled out through the kitchen door and jogged around to the front of the house, looking about her through the steady downpour of chilling rain, before heading for the barn, from where she had been carried after being abducted. There was a thick chain through the handles of the doors, but the padlock that held it in place was not locked. She pulled it free and entered the murky interior, to be faced by the sight of her Fiat parked up, standing on a thick carpet of straw that covered the earthen floor. Rushing to the driver’s side, she pulled the handle and the door opened. Relief surged through her. Within seconds she would be driving away from the farm, to raise the alarm and seal Hugh’s fate. She sat, dripping wet, and fumbled under the steering wheel, only to find the ignition empty. The key was missing. Anger and fear welled up inside her, and tears of frustration pricked her eyes. She had no idea where she was, and to run blindly through the rain, in his territory, seemed a more frightening prospect than staying in the barn. The last thing that he would expect her to do was remain in the vicinity. Surely he would think that she had made good her escape and was going for help. With any luck he would panic and leave. Whatever happened, she would stay put until dark, then find the road and ultimately another house, where she could call the cavalry from. She left the car, ran to the back of the barn and parted a thick drift of straw, crawling in and pulling armfuls of it over her, to hunch up, hidden and already warmer; to begin what she thought would be a long wait.
Jim was halfway up the stairs when he heard the door to the cellar slam, and seconds later the kitchen door shut. He sighed with relief. Laura must be safe. A voice at the back of his mind told him to retreat, go after Leo and Laura, and maybe Trish, and leave it to the police to mop up. It was foolish to try and finish it himself. And yet he continued on up to the landing; a dog with a bone, unable to let it go and back off. And where was Clem?
Jim reached a partly open door and eased it back with his foot, searching for a target with the gas-operated gun held in a two-handed grip, his right shooting hand cupped in his left, elbows bent, and the left side of his body slightly forward of the right, balanced and ready to squeeze the trigger at the slightest provocation. The coppery smell of blood mixed with acrid spent gunpowder hit his nose at the same time as Clem Nash came into view. The young cop was sprawled on the floor. Jim immediately spun round, expecting Hugh to be behind him, to then feel a surge of relief to see that the landing was empty. Pushing the bathroom door to, he knelt and felt the blood-smeared neck for a pulse, surprised at the strong beat that met his fingertips. He ripped the tape from Clem’s mouth, and the cop moaned and opened his eyes.
“He...he’s got a shotgun, Jim,” Clem whispered, his voice ragged with pain.
“Stay calm and keep quiet, you’re going to be fine. I’ll be back soon,” Jim said, turning and easing the door open. He saw two further doors along the landing, both closed, and presumed that Parfitt must be hiding behind one of them. He reached the nearest, turned the handle and kicked it back. As he made to enter, the other door, twelve feet away, flew open to reveal the pale, naked and blood-streaked figure of the rogue DS, who rushed from the shadows, raising a shotgun as he screamed hysterically at Jim.
“Keep out of there,” Hugh screamed. “Leave my Mummy alone.”
Jim fired once, and then threw himself into the room as the shotgun roared.
As Hugh tightened his finger on the trigger, a sudden sharp pain burned into his shoulder. The 12 bore bucked in his hands, and a gilt-framed photograph of his mother – which hung on the wall at the top of the stairs – disintegrated. He dropped the heavy shotgun and went back to his room, reappearing with a knife in his left hand.
“Hugh, help me...help me!” His mother screamed in his mind, and with no thought of caution he rushed to her aid.
Jim rolled as he hit the floor, to come up in a crouching position against a wardrobe at the far end of the bedroom. White-hot pain bit into his back, and he knew that at least some of the lethal load had caught him as he had dived into the room. He took deep breaths, suppressed the urge to groan in acknowledgement of his wound, and went to the other side of the bed, to crouch in the gloom with the gun trained on the open doorway, fully expecting Parfitt to appear any second and start blasting. It was only then that he saw the withered corpse on the bed and reeled away from it, unable to stifle a cry of agony as his raw and bleeding back slammed into the wall.
Hugh entered the room at speed, his crazed eyes spotting Jim instantly. He came round the bed, slashing in front of him with the razor-sharp knife; a continuous high-pitched whine escaping his lips as he attacked.
Jim had moved forward, about to regain his feet, but stopped to track the advancing figure with the barrel of the pistol and squeeze the trigger three times. The gas-driven pellets found their target. The first hit Hugh in the neck and the second and third both entered his chest, within an inch of each other, just below his collarbone. But they did not have the stopping power of bullets, and Hugh kept coming, (seemingly too enraged to feel or react to the pain), lashing out with the knife, its blade cutting through the air no more than a playing card’s thickness from Jim’s face as he snapped his head back to avoid it. Hugh struck again and sliced into the back of Jim’s hand, severing tendons and causing him to drop the pistol to the floor. Without hesitation, Jim drove his left fist into Hugh’s face, knocking him backwards into a sitting position, and then gripped the other man’s left wrist to prevent further use of the knife.
Hugh lunged forward and bit down on Jim’s forearm, ripping the flesh from it with a sawing motion of his teeth.
Grimacing, but ignoring the fresh pain, Jim brought his head forward with as much force as he could muster, and heard the crack of his attacker’s nose as it shattered under the impact of his forehead.
If pain has a colour, then Hugh saw it; a blinding flash of bright scarlet that almost matched the gout of blood that sprayed from his nostrils. He released his grip and screamed, dropping the knife and scrabbling away from Jim, finding his feet and running for the door.
Jim was up and after him half a second later, only a few feet behind, diving for the other man’s legs, before being hit in the temple by the edge of the door as it was thrown back against him.
“Get the bitch!” Hugh’s mother’s voice screamed as he ran along the landing, flaying the soles of his bare feet as he crunched over the fragments of glass from the photo frame he had inadvertently shot from the wall minutes earlier. He tripped halfway down the stairs, fell sideways and crashed through the banister, ripping out several of the wooden uprights and breaking the handrail, which split apart with the crack of a tree branch being broken over a knee.
Landing hard, Hugh lay on his side, winded, his whole body pounding with pain from the pellet wounds, his broken nose, feet torn, and now a sharp stabbing pain, which he thought may be broken ribs f
rom the fall. If the Yank had appeared at the top of the stairs at that moment, then he knew he would have been finished. But there was only the steady beat of water from the bathroom, and a rumble of thunder from the passing storm. A few seconds, he thought, and he would go for Laura. She would be his passport out of this fucking pigs breakfast of a balls-up.
CHAPTER THIRTY
AS she huddled under the straw, Laura wondered about the man whom she had locked in the cellar. He had looked familiar, and that bothered her. His strong features were striking; not good looking, but charismatic, with a quality of lived-in ruggedness that suggested he had earned the deep lines that etched his face like fissures in timeworn rock. Her thoughts drifted to Hugh and his grotesque double life. She felt unclean at the closeness she had felt to him, now that she knew he had carried out such horrific acts.
A PI...An ex-cop! Laura’s mind had been subconsciously sifting, searching through a mental mugshot book, and had found a match for the middle-aged man in the cellar. She recalled being introduced to him, soon after taking up her post at York. He had just handed the police a murderer on a plate, and was being thanked with an official dinner and much backslapping and acclaim from old colleagues, ranging from DCs to Chief Superintendent Cottrell. She remembered thinking that the ensuing media coverage must have brought a lot of new business to his door.
Leo had been asked to investigate a possibly fraudulent insurance claim. A woman by the name of Amelia Grant was in line to pick up a million pound payout following the supposedly accidental death of her husband.
Quentin Grant had gone horse riding with his wife, and Amelia, suitably and convincingly distressed, had phoned for an ambulance soon after. Her story was that Quentin’s horse had bolted after a low-flying jet had passed directly overhead. She had said that after careering through a wooded area, her husband had been knocked from his mount as a branch struck his face.
Maurice Iveson of M.I. Insurance was not certain, but hopeful that there had been foul play. The policy had only been taken out six months previously, and he needed to be convinced that the coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure was the correct one.
Leo had quickly ascertained that the grieving widow was screwing a guy twelve years her junior, and that the stud in question was Ralph Jameson, an ex-con with previous for GBH, burglary, and an acquittal on an attempted murder charge. It transpired – after much foot-slogging – that on the day of Quentin’s fatal ‘accident’, Jameson had been in a village pub, not far from the Grants’ house. The landlord recognised him from a photo that Leo was touting around, and also remembered that Jameson had stayed in the bar for over two hours that afternoon. He recalled that the man appeared agitated and ill at ease, continually looking nervously at his wristwatch and fidgeting with a mobile phone. After receiving a call that lasted all of ten seconds, he had rushed out to his car and driven off at high speed. The date could not be confused. The day that Grant had died was also the landlord’s wedding anniversary. It put Jameson a two minute drive away from the road adjacent to the wood were Quentin and Amelia were riding. The line from Hamlet came to mind, when Marcellus had said to Horatio that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.
Leo had called to see Amelia. Told her that he knew that she – aided by her boyfriend – had conspired to murder her husband and make it look like an accident, to get hold of the insurance money. He also told her that Jameson had spilled his guts to a mutual friend, and that he had proof of their relationship and of lover boy’s presence in the area on the fateful day. The clincher was when Leo said, erroneously, that as a freelance investigator, with gambling debts and the tax man on his back, he would forego reporting what he knew to the police, and even give her a letter implicating him in the cover-up, for a one-off payment of fifty thousand pounds. To his surprise, the cold-hearted bitch not only agreed to the deal, but offered to substantially increase the amount that he had asked for, if he would get rid of Ralph Jameson permanently for her. He said he would contact her the next day, when he would expect half the cash up front. Leo then went straight to the police with a tape he had made of the damning conversation. The police carried out their own investigation, and Amelia and Ralph were both arrested and charged, to be subsequently tried and convicted of Quentin Grant’s murder.
It emerged that just prior to leaving the stables that day, Amelia had phoned Jameson at the pub, confirmed the route that they would be taking, and then led her husband to his death. Ralph had leapt out from the side of the bridle path, dragged Grant from his horse, and struck him a single blow across the forehead with a stout tree branch, killing him instantly.
In court, they had tried to lay the blame off on each other, but only dug themselves in deeper with a jury that unanimously returned a verdict of guilty as charged.
The thought of going back into the farmhouse made Laura physically shake with fear. But she couldn’t leave...Taylor ‒ no, not Taylor, Talbot, Leo Talbot was his name ‒ at the mercy of Hugh. There was no way she could just sit it out, knowing that when Hugh went down and found him, he would undoubtedly kill him. There was no choice, she had to go back and set him free, or his death would forever be on her already guilt-ridden conscience.
Pushing her way out of the straw, Laura immediately began to shiver violently, her wet night-shirt clinging to her, and pieces of dull-yellow chaff sticking to her from head to toe. She lurched across the barn, past a concrete block with a large metal ring set into its top, then reaching the doors, looked out into the rain, expecting to see Hugh, but didn’t and was both relieved and thankful that there was no sign of him. She trudged back across the muddy yard, retracing her steps to the rear of the house, feeling vulnerable, scared and weak, and knowing that if she paused for even a second, then she would lose her nerve and run blindly, as far as her legs would carry her in any direction that took her away from Hugh Parfitt. At that moment, collapsing in a ditch a mile away with her lungs almost bursting and her chilled body scratched and torn by thorns and branches, seemed far more appealing than the thought of going back into the waiting arms of a homicidal maniac.
Leo tried the door, but it was solid, unyielding, hurting his shoulder as he ineffectively threw his weight against it several times. He went back down the steps; eyes still burning, vision blurry. The female DI had been inventive and quick as a fox. He admired the adeptness with which she had escaped; could appreciate that she had not expected anyone but her captor to enter the cellar. He now wished he had called out before going down into what had proved to be the lioness’s den. Absently reaching for his cigarettes, he lit one and took a deep drag, squinting around the small room to familiarise himself with his surroundings. It took him only a few seconds to realise that there was no other way out, nowhere to hide, and nothing that would serve as an effective weapon. He almost choked on lungs full of smoke as the sudden, deep, resonant blast of what could only be a shotgun, echoed above him. There was no way he could be optimistic. The probability was that Jim Elliott had just come across Parfitt, and not survived the encounter. Now, if he was to get out of the house alive, he would have to rely on his own wits and a whole lot of luck. He couldn’t help but think that his future had all the hallmarks of proving to be a bleak and very short-lived one.
Impending danger was a catalyst for inspiration. If he could not escape or arm himself, then he would have to defend himself as ably as possible and ride it out on a wing and a prayer. Sweeping the books and magazines off the top of the coffee table, he lifted it, noticing that one of the legs was missing. Climbing the steps, this time holding the table in front of himself as a shield, he rested the bottom edge of it on the top step and waited, ready to slam the heavy piece of furniture into the door as the bolts were drawn back, to hopefully gain advantage over the killer cop.
Jim fought against the racing tide of blackness that swept over his consciousness, but succumbed. The effect of the blow to his skull drew him down into a dark pit, to briefly curtail all interest in the situation.
He came to confused, uncertain for a few seconds as to where he was or what had happened to him. And then the events prior to being struck by the door flooded back. He tried to climb to his feet too quickly, only to fall, with his head spinning, pounding. He could taste the blood that had run down the side of his face and into his mouth from a deep gash above his ear. With supreme effort, he got up, but could not stay upright and fell back. Reaching out, he grasped a handful of the bedspread, jerking it, inadvertently pulling the bewigged husk of Jennifer Parfitt over the edge, for it to fall on top of him, the withered legs astride his hips, gnarled, long-nailed fingers on his chest, and face up against his with its puckered, stapled mouth resting against his lips.
Jim cried out and pushed the grotesque, dried-up body away, horror-struck as both of the staring blue eyes popped from their dark, musty sockets, to bounce off his face and roll across the floorboards into the shadows. He struggled to his knees, made it to his feet, but had to sit on the edge of the bed as a grey mist swirled in his mind, almost overwhelming him and holding him in a state of languid torpor. Taking deep breaths, he steadied himself and waited until his head cleared. When able, he assessed the situation.
The pain from his head, back and hand, helped to concentrate his mind. He looked down at the twisted bundle of skin and bone that had been Hugh’s mother, realising that his profile on the case had been as close as he had ever got to think his way into the mind of a serial killer. The mentally ill young man had obviously exhumed her, refusing to let death stand between them. Jim surmised that Hugh’s widowed mother had provoked him beyond endurance. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine that they had been involved in an incestuous relationship, and that when she had found a new lover, Hugh had engineered the car accident that had killed her and the man who she had been with. Being unable to kill her again, he had found look-alikes to punish in her place. Jim knew that there would be periods when Hugh would be oblivious to reality, living in a state of delusion. Given time, his ability to differentiate between the two worlds that he inhabited would degenerate, and he would collapse into a state of complete insanity.