‘I charge you with holding her here until we return,’ she said, and saw confusion pass across the faces of the old couple. The bridegroom showed no surprise, only courteous compliance. ‘If you allow her to leave I will hold you responsible.’ Sullenly Morgan Carter sat down, and Sarah Rutherford saw his hand, with its bright new wedding band, leave the mobile phone and settle on his wife’s knee below the table.
The woman in the unlicensed taxi had got the car door open and was standing in front of her. ‘I’m looking for The Laurels,’ she said, and she seemed quite heedless of the situation, the police car revving in front of them in the lane. She wasn’t dressed for a wedding: crumpled shirt, boy’s trousers. No make-up, no fascinator. ‘I’m looking for my friend. She’s…’ And finally she registered the flashes on the side of the police car. ‘She’s … her name’s Alison now but she was Esme Grace,’ she said, falling back against the car. ‘I’m Kay. I work with her, I found out … it’s the boyfriend, you see.’
Rutherford was having trouble with her head: she felt as though something had been shaken loose in there, she should know this girl, this woman. She knew Esme Grace, after all, and the name was secret. ‘The boyfriend,’ she said with difficulty. ‘Paul Bartlett.’ Her tongue felt thick.
Standing out there with Bob Argent’s words blown away in the wind, they had all looked at Morgan Carter. ‘He left me there,’ she said, her chin obstinate. ‘I wanted to come with him but he told me to wait in the car.’ Her father started to say something, a warning, but he didn’t seem to be able to get it out and Morgan’s colour heightened, spreading up her neck. ‘When he came back he was sweating, he smelled … he smelled strange.’ She smiled, satisfied. ‘He said, he’d dealt with it for Mummy, he said, it’s motiveless, they never catch you. Our secret, just ours.’ She looked around at them and she didn’t seem like a lawyer or a bride, she seemed like a vicious playground tormentor, ruling by shock tactics, driven by greed. ‘We did it in the car afterwards,’ she said, triumphant.
She seemed oblivious to her father in his morning coat at her side, his face appalled, on the point of collapse, but Sarah Rutherford had been obliged to register his response. To file it under No Fucking Clue.
She hadn’t read Morgan Carter her rights, was that why she’d stood up and crowed it over them? Accessory, for sure. Witnesses, at least: Karen Marshall, Argent, even if the father would say he’d heard nothing. But twenty years of doing everything by the book seemed to have deserted Sarah Rutherford. Behind the Volvo’s smeared windscreen the driver appeared at last to have worked out that he was under some kind of imperative, bent over his ignition. There was a strangled sound.
‘It’s the gun, you see,’ said the woman who’d climbed out of the car, the woman who called herself Kay. She seemed uncertain suddenly. ‘He lied to her about the gun. He brought it with him, you know. He’s got it here.’
‘The gun.’ Morgan Carter’s words took a different shape. Jennings was looking at Sarah anxiously and she put a hand to the bruise on her temple. Was she bleeding into her brain?
Kay took a step towards Sarah Rutherford and put out a hand to her. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Gun,’ said Sarah with difficulty.
‘She gave it to him,’ Kay said. ‘Morgan Carter.’
‘Of course, after that, we had to cool off,’ Morgan Carter had said, pretending carelessness. ‘We agreed. Our secret, though. Mummy had drunk a bottle and a half on the patio by the time we got back, she didn’t see a thing, never mentioned the phone call again. Our secret forever. He liked that, he even wanted me to get married and all the time we’d have our secret.’
A disbelieving sound had come from somewhere at that, and Morgan Carter had looked around the circle, settling on Karen Marshall, who’d looked back at her, lips set in a line.
‘I gave him a gun for his birthday, that year. We’d broken up by then, in public of course, but he knew what it meant.’
Nobody asked the question: Morgan didn’t need a prompt. ‘It took me forever to find the bloody thing, the one the Germans fighting in France would have used. It had to be right. And of course it had to be fully functioning.’ That smile again. ‘I mean, what good’s a gun that can’t be used?’
Behind them the knackered Volvo’s ignition caught at last and the car jerked backwards into the ditch.
Chapter Forty-four
The yard dripped and when she stumbled on some broken brick in her bare feet his free hand was there, solicitous under her elbow. She had to put a hand up to her glasses to stop them falling. ‘Careful,’ he said.
It stank in the rain. Reeling, she looked up at the house. Lucy Carter was still inside, still in the bedroom as far as she knew. Alison had stopped at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to have followed them, but the house above them was silent, she’d stayed there obedient as a child sent to her room.
Filth on the coated kitchen surfaces. Cupboard doors open, one hanging askew from a broken hinge, ancient remains inside, like Pompeii, she thought as he led her, courteous for the moment, through the narrow space towards the back door. A beautiful woman, my mother – the words repeated themselves as she didn’t look down, at the floor where her mother had lain.
‘They were in here when I came up to the house,’ he’d said, stopping abruptly at the door, turning to explain as if he was a teacher and they were on an educational tour. ‘I came round here and I saw them drinking.’ Two glasses on the draining board, she thought, Mum and Dad. ‘Arguing. She was winning, your mother. At least … he looked beaten.’ Paul looked amused, the kind of teacher who likes to show how much cleverer he is.
‘If he hadn’t come outside…’ he went on, musing, standing at the back door, but still his hand was hard around her wrist. Her fingers felt numb as frozen sausages. She’d always known, it seemed to her then; she’d known since he lifted the wineglass from her hand at the office, since he held her by the wrists just inside his front door. She’d always known there was something behind the calm and the order. It was the dark that had drawn her in.
‘If he hadn’t come outside I’d never have known where to find it.’ And then Paul turned a key and they were in the yard. He looked back over his shoulder, pleased. ‘A good hiding place. A good one to remember, just in case.’
He had stepped towards the lean-to at the back of the yard, tugging her after him. He brought her out through the kitchen as if he knew where he was going – but then, one thing she knew about Paul was that he didn’t falter: once he had decided on something, he might go underground but he followed through. It ended how he wanted it to end.
He reached up now, under the sagging slate of the lean-to, and paused there, turned back.
‘We could even have been witnesses,’ he said. ‘Morgan and I were there the night he came into the pub asking for a gun. Up for the weekend. She’d said something about him. I’d seen the way everyone looked at him.’ His pale eyes rested on her, and there was a glitter in them she’d never seen before. ‘I suppose you might say the idea started there.’ His head tilted. ‘Did you know where your father kept the gun?’ And his shoulder followed the arm under the shed roof.
‘I never knew he had a gun,’ she said, and he stopped, his hand somewhere under the tiles. ‘I never saw it until—’ She stopped. ‘My father was a good man.’ He was so close she could see the creases at his eyes but there was nothing left in the hard, handsome face of the Paul she’d invented, no kindness, no laughter. A reel of loving gestures played in her head – food offered, a present, his hands on her – but it had all been like a picture in a magazine you set a match to, light and empty as ash. The raw mark on her father’s neck as he lay on the hall carpet. She looked into Paul’s pale eyes.
‘He saw me out here and he came out and went straight for the gun, left her in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I got it off him before he’d even turned round, and once I’d knocked his glasses off he was helpless.’ And shrugged. Smiled. ‘I even thought to put bot
h his hands to the trigger. Not straightforward, blowing your own brains out with a shotgun.’
Needs determination. She stared, dumb.
‘You spent so much time covering your tracks,’ he said, and the smile hovered, his eyes greedy for something she couldn’t see. ‘I always knew where you’d been. You didn’t even wonder this morning, though, where I was, where I might have gone on my run. Did you? You didn’t know I’d come back to use your father’s hiding place.’
She stared. His hand came out from under the shed roof and it wasn’t empty anymore. He held it out to her. ‘I knew we’d come back here together,’ he said. ‘I believe in preparation.’
It sat in his palm, dull and heavy and ugly, a lump of scratched metal, the only other gun she’d ever seen. Herstal Belgique.
Then suddenly, brutally, he shoved her with the heel of his hand, the hand with the gun in it, she felt it connect below her ear and, unbalanced, shocked to the roots of her hair, she fell sideways. He was over her.
‘Run,’ he whispered, low and loving, but he was between her and the open gate. She raised herself on the sharp stone and glass and rubble, feeling it dig into her palms, and he was behind her. He gave her a push, contemptuously light, and she was down again, only this time her glasses came off and the world blurred.
‘If I’d known then,’ he said, and he pressed himself against her from behind, she felt his weight, she felt him between her legs. ‘That you were upstairs, waiting for me. If I’d found you. That’d have given the police something to get excited about.’ And she started away from him, her knees ripped and bleeding, bare feet scrabbling for purchase. As she broke free she heard the crunch, and as she blundered painfully into the jamb of the kitchen door she knew her glasses were gone but she heard a sliding on the loose stone behind her, heard him mutter something in anger, and she knew, in that instant, this was her only chance.
Back into the kitchen, blindly staggering, stickiness of the old blue and white vinyl underfoot, hands wide and feeling for the doorway at the other end. Through the door into the hall, her house around her, her house. She tripped: she was down.
On her knees she smelled the freshness of the rain through the open front door ahead of her; she knew she must get to her feet and run but she couldn’t move, she was stone. Dad, right here, his unshaven cheek on the bloodied carpet, the raw mark on his neck where Paul had manhandled him in the yard, his dying brain flooded and all of it draining out of him, love and jealousy and fear. Dad stumbling over Mum’s body in the kitchen, listening to the shots in that blur, one after another. He’d have heard more than she had, high up in her attic – he’d have heard the girls crying in fear, he’d have stumbled from room to room. Mads struggling to get free and seeing Joe. The last thing she’d have seen.
And all this time it hadn’t come from the village at all, not from the place she’d feared, it hadn’t bred in the cramped cottages or on the flat grey marsh: the darkness had drifted in from further off. Passing over those who belonged here, it had wandered between washing lines and back gardens until it found the outsiders, in their crooked house: scenting blood and damage it had gathered itself, and rushed inside.
It washed through her, it turned her like a vast wave and sucked her down. She crawled and she was there where coats had once hung, her back against the wall, Esme.
She saw a shape fill the kitchen doorway and he was there, closer, close enough for her to see the thing in his hand and then she closed her eyes and felt it cold against her skull, there where the bone was thinnest, the nerves close to the surface. He was over her, he was all around her, she smelled his sweat, his breathing was in her ear. A small movement against her ear, his finger moving on the trigger.
She heard a woman’s voice. It yelled.
And as though the wave had rolled and lifted her and spat her back to the surface she moved up and forwards, heels braced against the wall, up. She felt herself catch him off balance and as he tipped she spun and was in the doorway up against another body blocking her. A woman’s body.
Lucy.
She smelled sweat and cigarettes, lank hair against her face.
Not Lucy. Gina had her by the shoulders and was shifting her bodily out of the way, sidestepping into the house, and then she was screaming.
* * *
May was a ghost running along the top of the sea wall.
She ran into Sarah Rutherford’s arms, thin as a whip but more solid than a ghost, a tangle of elbows and legs and Sarah couldn’t tell who the sob came from.
‘Mummy,’ said May, her white terrified face all angles and dark eyes turned upwards, her tangle of hair falling back. ‘I told Mummy.’
‘Wait,’ said Sarah Rutherford, but there was no time, she planted the girl to one side and ran. No time to make sure she stayed put, barely a glance over her shoulder to make sure Jennings was still there and the friend who’d made them bring her too. The track down here had been flooded, they’d had to drive on, as far as the sea wall. She ran: as far as she could see was grey water, the marsh drowned.
Her chest burned, her feet in heavy shoes sliding on the sodden path, heart pounding in her ears. Eyes fixed on it, the dark house, it beat a pulse inside her. Run. It was there in front of her and as she slid down the bank it blocked the sky: inside someone was screaming.
Gina Harling was screaming.
Paul Bartlett was lying where they’d found John Grace, he was curled and bleeding while Gina flailed and spat and kicked, drawing back a booted foot.
Behind her she heard Jennings’s heavy footsteps, further back Kay gasping as she scrambled down the slope.
Wherewherewhere.
‘Where is she?’ she finally managed as Gina, still kicking, turned her clenched and raging face towards her and the light and despair flooded Sarah Rutherford’s system.
‘You bastard,’ she hissed, no breath left to scream like Gina was screaming. ‘You bastard.’
But something brushed her, soft in the shadows, she turned and saw a face streaked with dust and tears, her glasses gone, a child’s face defenceless and new. Sarah opened her arms and Esme Grace entered them.
Afterword
The nurse who’d led her down the corridor was different but the room was the same, the camera blinked above the door. It watched them.
She sat as close as his twisted body and the tubes attached to it would allow. She sat so close she could smell all the chemicals his stubbornly continuing life required, she felt the loose joints of his thin hand in hers, the cool slack unexercised flesh. She leaned against him, the two bodies motionless, she waited, she listened until it came to her from where it was buried, his heart beating on.
She laid her face by his.
‘Daddy,’ she said. The word that would make her known.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank my impeccable, surefooted editor, Jade Chandler of Sphere; Richard Beswick of Little, Brown for his unstinting friendship and literary insight; Sara O’Keeffe of Corvus, without whose clear-eyed support and strategic genius this book would never have been begun; and Victoria Hobbs, the bravest literary agent, critic and champion a writer could ask for. But most of all my husband, Donald, who has believed in me since 1981.
A Note About the Author
Christobel Kent was born in London and was educated at Cambridge. She has lived variously in Essex, London and Italy. Her childhood included several years spent on a Thames sailing barge in Maldon, Essex, with her father, stepmother, three siblings and four step-siblings, which provided inspiration for the setting of The Crooked House. She now lives in both Cambridge and Florence with her husband and five children. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY CHRISTOBEL KENT
The Drowning River
A Murder in Tuscany
The Dead Season
A Darkness Descending
The Killing Room
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Thirteen Years Ago
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Afterword
The Crooked House Page 32