The Blood Pit (41 page)

‘Go on,’ Wesley prompted.

‘He devised rituals. Mind games. I find it hard to believe he had such power over us, Inspector, but I assure you that power
was real.’

‘What were the rituals?’

Francis rolled up the left sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. ‘Blood. He used to cut us with a sharpened penknife and make us
drink each other’s blood. The idea’s preposterous now but for impressionable adolescents at midnight on an isolated beach
by the light of a fire … As I said, he knew exactly how to manipulate us and keep us in his power.’

He held out his arm to Wesley. The faint scar was visible even after all these years. Wesley had seen such scars before –
on the dead flesh of Charles Marrick and Simon Trench.

‘Tell me about the girl. A former Belsinger pupil called Barty Carter said he saw her in Tradmouth. She was the caretaker’s
daughter, I believe.’

Francis swallowed hard and tears began to fill his eyes. ‘Her name was Janet. Janet Blincoe. I’ve never forgiven myself for
what happened. Not that we realised what Charlie intended to do. He was more grown up than we were. It almost seemed as if
he was born that way. We hardly knew anything about sex – not like Charlie who claimed to have had half a dozen girls before
he was sixteen.’

‘Lads like to boast,’ Heffernan chipped in. ‘Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Could all have been fantasy … wishful thinking.’

Francis looked at him. ‘In general I’d say that you’re probably right, Chief Inspector. But in Charlie’s case I wouldn’t have
been surprised if it had been true. As I said, he wasn’t like the rest of us.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Janet had been hanging around us. I think she must have had some sort of crush on Charlie.’

‘And he took advantage of the fact?’ Wesley said.

‘You could say that.’ He thought for a few moments, considering the best way to begin his narrative. ‘Mortimer Dean, the housemaster,
wasn’t very observant – Charlie could run rings around him. It was easy for us to sneak out of Tavistock House because there
was a broken catch on one of the ground floor windows. It was summer, really warm – and one night we let ourselves out after
midnight. We didn’t realise Charlie had told her to come with us. She met us in the school grounds – by the cricket pavilion
– and we went down to the beach. Charlie was very quiet. She was chatting a lot, trying to make him notice her. She was only
fourteen – a couple of years younger than us – and we thought she was just a silly kid. We didn’t know why Charlie had said
she could come.’

Wesley pictured the scene. It was easy to envisage the boys following their pack leader – doing things they wouldn’t normally
dream of doing as they returned to a feral state under the influence of a more powerful personality. He waited for Francis
to continue.

‘When we got down to the beach, Charlie made an announcement,’ he said after a few moments. ‘He said she was to undergo the
blood ritual – to be one of us. None of us liked the idea but, as I said, Charlie’s word was law. We didn’t argue.’

‘So what happened?’ Gerry Heffernan leaned forward, anxious to hear the rest of the story.

‘Things went too far.’

‘What do you mean?’

Francis opened his mouth but no sound came out, as if he couldn’t bring himself to put what had happened into words and give
the truth the power of being released into the open. Wesley let him take his time and eventually his patience was rewarded.

‘Charlie raped her, there in front of us,’ Francis whispered. ‘Then he told us to … It was as if we’d been taken over by something
evil.’ He shook his head as the tears began to flow down his cheeks. ‘It was madness. She was screaming and crying but …’

‘So you all raped her?’ Gerry Heffernan couldn’t keep the horror out of his voice.

‘I’ve been paying for it all my life.’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘Charlie kept egging us on and …’

‘And you never thought to say no? You never thought to stop it?’ Heffernan’s voice was getting louder and Wesley put a restraining
hand on his arm.

‘None of us did. It was like … like a collective madness. A frenzy. I know I can’t make excuses for what we did. There is
no excuse.’

‘So you all joined in? Even Simon Tench?’

Francis nodded. ‘You’re wondering how someone like Simon could carry on with his normal, respectable life after doing that. Well
the human mind can fool itself that an event that’s too painful to live with never even happened – a defence mechanism, I
suppose. I think Simon and Chris blotted it out completely. And if you’d asked them about it they would have denied it because
they would have persuaded themselves that they could never do something like that. And in normal circumstances, they probably
couldn’t. They weren’t bad boys, Inspector. It was as if they were possessed.’

‘And you?’ Wesley asked gently.

Francis looked Wesley in the eye. ‘I could never blot it out. I’ve been doing penance for it since I was sixteen.’

‘There’s more isn’t there? What happened after you’d … ?’

Francis looked away. ‘Charlie said if she wanted to be one of us, she’d have to undergo the ritual. He pinned her down again
so she couldn’t move and he cut her wrist with the knife. She started to bleed a lot and she was crying. That’s when we got
scared. We all ran off ’cause we knew it had
gone too far. We thought she was going to die and we were terrified.’

‘What about Charlie?’

‘He stayed.’

‘Did you talk about it afterwards?’

‘Never. Nobody breathed a word. It was as if it had never happened.’

‘And the girl?’

‘She went away. We never saw her again.’

‘Surely her parents called the police,’ said Wesley. ‘Surely there was some sort of investigation.’

Francis shook his head. ‘No, it was never mentioned again. She disappeared.’

‘So her father quit his job as caretaker?’

Francis thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t believe he did. But she left and nothing was ever said.’

‘So everyone closed ranks. The school covered it up.’ Gerry Heffernan said, full of righteous indignation.

But Francis shook his head again. ‘I don’t think the school knew what had happened. I think the girl had been too ashamed to
tell the truth.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s one of the things I asked her when … She told her father she’d had an accident. Her
mother was dead and her father kept his distance. She’d been adopted and they weren’t close.’

‘Did she say how she tracked you and the others down after all these years?’ This was one of the things that had puzzled Wesley.

‘The Belsinger website has details of what old boys are doing now. We were all on it. Mortimer Dean made sure of that. She
did her homework.’

‘Did she say how she administered the hemlock?’

‘She told me everything … made her confession. I suppose she didn’t think I’d be around to give away her secrets.’

‘Well?’

‘She’d had a part-time job doing market research at one
time and that gave her the idea. She called round at the victims’ houses with samples of malt whisky – irresistible to the
likes of Charlie Marrick. They readily volunteered to give their verdicts on the different samples – only the whisky contained
hemlock. Once they’d drunk it, she produced a questionnaire and chatted until the paralysis set in. Then she made them bleed
to death … just as they’d left her to bleed to death. She told them who she was as they lay paralysed and helpless. Said she
enjoyed seeing the look in their eyes as they realised … as they remembered that night.’

‘Where is she now, Francis?’ Wesley asked gently.

There was no answer.

Wesley stood up and Gerry Heffernan watched him expectantly. A nurse entered the room with a clattering trolley and Francis
slumped back on his pillows, looking almost relieved.

‘So you took part in what happened at the beach,’ Wesley continued, ignoring the nurse. ‘You went along with it all. You could
have told Mortimer Dean. You could have gone to the headmaster … the matron. You could have told someone.’

The man in the bed shook his head sadly. ‘It was against the code of honour to tell tales. I sinned and now I can’t live with
myself. I wish you hadn’t found me, Inspector. I wish I’d been allowed to die.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I wanted her to kill me.
I was ready to pay for what I did to her.’

‘For what Charles Marrick did, you mean.’ Wesley looked into Francis’s tear-filled eyes. ‘Did she tell you where she planned
to go?’

Francis said nothing.

‘Please. We have to find her.’

After a few seconds Francis spoke, almost in a whisper. ‘She said she was going to go back to where it happened.’

Heffernan leaned forward. ‘And where exactly was that?’

As soon as Francis told them, Wesley, ignoring the hospital’s
ban on mobile phones, pulled his from his pocket and made a call.

Steve Carstairs stood at the office door, blocking Trish’s way. She avoided his gaze, like someone face to face with a bereaved
relative who found themselves lost for something to say.

He caught her arm. ‘What the fuck’s going on, Trish? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s happening?’

Trish stood for a few moments, wondering how much she should tell him. The boss hadn’t actually said that he should be kept
in the dark indefinitely. Besides, she had just heard that it was almost over. The search was on now – all the manpower they
could spare – and it wouldn’t be long now until the arrest was made.

She looked around. The office was buzzing. She needed somewhere more private. She grabbed Steve’s hand and led him out into
the corridor. Then she turned to face him and looked into his eyes. ‘Look, Steve, the boss is afraid you won’t be able to keep
your mouth shut. But I think you need to know.’ She hesitated. ‘Cheshire police sent a photo of Christopher Grisham’s girlfriend,
Jenny – I recognised her and so did Barty Carter. He’d seen her in Tradmouth.’

‘What’s all this got to do with … ?’

She took a deep breath. She was trying to break this gently. ‘She called herself Jenny Pringle up in Chester. Her dad was
the caretaker at Belsinger. She’s down here using a different name.’ She paused. ‘She’s calling herself Joanne.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘She’s just tried to kill Francis Duparc – Brother Francis. He’s in hospital now and he’s made a statement. Joanne’s the Spider,
Steve. She killed those men.’

Steve stared at her as though she’d struck him.

‘Didn’t you suspect anything?’ she asked warily.

‘Of course I didn’t. It’s impossible. There’s been a mistake.
Where is she? Does anyone know? I’ve been trying her mobile number but …’

‘They think she might be at the beach at Littlebury … just east of Monks Island.’

Steve turned. ‘I’m going over there.’

Trish clutched at his sleeve. ‘No. The boss said …’

‘The boss can fuck off.’

He shook off Trish’s clinging hand and marched out. But Trish followed him, her mouth set in a determined line. There was
no way she was going to let him go there alone.

It was raining now and she stood barefoot on the sand staring out to sea. The sound of the waves brought back the memory of
that night. Relentless, pitiless like the boys who had violated her body. She had never let a man touch her in that way since.
Even Steve. However much she liked him, she felt no desire, no temptation. The very thought of physical contact – of giving
herself – made her want to vomit.

When Marrick had stabbed the blade into her arm and laughed, she had prayed for death. They were alone then, her and Marrick
– the others had run off like frightened animals. Marrick had whispered in her ear. ‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you? Now I’m
going to watch you die.’ She lay sprawled there on the sand beneath the cliffs, paralysed with terror as he leered down at
her.

Then suddenly she’d found herself alone, knowing that death was close as her life blood drained away on to the damp sand.
She’d felt faint, as though the world was drifting away, but then she’d sensed a sudden pressure on her arm. Someone was kneeling
by her side, binding it with cloth very tightly to stop the bleeding. She’d looked into Mr Dean’s face and saw he was crying.
And he was telling her to say nothing. It had been an accident. She’d slipped and cut herself. She didn’t want to ruin the future
of the lads in his charge,
did she? It would be better to say nothing. Nobody would believe her anyway.

He’d been kind, Mr Dean. He’d carried her back home and told her father some story about an accident. She could tell by the
look in her father’s eyes that he didn’t quite believe it but he was in no position to argue. And since her mother’s death
in a road accident, she had never been able to talk to him about anything deeper than trivialities so she kept her silence.
Even when she was sent away to live with her aunt ‘because it would be better’, she’d never told. She’d been ashamed and nursed
the secret that had festered inside her soul, unseen and suppressed. But when she’d met Chris Grisham up in Chester, the horror
of that night had flooded back.

She’d been calling herself Jenny Pringle by then – she’d adopted her aunt’s surname and her father had always called her Jenny
so Chris had had no idea who she was and at first she hadn’t recognised him either. It was only when they got talking, trading
their backgrounds, that he told her he’d been at Belsinger. Then the memory came back to her slowly, seeping like blood from
a wound. She recalled his face – much younger then and ridden with acne. But she’d said nothing. She let it carry on and when
he became impatient with her refusal to sleep with him, she finished it, saying she’d rather be friends. She even told him
that she thought she preferred women and he had made a coarse joke but accepted it. You win some, you lose some.

She had had to use all her self-control to keep up the act, the pretence. And although he seemed quite amiable, she couldn’t
allow herself to see him as a human being. He was one of the boys who’d destroyed her life, left her emotionally paralysed;
unable to form relationships with men like the women around her did. She was petrified of physical contact. Dead to love.
And she’d wanted him to die. To be helpless as she had been helpless. He had to know what it was like – what he’d done to
her.