Eyes of the Wicked

by Adam J. Wright

  Gemma looked into the storm with a worried expression. “Did you hear that? There’s someone out there.”

  Dani listened. She heard a shout. The sound was snatched away by the wind. Then it came again. Distant but recognisable. Someone was calling her name.

  “Dani!”

  She tried to call back but taking a breath was too painful.

  “Can you call back?” she asked Teresa and Gemma. “Get his attention.”

  “Are you sure?” Teresa asked, holding her daughter closely. “Is it safe? Do you know who it is?”

  Dani nodded. “It’s my boss.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Tony steered the Micra onto the road that led to Whitby Abbey. He could see the van now, its red taillights glowing in the darkness ahead, and he pushed the Micra’s speed up a fraction to get closer.

  The taillights ahead suddenly flared as Michael applied the brakes and the van stopped. The doors opened and Michael got out. He went around to the passenger side and dragged Vera out of the vehicle before heading off toward the cliff with her.

  “No!” Tony shouted. He was too far away to talk to Michael, to try to reason with him. If he didn’t get to Michael now, Vera was as good as dead. There was no time for caution, He pressed the Micra’s accelerator to the floor. The car’s tyres spun uselessly for a couple of seconds, then found traction. The Nissan shot forward.

  It only took a couple of seconds to reach the parked van, which suddenly loomed in the windscreen. Tony applied the brakes. The Micra fishtailed, spraying snow into the air as it skidded across the road. Its bonnet clipped the van and Tony was slammed against his seatbelt before the car came to a dead stop.

  Releasing the seatbelt and pulling it off, he opened the door and scrambled out of the car, looking for Michael and Vera.

  He saw them, moving towards the cliff edge, Vera struggling against her son as he pulled her along over the slippery snow.

  “Michael!” Tony shouted, breaking into a jog. “Wait!”

  “Don’t try to stop me,” Michael shouted back. He had one arm around his mother’s throat, while his knife-wielding hand hovered over her chest, the blade pointed at her heart. His voice sounded calm and that worried Tony. Michael was playing his endgame here and seemed accepting of the bitter end his plan entailed.

  His face was bloody, and he looked like he was in pain. That probably meant Dani had found him after all, and some sort of scuffle had ensued. The fact that Michael had returned to the farmhouse and Dani hadn’t, made Tony’s gut feel hollow.

  “Listen to me,” he said, slowing his pace as he got closer. “This isn’t going to change anything.” He cast a worried glance at the cliff edge. Michael and Vera were dangerously close to it.

  Two hundred feet below, the sea crashed against rocks, tumultuous and wild.

  “It’s going to change everything,” Michael said. “She’ll die for what she did to Ruth, and I’ll be with my sister forever, the way it should have been all along.”

  “And what about the baby she’s carrying? Does that deserve to die as well?”

  Michael faltered. His eyes flickered down to the protrusion beneath his mother’s robe. He had no idea it was nothing more than a silicon bump and a few straps holding it in place.

  “Do you think Ruth would want you to kill an innocent child?” Tony said. “What would she say if she could see you now?”

  “She can see me.” Michael held the knife at his mother’s throat. “This is what she wanted me to do ten years ago and now, I’m finally doing it.”

  “Really?” Tony asked. “She wanted you to kill an innocent baby? I don’t think so. What kind of person would she be if she wanted that?”

  “She was a beautiful person. A kind and loving person.”

  Tony could hear vehicles coming along the road behind him. The team had arrived. But instead of feeling glad that he had backup, he was fearful that their presence might send Michael over the edge, literally as well as figuratively.

  “That’s not how she’ll be remembered, though, is it?” he said to Michael, trying to keep the young man’s attention. Despite the fact that every nerve in his body felt wound up so tightly that it might break, he tried to keep his voice casual. “I can see the headlines now. They’ll all say you killed a pregnant woman for your dead sister. It’s going to stain Ruth’s memory, Michael. She’ll be remembered as an evil girl who wanted you to kill a baby.”

  “She didn’t want me to kill a baby!”

  “No, she didn’t. In fact, this was all about protecting a baby, wasn’t it? The baby that was growing inside her.”

  Michael nodded.

  “But the papers won’t see it that way,” Tony said. He could hear car doors being slammed shut behind him. Footsteps approaching. “I mean, if you think Ruth would be okay with you killing a baby, that says a lot about what kind of person she must have been. The media will have a field day with it. Ruth’s will become known as a child-killer.”

  “That isn’t true!” Tears started to run from Michael’s eyes, mingling with the blood around his nose and mouth.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” Tony said matter-of-factly. “They print stuff that isn’t true all the time to sell newspapers. Do you think the general public will believe Ruth was a lovely girl and that you’ve got it all wrong by thinking she’d want you to kill a pregnant woman? Or will they believe Ruth was evil and has been manipulating you from beyond the grave?”

  Michael shook his head. “No, this is all wrong.”

  The footsteps were getting closer. Tony turned his head towards the dozen or so uniformed police officers behind him and held up a hand. They stopped in their tracks and waited.

  “It is all wrong,” Tony said, turning back to Michael. “The only thing you’ll achieve by carrying out your plan is to drag Ruth’s name through the dirt.”

  Michael glanced at the cliff edge. “I just want to be with her.”

  “Michael,” Tony said, sensing that this conversation was about to come to an end one way or another, “If Ruth was the wonderful sister you say she was, she wouldn’t want you to die. Not like this. She’d want you to live your life. Put the knife down and let your mother go. Then you can tell me all about Ruth and I’ll make sure the papers get it right.”

  Michael hesitated, his eyes flickering to the cliff edge and then his mother, and then the cliff edge again. Tony could see the tension increase in the young man’s face. He wondered if he would have time to rush forward and pull Vera and Michael back from the edge.

  “You’re right,” Michael said, finally. “I can’t have people believing bad things about Ruth. I won’t hurt an innocent baby.” He pushed his mother away from the cliff edge roughly. She stumbled and slipped on the snow.

  Michael turned towards the cliff edge. “But I want to be with her. I need to be with Ruth.”

  Tony’s heart leapt into his mouth as he realised Michael was about to rush over the edge of the cliff but the young man’s features, which had become accepting of his fate suddenly changed to anger and he turned back towards his mother.

  Vera was lying on the ground. The fake bump beneath her robe had become dislodged when she’d been pushed and was now lying at an unnatural angle. It was obvious to everyone, and, most importantly, to her son, that she wasn’t pregnant at all.

  Suddenly realising that an innocent child played no part in the equation at all, Michael approached his mother with the knife. “You liar! How could you lie to me?”

  “I only wanted you to be happy,” Vera cried. “I only ever wanted you to be happy.”

  Michael raised the knife above his head, his features twisted into a mixture of hate, misery, and anger.

  Tony sprinted forwards towards the mother and son, but even as he did so, he knew he wasn’t going to get there in time to save Vera.

  A shape came barrelling out of the swirling snow, colliding with Michael and knocking him to the ground. The knife landed in the snow some distance aw
ay.

  DC Ryan was on top of Michael, raising a fist to punch the young man in the face.

  “Ryan, no!” Tony shouted. “We’ve got him. It’s all right. We’ve got him.”

  Ryan resisted the urge to land his fist on Michael’s face and, instead, rolled the young man over and cuffed him with a pair of handcuffs that had been hanging from his belt. He looked over at Tony. “You’re right, doc, we’ve got him. But that was a bloody close one!” His trademark grin appeared on his face.

  The uniformed officers moved forward to deal with Michael and his mother.

  Tony walked away, back towards the Micra, ringing Battle as he did so. When the DCI answered, Tony said, “Is she okay?’

  “Well she’s not about to enter Strictly Come Dancing,” Battle said, “but she’ll live. She’s in the ambulance now, along with Teresa and Gemma Matthews.”

  Tony closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of relief. “That’s good news,” he said.

  “What’s happening your end?” Battle asked.

  “Vera and Michael Stokes have been arrested.”

  “Well, that’s good news, as well. This sorry mess has finally come to an end.”

  “Yes,” Tony said. He reached the vehicles. Half a dozen SOCOs, in white Tyvek suits, were examining the van and the Micra.

  “Umm, I need that one to get home,” Tony told the officer nearest to him.

  “Sorry, it’s evidence,” she replied. “We’ve been told to bring it all in, including this car.”

  “Great,” Tony said, turning away. How was he supposed to get home now?

  “I’ll give you a lift, doc.” Ryan was standing a few feet away, hands thrust in the pockets of his jacket but otherwise seemingly unaffected by the cold.

  “All right, thanks.”

  “I’m parked over here,” Ryan said, nodding towards a car park where a number of police were parked, along with his Aston Martin.

  The two of them walked towards the car.

  “Good job talking him down,” Ryan said. “At one point, I thought they were both going over that cliff.”

  “Good job yourself. That was some rugby tackle. You saved that woman’s life.”

  Ryan nodded. “All in a day’s work.”

  They reached the car and got in.

  “Do you think every case is going to be like this?” Tony asked, looking through the windscreen at the uniformed officers leading Michael and Vera, in handcuffs, to the police vans. “Now that we’re part of Murder Force, I mean. Is it all going to be so dangerous and desperate?”

  Ryan started the engine and pulled out of the parking space. “It had better be,” he said with a grin.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Dani sat in her hospital bed, watching the television in her room but not taking in any of what she was looking at. Her thoughts kept returning to the events of the day. The pain in her side, dulled by morphine, felt like nothing more than a dull ache now but the doctors who operated on her had told her that she had two cracked ribs.

  According to the SOCOs who had taken Michael Stokes’ gun from the van and examined it, the weapon looked like it had been sitting on a shelf in damp conditions for years and, as a result, the gunpowder in the cartridges had degraded.

  That, along with the facts that the cartridges had been lightly loaded with bird shot—which was lighter and less damaging than buckshot—and Dani had been wearing layers of thick clothing when she’d been shot meant the outcome of her encounter with Stokes had ended much less seriously than it might have otherwise. The surgeons had removed the shot and bound Dani’s torso to let the ribs heal.

  The door to her room opened and Charlotte entered, her face a mask of concern.

  “Charlie!” Dani said, sitting up. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean what am I doing here?” Charlotte bent over her and gave her a gentle hug. “You’re in hospital so of course I’m going to come!”

  “I meant how did you know I was here?”

  “Tony Sheridan rang me from your phone. He explained what had happened and said he thought I should know. He’s very nice.”

  “He is,” Dani said. “But I wasn’t going to worry you until tomorrow. I didn’t want you spending your first Christmas away from home worrying about me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Her daughter dropped into an armchair next to the bed. “I always worry about you. You know that.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t want you to. How did you get here?”

  “Elliot drove me. He’s downstairs in the cafeteria. The nurse at the desk said you can’t have too many visitors in the room.”

  “I’m sure two is fine.”

  Charlotte smiled. “There are a lot more people than that here to see you, Mum.”

  As if on cue, Sheridan’s head appeared around the door. “Can we come in?”

  “Yes, of course,” Dani said.

  The psychologist entered the room, followed by Tom Ryan and Matt Flowers. “I thought I’d better return this,” he said, showing Dani her phone and placing it on the bedside locker.

  “Thank you. How are things going at the station?”

  “Vera had admitted to killing her husband,” he said. “It seems she wasn’t too happy about being committed and soon after she got out of Larkmoor, she bludgeoned Jonathan to death and buried him in the cellar. Michael and Ruth didn’t know anything about it and, soon after, they moved to Wild Row Farm. But Vera kept returning to that cellar to speak to Jonathan. She’d convinced herself that he was alive. I don’t think she could face the fact that she’d killed him.”

  “We’ll get more out of them tomorrow morning, after they’ve spent a night in the cells,” Battle said, appearing at the door. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad,” Dani said. “I think the drugs are keeping most of the pain away.”

  “Well, you take as much time as you need before you come back to work. Murder Force isn’t going anywhere. We’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks.” She turned her face to the window, tears welling in her eyes. She wasn’t even sure why she felt like crying.

  Reading the situation, Battle said, “Right, everybody out. Let’s leave DI Summers to have some time with her daughter.”

  He ushered everyone out of the door and gave Dani a short wave before leaving himself.

  “It’s okay, Mum,” Charlotte said, taking Dani’s hand. “You can cry all you want; you’ve had a tough day.”

  “I’m okay,” Dani said, patting her daughter’s hand. She looked at the night and the snow beyond the window.

  Last winter, it had been the Snow Killer. This winter, Michael Stokes. She turned to her daughter and said, “I just really hate this time of year.”

  * * *

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