The Evil Beneath

by A J Waines

  ‘We lost the baby, you know.’ She sniffed. ‘After the accident in the Lakes. Don’t know if you knew Angela was pregnant.’

  ‘No. I didn’t. I’m so sorry.’

  Her arms were folded now. I noticed she hadn’t offered any acknowledgement that I’d saved her daughter’s life. She didn’t look like she was going to, either. She was defiant. Angry. Angry, with me for some reason.

  ‘Angela will be here shortly,’ I said, casually. ‘I’m afraid we’ll need to draw our session to a close and go downstairs.’

  ‘Angela is a long way away,’ she corrected with a forced smile. ‘She won’t be back for some time.’

  I found myself on my feet, overwhelmed by an acute sense of impending danger. At the same moment, an image finally burst through into my conscious mind. In that instant I knew what was trying to reach me. The gold badge. They weren’t coins - they were rings. Five of them. The Olympic symbol. A shoal of goose-pimples came to life along my arms, sending the hairs upright.

  The horrible truth was settling around me like fast-acting fog. The items that belonged to me that were left on the bodies in the river - Lynn had access to them all. It was Lynn who knew my favourite childhood book was The Secret Garden. She’d read it to me when I was nine years old. Our baby-sitter. She must have come across a cinema ticket the next time she baby-sat after the fire and slipped it in her pocket. She was the link to my past.

  Lynn must have been there when the women went into the water.

  Before I could react, Lynn slipped past me and locked the door, dropping the keys into her pocket.

  She knew.

  ‘You killed Angela’s baby…in that boat accident.’

  ‘What? No - I saved Angela’s life!’ I caught a flash of venom in Lynn’s eyes.

  Something she had said earlier was tugging at my sleeve. To do with the words she had used. That was it. When she described Angela losing the baby during the boating accident, she’d said we lost the baby - not, she, her daughter, but we, as though Lynn had some claim to the unborn child.

  ‘You saved your little friend, first, then as an afterthought, you decided to bother with my daughter.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I broke in. Images of that day, when the waves tipped our dingy upside down into the rapids, were flicking one after another through my memory, like a DVD on fast-forward. ‘The other girl, Emma Brockley…she was nearest to me when the dinghy went over. It wasn’t about choosing Angela second - it was about getting them both out.’

  Lynn ignored me. ‘I didn’t care that Angela was only sixteen when she first fell pregnant - in fact, you might say I encouraged it. We would have raised the child together,’ she said. ‘It would have been our family.’ Lynn’s face fell and she rounded on me. ‘But you put a stop to that. You killed our baby.’ She wagged her finger at me, getting closer. ‘And it wasn’t just the one baby you killed.’ I could hear the blood pumping in my ears and my hands starting to sweat. ‘You just don’t get it do you!?’

  She stamped her foot and I flinched, convinced she was about to land a punch right in my face. ‘Angela lost another one last year. Another dead baby because of you. It was all your fault. Doctors said it was because of the way she lost the baby in the accident and she’ll never have a child.’ She took hold of my shoulders and shook me violently. ‘Do you know what that’s like? She’ll NEVER have a child! You’ve robbed me of my grandchildren, my future. You can’t get away with that.’

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realised the level of danger I was in. Lynn saw me as someone who had not only killed her daughter’s unborn child, but ruined any future hope she had of having grandchildren. She was pathologically obsessed with continuing the line of her family.

  ‘That’s why I had to punish them…those slags…three of them who killed their own babies…and the other one who worked there, in that disgusting clinic, like you. It was easy to slip in on your days off, hang around and follow the ones who came out of the operating block looking fragile, clutching a post-op leaflet. None of them deserved to live.’

  The impulse to grab a chair and fling it out of the window crossed my mind, but even if I managed to break the glass, there was no way down. We both stood staring at each other, poised like two open doors in a lift about to slam shut.

  ‘The police know I’m here,’ I said, my voice hoarse, catching in my throat.

  ‘I know. Nice girl. I said hello.’

  I was blinking hard. Shit. Poor Penny. Lynn must have caught her off guard. I hoped she wasn’t badly hurt.

  The awful realisation that nobody knew where I was and nobody would dream of coming here to look for me, spread through my body, like poison. My first thought was to try to appeal to Lynn, but I could think of no point of entry. It was like staring at a Chinese puzzle box with no idea which tiny piece would slip aside, so I could open it. How could I possibly sway this woman who was so adamant in her cause. How could I say sorry, for not saving her daughter first? It would sound hollow and pointless to this woman who had decided I’d destroyed her life.

  ‘I wasn’t alone,’ she said. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I’d like you to meet someone else.’

  She unlocked the door, grabbing my arm with her other hand in a vice-like grip. She was so strong she almost lifted me off the floor as she dragged me on to the landing. As we got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard another set of footsteps and jerked around.

  William Jones stepped out of the shadows.

  Chapter Thirty

  William didn’t say anything, simply stood and stared at the floor, plucking at the skin on his neck. He had just reduced the odds of me getting out of the boathouse in one piece by half.

  ‘William…’ I said, still trying to get it all to fit inside the same frame.

  ‘Juliet…this is Billy,’ said Lynn, curling her lip.

  The truth suddenly crashed over my head like a collapsing chandelier. Billy. William. Billy was William Jones, the son she’d talked about being only thirteen. I couldn’t believe how short-sighted I’d been. When I first met William, I should have realised that the boy Lynn had been describing to me, week in and week out, was suffering Asperger’s, the same condition. Perhaps then I might have realised that she was actually talking about the same person, transported back in time.

  I was still trying to process what difference it would have made if I’d made the connection sooner, when Lynn took a step closer to me and started prodding her finger into my shoulder. I pulled away and took a swift look around. There were no windows. The side door was sturdy, solid, as was the large double door leading on to the riverside.

  I tried to work out how many steps it would take to make a dash for one of them. How many vital seconds. But, what was the point? Once I got there, all I could do was scream. The doors were locked, Lynn had the keys in her pocket and she had Billy at her beck and call. Lynn was taller and broader than me. In our sessions, she’d appeared vulnerable, with her low self-esteem giving me the impression of impotence. She was, in fact, a lot fitter than I’d given her credit for. I wouldn’t stand a chance; I had to think of something else.

  ‘The dates were special to him,’ said Lynn. ‘Those dates we chose for the women under the bridges were when he was bullied. His head was pushed under the water when he was thirteen, just like I told you. It started in September 1989…then twice in October and twice in November. Do you remember what you were doing then, Juliet?’

  I couldn’t work out what she was getting at. I was finding it hard in the current circumstances to send my mind back twenty years. I must have been eleven. It was the year before Luke died.

  ‘I don’t see what —’

  ‘We decided to use the same dates - and Billy loved the idea of using his knowledge of the tides on the Thames. He knew them all backwards.’

  The five dates. September through to November. The dates Billy had been bullied and the same dates the women were strangled.

  ‘I drive a school mini-bus,’ sa
id Lynn. ‘Plenty of space for a small boat when you remove a few seats.’

  She looked over to Billy, as if hoping to share some of the glory, but he continued to stare at the floor, a forlorn look on his face.

  ‘No one was going to bother with two people rowing on the river, even after dark,’ she continued. ‘Sometimes we left a body-bag in the boat for a few hours and came back to it later - we were versatile.’

  So that’s how they’d done it. It sounded so simple. They probably hadn’t even got their feet wet. I remembered the boats I’d seen moored on the mud banks at Kew. Benign, unremarkable. Many had tarpaulin or bin bags left inside. Even if a body had been left in their boat for an hour or two in broad daylight, no one would have suspected a thing.

  ‘And that’s what this has all been about?’ I said. ‘Retribution, because Angela lost any chance of having children - and you lost the chance of carrying on the family line?’ It probably wasn’t such a good idea to challenge her, but fury was starting to cloud my judgement.

  ‘You’re missing quite a lot here, dear,’ said Lynn. She sounded breezy and cheerful as though she was about to bring out tea and cakes. ‘Come on, Billy, tell her…she needs to know.’ She opened her arms towards him as though he was the star guest.

  He cleared his throat. ‘He did it.’

  ‘Who did what?’ I said.

  ‘He was the bully. Luke. He was the one who pushed my head under the water. 1989. Deep water, like high tide.’

  I stared at him. What was he saying? He must have got it wrong. My sweet Luke. Our special boy. A bully? No way. I felt myself sway and the boathouse started to pulsate in and out before my eyes. It was ludicrous. Not Luke.

  ‘Luke was at the school down the road,’ said Billy. ‘Him and his friends - they used to come after me. Luke was the leader. Hated me. I know the dates. Never forget. Mother saw it once.’

  Billy showed no signs of malice, he was simply stating the facts. All the malice was being manufactured and shouldered by Lynn.

  ‘Yes. It’s true,’ said Lynn. ‘That’s why Luke had to pay.’

  Without any warning, my knees went weak and I dropped to the floor.

  ‘Luke…’ I whispered. My mind blanked out for a moment and then was flooded with snapshots of my brother. Luke smiling, Luke laughing - then Luke burning, fighting to find a way out of the house. I started hyperventilating until Lynn kicked my foot hard and I began silently weeping instead.

  ‘The fire was very clever and undetectable,’ she said, rubbing her hands together; in control, enjoying every moment. ‘I knew your house. I’d babysat for the two of you a number of times.’ She glanced across at Billy. ‘Poor boy had head injuries following Luke’s bullying sprees - he’s never been the same since. I reported it, of course, but the brain scans were clear and with Billy having Asperger’s anyway, it was difficult for the neurologists to see any difference in him. But I knew he was scarred for life.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘So, we had to think of something else. The fire was a stroke of genius. Billy worked it all out, didn’t you, darling?’

  Billy shuffled from one foot to the other. He didn’t look like he was particularly enjoying himself.

  ‘Billy has always been a whiz with circuit boards and electricity. Your family were all out that afternoon, so Billy found the key under a plant pot by the front door, I mean…’ She tossed her head back to emphasise the stupidity of such a hiding place. ‘He caused the power-cut. If a fuse is too low it will blow, so he replaced some 13 amp fuses with 3 amp ones. You came back and sure enough the power went off. No one would think to check individual fuses. Your father probably tried to reset the trip switch, but it would all have blown again. Then, when you were all safely tucked up in bed, Billy went back in again and replaced the fuses and switched the power back on. Opened a few windows. Just a little breeze to fan the flames. It was dark, nobody was going to notice.’

  Except Mr Knightly, I thought, who unfortunately didn’t do anything about it.

  ‘My clever boy switched on two rings of the cooker, just like we agreed.’ She waved her arms in his direction, full of pride for him. ‘He laid a couple of tea-towels over the cooker and left some opened cartons of flammable liquid beside it, from the shed. Anyone else in the family could have done that. No real evidence, you see.’

  She was tapping her foot on the floor. I knew the only reason she was telling me all this was because she didn’t intend I’d be around much longer to repeat it. I wondered which bridge they’d chosen for me. I gulped at the thought of it and found my mouth as crusty as charred wood.

  ‘It was a magnificent blaze,’ she went on. ‘We could even see it from Donnington Street. We came over, of course. Anything to help. Couldn’t believe it when Luke ran inside after the dog. We’d have been happy just to see your house burn down, but taking Luke with it - that was an extra bonus.’

  I was still on the floor, holding my knees tight to my chest in a bid to protect myself. I felt sick and had started shaking as if overcome by fever. Everything was moving too fast. I wanted to make things go into slow-motion to give me a chance of holding on.

  ‘And that’s about it, I think.’ Her voice was light and gleeful. In spite of the low lighting, Lynn’s pupils had shrunk to a pin-prick and her irises had turned a vibrant metallic colour, as though the pigment was being lit up from the inside.

  ‘But why now? Why wait twenty years?’ I was desperate to keep her talking, spin things out, but I knew I was running out of time.

  ‘I thought about coming to get you years ago, after Angela lost her first baby, but by the time I’d worked out a plan, your family had moved to Spain. I thought you’d gone with them. Besides, although you’d killed one child, I thought then there would be more.’

  She grabbed a handful of my hair, pulled it hard, forcing my head back. I knew then how she’d got hold of the hair that had been found in the boat at Kew. Clever. I should have realised at the time. Lynn had reached out in a session just once and touched my shoulder. It was completely out of character. I should have known she wasn’t the touchy-feely type.

  She kept a firm grip on my hair. It felt like it was on fire. ‘After Angela lost another baby last year and we knew there would be no more children - well, that was it.’ She ran her hand under my chin, slicing the air. ‘Where ever you were, I was coming for you. Billy isn’t fit to be a father. Our family will die out, killed off by yours.’

  There was a pause when all I could hear was her rasping breath, then she gritted her teeth. ‘Last year, I did a little bit of checking and - lo and behold - you were living in London. I decided we’d move here. I made it my life’s work to spin my magic and see you terrified, to watch you slowly buckle as the women died one by one and the one link to them all was you. They were fair targets - they didn’t value the gifts they were carrying, whereas Angela and I…we didn’t have any choice in the matter. Neither of us could be mothers again.’

  I could see she was done with talking. ‘Where’s the body-bag, sweetheart?’ she said. My stomach lurched and I felt a heaviness pressing down in my bowel. Billy bent down, rolling out a black shape like a sleeping bag on the floor beside me. Lynn grasped my arm.

  Like the flick of a switch, I remembered the rape alarm in my pocket. I made a grab for it and removed the pin. A terrific squeal broke out around us. Lynn made a swipe for it and knocked it to the floor. I tried to go after it to kick it out of her reach, but within seconds she had ground the small box to a pulp with her heel and the noise fizzled out. She was still gripping my arm.

  ‘Pathetic,’ she said, laughing. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  She shook me. I felt like a rag doll. ‘You were meant to be the fifth body, to be found on November 15th, but the police were on to us at Kew on the 9th. We had to keep that one and use it a week later at Blackfriars - but you’ll round things off nicely. Five special dates - five sacrifices.’ She reached out and stroked Billy’s hair. ‘Now then, Billy. You know what to do. You hold he
r down and I’ll do the rest.’ He leant into her hand before kneeling down to unzip the body-bag. It was a well-practised gesture. They knew this next part off by heart.

  I had to think quickly and I had to think like a psychotherapist. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by panic. If I couldn’t reach Lynn, I had to reach Billy. I had to find a way to climb into Billy’s head. After all, that’s what I was supposed to be good at: thinking on my feet, finding ways to connect with people, encouraging them to trust me. What had Billy revealed to me in the brief time we’d spent together in the police interview room? What could I use to get me out of here?

  ‘Billy, you don’t have to do this,’ I said, calmly, gently. I couldn’t be sure how strong a hold his mother had over him. Did he blindly follow her every instruction to the letter? Did he ever make decisions on his own?

  Lynn dragged me to the body-bag and kicked my legs out from under me. I fell forward with a thud on to the granite floor and let out a yelp. She swung me onto my back in one swift, effortless manoeuvre and Billy knelt over me pressing my arms into the floor. The pain in my wrists when I’d fallen was making me dizzy. My knees felt like they were splintered and I could feel dribbles of blood running down the inside of my torn jeans. My fingers felt something gooey on the floor and I thought at first it was blood, but then noticed a bottle of Boatsheen, standing on a rack, above me. It must have been the waxy substance the police had found in the victims’ hair. Now it was going to be in mine.

  Inexplicably, time became dreamlike and elasticated. Billy was holding me down and Lynn was putting on a pair of gloves, spinning things out to allow my terror to escalate. I began to think of all the things that were left undone: I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Mum and Dad or tell them the truth about the fire. Mum, you didn’t leave the tea-towel on the oven rings. You weren’t to blame. Dad, Luke didn’t bring the flammable containers into the kitchen. He wasn’t to blame. I couldn’t die now. I couldn’t die without them knowing the truth. I had to find a way out of this.