crusaderfox

T W E N T Y   F I V E
 
 
Carol Monk appeared to ooze confidence as she strolled into the offices of Gateway Cabs. It was a journalistic mask of course; professionalism often hid any deep personal anguish she might normally feel.
When she’d heard that Scott had been attacked in his own flat, she could have hardly believed her ears.
She’d rushed off to visit him earlier that day, and had to admire the way he seemed adamant not to let things drag him down.
He knew of course that the story they had written together had been dropped in view of the murders on Christmas Eve. The police had been made a laughing stock and there was no way Turner would allow the Gazette to follow suit. She had spent most of Boxing Day rewriting the story herself; still crediting Scott with his part in the ruination of an illegal boxing syndicate but making absolutely no suggestion that there had been any link with the murders. In fact, she’d even omitted the very theories that had caused the police to get it wrong.
Turner had always brown-nosed the constabulary far too much in her opinion, but for once she was in full agreement that, mainly for Scott’s sake, any items of embarrassment to the local plod would be left out. That could be left to the nationals, who loved to have stories of bungling and incompetence splashed all over their front pages.
Those same papers were interested in Scott, not for hero-worship (as previously suggested before the killer had made his ugly declarations of being very much alive), but to learn his role in the almighty mess. This, combined with the fact that Scott was now in hospital after nearly being killed by a vengeful thug who’s illegal fighting days were over, would certainly sell red-top newspapers that had already dubbed Abergavenny, ‘The Town of Terror!’.
And the suicide of the policeman in charge of the investigation had certainly not helped matters.
The Gazette would try to work around it but it couldn’t really ignore all this. Some things you just can’t gloss over.
Poor Scott! He was living proof of the old adage ‘curiosity killed the cat’ but then again, all good journalists were supposed to ignore that, weren’t they?
Regardless, for Carol, it was time to be the good hack now; time to forget that everything was turning into shit, and get on with the day’s work at hand.
The interview should prove interesting. Harry Tyler could provide answers to a lot of questions that intrigued her.
She gave a nice professional smile, as a youngish lad led her to an office up some stairs. She’d taken the trouble to wear a particularly smart outfit; in interviews presentation was always important, even if it was she who was conducting the interview. The more she impressed, the more answers would prove forthcoming and besides, she may be on the wrong end fortysomething but she could still look good when she wanted to, and if a little flirting got her results, then why not?
Her young escort knocked on the door, quickly announced her and disappeared off down a corridor like he had a plane to catch.
Harry Tyler, manager of Gateway Cabs, opened the door and smiled back at her.
“Please Mrs Monk, won’t you come in?”
She watched him shuffle a few papers on his desk, clearing some space before inviting her to sit down on a chair opposite.
“Thankyou for agreeing to this interview Mr Tyler, especially as I hear you’ve turned away a lot of the tabloids.”
“Well they can be a tiresome lot but I’ve no objection to talking to the local rag.”
“Do you mind if I tape us?” She pulled out a miniature tape recorder out of her handbag.
“As long as it’s not used in a court of law,” he joked. She smiled back, more out of politeness than genuine amusement.
“Well,” she clicked the device into action, “let’s start with the main question on everyone’s mind.”
“Which is?”
“Why haven’t you followed suit with your rivals and decided to close for business until the murderer is caught?”
“Have all the others shut now?”
She nodded, and then remembered the tape machine. “Yes.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realise I was the only operational taxi firm in Abergavenny. I knew Speedway and Carlton had closed but I didn’t know the other two had as well.”
“They shut after the Christmas Eve killings.”
“I see.” His jovial tone seemed to have dropped. Carol suspected that he was thinking about his fallen colleagues.
 “Did you know Glen McCann well?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
“Unfortunately only too well, and poor old Idris.” He slowly shook his head. “It only seems like the other day I was playing cards with the pair of them - hell, it was the other day! Glen and Idris were particularly close. The tragedy is that Glen only kept on working so that he might have the opportunity of getting the bastard that killed Jonesy; looks like that bastard got him first.”
“So in view of the fact you’ve lost two drivers, why are you still operating?”
“Well firstly, there’s no guarantee the murderer will be caught, he may disappear only to later resurface in another town or he may stop altogether. Four days from now, Abergavenny, like any other place in the country, will be the venue for a bloody big booze up. Now, without a taxi service for those people from the villages who wish to celebrate the New Year in town, there’ll either be a lot of disappointments or even worse a hell of a lot of drunken drivers.
I think the overall effect would be devastating; if we can’t celebrate as a community, then what can we do? I personally refuse to let this whole town be effected just because one twisted sod has decided to go on the rampage. If I closed shop, like the rest, I’d feel like the bastard’s won and that’s the last thing I want. And more importantly, it’s the last thing Glen and Idris would want.
Secondly, I want to make it totally clear that no-one here is being forced to work, in fact many have taken time off, safe in the knowledge that the job will be waiting for them once all this has blown over.”
Carol admired the passion in his speech, even if she felt it was a bit misguided. However, as a reporter she had to take the hard-line.
“What would you say to suggestions that you’re capitalising on these tragic events? I mean if you’re the only company still going, then it’s fair to assume that all the business is going to come your way.”
“I totally refute them. In fact, there will be no profit for me between now and the new year. In fact, I will actually be making a loss.”
“How would that be?”
“Well it’s no secret that I’ve been hiring in staff from outside the area. The only thing that’s been tempting this lot to risk life and limb, is money, and lots of it. I’m actually paying them way beyond what the actual fares are bringing in and will continue to do so until drivers feel safe again, and this town gets back to normal.”
He spotted her cynical expression before he continued.
“Look, I’m not saying I’m some kind of hero. I’m just standing up for what I believe in, for as long as I can afford to. It won’t last forever and yes, okay, I’m sure the publicity of what I’m doing now will place me in a better standing when it comes to competition, after things have settled down.
It’s not the main reason I’m doing this, but as a businessman I obviously can’t ignore the fact that many people of this area will be grateful, when they realise its Gateway Cabs that’s providing them with a service when they need it most. But I also think that whatever new customers I may gain in the future will only generate enough extra revenue to cover the amount I will lose on New Years Eve alone.”
“So what you’re telling me is that you’re doing this for the sake of the town?”
“Well that’s not quite how I would put it but yes, I am extremely fond of Abergavenny and anything I can do to help it, I will without question.”
“May I ask how much you’re paying these drivers?”
“No, but if you want to ask them please feel free to do so. I don’t think it’s right that I should broadcast their earnings without their say so.”
Throughout all of this, Carol had studied Tyler. She had been looking out for any signs of deviousness, any clever avoidance to her questioning and she had detected none. His simplistic manner, his ‘matter of fact’ nature, was somewhat refreshing and while he may have sounded like a politician, it was true there wasn’t an awful lot for him to gain. Okay, so maybe it was a publicity stunt but to what purpose? Even if he took all the business away from the other four cab firms, the taxi-travelling population of Abergavenny and surrounding villages would hardly make him a millionaire!
Besides, in the newspaper business she knew only to well that it was human nature to forget grand gestures and any prolonged sense of loyalty, as soon as a better offer came along.
Everything about him, told her that he was the genuine article. With all the unpleasantness of late, this man was a breath of fresh air in a stale environment. It was nice to know that there were still people like Tyler who could keep the true spirit of Christmas alive.
“That’s great Mr Tyler. That’s all I should need.” She switched off the tape machine. “If only there were more like you,” she added.
“Try telling that to my wife,” he beamed. “Sorry, I’ve not been a very good host; can I offer you a cuppa?”
“Thanks but no,” she replied getting up, “I’ve just got to interview a few of your staff, with your permission of course, and then it’s back to base to write this lot up.”
“Like I said, you’re more than welcome. You’ll find a few of them lounging about in the staff room downstairs.” He moved to shake her hand.
“Thanks,” she replied, meeting the gesture, “Sorry I can’t stop longer but as you’ll no doubt realise I’ve been pretty busy lately.”
Harry Tyler nodded sympathetically as he showed her to the door.
She had barely set a foot outside, when Inspectors Stoker and Brookes appeared.
She recognised Stoker straight away.
“Inspector? What are you doing here?”
“We’re here to find out why Mr Tyler is the only taxi operator left in Abergavenny.”
“Well I’ve just given this lady an interview,” replied Tyler, defensively.
“Well I’m sure you won’t mind if you let us question you too,” Stoker retorted.
“I’m sure everything you want to know is on this tape.” Carol showed the police officers her small hand-held recorder.
“Well we’d be delighted to listen to that a little later but at this point in time, if it’s all the same to you, we’d like to talk to Mr Tyler here. I assume you were on your way out, please don’t let us hold you up.” Carol wasn’t sure she liked Stoker’s tone. She quite deliberately glared at him and then at Brookes, who gave an apologetic half-shrug. Only after her wordless protest did she walk away.
“You’ll be able to read about it all soon anyway,” was her parting blow.
“Don’t worry Mr Tyler. No-one’s under suspicion of anything. It’s just that we have to explore every avenue.” She heard Stoker explain before the door to Tyler’s office was firmly shut, blocking out the conversation.
She’d dealt with Stoker before, on the odd assignment now and then. He’d always been a bit stiff in her opinion but today he’d been positively rude.
Getting to you as well is it? It occurred to her that everyone she knew, herself included, was becoming a bit short-tempered of late. Everyone seemed on the edge. How long before the anxiety and fear totally dominated them all and turned any such anguish into violence? Not long she thought. The people of Abergavenny, the police being no exception, just weren’t used to this kind of thing and were even less equipped to deal with it.
The fact the police wanted to interview Tyler showed just how desperate they were getting. Still, could she really criticise? In their position, she’d probably be interviewing all the local cattle as well! She’d seen Stoker’s companion somewhere before too but not for a long while she surmised. Didn’t he used to be an assistant to Stoker’s predecessor? Yes that was it: Detective Brookes or something like that. Wonder what happened to Dixon?
She surfaced from the depths of her thoughts to find that she had inadvertently led herself to the garage below.
She spotted a small office in the corner of the vast parking area that could only be what Tyler had described as the staff room. As she headed towards it, she was preparing to ascertain whether these people were just brave, greedy, crazy or perhaps all of the above.
Hopefully, the two youngish lads that she could see chatting over a brew would provide some clue. They were both pretty well built; one had a skinhead and the other in contrast, sported bleached blonde hair.
The skinhead grinned as he noticed her approach the doorway. It was the kind of grin that suggested that he fell into the stupid and crazy category, and was a little unsettling.
It was then, no surprise that this same character let out a wolf-whistle as she entered.
“All right love. What can we do for you?” The grin was relentless.
“Steady on Mick, this is that reporter that Harry said might be coming down.” His companion offered her a chair, which she obligingly took, sitting awkwardly at the side of the table.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to project a serious journalistic look that was clearly wasted on the two men who were taking far more interest in her chest; even though (which she checked with a nervous glance) it was adequately covered.
“Well, your friend is right. I work for the Monmouthshire Gazette,” she said to Mick, the Cheshire cat.
“You want to ask some questions right?” he replied.
“Right.”
“Well fire away, sweetheart,” the other man interjected, finally bothering to look at her face.
She got the distinct impression that these two weren’t the kind of men, who took female professionals particularly seriously. One thing was for sure, they certainly lacked the charm of their boss.
Suppressing her own feelings of contempt for such backward-minded chauvinists, she pressed on.
“Well, I take it you’re both some of Mr Tyler’s new recruits?”
“That’s right. How can you tell?”
“Well your cockney accents are a bit of a give away. You certainly don’t sound from round here.”
“No we’re not, we’re from London,” the skinhead proclaimed, stating the obvious.
“Oh.” She knew there was no chance he’d pick-up on her sarcasm. “So what brings you here? Why are you doing this job when there’s someone out there trying to murder taxi-drivers?”
“I ain’t scared of nothing darling.” She could barely believe that at this point Mick, flexed his muscles. Oh for heaven’s sake Carol, just pretend to be impressed.
“To be honest,” said the more sensible of the two, “I don’t know about Mick here but I need the money. I mean I can pretty much handle myself too, so it’s worth the risk, especially for what Harry’s paying.”
“And how much is he paying?”
“Twenty quid an hour,” Mick boomed.
“And that’s whether we’re on standby like we are now or actually out on a job,” the blonde one added.
Twenty pounds? Christ, she wasn’t even on half of that! Tyler hadn’t been joking when he said he was losing money.
“So what were you doing before?” she probed, it suddenly occurring that they may not hold a private hire licence. There was a momentary silence, as the pair looked shiftily at each other. The blonde man spoke.
“The same job in the capital for a bleedin’ sight less.”
“Yeah, roll on the bloody murders, that’s what I say, good for me wallet they are!”
She decided not to pursue the matter any further. After all, if Harry Tyler was providing the town with a taxi service on New Years Eve, a service many would need, at great personal cost to himself then she would hardly be popular if she got him shut down because she exposed that he was using unlicensed drivers. Besides, that particular hunch could well be wrong. Either way, it wasn’t worth following up.
“Thanks for your time,” she got up to leave.
“Sure you won’t stay for a cuppa?” asked the less impolite of the two.
What was it with cabbies and their cuppas?
“No, I’d best be off.” She tried to make it look like she wasn’t too desperate to get out of the room. When she finally got away, be it to cries of “See ya sweetheart!” and “Bye love!” she found herself breathing a very large sigh of relief!
She hated the part of her job where she had to be nice to people in order to obtain desired information.
Still she had plenty to write about when she got back to the office.
Even though, it meant employing idiots like that, she for one was glad that Gateway Cabs was spitting in the murderer’s face.
She hoped it wouldn’t prove to be Harry Tyler’s undoing.
The two men she’d talked to, watched her through a side window, as she walked back to her car in the courtyard.
“Fucking tasty wasn’t she?” Mick’s eyes appeared to drool.
“Yeah but too classy for you son and too old.”
“I don’t give a toss, how old they are.”
“Yeah, but she probably does.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her, for later. Then, it won’t matter what she thinks.”
The blonde man whose name was Trev, looked stern.
“You’d better go and tell the boss she’s gone.”
“Why me?”
“Because I fucking said so.”
“Prick.” Mick grudgingly rose from his seat. His arse felt numb after sitting there for so long.
Before long he was outside Tyler’s office, knocking on the door. The boss answered and Mick walked in to find himself staring at two other men.
“Yes Mick?”
“Trev said to tell you that the reporter woman’s gone.” He didn’t like the two men staring at him; they had ‘filth’ written all over them!
“And did you answer her questions?”
“Yeah,” Mick replied, his eyes refusing to move away from Stoker and Brookes.
“Good. Better get back to work then.”
“Yeah.” He slammed the door as he walked out.
“Sorry about that Inspector. One of my new employees; not very bright I’m afraid. A good driver though,” he added. “Anyway, what were you saying?”
Stoker glanced cynically at his colleague before answering.
“How did you get to run this business?”
“Oh well, I own it.”
“Then how did you come to own it?”
“I bought it, let me see, just over five years ago now.”
“Do you know anything about the previous owner?” Brookes intervened.
“Only that the poor sod died in a fire here. I mean that was no secret. The fact that parts of the building needed repair brought the price down.”
“So why did you buy it?”
“I’ve always wanted my own business. I’d saved up enough, working as a driver myself and I saw the opportunity here and took it. I wasn’t worried about the damage. I’m a bit handy with a toolbox so I fixed most of it back up myself. Best decision, I ever made. Being at the wheel of a car is one thing, being at the wheel of a car-hire business is something else.”
“Are you sure you’re still going to have a business after what you’re paying these drivers?
“I appreciate your concern Inspector Stoker but I’ve got enough cash reserves to keep this up for at least a fortnight. By then, you’ll have this man caught I would like to presume?”
Stoker didn’t appreciate the dig.
“We’ll get him Mr Tyler, depend upon it.”
“I do,” the businessman replied.
There was something of an awkward silence before Tyler spoke again.
“Now is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No that’s about it.” The two detectives stood up.
“Thanks for your assistance,” added Brookes.
“Not at all. Let me show you out.”
“That’s not necessary,” replied Stoker, already at the door, “we can manage.”
“As you wish.”
Tyler was left sat at his desk in a state of reflection, as the two policemen headed towards the stairs that would provide an exit.
“What do you think?” Stoker was oblivious to the fact that this question was rapidly becoming his catchphrase!
“I think it’s another bloody dead-end.”
“Yeah, but you know, call me a cynic but nobody does anything for nothing any more. Did you swallow that caring for the community crap?”
“Well he did seem sincere, even perhaps a little too sincere. Maybe, he anticipates the publicity will help expand his business in the future. Maybe he really does have faith in the ability of his local plod?” grinned Brookes.
Stoker met the comment with the contempt it deserved.
Brookes ignored the handful of men watching them as they strolled through the garage. Stoker didn’t; he glared back.
“I’ll bet this lot have got a few records.”
“Who knows? I don’t think I’d want to meet any of them in dark alleyway, that’s for sure.” Brookes steered back to the subject. “The thing is though at the moment it seems that Tyler has absolutely nothing to gain from these killings but everything to lose. But I can’t help thinking the murder here five years ago and the ones happening now have to be down to the same guy.”
“I bloody well hope so. I’d hate to think there’s more than one elaborate killer in our midst. This does seem like another dead-end though. Time to concentrate back on White Farm, I reckon. Have we established whether Dorell was there yet?”
“Yeah, the dirt tracks found at the entrance matched the tyres of his car. The back door window had been smashed along with an upstairs wall that it looks like someone took an axe to. I thought you knew this though.”
Brookes opened the driver’s door of his car.
“I did.” Stoker massaged his temple before climbing into the passenger seat. “God, I need to rest a bit. I’m starting to ask questions I already know the answers to.”
“Makes a nice change from questions that you don’t know the answer to,” Brookes smiled, driving them out of the courtyard and onto the main road.
“Mmm, like how Dorell ended up with the same level of alcohol in him as the Skirrids did two weeks ago. Shit! I thought we’d solved that case at least.”
“I must admit, I do find it a little bit of a relief to know that had we not scared him out of that window, he’d have been dead within minutes from alcohol poisoning anyhow.”
“Christ, why does everyone keep dying. At this rate there’ll be no-one left!”
“What a comforting thought!”
“You want comfort you should have stayed in Solihull. Come to think of it, put me down for a transfer.”
“Come now Inspector Stoker, you can’t let this man beat you.”
“Yeah well, I just pray to God, he doesn’t strike again tonight. I need some bloody sleep!”
“And this is the man who said in the paper that he wouldn’t rest until the killer was caught.”
“That was Dorell!”
“Oh.” Brookes drove into the station car-park, dropping Stoker off next to his own car, which he immediately climbed into.
As Stoker drove away he watched the tired man disappear out of sight.
“Never mind,” he muttered to himself, “with any luck, it’ll all be over soon.”
He gave a deep breath that summed up his day and began following Stoker’s lead.
His tyres rolled over a stain in the concrete where the last man in charge of the case had cracked open his skull.
Brookes didn’t notice this, like Stoker all he could see was his bed. Unfortunately that particular piece of furniture lay a hundred or so miles away in Solihull but for now, the mattress in The King George’s Hotel where he was staying, would more than do.

   T W E N T Y   F O U R
 
 
Neville Hall Hospital may have been predominantly a place of sickness and ill-health but its numerous staff of nurses, doctors and porters had all made their own contributions towards trying to bring some of the joys of Christmas into the otherwise cold building complex.
Corridor walls were decorated with cards and plastic mistletoe. Trees sat in the corners of almost every ward; some still with loose wrapping left beneath, where presents had been opened. The usual hospital odour of sterilisation fluid was, for once, in competition with the sweet smell of Christmas pudding.
The atmosphere created was generally appreciated by those unfortunate enough to be forced to spend their Christmas there.
The attempts at levity produced the calming effect of helping patients forget their predicaments and allowed them to celebrate the season of goodwill as best as they could.
There had even been carol-singers; children from a local school travelling from ward to ward bringing with them a selection of Christmas hymns. To some this was an annoyance but to most it was warmly appreciated, particularly among the older patients for whom sentimentality grew stronger with each passing day.
A gathering of youngsters had just finished singing in the ward that Sandra Hedges occupied. They were all now busy helping themselves to their reward of chocolates from the tree.
Kate pulled across the screen, separating her mother’s bed from young prying eyes. Sandra duly climbed out from beneath the covers and began to get dressed.
“It’ll be good to get out of here. I’ve felt so helpless of late.” Sandra fumbled through a suitcase until she found the top she was looking for.    
“Yeah, I guess so. I’m just glad you’ve got the all-clear and you’re alright.” Kate helped her remove her gown.
“Me? Alright? From what I hear I should be asking you that question. How are you sweetheart? After yesterday.”
Kate pretended to look puzzled.
“I know you haven’t told me, but you were attacked again weren’t you?”
Again Kate shook her head in false bewilderment.
“Nice try Kate but there’s a very talkative nurse in this ward.” Sandra’s tone became more soft. “She saw them bring in your reporter friend. It was some lad called Scott that you were staying with wasn’t it?”
Sandra could see tears forming on her daughter’s eyes, as Kate’s mind began to relive the experience.
“It’s alright honey,” she said hugging her, “I didn’t hear until today and I’ve spent the last hour worrying myself sick that you weren’t going to show up.” Tears began to find their way from Sandra’s eyes too. “I thought that this time he’d got you.”
“That nurse had no right!”
“You can’t blame her. She was just gossiping - she didn’t know the connection. So why didn’t you tell me just now when you had the opportunity?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry.”
Sandra pulled away from the embrace, instead grabbing Kate firmly on each shoulder.
“Kate, I’ve worried plenty. Each minute that we’re still in this country terrifies me all the more. I want to get you as far away from this maniac as possible.”
“Mum.” Kate wiped the moisture away from her own eyes. “Mum, I’m staying.”
“Staying?” Sandra couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “Listen Kate, you’ve been lucky twice! How long do you reckon it’ll be before he succeeds in killing you or worse, if you stay around here?”
“It wasn’t me he was after, last night.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t be after you the next time. In case you’ve forgotten the reason I’ve spent the last four days in here is because of this psycho. It’s madness to stay. You’ve seen what he can do.”
“Yeah well I’ve got a few tricks of my own.”
“You have a gift, yes, but a few dreams and visions hardly...”
“I can do other things Mum. Lately, I’ve discovered…well…incredible things.”
“Such as?”
“Make things move without touching them.”
The implication of what Kate had just said, in a matter-of-fact manner, was startling enough to calm her mother. Sandra seemed buried in thought for a moment before returning a curious expression that seemed to combine pride with fascination.
“Show me.” Sandra’s voice was calm.
Kate shook her head.
“I can’t.”
“You won’t?”
“No, I simply can’t.” The frustration was apparent. “The power only comes when it wants to. I can’t control it.”
Sandra sighed.
“And if you can’t utilise this gift now, here, in front of me, what chance do you think you have against a murderer who can destroy a house without even being there?”
“It seems to come when I need it.”
“Kate can you truly be sure of that?”
Sandra’s daughter moved away and sat on the bed.
“Listen mum. I know you’re worried and I don’t expect you to understand. And I sympathise, I really do. If I was you, I’d want me away from Wales too, but, well, staying here and seeing this through is just something I feel I’ve got to do.”
Sandra was not convinced and it showed.
“After what happened last night,” Kate continued, “I just know deep down that it’s my duty to do everything I can to help catch this guy. You yourself said that I had a gift and that no gift was without purpose. Well I’ve found that purpose. And now that I have, I can’t ignore it. I’ve got to face up to what I am, even if I don’t like whatever that may mean. I’m not denying I’m scared. I’ve seen what he can do first hand and it terrifies me. But he also fears me. I can feel it. Whoever or whatever he may be, and as much as it frightens me, I know that it’s my destiny to face him. Please don’t ask me how I know, I just do.” 
Kate allowed herself a moment of reflection before continuing. “Besides, if I run away now, I’ll always be running away. I’ve got to stand my ground and as much as that prospect terrifies me, I get the feeling that if I don’t, something far more terrible, something so destructive if left unchallenged, will fall on all of us.”
Sandra sat beside her daughter, gently placing an arm around her. Kate spoke so much like her father it was eerie, especially when she thought of how Jonathan had left the world before his time; she didn’t want the same fate to befall Kate.
Then again, Jonathan never possessed the power that in Kate was apparent; the divine and rare talents that her daughter was only beginning to discover.
It was the likeness between father and daughter and the stubbornness of the two that told her that whatever her feelings, nothing she could ever say or do would be able to change Kate’s mind.
So with no further protest, she hugged her daughter telling her to be careful and to always remember that she loved her. In the end, Sandra knew that this was all she could really do.
After the sentimental embrace, Kate prepared herself for her mother’s reaction to her next revelation.
“I bought you a ticket to Boston though?”
“You did what?”
“Mum, the only way this guy can hurt me is by getting at those I love. I don’t want what happened to Scott to happen to you.” Sandra noticed the moisture return to Kate’s eyes as she fought unhappy memories. “Please mum, you’ve got to get beyond his reach and go to America as we originally planned. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
“Nor I you. Which is why if you’re determined to stay and see this through then so am I. I’m not going to abandon you when you need me most.”
“But mum, please...”
The conversation was abruptly interrupted by a call of, “Is it safe?” emanating from the other side of the screen.
Both women replied, “Yes!” in what seemed a harmony of irritation.
Detective Sergeant Dixon pulled back the barricade and stood before them.
His expression was sheepish as he noted the tear trails on both of their faces. He felt somewhat uncomfortable!
“Sorry, I haven’t come at a bad moment have I?”


“He’s awake?”
“Yes, for the third time, he’s awake.” Dixon replied, amused at the girl’s obvious excitement. She burst through the ward doors with all the drama of a cowboy entering a saloon. Dixon triumphantly followed. It wasn’t often he got to be the bearer of good news.
“The doc says we’ve got fifteen minutes tops,” His words were left unheard as she rushed towards a bed containing an individual experiencing equal, if not slightly painful, delight.
Kate gave the smiling figure of Scott Jackson a hug, taking care not to lean on the heavy padding around his chest.
“Steady on lass!” he grinned. “Don’t want the life squeezed out of me, now I’ve only just got it back.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” she wept, allowing the tears of joy to stream down her face; today was a day filled with strong emotions.
“Well from what the doc tells me, you very nearly did. Would you believe that I am nothing less than a miracle case?” he said proudly.
As Dixon watched on, smiling, touched by the reunion, Kate finally pulled away from the embrace, instead opting to fondle one of the journalist’s hands.
“They’re even going to keep me here longer than normal, to conduct tests to find out why I’m not dead. Now is that a first or what? Anybody would think they’re disappointed!”
“I don’t understand,” she sniffed.
“He had a severed artery, causing a massive loss of blood,” an attending doctor intervened, while Dixon found himself a chair, “Too much blood in fact, and far too quickly to be able to sustain his heart.”
Scott nodded a greeting to Dixon.
“How’s it going? Where are your pals?”
“Well the Inspector is busy down at the station at the moment telling everyone you’re dead, and Dorell, well he is dead. He took a nosedive through a window.
“Blimey,” Scott shook his head, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Dixon could see the guilt on Scott’s face.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman reassured, “I don’t think it had anything to do with you two leading the case up a dead alley. It wasn’t a depressed or deliberate suicide; he seemed high on something, all deluded; he jumped trying to get away from Stoker.”
“No disrespect Mr Dixon but can we get back to the subject of Scott.” Kate was caressing her hand up and down one of Scott’s arms. “If you lost so much blood then why didn’t you die?”
“Hey, now you sound disappointed!”
She gave him, a playful clout, and looked to the consultant for a more sensible response.
“Well,” replied the medic obligingly, “he regenerated blood cells at an alarming rate never thought possible. We can all regenerate blood cells at a reasonable pace over four to six weeks, hence we don’t miss the odd pint or two because it eventually comes back, but this human miracle sat before us, was effectively growing back blood just as quickly as he was losing it.”
“I’m even going to get a mention in the British Medical Journal.” Scott beamed. The doctor smiled back before returning to his other duties.
“So are you still producing blood?” Kate asked, clearly alarmed.
“Nope, apparently everything’s restored back to normal. They’ve even tried to re-create the effect by taking some blood out of me, but so far, unfortunately for me, they’ve failed, so I’ve a few more tests to look forward to. My own fault for co-operating I suppose.”
“And your chest?”
“It’s scarred up nicely and is, by all accounts, healing up quite nicely, although at a very normal rate. Hence it hurts like buggery! But the artery has repaired itself. Crazy huh?”
“So you see Scott’s a bit of a mystery.” Dixon added.
Kate wasn’t quite sure whether there was an implication in his tone, or was she merely detecting a reflection of what she, herself was feeling inside?
A thought occurred to Scott that had been overlooked in discussion of his medical condition.
“You say Stoker’s telling people I’m dead?”
“It was at the suggestion and request of Miss Hedges here. Besides, you were in a coma until an hour ago, so we could have been telling the truth.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she’d finally managed to stop crying, “seeing as how the attack was so deliberate we thought that if the killer knew you were alive, he might try again.”
“So who else knows I’m breathing?”
“Only Inspector Stoker.” Dixon leaned forward so as to emphasise a point. “The thing is, we can’t keep the cat in the bag for long because we’re under pressure to charge Brian Thomas.”
“With what?”
“Your attack.” Dixon didn’t add the word ‘obviously’ as he was not so sure the reporter would be particularly on the ball after being brutally stabbed. “I’m curious, I’ve asked Miss Hedges here, why you didn’t report the assault outside your flat the other day and she told me it was because you didn’t want to; why not?”
“To be honest, with everything else that was going on, I didn’t think it mattered. He warned me off the farm which was fine by me. I had no intention of going back there. Do you really think it was him who stabbed me?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Well he was wearing a balaclava, so I couldn’t see.”
“So I gather. Well, Miss Hedges here doesn’t seem to think it was Thomas.” 
“Call me Kate.”
“Sorry?”
“Call me Kate. Miss Hedges sounds way too formal and we are all kind of in this together aren’t we? And no, I don’t believe it was Thomas who attacked us.”
Dixon thought very carefully about his next words. He wasn’t sure he liked this ‘all in this together’ observation. He may be substantially younger than Stoker but he was still a copper.
He had always been taught to treat witnesses in a ‘them and us’ manner but he had to admit he had come to quite like these two. Scott seemed to have a view of life, he both admired and shared, and Kate, he found very attractive, although he could see she was spoken for. Besides, his fiancé Tanya might have had something to say about it (pretty damn loudly too) if he even thought about dating a witness.
“The problem is, Kate, we have damning evidence against Thomas, and all you can offer us is, yet more feelings based on psychic intuition which to be honest, didn’t carry much belief in the station before, and after you already naming the wrong man, doesn’t hold any whatsoever now.”
“I’m aware of that but I was manipulated into naming Gardner. It doesn’t mean I’m not without abilities. After all, he clearly was involved wasn’t he?”
“Evidence would indicate so, yes. But then you might know that, if you were also involved in some way, you’ve yet to tell us about.”
“What are you suggesting?” she asked indignantly.
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just pointing out that your psychic story lacks credibility and the lack of any other explanation, suggests you’ve got something to hide. You could even be a suspect Kate.”
“It’s Miss Hedges!”
Dixon shrugged, looking towards Scott for assistance.
“C’mon Kate, you can’t blame him for telling us how it is. But Sergeant, I have to tell you, what she says is absolutely true.” Scott winced a little, as he sat further up, to get a better look at the two; his wound reminding him that it hadn’t yet gone away. “The fact is, I was sceptical too until she woke up in the middle of the night yesterday and told me that there had been two more murders despite the facts at the time suggesting otherwise. My scepticism lasted right until I got up that morning to find her revelation had come true. Last night as well...” Scott stopped himself. He suddenly thought best to leave out the particular details. He didn’t want Dixon to think he was mad. “Last night,” he continued at a slower pace, “she demonstrated once again that she was the real thing. Believe me her talent is very real.”
“Well whether I believe you or not, it’s not me that’s going to take convincing. The way I see it,” the DS calculated, “is that a) Thomas isn’t the taxi-driver killer but did try to murder you out of revenge, b) Thomas is the killer and tried to murder you for similar reasons despite the attack not fitting his usual profile of being particularly inventive.”
“Inventive enough!” complained Scott, rubbing his patch for effect.
“Or c) Thomas didn’t attack you at all and as Kate suggests, our yet to be apprehended killer, did. But I’m sorry, the profile, the evidence, it all points to option ‘a’.
“And what if you’re wrong and you charge Thomas with attempted murder, while the real killer learns Scott’s alive?” implored Kate.
“If you do have this psychic link-up with him, what makes you think he doesn’t know already?”
Kate’s eyes directed to the ground; she hadn’t thought of that.
“In fact,” Dixon continued, “if he manipulated you once by making you name Gardner, then is it not possible that he’s just misleading you again by making you think that it was he who attacked Scott, and not your everyday, regular, average, low-life Brian Thomas? Or maybe our killer is Thomas and he’s fooled you into thinking he’s not?
“Alright DS Dixon, you’ve made your point.” interrupted Scott. It was clear that Kate was becoming quite upset.
“That’s what they’ll say isn’t it?” She looked back up, her voice fragile. “Even if I can prove my ability, because I messed up once, they won’t trust me not to do it again.”
Dixon shrugged sympathetically.
“I’m afraid so.” He rose from his chair. “Look, I’m going outside to leave you two alone for a bit, before we’re kicked out. Kate, if there is anything else you can tell me, psychic or otherwise, significant or insignificant, that may help us find this man, then please don’t hesitate to do so. Please remember that we’re the good guys, and we want him caught as badly as you.”
“You’re going to charge Thomas aren’t you?” Scott shouted across at the departing Dixon.
“Unless you can prove his innocence then I’m afraid we’ve no choice.” He continued his journey out of the ward. Once safely out of the reporter’s hearing the detective muttered to himself. “And for your sake, I really hope we’re right.”
Scott placed a hand from his less painful arm, through Kate’s hair.
“What if he’s right Scott? What if I am being used again? What if I can’t trust my own intuition?”
“Now that’s far too many ‘what ifs’ Kate. If you ask me, it’s obvious you’re developing these skills of yours all the time, so it is my somewhat humble opinion that you can’t be taken for a mug twice. You may have some ability beyond most human capabilities, but you don’t have the monopoly on gut-feelings. I get them too, and they’re with you. Besides, good old fashioned instinct is a lot different and more reliable than waking up with names in your head.”
Kate squeezed his hand tightly. Why did Scott always have this irritating knack of making things sound not half as bad as they were? She gazed directly into his face.
“Last night, I really thought I’d lost you.”
“You did lose me though didn’t you?”
Kate was stunned by this statement. Her whole expression became defensive, although why this was, she couldn’t tell (or didn’t want to explore). Realising this, Scott explained himself.
“Kate, I’m not as daft as I sometimes act. I haven’t got some miraculous healing power but I’d dare say that you have. I think you know it, as well as I. You and I are now quits; you saved my life.”
She didn’t know quite what to say, she wanted to deny it, but she found in her heart she couldn’t deny it any more than she could deny she had developed strong feelings for him.
Last night she had been convinced he was dead but had refused to accept it, to deal with it. She had lay upon him refusing death, willing it away. Had such defiance been so intense that death had changed its mind? Had this non-acceptance helped Scott’s blood cells replenish his supply?
It was all a bit vague; she had been an emotional wreck by the time the ambulance had arrived. She remembered rushing to the phone when to her astonishment and unfathomable joy, she had detected Scott breathing again.
Of course it seemed the nightmare had merely been postponed, when medics told her that he was virtually brain-dead and in a coma.
But here he was now, seemingly as right as rain, when not even twenty four hours earlier she had thought he was dead.
“Hey, you’re not sending me to Coventry are you?” he asked, mocking her wistfulness.
“Never,” she smiled. “Scott? Do you really believe it was me? It was me that healed you?”
“You do, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Then trust in yourself. Believe. I’ve seen what you can do, and I know I’ve got no miracle physique, just a perfect one,” he grinned. “Remember too, those experts can’t reproduce that effect despite all those bloody needles.”
“But visions are one thing but if I can heal?”
“I know. There seems no limit to your ability. But you’re a good person Kate, so whatever you can do, I know you’ll use that power wisely and for the right reasons.”
“Very profound,” she sighed.
“Tell you what else though?”
Kate raised her eyebrows.
“I ain’t gonna mess with you,” he laughed.
She laughed with him, playfully thumping him on the leg. Although behind the laugh there lay a doubt; a very large and terrifying doubt.

                                                                              Boxing Day  
   
                                                                        T W E N T Y   T H R E E
 
“For the last time, I’m telling you. It wasn’t me!”
Brian Thomas’s hands were trembling as he placed the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled. He tried to look away from his interrogators, finding refuge in the unremarkable brickwork of the interview room.
Stoker and Brookes just stared back at him coldly, neither detective making a sound, each allowing their eyes to do the talking. Thomas could see that they didn’t believe him and it was going to take a lot to persuade them into thinking otherwise.
“Look, what the hell would I want to attack the kid for anyway?”
“Well let me take a wild guess.” Stoker leaned back in his chair; a deliberate display of ease that made his interviewee feel anything but. “Jackson led us to your little fighting racket. Not only did we pull the plug on that but dear old Mr Gardner, your main source of income, decided to leave us all prematurely as a result. Now, if I was you Mr Thomas, I’d feel more than a little aggrieved towards that reporter.”
“You’re not me!” Thomas defended. “It was good earner, I’ll admit that, but I also knew that it wouldn’t always last. Besides, I was starting to want out anyway, Gardner was becoming too much of a psycho. I didn’t want to end up like Grendal.”
“And just how did Mr Grendal end up?”
“Don’t try and pin that on me too, I’ve already told you that I reckon he was bumped off even if they didn’t find the body. I also told you that is what I reckoned and that I had nought to do with it.”
Stoker turned to his colleague who was watching on with interest.
“Convincing isn’t he, Inspector Brookes? You know if he hadn’t threatened Jackson the other day I’d be quite inclined to believe him.”
Thomas stubbed out his cigarette on the table surface, avoiding the ash tray provided. It was a pathetic attempt to show that he was super-cool about the whole thing; his general manner told them different.
“I don’t know what he may have told you but I didn’t threaten him about nothing?”
“Told us?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here ain’t it? Jackson or the girl pointed the finger at me before?”
“On the contrary Mr Thomas, strangely enough neither of them reported the visit you paid them the other day. Oh and incidentally, I never mentioned a girl, funny then that you should, when the only contact you claim to have had with Jackson is when he came to The Angel pub, alone!”
Thomas produced another cigarette from his pocket. He was looking very foolish as he tried to light it. It was obvious that he was stalling for time so that he could think of a way out. There was none.
“Look whatever happened,” he finally replied, “you can’t prove nothing.”
“What do you think about that Inspector Brookes?”
Brookes for the first time throughout the whole interview showed expression. He smiled. It was the kind of smile that a lion that had trapped some prey would emanate from within and Thomas didn’t care for it.
“Well Inspector Stoker, personally I’m surprised Mr Thomas here doesn’t seem in the least bit curious as to how we found out about his mischief outside Jackson’s flat a few days ago.”
“Yes, do you think we ought to show him? You know I do love a good film, especially a violent one.”
Brookes rose from his chair and approached a mobile stand in the corner of the room upon which rested a television and video. As Stoker told the tape recorder what was happening, Brookes pressed a button to whirr the video into action. Thomas had wondered what the electronic contraption had been doing there in the first place. He was about to find out.
Two looked on with interest and one watched in horror as the screen produced home video footage of Thomas sitting on a church-yard wall, placing a balaclava over his head, and getting ready to go into a nearby alleyway to attack Scott Jackson.
Stoker felt obligated to provide the suspect with a commentary.
“I assume you recognise this particular deviant here? Note how for someone who really isn’t concerned about Jackson’s interference at White Farm, he really is laying into the deceased quite heavily.”
Thomas was visibly lost for words, as he was forced to watch his whole crime re-enact itself in glorious Technicolor for all to see.
Stoker was really starting to enjoy himself.
“It would seem Mr Thomas that you are exceptionally unlucky. It would seem a tourist who had spent the first twenty minutes filming the church and its mountainous surroundings - very picturesque it is too if you’d like me to rewind and show you - decided to turn the lenses attention towards your shady character and I’m sure you’ll agree from our point of view, it’s a good thing he/she did. We received this tape anonymously in the post this morning. Understandably whoever filmed this, didn’t want to get involved.
Thomas buried his head in his hands.
“I’m being set-up!”
“Let me guess, it’s by your evil twin brother?”
“Get fucked.” Thomas glared.
Stoker leaned across the table so that he was right in Thomas’s face.
“No Thomas, it is you who are fucked.” His voice was raised. “Jackson didn’t heed your warning and messed things up for you so you decided to take your revenge by using him as a knife rack. ISN’T THAT WHAT HAPPENED?”
“What were you thinking?” interjected Brookes. “There’s a few murders being committed about the place anyway, so if you did another one it would go unnoticed? Joining in with the spirit of things were you?”
“Okay , alright!” Thomas had broken. “I admit I did muscle Jackson but it was only at the orders of Gardner. It was him who paid me to do it.” He looked for some kind of acceptance. He didn’t get it. “Look, I don’t mind putting the frighteners on someone, but I ain’t no murderer. I swear on my mam’s grave, I didn’t kill him.”
Stoker removed something from his own jacket pocket, throwing it onto the table. It was a blood stained knife in a polythene bag bearing the label ‘Evidence’.
“Recognise this?”
“Should I?”
“Oh yes, I think you should. You see we found it in your house after the little search we conducted following your re-arrest. Now what’s the betting that when we send it down to the lab we’ll find that the blood on that blade matches Scott Jackson’s?”
“I’ve never seen it before I swear it! Can’t you see? I’m being framed. This is a bloody set-up!” Thomas looked at Brookes for sympathy, instead all he saw was a sceptical smile.
“Who’d waste their time on you?”
“I don’t know but you’ve got to believe me, I’ve never seen that weapon before in my life.”
“Murder is a very serious offence but if you co-operate now you might find they’ll let you out before you die of old age.”
Thomas, the hard man, began to sob.
“Please, you’ve got to believe me.”
“So persuade us?” It was Brooke’s turn to torment. “Tell us something about White Farm that might help us change our minds.”
“I already told you everything I know I swear.”
“Don’t look too promising then does it?”
Thomas just shook his head, repeatedly mumbling that he was not their man.
Stoker frowned. They were not going to get much more out of him for the moment. The man was becoming a nervous wreck. It was hard to believe that this was the guy who made a living knocking people out in the illegal boxing circuit.
“Interview terminated at 10:15 am on 26th December, 1999.” He turned off the tape machine, got up and walked to the door, and allowed a uniformed member of staff to lead the estranged Thomas away to his cell.
The two detectives waited until he was out of hearing range before following him out.
“So what do you think?” Stoker asked.
“Cut and dry I reckon.” Brookes seldom liked complications.
“It would seem so wouldn’t it?” came the somewhat wistful reply.
They began making their way back to the offices upstairs.
“Of course,” continued Stoker, “if he is our man and indeed a murderer then the question begs, is he capable of committing some of the atrocities of late. With his White Farm connections he’d have been in a good position to plant evidence on Gardner.”
“I hope he is our man but I must confess he doesn’t strike me as having the brains to pull off such imaginative killings. I think he’s more of an opportunist - hoping that killing Jackson would be accredited to the taxi-cab killer.”
“That’s the way I see it but maybe that is what he wants us to think; that he’s not capable of such cruel and well-thought-out crimes.” Stoker sighed. “I am bothered though. The evidence seems to have come a little too easily and I don’t think our main man would be quite so stupid as to leave lying around his home such incriminating evidence as an unwashed knife. So given the circumstances, I’m going to presume nothing. If Thomas is the serial killer then great because he won’t be going anywhere for a while after the murder of Jackson but if he isn’t, then the bastard is still out there and ready to strike at any time. And it’s still down to us to stop him.”
They walked into a large room filled with detectives who were scattered about the place, all rounding off their conversations to sit up to attention.
“Okay, gather around.” ordered Stoker. Brookes grabbed a chair, sitting among the rest.
“Right as you are all aware, I’m calling the shots now. I don’t want any of you to think that I am unsympathetic to what happened yesterday regarding Chief Inspector Dorell - I know some of you are from Scotland Yard and knew him quite well - it was as much a mystery as it was a tragedy but I’m afraid the time for grieving and mourning is not right now.
Right now, as hard as it may be, we must all put any personal feelings aside, and get on with what, without any doubt, is the most important task in the country and that ladies and gentlemen, is catching this animal. So I hope I can expect the same courtesy and professionalism that you all showed Dorell.”
Some had noticed the way Stoker had said ‘you’ instead of ‘we’ when talking about extending courtesy and professionalism; it had been no secret that Stoker had resented Dorell’s presence. Nevertheless, there was a general nodding and muttering of acceptance among the CID team. Some even respected the fact that this new governor was at least not going to be hypocritical. Some!
“Right to business then.” Stoker picked up a black marker pen and started to apply it to a fixed white board in the corner of the room. “I want to explore every possible avenue. However unlikely a lead may be, I want it investigated to the very full. No stone must be unturned. Our first area is the taxi companies themselves. I want all five firms checked out thoroughly. I want to know their history, their current policies, their employees and anything odd, obscure or untoward that has ever been reported and/or connected with them. Maybe our killer is an ex-driver with a grudge or maybe he’s a current nutcase employee trying to literally eliminate the competition. I want to know. Collins, Edwards, you’re to lead that one okay?”
The man and woman sat nearest nodded. The pen was moved to another area of the board.
“Okay secondly, after his accident, among other things Dorell’s car was examined and the muddy tyres suggested he’d been driving along a dirt track such as those found in farms. No prizes for guessing which farm we’re probably talking about and indeed our subsequent investigations have found Dorell’s tyre tracks there.
Now I don’t have to tell you that White Farm has been central to this investigation and despite the embarrassment of late, the evidence found there can not be ignored. The most recent development is that the farmhouse there has been broken into and quite literally torn apart. Now this could have been Dorell. But if so, why? It would seem Dorell, before he left us, dropped off a souvenir down in the holding cells. Our anonymous junky down there may have some of the answers but that’s something I’ll come back to in a minute or so.
I think when we hit on that illegal fighting racket we just scraped the tip of the iceberg. If that place has anything else to hide I want to know it. So you two,” Stoker indicated to two men sat in the far corner, “can provide me with some answers. I want to know the entire history of not just that farm but the whole Grosmont area. Anything out of the ordinary that could shed light on this case, I need to know about. I want all those arrested during the barn raid, re-interviewed and I want further, but discreet, questioning with all the locals. Use the concern over the missing wild dogs as an excuse to approach them if necessary. Can you manage that?”
“No problem,” one detective replied.
“Okay, onto the third area which applies to those of you who have yet to be assigned a task. This is the area of suspects.
We’re currently holding Brian Thomas in connection with the murder of the young journalist. I believe this incident to be related in some way to the bigger picture and as such, Thomas is now our prime suspect but unfortunately not a particularly convincing one. Despite this, I believe that he is, at the very least, a key player who may know far more about these horrific events than he is telling. I want him squeezed as tightly as is possible and the fact we already hold enough evidence to tie him with one murder is to be used against him to full effect.
Next up, is our self-styled psychic friend, Miss Kate Hedges. Now she has more or less dispelled any belief in her alleged psychic ability, by effectively naming the wrong man. So if we remove the psychic factor, which I believe we can, we have to find another reason for her abduction by Gardner. Whether she is a deliberately misleading us or not, there has to be a connection between her and White Farm and I want you to find it. Again the emphasis is on history; check her out, check her family out, bring her here for further questioning. As with Thomas, I’m convinced she knows more than she is saying, especially when you think she was present when Jackson was murdered but escaped the ordeal unharmed. But handle it delicately and discreetly because unlike Thomas she is not currently a murder suspect and her own mother who was attacked, just gets out of hospital today.
Finally, we have our crack-head friend who is being held downstairs, courtesy of Dorell before his…,” Stoker chose his words carefully, “…breakdown. As this man is without doubt our most fresh and intriguing lead to date, Inspector Brookes will be interviewing him along with myself.
On the more negative side of things, a pathologist is currently examining Dorell’s body in an attempt to find out whether there was a more chemical reason for his suicide yesterday, as opposed to a psychological one. I want to be notified the second his findings are reported.
Right, any questions?”
A detective raised his hand.
“Has Thomas been formally charged with murder yet?”
“Not yet, no. I’ll be getting a twenty-four hour detainment extension from the provincial magistrate this afternoon.”
“But if there’s enough evidence to charge him, why haven’t we?”
“Because as I said earlier, I want to use the charge as leverage to extract as much information as possible before he’s formally banged up. Don’t worry he’s not going to walk. Any other questions?”
Stoker was relieved to see that there were none, although he suspected that when he left the room they’d all have a lot to say.
“Okay people let’s get lively and lets see if we can’t catch this guy before the new year. I don’t know about you lot but I could certainly use some holiday.”
As the general bustle began, with detectives muttering amongst one another, shuffling papers and dialling various phones, Stoker gestured his head in a side motion, indicating to Brookes that they were about to leave.
Brookes followed the new CO, walking back along the very corridor which less than a day previous had played host to Dorell’s suicide. Some hardboard was fixed where a window used to be; had it not been Christmas the whole thing would already have been replaced.
“Time to talk to our resident addict? What did the duty say that Dorell had brought him in on?” Brookes got the impression that Stoker already knew but was either stimulating conversation or testing his colleague.
“Assaulting a police officer, apparently. Do you think he found this guy at White Farm?”
“I’ve no idea but with any luck I’m about to find out.”
“Well good luck, he was still pretty groggy earlier but I don’t think withdrawal has set in just yet. He’s still saying nothing. If you ask me it’s a great shame that thumb screws got banned as a legitimate tool of law enforcement,” grinned Brookes.
Good grief, Stoker thought to himself, Brookes really was like a Dixon mark two. This guy had been in the game as long as him, so why couldn’t he be as sceptical and as miserable as him? Working over Christmas was bad enough but at least Stoker was close enough to his family, to see them when he had the time. If he was Brookes and transferred miles away during the festive period he’d be livid!
Mind you, Brookes had by his own admittance requested the transfer. Maybe he didn’t get on with his wife? Or maybe he didn’t have one? Stoker decided against asking as it would seem trivially irrelevant at that time. He forced his mind back to the issue at hand.
“Do we know what he’s on?” Stoker asked, referring to Dorell’s legacy.
“Heroin, the doctor reckons.”
“Well at least if he doesn’t talk now, he’ll sure as hell talk later when he wants a fresh fix. Before I came here, I used to be on the drug’s squad. I saw what that shit can do to people.”
Brookes nodded in agreement. Something then occurred to him.
“Where’s DS Dixon?” Brookes had not seen him at the briefing.
Stoker was lost in a private memory of drug addicts he’d dealt with in the past, the ones he’d witnessed go out of their minds. He’d heard the sound of Brooke’s voice but not digested the meaning.
“Sorry, I was miles away.”
“I was inquiring about DS Dixon? Is he ill or something?”
“Oh no, he’s busy checking out something for me.”
They approached the duty officer who nodded a greeting. As they both signed the visitor’s book, Brookes looked expectantly at Stoker, anticipating more information. When it didn’t come he pressed.
“Anything I should be aware of?”
The duty officer led them to the appropriate cell door.
“He’s at the hospital with the Hedges girl. As I said earlier, her mother is being discharged sometime today.”
“Oh.” The door was unlocked and opened before them. “Oh!” repeated Brookes but this time the tone had entirely changed. It was one of despair, as his eyes absorbed the sight before them.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Stoker moaned as the duty officer and Brookes rushed forward to grab the legs of the occupant.
Stoker could see that it was already far too late. The man they’d come to interview had been hanging for quite some time in a noose made from bed-sheets, attached to the bars of a high window. He was already stone dead when they lifted him down.
“Didn’t you hear anything?” Brookes yelled at the duty officer with an air of desperation.
“Not a sound, sir!” he protested.
“Call a bloody ambulance,” instructed Stoker, “Tell them, it’s not urgent.”
As they walked back out, Stoker wanted so much to be alone, wanted to hide his head beneath the sand, wanted to roll over and die, wanted to do anything other than face up to yet another major set-back. He’d suffer a bloody inquiry too. No-one had ever committed suicide in his station, not while he’d been there anyway, and now he had two within twenty-four hours of each other.
“Do you get the feeling somebody doesn’t like you?”
“All the time,” replied Brookes.
The duty sergeant rushed past them, busy instructing some previously idle constables. As one such Constable passed, Stoker collared him.
“I want Thomas constantly watched. I don’t want him getting the same idea.”
“Yes, sir.” The Constable headed over to the Sergeant.
“Speaking of Thomas.” Brookes tested his superior’s mood. “I still don’t fully understand why we haven’t yet charged him with murder. I mean we’ve got all we need to send him down.”
Stoker stopped in his tracks and turned to face Brookes head on. Brookes, a little alarmed, thought Stoker was about to punch him. He didn’t, he just quickly glanced around them to check that no-one was in ear-shot.
“Allow me to let you in on a little secret,” he said.

                                                                                      T W E N T Y   T W O

 
Stoker involuntarily belched, bringing the pleasantries to an abrupt halt.
“Sorry - just had a very large Christmas meal,” he apologised.
“Lucky you,” came the reply, “I’ve had to make do with a few festive sarnies. That’s the problem when you’re away from home at Christmas - the only places you can get some decent grub are all fully booked.”
Stoker smiled sympathetically; it seemed to make his face ache!
“So Inspector Brookes, I understand you used to be a DC here?”
“DS,” he corrected. “Just over five years since I left this place to go on to greater things.” The man sat opposite Stoker’s desk grinned. “That’s if you can call Solihull greater things!”
“So how did you come to be transferred?”
“Well you know how it is, you gotta go where the promotions take you.”
“Quite.”
Stoker was starting to make the fellow officer feel as if he was undertaking a job-interview.
“Inspector Brookes.”
“Call me Terry.”
“Terry, I’ll be perfectly frank with you. You’re no doubt aware of the all-mighty cock-up that has led to the officer previously in charge of this investigation being relocated.”
“He did mention it to me, before you and I were introduced - nothing quite like a moody Jock!”
Stoker wasn’t sure such a candid manner was becoming of a police inspector but he had to admit that this guy was instantly likeable. He did not allow such conclusions to affect the seriousness of his voice as he embarked upon his lecture.
“Well now I’m left to carry the can, which off the record, I felt should have been my position in the first place. But that’s neither here nor there. The fact is that I have worked here for the past three years and I like to think that during that time I’ve got to know the area phenomenally well, so with respect, I don’t really know why Dorell arranged your transfer here, for besides knowing the place as well as I do, I don’t see what you can possibly bring to the investigation that the ten or so detectives already brought here can’t.”
“Well to tell you the truth I requested the transfer, not the Chief Inspector. I still have a lot of affection for this town and I didn’t like to hear what was happening to it.”
“And on that basis I’m told to work closely with you? In fact, the Chief Constable has appointed you as my partner, which DS Dixon isn’t too happy about I can tell you. Why do I get the feeling I’m in the dark here?”
Brookes nodded slightly whilst allowing an exaggerated breath. The very gesture confirmed to Stoker that he was absolutely correct and that all was about to be revealed.
“I’m afraid I must ask you Inspector to keep what I’m about to tell you in the strictest confidence.”
“Go on.”
“Five and a half years ago - on the early morning of the sixth of August, 1994 to be precise - a murder was committed here; a murder so cruel and bizarre that it fits the bill of our current taxi-obsessed friend. For one thing, the victim, a Paul Wallis, was a man who owned and managed one of Abergavenny’s taxi firms.”
Stoker raised an eyebrow.
“Which one?”
“Gateway Taxis or as it’s now known Gateway Cabs.
Anyway, the fire brigade were called to put out a fire at his depot that broke out in the middle of the night. When they arrived they found the top half of the building ablaze but they managed to contain the fire before it spread to the vehicle store below. In one of the first floor offices they found the charred remains of Mr Wallis.
The official story was that he’d been working late and that a freak fire resulting from dodgy wiring had brought about his untimely death. Fortunately this version of events was never contested; Wallis was separated from his wife, with who he had lost contact altogether, had no living family - none that gave a damn anyway - and apart from working hours he kept himself pretty much to himself. He had never been popular amongst his employees either so frankly, no-one really cared. He got a brief mention in a few of the nationals and that was that. Accidental death - nothing sensational! Even the inquest was a bit low key.”
“So what’s the unofficial line then?”
“A post-mortem revealed traces of chemicals in the body that are normally associated with petrol, hence strongly suggesting that he’d been doused in the stuff and set alight. His legs were also discovered to have been broken. It was either a very grisly suicide or murder and the broken limbs suggested the latter.”
“But why...”
“I haven’t finished; there’s more. On a very burnt-up desk there were the distinctive remains of a cow’s head.”
“A cow?” Stoker was beginning to wonder whether he was the subject of a wind-up.
“A cow. The rest of the thing was found lying in a field near-by. Some sicko had sliced its head clean off, God knows what with, and actually taken it up to that office. Of course the farmer who owned the beast reported the mutilation but no link with the ‘accident’ was publicly admitted. As far as the local Farmer Giles was concerned the head was never found.”
“So why all the secrecy? Why the hell didn’t any of this go public? We’re not the bloody CIA, we’re Gwent Constabulary. We don’t do cover-ups!”
“We did this time.”
“Why?”
“Because a decision was made to keep things quiet. No-one wanted the kind of media-frenzy we’re experiencing now.”
“And?” Stoker knew there had to be more to the explanation than that.
“And,” Brookes looked reluctant, “I uncovered evidence that suggested a police officer may have been involved.”
Stoker was filled with disbelief. He looked directly at Brookes with a fresh horror burning through his eyes. He could only manage two words.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
It occurred to Brookes that the fellow Inspector was looking like the world was crumbling down upon his shoulders.
“What was the evidence?” Stoker had found his voice again.
“Well, the Inspector in charge at the time asked me to get Wallis’s phone-line checked; we wanted to try and figure out why the hell he was at work so late. Well the last call received was traced and when I found out where, well, I looked like you do now.”
Stoker frowned at the simile.
“It turned out,” Brookes continued, “to have been made from this very station. Now as far as I knew, no-one had reason to call this bloke and until his demise, no-one claimed to have even heard of him.”
“Who knew about this?”
“Well only myself, the Inspector who had asked me to get the trace done, and the Chief Constable to whom the matter was directly taken.”
“Not then,” Stoker barked, his voice building up with anger, “now, the present, ie. ever since we’ve been trying to catch this murdering bastard!”
“Only Chief Inspector Dorell.”
“Jesus Christ! What the hell was he thinking?”
“He was under orders from the very top to keep it under wraps, and to keep a discreet eye on his colleagues.”
Stoker was now quite visibly outraged.
“But I wasn’t even here back then and neither were many of officers. We all had a right to know about this.”
Brookes refused to rise to the conflict.
“No-one’s saying you were under suspicion, it was just thought best to keep it discreet. There could well be no connection between what’s happening now and what happened then.”
“Yeah and there could well be no connection between smoke and bloody fire. They could just be some universal coincidence! Just tell me who exactly is under suspicion?”
“Well the duty sergeant and the two constables whose shift it was that night were thoroughly checked out. It was established that none had left the premises prior to the fire callout but this didn’t rule any out as a possible accomplice to the murder. They were all placed under heavy surveillance for some time but each did nothing to incriminate him or herself.
It was also considered possible that any senior officer, who would have had station keys, could have sneaked into the police building that night via the back and made the call undetected by those on duty. It was also considered very unlikely that an officer would bother to do this unless it was to deliberately incriminate the uniforms on duty.
Either way, all senior officers, myself included, were subsequently swiftly transferred to different regions, partly to see if any bizarre happenings turned up on their new patches and partly to get the culprit, if there was one, as far from Abergavenny as possible.
Nothing did turn up and of course only myself, my boss Inspector Stroud, and your Chief Constable knew the true reasons behind the transfers.
The constables and the duty sergeant were all locals and couldn’t really be shifted without substantial explanation, so they remained here.”
“Names?”
“Well of the three, one has left but Constable Goodson and now Sergeant Jordan are still here. But according to Chief Inspector Dorell they have not acted the slightest bit suspiciously throughout this entire investigation. It’s pretty safe to rule them out. In fact when the investigation pointed in the direction of Gardner, Dorell pretty much dismissed the matter but sadly because White Farm turned out to be a bit of a Red Herring we’re forced to look back at our own people, for want of any better lead.”
“What about the constable who left?”
“He lives in Cornwall. He was checked out too when this grisly business started. He’s not left that part of England so he’s definitely out of the frame - or at least as far as the current killings go.”
“Well I know Goodson and Jordan, they’re both as straight as they come. I’ll be vigilante none the less but what about these seniors who had access to the station, who could have sneaked in like you say?”
“As I said, they were all transferred but there are plenty more junior ranks who weren’t, who by some miracle may have got in without the three on duty knowing about it.”
“Well haven’t you checked them all?”
“Of course we have but as with the first three, nothing turned up. So perhaps you can now see why we kept it quite. We were clueless. It just did not seem like any of those working here could have been involved but the fact remains that a phone call was made from these premises six years ago, in the middle of the night, to a man who just two hours later ended up as toast.”
“What a bloody mess.”
“To be honest, the whole matter was forgotten until people started getting murdered again. Why someone would kill one person, stop, and then go on a rampage five years later is beyond me.”
“Yeah, well if it had gone public back then maybe we wouldn’t be having this problem now. Maybe the bastard responsible would have been caught!”
“Well right or wrong, the cover-up wasn’t my decision and at risk of repeating myself, I must ask you not to mention this to anyone.”
“What good would it do? I’d just have officers suspecting each other and that would only worsen matters.”
“Perhaps now you understand why Dorell kept this information to himself.”
“Damn it, I should have been told. This is my beat!”
“Like I say, the decision wasn’t mine.”
Stoker rose from his desk, opting to walk to the large rectangular window that looked out over the car-filled courtyard to the rear of the building; a window that he gazed through in search of inspiration with increasing frequency.
“No point moaning about it now I suppose,” he said with an uncharacteristic calm. Maybe the sparrow staring back at him from a disproportionately long tree-branch to his left had a soothing effect. “We’ve got to concentrate on getting this sod once and for all. What was the name again of the company Wallis owned all those years ago?”
“Gateway Taxis but I don’t really....”
“It’s now called Gateway Cabs right? Now didn’t two of the recent victims work for them?”
“Yes but the other two worked for two different companies so I don’t think the killer is necessarily targeting that firm. Especially when you think there are only five taxi-businesses in this town anyway.”
“True, but even the most twisted psychopath usually has some equally twisted motive. If we can find it then maybe we can find him.”
Stoker turned his attention back inside his office.
“What are you getting at?” Brookes could smell the scent of a hunt.
“Well I think we should pay Gateway Cabs a visit, especially as they’re death tally, if you include this Wallis, now comes to three.”
“Wouldn’t it be more logical to investigate the two rival firms that haven’t yet lost a driver to the killer.”
“Probably, and I think we should do that too. In fact we should check them all out but let’s start with Gateway.”
“Okay, but I think we may be barking up the wrong tree.”
“Inspector Brookes, at this moment it’s the only tree at which to bark.”
 
At that moment, just a few miles away and getting closer by the second, Chief Inspector Dorell was making yet another attempt at polite conversation with the passenger who had maintained a stubborn silence all the way from White Farm.
“Not far to go now, laddie. You sure you don’t want to tell me a story or two before we get there. It’ll sure as hell save us all a lot of hassle.”
The man in the backseat; his wrists handcuffed firmly behind him, just stared out of the side window blankly.
He had the same glazed expression on his face that the two friends of Gardner had by all accounts been wearing before they had ended up as dog food.
Dorell had been on the force long enough to know that look; it was obvious the guy was high on something and judging by the speed and ferocity of his earlier attack, it had been pretty powerful stuff.
Thankfully, although Dorell was reaching the less active end of middle-agedom, his ability in a fist fight had proved more than a match for his would-be assailant.
Where the guy had suddenly appeared from? That was a mystery. Equally mysterious was why he had tried to club Dorell over the head with a piece of wood.
Despite a few persuasive jabs to the ribs - the face was avoided (it was unwise to have suspects look too badly beaten) - this idiot hadn’t said a word, let alone shed any light on such mysteries. He hadn’t even begged for mercy which was a dead give away on the drug situation!
He suspected that this particular low-life probably knew about the hidden cash as well. Dorell glanced down at the notes protruding from his glove compartment; why would such a relatively paltry amount be holed up in a wall like that?
Well, the answers would soon come. To Dorell, the method would be simple. If this man was an addict (and the noticeable number of needle marks on one of his arms suggested as such), then although he could act the hard man now, if you stuck him in a cell for a few days, cut off his supply, withdrawal would soon have him crying like a baby and singing like a canary! He’d seen it happen so many times before. All you needed was a half-decent charge to hold them. Breaking and entry (Dorell would deviously attribute that little number to him) together with the more honest charge of assaulting a police officer, would keep him under lock and key for long enough. It was perhaps a sad fact but it was sometimes necessary to act a little corruptly to do the world a favour.
He knew it, others knew it, and as long as he wasn’t caught and his conscience was clear, he had no problem with it. Besides people with something to hide, like the man occupying his back seat, rarely registered a formal complaint.
“You know you could do a lot worse than provide me with some answers.”
The man remained silent.
“Oh well, it’s your funeral, son. Ahh, here we are, home sweet home!”
He parked the vehicle up behind one of the many police cars, littered along the street. Soon, he was pulling his prisoner out and marching him to the side entrance of Abergavenny Police Station.
“I hope Stoker likes his Christmas present.” His voice fell on inattentive ears.
He shook his head in mock dismay, aware that none of his words were even registering. How the hell could people get so doped up? Where was the enjoyment in being so totally oblivious to reality?
As he led him inside he wondered whether he’d just contradicted himself with his own argument with the one question. Sometimes reality could do with taking a back seat. Sometimes.
The reality of being transferred back to London, the reality of failure, those were ones he could have done without.
Still he’d been right to give himself another chance; the zombie in front of him could well prove to be his salvation.
He led the prisoner to the duty officer’s desk, trying to hide any trace of a smug grin across his face.
He’d be glad to be shot of him, the guy looked and smelt like a tramp. It was sad really, close inspection would reveal that the guy would only be in his thirties but with the rough stubble, the greasy hair, the shabby attire, and the vagueness of his eyes, he looked more like he was in his fifties.
“Chief Inspector?” The duty officer who had been unlucky enough to draw the straw that had given him the Christmas shift, looked surprised. “I thought you’d left, sir?”
“I had. But I’m back now. I’ve got a fella here who needs a room to sit in. He’s got himself all in a fluster, he’s got it into his head that he can attack police officers.”
The duty officer pushed an open book under Dorell’s nose which was obligingly signed.
“Have fun,” he said to the villain being led away to the holding cells.
His cargo delivered, he approached the nearest staircase that would lead him to the floors above. He hoped Stoker and his chums were back from their Christmas lunch.
Dixon was the first to notice him as he strode down the top corridor.
“Chief Inspector Dorell? I thought you’d...”
“Yes, well I’m back and I’ve brought something with me that might interest your Inspector Stoker.”
“He’s in his office.”
The DS was clearly interested in what that something was but also knew that it wasn’t his place to ask. Besides which, Dixon knew that if he tagged along he’d most likely find out anyway.
Dorell had quite liked Dixon, although this was probably owing to the fact he hadn’t been as hostile and unwelcoming as his immediate superior. Dorell also sensed that the lad was no fool; the type to bide his time, wait for his superiors to mess up and then move in to claim the next rung on the career ladder.
If this investigation finally turned out to be successful Dixon would be credited with playing a very large part. If the investigation was a continual failure then Dixon would be absolved from blame and it was the CO (as Dorell was painfully aware) that would get all the grief.
He wondered how long it would be before Stoker would cock-up and Dixon would waltz in. Judging by the situation to date, not long, he surmised.
It was a dog eat dog world and Dixon was more than willing to take a bite.
As Dixon politely smiled at him on reaching Stoker’s door, it occurred to Dorell that maybe he didn’t like the DS after all. He smiled with the teeth of a predator; a predator who won your confidence before eating you alive. There was nothing more dangerous than the enemy who posed as your friend.
Dixon noticed the unexpected rise of hostility in Dorell’s returning gaze but attributed it to the stressful circumstances. The DS took no offence and simply pushed open the door after hearing Stoker’s enquiring yell.
“Dorell?” Stoker shared the same look of surprise everyone had dished out since Dorell had returned.
Typical! Dorell thought to himself. They were all so amazed to see him back. They thought he’d gone; turned his tail and fled. Well maybe that was what they had hoped? But it hadn’t worked. He was back and they would just have to deal with it - especially Stoker. He had been up against him from the very beginning. He had doubted his authority, had wanted him out of the picture. He must have celebrated when Dorell slipped up. Christ, he may even have deliberately led him to do so. Maybe they all had. They couldn’t deal with his vastly superior experience and authority; they had all resented it, every last one of them.
Well they were smiling on the other sides of their faces now weren’t they? Because he was back wasn’t he? They thought he’d gone but he’d come back. They thought they’d won but the battle was far from over.
He’d got himself a witness; someone who knew secrets about White Farm, including hidden stashes of money; someone who had at least had the decency to outrightly attack him from the very beginning instead of pretending to be his ally.
“Chief Inspector?” Stoker had noticed how deep in thought the Scotsman seemed. “Can I help you?”
Dorell’s eyes coldly reflected back. Help him? That was a laugh! Just like he’d helped him get booted off the investigation?
And now Stoker was in charge, he’d want Dorell to tell him about his trip to White Farm, tell him about the money he’d found, tell him about the man in the cells downstairs, tell him so that Stoker could get all the credit, so that the Great Inspector Stoker could get all the glory?
And what would he get? A one-way drive back to London? Did they think him the fool? Did they actually think that he didn’t know? Did they think they could get away with mocking him, discrediting him, using him as a scapegoat for all of their failings? If they did, they were in for a surprise. Fuck you Stoker you’ll get nothing out of me. Fuck you Stoker, that’s the way it was going to be.
“Fuck you, Stoker!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. Fuck you!”
Dixon placed a hand on Dorell’s shoulder.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Get your fucking hands off me?” The yell was loud enough for all the station to hear. The DS, startled, did not react quickly enough and found himself being pushed so hard that he stumbled backwards into the office.
Stoker raised his arms imploringly.
“Calm down Dorell. What’s the problem?”
“What’s going on?” Brookes had come out to investigate, having heard the commotion from his office opposite.
Dorell turned to see the fellow officer looking concerned.
Stoker was up from his desk and approaching from the front; the shocked Dixon regaining his balance to his right. And there was Brookes now behind him. They were closing in on him. They weren’t going allow him not to tell them. They were going to make him. It was all so clear now - they’d wanted him dead all along. They’d all hated him from the very beginning. Now by trying to trap him they were revealing their true colours. But he now knew something that they didn’t. That’s why they had not yet attacked. Use that Dorell! Use that fact to your advantage. Use it to get away!
He turned sharply, using the force of the motion to deliver a devastating blow to Brooke’s stomach with his fist. The air pushed from his lungs, the Inspector doubled up in pain. Before anyone else could react, Dorell was running down the corridor, desperately heading for the stairs. The startled detectives were about to pursue when Dorell stopped dead in his tracks. Two uniformed officers, who had just ascended the staircase, were approaching him.
Dorell’s eyes widened in horror. My God! The two of them were both holding huge carving knives; the blood of a fresh kill still dripping from the steel blades.
The two officers were astounded to see the Chief Inspector turn around and run away from them.
Dorell stopped again, wary of returning towards the three detectives, who were standing at the other end watching him. Suddenly they were laughing. Stoker, Dixon and Brookes were laughing! They were horrible laughs, terrifying laughs, like harmonies of insanity!
“Please keep away!” he screamed.
The three looked at one another, bemused.
“No-one’s going to hurt you. Just calm down.” Stoker gave a knowing nod to the two uniforms behind Dorell. Understanding the message, the two policeman slowly approached the Scotsman with an aim to grab him from behind. The poor man was obviously having a weird breakdown of some kind.
Dorell did not hear the words Stoker spoke - how could he, for Stoker was too busy laughing to talk - but he saw that nod and swiftly turned yet again, to face the officers from behind. Both of their arms were now raised, both ready to thrust down those knives upon him. They bore menacing grins and they were chanting his name.
He would have to rush Stoker and the others but to his growing despair, he could see that now they all held crimson knives as well.
Pools of blood were forming on the floor around them, as the flow from each blade became more defined. Where the hell was the blood on the knives coming from? Oh Christ! Oh Fuck! It was coming from him; it was his blood!
He pushed his back against the wall, to face his only remaining option. He braced himself.
Those around him were tragically too late to realise his intention.
“You won’t get me you bastards!” Dorell yelled as he flung himself into the bay window. He did not see the images of shock across all of their faces. If he had, he would probably have felt triumphant. As it was, he didn’t feel anything for very long. His tumbling body smashed into the concrete floor of the station car park three storeys below. The impact was taken head first and his neck snapped instantly, sparing him the agony of his skull caving in.
The horrified onlookers rushed to the broken window and viewed down at the still body of Chief Inspector Dorell. None were carrying knives and certainly no-one was laughing. They were all in a state of utter disbelief, trying to make sense of the insane reality they had just witnessed.
A senior officer, who by all accounts had seemed a rational man, had just committed suicide in an effort to get away from them.
What had terrified him so much? Why had he returned there in the first place?
Stoker was the first to finally pull his eyes away from the morbid sight below. He looked across at Brookes.
“Still like this town?” he said.

 
                                                                              T W E N T Y   O N E
 
 
Scott opened the oven door; the sudden heat blasted out towards his face as he leant over to look inside. The turkey was sizzling quite nicely and its brownish appearance combined with a mouth-watering smell told his rumbling stomach that it was almost done. Just another ten minutes he thought to himself.
As Christmas Day’s went, this one had not started well.
He hoped the prospect of the festive feast might raise both their spirits. No, damn it, he was determined that it would, and the sight of that juicy bird was enough to make anyone feel good. And the turkey wasn’t bad either!
He smiled. See, it was possible to feel good about life, even if it meant thinking stupid puns to one’s self.
He just hoped that his bold effort didn’t end up depressing them further; he wasn’t exactly what you could call an experienced man in the kitchen!
The sudden surge of steam from a pan on the hob reminded him of this fact.
He quickly turned down the controls, allowing some over-active vegetables to simmer.
A few minutes later he was carrying two full glasses of fine wine (he assumed it was fine, he was about as experienced a wine-drinker as he was a cook, but the foreign name and the price tag had certainly looked impressive!) and an open bottle stacked neatly on a tray.
Kate smiled at his rather grand entrance into the living room, gleefully taking a glass from its perch.
He set the tray on the coffee-table in order to sit down on the sofa beside her, grabbing his own full glass and making a gesture that resembled a toast, muttering “Nostravia!” which he reliably informed her was Russian for ‘cheers’, and downing the beverage.
She looked at him with a mock disapproval.
“Plenty more where that came from,” he said, still trying to assess whether he liked the after-taste or not.
She continued to smile but gently shook her head.
“How can you do it?” she asked. “How can you be so cheerful after everything that’s happened?”
“Why not?” he shrugged. “Can’t change the past so why brood about it? We’ve got to look forward now. Besides, I’m damned if I’m going to let anything spoil my Christmas Day. I’m taking a well-earned break from despair and frustration.” He raised his eyebrows in a candid manner. “I’ll be miserable again tomorrow if you like?”
She gave him a ‘I suppose you’re right’ sort of look that wasn’t entirely convincing.
“Now look here your pagan-ness,” he said sternly as he refilled his glass. “You may not normally celebrate Christmas but I do, so come on let’s make a good time of it.”
“For your information,” she retorted, playfully hitting him with the nearest thing to hand (to Scott’s good fortune it was a settee cushion). “Us pagans do celebrate Christmas, only it’s the Yule Festival and all about rebirth, the light rekindled...” She stopped herself before she started another lecture. “Besides, I thought you were an agnostic?”
“Details!”
She laughed.
He grinned. “I better go and check on my other bird.”
“Oh really?”
“Back in a tick.”
She watched him head out of the doorway and felt a little useless; owing mainly to the fact that he had banned her from his kitchen and refused to let her help him.
He was clearly trying to impress her, and it was fair to admit that she liked that. She also loved the way his daft sense of humour would relentlessly prevent her from becoming depressed. She tended to forget about all the bad things when she was with him. She wasn’t so sure whether she liked that!
Since the other night, when he had comforted her from her nightmares; the nightmares that had now paled into insignificance following the new events of late, they had shared his double bed every night, although they hadn’t done anything more than cuddle each other to sleep.
Scott certainly didn’t seem to be the type to be frigid or shy and she suspected that he had withheld his advances because he did not wish to be seen to be taking advantage of her in what was quite obviously a stressful situation.
It had even taken an invitation from herself, for the reporter to share his own bed with her; he had made no assumptions regarding that first kiss and cuddle. However, his obvious eagerness to comply with such a request had ruled out the possibility that he didn’t desire her.
She hoped it wasn’t just her vulnerability that was making her, with every waking moment, increasingly desire him. She didn’t really think it was but maybe that creeping doubt that it could be a possibility had been the underlying reason why she had not made any sexual advances herself.
She was certainly no vestal virgin, but she had never in life considered herself to be easy either. Her previous two sexual partners she had felt something for; she had had to, to be truly comfortable in a love-making scenario.
With Scott though, things felt different. After a matter of days of their meeting, she could already picture a future with him, where as going out for months with previous men - although she had genuinely believed at the time she’d cared for each of them - had produced no such great effect.
It was a scary thought to have to entertain but admittedly a far more welcome scare than the others she’d been getting lately.
Maybe she wasn’t initiating sexual contact because she didn’t want to spoil that electricity that was beginning to sparkle between them? A cliché? Maybe. But quite possibly, an accurate one. She may be psychically-gifted but she sure as hell wished she could use it to read Scott’s mind. Why must she share the mind of a madman but not that of someone she was becoming deeply attracted to? Where was the justice in that?
She could, however, sense, not by any supernatural ability but pure female intuition, that he used his humour to cover up his real feelings.
Logic, told her that he must be in a great deal of pain, knowing that yesterday he’d thought he had achieved a great ambition and today, such achievement had proved to be short-lived. She also knew that she wouldn’t get to see that side of him - the hurting side. She wanted so much to share his thoughts, comfort him as he comforted her, know what it was that made Scott Jackson tick. In time maybe she would.
Maybe.
In the kitchen, Scott was busy carving into the turkey.
It smelt so good he was wondering what the hell it was that possessed people to become vegetarians. The morale grounds he understood (and sympathised) but he had long ago resided to the fact that he was carnivorous by nature; those succulent white chunks of cooked flesh that he was slicing into confirmed that beyond any doubt.
It was a good job that Kate had not turned out to be a veggie; he had only asked her as an afterthought that morning when he’d already defrosted the bird and had she been adverse to meat, things would have proved embarrassing because his entire vegetable collection was currently boiling in one pot before him.
He was really starting to fall for her and that he knew those feelings extended beyond sympathy or instinctive protectiveness.
The past couple of days (was it really only three days since they’d met?) had been, despite everything else, rather enjoyable. A selfish part of him was quite disappointed that her mother would be discharged from the hospital tomorrow – he would lose his house-guest.
Things had taken a swan dive into despair that morning but it had been a great comfort to be able to share Christmas Day with such a fantastic female companion.
His face dropped as his thoughts recounted the events of the past few hours.
He had been woken in the middle of the night by Kate’s screaming. She had been having bad dreams again and he had woke her and held her steadily, calming her down.
His tired mind hadn’t grasped the implications of any of this until Kate began to clearly recollect her dream-world experience.
She told him that she had witnessed not one, but two new murders and when, sobbing, she had delved into the gory details Scott had found it hard not to be terrified with her.
He tried to convince her that it had all been just a dream but she was adamant that what she had seen had been real. This was not all, however.
The part that had been the most frightening of all; the part that had quite literally turned her normally pale complexion an even more colourless shade, was that this time the killer had not only been aware of her psychic presence but had encouraged it, deliberately torturing his victims to entertain her through his sick and twisted mind.
But even worse than this, he had with his own thoughts, spoken to her for the first time she could recollect.
He had told her that he could use her and control her. He had told her that he had already demonstrated this. He had told her that he had willed the name of Gardner into her head so that she would unwittingly do his bidding by providing the police with false information.
The fact that she could be used like this had quite literally devastated her.
As she lay there crying, holding Scott tightly as if her very life depended upon the action, the journalist continually tried to convince her that it had all amounted to nothing more than an over-stressed, sub-conscious imagination.
When after finally getting back to sleep, he had woken that morning - Christmas morning - and he had wistfully turned on the television breakfast news, it was his turn to go pale as he saw reports of two more murders in Abergavenny complete with brief descriptions of the methods of the executions.
Methods chillingly similar to Kate’s dream-induced claims.
He was taken aback, having to sit down aghast. He felt disgust at the crimes, sympathy for the victims, great fear for Kate, general disbelief and huge disappointment for himself. Fleet Street would hardly further any interest in a reporter who’d spectacularly got it wrong.
It was a cruel cocktail of negative emotions all rolled into one. He found himself, still barely awake, reaching for the strongest drink in his cabinet.
Then he had abruptly stopped himself. He needed to be even stronger now, not just for his own sake but for Kate’s too.
That automatic defence of renewed determination kicked in.
He would get this bastard and he would be hero of the people once more. Realistic thoughts? Perhaps not?
But positive and highly necessary ones.
In the meantime he was going to have a great day. Well once he’d woken Kate and told her the bad news, getting that out of the way.
The fact that there was no work to face and he could spend the whole day with Kate brought some light into what would be otherwise utter darkness and despair.
So there he was a few hours later, forcing out his optimism by placing layers of turkey onto two plates, draining some vegetables, and slowly but surely working his way through a bottle of wine.
Ten carefully constructed minutes later, he was placing down a highly appetising Christmas dinner on a symmetrically laid out table, that boasted centre-stage in his living room, rather than its usual position tucked up against a wall.  
He’d even lit a few candles to bring some romance along; not to be deterred by daylight he had defiantly drawn the curtains making the candle-lit room seem very cosy.
A gas fire roaring heat at its fullest blaze was making sure that genuine warmth accompanied the cosiness.
They both eagerly tucked in but not before Kate had given him a very much appreciated, thankyou kiss.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said, carving into a tender turkey slice.
“Hmm?” he murmured vaguely, his mind elsewhere.
“Well we always seem to be talking about me or this whole White Farm business but never you. I want to know more about the great Scott Jackson.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Well tell it.”
“You want a life history?”
“As long as you skip the boring bits.”
He savoured a tasty morsel of food before gathering his thoughts. “Well I was born in some maternity ward in Gloucester, grew up in a relatively quiet town in The Midlands, not entirely unlike Abergavenny in fact, only less Welsh, oh, and of course Cheadham as far as I know has not as yet produced any rampant killers.
I went on to university in London where I managed to bluff my way through a degree in English, did a post-grad course in Journalism, and got my first job, ten months ago here in Abergavenny.”
“Why Aber?”
“Had to go where I was offered. I’d written to scores of small newspapers - to get a job on a larger paper it’s usually an unwritten rule that you should work in the little league first. The Gazette gave me an interview and hey presto, here I am.”
She deliberately over-emphasised her Welsh accent. “Didn’t realise you were a foreigner?” she said turning away in an effort to wind him up.
“I’m worse than a foreigner,” he replied, childishly flicking a pea at her. “I’m English!”
She turned back towards him, a broad grin from ear to ear.
“So I take it you’re a taffy born and bred?”
“Certainly am,” she replied.
“Can you speak Welsh?”
“Certainly can’t,” she said with equal pride.
“Can’t?”
“Not much call for it down here in the South.”
“Have you ever wanted to learn?”
“Are you kidding. I usually have enough trouble with English as it is.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Swine!” Her hand made an obscene gesture. Scott couldn’t stop himself from smiling. She was really cute when she was being playfully adversarial. He wondered if it would be the same case if the antagonism was genuine. Somehow he doubted it. It was already clear she could give as good as she got and he’d much rather leave that for someone else to explore.
“Anyway,” she continued, “stop steering the subject back to me. It’s you I want to talk about. Do you like it here?”
“Apart from the fact I’ve nearly been killed several times you mean?”
“Be serious.”
“I am.”
She gave him the kind of look a teacher gives a troublesome child. Or was it the kind that a spider gives a fly? Either way, he decided it was in his best interest to concede. So he did.
“Alright. Actually, I like Abergavenny very much, it has got great character and a few great characters for that matter. I must confess I do sometimes miss the hustle and bustle of the city but I’m essentially a country lad so I’m pretty much used to living somewhere that closes down after midnight.” He filled their empty glasses before reaching for a second bottle. “I must admit though, lately, I’m really beginning to think what a fantastic move it was coming down here.” He picked up his own full glass and drank from it, eyeing her constantly as he did so.
She looked back at him thoughtfully. Was he referring to the way things had livened up lately or was he talking about her?
She wasn’t absolutely sure and was too much of a coward to ask. Besides, the smile he gave as if to read her thoughts meant that she didn’t have to.
For a while she returned the gaze, and for a few timeless seconds there was an aura of silence as each tried to view what it was that lay beyond the other’s eyes.
Self-awareness soon returned though and along with it the inevitable feelings of awkwardness. Kate found herself looking back down at her plate, filling her mouth with food to provide the perfect excuse for saying nothing.
Scott followed suit and for the rest of the meal, the conversation remained informative and light but the gaze did not return.
After they had consumed a luxurious cheese-cake desert (that would have been even more luxurious if Scott had defrosted it properly!) the young reporter emptied the second bottle of wine into both glasses and gallantly proposed a toast.
“To success, in whatever we may endeavour.”
It was a very ambiguous statement and Kate wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at. She readily jilted her glass guessing that this was his way of saying he hoped things would get better without actually directly reminding them of the fact that things needed to get better.
Nevertheless, it had reminded her of how bad she should be feeling but mercifully she was enjoying his company so much, she could not bring herself to dwell on it.
She really was having a great time and at that moment at least, it seemed like all the pain, the disappointment, the frustration, the anger and above all, the fear were most certainly not invited.
Neither of them, having both consumed a fair amount already, had fully drained the contents of their glass. She used this fact to her advantage.
“I propose another toast,” she declared. Scott raised his eyebrows in excited anticipation.
“To you, Scott, the man who rescued me; my knight in shining armour. May our new-found friendship be a very long and lasting one.”
Scott chinked his glass and couldn’t stop himself from avoiding her eyes as he did so. She could see that he was actually blushing. Good grief! She’d finally managed to embarrass him!
“You’re going red,” she said, knowing full well that if there was ever a statement designed to turn people even more red, that was it.
“Must be the heat,” he replied, looking rather sheepish.
Then suddenly he burst into life, leaping up from his chair. “Wait there a second,” he barked, gently pushing the startled female back into her seat.
“There’s no need to run away,” she replied.
“No, I’ve just remembered something.” He dashed out of the room. Less than a minute had passed before he had re-appeared and was clutching a parcel. He plonked it down before her. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
Revenge was sweet. Her face was becoming a beautiful shade of red too. Kate was about to say something like ‘you shouldn’t have’ but decided against it; she had never liked clichés.
Instead, she keenly unwrapped the item before her.
“When did you get me this?” she asked, trying to get her nail behind a particularly stubborn piece of tape.
“I made a mad dash to the shops yesterday, when you were visiting your mum. I thought I ought to get you something. Hope you like it.”
“She finally managed to pull off the paper; a packet of two plastic rainhoods presented itself.
She looked up at him, not quite sure how to react.
“They stop your hair getting wet in the rain,” he said enthusiastically.
“I know but err...”
“Don’t you like it. I know it’s not much, but I rushed through wind and rain to get that.” His tone was tame. “Come to think of it, I could probably have done with one,” he quipped.
She studied the expectancy across his face.
“Thanks,” she said politely. “I’m sure they’ll come in handy.” She forced a smile of gratitude. Scott smiled back. There was a brief pause before he burst into laughter, so much in fact that he had to sit down to steady himself.
“You bastard!” she smiled, aware she was being mocked. It had been a total wind-up and she had fallen hook, line and sinker!
“Got ya,” he chuckled.
She was out of her chair and about to whack him round the head with his so-called gift but he quickly pulled up his hands for protection, cheerfully begging for mercy.
“Don’t do that or I won’t be able to give you your other present,” he yelled, as she laid into him.
He was still in a fit of hysterical amusement.
“What is it this time?” She gave him another whack. “A rocking chair?” Whack. “Curlers?” Whack. “A hair-net?”
He dived under the table for cover. She just re-directed her slapping to his protruding back. “You can’t hide under there.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m getting your real present,” he said, pulling himself back up.
She withdrew the attack, throwing the offending rain-hood packet back onto the table. He handed her a small box.
She opened it and found a silver necklace with a lustrous pendant that was crafted in a shape that signified a symbol of some kind.
“It’s beautiful.” Taken aback, she held it to the light.
“I was hoping you’d say that. I figured that you might like occult jewellery.”
“Where did you get it?”
“The little gift shop in Llanellen. I was told that the symbol is called Algiz and is supposed to ward off evil spirits.”
“Algeez,” she corrected, “and yes, it’s runic, it means protection.”
She carefully handed both ends of the necklace to him. “Would you care to do the honours?”
“Certainly.” She turned her back to him and he gently fastened the charm around her neck, not wasting the opportunity to gently stroke her long hair as he did so. She turned back to face him.
“Thanks. It’s great. It was really sweet of you.” She looked directly into his eyes. He looked directly back. There was a moment of hesitation but the kiss was inevitable.
“Let’s see if it works,” she beamed, before allowing her lips to press his.
When she didn’t withdraw he started to react, allowing his tongue to explore every part of her mouth. The fact she tasted of turkey encouraged him all the more.
Just as things were getting interesting she withdrew. Her eyes betrayed guilt.
“Hey, I’m not that evil. It shouldn’t be warding me off,” he complained.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that I didn’t really get a chance to get you anything.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“Still...”
“Look it honestly doesn’t matter. The fact you’re here is the best present I could have. And if you’d like to um…resume the current course of things I’d be very grateful.”
She looked through him, lost in a whirlpool of thoughts. It didn’t look like what he’d just said had registered. “Wait a second,” she said. “I have got something for you.”
Before he could offer any protest she had disappeared off towards the bedroom. Suddenly alone, he gave a shrug and a look that was designed to exclaim, “Women!” with no-one was there to see it.
She soon returned clutching a book that she proudly presented to him.
“Kate, you don’t have to give me something just because...”
“Shush, I was going to give you this anyway. I just totally forgot.”
“Well if you’re sure.” He looked down at the book she had placed in his hands. It had a picture of a pentagram and some candles on the front. The title read ‘Paganism in the World Today’.
“You seemed so interested in my faith,” she said, “I thought I’d better give you a book on it. That one, in my opinion, is one of the best books ever written on the subject. It’s totally objective and unbiased, as it’s written by a non-pagan guy who until he wrote this had been a military historian.”
He smiled at her obvious enthusiasm.
“So don’t worry,” she continued, “I’m not trying to convert you.”
“You’re more than welcome to try,” he beamed, placing the book on the table and moving his hands onto the sides of her shoulders. “Seriously though, thanks Kate. That’ll make a good read. Cheers gal!”
He tried to give her, her thankyou kiss but she grabbed one of his arms and led him to the settee. He obediently sat beside her allowing her to place her arms around him.
She looked deeply into him. He suddenly felt as though she could see his very soul. He hoped it didn’t look too bad.
“Scott.” The sound was a whisper.
“Kate,” he replied, demonstrating his inability to remain serious for any prolonged moment. 
 “Please listen.” It wasn’t said in a scornful manner, more of an appealing one. He decided to behave. “Scott, you know I owe you a lot. I mean rescuing me, letting me stay here, trying and succeeding in cheering me up...”
He listened with an attentiveness he was seldom accredited with. He could see this was the beginnings of a very deep conversation that was definitely leading somewhere.
“And I want you to know,” she continued, “that I’m extremely grateful. I only hope that one day I’ll be able to pay you half the kindness you’ve shown me, but...”
Scott prepared himself for the bombshell of disappointment that was about to drop while at the same time trying to conceal any pain or fear he felt at hearing her use the dreaded ‘But’ word.
The deep breath she allowed herself before continuing didn’t boost his confidence either.
“Go on,” he encouraged, knowing he’d have to face up to whatever it was she was going to say.
“...But, I wouldn’t want you to think that the reason I want to be with you is just because of gratitude...I mean...well I’ve given it a lot of thought and I want to be here for bigger reasons than that and well...” She was aware that she was rambling so she allowed herself another breath of air before adopting a more decisive manner. “The fact is Scott I find myself very attracted to you.”
Scott could not hide his relief and neither of them had realised his previous tension until it was relaxed so emphatically. It wasn’t the ‘let’s just be friends’ speech he’d expected. It wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. Awkwardness or delight - either seemed more appropriate than a huge sigh. Scott realised this and explained.
“I thought I was about to be blown out!” he smiled.
“Oh,” she managed, cautiously reserving any outward expressions of emotion.
He stroked her arm.
“Kate, I’m attracted to you too. I just didn’t want you to think that I was taking advantage.”
“Are you?” She was smiling now.
“No.”
“Why not?” He looked so confused at that point she felt she had to tighten her embrace, cuddling the poor thing just to set his mind at ease. She giggled. She could be a terrific tease too! “Just kiss me you idiot,” she ordered.
“If you insist,” came the reply.
The kiss was different to any of the others they had shared previous. It was far more passionate, for they both, with their new-found knowledge could safely let themselves go.
Scott’s fingers were running through Kate’s hair while her hands were dedicating their duty to pulling the sweatshirt off his back.
As the passion grew and the embrace enveloped, the two rolled off the sofa and onto the spacious floor of carpet. Scott’s mouth left the attention of her lips to explore South and gently kiss, caress and provide short bursts of breath onto her neck.
Her breathing noticeably accelerated as her body began to enter the first stages of arousal. She loved the warm feeling of moistness around her skin.
He retrieved his arms so that he could unbutton her purple silk blouse, allowing his mouth easy access to her warm chest. As she fondled the back of his head, he gently trapped a nipple between his lips, teasing it with his tongue. She could feel herself becoming wet between her thighs. She wanted him. She wanted him so incredibly badly. She started pulling down her skirt and the hem of the tights beneath.
The tightness in his jeans told Scott he was ready, ready to do what he had wanted from the very beginning, wanted since he’d met her. He was ready to make wild and passionate love to her. Still teasing her breasts, he pushed a stray hand between them to unbuckle the button that fastened his jeans but she was already there, doing it for him, allowing his proud manhood to burst free from its denim captivity.
And then she froze.
In the midst of passion her whole body became still.
Startled by the sudden contrast, Scott drew his face away from her erect nipples and looked up at her.
Her face was white with fear.
“Kate?”
She looked back at him as though he were a stranger, her posture rigid.
“Are you okay?” There was more than fear in that face, there was confusion. “If you’re not ready...”
“He’s here.”
“Who is?”
“I can sense him. I’m feeling the same thing I felt when I was attacked.”
He rolled off her, so that she could sit up. She was hastily pulling back her clothes.
“Scott, we’ve got to leave. We’ve got to leave now!”
The panic and the urgency in her voice was scaring him.
“Kate, just calm down.”
She stood up rushing across to get his discarded sweatshirt. “You don’t understand. He’s here. The man in my dreams. The murderer.”
“How can...”
His words were cut short as the door in the corner of the room; the door that was both entrance and exit to the flat; the door that was thick and sturdy; the door that had been locked; swung open so violently that it took a piece of frame with it.
In its place stood a large figure of a man. Whoever he was, he was wearing a balaclava to hide his features and he was notably well-built. They could both see that he was clutching a knife.
Scott was the first to react, leaping up and grabbing Kate, pulling them behind the dining table, so that the hefty piece of furniture served as an obstacle between the attacker and themselves.
The man walked slowly and calmly forward.
“You’re not having her you piece of shit!” Scott grabbed one of the empty wine bottles ready to smash it into the intruder’s face should he move within arm’s reach.
Kate was less patient, hurling one of the empty plates at the invader with an admirable accuracy. The china impacted with the man’s head before he could get his fists up for protection. However, to their horror, he simply brushed off the shattered fragments and continued his journey towards them.
Kate lobbed another but this time the target was ready and the plate was deflected with his right fist.
He was almost at the table now and Scott drew back the wine bottle in readiness. As he did so, the thing flew out of his hand to harmlessly smash against a side wall. Without having time to worry about why he had lost his hold so easily when he’d been certain of a tight grip, he made a grab for the second bottle, catching it between his hands just before it fell to the floor as a result of the masked man lifting up the table.
This time the journalist held the bottle as firmly as he could and swung it back but was then briefly forced to divert his attention to find out why from behind, Kate was trying to take the bottle off him.
The fear in his gut, increased ten-fold when he realised that Kate wasn’t anywhere near him; she was in the far corner of the room frantically searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. She wasn’t pulling at the bottle; nobody was and yet Scott had to use all the muscles he could summon just to swing the damn thing inwards against an invisible outward force.
The bottle finally hit the assailant against the shoulder, shattering in the impact, but it was already too late as a strong hand firmly gripped itself around Scott’s other arm.
The knife was plunged deep into Scott’s chest with a force so furious that at least four inches of the blade had disappeared beneath a bloody surface.
Scott screamed in agony, dropping to his knees, his hands now fumbling around the knife’s handle in a desperate attempt to pull it out of him.
Kate was screaming, filled with horror at the sight. In a rage, she lunged at the figure in a foolhardy attempt to get him away from his victim.
He responded by throwing her half-way across the room as though she was a rag-doll. He then kicked Scott in the chest, the accurately positioned impact driving the blade in even deeper and forcing the panicking reporter to lie on his back
“Run!” Scott managed to shout, spying Kate in the corner of his eye scrambling to her feet at an area near to the doorway. She ignored his advice and had already grabbed a table lamp to launch at their attacker.
The masked man did not even bother to face her, instead offering her an easy target as he leant over Scott’s blood soaked chest, placing a hand around the blade’s handle.
Before Kate could even step forward, the overturned table, of its own accord it seemed, rushed towards her, pinning her against the wall behind.
Scott, who had gone into shock, was denied the luxury of unconsciousness by a new agony. He screamed as the killer twisted the knife buried deep beneath his flesh.
Kate cried, helplessly watching her friend, who had already lost a lot of blood to the carpet beneath him, being tortured this way. Scott’s screams weakened as mercifully even this new agony was not enough to keep him alert.
The attacker, who had still yet to make a single sound, ignored everything around him as he methodically kept turning the knife, carving into veins and arteries that until now formed part of Scott’s chest. The reporter was unconscious by now. And she was still helpless; held captive by a mass furniture.
It was then that something inside Kate erupted. The fury that had been building up inside her had now become absolute, and this it seemed created a reaction that in the time to come would cause her much concern.
The table that held her suddenly flew back at its source with a tremendous force, and she knew that somehow it was her that had caused it to do so.
Such was its impact that the man fell forward awkwardly onto his victim, quickly rolling over in an attempt to regain his composure. He retrieved the weapon that had made a new home in Scott’s chest but before he could use it again, a barrage of books and ornaments had launched themselves off their shelves and were pelting into him. He drew his arms up to his head to protect himself against the onslaught. He successfully managed to stand up and walk in the direction of the exit.
When the wall ammunition had run out Kate, still ruled by emotion alone, felt something crash into her lower legs with such a force that it brought her to her knees.
She watched her adversary calmly walk past her and out through the doorway. She did not follow him but, pushing away the stool that had disabled her, rushed to the blood-soaked body that lay in a heap across the centre of the floor.
“SCOTT!” she wailed, grabbing at the discarded sweatshirt and using it to try and cover his wound.
The gash was too wide and too deep; a steady flow of blood relentlessly soaking up through the material.
She frantically called out his name, slapping his face to get any kind of response.
In the end, she just buried her head onto the bloodied material across his chest and stared sideways at the opposite wall with tear-soaked vision.
It was no use, she knew that she had to accept it, but she didn’t want to accept it. She wanted it to be like all those nightmares that she could wake up from. She wanted to awaken to find Scott cuddling her and soothing her. She wanted anything other than the reality that faced her. The reality that she refused to accept and yet had to. The reality that told her, that Scott Jackson was dead.

                                                                                Christmas Day

 
                                                                              T W E N T Y
 
“Electrocution and decapitation?!!!”
Stoker’s stomach churned at the thought of it. And he was so very tired of that feeling.
It was Christmas morning and instead of making merry with the wife and kids, he was once again in his office which, he assessed, might just be able to accommodate a bed.
He was not alone in his displeasure. Dixon was sat opposite, with the expression of a man that was thoroughly fed-up. Normally the DS allowed things to just slide over him but not this time, as Stoker noted; this time the bitter reality of failure being allowed to ruin Christmas Day was plane for all to see.
There was, however, another; a man whose irritation, frustration and downright despair far exceeded that of the two detectives; a man who hesitated outside the office door before entering, attempting to summon a facial expression that showed dignity in his demise.
He indicated to another man stood near by that he should wait a moment. The man nodded sympathetically, aware of his colleague’s discomfort.
His composure finally finding its false wave of assertiveness, Chief Inspector Dorell knocked on Stoker’s door.
He didn’t wait for an answer and let himself in.
“Gentleman, it appears that we have made one almighty fuck-up!”
Was it just Dixon or did the Scottish accent seem more acute now?
“It would seem so.” Stoker’s tone was one of submission.
“Well I’ll not beat about the bush with either of you. We got the wrong man. That much is obvious. Unless, of course, there just happens to be two twisted, inventive homicidal maniacs operating in this small town.”
“There may have been other accomplices, sir, that we didn’t and don’t know about?” Dixon’s feeble attempt to be optimistic was met with two hostile gazes.
“I doubt that Sergeant, from what I’m hearing last night’s murders,” Dorell emphasised the plural, “were executed with the cruel intelligence of the first two; far beyond the likely ability of some lackey. If you ask me, if Gardner was involved, he was one of those lackeys and not the actual bastard we’re looking for.”
“It would seem we were a little premature in going to the press with this one.” Stoker’s statement of fact was unusually, not presented as a criticism. He didn’t like Dorell but he didn’t envy him either.
“It would seem so.” Dorell replied sharply. “Anyway, the public are going to be even more fed up with us than they were before, which means we’re going to have to work twice as hard to catch this fella, and when I say we, I mean you. The force needs its scapegoat!”
Stoker and Dixon swapped puzzled glances. Dorell continued.
“It has been decided, that the detective in charge, that is to say, yours truly should be taken off the case and shifted as far away from this bloody mess as possible. In short the case is back in your hands Stoker. The buck will now stop with you. It’s what you wanted so enjoy yourself.”
The manner in which the senior detective had emphasised ‘it’ told them both that he had not been party to the decision. Stoker was not as surprised as Dixon, to hear such news. Dorell had been the face of the force; the face that had told the public it was safe once more; the face that had got it wrong. It was only logical that if he wasn’t pulled off the case, the public would be calling for his head.
It was a tough business. He and many others had believed, just as Dorell had, that they had got their man, but it would only be the Scotsman who would be forced out, for this general misassumption.
Strangely enough, Stoker actually detected himself feeling sorry for the man. If there was any delight at being the master of his turf once more, it was certainly not forthcoming in his expression.
He even extended a hand.
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not.” Dorell said matter-of-factly, refusing the hand-shake. “Anyway, good luck and I mean that. You’re certainly going to need it. And to help you on your way, I’ve brought in an Inspector who may be of some assistance. That’s in addition to the usual team who will now answer to you. I arranged this chap’s transfer a while ago and he got here yesterday!” Dorell turned to Dixon. “He’s your predecessor. He apparently worked here as DS for several years before moving upstairs and subsequently across the border. He may have some first-hand knowledge that may help. He’s outside now but I’ll let him introduce himself as I leave.” He turned back to Stoker. “Any of the junk and files on my desk are yours, if you want them.”
Dorell sighed. “Right I’m off. I wish I could say it was nice working with you.”
He opened the door and before stepping out into the hallway beyond, paused for a moment’s contemplation.
“Just make sure you get this bastard,” were his parting words.
The vacuum created by his rapid disappearance was quickly replaced by another man, about the same age as Stoker, who smiled as he rapped his knuckles against the side of the open door.
“Tough break,” he said, referring to Dorell.
“It comes with the position.” Stoker replied, all too aware that it was now he who held the position that it came with!
The man extended a hand and Stoker received it.
“I’m Inspector Brookes,” he said, “Very pleased to meet you.”
 
While the other detectives had gone home for their Christmas dinners, Chief Inspector Dorell was standing inside the grounds of White Farm, looking at the farmhouse figuring out how exactly he was going to get inside.
He was already regretting his decision to go there - it was a particularly cold day - but he knew for the sake of his career, not to mention his own peace of mind, he had to check the place over one more time unofficially before he returned home.
Despite the fact the building had already been searched twice, he was compelled to listen to that voice in his head (no doubt his ego) that told him that the answer to all of this had to lie somewhere within those four walls.
Not that he placed too much faith in his instincts of late; his instincts had been wrong about Gardner and now he was paying the price but if he could find just one more clue to the identity and whereabouts of the real killer, then his journey would not have been in vein.
He still had no doubt that Gardner had been involved in the Skirrids’ deaths and would state as such at his inquest. The testimony of Brian Thomas and others involved in the illegal boxing racket all pointed the finger firmly at Gardner when it came to that macabre double suicide.
But as far as the murders of the cabbies - well the only link had been the girl, until of course they had found damning evidence in Gardner’s coat and home. Furthermore, his subsequent suicide suggested that the man was unstable enough to possess the qualities necessary for a spot of serial-killing on the side.
The only part that eluded him had been the motive; as even psychopaths usually have some twisted reasoning for selecting their targets. Well the reason for lack of motive was now clear, Gardner hadn’t been the killer but had plainly been involved in some other way.
The evidence found on him proved that; unless he had been set-up but then why would the real killer go to all that trouble of framing him, only to start killing again and effectively proclaim Gardner’s innocence?
The frame theory only worked if the murderer had known beyond any doubt that when trapped, Gardner would take his own life. The reasoning? Maybe, to get an accomplice who knows too much out of the picture.
But then of course there was the girl; it was she who had named him, but if she was involved then surely she could have come up with a more plausible explanation for such an accusation other than the claim she dreamt it!
Additionally, the abduction would have had to have been faked (a role that Gardner would be most unlikely to play if he knew it would lead to his demise) which would also mean the journalist was either duped or involved and if involved, then the photographs deliberately posed.
Not forgetting that Kate Hedges would have had to have arranged the attack on her own mother!
No, believing that girl was capable of being party to such atrocities just didn’t wash; she was even training to be a medic, hardly the modus operandi of someone who would want to destroy lives rather than save them.
The fact that no link had been established between her and White Farm also worked in her favour, making her story of bad dreams not entirely implausible.
However, he had no doubt Stoker would re-interview her and probe for a more substantial reason for her abduction. After all, she had as a claimed psychic managed to get it horribly wrong!
Gardner may not have been the murderer but the man they were after, Dorell was certain, was pretty close by.
He wandered round to the back of the building interrupting his thoughts to scan the courtyard, before peeking into the barn there. He found its barrenness a disappointment.
The back-door to the house was also locked and every window was securely shut.
To hell with it, no-one lived there any more and with Gardner dead and a good while before anyone was likely to trace his family (if they bothered at all!), if the odd window was smashed and the place rummaged a bit, who would care?
Anyway, unless something proved forthcoming from his search, no-one would even know that he had been there.
He turned his back to a small window that formed part of the back door.
He kicked his right leg backwards with a force that demonstrated that he still hadn’t completely lost his combat skills from his younger days.
The noise of shattering glass intruded upon the silence. He withdrew his leg; careful enough to ensure that he did not let any of the sharp fragments cut him as he did so.
He turned back to admire his destructive handy-work, brushing off any glass that had found its way to the back of his coat. He carefully poked his arm through the hole he’d created, in order to reach the latch on the other side.
To his relief the door was not fastened by any other means and the Yale-lock obligingly turned with his hand, to ease it open.
This room appeared to be the kitchen; its considerably dishevelled state no doubt a testimony to the more official police searches that had already been performed. He moved into an equally untidy room. A dining table played host to a mass of ornaments that had been lifted from some of the overturned cabinets strewn against the wall. The drawers from these had been removed and both they and their contents were uniformly laid across the floor. Dorell frowned. Officers should not really leave a searched property in such a state even if there was no longer a living occupant to come home to it.
He grinned at his own hypocrisy. He had just broken a bloody window!
He sifted through the various documents contained in each drawer. He found a flurry of receipts, magazines and stationery that had already appeared on the inventory list he had viewed the previous day. He knew the chances of finding a clue amongst this lot, were a lot less than slim, considering that it had all been thoroughly checked and recorded.
He looked through it anyway, trying not to let the occasional item, such as a leaflet advertising a local tourist attraction, distract him from his task.
He paused. Now he was inside the house, he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. Did he really expect to find more evidence connected to the murders? If he did, would it point in any other direction than Gardner? On considered reflection he concluded that he was mainly hoping to find some indication of an associate or perhaps a clue as to where the secret hide-out was that had stored among other things, Gardner’s home brew, the make-shift furniture for the fight venue and a hell-hound or two.
All those arrested at that barbaric gathering had denied bringing any of the above to the party. They could have been lying of course but why lie about something like that?
Searching officers had sworn none of it had been in either building (house or barn) prior to the fight.
And the journalist’s claim that two men that had been involved in the girl’s abduction had quickly vanished that night, nagged at him.
The same two men, still yet to be identified, that had met an untimely demise at the hands, well claws, of two devilish dogs. If these creatures also sought refuge at this hideaway did Dorell really want to find it?
All such speculation and more, raced through the Chief Inspector’s mind, as he methodically searched each downstairs room.
As each one proved to be devoid of all but disappointment, so his frustration increased; each dose dishing out a cruel reminder that he had been driven to such measures.
There were better ways to spend Christmas Day! By his own admittance he was indulging in a pathetic attempt to save himself from disgrace and preserve some dignity in the face of his colleagues, subordinates and superiors at Scotland Yard.
It was something of a comfort that he also knew that any other good, experienced officer would most likely have drawn exactly the same conclusions about the case as he initially had, but a very small comfort. Unless he could find something here that might make some difference to the status quo he’d be branded an incompetent all the same.
Dorell had never experienced failure and on a case of this magnitude it was intolerable.
Once he had completed as thorough a search of the ground floor as was humanly possible without carving up a sofa and knocking holes into the walls (something he had not ruled out but preferred to wrestle the pros and cons of such an act until after he had performed the more reasonable approach) he headed through the doorway which he had discovered marked the entrance to a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar.
He had brought a torch with him for just such an eventuality but as he descended, the discovery of a working light switch on the adjacent wall told him that he wouldn’t need it.
It was not a long way down to the cold and damp room which, despite looking as if it would be the perfect setting for such things, disappointingly housed neither dead bodies or instruments of torture.
It did however, modestly play host to an ironing board (looking very out of place), and a workbench upon which was sat a variety of assorted tools and jars containing nails, bolts and screws.
In a gap beneath the wooden stairway there were stored a few potentially-lethal gardening tools but when it boiled down to it one had to admit that a spade, pitch-fork and axe were just a spade, pitch-fork and axe and hardly unexpected in a farm house.
The damp rock walls that encased the small room were all found to be, not unsurprisingly, solid as rock. In short as cellars go, this one could be considered to be particularly dull.
Dorell made a defeatist retreat back up the stairs, consoling himself that there was still the upstairs and an attic left to search.
He scorned himself for being so disappointed. What the hell had he expected? He was beginning to think that he was participating in nothing more than self-delusion. What could he find that other highly trained officers couldn’t… twice?
Still, a small voice in his head rushed to defence, one had to try.
Twenty minutes later he had searched the upstairs rooms with equal vigour, which in turn, were equal in their lack of anything forthcoming.
The attic was all that was left to check.
He placed a chair at a point directly below the hatch, climbed onto it, pushed back the white ceiling lid, and lifted himself up into the darkness above.
Once he had wriggled into a safe and suitable sitting position, he surveyed the inside with his torch; its bright beam revealing nothing around the interior of the roof other than a few startled spiders scurrying back into the relative safety of the tiny gaps between the slates.
Dorell sighed. He’d expected at least some junk to be up there. Who didn’t keep junk in the attic?
He carefully lowered his bulk back down until his feet had made contact with the chair beneath. He slid back the white cover with one hand, while his other still held onto the torch.
It was then that a rogue beam from the torch picked up something that, for the first time since Dorell had been in the house, roused his curiosity.
The light reflecting on the white painted lid, highlighted a hand mark that was not his own.
Someone recently, say in the last few weeks or so he estimated, had pushed back that cover with a dirty hand, leaving a print that was unnoticeable unless under the up-close scrutiny of a torch beam.
Obviously, the police that had searched the house would have looked in the attic but it was a strict procedure of police that when searching a property for clues that officers concerned should wear gloves. This was to eliminate the possibility of their prints being mixed up with any potential suspects, so none of the force would have left a hand-print, let alone a grubby one!
The reports he had read had made no mention of any evidence being seized from the attic.
So the question presented itself. Why would Gardner or perhaps one of the Skirrids before him, go up into an empty attic? It was possible they had gone up to empty it. But while people are known to clear out their lofts it is unusual for them to entirely strip it, unless it is to make room to store something else.
He lifted himself up for a second check. The attic was definitely empty and where the roof joined at the walls could clearly be seen at all angles, dismissing any possibility of any other rooms being up there.
He had to concede defeat on that one so he lowered himself back down again.
The print was curious but not without explanation. Maybe, the attic had indeed been entirely emptied, or maybe Gardner, curious like himself, had simply taken a look.
He walked into the nearest bedroom opting to stare out of its window for inspiration.
All he saw were muddy fields, a few trees and a grey sky.
It was time to decide.
Should he start to practically demolish the place looking for something that in all probability was not there to be found?
He had already checked which walls had sounded hollow and his mental tally had marked one downstairs and two upstairs.
All of these walls had been plastered and papered and had no access point, so anything that did lie behind them would not be retrievable without the aid of an axe, and judging by the age of the wallpaper any such thing is likely to have been there for a very long time.
Could he really feel justified in breaking down walls? Legally it was out of the question but if he did end up finding nothing, no-one had to know that it was he who had redecorated, and if he did find something useful there were ways of getting around such indiscretion.
In past cases he had been forced to bend the rules a little in order to get a result. On those occasions he had been lucky but was it not that professional instinct and ability to act on it that had until now, earned him a fair amount of prestige at the Yard?
Morally, was it right to damage the house in this way? It wouldn’t be affected beyond any normal repair though, and besides, who owned the property now? Relatives of that scum-bag Gardner? If it was a normal household maybe it would be different but White Farm was proving to be anything but!.
He was ultimately looking for a killer, his reason argued, so what were a few holes in the walls in a house where nobody lives, compared to that?
It was clear the self-argument to follow his instincts, as destructive as they may be, eventually won him over.
Even if he didn’t find anything, which was most likely, he knew he’d still end up feeling better than he would if he’d allowed himself to walk away without looking everywhere.
He broke off his gaze and headed back towards the cellar where the instrument of his thoughts lay. He reminded himself that he must take the axe away with him when he left, rather than leave it lying around complete with his finger-prints.
Once he had picked it up he moved purposefully into the downstairs lounge; the first room that had a wall that projected a hollow sound when rapped.
He took in a deep breath before swinging the axe.
The plaster was even older than he had thought, as it gave away with astounding ease. Once repeated hacking had created a large enough hole, he picked up his torch and peered through.
Nothing but a mountain of dust stood between the plaster and the original brick wall beyond. A revolting, musty smell invaded Dorell’s nostrils as air that had been trapped for a very long time escaped back into the lounge.
“One down, two to go,” he muttered, trying not to worry about the mess of broken plaster that littered the carpet about his feet.
Next stop was the bedroom at the rear, upstairs.
This wall was a little tougher than the downstairs one, but a few hefty whacks encouraged the plaster to crumble all the same. Again, eventually with a hole big enough, Dorell peered through, aided by torch-light. His eyes lit up and his heart sank as he spotted something below and to the right. From the awkward angle he couldn’t quite make it out, but by God, something was there on the area of floor deep in the crevice.
With a renewed enthusiasm for life and an excitement any schoolboy might envy, he retrieved his head and took the axe to the lower section of the wall that he estimated the item, whatever it was, to be behind.
A few more connections of axe-head with plaster and he could see clearly what it was as it fell loose onto the floor.
It was money.
A fair bit too!
He pulled the cash out from its hiding place.
It was made up of numerous wads, each peculiarly, holding a different denomination.  There was a bundle of fivers, tenners, twenties, fifties, and (Dorell could only assume as he had never actually seen them before) hundred-pound notes.
He flicked through the cash to count it, taking care not to dislodge the elastic bands that held the bundles of notes in place.
There was exactly £1,470.
The money was relatively new, still possessing the rigidness and crispness that recently produced notes have
It certainly hadn’t been there for as long a time as that plaster wall, so how did it get there?
He scanned the gap between brick and plaster again.
As the torch beam pointed upwards he found his answer.
The light revealed a small gap between the wall and the wooden beam at its top, a gap that obviously led to the attic, providing a small (and hence seemingly unimportant) hole in which to deposit the cash.
It was still very curious though! Although the cash could be easily deposited into its hiding place in this manner, it would be next to impossible to retrieve it without breaking up the wall as he had just done. The hollow area being far too thin and the depth from the attic far too deep for any organised retrieval.     
So it was fair to assume that whoever had dropped the cash down there, for whatever purpose, was storing it somewhere where it could be collected once and once only, hence making it a fantastic hiding place but not a very practical one.
If it had been a larger amount (say half a million or so) he could have understood; with such a high sum you could afford to wreck walls! Was it worth such effort for just over a grand?
Why hadn’t whoever dropped it simply used a bank account?
He stared at the cash in his hand, contemplating his next move.
Behind him, at the doorway, something stirred.
  

                                                                                                       N I N E T E E N

 
“Merry Christmas!” the three women yelled in succession as Jack Rogers started up his engine to take them to the inevitable seasonal festivities that followed.
Judging by the volume of noise and the amount of giggling that had gone on, these girls were certainly having a very merry Christmas already, thought Jack.
“Full of Christmas spirits!” as he often liked to say, as laughter filled the back seat of his cab.
It sure wasn’t going to be a merry Christmas Eve for Jack; he still had five hours of his shift left - still, he needed that double-time and at least it got him away from the flat. It wasn’t easy sharing a home with your ex-girlfriend.
He still couldn’t fathom how, when they had been going out together, he’d been mad enough to let her move in with him in the first place. Yet now the tides of love had well and truly run their course, he hadn’t the heart (or some might say balls!) to kick her out.
He knew full well that she had no-where to go, apart from back to that bastard excuse for a father who always enjoyed kicking the shit out of her when he’d had a few beers.
He may not actually be in love with her anymore, and if truth be told she was becoming a real pain in the arse, but he couldn’t let her go back to that.
He had told her she could stay until she found herself another place.
That had been two months ago and there were no clear signs of her making a great deal of effort to set herself up. It occurred to him that she may be deliberately clinging on to him in the hope that he’d change his mind about his feelings towards her. This was why lately he’d been unreasonably nasty to her, hoping the negativity would drive her away. So far it wasn’t working!
Sure, he felt guilty for ending the relationship in the first place but sometimes you could just go off people through no real fault of their own and then it was time for the offended party to just move on.
He’d have to withdraw his offer soon; but at the same time he knew he couldn’t throw her into the street.
He’d think of something. She had to go; having an ex around all the time did nothing for his potential love life (he hadn’t been with another woman since).
He inwardly moaned at that last thought, as he pulled the vehicle up to let his jolly revellers out. After a fare of loose change was thrust into his hands, he was on his way again, further annoyed that he hadn’t even thought to chat up one of his merry passengers.
Still no time for that, as he headed to the next pick-up that the headquarters of Country Cabs had already radioed through.
At least with that crazy, psycho, son-of-a-bitch dead, that was one less thing to worry about.
He soon pulled up outside a house on St David’s Road, confirming with a quick glance that the number on the door was the correct one.
He sounded his horn.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman opened the door, and a large man beside her grabbed his coat.
To Jack’s disappointment it was the man (who was incidentally built like a brick shithouse) that approached the car.
 Opening the side door he issued his instructions.
“Kings Arms, town, please.”
There was something strange about his voice; an unusual accent that the driver couldn’t place.
“Right you are,” he replied as his passenger clambered in, shut the door and put on his seat-belt.
The large man gave no reply and looked straight ahead.
Jack dropped the handbrake and thanked his blessings that the psychopath was no more; this guy, for some reason he couldn’t quite figure, made him feel very uncomfortable.
“Out on the town tonight is it, butt?”
The man didn’t answer, still staring straight ahead.
Jack tried a second attempt at conversation.
“I said, a night on the town is it?”
Again the man did not even acknowledge his driver’s existence.
“Should be quite a few out there tonight,” he persisted. “Leaving the missus at home for the night, are you?”
The man, without even a flicker of recognition or response, just stared intensely ahead.
Jack thought about the crowbar he kept under his seat, glad that he hadn’t yet discarded it following news of the killer’s demise.
He had come close to doing so, for he deplored violence, but a little voice in his head had asked, “What if the police got it wrong?”
That voice was now back with a vengeance because right now the man sitting next to him in his cab fitted the perfect picture of a serial nut; big enough to kill, extremely creepy and very, very weird.  Even miserable people usually gave him the benefit of a reply, even if it was to tell him to shut-up!
The taxi drove towards its pub destination in the middle of town with a new urgency, and it was with some relief when Jack pulled up outside and could see a hive of activity, with plenty of people bustling, outside and in.
The passenger turned in his seat to face Jack. The cabby tried not to look scared, while his mind raced through the many possible escape options should he be attacked there and then.
“How much do I owe you?” came a booming voice, fitting to the owner’s physique.
“Six pound fifty.” Jack was silently praying that there would be no objection to the holiday double-rate.
The man reached into his pocket and handed him a ten-pound note and to Jack’s amazement, told him to keep the change.
Jack muttered his thanks, as the man, ignoring him again, climbed out of the taxi.
Jack noticed a woman who had been hanging around the pub entrance dart forward and greet his passenger with a hug. She then began to gesticulate with her hands, twisting her fingers about to create different shapes. The man responded by doing the same.
Jack had to laugh as the penny dropped with an almighty thud!
The man was neither rude nor weird.
He was deaf.
They were communicating in sign language. Jack guessed his passenger could also lip read, hence the need to directly face the cabby when asking the fare.
The driver sat grinning, privately amused at his own stupidity, watching the happy couple head into the pub before contacting the office for his next job.       
Ten minutes later he was pulling up outside a computer warehouse, in Abergavenny’s only industrial estate.
Some over-enthusiastic employee was apparently working overtime but now wanted picking up.
The complex, though a mere stone’s throw from the town centre, was reasonably remote, with little else besides the hard concrete and aluminium exteriors of unimaginative 1950s business unit designs providing the scenery.
The bleakness was apparent despite attempts to suppress the invading darkness with the circular beams of strategically placed industrialised streetlamps. While the presence of such light was always reassuring on such a dark winter’s night, Jack noted, it often created a smattering of shadows that only added to the observer’s discomfort.
Pull yourself together man! What’s with all the bloody paranoia? The bastard’s dead, remember?
He sounded his horn twice, parking the vehicle as he did so, into the shadows of this desolate place.
In front of him was a vast warehouse and to his right side were two cars, presumably belonging to security guards on night shifts, looking very lonely among several acres of dimly lit parking space.
The sign above this particular unit was ‘ABS Computers’. The building looked as deserted as the rest.
His second potential attack of nerves that night was joyfully quashed when the unit door opened to reveal a tall, young and very beautiful woman standing fully in the light of the entranceway.
She was wearing a business-style suit, consisting of a black jacket that concealed a prominent chest, and a matching skirt, from which sprouted a pair of the most attractive legs he had ever seen, elegantly propped up by the stiletto heels she wore.
All this combined with a perfectly-formed face partially covered by flowing blonde hair caused Jack to stare for a while. It was ridiculous, but in his wide-eyed assessment she was quite honestly the most attractive woman he had ever seen; in the flesh anyway.
He wasn’t sure why he felt so captivated but something about her was seriously causing him to stir inside.
It was then, of no surprise, that when she walked across to the cab, leaned at his window and, with a sultry voice sent from heaven, explained that she still had a few errands to finish and would he mind waiting an extra five minutes or so, he readily agreed.
He truly felt like Christmas had arrived, when she asked him if he’d like to come in from the cold and wait for inside. His vehicle wasn’t cold in the slightest as his fan heater worked quite adequately but he was not going to turn down such an invitation. Besides, he was suddenly feeling quite hot and bothered, so a night-time stroll may just cool him off.
As he followed her through the doorway, trying not to physically drool, it occurred to him that she even walked like a beautiful woman. He didn’t know how beautiful women were supposed to walk but he did know that it was like that!
To hell with it, it was the season of goodwill, so when had finished driving her to wherever it was she wanted him to go, he would summon some courage to ask her out. There was nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.
He’d never been affected this way by such beauty; it was madness and yet he didn’t want to question it.
He shut the main door behind him and found himself stood in a huge room that contained columns and columns of factory shelves, reaching five to six metres in height, all stacked with boxed personal computers and varying peripherals.
“Wait here and I’ll fetch you a cuppa,” she promised, disappearing through another doorway before he could answer. She’d wandered into a cluster of offices that he could see had been purpose-built within one corner of the vast storage room.
Curiosity prevailing, he strolled along one of the many aisles that ran between organised clusters of stacked computers, wondering how much all this was actually worth?
He counted on one divide at least a hundred of the things neatly packaged and stored and began to question the justice in one room containing so many state-of-the-art machines when he didn’t have even one.
He heard a noise and turned back round, assuming the girl had left the office section and was approaching with his cup of tea, yet he found himself looking towards a closed doorway - the one through which she had disappeared.
Strange! Why would she shut the door on him? He wondered if he was about to fall victim to some practical joke. Logic decided it was unlikely.
He heard a noise again, this time a rustling sound, as if something very heavy was slowly sliding across a rough surface.
He walked back along the aisle towards the warehouse entrance and the recently closed office door to its side. He was pretty certain that the noise was coming from that direction anyway.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he identified the sound and was barely a metre away when several heavy boxes filled with computers crashed from either side of the aisle into the walk-way ahead. The sound of cardboard, plastic and metal impacting with the ground was deafening, and when it all finally settled, the debris had mounted up to the extent that his intended passage was now blocked.
He had no idea what had caused them to fall like that, the fact the hardware had fallen off opposite, unconnected shelves made for an eerie coincidence. The noise of all that electronic junk crashing down had certainly startled him to a near heart-attack.
This wasn’t funny; it was but for the grace of God that he had not been stood where there now sat a heavy, cluttered, disorganised pile of computerised debris.
The expensive mass of rubble blocked his vision of the entrance but he knew the noise was bound to send the girl running out. Although he was a little shaken, he was already preparing himself to explain that he had absolutely no part in the accident.
First, he’d have to get back to the entrance of course, and unwilling to try and climb over the obstruction ahead, he turned and faced towards the other end of the aisle, from where he figured, at the warehouse perimeter, he’d find another walk-way and double back.
His pace was swift, only too aware that there were still plenty more heavy goods above him, on either side!
The rustling returned.
In a surge of panic, his haste turned to a sprint, as he desperately tried to reach the end of the passage before...
He leapt backwards, fighting his own momentum, to narrowly avoid another mass of hardware, tumbling down from the shelves above.
The shattering of metal and plastic, impacting with the ground as relentlessly as its predecessors was blocking off his one and only escape route.
He was trapped.
In front of him there was a dishevelled mass of glass, plastic, circuitry, monitors and wiring all bursting free from their weak cardboard casings. Behind him there was the same; pile upon pile of techno-rubble, making passage impossible without risking a slippery, ill-footed climb.
He screamed for help, instinctively realising there was a danger that the items still towering both sides above him could at any moment leave their metal perches to crash down upon his head.
And this time he had no-where to run.
His pleas for assistance received no reply other than more terrifying rustling that prompted him to drop to his knees and cover his head. Sadly, his arms provided little protection against the thirty or so boxed PCs and monitors that fell relentlessly onto him.
The consistency of the impact finally knocked him into oblivion to leave him buried within an industrial grave of hardware rubble.
 
He woke to a sharp pain in his left ear. The pinching sensation was intense and provided distraction from the aching of his broken limbs. Dazed, he tried to reach whatever it was that was hurting his ear lobe, only to find that he couldn’t move his arms.
As realisation dawned he became aware that he was still inside the warehouse but no longer buried beneath a mass of merchandise. He was sat upright against a wall with his outstretched arms held tightly in position by the wires digging into his wrists.
He recognised the legs that were stood before him and as he tried to look up to see the girl properly, he felt further metal restraints across his forehead preventing his head from movement.
His eyes could just about see her unravelling some wire. The action was cold and methodical as she took hold of a crocodile clip at one end of the strip and leant over to attach it to his other ear lobe.
He howled as a new pinching sensation upstaged the old one that had already succeeded in making his left ear numb.
“What are you doing?” he pleaded, as she unravelled the wire further before using a small cutter to sever the other end and attach it to an electrical socket extension lead by placing it through a small slat.
“Please no!” he begged, realising her intentions.
Despite being unable to move his head, he could still see that the extension socket eventually led to a plug at a domestic supply point that was not, as yet, switched on. It was clear she wanted him to see that she was planning to electrocute him!
Ignoring his constant pleas, cries and begging she systematically continued to attach wires to him by means of crocodile clips, and then lead them off one by one into the varying sockets on the extension lead.
Two further clips were attached to his nostrils and then his tearful protests became gibberish after she grabbed his tongue and hooked another there.
Next came his lips, his eyebrows and finally and most painfully, his eyelids.
The whole procedure was agonisingly slow and when she had finished her work, she studied him.
His entire face had become virtually numb, and she surprised him by leaning over with the cutters and severing the wire that had held his forehead so tightly against the wall.
Able to move his head but unable to do anything about all the metal attached to it, he watched her walk over to the wall socket and place her hand around the deadly switch.
Jack did manage a gurgling noise that was reminiscent of a scream when she turned back to face him, one hand on her head pulling back the wig she wore.
For when she did so, her whole face structure changed and she was no longer anything that could be described as beautiful, no longer anything that could be described as a ‘she’.
The hideous inhuman vision through its twisted, distorted features leered at him before finally flicking the switch.
The electricity ripped through the victim’s face, its soaring heat no longer allowing the victim the sanctity of numbing pains.
The current was low enough for it to take at least five minutes for the jerking body of Jack Rogers to die.
The figure in the skirt watched on in amusement. It had always considered Christmas Eve to be an entertaining night.
  
Roughly an hour later, on the other side of town, Glen McCann was clocking off. There were still a few more hours to go before the pubs and clubs would be shut but he had promised Jenny that he would finish early. Harry hadn’t minded as there were plenty of the new boys available to cover the tail-end of his shift.
Jenny had wanted him to quit after what had happened to Idris so he felt obliged to make some compromise. He had promised her that he would not work the full shift on Christmas Eve, of course that was before the killer had been taken out of the picture but even though the streets were safe again, promises had to be kept. Besides, despite the loss of business, he really was looking forward to getting home, opening up a bottle of Glenfiddich and getting stuck into the slap-up meal she had promised him.
It would be good to be pampered a bit and be able to forget about work for a time, even if it was just a short time.
Things had been pretty gloomy around the office since Idris’s murder, despite the fact Harry had brought plenty of fresh (and to Glen’s mind crazy) faces to replace the old one’s that had left.
The new drivers had obviously been attracted by the high wage bonus incentives the boss had introduced. No incentive or amount of cash had been able to stop a lot of the regular lads from taking long holidays or handing in their notice; it had become pretty dangerous out there if you were a taxi driver. In fact (although the extra money helped) it had not been such incentive that had persuaded Glen to stay; it had been the relentless need for revenge; Idris had been a very close friend of his.
While he welcomed the news that the killer was now dead, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed that this Gardner fella hadn’t tried his luck with him. Glen had been more than ready: the collection of knives and spray cans hidden beneath his seat and even a shotgun in his boot, all lay testimony to that!
He’d wanted Idris’s senseless murder to be avenged. He knew now that it was too late. Even though Gardner had committed suicide it had not been enough; he had suffered at his own hand and clearly not suffered enough.
Still, now things were starting to look up maybe some of his old colleagues would return. He didn’t really care for some of those mindless morons Harry had hired.
They didn’t mix well. Probably due to the fact that they hadn’t known Idris, their arrogance and treatment of the circumstances as being exciting had not been received well amongst fellow drivers, Glen included.
They weren’t even local so they had not shared the communal grief and terror those who knew and loved the town, had been going through. Harry had explained the need to bring in outsiders as, in his words, no-one in Abergavenny would touch the job with a ‘barge-pole’.
One had to admire, he supposed, the way Harry had riskily invested a small fortune in making sure Gateway Cabs didn’t reduce its service during such troubled times. It looked like that extra investment would now be paying off as his confidence that the killer would eventually be caught had proved justified.
He frowned as he realised that this meant that the bonus schemes would soon be gone. Mind you, with any luck, so would the new employees. Glen certainly hoped so.
He drove his car into the garage where it would be safely locked up for the night. He was more security conscious when it came to his own little Renault. The taxi he normally worked in was a Hackney Cab and belonged to the firm and as such, was parked up there, within the Gateway Cabs’ closed bay. He always insisted on driving his own little car to and from the premises. He didn’t like bringing his work home with him.
He climbed out and pressed a button on his keyring as he walked away. A device inside the car beeped, telling him the central locking had been engaged. He’d always loved gadgets; the more pointless and gimmicky, the better!
He’d have to get himself one of those electronic garage doors next, he thought as he manually pulled down and locked the aluminium shutter.
He walked towards the tall building that lay host to his home. He lived on the top floor of Abergavenny’s only high rise building (although being eight floors it wasn’t really that high). The tallest building in Abergavenny did not, however, look particularly big against the backdrop of the Derri mountain; no doubt the result of a deliberate positioning strategy by the council as an answer to those who regarded such constructions as monstrosities that looked out of place in a picturesque, market town.
He cast his sights up to the top floor and could see a light emanating from the window of his living-room. Soon he’d be warm, fed, pampered and drunk. Sometimes life could be quite tolerable!
He strolled into the dark and damp foyer; a single light that had somehow escaped the vandals illuminated a gloomy hallway beyond.
He found the buttons to call the lifts. There were two so he pressed both. Glen guessed that one of them wasn’t working so had hedged his bets. It was a fact of life that wherever there was more than one lift then you could rely on at least one of them being out of order. It was a similar case with photocopiers in public libraries. Not that he read many books, let alone would wish to photocopy them.
A reassuring ping told him his carriage had arrived. The sliding doors opened and he stepped in.
Pressing button number eight prompted the doors to close again and the lift to begin whirring its way upwards.
Not that its passenger could really feel it move.
The device was laboriously slow, sometimes frustratingly so, and it would move between floors at the same rate an asthmatic snail might hop up the stairs! This was, or so it was claimed, a design feature, for the benefit of elderly residents who found lifts intimidating. Well if they found them that daunting then surely they’d want to spend as little time inside them as possible, he reasoned. Still logic and local government seldom made good bedfellows.
The sliding doors opened once more; sooner than he had anticipated.
A quick glance at the floor indicator above him revealed why. It had only arrived at the first; odd! The gloomy corridor beyond was devoid of anyone who may have pressed the call button.
After a few seconds pause, the doors closed again and the upward journey continued.
His bafflement increased when the lift stopped again and opened it doors, this time on the second floor. Again, there was nothing within the corridor beyond and a silence as eerie as the dimness.
Glen started to feel unsettled. Either the infernal machine wasn’t working properly or some joker was running up the stairs and pressing all the call buttons!
He took in a deep breath when the lift passed through the third and fourth floors without incident. However at the fifth, it once again came to a halt.
The doors opened and it was no surprise by now that he was once again looking down a very dark, silent and empty corridor.
Frustrated and a little unnerved, he repeatedly pressed the button for the eighth floor. At this rate he wouldn’t be home in time for Christmas lunch!
The doors obligingly closed and the whirring noise that followed told him he was on his way again.
He cursed out loud when the noise stopped, indicating that the lift had also. Sixth floor! This was getting stupid. Still no-one! Probably fucking kids! He’d get the little bastards when he spotted them.
But if just kids, why was he beginning to perspire when the temperature was far from warm?
As the lift continued its journey of constant interruption, he probed his hand into his back trouser pocket, checking to see if the small knife he had kept for the taxi-driver killer was still there. It was. But the killer was dead. So why did he feel like he needed it?
The lift doors opened on the seventh floor and he was now thanking his blessings that he only had one floor left to go. 
As he peered into the murk this time, however, something was different from before. There was a piece of rope… - no, not rope, it was shiny - …wire attached to a concrete support, leading to a small reel lying loose on the floor.
Electrical wiring ripped out by vandals seemed the obvious explanation.
He heard a sound; a soft, muted noise like that of someone breathing. Yet there was no-one in sight.
“Who’s there?” he called, his voice tense.
To his relief, the only response was the now-familiar sound of the lift doors sliding shut. His relief was short-lived.
He had barely drawn another breath when through the deteriorating gap something suddenly shot through and wrapped itself around his neck.
He grabbed his throat in pain and shock, realising that it was the wire he had seen; he desperately tried to pull it from around his throat but it had wrapped itself several times allowing little opportunity to grip. The other end lay somewhere behind those lift doors.
His eyes widened in horror as the whirring noise engaged, telling him he was moving up to the eighth floor. One hand still frantically pulling at the metal noose digging into his flesh, he hysterically used his other to repeatedly punch the ‘Door Open’ button. But it was too late. The lift was already travelling upwards and as it did so, the wire that poked through the closed doors was becoming more and more taut; the concrete pillar of which it was attached on the seventh floor taking up the strain.
The chokehold became tighter and tighter, pressurising his windpipe and forcing him down on the ground, his head facing upwards as close as possible to the lift doors, so he could allow himself to breathe.
The grip levelled off when the elevator, mercifully, reached its destination and slid open doors to the eighth and final floor. He gasped for breath and continued to clutch at the wire. Pinned to the floor, he had to use the full force of both his hands to release enough tension to allow his throat enough space for the flow of air.
“Help me,” he gasped, as he looked up to see someone entering the lift.
Then his bulging eyes looked up far enough to see its face and the grotesque grin bearing down upon him.
He tried to scream but it just came out as a croaking sound as the creature turned its back to him.
He tried to struggle free, utterly desperate to get away from the thing that he now knew was going to kill him but the more he moved, the more he choked. The wire’s grip around his neck was relentless.
The doors slid shut and tears flooded Glen’s eyes as he realised he was trapped. Trapped inside with that ‘thing’!
The whirring sound kicked in and the lift began to descend and he could already feel the wire loosening around him.
As the lift approached the seventh floor, he found a renewed glimmer of hope, as he realised he could stand again. However, despite the relaxing of the wire’s tension, he still, try as he might, could not get the noose (which he now realised was knotted) away from his neck.
The creature turned back around to face him and in abject terror, having to gaze upon its features a second time, the choking man knew this was his only chance.
He moved his hand to his back pocket and swiftly pulled out the blade that had been resting there.
He lunged at his aggressor and the creature dodged but not before he managed to bury it deep into its shoulder blades. The howl of pain and the blood that followed as Glen retrieved the weapon gave him a profound sense of satisfaction. So it was human and could be hurt!
This new-found victory would most certainly have spurred him on into taking another swipe had the lift been obliging enough to stop at floor seven. He had wondered why the creature had been stood with his back to him; it had been blocking his access to the control buttons.
As it was, the lift did not stop at the seventh floor but continued its lethal journey downwards, and as it did so the wire moved upwards. Panic returned as the taxi-driver realised what was happening.
The creature, clutching its shoulder, regained its composure and began to laugh as he watched its victim frantically try to use the knife to sever the link that was pulling him upwards.
The knife was not designed for cutting wire and amidst the most hideous laughter he had ever heard (and was ever likely to hear again) he dropped the weapon, opting to try and use both his hands to relieve the pressure around his throat as he was slowly lifted off the ground.
It was a futile gesture; the wire was too strong and already too tight. Suspended in the air now, choking badly, his tongue was protruding from his mouth, anxious for the space.
The lift indicator told both victim and assassin that they were now passing the sixth floor
Within seconds he couldn’t breath at all but that didn’t really matter, as when his head smashed against the lift’s roof he knew what was to come.
The figure continued to laugh, despite the blood seeping through the hand clutched around his shoulder, as he watched his struggling victim, suspended up against the lift doors, losing his energy, as the piano wire dug deeper into the flesh around his neck.
The lift had almost reached the fifth floor when Glen McCann’s head was ripped away from his body. As both head and torso crashed to the ground, the wet reddish wire slid free upwards through the tiny divide between the tops of the doors.
On arrival at the ground floor the creature waited for the doors to open, and with an air of great satisfaction stepped out, leaving the bloody mess in his wake.
He had never seen a man decapitated before. It was a memory he would treasure.

Christmas Eve

 
                                                                           E I G H T E E N
 
Scott sat back from his desk, jubilantly sipping from the cup of tea one of his colleagues had made. ‘Was this a sign of things to come?’ he smugly thought to himself.
In all honesty, he couldn’t think of when he’d spent a better Christmas Eve.
For the first time that week, things were going very right.
He’d received a call from Detective Sergeant Dixon that morning while he had been getting ready to go to work.
He thought the day had started brightly enough - waking to find himself lying next to a gorgeous young woman – but things improved further when Dixon informed him that the case was solved. That news made him feel like he’d won the lottery.
Because of his own involvement, the detective had asked him to come down to the station to learn the full story, saying little else until then.
This alone was particularly gratifying when he later learned that representatives of the television media and tabloid press had, sniffing a change in the tide, been denied any statements until an official press conference planned for later that afternoon (after Scott had got his exclusive).
He rang the office to explain that he would be late coming in, and felt so good about himself that he voluntarily spoke to Turner, who, not too surprisingly, didn’t moan this time, realising what the implications of Scott’s little visit to the police might be.
He then made some breakfast (which in Scott’s world meant throwing a few slices of bread into a toaster) and stirred Kate from her deep sleep. She had not even awakened when the phone had rung earlier.
She was a little groggy but managed a polite smile as a mug of tea was thrust into her face. The smile became more genuine when he excitedly told her the news that their ordeal was over. A trip to the station and all would be revealed it seemed.
Twenty minutes later they were both fully clothed and ready to set off.
This was the first time Scott had seen Kate smartly dressed and wearing make-up. She was indeed quite an eye-catcher when she made an effort. So much so, he found himself becoming self-conscious of his own appearance; he had combed his hair twice that morning!
It was fair to say that it was the first time both of them had looked vaguely respectable since they’d met.
Scott liked what he saw, and really hoped that Kate did too. As he watched her, posed before a lounge mirror, she was giving nothing away.
Had last night’s display of affection been one of friendship or worse still, just an impersonal display of vulnerability? He sure as hell hoped not and his brain wasn’t too keen on entertaining such a thought.
Still there were other things to think about at that moment and neither it seemed could get down to the police station quick enough.
When they arrived, they found themselves sat in an interview room with Stoker and Dixon, unable to fully comprehend what it was they were hearing.
Gardner had committed suicide? Scott couldn’t fully digest that. While he had to admit the concept of never laying eyes on his hostile face ever again was a most gratifying one, he could not help but feel disturbed by the way the man had died.
A small part of him felt surprised.
He didn’t - he hadn’t, seemed the type; mind you he hadn’t seemed the type to commit those highly imaginative murders either.
However, that news was just the tip of the iceburg; there was a whole lot more.
Traces of blood had been found on Gardner’s jacket matching that of Joe Tully, the first victim and that same jacket had been carrying a lighter that was identified (by its engraving) as once belonging to Idris Jones. Oddly, these two clues linking him with the grotesque crimes had been the only ones produced, as a second search of his house had proved as unsuccessful as the first.
Still, these had been damning enough to indicate that they’d got the right man or rather the right man had ultimately got himself!
The pair learned of how, with Gardner dead and no longer a threat, the arrested Brian Thomas had sung like a canary.
He didn’t or couldn’t finger Gardner for the murders but he told police that the barn that Scott had been so interested in had been used as a venue for illegal boxing matches for quite some time.
In fact it had been constructed some years ago by Tom Skirrid entirely for this purpose; the farmer having been somehow persuaded by new arrival Gardner that it could be a much more profitable venture than farming.
It had indeed proved a lucrative business in which Thomas himself, being one of the more successful participants, could earn more money from one fight than he could in several weeks of labouring.
Illegal fighting syndicates from all over the country had known about and had at least on one occasion taken advantage of the facilities at White Farm. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the underground business, which, unlike most others, had been used more than once to stage such ventures. In fact, the number of fights that had taken place there had almost gone into treble figures. Gardner had organised it all. Tom Skirrid who had no knowledge of any tricks of such a trade had simply provided the land.
In truth it was something of an embarrassment to the hierarchy of Gwent Constabulary that it had been allowed to go on so long without anyone on the force being the wiser. Normally such places were eventually revealed by an over anxious snout but not this one. Thomas had said that it was because Gardner, like some kind of Mafioso was both respected and feared in these circles. He had apparently carried an awful lot of clout.
Thomas had not been so naive as not to realise that Gardner was earning three times as much as he or Skirrid for that matter; through the fees, sales and gambling interests of the prohibited sport but he had been content with his own spoils – mainly because there was little other choice!
Towards the end though, Thomas claimed, it was Tom Skirrid who had started to get cold feet about the whole venture; why this should suddenly come about after so long, he hadn’t known but it was something that was ever apparent as he had seen Gardner and Skirrid arguing on several occasions.
Thomas had never known, or dared to ask Gardner, whether the death of the Skirrids had been down to him but he had always believed it to be so.
Many of the others who had been arrested on the scene were quick to confirm Brian Thomas’s story; all extremely anxious to disassociate themselves from the more serious crimes of multiple murders.
Perhaps the most intriguing news was police investigators at White Farm had suggested a possible method of the Skirrids’ execution. They had discovered in the barn, a substantial amount of home-brew; extremely strong wine in fact, with an alcoholic content that far exceeded legal distillery limits.
It was not implausible then that Gardner could have produced from the brewing equipment found with it, a lethal cocktail that he could have introduced to Tom Skirrid over a period of time, leading to the eventual deaths of the farmer and his wife.
This theory had been readily accepted for want of a better one.
And as for Gardner’s two accomplices kidnapping Kate Hedges, Thomas and the others claimed they had never seen them before the night of the fight, or indeed the two alsations that had been responsible for their gruesome demise.
The still unidentified men had been confirmed through the evidence of Scott’s photographs.
Stoker had even apologised to Scott about his earlier scepticism regarding the journalist’s claim of killer dogs, and now accepted by means of the terror Dixon had witnessed, that the missing Grendal was indeed rotting somewhere, another victim of a canine attack.
A widespread search, consisting of officers armed with tranquilliser darts, was still being conducted across the entire area but so far to no avail. Wherever these animals had come from, it was a place well hidden. Nevertheless, the search that had begun the night before would continue well into the night to follow. Such dangerous animals could not be allowed to remain loose in rural Monmouthshire.
This would be something that would be mentioned in the press conference that afternoon; an essential need for the people of Grosmont to be vigilante.
The fact the dogs had disappeared, and that brewing equipment, tables and chairs that had appeared in a previously empty barn had not been documented in the initial search of Gardner’s house, strongly suggested there was some secret location he had used.
A place where, police suspected, plenty more evidence linking Gardner to the murders would likely be found.
With the murders of the taxi drivers solved and in all probability the deaths of the Skirrids too, there was but one real disturbing question left to ask.
What had Gardner got against drivers of private hire cars?
Why did he go out of his way to murder those two drivers?
The killings unlike that of the Skirrids appeared to be totally without motive.
There was nothing obvious that Gardner had to gain.
Some police, Stoker included, resided themselves to the reality that they would probably never know; an unstable mind often lacked reason and the suicide had demonstrated that Gardner’s mind had indeed been unstable.
The police and the general public, when informed, would just be glad it was all over.
None would be as relieved as Stoker though; he knew this would mean his town would be back to normal and, more significantly, his station free of Dorell.
Though, he kept such jubilance to himself when dealing with the reporter and the girl.
After helping the police with their enquiries, Scott and Kate had spent the remainder of the morning going through the story with Carol back in the offices of the Monmouthshire Gazette.
When they had more or less depicted an outline of key events, Kate had left them to go and visit her mother at the hospital.
An hour had passed since then and Scott and Carol had already finished writing the copy, which, he proudly admitted to himself, was probably one of the best he’d ever write.
Even though it had been co-written with Carol as instructed, looking at it now, his ego was suitably impressed, as she had highlighted his, in her own words, heroic nobility.
He knew once the nationals had got to hear all about it, they’d be anxious to get his story and hopefully at a very good price.
Turner obviously suspected this as well, as Scott could not recollect such a day when the editor had been so polite and helpful to the trainee reporter. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that he was no doubt concealing a secret irritation that Scott had been no fool in making sure that although the Gazette got to publish the story first, any rights to the more personal recollection of the story remained with him.
He had after all, obtained his story outside of normal working hours (if such a concept could be said to exist for the working journalist!) and had done so without his editor’s consent!
They both knew the potential and Scott had perhaps appeased a little by suggesting that a donation would be made to the small town newspaper should he find himself with a substantial sum from the tabloids.
“Daydreaming of glory?” Carol startled him from his pondering. He hadn’t been aware of the confident smile projecting from his face.
“That obvious?”
“Come on hero, the press conference is on telly in a minute.”
Scott got up from his desk and followed her to the television room (or more accurately Nigel’s office, which happened to contain a set!).
“Shouldn’t one of us be there?” it suddenly occurred to Scott.
“Nigel’s there.”
“Oh.” Scott wasn’t quite sure why he wasn’t there really, still deputy editors did tend to get first dibs.
The Gazette staff huddled around the telly, some on chairs and some blatantly taking advantage of the junior boss’s absence by sitting on his desk.
The television pictures showed a long desk, behind which were sat five detectives. Three of which Scott recognised as Dorell, Stoker and Dixon.
Dorell was the one to stand up and make the announcement.
The Scotsman delivered a speech pretty much expected; not giving away any of the intricate details of the case but informing the press and public that there had been firm reason to believe the killer had been John Gardner.
Scott had involuntarily shivered when a picture of Gardner came up on the screen.
Even from death, those callous eyes could unsettle him.
Dorell loosely explained that Gardner had killed himself and that two believed accomplices (this revelation itself creating a few surprised mumblings in the crowd - no-one had expected a killer so sadistic to have helpers!) had met with fatal accidents in that they had been savaged by two very dangerous dogs.
He appealed to the public who resided or frequented the area of Grosmont to be duly vigilante as despite search team efforts the offending animals had still not been found.
He then explained the possible link between the death of the Skirrids to Gardner and how an illegal boxing circuit had been exposed.
All in all, the whole process was a reassuring and self-congratulatory one, in which the hardened cynics in the audience still applauded when the senior detective praised the hard work of his staff.
It would seem that Abergavenny and its surrounding villages would be the picturesque, relatively crime-free haven it had been before all this terrible business had begun.
When asked how police had been led to Gardner, Dorell replied that it had been a combination of on-going investigations into the White Farm tragedy and the information of two witnesses to a crime of kidnapping that took place at the farm in clear relation to the murders.
‘Not going to tell them that a psychic gave you his name then?’ thought Scott cynically.
When the next inevitable question of “Who were these witnesses?” followed, Dorell surprisingly, and to Scott’s utter annoyance, claimed that he was not at liberty to say.
Many other questions followed and Scott could not help but be impressed when Dorell and some of the other detectives sat there, answered each one with a direct clarity that was at the same time vague.
These press conferences came across in a whole new light when one knew the real facts behind them!
Still, the police were wetting the public’s appetite for the full picture; a hunger that Scott would be more than willing to satisfy.
It was also noted that such news came at an opportune time, for Christmas Eve was always celebrated with a great beer-consuming enthusiasm in the pubs of Abergavenny.
As many who made merry in the town did not live within its boundaries, taxis were in traditionally high demand. Christmas Eve was usually pub landlords’ and cab firms’ second busiest night of the year, next to New Year’s Eve.
Taxi drivers during a busy time, could at least now, relax in the comfort that they would not necessarily be risking their lives by doing their jobs.
They were overwhelmed by police and public confidence that the horror was finally over.
They thought the killer was dead and could no longer stalk them.
They were wrong.

                                                                            S E V E N T E E N

 
 
Kate screamed loudly enough to wake the dead - or in this case Scott Jackson who had been fighting a losing battle against restlessness for most of the night on his lounge settee.
He grabbed the nearest weapon, a glass from the coffee table, and rushed into the bedroom expecting to find a deranged killer, Gardner or otherwise, waiting for him.
Instead he just found a frightened girl, writhing around somewhat frantically in his bed.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief he put down his improvised armoury, turned on the main light and sat on the side of the mattress to lean over her.
Checking that she was decent beneath those covers (she was because she was wearing a set of pyjamas she had brought along with countless other things hurried into two bags and a suitcase, when he had taken her on the eight-mile journey to her home the previous afternoon) and making sure his own boxer-shorts weren’t revealing anything they shouldn’t, he gently shook her.
“Kate. Kate. Are you okay?” he whispered, strangely feeling a need to be quiet due to lateness of the hour, even though he was in his own flat. She relaxed her convulsions and opened her terrified eyes.
“You’ve been having a nightmare,” he said stating the obvious. “It’s alright now though. Welcome to reality where you’re safe here with me.”
She looked up at him, her dazed expression beginning to show signs of registering his words and concern.
“Scott,” she whispered without sitting up, “please hold me.”
The words took him unaware. For a moment he was at a loss what to do. Suddenly he had the opportunity to hold her, touch her, feel her held close to him. He wanted that more than anything in the world but it was because of the strength of this feeling of protection towards her that he was a little overwhelmed and hesitant.
He’d known this girl just over a day and certainly not in the most ideal of circumstances. He couldn’t help but feel that it would be wrong to capitalise on her vulnerability and to satisfy any personal feelings he may have of attraction towards her.
She pulled back the quilt a little to allow him to get underneath it with her.
“Please Scott,” she insisted.
The sight was too inviting to ignore and he found himself sliding in. He felt like he was doing the right thing but his logic seemed to suggest otherwise.
To hell with logic, he thought, surrendering to his emotions. It would have been far more illogical to leave her there in that state anyway!
She had already wrapped herself around him before he could push an arm around the back of her. She placed her head against his chest and although he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help but feel all his Christmas’s had come at once. He just wanted to hold her like that for eternity. It felt so good; too damn good!
A slight shuddering against him combined with the sounds of exaggerated breaths told him that she had begun to cry.
He gently ran his fingers through her hair, taking great care not to pinch, pull or get them caught in a knot. He carefully massaged every strand in an effort to project some comfort, protection, some signal to this girl that everything was going to be alright. She would never be hurt as long as she was in his loving embrace. Loving? No, that was too strong a word. Try protective or secure.
A delicate squeeze with his other arm reinforced his thoughts.
Again he started questioning why he should feel this way. He had not exactly lived the life of a monk and to cuddle a woman in the midst of night was far from a new experience. Each time he had enjoyed it (just as he’d enjoyed the sex that normally accompanied such expressions of affection) but somehow this seemed different. Why did he genuinely feel like he would die before he would allow anyone or anything to get through him and harm her? Again, he forced himself to dissolve such self-analysis. Reason had no place in moments like this. Feelings just had to be accepted. Feel and live the moment Scott, he thought.
He had to admit that while he felt deep sympathy for his female companion, he personally felt good; good that she could call on him to comfort her; good that despite hardly knowing him she trusted him to be with her; good that she was there in his arms at that moment.
She had stopped her shaking now and he could feel her warm breath against his chest. He also felt the bulge embarrassingly appear beneath his boxers. Without letting go of her, he turned himself slightly, transferring his weight to his side, in the hope that she would not feel the growing erection press against her, of which he was becoming quite ashamed.
He was content to hold her, reassure her. His carnal instincts were getting other ideas, ideas that he would control; his conscience deeming it completely inappropriate to even suggest sexual encounters when Kate was in such an emotional state.
He could not help but think however, that if he was to try and fondle her and pet her, his advances would not be rejected. Was that wishful thinking, or pure bloody arrogance? Or was there really something in the way she clung so tightly to him?
As if to read his mind and do the opposite, she softly pushed away and released her grip. He did the same, angry with himself and embarrassed – wondering if she had detected his arousal.
Whether she really had or hadn’t, he couldn’t tell (and wasn’t going to ask!) as she abruptly sat up, propping her back against the headboard. He followed suit propping himself up along side her, making sure that the duvet still covered his lower half until he could be satisfied that his manhood had settled back down.
She gave him one of the warmest smiles he thought he had ever seen.
“Thanks. I needed that,” she said with moist eyes.
“No problem.” He smiled back trying to disguise the foolishness he felt. She had just wanted a hug from him, nothing more. It had been a simple act of friendship.
She had noticed his smile was a little forced and intuitively guessed the reason why. She was thoughtful for a moment which then produced a decision to whisper in his ear.
“Just because we’re sat up doesn’t mean you can stop playing with my hair,” she teased.
“Yes ma’am,” came the reply in a pathetic attempt at an American accent.
Scott even managed a mock salute before placing a hand gently round her face. He used his thumb to brush dry the dampness beneath her eyes.
“You know Kate, you really are very beautiful.” The words just came out! His thoughts had literally voiced themselves without his brain’s permission.
She smiled and looked down, avoiding his gaze. He withdrew his hands.
“Sorry,” he said rather weakly. He felt a right idiot! She looked back at him with the kind of look a puppy gives out when you’ve caught it chewing your carpet.
“Don’t be.” She took hold of his arms and squeezed them tightly. So tightly in fact, already bruised, they began to hurt. This was, however, one minor discomfort he was more than prepared to tolerate.
She pulled him towards a second embrace but this time her face remained level with his. Scott would have, at that point, said something, but she placed a finger over his mouth. With eyes that he could happily fall into, he felt her lips meet with his.
The kiss lasted ten minutes, complemented by actions such as stroking hair and running hands along backs. Surprisingly, neither person allowed themselves to get carried away with the passion. Indeed the kiss was more a gentle action than a passionate one, more sensual than wild.
Scott had honestly hardly ever kissed this way and although passion could be a strong voice to silence, it was to his own astonishment that he found he liked it.
When they finally withdrew, they were both beaming all over the place like floodlights on a football pitch. For a few crucial seconds that seemed to last longer than they should, neither person spoke; both unsure of what should be said, if anything at all.
It was Kate who broke the ice, although her conversation couldn’t have been further from the moment.
“You couldn’t make me a cuppa could you?” she asked, once again deviously using her eyes in a manner of such vulnerability to increase the chances of things going her way.
Scott laughed.
“I bet you say that to all the fellas. Such incurable romanticism!”
“Well I’m thirsty,” she protested, playfully hitting him with the side of her pillow.
“Women!” Scott grumbled as he climbed from the bed, relieved that his proud warrior had returned to an ‘at ease’ condition.
The pillow hit the wall near the doorway as he was stepping out.
“Couldn’t hit the sea from a dinghy could you?” he mocked, before disappearing off to the kitchen.
Kate just laughed as she summoned the effort to retrieve the projected item.
In the kitchen, Scott filled up the kettle. It was not a task he relished - it reminded him of work - the sad fact was he never really drank the stuff himself. He didn’t particularly dislike tea - it was just that he could never be bothered to hang around long enough for it to cool down to a tolerable, drinkable temperature. Life was too short to have to wait to consume things he had often argued, purely to justify the fact that he was, by nature, impatient.
Still, he always kept tea in for guests, which was just as well considering the usual British obsession with this particular herb.
As the kettle boiled he decided to break the habit of a lifetime and make one for himself too. Right now, the need to be sociable was absolute!
Before long he was carrying a tray into his bedroom, containing two mini pots of tea (they had been gifts for a past birthday!), two cups, a container of milk, some teaspoons and some sugar.
He took a good look at the smiling female who was looking very inviting in her purple pyjamas, awake and sat upright on the bed. He placed the tray on a little table to her side, ignoring her remark about high standards of room service.
“So how’s your mother?” he asked as he stirred in some sugar. “I didn’t really get a chance to ask you at the police station yesterday, and when we got back here you went straight to bed.”
“Sorry about that. I was pretty exhausted.”
“That’s okay, it didn’t take me long to nod off either I can assure you. So how is she?”
“She’s okay. She was a little dazed but conscious yesterday afternoon. The doctors say that they don’t take any chances with head injuries and while they’ve stitched up the gash in her crown, they still want to keep her there a few days under observation to make sure it heals properly. But if all is well she should be out by Boxing Day.” Her expression turned serious. “Are you sure you don’t mind me imposing on you until then? It’s just that I can’t go home. Not...”
“Don’t be daft,” he scorned. “Besides, after the way you kiss do you think I’m gonna let you go that easy?”
She actually turned a little red. He grinned triumphantly. So she could feel self-conscious too?
“How was work?” she asked, changing the subject rapidly.
“Well I’ve still got some, that’s the main thing. That reminds me, I don’t suppose you fancy coming in with me tomorrow…,” he glanced at the alarm clock, “later today,” he corrected, “so you can help me and Carol piece together the story?”
“Carol?” Was that jealousy he detected or curiosity?
“My senior.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m still just a humble trainee at the moment.”
“Humble?”
Scott knew sarcasm when he heard it.
“Not that humble,” he grinned.
She grinned back.
“I’m just teasing. I’d love to. I’ve never been in a newspaper office before, it’ll be quite exciting.”
“Don’t count on it. It’s Monmouthshire Gazette remember, not The Times.”
“Either way.”
“Kate.”
Her name was said in a manner that suggested a very deep and meaningful question was about to follow.
“Yes,” she replied, a little cautiously; caught off-guard by the sudden change of tact.
“Why were you crying just now? Was it the nightmare?”
“Yes and...no.” She could see the concern in his eyes and she found she liked it. “I mean it wasn’t just the one nightmare, it’s the fact I keep getting them you know? And now I know that they mean something, that they’re more than mere dreams, that I’m somehow sharing a very sick and twisted mind, it makes it all the more frightening.” She turned her head as if to face someone else. “I’m beginning to think this gift, as my mother calls it, is a curse.”
He placed an arm around her shoulder.
“Hey, c’mon don’t get all upset again. You yourself said to me yesterday, that through your faith you’ll be able to control it one day and then think of the good you could achieve.”
“By being able to see inside sick heads?”       
“By being able to help police catch these whackos. Gardner will be caught thanks to you and people will be safe again.”
She looked back at him as if he had just told her the cure for cancer and it had been obvious all along.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s just when you mentioned Gardner I had a flash then, a memory of some kind, something to do with the nightmare I just had.”
“Well that’s hardly surprising, you’ve probably been in his mind again.” Scott was amazing himself at how much his statements were indicating that he actually believed in her claims of psychic ability.
“I suppose so.” She was clearly unconvinced. Something was playing on her mind, something lurking in the shadows, refusing to come out properly and reveal itself.
“I take it you can’t remember this nightmare then?”
“No, it’s really weird. Sometimes, when I’m witnessing something through his eyes, I can wake up and remember the terrible images quite clearly, but sometimes all I get is a barrage of emotions and images all thrown confusingly together.”
“Well I’m no expert but I think you should concentrate on trying to remember what you’ve dreamt. It might tell us where Gardner is and could lead the authorities to him.”
She shook her head.
“It doesn’t work like that. It comes to me when it wants to and usually when I least want it to.” Her eyes were looking pained again.
He stroked some hair back from her face.
“It can’t be easy. But don’t worry, I won’t let him hurt you.”
His words and gestures had already begun to brighten her up.
“Well you did a pretty good job the first time.”
Now he was avoiding her eyes and feeling bashful.
“Thanks,” he said.
Scott thought about the events of the previous night, it seemed such a very long time ago. He hadn’t even laid eyes on Kate Hedges before then, and now he was sat there in his bedroom, comforting, kissing and having deep and meaningful conversations with her.
He was glad she hadn’t turned out to be the child-like, disturbed creature that she had appeared to be when he’d first introduced himself. She had no recollection of any of this and he dared say she wouldn’t recognise Anne, the landlady of The Angel, if she jumped out and bit her.
Then he remembered the crash again, and the mystery surrounding it.
“Do you have any other strange abilities?” he asked.
“Play your cards right and you might find a few,” she said with a sultry look on her face.
“No seriously.”
“I am being serious,” she smiled. His stern look told her that he wasn’t going to give up on the subject.
“None that I know of. Don’t you think telepathy’s enough?”
“I don’t mean it like that. It’s just...” Should he tell her about the car? He decided not to; she might think he was crazy or jumping to conclusions, or worse, it may upset her. He decided it was best to test the water a little more first. “Do any witches possess telekinetic ability?”
“Witches now is it? I told you, I don’t think my faith has much to do with it. Some people are just born with different abilities whether they’re a Pagan, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jew.”
“You missed out Jedi?” he said attempting to lighten her tone. She seemed a little ratty all of a sudden and he preferred her humorous side.
“That too,” she added, trying to suppress any amusement with her anger.
“What did I say?”
“I’m just a little sick of the broomstick jokes?”
Scott looked like he was about to be hit by a brick.
“What are you on about? Who mentioned broomsticks?”
“You didn’t mention it, but you implied it. I know what telekinesis means; moving objects without direct physical influence, objects like broomsticks. I know what you’re getting at. I’ve heard it all before when so many so-called comedians at college have found out about my beliefs.” She was getting angrier by the second. She had already pushed him away.
Scott realised if he was to get anywhere he’d have to go on the defensive.
“Now hold it right there,” he said sternly. “I don’t know what bee just got into your bonnet but for goodness sake let it go. I wasn’t taking the piss out of your religion. Quite the opposite in fact, I find the whole subject of paganism fascinating. I’m not one of those ignoramus’s who think you’re a bunch of bloody devil worshippers who go around performing black magic, holding orgies, drinking goat’s blood and sacrificing babies and the like.”
She was about to interrupt but he wouldn’t let her.
“And frankly I’m offended that you should take me for such a bigot. Now I asked you a perfectly innocent question for perfectly innocent reasons, and no bloody mention anywhere of these broomsticks you seem so obsessed with, but if you think I’m having some kind of dig at you then fine, there’s not a lot I can do about it is there? But I’m buggered if I’m gonna just sit here and take it.”
She reclaimed one of his hands, in an attempt to diffuse his anger.
“I’m sorry,” she conceded. “I guess with everything that’s been going on I’m a bit touchy about my faith right now.”
“That’s okay,” he replied perfectly calmly, betraying the fact that he had just pretended to get all worked up, in order to snap her out of it. It had worked!
“To answer your question, you fraud,” she smiled realising how easily he’d manipulated her. “Spells, as I mentioned before, are generally more spiritual and as far as I know there are little or none that involve telekinesis.” She chose not to mention what had happened to various items of furniture at her home a few days previous. “I know that I would love to be able to do stuff like that - it would be better than these bloody visions - but I also know that I can’t.”
Scott decided not to press any further. Maybe it had been his imagination. In truth, he suddenly felt a little foolish. She pulled him back towards her, indicating that she fancied another cuddle. He obliged.
“I’m not normally that touchy you know. I’m sorry about earlier. But if you’re that interested,” she continued, “I’ve brought some books with me you can read if you like. I mean if you’re really that interested?”
Scott could tell straight away that this was an attempt to convert him. He didn’t know why he felt so flattered. It wasn’t as if she was about to let him in on some ancient family secret. He was about as likely to become a Pagan as he was to become a Buddhist but like many agnostics he was more than open to persuasion, especially from one who felt so warm in his arms.
“Thanks, I will,” he replied, putting down his emptied mug. She released him from her grip and gazed firmly and assertively into his eyes.
“I suppose we’d better get some sleep,” she said.
“I suppose so.” 
“Don’t go.”
Those words filled him with delight.
He walked across to a switch, turned off the light and crawled back into bed with her. She pulled her body against his, and his groin began to stir once more. Sod trying to hide it, he thought. She wasn’t crying this time.
The compromising morale code became an irrelevance as within minutes she was fast asleep once more.
Mildly disappointed but a little relieved at the same time, he tried not to dwell on how good he was feeling in the hope he could fall back into the peaceful abyss. It wasn’t easy with her encased within his arms but one thing was for sure, it was a bloody sight comfier than the settee!

                                                            S I X T E E N

 
Brian Thomas’s fist caught him squarely across the mouth, causing blood to instantly shoot out as his lower lip cut into his teeth.
Drunken onlookers roared their approval, happy that their blood lust was becoming increasingly satisfied.
Thomas threw another punch, this time with his left hand.
His opponent anticipated this and ducked, counter-attacking with a powerful blow deep into Thomas’s stomach that winded him so badly he almost threw up.
Disorientated, he dodged behind a post for cover in a bid to give himself time to regain his oxygen supply.
The crowd sneered at the action, viewing it as a cowardly retreat; their sneering was put to rest when Thomas ran at his opponent once more; catching him with such force across his chest that it caused him to fall backwards to the floor.
There was a roar of excitement as Thomas began kicking the fallen man; the roar became laughter as the man below grabbed onto an attacking leg, bringing Thomas down to his level. The two men wrestled around on the floor, each trying unsuccessfully to gain a full advantage on top of the other.
John Gardner looked on with interest. While the rest of the spectators were arranged on various make-shift tiers constructed from bails of hay, he sat on a chair that provided a front-line view of the action. His right leg was in a home-made plaster cast and was perched upon another wooden seat.
As fight organiser, he was also referee, which job title, in an event with no rules, was pretty obsolete saving for the fact that he could halt the fight if need dictated.
Such a need was rare as competitors either conceded or were knocked out before there could usually be a fatality. Besides, they all knew the risks and the money that could be made by taking them.
The barn made a great venue for these contests.
It was one of the more favoured stages of those littered up and down the country for its easy and discreet access. Ample parking space and seclusion was provided in a field, which was connected to a track that in turn, connected to a country lane different to the one on which the proper entrance to White farm could be found.
The barn itself was spacious enough to accommodate more than a hundred spectators, as it currently aptly demonstrated to full capacity.
It also provided room in an area close to its entrance, for improvised gambling tables and the recent addition of a home brewery.
This was proving particularly popular as many were already quite visibly inebriated, and hence loosening their wallets, as a result of this more localised but equally potent version of American Moonshine. And if liquor was not the preferred poison there were plenty of drugs on offer too.
All in all, it would be another entertaining and lucrative night.
He had of course been wary of putting in a personal appearance but he had been instructed that it was both necessary and safe, as the incompetent police, although watching the house, had no interest in this particular building three or four fields away.
If he was honest with himself, he did not share that certainty but to obey without question was the least he could do, considering what had happened with the girl!
In truth, Gardner had expected the repercussions of that almighty mess to be so severe, that the fact he had been allowed to live had surprised him.
His superior had been relatively calm about the whole affair. This had unnerved him more than an outward display of rage ever could and he guessed that his boss would have known that. Either way, he was very fortunate to be offered this chance to redeem himself, for when the dark one, the great one, it arrived, such redemption would be vital.
He had also been promised opportunity to take care of Scott Jackson; the throbbing in his leg reminding him that Jackson’s demise should be a particularly unpleasant and agonising one. He had a score to settle alright but he also had his instructions, and a responsibility to make sure this fight went smoothly first.
The two fighters were now back on their feet and Brian Thomas’s right eyebrow was bloody and swollen having received a glancing blow across the brow. This did not stop him kicking his opponent in the stomach with accurate precision and following it through with another punch, breaking a nose. Despite an accumulating catalogue of injuries, neither fighter was letting up, nor was the din created by the mob screaming from the sidelines.
Gardner was not noted for his cheeriness but he couldn’t help but smile as he watched the enthusiasm of the crowd egging on these savages; how each one of them thought they were in control but were right at this moment being used just like all the rest. If only just one of those bare-knuckle supporters knew? Had the faintest idea?
The cries of amusement became louder, as the man who was clearly losing his battle with Thomas had picked up a plank of wood with a very lethal looking nail protruding from it. He’d grabbed it from the far corner of the barn where it had mysteriously found a home.
All eyes briefly turned to Gardner, all anxious to see whether he would motion to stop the fight. Those same eyes filled with expressions of horror and perverse excitement as his returning glance let them know that the action would most definitely continue.
The man, who appeared to have one less tooth than when he’d first entered into the makeshift ring, paced slowly towards Thomas, arm and plank raised ready to strike. Brian Thomas, terrifyingly aware that one successful blow and it could all be over, started circling backwards in response, bracing himself for that crucial dodge.
For the first time that night, his opponent saw fear in his eyes and smelt blood.
 
“Two new officers ready and standing by, over.”
“Roger that.” Dixon spoke into the transmitter of the radio unit in the plain-clothes police car. He turned his head round to face Stoker, who was sat in the driving seat busy smoking a cigarette.
“Well that’s one shift over and a new one beginning.” Dixon was referring to the two constables who had just traded places with two others at one of the secondary look-out points, a position near the entrance to the farm in which they were parked.
The two detectives had already been there an hour and still had three more to go. It was the crucial eight ‘till midnight shift when it was believed that if Gardner was going to re-appear it would most likely be during this period. Stoker wasn’t quite sure why this should be the case, but something to do with the average arrest times in such operations, and the psychology of the cover of darkness and all that caboodle!
He didn’t like having to sit on his arse waiting around like this. It reminded him of his removed authority; normally it was he who sent other people out on surveillance (although the term ‘normally’ was less than appropriate as in the Abergavenny division, the need for stake-outs had been until now, few and far between).
He couldn’t help but feel a little patronised by Dorell, who had sent, in his words, the two senior detectives to the most important shift.
As he stared through the windscreen and the cover of trees that they were parked behind, he could see a distorted but adequate view of the house. He had to admit that it would be great to be the one to collar Gardner but somehow with such inactivity, it didn’t seem very likely.
One thing was for sure, unlike his partner who seemed to getting quite a buzz off all the goings-on of late, Stoker was growing sick of all the bloody mystery and now it seemed the very existence of John Gardner had presented another. He placed the report back on the dashboard, using his other hand to switch off the small reading torch and return it to his jacket pocket.
“What did it say, sir? I didn’t have a chance to read it earlier,” said Dixon.
Stoker turned and for a second, looked blankly towards his colleague, endeavouring to steer his mind back to the present situation. “I take it that’s the report you finally received about Gardner?” Dixon clarified.
“Yes, it is. Apparently our dear sweet Mr Gardner was charged eighteen years ago with attempted murder and incitement to riot. He was a very active participant in the skinhead movement in South London in those days, heavily involved with the outlawed race-hate organisation Combat 18. He even from the age of sixteen to nineteen, wrote for and circulated their propaganda magazine.
That was until he was finally caught and put away.
He got drunk after a football match and decided to prove himself by smashing some poor Asian kid’s face in with a piece of copper piping while his mates watched on. The 14-year-old’s only crime being to have the misfortune to wander into an alley next to Gardner’s house.
Although the victim was put in a coma for eleven weeks, Gardner was only caught because he was going round boasting about the beating, to all who would hear. In the pubs and on the streets he was calling on all white people to do the same, to follow his example and give the ethnics a ‘bloody good kicking!’”
“What a lovely chap!.”
“Well one of his brainless associates was persuaded to grass and he was convicted and given ten years. Funny thing is he didn’t seem to care too much, saw himself as a martyr for the cause; a self-styled Hitler who even pointed out in court that his idol had once spent time in jail too. Of course, that didn’t overly impress anyone including the judge. That said, this particular example of bigotry and violence was soon forgotten by the press as one sad, mindless incident among many.”
“Any other feathers in his cap?”
“Strangely, no. He was released from prison seven years later for being the model of behaviour and all that crap, and was never arrested, charged or questioned by police again.”
“So it seemed like he’d turned over a new leaf?”
“Not entirely, at the time of his release, his victim’s mother had fought an unsuccessful campaign in the local press to try and prevent it. By all accounts, Gardner still held the same sick ideals and showed absolutely no remorse for what he’d done, despite leaving the lad concerned, twenty-one by then, with learning difficulties as a result of his trauma.”
“Well what did he do? Scum like him don’t stay out of trouble for long.”
“Well there’s the mystery!” Stoker spoke with a hint of sarcasm, indicating to Dixon that the word ‘mystery’ wasn’t one of his favourites right now. “He disappeared. His parole officer tried to trace him but to no avail. He didn’t claim dole. He didn’t go live with his family; that being one alcoholic father and a slightly deranged mother. He didn’t get a local job or at least not a legitimate one where they would have submitted tax records. He simply disappeared. Only to turn up over a decade later to own a farm in Wales.”
“You know sir, I think there’s a lot more to this than a couple of dead cabbies.”
“I couldn’t agree more Sergeant. I just wish I had the faintest idea what. How does someone like that disappear anyway?”
“Someone must have been helping him. Jackson and the girl did say that there were two others.”
“Yes but by their description they sound even more moronic than he is.”
Stoker began searching his bag for a pasty he’d been saving. “Enough questions anyway, what we need is answers. All we do know is he was legitimately left that land in Skirrid’s will, despite the missing and probably late Mr Grendal’s story, the solicitors in Hereford check out. And after going to ground for so long and turning up here, no-one was likely to check up on his past and find a violation of parole.
So we know he had a farm to gain so maybe, as implausible as it sounds, he systematically introduced pure alcohol into Tom Skirrid’s diet? But why him? And why this farm?” Stoker bit into the pastry.
“And why cabbies?”
“I don’t know, maybe his racial hatred extended to the Welsh and he got over- charged a fare once.”
Dixon smiled at the sarcasm, realising that with all the explanations they could come up with, this one was as plausible as most. He did however, in light of what he’d just heard, feel uncomfortable with a certain aspect of the investigation and pondering momentarily, he found voice for his concern.
“You know, sir, I know Gardner was named as the murderer but I’m not convinced.”
“Why not?”
“Well the girl did only name him from a dream she’d had, and she claims that when she was attacked she only saw the other two men before she was knocked out and so she didn’t actually see Gardner. I know our absent-minded reporter friend has supplied us with photographs showing him to be one of her abductors but he also said that the girl was delivered here to him and that from eight o’clock last night at least he’d not left the house.
So it stands to reason that if three people grabbed the girl, one of which she didn’t clearly see, and only two actually arrived here with her, then there’s yet another unidentified character running around somewhere.”
Stoker was following the logic in his own mind and was admittedly impressed by Dixon’s algorithm thus far. “Now this Kate claims that this third man, the one she didn’t see, she psychically knew to be the killer,” the sergeant continued. “Yet she also psychically claims that she now knows the killer to be Gardner.
But if this third attacker and Gardner aren’t the same person then she’s wrong about one of them, if not both! It doesn’t do much for her so-called psychic ability.
If they are the same person then Gardner must have sneaked back ahead to the farm for whatever reason, without the journalist noticing him arriving. This he would have had to have done without a car as the only car on the scene was the one Jackson claims the girl was brought in. I mean which seems more likely to you?”
“I’d be the first to admit that psychic visions create a very weak suspect but at least they do create a suspect.”
“It’s weird though, sir. For some reason I don’t doubt she believes she’s telling the truth but I just get the feeling she’s not telling us the whole story and that maybe we’re just investigating a kidnapping here. Admittedly, an elaborate and admittedly motiveless kidnapping but not necessarily something connected with this killer we’re after.”
“It’s a good point Dixon but don’t forget that apart from the photographs, all we’re going on are the testimonies of two independent witnesses. For all you know the girl could be right and this reporter could have got it wrong. I agree that all we can be sure of is a kidnapping took place but given it was instigated by a neo-nazi who’s been missing for several years and at a place where two teetotallers died of alcoholic poisoning, I have to say the very bizarre nature of this inquiry suggests that it has to be related in someway, just by statistical probability alone.” Stoker shook his head. “It’s like one bloody great big three-dimensional jigsaw. If we can just solve some parts of it and build a foundation maybe we’ll find all the other pieces will come together too.”
“Well there is another thing, just from what you told me about that report actually.”
“Please continue. On a roll or something?”
Maybe Dixon was mistaken, but he could have sworn there hadn’t been any sarcasm in that statement.
“Well, sir, we know the two murders were extremely well organised and executed with an inventive cruelty that unnerved us all. So I think we can all safely assume that the killer is both twisted, and highly intelligent. Now from what you tell me of Gardner, sure he may fit the twisted category but extremely intelligent? A man who was convicted purely because he couldn’t keep his gob shut? A man who allowed himself to get outsmarted and shot in the leg by a young journalist? Doesn’t sound like the man we’re looking for to me.”
“I know what you mean but I sure as hell hope you’re wrong because if we do catch this bastard I’d like nothing more than finding him covered in the victims’ blood whilst grasping photo evidence, murder weapons and a signed confession telling us when, how and why. Then perhaps we can all go home and celebrate Christmas.”
“Well I guess time will tell, sir.” Dixon let out a yawn. “Sitting around doing nothing reminds you how tired you are.”
They spent the next ten minutes in silence as Dixon privately battled sleep and Stoker munched into an apple for dessert. A sudden crackling noise made them both jump as the radio transceiver burst into life.
“Delta Charlie One, do you copy, over?”
Dixon picked up the transmitter.
“Receiving you.”
“Any sign of activity, over?”
They both recognised the accent as Dorell’s.
“Negative.” Dixon loved saying that.
“Are you sure?”
Stoker and Dixon looked at each other surprised. There had been an element of astonishment in Dorell’s voice.
“Yes, I’m sure. Has something happened?”
“It could be a hoax, but we’ve had an anonymous tip-off that a illegal organised fight is taking place somewhere in that farm.”
The two found themselves looking directly at each other again, this time in a shared sense of disbelief. Dixon was the first to state aloud what they were both thinking in unison.
“Will it never end?” he said.
 
The bloodied, battered, shaven-headed man swung the plank with full force with the nail at the exact space where Brian Thomas’s head used to be. The country-man had dodged his incoming doom with near-perfect precision, skilfully projecting his right fist forward to catch his outstretched opponent straight into the groin.
The man doubled up and as he did so, the offending weapon was kicked out of his hand; the foot completing its journey to his stomach. Wheezing and in great pain, the opponent persisted in trying to maintain balance but this relatively simple act, was utilising all of his strength. An uppercut from beneath the jaw was enough to send him collapsing to the floor.
Triumphant, Thomas kicked him violently in the ribs a few times, taking care that his opponent would not and could not pull him down a second time. As consciousness drifted as a result of his opponent’s injuries, Thomas placed one foot upon his chest to declare his victory. With his last waking breath, his adversary tapped out a submission.
Many of the crowd cheered, many did not, but virtually all scrambled from their vantage points to head for the bookmakers. Like animals fighting for food they pounced on the men with all the cash, anxious to claim their rewards.
Gardner rose from his chair and with the aid of crutches walked across to the victor, patting him on the back. Thomas, stepping off the man he had been crushing beneath, glared back at him. The plank had not been something he’d anticipated or appreciated.
As they both walked away from the stage area, the fallen man’s manager rushed to his fighter’s assistance; he had been too scared of Thomas to attempt such a rescue beforehand.
If it hadn’t been for the bustle of the transference of money and the fact that others were already making a bee-line for the makeshift bar and the gaming tables, someone might have heard the three police vans approach and the helicopter hover above the roof.
The look-out had already been read his rights in what represented an unusually large operation to raid such illegal gatherings. The fact that the prime suspect, indeed the only suspect, for two of the most gruesome murders the country had ever witnessed might be among those at the gathering clearly carried some influence over the authority’s decision when it came to the amount of force deemed necessary.
The first anyone, including Gardner, realised that the party atmosphere was about to be well and truly dampened, was when a stream of police and dog handlers complete with their canine wards burst in through the main and only entrance to the barn.
Despite yells of “Stay where you are!” the front-line bobbies found themselves being washed aside in a sea of panicking law breakers who were all under the hasty illusion that by rushing off, they might actually make it across a vast field to their respective vehicles and get away.
Of course this was a virtual impossibility as had they even been able to outrun men and dogs a good four hundred yards or more, they would have found a swarm of blue uniforms waiting for them at the recently discovered getaway points.
Still panic seldom allows for logical thought which is probably why the first thing Brain Thomas did was dive and hide behind a straw bail, while Gardner pulled out a shotgun from behind the chair he’d been resting on.
Outside, officers and dogs with 4x4 vans were already beginning to force those running out, up against the outer barn wall in order to make various arrests.
Many police remembered the true reason they were there and amongst the shouting, grabbing and shoving, were glancing around to see if any of the herd, looked like the photographs they carried of Gardner or two other men.
Detective Sergeant Dixon was among them and it was he who was the first to spot two faces bearing some familiarity. The two men were conveniently side by side as they were led towards a police van along with many others.
He was about to shout across to the officers who were conducting the line, but thought better of it. Things were beginning to calm down and he didn’t want to stir them up again. If the two men were, who he thought they were, they were being rounded up anyway and could be checked out more thoroughly back at the station.
Or at least this would have been the case but the police had hardly expected such a huge crowd and although they had brought more than enough men to deal with the situation, there had been significantly, not enough hand-cuffs to go round.
As a result of this, neither of the two men Dixon was watching had been restrained in any way and as one, his arm in a sling, approached the van to be searched by a constable, the other close behind reached into his trench-coat pocket.  To Dixon’s horror he produced a pocket knife, thrusting it into the startled constable’s side.
The weapon had penetrated deeply, but the attacker’s firm grip on the handle meant that the bloodied weapon withdrew from its fleshy surround to remain in the villain’s hand.
The injured policeman fell against the rear of the van, almost joining those he’d placed inside, as his shaking hands clasped over his wound that was already weeping blood.
Other police nearby were quick to react and while two ran to their colleagues aid, others were running at the knifeman.
The latter, brandished the weapon menacingly and, along with his comrade who had just been searched, ran towards the greatest gap between blue uniforms they could see.
Not wishing to end up with the blade inside them, the closer officers backed off, merely raising their batons and calling for the knife to be dropped.
The two men gained themselves several yards advantage however, before Dixon and a few of his colleagues gave chase.
 
Inside the barn, Gardner had been spotted by some officers, among them Inspector Stoker who had been part of the first wave of police that had stormed into the building.
He also saw the shotgun raised and aimed at him, or less specifically at the widened doorway in which he and others stood.
By now, most people had left or been forced out of the barn to join the chaos outside. Inside, a few policemen had joined Gardner, Thomas and those fight enthusiasts who had resolved themselves to their unwelcome fate.
“Don’t shoot, Gardner.” Stoker shouted, contemplating whether he should risk ordering a retreat before a shot could hit him or one of his men.
Gardner, with crutches discarded and the gun held firm, looked around desperately to find another exit. There was no way out, but nevertheless he slowly moved backwards.
“C’mon man. You’ve nowhere to go. Put the gun down.” Stoker was joined by a few associates who had heard him shout from outside.
Thomas rose from his pathetic hiding place near-by, embarrassingly aware that many of the intruders had seen half his torso sticking out. He’d already decided to make the best of it.
“Yeah put it down you stupid bastard!” Thomas boomed.
“Fuck you!” he turned the gun on Thomas, moving forward but barely gaining any ground before realising his mistake and placing the Inspector back in his sights. “Stay back pig!” he yelled to the advancing detective.
Stoker froze while Gardner shuffled further backwards dragging his plastered leg, despite the painful protest of a lack of crutch support.
“What happened to your leg Gardner?” Stoker hoped some distracting conversation might put him off guard.
“Fuck you!”
“Quite the conversationalist aren’t you?”.
Gardner once again, glanced around frantically, as if he was expecting some miraculous escape route to present itself. The man was terrified! Was this really the cool, calculated, sadistic killer they were looking for? Stoker remembered what Dixon had said back in the car.
“Are we going to stand around here all night?” the Inspector shouted.
“No.”
To every onlooker’s horror, there was a deafening bang as Gardner changed the direction of his gun and pulled the trigger.
The barrel fell from his mouth, as did the rest of him, as his entire body went limp.
The gruesome contents of his head - a mass of blood and fragments of brain - exploded outwards as a result of the close range impact, scattering across the area Gardner had been standing.
The screams of terror from those unfortunate enough to witness the sight, made the earlier din in the barn, seem weak by comparison.
Some, like Stoker, had stopped screaming in order to vomit out the bile that had rushed into their throats.
One man had rolled into a protective ball, whimpering in a fit of frightened tears.
This was the hard-man Brian Thomas who usually prided himself on his tough image.
Still, such a tough persona would be hard to maintain for anyone who had been standing close-by to the gunmen and was now covered by parts of his brain!
 
In a field a short distance away, Dixon was struggling to keep his breath as he and three other men maintained their pursuit.
The detective was now quite sure that their targets were the two men in Jackson’s photographs, not least because they seemed to know the farm very well and had chosen an altogether different route than others who had tested their luck by running the long distance to the nearest road.
The detective wasn’t sure where it was they were being led but his sense of direction suggested they were getting closer to the farmhouse.
It was times like these that Dixon and his companions wished that the average British bobby was allowed to carry a gun. Their two targets were still only twenty yards or so ahead and would have be well within their sights.
The detective found enough breath for a curse when he noticed the woodland that the two were obviously heading for. Once into those trees they would be even more difficult to catch.
“They’re heading for the cover. Let’s try and cut them off.”
The pursuing officers keenly obeyed, each one splitting off in a direction that was intended to create a circle around their human prey with only Dixon left in straight-lined pursuit. The pursuers weren’t going to make it in time - the fleeing men were nearly fully across the field.
Then something happened that caused Dixon and his men to slow their approach.
Two dogs - from the distance they looked like alsations - had both sprung from the near-by woodland, each from an opposite side of the two men that were running towards it. The policemen watched the canines close in from either side, stalking the two villains, who were both terrifyingly aware of this new threat.
One of the men desperately jumped at the barbed-wire fence that marked the border of the forestation but he had barely got his footing when one of sizeable beasts leapt up at him; the momentum knocking him straight back to the ground.
The other man had chosen, in his terror, to run back towards Dixon and the others, but he had barely got ten yards when they saw his panic-stricken face fall forward. The weight of the other dog tackling him from behind had proved too much for the already-tired criminal.
The policemen froze in horror as they witnessed the demise of the suspects; each savaged by a different creature.
They heard the screams, they saw the writhing; the desperate flailing and the inevitable pockets of blood forming around the men, as each creature in eerie succession ripped at its victim’s throat.
Only when the men finally lay limp, struggling no more, did the dogs withdraw from their attack. And only then did it occur to any of the onlookers, all sickened with shock, that it was time to turn around and run for their lives.
They were all painfully aware that the dogs were already far too close for them to successfully out run such large, cunning and ruthless predators.
But before they had that chance to turn and flee, much to the relief of all involved, the canines were leaping back over the fence back into the wooded domain from which they had come, to disappear amongst the thickets as quickly as they had appeared.
It was almost as if these four-legged assassins had been discriminate in their choice of victims.
The implications of this would have been even more terrifying to contemplate, were they not currently enjoying an overwhelming sense of relief that they were all actually going to get away from there alive.
All of course, except for the two men who had aided Gardner, the two men whose usual glazed expressions were now fixed ones of terror.
Such expressions were irrelevant; mere impressions of emotions recently felt that had been so strong that they had become locked onto their faces, to send chills down the spines of any future onlookers; irrelevant because no emotions were present in either one.
It’s hard to be scared of anything when you’re dead.