by Mark Tilbury
Suddenly convinced it really was the Tall Man, all the strength drained out of her legs. They were going to die. All alone, with no one to help them. The nearest police station was twelve miles away in Oxford. Even if she dialled 999 they would be long dead before anyone got to Rose Cottage.
Something hissed and spat. For one terrible moment Mel thought it was the Tall Man, venting his wrath and getting ready to strike.
‘Mummy?’
Mel shrieked and spun around at the sudden sound of Chloe’s voice.
‘The milk’s boiling, Mummy.’
‘Huh?’
‘The milk!’
Mel gawped at the saucepan, struck mute by terror. She grabbed the handle and lifted it from the stove. Forgetting it didn’t have a heat-resistant handle, she reacted to a sudden flare of pain by throwing the thing in the vague direction of the sink. It bounced off the edge of the worktop and landed on the floor, spilling its bubbling contents.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘Are you all right, Mummy?’
Mel ran the tap and put her hand underneath a cold jet of water. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Did you burn your hand?’
‘A bit,’ Mel said, once again staring out the window. The man was no longer standing by his car.
‘Do you want me to help you?’
‘It’s all right, Pumpkin. You go back to the lounge and watch TV. I’ll clean up and make the hot chocolate in a minute.’
‘Okay.’
Mel drew the curtains, but not before she’d had a final look along the lane. Empty. Dark. Lonely. Exactly how she felt.
Jesus Christ, Mel, get a grip.
By the time she’d mopped up the milk, treated her hand with Sudocrem, and made two mugs of hot chocolate, she’d almost managed to convince herself she was overreacting. What next? Hide under the bed every time the wind blew?
She walked back into the lounge and put the drinks on the coffee table. Chloe smiled. No menace lurking behind that smile. Just a wonderful innocence.
As Chloe returned her attention to the cartoons, Mel tried to rationalise her fears. Put them into some sort of perspective. But how could she when there was no logical explanation for any of this? The doll. The Tall Man. The drawings. Chloe’s past-life memories. It was as if she was being stalked by death itself. The more she told herself to calm down, the more anxious she became. At first, she didn’t hear Chloe talking to Ruby Rag Doll and responding in a barely audible voice.
‘Mummy hurt her hand,’ Chloe told the doll.
‘Silly Mummy.’
‘But she’s all right.’
‘Carelessness costs lives.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘What it says on the tin.’
‘Chloe?’ Mel said, suddenly aware of the strange conversation going on between her daughter and the doll sitting in her lap.
Chloe ignored her. ‘What tin?’
‘It’s just a figure of speech.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Questions, questions, questions.’
Mel put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Chloe?’
Chloe stroked the doll’s woollen hair. ‘You say funny words, sometimes.’
‘Words are wisdom.’
‘What’s wisdom?’
‘Knowing when to cook your goose.’
‘I like chicken.’ Chloe announced.
‘Not Goosey-loosey?’
‘No.’
‘I like gin.’
‘What’s gin?’
‘It’s a spirit.’
‘Like a ghost?’
‘It’s a drink.’
‘What’s it made of?’
‘Tears.’
‘Yuk!’
‘Chloe?’ Mel interrupted. ‘That’s enough. Stop it!’
‘Listen to old grumpy drawers.’
‘Mummy’s not well.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She never did have a sense of humour.’
‘Stop that right now,’ Mel said. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Get her! Crying like a baby over spilt milk.’
Mel raised her hand. ‘Stop it. Stop it right this minute.’
‘What you going to do, Smelly-Mellie? Hit me?’
Mel’s hand hovered near Chloe’s face, shaking. ‘You shut your mouth. You’re evil.’
‘Sticks and stones, Smelly-Mellie. sticks and stones.’
‘I—’
A loud knock on the door interrupted Mel.
‘I wonder who that could be?’ Chloe said, in that awful rasping voice. ‘Maybe it’s the Big Bad Wolf come to gobble up the two little piggies.’
Chloe giggled. ‘I thought there were three little piggies.’
‘There were. But one’s been a naughty piggly-wiggly at school.’
The knock came again. Three times. Louder. More urgent.
‘Maybe it’s the Tall Man come to chop off your head.’
Mel shuddered.
‘I know you’re in there, Mel.’ A man’s voice. Familiar. Shouting through the letterbox, competing with the wind.
‘Tony?’
‘Please let me in. I just want to talk to you.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Please… it’s freezing out here.’
‘Let him freeze,’ Chloe said, in that small croaky voice.
Chloe’s interruption made up Mel’s mind for her. She couldn’t stay here on her own any longer. She would either go mad, or do something she would regret for the rest of her life. Or both. She opened the door and let him inside.
‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Chloe shrieked, all traces of Grandma Audrey gone from her voice. She threw the doll on the sofa and ran up to her father, throwing her arms around his waist.
‘Hiya, darling.’
‘I missed you, Daddy.’
‘I missed you, too.’
Mel closed the door and bolted it. She didn’t see the man crouched in the bushes at the end of the lane watching the house.
43
King wished he’d been able to use Gavin Westwood’s recording equipment to film the demise of his lover. The beauty of the occasion was already falling prey to the flimsy nature of memory.
Charles had left the world as he had lived – a coward. Westwood had been far more spirited. Hopping between threats and promises, he’d claimed to have evidence that could lock King away at Her Majesty’s pleasure for the rest of his life. King had been in no mood to pay heed to bluffs and threats; especially from a man who derived sexual pleasure from abusing hypnotised patients. He’d simply taken aim and put two bullets in his chest.
Charles had reacted to the killing by running towards the front door.
King had aimed the gun at his back. ‘Where in devil’s name are you going?’
‘I want no part of this.’
‘Oh, but you’re already a part of it, Charles. Stop right there, unless you want a bullet in your back.’
Honeywell turned around. ‘For goodness’ sake, Peter. See sense. Someone’s going to hear all the commotion and call the police.’
‘I don’t care. You’ve only got yourself to blame for getting embroiled in a love affair with that pathetic excuse for a man.’
Honeywell’s jaw slackened. ‘I don’t even know him.’
‘Liar.’
‘For God’s sake, Peter, you know I don’t know him.’
King plucked the love note from his pocket which Gavin Westwood had sent to him in more pleasant times. ‘Words do not lie, Charles. This letter clearly states his feelings towards you. Frankly, it fills me with revulsion. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe in romance. This is just full of filth and depravity.’
‘It’s not mine.’
King handed the note to him. ‘I beg to differ.’
After a few moments gawping at the piece of paper, he handed it back. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’
‘Either your eyes lie, or your tongue does. Ha
ve you no morals?’
‘I—’
‘I have neither the time nor the inclination to argue with you. You are now surplus to requirements. I suggest you accept your fate like a man and make your death a simple and pleasant experience.’
Honeywell sank to his knees. ‘Please, Peter. Please, I’m begging you…’
‘Do stop mewling like a cat.’
‘But I love you.’
‘“No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved, but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason.”’
‘I love you with all my heart.’
‘Your love no longer matters to me. All I require of you is to sit in that leather chair over by the window whilst I prepare the scene.’
Honeywell crawled to the chair and hoisted himself into it with all the grace of a dying bull.
‘Everything must die,’ King declared, smearing the love letter with blood from Gavin Westwood’s wounds. He handed the paper to his nemesis. Honeywell had turned a colour to suggest he was already transitioning to spirit.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Would it help to change your mind if I tore your testicles out with my bare hands?’
He took the note, hand trembling. ‘Why are you being so cruel? I’ve done nothing but love you.’
‘Nonsense pours from your mouth like pus from a running sore.’
‘But it’s true,’ Honeywell wailed. ‘I’ve given everything to you. Loved you. Protected you. Killed for you.’
‘Then God shall reward your efforts.’
‘I don’t want to die.’
‘We’re all destined for the grave. Perhaps you should take heart from Purple-five’s rebirth. You might come back as my cat.’
‘You don’t like cats.’
King grinned and raised the gun. ‘No; I don’t suppose I do.’ He squeezed the trigger as Honeywell opened his mouth, no doubt to protest and beg for his worthless life. Some people had no shame. The bullet blew the side of his face away, sending a shower of bone and brain matter against Westwood’s white walls. Some of the gore appeared to form into a question mark, as if Honeywell was enquiring about his demise from the other side.
King didn’t have time to hang around for long and appreciate his handiwork. He put the gun in Honeywell’s right hand and curled the man’s index finger around the trigger. ‘“These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume.’”
He thought the scene befitting of a tragedy. Love’s elusive dream destroyed by man’s endless pursuit of the unattainable. His mind fashioned a suitable piece of his own prose. Poetic in nature, pleasing to the ear. ‘Blood doth run like ribbons of scorned love.’
He savoured the taste and texture of his undeniable talent. His new play would start with these wonderful lines. Set the scene perfectly. Lead to the acclaim and the adulation he so richly deserved after all these years in the literary wilderness.
With this in mind, he let himself out of the flat and walked almost two miles before calling a taxi to take him home. The driver had exercised his right to show his ignorance by attempting to engage King in a conversation about football. A subject he had no interest in. King had resorted to offering the man a generous tip if he promised to keep his crap-flap shut for the rest of the journey.
He’d spent the next two days going over the crime scene in his mind, looking for potential mistakes. There would be evidence of his numerous visits to the flat, but he never intended to deny that he knew Gavin Westwood. They were friends. Which made it all the more hurtful to think his lover was carrying on an affair with a trusted associate.
The long restless nights were the hardest to deal with. Alone in bed, the cold empty space where Charles once slept seemed both poignant and frightening in equal measure. He missed his lover’s warmth. His humility. His calming nature.
How he wished, in those long slow hours of early morning, that Charles was still there with him to ease his pain and reassure him. When he did finally manage a few hours’ sleep, nightmares besieged him. Charles eating breakfast with half his head missing. Charles beside him in the bed, soaked in blood. Charles’s head in the freezer with Purple-five’s, one eye winking at her as if they shared the greatest secret on earth.
It wasn’t often Peter King cursed his vivid imagination, but in the aftermath of each nightmare, he dearly wished he possessed the intellect of a toad. To make matters worse, his reconnaissance trip to Rose Cottage had been plunged into disarray by the return of the woman’s husband in a taxi. He’d had to seek refuge in a bush. His mood hadn’t been helped when the Hollis woman had let her wayward husband inside.
To top it all he’d been convinced he was sharing his hidey-hole with a rat. After being driven to distraction by rustling and scraping noises, he’d abandoned the mission and returned home.
There was little doubt he would have to eliminate the husband before the main event, because he wanted to spend some quality time alone with Mel Hollis and the child before sending them skywards. He was reluctant to admit he might derive pleasure from killing Purple-five for a second time. The girl had shown resilience during the numerous games of One False Move, but it gave him a sense of pride knowing fate had allowed him to be part of such a rare phenomenon.
He would need to keep Rose Cottage under surveillance for a while. Watch the movements of the husband. Check the lie of the land.
Not in that blessed bush, though, at the mercy of rodents and footrot.
King shuddered. He would park at the bottom of the lane where it narrowed to a dirt track. Stay warm. Stay wise. Stay alert. He was a survivor. A lone warrior. A man of both pen and sword.
Poker, more like!
King smiled. His muse’s occasional bursts of wit would be most helpful in the coming weeks. ‘I am but as I am,’ He declared to a row of saucepans sitting idle on a shelf. ‘I choose to be free to choose, and for that alone, I shall be free.’
He allowed his mind to bask in the glow of future favourable reviews of his play. Perhaps he might even find it within himself to play a leading role.
‘I am Cornelius, and death is my heir.’
King bowed, and strutted around the kitchen, lost in a maze of fantasies and possibilities.
44
Chloe had taken advantage of her father’s return by making him read her a dozen bedtime stories. After a good hour and a half, with Chloe finally asleep, he’d sneaked out of the bedroom with Ruby Rag Doll tucked under his arm.
Mel looked at the doll with barely disguised contempt. ‘You got it, then?’
‘I feel mean taking it away from her.’
‘Think of it as being cruel to be kind.’
Tony flopped down on the sofa. ‘She’ll get upset when she realises it’s gone.’
‘I don’t care.’ Mel eyed the doll as if it might spring to life at any minute and babble in her mother’s long - dead tongue. ‘I want you to take it down the basement. There’s a manhole cover in the middle of the room that opens onto the sewer. Put it in there.’
‘Bit extreme, isn’t it?’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard the way Chloe spoke to the bloody thing.’
‘What did she say?’
Mel told him what she could remember of the bizarre conversation between her daughter and the doll. ‘Anyway, you were there when she talked about your affair.’
Tony looked away. ‘Do you really believe it’s your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s that even possible? It’s a doll, for Christ’s sake.’
Mel lit a cigarette. ‘Just get rid of it, Tony. Please.’
Tony walked to the kitchen. ‘If that’s what you really want.’
Mel imagined the basement door swinging open, emitting its rotten pungent smell of death and decay. Its rank stale odour of lies and cruelty. ‘And shut the kitchen door behind you before you go anywhere near that basement.’
As she waited for Tony to return, she wondered if she could ever look at him again without imagining Stephanie Wallace’s legs wrapped around him. Fear the worst every time he was five minutes late home. All she’d ever wanted was to be happy. Get married, have children, a nice house. Simple things. She didn’t want riches, parties, fast cars. She much preferred a simple home-cooked meal to a fancy restaurant. Was that too much to ask after her ruined childhood?
‘I lost my child. Isn’t that enough?’ she whispered.
Cruelty has an insatiable appetite. Enough is never enough.
And wasn’t that the truth? Not content with snatching Megan from her, it now had its sights set on Chloe. She’d tried so hard not to dwell on the unfairness of it all. Remain strong for her daughter. Not give in. But every day the tide swept her further and further out to sea, leaving her more and more powerless to fight, lost, confused, helpless.
Ten minutes later, Tony walked back into the lounge, interrupting Mel’s thoughts. ‘All done.’
‘Shut the kitchen door.’
‘It smells a bit ripe down there.’
‘Who cares? We won’t ever have to go down there again.’
‘There’s huge tins of coffee and—’
‘I know what’s down there!’
‘Just saying.’
Mel put her cigarette out. ‘Sorry. I’m just on edge.’
‘Have you been crying?’
Mel touched her face, surprised to feel it wet. ‘I don’t…’
‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘That would be nice.’
After two glasses of wine, and half an hour lost in thought, Mel said, ‘My mother’s fucking evil.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘My whole life’s been a bloody nightmare. You were supposed to be my salvation, Tony. Make it all better. So much for knights in shining armour, eh?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Stop apologising. Sorry is just a word. You need to show me.’
‘I know.’
After a slight pause, Mel said, ‘My mother hated me. I was always in the way as far as she was concerned. Especially when my dad was away at sea. She was nothing more than a whore. The summer she died was sweltering. One of the hottest on record according to the radio. My father went back to sea on June third, two days after my birthday. I’d spent most of that morning praying something would happen to make him stay at home. I even wished he’d break a leg or catch flu. Anything to stop him leaving.