by C. J. Tudor
“Wrigley?”
The distinct sound of glass breaking. She jumps.
“Wrigley?”
She pounds down the stairs, taking them two at a time. At the bottom, she flicks the phone flashlight on. She points it around. She can’t see Wrigley. And then she can’t see anything as someone grabs her from behind and yanks a sack over her head.
“Hope you don’t mind me dropping by?”
Joan places two cups of coffee on the kitchen table in front of us.
“And distracting me from an exciting evening of Coronation Street? No, dear, I don’t.”
I smile and reach for my coffee. “Thanks.”
I had debated with myself about driving over, but when Joan opened the door she didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“So, any more news on the body in the vault?”
“Reverend Rushton knew about the vault, but not the body. He accepted donations from the Harpers to cover it up.”
Her lips purse and then she sighs. “That surprises me less than it should.”
“Why?”
“Reverend Rushton doesn’t like to rock the boat. His first thought is always to protect the church, and himself.”
I sip my coffee. “I think Marsh knew about Grady’s body, maybe even hid it there.”
“I see.”
“You still don’t sound shocked.”
“Well, there can’t have been many people who knew about the existence of the vault or had easy access to it. The real question is: what would drive a devoted minister to hide a dead body—and, of course, who killed Grady?”
That is the question. And one I can’t answer. Not yet.
She smiles. “There’s something else?” she asks.
“I wanted to show you this.”
I take Flo’s photos of the derelict house out of my pocket and spread them out on the table.
Joan stares at them. Her face seems to pale a little.
“Who took these?”
“My daughter, Flo.”
“That’s the old Lane house. Where Merry lived. You should tell your daughter to stay away from that place.”
“I’m surprised it’s never been sold.”
“Well, legally, Merry’s mother still owns it. But I think after a certain period of time it’s possible to lay claim to an abandoned property. Mike Sudduth and his wife were looking into it, but then they lost their daughter and it all fell through. More recently, I think Simon Harper has made some claim on the place.”
“Really?”
“He’s never one to miss a money-making opportunity. The house is in a prime position, plenty of land. I imagine his long-term aim would be to knock it down and sell the land to developers—and maybe that would be for the best.”
I slide the photos to one side and slip out the final one, capturing the figure standing between the woods and the broken-down wall, staring toward the house. I tap it with my finger.
“Look familiar?”
She squints at the photo. Her wispy white eyebrows rise. “Interesting. And odd. It’s not easy to get to the Lane house. Simon Harper put up new fencing and gates at the entrance from the road, to stop teenagers going up there. The only other way is up through the woods and fields behind the chapel. You don’t pass casually by.”
I look back at the photo. That’s what I thought. Of course, there are innocent reasons why someone might be there. An interest in old buildings, perhaps? But something about it niggles at me.
“What are you thinking?” Joan asks.
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m picking up breadcrumbs to see if I can make a loaf.”
“And how’s that going?”
“At the moment—I’m a sandwich short of a picnic.”
“Have you spoken to Saffron yet?”
I shake my head. “No. I sent her a message, but she hasn’t replied.”
“She’s quite a private person.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“No. She didn’t come to Matthew’s funeral. I presumed she was too upset.”
I swig my coffee. I’m not convinced that speaking to Saffron will get me anywhere. On the other hand, if I do speak to her, at least I can tell myself I’ve followed every crumb and, if I’m still no closer to the gingerbread house, then maybe it’s time to get the hell out of the woods.
I look at Joan. “I don’t suppose you happen to know where she lives?”
She smiles again. “Well, funny you should ask.”
She can’t breathe. The hood is thick and coarse and stinks of hay and manure. It’s been pulled tight around her neck. Hands grab her wrists before she has a chance to fight back, snapping a plastic tie around them. Panic bubbles in her throat. She tries to summon up what she learned in self-defense, but that’s okay when you’re facing your attacker with all your limbs in play. When you’re ambushed, blind, struggling to breathe, you’re helpless.
Someone pushes her roughly forward.
“Let me go,” she tries to shout, but the sack suffocates her words.
Keep calm, she tells herself. Remember, if you can’t fight, try to gain knowledge of your attacker and your surroundings till you get a chance to escape. Try and work out what’s going on. She is being pushed out of the cottage. That means her attacker probably isn’t going to rape her. Why take her outside for that? So, what’s going on, and where’s Wrigley?
“Move,” a male voice hisses. A familiar voice? Maybe. She can’t be totally sure with the hood over her head. It muffles everything.
Another shove, and she stumbles forward.
“What are you doing?” she pants, trying to get him to speak again, to confirm her suspicions. Know your attacker. That way you have a better chance of either reasoning with them or finding a weak spot.
“You’ll see.”
A shove so hard that she almost trips over the tangled weeds of the garden.
“Wrigley!” she yells through the sack. “Where are you?”
“Flo,” a strangled voice cries in return, from somewhere ahead, to her right. “Over here.”
“Shut up,” a second voice snaps. A female voice. And now she’s sure she knows who their attackers are. Rosie and Tom. She’s just not sure if that makes things better, or worse.
“Please.” She tries to keep her voice calm, reasonable. “This is enough. You scared us. Now just let us go.”
“Oh, you’re going. Down the well.”
Oh God. Jesus. Panic coats her body in sweat. “Are you insane?”
“Scared, Vampirina?” Rosie’s voice, closer now.
“Please, don’t.”
“Say bye to your boyfriend.”
She hears scuffling. A struggle. And then a scream. Panicked, primal. It rises high into the night air and then falls away to silence.
“WRIGLEY!”
“One down,” Tom chuckles.
She tries to struggle, digging in her heels, pushing back against the sturdy body behind her. But then another set of hands grabs her and shoves her forward and she can’t fight against two of them. She feels the toes of her Docs stub the stone lip of the well. They really are going to do this. She closes her eyes, bracing for the fall.
“NOOOOO!”
The roar comes out of nowhere. Angry, animalistic. Heavy feet pound the ground.
“What the fuck?”
“Run!”
She’s shoved roughly to one side. She trips, losing her balance. Unable to put her hands out, she hits the ground hard, the side of her head smacking into the earth, dazing her. She lies on the scrubby grass, breathing hard, disoriented.
Have Rosie and Tom gone? She tries to push herself up and then she hears someone approaching again. Dry grass crunches underfoot. She tenses as the person crouches down next to her. They radiate a hot,
dank heat and smell bad. Really bad. Sweat, alcohol and something else, kind of sickly sweet and rotten. Oh God. Has she been left here to meet an even worse fate?
“Don’t move.”
The man’s voice is gruff, with the hint of a northern accent. She feels him grab her wrists. And then there’s a snap as the bindings on her hands are released.
“Stay there. Count to ten. Then take the hood off.”
She counts to thirty, just to be sure. Then she slowly sits up and tugs the sack off her head. Weakness washes over her. She feels dizzy and sick. She leans over and retches. Then she looks around. The garden is empty. No sign of Rosie and Tom. Or her rescuer.
Her heart is pounding. She wouldn’t be surprised if she had peed her pants a little. Fear. Like she had never known. Not even when she saw the burning girls. She thought she was going down the well. She thought she might die. Wrigley.
She scrambles over to the well’s open mouth. “Wrigley!!”
Her own voice echoes back. Christ. Is he down there? Is he even alive?
She fumbles in her jeans pocket for the phone and flicks on the flashlight. She points it down the well. It’s not strong enough to illuminate all the way down, but she thinks she can just make out a shadow.
And then, weakly, croakily, she hears his voice:
“Flo?”
“Oh, thank God. Are you hurt?”
“My ankle’s busted, but otherwise I’m okay.”
Christ. Talk about miracles.
“Jesus. You could have broken your neck. Fucking psychos.”
“I know. What happened? Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. Someone…scared them off. Maybe a tramp or something?”
“Shit.”
“Look, I’m going to call for help. Just hang tight, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She smiles through the fear.
“Flo?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“There’s something down here, with me.”
“What? Spiders? Rats?”
“No. I think it’s…a body.”
Never have children, a friend once told me. Not if you want to finish a cup of coffee, get to see the end of a film or enjoy a full night’s sleep ever again.
It’s not just the first few months, when you hover over their cot, listening to check that they’re still breathing. Nor the toddler years, when you turn away for a second to find them launching themselves off the back of the sofa at an open window, or even the school years, full of friendships, fallouts and first loves.
It’s the years when they’re teenagers and you’re waiting for them to get home safely, knowing you need to give them their independence, knowing you can’t clip their wings, telling yourself that the reason you can’t get hold of them is because they’re having too much fun, not that they’re lying dead in an alley somewhere. Praying you never get that call…
My mobile trills in my pocket. I’ve only just got back home, after deciding not to visit Saffron Winter tonight. I’m still holding my car keys. I pull my phone out and stare at the screen. Unknown number. Another one? I press accept.
“Hello?”
“Hello, am I speaking to Reverend Brooks?”
A young male voice, polite, officious. Police. My body goes limp.
“Yes.”
“My name is PC Ackroyd—”
“What’s happened? Is it my daughter? Is it Flo?”
“There’s nothing to panic about, ma’am.”
“I’m not panicking. I’m asking a question.”
“Your daughter is fine, but there has been an incident.”
“What sort of incident?”
“Your daughter and her boyfriend have been victims of an assault.”
“An assault? Jesus. Is she injured or—”
“No, no. She’s not injured, just a little shaken up, but if you could come and pick her up.”
“From the youth club—”
“No.” A note of puzzlement. “The old Lane house, off Merkle Road. Do you know it?”
The Lane house. I grip the phone so tightly I’m surprised the casing doesn’t crack. “I know it. I’m on my way.”
* * *
—
I bump the car up a rutted track that has obviously not been used in years and screech to a halt outside the derelict house. The gate is open, the padlock hanging off. The place buzzes with frenetic activity.
Two police cars and a Scientific Support van are parked outside. Blue lights illuminate the darkness. I can see people in uniforms and, once again, more people in white suits. Behind the house, floodlights are being set up. It seems a lot of activity for an assault. My panic notches up.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” A uniformed police officer approaches.
“I’m Reverend Jack Brooks. I’m looking for my daughter, Flo.”
“Oh yes. I’m PC Ackroyd. She’s just over here.”
He leads me around the side of the van. Flo is perched in the back of a police car, door open, legs outside, wrapped in a silver foil blanket.
“Oh my God. Flo.”
I run over. She stands and hugs me, tears starting to well. “I’m sorry.”
I smooth her hair. “I’m just glad you’re safe. What happened?”
She looks down. I see guilt writ large across her pale face.
“Wrigley and I—we arranged to meet up here tonight.”
Wrigley. Goddamn Wrigley. I will kill that boy.
“So you never went to the youth club?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
I bite back the anger. “We’ll talk about it later. Go on.”
“We were in the house, upstairs, when I heard a noise, and Wrigley went to look and he didn’t come back, so I went to find him and that’s when someone pulled this bag over my head and tied my arms.”
“Oh God.” I feel sick. “You didn’t see who?”
She shakes her head.
“They didn’t do anything else—”
“No, Mum. Nothing like that. They just shoved me outside into the garden.”
“Where was Wrigley?”
“They must have grabbed him first. I heard a scream and that’s when they pushed him into the well. They were going to do the same to me, but then there was this man. He just came out of nowhere and scared them off. He released my wrists, but when I pulled the sack off, he was gone again.”
“So you didn’t see who attacked you or who rescued you?”
“No.”
“What about Wrigley?”
“He didn’t see anything either.”
“Where is he?”
“They checked him over, to make sure he hadn’t broken his ankle. Then the paramedics dropped him home.”
A shame. I was planning on breaking his neck.
“And you don’t have any idea who your attackers were?”
A hesitation. She twists the hem of her vest top.
“Flo,” I say. “If you have any suspicions, you have to tell the police. You could both have been killed.”
“I know, and I have told them but—” I see her wrestle with it and sigh. “I don’t know for sure it’s them.”
“Who?”
“Rosie and Tom.”
“Rosie Harper?”
“Yeah.”
I feel the rage surge so fast and hard I think I’ll lose it. The façade I work so hard to maintain will just shatter, like volcanic lava bursting through its crust. I clench my fists tight.
“I will kill her.”
“What about forgiveness?”
“I’ll forgive her and then I’ll kill her.”
“I’m sorry, Mum. Really.”
“I know.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Of course I’m mad. I’m mad you lied. I’m mad you went somewhere I would have told you not to.” I sigh. “But all I really care about is that you are safe. I know there’s stuff you don’t want to talk to me about. I know even mentioning sex to your mum is embarrassing and gross, especially when your mum is a vicar—”
“And yet, here you go.”
“But I just want you to know that I’m here if you do want to talk, and I will never judge and—”
“I get it, Mum. But just for the record, that’s not what we went there to do. It was just, like, a date.”
“A date?”
“Yes.”
“So why not go to a café, or the cinema or…oooh, I don’t know, the youth club?”
She gives me a caustic look. “Have you ever thought that maybe it’s difficult for Wrigley, with his condition?”
“Fair enough, but there are safer places to hang out than a deserted, derelict house in the middle of the woods. Have you not seen Evil Dead?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well, maybe another night.”
“We just wanted to be alone.”
“Right.”
“Do you want me to stop seeing him?”
Yes.
“No. But I do want you to be honest with me. No more secrets.”
She stares at me, and for a moment, I think she is going to demand the same in return, and that’s a whole other can of rotten worms.
“Okay.” She nods.
“Okay.” I hug her tight. “And I wish you had told me before about Rosie and Tom.”
“I thought I could handle it.”
“Well, the police can deal with them now.”
“Excuse me?”
I turn. The same plainclothes detective from yesterday—Derek—is hovering. “Erm…Reverend Brooks?”
“DI Derek.” I hold out my hand and he shakes it.
“Are we all right here?”
“Yes. Flo was just explaining what happened.”
“Right. Good. Well, we’ve taken a statement. We may need to ask some more questions later, but you can take Flo home for now.”