The Diary Of Pamela D. (21 page)

‘You’re a fool, Pamela,’ he told her,
speaking slowly, as though giving full emphasis to his every word.
‘Theo’s not the man you want. I am. And what’s more, we both know
it.’ He approached her until she was backed up against the wall. He
reached over and bolted the door, which Pamela knew to be built of
solid oak two inches thick.

‘The truth is,’ he continued, ‘Theo doesn’t
give you what you want. You want to be dominated . . . controlled.
You remember how it was between us.’

‘I remember that you tried to force me. And
then, when I wouldn’t give in, you tried to kill me,’ Pamela said,
biting down on the fearful quaver in her voice. ‘I remember you
telling me where you put those girls’ bodies.’

‘Ah, so
you’re
responsible for CID dragging
the tarn.’ He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference, really.
They
were just
experiments.’ He caressed her cheek with his knife, causing her to
gasp with fear and flinch away from him. ‘But you, you’re no longer
just an experiment, Pamela. You’re exactly what I’ve been looking
for.’

Though trembling all over now, she fought
down the useless urge to flee and forced herself to look into his
mad eyes for the first time. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ he said, trying to
brush his lips against her own, ‘that for all these years I have
been looking for the perfect woman, someone who is a match for me,
who will stand up to me. Someone whom I
wouldn’t
kill
.’

‘No?’ She tried to keep the full attention of
his eyes on her own while her hand strayed behind her, seeking . .
.

‘No,’ he said in a husky
voice that chilled her, made her feel as though she were going to
be physically ill. ‘Why would I kill the perfect woman,
Pamela?
How
could
I? The others, they were just dreck, not worthy of the air they
breathed. But you, Pamela, you’re different.’

Her hand found the door jamb and moved
upwards.

‘H- how am I different,’ she said as he
leaned over her, touched the smooth skin of her cheek with his
coarse, unshaven jowl.

‘You
smell
different,’ he breathed, putting
a hand on her waist, causing her to jump involuntarily. ‘You
brought your
air
with you into this house. It was magic, Pamela . . . pure
magic. You breathed new life into this miserable old cavern, into a
community of small-minded, mean-spirited people. Did you know that?
You changed everyone, as though you’d waved a magic wand. What do
you call
that
but
magic.’

‘You exaggerate,’ Pamela
said, trying to evade his searching lips, her hand finding the
lock. ‘There were plenty of nice people here, in this house and
everywhere. It’s just people like
you
that can’t see things for what
they are.’

‘Ah, well, that just ties in with what I
said,’ he murmured, getting too close this time. She was forced to
quickly sidle away from him lest he touch her inappropriately. She
moved into the centre of the room and began backing away once more,
moving towards the balcony.

‘Like I said, Pamela, you’re pure magic.’

‘What, no more
Miss
Prissy
Pants
,’ she jibed, trying to control her
voice enough to sound sarcastic.

Something, a memory of a conversation she’d
overheard, came back to her then . . .

“It makes no sense. There
wasn’t a single sign of resistance from any of his victims. But how
can that be?”

“It was probably just fear-
they were terrified
not
to sate the sick demands he made of them.”

“I don’t know . . . for some reason I’m not
convinced of that. There has to be something else . . . something
we’ve so far overlooked . . .”

‘Look, Pamela,’ Albert said, trying to appear
appealing to her, ‘Theo doesn’t love you. He never has and he never
will. He only wants to marry you so that he won’t be disowned-’

‘That isn’t true!’ she cried, as though the
words were torn from her. She began to feel her sense of certainty
falter. ‘Theo does love me. More than you can know.’

He turned a horrible parody
of a pitying expression on her that almost made her scream. ‘No,
Pamela, he doesn’t. Remember what he said? “
I loved you from the moment mother threatened to disown
me
.” He doesn’t love you. He’s just afraid
of losing his inheritance.’

‘
No
!’ She began sobbing, shaking her
head, as if to dispel the hold he had on her. ‘That isn’t true. You
don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But his words so closely
resembled her own doubts that she was no longer sure. Saying words,
only to try and fend off his invasive insinuations, she blurted,
‘You’re just trying to twist his words.’

‘Am I?’ Albert approached
her once more with growing certainty in every dangerous line of his
giant frame. ‘You know yourself what an unfeeling man he is. How
many times have I seen the truth of him reflected in your eyes? Ask
yourself: Why do you doubt him? Why? Because the man
has
no feelings,
Pamela,
especially
not for you. The only reason he’s being nice to you now is so
that he can become married to you, and being married to you means
protecting his inheritance. That’s all you are to him. As long as
you’re tied to his coattails, working for him, he’s no longer in
danger of losing out on his mum’s cash.’ He moved closer to her,
until she neared the balcony door. ‘But
I’m
different, Pamela. I just want you
for yourself. Trust me, you’ll see. Now, do be a good girl and take
your clothes off. I’m not going to hurt you if you do what I say .
. . but if you disobey . . . ’ His face was expressionless,
unreadable, but he made a cutting gesture with the knife that
caused her to begin weeping in terror. She made a move to disrobe,
her heart pounding- but then she stopped, faced him once
more.

‘This isn’t how it normally
goes for you, is it?’ Pamela asked him bitterly, feeling a timid
surge of anger. ‘They’re usually on their backs by now, doing
whatever it is you want them to do. That’s really what this is all
about, isn’t it? This isn’t about Theo, or me, or all those girls
you killed. It’s really all about
you
, about this sick little game you
play, about the way you manipulate terrified, helpless young women
into desperately trying to please you, but all the while they’re
really hoping, praying, trying to believe that in the end, you’re
not going to kill them.’

‘But I’m
not
going to kill
you
,’ he said, doubt and anger
flickering momentarily behind the veil of compassion he tried to
draw over his features.

‘Oh, but that’s your usual line, isn’t it,’
she rejoined. ‘I’m supposed to want to believe you enough to save
my own life.’

‘Don’t you?’ he said, and there was something
unspeakably evil in his eyes that almost had her gibbering with
terror. ‘Don’t you believe in me, Pamela? Don’t you want to come
out of this alive?’

‘So, tell me Albert . . . ’ the words sprang
from her as though spoken by someone else, which was just as well,
since they were at once more calm than she herself could have
willed, ‘how did you get in here? You can’t have climbed up. It’s
too high, and I didn’t see any sign of a ladder. And how did you
manage to overhear what Theo and I were saying? You could only have
done that if you were inside the house.’

‘All right,’ he said, straightening up and
appraising her speculatively, ‘we’ll play it your way for the
moment.

‘I’ve
always
been here, Pamela, right close
at hand. I’ve watched you eat. I’ve watched you sleep. I was right
there at your elbow as you sat upstairs with Theo each and every
night. I even know what you were thinking, especially when you were
alone.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it,’
Pamela said quietly. ‘There
are
secret passages in this house. You somehow found
them and managed to make use of them.’

He shook his head. ‘Haven’t
you guessed the truth yet? There are no secret passages in this
house. There aren’t and there never were.’ He smiled suddenly, but
it was a smile that almost stopped her heart from beating. ‘Haven’t
you wondered how it is that all those professional trackers were
unable to find me, when I’ve never been more than a few hundred
yards from this place? I let them know it, too, leaving them signs
all over the place, so that they knew that I knew that they knew I
was near to them . . . so near they could almost feel me breathing
down their necks. So tell me, Pamela, how did I manage
that
?’

She waited, dreading what he would tell
her.

‘I was right in front of
them all along. Haven’t you heard the old saying?
“
A wise man always hides something in plain
sight
.”’

Pamela shook her head. ‘No. That isn’t
possible.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he taunted. ‘You
know what the people in CID call me, don’t you?
Grendel
. The elusive and
indestructible monster who drinks blood and feeds on human
flesh.’

‘I suggest you tell that
to
Beowulf
,’ she
rejoined meaningly.

‘Hello, Albert.’

He wheeled around to face Theo, who watched
him with eyes that were at once as dangerous and cold as his
own.

Pamela scarcely recognised
him.
Theo
? There
was not a trace of the compassion she had seen in
him
,
no caring in
his eyes, no warmth in his soul, no . . . the thought sent shivers
of terror through her . . . no
soul
at all.

‘You conniving little bitch,’ Albert said for
Pamela’s benefit. ‘You unlatched the door.’

Pamela looked wildly past Theo’s shoulder,
hoping for a sign of the Chief Inspector and some other men. But
there was no one. Albert, too, noticed this, but warily.

‘What, no reinforcements then, Theo?’

Something hard, like a smile that was not a
smile, touched Theo’s stony features.

‘No witnesses,’ he pronounced.

Pamela almost fainted. Were
Albert’s words true after all? Were
both
of these men brutal, uncaring,
ruthless monsters?

Albert acknowledged what
Theo had said with an inclination of his head. ‘No witnesses, then.
But
I’ve
got the
knife.’ He waved it menacingly, not taking his eyes from
Theo’s.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Theo told him. ‘With or
without it, I’m still going to rip your arm from its socket, and
you’re going to go running home to your mam and bleed to death,
just like you always do.’

For the first time, Pamela saw real fear in
Albert’s eyes. ‘You’re insane.’

As if to verify this as fact, Theo nodded.
‘It takes a one to know a one.’ Then, he began to advance, as
though his opponent was of no consequence at all.

Albert held the knife up, defensively, and
started backing up. Suddenly, Pamela gasped as he lunged, tried to
plunge it in Theo’s abdomen. Theo responded with a movement that
was almost too quick to comprehend. He evaded the thrusting sliver
of metal and struck Albert a blow that sent him reeling.

Pamela had never once in her life been in
such close proximity to such naked violence. She felt a sympathetic
concussion from the blow Theo inflicted on Albert, attesting to the
power of both men. Such a blow, she knew with certainty, would have
sent her flying across the room like a rag doll, bones crushed,
internal organs ruptured and bleeding. She backed away further,
towards the open door of the balcony. She felt something warm and
wet on her cheek. Putting her hand to her face reflexively,
glancing down, she saw the slash of blood that had sprayed her- the
hand that touched her cheek encountered a warm, sticky substance .
. .

‘That hurt,’Albert pronounced distinctly,
smiling through the blood on his mouth.

Without warning it was though a dam had
burst, allowing the violence incarnate it had contained to burst
out with unfettered savagery. Pamela sidled away until she was back
by the door as the two men cudgelled each other like titans, Albert
swinging his heavy maul-like fists while looking for any small
opening to slash or stab, Theo dodging, ducking, raining blows like
a frenetic sledgehammer when Albert invariably missed.

But chance, or fate, suddenly seemed to deal
Theo a foul blow- as the two fought on the balcony he slipped on
the rain-soaked deck, losing his balance, almost falling backwards
over the railing. Albert seized the opportunity instantly, falling
on Theo like a bird of prey, bending him back, knife upraised for
the final, triumphant killing blow.

‘
Theo
!’

Without volition, without thought for herself
or what she was doing, Pamela broke out of her paralysis of fear
and began running, throwing herself at Albert-

At once, things seemed to move in
slow-motion. She crashed into Albert, not daring to believe that
she would have any effect on his apparently immovable mass. Yet
somehow, catching him off-guard or propelled by fate, she managed
to topple him-

She knew at once, the instant their bodies
made contact, that this wasn’t enough. So she kept going-