Salton Killings (23 page)

She stopped pedalling and carefully applied her brake. She peered intently at the spot where she thought she had seen the shape, but nothing moved. She began to twist her body, pointing the bike back towards Salton. But Pete would be upset already – about Katie – and if she stood him up . . . She turned again, placed a foot decisively on the pedal and set off towards the wood. After all, there was really nothing to be frightened of – the police would have locked Mr Wilson up by now.

She pedalled faster and faster, faster than was probably safe, not giving her courage time to desert her. She sped past the spot where she had seen the shape, glancing down at the grass as she went. It looked a little flat, but she couldn't be sure, and she certainly wasn't going to get off her bike and have a closer look.

It's all in my imagination, she told herself, it's all in my imagination, it's all in my imagination.

Liz Poole unhooked the heavy shopping bags from the handlebars of her bike and knocked with her elbow on the side door of the George. She waited for what seemed an age, then banged louder. When still no one came, she took all the bags in one hand and juggled her purse with the other. She inserted the key into the lock and turned. The door swung open and she could hear the phone ringing in the hallway. Where the hell were Harry and Margie? She slammed the bags furiously on the kitchen table, realising that she had probably broken some of the eggs. Damn and blast! Let the bloody phone ring, it would only be the brewery. She counted the rings . . . six . . . seven . . . eight. They weren't going to go away. She marched into the hall and picked up the receiver.

“George and Dragon.”

She could hear the noise of people talking in the background, then a voice said, “Mrs Poole? Miss Paddock here, Margie's form teacher. I'm calling from school. Sorry I didn't get around to ringing you before but I just wondered if Margie had had any more fainting attacks.”

“Any more? She's not had any at all as far as I know.”

“Oh dear,” Miss Paddock sounded worried. “You mean, she hasn't told you. She had one just outside school, the day, the morning Diane went missing.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” Liz said, putting down the phone before Miss Paddock could say any more. There was only one reason, as far as she knew, for girls to feel faint at that time of the morning. If Pete had got her into trouble . . . if Harry found out . . .

“Margie,” she called out loudly. “
Margie
.”

There was no reply, the house seemed to be empty. Maybe Margie was hiding. Liz went briskly from room to room, looking for her daughter. She would not normally have gone into the bar until much later, but there was nowhere else to check, and she saw the note, corpse-white against the brown bar – like a message from the dead.

Woodend gazed down at his nicotine-stained finger.

“There has to be a link,” he said for the seventh or eighth time. “There
has
to be.”

The clock chimed five in dull, dead tones. Rutter, his head in his hands, closed his eyes and tried to conjure up pictures of the four dead girls.

“They were all fair-haired, sir,” he said.

“That's it,” Woodend exploded.

Rutter opened his eyes and saw that his chief's face was alive with excitement.

“It was only a thought, sir. I mean . . .”

“It was
the
thought,” Woodend said. “Cheshire's right next door to Wales and most of the people in Salton are of Celtic origin. That's why they're all so small and dark.” He could see that Rutter was not convinced. “Look,” he continued, “how many fair-haired people do you see in this village? How many of them are girls? And how many of them are fifteen? Jessie, Katie, Diane and – oh, my God!”

Margie stood under the tree where she usually met Pete. He was late, and that wasn't like him although she wouldn't normally have minded. She loved to sit in the wood, watching the golden shafts of sunlight filter their way through the lush green leaves, listening to the croaking of the insects in the grass. Sometimes she sat so perfectly still that a rabbit or a shrew would almost touch her before it sensed her presence.

Today it all felt wrong. Today, the sky was grey and the wood seemed dank and dark. The clouds, drifting sluggishly across the sky, depressed her. She was cold. But there was something worse than all this – though there was no sound and nothing moved, she knew she was being watched. A pair of eyes were boring coldly, relentlessly, into her mane of yellow hair, pinning it to the trunk of the tree. She could not say how she knew, but she did. She didn't even know where he was – only that he was there.

Woodend hammered furiously at the pub door.

“There's no point in bangin' like that,” Liz Poole called out. “We're closed. Come back in twenty minutes.”

Even through the solid oak, Woodend could sense her anxiety.

“Police,” he shouted. “Charlie.”

The bolts slid back.

“What's all this about, Charl––” Liz began.

“Where's Margie? Is she upstairs, doin' her homework?”

But he could tell by the strained look on Liz's face that she wasn't.

“No, she's gone off to see her boyfriend, Pete. I was a bit worried at first, but it's all over Maltham that you've––”

“Damn it, woman, where's she gone?”

“To the wood. It's where they usually meet. She doesn't want her dad . . .”

The Chief Inspector had already turned his back on her. His eyes fell on her Raleigh bike, propped against the wall.

“I'll take that along the canal,” he said to Rutter. “You drive the car up the track as far as you can an' make the rest of the way on foot.”

As he lowered himself onto the saddle and pulled back the pedal, Sowerbury rushed up, holding his handkerchief in his hand.

“We've found somethin', sir,” he gasped. “We think it's . . . it could be a clue.”

Woodend needed no more clues. Once he had the link between the girls, it all fitted together – the loose ends, the half-truths, the evasions, the timings – everything. The Chief Inspector knew who the killer was, and why he had killed. As Sowerbury unwrapped the handkerchief to reveal his prize, Woodend stepped on the pedal. The bike shot forward and Sowerbury was forced to jump to one side. Woodend caught a brief glimpse of what he was holding in his hand. He had not known what it would be, but he was not surprised that it was a whistle.

“Come on out,” Margie said, trying to sound braver than she felt. “I know you're in there. I can see you.”

She could see nothing, only the thick dull greenness of the bush. Yet she was sure he was there. She could feel his anger, buzzing, filling the air.

“If this is your idea of a joke, Pete Calloway,” she said, “I don't think it's very funny.”

They seemed to be the magic words. To her left, leaves rustled and, through the greenness, hands appeared. Hands that were smaller than Pete's, older than Pete's.

The man swept the branches aside and climbed out of the bush.

“So that's his name, is it?” he demanded. “Pete Calloway?”

“D-dad,” Margie said. “What are you doin' here?”

Poole could no longer hear her. His face was scarlet with rage, his frame shook.

“Has he been takin' advantage of you?” he demanded. “Has he? Or have
you
been takin' advantage of
him
? You're just like Doris an' your mother – you're like all women – nothin' but a little tart.”

She tried to run, but he side-stepped her, and then his hands were round her throat. She gasped and fell to her knees, her arms flapping ineffectually.

Woodend pedalled furiously along the towpath, his back wheel skidding on the stones, his front wheel flying – sometimes dangerously – into the air. Images and words flashed through his mind as the Raleigh juddered and shook.

Constable Yarwood, with bits of the windscreen of his police car embedded in his face. ‘He was nearly delirious,' Rutter had said, ‘babbling on about his eyes and being blind.'

Peggy Bryce, Katie Walmsley's best friend, looking at his hair with a professional interest and saying, ‘We'd been tryin' to look like Marilyn Monroe till then, but Audrey Hepburn was in this particular picture, an' we thought she looked great.'

And the suspender clip! He'd gone to talk to Liz Poole straight after Sowerbury had given it to him, whereas he should have followed his first thought – why had he needed to find out about it that way?

The murderer was there, in the woods just ahead. Woodend knew as much about him as he did about himself. But none of that would save Margie Poole.

Margie felt the grip on her throat relax and then stop completely. Through watery eyes she could see her father holding up his hands, looking at them in horror as if they were strangers to him and had no right to be on the ends of his arms. His eyes flooded with tears and his mouth flapped open. He tried to speak, but no words came. It didn't matter, she knew what he was trying to say. She wanted to go over to him, put her arms around him and tell him it was all right, but for the moment her body would not let her. She turned painfully onto her side, and was sick.

As the yellow slime trickled down her chin and on to her best school blouse, she heard a series of sounds behind her – a thud, a groan, and then another thud, the second one larger – broader somehow. She pulled herself shakily to her knees and saw her father lying on the ground.

“There was no need to do that,” she croaked angrily. “He just lost his temper, that's all. He didn't want to kill me.”

“I know that,” the murderer said, with a sad smile. “I don't want to either – but I have to.”

Rutter had forced the car along the narrow track beyond the point of its endurance and finally the front axle had given way with a sickening crunch, flinging the sergeant's head against the windscreen. Now he was on foot, running as fast as he could, a stitch tearing at his side. He had experienced the pain before, in races at school sports, and he knew how to deal with it. He knew, too, that he was not running for himself this time, to prove to everyone that he was the best. He was running for Woodend, a copper he had come to admire, whose career was teetering on the edge of disaster. He was running for the pretty blonde girl in the wood. And he had never run better.

“It's no use, Margie,” the killer said, and she could tell from his voice that he was only a few steps behind her, “no use at all.”

They were both breathing heavily from their exertions, but even in her state of panic she could detect the sadness in his tone.

“You can't get away, Margie. Why don't you give up now an' get it over with?”

Branches slapped her across the face, nettles stung her, brambles reached out and clawed at her, but still she did not slacken her pace. Even though she knew he was right, even though she knew he would catch her in the end. And despite the blind, throbbing terror that engulfed her mind, there was a tiny part of it that remained rational, non-instinctive and which made her realise, just as Katie Walmsley had realised in her last moments, why it was that she had to be killed.

A root caught her ankle, wrenching at her tendon – and she was down, sprawling on the ground, her body aching from the collision. The killer turned her over and sat astride her. His body crushed her young breasts, his hands clamped round her tender throat.

The fingers pressed, cutting off her air and she gagged immediately. Up above her, she could see the green leaves and the grey sky, but they were already starting to swim before her eyes. She wondered how long it would take her to die – and then she blacked out.

Woodend had reached the jam jar of flowers which marked the spot were Katie Walmsley had met her death. Her mother had not put them there, her mother had never been near the place since Katie drowned.

Just ahead of him was the path down into the woods. He jumped off the bike and threw it to the ground. He listened for the sound of a struggle, but there was none. Why should there be? If the killer had found Margie by now, she would have no strength left to cry out. It wasn't a big wood, but he could search it for hours without finding them. He raced down the track. He had to rely on chance – because that was all he had.

Margie's eyes were blank and lifeless, her face was turning purple and her throat made gurgling noises. Diane had looked like that just before she died, the killer thought. It would all be over soon. This would be the last one. He would be caught and he would hang. It didn't matter. He had paid his debt, struggled with injustice as best he could – he would go to his own death with a clear conscience.

Only a few more squeezes and whatever little life was left in Margie would depart. Just a while longer . . . He felt a strong arm wrap around his neck and jerk him away from the girl.

The noise of the battle brought Rutter and Woodend running, from opposite directions, to where Margie was lying. Rutter bent over her. Her eyes moved and she groaned.

“She's bruised and shocked,” the sergeant said, “but she should be all right.”

Woodend turned towards the two men locked in a fierce struggle on the ground. Clawing and gouging, they had not even noticed the arrival of the police. They were on the edge of a slope that led to the pond and, as Woodend started to move towards them, they began to roll, pell-mell, down it.

They hit the deep-green water with a loud splash – and disappeared. The surface of the pond bubbled and blistered as the men fought in the murk below. And then they were both up again, only inches apart, ready to resume their fight to the death.

“Enough,” Woodend shouted.

They turned clumsily in the water and saw him standing there. Side by side, they waded to the bank, pulled themselves out and began to walk towards him.

They were both bruised and bleeding. McLeash's check shirt clung tightly to his hard muscles, Black's cadet uniform was torn and covered with weed.