Ferocious beasts, p.15
Ferocious Beasts, page 15
Carl Jones was livid. He turned burning eyes on Jack and said, “If you weren’t my superior, I’d of smacked your teeth down your fucking throat by now.”
Jack stared straight back at the glowing embers of his eyes. “Harriet Bainbridge,” he said, “says you were there almost immediately. Practically at the same time. Though, she wasn’t sure if you were chasing your wife.”
“Get out,” Carl hissed.
SIXTY
Marcus Bainbridge had the worm of trepidation nestled in his gut. Harriet hadn’t returned yet and she wasn’t answering her phone.
A police car pulled into the driveway and he came away from the window. The sun was low and the car blocked it, intensifying the rays at the edges into blades of incandescence that forced Marcus to shield his eyes as he stepped outside.
It was only when the car pulled into the shadow of the house that he recognized his sister sitting in the passenger seat. She looked terribly pale and was staring blankly ahead.
The constable got out and came before Marcus.
“I’m afraid she’s very shaken,” he said.
“What happened?”
“There was an accident.”
“Is she hurt?”
“No. But someone was. See, your sister pulled out in front of a speeding motorist and when the car swerved to miss, it hit a telegraph pole.”
“My God. Who was the driver?”
“Gabby Jones.”
“You mean the detective’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“And is she…?”
Marcus trailed off.
“Very much so,” the constable confirmed. “In hospital as we speak. I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t make it.”
“Bloody hell. Is Harriet in any trouble?”
“No. No. Nothing like that. It was none of her fault. The woman was speeding. If she’d of been going the speed limit, your sister would have been able to see her in time.”
Marcus wandered up to the door of the police car. Crouching beside it, he tapped his knuckles gently on the window and spoke her name softly.
Harriet swiveled her head slowly to meet his eyes. The second she saw it was her brother, she burst into tears.
Marcus opened the door and took her by the hand, gently lifting her out. Once she was standing, she threw her arms around him and sobbed wildly into his shoulder.
“I’ll take her now,” Marcus told the constable.
“There may be some more questions to answer,” the latter said, “and we left her car up on the track. You’ll have to fetch it.”
“I will. I will,” Marcus assured him.
Holding on to the weight of his sister, he watched the police car disappear into the red sun, before turning around and guiding her inside.
Not knowing exactly what to do, he took Harriet upstairs and placed her on the edge of her bed. Leaving her there, he went down to the kitchen and began making tea. Their uncle Rupert used to make tea whenever he’d come to fetch them after their father had disappeared on another of his drinking binges. Like some cloaked hero, he would turn up, make tea, then pack their things and take them back to the manor, where they would stay until their father, now sobered up, returned to take them back.
Reappearing in the bedroom with Harriet’s tea, he helped her keep ahold of the cup while she sipped. Taking it from her and placing it on a bedside table when she’d done.
While she sat there in a daze, he took a chair from a dresser and sat himself opposite.
“They’ve arrested Will,” he told her.
She said nothing, her blank, wet face gazing into the dusty air.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Her eyes came alive. “Why would they arrest Will?”
“Why do you think?”
“The murders?” she wondered aloud.
“Yes. They don’t think it’s Julia anymore.”
Her face creased up worse than it already was and she threw herself into her brother, howling, “What is going wrong with the world?”
SIXTY-ONE
A thunderstorm rattled away on the horizon, a wall of bruised cloud rolling towards them like a tidal wave. With the car windows open, the two Scotland Yard detectives could smell the wet earth on the wind.
“This isn’t the way to the bed and breakfast,” Glenn Morris observed as Jack drove them through the shrouded twilight.
“I know it isn’t. But I’d like to speak with Will Bainbridge again.”
“I don’t see why. I mean, who are you going to believe—him or Carl Jones?”
“I’d like to believe them both.”
Glenn frowned. “And how do you suppose that could happen?”
“What if Carl Jones is right about it not being a murder-suicide, and, at the same time, Will is telling the truth that it wasn’t him?”
“A third suspect? But who else would do it other than Julia or Will?”
“That’s where we’ve got to start looking.”
“We’re wasting our time,” Glenn remarked, returning his eyes to the road. “It’s Bainbridge.”
“And why are you so sure?”
“A feeling I got about him. Like I wouldn’t put it past him. He just seems so cool. Too cool.”
“People react differently,” Jack argued. “Don’t apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Society would love it if we all looked the same and acted the same—easier to predict and control. But I like to believe there’s still a little bit of variety and unpredictability in the world.”
“Then let’s hope he can help us.”
The press were blocking the way to the cottage, the road clogged with them, vehicles parked up on grass verges, on fields, even on the road. Outside the gate, two constables, Waters and Moore, were trying to usher them away.
“This is mayhem,” Glenn remarked as they got out of the car and began wading through the bodies. “Those two will never get them away from that gate.”
Jack was on his mobile to Helm Police Station. “I need at least four officers out to Will Bainbridge’s cottage. We need to clear this place of press.”
The two detectives began pushing them roughly out of the way, Glenn getting his hands on a cameraman that he hauled back, the guy’s equipment falling off his shoulder and smashing on the road.
“Hey! That’s police brutality,” he cried.
“Sue me,” Glenn shouted back.
Reaching the constables at the front, Jack called out over the racket, “Where’s Bainbridge?”
“Inside the cottage,” Waters replied.
“Is anyone with him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Moore chimed in, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Does he know that Gabby Jones is dead?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Jack didn’t answer. He jumped over the gate and ran down the driveway. The front door was unlocked and he bolted inside to find the house empty. Reaching the kitchen, which was at the back of the property, he found the outer doors wide open, the curtains fluttering in the heavy storm wind.
SIXTY-TWO
“The operation was a relative success.” The consultant’s words echoed dimly in Carl Jones’s head. “Due to the swelling in her brain, we’ve had to remove a section of skull. As well as that, her right lung received a severe puncture and both legs were badly broken, as well as her left arm. We’ve had to place pins in the bones of her right tibia and left shin. There’ll need to be more operations.”
They were standing outside her room. On the other side of a window, Gabby lay in intensive care, white ventilator pipe stuffed in her mouth, bandages all over her head, except for the crown, where plastic film covered the patch of skull-less head, the brain a dirty yellow color.
Her torso was covered in a blanket, her right arm lay on top of her chest, while the other arm and her legs were wrapped in plaster and held aloft on wires.
“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Carl asked.
“She’s very sick,” the consultant told him. “Life support is keeping her alive for the moment. Until swelling goes down on the brain, we won’t even know what types of neurological damage there is.”
“Brain damage?”
“It is a possibility, I’m afraid.”
“Will she remember things?”
“She may or may not,” the consultant said with a benevolent look. “But it’s too early to make assumptions. She may make a full recovery.”
With a slight pang at this thought, Carl Jones fixed his eyes to his wife’s sleeping face. He still loved her with the same intensity he always had. But this intensity—well aware of her infidelity—was now purposed to new things. To the destruction of things as opposed to their harmony.
The storm was in full swing. Rain lashed against a window behind them and a tree branch tapped against the pane. For a while this was the only sound in that lonely corridor, until a set of swing doors at the other end swung open with such violence that both men turned that way.
At first, they failed to recognize the drowned rat of a man that came marching towards them. But it didn’t take long for Carl to recognize him.
Violence rose up inside of the detective like a terrible black bile, his heart palpitating, his fists curling up, his eyes aching, and before the consultant knew what was happening, Carl was practically running at the man, while he too ran at Carl.
They met like two cars, smashing head-on in a clash of bodies, Will Bainbridge swinging a punch, Carl Jones ducking it, swooping underneath, grabbing him around the waist, then driving him back, Will punching down onto his back, until he hit the wall with a thud and the air was knocked out of him.
The consultant had no choice but to get inside the room and use a telephone to call security. When he had, he darted back outside to watch the two men going at it like male bears fighting over territory during the mating season. Their faces clenched into masks of absolute animalism, grappling against the wall, sliding along it, getting an arm free every so often and swinging it like a club at the other man, grabbing ahold of whatever they could, every sinew in their bodies tensed.
The consultant was grateful when two overweight security guards came trundling towards them through the swinging doors.
SIXTY-THREE
Blue police lights illuminated the rain outside the hospital. Two patrol cars parked before the entrance. A silhouette sat in the back of one and Carl Jones stood with two constables outside the other. Another constable stood at the back, and it was this man whom the two Scotland Yard detectives approached after getting out of their car.
“What happened?” Jack asked over the hissing rain, already having made a pretty good guess.
“Will Bainbridge turned up,” the constable confirmed. “Him and Carl Jones had a right ruckus.”
The silhouette sitting handcuffed in the back of the patrol car was obviously Will Bainbridge. He was gazing down at his hands, a look of utter desolation on his face.
Jack asked the constable to open the door, but as the latter went to do it, Carl Jones, who’d just spotted Jack and Glenn, hurriedly stepped in the way and stopped the man.
“Oh no,” he said. “He’ll not be spouting anymore of his crap. This is the end game.”
It was then that Jack spotted the tall figure of Chief Constable Brian Daniels emerge from under the hood of the hospital entrance and begin approaching them through the rain. Coming up to Jack, he offered his hand and said, “I thank you for your help, Inspector, but we won’t be needing Scotland Yard’s assistance any longer. I’ve already notified your superior.”
Jack shook the hand limply.
“Where’s he going?” he asked, glancing at the sorry image of Will Bainbridge.
“Prison,” Daniels told him. “Perhaps there he’ll respect the rules.”
PART FOUR
SIXTY-FOUR
“Gabby?”
She was standing at the end of a wood-paneled hallway with her back to him, her long hair trailing in the breeze. Sunlight shone from an open door at the end, illuminating her outline and making her shine.
But what was she doing in Bainbridge Manor?
“Gabby?”
She didn’t turn. As if she hadn’t heard him.
“Gabby?” he repeated as he began approaching her along the narrow hallway, past the oil paintings of boats and storms, only now noticing he was holding a rifle.
Without any conscious intention, he stopped, raised the gun to his shoulder and, just as she turned to him with a frightened look, pushed her aside and aimed the gun at the open door, pulling the trigger and sending a bullet into the terrible red tree that was climbing into the house, its branches and roots reaching inside like grasping tentacles, feeling their way along the walls for grip.
It screamed out when the bullet struck, blood pouring from the wound in its bark. And then he saw them. Children trapped within the exposed roots, crying out and reaching for him to save them. So he shot it again and it screamed and sent out a tendril that grabbed ahold of Gabby and dragged her towards it until she was being fed into its chomping roots, her hand outstretched as she disappeared into the tree.
Will awoke with a start.
For a moment he didn’t recognize his surroundings: yellow bricks and a barred window, the air thick with the stench of human decay. He was cold to the bones and realized the blanket they’d given him was on the floor.
Closing his eyes to the prison cell, he saw the image of Gabby Jones, her soft expression unburdening his swollen soul. “Soon we’ll be together,” her voice breathed into his ear. “All we need to do is wait.”
He’d always sought a mother. He wasn’t blind to that. His own had been cold. But Gabby was so warm. Was that why he had fallen in love? Because she gave him something he’d been looking for his whole life? The gentle love of a mother?
Shouts and the general sounds of belligerent men, of unrest, of something coming, cascaded into the cell from outside. It caused a tension in the air that Will felt in his bones along with the cold, and he jumped in his skin when the spy hole on the door scraped to the side.
“Prisoner 3-1-5, show yourself,” a gruff voice commanded.
3-1-5. That was him now. A number.
“Stand at the back,” the prison officer said through the grate when Will had gotten down from the bunk.
He took a position by the back wall, cool air blowing through the barred window above his head. The locks rasped and the door opened outwards. Two large guards stood either side of an even larger prisoner; a giant, by all accounts. The guards, six-foot men themselves, only came to his shoulders.
The giant’s thick arms cradled folded blankets and his expression was dead-eyed and menacing without being obviously so. The guards told him to go inside as if commanding a dog and he stooped to climb into the cell. As he reached Will, the latter was forced to tip his neck to meet the man’s dark eyes.
“This is your new cellmate,” one of the prison officers said with an element of mirth in his tone. “Play nice, boys.”
The door slammed shut and they were all alone. Will offered the man a hand and told him his name. The giant looked down at the hand and his lips twisted into a malicious smile.
The first words spoken, or grunted, by the giant were, “Top bunk’s mine.”
“I prefer the bottom, anyway,” Will immediately appeased the man, going to the bunk bed and taking his pillow off the top.
The big guy placed the blankets on the bunk and then stepped back, swiveled to Will and ordered, “Make my bed.”
“What?”
“You deaf? Make my bed.”
Will knew something of these matters. It was the same at boarding school. Bullies would always try and needle everyone they came across until they found out who would budge and who wouldn’t.
Will had never budged in his life.
“No,” he said firmly.
The big guy came at him with surprising speed and it was like the cell itself was moving. Will put his hands out to stop him, but it did no good. The branch-like limb of the giant patted his hands away and grabbed Will’s throat, lifting him up and then using his whole body to press Will against the wall.
“Make the fuckin’ bed,” he hissed.
Will, choking on both the hold and the man’s bad breath, managed to mutter, “Okay.”
“Good,” the cellmate said, dropping him to the floor.
For the first time, Will ceded.
This wouldn’t be like boarding school.
SIXTY-FIVE
The Bath tearoom hadn’t changed since the 1930s, apparently, and the young serving girls wore old-style uniforms; black frocks that finished halfway down their shins, frilly white cuffs and collars, pinnies over the top and maid’s caps trapped to their heads.
The tall-ceilinged room was filled with the paraphernalia of a time before: a grand piano with candelabra on top, jazz playing on the radio, little square tables with gilded edges, chairs with doglegs, a potted palm tree at the entrance.
“It’s such a shame this has to end,” Beth said to Jack as he poured them another cup of Earl Grey.
“It’s probably for the best that I didn’t stay for a week,” he replied. “Col could have got suspicious.”
“I told you. He doesn’t give me hassle.”
“Then let’s not make him start.”
She said nothing and they went back to the tea and salmon sandwiches.
Last night, after being told they were no longer on the case, Jack had called the chief inspector. It was done: he and Glenn Morris had to return to London.
Being that it was late and the rainstorm was in full swing, they decided (or at least Jack did) to stay one more night under the roof of Mrs. Muggins.
