Epitaph (25 page)

A combination of the acoustics and the inferior quality of the speakers inside the coffin had made it impossible for Paul even to determine the gender of his captor. However, when the crackle of static heralded more distorted syllables, Paul was sure of one thing. The voice that came through the speakers this time was different from the one he’d been hearing so far.

Like the first it was reedy and strained due, he guessed, to the poor quality of the speakers, but it had a different timbre and convinced him that it belonged to a newcomer.

‘You’re lying,’ the new voice told him. ‘Nothing was taken from our daughter when she was killed. The police would have told us.’

Paul lay motionless for a moment, listening to this new voice. He tried to picture its owner, as he’d tried to picture the source of the first voice. Man or woman? Tall, short, fat, thin?

Did it really matter?

He was beginning to wonder how many of them were actually up there but, logically, his mind told him there were probably two. He was accused of killing a child so it was safe to assume that both of her parents had seized him. Two people had kidnapped and imprisoned him.

And killed him?

He forced the thought from his mind and concentrated instead on this second voice.

‘You’re bluffing,’ the voice went on. ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything else to say. You’re playing for time.’

‘Why the hell would I do that?’ Paul laughed and he was surprised at himself.

Why laugh? Why now?

‘What do you think I’m stalling for?’ he continued. ‘Do you think there’s someone waiting to come and rescue me? I’m running out of oxygen in this fucking coffin. Why would I want to be in here any longer than I have to be?’

Silence greeted this observation.

Paul waited a moment then continued.

‘Can you hear me?’ he called.

‘Yes, I can hear you,’ the second voice informed him.

‘Then you should be able to understand what I’m saying.’

‘The police report didn’t mention anything about something being taken from our daughter. What kind of thing do you mean?’

‘I’ll tell you that when you let me out of here.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘Then you’ll never know everything. You buried her but you buried her incomplete.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Frank snapped.

‘Not until you let me out of here. Once you do that I’ll tell you. I’ll even show you where I hid it.’

‘Hid what? I’m warning you. You’d better tell me what you’re talking about.’

‘Or what? What are you going to do, kill me?’

Paul laughed and the sound echoed mockingly inside the Portakabin.

‘This is bullshit,’ snarled Frank Hacket.

‘And what if it’s not?’ Gina demanded.

‘If we get him out of there then we’re going to have to kill him,’ Frank told her. ‘No question about it. If he sees us and can identity us to the police then that’s it. There’s no going back if we let him out. He has to die.’ He looked at his wife. ‘Are you going to do it, Gina?’

‘If I have to,’ she told him.

‘It’ll be different from sitting listening to him suffocate. He’ll struggle. It’ll be messy. There’ll be blood. Evidence to get rid of.’

‘I don’t care, Frank. Get him out of that coffin.’

‘And how are we going to do it? Strangle him? Smash his head in with a hammer? Stab him to death?’

‘We’ll do whatever we have to do.’

Frank shook his head.

‘We kidnapped him so we could force him to tell us the truth. He’s going to tell us the truth, Frank. The whole truth.’

‘And nothing but the truth, so help him God?’

‘What?’

‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. It’s part of the oath that you swear in court, isn’t it?’

‘Well, he’s in a court. He’s in our court and he’s been condemned as far as I’m concerned. His evidence has been heard and he’s been convicted. Now he’s going to be executed. The only question is how. We were happy enough to let him suffocate; what does it matter if we have to kill him some other way?’

Frank exhaled deeply but he didn’t speak.

Paul was beginning to feel light-headed again.

He felt faint and the nausea that he’d experienced earlier was now returning but more vehemently.

Was this the end? The beginning of his last few moments on earth?

Or below it, more to the point.

He felt the sweat on his body and he wiped it away with one hand as if removing the moisture would somehow make a difference.

They
had
to believe him. His captors had to go for this, he told himself. His last throw. The final roll of the dice in a game that had been stacked against him from the very beginning. Please don’t let me come so close and then fail, he thought.

And if you get out, what then? Are you going to dedicate your life to being a good man? Are you going to seize the second chance with both hands?

There wasn’t even any point in thinking that far ahead,

Paul told himself. The first and most important thing was that his lie had worked on his captors. He had sown the seeds of doubt, that much he was sure of, but now he needed all his powers of persuasion to secure the final step and release from this coffin.

If they take too much longer making up their minds it won’t matter. You’ll be out of oxygen.

The irony of that situation wasn’t lost on him. How dreadful to have persuaded his captors to release him only for them to dwell too much on their task and leave him in the rancid, unbreathable air for too long. Even now they would be discussing the pros and cons of letting him out, but what if that conversation went on for so long that when they eventually reached him he was dead anyway?

A fresh wave of panic swept over Paul.

His options, he realised, were becoming more limited by the second.

If they decided to leave him where he was, then the end he had feared for so long was merely minutes away. However, if they decided to free him, if they went for the lie, there was the question of how long it would take them to dig him up.

Never thought of that, did you, genius?

That thought had not crossed his mind and now it filled him with terror. How long would it take to dig him up again?

Well, let’s consider the situation, shall we?

He was six feet below ground in a sealed coffin. If they were exhuming by hand using shovels and spades then it could take anything up to an hour or more.

And you haven’t got an hour, have you?

That was an hour at least to uncover the coffin. It then had to be opened. That might take another ten or fifteen minutes depending upon whether it was sealed with nails or screws. Normally six screws or nails were used to keep the lid down (that was what they always showed in films, anyway) but these bastards might have used more than that and, if they had, every single one had to be removed before the lid could be lifted and fresh, clean air came flooding into his nostrils and lungs.

He tried to think about it logically. Tried to find some shred of hope in what was swiftly turning into a hopeless situation. It had always been a long shot, this master plan, but to fail now at so late a stage and so near to triumph would be even more intolerable. Hope had been dangled before him as if it were suspended on fishing line and now, it appeared, that hope was to be yanked out of his reach. He could feel his heart beginning to beat faster with a combination of fear and anger. This wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. He’d found a way out. He’d plotted and schemed inside his subterranean prison, and he’d found a way to escape, but now it appeared that he was to be undone by time.

‘Oh, God,’ he murmured, wanting to weep.

Even if they had a mechanical digger he was probably looking at somewhere close to fifteen or twenty minutes before they got him out. Even that wasn’t long enough.

Or was it?

Paul had no idea exactly how much oxygen he had left. He’d gleaned some information from his conversations with his captors but the taste, smell and feel of the air inside the box were now telling him that time was running out. At best, he guessed, he had half an hour. At best.

If they had a digger then he might just make it, but if they were using shovels and spades he was done for.

But how the hell could he get them to speed up? He couldn’t even persuade them to get him out. They were still deliberating over that and might well be for some time to come. So, if they did decide to release him how could he convince them that they had to do it fast? He had played his trump card with the story about the hidden item. Could he now play it again?

‘What’s your answer?’ Paul shouted.

He had to force their hand. He had to make them react more quickly or everything would be lost. Everything he’d gone through would be for nothing.

‘Let me out and I’ll take you to the place where I hid it,’ he called more insistently.

Silence.

‘There isn’t much time left,’ he reminded them. ‘You don’t want to let me suffocate before you can get me out. That wouldn’t help you, would it?’

No response.

‘You’ve got my confession,’ he reminded them. ‘As soon as I’ve shown you where I hid it you can turn me over to the police. I won’t try and escape, I promise. There’d be no point. You know where I live; you know what I look like. You could lead them straight to me if I managed to get away. Whatever happens, you’ve won. You’ve got what you wanted. You wanted justice for your daughter. You wanted a confession. You’ve got them.’

A hiss of static came from the speakers but nothing more.

Paul took another tainted breath, thinking how bitter
the air tasted. He tried to take a deep breath but it was becoming more difficult to fill his lungs. He coughed and felt a burning sensation at the back of his throat.

‘There isn’t much time,’ he called, trying to remind his captors of a fact that he himself was becoming all too aware. ‘What’s your answer?’

And still from the speakers inside the box there was only silence.

‘What are we going to do?’ Gina Hacket asked. ‘He’s right about the oxygen inside the coffin. If it runs out and he dies before he can tell us what he took from Laura then what’s the point of all this?’

Frank didn’t answer.

He got to his feet and began pacing the Portakabin slowly, his feet beating out a tattoo on the damp floor.

‘Frank,’ Gina persisted.

‘I’m thinking,’ he snapped.

He continued to pace.

‘What could he have taken?’ he murmured. ‘How do we know he’s not bluffing?’

‘We don’t. We’ll just have to trust him.’

‘Trust the man who raped and murdered our daughter?’

‘We haven’t got any choice.’

‘At the moment he’s under our control. It’s in our hands whether or not he lives or dies. He knows that. The only way he can change that situation is by getting
out of that coffin, and the only people who can get him out are us.’

‘And if we leave him then we’ll never know what he took from Laura. He’ll have won, Frank, because he’ll have that knowledge and we won’t.’

‘Just think for a minute. When you picked up Laura’s clothes from hospital was everything there? Every single item of clothing?’

‘Socks, skirt, blouse, tie and knickers. Yes, it was all there. I already had the cardigan.’

‘So it wasn’t an item of clothing that he took and kept.’

‘A body part?’

Gina put a hand to her mouth.

‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured.

‘What else could it be?’ Frank asked, still pacing.

‘So he took a part of her away, cut it out or hacked it off and he kept it?’

‘That’s what it looks like.’

Gina clamped her jaws together hard. For a moment she thought she was going to be sick.

‘What kind of man does that to an eight-year-old girl?’ Frank mused. ‘What kind of monster?’

‘What do you think it was, Frank?’ Gina wanted to know.

‘I don’t know,’ he sighed tearfully. ‘A finger? An ear? A toe?’

‘But I saw her body in the morgue. I would have noticed.’

‘In the state you were in? Gina, you wouldn’t have noticed if one of her arms had been missing. What mother would? And that’s what he’s banking on now.’

‘But if he’d cut part of her away it would have been in the police report, like you said.’

‘Not necessarily. They might have thought it was one of the injuries that caused her death. There were quite a few wounds on her body, weren’t there?’

Gina nodded slowly, tears welling up in her eyes.

‘So, do you think he’s bluffing or not?’ she wanted to know. ‘Why tell us so much about what he did to her? He couldn’t have made that up, Frank.’

Still he paced the small area, his face now set in hard lines, the knot of muscles at the side of his jaw pulsing.

‘What if it’s at his flat?’ Frank said finally. ‘What if the thing he took from her is at his flat?’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘Murderers keep mementos of their crimes but they’d want to keep them nearby, wouldn’t they? If he took something from Laura then he’d want it close to him, so he could look at it when he wanted to. I bet it’s in his flat.’

‘Even if it is you couldn’t get back there in time to find it. It might take hours and he’s running out of oxygen.’

Frank hesitated.

‘We’ve got no choice, Frank, we’ve got to let him out,’ Gina insisted.

‘I told you what has to happen if we do.’

‘He has to be killed.’

‘And we both have to do it. For every time I hit him you have to hit him. For every time I stick a knife in him you have to.’

‘I don’t care. I’ll do it. For Laura’s sake I’ll do it.’

Frank stopped pacing and stood motionless in the middle of the floor, his head bowed as if in thought. Or prayer.

‘Once he’s dead we just put him back in the coffin and bury it again,’ he said evenly.

Gina nodded enthusiastically.

‘It’ll be the way it was meant to be in the first place,’ Frank went on. ‘With him buried the police will never find him. They still won’t know where he is. It’ll be days before he’s even reported missing. As long as we make sure we clean everything afterwards and don’t leave any footprints or fingerprints or any kind of evidence, then we’ll be all right.’

‘Are we going to let him out?’ Gina asked, the question hanging in the air.

Frank had his back to her now, his head still bowed.

‘He could still be lying,’ he told her. ‘But we have to know. And if he’s telling the truth, and he did take something from Laura, then we’ve got to get it back. For her sake.’

Again Gina nodded.

Frank crossed to the microphone and leaned close to it.

‘Can you hear me?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Paul’s voice came back.

‘If you’re lying I’ll kill you. I swear to God I’ll kill you,’ Frank rasped. ‘And I’ll take my time doing it. I’ll make you suffer like you can’t imagine.’

‘Get me out, I’m running out of oxygen,’ Paul told him.

Frank stepped away from the microphone. He looked at Gina.

‘I’m going to get him out,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m going to dig him up.’