Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  Grimwood gazed at the place that had once been his home. Its brick frontage was sorely dilapidated: the long-broken window had been nailed across with planks; the door was old and scabby, the paint coming off it in long strips, though the number 41 was still visible in tarnished brass.

  “I take it no-one’s lived here since?” he said.

  “Not likely,” Lockhart replied. He produced a key. “Hardly an investment, is it?”

  “People have a thing about houses where nutters used to hang out,” Brunton added.

  “That’s right,” Lockhart said. “Worried they’ll end up like those poor sods who moved into Christie’s place. Where was it, Baz?”

  Brunton shrugged.

  “Rillington Place,” Craegan said.

  It was the first time the firearms man had spoken, and they all looked at him. He didn’t appear to be sharing the two detectives’ dark humour, but Grimwood suspected this had nothing to do with sympathy for a prisoner’s plight. Craegan had a long, thin face with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes as big and cold as ice cubes. He stared at Grimwood intensely, as if he fancied a spot of target practise right at that moment.

  “That’s it,” Lockhart said. “Ten, Rillington Place. You remember, Gordon? They’d been in half a day and there were bodies flopping out the cupboards. That how you see yourself? Christie and his like?”

  “I was never convicted of murder,” the rapist replied quietly.

  Lockhart unlocked the front door and pushed it open. Stale odours wafted out. “No – but you’re not worried by it either, are you? I mean, why else agree to bring us here?” He stepped inside. “It’s all part of the fun for blokes like you, isn’t it … the darkness, the spookiness?” He flicked his torch on; it showed bare floorboards, peeling wallpaper. “Course, it’s just an act. You know what the girls used to call Christie behind his back? Reggie No-Dick. Fred West, he was another. He used to advertise for studs to come and fuck his wife, because he couldn’t keep up with her himself.”

  “And what about you, Lockhart?” Grimwood asked. “What kind of legend do you want to be?”

  The chief super looked sharply round. For a moment he seemed surprised that someone had dared challenge him. It was certainly the first time their prisoner had spoken his mind. And he didn’t stop there.

  “I bet there was no holding you back when this one came up, was there?” Grimwood added. “Fancied crowning your career, did you? Or maybe making your career? Maybe your career’s been so shit you needed something like this!”

  A hand took the nape of his neck – it was Craegan’s. “You mouthy bastard!” he snarled, shoving the prisoner into the house.

  “Thought you’d be the man who broke the Lancashire Beast, eh?” Grimwood sniggered. He was thrown backward against a wall. “Even though you had nothing to do with catching him …”

  A rock-hard punch slammed into his guts and drove the wind from him. He doubled over, but someone snatched his collar and yanked him upright again. Then a cold, circular object pressed into his temple. Grimwood didn’t need to see the torchlight gleam on the slick steel barrel to know it was the muzzle of the Glock, firm in Craegan’s grasp.

  The torch appeared beside it, glaring into his eyes. Behind it, Lockhart’s head was a featureless mass. “Your mates from Durham are sitting in their car about two hundred yards down the road, playing cards and taking the piss.” The chief super spoke in a low, tremulous monotone. “You know what that means, Grimwood? It means we’ve got free rein. It means they don’t give a fuck about you. Nobody does. Whatever the prison shrinks say, bastards like you are fucking scum and beyond the law.” He clamped the prisoner’s throat in a fat, hairy hand. “Do you get me, son?”

  “Some hero you are,” Grimwood choked.

  Lockhart squeezed his throat even harder. “There’s no such thing as heroes. Only people like us … me and you. So let’s cut the bullshit and understand one another. You are going to take us to the body of Kirsty Ann McGregor. And afterwards, you are going to confess in detail to how you murdered and probably – you disgusting pig – raped her! Now this is not lynch-law or backstreet justice, or whatever else you and your do-gooding politician friends like to call it. I know you killed that child, and you know I know.” A second passed, and Lockhart released his grip. “If it makes you feel any better, though, Gordon … yeah you’re right, I just want a fucking result. But if you know anything about coppers at all, you’ll know that’s all the more reason not to fucking disappoint me!”

  Hrothgar is referred to as a ‘ring-giver’; in other words, he amply rewarded loyal service. It is impossible to disassociate Beowulf from this. In the Viking tradition, courage in battle was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but gifts and glory were always expected …

  The men stood back as Brunton produced a crowbar, fitted it under the first floorboard and, with some effort, cracked it loose. Several more followed, until a gaping hole yawned before them. However, strong torchlight revealed that it wasn’t the chasm it appeared to be. It was perhaps four feet deep and ran the length of the room; its floor was beaten dirt and alive with cockroaches scurrying to escape the powerful beam. A dank earthy smell, which was actually no worse than the stench pervading the rest of the abandoned house, drifted slowly upward.

  Lockhart snorted. “The Beast’s Lair … I ask you.” He glowered at Grimwood. “If only those hacks knew the truth about blokes like you. Worst thing we ever did in this country was abolish public executions. At least in those days people got to see what snivelling wretches you lot are. Locking you up in solitary just adds to the mystique, doesn’t it?”

  Grimwood said nothing. He stared down into the crawlspace as if trying to remember something.

  “I hope you haven’t forgotten where you put her,” Lockhart added, suddenly suspicious. “Not after bringing us all this way.”

  “I’ll need to get down and look.”

  Lockhart stepped aside. “Be our guest.”

  Grimwood was about to jump when the muzzle of the pistol jammed into his spine. “Don’t think about trying anything,” Craegan advised. “I’ll blow you in fucking half.”

  Grimwood nodded, then leaped down into the hole and crouched to shuffle out of sight under the remaining floorboards.

  Lockhart handed Brunton the torch. “Go with him, Baz.”

  The burly DS did as he was told. A few moments later, he was hunkered down beside the prisoner, his flashlight reflecting off loose and aged brickwork.

  Grimwood patted it, then sat back and raised his foot. “This isn’t part of the foundation wall,” he said. “It looks like it, but it isn’t. I discovered this when I was a lad.”

  And he rammed his foot forward – once, twice, three times. At first the bricks resisted, only dust trickling down, though with the third blow their positions visibly altered. Encouraged, Grimwood tried again, this time harder – until at last, one by one, the bricks dislodged and fell through into darkness. Their mortar had long ago crumbled to powder, and a jagged cavity was now visible, which was large enough for a man to climb through.

  “What’s going on?” Lockhart asked from above.

  “There’s more space down here than we thought, boss,” Brunton replied. He turned to Grimwood. “What’s through there?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  The prisoner made to clamber forward, but Brunton stopped him. “Just a minute. Boss! You’d best get down and have a look at this!”

  With some grunting, and no little sweating in the confined, dusty space, Lockhart and Craegan joined them.

  “It’s the old air-raid shelters,” Grimwood explained. “From Myrtle & Son. They were derelict even when I was a kid … hadn’t been used for ten years. But this is how I used to get in and out of our house without anyone seeing.”

  Lockhart stared through the hole. The torchlight illuminated a passage beyond it with a facing wall of bare concrete. “Are you telling me the original investigation team didn’t find this?”

 
; Grimwood shook his head.

  “Fucking woodentops,” Brunton muttered.

  Grimwood glanced at him, amused. “You wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t shown you.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  “See if you can get through, Barry,” Lockhart said.

  Nodding, but still scowling at Grimwood, the big sergeant bent forward and, inch by inch, squeezed his bulk through the aperture. He swore aloud as something snagged and ripped his jacket; but a minute or so later he was standing up on the other side.

  “It seems alright,” he said, his voice hollow and echoing. “Bloody cold, though. And watch the step – it’s about a foot and a half down.

  Craegan prodded Grimwood in the back. “You next.”

  Grimwood complied, followed by the firearms man and then Lockhart.

  The air-raid shelter had a more ‘underground’ feel to it than the crawlspace: dank and cool, with the sound of dripping water in its farthest depths. It was comprised mainly of identical passages, each one made from concrete and wide enough only for two men to walk abreast. In that classic 1930s style, the ceilings were all smoothly arched, though many were also riddled with fractures or had actually fallen in, strewing the floor with rubble and masonry. None of this seemed to put Grimwood off – boldly, he started walking. The cops shuffled in pursuit, dense blackness hemming them in from both front and rear. Even the strong torch shone only twenty or thirty yards ahead.

  “You know our radios won’t work down here, don’t you?” Craegan said quietly.

  Lockhart grimaced. He fished his radio from his pocket and tried to call Halliwell Comms. Only dead airwaves came back. He also tried his mobile phone, punching out the direct line to the CID office. Again, there was no response.

  He shrugged. “Don’t need it anyway, do we? Not like we’re a couple of birds who this arsehole can beat up and stick his dick in.”

  They pressed on through what, it was rapidly becoming clear, was a labyrinth. There were numerous turn-offs – some they took, others they ignored – and several complex junctions. One open space even had a table and a couple of very old school chairs in it; in faded red letters, on a high portion of wall, the wording ASSEMBLY AREA TWO was stencilled. The group waited there briefly while Grimwood tried to get his bearings.

  “Used to know this place like the back of my hand,” he said. “Newspapers thought I spent twelve years under my mum’s living room.” He snorted in derision. “No chance … not when I had all this to explore.”

  “How far does it go?” Lockhart asked, trying to modulate his voice.

  He didn’t want to admit it, but he suddenly felt as if he’d lost the initiative. They’d only been walking two or three minutes, and he was already unsure about the way back. The atmosphere was also getting to him: the chill, the damp, the enclosed nature of the place. Lockhart didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, but it wasn’t pleasant to contemplate the many layers of rock and soil above, largely – from what he could see – without any form of support.

  Grimwood moved on, taking the second of two right-hand passages. “Quite a distance. There used to be ways up to the surface, but they all got blocked with cement, to stop kids getting in.”

  “Where the fuck are you taking us to?” Brunton asked. He was still coming the heavy, but the eyes were darting about, rabbit-like, in his red, pudgy face.

  “We’re almost there,” Grimwood answered, a curious half-smile twisting his mouth.

  A few minutes later they entered an area of tunnel more heaped with debris than anything they’d so far seen; huge sections of its roof and walls had long ago collapsed. In consequence, this space was the tightest and dingiest yet. A black fungus coated the damp and rotted fragments of wall that were still visible – it seemed to leach away what minuscule light there was, and fuelled the sensation that the party had now burrowed to the deepest point of the air-raid shelters. In that respect, when Grimwood suddenly stopping to think, chuckled and, hunkering down, began to scoop bricks and dirt away from the piled rubble with his cuffed hands, it filled the three cops with revulsion.

  “Can you imagine,” Craegan said, “this slimy little toe-rag brought a child down here!” His gun was trained firmly on Grimwood’s back; sweat gleamed on his pallid face.

  Lockhart glanced warily at the firearms man. “That’s behind him now though, isn’t it? Eh … Gordon?”

  Grimwood made no reply.

  “Confession’s good for the soul,” Lockhart added.

  “So’s prison,” Craegan said, his voice rising. “Too good. He should’ve been strung up for what he did!”

  Grimwood ignored him and continued to dig.

  “Easy, Craegan,” Lockhart advised.

  “Easy?” For the first time, the firearms man looked round at the chief super. “Easy? He’s had it easy … for way too long!”

  They didn’t notice Grimwood suddenly stand up, or see him brush a few crumbs of dirt from the long, heavy screwdriver with the sharpened tip that he’d just extricated from the heap of rubble. Even when he turned stiffly to face them, the weapon clasped horizontal but handle-first against his stomach, they were too nonplussed to register the imminent threat.

  “What are you playing a … ” Brunton was in the process of saying, when Grimwood suddenly thrust the spike forward and up, plunging it hard into Craegan’s left eye, driving it virtually to the hilt.

  There was a millisecond of stunned silence before the firearms man tottered backward against the wall. The other two officers reacted explosively. Lockhart gave a wild shout; Brunton threw a massive punch. However, Grimwood had been expecting this and ducked to the ground, the sergeant’s heavy fist thus impacting on his own chief superintendent’s nose, smashing it and hurling him off his feet.

  “You shitarse!” Brunton screamed.

  Craegan had begun to shoot. Not because he was acting professionally and following his detailed training. But because he was already dead from acute brain damage, and his finger was locked on the Glock’s trigger. As his legs buckled and he slid lifelessly down the wall, the pistol went off repeatedly in his hand. Shots ricocheted, screaming left and right – and punching three neat holes in Detective Sergeant Brunton’s barrel chest.

  The sergeant dropped like a stone, the flashlight falling from his grasp.

  The deafening echoes of the fusillade took several seconds to die away. When they finally did, Lockhart was still on the ground, half-dazed. Only when he looked weakly up again did it strike him where he was and what peril he was in. Grimwood was crouched a matter of five or six yards away, watching in predatory silence, his battered face written with jack-o-lantern glee. Lockhart’s blood ran cold – especially when he spotted the Glock. It was lying right beside the psychopath; in fact, Grimwood was reaching down for it. The chief super froze, went bug-eyed. Then he moved as fast as he could, diving for the dropped flashlight and switching it off, plunging them both into Stygian blackness.

  There was a moment of complete quiet: not a scrape of a shoe, not even a breath. Lockhart was still on his hands and knees. His clothes clung like a second skin to his sweat-sodden body. His nose stung abominably – clearly it was broken, but he knew he couldn’t risk even a whimper. Grimwood needed only to pick up the gun and start firing. He had a few shots left, and then he might possess sense enough to rifle Craegan’s pockets for spare clips.

  There was a sound – a rasping chuckle. And a voice. It was Grimwood’s, soft and spooky and taunting. “I told you fifty times, Lockhart, that I wasn’t a murderer … well, now you’ve made me one. Congratulations.”

  Lockhart tried to shift backward. He was way too close to the madman for comfort.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Grimwood asked. “There’s about two miles of interconnecting tunnels down here. Even with your torch, you won’t find your way out.”

  Lockhart bit his lip, but the pain and fear were overwhelming and suddenly he couldn’t resist replying, “You won’t get away with this,
you bastard!”

  Grimwood’s chuckle rose into a throaty laugh. “Lockhart … I never get away with anything. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life getting leathered. I’ve had it off you sons of bitches, off the screws at Durham. I’ve even had it off my fellow inmates. Not that I can’t handle it … I mean before all this started I was getting it off my Mum, who regretted the day I was born.” The laugh faded again, into something darker, more bitter. “I couldn’t even look at a girl, never mind bring one home, without the stick coming out, or the belt, or the fucking fire poker. Course, it was when she used to press my hand against the scalding kettle that it really got unpleasant.”

  “But what do you think you’re going to achieve with this?” the cop asked, using the conversation to mask the crunch of bricks as he rose cautiously to his feet.

  Grimwood mused. “Oh … a moment’s pleasant distraction. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really.”

  Panic-stricken thoughts rushed through Lockhart’s head. If he turned and legged it, would the maniac give immediate chase or did he still need to find the gun? He hadn’t actually seen the bastard pick it up, which meant he might have to scrabble about in the dark for a minute or two. That could create sufficient time in which to reach the outside world. It was risky to say the least, but what other option was there?

  Grimwood seemed to be reading his mind, however. “Just remember,” he sneered, “when you run … apart from where we came in, all the other exits and entrances have been sealed off. Run blindly, and you could easily finish up at some dead-end. Which will be quite appropriate.”

  “Fuck you!” Lockhart hissed.

  “Defiant to the end. Or just pig-ignorant?” Grimwood tittered. “Get it? Pig-ignorant?”

  Lockhart backed away, then turned and began to stumble along the passage. Immediately, rubble got in the way of his feet, cobwebs trailed in his face – but he was determined not to switch on the flashlight, not yet. He would steer by the walls, both of which he could touch with his outstretched hands.