The Games People Play Box Set

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  He treated her in three ways, and the conditions rarely altered. He wanted sex. This mattered to him and he insisted on when and how this happened. He had marched in one day, pointed to the bucket, and ordered, “Tinkle.”

  Having discovered the dangers of disobedience, Eve had sat on the bucket, balanced with legs apart, closed her eyes, and tried to urinate. Since she ate and drank little, this took some time, but Master waited in silence. Eventually she managed to obey.

  Master had grunted. “No fun,” he declared, and left the room. But he experimented with many odd ideas and his appetite was demanding.

  When he felt thwarted, antagonised, disobeyed or in any manner annoyed, Master flew into a rage of terrifying panic. He thumped holes in walls, kicked and screamed, tore out his own hair and Eve’s, damaged or destroyed anything in his way and behaved like a buffalo in panic. But these tempers cooled abruptly. He would wipe his eyes, gulp, and leave the room quietly.

  Master’s third rule of behaviour was unexpected at first, although Eve found it hard to manipulate. Master became suddenly sympathetic, caressing and murmuring. He brought her food and alcohol, helped her bandage her knee where he had kicked her and made her bleed and limp. He had kissed her ear and told her he’d look after her. She was, he said, his little kitten.

  “I had a little kitten before,” he mumbled. “But she weren’t a good girl. She were naughty. Then she went away. I can’t remember where she went but I ain’t seen her since. You is my nicest little kitten ever.”

  “How many,” Eve croaked, “have you had?”

  “Dunno. Lots. But not so many. Two maybe. No, more. A hundred p’rhaps. Dunno really. Counting is rotten hard work.”

  “I could teach you.”

  But then he had lost his temper. “You wanna be a teach person? You fink you’s better n’me? I never liked teaching folk. You shut yer ugly face.” And he had punched her in the mouth, making her lips and her gums bleed.

  It was after many other punches that one of her front teeth came loose and eventually fell out. Since there was no mirror, she did not see herself until one day when Master brought her a large bowl of drinking water. As she bent to drink, she had slurped up her own reflection, gasped, and burst once more into tears. Now permanently naked, she was filthy and scarred, her hair was missing large clumps and the rest hung in thick greasy strands. She had one black eye, swollen lips and the missing front tooth. Her left cheek was badly cut and although the wound had partially closed, it was black and oozing.

  That had been when she attempted her second suicide, but that had failed as had the first one.

  Although Master’s legs were unusually short and bent outwards, his arms were normal length, giving him a gorilla gait with his knuckles almost to the ground. Sometimes Eve felt sorry for him, but pity was hard to maintain when the man was raping her with particular brutality. He was well endowed, but also liked using a bottle. Sometimes he fell asleep beside her. Once she had tried to strangle him with the chain as she had tried to use it to kill herself, but Master had snored and fallen from the bed. She tried again. Then he woke, confused, and stumbled back to his own room.

  She was too frightened to try again. Even a frown in his direction could send him into fury.

  “I’m getting a proper telly,” he said one day. “Dunno where to put it. Maybe near me bed. Or you wants it? Might be nice, eh?”

  “Jesus, yes,” Eve gasped. “Yes please.”

  He staggered in with the screen in his arms two dreary weeks later. Although small and a little cracked, it was watchable. Three channels worked well. Master stood it on the floor and plugged it into the nearby socket. For the first day, they saw only blurred flickers, but on the following day, Master came home with an indoor antenna. It worked. They both sat on the floor and watched with animation. Eve had strict instructions not to turn it on herself during the night or Master’s absence at any time. But one day she managed to see the news.

  35

  He had written, “Now an expert on the vicious crimes of others, I have been investigating the bodies in the chimney. A nasty case.”

  But Paul had got no further since investigating anything seemed unusually difficult. Just starting an investigation was a significant challenge. He had rented a bedsit in Cheltenham, set up his laptop, got a part-time job in the local Tescos, and dated the girl who seemed to spend all her days cleaning out the freezers. Janet was pretty but not the most intelligent of dates he’d ever been unfaithful with. He did, however, spend more time with Janet than he did with his laptop.

  Now using his own name, resting on the fame of his earlier notoriety as an accused serial killer, Paul had sold his small book in large quantities. Doing the same again lit his hope as though a small torch flickered just above his head. He visited the house and was permitted nowhere near it. The garden was being excavated one small square at a time, and it appeared that the house was being demolished in almost the same manner. There were police on the roof and the chimney was a pile of bricks without stature. Paul sighed and went back to work.

  Winter in the valley was dour. Winds blasted through and the sheep on the low surrounding hills found their own valley hideaways. Kate Howard closed up shop and went to visit Ruby at Rochester Manor. She took cakes. “Those bearing cake,” Lavender said as she opened the door, “will always be welcome. Especially by Mrs Pope.” She poked her head around the living room door and nodded. “Ruby dear, you have a visitor.”

  Harry and Sylvia had been talking over a coffee table covered in empty cups, small plates, and glasses smeared with the dregs of orange juice. Ruby and Stella were together on the second couch. Ruby hopped up and waved. “How sweet of you to come, Kate. And cake too. Lavender, could we have more tea?”

  “We were talking crime and serial killers,” sighed Stella. “Not the nicest subject. But it’s all hit rather close to home just recently.”

  “I know about those poor little girls in the Tudor house,” said Kate, delighted to have a seat right in front of the fire. She risked taking off her gloves and scarf. “I actually went to visit that house once just a few years ago. I wanted to move to something bigger. My husband and I are a bit squashed at present. I must say you have a wonderful home here.”

  With a vague hand and fingers fluttering in all directions, Ruby said, “But there’s a lot of us live here. Retirement, you see. What does your husband do?” Not that she really cared, but it might be a path to mentioning her own now dead but once famous husband.

  “Maurice teaches in the local Primary School. And our little girl goes there. Mia. She’s eight. Yes – you said about the crime. It’s horrifying. To think I looked at that chimney and thought what a wonderful fire you could build on that huge hearth.”

  “And if a bulky man with huge hands and feet ever comes into your nice little shop,” said Ruby, “call the police because he’s a serial killer too.”

  “Just walking around and going into cafes?”

  “He’s the one who escaped,” said Harry. “And sadly he might be looking for us.”

  Kate giggled slightly, presuming an exaggeration. “I popped in to bring the cakes from this afternoon,” she said. “It’s so quiet outside, there seemed no point in keeping open. These were left unsold. Not stale – made this morning. But I thought you might like them instead of me just giving them to the fish.”

  “Did you notice,” asked Sylvia abruptly, “signs of anyone living in that house when you considered buying it?” The tea had arrived, a large flowered teapot, matching milk jug, sugar bowl, and cup of Grissini brought in by Arthur. Lavender trotted behind with a rattle of cups and saucers. Sylvia poured the tea but peered through the steam as she’d carried on talking. “Those girls were obviously kept as sex slaves in the cellar. The cellar didn’t lead directly into the house, but someone else must surely have stayed there, keeping the girls locked up, fed and watered and so on.”

  Kate wrinkled her nose. “It was two years ago now, maybe about two and a
half. I can’t really remember. No fire definitely, I do remember that because the hearth was full of smelly ashes, all cold. It was all dreary and dark with no furniture, although I think there was a sideboard, you know, a great big wooden thing with carved corners and drawers. But I remember a rug in front of the fireplace. Big fluffy polar bear type rug.”

  Harry sat forwards at once. “One of the partially decomposed bodies had white nylon fluff in her hair.”

  “But those sort of rugs are terribly common. I doubt if tracing it would help with a thing.”

  “We could try.”

  “You could go off to Cavendish House tomorrow,” suggested Stella, “and see if they know who bought any but I doubt anyone will remember that after two years and more. Besides,” she clutched her teacup, “I don’t want to get involved. It’s sickening.”

  “There’s another carpet shop near the fountain,” said Kate.

  “And a very expensive shop on the outskirts, Tewksbury side,” remembered Harry. “I can do the lot tomorrow. It’ll be a good drive instead of slouching through the mud.” He grinned. “Might as well make use of the new car.”

  “I could come too,” offered Ruby.

  “Sorry.” Sylvia patted Ruby’s hand. “We’ll probably end up in the pub and you’re always tired by seven. Best stay here,” she said. “Or at some nice friendly cake shop in the village.”

  The Rochester Manor garage was a half walled dump which Lavender and Arthur both insisted was not worth the money to enlarge or update. Few of the residents owned cars since most of them admitted to failing eyesight but Harry drove his new Lexus out of the shadows with pride, let the engine run in order to get the heating on full, and waited for Sylvia. He’d bought the car with the money from the sale of his little house, and Sylvia had paid for the luxury model. It was bright blue since neither of them wanted to seem old, traditional and boring, and looked a good deal sunnier than the sky above.

  Eventually they drove into Cheltenham and started to visit any shop selling white furry rugs, or indeed any rugs at all.

  “At least two years ago. Maybe considerably longer.”

  The shop assistants looked at this aged couple with faint contempt. They could not remember what they had sold last week let alone two years ago, and many had left or only started work within that time period.

  The small Indian owner of a shop selling rugs so beautiful that Sylvia forgot why she was there and wanted to buy six of them, said that he had stopped importing white imitation fur rugs three years past even though they had proved popular, and he had sold twenty or thirty of them. But he could not possibly remember the names or faces of his customers, and he had not delivered any since they were small enough to be rolled up and taken away by their new owners.

  By the time they rolled home, grumbling about the useless waste of a day, it was raining again.

  Sylvia was looking up furry white rugs online. “Hundreds,” she sighed. “Thousands. China, America, eBay, some cost a fortune and some cost tuppence. This is a complete waste of time. Let’s forget rugs.”

  Harry was lying full length on the couch behind her, and she was more or less sitting on his legs, except that he had one ankle wrapped around her and his foot on her lap. She enjoyed the private warmth and the unspoken affection. Every touch was a tiny pleasure, reminding her of the happiness she had not known for so many years before she met Harry. Harry spelt happiness. Not security from murder nor from poverty, not even security from heart attacks, nor the cold and rain. But he was a whole welter of security against the hopeless loneliness that she hadn’t even known she was feeling. She hiccupped, smiled, and leaned back against his knees. “I know,” he said. “I make a good blanket,” and wrapped both arms around her.

  “Funny,” she said. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “But we have to think of something apart from furry rugs.” Because he had also been thinking of how his delight in touch and warmth with Sylvia contrasted so horribly with the last moments of five young and pretty girls, what they must have suffered, what loving warmth they had been torn from, and what vile creature had abducted them into such hopelessness.

  “We need to go back to that cellar,” Sylvia murmured. “If Morrison lets us.”

  “Or even if he doesn’t,” said Harry.

  Darcey Morrison let them. “You found it,” he said the next day when carefully approached. “So come on in and take a last look. We’ve broken directly through, and it’s certainly an easier entrance. But there’s more excavations planned so this will be your last visit to the house. Make the most of it.”

  Instead of an hour in a damp dark tunnel underground, a ladder was a solid balance through a small hole in the floorboards, and a light had been attached. Now the dismal cellar, otherwise unaltered, was spread wide for viewing. Even the light had not improved it much.

  “There’s more than some creepy little sex fiend involved,” said Harry reaching out one finger, and then remembering that he mustn’t touch. “Finding that tunnel. Setting those hooks and metal rings in the floor and walls around the bed. Then up the chimney. Picking up a body and wedging it up into the chimney over your head. That’s got to be a big strong man. Or two”

  “You can’t have two friends with the same sick perversions.”

  “You do. All the time,” Harry insisted. “Hindley and Brady, Fred and Rosemary West, Ricky Davis and Dena Riley, Catherine and David Birnie. I won’t go on. I can’t remember other names, but there are a high number.”

  Sylvia was staring at threads caught in the floorboards. “Just as well I wear contact lenses. These are tiny. Can you see?”

  He could. “I’m sure the police will have seen them too.”

  “Dirty old bits of blanket,” Sylvia decided.

  Morrison’s voice behind her made her jump. “Once orange mohair. And moreover here. Once brown hessian. But extremely common and quite untraceable. But there are other threads caught on the old bed springs. And we have some hope of tracing those.”

  Harry and Sylvia bent and stared. “A mattress? Pillows?”

  Morrison shook his head. “No, as it happens. A white fake fur rug. But of a particular kind that isn’t common. And the same threads were discovered caught in the strands of hair amongst the remains.” But he was called by one of his men peering down into the cellar from the room above, nodded, and turned back to Sylvia and Harry. “No time for more, I’m afraid,” he told them. “And I can’t authorise any more visits here. This has definitely been the last. But I’ll pop around this evening if you’re free. Something I wouldn’t mind discussing with you.”

  It was after dinner when Morrison finally arrived at Rochester Manor, and they took him into the small living room where they hoped for greater privacy. “We can go up to the bedroom if anyone pokes their noses in,” Harry said. There’s a living room as well as the bedroom.” He waved at the grand staircase as they passed.

  But settled in the small room and having opened one of his own bottles of wine, Harry passed around the overfilled glasses, and Morrison leaned back against the wide cushions, stretched his legs, and sipped. “Off duty,” he said. “But I’m driving home. No refills please, or I’ll have to sleep the night on your floor.”

  “I’m wondering what you feel able to tell us,” said Sylvia with a hopeful smile. “Have you identified any of those poor wretched girls yet?” She gulped her own wine, clutching the stem tightly.

  The night sky was star-pricked through the window, but Harry stood and quickly pulled the curtains. It had stopped raining, but the night was cold. “Don’t worry,” he added. “We won’t be approaching any desperate families. But we’d be only too pleased to help in some way, however small.”

  “Three identifications have been made,” Morrison said, “of the young women found in the chimney itself, three were sufficiently intact, and DNA has been recovered both for their own identification and for that of the killer. Sadly the latter doesn’t match any criminal already on ou
r database. But it will be of essential importance should we arrest any suspect in the future. The parents of the young women have been informed.” He sipped again, looking over the rim of his glass. “Eventually we hope to identify the others, being seven in all. But so far the media has been told little or nothing, and we want to keep it that way.”

  “And the ashes?” Harry didn’t see how anyone could be identified from a handful of ash in a fireplace. “Anything found in the garden?”

  “The grounds haven’t been fully excavated yet,” Morrison said. “And the ashes simply point to human destruction, and possibly two separate persons as yet unknown. But there’s something important I need to ask, I’m afraid. When you discovered the passage leading to the cellar and explored there, Harry, can you swear you neither touched nor removed anything?”

  Both Harry and Sylvia adamantly shook their heads. Sylvia said, “We aren’t that absurd, I hope. We were extremely careful. Why do you ask?”

  “Some things were discovered on the ground,’ Morrison said, “but in an odd sequence. To be frank, we found faeces beneath the bed. Now very old and dried up, naturally. But they had been laid out to spell a word, or at least it appeared that way. Yet the word made little sense.”