by Graham Smith
If the painting was a Fiona McGhie, then it connected Lawrence Eversham to three of the five victims. As always seemed to be the way with this case, there was no solid evidence to follow, just suspicions and coincidences.
Beth picked up her phone and looked at the screen as she battled indecision. She knew she was more than a little tipsy and she didn’t want to call O’Dowd late at night to offer a drunken theory that may well be a waste of time.
On the other hand, if Eversham was the killer, the sooner they caught him the better.
Eighty
The man who used the name Kevin Ingersoll crept round to the back of the house. Just like the previous night, everything was dark. The moon was hidden behind a cloud, which added an extra layer to the blackness.
For a policewoman, her security wasn’t up to much. With just his basic understanding of how to pick a lock, he’d got the door open in less than a minute. When doing his reconnaissance the previous night, he’d peered through the windows and spotted no signs of a dog. Neither was there a cat flap in any of the doors, so he was fairly confident there were no pets that would attack him or alert his target.
The house was illuminated by a light in the stairwell. A quick check of the lounge told him that his target hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch. He saw the empty wine bottle on the coffee table and grinned. If she’d been drinking, his job would be easier.
As he made his way through the hallway, he was alert for signs of a male occupant, but he saw no men’s shoes left beside a chair. Nor any men’s coats on the hooks by the door.
When he got to the stairs he made sure he kept his feet to the sides to minimise the risk of creaks. He also took large steps to miss out every other stair tread.
At the top of the stairs he found three doors.
Two were ajar and the third was closed. A peek through the open doors showed him a bathroom and a spare bedroom.
He grasped the handle of the third door and, with slow movements, pressed it down and teased the door open. The hinges didn’t creak in the slightest.
Even as he was opening the door, he was taking care not to let any light spill onto the target’s face lest it wake her, though he was now close enough to manage the situation should his target wake and try shouting for help.
Four steps got him from the doorway to the bed.
She was on her back with an arm flung across the bed onto the empty pillow.
From his backpack he pulled out the first two items he’d need.
He looked down at her and took three deep breaths then bent over to apply a wide strip of duct tape across her mouth. Even before her eyes levered themselves open, he’d snapped one ring of a handcuff onto her wrist and was flipping her onto her back while reaching for her other arm.
She thrashed and tried to shout, but he’d expected that. It was natural, anyone would do the same, so he let her have a minute to realise the futility of her situation.
When she settled down, he lifted the shotgun he’d laid at his feet and aimed it at her.
‘Hello, Elisabeth. Now listen up and do exactly as I say. I don’t want to pull the trigger, but I won’t hesitate if you leave me no choice.’
Eighty-One
Beth didn’t bother struggling against the handcuffs that had been put on her. She knew from her training that doing so was a waste of time and effort.
She’d been terrified when she’d woken up and found herself staring down the twin barrels of a shotgun. Behind the shotgun was a masked man. Despite being groggy from a lack of sleep and the bottle of wine she’d torpedoed before bed, her brain flicked from idle to full power in an instant.
There was no doubt in her mind that she’d been captured by the Dragon Master. If his capture of Caitlin was anything to go by, she would die in the next few hours. Twenty-four at the most. That was a certainty unless she could do something about it. Nobody else would come to save her. She was in this alone and if she was to survive, she had to rely on her own wits and cunning.
As soon as the Dragon Master had picked a small hole in the tape covering her mouth she’d known what was coming. As she expected, he’d produced a bottle of water and put its sports cap into the hole in the tape.
He’d squeezed it until the water filled her mouth.
She’d done everything she could not to swallow the liquid as she was convinced it would contain a date-rape drug or a tranquiliser. In spite of her best efforts, some of the water had trickled down her throat.
As soon as she’d been pushed into the boot of the car, she’d wriggled until her nose was pressed against the rough material of the boot lining and let the water dribble back out of the hole in the tape.
Now she was doing all she could to fight the effects of whatever he’d laced the water with. The only hope she had of saving herself was to resist the drug and seize the right moment to escape her captor. She’d have to act as though she was drugged. She’d have to be compliant, keep her face neutral until the right opportunity came her way. Then it would be a case of fighting back or fleeing. There was no way of knowing which until the moment arose.
Now she was in the boot, she was able to feel the edge of the tape starting to curl. As tempting as it was to rub her face back and forth on the boot lining to remove the tape, she decided to suffer the discomfort rather than give the Dragon Master any reason to doubt that she’d fallen under the influence of the drug.
She tried to count time in her head, but it was a forlorn hope as she had no idea how long she’d been in here and it was too late to start counting minutes.
As much as she could, she tried to remain calm. It would be so easy to go to pieces and fall apart with the terror of what she knew was coming. Even the tape over her mouth would delay him pouring his accelerant down her throat for the moment it took him to tear it off.
To combat the despair and fear, Beth turned her mind to the man’s voice. She’d heard it before, she just couldn’t remember where.
The Dragon Master’s voice was cultured. He didn’t use slang and he spoke with the quiet tones of someone whose social circle included lords rather than laymen. He’d also called her Elisabeth rather than Beth. Elisabeth might be the name on her birth certificate, but she’d always been Beth. The only other place she was Elisabeth was on her warrant card.
FRANCE
She cast her mind back over the people she’d flashed her warrant card to over the last week. One by one she went through them until she happened on a voice that matched her captor’s. Now Beth knew for certain that Lawrence Eversham was the Dragon Master. She cast her mind back to the previous evening and remembered how she’d made the connection. She cursed herself for being indecisive, but most of all, she berated herself for falling asleep before she’d screwed up the courage to call O’Dowd. She knew it was a mistake that may cost her her life.
The only part she couldn’t work out was where Sarah Hardy fit in to the picture. The best she could think of was that Sarah wasn’t actually a potential victim, although that Kevin Ingersoll was Lawrence made a lot of sense. Unless, of course, Sarah was to be his next victim:
FRANCES
Something about the car changed. The quiet hum of the engine disappeared, but they were still moving. The car tilted as if they were going uphill, but the increased noise of a straining engine was missing.
Beth struggled with the problem for a minute and then made the connection. The car was a hybrid with both petrol and electric power systems. Lawrence would be able to switch between petrol and electric at will. When using only electrical power, the car would be silent apart from the noise created by its tyres.
This explained how Lawrence had managed to drive down to Highstead Castle without any of the people who lived alongside the track hearing his car. In a low gear and with the lights off, his car would have been a silent ghost travelling onwards to deliver its grisly burden.
As the car jolted over a pothole, Beth had a terrifying epiphany. If the car was on electric now, it meant Lawrence wa
nted stealth. Which indicated the journey was about to end.
Behind the tape, Beth gritted her teeth and tried to contain the adrenaline that was flooding her body with a fight or flight instinct.
She would only get one chance to escape. One chance to save herself.
Whatever happened, she must recognise the moment when it came and take it.
Eighty-Two
The car pulled to a halt and Beth heard the ratchet of a handbrake being applied. She was cold and stiff, but as much as she could be, she was ready to seize her chance.
When the boot lid was opened she was confronted by a figure dressed all in black. There was a shotgun over his arm and curiosity in his eyes. She knew the question he wanted the answer to and kept her face blank.
His face was uncovered now, but she didn’t look at it. Didn’t want him to see a spark of recognition in case he forced more of the drug-laced water into her mouth.
He seemed to buy that she was drugged. His gloved hands grasped her pyjama-clad legs and fed her feet out of the boot. Next he took hold of her torso and lifted her onto her feet. The grass beneath her toes was cold, but Beth kept her face in one position and forced herself not to shift from foot to foot.
When Beth moved her head to one side she saw the shape of another human.
Her heart plummeted into her stomach. It would be all she could do to escape Lawrence. If he had an accomplice, she was doomed.
Two killers made a lot of sense. Setting up the deposit scenes would be easier, as would snatching the victims. She had to get a look at this other person. See if she recognised them on the slim chance that she got out of this alive.
Before she could turn her head, Lawrence spun her round and freed her right arm from the handcuffs. As she turned, Beth got a glimpse of a female head and red hair. Even as she was wondering if the woman was Lawrence’s accomplice, she heard the rasp of the handcuffs fastening again.
Beth turned her head and looked at the woman. Sarah Hardy’s face was blank, registering neither fear nor happiness.
That was the look she had to achieve; the state of indifferent acceptance. Memories of her modelling days helped. When on photoshoots she’d had to arrange her face in various ways for hours on end. It was a form of acting, and while she’d never been likely to win an Oscar, she’d learned ways to manipulate her expression and hold it for as long as was necessary.
The confirmation that Kevin Ingersoll was an alias used by Lawrence didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that she’d found Sarah alive and well. Sarah being here meant that Beth couldn’t escape, even if they weren’t handcuffed together. It was one thing to flee a killer to save your own life. To do so leaving someone still in the killer’s clutches was wrong on every possible level.
As a police officer, Beth knew that it was her job to save Sarah. There was no way she could live with herself if she ran off and left the girl behind. That she was tethered to Sarah would only complicate things further. The redhead was fully in thrall to the drugs Lawrence had fed her, and she’d be slow to react and may even refuse to come along. Fleeing Lawrence would be tricky enough without having to drag an unwilling Sarah behind her.
Lawrence pulled two bags from the back seat of the car and slung a backpack over one shoulder. The shotgun was fed into the boot and the car locked up. With the shotgun out of harm’s way, Beth considered making a run for it. Had Sarah not been so drugged she may have acted upon the idea.
Beth gave the surrounding area a quick scan. There was a huge old building with grills over the windows to one side and there was a smattering of trees topping a grassy bank. Streetlights peeked between the leaves of the trees and there were the sounds of occasional passing vehicles. Off in the distance Beth could hear the whoop of an ambulance siren. It took her a moment, but she recognised where they were. A place she used to picnic with her parents when she was a child, no less. Workington Hall.
Like the other murder sites, Workington Hall had fallen into disrepair and then ruin after a long and illustrious history. From her research into historic houses, Beth knew that it was once known as Curwen Castle; the building had started its life as a timber peel tower before morphing into a stone tower which in turn became a small castle by the fifteenth century.
Mary Queen of Scots had been received at the castle with full honours, only for the next day to see her hustled off to Carlisle Castle, where she was held for a short time before being transported to London, where her long years of captivity followed.
Workington Hall had fallen empty in 1929, only for the War Office to commission the building as a billet for troops during the Second World War. A significant fire had gutted large areas of the building and the troops had moved out.
Unlike the other grand houses used by the Dragon Master, Workington Hall was located in a built-up area. Namely the town of Workington.
Lawrence told them to each take a bag.
The one Beth picked up was three feet long and light. If she had to guess what was in it, she’d say a pair of wings.
Lawrence took Sarah’s arm and led them towards the rear of the castle. Along the back wall there was a doorway with a metal grill bolted to the wall to prevent entry. It was darker here and while Beth could still see the odd streetlight, there was far less chance of anyone seeing them.
Beth stood motionless as Lawrence shucked off his own backpack and rummaged in it for a moment. When his hands emerged they were holding what appeared to be a small blowtorch. He lit it and fiddled with a pair of knobs at the base of the handle until its hissing flame turned ice blue.
When he held it to the brackets securing the grill, they glowed red then yellow as the metal melted away under the fierce heat. Beth used the five minutes it took him to cut through all four brackets to try and assess Sarah’s state of mind.
It seemed as if Sarah was fully in the grip of the drug. There was no spark in her eyes, and when she gave a tug on Sarah’s arm, the woman looked down to the handcuffs rather than at Beth. Due to Sarah’s lack of comprehension of what was about to happen, Beth realised that she’d have to try to disable Lawrence, rather than flee him.
She was tempted to slam a fist against Lawrence’s temple but knew that she’d be lucky to knock him out with just one punch. If she failed, she’d then have to fight a desperate and angry man with only the use of one hand. It was a fight she’d lose and she’d pay for her mistake with her life.
With the grill out of the way, Lawrence told Sarah to go inside. Like an obedient child, Sarah did as she was told, the handcuff on her right arm pulling Beth along with her. Even in the dark areas of the castle, there was enough ambient moonlight for Beth to see the two squares of missing flesh on Sarah’s back. The fact Sarah was wearing a slip with narrow straps made Beth wonder if Sarah had been taken in her sleep the way she had and forced to make the call to her mother at gunpoint.
As Beth followed Sarah, she felt sharp pebbles pricking the soles of her feet, but that wasn’t her greatest worry. What was really beginning to concern her was that she was feeling less and less like resisting. She knew it was the drug doing its job, having seeped into her bloodstream via her saliva glands, but she also knew that she had to fight it, had to recognise where her free will began and ended. She mustn’t let the drug take control of her.
Everything must be questioned and if it didn’t seem in her best interests, she must act to prevent the drug taking control so she could save Sarah and herself.
Eighty-Three
Lawrence had to fight the urge to whistle in glee as he orchestrated his next tribute. Everything had gone far better than he’d dared hope. Snatching Elisabeth had been easy. The look in her eyes when she’d focussed on the shotgun had ensured her compliance.
If he was honest with himself, he knew that selecting her had been a dangerous gamble that may well have backfired on him. But now that she was in his clutches, the risk seemed minimal. Like Sarah, she was obeying his commands without question.
He directed Sarah to a roo
m near the back of the castle and told her to halt.
Workington Castle was the perfect place for this twin tribute and this room was the perfect arena. Large enough for him to work, and yet, not so large that the flames would fail to illuminate the room when he made his tributes.
With the girls standing in the far corner, he strung a nylon rope across the room and tied each end to a metal spike protruding from the wall.
His next move was to bring the girls forward. ‘Hold onto the rope.’
Sarah did as she was bidden at once, but he did notice that Elisabeth was a fraction slower. He put her slowness down to the wine she’d been drinking. She stank of stale alcohol, even with the tape covering her mouth.
He pulled a cable tie from his pocket, wrapped it over the handcuff and fed the end through the eyelet until it formed a circle a half inch in diameter. He secured Sarah’s left hand and Elisabeth’s right by looping a cable tie round their wrists and then using another to affix them to the rope.
With the girls secured he placed the oxyacetylene kit in front of their feet, pulled a pair of medical scissors from his bag and stepped behind them.
His first two cuts severed the thin straps of Sarah’s nightgown, and it fell to the ground with a fluttering whisper.
Lawrence’s next move was to slice through Elisabeth’s pyjama top.
With their shoulders exposed, he stepped in front of them and retrieved from his backpack his scalpel and one of the plastic squares he used to measure his cuts.
‘You two girls are so lucky. You’re going to be the most beautiful tributes to the greatest dragon of them all. You will be immortal; your names will go down in the pantheon of history.’
He reached forward and, in one sudden tear, ripped the tape from Elisabeth’s mouth. She gave a little gasp at the pain, but when he looked at her, there was still that dumb expression of non-comprehension.