„Life,“ muttered Sylvia to herself, „can certainly be a tiresome business. Trying to make it blissful and just both for ourselves and for those in need along the way can end up such a hopeless attempt.“
„Hope belongs in the box,“ mumbled Harry without explanation.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Five bodies had been found in a reasonably intact condition. Now they lay on the table in the large unheated chamber where Ostopolis continued working.
The first corpse rescued from the chimney in the mock-Tudor house was the least decomposed and the least dismembered. She had offered up DNA on immediate examination and had then been identified as Phoebe Stein, a seventeen year old pupil at the local college, desperately missed by her large family who reported her missing within an hour of her disappearance when she did not return from school. The cause of death was unclear, but almost certainly strangulation.
On the second table lay the burned remains of eighteen year old Vivien Riley who had run away from an abusive home many years ago, and taken to the streets. She had never been reported missing. Cause of death was once again strangulation.
The third recovered victim had been identified as a twenty three year old prostitute named Samantha White. She had also been strangled.
The fourth young woman had been suffocated with a plastic bag which had partially survived her burial higher up the chimney. Portia Lawrence had been a sixteen year old school girl reported missing nearly twelve years previously.
At twenty four years of age, River Crane had been missing for thirteen years. She had worked in the village chemist for two years before disappearing. The cause of death was not clear as there were knife marks on her ribs, but other abuse could not be ruled out.
Identified by the DNA found in three strands of hair caught on the bricks at the base of the chimney, Susan Grant had been nineteen when she went missing, having dropped out of university just two months earlier. No possible cause of death could be identified.
Beatrice Dawn had left only ashes, and her DNA was not entirely positive. Cause of death unknown.
In the gardens, two decomposed bodies had eventually been unearthed from beneath the bushes. Here both Marley Webster and Sharon Bell had been discovered. Both had been twenty one at their disappearance, and both had clearly been strangled. They had each been reported missing fourteen years ago, firstly Sharon Bell, an apprentice hairdresser, and a few months later Marley had left home to report to Social Security as out of work. Neither were seen again until they were found buried beneath the lilac.
Several of the remains also carried the DNA of someone else. The identity of this person remained unknown since the DNA did not fit anyone on file.
Morrison phoned, and when Harry and Sylvia bustled into his office, he tapped the papers on his desk and smiled with smug satisfaction. “A small house over the other side of Gloucester recently resold. The new owners explored their strangely barricaded and locked wine cellar. Two corpses, mangled and dismembered, were discovered in a metal chest. Both have been identified. April Westwood and Lucy Skandermitch. Young women who both disappeared last year.”
Harry was scribbling notes but looked up. “This is a killer who moves house every now and again, presumably when he thinks there’s a danger of getting caught. The last house seems to have been safer. Nine victims. Now another house with only two, but clearly he’s moved on again. But these new owners, do they know who lived there previously?”
“The Real Estate Agency does, but it makes no sense,” Morrison told them. “An old man, retired doctor, rented out to holidaymakers who stayed a couple of weeks at most. He never managed to hobble downstairs to the cellar. Steep steps, I gather. I'm going there this afternoon. I can’t invite you along, though. Latest address and names still secret.”|
With a faint frown of disappointment combined with interest, Sylvia said, “Well, clearly we haven’t the slightest talent at this investigation business, so we’d not be an asset anyway.”
“You had some clear talent tracing Mark Howard,” Morrison sighed, spreading his hands, “but my new companion Cramble used neither brain nor experience, and missed him. But don’t quote me on that. Any more clues you pick up from your interesting friend Kate Howard, please do let me know.”
They promised.
“And Eve Daish?”
Morrison shook his head. “I have every reason to suspect that the same killer has taken her, I’m afraid. Although at this stage there’s proof of nothing. She might have run away to London. Or Timbuktu. Although sadly I believe she’s trapped in this killer’s next cellar.”
Harry, who had looked it up, said, “He used an acro-prop, didn’t he? The killer hoisting bodies up the chimney. Can’t you trace that?”
“Believe me, we’ve tried,” Morrison said. “But it’s a common tool, and they sell in their thousands. The few leads that gave us have been well and truly walked over till rubbed out.”
They left, despondent and asked Morrison to pass on their love to his wife, and to his dear friend Cramble. They then drove directly to the hospital.
Unable to risk selling the BMW, Lionel Sullivan abandoned the stolen car in a snowbound ditch halfway towards Stone Henge in Wiltshire, stole a battered blue Ford from outside a tenement flat, drove as far as he could south, abandoned the old banger and stole a nondescript Austin, turned in the opposite direction and drove back to Cheltenham. He had started wearing a pair of gardening gloves stolen from a tiny shop which had closed for the winter. The gloves were magnificently huge, but they were still a little small for him. Uncomfortable then, but that was irrelevant. They kept his fingerprints wrapped.
Besides, he had only one aim. There was no longer the cheerful anticipation. No casual passing young woman, hopefully attractive, could be the future thrill. Once caught, no stranger would make his eyes sparkle and his groin tingle. He was now after one person only, and that was his bitch of a wife who had tried to poison him. She had planned for him to die alone and in prolonged agony from drinking a homemade killer which could eat him away from within, burning out his liver, chewing on his kidneys, and grinding at his heart. The bitch had to die, and he locked other thoughts from his rigid determination.
He'd had help, since he hardly expected himself to be a geek in an office, but now he had a way to trace the damned woman. She had kept an old tablet, one he’d actually given her several years ago, because of the old photographs and audible romance books she’d collected. Presumably, the police had told her to chuck it, and now she had a new one, but the old one remained traceable.
There was never a mirror, so he remained unaware of the purple stains still on the side of his face from his last unsuccessful adventure. But the hood covered most of his face in shade.
It was a shop he’d never entered in his life before, but he could see what it sold. “Someone’s stolen my little laptop thing,” Lionel had complained. “A tablet, and a good one. I bought it here six years ago when the damn things were new and expensive. It’s been nicked. So how do I trace it?”
“You inform the police, sir. Their station’s just around the corner.”
Lionel had sniffed. “Look, don’t report me or anything. But I can’t. Films and pictures, you know, the sort I shouldn’t have. I mean it’s not kids or anything disgusting, but I couldn’t risk the cops. They’d think I was a perv. I’d be so embarrassed. I swear it’s not anything too bad, but well, I admit, I couldn’t show the wife.”
“Here.” Pushing over a small card with a name, an address and phone number, and a pattern of arrows following smaller arrows. “My brother Paul. He’s a fanatic on this sort of thing. He won’t be interested in the rubbish you’ve got on there, but he’ll trace anything, given time and clues.”
Lionel had phoned the fanatical Paul, and now he was hidden, head down, in his small black Austin which was parked further down the road where Joyce Sullivan now lived. The car was not particularly comfortable, and after two days and two nights, Lionel w
as suffering from more aches and pains that he had in prison. But on the third morning, Joyce trotted out of the front door, slammed it firmly shut behind her, and began to walk up the street. By the time Lionel thought it safe to follow her, she had turned down a side street.
He drove at first, keeping at a distance and taking two diversions. Eventually, as time slipped away and he realised that the blasted woman was intending a long walk off to some village somewhere, he parked the car and began to walk himself. Hands in gardening gloves, then stuffed in pockets, hooded coat enveloping the entire body in navy duffle, wellington boots thick in mud, Lionel appeared normal enough, like any other farm worker, on the larger end of the scale, trudging in the rain. It was a blustery sleet that closed off the horizon and made long walks illogical. Lionel wondered vaguely what his wife, now his ex-wife, was up to but he kept walking, head down. She’d never owned a car and couldn’t drive. Cursing, he reminded himself of the pleasure to come.
Heading for open country, Joyce aimed for the short cut to Rochester Manor. It was still some distance away, but she was sick of being stuck inside and having put up with an abusive husband for many years, a little cold rain wasn’t going to spoil the visit. Nor was she concerned with a short cut across soaked countryside. Taking the long way was simple madness. She expected to be welcomed, given wine and probably cake, invited to stay for lunch and maybe even dinner because of the weather. Inevitably the plodding handyman would offer to drive her home after an interesting day of conversation and good company. Staying at home meant saying ‘Good morning’ to the police, and possibly ‘Thank you’ for a cup of undrinkable over-brewed tea. Then she’d sit in the badly heated living room for hours and hours and watch Escape to the Country. Well, she was already in the country and hoped to escape the endless monotony.
Never having learned to drive, walking had become a lifetime habit. She was only a short distance across one soggy field when she heard the slosh of boots, looked around and saw him. The figure, even at a considerable distance, was a galloping black bear, and the threat was immediately obvious. Lionel was unmistakable.
She had been untraceable and promised safety. It seemed impossible that the devil had discovered her. A threat without hope, and a nightmare without logic. Joyce almost choked with terror, but the adrenalin rush swirled into her head and she ran faster than she ever had in her life before. Her boots stuck in mud but she ripped them free as she swerved away from her original direction and raced towards the nearest hedge and burst through into the lower slope of the heavily treed horizon.
The spikes on the pruned surface of the boundary hedge scratched at her, but she sped through its scrubby twigs and ran without slowing to the trees beyond. First down a slope, bringing greater energy, but then upwards, which she took on the diagonal to lessen the strain. The first trees sheltered her and Joyce disappeared into the shadows. Trying for greater silence, she turned, heading towards the forested copse which would eventually cut to the road. Yet she slipped, gulped as she fell back, and slid directly down and into the murk of the winter pond below. Then, both feet stuck in bog and the swirl of the muddied water around her knees, she held her breath and waited, staring back up at the ridge from which she had slipped. The marks of her shoes were horribly visible.
Barely hurrying, Lionel appeared at the crest of the slope, looking down. He sniggered and stared. He was licking his lips.
Now gasping for breath, Joyce could taste the fear. Acid bile rose up in her stomach and she was sure she’d be sick. But she did not dare stop and kept running. Splashing over the boggy pond and its trickle of stream, she climbed the bank and disappeared between the trees where they grew thicker and cast blacker, thicker shadows. The rain barely found a passage between the branches although few of the trees were evergreen, and only the occasional spruce fluttered its leaves. A bare-branched oak sprang from a trunk thick enough to hide her. Joyce wondered if she could climb it. She had never, even as a child, climbed a tree. But never before had she been chased by a killer who hated her.
She wore trousers, a brand for women with more interest in comfort than style, so the waist was elasticated. She might, just might manage one leg up, then two, then hang on tight to whatever branch she could grasp. There wasn’t time to doubt herself.
Peeping from the darkness into the grey sleet, Joyce tried to see where Lionel had reached, and if he knew where she was hiding. For some time there was no sound except the rush of the wind and rain. Yet there was another sound she heard, louder, and continuous, and that was the pounding of her heartbeat. It called for urgency. Still heaving for breath, she crouched, pulled off her boots, tied the laces and hung them around her neck, and very carefully started to climb. The oak tree, stubby and widely spreading, carried her upwards, holding the curl of her stockinged toes safe. Above her, black and bare against the white sky, the interwoven tracery of bare branches was tight knit and alien. Even the sleet made little entrance here. She slipped only once and clambered on upwards. One branch, high and solid, spread like an invitation amongst the others, and here she managed to straddle, clinging in fright to the main trunk, but almost invisible from below. Had it been spring, had the oak been a swirl of leaf, she could have crouched therefore long hours unseen, but being proud of her accomplishment did not think Lionel would look upwards. A middle-aged woman sitting in an oak tree. That clashed with her usual steady uninspired and orthodox obedience. He could not expect his plump and placid little wife, devoid of personality and lacking all agility, could ever climb a tree.
She did not dare breathe deeply and did not move. He came through the copse, avoiding the road and pushing at the trees around him. His head bent downwards as he searched for footprints, his eyes shifting straight as he looked for a running shadow. He did not peer up. Joyce had hidden her footsteps with a scuffle of undergrowth and a clump of gorse. Lionel walked on. She could hear his grumble of madness.
“Find her for me, bitch. You fly, black witch, so find her for me. If you sit on my shoulder with your rancid fur up my nose, I’ll kill myself and you with me.”
Joyce shivered but did not fall.
He was over the next slope and plodding a ditch when the branch cracked. She still did not fall, but Lionel had heard. He turned like a hound at bay, thanked Olga with a chuckle for having found the old hag, and bounded to the oak tree. Joyce clung desperately and stayed where she was. Lionel kicked at the tree. His boots were massive, and the tree shook. With both arms, he clasped the trunk, pulling with every inch of his strength. Pulling, pulling, grunting, puffing and pulling again, and very gradually the tree began to slope over. Too solid to break, the trunk bent just a little, and finally Joyce fell.
With a whoop of success, Lionel grabbed her. Joyce accepted death. “Get on with it,” she shouted at him. “But you’ll be caught. Enjoy me dying. I’ll shriek if you want. But the cops’ll shoot. We’ll die together, and then I’ll laugh.”
It didn’t make a lot of sense, but he listened. Then his whole fist within the leather gardening glove slammed into her jaw. She slumped, not unconscious but unable to stand for one essential minute. In that minute Lionel shoved the point of a short knife into her shoulder.
Aimed at her neck, her collapse sideways spoiled the strike. Even through the thick coat and clothes beneath, Joyce started to bleed. It first soaked from the cut outwards onto the woollen material and then poured. She felt no pain whatsoever, wrapped in warmth and drugged with adrenalin, Joyce twisted up with her other hand and shoved beneath the heavy coat up between Lionel’s legs. She punched first. She had neither the force nor the size of fist she’d suffered herself, but Lionel squeaked and staggered back. She clung and moved with him. Now her fingers grasped his testicles and squeezed with all the strength she could muster. The adrenalin doubled the power. Lionel howled.
Joyce ran. The road wasn’t far, and she could hear engines. Not a busy road, but a car might find her. Like Olga, she flew.
It was a stumble from mud to the g
rassy verge, and from verge to ditch, but Joyce staggered out into the middle of the narrow wet road. She saw the headlights blurred by sleet. The golden brilliance blinded her. In a confusion of horror and the sudden influx of violent pain, Joyce toppled and fainted.
The driver thought he would hit her. She had been less than a small dark blur through the windblown rain, and he was on her before he saw her and swerved. The screech of his tyres on the wet and frozen road was the only sound Lionel heard. He sat in mud and began to cry. Only Olga listened to him and smiled.
Her faint had nearly killed her, and her husband had nearly killed her, but Joyce twice escaped death. The car driver, with one dash from car to road, quickly phoned for both ambulance and police. Then he stayed with her, sitting and soaked, trying to balance his crazy heartbeat and his frantic breathing. The ambulance came first. Two sirens echoed amongst the trees.
Joyce was taken to the same hospital, although not the same ward as Iris, Ruby and Candy, who had now also been separated. That early evening visiting hour, Harry and Sylvia went to see Ruby and intended a brief word with Iris. Instead, they ended up staying for some considerable time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Unexpected, if nothing else,” agreed Morrison as he apologised for bumping into Sylvia in the hospital corridor. Morrison had questioned Candy Libansky but as he was leaving a DC hurried in with the news concerning Joyce Sullivan. “No, it isn’t Lionel Sullivan I’ve been assigned as a case, but since the other business is somewhat of a stalemate, I was asked to follow up on the young woman who managed by her own courage and luck to escape imminent murder.”
“I was here visiting my friend Ruby.” Sylvia pointed to the lift. “There’s a decent cafeteria downstairs. Do you want a coffee? I want to tell you about someone else. She’s Iris Little, and she needs help.”
Ashes From Ashes Page 19
