I’ll tell you no lies Read online

  “Then put me in touch with my mother, please.”

  “Okay, it’s what her spirit wants. I can put you in touch, but I can’t guarantee what the outcome will be, that depends on you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, okay, it’s me she wants to speak to. You can only put us in touch. Is that right?” asked Keith.

  “That’s exactly right. I think we’ll get along just fine, the three of us. You just need to put your trust in me. If you can trust me Keith everything will be okay.”

  With that Lucy then went on to arrange a ‘sitting’ that evening at her place, where her ‘power is by far the strongest’. Keith was okay with this; he just wanted it over and done with. She told him where to come, giving him directions, and saying she looked forward to meeting him as she felt she knew him already.

  At six thirty that evening, when Stein studios was empty, Lucy changed the simple brass number plate at street level for one that she’d had made weeks ago. The number was the same but etched beneath the number was the name Pippa D Manning. It was just in case he needed a little extra reassurance when he arrived, that little extra push to go ahead and ring the bell.

  At seven thirty that same evening he did ring the bell.

  Come all you sinners

  Come one come all

  Like lambs to the slaughter

  Come live in my thrall

  “Hello, Keith; come in and just keep climbing until you can’t go any further, the door will be open.” Lucy’s voice came through the intercom.

  When Keith reached the top floor the door was open. He walked in, fearful of what the evening had to offer. That unfortunately was as much as he would remember for the next seventy minutes. He had been quite correct in his trepidation. A baseball bat to the back of the head, however, can remove any feelings of trepidation immediately. In fact a well-placed blow from a baseball bat to the back of the head can remove any feelings at all, not just trepidation. That is until you regain consciousness.

  When Keith woke up his head was banging, but that appeared to be the least of his worries. He was naked apart from a tight fitting, full head leather mask. The only holes in the mask were for his eyes, his ears, his nostrils and one just big enough to fit a straw through in front of his mouth. His legs were chained together and his wrists shackled above his head. He was on his tiptoes, the chain connecting his wrists together hung on a hook that looked like it had come straight out of a slaughterhouse. He was alone in what looked like some sort of medieval torture chamber come bedroom.

  Twenty minutes later his captor walked through the door carrying a brass number plate and a screwdriver.

  “We won’t need that again,” said Lucy to nobody in particular. Turning round to look at her catch, she moved in closer.

  “Good to see you awake again, for a minute back there I thought I’d spoiled everything before we’d even begun. But I can see everything is fine now. Sorry about the bump on the head though, it couldn’t be helped.”

  Keith couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lucy Kirkpatrick. His heart rate jumped at the thought of how much Lucy Kirkpatrick must hate him. He knew in her shoes he would feel the same.

  “Oh don’t try to talk, Keith. You won’t be able to anyway, the mask is a nice tight fit. I think a grunt is probably the best you can manage just now.”

  Keith’s mind was racing. It was as if reality had stopped and something else had taken over, maybe this was what madness feels like, he thought.

  “Oh. How rude of me, Keith. Where are my manners?” said Lucy, “Allow me to introduce myself I’m Lucy, Lucy Kirkpatrick, but you know that already don’t you? We bumped into each other a little while back, remember? I’m also Pippa Manning. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Not to worry, I’ve stopped being Pippa now. I’m Lucy again from now on.”

  Of course he knew who Lucy Kirkpatrick was. Every man in Britain knew who she was, thought Keith? That and the fact that he’d been driving the car that had killed her lover, of course he knew who she was, why wouldn’t he?

  “Oh, Keith, your mother still wants to say hello.” said Lucy. “Silly me forgetting that!”

  With that Lucy swung Keith around on his chain to face the opposite direction. Keith gasped; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Less than two feet away chained and suspended from another meat hook was his mother’s frozen body, slowly defrosting. He tried to scream but couldn’t, the leather was holding his jaw in place.

  “Now you two get reacquainted while I sort a few things out. Before I forget Keith I need your alarm code; I take it you’ve changed it since I was there last.”

  Everything came to Keith then in a rush. How stupid could he have been? Taken in by circumstance he’d let his mind fill in all the spaces. His mind had been only too willing to accept that his mother was dead, it had suited him. He’d been taken in by an offer of help, an offer to rid him of his problems. Pippa Manning had offered to put him in contact with his dead mother. She hadn’t been lying when she said that; there she was in front of him.

  “Your alarm code Keith. Come on concentrate.” With that Lucy held up some cards in one hand and a drill in the other.

  “I’m going to hold these cards up one by one, when we get to the first number just nod. Okay? Then we’ll do the other numbers in order. If you refuse to do it or give me a wrong number I’ll drill holes in your feet. Now take a good look at your mother. Do you understand?” said Lucy.

  Keith nodded. Self-preservation had always been one of his specialities.

  “Good.”

  Within twenty minutes Lucy was driving Keith’s Toyota four-wheel drive monster back to his house. His keys were in her handbag and the new alarm code in her head. The disguise was having its last outing, then that too could go back into storage, just like Dawn Waterson would later that evening. But for now she was going to let her hang around for a while. After all Keith hadn’t seen his mother in such a long time, it seemed cruel to spoil their reunion too soon.

  She parked his car on the drive and went in. He’d given her the correct alarm code; she didn’t have to drill holes in his feet, not yet anyway. She found the letter she’d sent along with the business card and checked the rest of the house.

  While she was there she took all the perishables out of his kitchen, things like bread and milk, things that the police would look for straight away when they got involved later on. No perishables usually mean a person has just gone away without telling anybody, a premeditated event. She left no trace of her visit and was happy when she left that nothing would point in her direction when people eventually got round to looking.

  When she eventually made it back home she got changed into jeans and a T-shirt, disposing of her disguise in a cupboard. There was nothing unusual in a model like Lucy possessing the odd disguise, it came with the territory. It was how you carried it off that made it successful or not, and Lucy was good, very good, she seemed able to change character at will.

  Back in the ‘guest room’ Lucy lowered Keith’s mother to the floor and unshackled her.

  “Have you had fun, Keith? Caught up on old times?” asked Lucy.

  Keith could only grunt a reply, which sounded faintly like “bitch.” When she returned from putting Dawn back in her coffin she gave him five sharp blows with the baseball bat to his body, just in case the word had indeed been bitch.

  “Now we don’t like that sort of attitude, Keith,” said Lucy after the fifth blow, “carry on like that and you won’t even make it to Friday.” Turning the light off and leaving him dangling all that he heard as she shut the door was, “goodnight, Keith. We’ll see each other again tomorrow; we’re going to have such fun together. I just know it.”

  It was as much as Keith could do to weep, and even this was painful. Looking up in the dark to see if an escape was possible he saw his cause was hopeless. Within the hour his legs and stomach were cramping up, she was torturing him and she wasn’t even there. He didn’t even want to contemplate what tomorrow might
bring. While Keith wept Lucy slept the sleep of the righteous and looked forward to the next day with great anticipation.

  The sun was shining when she eventually woke the following day; summer had come early for once. As far as Lucy was concerned having Keith Waterson under her control was like having all her Christmases come at once. She was like a child who didn’t know which present to open first. Maybe first she’d open up his chest, see how much pain that would cause, or maybe just a leg, for starters. She’d read that a really good torturer could keep a victim alive for weeks. Knowing just when to stop, that was where the real skill lay; to bring your victim so close to death that you could smell it, then backing off. That was the pain she wanted him to feel. That was the pain he’d made her feel, anything less would be a failure on her part.

  Okay, Lucy; let’s go and enjoy ourselves, for Jayne’s sake.

  Yes, for Jayne.

  It wasn’t until she got close to him that she sensed something was wrong. It could have been his colour; it could have been the way his head lay against his chest. It didn’t really matter, what she’d set out to do was no longer possible. She couldn’t cause him any more pain if he was already dead. She wanted him alive; Sally-Anne had wanted him alive.

  “No, no, no, you bastard; you can’t be dead, not yet, not for a long time yet!” Lucy said to the corpse that until three o’clock that morning had been Keith Waterson, as he lived and breathed. He would have still been living and breathing had it not been for the last hit with the baseball bat. She’d only meant to soften him up but she’d broken a rib. When the cramps came and he’d been writhing in agony the rib had punctured a lung and he’d drowned in his own blood. It wasn’t a nice way to go but at least he would have chosen it over what Lucy had planned for him. In a sense he was a very fortunate man to have suffered so little, looking at him hanging there, naked and grey but for a blood encrusted leather facemask.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen, Sally-Anne; not like this.

  No Lucy, it wasn’t.

  For Jayne, for me, for you, for Rosie, it wasn’t meant to be like this.

  No Lucy, not like this.

  Thirty-One

  Lucy’s sense of vengeance, her need for retaliation would never now be satisfied. It had been something Sally-Anne had built up carefully. A little nudge here, a quiet word at an appropriate moment there.

  Only one man could have satisfied that desire for retribution, but now she would never be able to settle that score. Don’t be mistaken, she’d killed him, there was no doubting that, there never would be, even in Lucy’s feeble mind. But Lucy had wanted so much more from him than just his death. Now he could never give her what she’d wanted, really wanted, more than anything else. She would never be at peace. Lucy knew it, Sally-Anne knew it. She did still have Rosie though, a glimmer of hope on the horizon maybe?

  To get revenge is one thing. To have revenge in your heart, waiting to be had, is yet another. To have that revenge snatched away before it’s had; well that’s something completely different. She’d had a need, now she was an empty shell.

  She didn’t even bother taking his body down. It would have given her no pleasure. She had planned on keeping him alive as long as possible; she had even planned the final act to be on Jayne’s birthday, 24 June. That was still two weeks away. Two weeks of pain, two weeks to make him feel years of pain. She’d had it all planned out; it really was going to be fun.

  There was nothing Sally-Anne could say to console her. Sally-Anne was quite prepared to mark it down to experience and move on. There are plenty of other men in the world. That had been Sally-Anne’s argument; it had always been Sally-Anne’s argument.

  Come on, Lucy. It’s only the end of his world, not yours. There are Plenty more fish in the sea. Okay, you might not find that perfect specimen again, but that doesn’t mean you stop fishing. You just go out and buy yourself a bigger boat.

  For Jayne?

  No, for us, Jayne’s gone now Lucy. We had our chance, we blew it.

  I blew it.

  Trust me, Lucy. Everything is going to be okay. You do trust me don’t you?

  Silence…

  …

  Lucy went to bed with a heavy heart that evening. She felt empty, alone, unloved, and unable to love. It took some time before she could sleep; her mind was awash with memories. She had difficulty recalling the good times she’d had with Jayne. She even struggled to remember her voice, whenever she spoke she sounded like Sally-Anne.

  It had been Sally-Anne after all who had first spotted Jayne. It had been Sally-Anne who had made the first move on Jayne. Had it been Sally-Anne whom Jayne had loved all along? Lucy couldn’t get the thought out of her head that she had been played, like a pawn in a game of chess, ever since that day, years ago, outside of school in Manchester.

  At two thirty that same night Sally-Anne put Lucy’s mind into the padded cell next to hers. She took the straight jacket hanging from the rusty nail and made sure it was a tight fit. When she left and shut the door behind her she locked it using the big fuck off padlock that Lucy didn’t know existed. Sally-Anne had an idea; she thought she knew what would make Lucy smile again.

  Lucy was dreaming again, floating on air, rising above the clouds with a presence close by. She couldn’t see who it was; she just knew there was somebody with her, guiding her, an angel, a guardian angel helping her, pointing her in the right direction. It felt so right.

  Within minutes she was at her destination. She had a choice to make, her guardian angel said. She would have to choose a door through which she could enter one of two rooms. Before making that choice though she would be able to see inside the rooms, in order to make the right choice. She was told she had only one choice. There was no changing her mind once she’d made her decision.

  Moving to the window next to the door on the left she saw a waiting room. In the waiting room were people she knew. Her dad was the first person she saw. He obviously couldn’t see her though. Lucy thought it must be a two-way mirror she was looking through because the next person she saw was Patrick Stein, combing his hair looking directly at her from the other side of the room. Sat together to the left of Stein were Terence Sandford and Georgie Dunston, playing cards. To the left of them was Steve Summer making notes in a book.

  It would have been a strange choice for Lucy to pick this door, a room full of people she despised or who had let her down. Just then she noticed another door in the room. The door opened and in walked Keith Waterson with his mother. They were hand in hand, like mother and son often are before small boys become big boys.

  She hoped the second room was a better choice than the first. It was. As she approached the room she could see only two people, both sat down. Just before she reached the window though both people stood up, they could both see her. On the other side of this glass stood Jayne and Lucy’s mum. Both began to cry tears of joy as they began to run toward the window, hands outstretched. Lucy couldn’t hear what they were saying, she didn’t need to, here were two people she loved and who loved her back. Jayne was just as she remembered her, she longed for her touch again, wanted to hear her voice again. She was so close to something she had thought she would never happen again.

  Two doors, one choice, the decision was hardly a tough one. Do I go with the people I love, or the people I hate and despise? Not very difficult…

  Lucy pushed open the right hand door in her eagerness to enter. She ran in with both hands outstretched, a big smile on her face, desperate for the reunion to follow. She was in the left hand room. Looking back at her were six pairs of eyes she’d never wanted to see again. She rushed out of the room slamming the door behind her.

  The left hand door opened just as easily as the other. Again there were six pairs of eyes looking back at her. The same six pairs of eyes she’d seen only seconds before. She rushed out of the room again, once again slamming the door behind her. Rushing to the window she could see Jayne and her mum looking back. This time they were crying. Openi
ng the door a second time she saw six pairs of eyes once again.

  Back outside the two rooms she realised that her dream had become a nightmare. She felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking round she saw a woman smiling.

  “Come on now, Lucy. You’ve made your choice; in fact, you made it a long time ago. Do you understand?”

  “No, what’s happening? What do you mean?”

  “Oh come on, you made your choice when you were thirteen. You’re mine now. You’ve been mine ever since you were thirteen. Trust me; I know what I’m talking about. You trusted Sally-Anne, now you’ll just have to trust me. You don’t really have much choice in the matter from now on, you’re mine. Join me in hell.”

  “You do trust me don’t you, Lucy?”

  A dream turning into a nightmare isn’t much of a problem. The nightmare turning into reality, now that’s a problem.

  Her body wasn’t discovered for three days. John hadn’t been able to stop Rosie following him into Lucy’s apartment. When he turned round to throw up she was there behind him, looking up in amazement at the scene in front of her. He was sure she’d not been there long, staring at Lucy’s body strung up from the ceiling, a leather whip wrapped round her neck, her tongue hanging out and her face looking in more pain than a person should ever endure. She was hanging there right next to the body of Keith Waterson. A knife was stuck into her stomach up to the hilt, pushed there by Sally-Anne, her final act of Lucy’s short life.

  Both bodies were found in a fairly bad state. Three days hanging around with nowhere to go in a warm early summer can do that to you. It was four days in the case of Keith, but they weren’t to know that yet. In fact, by the time the police had finished in Lucy’s apartment they knew much more about Lucy than they had ever known before. They still didn’t know about Sally-Anne though.