DECOY (Kindle Single) (6 page)

Eleven

The heavy, old-fashioned
switch flipped with a
clunk
and the basement was lit up by the cobwebbed glow of a single naked bulb overhead.

Kate screamed again.

Hayley was sitting upright on a high-backed wooden chair, looking at her with a detached, blank expression. Her hands were clasped limply in her lap. Her wrists had been bound with thin cord. Her ankles were fastened to the legs of the chair. A broad leather strap, like the strap from an old steamer trunk, was wrapped around her middle binding her to the backrest of the chair, and another was looped across her forehead. Her body was covered in open gashes and puncture wounds from the knife that had hacked and chopped and sliced into her flesh, ten times, twenty times, fifty stab wounds. Her face, her neck, her arms, her chest, her stomach, her legs. Spatters and rivulets and smudges of blood all over her skin. Every fibre of her tattered clothes saturated. Red dribbles snaking down the legs of the chair to pool at her feet, where it ran down a channel in the concrete floor to an iron drain cover.

Behind Hayley’s chair were four others. They weren’t empty. The four women tied to them had been dead for longer than she had. One was naked, her body shrivelled and pitiful, grimy brown hair hanging down over her face. Another was grotesquely swollen and livid with decay. It hadn’t been just the rats that Kate could smell down here. The remnants of clothing that hung from the woman’s corpse, encrusted with black blood, had once been lacy underwear. She was still wearing the stiletto shoes she’d had on when he’d brought her back here.

To one side of the chairs was a long, scarred wooden table. On its surface lay a coil of the same thin cord that had been used to bind Hayley’s wrists, and a long-bladed pair of scissors. A hammer with wisps of brown hair entangled in its claw. A crooked cast-iron fire poker. A butane-powered blowtorch and a box of matches. A butcher’s knife, smeared with blood. A rusty carpenter’s saw with a plastic handle. It was a set of torture implements. To the rear of the table, a grimy old chest freezer stood against the wall. Whatever might be inside was too terrible to imagine.

Kate dropped to her knees and felt her stomach heave and the hot, salty tears well up in her eyes. She ground them shut and the tears flooded down her cheeks. ‘Hayley,’ she whimpered.

And then the grinding, rumbling, squealing clatter resonated through the basement ceiling as the lift started coming down.

Kate snapped her eyes open. She raised herself up from the floor and saw the bottom of the lift emerging from the shaft. He was coming.

She glanced up the stairwell towards the basement door with a knot in her throat, knowing she couldn’t make a run for it. Not with her ankle so badly twisted. He’d be on top of her before she made it halfway up the steps. There was no time to hide, barely time even to think as the noise of the lift’s relentless descent filled the basement. Down it came, inch by creaking, juddering inch. She could see his shoes. Then the bottoms of his trouser legs. Now she could see his knees.

Kate limped past the chairs, refusing to look at what was in them. Snatched the cast-iron poker from the table. She refused to think about what it had been used for, too. All she could think about was the lift coming down and the distance between her and the cage door. Could she make it?

She grabbed the hammer as well, then turned from the table and ran. The pain was too much. She cried out and stumbled, fell to her knees and crawled desperately towards the cage door, the hammer in her right hand, the poker in her left, dragging and scraping them along the floor as she went.

The lift kept coming. He was visible up to his chest. Then to his neck; and then she saw his face, one side smeared with blood below the gash on his cheekbone where she’d hit him.

The lift reached the bottom with a final judder. Geoffrey smiled.

And Kate threw herself the last couple of feet to the cage door, slammed it tight shut with her shoulder and with her left hand rammed the poker through the holes in the two welded lugs. It slid through easily, blocking the door shut like a long iron bolt. But it could still be pulled back out from inside the cage. It had to be bent into a twisted loop to stop him from simply withdrawing it and opening the door. She lashed at it with the hammer, and missed. Geoffrey had realised what she was trying to do. He stepped quickly off the lift platform and thrust a hand through the bars, grabbing at one end of the poker to slide it out of the hole. She lashed out once more with the hammer, and felt it crush one of his fingers. He let out a shriek and pulled away, bending double, clasping his injured hand between his legs. ‘Oh, you bitch! I’ll rip your guts out!’

Kate swung the hammer again, and this time she caught the end of the poker dead on, bending it into a slight U. She hit it again, again, again. Sparks flew from the impacts. The sound pierced her ears. She didn’t stop beating the poker until it was bent almost into a hoop. Now, it was impossible to draw out of the padlock hole. No way he could open that door.

She stood up, breathless and sweating, her hair plastered over her face. Still clutching the hammer, she began to turn towards the stairs. She had to find Charlie and get away from this place, and call the police …

‘Think you can escape from me, do you?’ Geoffrey screamed. He thrust his uninjured hand through the bars. It was clutching the gun, pointing it right at her. Now Kate could see it clearly, a massive double-barrelled thing like a sawn-off shotgun. The twin muzzles were wobbling in a circle as he tried to hold the weapon steady. His teeth were bared in hatred.

She flung the hammer. It was a lucky throw, propelled with all the rage and fury of a desperate mother driven to protect her child. It whirled through the air and hit the gun with a metallic clang, knocking it out of his grip. The heavy double-barrelled pistol fell to the floor on her side of the cage. Geoffrey dropped to his knees in sudden panic, pushed his arm through the bars and tried to reach it. Seeing that the gun was almost within his grasp, Kate stumbled forwards and sent it scraping across the floor with a kick. He tried to make a grab for her through the bars, and she caught hold of his wrist in both hands and gripped it with all her strength and threw her weight backwards, trapping his elbow between the metal bars and levering it back the wrong way. There was a crackling and a popping of cartilage. He screamed. She pulled harder, felt the sickening snap of the bone and the joint going suddenly loose. His scream became shrill.

Kate let go of him. She turned and started hobbling for the stairs, leaving him to writhe and squeal in agony. The police would know how to deal with him, later.

With gritted teeth she hauled herself up the steps.
To hell with the pain. Find Charlie.

She made it to the top of the stairs, unlocked the door and limped and hobbled across the warehouse, using pieces of furniture for support. She found the light switch, and overhead neons flickered once and then flooded the huge room and its contents. A padlock hung open from the lift cage door on the ground floor. She pressed it shut and it locked with a click. Then looked around her, breathing hard, dizzy with pain and horror.

Where was he? Where was her boy?

He’s sitting here right beside me
, Geoffrey had said.

Near the phone. So where was the phone?

I can see anyone approaching from my office window.

The figure she’d seen at the upstairs window.

The office. Charlie was in the office on the upper floor.

Kate soon found the doorway to the stairs. Her ankle was excruciatingly painful, making her cry out at every step. The bare wooden staircase was narrow and steep. She lost a shoe halfway up, and didn’t try to go back for it. At the top, she found herself on a landing with a door either side of her. Directly in front of her was the top of the lift cage. Another padlock dangled from the open door. She stumbled over to it, crashed it shut and pressed the lock home. That was it. Now he was well and truly trapped in the shaft, like a caged animal.

‘
Charlie!?
’ she yelled, her voice hoarse with panic.

No reply. Where was he?

Kicking off her second shoe, she limped to the nearest door and flung it open. It was the office. A big old-fashioned desk, leather chairs, an antique wooden filing cabinet. No Charlie.

She turned with a groan and hobbled to the other door, which was opaque glass from top to bottom. She tried the handle. The door was locked.

Kate limped back to pick up her fallen shoe. She gripped it by its pointy toe and used the heel to smash the glass, whacking repeatedly until the pane was falling out of the frame. She tossed the shoe away and stepped through the door’s jagged remains.

The other side of it was a small store-room, with a single window overlooking the front of the building. The phone lay on a padded window seat.

And sitting in a chair nearby was Charlie. He was alive, unharmed. Barefoot and in his pyjamas, bound and gagged and staring wide-eyed at the doorway. All he could see of her was a blur, she knew that. But he’d heard her voice, and the terror in his face was mixed with relief and joy.

‘Charlie!’ Kate blinked away the tears and hurriedly overstepped the mess of broken glass in her bare feet. She undid his gag first, telling him that mummy was here now and that he was safe and that they were leaving this place and that everything was going to be all right. She found a box cutter on a shelf and used it to slice away the cord holding him to the chair, then held him for a moment or two, more tightly than she’d ever held him in his life.

‘We have to go now.’

‘Where’s Hayley?’

She swallowed. ‘He can’t hurt her.’

‘Can he hurt us?’

‘No, Charlie. Mummy won’t let him do that. Come on.’ She lifted him in her arms and carried him carefully through the smashed door. He was getting too big to carry any distance.

‘Mummy, why are you walking funny?’

‘Mummy’s hurt her ankle, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.’

Kate limped down the stairs, keeping her body turned sideways-on for fear of overbalancing with Charlie’s weight in her arms. She didn’t want to worry him by crying out in pain, so she bit her lip to force herself to keep quiet. They reached the bottom of the stairs and Kate retraced her agonising steps towards the doorway, Charlie’s arms wrapped tight around her neck. The pain was making her feel faint. The car was just outside. Just a little bit further …

Kate was just five feet from the door when it opened.

She almost passed out with shock. ‘Oh, my God.’

A cloud had passed over the face of the moon, shrouding it like a black shadow. Standing in the dark entrance was a figure.

Twelve

It was a
moment before Kate realised that the shadowy figure in the doorway wasn’t Geoffrey, and her heart started to beat again. It was somebody smaller, slimmer. And female. The unexpected visitor stepped into the light. She was wearing linen trousers and a summery jacket. Her yellow Lotus Evora was parked in the yard behind her.

‘Julie! Thank God.’

Julie Hawkins didn’t speak. She was looking at Kate in amazement, taking in the dishevelled, battered state of her. Looking at Charlie clasped in her arms. Kate’s own initial relief at seeing her client standing there was quickly dissolving into surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

Julie Hawkins still said nothing. She took another step inside the doorway.

‘You mustn’t come into this place,’ Kate warned her, and she couldn’t stop the tears as she spoke. ‘Please listen to me. It’s … he’s … your husband’s …’

‘Where is he?’ Julie Hawkins asked in a tight voice.

‘I locked him in the lift shaft. He’s sick, Julie. He’s done terrible things. I have to get the police.’

‘Is he hurt?’

‘I … his arm. I think I broke it. Please – don’t go in there. Come with me. We’ll go to the police together.’

Without taking her eyes off Kate, Julie Hawkins reached behind her and shut the door. Then she reached under her jacket and drew out a small black hatchet.

Kate stared at her, unbelieving. She clutched Charlie even more tightly and took a step back.

‘You understand now,’ Julie Hawkins said. The hatchet blade looked razor sharp.

‘You’re in it together. You—’

Julie Hawkins nodded. ‘That’s right. I love my husband. And he loves me. As if he’d ever have anything to do with the likes of
you!
’ She spat out the last word with a grimace of hate.

‘Oh my God. What have you done? You’re both insane.’

‘Insane, because we listen when God tells us to do His work? Insane, for ridding the world of scum like you, and your sluttish friend, and your bastard spawn?’ Julie Hawkins advanced another step, clutching the weapon in a white-knuckle grip and pointing the blade at Kate. ‘You’re no better than the rest of those whores down there, and all the ones buried in those woods.’ She waved the hatchet. ‘Better get ready to join them.’

‘You set this whole thing up to trap me,’ Kate murmured. Charlie’s head was buried against her neck. She could feel him shaking with terror.

‘Oh yes. And you walked right into it, didn’t you? Pimping yourself out like a bitch in heat.’

‘I was trying to help my son. He needs an operation.’

Julie Hawkins gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘You think I’d believe any of your lies, whore? I know exactly who you are. Look at you. You’re the one who’s sick. You’re the one who’s done terrible things.
Dressed in purple and scarlet, glittering with gold and precious stones and pearls.
’

Kate realised she was quoting words from scripture. She was even more deranged than her husband.

‘She held a cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The great whore, the whore of Babylon.
You temptress, you devil, you shall be punished.’

Kate backed away two more steps. ‘I’m not a prostitute. But if I was, what right does that give you to kill me? Put the axe down. Please! Let us go.’

‘God’s word is what makes it right,’ Julie Hawkins said. ‘And His bidding will be done.’

Then she rushed at Kate, the hatchet raised. With Charlie in her arms, Kate couldn’t move quickly enough. She saw the blade come swinging down out of the air. Felt the impact like a flash of white light, and she was gone.

It was the sensation of movement that woke her. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused. Her ankle hurt like hell, but her head was exploding with pain. Her heels were dragging along the ground. She couldn’t move her arms. Her senses swam into focus, and she cried out as she saw the figures of Julie and Geoffrey Hawkins above her. Each of them had hold of one of her wrists. Hauling her across the basement floor. Geoffrey’s broken arm was in a makeshift sling. His face was pale and bloodstained, his hair in disarray, his eyes wild. ‘You little trollop, you’ll be sorry you did this to me.’

‘Charlie,’ she groaned. ‘Where’s Charlie?’

Julie Hawkins said sharply, ‘Shut up, whore.’

They let go of her arms and she flopped to the floor. Her eyes rolled shut. Dizziness washed over her, the darkness rising again for a moment. The voices above her sounded echoey and distant.

‘Do you want to do her, or shall I?’

‘You do her this time. My arm hurts. Oh, it hurts so much.’

‘You’ll have to see a doctor.’

‘Later. Help me get her in the chair. I want to see this slut die.’

‘Let me get something to tie her with first. She’ll struggle. They always do.’

Kate heard the scrape of chair legs on the rough cement. She opened her eyes and blinked, her vision blurring and sharpening in waves. She craned her neck to look upwards. The cobwebbed bulb was directly above her. By its dirty yellow light she could see the two figures turned towards the table, with their backs to her. Julie Hawkins was impatiently unravelling a length of cord that had got tangled and knotted. Her husband was leaning against the wall, head bowed, breathing hard and moaning softly in pain.

Where was Charlie?

Kate closed her eyes again. She felt so weak. She could hardly move without starbursts of pain shooting through her head, crippling her. If the Hawkins woman had hit her with the sharp edge of the hatchet blade, she’d have killed her there and then. She’d used the blunt edge because they wanted to take their time cutting her up slowly. Like they’d done to Hayley. Like they’d do to Charlie—

That thought made her open her eyes wide. She battled to focus. The couple were still over by the table. But they wouldn’t be there for long. Any moment now …

Kate’s hazy vision swept over the floor. She could see pits and ripples in the roughly-laid concrete. Spots of dried blood, dirt and dust and rat droppings scattered here and there like little black olive pips. A spider scuttling out from underneath an old bottled gas heater.

A fallen claw hammer.

And not far away from the hammer, lying in the dust, another object apparently forgotten about.

It was the gun. It was only about ten feet away.

Kate’s breath hissed from her lips. She glanced back at the couple. They weren’t looking at her. Gritting her teeth against the pain that jolted through her head, she rolled herself up onto her knees and elbows and began to crawl. Slowly, slowly at first; then she dared to crawl a little faster, until the gun was just five feet away from her outstretched right hand.

The angry shout almost stopped her heart. Julie Hawkins had spotted her. The two of them were turning and striding towards her.

Kate scrambled the rest of the way to the fallen gun. Her fingers closed on its wooden handle, her arm muscles tensed and she jerked its weight up off the floor and simultaneously rolled on her back and sat up and swung the gun sideways through the air to point at them as they came racing towards her. Their eyes and mouths were opening, the realisation hitting them:
too late
.

The gun felt huge and nose-heavy in Kate’s hand, the weight of the thick barrels wanting to tip it down towards the floor. She sat up straighter, blinked to clear her vision, and brought her other arm up to steady the weapon in a double-handed grip. It had two curved swan-neck hammers and two thin triggers, one behind the other. An antique weapon, maybe an old relic that someone had turned up in their attic and which had landed in the Hawkins’ hands, still in working order after all these years.

One shot gone, one to go. Or so she hoped. Kate curled her index finger around a trigger and squeezed. Nothing happened. The trigger wouldn’t budge.

Julie Hawkins let out another furious shout. She had the butcher’s knife in her hand. She raised it—

And Kate found the second trigger and wrapped her finger tight around it and pulled and felt it go back and saw the second hammer drop.

The gun’s report was incredibly loud in the confines of the basement. Its recoil lifted the muzzle high, with a fiery flash and a billow of white smoke. Through the aftershock of the blast came first a woman’s piercing scream, then a man’s yell of horror.

The second barrel had discharged straight into Julie Hawkins’ face as she charged towards Kate with the knife. It must have been filled with some kind of loose shotgun load. The pellets had exploded from the muzzle in a conical spray of devastation. Julie Hawkins had been thrown backwards and was lying on the floor. The top of her head had been blown off. Blood was spattered all over the walls, all over the concrete and all over her husband, who was falling to his knees with an animal howl to bend over his dead wife.

Kate staggered to her feet and ran straight past him, ignoring the pain of her injuries. She made it to the basement steps, gripped the iron handrail and willed herself up them, two at a time. The door at the top was wide open. She burst through it. The key was gone. Impossible to lock him in. But that didn’t matter – all that mattered was her boy, and she was certain she knew where they’d taken him. She made it across the brightly-lit warehouse to the stairs leading to the upper floor.

‘
Charlie!
’

‘Mummy!’ The cry came from the storeroom. The bastards had tied him up again, but they’d forgotten to gag him this time. Or else they hadn’t thought they would need to.

‘I’m coming, baby!’ she shouted as she worked her way up the stairs.

She never heard him coming after her. Had no idea of his presence coming up behind her until she was right on the edge of the landing and a strong hand caught her by the hair and almost jerked her back off her feet. She fell heavily and felt the impact knock the wind out of her. Then he was on the landing, towering over her. His foot drew back and lashed forwards. The brutal kick hit her in the left kidney. She screamed and curled into a ball, writhing and rolling from side to side.

‘
Mummy!
’

Geoffrey roared with fury and kicked her again, catching her hard in the stomach this time. He reached down with his good arm and grabbed her hair. Dragged her to her feet and sent her sprawling through the open door into the office. She collapsed on her face, wheezing and coughing.

‘
Mummy!
’

‘I’m going to take you apart piece by piece,’ Geoffrey’s voice rasped in her ear. ‘And your boy’s going to watch, but you’ll still be alive when I make
you
watch what I do to
him
.’

He dug his hand in her hair again. Wrapped it and rolled it around in his fist and yanked her violently to her knees, then kicked her again in the chest. She could taste blood in her mouth as she flew backwards and crashed into the wooden filing cabinet with such force that it overbalanced and toppled down over her. Its drawers slid out, hit the floor and spilled papers and receipts and money across the varnished boards.

Money
. Kate saw the bundles of banknotes tumble like bricks from the drawer they’d been neatly stacked in. Two or three of the stacks split open as they hit the floor, twenties and fifties bursting all over the place in a cloud of paper like feathers exploding from a ruptured pillow. She rolled and slithered in the mess, trying to get to her feet. He laughed. Stepped over to her and grabbed her by the neck and launched her towards the opposite wall. She managed to twist and avoid slamming into it with her head. Fell to her hands and knees and crawled out of the office, back out onto the landing. She could see Charlie through the smashed glass of the storeroom door.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Kate?’

She screamed as he fell on her with his knees, crushing her to the floorboards. Even one-armed, he was too strong to resist as he rolled her over and pinned her with his legs and clamped his hand around her throat.

He was going to strangle her. Right in front of her child. For the one and only time in her life, Kate was glad that Charlie was going blind.

Then she realised that Geoffrey wasn’t going to strangle her. Not yet.

He was going to rape her first. He slapped her twice and then his hand went to his belt, yanking at the buckle. He wrenched down his zipper, and then he was tugging at her skirt, which had ridden up her legs. He wedged them roughly apart with his knees and slapped her again.

‘You want it, whore? Of course you do.’ He lowered himself on top of her, so close that she could smell his dead wife’s blood on him. She fought and kicked and tried to bite him, but he was heavy and powerful.

‘
Mummy!
’

Geoffrey kissed her. She spat and twisted her head away from him, and that was when she saw the red high-heeled shoe lying there in the middle of the landing floor.

‘I’m going to enjoy this,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Not as much as I am,’ Kate replied. Then she gripped the shoe by its pointy toe and hit him in the neck with all her strength. The long, tapered heel punctured his flesh like a spike. She drew it out and a fountain of blood spurted from the wound. He cried out and instinctively clapped his hand to his neck to stifle the flow, but with only one arm to support him he fell down on top of her. She felt hot blood spray all over her face. Wrestled him violently off her and managed to roll him over onto his back, and then hit him with the shoe again. The heel punctured his eye. His screaming was continuous now, like the death agony of a stuck pig. She knelt astride him and hit him again, and again, and again. Cheek. Forehead. Throat. There was a gurgling rasp as the heel stabbed into his windpipe. Blood spattered and bubbled from his mouth. Her face and hair were dripping with it.

It took a long and terrible ninety seconds for Geoffrey Hawkins’ struggles to diminish. Another minute after that before Kate realised he was dead. She spat in his face and staggered to her feet. She could hardly feel the pain now as she stepped across the bloody landing and through the broken storeroom door, to Charlie.

It was over, and it wasn’t. When Charlie was free and they’d held each other close long enough, Kate limped back into the office. There was a supermarket bag in a corner, with coffee and tea-making supplies in it. She spilled them out, then gathered up all the money she could squeeze into the bag. She wasn’t trying to count. She didn’t have to. There was easily ten thousand pounds there in antique cash sales the Hawkinses must have been keeping from the taxman. Maybe more. Enough to pay for Charlie’s operation twice over, with change.