by Eva Hudson
“You know what, I didn’t. I took one look at him and thought, ‘You’re not a fan of the show.’ In fact, I’d bet he’s never seen it. I didn’t like the look of him, so I gave him directions to the A23 instead.” She sounded quite pleased with herself.
“Why didn’t you like the look of him?”
“Like I say, he should probably wear a hat.”
Ingrid didn’t know how to respond.
“Well, it’s not normal, to cover your entire head in tattoos, is it? Right across the back of his head was a tattoo of a skull, like an X-ray. Only the wrong way round, of course. Two dead eyes in the back of his head. I mean, that’s just asking for trouble.”
38
Ingrid followed the directions she’d been given to Arding Manor and found herself on a narrow country road tracing the contours of the South Downs. To her right were open fields dotted with sheep, to her left was a long hedge obscuring the houses on the other side from view. In the early morning mist, the place looked almost magical.
The usually reliable Triumph Tiger 800 started to splutter beneath her. She checked she was in the right gear but quickly figured out the problem. She was low on fuel. She leaned forward and turned the petcock to start using the reserve tank. She had enough for another ten miles, fifteen max, before she’d have to fill up. She hoped it wouldn’t matter: from the directions she’d been given in the village store, she couldn’t be more than a mile away.
Up ahead, Ingrid spotted the landmark she was looking for: a long, low red-brick wall set back from the road. Tall railings were cemented into the wall, and behind the railings was a wood. Ingrid slowed to get a better look, but she couldn’t see any kind of building beyond the trees. After a couple of hundred yards, she came to a set of iron gates hinged onto weathered stone gateposts, just as the woman in the store had described. She killed the engine and got off the bike. Even with the helmet on, the sound of the birdsong was incredible, like a sound effect from a natural history program.
Beyond the wrought-iron gates a path lined with linden trees curved slightly through the woods and fog toward an unseen destination. Ingrid held onto the gates, pushing her helmet up against the metal in an attempt to see further. It was a pointless exercise: the house would have been bought for its privacy and a curved path deliberately denied prying eyes a view of the residence. It was the perfect place to hide a pregnant woman. Or bury her body. It was only when Ingrid took a step backwards that she noticed the heavy chain on the gates. A rusted chain. And at the base of the gates were tall weeds: they hadn’t been opened for years. She spotted messages scrawled in marker pen on the stone gateposts. I love you Truman. Wanna slow dance with me? Anna, Wisconsin. Japan love you Truman!
Ingrid pulled her helmet off. This wasn’t making sense. Either the woman in the shop had given her—and fans armed with marker pens—false directions, or she had taken a wrong turn. She crossed to the other side of the road to get a bit of perspective. The birdsong was like nothing she’d heard before: the woods were alive with noise, yet she couldn’t see a single bird.
She stared at the gates and saw for the first time the way the iron twisted at the top in the middle to form the shape of an A and an M. Arding Manor. It is the right place. Either Ingrid had wasted valuable time leaving London, or there was another way in. She got back on the bike and continued on down the narrow road until she reached the end of the red-brick wall. A dirt track left the road at a right angle, running through the wood. The boundary of Arding Manor was now marked by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence.
Ingrid took the turn and after about a hundred and fifty yards she came to a steel gate, solid except for a hatch where a security guard could check your credentials. She killed the engine, put the bike on the stand and looked around. Above the gate were two cameras. A yellow sign had been stuck to the gate to warn trespassers of security patrols. Down the track was a parked car. It had a Hertz sticker in the year window. A rental.
Ingrid stood on tiptoes in an attempt to see through the hatch, but it was too high. Embedded in the gate was an intercom. She pressed the button, but didn’t hear a damn thing. She removed her helmet, but still couldn’t hear anything. Normally there was a click, or a buzz, but there was just silence, as if it had been disconnected. She waited a minute, then pressed the button again. While she stood waiting for a response, she heard a vehicle drive down the road. It was the first vehicle she had seen or heard since she’d left the village. If Tom and Truman had wanted isolation, they had found it.
Ingrid moved the Triumph out of the way and locked her helmet in its box. She put the bike key in her front pants pocket. In her rear pants pocket was her iPhone. In her jacket was a wallet and a penknife. And the Glock 23. Ten miles’ worth of petrol, four minutes of battery life, a little under £20 and thirteen bullets.
If I was in the States, she asked herself, would I just shoot the damn lock? Of course not: a tall locked gate was a better challenge than a climbing wall. She placed one hand in the open hatch, the other round the edge of the post, feeling for a hinge or a bolt to grab hold of. Then she bent her knees, pulled them toward her chest like a vertical squat thrust and levered herself to the top of the gate. A flash of the run in Angela Tate’s pantyhose slipped into her mind, making her smile. She straddled the cold steel for a few moments to get a view of what lay ahead. Directly beneath her was a muddy clearing rippled with tire tracks left by turning vehicles. Beyond that was a path snaking through the mist-shrouded trees.
She dropped down to the mud, picked herself up and started walking.
39
Ingrid could run faster and further than most humans on the planet. She was fitter and stronger than almost all of the men she’d had to restrain in her career. But there was still something about walking alone through the woods that spooked her. She blamed Little Red Riding Hood.
There was a sudden movement in the trees. She turned.
Ingrid looked through the trunks and thought she saw a branch spring back. Was there a dog? A security patrol? A photographer? She stood stock still, staring into the woods. Her breathing became shallow. Her heart hammered. A breeze rustled through the canopy, sending a gentle shower of leaves down to the mud. She kept her focus fixed on the branch that had moved, aware just how quickly she was drawing breath. There was no one there.
The muddy path—twin tire tracks separated by a ragged stripe of grass—looked well-used. It had rained overnight in London, and by the looks of things it had rained in Sussex too. She couldn’t be sure, but one set of tracks appeared to have been created after the rain had fallen. And that meant a car had driven down this path within the past few hours. A big car, possibly the Range Rover she had seen parked in the courtyard of the Wapping warehouse.
The air was cooler in the woods and the morning mist lingered more densely in patches. Ingrid shivered, but whether from the change in temperature or evolutionary instincts she couldn’t be sure. Up ahead, almost silhouetted against the mist, was a large dead tree, its bare branches stretching across the path like witches’ fingers. She heard the noise again. A snapping. Something was moving.
Ingrid checked behind her, then craned her neck to see further down the path. She looked left and right into the woods. A large bird flapped its wings above her head. Was that it? Just a bird? Instinctively, Ingrid’s right hand reached inside her jacket and felt for her gun. She swallowed hard. What was she thinking? This was England. She withdrew her hand.
The air was sweet, a mix of newly fallen leaves and morning dew with a faint reminder of last night’s wood smoke. She filled her lungs, mindful that if she controlled her breathing she would also check her fear. It was just a wood. There were no bears, no poisonous snakes. This is just a morning walk through the trees. Her boots squelched into the mud. She didn’t want to dwell on how much they had cost.
The path curved away to her right, and the tire tracks deepened where vehicles had been forced to slow and change gear. She looked down, searching for the best
footholds, and saw footprints. Fresh footprints. Sneakers. She sensed movement again. She reached in for the gun.
In the middle of the path, staring straight back at her, was a deer. A small female. Neither of them moved. The doe was so small and so beautiful Ingrid didn’t want to give her any reason to run off. She didn’t even want to blink, just in case it brought their encounter to an end. For a few seconds, maybe a minute, the two of them looked at each other, frozen in time and place.
A sound rumbled through the trees. The deer moved an ear in the direction of the noise then sprang into the undergrowth, darting between the trees. Ingrid stood and watched, hoping for another glimpse, but the animal had merged with the forest. She was gone.
After a few more minutes, Ingrid reached the end of the woods where the muddy path opened out into a yard surrounded by a cluster of small buildings, mostly brick-built with corrugated iron roofs. They looked like garden stores, possibly an office for the estate manager, a couple of garages, and just beyond was a row of large greenhouses. Perhaps if it wasn’t the weekend, she thought, there might be somebody working there, but the place was still and silent. The temperature jumped a few degrees in the open, and the weak fall sunshine created shadows across the landscape.
Ingrid followed the tire tracks down a slope and as she turned a bend around a small stand of birch trees, the main house came into view. It looked like something from a history book, the sort of property owned by a duke who had briefly courted Elizabeth I. It wasn’t particularly large, but it was grand, with turrets and elaborate brick patterns between the dark timber framework. It had almost as many chimney pots as it did windows.
The track joined the main path from the unused gates, her boots slipping slightly as dirt gave way to gravel. She followed the path through a Moorish carpet of formal gardens and slowly approached the grand entrance. With every step, Ingrid expected to hear an engine as a security patrol approached, or maybe even a gunshot to act as a warning. But all she could hear was her boots crunching on the gravel and a lark singing in the air above.
It took several minutes to reach the front door, which gave her time to come up with a plausible reason for her trespass. She decided that if she was intercepted by a member of staff—and, surely, with such vast grounds and outbuildings, there had to be staff—she would say she was Tom’s niece who was visiting for the weekend. If Tom himself answered the door, then she would have to judge her response by how distressed he was to see her.
She rang the bell, a weathered button at the center of an ornate brass disc. She heard the chime resonate within the building and waited for the sound of footsteps. None came. After ringing the bell a second time, she decided to walk round the side of the manor house.
History was not a subject Ingrid knew much about, but she was willing to bet that if she managed to get inside Arding Manor, it would be the oldest building she had ever set foot in. The stone windowsills drooped with age, the glass inside the leaded panels was rippled and dimpled, made by hand many generations before.
Ingrid flexed her fingers, exposing as much skin as possible to the air to evaporate the dampness of her palms. Beneath her jacket, her cotton jersey started sticking to her underarms. The air was cool, but she was sweating. She peered through each window she passed, and while the low sun made it difficult to always see in, the house appeared to be empty. Where were the gardeners? The housekeeper? Where the hell was Tom Kerrison?
Ingrid reached a smaller doorway that she guessed would have once been—or might still have been—used by servants. Through the glass she saw a large farmhouse kitchen, and on the gravel around the door were several cigarette butts; by the look of them they had been dropped after the last rainfall. That morning. Tom Kerrison had been smoking in the gallery’s courtyard the night they met; smoking, and drinking whisky from a flask. Ingrid hadn’t seen him smoke since.
There hadn’t been any ashtrays in the house in Wapping. He hadn’t even smelt of cigarettes. Why? Was it a habit he kept from Truman? After all, wasn’t the actor a control freak who needed everything to be perfect? What had his Wikipedia entry said about his participation in Celebrity MasterChef? Something about attention to detail and precise presentation. And then there was his fitness obsession. The first time she’d met him he’d had damp hair from a swim. She could easily see he was the sort of person who always performed the same number of lengths, and the same number of strokes per length.
For someone like Truman, a partner who smoked, who willingly let toxins into his body, would be almost impossible to deal with. It barely required any imagination to picture the tantrums he’d throw. He freaked out with the tiniest provocation, like not using filtered water in the coffee machine. She didn’t know very much about obsessive compulsive disorder, but she was starting to suspect Truman Cooper’s erratic behavior had a medical origin. Having witnessed his outbursts, she could understand why Tom Kerrison might keep secrets. But would he, could he, have kept how he felt about fatherhood from Truman?
The article in the Daily Mail had mentioned Tom’s hospitalization for stress. She was pretty sure that if she asked Angela Tate, the journalist would tell her ‘stress’ was a code, something agreed between the media and a publicist to obscure the real reason one of the world’s most lauded fashion designers had spent a night in hospital. When she thought about the scar she’d seen on Kerrison’s wrist, she wondered if the exhibition, the baby and the pressure of running a multinational business had pushed Tom too far. And if he was that unstable, what might he be capable of doing to Kristyn?
Ingrid positioned herself where the smoker had stood so she could have the same view as him. In front of her was a walled kitchen garden with neat rows of ripening squashes and A-frames of climbing beans. It was tempting to indulge herself in thoughts of Merchant Ivory films or Jane Austen novels, but she needed to focus. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t the weekend retreat for two middle-aged, enormously successful men. Given their work schedules, it was possible they only made it to Arding Manor a few times a year. They didn’t need fifteen squashes in a weekend; they couldn’t eat that many beans or lettuces. What was she missing?
Ingrid counted the cigarette butts. Seven. Whoever had smoked them was in distress. She imagined Tom, sitting on the back step, drinking unfiltered coffee and lighting each cigarette from the dying butt of the last. She was starting to see him as he really was—a street hustler, a cowboy who could never quite believe his luck. Despite all his success, Tom Kerrison still didn’t think he was worthy of Truman’s love. Maybe he didn’t think he was worthy of a family either. It explained why he had disappeared: she could only hope to God it didn’t explain Kristyn’s disappearance too.
Something moved in Ingrid’s peripheral vision. She turned, adrenaline surging, ready for confrontation.
“Cully. Hey boy.” The good-natured animal walked right up to her, his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted. Ingrid patted his head. “Where did you come from?”
Ingrid looked in the direction the dog had come from, expecting to see Tom Kerrison return from an early morning walk. But he didn’t come. No one came.
40
“Where did you come from?” Ingrid said again. The dog just carried on wagging his tail, pleased to have found someone to stroke him. He didn’t seem distressed, or hungry. “Have you been left in charge?” she said to the dog. “Or have you eaten all of the gardeners?”
Cully’s tail started to wag with more enthusiasm.
“You have?”
He let out a sharp, short bark. One of those dogs that thinks he’s human.
“Come on then, you better show me where you buried the bones.”
Ingrid followed a stone path through the vegetable beds to a gap in a clipped yew hedge. She heard a plane overhead and followed it across the sky as it flew over the house. She stared at the rear of the building, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. It was three stories high, with the third floor up inside the roof identifiable by
a row of small dormer windows. She noted that each window was a slightly different size from its neighbor, a result of repair, or subsidence, or the fact that each frame was made by hand before the Mayflower had set sail. She flinched: something moved in one of the top-floor windows. It had probably just been the reflection of the plane.
She followed Cully through the gap in the hedge to a wide circle of gravel and an open-sided barn that provided covered parking for five cars. In the apex roof of the barn was a row of three skylights: she guessed the loft had been turned into a workshop or a games room, something realtors would describe as a ‘man cave’. Two of the parking spaces were occupied, one with a decrepit Land Rover with bricks for tires, the other with a dark green vintage Mercedes Roadster. It was the kind of vehicle a European prince would use to court a Hollywood actress in a 1950s romantic comedy. It was hard to tell with gravel if a car had recently pulled in or out.
Cully trotted up to the garage. The fact that the dog was not showing any signs of distress or neglect suggested Tom was around somewhere. Ingrid felt the hood of the Mercedes. Completely cold. She looked around for any other sign of recent activity. At the far end was a row of trash cans. She lifted the lids one by one, but all were empty. Beyond the bins was a door. She tried the handle but it didn’t budge.
Ingrid walked around the back of the barn. A garden hoe leaned up against the flint wall, but that was it. She turned to go back, but something made her look again. The wall was wet, like the patch a dog leaves when it urinates. Only the patch was too high. It had been left by a man.
How long would piss take to dry? On a cold misty morning? Fifteen minutes? Thirty, max? A man had been here in the very recent past. A man who presumably couldn’t have been Tom, because Tom would have access to a bathroom. Ingrid felt pressure constrict her ribs. She swallowed hard. Or was she just being prudish? All alone on your country estate, would you bother going all the way inside the house to answer the call of nature? The dog barked from the other side of the barn. It wasn’t a distressed bark, just a friendly noise to say either ‘where are you?’ or ‘I’m still here, you know’.