A Deadly Compulsion (19 page)

Not bothering to go and retrieve the spare door key from the garage, Jim climbed through the window, noticing that the sill was clear, and suspecting that the large vase of flowers farther along it had been moved to allow prior unrestricted access.  Lowering himself to the floor, he slipped off his loafers and quickly made his way through to the living room, his awareness to the surroundings heightened as he tried to ready himself for any eventuality.  Silently, he wound his way up the metal steps. The house felt empty, but he was on guard, tensed for a sudden attack, his muscles as tightly coiled as the spiral staircase.  In the bedroom, he found no clues.  Laura just wasn’t there, though the bed had been slept in.  The pillow was dimpled from where her head had lain on it, and the ruffled sheet had been thrown back.  There seemed nothing untoward.  Perhaps she was at work now.  He checked the other small bedroom and the bathroom, before going back downstairs and finding a note on the coffee table, its corner pinned down by a heavy onyx ashtray.  He read it twice, studied each word, and came to the sickening conclusion that Laura was in the hands of the killer.

A further meticulous search of the cottage confirmed his worst fears.  On the jamb of her bedroom door was a small smear of blood, almost dry, not yet set hard to the gloss paint; still bright and easy to rub off on to the ball of his thumb.  He went back to the bed and found a single red blot that appeared almost black against the background of the plum-coloured pillowcase.  If not specifically searching for it, he would have – as he had on first inspection – missed it.  Back downstairs he read the note again: Jim, I’ve had enough.  I’m sorry, but I need time out from the job and everything else.  I thought getting away from London would be the answer.  But you can’t run away from yourself.  I still haven’t come to terms with Karah’s death.  And this case with teenage victims has got to me.  Please don’t try to find me.  I need to work things out.  I’ll give you a call when I get it back together.

It was definitely Laura’s handwriting, but Jim knew that she had been taken from the cottage against her will.  However messed up her mind was she wouldn’t – even under dire stress – have misspelled Kara’s name.  The addition of an H was her message to him, telling him that the note was bogus.  Also, though maybe not intentional, the extra letter was significant; H, for Hugh.  He pocketed the piece of paper and went back through to the kitchen for his shoes, and then made for the front door, opening it as the phone began to ring.  He rushed back to answer it before the machine kicked in.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi.  Is Laura there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Larry.”

“Larry who?”

“Larry Hannigan.  Odontology.  Who am I speaking to?”

“Jim Elliott.  I’m a close friend of Laura’s.”

“Well, er, Jim Elliott.  I need to know that she’s okay.”

“I don’t think she is okay, Larry.  I just got here and she’s missing.  Why are you so concerned at this time in the morning?”

“I rang her with some results, just a few hours ago, and the more I thought about the implications, the more worried I got.  My karma’s fucked up, and I think she’s in danger.”

“I need to know all you know, Larry.  What results are you talking about?”

“Sorry, pal, no can do.  I don’t know you from Adam.  I’m going to ring her department.”

“Larry, whatever you do, do
not
ring the police.  It’s a cop that’s involved in this.  You could get her killed if you talk to the wrong person.”

“Give me one half decent reason why I should believe you.”

“Because I’ve got no reason to lie to you.  I needn’t have answered the phone, or told you that she was missing.  I need help, Larry, or Laura might not make it.”

There was a long pause.  “I’ll buy that for now.  Call in at the lab within an hour and convince me that I should trust you,” Larry said before giving him the address and disconnecting.

Jim left the cottage and headed for the city, the bunching muscles in his cheeks being the only outward sign of his agitation.

The small office he was ushered into was a world apart from the white, sterile looking laboratory he had passed through.  The room was a scruffy den, pure sixties.  The Dell pc on the paper-laden desktop clashed with garret-like surroundings that reflected Larry’s appearance and demeanour.

“I met Dylan in D.C., back in ’93 at Clinton’s inauguration ‘do’ at the Lincoln Memorial,”  Jim said as he stared at the giant poster of Larry’s folk hero, which held pride of place, tacked to the wall above the desk.  “He seemed a cool dude.  I remember he sang ‘Chimes of Freedom’.”

Larry was impressed.  His raised eyebrows and rapid blinking said so.  “So, er, Jim, just who the hell exactly are you?  And what’s happened to Laura?” he asked, pouring them both black coffee from a machine that could have been – and in fact was – a model manufactured in the ‘Swinging Sixties’.

“I’m an ex-FBI profiler, Larry.  I knew Laura in London when she was with the Met. After her daughter died, I helped her get past it, and we got tight.  She needed to move away, and I didn’t want to live with her and the force.  Anyway, she contacted me over this Tacker case and asked if I would give a few pointers.  The bottom line is, that I’ve got it narrowed down to a list of one; a cop on her team.  I arranged to be at her place today, and arrived early.  When I got there she was gone.  I found traces of blood and this phoney note,” he said, withdrawing the folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and handing it to the technician.

“This is bullshit, Jim,” Larry said, reading it and passing it back.  “She was up, on top of this.  Christ, man, I was talking to her on the phone at one a.m.  She wouldn’t have just taken off.”

“I know that.  Help me on this, Larry.  It could save her life.”

“She came to see me yesterday, late afternoon, with a fresh, partly eaten pork pie, and asked me to do an ‘off the record’ bite comparison with the two victims who’d had their nipples bitten off.  I got a positive match and phoned her.  She told me to treat it as evidence and do the necessary paperwork.  I rang back because I couldn’t get it out of my head that she must have been with the killer yesterday, probably eating with him at lunchtime.  I had bad vibes.”

“I know who he is, Larry” Jim said.  “He must have realised that Laura was on to him, and abducted her.  I don’t want him panicked.  He may have already killed her, but if he hasn’t, I need for him to feel safe until I can locate her.”

Jim fell silent, looking down into the dregs of coffee in the old Greenpeace mug.  He had voiced his fear that Laura might already be dead, and in saying it, had made it seem more of a probability than a possibility.  And he didn’t know if he could deal with that, if it turned out to be true.

“Larry,” he said after gathering his thoughts.  “I don’t want you to do anything till I get Laura back.  Can you trust me and believe that I’m her only chance?”

“You really love her,” Larry stated.

“You’d better believe it.”

“Keep me posted, will you?  She’s a special lady.”

“You got it, Larry.  Thanks.”

LAURA
reached out slowly, found and pressed the light switch and half-closed her eyes against the sudden glare.  Hugh was withdrawing a long-bladed knife from the side of her neck, smiling cheerfully as he sat down on the bed next to her.

“What the fuck are you doing, Hugh?  Why are you here?”  Laura said, trying to feign ignorance, and simultaneously cope with the genuine shock and astonishment of what had transpired during the last few seconds.

Hugh’s smile vanished.  “Nice try, boss.  But it’s too late to act dumb.  Thanks to your colonial friend coming up with a pretty good description, and putting it into your head that the Tacker was a copper, I’ve had to think up a whole new game plan.  You suddenly put two and two together at lunchtime in the pub.  Why?”

“It just fell into place,” Laura said, dropping all pretence.  “Jim thought it had to be someone on the case.  I hoped it wasn’t you, even when I saw that you were left-handed.  Funny, I’d never really noticed that before.  The phone call I just got sealed it.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“The lab.  They did a comparison for me, and your teeth marks were identical to the killer’s, which means that you’re the maniac who gets off on killing young defenceless girls.”

“Careful, Laura.  Push me and it can end right here and now.  Where did you get my teeth marks from?”

“The pie you only ate half of in the pub.”

“So that’s what you went back for?”

“That’s right, Hugh.  It’s over.”

“It isn’t over till it’s over, Laura.  I’m betting that you were waiting to see if it
was
a match before you told anyone else.  That means I’m still in the clear.”

“So what are you going to do, Hugh, kill me?”

“I hope not.  I may not have to if you don’t try to do anything stupid.  I need you out of the way though, under wraps until I get organised.  But if you fuck with me...well, you know what I’m capable of.  You’ve seen enough of my work.”

It didn’t make any sense to her.  “Why, Hugh?  You’re a good copper.  Why did you murder all those girls?”

“You don’t need to ask.  Elliott had all the answers.  He’s too smart for his own good. I think I’ll kill him for fucking up my life and forcing me to have to start over.  What I do to them is personal.  I’m a liberated man, and what I do has nothing to do with anybody but me and my whore of a mother. She has to pay.”

“I thought that your parents lived down south, Hugh?”

“You were meant to.  I watched my father die under a tractor, and spat on his dead face.   Later, I fixed my mother and her fancy man.  The flat and the photos are just a front.  Edgar fucking Hoover Elliott was right again.  I own a farm in the area that he pointed us at.”

“But if―”

“That’s it, Laura.  No more talking.  I’ve got a lot to do.  Let’s go.”

With the point of the knife’s blade pricking the skin of her neck, drawing blood, Laura got up from the bed and allowed herself to be guided to the door, where Hugh stopped her with a hand on the shoulder.

“Remember, Laura, if you try to run or make any heroic moves, I’ll cut your pretty head off and leave it on a plate in the fridge for lover boy to find.”

She put a hand up to her neck, felt a bead of blood, and then lowered her arm back down to her side.  “I’m not going to give you any reason to hurt me, Hugh,” she said, furtively wiping her finger on the door jamb as he urged her forward and down the stairs to the living room.

He dictated the note, and she wrote it word for word.  He had known that her daughter had died in tragic circumstances; even knew her name.  But he did not how it was spelt.

Laura had no warning of the blow.  As she finished writing, her head lit up with a starburst of light and she was instantly dead to the world.  His fist, clenched around the worn, wooden handle of the knife, had flicked out with the speed of a cobra’s tongue, catching her skull behind the ear, hard, jarring her brain into unconsciousness.

As her head snapped sideways and she began to topple from the chair, he gathered her in his arms and lowered her onto the carpeted floor, face down.  Pulled a reel of duct tape from a pocket and quickly secured her wrists behind her back and her ankles together, and finally covered her mouth.  He was gentle, even pulling her Disney night-shirt down over her thighs, aroused by the sight of her bare buttocks, but covering them out of long-standing high regard for the woman who was now his defenceless captive.  Taking the car keys from her shoulder bag, he scooped her up and draped her over his shoulder like a rolled-up rug, then carried her outside and carefully placed her in the boot of the small Fiat, ensuring that she was on her side, even taking the time to retrieve a throw from the rear seat to fold and place under her head.

Back inside the cottage, Hugh set the scene, filling a holdall with a selection of clothes from the bedroom drawers, and taking essential toiletries from the bathroom.  He then returned downstairs and left the note on the coffee table, its corner pinned by a large ashtray, and left.

Driving Laura’s Fiat back past where he had dumped the expendable Jeep, he lit a cheroot and thumbed the cassette that jutted from the stereo into the slot.  It was Sinatra; Laura had taste.  He played it loud enough so that she would be able to hear it in the boot, should she have regained consciousness.  He even sang along with ‘Old Blue Eyes’; a splendidly out of tune rendition of
My Way
, sung his way.

Trish sat on the bed and concentrated, examining every item available to her as she deliberated and eventually formulated a plan that might save her life.  The sick copper would get more than he bargained for when he next ventured down into the cellar.  She had no intention of making it easy for him; was not the cowed, pathetic prisoner that he supposed her to be.  Her readily submitting to his every demand had been out of fear, and now that same fear was motivating her to fight for life and freedom.  He did not seem to realise that if she had nothing to lose then, like a cornered, frightened animal, she would expend her last ounce of energy on defending herself.

Removing the books and magazines from the coffee table and turning it onto its side, Trish brought the sole of her foot down onto one of the two legs that were now eighteen inches from the floor, stuck out horizontally like the stiffened legs of a dead sheep.  The effort caused her to cry out in pain as the unyielding timber bruised her bare foot.  After massaging her sole, she placed open magazines over the leg as padding, stood on the bed and jumped down with her feet together and knees flexed.  The leg sheared off with a sharp crack as the dovetailed and glued joint snapped, causing her to fall awkwardly over the table, her left side connecting with the raised edge as she put her outstretched arms out in front of her to save her head from hitting the concrete.  Screaming against the pain, she slid down into a sitting position and held her side, moaning as every shallow breath caused sharp, stabbing pains, convincing her that she had cracked or fractured one or two ribs.

After waiting for the agony to subside to a dull ache, she examined the now detached table leg.  It was a heavy length of hardwood that tapered to a diameter that she could hold comfortably in her hand.  She now had a weapon; a club, but doubted that she would be able to use it against him effectively in her weakened state.

Necessity truly being the mother of invention, she turned her attention to the small portable loo.  It was constructed from a hard plastic material, and gave her an idea.

Using both hands, she lifted up the foul-smelling container, her stomach heaving at the stench of her own waste, that mixed with the disinfectant liquid was a potent brew that almost made her vomit.  She breathed through her mouth, hefted the loo up to the edge of the sink and emptied the concoction, gagging as the liquid slowly seeped away to leave a clotted layer of faeces, that even the running water from the tap would not clear.  She rinsed out the receptacle and then swung it with all her might against the corner of the wall, where it rebated into the stairwell, to turn her head to the side as it shattered and left her holding the handle.  The loo disintegrated and was reduced to an array of blue shards that flew off in every direction, to land on the cellar floor and the top of the bed.

“Yes...Yesss!” Trish cried out in triumph, hugging herself and grimacing as her ribs complained at the physical exertion.

Crawling around the floor and gathering the pieces into a pile, she inspected the various sized fragments of plastic.  Finally, she selected and picked up a twelve-inch long spearhead-shaped shard and pressed it against her palm, laughing as it pierced her skin with the sharpness of broken glass.

An hour later, Trish was as ready as she ever would be.  The coffee table was again upright, standing like a three-legged dog, with the books and magazines back on its top.  She had put the end with the missing leg farthest from the stairwell, and then gone over to the bottom step to look back and survey her work, content that without close inspection, nothing seemed untoward.  She then gathered up all the other pieces of the loo and placed them in a heap in the corner to the left of the steps, out of direct line of sight from anyone entering the underground room.  Sitting on the bed, she examined her work.  The table leg she had broken off was now no longer a cudgel, but a shaft.  The pointed plastic shard was a blade, bound tightly to the wood with strips of bed sheet.

Timing would be critical.  She rehearsed the scene over and over in her mind, ‘seeing’ Parfitt walking down the stairs with a tray or plate in one hand, and a drink in the other.  He was arrogant, too sure of himself, and that was in her favour.  He could not now imagine her as a threat.  In his eyes she was just a weak and compliant plaything with no will left; reduced to a cringing and pitiful creature that relied on him and feared him.  Making a move against him would be the last thing he would expect her to do, with the threat of pain, or worse, to be returned to the rat-infested barn and shackled to the cement block.  As he leant forward to place whatever he was carrying on to the tabletop, she would lunge forward with the spear that she had fashioned.  In one smooth movement she would bring it from concealment at her side and drive it into his face, throat or chest, then leap over the end of the bed, race up the steps and throw the door shut behind her and bolt it, to trap him wounded, dying or dead in his own stinking cellar.

She shook in a state of mingled fear and excitement at the thought of being free, daring to contemplate success, and already picturing herself phoning the police as the Tacker beat his fists against the door and screamed obscenities at her.  If this didn’t prove to be a career-enhancing opportunity, then nothing ever would be.  Christ, she could write a book of her nightmare ordeal as his prisoner: the true story of how after suffering at the maniac’s hands, she had finally not only escaped his clutches, but ensnared or killed him.  It would be serialised by a tabloid, without doubt be at the top of the best seller list, and would in all likelihood be made into a movie.  There would be a very lucrative upside to recompense her for the near-death experience, and rightly so.

The element of surprise would be on her side.  She played the scene over and over again, even practising the move that would save her life, repeatedly bringing up the spear from her side and thrusting it ‒ like a quick draw gunslinger ‒ to where she expected him to be.  Her hatred for the demented copper who had tricked her, abducted her, and used her so repeatedly and violently, gave her the strength and the resolve to do whatever was necessary to live to tell the tale.

He parked the car in the barn, remained seated and listened to Sinatra finish up singing
The Lady is a Tramp
, before ejecting the cassette and pocketing it.  He then left Laura in the boot and walked across to the house.  There was still a lot that had to be done before the night was through.  No rest for the wicked.  Ha!

Once ready, with a claw-hammer secreted under a tea towel on the unit top behind the kitchen table, he went upstairs and changed back into the shorts and T-shirt.  He planned to bring Trish up from the cellar, allow her to sit at the table in the belief that he was going to make her a hot drink and allow her to shower, and then kill her with one devastating blow to the skull with the hammer.  He would immediately put a bin liner over her head and tape it around her neck.  What little blood escaped would quickly mop up.  It should all be over in a few seconds, and he would then bury her in the shallow grave and transfer Laura to the cellar.  He did not intend for Trish to suffer unduly, or even for her to be aware that it was time for her to check out.  He bore her no ill-will.  She had just outlived her usefulness; had become excess to requirements.

The sound of the bolts being drawn back caused Trish to whimper with fear at the overwhelming significance of what the next few seconds held.  She was under no illusion and firmly believed that this was truly a life or death situation.  She sat at the head of the bed, legs stretched out in front of her, and the weapon – that seemed so puny now – at the side of her leg, with the blanket bunched up to help conceal it.

His feet, bare legs, shorts, upper body, and finally his head and shoulders came into view as he descended the steps and smiled at her.

Her heart tripped, skipped, and felt as though it was being crushed in the grip of an iron fist.  He had stopped three feet from the foot of the bed, and had nothing in his hands.  Trish stared at him, horrified, her plan evaporating.  The rehearsals had been a waste of time.  For ome reason he was not going to come within striking distance.  Panic seemed to drain her mind of all ability to think, and her limbs were rigid, muscles locked.  The smile on his face had transmuted to become a look of disgust as his eyes narrowed and his lips drew back and twisted in a scowl.