by S J Bolton
Every time Tom was tempted to turn back, he made himself think of his brother. Joe, who he sometimes thought had been sent to earth to make his life miserable, who had been a complete pain from the day he was born, who was always getting his own way and who he fantasized about killing at least once a week. Joe, who he really didn’t think he could live the rest of his life without.
A wall loomed in front of them and Ebba shot through an archway. Tom went too, before he had chance to ask himself whether this was a good idea or not. None of this was a good idea, it was probably the worst idea he’d ever had in his life, but the strange creature ahead of him had his brother’s shoe.
She was balancing on an upturned crate and reaching for something in the ceiling. Then Tom saw light shining through. A minute later he and Ebba were both in the church. There was no sign of the police constable, the door to the vestry was firmly closed. Then Ebba was on her feet again and running up the aisle towards the back of the church.
Tom wasn’t in the house. Alice had been right and Evi had wasted precious time. She hadn’t even seen a phone. Nor had she heard anything of Alice for several minutes now. She had to get back downstairs and call the police. They could be here in minutes. She would use her mobile – it was just outside, in her car.
As she approached the front door, it slammed shut, startling her. She took a second to catch her breath. There was still a cold wind blowing through the house. Then the door of the living room blew shut.
She crossed the hall and pushed it open again. The window at the far end of the room was wide open. As quickly as she could, Evi walked across the room and leaned out. There was no sign of Alice in the garden any more.
‘Tom!’ Evi called.
Tom didn’t reply, nor had Evi expected him to. Tom had gone. A clear set of footprints leading across the garden to the churchyard wall, far too small to have been made by an adult, was indisputable proof of that.
Evi leaned out further and looked at the ground more closely. A second pair of prints lay in the snow just to one side of the boy’s. Knowing how much it would hurt, Evi sat on the window ledge, swung her legs up and twisted round until she could lower herself into the garden.
Already the snow was beginning to cover the prints; in less than an hour they might hardly be visible at all. Now, though, they were clear enough. Not very long ago, someone had crossed the garden from the wall and had then turned and retraced their steps, taking Tom along too. Tom’s footsteps were clean and regular, with no indication that he’d been dragged or forced along. Evi peered at the second set of prints. They were adult sized, although not huge, and quite different to the swirled and ridged pattern made by the soles of Tom’s trainers. Evi could see the outline of a large big toe, the curve of an instep. These were the prints of someone who didn’t wear shoes.
Tom had gone with Ebba.
The door gave way on the fourth blow and Harry caught hold of Gareth by the shoulder to stop him racing in. ‘Bore hole,’ he reminded him.
Pushing himself in front, Harry shone his torch all around the small stone hut. It had just one room, about four metres long by three wide. Looking up, he could almost touch the beams of the roof. A large metal ring had been screwed into the central beam. Under their feet was pitch-pine flooring.
Gareth moved in, banging the floorboards with the heel of his boot.
‘Sounds pretty solid,’ said Harry.
Gareth shook his head. ‘This is different,’ he said.
Harry listened as Gareth moved from one spot to the other, banging his foot down hard on each. The difference was minimal.
Harry began moving slowly round the hut, shining his torch downwards, looking for any discrepancies in the boarding that might indicate that the floor could be raised. There was nothing that he could see. Except, eighteen inches in from the door, there was a small round hole in one of the boards. He bent down.
‘What is it?’ asked Gareth.
Harry’s little finger was circling round in the hole. ‘Screw hole,’ he said after a second. ‘I can feel the thread. Something is supposed to screw into here.’ He looked up, shining the torch around, as though whatever was supposed to be screwed into the hole might be lying conveniently by on a hook. ‘Something like that,’ he said, shining the torch directly at the ring in the roof beam.
Gareth glanced up and then moved to the back of the hut. ‘Like this,’ he said, pointing at a similar ring that had been fastened into the rear wall. Several feet below the wall ring was a twisted piece of metal. ‘This is a lifting mechanism. Give me that rope.’
Harry tossed the rope over and watched the other man thread the end through first the wall ring and then the roof-beam ring. Then he brought it over to where Harry was kneeling.
‘This ring’s missing,’ said Harry.
‘Of course it is,’ said Gareth. ‘With the ring here, it would be too easy to access the bore hole. It was probably removed for safety. Or Gillian could have it.’ He dropped flat on the boards. ‘Joe!’ he yelled. ‘Joe!’
Harry couldn’t stop himself shuddering. Gareth was pushing himself to his feet again, reaching out for his tool-box, taking out a sharp chisel and hammer. He pushed the sharp end into the gap between two boards and slammed the hammer down hard. The wood splintered. Gareth banged again and again. Then he stopped, found another chisel and hammer and threw them to Harry. ‘Other side,’ he ordered.
Harry found the tiny, narrow gap and started copying. The wood was old and crumbled easily enough. After hammering through just over an inch of wood, the chisel almost slipped from his hand.
‘I’m through,’ he said. ‘It’s hollow underneath.’ Gareth was already threading the end of the rope through the hole he’d made and aiming it towards Harry. Harry stuck his fingers into the gap, fumbling around until he felt the rope. He tugged and it came.
Taking it from him, Gareth tied the end together and then jumped up and strode to the other side of the hut. He looked at Harry. ‘Stand back,’ he said. ‘Next to the wall.’
Shuddering with every step, Evi was back in the house, intent on getting her mobile phone from her car. As she opened the front door, she had to clutch at the frame – she was going to fall any second now. A dark shape appeared from around the side of the house.
‘Alice?’ Evi called, uncertain. Too tall to be Alice.
‘It’s me.’ A woman’s voice. The figure stepped into the light. Jenny Pickup, Alice’s friend. She’d been here earlier, helping with the children. Thank God.
‘Jenny, Tom’s missing too.’ Evi found herself ridiculously short of breath, every word an effort. ‘We have to get help,’ she managed. ‘He’s gone with that girl he’s been talking about, the one with the hormone deficiency. The one who’s been hanging around the house.’
Jenny frowned for a split second and looked back over her shoulder. Then she stepped forward. ‘Evi, you look dreadful,’ she said. ‘Come back inside. Let me get you something.’
‘We have to call the police. Tom’s missing. I have no idea where Alice is.’
Jenny put a hand on the door, the other on Evi’s arm. ‘Take it easy,’ she said. ‘Get your breath back. The police are on their way.’
‘They are?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ replied Jenny. ‘I called Brian myself. He said ten minutes. Now, Alice asked me to check on Millie. And you really need to sit down.’
‘You’ve seen Alice?’ said Evi, stepping back because the other woman was so close it seemed impossible not to. ‘Look, Tom is missing, we have to get people looking.’
‘Evi, calm down, they are. Listen to me.’
Evi made herself look at Jenny, at her calm hazel eyes. Something about the other woman’s composure seemed catching. Evi’s breathing began to feel more under control.
‘A group of us bumped into Alice in the lane just now,’ said Jenny, speaking slowly, as though she were the psychiatrist and Evi the hysterical patient. ‘Me, Dad, Mike, one of Mike’s men. They’ve all gone
to help her look. Tom can’t have gone far.’ She stopped speaking and ran a hand through her long, blonde hair. It was loose, sprinkled with snowflakes, damp around the crown. ‘Especially if he’s gone with Heather,’ she went on. ‘She hasn’t the energy to go any distance. And the police will be here any second.’
Thank God. What did she have to do now? Check on Millie. Evi turned to the stairs, took two steps forwards and grasped hold of the banister. Behind her, Jenny pushed the front door shut.
‘Heather?’ repeated Evi, turning back as Jenny’s words finally sank in. Heather – pronounced by a two-year-old – Ebba. ‘The girl who took Tom,’ she went on. ‘Her name is Heather? You know who she is?’
Harry pressed himself against the door of the hut and watched as Gareth began pulling on the rope. At first nothing happened, then the length of board the two men had been hammering through started to judder. Another tug from Gareth and then the entire floor, apart from a twelve-inch strip around the edge, started to lift up. It was a huge square trapdoor, hinged near the far wall. Once it started moving it came up easily and within seconds Gareth had raised it until it fell with a dull thud against the rear wall.
Harry stepped forward on to the rough stone of the original hut floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gareth tying the rope and then moving round to join him. Suddenly nervous of the chasm at his feet, Harry dropped to his knees and moved forward on all fours.
A smell that made him think of churches long since abandoned rose up from beneath the ground. He’d expected the bore hole – if indeed they found one – to be perfectly circular. This one had been crudely dug and looked unfinished, the stones around its edge roughly cut and angular. He could see two, maybe three feet down into the hole. After that lay a blackness so solid he could almost have stepped out on to it. By this time, Gareth was kneeling at his side.
‘Pass me the light,’ said Harry, still not taking his eyes off the well. Gareth didn’t move. ‘I need the light, mate,’ Harry tried again. ‘I can’t reach it.’ He prodded the other man on the arm and pointed to where the torch lay on the ground. Like a man moving in his sleep, Gareth turned, reached out and then handed the light to Harry.
Despite the cold, Harry’s hands were damp with sweat. He gripped the torch and moved forwards until he could lean over the edge. The beam seemed to fall like a rock, plummeting away from him into the depths of the earth. Harry saw stonework, roughly held together with crumbling mortar, and could just about make out the clinging slime of some form of vegetation that could exist without light. He thought he might even be able to see water, many feet below. But the only thing he could be sure about was the one thing he couldn’t take his eyes off: the rusting chain, hammered into the wall nearly two feet below the edge and disappearing further than the torch beam could reach.
He glanced round and knew that Gareth had seen it too. Speaking seemed like a ridiculous waste of time and energy. Harry made his way round the well until he could lie down flat and reach the chain.
Jenny was standing just inside the front door. The street lamp outside shone through the coloured hall window, turning her hair a strange shade of purple. Her face, though, was as white as the snow outside. ‘Of course I know who she is,’ she said sadly. ‘We lived in the same house for nearly ten years. She’s my niece.’
For a second Evi thought she might have misheard. ‘Your niece?’ she repeated.
Jenny nodded and seemed to pull herself together. ‘Christiana’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Shall we go up? Alice did make a point of saying we should check on Millie.’
Evi could only stare. She and Harry had talked about isolated farmhouses, cottages way up high on the moor, yet the girl had been living round the corner all this time, right in the heart of the town.
‘Her condition, it’s congenital hypothyroidism, isn’t it?’ she said.
Jenny took a step closer. ‘A direct result of the soil up here,’ she said. ‘It’s been the plague of our family for donkey’s years. If we’d just buy some of our food at Asda it wouldn’t happen.’ She’d reached Evi at the foot of the stairs.
‘But the condition can be treated now,’ said Evi, taking a small step to the side and planting herself firmly in the other woman’s path. ‘It’s picked up on antenatal scans and the baby can be given medication. It’s practically been eradicated.’
Jenny sighed. ‘And yet we have a fine specimen right on our doorstep. I really should check on Millie, you know. Can I get past?’
‘How did it happen?’ asked Evi, not sure why finding out as much as she could about the girl was important, only knowing that it was. ‘Did Christiana refuse treatment?’
‘Christiana was never offered treatment,’ said Jenny. ‘She spent her entire pregnancy shut up in the house and she gave birth with a local midwife who was paid a lot of money to keep her mouth shut. The birth was never registered.’ Her eyes moved upwards to a spot on the landing. Evi resisted the temptation to turn round.
‘How many people know about her?’ asked Evi, hardly able to believe that no one had mentioned the existence of Heather to the Fletchers, especially after Tom had started seeing his strange little girl.
‘Relatively few, I think,’ replied Jenny. ‘Even Mike has no idea she exists, not that he’s the sharpest knife in the box.’
Somehow, Evi had taken a step backwards. She was on the bottom step and was shaking her head. ‘How can that be possible?’ she said.
‘Oh, Evi, you’d be amazed what you can do if you own a town,’ said Jenny, her hand reaching out to the banister. She put it down, inches away from Evi’s. ‘She’s not allowed to leave the house, of course. Christiana spends most of the day with her, reading to her, playing simple games. Christy has endless patience, but if she needs a break, Heather watches CBeebies.’
‘She’s kept in the house all day?’
Jenny nodded. ‘None of the staff ever go upstairs,’ she said. ‘Christiana looks after the upper floors. When everyone has gone home, Heather gets to play in the garden,’ she went on. ‘To be honest, I think one or two people do know about her – as she got older, she got pretty good at sneaking out at night, even in the day sometimes. She’s clearly taken a fancy to Alice and Gareth’s children. But people keep quiet, they don’t want to get on the wrong side of Dad.’
Something was tightening inside Evi’s chest, something that went beyond concern for the Fletcher children. A young girl had been kept a prisoner her whole life – a prisoner inside an unnecessarily damaged body, as well as in her own home. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why on earth would your family break the law in that way?’
Jenny blinked her clear hazel eyes twice. ‘You’re the psychiatrist, Evi,’ she said. ‘Have a guess.’
Ebba unlocked the door at the back of the gallery and began to climb the short, spiral staircase. The wind caught at her hair, spinning it up and around her head like a flag. Tom stopped. It would be madness to go up.
Tommy, please come.
Before he had time to think what to do, Ebba had grasped hold of his hand and was pulling him on to the roof. She dropped to her hands and knees and he did the same. Snow squeaked beneath him as the wind rushed inside his sweatshirt. Ebba was crawling along the edge of the roof, in a sort of lead-lined guttering. To her left, the roof sloped gently upwards; to her right was a four-inch stone edging that wasn’t nearly high enough to offer any sort of barrier if she slipped. Was he expected to go too? He was, because she was looking back, waiting for him. Oh shit.
Tom set off, keeping his eyes firmly on the snow-covered trench he was crawling through. This was insane. There was nowhere on the roof Joe could be hiding. The other three bell towers were empty, you could see that from the ground. You could see the sky right through them. They were heading for the one on the northeastern corner, the one that always seemed to be in shadow because the sun couldn’t reach it. He could see it over Ebba’s shoulder, empty as a selection-box on Boxing Day. He could see stars shining through the gaps b
etween the columns, he could see the movement of clouds, he could see the silver ball of the full moon.
But the moon was behind him.
*
Evi didn’t have to guess for long. ‘Who’s her father?’ she asked. ‘Is it your father? Is it Sinclair?’
Jenny’s face twisted. ‘Keep going,’ she said.
Evi thought quickly. She knew so little about the Renshaws, only what Harry and the Fletchers had told her. She wasn’t aware of any brothers, just the father: a tall, white-haired, very distinguished looking man, and the…
‘Not your grandfather?’ she said in a low voice, terrified she might have got it wrong, knowing, from the look on the other woman’s face, that she hadn’t. ‘But he’s…’ How old was Tobias Renshaw? He had to be in his eighties.
‘He was in his late sixties when Heather was born. Well into his stride by then.’
‘Your poor sister. What do you mean, well into his stride?’
Jenny’s eyes remained fixed on Evi’s. She said nothing.
‘He abused you too, didn’t he?’ said Evi.
Nothing, just a blank stare.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Evi.
Nothing.
‘How old were you? When it started?’
Jenny gave a deep sigh and then stepped backwards until she came up against the dining-room door. Evi felt as if she could breathe again. ‘Three. Maybe four. I can’t really remember,’ Jenny was saying. ‘There was no time in my childhood when I didn’t know what it was like to be poked and prodded and fiddled with by big, rough hands.’ She turned to look directly at Evi. ‘He used to stand in my bedroom doorway and watch me get dressed,’ she said. ‘He’d come in while I was having a bath and wash me. I’ve never been in charge of my own body, never. Can you imagine what that’s like?’
‘No,’ said Evi truthfully. ‘I’m so sorry. Did he rape you?’
‘At that age? No, he was too clever for that. You rape a four-year-old, someone will spot it. He used to masturbate over me, touching me with one hand, pulling on his, you know, with the other. When I got a bit bigger he made me suck him. I was ten when the rape started. In a way I was surprised it took him so long. I heard him, you see, with Christiana. I knew what was coming.’