Missing Piece

by Emma Snow

The other possibility was that Samuel Lyons had not died in the fire. Two unlikely leads to follow up. He wondered what might be waiting for him in Helmsley. It could be a dead end. He had forty minutes until he would know one way or another.

  Lucas was still talking, giving him more details.

  Burleigh had apparently lost a fortune when the care home had burned down. The insurers had found a loophole to avoid paying out, something to do with the storage of the chemicals that had caught. He had been left personally liable after taking them to court and losing, leaving him with paying their costs alongside the hit he took over the blaze.

  It would likely have left him bitter, to have been thrown to the wolves after rescuing two of the girls, running into the blaze to drag one out, only seeing Lisa in the smoke, then catching sight of Martha. He’d burned himself pretty badly doing that and it wasn’t entirely unfeasible that he would build up a resentment of them, seeing them as representing a system that had let him down.

  His daughter was apparently not happy with him for losing so much money, angry with him for not working for a long time afterwards. He’d been funding the training for her career but the money troubles had brought that to an abrupt halt.

  Burleigh was a complicated character. From the sound of his notes, he loved and hated his daughter, a single mother of a little girl called Jenny. He doted on his granddaughter but hadn’t seen her for some time, since Catherine had fallen in with a man called Anthony, a man Timothy hated with a vitriol that dripped out from the words he’d written. There was a lot of anger there. Was there enough anger to make him a killer?

  “Looks like he was telling the truth,” Lucas said. “About Lisa getting in touch every day. She must have meant a lot to him.”

  “Or he was controlling,” Gregg muttered, more to himself than to his colleague. He ran through his plan. He would get to Helmsley Castle and see if Martha Coleman was there. If she was, great. He’d find out what she knew about Burleigh and then base his actions on what she told him. If she wasn’t there, then he was back to square one but the team were already working on tracking her down. She was receiving payslips from the castle according to the tax office so the odds were good that he’d find her there, the address he’d been given was a cottage next to the castle.

  “I’m almost there,” he said to Lucas. “Keep going through it, see what else turns up. Once I know anything, I’ll be in touch.”

  He pressed the button on the steering wheel to end the call then turned his attention to his plan, running through it, thinking of the different options that might result from what he found. He had a horrible feeling he might find Martha’s body in the cottage, that Burleigh would go from a person of interest to a murder suspect. If that happened, he’d take a ton of flak for letting him go. He’d have to just take the hit if that was the case.

  The only way to find out what was really going on was to let Burleigh go and then follow the breadcrumbs, see where they took him. They were taking him to Helmsley. His instinct told him this was where things would come to a head. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.

  THIRTY

  Ben didn’t want to speak to his mother. She’d rung twice already and he knew that if he ignored it this time, his father would answer. He could hear him upstairs, coughing in the bathroom as he cleaned his teeth. Another few seconds and the water would stop running, then he’d hear the phone and want to answer it.

  Last time he spoke to her was in the castle office. Martha was giving her tour and he was passing through on his way to go get something to eat when Joanne stopped him, passing him the phone. As soon as he heard his mother’s voice at the other end, he hung up. He had no interest in speaking to her. He turned to Joanne. “If she rings again, tell her the succession has been decided.”

  But if he didn’t answer this time, his father would get the phone. That was worse. He didn’t want to hear them argue. He picked up the phone, her name flashing on the display unit as he brought it up to his ear.

  “Hello,” he said but she was already talking, sounding furious.

  “So he’s giving you the castle, is he? I might have known, that’s just bloody typical of the pair of you. You swan back here after God knows how long and…”

  Ben smiled to himself. So Joanne had told her about the succession and she’d assumed it meant he was taking over the place. At least he’d proved that Joanne was working with her. That was something he’d need to tell his father at some point, though it was also information that might come in handy, a card to pull out and play when the time was right.

  “If you sell to Alex once it’s in your name, it’ll be more than worth your while,” she was saying when he tuned back into her voice. “You can go back to wherever you were staying and be a millionaire. I know the place is losing money, Ben. Do the right thing and we can all come out of this very rich indeed. What do you say?”

  “I say that’ll be up to the new owner,” he replied, finally able to get a word in. “But I’m going to be doing everything in my power to make sure Dad doesn’t sell.”

  He hung up on her, feeling his heart race as he did so. He didn’t like making her angry. Despite it all, she was still his mother. This was Alex, poisoning her, whispering in her ear that money was all that mattered.

  He had long ago established that there were far more important things in life. All the money in the world wouldn’t bring Zoë back to life, wouldn’t put his family back together again.

  “Who was that on the phone?” Peter asked from the top of the stairs, shuffling slowly down them on his crutches.

  “Mum,” he said, seeing little point in lying.

  “She wants you to get me to sell, right?”

  Ben nodded.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her the same as I’m about to tell you. It’s up to the owner what happens to this place.”

  “What do you think though? Truthfully?”

  “I think it’s a castle, not some tacky theme park. I think if you sell to Alexander, I’ll never forgive you and if you don’t, she’ll never forgive you.”

  “Piss off my son or my ex-wife? What a choice.”

  “If it tips the scale, I was about to make you a tea.”

  “Bribery too. I like it. Throw in a slice of cake and that might seal the deal.

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  As D.C.I Gregg headed towards Helmsley and Ben sat talking to his father, Samuel Lyons was outside a sawmill. He’d picked this location as the perfect distance to test the response time of the emergency services.

  He knew there was a difference between police and fire response but he also knew both would need to travel the same distance to get to Helmsley.

  The car he’d stolen was parked up next to a conveyor belt. The ground was covered in sawdust, perfect for what he had planned.

  He was excited. By tomorrow morning there would only be two days to go. He couldn’t help but keep checking the skies, in case the comet came early. If it did, he’d have to speed up his plans.

  There wasn’t long to go. Martha hadn’t recognised him on the guided tour, giving him a chance to observe her closely for the first time in years. It was one thing to look in through her window at her, it was another to be just a few feet away as she talked about the castle. Her lips moved so seductively and every now and then she’d glanced at him. He’d stiffened each time, thinking about how she used to look.

  If he closed his eyes for a second or two, he could picture her, naked in front of him, the black knight in her hand, the others crying behind her. Would her skin feel as soft as it had back then? Would she smell as good? Would she cry when he killed her? Would he beg her to let her live? The sense of power was overwhelming. It had been worth the wait to stand so close to her again, to know that in a couple of days he would fuck her and then kill her, perhaps not even in that order. She would become the offering his Gods wanted. It would be glorious.

  First he needed to
make sure he would have time. He squirted the last of the lighter fluid across the rear seats. That was when he noticed the rabbit. It was limping, trying to move away from him. It had been hiding under the conveyor belt. The sawmill was along a track in the woods north of Helmsley. There were probably dozens of rabbits that would have run from the sound of the car engine. In the glow of the headlights, one remained, limping slowly, its leg clearly badly damaged.

  He ran over and leaned down, grabbing hold of it before it could get away. Shushing it quietly, he stroked its fur, walking back towards the car. “You’re a cute little thing,” he said as he placed it on the back seat, stepping back and smiling. The Gods had given him his first offering. It was small but it was a sign. Do this and greater things would be his. Martha would be his.

  He didn’t hesitate for a second. Flicking the lighter, he held the burning tip to the screwed up paper in his hand. Only when the flames were licking towards his fingers did he toss it in through the open window. Then he faded into the trees behind him and found a good spot to sit and wait. He started the timer on his watch as he sat there. It was nearly an hour before the fire engine rumbled down the track. By then the car was almost burnt out. Samuel thought about the rabbit, how it would have felt as the car burned around it. Would it have known what was happening? Would it have been afraid? Did it understand his power? Or was it too busy being scared of the growing heat around it? Would Martha feel the same fear when she too felt death approaching?

  THIRTY-TWO

  Ben found Peter in the living room. The wind was building outside. It had been building all day. It looked like there was going to be a hell of a storm but the weather forecast had suggested it might skip Yorkshire and hit further north. There’d been few visitors to the castle all day. Martha had been behind the desk looking bored when he’d been to see her. He was pleased to find her smiling when she realised he was there. She still seemed distracted when he’d talked to her but he suspected that was because she was getting used to the idea of taking over the whole site.

  He had no idea that Martha was planning to leave, that she’d been sorting things in her house, trying to decide what to take with her and what to leave behind. He had no idea how hard it was for her to think about leaving the place she loved. But he hadn’t seen the man on the edge of the tour group, the one who wouldn’t stop staring at her, the one who put her more on edge than ever, who reinforced that she was making the right decision. She had to leave. She didn’t feel safe there anymore.

  All Ben knew was that she smiled when she saw him and that was enough for him. He’d smiled too. The more he thought about the castle, the more he thought he might stay, and the more he thought that a big reason for wanting to stay was so that he could get to know her better.

  Peter was reading in his armchair, the crutch on the floor next to him, the heating off. He never seemed to feel the cold. He had the obligatory old man blanket over his legs though. That blanket had been over his legs when he read for how long? Ben could remember feeling the roughness of the wool when he was no more than five. It had survived a long time. As had Peter.

  He looked at his father for a brief moment from the doorway. He had been in a car crash that had almost killed him and here he was a few days later, carrying on where he left off in his book as if nothing happened. The crutch and the plaster cast the only sign anything had changed. He’d even taken the bandage off his head, only putting it on when he knew the nurse was due to visit. There was a nasty gash on his forehead that was going to leave quite the scar.

  He didn’t look up as Ben walked in, turning the page in silence.

  Ben sat on the sofa thinking about the conversation he’d just had.

  He had bumped into the old man and his granddaughter in the middle of Helmsley. They were on their way back to their cottage from the bookshop down the side of the marketplace. Ben knew that bookshop well. It had been there longer than he had, although the original owner had long since died. Mr Brawley, he had been one of the old fashioned shopkeepers, viewing the admittance of customers as an unfortunate side effect of owning a bookshop. He had a special dislike of children. Whenever Ben had gone in to buy something with his pocket money, he’d been watched like a hawk. Occasionally he’d been thrown out before he could even look round, warned that “children steal,” without a chance to defend himself.

  That time was long gone by the looks of the little girl, her arms weighed down with her purchases.

  They had somehow ended up chatting in The Old Police Station Cafe, itself a relic of the past. In Ben’s childhood, there had still been a local police force, long since amalgamated into a regional headquarters, all the little town police stations closing down when budget cuts kicked in a decade earlier. It had become a cafe and it felt odd to Ben to sit in the same spot where he’d tried to report Mr Brawley for calling him a “little sneak thief.”

  He’d been laughed out of there, told if they arrested everyone who insulted children, there’d be no room in the cells for the real criminals.

  At least no one laughed at him this time. He had been served his tea by a teenage girl and he sat with it whilst the old man and his granddaughter sat opposite him. The old man had introduced himself as Timothy, his granddaughter was Jenny, the two of them on holiday for a week or so.

  When Jenny had gone to the toilet, located where the cells used to be, Timothy had talked quietly and quickly. “Keep a close eye on Martha for the next few days.”

  “What? Why? How do you know her?”

  “I know her from a long time ago and if you care about her, you’ll watch her closely.”

  “Why? What are you talking about?”

  “There’s someone else from her past hanging around and he’s up to no good. Here’s my mobile number. Ring me if you see anything suspicious will you?”

  “Like what?”

  But then Jenny had reappeared and the conversation had moved on to her book choices. She had waxed lyrical about how much she loved her Granddad, how grateful she was that he had doubled the size of her personal library in the few days they’d been in Helmsley so far.

  It had made him think. When he sat opposite his father in the cottage, he continued to think. “I wrote to you,” he said at last. “When I went, I wrote you a letter.”

  Peter grunted but still didn’t look up.

  “You never replied.”

  Peter sighed, putting the bookmark in place before folding the book closed and setting it down on the arm of the chair. He looked up at Ben, his eyes wet. “I’m going to have to sell.”

  Ben realised he hadn’t been listening to him, he was too lost in his own thoughts. “What do you mean, you’ll have to sell? Why?”

  “Alex has got the council in his pocket. They’ve found some bloody loophole that if I can’t work, the terms of the contract I have with Historic England is invalid. I’m going to have to go back in tomorrow.”

  “But that’s stupid. You can’t run the place. You can barely get up and down stairs.”

  “They’ve got me over a barrel, son.”

  Ben sat upright, feeling the anger bubbling up inside him. “I’ll make it right,” he said, getting up and walking over to his father. “Leave it with me.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Samuel was silent as he dug the things out of his bag. He wanted to sing with the joy he felt in his heart but he knew that was a bad idea. It was gone midnight and if anyone heard singing coming from the altar, they might wonder what on earth someone was doing there that late at night. It was better to be as quiet as possible.

  Two days to go. Tomorrow would be the penultimate day. Ten years of waiting and it all came down to this. All he had to do was prepare the altar, hide the items he needed. Then he would get Martha here. The system he had devised to do so was perfect. It couldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail. Everything was falling perfectly into place.

  The fire brigade had taken an hour to get to the car. If the police response was anything like that, then
he should be absolutely fine. By the time they arrived, he’d already be done. It would all be over. What happened after that didn’t concern him. That was in the hands of the Gods. It would be up to them.

  He might be taken up to join them. He might be arrested, he might be able to run, to start a new life, perhaps wait out another ten years until the next offering. Would they choose him again? It was possible. After all, he’d been chosen once and the odds of that were so small, there had to be a chance he’d be chosen again.

  He shook his head. Now was not the time to be thinking about that. Now was the time to be making sure everything he needed was to hand, ready for him in advance of the day of the offering.

  He’d found a loose stone in the wall behind the altar. That was just one more sign that this was meant to be. Into it, he deposited the contents of the bag. The candles, the knife, the lighter. The scourge went in there too, his heart thumping when that went in, unable to stop himself thinking about making her use it, making her beat the sin out of herself, her pain absolving him of the bad things he’d done to her.

  They weren’t bad in his mind. Like mother had said, girls were sluts and whores. Their bodies were designed to trap people like him. He couldn’t be blamed when he fell for the charms of their flesh. He was only human. Not for much longer, he thought to himself as he slid the stone back into place. Soon he would be so much more than a man. All because of Martha.

  He had failed before. He had prepared her well but on the day, he had been caught in the act. Burleigh had seen him with them, had tried to stop him, had taken her from him. He had a back up plan. He always had a back up plan. Except this time. There could be no excuse for failure this time.

  Not that he expected to fail. His plan was foolproof. She would come to the altar willingly. There he would strip her of her clothes and her adulthood, return her to innocence without the trappings of the modern world. She would leave the world as naked as she came into it, offered up to the Gods as the most perfect sacrifice.