“An interesting hypothesis,” Sylvia said. “This chimney here, for instance. But not that particular one, Amy dear, since the house wasn’t old at all. Mock Tudor, built less than a hundred years back.”
It was a conversation they continued in bed. Wrapped in two layers of feather quilts and with the electric under blanket only just turned off, Sylvia stretched and admitted to warmth and comfort. “Though it’s your cuddles that really keep me warm, my love.”
Harry squeezed tighter. They had not fully closed the curtains since both enjoyed the occasional visits from owls. Now it was a flight of bats, tiny and silent, rising from the trees along the edge of the kitchen garden outside, and streaking the night sky with even darker shadows. Like tiny black birds, they flocked, searching for food. “Bats in the belfry again,” Harry said.
“We’re all getting there,” said Sylvia. “Amy’s on her way. But she’s fighting it.” Pausing, she cuddled tighter. “If I ever get like that, put me out of my misery.”
“Kill you off? Isn’t it murderers we’re trying to catch?”
“I didn’t suggest torture or stuffing me up the chimney. I just want a nice quick release. Talking of which – do we have a belfry?”
“No. No bell tower and no bell. But,” added Harry, “there is clearly an attic. Not that I want to crawl around attics. I’ve had another idea about finding Eve. The library. She must go there for study. College friends and teachers. Teachers from her previous school. And teachers from her brother’s school. Someone with a car and who Eve trusted enough to accept a lift, is more likely to be a teacher or some other adult, rather than daft friends who could be tipsy at that house. It’s a shame Morrison isn’t on Eve’s case, or we could ask him about who’s been questioned so far.”
Half asleep now, Sylvia was just murmuring. “Kate’s husband is a teacher. He teaches little ones, not Eve’s age. But I can talk to Kate anyway. She’s promised to come tomorrow. Ruby hasn’t had cake for hours. She’s getting withdrawal symptoms.”
“Perhaps I should go to the college.”
But Sylvia was asleep. Her first small snores were like little kisses against Harry’s arm.
Chapter Twelve
She lay on her stomach, her face hidden in the pillow and the white wool rug over her back. She had stopped crying. It only made her sick and she was too hungry to miss food by vomiting it back. No memory of her last meal could be timed but it seemed a long time ago. There had been warm toast without butter, and a lamb chop on the bone, with two small bites already gone.
Master had handed over the plate, saying, “I never finished it. So I were thinking she’ll like it. I were right, weren’t I?”
“Yes indeed,” Eve had said at once. She had gnawed at that bone for many, many hours. The two pieces of toast had been eaten within seconds.
Now feeling as empty as usual, the terror of her destiny swarmed around her head like wasps disturbed from their nest. Biting, threatening, buzzing, attacking. Emotion swamped her mind and left no space for rational thought. Fear was the tidal wave, rushing and roaring into her head when she woke in the night, when she woke the next morning, and all through the day. She had not expected to sleep at all, but weakness and the strangely exhausting listless apathy led her into both sleep and dreams. The dreams were vile. She dreamed of her mother’s arms reaching for her, then the face above the arms turning to a bleeding skull with vampire teeth.
Shivering coldness was both fact and fear. She expected to die and fervently wished that death would come soon, yet not accompanied by the torture she imagined. Rape, which she no longer resisted, was of little consequence, but Master enjoyed her screams and the chocking and guttural cries when he partially strangled her while embedding not only himself inside her but bottles, torches, scissors and other gadgets. He had a bamboo cane which he used to beat her, to force into various parts of her, and also used to tie to her head between her lips as a gag.
Not knowing night from day nor the passing of the hours, Eve could not know how long she had been kept prisoner. She guessed a month. Now perhaps more.
“I dunno,” Master said when asked. “I doesn’t count. You knows that.”
“Do you have a mother and father?”
“Shurrup.” He punched her breast. And she was quiet.
What each day might bring was the eternal terror. Pain was accustomed, but sometimes the pain was a little less, yet sometimes greater. There had been days of such violent suffering that Eve had truly expected imminent death and been disappointed when it did not occur. The initial pity she had intermittently felt had long since flown since Master’s delight in cruelty was no canvas for empathy, however much he clearly suffered himself.
“How did you kill them? The others before me?” Asking these questions was a risk, but sometimes it brought a conversation of sorts which then delayed the next beating.
Master looked up. He was sitting cross-legged on the floorboards. “Yeh.” He studied his own memories. “I got strong hands. Squeezing necks. Sometimes it ain’t meant. I had a nice lady. She were pretty and proper little. She gotta nice little arse all pretty and rosy. I stuck all sorts o’ things up it. One day I stuck up me whole hand wiv a nice big mirror on a handle. I wanted to see wot she got inside her. I mean, tis all hid, ain’t it. Secrets up inside. But silly cow yelled and yelled and the mirror broke. Reckon it cut her cos she bled all over. But I never meant killing my little lady an’ I were sorry.”
Eve swallowed back vomit. “How did you bury her?”
“Oh, I never done that. Number One does that.”
“Where?”
“I dunno. I doesn’t care neither. Once my lady’s gone dead, she ain’t no use no more.”
“People used to think I was pretty.” Eve kept the rug to her chin. “But not anymore. I’m bony and my skin hangs off in straggly bits, all grey and scratched. I have so many scars, it’s as if I’m striped. I don’t know what my face looks like, but it’s all scarred too, isn’t it? My eyes must be swollen. I must look like a scarecrow.”
Master pulled a face. “You’s OK. I seen worse. You got nice tits.”
Eve looked down. Her breasts were also deeply scarred, some still red raw with others old puckered and brown. One nipple had been nearly bitten through and survived in a purple puffy bruise. “I don’t think so.”
“Wot ‘bout me?” Master asked suddenly, looking up. “Wot ‘bout me prick? Is it big and yummy?”
She could not surrender to temptation. Saying small and scrawny might have caused a quick and easy death, but could just as easily cause many hours of torture. “Yes, big and masterful and handsome.” Because his legs were misshapen and short, his endowment did indeed appear absurdly large.
Master smiled and brought her a bowl of cold tomato soup in a mug. He took the mug away afterwards and was gone for several days.
The cold returned inside and out. It froze Eve’s body, and it froze her mind. Sometimes she decided that she mustn’t cry anymore as it brought her no gain and simply used more of her body’s sugars and salts, which she desperately needed to conserve. Then the loneliness and sick misery for the parents who would think her gone forever, would float back, suffocating, and she would cry after all, wheezing, choking and heaving.
Asking for things, which were mostly refused, did not bother Master at first. Eve begged for another bucket, this time filled with clean water to drink. Many times she had asked for the return of her clothes. She begged for another rug. She begged for more food, for daylight, to know how much time had passed, and she begged a thousand times for Master to let her go.
At first she promised to return but the simpleton was not so simple, and Master chuckled at the words. But then Eve begged for release the thousandth time, and Master slashed her across her shrunken belly with his bamboo cane. The welt took a long time to heal.
Having no memory of her capture, at first, when she was alone and could lie in silence, Eve closed her eyes and pictured that night. Glimpses ret
urned sometimes, then retreated. For a moment she remembered standing barefoot and soaked, then an echo of the thrum of the car engine, and the blur of the rain on the car windows.
Almost imagining, she could visualise herself climbing into the back seat, For some reason, not the front passenger seat. Once inside the back seat, she had been given a swig of the wine bottle. But it had not been wine. She had slumped into unconscious sleep and remembered nothing more until gradually, her head thumping, she woke in the cell where she remained chained.
Then, crack by narrow crack, Eve began to remember slivers of what had happened. For some time she disbelieved her own memories. Then she suddenly knew they were too vivid and too alive and therefore utterly true.
She had been drenched, wearing clothes for the club in the High Street, too short, too tight, too colourful and too sexy.
Beaujolais. But a strange taste. And Eve glimpsed the face of the man who had handed it to her. Eve had rubbed her thumb along the side of the glass wine bottle. She depicted the feel of it.
Each day she studied the memories and brought back the pictures.
Kate brought the cakes. Cream puffs and French slices, Vanilla cheesecake, cannoli and custard tarts. They sat at the coffee table in front of the fire. With a sullen spit and crackle, the fire was burning low. David, the caretaker’s son, bustled in with a poker and lifted the two logs lying ready in the grate, crossing them onto the ashes. Sparks rose up and the crackle increased. The flames leapt.
“Here,” Kate said, holding out the plate. “Please have a cake.”
David’s mental health had improved with study and training. “I will,” he said, reaching out. “And can I have one fer me dad? Cos me dad’s a wonderful man.”
“Please take one for your father too,” said Kate.
Ruby watched the disappearance of her two favourite cakes and licked her fingers free of the cream which had oozed from her vanilla slice. “You said your brother-in-law was visiting?” She turned back to Kate. “Do you like him?” It was almost a challenge.
“Indeed I do.” Kate once again offered the plate, pointing to the last vanilla slice. “For a start, he looks exactly the same as my Maurice. How can you dislike a man that looks identical to the man you love?”
“But evidently doesn’t act the same.”
“Well, no.” Kate now smiled at Sylvia. “You might not like him at all. But he’s clever and generous. He’s the rich one of the family, earns a fortune I think, and always brings presents for me and Mia. He can be a little bit arrogant, but when you’re terribly rich, I think that’s inevitable.”
Sylvia shook her head. “Do you ever run into Mark’s arms, mistaking him for Maurice?”
Kate was laughing, when Harry said, “Why does he live mostly in Dubai?”
“Business.” The plate of cakes was emptying fast, and Stella scooped up the very last cheesecake. Ruby looked forlorn. “Banking. Money. It all seems to come from there, doesn’t it?”
Harry failed to tell her that Mark Howard was suspected of grand-scale money-laundering. “But he’s coming home. So, just a holiday?”
“Half and half,” Kate said through cream-cheese and crumbs. “Business too, I think. Maurice doesn’t talk about him much, but they’re terribly close. He’s so thrilled to have his twin brother back, and they plan to go off together for a couple of days. Fishing or something. Is it too cold for golf? That’s the two things they usually do together. I’ve planned a big dinner for Friday evening. But he’s got his own place so he won’t be staying with us.”
“Nearby?”
“Just outside Tewksbury. Backing onto those gorgeous bluebell woods.”
“Wonderful Bluebell,” Sylvia smiled at Ruby, “they’ve named the woods after you.”
An hour after Kate had left, Harry phoned Darcey Morrison. “I know it’s not your job, but I can’t phone the right guy since I don’t know him. I just thought you’d like to know the big fancy money-launderer Mark Howard, is coming to England this Friday. A limousine will pick him up from Gatwick, but he’s coming on a private plane from Dubai. Then he’s going to have dinner with your kid’s school teacher. Sounds crazy to me.”
“And to me. I’ll pass on the news.” Morrison cleared his throat and continued, “Just a small point, Harry, but who told you about the money laundering. I most certainly don’t remember going into such private details. Don’t tell me Maurice Howards admits such inside truths about his brother? If so, do please pass them on.”
“I do. I just have,” Harry pointed out. “But nothing came from Maurice. It’s the wife that told us about big brother’s visit, and some of the details that go with it. Not the money laundering, of course. We – well, we sort of guessed about that bit.”
“Really?” Morrison didn’t believe a word about the guesswork. “But it’s information that will be excessively helpful. I shall pass it on about the arrival in England.”
“Just make sure whoever it is doesn’t arrest the teacher instead of the money launderer. They’re identical twins.”
“Maurice dresses in stuffy tweeds and baggy jeans. According to Kate, Mark Howard looks the perfect businessman, iron and spotless to within an inch of his life Well. Obviously she can’t know what he really does.” Morrison cackled and hung up.
Harry looked down briefly at his own clothes, baggy black jeans and a thick blue woollen jumper over a pale blue shirt. Slippers shaped like kittens with their tongues hanging out, a Christmas gift from Sylvia. He stuffed his phone back in his pocket and stood a moment at the front door. He always made his private phone calls in the corridor or the bedroom. But this time he saw shadows outside. A child’s hand knocked.
Very slowly Harry went to answer the door. Maurice Howard was smiling as the drizzle trickled over his shoulders. His own daughter stood stamping her feet, suffering from the cold. Harry invited them in, but said, “Did you mean to pick up Kate? She left over an hour ago.” He was wondering just how much of his phone conversation this man had heard.
“Oh dear, yes, yes,” Maurice sighed. “Our plans always cross. So she’ll be at home now. I’ll hop off then, and get home in time to make the tea.”
Wondering just how innocent this careful speech was meant to sound, Harry handed the small girl a towel, always kept on the hall dresser, to dry her face of the drips falling from her woolly hat, and said a pleasant goodbye as they left and he closed the door behind them. He then hurried upstairs to the bedroom where he made another private phone call to Morrison.
That Friday brought neither cakes nor personal visitors. With lightning crossing the sky with the flash of alien attacks and the explosion of thunder to follow, almost everybody from the Rochester Manor stayed indoors. With March kicking at the hilltops, everyone was hoping that the next week would finally bring better weather.
“Sunshine.”
“Birdsong.”
“Apple blossom.”
“Roast spring lamb for dinner.”
Morrison did not telephone, nor inform the Joyces in any manner concerning the arrival of Mark Howard at the airport. Harry and Sylvia both assumed that either their friend’s brother-in-law would have altered his time schedule, or at the least arranged to be whisked away fast enough to avoid the police. Sitting as usual by the fire but with mutters of restless impatience, Harry and Sylvia waited for some sort of brief information. It did not come.
The Cotswold Airport at Cirencester welcomed a small private aircraft flying in from another small private airport near Glasgow, which accepted international flights. The plane from Dubai arrived in Glasgow at four o clock in the morning, and within an hour had been refuelled and reprogrammed for the Cotswolds. Arriving at six fifteen, a tall dark man carrying nothing but a briefcase descended the steps and jumped into a black limousine already waiting near the runway. A uniformed official piled two suitcases in the car’s boot, and the driver sped off immediately.
The car and its passenger were not taken to the large Georgian house on the
outskirts of Gloucester, and instead it drove sedately on to a snug cottage just over the border in Wales.
Here on the ivy-clad porch, Mark Howard was met by his twin brother Maurice. While the chauffeur unloaded the car, Mark and Maurice walked indoors and wandered into the tiny room already sweltering around the fire lit some hours previously. Here they sat, for there was a great deal to talk about.
The first thing Mark asked was, “How’s Milton?”
Maurice answered with a brief nod. “Fine. No change.”
“Great,” said Mark. “OK. Now down to business.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cycling the country miles proved more pleasant than Lionel Sullivan had expected. The dismal and sometimes freezing weather cleared his mind. He sang to himself quite frequently, making up his own words to tunes he remembered. Sam Smith’s Stay With Me became Chop the Legs Off, That’s the Key and a few old Beatles songs and sang, Will You Still be Alive When I’m Sixty Four.
Having lost some weight in prison, Lionel discovered his legs more pliable, but the bulges of fat that had shrunk had left the stretched skin behind them, and the first time he looked in a full-length mirror, he had laughed. Never having been good looking, his new-found flab didn’t bother him. Perhaps, he wondered, the newly stolen bicycle would trim him down, although he needed practice, not having ridden one since he was twelve. The only things he would have liked to see shrink were his hands and feet. But then, extremely large hands had proved excessively useful over the years.
The planned escape from prison, having proved a remarkable success, had seemed enough at first. Lionel had then realized that the lack of any following plan was a mistake. Assuming he would hide in the same forest, after all, it had hidden him well for more than a year previously, would lead to repeat adventures and the repeat of the pleasures he dreamed of, had sadly proved entirely wrong. He knew where bloody Harry bloody Joyce lived in that fancy big house, and he thought it wouldn’t take long to find his wife – either dead or alive. Hopefully, Ike had already clobbered the bitch. But – he’d have fun exploring.
Ashes From Ashes Page 10
