Hold Back the Night

by Hold Back the Night (retail) (epub)

  ‘Emma,’ I said. I held her wrist and pulled my hand from her as gently as I could. She smiled, grimly.

  ‘I get it.’

  ‘You’re upset,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Patronizing. I’m not a child.’

  ‘I know that…’

  Emma moved nearer to me and took my hand again.

  ‘I’m not a virgin, you know,’ she said.

  I pulled my hand away and told her that I’d better drive her home. When she started to pull off her top I stopped her, and told her that there was no way this was going to happen. She stayed still for a moment and then turned and ran out, slamming the door on the way down. I took a few deep breaths and walked down after her and was just in time to see her mother’s Peugeot pulling away from the kerb, towards Rosebery Avenue. Well, if she got there, she could get back home. I walked upstairs.

  I replayed the message from Sharon. It sounded different the second time over. She’d probably phoned at a time when she’d hoped I was out. She didn’t say she needed to speak to me or anything like that. I couldn’t decide what to do about it and instead of thinking about it I picked up the Tao.

  ‘Learn the value of non-action.’

  I didn’t call her back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘Beautiful roses.’

  The man with his back to me looked up and turned. He was a good-looking guy in his early to mid-twenties, dressed in old jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt, even though the heat was already getting up. I figured it was to stop his arms getting scratched.

  ‘I thought Mr Bradley did the gardening,’ I said, with a smile.

  ‘He does,’ the man replied, leaning on his edge trimmer. ‘Usually won’t let anyone near his roses, though he can’t do everything himself. But just at the minute he hasn’t been able to do much at all, what with…’ He tailed off and looked at me. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m working for the Bradleys,’ I said. ‘Trying to find out what happened to their daughter. Are you going to be around long?’

  The man looked ever so slightly flustered. ‘Until about three,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later then.’

  On arriving by train at the small village of Ravensey, Sussex, that morning I’d gone immediately to the post office, a small general store facing a well-kept green on which some kids were playing football and using a set of swings. The postmistress, Mrs Dearing, had told me that yes, I was expected, but she didn’t need to give me the key to the Bradleys’ house because Mrs Bradley had phoned to tell her that she’d be there to let me in herself. Mrs Dearing obviously knew who I was, because she went into a five-minute speech about how shocked she had been to hear about what had happened to Lucy, and what a lovely girl she had been, during which I nodded my head when appropriate.

  ‘She used to come round you know, just to talk. I think she liked someone to listen to her. Anyway…’

  Eventually I had to interrupt Mrs Dearing, and she told me where the house was. I took the short walk over there, feeling the space, breathing the air, thanking God I was out of the city if only for a day.

  I left the gardener and walked on up the curved drive, breathing in a mélange of scents that I’d forgotten existed, listening to the crunch of my feet on the gravel biting into the insistent backdrop of birdsong. When I got to the end I found a house that was slightly smaller than the drive had led me to expect, with a yellow alarm box above the door. There was a black BMW estate parked outside and a sit-on lawnmower, the kind I always wanted as a kid when my dad made me cut the grass to within an inch of its life. Or mine. I was wondering if Mrs Bradley would let me have a go, when the woman herself walked out of the front door and greeted me with a look that gave away neither pleasure nor annoyance. We shook hands and I followed her into a wide hallway that turned into a reception area for her husband’s dental practice. James Bradley had obviously cancelled all appointments for the foreseeable future, however, rather than get a locum; there were no patients waiting and no receptionist in attendance.

  The inside of the house was pretty much as I expected; it was light and airy, done out in a modern, though still Country Life style, which I could never have lived in but was a lot more tasteful than most. Mrs Bradley led me into a modern kitchen with a huge old Aga shining on one side, which I told her I admired. She curled up her nose.

  ‘You’re welcome to it,’she said. ’Stupid bloody thing. I’d cart it off tomorrow and get a real cooker, but James won’t let me.’

  I tried not to show my surprise at the fact that Mr Bradley had his way about anything, and let Mrs Bradley pour me some coffee. I took a sip and then asked her if she could show me into Lucy’s room. I really did want to get on. She showed me upstairs and opened the door, but didn’t enter herself. I wondered if she had gone in there at all in the last week. I tried to smile at her sympathetically and she turned back to the stairwell heading down to her office, where she’d be if I needed anything. I’d half expected her to stand over my shoulder while I searched Lucy’s room and I was thankful that she wasn’t going to.

  I shut the door behind me and let out a breath. Then I began looking for anything that might give me a clue about Lucy. The room was medium-sized, the walls covered in an eclectic mix of rap star posters, modrn art, postcards and gig tickets. On her bedside table was a purse, which the police had returned, and I went through that. In her wardrobe I was surprised to find a shoebox full of photographs that I thought the police would have taken, and I went through them, primarily looking for anyone I recognized – Lee Finch in particular. I didn’t see him in any. Nor did I see Lucy’s mother or her father, or even any of her sister. I put the pictures back in the box, intending to take them with me so that I could go through them later with Emma. Then I went through all of Lucy’s drawers, rummaging through the clothes that were there and checking her cupboards for a hidden diary or address book, anything she hadn’t wanted her parents to find. I looked at the labels inside some of the clothes, and wrote down the names of any shops that I didn’t recognize and which came up more than once. I looked in her pillowcases, and underneath her mattress, in each of her CD cases, of which there were a vast number, and inside every book on her bookshelf, of which there were considerably fewer. I read her old schoolbooks, and checked inside a Bart Simpson water-bottle cover, and I took every poster off the wall to see if there were any notes tucked away behind them. I removed each and every postcard and put them in the box with the photographs.

  I was in there for three hours, during which time Mrs Bradley made an appearance with another coffee and told me that she had left some sandwiches out for me downstairs in case I was hungry. When I was done in the room I found that I was, but before going downstairs I used the bathroom and then checked the other doors on the landing. I found Emma’s room, which was a much more ordered affair, with Mr Darcy taking the place of Tupac Shakir. I also found the spare room, a walk-in linen closet, and a boxroom filled with old computer equipment and piles of software magazines. The last door that I came to was locked, which didn’t really surprise me. I was about to do something about that when I heard Mrs Bradley walking around in the kitchen. I thought better of it, knowing it wasn’t really necessary, and I wandered downstairs to meet her.

  Mrs Bradley was putting the kettle on for more coffee. She told me to help myself to the sandwiches, which I did, and she asked me if I’d managed to find anything. She didn’t sound exactly interested, almost as if she knew I was wasting my time, and she was right. Apart from getting the impression that Lucy was a girl very much out of synch with those living around her, which was not a very unusual thing to surmise after looking in a teenager’s bedroom, I hadn’t come up with anything, and I told Mrs Bradley so.

  After finishing up I asked Mrs Bradley if there were any other places in the house that Lucy was particularly fond of, where she tended to hang out. She told me no, not that she could think of, in the house, at least. When I asked her what she meant she told me
that Lucy used to spend a lot of time in the tree house in the wood at the bottom of the garden, that her dad had built for her one birthday.

  ‘It was just for her,’ Mrs Bradley said. ‘Not for Emma, just for her. The twins always complained when we gave them things to share, so James said that was just for Lucy. When they were eleven, I think. He spent hours on it, when the girls were on a French exchange, it wasn’t your average tree house, and it was the only time I’ve ever seen Emma jealous of her sister. Oh, we got Emma something of course, a bike I think, and she was pleased, but it didn’t match the look on Lucy’s face. To think her dad had done that just for her.’ Mrs Bradley stopped. ‘She wouldn’t let Emma anywhere near it. She used to sit in it all the time and if Emma did try and get in she’d run and tell James and he’d tell her to get out, that it was Lucy’s to do with as she liked. Even when James asked Lucy to let Emma in, she wouldn’t.’

  I asked Mrs Bradley if the police had looked in the tree house but she said she hadn’t thought to mention it. I asked if I could check it out and she shrugged, before opening the back door for me and leaving me to stroll down a long, smooth lawn. Once I’d worked out how to get the rope ladder down, by using a bamboo cane hidden in a conifer, I climbed into the house, which was built around the bottom two branches of a horse chestnut. It was ten feet by twelve, with a branch running through the far corner, and looked stable enough to live in. The inside had been painted orange a few years back and was perfectly dry, with two small stools and an old table.

  There was nothing to see, but I sat in the house for five minutes looking at the walls, which were all covered with one word carved into the wood. Lucy. I got down and found the gardener, spoke with him for five minutes and then went back indoors.

  Back in the kitchen, I apologized for disturbing Mrs Bradley, but told her that I had needed to come down there.

  ‘You never know if something’s necessary until you do it,’ I said.

  Mrs Bradley nodded and then we chatted for a while, until she asked me how I’d travelled down. I told her by train, and asked her if she knew when the next one left. She had a timetable pinned to a board in the kitchen, which she looked at, and then she insisted on driving me to catch the 4.10 to Arundel, which I would just about make if we hurried. Otherwise I’d have had to wait another hour. I don’t think either of us relished the thought of that much small talk so I thanked her for her offer and we got to the station in time to see the two-carriage hopper pulling onto the platform. I got out of the car, told Mrs Bradley that I’d call her, and jogged through the tiny station entrance where I was just in time to step aboard. The train pulled out and I watched Mrs Bradley’s BMW pulling up the quiet lane, back towards Ravensey.

  I let out a breath and relaxed my shoulders, which I always seemed to do after meeting Mrs Bradley. I looked around the empty carriage and perched on the nearest seat. I had the box of photographs with me, and I could have gone through them again for something to do, but I didn’t. I didn’t even get comfortable. The next stop was only ten minutes away. When the train pulled into Dalcombe Heath I stepped off and walked out of the station into the small car park where I found my Mazda. I put the box on the back seat, got in, and had a look at an ordnance survey map that was in my glove compartment. After that I went and found the local pub, where I sat over a ploughman’s and a couple of pints until about seven thirty. Then I made a phone call, and when I got an answerphone I put the receiver down without speaking, set my pint glass on the bar, and left.

  I glanced at the map again and drove for ten minutes. I parked the Mazda at a crossroads and set off across a field full of sheep. I came to a very dense wood after five minutes, and had to use my Maglite to pick a way through the brambles and pines, and over a dried up stream. I climbed over a barbed wire fence dissecting the wood, and found that on the other side the trees thinned out and were better cared for, and bigger. I put the light away. Very soon I was standing underneath Lucy’s tree house. I walked up to the back of the house and skirted round to the front. Taking a quick look round the corner of the house onto the drive I saw that the BMW was gone.

  Mrs Bradley hadn’t come down to work all day. She just wanted to be there when I was, which was perfectly natural given that it was her house, or else very suspicious. Either way, I wasn’t having it. I retraced my steps to the back door, which was built into an old glass porch. I moved to the left of the door and pushed at the bottom of a window, which was the type that swings upwards. It hadn’t looked open, but I was pretty confident that it would be, as I’d fixed it that way earlier, tossing an old coat over the latch so Mrs Bradley wouldn’t notice it when she locked up. The window moved beneath my fingers and I reached in underneath it to keep the latch from falling back into place. Then I made sure that neither of the Bradleys’ neighbours was being overzealous about their civic duties and I stepped through the window into the porch.

  The tone was continuous and loud, and it began as soon as I pushed open the door into the kitchen. I didn’t know how long I had, but I tried not to hurry as I made my way through to the front door, where I’d already noticed the alarm disabling box fixed to a wall in the hallway. I got the cupboard open, while simultaneously pulling a crumpled post-it note out of my back pocket, which I’d found in Lucy’s purse only a few hours ago. On the note was the number C237Y, which was too long for a bike lock and couldn’t have been a PIN number. I punched it into the keypad, said a small prayer, and the alarm stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It was replaced by a ringing silence. I said another prayer and stood in the fading light for a second. Then I closed the door of the alarm box and headed up the stairs.

  An hour later, in the local pub, I stood waiting for the young gardener, who had reluctantly agreed to meet me. I hadn’t really left him any choice. When I’d gone to find him earlier I’d told him straight out that I knew he’d been having an affair with Lucy Bradley. It was something that I’d only guessed at, from what Emma had said about her sister, plus the look on the gardener’s face when I’d first mentioned Lucy’s name to him. I’d obviously struck lucky though because as soon as I said it he went as white as the lilies he was tending, and began to protest his total innocence in regard to Lucy’s murder. I didn’t really doubt that but played it a bit heavy with him anyway, and he said he’d see me in the pub at nine. When he came in he led me through to the very back of the place, and into a step-down snug with a flagstone floor, which we had to ourselves.

  Ian Williams was saving up to go travelling by working for his father, who owned a couple of garden centres and a contracting company. He’d known Lucy for years, he told me, ever since he’d been at school. He had an alibi for the night Lucy was killed but I told him I wasn’t really interested in that. I got him to tell me how he knew her. Ian said he’d been sleeping with Lucy on and off for a couple of years, mainly when he was home from college. He was not under any illusions that he was the only one, but I got the impression he had been more than slightly fixed on her. Williams told me that he’d been really shaken by what had happened to Lucy, and that he hadn’t come forward because he knew he had nothing to tell, and couldn’t see the point of getting himself into trouble. I nodded, and asked him what kind of girl Lucy was.

  ‘Fucked up,’ he answered.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘About her family. Her mother particularly.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Her mother was a bitch to her. I heard her yelling at her a few times. It drove Lucy mad. It was like a constant preoccupation with her. And she couldn’t do anything. Emma, that’s the other one, she’s a bit of a stuck-up cow, but her mother was really into her. She got the grades and stuff but Lucy couldn’t compete. I think that’s why she went a bit wild. It got her mother’s attention at least.’

  Ian shook his head at some memory or other, something Lucy must have done.

  ‘You know’, he said, after a second, ‘if I’d have been told that there was a murder in that family, and had to guess who,
I’d never have said it would have happened to Lucy. I’d have said it would have been the mother they’d found. And Lucy’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.’

  * * *

  I walked back to my car through the quiet, darkening lanes, listening to the distant, rasping call of a corncrake somewhere in the fields surrounding me. I opened the door and sat for a while, enjoying the quiet, running a few thoughts through my head, trying them out like film scenarios to see if they’d work. Then I drove back to London, with the radio off, thinking all the way. I felt focused and clear, like I hadn’t for ages. Somehow, I managed to keep everything else out. It felt good; just me, a car, and a series of problems. When I thought about them, the last few weeks felt surreal, as if someone else had been living them for me, someone who kept turning the wrong way, saying the wrong thing, leaving things too late. Someone else had been living my life and it wasn’t someone I liked very much.

  When I got back home at about eleven there was a message from Andy, to the effect that Natalie’s condition was the same and the boy was still nowhere. I set the box I’d taken from Lucy’s room on the kitchen table and made a note to go through the photographs and the postcards with Emma. Not that I thought it would help. I was 80 per cent sure I had it now. Not everything, but the main deal. The rest would either fall into place or else fall out of the picture. I just wanted to be certain, and I wanted to know that I had something for Andy Gold, so he’d be certain too. I pushed the box to one side. Then I slid out another photograph, not from the box, this one out of my jacket pocket. It was a ten by eight, folded in two, which I’d found in a file in Mrs Bradley’s bedroom, and taken with me. I laid it out on the table.

  I studied it carefully, using a plastic eyeglass Carl had given me. And then I was certain. I reached for the phone.