by A. B. King
“Tracy, it's Neil,” I said as I ran. “I'm off to the old camp-site by the river at Willows End. I've found Danny's car, and I think she may have been taken there. If I'm right, the killer is the man called Parsons she interviewed, and I've a feeling he may try to drown Danny there as I believe he drowned her sister fourteen years ago. Alert Grayson for me; I'll phone you again later if I'm right.”
I broke the connection and leapt into the car. I knew the road that ran down the far side of the river and I headed for the lay-by where the Reagan had been parked by Steve Sanders all those long years ago. I half expected to see another car already there, a vehicle used perhaps by Andrew Parsons, but the bay was empty. Either I was totally wrong, or he had parked elsewhere. I exited the car and walked quietly down the footpath, stopping frequently to listen, but beyond the sound of bird song I heard nothing at all. Eventually I could pick out the outline of the bridge through the trees, and once again I paused and looked carefully in all directions for several minutes. Either there was no one else around, or I was completely wrong. There was also the worrying possibility that I was absolutely right, but had come too late.
I set off again, but now walking jauntily as if I was just someone out for a stroll, and crossed the footbridge which seemed ricketier than ever, and with no indication that it had been used recently. Once over the bridge I continued past the camp-site and up the path that led up towards the farm. Once concealed from the bridge in the tree line I turned off the path and into the undergrowth, moving back stealthily so that I could get a view of the bridge. A part of me kept insisting that I had totally out-guessed myself, yet something else inside me instinctively insisted that I was on the right track. I reached a point that was well concealed and gave me a view of the foot bridge, and here I settled down to wait. The nagging doubt that I was totally wrong still kept gnawing away at my insides, yet I clung obstinately to the belief that Danny was still alive because I simply couldn't think of any other course I could follow. I was gambling everything on the hope that she would be brought back here, but a lot earlier than she had publicised. I was gambling for her life on a hunch because I had no choice.
As I crouched in the undergrowth waiting, with my anxiety and self doubt growing rapidly with every passing second, I tried to work out what I would do if my wild and completely unsubstantiated theory should prove correct. I didn't know Andrew Parson's by sight, although I reasoned that if I recognised Danny with anyone, then it was likely that she would be under some form of coercion. If this proved to be the case, was it possible that her abductor would have a gun? To me it seemed unlikely, yet in this lawless age anything was possible, and how else would he keep her under restraint? She wasn't by any means a nervous female, and would be likely to fight unless faced with a really serious threat to her life. If she was under physical restraint, how would he get her down to the river without it being obvious what he was up to? From where he was positioned he knew that it might not be possible to determine if the man was armed, and if the man had a handgun pressed against her then she wouldn't have any choice other than to co-operate. Even if all of that should prove to be true, if it was his intention to dispose of her in the river in the same way as her sister had died in the hope of making it look like a suicide, the minute she was out of his grasp she would make a break for it. She was a strong swimmer, and knowing Danny she would go for it! In such a situation, I knew that I would have to time my intervention to the second; if I made a move too soon I might create the very thing that I feared; her murder!
I glanced up in the sky and saw that clouds were gathering, and from the shape of them I guessed a storm was brewing. I hoped that the weather would hold off long enough for me to be able to see the bridge and to act quickly if I needed to. I glanced across to the homes of Gloria Divine and Alexander DeVere on the far side of the river, wondering if either of these people were already watching. It seemed unlikely because I had told them that events were supposed to be taking place at about ten in the evening, and this was several hours too soon. I wondered if Tracy had already alerted Grayson, and worst of all, I wondered what I would do if I was totally wrong, and Danny was already dead! I felt sick inside as I tried to blot that possibility out of my mind.
Quite suddenly I saw movement on the footpath leading down to the footbridge from the far side. I stared intently, every muscle tensing up as I peered through the foliage of my concealment. At first I couldn't make out anything beyond movement because of the intervening greenery, and then after a few moments two figures emerged, walking side by side in a leisurely manner, and as I looked my heart almost leapt into my mouth as I recognized Danny! With a tremendous surge of wild elation I realised that I had been right all along; the man I took to be Parsons was bringing her back to the very place where her sister had died! I wanted to run towards her, to sweep her away from the terrible danger I knew she was in, and only by a supreme effort of will did I force myself to wait and see what the man planned to do. Within minutes they reached the footbridge over the river, and the man gestured for Danny to go first, and together they walked across towards my side. As they reached the end of the bridge they came to a standstill, and the man took a good look all round him, but Danny stood motionless. If the man had a gun, it wasn't in evidence, because I could see both of his hands, and I noticed that he was wearing what appeared to be linen gloves. Why didn't Danny make a run for it? Maybe she would if I broke cover and distracted him for a few moments? I was on the point of making a dash towards her when the man's voice rang out.
“Mr Hammond,” he called out loudly. “There's no point in hiding; you might as well come down here!”
Chapter Twenty Five.
For a few seconds I was as one paralysed; how the hell did he know I was already there? I was as sure as I could possibly be that my car wasn't bugged. Was it conceivable that Mark Shepherd had warned him? Well, however he had found out, there was no longer any point in trying to hide. I stood up and moved out into the open, watching his motionless figure. He just stood there waiting, and Danny stood at his side doing absolutely nothing. It all seemed to be so unreal. One reads of these situations in books, and they have been portrayed endlessly in films and on television shows, but when encountered in real life it is nothing like as one would imagine it to be. Even though I had been lying in wait, now that the crisis was on me it still seemed totally unreal.
“Come on down,” he called again as he obviously saw me emerge from my place of concealment, “I'm sure that is what you were planning to do anyway?”
He was right. I glanced both ways, but there was nobody else in sight. With all hope of surprising him now vanished I had no choice. I walked down the footpath towards him, every muscle tense, yet totally devoid of any sort of plan of action. As I drew closer I knew instinctively that it had to be Parsons; Danny had described him so well I would probably have recognised him in the street if I'd come upon him by accident. But it wasn't the man I was focussing on as I drew nearer, it was his companion. Danny stood listlessly at his side, staring into space and seemingly totally detached from her surroundings. She gave no sign of having even seen me, let alone recognise who was approaching. As I came within a few paces of her the truth suddenly hit me; she was drugged!
“What the hell have you done to her?” I demanded angrily as I drew nearer to him. On the face of it that was a pretty stupid question because it was obvious that he wasn't going to stand around giving me detailed explanations as to what he had done and why, nor what he planned to be doing to the pair of us in the very near future. He'd called me down for a purpose, and at the moment he held all the winning cards.
“Oh, don't worry about her,” he remarked casually. “Only, don't try anything heroic or she'll finish up in the water, and in her present state I doubt she will float very well.”
He was standing by the end of the bridge where the rail was broken, and just to his right, and only a matter of a foot or so away the bank dropped away sharply, leaving me uncom
fortably aware of the water that was swirling past. If Danny was drugged, then falling in that water probably would be the end of her. If only I could get close enough I figured I might be able to launch a surprise attack on him and snatch her to safety, but as I was almost upon him he put his hand into a pocket and produced a hypodermic.
“Like I said,” he remarked, “don’t try being a hero. One more step and this goes into her. With what she has already has already absorbed, this dose will prove fatal. Naturally, you only have my word for it, but do you really wish to test the honesty of my claim for yourself?”
I stood stock still; even if he was bluffing, which I doubted, I certainly wasn't going to take the risk. As I saw the situation at that moment I only had one real hope of Danny and I getting away with things with a whole skin; if Tracy had alerted Grayson as I had told her, and if only I could string things out for even a brief period, then everything depended on the boys in blue appearing like the fifth cavalry, or whatever it is our American cousins are supposed to send in on a rescue mission, and that would be that.
“Alright,” I said, determined to play for as much time as I could squeeze out of him, “I get the message. What is it you want?”
“Now who said I wanted anything?”
“Let's not play games, Parsons. You've brought Danny down here for a reason; my guess is that the reason involves me.”
“Very good;” he said with mock enthusiasm, “we'll make a detective of you yet.”
“Whatever it is you're planning, you won't get away with it.” I realised just how stupid that sounded the moment the words were out of my mouth, but engaging brain before voice has never been my strong-point.
“Oh dear,” he answered with a sad, condescending shake of his head. “Do you not know that that is the most trite phrase in every film and book that has ever been produced; surely you can think of something more original than that?”
I needed to convince him that I was getting rattled, which was quite easy because I was getting rattled. “Then try this for size,” I snapped back. “I'm not the only person who knows the truth about this business.”
“There you go again, you should get a new script-writer; you really should.”
“The police are on their way here right now.”
“Is that a fact?” he answered derisively, “and I wonder where I've heard that highly unoriginal phrase before?”
The more I could convince him I was an idiot, the better my chances of springing a surprise, I pressed on with a growing feeling of desperation.
“You thought you were being extremely clever in bugging my office, didn't you?” I snarled at him, attempting to mimic one of the gangsters I’d seen years ago on the big screen. “How did you manage to get in to the place, anyway?”
“Oh, that was no problem at all,” he said lightly. “I've had what you might call a pretty chequered career, and it so happens that I once worked for the very company that Danny now owns dealing in security equipment. I learnt a lot of useful tricks while I was there, such as lock-picking, electronic surveylance and so forth, all of which has proved to be very useful to me over the years. I admit that it was a bit of a surprise when Danny here first walked in on me when she did; I thought all that business with her sister was over and done with. However, once I had spoken to her I knew that there was now a very real chance of her getting her memory back, and that could prove highly inconvenient to say the least. As I am sure you will appreciate, I needed to know exactly how things were going, hence the need for bugging. Tracking you down was simple when you know how, and I've done more bugging in my time than you've had hot dinners. Being known as an artist is a useful cover for other, shall we say, more lucrative activities, and it certainly fooled Danny, just as it has fooled a lot of other people. As I am sure you can readily appreciate, I have my reasons for my, shall we say, private life to remain just that; private.”
“So it was you that killed Julia?”
“Not that knowing will do you any good, but yes, she was another one that wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie. I don't mind telling you about it because you are not going to be in a position to convince anyone of the truth of such a ridiculous story anyway. As you suspected, she phoned me after you visit, and I knew that she would have to be silenced. Now that she was widowed she would always be a threat to me, and I don't much like threats. It wasn't difficult to do; I arranged to go and see her, I deliberately alerted the neighbour just to throw the police off the scent. Luckily Julia hadn't lost her taste for sado-masochism since we'd last met. I was hardly in the door before she was apologising and begging me to punish her for being so stupid. Frankly, I was happy to oblige, I even made use of her husband's cane for the purpose. Then I suggested that it would be even more fun if I beat her again once she was in the bath. She was far too stupid to see what I was really planning. I plied her with drink, and then when I was ready I pulled at her feet so that she slipped under the water. Afterwards I used a Stanley knife to slit her wrists to make certain, and to indicate suicide and that solved that little problem. The way I'd planned it, there could only be one real suspect if the police figured out that it couldn't have been suicide after all.”
“Pete Lanscomb.” I said as things started coming together in my mind.
“It would be the natural assumption,” he agreed as if it was of no consequence, “once the police had finished grilling you that is. You had a cast iron alibi and Pete didn't, and undoubtedly from the police point of view, who else would be more likely to set you up as the fall-guy? When did you notice the bug, by the way?”
“That's for me to know and you to worry about! As I've told you; the police are on their way already, so if I were you I'd drop all this nonsense and escape while you can. If you have your passport you might even stand a chance of fleeing the country.”
I hoped that by continually suggesting that the police were aware of the situation, and even then in transit might cause him to change his plans and make a run for it, but there was no change of expression on his face, and I knew that the bluff had failed.
“Ah, but you are not me, are you?” he said. “Still, I suppose I shouldn't blame you for trying the usual feeble ploy in the circumstances. Just for the record, I guessed that once Danny failed to show up you would start looking. I flagged her down not far from your office, and I was gratified to discover that she is just as stupid as you. I told her that I had some 'new information' that would help her, and she fell for it as I knew she would. She promptly invited me into her car to talk, and it didn't take me long to give her a shot. I then drove her in her own car up here to Willows End. I was pretty sure that sooner or later you'd come here as well, and of course I was right. I was watching you when you went into Jackman's, just as I was watching you when you made your amateurish attempt at burglary at my home. I didn't need to be a mental genius to guess that you would come here once you had found Danny's car. I followed at a discrete distance, and when I saw your car in the lay-by I knew I was right. I suppose I should feel grateful, because it saves me tracking you down after I've attended to Danny.”
“You still actually plan to dispose of the pair of us? You must be mad!”
“I'll agree it's regrettable, yet in a sense the real responsibility for the need lies squarely with the pair of you; if you and Danny hadn't started poking your nose into things best left alone neither of you would be in this situation. With your tiresome meddling you really leave me no alternative. You should both have heeded the old adage, 'let sleeping dogs lie'!”
“It was you, and not Julia that killed Danny's sister, wasn't it?”
“It was her own fault.”
It made my blood run cold hearing the callous way he admitted to killing a child without so much as a gesture of regret or remorse. “You are seriously telling me that a young girl of fourteen was the author of her own murder?” I sneered.
“You don't understand do you?” he sighed as if lecturing a particularly dense child. “Look, I was barely ou
t of my teens when I met Julia. I was courting another girl at the time, one who was not only good looking, but also pretty well loaded. Then Julia came along, and we sort of, well, clicked I suppose you might say. My fiancé was one of those girls who didn't believe in sex before marriage, but Julia had no such qualms. She loved it rough, and in those days so did I. We both had our reasons for keeping things quiet, and on that last night I arranged for a phone call to get me away from the camp. I met Julia by arrangement up there on the footpath, and we were having a great time of it I can tell you. But then suddenly we realised that we were being spied on by one of the Fortescue girls. She scuttled away once she rumbled that we had spotted her, but Julia said that she could make her keep quiet. I stayed on the other side of the bridge watching her as Dian came up and they spoke on the bridge. I could tell that Julia wasn't making any headway with the kid, and that made me angry. It started to rain, and then I saw Julia lose her temper. She gave the girl an angry shove which caught her off balance so that she tumbled into the water. Julia walked away and I started to cross the bridge, determined that the girl had to be made to shut up. I think at that stage I just meant to threaten her, I can't remember now, and it doesn't matter anyway. As I got to the end of the bridge she was pulling herself out of the water. She was screaming with rage, threatening to call the police, and that did it. I just grabbed her and threw her out into the deeper water, and at just that moment there was a huge bang. I turned and saw that lightning had struck the camp. Gathering my wits I went over to where Julia was climbing shakily to her feet. Danny was lying face down and looked like burnt meat. We both thought she was dead. Julia was pretty badly shocked, but I impressed upon her what to say and what to do, stressing that if she stuck to her guns the loss of the girls would be treated as an accident and our secret would be safe. We would have been, too, if Danny had died. By the time we realised that she wasn't already dead it was too late. We both went through an anxious few weeks I must admit until became obvious that she had no memory of what had happened. To our great relief, to all intents and purposes it looked like being a permanent situation. I suppose I always knew in my heart that the day might dawn when she would start to remember something. If she started making waves, well, once that happened I knew that I would have no choice other than to silence her. And you know what? The ironical part of the whole business is that my fiancé ditched me only a few weeks later. As far as I was concerned, it was all for nothing.”
