by Louise Voss
Gemma heard Lincoln whistle with incredulity. ‘Good grief. This is astonishing. Do you believe her?’
‘I think so, boss. Obviously we need to bring her in, but she was clearly very fond of the man.’
‘Do you think it was some sort of sex game that went wrong?’
‘I don’t think it was anything to do with the sex,’ Gemma said. ‘Though I suppose we can’t rule it out. If she did strangle him while they were shagging, she’d have to be stronger than she looks.’
‘And if she was all that fond of him, why did she just leave his body in there?’ Lincoln mused.
‘She wasn’t going to, she said.’ Gemma glanced over her shoulder back at the house, hoping Meredith couldn’t hear her. It was so deathly quiet in these hills, sound must carry for miles. She walked a little further away, into a large walled vegetable garden – huge beds of netted strawberry plants, their delicate foliage in stark contrast with the obscenely broad leaves of the pinkening rhubarb stems in the neighbouring beds. The smell of warm fruit was intoxicating.
Gemma gave a start when she saw a figure crouching over one of the far beds. Then she realised the person was in the green uniform of Minstead House’s gardening team, and they were pulling weeds out from around what looked like carrots. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, but they showed no signs of having noticed or overheard her, so she paced in the opposite direction.
‘She rang her brother in a panic. He told her to stay put till he got there, and then they’d go back; pretend to discover Allerton “by chance” and call the police. But when they went back to the ice house, he was gone.’
‘Right,’ Lincoln said. ‘I’ll meet you at the station in an hour. We’ll interview her. Let’s get all the CCTV from inside the house that day, as well as any in the grounds near the ice house. I’ll get someone stationed over there twenty-four/seven; it’s a new crime scene. I don’t want any gap in the evidence chain, now we’ve finally got one. Oh, and Gemma?’
‘Sir?’
‘Nice work, getting her to tell you that.’
Gemma returned to the cottage, her cheeks flushed the same pink as the rhubarb at DI Lincoln’s praise.
Meredith was still sitting in the same position in the kitchen, her arms hanging uselessly by her sides, looking more like an old woman than she ever had before. The stew was still bubbled gently on the Aga’s hotplate, the soft plopping sounds somehow comforting.
She touched Meredith’s shoulder gently.
‘OK Meredith, we’re going to have to go to the station – but I think you should eat something first. You’ve made this lovely stew, and all that’ll be on offer down there will be some dodgy sandwiches.’
‘I’m not hungry now,’ Meredith said, in a dull monotone.
‘I’m sure. I’m not really either – but let’s try. Just a small amount. You sit there, I’ll sort it.’
Gemma took two glasses down from a shelf and ran the tap to fill them with cold water, thinking how glad she was that she hadn’t succumbed to the sneaky glass of Rioja she’d been tempted by just half an hour ago. Imagine Lincoln smelling it on her breath! She glanced at Meredith’s wineglass – it didn’t look like she’d downed any more since Gemma had been on the phone to Lincoln. That was good. It would be far from ideal if Meredith was under the influence when interviewed.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ Meredith’s voice was tiny and thin.
‘You’re not under arrest so, no, not unless you want one. We just need to get a proper record of what happened, on tape. OK?’
‘OK.’
There were oven gloves on a hook near the Aga, so Gemma slotted one hand into each end, lifting the heavy iron pot off the stove and placing it on a mat on the table. Steam rushed out in a thick cloud when she took off the lid, and the smell of the succulent meat made her mouth water. She ladled a couple of spoonfuls into two bowls and handed one to Meredith, who merely gazed at it as if she didn’t know what she was meant to do with it.
As Gemma hung the gloves back up, something else glove-related occurred to her:
‘Can I ask you a slightly personal question, Meredith?’
Meredith shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
‘Your scar … I know Mark asked you about it before, but it’s obvious that you’re self-conscious about it. How come you don’t wear gloves? Wouldn’t that be easier for you than people staring at it all the time?’
As if to demonstrate, Meredith slid her damaged hand under her buttock on the chair; an instinctive movement.
‘I used to,’ she said, quietly. ‘When I first got the job here. It’s hard to hide it when you work in a shop. But one glove makes you look like a weirdo – I kept getting comments about Michael Jackson, or people just outright sniggered. Two gloves isn’t much better – not to mention just being totally impractical. You can’t use a phone, wash your hands, type – none of the things I need to do a lot of the time…’
She paused, pulled out her hand and studied the scar, turning her hand this way and that as the steam from the bowls gradually died down.
‘I thought I’d get used to it, but I never have. I did plan to have reconstructive surgery – you know, a skin graft – but once I took the job here, I never got round to it, I suppose. I just learned to block out the sight of it; and I do, most of the time.’
Gemma took a seat at the table with her, digging a fork into the stew and blowing on it before putting it in her mouth. It tasted as delicious as it had smelled.
‘I know what happened; how you got it,’ she said carefully. It felt the right time, having broached the subject already.
Meredith’s head jerked up. ‘How?’
‘I did a search for your name on the General Registry – sorry, our database – and saw the report about the attack on you. I’m so sorry, Meredith; it sounds like a horrific experience. A terrible thing to happen to you.’
Meredith sat completely still, glassy-eyed, and Gemma felt it would be insensitive to take another mouthful of the stew. She gently picked up Meredith’s fork and placed it into her hand. ‘Please, try and eat if you can.’
‘I don’t want anyone to know,’ Meredith blurted eventually. ‘It would be in the papers. I couldn’t bear it all being raked up again, when I did everything to avoid people knowing last time.’
39
1995
Meredith
Someone was actually trying to get into my bedroom; a real-life horror movie. I’d locked the door, but as the intruder pushed I didn’t trust the lock to hold. I wedged the rubber door stop in the gap under the door, screaming as loudly as I could.
That was when it all kicked off. The intruder shoved and rattled the door, hard this time. I rammed my foot up against the doorstop to prevent it slipping, but the person on the other side was now banging on the door panels. Why, why hadn’t I put in an alarm the day I moved in? A panic button? A sturdy bolt as well as the lock and key? My telephone was on the bedside table on the far side of the bed. I had a choice – either lunge for it now and call 999, or keep my bodyweight against the door in case the lock gave way.
My elderly neighbours were all deaf, and although the houses were terraced, they were so solidly built that no noise leached through the walls. I screamed more loudly though, just in case someone heard through the window. But my bedroom was at the back of the house, not over the street.
I was wearing flowery cotton pyjamas. I remembered looking down at them and having the inane thought: I couldn’t be murdered wearing flowery cotton pyjamas, I just couldn’t.
The intruder kicked the door with all his force, splintering the bottom panel. With a jerk of shock I saw a huge black boot briefly appear through the hole, then withdraw. Then, worse, a black-gloved hand shot through and grabbed me in an iron-pincerlike grip around my calf, crushing the cotton flowers. When I tried to disengage it, his other hand reached through the hole too, and then he had my arm.
‘Unlock this fucking door right now and stop screaming,’ he hisse
d, ‘otherwise you’re a dead woman.’
I struggled but I felt like a car in a scrapyard being lifted in metal jaws, about to be crushed. He had pulled my arm through the hole, up to my shoulder, and was now twisting it backwards, threatening to dislocate it.
‘Open. The. Door.’
‘What do you want?’ I gasped in agony, as a stream of warm urine gushed down my inner thigh and puddled on the wooden floor. ‘Please stop.’
‘Do as I say, bitch,’ he ordered, ‘or I’ll snap your arm in two.’
‘I can’t reach the key unless you let me go,’ I screamed, and he released his grip enough to allow me to twist around, but kept tight hold on my wrist.
What should I do? I had no choice. I had to open it. If I didn’t, he’d destroy the door completely and break my arm. There was nowhere to run apart from into the bathroom, which didn’t have any lock on the door. My phone was out of reach. Perhaps if I just gave him my jewellery and the stack of notes I kept hidden at the back of my knicker drawer, he’d go away.
Or should I just jump through the window and take my chances? No, too risky; I’d land on the flagstoned patio and probably break my neck.
I grabbed hold of the rubber doorstop and unlocked and opened the ruined door, feeling like I’d just sealed my own fate. He let go of me, just for a moment, and I pulled my arm back through the hole, pain shooting up into my neck and through my shoulder. I turned to run, planning to barricade myself inside my ensuite bathroom with the doorstop; the door of that was more solid than the original pine panelled bedroom one. But I didn’t take more than two paces before he was on me, shoving me face-down on the bed and twisting my arm up behind my back – the arm he’d already hurt. My screams were muffled by the duvet.
I’d caught a glimpse of a well-built, featureless figure: he was wearing a balaclava – not a standard-issue, ghoul-rapists black one, but bizarrely, one in dark autumnal stripes of russet, brown and green. Like someone’s nan had knitted it. A nightmare personified, nonetheless.
‘This will be so much easier if you fucking cooperate.’ His voice was a weird combination of gruff and simultaneously high, for a man; at odds with his muscled frame.
‘I will,’ I mumbled, above the sound of the shriek of pain from my shoulder. The foxes had nothing on me. ‘Take whatever you want. I’ll tell you where it is.’
‘Just you.’ Then I heard the rip of gaffer tape being detached and he rolled me over, securing my arms together at the front and taping them together at the wrists. Next my head was pulled forwards off the mattress so he could wrap the tape round and round, covering my mouth. In his haste and my fight, at first he managed to cover my nose too, and I had to vigorously shake my head, trying to make him see that I’d actually die before he could do whatever the hell he wanted me to cooperate with. He must have seen me starting to turn blue, and pulled it down, away from my nostrils, kneeling astride me as he did so. He was wearing a massive, bulky waterproof black coat thing; I remember it rustled whenever he moved. He smelled of sweat and engine oil and just a whiff of patchouli.
When he knelt over me I assumed that was it: he was going to rape me.
But he didn’t.
No grinding or grabbing. Instead he yanked me up by the elbow and frogmarched me to the wrecked door. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
As he dragged me down the stairs, fighting as much as I could, given my bound arms – why could nobody hear? – I had a fleeting thought, clear and sharp in the panic soup of my brain, of Keats’ ‘iced foot on the bottom stair’. It was from that poem I did for A level English, the one that reminded me of Dad’s death. I hadn’t thought of it for decades, but as I saw my own bare feet stumbling and sliding, I knew it was because I was facing my own point of no return; my very own descent into oblivion.
He bundled me, resisting all the way, out of the jemmied-open kitchen door, down the garden and out to the dark street via the alleyway. I struggled, but his meaty arms were firm around my waist, the wet-wool stink of his breath in my face. There was a Luton van backed up at the end of the alley. He pulled open the rear shutter just enough to get me inside, lifting me off my feet and stuffing me through the gap and into its black maw, then climbing in after me and slamming the door back down. Surely my neighbours would hear that? It was such a loud, metallic crashing sound, like someone hitting saucepans with metal serving spoons.
Even now, the sound of the shutter door at the rear of a van, any van, going up or down makes me weak with terror. I have to sit down and jam my head between my knees to stop myself fainting, no matter where I am. On the kerb, or the middle of the car park, if there’s nowhere else. In my mind it has become conflated with another, long-ago sound; the metal shutters across the windows of the record shop in Salisbury. I’ve always thought that was a shame. I’d liked that job, working with little hippie Caitlin and grumpy Alaric. Now the memory of it is ruined, in a jumble of other bad stuff, like Dad dying, what happened with Samantha, falling out with Pete. That grinding, shuddering sound would forever confuse and shut me down.
As I lay panting with shock, the floor cold and smooth beneath my right hip and shoulder, I felt my ankle being yanked, then encircled in cold metal – handcuffs, with a chain welded to one half. The other end of the chain was attached to a metal ring, and I had a mental flash of a defeated, bow-backed donkey chained to a fence. Why was the floor so smooth and slippery beneath me? It wasn’t like the rough floor of a normal van.
It took me a moment to realise I was lying on thick plastic sheeting. Oh Jesus, oh God, I knew what that was for; it was so my guts wouldn’t stain his van.
He heaved himself in, the engine juddering into life with the turn of the ignition key. The radio came on at the same time – some sort of hideous techno – quiet at first, then he turned it up, presumably once we were out of my street. It seemed to represent my panic. I tried to force myself to breathe deeply, to listen to the music and subsume myself into it, use it like mental blotting paper to soak up the terror.
He drove for some time – twenty minutes, half an hour? I couldn’t tell, and couldn’t see my watch. I was freezing cold in my PJs, with a soaked crotch and piss-stained legs. I could smell my own urine, further soured with fear, and my shivers had turned into shudders that convulsed me as I lay on the slippery van floor in a foetal position, convinced I had just minutes to live.
If I survived, I vowed to make up with Pete. Fresh tears rose in my eyes at a brief mental flash of throwing myself into his embrace. The scent of urine was replaced, just for a second, by a memory of the smell of home: woodsmoke and Dad’s pipe – which, in my fevered, sentimental imagination still lingered all these years after he’d gone; Pete’s teenage aftershave; Mum’s gentle lavender. Oh God, please, I prayed. Please let me see Pete again. It seemed so trivial now, and me so stubborn. I’d treated him badly, him and Mum. No wonder they’d been angry with me for just walking out on my family, leaving Pete to pick up the pieces, too arrogant to think it mattered, too traumatised by Dad’s death to think about anyone else’s feelings.
Family was all that mattered. And now I’d never get the chance to tell him that.
Eventually the van came to an abrupt stop, somewhere so silent that my ears rang with it after the techno and engine noise. Door opening again. Heavy footsteps. Shutter up.
‘I have to do this, Merry,’ he said as he hauled himself in and put a hurricane lamp in the corner, his weird, high voice indistinct behind the hot, damp wool of the stripy balaclava. The emphasis on my stage name sounded mocking, full of intent.
He pulled the shutter back down again, sealing us in this windowless Tardis of torture. When he turned around I saw he was holding a knife so long and sharp-looking that I almost fainted.
‘Why?’ I tried to say through my tape gag and the encroaching blackness, but it just came out as a moan. I had backed myself into the corner, my knees hugged to my chest, the metal ring pressing into the small of my back, instinctively and pointlessly trying to make my
self as small as possible. I didn’t want to die here, not in this cold metal box, with the lamp casting menacing shadows in the van’s interior and making the knife’s blade flash. He was actually waving it around, as if he’d seen too many martial arts movies, like the crazy person he must be. But he couldn’t be that crazy, surely; were full-on mad people capable of buying or hiring vans, working out how to get into my house, how to get me out without anybody seeing, all the logistics that must have been involved? He knew my name, so it must have been premeditated.
Much later, I wondered if the waving around of the knife was some kind of prevarication. He didn’t seem to hate me, particularly; at least not until he dragged me out of the corner of the van by my wrists as far as the chain would reach, and repeatedly kicked me in the kidneys and spine until I felt like my body was a sack filled with shards of vertebrae and feared I’d never walk again. I couldn’t believe my back wasn’t broken.
‘You had it coming, you bitch,’ he said almost casually, his voice mean, although not angry. Then he stopped, took one step towards me, raised the knife up high, and held it with both hands, like a sacrificial sword. I put my own bound hands in front of my face to protect me, looking desperately from side to side to see where I could escape to – somewhere to roll out of his reach – but there was nowhere to go, and my back was too sore to move anyway. For a moment I thought this was it, it was all over. I closed my eyes, not even realising that it was me making the high-pitched squealing sound that was all I could manage inside the gag.
Then, out of nowhere, a banging, and a quavery but firm voice from outside of the van: ‘Everything all right in there? What’s going on? I’m going to go and telephone the police!’
My attacker brought the knife down towards me, full force. The voice must have thrown him, though, because the knife missed whatever target he’d been aiming at – eye, throat, heart? Instead he caught my hand, the knife striking and breaking the bone leading to my middle finger, then slipping between that bone and the next, my ring fingerbone.
