September 1995
The feeling still thrilled him. Standing in a strange house, enshrouded and empowered by the darkness, Crowan Frayne felt a curious sense of belonging. He enjoyed the strange smells and decorations; the feel of unfamiliar furniture; the rush of power and control. Sometimes he took things, things that might prove valuable when the time eventually came. However, for the most part he just stood, masturbated and absorbed the darkness.
It was useful practice, too. He worked on a variety of houses. He knew that gaining experience and knowledge would prove invaluable when the time came to execute his conceit. This would be his fifth house. It was a large Edwardian building: part accommodation and part veterinary surgery. There was a burglar alarm: he would need to be careful. The surgery might contain equipment that he could use; drugs, even. The back of the building was approachable only via a narrow alley. It was a bottleneck: it made him uncomfortable.
The security light made him feel worse. He accidentally triggered it as he entered the alley. He froze and waited for darkness. There were no further lights at the rear of the house and Frayne moved quickly. He withdrew a spray can from his pocket and sprayed ‘Wanker’ in red paint on the brickwork: better to be thought a vandal than a burglar in New Bolden. He traced an electric cable that powered the burglar alarm down the line of the wall. He used his Stanley knife to slice through the cable. The alarm didn’t ring. Frayne started work on the back door.
The alarm had a silent trigger to the New Bolden police station. A police squad car half a mile away received the alert call almost immediately. The surgery had been identified as a possible target for drug abusers and the car was outside within two minutes of Frayne cutting the cable. He still hadn’t managed to open the security lock on the back door of the house when he heard footsteps and saw torchlight in the alleyway. There was nowhere to run. He threw his equipment bag over the nearest fence, took a deep breath and sprinted out of the darkness at the two policemen in the alleyway, spraying paint into their eyes as he did. One of them fell, the paint burning at him, but the other caught Frayne around the neck and hauled him to the floor. They struggled and Frayne almost managed to escape when the other policeman regained his vision and kicked him hard in the stomach, driving the breath from Frayne’s lungs. He gasped as they rolled him onto his stomach and pulled his hands up behind his back. The plastic handcuffs were extremely tight and cut into his skin. One of the policeman called him a ‘junkie cunt.’
Frayne gave the address of his temporary lodgings in New Bolden and claimed to have no living relatives. He had no desire to break Violet’s heart again. He was charged and convicted in November 1995 for criminal damage. His legal-aid lawyer explained to the court that Crowan Frayne was unemployed and resentful of affluence. His vandalism was merely a confused act of expression. This was nonsense, of course, but it served a purpose. Frayne was ordered to pay costs of five hundred pounds to the veterinary practice and did not receive a custodial sentence. The judge recommended that Frayne see a social worker.
Frayne didn’t bother.
Violet Frayne didn’t ever find out about her grandson’s conviction. He kept it a closely guarded secret, paid the fine himself and destroyed all the free local papers when they fell through Violet’s letter box. It was an unnecessary precaution. By this time Violet Frayne’s vision had deteriorated so much that she was unable to read any newspaper print without a magnifying glass and she rarely bothered. Much to Frayne’s amusement, Bill Gowers had died of liver cancer the previous Christmas. In a way this was unfortunate, as Frayne had already developed his own plan for Bill Gowers. He had intended to inject concentrated sulphuric acid into the old man’s stomach if Violet had died before her husband. No need now. Nature had devised a far more uncomfortable and drawn-out torture and Bill Gowers was now just another contortion in the bark of the laburnum tree.
Frayne had escaped prison but at a cost. He now had a criminal record. When he came to realize his great conceit he would have to be extremely cautious: eyes would be upon him. Mistakes would prove very expensive. Planning would be crucial and the experience he had gained would be useful. Timing would be the variable. He would know when the correct moment arrived. Until then he was content to wait, to prepare.
And to dream.
Dexter was suddenly conscious. Her pain centres were firing messages across her brain. She was lying on her side in total darkness. Pain everywhere. She tried to move but something tightened against her neck. Where was she? She couldn’t see. Had he taken her eyes? Had he blinded her? No. Her eyes were stinging with dust. She struggled to remain calm and forced her body to relax. Her hands and feet were bound and there was cord around her neck. She had tape across her mouth. Again she tried to move, again the noose began to choke her. She got the message and lay perfectly still.
Think rationally. She tried to brush aside her discomfort and focus on where she was. The floor was cold and she guessed it was concrete. It was dusty too and her eyes were starting to water now. Was he watching her? Was he standing in the blackness, staring at her? She desperately tried to distinguish shapes and listened for tell-tale noises such as breathing. Nothing. She could see his face in her mind clearly enough. Thin and bony: well-defined cheekbones and a shock of dark hair. He had looked pale, as if his angry eyes had drained the life and colour from his skin. He looked like a ghost.
Where could she be? Concrete floor. Total silence. A warehouse, maybe? A garage? She didn’t think so. The room didn’t smell of oil or machinery. If anything, it smelled of old books: dry and musty. There was no draught. He had gagged her, so he must have been concerned that someone might hear her cries. She found that strangely reassuring. There must be people nearby. Somewhere above her, away in the distance, she heard a car start and slowly accelerate.
Maybe she was in his house. On a residential road. If she was in a house she had to be in a cellar or a shed. She guessed it was the former. Dexter sensed there was a low ceiling above her: the room was tight and airless.
Underwood had been right. The killer wanted her alive for something. What had the inspector said? He wasn’t performing, he was educating. Why had he chosen to educate her? Her mind sought explanations. She had found him at Elizabeth Drury’s house; surprised him. Hadn’t Stussman said that the metaphysical poets valued unexpectedness as a form of wit? Perhaps the killer valued her intelligence or appreciated the stream of connections that she must have made to find him so quickly. Did that mean that he wasn’t going to kill her? She doubted it.
The bindings on her hands were slightly less painful than those around her ankles and Dexter gradually began to move her wrists in an attempt to loosen the tape further. The cord tugged at her neck as she did so but she persevered. It would take time but she was confident that eventually she could work her hands free. She also used her tongue to lick the inside of the masking tape that sealed her mouth. It tasted disgusting but it slowly began to loosen as she moistened the adhesive with saliva. It was exhausting, sweaty work and she had to rest for breath every thirty seconds or so.
She was confident that she was alone in the room. Why had he left her? A car had just driven off. Was it the killer? If so, where had he gone? How long did she have? Concentrate, Alison. She began to work her wrists once more.
Heather Stussman’s telephone rang at three p.m. The noise smashed through the tense silence like an exploding hand grenade. She sensed bad news.
‘Hello?’
‘When is the world a carkasse?’ said Crowan Frayne.
The voice chilled her to the marrow. ‘Today,’ she replied. She looked out of the window across the old quad. She had an instinctive sense that he was close: as if the hairs on the back of her neck had all suddenly stood on end. There was nobody in sight. Most of the students were at lectures.
‘Why?’
‘13 December is St Lucies Day. The yeare’s midnight.’
There was a pause. Frayne seemed to be digesting the information. Eventually the voice came again: dry and rasping.
‘Are you looking out of your window?’
She froze in horror. ‘Why do you ask?’
Crowan Frayne took a deep breath: it sounded like a wave whispering against dry pebbles. ‘See how the thirsty earth has withered and shrunk as to the beds feet?’
Stussman understood the reference to the poem. Hippocrates said that a dying man will huddle at the foot of his bed. Donne had used it in his St Lucy’s Day poem. She looked again at the quadrangle. There was no one there: he couldn’t possibly see her.
‘I suppose you’re every dead thing?’ she replied after a moment.
‘So are you.’
‘Is that meant to frighten me?’ She tried to hide the tremor in her voice.
‘No. To help you. Listen to the dead inside you. We are only animations of forgotten souls. Listen to their cries, their anguish. They will give you perspective. They will teach you pity.’
‘What do you want?’
There was another pause. Stussman wondered what he was doing: playing with himself, maybe. ‘What’s the matter?’ she added. ‘Can’t you think of anything scary to say?’
‘Are you acquainted with Detective Sergeant Alison Dexter?’ he asked softly.
Stussman hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘Alison Dexter has short dark brown hair and green eyes that glower like a cat’s. Her blood tastes of sugar for a second; then of rust.’
‘Is she with you now?’
‘She is.’
‘Let me speak to her.’
‘I don’t think I can allow that.’
‘Is she alive? Have you hurt her?’
‘Sergeant Dexter has the ability to make extraordinary connections,’ said Crowan Frayne. ‘I’m sure she is doing so as we speak. She is unable to do much else.’
‘Listen to me.’ Stussman was trying frantically to think of an angle. ‘Killing a cop is heavy shit. You think you’re in trouble now. If you kill her they will tear you apart, mister. No trial, no jury. You won’t make it as far as court. They will crucify you. Every policeman in the country will want your head.’
‘With your cooperation, Sergeant Dexter need not come to any lasting harm.’
‘My cooperation?’
‘I want you to come to the war memorial in New Bolden Cemetery.’
‘Why?’
‘I will explain it to you when you arrive.’
‘I don’t think so, buster.’
‘Alison Dexter has pretty green eyes, fiercely intelligent. She also has surprisingly delicate hands for a policewoman.’
‘Don’t threaten me.’
‘Similarly, if you are not at the war memorial in New Bolden cemetery at five o’clock today I will tie Sergeant Dexter to a table and cut out her left eye. While she screams into her gag, I will tell her that you refused to help her. She may pass out with the pain, of course: I imagine peeling back her eyelids will cause considerable distress. But then, Sergeant Dexter strikes me as a particularly strong-willed individual. She may remain awake for some time. She may even have the unique privilege of seeing her own eye pulled from its socket.’
‘You are a very sick fuck.’
‘I will then send the eye to a national newspaper – probably a lurid tabloid – with an accompanying note explaining that my actions were inspired by your radical text Reconstructing Donne – rather in the way that The Beatles apparently inspired Charles Manson – and that you had the chance to save Sergeant Dexter but refused. I am uncertain how the university would react but your celebrity would outlive both of us. If I am arrested as a result of your actions I shall instruct my solicitor to post a parcel that I have prepared and entrusted to him, again to a major tabloid newspaper. It will have a similar effect.’
Stussman was being backed into a corner. If Frayne meant what he said, she’d be ruined.
‘How do I know that you won’t hurt me?’ she said. ‘I’d be crazy to swap my life for Dexter’s.’ She would play along with him, then call the police.
‘That may not be necessary. If you trust in your knowledge, if you are confident in your own work, if you are certain of the arguments you put forward with such intellectual force in your book, then you will not come to any harm.’
‘That isn’t very reassuring.’
‘If you contact the police, I shall know. If you are accompanied or followed to the war memorial I shall know. In my house I have a large flask of concentrated sulphuric acid. If you attempt to deceive me in any way I will remove Sergeant Dexter’s eye and then drop acid into the socket, using a pipette. I will then apply the acid to her face, her hands, her nipples and Lord knows where else. I guess that her heart will eventually succumb to the agony but who knows how long that will take?’
‘If I come you’ll kill me, won’t you?’ She was floundering now.
‘Once I have finished with Alison I shall visit you in any case. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘This is your opportunity to live. If you try and fuck me around I will show you every dead thing that crawls around inside you, shits behind your eyes and slithers in your blood. I will take great pleasure and much time in showing you. When you leave the college today, you should assume that I am watching you all the way. I shall know if you are playing with me and I promise that I will find agonies for you and Sergeant Dexter that will burst your brains.’
‘I get the picture.’
‘And I am rebegot,’ said Crowan Frayne, ‘of absence, darkness, death, things which are not.’
The line died suddenly and Stussman put the phone down. Her hand hovered over the receiver. She knew she should call the police. But what if the killer was nearby? What if he was a policeman? The idea made her shiver: there was a policeman outside her door. If you are accompanied or followed to the war memorial, I shall know, the killer had said. That meant he must already be in Cambridge, unless he was just trying to frighten her to make sure she’d comply.
He had said that he was planning to visit her. That this was her chance to live. Calling the police would be a huge risk. He would kill Alison Dexter for sure and offer Stussman’s name to the tabloid press. She could not let that happen. Heather Stussman had built her academic reputation piece by exhausting piece. It had been a tortuous process, driven only by her instinctive desire to succeed, like a salmon swimming against the flow of a thick black river. It was her entire life. Without her reputation what would she do? Go back to Wisconsin, probably, but then what? She would be unemployable and, worse than that, she would be notorious.
If you are certain of your arguments then you will not come to any harm. He would say that, though, wouldn’t he? Stussman mused. She thought again of ‘A Nocturnall on St Lucies Day’. The killer had quoted from it again as he hung up: ‘And I am rebegot of absence, darkness, death, things which are not.’ He was obsessed with annihilation, self-destruction, nothingness. If, as Stussman had previously suspected, he planned to kill himself, perhaps she could encourage him in the act. She sat down at her desk and wrote on a piece of college notepaper:
‘Murderer of Harrington and Drury asked me to meet him today at five p.m., New Bolden Cemetery, War Memorial. He has Sergeant Dexter and has threatened to kill her if I do not attend. I believe he plans to kill himself.’
She folded the note carefully inside an envelope, sealed it, addressed it to Sergeant Harrison, New Bolden CID and wrote the phone number of the Incident Room at the top edge of the envelope. It wasn’t much of a contingency plan but it was better than nothing. Stussman opened the door of her rooms and smiled down at her blue-uniformed sentry.
‘I’m going to drop this letter at the porter’s lodge,’ she said. ‘Then I am going to the college library for an hour or two. I’ll be quite safe. It’s within college grounds and there will be plenty of students there.’
‘I’m supposed to stay with you, Dr Stussman.’ PC Jarvis was young and eager not to screw up.
‘There’s really no need. No offence, but I won’t be able to work with you sitting next to me. Wouldn’t you be better off here? In case he calls or turns up, I mean. He’s not likely to attack me in the library in front of the entire college.’
‘I guess not. All right, Dr Stussman, but please don’t leave the college site without telling me first. Would you like me to walk with you to the lodge?’
‘You’re very kind but there’s no need. I’ll leave the room open. Help yourself to tea.’ She smiled her most dazzling smile at him and PC Jarvis melted like hot butter.
Stussman hurried down to the porter’s lodge. The air was bitterly cold. Tiny flakes of snow drifted across the stone quadrangle like ash from a distant bonfire. The newly refurbished lodge was centrally heated and the warmth enfolded her as she stepped inside. Johnson, the head porter, was hanging room keys on the board behind the front desk.
‘Johnson, can I ask you an important favour?’
The head porter twisted the right side of his mouth into a sardonic knot. He put down his pipe on the wooden counter. ‘That’s why I am here, Dr Stussman.’
She handed him the envelope. He read the name of the addressee with interest.
‘I have to leave the college for a couple of hours on police business. You’ve heard the rumours, I’m sure.’
‘Every one of them.’
‘Good. You’ll understand the importance, then.’ She looked Johnson in the eye, using her toughest stare. ‘Listen. If I have not called you by six p.m. today I want you to call Sergeant Harrison on the number I have given and read him the contents of the envelope.’
‘Open it, you mean?’
‘Obviously. This is a matter of life and death, Mr Johnson. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise.’
The head porter nodded and carefully placed the envelope in the breast pocket of his blazer.
‘What about the young police gentleman on your staircase?’
‘He’s in my room. We … we are expecting the killer to call.’
‘Very well, Dr Stussman.’ He tapped his pocket and winked at her. ‘I shall wait for your call.’
‘Thank you, Mr Johnson. I knew I could depend on you.’
‘Always, madam.’
Stussman nodded at him and then stepped back outside. Into the oven.
Marty Farrell had been lifting prints from the New Bolden library computer for nearly four hours. It was a painstaking process. The machine was covered with dozens of latent prints. He started with the keyboard, carefully dusting and brushing black non-magnetic powder onto the surface of each of the keys to highlight the tell-tale oils in the fingerprints. He lifted the prints from the surface by pressing adhesive tape against the powder. Farrell then used a special camera to photograph the imprints on the tape. The procedure took time and he knew that time was a critical factor now. There were some faint latent fingerprints that the powder was unable to clarify. On these he used a small laser that caused the perspiration in the prints to glow a mysterious yellow. These too were photographed.
The problem was not so much finding the prints as separating them. The library computer was used by the general public and dozens of greasy-fingered people had used it. The fingerprints were smudged and overlaid on top of each other on many of the keys. The smudging was so bad on the mouse buttons that lifting individual prints was virtually impossible. Still, Marty Farrell persevered and by 4.30 p.m. he had lifted and photographed seventeen reasonably uncorrupted partial and whole prints.
He knew that attempting to identify each of them in turn could take hours so he acted on the suggestion that Harrison had made to him that morning. On a piece of paper Farrell wrote down:
ELIZABETH DRURY
JOHN DONNE
He then cross-referenced the constituent letters of the two names with the locations where he had found each of the prints. This allowed him to prioritize more effectively. He would concentrate his attention on the more uncommon letters from which he had lifted a fingerprint. He decided to start with Z, H, D, R, and Y. In total, he had taken nine partials from those letters. He might not be able to secure the court-required sixteen-point match but at this stage that wouldn’t be necessary. At this stage he just needed a name. And a break.
Marty Farrell scanned the photographed prints from Z, H, D, R and Y into his computer and, brushing the sweat from his brow, began to look for possible matches in the police fingerprint records with the two whorl-patterned prints he had lifted from the Z key. The clock marched inexorably towards five o’clock.
December 1999
Violet Frayne’s final act had been to kiss her grandson’s forehead. She fell back and breathed a last, tired breath: her grey hair was spread out on the pillows of her hospital bed. Then she was gone. Crowan Frayne watched her closely. He had hoped to see her spirit quit her body with that final resigned breath. Instead he saw nothing and felt only the gradual relaxation of her grip on his hand. He was alone, absolutely without meaning. A nothingness without form or direction.
He leaned forward and brushed his grandmother’s hair back from her face. Beside the bed were the flowers and plants that he had brought her. Crowan Frayne pulled some petals from the African violet and scattered them softly over the pillow. He reached for her treasured leather-bound book of Donne and turned to the page that he had selected for this moment. Sotto voce, below the hum of machines and the clatter of the ward, Crowan Frayne began to read from ‘The Extasie’:
‘Where like a pillow on a bed
A Pregnant banke swel’d up to rest
The violets reclining head
Sat we two, one anothers best
‘Our hands were firmely cimented
With a fast balme, which thence did spring
Our eye beames twisted and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string.’
To his frustration, he could read no further. Tears welled up in his eyes and he squeezed them back, swallowing the pain in deep acid draughts as he always had. He had disappointed her in death as he had failed her in life. She was the intelligence: the angel that had moved his physical and intellectual cosmos. She had given the spheres their strange and beautiful music, put poetry into his darkest, most senseless thoughts, bound his thoughts with hers on one double string. Violet Frayne had fired the alchemy that was glowing now in his soul: Frayne could see the divine in the mundane, music behind the terrible vastness of space and time, celebration in desecration, the yoking of opposites. Wit in horror.
Like a billion burning magnets, his thoughts sought connections. Some were unusual and disturbing, as if terrible predators swam in the dopamine and serotonin that connected his neural transmitters and receptors. Monsters hid between his cells and in the electrical pulses of his thoughts. What if they were the spirits? ‘As our blood labours to beget, Spirits … that subtile knot that makes us man,’ Donne had written. The spirits lived in human blood and communicated the brain’s instructions to the body. What if monsters, abominations of time and evolution, deformed and malignant, were the binders that united his mind with his body?
The thought dug like a scalpel at the matter of his brain. Could he marshal those monsters to celebrate her? Could he use their alchemy to convert the banality and ugliness of the life she had endured into the rarefication of beauty that she deserved in death? When he had smashed the glass eyes he had turned her agonies inside out. He had snagged the monsters that dwelt in her blood and hauled them writhing to the surface. She had injected beauty into his soul and he had revealed her ugliness in return. He despised himself for that. He would make amends.
Crowan Frayne kissed his dead grandmother’s hand and promised he would make her beautiful again.
‘You’re a sick man, Mr Underwood,’ said Dr Barozzi as he read the inspector’s charts. ‘You are lucky to be alive.’
‘I know.’ Underwood’s head still swam with exhaustion and traces of drugs. Clarity was beginning to return, however, like fresh air circulating in a dark stuffy room.
‘You have had a minor heart attack. Your signs are now stable.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You have a severe infection of the pleural membrane in your left lung. This has put a huge strain on your cardiovascular system. How long have you had this lung infection?’
‘A long time.’ Underwood’s throat was dry and painful. It hurt to talk.
‘Six months?’
‘More.’
‘A year?’
‘Perhaps.’
Dr Barozzi shook his head slowly. ‘Your left lung is a mess. It’s dog meat, to be blunt. You have let this go much too far. Men of your age have to take care of themselves. You have put your heart under terrible strain through your own negligence. It’s like taking the pin out of a hand grenade, then jumping up and down with it in your breast pocket.’ Barozzi smiled at his own imagery.
‘I understand.’
‘We have put you on a course of powerful antibiotics. These will attack the infection in your lung but you will feel tired for some time. Your heart is weak and the strain of fighting this infection will take it out of you.’
Underwood was floating away. He could feel exhaustion crawling through his veins like water through tissue paper.
‘I will be back to see you tomorrow.’ Barozzi reattached the chart board to the foot of Underwood’s bed. ‘I’ve left some papers by the side of your bed in case you feel like reading.’
Underwood drifted off to sleep for a couple of minutes. He dreamed of his parents; less distant now than when they were alive. 28 September 1988 and 3 March 1989. Gone within six months of each other. He woke suddenly. Would he have killed Paul Heyer? Would he have kicked him over the cliff edge and watched him smash onto the rocks below?
The killer of Lucy Harrington and Elizabeth Drury was giggling at him, pulling the strings in the back of his head.
He opened his eyes and looked over at the bedside cabinet. There was a small pile of newspapers: The Independent, the Daily Mail and the New Bolden Echo. Underwood reached over for the local newspaper. It was a week old. Lucy Harrington’s smiling face looked back at him from the front page: ‘Local Girl Strikes Gold’ boomed the headline happily.
The killer was local, thought Underwood. He read this story. It surprised him and occasioned his actions. Why? The name. The killer liked John Donne. Lucy Harrington was a member of Donne’s coterie. He saw the name and got the idea. Why now, though? Underwood remembered that serial killers built and adapted their fantasies over time. Lucy Harrington didn’t give the murderer his idea. She occasioned it. Something about the story occasioned his fantasy. Occasioned his need to educate and explain.
He tried to read the article that he had already read ten times at the station over the previous week. But his eyes failed him and he drifted away again, drugs lapping at his consciousness like waves on a lonely shore. Underwood dreamed he was walking with his parents on a pebbled beach. He threw pebbles into the sea, watching them skim across the waves. None of them sank into the water. They bounced over the wave tops until they faded out of sight, over the horizon. He looked at the pebble in his hand. It was an eye.
Dexter lay half-asleep in bloody exhaustion. She had loosened the bindings slightly but at a cost. Her wrists bled painfully and she felt no closer to manoeuvring herself free. She had been in the darkness for what seemed like hours. No one had come for her. Had the killer left her in the basement of a deserted house to rot and starve to death in the dark? The thought terrified her. A blow to the head would end things quickly. She would prefer that. She was brave, always had been. Crying alone and soundlessly in the dark terrified her. It was the terror of waiting to be born.
Heather Stussman took a taxi from Southwell College to Cambridge Station, then boarded a local train to New Bolden. She was alone.
Crowan Frayne had watched Stussman board the train and had then driven at high speed, but within the speed limits, to New Bolden station. He beat her train there by five minutes. Stussman stepped out into the unfamiliar environment of New Bolden and immediately climbed into a minicab. Frayne followed at a distance, two cars back. He knew that she would be expecting him. No other cars appeared to be following her. Perhaps she would go through with it. He dared to dream.
Once he was confident she was heading for the cemetery, Crowan Frayne accelerated past the minicab. He knew a short cut and found a quiet place to park his van. Following Stussman from Cambridge meant that he hadn’t checked the cemetery. He would do that now.
Stussman climbed from her minicab at the main entrance to the cemetery. She shivered in the dry cold of the gathering darkness. The driver had told her that the war memorial was in the centre of the site, a two-minute walk from the road. The red lights of the car flared briefly at her as the minicab braked, turned right along Station Road and disappeared. She was alone. She felt the cold steel of the carving knife in her coat pocket and walked through the cast-iron gates into New Bolden Cemetery.
There was a path lined with imitation gas lamps that led into the heart of the graveyard. Stussman stepped briskly along the hazy yellow trail, her shoes crunching the gravel underfoot. It seemed to stretch endlessly into the darkness: there were black outlines of headstones all around that seemed to lean towards her, throwing strangely shaped shadows against the murmuring grass: angels and carved flowers, open Bibles and crosses. The wind moved silently through the naked trees and chilled stone. She looked behind her and ahead. She could see nobody. Fear pricked at her skin, together with the crisp air. He was out there, moving with her like a shadow in the textured blackness. She was illuminated like a good soul in hell.
The war memorial loomed suddenly. Stussman’s heart hammered at her chest. She would give him five minutes. A train rattled and moaned in the near distance. She stood with her back against the cold marble of the monolith, felt the carved names of the dead press into her back. It was disrespectful, but at least it meant that no one could creep up behind her. If he came at her it would be from the front or the sides and she would have a second or two to draw the knife from her pocket.
She knew that she had to be mad. Corning to this place was a terrible mistake. She checked her watch: 5.15. Johnson would call the police in forty-five minutes if she didn’t call. It seemed like a long time now. She could be fifteen or twenty miles away in forty-five minutes. What would she do if he appeared? She hadn’t really constructed much of a strategy except self-defence. Stussman suspected that the killer might be suicidal and she hoped she could play to that if they started a discussion – encourage him, even.
‘Good evening, Dr Stussman.’
The voice came from directly in front of her. Out of the darkness. Heather Stussman jumped in terror and gripped the handle of the carving knife in her pocket. As she tried desperately to make out a face or a form, she half withdrew the knife in case he ran at her.
‘Who’s there?’ she said. It sounded pathetic, reedy and shrill in the vast openness of the cemetery.
‘I think you know,’ the voice said.
‘What should I call you?’
‘Nothing.’
Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark. She thought she could make out a figure, straight ahead of her in the shadows. He was clever. He had chosen this spot carefully and deliberately. The same lights that illuminated her and the war memorial blinded Heather Stussman to the area beyond the pathway.
‘I am alone,’ she said.
‘So it seems,’ said Crowan Frayne. ‘Who did you tell? Not the police.’
‘I haven’t told anyone where I am. However, I have left a sealed envelope at Southwell College. It contains details of the arrangements for our meeting. It will be opened if I do not call in during the next half an hour.’
‘Very resourceful of you.’ Crowan Frayne stepped from the shadows onto the pathway. She could see him now: tall and lean, silhouetted. A hole in the night.
‘Where is Sergeant Dexter?’
‘Safe.’ He didn’t move.
‘I want to see her.’
‘You will.’
Heather Stussman shivered. There was a terrible calm about the man.
‘I would like you to come with me.’
‘Where to?’
‘There is a grave plot some twenty metres from here. I would like you to see it.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s important. Step out onto the pathway and walk. Please.’
‘You’re going to kill me.’
‘If you don’t do as I say, I surely will.’
Stussman stepped away from the war memorial and onto the gravel pathway. The killer stood some two metres from her now. She could see his face more clearly: thin and gaunt, gouged with deep lines of sadness. His eyes appeared black – as if they weren’t there. He gestured to her to start walking. He stayed a couple of paces behind. Stussman kept her right hand in her pocket.
‘Let me guess,’ said Crowan Frayne from behind her. ‘A screwdriver or a Southwell College cheese knife?’
She cursed quietly. She could hear him smiling. ‘It’s a carving knife and if you screw with me I will stick it into your dick.’
‘That won’t be necessary. Turn left here.’
They had arrived where two pathways crossed. Stussman did exactly as she was told. There was a cluster of small gravestones to her right. They had walked about ten yards when she heard Frayne step off the gravel. She stopped and looked around. He was standing looking down at a grave. So, Stussman thought, you have lost someone and now you want to join them. How could she use that to her advantage? She took a step towards him.
‘Someone who was close to you?’ she asked softly.
‘She is me. She penetrates my every thought and action, every molecule that holds me together. Just as a tree draws up the dead in its sap and its leaves, in the yellow and white of its flowers, so she is drawn up into me. See her blossoming beauty.’ He stretched his arms to the sky.
‘Who was she?’
Crowan Frayne gestured to her to approach him. Stussman did so and turned to look at the inscription on the headstone. Frayne shone a torch on the stone. She read aloud, sotto voce:
‘Violet Frayne 1908–1999, beloved mother and grandmother. One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.’
Frayne stood absolutely still as Stussman read. She paused and turned to him. She was close now, dangerously close.
‘It’s from the “Holy Sonnets”. Death be not proud, for though some have called thee mighty and dreadful …’
‘Thou art not so,’ said Crowan Frayne.
‘Were you very close?’
Frayne ignored her and raised his eyes to the sky. The stars blinked and sung back to him. He relaxed his grip on the torch and its light drifted over onto the next headstone. Stussman read it to herself. ‘Elizabeth Frayne, 1944–1967.’
‘Is this your mother?’
‘She facilitated me. She was fortunate to work such an alchemy.’ Frayne knelt at Violet’s grave and scooped up a handful of dirt. He stood and placed it in his mouth, turning to face Stussman. She took an instinctive step backwards. Soil fell from Crowan Frayne’s mouth as he chewed.
‘Aristotle believed that stones and plants, animals and men all had souls. Am I correct, Dr Stussman? I suck their souls from the earth. These flowers –’ he pulled up a clump from the ground ‘– are rich with my grandmother’s colour and spirit. Her intelligence gives their simple cell divisions and chemical reactions a breathtaking musicality.’
Frayne tore off the leaves and petals and ate them vigorously. ‘A year ago today my grandmother died under the same sky, these same stars. Her spirit was engulfed by the soft cadences of the Harmoniae Mundorum – the same pitches and rhythms that we hear now, infusing this place.’ He raised his hands to the vast celestial orchestra, as if he was conducting their strange and terrible music: the music of time, separation and creation that had triangulated across the infinities and sharpened to a white-hot point in his brain. ‘And yet she remains incomplete, an abomination.’
Stussman watched him, uncertain whether to run away as his attention plummeted through the dark pools of his imagination. But he would catch her, she knew. Besides, she was lost in an unfamiliar place. He turned back to her.
‘Life is an ugliness, Dr Stussman. My grandmother defined beauty and yet she was herself an exhibit of ugliness. I was born in ugliness; the ugliness of loss and agony. My life has been an ugliness and yet I scale the heights of beauty and wit.’ He moved his hand in a sudden, flicking movement and hurled dirt and grit into Stussman’s face. She staggered back, her hands at her face, trying to push away the scratching, dirty pain in her eyes. ‘Do you feel the salty sting of my wit, Dr Stussman?’ he asked as he advanced on her. ‘Do you roast in the flames of unexpected genius? Do your eyes burn as if they had seen the very face of God?’
Stussman fell backwards over a gravestone and in a second Crowan Frayne was on her. He put his foot against her throat and quickly took the knife from her pocket, flinging it into the anonymous distance. He hauled her, kicking and writhing, back to Violet Frayne’s grave and, rolling her over, pushed her face into the dirt. Stussman panicked as the pain seared at her eyes and she struggled for breath.
‘Take a long, deep, luxurious mouthful, Dr Stussman. Let the elemental dead crawl across your tongue and infuse your consciousness with music and colour.’ He pushed her harder into the soil. Mud forced its way into her mouth. She felt sick as it tickled her throat. ‘This is the taste of death, Dr Stussman. Relish it. There is transcendent beauty in its ugliness. The earth is enriched. I am every dead thing/In whom love wrought new Alchemie/For his art did expresse/A quintessence even from nothingness.’ Frayne pulled Stussman’s face from the mud. She was coughing and retching. ‘Tonight, Dr Stussman, we will complete my grandmother’s ascent back to beauty. We will become the burning soul of wit. Through the alchemy of our intelligence, the chanting voices of the dead that we draw together and amplify, we will forge angels in the oven and rise into infinity like smoke on the wind.’
Crowan Frayne struck Heather Stussman on her right temple with the butt of his torch. Then he struck her again.
Harrison called Marty Farrell at six-fifteen that evening. He had just received a call himself from the Head Porter of Southwell College and had learned that Heather Stussman had met with the killer an hour previously. A squad car had been dispatched to the cemetery immediately and had found nothing.
Farrell picked up the phone on its fourth ring. ‘Lab.’
‘Marty, it’s Harrison.’
‘No joy as yet. The only clean match I’ve found so far is Dexter’s right index finger.’
‘Fuck. It looks like he’s taken someone else.’
Marty groaned. ‘Who?’
‘Stussman, the lecturer.’
‘Jesus.’ Marty was already exhausted and the pressure had just been upped another notch.
‘I don’t need to tell you, Marty, that it’s going to be a long night. You might be our only chance of finding this fruitcake.’
‘I realize that. You need to understand something, though.’ Farrell took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I have started with the less common letters in the two names you gave me. I’ve looked at D, R, J, T, H, and U, and haven’t found any matches in our records except Dexter. I’m about to do Z, B, N and Y now. It’s taken me six hours to get this far. Most of the prints are partial and overlaid with others. Getting the computer to match smeared partial prints with our files is virtually impossible. If I have to broaden the search and check every print on the keyboard I shall be here all night. And some.’
‘That might be too late, Marty.’
‘I’d better get on with it, then.’
‘Call me. When you get something.’ Harrison hung up.
Marty Farrell sighed and tried to clear his head. He was beginning to think that this was a wild-goose chase. Not so much looking for a needle in a haystack as looking for a specific needle in a room full of needles. The thought of dusting and analysing every key on the computer filled him with gloom. There had to be a way he could short-cut the process. He swallowed the remains of his cup of coffee and frowned in concentration.
Z, B, N and Y. He had lifted five partials from those keys. It could take two or three hours for his computer to process them. Could he prioritize those in some way? He thought about the software that the library computer used. He knew it was a basically just a search program. The same kind of format that he used to access files on the Cambridgeshire Police mainframe. How did that work? It was easy, he remembered. You just typed the name of the person you wanted to find and pressed the ‘Return’ key. He made a mental note to dust the ‘Return’ key of the library computer. However, that didn’t seem very promising: everyone who used the system would have pressed ‘Return’ at some point. There would be dozens of prints, all of them smudged beyond recognition.
What else, then? Separation. You separated the forenames and surname of each subject with a comma. The same problem applied, though. Every user would have touched the comma key for precisely that purpose. He needed to isolate a key that only the killer had used. Forename and surname. The thought niggled at him. Why didn’t that sound right? In the back of Marty Farrell’s head an idea began to germinate. Suddenly he closed his eyes and cursed at his own stupidity.
The principal search term was always the subject’s surname. You typed the surname first, then the comma, then the forename. In fact, on many of these systems you didn’t even need to enter a forename: the database presented a list of subjects with the same surname and you could just click on the one that you wanted.
Marty looked again at the letters he had already checked: D, R, J, T, H, and U. Dexter’s prints had turned-up on D and R but not on U. What did that mean? Dexter had typed in the first two letters of ‘Drury’ and the computer had defaulted to the name typed in by the killer. Dexter hadn’t needed to type in the woman’s full surname. But the killer must have done. The U key was smeared with a number of prints so fragmentary and corrupted that he had been unable to lift any usable prints from it.
Z, B, N and Y. He thought for a second. The killer must have typed in ‘Drury’ in full. He had to have pressed the Y key. Y was a less common letter than U. Marty called up the partial print he had lifted from the Y key on to his computer screen. It was a fragment: about a third of a full print. Right index finger, most likely: classic loop pattern. He decided to take a chance. He selected the print and ran for matches. The system began sorting through its files. This was the tedious part of the process; the time-consuming part.
Marty stood and walked out of the laboratory area and into the toilet. He splashed some cold water on his face. He was annoyed with himself. He had wasted so much time concentrating on the wrong letters: he should have realized that the letters making up the surnames of ‘Donne’ and ‘Drury’ were potentially the most useful targets. Marty dried his face on a paper towel and walked round to the coffee machine. The coffee was nearly always awful but he needed some sustenance. He chose a cappuccino with extra sugar and walked back into the laboratory.
A light blue dialogue box had appeared on the centre of his computer screen. Marty put his coffee down carefully. The box said: Print Search: One Possible Match. He tried to contain his excitement and clicked on the dialogue box. It took a second for the next screen to appear:
Eleven Point Match: Probability 68.75%
Subject Record Loading
Please Wait.
Marty Farrell tapped his finger against the Formica surface of his desk. It took a minute for the file to upload. He wrote down the details as they appeared on the screen:
| Subject Name: | Frayne, Crowan | |
| Date of Birth: | 11 February 1967 | |
| Address: | Flat C Beaufort House Ravenswood Estate New Bolden NM6 8QJ |
|
| Arrested: | 5 September 1995, Brierly Veterinary Practice, NM Suspected Breaking and Entering |
|
| Arresting Officers: | PC Woods & PC Hillgate | |
| Conviction: | Criminal Damage & Resisting Arrest 17 November 1995, NM Magistrates Court |
Marty Farrell picked up his phone and dialled the Incident Room. He had a name and an address. Suspected breaking and entering. The words sent a chill down the length of his spine. Marty allowed himself a smile as Crowan Frayne’s picture slowly materialized on the screen.
Dexter started at the noises above her: a thud, footsteps and a door slamming. She strained her eyes, peering into the darkness. More footsteps, then a door opened. A blinding shaft of light blazed into the room. She tugged frantically at the binders on her wrists and the cord tightened again around her throat. He was here. This was it now. She was going to die. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the light and she looked around her. It was a basement, piled high with books. There were books everywhere. It was like the storage room under a library. There was a heavy old-fashioned wooden table in the centre of the room and three chairs arranged around it.
A torch shone in her face from the top of the stairs. She was dazzled by its intensity and yellow spots floated in front of her eyes. The light went away. She squinted hard. There were two figures on the stairs. Alison Dexter tensed again as the cord choked her. She was no longer alone.
‘Sergeant Dexter.’ A man’s voice, his voice. ‘I believe you know Dr Stussman.’
Dexter could see more clearly now as her eyes grew accustomed to the light. The killer had sat Heather Stussman in the chair next to the table. He was in the process of tying her hands behind her. She had a black plastic bag over her head. Once Frayne had secured her to the chair he untied the bag and pulled it from her face. Stussman’s head lolled drunkenly to one side. She was swimming in and out of consciousness, mumbling to herself. Satisfied that Stussman was secure, Crowan Frayne walked quickly around the table and dragged Alison Dexter up from the ground.
‘I apologize for leaving you alone. But, as you can see, I have had a busy afternoon.’
Dexter swore at him through her gag and coughed as the cord cut across her windpipe. Frayne placed her in the chair opposite Stussman and loosened the line around her neck. Then he left the room, bounding up the stairs like an excited child and slamming the door behind him.
The room plunged into darkness and Dexter sat at the table in frightened confusion, listening to Heather Stussman’s soft moans. She started work again on her wrists. The pain was acute, gnawing at her flesh like an insistent, hungry animal. She drove herself on with the thought of what she would do to her captor’s face if she managed to work herself free. When the pain became almost too much to bear, she thought of what he might do to her face if she couldn’t get free.
Five minutes passed and he returned. The room was again bathed in light. Crowan Frayne stepped and clanked awkwardly down the wooden stairs, carrying a large metal barrel. It looked like an oil drum. Dexter watched him place it next to a stack of books and go back into the main part of the house. When he re-emerged Frayne was carrying a large brass candlestick that resembled a short metal tree with eight small wax candles attached. He put the object on the table between Dexter and Stussman and lit each of the candles in turn. Their flickering light illuminated Stussman’s face: Dexter could see that she had been bleeding. Crowan Frayne sat at the table and placed his black leather box of antique medical instruments in front of him.
The gaunt lines of his terrible face creased into an abomination of a smile as he looked at Dexter.
‘Now then,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘Shall we begin?’
Three squad cars raced through the centre of New Bolden, a whirl of blue flashing lights and noise. Harrison was in the lead car. In all, ten officers accompanied him. He would have liked some firearms specialists with him but there hadn’t been time to call in the team from Huntingdon. Harrison hoped that surprise and the weight of numbers would be enough to overwhelm Crowan Frayne.
The Ravenswood estate was an unpleasant sprawl of local-authority accommodation on the northern outskirts of the town. It took fifteen minutes for the cars to cut through the evening traffic. As they approached the estate from the south, the car sirens and lights were switched off. Beaufort House was a square, grey oblong in the centre of the Ravenswood. Harrison ordered that the cars park out of sight of Beaufort House and his team ran the final hundred yards. Surprise would be everything.
Flat C was on the first floor. There was no light on. Harrison ordered two officers to wait at the foot of the stairwell and two more at the entrance to the lifts. He led the remaining officers up the piss-smelling stairs to the door of Flat C. Barker, a heavyset uniform sergeant came forward with a large sledge hammer and, at Harrison’s signal, smashed open the front door.
The team piled in, shining torches into the darkness. The flat smelled stale and dirty. As soon as Harrison breathed the dead air, he knew Frayne wasn’t inside. It was the smell of neglect and absence. He had recognized it immediately. It reminded him of the smell he had encountered in the houses of old-age pensioners who had died of hypothermia and been left to decay in their own beds. His officers kicked open the doors to both bedrooms and the kitchen. The living room was barely furnished. There were no books or ornaments. There was no television.
Harrison sat down in a threadbare brown armchair and looked at the shelf in front of him. There were eight glass flasks arranged in a neat line. He shone his torch at them. Each contained two or more eyes. They varied in size and colour from small yellow-centred pebbles that Harrison presumed had been taken from cats, to large scraggy-looking dog and sheep eyes.
‘Practice makes perfect,’ Harrison muttered to himself.
Sergeant Barker flicked on the living-room light and started in shock as a row of floating eyes glowered back at him. ‘Stone me!’ he cursed as he jumped. ‘He’s not here, guv. There’s no sign.’
‘Check all the drawers and cupboards. Bag everything,’ said Harrison. ‘If you find any envelopes or forms with another address on them let me know right away.’ Frustration smacked him sharply in the face and he slammed his fist against the dusty arm of the chair.
‘Fuck!’
He thought of Dexter and Heather Stussman. They were dead now, for sure.
The ward was nearly empty now, apart from the duty nurse and the male orderly who was chatting quietly to her. Underwood had woken ten minutes previously as the last dinner trays had been collected and taken away, clattering. He had not eaten and wasn’t hungry. In fact, he felt so nauseous that he thought he might never eat again.
He picked up the New Bolden Echo lying on top of the cabinet next to his bed. He was faintly annoyed that no one other than Dexter had come to visit him. Then he remembered that he didn’t have anyone other than Dexter. Once Paul Heyer and Julia recovered, Underwood knew that he would receive lots of visitors: solicitors, the Chief Super, Norwich police. He tried to sort through the fragments of memory and madness that still littered his brain. It was painful to walk there.
Lucy Harrington stared at him accusingly from the front page of the newspaper. He remembered the gaping hole in her face, the corruption of her beauty. She had been a strong, successful athlete, butchered for no reason. She left behind a devastated family who had supported and encouraged her in life. Now they would mourn the idiocy of her death. Underwood almost envied her. Who would mourn him? He had been cut adrift on an ocean of uncertainty; smashed against the dark edges of his personality. The people around us define us and bind us together. When those people fall away we are left alone to unpick the fabric of ourselves as if it were the only way to fill the silences.
Underwood’s attention drifted back to the newspaper. He couldn’t bring himself to read about Lucy’s achievements again. He turned the pages slowly and with little interest. Most of the stories were tedious local news items about old ladies being mugged and pets winning awards at shows. He didn’t read them. Had the killer bothered to read the rest of the paper?
The date on the newspaper was 1 December, just over a week before Lucy Harrington had been murdered. The killer had called the author of the article – George Gardiner – the morning after he had killed Lucy Harrington. He had read this paper and found something he hadn’t expected: a name that resounded with significance. A Providence, if you like, Underwood mused, a catalyst. If finding Lucy Harrington had been unexpected, had the murderer been looking for something else? What would you look for in a local paper? What would a local man look for in a local paper?
Himself, perhaps. Or someone he knew, someone he was close to. The people around us define us and bind us together, Underwood thought again. When they fall away we pick ourselves apart. The killer values the wit of strange connections. He connected Lucy Harrington with something else he was looking for. Underwood looked at the rain thumping on the window; he thought of Julia, of his parents. When they fall away we pick ourselves apart.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered to himself. He turned to page seventeen of the New Bolden Echo: the page that contained birth, marriage and death announcements. His tired eyes scanned the page quickly. He discounted births and marriages, concentrating instead on the death announcements. The first two obituaries didn’t seem appropriate: they were written in the clipped middle-class prose that announced deaths as if they were changes in a cast list at an amateur-dramatics evening. The third obituary in the column grabbed his attention, though:
Violet Frayne, d. 13 December 1999, beloved mother and grandmother. Shee by whose lines proportion should be examin’d, Measure of all Symmetree, Whom had that Ancient seen, Who thought Soules made of Harmony, He would at next have said, That Harmony was she.
Underwood knew he had him. He recognized the dedication. It was from Donne’s ‘The First Anniversary’: the poem that the killer had written on Elizabeth Drury’s ceiling. This woman, whoever she had been – mother, grandmother – had died a year before this edition of the newspaper had been produced. So that was it. The killer had been commemorating the first anniversary of the death when, by chance, Lucy Harrington’s beautiful round eyes had illumined his grief.
Underwood reached over for his mobile phone and dialled the Incident Room. A woman answered.
‘Dexter?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said a weary voice. ‘This is Jensen.’
‘Jensen, it’s Inspector Underwood.’
‘Hello, sir.’ She sounded surprised. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Listen to me, Jensen. I think I have the killer’s name. His surname, at least. I won’t bother you with the details but tell Dexter that I think his name is Frayne, F-R-A-Y-N-E.’
‘We think so too, sir. We lifted the prints of a Crowan Frayne from the computer terminal at New Bolden Library. Harrison went to his flat with a team about twenty minutes ago. There’s no one there. Harrison reckons the flat’s been deserted for some time. I was just trying to dig up some more information on Frayne. Job records, relatives and so on.’
‘Look for a Violet Frayne. I think it’s his mother or grandmother. She died a year ago but I think she lived locally.’ Underwood paused for a second. ‘Did you say Harrison had gone after the killer?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Where’s Dexter?’
Jensen bit her lip. He didn’t know … how could he know? She took a deep breath and briefly told the inspector the story of Dexter’s abduction, of Dr Stussman’s meeting with the killer and subsequent disappearance and of how she, DC Jensen, had been knocking on doors all day and had missed virtually all the excitement. By the end of the story Underwood had stopped listening. He knew that Dexter and Stussman were dead. And he was truly alone. He hung up before Jensen had finished speaking.
Annoyed by Underwood’s hanging up on her but focused on the task in hand, DC Jensen tried to call up the name of Violet Frayne on the New Bolden electoral roll. The database was two years old so if the woman had died twelve months ago she should still appear on record. It only took a couple of minutes to find her: Violet Frayne, 12 Willow Road, Hawstead, New Bolden. Jensen called Harrison’s mobile on her way out of the Incident Room.
The candles smoothed shadows across Crowan Frayne’s face as he read from memory. Heather Stussman’s eyes were open now and her gaze was fixed upon Dexter in fear and expectation. Dexter watched Frayne and worked at her bindings as he spoke. Frayne had been reciting ‘A Nocturnall upon St Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day’. His dry, rasping voice rose and fell like a boat on an ocean as he drifted through the last verse.
‘But I am None; nor will my sunne renew
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser Sunne
At this time to the Goat is runne
To fetch new lust, and give it you.’
The candle flames bent and sparked slightly as Frayne’s breath cut across them. Dexter looked around the room. There were great piles of books everywhere, some ancient and expensive, some falling apart at the bindings. She tried to piece together the jigsaw. The oil drum concerned her. It seemed incongruous, an ugliness. What was he trying to achieve?
Frayne paused for a second and then turned to face Heather Stussman, wild-eyed, gagged and seated at the table. Frayne opened his box of medical equipment and stared at the glittering rows of scalpels and scissors. His hand hovered over the box like a sparrow hawk until he selected one of the heavier-looking scalpels. He stood and walked around the table to Heather Stussman.
‘Dr Stussman, I am going to remove your gag now. If you scream or attempt to scream I will insert this instrument into Sergeant Dexter’s left eye. Do you understand?’
Terrified and shaking, Heather Stussman nodded her agreement. In a swift movement, Frayne sliced the masking tape gag from her mouth and returned to his chair.
‘So, Dr Stussman, lecturer in English at Cambridge University, tell me about “A Nocturnall upon St Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day”.’
Stussman frowned. Sweat streamed from her brow into her eyes. She tried to blink it away. ‘What can I tell you that you don’t already know?’
‘It’s what you don’t know that I am interested in,’ said Crowan Frayne as he replaced his scalpel into its holder and ran a gentle finger across his other instruments.
Stussman breathed deeply. ‘It’s a poem about bereavement. St Lucy’s Day was regarded as the longest, darkest night of the year.’ She looked over at Dexter, ‘December the thirteenth. Today.’
Stussman paused. What did he want her to say? She decided to keep it simple and apply her own basic critical model. ‘The poem is probably about his wife Ann. She died in childbirth. There are five stanzas, each with nine lines. The rhyme scheme is fairly standard and straightforward: ABBACCCDD. The repetition of rhymes at the end of each stanza is deliberate.’ She dared to look in Frayne’s direction. He nodded encouragement. ‘It is calculated to enforce the sense of despair: the rhymes are heavy and ponderous, like “drunk” and “shrunk”, “laugh” and “epitaph”, “absences” and “carcasses”.’
‘What about the conceit?’ Frayne took another blade from the box and held it to the light.
‘Donne says that by the woman’s death he has become a quintessential nothing. The nothing that predated Creation. An absolute nothingness. He says that even stones and rocks have some kind of spirituality.’
Frayne smiled at Dexter. ‘Aristotle.’
‘Yes, it’s an Aristotelian idea.’ Stussman started speaking more rapidly as Frayne stood and began to walk around the table. ‘Then he resolves to join with the dead woman, he yearns for annihilation, to become nothingness on the darkest, longest night of the year.’
Frayne walked around the table to Dexter and stood next to her, blade in hand. Stussman desperately groped for something else to say. ‘It’s an interesting theological point explored by Augustine and Aquinas: can a man wish to become nothing? If being nothing is better than his present state then surely it must be something. Now, in my opinion—’
Frayne cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing, because that seems to deliver him from the sense of his present misery.’ His eyes rolled in his head, like a shark biting down on its prey, as he remembered the remainder of the quotation. ‘But deliberately he cannot; because whatsoever a man wishes, must be something better than he hath yet; and whatsoever is better is not nothing.’ He reached down and cut away Dexter’s gag. ‘Donne’s Sermons, yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Heather Stussman.
Dexter gulped air into her dry mouth. ‘Listen to me,’ she said to Crowan Frayne. ‘This is madness. Let us go. There are people who can help you. I can arrange that.’
Frayne frowned at her, curious. ‘You think I need help, sergeant? Do you think I am a monster? Or a madman like the tramps who drink lighter fuel by the bus station and think they can fly?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ She struggled to find neutral language, ‘I don’t think that you’re mad but I do think that you need help. I am prepared to help you.’ The tape was loosening slightly on her wrists. If she could stay alive for a couple more minutes …
‘You make an interesting point, Alison.’ Frayne moved away from her. ‘You have the ability to make strange connections about people. What is the essence of that, do you think?’
‘I don’t understand the question,’ Dexter replied. Keep him talking …
‘Let me rephrase, it then. What do you think that Dr Stussman here missed in her analysis of the poem?’
‘I am not an expert,’ said Dexter. ‘I don’t understand poetry.’
‘I think you understand people, though.’ Frayne picked up a roll of black masking tape from the floor. He tore off a long strip and wrapped it around Stussman’s mouth. ‘Let me help you. The poem is a man’s response to bereavement, to the loss of his wife and daughter. Dr Stussman talked very lucidly about the structure of the poem, of the devices employed by the poet to attain his ends. She even entertained us with a snapshot of the theological tensions that underpin man’s desire for annihilation.’
He moved his left hand across Stussman’s face, feeling the smooth ridges of her cheekbones, the elastic perfection of her eyeballs. ‘What’s missing?’
Dexter saw where he was driving her. ‘She didn’t talk about the pain. The man’s emotions.’
‘Correct!’ Frayne seemed pleased as he drew the hair back from Stussman’s face. ‘The word is “pity”. It is a concept that I am sure Dr Stussman understands but she is afraid to apply. You see, sergeant, “pity” is a literary term. Tragedy is meaningless unless you pity the protagonist.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Unless his condition arouses pity in the audience, feelings of compassion that arise from empathizing with his desperate condition, his redemption has no more meaning than his suffering. Dr Stussman is a literary electrician. She understands circuitry and technique in language. In many respects she is original. However, unless one has the honesty and the courage to embrace one’s own agonies, how can we understand the pain of others? Dr Stussman’s ivory tower is in her head. Poetry is not mathematics, you see, Alison: it grows from the agonies of the soul. It bleeds. If Dr Stussman had the capacity to feel pity, her logical structures would be beautiful.’
‘Did you pity Lucy Harrington and Elizabeth Drury, then?’ said Dexter angrily, despite her fear. ‘Or those two kids that you beat to death and pushed into a stream?’
‘No,’ said Crowan Frayne. ‘But I pity you, Alison. Your cleverness has made you lonely like me.’ He pulled back Stussman’s chair so he could get around in front of her. ‘And I pity you, Dr Stussman. So I am going to help you both. I am going to show you that beauty can come from ugliness – and once we have each attained beauty we will become angels together.’
With his left hand Crowan Frayne held Heather Stussman by the neck. With his right hand he sliced the four letters that spelled ‘PITY’ into her forehead with his scalpel. Stussman screamed noiselessly into her gag as blood streamed down her face. Crowan Frayne stepped back to admire his handiwork.
‘Now, Heather, you are beautiful,’ he said happily. ‘You are complete. Pity should arouse pain.’ He wiped the scalpel against his trousers and replaced it in his equipment box.
‘You bastard!’ Dexter shouted at him. ‘What kind of sick fucker are you?’
Crowan Frayne held a finger to his mouth and shushed her. He walked over to a bookcase and picked up a small wooden box. He placed it on the table between Dexter and the sobbing Stussman.
‘Guess who?’ he asked as he opened the box.
Dexter saw the two bloodied eyes staring back at her and thought she might be sick. Lucy Harrington and Elizabeth Drury glared angrily at her.
‘What do you suppose, Alison Dexter?’ asked Crowan Frayne. ‘Is she not beautiful?’
‘Who? All I can see is a bloody mess that you created.’
‘You’re closer to the truth than you realize, Alison. As I said, you have the ability to make strange connections. Sometimes you do it in ignorance of yourself. Donne would regard you as a wit. Remember that beauty is born of ugliness. Worthiness is born of failure.’
‘We learn from our mistakes?’ Dexter snarled at him. ‘Is that the best you can do? That doesn’t strike me as especially witty. More like a big bloody cliché.’ She stopped herself from saying anything else: there was still one empty space in the eye box.
‘I was born of an ugliness, Sergeant Dexter. Unwanted and unloved, an accident that killed my mother as surely as if she’d walked under a bus. I was born in death. Infused with its ugliness at a subatomic level. But my grandmother created beautiful structures in my soul. She was an alchemist where Dr Stussman is an electrician. She refracted darkness and made it light, catalysed music from white noise, drew poetry from the billion dead voices shouting in my head.’
‘What has that got to do with us?’ Dexter shouted at him. She had a sense that events were beginning to accelerate. A reckoning was approaching.
‘Everything. You see, she hid her ugliness, the darkness of her times and her life. She kept her pain in a wooden box in her bedroom. I found it. The tiny universe of pain and experience she had compressed into this box, into three glass eyes. How fragile and corruptible beauty is. I exposed her horror to the world. It overwhelmed her. I took her placid beauty and made her abhorrent to herself. She saw herself in my eyes and finally knew her own ugliness.’
Stussman moaned in pain, her face a curtain of blood. Dexter had almost worked her hands free. Now she just needed an opportunity. Frayne moved to the foot of the stairs and rolled the oil drum to the centre of the room.
‘So I resolved to become the alchemist, Sergeant Dexter. I decided to take the ugliness I had created, the base matter if you like, and restore it to beauty.’
‘You’re replacing her eyes?’ Dexter asked, playing for time.
‘I am creating poetry, Alison. I am reaching beyond physics and religion, plugging the gaps in the glistening spider’s web that is man’s self-knowledge. Let’s get Dr Stussman here to help us now she’s had a rest.’ Frayne peeled the tape from Stussman’s mouth. She groaned in agony.
‘Doctor, what are the basic characteristics of a metaphysical poem? If you fail to answer I will have to molest Sergeant Dexter’s eyes.’
Stussman tried to look beyond the pain, to concentrate the agony away. ‘Intellectual rigour, sexual or religious imagery, conceit … performance.’ It was all she could manage. Stussman’s head fell forward and dark spots of blood dropped onto the wooden table.
‘You might say, Sergeant Dexter, that the last week has been my own valediction. You must admit it has approached poetry. The rigorous transubstantiation of ugliness into beauty: the bold and bloody imagery, oceans of tears drawn from sightless eyes. Wasn’t my conceit confusing to you at first? Have you not gained knowledge and understanding as it unfolded through Harrington and Drury? Has my performance not entertained and engaged the chosen audience? Has it not dazzled you all with wit and invention? The generation of beauty out of baseness. Violet Frayne’s beauty reborn from the same blood and destruction that once took it from her. It’s alchemy, Alison. It’s the very essence of man’s struggle out of ignorance.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’ Dexter asked. ‘How does your poem end? I suppose you’ll cut my eye out and bash my head in. That doesn’t strike me as poetry, though. That strikes me as exactly the kind of pig ignorance you say man has been struggling to crawl away from.’
‘Why do you think I contacted Dr Stussman? Why did you think I chose women with such specific names? I meant you all to understand, Alison. I took it upon myself to educate. To educate myself and my coterie. To make you worthy. Do you read the Bible, Alison?’
‘No.’
‘The Book of Daniel interested Donne. The writing on the wall at the murder sites? Does that not seem reminiscent of the writing on the wall at the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar prophesying the fall of Israel?’
‘No. To me it is reminiscent of a maniac with a big fucking ego.’
Frayne smiled and turned to Stussman. ‘I’m sure the piteous Dr Stussman is familiar with the Book of Daniel. Tell me, doctor –’ Frayne shook Stussman violently until her eyes rolled open and her stare fixed on him ‘– are we not as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?’
Dexter started. She remembered her first encounter with Frayne: ‘bedtogoto bedtogo’. Abednego. She hadn’t dreamed it.
‘What?’ said Stussman, blinking through the blood that was starting to dry in crusts around her eyes.
‘Are we not worthy now? Have I not made us worthy? I have achieved alchemy, you have found pity and Alison has her mind full of strange connections. Together we are the essence of metaphysics.’ Frayne unscrewed the top of the oil drum, ‘Kind pitty chokes my spleene; brave scorn forbids/Those teares to issue which swell my eyelids.’
Stussman heard the words rise above her pain. The opening couplet of ‘Satyre of Religion’. What did they mean? What was he thinking? She tried to think of his loss, his madness, to put herself in the centre of the inferno that raged inside Crowan Frayne’s mind. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Stussman croaked at Dexter across the table.
‘I’m working on it.’ Dexter had one hand free now.
‘We’re all going to die.’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Donne called them the children in the oven in his “Satyre of Religion”. He used them as imagery.’
‘What oven? What are you talking about?’ Dexter was getting annoyed.
‘In the Book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are cast into a burning furnace to test their faith in God. God saved their lives because of their faith and worthiness.’ Stussman’s wounds were starting to dry and they cracked painfully as she spoke. ‘He sees us as the most worthy.’
Dexter watched in horror as Crowan Frayne tipped the oil drum over and spilled petrol over the floor. He lifted the container and poured the remainder over the book piles, over the table and finally over himself. He then returned to his seat and pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket. He placed it on the table and took two vicious-looking skin clamps from his box of medical equipment. With her left hand, Dexter frantically picked at the tape that bound her right wrist to the wooden chair. She needed more time. Must talk to him.
‘So now what?’ she asked. ‘Burning the house down isn’t poetry.’ The smell of petrol was everywhere. The room was as dangerous as a powder keg. It smelled of death.
‘The conceit has almost unfolded, Sergeant Dexter. This process has been educative for us all. You have become a worthy audience and I have become a worthy poet. Are we not poised to become angels?’ With that, Crowan Frayne placed the two eye clamps on the skin above his left eyebrow. Then he ignited his lighter and threw it into the nearest book stack, which promptly burst into flames. The wall of heat hit Dexter in a second. She only had moments to get out before the whole room exploded into flames. Crowan Frayne let out a high-pitched scream as he drove his scalpel into the ciliary muscles at the side of his left eye.
Dexter was panicking. The glue on the tape was melting onto her hands, burning at her skin. A final wrench and both her hands were free. The staircase was on fire now and Dexter was gasping for air. She tore at the tape around her ankles. Flames were spreading quickly up the wall. They rolled across the floor in a blue and yellow tide, eating at the legs of the table. Crowan Frayne dropped his scalpel onto the table and pulled a pair of metal forceps from his equipment tray. Dexter tried not to watch as he forced the claws of the instrument into his eye socket and begin to pull on it.
Finally she was free. She ran around the table to Stussman and desperately tore at the lecturer’s bindings. Fire burned at her feet and her ankles, melting her tights against her skin. Crowan Frayne screamed again as fire washed over his chest and back. With a final terrible effort, he pulled his left eye from its socket and dropped it on the table in a dark pool of blood.
‘Is this not the triumph of the will, Sergeant Dexter?’ he screamed.
The fire was roaring now. She had to get to the staircase fast. Dexter quickly reached across the table, grabbed a scalpel from Frayne’s box and slashed violently at the tape around Stussman’s ankles. It finally came away and Dexter dragged Stussman to the foot of the stairs.
‘Look, Alison!’ Crowan Frayne shouted through the flames. ‘Love has wrought new alchemy. I have forged beauty from ugliness. She is beautiful again.’ As flames engulfed him, Crowan Frayne held up the highly polished purple-lined box that now contained three eyes.
Dexter hauled Stussman up the burning staircase with her last vestiges of strength. At the top she turned the door handle and pushed hard against the wooden door. It was locked. For the first time that night, Alison Dexter screamed for help.
Jensen heard the screams and smelled the smoke rising from the house. There was a large stone urn in the front garden. She grabbed it, groaning under its weight, and smashed it through Violet Frayne’s living-room window. The broken glass tore at her skin as she climbed through. Three squad cars pulled up in the street outside.
‘Sergeant Dexter?’ She shouted into the smoke. ‘Dr Stussman?’ She heard a muffled scream in response.
Jensen hurried into the hallway and opened the front door. She saw Harrison running across the road and turned back inside, staggering blindly through the smoke in the direction of he cries. She found the door to the basement in a few seconds. The handle was red hot. The door was locked. She looked desperately around for a key. Harrison had joined her.
‘We’re going to have to force it,’ she shouted.
‘All right. On three.’
‘Stand back inside.’
They charged at the door together and it fell open, hanging inwards as the rotting frame gave way. The wall of smoke and heat hit them immediately. Jensen crouched, coughing, and reached blindly into the smoke. After a second she felt a body.