Sylvia stepped back from the doorstep. “Well, I’ve never met the rich one.”
“Forget what I told you,” Peggy shut the door, but muttered through the last inch, “But I hope you find that poor little girl, Eve. And I hope she’s not dead.”
It was raining, just a light and chilly drizzle. Through the darkness, it spangled the cobwebs and dripped between the tree branches. Harry stood by the car, holding the door open for Sylvia. “I used to like walking in the rain,” he said. “Even when it poured. It felt like washing the brain. But not any more.”
“Hurry up and get in the car then,” said Sylvia as she climbed in.
But he stood a moment, gazing up at the muffled moon and letting the cold water slip over his face. “Perhaps I’m crazy,” he said, more to himself than to Sylvia. “Three completely different things and I haven’t got a clue about any of them. But finding Eve is probably the most urgent.” Then shook his head. “But that monster Sullivan may be after Sylvia and myself – defence comes first too.” He climbed in the car. “I need a drink.”
“You had one,” said Sylvia.
“A small white wine, since I’m driving. Darcey would never have offered me more.”
“I’ll make another hot toddy once we get home.”
In explaining the little she knew of her daughter’s disappearance, the desperate Mrs Daish had described her daughter as old for her seventeen years, and serious about her ambition to go to college and learn veterinary skills, sufficient for an assistant in the nearby clinic. But she had gone to a club one night, keen to dance off her own depression at having been dumped by her erstwhile boyfriend. Brian Orbos was a creep who had picked up another girl instead, telling Eve she was too academic.
So Eve had put on the sexiest clothes she owned and walked down to the nightclub ten or twelve streets away in Cheltenham, taking a small amount of money and a promise to be home early.
“She was never seen again. I mean, she will be because I know – she has to be alive. I’m her mother, and I know. I feel it. But it’s been three weeks. Even that nasty little creep Brian Orbos, and it was his fault in the first place, but he’s walked the whole county by now I think, just searching for Eve.”
Now Sylvia had three notebooks. ‘EVE,’ ‘SULLIVAN’ and ‘CHIMNEY’. There was not a great deal in any of these slim exercise books, but Eve was noted as ‘Average height, 5’4” – slim, pretty, long dark curls, brown eyes, no tattoos, clever, loves animals, doesn’t drink much. No drugs. Good girl.’
Harry found the Orbost boy. In a self-righteous but miserable Gloucester accent, he swore he hadn’t been at the club that night, knew nothing of anything, but had searched the roads between the club and Eve’s house a hundred times, trudging through puddles and poking into bushes. Eve was a bit of a prude, he told Harry. Yes, alright, they had slept together a few times. Well, they’d been together for months. But she never slept around with anyone else. He was sorry now that he’d dumped her, but he was happy with the new girl. He just hoped Eve would turn up soon.
It had been bitterly cold that night, and if the right sort of person offered a lift in a nice warm car, the girl might have accepted. She might have recognised him. Evidently, she had left the nightclub fairly early after dancing and drinking too much and then telling her friends she was tired. But it was too early for anyone else wanting to leave, and no bus skidded around that particular small journey. Usually there were a few taxis waiting outside the club to take the various drunken dancers home, but again it had been too early for that.
No ransom notes, no telephone messages, no clues of any kind turned up. Silence had moved in. Harry retraced the journey between Eve’s house and the club, and then back again. Nothing screamed danger, rape, abduction. But the same had occurred when Lionel Sullivan found his victims. Offer a lift in the freezing winter rain, be friendly, and one in five at least would accept.
“You know, Morrison couldn’t tell us because it’s not his responsibility,” Harry said. “But I’d bet whoever is in charge of looking for this poor missing girl, thinks she ran away on purpose, because of losing her boyfriend. Even suicide or something. But I’d bet she hasn’t. She doesn’t sound like the right sort of girl.”
“She hasn’t been back to college.” Sylvia was studying a map of the surrounding area including Cheltenham, Gloucester, and the various villages between including Little Woppington on the Torr, which was, the residents often said, smaller than its name. “There are three long roads between the Harlequin Club and Eve’s house, plus a little bridge crossing. She was wearing unseasonal clothes and it was a bitter wet night, but would she have accepted a pick up from some great lout like Sullivan?”
“She was tired and fed up,” Harry spread his hands. “perhaps she felt that life had been such a bloody pig lately, surely nothing else could go wrong.”
“That sounds even more sad,” Sylvia told him. “Come and look at this map. Could it have been her brother? If he’s a bit protective and aggressive – which we don’t know yet, he could have given her a lift home but then hit her, a slap or a punch, and she banged her head back against the car door and cracked her skull. Now he’s hiding the fact, frightened. Ashamed.”
“Or he hit her, and the car door swung open and she tumbled out and got run over.”
“Or – ,”
“Pointless,” Harry said, coming over to join Sylvia staring down at the map. “Too much guessing is distracting. We need to talk to the brother.”
“Niles.”
“I’m sure he won’t object – his mother would kill him if he did. Phone Mrs Daish and ask.”
Once again it was raining. “I’ve spoken to the police ten times or more.” Niles Daish was not large, did not seem aggressive, and appeared flattened by his sister’s disappearance. “But I was at home that night. I told her ‘bye and have fun.’ God, I wish I’d said something different. Have fun, for goodness sake. But I couldn’t have stopped her going, she’d never have listened to me. Besides, who would have thought to stop her. She deserved some fun.”
“Do you have a car?” It sounded, hopefully, like a casual question.
But Niles shook his head. “I used to fix windscreens, so I had a works car – a nice little truck actually. But I left the job when I discovered they were fiddling me. I wish I hadn’t left now since I’ve not found a job elsewhere. Been looking since Christmas. And of course, I lost the works van. So there’s no car in this family. Otherwise I would have given Eve a lift there and back. And the rain just kept on and on.”
“To escape the rain, would she have visited a friend?” Sylvia asked. “Does she know anybody who lives nearby?”
Both Harry and Sylvia had refused Mrs Daish’s offer of tea, but now Sylvia was wishing she’d said yes. Nothing was working out, and there were no clues coming out. Evidently Eve’s friends lived nowhere near the club and walking home would have been quicker than walking to any of her three best friends, all of whom would have been out anyway. Two of them were at the club with her.
Mrs Daish sat in the corner, knees tight together, hands tightly clasped in her lap. Niles Daish paced the floor. Both looked virtually suicidal. “First off,” Niles said, gulping, “they thought I dun it. I know they did. You know – if the wife goes off, they reckon must be the husband wot killed her. And tis right. So when they thought t’was me wot dun Evie, I weren’t angry. But honest to God, I love me little sister. She’s brighter than me. She’s me little pet. I’d do anything to find her.”
“He’s a good boy,” Belinda whispered. “And we all love Evie so much. I’ll never give up. I sit by the phone, just in case. But Niles – he goes searching over the hills.”
The taste of misery invaded the house like the cold wind outside. “We’re not letting this drop,” Harry assured his hosts. “We think this is incredibly important. We won’t stop. But we’d better go now, I think, and start again tomorrow. And if you get any idea at all, please phone. You’ve got our mobile numbers, a
nd the manor phone too.”
“Oh, I will,” Mrs Daish whispered, closing the door behind them.
They climbed in the car and kept talking as Harry drove. He drove slowly since the weather was, as usual, foul.
It was on the way home that they saw Lionel Sullivan.
Chapter Ten
“Stop, stop! Drive back!” yelled Sylvia.
“I’m not making an illegal U-turn in this weather,” Harry mumbled, and then he did exactly that. The wheels skidded on the road and the tyres screeched.
“They’ve had every copper in Gloucester after this creature. Stopping every car, tracking back through the forests, checking every boarding house. Helicopters and hospitals. Undercover and uniformed. And who finds him? Us? That’s no coincidence.”
Harry saw the tall figure in the distance. “So he was following us?”
“Harry, my love, how could I know? But I bet he was.”
“Impossible. He could never have known.”
“And we’re sure it’s him?” Harry stopped the car, pulling in to the side of the road. There seemed nowhere for the man to disappear, but the scurrying figure was now unseen. Through the darkness and rain the world was murky and blurred, but Lionel Sullivan was exceedingly tall, wide shouldered and his middle bulged. His arms were long, his feet unusually large, and his hands exceptional. But now there was no one at all in the wet street. “So he’s ducked into one of these houses.”
“He lives here. Somewhere near here. Or he has a friend who does.”
“That man doesn’t have friends.”
“We can’t go knocking on doors now. We’ll have the police out after us instead.”
Harry pulled out his mobile and phoned the hotline. It seemed unfair to contact Morrison directly now he would surely be asleep in bed. So the desk sergeant took the message.
“We’ll be right on to it, Mr Joyce.”
Too late now for themselves, Harry and Sylvia agreed to return in the morning, hoping the rain would have stopped.
Eve counted the steps from the corner by the door. No huge strides and no minute shuffles. Just steps, as if she was in a normal room. Twenty five steps from corner to corner. She walked over to the opposite corner and counted steps in the new direction. Twenty five. Nice and square. She turned and counted twelve and a half. The middle of the room. Ways of passing the time became repetitive, but counting steps was something she did often since little else was possible.
While desperately passing the long lonely hours, having nothing to do of any kind except think, she tried so hard to banish memory. Memory hurt far worse than being whipped, worse than being raped, even worse than being tortured. It was a torture of sorts.
“Night night, darling. Love you.”
“Mummy, I’m cold.”
“Do you want a hot water bottle Evie?”
“Yes please, mummy.”
“Cuddle Evie, Andy my love, and keep her warm until the kettle boils.”
“Thanks, mummy. Love you too. Love you too, Daddy. And I loves Niles. Where’s Niles, Daddy?”
“Doing his homework downstairs, my little one. One day you’ll do homework too.”
“Sounds like fun. Night, night everyone. I’ll say all my prayers to keep you all safe and snuggly.”
She wiped away gritty tears, sat on the dirty floorboards, stretched out her legs and examined her knees. They were very grubby and rubbed raw in several places. Because the flesh on her thighs and calves had shrunk, the knees seemed more bony than in the past, sitting up like unsymmetrical lumps of sore and partly bleeding debris left over after the rough creation of a living body. But the knees were not living. They were discarded rubbish.
Bending one of those knees, Eve regarded her right foot. The toenails, now thickened and ingrowing, were painful in places, and exceedingly dirty. She could neither clean them nor cut them, having neither clippers nor scissors, nail file nor water and cloth. Sometimes Master had demanded a pedicure and gave her sharp little scissors and a green nail file. But once done, these were taken away immediately. She was given nothing for herself.
She stared. It was as if the foot no longer belonged to her. She stretched out her left foot and gazed on both together. She started to pick away the dirt from between some of the toes but discovered that some were bruises. The soles of her feet resembled broken linoleum, thick but flaking, dark coloured but callused.
Collapsing backwards on the ground, she crossed her hands over her breasts, closed her eyes, and saw herself as one of the carved figures laying on their medieval coffins. Then, shivering, she pulled the white furry rug from her bed and laid it over herself. She stopped shivering and instead started to cry.
Eve wrote a mental letter to her mother, another to her brother Niles, and a third to her father. She knew they would be worried. She had never run away in her life, and surely they’d think her dead. She wished she was.
There was absolutely nothing to do. Only think. And inevitably her thoughts were dismal, frequently suicidal and sometimes overflowing with raging hatred. Yet, strangely, although she loathed the man, she also pitied Master. Yet she pitied herself more. She had accepted a lift in the rain, which was madness. But surely she had known the man. To accept a lift from someone you know surely did not seem crazed. Even a little pissed, frozen with icy rain, and tired, she could not have been so crazed.
But it was a face she could no longer remember. No name came to mind. She remembered only the club, the happiness and fun followed by the incoherence and the beginning of that soaking journey home. Then she woke, ill, shivering, and chained. Whatever had happened in-between was washed into flickering atoms of inconsistency. The buzz of a car engine. Her own sudden relief. A gulp of water on her tongue.
Eve stood, wrapped the rug around her shoulders, and again walked the room, this time counting the steps while following the walls. She knew each wall intimately. She had traced each pattern where dampness, stains or scratches marked the plaster. Finally she lay on the bed. She was still there many hours later when she heard the rattle and scrape as the door was unlocked, opening slowly.
It had seemed that anything would be preferable to the utter nothingness and the misery of empty loneliness. But now, with Master’s footsteps approaching the bed, she wished desperately that the nothingness would rush back.
Morrison shrugged. “There are signs of brutality post mortem. There’s very little indication of cause of death. We have no leads. Well, my friends, have you come to tell me all the answers?”
“Humph,” Harry sighed. “Wish I could. But one thing happened.”
Darcey lifted one eyebrow. Sylvia said, “We saw Lionel Sullivan.”
With a lurch of surprise, Morrison leaned forwards, saying, “Are you sure? Where, exactly? Did you follow him?”
“We tried to,” said Harry. “Last night, but too dark and too wet. We lost him. Up the Torr Road, on our way home. I phoned the police at once and got your desk sergeant, or whoever it is does nights. So we went back this morning. Troops of police tramping first thing, so we avoided them. There are a few deserted buildings through the area. A large farm with a few sheds. We asked permission, explained why, and searched the sheds. No sign of anyone. There are other sheds and broken down outbuildings – a smallholding with a couple of donkeys and a thousand free-range hens. Again we got permission to search and found nothing except eggs!” He smiled. “I’m surprised the uniformed lot didn’t tell you. I expect they just do their job.”
“And I do mine.” Morrison sighed. “But let me warn you both, leave that man alone. He’s one of the most dangerous I’ve known.”
“We asked at the pub too.” Sylvia shook her very wet hair. “The Brass Farthing. Nothing. He skipped it. But why come back here where people know him? He’s after us, and he’s after his wife. That’s a man who plans. He’s not spontaneous.”
“His escape from prison was certainly well planned. We haven’t traced the inside informant yet. But we know he had help.”
“At the back of that road, behind the smallholding, there’s another pub. You may know it. The White Boar.”
Morrison grinned. “I know it. Live Jazz on Fridays and Country on Sundays. Attracts the trouble makers at weekends, mostly drunk teenagers.. Sullivan isn’t my responsibility anymore, but I most certainly take an interest. I’m in charge of homicide. But if you’re both crazy enough to try and find him, there’ll be two more homicides for me to trace. Although I’ll guess the killer at once.”
“I know.” Sylvia “If anyone has any connection to homicide it’s that monster.”
“But he can’t be connected to this new case. I did consider the possibility at one stage, but it doesn’t fit. Never mind, Billy Lang will be delighted to hear about Sullivan. No doubt he’ll drop into the Manor later to talk to you.”
“In the meantime, love to Peggy and the kids.”
It had stopped raining, but the trees dripped as heavily as the rain had. When quite unexpectedly the sun made a brief golden peep between the swathes of grey, everyone blinked with delight and changed whatever their intentions had been, deciding to go out instead. Harry and Sylvia went to explore the road where they had seen Lionel Sullivan.
“I’m coming,” said Ruby. “Don’t try putting me off this time. I’m bored, and there’s not a cake in the house. I need diversions.”
Ashes From Ashes Page 8
