A Life for a Life: (Parish & Richards #1)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘Why do you call the orphanage Hell, Mr Rushdon?’ Richards asked.

  ‘You’ll understand why soon.’

  ‘What we don’t understand is why you didn’t knock it all down and build houses on the land,’ Parish said.

  Peter Rushdon ignored him and Parish didn’t bother to ask anymore questions. He presumed Rushdon would tell the story in his own time.

  They reached the administrative block. Roger Anderson used a key from a bunch he took out of his coat pocket to unlock the door.

  Peter Rushdon’s two helpers lifted the wheelchair up the set of four steps onto the porch, and wheeled it in through the front door.

  ‘You’ll find all the records of the children and the staff in the cabinets in the office.’ He waved to his left. ‘But what you really want to see is in the manager’s office.’ He pointed a withered finger towards a door on the right. ‘Over there,’ he rasped. ‘Come on, hurry up you useless bastards. I’ll be dead before you pull your fingers out.’

  Parish guessed that it wasn’t much fun working for Peter Rushdon. He imagined that the old man must have been paying the helpers a fortune to work for him. Rushdon reminded Parish of CI Naylor and decided that he didn’t like the old man.

  Again, Anderson unlocked the manager’s office with a key from the bunch he held in his hand.

  ‘Get the torches out,’ Rushdon said.

  The helper with the rucksack slid it on the floor, unzipped it and handed torches with handles to everyone. Parish and Richards both switched theirs on.

  ‘You two useless bastards can stay here,’ Rushdon said to the helpers. ‘Anderson can help me now. Strap the mobile oxygen on my back.’ The old man pushed himself up out of the wheelchair, shrugged off the blankets and wriggled into the oxygen backpack that the helpers held for him.

  ‘Where are we going, Sir?’ Richards whispered.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Parish whispered back. He shone his torch around the lobby. Besides the doors left and right, there was another door directly ahead of them which lead to the male and female toilets.

  ‘Follow me,’ Rushdon said, and he hobbled into the darkness of the manager’s office with the help of Roger Anderson.

  Parish and Richards looked at each other nervously and followed Rushdon, who was hanging heavily on Anderson’s arm, inside. It was a large room with twenty-four years worth of cobwebs dangling from the ceiling.

  Richards squealed and flapped at her face with her hands. ‘Oh, I hate spiders.’

  ‘I’m not that keen on them myself,’ Parish said, glad that he’d be going home after this to shower and change.

  There was a glass-fronted cabinet against the wall on the left. Ornaments were sitting behind the glass on shelves. Next to it stood a bookcase stacked with books. In the middle of the room was a large table with a desk lamp, a heap of files, a coffee mug and a pot stuffed with pens and pencils. To the right were three easy chairs and a coffee table. The way the room had been left as it was twenty-four years ago reminded Parish of the ruins at Pompeii. He shone his torch over the desk and saw a small pile of tokens, which he picked up. There were seven tokens with numbers 21, 23, 35, 38, 49, 50, and 59 on them. He began adding them up. Carlgren had forty-five, six had been used in the murders, one had been found in Martin Squires’ mouth and he held seven in his hand. There was one missing.

  ‘This office is the gateway to Hell, Parish,’ Rushdon said, pulling something under the desk. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  Parish heard a sound like a coffin opening from inside, and when he turned he saw that the bookcase had come away from the wall. ‘I’m sorry, I…’

  Richards’ phone activated. She found it in her coat and moved back towards the lobby to talk in private. ‘Hello, Paul…’

  Rushdon, his feet scraping on the floor, went over to the bookcase and opened it fully. Anderson’s torch lit the way down a set of steps into the darkness.

  They began to descend the steps. Rushdon and Andrews went first, and Parish followed them. He looked behind, but Richards was still talking to Toadstone on the phone. She’ll follow on, he thought.

  At the bottom of the steps there was a corridor that led towards the north-east. The cold air smelled of mould and wrapped itself around them like a stinking old blanket. Rushdon began shuffling along the corridor. ‘Nearly there,’ he said through his oxygen mask.

  With each step Parish began to feel a panic he had only ever felt in his nightmares. A dark hand gripped his insides and squeezed. This was his nightmare come to life.

  ‘Do you remember now, Parish?’ Rushdon said over his shoulder.

  Tears came to Parish’s eyes. He slid down the wall and sat on the cold concrete.

  ‘Sir?’ Richards shouted from the top of the steps. ‘You have to come back, Sir.’

  But it was too late. The wall in his brain that he had built many years ago to protect himself from the truth came crashing down. The memories flooded back and paralysed him, washed away everything else. All he was, all he would ever be, was that little boy of five being dragged screaming along this dark corridor to a room with a bed to satisfy the perverted desires of men. He remembered his friends: Johnny Tomkins, Joseph Dobbs, Liam Preston, Ronnie Sanders, Frank Landon, Tommy Lonely, and… Terry Reynolds. Their faces swam before him as if it were only yesterday. They were the special children with tokens. He was number 55 on the menu. He remembered the bastards that dragged him up this corridor and did terrible things to him as well: Gregory Taylor, Brian Ridpath, Evan Hughes, Martin Squires, Graham Pearson, and… Oh God…

  ***

  From out of the darkness, a man dressed all in black knocked Anderson to the ground. With one hand he grasped Rushdon around the neck; with the other he held a marlinspike to the old man’s sagging flesh.

  ‘Hello, Mr Rushdon. Remember me?’ Terry had entered the underground complex through a secret entrance in his old dormitory.

  ‘You’re the driver,’ Anderson blurted out. ‘What…?’

  ‘I knew you’d be here somewhere, Terry Reynolds,’ Rushdon hissed. ‘You always were trouble.’

  ‘Time to die, Mr Rushdon.’

  ‘Before you kill me, let me tell you why.’

  ‘What does it matter now?’ Terry said. ‘All that matters is that you pay for what you did to me, to Jed Parish, and to all the others you used and then buried in the graveyard in unmarked graves.’

  ‘I was one of you,’ Rushdon said softly. ‘It didn’t start with you, you know, Terry. It had been going on for years. I wasn’t the first, but afterwards I came back and joined Pearson’s club. I didn’t mean to. I hated myself for doing it. In the end, that’s why I sealed this place up; why I never pulled it down and built on it. I knew that one day we would all have to pay for our sins, and that the boys we killed deserved to rest in peace.’

  Richards had reached them. She crouched down and put her arm around Parish’s shoulders. ‘Are you all right, Sir?’

  Parish was crying silently. He was a little boy of five in the dark again with no one to help him.

  ‘You don’t have to kill Rushdon, Terry,’ Richards said. ‘He’ll pay for what he did.’

  ‘You can arrest me afterwards. My life ended in this place and Rushdon’s will as well. You’ll have to look after Jed, though, if he’s not going to end up like me. We were friends you know.’ He began crying. ‘I tried to protect him, but I couldn’t protect myself.’ He spun Rushdon round and stabbed him in the heart. ‘For me, you bastard,’ he said, slipping token number 7 in Rushdon’s mouth. ‘A life for a life.’ The marlinspike clattered on the floor and Terry Reynolds sat down against the wall.

  After handcuffing Reynolds, Richards had to go back along the corridor and up the steps to get a signal. She phoned for Doc Michelin, Paul Toadstone and two ambulances. She then rang DI Kowalski to come and take charge so that she could go to the hospital with Parish.

  Aftermath

  Kowalski arrived first. He formally arrested Terry Reynolds and to
ok him back to Hoddesdon Police Station for processing. A confused Roger Anderson accompanied them and provided a witness statement before he was permitted to return to America.

  Richards went with Parish in one of the ambulances and held his hand. For once, she had nothing to say. Toadstone had told her that they’d found sixty-nine videotapes hidden in a wall recess at Graham Pearson’s house. The tapes had boys’ names on them, and one of those names was Jed Parish. Toadstone was the only one who knew about the tape. Richards convinced him to destroy it. He wasn’t keen on the idea of destroying evidence, but she persuaded him in the end that it was the right thing to do. With all those other tapes, she argued, they didn’t need that one.

  Doc Michelin arrived and took charge of Peter Rushdon’s body. He noticed Toadstone hadn’t yet arrived, so he also put the marlinspike in an evidence bag and slipped it in his pocket. Although the marlinspike would be used as evidence when the case went to trial, he hoped that someone would let him keep it when it was all over.

  On Friday 24th January, the day after Parish was admitted to the medical ward of King George Hospital, Angie Richards and her daughter, Mary, signed him out against the advice of doctors and took him home to 38, Puck Road.

  The forensics team took everything away from Beech Tree Orphanage and analysed all the records. Most of the children had lived their lives and died, but there were a few who were able to corroborate what had happened. They found some of the old staff, but none of them had known what was going on, or so they said.

  In Chigwell Cemetery, on the boundary next to the orphanage, they found twenty-seven children’s bodies in unmarked shallow graves. Nobody knew who they were, but names from the files were put on their headstones when they were buried much later.

  Peter Rushdon had amassed a twenty-three million pound fortune. When his will was read, they found that he had no family and had donated the entire amount to children’s charities in England. The unemployed Roger Anderson went back to America wondering what had happened.

  Two weeks after Terry Reynolds had been arrested, the forensic accountants rang up and told Richards that Martin Squires had hidden a number of ‘pensions’ in the accounts. The total amount he had fraudulently paid out over the course of twenty-four years was £1.2 million. Everyone at Redbridge Council, past and present, was stunned. No one, so they said, knew anything about the payments. The current Chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee resigned.

  After it was all over, only a handful of people knew the truth about Parish. Richards made them all, even the Chief Constable, swear never to reveal what they knew. The Chief Constable was so impressed with Richards that he ignored his own procedures and arranged for her to attend the next three-phase competency-based National Investigator’s Course.

  ***

  Wednesday, 24th February

  It was six thirty in the evening. He was sitting in the living room watching the Champions’ League highlights that he’d taped last night. Angie came in and sat beside him on the sofa. ‘There are two people to see you,’ she said, holding his hand. ‘I’ve kept them away up to now, but I think you’re well enough.’

  He pressed the pause button and kissed her. ‘Send them in.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He stroked the two month old black and white Schnauzer puppy Richards had bought him. ‘You’re right, it’s time.’

  Angie let the first visitor in.

  ‘Parish, as I live and breathe.’

  Parish smiled, and with each kind word, he moved further and further from the darkness. ‘Hello, Kowalski – I’ve missed your big mouth.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a welcome. Back to work on Monday, I hear?’

  ‘Somebody has to come in and do something productive,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been reading the newspapers?’

  ‘I’ve glanced at them.’

  ‘So modest. They’ve made you into a bloody hero, Parish, especially that Catherine Cox from the Chigwell Herald. The rest of us are trailing in your wake. I hear the Chief Constable is ruing the day he ever promoted you. He knows damned well he’ll have to move over to make room for you soon.’

  ‘Have I ever told you that you talk a load of crap, Kowalski?’

  ‘On numerous occasions, Jed. The wife and kids send their regards.’

  ‘Thank them for me.’

  ‘Right, Kowalski, get the hell out. Go and wait in the car and tell yourself how wonderful you are.’ It was the Chief, with a ruddy complexion and small tufts of hair on his head.

  ‘See you Monday, Parish,’ Kowalski said. ‘Remind me to tell you what Richards and I have been getting up to in the broom cupboard.’ They could hear his laughter all the way to the car.

  ‘How are you feeling, Parish?’

  ‘Never mind me, Chief – what’s with the hair?’

  ‘They’ve given me the all-clear. I beat the damned thing.’

  ‘That’s the best news I’ve ever heard, Sir.’

  ‘Listen, Parish – I was hoping to ease you back in gently, but…’

  ‘Hello, Chief,’ Richards said, coming into the room. ‘My mum said you were here with that octopus Kowalski.’ She leaned over. ‘What’s that on your head?’

  ‘Hair, Richards. The cancer’s gone.’

  Richards burst into tears and hugged Walter Day. ‘I’m the happiest girl alive, Sir.’

  ‘Have you got nothing else better to do, Richards? The Chief and I are trying to have a serious conversation here.’

  ‘Stop being mean. You know I’ve had requests from other people to be their partner, don’t you?’

  Parish laughed. ‘As if.’

  ‘I’ll leave you two squabbling.’ The Chief passed Parish a manila folder. ‘Take a look at that, Parish; it’s your next case.’

  Parish opened the file. Inside was a colour photograph of what looked like a middle-aged woman hanging upside down with a meat hook through her ankle. Maggots crawled in her empty eye sockets, mouth and nose. There was evidence of a multitude of stab wounds on her torso. Her abdomen had been slashed open and her intestines were protruding through the wound. She was naked from the waist down and her blouse had been pulled up to expose her breasts.

  ‘A human being shouldn’t have to look at things like that,’ Parish said, closing the file.

  ‘Chief, you know DI Parish is recuperating.’ She snatched the file off Parish and slipped it under her arm. ‘I’ll read it and brief him on it when he’s ready.’

  ‘See you, Monday, Parish,’ the Chief said.

  ‘I can’t wait, Chief,’ Parish said.

  ***

  Tuesday 2nd March

  Parish was sitting across the table from Terry Reynolds in the visitor’s centre of HMP Wormwood Scrubs on Du Cane Road, London.

  ‘Hello, Jed.’

  ‘Hello, Terry. How are they treating you?’

  ‘Good. Yeah, I’m a bit of a hero in here. Nobody likes paedophiles.’

  ‘I can’t condone what you did, but thanks for trying to protect me.’

  ‘You remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t let it destroy your life like it has mine.’

  ‘I’ve got some good people round me.’

  ‘That’s important. I had no one.’

  There was nothing more to say. Parish stood up.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Jed. Enjoy the rest of your life.’

  ‘I will, Terry. By the way – why did you use a marlinspike? I’ve tried to think, but I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘It was a paperweight on Pearson’s desk. I stole it and kept it. That’s all.’

  ‘What about Diane Flint? Why did you kill her?’

  ‘She was the social worker who put me in there.’

  ‘Did she know what was going on?’

  ‘If she didn’t, she damned well should have done.’

  ‘Goodbye, Terry.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jed.’

  ###

 
Thank you for choosing and reading my book. If you enjoyed it, I would be grateful if you could write a review and post it on Amazon.co.uk and/or Amazon.com.

  ###

  DI Jed Parish and PC Mary Richards tackle their next case: The Wages of Sin

  ####

  About the Author

  Tim Ellis was born in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital, London, on a dark and stormy night, grew up in Cheadle, Cheshire, and now lives in Essex with his wife and four Shitzus. In-between, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at eighteen and completed twenty-two years service, leaving in 1993 having achieved the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major). Since then he has worked in secondary education as a senior financial manager, in higher education as an associate lecturer/tutor at Lincoln and Anglia Ruskin Universities, and as a consultant for the National College of School Leadership. His final job, before retiring to write fiction full time in 2009, was as Head and teacher of Behavioural Sciences (Psychology/Sociology) in a secondary school. He has a PhD and an MBA in Educational Management, and an MA in Education.

  Discover other titles by Tim Ellis at http://timellis.weebly.com/

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