The Fell Walker (21 page)

She charged it with her shoulder and bounced off it like a ball. But she thought she heard bits of something falling down the gap between the door and the wall. She charged again; again the sound of bits falling. She picked up the tool and pushed one end into the narrow gap between the door and the wall, and then using the concrete plug as a hammer, knocked the tool inwards. It travelled the width of the door, then met some resistance. She continued hammering against the resistance, and suddenly the tool shot through and almost disappeared. Carefully, she retrieved it and inserted it into a different area, and hammered. Again it went through, relatively easily.

Now she realised that the gap on the other side of the door had only been filled with a thin filler or plaster. If there was no locking mechanism in place, all she had to do was knock out sufficient filler to allow her to charge the door open.

She went at it with renewed vigour, hammering the tool through at intervals around the gap. Occasionally she stopped, to test it with a shoulder charge. It was taking too long. She didn’t know what time it was; he might return at any moment. Her throat was dry with fear.

She stepped back for a moment, and gulped the last of the orange juice. Once again, she flung herself at the door. At last it gave way. Not much at first. But a few more charges, and she had opened it enough to allow her to pass through.

She flicked her long hair forward so that it protected her bare breasts, and gathering up the chain and plug, squeezed through the gap. The light coming through the gap allowed her to see that she was standing, in what appeared to be, an old wash-house. In the dark shadowed room she could just make out an old ceramic sink, taps, and tiles. She wasn’t free yet.

She stood still and waited for her eyes to adjust to a darkness she had forgotten. In the absolute silence, she could hear her heart thumping in her ears.

She was desperate to move, to run and run and run, away from him, away from the nightmare. She couldn’t be caught now - not after she’d come so far. It would be unbearable. If she was, she imagined, she would lose the will to live, and… She could see a doorway…ahead to the left and up one stone step. She almost ran to it.

It was a typical old tongued and grooved exterior door, with a simple iron latch. Barely able to breath, she lifted the latch and pushed. It didn’t move. Then she pulled, and the door swung easily inwards. And she climbed the step to freedom.

It was dark and very cold. There was no light from the house. If he hadn’t returned from work yet, it meant it was probably early evening in winter. Just for a moment, she hesitated, wondering whether her naked body would be able to cope with the cold. But she knew she had no choice. She would rather die quickly in the cold free air than return to the slow death of captivity.

She wanted to run, to feel the air again against her face, to escape as quickly as possible, but she knew she couldn’t. The weight of the chain and plug, and the state of her left leg made it impossible. There was also the darkness.

Her first step was on to sharp, loose, gravel. She hopped, in pain, as the stones bit into her bare feet. But she didn’t stop. She walked about 20 paces, feet screaming, before the gravel stopped. Now she was on, what seemed to be, a rough dirt track. In the distance she thought she could see a source of light. As she moved down the track towards it, the light grew brighter, and quickly, brighter still. Then she heard a sound. It was a car. It was probably him, returning from work.

She rushed to the side of the track and felt grass and foliage about her. She threw herself to the ground, face down, in the hope that her long hair would hide most of her naked back She didn’t breath.

The car approached quickly, then slowed down when it reached her vicinity. Perhaps he had seen her in the distance. She heard the wheels turning, agonisingly slowly, as it came to within a few feet of her. If he stopped, she decided, she would go down fighting. She would use the chain and plug like a sling and swing it at him. She started to tense, in preparation.

The car moved slowly on, and on, and gradually she knew she was safe. As the tension of the moment left her body, it opened the door for the rest of the day to follow. She sobbed where she lay - huge, gasping, heaving sobs. She was utterly drained, utterly exhausted, and utterly free.

When at last she asked her body to move again, it refused. And to give her some peace, it took her into unconsciousness.

From the deep darkness of that state, came a memory of waking up, lying still, too exhausted to rise, shivering violently, before drifting back into the welcome peace of sleep.

Only a passing fox, doing its nightly rounds, saved her from sleeping to a hypothermic death. It sniffed around her naked feet, and licked the blood off them. Then it took an exploratory bite at the softest part. Suddenly, her senses switched on again, as her foot took instinctive evasive action. Her eyes opened and her body twitched. The fox ran off.

Dreamily, she forced herself to a sitting position and reached for her right foot. A harsh stinging pain pulsed through it, and brought her to full alertness. She could feel torn flesh and sticky blood, and now she could also remember where she was.

She struggled to her feet, hugging herself against the cold, and set off down the track. Now she was glad of the night; it was unlikely he would come looking for her in that cloud covered, jet black darkness.

The track soon merged on to a narrow tarmaced lane, which she began to hobble along. During the next half hour, as she forced herself forward, only the pain in her foot kept her from drifting back into a hypothermic haze.

Now, ahead, she could see lights from occasional traffic travelling at right angles to her. She must be approaching a main road. Her spirits lifted. She was going to make it.

As she arrived at the main road, a car swept pass, its headlights highlighting that she was at a T-junction, and that the road was bordered by a narrow grass verge.

She decided to turn right and, gingerly, stepped on to the verge, hoping it contained no hidden hazards. She had only travelled about 30 paces when she placed her torn right foot on to a sharp object. She tried to stop her weight going on to it by lunging to the left, but it was too late. The object penetrated her skin, and she screamed as she fell to the ground on her left side.

Recovering from the shock, she sat on the verge with her back to the road, and nursed her strident foot. The object had dislodged itself, but she could feel more leaking blood. Gradually, she began to feel dizzy, and then nauseous. This would have to do, she decided. She would sit and wait, and wave down the next car that came along.

*

Like most dairy farmers, Willie McNeil is a man of habit. He hadn’t missed his Friday night drink and game of dominoes at the pub on the edge of town for 35 years.

And he had no intention of changing his drinking habits just because they had brought that no drinking and driving law in. That was to stop the young tearaways - not people like him who knew how to handle their vehicle after a few pints and had never had an accident, except for hitting the odd deer or badger.

That was when he was glad he had the bull-bar fitted to his Land Rover. It absorbed the impact and protected his vehicle from damage.

He was driving along the familiar winding road, back to his farm five miles away, when suddenly, on a bend, oncoming headlights were dazzling him. He hit his dip-switch as fast as he could, but the on-comer didn’t hit his. Dazzled by the lights, and not knowing how wide the other vehicle was, Willie slowed, and swerved to the left to make more space. As the vehicle flashed past him, Willie felt his wheels mount the grass verge. A second later his vehicle registered a dull thud and he knew he had hit something fairly big. ‘Probably another deer’, he thought, as he brought the wheels back on to the road, and accelerated, and once again thanked the day he had fitted the bull-bar.

*

She lay in a dank ditch, beneath a barbed wire fence. She had disturbed the spiders and the cobwebs and the insects and a field mouse. Her left arm hung, crazily, over her face. Her eyes, and head, were wide open. She would not be disturbing them again. She had made the ultimate escape.

Chapter 29

‘Don’t tell me, Margaret,’ Ben said to the woman behind the counter in Keswick Police Station. ‘You’ve had four missing dogs, three thefts from cars, two drunken yobs and a partridge up a pear tree.’

‘Bit more than that,’ Margaret said, plainly, pushing slips of paper towards him.

Ben didn’t feel very jocular, but his routine with Margaret had been going so long he felt that she expected it. He hadn’t experienced a Monday morning gloom since his work days, but today it lay on him like a drab cloud. His mood was caused by his lack of success during a weekend of contacting relatives of the victims, to try to pick up background information on them and create some linkages. Most had been unavailable and hadn’t returned his call yet. Of the three he spoke to, one refused to co-operate, and he gained only snippets from the other two. His information database continued to look disappointingly sparse.

He glanced at the first slip of paper. ‘Mountain rescue seems to have had a quiet week,’ he muttered, his casual observation hiding a great sense of relief.

‘Aye...’ Margaret’s tone was quizzical, as though she was waiting for him to say something else.

He looked at the next slip. ‘What’s this?’ he exclaimed in surprise.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Margaret queried in a rising voice, as she leaned on the counter, ready for further discussion. ‘I thought you might have heard about it. It happened not far from where you live.’

‘I can see that,’ Ben said, in disbelief, as he continued reading the slip of paper. ‘I saw a couple of police cars and lots of barrier tape when I drove in this morning, but I just assumed there had been an accident. When did it happen?’

‘We got it yesterday afternoon,’ Margaret replied. ‘Couldn’t tell you when it happened. We are just about to release it to the media now. And we all know what that means,’ she sighed. ‘A town full of tabloid journalists and television crews again. Won’t that be fun!’

Ben carried on reading the notes, then asked: ‘Is Bill in this morning?’

Margaret’s eyes rose in surprise, and Ben knew he had asked a stupid question. ‘
Everybody
is in,’ she announced. Ben knew it would be a waste of time asking to see Bill who, no doubt, would be tied up with his superiors. He would have to work with the brief information the slip of paper provided. He thanked Margaret, and headed for the offices of the Keswick Tribune.

After a short discussion about the incident, with Sue Burrows, he drove home and wrote the following report:

MYSTERY BODY ON A591

The naked body of a woman, believed to be of

Asian origin, was found beside the A591 trunk road,

four miles north of Keswick, on Sunday afternoon.

She had suffered severe injuries to the head and body.

A heavy steel chain was found attached to her ankle,

with the other end being attached to a chunk of

concrete. It was evident that the woman had been

held captive for some considerable time.

The body was discovered at 3.30 PM by

a group of walkers returning to Keswick after a day

on Ullock Pike.

Keswick police are asking anyone who has

driven on the A591 between Bassenthwaite and

Keswick during the past week, and may have

witnessed anything unusual, to contact them on

Keswick 79003. They are also keen to hear from

anyone who may be able to help them with the

identification of the 5 ft tall woman, who appeared

to be in her 30s.

That was all he had at the moment, and as the paper didn’t go to print for another couple of days, he put it to one side, hoping to be able to pad it out with more information from Bill, when he was free from his superiors.

It appeared to be an amazing and tragic affair, with which, no doubt, the tabloids would have a field day. Already, he could see the headlines: ‘Sex Bondage Slave Slaughtered’, or ‘Slaughter Of Asian Sex Slave’. They would definitely all have the word ‘sex’ in them; he could guarantee it.

There was no getting away from the fact that it was a big story. But the fact that she had been found less than a mile from his cottage was, he believed, irrelevant to his investigations. The A591 was the main artery running from Carlisle on the Scottish border, right through the heart of the Lakes, to join up with the M6 motorway in Lancashire. The poor woman could have been murdered in Glasgow or Manchester and dumped on any roadside during the quiet of the night.

He had agreed with Sue Burrows that it needed plenty of attention, and normally he would have been glad to run down every last detail. But right now, he was convinced he had even bigger fish to fry.

Having had little success when contacting victim’s relatives in the UK, he decided to try his luck with Professor Metternich’s son, who, according to the police records, had come over to accompany his parents’ bodies back to Munich. He found the phone number in the records and dialled, hoping the hour time difference would enable him to finish the call before Helen returned from work.

‘Hallo...Peter Metternich.’ A friendly voice greeted him.

‘Guten Abend, Herr Metternich. Mein Namen Ben Foxley. Ich am Apparat von England. Sprechen Sie Englisch?’
Ben hoped his very basic German was understandable.

‘Yes, I speak English. Go ahead Ben.’

‘Thank you Peter. I’m calling from the police records department, regarding your parents’ deaths. I am very sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you could help me to fill in some personal details about your parents, so that we can close the file.’

‘You should have been asked these questions when you were here, but I’m sure my colleagues didn’t want to burden you at such a terrible time.’ His ability to lie convincingly had been learned in the world of private industry, where it had become an art form.

There was a slight hesitation before Peter replied: ‘There is nothing wrong is there?’

‘No…no,’ Ben assured him. ‘It is just routine. We have a very comprehensive check system we have to go through when sudden death occurs. It is all to do with recording as much information as possible at the time of death. Firstly, it is to ensure that we have identified the person correctly; secondly, it is to have the information available for any investigations that may arise in the future, and thirdly, it helps with all the statistical analysis that goes on these days. It might all seem unnecessary to you Peter, and if you don’t feel up to it, I’ll understand. But we believe these records are important. It will take about ten minutes to answer all the questions on my list. I would be very grateful if you could spare me that time.’

He crossed his fingers, and took a deep breath.

‘Okay, go ahead,’ came the reply.

It actually took Ben about 15 minutes to run through all the questions on his database. Peter seemed to answer them as best he could, but frequently appeared to be on the point of querying why a particular question was necessary. When that happened, Ben rushed on to the next question, and somehow managed to conclude the interview without serious interruption.

‘Vielen Dank, Peter,’ Ben said when it was all over. ‘Gefallen hinnehmen unser Beileid.’ He read out his condolences from his pre-prepared notes.

After putting the phone down, Ben breathed a sigh of relief, and satisfaction. Now that he had three comprehensive sets of background information - the Frasers, Tessa, and the Metternichs, plus some other snippets - he might, at last, be able to find a common link.

Before he had a chance to enter the Metternich information into his database, the phone rang.

‘Hello…Ben Foxley.’

A formal sounding, middle aged, voice said: ‘Mr Foxley, my name is Austin...David Austin. I’m calling from the National Parks Authority office at Windermere. I was on holiday last week when you telephoned my assistant, Sarah, and asked about our voluntary wardens, particularly about a Mr Summer....’

‘That’s right,’ Ben interjected, hoping he hadn’t got the young girl into strife for giving out information on the phone.

‘...Well, Sarah has only been with us for a few weeks. That’s why I was checking with her what had happened while I was away. She was quite right to tell you that Mr Summer is not on our current list of voluntary wardens, but I thought you might want to know that Mr Summer left us about two years ago. Presumably, he was the man who helped you with your article?’

‘Yes...that would be him.’ The sentence came out mundanely, but inside, Ben was flying. He sat bolt upright, tense with energy and exultation. He’d been right...he’d been bloody right. He’d found the evil..........

He had to stay calm. ‘It’s very good of you to let me know, David. I appreciate it,’ he said, as casually as possible. If I was to pop into your office, do you think you would be able to let me have his home address? I’m sure he can still help me with my follow up article, even if he’s no longer with you....’

‘Let me stop you there,’ Austin intervened. ‘When I said Mr Summer had left us, I meant he had died....’

‘Died?’
Ben shouted, unable to control his disbelief and frustration. This was unbelievable. Just when he thought he had found the answer, it had vanished again.

Through a self-pitying fog of frustration, he heard David Austin continue: ‘It was very tragic. They found him at the foot of Eel Crag. He had obviously fallen while out walking. A nice man apparently...such a pity...we all went to his funeral....’

‘Hallelujah!’
Ben celebrated inside, not
out loud. He was back in business. Sorry as he was to hear of the demise of Mr Summer, he realised that the way Summer had died carried all the hallmarks of the killer’s work. It pointed to the probability that the killer had taken Summer’s identity tag, and was using it to pose as a volunteer warden when approaching potential victims. Surely, he was right this time, he had to be.

‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Ben said, genuinely, when Austin had finished. ‘He was a nice man. He helped me a lot with my article.’ The lies were in a good cause.

Ben wanted to ask him if he knew the whereabouts of Mr Summer’s identity tag, but couldn’t think of a wording that wouldn’t arouse Austin’s curiosity. It was unlikely, anyway, that such a trivial item had been noticed or recorded during the shock and confusion surrounding such an incident. Which reminded him - why had he not seen Mr Summer’s incident in the mountain rescue and police reports he had gone through. He needed to check on that.

‘Sorry to bring you the bad news,’ Austin was saying.

‘Not at all,’ Ben said. ‘I’m grateful to you for letting me know. I know one or two of the local wardens. They’ll probably be able to help me on my next piece. Thanks again for the call.’

‘I’m sure they will, Mr Foxley. Good-bye.’

Ben sat back, and tried to temper his excitement. He had suffered so many false dawns that he was now very wary of apparent success. Yet surely, this time, he must be on the right track.

He sent it through his mind’s computer again, to double check. A man called Summer existed. He had walked on the fells regularly. He is killed on the fells by someone who takes his identity tag and assumes his identity. Another man is found on the fells, dying. His last words are ‘summer sniffs’. There had to be a connection. Surely, it couldn’t be a cruel coincidence? If it was, then he was in for another massive disappointment.