The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery, crime and suspense)

by Mitchell, D. M.

  They entered the study and two men rose from their seats. The woman flinched at seeing them. ‘You said you lived alone.’

  ‘And I do, ordinarily. Please forgive me for not mentioning them earlier. I did not want to unnerve you any more than you are already. Let me introduce you to the two other members of The Lunar Club, myself being the third – Howard Baxter and Carl Wood.’

  ‘The Lunar Club?’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘Without their help you would not be here. We have worked together…’

  They stared at her, failing to hide their amazement. Baxter lunged forward and held out his hand to shake, but she backed off in alarm. Charles Rayne held up a gentle hand for him to step back. ‘Pleased to meet you at last,’ said Baxter as Charles led her away.

  ‘Come this way, through here,’ he said indicating a door that opened onto a flight of stairs. He nodded at her midriff. ‘Can you manage the stairs? They are dreadfully small and tight, as is the way with these old places.’

  ‘I am not made of porcelain,’ she said, and he thought immediately of her doll’s face as she slept. She gripped the banister tightly and went up the stairs.

  ‘Second door on the left,’ he said.

  The room was small but neat, plain unassuming furniture sat against prettily patterned wallpaper, a wooden-framed mirror, a double bed heavily laden with thick woollen blankets, a bedside table strewn with a few books.

  ‘It has been so long since I slept in a proper bedroom,’ she said. ‘Able to turn out the light…’

  ‘I have arranged for a local woman, a former midwife, to attend to your needs when the time is right.’ He saw her sudden, alarmed expression. ‘Don’t worry; she thinks you are on the run from a violent husband. She is sworn to secrecy. I know her well.’ He went over to the window and drew the curtains closed. ‘We must ensure you and your babies are going to be well. But you will need help beyond all this, though, and on that score I can assure you I have matters in hand.’

  She sat slowly on the bed. The springs squeaked. ‘Why are you doing all this?’

  He found he had to avert his head when she looked at him directly. He was all too aware of her beauty and his disfigurement. ‘Because you need my help.’

  She didn’t answer. Her hand was running over the soft woollen blanket, disturbing tiny fibres of wool that sprang up and swirled in the air like so much dust. ‘I cannot stay,’ she said. ‘You know they will find me, and they will kill you.’

  ‘For now you are safe,’ he said. ‘What name do you wish me to call you? I ask only because it is difficult to address someone without using their name.’

  She shrugged. ‘What’s in a name anyway?’ she said bleakly. ‘Please leave me alone for a while.’

  ‘I will fix you something to eat presently,’ he said. He left her staring fixedly at the blanket and closed the door softly on her. When he came back with a tray of food and knocked softly at the door, opening it and poking his head round, he saw her in bed sound asleep. She looked so peaceful, he thought, but he knew better. She could never be at peace.

  He stood there, hands wringing, outside the door. Pacing, pacing, and as nervous as an expectant father. From within the room he heard agonising screams. She had been in labour for hours, far longer than was good for her, said the midwife, dashing out and then dashing in again, closing the door on him before he could catch a glimpse of what was happening. He heard scuffling and soothing words, and more screams and panting and rapid breathing. He heard water being squeezed from a cloth into a bowl. And then, finally, he heard a baby cry and there were no more screams. Then even the baby fell silent and he knocked tentatively at the door. Eventually the midwife stepped outside. She looked exhausted herself, locks of grey hair wet with sweat sticking to her forehead.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl,’ she said, rubbing her tired eyes. ‘Both of them bruisers, and little wonder she was so large and they took some getting out.’ Then her face looked all at once solemn. ‘But, Mr Rayne, I have some terrible news…’

  ‘What? Tell me!’

  ‘I am sorry. There was nothing I could do. She is dead.’

  * * * *

  Abandoned Baby FoundSouth Wales Echo

  May 1976

  Cardiff police are today trying to locate the mother of a baby found abandoned in one of the cubicles in the women’s toilets at Cardiff Central railway station yesterday evening.

  Mrs Sylvia Tomas, a cleaner at the station for over fifteen years said she had seen many strange things in her time working for the station but had never come across an abandoned baby.

  ‘I heard a baby crying from one of the cubicles,’ said Mrs Tomas. ‘At first I thought the mother was in there too, but when I heard it crying for a while I knocked on the door and was surprised to see the baby.’

  The baby boy, which police say is aged only a week or so old, was found wrapped in a woollen blanket, quite healthy but obviously distressed.

  ‘Fortunately, with the mild weather, we weren’t concerned that the baby had been kept warm enough,’ said a police spokesman. ‘However, we were worried he might be a little dehydrated. We’d like to ask the mother to come forward and we can offer help. She may be in a critical condition herself and in need of medical attention.’

  The police did admit the baby had been left with a single piece of jewellery, in a brown envelope wrapped in its blanket, the nature of which they will not at this stage disclose in order to verify the correct identity of the woman when and if she comes forward to claim her child.

  In the meantime the baby, as yet without a name, is being cared for by the authorities and is said to be doing well in spite of his railway ordeal. Police are calling for anyone who may have witnessed the woman going into the toilets with her baby.

  * * * *

  7

  Gareth Davies

  Euston tube station, London

  2010

  He would forever refer to it as that one event which marked a decided shift in his fate, if such a thing exists. He didn’t believe in such things ordinarily. But it was as if his life were but two great plates split apart, a continent once secure in itself now divided. The two halves would never again be joined, irrevocably drifting away from one another. The existence he’d known and trusted, had taken for granted, all at once transformed and called into question. Belonged to another. On that evening he began his journey towards another life leaving the old forever behind.

  Until then things had been going on as normal, Gareth Davies’ life locked into a seeming spiral of sameness and predictability. He was only thirty-four-years of age, at a time in his life when he considered himself ‘fortunately young’; that is, old enough to feel a growing confidence in himself rather than the empty bravado of his younger years, gradually shedding his self-consciousness like an old skin. He convinced himself he was in possession of a certain maturity that only comes with age, poised, as he thought, on that enviable pedestal from where he was able to look down at both those younger than him with frustration and disdain, and those older than him in the same way but through the additional lens of pity.

  He was working for a respectable and successful real-estate agency in central London. Conrad Jefferson Realty Co. It was your high-end stuff, not your bungalows and semis. A single deal could be worth millions, the commission made measured in the many thousands.

  Gareth was good at his job. Had a nose for it, they often told him. He made his name early, moving swiftly up the ranks until it was hinted at very strongly that if he stayed long enough he might even make partner. He had it all – a pretty girlfriend, a dockside flat (OK, so it was a small dockside flat), a Mercedes, he travelled regularly and far, and had a sickeningly healthy bank balance. His future seemed to stretch out before him like an ironed bed sheet – flat and entirely wrinkle free.

  How wrong he was.

  On that evening in question he hadn’t seen Fitzroy at first. It was rush hour and
he was on a typically crowded Euston underground platform, London, waiting for the train.

  He hated rush hour, he thought. No, scratch that; he despised it. During rush hour he tended to become snow blind – with so many people around he simply didn’t see them and, he guessed, they didn’t see him either. The tube was as packed as it always was on a Friday evening, with everyone head down and desperate to start the weekend. They were all crammed onto the platform, waiting, cursing that three minutes between trains can feel like an eternity when you’re worn out and dead on your legs.

  He was reading a paper. More gloomy news about the recession, the first signs that the Greek economy could go tits up and take down the entire Eurozone, borrowed-up-to-their-eyeballs like everyone else. It was a time of cuts, more cuts and redundancies; it was a time of a coalition government and opposition party sharing something for once; the fact that they both didn’t have a clue about how to solve the mess. Lots of symptomatic things like programmes on TV about making your money stretch and how to recycle your old soap. Lots of house repossessions, growing dole queues, people stealing lead from church rooftops and the brass plaques from war memorials to sell on. It was the worse economic depression since the ‘30s and the mood was generally sombre. Especially so tonight because the trains were being delayed due to signal failure. You could read the frustration in people’s faces. If there’d been a huge cartoon-style bubble over the heads of the crowd it would have read simply ‘fuck this!’ It didn’t help that billboards on the wall opposite goaded him with scantily clad women sunning themselves besides azure seas on exotic beaches.

  Someone sneezed wetly and disgustingly into a tissue behind him and ruined the daydream he’d allowed himself to fall into as he studied the woman’s breasts bubbling out of her bikini, wondering and not really caring whether they’d been digitally enhanced or not. He closed his eyes briefly to blot everything out and when he opened them Fitzroy was standing in front of him. His presence took him by surprise.

  ‘How are you, Gareth?’ he asked.

  Gareth. He’d never been particularly fond of the name, unlike others who were undeniably proud of their moniker. Gareth. So called after the man who adopted him. Apparently his father before him had been named Gareth, as had his grandfather before that, and so on. A string of Gareths. Welsh tradition. He guessed he gave him Gareth to make him feel as if he belonged, so he could lay claim to some form of heritage stretching way back when. It never quite worked for him. He always felt like an impostor, a weak link in the Gareth chain.

  Gerard Fitzroy, in a strange way, reminded him very much of his adoptive father. When Davies joined the company as a fresh-faced youngster out of university, Fitzroy assumed the mantle of mentor, took him under his protective wing, taught him the ropes, forgiving him his many mistakes and celebrating with him his early triumphs. He said he had the talent to go far. He was the first to see this in him. He vowed that when he grew older he would model himself on Gerard Fitzroy; calm, intelligent, patient, quietly spoken yet with each word thoroughly thought out, meaningful and wise. He cared about people. He had a humanity the world was fast losing. He genuinely liked Gerard Fitzroy.

  But he did not want to see him that evening. He could feel his insides shrivelling up as their eyes met. Gareth turned his head aside, pretending to look at the bright yellow LEDs that flickered on the board above the platform, announcing that a train would be along in one minute’s time, but mainly because he did not feel man enough to meet his warm, sincere gaze.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Gareth said, folding up his paper and trapping it beneath his armpit.

  Fitzroy was aged about fifty-nine, bald on top, a band of hair that had once been black but now streaked heavily with grey, cut short above the ears and the back of the head. His lips were thin and pale, but his cheeks were flushed pink. His shirt was always an immaculate white, never any other colour, the knot of his tie perfectly formed and sitting dead centre under his collar. His suit was always charcoal grey and he always wore the same style woollen overcoat and carried the same buff-coloured briefcase that his wife had given him as a present thirty-odd years before.

  He was surprised that Fitzroy’s smile was genuine, almost as if he felt sorry for him and was offering support. The irony was hard to bear.

  The organisation (weird, isn’t it, he thought, how we refer to the organisation as if it were some form of mindless entity separate from the people who make it up, who make the decisions?), well, the organisation was restructuring, responding to the economic downturn, the slump in the property market. In short – and it hurt Gareth to think of this even after all this time – they had shafted Gerard Fitzroy and he’d done the dirty for them. He may have risen up the dubious and sticky hierarchical ladder to stand above Fitzroy, in effect to become his superior, but he realised he displayed none of his superior qualities when backroom meetings focussed on shedding staff. In particular, staff of a certain age.

  Discrimination, naturally, but rife in such places and difficult to prove. So when Fitzroy’s name was raised did I object, thought Gareth? Did I defend? Did I, in fact, raise any concerns whatsoever? Not a single one. Moreover, he added the weight of his eager support. After all, Fitzroy had considerable experience and he’d be sure to find something else soon enough. He said it, but he didn’t believe that delusion for a second. His age, the rising unemployment, the shrinking property market, many things were stacked against him.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Fitzroy said, turning away from him, staring into the black tunnel, a blast of warm air ruffling his short hair. He bent down, set his briefcase on the platform.

  ‘Look, Gerard…’ he began.

  He began but he did not know how to finish. He did not know where he should take the rest of the sentence. Fitzroy held up a hand to bid him stop. Gareth needed no such encouragement.

  When they suggested Fitzroy should go he knew he should have had the strength to say no. They, on the other hand, were quite plainly looking for him to have the strength to say yes. They were testing him. They knew how he admired him. The path to his ultimate promotional prize blocked only by this thing with Fitzroy. All he had to do was do the dirty. Simple. So he said yes and agreed that he must be first amongst those to feel the axe.

  He broke the news to Fitzroy himself. How he hated that heavy, sick sensation; Fitzroy sat in front of him, bemused expression, waiting for him to begin, then realising something was wrong. The news was going to be bad. And being the man he was, he said, ‘Take your time, Gareth.’ Giving advice and guidance to the last.

  The twin glinting eyes of the train’s headlights appeared out of the void to the sound of its rumbling engine, like a red and white dragon hurtling from its cave. People stepped forward as a body.

  ‘Have a good life, Gareth,’ said Fitzroy, his dark eyes moist.

  He took a single step over the thickly painted yellow line at the platform’s edge and, as calmly as he had conducted everything in his life, he jumped onto the rails and into the path of the thundering train.

  Someone screamed, or it might have been the screeching of brakes. Gareth stood immobile as Fitzroy’s body disappeared beneath the rush of metal, and thought he heard the ripping of cloth and the splitting of bone. But these were sounds he realised he must have dubbed onto the scene later, during his many tortured recollections, to torment him, for he could not have heard them over the deafening sound of the train.

  ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ a woman ranted next to him.

  He was aware of people backing away in horror, but mostly he remembered others who gathered around to get a better look. He made out the flap of Fitzroy’s black coat, wet with blood, in the thin gap between the train and the platform’s edge and he gulped back the urge to be sick. He staggered backwards, his hand to his mouth, noticing Fitzroy’s buff leather briefcase sitting on the platform like a lost and forlorn little terrier.

  The tiny crowd grew in number. Someone was snapping away with their phone, the images no doubt
sent out over the ether to share with friends within minutes. Guess what happened to me on the way to the office?

  A uniformed woman waving her white plastic signal paddle came bounding over, forcing her way through the crush of people.

  ‘Stand back! Stand back!’ she cried, her middle-European accent coming out thick in her panic and almost making her words unintelligible.

  ‘Great!’ snarled an irritated commuter, dressed not unlike Fitzroy himself. He glowered at his watch and went over to the tube map on the wall. Gareth was surprised how fast the platform now emptied as people realised they were going nowhere from here. The uniformed woman was shouting something into her radio and at the same time turned to shoo away another wave of people who were streaming down the steps and onto the platform. ‘Closed! Closed!’ she screeched at them. ‘Closed till further notice. Dead man on the track!’

  A corpulent woman washed up against the not inconsiderable size of the railway attendant and immediately rolled her eyes. ‘How fucking inconsiderate!’ she opined and her puffy little legs swivelled on her expensive Jimmy Choo heels to retrace her steps.

  The attendant then turned her plastic paddle on Gareth. ‘Go now!’ she ordered sternly.

  He couldn’t. He simply stared at the spot where Fitzroy lay dead on the tracks, largely imagining the carnage that lay beneath the train. She tapped Gareth firmly on the back with the paddle. He spun round on her, his face fierce with shock and anger.

  ‘He was a friend of mine!’ He said, swiping away the paddle. She backed off a little.

  Suddenly remembering, he frantically looked around for Fitzroy’s briefcase.

  Someone had stolen it.

  * * * *