by John Gardner
In the ambulance tucked away in the thicket above Saxon Hall, Lavender and Queenie sat, tense and twitchy. The signal confirmed that Addenbrooks Hospital had been rung and an ambulance was on the way. Quietly they had slid into the high risk period, allowing fifteen minutes or so to pass before they drove fast to Saxon Hall, the Devil’s Island of hospitals for the criminally insane.
An ambulance direct from Cambridge would take a while. Danger was that the hospital could well have one nearby, on its way back from a call: no way of telling. Had to take the chance. Coming across a genuine ambulance would alert everybody, even Bruce Edgehill, whom they had recruited and won over as their inside man weeks ago, would deny everything and turn on them quick as kiss your arse, as Lavender said during the planning. The two girls had seduced him in pubs and on the lush grass of summer meadows. Liked his greens, our Bruce.
They waited for around seven minutes before Lavender said, ‘Let’s go. Now.’ Her throat dry, muscles taut, in the driving seat. She turned on the engine, slipped into first gear and let out the clutch, heading over the rough ground until they met the road around three miles from Saxon Hall.
They reached the outer gates and someone had phoned ahead from C Block, C1 Ward and they were let through, down the avenue of trees to the entrance doors, a checkpoint where they had to wait with the engine idling and the rear doors open, ready for the patient, whom Mr Edgehill brought out with a couple of junior nurses. They had Golly on a trolley — what the Americans called a gurney — wrists and ankles trussed up in leather restraints with chains and locks. Together they manhandled him into the back of the ambulance, Mr Edgehill, red-faced with his little bristling tash, saying he would ride with them, make sure of security, so Queenie stayed in the back with him, Golly lying there looking white-faced and giving a fair imitation of final agony, repeating like a child, ‘I hurt… I hurt… Tummy hurt… Feel sick… O Lord…’
Basically Golly was a child, the kind of child that tears wings off butterflies, thinking nothing of it, except he killed people then laughed, thought it was a joke.
At last they got the doors closed and took off with a roar, Lavender hammering the engine, heading off to the lay-by and the Austin Seven behind the laburnum screen.
Around three miles out, they passed an ambulance going in the opposite direction, showing more light than it should, racing along in the dark, painted by moonlight, its little bell ringing as it went through a tiny hamlet, ten dwellings, a church and a pub, not big enough to show on anything but an Ordnance Survey map, one inch to the mile.
That’ll be for Saxon Hall, Lavender thought. Another ten minutes or so and the cat’ll be out of the bag, all hell breaking loose, coppers on the lookout, setting up barricades. Quite like old times. She remembered the Christmas of 1940 when Golly had told her about staying at his mum’s in rural Hampshire and sneaking past roadblocks made up of police and Home Guard. Tonight he’d be doing it in style. Gently her foot pressed down on the accelerator and the vehicle gained speed.
Ten minutes later they were at the lay-by with the screen of laburnums hiding the Austin Seven where the ambulance neatly pulled in.
Bruce Edgehill, jumping down with Queenie behind him, said they’d better use Golly’s restraints on him, leave him there like a trussed turkey, handed Queenie the keys as he left the ambulance.
‘Good idea,’ Queenie said, hitting him hard on the back of the head with her truncheon. ‘Make it realistic,’ she panted, hitting him again, on the ground, and again and again, crushing his cranium. Bruce Edgehill didn’t even cry out, just lay down and died. They had determined that Edgehill couldn’t be left alive, too much of a risk, knew too much, could name them both. Also he’d done it for greed and sex, so he couldn’t be allowed to survive.
Lavender had taken the keys from Queenie, began to unshackle Golly, who still felt rough — ‘That really you, Lavender? Oh my goodness. Here we go then, I don’t half feel sick. Really buggered.’
‘You’ll be all right now, Golly, soon get over the sickness. I got a nice piece of fish back home for you.’
‘Oh, ah. With boiled potatoes, yes? And a little bit of vinegar? Don’t want chips.’
‘It’ll be fine, Golly love. You’ll be safe with us.’
‘History, that’s what it is,’ as he tried to sit up. ‘We made history, didn’t us, Lavender? Made history getting out of the Hall.’
And the moonlight fell across his face, revealing him in all his hideous glory, the deep ravine cut up the forehead into the hairline, then down, dividing the nose into what appeared to be two separate parts, and again through the lips, lifting half and dropping the other side, sending the teeth into two levels, up and down, cleaving the chin. Golly was tired, but panted out his strange laugh — uhu-uhu-uhu — then gave a strangled little cry, ‘Free, Lavender! Free! Free!’
Behind the bushes, Queenie turned the key in the Austin Seven.
And the engine wouldn’t fire.
‘Shit!’ she cursed, then again, ‘Shit ’n’abortion!’ That still didn’t do the trick and by this time Lavender and Golly had arrived at the car, Golly still complaining and Lavender breathless. She pushed Golly into the back, told him to lie down, then settled in next to Queenie who was still trying to start the engine, panicking as she did so.
Lavender peered down. ‘You’ve flooded the carburettor, Queenie: you idiot, close the choke!’
‘What’s the choke?’
‘There.’ Lavender slammed the choke closed. ‘Now wait. She won’t start for a minute.’
Queenie lowered her head to see the choke. ‘Oh, that’s where I usually hang my bleedin’ handbag.’
‘Well, it’s the choke. Controls the air in the fuel mixture when you’re starting.’
‘What’s gone wrong then?’
‘You pulled the bloody thing out and left it out. The mixture’s all wrong, flooded the carb. Try it again… Just a quick turn.’
Still the engine didn’t fire. ‘Christ, Queenie, who taught you to drive?’
‘You have to be taught?’
The engine turned over.
‘Again.’
This time it fired.
‘Touch on the accelerator. Gently. Right, off we go… Bloody hell, Queenie, what we got a bloody kangaroo in the tank?’
‘I can’t see,’ Queenie complained.
‘Well, take it gently.’
They turned out of the lay-by and began moving up the road, heading back towards Newmarket, gingerly, going across country, taking side roads, dodging, weaving and navigating by moonlight, Queenie driving with the kind of care with which you fail your driving test. Lavender giving directions.
‘Where we goin’ then, Lavender? Where we goin’?’ Golly, whooping, excited.
‘You feeling better then, Goll?’
‘Just a bit. Where we goin’?’
‘Babylon, Goll.’
‘How many miles to Babylon then, Lavender?’
‘Three score and ten, Goll.’
‘We get there by candlelight, Lavla?’ It was his unfortunate pet name for her when they first met in their twenties.
‘You just lie down and keep still, Golly. Don’t want anyone seeing you. They’ll know by now. Know you’re out. Just pray we don’t get any nosy coppers sniffing round.’
They got back to the flat just before midnight, knowing that the news had been out since about half-past ten, saw the police nipping around the main roads which they’d avoided, active all over the place.
Queenie volunteered to drive the car back to their lock-up and hitch a ride back. ‘Never know, might get lucky.’ She cackled.
‘Well, this is cosy,’ Golly said when Lavender let him into the flat. ‘I have my piece of fish now, Lavla?’
‘Course you can, Goll, and now I’ve got you out, there’s a lot of work for you to do. Lot of people to take care of.’ Lavender had her own schedule, including the demise of some villainous people not all that far away in the University City of Oxford
, where she planned to gather rich pickings from criminal schemes. Undergraduates were fair game, she thought, and some of them had money. Had it all planned.
Golly gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I know the first one.’ The hideous grin, with the slanted mouth and cock-eyed teeth. ‘Special, and all mine. That lady policeman that caused all the trouble before.’
‘You think that’s wise, Golly?’ Lavender hadn’t bargained for this.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. And she’s near here ain’t she, the lady policeman. Saw it in the paper. Yeah, that’d be good,’ and he started to giggle, his voice rising, the giggle becoming wild, so that Lavender had to shut him up sharply, knew Golly of old and was aware that the giggle was a sign of him getting out of control.
‘Golly, exactly why would you really bother with the lady policeman?’
‘Because she’s responsible,’ he snapped back. ‘Her and that Honourable bloke, that Honourable Livermore dick.’
‘For what?’
‘For putting me away. For everything, for locking me up, for tying me down with them pills that Dr Cornish give me.’
‘I suppose.’ Lavender found it easier to go along with Golly’s flights of fancy when she could follow his reasoning. He had killed to her orders, and finally been caught. His anger at that turn in circumstances was manifest. The people who had caught him and put him away had become those who were responsible for him and the bad things that happened to him.
Golly would insist on these folk paying the price.
*
Molly joined Tommy and Suzie in the dining room of the Falcon Inn. She was distracted and tired following an afternoon tying up ends and seeing to the housekeeping of the murder inquiry. The food was execrable: warm water with a dash of Oxo masquerading as Brown Windsor soup and a tired piece of scrag-end with over-boiled potatoes and the ubiquitous waterlogged cabbage as vegetables of the day.
Tommy pushed his plate away and asked if they had a morsel of cheese, ‘just to stave off the agony of hunger’.
Mrs Staleways, our Hetty, came bustling up, smiled, almost bowing to their aristocratic guest and mumbled something about having a little extra and she shouldn’t really give it to residents but seeing as how it was him, and Beryl came along with a nice hunk of bread and a piece of mousetrap the size of a halfbrick. Beryl still niffing of rodent.
Tommy took a sliver of cheese and a fistful of bread and began feeding himself with apparent distaste. Later he told Suzie this was the worst cheese he’d tasted in a month of Sundays.
‘You get that handwriting sample from Paula Palmer?’ he asked Molly, who shook her head, sadly.
‘No, Chief. I had Dennis out there this afternoon. Came back about an hour ago. Waited, Paula and Thetis were out for the day, Mrs Goode told him, so he said he’d wait. He did. About half six there was a telephone call, Paula saying they wouldn’t be home until very late. Dennis comes back, reckoned they’d been out so long that they wouldn’t be receptive to giving handwriting samples when they got back. I told him, yes, he did right.’
Tommy nodded, chewed and nodded again. ‘We can drop in tomorrow. Suzie can anyway.’
‘Over there tomorrow, Chief?’ Suzie asked.
‘Reckon so. We’ve got Freddy Ascoli coming up, with the ladies I’d imagine but I’m only letting Freddy do the formal ID. Don’t fancy Freda and Helena getting the vapours over the corpses. Freddy’s different. Must’ve seen corpses in France, RFC boys usually saw some bodies.’
‘You going over first thing, Chief?’ Molly playing with the food on her plate, pushing it around, didn’t fancy it.
‘Possibly. I’ll talk to Freddy later this evening and arrange matters. We could be over for a while because I want to see DCI Tait, Führer of King’s Lynn CID, talk to him about this bloody silly business of the killer possibly being a vagrant. Try to set him right.’
They had cups of tasteless coffee in the Residents’ Lounge, then Molly went off to make sure the other boys and girls — as she called them — were okay. ‘Thought they’d try to get a meal somewhere else,’ she said, not telling anyone where the somewhere else was: being like Dad, as the posters said, keeping Mum. Molly left and, eventually, Suzie said she wanted to go to bed, went up the stairs with Tommy on her heels.
‘Come in for a little while or stay the night, heart.’ Tommy laid a hand on her arm.
‘You mind, Tom, not tonight, I’m really tired, just want to get my head down.’
‘Fine. Fine. Maybe tomorrow, eh?’
‘Of course, Tommy.’ She was confused. Six months ago she wouldn’t have needed asking twice, she’d have been in there like the proverbial rat up a drainpipe, couldn’t get enough. Going through a phase, wondered how Fordy O’Dell was getting on, still flying his Spits, Wing Commander O’Dell with whom she’d been unfaithful to Tommy. Once only. One-night stand. Never told Tommy and still felt guilty.
Will you won’t you, will you won’t you, will you join the dance.
She went on tiptoes, made sure there was nobody else on the landing and kissed Tommy lightly. ‘See you tomorrow, Tommy darling.’
‘Bright and early, heart.’ Taking it like a man.
Suzie undressed, put on her dressing gown, went along to the big bathroom marked Ladies, washed out a pair of stockings — wondered if she could get any nylons from the aerodrome when they went to the dance on Saturday — and had a strip-down wash, the water not being hot enough for a bath, only allowed five inches these days and here they actually had a five-inch mark on the bath, painted red line.
She went back to her room, pulled on her pyjamas and got into bed, reading her book, Rebecca, couple of pages, and she dropped off then wakened suddenly, light still on. Must switch the light off, laid her head back on the pillow, closed her eyes then heard what had wakened her before.
A quiet scratching at the door.
Chapter Twelve
The scratching turned into a soft knocking, deliberate and persistent on her door.
Suzie slid from the bed, unsteady for a moment, then, finding her balance, ran softly on tiptoe to the door: put her ear to it, then her lips.
‘Who’s there?’ Just loud enough.
And the answer bounced back like a distorted echo, ‘It’s me. Tommy. Let me in.’
Oh, Tommy, not tonight…the words formed in her head and she was about to let them come out.
‘And Molly,’ she heard.
‘Open the door,’ Tommy commanded.
‘It’s not locked.’ Not a gremlin in sight, so she hadn’t locked it. She hadn’t locked it because of getting out of there in the dark: if there was a raid or a fire, wanted to be able to sail straight through. People locked their outer doors in cities, but not always. Out in the country, she reasoned, there was no need, which was strange seeing as how only a little way up the road someone had walked into Knights Cottage and blown the faces off the residents.
She stepped back.
Dandy Tom Livermore and Molly Abelard came in looking grave and slab-faced; though Molly was distinctly tousled, her neat trench coat belted over blue pyjamas, very sexy. With Brian, Suzie thought, and it went through her head that she must be really furious to have been disturbed by Tommy.
‘Never, never leave your door unlocked again, Suzie. Never go out of this room alone. You wait for one of us to be with you; you never stray off by yourself, got it?’
‘I’ll even sleep across your door,’ said Molly, meaning it, the one hundred per cent serious glint in her eyes.
They both meant it and their intensity rocked her.
‘What’s happened?’
Tommy closed the door behind him. ‘Golly Goldfinch’s done a runner from Saxon Hall.’
‘But… Saxon Hall’s…’
‘Yes, it’s impossible, nobody escapes from Saxon Hall, Suzie, but Golly just did; and he had some help.’
Her stomach turned over, rolled and looped, felt like going down in a lift, fast. She even swayed to and fro on her feet, as if about to faint.
They walked her back towards the bed; Tommy putting a hand under her left armpit to steady her.
‘I’ve talked to Golly’s head doctor, fellow called Cornish. Tells me he’s forever going on about the women he killed. Remembers and recites all the details. But he also talks about you, heart, calls you “the lady policeman” and how he wants to get even. Cornish reckons he could be coming after you. And me, possibly, come to think of it.’
There, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the memories flooded back, not in the form of pictures; instead she conjured Golly Goldfinch into a smell, plugged into her nostrils — a horrible stench of dog’s breath, blended with the sour rotting vegetation smell she vividly recalled from that one close call when Golly tried to kill her. And almost did. In her head she heard the frightening creature’s great, low sigh of pleasure as he exhaled.
‘How?’ she asked, meaning how the blazes did Goldfinch manage to escape from Saxon Hall?
‘Told you, heart, he had help.’ Tommy made himself comfortable, sat down next to her on the side of the bed. ‘Could well have been that bitch Lavender, for all I know. There were two women. Stole an ambulance. Golly obviously feigned illness. They thought he had the beginnings of appendicitis. Everything done by the book, but these girls were in dead earnest. One of the so-called male nurses, who are the screws at Saxon Hall you understand, went along with Golly in the back of the ambulance. They killed him. Found him with the ambulance in a lay-by, skull bashed in.’
There was silence for around fifteen seconds. ‘What do we do?’ Suzie asked, foundering, feeling as though she would drown.
