by Paul Finch
“It’s hardly what I want.” Helga let that point hang; again, the implication seemed to be that if anyone was at fault here, it was Don. “Anyway, I must rush.”
She set off down the drive.
“I’m not sure it’s as bad as all this,” he called after her. She glanced back at him. “What I mean is … there are police officers all over the estate.”
“They haven’t done much good so far, have they, Mr Presswick?”
And that, Berni supposed, was true. Don had said what he’d said in an effort to suppress the woman’s anxiety. But it had been a little crass given that in the last three nights on this housing estate three different women had been murdered and their killer was still on the loose.
“They’ll catch him,” Don said, rather lamely.
Helga gave him a withering stare in which all the doubts she’d ever had about his knowing anything worthwhile were implicit, before saying, “I’ll call Mrs Presswick tomorrow.”
She continued down the drive, Don watching her broad back and large, sagging bottom until she’d vanished through the gate.
“I doubt she’s got much to worry about,” he said.
“At least one of the victims was middle-aged, wasn’t she?” Berni replied.
“Would you try and tackle Helga?”
“I don’t think it’s funny, Don.”
“Neither do I.” He climbed into the car and started the engine.
Berni climbed in too. “I thought you were going to drive her to the bus stop?”
“I never agreed to that.”
As they prowled around to the rear of the house, Berni said no more on the matter. Don had served as a policeman for the first twelve years of his working life, and as a security officer ever since. Now that he was in his late-thirties, he’d gone a little to seed, but he was still a rangy, raw-boned chap who stood six feet two inches tall. His hair and beard were greying, but he was handsome in a craggy, masculine sort of way. He regarded himself as a man’s man, which made it all the more galling for him to have to put up with Helga’s domineering manner. Not that this was an unusual experience for him. In many ways, Helga was an extension of his mother and, in that respect, petty victories, like refusing to offer her a ride when she was in a hurry, were the only ones he would ever really have over her.
They entered the house through the kitchen, which comprised dark wood panelling with a linoleum floor. Beyond the kitchen lay the dining room, the hall and the lounge. It was all very tidy, but the furnishing and decor throughout was sombre and old-fashioned. The rooms were tall with elaborate, hand-painted cornicing around their ceilings, but there were heavy curtains drawn everywhere, which made the interior dim to the point where it was almost difficult to find one’s way around. Carpets and rugs, many threadbare and frayed, muffled all sound as Don and Berni entered the lounge. There was scarcely a peep from the outside world. The windows, which were double-glazed, were presumably closed and locked. The walls of this house were very thick, and then of course there was the tree-filled garden encircling it, and the high wall surrounding the garden.
Thanks to the radiator in each room, the house was warm, as Helga had said, but it felt stuffy and lived-in. The air smelled stale. Berni gazed at her reflection in the large mirror hanging over the stone fireplace; because of its deeply tarnished glass, only a fogged spectre gazed back. When she ran a fingertip along the top of the mantel, it drew a visible trail. Don made no comment when she mentioned this. Instead, he grabbed their two holdalls – his blue/grey in colour, hers covered with pink flower patterns – and took them up the steep, creaking staircase to the first floor.
Berni glanced around, irritated as always by the steady process of neglect that continued to reduce her husband’s nest egg to a pathetic shadow of what it once must have been. Upstairs, she heard the strident tones of Don’s mother as she berated him for not getting here sooner.
Miriam Presswick had not always lived like a hermit in her own home. When The Grove had been the sole dwelling on this broad green Lancashire hillside, with only a clutch of trees to shelter it from the heather-scented breeze of the Pennines, she had, for a time, come out of the mental exile she’d endured since returning to England from Africa, and enjoyed life again. Even after her husband’s premature death, she’d made an effort to remain in the real world. Inevitably though, the nearest town – Layburn, once three miles away – had continued to expand, and by the mid-1980s one of its multiple new housing estates, ‘the Bannerwood’, had engulfed the one-time country house. The Bannerwood wasn’t by any means a problem housing estate, being privately owned and suburban in character. But it was vast and sprawling, and on first being built it was occupied mainly by young families, which soon meant there were lots of children running around – so many children, as Miriam Presswick would complain. Children in gangs, children running, children shouting, children screaming – and children encroaching, always encroaching, finding ever more reasons to trespass on her property: in summer chasing footballs or playing hide and seek among her trees, in autumn trick-or-treating or throwing fireworks onto her lawn.
Berni didn’t know whether such persecutions had actually taken place or were purely imaginary, but given Miriam’s personal history it was no surprise that her sense of embattlement had finally become so acute that she’d had the outer wall erected, cutting herself off completely from the busy world that had suddenly encircled her. Despite that, but not atypically of psychological breakdown (not to mention advancing senility), even this security measure had in due course proved insufficient. In the last year alone, Miriam had contacted her son on average once a week to complain that people were trying to climb over the wall, were scratching on her doors, tapping on her windows. Nonsense, of course. Utter nonsense. Though Don had not admitted that. He would never have the guts to be so abrupt with his mother. He’d tried to calm her, tried to reassure her that she was imagining it – to no avail.
And then, this last week, the murders had started.
Berni only knew what she’d read in the papers, but on three consecutive nights an unknown assailant had entered homes on the Bannerwood estate and had strangled a woman to death in each one. It was pretty difficult to take Miriam’s fears with a pinch of salt under those circumstances.
Don now came downstairs. As always after a meeting with his mother, he looked chastised.
“She okay?” Berni asked.
“She’s fine.”
“Happy?”
“Happier.” Though he didn’t look as if he was being entirely truthful with that. “Don’t suppose you fancy popping to the chippie and bringing us something for tea?”
“Sure.” Berni had taken her coat off, but now pulled it back on.
“Hang on.” He raised a hand. “You’d better not go. I’ll go.”
“It’s okay. It’s not even dark yet.”
“It’s getting dark.”
“Don, there are coppers all over the estate.”
“Yeah, and like Helga said, what bloody good have they been?”
Berni took her coat off again. She wasn’t usually so quick to follow her husband’s orders. A born and bred Scouser, ‘toughness’ and ‘independence’ were her two middle names. But there was something about visiting The Grove that she found oppressive. Its brooding aura, not to mention the aura of its queenly owner, always seemed to sap her energy to resist. She wondered if this was the spell the aristocracy had woven in olden times, when an awed peasantry made them superior simply by believing that they were. Miriam was no aristocrat of course, but she had been raised among the colonial classes.
“What are you having?” Don said, lurching along the hall.
“Fish and chips is fine. Bring us a buttered roll as well.”
He nodded and left, the heavy oak door clicking closed behind him.
Berni found herself alone in deepening gloom. There was something she could do about that at least – she opened the curtains in the lounge. Thanks to the crowded trees
outside, it didn’t improve things much, so she switched various lamps on. Their shades were exclusively of heavy, tasseled material, which seemed more designed to absorb light than release it. In the kitchen, she took dishes from the sideboard and cutlery from a drawer. She filled the kettle and put teabags into a pair of mugs. She then prepared for what was always going to have been the most difficult duty of the night: saying ‘hello’ to Miriam. She halted at the foot of the stairs. Two thirds of the way up, there was a small sub-landing where the stair turned right. That too had a curtained window. When Berni reached it, she pondered the wisdom of opening this curtain as well. Miriam wouldn’t like it, but Miriam was becoming less capable by the day, and maybe it was time people realised that – especially Miriam herself.
Feeling justified, Berni jerked the drape back along its brass rod – and yelped aloud when she saw the ugly shape hiding behind it.
Perhaps ‘hiding’ was too strong a term.
It was only a figurine, which had been mounted on a wooden dais and placed in the recessed alcove in front of the narrow, stained glass window. That said, it was easily the most repulsive thing Berni had ever seen.
It was about three feet tall, and though it stood upright on two legs, her first thought was that it was a stuffed chimpanzee or some other kind of ape. It had coarse hair all over its body, and was now shrivelled and dry. But there was nothing quaint or ornamental about it. Its eyes were empty sockets, while its mouth had been fixed in a snarl that split its head from ear to ear, and in which two rows of thorns had been placed to provide fangs. Though its posture was stooped and its knees bent, certain aspects of its features were more humanoid than anthropoid.
Berni wondered what on Earth she was looking at.
The sides of the creature’s torso and the undersides of its thin, gangling arms were not hairy, but covered with dark, leathery skin. Likewise its face: its nostrils flared, its sloped brow was furrowed as though by intense concentration. The hair began again on top of its small, anvil-shaped head, but it was short and spiky, deliberately caked with what looked like dried clay – combined with those hollow eye sockets, this was perhaps the most hideous aspect of the thing, because it suggested a degree of intelligence.
Intelligence? What the devil was she thinking? Surely this mannequin had been made. A creature like this could never have actually lived. It had to be a mock-up.
Berni seemed to remember that Miriam had purposely divested herself of all the relics from her time in Africa. Yet this thing bespoke not just Africa, but darkest Africa, savage Africa. Maybe it was a joke. Perhaps comic creations like this were on sale at every market stall from Banjul to Johannesburg. Though, in truth, there was nothing comical about the necklace the mannequin wore, which looked to be composed of human teeth, while its leather thong, the frontal pouch of which apparently contained a small set of male genitals, was surely taking realism a touch too far. The alcove, while whitewashed, had been marked with red and blue paint in what looked like tribal symbols: abstract patterns, pictographs of animals and hunters, and crude glyphs, which, now that she looked closely, might signify some kind of writing …
“Don’t you dare touch that!” came a sharp voice.
Berni spun around.
Miriam gazed imperiously down from the top of the next flight. She was a tall woman, but her emaciated figure did not benefit from this. Nor from her flowing nightgown. A diaphanous garment, all ruffles and lace, on Miriam it hung baggy and shapeless. Despite being in her bed-wear, she wore make-up – there’d never been a time when Berni hadn’t seen Miriam wearing make-up – but now the effect was grotesque, because the woman was so cadaverous. She’d kept her hair long, but where it had once been auburn, it was now grey and hung past her shoulders in rat-tails. Miriam was not old – at a conservative estimate no more than sixty-five. But her deteriorated condition was a testament to the self-imposed stress she’d suffered over the years.
“Oh, Bernadette … forgive me.” Miriam had lived in Lancashire since returning to England in the 1950s, but unlike her late husband, a local factory owner who she’d met after moving here, and unlike her son, who’d been born and raised here, she’d never developed an accent. Her voice was ‘BBC’ neutral. “Forgive me,” she said again, still not sounding as if she meant it. “I didn’t recognise you.”
Berni didn’t believe that. If Miriam had found someone she thought she didn’t know on the staircase in her house, she’d have had a fit. But now was not the time for a fight.
“Well … we haven’t seen each other for a while,” Berni said. “How are you, Miriam?”
“How are any of us … in this place?”
“I’m sorry about the curtain. I was just trying to let some light in.”
“I’d rather keep the curtains drawn.”
“I don’t blame you in this case.” Berni indicated the mannequin. “What’s this?”
“You haven’t seen him before?” Miriam sounded surprised. “That’s Tok.”
Tok? Such an inoffensive name for something so repellent.
“Would you mind closing that curtain, dear?” Miriam had the ability to make any request into a thinly veiled command.
Berni did so.
“And where is Donald?” Miriam asked.
“He’s gone to get us some tea.”
“I see. I’d hoped he’d be spending the next few nights here. But apparently he can’t.”
“He’s got to go to work. But I’ll be here.”
Miriam’s attempted half-smile indicated that only politeness prevented her saying what she felt about this part of the arrangement. “Buying tea is very thoughtful,” she said, “but you needn’t have bothered on my behalf. I’m not at all hungry. Please send Donald up when he returns. I’d like to speak with him again.”
“Of course, I’ll …”
But the conversation was over. Miriam perambulated out of sight. Berni went downstairs and into the lounge. She surveyed the sombre room that would be her home for the next few days. If the police hadn’t caught the killer by that time, she’d need a serious talk with Don about what they were going to do. They had lives to lead, after all. Speaking of which – she picked the remote control up and switched the television on, settling on a news channel that was coming live from somewhere on the Bannerwood.
A crime reporter in an overcoat and scarf was standing under arc-lights in front of an outside-broadcast caravan. “All we know is that the police have not ruled out burglary as a possible motive,” he said.
The anchor woman, a pretty blonde, who looked suitably concerned by the string of dreadful events, asked, “Have the police commented further on the modus operandi of these murders, Dylan? We’ve heard rumours that the three victims were strangled, though we’ve had no confirmation.”
“The police aren’t commenting, though there is a press conference lined up for tomorrow morning. I expect we’ll learn more …”
Berni switched to another channel. Here, a group of people, this time inside a studio, were also discussing the crisis. Having few actual facts to hand, the presenter was allowing the conversation to range freely.
“I think we’re all getting a bit sick and tired of the objectification of women!” This came from an elderly lady in a smart skirt suit and dangly earrings, who Berni thought was a famous author. “These gossip magazines are full of female celebrities wearing next to nothing, or talking endlessly about their sex lives, which are nearly always lurid and scandalous. We’ve got girl bands dressing like Times Square hookers; we’ve got schoolgirls copying them when they go out to discos and nightclubs …”
“I think you could argue that men are being objectified as well,” a male guest replied. He too was elderly and wore a smart suit; Berni recognised him as an editor in the tabloid press. “If you look at the world of pornography …”
“Well, you ought to know about the world of pornography, Tarquin,” the author interrupted. “Your newspaper has done its best to promote that industry, along
with the breast enhancement industry, and the stockings and suspenders and see-through knickers industries …”
“Perhaps we’re moving off the point,” the presenter said hastily. “We shouldn’t forget the three victims.”
“I’m not forgetting them,” the newspaper editor replied, “but I think Sheila’s running before her horse to market. The police haven’t even confirmed that these were sex attacks.”
“Oh come on!” the author protested.
“I wasn’t aware that you were an expert on deviant psychology, Sheila. To start with, look at the age ranges of the victims. The oldest was fifty-eight, while the other two were thirty and nineteen respectively. That’s an unusual variation of victim types for a traditional serial killer. If anything, what we’re dealing with here is a spree killer …”
“Serial killer, spree killer … women are being slaughtered, and Tarquin’s talking semantics.”
“Sheila! Sensationalist language will not help.”
“Sensationalist language is all we’ve got, Tarquin. In houses all over the Bannerwood estate, which in case you’ve forgotten is only seventeen miles from the studio here in Manchester, there are women watching this programme, wondering if tonight will be the night when some drink-sodden animal forces his way through their downstairs window, sneaks up to their bedroom and inflicts God knows what kind of atrocities on them …”
Berni flicked the television off.
For the first time it really struck her what it was Don had asked her to do here. She hadn’t been happy about rooming at The Grove for all sorts of obvious reasons, but it had never occurred to her until now that, in consenting to do this, she might not just be risking attack herself, but inviting it.
Berni had always wrapped men round her little finger. She was slim and petite, but also shapely – a figure she’d maintained despite having reached her mid-thirties. She had dark, bobbed hair and sultry Italian looks. Even back in her teenage years, when surrounded by braying drunks in city centre bars, she’d never felt a hint of danger from them, because with a word or gesture she could reduce them to lumps of slobbering jelly. But perhaps in agreeing to do this, she’d taken that self-assurance a little too far.
