Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  Realizing that she would only remain alive as long as George thought she had the information he wanted, Kate quickly turned the conversation on to another tack.

  ‘What, so that you can brutally murder her like you murdered Elsie Norman and Mabel Strong?’

  He shrugged. ‘What other reason could there be? And if it’s a confession you want, you can have it.’

  He smirked and placed the palm of his free hand on his chest and stared up at the ceiling, as if addressing a higher authority.

  ‘It’s me what done them two old bitches, Lord, and I enjoyed it.’ His grin broadened as he turned his gaze on her again. ‘Satisfied now, Occifer?’

  Kate swallowed hard, but persisted with her distraction strategy. ‘So, why do you hate your aunts so much?’

  There was a brief pause and when the reply came, it was in a tone that was suddenly laced with menace.

  ‘Wouldn’t you hate them if you were in my shoes? Sadistic harridans, all of them. Taunted and humiliated me all through my childhood. Said I had the devil’s mark and that my soul needed to be purified.’ He gave a derisory snort. ‘Purified? Tortured would be a more appropriate word. I used to dread it when they dropped in to see my parents at our home because I knew that they would wind up that shit of a stepfather to inflict more misery on me.’

  ‘Quigley was your stepfather?’ Kate said.

  He studied her with contempt, seemingly unsurprised by the fact that she already knew something of his background

  ‘You didn’t think that arsehole could ever be my real father, did you? Not a chance, and he wouldn’t let me have his own family name anyway. He only took me in because I came as a package with my mother. I didn’t want the name Quigley either and I have stuck to my birth name, Lupin, ever since.’ Another smirk. ‘Confuse you all, did it, when you were trying to find out who I was?’

  Kate started as realization dawned. No wonder there had been no trace of Quigley on the PNC database. They had been searching under the wrong name.

  ‘But what about the authorities – schools, doctors and so forth? You couldn’t have just disappeared in this day and age.’

  ‘It wasn’t in this day and age, and anyway, I was only four then. No one really knew – or cared – if I existed. Furthermore, Quigley apparently met my mother when we were living in Essex and we simply upped sticks and disappeared to Somerset – no one being any the wiser. As far as the authorities were concerned, I didn’t exist. I was a non-person.’

  ‘And what happened to your real father?’

  He scowled. ‘He died when I was about three, I’m told,’ he replied, ‘and my mother was stupid enough to shack up with that religious freak, Quigley, before she knew what she was getting into.’

  His eyes became strangely hooded, as if his mind was reliving the past.

  ‘Any idea what it was like being a little child raised by a family of religious maniacs?’ he went on, without waiting for a reply. ‘No childhood fun or laughter, no love, no nothing. Imprisoned in that bloody awful house as if I were a leper. Kept away from school and educated in my cell of a room by my Aunt Beatrix, who was a teacher, with prayers before breakfast, prayers before lunch and prayers before tea – and, of course, Bible readings in between. Constant beatings, and deprivations – like being stripped naked, caned or shut in the cellar for forgetting some meaningless drivel from the scriptures or for failing to do well enough in my studies.’ He paused a second, his gaze fastening on her again. ‘Beatings and deprivations that drove me to self-harm with any sharp object I could find.’

  He leaned forward, his grip tightening on the shotgun, so that she flinched in horrible anticipation of an accidental blast.

  ‘And do you know what they did when I caused the injuries to myself? Nothing, that’s what. No tears, no sense of guilt, no self-recriminations, no trip to the hospital or even to see a doctor. Instead, my mother – an ex-nurse – just patched me up, and the whole coven condemned me as a sinner for what I had done and inflicted further punishment on me, while my mother just looked on, too weak to intervene.’

  He relaxed slightly and to Kate’s relief, slumped back in his chair, releasing his grip on the weapon completely, so that it slewed round on the table top away from her to point at the Aga cooker in the corner.

  ‘And there was worse to follow,’ he went on. ‘When I was orphaned, as a result of both my parents dying in a road accident, did my aunts rally around in support? Not a bit of it. They simply washed their hands of me. Said they wouldn’t be able to cope with a child who was so mentally disturbed. Was it any wonder I was mentally disturbed after what they and my arsehole parents had put me through?’

  ‘What about your uncles?’ Kate cut in hastily, anxious to calm him down before he lost it completely and used the shotgun on her. ‘Didn’t they do anything to stop what was going on?’

  He snorted. ‘They’d all died, one by one before I’d even reached my teens. Two copped it from cancer, another committed suicide – a blessed relief for him, I would think – and the fourth died in a railway accident at work. I had no friends, never allowed any, so there was no one I could turn to, no one to stop Iris Naylor and her bitch sisters shunting me off to that hell-hole at Talbot Court—’

  ‘Where you were sexually abused?’ Kate finished for him, without meaning to say anything.

  She was treated to a thoughtful nod. ‘You are very well informed, Detective. But you are exactly right. And that abuse was carried out on numerous occasions over a pretty long period. Not only by the so-called Principal, Edward Grace, and his darling wife either, but by other members of staff, as well as the well-heeled friends he regularly invited to the orphanage for a night’s fun and games.’

  ‘Until you lost it and stabbed one of them to death?’

  ‘Right again. An odious character called Alistair Scarsfield. Pity it wasn’t Grace too, but by then it was too late and I was carted away by the police, eventually ending up in what at that time was called borstal. I wasn’t there long, though. After so-called behavioural problems, I was labelled psychotic by the trick cyclists and soon shunted off to the funny farm – or rather, a succession of them, as I proved to be a continuing embarrassment to the shrinks and unresponsive to their imaginative treatment regimes.’

  A lengthy pause before the reminiscences resumed and Kate made no effort to interrupt this time.

  ‘It wasn’t until I was much older that it dawned on me that the best way of handling my situation was to play the good doctors at their own game and pretend to cooperate. It worked too. That’s how I ended up in Larchfield Secure Psychiatric Hospital, where the privileges I earned as a trusted inmate eventually provided me with the freedoms I needed to achieve my escape.’

  ‘So why didn’t you just run and keep on running? You could have got clean away – to Ireland or the Continent maybe. Started a new life. Why take the risk of coming back here after all this time, just to waste a few harmless old ladies—’

  ‘Harmless?’ he cut in with a new vehemence. ‘Harmless? Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? Those old crones were never harmless and Iris Naylor was the worst of them. As my guardian, she had all the power to do what she liked with me. Furthermore, as she was well in with Edward Grace, who professed the same fanatical Christian beliefs as her – which was a real joke when you think what a perverted scumbag he actually was – my incarceration in Talbot Court was inevitable once my parents were out of the way. Grace and Aunt Iris cooked up everything between them and the other old bitches just fell in behind the plan – and do you know why? Money, that’s why. What do you think happened to my inheritance when my mother and father died, eh? Well, I’ll tell you – it disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared? But surely there must have been legal safeguards to protect your interests as a minor?’

  ‘Legal safeguards?’ he sneered. ‘You have to be joking. Iris Naylor was not only my guardian, she was also the family solicitor. She had all the expert know-how to get around such
legal niceties and, in those days, official scrutiny was pretty lamentable.’

  ‘But why would she bother to do that? When your parents died, she could just as easily have cut you out of any inheritance there and then and claimed it for herself and the other sisters. After all, from what you say, I can’t imagine your stepfather leaving it to you.’

  He treated her to a cold, sardonic smile. ‘Iris had no choice in the matter. John Quigley was killed outright in the accident, but my mother lived on for another three months and, as the sole beneficiary in the old man’s will, before she died of thrombosis, she forced Iris to bequeath it all to me as her heir. Obviously, Iris had to comply with her wishes as her legal representative, but she managed to persuade my mother to name her as my official guardian.

  ‘As a result, after my mother had passed on, some dodgy trust fund was set up for me – ironically in the name of Lupin, as per my birth certificate, so all would appear above board and nothing would rebound on Grace. But while on paper the money was used to pay for my keep and so-called education at Talbot Court, in reality, through some imaginative accounting, most of it eventually found its way into the coffers of Grace and my dear old aunts.’

  He lurched forward in his chair and thrust his face to within a couple of feet of Kate’s.

  ‘Those wicked bitches stole what was due to me and helped to make my childhood a living hell. Turned the family home into a place where nightmares were born. A place that still haunts me like a living thing after all this time. A place that, in my mind, has come to symbolize the beginning of my mental and physical degeneration. It was because of those witches that I ended up in Talbot Court, because of them that I was abused, because of them that I have spent over fifty years incarcerated in bloody institutions.’

  Kate froze, reading the madness in his twisted features and unsure what to do to defuse the situation. She had encountered psychopaths in her career before, but this one was plainly so unhinged that it was almost impossible to predict how he would react to anything.

  ‘So … so why pre-warn the police about what you were going to do in advance?’ she stammered, in an effort to quieten him down and once again change the direction of his thoughts. ‘What was the sense in that?’

  For a moment it was touch and go, but then it seemed that her words had struck a chord and he relaxed again, back in control.

  ‘Vanity, I suppose. I didn’t want to go down as just another psycho, killing for the fun of it. I wanted to establish my credentials right at the start – to set the record straight, so to speak.’

  ‘But wasn’t that taking a big risk?’ she blurted, trying to prolong the conversation for as long as possible. ‘You could have been caught before you’d had the opportunity of doing anything.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not a chance. That’s why I was less than specific about my identity or my intentions. “George” could be the name of anyone and I was careful not to say anything in the letter that would point to the actual identities of my intended victims before I had dealt with them. But by sowing the seed, I had ensured that after I had finished what I’d set out to do, my celebrity status would be assured and the justification for my actions established.’

  ‘But what was the point of the sherry and the lipstick?’

  ‘You obviously didn’t pay enough attention to the letter I sent, Detective. It was all in there about my nightmare experiences as a child and it seemed to tie in admirably with the message I wanted to send out.’

  Without taking his eyes off her, he dug a hand in his pocket and produced a plastic lipstick holder, placing it on the table beside the bottle of sherry.

  ‘Easy enough to obtain too, courtesy of my dear old shrink’s wallet. I got the sherry,’ and he tapped the bottle with the fingers of the same hand, ‘from a motorway services, so I could share it with my precious aunts before I sent them off to the next world. As for the lipstick, nicked, I’m afraid – from a local chemist. There were two sticks originally, but I accidentally left one behind at Aunt Elsie’s, so I had to make do with just this little fellow when I popped in to see poor old Mabel. Slightly different shade of red, but there you are, you can’t have everything, can you?’

  Abruptly his expression hardened. ‘Right, Detective, you have prevaricated long enough. Do you think I haven’t already realized what you’ve been up to with all your stupid questions? Playing for time and hoping for a miracle rescue, were you?’

  He leaned forward across the table again. ‘Well, there’s not going to be one and now it’s the moment of truth. So, tell me, where can I find Iris Naylor?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied simply.

  ‘Rubbish,’ he retorted. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? With all your resources, you’re saying you can’t find one decrepit old woman?’

  ‘I can’t help you. I have no idea where she is.’

  He sighed, leaned back in his chair and raised the shotgun again. ‘In which case, Detective,’ he said grimly, ‘what further use are you to me?’

  And he smiled as he once more slid his index finger back inside the trigger guard.

  CHAPTER 19

  The man with the sword was quivering with rage.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he yelled. ‘Get out of my house!’

  Conscious of his colleagues fidgeting uneasily at the foot of the staircase where they had come to an abrupt halt, the DI pushed his way through them to the front.

  ‘Put the weapon down, sir,’ he ordered sharply, ‘before someone gets hurt.’

  The man in the shorts squealed his anger. ‘Someone gets hurt?’ he exclaimed. ‘You burst into my house in the middle of the night, breaking down my door, and have the audacity to—’ He broke off in a semi-choking fit. ‘Do you have a warrant?’

  A tall, younger-looking blonde-haired woman in a very short nightdress that revealed more than it concealed had now joined him on the landing and was staring down at them with wide-eyed astonishment.

  ‘What on earth do you want?’ she said nervously before Roscoe could respond to her partner’s question, and she pushed the hand holding the sword down so that it was pointing at the floor.

  Roscoe grimaced. ‘You own a Land Rover Defender,’ he said, producing a crumpled piece of paper and quoting the registration number.

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘Is that a crime?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Roscoe continued impatiently. ‘But we have reason to believe that the vehicle was involved in a burglary and the possible abduction of a police officer tonight.’

  ‘A what?’ the man blazed. ‘That’s bloody ridiculous.’

  Roscoe’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you own this vehicle or not?’ he snapped.

  The woman frowned. ‘That old thing?’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, we own it. But it’s only used as a farm vehicle. It’s not reliable enough for anything else.’

  ‘So where is it now?’

  She glanced quickly at her partner. ‘Not here. My dad has borrowed it.’

  ‘Your father?’ Roscoe exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, he owns the farm just down the road …’ Her voice trailed off and she quickly raised a hand to her mouth. ‘If … if it’s been stolen,’ she exclaimed tremulously, ‘then what about my dad and my sister?’

  But Roscoe was already ahead of her there and he didn’t like the direction in which his thoughts were taking him.

  *

  Kate was relieved to still be alive, though she guessed it wouldn’t be for too much longer. Instead of blasting her from the other side of the table, George had ordered her to stand up and move towards the door. Then he unlocked it and prodded her through, out into the yard.

  ‘There are some people I want you to meet,’ he said with the by now familiar sneer. ‘So, walk.’

  She didn’t need to be told where they were going, for he turned left outside the door and was pushing her towards the barns that had afforded her shelter earlier. He was going to shoot her and dump her body in the slurry pit – that fact was pretty
obvious – saving him the trouble of doing the job at the house and carting her body the hundred yards he would otherwise have had to cover with her corpse draped over one shoulder. And the awful thing was, she could do nothing about it. She was totally helpless, incapable of doing anything to save herself, and he knew it.

  She thought of Hayden then, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t thought about him and his infidelity for some time now. She couldn’t help wondering what his reaction would be when her body was dragged out of the slurry pit. Would he be horrified, upset, or just relieved? No doubt horrified – who wouldn’t be in such circumstances? But she guessed that he would be more relieved than upset. After all, her death would leave him a free man, wouldn’t it? Free to shag whoever he wanted. Oh, there would probably be a few tears, just to show willing, and maybe even a convincing period of mourning for the benefit of colleagues and relatives. But then it would be a case of ‘Ah well, life has to go on, doesn’t it?’ and back to bed with his bit of spare.

  In the midst of her bitter reflections, she was hardly aware of the gun barrel prodding her on and only surfaced from her shock-induced reverie when George suddenly rapped, ‘Stop here!’

  She could smell the gas from the slurry pit already and she clenched her fists tightly by her sides as she turned slowly to face him.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said hoarsely, wondering why she had bothered to say something as pointless as that.

  He studied her for a moment, then sighed. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve brought it on yourself and I have no option.’

  The shotgun was held out in front of him now, pointing at her stomach, and his eyes were strangely hooded in the moonlight.

  ‘What is it the villain asks at this point in all the good films?’ he continued. ‘Oh yes, I know – any last requests?’

  But she never got the opportunity to reply. At precisely that moment they were caught in a blaze of headlights, which had suddenly appeared around the bend of the approach road, and she glimpsed a convoy of vehicles hurtling towards them.