Beyond Life (7 page)

‘You may have noticed the police presence,’ he replied. ‘Now isn’t a particularly good time for this discussion.’

‘Just chill and act like your normal self but show you’re upset at the girl’s disappearance. What do the police think?’

‘That an animal’s taken her. I told them I ran outside when I heard a scream and saw a lion carrying something in the distance, but that I couldn’t make out what it was.’

‘Did they believe you?’ Gary wasn’t overly bothered. It was handy having the Chief of Police as one of his clients and he knew he enjoyed young lithe girls much better than fully formed women. He also knew that as long as he kept him happy he needn’t worry about being caught. Daniel needed to be kept on his toes though and there was no way he’d share the confidential information about his scumbag clients.

‘There’s no evidence to prove it or otherwise and they know we haven’t had lions attack humans in this area for years,’ he gave a sneaky smile and Gary knew there was more to come. ‘That bloody woman Marion didn’t believe it of course, until I told her that the reason she couldn’t see the bodies of the other girls who’d disappeared was because we’d suspected lion attacks. She went ape and said that if we had warned everyone off, Mary would still be safe.’

‘But you think she believed you?’

‘Judging by her reaction, yes.’ Marion had run to her room crying and when he’d sent the nurse to see her she’d been sobbing her heart out.

Daniel had done a good job and Gary gave him a manly pat on the back. ‘Well done, mate. There may be a little bonus in this for you. We won’t take anyone else from here until Marion and Val have gone and I’ll arrange a hunting expedition and bring me back a rogue lion in the meantime.’ It wouldn’t do him any harm at all for Val to think he’d killed a lion that’d had a taste for human blood.

*****

Mary woke up in a comfortable bed wearing a strange nightdress and grabbed the wrist of the hand that was stroking her face. The girl who was looking down at her and smiling, jolted and tried to pull her hand away, to no avail. She saw the look of terror on the new girl’s face and remembered how she’d felt on her first day.

‘Please, I don’t want to hurt you. I am your friend,’ Tamara risked a little smile. ‘They want me to tell you what you have to do if you want to eat and don’t want to be beaten.’

Ten minutes later Mary sat with her knees hugged to her chest, arms folded around them with her head on her arms. She was absolutely terrified at what Tamara had told her and at first, hoped she was having a nightmare and would soon wake up. When the child realised that the nightmare was the reality of her existence, all hope disappeared and she sat on the bed sobbing her heart out. The memories of her family’s murder came back to her, but before that she remembered the face of the group’s leader who had raped her, and slapped her when she screamed with the pain. Her insides ached just thinking about it. She had scurried back to her family and now in her mind’s eye she saw the picture of her mother being violated by a number of men. First by the one who had ruined her and then the others one at a time, while her father had been forced to watch. She could still hear the laughter of the others as they watched and Mary had had to bite her fingers until they bled, to stop herself from screaming out loud. They were all flung on top of each other like rubbish bags, after the men had finished, and bullets were fired as their attackers watched and laughed. And now, just when she thought she might have had a chance at a decent life, they wanted to turn her into an underage sex slave. Strange men would prod and poke her and she would have to perform for them and commit acts that she could never have imagined doing, until Tamara had slowly and calmly explained it all. And if she refused, they wouldn’t feed her or allow her to sleep and she would die of starvation and exhaustion. There was one small consolation that if she kept secret would ruin their evil lives as much as they would ruin hers. She didn’t dwell on that information because the personal consequences were too frightening. Mary’s final thought before her body collapsed into a fatigued sleep, was that she must be a really evil child to be punished so much before she even had a chance of reaching adulthood.

*****

‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ Claire said out loud. She’d seen and heard enough and wanted to get back to safety to process the niggling thoughts in the back of her mind about this latest child abuser. The spirits that hadn’t appeared to notice her presence before turned away from their human and looked directly at her. Claire knew she was in trouble and hoped she’d be able to return to Cherussola before they caught up with her.

*****

Marion had been crying again but gave herself a good talking to about pulling herself together. Val was dying to know what had happened while she’d been out in the bush but remained calm and quiet until Marion was ready to explain. Seeing how upset she was, Val knew it must have been something awful and let Marion talk at her own pace, without interruption.

‘A lion attacked and killed Mary and they think that’s what happened to the other girls,’ her hand covered her mouth as she thought of the awfulness of the situation. ‘But how could? When...’

‘When you were out sightseeing with your...’ Marion looked down, refusing to make eye contact with Val, but the disgust showed on her face now that she’d regained her composure.

Val had had enough. ‘I’ll have you know that the Land Rover broke down,’ she stood up and banged her fists on the chair arms, both women chose to ignore the clouds of dust that jumped from the chair and slowly floated back down. ‘We would have been back much earlier and trust me, it wasn’t fun out in the bush, wondering if we were going to survive until the morning.’ That wasn’t strictly true but Val wanted to make her point. She leaned toward her friend, her face inches away from Marion’s. ‘If you weren’t so bloody jealous, maybe you’d have noticed that before this awful news, I was the happiest I’d been in ages.’

‘Jealous! Jealous! Me?’ For God’s sake, Val, you can’t seriously think...’

‘This conversation is over, Marion. My focus now is to look after the children and ensure their safety. I thought we were meant to be friends but obviously...’

‘Is now a bad time?’ neither of them noticed that Gary had entered the room.

‘No,’ said Marion and Val shook her head. ‘We need to build a barbed wire fence. Not sure how quickly we can get the wire but the sooner the better.’

‘I’m already on it,’ said Gary and Marion ignored the smug look from Val. ‘Daniel’s arranged for an armed guard for a few nights but the fence will be up by tomorrow night. My men will see to that.’

Val thanked him but Marion didn’t acknowledge his comments, wondering why she was being made out to be the baddie of the piece.

‘We need to get the children together and try to talk to them without terrifying them, though I’m not sure how we’re going to do that.’

‘Maybe I should come along and tell them about the guards and the guns?’

‘That won’t be necessary, Gary,’ said Marion through gritted teeth. ‘But thank you for arranging for the fence to be erected. You may want to get on with that now,’ she dismissed him as if she were the head talking to a naughty pupil and he turned away to look out of the window for a moment, pretending to assess the area but calming himself until his eye stopped twitching. Perhaps Marion should have an encounter with a lion, he thought fleetingly before turning to Val. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

She leant over and kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks, Gary.’

And Marion wanted to vomit.

‘Marion,’ he said nodding and she nodded back in acknowledgement of his departure without saying a word.

*****

The angels and two spirits were discussing how best to warn Val about her evil suitor.

‘I think Claire may want to tell her brothers then perhaps Tony can explain to Libby and she can speak to her mother on her return home?’ said Gabriella. She could see that Raphael didn’t know what she was talking about, so explained the siblings’ ability to communicate with each other.

‘She is special isn’t she?’ Gabriella noticed his tone of voice and was surprised. It had been a while since her twin had shown that sort of interest in anyone. Knowing that Claire had her faults but was intrinsically good and totally different to the last one, she was happy for him.

‘Yeah, yeah, we all know how special she is.’ Ron sounded petty even to himself, so tried to justify his words. ‘What I meant to say is that can we stick to the point and try to find a way to warn Val off. I don’t think they’re due back for a while, Gabriella so we need something more urgent that your plan. Do you have any ideas, Raphael?... Raphael?’

‘Claire!’

‘What?’ said Ron but Gabriella was sensing a problem too. Not with the same foresight as her brother but she definitely felt the disturbance.

‘Come on, before they get to her,’ he turned to Gabriella. ‘I’m not sure if Sandy’s strong enough yet.’

The disturbance was getting stronger. ‘We’re going to need all the help we can get. Come on, I’ll explain on the way.’

She was moving upwards as fast as she could but they were gaining on her. She’d looked back once and had been alarmed to see that the few evils had multiplied and the teenager who they’d encountered in the past had joined them. Had Claire had time to have a proper look she would have seen that he was stronger and now appeared to be in charge. She was terrified and images of the terrors that both Sandy and Ken had told her about passed before her eyes. Claire shook them away trying to concentrate all her efforts on moving upwards as fast as she could. She felt a gush of wind, caused by a hand swiping and missing her leg. She panted with the effort, knowing that this was a race she was unlikely to win and she felt the first hand make contact with her ankle. Trying to keep moving upwards with every fibre of her soul, her warped mind still had time to tell her that the calloused hand was covered in warts, and the second one had a finger missing. By the time the prodding hands were in double figures, she had stopped analysing their individual deformities. Only one set of hands had a body and face and when the teenager shoved his face directly into Claire’s she screamed, wondering why on previous occasions, she hadn’t noticed his likeness to Big Ed.

*****

Relations between Marion and Val were polite but frosty during the following days. They were both grieving over the loss of the girls and were able to use the grief to disguise what appeared to be the demise of their friendship. Val had been told about the early return to the UK and instead of the news of the new assignment bringing them closer, it had widened the gap. When Val had told Gary he had been distraught and the news of her departure had given their relationship a sense of urgency, which in turn made Marion even more distant. The fence was erected and despite Val’s protests to the contrary, Marion was grateful for his help. She was annoyed that Val appeared to turn into an incapable useless female in Gary’s presence, and wondered when she would swoon so her hero could pick her up and walk off with her into the sunset.

On the third day after Mary’s disappearance before night turned to dawn, shots awoke the occupants of the orphanage. The children were told to remain in their accommodation and Val, Marion and Daniel almost collided at the bottom of the stairs. They heard another shot from the direction of the back of the building and walked cautiously toward the back door. Gary appeared with his uncocked shotgun over an arm and smiled reassuringly at the worried audience.

‘One of the guards thought he saw something earlier tonight and the boss called me in,’ he rubbed some sweat off his forehead. ‘A large female’s prowling the area. They say once they get a taste for human blood, they always come back for more.’

Val shivered and the others stared at him in horror.

‘The only way to stop this is to kill her. I’m taking a party of men with me and we’re going to hunt her down.’

Good grief! Marion thought as Val flung herself into Gary’s arms telling him to be careful and to stay safe. She felt the need to do the right thing so wished him good luck and shook his hand. The feel of his flesh on hers gave her the creeps and it was a major effort to keep her expression impassive. The moment passed and she stepped back when Daniel stepped forward to shake his hand. Marion’s bullshit-ometer almost went off the scale when she noticed the sly look that passed between the men. Something was afoot and she would do her utmost to find out what was really going on.

The hunting party were away the whole of that day and night and Val was almost beside herself with worry and retired to her room after dinner, saying that she wanted to be alone. Not that long ago she would have confided her fears in me, thought Marion sadly. Daniel had gone out for the night and Marion wondered if he were secretly meeting up somewhere with Gary. She took the time and opportunity to have a good look around the office, to see if she could find a reason for her suspicions and distrust of her co-worker. She flicked through the personal files of the children in the filing cabinet. At first she thought that all was in order but Mary’s was missing, along with those of the other missing girls. She didn’t know whether this was significant but planned to ask the police if they’d taken the files.

The desk drawer was easy to open with a bit of fiddling with a hairgrip. Marion had always thought it clichéd when she watched old-fashioned detective shows and they were able to pick locks with hair accessories, but it had actually worked! The papers weren’t very well organised which told Marion that Enala, the very efficient and jolly administrator come part-time cleaner, did not have access to this drawer.

‘Well, well,’ she muttered to herself as she looked at two UK bank statements she’d found amongst the scribbled notes and other rubbish that was in the drawer. Why would Gary Jamieson pay Daniel Mulenga money into a UK bank account? As much as she pondered, Marion couldn’t think of one legitimate reason. She also knew she’d have to figure this one out without the help of Val – when it came to Gary Jamieson, her friend’s judgement could not be trusted.