Antman (44 page)

*  *  *

As they got into the car and drove off, Chris told Tom about Mrs Blatt having looked after Thompsen, long-term.

'If it's true, I wonder why Mrs Blatt lied,' he said.

'Come to think of it, she didn't exactly lie. She just didn't tell me.'

'Perhaps she didn't want you to think she was responsible for events over a longer period in the boy's life.'

'How the other half lives,' Chris reflected. 'I felt terrible to think those biscuits were her one luxury. And you carried on eating them like there was no tomorrow. I couldn't catch your eye.'

'You take people too literally,' said Tom. 'The Church looks after its own.'

'That's where you're utterly mistaken. This woman left the safe custody of her religious order. She's probably been more disadvantaged as a consequence than if she'd never joined in the first place.'

'Spoken with feeling.'

'There's no complacency like that of the well-heeled middle class, completely insulated from any real understanding of hardship. There's no anger, rejection and punitiveness as strong as from the society when one of its members spurns it and leaves.'

'People like that who submit others to corporal punishment should be given a taste of their own sanctions,' he said.

'You've some real hang-ups about punishment,' she said.

'I have not,' he protested, but she wasn't convinced.

'To say nothing of your religious prejudices,' she added.

*  *  *

Graver's memories ran riot.

I felt near the heart of the evil of the school. I remember an incident back at the home, with Mother Bernadette.

I was upstairs, sent to bed in the dormitory for rubbing my glass during supper and making it ring. I heard a noise along the corridor. There was a connecting door between the dormitories and the nuns' accommodation. I pushed the door. It was always locked, but on this occasion someone must have forgotten. The door swung open. I walked towards the sound. A room at the far end with the door not quite closed. I looked through the crack next to the door hinge. The music teacher, Brother Francis and a nun, with a victim. A naked girl, a Homes girl, in a room filled with blood and no cushions or anything.

The girl turned towards me, nearly unconscious, perhaps drugged or drunk. I saw brother Francis holding her while the nun forced the neck of a half bottle of whisky into her mouth. He pushed up his cassock and rubbed himself up against her legs. They were wide apart, hanging over the end of the bed.

It makes me angry to think of it. So angry I have taken action. It's time to inform you.

J

*  *  *

Miss Craig went to bed early that night. In her dream, she was Sister Ruth again. She heard noises outside the house and later, sounds in the kitchen. It seemed she had hardly gone to sleep when she woke to sudden terror. Her hands were pinned down and she couldn't breath. A piece of cloth was being held over her nose and mouth. She tried to move in the bed but couldn't. Then she passed out, confused as to whether she was awake or merely dreaming.

It didn't take Graver long to overpower his victim and use the anaesthetic pad to bring about a state of virtual unconsciousness.

Sister Ruth woke in pitch darkness and experienced panic as her hands fought with a soft enveloping substance which felt like fine sand. Her arms broke free and she started to pray:

'Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed are Thou –'

She panicked again and scrabbled at her hair to clear it of bits. She pulled it back from her face. When she tried to stand she realised that something was seriously affecting her power to move. An enormous weight pressed on her body, from the shoulders down. She wanted to turn and scratch her foot, in which she suddenly had become aware of an irritating tingling. Panic set in when she realised that she was, in effect, paralysed from the shoulders downwards. Her arms beat uselessly at the hard-packed substance which encased the rest of her body.

'Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed art Thou among women and blessed –'

She heard a soft grunt. It sounded some distance away. It was like a wild animal. Ruth was really scared now. What if it reached her and attacked before she had the chance to extricate herself. She redoubled the scraping with her fingers. The grunting came again. It was closer. She could hear panting now. In a panic, she imagined its hot breath fanning her cheek before it gouged at her face with its sharp tusks.

'Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed –'

A shape moved. She realised the darkness was lifting. Or was it her eyes becoming accustomed to the night? The shape was quite close, almost but not quite within reach. It was oval, not a grunting pig as she had imagined, but – she giggled – a ball, yes, one of those rugby balls, on its end, containing some kind of trick mechanism which made it move slightly from side to side.

'Hail Mary, hail Mary, hail –'

Chapter 29

Chris was standing over Morrison, who sat seemingly doodling at the keyboard of his PC.

'Here we are, boss.' He manipulated the keys and a map appeared on the screen.

‘
What do we know about his area of operations?' asked Chris

‘
Well, we know he has one. That's to say, if you put a pencil and line here on the map and draw like this around all the sites where victims have been found –'

'You get a circle. Wonderful. In other words, we know the killer operates within an area of, let's say, twenty by fifty miles on the borders of North and East Yorkshire – that's a thousand square miles. That's goodness knows how many sheep, farms and villages, to say nothing of Hull, Beverley and one or two other towns. Brilliant.'

'No, boss. Not quite as depressing. If we assume it takes the killer half an hour to set the murder scene up and a similar time to drive away, this produces a much smaller radius – say ten to twelve miles.'

*  *  *

The dull red light shone eerily from a bulb in a socket fixed to the wall to one side of her head. The rugby ball turned and groaned again and she stared aghast at Father Doyle's head. Puffy and discoloured, but still recognisable. Father Doyle!

'Hullo, Father, Sister Ruth here.' Could he see or hear her? Sister Ruth wasn't sure. She thought he opened one swollen eye and grunted a response. She cast her eyes from side to side as they became accustomed to the strange, subdued red light. There wasn't much to see in the arc of sand within her horizon. Apart from Father Doyle to the left of her. And a curious little semicircular shadow in the blank wall, far over on her right. Is it a painted mark or a hole? She couldn't tell.

'I intended to maintain complete darkness in the room, but installed lighting – ants cannot see red so are unaffected by it – so I could monitor my subjects. The cellar isn't ideal. It requires filling almost to the ceiling with sharp sand, poured through a pipe I've made specially to improve ventilation for the insects. I've diverted the exit though, in case any sounds from it attract attention. To overcome the problems of cold and damp conditions – anathema to ants – I've buried several separately wired heating elements. I can't risk dependence on one in case it fails.'

'I'm trying the second movement of the Bruckner for the climax of the experiment. That rhythmic power! I wish it would go on for eternity. I can't wait for the repeat after the lighter passages in between. Is it intended as a minuet and trio? After all this time I haven't found out. It's unusual, if that is the case, to put it in the position of second movement. To some extent I've overcome my disappointment at the brevity of the powerful passage by taping those first few bars over and over, so that the pounding of full orchestra goes on for about half an hour. Du,du,du,du,du,du – du,du,du,du,du,du,du. And so on. After which I'm never prepared for those rich and stretching harmonies at the start of the third movement to tear at my emotions.'

*  *  *

Sister Ruth panted in the heat. The perspiration ran down her face and neck, and dripped off her nose. She wiped her chin repeatedly. The liquid irritated her eyes and made her itch and shiver.

It was only when she stopped to rest that she became aware of something over and above the maze. There was silence, broken only by her calling for the children. But the something else was the silky smoothness of a quadrillion moving legs. A motion so seamless and unerring, it lapped every crevice like the incoming tide of a becalmed sea, moving upward yet almost without any movement. The slight rustling was the nearest she could get to appreciating the ticking time-bomb of attack. She knew it was plural. The sounds were many, not one compound sound. She somehow knew that, even though she couldn't guess what they were. Phalanx upon phalanx of skeletal forms, chained together by the invisible bonding of tapping antennae and interlocking legs.

When millions of them were in place, so many that they bowed every branch down and couldn't shift their places on the ground without stepping over each other, then, as if by mental powers alone, they stopped. In fact, it was the almost simultaneous waves of feelers briskly stroked on other feelers and bodies in an indescribably delicate ballet of intention, which ordered their stillness and made it absolutely inevitable. The lack of movement was complete, as devastating as the waves of motion had been. It was the silence of armies holding their breath.

Then, like a single slow transpiration, the entire horde advanced. Each occupied only the ant-space in front, and only the gap behind was filled – no less, no more. It was the merest shiver, a trickle of life. But when that slight adjustment is multiplied a billion times, and is repeated over and over again, its impact becomes gross, devastating, and irresistible.

Only then did she realise that the ants were all over her. She stood aghast, paralysed by the shock of it. Then she moved, arms flailing like sails on a windmill. But like thick streams of sticky black treacle they were pouring off the high branches which overhung her. Faster than she could brush and shake them off, fresh lumps of the black crawling masses landed on her, hissing and crackling as they dispersed to find a hold anywhere on her skin or clothing. With mandibles and hooked feet, they clung on, resisting with all means the force of her wild movements.

She screamed. She went on screaming for some minutes after she had toppled to the ground. Until they had completely filled her mouth, biting, wounding, stinging. Suffocating her.

Chapter 30

Not long after Sister Ruth stopped breathing, Tom was discussing the nature of possible links between all of the deaths.

'It's highly likely the killer is an insider to the University.'

'Or the Police Force.'

'You wouldn't countenance that,' said Tom.

'It's one of the options we should consider. The first linked death was a special constable.'

'And a university researcher.'

*  *  *

Graver drove the tractor with the forklift and laid the two bodies on the sacks he'd carefully placed across the trailer. It took a few minutes to reverse the tractor and connect the trailer to the towbar. He had planned where he would leave the bodies and had the envelope in its plastic cover, sealed against the elements, ready to pin onto the man's jacket.

A sudden flashback made him wince. An image blurred by many years passing. An image of himself, pressed down on those sacks in the corner of the garage, his father's garage, the palm of his hand hiding his eyes, wet with tears. I shall have to teach you a lesson, his father had said. Graver felt as though one secret part of him had never stopped weeping from that day to this.