The Reckoning (13 page)

“Yes…You were in bed with who?” Donna
prompted him.

Joe continued to hesitate, and then, with a
sigh, he answered the question. “There’s a problem,” he admitted. “I was in bed
with Elizabeth Gardiner; she’s the mother of one of the students at the Dean
Stables.”

“I take it Mr Gardiner isn’t aware of where
his wife was last night,” Donna said, guessing what the situation was. She
didn’t really approve of people who had affairs, an opinion she had inherited
from her grandmother, but realised that it was none of her concern. Right then
her only concern was finding the person responsible for vandalising the Dean
Stables’ vehicles.

“No, he isn’t, and Elizabeth would rather he
didn’t find out that she was sleeping with me. As far as her husband knows, she
was in London visiting a friend. If he finds out, he’ll make her life hell.”

“Do you think Mrs Gardiner will confirm your
story?”

Despite his satisfaction of a moment ago, Joe
looked a little less happy then. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I know she
doesn’t want her husband to find out about us; she might deny being with me if
she thinks he’ll find out where she really was.”

“I’ll be as discreet as I can when I speak to
her,” Donna assured him, knowing that speaking to the lady couldn’t be avoided.
“Can you tell me how to contact Mrs Gardiner?”

Reluctantly, Joe provided the necessary
information; he hoped that Elizabeth would back him up, but suspected she would
keep quiet if talking was likely to endanger her marriage. He could understand
why, even if he didn’t like the possibility.

“Thank you, Mr Proud,” Donna said when she
had the information down in her notepad. “I’d suggest you stay where I can find
you, at least until I’ve been able to confirm your alibi.”

“Sure, whatever, I’m not going anywhere.” Joe
nodded agreeably. “Do you need anything else from me?” he asked. He was
fiddling with the pint glass before him in his impatience to get another drink.

*****

Jason couldn’t see Donna and her suspect from
his position near the door, nor could he hear what they were saying, but he
didn’t need to. He wasn’t really interested in the vandalism that Donna was
investigating, it wasn’t his case, he was only there in case anything went
wrong and Donna needed backup.

He was glad when Donna got to her feet and
left the pub, with no trouble occurring. Given that he still had a limp, more
than a dozen stitches in his forearm and was recovering from being shot, he
wasn’t sure how much use he would have been if her suspect had decided to cause
trouble or make a break for it.

While Donna left the pub, to go and do
whatever, Jason remained where he was. He had two reasons for doing so; he
didn’t really want to leave his second pint unfinished, and he wanted to see if
Donna’s suspect was going to do anything suspicious following her departure.

The first thing the young man did after Donna
left him at the booth was cross to the bar to get himself a fresh drink. He
then headed for the rear of the pub. After a conversation with his friend, he
returned to the game of pool that had been interrupted by Donna’s arrival.

Deciding that there was nothing for him to
worry about, especially since he was no longer a detective, Jason turned all of
his attention to the remains of his pint. He couldn’t delay getting the
shopping the he had bought home for too much longer, not if he wanted the
frozen food to remain that way.

TWENTY-FOUR

The moment he rounded the bend in the river,
and was out of sight of the bridge, Michael throttled back so he was no longer
racing along at a dangerous speed. Not only did he want to avoid crashing into
any other boats that might be on the river, he wanted to avoid drawing
unnecessary attention to himself.

With his speed reduced to a crawl of about
five miles an hour, Michael made his way upriver. He couldn’t have said why,
but he felt confident that the police would have a hard time finding or
catching him while he remained on the water. He couldn’t remain on there
forever, though; he needed somewhere to go, not least because he was thirsty
and would need food at some point.

The Green Man; seeing the sign on the bank
outside the pub resurrected a memory.

He had been to that pub several months
before; it had been one of the few occasions when he was able to persuade his
father to let him stay away overnight. His father had been extremely reluctant,
since it meant he wasn’t available to do his morning chores, but it was a
one-off, for his eighteenth birthday, so he had gone into town. After drinks at
The Green Man, he had spent the night at his friend’s place.

The memory the sign triggered gave Michael a
possible solution to his need for somewhere to rest up. That would allow him a
chance to come up with a plan of action for what and where he was going to go
and do.

His first instinct was to spin the wheel in
his hands and stop the boat at the pub; he quickly realised that the idea
wasn’t a good one. There were people at the tables outside the pub, which meant
someone might be able to point the police in the right direction to follow him,
once they discovered the boat. He preferred to avoid that possibility, if he
could, so he continued upriver past the pub.

When he reached a quiet stretch of the river,
where there were no boats moving in either direction and no properties visible,
he manoeuvred the boat he had stolen to the bank. Once he reached it, he shoved
the throttle forward and then quickly jumped out of the boat while it raced
away.

He stumbled as he landed, and almost fell
back into the river; he managed to regain his balance, just, and turned to
watch the boat. It bumped its way along the bank for a while before the nose
angled away and it raced upriver.

How long the boat would continue before it
crashed into something, another boat, or one of the banks, or it ran out of
fuel and began to drift back the way it had come with the current, he didn’t
know. He didn’t really care how long the boat continued for; all he cared about
was that what he had done would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the
police to figure out where he had abandoned it.

If they didn’t know where he had parted ways
with the boat, it would be hard for them to figure out where he was or where he
might be going.

After watching the boat for a moment, Michael
turned away and scrambled up the bank. He had a rough idea of where he was in
relation to the pub, and was confident that he could find his way from it to
his friend’s place. His friend lived quite close to The Green Man, as he
recalled.

Once at the top of the bank he wiped his
hands on his jeans, and then set off in the direction of The Green Man. Though
he had only gone about five or ten minutes further upriver in the boat after
passing the pub, it took him more than half an hour to get back to it on foot.
He was tempted to go in and have a drink, he felt a strong urge for a pint or five
of cider; he resisted though.

Having a drink would only waste some of the
small amount of money he had to his name, as well as giving the police
somewhere to track him from. He wanted to be seen by as few people as possible;
remaining unseen and undiscovered was the only hope he had of getting away and
staying out of jail.

His friend’s house proved to be further from
the pub than he remembered; he guessed his recollection of the previous
occasion when he made the journey had been distorted by drink. Not only was the
house further from the pub than he recalled, but he didn’t remember the route
as clearly as he thought he had.

*****

After two wrong turns and almost forty-five
minutes Michael reached his destination.

He looked around briefly but the street was
empty, save for himself, so he had no cause to worry about being spotted going
in there. He pushed open the gate and walked up the path; the garden was just
as untidy as he remembered it from his previous visit, though that didn’t
surprise him, his friend had never been interested in gardening or in tidying.

Though he was confident that his friend was
home, since his car was there, Michael had to ring the doorbell three times,
and wait for almost five minutes before the front door opened.

“WHAT?!”

Michael wasn’t surprised by the annoyance in
his friend’s voice; he was naked but for a towel, and the handbag on the end of
the banister gave Michael a pretty good indication of why his friend was naked
and annoyed. He wouldn’t have been too happy if someone had disturbed him while
he was having sex.

“Sorry, Andy,” he apologised. “I didn’t mean
to disturb you, I wasn’t even sure you were home, but I’m in trouble and need
somewhere to lay low for a while. Can you help me out?”

Andy looked at his friend for a moment, the
expression on his face suggested that he was strongly tempted to tell Michael
to ‘fuck off’, he didn’t though. “Fine!” he said, stepping back to let his
friend in. “Kitchen’s through there,” he pointed down the passage, “and the
living room’s there; help yourself to whatever you want.” With that, he turned
and made his way upstairs, without even bothering to ask Michael what trouble
he was in; he had other things on his mind just then, namely the naked girl in
his bed, who he had been enthusiastically fucking prior to being disturbed by
the doorbell.

While his friend made his way upstairs,
Michael headed down the passage to the kitchen. His first thought was to get
himself a drink, and he followed that up with a snack; one way and another he
had burned through a lot of calories since getting up. Somehow, he had used
even more calories than he did working on the farm, which he wouldn’t have
thought possible.

When he had his drink and a snack he settled
himself in the living room in front of the T.V.; tucked down the side of his
leg, where he could get at it easily should he need to, was a knife from the
kitchen. Taking the knife was pure instinct; he wanted a weapon to hand in case
anything happened, and so he had taken it when he found it in a drawer while
making his sandwich.

Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, he
turned the T.V. on and began flicking through the channels in search of the
news. He wanted to get some idea of what the police knew, and how close to
finding him they were. Not very close, he hoped.

To his frustration, Michael discovered that
his friend didn’t have cable or satellite television. All he had was the five
terrestrial channels, none of which were showing the news. Since there was no
news for him to watch, he sat back and sipped at the beer he had taken from the
fridge while he tried to come up with a plan of action.

He needed to figure out somewhere he could go
where the police wouldn’t find him. He needed to figure out some way of getting
there, and he needed some idea of what he was going to do for money and
survival when he got there.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Constable; it’s Constable Harp, isn’t it?”

Donna did her best to ignore the person
calling her name; even if she hadn’t been warned against speaking to anyone about
the investigation by DI Anderson she would have avoided the news crews as best
she could. That was until…

“Since you’re the officer who arrested him,
prior to his escape, what do you have to say to the news that Michael Davis has
kidnapped a child?”

Donna stopped in her tracks, stunned. “I beg
your pardon?” She turned back to the reporter, who was closer than she’d
expected. “Michael’s kidnapped a kid?” Despite what she knew Michael had done,
the news of his latest act shocked her.

“I take it, Constable, that you were not
aware of what Michael Davis has done,” the attractive reporter said, the
microphone in her hand held out to catch any response that might be
forthcoming, while her cameraman stood a short distance away, his camera
focused on both her and Constable Harp.

“No.” Donna shook her head. “I haven’t been
given any news since I was told Michael escaped custody. When and where did he
kidnap a kid?” she asked, wondering if there were any limits to what Michael,
whom she had previously thought if not well of, then at least positively of,
would do.

“Apparently he pulled a woman from her car at
a set of traffic lights and took the car, her child was asleep in the back at
the time. Do you think Mr Davis will harm the boy?” the reporter wanted to
know.

Donna hesitated for a moment and then
shrugged. “I have no idea,” she admitted. “After everything he’s done recently,
I’m not sure there’s anything he won’t do.”

“And what has he done? According to the
information my colleagues and I have received, Michael Davis was arrested this
morning, by you I believe, Constable, on several counts of rape and murder, and
then escaped when he was taken to hospital. Is that true?”

*****

Justin walked down the dirt path at the side
of Jason Denton’s house. When he reached the ruined farmhouse he walked through
the open gate into the yard.

For several long minutes he stood in the
middle of the yard, taking in his surroundings. There wasn’t much to see; in
front of him was the ruined farmhouse where Jessica Davis and Melanie Nelson
had been found, ravaged by time, and a fire that had taken place at some point
in the past. The front door hung off its hinges, all the windows that he could
see were broken, and most of the roof was missing. It looked to him as if it
had collapsed in on the house’s first floor.

Also visible was a barn, though Justin could
only see a corner of it from where he was standing. He wasn’t all that
interested in the barn just then, so he paid it little attention. The farmhouse
was what interested him; reaching into the bag he’d collected from his car he
took out his camera. He wasn’t a professional photographer, by any stretch of
the imagination, but he could handle the camera well enough to suit his needs.

He started by taking a series of pictures of
the dirt path, the yard, and then the exterior of the farmhouse. He made sure
to capture every detail of the building he could; he even switched settings to
take several pictures in black and white, which he hoped would add atmosphere.
He then moved inside, taking more photos as he went; he was glad he didn’t have
to go any further than the living room, one look at the stairs left him
suspecting that they would collapse if he were to try and ascend them.

Once he had taken all the pictures he felt
were necessary, including several close-ups of the bloodstains on the floor, he
put the camera away and took out his Dictaphone.

“As if the crimes he committed weren’t
horrific enough,” he began, “Michael Davis seems to have found the perfect
place to bring his victims; this ruined farmhouse, the victim of a fire at some
time in the past, looks so perfect for the nightmarish acts committed within
its walls that one might think it a set from a horror movie…”

In as much detail as he could, Justin
described not just the physicality of the farmhouse, but the atmosphere as
well. When he wrote his article – he hoped he would be able to make a book out
of the story – he wanted to be able to make the readers feel as though they
were right there, standing in the place where Michael Davis had committed his
crimes.

Once he was finished in the living room
Justin made a quick tour of the rest of the downstairs, which consisted of a
dining room, a kitchen and a walk-in pantry. A door in the passage revealed a
black hole that led down, he presumed, to a cellar; given the lack of light and
the state of the rest of the house, he decided against taking a look down
there. He imagined there was nothing in the cellar worth seeing, at least in
regard to the Michael Davis case, though he was sure the atmosphere down there
would enhance his story.

He headed outside after that. There was no
particular reason for him to look around the rest of the yard, he didn’t expect
to see or find anything, but he believed in being thorough.

There was a pen of some sort in the far
corner, but it contained nothing of interest. The barn, however, did. The
moment he stepped over the threshold he knew he had found something the police
had missed, something that could make all the difference to his story.

In an instant he had his camera out and was
taking pictures of the length of rope that hung from a beam in the middle of
the barn. What the rope had been used for, he didn’t like to think.

After talking half a dozen pictures he began
a careful search of the barn for anything else that might have been missed by
the police. It didn’t take him long to find something, which wasn’t a surprise
since there was little in the barn other than a small amount of decaying hay,
or it might have been straw, he didn’t really know.

He took pictures of what he had found, being
careful not to disturb it, and then made his way out of the barn.
Automatically, he reached a hand into his pocket for his phone, he stopped when
he had it in his hand, though. As he looked down at his phone he realised that
he didn’t have a clue what the number for the local police station was. He was
sure he could find the number but decided it was a better idea for him to go
back to Jason Denton’s. With a bit of luck, he thought, he could kill two birds
with one stone.

*****

“Mr Denton?”

Jason was just digging his keys out of his
pocket when his name was called. Immediately he turned to see who wanted him.
“Yes, that’s me,” he said. He didn’t recognise the man before him as anyone
from the village, and that made him wonder who he was, and why he was there.
“Can I help you?”

“Justin Over, I’m a freelance journalist,” he
introduced himself, holding out his hand as he approached. “I’d like to speak
to you about recent events in the village, if I may, but first, I need to call
the local police station, if you have the number. I’ve found something they
need to know about.”

“Such as?” Jason asked curiously. He had no
interest in talking to a journalist, freelance or otherwise, but realised there
was a possibility the man before him had discovered something important. Not
that he could imagine what that might be.

“I think it best if I tell that to the local
police,” Justin said. “Sorry, but they might not want the information spread
any further than necessary; it might prove to be important evidence.”

Jason shrugged. “Fair enough, you’d better
come in.” He took out his keys and unlocked the door, he then made his way
inside with his bags of shopping. “Lily,” he called out. “Ah, there you are,”
he said when she appeared from the living room. “This is Justin Over.” He
nodded behind him. “He’s a freelance journalist…”

“I know, he was here earlier,” Lily said, her
voice, the expression on her face, and her body language, all proclaiming how
unhappy she was to see him. “He wanted to talk to you, and to Lucy.”

“We’ll worry about that in a bit, apparently
he needs to speak to the police; I’d guess that’s more important than speaking
to me,” Jason said. He made his way through to the kitchen where he set his
shopping on the counter; that done, he took out his mobile phone and rang the
police station, at the same time he flicked the switch on the kettle.

“Donna, it’s Jason,” he said when his call
was diverted from the station to the constable’s phone and she answered.