by Joy Ellis
‘Sarge?’ Dave Harris, Niall Farrow and a big athletic man that he had never seen before were hurrying towards him. ‘Sarge, this is Stuart Bass, forensics, mate of our missing pathologist. Listen, sir,’ Dave looked distraught, ‘we’ve just heard the evacuation order and we know exactly what’s at stake, but we are not going if there’s a chance Tamsin and the prof are down there somewhere. We wanted you to know that we are going back underground to look for them.’
Joseph closed his eyes for a moment, then stared at the men. ‘Apart from getting yourselves killed, you’ll get the book thrown at you for this, you know that?’
‘Absolutely, sir.’ Niall’s jaw was set. ‘And I also know I couldn’t live with myself if that maniac gets to Tamsin without me doing something about it.’
‘Okay, count me in. If we ever get out alive we’ll think of some excuse. Let’s go.’
As the four men ran back towards the control tower, Stuart said, ‘Damn you, Rory Wilkinson! I should be on a sun-drenched beach with the most beautiful woman in the world right now, not trying to save your spotty arse from some psycho!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Someone had caught him off-balance and he was easily overpowered. This didn’t surprise him. The nearest Rory ever came to physical exertion was a little light-hearted wrestling before a more intimate form of exercise.
Opposite him, lying on a heap of blankets was the unmoving form of a young woman. She had regained partial consciousness a couple of times, but she had been too sick and confused to tell him anything. He guessed she was Sergeant Easter’s daughter, and he was desperately worried about her condition. The sickly-sweet odour in the small room must be chloroform, Rory thought. He knew all about that insidious substance.
She needed medical help, but Rory was certain she wasn’t going to get it from the motionless figure with the strange, bright eyes that sat a little apart from them.
Rory had known from the moment that he entered the room that, for both their sakes, he had to find a way of staying alive long enough to allow the police to find them. He tried to remember everything he’d heard or read about serial killers, but understandably his thought processes were not functioning too well. At least he seemed to have a little time, as neither of them had been immediately dispatched. The silent man was obviously waiting for something.
They were in a small room, lit by a battery-powered lantern. Both men sat on wooden chairs. The only difference was that Rory’s feet were secured to the chair legs, and his hands were bound tightly together with duct tape.
Rory shivered. He’d heard that killers were often egotists, believing themselves superior and above, or apart, from the law. Maybe he should try flattery? Rory also knew that the last thing he should do was beg for mercy, and at that moment, blubbering was the only thing he felt capable of.
Simon Flower broke the silence. ‘They are leaving now.’
‘Ah. We’ll have the place to ourselves. Alone at last, as they say.’
Flower looked at the pathologist with interest. ‘You can joke? Aren’t you frightened?’
Rory swallowed and pulled tentatively at his restraints. ‘Shit-scared, old son. Absolutely terror-stricken.’
‘You certainly don’t seem it.’
‘Well, rumour has it that you are a crazed psycho, teetering on the brink of total madness, but if you’ll forgive my saying so, you don’t seem like that either.’
Flower frowned. ‘I’m not sure how to take that.’
Rory did not answer. At that moment he was dearly wishing that he’d chosen psychology for a career. He held on to the thought that the police would not abandon them. He just had to try to stay alive long enough to give the boys in blue something to rescue. ‘Call me psychic, but I knew we’d meet again. We have met before, haven’t we?’
‘Oh yes. And I had every intention of making that happen, Professor Wilkinson. After all, I couldn’t leave without thanking you personally.’
‘Ah. For desecrating your beautiful mausoleum, no doubt.’
Flower looked around the tiny shadowy cavern. ‘It wasn’t a mausoleum, Professor. It was a sanctuary.’ He spoke softly.
‘Why did you kill those people?’ Rory immediately regretted his words. What the hell was he trying to do? Hasten their execution?
Flower shook his head. ‘If you recall our conversation of the other day, you told me my sanctuary was a peaceful place, a place of beauty. So in my eyes, you never actually desecrated anything. You chose to work and sleep there, which was extraordinary. You respected it. When I said I wanted to thank you, I actually meant it.’ He smiled coldly at Rory. ‘And why did I kill those people?’ He shrugged. ‘Why does anyone do anything? Because they want to? Because they like it? Because they can?’ He paused. ‘In my case, I enjoyed taking their dirty, stinking bodies and making them whole again. I mended them, took away their addictions and their filthy habits. I nurtured and looked after them in a most professional manner, and finally gave them peace.’ The handsome face suddenly became hard. ‘You saw my work! Was I ever a butcher? And where exactly is the difference between you and me?’
‘I’ve never seen better,’ said Rory truthfully. ‘Your methods of preserving the bodies were a perfect synergy of modern science and historically documented embalming techniques. Amazing. Simply amazing.’
Flower nodded. ‘And your thoughts on the difference between us?’
‘You took their lives before you gave them the benefit of your expertise. I only offer them my care and considerable virtuosity when they are already dead.’
‘Very good, but you have to admit there’s a fine line. Most “normal” people could never find it in them to do your job.’
Rory thought the “fine line” was actually a chasm, but decided he was probably wise not to argue the point. ‘True. True.’
He glanced at Tamsin. She was still breathing.
Flower moved closer, and Rory could feel the man’s breath in his face. ‘What sort of lives did they have anyway? You must have noticed the kind of victims I chose? Vagrants, methies, junkies, runaways.’ The eyes were glittering dangerously.
‘I see. You chose the ones that wouldn’t be missed.’
‘Of course. But that’s not the whole reason. It goes deeper than that. I took those filthy bodies and made them clean. I made them pure! I turned their stinking, tainted selves into something wholesome again!’ Flower leapt from the chair, knocking it over and scaring Rory. ‘But who cares anymore? It’s over now, stolen from me by one man’s greed. That miserable, avaricious glutton called Shine.’
Rory saw the man’s hands begin to grip and release as he paced the room. ‘He’s dead now, Simon.’
‘Which is a great pity. Because no matter how he died, I could have made it a thousand times worse for him.’
Rory watched the man’s composure begin to show signs of unravelling, and he tried to redirect the conversation. ‘Er, can I ask you something? As a professional, I have to say that the equipment you use is excellent.’ Rory deliberately faltered. ‘Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter what I say now.’ He sighed a little theatrically. ‘You see, the police couldn’t trace where it had come from. They still have no idea.’
‘Mm . . . ?’ Flower continued to pace around. ‘Oh, that. It’s American, shipped over via the continent. The quality was better than ours.’
‘How on earth did you get it here?’
Flower stopped pacing and said, ‘It was ostensibly for a university project for Joshua’s college. I paid for it online. It was easy to fake the documents and forge a signature. I collected it from the docks myself, hired an HGV, and under cover of night, drove it directly into one of the derelict buildings and put it together at my leisure.’
Rory nodded sagely. He wondered if the man talked at such length to all his victims. He chanced another swift look at Tamsin and wondered if he dare mention her precarious condition.
Flower went to the door and listened for a while before picking up the fall
en chair, sitting back down and tapping his foot on the stone floor.
Rory decided it was definitely not a good moment to refer to Tamsin’s plight. He searched around in his addled and exhausted brain for some other topic of conversation to spin out the time. ‘I know I’m being a pain with all these questions, but if you don’t mind me asking . . . ?’
The man gave him a suspicious scowl. ‘You’re becoming a nuisance.’
Rory smiled and nodded. ‘That’s me. A right vexation to the spirit. But something is really bothering me.’ He looked enquiringly at Flower.
‘What now?’
‘It’s about the most recent ones, the last two, uh, visitors to your sanctuary. When I examined them I realised that they were quite different to your other . . .’ He fought to find an alternative word for victim. ‘. . . your other works of art.’
Flower seemed to relax. ‘Ah, you could tell, could you? That surprises me. But yes, neither of them were part of my plan. They just needed to be dealt with because of their actions.’ He threw Rory a conspiratorial smile. ‘Mind you, I must say it made a very pleasant change to deal with such wholesome bodies.’
‘The dark one was certainly something of an Adonis.’ Rory tried to sound casual as he fought back a wave of nausea.
‘And the other one was spotless! Apart from that stupid, childish tattoo there was not a blemish on him. He even smelt good.’ Flower sighed. ‘Something of a waste really. He blundered into one of the old buildings just as I was opening one of my secret entrances, so,’ he shrugged, ‘I didn’t have much choice.’
‘And the other one? The one with black hair?’
Flower’s frown creased into furrows. ‘His death is that bastard Karl Shine’s fault. He was checking the ground, with some very sophisticated high-tech equipment, dangerously close to my sanctuary and to my devices.’
‘Devices?’
‘My carefully planned son et lumiere. Sound and light to keep the curious away and the superstitious cowering in their beds.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Funny how modern techniques used in the army for distraction purposes can be adapted to feed people’s irrational fears of the unknown.’ He shook his head. ‘All wasted now.’
‘You must have spent a lot of time here,’ Rory said with what he hoped sounded like empathy.
‘Every hour God gave me. Whenever I could, day or night. This is my spiritual home.’ He suddenly let out a low growling noise, stood up and began pacing again.
Rory’s shoulders drooped. He knew he’d pushed his luck about as far as it would go.
Flower continued to pace, then looked at his watch and flopped back down into his chair, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
After a few minutes, Rory chanced saying, ‘We seem to be waiting for something.’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘And . . . ?’
Flower dropped his head into his hands. ‘I’m so very tired. There’s such a lot to do.’ When he looked up, Rory saw hollow eyes and a pallor of skin more appropriate to his own dissecting table. ‘I have opened the exits at the furthest point on the marsh. They are flooding as we speak,’ he gave Rory another creepy, conspiratorial smile, ‘but not as badly as our friends in the police and the fire service think. When I was here last I prepared a few diversions. I left them a few little indications, detonators and the like. I’ve also just brought down a storeroom wall, purely for effect.’ He pointed to a small device, something like a TV remote, clipped to the waistband of his trousers. ‘My time in the Royal Engineers was not for nothing.’ He rubbed his eyes, ‘Actually, I have about two hours, until the high tide comes in and then, with the aid of this little beauty, no one will ever try to put a housing estate on Flaxton Mere again.’
Flower stood up and walked towards the door. ‘Not long now and we’ll be able to go. But we need to tread very carefully, because of my rather clever diversions.’
‘Go where?’ Rory felt a frisson of fear, then a glimmer of hope. He had used the word “we.”
‘Back to my sanctuary, where else?’
The glimmer of hope died.
Rory knew that he would never be able to keep up the banter, even though their lives depended on it. He sagged forward, and although a terrible ennui was creeping insidiously through his mind, he desperately tried to keep going.
‘And what about that lovely young woman over there?’
Flower’s head tilted, with a quick, twitchy motion. ‘Yes. Now there we have a problem. Some people don’t react too well to my preferred form of sedative, and she was one of them. So, what to do?’ The question hung in the air.
‘I could take a look at her, if you like? I admit that my patients are usually beyond help, but I am still medically trained.’
‘Nice one, my friend. But I don’t think so.’
Rory’s head felt as if it would explode. How long could he keep this up?
Opposite him, pacing slowly backwards and forwards, Flower seemed to be in some sort of trance. He was muttering the name “Joshua” as he walked.
‘At least your end came in the place you loved,’ he concluded.
Rory felt as if iced water had been thrown at him. ‘Joshua is dead too?’
‘Oh, he’s dead! Very dead! But,’ Flower straightened up with a jerk, ‘you don’t think that I . . . ?’ He let out a staccato, barking laugh. ‘He died by his own hand.’ Flower sank onto the chair, slowly shaking his head. ‘Joshua knew I had to be involved. He believed I’d done something terrible.’
Rory’s head ached and it was becoming difficult to concentrate. He knew that he was being used as a sort of confessor. And Flower seemed to want to take his time with his story.
‘In the end I told Joshua everything. Everything I’d done over the last twenty years, and how and why. And I told him of my plans to give Flaxton Mere back to the sea. But he never answered me . . .’ The voice broke. ‘He never said a word. He just hugged me and cried like a baby.’ Flower drew in a deep, noisy breath. ‘He told me he loved me, then he ran from the house, jumped into his car, and I never saw him again until an hour or so ago when the police brought me here. He’s in the small crypt . . .’ He stopped, mid-sentence, then stood abruptly and said, ‘It’s time to go. I have to attend to one or two small jobs.’
‘And the girl? What about Tamsin?’ asked Rory desperately.
Flower slowly turned. His expression was steely cold. ‘I’ve lost everything. This place was my life. So I’m going to share a little of that hurt with the detective sergeant. Let’s see how he feels about losing something rare, precious and beautiful.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dave frowned. ‘This place is a bleeding rabbit warren. They could be anywhere, and didn’t someone say half the North Sea might soon be making its way down the tunnels?’
Stuart Bass was unconvinced. ‘I think that’s a diversionary tactic to get us out. He’s buying time.’ He bit his lip. ‘While Rory and I were working in the burial chamber, we talked about how tormented the killer must be to be separated from his holy of holies. Rory always said that he’d be unable to stay away.’
‘I thought the same thing,’ said Dave. ‘And now there’s nothing left. He’s even taken care of his brother. What’s the betting he goes back to his sanctuary to kill himself?’
‘And my Tamsin, and Rory?’ Joseph asked slowly.
Stuart shrugged. ‘Where else would he take them?’
‘Then I think we’d better get our arses down there!’ Niall was hair-spring taut.
Stuart started to agree, then they heard the sound of policemen’s boots running up the long corridor behind them.
The uniformed inspector raised his eyebrows when he saw them. ‘Your superintendent said you should all be severely reprimanded and read the riot act for this, but unofficially you might welcome a bit of support. Is that right?’ He smiled.
Dave grinned. ‘You are so right, sir! Now, what do you think about this?’ He told the inspector of their assumption.
The man looked grim. ‘Okay, it’s worth a shot. I’ll radio the RV point and tell them to give us another unit as back-up. Now, show us where the hell in this labyrinth we’re supposed to be going.’
It took about ten minutes to get back to the surface and reach the pillbox. Then Joseph and the three others, backed by the small armed unit, slipped silently down the stone steps and into the burial chamber.
The inspector spread his arms and the policemen moved, in pincer formation, around the big crypt. Joseph looked across at him and raised his hands, palms up, as if to say, “What now?”
‘He’ll be here.’ The inspector raised his finger to his lips. The support team concealed themselves, and the chamber appeared to be empty.
Out on the fen, a team of armed police officers formed a cordon around the pillbox. Underground, hidden and silent, the inspector’s team waited.
One of the generators was running and a few safety lights had been left on. Above the soft humming, Stuart could hear his own heart beating. It felt as though the whole chamber were reverberating with its steady thump.
Then there was another sound. Footsteps, and a shuffling, dragging noise. It was coming from a narrow corridor behind the stone altar which had supported the mortuary table.
When Stuart saw the figure of his friend hobbling into the chamber, it was all he could do not to cry out. Then he saw that Simon Flower was immediately behind Rory, tightly gripping his arm, and holding him close. Stuart gritted his teeth. There was no clear shot for the marksmen.
He watched the two men stand perfectly still, and gaze wordlessly around the chamber. From his hiding place in the shadows, he wondered if Flower would feel as he had, that the magic had gone.
Stuart heard a low, almost inhuman keening sound that seemed wrenched from the depths of the man’s dark soul.
Flower flung his prisoner to the ground, and ran howling down the steps towards the crypt, and the empty shelves where his victims had been stored. He stood in the archway leading to the burial chamber and gazed at the desecration. He slowly turned back to his prisoner. The pathologist was clasped tightly in the arms of his friend.