The Principle of Evil: A Fast-Paced Serial Killer Thriller (DCI Claire Winters, Book 2)

by T. M. E. Walsh

  It became all too apparent that despite his revelations, she was still his prisoner.

  ‘Time for you to go back below.’

  His speech was slow. He was definitely drunk and she couldn’t abandon her plan after so much hard work and effort. She stood up, raised her head and looked him hard in the face.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  CHAPTER 36

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Sara…’

  The words that followed were sobering, but she held her resolve. ‘… But I will if I have to.’

  She seized the chance; it was now or never. Her hand shot up, covered his mouth and hushed him. His reaction time was considerably delayed and when he tried removing her hand, she shook her head.

  ‘You can’t tell me all that about your childhood and not feel anything for me,’ she said, raising her voice. If she tried hard enough, she knew she could possibly squeeze out a few tears as well. ‘You must feel something for me to be able to open up to me like that.’

  He frowned, pushing her hand from his mouth. ‘I do feel something for you. Why do you think you’re here in the first place?’

  ‘Then don’t put me back in the basement. Making me grateful by keeping me down there won’t work.’

  ‘I have to, you’re no different, and I can’t treat you as such.’

  ‘No different from what?’

  ‘From the others!’

  Sara couldn’t speak. It took every ounce of strength to hold back her tears.

  He saw the look in her eyes.

  ‘I’ve told you too much. I should never have agreed to this,’ he said, gesturing to the empty dinner plates and candles. He pushed her back. ‘This was a mistake.’ He pushed her again, back towards the kitchen door.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  Act now in case you never get the chance again!

  All reason seemed to be sucked away and it was as if she had no control over her body. She pushed his arms down, threw herself onto him and forced her mouth against his. She felt his resistance. His hands caught her forearms, trying to force her back but she pushed forward, her body now hard against his chest.

  When she pulled back she looked up into his eyes and smiled. He tasted good, ashamed as she was to admit it.

  He looked unsure what to do. She went to kiss him again but he turned his head. His breathing had quickened and she could feel his heart hammering inside his chest. She reached up, touched his cheek. He felt her breath hot on his skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ she whispered. There was a small flicker in his eyes, but he said nothing. ‘If you do nothing else, just tell me your name.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t… and you mustn’t ask it of me.’ He swallowed hard, pushed her back, but she gripped his shoulders. ‘Go back to the basement, Sara. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.’

  Deep down she could see him brooding. He was angry with her but he was trying to suppress it. Suddenly she was unsure. However well she thought she’d got to know him, she realised she hadn’t even scratched the surface.

  She hesitated, but her voice was defiant. ‘No.’

  His eyes snapped towards her. They looked darker than before.

  ‘I see the way you look at me.’ Her voice rose. ‘You can’t keep this up forever.’ She tried to kiss him again, but this time he anticipated it.

  He gripped her face with both his hands and squeezed. She began to scream under the pressure. He grabbed her by the hand and dragged her back through the kitchen.

  She pulled her body down to the floor, yanking his arm. Her feet began to slide across the old linoleum. She fought like a wild animal until he couldn’t hold back any longer. He balled his right hand, then smashed it into her ribcage. She fell back like a sack of cement.

  ‘Look what you made me do!’ His face was red with rage. ‘This is not who I am, Sara. I keep fighting it but girls like you make it so goddamn difficult!’

  He turned his back to her.

  ‘I know about the man you’ve been seeing at work, Sara.’ He turned to face her again, grinned when he saw the shock on her face. ‘Oh, I heard you on the phone to him, planning your next meet up.’

  ‘I can’t… I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘Gregg was trying to make your marriage work, Sara, and even then you started sleeping with someone else.’

  Sara shook her head, but couldn’t find the words. She felt disgusted with herself.

  ‘Fidelity,’ he said. ‘Have I not taught you anything?’ He cocked his head to the side, looking down on her. ‘Your plan wouldn’t have worked.’

  She whimpered, clutching her chest. Through squinted eyes, she looked into his.

  ‘Kissing me?’ he said. ‘That’s adultery. Gregg’s given you a life worth having. A life worth living. Why weren’t you ever grateful?’

  And then it happened.

  Like the light bulb moment you always hear about.

  She knew him then. ‘A life worth living…’ she spluttered.

  He turned around to face her.

  ‘I know you… I remember the day you spoke those words to me… to Gregg.’

  He paused. ‘Bet you wish you’d listened to me then.’

  He raised his hand and slapped her hard in the mouth. Before she could recover, he roughly encircled his arms around her torso, lifted and hauled her out through the kitchen, into the hall.

  He swung the basement door open.

  When she saw the stairs descending into the darkness below, she pleaded with him. She screamed and tears streamed down her face, but it fell on deaf ears.

  With one surge forward, he shoved her through the doorway, and she hurtled down the stairs. Halfway down she managed to stop herself, clutching the rail for dear life, but he was soon down on her, raising his foot and slamming it into her chest.

  As she fell down the final steps, her elbow caught the rough brick on one side of the staircase. She lay crumpled on the floor at the bottom, bleeding. Her elbow was grazed and stung like hell but she ignored the pain and climbed to her feet.

  Her head swung back.

  She let out a defiant scream.

  He slammed the door, locked and bolted it. He stormed into the kitchen and drove his arm across the cluttered worktop, sending everything crashing to the floor. In the dining room he grabbed the candles, not bothering to extinguish the flames, and chucked the lot in the kitchen sink, blasting them with cold water from the tap.

  He left it running as he went back to the dining room. He hurled both the empty wine bottles at the far wall, sending broken glass everywhere. He switched on the main lights, then sent his fist crashing into the picture frames on the sideboard. He picked up the one which held the photograph of him and his mother, and hurled it across the room, screaming so loud his throat ached.

  How could I have been so stupid?!

  Down in the basement, Sara had climbed back up the stairs and was beating her fist against the door. She was screaming every obscenity she could think of.

  Mentally he’d been stronger than she’d thought. He hadn’t taken the bait. She’d even been ready to give herself to him if it meant the chance of escape, despite knowing she would hate every minute of it, but he’d rejected her. Something Sara wasn’t used to. It was alien to her. And now she knew who he was, every minute of her life in the last year came rushing into the forefront of her mind and she cursed every goddamn memory.

  The man was now sitting amongst the broken plates and bowls on the kitchen floor. His eyes were transfixed on the basement door.

  Inside he was ablaze with anger.

  *

  She didn’t know how long it’d been before the pain in her hands had grown too much. Sara’s knuckles were now bloody and bruised. She’d taken the top layer of skin off by hammering the basement door in a blind fury. She’d heard the man crashing around elsewhere in the house. He’d usually been more controlled but the drink had lowered his
defences and affected his rational thinking considerably.

  She sat perched on the top few steps, sucking at her damaged skin. All had gone quiet and she jumped with fright when she heard his voice somewhere in the distance. He sounded so angry.

  Then nothing.

  She felt as if her heart would give out with fright when someone hammered a fist on the door to the basement some time later. The thick wooden door vibrated violently.

  Then silence again. She couldn’t have spoken even if she’d wanted to; she was too scared.

  She strained her ears.

  She heard the faint sound of the back door opening, then footsteps coming closer to the door.

  She backed down a few steps.

  The lock on the door clicked. The bolt was drawn back.

  The door slowly swung open.

  She froze at what she saw and it scared her so much, she couldn’t even scream.

  CHAPTER 37

  December 1987

  ‘Be still… be as silent as a ghost.’ He watched his grandmother’s mouth, lined with wrinkles, pucker. ‘Control your breathing.’

  The boy was twelve and the grandmother had long promised to take him to the woods she’d known since childhood, when he came of age.

  As a small girl she’d often laid primitive traps for small woodland animals. She’d then lie in wait, sometimes for hours, hidden under a bush or watching from a ditch, like they did in the movies. On the occasions she did catch something, a hare, usually, her favourite, she’d laugh, and clap and sing.

  Sometimes she’d let the creature go.

  Sometimes she didn’t.

  The days she came back with blood smeared across her rosy-red cheeks, caked under her fingernails, with soil encrusted on the hem of her dress, her parents would laugh their concerns away.

  The boy never grew tired of his grandmother’s stories or dark secrets. It showed him she was human. That she’d lived. That she wasn’t afraid. Something to be admired, it was. Something almost sacred.

  The frozen ground was solid against his chest, and the wind was bitter, taking bites at his flesh. He shivered, pulling his woolly hat down lower, covering his ears. He felt his throat contract, and he raised his gloved fist to stifle a cough.

  ‘Shh,’ Grandmother hissed, her icy-blue eyes snapping to the side, throwing him a warning glare. She raised her finger to her dry cracked lips, then pointed in front of her over the rim of the ditch. ‘Over there, in the bushes.’

  His eyes were watering profusely but he could still make out the salt-and-pepper coloured fur and the long ears scrambling through the decaying undergrowth. He saw large, wide eyes.

  Grandmother smiled. ‘Any minute now.’ Her breath was like dry ice escaping from her lips. ‘It’s near the snare. Come on, just a little closer.’

  Snap.

  The cable pulled tight. The hare scrambled frantically, its hind legs hammering the cold earth in panic.

  Grandmother smiled.

  The boy followed her out over the ditch. He watched her long brown skirt drag the floor, mindful not to step on it. She looked like some kind of nomad or mystic with her dark flowing clothes and meaningful stare. Even the spidery veins on her bony hands looked more prominent.

  He hesitated, stopping in his tracks when her foot pressed on the taut cable. The hare’s movements became more laboured, the cable biting through its fur. Drops of dark-red blood spattered the floor.

  ‘Unusual to catch them this time of year.’ She sounded breathless when she crouched down and drew her knife. ‘Come, hold it down.’ The boy watched the knife sway back and forth in her hand.

  He gazed at the hare.

  Its eyes penetrated his.

  ‘Grab its legs.’

  He did as he was told. She sawed the knife quickly, back and forth until the cable snapped. The hare didn’t even attempt to run. Instead it just lay there quietly as if awaiting the inevitable and accepting its fate.

  Grandmother waved the knife in front of him. ‘It’s your turn.’ She smiled.

  ‘Mum asked me not to.’

  The smile faded.

  ‘She has no say here, you know that.’ She thrust the knife into his hands. ‘Do it.’

  He eyed the knife, then the hare. He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’ Grandmother rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t, Nanna. Please don’t make me.’

  ‘It’s just an animal.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘What if you were starving?’

  He frowned.

  ‘What if you were stuck out here in the wilderness, no chance of being found for a long time? You need food and water to survive… Would you do it then?’

  He tried to answer but his voice stuck in his throat. She squeezed her hand around the hare’s neck. ‘Would you do it to survive?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so… but this isn’t the same thing.’

  Grandmother wasn’t listening. Her head shook violently. ‘You’re not grateful for what nature has provided us. Living off the land is the most natural thing in the world.’

  ‘I don’t want to eat it.’

  ‘This is your mother’s doing.’ She ripped the knife from his hand. ‘Have I got to do everything myself?’ She pulled the hare up by its hind legs and drove the blade into its belly.

  ‘She’s selfish. Ungrateful and spoiled,’ she raged, thrusting the blade in faster and faster with each swing. ‘I won’t have you growing up the same way.’

  He watched each savage movement open-mouthed. The blood stained the ground, her hands and clothes. Her face looked like a snapshot of a mad frenzy, each stab her way of taking out her frustration about his mother. It didn’t seem real, yet somehow it felt normal, as if he was part of it. As if it felt right. He realised he didn’t feel any sadness for the animal either.

  When she finally stopped, dropping the hare’s mangled corpse to the ground with a thud, a sound he’d never forget, she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her skin.

  She raised the knife, pointing it at his gut. ‘Next time, you’ll do it.’

  And she was right.

  The next time she took him to the forest, he killed at her request. Over time he grew to like it. Maybe he always had? The feeling crept up on him so quickly, he couldn’t be sure.

  At first it had taken some mental strength to be able to make the first cut, but over time, that soon disappeared, like his grandmother had said it would.

  ‘Soon it will become second nature,’ she told him. And as usual she’d been right. That was the only time he’d seen her behave like that. Only when she was in that forest trapping animals. It seemed to be for no reason other than pleasure. Back at home it was different. She’d always teach him to help others. Not in the typical sense but in her own way, whether the help was wanted or not.

  He was the pupil and she was the teacher. Soon, she told him, it would be his turn. She told him not to fall into the self-loathing his mother had succumbed to and made him promise everything he would do after she was gone, he would do for the greater good.

  CHAPTER 38

  Deacon Hill was beautiful, exceptionally so in winter. Sitting off the B655 Hitchin Road, just over the Bedfordshire border, en route to the village of Hexton, Deacon Hill went unnoticed in a blink of an eye, but for those who lived close by, the picturesque trail to the top was breathtaking.

  Many walkers took their dogs and cut across the cattle field, up towards the foot of the steep mound from which, after a short ascent, you could see miles upon miles of beautiful unspoilt English countryside. The surrounding land was littered with rabbit warrens, and birds of prey would soar high above, waiting for their chance to pluck an unlucky hare from the ground below.

  In winter, it was mainly locals who came up here, or an artist trying to capture the beauty of the winter sun, but today, only one car sat off the road in the lay-by, and only one man stood upon the top of Deacon Hill.

  Dressed in black, his large frame looked ominous against th
e white backdrop and the grey sky. The roads below were very quiet, and he’d managed to haul the body in the industrial-sized black sack up the trail, flanked either side with skeletal trees and bushes, towards the foot of the hill.

  With little effort he carried the body up and leaned it against the side of the stone marker at the top of the hill. The large concrete sculpture was shaped like a pyramid. The base was made up of two large tiered squares, one slightly taller sitting on top of the other. The crowning top was a square pyramid in shape with a blunt top. Altogether, it stood at nearly seven feet tall.

  The man breathed in the cold. It seeped into his bones, despite his thick clothes. He removed the black sack. He leaned the body against the structure.

  The weather forecast earlier said there would be heavy snow in the early hours of the morning. This was good, not just because it would obscure or cover his footprints, but because of how it would almost transform the body.

  Once the snow began to fall, it would give the illusion that the stone marker and the body were as one. A work of art.

  He picked up the sack, reached the edge of the hilltop, and looked back. He smiled.

  The naked body of Sara Thornton looked beautiful against the chosen backdrop. Her eyes were shut, her head leaning to one side, obscuring the deep gash at the side of her neck. She looked at peace. She looked like a sleeping angel.

  A few flakes of snow began to drift down from the sky and the man caught a few in his gloved hand. After another look at the vast landscape around him, he disappeared down the hill.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 39

  22nd November

  ‘Fallon!’

  The familiar roar of her father’s voice rumbled from down the hall. Richard Dockley stormed up the stairs towards his daughter’s room. He burst through the door, not bothering to knock.

  Fallon Dockley’s skinny, boyish frame stood half dressed in front of her full-length mirror. Rolling her eyes when faced with her father’s reflection, she half turned her head towards him.