by Louise Voss
In her head she was whispering, Hold on Pete, I’ll get you out. I’ll get you back. Just hold on a bit longer. Please don’t be dead.
‘God, you really haven’t a clue, have you?’
Caitlin advanced towards her, suddenly snaking out an arm and grabbing Meredith’s throat in her fingers. It felt like an iron pincer. Meredith couldn’t breathe.
With her free hand, Caitlin delved behind Meredith, into the back pocket of her dungarees, and whipped out the phone, stuffing it deep about her own person – Meredith couldn’t see where, because so many white spots were dancing jigs in front of her eyes.
Caitlin frisked her one-handed, hard and efficient, slapping rather than patting her down: hips, crotch, front and back pockets. She slapped harder and harder, until the slaps turned to punches; kidney, belly, side, breast…
She spoke fast and low, the words seeming to run together: ‘You stole the love of my life. You ruined my life, you left me with nothing. You took Sam. You just fucking took her. It’s your fault they locked me up. Seeing you with her, seeing you kissing each other in your stupid fucking teddy-bear costumes, it’s your fault I went mental. You’re lucky it wasn’t you. If I’d been close enough it’d have been your fucking eye I poked out.’
Sam.
Samantha.
Caitlin was still on her hitting spree. Finding nothing else in Meredith’s pockets, she punched her hard in the eye, and Meredith would have fallen backwards if Caitlin’s hand hadn’t still been around her throat. Through the agonising crimson haze, she had a flash of memory: being in the shop with Caitlin wittering on and out about Sam, how wonderful Sam was, how much she loved Sam.
She’d thought Sam was a boy. They all had. Caitlin never said she was gay. She hadn’t wanted us to know Sam was a girl!
Fucking Samantha. That bitch had been nothing but trouble in her life. If it wasn’t for her, Meredith thought frantically, she’d never have dropped out of school, broken her promise to look after Mum, abandoned Pete … and for what? To have this maniac stalk and kill everyone she loved?
Caitlin dropped her hand, and Meredith fell to the floor, gagging and clutching her throat, holding her palm tight over her eye because it felt as if it was about to pop out.
Caitlin crouched down next to her, her knees cracking like dry twigs. ‘But hey, you were worth waiting for. This has been worth waiting for. And the fun’s only just starting. All we need to do now is one more tiny bit of waiting. We’ll just wait till it starts getting dark. Anything good on the telly?’
When Meredith opened the one eye that still would, there was a gun pointing right at the end of her nose, and beyond it, Caitlin’s sickly smile.
Get back here, Gemma. I need you. Don’t leave me with this crazy person.
The only possible consolation was that if Crazy Caitlin was here with her, Meredith, then at least she couldn’t be anywhere torturing Pete…
Caitlin sat down on the sofa first, jerking the gun to indicate Meredith should join her. Meredith sat cautiously, terrified, but at the same time with a slow, dawning understanding. All the years of threats, memories of the slow swoosh of green paint, abusive letters, mean-spirited snipes and intimidation. The person responsible for all of this, for her near-death experience in the van that night, for her ruined hand. For Ralph’s death, and Andrea’s. That person was sitting right next to her on a sofa. If it wasn’t for Pete’s life being under threat, Meredith would have launched herself at her then and there.
In a tiny way, it was almost – almost – a relief, to put a face to the tormentor, to know that there was a reason; and there was someone to be held accountable for it.
But as she had that thought, another simultaneous one occurred: so it was her own fault that Ralph and Andrea had been killed.
She couldn’t let it happen to Pete as well. She wouldn’t let it.
49
Meredith
They sat on the sofa together in silence for more than two interminable hours, as dusk then gradual darkness pressed against the small square panes of the cottage windows. Where the hell was Gemma?
Caitlin had the gun in one hand in her lap and the TV remote in the other, her eyes glued to the screen. At one point she even slipped off her unattractive sandals and put her bare feet up on the coffee table, a warped facsimile of domesticity. When Meredith caught the first whiff of cheesy odour she felt bile rise in her throat and had to swallow hard not to gag.
Instead, she forced herself to concentrate; alternating between glancing at the gun and keeping her attention outside the cottage – Leonard sometimes popped in on his night rounds, for a chinwag and a cup of tea. She didn’t love the unannounced visits, since Leonard had a habit of wittering mindlessly on until Meredith had to feign a yawn and tell him she needed to get to bed, but she tolerated him doing this as she could tell the man was lonely. And he only dropped in occasionally – anything past the orchard and vegetable gardens wasn’t, strictly speaking, in his patrol remit.
She’d have given anything to hear his footsteps on the gravel now though – but would that just precipitate something worse? Caitlin didn’t seem like she would be reluctant to use that gun. I can’t be responsible for another death, Meredith thought.
She needed to pee, but guessed that Caitlin would insist on coming into the bathroom with her. That was too humiliating to contemplate. She’d just have to hold it.
Finally, as Big Ben bonged on screen to signify the ten o’clock news, Caitlin put down the remote and fished a mobile out of her skirt pocket, tapping out a text with her free thumb. The phone was on silent but a reply must have come almost immediately, as she nodded with satisfaction and hauled herself off the sofa, pushing the gun into Meredith’s side and sliding her feet back into her shoes.
Shit, Meredith thought. She’s got an accomplice. It would be two against one, assuming that Pete was in some way incapacitated.
Oh God, perhaps it was the man from the Luton van … Meredith’s bowels contorted in a twist of terror.
‘Righty ho, time to go. Hey, that rhymes!’ Caitlin cackled. ‘Let’s go visit your precious twinny. I’m sure he’s missing you. And guess what? He’s only five minutes’ walk away!’
Meredith stared up at her. ‘Pete’s here, on the estate?’ she croaked. ‘You know we have security. CCTV cameras everywhere. Night security guards.’
Her thoughts immediately turned to the ice house, Ralph’s body in the pond. There had been a round-the-clock police cordon put on the ice house now it was a crime scene. Caitlin had some nerve, coming back here.
Unless she had disposed of the police guards … And even if she hadn’t, how could she, Meredith, raise the alarm? The ice house was a ten-minute walk away.
‘Is he in the ice house?’ Meredith tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but the feel of the gun barrel pressing into her liver was as petrifying as that night in the van; as if the gun’s mouth was literally tapping into her terror; it was somehow more visceral like this than seeing it trained on her face.
Caitlin just smiled, an infuriating little smirk that pushed her cheeks into two puffy cushions and made her eyes almost vanish. ‘I know all about how good your “security” is, Meredith.’
She gave a manic thumbs-up, like someone about to watch a favourite TV show, something she’d looked forward to all week. It was impossible to imagine Samantha in a relationship with this insane woman, thought Meredith.
But then Caitlin had been young and gorgeous once too. Perhaps Samantha was just as bloated, her strawberry-red hair now dulled and grey, her teeth as misshapen and stained as Caitlin’s. For a furious moment, Meredith wished Samantha was there, standing in front of her right now. She’d grab Caitlin’s gun and kill her without hesitation, for all the pain she’d blithely inflicted for so many years.
But first she had to rescue Pete.
The fear returned, and Meredith realised it was fear for Pete, not for herself. That helped, in a small way: took it outside of herself, gave it
a name and a purpose.
‘Hey,’ Caitlin said as they left the house, pushing Meredith ahead of her and closing the door behind them. ‘I love your dungarees, where did you get them?’
What the fuck? The woman was off her head. Meredith didn’t answer, shoving her hands into the deep pockets of the dungarees as they walked along the gravel path in the shadow of the huge old wall of the vegetable garden. The moon was bright, illuminating their way, and the gentle hoot of an owl felt very slightly reassuring.
‘Charity shop,’ Meredith muttered at last.
‘Ew,’ said Caitlin. ‘How you can wear other people’s cast-offs I just don’t know. Disgusting. You might find anything in the pockets.’
Meredith almost stopped in her tracks. A huge jolt of fresh adrenaline swept up and down her body. The pockets! Could it still be in there? Very, very slowly, as Caitlin walked behind her, she crept the fingers of her right hand up towards her belly button and a few inches higher, to feel through the denim at the bottom of the dungarees’ bib pocket.
It was still there! Caitlin hadn’t thought to check that pocket when she’d been frisking/slapping her – perhaps she hadn’t realised there was even a pocket up there.
She had a weapon! Albeit a very small one, but it was better than nothing; a tiny claw of a gardening knife, folded in on itself like a curved penknife. It had been in the side pocket of the case of the faulty secateurs. She’d forgotten all about it until Caitlin had unwittingly reminded her.
With her right elbow pressed close to her side, since Caitlin was slightly to the left and behind her, Meredith sneaked her fingers into the pocket and fished out the knife. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She dropped it into the more accessible side pocket of the dungarees, then slid her hand in after it, clutching it tightly until its plastic shaft was as warm as her feverish skin.
Caitlin hadn’t noticed.
Meredith’s heart pounded so hard that she could feel its throb in her throat, like a drum beat on the cool summer night air. If she could flip open the knife fast enough, and undetected, there was hope.
They walked for five minutes or so, downhill, towards the fringes of the Minstead Estate, through the orchard and out the other side to where the rough parkland began. They were heading, Meredith realised, towards the tennis court and the old swimming pool. On one of the first Lady Minstead’s whims, the pool had been built quite far from the house – apparently she wanted the daily walk through the grounds to get to it, and didn’t want it to be visible from the house. The Minstead House Trust had latterly decided that, since it was of no interest to the general public, it wasn’t worth maintaining, and it had been abandoned once the House had been opened to the public two decades before. Meredith often thought what a shame that was; she’d have loved a lunchtime swim during her workday.
Nobody had played on the tennis court for years either. It stood, net-less, weeds sprouting from fissures in the tarmac, the white lines blurred and obscured by time and bird crap. Meredith and Caitlin walked across it now, the light from Caitlin’s phone screen bobbing ahead of them. Meredith could see another faint flickering light coming from the window of the pool house. Her heart leaped in anticipation then cramped with pain. Was this where Pete had been all this time, so close by, practically hidden in plain sight? Why hadn’t the police searched the grounds? Why hadn’t she?
Caitlin heaved open the heavy pool house door, one of those old lead-paned glass ones. It gave an exaggerated haunted-house creak. ‘We’re here,’ she called out, quietly, presumably to the person who’d sent her that text earlier.
A candle flame wavered in a jam jar on the side of the empty swimming pool, the only pinprick of light in the cold musty air of the place. Meredith felt a deep chill – the temperature seemed to have dropped by ten degrees from the summer night air of the grounds outside. At first she couldn’t make out anything apart from the tiny flickering light – Caitlin had switched off the torch function on her phone.
Where was her own phone, Meredith wondered? Was it still in Caitlin’s pocket or had the woman left it behind?
The pool house seemed so still. Caitlin must have thought so too because she called again, a faint tone of irritation in her voice: ‘Graeme!’
Graeme? Who was Graeme?
50
Meredith
‘Here,’ came a strange, high-low, echoey voice in reply, seemingly from the depths of the empty pool.
That voice, speaking just one word, triggered something in Meredith, some long-suppressed memory. A black-gloved hand snaking through the hole kicked in her bedroom door and grabbing her ankle. Being driven away in the black interior of a Luton van, death reaching for her with cold fingers under its metal door. The shouting, the flash of the knife plunging into the back of her hand … the terror.
It was him.
Meredith made a sound, an involuntary gasp, and felt her knees buckle. Warm urine released from her full bladder and streamed down her legs, filling the chill air with a sweet, straw-like smell, the exact same reaction she’d had when this person had broken into her bedroom. Just for a moment the relief of pressure in her belly, and the warmth on her cold skin, were welcome.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, on her knees. ‘Help us.’ He’d rescued her before. Now they needed another Mr Martindale…
‘Ugh,’ said Caitlin in disgust, her voice suddenly loud in the darkness. ‘She’s pissed herself. Gross. Where are you?’
‘Checking on the brother. He’s down here, in a right state. Not sure how we’re gonna get him out.’
Meredith’s head shot up. ‘What have you done to him? Pete! Pete? Can you hear me?’
‘Shut up, bitch,’ snapped Caitlin. ‘One more word, one movement, and I’ll shoot you both right now.’
She flicked the torch function back again and shone it into the empty pool. Pain pierced Meredith’s heart as she saw Pete caught in the yellow beam, curled up naked on the blue-tiled floor, not moving. That … person knelt over him.
It was the first time Meredith had seen the man’s face, and with yet another shock she realised it was a face she recognised. She gasped again, but didn’t dare speak, not with the glint of the gun barrel pointing in her direction.
The person – Graeme – worked here, at Minstead. One of the gardeners. Meredith felt a furious pulse throb in her neck. She’d seen him many times, crouching in a flowerbed, pruning, digging, weeding, never meeting Meredith’s eye or returning her ‘morning’ when she passed him on the way to work, or was out walking Ceri’s dog. Meredith had always assumed the man had learning difficulties, or was extremely shy, or just terminally antisocial. He’d even come into the shop once.
Oh God, she thought. No wonder he knew my movements, and Pete’s. He could’ve been watching them for months. Probably had been. It was him who decapitated the flowers in the front garden, who knocked all the stuff off the shelves, probably left the dead rat in the fireplace.
It was starting to make sense. This Graeme was Caitlin’s bitch. Caitlin was the one who ordered the attack on her all those years ago. Maybe Graeme had been inside too, in the intervening years, when things had gone quiet. Now they were both out – and Graeme clearly had been for some time.
Meredith was desperate to get to Pete, to climb into the pool and hug him, but it was as if Caitlin read her mind – or maybe she had unknowingly made a move forwards – because Caitlin snapped again: ‘I told you, don’t move. We’re going in a minute.’
Going? Going where?
‘I’m not going to kill you here,’ Caitlin added. ‘Thought we’d take a little walk first. So while we get him out, you can get your kit off too. Chop, chop.’
Meredith stared at her, stunned. ‘What?’
‘Kit off, cloth ears. I want you both naked.’
‘Why?’
Caitlin chuckled meanly. ‘Why not? You’re an exhibitionist, aren’t you? Prancing round for all those years like a cunt on stages, singing your stupid little songs �
�� You both came into the world at the same time starkers, so you should both leave the same way.’
The woman wasn’t even making sense. This could not be happening, Meredith thought. It was just impossible.
If she stripped, she’d lose the knife. She couldn’t lose the knife; it was all she had. Also – Pete didn’t look like he could go anywhere, let alone climb a ladder.
Graeme seemed to agree. ‘Cath … you’ll have to help me get him out. Maybe we should do it here. Put him out of his misery.’
Caitlin tutted irritably. ‘Not doing it here; they’d be found too soon. Too much evidence. We’ll stick to the plan. He’s probably just faking anyway. You.’ She turned to Meredith. ‘Strip off.’
She tucked the gun into the waistband of her skirt and hauled herself, puffing with exertion, over the edge of the pool, down a rusty iron ladder at what was once the shallow end. Meredith palmed the knife once more then, still clutching it, unhooked the clasps on the bib of her dungarees, and let them slip off to the floor. The darkness was a help – neither Caitlin nor Graeme should be able to see that she was holding anything.
The air was cool, particularly on her piss-wet thighs, but there was too much adrenaline flowing round her body to allow her to feel cold. She stripped off her T-shirt and bra, and hooked off her knickers, so intent on concealing the knife that she didn’t even feel shame at her nakedness. She had to do it fast, before Caitlin got close again.
In the pool, Caitlin laughed. ‘Look at that: what a show-off. Didn’t I say she was an exhibitionist? Nice tits too, what I can see of them. Shame it’s so dark in here.’
As Caitlin and Graeme took hold of Pete and hauled him to his feet, his head hanging like a crucified man’s, Meredith surreptitiously wedged the knife into her armpit. She’d briefly considered concealing it inside her vagina, but that would have been harder to do unnoticed, and harder to deploy fast if an opportunity to use it arose … As long as Caitlin didn’t make her walk with her arms in the air, this was probably the only option.