Authors: Michael Wood
Chapter 31
Ben was back at his desk and ready to go, a period of frustration over. For two days he had been unable to get on with any of his ‘own work’ because of Sue Burrows’ demand for copy on the A591 incident.
Much to her consternation, he had missed the press conference in Keswick’s new ‘Theatre by the Lake’ - the only place in town big enough to hold such a plethora of media - when the chief inspector handling the case had officially released the woman’s name, and other fresh data.
But, at Sue’s insistence, he had visited the site where her body was found, and tried to paint a word picture, and he had interviewed a few people in and around Keswick to get an opinion picture. He had rattled off a quick 500 words for her, feeling slightly guilty that he hadn’t given it his best attention. He wasn’t too keen on this type of journalism, preferring facts to opinions, but Sue had every right to ask it of him occasionally.
At night, he had managed to input the information from Peter Metternich into the Metternichs’ database, and now he was ready to look for victim commonalities again.
Against the 20 heading categories on his database, he cross-referenced the information he had gathered on the Frasers, the Metternichs, Tessa, and the two others on whom he had only snippets.
At times, as he slowly went through the data, he would think he was on to something, when three people would match in a category, only to find a fourth or fifth not matching.
After about half an hour he selected the category - ‘Member Of’ - being his shorthand for ‘member of a recognised organisation, be it professional, business, union, or similar.’
At first, he saw no commonality, as various organisations appeared on the screen against each victim’s name. But then he spotted something. Among the disparate organisations they belonged to, he saw Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Green Party, and others.
Although they were all different, they were all environmental organisations. The Metternichs were members of the German Green Party, Tessa was a member of Friends of the Lake District, Mrs Fraser was a member of Friends of the Earth and the two ‘snippets’ were members of Greenpeace and Ecobridge. The only exception was Jack Fraser, who was a member of nothing but the Labour Party.
Ben was not too disturbed by this omission. It could be that Jack had been made to cancel any such memberships when he was appointed minister, particularly when he was dealing with the nuclear industry. More likely was the theory that his background was insignificant once the killer had learned that his wife was an environmentalist. He had then become nothing more than a witness to be silenced.
Ben started to get excited again. At last he had found a link, however tenuous. What was it the book said: ‘Gain as much information as possible, study the minutiae of events, home in on the slightest clues, and chase them down.’
He came back to earth again. How the hell was he going to chase this down?
And, if his environmentalist theory was true, how the hell did the killer know his victims were environmentalists if he hadn’t met them before?
A strong coffee, and a stroll around the garden, brought an idea. Back upstairs, he picked up the phone and dialled.
‘National Park…David Austin speaking.’
‘It’s Ben Foxley, David, ‘Ben said, momentarily grateful that he’d been spared the whole ‘how may I help you’ routine. ‘Sorry to bother you again. We spoke recently about your warden, Mr Summer.’
‘Yes, I remember?’
‘Would you happen to know if Mr Summer was a member of Friends of the Lake District or any other environmental organisation?’
‘I...believe he was...yes...I’m certain he was. I remember all the members came to the funeral and donated a joint wreath. What’s this for - your article?’
‘Yes,’ Ben lied. ‘I’m just pointing out the obvious - that a lot of wardens are attracted to the job because they are environmentalists. I just need a couple of names and a couple of facts and then I can usually pad it out.’
‘I see,’ Austin said, uncertainly.
‘By the way,’ Ben hurried on. ‘I’m wanting to show the lighter side of a warden’s job as well as the serious side. I don’t suppose you can recall any reports of funny or odd behaviour by a warden in recent times?’
Ben heard Austin sigh the sigh of a man who didn’t want to be bothered with frivolous questions. ‘I don’t think so,’ he droned. ‘There’s been one or two wrong directions been given, and the odd fracas with litter droppers, but nothing very reportable in my opinion. We’ve had a couple of complaints in the last few months about a warden pestering walkers with a market survey questionnaire. Apparently, he says he’s doing it on behalf of the National Park Authority, but we haven’t authorised one. He could be one of our over-zealous types gathering a load of statistics to present us with, to show how useful and efficient he is. It happens sometimes with retired managerial people who miss being in charge. But, anyway, it’s not exactly stuff to excite a reader...is it?’
‘Did they mention his name?’ Ben asked, quietly.
‘No. It’s typical isn’t it....’
Ben had stopped listening. Inside, he was shouting BINGO!. In one simple phone call he had confirmed the WHY, and found the HOW. What was it the book said: ‘there was always a connection between the victims, usually simple in retrospect, because the killer is simple minded.’
He dragged himself back to David Austin. ‘You’re right, David,’ he said. ‘It’s not really what I’m looking for. Never mind, I’ll keep asking around. If I don’t find anything I’ll just have to leave the light side out of the article. Thanks anyway...you’ve been a great help again.’
‘Glad to help,’ Austin said, and put the phone down.
Once again, Ben tried to control his excitement, in case he might be jumping to the wrong conclusions, and suffer disappointment again. But, surely not this time. Seven out of eight victims had been members of an environmental organisation - that just had to be the WHY.
And the HOW had also turned out to be simple, in retrospect. The killer, posing as a warden, simply walked up to people and asked them questions about themselves, using the guise of an official looking questionnaire. Few fell walkers would refuse - they are a polite lot, generally. If they answered ‘no’ to the question: ‘are you a member of an environmental organisation?’ they were free to go. If they answered ‘yes’, then they, and anybody with them, was murdered.
Ben shuddered at the thought. What kind of person could have a face-to-face conversation with a stranger, suddenly attack them, disfigure them while still alive, then throw them to their deaths over the edge?
It had to be a person utterly consumed with hatred. A person who, according to the book: ‘…murders when the heat of his rage is at its peak. A person who takes revenge for some wrong done to them, usually perceived.’ In this case the wrongdoers being some sort of environmentalists.
Ben’s train of thought was momentarily stopped by this. Environmental organisations were not usually perceived as enemies of the public - just the opposite. They usually claimed to be acting on behalf of the public against the might of big business or governments. Maybe
that
was the connection? Maybe the killer had his business or career ruined by the actions of one of these organisations?
Again, the problem looked insurmountable: how to find one man amongst millions who may have worked in business or government.
Having decided that it was indeed an impossible task, he then made a second decision - to keep plodding on, in the hope that his vibration theory might bring something to him. After all, hadn’t his persistent probing already brought him much further than he expected. He had answered the ‘Why, When, Where, and How’ questions. He had identified the victims as environmentalists. Now all he had to do was find the link between the victims and the killer, and finally - identify the killer.
‘Should keep me busy for the next half hour,’ he thought, ironically.
As far as Ben was aware, he had only one piece of information with which to kick start his search for the link - that given to him by Dr Grearson - that a man who constantly sniffs might have Rhinitis, possibly caused by working in a chemical environment.
So for the time being, that meant concentrating on business rather than government. Also, it was unlikely that a business owner or manager would be directly involved in handling chemical materials, so that meant that he was probably a process worker or similar. So, it could be a lost job rather than a lost business, or a lost job because of a lost business.
But why would someone become a killer just because they had lost their job? It didn’t make sense; there had to be more to it than that. Then again, maybe sense didn’t come into it. Maybe the killer had always been irrational or living on the edge of psychosis.
To try to find one individual lost job in the chemical industry was definitely impossible, so the next step had to be to search for a chemical business that had been closed due to the actions of an environmental organisation. And the closure must have taken place before the killings started - in Scotland, about four years ago.
Regrettably, it looked like the Internet, the library and the newspaper offices were going to dominate his life for the foreseeable future.
Chapter 32
He rocks in his chair, eyes still closed. The smile has gone. It made its brief appearance because he had outwitted the police. He guessed they would do a house-to-house; he knew how they worked, having had plenty of contact with them in his early years.
He had repaired the old doorway between the laundry and recording studio through which Vilma had escaped, taping over the joints on the laundry side, and piling canoes against the wall to hide the repair. He had put the ladder and hedge trimmer against the hedge, and dressed in overalls, the day after Vilma had escaped, and always been ready to present an aura of routine normality when the police appeared.
He had seen them coming on the monitor screen in his cottage: one of many throughout the house. They were linked to a camera concealed in the eye of an ornamental lion standing close to the main entrance gate. Jed Samson had not wanted to be disturbed by unannounced visitors.
He was grateful to Jed Samson for a lot of things. Only a Glaswegian would insist that his caretaker had to come from a dole queue in Scotland, a place he had often stood before his success. And only a man who had known hard times would have provided such a generous wage as well as free accommodation.
The Manor had proved to be far better for Hector’s purposes than the remote cottages he had rented as he made his way south from Strathy Point. The hidden recording studio had been a bonus - the perfect place to keep Vilma.
Shortly after arriving, he had scoured the area and found a deserted gamekeeper’s cottage in a remote valley beneath Grizedale Pike. Had Jed Samson wanted to use the Manor at any time, Hector had planned to use the cottage as temporary accommodation for Vilma until Jed left. Now, of course, that possibility would not arise.
Hector opened his eyes and rose from the chair. He pushed it to one side, kicked the Persian rug away, and lifted the trapdoor.
He moved down the stairs with a strange caution. Ever since Vilma had gone, a painful loneliness had gripped him. He paused at the control room and sat at a low desk in front of the window looking into the recording studio. From the myriad of switches and dials among the equipment surrounding him, he selected two.
This time, instead of the love duet from Madame Butterfly, the slow movement of Barber’s violin concerto started up, as he moved towards the studio door.
The violin took over from the introduction, building up to a harsh crescendo of troubled chaos. It searched for somewhere to go. Suddenly it found a way out, through a tune so sublime, yet so painful, it tore his heart out. It told of the mystery and joy of life, yet warned of the inevitability of death. It tried to fight death off, but it couldn’t, and it disappeared into a chasm of dreadful drums. It emerged briefly for a final effort, but fluttered helplessly, like a moth in a flame, before it faded away.
An emotion close to fear shivered through him as he entered the studio through the thick double-doors. Its emptiness hit him physically, made him sway unsteadily, almost made him sick. He knew he wouldn’t be able to tolerate being alone for very long. He would have to find another companion soon.
Breathing deeply to combat the nausea, he moved across the room, glancing up at the repair he had done to the hole in the concrete ceiling. He had placed a new steel ring in a fast setting mortar, and now the whole thing was hidden by the suspended sound baffle he had initially removed to make way for Vilma’s chain. Jed would never spot it if ever he returned.
In a far corner of the room, he stopped, knelt down on the carpeted floor, and gazed up at a large, framed, photograph of Leni; one of ten identical photographs he had hung, equally spaced, around the walls. His daily homage to Leni had been inspired by seeing her perform the ‘stations of the cross’ in church. But instead of praying, as he shuffled on his knees from one identical photograph to the other, he reminisced.
If he concentrated on the right side of her face, which was still perfect, her beautiful brown eye staring forever into his soul, he thought of the blissful times, when she had brought him untold joy.
But, if he glanced to the left side, to the blood-filled eye socket, the shattered bones, the ripped flesh, the dangling ear, the blood soaked hair, he relived the horror.
Then there was the smile...God ...she had tried to smile. He had asked her to smile while she died, and she had tried. It was there, caught forever, forced through the terrible pain - a tiny smile - a massive effort of a smile.
‘Smile Leni smile,’ he had shouted, as she lay, contorted, in the wreckage. She couldn’t die if he photographed her, could she. She couldn’t leave him if he was keeping her alive with his camera, could she. She would have to stay to smile. You can’t die if you are smiling, can you.
‘Smile Leni smile...Smile Leni smile...Smile Leni smile’
he had screamed through a drunken haze as he saw her eye fill with blood, heard her gurgle and gasp, saw her quivering, tiny hand move to touch him.
Then it had come. A glowing glint of love in her right eye. A tiny smile on her beautiful lips. Then stillness.
He pressed the shutter release button again and again. He had to bring her back...he had to keep her alive...she had to live...she had to live..... He clicked and clicked and clicked....
Two passing motorists had found him sitting in the stream where the car had finished after hitting the bridge parapet. He was trembling and incoherent. They put it down to the alcohol they smelt on him. They had not yet looked inside the wreckage. Nor were they to know that he had just found his daughter’s head beneath the water’s peat brown surface.
*
His next recollection had been the funeral. A bitter wind had blown across the graveyard, prominent on the bleak headland, overlooking the grey sea. He had found Vilma standing beside him at the graveside, shivering, crying. She told him later that he had phoned her with the terrible news, and sent her the money to fly over for the funeral. He could vaguely remember doing it, although most of what he had done in that period after the crash was obliterated by a cocktail of alcohol and sedatives.
Leni and Grace were buried side-by-side, looking west towards Ben Loyal, in the best coffins, with the best headstone he could afford. On Leni’s side of the glinting white marble headstone, he had engraved in gold an extract from Robert Burns’ ‘Ae Fond Kiss’:
Had we never lov’d sae kindly
Had we never lov’d sae blindly
Never met...or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted!
On Grace’s side he had engraved the words of WB Yeats:
‘The innocent and the beautiful
have no enemies but time.’
Even the old priest, who had buried hundreds, cried.
*
If Vilma hadn’t been there, he would have committed suicide that same day. It wasn’t that she comforted him particularly. It was just that her return flight was not due for a few days and he felt obliged to look after her until then. For two days and nights they sat together in the croft house: she in Leni’s chair at the other side of the fireplace. Little was said. Little was eaten. Plenty was drunk.
On the third day, no longer able to bear the pain, and without saying a word to Vilma, he went out to commit suicide. He cycled to the cemetery and kissed their headstone, then on to the farm at Ribigill, where he left the bike. He reached the cold summit of Ben Loyal, wearing only a short-sleeved shirt.
He walked to the edge of An Caisteal crag, and took one last look at the mighty scene. For a moment, Leni and Grace were at his side, holding his hands, sharing again their immortal feelings. Closing his eyes, he could see Leni’s smile, hear Grace’s tinkling laugh. He held on tight to their tiny hands as he summoned the courage to jump.
‘Fantastic view isn’t it.’ The bellowing voice shocked his eyes open, made him teeter on the edge. Instinctively, he stepped back and turned. A bearded, weather-beaten, man stood a few paces away. The dreadlocks, bandanna, and baggy trousers all announced that he was still a hippie.
Hector wasn’t capable of speech. He could do no more than dazedly stare at the man.
‘You’re a bit close to the edge, pal,’ the man shouted, pointedly, in a lowland Scottish accent. ‘Better watch your step, or you’ll be eagle meat.’
Hector shuffled away from the edge, obediently, like a boy instructed by a teacher. Still he didn’t speak.
‘You alright, pal?’ the man asked, routinely, without concern in his voice. ‘You look a bit...funny... if you don’t mind me saying. Why don’t you have a sit down.’ He gestured to a platform of smooth rock a few paces from the edge.
Hector did as he was told and trudged to the rock, where he sat and stared.
The man paced back and forth along the edge, like an actor on stage, head held high, taking in the vast panorama. ‘What a county,’ he shouted. ‘The only wilderness left in Britain. Just look at the emptiness. Isn’t it bloody wonderful?’
Hector stared, blankly.
Feeling that he had a captive audience, the man strode his stage, expounding his opinions and philosophies. Pollution, global warming, de-forestation, capitalism, were all denounced to Hector’s un-listening ears.
Hector was suspended between two worlds. He should have been dead by now. He wanted to be dead by now. But this man was blathering non-stop, holding him up. He didn’t want to listen to him, to be brought back into the living world; that was too painful. But then he heard the word ‘nuclear’ and his mind automatically clicked back to reality.
‘Just look at that monstrosity over there,’ the man shouted, pointing out Dounreay Nuclear Plant a few miles away. ‘One of these days we’ll get the whole bloody thing closed, not just part of it. Then we’ll get the bulldozers in and wipe it out, and give the land back to the heather and the birds.’
Hector was alert now, anger rising. ‘Who is ‘we’?’ he asked, plainly.
‘The Greens of course,’ the man boasted. ‘I’m a member of the Scottish Green Party. We’re on the march, pal. Mark my word, by the time this decade is over, there won’t be a nuclear installation left in Scotland. No submarine bases, no power stations, and no bloody Dounreay.’
Hector’s anger suddenly boiled up inside him like magma in a volcano. This was the man who had lost him his job - him and his like.
The resurgent Green Party had struck some deals with the Labour majority in the new Scottish Parliament, and succeeded in having closed all nuclear facilities that came under the direct control of Scotland. This had included the part of Dounreay that dealt with export orders, a part that included Hector’s Cementation Plant, which processed and stored the raffinate from Europe’s reactors.
The rest of the plant, still under the control of a Green-less Westminster Parliament, had stayed open. Hector had been made redundant, and even his mentor, Callum McDonald, had been unable to find him another job at the plant.
If it hadn’t been for them, Hector knew, he wouldn’t have lost his job, and with it, his proud status as provider for Leni, Grace and Mama. Leni would not have had to go out to work, and he wouldn’t have become consumed with jealousy and self-doubt, and tried to blank it all out with alcohol.
He wouldn’t have been driving to pick them up from work and school every day. He wouldn’t have been drunk at that time of the afternoon. He wouldn’t have misjudged the bend before the narrow stone bridge over the stream.
He would have been at work.
It had all happened because of these arrogant, self-righteous, interfering bastards. Leni and Grace were dead because of them. He was one of them. And he was boasting about it.
The man was still striding about, delivering his lecture, impassioned by the certainty of his virtue.
Inside Hector, the magma boiled to bursting point. The pent up self-hatred erupted. The lava exploded.
He ran the few paces between them like an agile ape, and charged his shoulder into the startled man. The man staggered backwards and fell, silently, over the edge of An Caisteal.