‘Have I ever denied I shot him?’ she said, challengingly.
‘You said you didn’t remember pulling the trigger.’
‘I didn’t. I wasn’t even sure what had happened until I saw him lying there.’
There was a moment’s silence then Barton crossed to the glass panelled door behind him.
‘Tony, bring the phone in here will you,’ he called, then turned back to face Kelly. ‘AH right, you make your phone call.’
A tall, slim man in a sergeant’s uniform entered the room carrying a trimphone which he plugged into a socket in the wall near Kelly. He hesitated a moment then walked out.
‘Go on,’ urged the Inspector, nodding towards the phone.
Kelly picked up the receiver and dialled the number of the hotel where Joubert was staying. She wiped perspiration from her face with her free hand, looking up occasionally at Barton who was rummaging through his pockets in search of another packet of cigarettes. He found one and lit up.
On the other end of the line, Kelly heard the sound of Joubert’s voice.
‘Blake made the broadcast,’ she told him. ‘I couldn’t stop him in time.’
He asked where she was.
‘I killed Blake. The police are holding me here now. Please Joubert, you must come to London. It might already be too late.’ She gave him instructions on how to reach the police station then hung up.
‘Too late for what?’ Barton wanted to know.
‘Everyone who watched that programme,’ she said.
‘He might have been bluffing,’ said Barton, disinterestedly.
i wish to God he had been,’ Kelly said, quietly.
There was a knock on the door and the tall, slim sergeant entered, carrying a piece of paper. He passed it to Barton. The Inspector read it, glancing occasionally at Kelly as he did so. He sucked hard on his cigarette.
‘What do you make of it, guv?’ said the sergeant.
‘When did these reports come in?’ Barton wanted to know.
‘These were the first three, they came in less than an hour ago.’
Barton looked puzzled.
‘What do you mean, the first three?’ he asked.
‘We’ve had five more reports since,’ the sergeant told him.
i suppose you’d take this as proof of your little story would you, Miss Hunt?’
the Inspector said, tapping the piece of paper.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘At 8.07 a pet shop owner in Kilburn slaughtered every single animal in his shop with a knife. One of our constables found him in the street outside the shop. He’d just gutted a couple of kittens. At 8.16 a woman in Bermondsey held her eight-week-old child against the bars of an electric fire until it died.
At 8.29 a man in Hammersmith killed his wife and daughter with a chisel.’
Kelly closed her eyes.
‘Oh God,’ she murmured.
‘Go on then, tell me it was your friend Blake who caused these killings.’
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ said Kelly, wearily, it’s already begun and there’s no way to stop it.’
This time Barton did not add a sarcastic remark.
He felt inexplicably afraid as he lit up another cigarette.
And he wondered if he was the only one who felt the peculiar chill in the room.
Manchester
8.36 p.m.
The scissors fell to the carpet with a dull ring as Laura Foster knocked them off the arm of the chair. She reached down and retrieved them, replacing them next to her. Her husband, Paul, got to his feet as she handed him the trousers she’d finished turning up. He pulled them on and strutted around the sitting room happily.
‘They’re OK aren’t they?’ he asked.
‘They are now,’ Laura told him. ‘You’d have worn them without me turning them up. They looked like concertinas on your shoes.’
Paul slipped them off again and walked across to her chair, bending down to kiss her. She giggled as he slipped one hand inside her blouse and squeezed her unfettered breasts.
‘Shall I bother putting my others back on?’ he asked.
Laura chuckled again, pointing out how comical he looked in just his socks and underpants.
He moved closer, kissing her fiercely and she responded with equal fervour, one hand straying to the growing bulge in his pants. She slipped her hand beneath his testicles and fondled them, feeling his erection throbbing against her fingers.
Paul closed his eyes as she pulled his pants down, freeing his stiff organ.
The next thing he felt was an unbearable coldness as the scissor blades brushed his testicles. His eyes jerked open and, for interminable seconds he found himself gaping at Laura. Her own eyes were glazed, almost unseeing. Her face was expressionless.
The blades snapped together.
Laura sat impassively as he dropped to his knees, hands clutching his scrotum.
Blood sprayed from the neatly severed
veins and Paul found that his agony was mixed with nausea as he saw one egg-shaped purple object glistening on the carpet before him.
As he fell backward he heard laughter and, just before he blacked out, he realized that it was coming from the television.
Liverpool
8.52.
The child was small and it had been common sense to keep him in plain view at all times since his premature birth two weeks earlier. Now he gurgled happily in his carry-cot, his large brown eyes open and staring at the multi-coloured TV screen nearby.
Terry Pearson looked down at the child and smiled.
‘Is he all right, love?’ asked his wife, Denise, who was glancing through the paper to see what other delights the networks were offering for the remainder of the evening. She and Terry had been watching the screen since six that evening. Though Denise doubted if there’d be anything else to match the excitement of what had happened on the chat show they’d been watching.
i suppose there’ll be something on News at Ten about that fella getting shot,’
she said, putting down the paper and crossing to the carry-cot.
Terry nodded, not taking his eyes from his son. Denise also gazed down at the baby, both of them mesmerised by it.
Il looked so helpless. So tiny.
Terry reached into the cot and, with contemptuous ease, fastened the fingers of one powerful hand around the baby’s neck, squeezing tighter until the child’s face began to turn the colour of dark grapes. He held it before him for a moment longer, watched by Denise, then, with a grunt, he hurled the child across the room as if it had been a rag doll.
The baby hit the mirror which hung on the far wall, the impact bringing down the glass which promptly shattered, spraying the carpet with needle-sharp shards of crystal.
Terry crossed the room and prodded the tiny body. There was blood on the wall and a sickly grey substance on the
carpet.
He reached for a particularly long piece of mirror, ignoring the pain in his hand as it cut into his palm. Blood dribbled down his arm, the flow increasing
as he put his weight behind the rapier-like implement.
Denise chuckled as she watched her husband tear her child’s flesh and raise it to his lips.
Then she held the tiny body still as Terry set about hacking the other leg off.
Norwich
9.03.
The book fell from her grasp and she awoke with a start, picking the paperback up, muttering to herself when she saw that she’d lost her page. Maureen Horton found her place and folded down the corner of the page, checking that Arthur wasn’t looking. He hated to see books being mistreated and, as far as he was concerned, folding down the corner of a page was a particularly heinous crime.
He’d reminded her time and again what bookmarks were for. Well, she didn’t care. This was one of her books. A good old romance. Not that pompous Jeffrey Archer stuff that Arthur always had his nose in.