The Terror at Grisly Park (Quigg 5)

by Ellis, Tim

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, Chief.’

  ‘Black and white, strange stories, great theme tune.’

  ‘Black and white television was before my time . . .’

  The Chief sounded more exasperated each time the clue failed to jog Quigg’s memory. ‘Debbie Harry was in one story. I used to be in love with . . .’

  ‘An old girlfriend?’

  ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Not about your old girlfriends.’

  ‘Is that it then?’

  ‘I was going to tell you how the case was going?’

  ‘Will you solve it before I retire?’

  ‘I certainly hope so, but . . .’

  ‘That’s really all I need to know.’

  ‘This is a big place, Chief. I was going to ask about the possibility of two armed support teams from CO19 . . .’

  He heard hysterical laughter, and then strangled coughing.

  ‘You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you, Quigg?’

  The call ended.

  So, he and Kline were on their own. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last either. He had to maximise his resources. Two of them conducting interviews wasn’t very efficient. He’d leave Kline to finish off the night staff interviews while he went up to Room 666 and rummaged through Cora Jiggins’ personal effects. Then, he could go back to the command centre and take a look at the security tapes while one of the women on the second shift made him a coffee, input Cora Jiggins’ name into the database and found out what they could about the Waterbury Asylum. First though, he’d get the key to the cleaner’s cupboard, and check that Daniel Frye was still in one piece.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sir,’ Andrea Edwards, the middle-aged receptionist said. ‘The key isn’t here.’

  He guessed Kline must have it, so he went through into the back room.

  ‘No, ain’t got it,’ she said. ‘Left it on the reception counter straight after I’d shoved him in the cupboard.’

  His brow furrowed. Where the hell was it? All he needed was for the manager to die of starvation or dehydration in a cleaner’s cupboard. Especially as he’d ordered him to be put in there in the first place.

  ‘Are you going to help me with these interviews now?’

  ‘No. I’ll meet you in the command centre when you’re finished.’

  ‘F . . . f . . . fine, but I might have something to say about it later.’

  ‘I look forward to listening to your considered comments.’

  He turned to the receptionist. ‘Do you have a maintenance man on night duty?’

  ‘We have an emergency number to ring.’

  ‘No, that won’t do. If someone could find me a large screwdriver, and possibly a hammer?’

  ‘I’ll speak to security, they might be able to help.’

  ‘Ask them to meet me outside the cleaner’s cupboard.’

  ‘Okay, Sir.’

  He walked along the corridor to the cupboard and banged on the door. ‘Are you okay in there, Mr Frye?’

  There was no answer.

  He turned the round brass handle, but the door didn’t open. It was definitely locked. Maybe some sympathetic soul had let the miserable bastard out. He banged again. ‘I’ve decided to let you out, Mr Frye.’

  No answer.

  A security officer arrived holding up a tyre iron. ‘This should do the trick,’ he said. Peter Palmer was etched on his name badge.

  Quigg shuffled to one side.

  Palmer jammed the thin wedge of the tyre iron into the gap next to the lock, and gave it a tug. The door frame splintered, and the door swung open. ‘Easy as she goes,’ he said.

  With the exception of a red Henry vacuum cleaner, a floor polishing machine, a brush, a mop and bucket, a stack of chemicals, bags, dusters, and a large picture of the Chippendales, there was no human being in there.

  ‘Between you and me,’ Palmer said. ‘I heard you’d put our wonderful Mr Frye in here.’

  ‘I heard that as well, but I’m beginning to think it was just a rumour.’

  ‘Well, if he’s not in here, where’s he been all day?’

  ‘That’s a very good question.’

  He scratched his head, and had another look inside the cupboard – even peering behind the door. He did find some posters of naked men, and wondered if they’d been digitally enhanced.

  Maybe Lucy was right. Maybe he did have a tiny, withered penis. He hadn’t had any complaints up to now – as far as he was aware. Maybe the Chief had received a whole drawer-full of complaints, but was too embarrassed to say anything to him. How big should it be? Was it measured at rest, or at play? How big did women like them to be? Was there a “one size fits all”? Or, did you have to be “matched-up” with a female vagina? How was it he didn’t know these nuggets of information? There seemed to be a lot he didn’t know. Whose fault was it? Should his mum have told him?

  ‘I can only think that someone must have let him out,’ Quigg said.

  Palmer pulled a face. ‘I can’t imagine who that would be. Not one person likes Frye. He’s a complete bastard all the time.’

  An idea jumped into his head. ‘The other possibility is that Frye had a “master key”. You’re security. Are there any master keys in the hotel?’

  ‘That’s a good point.’ Palmer nodded. ‘Yes, Frye has a master key. That’ll be it then. The bastard would have let you lock him in there, and then let himself out.’

  ‘If that’s the case, where the hell is he?’

  Palmer shrugged. ‘This is a big place. He could be anywhere. In fact, he could even have buggered off home, and then blamed you if anything went wrong.’

  He was still staring into the cleaner’s cupboard. ‘Except, if he’s not in the cupboard, then he has no evidence I ever put him in there, so he’d find it difficult to blame me for anything.’

  ‘True. Well, we do regular security checks, and of course there’s the CCTV. I’ll tell the guys to keep their eyes open for him.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The two of them wandered back to reception.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Palmer.’

  ‘No problem. It felt like old times.’

  Quigg’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  ‘Used to be a burglar before I saw the light.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Palmer returned to wherever he’d come from.

  Quigg went through into the back room again.

  ‘You got him?’ Kline asked. There was a woman in there with her.

  ‘Someone let him out, or he let himself out.’

  Kline pulled a face.

  ‘He probably had a master key on him. I don’t suppose you checked?’

  ‘I was wondering when it’d get round to it being my f . . . f . . . flippin’ fault.’

  ‘Calm down. I’m not blaming you. If it’s anyone’s fault he’s escaped, it’s mine. I should have made sure he was secure in the cupboard, and that the keys were accounted for.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. I expect he’ll turn up for work tomorrow morning with a smug grin on his face. He’s probably in the pub now with his mates. Throwing the pints back, and bragging how he got one over on us.’

  ‘If he’s got any mates,’ Kline said.

  ‘Anyway, you finish off the interviews. I’m going up to Room 666 to check Jiggins’ personal effects. I’ll meet you in the command centre in about an hour, and we’ll see where we are before turning in for the night.’

  ‘You betcha.’

  ***

  Avery Millsap climbed over the palisade fencing and jumped into the theme park. He wasn’t a particularly fit man, but he was a motivated man.

  Up until three months ago he’d been an advertising executive at the Morton Agency in Charing Cross, but his seventeen year-old daughter – Willow – had disappeared two months previously. He’d taken a week’s leave of absence to try and find her, which had been extended to two, three, and then four weeks. Senior management had l
ost patience with him, and although they were sympathetic they were also a business in a crippled economy. They gave him three month’s severance pay, and wished him the very best of luck finding his daughter.

  Avril – his wife – had left him. As far as she was concerned her daughter – the bitch – could rot in hell. And if he was going to put Willow before her, then he could rot in hell as well. At first, she had stayed with her sister Maureen in Swansea, but then she’d found another man who had taken her to Ibiza to run a beach bar. As far as he knew, she was still there serving sangrias and margaritas to English yobs.

  He’d tried everything. At first, he’d written letters, made telephone calls, and been polite. Then he had banged on some doors, made a noise, created a nuisance of himself. The local paper had run an article, but then it was old news. The police weren’t interested. Did he know how many missing people there were in the United Kingdom for God’s sake? Willow was above the age of consent. She was probably staying in a squat somewhere, or sleeping rough. Did he know how many homeless teenagers there were in the nation’s capital for God’s sake? The police didn’t have the resources to waste on teenage runaways anyway. Did he know how much money had been slashed from their budget for God’s sake?

  Get real, Mr Millsap.

  He had two realistic options open to him. Either he could forget he had a daughter, and hope that one day she’d find her way back home. Or, he could go it alone, and try to find her. He chose the latter.

  Avril was right, Willow was a bitch. She’d been nothing but trouble since the day she’d been born. It didn’t matter though. He knew he’d get no thanks if he found her. Probably a mouthful of abuse, but he had to try. She was his only child, and a father never gives up on his own flesh and blood. He could get another job, another wife, and all the other material possessions he’d sold to fund his search, but there was only one Willow.

  No one knew anything. Her friends denied ever having known her. He’d sent her a million voicemails, emails, and texts – all to no avail. In desperation he paid a man to hack into her phone records, which had given him a few leads. He’d followed where they led, but he came up against more brick walls, except for two clues. First, Willow had received a call only two weeks ago, and spoke for three and a half minutes – nothing since then. It told him that two weeks ago she was probably alive. Oh, he knew that someone else could have had her phone, but he didn’t want to think about that. If that was the case, at least he’d know one way or the other.

  Second, the person who had rung her was a man named Hugo Twelvetrees, the charismatic leader of the Cult of Bugarach. From the little information he’d been able to find out about them, they were a doomsday cult who believed that aliens were on their way and that the world was going to end soon, but no specific date was given.

  It took him another month to locate the cult. They were here in Grisly Park somewhere. So, here he was. Now, all he had to do was find them.

  ***

  After obtaining the key to Room 666, Quigg caught the lift up to the third floor.

  He was surprised that the hotel was just like any other hotel he’d stayed in – except for some minor modifications. Oh, the decor was a bit dark for his tastes, but he’d expected . . . What had he expected? Cobwebs, and lots of them? Sound effects – like clanking chains, spine-tingling moans and blood-curdling screams? Blood and vomit dripping down the walls? Axe murderers, zombies, and werewolves wandering about scaring the shit out of people? He could imagine the cleaning problems. He guessed that the Health and Safety Executive, the Food Standards Agency, and a glut of other quangos would have something to say about the way a hotel should be run. Just so long as he got a decent night’s sleep tonight, that’s all he cared about.

  The door to Room 666 was already unlocked. Why? Had someone been inside and searched the room? Had Cora Jiggins left it open? He tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t swing. The bottom of the door was too close to the carpet. Maybe a new carpet had been fitted, and a few slivers hadn’t yet been taken off the bottom of the door, so that it did swing open effortlessly. He switched the light on, and pushed the door open.

  If he’d been in America, he could have had an impressive-looking .44 Magnum like Dirty Harry Callahan, and shouted something like, ‘Go ahead, punk, make my day.’ Or, ‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’

  Instead, he said, ‘Hello! Anybody in there?’ It didn’t really have the same ring to it, but he tried to sound like Clint Eastwood.

  There was no answer.

  He hadn’t expected one. Slowly, he inched inside. Switched the light on in the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain for Janet Leigh, and behind the door for Anthony Perkins. Opened the cupboards, but he didn’t find the bogeyman skulking inside, and he was glad that Jason Voorhees wasn’t hiding under the bed in his plastic hockey mask.

  Behind the curtains!

  There were no demons behind the curtains.

  He put his pretend .44 Magnum back in its holster and stared out of the window. The room was at the back of the hotel. He could see a million lights from the park – it was still in full swing. Everything shut down at twelve-thirty – after the witching hour. Revellers then had half an hour to get to the exits using one of the ghost trains that regularly moved around the park. He checked his watch. It was eleven forty-five.

  The bed hadn’t been slept in – Cora Jiggins wasn’t given the chance to sample the luxury of a three-quarter sized bed in Room 666. Maybe she’d been able to get a few hours’ sleep in Room 13 before . . . before what? Yes, she’d been fed through a meat grinder, but what else? Was she drugged, unconscious, or awake when the mechanical blades began to chew up her flesh and bones? He tried to imagine watching his arm or leg being mangled in a machine, but couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea and the pain.

  Had they done anything else to her? Anything else! They could have made her suffer plenty before killing her. Had they? Perkins surely wouldn’t be able to tell from a few strands of meat.

  Where the hell was Perkins? Why hadn’t he heard from him? He pulled out his phone, found his number, and dialled.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell me you’re not sleeping, Perkins.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping . . . You just woke me up.’

  ‘I leave you to your own devices for five minutes, and you’re crawling between the sheets like a hedgehog snuffling into hibernation.’

  ‘We have two shifts – the day shift, and the night shift. I’m on the day shift. My shift finished at eight o’clock, but feel free to contact Debbie Chan who’s on the night shift.’

  The call ended.

  He wasn’t having much luck with phone calls tonight. His thumb hovered over the “re-dial” button, but he resisted the temptation. Who was Debbie Chan? He didn’t know her. Maybe he should go and introduce himself. Except, he had work to do here. There was more work in the command centre, and a bed in Room 25 with his name written all over it. He was really tired though, and was gradually being seduced by the idea of crawling into the bed in front of him. Why should Perkins get all the sleep?

  Fighting off the tiredness, he began rifling through Cora Jiggins’ luggage. There was a black case with a pull-out handle at one end, and two wheels at the other. He put it on the bed. It was locked with a pathetic lock and chain. He yanked the chain. The links burst open and fell onto the bedspread. Inside were a selection of black clothes. He guessed she liked black. There were black jeans, black knickers, black bras, and black sweaters. To add some colour, there was also some toiletry items in a small black wash bag.

  He had no picture of Cora Jiggins in his head. Yes, he knew she was a thirty one year-old mortuary assistant from Leicestershire, but what did she look like? He held up her t-shirt, which he found was quite big – the label inside stated it was a “Large”, but he didn’t know what that meant.

  Shopping wasn’t really his thing. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been shopping. Before he’d met Ruth, Duffy and Lucy,
he’d had no money. Now, clothes just seemed to appear in his wardrobe as if by magic. He held the t-shirt up against himself, and noticed there was writing on the front: “Oh no . . . You’re going to try and cheer me up, aren’t you?” He smiled. The t-shirt was about his size as well. So, she was a fairly large woman. He held a pair of jeans against him – and guessed she was about five foot nine or ten.

  Next, he looked in a small black bag and found make-up, strange gothic jewellery, a rabbit’s foot, a black cross, a bag of small bones he hoped belonged to a chicken or rabbit, and a leather – at least he hoped it was leather and not human skin – covered book of Witch’s Spells. He opened it up at a random page. The spell was for “Three Nights of Hell”. He began to read:

  As I do this candle spell,

  Bring mine enemy three nights of hell,

  Candle black, black as night,

  Bring him pains of flesh tonight!

  There were another four verses. He decided not to tempt fate by reading all of the spell, and closed the book. Rummaging through Cora Jiggins’ luggage was giving him a pretty fair idea of who she was as a person.

  He searched the rest of the room, but found nothing else. Where was her handbag? Did she have a handbag? There were items missing from what he expected to be in either this room, or Room 13. There was no identity card, driving licence, purse, mobile phone, or wristwatch.

  He phoned Kline.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ask the receptionist to check how Cora Jiggins paid for her stay.’

  ‘Wait.’

  He waited a couple of minutes.

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Another crappy phone call. Maybe it was him. Maybe he needed to improve his telephone manner, sound more jovial – Ho, ho, ho!

  So, no credit card. He was hoping she’d paid by credit card, so that he could get some more information about her. Did she even have a credit card? Everybody had a credit card, didn’t they? Maybe they’d find something when the command centre staff carried out a database search. They’d have to check her mobile phone records as well.