by T F Muir
‘And . . .?’
‘Well, I have to admit I’m guessing here, but I’d say you arranged to meet her, maybe even drove behind her and gave her a last-minute phone call to tell her to pull into the side of the road so you could talk where no one could overhear you. Maybe you opened your car door to invite her to cross the road, but you were really just timing it right so your guard-dog there’ – Gilchrist nodded at Purvis – ‘could run her down. And that makes you an accessory even if—’
‘Who the fuck’re you calling a guard-dog?’
Again, Magner raised his hand. ‘Sticks and stones, Jason. Really, you must learn to control that temper of yours.’
‘Ah, fuck.’ Purvis stepped back, raised his shotgun and aimed it at Gilchrist’s face.
Jessie screamed.
The sudden noise of both barrels releasing thudded through the basement like a solid wave that shocked Gilchrist’s body like a punch. If Magner hadn’t swatted at the shotgun, Gilchrist’s head would have been blasted from his shoulders. As it was, the tight formation of pellets made a ten-inch crater in the wall to the side of his head, scattering fragments of concrete over his hair and shoulders like confetti.
The noise reverberated through the basement like a war beat.
Magner took hold of the shotgun and jerked it from Purvis’s grip.
They faced each other in a silent stand-off that seemed to last minutes, but was no more than a few seconds. If the shotgun had still been loaded, Gilchrist was convinced one of them would have blasted both barrels at the other.
Then he caught a hint of movement by his side, and turned his head to catch Jessie fumbling with an ankle holster.
Purvis shouted, ‘Ah, fuck,’ and pushed Magner to the side. He was on Jessie in four athletic steps, just as she retrieved the Beretta from its holster and pulled the trigger.
In the tight chamber, the shot from the .22 echoed like a cannon firing.
Purvis cursed – a guttural grunt that sounded like a wild animal being hit – but his momentum carried him forward and he lashed out at Jessie’s arm, sending the gun flying.
Gilchrist was on his feet at the same time as Stan, but his world had the disconcerting feeling of having its axis tilted in the wrong direction. He stumbled to the side and landed on the concrete floor with a heavy thud that punched the wind from him.
And Stan, as if realising that the shotgun was now out of ammunition, tried to catch Jessie’s gun as it bounced off the wall. He almost had it, but fumbled trying to take hold of the grip, and it skittered to the floor.
Purvis toppled over Jessie, his hands scrabbling for her gun, too.
But Stan was too fast for him. He reached Jessie’s gun, which seemed to go off without him pulling the trigger.
Stan froze, eyes white.
Magner said, ‘The next one won’t miss.’
Purvis groaned, pushed himself to his knees, his face twisted in an ugly grimace that could have destroyed any suggestion that he and Magner, with his pretty hardman looks, were in any way related. He stretched for Jessie’s gun.
‘Leave it.’
Purvis glared at Magner.
‘You can’t be trusted with guns, Jason,’ Magner explained. ‘Now get to your feet and let’s have a look at that arm of yours.’
From his position on the concrete floor, Gilchrist watched the scene unfold before him as if in slow motion . . .
Purvis reached up to Magner, hand outstretched for help to his feet, leaving Jessie’s gun abandoned on the floor; Stan, still on his knees, glanced at Gilchrist who, even in that fleeting moment, read the intention from the desperation in Stan’s eyes and tried to warn him off by shaking his head. As Purvis was pulled upright, Stan reached for the Beretta, his fingers working around the grip and through the trigger guard.
Magner aimed his pistol and shot him.
Stan hit the floor like a dead weight.
Jessie gasped a scream, then pressed a hand hard to her mouth, tears squeezing through clenched eyelids.
Gilchrist groaned, and tried to say, ‘Stan,’ but the word came out flat and lifeless.
Magner said, ‘I told him the next one wouldn’t miss.’
CHAPTER 35
Gilchrist struggled to his feet, aware of Magner’s eyes on him, his every move covered by a gun – a Sig Sauer P250, he thought, although he never had been the best at identifying pistols.
‘You’ve killed him,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I have indeed,’ Magner agreed. ‘So why don’t you sit next to Miss Piggy while I attend to Jason here?’
Gilchrist felt too exhausted to resist. His body could have been drained of blood. He sat beside Jessie – more collapsed than sat – and placed an arm around her shoulder in a vain attempt to still the tremors that jumped through her body like electric shocks. Her head seemed to fall on to him, and her breath jerked in shivering sobs until he placed a hand over her eyes and turned her face to his chest, away from the morbid stare of Stan’s sightless eyes.
Stan lay less than six feet from them, body motionless, blood pooling around his face. His blond hair above his right temple glistened with a mixture of brains and blood.
Gilchrist had to close his eyes, but images of himself and Stan flickered through his mind in stroboscopic strikes. He struggled to blank them out, but his mind fired through the logic, until a sudden realisation hit him.
‘You’re shutting up shop,’ he said.
Magner looked up from Purvis’s arm, which was leaking blood.
‘That’s why you’re here,’ Gilchrist continued. ‘You’re getting ready to leave.’
Purvis glanced at Magner, who shook his head as if to suggest Gilchrist’s conclusion was pure fantasy.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Gilchrist said to Purvis.
Silence.
‘Was it meant to be a surprise? Sorry. Have I ruined it for you?’
Silence.
‘You knew it was only a matter of time until we found this place,’ Gilchrist pressed on. If he could have raised his arm and cast it around him in an expansive gesture, he would have. But his head ached with a pain that had his left eye wincing and his logic firing in fits and starts. Even so, ideas flickered and held for a moment before fading away, none of them bringing him any closer to finding a way out of their hopeless predicament.
Except one, maybe . . .
He forced himself to concentrate on the interaction between Magner and Purvis, the way they spoke to each other in muted whispers. But he also thought he picked up an unnatural closeness in the way Magner wrapped a makeshift tourniquet around Purvis’s arm, his touch soothing the fire in the wound, the sound of his voice seeming to salve the heat of Purvis’s anger.
‘If you were ever to be connected to this place, then you’d both be finished, wouldn’t you?’ Gilchrist said.
No reaction, other than a casual glance from Magner and a quick shift of Purvis’s eyes to confirm the Beretta was still lying on the floor, inches from Stan’s dead fingers, but out of Gilchrist’s or Jessie’s reach. Gilchrist suspected it had been left there deliberately, as some sort of test, failing which, they would be shot.
Rather than go for the gun, he went for the throat.
‘That was why you were intending to leave Jason down here,’ he said, ‘to rot with all of his sculptures.’
Purvis tried to free his arm, but Magner held tight, and said in a voice loud enough for Gilchrist to hear, ‘He’s talking nonsense, Jason. Forget him.’
‘So, you still haven’t told us what this place is for?’ Gilchrist said, probing for a greater reaction.
Purvis grunted as he slipped from Magner’s grip and reached with his uninjured arm for one of the torches that sat lens down on the workbench. He slapped it into the palm of his hand, as if testing its usefulness as a weapon with which to beat Gilchrist’s brains to pulp.
‘Don’t indulge him,’ Magner said.
But Purvis shrugged Magner’s hand away with a ‘What the fuck can they
do about it,’ then clicked on the torch and pointed it into the black warren of chambers until it rested on some point beyond the reach of the single overhead bulb.
Gilchrist followed the torch’s beam and felt his breath catch.
‘You see it now?’ Purvis asked.
Magner seemed almost embarrassed.
‘It’s my studio,’ Purvis explained. ‘This is where I work.’
He shifted the beam across trestles, workbenches, rolls of wire mesh of different gauges, and an array of tools – both carpentry and surgical – all neatly organised on hooks on the walls. Something heavy flipped over in Gilchrist’s stomach as his gaze settled on a pair of heavy-duty pruning shears with two stubby flanges eighteen inches apart welded to one length of handle. He realised with a shudder that the tool could be used to hold open a ribcage while the victim was disembowelled. Jessie seemed to sense his unease, and stirred beside him, pushing herself upright.
The beam of light danced to the roof of the chamber, then rested on a metal beam that spanned one of the open doorways. Purvis laughed, a hard sound that echoed through the basement like the cackle of a madman. ‘My sculpting studio.’ The beam shifted along a signboard and, like a teacher reading aloud to his pupils, Purvis said, ‘The Meating Room.’
Jessie put her hand to her mouth and whispered, ‘Holy fuck.’
Purvis redirected the beam into the heart of the studio, playing the light across skin stretched on a wire mesh frame, as if to dry it. Other lumps of meat and rolls of intestine sat in glass jars in an opaque liquid. ‘Formaldehyde solution,’ Purvis explained as the beam reflected off the glass. ‘Slows down decomposition. Like varnishing wood.’
Magner seemed to have had enough of the morbid display. He retrieved Jessie’s gun from the floor, then stepped up to Purvis and, like a doctor to a patient, gave a gentle tug at his arm. As if in some kind of hypnotic state, Purvis let Magner remove the torch from his grip, and Gilchrist realised that Purvis was not suffering from shock, but was drunk, plain and simple.
Without warning, Jessie tried to struggle to her feet.
‘Sit,’ ordered Magner.
She ignored him.
Purvis turned, his eyes blazing fury.
Gilchrist managed to grip the tail of Jessie’s jacket and gave a hard tug. She slumped back down beside him, then tried to push herself free. But Gilchrist kept his grip firm.
‘Leave it,’ he said.
Purvis stood before them, looking down. Gilchrist was certain that if the man had any kind of weapon in his hand, he would finish them both off without a second thought. As if sensing that possibility, too, Magner shouted, ‘Jason,’ then added a softer, ‘Jason.’
Purvis’s eyes seemed to settle – like watching fever lift, Gilchrist thought – and he retreated to Magner’s side once again.
Gilchrist waited until Magner looked his way, then asked, ‘What were you going to do with the dogs?’
Magner narrowed his eyes, as if seeing the trap.
‘You weren’t going to take them with you, were you?’ Gilchrist continued. ‘You’re not a doggie person. They would spoil the image – slobbering all over your nice white shirts. What were you going to do? Shoot them?’
Purvis looked at Gilchrist, then at Magner, who shook his head and said, ‘You ask far too many questions.’ The SIG Sauer reappeared in his hand as if by magic.
Gilchrist felt his heart stutter as the pistol turned his way until all he could see of it was the black hole of its barrel. Survival instinct forced him to say, ‘We’re worth more to you alive. You know that.’
Magner smiled. ‘I see you know how to play your cards.’ He waited, as if for Purvis’s nod of approval, then asked, ‘Are you a gambling man?’
Gilchrist knew he was being toyed with, but he also knew the longer he kept Magner talking, the longer he and Jessie had to live. Of course, finding some way to overcome two armed killers posed another problem, the answer to which eluded him utterly.
‘I have the odd punt,’ he said. ‘Never really took to it, though. Always lose more than I win, which kind of numbs the thrill of it, I suppose. But I bet you know how to play the odds.’ Another twitch from Purvis gave Gilchrist his cue. ‘Once you’d shot the dogs were you going to drag their bodies down here, and leave them to rot?’
Magner raised his hand to stop Purvis from stepping forward and beating Gilchrist to death. Oddly, that simple action worked, for Purvis stood still, lips drawn in a white line, eyes no more than slits too narrow for blinking. And, as they stood side by side, looking down at him, Gilchrist was struck by how similar yet different they were.
Purvis was smaller, stockier, and broader than Magner – not by much – but with less sense of sophistication. Of course, the camouflage outfit did not compare well with a pristine suited collar and tie. And where Magner could no doubt command attention by the simple act of making an entrance, Purvis would always prefer anonymity. Purvis’s face, too, had less of a defined jawline, more rounded than square-chin sculpted, and Gilchrist came to see that Purvis had always stood in Magner’s shadow – like checking in and out of hotels manned by rotating staff, and attending conferences in the dim light of an audience, while Magner was off somewhere hunting for another victim for Purvis to turn into art, which only compounded Purvis’s sense of the underdog.
And where Magner possessed the confidence and presence of mind to attend to the grisly with a sober mind, Purvis sought strength from alcohol. But more importantly – and Gilchrist thought he saw an opening here – where Magner remained cool under fire, Purvis could be the proverbial loose cannon.
‘The dead one was called Bruce,’ Gilchrist said. ‘What’s the other one called? Lee?’
‘You can ask him yourself when he comes round,’ Purvis said with a twisted smile. ‘But you’d better be quick. He’s got an appetite on him first thing. He likes to have a ball. Or two.’ He let out a manic cackle at his own joke.
Magner found nothing funny in Purvis’s antics. His attention was focused on something flickering on the workbench – a monitor that Gilchrist had not noticed until that moment.
‘Bring him here,’ Magner snapped.
Purvis obliged by leaning down, gripping Gilchrist by the collar, and lugging him to his feet. For a moment, Gilchrist felt as if his central axis was going to let him down again, but the moment passed as Purvis pulled him beyond Stan’s body, to face the monitor.
‘Who’s that?’ Magner asked, pointing at the screen.
The monitor was divided into four sections, with each quarter showing a view of the exterior of Purvis’s cottage from a different webcam. Someone was standing at the back door, a woman Gilchrist recognised as WPC Mhairi McBride. He felt a stab of pain pierce his heart, and had to fight off the urge to glance at Stan’s body. He and Mhairi had just been settling into a deepening relationship.
And as Gilchrist stood there, Magner watching him, Purvis just itching for the order to gut him, Gilchrist came to see why he and Jessie had not been killed right away. Magner needed to know if anyone from the Force would turn up at the cottage, before he gave Purvis the instruction to take their lives.
Gilchrist grunted as Purvis poked him with a hand as hard as wood. ‘Recognise her?’
Gilchrist shook his head. ‘I don’t know who she is.’
Purvis punched Gilchrist’s side with a force that could crack ribs – and probably did – which caused Gilchrist to sink to his knees as pain as sharp as a knife-strike overwhelmed him.
‘We need him,’ Magner growled.
Purvis nodded to Jessie, who was still sitting on the floor, her back to the wall. ‘We can use her.’
‘We’ve got him,’ Magner replied. ‘Now get him up.’
Gilchrist gasped as Purvis grabbed a clump of hair and tugged him to his feet. He managed to remain upright, a bit shaky, but he was getting the hang of it. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea who she is.’
‘Why is she here, then?’
‘
How would I know?’
‘Have a guess,’ Purvis suggested.
‘Well, it’s Sunday. Maybe she’s selling Bibles.’
A punch to the side of the head bowled Gilchrist over. He hit the floor with a thud that almost knocked him unconscious again. He lay there for a few beats, struggling to fight off the almost overpowering urge to let his eyes roll back and settle under his eyelids. Then the moment passed. He spat out a mouthful of blood and pushed himself to his knees.
Purvis’s grip had him standing to attention in zero seconds flat, as well as wondering if he had any hair left. His scalp was stinging, but at least he was still alive – well, for the time being.
‘Let’s try this one more time,’ Magner said.
Gilchrist stared at the monitor. Mhairi had walked from the rear door to the kitchen window, and was tilting her face to peer through a gap in the curtains. Then the monitor flickered to display another quartered screen – views of the outside of the barn. Another flicker, and this time the quarters turned a hazy green – images from infrared webcams located within the basement warren itself. Each showed what looked like a door – four exit points. He realised that the monitor’s electrical supply was being provided by the generator, via some sort of transformer, and probably powering a wi-fi transmitter too, so images could be beamed from the cottage.
Another set of four images showed two screens in which the three of them stood facing the monitor from different angles. He turned his head to search for the webcam in the ceiling, and received a slap to the side of the head for his effort.
‘Eyes to the front,’ Purvis said.
Gilchrist obliged, and said nothing while the screen shifted again to show four images of the inside of Purvis’s cottage, which Magner studied as if to ensure no one had broken in. The next screen brought them back to Mhairi at the rear of the cottage.
‘Okay,’ Magner said. ‘One last time. Who is she?’
‘I’m telling you, I don’t know.’