by Matt Hilton
“Did they catch him?” she asked.
Shelly leaned forward, clasping her hands in mimic of the woman across from her. She shook her head slowly. “Not yet.”
“Not yet.” Resignation sighed from Janet.
“We are conducting an area search. I’m sure we will find him soon.”
Janet’s mouth formed a straight line.
Shelly said, “It’s not as if there are that many places to hide. We’ll have him in no time.”
Unconvinced, Janet clutched handfuls of her bathrobe.
Awareness crept in to Shelly and she sat back, carefully unfolding her hands. She could be another woman feeling the same level of pain and terror as the professor, or she could be a police sergeant. The woman in her wept for John Entwhistle - and for all the other victims of this vicious killer - but the sergeant had a job to do. Primarily she had to catch the brute responsible for the murders, but equally as importantly she had a duty to reassure the victim before her.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Professor Hale. We will ensure that your attacker doesn’t get access to you again.”
Janet looked at Bob, who stirred self-consciously beneath her gaze. Her headshake was desultory. “No offence officers, but I don’t see how that could be possible. He got to me once, he could do it again.”
“Not now that we are looking for him…”
“Sergeant…the camp was full of people, and he simply walked straight through them and into my home. He attacked me and carried me off. God knows what would have happened if that dog hadn’t got him.”
“We weren’t prepared for him then. Now we are. I promise you that we will keep you safe.”
Janet still wasn’t satisfied. “You say you weren’t prepared before…but you still don’t know who it was that attacked me. Or even what attacked me. How can you make a promise that I’ll be safe when you have no idea what it is that we’re up against?”
“I’ll grant you that this man is very dangerous, but there’s no way he can get to you again. Not now that we’re here.”
Janet puffed out her cheeks. “I heard the shooting, the screaming. You didn’t manage to stop him then.”
Stung by the comment, Shelly slapped at her jacket, pulling out her notebook. “We underestimated him last time. We won’t let the same thing happen again.”
Janet looked deflated. “Was someone else hurt?”
No use hiding the truth. “Three officers were injured. Another was killed.”
“Oh my God, I am so sorry.” Janet’s eyes shone with fresh tears.
“It’s not your fault.” Images of John Entwhistle forced themselves into Shelly’s mind. Vividly she saw his ashen features grow alabaster white as his lifeblood leaked away. His mouth hung open in accusation, as though the finger of blame should fall directly upon the ineptitude of his supervisor to protect him. The thought was illogical, of course. There was nothing she could have done that would have changed the outcome. She batted the image aside. “As I said, we underestimated the killer and have paid sorely for it. More the reason why we won’t let the same thing happen again.”
Shelly felt like a stuck record, repeating herself over-and-over again. The cure for a stuck record generally called for a quick thump to the offending mechanism to skip the needle over the sticking point. Changing tact was her response. “I know you’ve already gone over this a dozen times, but could you describe your attacker to me again?”
“Of course. Anything that will help to catch him.”
Shelly sat with a pen poised over her notebook.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought since then,” Janet began. “Perhaps I was suffering from shock at the time.” She paused, embarrassment adding colour to her drained face. “I told your colleagues that I was attacked by a monster. A Skeklar, no less.” She laughed at her apparent foolishness. “Now I realise that it couldn’t possibly have been anything so ridiculous.”
Shelly rolled her shoulders. John Entwhistle’s words came back to her and she formed them into a question. “It was…just a man?”
“What else could it be?” Janet asked, but her words were as hollow as her conviction.
Shelly offered the alternative. “A person posing as a Skeklar?”
“Had to be.”
From Bob came a grumble of assent. Both women gave him a second’s notice. He lifted his eyebrows in an I thought so gesture, then turned his back on them and wandered to the far end of the caravan. Without seeking permission he leaned into the open door to the bedroom and checked that the window was shut. Happy that the women were safe, he stepped to the exit door. “I’ll just take a look around outside, Sarge. Make sure everything’s safe for you women while the two of you talk.”
Shelly smiled at the manly intimation; some might think Bob’s actions as ill-veiled chauvinism, but Shelly recognised his desire to protect them as a deeper and innate condition based at a gene level. Nature decreed that - comparatively speaking - the male of the species was bigger, stronger and faster than his female counterpart. Therefore, who was she to be offended by a man’s need to carry out what instinct bade him do? At base level, Shelly would rather it was Bob guarding them than anyone. She watched him angle his big frame through the door, the ghost of a smile plucking at her lips.
As the door snicked to behind him, Janet asked, “Are the two of you involved?”
Shelly blinked, only then aware of the professor’s scrutiny. “No. We just…work together.”
Janet turned down the corners of her mouth. Eyelids drooping. “Oh.”
“What gives you that impression?” Shelly asked. Unexpected warmth trembled in her midriff.
Janet shrugged. “Just the way that you look at each other. I thought…”
“That we are lovers?” Shelly laughed. It was as forced a sound as ever she’d heard.
“He seems like a nice man.” Janet’s stare bore holes into Shelly’s. It was Shelly’s turn to redden.
“Yes…”
“You could do worse, you know,” Janet said.
There was a moment of silence as they both considered. The man had stepped out the room, and suddenly they were simply two women sharing intimacies. Shelly kidded herself that it was good for the bonding process, that she was winning the woman’s trust. Just as a police sergeant should. So why was she feeling all girly all of a sudden?
With a slight tremor to her voice, she asked, “What do you mean by ‘the way we look at each other’?”
Janet slowly lifted her head, as though seeking inspiration from the lamp glow behind Shelly. She appeared to measure her answer in the earnest way in which Shelly kept check of herself. “Pardon me for saying, but you’re like a couple of love struck teenagers. Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, but I think that there’s an attraction that goes beyond just working together.”
“No, no. It’s simply mutual respect.”
“Maybe on your part,” Janet said. “But you’d have to be blind not to see the way your friend looks at you.”
Waving a hand, Shelly asked, “You’ve noticed all this since we walked in here a few minutes ago?”
“And at the gravesite earlier,” Janet added. “Please don’t be offended, Sergeant McCusker. I’m only telling it as I see things. That constable is in love with you.”
“No…”
“Yes.”
There was little need for the lights; the glow off Shelly’s cheeks was enough to brighten up a dull Sunday in Skelvoe.
“I’m sorry, I’ve embarrassed you.” Janet screwed up the cloth at her throat. “Please. You must excuse me.”
“No…I’m not embarrassed…there’s nothing to excuse you for…”
Janet smiled at her. “I have embarrassed you. I’m sorry for talking out of turn. I guess it’s the damn anthropologist in me. I’ve made a study of human behaviour, but I still don’t realise how insensitive I must sound when I speak.”
“Insensitive?”
“Yes. I just open my mouth, and a load of old
rubbish spills out. You’re here to find out what I remember about my attacker, and I’m acting like a match-maker for a dating agency.”
If Shelly had a handkerchief she’d have coughed politely into it. That’s what the fair maidens did when acting demurely in those Regency Romance novels her mum used to read. Shelly had to make do with concealing her bashful smile behind her pocket notebook. “Oh, my!” she said. Very Jane Austen.
They laughed. Both embarrassed now in their own way. At least the ice was well and truly broken. Shelly had won a confidant, even if it hadn’t been in the way - or on the subject - she’d intended.
The warmth didn’t last long. Shelly had a job to do. They both had a killer to catch.
“I’ve made my mind up,” Janet concluded. “It was a man. Had to be a man.”
“Would you please try and describe him to me?”
Janet stared into space. Her grey eyes were the colour of the mist that writhes across Yell Sound in mid-winter. “He was grotesque.”
“By grotesque, you mean he was ugly?”
Janet shuddered. “As my father used to say, ‘you couldn’t kick putty into anything so ugly’. Sergeant, this man was about the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Deformed?”
“And then some.” Janet sat back, resting against the caravan wall like she’d no strength left. “Not naturally, though. Nothing in nature could be formed like that.” She laughed. “Unless the government are doing secret genetic experiments up at Burra Ness that they’re not telling us about.”
There are no secret experiments at the military base, Shelly wanted to say, if you exclude the captured UFO that they’re rumoured to be back engineering in order to develop new technologies. Of course, that would be just a little too absurd. Maybe Janet wouldn’t appreciate her attempt at humour. Anyway, they had a Skeklar to catch, not little green men.
Instead she asked, “Can you expound a little?” She poised her pen over her notebook.
“I didn’t get a clear look at it. It grabbed me from behind, carried me on its shoulder. When I was on the floor and it was standing over me, it was in silhouette against the night sky. I only got a look at it for a split-second.”
The fact Janet was again referring to her attacker as ‘It’ didn’t escape Shelly’s notice. Softly, she prompted, “Just tell me what you can recall about him. Even if it’s just your impressions of what you remember.”
“Okay,” Janet said. She gave a single laugh. “You might think my impressions are those of a crazy woman, but here goes…Very large. Six and a half, maybe seven feet tall. Very strong. Big, big claws. Its shoulders were very bony, almost like an exoskeleton or a beetle’s carapace. Its legs were hairy, like wiry bristles. Like I said, like nothing in nature.”
Shelly had no need to hide her incredulity. It wasn’t a factor. She’d witnessed first hand what this thing had done to John Entwhistle, and she for one wasn’t of a mind to dispute Janet’s memories.
“Did you see his face at any time?” she asked.
Again the singular laugh. “The face was about the worst thing about it. Like my father said -”
“You couldn’t kick putty into anything so ugly,” Shelly finished for her.
“Yes. Exactly.” Janet scratched her hair back behind her ears. “Have you seen that sci-fi movie, The Predator?”
“The one with Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Yes, where he’s being chased through the jungle by a huge alien hunter. Well, if I’d to give you my impression of my attacker, I’d say you were looking for The Predator.” Janet lifted the flat of her hand. “Of course, I couldn’t possibly suggest something like that. I’m a scientist for Christ’s sake…I could ruin my reputation.”
“Hey!” Shelly said, tongue firm in her cheek. “What’s wrong with Schwarzenegger movies?”
Shelly’s humour had the desired effect. Janet’s laughter was genuine this time. Good, things were beginning to get too bleak again, and Shelly had no intention of getting back to the subject of unrequited love to lighten the mood.
“He must’ve had some sort of helmet on,” Janet explained. “And goggles.”
“Goggles?”
“You know like those night vision goggles that soldiers wear.”
Janet nodded. Maybe their jokes concerning secret experiments weren’t so far removed, after all. Who else would have access to night vision technology here on Conn, if not military personnel up at Burra Ness?
“Something else. I think he could have been wearing a gas mask or something like it. By the sound of his voice -”
“What?” Shelly asked. “He spoke to you?”
Janet nodded again. “Before you ask, I didn’t recognise his voice. It’s why I think he had on a gas mask; his voice was slurred and sounded hollow and his breathing sounded harsh.”
“Okay,” said Shelly. “Do you remember what he said?”
“I’ll never forget for the rest of my life,” Janet said emphatically.
“When he first attacked me, he said ‘It is time, Professor Hale’. I tried to fight him off, to get free and he said something really weird: ‘It is pointless fighting me,’ he said. ‘I have chosen you. You are four of nine. I have decided.’”
Her pen scrabbled at the page as Shelly noted down the words. “Very weird,” she agreed. “Four of nine?”
Janet’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know what he meant. Unless he was talking about his victims. I was going to be the fourth?”
“But what is the significance of the nine?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a ritual thing. I know that the number nine is significant in Norse mythology, but that’s as far as my knowledge goes.”
Shelly pondered. “Who is knowledgeable on the subject? Do you think that Professor Bishop would be able to help?”
“Maybe,” Janet said. There was no enthusiasm in her response. “There is someone more likely to know. There’s this writer-”
“Paul Broom?” Shelly squinted. “You know him?”
“Only fleetingly,” Janet replied.
There was something in the way her eyes flickered that made Shelly think there was something else that was going unsaid. When she didn’t expound, Shelly said, “Was there anything else of importance that your attacker said to you?”
Janet pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “He told me my screams would not help me. All they’d achieve was to bring others hurrying to their deaths. If I continued to scream he’d be forced to kill them all.”
Shelly grunted as she wrote. Then, “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Janet blinked down at the floor. “There’s this man I met, I must have called out for help or something. My attacker said, ‘Forget him. He is useless to you. He is gone from here’.”
“The attacker knew your friend’s name?”
“He must have done. Going by what he said, I don’t think that they are on the best of terms, though.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘If Carter Bailey was here, I would show you just how useless to you he is’.”
Shelly’s pen stopped mid-stroke. There he was again. “Carter Bailey? The attacker knew Carter Bailey?”
Janet’s pause seemed to fill the caravan. She had the look of a guilty person all of a sudden. Or of one who’d just realised that they may just have incriminated an innocent person in a crime. Finally, she said, “I told you. He had to know him. I only said Carter’s first name. Never mentioned his surname.”
Shelly’s mind was on triple over-drive. Carter Bailey again. What was it with that man? She shook the thought away, but instantly formed another. She had reason to go and speak with Paul Broom. Why not corner Carter Bailey at the same time, and finally get to the bottom of her fears?
THIRTYSIX
Broom’s cottage
How does that old song go? Oh, yeah! ‘If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.’ Not that I’m much of a cook, but I’d have done
something. For a start I’d have at least tidied myself up.
“Janet,” I said, getting up off my chair as Broom ushered the professor into his kitchen. Despite myself I was smiling unashamedly. Not all of it was to do with the schoolboy flush raging through my body; I was overwhelmed with relief that she appeared unharmed.
Janet offered me a tight smile. That’s all I noted before the woman police sergeant and her huge companion wandered into the room. I shot a glance at Broom who gave me a lift of his eyebrows.
A phrase flitted through my mind, ‘Uh-oh, trouble at mill, lad’. It was one of those phrases that had inserted itself into popular northern English culture, which probably didn’t have any basis in a genuine quote. Trouble with me was that trouble at the mill was the starting point for all my woes. It made me wonder if the voice was Cash’s and he was attempting to get his hooks into me again.
My smile became a tight grimace.
“Hello officers,” I said. “Please, come in.”
The sandy-haired constable nodded curtly. “You made it here, then Mr Bailey?”
“I did, officer. I didn’t want it on my conscience if you had to traipse the moors all night looking for me.” I said it lightly enough, so that it came across as a joke.
“As you know by now, we got otherwise diverted,” the sergeant said. For some reason she wouldn’t meet my eye. She turned away, adjusting her equipment belt in order to sit on one of Broom’s wooden stools.
“Are you okay, Janet?” I asked. Janet was standing next to the counter wringing her hands.
“Fine thanks,” she said without conviction.
Broom saved us all from the uneasy silence that followed.
“Can I make you some tea?”
The uneasiness lasted a few seconds before the constable said, “I’d appreciate a strong coffee please. Black, no sugar.”
That opened the door to negotiations and Broom busied himself by pottering with mugs and condiments.
Sergeant Shelly McCusker introduced herself and Constable Bob Harris. Then said, “You’re already familiar with Professor Hale.”
The way she said it held more than a little hint of hidden meaning.
