The Games People Play Box Set

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The unmoving mass of skinned flesh and fleshless bone was no longer recognisable as a girl.

  The man sat on the old chair, its damp spongy filling oozing from the broken seams. The chair legs were a mess of hanging threads, but his own legs were stretched to the warmth of the small electric fire, calf muscles twitching. Clasping his hands over the slight bulge of his stomach, he breathed deeply with satisfaction. He wore a stained shirt, pale blue splattered with old dried blood but wore nothing else except from both thighs, close to his groin protruded a variety of pins.

  The pins were arranged in a pattern, and although their inserted points were identical, their little round tops were each of a different colour. The first, on his right leg, was prominent. The top was large, a green plastic bauble. Further down his right leg was another large headed pin, this time in a flat red. Last, pushed deep and still bleeding, was a pin of gold, the only one.

  His left leg was pierced with many more pins, but they were smaller, their heads simply dots of various colours.

  Smiling and tapping each, he called them by name. First the three pins pushed firmly into his right thigh. “Jemima. My beautiful first. Vera Harcott. A speciality. Then Tricia Innes, so juicy after so many years’ enforced abstinence.” And onto the left thigh. “Maria. Skinny. A little disappointing. Amy. Satisfactory. Mary. Almost forgotten. Doreen. A little better. Sara, almost caught, but the risk was exciting. Clair Nicholson. A good two days. Kate. Too hurried and too cold on the cliff, but an excellent opportunity well taken. And now?”

  He regarded the mess lying before him on the rug in front of the fire and poked at it with his bare toes. “Pam, you told me that’s your name. Well, Pam, you’ve been a true pleasure and one of the very best. Three days here and before that quite some hours alive. The begging was enjoyable. The screaming was a delight. You deserve the right leg. I have one more gold pin.”

  And with sudden energy, he thrust the entire length of the pin into his right thigh, teeth gritted, shaking with pain and thrill. “Well done, my girl. You’ve earned a place of honour.” He leaned back, feeling the pulse between his legs, and the darts of sharp pain through his flesh.

  It was sometime later when he pulled each pin from its spindly hole in his large thighs, and replaced them in a wooden box, which he then locked. With himself, he was gentle. But he had now quite lost enthusiasm for the dead thing at his feet. He poked the legs, which fell broken and loose. “No good for anything now, eh, girl? But I’ve had the best of you, and now you’re garbage. But you were a great fuck. Four times alive, ten at least when dead and rotting. Such a sweet rich scent. And all the other fun of course. A generous girl, my Pammie. So now let’s give you the sleep you need, if the badgers and rats don’t get you first. I know a good place, and easy enough from here. So into the rubbish bag, where you belong.”

  He had the black plastic bag ready. The pieces of each girl which he kept safe and never discarded were already safely buried and would never be found by anyone else except himself. Even Olga would never be able to uproot them. He had been digging here since before he rented the shed. Its history was one of the great pleasures that returned in his dreams.

  Collecting the parts did not take too long, so he turned off the fire, pulled on a pair of baggy jeans and trainers, closed and locked the drawer crammed with the souvenir underpants, changed his shirt to a clean one, swung the plastic sack over his shoulder, and marched out to the car.

  With the bulging bag in the boot, he set off towards the setting sun and parked at the edge of the extensive grounds where the old grannies were kept. The black bag wasn’t heavy, and it was easy to drag through the trees, then leaving it on the bank of the creek. No one ever went there. He’d been there before and knew it as deserted. Probably those old grannies were too feeble to walk that far. He kicked once, but instead of rolling into the water, the plastic split and a foot rolled out. Shrugging, he strolled back to the car. It didn’t matter. He was powerful now. Nothing could go wrong.

  As he walked again to the car, the knowledge of power dwindled. A swirling sense of failure filled his gut, like nausea, and a loss of balance made him stumble. His feet seemed too big. Big and ugly. These were the accustomed sensations immediately after relinquishing a corpse, and he managed to control the plodding black and bitter taste. He would have to use the knife again after dinner, cutting into the centre of the pinprick circle on his left thigh. That would bring the thrill back and keep Olga away. Temporary of course, but nothing lasted forever.

  Edging into the driver’s seat, sight blurred by inner shadows, he wondered about suicide again. The urge to escape himself was often strong. Easy enough after all, and put an end to the rising panic, the knowledge of loss, the wild happiness followed by bleak threat. Easy enough to drive full speed into a tree trunk. Or another car. Take someone else with him. Bastards. None of them would understand if he was ever caught. No other man would appreciate his need, his bitter difficulties, or his obsession. And he was bound to be caught eventually.

  But power was golden. It was many past years of freedom and never being found guilty of anything that reminded him of the power he held tight inside, and which flooded out when he grabbed a sweet and terrified victim. He’d once been given a speeding fine. He’d even got away with that, explaining himself out of it. Power mattered.

  Reluctantly, with the old blank and empty eyes, he drove home to his wife and whatever he could order her to drum up for dinner.

  Telling Sylvia he had a woman sleeping in his spare room was not the easiest confession Harry could volunteer, but Sylvia had been interested, offered help, and made suggestions (‘This makes Tony even more suspicious. Should you tell Morrison?). There had been no hint of criticism. After two days of renewing their friendship, Harry felt a refreshed surge of energy. If no other partnership was possible, he was at least hopeful regarding a continuing pleasure, he in her company, and she in his. They had laughed a great deal, watched Marigold Hotel together on DVD, teased each other about adoring Judi Dench and Bill Nighy, held hands and shared opinions. They had also shared opinions on a dozen other matters.

  Isabel had made the attempt, she claimed, to move in with Cousin Beatrice. But Beatrice was on holiday. Really? Yes, somewhere backpacking. She would have to stay at Harry’s and hoped he wouldn’t mind. He did, but did not say it.

  The following day Harry stayed at home, explaining that he had to face Tony first and Isabel afterwards, and hopefully get rid of his spare room guest. He could find her a tiny flat somewhere and keep it a secret, but explain the problem to Tony. He had to do something.

  It was dark when Sylvia left her own bedroom, but a vivid silver aura surrounded an almost full moon, pooling light across the grass and shrubbery. She stood for some time staring up and then across the treetops to the beginning glimmer of star-shine. Under her old dressing gown, she wore a long faded flower-sprigged nightdress. These were always discarded once she climbed beneath the quilt, but they served when talking to the others, and might one day serve if she got carted off to hospital. Slippers too. Blue with polar bears. She wore them a good deal.

  Feeling warm enough, even though the night threatened frost, Sylvia decided to walk. She wanted to clear her head of the two recent obsessions, both of which disgusted her. The murders were vile, and she had already seen too much. Her father had sometimes brought photographs of victims back to the house, to study for clues, and she had peeped over his shoulder. But she’d certainly never seen the real thing and now she had. Reading relentlessly had brought insight. How the murderer felt. Or perhaps. No one could know for sure why he killed. That was only perhaps as well, since often the monster did not know himself. But searching for insight into a vile madness was nearly as unhealthy as the will to slaughter. Or perhaps.

  Harry was the other obsession and that was beginning to hurt more. Why the hell at her age did she want to be kissed? Cuddled? Loved? It made no sense. Having married a man she later despised, her experiences w
ith love had been few enough, but she had loved him once. And she remembered thinking that love was delicious and the key to happiness, and she didn’t feel that now so clearly her feelings for Harry weren’t anything to do with love. Feeling neither deliriously happy nor floating on contentment, Sylvia accepted that this mature sensation was a new one. Lust perhaps, though that was plain silly. More likely just loneliness, which was pathetic.

  Yet assured of being neither pathetic, nor silly, Sylvia smiled and wandered onwards down through the thickening copse of willows, birches and sycamores. A mulberry was losing its leaves at the first hint of autumn, and a silver birch was straddling a patch of early mushrooms. A flicker of autumn colours on the smaller trees threatened colder weather to come, but that was of no concern as yet. The ground underfoot smelled rich, of loam and moss, clover and damp briars.

  Pin pricks of colour striped by shadow glimmered in the moonlight, and Sylvia saw the glitter of the creek winding its knotted pathway through the woods. She did not usually walk as far as the creek, but it was a pretty place pock marked by the hoof prints of deer, and the paws of foxes and badgers coming down at dusk to drink. The stream, shallow over pebbles, was narrow enough to jump in places and the banks were low, grassy and welcoming. Sylvia, slipping a little where the mud oozed up, stepped down to the water’s edge. Ripples, the scatter of tiny frogs disturbed by movement, and the gentle swirl of weed and fallen leaf gave the stream a story. Sylvia would have liked to sit, but she didn’t relish a mud stained butt, and once down, her knees often refused to let her scramble up again.

  For a while she followed the creek’s uneven rambles, but then, where the water was little more than a trickle and the banks kissed, she hopped over to the other side where the moonlight was clearer and the glade open. The sweet scented breeze had become tainted with something less attractive, stagnant water presumably, or dead fish. Yet smells, sewerage and burned dinner, were a common enough part of life. Sylvia took little notice.

  The interruption was sudden. She had walked for some time when she stopped, shocked, but unsure of what she had seen. A twist of tiny purple flowers surrounded an upturned puzzle, shaped as a foot, protruding from the earth and grass. Sole upwards, toes curled, nails unpainted but cut short and straight, the foot appeared human. Sylvia stood staring, then bent. One outstretched finger, hesitating, then gently touched, tested whether this thing might be plastic, wood, doll or dummy, or human flesh and the foot of a person perhaps buried underground.

  The touch was tentative but sufficient. Then the ankle twisted and the foot tumbled, lying on its side, the raw cut through the lower leg showing ragged and black with earth and dried blood. At one side of the ankle bone there showed the nibbles of rats. Small sharp teeth. Then the marks of larger teeth, not so sharp. Not buried then. Amputated and left to rot.

  Staring, horrified and bent over, Sylvia gulped and slipped and fell backwards onto the sloping bank. She hit the back of her head on something bulky, presumed stones or hillocks, and rolled over to help ease up her knees, first to kneel and then for a return to her feet. Her knees screamed, but the rollover was simple enough, scrabbling with her fingers for a solid hold.

  Lying flat on her stomach, her hands found tufts of weed to grab and lifted her head, pulling her knees up beneath her. Then stopped.

  She was staring into a nightmare shadow. A face without eyes stared back. Now the stench became a billow of rancid decay. There was a large black plastic bag, the sort used for piles of rubbish, or collecting garden waste. It lay on the bank just above her head, a great lump of a thing seemingly stuffed with strange jagged shapes. But the sides, in parts, had split. Where Sylvia stared, the bag was gaping down one seam and the darkness within was moonlit in one bright silver beam where a face peered out, empty eye sockets, and the mouth falling open. Four front teeth were missing. One was stuffed up the left nostril. Nothing else was visible.

  Without care to her painful knees, Sylvia scrambled up, then doubled over again and vomited violently over her slippers. Then she sat down again and cried.

  The path back to the manor was long and not so easily followed. She stumbled, stopped to weep and to vomit again, and finally reached the great Rochester doors. She managed to unlock them, stagger in, collapse on the bench in the entrance, found the house telephone, called loudly for Lavender Dawson, and then phoned the police.

  Lavender appeared in her pyjamas, and it was not long afterwards that Detective Inspector Morrison appeared, looking tired but as if he had been working, not thrown from a deep dream by an unexpected call.

  Sylvia and a cluster of bustling and curious elderly inhabitants were being fussed over by Lavender. Sylvia had been served with hot tea but was drinking something considerably stronger.

  “I know it was Pam. Even like that, I could recognise her.”

  Lavender sniffed. “She’s been on all our minds. The disappearance – especially after – but that could have made you think it was her. It might not have been –”

  “It was.”

  The police had arrived within minutes.

  “Mrs. Greene, I’m sure you’re in distress, but I’m afraid we’re going to need a word.”

  “Several words, I presume, Detective Morrison.” Her deep breath sounded more as if she was choking. “I’m ready.” Although she wasn’t really. She had thrown her polar bear slippers in the bin, covered in mud and vomit. Bare foot and clutching her Vodka and tonic, more Vodka than anything else, Sylvia was led into the small saloon where she flopped onto the accustomed couch and drank deeply. Detective Inspector Morrison sat on red velvet. His two companions sat at the table scribbling notes. Sylvia said, “You’ll sort it all out with DNA, but I know it was Pam. Pamela Barnstable. Her disappearance was reported to your offices four days ago. She’s been gone five.”

  “I’m afraid I need you to describe exactly what you saw,” Morrison told her, “and in some detail, please, Mrs. Greene.”

  With fingers shaking, although the details were few enough, Sylvia drank between sentences and told her story. “I had worried about Pam. But no murder had been committed in this area before, and I couldn’t have expected – and of course didn’t expect –”

  “You were alone, Mrs. Greene? Mr. Joyce was not with you this time?”

  “At two o’clock in the morning? Certainly not. I live here alone, inspector, and although Harry Joyce is a friend, I continue to live alone. Nor have I told him about this, though I’ll phone him once past eight o’ clock when I assume he’ll be awake.” Sylvia’s expression flickered from agonised to cold. “Do you imagine I’ve hidden him somewhere, inspector? Or simply that I’m incapable of walking any distance alone?”

  Morrison managed a faint smile. “Just that I’m aware how you and Mr. Joyce have been surprisingly linked to these cases so far. I have been wondering whether the killer’s decision to deposit this body in your domain, Mrs. Greene, was deliberate, and whether he is fully aware of your interest in his crimes. Was this intentional, I wonder?”

  “Was what intentional, exactly? That my dear sweet Pam was deliberately killed, is obvious. That her remains have been dumped back where she works might very easily have been deliberate. But I don’t flatter myself that any deliberation includes me, inspector. It isn’t all about me, you know. It’s about a brutally insane monster and his poor wretched victims.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Mrs. Greene. The first victim was killed on the coach you were booked to travel in. The second victim had you and Mr. Joyce running off to investigate in Wales, where you both promptly came across the third victim. Now this.” He stared at her. Sylvia felt strangely guilty and wondered if she was blushing. “Three out of four victims, Mrs. Greene, have been closely connected with your movements.”

  Sylvia had finished the vodka, and now Lavender brought in tea for everyone. Morrison ignored his. “The part of the grounds where dearest Pam was discovered,” Lavender said, “is now cordoned off and closed with yellow streame
rs. There’s a tent erected. I presume your men will be there all night. Can they make their own tea?”

  “I doubt they’ll have time to make it or drink it, thank you, Mrs. Dawson.” The detective turned back to Sylvia.

  “But your people will find my DNA down there too. I was violently sick, and I fell over.” She heard the clock tick-tick-tick and it seemed like hours. Her own voice sounded as monotonous as the passing of time. “I was just walking. I needed to think. I don’t often go as far as the stream, but I like it there. I’ve sat and watched the wildlife some days. But I go there rarely, no one would associate me with that place, or deliberately leave something there, expecting me to find it. Especially gone midnight and in my night clothes.” She paused, then asked in a rush, “Is there only Pam in that disgusting sack? Or more than one person?”

  “I’m unable to discuss details, Mrs. Greene.” Morrison nodded to his companions. “But in the morning, I should like you to identify certain items of clothing also found in the same bag. And when did you last see Pamela Barnstable?”

  She had already worked that out. “I told you. Five days ago, last Friday. She left here at about three in the afternoon and waved to me as she went outside. Have you found her car?”

  “We weren’t told she owned a car.” Morrison looked up, interested. “Do you know the make and model? Colour?”

  Of course she did. “It’s a red two door Ford Capri, and some years old. There are quite a few dents on the bonnet and both sides, and a big rusty dent in the back. The exhaust has a hole in it and makes a lot of noise. And since I suppose you’ll ask, I have no idea where her mother lives, but I imagine Lavender will know.”

  “Then I shall see you early in the morning, Mrs. Greene.” Morrison nodded to his two detectives, both bleary eyed but still scribbling in their notebooks. “We’ll be working most of the night, but I imagine you must be desperately tired. Sleep well, Mrs. Greene, this is a long way from over.”