A Deadly Compulsion (23 page)

“So, Mr FBI is coming to the rescue.  Am I right?”

“Yeah.  And he’ll f...fucking nail you...you mad bastard.”

“Well, whatever happens, Clem, you won’t be here to see it.  It’s time to die, old son.”

“No!  Hugh, please, don’t do it.  I swear to God I won’t say anything,” Clem whined. “I don’t want to die.”

“You pathetic, grovelling little shit,” Hugh said, smoothly pulling the trigger.

The dense clump of lead-shot missed Clem’s head by inches, shattering the tiles and leaving a crater in the wall.

Clem screamed as hot, jagged fragments of tile and lead pellets rebounded and pierced the back of his neck and scalp.  And then he passed out.

Hugh laughed aloud as he dragged the unconscious DC out of the bath, before going to his bedroom, to return with handcuffs and tape.  He looped the cuffs around the thick outflow pipe at the back of the toilet and ratcheted them tightly to Clem’s wrists, then taped his former colleague’s mouth.

He wasn’t some homicidal maniac who killed wantonly.  He was a good cop.  Trish had been an unavoidable, regrettable casualty.  He had no intention of harming Clem – anymore than he’d already had to – or Laura, or even the Yank.  He just wanted to give himself time to vanish and regroup.

Back in the bedroom, Hugh ejected the spent cartridges, reloaded the shotgun and placed it on the bed and went over to the chest of drawers and took his knife and a key from under the pile of panties in the top drawer.  Going back out on to the landing, he stopped outside the second bedroom, unlocked the door and entered.  Closing it behind him, he turned to the bed and was met by sparkling blue eyes, and a smiling face framed by vibrant blonde tresses that flowed over the pillow.

LAURA
heard the two muffled reports, and recognised them as being too short and precise to confuse with the claps of thunder.  The explosions could have been a car backfiring, with a stretch of the imagination.  But her situation compelled her to believe that the source was of a more iniquitous nature.  Sitting bolt upright at the sound of the first blast, she swung her feet onto the floor between the bed and the coffee table, to hide the jug from view, gripping it by the handle, tensed, waiting expectantly, sure that it would not be long before he came.  She hoped that the blasts had been shots, and that Hugh had done the world, and her in particular, a big favour by blowing his own brains out.  But that was wishful thinking.  In her estimation suicide wasn’t something Hugh would even contemplate.

Looking down, Hugh saw that her night-dress was rucked up over her hips, so averted his eyes and adjusted it, before sitting on the bed cross-legged, next to the shrunken, brown-skinned and almost skeletal remains that he had eviscerated before curing in tannic acid so many years ago.  Rusted staples pinned the leathery lips together, but the glass eyes and cheap nylon wig gave the late Jennifer Parfitt a horrific semblance of life.

Hugh had returned to the quiet country graveyard as darkness fell, just a few hours’ after his mother had been laid to rest.  Now, all these years later, he held her shrivelled hand gently and let the events replay...

…There were no high, wrought-iron fences or locked gates to negotiate.  This was not a landscaped cemetery with neat, regimental flower beds, crisp gravel walkways, or carefully manicured lawns and hedging.  The majority of the gravestones leant like the dark stumps of crooked teeth, spotted with lichen and losing the slow battle against gravity.  And the coarse grass was shin-high, ready for the local farmer to put his sheep in to nip it short, right up to the granite and marble bases.  Should he be discovered waist deep in his mother’s grave by an insomniac vicar, what would he do?  Maybe put his spade across the man of the cloth’s head and send him prematurely to his maker, depositing his earthly remains in the coffin beneath his feet, which would soon be vacant.  Waste not, want not.  He could not afford to be caught; to probably be charged with grave-robbing, or at very least, vandalism.  And the papers would have a field day.  He could almost see the headlines: ‘Mentally disturbed local teenager discovered digging up the body of his recently interred mother’.  They would treat him like a raving lunatic.  Probably lock him up in an asylum.  That was not going to happen.  She…Was…Not…Dead.  It had been a terrible, terrible mistake.  She could be resurrected, returned to him, and they would be together again, just like before.  Everything was going to be just fine.  He could make things right.

Under the light of a full moon, he dug down to her coffin, reclaimed her, and set her down gently next to a nearby oak, from where she could watch him return the grave site to the condition he had found it in.  Once finished, he carried her to the van, placed her on a blanket in the rear, covering her with half of it, and arrived back at the house as the grey half-light of dawn broke.

He envisaged a perfect relationship, with a reborn, obedient and forever faithful mother.  It was at that moment in time that his way of thinking became a little unhinged.

At first he would just talk at her, but then, with time, a growing delusional state overcame him, enabling him to imagine her animated and – in his mind – able to converse freely with him and move independently.  He was able to suppress his illness to the outside world, possessing an internal switch that he could switch on and off at will.  Having bestowed ‘life’ into the corpse, he found there was a downside.  She had taken to berate him sporadically with verbal condemnation of his deeds, which had resulted in his stapling her mouth; an act that proved futile, due to her power of speech being projected wholly from within his own troubled psyche.

Hugh snapped back to the present.  “I don’t know what to do, Mummy,” he said, snuggling up close to her on the damp bed.  “They know what I’ve done.”

“Stop worrying, baby,” he said aloud in a falsetto reply to himself, his eyes glazing over as he saw his mother as she had been in life; smooth peach-blossom skin, full lips, teeth so white and even.  “They know nothing,” ‘she’ continued, reaching out, with his assistance, to cup his face with her hand. “Only the bitch in the cellar, the cop in the bathroom, and that American know what you’ve been doing to all those girls.  Kill them all and we’ll be safe.  You’ll just have to stop butchering those sluts...for a while.”

“But the police won’t stop until they find me.  We should go away from here, just vanish.  I have a plan.”

“This is my house!” she screamed.  “And it’s where I plan to stay.  Fit-up that bastard, Cox.  But do it properly this time.  Put Laura’s body at his place, with the knife.  And then make the cocksucker write a suicide note, admitting to being the Tacker.  And be sure his fingerprints, hair and semen are all over the whore.”

“But the teeth impressions on the bodies aren’t his.”

“So what?  He had an accomplice.  It’ll be in the note.  He can plead that he did it with some other maniac.  Christ, Hugh, make him write anything you like.  First, wait for the Yank, and kill him.  Then finish Clem off and take your split-arse boss to Cox’s and do her there.”

“Okay, Mummy,” Hugh said, climbing off the bed and leaving the room, to return to his own and retrieve the shotgun.

Jim paused at the door that led down to the cellar, and turned to face Leo.  “See if Laura and Trish Pearson are down there,” he whispered to the PI.  “And if they are, get them away from here and call the police.”

“But―”

“No buts, Leo.  I’m counting on you to save Laura’s ass.  Just do it.”

As Jim edged out of the kitchen into the hall, Leo gingerly slid the bolts back, careful not to make a sound, pulling the door open with all the caution of a bomb disposal expert opening a package suspected of containing a pipe-bomb wired to the lid.

Laura tensed as she heard the whisper of the door being opened.  Oh, Christ! This is it, she thought.  Her whole body stiffened, muscles locked.  Inwardly she felt utterly weak and boneless, scared that she would be powerless to act, as she heard the first light footfall on the steps: leather on stone.

She couldn’t look up; felt sure that Hugh would read the intention in her eyes if she faced him.  She stared at the top of the coffee table, her gaze riveted to the cover of a National Geographic magazine, the photo of an aborigine staring back at her, his dark, sun-creased face daubed with beaded whorls of white spots; wide nostrils flared, and deep-set eyes fixed on the camera lens with more than a little condescension.  The red sandstone monolith of what her generation would always call Ayers Rock grew out of the heat haze behind him to form a dramatic backdrop.

He was so close, now.  Almost down there with her. 
Please, sweet Jesus, help me!

With perfect timing, Laura swung the jug up from the floor as the figure appeared in her peripheral vision.  The blue liquid found its mark, splashing into the face of a man she thought looked vaguely familiar, but who was
not
Hugh Parfitt.

Leo reached the bottom of the steps and saw the woman sitting on a single bed, head bowed, unmoving.  As he opened his mouth to speak, she moved in a blur of speed.  He recoiled, instinctively put his hands up, but was a split second too late to stop the tide of liquid that hit him from filling his mouth, stinging his eyes, and burning his sinuses as he inhaled it through his nose.  He reeled backwards, shocked, coughing, blinking and wiping at his smarting eyes.

Laura ran straight at him, hit him in the groin with all the force she could muster, fist clenched in an underarm swing, then elbowed past him and bounded up the steps, her legs rubbery, shaking, threatening to give out.  She threw the door shut behind her, slammed the bolts into place and headed for the kitchen door.

Leo felt a sudden, sickening agony spread through his compacted testicles and flare up into the pit of his stomach, before he fell sideways grasping at the main source of tribulation, to strike his head on the concrete as he gagged on the chemical mix he had inadvertently imbibed.  He heard the door above him close, and the bolts shoot home: Knew that he’d blown it, but could not have foreseen the woman’s attack against him.  Christ, he’d come to rescue her, and been half-blinded and kicked or punched in the balls as reward.  He got to his knees, reached up to grip the edge of the sink and pulled himself upright, immediately vomiting and collapsing back down to the floor on all fours, where he stayed until the pain dulled and the retching subsided.  Standing again, he turned on the tap, cupped water to his eyes, rinsed out his mouth, and tried to assess how deep the shit he had got himself into might be.

Laura stumbled out through the kitchen door and jogged around to the front of the house, looking about her through the steady downpour of chilling rain, before heading for the barn, from where she had been carried after being abducted. There was a thick chain through the handles of the doors, but the padlock that held it in place was not locked.  She pulled it free and entered the murky interior, to be faced by the sight of her Fiat parked up, standing on a thick carpet of straw that covered the earthen floor.  Rushing to the driver’s side, she pulled the handle and the door opened.  Relief surged through her.  Within seconds she would be driving away from the farm, to raise the alarm and seal Hugh’s fate.  She sat, dripping wet, and fumbled under the steering wheel, only to find the ignition empty. The key was missing.  Anger and fear welled up inside her, and tears of frustration pricked her eyes. She had no idea where she was, and to run blindly through the rain, in his territory, seemed a more frightening prospect than staying in the barn.  The last thing that he would expect her to do was remain in the vicinity.  Surely he would think that she had made good her escape and was going for help.  With any luck he would panic and leave.  Whatever happened, she would stay put until dark, then find the road and ultimately another house, where she could call the cavalry from.  She left the car, ran to the back of the barn and parted a thick drift of straw, crawling in and pulling armfuls of it over her, to hunch up, hidden and already warmer; to begin what she thought would be a long wait.

Jim was halfway up the stairs when he heard the door to the cellar slam, and seconds later the kitchen door shut.  He sighed with relief.  Laura must be safe.  A voice at the back of his mind told him to retreat, go after Leo and Laura, and maybe Trish, and leave it to the police to mop up.  It was foolish to try and finish it himself.  And yet he continued on up to the landing; a dog with a bone, unable to let it go and back off.  And where was Clem?

Jim reached a partly open door and eased it back with his foot, searching for a target with the gas-operated gun held in a two-handed grip, his right shooting hand cupped in his left, elbows bent, and the left side of his body slightly forward of the right, balanced and ready to squeeze the trigger at the slightest provocation.  The coppery smell of blood mixed with acrid spent gunpowder hit his nose at the same time as Clem Nash came into view.  The young cop was sprawled on the floor.  Jim immediately spun round, expecting Hugh to be behind him, to then feel a surge of relief to see that the landing was empty.  Pushing the bathroom door to, he knelt and felt the blood-smeared neck for a pulse, surprised at the strong beat that met his fingertips.  He ripped the tape from Clem’s mouth, and the cop moaned and opened his eyes.

“He...he’s got a shotgun, Jim,” Clem whispered, his voice ragged with pain.

“Stay calm and keep quiet, you’re going to be fine.  I’ll be back soon,” Jim said, turning and easing the door open.  He saw two further doors along the landing, both closed, and presumed that Parfitt must be hiding behind one of them.  He reached the nearest, turned the handle and kicked it back.  As he made to enter, the other door, twelve feet away, flew open to reveal the pale, naked and blood-streaked figure of the rogue DS, who rushed from the shadows, raising a shotgun as he screamed hysterically at Jim.

“Keep out of there,” Hugh screamed.  “Leave my Mummy alone.”

Jim fired once, and then threw himself into the room as the shotgun roared.

As Hugh tightened his finger on the trigger, a sudden sharp pain burned into his shoulder.  The 12 bore bucked in his hands, and a gilt-framed photograph of his mother – which hung on the wall at the top of the stairs – disintegrated.  He dropped the heavy shotgun and went back to his room, reappearing with a knife in his left hand.

“Hugh, help me...help me!” His mother screamed in his mind, and with no thought of caution he rushed to her aid.

Jim rolled as he hit the floor, to come up in a crouching position against a wardrobe at the far end of the bedroom.  White-hot pain bit into his back, and he knew that at least some of the lethal load had caught him as he had dived into the room.  He took deep breaths, suppressed the urge to groan in acknowledgement of his wound, and went to the other side of the bed, to crouch in the gloom with the gun trained on the open doorway, fully expecting Parfitt to appear any second and start blasting.  It was only then that he saw the withered corpse on the bed and reeled away from it, unable to stifle a cry of agony as his raw and bleeding back slammed into the wall.

Hugh entered the room at speed, his crazed eyes spotting Jim instantly.  He came round the bed, slashing in front of him with the razor-sharp knife; a continuous high-pitched whine escaping his lips as he attacked.