by Paul Finch
‘I haven’t inherited Thornton Farm.’
‘No, but your mother’s obviously suffered some kind of breakdown. I can’t believe she’ll stand in your way for long.’
Thornton regarded him carefully. ‘There’s something you need to know, Sergeant Heckenburg. My father was a complete domestic tyrant. I’m sure you’ve encountered those characters before?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘He was a violent pig, who would demand absolute obedience and would leather the living hide off you for the slightest infraction. But you know the worst thing about him?’
‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’
‘It was the mental oppression he created. He had absolutely no sense of humour. He never smiled. Never found anything amusing.’
‘A practical joker like you must have gone down a storm.’
Thornton shrugged. ‘I’m no psychologist, you understand, but maybe Father was the origin of that? In a house where there is no natural laughter, you try to make your own. But we did love our little jests, my sister and I. Always have. Superglue on the cow’s udders, cold tea in the whisky decanter – Father didn’t drink whisky but he gave it to all his guests.’ Thornton grinned at the thought. ‘What else? Oh yes: salt in the sugar bowl, sugar in the salt shaker, urine in the farm labourers’ kettle …’
‘You guys were an absolute scream.’
‘The best one was the easiest. Locking the toilet door from the inside and climbing out through the window, so no one could go all day. That was Tilly’s forte, she being so skinny and all.’
‘Every one a winner, eh?’
Thornton shrugged again. ‘We thought it was funny. Course, with Father never laughing at anything, it made no difference whether he did or didn’t. Apart from one year, I suppose, when he caught us sprinkling the barbecue coals with gunpowder. It wasn’t even very dangerous, just some stuff we’d drained out of a few fireworks. It wouldn’t have done any more than make a bit of smoke. But Father was so unimpressed. Not only did he give us both a whipping, he took away our entire video collection of slapstick classics – Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges, Norman Wisdom. I mean we’d only ever been able to watch that stuff in the attic, on the spare television – he couldn’t stand to have it downstairs. But now he went a whole lot further. He burned it all on a bonfire. Made Tilly and me watch. Hundreds of pounds’ worth of wonderful movies, bought over several years with our own hard-earned pocket money, off to the Film Vault Invisible.’
‘And for that he was earmarked for destruction?’ Heck said.
‘Well that wasn’t the only thing, but it didn’t help his cause. You see, Sergeant, even when he wasn’t dishing out the punishment, Father would subjugate us merely with his presence. He was that kind of dour, downbeat chap. We all lived in his shadow, under his thumb … though I suppose Mother was the real victim. And the main beneficiary.’
‘Beneficiary?’
‘She was a mouse, you see.’ Thornton gave another of those soulless, pointless chuckles that his family seemed to specialise in. ‘Barely there at the best of times. She obeyed without question. Father didn’t just make all the important decisions in their lives, he made all the decisions. When he suddenly departed the scene after so many decades, well, she was hapless. Didn’t know what to do with herself.’
‘So now she takes her orders from you and Tilly?’
‘More or less.’ Thornton pondered this. ‘Despite the shock-horror of it, I think she was quite happy to go along with the accident story. She could never stand the thought that we might have been the cause. Of course, you offered a brief glimmer of hope – if you’d named us as the culprits that would have taken the terrible responsibility away from her.’
‘And the fact that she hadn’t named you already was down to what – family loyalty?’
‘Maybe. If so, we couldn’t trust to that indefinitely. You see, Sergeant … you can be crafty with people, you can be clever, you can try to make them see things your way …’
‘Assuming your mother was sane, I’d imagine that was fairly difficult.’
‘She knew what a dull, brutish oaf Father was. As I say, she’d taken the brunt of it. But some people aren’t … well, they’re just not as ready to act the way others will.’
‘Or as ready to get measured for a straitjacket.’
Thornton smiled again, but thinly, tolerantly. ‘In the end, the best way to govern someone’s actions is with force – or the threat of force.’
‘Terrorise them, you mean?’ Heck said. ‘To the point where they’re almost on the verge of collapse.’
‘It’s easier than you may think.’
‘Especially when they know what you’re capable of, eh?’
Thornton shrugged grandly. ‘You can’t beat making a good example of someone – or several someones.’ His sister now re-entered through the side door, dragging a canvas holdall. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Fine. Mother’s in bed.’
‘No one else around?’
‘I drove up to the road and back. It’s all quiet.’
‘You got the stuff?’
‘It’s all here.’ She toed at the holdall.
‘Excellent.’
Heck eyed the bag uneasily, but made an effort to focus on Tilly. Suddenly it seemed vital to keep them talking. ‘Your brother’s just been telling me about your plans. How you fabricated a series of accidental deaths to conceal the murder of your father, and had a few giggles along the way.’
‘He got there in the end,’ Thornton said. ‘Even though most of it was guesswork.’
‘Very little guesswork actually,’ Heck retorted. ‘The flaw in your plan was the murder of Harold Lansing. The fact that you made two attempts on his life indicated he was no random target. That he too was someone you wanted to eliminate. He was also the only other person on the list with any real connection to your family. The other deaths, though, were clever. A real double bluff. Even if a bright spark like me actually twigged they were deliberate acts, he’d go looking for some crazy trickster murdering indiscriminately rather than someone looking to get rich quick. As grieving relatives of one of several victims, you and your sister could have hidden in plain sight.’
‘Whether you guessed or not, you’re remarkably close,’ Thornton said. He glanced sidelong at Tilly. ‘But I’ve often thought my father’s policy was the best one. Give orders and leave nothing open for discussion.’
The girl cast her eyes down.
Heck fixed on her, sensing a possible weakness. ‘So it was your idea to put Lansing on the list?’
She glanced back up. ‘Harold Lansing was a complete shitarse!’
‘That’s not the impression I’ve had.’
‘I don’t care what impression you’ve had. I got arrested because of him.’
‘You got off lightly, love.’
‘Lightly?’ She seemed genuinely astonished.
‘You got a slapped wrist,’ Heck said. ‘They didn’t even take your DNA. If they had done, we might’ve ended this bloody madness days ago.’
‘I was grounded all summer, you bastard! I missed two weeks in Magaluf with my friends, which I’d been looking forward to since the previous January.’
‘What … so you burned Lansing alive?’
‘It was better than he deserved.’
‘How about Dean Torbert? Was it better than he deserved?’
Tilly shrugged, as if she’d never given the other fatality in the accident a moment’s concern. ‘It was only the fate that loser would have brought on himself eventually.’ Then she grinned. ‘Masterclass in timing though, that one …’
‘I did wonder how you pulled it off,’ Heck admitted.
‘It wasn’t at all difficult.’ Her grin curved into a crescent; it was like a jack-o-lantern as she enthusiastically recalled her and her brother’s cleverness. ‘Torbert studied political science, believe it or not. Couldn’t have cared less about it, of course.
Didn’t turn up for lectures, missed his tutorials. But he liked his car, and he loved to show off. He was only a casual acquaintance, but when I intimated to him that we ran an illegal road-racing club he was very eager to join. I told him that all new members had to pass a test: a speed trial along a certain stretch of road we knew. One that was very private and very quiet.’
‘Especially at seven in the morning, eh?’ Heck said.
‘Bang on, Sergeant. And each day he was there on the dot. We told him he had to get from A to B in the shortest time possible. Of course we didn’t tell him what the pass mark was, but said he had five chances – on five consecutive days—’
‘Let me guess,’ Heck interrupted. ‘That was the five days Lansing’s housekeeper and gardener were away on holiday?’
She grinned all the more. ‘Very useful to us that old Mr Beetham, the gardener, kept his own personal schedule on a wall in one of his potting sheds. We were still at the planning stage, but we didn’t have to poke around very hard to find it. Five days marked “Cornwall” gave us the perfect window of opportunity. But if the Beethams hadn’t been coming home after that, we didn’t think we’d be able to pull the deception off much longer, even if it was no dice. The weather, you see. Can’t trust the weather forecast past five days in this country. Fine thing if it had started raining, and our mirror-photo still showed a nice sunny morning, eh? Unnecessary caution, as it turned out. We struck lucky on the fourth morning.’
‘I’d say you were unlucky it took you that long,’ Heck said, ‘given how OCD Lansing was about leaving the house at seven each day.’
‘Well of course; but we only knew that Lansing had survived his fishing accident, not that he’d been off work. We’d no idea the fourth day of the trial was Lansing’s first day back in. So actually we hit the spot first time.’
‘You must be proud.’
‘Why not, it was a staggering result – a work of genius!’
‘It was folly,’ Thornton cut in. ‘Totally unnecessary. I said so then and I say it again now. Apart from Father, all the victims should have been chosen at random. They should have been completely untraceable to us, and if we missed them, well no loss – there were always more fish in the sea. But alas …’ Almost casually, he fidgeted with the rifle, knocking off its safety catch. His eyes briefly glazed. ‘I gave in. I mean, what’s a man to do, Sergeant? I should have put my foot down, but women can be so persuasive. We’ve always been close, my sister and I. Some would say too close, though I’d take issue with that. When you’re under the knuckle all day, you seek comfort anywhere you can. Anyway, the point is that targeting Harold Lansing was undisciplined of us – but it was entirely my fault.’
‘It’ll be even more your fault if my body turns up riddled with .22 calibre slugs,’ Heck said. ‘You think they’ll explain that away as an accident?’
That comment seemed to bring Thornton to the present. He restored the safety catch. ‘Not at all, Sergeant. You’ve actually proved to me that the brightest thing about you chaps isn’t your buttons. It’s clearly the case that almost anything we do to you will be queried. However, we may still manage to mystify and confuse your people.’
He glanced at Tilly, who smiled excitedly and knelt down beside the holdall, from out of which she extracted a large metal funnel, some two feet in length and tapering from its wider end, which was about fourteen inches in diameter, to its narrow end, which was about five inches. Heck didn’t know what this signified, but new chills ran through his body. He tested his wrists against the nylon ties, but there was no movement there. The planking to which they were fastened was equally unyielding.
‘You really don’t think someone’s going to trace you at some point?’ Heck said. ‘You did these jobs in your own vehicle, for Christ’s sake! That was one of the biggest clues we had. It’ll be on film somewhere, along with its number plate.’
‘Fake plates, Sergeant Heckenburg, fake plates,’ Thornton replied. ‘We’re not completely stupid.’
Tilly stood up, tilting the funnel first one way and then the other, but it was her brother who now stepped close to Heck, smiling – before delivering a crushing, two-handed blow with the butt of the rifle to the upper surface of his left foot.
Heck couldn’t help it. He shouted out in agony, and in that same second Tilly shoved the narrow end of the funnel into his mouth, ramming it in several inches, squashing his tongue, wedging his jaws so wide apart that their hinges ached. Heck gagged and choked, tasting rust-flavoured saliva. He was still able to breathe, though the air rasped horribly in the funnel’s interior. Barely able to move, there was nothing he could do to dislodge the thing, but perhaps to be on the safe side Tilly vanished again, only to reappear at his shoulder with a roll of duct tape, and wind strips of the stuff round the funnel and then round the slats to either side of Heck’s head. She fastened it securely in place, angling it slightly upwards.
‘I’ve often heard it said that police officers are big drinkers,’ Thornton remarked, laying his rifle in the straw. He broke off to chuckle at the sight of Heck’s eyes bulging. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Sergeant … if that were true, there’d be no mystery or confusion if they were to find you full to bursting with alcohol. So I’m hardly going to reach into Tilly’s magic holdall and produce five crates of beer and six bottles of whisky. I love my old-time comedians, but I’m no Tommy Cooper.’
Tilly tittered again, but Thornton snapped his fingers and she scuttled back to the holdall, rooting inside and lifting something else out. When she brought this to her brother, Heck wasn’t quite sure what he was initially seeing. It was a glass cylinder – it looked like an old jam jar with a removable lid. But there was something he couldn’t at first identify inside it; a shapeless jumble of pinkish-grey digits, roughly the size of a child’s hand. It was only when it twitched that a bolt of horror went through him.
‘Allow me to introduce Sicarius hahni,’ Thornton said, turning the jar slightly, to reveal air holes punched in its lid. ‘Better known as the South African sand spider. We acquired a number of these exotic specimens a short time ago, and achieved one of our most spectacular results to date. Sadly, we weren’t able to retrieve all the others before they perished in the winter cold. This one was inert for quite some time afterwards, but as you can see, with a bit of tender, loving care …’
The spider was now spread wide inside the jar, quivering.
Heck struggled wildly. The timber wall groaned and shuddered, but he was still immobile. He halted, sweating, eyes riveted on the jar. He then tried to clamp his teeth on the funnel, but didn’t make an indent; tried to spit it out but it wouldn’t budge.
Nightmare images of the murdered car thieves swam before his inner eye: tortured features; puffy, bloated flesh.
Tilly stood nearby with hands jammed into her overalls’ front pockets. Her eyes and mouth widened with near-sexual excitement as Charles placed the jar against the rim of the funnel and slowly began to unscrew its lid.
‘This is where the mystery and confusion come in,’ he said in explanatory mode. ‘You see, this little chap lives in the Kalahari Desert and has almost no contact with humans; which is a good thing, as a single bite will not just cause deep and widespread necrosis of the flesh, but also excessive blood-clotting. The ultimate outcome is cardiac arrest, but that won’t occur with any kind of – what’s the phrase, ah yes – merciful speed. Oh, and in case you were wondering, there’s no known anti-venom.’ Thornton chuckled. ‘Just imagine, Sergeant, what they’re going to think when they cut you open. They won’t believe their eyes, and of course if you’ve already digested this little chap, they’ll be even more baffled.’
With a gentle plop, the lid came free.
There was a clink of glass as the rim of the jar touched the rim of the funnel.
Heck could barely move, though his lungs were working with tremendous exertion. He couldn’t see much because the upper part of the funnel screened the jar from him, but he could tell from the expression on
Thornton’s face, which was slowly lengthening and tightening as if he, like his sister, was approaching an orgasm, that he was carefully tilting it to the horizontal. There was a repeated tapping sound: Thornton’s finger on the base of the jar.
Again Heck began struggling, fighting with every part of his body, and though there was some slippage of the cable tie round his ankles, from his waist up he was still held rigid. At any second he expected to hear the soft rumble of multiple legs in the funnel’s interior – but before anything else could happen there came a shrill and frenzied jangling sound, so loud and unexpected that it drew a half-scream from Tilly.
Thornton jumped backwards. ‘Damn and fucking blast!’ Froth spurted from his mouth. ‘Goddamn blasting bloody hell fire!’
With sharp jerks of his elbow, he screwed the jar’s lid back into place. Despite the sweat stinging his eyes, Heck saw that the creature was still in its prison. He sagged in his bonds. That alone was such a relief that he could barely rationalise what had just happened. The alarm jangled again, this time protractedly. Heck glanced weakly up and spied a circular bell on a high beam, now being hammered by a clapper. An insulated cable snaked away from it along the bottom of an adjacent beam and vanished through a hole. Dully, he realised what this was: an extension of the farmhouse front doorbell.
‘Sodding, bloody, fucking hell!’ Thornton snarled, rounding red-faced on his sister as if this was somehow her fault. His fury was so massive that she cowered away from him. ‘Who the Goddamned bloody hell is calling at this fucking hour?’
She shook her head mutely.
‘Go and see!’ he bellowed. ‘And make sure you get to the front door before that silly old bitch. Whoever they are, whatever they want, get rid of them! You understand?’
Tilly turned and scampered away.
‘And go through the rear of the house!’ he called after her.
She glanced back, white-cheeked.
‘Just answer the door as if nothing’s happening. Pretend you were in bed.’
