by steve higgs
I didn't even have to wait long, as less than a minute later CI Quinn himself together with the same Sergeant entered the room.
Warily we shook hands, but there were no words of animosity exchanged. CI Quinn's Sergeant, who I soon learned to be named Barraclough, went through the preliminaries such as setting up the tape-recording device and listing who was present.
‘Shall we begin?’ I asked when it seemed there was nothing else they needed to do.
CI Quinn leaned forward in his chair. The two of them had positioned themselves on the opposite side of the table to me. ‘Mr. Michaels. Please tell us in detail how you came to learn that Mabel Cotton, Dorothy Myers, Edna Hinkley, and Barbara Tremont were conspiring to kill their husbands.'
As he sat back into his chair I began talking, leading them through the initial contact with the client, the runes on the houses, the overheard conversation at the golf club and on to the stakeout that Hilary conducted at the tea room in West Malling. I explained as best as I could about the old lady and her role in the murders and did so without ever referring to her as a witch. Quinn stopped me though when I started talking about the coroner.
‘You think the coroner, Dr. Mallory is involved?’ He asked.
‘I cannot see how she could mistake a death by lightning for whatever it was that actually killed them. We have the wives on camera discussing the deaths and Rose, the old lady, stating that she is going to call up a storm this weekend to kill Edna Hinkley's husband. While I am quite sure her witch act is all hokum, the wives have bought into it and are allowing Rose to murder them. They could not possibly hope to get away with it unless the coroner that would determine the cause of death was on the payroll.'
‘Nonsense, Mr. Michaels. I know Dr. Mallory socially. She is not involved in any conspiracy to cover up a series of murders.' I wondered if socially meant they were sleeping together but didn't voice my question. ‘Dr. Mallory will have given a death verdict based on the evidence she was presented with. You said yourself that you don't know how they are creating the lightning effect. When we find the old lady, the truth will be revealed.’
I pondered that statement for a while. Then I checked my watch. We had been going for more than two hours. I wanted to continue to argue that Dr. Mallory was involved but I saw the futility in it. CI Quinn was not one to listen. Certainly not to anything I had to say.
If I pushed the matter he would continue to scoff at me. I cut my losses.
‘Is there anything else that you remember that will be of interest to my investigation?’ he asked.
I shook my head. We were done.
Coming out of the station I called Mick Cotton’s mobile number. I hoped he would have found it by now.
He answered, but only after it had rung for an age and I thought it was about to go to voicemail. ‘Hi, is that you, Tempest. I was asleep, sorry.’
‘My apologies for waking you. I am on my way to the hospital. You’re not about to be released, are you?’
‘No, they said I had to stay for at least another day.’
‘I’ll be there within the hour.’
I debated going home to walk the dogs, but this task was more pressing, plus Hilary was there. It was just after midday, a trip to Pembury and back, plus the time to chat with Mick would probably take up three hours or more. If I was unlucky I would get caught in the school run traffic on the way back along the A25. It would double the time to get home.
No point delaying it then by going home now. I plipped the car open, gunned the engine and got going.
The Missing Piece. Friday, November 11th 1215hrs
I found Mick propped up in his bed watching BBC1. Bargain Hunt was showing, but he switched it off when I came into the room.
‘How did it go at the station?’ he asked.
I didn't bother to regale him with anecdotes about CI Quinn. ‘It was fine. They had already been able to obtain confessions from three of them.' Barbara was still denying any knowledge or involvement with the others and in the planned murder of her husband, a tactic that was unlikely to bring the result she wanted. ‘My concern is with the whereabouts and identity of the witch and with who poisoned you.'
‘You think Emma might be involved?’
‘Emma is the girl you spent Wednesday night with?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a picture?’
‘No. taking pictures of girls you sleep with once is creepy, man.’ A valid point. ‘What do you want to see her picture for?’
I ignored the question. ‘Can you describe her for me please?’
‘Err, about five feet eight inches tall, blonde, stunning rack, slim waist.’
‘More detail.’ I prompted.
‘Oh, err, really pretty blue eyes.'
‘Her age?’
He hesitated, his cheeks coloured slightly. ‘Somewhere around forty, I think.’
‘Did you get her last name?’
‘Stone.’
‘Emma Stone? The famous Hollywood actress, Emma Stone.’ That her name matched someone famous did not make it fake, but it hinted that she had given him a false name instead of her real one.
‘Anything else? Anything else about her that you remember that might help give me an accurate picture?’
‘Um, she had quite big biceps.'
And there it was.
I pulled out my phone, googled Victoria Mallory and showed him the picture.
‘Hey, that’s her! That’s Emma Stone. Except it says Victoria Mallory on the picture.’
‘Dr. Mallory is the coroner that examined your father's body and determined that his death was accidental.'
He looked stunned. He was adding it up.
‘I think she is directly involved. Her verdicts are never questioned so she can write what she likes. The old lady...'
‘The witch?’
‘Yes, the witch is murdering people, I still don’t know how, and the coroner is covering it up.’
‘Why?’
‘For money would be my first guess. I also think she poisoned you.’
His eyes widened. He hadn’t connected the dots until then. ‘How?’
‘Anthrax can be dispensed in a powder form. It would have been easy for her to sprinkle it on something you ate or into a drink maybe. You can contract it by ingestion or inhalation, so it was probably easy for her.' I had looked up Anthrax poisoning while I was sitting in the police waiting room.
I looked about, twitching while I tried to make a decision. ‘I need you to call the police. They need to come and take a statement from you.'
‘Should I call them now?' he asked, his hand reaching for his phone.
I had already told the police that I thought she was involved somehow and had been dismissed. Mick would call from here and be able to report that I thought he knew who had poisoned him. ‘Do it.' I said. There was grit in my voice now. I could sense the end of the case.
I hung around while he made the call. He spoke to one person, was passed to another and then another and the phone call got quite animated as suddenly the person he was talking to was quite interested in what he had to say. A poisoning in rural Kent was a rare occasion. I imagined at the other end of the phone was a detective that suddenly had a reason to take their feet off the desk.
When he hung up he looked satisfied. ‘They are on their way.’
I nodded and stood up. ‘You don’t need me anymore. I will be of no assistance with the police, I might actually cloud their involvement, so I will get going.’
‘What about the witch?’
Good question. I didn't have an answer. That wasn't what one told the client though. ‘I believe the police will soon have her in custody. Your stepmother and her friends will provide enough information for them to track her down.' I wasn't convinced that was true, but it sounded better than "Don't shut your eyes".
We said our goodbyes. I promised to send him a final bill and he promised faithfully to honour it even though he worried that the ten grand he had
received from his stepmother was now most likely forfeit and due to be paid back.
I left him with that quandary and headed for home.
Never Turn Your Back. Friday, November 11th 1612hrs
I got home expecting to find Hilary on the sofa watching crap daytime TV or perhaps a movie, but when I called out to him as I closed the door behind me, I got no reply.
The dogs ran out to greet me though, so I went through my usual routine of making a fuss of them and letting them out into the garden. They trotted across the patio and onto the lawn where both lifted a leg. I left them outside to explore. It was trying to rain again, spots were visible on my patio and there was another storm around. It wasn’t visible, but I could hear it in the distance.
As I filled the kettle, I talked to Kevin the toad. 'You didn't prove to be of much use, did you? I was going to take you back to Frank, but he insists that he cannot keep you. So, what do I do with you? I don't want a pet toad.'
In response to my question he farted. It made a high-pitched whistling noise as he had lifted his little toad bottom out of the water first.
'Lovely.' I moved away, electing to make tea later when there wasn't so much toad fart in the air by my kettle. I would have to find a new home for him.
Another rumble of thunder as I was filling the kettle resulted in the dogs barking. They were not fans of the thunder and always barked at it. At night, when there was a storm, they would burrow right into me for protection, my closeness somehow comforting to them.
They wouldn’t want to stay outside now so I went back to the patio door to let them in. I never got there though.
As I left the kitchen, I was drawn to a halt by the wet footprints on the tile in my lobby. Someone else had come into the house behind me. I rarely locked the door when I was in. I had only felt the need once or twice ever, like when the Klowns had been promising to kill me a few weeks ago and on Wednesday night when the scary witch was in my garden.
Now there was someone in my house. Bull barked, the familiar sound his particular bark to be let in. I had lived with them long enough to discern different barks.
I didn’t go to him though. I turned slowly, looking for where the footprints had gone. They went toward the dining room/office.
With my heart beating in my chest, I stepped into the room. The witch was standing with her back to me. She was staring at the picture of her on the wall. The one I had taken with my phone.
‘It's a good picture.' She said, her back still to me. Slowly she turned around. ‘I have to commend you for your persistence and your ability. No one has ever tied anything to me before. No one ever got close.'
I was gritting my teeth, my face turning into an angry snarl. I was standing in front of a murderer. She had not the slightest remorse for her acts, nor did she show me the slightest fear and it was pissing me off.
I was a six-foot-tall muscular man facing down a hobbled old woman. She was shrunken with age and stooped. She might have been taller in her youth, but hunched over, she was only a little more than five feet now.
Then she produced a gun from her right sleeve. It was suddenly in her hand and pointed at me. I didn't recognise the make, my knowledge of weapons severely lacking, but if it was loaded the firm responsible for making it was hardly important.
‘Kneel.’ She spat out the instruction expecting me to comply.
‘Not a chance.' I took a step toward her. Was she able to shoot me? Was that how she had killed the men? Was the whole heart bursting from the chest and all the burn marks a big act to cover the obvious bullet wound so the coroner could convincingly claim a different verdict?
She twitched the barrel slightly to the right and put a bullet hole in the wall next to me.
Okay, so she was quite able to pull the trigger. I halted my advance toward her.
‘Kneel.' If I knelt she probably planned to move closer to me, maybe try to bind me or something. Her closeness would give me the opportunity to grab for the gun. I would need to grab its barrel, which would be too hot to touch even after firing only one shot, so I steeled myself for the pain I would need to endure. I sunk to my knees.
Thunder rumbled with intense volume. I hadn't seen the lightning, so it wasn't overhead but equally, it couldn't be that loud and be very far away. The dogs barked at the door again. They wanted to come in.
The witch looked up and out of the window toward the sky. ‘Can you hear its power? I have called forth the most powerful of storms to dispatch you. Your pathetic police will not stop me.’
I lunged for her. She was not paying attention, but she moved with impossible speed for a woman her age, darting out of my grip and striking my right arm hard with the gun as it reached for her.
As I snatched my arm back, an involuntary reaction to the pain, she whipped out a set of handcuffs, slapped one over my right wrist before I could pull it back to my body and yanked me off balance.
She was impossibly strong as well!
Pitching forward, I started to worry, but she wasn't done yet. The cuff had instantly locked onto my wrist like it was supposed to, so using the bar that joined the two cuffs, she levered against my wrist to push me down.
I was flat to the carpet before I had time to react and my wrist was twisted painfully against the joint. I knew I needed to break my wrist to get free so that was what I tried to do.
Because I am stupid.
Forcing my wrist against the direction it was designed to go sent a wave of pain through me that threatened my conscious state. It also gave her the momentary lack of resistance she needed to pull my arm behind my back and lock the cuffs to my other arm.
Then she knelt on the small of my back, her knee digging cruelly into my spine.
How on earth was I pinned by an eighty-year-old woman that couldn't even stand up straight?
‘Wow.’ She said coolly. ‘That was easier than I expected.’ Her voice had changed and now I recognised it.
She took her weight from my back. ‘Hold still now, this is much easier if the victim is unconscious.' I snapped my head around to see what she was doing but could do nothing when she landed on my shoulders and forced a rag over my face.
I had no idea what chloroform smelled of but as my senses went fuzzy I felt certain it was what was on the rag.
As I drifted away, shaking my head to get her off as she held me in place, I thought about what I hadn't been able to see, what had just not occurred to me: The witch. The witch had never been what she seemed. She was…
End Game. Friday, November 11th 1907hrs
I came around slowly, confused about what I was feeling, sensing. I was unable to move much but I was upright. I moved as much as I could, quickly arriving at the conclusion that I was strapped to a frame of some kind. I reached out with my fingers to touch it. It felt like plastic. I was also confused about what I could hear. It was quiet, but there was also a low, continuous hum, like a machine working. Enough of my sense returned that I realised I couldn't see because my eyes were closed.
I opened them.
‘Hello, Tempest.’ the witch said. She was sitting on one of my dining chairs.
I glanced about. ‘Where are my dogs?’ I demanded.
‘Goodness, I wouldn't worry about them, dear boy. I locked them in the kitchen. They were making such a noise.'
I heard one of them, probably Bull, whine. The sound of my voice most likely the cause of his plaintive cry. At least they were inside and unharmed.
‘I had to kill one of your friends.’ She said it like she had changed the channel on the TV or turned down the thermostat. ‘Big guy? Really pretty?’
Big Ben.
‘He just let himself in. Terrible manners. He is laying on the floor by the door. I might have to cut him into pieces to get him out of here.’
He had probably phoned me to check I was going to the pub, got no answer and came looking for me.
‘Nearly ready though. I should probably get ready too.’
She stood up. Stood up p
roperly that is. No longer stooped, she was five feet eight inches tall and would have blonde hair under the witches cowl she still wore. She started to pull her black shawl-like robe open to take it off.
‘Do you really think the police will not catch you, Victoria?’
She stopped her motion and stared directly at me. ‘No one has ever worked it out before. Every time I have ever revealed myself to the ridiculous cheating husband, it was a complete surprise. It seems a shame to kill you now. I almost feel like I have met an equal.'
‘What’s making the noise?’
‘Ah. Now that's an interesting question.' She continued to take off the witch's outfit. Beneath it, she had prosthetic skin over her arms and hands. I could see it now because it ended at her elbows and her top had much shorter sleeves. Her face and neck too were similarly covered, and a wig hid her blonde hair. I watched as she carefully took each piece of fake skin off and folded it into pouches before storing them in a case on my table. Then she took out a contact lens that made one of her eyes brown. The disguise was brilliant.
‘You asked about the noise. This device,' with a flourish she pulled a black sheet off a squat lump on the carpet. 'is basically a giant capacitor with an electrode. When it is charged all the way up it can deliver a charge that will burn right through a person. I read about it in a medical journal more than ten years ago after a man had accidentally killed himself with one.'
The thing was half a metre in every direction and housed within a steel frame that formed a cube. It was dark in the room so making out details was hard, occasional flashes of lightning lit the room though to reveal a jumble of electrical cables connected here and there and circuit boards on one side. It was sitting on a sack barrow, the type with two wheels so that you leaned it back and wheeled it around at an angle. It looked heavy. On one side, a long, thick cable about three metres in length ended in a spike.
‘They fit them in nuclear submarines. I couldn't tell you what purpose they were used for, but it was jolly hard to get hold of and modify. Apologies if I bore you with the details. It takes a while to charge up.'
