Tony stooped under the tape, caught up and walked fast-paced to the driveway. The officer upped his pace to keep up.
The house, Tony supposed, was as grand as any other on the street when they reached the gates and the driveway leading off to the property. Two spotlights either side of the entrance walls were shining in on them. The gates were black and wide and the spikes had gold-painted tops. There were two crests designed into the centre of each, also painted in gold. The wall stood three meters in height from where the gates hinged the wall. Leyland Cypress firs stretched behind the wall and down either side of the driveway. They provided a thick boundary of privacy from the street. The hedge was perfectly boxed and he wondered how tall the ladder would have to be to chop an even top, not to mention the cost. Then he remembered where and why he was there and the appreciation vanished.
The crunching of stones beneath his feet felt like a barefoot walk on hot coals. The driveway wasn’t as long as he had expected. Beyond the firs where the stones became short cut grass, was an expansive lawn fenced in by more of the swelling firs. Obscure trees dotted the garden. The house was about twenty yards in front of them with lights on through every window.
“Did they apprehend anyone?” Tony asked the officer. He could hear the officer’s panting breath.
The officer looked at him and slowly shook his head. “The house was empty when they got here. They put an APB out on him. It appears to be the guy all right from what I’ve been told.”
They reached the front door and the officer spoke with another man before waving him through. “He’s down in the basement, through the kitchen and the door on the right. It’s open.”
Tony thanked him and went through the front door that had been forced open with a battering ram.
The smell of burnt metal caught his attention when he went inside. It was stronger as he came down the steps into the basement. Several people were looking around but there was no sign of Hunt. The flash of a camera went off in one corner of the room. One of the men recognised Tony and nodded a solemn welcome with his head. “He’s in through there,” the man said, pointing off to his left. Tony moved round the stairs and saw a metal door opened inward in a narrow corridor. He entered and saw that the door had been cut to open. He made out Hunt at the far end of the room, briefing two men.
Tony looked around the space from where he stood. To his right was some scientific-looking equipment. A white cylindrical chamber with a glass lid and two yellow handles to seal it shut, a pressure gauge fixed between the handles and a black hose attached to the side ran behind. Opposite that was an oval brick structure knitted into the wall. He recognised it as a kiln, a metal door hinged ajar on the opening to the front. A large workbench stood up against the wall, adjacent to the door. Above, two shelves held books and some smaller objects which looked like metal boxes with hard plastic lids placed in a straight line along the edge. Tony picked one off the shelf and removed the lid. A chill blasted through him when he looked at a set of dentures: Sharp pointed teeth, like vampire teeth. Tools were scattered on the bench; a file, a chisel, a small hammer or pick, and some craft knives. More were clipped to the wall in the space underneath the shelving. One appliance was plugged into the wall that looked like a small drill. There were scattered wood chippings on the bench and a black leather chair that had seen better days. The chippings looked recent, the carving was missing.
He pulled open one of two drawers labelled with white strips of paper like a collection that might be viewed in a museum; the drawers were filled with rows of small containers that held contact lenses of varying designs resting in a solution. He looked to his right and his heart skipped a beat when he caught sight of what looked like a face staring back at him through the crack of a cabinet door, then more than one, then another below the first. His heart slowed considerably when he realised the cabinet wasn’t large enough to conceal a person. He opened the doors and a display light illuminated a number of prosthetic masks with eye sockets missing. They were fitted over ten mannequin heads, five on two shelves. All but one stood without cover, a cold, white faceless head.
There was a werewolf (never to be forgotten), a crinkly old man, and a woman that looked like some kind of witch. One had a type of monkey or ape shape to it that wouldn’t look out of place on a Planet of the Apes set. Another had a pig’s nose and a furrowed brow, and another was white and clown-like. Some had hair woven into them. They all looked sinister.
There was one that grabbed his attention above all others. It had a large horn in the centre of the forehead, not unlike that of a rhino, with two smaller, devil-like horns on either side. He touched the tip of the centre horn with one finger then pinched and stroked the rippled-black-dappled texture. It felt hard enough to stick someone. Tony realised now that it probably had. He looked back at the pressure cylinder and considered it could have been used to harden the material. He remembered holding a specific set of photos in his hands with the unusual puncture wounds around the woman’s midriff. The implement used to inflict them had never been accounted for. Now he saw him outfitted as this rhino character, moving back in calculated steps to charge and ram into her, over and over and over again. He had gone to great effort to fix her up naked against a wall in her living room using heavy-duty wall mounts drilled into the ceiling that would have supported the weight of two punching bags. She was not strung up in the way Helen had been, over the branch with her arms close together. Hers were spread apart as if signalling victory. The lollipop stick in that instance had the engraving “Fuzzy Navel.” The woman’s surname, Tony recalled, had been Deborah Horne.
Another chill ran through him. Anymore of this and he was liable to suffer hypothermia. He looked again at the stone-cold mannequin head. It looked just as frightening as the rest of the set with its faceless, smooth white shape. He feared a mask was missing and prayed someone had accounted for its whereabouts.
“Well, it’s him all right, no question,” Hunt said when he approached Tony. He looked pale-sick and agitated. “He’s not here. Neither is his wife. The house is empty. Where the fuck is he? He couldn’t possibly know we were onto him, could he?”
“No, he’s out. The only question is where and with whom.” Tony looked again at the bare-faced mannequin head. “I hope he’s away with his wife, but I’m beginning to doubt it. Maybe there’s something here that can tell us?”
“Look around, we’ve only scratched the surface. Here, put these on.” Hunt handed him a pair of gloves.
“What do we have down here?” Tony asked as they walked to the other end of the workshop.
“More weird shit, no doubt. Let’s see what we can find.”
There was another wooden bench at the far end of the room, smaller, where more items were scattered, dental in nature. An illuminating magnified glass stood next to precision tools with odd-shaped hooks. Some had tiny shovel and trowel heads. A set of dentures was clamped in a metal contraption, the gum line red and the teeth off white, round and cone-like to points, a work in progress.
A life-size plaster cast of a head and shoulders sat in the middle of the bench up against the wall. The face of the cast was turned inward. Tony slid the casting toward him. He was looking at it, considering it to be the face of Eamon Masterson, when he noticed what appeared to be a small window. It was only clearly visible when the casting was moved. “Did you see this?” he asked.
“No, I did not,” Hunt said. Then he paused, looking uncomfortable. “That is strange.”
Tony left the cast aside to inspect a large number of small, blue plastic containers fixed to the wall, used for holding nails and screws and other bits and pieces. He pulled on one, nothing happened, then another and another. Upon pulling a forth, one farthest from the edge, the wall moved out almost on top of him.
Hunt drew the gun from his holster at surprising speed, aimed it at the opening, and nodded to Tony to pu
ll it the rest of the way open. Beyond the entrance and to the right was another door. This one was partly open. It was dark inside. There was a plug in a socket and a flex that fed through a small hole drilled into the bottom of the wall. A switch was integrated into the cord. Tony bent down and pressed it. Light came on behind the second door. They used the same routine to open this one but it scraped and stuck against the hard floor. Hunt put his gun away when he saw enough of the inside to deem it safe and helped to prise the door back. No one rushed out or screamed for help, and no one tried to kill them.
Before them was a cubicle or cell. It couldn’t have been much bigger than three feet by six feet, and illuminated by the light he had just turned on from the outside. The cramped space contained a homemade wooden bed. Tony stepped in three paces and was standing in the centre. A crude shelf held some toiletries and a roll of toilet paper hung fixed to the wall. A small hole had been cut out into the wall close to the ceiling, probably for ventilation. The space was suffocating even with the door partly open. Adjacent to the bed was a small mirror inset into the wall of the cell.
Tony ran his finger around the rim. “It’s a two-way mirror,” he said, thinking about the head that was purposefully placed on the other side. Masterson had control of the lighting. With the light off in here and on in the workshop, whoever this was meant for would have seen the silhouette of the head through this glass, still and silently staring, always in control, always instilling fear.
“And that’s not his only trick. Have a look at this,” Hunt said, only two feet away at the standalone reading lamp that stood in the corner (a nice touch), the flex too short to allow the lamp be moved anywhere else. “So this explains his time line, why he could afford to wait as long as he did between victims.” He was shaking his head in a sort of disbelief. “He could have been holding women down here for God knows how long, and just how many remains to be seen. We may never know for sure. I can’t fucking stay in here. I need some air.”
Tony took his place and understood why he had to leave. Under the hood of the lamp, spelt out in bold capital letters, was a tight list of rules fixed with four screws behind a sheet of hard plastic. He read them alone and in silence.
RULES
I MUST ALWAYS BE READY TO SERVICE MY MASTER. I MUST BE CLEAN, BRUSHED, AND MADE-UP WITH MY CELL NEAT.
I MUST NEVER SPEAK UNLESS SPOKEN TO. UNLESS IN BED, I MUST NEVER LOOK MY MASTER IN THE EYE, BUT MUST KEEP MY EYES DOWNCAST.
I MUST NEVER SHOW MY DISRESPECT, EITHER VERBALLY OR SILENT. I MUST NEVER CROSS MY ARMS OR LEGS IN FRONT OF MY BODY, OR CLENCH MY FISTS, AND UNLESS EATING, MUST KEEP MY LIPS PARTED.
I MUST BE OBEDIENT COMPLETELY AND IN ALL THINGS. I MUST OBEY IMMEDIATELY AND WITHOUT QUESTION OR COMMENT.
I MUST ALWAYS BE QUIET WHEN LOCKED IN MY CELL.
I MUST REMEMBER AND OBEY ANY ADDITIONAL RULES TOLD TO ME. I MUST UNDERSTAND THAT ANY DISOBEDIENCE, ANY PAIN, TROUBLE, OR ANNOYANCE CAUSED BY ME TO MY MASTER WILL BE GROUNDS FOR PUNISHMENT.
As Tony made his way out he saw the difficulty opening the door. The hinges were damaged, bent from pressure on the door pressing out from the inside, a broken rule of disobedience sure to cause Trouble and Annoyance to the Master. He assumed there had not been a lucky escape; otherwise they would have known about it and Masterson would have been caught or killed by now. Whoever this poor unfortunate was, she had probably paid the price with her life; Tony wasn’t ready to think he’d kept boys in here. There was no sign of anyone kept in there now.
Out of the confined enclosure, Tony considered the kiln and second-guessed its purpose. He saw Hunt at a small sink, taking something from his trouser pocket. His focus was on the two men when he slipped something into his mouth, a pill or two. Then he washed it down under the tap. When he stood up straight he huffed out a deep breath and wiped his hand over his mouth to dry the drips from the hairs on his chin. Once composed, he instructed the men to search around the bench where the mannequin heads were for anything that might lead to Masterson’s whereabouts. Then he turned to Tony, unaware that he had been seen. “We’ll start with this end and see what we can find.”
There was a lot to go through. Boxes and containers were tucked under and alongside both benches that must hold plenty of interest: notes or plans, or a diary, sketches of his sickening fantasies, perhaps. Hunt first picked a brown glass bottle from off the shelf and looked at the label. “Chloral hydrate. You know what this does, don’t you? It puts people to sleep, but it’s not a painkiller.” Hunt didn’t dwell on the sadistic measures he might have used it for. He put the bottle back and noticed an absence of dust beside the bottle of chloral hydrate. “There’s a bottle missing.” He swallowed. “Where the fuck is he?”
Tony had that niggling feeling of impatience he’d felt back a couple of hours earlier in his study. When he thought about it, the feeling had never left. It was as if a crowd of shoppers were shouting at the glass doors to open so they could get to the sales. You couldn’t hear them but he could feel the vibrations of their voices and knew what they wanted—to get a move on.
While Tony pulled a box from the floor and began to search through it, Hunt did the same with one of the pink plastic containers from under the bench. In it were a number of unmarked CD casings. He opened the first on the top of the pile and saw the name, Margery, written on the disk, and three numbers separated by two dots underneath.
“Look at this,” he said and handed it to Tony. “It’s dated a little over two weeks ago. There’s a player in the next room.”
They walked across the workshop to the metal doorway. One of the two men had his head in the doorway of the kiln. “You’re not going to find what we’re looking for in there.” The young man turned to Hunt, looking sheepish. “Go down there and go through the rest of what’s under the bench. Remember we are only looking for anything that can tell us of his whereabouts. Leave out the rest for now, no matter how tempting it might appear to be.”
“Yes, sir,” he said in a sheepish voice as he walked away.
“Good man,” Hunt said and turned to the second. “You carry on as you are, same applies to you. We’ll be next door if you find anything.”
“Yes, sir,” the second man said.
Tony put the disk into the Blu-ray player. The machine sucked in the disk and the led display changed to PLAY. Both men stood mirroring each other in front of the television, holding their elbows. Hunt rubbed his hand around his mouth. Tony covered his. Those already in the room slowly gathered around the sofa. Nothing could prepare them for what was to follow.
It was filmed in the workshop. The images depicted a woman cable-tied to a scabby black chair, suffering extreme verbal and physiological abuse from Eamon Masterson, who was demanding sexual submission under the threat of violence. A pulse beat sickly in her throat. She looked jaded, possibly drugged. Her hair was unkempt, not brushed. Rule No. 1, and the white blouse was creased and stained.
All in the room either hugged themselves, stooped or took a step back from the television screen. The fear and terror in the woman’s eyes was palpable. Every now and then Eamon looked straight at the lens and smiled, showing his teeth, pointy and sharp. The camera was steady, filmed from a tripod or other stationery object. Eamon produced a scalpel precariously close to the woman’s neck, her jugular displayed in a prominent knot. He moved the scalpel down deliberately, cutting delicately at the buttons of her blouse. The buttons tumbled to the floor, one by one, some rolling from the creases of her blouse, others bouncing off her thighs on the way to the floor. The blouse was pulled down off her shoulders behind her back. He severed the bra strap at each shoulder. With gentle coxing of the blade the cups fell forward, exposing the woman’s breasts. One more cut to the back and the bra fell away. The woman’s face was red and puffed. She was crying hard, demanding to get her baby back. Eamon taunted her with a series of “shushes.” He stroked the
top of the woman’s head, the action meant not to soothe but to frighten.
Everyone in the room was shaken to the core. No one turned away, transfixed and horrified by what they witnessed.
Eamon again looked into the lens from over the distressed woman’s left shoulder. He slowly and deliberately opened his mouth wide to bare his teeth, strange, frightful, and sharp. Now his eyes were smiling at the camera, sticking his tongue out in a waggish fashion.
The woman began to scream.
“Go on, let it all out,” he encouraged her, “no one can hear you.” He winked at the camera after he said that. Then he burst out in manic laughter to mock and compete against the woman’s cries. Then he pretended to cry. “Where’s my baby, I want my baby, boo fucking hoo for you.”
Everyone watching had tears in their eyes. Thoughts were with the woman and the baby that was neither seen nor heard. Two of the men turned away. The only female watching left up the cellar steps in tears with her hand cupped over her mouth.
Eamon stepped back around to the woman’s right side and began pulling her hair away from her neck as if playing with the head of a doll. He brought his mouth toward the woman’s neck, teeth showing, covering the knotted artery; his smiling eyes remained fixed to the lens.
Marcus Hunt switched off the television with the remote control.
The sheepish young man was standing behind them, hypnotised by what he’d seen. His mouth was open, and clearly forgetting a number of pages he had in his hand.
The Ice Scream Man Page 40