(2011) Only the Innocent

by Rachel Abbott

  ‘It’s not that one.’

  ‘Why not, Beatrice?’ Tom wanted to hurry, but he didn’t want to overlook something and waste even more time.

  ‘Because it’s unlikely to be ‘in a state’. Much as I deplore the decor at Ashbury Park, Hugo will have liked his creature comforts. And fifty metres from the road doesn’t sound far enough. Not enough privacy. Next.’

  Looking at Tom for approval, and getting a curt nod, the policeman moved on to the next property.

  ‘If the fence is anything to go by, this next one is in a good state of repair, but it’s a long way from the road. It doesn’t look as if it’s inhabited, but the fence goes all around it, and it’s got an electric gate. You can’t see the house from the road, and none of us has had any reason to go there, so we don’t know if it’s used at all.’

  ‘Sounds possible. Next.’

  The policeman quickly gave details of the last house.

  ‘This one’s quite grand. We know that it’s used occasionally, because we’ve seen cars going in and out of the gates. It’s just on the edge of the village, but down a lane. The local kids used to go in the gardens to steal the fruit from the trees, but when the owners come down they bring a dog - and it frightened the children so they don’t go there anymore.’

  ‘It won’t be that one. If children can get in, Hugo wouldn’t like that. And he always hated dogs. Said they were dirty things that ate their own faeces. He got that from my mother. She always said…’

  Tom interrupted her. He had no time to listen to tales of woe from Beatrice’s childhood.

  ‘So you think it’s property number two, Beatrice?’

  ‘Yes. Well hidden, fence, electric gate. Of the three, it’s the best option.’

  ‘Right. This is what I suggest. Given the number of us, I suggest that you Sergeant, together with your female officer, lead us to house number two, and you, detective constable, follow behind.’ He turned to the remaining two policemen. ‘Perhaps you two could go in the other car to house number three - just check it out from the outside. If we’re unlucky with number two, we’ll meet you there. Everybody okay with that?’

  Nobody argued. Although out of his jurisdiction, his seniority and the importance of this case left them all more than willing to follow his orders.

  Ten minutes later, Tom’s car was bumping down an unmade road in the middle of nowhere. There were no other houses within sight, and since leaving the main road they hadn’t passed another vehicle. The leading police car finally pulled up by a sliding metal electric gate. Tom pulled up on the lane behind. The sergeant walked over to the car, and Tom wound down his window. The lane was dark, and other than the wind swishing in the tall trees, blowing the autumn leaves from their boughs, there wasn’t a sound.

  ‘We need to get the gate open, sir. You can’t see the house from here, and it might be useful to get as close as we can in case we need any equipment. I’ll hop over the gate and open up. I just need a few minutes.’

  ‘How does he propose doing that?’ Beatrice asked. ‘It’s electric.’

  ‘He’ll have an alun key in his kit. A lot of the older electric gates can be opened with one, just in case of a power cut. You need to be able to get out somehow.’

  ‘Hah! Not as secure as you might think, then. I bet Hugo didn’t know that.’

  Within moments, the sergeant was pushing the gate open, having disengaged the motor that was holding it closed. Tom began slowly steering the car up the winding drive, avoiding potholes and overhanging branches. The place had an air of desertion about it. Weeds grew high on either side of the drive and between the established trees there were a myriad of saplings, fighting for space and for light.

  ‘Does it look familiar yet, Beatrice?’

  ‘Not yet. I do get the sense that I’ve been here before, but that could just be wishful thinking.’ Beatrice peered eagerly through the windscreen. ‘Wait a minute. See that ramshackle building over there? That used to be a summerhouse. This is it.’

  Tom felt a rush of adrenaline. He put his foot down. Bugger the potholes.

  They rounded the bend in the drive, and ahead of them they saw the house, eerily quiet and dark against the night sky. As they pulled up close to the front door, Tom looked up at the building. The three storeys seemed to rear up menacingly, and the gothic arched windows were lifeless. The only light came from a weak moon, which was momentarily revealed, by the fast scudding clouds.

  Tom turned to Beatrice.

  ‘Wait in the car, please Beatrice.’

  ‘No.’

  Beatrice made to open her door. Tom turned to her in frustration, and could see the stubborn set of her jaw.

  ‘Beatrice, would you wait in the car, please?’

  ‘I heard you the first time, and I said no.’

  Beatrice got out of the car and slammed the door decisively.

  ‘I know the layout of the house. I won’t get in the way.’

  Tom hadn’t got time for this. He realised that short of handcuffing her to the steering wheel, this was one battle he wasn’t going to win. The other policemen were standing looking at the front door. One of them walked up and rang the bell. They could hear it echo ominously around the seemingly abandoned building. Nobody was expecting a response. They turned to look at Tom as he spoke. His voice was tight with tension, and he felt a creeping dread as he gave his instructions. If Mirela was here, she wasn’t able to get to the door.

  ‘Okay guys. We have grounds to believe that a young girl has been abducted, and our evidence to date suggests that she may well be inside this house. There is no reason to wait for a warrant, as she may be in danger. Everybody happy with that?’ There were nods all round.

  ‘We need to get in. Suggestions?’

  ‘The front door is solid hardwood, sir, five lever locks top and bottom. What about the windows?’

  The detective was trying to peer through into the downstairs rooms.

  ‘All of these at the front seem to be very thick glass, and there are metal grills of some type on the inside. We’d need equipment.’

  Tom could feel his blood racing. He was impatient, and apprehensive. The amount of security suggested that this was not a house used for idle pleasures. It was a fortress. Tom felt a tap on his shoulder.

  ‘Would an old coal chute be any use?’ Bless you, Beatrice, he thought.

  ‘It could well be. Where is it?’

  ‘I used to slide down it when I was a child. When I needed to hide. It’s probably filthy, but it comes into the cellar under the kitchen. There are some stairs that lead to a door into the rear hall. It might be locked, but unless it’s been replaced it was pretty flimsy. The chute’s just round this corner, I think.’

  Tom felt hope stirring. Hugo probably was only concerned about people getting out of the house, and climbing up a steep smooth coal chute would be impossible. Perhaps he hadn’t bothered to secure it.

  The chute was covered with wooden shutters set into the ground. They were very overgrown, indicating that they hadn’t been used in years, and they creaked and groaned as he pulled them back. Tom peered into the opening, and even with the aid of the light from his torch, it wasn’t possible to see how far down the chute went, and how dangerous it was. And there could be anything waiting at the bottom. The chute was narrow, though, and filthy. There was no way that Tom would fit down there.

  Tom heard a quiet voice behind him.

  ‘I can get down there, sir.’ The woman officer was very slight, and Tom was sure the chute would be wide enough for her. The door at the other end, however, might be more difficult.

  ‘Bruce has got a jemmy in the boot, sir, and I know how to use it.’

  The young sergeant was already running back to his vehicle, and the woman officer was slipping off her jacket and hat. Deciding that shoes might be vital for landing on a mountain of old coal, or whatever else lay at the bottom, she kept them on. She sat on the edge of the chute, clutched a torch and the jemmy that an out of breath
Bruce had just delivered, and without hesitation pushed herself down the chute as if she were setting off on a helter-skelter ride.

  They heard a clatter as she hit whatever was at the bottom, then silence. The policemen at the top of the chute held their breath, not daring to look at each other. Then an echoing voice came from the black depths below. Sounding a little less confident now that she was alone in the house, the police officer shouted up to them.

  ‘I’m okay, sir. Sorry for the delay. I dropped the torch when I landed, so I needed to just grope around a bit before I moved. I’ve got it now. I can see the stairs. I’ll see if I can find a way to let you in. I’ll start in the kitchen.’

  Following Beatrice who had set off with a purpose, the officers made their way towards the shadowy and silent back of the house, stepping through the weeds that were growing over the disused gravel paths.

  Within moments they saw the flash of the officer’s torch through the gloom of the windows, and heard a number of bolts being dragged back. A muffled voice came from inside.

  ‘I can’t find what’s keeping it closed. It won’t budge.’

  Tom shone his own torch on the door, and saw that there were padlocked metal bars at the top and bottom. He immediately recognised the significance of them being on the outside. Bruce didn’t need to be told what to do, and disappeared once more round the side of the house.

  ‘Hang on in there. Bruce has just gone for some tool or other - we’ll be with you in a second.’

  ‘It’s all right, sir. This place is as quiet as the grave.’

  Tom didn’t like the sound of that one bit.

  Within minutes, Bruce had taken a sledgehammer to the padlocks, and the door was pushed open.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  The woman officer, who was herself no more than a girl, nodded. But this wasn’t a comfortable house, and certainly not a place to be alone in the dark.

  He tried a light switch, but nothing happened. He realised that Hugo must have switched the power off at the fuse box. That suggested that the house was empty, but he couldn’t be sure. He no longer knew if he wanted to find Mirela here. Like Laura, he was beginning to hope for a phone call to say that Mirela was somewhere else entirely.

  ‘Beatrice, do you know where the main fuse box is?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Right. We can waste time looking for it, or we can use torches. Everybody happy to use a torch?’ With nods all round, they split into two groups. Tom and the woman officer, with Beatrice in tow, began their search of the downstairs rooms whilst Bruce and detective made their way upstairs to the first floor bedrooms. They crept around like burglars in the night, as if frightened of the secrets that the house would reveal. Each footstep seemed to resonate, as if the house were hollow and empty.

  And it was ominously quiet. A large stained glass window high above the front door cast sinister shadows as the moon periodically darted out from behind a cloud.

  The first door Tom tried opened into a dining room. Tom shone his torch into the shadowy depths of the room. The furniture was old, but in good condition. There was a very thin film of dust, but not what Tom would have expected if the house was deserted. He couldn’t believe that Hugo would clean for himself, so somebody else must have been doing it. Perhaps this was all that he wanted the girls for. Tom brushed that thought aside. With what he knew now, he was certain that it was nothing so simple.

  For the moment, he cast no more than a cursory glance around each of the rooms he entered. There would be time for a proper search later, when they had established that they were definitely alone. Although he knew that Hugo was dead and there could be no threat from anybody in this house, he couldn’t deny that the darkness and the silence sent a cold shiver up his spine.

  He had just tried the last door and found it locked when Tom heard a shout from upstairs.

  ‘DCI Douglas! Here! You need to come here. Now!’

  Tom turned to the woman officer and pointed to Beatrice.

  ‘Keep her down here, do you understand?’

  He turned and ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. The shadows cast by the moon appeared to be chasing him as he ran, the thump of his feet echoing dismally around the barren walls. He followed the sounds of the voices to a bedroom at the front of the house.

  Pushing open the door, he could see the light from the officers’ abandoned torches shining against blank walls, and didn’t know what he was looking for. There was a dreadful smell in the room, but he couldn’t see anybody. He flashed his torch and captured the policemen in the light, kneeling by the side of a mattress on the floor.

  At that moment, the room burst into bright light. The woman officer’s voice drifted up the stairs, shouting something about finding the fuse box. But Tom didn’t register what she was saying. All he could do was look at the body lying on the mattress, revealed in the harsh glare of a bare light bulb.

  CHAPTER 35

  Laura felt a deep sense of foreboding. She had no idea what they would discover, but she knew it wouldn’t be good. Nobody knew Hugo the way that she did, and she felt a massive pressure in her chest, as if somebody were pressing down on it. In the end, nothing prepared her for the reality.

  Becky came into the drawing room where they were all waiting in silence. Her face was grim.

  ‘Laura, Tom just called. Could I speak to you in private, please?’

  ‘Becky, whatever it is you can tell everybody. Too much has happened now for there to be any secrets.’

  Becky swallowed, and asked if it would be okay if she sat down. Everybody just looked at her.

  ‘Tell us, please Becky.’

  ‘Tom is going to come and see you and give you more detail, but it appears that when they reached the farm, they found a girl. Mirela Tinescy.

  Laura put her head down and gasped. It was Will who spoke, reaching for Imogen’s hand as he did so as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘My God! Is she okay?’ he said.

  ‘She’s alive. That’s about as much as I can say, really. She was chained up in a bedroom, by her ankle. Her water had run out - we don’t know how long ago.’

  The words ‘chained up’ made Laura shiver, and she could feel her body covered with goose bumps. She had to ask.

  ‘But there’s only the one girl? They’ve not found any others?’

  Becky shook her head silently.

  ‘Tom’s going to organise a car to bring Beatrice back, but he needs to stay there. He won’t be able to get back to you until late morning at the earliest. He asked me to tell you that he’s really sorry, Laura. We both know how dreadful this must be for you.’

  Three stunned faces were turned towards Becky, and then back towards Laura, who lifted her head and leaned back heavily. She stared up at the ceiling, unable to return anybody’s gaze.

  Only Will broke the silence.

  ‘My God, Laura. What were you married to?’

  Imogen glared at her ex-husband, their moment of closeness apparently gone.

  ‘Shut up, Will. Now’s not the time, is it? Leave Laura alone. Stella, not the time for a cup of tea, I don’t think. I know where the brandy is. Let’s get it sorted shall we?’

  Laura stared into space, and suddenly realised that tears were running down her face. Only Becky and Will remained in the room.

  Becky broke the silence. ‘I’m sorry, Laura. It must be an awful time for you. I really don’t know what to say.’

  Laura tried to smile through her tears.

  ‘It’s okay, Becky. I’m not crying for me. I’m crying for those girls. If he treated them that badly, you see, I can’t believe he would have risked letting them go. He wouldn’t have let them go. They would have exposed him for what he was. Do you understand?’

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘And I knew. I knew he was taking them.’

  There was a shocked silence. Will was looking at his sister in amazement.

  ‘What the fuck do you mean, Laura?
You knew he was taking them? Why in God’s name didn’t you do anything?’

  How could she ever explain?

  ‘Don’t you think I tried, Will? You have no idea. No idea at all. I even went to the police with my suspicions - a Chief Constable no less. And look where that got me. Back in a straightjacket, practically. There’s a lot you don’t understand, and clearly a lot that even I didn’t understand.’

  She wanted to plead with them. She just wanted somebody - anybody - to begin to comprehend the life she had lead, and why she had only one option.

  ‘I thought he was just paying them off - really I did. That’s what he implied. I knew it wouldn’t have been nice for them, knowing Hugo’s proclivities, but I never thought he’d chain them up. I thought he’d use them in his weird games and send them away with more money than they had ever dreamed of. And when I returned here from the home, I had to do exactly as he said. I couldn’t rock the boat. There was too much at stake.’

  Laura realised that she was in danger of saying too much. She tried to calm herself down before she continued with her explanation.

  ‘Once he was dead, I thought they were all safe, don’t you see? So there didn’t seem any point raking through the dirt then. More than anything, I didn’t want Alexa to ever know who her father really was. She has enough to deal with.’

  Laura turned to Becky, in the hope that the other woman would understand what she was saying, and why she had kept this to herself. Becky looked sympathetic, but Laura felt a sense of futility. She wished Tom were here. She thought that he would understand. He already knew some of it, and he believed in her. She was sure of that.

  ‘Will,’ Laura said, ‘there’s a lot of this that won’t make sense to you. But the day after Hugo died, we heard that a girl was missing. A girl called Danika. When I heard that, I didn’t know what to do. If I had thought that I could help, I would have told Tom. But I had no idea where he’d taken them - and I promise you I didn’t think he would harm them. At least, not physically. Tom only told me that Mirela was missing a few hours ago, but there was still nothing I could do.’