The Mayfly: The chilling thriller that will get under your skin

by James Hazel

  ‘When did you last see Hayley?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘When did I last see Hayley?’ Binny said thoughtfully. ‘Let me sees. D’you want some green, by the way? It’s Purple Haze, or something. Not very strong but does the trick.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Jessica flatly.

  ‘Suit yourself. Now then. Hayley. When did I last see Hayley? Ah . . . a week ago, maybe.’

  ‘What was she like when you saw her? Notice anything unusual?’

  Binny pulled a face as he struggled to recall, although given the way he was burning through the spliff, it was doubtful his recollection could be trusted. ‘She left in a car. I watched her from the window. I like to hang out there when I do my smokin’. Let the wind flap about me face.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the car?’

  Binny considered this for a while. ‘Not really. Didn’t seem important.’

  ‘What sort of time of day was it? Morning? Evening?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Well if I was up to see it, then that could mean any time of day, I guess.’

  ‘Was it dark?’ Jessica asked impatiently.

  ‘Gettin’ dark.’ Binny took another long drag. ‘It was after someone left a message for her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Priest slowly. ‘Left a message how?’

  ‘He left a message.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dunno. Her dad, I think. On her answerphone.’

  Priest and Jessica exchanged looks.

  ‘How do you know that, Binny?’ Priest said gently.

  ‘It’s on my answerphone.’ Binny seemed to realise that this might seem curious, so he added somewhat sheepishly, ‘Not so easy to afford a phone line. Foreigners got all the good jobs, don’t they? So I, you know, tap into next door’s phone. And electricity. And gas. Long and short, I get her messages on my machine.’

  ‘Can you play the message for us, Binny?’ asked Jessica.

  Binny seemed surprised that this revelation hadn’t been met with disapproval and flashed Jessica a toothless grin. He got up and staggered off. Jessica and Priest followed him through an uncarpeted hallway scattered with pizza delivery leaflets and old Avon catalogues. Binny located the answerphone hidden under a pile of yellowing newspapers.

  Solemnly, Binny clicked a few buttons. ‘Here we go.’

  After several moments, the tape whirred. Priest leant in to listen. A voice groaned from the machine, spectral and desperate.

  ‘Hayley. It’s Dad. Pick up if you’re there . . . Hayley? I told you to answer your phone if I called you! Your mobile isn’t ringing, either. Listen to me, get a taxi to the station and come back home. Now. Don’t pack any things; come right away. It’s not safe where you are. I – I need to know you’re OK. Call me when you’re in the taxi. I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.’

  28

  26th March, 1946

  A remote farm in middle England

  Colonel Bertie Ruck couldn’t sleep.

  He had become accustomed to the rattle of the door as the wind swept down the chimney and out through the fireplace and the gentle call of the owl that visited the barn at night. It wasn’t that. It was him, he realised. Or her, maybe.

  Ruck sat up and rubbed his head, dropped his legs over the side of the bed and pulled his coat over his nightshirt. A walk would loosen up his churning head.

  He took an oil lantern and strolled out on to the landing. The stairway led down to the pantry and from there, an oak door gave access to the courtyard. Across the way, they had converted one of the old outhouses into a small prison. Schneider was chained to the walls but, other than that inconvenience, he slept in better conditions than his physician colleagues at Nuremburg.

  Ruck was about to descend the staircase when he saw a light framing the doorway at the other end of the corridor.

  Eva’s room.

  Curious, he waited, listened. There was a noise coming from the room. The sound of low whispers, scuffling. More than one person.

  Alarmed, Ruck hung the lantern in the corridor and slipped quietly back into his own room where he retrieved a pistol from its holster. He made his way towards the source of the disturbance but he was halted abruptly by a scream cutting across the landing, a scream loud enough to be heard on the other side of the courtyard.

  ‘Eva!’ he shouted.

  Ruck bolted the last ten yards, put his shoulder hard against the door and the hinges splintered. He fell into the room, pistol outstretched.

  The sight that met him rendered him speechless.

  Eva was standing in the corner of the room, her face ashen. Her nightdress was torn down one side, her body partially exposed from breast to hip. On the floor near the foot of the bed, Lance Corporal Fitzgerald was thrashing around like he was possessed, clutching at a wound in his chest. His rifle had been abandoned next to him.

  It took Ruck a moment to register what he was seeing. Fitzgerald was screaming, his body convulsing.

  ‘Colonel!’ he spat. ‘She –’ He pointed.

  Ruck saw the knife in her hand, the blade stained with the soldier’s blood. ‘What have you done?’ Ruck demanded, turning to Eva.

  She looked at him. He could see nothing in her green eyes. Not distress, not fear. Nothing.

  ‘He tried to rape me,’ she said coldly.

  ‘That’s a bloody lie!’ Fitzgerald roared. ‘Colonel! She’s lying!’

  Ruck gripped the pistol tightly but kept it down. He didn’t know who to point it at even if he did find the fortitude to raise it.

  ‘Eva?’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘He came into my room. I was asleep. He held a knife to my throat and tried to rape me.’

  Ruck hesitated.

  ‘Look!’ she screamed, taking the torn dress in her hand and pulling it open, revealing her nakedness underneath.

  ‘She told me to come here,’ Fitzgerald gasped. ‘She said I should come here. Colonel, you have to believe me!’

  Fitzgerald started to crawl across the room towards Ruck. Blood was oozing from the wound. He was clutching his chest where the bayonet’s knife blade had penetrated him, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but it was no use. Ruck knew a fatal wound when he saw one.

  ‘Eva, look at me,’ he instructed. When she didn’t respond, he bellowed, ‘Look at me!’

  She looked. There were spots of blood on her face; her eyes were wet with tears.

  ‘He placed his arm across my chest and pinned me down. He said if I screamed he would kill me. Then he said I had to open my legs.’

  ‘You lying bitch!’ Fitzgerald roared.

  With one final effort, Fitzgerald launched himself at the rifle. He grabbed the butt and hauled the weapon around so that the barrel was pointing at Eva.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Fitzgerald slumped down against the wall of the bedroom. Ruck lowered the pistol.

  Outside, an owl took flight from the barn.

  *

  Some time later, they sat in silence. Eva was hunched up on Ruck’s bed, her arms folded around her knees. He sat at the desk, staring out of the window, smoking a cigarette.

  He tried not to think about the curve of her midriff, exposed by the tear in her nightdress. She made no effort to hide it. He should cover her with his coat. A gentleman would.

  The two soldiers guarding Schneider had sprinted across the courtyard on hearing the gunshot, rifles at the ready. Ruck had ordered them to remove Fitzgerald’s body and bury it in the woods half a mile from the farm.

  ‘You will not breathe a word of what you have seen here tonight.’ Ruck had forestalled any questions. ‘The man we knew as Fitzgerald did not exist. This place does not exist. You do not exist. Is that clear?’ The men had nodded. ‘Do not in any way consider that ignoring this instruction will not have consequences for you.’

  Consequences. Yes, there would be many, but that was a worry for another day.

  He inhaled the smoke deeply, the heat burning the back of his throat. It felt
good and helped numb the sensation of uneasiness building in his gut.

  ‘Thank you.’ Eva spoke, suddenly and softly. A voice that was barely audible, even in the stillness of the night.

  He turned to look at her. She had her head half buried in her knees, one eye appraising him carefully. If he didn’t know any better, he could have sworn she was smiling. He felt sickened by her.

  ‘You said he attacked you,’ he remarked.

  ‘He tried to rape me,’ she said in the same detached voice she had used when she had first made the accusation. When Fitzgerald had still been alive.

  ‘I see. And you were able to disarm him and stab him with the knife he held to your throat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some achievement.’ Ruck did not believe a word of it. Not one word. But he had shot Fitzgerald anyway. What spell am I under?

  ‘I don’t know how I managed it.’

  Ruck felt sickened by the lie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You’re doing important work here. I’m a distraction.’

  Ruck narrowed his eyes. Eva was teasing him, seeing how far he would go. And he was all too familiar with the limits of his own endurance. When she sensed she had his attention she unhooked her arms from around her knees, put one leg down and shuffled down the bed. He should have told her to stop but he watched silently.

  Eva lifted one arm and draped it over her head, linking her fingers around the bedpost. The tear in her dress was just enough for him to see her as she really was. Her slender body, undulating across his bed.

  As Eva turned her head he tried to register her expression. Whatever it was, it was not the look of a woman who had just seen a man die.

  ‘Did you see Him?’ Ruck said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, Colonel Ruck?’ she said in a coquettish voice. It sounded wrong.

  Ruck felt the grip he had on his control loosening. ‘When you put the knife into Fitzgerald’s chest and twisted it. When he screamed as he saw his blood escape his body. Did you see God?’

  ‘Oh, what a silly notion, Colonel Ruck.’ Eva moved her hand down her body, exhaling softly.

  There was something feral about her.

  ‘It isn’t real, Miss Miller,’ he murmured thickly, barely able to speak. ‘None of it is real. Schneider’s ridiculous idea that one can create a channel to God through suffering. It was a rant, a perversion, something malignant spewing from the mouth of evil.’

  ‘Oh, Colonel Ruck,’ she said again. ‘You say the silliest of things.’ She had her hand on her pelvis. Her green eyes were boring into him.

  ‘You must listen to me, Eva. Don’t let him in.’

  ‘Who?’ she asked, running her tongue around her lips.

  ‘Schneider.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m always very careful, Colonel Ruck, about who I let in.’

  He swallowed, then stubbed out his cigarette. He thought he might burst.

  She rose from the bed, wrapping her torn dress around her before walking to the door. She placed her hand on the handle. ‘Good night, Colonel Ruck. I am sure I will be reassigned in the morning. I hope I have not caused you too much inconvenience.’

  The latch clicked, and so did something inside Ruck. Something he did not know was within him. He crossed the distance between them like a storm, descending on her with such force that she tumbled backwards, crashing into the door. He felt her fight back. She took hold of his wrists, wrenched them around but, whether she was pulling him in or trying to throw him off, he could not tell and did not care.

  He tore at the nightdress, found her skin soft and warm underneath.

  ‘Colonel Ruck,’ she gasped. ‘Wait – no!’

  Her hand gripped tightly around his right arm with an almost unnatural strength. Her other hand was wrapped around his left wrist, twisting it downwards until he thought it might break, until he felt the warm sanctuary between her legs.

  She snatched at his belt buckle and he fell on top of her. The pained gasp from the sudden escape of air from her lungs as she hit the floor only maddened him further.

  ‘No –’ She bit his shoulder.

  The pain rippled down his body like a shock wave. ‘I know you lied to me about what happened,’ Ruck hissed.

  She took hold of his hair, moaned as he entered her. He could taste her moist skin in his mouth, smell her sweat.

  ‘You want to see God?’ he panted.

  ‘Show me –’ She took hold of his collar, tore at his neck. ‘Show me –’

  She pulled him in deeper.

  29

  Georgie sat at her desk at home and sniffed the steaming hot mug of Cup-a-Soup she had made herself. Cream of Asparagus. Or so the packet had promised. She had spent the day at the office catching up on admin and sorting through a few smaller cases Priest & Co had taken on. They could have waited but she needed something to fill her time other than reading about fifteenth-century tyrants. Sorry, Vlad, but I’ve had enough of you for the moment.

  It had been another day of strange revelations. When she had been stirring sugar into her third latte, Charlie had called her from Cambridge, of all places. He had been with Jessica Ellinder; and the thought of them together was a little discomfiting. Although, of course, that’s nothing to do with me. She doubted Jessica was his type anyway. They hadn’t found Hayley, but they had found a link between her disappearance and Miles Ellinder’s death. She had been sent a mayfly in the post, the same insect that McEwen had said had been found lodged in Ellinder’s throat.

  ‘A killer’s calling card?’ suggested Georgie. She tried hard to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  ‘Maybe something like that, Georgie,’ Charlie had said. ‘Could you at least try and act concerned?’

  Undoubtedly, Georgie was concerned. A girl was in trouble. The police, and particularly DI McEwen, weren’t interested. A man had been ritualistically murdered. And Charlie Priest was now travelling back with Jessica Ellinder to her family home outside London.

  She hoped he wouldn’t be spending the night.

  Georgie’s room on the top floor was the smallest but she owned the least things and, by way of compensation, her window overlooked the Thames. In the summer, she could watch the river traffic chug by – converted fishing boats ferrying tourists, teams of rowers heaving their way through the water at astonishing speed, low barges piled high with rubbish. Georgie liked the way the sunlight danced across the water, and the way the reflection was disturbed by passing ships, like a painter running his brush across the face of the canvas.

  Georgie’s cheeks had reddened as she sat poised at her desk furiously scribbling notes as Charlie spoke in her ear. She had a new assignment. She was to go and speak to Lady Wren and, if she could, take some photos of Sir Philip Wren’s office, although Charlie had been a little vague on why. He had relayed the plan to her; it wasn’t going to be straightforward because the police were no doubt still in attendance at the Wren household, but he was going to phone ahead and brief Terri. The importance of the task sent a shiver down her spine. This was her moment.

  She needed something to carry her things in but she didn’t own a handbag. Georgie was the only woman she knew who didn’t own at least one handbag. She had pockets. Pockets were for carrying things in. Handbags were for fitting in, which Georgie didn’t do. Mira had a whole wardrobe full of them. Li probably had a lock-up garage somewhere for her collection. She could borrow one – from Li, of course, not Mira – but talking to any one of her flatmates right now didn’t appeal.

  She took a counsel’s notepad, a fountain pen and an extra cartridge, fifty pounds in cash and her mobile.

  In the corridor, she noticed Martin’s door was shut. The gentle thud of music was seeping through. Something not quite his style – a drum-and-bass rhythm. Fast and repetitive. Not him but Mira, maybe – probably. It really didn’t matter, she told herse
lf.

  ‘Georgie!’

  For one awful moment, she thought it was Mira.

  ‘My hairdryer’s broken,’ said Li, making a sad face.

  ‘I have one but it’s not very good,’ Georgie admitted. ‘At least it’s out of the box.’

  ‘Can I use it? I’m sorry, I probably owe you rent for the stuff I keep borrowing.’

  ‘It’s in the bedside table drawer.’ Georgie tossed her the key.

  ‘Thanks, Georgie.’ Li smiled again.

  ‘I’ll pick the key up later. Will you be in this evening?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘Might have a guy but don’t worry, just knock first. Are you out all evening? A date or something?’

  ‘Do you think I take notes on dates?’

  ‘Actually, I do.’

  ‘Hm. It’s not a bad idea. See you later.’

  Georgie waved then ran down the stairs and out of the front door without giving Li the chance to reply. Outside, the river looked dark and less friendly than on other days.

  *

  Li watched Georgie disappear down the stairs and waited until she heard the front door close.

  She has a very awkward gait. It struck Li that Georgie Someday wasn’t quite sure how to walk properly. That girl has confidence issues, she thought. Unnecessarily, as it happened. She was really quite pretty, if she stopped dressing like a Christian missionary. She could certainly do a whole lot better than that idiot Martin. Why Georgie had ever shown any interest in him was a mystery; although Li suspected something more complicated was at play.

  It had been two years since Martin had tried to stick his tongue down Li’s throat. He hadn’t tried to repeat the operation – he had nearly lost his tongue. Li had accepted many years ago that her English father and Japanese mother had left her confused, straddling two cultures with a tenuous grip on neither. She could have been like Georgie, if she had chosen to be: ambitious, career-driven, intuitive. She could have started in a local firm as a paralegal and made partner by the age of thirty – and her parents would have put in some equity, too. But instead, she was an escort.

  She had met Mrs White at a party before the Oxford class of 2013 had moved to London. Come to think of it, perhaps it was even the same night on which Li had sent Martin off to the out-of-hours GP to get his mouth patched up. Mrs White was an extraordinary woman. She was in her late fifties, with a curve down her hips that most models would have been proud of. She had been wearing an exquisite, white Jovani dress that had stood in stark contrast to the mahogany tone of her perfect skin. Li remembered the encounter well.