by Shaun Hutson
“One of them probably wants to have a piss,” he said.
By this time the emergency vehicle had indeed stopped. Fowler brought the Panda to a halt about twenty yards behind, watching as the driver got out and walked to the back of the vehicle. He fumbled with the doors, finally turning the handle.
Harvey came crashing out of the ambulance like a tank through a wall. The door slammed into the driver, knocking him flat and, before anyone could react, he was dashing off into the darkened woods to the left, disappearing like a fading nightmare.
Both Willis and Fowler leapt out of the car, the sergeant dashing after Harvey but it was useless. He saw the big man crashing through the undergrowth in his wild flight but the sergeant knew that he could never catch him. He ran back across the road to check on the injured ambulancemen. The driver was bleeding from a cut on the forehead, his companion inside lay unconscious.
“Get on the two-way, quick,” Willis told Fowler. “Alert all cars. Tell them what’s happened.”
Fowler ran back to the car and snatched up the radio.
Within minutes, every man on the Exham force was picking up his frantic message.
Outside the pub, Maggie pulled up the collar of her coat and waited as Randall fumbled in his pocket for the car keys. A slight fog had come down during the evening and Maggie noticed how halos seemed to have formed around the sodium street lamps. Objects looked blurred and indistinct through the thin film of mist.
Randall finally found the keys and unlocked the car. Both of them climbed in. He was about to start the engine when the two-way hissed into life. Randall picked it up.
“Randall here, what is it?” he asked.
“It’s Harvey,” the voice at the other end said.
Maggie saw Randall’s expression darken.
“Harvey’s loose,” the voice said.
Forty-Two
Harold paced the corridors of the deserted asylum agitatedly. The wind was whispering through the many broken windows and it seemed to add an accompaniment to his apparently aimless wanderings. He moved with assurance through the dark avenues, through rooms which he had come to know only too well in the past and with which he was now becoming reacquainted. He could not sleep. It wasn’t that he dare not but, for the first time in many years, the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness eluded him.
He pushed open a door and walked into what had once been a dormitory. One or two beds, considered too old to be moved to the new psychiatric hospital, still stood in their familiar places. The iron work was rusted, the old mattresses damp and torn. Harold walked across to one and looked down at it. In his mind’s eye he could see himself lying there, sleeping peacefully.
Crossing to one of the windows, he stared out into the night. It seemed a million years since he had been here, the memories now like fading photographs, the images becoming more and more indistinct.
He remained at the window for a long time then finally turned and walked back towards the door of the dormitory, pushing it shut behind him. He made his way slowly along the corridor, one hand absent-mindedly touching the scarred side of his face. Harold reached the foot of the staircase which would take him up to the first floor and the room where the foetuses lay. He paused for a moment, gazing up, as if expecting to see someone standing at the top, then, wearily, he began to climb. His legs and head ached and, as he drew nearer to the room, the stench which he had come to know so well wrapped itself around him like invisible tentacles.
He stumbled into the room and froze, both hands gripping the door frame until his knuckles turned white.
The first, and largest, of the three creatures was standing up.
It wavered uncertainly at first, those black pits of eyes pinning Harold in a hypnotic stare. Then, as if moving in slow motion, it began to walk.
Forty-Three
Paul, Harvey tore the last of the dressing from his nose and cheeks and tossed it aside. He had already removed the bandages around his head. Now he moved slowly down the lane, sucking in lungfuls of early morning air. He still found it difficult to breathe through his nose and his breathing was harsh and guttural. A persistent pain gnawed at the back of his head where he’d sustained the fracture and, periodically, he would press tentative fingers to it.
Exham had yet to come to life. The town seemed to be sleeping as dawn broke but Harvey knew that, soon, there would be people on the streets, in their gardens, walking their dogs. He had to find shelter. He’d spent the night in a shed at the bottom of a large garden. It was from there he’d picked up the shears which he now held in one huge hand but, as the daylight began to creep inexorably across the heavens, he knew he must find somewhere to hide.
The church stood on a hill, on the very edge of one of Exham’s many estates. It was old, its stone-work worn and chipped, the colours in its stained-glass windows now faded somewhat. A weather vane squeaked mournfully in the light breeze and Harvey ran appraising eyes over the building as he approached it. Many of the gravestones were coloured with moss and a good number of the plots were overgrown. Here and there, dead flowers lay like discarded confetti, their petals now brown and wrinkled.
He reached the main door but found it locked. He slammed a powerful fist against it twice, angry that he could not gain entry. Muttering to himself, he made his way around the building until he found another door. This one was old too, the woodwork the colour of dried blood. It was splintered in many places and the chain which held it shut looked brittle. Harvey tugged hard on it, gritting his teeth as he felt the rusty links give. It snapped with a dull clang and he tossed the pieces away, wedging his fingers in the gap between door and frame in an effort to get it open.
The hinges screamed alarmingly but Harvey persevered, finally opening it far enough to give himself access. He slipped inside. The stench and the impenetrable darkness nearly made him change his mind but, fortunately, due to his broken nose he could not detect too much of the fetid odour and he soon found that there was some light coming into the subterranean room. He descended the stone steps cautiously only realizing when he reached the bottom that he was in a crypt.
Nevertheless, it was shelter. He sat down, the shears across his lap.
He waited for the darkness.
Forty-Four
Maggie stood still at the top of the stairs, trying to catch her breath. She considered herself a fit woman but climbing up a long flight of stairs with two armfuls of shopping had all but exhausted her. She walked across towards the door of her flat, wishing that she’d put some lower shoes on. Her feet were throbbing and she decided to run a bath as soon as she got inside. She put down her bags and fumbled in the pocket of her jeans for the key.
The phone was ringing inside and Maggie muttered irritably to herself as she struggled to unlock the door; she pushed it open, snatched up the bag and hurried in, one eye on the phone, convinced that it would stop ringing the moment she picked it up. She made a dash for it and lifted the receiver.
“Hello,” she said.
“Doctor Ford?”
She recognized the voice at the other end of the line but could not identify it immediately.
“It’s Ronald Potter here.”
Maggie wrinkled her brow.
“What can I do for you?” she wanted to know.
Potter sounded anxious, distraught even.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last three hours,” he said, speaking quickly, not giving her time to ask why. She glanced across at the clock on the mantlepiece which showed 4.35 p.m. “There’s been another death. The symptoms are identical to those of that woman the other day.” Maggie heard rustling of paper on the other end of the line. “The ectopic pregnancy, Judith Myers.”
“I remember,” she said.
“There was another one this afternoon and the results of the autopsy are exactly the same. No foetus, no embryo, not even an egg and yet she died of a Fallopian rupture.”
Maggie let out a long, slow breath, gripping the receiver until he
r knuckles turned white.
“Doctor Ford.”
Potter’s voice seemed to shake her out of her trance.
“Yes, I’m still here,” she told him. “Look, I’m coming over to the hospital now. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.” She put the phone down and, without changing, she rushed out once more. The shopping was left discarded on the sitting room floor.
Maggie sipped at the cup of luke-warm coffee and winced. On the desk before her lay half a dozen different files, including those on Judith Myers but the thing which was holding her attention was the neatly typed sheet headed:
FAIRVALE HOSPITAL: NOTICE OF DECEASE.
The name entered in the appropriate box was one which she recognized:
Lynn Tyler.
Maggie exhaled deeply and ran her eyes over the sheet for the fourth rime. She had read the autopsy report countless times too, glancing at that of Judith Myers as well. From the wording, it might have been a duplicate of the same woman’s autopsy. Everything was the same about the two cases. Both young women, apparently healthy, had died from internal haemorrhage due to the rupturing of a Fallopian tube. But it was not just a rupture, it was the complete destruction of that particular internal organ. There were no warning signs, just the rapid onset of symptoms so virulent they had caused death in a matter of hours.
“No evidence of any embryonic or foetal development,” Maggie read aloud. The words were the same on both reports. It wasn’t a virus of any kind, that she was sure of. Could it be coincidence? The chances must be astronomical. Lynn Tyler had suffered a Fallopian rupture which would have corresponded to her carrying a foetus of over six months. Even the size of the bursts was the same, thought Maggie, and there was one more thing which made her uneasy.
Lynn Tyler, like Judith Myers, had undergone a clinical abortion just seven weeks earlier.
She swept her hair back and tried to find some kind of explanation for the two deaths in the fads and figures laid out before her. There seemed to be no answers, just the unnervingly exact similarities between the two deaths.
There was another file on her desk, one which she now picked up and glanced through. It was a report by the senior porter on the discovery of the foetuses which Harold Pierce had buried in the field beyond the hospital grounds. She read it once, then twice, this time more slowly. It told of how the grave had been discovered, the remains disinterred and disposed of and ended with a note about Harold’s dismissal because of his part in the action. Five foetuses had been dug up and incinerated. Maggie frowned and glanced across at another piece of paper to her left. It was a record of all clinical abortions carried out between the beginning of August and the end of September. There had been eight. The porter assigned to dispose of each one had been Harold Pierce.
Eight abortions but only five foetuses found in the grave.
Perhaps he just missed three Maggie reasoned. She chewed her bottom lip, contemplatively. Harold’s obsession with the “burning of children”, as he put it, was something which had surprised her but now, as she sat alone in her office, she began to wonder just how deep that obsession went.
“Eight abortions carried out,” she muttered. “Five bodies exhumed.” She drummed on the desk top with her fingers.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Maggie, called and was surprised to see Randall standing there.
“I went to your flat,” he said. “There was no answer so I thought I’d try here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “something came up.” Then, remembering he had problems of his own she added:
“Any sign of Harvey yet?”
He shook his head, producing a newspaper from behind his back. He held it before him.
“I could have done without this too,” he muttered, handing her the paper.
She opened it and read the headline:
MANIAC HARVEY ELUDES POLICE AGAIN
“Oh Christ,” said Maggie, quickly scanning the story that accompanied the headline. “ ‘Mass murderer, Paul Harvey, already thought to be responsible for four deaths in Exham recently, escaped from the police for the second time in as many days. . .’ “ She allowed the sentence to trail off. “What are you going to do?” she asked him.
Randall was gazing out of the window into the darkening evening sky. The first droplets of rain were coursing down the pane like silent tears.
“About what?” he demanded. “Harvey, or that fucking article?”
“Both.”
“Bloody local papers,” rasped Randall. “They’re all the same. A bunch of two-bit scribblers. They might as well write on toilet paper because the stuff they write is only fit for wiping your arse on.” He banged the window frame angrily.
“And Harvey?” she said.
Randall sucked in a troubled breath.
“My men are out there now looking for him, they’ve got orders to call me the minute they find anything.” He turned, scanning the piles of paper and files on her desk. “What’s your problem?” He sat down opposite her and Maggie began speaking. She explained everything. About the two deaths, about the autopsy reports, the abortions, even the discovery of the foetuses’ grave.
“Christ,” murmured Randall when she’d finally finished. “How do you explain it?”
“I can’t,” she told him.
“And the pathologist has no answer either?”
She shook her head.
He asked if it could be a virus.
“Any infection would have shown up in the examination,” she told him.
He reached forward and picked up one of the files, flipping through it.
“In both cases,” she said, “there was no physical cause for the Fallopian ruptures, that’s the most puzzling thing. It’s as if they were, well. . .” she struggled to find the words, “induced.”
Randall looked up.
“I don’t get you,” he said.
“Every woman reacts differently to an abortion,” Maggie explained. “For some it’s a great relief but even the ones who want abortions and realize how necessary they are still feel guilty. It might only be in their subconcious but the guilt is still there.”
“So you’re trying to say that these two women induced the symptoms of ectopic pregnancy in themselves to compensate for the kids they’d had aborted?” he said.
Maggie raised an eyebrow.
“Does it sound crazy?”
Randall dropped the file back onto the desk.
“It sounds bloody ridiculous, Maggie,” he said.
“Well then what the hell do you think happened?” she asked.
“Look, you’re the doctor not me but you must admit that theory is stretching things a bit.”
“Do you know anything about the power of the mind, Lou?”
“About as much as the average man in the street. What kind of power?”
“Thought projection, auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis. That kind of thing.”
He sighed.
“Come on, Lou,” she muttered, “I know it’s clutching at straws but it’s all I’ve got. Both women aborted for non-medical reasons.”
“Meaning what?” he demanded.
“Usually abortions are carried out if the baby is found to be malformed, retarded or sometimes even dead. Both Judith Myers and Lynn Tyler would have given birth to perfectly healthy children. There was nothing clinically wrong with the babies they were carrying. They had abortions for convenience not necessity.”
“You said there were three bodies missing from the grave,” he said: “What about the mother of the third aborted child?”
Maggie flicked through one of the files.
“That abortion was a medical necessity,” she told him. “The scan showed that the child would have been malformed.”
Randall nodded.
“If your theory about the ectopic pregnancies is right,” the Inspector said, “then you realize you’re trying to tell me they committed suicide.”
Maggie sighed.
&
nbsp; “I know it sounds ridiculous, you’re right.” There was a long pause. “Lou, it’s almost as if they’d both still had the foetuses gestating inside their Fallopian tubes despite the fact that they’d undergone abortions just weeks before. I don’t know what to think.”
“What about this business with the grave?” he asked. “Were the three missing bodies ever found?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Randall frowned, aware that what he was about to say was going to sound idiotic. He coughed.
“Is there any way a foetus could continue to grow once it had been removed from the womb?” he asked.
“No. Even in laboratory conditions it would be difficult. Not impossible but extremely unlikely.”
He exhaled deeply.
“Now I’m not sure what I’m trying to say,” he confessed. “But I know one thing, I’d like to talk to Harold Pierce.”
“How could he be linked with this?” she wanted to know.
“Maybe he knows what happened to those other three bodies.”
Maggie closed the files and stacked them on one corner of the desk. She got to her feet, switching off the lamp. The room was momentarily plunged into darkness.
“Perhaps we’ll both think straighter on a full stomach,” said Randall, opening the office door for her.
They walked out into the corridor, heading for the lift. Maggie looked worried and, as they reached the ground floor, she took his hand and held it tightly. The two of them walked out to the car park where Randall’s Chevette waited. As he opened the passenger door to let her in, Maggie seemed reluctant to let go of his hand. He touched her cheek gently and kissed her softly on the lips.
Inside the car, despite the warmth from the heater, both of them shivered.
They were back at Randall’s place in less than twenty minutes.
Neither of them ate much. They spoke quietly, as if afraid that their conversation would be overheard by someone. Again and again they discussed what had transpired at the hospital, as if repeated examination of the bizarre events would somehow lead to a solution. There was no need for either of them to suspect anything out of the ordinary but nevertheless an atmosphere of foreboding seemed to descend over them as they spoke. In the sitting room, Maggie sat close to Randall, glad to feel his arm around her shoulder. Still they talked and still they could find no answers.