Soul Seeker (34 page)

She felt crushed by failure. She had been entrusted with looking after her grandchildren and she had failed catastrophically. ‘Oh, dear God,' she whispered into the darkness of that empty room, her voice trembling. ‘What can I do now?'

Antonia Barclay was a fighter, though. She knew despite her failure of duty, she could not, for the sake of her husband and remaining grandchild, afford to let self-pity engulf her. She still had responsibilities. Part of her grief, she knew, was powerlessness. She was impotent to bring Josh back, impotent to assuage the anguish that Andrew was feeling, that Harriet would feel when she learned the awful truth. She was impotent, even, to help with the conviction of the two men that Chief Inspector Smillie had caught and that he assured her were the guilty men. All she could do was what woman had done for thousands of years; all she could do was weep.

She switched on the bedside light, illuminating through the Star Wars lampshade a room that was cosy and untidy and haunted. Should she tidy it? She hated the thought of turning it into a shrine and thereby becoming chained to the past, but it seemed wrong to tamper with things that were not hers. She almost laughed. It had never bothered her before, tidying up after Josh, although she had constantly scolded him for his mess. It might even help . . .

‘Antonia?' It was Andrew, standing in the doorway, sleepy, concerned, almost disorientated, and easily a hundred years old. Without saying more, he went to her, embraced her hard. They said nothing, but cried so much.

Lancefield's next question was asked at the cost of her life. Her professional instincts came to the fore before she could stop them as she asked, ‘Did you kill the boys?'

Again, everything changed; it was a small, subtle alteration, but the shift in perspectives it produced was profound. Quietly and not looking at her, he said, ‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘They saw too much.' He sighed. ‘I liked Josh and Darren, but I could not allow them to tell others that they had seen me there. Nor could I use them, for it would have been too close to home.' He was silent for a while, brooding, although she did not think that he was particularly remorseful, just upset that he had not been able to use them in his experiments. Then, chillingly, he looked at her and said, ‘But all was not lost.'

‘No?'

‘No, because as I killed them, it happened again. I felt it, Rebecca, just as you did, just as I had twice before. Their souls passed through me as I held them down, one in each hand, and crushed their necks.'

He was elated and she knew that unless she, too, showed him elation, she was dead.

She was dead anyway.

‘You did?' she asked.

In a reverie, the boys' deaths a successful experiment rather than an obscenity, he murmured, ‘If only I had been able to do it in controlled conditions . . .'

What could she say to that? In the event, she didn't need to say anything, for he came out of his trance and was back close to her again; terrifyingly close to her. He asked in a whisper, ‘But what about you, Rebecca?'

What about her? She was very afraid that this was a question that had no answer, at least not one in which she continued to live. She could only look deeply into those eyes and close her throat on a dry swallow. He continued before she had rediscovered the ability to speak, ‘You would not wish your soul to go to waste, would you?'

She had come to this place, to this man, because she had been living, she had believed, a half-life, had been in a kind of crazy love with the idea of dying. She found now that it had been a romanticized delusion and that she had been a fool. She very much wanted to live; she did not want to die, certainly not at the hands of a man who had cooked someone to death just so that he could search out a purely metaphysical concept.

But it was too late. His gaze was constant, without blinking, as he said softly, almost lovingly, ‘Your soul is strong, Rebecca; I can tell that. You will ascend to heaven and I will see it. Together we will prove that I am right, and you will be in everlasting joy with God.'

‘No . . .' She was shaking her head, and her eyes felt so wide and cold that they might been about to fall to earth.

He was smiling. ‘Do not be afraid, Rebecca. For in suffering is there salvation, in pain is there joy.'

Too late to do anything by way of resistance, she began to rise from her chair. He leaned forward in his chair and his right arm stretched out and his right hand – so massive, so strong – was around her throat and pushing her down and back into the chair. And no matter how much she tried to pull it away or reach out for his face and eyes, no matter how much she tried to struggle, no matter how much she squirmed and wriggled and kicked out at his shins, no matter how strenuously she gasped for breath and tried to scream . . .

No matter how much all of these, he continued to squeeze. She lost consciousness, but he stopped immediately, smiling. ‘You will see heaven, Rebecca, but not just yet.'

SIXTY-ONE

‘
I
n science, the null hypothesis is the way forward.'

Beverley Wharton didn't need another soliloquy on the philosophy of scientific method, no matter how learned it might be, and even if it was from John Eisenmenger. They were in her office and she was in a fucking bad mood because Lancefield had disappeared again. This time she had had no hesitation in reporting the matter to Braxton and he had agreed that even if Lancefield was in mourning, her behaviour was unprofessional and disciplinary action was inevitable. She had been given Frobisher as a temporary replacement. ‘So you said before.'

Eisenmenger was Eisenmenger and didn't notice the inflection of her reply. ‘So, we ask ourselves, what if Chief Inspector Smillie is wrong and our Internet killer did murder the two boys?'

‘Except that the MO is all wrong.'

‘Let's put that to one side for a moment. If our madman did kill the boys, what is he to do about disposing of the bodies? If he hides the bodies, or has some way of effectively destroying them – which, of course, is unbelievably difficult – there is still a big signpost pointing to Colberrow. In fact, it's
worse
if the bodies aren't found.'

‘I suppose,' she said.

‘In which case, his only safe course of action is to make sure that they are found, but make it look as if they were killed for another reason and by someone else.'

‘Somersby and Sheldon, and their little drugs kitchen.'

‘Which would explain why the bodies were hidden so poorly and so close to the shed where Somersby and Sheldon were working.'

‘They had a very good reason for killing them, we assume that it's nothing to do with the previous killings, and our man is in the clear.'

‘It makes sense to me.'

She stood up and went to the door. Opening it, she yelled out, ‘Fisher? Get me coffee for two.'

Eisenmenger noted the lack of pleasantries and asked mildly, ‘Is that the best use of your manpower?'

Back behind her desk, she snorted. ‘Where Fisher's concerned, it is.'

He laughed. She said thoughtfully, ‘There's still the problem of MO. Our killer has never done anything like this before.'

‘But perhaps he didn't have any choice. Perhaps he was forced to kill the boys on the spur of the moment.'

‘Because they saw something?'

‘That's what I think; it wasn't Somersby's little operation, though.'

Fisher knocked and came in with two mugs of coffee, two spoons, a half full bottle of semi-skimmed milk and sugar cubes in a chipped canteen dessert bowl. Eisenmenger murmured, ‘Silver service, I see.'

‘Nothing but the best for Gloucestershire Constabulary.'

He put some milk in his coffee, while she took hers black; the sugar cubes were ignored. Sipping it, she said, ‘If all this isn't complete rot, you're suggesting that there is something the Internet killer doesn't want us to see in or around Colberrow. Other than confirming our suspicions about the significance of the place, I'm not sure that gets us any further forward.'

Eisenmenger mused for a while. After a while, he admitted, ‘No, I suppose not.'

‘And it could all be misdirection. If our man is clever enough – and I have a horrible feeling he is – he might be deliberately pointing us towards Colberrow so that we don't look elsewhere.'

‘Maybe . . .'

They sipped the coffee for a while; Eisenmenger found himself settling into a cosy sense of companionship.

Beverley stood up suddenly, went to the door and bellowed, ‘Frobisher!'

He came in at once. He was a short man, not unhandsome, and clearly a fastidious dresser; Eisenmenger even saw cufflinks, an affectation he found strangely anachronistic in the modern police force. ‘Sir?' Frobisher asked, standing to attention before the desk. Eisenmenger got the impression he wasn't happy to be answering to Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton.

‘Sit down.'

He complied.

‘Has either Somersby or Sheldon confessed?'

Frobisher said at once. ‘Don't know, sir. Not my investigation anymore.'

She cut across him, sharply. ‘If I want to hear bollocks, I call in Sergeant Fisher. When I ask you a question, I want some sense and I want the truth, inspector. I don't blame you for keeping in contact with DCI Smillie, so tell me what's happening.'

He had stiffened noticeably. ‘No one's confessed yet. They're both vehement that they had nothing to do with it. They've both admitted the drugs charges, though.'

Eisenmenger observed, ‘Which is still going to mean a very stiff sentence.'

‘But easier parole,' responded Frobisher.

‘But as far as I can see, that means we still have a legitimate right to investigate the boys' murder, since I deem it to be possibly connected to the Internet killings.'

‘I don't see how you can say that,' protested her new inspector, clearly demonstrating a distressing lack of team spirit.

‘I don't care doodley-shit what you can or can't see, Frobisher. Shut up if you can't be constructive.'

Inspector Frobisher was clearly not used to Beverley's methods of discipline; either that, Eisenmenger reckoned, or he had just soiled his Calvin Kleins. He asked him, ‘Was the Grange searched?'

‘We made sure it was secure, yes.' This was said in a rather haughty tone.

‘And there was no sign that anyone had got in recently?'

‘None at all.'

‘So what the fucking hell did they see that got them killed?' asked Beverley. Frobisher began to say something and got put straight before he had got halfway through the first syllable. ‘Shut up, inspector. We're thinking outside the box here.'

‘To coin a cliché,' murmured Eisenmenger almost inaudibly.

Frobisher was flushed and angry at this series of put-downs and had donned a petulant expression which did little for his innate beauty, and did even less to disturb Chief Inspector Wharton, who sat in deep thought until she said suddenly, ‘Frobisher, you and Fisher find out all you can about the history of the Grange. I haven't talked to the boys' parents yet, and that's the first thing we should have done.'

Frobisher frowned. ‘Shouldn't you talk to DCI Smillie first?'

‘I'm going to talk to them about the Internet killer, Frobisher. Nothing to do with Smillie's investigation but, if I find you've accidentally let him know what I'm doing, I'll make sure you never make Chief Inspector. Got that?'

He didn't like what he got, but he undoubtedly got it.

SIXTY-TWO

E
llie Taylor had nothing to tell them. She was holding herself together with admirable courage, helped by Darren's father who had flown back from his new home in Spain to be with her. It was an awkward interview, with Beverley's tact stretched to the limits as she wrestled with the opposing demands of being considerate and trying to elicit information. Eisenmenger, who had only come because Beverley had insisted, said nothing; he felt his presence to be intrusive, almost voyeuristic.

If anything, at the Barclays, things were even more difficult. It was clear that Antonia Barclay was holding herself together with nothing less than superhuman effort, whilst her husband was operating almost as an automaton. The information they gleaned, though, was of more interest. It seemed that the boys had been in the habit of playing on the estate. Had they been into the grounds of the Grange before?

Yes, Antonia said, they had. They weren't supposed to, but they had been caught on one occasion, and reprimanded for it. Mr Somersby had been angry, and now she knew why.

She broke down in tears and was comforted in a painfully mechanical way by her husband. After a short interval, Beverley began again. Had they ever mentioned anything they'd ever seen while playing in there?

No, nothing.

Nothing at all?

Antonia became flustered. No, nothing. What were they getting at by asking these questions?

Beverley explained that whilst it was almost certain that the killers were in custody, the police had to explore every possible avenue.

They understood. She asked if they could look at Josh's bedroom; she solemnly pledged that they would disturb nothing. Antonia, still wandering in the hinterland of breakdown, said with tears in her eyes that she had been about to tidy it the night before.

Andrew took them up and then stood in the doorway, not entering as if unable to, watching them as they looked around. It was Beverley who found the camera. She asked Andrew if he minded if she looked at the photographs. He said no, as long as she didn't delete them, and she was careful not to.