Dont let him in, p.27
Don't Let Him In, page 27
I admit you had me worried there for a while, Rebecca.
I was beginning to think you were the one who would work it all out. I could picture everything unravelling for me, but it looks like I overestimated you.
Now you are trapped and helpless.
It seems you’re nothing special after all. No better than the rest.
All you’ve really succeeded in doing is taking up a lot of my time.
You’ll pay for that now.
I’ve been looking forward to this.
She could not recall leaving the house. Rebecca must have been carried out because she was aware that she was outside now and it was very cold. Freezing water splashed her and this must have been what brought her round. She was vaguely aware of a rolling movement, a feeling like she was being pushed up then down and her clothes were wet in places. Rebecca tried to open her eyes but they were too heavy and she couldn’t be sure whether what she was experiencing was real. More water splashed on to her face then and it felt like rain, but some of it touched her lips and she tasted salt. It was seawater and she realized she was lying in a rowing boat and it was moving. That was causing the up and down movement. She managed to open her eyes but was unable to sit up.
Someone was lying motionless next to her. A woman. Claire Tilbury? She thought so. They were squashed together in the boat. A dark shape with his back to them was moving. Dressed in a black coat and cap, he was powering the oars, propelling the boat along. Rebecca tried again to sit up but she could not move. Whatever she had been given, it was strong and she didn’t have the strength to fight it. She had no power over her limbs and her eyes felt incredibly heavy. She passed out again.
Rebecca couldn’t tell how long she had been unconscious but she woke to find she was alone in the boat. The man was gone and so was Claire Tilbury. She could still hear the sea but the rowing boat was no longer moving. He had dragged it out of the water and on to the beach somewhere. He must have carried the unconscious Claire from the boat.
Close to her, looming above Rebecca, was a sheer cliff. She couldn’t be sure but this looked like the very edge of the Point and she was directly below the lighthouse, which meant the boat was now on the exact spot she had surveyed with Alan when they had walked down the steps to the jetty.
Alan?
She remembered now. His text message to her, being in his house, Claire Tilbury tied up there and Rebecca attacked from behind, before she could help her. What the hell had happened?
It would have been the best time to at least try to get away but, when she tried to move, Rebecca found she was unable to get up. She concentrated hard and managed to move her leg. It twitched almost involuntarily. She focused on the other leg, managed to move it slightly, then flexed the fingers of both hands. They felt so numb it was as if they belonged to someone else. Next, she tried to sit up. If she could do that, perhaps she could get out of the boat and away, but she wasn’t yet strong enough to manage it.
Then Rebecca heard a new sound. Urgent footsteps drawing nearer. Someone was walking along the jetty towards the boat. He was coming back. Her first thought was to try to call out for help but at this hour the only man within a mile of the place would be her attacker.
Rebecca closed her eyes and faked unconsciousness. She didn’t dare open them in case he attacked her, injected her again or tied her up and then she would be done for, just like every other victim of the Chameleon. Rebecca would be killed, her body thrown into the sea or dumped in a shallow grave in the woods and no one would ever find her, unless she managed to stifle the panic rising in her now.
Think, Rebecca, think.
Strong hands seized her then, pulling her up by the lapels of her coat and hauling her into a seated position. Then the man stooped lower and levered her over his shoulder so he could pick her up and carry her.
He was off and moving with her now and she was rocked by the movement. She opened her eyes and found she could see nothing but the jetty below as she hung upside down from his back.
He reached the stone steps that went up to the lighthouse. She knew they were worn and would be wet and slippy, but he did not hesitate and was clearly used to walking here. She wondered how she might strike out at him, when and with what? She had no weapon and her limbs still felt like jelly from whatever drug he’d injected into her.
He carried her up the steps like a mannequin, then through the bushes and on into the lighthouse, which was illuminated by a large LED camping lamp he had already placed there. He stood on the stone lip that went round the edge, his back towards the lowered, inner section where she had been with Alan. Now she realized her life would probably end here.
He let go of her then and Rebecca slipped from his back as he dropped her and she landed hard on the sandy floor, which knocked the wind from her, the pain shocking her body back into life. Somehow Rebecca managed to stifle a cry, because she knew everything depended on her staying silent. She had to make him think she was unconscious until she got some strength back.
‘Stupid, interfering bitch,’ he said to what he must have believed was her still unconscious form. ‘Taking me for an idiot.’ And the voice was chillingly familiar.
There was a clattering sound then and he cursed. He had dropped something and it landed in the pit near to her, so he jumped down to retrieve it and she risked opening her eyes as he picked it up. The object was her phone, which he must have taken from her while she was unconscious. He bent low and she saw the side of his face and Rebecca’s world seem to stop then.
It was Dominic.
44
Who else could it have been? But somehow it was still a shock. The Eriston police officer, Dominic Green, was standing there, pocketing her phone and regarding the now conscious, bound and clearly terrified figure of Claire Tilbury with a look of pure hatred.
‘Should have stayed away, Claire,’ he told the woman who was chained to one of the old metal rings. ‘I’d have come for you eventually but it’s going to be a hell of a lot sooner now, and when I’m done I’ll go looking for your ex. When you both disappear, he’ll get the blame. I wanted you to know that’s how it’s going to be.’
He turned towards Rebecca then and she closed her eyes, but did she do it in time to fool him? She didn’t have a plan. If he came for her and she had some strength left, she could hit, scratch or kick him. It was a long shot but it was her only hope of getting out of there alive.
Rebecca could feel something sticky on the side of her head and she realized it had to be blood. What had he hit her with? The pain was agonizing but perversely that was a good thing. She was getting the feeling back in her body now, but what good would it do if he came for her, then chained her up too? Once that happened, it would be over for her and Claire. Maybe death would not be the worst of it. Nobody came up here any more and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to get in, so he would be in no hurry. Dominic would take his time.
She had to move now or it would be too late but did she even have the strength to do that? The decision was made easier by the incessant, despairing tone of Claire Tilbury’s moans from behind her gag. She was urging Rebecca to wake up and do something. Rebecca risked opening her eyes again and fully expected her assailant to be standing over her but he was gone. She rolled over on to her back and realized Dominic had left the pit. That was why Claire was making those sounds. She was trying to wake Rebecca up. He had to have assumed she was still unconscious and probably would be for some time, so he had gone to fetch something from the boat. It meant she had a few precious minutes but what to do with them? He surely wouldn’t be long.
Rebecca tried and failed to get to her feet and a sharp stabbing pain went through her head, and she immediately collapsed back down again. She knew she had to try once more. Rebecca rolled over on to an elbow and dug it into the floor. Ignoring the pain in her head, she pushed against it till she managed to get unsteadily to her feet, then promptly fell over again.
Rebecca went through the process of rolling on to her side then forcing herself up once more and this time she managed to stay on her feet. She staggered sideways, dizzy and disoriented and was greeted by the other woman’s muffled pleas for help.
The harsh truth hit Rebecca then. She knew she couldn’t help Claire. Not now. There was no time. She had to save herself first if she was going to have any chance of escaping from Dominic, then return with others to rescue Claire.
Rebecca turned away and faced the door. She was about to attempt to run through it when she heard the sound of feet crunching the hard ground outside. It was Dominic and he would be back in seconds. She couldn’t go out that way and there was no other exit from the lighthouse. With no weapon and only half her strength at best, she knew she had no chance of overpowering him.
There was only one course of action left and it was the very last thing Rebecca wanted to do. Her arms felt like jelly but she managed to haul herself up and out of the far side of the pit and on to the lip round it. Rebecca moved unsteadily towards what remained of the stairs, the stone steps she had been so terrified of as a teenager, and she began to climb them unsteadily. The difference now was that she was even more frightened of the man behind her than of the crumbling stone.
As feeling came back to her body, her thoughts also began to fall into some sort of order. Rebecca understood what had happened to her or at least thought she did. Dominic had stolen Alan’s phone, which wouldn’t have been that hard, as he was always losing it or leaving it in his truck. He had read their private messages, then sent Rebecca a text to summon her that looked as if it could only have come from Alan. Somehow he had managed to get into Alan’s home while he was away, then waited for her to come over. She had no more time to consider this. Rebecca had to keep on climbing, putting her trembling hands out in front of her to feel her way up the broken steps and move higher.
Dominic burst back into the lighthouse. He was carrying a metal box and when he saw Rebecca climbing the old stairs, he let go and it crashed to the floor. ‘Bitch!’ he shouted. Whatever hard metal items were in that box there was a good chance he was about to use them to torture both women. He’d done this before, she knew it. He had even summoned a fleet of police cars down here on a fool’s errand, to make them think nothing was going on at the lighthouse and dissuade them from ever looking here again.
The frustration Dominic experienced, as he watched her climb away from him, must have been short-lived because his tone abruptly changed and he became calm again. ‘You’re made of strong stuff, Rebecca. I’d have tied you up too, but you should have been out for another twenty minutes at least. Have you got ice in your veins where the blood should be? It wouldn’t surprise me.’
Dominic didn’t even try to chase after her. Instead he stood and watched as she reached a point where the stairs were so worn down they became little more than tiny ledges.
‘You can climb, Rebecca,’ he taunted her, ‘but there is nowhere to go. You’ve no way to call anyone and nobody can hear you from here, even if you scream. No one comes here any more.’ And he laughed. ‘I’m the boy who cried wolf.’
Every time Rebecca placed a foot on a step, she expected it to give way and she would fall. Miraculously, one after the other, the partial steps stayed firm enough for Rebecca to lever herself slowly upwards and on to the next one. She was going round the inner walls of the building in a spiral, not daring to look down but occasionally catching a glimpse of the hard floor below where Dominic stood, taunting her.
‘Careful, Rebecca. You’ve had a big dose of Midazolam mixed with Fentanyl. That’s a powerful anaesthetic and I seriously doubt that it’s fully worn off. You must be feeling very woozy. I’d hate to see you fall.’
She was already far higher than she had ever gone during those teenage dares. The only thing that frightened her more than falling was the prospect of being at the mercy of Dominic if she did. And so she climbed.
To take her mind from the drop below, she called out to him, trying hard to sound much calmer than she was. She didn’t want him to know she was terrified, though it must have been obvious. ‘You don’t want to hurt Claire. If you did, you would have done it years ago. Let her go, Dominic. You loved her.’
He actually laughed at that. ‘Loved this bitch? You’re joking. I would have done this after we broke up but I couldn’t draw attention to myself. When she came to see you, she forced me to act. I’ve waited a long time for this.’ His tone became mocking then. ‘Now come down, Rebecca, please, so we can get started.’
‘If I disappear, you’ll be the prime suspect.’
‘Not when I tell them about that jealous, controlling boyfriend of yours. The one with the violent father who scarred his childhood. It was Alan that messaged you to come over and you were never seen again. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt him, just got into his house and took his phone. I need him alive and healthy to take the blame.’
‘Because you usually only hurt women, don’t you? You didn’t contaminate that crime scene, did you, Dominic? You killed that woman!’ She was moving more slowly now as she went higher and used untried steps. How easily they could give way.
‘She deserved it!’ he snapped back.
‘Why? Because she turned you down?’
That seemed to anger him. ‘Not just that.’ And she knew she’d hit home. Rebecca realized that at least some of his anger at women was caused by their almost complete rejection of him. The one woman who had permitted him to get close to her was now chained at his feet. ‘If you do it properly, all it takes is a slash at the carotid artery, then you can step back and see the look on their face as they die, but someone heard something and suddenly there were sirens.’ He said that as if it had been most inconvenient. ‘So I grabbed her while she bled out and it worked. After that they left me alone to do my thing.’
‘Being a psychopath?’
‘You should watch that mouth of yours, Rebecca. I can make this quick or I can make it very slow. It’s up to you.’
The weight of her next step made a shard of stone come free and it slid away from her. For a second she fully expected the rest of the step to crumble beneath her but somehow it held. ‘Seriously, I want to know,’ she asked. ‘Why do you kill and why only women?’
That shut him up for a second. Was he actually lost for an explanation?
Then he said, ‘The only way to avoid the pain of losing something is to destroy it yourself.’ He seemed to warm to his subject. ‘You don’t know what it is like to stare into the eyes of another person while you take their life.’ There was wonder in his voice. ‘There can be no greater intimacy than that.’
‘It wasn’t enough, though, was it? You don’t just kill any more. It’s too quick.’
‘You’d be surprised how quickly the novelty wears off,’ he told her. ‘And, just in time, they fenced off this place.’ He said that like it had been done entirely for him.
‘Mad people don’t realize they’re mad, Dominic.’
‘I’m not mad. There is a limit to what I am prepared to take, that’s all. I don’t know how other men walk away from their humiliations but I won’t.’
‘It’s not just that, though, is it?’ She took another step and it held. ‘You didn’t know all those women.’ And then another.
‘You’re all the same.’
‘That sounds like an excuse to me. Why not admit you just enjoy what you do?’ She was focusing entirely on the next step, taking one at a time and concentrating hard to keep her mind focused.
‘You’re going to find out just how much!’ he shouted.
Dominic watched in impotent fury as Rebecca continued to rise and was soon far above his head. He yelled abuse at her then; it was the same shaming tirade of every man who thinks that women are all the same. She was a bitch and a slut and a lot of other foul things Rebecca barely registered, as she focused entirely on her next step. He told her exactly what he would do to her then, when he finally came up there and caught her. She tried to blot out his violent, vile words and kept on climbing. Periodically she would feel dizzy and like someone who had drunk far too much and could no longer fully control her senses or coordinate her movements. Rebecca forced herself to concentrate even harder and, by doing so, she managed to take another step then another.
‘I’ve had enough of this, Rebecca,’ he called. ‘I’m coming up.’ He had given up waiting for her to slip and fall and was following her, which increased her sense of panic.
Rebecca had almost made it to the top and in her haste to get away from him she neglected to test one of the final steps. Instead she put her faith in it and her weight upon it. It gave way immediately. Rebecca screamed in alarm and started to fall. Her hand flailed but could not grasp anything by her side. Somehow, as she fell, it went over her head, reached the roof directly above her and she wedged it there, which stopped her from tipping right off the ruined step. Her other foot stayed on the step below and, as her head dipped, she watched the broken remnants of rotten stone fall away below her. Dominic had to step aside to avoid them landing on his head as he climbed the lower steps.
‘Ooops,’ he said cheerfully, ‘nearly,’ and he laughed.
Astonished that she was still alive, Rebecca managed to reach high above her with her other hand. She pushed against what remained of the rotten hatch that opened into the room at the very top of the lighthouse. Most of it had rotted away and what remained was soaking wet, making it easier to push upwards. With the hatch open, she was able to grab the edge of the concrete floor and pull herself up. The worst part was having to let her feet leave the broken last step so she could haul herself upwards when she felt so weak. She was convinced she would fall.
Rebecca’s head, then her shoulders went through the gap and she managed to pull herself up until both her elbows were on the edge of the stone floor, then she hauled herself in, expecting at any moment to either fall or have her ankles grabbed by Dominic who was coming up fast behind her. If that happened, she would be thrown all the way down.
