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

by Mitchell, D. M.

  Gareth looked at the name and number on the piece of paper. What the hell, he thought. What harm can it do?

  * * * *

  23

  Fruitcake

  For him, Cardiff Central station was where it all began. Or ended. It depended upon your point of view. This place, right here, right in front of him, was where his mother had abandoned him. Through that door (OK, so it wasn’t that very door as it had been replaced ages ago) and in those same women’s toilets. 1976.

  He’d often pictured it in his head. It was late, the platform thinning somewhat as the last dregs of commuters headed home. A woman clutching a small bundle to her chest, unnoticed, attracting not the slightest attention. But there again why should she? There was nothing unusual about her, a woman carrying a baby. Nothing unusual in the way she nipped into the toilets.

  Gareth Davies wondered what her expression had been as she glanced about her to see if anyone were watching. Was it cold and calculating, indicative of a job to be done, to be got out of the way quickly, not even a hint of emotion? Or was it pained, remorseful, tearful? It depended upon which mood seized him, whether he wanted to despise or pity her, or even whether he despised or pitied himself.

  He imagined her exiting, the bundle no longer at her chest. He even followed her path from the door, saw her faint shape scurrying down the platform and out of his life forever. She could only have gone that way, he thought, headed for the exit or another platform. She had walked this very platform, passed within inches of where he stood now.

  He breathed deep as if to breathe in what remained of her presence, but all he could smell were the acrid fumes from throbbing diesel engines and strong coffee wafting from the café further down the platform.

  As a consequence he hated this place for all that it represented. He’d been here a few times over the years and the feelings only grew stronger. What he should not have done was come to this platform in the first place. He needn’t have; his train didn’t even depart from here. But it was as if he were drawn against his will. But for what? To suffer abandonment all over again, to heat himself up with something he couldn’t change? Or to try and reach out for someone that was the only true link to who he truly was; to that woman who took with her, when she scurried empty-handed down the platform, his very identity, his sense of belonging; took away the very meaning to his life before it had even begun?

  ‘You’ll find it’s the door on the left,’ a woman’s voice said at his right shoulder.

  It caused him to start. ‘Sorry?’ he said, turning to look at her.

  She didn’t meet his eyes, though he could see hers were a vivid shade of green. Her hair was a luxuriant red, shining healthily and long, hanging just above her shoulder blades. She sported a short, heavily worn leather jacket and equally worn slim-legged denim jeans. She had her hands thrust deep in her jacket pockets. Attractive, he thought almost immediately and almost against his will. She was chewing gum like it was going out of fashion.

  ‘The men’s toilets are the ones on the left.’ She pointed limply, returning the hand to the pocket as if it were a shy creature unwilling to poke its nose out in daylight. ‘You appear confused. It’s the one marked with the little man wearing trousers.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, expelling a nervous laugh. ‘No, not confused, thank you.’

  ‘Unless it really is the one with the little dress on – it’s none of my business to pry.’

  Though he smiled at her remark she did not smile in return. Her head was making little darting movements, first looking down the platform to her left and then to her right. She met his gaze only briefly. A minimum of makeup, he thought, if any. Lips pale but full, the only colour on her cheeks brought on by the wind streaking through the station. He wondered whether the striking red of her hair was real or from a bottle. Couldn’t be real, he decided, but it looked good on her.

  He stepped aside. ‘I apologise, I’m blocking your way.’

  ‘Not good to stand outside the women’s toilets and stare. People might get the wrong impression.’ She nodded upwards at a CCTV camera. ‘Careful, may be used in evidence and all that…’

  She made him feel curiously embarrassed. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t doing that,’ he defended.

  She looked into his eyes, unblinking. Then gave the tiniest of laughs with a shadow of a smile tagged on. ‘Kidding,’ she said, and the smile faded before it had really got going. Her jaws worked the gum hard. ‘He was found there,’ she said out of the blue.

  ‘Sorry, who was found?’

  ‘The baby. Abandoned. In the toilet cubicle, back in 1976. I was a year old then.’

  Gareth struggled to pull together his words. ‘Why would you say that?’ he asked, frowning deeply, quietly disturbed by what she’d said.

  ‘Because it’s true, is why. In there; abandoned.’

  He looked about himself uncertainly. Was this some kind of a sick prank being played on him? ‘How do you know about that?’ he said.

  ‘People know lots of things about lots of things. I know about that one.’

  ‘Why’d you pick me to tell it to?’

  ‘Making conversation,’ she said. ‘You looked lost.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What else would there be? It’s what people do all the time. I’m a facts person, queer little anecdotes. The correct one at the correct time makes you appear intelligent and well-informed.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’ he said. ‘Because if it is then it’s definitely not funny.’

  She shrugged, her face impassive. ‘I don’t do jokes. Some people are born without the capacity to either receive or deliver jokes. I’m one of them. People have told me I have a dry sense of humour, which basically means it’s as acrid and as featureless as a desert. Sorry to disappoint.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said quickly, picking up his suitcase.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘We’re all headed somewhere.’

  He ordered a black coffee, noticing as he handed the money over to the man at the checkout that his hand was shaking. He carried his drink over to a small table in the corner of the room and sat down. The platform café wasn’t unduly busy and he was glad of the quiet. He was wondering what all that with the woman on the platform was when he saw her enter the café. She scanned the room. He bent his head down, avoiding looking at her. The next thing he knew she was sliding into a chair opposite him.

  ‘Am I being stalked?’ he asked. He did not mean it as light-hearted banter.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, we got off on the wrong foot back there. My fault.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said, returning his attention to stirring his drink.

  ‘No harm done,’ she said.

  ‘None that’s visible.’

  She pouted her lips. ‘Ooh, raw nerve touched, I think. I’m sorry if what I said upset you.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘It did. Even I can see that.’

  ‘OK, it did. Fine, let’s leave it at that. I’d like to be alone and drink my coffee now.’

  ‘It’s shit,’ she said. ‘The hot chocolate is marginally better, but don’t you find that’s always the case wherever you go? Weird, huh?’

  ‘Do you never mince your words?’

  ‘I talk straight. Say things as they are.’

  ‘I noticed. Now if you don’t mind I’d like to drink my shit in peace. Is that straight enough for you?’

  She took out the gum and wrapped in a discarded paper sugar sachet. She took another stick of gum and rolled it onto her tongue. ‘Straight as an arrow,’ she said, but didn’t take it as her queue to leave. ‘Can I buy you a drink to say sorry?’

  Gareth held up his paper cup. ‘Sorted, thanks. I don’t want to be rude…’ He was brought up by her startled expression, her eyes wide and looking beyond his shoulder to the wall behind him. Her jaw had stopped its irritating chewing.

  ‘You’re being tracked,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ he said incredulously.
/>   ‘Followed. I’ve just seem him walk in.’

  ‘Who has walked in?’ he asked. This is ridiculous, he thought, and getting more absurd by the minute.

  ‘The black guy, sitting down with a coffee and a fairy cake.’

  He looked across her shoulder and saw him. He looked innocent enough. ‘Now how on earth could you know that?’ he said. ‘You have your back to the counter.’

  ‘There’s a mirror on the wall behind you,’ she said.

  He turned. ‘Oh yeah, very James Bond of you.’ A total fruitcake, he thought. He must have a label on his forehead declaring his susceptibility. ‘He’s just a regular guy having a regular coffee and grabbing a bite to eat before heading off.’ He rose from the table. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, lady, but I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Seriously, you have to trust me,’ she said.

  ‘Seriously, I have to do no such thing.’

  ‘You think I’m some kind of nutcase?’ she said.

  ‘The penny’s dropped at last!’ he said. ‘I’m being followed by a man who likes fairy cakes. I’m all a-tremble!’ He made pretended to check his watch. ‘My train leaves soon. Sorry, got to be going.’

  ‘The train to Winchester doesn’t leave for another half hour,’ she said. ‘We’ve plenty of time.’

  Gareth’s jaw hung open. He closed his eyes and scratched his temple. ‘How do you know I’m going to Winchester? No, tell you what, don’t bother. I’ve had enough. Please don’t follow me or I’ll search out the transport police to haul your crazy arse out of here.’

  He grabbed his case and swept out of the café as quickly as he could, casting a passing glance at the man eating his cake. He was more interested in the buttercream than anything else, and in reading a dog-eared copy of a fishing magazine.

  Gareth was glad to board the train. He’d felt pretty vulnerable stood there on the platform, thinking that at any moment the raving young woman could pounce on him with fresh imaginings. But she never showed her face again, though he searched the crowd of people on the platform even as the train began to pick up speed and pull away from the station.

  Naturally she wasn’t quite right in the head, he thought, and he should have reported her. But he admitted that what had come out of that head had unnerved him. It had been one hell of a coincidence that she mentioned the abandoned baby. But that’s all it could be, a coincidence, he told himself. And really, who the hell would set out to follow him?

  Maybe it was the police? He’d been unsettled ever since Stafford and Styles had cross-examined him at the station over the murder of the poor young Polish woman in Manchester. Ever since the Cavendish sisters mentioned the strange Canadian he had the feeling that someone was watching him, keeping him under tabs. Or that could purely be his insecurity taking centre-stage again.

  His attention wandered to his fellow passengers. A man rattling away at his laptop; another one head back, eyes closed; a middle-aged woman engrossed in a tatty paperback; a wheezy old man chatting away on a mobile. Every one of them appeared thoroughly harmless; every one of them might be a potential threat.

  Christ, he thought, rubbing his eyes, you’ve let her get to you that’s all, let her peel back the lid on the tub of fears you’ve been storing up. Time to put the lid back on them.

  No sign of the black guy, he thought, then admonished himself. Of course not, he was just a normal guy. The fantasy was in her head.

  It was a pretty head though, he mused. Attractive for a complete nutter. He allowed himself a smile and relaxed into his seat. Time to forget about her. He had other things to think about, like meeting Lambert-Chide; like finding his sister.

  * * * *

  24

  Gattenby House

  Winchester railway station was smaller than he envisaged, made up of two platforms under painted wooden canopies supported by painted iron pillars. One of the lucky stations to have escaped Beeching’s cuts way back when, he thought. The platforms themselves were relatively busy, given the inclement weather; there was a cold wind driving sheets of fine rain into the sour faces of travellers.

  He watched the train snake out of the station and looked at his watch. It had taken over three hours and two changes to get here from Cardiff. He shared the platform with a few groups of sullen-faced people and the odd-person with their head down in a book or newspaper awaiting the next train. A group of Chinese tourists, in lively good humour and clutching cameras and guidebooks, chatted amiably amongst themselves in spite of the freezing British weather. Nothing would stop them enjoying their Jane Austen tour, he mused. He followed them out of the station and into the car park. They hitched a ride in a taxi and he was left pretty much all alone in the rain.

  Gareth had made the call. He was put through to a Randall Tremain. He was told he was invited to Gattenby House in Hampshire to meet personally with David Lambert-Chide, who was most eager to thank him in for the recovery of the family heirloom. The man, he was told, would also be delighted if he could stay the night and have dinner with him, taking advantage of everything the house had to offer in the way of swimming pools, saunas and so on. Call it a mini-break, Randall Tremain had said lightly.

  He was taken aback by the throwing open of Gattenby House doors to him so readily; Lambert-Chide was a notoriously private man, so the brooch must have meant a great deal to him, Gareth surmised, to go to all this trouble for a nobody, a jobbing photographer. He was also quite surprised at how insistent Lambert-Chide was. They arranged that a car would pick him up from Winchester station and he was sent first class train tickets the next day.

  Presently a sleek black Bentley cruised incongruously into the car park and it was only when the door opened and the driver came across that he realised it was meant for him.

  ‘This is rather plush,’ Gareth said as the driver held open the door and he settled himself down on the luxurious cream leather seat. ‘I expected something a little less stately.’ The driver smiled politely and took Gareth’s overnight bag. The door shut with a solid thud. The driver took the wheel and didn’t say another word for the next fifty minutes or so.

  The car passed silently through the chalk uplands and rolling hills of the South Downs National park, looking bedraggled and brown in the winter drizzle, but, Gareth thought, quintessentially English with its hedgerows, trees, patchwork of fields and open grassland. He turned on the radio and half-dozed to the scraping of a violin on Classic FM.

  He couldn’t care less about any reward that had been offered. He had refused to take it. But he was still curious as to what the connection was between Erica and the theft of a Cartier brooch some seventy years ago. And anyhow, he thought, if anything the time away from Deller’s End would do him good, he convinced himself. Being shut away from everyone for so long can’t be good for the body and soul. So even if his search for Erica came to a dead end and there wasn’t anything to be gleaned in that direction from the visit, a mini-break at the expense of one of the country’s richest men might be just the tonic, he thought.

  They turned off a quiet country road marked as private. It went on for about a mile or so, naked grey elm trees lining the route on either side like sombre sentinels; beyond these stretched open fields, not a house or cottage to be seen. The car eventually pulled up in front of a large set of black wrought iron gates supported by twin redbrick pillars. A CCTV camera looked down on them from the top of a metal box-like pole. Almost as soon as the car drew to a halt the gates began to swing slowly open and the car headed sedately along the long road that stretched beyond them.

  The landscape had Capability Brown written all over it, or that of one of his closest disciples; acres of sculpted hills, rolling lawns and carefully crafted gardens, glimpses of statues and follies through the trees, a huge lake fed by a river that was spanned by an ancient-looking stone bridge over which they drove. A pair of swans sitting serenely on the river completed the picture-postcard view.

  The final approach to Gattenby House had been p
urposely designed to impress, and Gareth admitted it worked on him, as it must have done on numerous visitors over the last two hundred years or so. Reading something on a website was one thing, but to see it in reality really brings it home, he thought. He had prepared for Gattenby House to be a grand affair, as befitted a billionaire, but still the place took his breath away.

  The name Gattenby House was misleading; it was more a mansion or a stately home than a house. Working in real estate Gareth would have drooled over selling something like this. It was mostly Georgian in origin, partly Victorian in its later additions, and a smattering of other styles in between, yet they all worked very well together, he thought, unlike some he’d seen which had their fair share of bits taken away and bits added leaving muddled architectural monstrosities.

  The gravel drive swept up to a set of magnificent stone steps, as expected, and the car came to a halt beneath these. The driver came round and held open the door for Gareth and as he emerged from the Bentley a man headed down the stone steps to greet him.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Davies. Good to meet you,’ he said, holding out a hand to shake. ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m Randall Tremain.’ Something that might have been a smile twitched briefly on his lips.

  He was much older than he’d envisaged, but tall, well built, his hair cropped short. Must be in his sixties, Gareth thought, but he looked good for his age, and his grip was hard and decisive; together it suggested a man who looked after himself, worked out maybe. He signalled for the driver to collect the bag.