Daniel rushed out into the hall and drew the bolt on the front door.
‘He’s in there,’ he said pointing through the lounge door. ‘I think he’s had some sort of seizure. I put him on his side in the recovery position.’
Two policemen were coming up the drive and Daniel tried to stop them from bursting in but they took no notice of him and pushed through into the lounge.
‘She’s in here,’ Daniel said, to one of the officers. ‘You need to see this. You’ll need a doctor and a police woman.’
The policeman looked at him scornfully.
‘Are you the young man who made the emergency call? What’s your role in this?’
‘Just come with me,’ Daniel said. ‘You can’t leave her there, she’s in pain.’
The officer reluctantly followed Daniel into the room at the far end of the hall. He blanched when he saw the scene. Sophie was virtually naked on the bed, the ropes that held her were clear to see but most of all it was the knife on the bedside table that held his attention.
‘Is that your knife?’ he asked.
Seeing the look on Daniel’s face he changed tack.
‘Have you touched it?’
‘Not at all. I tried to cover Sophie so you’ll find traces of my DNA on her clothes and I peeled the tape from her mouth. Before you ask, I’m her boyfriend and I would do nothing to harm her. I just happened to know that she’d come here to see Dr Porter and I came along to talk to them both.’
‘If you’d wait in the other room,’ the officer began.
‘I want him to stay with me,’ Sophie interrupted.
The officer thought for a moment.
‘If you stand away from the bed and don’t touch anything I suppose that’s all right,’ he said, fumbling with the rope that tied Sophie’s hands to the bed. ‘I’ll call for backup. It’d be best if you don’t talk to each other.’
He left the room and Daniel looked at Sophie.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Just trust me.’
He tried to hold her eyes in his gaze but she was shaking too much. He wanted to go to her and comfort her but the officer had been explicit. He felt Scimitar close by. It was a strange feeling.
It took a lot longer than either Daniel or Sophie wanted. A police photographer was called and then Sophie was released and taken to hospital by ambulance. After a preliminary interview Daniel, too, was sent to hospital for a check up. They gave Sophie a sedative and she drifted into an uneasy sleep. Daniel sat with her until her father arrived.
Daniel explained that he'd had an uneasy feeling that Sophie was in danger and that he'd come to meet her, to walk back to the university with her. He went on to tell Sophie's father about what he'd found and what had happened.'
Sophie's father was clearly shaken. Leaving Daniel with Sophie, he spoke to the police and then to the doctor. He came back looking a little calmer.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ her father told Daniel. ‘The doctor said that she’ll sleep until the morning so I’ll take you home to your parents and then we can come back first thing tomorrow.’
Daniel felt too disturbed to argue and the thought of spending the night in the safety of his own home, in his own bed, gave him some comfort as he left Sophie.
‘She’ll be fine until the morning,’ the nurse told him. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of her.’
‘You’ll both have to speak to the police tomorrow,’ Sophie’s father told him on their way home. ‘I expect they’ll arrange for you to see a counsellor. You’ve both had a terrible experience.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ Daniel said, ‘but I worry about Sophie. It’s the second time that she’s come across him like that.’
‘But it was the last and I think Sophie will be fine now if you’re with her.’
Chapter 27
The following day Daniel and Sophie’s father left the village early to be at Sophie’s bedside, hoping to be there before she awoke, but they were too late.
‘What kept you?’ she asked the moment they came through the door. She seemed a lot more cheerful and was sitting in her chair beside the bed waiting for them to bring her clothes so that she could go home.
‘It’s all right for you just lounging around,’ Daniel said, pleased to see that she was feeling better, ‘but we’ve had to get up early and drive here.’ He moved to the chair and kissed Sophie. ‘How are you today?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine, just a few bruises. They say I can leave as soon as the doctor’s done his rounds but a police lady came and said they needed to speak to me before I can go home. They said they’ll need to take a full statement from you as well. They’re waiting in the reception hall and when we’re ready they’re going to take us to the station.’
‘Have they said anything about Dr Porter?’
‘I asked but all they’d say was that he’s still unconscious and in intensive care.’
‘I doubt that he’ll recover,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m sure he’ll live but I don’t think he’s going to move or speak again. He had a massive stroke when I was with him and I saw the total panic in his eyes before he collapsed.’
Far from being restful, the remainder of the day was taken up with two very long interviews with the police. Sophie and Daniel were driven to the police station in separate police cars and , although they were shown every courtesy, they were kept apart. Sophie’s father was allowed to stay with her; the day was tiring and difficult for them all.
Daniel found it hard to explain how he came to be at Dr Porter’s house. He told them that he and Sophie were planning to meet up that evening but that he wanted to see Sophie before then. He explained that he’d gone to Dr Porter’s flat in town but he couldn’t find him there. While he was at the flats one of the residents had suggested that he might have gone to his weekend cottage. He was unable to tell them the name of the lady but he told them he was sure that they could easily find her to corroborate his story since she lived there. When he’d got the name of the village where Dr Porter lived from the university library he’d gone on to the village and then, after asking at the Post Office, he walked to the cottage. Again, he was sure that they could check his movements quite easily, both from the library and from the Postmistress.
The rest he was able to explain in more detail and he told the police that Dr Porter had seemed strange. At first he’d denied that Sophie was there and then he’d told the story of Sophie stalking him. Daniel finished by trying to tell the police as accurately as he could remember all the other things that Dr Porter had said.
‘I think he was having some sort of breakdown,’ Daniel said. ‘Part of the time he was the Dr Porter that Sophie had described and then he suddenly became a totally different person. He was almost raving but he did explain how he’d killed a thief and stolen his money and then he’d killed Sophie’s mother — although he said it was her fault for moving when he had his knife at her throat!’
He avoided mentioning Scimitar’s voice in his head! The police went into the account of his talk with Dr Jonathan in minute detail and it took longer than Daniel had imagined for them to have every detail accurately written down to their satisfaction.
‘Your statement is very important,’ the officer told Daniel. ‘Any future prosecution will depend on what you and Miss Fielder say. Provided that your statements are accurate and backed up by the facts as well as the circumstances, I don’t think there will be any problems. And we have the gun. We’ll check the bullet rifling marks. If they agree with the bullet from the murder that you you say Dr Porter told you about then I think we can assume that what you have told us is correct.’
Daniel felt that the situation was far from simple but he kept quiet. He didn’t want to stay longer than was necessary and he wanted to be with Sophie.
‘Obviously we’ll have to reopen the old murder cases,’ the officer continued, ‘and doing that may take a while but I guess he’s not going anywhere in a hurry so that it won’t matter. We can look in
to his bank accounts, too; they might give us more information that corroborates what you have told us. The problem is that he won’t be able to verify or deny it. The medics say that his stroke was indeed massive and that it’s unlikely that he will ever talk again. He’s a strong man but the damage is irreversible and he’ll have a very poor quality of life even if he manages to pull through.’
‘But what about Sophie? What he tried to do to her?’
‘We have all the evidence we need for that. Her account of what he did, his DNA on everything — no, there’s no problem there. It’s a good thing you arrived when you did or we might be investigating a murder.’
It was the closest they came to congratulating Daniel on Sophie’s rescue.
Sophie was treated more gently although the detectives seemed particularly interested in her relationship with Dr Porter. It seemed to her as if they were trying to suggest that she had led him on, that she had been instrumental in the whole affair, that she had been all too eager to go to bed with him. Sophie was appalled that they could think that.
‘For a start he was my teacher,’ she said. ‘And he killed my mother,’ she said, unable to stop her tears. ‘I always knew there was something about him, but I didn’t know that it was a subconscious memory. Not until I saw the way he was twisting his hands and the way he handled the knife. He had been so helpful and given me so much of his time. And then the ruby in the handle caught the light and I remembered how it had winked at me all those years ago. I thought he liked me because I was interested in history. I had no idea that he had an ulterior motive. I have a boyfriend. I would never cheat on him; Daniel means everything to me.’
Much later, when the case had been pursued in depth, and when the detectives dug into Dr Porter’s past, many of his old students came forward to tell of their relationships with him.
Arthur was interviewed. Had he noticed anything strange about Dr Porter when they were younger?
‘Jack, that’s what we called him, he was always a bit of a loner. He seemed out of place. He was a bit like me, he didn’t fit in at school and so we became friends. I spent a lot of time with him at his house. He used to have nightmares but I didn’t take any notice of that. He was lonely and I was just his friend. Sometimes I think that I was his only friend.’
As soon as their lives began to settle down again Sophie and Daniel set about finding a flat for the next year so that they could move in together; so that they could look after each other, Sophie told her father.
‘It’s fine with me,’ he said. ‘I know that you’ll help each other. I’ve known it for a long time, that you have a special relationship. I hope you’ll be as happy as your mother and I were,’ he added.
Sophie hugged him.
With the term finished, Daniel and Sophie had free time on their hands. The long summer break was on them and they felt the need to get away from the confines of their homes and the events of the previous weeks. They thought about moving into their new flat but the lease didn’t start for another two months. Sophie’s father suggested that they go on a walking holiday.
‘Your mother and I used to do a lot of walking before you were born,’ he told Sophie. ‘It’s good to be out in the fresh air; the exercise clears your head and the views lift your heart. Why don’t you explore the Pennine Way? Or the Yorkshire moors? You could camp or stop at Youth Hostels.’
They talked over the idea. Daniel was concerned that Sophie might feel at risk if they were so far from civilisation.
‘Not if I’m with you. You’ve saved me once and I’ve no doubt you could do it again.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘And I quite like the idea of spending the night with you in a tent under the stars.’
‘Would you trust me?’
‘Of course not; that‘s the whole point!’ Sophie said with something of her old fire.
‘If you’re sure and if your Dad’s happy, I’m sure my parents won’t object; they’ll be only too pleased to get rid of me.’
They made plans, plotting their route and making some bookings at hostels along the way so that they could shower and wash their clothes. Sophie was enthusiastic and seemed to have put her recent ordeal behind her. The knowledge that Dr Porter was out of the way and that he would never again cause her any problems had helped her to find closure. She fixed her eyes on the future, her future with Daniel.
Although he was pleased at the way Sophie had recovered from her ordeal, Daniel’s thinking was still muddled. It was the old problem of Scimitar, and now another ingredient had been mixed into the equation with Dr Porter’s scimitar shaped dagger. Daniel was trying to put the whole matter out of his mind but it obstinately refused to go away. He counted his lucky stars that he’d not tried to explain Scimitar to Sophie. At least she didn’t think he was an idiot and he hoped to keep it that way.
Lying in bed after a pleasant evening with Sophie and looking forward to the next week when they were going on holiday, he was going over the past in his mind, trying to sort reality from fantasy, but the more he pushed the matter out of his mind, the more it kept intruding into his quiet thoughts.
In desperation he reluctantly decided to go back to his computer, a new one, and to try the old game again. He was certain that Scimitar didn’t exist and he would take every precaution he could think of not to be confused. He fell asleep, confident that tomorrow he would settle the matter once and for all.
It was ten o’clock the following morning, he was wide awake and he took his laptop into the garden, as far away from his previous experiences as possible. He even switched the wi-fi internet connection off. His throat was dry as he typed in the cryptic ‘HELLO D2S’ and pressed return. Nothing happened but he remembered that it took a while to obtain a response. He watched the screen and he felt his confidence growing through every second that it remained blank.
At last, he thought. Why didn’t I do this a long time ago? It would have saved me agonising doubts about my sanity and put the matter to rest. He was about to close the laptop and go round to Sophie’s house to finalise their plans when he saw a tiny movement on the screen.
‘You’re not insane, you’re doing just fine!’ grew out of the dot in its centre.
He looked at it in disbelief. The cursor on the screen moved again.
‘Enjoy your holiday! Both of you.’
The only problem that remained was to decide if he was actually awake or if he was dreaming ... again.
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