by Michael Kerr
Laura shook her head vehemently. “I don’t want to profit from all the misery that a fellow officer caused. Christ knows what the final tally of victims will be. I doubt that we’ll ever know.”
“Business as usual, then?”
Laura felt the mood change. It was as if a sudden icy draught had entered the room to lower the temperature by a few degrees. The cold shadow of her job was there between them, festering; a wedge driven deep between her and all that she wanted from life. Unbeknown to Jim, she had made the decision to walk away from the sleaze, now sick of a life that was ruled by violence, drugs and the worst elements of human nature.
“I’m taking some leave, Jim. I think I’d like to see Arizona, as soon as all the debriefing and paperwork are out of the way. A guided tour might be best. Any idea who I should book with?”
Jim’s disposition was instantly modified. “Elliott’s Golden West Tours are incomparable,” he said. “You get as much sex and scenery as you can take. It’s a personally conducted, tailor-made romp through the Southwest. You’ll see Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Vegas; the whole nine yards. But watch out for that guide, he’s a randy piece of work, given half a chance.”
“It sounds like just what I need. Can I book now?”
Laura left the hospital walking on air, so excited at the prospect of starting over with Jim that she forgot to have a cigarette until she had reached the car park. She was now ready to enter a new phase of life, to break free from the cocoon of her career and spread her wings. In the final analysis, it was only people and relationships that were worth a damn. Her job was just an endless war that could at best result in the winning of only small battles. The overall picture was grim. Crime in all its multifarious forms was a part of human nature, as natural as eating, making love, taking one breath after another. It wasn’t something that could be cut out like a diseased appendix. Good and evil came in many varieties, and she was no avenging angel put on earth to fight the Devil in all his guises. Her close call with Hugh – which could have so easily resulted in her death – and the still gut-wrenching memory of the swiftness with which Kara had been taken from her, combined to give a fuller comprehension of the brevity of life. Nothing that happened, however bad, would knock the world off its axis, bar it being struck by a large enough asteroid. Had she died at the farmhouse, then it would have been newsworthy for a fleeting moment, for strangers to read about as life marched on unaffected by her passing. It was now time to look out for number one. As far as she was concerned, she’d paid her dues in service to an uncaring society; had been there, collected the emotional scars and got the ripped and bloody T-shirt. Egotistical would be her chosen watchword for the coming week. She was ready for a large dose of systematic selfishness, and fuck anyone who didn’t like it.
It was ten o’clock the next morning when Laura got a call from pathology.
“Laura? It’s Brian Morris.”
“Yes, Brian.”
“Are you okay? I heard what happened. It’s hard to believe that it was Hugh.”
“I’m fine, Brian. If you walk away in one piece, you can’t complain. And I’m still trying to come to terms with it being Hugh. It seems you never really know anyone. Only the side of themselves that they let you see.”
“I thought you should know that you still have a big problem,” Brian said, his voice lowered as though what he had to impart was a state secret of such magnitude that he was scared of being overheard telling it to the world at large.
“In what sense?”
“We found seventeen bodies in the barn. Sixteen were in shallow graves, and one of them was Trish Pearson. The others are too badly decomposed for a quick ID. They’d been buried in quicklime. Above ground, we only found one charred corpse. I think dental records will confirm that it’s Leo Talbot. There were no other remains.”
“But Hugh was trapped, locked in the barn for Christ’s sake! He must have been there.”
“No, Laura. He got out. Believe me, he was not inside it.”
“Fuck! Who else knows about this?”
“Officially, you’re the first. When I hang up, I’ll have to make more calls and let the dogs of war loose, so to speak.”
“Thanks, Brian. Was there anything else?”
“We found a glass eye in the barn. I say glass, but it was actually a high density resin compound. It had melted; looked like a fried egg with a blue yoke. I still can’t figure Hugh as being so sick. He always seemed the type who I would have been proud to have as a son-in-law.”
After Brian rang off, Laura lit a cigarette. Dragged on it nervously. Paced the office. The news that Hugh was still alive and on the loose had come as a complete shock. She could not fathom out how he could have escaped being burned up in the inferno. He would now be the subject of a massive manhunt, but being a copper he would know exactly what procedures would be employed, and what measures to take to lie low, vanish and avoid capture. She imagined that he was many miles away by now, almost certainly in London, or any large city that would provide an environment in which he could become anonymous among the masses.
In actual fact, Hugh was less than a thirty minute drive from where Laura was standing. He was planning what he thought to be a fitting revenge on both her and Jim Elliott. They had conspired to bring him down, and almost succeeded in their endeavours. But he could not, would not be stopped, and was not one to forgive or forget. As an enemy, he had no equal. Everyone got to pay the piper, eventually. And in their case it would be sooner rather than later. He and his mother had survived a terrible and potentially fatal experience. Now, his former life was irretrievable, but he had the strength to overcome adversity. Laura and the Yank had killed Hugh Parfitt in name only, forcing him to adopt another identity. He would move on, after first meeting the challenge and prevailing. They would come to know that he was a living nightmare; one that they could not wake from to flee and escape. The only feeling left for Laura now was a burning hatred. The saying, ‘You’re either with me or against me’ came to mind. Well the lovely Laura and Mr FBI were certainly not with him. They were the opposition, and would soon know that they were on the losing team.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DOMINIC Armstrong was one of three GP’s operating out of a small surgery in Skelby; a village west of the A19, situated in the lush pastorage of the Neame Valley, alongside the banks of the River Ouse.
Dominic left his last house call, out at Dutton’s Farm, at six-thirty p.m. and headed for home. Alfred Dutton, a sixty-year-old sheep farmer, had been suffering from chest pains, and having already recovered from one heart attack, which had struck at a time of enormous stress during the foot and mouth epidemic (which had resulted in his entire flock being slaughtered), Dominic quickly made the decision to call for an ambulance. His policy being an old and faithful one; ‘better safe than sorry’.
Having waited for paramedics to arrive, Dominic drove down to the valley floor, relishing the thought of being off duty for the next two days, barring unforeseen emergencies.
Home was a detached Yorkstone house – on a little-used minor road, a mile outside the village – at which he lived with his wife, Paula. The location was idyllic, a far cry from the Chapeltown area of Leeds, where he had previously been in practise for over twenty years. Break-ins by junkies desperate for drugs had become commonplace, and the workload, although shared with five colleagues, had been mind-numbing and without letup. He had dreamed of being part of a country practise for a long time, and not a day passed without him consciously appreciating the opportunity which had arisen and led him to Skelby.
Dominic and Paula now enjoyed a quiet rural life; just the two of them, since their daughter, Caroline, had flown the nest after gaining a place at Durham University.
Pulling into the circle driveway, Dominic parked under the leafy mantle provided by mature chestnut trees; their leaf-laden branches reaching for the front of the house, painting it in dappled light and shade.
“
I’m home, Paula,” Dominic shouted, setting his battered medical bag on the hall table, and hanging his trilby, which was as dilapidated as the bag, on one of the pegs of the wall-mounted rack above it.
“In here,” Paula called from the lounge.
Entering the room, he saw that they had company. Paula was sitting in an armchair, facing him. And from where he stood, he could see the back of another woman’s head, her blonde hair apparently and bewilderingly flecked with pieces of straw.
Walking to the centre of the lounge, he froze, and his legs nearly gave way as he saw the mummified corpse that was sitting opposite his wife; the single eye in its hideous face canted to the side, as if staring into the fireplace.
“Unh!” That was the only sound he uttered, as his brain attempted to interpret the macabre scene before him.
The cold steel at his throat caused him to jerk sideways, resulting in a shallow cut from the sharp blade.
“Easy, easy,” Hugh said, pressing the knife that he had taken from the kitchen drawer even harder against the doctor’s wrinkled neck. “Mother, this is Dr Armstrong. He’s going to fix me up. And if he behaves and does exactly as he’s told, and keeps his shit together, then I won’t have to disembowel the lovely Paula.”
“I’m sorry, Dom,” Paula said, unable to staunch the tears that ran down her pale cheeks. “He told me that if I tried to warn you, he’d kill both of us.”
“That’s right, Dom,” Hugh said conversationally. “I will kill you if necessary. I know it’s an antisocial trait, but everyone has their little foibles. Now sit down next to the lovely Paula and I’ll explain what’s going to happen.”
Dom struggled to move, legs feeling set in concrete, only able to respond when a sharp blow to his lower back started him off, for him to totter forward and almost fall across Paula. It was only then he noticed that her wrists were bound with silver duct tape.
“I’m only going to say this once, Dom,” Hugh said, sitting next to his mother and holding her hand in his. “We’ve had a very, very bad day, haven’t we Mother?”
“Yes, son, dreadful,” she replied, her words and wan smile lost on the captive couple.
“I’ve already had to kill once today,” Hugh continued, his full attention now back on Dominic. “So please don’t give me the slightest reason to add to that. I’ve been shot by some kind of air gun, and I think that a few of my ribs are cracked. Also, my nose is broken, and my feet are cut up. The deal is, you patch me up, and then after a couple of days, when I’m feeling chipper, I leave you locked in your cellar and vanish.”
Hugh had been extremely lucky, and knew it. As the barn had been engulfed by fire, he had picked his mother up and charged at the rear wall, shouldering his way through weak, brittle boards that had offered barely any resistance to the sudden impact. He had run through the thick stand of trees, out to the road, to lay his mother down in the long grass, out of sight. He then waved down a Post Office van that – fortuitously for him – had been passing at the right time and place.
“My barn’s on fire,” he shouted, leaning into the driver’s open window; the smell of singed hair, scorched skin and smoke convincing the uniformed postman of what was in fact the truth. “Do you have a phone to call for help?”
As Jason Harper reached for his mobile, Hugh hit him; a powerful, fisted blow that caught the young man just above his ear and knocked him sideways.
Hugh pulled the door open and struck the dazed man another four times, only stopping when sure that he was unconscious.
Placing his mother gently in the back of the vehicle under a jumble of parcels and mail pouches, he then bundled Jason into the front passenger seat, where the young man slipped down into the foot well.
After driving east on back roads for two miles, Hugh drove through an open gateway that led into a field of wheat that rippled wavelike in the breeze; a golden sea under the strengthening light of the sun. He dragged the stricken postman out on to the ground, stripped him of his uniform and lifted up a large football-sized piece of rock, with the full intention of pulverising the man’s head to a pulp, but on a whim, cast it aside and bound him hand and foot with twine that he removed from a large parcel. Bunching one of the young man’s socks into a ball and stuffing it into his mouth, he tied it securely in place with his necktie to gag him, and secreted him alongside his mother, before donning the uniform and driving northwest, skirting the city of York and picking up the A19.
Feeling uneasy and vulnerable, knowing that he would have to find somewhere to rest up and lie low for a while, Hugh made a left onto a minor road, slowing after several minutes as he passed a solitary house that was set back from the highway, almost obscured behind a screen of tall and leafy trees. The brass plate screwed to one of the large, brick gateposts informed him that this was Mayfield House, the residence of Dr D. Armstrong. Without hesitation he drove up the curving driveway and stopped outside the front of the house. Stepping out of the van, keeping his head down to hide his bloody, swollen nose, and with a parcel in hand, he approached the door and pressed the old fashioned porcelain bell push.
As a middle-aged woman opened the door, he rammed the parcel into her chest, forcing her back into the hall with such force that she fell heavily, to end up on the floor in a sitting position, looking up at him in mute surprise.
“Listen, lady,” Hugh said. “Answer my questions quickly, or I’ll fucking kill you, it’s that simple. Is there anyone else in the house?”
“N...no,” Paula managed to reply, thinking that this was a burglary; having no idea that mere robbery would have been a Godsend.
“When does the good doctor get home?”
“In...in about an hour. But it could be longer.”
“Who else lives here?”
“No one. There’s just the two of us.”
“Okay, get up. We’re going to get in the van and hide it around the back of the house. Then you follow my instructions to the letter. Don’t give me the slightest excuse to hurt you. Understand?”
“Yes,” Paula said as she climbed shakily to her feet.
“What’s your name, lady?”
“Paula.”
“I’m Hugh, Paula. Take it easy and you’ll be just fine.”
Once the Post Office van was parked in a disused stable block and covered with a tarpaulin sheet, Hugh found thicker rope and tied the now semiconscious postman more securely, tethering him to a post at the back of a hay-strewn stall and taping his mouth. He had no intention of murdering anyone else, unless he had to. He was not a fucking thrill killer who wasted people for the sake of it. He determined to be disciplined and remain in control. These people were not a part of his problem, and he bore them no malice. To leave a trail of corpses was not in his game plan.
Following instructions, Paula carried the mummified corpse into the house and propped it up in a sitting position on the settee. It was then that she knew true fear and became wholly aware that the stranger was stark raving mad, as well as bad.
“Make me a coffee and something to eat,” Hugh ordered as he looked about him, holding the shaking woman with one hand, his fingers and thumb gripping, digging into the nape of her neck. “Does your husband own a shotgun?” He then asked. “And if you say no, and then I find one, I’ll use it on him when he gets home.”
“Yes. There’s a gun safe in the cellar,” Paula replied. “The keys are in the cutlery drawer, under the plastic tray.”
Before the doctor arrived home, Hugh ate a large chunk of mature cheddar cheese served with pickles and homemade crusty bread, and enjoyed two mugs of strong, sweet coffee. For very dissimilar reasons, neither Paula nor his mother had an appetite.
Now, with Dominic seated on the settee next to his mother, Hugh took off the blood-spotted blue shirt and retrieved the shotgun from where he had propped it behind Paula’s chair. He then wound duct tape – furnished by Paula – around her neck several times, before tightly taping the ends of the 12 gauge’s barrels to the back of her skull. Fin
ally, with his hand taped to the stock, finger on the trigger, he was ready.
“Got the picture, Doc?” Hugh said. “You inject me with anything other than a safe dose of local anaesthetic and antibiotics, or try to be a hero, and I pull the trigger and blow Paula’s head off. Now feel free to go and get what you need. And if you phone the police, remember that even if I was shot through the window, Paula would still die. So move your arse. You’ve got less than a minute to join us in the kitchen.”
An hour later, Dominic had finished up. He had excised three of the four pellets; one from Hugh’s neck, a second from his shoulder, and a third from his chest. The fourth was too deeply imbedded, lodged behind a major blood vessel. He explained that he didn’t have the training to even attempt to remove it; that he was a GP, not a surgeon. He then bound Hugh’s ribs, three of which were cracked, and finally removed slivers of glass from, and dressed his unsolicited patient’s feet.
“How am I doing, Doc?” Hugh asked, free of pain for a while, due to the injections that had artificially induced an absence of sensation to all but his fractured nose.
“You’ll live. But you need more surgery to remove the other pellet from your chest.”
“I’ll get round to it. Now let’s go out to the stables and fetch the postman. I think that you and he can share each other’s company for a while.”
The cellar was perfect, with no windows or secondary exit.
“You’re lucky,” Hugh said to the postman, (who was conscious but concussed), before locking him and Dominic in the underground room. “This is Doctor Armstrong, who is now your personal physician.”
Cutting the tape between her head and the shotgun, Hugh used a tea towel to blindfold Paula, and then bound her hands behind her.