by Michael Kerr
Clem reviewed what Jim had told him, re-examining the facts that pointed to Hugh being the killer, then steeled himself and eased open the door, holding his breath as he waited for a loud squeak from swollen wood or rusted hinges. There was no giveaway noise. He entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him, then removed his shoes and tiptoed across the room, to pass by a bolted, steel-faced door which he instinctively knew would lead to a cellar, and on a subconscious level wondered why it would be bolted as a police or prison cell is…to denote occupancy?
The interior hallway was gloomy, musty-smelling due to dampness, bathed with only the dull light from the open kitchen door and a window at the top of the stairs. Clem jumped back as a photoflash of lightning produced jagged shadows that seemed to leap towards him. His nerves were stretched to breaking point, his heart pounding in his ears, and his stomach queasy, threatening to rebel and eject its contents from his mouth, his bowels, or both. Looking about him, he saw a golf bag standing next to the front door. It ran through his mind that Hugh played off a handicap of ten; a bandit who, in competition could play to six.
Clem eased an iron club from the bag, grasped it two-handed and immediately felt a surge of confidence run through him from the weighty cudgel, that if necessary he would use against the other man without the slightest hesitation. He was now decided that Hugh was a vicious and cold-blooded killer, who would not give up without a fight to preserve his freedom.
Taking one slow step at a time, Clem climbed the stairs; the soles of his damp socks tacky on the dust and grime-laden carpet. Halfway up, a board creaked under his weight, and so he stopped, breath held as his mind conjured-up an inhuman figure rushing from an upstairs room, wielding a gleaming butcher’s knife; a keening wail escaping its mouth as it attacked, slicing and hacking at him. He waited an interminably long thirty seconds, then continued on up, reaching the landing before pausing again, straining to hear any movement that would indicate where Hugh was. The sound of rain still filled his ears. It was too loud― It wasn’t rain. The thrumming, running water was inside the house, emanating from what must be the bathroom. The door ahead on the right was slightly ajar, and a cloud of steam issued from the lit gap, dissolving as it met the colder air on the landing. His courage blossomed. The thought of Hugh unaware of his presence, standing under the shower and deafened to his approach, gave Clem a false sense of inflated superiority, dulling his guard against danger.
Hands aching from the firm grip he held the shaft of the golf club with, Clem walked up to the door, took a deep breath and kicked it open.
Leo pulled in and stopped behind the Sierra, just as Jim was stowing the flat in the well of the boot. Stepping out of his car, Leo turned up the collar of his jacket against the whipping rain and approached the bedraggled American, who looked up in surprise, then slammed the lid of the boot down and wiped his wet and dirty hands on his soaking trousers.
“I decided to come along at no extra charge,” Leo said.
Jim nodded. “Thanks. I may need the help. Although one cop is already there, keeping an eye on the place. He tailed Parfitt to the farm.”
“I’ll follow you,” Leo said, before running back to the shelter of his car.
Jim climbed back into the Sierra, started it up and stabbed at the accelerator, to speed away from the verge with tyres spinning for a second on the slick grass, before they found purchase on the road. His heart felt heavy in his chest; a dead weight of growing panic. The contemplation of being too late was almost too much to bear.
Passing the gateway, almost missing seeing it through the semi-opaque veil of rain, Jim braked, skidding on to the long grass at the side of the road and fishtailing to a stop. Leo drew in smoothly behind him. They both climbed out, hesitating for a few seconds, expecting Clem to appear from hiding.
“Let’s go in,” Jim said, raising his voice and leaning close to Leo to be heard over the hissing rain and background crackling of thunder that echoed through the low ceiling of cloud above them.
“Take this,” Leo said, pulling the gas gun from his pocket and thrusting it out towards Jim. “It’s not a .45, but it’s an attention-getter.”
Jim took it, looked it over and pushed it into the waistband of his trousers. “An air gun?”
“CO2, eight shot. It’ll stop him at close range.”
They jogged along the undulating track, feet splashing through muddy puddles, approaching the house warily, but with little hesitation. Jim had now decided on a full frontal assault, hoping that the element of surprise and the gas gun would give him all the advantage he would need. Skirting Hugh’s car – that squatted, dark and still, as if it were a hell-hound standing guard for its evil master – he depressed the handle on the front door of the house and finding it locked, ran around to the rear with Leo following in his slipstream, wheezing, lungs aching from a lifetime of smoking that had reduced his ability to absorb oxygen into his bloodstream by up to forty percent.
The kitchen door was unlocked, and the wet, mud-caked shoes on the floor inside it led Jim, correctly, to assume that Clem had become impatient and was already in the house, somewhere.
Clem narrowed his eyes in the steam-filled bathroom, squinting to try and make out a shape behind the dolphin-illustrated plastic shower curtain that hung inside the bath. As he summoned up the nerve to pull it aside, a devastating blow to his back sent him hurtling forward to crash into it. He let go of the golf club and put his hands out, scrabbling at the smooth, wet material, dropping heavily as his knees collided against the bath’s rim, pitching him into it. His weight ripped the curtain down from the plastic hooks, for it to fall and drape him. And he cried out as intense pain travelled the length of his spine with flaring, bright agony that reached up through his neck into his skull, and down into his buttocks and legs. He lay still, unable to move, attempting to breath, sucking open-mouthed against the plastic that was encompassing his head and held in place by the powerful jets of hot water that pummelled and compressed the clinging fabric to his skin.
“Fucking amateur,” Hugh said, jerking the curtain up to reveal himself standing naked, shotgun held one-handed as he uncovered Clem. “Thought you’d just sneak up and brain me with a seven iron, eh?”
Lying on his back, one leg hooked over the edge of the bath, defenceless and at the armed man’s mercy, Clem now knew beyond any doubt that Jim Elliott had been correct in pegging Hugh as the Tacker. He wished that the ex-FBI man had been off-base, because knowing that Hugh was the killer could only allow for one outcome to his brash trespass. He was going to die, there and then, and had no means to stop it happening.
Hugh backed up, not taking his eyes off Clem, to sit on the toilet seat, the double-barrelled 12 gauge that he had driven into Clem’s spine now across his knees with the twin black maws of the muzzles pointing at the DC’s head.
“Let’s make this easy, Clem,” Hugh said. “I want to know why you followed me here, and who else knows about this place?”
“Fuck you!” Clem said, knowing that talking wouldn’t buy him any favours.
The blast was deafening, ricocheting off the tiled walls of the small bathroom; an eardrum-pounding roar that masked the high-pitched animal scream that Clem emitted as three toes were blown off his right foot.
Blood mixed with the running water and swirled down the plug hole. More had covered the white tiles and ceiling; a splatter of crimson that was slowly diluted by the condensation to form rivulets and run down to the cast-iron bath, which now sported a pitted and holed area, bereft of enamel.
Hugh inhaled the warm, damp, cordite-laden air and watched as Clem writhed and wailed in abject agony. “Let’s try again,” he said, his attention focused on part of a toe, complete with nail, that was slipping down the wall and leaving a snail-trail of gore behind it.
“El...Elliott,” Clem stammered through gritted teeth, not looking at Hugh; mesmerised by the bloody, misshapen end of his foot, and wetting himself as terror of a magnitude he had not previously known
could be experienced, consumed him. “He knows that you’re...that you’re the Tacker. And he...he knows that you took the boss.”
“So, Mr FBI is coming to the rescue. Am I right?”
“Yeah. And he’ll f...fucking nail you...you mad bastard.”
“Well, whatever happens, Clem, you won’t be here to see it. It’s time to die, old son.”
“No! Hugh, please, don’t do it. I swear to God I won’t say anything,” Clem whined. “I don’t want to die.”
“You pathetic, grovelling little shit,” Hugh said, smoothly pulling the trigger.
The dense clump of lead-shot missed Clem’s head by inches, shattering the tiles and leaving a crater in the wall.
Clem screamed as hot, jagged fragments of tile and lead pellets rebounded and pierced the back of his neck and scalp. And then he passed out.
Hugh laughed aloud as he dragged the unconscious DC out of the bath, before going to his bedroom, to return with handcuffs and tape. He looped the cuffs around the thick outflow pipe at the back of the toilet and ratcheted them tightly to Clem’s wrists, then taped his former colleague’s mouth.
He wasn’t some homicidal maniac who killed wantonly. He was a good cop. Trish had been an unavoidable, regrettable casualty. He had no intention of harming Clem – anymore than he’d already had to – or Laura, or even the Yank. He just wanted to give himself time to vanish and regroup.
Back in the bedroom, Hugh ejected the spent cartridges, reloaded the shotgun and placed it on the bed and went over to the chest of drawers and took his knife and a key from under the pile of panties in the top drawer. Going back out on to the landing, he stopped outside the second bedroom, unlocked the door and entered. Closing it behind him, he turned to the bed and was met by sparkling blue eyes, and a smiling face framed by vibrant blonde tresses that flowed over the pillow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LAURA heard the two muffled reports, and recognised them as being too short and precise to confuse with the claps of thunder. The explosions could have been a car backfiring, with a stretch of the imagination. But her situation compelled her to believe that the source was of a more iniquitous nature. Sitting bolt upright at the sound of the first blast, she swung her feet onto the floor between the bed and the coffee table, to hide the jug from view, gripping it by the handle, tensed, waiting expectantly, sure that it would not be long before he came. She hoped that the blasts had been shots, and that Hugh had done the world, and her in particular, a big favour by blowing his own brains out. But that was wishful thinking. In her estimation suicide wasn’t something Hugh would even contemplate.
Looking down, Hugh saw that her night-dress was rucked up over her hips, so averted his eyes and adjusted it, before sitting on the bed cross-legged, next to the shrunken, brown-skinned and almost skeletal remains that he had eviscerated before curing in tannic acid so many years ago. Rusted staples pinned the leathery lips together, but the glass eyes and cheap nylon wig gave the late Jennifer Parfitt a horrific semblance of life.
Hugh had returned to the quiet country graveyard as darkness fell, just a few hours’ after his mother had been laid to rest. Now, all these years later, he held her shrivelled hand gently and let the events replay...
…There were no high, wrought-iron fences or locked gates to negotiate. This was not a landscaped cemetery with neat, regimental flower beds, crisp gravel walkways, or carefully manicured lawns and hedging. The majority of the gravestones leant like the dark stumps of crooked teeth, spotted with lichen and losing the slow battle against gravity. And the coarse grass was shin-high, ready for the local farmer to put his sheep in to nip it short, right up to the granite and marble bases. Should he be discovered waist deep in his mother’s grave by an insomniac vicar, what would he do? Maybe put his spade across the man of the cloth’s head and send him prematurely to his maker, depositing his earthly remains in the coffin beneath his feet, which would soon be vacant. Waste not, want not. He could not afford to be caught; to probably be charged with grave-robbing, or at very least, vandalism. And the papers would have a field day. He could almost see the headlines: ‘Mentally disturbed local teenager discovered digging up the body of his recently interred mother’. They would treat him like a raving lunatic. Probably lock him up in an asylum. That was not going to happen. She…Was…Not…Dead. It had been a terrible, terrible mistake. She could be resurrected, returned to him, and they would be together again, just like before. Everything was going to be just fine. He could make things right.
Under the light of a full moon, he dug down to her coffin, reclaimed her, and set her down gently next to a nearby oak, from where she could watch him return the grave site to the condition he had found it in. Once finished, he carried her to the van, placed her on a blanket in the rear, covering her with half of it, and arrived back at the house as the grey half-light of dawn broke.
He envisaged a perfect relationship, with a reborn, obedient and forever faithful mother. It was at that moment in time that his way of thinking became a little unhinged.
At first he would just talk at her, but then, with time, a growing delusional state overcame him, enabling him to imagine her animated and – in his mind – able to converse freely with him and move independently. He was able to suppress his illness to the outside world, possessing an internal switch that he could switch on and off at will. Having bestowed ‘life’ into the corpse, he found there was a downside. She had taken to berate him sporadically with verbal condemnation of his deeds, which had resulted in his stapling her mouth; an act that proved futile, due to her power of speech being projected wholly from within his own troubled psyche.
Hugh snapped back to the present. “I don’t know what to do, Mummy,” he said, snuggling up close to her on the damp bed. “They know what I’ve done.”
“Stop worrying, baby,” he said aloud in a falsetto reply to himself, his eyes glazing over as he saw his mother as she had been in life; smooth peach-blossom skin, full lips, teeth so white and even. “They know nothing,” ‘she’ continued, reaching out, with his assistance, to cup his face with her hand. “Only the bitch in the cellar, the cop in the bathroom, and that American know what you’ve been doing to all those girls. Kill them all and we’ll be safe. You’ll just have to stop butchering those sluts...for a while.”
“But the police won’t stop until they find me. We should go away from here, just vanish. I have a plan.”
“This is my house!” she screamed. “And it’s where I plan to stay. Fit-up that bastard, Cox. But do it properly this time. Put Laura’s body at his place, with the knife. And then make the cocksucker write a suicide note, admitting to being the Tacker. And be sure his fingerprints, hair and semen are all over the whore.”
“But the teeth impressions on the bodies aren’t his.”
“So what? He had an accomplice. It’ll be in the note. He can plead that he did it with some other maniac. Christ, Hugh, make him write anything you like. First, wait for the Yank, and kill him. Then finish Clem off and take your split-arse boss to Cox’s and do her there.”
“Okay, Mummy,” Hugh said, climbing off the bed and leaving the room, to return to his own and retrieve the shotgun.
Jim paused at the door that led down to the cellar, and turned to face Leo. “See if Laura and Trish Pearson are down there,” he whispered to the PI. “And if they are, get them away from here and call the police.”
“But―”
“No buts, Leo. I’m counting on you to save Laura’s ass. Just do it.”
As Jim edged out of the kitchen into the hall, Leo gingerly slid the bolts back, careful not to make a sound, pulling the door open with all the caution of a bomb disposal expert opening a package suspected of containing a pipe-bomb wired to the lid.
Laura tensed as she heard the whisper of the door being opened. Oh, Christ! This is it, she thought. Her whole body stiffened, muscles locked. Inwardly she felt utterly weak and boneless, scared that she would be powerless to act, as she heard the fir
st light footfall on the steps: leather on stone.
She couldn’t look up; felt sure that Hugh would read the intention in her eyes if she faced him. She stared at the top of the coffee table, her gaze riveted to the cover of a National Geographic magazine, the photo of an aborigine staring back at her, his dark, sun-creased face daubed with beaded whorls of white spots; wide nostrils flared, and deep-set eyes fixed on the camera lens with more than a little condescension. The red sandstone monolith of what her generation would always call Ayers Rock grew out of the heat haze behind him to form a dramatic backdrop.
He was so close, now. Almost down there with her. Please, sweet Jesus, help me!
With perfect timing, Laura swung the jug up from the floor as the figure appeared in her peripheral vision. The blue liquid found its mark, splashing into the face of a man she thought looked vaguely familiar, but who was not Hugh Parfitt.
Leo reached the bottom of the steps and saw the woman sitting on a single bed, head bowed, unmoving. As he opened his mouth to speak, she moved in a blur of speed. He recoiled, instinctively put his hands up, but was a split second too late to stop the tide of liquid that hit him from filling his mouth, stinging his eyes, and burning his sinuses as he inhaled it through his nose. He reeled backwards, shocked, coughing, blinking and wiping at his smarting eyes.
