Rosie (72 page)

All the way across the field he kept up a barrage of accusations. She was the reason he’d gone wrong. Right from when she was born she’d caused him trouble. Cole had always cared more for her than for him. She was the reason he had to kill Ruby.

She had stopped short at that, staring at him in horror. He snarled at her, kicked her to start her walking again, and proceeded to tell her in gory, sickening detail just how he did it and why. Then he moved on to Heather.

By the time they reached the woods Rosie was in pain. She had stubbed her bare feet on stones several times, she was icy cold, and the rope around her middle was cutting deeper and deeper into her skin. The rain made her pyjamas cling to her and she was certain Seth intended to rape her. Somehow rape was the worst thing she could imagine. She’d rather be beaten half to death.

Yet above all that was the terrible knowledge her father had been innocent. Hanged for crimes committed by his eldest son, this savage madman. She had always felt guilty that she hadn’t told the police everything she knew about Seth. Now she felt utter desolation because by keeping her counsel she had actually helped put the rope round her father’s neck.

Praying for rescue was pointless. No one would even know she was missing until the morning, and by then it would be much too late. Tears poured down her face, but she couldn’t even speak to plead with Seth.

Going through the woods was far worse than the fields. She stumbled on every stick, she was stung by nettles and pricked by thorns. Then he stopped and tied her to the tree with her feet splayed wide apart, and she knew this meant that rape was going to be the start of it. But he teased her first, taking out a long, shining knife from his belt and running it under her nostrils and down her cheeks, digging the point in just a little way to show what he intended to do.

‘That will be last,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to cut your face to ribbons, then poke out your eyes. No man will ever want you again, you won’t even be able to see how ugly you are or look at your precious flowers. But first you’re going to get my big, hard cock.’

Even above the overpowering smell of paraffin, she could still smell his foul breath and the stink of sweat, and she gagged again. Then he unzipped his trousers and displayed his penis to her, jerking her head this way and that each time she tried to look away.

Ripping the pants of her pyjamas away with one hand, he masturbated with the other. Then when it was hard, he tried to force his penis into her. She tightened every muscle. Whatever he did to her, she wasn’t going to let him have this. She had wanted to save herself for Gareth on their wedding night. He didn’t want her now, but she’d be damned if her brother was going to take her virginity.

He punched her in the face when he couldn’t get it in, but she was beyond caring. He was an animal, a cruel sadistic monster, who had allowed their father to be hanged for killing two women he loved. Her virginity was all she had left and she would fight to keep it.

Suddenly there was a roaring, bellowing sound. For a moment she thought it was Seth, but as she jerked her head round she saw a figure hurtling towards them like a wild bull.

Seth backed away, taken by surprise. He scrabbled for the shotgun that was still slung across his back. But he wasn’t fast enough. The figure leapt at him, sending him flying backwards on to the ground, threw himself on top of him and began beating at his head and face with a heavy stick.

It wasn’t until her rescuer sobbed that Rosie realized it was Donald.

Chapter Nineteen

Pandemonium broke out in the woods. Shouting male voices, feet thundering through the undergrowth and dancing lights came from every direction to vie with the thunder, lightning and drumming rain. Rosie tried to scream to direct them to her, but the sound was only in her head and she choked again and again as the rag in her mouth was sucked deeper into her throat.

But Donald was yelling for her. In a flash of lightning Rosie saw him clearly. He was sitting astride Seth, head thrown back, roaring like a wounded lion.

All at once uniformed men appeared. She saw the glint of silver buttons, faces ghostly-white in the light of their torches, and the trees seemed to spin before her eyes.

‘You’re safe now,’ a gruff voice said, and his hands felt warm against her cold, wet cheeks as he untied the rag around her head and mouth. As he pulled the second rag from her mouth, the screams she’d stored up burst out.

‘Steady now,’ the policeman said. ‘I’m going to untie you.’

‘Donald,’ she yelled. Her line of vision was obscured by the policeman’s big shoulders, and now she was safe she had to make sure Donald was too.

‘He’s fine,’ the policeman said, glancing over his shoulder to where his colleagues surrounded Donald and Seth. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. It’s all over now.’

Those words ‘It’s all over now’ kept repeating in her head as she was wrapped in someone’s coat and lifted up by strong arms. Her father had often said them when he woke her from a nightmare as a small child. Sergeant Headly had said them as he carried her into Bridgwater Infirmary. Miss Pemberton and Thomas had both uttered them after her ordeal at Carrington Hall. But was it really over this time? Or was there more to come?

‘You’re the bravest man I ever met,’ Thomas said as he washed Donald’s hair for him in the bath. It was dawn now: the storm was over and a fresh wind was driving away the last of the cloud. Thomas wished he could wipe out the terrible images which the police, Donald and Rosie herself had imprinted on his mind in the last hour or two, as easily as he could rinse away the mud from this boy’s hair.

Donald’s eyes shone and his grin stretched from ear to ear. ‘I had to stop that bad man,’ he said. ‘He was hurting Rosie.’

Thomas gulped and turned away so Donald wouldn’t see his tears.

When the police had come back to the house, one of them carrying Rosie in his arms, for one split second he had thought she was dead. Reason immediately prevailed, however: policemen didn’t carry dead bodies into anyone’s house. But she looked like a rag doll wrapped in a coat, her hideously scratched, mud-daubed legs dangling lifelessly over the man’s arms.

‘She refused to go to hospital,’ the policeman said helplessly. Then as Norah came flapping down the hall, directing him to carry her into the sitting-room, Rosie began moving in his arms.

‘I’m all right,’ she said, in a surprisingly clear voice. ‘Take me into the kitchen. I’m all wet and muddy.’

Later on, after the doctor had pronounced her injuries to be only superficial scratches and bruises, they even managed to smile about her concern for carpets and furniture. But at that moment they were all so profoundly stunned at actually having her back, alive and able to speak clearly, that they did as she asked and sat her on a wooden chair.

Donald’s arrival a few moments later almost eclipsed Rosie’s ordeal. Their first view of him – mud-caked face and hair, blood-stained hands and raincoat – gave them all a turn. But while Rosie sat in silence, wrapped in a blanket, Donald excitedly related a garbled tale about how he’d stopped ‘the bad man’.

Once it was established that Donald too was unhurt, Norah took Rosie upstairs to bathe her and put her to bed, and the police took Frank aside to speak to him in private. They left soon after, saying they would call back later in the day in the hope that Rosie would then be able to give a full account of the night’s events.

Norah came back downstairs sometime later, grey-faced and shaking. She managed to order Donald upstairs to take the bath she’d run for him, but once he’d left the room she burst into tears as she related to Frank and Thomas what Rosie had told her.

‘It was Seth who murdered Ruby and Heather, not his father,’ she wept, clinging to her husband. ‘Can you imagine! He boasted about it to Rosie and told her all the horrifying details. He said he was going to blind and disfigure her, and he was trying to rape her when Donald charged through the woods and stopped him. She might have no serious external injuries, but heaven only knows what terrible damage he’s done to her mind.’

Frank spoke then of what the police had told him in private, how Donald had leapt on Seth and almost clubbed him to death with a stick. They thought Seth’s skull was broken and doubted whether he would live to stand trial. He was on his way to a hospital.

There was only one role left for Thomas to fill. He made tea, poured brandies, listened and offered consolation, but the role he was burning for was avenger. He wished more than anything that it was possible for him to have five minutes alone with Seth Parker, for he would make the man beg and plead for death.

In the absence of any opportunity to exact revenge, Thomas chose to pray silently as he gave his help to each member of the family: that Rosie would come through this unscathed; that Donald would never again need or want to use his physical strength to get the better of another man. But most of all he prayed that Seth would survive, so that he could endure the kind of terror he’d inflicted on Rosie, waiting to be hanged.

Thomas poured a jug of water over Donald’s head to rinse off the last of the shampoo. Then he handed him a towel.

‘I was just like a Red Indian,’ Donald said proudly as he dried himself. ‘I would have scalped him too if I’d had a knife.’

That boast of Donald’s brought a chink of light to Thomas’s black thoughts and even made him smile. The lad sounded like an excited six-year-old just back from a feast of Cowboys and Indians at Saturday morning pictures. Fortunately he had no real conception of exactly what Seth was intending to do to Rosie, or in fact how close he’d come to murder himself. He had been guided only by a primitive protective instinct, and within days he’d probably have forgotten all but the glory of it.

For the first time ever Thomas found himself envying Donald’s simpleness. He didn’t look back over his shoulder at the past, or try to see into the future. He accepted everything as it was. Good food, clean clothes, the love of his family, warm smiles from neighbours and occasional words of praise were all he needed for complete happiness. Thomas remembered how he’d felt in the camp in Burma, when just one tiny piece of meat or fish in his daily bowl of rice was enough to make him delirious with happiness. He wished he could regain that ability to need and want so little.

Two days after Seth snatched Rosie from her bedroom, the press were in the garden of The Grange photographing Donald. Overnight he had become a national hero, and because Norah and Frank were afraid that unscrupulous reporters might resort to underhand methods to talk to their son, they had allowed them this one photo-call, strictly under Frank’s control.

‘Look at them!’ Norah whispered scathingly to her husband as they posed for one picture with Donald. She inclined her head towards the end of the garden where people from the village were packed shoulder to shoulder, rubber-necking through bushes, even climbing on to the wall and gate. From time to time someone would shout out extravagant praise, or lead a chorus of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. The reporters thought it was very moving and were puzzled by Norah’s refusal to be photographed with the villagers.

There was an excellent reason for her refusal. Twelve years ago some of these very same people had stood in the same place, screaming hysterically that Donald was a maniac and ought to be behind bars. Norah had forgiven them for that – they were ignorant people who allowed themselves to be caught up in group hysteria. But proud as she was of her son’s courage, she didn’t intend to share a moment of it with them.

‘You don’t have to do it,’ Thomas reminded Roise as they came downstairs. They had been watching the noisy scene from a bedroom upstairs and Rosie had suggested that she went out there too and got it over and done with.

‘They won’t stop telephoning and calling round until I do,’ she said in a firm, crisp voice. ‘Besides I’m fine now, and they’ll like it better if they can see me while I still look beaten up.’

Thomas looked at her appraisingly. She was still very pale and was having difficulty in holding a cup of tea because of her shaking hands. But apart from one badly bruised eye where Seth had punched her and vivid scratches on her arms and legs, she didn’t look so bad. He thought she must have a nervous system made of steel, because apart from breaking down when she first told Norah everything Seth had said and done, she had somehow managed to maintain an air of near-indifference to the events of that night.

‘Well, just do a quick interview then,’ Thomas said, his hand on the half-glass door which opened into the porch. He wasn’t convinced that she was as inwardly composed as her exterior suggested. ‘If they ask any awkward questions or I think you look distressed, I’ll drag you in by the scruff of your neck.’

‘Okay, bossy-boots,’ she said with a grin. ‘Lead on.’

The moment Rosie stepped outside the front door, a buzz went round amongst the journalists and photographers gathered round Donald and his parents further down the drive.

‘It’s her,’ ‘The girl’s here’ and ‘It’s Parker’s daughter’ were some of the remarks Thomas heard. As one they turned away from Donald and flocked up the garden towards Rosie.

‘How are you feeling, Rosie?’ one young reporter shouted out, determined to get something meaty out of her if it was the last thing he did. Donald Cook was a dead loss as far as he was concerned, keen enough to pose for pictures, but he couldn’t give a very lucid account of how he’d managed to overcome Seth Parker. What’s more, his father had already marked their card and said no one was to print that his son was simple-minded, and without that juicy bit there wasn’t much of a story.

‘I’m better now, thank you,’ Rosie said. She felt intimidated to find herself surrounded by men clamouring to speak to her.

‘How do you feel about your brother now?’ the same reporter threw in, hoping for an unguarded answer while she was still unprepared.

Thomas bristled at the question and tightened his grip on Rosie’s arm. She glanced at him to reassure him. ‘He’s only my half-brother,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad he’s somewhere he can’t hurt anyone else.’