S Bolton - Blood Harvest

‘But I knew how clever he was. I knew he’d get to her in the end. So I started planning ways to kill him. It seemed like the only way. Does that shock you?’

Evi thought she was way beyond being shocked. ‘I think it’s very understandable that you should be so angry,’ she said.

‘I thought about smothering him in his sleep, putting something in his food, pushing him down the stairs, tricking him to come up to the Tor with me and shoving him off. But then, one day, I realized. I didn’t have to kill him to stop him getting what he wanted.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No. I could kill her instead.’

Tom was being tugged downwards, his back jarring painfully on the stone steps.

‘What the fuck are you doin’?’ said a voice he knew. Two large hands grasped his waist and pulled him down more steps. ‘Back off, let us get down,’ the same voice instructed. Tom heard several pairs of footsteps retreating behind them and then he was in the church gallery once more.

‘Joe’s on the roof,’ he managed. ‘In the other bell tower, the one that everyone thinks is empty, but it’s not. He’s in there and he’s freezing and we have to get him down now.’

The four boys stared back at him, as if they’d captured an alien that had suddenly started giving them orders.

‘Your brother?’ Jake Knowles was the first to speak. ‘The one we’ve been looking for all day?’

‘On the roof?’ repeated Jake’s older brother, whose name Tom couldn’t remember.

Tom looked back at the four faces and felt like his heart had stopped beating. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You put him there.’

The older boy’s face twisted. ‘What the fuck do you think we are?’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ psychos?’

‘He’s actually up there?’ said Billy Aspin. ‘Alive?’

Tom nodded. ‘He’s tied up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get him out. I need to get my dad. What are you doing here? If you didn’t put him there, why are you here?’

‘We followed you in,’ said Jake. ‘We saw you and that Renshaw cretin running through the graveyard and we followed. Got fuckin’ lost in that cellar. Where’d she go?’

‘We have to get help. There’s a police…’ said Tom, realizing he had no idea what had happened to Ebba.

‘Come on,’ interrupted the eldest Knowles boy. ‘Let’s see what he’s on about.’

Evi felt like she was burning up. Funny, she’d heard patients talk about feeling terror many times. None of them had ever told her how hot it was. Or how it seemed to throw your brain into slow motion. Jenny? Jenny was the one who’d been after Millie the whole time. No, that couldn’t be right. She’d misunderstood something. She was overtired.

‘And the really ironic thing was, Tobias did love her.’ Jenny was clutching Evi again, making it impossible for her to move. Her face was flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright. Evi had to get up somehow. Then what? Upstairs, to Millie’s room, or outside to the phone?

‘He was absolutely devastated,’ Jenny went on. ‘I made him watch, you see. I knew he was going to the church – he was churchwarden for years – and I followed him there with Lucy in my arms. I climbed up to the gallery and then I shouted for him.’

Sweat was trickling down between Evi’s shoulder blades. The police weren’t coming. Jenny hadn’t called them. And why did she have to be so close?

‘I’ll never forget it,’ she was saying. ‘He came out of the vestry and I was dangling her from her ankles, the way he used to do to me, and she was screaming and screaming and I could see him shouting at me, yelling at me to stop. He started running forward and I let her go, just like that.’

The smell of the woman was almost worse than the heat: alcohol and perspiration and exotic flowers. Evi knew it was going to make her retch if she didn’t move. Hands down, push hard, ignore the pain; she had strong arms, it would work.

‘It took so long for her to fall,’ Jenny went on. ‘I had so much time to think, to realize it was always meant to be this way, that I would destroy him in the end, because of what he did to me.’

Do it now. Evi rose up, was caught and dragged back down.

‘He almost made it.’ Jenny was whispering into her face now. ‘Almost caught her. But she slammed down hard on those flagstones and the blood, the blood just went everywhere, it was like I’d dropped a bubble of it. I thought some of it was going to reach me up in the gallery.’

Evi swallowed hard and fought the temptation to hold her breath. She had to keep breathing. If she held her breath, she’d faint.

‘I’ve never had any pleasure from sex, Evi, not once – how could I?’ Jenny was saying. ‘This orgasm business people get so worked up about, I have no idea what they’re talking about. But that day, seeing all that blood and watching him start to scream, I can’t tell you the pleasure I felt. I almost fainted away, right there and then, it was so intense. And the sound of the thud when she hit the tiles, like a ripe fruit bursting open, I could hear that over and over again in my head, and all the time the blood was spreading out from around her. I could see it oozing out in waves, while her heart struggled to keep going.’

Evi knew she couldn’t scream. No one but Millie would hear her.

The two men were running down the moor, their torch beams aimed at the white ground below their feet. Through the beech wood, past the abandoned water mill, over the stream. Once Gareth had seemed himself again, a sense of panic had swept through Harry. They had to get back. It was all he could think of – getting back.

It had been forty minutes or more since they’d left the house. The police should have joined them by now. There were police cars on the roads into Heptonclough, they weren’t more than five minutes from the Fletchers’ house. If Evi had phoned them when he and Gareth had set out, they would have arrived by now. They hadn’t, which meant she hadn’t phoned. Something else had happened. It was worse now, worse than just Joe, the mayhem that Gillian had unleashed. They had to get back.

His mobile was in the pocket of his jeans. He could stop, call the police himself, phone the house. But to do that he’d have to stop running.

They’d reached a stile. Harry climbed up, jumped down and set off again, hearing Gareth doing the same thing behind him. They were in the harvest field, just above the town. Another hundred yards and they’d be passing the site of the All Souls’ Day bonfire. They reached the fence and Harry vaulted over. Past Gillian’s old cottage, the cobbles slippery with snow, buildings rising up on either side now. Gareth was breathing heavily by his side. They came to the end of the lane, had just turned into the main road when the church bell began to ring.

‘He dragged me away, of course,’ said Jenny. ‘Back to the house. We both changed our clothes and then we started the search for her. He wouldn’t go back to the church, though, he couldn’t face her again. I had to do that.’

Think now, stay calm. The police weren’t coming, but Harry and Gareth would be back. They’d have made it to the cottage by now, found whatever they had to find, they’d be making their way home. Evi just had to stay calm. Stop this woman from doing any more harm. She had to keep her away from Millie. If only it weren’t so hot.

‘And then,’ said Evi, forcing herself to relax back on the stair, to breathe deeply. ‘Was it over then? When you’d punished him? Did you find…’ Jesus, what the hell was she supposed to say? ‘Did you find peace?’ she tried.

Jenny nodded. ‘For a while, yes,’ she said. ‘It was as though I’d taken back control over my life, can you understand that?’

‘Of course,’ said Evi, telling herself to speak slowly, the way she always did with an overexcited patient. ‘Control is very important,’ she said. ‘We all need that.’