Little Fingers! (36 page)

“
I find that
very, very hard to believe.”

“
I know you
do, John. Try. Listen to your intuition. Did you always think I was
the killer?”

“
No.”

“
Did your
intuition tell you I was not the killer, despite appearances, and
despite the absence of any alternative explanations?”

“
Yes.”

“
Do you have
the slightest hard evidence that I killed any of those
people?”

“
Only what
you have just done to Jeff Berringer.”

“
I did that
in broad daylight in front of witnesses. It was hardly the same
modus operandi.”

“
That is
true. He is pulling through, by the way. He will be horrifically
scarred for life ………”

“
Which seems
appropriate………..”

“
He will have
to go through years of surgery to try to hide the
scars……..”

“
Many of us
have been there, John. Put there by him, in fact. There can indeed
be true poetry in justice, if you plan it carefully enough, much
more so than there is justice in the law most of the
time.”

“
Don't you
feel any pity for him, Julia?”

“
Yes, I do.
You know I do, John. You have read about it. However, just because
I empathise with his situation does not preclude me from acting,
and this was the only course that you and your kind left me with.
You wouldn't stop him, you wouldn't arrest him, you wouldn't even
confront him. You could have stopped all this years and years ago.
You chose not to. I chose to.”

“
It wasn't as
simple as that……..”

“
It doesn't
matter now. The deed is done, and justice has been served. Can I
ask you one favour?”

“
You can ask.
Doing you favours is a little tricky at the moment.”

“
Have I tried
to help you?”

“
I think so.
I am not terribly sure. I cannot decide whether you have mostly
sought to clarify or obfuscate the facts.”

“
Believe me,
John, I have really tried to help you. I have really tried to do
what you asked of me, the enormous task you asked of me, in my own
way, of course.”

“
Let us say,
for the moment, that I believe you.”

“
I will go to
prison for what I did to Jeff Berringer.”

“
Undoubtedly.”

“
What am I
looking at - 15, 20 years?”

“
About that,
unless your lawyer can put together a really compelling mitigation
plea.”

“
And then
what - ten?”

“
I would say
so.”

“
I do not
want to go to prison for 10 years.”

“
Maybe you
should have thought about that before you set fire to
him.”

“
I did, John,
I did. Why do you think I took so long to do it, left the country
to get a distance on it ……”

“
And you
still did it.”

“
In the end,
as a moral human being, there was no choice.”

“
You
absolutely had a choice.”

“
Anyway, the
favour I was going to ask you was for you to help me escape from
here.”

I froze.
“Julia, you have got to be joking. Apart from any considerations of
justice, I would get ten years myself if I were to do that. Give me
one good reason why I should even remember that you have asked
me.”

“
Because,
John, I did what you did not have the courage to do. I did your
work.”

“
It never
occurred to me to set fire to Jeff Berringer.”

“
I don't
believe you.”

“
I wouldn't
have been as subtle as that.”

“
I am not
sure that anyone would call it subtle.”

“
You said
yourself it was poetic, branding the hidden scars of his victims
visibly onto his face and head. I think that many will understand
the significance. You may yet become a heroine.”

“
It is not an
age of heroism, John.”

“
And yet you
are asking me to be heroic?”

“
Yes. A small
act of heroism. You will get away with it. Six metres of rope, and
a knife.”

“
Is that all?
Why on earth do you need rope? You are on the ground floor
here.”

“
It may
depend on how many people I have to tie up. At least one, I should
think.”

“
Meaning
me?”

“
It is
possible.”

“
How do I get
six metres of rope in here?”

“
Easy. A
change of clothes, a bag of evidence, under your coat.”

“
I'll think
about it, Julia. That is the most that I can promise. Do you still
have the gun you took from me?”

"Yes, in
Cacin."

"So long as it
is not here."

* *
*

Author's
Note

The reason
Sally Willows was in the village on the day of Tom Willows’ murder
was that she had been summoned by Tom to discuss an issue that had
been disturbing him.

Two of his
children – Tom Becker and Charlene Brown – were planning to marry
each other, neither knowing that Tom Willows was their
father.

What should he
do about it?

Having talked
the problem over with Sally, Tom decided to raise it with his best
friend, Henry Spence.

Henry was
absolutely furious. Tom Becker was his protégé in the funeral
parlour business, and virtually his adoptive son. Tom Willows’
decadence and irresponsibility threatened to ruin Tom Becker’s
life, and that of Charlene, of whom Henry was extremely
fond.

Henry also
bore a deep, hidden, grudge against Tom Willows for the humiliation
of his early adult years when Tom could pick up any girl he wanted,
and made no effort whatsoever to help Henry hook up with the girls
he fancied. Worse, Tom was adamantly opposed to any relationship
between Sally and Henry, and not only expressly forbade Sally from
getting involved with him, but actually ran Henry down in front of
Sally, and spread false rumours to render him unpalatable to
her.

Henry knew
about the secret tunnel into Tom’s house from his friendships with
Tom and Sally when they were young, and decided to act before Tom
could intervene in Tom Becker and Charlene Brown’s marriage. He
sneaked into the house via the secret passageway, found the
double-shafted axe outside the back door, picked up the towel from
where Tom had let it drop, and attacked him at his desk from
behind, cleaving his head in two.

After the
collapse of the proposed marriage between Tom Becker and Charlene
Brown, in saying how sorry he was for what had happened, Henry
accidentally provided Tom with enough information for him to
realise that Henry had murdered Tom Willows. Despite his affection
for Henry, Tom Becker made it clear that it was his duty to go
directly to the police. Perhaps the courts would be lenient when
they understood the full circumstances of the killing, and would
find Henry guilty of manslaughter rather than of murder. Henry
panicked, had a heated argument with Tom, and slit his throat with
a knife which Tom had just been using. As both were wearing gloves
as part of their standard working practices, no fingerprints were
left on the handle. He then fled the scene of the crime just before
his wife, Hilary, arrived to find Tom in his death
throes.

George
Knightly was not murdered by Henry, but by Julia who was outraged
at his self-appointed role in warning off Dr. Berringer’s victims
from exposing him, and maybe even of killing them. Julia had seen
George visit her own mother only days before her eventual
suicide.

In her usual
poetic style, she used an electric cord because George “shocked”
Dr. Berringer’s victims into silence. From her recent foray into
the Berringer’s home with Sam, Julia knew George’s schedule and
routine, and lay in wait for him, catching him off-balance from
behind, and preventing him from regaining his balance while she
choked him to death. Indeed, George’s desperate struggling only
served to ensure his death, as it forced the cable tighter around
his throat, and made it easier for Julia to execute him.