A Deadly Compulsion (15 page)

The iodine stung as it soaked into the raw, deep rents left by the rodent’s teeth.  And when he pressed the wad against her more seriously bitten hand, she sucked in her breath at the deep throbbing pain that set her whole arm aflame.

He made sweet, hot tea and pastrami sandwiches for them both, and then settled facing her across the table and ordered her to eat.  She nibbled at the fresh bread, tasted the filling of thinly sliced, salted beef and began to salivate, ravenous, her stomach growling.  It took all of her willpower to take small bites and chew the food properly.  She knew that if she bolted it down too quickly she would almost certainly be sick.  Savouring each mouthful, she enjoyed the sandwich much more than she could ever remember relishing the finest fillet steak, lobster, or pâté de foie gras.

“You can speak, as long as you don’t insult me,” he said.  “If you badmouth me, the rats will think it’s Christmas come early.  Do you understand?”

Trish looked him directly in the face for the first time in days.  His eyes were deceiving; not as she would imagine the eyes of a killer to be.  They shone a bright sapphire blue and appeared, erroneously, to be kind, harbouring no evil or the capacity to carry out the horrific acts that she knew he had committed.  He was reasonably good-looking and even-featured, with a firm mouth and strong, dimpled chin.  His hair was fair, thick, but cut quite short with a side parting.  A lock of it fell across his forehead, giving him a boyish look.  She judged him to be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-one or two.  Although she had known who he was, she had never taken much notice of him in the past.

“I asked you if you understood.” he said, breaking her line of thought.

“Yes, I understand,” she replied, nodding as she spoke, her voice now smoother, more recognisable from the gravel croak it had been; although too high, nearly soprano with anxiety.

“Thing is, Trish, I think you
have
paid for the slagging that you gave me on TV.  The only problem is, I can’t let you go, because you know who I am.”

“I wouldn’t tell any―”

“The fuck you wouldn’t tell anybody,” he said, his voice suddenly knife sharp.  “Once free, you’d want me behind bars for the rest of my life.  So don’t talk shit or I’ll staple your fucking mouth shut.”

“No…please, don’t.  I’m sorry,”

“That’s better,” he said, reaching forward, taking her uninjured hand and squeezing it gently. “This could be fun.  I’ve got no script for keeping someone alive.  I’m just playing it by ear, because I really don’t want to kill you.”

Later, they sat in the living room and he showed her videos of the news reports that had been broadcast following her disappearance.  Looking at footage of herself dressed in a power suit, lightly made-up, and with her hair carefully styled, she viewed the faintly smug and in-control anchor woman as though she was a stranger.  For the first time in her life she looked at herself with a certain dislike.  The on-screen Trish Pearson was not a person she would want to know.  The insincerity that shone through was almost as irksome as the aura of superciliousness.

“You’re no longer that stupid cow with an attitude, are you?” he said.

“No,” she whispered.  “I don’t feel as though I know her.  And I don’t like her.”

“So this has been a valuable learning curve, eh?”

She didn’t know how to answer that, so didn’t.  It had in no way been worthwhile, but it
had
changed her, radically.  She was different, in some basic way unlike the old Trish who she now saw as having as little depth as the two-dimensional taped image on the screen in front of her.  How could she have been such a shallow, insensitive person for so long, without even realising it?

“Time for bed,” he said, yawning as he stood up.  “Follow me.”

A
door in the kitchen opened on to stone steps that led down to a large and freshly whitewashed cellar.  It held only two items of furniture: a single bed and a coffee table, its top littered with magazines and dog-eared paperback novels.  In one corner stood a plastic chemical loo next to a large, stained and crazed porcelain sink, its single rusty tap dripping; the patter a heartbeat, echoing around a room that had no carpet to dampen the sound.  A single low wattage pearl light bulb hung from the ceiling.  It could be turned on or off from a switch in the cellar, or from one above them in the kitchen.  The subterranean room was Spartan, but was as appealing to Trish as any suite in a five star hotel, compared to the barn.

“I work shifts, Trish, so you’re going to be spending a lot of time down here,” he said, sitting on the bed and patting the cover next to him, intimating that she should join him. “I don’t want to have to tape your mouth or shackle you again, so I’m going to leave a voice-activated recorder on in the kitchen.  If you start screaming for help, I’ll know, and you’ll be punished.

“Think on this...you’re on a farm, well away from the road and out in the country.  There are no neighbours, so no one could hear you.  And the floor, walls and ceiling are two-foot-thick reinforced concrete.  My dad, God piss on his soul, got the heebies back when Kennedy and Kruschev faced-off over the Cuban Bay of Pigs thing in the early sixties.  He decided that World War Three was imminent, so turned what had been an old dirt cellar into this bunker.  There used to be a generator and a complicated air filter system.  The stupid bastard thought that after the bombs fell, he would be able to sit it out for a few months, live off canned food and bottles of water and then go back to farming after the fallout had somehow cleared.  Oh, and the door at the top of the stairs is constructed of lead and sheet-metal, and I’ve modified it, there’s no handle on the inside.  You’re on probation, Trish.  No chain, no gag, but fuck up just once and it’s game over.”

He actually kissed her on the forehead and smiled warmly before rising and going to the stairs, pausing as he began to climb them, to turn back and call, “Goodnight, Blondie.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

“G...goodnight,” she replied.  And seconds later fear and confusion, relief and tiredness vied with a sense of hopelessness as the steel door closed with the heavy sigh of how she imagined a vault or airlock door might sound.  The metallic scrape of two bolts shooting home caused a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, and a sudden rise of panic took hold.  Her cold skin crawled, claustrophobia hit her, and the cellar was transformed in her mind into a sealed sepulchre.  She actually missed the skylight that had been a portal through which she had been able to view and somehow still feel connected in some small way to the outside world.

Leaving the light on, Trish lay back on the bed and closed her eyes against the sight of the low concrete ceiling that she imagined was moving down, soon to reach and flatten her with crushing force.  The mattress felt soft and inviting after existing for so long on hard-packed earth.  And the pillow and linen were dry.  She almost floated, overwhelmed by a tiredness that obliterated all horrific thought in her numb brain, wanting to be asleep and find some respite from her suffering.

No  Please, no.  Jesus help me!
  Her surroundings began to transform. But how could they? The tap that had been dripping was now pouring with a steady flow, sounding like someone urinating.  She was freezing to the bone, and her breath escaped her mouth in a mist of frigid vapour.  Sitting up, she swung her feet onto the damp concrete, placing her hands on the patchwork quilt that she had been lying on top of.  It too felt clammy.  Looking down, she saw small coins of green mould or mildew clinging to its surface; the furry growths appearing to proliferate and mushroom out as she watched them.  Standing shakily, she walked across to the sink and saw that the stream of liquid was thick, almost black, stank of raw sewage, and was nearly up to the rim, about to overflow and cascade down to the floor.  Using both hands, she turned the resisting, squeaking tap off, before plunging her fingers into the opaque depths, sure that the plug must be in place, only to find a slimy mass blocking the hole.  She tried to pull it free, clawed at it, and then leapt back, her hands whipping from the sink as though she had touched a live wire, as whatever filled the outlet pipe contracted and squirmed like a writhing eel.

Looking about the subterranean vault, the setting was not as she had first thought it to be.  The whitewashed walls were powdery, flaking, and discoloured by brown patches that brought images of liver spots or blemishes of skin cancer on the back of ancient and anaemic hands to mind.  In the shadows, where the walls met the ceiling, limp, black cobwebs hung with fat-bodied spiders clinging to them: sailors in the rigging of tall ships.

Stepping back the three paces to the bed, Trish saw a trail of fresh blood puddled on the concrete.  Her gaze moved to her legs, and she cried out at the sight of the bloody rivulets that striped them and ran down over her feet.  There were more than a dozen fresh bites on each leg; small open wounds on her shins, calves, thighs and feet.  The end of the little toe on her right foot was missing, and the spur of disclosed bone jutted from the raw meat, a glistening white like a pointed stick of chalk.

She climbed up on to the bed and sat hunched, trembling uncontrollably as she searched the floor for movement.  There appeared to be no holes at the foot of the walls; no way that they could enter, and yet they had reached her, somehow bitten her and even chewed off her toe without causing her to wake up screaming in agony.  She knew that vampire bats anaesthetised with their saliva as they bit the legs of cattle at night to lap the warm blood from the unsuspecting animals.  The disgusting creatures even introduced a fluid that stopped the blood from coagulating; could rats also have those abilities? She didn’t know.

The quilt rippled with life.  She froze, breath held as the moving lumps burrowed towards her under the bedclothes.  One pointed head appeared from beneath the pillow, its large, oil-bead eyes fixed on her face, unafraid; snout and whiskers twitching as if smelling her.  The light bulb dimmed, and the semidarkness galvanised the rodents into action.  She lashed out as her body was weighed down by the stinking, bristling vermin.  Sharp claws raked her, and sharper teeth bit into her flesh, tearing at her back, buttocks, stomach, breasts, neck, arm, legs and face.  Muscle spasms caused her to buck and writhe and arch her back.  She tumbled off the bed, rolled over on at least two of the plump bodies – that screamed like newborn babies – and forced herself up onto her knees, found her feet and scrambled for the stairwell.  Reaching the top, she pounded on the door, simultaneously turning as she heard skittering claws from the tide of undulating fur rising toward her.  The front-runners leapt, slapped into her breasts, stomach and thighs to knock her back against the cold steel.  The pack covered her, latched on to her and dragged her down.  What felt like a thousand knifes sliced at her.  And as she tried to scream, a head darted into her open mouth for razor-edged incisors to cut through her tongue, ripping away a large chunk.  They took her eyes, plucking them from the sockets, and the pain became a cloak of sheer agony.  She lost all ability to think or resist the onslaught, and felt no further individual bites, just an overall flensing of her entire body, as from within her skull she suffered the unbelievable pain and waited for blood loss to bring her the mercy of unconsciousness.

Sitting bolt upright, hands clawing at herself, she grasped at the diseased bodies that were dissolving with the nightmare.  The light bulb still shone brightly in the underground room, which she could see was as clean and freshly painted as when her captor had brought her down to it.  Still tingling from the lingering, phantom pain of nonexistent bites, and without solace, she realised that this was her death cell, and that there would be no reprieve from the
real
horror that lurked above her.  He would tire of her soon, take her back to the barn and perform his ritual act of murder.  She could wait, subservient to his every command and perverted desires, or she could find a way to escape.

Trish lay awake, thinking of ways she might fashion a weapon with which at some stage she would employ to try to kill the maniac who held her fate in his hands. She wanted to survive; to somehow better her captor and get her life back.

“COME
,” Chief Superintendent Raymond Cottrell called out as Laura rapped twice on the door of his fourth floor office.

She entered and was immediately uneasy in the large room that was intimidating by design, not accident.  Walking self-consciously over the deep pile of slate-grey carpet, she counted the number of steps that it took her to reach the solitary chair that stood before the chief’s behemoth, mahogany desk.  Fifteen steps.  Over thirty feet: a long, lonely walk that was intended to unnerve all visitors.

“Sit,” Cottrell said, his voice a snake’s hiss: the python Kaa of Kipling’s Jungle Book.

Laura eased herself into the low, hard chair; eyes narrowed against the harsh daylight that almost but not quite silhouetted her inquisitor in front of the window that his high chair and buttress of a desk were strategically positioned.  She studied the man.  He was thin, sickly looking, with grey skin of almost the same hue as the carpet, and a loose wattle of flesh that hung – displaying white stubble missed by the razor – from his scrawny neck onto the front of his shirt collar, almost obscuring the small, tightly-fashioned knot of his maroon tie.  His yellow-grey hair was sparse, slicked down to his scalp.  It was only his eyes that burned with life, as if sapping energy from the rest of his apparently enfeebled frame.  They were avian, with large and almost black irises that absorbed the light into unplumbed depths.

“To say that you had erred, Detective Inspector Scott would be a gross understatement,” Cottrell said, drumming his almost pencil-thin fingers on a green blotter; which, apart from a telephone was the only other article on the highly polished surface of the desktop.  “You jumped the gun and instigated the use of an armed unit to arrest an innocent man.”

Laura waited until she was sure he had finished.  He had a habit of leaving his discourse open-ended; a further ploy to disconcert.  It worked.

“We had every reason to believe that Cox was the killer, sir.  We found―”

“I know exactly what you found, Detective Inspector.  I did not summon you here to discuss the matter.  I want you to know that you are not performing your duties to an acceptable level.  You should have kept the suspect under surveillance and waited for the results from the odontology department.  You were too hasty by far.

“I am also informed that you have involved a civilian who was once employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said, almost spitting the organisation’s name out with undisguised disdain.

“The man was a topflight profiler with the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico.  I was using any means available to me to try and close the case,” Laura said in defence of her actions.

“I am not suggesting that initiative is without merit, Detective Inspector,” Cottrell said, his refusal to ever use acronyms an annoyance to Laura.  “But only results can go some way to excuse less than professional methodology.  I shall take it under advisement as to whether you should be removed from this investigation.  And I will not tolerate any further association with the American.  That is all.”

Laura had been summarily dismissed.  The reprimand was over, for the time being. She wanted to tell the anal retentive megalomaniac just what he could do with the case, the job, and even the oversized desk that he preached from behind, as though it was a raised pulpit.  It was with a great deal of difficulty that she somehow managed to maintain an outwardly calm, unruffled demeanour.  Most people had some sense of humour, but the police chief was seemingly the exception to the rule, bereft of any sign of even suppressed levity.  It occurred to her that Jim would have been able to produce a written vignette of Cottrell, setting out the premise that he had been denied breast feeding and was raised in a loveless environment that accounted for his morose personality and piss-poor attitude.  Or maybe he suffered from a stomach ulcer, haemorrhoids or a nagging, frigid wife.  Whatever the reason, Laura found the man to be as personable as a cockroach.  Cottrell spoke
at
people, not to them.  His only interest was results.

Laura stood up, her lips pursed, then nodded curtly and made the long trek back to the door, sensing the police chief’s eyes boring into her back; her mind conjuring him raising an unseen smile that she was pleased not to be able to see, knowing that it would make her flesh creep.

Resisting a powerful urge to slam the door behind her, Laura left what she thought to be an unwholesome place.  The little man’s mild body odour seemed to have adhered to her, making her feel unclean and in need of a hot shower to remove the invisible layer of contamination from her skin.

“You look angry, boss,” Hugh said when she strode past him into her office and made a beeline for the desk drawer and her hidden cache of cigarettes.

“Cottrell just carpeted me, Hugh,” she said, lighting up and sucking the calming smoke deep into her lungs.  “He is without doubt the most contemptible little bastard that I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.  And he stinks.”

“What did he say?”

“In short, that I wasn’t hacking it.  He wants results.  It was basically a smack on the wrist for moving too fast on Cox.  He thinks I overreacted, and he’s right, damn him.  What really pissed me off is that he knew about Jim.  Somebody dropped me in it from a great height.”

“Not me, boss,” Hugh said.  “I might not rate Elliott, but I wouldn’t be disloyal to you.  I hope that you know that.”

“I didn’t accuse you, Hugh.  But someone on the team ran off at the mouth.”

Jim was sitting out on the balcony sipping black coffee and pondering on whether to water the potted japonica, which was wilting with the heat; the mixture of compost and peat that it grew in, dry, its surface cracked like the earth of some drought-ridden African plain.

He drained his mug and got up, pausing for a few seconds to watch a jet angle up from Heathrow, to be encompassed by cotton-candy clouds.  As it vanished, he went inside for more caffeine.

Rummaging through two units in the kitchen, he found a plastic jug, filled it with cold water, returned to the balcony and set the coffee down before pouring the life-giving water over the baked crust that was losing its ability to sustain the plant’s life.  At first, the water pooled, and then slowly began to drain.  It took several minutes to absorb the two pints that he patiently fed to it, and he could almost imagine hearing a sigh of relief as the ornamental quince sucked up the sustenance through its dry and withering root system.  He left the empty jug next to it and sat down again, staring off to the castle’s round tower, that stood resolute and might have been a permanent, natural feature of the landscape; oblivious to man and his transient passing before its aged edifice.

Since driving back from Yorkshire, Jim had been unable to settle back in the groove.  He saw to business in a perfunctory, offhand manner, with no appetite for the sham of reinventing personalities and mollycoddling celebrities of dubious, usually fey character and questionable ability.  He now saw his life as a dreary canvas, faded, the bright pigments obscured by a patina of grime that clung to its surface, thickening with inchmeal accumulation that vexed his spirit and obscured any worthwhile aspirations.

Laura cared deeply for him, he knew that.  And he loved her and wanted to be with her with a need that was consuming him.  Her personality was a convoluted maze, strewn with dead ends and detours.  Her career was a crutch, and had helped her to cope with loss and grief and the crippling weight of emptiness.  The job was her security blanket; a constant that could not just be ripped away and confiscated, but had to be cast aside willingly, when the confidence to function without it came about naturally, by choice.  And that might be something that would never happen.

She had phoned twice since he’d returned home.  They had planned to see each other again, as soon as the Tacker case was solved, for a weekend on neutral ground; maybe stay at a quiet hotel in the country and avoid newspapers and television.  That in itself would be a giant step forward, if it ever materialised.  In the meantime she was keeping him abreast of developments.  The suspect, who lived within the area that Jim had designated, seemed involved, although the only evidence was a length of rope that he insisted he had never seen and therefore, to his mind, must have been planted by the police.  With no other leads, the guy had walked.  Jim now waited for her e-mails and phone calls, hungry for more details that might help him fill in some of the blanks and add to the jigsaw that was taking shape in his mind.  He had found all the edges, and was working towards the centre, now feeling as though one elusive key piece would fully disclose to him the identity of a figure that was almost revealed.

Going back inside to his computer, Jim began to compile a simple list of what he considered to be the pertinent facts.  Laura’s latest mail, received the previous day, had given up another clue, hardening his conviction that the killer lived on a farm.  The traces of white powder found on the last victim’s body had been calcium oxide. Lime; a substance usually spread on the land as a fertiliser by the farming community.  The molecular structure of the lime had been degraded and was believed to be at least twenty years old.  The assumption was that the corpse had been transported in a bag –plastic, as confirmed by forensic – to where the body had been found hanging.

Jim made a list:

1.  PAST RECORDS OF MISSING BLONDES...ALL FROM SOUTHEAST AREA

OF YORK.

2.  UNKNOWN SUBJECT’S LOCALE WITHIN THAT DISTRICT.

3.  ISOLATED FARM/SMALLHOLDING/DOMICILE.

4.  LIME...WHICH WOULD MAKE A FARM MOST LIKELY.

5.  MATCHING SECTION OF BLUE NYLON ROPE/DEREK COX.

6.  KILLER/BLUE EYES/FAIR HAIR/LEFT-HANDED/TALL?

7.  TEETH IMPRESSION…NOT COX’S.

8.  MOTHER/MATRICIDE/COMPULSION.

9.  SADISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER.  VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY USED

TO CONTROL AND DOMINATE.  NEEDS TO INFLICT PHYSICAL AND

PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN.  OBSESSED WITH TORTURE/DEATH.

10.  INTELLIGENT/COMPETITIVE/GAME PLAYER.

11.  COX + ACCOMPLICE...OR ROPE PLANTED BY KILLER. WHO KNEW

THAT COX WAS A SUSPECT?

THE POLICE?

Jim stared at the screen and let his mind spin like the reels of a Vegas slot machine. The facts clicked into place...Jackpot!  The Tacker was a cop.  He reached for the phone.             

“Jesus, Jim, are you positive?” Laura said, holding the receiver close to her ear, even though she was at home alone and could not be overheard.

“Hell, no, I’m not positive, but sure enough.  I’m working on the assumption that if Cox was involved, then you would have found more than just one glaring, incriminating clue. You found nothing.  His house and land were as clean as a whistle.  And he’s gay.  He doesn’t fit the bill.  Whoever put the rope in his garage was pointing you at a suspect who fitted the rough description of the killer, and who lived in the right surroundings in the area that we were locked on to.  Cox conformed to the profile, superficially.  You need to make a list of everyone who had access to the information.  Then just home in by process of elimination.  You’ve got a killer cop, Laura, I’m sure of it.  He’s going to loosely fit the picture that we’ve built up of him.  And once you’ve narrowed it down, you’ll find that he lives out in the sticks, and all the clues will be there to nail him.  I’m convinced that he took Trish Pearson as well.  She may even still be alive.  And Laura, for God’s sake be ultra careful.  If he thinks that you’re getting close to him, he’ll take you out.”

“Thanks, Jim.  I’ll get on it.  Unfortunately it’s not just confined to the team.  Quite a few others have been involved in the investigation and know a lot of the case details. It could take a while.”

“It shouldn’t.  His address will point him out.”

“I’ll keep you informed of―”

“I’m coming back up,” Jim interrupted.  “I don’t intend to sit down here like a spare prick at a wedding, wondering if he’s cottoned on to what you’re doing.  Remember, if it is a cop we’re looking for, he thinks like you and is without doubt monitoring every move that you make.  Don’t lose sight of the fact that this guy is a killing machine.  Trust no one who has any knowledge of the profile, or could feasibly be who you’re after.”

“Go straight to the cottage, Jim.  I’ll leave a key in the woodshed out back, above the door on a nail.”

“I’ll be there by noon tomorrow...I love you.”

There was a pause.  “Good.  We need to talk.”

“Take care.”

“And you.  Bye.”

He felt like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof.  He’d declared himself by saying ‘I love you’ and disclosing the depth of his feelings.  He hadn’t planned on saying it. The words had just tumbled out unbidden.  With the exception of Pamela, Laura was the only other person he had ever truly loved, apart from his parents.  Images and memories of his mum, dad and Pamela assailed him.  All three were now gone.  His parents had died together in the twisted remains of his father’s Ford pickup.  A local drunk had passed-out at the wheel of his old Mercury and perished with them in the resulting head-on collision.  They had been driving back from church along a quiet country road on a bright spring day in ninety-nine when it happened.  God, how the years flew by.  It seemed like only yesterday he had got the call.  You never get over life experiences like that, just accommodate them somehow and let time do the rest.  And Pamela, dear sweet Pamela, who had been gunned down during the attempt on his life.  That had been the hardest cut of all.  Guilt was cruelly endurable.  He had come to accept it would always be on his shoulder berating him interminably like a fucking parrot with a bad attitude.  But there was absolutely nothing he could do to change one second of what had gone down.  Life isn’t like the movies; you only get one take.  And that one rainy night in D.C. had left him thinking of how things might have been.  Pamela should still be alive, and wasn’t because of what he had been. And now he was going back to it.  He was obviously one of those people they talk about that never seem to learn from their mistakes.