The other was a credit-card slip for the lunch at Jolly’s. Doreen had settled that one at the till.
She stared at the name.
But it ought to read Doreen Jenkins.
The date was the correct one. Two lunches, it said. The name of the card-holder was Mrs Emma Treadwell.
Emma?
Frowning, she stared at the name for some time. There was only one conclusion. Her so-called stepsister was caught out. Here was proof that she had been lying about her real identity.
She was crushed by the betrayal. If Doreen concealed her own name, could anything she said be trusted? The story about her father and his horrible death could be pure fabrication, as could the stuff about the Tormarton Seax.
Soon after, the doorbell rang.
Her first thought was that Doreen must have come back. No one else knew who was staying here. That would be it: she had just discovered she’d mislaid the receipts and she was back in a panic.
She called out, ‘Coming,’ and hastily scooped up the bits of paper and put them in her own pocket, hoisted herself up and on to the crutches and picked her way across the floor to the hall.
There was no second ring. She knows I’m slow, she thought. She unfastened the door and opened it the few inches the safety chain allowed.
A mistake.
A metal-cutter closed on the safety-chain and severed it. The door swung open, practically knocking her down, and Smiling Face walked into the flat and slammed the door closed.
She gripped the crutches, terrified.
‘Move,’ he ordered, pointing to the armchair.
She hobbled across the room. She was turning to make the awkward manoeuvre of lowering herself when he grabbed one of the crutches away and pushed her in the chest, slamming her into the chair. He kicked the other crutch out of her reach.
As if she were no longer there, he walked through and checked the kitchen and the bedroom. Satisfied, he sat opposite her, resting a brown paper carrier on his knees. He was in a suede jacket, white sweater and black jeans.
In a shaky voice she asked him what he wanted.
‘You don’t know?’ It was an educated voice, no more comforting for that. His mouth curved in that crocodile smile. ‘Come now, Miss Gladstone, you’re not stupid. You know you’ve got to be dealt with, and it needn’t hurt. You swallow the sleeping tablets I give you, helped down with excellent cognac, which I also happen to have in my bag, and you don’t wake up. It’s the civilised way to go, and it works.’
‘You want to kill me?’
‘Not at all.’ The smile widened. ‘I want you to commit suicide.’ From the carrier he produced some cheap plastic gloves, the sort garages provide free at the pumps, and put them on. ‘Oh, and so that no one is in any doubt, I’ll fix a new safety-chain before I leave, reassuring anyone with a suspicious mind that you must have been alone here.’
Rose had not listened to any of it.
He took out and placed on the low table between them a silver flask and a brown bottle full of prescription capsules. ‘Fifteen should do it. Twenty will make certain.’
Terrified as she was, her brain went into overdrive. This man would snuff out her life unless she found some way of outwitting him.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘What have I done, that you want to kill me?’
He unscrewed the bottle and tipped some capsules on to the table. ‘Take a few.’
If anything Doreen had said could be believed, the man was a treasure-hunter. She knew nothing else about him, so she would have to gamble on its being true.
She said, ‘It’s revenge, isn’t it?’
‘For what?’
She held his glance and began to unfold a story worthy of Scheherazade. ‘Because you didn’t find the necklace and the other things that belong to my family.’
He gazed at her blankly, unconvinced. ‘Just what are you wittering on about?’
‘Certain objects my father dug up years ago.’
His brown eyes were giving away more than he intended. ‘You’re bluffing. There’s no record of anything being found there after 1943.’
He was a circling vulture.
‘There wouldn’t be,’ Rose said, trying to sound calm, ‘because Dad didn’t report it. He didn’t want some coroner declaring them as treasure-trove and belonging to the nation. My grandfather made that mistake with his find.’
‘Nice try,’ he said, getting up. ‘I don’t buy it. I’ll fetch you a glass from the kitchen.’
Elaborating wildly, she called out, ‘I’ve tried on the necklace. Dad re-strung the gold beads and the garnets himself. The original string rotted in the soil.’
Smiling Face was silent for some time.
When he returned from the kitchen he was holding a tumbler. ‘It isn’t the right shape for a decent cognac, but it will have to do. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You don’t remember a damned thing about your father, let alone any gold objects, so swallow these and give us both a break.’ He took the cap off the flask and poured some brandy.
Her brain grappled with the complexities. In this poker game her life was the stake and the cards had been dealt to her by Doreen, an impostor. In spite of the denials, the man had appeared at first to be interested. She had no choice but to play on as if she held a winning hand.
‘Don’t you want to know why I came down here to visit my father?’ Without giving him time to respond she answered her own question. ‘Dad invited me to collect the hoard, as he called it. He wrote to say it would be safer with me. People had visited him, wanting to excavate. If he agreed, he said, they’d find nothing and there was a danger they would turn nasty. He felt vulnerable, being elderly. He was afraid they would break into the house.’ While she was speaking, her eyes read every muscle movement across his face. She was encouraged to add, ‘He said the coins would bring me a steady income sold in small amounts and to different collectors.’
The mention of coins drew a better result than the necklace had. His grin lost a little of its upward curve. ‘What coins?’
‘The ones he dug up.’
‘You mean old coins?’
‘I don’t know how old they are. Silver and gold mostly. They must have been in a pot originally, because they were mingled with tiny fragments of clay.’
His facade was crumbling, even if he tried to sound sceptical. ‘And where are these fabulous coins kept now? In a bank vault?’
‘No. He wouldn’t trust a bank. They’re in the farmhouse.’
‘Oh, yes? Where precisely?’
If she named a hiding-place, he wouldn’t be able to resist checking. He might disbelieve her, but he was too committed to let any chance slip by, however remote. The challenge was to keep him interested without telling him enough to let him believe he could go alone. ‘He didn’t tell me exactly where.’
He was contemptuous. ‘Convenient.’
‘But there can’t be more than four or five places they could be. I knew the farmhouse as a child.’
‘Now you’re lying through your teeth,’ he said. ‘It’s common knowledge that your memory is gone. You know sweet FA about what happened when you were a kid.’
Rose harangued him with the force of Joan of Arc in front of her accusers. ‘Wrong. It came back a couple of nights ago. I woke up in the small hours and remembered who I am and everything about me.’A huge claim that she would find impossible to justify if put to the test, but how much did Smiling Face know of her life? She started talking at the rhythm of a sewing machine, stitching together a patchwork of what Doreen had told her and what sprang to mind. ‘I’m twenty-eight, and I live in Hounslow and I work in a bookshop. My parents separated when I was very young and I’ve seen very little of my father since. I came down from London the other day at his request and when I got to the farmhouse I found him dead, shot through the head. The rest you know.’
He reached for the brandy and drank some, caught in indecision.
‘If
you like,’ she offered in a more measured tone, squeezing her hands between her knees to stop them trembling, ‘we could go to the farmhouse and find the hoard. You can have the coins and all the other things except the necklace.’ Trying to do a deal over the non-existent necklace was an inspiration. ‘Dad always promised me the necklace.’
He said tersely, getting in deeper, ‘You’re in no position to bargain. If I believed you for one moment, I could go there and turn the place over. I don’t need your help.’
‘Believe me, you do. Cottage hiding-places are really cunning. People centuries ago needed to keep all their valuables secure. The places they used were incredibly clever. You have to live there to know where to look.’
He passed a gloved hand uncertainly through his black hair.
At the limit of her invention, she added, ‘We can go there now. I’ll show you where to look.’ She pointed at the plastered ankle. ‘I’m not going to run away.’
In the Toyota, he said with his habitual grin, ‘If your memory is back, I’m surprised you want to get into a car with me.’
She didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t care to think about it. she said with disdain, ‘It’s better than the alternative.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
They had been on the road about twenty minutes, going further and further from the lights of Bath, past places with strange, discomforting names like Swainswick, Cold Ashton, Nimlet and Pennsylvania. How this would end, Rose did not dare think. With her injury, she had no chance of running away. Her plan, such as it was, amounted to no more than delaying action – but for what? The Cavalry wouldn’t come riding to her rescue.
The car swung right and up a bumpy track. A stone building, pale in the headlamp beam, appeared ahead. It was essential to pretend this was familiar ground. She felt her mouth go dry. The bluffing was over. He would expect her to deliver now.
‘Out.’
‘I can’t move without my crutches.’
He got out and took them off the back seat and handed them to her. He produced a heavy-duty rubber torch and lit the way across the yard to the house.
Strips of yellow and black police tape were plastered across the front door. Smiling Face kicked it open and clawed the tape away.
He told her, ‘There’s no electricity. We’ll have to do this by torchlight. Where first?’
She’d spent the last twenty minutes asking herself the same question. Without any memory of this house, it required swift decisions. She had to put up a show of familiarity. ‘Could I hold the torch a moment?’
He handed it to her. She cast the beam rapidly around the kitchen. ‘There used to be a loose brick against the wall there,’ she improvised, training the torch on one section, ‘but it seems to have been cemented in.’ She hobbled out of the kitchen, hoping the floors might be of wood – for loose floorboards – but they were flagstoned.
This was the living-room. She shone the torch over a wooden armchair and a small table, a chest of drawers and a bed against the wall. One other hope was dashed: the place had no phone. On the walls and ceiling were a number of stains encircled with chalk. Her own father’s blood? She made a huge effort to put death out of her mind. Then she spotted the faint outline of a pair of footprints in chalk, and a shudder passed through her. There used to be a special flagstone with a cavity under it. I’m trying to remember which one.’
Smiling Face kicked the mat, uncovering most of it. He wasn’t saying anything, but his impatience was obvious.
‘It definitely wasn’t one of these,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if you rolled the mat right back…’
‘And you cracked me over the head with the torch? No thanks,’ he said. ‘Your time has run out.’ Even so, he moved the mat with his foot and exposed more flagstones. It was obvious from the dirt impacted in the cracks that none of them had been disturbed for years.
‘I wonder if the stone I’m thinking of was in the back room,’ she speculated, switching the torch-beam to the door at the end.
‘Full of junk,’ he told her acidly. ‘No one has been in there for years.’
Undaunted, she crossed the room and shone the torch over a forest of furniture and household objects. ‘Well, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s at the back, by the wardrobe.’
To reach the wardrobe, he would have to remove a rocking-chair, a table, a dog-basket and a hat-stand, all coated with an even layer of dust.
‘Let’s face it,’ he said. ‘This has been a total waste of time. You haven’t any more knowledge than I have about this place. Give me that.’ He grabbed back the torch.
She started to say, ‘I didn’t promise to-’
He swung the torch viciously and cracked it against her head. She felt her skull implode. Briefly, she saw fireworks, brilliant, multicoloured points of light. Then they went fuzzy and faded away.
The darkness was absolute, but some of her sensations returned. Shallow breathing. She was cold, freezing cold, there was a roaring in her ears and she was being buffeted.
This uniform blackness was scary. Her eyes were open. She could feel them blink, and she could see nothing, not the faintest grey shading at the edge of her vision.
Blind?
I will not panic, she thought. Try to work out a rational explanation.
She seemed to be lying on her right side in a hunched position. Her foot – the one not in plaster – was in contact with something solid that made it impossible for her to stretch.
And there was a smell that made her nose itch and her eyes water.
Petrol fumes. I am in a car. It’s an engine that I’m hearing. I’m being driven at high speed.
By degrees, she remembered the incident immediately prior to blacking out. This, she deduced, must be the red Toyota. Smiling Face is at the wheel, driving at a terrifying speed, and only he knows where.
I’m locked in the boot. He knocked me senseless with the torch and carried me to the boot and now he’s going to dispose of me somewhere. He wants me to die. He made that clear. He may even think I’m dead already.
The strange thing about it is that I’m beginning not to care. I’m freezing and uncomfortable and I want to be sick.
Some instinct for survival insisted that she do something about it. Car boots had linings. If she could wrap some of the lining around herself she would get some insulation. She reached out in the dark, probing with her fingertips for the edge of the felt she was lying on. Some of her fingernails broke. The effort was almost too much. But a strip of the material came away from the bodywork. More followed. She drew it to herself like a blanket, or a shroud.
Thirty-four
Diamond’s physique had thickened and, it has to be said, slackened since he gave up rugby, but his reactions were still quick. He grabbed Julie and dived out of the path of the advancing car. It whooshed by so close that he felt the rush of air on the back of his neck.
Scratched and winded, but basically unhurt because his colleague’s soft flesh had cushioned his fall, he hauled himself off her and out of a hedge that was mainly bramble.
‘You okay?’
She thought she was. He helped her up.
‘See if Rose is in the farmhouse.’
Leaving Julie, he started running up the lane after the Toyota, confident that a patrol car was blocking the exit to the road.
From up ahead a screech of brakes pierced the air. But the expected impact didn’t happen. There was the high note of the engine in reverse, then a change of gear.
He was in time to see the Toyota mount the verge to avoid the police car, rip through the hedge, advance into the field, rev again, switchback over the uneven turf and bear down like a tank on a wooden gate at the edge nearest to the road. Like a tank it smashed through.
‘Get after him then!’
One of the cars was already turning to give chase, its blue light pulsing. Diamond hurled himself through the open door of another and they were moving before he slammed it.
The rear lights of the Toy
ota were not in sight.
‘He’ll make for the motorway,’ Diamond told the driver. ‘Can you radio ahead?’
On an undulating stretch north of Tormarton, the skyline momentarily glowed in the high beam of headlights. At a rough estimate, Allardyce was a quarter of a mile ahead. There was no chance of catching him before the M4 interchange.
A message came through from headquarters. Diamond could just make out through the static that Julie had radioed in from the farmhouse to say no one was in there, but she had found Rose’s crutches.
‘I don’t like the sound of that. I didn’t see her in the car, did you?’ he asked his driver.
‘No passenger, sir. I had a clear look.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘PC Roberts, sir.’
There was a hairy moment when they raided the wing mirror in passing a stationary car. They were doing eighty along country lanes.
‘Been driving long, Roberts?’
‘Since my seventeenth birthday, sir.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Eighteen, sir.’
The problem at the approach to the motorway was how to divine which direction Allardyce had taken. At the roundabout, Diamond watched the patrol car ahead speed up the first slipway eastwards. ‘Then we go west,’ he told PC Roberts. They swung with screaming tyres around the long turn and presently joined the Bristol-bound carriageway. At this time of night the traffic would be sparse.
Diamond was trying to hold down the nausea he always felt at high speed. It was compounded by concern over Rose. If she was not at the farmhouse and her crutches were there, what had Allardyce done with her?
‘No sign of him, sir,’ Roberts said. ‘I reckon he took the other route.’
‘Is this thing as fast as the Toyota?’
‘Should be. He should be in sight by now.’
‘Keep going.’
This stretch of motorway had no lighting whatsoever. They had the main beam probing the three lanes. In the next minute Diamond thought he could discern a dark shape ahead.
Upon A Dark Night Page 34