Hunted

by Paul Finch

  Harold Lansing was connected to the Thorntons. So, possibly, was Dean Torbert. All of a sudden these deaths looked less like a random series and more like a conspiracy.

  Heck needed to know more, and he needed to know it now.

  Guildford was another of those places that had never once been on Heck’s radar all the time he’d served in the National Crime Group. It was a bustling shopping centre and a seat of local government, but also of rich historic interest and famously one of the most expensive places to buy property in England. By the sound of it, Guildford Hall of Humanities was an old and venerable institution which provided a wide variety of studies. According to further info provided by Eric Fisher, Tilly Thornton, whose only image Heck could call to mind was that of a cherubic toddler seated on a Shetland pony, was shortly to commence her final year in a degree course combining European History and Religious Studies.

  The college’s various residential blocks were congregated around the main campus. Heck, whose attention was divided between the road signs and a scruffy old map spread across his steering wheel, was looking for a specific hall of residence, which was named after one of the college’s co-founders. He finally located it just off the High Street, at the north end of a pleasant square filled with shrubs and fountains. It was a tall, functional building, part of a terrace, but elegant in that traditional not-too-decorative Edwardian style. He ascended a low flight of steps. At the top, a brass plaque was set into the bricks to one side of the front door. Alongside the university’s famous stag icon, engraved black lettering read:

  Darleen Anderson House

  Guildford Hall

  University of Surrey

  The door, which was covered in shiny black lacquer, was closed and locked; an illuminated keypad was fixed to its left-hand jamb.

  Heck gazed up the building, which stood to a height of three storeys. Light only shone from two or three of its windows; unsurprising given that it was now the official summer holidays. He pressed the doorbell, opened his wallet, and held his warrant card to the camera over the lintel. It was several seconds before the intercom crackled and a stern female voice said: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yeah, hi,’ he said. ‘I’m a police officer. Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. I could do with speaking to one of your girls please. Her name’s Tilly Thornton. I believe she’s on the premises.’

  There was a protracted silence.

  ‘It’s rather late,’ the voice finally replied.

  Yeah for me too, he was about to respond, but checked himself. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but this won’t take long. It’s concerning her recent bereavement.’

  Another silence followed, broken by a dull clunk as a lock was disengaged and the front door creaked open. Heck walked through, and found himself in a wide hallway with a black-and-white tiled floor and towering rubber plants ranged down either side.

  Here he was confronted by a tall, broad-shouldered woman in a heavy purple dressing gown. She had a vaguely mannish aspect, but her shiny brown hair, of which there was an awful lot, was stacked high like a disorderly Madame Pompadour wig, and fixed in place by a series of thick wooden pins. Doubtless this formidable lady was the bursar or concierge. She’d emerged from an apartment on the left, and dried her hands on a dishrag while regarding him with apparent deep suspicion.

  ‘Who did you say you were again?’ Her voice was deep and powerful.

  It now occurred to Heck, rather belatedly, that he was still in casuals: trainers and jeans, a leather jacket over his old sweater. He displayed his warrant card a second time. ‘DS Heckenburg.’

  She scrutinised it closely. ‘And it’s concerning Tilly’s father’s death?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘You’d better go up,’ she said. ‘You’ll find her on the third floor, room thirty-five.’

  ‘Thanks. Erm, you’re …?’

  ‘Dr Allacott.’

  Heck nodded and smiled, and headed past her along the hall, but then stopped and turned back. She was still watching him.

  ‘Do you mind me asking, Dr Allacott – what kind of girl is Tilly? I mean since the accident?’

  The woman’s hard frown softened a little. ‘You mean how’s she handling it? There isn’t more bad news, I hope?’

  ‘No, but … well, I don’t want to put her under any undue pressure.’

  Dr Allacott gave it some thought. ‘She came back here about a week after the funeral. I haven’t seen a great deal of her, you understand, but enough to, well …’ She seemed vaguely embarrassed. ‘She hasn’t been quite the way I’d have expected.’

  ‘Can you explain that?’

  She folded the dishrag and stuffed it into her capacious dressing-gown pocket. ‘You need to understand, I thought it was probably a good idea her coming here after the funeral, even though we’re out of term-time. She shares her digs with another girl, Zara Jolley, who’s a rather zany character. I thought Zara might cheer her up. Only …’

  ‘Only?’

  ‘Only she didn’t seem to need it. Tilly must still be in shock. I mean, she’s not exactly running around clicking her heels, but she’s not in mourning either. If you get my drift.’

  Heck did. ‘How did Tilly get on with her father?’

  ‘Perfectly well, as far as I know. At least, she was always happy to accept his generosity. I mean, his cheques paid for her residence here. I think he used to send her spending money too. Most of the girls who stay during the holidays do so because they have jobs locally. Tilly never has. She’s never needed one. She’s not alone in that, of course.’

  ‘No. Well, thanks, Dr Allacott.’

  ‘Room thirty-five,’ she reminded him, as he proceeded along the passage.

  Heck ascended the building via an old fashioned cage-lift, which rattled and wheezed and took an unexpectedly long time to reach its destination. The first floor lay quiet and in darkness, but on the second several doors stood open, lamplight spilling out of them. Voices and faint music could be heard. A girl of about nineteen, also wearing a dressing gown, was standing by an open window, smoking what looked like a joint. Another girl strode past her, wearing only a vest and knickers. With good security downstairs, the residents were probably justified in feeling safe enough to leave doors open and wander around in their scanties.

  When Heck left the lift on the third floor he padded down a carpeted corridor, passing several more doors standing ajar. More music came to his ears, along with chatting voices and occasional laughter. Number thirty-five was not locked, but as soon as he tapped on it a cheerful voice responded: ‘Come in!’

  Heck entered a surprisingly small room. It was snug, but cluttered. A right-angled sofa had been shoehorned into a corner, facing a low table on which sat a television, a satellite box, and a DVD player, not to mention various items of clothing and several unwashed plates. The rest of the tight space had been given over to study: two desks were jammed side by side against the main wall. Both had computers and Anglepoise lamps and were littered with books, pens, and messy paperwork. Two noticeboards were fixed to the wall, one over each workstation; these too were plastered with documents, though not all of the educational variety. Some were posters for rock concerts, others were group photographs taken in bars or at street demos.

  On the left, a short, dim corridor led off to what presumably were the bedrooms; Heck entered just as a vague figure disappeared through a door at the end of it. ‘Not be a sec!’ called the voice that had admitted him.

  He loitered there, feeling awkward – though not as much as he did two minutes later when the figure, who was a girl of about twenty, reappeared in the corridor and sauntered back towards him, naked except for a bath towel, which she held in front of herself as she tried to straighten it. She was of mixed race and incredibly pretty, freckle-faced and with a delectable mass of frizzy hair.

  When she spotted him, she froze in mid-stride. ‘Oh my God!’ She clasped the towel to her body.

  ‘Whoa, I’m sorry,’ Heck said, averting his e
yes. ‘I’m here to see Tilly. But I thought … I thought Dr Allacott would have told you I was coming up.’

  ‘She probably did,’ the girl said, giggling. ‘She’ll have sent a text, but I had these on.’ He risked a glance at her as she yanked out a tiny pair of earphones. ‘Heard you knocking, but didn’t hear that little car-crash sound my phone makes. Hell, I’m really sorry – I thought you were one of the girls.’

  ‘First time that’s ever been said to me.’

  ‘Oh God, what must you think of me? Look, just hang on, yeah – I’ll not be a mo. I’m Zara, by the way. Who are you?’

  ‘Mark. Mark Heckenburg.’

  ‘You’re a friend of Tilly’s, you say?’

  He produced his warrant card. ‘I’m a police officer.’

  Her mouth dropped into a perfect, red-lipped ‘Oh!’

  ‘It’s to do with Tilly’s dad.’

  ‘Ahhh, I see. Look hang on … let me get dressed.’

  She turned and scuttled prettily back down the corridor, exposing her pert posterior as she did. Heck remained where he was, vaguely amused by the incident, but still sizing up the apartment, which appeared to possess that usual ‘student flat’ aura of burgeoning intellect and abject slovenliness. On the desk to the right, the stationery lay in complete disarray, but there were also books by Kafka, Proust, and Dostoyevsky. On the other, which he took to be Tilly Thornton’s – mainly because several of the photos pinned to the noticeboard had been taken at Thornton Farm, and featured Charles and Freda Thornton, and the late Mervin – there were volumes concerned either with history or religion. The top one lay open on an image so bizarre that Heck couldn’t help but pick it up. It was the reprint of a woodcut dating from several centuries ago, in which a painfully thin man wearing a frock coat and cravat, knee breeches, stockings, buckled shoes and a periwig strode along a cobbled street. In one hand he wielded a heavy club, and with the other held a skull mask to his face. An odious creature, something partway between a rat and a deformed human foetus, peeked from his pocket. In the background, everyday common-folk hurried away along alleys.

  Heck scanned the block of adjoining text:

  The dreaded Mohocks … a criminal organisation of the eighteenth century, whose activities went unpunished thanks to their semi-aristocratic status. The Mohocks were a self-styled gang of young men, rakes and dandies for the most part, who terrorised the inner districts of London between the years 1700 and 1714. Inspired by ghoulish tales from the New World concerning the murderous hit-and-run raids of the Mohawk Indians, the Mohocks commenced a reign of fear in the metropolis derived entirely from their own sadistic sense of humour. They neither robbed nor raped, but committed acts of purposeless brutality seemingly for its own sake, treating each and every outrage as a huge practical joke.

  This was the Age of Reason. Religious beliefs had dwindled in Britain, and with them – in certain quarters at least – any notion of right and wrong. Hailing from a social class who often stood aloof from the law, the Mohocks followed the examples set by other heinous but untouchable bands in that era, such as the Muns, the Hawkubites, the Scourers, and the even-more-notorious Hellfire Clubs, by revelling in acts of evil simply because they were allowed to.

  Their victims were often drawn from the lower orders, particularly from among beggars and other vagrants, as these unfortunate folk had no judicial or political voice. Their fate might be sealed with elaborate and ingenious cruelty, and yet would cause barely a ripple in wider London society.

  In one instance, an old woman was held upside down in the barrel where she had been washing clothes until she drowned. In another, a ploughboy was dragged over his own plough blade after the harness straps were mysteriously unbuckled. Fireworks were once used to stampede cattle down a busy backstreet, trampling a number of persons to death, including children.

  The Mohocks made no attempt to disguise their involvement in these atrocities, and on several occasions repaired to the nearest tavern afterwards, to toast each other and congratulate themselves on their inventiveness. Anyone brave enough to try and apprehend these scoundrels would be beaten or shot …

  The book had a library stamp on its inside leaf. Its title was printed in gold: Chaos And Immorality: The Roots of Social Breakdown.

  Heck checked several other books on the desk. Do As Thou Wilt discussed ‘the psychology of self-indulgence’. Crocodile Smiles focused on ‘history’s most alluring anti-heroes’. The last and largest, which bore on its cover an impressive cartoon portrait of Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, was entitled To Them It’s Just Fun, and purported to be ‘a study of thrill-killers throughout the ages’. When Heck flicked through it, he saw chapters dedicated to leading exponents of the art, Caligula, Tamerlane, and Vlad the Impaler, intellectual advocates such as Torquemada and the Marquis de Sade, and finally its lesser lights, Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer, and others. At the end, there was another chapter on gangs and cults. Several of these latter pages had been bookmarked; when Heck glanced at them, he saw that passages on the Mohocks and the Hawkubites had been underlined in pencil. When the author described the Duke of Wharton, the founder of the Hellfire Clubs in England, as ‘a deviant to his bones, who lived only to shock and dismay the rest of society’, it had been trebly underlined.

  ‘Tilly went home yesterday,’ came a voice from his rear.

  Heck turned sharply and placed the book back on the desk.

  If Zara Jolley thought it odd that he’d been glancing through her flatmate’s textbooks, she didn’t say so. She’d said that she was off to get dressed, but in fact she’d only put on a silky ankle-length kimono, which showed plenty of bare, shapely leg as she walked back towards him.

  ‘I see,’ Heck replied, slightly distracted by this. ‘Sorry – Dr Allacott didn’t seem to know that.’

  ‘Tilly goes home quite a bit; she doesn’t bother telling her anymore.’ Zara cocked her head to one side as she fastened various hairbands in place. ‘It’s that gorgeous brother of hers, Charles. He always seems to need help on the farm now that their dad isn’t there. Called her the night before last and asked her to pop back. She went yesterday. Said she’d be gone a couple of days.’

  ‘Okay.’ Heck nodded. ‘Just out of interest …’ He indicated the books on Tilly’s desk. ‘All this stuff … seems a bit strong?’

  ‘That’s for her thesis. It’s due in by Christmas, so she wanted a head start.’

  ‘Seems an odd choice of thesis for someone doing religious studies.’

  ‘Gimme a break!’ Zara giggled. ‘Tilly doesn’t believe any of that Holy Joe crap. Tilly hasn’t got a religious bone in her body. Quite the opposite. I think she only picked that course for a joke, thought it would be really funny to get a degree in religion – some kind of amazing irony. I mean she’s like that, she’s an arch piss-taker.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘She once gave her name on an official college survey as Mya Nus. Get it: “my anus”?’

  ‘Erm, yeah,’ Heck said.

  ‘You don’t know Tilly at all, do you?’ Zara cocked her head the other way, a consciously cute gesture. ‘Then again – perhaps you do?’

  ‘What time did she leave?’

  ‘Mid-morning yesterday. Something urgent had come up, she said.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ Heck moved to the door.

  ‘Can’t tempt you into staying for a cuppa?’

  ‘No time, I’m afraid.’

  Zara smiled saucily. ‘You really looking for Tilly to talk about her dad?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You seem very keen to find her.’

  ‘This could be quite important.’

  ‘It always is.’ She smiled again, indulgently, and in a voice that implied he had her full permission, added: ‘Go on then. I’ll let her have you all to herself … this time.’

  ‘Shit, Heck,’ Eric Fisher groaned. ‘I’m at home now.’

  ‘I wish I was,’ Heck replied, as he headed out of Guildford along the A3. ‘Y
ou don’t have to stop whatever it is you’re doing. I just want to pick your brains.’

  ‘The few remaining. Go on.’

  ‘I’ve got to make it quick, because this phone’s almost dead. The Thornton kids – Charles and Tilly.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You didn’t get any other curios on them?’

  ‘Well …’ Briefly, Fisher’s stentorian breathing was the only sound. ‘The arrest report concerning Tilly Thornton. Apparently she gave Surrey quite a bit of grief.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Gobby. “You know who I am?” All that sort of stuff. Seemed to have the idea her old man was some kind of country squire.’

  ‘They can’t have been short of a few bob.’ Heck sped one-handed down the ramp onto the M25. ‘I’ve seen the size of that farm. They used to run a horse stud and a dressage stable. Kicked it into touch because they didn’t need the money.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I think he was worth a bit, old man Thornton.’

  ‘How much of it do the two kids stand to gain now he’s popped his clogs?’

  ‘Nothing at the moment. His wife Freda’s still alive. Unless he made a special will, she’s the sole beneficiary.’

  Heck considered this as he drove. ‘I’ve met Mrs Thornton. She’s an odd fish.’

  ‘Odd how?’

  ‘Part of the time I was with her, I got the feeling … I dunno, not so much that she was keeping stuff from me, but that she was struggling with something inside, and yet saying nothing. A bit weird when you think I was there to find out who’d killed her husband.’

  ‘After what happened to him, who wouldn’t have gone a bit weird?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m just wondering if it’s a weirdness that’s been imposed on her.’ Heck recalled the now-curious moment at Thornton Farm when Mrs Thornton, having initially shown interest in his enquiry, was gently admonished by her son, after which she lapsed into troubled silence. ‘Is she being manipulated maybe? You know, controlled?’

  ‘You mean by her kids?’

  ‘Up to now I’ve been working on the basis these accidental deaths are like practical jokes; a bit of a giggle that some nutcase is having with us.’