Last Rites Read online

  He held one hand before him and was glad to see that he’d stopped shaking. At least for the time being.

  Confrontation

  The light was fading rapidly.

  The battered torch was now supplying just a glimmer of sickly yellow to guide the man through the impenetrably dark tunnel. He knew that it would last only a few more moments and then he would have to hurry on in pitch darkness, unable to see anything, able only to guide himself along by feeling the cold stone walls of the culvert.

  And, behind him, whoever was following him was close. He guessed less than twenty yards. Perhaps, he thought, if he managed to reach one of the side tunnels he could hide in there, wait until his pursuer had passed. It was all he could think of. His only other choice was to run as fast as he could on his already aching legs, on one ankle he knew he had twisted badly and possibly even broken. Either way he knew he had very little chance of escaping this underground labyrinth alive.

  The thought sent a cold shiver the full length of his spine and when he tried to swallow he found that his throat was too dry. He shook the torch again, trying to bully it into supplying him with more light but it was useless. He could only see a few feet ahead now.

  He splashed through another deep puddle and stumbled again, almost lost his footing but somehow remained upright.

  Behind him, his pursuer didn’t seem to be having any difficulty with the slippery ground or with the impenetrable darkness. With each passing second the sounds from behind him grew louder. The other figure down there with him drew nearer.

  The man gripped the spade more tightly. Perhaps, he thought, he would have a chance to use it.To swing it as hard as he could in the confines of the tunnel. One last chance to save himself.

  The torch went out again.

  ‘No, no,’ he gasped under his breath and he shook it once more. It flared briefly, the brilliance of the beam restored for fleeting seconds before the cloying sickly yellow of the dying bulb returned. He hurried on, hands scraping against the bare walls so hard in places that he lost the skin from his knuckles. The pain from his ankle grew worse. His lungs felt as if they were on fire.

  He tripped and fell once again, landing hard on his hands. He rolled over, trying to get to his feet, the last light that the torch had to offer now fading in the blackness like a candle in a high wind.

  ‘God help me,’ he panted, close to tears now.

  Behind him, his pursuer was within fifteen feet.

  The man raised the torch and aimed the dying beam in that direction. As he did, the feeble beam illuminated the other presence in the culvert.

  The man began to scream. Roars of frustration, pain and terror filled the subterranean tunnel. Any thoughts he had of fighting back were gone.

  There would be no point. Not now. Not in view of what faced him.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ he shrieked.

  His screams reverberated off the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.

  Finally, the torch went out for good.

  The screaming man couldn’t see the one who stood over him any more.

  And perhaps that was just as well.

  17

  Walston, Buckinghamshire

  From the road, the cottage was almost hidden by trees. It was accessible only by a narrow dirt driveway and an even narrower path bordered on both sides by a lawn that was in need of a good trim. Weeds had begun to poke up through the cracks in the path.

  The building itself was in relatively good condition. The stonework had been well maintained, the roof re-tiled only two years earlier and a new front door fitted less than a month ago. The wooden porch needed a coat of creosote and the windows of the dwelling could have done with some fresh paint around their frames but little else would have caught the eye of a visitor.

  There was a one-car garage to the side of the cottage. The door was padlocked and held even more firmly shut by a rusty chain.

  There was a small garden to the front of the property, a larger one to the rear. In this bigger back garden, laid mostly to lawn but with some untended flowerbeds too, there was also a small wooden shed and a greenhouse. Several of the panes were broken and had been replaced with pieces of thick Cellophane secured with gaffer tape.There were four tables inside the transparent structure but they supported only empty flower pots. When the wind blew strongly the panes rattled in their frames and the door of the greenhouse moved gently back and forth on rusted hinges, sometimes banging against the frame so hard that the glass threatened to shatter.

  The rear garden was enclosed by high privet hedges on two sides and a drystone wall on the other. Standing at the bottom of the garden, any visitor would have been able to look over the wall towards the town of Walston itself, less than a mile away by car.

  Inside the cottage, the same view was available from the window of the main bedroom. From the study window, also to the rear of the structure, the garden was visible. The study had been added, almost as an afterthought, in the 1930s but had been maintained well and appeared a natural extension of the main building. It was a small annexe that held a large wooden desk and some bookshelves. There was an antique-looking television aerial propped on the tiled roof.

  The study led off from the small hallway and the living room.This was a much larger room from which the stairs rose at the far end, the bottom step close to the door of the kitchen. Upstairs, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large attic, accessible via a pull-down ladder, completed the complement of rooms.

  The cellar ran beneath the entire extent of the house. There was a trapdoor opening in the kitchen that could be pulled up and, beneath it, a set of bare stone steps led down into the subterranean gloom below.This blackness was dissipated by a single unshaded bulb that hung in the centre of the ceiling, accessed by a switch close to the cellar entrance but, even when the light was on, there were shadows it wouldn’t penetrate.

  Areas of darkness and hidden corners that hid their secrets from prying eyes.

  18

  North London

  ‘But Pete, this is crazy. You don’t even know if you’re going to get any of the jobs you’ve applied for and, even if you do, you’ve got to find somewhere to live.’ Natalie Mason shook her head and shrugged then let out a long sigh.‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through at all.’

  Mason sipped from his glass and looked at her evenly. The smell of their Chinese food was still heavy in the air, the plates still on the small kitchen table.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Mason told her, lifting his wine glass to his lips. ‘I’ll find a job.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that you will but I just don’t think you’ll get one as easily and as quickly as you think. It could be weeks before you hear from some of these schools. Even longer before you even get an interview and then you’ve got to get the job.’

  Mason held up a hand to silence her.

  ‘Well, all I can do is wait, isn’t it?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘And what do you do while you wait? You’ve got to have money coming in. You can’t just sit around.’

  Mason shrugged.

  ‘I’ll find something to do,’ he insisted. ‘Something’s always turned up in the past.’

  ‘You’ve been lucky, Pete.Your luck might have run out.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  ‘You know what I mean. There are plenty of other teachers out there looking for work. Why not go back to the school where you were teaching?’

  He cut her short.

  ‘So your suggestion is that I return to the place where the little fuckers who almost killed me still go? Let them laugh at me every fucking day because they’ve got away with almost killing me? Cheers, Natalie.’

  She exhaled wearily and opened her mouth to speak again but he cut in.

  ‘I can’t do it, Nat,’ he breathed. ‘I just can’t.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘And what about you?’ he asked.‘What does the future hold for you?’

  ‘Does it matter? You
’re not going to be around to see me, are you? Not if your grand plan works.’

  Mason wasn’t slow to catch the scorn in her tone.

  ‘Do you blame me for wanting to get away from here after what happened?’ he challenged. ‘I want to get out of London, put this whole fucking episode behind me and start again and all you can suggest is that I stay as I was before.’

  ‘It’s a big step, Pete. I hope you’re ready for it.’

  ‘Nearly getting killed was a pretty big step too.’ She nodded and sipped some more wine.

  For long moments they sat in silence, gazing across the table at each other then Natalie looked around at the dirty plates and the empty cartons of food.

  ‘I’d better help you tidy up. I can’t come round here, eat and drink and then just go home, can I?’ she intoned.

  ‘Leave it. I’ll do it in the morning. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for my job applications to be answered, won’t it?’

  ‘I’ll finish this then I’d better go,’ she told him, sipping more from the glass.

  ‘Stay for a while. I’ll make coffee.’ He got to his feet then turned and looked around at her. ‘Unless you’ve got somewhere to get to in a hurry. Someone to see.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Another bloke?’

  ‘You know I haven’t got anyone to see, Pete.’

  Mason filled the kettle with water then spooned some coffee into two mugs he retrieved from the wooden mug tree on the worktop.

  ‘There must have been other blokes since we split up,’ he mused. ‘I mean, you’re a good-looking woman, Nat.’

  ‘And you’re still full of shit.’

  ‘I’m trying to pay you a compliment,’ he grinned. ‘So, come on, tell me. Have there been other blokes?’

  ‘Do you want the gory details?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘All right, there’ve been three. Two one-night stands and one big mistake that passed for a relationship and finished about seven months ago.What about you? There must have been other women.You had a roving eye even when we were married.’

  ‘I resent that accusation,’ he smiled.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I never cheated on you, Nat.’

  ‘I didn’t say you did. I just said you had a roving eye.’

  Mason shrugged then poured hot water onto the instant coffee, stirring slowly.

  ‘There’s been no one else,’ he sighed. ‘If I couldn’t make love to you after Chloe died what makes you think I could do it with anyone else? I wasn’t interested in you. I wasn’t interested in anyone.’

  He carried the cups to the table and stood close to Natalie who looked up at him.

  ‘Sorry I’ve got no milk. Shall we sit in the living room?’ he offered. ‘It’s more comfortable.’

  She hesitated a moment then got to her feet and followed him through into the other room. Mason seated himself on one end of the sofa and watched as Natalie took her place at the other end.

  ‘I won’t bite,’ he told her. ‘Not unless you want me to.’ She held his gaze then reached for her coffee and took a sip.

  ‘What’s this all about, Pete?’ Natalie asked, wearily. ‘All the small talk? The bullshit? This?’ She waved a hand back and forth in the air, designed to encompass both of them. ‘Why now?’

  ‘We’re only talking, Nat. Where’s the problem?’

  ‘We’re talking now, Pete. When we were married we never did. Not about what mattered anyway.’

  ‘If you mean about Chloe.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she interrupted. ‘And about us. How our sex life died too. I know it was only natural after a loss like that but we needed that closeness, Pete. We needed each other and you never came near me. Not for two years after she died. Do you wonder that we split up? You weren’t there for me when I needed you most. In every sense.’

  ‘So a decent fuck would have kept you happy?’ he said, venomously. ‘That would have saved our marriage?’

  ‘But you accepted that distance between us so easily. It was as if you gave up. Just like you gave up on Chloe.’

  ‘I loved her more than I thought it was possible to love anyone,’ Mason said through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t ever say I gave up on her because I didn’t. There was nothing I could do. Nothing we could do. I wasn’t going to sit around and watch her die.’

  ‘But you let me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t come to the hospital. I didn’t want to see her hooked up to those fucking tubes, her life draining away a bit more every day.’

  ‘Neither did I, Pete but I still did it. I went for Chloe’s sake. You stayed away for your sake, you selfish bastard.’

  ‘Perhaps I did,’ he snapped. ‘I couldn’t face her. I couldn’t deal with the questions. With her questions. She asked me once if she was going to die. What was I supposed to do? Lie to her? Tell her that everything was going to be fine when I knew it wasn’t going to be?’ He shook his head.

  ‘But you expected me to be there for her.You knew I’d have to answer her questions.’

  Mason lowered his gaze.

  ‘And that was when you lost respect for me?’ he murmured. ‘That was the beginning of us splitting up, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That and your drinking. You were happier with a bottle in your hand than you were with me.’

  ‘It was the only way I could cope, Natalie.’

  ‘By downing a bottle of vodka a night. Very helpful, Pete.’

  ‘It helped me,’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t know how else to cope with what was happening to our daughter or to us. And I’m sorry. Don’t you think that a day goes by I don’t think about her and want her back? Want the three of us together again? But that’s not going to happen, is it? That was in the past. Everything’s changed and it’s not going to get any better.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re running away.’

  Mason didn’t answer.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late to be making a fresh start, Pete?’ she continued.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’

  He reached for his coffee and sipped it. When he looked at Natalie again he saw something behind her eyes. A look that he recognised from another time. A look of disdain that bordered on contempt.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said, quietly.

  When she got to her feet he didn’t try to stop her.

  19

  Walston, Buckinghamshire

  Amy Coulson shuddered at the touch of warm female flesh on either side of her. In the gloom of the room every feeling and sensation seemed heightened.The intoxicating scent of perfume, freshly washed hair and the perspiration that came from such intense and pleasurable physical exertion filled her nostrils as surely as if it was a narcotic.

  She closed her eyes as she felt gentle feminine hands brushing over her skin. Warm breath washed over both her ears as the two figures with her on the bed moved closer, kissing and nibbling at the sensitive appendages. They moved in perfect unison, as if they belonged to one single entity.

  Amy felt hands on her breasts, one pushing urgently beneath her white vest top and enveloping the plump globe. Slender fingers squeezed her erect nipples and she arched her back as the feelings already running through her body intensified.

  Around the large bed she sensed rather than saw the other figures moving closer, anxious to watch the spectacle before them and this only increased her excitement. Amy turned first one way then the other and, both times, she was met by slippery, tender lips that she kissed enthusiastically. Female lips that pressed against her own before pushing soft tongues into her mouth and against the hard white edges of her teeth.

  She knew that the girls on either side of her were barely a year older than she was. Seventeen or eighteen but no more.

  As were the other figures gathered around the bed. The figures that watched so intently in virtual silence, keen to be closer to what lay before them, revelling in it. Drinking it in. But Amy didn’t care ab
out that. All that concerned her were the electric jolts of pleasure coursing through her body, each one growing more intense.

  She felt wonderfully light-headed.As if she was floating. She knew that the drink she’d consumed and the drugs she’d taken were helping to create this feeling but more than anything, it was the undiluted physical pleasure she felt that was the most intoxicating part of the cocktail. She let out a long, low sigh of desire and fixed her own mouth to the one on her left, kissing intently as she felt two hands now roving wantonly over her breasts and stomach.