Ashes From Ashes

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “He’s a mighty good man,” Master said between his teeth. “Say it. Go on. You says it now and loud.”

  Obedience, she hoped, would as usual keep her safe. She said that Number One was a mighty good man. She said it three times and lastly shouted the words again. Then she saw the expression in Master’s eyes, and she huddled, pulling the rug over her face. But he grabbed one of her hands, and held it between both of his own, taking one finger, he twisted it suddenly, and Eve heard the snap and felt the pain. She screamed. “Shut up,” shrieked Master, but he twisted the second finger, and it too snapped. Then he broke her third. Finally, her little finger snapped beneath his fierce twist. Every finger except her thumb was broken at its lower joint. Eve sobbed, choking. The pain shot through each finger and up her arm.

  “You says that name again,” Master roared into her eyes, his teeth nearly on her nose and his spittle mixing with her tears, “and I reckon I’ll cut one o’ yer fingers off altogether. One by one, maybe. Cut, cut, cut. I done that to Sharpton. Cheeky, she was, so I cuts all her fingers off one hand. Squealed and squealed, she did, and I liked that. I got a good knife for carving. Will use it on you if you says that name again. And if Number One hears, reckon he’s gonna kill you there and then.”

  He marched out and she realised immediately how idiotic she had been. Brainless. To admit knowing the man. She felt she deserved to die, and hoped simply that it would be quick. For a while, she had lost consciousness, her legs like water, toppling to the bed but still cradling her mangled fingers.

  She did not see Master again for two days, and that was a blessing although she grew bitterly hungry and thirst plagued her like a haunted nightmare: the endless hours of nothing, the restrictions on her movements and the difficulty of no toilet, little food and nothing to do until Master came, and then that was even worse. Indeed, when Master entered and the door slammed open, he snapped on the light. A bare bulb swung from the ceiling and its light lit the small room in all its dingy detail. But when Master left, so did the light. Darkness sank down each time the door clicked its lock, and she was forced once again to retreat into the hopelessness of night. Black as pitch and quiet as death. This could last for days. The broken fingers shot agonising pain up her arm, and as she found nothing to act as a sling, she walked constantly with one hand around the other.

  The bones knitted, but not prettily. She could hold nothing.

  It was death she considered. This often seemed the only solution, especially when the gnawing cramps of bitter hunger made her curl and writhe, her throat rasping dry. She considered several possibilities and tearing up the blankets to plait for a noose was one. But no ceiling beams existed, and so there was nothing there to attach the hand made rope. Instead, she was held by the ankle with a metal chain strong enough for strangulation – if only she could keep pulling while choking and gasping for breath. But she could not. That chain, and she practised this, could be wrapped around her neck. But at each attempt, she would fall, and the chain would also fall slack.

  Between her desperate tears, Eve attempted something else.

  “One day Niles,” said Harry, “and the next day this.”

  “Who is it?”

  Sylvia was calling down from the top of the deep red carpeted staircase, replete with a balustrade of highly polished wood. Sylvia had often wondered if she could slide down it. She saw the top of Harry’s head coming from the front door along the passage to the living room. Behind him bobbed a crimson bonnet with a pom-pom. Then she realised who it was and ducked back into her own bedroom. “Bother,” she muttered to herself, “bloody Sullivan’s wife.”

  Downstairs Harry ordered tea and biscuits. David took the order and grinned hopefully. “We got more cake?” he asked.

  Harry shook his head. “To be honest, I’m getting a little tired of cake.”

  David looked disappointed but scampered off to the kitchen. He was wearing his ‘I’m being good” face. He reappeared balancing the tray of teapot, mugs, and the plate of biscuits. David put the tray down extremely carefully on the small table, grabbed a quick biscuit from the plate, and hurried off. Sylvia came in briskly with a whisk of navy silk.

  “Joyce, how nice to see you again. We see you occasionally on the television. Has that helped in any way? Or better still, any news of your husband?”

  “My ex-husband.” Joyce flopped down, having shrugged off her snow speckled coat, and dropping it over the back of the sofa. “I’ve not seen him, thank the Lord,” she said. “But I’ve heard from him. It gave me the creeps.”

  “He phoned you? How? What number?”

  “No,” Joyce spoke softly but fast. She was worried sick. “The bastard messaged me, You know, on Facebook. A sick message, though most people wouldn’t know what it meant.”

  “So tell us.” Sylvia poured the tea. Harry sat forwards, hands between his knees.

  Joyce looked reluctant, but took the tea and started to sip. “I’ve got the tablet in me bag. I’ll show you afterwards. It says look, here – ‘Baggy pants, I almost miss you. Must talk. Things of interest to tell you. Must meet.’ “

  “I’m amazed he found a way of contacting you,” Harry muttered.

  “It’s an old tablet,” Joyce admitted. “I got a new one, and a new phone and nothing Lionel can trace. But this old tablet – well it has photos I love and nice memories, so I kept it.”

  “Some of those interviews on TV were a bit traceable,” Sylvia told her. “Are you still doing that?”

  “No.” Joyce tapped her fingertips on the tablet screen, still flickering on her lap. “I always knew it was a bit naughty. But - ,” and she looked miserable, “I wanted to be me, you see. Not just a poor bedraggled little old lady who always did as she was told because she was frightened of her husband. I thought, well, a little notoriety might bring some money. I’m poor as a church mouse. Lionel never gave me more than a few pounds out of his wages. He hoarded it, and now it’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  But she had no idea. “I’m on social security and a free pizza every now and again from those coppers who share the safe house with me. I hate them being there. I hate not having my own home. I hate being frightened all the time, and poor, and miserable, and lonely. Being married to that pig was horrible, and I was so glad when he was arrested. But now – it’s almost as bad.”

  Both Harry and Sylvia stared at her. Mumbling, almost to himself, Harry said, “Bloody life. It’s so twisted. There’s Eve, and her poor mother and father, and the brother too. You, Joyce, and those girls in the past. Shit. I mean, I feel guilty being happy.”

  Sylvia turned to him. “You were miserable too, for years.” The night before they had talked for a long time through the sweaty steam of their bathroom. Sylvia had been in the bath, sitting clutching her sponge, bubbles popping on the water’s surface, soapy shampoo in her hair and drip dripping back down her face, over her partly submerged breasts and back into the water. Her knees popped out halfway down the bath, pink and sudsy. Harry had sat on the edge of the bath, looking down at her, fully dressed. But his woolly jumper was wilting in the steam. They had talked for hours about themselves, about the mock-Tudor house and the vile discovery in the chimney, about Lionel Sullivan’s crimes, and about Eve Daish.

  Now Sylvia said, “Joyce, you should write a book. That other one, did you read it? I suppose you wouldn’t want to. About Lionel and the murders. By someone called Stoker. But he made a fortune. I could help you a little if you’d like, and so would Harry. But you could write such a deep, knowledgeable and plaintive book about your side and how everything happened. People read that sort of thing.”

  “None of us know what makes a killer kill,” Harry continued. “You know a bit more about that than anyone else.”

  “I don’t,” Joyce Sullivan said. “He never explained anything to me. He just hit me. If I cooked a dinner he didn’t like, he threw it at me. He beat me badly sometimes. Even early on when he said he loved me. It was control, I sup
pose. He told me what to wear and what to say. He told me where to go and made me stay at home almost all the time. Even when I didn’t see him for weeks, I felt I had to obey his last orders. He watched me from the windows of our house or even the corner of the street. If he saw me talk to anyone, he beat me when I got home. Even if someone asked me where the Post Office was, I had to put my head down, shut my mouth tight, and hurry away.”

  “I don’t blame you for trying to kill him.” Harry had been there. “I watched him go into paroxysms. You saved my life.”

  „So you believe it’s power.“ Sylvia was thinking aloud. „So the killers are the people who actually feel pathetic and weak inside and have to prove their value?“

  Joyce went suddenly quiet and looked at her thickly stockinged feet. “I hated him so much.” She had gone very pink and looked up again. “Please don’t tell the police,” she whispered. “They might put me in prison too. They might put me next to – him.”

  “That wouldn’t ever happen,” Sylvia told Joyce. “Men and women are strictly separated, but anyway, I think the police know, but they won’t make a declaration of it. They’ve let the information drop. You’re safe, Joyce. Write that book. He must have been a nightmare.”

  “I still have nightmares about him. The things he made me do. The things he did to me.”

  “And whatever else you do,” said Sylvia quickly, “don’t go and meet him. Not even with the police hiding around the corner. Not worth the risk.” Sylvia had allowed her tea to go cold. She sipped it, missing the bite of heat that she loved, and decided to leave it. “You weren’t thinking of meeting him, were you?”

  “I was.” Joyce tucked the tablet back in her large plastic handbag. “Maybe the only way to catch him, don’t you think? I’d tell the cops first. The police would be all over the place.”

  “And Lionel would know that, and have some horrible plan worked out to hurt you while he kept himself hidden. Don’t go. Don’t even reply.”

  “Alright.” Joyce sighed. She did not admit that she had already replied, and had already agreed to meet him. She had planned to go to the police immediately after speaking to Harry and Sylvia, but now she wondered whether she should avoid that too. All they might do is tell her off and call her a fool.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Morrison sat on the small graffitied table, one foot up on the adjacent chair, his elbow to his knee, while he regarded the team of men staring back at him within the briefing room. The walls were covered in photos, maps, and printed lists. One list began with Niles Daish. Another began with Lionel Sullivan. But the photos were all of the mock-Tudor house out on the other side of the village, and the bodies discovered in the chimney and beneath the bushes.

  But it was Nick Ostopolis who was talking. He addressed the homicide squad with faint apology. “My autopsy report went out some time ago, and you’ve all read it. There’s three files of semen, sharing exactly the same DNA, but with no connection to anyone on our files. Some samples were already contaminated – well, you know all about that, and we still have no suspect. But anyone, anyone at all, that any of you bring in for questioning, you must ask for a DNA sample, and if they refuse, then you ask if they mind being suspected of multiple and perverted homicide. Take the sample anyway. Order a cup of tea, and pass the cup carefully over to forensics. Permit smoking – that tip is thick with DNA. I can get a sample off a pinprick.”

  “True, sir?”

  “If there’s blood or skin, yes. Saliva – yes. Fingerprints, sweat, any bodily fluid, yes.”

  “We’ve found no more bodies, as you know,” Morrison added. “But no bastard who kills to that extent is going to stop unless he dies or gets seriously ill.”

  D.C. Whitehead bit his lip. “Well, Boss. That freak Sullivan stopped for some years when he first got married.”

  “Lord knows what he did to his poor wife to help stifle the urges.”

  “She’s in safekeeping, but he’s free.”

  “It’s not him we’re after, that’s someone else’s job, thank God. Not unless he starts killing again,” Morrison said. “Though if you run over him one day in a squad car, that might be good news.”

  “Or that creep Mark Howard. This place is getting to be a hotbed of crime.”

  D.C. Crabb spread both hands. “As well as the gangs starting down near the new estates,” He said. “You know, Boss, we’ll have murder there soon.”

  “Cheltenham’s still more respectable than some. Though I found a discarded syringe the other day.”

  Morrison tapped his knuckles on the table where he was sitting. “We’ll keep to the point, and if any of you come up with a sensible idea for a change, then let me know.”

  “Ask that Harry Joyce, he just falls over the answers,” D.C. Walsh grumbled.

  “I have. He’s searching for Eve Daish. Yes, yes, I know, but he’s a good man and no fool.” Morrison peered at Tommy Walsh. “We need all the help we can get. Harry Joyce and his wife are useful. No, no, they don’t earn any special treatment or inside knowledge, but they don’t do any harm either.”

  “One day they’ll get themselves killed,” said Cameron Whitehead.

  Morrison changed the subject. “As you know, I believe that Eve Daish has been taken by the man we’re looking for. But there’s no proof of that. Nor do we know how long this killer keeps his prisoners for. It might be a day or two of torture, or it might be months. Even years. I want the Torr banks searched for bodies again, and lonely roads with cars offering lifts to solitary girls. If our John has killed his latest victim already, he’ll be looking for another. That’s probably the only way we’re going to catch him. Every woman in Gloucestershire has been warned by television and press not to accept lifts from strangers. But he’ll still try. If the girl manages to get away, we’ll hear about it.”

  The following morning the snow had stopped, the sun woke up and peeped from the clouds. By midday the sky was bright, frosty and blue while the sun melted the rime on the fields. The school grounds were wet with melt, but the reflection of gold splattered the grass. Inside the larger schoolroom, Jackson put up his hand.

  “Yes, Jackson? You know the answer?”

  “Not really,” said D.I. Morrison’s son. “Maybe it was Shakespeare. He wrote almost everything, didn’t he? But I wanted to ask something else.”

  “Wrong, Jackson. Shakespeare did not write Harry Potter,” said Maurice Howard with faint irritation. “And what’s this other question you seem to think so important?”

  “Just wanted to know, Mr Howard. Have you got a brother that looks like you? I heard you did. Like a twin. Does that feel really strange? Like looking in the mirror or something?”

  Maurice sighed, hiding his irritation. “Yes, as it happens, I do,” he said. “And I very much enjoy being an identical twin. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with this lesson, and you can sit down, Jackson, and concentrate on the subject.”

  “J.K. Rowling,” called out the small girl sitting in the front row, waving her hand madly in the air. “And that Shakespeare person wrote Hampster.”

  “Hamlet, Mia. You should know that. But J.K. Rowling is right. Now, has anybody in this class read any or all of the Harry Potter books?”

  A flurry of hands shot up. “I’ve seen all the films. Is that the same?”

  But the teacher was interrupted. The headmistress, looking serious as usual, marched in and spoke very quietly to Maurice Howard. He then turned to his class, frowning. “Sorry, but I have to disappear for a while. Turn your grammar books to page twenty one, and start a clean page in your exercise books. Work on lesson 10 until I come back. And quiet please. No disturbances, it’s important.”

  No room of ten-year-olds was going to behave like angels if unsupervised, but Maurice was more concerned with the arrival of two senior detectives in the headmistress’s office, asking to speak to Maurice Howard about his brother. He never spoke to anyone about his brother. Most people did not know of Mark’s existence. But Jackso
n’s question a few moments earlier had made it clear that the local police force knew considerably more than they should.

  As Candy began to panic, Lionel sniggered. “You’re mine now, Sweetie-pops. What an apt name. Candy! I shall suck you dry.”

  “You let me go now,” the girl yelled back. “Or I’ll blind you with coloured pepper.” She clamped her hand over her coat pocket. Then as he lunged at her, she kicked out with one lean muscled leg and slammed her foot forwards into his ribs. He was winded but unhurt, and grabbed her.

  With the car doors now unlocked, and the small barn immediately in front of them, the black skids of the tyres across the wet grass pointed to the way they had come, Candy hoped someone would make use of that. But now she was being dragged from the car by her hair and one arm, and she screeched. Lionel had tufts of her hair between his fingers when he let her go, pushing open the barn’s small door. Candy grasped the spray can from her pocket, and flung up her arm as she pressed the firing pin. A burst of dark purple dye covered his face, stinging his eyes, and filling his mouth. In a rage of furious temper, he flung the girl into the little shed and locked the door behind him. He could hardly see, which doubled the raging anger he felt. He had already knocked the spray from the girl’s hand, and it now lay outside in the wet grass.

  Black hooked batwings threatened Lionel, Olga whispering of failure and his own absurdity. He grabbed Candy’s hair, tugging out great tufts of bleached fluff. She fell back on the straw piles, still furiously kicking and screaming as Lionel pressed down on her, ripping at her skirt, coat and jumper. As he grabbed her breasts and squeezed, each huge hand’s grip as hard as stone, Candy screamed like a banshee and scratched her fingernails over the purple haze across Lionel’s face. Over the soft dip just below one eye, where her fingernail was ragged and broken by his attack, the flesh was deeply torn and bleeding. Candy spat. Purple dye mixed with blood and saliva. Lionel winced, staggering back. Once again he was blind. Scrambling out from straw, she stabbed the fingers of each hand into the watery and bloody eyes of the face looming over her. Twisting around, she tried to push open the door but found it locked. Lionel grabbed her from behind. He shoved her down but heaved her arms up behind her. She screamed as one arm broke and the other shoulder disconnected. Once again Lionel forced her onto the straw, now facing him, her arms useless, as he kept her firm with one enormous booted foot hard down onto her naked belly while he bent and bit her bruised nipple. His teeth were strong, and his jaw clamped over her flesh. With a twist, he ripped the left nipple from her body. Liquid fats and a flood of blood poured from her breast as Candy screamed and fainted.