One Dead Witness hc-3

by Nick Oldham

  ‘ Seat belt, Danny,’ Trent said calmly. He pushed the knife further into her neck. Any deeper and blood would be drawn.

  She drew the belt across her chest and clunked it in.

  ‘ Now reverse out of here and drive out of the car park. If you try anything, I’ll skewer you and run. I’ll stick this right into your heart and you’ll fucking die here and now. Got that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘ Good.’ He lowered the blade so it rested against her left breast. He prodded and she jumped like a fork of static had jolted her. Trent laughed. Cruelly he said, ‘I’ll bet you’ve got nice tits, Danny. I’m going to carve them like Christmas turkey. Now drive!’ He prodded her again.

  She was unable to stop her right foot from trembling on the pedals. In consequence the car lurched backwards out of the parking space. She slammed the brake on, too hard, unintentionally, and the vehicle screeched to a swaying halt.

  Trent reacted angrily. He whacked her across the face with the open palm of his left hand. He struck hard, making Danny’s neck snap round. She glared at him. He held the knife up to her nose and inserted it half an inch into a nostril. ‘Don’t fuck about, Danny,’ he warned her, ‘or you’re dead.’

  ‘ I can’t stop my legs from shaking,’ she explained, voice quivering.

  ‘ You’d better get in control of yourself,’ he breathed, staring at her — and she could smell his body odour. It made her want to retch. ‘Now drive away, nice and gently, and in control. Pretend I’m not here. Pretend I’m Jack.’

  From one horror to another, she thought, taking a firm grip on the wheel when Trent removed the knife. She took a deep, steadying breath, exhaled shudderingly, slid the gear-stick into Drive and pressed the gas pedal with even strength.

  ‘ That’s it, Danny,’ he encouraged her. ‘Nice… nice car, too.’ He opened his legs and drove the knife into the seat between his thighs. ‘Be a real mess when we’ve finished with it… sadly.’ He made the opening in the fabric big and ragged by using the knife like a garden trowel. ‘Let’s got for a drive,’ he laughed.

  It was the cheapest Casio watch he could find — ?4.95 at the time of purchase — but it had served him well over the years. The cost of replacement straps far outweighed the original cost of the watch. He looked at it and did not feel too happy. Almost eleven.

  He had been in the pub twenty minutes. There was about a half-inch of lager remaining in the glass.

  Where the hell was Danny?

  He emptied the beer down his throat and made a return journey to the bar.

  ‘ Fosters,’ he told the barman.

  ‘ Nasty cut, that,’ the barman observed, nodding at Henry’s temple.

  They had been driving ten minutes, mainly in silence other than for Trent to give her directions. He told her to drive north up the Promenade, towards Fleetwood.

  ‘ Pussy got your tongue?’ Trent sneered. ‘You did enough talking when you interviewed me, didn’t you? Do you remember what I said, all those years ago? That time we were alone together? Do you?’

  ‘ Yes,’ she squeaked.

  ‘ Tell me.’

  ‘ You… you said you’d kill me.’

  ‘ No.’ He jabbed her with the knife. ‘The exact words, Danny. The exact words.’

  She knew them. They were branded into her mind.

  She spoke softly. ‘ “Guilty or not guilty, Danny, one fine day — or night”,’ — a tear of fear rolled out of her eye as the words came haltingly out — ‘ “I’m going to come back and kill you for this”.’

  ‘ Yeah. Brilliant. Well done!’ he shouted. He leaned across and spoke into her ear, his lips brushing her lobe. ‘And now I’m here,’ he said in a voice which sounded like the devil’s. He sat back and drew the knife across the dashboard, slashing a line in the wooden veneer.

  ‘ Right, I’ve had enough of this journey. Turn round, head back to Blackpool.’

  Henry found the second pint went down almost as easily as the first — and far quicker. Without much thought he had drunk it in five minutes. He must have been thirstier than he first imagined.

  Still no sign of Danny.

  ‘ Ah well,’ he said to himself. With a show of great reluctance for no one but himself, he pushed himself from his seat and plodded back to the bar. This was definitely going to be the last.

  He presented the empty glass to the barman. ‘Fosters.’

  ‘ It really is a nasty cut, that,’ the man said, indicating Henry’s temple.

  They drove all the way back down the Promenade. All the way down the Golden Mile, past the amusement arcades, the Tower, Tussauds Waxworks, the Sea Life Centre, all still teeming with thousands of people. There was much laughter. Lots of rowdiness. They drove through South Shore, past the hotel where Claire Lilton lived, past the Pleasure Beach and the Pepsi Max Big One.

  When the Promenade cut slightly inland and became Clifton Drive North and they drove through the Local Authority boundary into Lytham St Annes, Trent said, ‘Pull in here.’ He pointed across the road.

  Danny veered across and stopped the car, facing oncoming traffic. She doused the headlights.

  Only feet away to Danny’s right, was Star Hill Dunes, an area of grass and sand dunes. On the opposite side of the road was a holiday camp. The dunes were popular with dog-owners, courting couples and, occasionally, murderers.

  ‘ Nah — too fucking busy here," Trent blurted after consideration. ‘Drive on.’

  With relief, Danny accelerated away. ‘I was going to kill you there.’

  ‘ I know,’ Danny said — but to herself.

  There was no reply from Danny’s office phone, nor her home. Henry was perplexed. He hung up the payphone, drummed his fingers on the side of the wall-mounted, bubble-like kiosk which surrounded him. He picked up the phone again, dialled Blackpool comms and asked them. They knew nothing; Danny had not been deployed by them, but she had dropped a misper file off to be circulated about half an hour before. She’d said she was going for a drink.

  He hung up and heard his ten-pence piece clatter away down the shute. He picked up his drink from the thoughtfully installed shelf next to the payphone and stepped back into the toilet corridor in which the phone was located. He took a sip from his third pint — almost gone — and walked back into the bar.

  He was experiencing that old twinge of the sphincter. It told him, rather like an old woman’s corns forecasting the weather, that something was a little off the beam here… and the towering spectre of Jack Sands loomed into Henry’s thoughts. A man with a bagful of resentment. Someone who had already shown he was capable of violence.

  Maybe he was being over-dramatic.

  Yet Danny had clearly said she would come for a drink.

  Henry knew if she changed her mind she would have let him know, not just stood him up. She wasn’t that kind of person.

  His lager now tasted harsh on his tongue.

  He threw the last of it down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hands. A quick visit to the toilet, then he was going to put his mind to rest one way or the other.

  Danny knew she had to look for any chance of survival. When it came, however slight, she had to go for it whether it meant physical confrontation with Trent or running away. Whichever, she would give it her best shot.

  For the time being, she reasoned her best way forwards would be to talk and keep him talking.

  ‘ This is madness,’ were the three ill-judged words which constituted her opening gambit.

  Trent exploded.

  ‘ How dare you fucking-well say that, you stinking bitch!’ he screamed. He plunged the knife towards her face. Danny braced herself. It slowed as it neared her and he stuck it against her cheek, on the stitches from her other bad night. With a quick nick, he drew first blood, reopening the wound. She almost cried out, but held back to a whimper. The warm blood trickled down her cheek. He removed the knife, then held it an angle across her neck. ‘If I slice this now, you’ll bleed to death and I’ll just fucking
watch you, like that ambulance-driver.’ He breathed all over her. ‘This, Danny, is not madness. It’s revenge, a perfectly normal thing to do. People do it, governments do it, so how can it be wrong or mad? Yeah, revenge — for all that’s been done to me over the years.’

  ‘ Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. I was wrong to say what I did. I didn’t mean it to sound that way… I just wanted to know why you were doing all this, Louis.’

  ‘ Now you know. I was betrayed by everyone, particularly those little angels who I cared for. They’re the ones who must suffer — as well as people like you. People in the system who don’t understand men like me.’

  ‘ But what about Meg Tomlinson?’ she asked. That was the name of the murdered girl whose parents Danny had just spent several hours counselling. Danny needed to know if Trent had killed her. ‘You didn’t even know her, did you?’ She asked the questions gently, so as not to antagonise him.

  ‘ Knowing is not the point.’ Trent relaxed, removed the knife. He sat back and Danny breathed out. The cold line where the blade had been pressed throbbed. ‘It’s the principle of the matter. She was like them, one of them, really. I’m simply making a statement.’

  ‘ Why kill her, though?’ She still needed a definite answer. ‘I’m assuming you did kill her.’

  ‘ You assume right.’

  Danny cast a quick glance at him. He stared ahead, eyes unblinking. She could hear his teeth grinding, a noise which made her cringe.

  ‘ I treated her with kindness and compassion, actually. But she didn’t like it. She would have betrayed me like all the others — if she’d lived. She was going to die anyway, but she chose to do it without dignity. She could have been a willing martyr for me, but no. Instead of a dignified death, she struggled after we had finished making love… she was foolish, very foolish.’

  He had said all this as if in a trance.

  Danny shook as his words poured out. She had to blank her mind to how Meg Tomlinson must have suffered at Trent’s hands. Making love! Jesus, Danny thought. Making love was not what the post mortem revealed, but a brutal, perverted assault.

  It dawned on Danny, if it hadn’t done before, that she had been kidnapped by a seriously deranged man who, for his own good and the safety of the general public, needed to be killed.

  Danny knew she probably would not be the one to do the deed, though.

  She fully expected to be his next victim.

  Henry stood at the urinal. His water seemed to be passing for ever. He willed his bladder to empty quicker.

  The toilet door opened behind him and someone came in.

  Ahhh… finished. Henry looked down and shook off the drops and the image of his limp penis was the last thing he saw as his head exploded in a firework display Guy Fawkes would have been proud of. His legs buckled and he crashed down, catching his chin against the bowl of the urinal before he hit the floor. A further broadside pummelled him into blackness.

  The assault stopped abruptly.

  Henry veered through that sickening twilight zone somewhere between conscious and not, fading in and out, whilst his mind blared like a siren, loud, then quiet, then louder.

  Finally everything went quiet.

  Henry lay there very still as the urinals flushed.

  Trent made Danny loop round again, cut inland through Blackpool and eventually hit the M55, heading east towards Preston. His directions were as contorted as his thoughts. It became clear to Danny that he had no idea where to take her to finish her off. Obviously the prospect of dealing with Danny was unsettling him.

  Before they had gone very far on the motorway, he instructed her to take the next turning off. She found herself being directed along country roads, towards Fleetwood. She knew exactly where she was, though, which made her feel comforted. She was pretty sure he’d be unable to take her anywhere within the county she did not know.

  He made her turn right off the A586 and go across Shard Bridge, over the River Wyre. Now they were on narrower, winding roads, with Trent saying little, deeply engrossed in his own thoughts.

  Soon they reached the coast again, well to the north of Blackpool, at a small seaside village called Knott End, and were driving down the short promenade towards the slipway near the river estuary. Fleetwood was directly opposite, across the water.

  He told her to stop at the top of the slipway.

  Fleetwood was lit up and looked prettier than it actually was. The tide was in, quite high, and the water lapped not many feet from the front wheels of the Mercedes. On this side of the water it was dark. No one around. In more ways than one, Danny had reached the point of no return.

  ‘ Switch off.’

  She killed the engine. Silence surrounded them like a shroud.

  ‘ Keys,’ he barked, holding out his hand. Danny took them out of the ignition and dropped them into his open palm. He slid them into his pocket.

  Trent was now in a dilemma.

  The very fact that Danny had to get out of the car gave her a slight opportunity to escape. He knew it, so did she.

  As soon as he told her to get out, she was going to run. Trent’s mind, already in turmoil, revolved furiously. Then he hit on a course of action.

  He opened his door and placed his left leg out. With his right hand he grabbed Danny’s hair, started to climb out and dragged her behind him over the handbrake and gearstick.

  ‘ This way. You come out this way and if you try anything I’ll stab you.’ The point of the knife wavered dangerously close as she succumbed to the situation. He pulled her across and dropped her onto the ground on her hands and knees. He stepped away from her, waving the blade threateningly.

  ‘ Come on, come on, get up, get up!’

  She clambered unsteadily up, using the arm-rest on the inside of the door as leverage. Trent yanked her away from the door, back-heeled the door shut and propelled her towards the footpath which ran alongside the river, underneath the observation windows of the unmanned coastguard station and the golf club to their left. On their right was the River Wyre. The water lapped gently up the man-made riverbank.

  Danny stumbled several times when Trent pushed her, but he was remorseless.

  Two hundred yards down the path they approached a pretty white cottage at the water’s edge, lit up, looking inviting and homely. Danny willed one of the occupants to come to a window. That did not happen as Trent frogmarched her quickly past. Ahead of them was a small sailing club with many dinghies drawn up on a slipway. Beyond were more cottages which Trent obviously did not know about.

  ‘ Shit,’ he said on seeing them.

  He pulled Danny around and marched her back past the white cottage and turned her onto the public footpath which sliced across the golf course. Within seconds the lights from Fleetwood docks were left behind. They seemed to walk into a shroud of blackness where it was impossible to see your feet.

  A wave of panic coursed through Danny. This was the ideal place to finish the job. Drag her onto a fairway, into a bunker, then attack her. A hundred yards dead ahead of her, Danny saw the lights from a row of houses which backed onto the golf course, and to which the footpath led.

  Trent shoved her, driving his open hand into the middle of her back, making her head snap backwards.

  She stumbled.

  And saw her chance.

  She exaggerated the movement and turned it into a sprint.

  She shot off like a whippet. Before Trent realised his error, Danny was five yards away. ‘Bitch!’ he shouted angrily. He lunged at her. The knife cut through the air with a swish.

  Danny accelerated away. Having only recently tested her running skills when pursuing Claire Lilton, she knew her capabilities were limited, especially now with a sore ankle. But she had to put as much distance between herself and Trent as possible. She motored.

  ‘ No way! No fucking way!’ Trent screamed behind her.

  Danny’s arms pumped wildly, her legs pumped, dismissing the pain in her ankle, her heart pumped to bursting. She knew she would ge
t no help from adrenaline which had already overdosed her system. She had to rely on pure determination and the instinct to survive.

  She willed herself to get to the houses ahead of Trent.

  His footsteps crashed down in her wake, echoing in her ears.

  He was only feet away, maybe only inches.

  Danny surged on, motivated by the thought of his hands reaching out for her. She got to the point where the narrow footpath did a 90-degree turn to run directly behind the houses.

  ‘ Ahhh!’ Trent cried. He had lost his footing at the turn and pitched headlong into bushes.

  Danny forced herself to go even faster, racing to the point where the path ended and an avenue of bungalows began and street-lights blazed, house-lights burned… back to an environment of normality.

  Before she could get to the nearest door and possibly safety, Trent was on her, having recovered quickly from his fall. He rugby-tackled her, driving her over a low garden wall, through a tangle of bushes, rolling onto a well-manicured lawn.

  Trent landed on top, reared up with the knife rising in his right hand, glinting in the sodium lighting. It began a downward descend into her face.

  With a superhuman effort, Danny writhed herself away from the weapon’s arc of travel and Trent stuck the knife into the grass where, a split second before, Danny’s eye had been.

  Danny’s right hand fell onto a large, hand-sized pebble on the rockery. She grabbed it immediately and with no thought process, just pure basic instinct, smashed it into the side of Trent’s head. He sprawled across the grass, leaving the knife embedded in the lawn.

  Danny crawled away from him, completely exhausted, trying to get to her feet, but her whole body had given up responding to anything. Trent had already stood up. He staggered like a drunk around the garden, holding his head and searching for the knife.

  ‘ What the bloody ‘ell’s goin’ on ‘ere?’ boomed a voice from the back door of the house. The dark figures of two burly, handy-looking men appeared and made towards Danny and Trent.

  ‘ Call the police,’ Danny groaned. She slumped down. ‘Please, call the police.’