Ashes From Ashes

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Harry was lying full length on the couch behind her, and she was more or less sitting on his legs, except that he had one ankle wrapped around her and his foot on her lap. She enjoyed the private warmth and the unspoken affection. Every touch was a tiny pleasure, reminding her of the happiness she had not known for so many years before she met Harry. Harry spelt happiness. Not security from murder nor from poverty, not even security from heart attacks, nor the cold and rain. But he was a whole welter of security against the hopeless loneliness that she hadn’t even known she was feeling. She hiccupped, smiled, and leaned back against his knees. “I know,” he said. “I make a good blanket,” and wrapped both arms around her.

  “Funny,” she said. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “But we have to think of something apart from furry rugs.” Because he had also been thinking of how his delight in touch and warmth with Sylvia contrasted so horribly with the last moments of five young and pretty girls, what they must have suffered, what loving warmth they had been torn from, and what vile creature had abducted them into such hopelessness.

  “We need to go back to that cellar,” Sylvia murmured. “If Morrison lets us.”

  “Or even if he doesn’t,” said Harry.

  Darcey Morrison let them. “You found it,” he said the next day when carefully approached. “So come on in and take a last look. We’ve broken directly through, and it’s certainly an easier entrance. But there’s more excavations planned so this will be your last visit to the house. Make the most of it.”

  Instead of an hour in a damp dark tunnel underground, a ladder was a solid balance through a small hole in the floorboards, and a light had been attached. Now the dismal cellar, otherwise unaltered, was spread wide for viewing. Even the light had not improved it much.

  “There’s more than some creepy little sex fiend involved,” said Harry reaching out one finger, and then remembering that he mustn’t touch. “Finding that tunnel. Setting those hooks and metal rings in the floor and walls around the bed. Then up the chimney. Picking up a body and wedging it up into the chimney over your head. That’s got to be a big strong man. Or two”

  “You can’t have two friends with the same sick perversions.”

  “You do. All the time,” Harry insisted. “Hindley and Brady, Fred and Rosemary West, Ricky Davis and Dena Riley, Catherine and David Birnie. I won’t go on. I can’t remember other names, but there are a high number.”

  Sylvia was staring at threads caught in the floorboards. “Just as well I wear contact lenses. These are tiny. Can you see?”

  He could. “I’m sure the police will have seen them too.”

  “Dirty old bits of blanket,” Sylvia decided.

  Morrison’s voice behind her made her jump. “Once orange mohair. And moreover here. Once brown hessian. But extremely common and quite untraceable. But there are other threads caught on the old bed springs. And we have some hope of tracing those.”

  Harry and Sylvia bent and stared. “A mattress? Pillows?”

  Morrison shook his head. “No, as it happens. A white fake fur rug. But of a particular kind that isn’t common. And the same threads were discovered caught in the strands of hair amongst the remains.” But he was called by one of his men peering down into the cellar from the room above, nodded, and turned back to Sylvia and Harry. “No time for more, I’m afraid,” he told them. “And I can’t authorise any more visits here. This has definitely been the last. But I’ll pop around this evening if you’re free. Something I wouldn’t mind discussing with you.”

  It was after dinner when Morrison finally arrived at Rochester Manor, and they took him into the small living room where they hoped for greater privacy. “We can go up to the bedroom if anyone pokes their noses in,” Harry said. There’s a living room as well as the bedroom.” He waved at the grand staircase as they passed.

  But settled in the small room and having opened one of his own bottles of wine, Harry passed around the overfilled glasses, and Morrison leaned back against the wide cushions, stretched his legs, and sipped. “Off duty,” he said. “But I’m driving home. No refills please, or I’ll have to sleep the night on your floor.”

  “I’m wondering what you feel able to tell us,” said Sylvia with a hopeful smile. “Have you identified any of those poor wretched girls yet?” She gulped her own wine, clutching the stem tightly.

  The night sky was star-pricked through the window, but Harry stood and quickly pulled the curtains. It had stopped raining, but the night was cold. “Don’t worry,” he added. “We won’t be approaching any desperate families. But we’d be only too pleased to help in some way, however small.”

  “Three identifications have been made,” Morrison said, “of the young women found in the chimney itself, three were sufficiently intact, and DNA has been recovered both for their own identification and for that of the killer. Sadly the latter doesn’t match any criminal already on our database. But it will be of essential importance should we arrest any suspect in the future. The parents of the young women have been informed.” He sipped again, looking over the rim of his glass. “Eventually we hope to identify the others, being seven in all. But so far the media has been told little or nothing, and we want to keep it that way.”

  “And the ashes?” Harry didn’t see how anyone could be identified from a handful of ash in a fireplace. “Anything found in the garden?”

  “The grounds haven’t been fully excavated yet,” Morrison said. “And the ashes simply point to human destruction, and possibly two separate persons as yet unknown. But there’s something important I need to ask, I’m afraid. When you discovered the passage leading to the cellar and explored there, Harry, can you swear you neither touched nor removed anything?”

  Both Harry and Sylvia adamantly shook their heads. Sylvia said, “We aren’t that absurd, I hope. We were extremely careful. Why do you ask?”

  “Some things were discovered on the ground,’ Morrison said, “but in an odd sequence. To be frank, we found faeces beneath the bed. Now very old and dried up, naturally. But they had been laid out to spell a word, or at least it appeared that way. Yet the word made little sense.”

  Waiting, and growing impatient, Sylvia insisted, “What word? Do tell.”

  “The word ‘How’,” said Morrison finally. “But there were other faeces in a lump beside the word’s ending – as though kicked out of sequence.”

  “How makes sense, I suppose,’ said Harry. “But I promise, we never saw that at all.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Darcey sighed. “I say how all the damn time. But why would a prisoner write such a pointless word?”

  They talked about Morrison’s eccentric family before he left, but there was one more thing Sylvia needed to know. “What was so unusual about the white rug? And have you traced it at all?”

  He set down his empty glass, stood, and smiled. “Ah, now, Mrs Joyce. That would be telling, wouldn’t it.”

  Chapter Six

  Master stuck out both bare feet. He was otherwise well covered since the weather was freezing and there was no heating in the room. He was muffled in grey wool and thick trousers in unwieldy duffle. Eve doubted if Master would be able to buy ready-made trousers from any shop since his legs were badly deformed, yet his feet were normal enough although the toes resembled a bear’s claws. His arms, upper body and neck were entirely normal and his face almost so, although squashed badly on one side. Clearly he could only see well from one eye and needed to peer closely in order to make out pictures. He kept pornographic magazines and enjoyed them, repeating the examination over and over. But it seemed he could not read. Several times he ordered Eve to read the stories to him, but since they were wilfully sadistic, she had enormous trouble reading them aloud.

  Now Eve was cutting Master’s toenails, which had become thick and hooked. She was naked and shivering violently but she had wrapped two blankets around herself and could speak without her teeth chattering.

  The nail scissors w
ere sharp, tucked between her fingers. Not large enough to kill Master perhaps, but certainly the points could do great damage and inflict pain, should she be able to press hard enough.

  Yet nothing short of killing would be adequate. If she hurt him, he would probably kill her. The beatings were fairly regular. Master lost his temper very quickly, abruptly, and sometimes without any notable cause. Eve had once, in an attempt to create a trustful friendship, greeted him with a polite ‘Good morning” and a question about the weather outside. Master had answered her with a violent lashing from an elasticated Bungie tie, with its black plastic hook on the end.

  Eve, her belly, breasts and groin ripped and bleeding, had crawled beneath the bed and Master had left her there for two days without food.

  Finally, on the third day, he had sobbed onto her shoulder, patted her scars and crimson welts, and explained his anger. “I can’t go out on me own. Months tis when I doesn’t know wot outside be like. Sometimes, mind you. I bin out when I’s let. I seen that big wide world. But not much, not since I turned big and growed up. I ain’t let out cos I ain’t proper. So wot you don’t like, I got the same. It ain’t no better.”

  She felt suddenly sorry for him, wiping his tears from her own body. “But no one whips you, Master. No one hurts you. Not like you hurt me.”

  “Cos I’s the master. I gotta have somint. I’s a freak. You ain’t. You’s pretty. So I gotta have extra. Being Master. That’s extra.”

  “But does it help you, by hurting me?”

  Master sniggered through the tears. “Course it do. Silly.”

  “I’m sorry. But I don’t even know your name.”

  “Number Two calls me Hobbit. But you calls me Master.”

  The mesmerising cold continued. So did the rapes, the beatings, and the abuse. Master enjoyed abuse of a sadistic type on occasion, but was often tired and longed for caresses. He brought Eve bread crusts and stale beer, then suddenly arrived with roast lamb and potatoes, or steaming beetroot soup and fresh buttered rolls. Usually, he shared the same food with her. Only when he was angry did he eat everything himself, forcing her to sit and watch him, and then leave her hungry. Eve knew she was losing weight. She had once wanted to diet. This was a hideous lesson in the real meaning of food, and she ate even the crumbs from the floor when Master left her alone, locking the door behind him.

  She wondered how he obtained the food and was sure he must somehow leave their prison, whether he denied it or not. She could not imagine him cooking such dishes, and even in such a situation, he would have to shop for the ingredients. Shops delivered, but would he have an endless supply of cash? Or was everything now possible online? Yet if he never went out, who stopped him? His own embarrassment, perhaps. Or did he have a mother who was ashamed of her deformed son, and forbade him to enter the outside world?

  “Who calls you a Hobbit?”

  “Piss off. Open yer legs, quick, afore I loses me temper.”

  She asked him once, “Master, you have another room outside. When you open the door, I see it. It looks a bit cosy. But I get terribly cold. Do you have any spare blankets?”

  He brought her one. It was suede dyed deep red on the back and soft white wool or fur on top. Eve wasn’t sure if the fur was fake, since it was thick and deliciously warm, with soft browns and creams merging in. Master said, “Tis a bear from them icy places.”

  “A polar bear?”

  “Yep.” Giggles and snorts. “Be proper careful or one night t’will eat you all up. Crunch, crunch, crunch!”

  “Thank you. I’m so much warmer now.” Her own clothes had been taken from her. She saw them once, in a heap on Master’s floor beneath his bed, but the chain around her ankle stopped her reaching out for them.

  After a month, being naked had become a habit. She did not stop hating the icy draughts and now suffered from a permanent cough, but the polar bear helped enormously Eve called him Gandalf, and having no idea that the name came from a book introducing Hobbits, Master accepted this name and found no sarcasm nor humour in it.

  “Wrap Gandalf,” he said often. “Cosy. Nice from me, eh?”

  “Yes. Good Master.” She kept the fur side next to her skin, for even when she was whipped, bleeding and in pain, the soft fleece soothed her body.

  Grinding hours of boredom paled into dizzy dreaming. Master slept in his own bed for many hours and left Eve alone without anything to do. She asked for books and magazines. He gave her three pornographic brochures of pictures which made her sick. She asked for a broom or cloths and offered to clean up. Master refused. “You want bonk Master on the head with brooms?” The sparkle of anger lit his eyes.

  Immediately she soothed him, denying everything except a need to fill her time, and attempt a cleaner space for living. Master threw her dirty dinner plate at her and being plastic, it did not break. But the smears of gravy splattered her face, and the edge of the plate cut against her nose. She cried. Master stalked off. The plate now chipped, was the base for all her meals, and it was never washed. Eve constantly expected dysentery or some greater poisoning from this encrusted filth, but her immunity grew to protect her. She usually licked her plate, not to clean it but because of her own hunger. But licking her plate was not the worst.

  Later when he returned, pointed to the bucket in the corner of the room, and ordered, “Tinkle.”

  “I don’t need to,” she whispered back.”

  “Piss, bitch,” Master shouted. “Now you go empty bucket.” The double crack in the floorboards was the only place where the bucket could be emptied but it was neither an easy nor a pleasant job. He kicked her from behind. “Splashes. Look. Now lick clean.”

  “Lick? Oh no, I beg you. If you could give me a cloth?”

  He spat full in her eyes. “Lick it, bitch. On them knees. Bend over and lick. I’s gonna take you in yer lickle pink arse whiles you licking.”

  Harry stepped out of his navy checked underpants and walked into the large shower cubicle. He stretched out one arm, and Sylvia squeaked, surprised. She had been standing beneath the hoop of steaming water, facing the tiled wall. The waterfall obliterated other sounds and she had not heard Harry pull open the shower door. Now he hugged her tightly from behind, the palms of his hands pushing up beneath her breasts. So she wriggled around and embraced him in return.

  “I wake up knowing I’ll see you every morning.” Harry’s mouth was a tickle against her cheek. At about the same height, their mouths then met, half kissing, half swallowing steam and the boiling water. “There was never anything to look forward to. The pub. The television. Then bedtime. That’s why I pushed the idea of the murder investigation. Well, it was different. Thrust on us, really. Anyway, now I look forward to you. It’s changed my life.”

  “Of course it has, dopey. We live together. We’re married.”

  “And we still investigate murders.”

  “Not much investigation is going on,” Sylvia said, reaching for the shampoo bottle. “We don’t know where to start, do we!”

  She used the same white creamy handful to wash her own silver hair, and Harry’s darker grey. “We’ve found that cellar. That helped Darcey. It was a huge step. Well, it was Stella’s grandson that found it, but we went there and told the police. And wasn’t Dopey a donkey?”

  “No. That was Eeyore.” Sylvia massaged Harry’s head, then rinsed off the shampoo and applied the conditioner. She enjoyed the feel of his scalp beneath her fingertips. It felt almost as though she touched his brain, moving it, smelling it. Her conditioner was perfumed. “You’ll smell sweet.”

  “I’m sweet enough.”

  “You are. I agree.” Her fingers explored lower and she kissed him again. Then, rinsing off the hair cream, she pointed the shower head at his nipples and navel. “Shall I go lower?”

  Afterwards, he dried her, rubbing vigorously with the huge bath sheet, rough turquoise and thick enough to absorb all liquids. Then he threw the towel in the washing bin. “Come on, angel. Nearly dinner time. Or don’t
you have the energy?”

  “It always leaves me dreamy. Not tired as much as just relaxed. The last thing I want to do now is rush downstairs and face Ruby, Lavender, and food.”

  He grinned. “I’m starving. It always leaves me hungry. But I can ask Lavender to send something up, and we can talk in private.” He phoned down, as Sylvia cuddled into bed. “So what’s the next move?” He grinned again. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean with the murders. Are we great investigators or not?”

  “Not,” said Sylvia, muffled beneath the blankets. “But I do have a few ideas. Morrison has identified at least two of the girls. So when did they disappear, and where last seen? Were these street girls, or runaways, or respectable lost kids? And how old were they? Most importantly, can they tell how long apart were they murdered and then buried?”

  “We’ll ask Morrison,” Harry nodded. “And if he won’t tell us, we’ll need to do our own undercover searches.”

  There were, as usual, pieces of information Morrison was glad to pass on, and others he was not. “Marley Weaver was only sixteen when she disappeared from home in 2009. Her mother had gone on the streets, and she had no known father. She’d been looked after by her aunt. The aunt and mother have both been informed and have co-operated with the police, although have shown little interest.”

  “So can we go and visit one or the other?”

  “Certainly not. And if I discover that you have, then our friendship ends.” But Morrison was smiling. “However, if you just happen to bump into one of them outside their home in Clariton Street Cheltenham, an address I cannot possibly give you, then please feel free to offer a chat over a cup of coffee. They might, should you bump into them which of course you won’t, be more co-operative with an elderly couple doing their own investigation than they were with the police. Then you might consider coming to visit me with a fairly detailed description of what you spoke about.”