Gavin closes the hatch, leaving Richard in darkness. His eyes sting and it takes a few seconds for him to realise that there is the faintest of light coming from the edges of the hatch to create a perfect square above his head. Gavin is pacing across the top. There are more muffled voices, perhaps a phone conversation, and then the hatch opens once more. The quick switch from darkness to the gloom of night leaves Richard blinded.
‘I don’t know what to do with you,’ Gavin says with a huff.
‘Let me go…?’
‘You’re a funny man.’ Gavin steps away and then instantly back as he waves the gun into the air. ‘You’re going to stay down there and you’re going to be silent because, if you’re not, I’m going to put a hole in Maddy.’
It’s already cold – but Richard feels a bristling spike of ice pass through him. ‘You wouldn’t risk everything you have.’
‘Are you joking? Do you know what a mess I’ve got to clear up? Your car, that stupid girl, those rocks, Sarah. Maddy would just be one more thing for the list. So you’re going to stay down there and you’re going to shut up.’
‘You can’t keep me here forever.’
Gavin bites his lip and then: ‘Have it your way.’
He slams the hatch and then there’s the sound of something being dragged. There are footsteps above and then, eventually, silence. The only light remains the square around the hatch but, when Richard gently presses the underside, it doesn’t budge. It’s so much effort anyway. Richard’s body is ready to shut down – and the only reason he’s stopping himself from curling into the corner is because of Alice. And Maddy.
Richard pats his pockets, looking for his phone. He tries all of them, inside and out, but it’s gone. His wallet and keys have been taken as well, although he doesn’t know when that might have happened.
It’s hard to know how long passes, although it doesn’t feel like much. There’s a scrabbling from above and then the hatch pops open. Gavin is there, out of breath and wearing a heavy coat.
‘Come here,’ he says.
Richard is pressed into the corner furthest from the hatch and struggles to move.
‘Don’t make me come down there,’ Gavin says.
Richard reluctantly shuffles across the floor until he’s directly underneath the hatch. Gavin is sitting above and reaches down with a large soft disc that he presses into Richard’s hand.
‘Swallow that.’
‘What is it?’
Gavin drops a bottle of water through the space and it lands with a plop on the ground. Richard ignores it for the moment until he turns around and spies the gun on Gavin’s lap.
‘It’s not you I’ll shoot,’ he says. ‘It’s Maddy. Now swallow it.’
The disc is squishy in Richard’s hand, yet firm as well. Like a jelly bean but significantly larger. There doesn’t seem to be another option, so Richard puts it in his mouth. Swallowing it is going to be harder than suggested and it’s definitely going to need some chewing.
The taste is hard to describe. Not bad, more… nothing. Like dust.
Richard chews and sips at the water until it has all gone. Despite the water, his mouth feels dry.
‘What was it?’ he asks.
‘Horse tranquilliser. It used to be the only thing that could calm Puddle back when Beatrice was going through her horsey phase.’ He shrugs and there’s a moment in which he seems like a normal father. ‘It won’t hurt you,’ Gavin adds. ‘I checked. It will just help you sleep.’
‘I could freeze to death.’
Gavin shakes his head and then stretches forward, before dumping a pile of blankets through the hatch.
‘I’ll be back,’ he says. ‘Just remember that if you consider doing anything stupid, it’s not you I’ll hurt, it’s your wife.’
*
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
Dad is sitting in the kitchen with the newspaper spread across table in front of him. He hasn’t turned a page in a good few minutes and, even though he’s looking at the pages, I don’t think he’s reading.
‘Can we do something?’ I ask.
He doesn’t seem to hear, so I slot into the seat on the other side of the table and repeat myself.
Dad still doesn’t respond, not at first anyway. He continues staring down and blinks his way up as if he’s a few seconds behind me.
‘We could go to the park?’ I say. ‘Or the beach? Or the cricket. I checked and it’s the last county home game of the summer…’
Dad mumbles something that I don’t catch. He’s barely left Auntie Kath’s sofa in the week since we were in that hotel room together. I thought he might have just been tired, but very little about him has changed since then. He spends a lot of time staring at the walls and he hardly ever talks. There are a lot of times in which it feels like he’s running a little behind the rest of the world. Where Auntie Kath or I will ask him something and then, ten seconds later, there’s a reply. My aunt says he needs time, that he’s been through something traumatic.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
He shakes his head. ‘You wouldn’t understand, Mads.’
‘You can try telling me…’
Another shake. ‘You’re too young.’
‘I’m sixteen.’
‘I know.’
I reach for his hand, except he pulls away. He’s not looked up from the paper at all.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere?’ I ask.
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
*
EARLIER, RICHARD
Days have passed. It’s hard to tell how many while underneath the stables because there is no light. Everything is marked by when the hatch opens and Gavin appears with food, water, or more of the tranquilliser chews. It always seems to be dark when the hatch opens – although it is that time of year where the sun rarely hangs around for long. It’s definitely been three days, possibly four. It could even be five.
In between the blankets and the straw, Richard has made something close to a nest. It doesn’t make the floor that much comfier but it’s better than nothing. The worst thing is the smell. Gavin will swap the buckets once or twice a day – but that’s not much of a help.
Where is this all going to end? Surely nowhere good. The only reason Richard goes with it is for Maddy. Gavin has stopped making threats any longer – not that the inherent menace has gone anywhere. Richard wonders how she’s doing without him. She’s not the type who’d go to pieces – but he’d like to think she’s missing him.
There’s a bigger worry, too. He knows how it must all look.
The hatch opens as it always does and the light burns. Richard’s become used to the darkness now – and the various shades of black within it. Gavin’s silhouette is standing in the space above the hatch. He lowers down a large bin bag that, when Richard examines it, seems to be full of his clothes.
‘Where did you get these?’ he asks.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
Richard holds up the coat that he’s had for something like twenty years. He bought it from an old outdoors shop at the seaside that had closed down the next time he visited. ‘This was at my house.’
Gavin doesn’t reply, instead reaching into a separate bag for three Snickers bars that he drops down.
‘Have you hurt her?’ Richard asks. ‘You better not have. I—’
‘I’ve not touched her. I’ve not even spoken to her this week.’
‘So how did you get the clothes?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I thought you’d appreciate something warmer.’
That’s true enough. Richard assumes that Gavin used his key to break into the house at some point. It’s hardly comforting – but Gavin’s claims of leaving Maddy alone does seem true. Richard has to believe something, after all. This is all he has.
He reaches for the Snickers bar and struggles to tear across the top. It takes four or five tries until the wrapper comes free. The chocolate bar is devoured in barely a few bites.
G
avin sits on the edge of the drop and watches as Richard sweeps the other two bars away to the corner.
‘You care for her, don’t you?’ Gavin says.
‘Who? Maddy? Of course.’
‘It’s just all those rumours about your other wife… I suppose I believed them.’
Richard shuffles away towards the corner. The past few days has been one humiliation after another – but this is one thing about which he won’t talk.
‘Why was the girl in your car?’
Richard ignores the question. It’s not the first time Gavin’s asked and it’s not the first time he’s been ignored. He might be able to force Richard to take the tranquilliser tablets by threatening Maddy – but he can’t make him talk about things he doesn’t want to.
‘What have you done with her?’
Gavin doesn’t answer this.
‘Is she alive?’
No answer.
‘Do they think I hurt her?’
Still no reply, not at first. And then: ‘Are you a paedo?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So why was she in your car?’
Richard doesn’t answer – but neither does Gavin reply to any of the questions. The two men are stuck staring at one another.
‘Maddy won’t believe I did anything to that girl.’
There’s a hesitation that’s almost nothing – except it’s enough to let Richard know that he might be right.
‘What makes you so sure?’ Gavin replies.
‘Her father was convicted of something he never did.’
Gavin rocks backwards, taking it in. In an odd way, Richard feels as if he’s come to know the other man somewhat in the past few days. He knows all about Stockholm Syndrome and of course it’s true that he’d rather be free. None of that changes the fact that he also knows this is something that’s got massively out of hand. A stupid affair that has spiralled way beyond anything that could have been predicted.
He also knows there’s no simple way out of this. He could promise not to tell anyone – but how realistic is that? He’s been gone for three, four, or five days. People are going to want to know where he was. And then there’s the far more important question of what’s happened to Alice. To his daughter. He wants to know those answers, too – but every time he asks, Gavin is silent. Sometimes, he simply leaves. As awful as it is, these few minutes are the only times Richard gets to talk to another human. It keeps him sane, in between the woozy moments of sleep brought on by the tranquillisers.
‘What happened to Maddy’s dad?’ Gavin asks.
‘It’s not my place to say.’
Gavin nods slowly and then passes down the next squishy disc.
Richard is so used to them now that he doesn’t mind the taste. He even anticipates it.
‘When will you be back?’ he asks.
‘Do you miss me?’
It’s humourless and neither of them laugh.
Richard does the thing he always does – and puts the disc in his mouth. He doesn’t need the water any longer. The discs are like gum and he chews it until it’s gone, when he opens his mouth to show Gavin.
It won’t be long before the giddiness hits and then he’ll drift off to sleep. ‘You can’t keep me here forever,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘If you’re going to kill me, just do it.’
Gavin’s features are stony and unreadable. He doesn’t move for perhaps a minute – and then he stands and lowers the hatch back into place.
Thirty-Seven
Richard is dangling from a noose made of thick, blue rope. He’s wearing the clothes I dropped off behind the village sign that I now know he couldn’t have collected himself. It’s only a couple of steps towards him and I reach around his middle, trying to support his weight.
Not again. Please, not again.
‘Richard?’
His eyes are closed and I can’t tell whether he’s breathing. If he is, then it’s too shallow to notice. It’s dark and I can’t see properly. He’s heavy and yet, in the days since I last saw him, he seems thinner. I get myself underneath him to the point that I’m almost giving him a piggyback as I attempt to support his weight with my back and shoulders. When we’re in that position, I reach up and try to get my fingers into the knot.
I realise almost straight away that this will do no good. The rope is too thick and the tension too taut.
It’s not only that: Richard weighs too much for me and I’m being pushed down to the floor. I lower myself all the way and there’s a stomach-grinding moment in which I feel the rope take my husband’s full heft once more. I dash the few steps across to the other side of the shed and then drag the rocking chair across the floor until I can manoeuvre it underneath him. The chair squeaks as it bobs back and forth – but it does the job as I manage to manipulate Richard’s body so that the back of the seat is taking his weight.
It takes me a few seconds to find the light switch. I don’t come down to the shed often enough to have any muscle memory of where it is but eventually find it hidden behind the door. Pressing it doesn’t get the expected result – largely because it’s not only the yellow bulb within the shed that turns on. There are strings of white bulbs that criss-cross the garden; a hangover from two Christmases ago when Richard spotted a load of lights on offer at B&Q. We ended up wiring all the lights to the same source. It’s all so bright that the back of the house is lit up as if it’s daytime.
Back with Richard and I still can’t tell whether he’s breathing. There are reddy-purple scratches around his neck but the noose is no longer digging in. I need to get him down.
With the lights on, I can see the shears resting in the corner along with the rake and spade. The blades look rusted but it’s as good as I’m going to get. I scissor the shears around the blue rope that’s been nailed to the roof – and then I squeeze as hard as I can.
Nothing happens.
The shears are wrapped around the rope, except the blades are not doing the one thing they’re designed to do. I try to crush the handles together but only succeed in twisting the rope, which makes Richard’s limp body start to spin. My chest is heaving from the effort and my palms feel raw from the wooden handles.
I stop, take a breath, and then try again.
This time the blades catch. It’s like the first moments where scissors go through cardboard. There’s a gentle, creeping amount of give – and then the shears slice through the rope as if it’s soft butter.
Richard flops across the chair but the curved legs mean that he rocks instead of falls. I lower him to the floor, onto his back, and then press my fingers to his neck to try to find a pulse.
Nothing.
I rest my ear next to his chest, then his mouth, listening for a sign that he might be breathing – but there’s still nothing.
I don’t know what I’m doing, not really, but I start pumping his chest, remembering the poster from the police waiting room as I silently play the Stayin’ Alive chorus in my head. When I’m through that, I pause and press my ear to his mouth, before moving onto the chorus of Another One Bites The Dust.
I’m almost the whole way through it, my forearms burning, when Richard’s upper body convulses. He almost jumps upwards with a cough before his eyelids start to flutter. When he falls back to the ground, I watch as his chest gently rises.
He’s a mess, with deep red marks around his neck and a scabbed indent on the side of his head near his ear. His eyes are closed once more and there’s a wheezing, groaning noise creaking from his lungs.
He’s alive.
I fall back until I’m sitting next to him. There’s sweat pouring from my face that has pooled along the top of my dress. That’s when I spot the piece of folded paper sitting on top of the blankets. My name is written on the front and, inside, there’s a simple ‘Sorry about the girl’.
I don’t think it’s Richard’s handwriting… although
it is in block capital letters, so it’s not beyond all possibility that he wrote it.
I say Richard’s name but he doesn’t reply. The sound of him wheezing is comforting enough for now, but I need to call an ambulance and the police. I had my phone not long ago, so it is somewhere in the shed – although I can’t immediately see it. Somehow, the shed has become a battleground of rope, shears, an upturned chair – and my husband’s body.
I shuffle back towards him, still scanning for my phone – which is when a shadow lurches across the floor. From nowhere, Gavin is in the doorway, blinking from the lights that criss-cross the garden. He must have come around the side of the house… and he’s holding a rifle across his front.
He looks from me to Richard and back again, his features wrinkled with confusion. ‘I thought you were at the back of the pub…?’
Thirty-Eight
‘Have you had him this whole time?’
Gavin is dazed from the lights behind and the gloom of the shed. He stares down towards me and the white behind him almost makes it look like he’s glowing. In the distance behind, the side gate hangs open.
‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ Gavin says. ‘I’ve got too much to lose.’
He sounds matter-of-fact as he glances down towards Richard’s unmoving body. If there’s any emotion there, then it’s a resigned sadness.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say.
Gavin gets no opportunity to respond because my phone starts ringing. It’s on the floor to my side – hidden almost right in front of me. I don’t need to move to see Harriet’s name flashing across the front.
‘It’s your wife,’ I say.
He looks at the phone and then back to me. ‘She never could keep her nose out of everyone’s business.’ Gavin sighs and then lifts the gun. ‘If it’s any consolation, this isn’t what I wanted.’
What My Husband Did: A gripping psychological thriller with an amazing twist Page 27
