Denied to all but Ghosts

by Pete Heathmoor

  “Can’t be sure yet, DNA results were inconclusive, they’re running the tests again.”

  “Verdammt!” shouted the confused and mortified Untersucher.

  * * *

  Thomas Beckett was not enjoying the fete as they loitered by the manor waiting for Cavendish and Houghton to conclude their business with Hugo Victor. He was not happy, perhaps it was due to Cavendish’s monologue the previous evening about how the case would end, that there would be no pats on the back and drinks at the bar. They would simply go their own way.

  But where was his way? He could not face the prospect of not seeing Emily, but if she was to be whisked away on some firm induction course, where did that leave him?

  Blanch would have been disappointed to know that he and Emily did not ‘do it’ the previous evening. He had lain on her bed and she had fallen asleep, cradled in his arms, whilst he had run his fingers through her soft long hair. It was the most blissful night he had ever spent.

  Emily spotted the pavilion of a fortune-teller by the high stone wall backing onto the manor.

  “Come on, Tom, I’m bored, let’s have our fortunes read!” she suggested.

  “Oh, come on, Emily. You know it’s all bollocks!” Beckett’s mind instantly returned to the crazy atmosphere of Chesterfield and young Mary, the fortune-teller. He had not thought of her since that day but her prophesy came back to him, ‘I see a beautiful woman. She will fulfil a deep longing but at a price.’ He suddenly felt worried for the first time that day.

  “Hey, sunshine. I was the one who listened to you extolling the virtues of Bill Hardy, your favourite rock god,” said Emily tugging at his arm. “It’s now pay back time. Blanch can watch the entrance.” Beckett failed to see Emily mouth to the sergeant, “please, Blanch!”

  “You two go on in, I’ll make sure you don’t miss anything,” smiled an unconcerned Blanch.

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing they say; unfortunately, Blanch was not privy to any as her companions left to walk her arm in arm towards the pavilion.

  The band finished playing its latest discordant rumpus when Blanch decided that they had been in the tent long enough. As she flung back the canvas flap, her world collapsed around her as she found the tent empty, save for a discarded robe draped across a circular table. She noticed the open canvas flap at the rear of the tent wafting in what breeze there was that day. A cold shiver ran down her spine. She had failed in her allotted task of looking after Beckett and Emily. Yet what if that had been their intention all along?

  Blanch dashed into the floral marquee and Houghton was about to remonstrate with the interloper when he recognised the diminutive frame of his sergeant.

  “They’ve gone!” Blanch shouted breathlessly at Houghton, “they’ve bloody well gone!”

  Houghton roughly grabbed Blanch by her arms, he was acutely aware of the disintegration of the calm that had accompanied the day up until the revelation of the SOCO results. Cavendish had become instantly introverted upon hearing the report and Houghton had watched with fascination and alarm the physicality of Cavendish’s thought processes as he tried to make sense of what had been revealed. The smoking, the pacing, the muttering to himself, for a normally calm man Cavendish was certainly animated when he was unsettled, there was almost an hysterical intensity oozing from his rigid body.

  “What happened, Blanch?” asked Houghton as calmly as he could, trying to maintain a degree of professional level headedness. She took a deep breath and recounted the incident at the fortuneteller's pavilion.

  Houghton desperately tried to repudiate the thoughts that were invading his head, that Beckett had absconded with Emily, that she had taken her opportunity to flee and had taken her besotted lover with her. So all along, she had been playing games with them.

  He felt sick. He felt sick with disappointment and sick with rage. He despised Emily Spelman for her abject deception and he despised Tom Beckett for his fecklessness. He despised himself for being a complicit fool.

  “Okay, Blanch,” said Houghton, “go check the Focus, if it has gone put out a call, think of anything that’s likely to get the local plods moving. They can’t have gone very far, they’re most likely heading for Bristol, that’s Tom’s home turf.”

  “Right oh, Sir,” whatever emotions Blanch was experiencing she hid them behind a mask of practised stoicism.

  “Wait!” commanded Cavendish, “just wait a moment, Blanch!”

  “Wait for what, for Christ sake!” shouted Houghton, his emotions bettering his self-restraint, “They’ve fucked off!” he shouted angrily.

  “We don’t know that, Josh, we don’t know that,” declared Cavendish, attempting to convince Houghton of Beckett’s innocence.

  “I suppose Simeon and Miles have kidnapped them!” lambasted Houghton.

  “Possibly!” replied Cavendish with equal volume though perhaps not the same degree of conviction.

  “Oh, come on, Cavendish,” said Houghton in a more moderate voice, “now you’re clutching at bloody straws! You just don’t want to think that Tom has let you down, do you!”

  Cavendish had no answer, he felt the same sense of betrayal as Houghton but his foremost emotion after the initial panic was one of utter disillusionment. He felt flat and his vitality had leached viscerally from his body leaving him listless and lost. He had no credible plan of action. He could not bring himself to believe that Thomas would do this to him. Thomas was his friend, wasn’t he?

  It was an opportune moment for the youngest member of the Montgomery family to enter the marquee. Edward ducked into the tent and looked hastily around him before he spotted Cavendish. Edward ran anxiously up to the inquisitor breathing heavily and spoke quickly but persuasively.

  “Herr Cavendish, you’ve got to come quick, they’ve taken them. Your friends are in deep shit!”

  “Who has them, Edward?” asked Cavendish fervently.

  “Jas and Brad!”

  A smile of relief played across Cavendish’s face, which confused the anxious Edward.

  “You don’t understand, your two friends are in real danger, Jas was really manic when she saw her arrive, God know what she’ll do to her!”

  Cavendish instantly recalled the heady aroma of floral scent when he and Beckett had stood in the conservatory conversing with Ralph and Estelle. He made a mental note to take more interest in horticulture.

  “Thank you, Edward,” beamed Cavendish, “you lead the way. Ready Josh, Blanch?”

  Houghton displayed an expression of consternation induced by the eddy and flux of the revelations with which he was being bombarded. Blanch betrayed no such emotion; her jaw remained firmly and resolutely set. Nothing seemed to faze or distract the girl from the Black Country.

  CHAPTER 43. A SLEDGEHAMMER TO CRACK A SLUT.

  Beckett’s entire essence was consumed by terror. His breaths came in short violent bursts via his flared nostrils; convinced he was going to suffocate, he gagged and heaved against the noxious cloth, which had been thrust cruelly into his mouth. The world became a macabre waking nightmare as the coarse hood drew tighter around his face with each desperate gasp for air. His hearing had become over sensitised so that he inwardly flinched at each random sound as he was dragged from the clairvoyant's marquee.

  Tossed savagely onto a leather sofa, Beckett felt what he thought to be the impact of another person next to him. The Bristolian retched violently against the gag as the hood was unexpectedly wrenched from his perspiring head; surely, now he was about to die as he swallowed the gag deep to the back of his throat. Yet without warning, the material was jerked from his mouth.

  In his state of utter horror, he had failed to realise that his wrists had been bound and an agonised cry burst from his parched mouth as the narrow plastic cable tie bit into his flesh as he attempted to move his hands from behind his back.

  Through eyes smarting with tears, he glimpsed Emily perched to his right, her petrified countenance replicating his own. He vaguely understood that he was in
the IKEA room at Yoxter Manor where he and Cavendish had interviewed the Montgomery children a lifetime ago.

  Posing haughtily before him was the distinctive young woman he recognised as Jasmine Montgomery and a young man with a crew cut hairstyle. He heard Emily gasp with dismay as she discerned the presence of Brad Patterson.

  “Why did you have to come here!” spat Jasmine at Emily, “you should have stayed away, you stupid whore! Why did you have to come back to taunt poor Brad?”

  Jasmine's eyes, which Beckett had once described as alluring and innocent, now possessed a psychotic intensity that chilled his soul. Jasmine turned her attention to Beckett.

  “I think we know what we should do with Sundance,” she said unconsciously using the epithet she had given him during the Cavendish interview.

  “What, here?” asked Brad, “what about your parents?”

  “They are busy with their fete; you won’t see them all day. And no, you dummy, we’ve a cellar, Mummy would hate to get blood over the parquet! We do have a freezer you could use.”

  “Jeez, Jas. That took planning and preparation!” exclaimed Brad. Jasmine scoffed at her boyfriend’s negativity,

  “Oh, you’re so pathetic sometimes, always got an excuse, do I have to do everything!” Brad appeared to be wounded by Jasmine’s baiting. “Get the old slag on her feet,” she callously ordered, “I knew we shouldn’t have left her in Wells, you and your ‘saving her for later’ crap.”

  Brad grasped Emily by the tops of her bare arms, hauled her to her feet, and stood behind her, pinning her restrained arms to her side. Jasmine picked up a pair of dress making scissors that lay innocuously on top of the glass top coffee table and repeatedly snapped the scissors together in front of her fervid face as she sidled up to the distraught Doctor. Savagely grabbing a handful of Emily’s long hair, Jasmine bunched the soft tress it into a crude pigtail.

  “Keep still, bitch,” Jasmine hissed at the flinching Emily, “I’d hate to cut your pretty face, Brad wouldn’t like that!”

  The smiling Montgomery girl maliciously began to shear at the base of the pigtail, drawing blood as she carelessly sliced into Emily’s scalp. Emily screeched with pain and ignominy as her luxuriant hair was hacked from her head. The frantic and spiteful despoiling repeated until the floor at Emily’s feet lay strewn with bloody hair. Emily sobbed unashamedly as Jasmine gleefully cut the shoulder straps of her striped dress and tugged the fabric over her blue bra down to her waist.

  Thomas Beckett could tolerate Emily's humiliation no longer. He had watched with a resigned fatalism as Jasmine severed Emily’s gorgeous hair but the final violation of the dress was his tipping point. Like the action hero he most certainly wasn’t he sprang furiously from the sofa and head down screamed as he rammed into the side of a stunned Brad, who was still restraining Emily’s arms.

  Brad released Emily under the impetus of the charge and lurched against the coffee table. However, Brad, the failed college quarterback, commendably retained his footing and swiftly dispensed two sharp punches to the photographer’s ribcage before placing him in a headlock with his left arm.

  The coup de grace was melted out as Brad smashed his knee into Beckett’s down turned face, stifling the older man’s shouts of rage. There was a sickening thud of compacted flesh and bone as Beckett crumpled inertly to the floor.

  Jasmine laughed demonically at the sight of the unmoving photographer, thoroughly invigorated by the display of savagery.

  “Poor Sundance! Put the whore over the arm of the couch!” shouted Jasmine at Brad. He read his girlfriend’s approval of his handling of the Beckett attack and smiled liked a eulogised schoolboy.

  Emily was by now incapable of making any sound as Brad bundled her crudely over the left arm of the white leather sofa, nearest the door, and Jasmine forced Emily’s blooded face down into the leather cushion. Brad gave a whoop of delight as he posed by Emily’s bottom as it rested over the arm of the sofa and eagerly grasped the hem of her dress in preparation for his overdue assault upon the academic. He looked to Jasmine for permission to continue and she nodded her head vociferously.

  Estelle Montgomery was still wondering if she had really left her wrap in the lounge as her husband had suggested. She was, however, pleased to escape the gaggle of visitors outside to gain a few minutes of peace and quiet. Estelle strolled sublimely unaware into the room, followed dutifully by Ralph.

  Despite her concerns, she was pleased with the way the fete was progressing; her expectations were that the charity receipts would by far exceed last year’s record-breaking takings. Estelle came to a stuttering halt, shocked at the vignette that greeted her. She was at a loss to describe the inexplicable scene depicted before her in the sanctity of her own home.

  “Oh, I say...,” mumbled a wide-eyed Ralph.

  “What is going on here!” boomed an incensed Estelle, not believing the implications of what was about to unfold.

  Her eyes flitted furiously revealing the bullet points of the debauched scene. An anonymous man lay face down in a pool of his own blood leaking over her precious parquet flooring. The puzzling array of strewn hair leading to the whimpering woman held prostrate over the arm of her sofa.

  Brad froze, one hand still gripping the hem of Emily’s dress, now pulled high to join the tatters of the top half of her garment gathered about her waist. His other hand clenched the exposed flesh of her inner right thigh as he frenziedly struggled to pry her disobliging legs apart.

  Jasmine however exhibited no such rigor as she careful raised her head away from the attentions of the writhing victim and cooly regarded her mother.

  “I thought you were busy, Mummy. It’s alright, everything here is under control.”

  “What do you mean, you stupid girl. Let that woman go at once!” demanded Estelle.

  “Oh, come on, Brad,” said Jasmine petulantly, “let’s take the bitch up to my room, maybe we won’t get interrupted there!”

  Estelle scurried across to Jasmine, grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her away from Emily and to her feet. The daughter stood querulously before her incensed mother as Estelle raised her hand high above her head, priming her hand to dispense the slap to her wayward daughter.

  “Not so fast, Mrs M,” insisted Brad. Estelle distractedly turned her attention towards Brad and found herself staring down the barrel of his black Browning pistol. Brad smiled as he gestured Estelle and Ralph to stand at the opposite end of the sofa, nearest the French windows that looked out onto the secluded walled garden of the manor.

  Empowered by the handgun, Brad strutted cockily around the room; his girlfriend had lost her scowl and smiled sweetly at Brad who, as a sign of devotion to his sweetheart, indifferently kicked the insensate Beckett in the face before swaggering across to stand in front of the French window.

  Jasmine leant down to Emily and pulled the distraught academic from the sofa whilst retrieving the scissors from the coffee table.

  “Come, Bradley. Let’s go upstairs.”

  CHAPTER 44. COMETH THE HOUR...

  The only person to pass comment on the bizarre sight of four people running towards the manor was a six-year-old boy messily eating a 99 ice cream cornet. He saw a lean young man in the lead closely followed by a tall blonde man in a flailing long woollen coat. There followed a big West Indian man and a small dark haired woman who brought up the rear. When the boy asked his parents what was happening he was told to shut up and eat his ice cream before it melted.

  The four runners stopped by the front door of Yoxter Manor to catch their breath at Cavendish’s insistence.

  “Stay here, Edward, no need for you to be involved. Well, Josh?” asked an excited panting Cavendish.

  “Well what?” gasped Houghton.

  “You and Blanch ready to go in?” asked the Untersucher as he withdrew his chrome-plated revolver. Houghton stood motionless as he fought for his breath. “Where is your firearm?” enquired Cavendish.

  “In the car,” answered Houghton.
>
  “And yours, Blanch?” demanded the Untersucher. She shrugged her shoulders, sensing the German’s displeasure.

  “What bloody good are they doing there!” exploded Cavendish. Houghton shook his head in resignation.

  “We are here to talk to Victor, since when was he supposed to have shot anyone?” shouted Houghton defensively.

  “We don’t know that!” fumed Cavendish.

  “Well it seems to me that there is a hell of lot you don’t know, Cavendish. I thought you were supposed to be good!”

  Houghton noted the anger that flared in the Untersuchers cold eyes and for a second perceived a fleeting apparition of being shot by an irate inquisitor. The same vision passed through Cavendish’s mind but he quickly dismissed the image despite its appeal.

  “I think you’d better collect your weapon, Chief Inspector. We have to assume that Brad Patterson is armed.”

  Blanch watched the exchange between the two men with a wretched heart. She felt responsible for the collapse of their carefully laid plans, if only she had prevented Beckett and Emily from visiting the fortune-teller. If only she had not been once again seduced by Emily’s charm.

  “Come on, Blanch,” declared Houghton irritably. “We’ll collect our weapons. For God’s sake, Cavendish, wait until we get back before you decide to do anything stupid!”

  The Untersucher nodded and watched as Houghton and Blanch jogged towards their parked car. He guessed it would take a good five minutes for them to complete the round trip. Edward Montgomery stared wide mouthed as Cavendish grinned over excitedly and carefully opened the front door.

  The hallway was deserted as Cavendish trod gently upon the flag stone floor. He halted and tilted his head in an effort to increase his aural awareness and was rewarded with the unmistakably strident tones on the Montgomery matriarch.

  He edged along the corridor towards the source of the sound and realised it was coming from the same room that he and his friend had previously visited. The door stood ajar and without a moment’s hesitation, he walked into the lion’s den.