Shaping the Ripples (36 page)

“But what about Christopher Upton? How did you pick on him?”

“That was really thanks to Jennifer again. When I was reading your file, I read all about your ridiculous religious faith, and how you tried to use that to justify your existence. Once you mentioned the vicar of the church you went to, and Jennifer had cross-referenced it to the file she had on him. As soon as I realised that this person you had put such trust in was just a sick pervert, I decided he needed to be exposed next. Torturing him was just a bonus.”

My eyes close with revulsion at what he had put Jennifer and Christopher through, and at the horror I knew he had yet to unfold. “And Jill and Sophie?” His smile grew even more wide and mocking.

“I’m pleased to say that you deserve full credit for them. I knew I was going to kill some of the scum you’d helped but I didn’t know which ones would hurt you most. And then you just handed them to me at the dinner. You can imagine how much that stuck in my throat, to see you preening yourself and being applauded like some sort of hero. But you made up for it by choosing my next victims.”

“But I didn’t use their real names,” I say suddenly, as that thought hit me. “How did you track them down?”

“Oh yes, you made it so difficult for me,” he answers sarcastically. “Talking about a “Jane” and “Susan” who had come to see you almost three years ago. It was even you who put me into George’s office on Christmas Eve so that I could check his list of clients. How long do you think it took me to find a case involving a Jill and Sophie that matched the period and to look at their file. You even told me what date to kill them on, because you’d written when your next visit was going to be.”

“So it wasn’t you who broke into the office.”

“Of course it was,” he laughed. “Why else would I have been there to hit you over the head? I was already seven moves ahead. I’m assuming that when the police find your body tomorrow, they’re going to take a hard look at the previous murders to see if they’d missed anything. How long do you think it would have taken them to realise that the killer had to be someone with access to the files at the Centre? Thanks to the break in, that won’t help them at all – it could be anyone, especially Jill’s former husband.”

I was beginning to realise how carefully he had planned all of this out. The one inconsistency strikes out at me. “But you made a mistake in not killing Katie.”

Instead of the defiance I’d expected, he started laughing even harder. “Ah, Katie. Now that was when I knew everything was going to go exactly to plan. One of my problems at the start was how was I going to destroy your life when you had so little life anyway. But then the first time we met, I saw your eyes when you looked at her, and I knew what I had to do. That’s why I insisted on the two of you working together for the dinner, and then reserved places for a fictitious company so that the two of you would be alone together. I even bought paint to decorate the centre for the one weekend that I knew no-one else could be there. You can imagine how happy I was to see the two of you together at the pantomime. It’s so gratifying when your puppets do what you want.”

“You bastard!” I hiss, my fists clenching into balls.

“As for making a mistake,” Ian continued regardless. “I never intended to kill her. If she was dead then I didn’t see what you had to lose by calling the police when I contacted you. I knew that if I had her as a lever, you’d come alone trying to be the great hero. The mistake I made was in almost killing her – I got a bit carried away with carving your name, I’m afraid.”

He shook his head, as if telling himself off. “I must admit though, she did look quite delectable once I’d undressed her. I want you to know that once you’re dead, I plan to pay Katie another little visit, one where I can take a little more time with her. I don’t think she’ll want to come out of that alive by the time I’ve finished. So you see your noble gesture has been all for nothing – just like your worthless life.”

The urge to fling myself at him was almost overwhelming. But the gun was still pointing steadily at me, and I knew that he was expecting me to try something. So with a great effort I remain still and make my voice as contemptuous as possible.

“For someone so intelligent, you haven’t got much sense. The irony is that when you first met me I wasn’t sure myself that my life was worth living. If you’d just come after me in the first place, maybe I’d have welcomed you – been grateful of death.” His eyes still blaze, but now there is a hint of uncertainty there as well.

“I don’t think so though,” I went on, “I’ve survived a lot worse than anything you can do to me. But in any case you didn’t. You tried to make me see that my life was worthless before you killed me. And you know something? You managed the complete opposite.”

The hand holding the gun has dropped slightly. It was clear that this is no longer going the way he had imagined it. The rage is boiling up inside me, but I can sense that it isn’t quite time to let it go.

“All the things you’ve tried to take away – the help Jennifer gave me, my faith, the people whose lives I’ve helped to rebuild, my love for Katie. All you’ve done is show me how precious they are. You couldn’t have given me a better gift than bringing me together with Katie.”

It was as if I could see right into his soul with a sudden blinding clarity, and see the terrified angry child that lay at the heart of him. But I didn’t have any pity to give him, just a determination that I couldn’t let him hurt Katie again.

“All my life, I’ve been haunted by a poem by William Blake called “Endless Night”. The lines in it say;

“Some are born to sweet delight,

and some are born to endless night.”

All my life I’ve believed that, and been afraid that I was in the second group. But I don’t think the poem’s true anymore. We’re not born in one state or the other – we choose it for ourselves, irrespective of what our past is. You can kill me today – you probably will – but in the last two months you’ve shown me what my choice is. I choose to live and to love. My death can’t change that.”

His hand had dropped just a little more. Nearly, nearly. I try to brace myself to jump, and carry on speaking, in as even a tone as possible.

“But you, what have you done? You had everything people dream of - money, success, status, a loving family – but you’ve chosen to hate, to kill. It isn’t me you’ve destroyed, Ian, it’s yourself. You’re the one who lives in endless night.”

NOW! As he opens his mouth to reply, I fling myself through the air. His reactions were exceptionally quick, and he tried to spin away and raise the gun in one motion. There was a second bang, and I feel a mule kick me in the stomach.

But I was already in mid-air and my forward momentum carries me crashing into him. We both fall to the ground with a thud, with me on top of him. There was a clatter as the metal gun fell from his hand and bounced across the stone floor.

His hands are punching at me, gouging at my eyes, and then fastening tight around my throat to choke the life from me. I found that I could move my left arm, but all the strength seems to have drained out of me.

A darkness is closing in at the sides of my eyes. But then, overwhelming all else, from somewhere deep inside, came a hot, red rage. I grab hold of his head with both hands, oblivious to his choking grasp, lift it and then slam it back into the stone floor. His grip eases slightly, and then releases completely as I smash his head into the floor again.

Then the red mist descends. Again and again I took his head and pound it like an egg into the concrete. I must have been delirious because for a moment I was sure his face had changed into that of my grandfather. From somewhere in the distance, I could hear a child’s voice shouting “I hate you, I hate you!” over and over again.

Eventually the rage was satiated, and I look down at the empty staring eyes of the man that had been Ian Jacobs. The whole of the back of his head is completely caved in, and the floor it rests on is covered in a deep red pool, stained with specks of white.

I turn to the side and throw up, shaking uncontrollably. My shirt and jumper seemed soaked through with blood. In my confused state, I thought it was from his head but when I try to stand, I haven’t got enough energy or balance.

I fall headlong to the floor. A warm blackness is trying to enfold me, and I just want to close my eyes and rest for a while. But there was an insistent voice that wouldn’t let me. “Move!” It commanded. I use what little energy I have to crawl across the cold floor, hurting more with every step.

Somehow I reach the top of the stairs, and look down them in despair. They were too steep to be able to crawl down, and I was under no illusions that I had enough strength to be able to survive falling down. The urge to lie down became irresistible.

But still the voice wouldn’t leave me in peace. “Get help!” it shouted. But how? I lie in the doorway of the bell room, and my blurred vision settles upon the hanging bell rope. “Move!” I crawl up to it, and stretch up. The bottom of the rope is beyond my fingertips. I can’t reach any further. “Get IT!” Came the command, and I push myself to make what I knew would the last grab I had strength for.

My fingers close around the rope, and my falling weight pulls down on it. The agony as the bell’s movement pulls me upwards off my knees is excruciating. “Hold on!” said the irritating voice. With all of my strength I make myself hold the rope. As my weight pulls me down, and the rope lifts me up I imagined that I could hear a bell tolling in the far distance. Dong - Dong - Dong went it’s soothing lullaby

I’ve no idea how long it was, until I could hear a movement below in the doorway of the church. A voice calls, “Hello? Who’s up there?”

Then I watch as my fingers finally slip from the rope, before the blackness engulfs me at last.

EVIDENCE PRESENTED TO INTERNAL ENQUIRY WY05/32741:

EXTRACT FROM RECOVERED FILES OF DR. JENNIFER CARTER

Further Review - patient no 2306

Progress continues to be elusive. Patient has settled into a life which, although filled with other people and their problems, is marked by extreme emotional isolation. Although this may serve at present, my belief is that it merely adds to the strength of the repressed rage.

I continue to believe that there is a strong risk of violence, most likely directed towards self but, in the wrong circumstances, could result in the patient harming others. If the rage ever escapes the tight control the patient currently exercises, it is likely to be totally overwhelming.

At present, my aim is to encourage the patient to face the effect their behaviour is having on their own life, but with little success. I am also beginning to question how helpful patient’s job at the Crisis Centre really is for his own mental stability.

Epilogue

I walk down the long white corridor, my arm around the drip stand which will be my constant companion for the next few days. Its wheels squeak as it rolls beside me. The doctors tell me that I’m fortunate that the two bullets they took out of me – one from my shoulder and one from my stomach - missed doing any major internal damage. Once the churchwarden had phoned for an ambulance and the paramedics had made sure I wasn’t going to bleed to death, my survival wasn’t really in any doubt.

I turn the handle of the door to my right, and go in. Katie is lying in the bed, surrounded by an overwhelming array of technology, but still managing to look as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen. She is asleep, as she still is most of the time, but the medical opinion is that the worst is over and that in time she too will make a fairly full recovery. The skin grafts they’ve done will leave some scars, but at least she won’t have to spend the rest of her life branded with my name. When she’s been awake we’ve begun to talk – tentatively but hopefully – about facing the future together and trying to help each other recover from our own wounds.

I’m not stupid enough to think that it’s going to be easy, or to imagine that there still won’t be days when killing myself seems the most attractive prospect. But I have an extra truth to deal with now – the fact that when the easiest thing would have been to literally lie down and die I found that right at the core of me was a determination to survive – to refuse to be destroyed – to
live.
If Jennifer was here now, she’d probably say that it was that same core that had helped me survive the abuse in childhood, and never quite let me take the easy way out.

Besides all that, when I think of the future, I’m curious about how the story is going to develop. Can Katie and I make a go of things ? Will I ever manage to shape the ripples enough to be free of my childhood ? Or, as I tried to say to Ian, is it not so much about shaping them as choosing where you let them take you to ?

All I know is that for the first time in my life, I see the future as a place of possibility, rather than a curse. In a strange way, I have Ian Jacobs to thank for that new insight. And if (to borrow a line from the Terminator movies) the future is an uncharted highway then anything could be waiting just beyond the horizon. Today I want to live if for no other reason than to see what happens next.

Maybe that’s enough.

About the Author

Paul Wallington was born in Birkenhead and first trained as an accountant before leaving industry to become a vicar. Paul then went to work at a secondary school in Bolton, first as a pastoral assistant and then as school chaplain. His loves include family, travel, film and sports – although watching these days rather than playing!

Author’s Notes

The idea for this book started when I was working through my own breakdown. I read the observation that adults who have experienced abuse in childhood most commonly struggle to find a balance between two extremes. They either blame themselves, and go through life trying to make amends (often being very caring and loving to others but struggling to see any good in themselves) or - more rarely - they turn the anger outside and find their worth in having power and control over others.

It started me wondering – what if two people who had gone completely to each extreme met? How threatening would each find the other? And how dangerous might it be? That is where this book came from.

Thank you for reading it.