by Jane Holland
‘I will be in a few minutes,’ I say. ‘And I need to do my teeth. Count to, I don’t know, fifty, then let him in.’
As soon as the door closes on my father, I pull my PJ top over my head and finish dressing. Jeans first. Then a black vest top, in need of a little ironing. It’s the first thing to hand, so on it goes.
In the bathroom, I use the toilet, then brush my teeth and rinse out. I don’t bother with earrings or make-up. I’ve been signed off work for a week, and besides, it’s not going to be that sort of day. But I drag a brush through my hair, since this is Tris, glad that I took ten minutes to shower when I finally got home last night, and am just beginning to feel awake when I hear him coming up the stairs.
‘Ellie?’
I throw open the bathroom door.
Tris is standing outside on the landing, looking haggard, his hands in his jeans pockets. I see the pain and loss and fear in his eyes, and understand what he’s feeling because I’m feeling it too. Except that I’ve pushed it aside for now so I can deal with what’s next. There just isn’t time to break down. There will be time later, but I can’t let any of that pain happen yet or it will rip me apart.
‘Hannah,’ I whisper.
He gives a jerk of his head. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I was told she swam over to help me, and must have been caught by the riptide.’
‘There was so much going on. We realised you had disappeared, so we all swam back. Connor was there. Denzil too, at one point. Everyone was shouting and diving down to see if they could find you. Then the lifeguards came out on their dinghy. It was chaotic.’ He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t notice she wasn’t there until we followed the dinghy back to shore. Then Connor said, where’s Hannah? And I couldn’t even remember where I had last seen her.’
I touch his face. He’s trembling. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Whose then?’
‘No one’s fault. You know that.’ I touch his forehead. ‘You know that here.’
‘She was such an experienced swimmer.’
‘It happens even to the best. The currents round the north coast are treacherous. We all know that.’
‘But Hannah … ’ His voice chokes. ‘Why?’
I lean against his broad chest, listening to the muffled beat of his heart. I loved Hannah too. Fiercely and forever. But I’m thinking, not now, not this. We have to move on, and come back to Hannah later. I decide to let him have the moment though. It will comfort both of us.
He takes an unsteady breath. ‘And I almost lost you too.’
‘Except you didn’t. I’m still here.’
He makes an abrupt noise under his breath, then seeks my mouth. I let him kiss me. My hands cup his face as we kiss. I feel stubble along his jaw, and imagine him pacing about outside the cottage since first light, probably.
‘Did you come on the quad bike? With the trailer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, you can give me a lift.’
He draws back, frowning. ‘Where to? Shouldn’t you be resting?’
‘I can rest later. There’s something I need to do first.’ I head into my room to grab a jacket, and see the long dark coat hanging over the open wardrobe door. ‘Whose is this, do you know? I came home in it last night.’
He looks at it hesitantly. ‘That’s mine.’
‘Yours?’
Again Tris hesitates. Then he nods, and says, ‘Yeah, it used to belong to my dad. It’s usually kept in the back of the car. When they brought you up the beach to the lifeguard’s hut, you were shivering. I ran to the car for a blanket to wrap around you, and found that instead. Not that you needed a coat. The lifeguards had foil and blankets in the dinghy, and then the paramedics arrived. But I left it with you, just in case.’
‘Thanks,’ I say softly.
‘You’re welcome. It was the least I could do.’ He takes the coat from me, running a hand over the black wool mix, shiny where the fabric is worn, and then lays it carefully over his arm. ‘I’ll take it home with me later.’
‘No,’ I say, holding out my hand for it, ‘let me wear the coat, it will save you carrying it. I want to go home with you anyway.’
He hands the coat back blankly. ‘You want to come to our place?’
‘That okay?’
‘Sure,’ he agrees. ‘I was just wondering why.’
Because I want to look round your farm to see if Jenny is being held there by your late father, who may have risen from the grave as a zombie killer.
‘I want to talk to Connor. To thank him for helping to save my life yesterday.’
I shrug into the long dark coat, loving the way the sleeves are slightly too long for my arms, and it falls almost to my knees. A bit too heavy for a summer’s day, but maybe I’m in need of a little warmth today. I think of Hannah, and hold back the brimming grief with difficulty.
‘Come on,’ I say huskily, ‘let’s go.’
We head down the stairs, and as we descend, I glance up at the closed door of Hannah’s room. I can still smell her perfume on the air.
‘Shit,’ I mutter.
He turns at the bottom of the stairs. ‘What?’
‘My phone.’ I make a face. ‘I left it in my room. Go on, turn the bike round. I’ll tell my dad I’m going out, and join you outside in a minute.’
He says nothing, but carries on outside while I run back upstairs.
To my surprise, I can’t take the stairs two-at-a-time as usual, and find myself breathless at the top. But the doctor did say I might find my strength and lung capacity would take a few days to return to normal. I did almost drown, after all, and should probably still be in hospital.
My phone is still on the bedside cabinet. I check it. No messages. No emails. No notifications. That has to be a first. But Patricia did promise the school would leave me to recover until I was ready to come back.
I slide my phone into the deep pocket of his old coat, enjoying the padded comfort and faint scent of his body still lingering on the dark wool. Then my fingers close around something hard and cold at the bottom of the pocket.
Frowning, I pull the object out of his coat pocket. It’s a school ID badge, precisely like my own, except this one is minus its blue-and-white striped lanyard.
Miss J. D. Crofter. Head of P.E. And there’s her miniature photograph. Smiling up at me, next to a barcode.
It’s sunny again, only a few soft clouds in the blue-chintz sky over the valley. A glorious day Hannah will never see. I take a deep breath, then pull the cottage door shut behind me. I’ve told my dad to go home to his caravan and get some sleep, that I don’t know when I’ll be back. I had to stop myself from saying, ‘if I’ll be back.’ What happens now is something I have to do alone. To alert the police would be to risk Jenny’s life, assuming she is still alive. This is my fault, has been my fault all along, and it’s up to me alone to finish it.
I look up, try to enjoy the sun on my face; there’s a dark irony to the way the weather has blessed us recently. The coat feels heavy on my shoulders now, too hot for the sunshine. But I keep it on. Like a penance for not seeing the pattern clearly until this moment.
Tris is waiting for me on the quad bike, the engine running, his right hand keeping the throttle open. ‘Hop in,’ he says, nodding to the small trailer behind.
I climb in easily, and grip the sides of the trailer as he accelerates down the lane. Sheep wool is snagged on the metal surround, and it smells of animals. I’m jolted up and down as he turns down towards the ford, clipping the verge on the sharp bend, but cling on stubbornly.
When we get to the battered old sign for Hill Farm, I shout, ‘Not here,’ over the noise of the engine, and he shifts in his seat to stare back at me. ‘Take me to the old mill.’
He stalls the engine, but does not restart it. ‘The old mill?’
‘Yes, I want to see it.’
‘I don’t think that�
�s such a good idea.’
‘Take me to the old mill, Tris,’ I tell him. ‘Or let me off here and I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
He hesitates. ‘Ellie, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Don’t bother. It’s over between us. It was over the minute Hannah died. Now take me to the old mill.’
He stares at me for a long moment, his eyes very dark. Then he faces front again. Pulls in the clutch, kicks down into first, and gets the bike going. We jolt off again like before. But the atmosphere between us has changed.
We head down past sloping fields in full sunlight. The grass in the lower meadows is ankle-high, dotted with patches of fresh green nettles and thistles, but will soon be cropped once the sheep are moved down from the hills. There is barely a breath of wind, and the mature oaks and beech trees that grow along the stream are hanging heavy with new foliage. It is an idyllic scene, and on any other day I would be enjoying it, admiring the beauty of the Cornish countryside.
But today is different.
I put my hand in the coat pocket, trace the rectangular plastic block of Jenny’s ID badge. I think of her talking to me in the gym, whistle dangling from a ribbon in her hand, her ID badge hanging round her neck on its lanyard.
Why did she go running in the woods again?
Was Jenny lured there by someone she knew and trusted? Someone she never thought would hurt her? Maybe two someones.
But surely she would not have worn her ID while out running, even if she had gone to the woods straight after work; she would have removed it in the car, perhaps, and put it where? On the passenger seat of her Renault? In the glove box? Either of those seems likely.
So how did it find its way into Tris’s pocket?
The track to the old mill is bumpy and overgrown with rough grass and brambles, but I can see where it has been used recently by a van, probably carrying a heavy load. The mud ruts are higher in places than others, fresh tyre marks carved out on the edge of some indents.
Tris stops the bike at one point and jumps down, leaving the engine running, to move aside a thick wire fence blocking the track. The roll of wire fencing delivered to the farm by Dick Laney, and that I helped him carry out of his van.
Tris climbs back into his seat, not looking at me, and kicks the quad bike into gear again.
Through thick undergrowth I catch a glimpse of high grey stone walls ahead. Then we round the bend in the track, the rhododendron bushes give way, and I see the whole house. It’s a disused mill house with water course running alongside, a lichened stone channel diverting water from the nearby stream, and a broken-down wheel still attached to the far wall, the wood cracked and rotten, spokes missing.
Like many Cornish buildings of its age, the mill was built hard against the slopes behind, providing some shelter from the winds that tear down off the moors in winter. That did not help the house escape decades of neglect though. The slate roof is sagging in several places, slates missing, and the walls are overgrown with greenery, nature attempting to take it over. Two narrow, ivy-thick window frames without any glass left yawn into a gloomy interior.
And there’s his dad’s old van, rusting near the front entrance. I see him glance at it before stopping the bike a few feet away.
The silence is deafening after he turns off the engine. Tris gets off the bike and stands there, watching me climb out of the trailer.
‘Dad had big plans to renovate this place,’ he says, turning to look up at the old building through narrowed eyes. ‘But he ran out of money. So it just sat here and rotted away. Like him.’
The place is perfect for a psycho killer’s lair, ruined and remote. It even has its own witch’s familiar. There’s a shabby black crow perched on the roof as we approach. It cocks its head, watching us with one ironic eye, then caws loudly and flies away into the trees.
‘You sure you want to do this, Ellie?’ he asks, looking back at me with an expression I don’t recognise.
‘No, but I’m going to anyway.’
He takes a deep breath, rather like I did on leaving the cottage, then walks round to the front of the old mill and stands there a moment, scanning the ivy-covered walls and broken windows. There is not a sound.
He cups his hands to his mouth. ‘Connor? Are you here, Connor?’ He waits, listening to the silence that follows his call, then rubs a hand across his forehead, closing his eyes.
‘Looks like we’re alone,’ I say.
He nods.
‘What now?’ I ask him.
Tris opens his eyes again, considers me in silence, then nods his head towards the back of the old mill.
‘Come on,’ he says heavily, ‘you want to see it, I’ll show you. But don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to turn back.’
His voice is bitter now too, like he hates me. Which perhaps he does. I remember us in bed together, and fight to block out that memory. The whole thing was an act, designed to draw me in. A honey trap, with him as the bait.
My head is a mess but I’m looking down on it from above, keeping a safe distance from the emotion. I let this man touch me, kiss me, even make love to me. I believed him, let him work his way into my heart. And he’s a stone-cold killer.
‘Lead on,’ I say.
We walk round the back of the old mill. It’s a large building and mostly in serious disrepair, though I can see where small efforts have been made to renovate parts of it. The traditional Cornish gardens are badly overgrown once we move away from the front of the house, all sprawling rhododendrons and palms and vast-leaved gunnera blocking out the sky, but there’s a path through wild, tangled shrubbery that Tris takes, hesitantly, looking back at me occasionally as though he expects me to change my mind at any moment.
Past the mill wheel, hidden away in the shadowy green light of the overgrown shrubs, there’s a crumbling flight of steps down to a trapdoor into a basement or cellar. The area must have flooded badly several times over the years. It’s boggy, pitted with marshy tracts bulging with reeds, almost more water than dry land. But either Tris or Connor has been hard at work, keeping the stream at bay with the sacks of soil and sand dutifully delivered by Dick Laney.
Tris leads me along an uneven pathway made of damp sandbags, and pauses just before the open trapdoor, staring down at the dark space of the cellar.
‘What’s down there?’ I demand.
He shakes his head.
‘What, you don’t know?’ My voice is bitter, laced with contempt. I’m burningly angry, and it’s showing. I pull the ID badge out of the coat pocket and hold it up, showing him. ‘I suppose you don’t know anything about this, either?’
He stares blankly. ‘What is that?’
I fight the urge to choke him to death with Jenny’s ID badge. ‘You should get a bloody Oscar. This is your coat, Tris. So explain to me how my friend’s ID badge got into your pocket, and use short words because I’m in a hurry.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Dick Laney didn’t murder those two women, did he? Or abduct Jenny. I have no idea why he confessed, though I have my suspicions. But the killer is someone completely different, isn’t he?’ I face him, my heart beating a tattoo in my chest, hard and fast. ‘Or perhaps I should say, aren’t they?’
His eyes fix on mine as though trying to gauge how serious I am, how much of a threat. Then he turns abruptly away, saying, ‘Okay, this has gone far enough. I’m taking you home.’
Coming behind him, I thrust my knee into the back of his, catching him in the vulnerable spot just below and to the outer side of his kneecap. Tris gives a gasp of pain, and his knee starts to fold. As he collapses, I dance away, grabbing his right arm, then use the momentum of his body as he crumples sideways to drag it behind his back, rendering him helpless.
The coat hampers me, which gives me a split-second of doubt. But he goes down anyway. It’s a textbook move I’ve demonstrated hundreds of times on a mat in a gym. It’s only now, kneeling above him, my knee set into
his back, holding him immobilised by twisting his arm, that I realise how deeply satisfying it is.
Tris grunts, heaves, struggles against the painful joint lock, then gives it up, breathing with heavy resentment beneath me.
‘Very wise of you,’ I say into his ear, leaning forward over his back.
He says nothing.
I can smell his aftershave, spicy, lingering on the air. Below the razored cut of his hair, the skin on the back of his neck is tinged faintly red. I feel a crazy impulse to kiss his neck but resist it. Any show of weakness now could be fatal.
I’m tall for a woman at five foot eight. Muscular too, what some people might call an athletic build. But Tris is easily six foot one, maybe two, and broad with it, a big man. So he has at least thirteen stone on my nine stone, eleven pounds. Possibly more. And I’ve brought him down with a basic Jujutsu grapple and joint lock.
Suddenly there’s a noise from somewhere inside the millhouse, and we both look round. A muffled echo, like a door banging shut. Or something heavy and metallic falling to the ground.
I look down at him, suddenly very still. ‘Now what was that, would you say?’
‘A rat,’ he says harshly.
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
‘Ellie, don’t.’
But I drag him up, and he does not resist, his face darkly flushed. With anger or shame, though?
‘Come on,’ I insist, ‘time to go rat-catching.’
I push him forward, foot by shuffling foot, towards the yawning black hole of the trapdoor, careful to keep his right arm twisted hard behind his back. I don’t intend to break it, but the pain and stress of that position should control him, keeping resistance to a minimum.
Once we’re standing on the lip, I see a flight of steps leading down into darkness. There’s a strange mechanical hum from below. Tris stiffens, listening to it too.
I nudge him forward until he’s standing on the top step.
‘You first, darling.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I watch him take the first few steps gingerly down into darkness. I follow, still attached to him, so close I can feel his body warmth, keeping his arm twisted behind his back like an umbilical between us.