The Winter House

by P. R. Black

  ‘No need for any of that,’ Devin said. ‘I am so, so sorry, Vonny. We’re just going to collect some gear we had on site then we’re going to clear off. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘I’ve got to be totally honest with you – I don’t understand, at all. What’s going on here?’

  ‘We have to go, Vonny. We’ll be in touch about the remainder of the contract. It’s being shifted out to another company, one we trust. They’ll be back in touch in due course…’

  He tried to walk past her as he spoke, not even looking at her. ‘Stop! What is this? Has someone attacked you? Here?’

  ‘The other company is a snagging specialist – there’s an issue with the special room we need to talk over. There’s a flood risk – bad work from your architect, frankly, rather than us. And of course there’s the railings to secure, one or two other…’

  ‘Devin! Talk to me – what’s happened?’

  ‘And that is all!’ Devin bellowed, at last. ‘Vonny. Please. We’re leaving. That’s it. OK?’

  She backed away. ‘Course. Take as long as you like. This is just a shock, it really is.’

  ‘I understand there are some contractual issues, and we’ll happily sort those out.’ Devin signalled to the truck; the other two men appeared. ‘This has been a great project to work on – thanks so much.’

  ‘But you’ve hardly been here!’

  Devin looked like he wanted to say more. What she could see of his face crumpled for a second or two. Alarmed, she reached out for his shoulder, but he strode off to join his colleagues.

  She wanted to sag. Had there been a chair handy she would have collapsed into it. They’d been attacked, surely – something had spooked them. She could sue. They were in clear breach of contract… But that wasn’t Vonny’s main fear.

  Had someone approached them while they were working on the house? Warned them off? But if so, what?

  Something to do with Dan Grainger?

  Vonny shivered, and looked towards the trees.

  Back in the house, she sent Seth a message. ‘Any chance of hurrying the train up?’

  *

  He was in that not-drunk but definitely over-beered state when he returned. He’d had a few drinks, but not recently, and he was more likely to slump in front of the TV and fall asleep than take another one. Perhaps there was a shot of whisky or two on his breath.

  ‘Well, no moving into the house tonight,’ Vonny said, holding him tight. ‘But…’

  ‘It might be nicer to get cuddled into the Tin Coffin. Just the two of us.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  They did just that, lying together on top of the bedclothes. Seth hadn’t even removed his overcoat. ‘Thought it was going to snow, just then,’ he said. ‘It’ll look lovely on the skylight when it lands.’

  ‘And on this little skylight, right here.’

  ‘The magpies can leave footprints. Make little snow angels. Snow birds. Whatever they make. You know, I almost forgot Christmas was just around the corner. Hardly thought about it, until a maniac got on board, a few stops before Brenwood Green. Played his phone at full blast. Christmas songs. Slade. Wizzard. Shakey. Wham. And the beautiful thing was, no one even looked annoyed about it. One or two older gents, you know the type – letter to The Times if someone farts. They started singing along to John and Yoko.’

  ‘You sound sad you had to leave.’

  ‘Nice little moment.’ There was silence for a moment. Then he raised his head, and gazed at her. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘Kind of. But something’s more wrong with you. So, you first.’

  ‘No, tell me. What’s happened. Someone upset you?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. Devin and the crew…’

  ‘Please tell me they weren’t rude. After all that, please tell me they didn’t do anything nasty.’

  ‘No. Perfect gentlemen. It’s just… they’re gone, Seth.’ She explained the scene from earlier on in the day.

  ‘Someone must have battered them. That’s what it sounds like to me.’

  ‘I thought that,’ Vonny said, resting her head on his chest as he lay down again. The jacket was in need of some dry-cleaning, or perhaps a sandblast, but it smelled of him; it was a comfort, in its own roughcast-textured way. ‘But maybe it was something else. Maybe they had an accident, something like that, or they made a mistake…’

  ‘Or they battered each other. They look like they wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but they’re young. That’s what happens with young guys.’ He swallowed. He saw the kid in the pub, folded neatly, immobile. Had the boy bled? He must have. He couldn’t remember if he’d imagined the blood, flowing through the boy’s fingers, or not. Had he lost an eye? Lost consciousness? Fractured his skull? Was he dead?

  ‘Whatever it is… Seth. Was it something to do with here?’

  ‘The house. The land. Dan “Don Corleone” Grainger?’

  ‘I doubt it. What would anyone crack down hard on a squad of builders for?’ Maybe they wanted to know something, was the answer in his own head. Maybe they wanted to find out if something had been dug up.

  Seth remembered his mate’s words, in the pub. Maybe X marked the spot, after all.

  ‘Whatever it is… I’m going to get onto the builder. First thing Monday morning. There’s still bits of snagging here and there. And they left a flood risk in the special room.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Something to do with the angle of the pipe, or pipework not completed… Won’t affect the house. Anyway. That needs sorting out.’

  ‘We can take them to court over this. It’s not safe, leaving the job unfinished.’

  ‘They were due to finish up next week, anyway. This is what I don’t get.’

  Seth listened to the sound of their breathing, in the centre of the Tin Can, the cramped confines melting away in the concealing darkness. ‘Tomorrow’s the day, eh?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s the day.’ Her lips were close to his neck. ‘But you’ve stalled long enough. What happened?’

  He told her. Sweat broke out on his brow – guilty sweat. Vonny listened. She dabbed her fingers against the moisture above his eyes. ‘What else, Seth? What else happened?’

  He began to shake, as he told her about the two boys in the pub, and the one that ended up on the floor. ‘I had no choice. In that situation, you can’t wait for someone else to make a move. You’ll be on the floor with two or more of them stomping you in a minute flat. In the time it takes for you to work out your first big kung fu kick, or whether or not you might want to use the bar stool. I had to…’

  ‘He could be dead,’ Vonny said, aghast.

  ‘Doubt it. They’d have picked me up by now. Hopefully he just has a souvenir from the occasion.’

  She did not like the dark irony in his tone. ‘Never get into a situation like that again, Seth. Never. Never even walk into a dodgy pub again. Don’t go near it. A bar stool?’

  ‘You weren’t there,’ he said, quietly. ‘You didn’t see it.’ He began to shake again, hands and voice trembling. She held him, until the quaking stopped.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she said.

  ‘Jake, Mum and Dad can’t go back there. I’ll get them moved somewhere else. It’ll take just about everything else I’ve got, but they have to move. Jake can go to another sixth form college. From there, university, if he has any sense. He can have a nice scar to impress the girls. I should have gotten them out of that shitty street years ago, but Dad just wouldn’t… He’s not tough, but he’s stubborn. They have to move out now. The house will be marked. I’ll get a removals van, move them out first thing in the morning. Bastards won’t get them.’

  ‘What about the people he owes? They won’t just let him walk away, will they?’

  ‘I was coming to that. It’s a lot.’

  ‘How much is a lot?’

  ‘It’s not an exact figure. It’s not like a balance sheet at the end of the financial year, or…’

  ‘How m
uch, Seth?’

  He told her, and she cried. Seth could not tell her it would be all right. He could not assure her that it would turn out well.

  ‘They’ll kill him,’ she said. ‘He’ll have to go into witness protection. He’ll have to tell the police.’

  ‘No chance. You can’t grass. If he doesn’t have a death warrant already, he will have after he does that. You cannot put people like that into prison.’

  ‘It might be his only choice!’

  Seth could not argue with this.

  Then she covered her face with her hands. ‘What if they come for us?’

  ‘They won’t. No chance.’ He wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

  She whispered, ‘We might have to sell this place. That would cover it. Wouldn’t it?’

  That’s when he came closest to tears. ‘Never in a million years. Never. This is the place… This is the dream house.’

  ‘Then what else can we do?’

  ‘What I’m going to do is… make some beats.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘I never joke about work. I’ve already got an idea for a suite of tunes. Title’s there already – Tin Can Opera. Plus I have a memory card full of new tracks that were meant for DJ PissyPants, don’t forget. They need a home. I’ve got a few more contacts – they always want the good stuff. They’re good tracks, darlin’. If they’re not for her breakout album, they’ll be for someone else’s. I’ve got the contacts. Don’t worry. They’ll get sold. I’ll sort out Jake. We’ll be sitting pretty, here, before you know it.’

  Seth sounded sure of himself. But the only thing he was certain of was that Vonny wasn’t fooled.

  22

  While Vonny slept that night, Seth extricated himself from her, watching a blade of moonlight slip across her face as she turned, grunted, and lay at rest. It was an obscene hour, and he was exhausted, but anxiety and booze had shaken his system, jolted him into consciousness he didn’t want. He found the wrong solution. He opened up the tiny kitchen cabinet, and withdrew a bottle.

  He had aimed to get petulantly pissed, a childish solution to an adult problem. After two single malts, he’d tried to drown it out with music – quickly irritated by the demos he’d been sent, he retreated into the arms of Stevie Wonder, as usual. ‘He’s Misstra Know-It-All’ got him to thinking about his friend at the bar, who’d calmed him down after he hit the kid with the bar stool.

  He snatched off the headphones and closed the computer down.

  Vonny did not stir as he crept out.

  Five minutes later he had a torch tucked into his big jacket pocket and a shovel in his hand, which he’d meant to retrieve from the garden days ago.

  The cold nipped at him. Brutal, top-button-fastened stuff, frost and ice on the path underfoot, the driveway given a coating of sugar.

  Seth had a rough idea where he was going, but in the dark this soon turned treacherous. Semi-tipsy bravado turned a little sour in his gut, when he stared into the mass of pines, like ranks of planted spears. He had to turn back once, cursing himself, when he tried to cut through the trees instead of taking the path like any sensible person would.

  ‘Waste of time,’ he grunted to himself. ‘Fool’s gold.’

  He played about a bar of music in his headphones before writing this off as a spectacularly bad idea. Even if the scariest thing in the woods in front of him was a badger, then that was plenty scary for Seth, and so he was on high alert. Soon he came to the place where the shed had been, a pile of stunted planks like the font of a scary movie title. Something about this jagged structure upset him, even when the details of grain, splinter and bent nails were exposed by the torch beam.

  He swept the light to the left. That’s where the path to the bushes was. This was the moment Seth became truly freaked out, as everything closed in. Squeezing through the trees had seemed such a lark during the daytime, with Vonny and the reporter accompanying him. ‘Never again,’ he whispered, his breath curling around his nose and mouth, ‘will I laugh at a scary film.’

  A rearing monster in front of him gave him pause; spiky, the dead brown of dried blood even under bright light. ‘That’s it,’ Seth said, squaring his shoulders after the fright. ‘That’s what I’m looking for.’

  He talked to himself as he scraped the shovel along the branches. He was going to have to go a little further in; this would be like a pilot fish picking at the teeth of a shark for its supper. There was a tunnel of sorts, after the boys had cut back the winter-dead vegetation to clear a path for the Datsun. From there they’d had to push it to the side gate along a straighter path, then back down to the road where a hire truck had been waiting.

  ‘I am not crawling in,’ he muttered, bending down at the maw of the beast. He could picture it – the sudden smell of rotten meat and bad breath, the realisation that what he was on his haunches in front of was not a plant given a trick of the light, but an animal. Then the spikes would come down and that’d be it – no more Seth. A belt buckle or the eyelets of his boots surviving inside some unspeakable droppings. ‘At least the headphones would live,’ he said, and chuckled.

  He reached out with the shovel – don’t imagine a hand darting out to snatch it, no absolutely not – and scraped it along the ground.

  The metal struck against stone. There was no mistaking the change in pitch and timbre. This was not earth, even freeze-dried, hard-packed earth. He withdrew the shovel and got close to the ground, his chin about an inch away. There was something there, beneath a pile of pine needles and stones. He cleared it away, his gloved hands slithering over the detritus. He felt something tough even through the material, unyielding like the granite worktop in his new house. He brought the shovel blade back in, stabbing at the edge of this slightly raised pile.

  A little work uncovered the stone. Hard and flat – like slate, rather than concrete, organic-looking. Out of place, but not suspiciously so. Not like a manhole or a trapdoor might have been.

  There was no leverage to lift it, and Seth didn’t trust his back. He found an edge with the shovel, planted it down until it found the lower edge, and levered it up.

  His back hurt anyway. But soon it was clear. The slate wasn’t too heavy, and indeed it had split in some places, possibly under the weight of one of the Datsun’s wheels.

  Underneath was another hard surface, caked with dirt, but recognisable even under torchlight.

  A suitcase. A great big one; the kind that you knew would attract a penalty should you attempt to put it on a plane, no dissent offered, no grumbling in the queue. And then there was another one, just as big if not identical.

  He felt a childlike excitement, the feeling of opening the door to the front room and seeing that yes, Santa had been. Dread soon followed. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good for anyone. He felt that certainty.

  But he had already made the proper connections, and, although he couldn’t be totally sure, the right conclusions. If this was what he thought it was, then… Then there were possibilities. To do with Jake, first of all. And then other possibilities, for him and Vonny.

  These connections had all been fully tested and fitted as standard as Seth got busy with the shovel, then his bare hands, shifting the slabs out of the way. Sweat dripped, and it seemed as if he had created his own mist, his own mini-climate, out there in the dark and the cold.

  The padlocks sealing the carbon-fibre suitcases had already rusted. Lovely suitcases, too, Seth thought, as he brought down the shovel head, decapitating the shiny locks with a single swing. Pity to damage them.

  He paused before breaking the seals. Bodies were a possibility, here. The X might not have marked treasure, after all. Hell of a way to go to hide something. Very complicated. A careful person had done this, a person who knew how to keep secrets, a person who knew people might come for what he was attempting to hide.

  No terrible smell rose from the broken seal, but even so, Seth jumped back as he flipped open the top of the first suitcase. Perhaps he’d expec
ted rats to swarm out, bugs maybe.

  Instead, there were only tightly packed plastic-coated bricks. Dozens of them, laid out neatly. Vonny might have packed these, was his absurd thought; Vonny, or someone just like her.

  He remembered to breathe. He carried out some calculations, and forgot to breathe again. ‘No way… No way on God’s earth…’ he said, shaking his head. It could not be right. He could not be seeing this.

  He pulled out one of the bricks, then nicked at the end with a penknife. He was no expert, but he knew what this was, knew what he was holding, knew what it possibly meant. He turned away from it, blinking, all those lights on now, every connection complete, the circuit in perfect operation.

  Knowing it was wrong, Seth knew what to do.

  ‘Vonny,’ he said to himself. Always her. Always coming back to her.

  But if he told her, he knew what she would say…

  He shook his head, and shivered. He could not tell her. She could not know. The minute he broached it… No. She’d call the police. Jake would still be in trouble. And there was a chance, if he contacted a guy he knew… And he knew just the man. The engineer, Simon. That could be a way through. He’d take a hit, a big percentage, but even so…

  He had to handle it. Vonny wouldn’t stand for it. And then guilt, over and above everything he’d done of late, including annihilating a teenager with a bar stool, clutched at him. No secrets was the rule. Everyone behaves. No one feels as if they have to hide anything. We keep no secrets. They had agreed, early on. Seth had found that candour refreshing. No game playing. Nothing hidden. Honesty. There was no other way.

  ‘I can’t,’ he hissed to himself, ‘just this once. I can’t.’

  23

  The next day was chillier. Before he even put on his clothes the next morning, Seth put on his winter coat, once again. It had lasted three winters, now, and he was getting bored with it. But Vonny had to admit that it had staying power. The lining had frayed a little, but he hadn’t bought cheap, and it had more than done its job.