both her wrists. After the other man had departed, he’d let her out of the cave again and kept her tethered by the one arm. She’d tried to engage him in conversation, but without success. He’d given her permission to relieve herself and even given her some food.
Why did he bother? She knew they’d agreed to leave her there to die.
“Back in the cave now.” Brian Helling jerked the rope taut, less gentle than he’d been the day before. He pulled her face round to face his. “I’m going to write about you, you know, Carole Seddon.”
Panic snatched away her breath. “Write about me?” she managed to say. “What on earth do you mean? There’s nothing to write about me.”
His answer made her feel even bleaker.
“Oh, there will be.
Carole fought off terror with cold logic. “If you’re going to make that kind of detailed observation, you’ll have to come out here. You’ll draw attention to my hiding place.”
“No way. I know this area. I grew up round here. I know every copse and fold of the Downs. I’m a good tracker, a good countryman. Nobody’ll find me out here.”
“They will if you keep coming out in a Land Rover.”
“I won’t use the Land Rover after today.”
“Somebody must know where you are.”
Brian Helling shook his head complacently. “Only Lennie Baylis. And he’ll keep quiet.”
Carole clutched at a straw. “Will Maples! He tipped you off and told you where to find me. He knows where you are.”
“As you know,” said Brian quietly, “if you were listening to what Lennie and I said, we’ve both got something of a hold over Will Maples. Incidentally,” Brian went on, aware of the cruelty of what he was about to say, “Will rang through on the mobile earlier. He told me two friends of yours had arrived at the Hare and Hounds looking for you.”
“What did they look like?”
“Chubby woman with blonde hair, big fat chap with a beard. Needless to say, Will didn’t tell them anything.”
A shadow of despair engulfed Carole.
Brian Helling tugged on the rope. “Better get you back in your little niche, hadn’t we? I’ve got to be off.”
“When will you be coming back?” asked Carole, trying to make it sound like the most casual question in the world.
He let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, I don’t think I should tell you that. It’d spoil the fun.”
“So what is going to be the fun for you? Killing me? Watching me die?”
“I suppose so, yes. But,” he said rather primly, “it’s not just random cruelty. There’s a practical side as well. Writers need experience. There are some things you can’t make up. You have to live through them. All my other books were rejected, not because they weren’t horrifying enough, but because they weren’t authentic enough. They lacked that little bit extra that can only be given by firsthand experience.”
“And you didn’t get that first-hand experience when you set fire to Heron Cottage?”
“No.” He spoke with genuine regret and a frightening objectivity. “I wasn’t able to watch my mother die. Pity, I’d been looking forward to that for a long time.”
“So she couldn’t give you the authentic material you were looking for?”
“No.”
“So…you couldn’t get what you wanted when you killed your mother…Whereas I, on the other hand, can go to my death with the great satisfaction of knowing I’ve helped you, for the first time in your life, to write a publishable book?”
He didn’t like the scorn in her voice. He lashed out and slapped her face hard, hissing, “Yes.”
“Well, don’t bother putting me back in that smelly cave. Why don’t you just kill me with your knife?” Carole demanded defiantly. “Get it over with. Watch me die here and now. Sit with your notebook and describe every last twitch of my body. I’m sure that would add the necessary ‘authenticity’ to your precious book.”
“Oh no,” said Brian Helling, with an icicle of a smile. “That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t fit. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have to watch someone die in the Prison of Fort Pittsburgh.”
“Why?”
His face clouded with painful memories. But the only explanation he could give was, “I have to do it.”
He tugged on the rope, again with unnecessary harshness. “Come on, it’ll be dark soon. Time to settle you in for the night, Carole. Though in fact what we’re talking about is nights and days, and more nights and days…You won’t be coming out of there again.”
“But you’ll be coming in to watch me?”
“I must make sure my
“Well, may I at least have another pee before – ”
“No!”
This time the tug on the rope was so hard that Carole fell to the ground. Brian Helling dragged her upright and pushed her towards the undergrowth-hidden entrance to the cave.
When she tried to resist, he hit her hard around the head. He had lost the restraint that previously curbed his violence. He was very dangerous.
Cowed, Carole could do nothing but what he wanted. She dropped to her knees and then rolled sideways into the rank darkness.
She could still feel the tension on the rope, and waited for him to follow her in and truss her up again. He’d tie her legs, and shackle her once again to the tree root. And that was the position in which she would stay, for the rest of her life. Which wouldn’t be very long.
Then one day perhaps another walker, wandering off the beaten track across the Downs, would stumble on her catacomb. And another set of female bones would be found to feed the mills of gossip and conjecture that ground endlessly in the village of Weldisham.
Carole Seddon had often thought her life was unimportant. Never till that moment had it felt so essential. She dreamed of being back in a hot bath at High Tor, and she knew how unlikely that dream was ever to be realized.
She lay on the slimy floor, breathing the chill, dank air, waiting for her murderer to come into the cave after her.
There was a moment of stillness, then a shout, and a yank on the rope that almost pulled her arms from their sockets. She was aware of herself screaming.
? Death on the Downs ?
Forty-Eight
Suddenly, mercifully, the rope was released.
There were sounds of confusion, shouting, possibly fighting, from outside. Then the entrance to the cave was once again darkened by a human body.
And Carole heard the most welcome sound of her life. It was the anxious voice of Ted Crisp asking, “Are you all right, Carole? I’ll kill the bastard if he’s hurt you.”
She felt Ted’s strong arms helping her out and, once she was upright, fell into them. His body felt huge and wonderfully solid.
It was still just light at the foot of the chalk cliff. Carole took in Nick, holding a tyre iron, guarding the Land Rover to prevent Brian Helling’s escape by that route. Beside him was a sight almost as welcome as led Crisp – Jude.
But Jude was looking upwards with fear in her eyes and there was shouting from above them.
Carole, still holding Ted Crisp’s hand, moved backwards to see what was going on at the top of the cliff.
Brian Helling had scurried up a narrow diagonal ridge across the chalk face. An escape route from Fort
