Venomous: a must read crime thriller by Karl Hill

Author:Karl Hill [Hill, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books - crime, thriller and mystery
Published: 2020-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

62

The water and food were laced with a powerful sedative. She had been given precise instructions as to how to apply it, the quantities to use, and when. The instructions as to application and quantity had been written down for her on notepaper, which she had pinned on a wooden message board on her kitchen wall. The timing of the administration of the drugs was relayed by telephone. Not the mobile phone which had been a gift from her son. But they had confiscated it. Any verbal contact was through the landline.

Her visitor arrived every two weeks, barely talking, going immediately downstairs to change the girl into specific clothing, arrange her hair, apply make-up.

The old woman always made sure she was out when it happened. She would stand at the cliff edge, her back to the house, and look out on to the endless reach of the sea. She could stand like that for what seemed an age, and forget time. But always, in those moments, when her dreaded visitor was in the house, she thought back to how it began, and wondered despairingly how it would all end.

Her house had been occupied that morning, briefly, the visitor appearing for a short visit in the early hours, descending to the basement to make further preparations. Such was the routine. Checking up on the prisoner, and then finally removing her. To a different location, was the explanation. The old woman didn’t ask any questions, didn’t dare to. She had no idea what happened to them when they left – when they were moved on. She knew in the marrow of her bones it was bad. But she’d made a choice. She refused to think about it. She didn’t own a television, radio, and she shunned others from the village. She chose never to know.

But there were things her mind could not refuse. Her memories. They reared up in her mind, like grotesque phantoms. And as she’d gazed out on to the flat darkness of the ocean while her visitor had been busy below, so they had reared up again, unbidden.

The child. From the village. Found in the woods behind her house. Found wandering, crying, dazed. Naked. The police arrived, with questions. She had two sons, she had explained. One was working in London. The other, the younger, working in Glasgow. Her husband had died years back. She was living by herself in the big rambling house. All alone.

Which was a lie.

The police went away, and never came back. The little girl – only three years old – was too traumatised to remember anything. The conclusion reached was that her abuser was probably from the mainland. A tourist. The investigation moved from the island to elsewhere. She never heard anything about it again.

But she had lied.

Her son had come back that weekend. From Glasgow. Or wherever he was working. He drifted, from job to job. He’d arrived with a stack of American sightseers on an early morning ferry crossing. He’d walked to their house by hidden paths.

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