A Deadly Compulsion (22 page)

LEO
went over to the window and pushed down the dust-covered slats of the Venetian blind so that he could watch the tall American run along the pavement, threading and jostling his way through pedestrians, almost knocking a woman to the ground in his eagerness to get back to the car and head off into what was without doubt going to be a deadly situation.

Leo couldn’t settle.  It was too much to expect him to sit back while a client – who had paid a retainer up front in readies – tried to deal with a suspected serial killer, alone.  He did his utmost to resist the urge to get involved, but couldn’t.  However good the Yank was, he may need all the help he could get.  Turning away from the window, Leo paced the office like a caged bear, on edge, scratching at his scalp, unaware of the dandruff that was dislodged to rain down on to his shoulders.  Coming to a decision, he went to his desk, unlocked the bottom drawer and withdrew a weapon from under a stack of old files, checked it and pushed it into the side pocket of his jacket.  He had only ever used it for target practise, but knew that it had the power to inflict serious injury or even death if ever employed as a last ditch defence at reasonably close quarters.  He now wished that he’d offered it to Jim.  The Crosman CB40 pistol was a comforting two and a quarter pound of zinc chromate; a gas pistol, almost as reassuring as a real firearm, but without the need of a certificate.  It held an eight shot magazine of pointed pellets that would penetrate flesh and muscle with destructive force.

Leaving the office, Leo walked briskly to the NCP car park across the river, keeping his hand on the gun in his pocket, visualising emptying its load into the killer’s thighs or kneecaps, to take him down and negate any threat that he might pose.  Leo had no intention of rolling around on the ground and fighting with a much younger, fitter man.  Not at his time of life.  He had enough aches and pains without adding to them.

Jim drove out of the city and turned on to the back road that led to the farm two miles away.  As he anticipated being at his intended destination in under two minutes, a muffled explosion startled him.  It sounded like a blanket-covered balloon being burst. The steering wheel pulled sharply to the left, almost spraining his wrists as he wrestled to keep the car on the tarmac surface.  He slowed, straightened the Sierra and brought it to a stop, half up on the grass verge.

I don’t fucking believe it!  That’s all I need.
  He stepped out of the car and kicked the bodywork savagely. The front offside tyre was flat to the rim.

Fifteen minutes crawled by, and with still no sign of Jim and a growing fear that every second could be Laura’s last; Clem decided to approach the farmhouse and play it by ear.  After all, he was the cop, Elliott was a civilian.

Dark clouds had been drifting in from the west and stacking up, and the first coin-sized drops of rain began to patter through the leaves of trees, forerunners of the imminent storm.  Keeping to the side of the driveway, Clem moved quickly, as stealthily as possible, ready to dive into the undergrowth at the slightest untoward sound.  A barn and farmhouse came into view. And Hugh’s jet-black Mondeo was parked outside the house’s front door.  Clem shivered, as though the car was a hearse.  The skin on his arms and belly puckered, and a fleeting sense of intense apprehension ran through his whole being.  He bent low, crossed the drive fast, edged along the weather-bleached side of the barn and stopped at the corner to make sure all was clear.  Pausing to decide what to do next, he wished that Jim would arrive and save him from having to go it alone.

The summer storm became torrential.  The thunderheads shed their load; the deluge announced by chains of lightning racing across a pumice sky, and sonorous cracks of thunder that split the air in deafening accompaniment.  The tapping of raindrops on the corrugated-iron roof of the barn became a solid drumming, the beats inseparable; a single continuous unyielding detonation.

Clem took a risk and ran, feet squelching on ground that was now pooling mud; clothes immediately soaked and clinging to him, cold and uncomfortable.  Reaching the front of the house, he made his way around the building, staying close to the rough, whitewashed walls, dropping down on all fours to pass ground-floor windows unseen.  At the rear of the house he took a furtive peek through a window, into what was a large farmhouse kitchen.  No one was visible.  He grasped the brass knob on the back door, slowly turned it and found it to be unlocked.  He then froze and his mind suddenly went blank.  He was at a loss as to what to do next.  Should he enter the house and carry out an unprovoked attack on a superior officer, because he believed him to be a serial killer?  Now that he was at the point of taking some action, the situation seemed ludicrous.  He had let the Yank’s fervour ignite him.  But now, standing there dripping wet, he found that his conviction had been cooled by both the lashing rain and the absurdity of the premise that his DS was holding Laura Scott hostage, or that Hugh spent his spare time mutilating and murdering teenage girls.  He could imagine the scene: entering the house like a drowned rat, confronting Hugh and asking him if he was the Tacker, and inquiring as to whether or not he had the boss trussed up, or perhaps butchered and reposing in a freezer, ready for dumping off at a picnic area, or maybe outside WH Smith, sat with her throat cut and a stack of the Big Issue on her lap.

Clem reviewed what Jim had told him, re-examining the facts that pointed to Hugh being the killer, then steeled himself and eased open the door, holding his breath as he waited for a loud squeak from swollen wood or rusted hinges.  There was no giveaway noise.  He entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him, then removed his shoes and tiptoed across the room, to pass by a bolted, steel-faced door which he instinctively knew would lead to a cellar, and on a subconscious level wondered why it would be bolted as a police or prison cell is…to denote occupancy?

The interior hallway was gloomy, musty-smelling due to dampness, bathed with only the dull light from the open kitchen door and a window at the top of the stairs.  Clem jumped back as a photoflash of lightning produced jagged shadows that seemed to leap towards him.  His nerves were stretched to breaking point, his heart pounding in his ears, and his stomach queasy, threatening to rebel and eject its contents from his mouth, his bowels, or both.  Looking about him, he saw a golf bag standing next to the front door.  It ran through his mind that Hugh played off a handicap of ten; a bandit who, in competition could play to six.

Clem eased an iron club from the bag, grasped it two-handed and immediately felt a surge of confidence run through him from the weighty cudgel, that if necessary he would use against the other man without the slightest hesitation.  He was now decided that Hugh
was
a vicious and cold-blooded killer, who would not give up without a fight to preserve his freedom.

Taking one slow step at a time, Clem climbed the stairs; the soles of his damp socks tacky on the dust and grime-laden carpet.  Halfway up, a board creaked under his weight, and so he stopped, breath held as his mind conjured-up an inhuman figure rushing from an upstairs room, wielding a gleaming butcher’s knife; a keening wail escaping its mouth as it attacked, slicing and hacking at him.  He waited an interminably long thirty seconds, then continued on up, reaching the landing before pausing again, straining to hear any movement that would indicate where Hugh was.  The sound of rain still filled his ears.  It was too loud― It wasn’t rain.  The thrumming, running water was inside the house, emanating from what must be the bathroom.  The door ahead on the right was slightly ajar, and a cloud of steam issued from the lit gap, dissolving as it met the colder air on the landing.  His courage blossomed.  The thought of Hugh unaware of his presence, standing under the shower and deafened to his approach, gave Clem a false sense of inflated superiority, dulling his guard against danger.

Hands aching from the firm grip he held the shaft of the golf club with, Clem walked up to the door, took a deep breath and kicked it open.

Leo pulled in and stopped behind the Sierra, just as Jim was stowing the flat in the well of the boot.  Stepping out of his car, Leo turned up the collar of his jacket against the whipping rain and approached the bedraggled American, who looked up in surprise, then slammed the lid of the boot down and wiped his wet and dirty hands on his soaking trousers.

“I decided to come along at no extra charge,” Leo said.

Jim nodded.  “Thanks.  I may need the help.  Although one cop is already there, keeping an eye on the place.  He tailed Parfitt to the farm.”

“I’ll follow you,” Leo said, before running back to the shelter of his car.

Jim climbed back into the Sierra, started it up and stabbed at the accelerator, to speed away from the verge with tyres spinning for a second on the slick grass, before they found purchase on the road.  His heart felt heavy in his chest; a dead weight of growing panic.  The contemplation of being too late was almost too much to bear.

Passing the gateway, almost missing seeing it through the semi-opaque veil of rain, Jim braked, skidding on to the long grass at the side of the road and fishtailing to a stop.  Leo drew in smoothly behind him.  They both climbed out, hesitating for a few seconds, expecting Clem to appear from hiding.

“Let’s go in,” Jim said, raising his voice and leaning close to Leo to be heard over the hissing rain and background crackling of thunder that echoed through the low ceiling of cloud above them.

“Take this,” Leo said, pulling the gas gun from his pocket and thrusting it out towards Jim.  “It’s not a .45, but it’s an attention-getter.”

Jim took it, looked it over and pushed it into the waistband of his trousers.  “An air gun?”

“CO2, eight shot.  It’ll stop him at close range.”

They jogged along the undulating track, feet splashing through muddy puddles, approaching the house warily, but with little hesitation.  Jim had now decided on a full frontal assault, hoping that the element of surprise and the gas gun would give him all the advantage he would need.  Skirting Hugh’s car – that squatted, dark and still, as if it were a hell-hound standing guard for its evil master – he depressed the handle on the front door of the house and finding it locked, ran around to the rear with Leo following in his slipstream, wheezing, lungs aching from a lifetime of smoking that had reduced his ability to absorb oxygen into his bloodstream by up to forty percent.

The kitchen door was unlocked, and the wet, mud-caked shoes on the floor inside it led Jim, correctly, to assume that Clem had become impatient and was already in the house, somewhere.

Clem narrowed his eyes in the steam-filled bathroom, squinting to try and make out a shape behind the dolphin-illustrated plastic shower curtain that hung inside the bath.  As he summoned up the nerve to pull it aside, a devastating blow to his back sent him hurtling forward to crash into it.  He let go of the golf club and put his hands out, scrabbling at the smooth, wet material, dropping heavily as his knees collided against the bath’s rim, pitching him into it.  His weight ripped the curtain down from the plastic hooks, for it to fall and drape him.  And he cried out as intense pain travelled the length of his spine with flaring, bright agony that reached up through his neck into his skull, and down into his buttocks and legs.  He lay still, unable to move, attempting to breath, sucking open-mouthed against the plastic that was encompassing his head and held in place by the powerful jets of hot water that pummelled and compressed the clinging fabric to his skin.

“Fucking amateur,” Hugh said, jerking the curtain up to reveal himself standing naked, shotgun held one-handed as he uncovered Clem.  “Thought you’d just sneak up and brain me with a seven iron, eh?”

Lying on his back, one leg hooked over the edge of the bath, defenceless and at the armed man’s mercy, Clem now knew beyond any doubt that Jim Elliott had been correct in pegging Hugh as the Tacker.  He wished that the ex-FBI man had been off-base, because knowing that Hugh was the killer could only allow for one outcome to his brash trespass.  He was going to die, there and then, and had no means to stop it happening.

Hugh backed up, not taking his eyes off Clem, to sit on the toilet seat, the double-barrelled 12 gauge that he had driven into Clem’s spine now across his knees with the twin black maws of the muzzles pointing at the DC’s head.

“Let’s make this easy, Clem,” Hugh said.  “I want to know why you followed me here, and who else knows about this place?”

“Fuck you!”  Clem said, knowing that talking wouldn’t buy him any favours.

The blast was deafening, ricocheting off the tiled walls of the small bathroom; an eardrum-pounding roar that masked the high-pitched animal scream that Clem emitted as three toes were blown off his right foot.

Blood mixed with the running water and swirled down the plug hole.  More had covered the white tiles and ceiling; a splatter of crimson that was slowly diluted by the condensation to form rivulets and run down to the cast-iron bath, which now sported a pitted and holed area, bereft of enamel.

Hugh inhaled the warm, damp, cordite-laden air and watched as Clem writhed and wailed in abject agony.  “Let’s try again,” he said, his attention focused on part of a toe, complete with nail, that was slipping down the wall and leaving a snail-trail of gore behind it.

“El...Elliott,” Clem stammered through gritted teeth, not looking at Hugh; mesmerised by the bloody, misshapen end of his foot, and wetting himself as terror of a magnitude he had not previously known could be experienced, consumed him.  “He knows that you’re...that you’re the Tacker.  And he...he knows that you took the boss.”