Design for Murder (22 page)

Eric hesitated, uncertain what to do. He glanced wildly around him. Somewhere, he knew, Raymond Conroy would now be waiting, watching, with some unpleasant purpose in mind. Eric could not guess at it. He could not wait to even try. He knew he had to get Sharon out of this death house. He slipped an arm under her body, draped her bare arm around his neck and lifted her, cradling her limp frame against his body. He stepped towards the door, stumbling slightly, lurching against the damp wall.

It was at that moment, as he straightened, that he caught the dim flash of light as the front door was thrown open. He
heard movement, steps, as someone came into the
stone-flagged
passageway.

Eric held his breath. It had to be Conroy and the killer would know exactly where Eric was. He would have been watching, waiting. From his hiding place in one of the barns, perhaps, he had seen Eric’s car arrive. He would have waited a little while, making sure that no one else was with him. Now he had come for the confrontation he had arranged. Eric gritted his teeth, his heart hammering in his chest as a surge of anger drove through him. He turned, carefully laid Sharon’s inert form back on the bed and stepped quietly behind the door. He stood in the shadows of the room, and waited as the steps in the passageway echoed on the stone floor. They stopped outside the room that held Eric and the unconscious Sharon. They stopped, waited, and Eric could hear harsh breathing.

Then the door slowly opened.

The man stood framed in the dimly lit doorway. Eric edged out from the darkness. With a lurch of relief in his chest, he realized the man standing there was not Raymond Conroy: this man was shorter, but even in the dim light, somehow familiar. For a few moments, as they stared at each other, Eric was unable to put a name to the face. Then suddenly he knew who it was.

‘Fraser! What are you doing here?’

The man waved a vague hand behind him, half-turned his head. ‘I’d arrived a few minutes before you. Then I heard your car. I didn’t know who it might be. Thought it might be Conroy. So I got out, put my car under cover. Watched until
I saw it was you.’

‘I didn’t see your car.’

‘Parked it around the back, out of sight. Couldn’t take any chances.’

Eric was relieved, but puzzled. ‘So where’s Conroy? Have you seen him?’

Fraser ignored the question. He looked past Eric, then moved into the room towards the bed. He leaned over Sharon’s crumpled form. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s unconscious. I think she’s been drugged. We need to get her out of here.’

Fraser turned his head to stare at Eric. He was silent for a few moments, thinking, calculating. ‘Have you forgotten about Conroy?’ He glanced about the room as though searching for something. ‘What will happen if he comes back as we’re leaving? What if he’s out there waiting?’

Something in Fraser’s attitude was puzzling Eric. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Everything seemed out of kilter somehow. He put his hand on Fraser’s arm. ‘How did you get here? How did you know Conroy was hiding out here at the farm?’

‘Did you see the female clothing in the other room?’ Fraser asked, ignoring the question, stepping away from Eric’s restraining hand. ‘Trophies. From Coleen Chivers.’

‘So … you’ve already been inside the farmhouse. This isn’t the first time…. You’ve been here before.’ Eric said slowly.

‘I’ve been here.’ The journalist pushed past Eric, stepped back into the passageway. ‘Have you looked around, searched the rest of the house?’

He seemed oddly uncaring about Sharon. Eric glanced back at her sprawled figure on the bed. It was necessary to get her out of here, but at the same time he was curious.
There was a tingling at the back of his neck; he was confused by Fraser’s odd, nervy behaviour. There were questions to which he had no answer.

‘Have you looked upstairs yet?’ Fraser called to him in a low voice. ‘We should check all through the house, don’t you think?’

The man was already on the stairs. Reluctantly, but still on edge, Eric followed him. The shaky wooden stairs were uncarpeted and they creaked and groaned as the two men ascended. Eric was forced to duck his head at the top of the stairs because of the low cross beam at the landing but the hallway at the top was wide. Probably a converted loft, he guessed. Fraser was opening one of the two doors which led off the timber-floored landing. He put his shoulder against it. This door opened only with difficulty, groaning a protest. Fraser looked inside then turned back, shaking his head at Eric.

‘Empty. Let’s look in the other room,’ he suggested.

Numbly, Eric did as Fraser suggested. He stepped forward, raised the sneck of the door, pushed against the scarred wood. There was a dry, dusty odour to the darkened room. He looked inside but could see very little: the windows were shuttered. Eric made out some vague outlines, a chair, an overturned stool. He moved towards the window, stumbled over something, then pushed at the old shutters. One of them swung open, allowing light to stream into the room. Dust flecks rose and danced in the air. Eric turned back towards the doorway, and it was then that he saw it, swinging slightly, pendulum-like, with a slight creaking sound from the overhead beam.

The man was completely naked. His skin had an odd greenish tinge. His head hung sideways at an unnatural angle, his tongue forced out between his gaping mouth in a
horrifying rictus. His arms were dangling by his side. Adark stain ran down the inside of his thigh, the last protest of his body before death. The rope had been knotted just behind his left ear; the other end of the rope was attached to an exposed, sagging beam in the roof. It had been wound twice around the beam, knotted firmly. To one side of the dead man’s foot was the stool Eric had dimly noticed on entering the room: it had been kicked aside, allowing for the drop. The feet of the corpse were just a matter of inches from the floor: this would have been no matter of a broken neck. He would have died of a slow, dancing, kicking strangulation.

Eric stepped closer. He stared at the barely recognizable, twisted features of the dead man.

‘Raymond Conroy,’ he murmured, stunned.

His mind whirled, questions tumbling around in his head. He turned to stare at his companion. ‘What the hell’s gone on here?’

There was a short silence. Fraser still stood silently in the doorway, staring at the hanging man. Eric could not make out his features but he seemed calm, almost unmoved. His tone was measured, speculative. ‘Justice of a kind, perhaps. A finality he deserved. After all, he was a monster. Perhaps he couldn’t face himself any longer. Maybe he came to the end of his tether.’ He snickered lightly. ‘If you’ll excuse the pun.’

Eric frowned, glaring at the journalist. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he snarled, irritated and shocked by the man’s insouciance.

Fraser shrugged indifferently. ‘Hey, it’s only a thought. But he killed those women in the Midlands. Then the Coleen Chivers woman. Maybe it was all too much for him in the end. An insupportable burden of guilt. Perhaps he was finally appalled by his own perversions, felt he had to bring
an end to his own savagery. Or maybe he knew he would eventually be caught, wouldn’t escape a second time. So he came up here, with the rope and the stool and put an end to it himself. Perhaps he decided he’d rather face the rope by his own hand, rather than a lifetime of incarceration. Who knows? Who will ever know? When I get around to writing about it I could attempt to produce some reason in my account—’

The man was unmoved, obsessive, self-centred. A wave of disgust swept over Eric. ‘Sharon,’ Eric interrupted. He pushed past him. ‘We need to get her out of here.’

Fraser stepped aside reluctantly, allowing Eric to hustle towards the stairs. ‘She would probably have been the next victim,’ he suggested, nodding thoughtfully. ‘He would have enticed her here, as he did you. He would have played with her in the same way as he did the others, carving her before finally strangling her. But probably, at last, his conscience, his feeling of guilt, his admission of responsibility all washed over him. Made him take his own life. Interesting … a fascinating psychological twist….’

Eric hurried down the stairs. He re-entered the room Conroy would have used for a bedroom. He was approaching Sharon’s inert form when a thought struck him. He glanced back. Fraser had followed him and was now standing in the doorway, one hand stuck casually in the deep pocket of his worn leather jacket. ‘You said Conroy enticed Sharon here.’

‘That’s pretty obvious.’ Fraser shrugged carelessly. ‘I presume so.’

‘But you also said he enticed
me
. How would you know that?’

There was a short silence. Then Fraser chuckled, a light, dry sound in his throat. ‘Well, I could say that it was just a
good guess, because you’re here, after all. The two lawyers … as a theory it still needs a little working on, I suppose.’ He chuckled again. ‘But I suppose it’s time to forget charades like that.’ He stood a little straighter in the doorway. ‘In fact, it wasn’t Conroy who enticed you here at all. Nor Miss Owen either, for that matter.’

Eric frowned. ‘What do you mean? I spoke to Conroy on the phone. He asked me to come here, to the farm.’

‘No. You spoke to
me
.’ Fraser shook his head, clucking his tongue mockingly. ‘You must have noticed the strangeness of the voice. The harshness. The breathlessness. The unreality of it. It’s strange, isn’t it? An urgency injected into the tone, the muffling of a handkerchief, announcing myself as Conroy … it was enough to fool you both. I told Miss Owen you were already here: she came running. And you were easily persuaded too. What was it? Bad conscience, that you’d let a murderer escape? No matter. Two simple phone calls. Brought you both here.’

Eric straightened, the blood beginning to pound in his head. ‘What the hell is this all about?’

Fraser seemed to hesitate for a few moments, thinking. Then he took his hand out of his jacket pocket. Eric caught a glimpse of something dark, glinting dully in the dim light. A handgun. Fraser waved it in his direction, almost casually. ‘Did I ever tell you I’d spent some time in prison? I think I did. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate you. But in fact it teaches you new tricks. You pick up all sorts of information while you’re inside, develop all sorts of skills that are denied to you in the outside world. Like faking a man’s voice. And knowing where to get hold of a dangerous weapon like this.’

Eric stared at him, bemused. Behind him, on the bed, he heard Sharon stir a little, murmur something then lapse again into unconsciousness. The gun muzzle was now
pointing, unwavering, directly at Eric.

‘Raymond Conroy, upstairs,’ Eric said slowly, struggling to piece things together. ‘Was it really suicide?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ Fraser replied easily. ‘He died early yesterday, but it was quite a subdued affair. And it was time anyway. He’d given me all the information I needed; he was getting a bit suspicious, as a matter of fact, answering all my questions. And then there was the television report. He kicked in the set when he heard the police were after him for the murder of Coleen Chivers. So I had to speed things up a bit. Which I thought might raise a slight problem, forensically. After all, he couldn’t die too long before Sharon Owen, if my scenario was to hold water. There’s a deep freezer in the shed outside, and that helped a bit, but I couldn’t allow the deaths to be too far apart, forensic science being what it is these days. No, he was quiet after I drugged him … another little skill I picked up in prison … and then he died really without knowing too much about it. Though I have to admit, I found it a bit of a struggle getting him up the stairs. And strung up on that beam.’

A cold chill seemed to have struck Eric. He glared at Fraser, still not understanding. ‘You killed him … and you said … you implied Sharon has to die.’

‘That’s right,’ Fraser said confidently. ‘Oh, I’ll dress it up a bit, using a knife, the way Conroy was accustomed to, but she won’t feel the blade. She’ll be unconscious before I strangle her. That’s the way Conroy always did it, isn’t it? He worked on them with the scalpel, did his designs, then strangled them. Zodiac designs.’ He grunted contemptuously, then laughed. ‘I had a design too. A different design. Design for murder.’

‘So you killed Coleen Chivers?’ Eric asked slowly.

‘That’s right. She wasn’t a Conroy victim,’ Fraser
admitted. ‘But I’d made sure there were sufficient similarities with the Zodiac killings to have the police chasing after him. They jumped quickly to the conclusions I’d intended. And when Sharon dies in the same manner, shortly, they’ll follow the same trail and it will be put down to him. The women in the Midlands, Coleen Chivers, and finally Sharon Owen – the police will assume he killed them all before he topped himself.’

‘And me?’ Eric asked grimly.

Fraser waved the pistol. ‘Well, I’m forced to admit that it’s not a
perfect
scenario. But it goes like this. Sharon Owen came to this farmhouse after a phone call from Conroy. So did you. The Zodiac Killer was at the end of his tether, he had decided he was going out in a blaze of glory. He strangled Sharon just before you arrived, had started using the knife on her. But when he heard your car he waited until you came in and then he used a gun …
this
gun … on you. After which he played out the game as he’d planned. Until finally, remorseful, he went upstairs and hanged himself.’

‘That’s crazy! You’ll never get away with it! Why would Conroy feel remorse like that? And forensics will be able to determine the timing of the deaths. They’ll realize Conroy must have died before Sharon or me!’

Fraser ducked his head, and smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. It’ll be some time before the police trace Conroy to this cottage. I’ll send them an anonymous tip, probably in a few weeks’ time. By that time it will be virtually impossible for them to reach such specific conclusions. They might have doubts, but there’ll be no real evidence to lead them to what actually happened.’

There was a short silence. Fraser regarded Eric with a certain cynicism in his smile. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Point out what other weaknesses there might be in my scenario.’