by Penny Grubb
He stopped and waited for Annie to catch up. She stood beside him, listened to his rasping intakes of breath. He stared in the direction from where all sight and sound of Laura had vanished and wheezed out, ‘D’you think she’ll make it?’
‘Laura? Oh yes. She knows these tracks, Colonel. She’ll follow the quickest way back home.’
‘Hope so. Galloped off like a trouper. Don’t know how she got free, but …’
‘She was locked in. I had a key.’
She heard him chuckle. ‘That granddaughter of mine, eh? Resourceful young lass.’ The wind whipped the words away. She had to lean close to hear him. ‘Young Laura, will she hold her nerve, keep the beast at a gallop?’
‘Oh yes, no one’ll catch her now. Come on. We need to get back to the road.’
His breathing had eased. She’d lead him back. He must have a car here. Where were the police? Mally and Kay should have been on to Jennifer by now. Laura was safe. That was the thought to hold to. She’d be on autopilot for home. Down the slope from the building … on to the side track up towards the cliff.
Full gallop up the slope and then …
And then turn right, but his path would be barred by a silvery strand of Christmas tinsel. Danger! Lions! He’d been taught to be terrified. He’d leap shy of it. What would be there in front of him? Two concrete blocks with a pole wedged between them. The obstacle he’d been taught to jump in his sleep.
Annie felt her insides turn to ice; her heart begin to pound. Boxer flying up that slope.
‘Oh my God!’ She clenched her fists. ‘Colonel, she’s going into a trap. We’ve got to stop her.’
Annie took a step. Which way? She couldn’t see in the darkness. The colonel’s hand was on her arm. ‘This way,’ he barked.
Yes, he was right. Head for the only landmark they could see. The smudged outline of the cliff’s edge where it drew a line between land and sea.
‘Laura!’ she screamed, careless of hidden listeners, knowing the sound wouldn’t carry, knowing it was too late.
As she ran, ignoring the colonel’s laboured breathing behind her, she strained to hear through the increasing rush of the waves as they neared the edge. Too late. Too late.
The colonel tried to keep up with her, his face a grimace of pain as he clutched at his chest. She couldn’t help him, could only gasp out, ‘Stop, Colonel. Wait there. I’ll come back to you.’
Tina’s words. ‘Boxer’ll jump blind.’ Over the obstacle … over the edge … Laura, given to running away with her pony, would be found dead at the foot of the cliff.
She stumbled on, knowing she couldn’t reach the spot before they did, knowing they must be there already.
But she’d heard no scream. Surely they’d scream when Boxer with all that training flew over that tiny obstacle and took them both to their deaths far below.
Oh, but he wouldn’t. A sudden surge of hope. Concrete blocks were lions too. For all Mally’s hard work he’d only ever jumped that fence in the colonel’s garden.
And Mally … Kay … Clearing the path. Christ, that’s what they’d meant. Kay had recognized it at once. And Mally had gone to pieces. Couldn’t cope with what her father had planned.
What sort of mind planned that? As she slid and staggered over the rutted ground, Annie knew she hadn’t worked it out because it could never have been the plan to frighten the pony over the edge with Laura on its back. But that was what would happen. She knew the answer was there for her to think out. It didn’t matter. No time. All she could think was that she was too late.
Laura’s fate lay with Mally and Kay now.
The clay grabbed her shoes and clung on, weighing her down. She cursed the rain that flew into her face, salty and stinging, obscuring everything ahead.
A sheet of lightning flashed across the sky. For a second the scene lit up like day. They were there. Further away than she’d realized. All of them. On the slope near the edge. She caught half a glimpse of a pony struggling on its side in the mud … three small figures. Then the black of night and the pounding of the rain swallowed them, leaving the image imprinted on her mind.
‘They’ve made it!’ She turned to the colonel in triumph. ‘Boxer fell in the mud. We were heading the wrong way. We have to get to them.’
‘Yes,’ said the colonel. Just yes.
A tiny gap opened with the relief of seeing them all alive; a gap through which another thought was able to snake in. Mally’s father. It needed no thinking through; the idea arrived fully-formed in her mind.
He’d been away … seen nothing of the Showcross … wasn’t a welcome visitor at his father-in-law’s house. Why would he embezzle money to spend on his ex-wife’s house after such a messy divorce? Who had sat and watched those girls with Boxer … up and down … up and down … Who had control of Elizabeth Atkins’s money? Terry Martin and his obsession with the church wardens …
And how had a man in the throes of a heart attack kept pace with her?
In the fraction of a second it took for the story to slot into place in her mind, Annie tried to turn.
Strong hands gripped her arms from behind, twisted her body till her feet were almost off the floor.
She screamed out. At once the world tipped from under her and she found her face pressed into the mud. No room for any thoughts except how to breathe. He’d suffocate her here. She felt herself gag on the pooled rainwater. The pain of his weight on her back speared through her as it forced her into the ground.
At the moment of panic, as she tasted salty clay, his grip slackened, the weight was gone. She had enough leeway that instinct almost had her struggle to her feet.
No. She clung to the security of the muddy ground.
He’d fooled her long and often enough. At last – too late? – she could read him. He needed her on her feet so he could drag her the last metre to the edge. She mustn’t suffocate in the mud. Modern forensics were too good to risk that. But if she were found dashed to pieces by the waves, who could say what made her fall? He was so strong. No glimmer of the frail old man she thought she’d come to know.
He’d used Mally to lure her up here, but he’d arrived too late to trap her; hadn’t expected her to free Laura.
He might not be frail, but he was old. He held still. Getting his breath back. Annie clung to the security of the muddy surface alert to the hands that held her. Both hands. While both hands held her down, he couldn’t hit her.
‘Is that what you did to Terry Martin? Hit him first then toss him in that hole?’
She spoke into the mud with no expectation of being heard, but his voice answered her. Down here close to the ground, they’d found their own refuge from the storm.
‘Good Lord, no. Leave things to chance? Hit him in the first place of course. Had to silence him. He wasn’t a drinker, you see. Couldn’t have got it down him easily if he’d been fully compos mentis.’ He laughed softly. The sound sent bolts of panic through her. ‘Clever forensics might have found an earlier head wound, but they wouldn’t find a mismatched time of death. Died maybe ten minutes before his so-called fall.’
Poor, foolish Terry. Annie knew now why he’d gone to the colonel, even knew who had sent him. Mally, who’d seen him ‘threeish’ on the Sunday, had sent him to her grandfather and to his death. She remembered the fractured conversation as the colonel had prevented Mally’s answers to Annie making any sense. Terry had spent his missing hours comatose in the colonel’s house, or maybe his daughter’s.
It was you on that scaffolding, Colonel.
Irrationally, she wanted to scream it at him. You that Doris saw up there, loosening the metal rail as a reason for Terry’s fall. But Terry was already dead below.
She remembered the look in Tremlow’s eye as he’d said, ‘I saw him plain as day’. Glasses or no, Tremlow knew who he’d seen.
Her mind flitted from point to point across the things she now knew. Where was his weakness, what could she say to distract him, to put him off balance?
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sp; The track blocked with harmless silver glitz was a trap for Boxer, not for Laura. He intended the pony to gallop up there to leave its tracks for someone to find. If Boxer, frightened, went over the edge, all the better. If not, he would have made his way back tired and soaked. It would have taken nothing to carry Laura up to the edge and throw her over into the darkness of the storm.
She’d had a few more hours than Terry Martin and Tremlow to get the alcohol out of her system. Terry Martin and Tremlow could die drunk without undue comment: a girl like Laura couldn’t.
‘But, Colonel, she’s just a child.’ She hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud; knew better than to plead with him. ‘It’s too late, Colonel. The police are on their way.’
His reply came somewhere close to a laugh. She’d asked Laura who had locked her up. Laura didn’t know.
No one had seen him. Or rather they’d all seen him and not noticed. The finger pointed at his son-in-law. If he could rid himself of Annie he might yet make it. She felt the pressure ease again. She nerved every muscle in her body. He intended using what she’d said, pretending to relent, giving her half a chance to rise because this was deadlock and time was running out.
Oh, now the smokescreen’s lifted, Colonel, I can read you so easily.
She must use this to get free. He mustn’t know she’d sussed him.
‘Quiet!’ His weight rammed down on the back of her head, forcing her face into the mud. She struggled to breathe, strained to hear what was going on.
A voice had cut through the night, up close.
‘Grandad…?’
Mally!
‘It was her, Mel. You did well to get her here. And I’m afraid she’s in cahoots with that scoundrel your mother married.’
‘But Laura was really here, Grandad.’
‘You stole the key from me, Mel.’
‘I’m sorry, Grandad. I’m sorry.’ Mally’s voice rose in panic. Annie knew the odd relationship between them had been play-acting. What she heard now – Mally’s terror of him – was real.
‘Then make amends. Here, hold her down like this. I won’t be long.’
In a spike of pain to her lower back that made her groan aloud, the weight shifted. It was Mally holding her now. Mally, terrified of her grandfather like she’d been all along. All that loutish behaviour in front of him had been what he wanted to paint the picture of the frail old man who could barely cope; the front he put on for the gossips of Milesthorpe and the interfering woman who asked questions about Terry Martin.
Mally’s grip was strong, but not quite so strong as her grandfather’s. Annie lay very still, let Mally relax just a little. When she made her move she must be sure of it.
She heard the colonel’s voice barking out instructions, the sense of them carried off on the storm.
‘Dad’s not here …’ Mally’s voice was small.
‘He’s here somewhere, Mel.’
Annie understood. Did Mally? Her father was on his way here, panicked by some message about his daughter. The colonel intended him to appear in time to take the blame for all this.
It couldn’t work. It was too late, surely. The frail old man versus the prime suspect up here on the moor. Annie’s body in the sea. Could he keep Mally quiet?
‘Hold firm, Mel, but keep clear.’
More voices far off. Too far off to bother with.
Annie played comatose. A fraction of a second more … as long as she dared … cringing inwardly at the image of something heavy crashing towards her.
And then she twisted out of Mally’s grip.
Halfway to her feet, off balance, the colonel came at her.
The rocks and crashing waves spiralled below. In one dizzying rush, she was back on top of the world, high above the city. Invincible. She read every move before he made it. He would grab her as she dived to get away from the crumbling earth at the lip of the precipice, but she didn’t go that way. She leapt back into the danger zone, getting round him. The storm might try to tip her over, but it acted without malice, she knew all its moves. She knew her face smiled as their stares locked; she tasted the power. He was the one who floundered now.
She worked with the eddies of the storm, keeping low. He tried to grab out at her, paradoxically needing to drag her away from danger so he could push her over without going with her.
And even now she’d underestimated him. She’d been so sure she could snatch the fraction of a second that was all she needed, but he read her. He knew power too.
Voices from the darkness. She couldn’t take an iota of attention away even to think out the need to shout to them.
But another voice rang out. ‘Over here!’ Mally shrieked. ‘Over here!’
‘Mel!’ her grandfather roared.
The instant his attention slewed to his granddaughter, Annie leapt for safety. She saw him lunge out at her, felt his hand rake its way down her arm. He seemed right there with her, but she knew she was a fraction ahead.
A hair’s breadth from safety she heard a gasp and was aware of one of his legs sliding out on the slick clay as he lost his footing. She threw herself back from the hand that grabbed out at her. In the moment of twisting away, their eyes met. An instant frozen in time. Realization. No way back.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Didn’t want to see. In her mind she gabbled out the words, already rehearsing her script. It happened so quickly … dark … it was dark …
An angry howl dragged the strength from her as his form disappeared, swallowed up into the night and the crashing of the waves.
All that was left was the high breathing of someone who’d sprinted beyond their capacity, someone close by.
‘Annie?’ Jennifer’s voice had barely the strength to breathe her name.
Annie let herself sink back down into the mud. All her power to read the vagaries of the storm had vanished. She held tight to the grass beneath her and slithered backwards away from the edge. She was aware of Jennifer beside her, keeping low, moving the other way wanting to see over.
‘They called you then. Thank God. I wasn’t sure they would.’
‘Who? No one called me. You tried to leave a message on my voicemail. Couldn’t make out what you said, but I heard the sound of the sea before you cut out. It made me think of the night we found the body up here. I guessed where you’d be.’
As Jennifer reached the edge, the winds howled their unease and a pale moon slid into view spreading a ribbon of silver across the sea. Annie imagined a momentary glistening edge to the body far below before the waves crashed in to obliterate the sight and the storm whipped a dark cloud across to shroud the scene.
She heard Jennifer’s gasp of surprise. ‘But it isn’t him. That isn’t Melissa Fletcher’s father.’
‘I know.’ Annie lay on the mud, hands shaking as they clutched tight to tufts of grass. Without haste she let in the idea she was safe ‘It’s her grandfather. It’s Colonel Ludgrove. I didn’t realize … not till too late anyway.’
She thought she’d been so clever … built up a picture no one else had seen … but details matter. And she’d missed so much.
The sea breeze became a jagged hand scraping across her back, freezing the sweat on her skin, making her shake in earnest. She rolled over and forced herself to her feet. Her eyes told her that people raced about shouting, that vehicles bumped towards them over the rough ground, but the rush of the waves and the wind overlay everything as though no other sound would ever pierce this landscape again.
As soon as she’d wrapped herself in the security of the thought, an unearthly cry sliced through the air, cutting out the best efforts of sea and sky. Annie started up in alarm, was aware of Jennifer beside her, face ashen. She spun round to the source of the noise. Mally stood alone, pose rigid as though paralyzed in some bizarre act of pagan worship, eyes turned skywards, arms and hands raised twisted, clutching an invisible foe. The only movement was in her face that contorted as she let out scream after scream.
CHAPTER 29
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sp; ANNIE WATCHED AS people rushed towards Mally. After her first shock, she stopped and allowed her mind to remember. Everything. Details matter.
The sodden form of Kay, leading an equally sodden Boxer, plodded across her line of sight. Someone she didn’t recognize strode up to take the pair in hand. Annie looked round for Laura and saw her sitting on the grass, as oblivious as Kay to the shrieks that rent the night air. She walked over to her.
‘Come on, Laura. Let’s get to the road and find somewhere warm.’
Laura allowed herself to be raised to her feet. Annie supported the shivering girl and led her back towards civilization.
She reflected later that it had not been by any plan on her part. It was the detail that teemed in her mind, the things she had to get straight. And because in the end these had drawn her to Laura and not to Mally, the sight that greeted the Tunbridges as they leapt from their car almost before it had skidded to a halt on the verge, was of their daughter being led out of the hellhole with Annie at her side, arms wrapped protectively around her. In the mêlée that followed, the hugs, the gasps over Laura, Annie felt her hands wrung and her shoulders squeezed as expressions of gratitude tumbled out. She knew she had her third case. Vince would be furious.
In the rush of emotion with which Laura and her parents collided, Mrs Tunbridge grabbed her daughter. ‘Oh Laura … how … what … where…?’
Laura gabbled out her own confused account in a torrent of words, as events teetered back towards equilibrium. Annie stayed at the periphery of the family group and listened intently.
After the day that Laura had seen Terry Martin in Mally’s house with Charles Tremlow and heard their conversation, she’d taken special note of what went on there. Because she and Mally had been at loggerheads over the cheating at the Showcross, she hadn’t shared what she’d overheard, but the track at the bottom of the crescent was a bridleway, a popular route for the girls on their ponies. Laura had seen smoke from the chimney of the Fletchers’ house and gone round later to investigate. Back doors were rarely locked in Milesthorpe, not even the colonel’s daughter’s with the comatose victims inside. Laura had sneaked in unnoticed the first time and although she’d missed the horrors that lay in the garage, had recognized the scorched half page and pulled it from the grate. She’d decided to copy it through a fax machine.