by Penny Grubb
As the storm threw clouds across to shroud the moon and the scene darkened, Annie thought back to Tina’s words. ‘She’s safe with Boxer. Even if she gets lost, he won’t.’ And there stood Laura’s symbol of safety wearing a saddle and bridle as though all ready to set off with his rider. But even through the gloom and driving rain Annie could see the leather was soaked through. The stirrups swung beside the pony as he moved. How long had he stood there?
If Laura were inside and if Annie could get her out and on to her pony …
She looked at the entrance to the yard. A pole was balanced across. It would be the work of a moment to lift that clear.
The first door, the one that led to the corridor Terry Martin had crept down, was a dark outline in the far wall. A perfect trap. She remembered how it felt to sneak inside in the daylight and tried to imagine herself creeping down into the yard, slipping through that door … She couldn’t.
She eased back and made her way through the wet grass towards the other end of the building feeling along the wall as she went. The wind screamed, but in the shelter of the wall, couldn’t batter her as well as it wanted. The rain made up for it. A relentless barrage pounded down. Then, as her hands began to track along the cold, wet surface of the building proper, a soft moaning reached out to her over the howling of the storm. She saw a dark shadow like a gash in the wall. The gap Kay told her about. And the low keening she could hear could only be Laura.
When she reached the slit in the wall, Annie pressed her ear to the sodden surface and heard the subdued wailing. It was all that was left of long burnt-out hysterics. Low cries, barely sobs. What state was the poor child in? How long had she been in that hellhole?
The gap was no more than a fissure where the cement bed crumbled away from between two uneven slabs of concrete. Annie found she could slip a hand through but there was no chance to get inside or to get Laura out. The despairing sound seemed right beside her, but that might be the echo from the cave-like structure.
Could she risk calling out?
She pulled her hand back and pressed her face to the opening straining for any glimpse of the interior. Kay said it was covered with sacking. Annie eased herself sideways into the wall to get the longest reach, and gingerly stretched her arm through. Her hand went beyond the concrete of the wall, felt flimsy material that trailed on her skin like spiders’ web and then touched cold metal, some sort of wall bracket. She walked her fingers along it. They pushed up against something warm and soft.
There was a shriek from inside as she recoiled. Oh my God! Laura!
‘No, Laura. It’s OK. Be quiet. It’s Annie. I’ve come to get you out. It’s OK.’
After the first petrified shriek, Laura quietened, as though too exhausted to scream. What had she been through these last two days? Annie could almost lose her fear of the dark corridor in her determination to get this child out of her prison.
She reached back in through the gap. ‘Laura, it’s Annie. I’m going to reach through and touch your arm. I’ve come to get you out. The police are on their way.’ Please God.
‘Annie?’ Barely a whisper that Annie couldn’t be sure she’d heard.
‘Yes, I’m going to get you out. Just keep calm.’
‘But my arm’s in this thing.’ As Laura spoke, her voice broke up into sobs.
‘I know it is. I’ll get it out. Who locked you up, Laura?’
‘I don’t know. I was waiting for Mally then I woke up in here. Annie, get me out. I’m frightened.’
Annie knew she had to keep the girl talking. ‘Is your other hand tied?’
‘It so isn’t fair, Annie. I want to go home.’
‘I know, Laura. I’ll get you out. Please tell me, is your other hand tied? Are your legs tied?’
While she talked, Annie felt as best she could round the metal of the wall bracket.
‘No,’ Laura sobbed. ‘It’s so not fair. It hurts my arm.’
‘Are you sure, Laura? This is really important. Try and tell me. Is it just one hand that’s tied?’
Annie kept up the questions to distract Laura and keep her calm, but she also needed to know because the wall bracket holding Laura was old and loose. She was sure she could jiggle it out far enough for Laura to slide her hand free. And if sliding her hand free would release her properly, then Annie could creep back round and down that corridor knowing that if she could get the door open, Laura had a chance to get away. A tremor ran through her as she saw herself wrestling with the key in the lock, just as she’d seen Terry Martin do on the film, but now she pictured a figure in the darkness behind her watching, waiting for the moment to grab her and push her inside the trap with Laura. If she were prepared for it, she might be able to hold out long enough for Laura to run back down the corridor, get on to her pony’s back and away. If she could only stop Laura’s fear pinning her inside the dark cave.
‘Laura, have you heard anyone else nearby?’
‘No, Annie, not for ages.’
The killer had imprisoned Laura and left her, but he’d be back to finish the job. She had to work quickly and somehow, while she worked Laura’s arm free, she must coach her to have the courage to run. Because once Laura was in the saddle no one would catch her on this terrain.
‘Laura, listen carefully. I’m going to get your hand out of here and then I’m coming to unlock the door. Boxer’s waiting outside.’
At once, Laura’s half-sobs changed to rapid breaths that made Annie fear the girl would hyperventilate herself into a faint. ‘Annie … Annie, get me out. I knew he was still out there … I knew it …’
Annie felt excitement rise inside her. The thought of her pony nearby would bolster Laura. Whoever put her in here should have freed the pony to wander off but had maybe been afraid the loose pony would alert people. Laura must have been persuaded to ride him here. That’s where she’d gone after she’d left Kay on the old railway. No. No, it wasn’t. It was where she’d been persuaded to go after she’d e-mailed Annie. When had she found the torn page and made a copy for Maz? She couldn’t stop to work it all out now.
‘It’s important to keep calm, Laura. Keep calm for Boxer.’ Annie gritted her teeth as she pulled at the bracket through the narrow opening. The angle was almost impossible, but she could feel it loosening. Now she must rehearse Laura in the detail of her escape, because it was possible she’d have to do it all on her own while Annie struggled to hold back a killer. Don’t think about it. Focus on the girl.
‘Now listen, Laura. When I unlock the door, you come out as quickly as you can and get to Boxer.’
‘I’ll wait for you, Annie.’
‘No, no. You mustn’t wait for me.’
‘I’ll be frightened on my own. I so won’t go on my own.’
Annie knew Laura would panic if she hinted the killer might be close. She sought for inspiration as the sharp sting of the rain hit the side of her head and water poured down her face. ‘You must take Boxer straight home, Laura. He’s been standing out in the rain. He needs his warm dry stable. You’ll take him straight home, won’t you, Laura?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I will. Poor Boxer. Let me out, Annie. Quickly.’
‘No, Laura, don’t pull yet. Let me loosen it further. Laura, when you get outside … this is really important, Laura … when you get on Boxer you need to go out of the yard here. And then you must go along till you get to the track, then turn towards the sea and you can get to the cliff path.’
‘Yes, I know Annie. I’ve done it loads of times.’
Annie smiled in the darkness as she redoubled her efforts with the metal bracket. Of course Laura knew. She had done it loads of times. ‘Hold still, Laura. Nearly there.’
‘I saw Terry in Mally’s house with Mr Tremlow.’
‘It doesn’t matter now, Laura. You can tell me later.’
‘It was after Mally’s mum had gone away. Mr Tremlow so shouldn’t have taken Terry in there. It’s not his house. He shouldn’t have taken him, should he, Annie?’
> ‘No, Laura, he shouldn’t.’
‘I went to call for Mally. I forgot she wasn’t there. And I saw them.’
‘What were they doing, Laura?’
‘Terry said, “It’s Mrs Atkins’s money isn’t it?” And Mr Tremlow called him a blackguard. What’s a blackguard, Annie?’
‘Blackguard? I think it’ll have been blaggard. It’s an old-fashioned swear word.’
Laura babbled on as Annie gritted her teeth in frustration at the awkward angle, the pounding of the rain and the pain in her arm as she struggled with the ancient structure.
‘I didn’t tell Mally ’cos she was horrid about the Showcross. It wasn’t my fault. It was clever of me to make a copy of that paper like that, wasn’t it, and send it with Maz?’
‘Yes, Laura, very clever.’
‘It was what Terry wrote when Mally stole him the papers about the church. Then I decided to sneak it back after I’d e-mailed you so no one would know.’
So she’d been caught trying to put the torn page back. Annie wondered where. It didn’t matter for now. She imagined someone twisting their mouth to a false smile, pretending not to notice what they’d seen; questioning Laura gently so she spilt all she knew.
She wrenched the metal bar, grunting at the effort needed to get any sort of purchase on it; wincing as the awkward position shot a shaft of fire up her arm.
‘Why did you come up here with Boxer, Laura?’
‘Mally said to come up here quick as I could and not let anyone know.’
‘Mally told you?’ Mally had lured them both? But the girl had been genuinely surprised to find Boxer.
‘She left me a message, but I came as quick as I could.’
A message? Annie would lay money it was a message Mally knew nothing about.
She yanked at the bar, heard Laura’s sudden intake of breath as the jarring movement jerked her arm, was aware the girl held back an instinctive cry of pain. As she kept up the pressure and felt the decades-old wall give up its hold bit by bit, Annie kept talking almost at random. Anything to distract the girl from her predicament.
‘Who was here when you arrived, Laura?’
‘No one.’ The girl’s voice sounded puzzled. ‘Just a hay-net for Boxer and a drink for me. I was ever so thirsty, Annie. Then I got sleepy and I don’t remember.’
Did that make it planned in advance, or just very quick thinking by someone taking advantage of circumstances and Laura’s parents being away?
Annie thought of Mally leaping out in front of her car. Everyone knew everything in Milesthorpe; and by then the place was boiling with news of Laura’s disappearance. Doris Kitson knew Annie was on her way to the Tunbridges’. If Doris knew, Milesthorpe knew. Who was aware that Annie had a copy of the torn page? Was that the reason Mally had been used to lure her up here? Or was it just that she homed in on the truth step by step, millimetre by millimetre, and must be stopped. It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered now.
What mattered was to keep Laura talking. Once she’d freed her arm, she wanted the girl to feel her way across a pitch-black room where a rotting corpse had lain not so long ago. It would be good if Laura didn’t remember that.
Laura’s earlier words were an irrelevance, but they seeped into Annie’s consciousness. Mally didn’t live at the colonel’s, of course she didn’t. Her house was where she lived with her mother, next door to Tremlow. Annie had known all along but somehow hadn’t adjusted her mental image. The house with all the work being done. We’re poor now …
‘Try it now, Laura. Can you get your arm out?’ Annie felt Laura pull against her. For a moment she thought the bracket might hold firm but suddenly the strain slackened.
‘I’m free.’ It was a whisper. ‘Hurry up, Annie. Hurry and unlock the door.’
‘Keep calm, Laura. Boxer’s waiting for you.’
Annie pulled her hand out of the gap, grazing it painfully on the rough surface of the concrete. She stumbled along the side of the building sliding in the mud, running blind now. The last of the light had been swallowed in the storm.
Boxer was no more than an outline down below her. She was aware his head shot up as she looked over at him, but then he returned to his search for stray wisps of hay. Annie slid herself over the low wall and dropped down beside him. She made for the pole blocking the entrance.
‘Stay here, Boxer. Don’t wander off,’ she whispered, and lifted the pole away from the gap.
She crept to the outer door. It creaked as she pulled it towards her. She prayed that the gale hid the sound as she slipped through into the dark corridor. At once, the noise of the storm melted into the background behind the thick walls. The air stilled. The silence wrapped itself round her too closely, too intimately, as her footsteps traced Terry Martin’s.
She took the dark stretch step by step with Terry Martin’s film in her mind’s eye, knowing the raised stalls lay in the blackness beside her, every shadow dense enough to hide a body. Terry Martin’s killer could be close enough to reach out and touch her as she crept past.
The big door, the backdrop to the only sight she’d had of Terry Martin, loomed large ahead of her. His silhouette had bent over this door twisting a key. Now Annie reached out with an identical key to the same door and found Maz’s uncle’s handiwork all but swallowed by the lock. She had to bend close as she held the key with finger ends and tried to turn it. As she struggled with it she realized Maz hadn’t broken into Balham’s farmhouse to get a copy of the key for the girls: he already had the impression from doing the same task for Terry Martin. How much had Terry paid him for that?
The sound of the key in the lock must have filtered through the stout wooden panels.
‘Hurry. Hurry.’ She heard Laura’s fists pound on the other side of the wood.
‘Hush, Laura, please hush.’ She couldn’t make Laura hear without shouting louder than she dared and desperately centred her efforts on the stubby key. Once she’d pushed it home, it turned sweetly. Maz’s uncle knew his craft. She pushed the big door and felt it give under the pressure.
‘Quiet, Laura. You must keep quiet.’ The girl was out as soon as the door was wide enough for her to squeeze through. She shot past Annie and raced towards the thin line of light from the outer door. Annie heard her stumble on the uneven ground as she hurried after her. It had been wasted worry that Laura would hang back and wait for her. The girl had forgotten her in the rush of freedom from her prison. Annie hurried after her, too aware of the clammy stones of the building closing in.
Outside, the storm had lost its intensity. The rain poured down without a hurricane to whip it to a stinging force that hit from all directions. Pale moonlight filtered through, turning the yard into a stage, the surrounding scrubland an amphitheatre where anyone might sit back and watch through the dark.
‘Boxer!’ Laura flew at her pony and embraced his neck.
‘Get on his back, Laura. Quick. Get going.’
Laura seemed paralyzed as though shock had switched her to a different dimension. ‘Oh, his saddle’s all wet. He’s soaked. He’s …’ Laura reached into her pocket for a hanky to dab at the wet leather.
‘For God’s sake! Get on his back!’ Annie rushed at Laura and lifted her at the pony, half throwing her on to it. ‘Go on. Get going.’
Even once aboard, Laura couldn’t seem to grab the urgency above the niceties of arranging herself in the saddle and untwisting the reins. Careless of the danger from hoofs or teeth, Annie grabbed a handful of leather strapping somewhere near Boxer’s nose and dragged him round to face the way out of the enclosure, then she dived behind him and slapped his rump with all the energy she could muster.
Almost crying in frustration as the rain stung her face and the wind cut through to her skin, Annie hit out again and again. The pony ambled across the concrete with Laura crooning, ‘Boxer. You’re safe. Poor Boxer …’
Then, through the rush and roar of the storm and the waves lashing the shore, Annie heard a tiny sound from somewhere
nearby. Like the snapping of a twig in the darkness beyond the wall.
CHAPTER 28
‘RUN, LAURA!’
At last, something speared panic through the unnatural calm. Boxer leapt forward. Laura screamed. In a clatter of hoofs they were gone. Annie had a momentary impression of the pony disappearing into the night then she dived for the deep shadow of the wall.
A surge of triumph took her. Now she was alone with whoever was here in the darkness, but Laura was out of the trap. Pressed into the wall, she eased herself along, desperate for the safety of open country.
Rain swept across her in waves, the wind found strength again to howl at the rush of the sea. As the moon’s light was obscured, definition leached from the scene. Reflected phosphorescence from distant waves danced weird shapes in front of Annie’s eyes. She fought for memory of the yard’s layout as she felt her way.
Under everything she could hear the rapidly receding hoofbeats heading for the track. Make him run, Laura. Make him run.
Water and mud poured down the face of the wall. She could barely get any purchase but grabbed at the loose bricks and forced herself to climb.
Just at the top where one last effort would take her over, a hand reached out of the darkness, grasped her upper arm and heaved her up and over the wall.
Annie cried out in fright, thought her heart would burst from her chest the shock was so great. At once the hand released her and a voice hissed from the shadow, ‘Keep the noise down. He’s not far away. This way, Miss Raymond. Quick.’
She scrabbled to her feet, fought for breath as she squinted to see the man who’d appeared from nowhere. ‘What the hell…?’
‘Quick. No time. He’s on his way.’ The figure turned to go, his form dissolving into the dark.
Annie scrambled after him, thoughts spinning. Colonel Ludgrove. He’d come up here to find Mally. What instinct had brought him? This must be about Mally’s father. And where was he?
She was aware the colonel stumbled worse than she did. This would kill him for sure. How had he known? Why couldn’t she focus? What must they do?