‘It’s all true,’ George said. He patted his coat pocket where the tapes were. ‘It’s all here. It’s all been recorded.’ He ran breathlessly to the back door. ‘I’m going to where Phelps used to have his grain silo, on the other side of Langland’s Wood. That’s where my uncles kept Sylvia Tredwin prisoner. I’ll prove to you all conclusively that I’m telling you the truth. I finally know what’s been going on. And you think me crazy, huh? Well you’ll see!’
He got into his car and drove quickly out of the village, his heart racing, his mouth sponged dry, overcome by a sense of reckless urgency. He barely registered the drive up and out of Petheram, climbing the hills along narrow, winding country roads. He finally came to the spot where Brendan Mollett had brought him in his Ford Classic Consul, and parked the car. Stepping over to the fence that bordered the field. In the distance he could see the grain silo and the remains of the dilapidated outbuildings that used to belong to the elder Phelps back in 1974. He clambered over the fence and made his way over the summer-scorched, yellow, dry grass of the field towards the grain silo, on his left the ominous black stretch of dark fir woodland that was Langland’s Wood, a flock of sheep on his right making a bolt for it at seeing him, as if sensing his fiery determination.
Ironically, he thought as he approached the buildings, the silo looked like a gigantic rusting robot straight out of one of Bruce Tredwin’s 1950s paperbacks. Tall, cylindrical, domed, two crows perched on top of it, ominously silent, regarding him with their bead-black eyes. George paused, looked about him. The buildings hadn’t been used in years, the roofs having collapsed a long time ago, stone filched from the walls for use elsewhere. Old bits of farm machinery, brown with rust, sat amid the tangled scribbles of discarded barbed wire in beds of weeds and grass. Not a soul for miles around. Deathly silent, save for the murmuring of the wind through the gnarled trees that had been allowed to grow around the tired old buildings, like aged sentinels keeping vigil.
It was then he began to doubt himself. Began to doubt the validity of his findings. There was no one here. Why should there be?
Because he knew what was going through Adam Tredwin’s mind. Knew it, because, as it turned out, they were very much alike, Adam and he. Kindred spirits, lonely and wallowing in hurt and pain and having to resort to the only salve within reach.
He went over to the large metal door on the grain silo’s side, grabbed the handle and gave it a twist downwards. It resisted, as if it had been sleeping and tiredly resented the sudden movement. The rusted metal of the hinges groaned as he eased the door open.
It was all but pitch-black inside the silo, and with the sun having played over its metal surface the air was warm and stifling.
‘Hello…’ he ventured quietly, but his voice was amplified by the cavernous structure. ‘Anyone here? Adam?’
The smell hit him. Human faeces. Strong and vile. He wrinkled his nose, pushing the door wider to allow more light into the silo. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dark. Something started to take shape against the far wall. He squinted, moved further inside the silo, his foot hitting a lump of wood; the floor was littered with debris, as if the place had been used as a dumping ground for all manner of farmyard rubbish. He’d have to tread carefully.
Then the object before him came into focus. It was a naked man sitting in a chair, his head bowed, his arms fastened behind him.
‘Christ!’ whispered George, putting a hand to his mouth and slowly moving towards the man.
The man was covered in filth – mud and his own excrement smeared down his legs. His hair was lank and greasy, and his white, shivering body covered in many bruises, like purple flowers growing through dirty snow. George tentatively reached out and placed a single finger on the man’s lowered head.
‘Are you… Are you OK?’ he asked.
It was a ludicrous question and he knew it. The man lifted his head, his body shaking as he did so, the act clearly taking much effort. His mouth had a gag of filthy red cloth bound round it. His sunken, vacant eyes stared into George’s face.
It was Christian Phelps.
‘Oh my God!’ said George. ‘It’s true! It’s all true!’
The high-pitched scream behind him caused George’s heart to all but explode as he turned round to see Sylvia Tredwin bearing down on him, a long metal pipe held above her head. George managed to raise his arm just in time as the stave came down hard upon him. He heard the crack of bone before he felt the pain that rushed in like water from a burst dam.
He yelled in fear and agony, staggering backing into the figure of Christian Phelps, tripping up over him and falling to the floor. He saw Sylvia Tredwin about to strike him again.
But it wasn’t Sylvia. It was Adam Tredwin, wearing a dress and a long black wig.
‘Adam!’ George yelled as Adam brought the stave up to its full height. ‘Adam, it’s me! It’s me, George!’
But Adam Tredwin’s eyes were glazed, unrecognising and feral in their intensity. He brought the stave down hard and it caught George’s head a glancing blow.
George Lee slumped to the ground in a bright blaze of colour and expected to die.
26
Disappear Forever
His head felt like it was filled with a seething tornado of needles. He groaned, aware of something running into his right eye. He wiped it away, staring abstractedly at the dark patch on his hand. His mind eventually registered it as blood. It was then realisation flooded in and he gave a start, all pain momentarily stashed into a corner of his brain as panic set in, and he tried to raise himself onto his elbow.
The sight of bare legs and bare feet before him made him stop. He traced the legs up, a dress beginning at the knees, its hem filthy with dried mud and blood; his eyes continued upwards, halting at the sight of Adam Tredwin’s uncompromisingly severe and stony expression as he stared down hard at him. His face was partially hidden by the dark wig, strands of hair sitting stark against his pale skin, his eyes and lips bearing traces of makeup. His breathing was steady, almost calm.
George’s pain returned with a vengeance.
‘Oh, Christ!’ he said, attempting to move his arm. He was stopped short by another fierce burst of agony. His eyes widened at the sight of his blood-soaked coat sleeve. ‘You’ve broken my arm!’ he hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You’ve broken my fucking arm!’
Adam Tredwin did not respond, except to drop the piece of metal pipe he carried. It clattered on the concrete floor, the noise causing George to get jumpy all over again.
‘I’ve gotta see a doctor,’ he gasped. But Adam’s features remained implacable. ‘Adam, it’s me, your friend George. Don’t you recognise me?’
‘Adam’s not here,’ he replied, his voice curiously altered, higher, attempting to be that of a woman’s.
‘Look, I know what happened to your mother, Adam. I know all about her, about your sister. I know why you’re acting like this…’
‘Adam’s not here!’ he retorted, his eyes burning.
George held up his hand, tried to get himself into a comfortable sitting position. ‘OK, OK, I get it. You’re Eva, right?’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘Let’s say it was a lucky guess. I’m not your enemy, Eva. I’m Adam’s friend. He told you all about me, right?’
Adam hesitated, then nodded. ‘He told me about you. How you were the only friend he had when he was a young boy.’
‘So I’m not going to hurt you, am I?’
‘I guess not,’ he said, his attention wandering away, his restive eyes glancing up at the tall, domed roof of the silo. They could hear the scratching of the crows on the metal above.
‘You’ve got to let me out of here, Eva. I’m hurt. I could bleed to death.’
Adam shook his head. ‘Sorry, George, but I can’t do that. You’ll talk, tell people what I’ve done. I can’t have that. This beast Phelps deserves everything he gets. They both do. You’ll have to stay here for a while, until I’ve finished doing wha
t I have to do.’
‘And what exactly is that, Eva?’
He nodded at Phelps’s fear-soaked eyes. ‘I’m making him suffer, the same way he made my mother suffer, in the very same place they kept her locked away. He’s going to know just how much he ruined our lives and then I’m going to kill him. The same thing he was going to do to our mother.’
Phelps gave a little squeak, struggled in vain against his bonds.
‘Look, I know what they did to her… But you can’t kill him. You’ve got to tell the police. Let him face justice.’
‘And when I’ve killed this swine I’m going to kill Robert Cowper. I tried but I failed. But I won’t fail a second time.’
George swallowed back his pain, and the nausea it was bringing on. ‘It was you that set fire to my uncles’ garage, wasn’t it?’
‘I should have had more petrol. Robert Cowper would be dead right now if I’d been better prepared. But with this one I’ll not make the same mistake.’
Adam Tredwin went over to a pile of debris and came back with a red plastic petrol can.
‘Jesus – what are you going to do with that?’
Adam ignored him and went to stand in front of Phelps. ‘I’d move away from here if I were you, George, unless you want to get burnt.’
Phelps started to utter pathetic, muffled screams, and jerked frantically at his roped hands. The chair was in danger of falling over.
‘You can’t do that!’ said George, horrified.
‘Really?’ Adam bent down to Phelps as George scuttled across the floor, rising awkwardly to his feet, his legs shaking uncontrollably. ‘Did you think it was funny, getting that band to play The Ballad of Sylvia Tredwin, Phelps? That was so cruel of you. You knew how it would affect my brother Adam. And attacking his shop like you did, smashing the glass and setting fire to his van – was that designed to scare him away from the village? What else had you got planned for him, eh?’ Adam cocked his head, brushed the long hair from his eyes. ‘Well I’m not as sensitive as my brother. I take things into my own hands.’ He gave an icy chuckle. ‘I’ll bet you thought you’d gotten away with it. After all, it was so long ago, wasn’t it? Our mother simply a mad woman that no one would listen to. Do you know how that affected us all? Do you know what it’s like living with a woman haunted by unspeakable things that happened to her and being helpless in the face of it, unable to do anything about it? But we found out what really happened in Flinder’s Field, didn’t we? We discovered the truth…’ Adam turned to George. ‘And it was all thanks to your father, George.’
‘My father?’ he said. ‘I don’t understand…’
‘He contacted Adam shortly before he died. He wrote him a letter. A very long and detailed letter.’ As he spoke he unscrewed the cap from the petrol can and splashed the fuel over Phelps’s bare legs. The man shrank back in terror, his head shaking wildly. His muffled screams grew in urgency and intent.
‘Wait – stop that,’ said George. ‘Put the can down.’ But Adam didn’t. ‘OK, tell me about the letter,’ he said. ‘Adam, please stop that and tell me about the letter…’
Thankfully, Adam hesitated and the hand holding the can dropped to his side. ‘Did you know that it was your mother who begged your Uncle Robert to do something about Sylvia?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘She demanded he teach her a lesson. She wanted my mother to disappear. Forever.’
‘That’s not true,’ he defended.
Adam raised a brow. ‘She was eaten by jealousy of my unsuspecting mother. All she needed was an excuse. The affair was that excuse.’ His eyes looked to the ground. ‘Except it wasn’t an affair, was it? Your father told Adam that he was simply teaching her to read. When she went missing he had no idea, like everyone else, what had happened to her. He attended the search parties, did his best to find her. He liked her, you see, but not in the way your mother thought. They’d become friends. And mother didn’t have any friends in Petheram. But we all know what happened after my mother was discovered, her emotional instability, the tales she began spinning about alien abduction. Adam and our father lived with that for years, never knowing what really happened to poor Sylvia Tredwin, as everyone took to calling her; they were only aware of the impact it was having on the family, what with her in and out of hospital, the panic attacks, the tantrums, the attempted suicides. Oh, didn’t they tell you about those? There were a few. But she seemed to get better – well, as much as she ever could.
‘But rumours have a habit of growing, refusing to die down. Rumours started to circulate around the village about an affair between my mother and your father. My dad got wind of it, but there was no real evidence, and that’s when he started to first distrust and then openly despise your father. He was blind to reason, and wouldn’t hear your father’s explanations. But our father was so incensed and proud he was having none of it. Adam told me about the time when you were kids and he invited you round to our house. Remember how father reacted to you? Now perhaps you can understand he didn’t want you there.
‘Then one day – somehow – your father finds out that your mother’s jealousies and desire for revenge prompted my mother’s disappearance. He intimated it came out in some kind of argument, your mother inadvertently admitting the truth. He said he was horrified by the discovery. But he could not keep the information to himself. He met with my father and told him…’ He began sloshing petrol all over Phelps again. ‘That’s why my father was killed,’ he said bitterly.
George said, ‘By my Uncle Robert? The hit-and-run? He was driving the car?’
Adam grinned, but it was devoid of humour. ‘Is that what you think? Then you’d be wrong. Your dad came back home and told your mother what he’d done, and so your mother panicked. She said she would drive to our house, try and persuade my father not to make the call, to offer some other kind of flimsy excuse no doubt. My father was on his way to phone the police, walking to the phone box at the end of the lane, when your mother came rushing down the road in her car. But on seeing him something snapped, and she kept her foot on the accelerator and ploughed straight into him. You know the rest.’
‘No, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! Not my mother…’
But it all started to make sense now.
‘Your mother arrived home, the car’s wing dented from where she’d hit my father. Your father soon worked out what had happened. He said your Uncle Robert came round to the house and threatened to kill him if he so much as breathed a single word about the hit-and-run – then when that didn’t seem to be working, he threatened to kill Amelia and you. You were a kid, an eight-year-old at the time. Your father knew he meant it. Your Uncle Gary came round to the house later in the evening. He saw something was wrong, and they told him about how Bruce Tredwin had been knocked down by your mother, but that it was a tragic accident. He believed them. Your Uncle Gary agreed to fix the wing and keep quiet about it.’
George’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was Gary involved in Sylvia’s disappearance?’
Adam shook his head. ‘No. He was unaware of what his brother and sister had done. But he was guilty of covering up the hit-and-run. He should have gone to the police. But I guess the pull of Cowper family ties extend beyond the law.
‘So your father, afraid for his children’s safety, kept the secret to himself all this time, staying with his wife and keeping quiet to protect you. Except he couldn’t entirely dismiss Sylvia Tredwin and her two children from his mind, even when they left the village following Bruce Tredwin’s death. He wrote in his letter that he felt guilty and ashamed that he did not have the courage to say anything, either about the true nature of my mother’s disappearance or the death of my father. So he found out where we lived and set up a separate bank account into which he paid regular money, to help support my mother and her children. I guess it helped assuage the guilt, but we never knew where the money came from. We assumed it was the result of some kind of dividend payments from shares or something that dad had
once owned. Mother was in no fit state to explain things to us. When mother died the money kept coming in, and then, a few months ago Adam gets a huge windfall of £30,000 and the letter from your father. He started by saying he’d got a serious heart condition, didn’t think he’d have much time left to him, and that it was time to come clean on what really happened to our mother and father.
‘That’s why we came back to Petheram, to seek justice. So Adam used the money to set up in his garden centre business. He wanted to go to the police, but I persuaded him otherwise. I wanted justice to be of the eye-for-an-eye variety. He always does as I say.’
Adam emptied the last of the petrol over Phelps’ head. The stricken man screwed up his eyes against the stinging fuel.
‘Listen, Eva, you don’t have to do this. You can still go to the police.’
‘Now you sound like Adam,’ she said.
‘Maybe Adam knows best,’ George said.
The petrol can was tossed away. ‘We love each other, Adam and me. We only have each other.’ His eyes began to fill up. ‘We have no one else in the entire world. We never did have…’
‘I know,’ sympathised George, holding out a hand. ‘I know, trust me. You and me, we’re so alike…’
Adam’s watery eyes studied George’s face. ‘We are?’
‘Sure we are. I never had anyone either. People don’t understand us, do they?’
Adam shook his head slowly. ‘No, they don’t.’
‘I understand you better than you think you do,’ George said. He watched as Adam searched for something. It became clear what he was looking for when his eyes landed on a small plastic cigarette lighter standing on the remains of a wooden crate. His slender fingers scooped it up. ‘Adam, Eva is dead…’ he said.
Adam frowned. ‘I’m Eva,’ he said.
‘No, that’s not true, is it?’ George said, looking nervously at the lighter, Adam’s thumb playing with the metal wheel. A tiny spark flew out. ‘Eva died. Your mother killed her, as she killed your stepfather. As she tried to kill you. But you survived, didn’t you?’
FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) Page 22