King was tired, and when he was tired his manners suffered. It was a flaw he disliked in himself but then he always had been his own harshest critic. What he didn’t enjoy was having his faults pointed out by others.
On his return home, legs and arms punishing him for the physical exertions of his night, skittish with the after effects of too much adrenaline, he had tried to be welcoming to his newest guest. She’d been unreceptive. Tempted as he was to resort to an extra dose of chloroform, he couldn’t imperil her with too great a build up. More importantly, he’d decided that he was beyond dragging bodies up and down the staircases. Tilting the heavy table, he allowed Ava to slip her cable-tied hands free of the table leg, and sit up.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You’ll be groggy for a while and your hands and feet will be numb from the restraints, but that’ll go. I’m Dr King.’
‘Moffboars,’ she said through a swollen face, puffy lips, eye badly disfigured. He’d have to get some ice on that.
‘I can’t understand what you’re saying, I’m afraid. Perhaps better to stay quiet and listen at this stage. I need to get you to a place where you can rest properly. You’re going to have to walk. It’s not far. Every door and window is locked so there’s no point running. Your hands will remain as they are and I will cut the tie around your ankles, but you and I need to understand one another. I have this knife,’ he picked it up from the sofa. ‘It’s a carving knife. I sharpen it myself and take quite a pride in doing so. Given that the world will be mourning your passing anyway in a couple of days, it would be advisable not to give them better proof of your demise than I had planned.’
Her face could put lemons to shame, he thought. Quite the vixen. She hadn’t even glanced at the knife. He’d expected toughness from a police officer but this hostility was unfortunate. King pointed the blade at her for effect, letting the lamp light glint off its edges and reflect in her eyes.
‘This knife will be at your throat as you walk. Do not kick or trip or launch yourself at or away from me. If you do, I will not hesitate to dirty the steel.’ He put the knife to the cable tie around her feet and demonstrated the truth of his claim. It sliced the toughened plastic as if through butter. Ava watched him do it, but he saw calculation in her eyes rather than distress. He’d have to be careful with this one. No wonder Natasha had been drawn to her. They were well twinned in cunning and guile.
‘Stand up,’ he said. Ava didn’t hesitate. She was bright enough to know which battles to fight and which were beyond her. They walked across the lounge, through the hallway and into the cupboard under the stairs. From there, the door to the cellar was discreet but far from hidden. The cellar was a feature of all the houses in the road. Pretending it didn’t exist would look suspicious if anyone ever got close enough to enquire. It was down those very steps, tragically enough, that his sister had slipped and broken her neck aged just fourteen, wasting so much extraordinary genius and potential. Thirteen-year-old King had thought they might move from the house then, that it would be too full of memories to tolerate, but it had only served to become a shrine to their darling Eleanor, and both his father and mother had spent the rest of their days there.
DI Turner was walking as he’d instructed her, but her eyes were darting left and right. Well, left anyway, he thought, allowing himself a grin. She couldn’t look to the right with the damage to her face.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘So study away, get a feel for the terrain, know your entrances and exits. It won’t help. The staircase from the cellar to the guest suite has been there for years. My father used to escape to his private rooms when my mother was in one of her less sociable moods. It was only when they both passed that I put in the false wall, converted the space so I could use it in my own way. It took me the best part of a year just to fit the wood panelling.’
At the bottom of the first staircase he unlocked the door and flicked a light switch to illuminate the stairs hidden behind the wall. Ava turned to look him in the eyes. She was brave. He could see it. Not bravado, not an act. Perhaps she genuinely had no fear. Perhaps some part of her, that sixth sense that everyone had like a parasitic worm in their guts, had always suspected this might be her fate.
‘I know who you are.’ She spat out each word through the swelling so he could be left in no doubt. ‘You smell of mothballs. You murdered Elaine Buxton and Jayne Magee.’
‘Is that what Detective Inspector Callanach told you when he was so unsuccessfully investigating the case?’ King asked, bristling at the mention of how he smelled but more determined than ever to get her up the stairs. ‘You police are all so self-assured, aren’t you? So keen to label and box and solve. Perhaps you’d like to join Miss Buxton and the Reverend Magee?’ he asked, pushing the knife into her throat until he could see the veins starting to bulge.
Finally she looked afraid. She took a step backwards, then another and another, following the orbit of the knife as he circled it from left to right in an infinite loop before her face, forcing her upwards, closer to the top of the hidden staircase, further away from her old life with every step.
‘You don’t have to kill me,’ she said, finding her voice as the upper door loomed closer.
‘If only that were true,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t die, then you’ll never be mine, not properly. There will always be people with hope in their hearts, people who won’t stop searching, police officers for whom the case will grow cold but never lie still in their memories. With death, Detective Inspector, comes grief and with grief there can be an ending.’
Ava stood on the top step, her back to the door. She put her hands in the air and the gesture said more than words ever could. She had surrendered, accepted her fate, made herself his. He wished he could stop time, could study the expression on her face as she transcended into his world, could fill himself forever with the delight of knowing he had won.
‘Ava, don’t be scared. It’s time to meet your new dead friends.’
King pushed open the door. He held Ava’s hand as she went in, like a bride walking to the altar, watching her eyes widen as she recognised the women on the beds.
‘What the fuck?’ she whispered.