The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

  Instead, I walked slowly towards the outhouse in the hope that they’d lose interest and let me cut across the grass to the main road. They didn’t. Each step I took was mirrored by five rippling shadows. For big animals they were extraordinarily quiet. The only sound any of them made was the brush of paws over grass. I couldn’t even hear their breathing, but that may have been because mine was noisy enough for all of us.

  I stopped after about twenty metres, seriously doubting that MacKenzie was in the house. How could he have got past these dogs unless he’d broken in before Jess brought them? In which case, why had he waited? And why only cut the telephone line after I’d emailed my parents? I’d been alone all day, and for a good hour between Jess’s first and second visits. He could have done what he liked and left. It didn’t make sense to involve other people.

  From there, it was a small jump to the absolute conviction that I was doing what he wanted—putting myself at his mercy by leaving the house. It’s hard to think logically when you’re frightened. I turned rather wildly to head back towards the kitchen and found myself looking at MacKenzie.

  He was sitting at my desk with his hands linked behind his head, staring at my computer screen. He laughed suddenly and swivelled the chair to talk to someone behind him. With a dreadful sense of inevitability I caught a glimpse of Peter’s face before MacKenzie completed the turn and blocked Peter from sight again.

  THE SAME POLICEMAN who’d asked what Jess and I had talked about during our five hours alone the previous week suggested I might have acted differently if MacKenzie had shown her the same respect that he showed Peter. “I’m assuming it was this man’s mistreatment of Ms. Derbyshire that persuaded you to confront him? Was it seeing her in trouble that took you back into the house?”

  I shook my head. “Jess wasn’t visible from outside. The first time I saw her was when I reached the hall.”

  “But you guessed she was in distress?”

  “I suppose so. I saw that Peter was frightened—which almost certainly meant Jess was, too.” I couldn’t see the point of his questions. “Wouldn’t you be scared if someone broke into your house?” I paused. “I knew he’d kill her…he liked hurting women.”

  “So why weren’t you scared, Ms. Burns?”

  “I was. I was terrified.”

  “Then why didn’t you continue with your original plan”—he glanced at his notes—“to run for the nearest high point and use your mobile? Wouldn’t that have been more sensible than going back inside?”

  “Of course it would, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to say? That I was stupid to do it? I agree with you. I was the fool that rushed in. I acted first, thought later.”

  “You thought long enough to take an axe with you,” he pointed out mildly.

  “So? I was hardly going to tackle MacKenzie empty-handed.”

  I CREPT DOWN the corridor on bare feet and eased the baize door open a crack before sliding through and letting it close silently behind me. MacKenzie had turned up the volume on my computer and I could hear my own voice coming through the speakers. I knew then what he was looking at. There was no mistaking my begging tone even if the only words I could make out were a repetitive “please don’t…please don’t…please don’t…”

  The sound died suddenly. “Is that you, Connie?” he said in his familiar Glaswegian accent. “I’ve been expecting you, feather. Will you show yourself to me?”

  How did he know I was there? I hadn’t made a sound. I didn’t make a sound.

  “You know what’ll happen if you don’t,” he warned with a grunt of amusement. “I’ll have to make do with your friend. She’s an ugly little bitch but her mouth seems to work.”

  My flesh crawled in response to his voice, and it took considerable will-power to move into the open doorway. I hated the way he spoke. It was mangled vowels and glottal stops and exploded any myth that “Glesca patter” was attractive. No printed words can convey the ugliness of his accent or the effect it had on me. I associated it with his smell and his taste, and nausea flooded my mouth immediately.

  He was still sitting at my desk, and Peter was where I’d seen him from outside, in the chair Jess had perched on earlier. He was fully clothed and his eyes were uncovered, but there was duct tape across his mouth, and his hands and feet were bound. MacKenzie had half-turned the chair towards the desk so that Peter could see the images that were flickering on the computer screen, and beyond them Jess, who was standing in the far corner.

  I hardly looked at Peter because I was focusing all my attention on MacKenzie, but I saw the panic in his eyes before I picked out Jess at the edge of my vision. She was naked, blindfolded, gagged and bound, and balanced precariously on a footstool. I felt a lurch of panic for her because I knew how frightening that was. Unable to see, and without being able to move your hands or feet, your only point of reference is the wall behind you. If you lose contact with it, you fall. The strain of concentration is unbearable.

  I’ve no idea if MacKenzie’s intention was to frighten me into complying—or if the degradation of women was irresistible for him—but Jess’s frailty shocked me. Without its normal covering of a man’s shirt and jeans, her body looked too small and childlike to take the kind of punishment that MacKenzie liked to inflict. I was aware of an object on the carpet in front of her. I couldn’t see it properly because I didn’t want to lose sight of MacKenzie for a second, but the serrated outline reminded me of one of my father’s homemade stingers.

  They were short planks with nails hammered through them, and he’d used them anywhere on the farm where he found rustler or poacher tracks. His favourite trick was to bury the wooden base in the dry earth and leave the nails poking half an inch above the surface. Occasionally he caught elderly vehicles which were abandoned when their tyres burst, but the more usual result was bloody footprints in the dirt. No one died from having his feet pierced but it was an effective deterrent against stealing from my father.

  Where had it come from? Had Dad made it?

  I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth. “How did you find me?”

  “The world’s smaller than you think.” He took note of the axe that I was holding across my chest. “Are you planning to use that, feather?”

  Dad always used two-inch nails…They’d kill Jess if she fell on them… “Don’t call me that.”

  MacKenzie smiled. “Answer the question, feather. Are you planning to use that?”

  “Yes.”

  His smiled widened. “And when I take it off you and use it on Gollum over here”—he tilted his head towards Jess—“what will the plan be then?”

  “To kill you.”

  I think my expression must have shown that I meant it, because he was in no hurry to move. “I persuaded your father to tell me where you were. He didn’t want to, but I gave him a choice…you or your mother. He chose your mother.” There was a glint of humour in his pale eyes. “How does that make you feel?” He pronounced “father” in almost the same way as he pronounced “feather”—“fay-ther”—a rasping, grating sound.

  My fists tightened round the axe. “Flattered,” I said from a dry mouth. “My father has faith in me. He knows I can survive you.”

  “Only if I let you.”

  “Where is he? What have you done to him?”

  “Taught him the facts of life. It was sad. It’s always sad when old men fight.”

  “You wouldn’t have taken him on if his hands had been free. You won’t even take on a woman unless she’s bound, gagged and blindfolded.”

  MacKenzie shrugged indifferently and took my father’s mobile from his pocket, turning it towards me so that I could see it. “Recognize it? Remember this? ‘All fine. Mum with me. Nothing to worry about. Call soon. Dad.’ Your text came through while I was still on the road. I thought I’d put your mind at rest by answering.” He studied my face for a reaction. “I’d have sent another one but I lost the signal when I reached the valley. Why would
you want to live in a dead zone, Connie?”

  I moistened my mouth again. “How do you think I sent the text? It depends which server you use.”

  “Is that right? So why doesn’t this guy have a signal?” He nodded at Peter’s mobile, which was on the desk. His eyes narrowed speculatively. “You wouldn’t have come looking for me if you’d been able to call the police. Am I correct, feather?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t like that, yet how strange that it was the truth that made him uneasy. I think he wanted me to bluster and pretend, because no one in my position would admit so readily that help was unavailable. I don’t even know why I did it, since my hope had been to persuade him the police were on their way.

  He darted a suspicious look at the hall behind me. “You’d better not be lying.”

  “I’m not,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “How could I have called them without a signal? The landline’s not working. You know that.”

  It was the smallest of hits—a nervous toying with my father’s mobile as he confirmed the lack of signal—but it seemed to hand me an advantage. A fear that he hadn’t read the situation as well as he believed. My difficulty was that I couldn’t see how to exploit it, as I had no idea how long he’d been in the house or what he knew, and his doubts would vanish, anyway, when the cavalry failed to appear.

  “They know about you,” I said. “Your mother’s made a statement.”

  He stared at me. “You’re lying.”

  Was there doubt in his voice?

  “If you go into my inbox, you’ll find it as an attachment to the last email from DI Alan Collins.” I could hear the clicks as my tongue rasped against my dry palate. “I remembered her name from the letter you asked me to post.”

  The flicker of recognition, brief though it was, was unmistakable.

  “I told Alan Collins she was called Mary MacKenzie, and had probably been…or still was…a prostitute. He passed the information to Glasgow and they found her quite easily.”

  I wasn’t committing myself to much. If he denied his mother was a prostitute, or that Mary MacKenzie was her name, I’d say my information had been wrong and the police had located her another way. He didn’t. He was more interested in the axe. “You’d better not take me for an idiot, Connie. Do you think I’ll turn my back on you? It’s no matter, anyway. My bitch of a mother’s been dead to me for years. Tell me what her statement says.”

  Oh God! Such tiny steps and each one had to be understood and profited from immediately or MacKenzie would smell a rat. I shouldn’t need thinking time to recall a statement. It helped that I’d given some thought to his mother, helped that I’d trawled the net for information on sadists and rapists. I’d even had the idea of trying to find her myself, either by using a private detective agency or going to Glasgow and searching through the local newspaper archives. It seemed incredible to me that a man of his violence hadn’t shown up in the courts before he left his native city, or that his hatred of women was unassociated with his mother.

  I gave a passable attempt at a shrug. “She blames herself for the way you are…says it was her being on the game that started you off. You found school difficult and started truanting…and she talks about thieving and drunken fights.” There was enough of a reaction to make it worth trying something I’d found on a website—the term Glasgow prostitutes use for the red light district. “She says she was more frightened of you than going on the drag.”

  “That’s crap,” he grated angrily.

  “It’s what she says. There’ve been seven unsolved prostitute murders in Glasgow since 1991, and she’s told Strathclyde police she thinks you’re responsible. It’s all in her statement.”

  He didn’t know whether to believe me or not. Would a Zimbabwean know that Strathclyde police was the over-arching force for Glasgow or that files were still open on seven prostitutes from the drag? The murders had happened, although they weren’t thought to be linked to a single individual. Did MacKenzie know that?

  He sent a darting glance towards the computer screen. I kept my eyes on his face, but at the edge of my range I could see Peter struggling to release his hands. I knew from experience that it was wasted effort but I prayed for a miracle, anyway. “It’s your mother who provided the photograph,” I said.

  I was afraid that might be a step too far. Would Mary MacKenzie have a recent picture of her son? Apparently so, because he didn’t question it. I wasn’t entirely clear where it took me, except that it seemed to keep his unease alive. My real hope was to persuade him that taking out his anger on me, Jess and Peter would achieve nothing if it was his mother who had given most of the information to the police.

  “Your photograph has been posted with every police force in the UK, along with a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of the Glasgow murders. Once you’re in custody, Alan Collins and Bill Fraser will be given time to question you about the Freetown and Baghdad murders. You came under UK jurisdiction as soon as you entered the country…which means you can be questioned about crimes anywhere in the world.” Carefully, I adjusted my grip on the axe. My palms were so wet I could barely hold it. “It’s all in Alan’s email.”

  If I could indeed tempt him into turning his back, I would certainly hit him, but I had few illusions about my ability to do any serious damage. I was more likely to miss him completely and bury the axe in my monitor. At least I’d kill the awful repetition of my own tearful entreaties, followed by mute obedience, that filled the screen behind him. The images, many in close-up, were worse than anything I’d imagined.

  I had to try twice before any words came. “They’ve done a psychological profile on you that says if you filmed me, then you’ll have filmed the women you murdered as well. They say you’re an addictive trophy killer…you hang on to evidence that will convict you because you need to keep reminding yourself—”

  The speed with which MacKenzie’s fist whipped out to flick a knife blade in front of Peter’s face stopped me in my tracks. “Stay where you are,” he warned. “I don’t give a shit for this man’s sight…but you probably do.” With his other hand, he felt behind him for the CD-ROM button. “You talk too much, Connie,” he said, glancing round to retrieve a disk from the open tray. “All women talk too much. It does my fucking head in. I liked you better when your tongue was tied.”

  He played the point of the knife between Peter’s terrified eyes while he slid the DVD into his pocket. “What else does this profile say?”

  Christ! Which was better? Back off or keep going? How much did he know about psychological profiling? What was more likely to tip him over the edge? Something anodyne or something brutal? I dredged facts from the research I’d done. “That you’re an organized killer…a vengeful stalker who blames women for your inability to make relationships…that you target your victims carefully and plan your murders to avoid detection.” I kept my eyes on the blade. “That your socioeconomic group is at the lower end of the scale…you’re unlikely to be married…possibly delusional…have no interest in personal hygiene…” I fell silent because his aggression suddenly vanished.

  He lowered the knife to the table and assessed me critically. “You’re skin and bones, feather,” he said gently. “What happened to you?”

  “I haven’t been eating. I feel sick if I put something in my mouth.”

  “You think about me then?”

  “All the time.”

  “Go on,” he encouraged, placing the knife on the desk to reach for a canvas bag that I hadn’t noticed within the embrasure of the desk. I watched him pull back the flap to put my father’s mobile and the DVD inside, and with a small shock I recognized it as my own bag.

  “At night, I wake up screaming because I’m afraid you’re in the room,” I said in a monotone. “During the day I have panic attacks because I see a dog or smell something that reminds me of you.” Inside the bag, I could see a pair of miniature binoculars that I was sure belonged to my father. “There isn’t a single min
ute in twenty-four hours when Keith MacKenzie doesn’t fill my mind.”

  I lapsed into silence again because I didn’t know what he was doing. Part of me wondered if he was preparing to leave; the other part remained intensely suspicious. His only way out was past me, but I wasn’t so naïve as to lower the axe to let him pass. Nor was I prepared to separate myself from Jess and Peter. However incapacitated they were, I drew a confidence from their presence that I wouldn’t have had if I’d faced MacKenzie alone.

  My concern now was Jess. She was beginning to tire. On the fringes of my vision, she kept jerking her head back to keep her shoulders in contact with the walls. Peter’s fear for her was intense. He doubled his efforts to free his hands, and I saw his desperation every time he looked from her to me.

  MacKenzie saw it, too, and smiled as he jerked his head towards the stinger. “It’s a neat little thing, isn’t it? I assume it was meant for me, feather. If your friend’s unlucky, the nails will get her in the belly. I’ve seen more soldiers die of gut wounds than anything else. The filth from the intestine infects the blood.” He gave an indifferent shrug. “It’s your choice. You can come in and move the trap…or you can let her fall. I’ll even make a deal with you. As soon as you’re through the doorway, I’ll leave.”

  Peter nodded violently, begging me to obey. I forced my tongue across my lips so that I could generate some noise. “JESS!” I cried. “Listen to me! You must concentrate! I can’t come in. Do you understand?” Her head ducked a millimetre in response. I went on more calmly: “I don’t care how tired you are or how much it hurts, you stay upright. At least you’re on your feet and not cowering in a corner. Understand?” Another dip of her head.