The Reckoning (19 page)

“Is that all there is to it, Mr Proud?” Donna
asked. “He just walked up and hit you with the golf club, he didn’t say
anything to you or do anything first?”

“No.” Joe shook his head. “He just appeared,
broke my arm with that golf club, then he called me a bastard; he was swinging
the club again, it looked like he was aiming for my head that time, when Toby
tackled him, so did Neil. That’s everything.”

“Thank you, Mr Proud; I’ll get an official
statement off you later,” Donna said, wanting to get the matter dealt with as
quickly as she could. “Right now I think I’d better get Mr Gardiner to town so
he can be looked after there for the night.” Since she was the only officer in
the village, and she had already been on duty for more than twelve hours, she
didn’t think it would be a good idea for her to keep him in a cell in the
village station overnight.

THIRTY-NINE

“Jesus!” Donna swore, putting a hand on the
dashboard in front of her as Jason slammed on the brakes and she was thrown
forward. Only her seatbelt stopped her smashing her head into either the windscreen
or the dashboard.

The car skidded for almost twenty yards
before finally coming to a stop. Jason, who was gripping the wheel so tight his
knuckles were white, let out a huge sigh of relief once it was still. Somehow,
they had managed to stay on the road and avoid skidding off into the trees
alongside it, though only just.

With her heart thudding in her heaving chest,
Donna twisted round in her seat to look out through the rear windscreen. The
red rear lights of the car that had appeared so suddenly from around the bend,
and which had come close to running them off the road, were just visible
through the storm. They quickly disappeared into the darkness as the car
continued down the road at well above the speed limit.

“Are you alright?” Jason asked, blinking his
eyes to restore normal vision after being nearly blinded by the headlights of
the car that had almost caused him to crash Donna’s car. “Mr Gardiner?” he
asked when Donna nodded.

“I’m okay,” Mr Gardiner said from the back
seat, where he was handcuffed. “Who was that?”

“I have no idea,” Jason said. “I couldn’t see
anything but their high-beams. How about you, Donna? Could you see anything?”
He hadn’t even been able to see what sort of car it was that almost hit them,
let alone make out anything about the driver. He couldn’t even say whether the
driver was male or female.

“I’m pretty sure the car was dark, and the
driver male,” Donna said. “Beyond that, I don’t have a clue; that was all I
could see beyond the headlights. Shouldn’t we go after him?” she asked.
“Driving like that, he’s likely to end up hurting himself, maybe even someone
else.”

Jason shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a
good idea,” he said. “We need to get Mr Gardiner to town, and trying to catch
up with that car would be dangerous in this weather. We’d be lucky to see him
before we were on top of him, and that’s asking for an accident that would
leave him or us, and possibly all of us, injured, if not dead.

“It’s up to you of course, you’re the
constable, I’m just a civilian, but I think we’d be better off getting Mr
Gardiner safely to town. We can look for him on the way back.”

While she was a little disappointed by the
thought of allowing the reckless driver who had come close to totalling her car
to get away, she knew Jason was right. With the weather the way it was, it
would be dangerous for them to give chase. Not only that but since Jason was a
civilian, and Mr Gardiner was under arrest, she would be liable should any
misfortune befall either of them as a result of her deciding to pursue the car.

“You’re right,” she said reluctantly. “We’d
better get Mr Gardiner to town, then we can worry about that idiot. I just hope
if he does crash, he’s the only one who gets hurt.”

FORTY

The moment she heard the front door open Patricia
lurched to her feet; the wine in the glass she was holding sloshed over the
side to stain the carpet but she paid it no heed.

On unsteady feet she made for the door of the
living room. “Where have you been?” she demanded of her husband the instant he
appeared in the doorway. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,” she
slurred.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Jonathan Water
asked, taking the half-full wine glass from his wife’s hand before she could
drop it or spill the contents, as the burgundy stain by the sofa indicated she
already had. “Is everything alright?”

“Where have you been?” Patricia asked again,
reaching for the glass he had taken from her.

“I was at work,” Jonathan told her. “I had a
couple of meetings I couldn’t reschedule, and I had to begin making
arrangements for the funeral.” Though his voice was calm there was a look of
sadness on his face, not that his wife seemed to give any consideration for the
possibility that the loss of their daughter might be painful or upsetting for
him.

“You’re arranging the funeral!” she said in
astonishment. “Why on earth are you doing that?” she wanted to know. “You don’t
have the first clue what arrangements need to be made. I will arrange it, and
ensure that it is suitable for Sir Christopher’s great-niece.” The notion that
her husband considered himself capable of arranging a suitable send-off for
their daughter was enough to sober her, at least partially.

With a sigh, Jonathan nodded. “Yes, dear,” he
said resignedly. “I’m sure you will do a far better job than I could. Now, why
were you trying to get hold of me all day?” he asked as he made his way over to
the bar in the corner so he could fix himself a drink. “Has something
happened?”

“Of course something’s happened!” Patricia
snapped. “Why else would I have been trying to get hold of you?” On legs that
were still unsteady, she made her way over to the bar so she could reclaim her
glass of wine. “There was a reporter here earlier, he said that sick bastard,
Michael Davis, escaped from the police this morning.” Her voice was filled with
bitterness. “He killed our daughter, and those other girls, and the police
can’t even keep hold of him when they arrest him. The evening news said he’s
killed even more people since he escaped; he even tried to kill a little boy by
dropping him into the river.”

“Jesus!” Jonathan swore. He downed his
whiskey in one and poured himself another. He could understand why his wife was
upset, and looked as though she had been drinking all afternoon. “Have they
caught him yet?”

Patricia shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve
been calling the police station all afternoon; they answered – it was clear
what she meant from the tone of her voice, they had answered the phone, while
he hadn’t – but they wouldn’t tell me anything. They wouldn’t even let me speak
to the inspector in charge,” she said disgustedly. “They fobbed me off with
some sergeant, he wasn’t even a detective, who told me any information would
have come from the inspector, and he was too busy to speak to me. Too busy! Too
busy to speak to the mother of a victim!” Her face went deathly white as she
said that, as though she had suddenly been drained of all her blood.

“He may have been too busy to speak to you,”
Jonathan said, “but he’ll speak to me; if he isn’t willing to do that, Uncle
Christopher will have something to say about it.” He was tempted to just call
his uncle and let him find out whether Michael Davis had been caught; he was
certain Sir Christopher would have no trouble getting someone to speak to him.
He decided against calling his uncle after a moment, however, figuring that he
should at least try and get the information himself. He didn’t want it to seem
like he relied on his uncle to sort or fix everything for him.

After tossing back his second whiskey he took
out his mobile phone and dialled the main police station in town. “I want to
speak to the officer in charge of the Michael Davis case,” he said briskly when
his call was answered.

FORTY-ONE

With a jerk of the wheel, Michael returned
the car to the correct lane, barely missing the oncoming car. Who it was he had
nearly hit, he didn’t know, nor did he care; just then he was far more
interested in keeping control of the car he had stolen as it threatened to
slide off the rain slicked road.

Once he had the car under control, he looked
in the rear-view mirror to see what had happened with the car he had almost
hit. It was stationary at the side of the road, but he didn’t think it had
crashed, not that he cared if it had. All he did care about was that he wasn’t
being pursued, and he wasn’t.

He turned his attention back to the road
ahead. The turn-off he was looking for was hard enough to spot in daylight and
he didn’t want to miss it. It was just as well he turned his attention back to
the road ahead when he did, he almost drove straight past it.

Slowing down carefully, he didn’t want to
skid or lose control, he swung the car off the road and onto the dirt track
that ran through the trees. He drove slowly along the track, the headlights on
full so he could see where he was going, the wheels slipping and sliding as
they struggled for traction in the muddy mess beneath them.

After about three quarters of a mile Michael
stopped the car and got out. He took one step and fell, as his foot slid out
from under him on the slick mud. He landed on his backside and rolled, barely
managing to avoid getting a face full of mud.

With no small difficulty, Michael got to his
feet and made his way round to the boot. He took out the knife he had killed
the car’s owner with, slammed the boot shut, and abandoned the vehicle. He had
no more use for it.

Accompanied by a series of unpleasant
squelching and sucking noises, Michael made his way along the dirt – right then
it was more mud than dirt – path. Since he didn’t have a torch, and there was
little in the way of natural light, not even lightning, he was forced to trust
to his knowledge of the areas surrounding Greenville to keep him out of
trouble. Fortunately his knowledge was up to the task since he had had plenty
of time to explore the countryside during his childhood; when he wasn’t doing
chores around the family farm that was.

Why the path existed, he didn’t have a clue,
especially since it led nowhere. It ran from the road into the woods for a
little over a mile, and then came to a stop in a clearing; in truth, the road
ran over the top of the dirt path, which disappeared into the woods on either
side of it. The path on the other side of the road ran clear through the woods,
before disappearing beneath the fields of the farm that bordered The Manor
hotel and golf club. The section he was on ended at a clearing that seemed to
serve no purpose whatsoever.

When he was a kid, he had wondered about the
path and the clearing at its end; he couldn’t help thinking there was something
strange, mysterious and magical about the clearing. The scattering of Roman
ruins that had been found around the village over the years indicated there was
a lot of history in the area, and that had fuelled his imagination.

Just then he didn’t spare a thought for the
possible reasons for the clearing’s existence; his only interest in it was in
the spring that bubbled up to one side of it. The water from the spring ran
from the clearing to the river, and that was what he was after.

Once he reached the river he could find his
way to the Morgan farm, where he was sure he could get himself a shotgun. He
didn’t consider himself a coward, but he didn’t much like the thought of trying
to get his revenge on Donna and Denton with just the knife he was holding then
for a weapon.

The rain made finding the spring difficult,
but he found it after almost a quarter of an hour of searching. Once he had he
began following the stream that led away from it.

*****

Michael was just thinking that things were
looking up, the rain had almost stopped, and the sky was starting to lighten
back to how it should be at that time of the evening, when he made it out of
the woods to the riverbank. He was where he wanted to be, he just hadn’t
expected to discover a couple of fishermen about twenty yards away. From what
he could see in the dim light, it was an old man and his grandson, not that he
cared in the slightest who they were, only that they were there and he hadn’t
expected to see anyone.

He stopped at the edge of the trees, needing
some time to decide what to do. Before he could make up his mind…

“Granddad, there’s someone over there!”

Michael couldn’t tell how old the boy was
through the gloom, but the voice suggested he wasn’t much more than ten.
Whatever his age, he had sharp eyes, and Michael cursed him for them; the boy
should have been paying attention to his fishing rod, not the woods, he
thought.

His first instinct was to melt back into the
trees and disappear from sight, but a call from the old man stopped him.

“Who’s there?”

The call assured him that he hadn’t been
recognised, which was good, but he realised there was a possibility the old man
had a mobile phone and would report the sighting. If that happened then it was
possible the car he had stolen would be discovered, and that would lead them to
realise he had returned to the village. He didn’t want anyone to know that, not
until after he had finished with Denton and Donna, and preferably not even
then.

Since he couldn’t hide, he had only one
option available to him. He gripped the knife tightly, hiding it behind him as
he strode along the riverbank toward the old man and his grandson. He did his
best to look non-threatening, to avoid alerting the pair to their danger; his
efforts were wasted however.

“Michael!” The old man’s voice was filled
with alarm when he recognised the approaching teen. “Run, Steven!” he called to
his grandson as he got to his feet, reaching a hand into the pocket of his
jacket for his mobile phone. As rapidly as his arthritic fingers would allow,
he dialled the number for the police station.

The moment he saw the mobile phone in the old
man’s hand, Michael abandoned his effort to appear non-threatening. It was
clearly a waste of time. He also abandoned his slow pace. As rapidly as he
could manage, without losing his footing, he covered the distance between him
and the old man, whom he recognised as Duncan Larkin just before he plunged the
knife into him.

Blood spurted as he yanked the knife out so
he could stab him again. The old man clawed at him futilely as he pulled the
knife out to stab him for a third time and he collapsed to the ground as
Michael stepped back, pulling out of his grasp.

Michael evaded the hand that grabbed for him
and kicked Duncan in the face, rolling him over. He bent quickly to snatch up
the phone the old man had dropped. He tossed it aside as he looked around for
Steven, the grandson. He saw him about twenty yards away, running along the
riverbank, and took off in pursuit.

Michael ran as fast as he could, but he
wasn’t able to cut the distance between him and the boy. The muddy ground
didn’t help, the footing was treacherous, and he worried that he was going to
fall at any moment.

“Steven,” he called, hoping to make the boy
slow or even stop. “I’m not going to hurt you, Steven!” he called after him, in
what he hoped was a reassuring voice.

Steven neither slowed nor stopped, but he did
look back over his shoulder. As he did so he lost his footing. Pleased, Michael
closed the gap between him and the eleven year old – now he knew who the boy
was he knew how old he was – who tumbled to the ground, and desperately tried
to stop himself as he rolled toward the edge of the bank.

Michael was still about five yards from him
when Steven’s rolling body reached the edge. He stopped as, with a desperate
cry, Steven fell to the water below, splashing noisily into it, and then he
hurried forward to search the water for any sign of the boy.

It took him a few moments to spot the boy,
and by the time he did Steven was a dozen or so feet from the bank and getting
further away by the second. As he watched, Michael saw Steven sink beneath the
surface of the river, only to reappear a few seconds later. He disappeared for
a second time before bobbing back to the surface further downriver, his arms flailing
as he tried to get to the bank.

Michael watched as Steven disappeared beneath
the surface again, and that time the boy didn’t resurface, at least not in
sight. He could only assume that the boy had drowned; the thought didn’t
trouble him in the slightest since he’d have killed him if he’d caught up to
him.

After a couple of minutes, when he saw no
more sign of the boy, he turned away from the riverbank and made his way back
to where the body of Duncan Larkin lay. It wasn’t until he started checking his
pockets for anything of value or use, and Duncan moaned and tried to reach a
hand up to him, that he realised the old man was still alive.

Michael soon fixed that problem; with an
almost casual indifference to the fact that he was ending a man’s life, he slit
Duncan’s throat. He ignored the blood that sprayed out as he severed the
jugular, even when it covered his hand, and returned to checking pockets. His
search yielded little, though he did find a couple of chocolate bars and a
bottle of juice when he moved on to check the tackle box by the rod propped up
at the edge of the bank.

He ate one of the chocolate bars hungrily and
downed half the drink, he then stuffed the other chocolate bar into a pocket
and started off along the riverbank. He had at least a couple of miles to cover
to reach the Morgan farm, and he wanted to get there as soon as he could, so he
could move on and get his revenge on Denton and Donna. Once he had done that,
he might be in a position to figure out what he was going to do with his
future.

The rain, which had been slacking off,
increased in intensity as he walked and he found himself wishing that he had
thought to take the coat from Duncan’s body. The coat wouldn’t have kept him
dry, he was pretty well soaked through after the walk from the car he had
stolen, but it would have stopped him getting worse.

Briefly, he looked back over his shoulder in
the direction of Duncan’s body; he decided he couldn’t be bothered to walk back
to it, though.