(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  He went back to the bottom of the steps, looked up at the windows, checking each one in turn, then walked round to the side, into the welcome cool of the shadow from the neighbouring house. No windows at ground-floor level down this side. Then he came into the back garden. He saw the handsome pond with its columned island, flowerbeds badly in need of weeding, and grass gone wild from a month of neglect.

  Maybe the son is away and the house is empty, he wondered. The best hiding place is often the most obvious.

  He was rambling again, he realised. Why should this place be obvious?

  Patio doors from the kitchen at the rear led out onto a small terrace. To their left, a metal fire escape rose the full three-storey height of the house. A dozen windows, all closed. A tortoiseshell butterfly jigged past him. He turned and looked at the neighbours’ houses on either side. Could anyone see him? Not easily. Dense foliage protected him.

  Anyhow, what the hell if the police did come? That was fine by him – that was what he wanted!

  He climbed the steps onto the terrace and peered in through the patio doors at a rather dingy, old-fashioned kitchen. An empty pizza container sat on the table. Several flies buzzed around, and he could see why: there were some dirty plates on the draining board.

  Someone had been here recently. Her son? Where was he now? Out shopping? Away? Left the clearing up to the staff. Housekeeper? Why were there no staff? Gloria had always talked about her staff, her retainers, she called them. Probably dancing on her bloody grave, he thought irreverently.

  With trembling hands he tested the doors. They were locked.

  Jesus, I could get struck off for this. Breaking and entering. The press would have a field day.

  He examined each of the ground-floor windows in turn. They were all secured shut. Then he began to climb the fire escape. Struggling against a life-long fear of heights he kept going right to the narrow platform at the top. Gripping the handrail, he walked forward slowly and pressed his face against the glass of a sash window. Through it he could see what appeared to be a changing room.

  Gingerly, he tried to raise the bottom half of the window. To his surprise, it shot up with well-oiled ease. This is madness. Turn round, go back down the fire escape, get in your car and go back to work, Michael Tennent. You haven’t a shred of evidence to justify breaking into someone’s house.

  Very nervous now, he turned on the platform and looked around. He had a clear view down into the garden of the house on his right. It was empty. The cover lay in place over the pool; it seemed that the occupants were not there. The view into the house on the left was obstructed by a giant laburnum tree. Similarly, conifers at the end of the garden, some planted, he presumed, to block out the unsightly view of the garage, screened him from the houses behind.

  He climbed over the sill and dropped down onto the thick pile of the wall-to-wall carpet. Then he held his breath and listened as carefully as he could, engulfed in the smell of leather and mothballs. Silence.

  A thousand pairs of women’s shoes were laid out in long, tidy rows in the room. Hat boxes were stacked on top of each other. Dresses in plastic dry-cleaning bags bulged out of the open sliding door of one fitted wardrobe. He trod lightly down the narrow pathway through the shoes to the door, gripped the handle, listened. As he opened it, a rubber draught excluder shuffled along the carpet but the hinges were mercifully silent.

  He looked out onto a landing, eyes darting in every direction, ears tracking the silence in the house. Just the tick of a clock down below. Nothing else. His whole body was pulsing as he slipped quietly onto the landing, which was carpeted in the same grey as the dressing room, and glanced at the walls lined with framed publicity photographs of Gloria Lamark. There were several closed doors, a bronze bust of her on a pedestal, and a wide, handsomely carved staircase leading down.

  One step at a time, keeping to the edge of the treads, testing each for a creak, he reached the next landing, stood still, listening, glancing warily at each of the closed doors, unsure what he was going to do if one opened suddenly. Run, he supposed, either to the front door, or back up to the dressing room, whichever exit was clear. One door was open just a crack, but no light came from it. Probably one of the rooms with the curtains drawn.

  He noticed a large Wedgwood vase on a plinth, filled with dead flowers. And on the floor, right beside his foot, was a coffee cup, half full, with a thick green crust of mould.

  There isn’t anyone here. The house is empty. It’s been empty since her death. Where’s her son? Away? Unable to bear being here on his own?

  Making less effort to remain quiet now, he reached the hall. Images of Gloria Lamark covered every inch of wall space. There was a massive oil painting of her stepping out of a limousine, framed posters, production stills, framed press cuttings. The whole house was a shrine to her.

  He wondered, absurdly, if she was looking at him right now, angry with him for what he had said to her in their last session. She had been a great beauty: these pictures told the story. Stunning. She had the looks to have been one of the greats, but she had not had the intelligence. People forgot that the most enduring actors and actresses had more than great looks: they had fine minds, too.

  In the plans he had studied, the steps down to the cellar were from the kitchen. There was a passageway in front of him, which he presumed led to the kitchen, and he walked down it.

  In the darkness of his den, Thomas Lamark stood by the door that was open just an inch, no more, listening to the psychiatrist’s footsteps.

  Took you long enough to get here, Dr Tennent. Dr Goel gave you enough hints in your office, surely to God? It just goes to confirm what I have always suspected about you. You think you’re smart, but all you really do is cause pain and suffering to others. You’re about to find out that you really are not at all smart. Enjoy!

  He remained in his den. There was no hurry, no need to take unnecessary risks of being seen. There was still a full hour before he needed to leave in order not to miss the lecture at King’s.

  Michael saw the cellar door, secured by two bolts, as he entered the kitchen. First he went over to the table, waved away the flies from the pizza container and looked at it. Pizza San Marco, wood-smoked ham and mozzarella. He looked at the best before date and saw that it was still current.

  He opened the fridge door. Two full bottles of milk, one half empty. He sniffed the half-empty one. It was still fresh.

  Someone was either living here or coming here – they must have been here within the last few days. They could come back at any time.

  He opened the cellar door, found the light switch and pressed it, then pulled the door shut behind him. At the bottom of the short flight of brick steps, past shelves stacked with empty glass storage jars, he found himself facing another door, locked with a heavy, old-fashioned key. He turned it, pushed it open and smelt new carpet.

  He found a light switch, and when he pressed it, a whole battery of strip-lights flickered then came on. He was in an elaborate modern gymnasium. There was a running-machine complete with a huge video screen, a rowing-machine, weights, mats, parallel bars, and a sauna cabin. One of the lights was making a loud hum right above him.

  According to the plans, the entrance down into the shelter should be directly in front of him. But all he could see in front of him was the sauna cabin. Puzzled, he looked carefully around the cellar. But there was no break in the matting that covered the floor, and no sign at all of a door. Just one recess, racked out for wine storage, and filled with several hundred dusty bottles.

  His heart sank. Was he being really stupid? He’d seen the plans – had he jumped to an assumption? Sometimes people put forward plans, but then, for one reason or another – usually financial – never got round to carrying them out. Just because Gloria Lamark had obtained planning permission didn’t necessarily mean she’d gone ahead and had the bloody thing built.

  He banged his knuckles together. Stared at the sauna cabin. Thinking. The application had been
for a wine cellar. Why a wine cellar and not a fallout shelter? Why had she wanted to keep it secret? Because if her neighbours knew about it she could find herself shut out of it – or even killed for it.

  There was a creak above him. He froze. Tried to get his ears to tune out the blasted hum of the light, but he couldn’t. He walked over to the light switch and snapped it off. Then he moved into the shadows, away from the throw of the single bulb over the stairs, and listened hard again.

  Nothing.

  The pulse was throbbing in his throat. Fearfully he watched the staircase. For a minute, maybe longer, he stayed like this. No further sounds above him. This was an old house; probably just the heat causing expansion; old houses moved around all the time.

  All the same he kept the light off as he walked over to the sauna and opened the door. The strong scent of pine greeted him as he fumbled around for a light switch, then found it. He shot a glance behind him at the cellar steps, then looked around the interior of the cabin, casting his eyes over the stones in the grate of the electric fire. The empty water bucket. The tiered seats.

  Look in the obvious place. He lifted up the slats of the first seat. Nothing below, just the concrete floor. Nor beneath the second slats, nor the third.

  He examined the wall panels. They appeared to be fixed permanently and very securely.

  Shit.

  He stepped outside the cabin, looked up at the ceiling, then at the stairs. Stood still, listening.

  Look in the obvious place.

  The obvious place can be the most obvious – or the least obvious.

  He went back into the cabin and looked at the grate. Both it and the bucket stood on a wide strip of metal, which was not entirely flush with the rest of the floor. Then he noticed a tiny scrap of paper trapped under the metal strip.

  Which meant the strip had been put down on top of it.

  Which meant it had been moved. Recently.

  He lifted away the water bucket. Then he gripped the grate with both hands, testing its weight. It was even heavier than it looked, too heavy to lift, all he could do was slide it. The flex trailed behind it.

  When it was clear of the metal strip, he knelt, eased his fingers under the edge of the strip and lifted it up.

  It came away easily, to reveal a steel trapdoor beneath.

  He lifted the strip clear, set it down and stared at the trapdoor. Then he knelt and gripped the recessed handle and tried to lift it. The door wouldn’t move. He tried again; then he realised the handle was a locking device and he rotated it several times, feeling the pressure easing with each turn. If this is a fallout shelter, why is the handle on the outside? Surely it should be on the inside, to keep people out?

  He tried again. This time the door lifted. A blast of cool, dank air came up with it. Stone steps spiralled down beneath him into darkness.

  He lowered himself through the hatch, planting his feet firmly on a step. Then, holding the frame of the trapdoor with both hands, he took a few tentative steps down. He found the light switch and turned it on. Complete and utter silence beneath him.

  A squall of fear was blowing inside him as he descended, turning in a constant, giddying, clockwise direction. He had no idea what the hell he was going to find down here. He just prayed with every step he took that, if Amanda was down here, she was alive.

  He reached the bottom. A small flat standing area, with steel vault door ahead, in the centre of which was a heavy four-pronged locking handle, of the kind that might be used to secure the waterproof hatch on a submarine.

  He tested it, and the handle moved easily, as if it had been turned recently. He gave it two rotations, then stopped and listened. Silence above him. Six more turns and the handle was rotating without pressure. He gave the door a push, but nothing happened. Then he pulled and, with a deep sucking sound, it swung open slowly. He couldn’t believe how thick it was. Over a foot thick and still opening. Two feet. Three feet. Almost four feet before a gap appeared between the door and the jamb. He carried on pulling, opening up a larger and larger gap into the pitch darkness beyond, a gap big enough for him to fit through.

  No light switch in here. He pulled the torch out of his pocket and turned it on. The beam was weak – it had been sitting in the car for a couple of years, unused, and the battery was low. There was enough light to see that he was in a small chamber: this must be the airlock chamber he had seen on the plan. On his right was a long narrow metal table on wheels, which reminded him of a rather primitive hospital trolley. Next to it were what looked like drip stands, a stack of electrical equipment and a row of oxygen cylinders.

  Ten feet in front of him was another vault door, with the same locking handle as on the one he had just opened.

  Was she in there? The other side of the door?

  He wanted to call out, but there was no chance she would hear him. Gripping the handle, he began to turn it swiftly, six full rotations. Then he pulled. Slowly the door moved outwards. He pulled even harder, and finally the gap into the darkness beyond appeared. And with it a powerful stench. Body odour, excrement and unwashed clothes; but stronger than these was an acrid smell, which he recognised instantly.

  Formalin. Used in laboratories to preserve dead tissue and organs. At medical school, the cadavers for dissection in the department of anatomy had been preserved in formalin.

  Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, what was in this chamber?

  He shone the weak beam. Shadows jumped back at him. ‘Amanda?’ he called. ‘Amanda?’

  He took a step forward and then he saw the figure lying on the ground, motionless. Oh, God, don’t let it be Amanda.

  He walked over. It was a human body. ‘Amanda? Amanda.’

  Then he heard the rustle of clothes behind him. As he swung the torch, a gigantic shadow hurtled at him. He heard Amanda’s voice, screaming, ‘Fuck you, you bastard!’

  Then he felt the agonising jarring pain on the back of his neck. An explosion of lights inside his skull.

  He crashed to the ground.

  Amanda, standing behind him, raised the heavy metal grille from the ventilation shaft over her head again, holding it there with every ounce of strength she possessed, ready to bring it swinging back down on him if he moved just one muscle, ready to pulp his skull into the concrete.

  The torch had rolled to the side. In the glow she could see he was lying motionless, head twisted awkwardly to one side, blood pooling on the floor around him.

  She stared down at him, barely able to trust her eyes, gulping air, until she was certain he wasn’t about to get up and come after her. Then she put down the grille, grabbed the torch, and turned with desperation in her heart to run towards the open doorway he had come through.

  She let out a whimper of terror.

  The door was closed.

  Chapter Ninety-nine

  PC Tim Willis, who had stopped Dr Terence Goel’s blue Ford Mondeo car in the Tottenham Court Road last Saturday night, was on the line.

  ‘He was tall – about six foot six. Medium build. Slick dark hair, good-looking – very good-looking, if you know what I mean, movie star, matinée-idol looks, and he had an American accent.’

  ‘Anything else you can remember?’ Glenn asked, seated at his desk, writing this down, trying to wring every last spark from the police constable’s brain.

  ‘He seemed agitated. He said he was going to Cheltenham and that he’d set out from visiting friends in Barnes – one hell of a detour.’

  ‘Did he have an explanation?’

  ‘Said he got lost in London very easily.’

  ‘Did you search the car?’

  ‘It was clean. And we breathalysed him. Negative.’

  Glenn thanked him and hung up, then looked back at the notes he had just written. Cheltenham made sense. He wondered about Barnes. Why Barnes?

  Half an hour later, shortly after three o’clock, his direct line rang. It was a woman from the Orange phone company. They had a Dr Terence Goel as a customer. Glenn’s hopes rose, then im
mediately sank again when she gave him the address: 97 Royal Court Walk.

  The address that didn’t exist.

  He asked if she could request a mapped log of all Goel’s calls in the three and a half weeks since he had become a subscriber, which would show Glenn the geographic location to the nearest cell where each call was made. In parts of central London that could narrow it down to within a few hundred yards. She rang him back ten minutes later to say she wouldn’t be able to get the log for him until some time on Monday. She also had the name of the dealer in Cheltenham from whom Dr Goel had purchased the phone.

  Glenn wrote down the information and thanked her. Moments after he had hung up, the phone rang again. It was the closed-circuit television room for the South East Central Metropolitan London area. They had a positive ID on Dr Terence Goel’s Ford Mondeo crossing Westminster Bridge, heading south, at 3.19 p.m.

  The surveillance operator had calculated all possible major routes the car might have taken from there and asked patrols to keep a vigilant eye for it, but so far there had not been any further sighting.

  Glenn grabbed a map. South over Westminster Bridge. It only took him a few seconds to realise the hopelessness of trying to guess where he might be heading, except that it wasn’t Barnes. Goel could have been heading anywhere in the entire south of England.

  With a ruler and a pencil he drew a line from Tottenham Court Road to Barnes, from Barnes to Westminster Bridge, and from Westminster Bridge to the Tottenham Court Road. The area inside covered a big swathe of central London.

  It told him nothing.

  Although Goel was American, he checked with the British Medical Association and ascertained that they knew of no doctor called Terence Goel. He asked his own divisional intelligence unit to find any Dr Terence Goel on the Internet. When the printout of the man’s web page was brought into him, one phone call to the MIT in Boston confirmed that no Dr Terence Goel had ever been a junior professor of astronomy – nor had they ever had a Terence Goel either as a teacher or student.