by S J Bolton
She wasn’t, but it was hardly the time to get into an argument. Especially as what she’d just said had finally filtered through. Blimey, I was slow.
‘Evi, what did you just say about trees?’
‘When?’
‘About Jessica. What did she say about clowns hanging by the neck from trees?’
‘Well, she was rambling,’ said Evi. ‘A lot of stuff about running through a forest, and bats and clowns having a tea party. She said there had been clowns hanging by the neck from trees. It just struck me as a particularly bizarre image.’
‘The sort of thing you wouldn’t forget,’ I agreed. ‘Right, there’s something I need to do. Are you on your way home now?’
‘What is it?’ said Evi. ‘What have you thought of?’
‘Probably nothing,’ I said. ‘Just something I need to check out. I’ll come round later, if that’s OK. Just to walk the dog.’
I walked Evi to her car and waved her off.
As soon as she’d gone I went to my own car and looked at the map. The day I’d had my close encounter with the buzzard, I’d found myself in a small wooded area that not only had given me the serious heebie-jeebies but was also very close to an industrial estate that Scott Thornton was connected to. An industrial estate that still had an old foundry bell. Bell, Bryony had written. Bell.
Jessica had talked about a dog finding her. The industrial estate wasn’t far from Nick’s house. On Friday night, when I’d been at his party, Jessica had been missing. I’d heard a woman scream. A minute or two later, Sniffy had appeared.
Joesbury had told me to sit tight. And feeling better or not, I was still in no fit state to go driving around Cambridgeshire. But I had no idea when he’d be back and I couldn’t help a horrible feeling that we were running out of time. I pulled out my mobile and composed a text message.
Bell Foundry Industrial Estate 11am, I wrote, then pressed Send. On the off-chance that something went wrong, Joesbury would know where I was.
The tall, dark-haired man was getting into his car when the call came in. ‘She’s figured it out,’ said the voice. ‘Can you get over there now?’
‘I thought Scott was there?’
‘Can’t get hold of him. He may have nipped out for food. Which means he won’t have set the alarm or closed everything down. You know what he’s like.’
‘I’m on my way. What do you want me to do with her?’
‘Hang on to her. They know about the drugs as well. We have to do it today.’
Evi was sobbing as she let herself in through her front door. The trip to St John’s to check on Laura had sapped every last bit of her strength and now the pain running up and down her leg and back had reached her head. She felt as though her brain had swollen and was pressing against the bones of her skull.
Harry. Just to know he was in the world somewhere, maybe even thinking about her, seemed like bliss compared to what she had now. She was thirty-four years old, had maybe another forty years left to live and didn’t know how she was going to make it through the next ten minutes.
Sniffy walked through from the kitchen, tail wagging, and pressed her damp nose against Evi’s palm. Patting the dog on the head, Evi limped across the hall and into her bedroom. Just a bit longer, just a few more days, until Laura didn’t need her any more. She lay down on the bed and pulled the quilt up around her.
*
It took me barely fifteen minutes to reach the industrial estate. I carried on past and travelled a few hundred yards further up the B1102 before pulling into a small lay-by. The last thing I felt like doing was standing upright, never mind moving forward. On the other hand, if I approached the unit on foot, I’d be much harder to spot.
Slowly but steadily, the fresh, cold air helping, I made my way through the woods and down towards the units, keeping a sharp lookout for Jim Notley or anyone else who might be around. When I passed the spot where he’d found me the previous week, I could see that the lights were still in position along the path, but the hanging figures had been taken down.
Clowns hanging by the neck? The hanging figures I’d seen hadn’t been clowns. They’d been dolls, with horribly disfigured faces. Had they been for Bryony?
There was a wooden fence between the edge of the copse and the narrow, flagged path that rimmed the estate. I ducked down and climbed through. Unit 33 was one of the more recent buildings on the estate, made of huge vertical sheets of corrugated steel with a gently sloping steel roof. A massive air-conditioning unit lay silent on the moss-covered path and, just above it, a small window that had been blacked out with dark paint. I walked to the corner of the building, so that I could see the rear and the side elevations at once.
One CCTV camera, almost at roof height, directed towards the front of the building. I couldn’t afford to be recognized on film, but I’d tied my hair back and brought the hood of my sweatshirt up. As long as I kept my head down, I wouldn’t be identifiable.
Two windows very high up at the front suggested there might be an upper floor. The front door was locked, as were warehouse doors on the next side I came to. There wasn’t going to be an easy way in.
Back at the rear, I gave myself a couple of minutes to get my breath back. Then I searched round on the ground, found a piece of old concrete, pulled my sleeve down over my fingers and drove it through the blackened window pane. In my delicate state the crash seemed unnaturally loud. I waited a moment for an alarm but there was nothing. Knocking the broken glass free of the window, I scrambled up.
At first I was trapped. Not a metre from the window was a tall, flat sheet of something blocking my way. It was slanted towards me too, leaning against the rear wall a few feet above my head. It gave slightly when I pushed against it but I didn’t want to send the whole thing toppling so I moved sideways and stepped out from behind tall plywood boards.
I counted twelve in total, stacked against the wall, four to a stack. The ones at the front had been painted to resemble brickwork. As artwork went, it was pretty crude, knocked up in a hurry, but still clear what it was meant to be. Old, crumbling, damp brickwork, the sort that would line Victorian cellars or tunnels. The boards had a look of theatrical scenery. The rest of the room wasn’t the cavernous space I’d expected but quite a confined area and the resemblance to the backstage of a theatre was increased by some large black floodlights, mounted on tripods in one corner. Coiled black extension leads stood at their feet. Could I be in a theatre? There was one door. It opened silently upon a vast, dark space. I raised the torch I’d brought from the car and stepped through into the very last thing I’d expected. A fairground.
DI JOHN CASTELL was on Evi’s doorstep, looking down at her. Suddenly unsteady on her feet, Evi reached out and took hold of the doorframe for support.
‘I’ve afraid I’ve got bad news, Evi,’ he told her. ‘Megan died last night.’
Directly in front of me was a carousel. Like something from a Victorian funfair, the painted horses reared on poles, ready to prance their way around the ride when the music began. In the torchlight the carousel shone with gilt and its fluted red and white striped roof rose above me. To one side of the ride was a small fortune teller’s tent and a Test Your Strength machine. Further into the warehouse was another carousel. Much smaller than the first, this was designed for young children and in place of the horses were red, blue and yellow elephants, trunks held high and gleaming with painted jewels.
The edge of my torch beam caught something and I jumped round to see a hideously scary clown looking right at me. I’d opened my mouth to yell before I realized it was a painted image. With clawing hands and a face that was half wolf, half demon, this wasn’t like any clown I’d seen before. Behind it were more of the same: hideous plywood clowns that, seen quickly and in poor light, by someone high on hallucinogenic drugs, would appear very real.
Clowns were what Jessica was most afraid of. This freak show had probably been created with the sole purpose of terrifying her. As I set off again, not wan
ting to stay too close to those horrible images, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d done for Nicole, Bryony, Jackie, for all the others, here in this psychological torture chamber.
And what they had planned for me.
Towards the far end of the warehouse, my torch beam picked out a narrow staircase leading up to a mezzanine level. At the top was a closed door. Ten steps up and the door wasn’t locked. This was a bad idea. I was a long way from my exit route if something happened. On the other hand, I would hear if a vehicle approached.
The room beyond was in darkness. There were four windows but blinds on each kept out the light. I had to rely on the torch.
A large television screen sat on a low glass table against the far wall and, facing it, in the middle of the floor, was a single chair. Desks ran along both sides of the room and the computer equipment on them looked state-of-the-art. On one desk sat two large objects concealed by thin plastic covers. I had a feeling I knew what they were, but wanting to be sure I stepped over and raised the first cover. Same thing beneath the second. Film cameras. Not simple hand-held video recorders, the sort most households own these days, but the kind I’d seen news teams use when making outside broadcasts. Heavy, powerful, with huge lenses.
On the small dust-covered TV table lay a single DVD. The photograph on the case was of a girl with long dark hair in some sort of cellar, bound at her wrists and ankles. It could have been the case image of any commercially made thriller. I knew it wasn’t, because I recognized the girl. The title on the case said simply Nicole.
Suddenly it all made sense. Unit 33 was a film studio.
Castell and Evi were in the kitchen. She had no recollection of getting there. Had John taken her arm and led her through the hallway? Possibly. Had he pulled out the chair and steadied her until she was sitting in it?
‘Megan’s dead?’ she repeated.
Castell dropped his head, ran a hand over his face. When he looked at her again, his face was perfectly composed. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I really can’t take it in.’
He was waiting for her to ask the inevitable questions and she had no idea what they were.
‘It’s too early to say for certain,’ he went on, after a few moments. ‘But we think she tripped at the top of the stairs. The carpet wasn’t nailed down properly, and she was wearing those ridiculous heels.’
Evi told herself not to react, to let nothing show on her face. Because Meg was tall, and she walked with a long-legged stride. In summer she wore sandals, new-age-style strappy things. Pixie-boots in winter.
She never wore heels.
Movement in the corner of my eye. The screen of one of the computers had just gone into sleep mode. Someone had been here recently and they were probably on their way back. A quick check behind the nearest window blind told me no vehicles were anywhere near.
When the screen sprang back to life, it was to reveal the frozen image of a piece of video footage. A semi-naked girl was putting make-up on, leaning over a basin towards the camera, which had to be concealed behind the mirror. Sliding the mouse along the desk, I clicked on the arrow button that would start the video.
The girl ran a brush over her lips before stepping back and fluffing up her long hair. Then she cupped one hand into her bra, to pull her breast up higher. Same thing on the other side, the way women do to give themselves a better cleavage. She pushed back her shoulders and gave her image one last glance before turning to clothes she’d laid out on the bed.
I felt sick. The video had been shot in my room. The girl was me.
I closed down my little home movie, making a mental note of its file root, then opened up Finder. Knowing where I was heading made finding the rest of the files on me a little easier. Conveniently, someone had labelled them all with my name. Laura 001 showed the episode on the green outside St John’s. This clip was nearly seven minutes long and I had to fast-forward through it. I got the gist though. Most of the time the camera had been focused on my wet, shivering body, even when it had been sprawled on the ground, covered in mud. 001 was bad enough. Laura 002 was worse. It was just twenty-two seconds long and showed me asleep.
It looked harmless enough at first. Except I was rigid. I lay like a corpse, flat on my back, legs straight and close together, arms by my sides. Everything still except for my head.
My face was quivering with effort. In small, jerking movements I threw my head from side to side and I knew, because in some part of the back of my mind I remembered, that I had been trying to wake up.
The window next to my bed opened and in my half dreaming, half waking, heavily sedated state I heard it. I stopped fidgeting and froze. Then I started tossing again, like a helpless cripple trying to flee, unable to move more than a fraction of an inch at a time. I could hear the whimpers coming out of my own throat as the dark figure climbed through the window and leaned over me on the bed.
As the sweat ran down between my shoulder blades, I remembered this happening. The dream when someone had been in my room, looking down at me, while I’d done everything I could to move and had been paralysed. I’d never felt more helpless in my life and now every second of that terrifying dream had turned out to be real.
The dark figure – impossible to say for certain who it was but the hair looked too short to be Thornton – took hold of the quilt and began to pull it down. I didn’t think I could watch any more and was actually reaching out to close it down when something hurled itself at the intruder. The masked figure turned in alarm, raised an arm to defend itself and then kicked out. My rescuer – Sniffy the dog, God bless her – had backed off and was out of view but I could hear her barking and growling. The intruder glanced out of the window, climbed through and vanished. The film ended.
I went back to Finder. So many familiar names: Bryony, Nicole, Jackie, Nina, Kate, Jayne, Evi, each with several files. I didn’t want to look at any of them, but there was something I had to know for certain.
I chose the file labelled Nicole that appeared to be the last, Nicole 010, and pressed Play. The scene had been shot at night, using some sort of night-vision equipment because the footage had the monochrome appearance of nocturnal wildlife footage. Nicole’s Mini convertible was parked at the side of a quiet country road. She was in the driver’s seat and appeared to be unconscious. As I watched, a tall, masked figure (this was Thornton, judging by the hair) adjusted the seat belt around her so that it was tight while another masked man checked the knot of a rope that had been tied around the nearest tree. Thornton was pushing up the sleeve on her right arm when his companion slipped the noose end of the rope over Nicole’s head. Thornton had something in his hand that looked like a syringe. He injected something into the unconscious girl and pulled her sleeve back down in place. The other turned the key in the ignition and the Mini’s engine sprang to life. Both men walked out of shot.
I had to fast forward the next part. It took Nicole maybe two minutes to wake up. Her head swayed, fell forward and raised itself again slowly a couple of times before she came round properly. Her right hand went up and felt the noose around her neck. She glanced round to see where the rope finished.
Do you know what? I actually found myself hoping she wouldn’t do it. That, at the last minute, she’d see sense, slip the noose from her neck and press her foot down hard on the pedal to get herself the hell away from those monsters.
She didn’t, of course. She sat still for several moments, then in a flurry of activity checked the mirror, released the handbrake, clutched the steering wheel and shot forward.
The camera followed her all the way, caught the severed head bouncing along the road like a lost football, and only switched off when approaching headlights warned that another vehicle was getting close.
‘And it looks as though she’d had quite a lot to drink,’ said Castell. ‘I was working last night. I usually try to keep an eye on her when I’m there, but … anyway, she broke her neck. It would have been instant. She wouldn’t have known anything.’
‘I didn’t know Meg had a drink problem,’ said Evi as Sniffy slinked over and leaned heavily against her.
Castell was nodding his head, slowly, sadly. ‘Well, they get very good at hiding it.’
‘Megan’s dead?’ said Evi, running a hand over Sniffy’s head and along her velvet-soft ears.
Castell narrowed his eyes and seemed to lean towards her. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘Would you like a drink? A glass of brandy?’
Evi shook her head. ‘I’m not supposed to drink alcohol.’
Castell’s face was all sympathy. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you do though, don’t you? You drink quite a lot.’
‘Excuse me?’
Sniffy nudged Evi for more attention.
Castell stretched across the table, as though he were going to touch her. Evi drew her hand back. His eyes flicked down and back up again.
‘Evi, this isn’t easy for me to say, but Megan was concerned about you,’ he said. ‘Specifically, she was worried about you continuing to work in your current state of ill health. She’d written a letter to your GP, copied to the university authorities, setting out her concerns.’
Evi put an arm round Sniffy’s shoulders and pulled her a little closer. ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘Megan wouldn’t discuss me with you. That would be completely unethical.’
Castell shrugged. ‘The letter’s on her computer,’ he said. ‘I can print it off in a matter of moments.’
It took a second, for what he’d just said to sink in. ‘You can access Meg’s computer?’
Eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at?’
Castell had been at Cambridge fifteen years ago. Not studying medicine, but he’d known several people who had been. Castell had been dating Meg for months now, often stayed over at her house. If he could access Meg’s computer he could have seen all the files she kept on Evi. He would know everything about her. Everything that had happened to her, everything she was afraid of.
‘Can I give you some advice, Evi?’ Castell was saying.
