Authors: Tom Bale
They came in three Jeeps. Three Grand Cherokees in midnight blue.
Kendrick was in the lead car. Halfway along Chilton Way he signalled
them to a halt. Before he opened his door, a man in the back seat
jumped out and put up an umbrella, only to have it torn from his
grasp by the wind.
'Forget it.' Kendrick marched back to the third vehicle in line and
motioned the passenger to open his window. He indicated the trees
at the side of the road.
'You two stay here. Cut down a tree and block the road. If anyone
comes along, tell them you've called the fire brigade. It'll buy us some
time.'
There was a plan to follow. An excellent plan. So far it had worked
like a dream. If he didn't get control of himself, he might throw it
away. But he couldn't resist.
Julia was appalled. 'Megan Caplan? You killed them because of
Megan?'
Toby nodded. He rolled Julia on to her back. If she had gathered
what was on his mind, she did well to conceal it.
'My uncle was having an affair with Laura Caplan. That's why he
reacted so badly when they caught Carl wanking over her underwear.
My aunt is terminally ill. George was waiting for her to die, then
Laura was going to divorce Keith, who was a boring skinflint, and
move in with her lover.'
As he spoke, he realised he was rubbing himself through his
trousers. His hand sprung away, and then he remembered: he could
do whatever he liked now. His mouth felt dry and he swallowed,
then moistened his lips with his tongue.
'Megan was going to be made his sole heir. Cutting me out.'
'But Megan's still alive.'
'In a deep coma. I'll deal with her when I have to.'
He fumbled with the buttons of her shirt. She let out a whimper,
which only served to heighten his pleasure. Her stomach muscles
clenched beneath his fingers. He could have just ripped the shirt
open, but it felt better to do it slowly. Erotically.
'How do you know all this? Did you confront George?'
He heard the emotion in her voice and smiled. 'Of course not.'
He reached the last button and allowed his hand to brush over her
breasts. She tried to shrink away but had nowhere to go.
'Someone else told you?'
'I received an email, warning me what George was planning. I was
faced with losing everything. I had to find a way to stop him. It
was bad enough that the first application had been turned down. I was
in debt to Vilner. I was desperate. I needed to get rid of the Caplans.
Then I thought of Carl.'
Breathless, he drew back her shirt. The sight made him lightheaded.
It wasn't because she was slim and well toned, or because
her breasts were visible through the gauzy material of the bra. What
thrilled him were her scars. The legacy of 19 January.
His legacy.
'Carl was the perfect candidate,' he said. 'I pretended to bump into
him one day in Falcombe. He remembered me from the summers I
spent down here, when I was at university. I got him pissed, then
started coming down here regularly. We'd go to pubs where no one
knew us, and I set about indoctrinating him.'
He reached out and traced his finger along the ridge of red skin
that ran vertically from just below her sternum and disappeared into
her jeans. He pictured her on the operating table, the surgeons elbowdeep
in blood, living organs slippery in their hands.
'I kept talking about Laura Caplan, what a bitch she was. How she
used to laugh at him, telling everyone how inadequate he was. I
convinced him his whole life had been destroyed by that one incident
in her kitchen, and pretty soon he was steaming for revenge. Of
course, it helped that he was already a headcase. I just had to wind
him up and point him in the right direction.'
'It was your idea to steal your uncle's shotgun?'
Toby nodded. 'We made it look like a break-in, but I'd deactivated
the alarm the night before. George just assumed he'd forgotten to set
it.'
'And what about everyone else Carl killed?'
'I don't know why he did that. I was upstairs, dealing with Megan.
I heard him go outside and followed him down the lane. I couldn't
call out in case someone heard me. Then I saw him pull the pistol
and shoot the man in the pub garden. After that, I had no choice but
to wait and see what happened.'
He stopped, unhappy with the direction they were taking. His
erection softened. Her body had lost a little of its allure, which was
probably a good thing.
'You were in the lane when I found the postman?'
'Yes. I watched him going round the village. I couldn't risk showing
myself, but I couldn't let him be taken alive either. When he chased
you on to the green I saw my chance.' He laughed. 'I finished him
off, just as I'd intended to do back at the farmhouse. I thought I'd
finished you off, too.'
'And you've achieved nothing,' Julia said.
'I wouldn't say that. A lot of the protesters are dead. The Caplans
are out of the picture. So is Vilner, now.'
'All these lives destroyed, and you're not a penny richer.'
He dismissed her scorn. 'I will be, once George is dead.'
'You'll kill your uncle?'
Toby stood up, proud that his self-control hadn't deserted him.
Observing Julia's pathetic show of defiance, he understood how she'd
survived the fall from the tree. She never knew when she was beaten.
'First he's going to come here and shoot you, before tragically taking
his own life.' He grinned. 'The mystery of the second killer will be
laid to rest at last.'
He took a look around, satisfied himself she was secure here. This
was the only room that could be locked with a key. He was at the
door when she threw a last desperate question.
'But what if Carl killed the others for someone else?'
He stopped, irritated. 'What?'
'This Decipio you mentioned?'
'That was Vilner.'
'No it wasn't. You don't know who it is.'
Her words rang in his head as he strode out. He slammed the
door and turned the key in the lock. The wind roared around the
house and rain pounded the roof, but despite the noise he still heard
her shouting as he descended the stairs.
'You don't know who he is. But he knows you.'
Julia kept her eyes tightly shut while a long minute passed, trying to
blot out the storm, listening for proof that he was leaving. Finally she
heard it: the faint muffled thud of the front door closing.
He had gone to Chilton Manor to get his uncle. That meant she had
a little time. Half an hour, perhaps. Was that long enough? The voices
in her head wouldn't agree on anything.
You can't afford to delay
, the first one said.
You have to be sure he's gone
, the other cautioned.
And of course, they were both right. So she waited. But only for
another minute or so.
Then she swung her legs round, and used her stomach muscles to
propel herself into a sitting position. She slid off the bed, landing on
the floor with a thump. She waited, her heart pounding like a kettle
drum. If Toby was bluffing, he'd have heard that. He would be up
here any moment.
More agonising seconds passed, but he didn't appear. Julia let out
a sigh of relief and shuffled on her bottom until she was sitting with
her back to the crumpled pair of jeans. Her fingers stretched as far as
the tape would allow, probing the cold denim until finally, with a
small prayer of thanks to Keith Caplan, she made contact with the
smooth leather belt.
She smiled.
Every second she stayed alive . . .
It seemed to take an age for Vanessa to enter the room. Both George
and Craig offered help, but she waved them away. She was similarly
dismissive when George implored her to go back to her bed.
'No,' she said. 'I want to know what's going on.'
The two men stared at each other. Craig cleared his throat and
said, 'I need to speak to your nephew. Julia Trent has gone missing.'
Vanessa made it to a high-backed chair and shuffled round, positioning
herself above it. Craig had to fight the impulse to guide her
down; the furious determination in her face told him it wouldn't be
welcome. At close range her skin was impossibly thin and translucent,
as if at any moment it might rupture like worn fabric.
'I don't see the connection,' she said.
'Craig believes . . .' George began, and then faltered.
'I think Toby was involved in the massacre,' Craig said, his own
voice a little unsteady. Despite her frailty, or perhaps in part because
of it, Vanessa carried an air of haughty command. Neither man spoke
as she descended, gingerly, and finally sat, pulling the folds of her
dressing gown around her.
'Involved how?' she said.
'The other gunman that Julia described,' George explained. 'With
Alice Jones coming forward, we probably have to accept—'
'You suspect that was Toby?' Vanessa broke in. Craig felt a hot flush
of embarrassment. The mere presence of this elderly, dying woman
in the room made his accusations seem offensive, indecent, even
implausible.
'He believes I also had something to do with it,' George added.
Vanessa's gaze snapped from her husband to Craig. 'I rather think
not,' she said, as if humouring a small boy. Then back to George, her
eyes like burning coals. 'Didn't you tell him?'
George twitched. 'Tell him what?'
'About Laura,' said Vanessa, producing a crumpled photograph from
her pocket. She tossed it on to the floor and sneered. 'About the
woman you loved.'
Julia knew exactly how she would free herself. She had it all worked
out in her head, but real life was stubbornly refusing to play along.
The belt had a thick buckle made of polished steel. The pin in the
centre of the buckle was about an inch and an half long, with a tiny
rounded head. Providing she could apply sufficient force, she reckoned
it was sharp enough to puncture the tape binding her hands.
At first she tried spearing the tape by propping the pin upright and
then forcing her wrists down on it. The problem was that the pin kept
slipping sideways. Because she was working blind, her hands tied
behind her back, she couldn't tell if she had it positioned correctly
before she pushed down. She wasted a lot of time and energy and
ended up tearful and frustrated.
It wasn't going to work, she thought. She couldn't count on having
more than half an hour. She'd wasted ten or fifteen minutes of that
already. Despair was like a crouching predator, waiting for its moment.
She fought every urge to surrender to it.
Then she had an inspiration. Bring her hands round in front.
She fell on to her side and pulled her knees up to her chin. Thanked
God for the weight she'd lost in the past couple of months. Even so,
it was a struggle to slide her arms over her buttocks. The pressure
caused the tape to bite into the skin around her wrists. She felt a
tearing sensation in her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She had to
make this work.
With a cry of pain and victory, she wrenched her hands into the
space behind her knees. Rested for a moment.
You're halfway there
,
she told herself. Now she just had to loop her hands over her feet.
She drew her legs in as tightly as she could, knees pressing against
her chin, and stretched her arms to their limit, scraping her wrists
down across her ankles. But it did no good. The way her feet were
bound together, there simply wasn't enough clearance. One foot at a
time it would have been easy, but like this it was impossible. Truly
impossible.
'Shitting shitting shit!' she shouted. The seconds ticking away felt like
a march of ants across her skin. She'd heard what Toby was planning to
do when he returned. She had a very simple choice: escape or die.
Craig picked up the photograph. It was obviously a couple of years
old, taken one summer during the harvest. A pretty girl with light
brown hair was perched on a hay bale, beaming at the camera while
George stood next to her, his arm suspended in mid-air as if he'd
intended an embrace but lost his nerve at the last moment.
'George wouldn't have harmed the Caplans,' Vanessa told him. 'Not
Laura or that little brat, anyway.'
The words were delivered with an unsettling mix of amusement
and bitterness. Craig thought back to the doubts Julia had expressed
about George's involvement. She'd described how upset he became
when he talked about the Caplans, saying she didn't think he could
have faked his reaction.
George wore an expression of absolute horror. He waved his hands
in agitation, stumbling over his words. 'No, you're wrong. Vanessa,
please, darling—'
'Don't use that term on me. I meant nothing to you, all those years
you were sneaking off to see her. Insulting me, humiliating me,
screwing that common little whore right under my nose.'
George became distraught, shaking his head, trying to make himself
heard. 'This isn't the right time. Let me take you back upstairs.'
'I'm staying here.'
'But I have so much to explain. I can't do it like this. Please, Vanessa.'
Tears welled in his eyes, and for a moment Craig thought he was
going to prostrate himself and beg for her forgiveness.
'Listen,' he said, 'Julia's still missing, and this isn't going to help
her.'
The Mathesons regarded him as if they had forgotten he was there.
'I may have made a big mistake,' he went on, 'but it would put my
mind at ease if I could speak to Toby. Could you phone him for me?'
George cast an anxious glance at his wife, then nodded. He went
over to the phone on the wall. Craig was aware of Vanessa shuffling
unhappily in her seat. He wished she had never joined them. Rubbing
a sudden fatigue from his eyes, he realised he'd reached the end of
the line. He had no idea where to find Julia. No idea if he should go
after Toby, or Vilner, or Kendrick.
He didn't look up until he heard George, in a puzzled voice, say,
'The phone's dead. Must be the storm.'
Then Vanessa said, 'Please leave us now. We have a lot to discuss.'
Craig stood up, intending to comply. Desperate to salvage something
from this wasted journey, he said, 'Can you give me Toby's
number? And his address. I'll go and see him if I have to.'
Then someone in the doorway said, 'That won't be necessary.'
Vanessa saw him first, then Craig. George was still grasping the
phone, as if he couldn't decide what to do with it. His puzzlement
grew as he registered the astonishment on their faces, and only then
did he turn towards the door.
'Toby!'
It was George who confirmed his identity, but Craig already knew.
He read it in the man's dangerous, almost feral presence. Clad in dark
clothes, Toby's hair was plastered to his head and his shoes were clotted
with mud, but his eyes were alert and predatory. He exuded an odour
of blood and death that stilled the air in the room and for a moment
robbed Craig of all thought except one: Julia was dead.
'Where is she?' he shouted. It was a gut reaction, but it got the
response he wanted. Toby's eyes narrowed in acknowledgement, just
as dazzling beams of light cut through the room.
Craig launched himself towards Toby. He heard Vanessa scream,
'Run!' and as he passed her he felt a slap on his thigh far more powerful
than anything a desperately ill woman could muster. By now Toby
was turning, acting on his aunt's advice. Craig tried to follow but his
right leg gave out beneath him and he stumbled, crashing into a small
table. He looked down and saw blood streaming from a slit in his
trousers. In his periphery he registered Vanessa thrusting forward and
just managed to dodge clear as the blade slashed down again.
George cried out and moved to restrain her, but she was already
collapsing back in her chair, a craft knife gripped in her thin, trembling
hand. Clutching his leg, Craig was dimly aware of a door slamming as
Toby made his escape, followed almost immediately by a loud, urgent
thudding on the front door.
Police
, he thought.
Thank Christ the police are here.