by Gary Gibson
She forced herself to smile back. ‘Obviously we need to run repeats of the experiment. And as I said, it’ll be necessary to bring in other people to run it for themselves and see if they can replicate our results. That’s the most important thing of all.’
‘Of course. Of course. I have faith in you, Susan. Always did.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I... assume that means I’ll continue to be in charge of my project?’
His smile didn’t flicker, but for a moment she sensed the steely businessman behind the mask. ‘I guarantee it,’ he said. ‘When will you be ready for another run? I’d like to see it with my own two eyes before we start talking about this to anyone else.’
‘How about tomorrow evening? I’m sure you’re tired after flying all the way here.’
His grin became more relaxed. ‘Not so much as you might think. But I should get settled in, and there’s other business I want to attend to while I’m back in the country.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘Can I assume Rajam is aware of the nature of the experiment?’
‘He is.’
Rajam had taken it in his stride when she described the details of what she and Metka had done, even though she sensed he didn’t really quite believe what she was telling him. But it was the least she owed him for warning her about Andrew and Ashford.
‘I should talk to Metka as well,’ he said. ‘I assume she’ll be joining us tomorrow?’
Susan nodded. ‘She will be. She has to go down to London first, but she’ll be back in the early evening.’
‘Perfect timing,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Shall we say seven tomorrow evening? That’ll give me time to attend to some business of my own.’
‘Of course.’ She guided him to the door. ‘I’ll show you out.’
‘No need,’ he said. His skin glistened beneath the strip lights as he stepped out into the corridor. ‘I’ll show myself out.’
She watched him leave, the rapid drumming of his tennis shoes on the floorboards testament to the speed with which he exited the building. You only need him for a few more days, she reminded herself: enough time to run the same experiment for people who could verify what they were seeing, or at least vouch for her. Then she’d give the damn bracelet to the police and they could do with Ashford what the hell they liked.
Saturday July 11th 2020
‘Hey!’
Susan turned to see a man in a suit hurry across the intersection towards her car where she was waiting for the lights to change. It took her a moment to recognise him as the estate agent from the café, Adam something-or-other. He knocked on her window, a wide grin plastered across his face.
She wound the window down. ‘I think the light’s about to go green, Adam.’
‘Just wanted to check,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I heard on the grapevine that Christian Ashford’s back in town.’
‘How did you hear about that?’
‘There’s a picture of him at Heathrow in this morning’s Sun. That, and someone saw his limousine driving back from Ashford Hall last night.’
She shrugged gamely. ‘Then I guess the jig’s up.’
‘Thanks for confirming. I swear to God, I can practically feel the property values around here going up by the second. Best thing that ever happened to this town.’ He slapped the open palm of his hand on the roof of her car in a rapid rhythm, and then he was off with a wave.
She shook her head and guided her car forward as the light changed. When she pulled up outside the Hall ten minutes later, a beaten-up old Mini was parked next to Rajam’s car. She got out, locked her car and dropped her keys.
She heard a foot crunch on the gravel behind her when she bent to pick them up. She looked around, but there was no one there.
‘Hello?’ she called into the cool evening air.
Huh. No one there. She went on in, wondering if she’d only imagined it, or if it was yet another manifestation of whatever strange force had taken hold of the building. But that only ever happened inside the building, not outside.
There was still no security guard, of course. It was getting to the point she was surprised to find anyone sitting at the reception desk.
When she reached the lab, she found Ashford was already waiting there, sitting chatting with Rajam.
‘Didn’t your driver bring you?’ she asked, surprised to see him. ‘I didn’t see the limousine –’
‘I came in the Mini,’ Ashford replied, then laughed. ‘I gave Grigor the day off. Figured a rental would help me stay under the radar now the press know I’m in the country.’
‘I guess we’d better get to it,’ said Susan. She saw a stack of newspapers that Ashford must have bought, sitting on a chair. ‘Rajam?’
‘Everything’s ready,’ Rajam confirmed.
‘I spoke with Andrew yesterday evening, by the way,’ said Ashford. ‘That man is far too stressed-out. He’s on his way to an ulcer if he’s not careful.’
‘He is somewhat... fixed in his views,’ Susan agreed.
Rajam let out a snigger, then caught himself. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘He was very polite about it,’ said Ashford, a hint of Englishness already creeping back into his accent. ‘But it’s not absolutely necessary for him to be here, is it?’
Susan shook her head. ‘Myself and Rajam can handle all the technicalities of programming the array.’ Her phone pinged and she pulled it out. ‘Drat.’
‘Problem?’ asked Ashford.
‘It’s Metka. She’s going to be late.’
Ashford looked concerned. ‘How late?’
‘She’s on the train from London. She doesn’t think she’ll be much more than half an hour late, forty-five minutes at the most.’
‘Well,’ said Ashford, ‘unless it’s absolutely necessary for her to be present as well, maybe we should just go ahead with the three of us?’
The way he said it, it was clear he wanted no further delays.
‘We do have to wait for her,’ Susan said apologetically. ‘She’s got all the historical EVP recordings on her laptop, plus the transcriptions.’ Susan tapped on her phone and sent a reply asking Metka to let her know the instant her train got moving again.
‘If there’s one thing I hate about this country,’ Ashford muttered under his breath, ‘it’s the trains.’
Susan put her hands up. ‘All right, here’s what we’ll do in the meantime. Myself and Rajam will get to work tearing up today’s newspapers into strips the same way me and Metka did.’ She nodded to the stack of newspapers. ‘By the time she gets here, we’ll be all set to go. You can witness the randomised statements we come up with.’
Susan talked Ashford through the process once again, and she and Rajam got busy with the newspapers. Ashford told them he had to make some calls and left the office with his phone.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Rajam suddenly after they’d been cutting and tearing up pieces of paper for about fifteen minutes. ‘Someone came looking for you yesterday – a woman. I forgot to mention it.’
Susan looked up at him from where she sat next to her desk. Rajam sat crosslegged on the floor with a pair of scissors, dropping his article-fragments into the wastebasket sitting between them. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday afternoon, about two.’
After she’d spoken with Andrew, and before she’d met Ashford that same evening. ‘Polish accent, short hair, that kind of thing?’
‘The woman who works with Bernard and Angus?’
Rajam shook his head. ‘No, it’s no one I’ve seen before. I think it was a local woman, actually.’
Susan stopped working with her scissors and looked carefully at him. ‘Who, exactly?’
‘I have no idea. See, that’s the weird thing. Far as I could tell, she’d just wandered in from outside.’
‘And there was no one at reception, of course. She didn’t give you her name?’
He shook his head. ‘I asked, but she refused.’
Somewhere in the back of Susan’s head alarm bells b
egan to ring. ‘Tell me what she looked like.’
‘Mousy, with brown hair, a cardigan and jeans. I think I might have seen her around Wardenby.’
Oh dear God.
Susan turned to look for the bracelet where she’d left it on her desk, but it wasn’t there. She stood and pushed her hands through the papers and journals scattered across the desk, but there was no sign of it.
‘What is it?’ asked Rajam, looking puzzled.
‘I left something here,’ she said. ‘But I can’t find it.’ Rajam had just described Claire Ward. Could she possibly have seen the bracelet? It would have been so very easy for her to just snatch it up without Rajam even being aware.
It struck her, then, that Ashford had been gone for some time. And she could smell burning.
She went through to look at the Beast, afraid Rajam’s repair work might have caused some component to go up in smoke, but it looked the same as ever. When she returned to the office, she found Rajam standing at the door leading into the corridor, looking either way and loudly sniffing at the air.
‘I think there’s smoke,’ he said, pulling his head back in.
She made her way over and sniffed the air as well. When she looked out into the corridor in the direction of the grand staircase, she could see wisps of smoke drifting out of the South Wing corridor.
‘Call the fire brigade,’ she said tersely. ‘The alarm should have gone off.’
‘Sure.’ He pulled out his phone and began dialling. ‘I’ll check that all the data’s backed up as well.’
She nodded. ‘Good idea. I need to go find Ashford and make sure he’s okay. How long should those backups take?’
‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Most of the data’s stored offsite, but I don’t usually backup the last twenty-four hours until the end of the day.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘forget it. Just get yourself outside.’
He hesitated. ‘Maybe I should go and look for –’
‘No,’ she said adamantly. ‘You’re my responsibility. Get yourself outside, now, until the fire crews get here.’
Rajam was about to say something when the operator picked up. He hurriedly explained what was happening and hung up. ‘Should be here in twenty minutes,’ he said.
Better than nothing. She had a terrible feeling whatever was happening was in some way her fault. She and Rajam hurried along the corridor to the top of the main staircase, where they stopped, hearing loud and angry voices shouting at each other from somewhere down the far end of the South Wing corridor. One of them was recognisably Ashford’s, but it was impossible to see who he was with through the smoke drifting towards the stairs.
‘Go check the West Wing,’ said Susan. ‘See if Bernard or your friend Angus are there and get them out if they are. And as soon as you’ve done that, get the hell outside.’
‘But what about you?’
‘I’ll find Ashford.’
‘But –’
‘Rajam,’ she snapped, ‘just go.’
He nodded, his face pale, then hurried down the West Wing corridor. It occurred to Susan the reason the fire alarm hadn’t gone off was that it probably hadn’t even been wired up.
She pressed the sleeve of her shirt over her mouth and nose and started to make her way down the South Wing corridor, crouching to keep under the layer of smoke drifting along beneath the ceiling. The further she went, the more she could hear the crackling of flames. She came to a laboratory and saw that it was ablaze: the heat was so intense she had to run past it as quickly as she could.
Then she saw them: Ashford and Claire Ward, struggling with each other next to the South Wing balcony.
‘You killed her!’ Claire screamed. She was beating at Ashford’s face and shoulders while he tried desperately to fend her off. ‘You were here and you killed her and you –’
‘For God’s sake, you crazy bitch!’ Ashford shouted. He managed to get hold of her arms and she struggled like a wildcat in his grasp.
‘You lied to me!’ she screamed. ‘You –’
They had moved closer to the top of the stairs. Susan took a step forward, then cried out at a sudden rush of heat at her back. She spun around, hands up to shield her face, and saw a great gout of flames come pouring out of the laboratory behind her. The fire was spreading far more quickly than she would have believed possible.
Susan turned back in time to see Ashford strike Claire across the head with something she couldn’t quite make out. Claire’s body immediately went limp, and she fell backwards over the balcony and out of sight.
Susan heard a thump, and then silence.
Ashford turned towards Susan and started in such a way that it was obvious he hadn’t realised anyone else was there – so focussed had he been on his argument with Claire. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling from exertion. For the first time Susan saw the hammer gripped in his hand, its handle dark with Claire’s blood. Workmen’s tools were still scattered next to a painter’s ladder.
‘It was an accident,’ he shouted over the roar of the flames. His voice took on a pleading tone, as if trying to convince himself as much as her. ‘An accident.’
The growing heat of the flames behind her forced Susan to move closer to Ashford. She couldn’t take her eyes from the hammer gripped in his hand. If she could just get past him and make a run for it down the stairs, she could get to the doors leading into the gardens and make her escape.
‘I know it was,’ she said. ‘I saw what happened. It was an accident.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You saw what happened?’
She realised she had made a mistake. She threw herself past him and down the steps, feeling his hand lunge out to try and grab her arm. She managed to yank it free, then hurried down the steps, seeing Claire lying sprawled on the floor below, her neck twisted at an odd angle. The bracelet lay near one of her hands.
Susan grabbed hold of the doors and yanked at them furiously, realising to her horror that they were locked. There was no way out. But then she remembered the corridor that ran directly beneath the grand staircase, connecting the main hall to the gardens. So all she needed to do was –
The world crashed down on top of her skull before she could as much as turn around.
She collapsed, boneless, next to Claire’s body, although she did not lose consciousness. She tasted iron on her tongue, and when she tried to move, her limbs refused to respond. Claire’s dead eyes stared back at her as if to say I told you so.
She felt hands lift her under her armpits, Ashford grunting with the effort. She tried feebly to resist, to shake him loose as he dragged her back up the steps to the upper balcony. Her head seemed filled with a distant booming, like the crash of surf on a faraway shore.
Once he’d hauled her all the way up, Ashford kept dragging her until they were in the room where he’d murdered Clara Ward. He dropped her like a heavy sack, and she saw the room was unchanged since she had last seen it. The smoke rasped in her lungs.
Only then did it come to her that Ashford was going to leave her there to die. He was hoping the flames would burn her body so badly the true cause of death would never be found.
He left, then, but she wasn’t at all surprised when he reappeared some minutes later, dragging Claire’s body after him. He was red-faced and winded, his clothes dirty and rumpled from ash and smoke.
He looked down at Susan, panting hard. ‘I’m sorry, okay? Wrong place, wrong time. It sucks.’ He stared down at Claire’s body and shook his head. ‘Man, if you’d only known her when she was younger.’ He moved towards the door and raised a hand. ‘I’ll make sure you get full posthumous credit for anything that comes out of any future research.’
‘Wait,’ Susan managed to mumble.
‘Sorry,’ said Ashford. ‘I –’
Somewhere behind Susan’s head and out of her sight, a floorboard creaked. She heard a sigh of wind that might have been a whisper, and had the undeniable sense that there was someone else in the room with the
m.
Standing right behind Susan where she lay.
Whatever it was, Ashford was staring speechless at it, his eyes full of animal terror.
And then Metka appeared behind him at the doorway, a two-by-four gripped in both hands. She brought it around in a smooth arc so that it smacked Ashford hard across the back of his head. The billionaire investor’s knees folded, and he crumbled to the floor without so much as a sound. Metka let the plank tumble to the floor, then knelt quickly by Susan’s side.
‘You’re still alive?’ she asked, studying Susan with deep concern.
Susan managed to mumble an affirmative.
‘Rajam told me you were still somewhere in here,’ she said, hoisting Susan over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. ‘Thought you must be dead when I saw the flames. I heard everything Ashford said.’
Metka carried Susan all the way back down the rear stairway and out through the now-unlocked doors into the garden, swearing and grunting under her breath the whole time before depositing Susan on the grass.
‘Did you see anything?’ Susan finally managed to say, her words slurred. ‘In that room. There was someone behind me.’
Metka stared at her with a curious expression. ‘I saw nothing.’
She looked back at the Halls, now entirely ablaze. From somewhere far away, Susan heard the sound of approaching sirens.
One Year Later
When Metka saw Susan on the steps of the Old Bailey the following summer, she pulled her into a bear-hug. It was the first time they’d seen each other in months.
‘You look so thin,’ said Metka, standing back and giving Susan an up-and-down look. ‘You are... getting around all right?’
She meant the walking-stick, of course. ‘It’s not so bad,’ said Susan. She moved the stick to her other hand. ‘I’m fine, really.’