by Finch, Paul
“I’ll give you a count of five,” Grimwood called after him. “One, two …”
“Help!” Lockhart shouted. “Someone … help me please!”
“Don’t waste your breath!” the rapist laughed. “You’re ten feet under and about fifty yards from the nearest road. Even those lazy-arsed HMPs can’t hear you. Three, four …”
Lockhart reached a corner and staggered around it. His heart was now banging against his ribs, sweat streamed off him. He wasn’t even vaguely fit, he realised; he hadn’t done a spot of real exercise for twenty years or more – wouldn’t be able to play hide ‘n’ seek with his grandkids, let alone manage something like this. Maybe the same rule applied to Grimwood, but Lockhart didn’t believe it. The guy looked thin but not wasted; perhaps he’d been working out in jail. Even if he hadn’t, he was the one who’d once spent twelve years down here. He’d know it blindfolded.
“Coming!” came a cheerful shout from somewhere behind.
The cop stopped in his tracks, panting hard, thoughts racing. Should he switch the light on yet? No – it would be a total give-away.
He blundered desperately on, turning another corner, realising he was already taking passages at random rather than trying to remember the way out, but keeping going all the same because, at present, only putting distance between himself and Grimwood would save his life.
Then he smashed into a concrete wall.
The pain of it was shocking. Lockhart’s already shattered nose was flattened against his face; there was a hammer blow to his forehead, a searing flash behind his eyes. Worse than any of this, however, his torch took the brunt of the collision and virtually exploded in his hand. He slumped to the ground, stunned, fresh hot fluid trickling over his lips, but thinking only of the torch. When he was suitably compos mentis, he groped around for it, finally laying his fingers on a hunk of crumpled metal and broken glass.
He wanted to yowl in despair, but didn’t – because now he heard someone approaching. Footfalls, definitely footfalls, coming steadily nearer and not in a tentative, fumbling fashion, the way his had been, but strong, sure. Lockhart crouched in the blackness, holding his breath. The footsteps were almost upon him. He closed his eyes tightly, even though it was already impossible to see anything. The wild thought occurred to him to snatch up some half-brick or lump of masonry, and go onto the attack. But with the maniac armed, that would surely be suicide. Best just to hunker down and wait for the inevitable.
Though the inevitable didn’t come straight away.
The approaching feet, still making no apparent effort to conceal themselves, tramped heavily past the end of the passage; and though they might have faltered there fleetingly – as if their owner had halted to listen – they were soon fading away into the distance.
Lockhart opened his eyes warily. Darkness still cloaked everything, but now he felt a vague hope. Overconfidence might be the psychopath’s undoing. And why not? Lockhart didn’t have a sportsman’s physique any longer, but he had thirty years’ police experience under his belt, and had dealt effectively with a wide range of dangerous criminals. If Grimwood thought he was dealing with Mickey Mouse, he’d be in for a shock.
Lockhart strained his ears again to ensure the killer had moved on, then dug out his phone and radio, trying to make contact on them one more time. Both devices were still dead. He returned them to his pocket, grim but not too distressed. He’d expected as much.
Grendel’s death was significant in more ways than one. When Beowulf tore off his arm, he fled into the night wailing, and was therefore deemed, at heart, to be a coward. There was a double-bluff in the poet’s words, however; when the monster’s arm was nailed to the overhead beam, it was still so large and hideous that the king’s hearth-men could only shudder with fear when they gazed at it …
It was difficult enough walking, but walking quietly was a virtual impossibility. Within two minutes, Lockhart had all but given up and was stumping his way along, slapping his hands on the walls, scattering rubble with his feet. He could only pray that he found the exit to the empty house soon. As far as he could remember, when they’d first come in they’d made a left, then a right, then a left, then a right, then another right – something like that at least. He swallowed dust as he progressed. It also coated his body, adhering thickly to his seeping sweat. Of course, all those directions would now need to be reversed. In which case, did that mean it was a left, then a left, then a right? His thoughts tailed off maddeningly. What if he’d missed a turn? Had they ignored certain passages?
The voice of rising panic was telling him that this was a lost cause, that he would never be able to find his way out of such a maze even in broad daylight. Instinctively he took a sharp left, but a second later was slogging through ankle-deep water. He backtracked and took a right. This way seemed clearer, but there were openings to both left and right. Lockhart ventured into some, others he bypassed – there was no reason or logic behind any of it. He knew the position was hopeless. He wanted to shout again, to scream, but there was another problem. He couldn’t be sure, but just for a second he fancied he heard something. He stopped in his tracks and listened intently. Almost certainly this place was crawling with rats, and that might explain what had just sounded distinctly like the soft patter of footsteps. It might.
Lockhart’s spine began to prickle. Hurriedly he pushed on, darting down any corridor he came across. He was almost running, but continued to trip and slide on the endless heaps of debris. Eventually, the agonising thump of his heart and the near-total exhaustion that wracked his untrained body brought him to another halt. He was sobbing for breath, the echoes of his flight still dying away in the adjoining passages. Nevertheless, he heard it again. This time there was no mistake – footfalls were encroaching from somewhere behind.
With a strangled gasp, he set off as quickly as he could; but now he was hobbling and grunting with effort. At one point he fell full-length, ripping the knees of his trousers and the skin beneath. Even as he clambered up and staggered on, the feet sounded closer – much closer and far less cautious, as though concealing the sound of their approach was no longer a priority. Blood pounded in Lockhart’s ears, sweat stung his eyes. He rounded corner after corner, for several minutes enjoying phenomenal luck in that he didn’t actually collide with anything. Inevitably, that luck ran out.
Lockhart went head over heels on some heavy but yielding object that lay across his path. His chin struck concrete, and for a few moments he was too dizzy to realise what it was he’d fallen over. Eventually he came back to himself – and tensed sharply, sitting up, his ears straining for the slightest sound. Weirdly, there was now only silence. A second passed, and another, finally several. Still there was nothing. Had he eluded his pursuer? Thrown him off track with his wild zigzagging through the corridors? He hardly dared believe it, but eventually a minute had passed and still there was no noise.
Warily, he reached out and felt around. As he suspected, the thing he’d tripped over was a dead body – either Brunton or Craegan. Lockhart groped further. It was slumped against the side of the passage, as if seated, which meant it was Craegan; he was the one who had died in that posture. Then something else struck Lockhart. The spike or screwdriver, or whatever it was that had killed the poor bastard! It might still be there. It would be a crude and brutal sort of weapon; but he’d seen for himself how effective it could be, and anything was better than nothing.
As hurriedly as he dared, but also rather gingerly, he felt at the pulverised mask that had once been the firearms officer’s face. It was damp to touch, and lifeless as clay. It was also covered in crusty streaks. Lockhart wanted to yank his hand back, but managed to swallow his revulsion and continued to probe; and a second later, to his relief, he felt his fingers alight on the heavy, jutting handle of the screwdriver. It remained exactly where Grimwood had embedded it.
Initially, the thing wouldn’t even budge. Lockhart first tried to work it loose, but it was much too secure. Then he h
auled at it, only succeeding in pulling Craegan forward, the cold body slumping down onto its front. With some effort, the chief super heaved it back. Even now, after so many years in the job, it never ceased to amaze him how heavy a dead man could be. Several seconds passed as he regained his breath, then he stood up and tried a different tack. He placed a foot on Craegan’s left shoulder, took the screwdriver in both hands and tugged as hard as he could, leaning backward to add his own weight to the effort. For a moment or two, the wretched thing remained wedged in place; then, unexpectedly, it moved slightly. Lockhart tottered and almost fell, but quickly repositioned himself; and, bracing his foot against the corpse again – this on time its face – he tried once more. With a gurgle of blood and grating of bone, the blade slid free.
Lockhart hunkered down, panting. The tool clanked on the concrete floor; it was slimed and sticky in his grasp. For once, the all-consuming darkness was doing him a favour. He didn’t want to see that long steel shaft now coated with Craegan’s red and black gore. He didn’t especially want to see Craegan either – the bloke’s left eye a raw, bottomless pit; or the shattered corpse of Barry Brunton – his chest cross-stitched with bullet holes.
Then something else struck Lockhart – Brunton! Hadn’t the young sergeant been carrying cigarettes for Grimwood? Cigarettes – and matches!
Lockhart wanted to jump up, to hurl himself on the body and loot its pockets, but he resisted. That could prove fatal. While light might show him a way out, it might also invite another attack. Having said that, it was uncertain how far into these entwined passages a flickering match-glow would penetrate. He listened again. The silence was still total. The thought occurred to him that the killer might have left the air-raid shelters altogether. That would make sense of a sort. Wouldn’t Grimwood be seeking freedom rather than an ongoing confrontation with the police?
Encouraged by this, Lockhart fumbled around until he found Brunton’s feet and legs. He worked his way up the body, grimacing when he encountered the coagulated pulp of the sergeant’s chest, but not put off to the degree that he couldn’t then rummage around inside the corpse’s jacket. The cigarettes and matches were the first things he found, both stowed in the left breast pocket. He extricated the smaller box, and shook it – it rattled. Relieved, he opened it and took out a couple of sticks, then paused to listen.
As before, no sound.
Lockhart pondered. His prime concern was getting out of this mess alive; but even if he managed that, he’d be in for a torrid time. Thanks to his bungling, they’d say, two officers were dead and one of Britain’s most dangerous criminals back on the loose. How he was going to explain it, he wasn’t quite sure. He spent a moment wondering to what extent he himself was wounded. If he re-emerged from the tunnels with significant injuries, it would reduce the amount of ridicule they could heap on him, not to mention the blame; he might even be proclaimed a hero. Of course, the truth was that he wasn’t wounded, apart from a broken nose and a few cuts and bruises. There might be something he could do about that when he got topside again, though he didn’t much like the idea. Still, desperate times called for desperate measures. So thinking, Lockhart struck a bunch of matches. At first, the flare was astonishingly bright, dazzling him, but not to the extent that he didn’t immediately spot Gordon Grimwood – standing only a few feet away.
Lockhart felt his jaw drop. In the sharp light, the maniac was ghostlike – pale as ice, smiling serenely, still spattered with the blood of the men he had slain. He was also carrying Craegan’s gun, and now slowly raising and pointing it. Without thinking, the cop lunged out with the screwdriver – as hard and straight as he could.
It was about the luckiest moment of Jim Lockhart’s life. Grimwood, the Beast of Lancashire, an expert stalker and hunter of humans, had made only one mistake in his rapacious career, and now he made it again: a failure to consider that his prey might be armed. Even as he stood there, gloating, the steel spike struck his midriff and tore its way in, sinking to well over half its length.
The rapist’s expression turned first to one of amazement, then to one of disbelieving pain. With a silent shriek, he fell heavily backward, clamping the screwdriver hilt with both hands, though the tool was firmly lodged under his ribs. Only a feat of great physical strength would remove it, and Grimwood no longer had strength of any description. As he clasped the weapon, hot, dark liquid began to leak through his fingers.
Lockhart tottered back, rasping for breath, nauseous with shock. For all the things he’d seen and done, he still wanted to block out this image of death by slow torture, to slap a hand to his face or turn away, or at least close his eyes. But he did none of these. He was too numbed, too exhausted. Wearily, he slumped against the wall and struck a few more matches. He knew that shortly these too would burn down and flicker out, and then he’d be in Stygian blackness again. But at least the danger was past. At least he needed only to blunder his way back to the surface. After this, he doubted anything would ever seem frightening again.
Then he was struck from behind. In the very middle of his cranium.
It was a terrible blow, delivered with such monstrous force that Lockhart knew his skull was broken even as he pitched face-down into the rubble.
The fact that two misshapen beings walked the dark, one of them female, was a shocking revelation. In Norse society, women were chattels and had no say in political events. The death of an adventuring hero like Aeschere at the hands of Grendel’s mother was totally unprecedented …
“You … you died …” Lockhart whispered as he gazed up at the thing that had dragged him over onto his back, “ … in Broadmoor …”
She still clutched a half-brick, heavily caked with hair, blood and brain matter. Clearly, she’d intended to use it again, but now there didn’t seem any point. A piece of rag was burning on the ground by the policeman’s head, though the light was rapidly fading from his eyes – which, horribly, were leaking blood from their tear ducts. Red trickles were also visible from his ears. His entire body was frozen in a spasmodic twist.
Instead of dealing the deathblow herself, the apparition simply crouched there and watched; and even in the last seconds of his life, Jim Lockhart had sufficient intellect to be appalled by the sight of her. Her once-human form was shrivelled and skeletal, and hung with the filthiest rags imaginable; her hair was a hanging mane of dirt-encrusted rat-tails, her raddled face a mass of warts and open sores. If there was any sanity at all behind her rheumy eyes, Lockhart would have been astounded; but as his last vestige of consciousness slipped away, she gave some indication of that, for her gummy, toothless mouth curved into a hideous mocking smile.
Once the policeman had died, the hag moved along the passage and settled down beside Grimwood. She took his head into her lap and started petting it. The rag had burned itself out, and total blackness returned. Not that Grimwood needed light in these circumstances. He’d had so few friends in his life that he would never forget their touch, their smell.
“You … waited,” he stammered. “All this … time.” Her hooked fingers were almost gentle as she clawed the hair back from his sweat-sodden brow. The simple effort of speaking was agony to him, but he was determined to try. “I … I told them, you know. I … I’m no murderer.” He shook his head. “Never was.”
He knew she’d be smiling kindly on him, fondly – the fondness that only exists between parent and child.
He coughed up blood as she kissed him goodbye. “My lovely … Kirsty … Ann …”
HELL IN THE CATHEDRAL
I didn’t quite know what the German couple were expecting, but they’d geared up as if they were on some deep sea diving mission. Spear-guns, flippers, harnessed oxygen cylinders, the lot; even a pack of underwater sodium-flares. They looked the part too. He said his name was Dolph, his wife Heidi – both of them were leonine blondes, deeply-tanned. He was trim and firmly-muscled; she statuesque and incredibly handsome in the traditional Teutonic way. Inevitably of course, they both spoke impe
ccable English.
They made Karen and myself, neither of us speaking a word of German, and equipped with only snorkels and goggles, feel small and insignificant. Add to that our alabaster-white complexions – we’d only been in Sicily two days, after all – and it was the usual case of the Brits abroad standing out like sore thumbs. I was only glad I wasn’t dressed in rolled-up pants and string-vest, with a knotted handkerchief on my head. I was even embarrassed about the hamper we’d brought, with its packs of sandwiches and multiple bottles of beer.
Not that Carlo, our guide seemed worried. He also spoke good English, and chattered idly to the four of us as he steered the little outboard around the various rocky coves. Ironically, he was clad in a ridiculous old vest, flip-flops and baggy khaki shorts, but somehow his plump physique, olive-brown skin and thick tangle of blue-black hair, made it alright on him. He was a local, after all. Locals could dress how they pleased.
Now he wore a straw cowboy hat as well, to shield himself from the midday sun, which as well as blazing down from above was also glaring back up from the sea. Even out there, off the coast, rounding one headland after another on a generous swell, the heat was terrific. Both Karen and myself were heavily greased-up in factor eight, but already we could feel our shoulders and backs itching.
When he’d first tapped us up on the beach at Taormina and offered us this day-trip for what seemed like an incredibly reasonable price, he’d never mentioned being exposed to the sun for quite so long; but to be fair, neither had he said we wouldn’t be. He was taking us to what he mysteriously referred to as ‘the Cathedral’ – a fantastic cave system, accessible only from the sea and by narrow boat. Neither Karen nor I had ever heard of it before, but Carlo assured us it was worth seeing. Apparently it knocked the Blue Grotto into “ow you say … cock-hat, no!”