Some particular evil, p.30
Some Particular Evil, page 30
He flattened himself against the wall of the house and inched forward so he could see through the front window. There she was, sitting at the table, her back to him. What was she doing? She was reading something. He couldn’t see what it was. Why had she stopped packing her things? What was she reading that was so important?
He felt the blood rushing to his head, his fingers clenching inside the leather gloves. Had she found it? Was it the log book? What had Susan written in it? Had she written about him and his loves? Laurel Bowman didn’t know her place. From the first she’d been domineering, bossy: demanding her own office, wanting a telephone, telling people what to do; making friends with people like Mabel Grill and Dorothy Piff. He was breathing rapidly, his muscles tightening. This time she wouldn’t best him. This time she’d pay. She thought she was as good as he was, as good as a man. Men were better at everything than women. Women should know their place. He inched backwards to the front door.
45
Laurel knew she should stop reading. She must get the log book to Frank. She hesitated. She had to know how it ended. She flicked to the last page.
Friday, 20th March, 1970
I think Philip suspects I’ve been through his desk. Perhaps I didn’t put things back in exactly the right order. He’s so meticulous. He hasn’t said anything but I’ve caught him staring at me. He looks away when our eyes contact. He’s making me nervous.
After another discovery today I feel even more disturbed. I saw Toni Habershon leaving in an ambulance with a pupil who’d got a fractured leg. She’d be away hours in Ipswich. Mabel Grill was busy in the school kitchens and so I had a chance to get in Toni’s cottage without anyone seeing me.
I didn’t think much of her wardrobe and there wasn’t anything interesting: no letters from past or present lovers; no whips or handcuffs to suggest she was a sadomasochist, and no empty bottles of gin pointing to alcoholism.
Then I found something which made me sick. In her wardrobe under a pile of sweaters, some a bit mothy, was a red wig, in the same style as my hair. What am I to make of that? I’ve never seen her in a wig, of any colour. Is she a secret admirer? Or does she think if she wears it Philip will fancy her? I’m pretty sure she fancies him – I’ve seen the worshipping looks she gives him.
I feel unsettled: First locks of red hair in Philip’s desk and now this? Is there some weird game going on I don’t know about? Is there something in Philip’s past he’s trying to hide? If I find out more could I use this to get a good divorce settlement out of him? Or a large sum of money? Or both? My nest egg is growing; a few thousand pounds would help to set up a little business. I could try going back to the theatre, but I wouldn’t mind a dress shop in London or perhaps abroad, the south of France would be fantastic.
I need to get back in his desk. That won’t be easy. He was furious with himself when he last left his keys at home. I should have made some copies. The thought of leaving this place is heaven.
They were the last words written in the book. What was the significance of the red wig? Laurel closed the book and stared at its black cover. Did Toni use it to disguise herself as Susan? Was it Toni Mabel saw when she took that walk with Muffin? Was Susan already dead? It meant Toni was part of Nicholson’s plot to kill his wife. He had to kill Susan because he knew she’d discovered his secret. He didn’t know she didn’t realise what the locks of red hair and the jewellery meant. She had to be got rid of.
What did he promise Toni to persuade her to be part of a murder plot? Marriage?
She pushed her fingers through her hair. This wasn’t the time to try and find solutions. It was time to get out of here, out of the school.
She got up from the table and picked up the log book. She must get it to Frank as quickly as possible. She’d go straight back to Dorothy’s and phone Frank from there.
Laurel stood in front of the fireplace. Where had she put her car keys? She heard a sound: feet on carpet.
Nicholson was in the doorway. He looked at the log book she was holding, and then he glanced at the cupboard and the table.
God in heaven, what could she do? He was staring at her, blue irises ringed in black. She edged away. He was hesitating. Why? Because she wasn’t small and delicate? Not easy meat like his other victims?
‘So you found it? I presume you’ve read it?’ he said. His voice was jagged, full of hate, flecks of spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth. His arms were rigid by his side. He wore leather gloves, the fingers curling and uncurling.
If he killed her she’d leave him damaged. She’d fight him. He was taller, stronger, but she was fitter and in control of herself. He wasn’t. His madness was exposed. His eyes were uncoordinated. Keep your nerve she told herself. She took a deep breath and tensed her muscles for action.
He snorted with laughter. ‘You’re angry. Who are you angry with? Me? Or yourself, for being so stupid? Give me the book, Laurel, and I’ll let you go.’ He held out a gloved hand.
Her anger was for him – the destroyer of young lives, the killer of Emily Piff and the man who’d struck down Mabel and brained Muffin. No. He wasn’t going to get it. He wasn’t going to kill her. She refused to be a victim. He’d damn well have to fight her for it. She moved nearer to the settee. She had one chance. His eyes weren’t focusing. His hair was a wild mess. She had to keep calm, act quickly. Her salvation lay behind the settee.
‘I’m getting impatient, Laurel.’ He lunged at her, his arms outstretched in a rugby tackle.
With little backswing she kicked him in a knee-cap and vaulted over the settee. He tripped on the rug and banged into the fireplace. He screamed as his damaged knee hit the hearthstone.
Everything was in slow motion. Laurel dropped the log book, and took a firm grip on the handle of the giant wooden spoon.
‘I’ll wring your neck until your eyes stick out like balls. You bitch. I’ll make you scream for mercy.’ He was spitting and grimacing as he tried to scramble to his feet.
Laurel swung back the heavy spoon as far as possible and with techniques honed on the lacrosse field, she let the giant head do its work. She aimed for the side of Nicholson’s head as he reached across the settee to grab her. His eyes widened and he tried to duck, but the spoon made a satisfactory, if glancing thud, as wood met the flesh and bone of his left temple. He crumpled onto the settee, groaning.
Laurel dropped the spoon, grabbed the log book and ran for the door. Behind her she could hear him knocking over furniture, and swearing. She should have given him another whack. She ran towards her car. Her stomach plummeted. The keys were in the cottage. She turned.
Nicholson staggered out of the door, blood running down his face. He saw her. His gloved hands were held like boxer’s fists in front of him. He was snarling and swearing, lips pulled back, teeth exposed.
She panicked. He was too strong. She didn’t have the spoon. Could she outrun him? She turned and sprinted towards the cliffs.
46
Frank and Elderkin raced back to Frank’s car. ‘His Range Rover isn’t here. He may have left the school grounds. We’ll drive round and check the site before telephoning a warning to the rest of the squad. Is the Jaguar in the garage?’
‘It’s there,’ said Elderkin, his face like a stone mask.
Frank started the engine. ‘I’m going to Laurel’s cottage first. She should be with Dorothy Piff – but just in case. Then we’ll go to the main block and see if he’s there.’
Gravel spat from the rear wheels as he turned from the tarmacked road into the lane to the three cottages. His heart squeezed into a ball.
‘Shit!’ Elderkin spat.
There were two cars in front of Laurel’s cottage. Nicholson’s Land Rover, the driver’s door wide open, and beyond Laurel’s Ford Cortina, the boot lid raised.
‘God’s blister.’ The car swerved as he slammed on the brakes. The car stopped a few inches from the Land Rover. He and Elderkin burst from the car and ran to Laurel’s cottage.
The door was wide open. They ran into the front room. There were signs of a struggle – a tablecloth askew, a chair on its side, a smashed vase on the floor, the settee on its back. They lifted it up. Thank God, she wasn’t lying there. But the monster spoon was. Frank picked it up. There was blood on the back of the bowl. Whose blood?
‘I’ll check upstairs. You do the kitchen and bathroom.’ He took the stairs three at a time. No one here. No sign of a disturbance. Racing back down he met Elderkin.
‘Nothing. What do we do now?’ Elderkin asked.
Frank pointed to the open cupboard, the hole in the floor and the discarded floorboard. It was a hole big enough to hide a book in. ‘She must have found it.’
‘Frank, here’s a bunch of keys.’ Elderkin picked them up from the table.
Frank saw a notebook on the floor. He opened it. Mathematical questions were neatly written on its first pages. ‘This isn’t it. Laurel must have the log book.’
‘And Nicholson’s found her with it?’
Frank’s stomach twisted. Had he killed her and dragged her body from the cottage? But Nicholson’s Land Rover was outside.
Laurel’s lungs were raw as she sucked in air, her feet pounding on the path through the Holm oaks. Brambles tore at her clothes and ripped her arms. She kept tripping as she couldn’t run properly as she clutched the log book to her chest. Her legs were like lead. She couldn’t find the rhythm but she daren’t try to change her grip on the book in case she dropped it.
He was close behind. He was crashing against trees, shouting, swearing. He was mad – he’d lost all sense of reality. The cold calculating headmaster was a berserk monster. If she could get down to the beach she could outrun him, she was sure of that. It was a hard run to Minsmere beach over the sand and gravel, but there would be people in the National Trust car park, bird watchers on the reserve.
The steps. There was a barrier of rope suspended on iron spikes and a notice. Danger. Keep off. Steps unsafe. Dear God, she’d forgotten. The police had declared them unsafe and out-of-bounds after they brought Toni’s body up from the beach. Laurel turned. Where could she go? He was getting nearer. Should she run to the main house? Was there anyone there?
She took a deep breath, tucked the log book under one arm and jumped over the rope. She gritted her teeth, trying not to imagine the steps collapsing under her. Move swiftly and lightly. She tried not to let her weight rest for more than a second on each step. One, two, three – the fourth bowed beneath her. Another groaned. Like an athlete attacking the high jump she pranced down the wooden steps.
As her foot hit the shingle, she yelled in triumph and blew out her cheeks with relief. She dug her heels into the shingle and didn’t stop running until she was on the hard sand near the sea’s edge. She turned, gasping, refilling her lungs.
Nicholson was at the top of the steps. He was screaming, punching the air with his black-gloved hands. Would he come down the steps? Would the steps hold his weight?
‘Don’t do it,’ she shouted. ‘They’ll collapse.’
He roared back at her, unintelligible words. His face was a livid red blob as he swayed from side to side.
She moved towards him and put a hand to her mouth to try and make him hear her. ‘They won’t take your weight. Give yourself up. Go back to your house and wait for the police,’ she shouted. Why was she doing this? Let him die. He deserved it.
He raised both arms above his head, fists clenched, like a great primate challenging a rival. ‘If it’s the last thing I do, Laurel Bowman, I’ll kill you. Kill you!’ He charged down the steps, his body ricocheting against the rails, a figure of fury and hate.
She turned and started running again. It was easier now, her breath even, and her legs moving smoothly. She was confident he wouldn’t be able to catch her.
A thunderous rumble stopped her. She turned. The noise increased as boulders, stones, wood, and earth crashed down the cliff. The ground beneath her trembled as part of the cliff hit the beach. An avalanche of earth and sand rolled over the shingle towards her, tossing the planks and railings into the air. Clouds of earth bombed into the sky. The grinding and groaning deadened the crash of the waves and the cries of the gulls.
She was coated in grit, the log book clutched to her chest. Nicholson must be buried. It could have been her_ earth filling her mouth, soil suffocating her, tons of stones and soil squeezing the air from her lungs. Legs and arms broken and her back shattered. She put down the log book and ran towards the cliff fall.
Frank and Elderkin rushed out of the cottage.
‘She must have escaped. He’ll be chasing her,’ Elderkin said.
‘I hope to God, you’re right. Which way would she have gone?’ Frank said, ‘We’ll go to the main house –’
From the direction of the sea there was a great roaring as though a pride of lions had raised their heads and simultaneously vented their anger to the heavens. They both froze, as though turned to stone by a spell. A dark cloud rose from below the cliffs, over the Holm oaks, billowing up like the debris from an exploding bomb.
‘The steps!’ Frank threw Stuart his car keys. ‘Take my car, Stuart. Alert fire services and ambulance.’ He looked into Nicholson’s Range Rover. The ignition key was in the lock. He jumped in and turned on the engine. He crunched into first gear, weaved past Laurel’s car, and drove towards the cliff. He tried not to think what he might find.
Laurel checked her run as she came near the fall. Stones were rolling down the sides of the cliff into hills of earth. They wedged into broken wood, tree roots and scrubby plants. She blinked, trying to clear the grit in her eyes. She bit her lip as she systematically looked over the piles of earth and debris, searching for signs of Nicholson. Breathing was difficult. She coughed, her mouth coated with sand. She imagined him dead, buried under the avalanche of earth, stone and wood.
She moved carefully to her right to get a closer look at the middle of the fall, and concentrated on looking for any part of his body sticking above the earth, or any sign of clothing. Nothing. She moved a little more to the right.
There. A foot in a navy sock was sticking up from a five-foot pile of earth and stones about three yards in front of her. She sank to her knees and inched towards it, afraid of setting off movement in the mounds of earth above her.
She started digging round the foot with her hands. She pressed her fingers over the ankle bone. Yes, a faint pulse – he was alive. She looked round, grabbed a broken piece of wood and attacked the earth round his leg.
‘Laurel! Laurel!’
She looked up. Standing on the cliff edge was Frank. She stood up. ‘Frank. Be careful. It could collapse.’
‘Is that Nicholson?’ he shouted.
‘Yes,’ she yelled. ‘He’s alive.’
‘Have you got the log book?’
She gave him a thumbs up and pointed back to where she’d placed it on the beach.
‘Fantastic. I’ll have to drive down to Minsmere beach. I’ll be with you soon. Be careful.’ He waved and was gone.
Laurel kept on digging. She had to get to his head. He must have an air pocket under his face. She freed his left leg. His trouser was ripped exposing a muscular leg and a nasty break, his tibia and fibula poking through the flesh. Ugh.
Why was she doing this? Why was she risking her own life for a murderer? She knew why. The last time she’d failed. She wanted this murderer to stand trial; for justice to come through the courts; for Nicholson to face up to all the grief and sorrow he had given to the family and friends of the girls and women he’d murdered, and to give the victims, whose lives he’d ended in pain, suffering and horror, justice.
Frank bounced the Range Rover past the cottages and turned into the tarmacked road past Shipster’s house. Laurel was alive and Nicholson was nailed. He hoped he wasn’t dead. He wanted him alive to face justice; also he wanted him alive for Laurel’s sake. He thought he knew why she was trying to get him out. As he approached the main house Elderkin came racing from it. Dorothy Piff’s Morris Traveller was in the car park. He slowed down.
Stuart flung open the passenger door and hauled himself in. ‘Is she all right?’
‘She’s on the beach digging out Nicholson. We’ll have to go down to Minsmere beach and over the sand to get to them.’
Elderkin let out a giant sigh of relief. ‘Thank God. Get on with it then.’ He slapped the dashboard.
Frank laughed. ‘Impatient old bugger.’ He let out a whoop of joy and elbowed Stuart who slapped him on the back. ‘Did you manage to telephone?’
‘Dorothy’s in charge. She drove here because she was worried. She’d persuaded Laurel not to go back to the school to collect some clothes, but as she wasn’t in the cottage when she got back from lunch with the vicar, she was afraid she’d changed her mind.’
On the road to Minsmere beach Frank put his foot down on the accelerator. Soon they were bumping downhill on the narrow road that led to the sea. Stuart was clinging to the passenger strap. He should have been waving a cowboy hat, to match the hollers and hoots whenever the Land Rover bucked and jumped over the heaps of gravel on the beach.
Frank stopped a safe distance from the fall. They scrambled out and ran towards Laurel. A dishevelled Laurel: dirty, with filthy clothes and grazed and bleeding hands as she continued to dig out Nicholson.
Frank crawled towards her and pulled her arm. ‘My turn. Don’t be so greedy. Want all the glory, do you?’
She put her arms round him and they hugged each other. He pulled her away to a safe distance from the fall. Elderkin gave her a fierce embrace. She winced.
