I eased myself around the side of the house, ignoring the crunching sound my feet made on the gravel path. It was far too late for subtlety. There was a garage at the side of the house; the door was partly open, so I went to examine it. From the feel of the engine of the car inside, whoever was driving it had only just arrived; it was almost hot.
At the back of the property I saw a light on in what had to be the kitchen. I tried the door and felt it easing under the pressure, and found myself in a kind of laundry room facing a slightly open door where the light was coming from. Quietly I let myself into the kitchen, not knowing what I might come across. It was empty, and as silent as the grave – which caused me again to wonder if this was the right house. Then, at the rear of the room, I noticed a darkened passageway leading into the bowels of the house. I withdrew my torch and, keeping it low to the ground, I entered the passage. There was another light protruding from a slightly open doorway at the end, and as I came nearer I saw it was a doorway with stone steps leading down to the cellar. Every instinct within me urged me to get the hell out of there and wait for the arrival of the second patrol car. And then I thought of Connie and the terrors she would be going through, and what he might be doing to her down there. However reckless, I took the only decision possible and began to descend the stairs towards the light.
Partway down I heard the voices: one of them, which caused me to freeze against the wall, was definitely Connie’s; the other, the same nightmarish voice I had heard through the mobile. I was horrified at the things she was saying.
“Why are you doing this to me, Daddy? Mummy promised me you wouldn’t do it again. Ooh, no; please, Daddy – you are hurting me.”
I stood on the stairs frozen in shock. Her father? I was told some years ago he had died in a car crash. Why? What was the point in telling me that?
“Now, now, my little darling; you know you don’t mean that.” The sneering voice said. “You used to like your daddy doing this to you, didn’t you? It was only that bitch of a mother of yours who interfered and spoilt our fun. Come on, sweetie – tell the truth; you love it really, don’t you? And when I’ve finished there’s another little treat in store for you … you see, my dear, you now have to pay for all the trouble you’ve caused me. You do understand, don’t you? Thanks to you and your fucking visions my pleasures are almost at an end.”
The sound of weeping followed; it was a ghoulish, horrifying sound – a mixture of sobbing and squealing with pain – and I found myself paralysed with shock and revulsion at the thought of what was taking place below me.
Then I began to realise why they had kept his existence a secret. That was the shocking part. He was the one who had molested her as a child. He was the one who had raped her and driven her mind into a retreat.
For all these years we had hunted a monster whilst, unknowingly, we had his daughter in our care. And neither she nor we had had the beginnings of an idea. He, then, was the cause of the disassociate fugue Connie had suffered. It was not solely due either to the trauma of uncovering the mass grave in the woods, as we had all thought, but also from the sexual abuse this evil monster had visited on a little girl – his daughter, for God’s sake! And now her memory had returned, accompanied by all the vivid images of the violent, depraved obscenities he had committed.
But her current recollections were of the eight-year-old child who had had to endure the nightly terror, rather than the adult she had now become. Listening to her speaking, through the closed door, was like listening to a child. It was as if she had regressed into the world she had inhabited when still living with her father; as if she was reliving the events of that time. I shuddered from an amalgam of my own fear at the reality that men like her father actually existed and outright rage that anyone could do those things to their own daughter.
I remained transfixed on the cellar steps, trying to make some sense out of the thoughts racing through my head. The visions she had experienced? Was that something she had inherited from her father? Hadn’t Connie said, a number of times, “He can see me”?
Was this a shared phenomenon? If so it would clearly explain why he couldn’t allow her to remain free; he must have been afraid that her memory was slowly returning, and in that event would identify him. In that instance I also remembered something Paul Simmons had said to me some years ago: that we would find the origins of her trauma in her family environment. But, then, that wasn’t supported by Connie’s assertion that she had inherited the gift from her grandmother.
I had never cursed my incompetence more than I did at that moment. I was standing there, on the stairs, rigid with shock and the on point of being violently sick, but totally unsure how I should proceed. In the end it was cold anger that emerged the winner, especially as I felt the penetrating sobs from my young friend tormenting me.
Silently I retreated back to the kitchen and hastily, using my flashlight and searched through the drawers until I discovered a large carving knife, which I gripped with a new resolve. Then I hurried again down the steps and without hesitating I pushed open the door to the cellar. I couldn’t help myself; what I witnessed and experienced there caused me to let out a feral scream, the like of which I had never before heard, and from which I felt I was totally detached. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Arnold Brownlaw – I will always think of him by that name – was lying naked on top of an equally naked Connie, very evidently penetrating her, and very evidently enjoying his depraved sexual act. I saw that he had his hands around her throat, and was beginning to squeeze the life from her. He had a grotesque expression of lust on his face; his mouth was gaping wide open, whilst saliva trickled down to his chin. His eyes appeared to have lost focus; he was immersed in his world of madness – until he heard my scream. Then he regained a degree of control; I saw his head come up, and watched him withdraw himself from Connie. He climbed off the small bed and came towards me, oozing pure hatred, coupled with a sense of pervading evil. I had an overpowering sense of malevolence cloaking his whole body.
I know I should have concentrated on him, but I was paralysed with the horror of it all. Then the sight of a child’s body behind him distracted my focus. She was lying there, naked and dead, but in perfect repose, as if she had been prepared for a requiem ceremony. I guessed it was Lisa – the girl from the playground. She seemed to be at perfect peace, even though her throat and vulva were badly mutilated. Above her, and all around the walls of the cellar, a variety of trophies were displayed: photograph after photograph of naked children. Dead little girls in a variety of obscene poses, positioned by the killer especially for his album. Most of them appeared to be silently pleading for mercy, as though they were aware of what was to come. Others had their faces screwed up in agony. This then was what Paul was referring to when he mentioned trophies. These pictures, hanging on the wall around the room, were Brownlaw’s trophies of his evil acts.
As my attention was diverted, I sensed rather than saw Brownlaw leap at me and make a grab for the knife in my hand. I stood virtually paralysed, tears streaming down my cheeks, still attempting to absorb the enormity of the scene into my shocked consciousness. It was pure instinct, and perhaps some training, that prompted my reaction. As he knocked the knife from my hand my foot came up reflexively and kicked him hard in the groin. He fell to the ground, clutching his testicles in agony and screaming obscenities at me, as I, in turn, was pushed backwards heavily, against the wall, my already sensitive head impacting with a sickening thud against the hard concrete. I felt the blood trickling down the back of my neck as the room started to spin and my focus start to distort, and I desperately tried to maintain my balance.
“You’re the other fucking bitch, aren’t you?” he squealed in pain. “How did you find me?” I then heard him scream. “You had no right to find me.” Slowly he tried to climb back to his feet. “Well, now you’re here you can join the party – there’s no way out of this place. Connie,” he gasped, looking towards the bed, “get the knife. Hurry! We can’t let her get away.”
I watched Connie, in a dreamlike state, climb slowly from the bed, almost as if she was unaware of where she was or even that she was naked. I noticed her jaw was badly swollen and displaced from where he had punched her. She walked over towards the knife without speaking and picked it up from the floor. Then her head turned towards me and I saw just a flicker of recognition in her eyes. By now Brownlaw had managed to painfully struggle to his feet. My vision of the scene kept distorting, and I felt I was on the point of passing out.
“Hurry, you stupid BITCH !” he screamed at Connie. “Right. That’s it. Now, give it to Daddy.” He held out his hand towards her, and then took a step nearer. Before I knew what was happening, or could do anything to prevent it, Connie thrust forward viciously with the knife and sank it deep into his stomach. In absolute horror, I watched her deliberately withdraw the blade and then plunge it into his abdomen again. The blood from his severed artery was spurting all over her naked body, from her breasts down to her lower abdomen, and into her crotch, changing the colour of her pubic hair from blonde to a deep, unnatural red. She was completely oblivious.
“Daddy…Daddy…Daddy…” she said, over and over, in that childlike voice, repeatedly plunging and plunging the knife into him. “I said for you not to do it again, didn’t I? And Mummy warned you too, didn’t she? You know she did.”
Brownlaw had a look of sheer astonishment on his face. “I’m your father; you can’t do this,” he whimpered in unconcealed agony. This merely prompted Connie to thrust the knife once more into his now eviscerated bowel. I watched, almost in fascination, as his intestines began spilling out from the wounds, and I witnessed his gaze turn from bewilderment to horror, then to intense fear. It was as if he had experienced a sudden and graphic vision, at the precise moment he was about to die, of the eternal damnation waiting to welcome him.
I turned my face away from the nightmarish scene and felt myself throwing up, no longer able to control my reaction. My legs giving way followed this, and I sank to the floor in deep shock. My whole body was trembling.
I watched in a kind of blur as Peter Conway pulled Connie away from her father and took the knife from her. The last thing my consciousness noticed was what a pathetically small man he was. Lying there, dead now, drenched in his own blood, his eyes still open in disbelief and looking so innocuous, I was left with the impression we had caught the wrong man. It just didn’t seem possible that this insignificant and disembowelled little man, with his by now shrivelled penis, could have possibly committed all those atrocities.