by Paul Kane
“If that’s how you want it, then fuck off and get yourself killed.”
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly in and out. Had to keep it together, at least long enough to get through this. Hammond climbed out and walked up the driveway, admiring the pretty arrangements of flowers in the front garden, the tiny tree in the middle of the lawn. When he reached the front door – ringing the bell as he did so – Hammond was surprised to see it open almost immediately. Standing there was a woman with dark grey hair, streaked through with lighter shades of the same colour. She was wearing a maroon dress that covered every inch of her, right up to the neck, and over the top of that a shawl – the effect of which was to make her look much older than she probably was. “Yes?” she asked eventually, her voice tinged with more than a hint of suspicion.
“Er… hell-hello. My name’s Patrick Hammond, I hope you don’t mind me dropping by but–”
“If you’re selling something, then…”
He held up a hand. “No, no. Nothing like that. I know… well, I knew your daughter.”
She looked at him sideways then, her suspicion deepening. “Which one?”
It was his turn to pause, then he remembered this woman had kids of her own. “Your step-daughter, Ella.”
Hester Tyrell’s face soured at the name.
“I was part of the investigation leading up to what happened,” Hammond clarified.
“A policeman?” Hammond nodded. “Then I suppose you’d better come inside.”
He was shown into and through a hallway with a set of stairs ahead, then ushered right into the living room. The décor did little to dispel the old-fashioned air, tasteful but stuck somewhere in the mid-1930s. Hester Tyrell bid him to take a seat on the sofa, which had elaborately-carved wooden arms and was just as hard as it looked. “I… I expect you were told what happened,” Hammond began. “About Ella’s… disappearance.”
The woman took a seat opposite him, but didn’t lean back, instead keeping her posture very straight. Hammond had to wonder whether she’d ever really relaxed in her life. The fact she answered the door so quickly meant she must have seen him pull up outside through those net curtains, the bay window affording her a view of the entire street from this angle. “I was informed, yes. Terrible business. But then, that was the kind of world she lived in, wasn’t it.”
A statement of fact, not a question; Hammond ignored it. “I was wondering if you might be able to shed some light on her background at all? About her time living with you?”
Hester Tyrell let out a long breath. “She was a wilful child, right from the start. I should probably have thought twice about taking her on, but then I did so love her father.”
“Mr Tyrell?”
She nodded. “He sadly passed away when she… when Ella was still only a little girl, really. Ten, eleven. She was the apple of that man’s eye – and, between us, he was much too lenient with her. I did my best, but… well, it explains a lot about where she ended up. A streetwalker! I ask you, how in God’s name…” The woman shook her head in despair. “The shame of it. I’m glad we never had anything to do with each other after she left.”
It was Hammond’s turn to sigh. This wasn’t exactly how he pictured the conversation going. “And you never re-married? No boyfriends or anything? No man of the house?”
“Mr Hammond,” she said seriously, inching forwards but still keeping her back rigid, “I have loved only two men in my entire life, and I married them both. There have certainly never been any… ‘boyfriends’, as you call them. Only suitors. Two of them, who courted me. The first, my sweet Kenneth, blessed me with my girls, but only after we were wed.”
Suitors? Fucking hell, thought Hammond. The décor wasn’t the only thing stuck in the past.
“Anything else would have been a sin, as you can probably appreciate.”
“Oh, definitely,” he replied, then straight away regretted the sarcasm in his voice. He needn’t have worried, it wasn’t even noticed as the woman continued her sermon:
“It’s values such as these I have tried to instil in my daughters now that they’re older,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “I keep telling them, when it’s the right one, you just know. Don’t you think?”
Now that Hammond did agree with. It was how he had felt the first time he clapped eyes on Ella.
As if reading his mind, she now asked: “So how did you know my step-daughter, exactly, Mr Hammond? Just through the case?”
“We were… I’m… I was her friend,” he thought would be the safest answer.
She stared at him. “I see. And the man who did all this, he came to a bad end I understand.”
“He did.”
“His guilt finally catching up with him. Agent of the Devil,” Mrs Tyrell told Hammond. “Oh, would you look at me,” she suddenly said after a pause, “where are my manners? I haven’t even offered you a drink. Tea, coffee?”
“Coffee, please,” he said, “if you have it.”
“Of course, just bear with me.” He rose when she did, out of politeness. But when she disappeared into the kitchen – through an open doorway inside the living room – he couldn’t help wandering around and looking at some of the pictures on the wall, hanging over the fireplace: photos of Hester’s daughters when they were small, wearing knitted cardigans and with their hair cut short. There were no photos of Ella on display, however. Various religious mantras covered another wall, including one which caught his eye, footprints on a beach: During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, the text said, it was when I carried you.
“Do you take milk, sugar?” a voice wafted in from the other room.
“Oh… er, black please,” Hammond answered. It was then that he heard the creaking from upstairs, floorboards above him. Could have been the house settling, but it sounded a lot like a person. “Mrs Tyrell, are we alone in the house?” he called.
“Oh yes, quite alone,” came the reply. “Apart from the cat, of course. He’s probably hiding. Doesn’t like strangers, you see.”
Could be a cat, he supposed, but Hammond’s Spider-sense was tingling like mad. He made his way across the room to the doorway Hester Tyrell had disappeared through. “So there’s just you and…” He stopped, the kitchen was empty. No sign of Hester Tyrell. What he did see, when he looked across the way, was a coat hanging from the back door, which was swinging open. A coat he recognised: the padded jacket from that CCTV footage he’d studied so long and so hard.
No man of the house, my foo… Hammond thought, then was suddenly aware of someone behind him, someone swinging something which connected with his left arm as he turned, and which sent it numb. He was shoved backwards into a small kitchen table by the large figure who had struck him. The large figure who must have been upstairs all this time. Hammond just about had time to move sideways before what he could now see was a cricket bat came crashing down onto the table beside him.
As he rolled off and onto the floor, he took in the sight of the sturdy guy in front, a hoodie pulled up over his head. The bat was drawn back again, ready to take another swipe at Hammond, but he was ready this time. Barrelling into his attacker, he shoved him against the wall, causing all the air to explode out of the man’s body. Hammond brought up the back of his head, catching the guy under the chin and whipping his head back. Hammond retreated a step or two, tried moving his left arm, but found he couldn’t; it was definitely broken. He didn’t have much time to think about this, though, because the man was coming at him again, swiping the bat from side to side. He lunged, and Hammond ducked, the bat striking one of the cupboards and smashing the wood to pieces. Smashing some of the crockery inside as well.
Hammond punched the man in the face with his good hand, felt the satisfying splinter of bone as the nose exploded with redness. The man dropped the bat, hands going to his face, before Hammond followed this up with a knee to the stomach. The big man doubled over, as Hammond scooped up the bat and brought that down on the bac
k of his head. His attacker fell forward and sideways, unconscious or dead – it didn’t matter to Hammond.
“Thanks for this,” he growled as he carried the bat out through the back door and into the garden. Hammond quickly spotted where Mrs Tyrell must have gone, one door still open on what looked like a coal bunker. He should be calling for back-up, waiting until it arrived before going after the woman, but he had only one thing on his mind: Ella. This woman, her stepmother, was – as insane as it sounded – somehow responsible for what had happened to her, and he was going to get to the bottom of it no matter what.
Hammond reached the bunker, looked down at the steps which descended into the darkness. That wasn’t completely true, there was a flickering light down there – breaking up the black. “Mrs Tyrell? I’m coming down there now, and just to warn you, I’m armed.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, and though he would have preferred to have an armed response unit with him, or even a pistol himself, the weight of the bat was quite comforting as he made his way down those steps.
There were several of them, taking him what must have been deep under the garden. Perhaps the property had come with this underground lair originally? In any event, Hammond found the bottom step at last, looking around for the source of the light, which appeared to be some kind of lamp fitted to the wall. There was indeed coal still down here, for the fire inside the house he assumed, but there was also something else. And, as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he finally saw what it was.
Chained to the back of the bunker, slumped forward with matted hair over its face, was a body. Naked and filthy, Hammond could see it was a woman – a naked woman – and it was a testament to the state of her that he didn’t recognise Ella until his eyes dropped to take in the stump at the end of her right leg; the wound cauterised but still angry-looking.
“My… My God!” he finally breathed out, taking a step towards her. Ella wasn’t moving, and like the person who’d attacked him in the kitchen, it was unclear whether she was alive or dead.
“Your God?” came a voice off to the side of him, unmistakably Mrs Tyrell’s. “Do you even have a God, Mr Hammond, liar and fornicator that you are?”
He was having trouble processing any of this, didn’t know how to answer. Hammond just wanted to go to Ella, to get her down from there. Mrs Tyrell stepped between them, casting a look backwards at her step-daughter. “She’s where she belongs, your whore, in the filth and the dirt. Always wild, she was. Always unruly. I tried my best, tried to get her to follow the right path – but nothing ever worked, not even when I was forced to… correct her. Forced to punish her by locking her down here. Imagine how horrified I was when I finally discovered where she’d gone when she ran away, what she’d been up to. And there was only one way I could see to help her, to stop her.”
A streetwalker! Not any more.
“The others,” Hammond managed. “You used what was happening to do this?”
Hester Tyrell let out a shrill laugh. “Of course not! Of course I didn’t use it. I initiated it!”
Hammond’s face screwed up. “You did what?”
“That agent of the Devil… He wasn’t hard to find, on one of those perverted sites you must have looked into yourself. Wasn’t hard to manipulate – he was halfway there already. An agent of the Devil to destroy the Devil’s work. So much sin… so much…”
“Sin? Jesus! What do you call murder?”
“Do not blaspheme!” Mrs Tyrell shrieked. “And I did not kill anyone.”
“No, not you personally. But you sent the box, didn’t you? You led us to him,” spat Hammond.
“I knew someone would put everything together, you’re detectives after all. Doing good deeds…well, some of the time. And it was an offering. An atonement of sorts, her road back to a righteous path.”
“What was to stop him from turning you in? Wilkinson?”
“Oh, Heavens…” She touched her chest. “I never even met the maggot.”
“No, you had help. Your friend back there in the kitchen.”
“My… my friend?”
“Or whatever you want to call him, your fucking suitor – whatever. Look, just get out of the way.”
“My…? I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t you get it? He’s in a pool of blood back there. Now get the fuck out of the–”
The scream that followed didn’t come from Mrs Tyrell; it came from behind him. Hammond wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t prepared for it. For the notion that Mrs Tyrell might have had more than one helper; yet another guy, and for someone who thought all that was a sin she sure put it about. He whirled and began bringing the bat up, but it was knocked out of his hand by something else: a coal shovel, wielded by this newcomer. A shovel they then swung, missing Hammond only by inches – their intention to open him up.
“Shit!” he said, stumbling backwards and losing his footing because of a rogue piece of coal on the ground. Hammond landed awkwardly, banging his injured arm. The pain was incredible.
The scream turned into a voice: “What did you do to her?”
In spite of the agony he was in, Hammond couldn’t help thinking: who?
“Anna… Mum, what did he do to Anna?” The man looked over towards Mrs Tyrell, before stepping forward so Hammond could see his… her face, framed by that same haircut he’d seen in those photos.
“I don’t know, Diana,” answered Mrs Tyrell.
Fuck! thought Hammond. It hadn’t been a man at all, not in the CCTV footage at the post depot, not in the kitchen with the bat. Probably not even in the contact with Wilkinson on those sites! These were Tyrell’s children, hers and Kenneth’s girls – though easily mistaken for men at first glance, built as they were. Ella’s damned step-sisters! Diana moved forwards, holding the shovel high like the Sword of Damocles over Hammond. “He can’t be allowed to live,” she stated.
“An eye for an eye?” said Hester Tyrell, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
“How about,” said Hammond, getting his breath back, “turning the other fucking cheek!” He threw the piece of coal he’d tripped on, striking Diana in the face – hard – causing her to drop the shovel and giving Hammond time enough to get to his feet, to kick out at the woman. She went backwards, striking the bunker wall, which shook and rained coal dust on her. Biting down the pain, Hammond snatched up the shovel and ran into her with it, this time like a jousting knight. The blade rammed into her stomach, and she hawked up blood.
Now it was her mother’s turn to scream, running at Hammond and drawing a kitchen knife she’d had behind her back. He turned to face her and was slashed across the chest for his trouble. “You crazy bitch!” he shouted, head-butting the woman.
Hester Tyrell staggered backwards, a cut opening on her brow. She snarled, then came at him again with the knife, holding it out in front of her. Hammond sidestepped her, then stuck his leg out, which sent her flying. He looked around for the only weapon left, snatching up the bat and hitting Mrs Tyrell as she was starting to pick herself up off the floor. Hammond’s breath was coming in short bursts, slowing up finally. He looked up and over at the other body, slumped and held by chains.
Family ties…
“Ella,” he said, dropping the bat and shambling across to her. Even after all this, she wasn’t moving; not even a twitch.
“I did not kill anyone!”
Hammond hoped against hope Tyrell had been telling the truth. Of course, one of those equally deranged daughters might have done the honours. He reached out, fingers trembling, and repeated her name. “Ella… Ella, it’s Patrick.”
Her skin was cold as he lifted her head up, but then she’d probably been in this place for weeks. “Ella, please!”
He couldn’t see her eyes, because the hair was still hanging over them – couldn’t see whether they were open or closed. But then there was a breath, a whisper, and he could see her smile beneath the dirt. “I-I knew you’d come,” she said hoarsely. “I made a wish…”
Hammond moved forward, letting her head rest on his shoulder, and now he cried simple tears of joy.
***
It was warm in the sun.
Warm on the beach as they walked along it. Ella wouldn’t be running anytime soon, but the prosthetic he’d helped her with that morning, as she sat on the bed and he’d attached it to her stump, enabled to her make her way along the sand – arm in arm with Hammond. She got him to stop for a minute, and he thought it might be because she was sore, but it was only so she could look out over the sea. He’d found out why she loved it so much, the coast. It was where she’d lived growing up with her parents, her real parents. And then her and her dad – before he met Hester, before he’d died.
The things that woman, that family had put Ella through afterwards… Hammond didn’t wonder any more about why she’d left, about what had put her on the road to where she’d ended up. She’d finally let him in, trusted him with everything.
“You okay?” he asked her, brushing a strand of that golden hair out of her face now he was able to; using the hand that was only recently free of a cast that reached up to his elbow.
“Yeah,” she answered, and smiled. She knew how much he loved her – should do, because he told her a million times a day. In fact, they told each other. Knew that the foot thing didn’t bother him in the slightest, that she was still perfect in his eyes. He’d even drawn that star on the prosthetic in marker pen, to replace the tattoo, to make her feel better.
“It was never a star,” she said as he did it, taking the pen from him and adding a stick underneath. “A wand. A magic wand, like the kind your fairy godmother uses.”
“My fairy what?” he’d asked.
“Never mind,” Ella had replied with a laugh.
As she watched the ocean, he watched her. He’d never let anything happen to her again, and she never wanted him to. They’d agreed to both leave their former lives behind and start afresh, out here. It had been the best thing either of them had ever done. Of course, the past has a way of coming back to haunt you – and news had reached them that week about the trial coming up.
