Hunting Angels (Box Set) (The great horror writers (Masterton, Saul, Herbert) and now Jones)

by Conrad Jones

  “Would you try to fuck me on the first date, doctor?” she teased. The doctor shifted uncomfortably in his chair. I was beginning to wonder who was in charge of the interview. “You would like to fuck me, though, wouldn’t you?” She pushed her breasts up with her hands and shook them at him. His face reddened, and the detective struggled to hide the smile on his face. “You would love to bend me over this table and fuck my brains out, wouldn’t you?”

  “No.” The doctor put his glasses down and looked her in the eye trying to show that he wasn’t perturbed by her mischief.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” he sighed.

  “Why wouldn’t you like to fuck me?”

  “If you’re trying to shock me Jennifer, then you can’t.”

  “Are you gay?” she chuckled, and pointed to the detective. “Would you rather bend him over the table?”

  He ignored the question and carried on. “Favourite film?”

  “Do you want me to answer honestly or give you the answers that I think you want to hear?”

  “Whichever suites you,” he shrugged.

  “Hostel. There’s lots of blood in that. Have you seen it?” she asked. “Is that what you want me to say? I like horror films.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to say that there’s lots of blood in that, lots and lots?” She touched the blood on her face and then put her finger in her mouth suggestively.

  “What’s your favourite book?” The doctor ignored her comment. He wanted to get to the end of the test and go home. His wife hated him working late and she would be frantic.

  She looked down at her paper suit. “The Rats by James Herbert maybe. Yeah, I like The Rats. Have you read it?”

  “Which would you rather have, a dog or a cat?”

  “It would depend who was cooking it. Dog is greasy. Cats are tough.” She giggled again and licked her lips. The doctor studied her and scribbled some notes again. Her smile turned into a snarl for a second. Her lips curled back from her teeth and for a second she looked ugly. Evil. Then the look was gone.

  “You don’t like animals?”

  She shrugged. “Depends how hungry I am. I ate my pet rabbit when I was eight years old.” She laughed and put her finger to her lips. “I blamed the dog.”

  “Did you?” The doctor raised his eyebrows. He scribbled another note. The detective next to him raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t make her out and neither could I. “Did you eat your rabbit?”

  “Yes.” She played with her hair and stared at the mirror.

  “How did you kill it?”

  “With a hammer.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Are you fucking stupid?” She seemed to change emotionally. She looked away from the mirror and smiled at the doctor. “Do you really think I ate my rabbit?”

  “I don’t know.” He studied her. “Did you?”

  “Of course not,” she giggled again.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited but she didn’t expand on her answer, she just sat back and looked at me through the glass. She smiled again as if she could see straight through it. I shuffled my feet nervously.

  “Will you tell me why you think you’re here?”

  “They think I killed a woman in the park. She had her throat ripped out. There was blood everywhere.”

  “And did you kill her?”

  “No. She was dead when I found her.” Her voice cracked and a tear rolled down her left cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and her chest heaved as she tried not to break completely.

  “What were you doing in the park?”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, honestly.” She looked down as she answered and the tears ran freely now. I wanted her to answer the question and tell us why she was in the park.

  “That’s not for me to ascertain, Jennifer. I need to establish your mental state. That’s all.”

  “I want to talk to him.” She wiped away her tears and pointed to the mirror straight at me. “He uses his imagination. I think he’s a writer. Is he?”

  “How does she know that, Pete?” I asked. I was convinced that someone had told her that a writer was following the case. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize something must have been said during her transfer, maybe in an attempt to calm her down.

  “I don’t know but I’ll find out. Someone must have broken our confidence.”

  “The last thing I need is a lunatic on my case. She could find out my address in five minutes on Google. Someone is out of order.” I was genuinely concerned.

  “Who is a writer?” The doctor looked at the mirror, confused.

  “He is.” She pointed again and choked back a sob. “He writes things. I’m not sure what yet. They hate artists and writers; I think he’s a writer. They have slaughtered thousands of writers over the years, you know.” She put a finger to her lips and tried to smile. “Are you a writer?” She cocked her head like a curious dog and stared at the mirror.

  “Okay, Jennifer, forget the man behind the mirror. He is a police officer. What happened tonight?” The doctor was impatient. She watched me through the mirror as he waited for an answer. I shivered as I looked back at her. Those black eyes and the dried blood around her lips will haunt me to my grave. I was fascinated by her; terrified but excited.

  “She knows I’m here and she knows my name. She’s playing games,” I muttered.

  “Okay, I need your attention,” the doctor said. He moved his chair closer to the table. “You really should take this seriously,” he said to Jennifer, much to the annoyance of the detective, who sat in silence. He could not say a word until they had confirmed her age and sanity.

  She shrugged and looked back to the floor. “I haven’t done anything, so fuck off,” she whispered. “I mean, it’s your problem, not mine. I’ll be back at home before you know it. I want to talk to him. He can tell everyone about them. He can tell everyone what they do.” She tried to stand up, but a strap held her to the chair. The guard had threaded it through the manacles and attached it to an anchor point under the chair.

  The doctor tried to calm her. “There are police officers behind the mirror, Jennifer. They are deciding whether to charge you with murder or not.”

  “I know there are police officers there and I know he is there, too. You’re a liar.”

  “Why would I lie to you, Jennifer? I am here to protect you. I am here to verify you are well enough and old enough to be interviewed.” The doctor frowned. It was getting late. It was near the end of his shift and he needed to leave on time.

  “You can’t protect me. I don’t want to speak to you anymore.” She turned sideways and smiled at me through her tears. “You can’t protect me either, but you can help me. They will probably kill you, but we all have to die sometime, right?” She spoke directly to the mirror.

  “Someone is going to get their arse kicked,” Peter growled. The fact that she knew I was there was slowing the interview down. She was playing to the audience. Why? I didn’t know, but I was convinced one of her guards had told her I would be following the case. Peter opened the door to the corridor and shouted a uniformed officer over. “Who was on the girl’s transfer?”

  “Blakey and me, Serg,” the officer frowned. “Why?”

  “Did either of you mention to her that Conrad was shadowing the investigation?”

  “Of course not, Serg! You said it was confidential.” The officer looked offended and his face darkened.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure,” he replied. He sounded like he was telling the truth. I was too busy watching the girl to look at his face.

  “Jennifer, can you tell me why you were in the park tonight?” The doctor stood between her and the mirror. He attempted to hold her full attention.

  “Move out of the way.” She tried to look past him. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Jennifer,” he tried again, and sh
e flipped.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed. Her face turned into a mask of hatred. She pulled her lips back from her teeth and snapped them together repeatedly. The straps strained and held her, but every muscle and sinew in her body was fighting to be free. She howled like a dog and spittle sprayed from her lips and dribbled down her chin. “Help me!” she screamed through the mirror repeatedly.

  “My God, this is freaking me out,” I said to Peter. “What does she think I can do for her?” As soon as I spoke, she stopped screaming. She wiped the spit from her face and it smeared the dried blood. Her eyes seemed to focus on me again and she smiled.

  “I heard his voice,” she said in a child-like voice. “I knew you would help me.”

  “Who is going to help you?” the doctor asked her. His cheeks reddened with frustration. One minute she seemed to give him all her attention, the next she was fixated on the mirror. The outburst had him rattled.

  “The man behind the glass. The writer. He likes me, don’t you?” She mouthed the last bit silently. I looked at Peter and shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t think of anything to say. The woman freaked me out.

  “I heard what your officer said, but there’s no way she can know that I’m here, unless someone told her.”

  “I think you’ve pulled,” Peter joked nervously.

  “Just my luck, another bunny-boiler.” I tried to make out that I wasn’t perturbed by the fact she knew the first letter of my name and my profession. The fact was, she hadn’t guessed. She knew what my name was. That’s one of the things they can do.

  “Can you remember being arrested?”

  “Yes. Ask him to come in. I need to talk to him. If they think I’m talking to the police, they will kill me. They will kill me anyway, probably.” She looked at the mirror again. This time her eyes pleaded with me. She needed my help I was sure of that, but I didn’t know why. I wanted to help her. I needed to help her.

  “Where did they arrest you?” The doctor ignored her request to talk to me. He didn’t even know I was there.

  “Do you think I killed that woman?”

  “I want to know if you’re well enough to answer the questions that the police officers want to ask you, that’s all.” He folded his arms and sighed. He would be in the doghouse when he got home. His wife would be worried sick.

  “I didn’t kill her,” she said looking at the doctor. “I didn’t kill her, honestly. Please help me.” She looked at me through the mirror again.

  “What were you doing in the park?”

  “Why are you repeating yourself?” she shouted loudly. Her ugly face returned.

  “To check that your answers are consistent,” he said.

  “To check that I’m not lying?” she screamed. The sinews in her neck were sticking out.

  “Something like that,” he said. “But if you’ve done nothing wrong, Jennifer, you’ve nothing to worry about.”

  “Am I okay then or am I fucking nuts?” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  “You’re fine, Jennifer. I think you are upset by what you’ve seen.”

  She calmed down for a moment and grinned at the mirror again. “Can you do me a favour now, doctor?”

  “Depends what you want,” he told her.

  “I want to talk to him.” She pointed to the mirror again.

  “Are you done, doctor?” the detective asked, “this is getting weird.” It was obvious to him the woman was a crackpot.

  “Yeah, I’m done,” he said. The doctor stood up and smiled at the girl. He packed up his stuff and watched her staring through the glass. She was clearly insane. Her fascination with whoever was behind the mirror puzzled him. In this case, me. “We are finished here, Jennifer. You are obviously traumatized; I’m going to recommend that you stay here for a while.”

  She flipped. Her screams and the hatred in her eyes will stay with me forever. She looked into me and screamed for help repeatedly as the guards dragged her away. She reached out and tried to touch the mirror. I touched it from my side, and for a split second only the glass separated our fingertips. There was a jolt, like a shock from a nine-volt battery.

  “What exactly do they think she has done?” I whispered to Peter as I watched her writhe and struggle against the guards. I was shaking inside, and I felt sick as they dragged her out of the interview room. There was a connection between us and I didn’t know why. “Do you think that she killed the victim?”

  Peter frowned. “It looks like she stabbed the victim in the heart and then slashed her throat. When we found her, she was crouched over her, covered in blood. We haven’t found the murder weapon yet, but it won’t be long. What we don’t want is for her to spring some insanity plea on us. Hence, we needed to know if she was sane. It’s the same thing that happened to Pauline Holmes, virtually identical.”

  “But what about the rape? I thought you arrested her pimp?” That was how I found the story in the first place.

  “Yes we did. Holmes’s pimp is on remand awaiting trial. He denies the murder and this will help his case, unfortunately.”

  “You can’t think Jennifer killed two women. She looks so innocent.” I stared through the glass. In my mind she looked back into my eyes, even though I could hear them dragging her down the corridor. She had dried blood around her mouth. They may have found her next to the body, but I thought she was innocent. I wanted her to be innocent. “Were the injuries similar?”

  “From what I have seen, identical,” Peter frowned. He had deep lines across his forehead. He was purposely vague again.

  “You mentioned that there were symbols carved into the bodies.” I’d almost forgotten about our earlier conversation. “Can you describe them?”

  Peter lowered his voice. “This has been withheld from the press for obvious reasons.” He took out a notepad and flicked open a page where he’d copied the symbols in pen.

  “This was on the Stokes woman,” he pointed to his pad. “The governor asked me to run them by you.”

  “Stokes?” I asked. “So you know her name?”

  “We found some ID, but it’s not enough to verify her identity,” Peter said, fobbing me off. “Do you recognize this?”

  I did, but I was inclined to pretend that I didn’t. I wanted to know more about the case though, so I decided that being churlish would be pointless. Peter’s expression told me that this was the real reason he’d invited me.

  I looked at both symbols. “This is the symbol used for a ritual sex act. Sometimes it’s used as proof to other members that an anonymous victim has been killed or raped as a part of a ritual or sacrifice. It’s used as a signature rather than a signpost.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” he frowned. I didn’t think I could have been much clearer. Like I said, he wasn’t too bright.

  “If a newspaper reported that a woman had been raped in the town centre and I claimed to other members of my nexion that it was me who had done it, they wouldn’t give it any credence unless I’d left this mark,” I explained. “Do you remember how the IRA used to use a code word before a bomb went off?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is similar. They didn’t want any other faction to claim the credit for their crimes. Well, this is the same thing. It’s proof that a satanic order wants the credit for killing this woman.”

  “How the bloody hell do you know that?” Peter looked astonished. I knew from the tone in his voice on the telephone that whatever his senior officer had said about my book, Peter put no store in it. He obviously hadn’t read it! His senior officer had asked him to use our friendship to gain some insight into the occult. Obviously Peter didn’t want to be beholding to me. Maybe our previous careers had forced a barrier between us.

  “From research on the Internet,” I laughed, embarrassed by how impressed he was. “Seriously, though, this symbol has been found on victims in the US; that’s where I’ve seen it before.”

  “So they were definitely sexually motivated attacks?” Peter stared at his pad.

&nb
sp; “No, not necessarily.” I shook my head. He hadn’t listened to a word I’d said. Either that or he simply didn’t understand. “Who was this one on?” The second sketch was slightly different.

  “That was on the Holmes woman,” Peter frowned. “It looks like they didn’t have time to finish it.”

  “It’s finished alright,” I corrected him. “That‘s the inverted cross of satanic justice. Carved into the chest of a victim; it signifies that they are a traitor. It’s a very different meaning to the other one.”

  “So they might not be connected?”

  “I would be amazed if two victims of a satanic-style murder found in the same park were not connected.” I didn’t understand why he was so keen to dismiss the obvious link between them. The fact was that they had charged Eddie Duncan with the first murder. Releasing him would leave egg on their faces.

  “I’ll run it by the governor, but I can’t see it making any difference,” he replied, scribbling next to his sketches. “Now we have the doctor’s opinion on her sanity, she can’t be interviewed about either murder.”

  “I just can’t see it. The article about the Holmes girl said that the evidence against her pimp was watertight, but did they know what that symbol meant when they charged him?” I watched the detective in the interview room, fiddling with his notes. He stared at the mirror and never took his eyes from it once. He wasn’t smiling though; his eyes looked through the glass in a piercing glare. “Surely the symbols carved into the victims shed a different light on things. They indicate that both women were killed by occult followers, but for very different reasons. Jennifer was frightened, very frightened.”

  “You’d never make a police officer, Conrad. You’re too soft. She’s the suspect in a very nasty murder case. Save your sympathy for the victim’s family.” Peter smiled thinly. “If you want to shadow me on the case, you can. The forensic team have swabbed her and taken samples. We’ll see what they tell us.” I knew he was right, but something about Jennifer intrigued me. I wanted to follow the case, not for the research, but to see her. I wanted to look into her eyes. She had cast a spell on me. “Do you still want to follow the investigation?” Peter asked. I knew that he wanted me to say no.