Her words were interrupted by Nicky pouncing into a crouched stance, straddling Glover’s back, and swiping with the sword. The blade made a ‘shhhhff’ sound as it cut through the air. The glance took Mrs Tonks's head clean off. It landed with a thud next to the bin in the corner of the room. Aitken turned and saw her headless body rocking in the chair.
Nicky stood up from his crouched position, wiped the sword’s blade across his jeans and said, “I wouldn’t be worrying about witnesses if I were you.”
He made a circle with his fingers, put them to his lips, and let out a brief, shrill whistle. Nicky’s dog - the dog which had attacked Aitken - appeared from around his thighs, snapping and snarling with intensity. Aitken held out a flat palm and backed towards the corner of the room - the dog edged forwards, closing in. Meanwhile Nicky bent down, prised a dog-catching pole from Glovers’s lifeless fingers, and headed towards Aitken saying, “Come with me … there’s a good girl.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
The drive from West Parade to Blaine had been wholly frustrating; narrow A roads blocked by tractors and lorries at every turn. Daniel drove whilst Cliff made harassing calls to the dog section to retrieve the address. His call had been redirected twice before he found someone who could help. Once he’d secured the address, he repeatedly dialled Aitken, each time hitting the voicemail wall. He received a call too, from the Dog section, confirming that they'd sent two officers to the address and could raise neither of them.
As he sped along, Daniel glanced at the digital clock, constantly doing the maths. How long had it been since Aitken would have arrived in Blaine? An hour and five … an hour and six … and hour and seven.
In between aggressive, infuriatingly infrequent overtaking manoeuvres, Daniel said silent prayers that his hunch was wrong. He explained his logic to Cliff then said, “I’m wrong aren't I… tell me I'm wrong.”
All he could get out of Cliff was, “I hope so.”
Daniel knew the second they pulled up outside the house, just the way Aitken had known as she’d stood by the front door. He raked on the handbrake, and Cliff’s head flew forward, “Christ!”
Daniel was in no mood to apologise for giving Cliff whiplash. He feared they were out of time. They ran down the path which bisected the overgrown lawn. Daniel listened for sirens - the back-up Cliff had requested - nothing yet. He glanced at Cliff briefly, who nodded. They entered the house.
The first room they came upon was the living room which told them in grisly technicolour everything they needed to know. Cliff, standing next to Daniel, scanning the room, let out a hushed, incredulous, “Jesus Chr-” Daniel silenced Cliff with a finger to his lips.
There were pools of blood all over the floor, but no bloody footprints. Whoever did this had left the room carefully. He looked at the beheaded woman in the rocking chair; her paisley blouse soaked in blood, her head resting on its ear in the corner of the room. He recognised her, the woman who'd looked after the raffle tickets at the church fundraiser. The milky eyes of her severed head possessed a vacant knowing. He wanted to close her eyelids, but there wasn’t time. Dignity in death for these three women would come later. He had to focus on preventing the death toll rising.
Daniel looked at Cliff and tilted his head towards the door, silently signalling for them to move into the hall. Cliff nodded. They crept towards the back of the property, anxious not to give early warning of their presence. As they passed the under-stairs cupboard - Daniel leading - Cliff placed a hand on his shoulder. Daniel turned and Cliff pointed to a smudge of blood, perhaps made with the drag of a thumb, on the cupboard’s frame. Daniel put his ear to the cupboard door, lifting a hand to request quiet from his already silent partner. He heard faint panting, like a dog wanting for water in the mid-summer sun.
He took his ear from the door and whispered to Cliff, “I hear something.”
Cliff whispered back, “We should wait.” Daniel shook his head. Cliff continued, “What if he has a weapon? You saw what he did to that woman. An armed unit will be here any moment.”
“And what if ‘any moment’ is too late?”
Cliff shook his head then nodded, playing out the dilemma like a mime artist. Daniel winced as he attempted to open the cupboard door without the hinge creaking.
Behind such a door, you would expect to see a jumble of shoes, perhaps a gas or electric meter, a vacuum cleaner. But there was nothing. Half the floor was concrete, the other half descending stone steps. Daniel had only seen steps like this before, when he’d investigated the case of a man who’d abused prostitutes in his cellar.
And then there was your dream, in Sebastian Fallon’s with stone steps, just like these. A premonition. A warning.
The memory evoked the damp aroma of time, of ageing. Daniel put a foot on the top step; the first four were visible, the rest were not. He glanced back at Cliff, who looked like he was going to be shaking his head for the rest of his life. But Daniel knew Cliff would follow, he recognised overwhelming loyalty in that one healthy eye.
They descended into darkness. Daniel was certain there would be a door at the bottom of the stairs, they just had to move slowly, carefully and they would feel it. As they moved, the whirring of blood vessels and the drumming of Daniel’s heart attempted to drowned out that panting noise which was getting louder. It turned into a whimper, then quickly into a low growl. He heard a man’s voice, “What is it?” The growl deepened. Daniel’s mind leapt forward, playing out the events he envisaged unravelling. They would disturb the person who had Aitken. He would open the door, spilling light in. The dog would see Daniel first, and go for him. They would undoubtedly fall on the stairs; game over. The only chance was to reach that door before the dog could attack, before the killer could open it himself.
Daniel quickened his pace, and the dog - surely guarding some corner in the darkness - sounded so close that Daniel reckoned he could touch it if he reached out to his left. He stayed to the right, feeling frantically for the door. As he neared it, thin, weak lines of light cast through the door’s frame, provided a weak illumination. He saw the dog now, its head at least, its haunches still buried in darkness. The matted hairs of its muzzle twitched as its lip curled back to present its canines. It made an aggressive retreat into the darkness, back onto its haunches, as though preparing to strike.
Daniel reached out for the door handle and found it. In a single motion, he turned the handle and pushed the door open. The strip-light bathed the stairs in light and the dog leapt for Daniel as he reached the doorway.
The dog whined and gagged. Without looking back, Daniel knew Cliff had collared it. For how long, he couldn’t be sure, but he had to focus on what was in front of him.
Aitken was lying back, strapped into a reclined wooden chair which looked like a Victorian backstreet dentist’s. Her left sleeve was rolled up, a track mark running down from a prominent vein which had a small but distant puncture mark - a spent syringe lay on the seat by her side. A man, dressed entirely in black, loomed over her, holding her eyelid open in one hand and clutching a pipette in the other.
To the right of the room, some six feet from Daniel, a glass flask sat on a stove, bubbling away with some viscous liquid, the colour of honey.
The man paused with a pregnant drop at the end of the pipette ready to fall. He turned towards Daniel then glanced over his shoulder, towards the sword which was resting atop a chest-high fridge freezer. He dropped the pipette which rolled down Aitken’s face and onto the floor. He and Daniel rushed towards the sword. Daniel came a close second.
As the man turned to wield it at him, Daniel grabbed the end and top of the handle. They both pulled at it so hard, that they met, chest to chest, eye-balling each other past the blade which was just a few inches from both of their faces. Then came recognition.
The man’s face came back to him, from the briefest of glimpses. This was Agnes’s nephew, Nicky.
Nicky was taller, and stronger. Daniel could hold him for a short while, but this sta
lemate wasn’t going to end in Daniel’s favour; his forearm’s wound was tearing open beneath his strapping. Perhaps Cliff would secure that dog - shut it out of the room - in time to help him. But perhaps not. He couldn’t guarantee the gargantuan mutt wasn’t going to maul his friend to death. No, it wasn’t a risk he could take. He knew what he had to do and it had to be timed and executed to perfection.
He let go of the sword with his right hand and, in the fraction of a second before Nicky could register his advantage, Daniel reached to his right and took hold of the top of the glass flask, knowing full well that he would loose his skin to it; perhaps even the use of his hand altogether. Still … he wouldn’t be holding onto it for long. He crashed the base of the flask against Nicky’s temple, who was holding the sword above his head, about to perform Daniel’s execution. The glass exploded in shards and bubbling liquid gripped Nicky’s face. His hand instinctively came up to wipe it from his eyes, and the sword fell.
Nicky dropped to his knees, screaming in pain, desperately wiping with a sleeve at his eyes, his face, his neck. Blood from gashes in his forehead mingled; crimson streaks in honeyed tar.
Daniel glanced at his palm, a mottled patchwork of scarlet and white, his skin already ballooning with fluid. He couldn’t worry about that. He picked the sword up with both hands, grunting and cringing at the agony of the grip. He backed away towards the sound of snapping jaws and growling.
Cliff spat words between gasps of exertion, “Don’t know … how much … longer I can … hold him.”
The liquid must have been cooling quickly, because Nicky had stopped screaming and - with one eye closed - pushed himself to his feet. Daniel’s hands were shaking with the weight of the sword. Nicky look past Daniel, to Cliff who was losing his battle to restrain the dog, and smiled.
“Doesn’t look like you have long,” said Nicky, standing upright next to Aitken’s convulsing body. He puffed out his chest and sniggered. His sick amusement didn’t last for long. He cried out in pain as Aitken managed to get enough movement in her wrist to jab the spent hypodermic needle, through his black jeans and into his thigh. He stepped to one side, grabbed the needle, dragged it out of his leg with a grunt and lifted it over his head, about to bring it down on Aitken’s face.
Daniel had a momentary vision of Aitken ending up like Cliff, with one good eye, and anger overtook his hesitation. He slashed at Nicky’s upper arm - just below the bicep - with all the strength he could summon. Nicky’s arm was sliced through, dangling from a fractured bone and strands of cartilage. He fixed Daniel with a wide-eyed look of bewildered hurt before his eyes rolled into their sockets and he crumpled to the floor like a staked vampire.
Daniel turned to face the dog that Cliff was restraining; his neck and fingers purple with the exertion. Daniel held the tip of the sword to the dog’s nose and stared deeply into its eyes. That look conveyed the weight of a thousand verbal instructions and its defeated eyes softened. It dropped onto its haunches, submissive to its new master. Cliff let go and lay on the floor, panting. After a few moments of recovery, he sat up and said, “Let’s get Aitken untied.”
Daniel looked over his shoulder, regarding her for a moment, then said, “Let’s not. I’ve seen that look before, and trust me, she’s better off restrained for a while.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Two weeks later.
Daniel bent in front of the kennel’s cage-like front. His right palm was no longer blistered, but his skin was pink, tight and featureless.
He put his left palm to the wire mesh, letting the dog lick it. “You wouldn’t hurt a fly would you Alfie?”
Winter was on its way; metal cold to his touch, aching his bones. On the coldest days his forearm throbbed and doubled in weight. His doctor said this would improve with time, but he doubted it. The sound of Aitken’s voice over the kennel’s barking din surprised him.
“Morning DI Sheppard.”
“It’s the weekend, call me Daniel.”
Aitken, makeup-less and in an unattractive chunky grey jumper, looked like she was dressed for a hike. She regarded the dog through the wire mesh with a sideways, suspicious look.
“Morning Daniel.”
“Morning. I thought you’d take a rain check when you heard where I was.”
“I nearly did.”
“They say he’s been as good as gold here. Not so much as barked at the staff,” said Daniel.
“You’re seriously considering this, aren’t you?”
“Nobody else is going to take him. This place is stretched to capacity, my bet is they’ll eventually have to put him down. I reckon there’s been enough death around here lately.”
“Amen to that.”
With Aitken at his side, Daniel put his fingers through the mesh and stroked the dog’s muzzle.
“He doesn’t look as big in the cold light of day. Still a monster though,” said Aitken.
“You’re not a monster are you?” Daniel’s voice was high, affected, like he was talking to a baby.
“Speaking of monsters as lovely as this ‘man’s best friend’ moment is, you promised me an update.”
“That I did,” said Daniel as he stood up with a groan, cracking in his knees reminding him of impending old age. He wiped slobber off his fingers onto his jeans and said, “Let’s go somewhere quieter. I know a place nearby.”
Next to the RSPCA centre was a farm which had diversified to survive. They let parties of children bottle-feed lambs and throw potatoes to the cows from a tractor-towed trailer trundling through fields where cowpats were scattered like land mines.
The farm also had a tearoom. It was mid morning, a week before they shut for the winter, and the place was deserted. They ordered latte’s (Aitken’s was skinny) and sat at a corner table beside an antique penny farthing which was mounted on the wall next to a chalk and slate specials board.
Aitken was taking little interest in her drink for now. Daniel, was enjoying stirring in the dusting of cocoa which briefly held the shape of a leaf. Aitken asked, “Have you identified him?”
He nodded and gulped coffee.
“He was born Paul Dolton. Grew up on a remote farm with his father, ten miles south of Delamere Forest - we can’t find any trace of his mother. Bright kid, according to his school reports, loved Biology and Chemistry. Became withdrawn shortly after his thirteenth birthday and his grades slipped. The school brought his father in to discuss it. Shortly after that his father died in a farming accident. Paul was taken into a foster home two days before his fourteenth birthday. Never settled, according to his foster parents. Had anger issues which they put down to his father’s death. Spent all his spare time at the Church or the Church youth club.”
“The Reverend Jacobs?”
“Yep. It was his parish before he moved to Blaine. Jacobs says he knew the boy vaguely. I reckon’ he knew him better than that. It’s too big a co-incidence. The boy followed him here.”
“Was he related to Mrs Tonks?”
“No, though he knew her nephew well, they went to the same youth club near Chester. Nicky died in a house fire along with his parents when he was seventeen. My guess is our Paul Dolton had operated in Chester for years and spied the opportunity to move - probably worried about getting caught. Wouldn’t surprise me if he burnt the place down himself. No proof of that though.”
“So he moved to Blaine and managed to live with Mrs Tonks, posing as her Nephew all that time, and she didn’t know?”
“Have you ever known someone with Dementia?”
“No.”
“I have. I knew a woman who was fleeced of her life savings by a cleaner who managed to convince the person she was supposed to be looking after, that she was her estranged granddaughter.”
“That’s sick.”
“That’s people … that’s money.” He sipped and smacked his lips, “That’s good coffee.”
There was a lull in conversation, Aitken was clearly trying to take it all in.
“You said �
��operated’ what do you mean. Drugging people?”
“That was just part of it. The Reverend’s as tight lipped as the Dalgliesh kid, but just from what we know … Charlotte spoke to someone in that confessional box the day she tried to kill River. And it wasn’t Reverend Jacobs - his alibi’s as tight as a drum. So it had to be our Paul Dolton, right? He would have known the Reverend for long enough to impersonate him in a dark booth. Both the same height. Through the screen, who would know?”
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“It’s only just come back to me … impressions. Dolton was a master at them. I saw him in the church hall playing football with younger kids. He looked out of place, he was making them laugh with impersonations.”
“There you go. I think he’s been feeding off intimate knowledge of the Reverend’s parishioners for years and - when the moment’s right - when he’s all alone with them, he drugs them, takes them someplace safe-”
“Mrs Tonks’s place would be perfect - it’s right next to the church.”
“Yep …. takes them someplace safe and makes them suggestible with a cocktail of drugs which, by the way, is close to the mixture the Nazis used during the war, - according to our pathologist - as part of mind altering experiments.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not”
“Reverend Jacobs. Did he know anything about it?”
“Do I think he knew? Yes. Do I think he turned a blind eye to what our Paul Dolton was using his confessional for? Yes I do. Do I think that Paul had something on the Reverend to manipulate him into silence? Yes I do. The Reverend was probably involved in the abuse of the Dalgliesh kid - probably took that picture. Can I prove any of it? Not a chance. Not unless we can get Dalgliesh to speak. No matter how much I reassure him he’s no longer in danger, he shuts up as tight as a clam every time I try to talk to him. Of course the Reverend’s denying it, just like he’s denying ever being friendly with Paul Dolton. Jacobs probably thought he’d escaped the hold Paul had over him when he moved from Chester to Blaine. Could you imagine the reverend’s reaction when Paul Dolton turns up like a bad penny and moves within spitting distance of the church? You should have seen the relief on Jacobs’s face when I told him that Paul was dead. There was no masking it.”
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