by Penny Grubb
‘Yes, Laura, very clever.’
‘It was what Terry wrote when Mally stole him the papers about the church. Then I decided to sneak it back after I’d emailed you so no one would know.’
So she’d been caught trying to put the torn page back. Annie wondered where. It didn’t matter for now. She imagined someone twisting their mouth to a false smile, pretending not to notice what they’d seen. Questioning Laura gently so she spilt all she knew.
She wrenched the metal bar, grunting at the effort needed to get any sort of purchase on it; wincing as the awkward position shot a shaft of fire up her arm.
‘Why did you come up here with Boxer, Laura?’
‘Mally said to come up here quick as I could and not let anyone know.’
‘Mally told you?’ Mally had lured them both? But the girl had been genuinely surprised to find Boxer.
‘She left me a message, but I came as quick as I could.’
A message? Annie would lay money it was a message Mally knew nothing about.
She yanked at the bar, heard Laura’s sudden intake of breath as the jarring movement jerked her arm, was aware the girl held back an instinctive cry of pain. As she kept up the pressure and felt the decades-old wall give up its hold bit by bit, Annie kept talking almost at random. Anything to distract the girl from her predicament.
‘Who was here when you arrived, Laura?’
‘No one.’ The girl’s voice sounded puzzled. ‘Just a hay-net for Boxer and a drink for me. I was ever so thirsty, Annie. Then I got sleepy and I don’t remember.’
Did that make it planned in advance, or just very quick thinking by someone taking advantage of circumstances and Laura’s parents being away?
Annie thought of Mally leaping out in front of her car. Everyone knew everything in Milesthorpe; and by then the place was boiling with news of Laura’s disappearance. Doris Kitson knew Annie was on her way to the Tunbridges’. If Doris knew, Milesthorpe knew. Who was aware that Annie had a copy of the torn page? Was that the reason Mally had been used to lure her up here? Or was it just that she was homing in on the truth step by step, millimetre by millimetre, and must be stopped? It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered now.
What mattered was to keep Laura talking. Once she’d freed her arm, she wanted the girl to feel her way across a pitch-black room where a rotting corpse had lain not so long ago. It would be good if Laura didn’t remember that.
Laura’s earlier words were an irrelevance, but they seeped into Annie’s consciousness. Mally didn’t live at the colonel’s, of course she didn’t. Her house was where she lived with her mother, next door to Tremlow. Annie had known all along but somehow hadn’t adjusted her mental image. The house with all the work being done. We’re poor now …
‘Try it now, Laura. Can you get your arm out?’ Annie felt Laura pull against her. For a moment she thought the bracket might hold firm but suddenly the strain slackened.
‘I’m free.’ It was a whisper. ‘Hurry up, Annie. Hurry and unlock the door.’
‘Keep calm, Laura. Boxer’s waiting for you.’
Annie pulled her hand out of the gap, grazing it painfully on the rough surface of the concrete. She stumbled along the side of the building sliding in the mud, running blind now. The last of the light had been swallowed in the storm.
Boxer was no more than an outline down below her. She was aware his head shot up as she looked over at him, but then he returned to his search for stray wisps of hay. Annie slid herself over the low wall and dropped down beside him. She made for the pole blocking the entrance.
‘Stay here, Boxer. Don’t wander off,’ she whispered, and lifted the pole away from the gap.
She crept to the outer door. It creaked as she pulled it towards her. She prayed that the gale hid the sound as she slipped through into the dark corridor. At once, the noise of the storm melted into the background behind the thick walls. The air stilled. The silence wrapped itself round her too closely, too intimately, as her footsteps traced Terry Martin’s.
She took the dark stretch step by step with Terry Martin’s film in her mind’s eye, knowing the raised stalls lay in the blackness beside her, every shadow dense enough to hide a body. Terry Martin’s killer could be close enough to reach out and touch her as she crept past.
The big door, the backdrop to the only sight she’d had of Terry Martin, loomed large ahead of her. His silhouette had bent over this door twisting a key. Now Annie reached out with an identical key to the same door and found Maz’s uncle’s handiwork all but swallowed by the lock. She had to bend close as she held the key with finger ends and tried to turn it. As she struggled she realized Maz hadn’t broken into Balham’s farmhouse to get a copy of the key for the girls. He already had the impression from doing the same task for Terry Martin. How much had Terry paid him for that?
The sound of the key in the lock must have filtered through the stout wooden panels.
‘Hurry. Hurry.’ She heard Laura’s fists pound on the other side of the wood.
‘Hush, Laura, please hush.’ She couldn’t make Laura hear without shouting louder than she dared and desperately centred her efforts on the stubby key. Once she’d pushed it home, it turned sweetly. Maz’s uncle knew his craft. She pushed the big door and felt it give under the pressure.
‘Quiet, Laura. You must keep quiet.’ The girl was out as soon as the door was wide enough for her to squeeze through. She shot past Annie and raced towards the thin line of light from the outer door. Annie heard her stumble on the uneven ground. It had been wasted worry that Laura would hang back and wait for her. The girl had forgotten her in the rush of freedom from her prison. Annie hurried after her, too aware of the clammy stones of the building closing in.
Outside, the storm had lost its intensity. The rain poured down without a hurricane to whip it to a stinging force that hit from all directions. Pale moonlight filtered through, turning the yard into a stage, the surrounding scrubland an amphitheatre where anyone might sit back and watch through the dark.
‘Boxer!’ Laura flew at her pony and embraced his neck.
‘Get on his back, Laura. Quick. Get going.’
Laura seemed paralysed as though shock had switched her to a different dimension. ‘Oh, his saddle’s all wet. He’s soaked. He’s …’ Laura reached into her pocket for a hanky to dab at the wet leather.
‘For God’s sake! Get on his back!’ Annie rushed at Laura and lifted her at the pony, half throwing her on to it. ‘Go on. Get going.’
Even once aboard, Laura couldn’t seem to grab the urgency above the niceties of arranging herself in the saddle and untwisting the reins. Careless of the danger from hoofs or teeth, Annie grabbed a handful of leather strapping somewhere near Boxer’s nose and dragged him round to face the way out of the enclosure, then she dived behind him and slapped his rump with all the energy she could muster.
Almost crying in frustration as the rain stung her face and the wind cut through to her skin, Annie hit out again and again. The pony ambled across the concrete with Laura crooning, ‘Boxer. You’re safe. Poor Boxer …’
Then, through the rush and roar of the storm and the waves lashing the shore, Annie heard a tiny sound from somewhere nearby. Like the snapping of a twig in the darkness beyond the wall.
Chapter 28
‘Run, Laura!’
At last, something speared panic through the unnatural calm. Boxer leapt forward. Laura screamed. In a clatter of hoofs they were gone. Annie had a momentary impression of the pony disappearing into the night then she dived for the deep shadow of the wall.
A surge of triumph took her. Now she was alone with whoever was here in the darkness, but Laura was out of the trap. Pressed into the wall, she eased herself along, desperate for the safety of open country.
Rain swept across her in waves, the wind found strength again to howl at the rush of the sea. As the moon’s light was obscured, definition leached from the scene. Reflected phosphorescence from distant waves danced weird sh
apes in front of Annie’s eyes. She fought for memory of the yard’s layout as she felt her way.
Under everything she could hear the rapidly receding hoofbeats heading for the track. Make him run, Laura. Make him run.
Water and mud poured down the face of the wall. She could barely get any purchase but grabbed at the loose bricks and forced herself to climb.
Close to the top where one last effort would take her over, a hand reached out of the darkness, grasped her upper arm and heaved her up and over the wall.
Annie cried out in fright, thought her heart would burst from her chest the shock was so great. At once the hand released her and a voice hissed from the shadow, ‘Keep the noise down. He’s not far away. This way, Miss Raymond. Quick.’
She scrabbled to her feet, fought for breath as she squinted to see the man who’d appeared from nowhere. ‘What the hell…?’
‘Quick. No time. He’s on his way.’ The figure turned to go, his form dissolving into the dark.
Annie scrambled after him, thoughts spinning. Colonel Ludgrove. He’d come up here to find Mally. What instinct had brought him? This must be about Mally’s father. And where was he?
She was aware the colonel stumbled worse than she did. This would kill him for sure. How had he known? Why couldn’t she focus? What must they do?
He stopped and waited for Annie to catch up. She stood beside him, listened to his rasping intakes of breath. He stared in the direction from where all sight and sound of Laura had vanished and wheezed out, ‘D’you think she’ll make it?’
‘Laura? Oh yes. She knows these tracks, Colonel. She’ll follow the quickest way back home.’
‘Hope so. Galloped off like a trouper. Don’t know how she got free, but …’
‘She was locked in. I had a key.’
She heard him chuckle. ‘That granddaughter of mine, eh? Resourceful young lass.’ The wind whipped the words away. She had to lean close to hear him. ‘Young Laura, will she hold her nerve, keep the beast at a gallop?’
‘Oh yes, no one’ll catch her now. Come on. We need to get back to the road.’
His breathing had eased. She’d lead him back. He must have a car here. Where were the police? Mally and Kay should have been on to Jennifer by now. Laura was safe. That was the thought to hold to. She’d be on auto-pilot for home. Down the slope from the building … on to the side track up towards the cliff.
Full gallop up the slope and then …
And then turn right, but his path would be barred by a silvery strand of Christmas tinsel. Danger! Lions! He’d been taught to be terrified. He’d leap shy of it. What would be there in front of him? Two concrete blocks with a pole wedged between them. The obstacle he’d been taught to jump in his sleep.
Annie felt her insides turn to ice; her heart begin to pound. Boxer flying up that slope.
‘Oh my God!’ She clenched her fists. ‘Colonel, she’s going into a trap. We’ve got to stop her.’
Annie took a step. Which way? She couldn’t see in the darkness. The colonel’s hand was on her arm. ‘This way,’ he barked.
Yes, he was right. Head for the only landmark they could see. The smudged outline of the cliff’s edge where it drew a line between land and sea.
‘Laura!’ she screamed, careless of hidden listeners, knowing the sound wouldn’t carry, knowing it was too late.
As she ran, ignoring the colonel’s laboured breathing behind her, she strained to hear through the increasing rush of the waves as they neared the edge. Too late. Too late.
The colonel tried to keep up with her, his face a grimace of pain as he clutched at his chest. She couldn’t help him, could only gasp out, ‘Stop, Colonel. Wait there. I’ll come back to you.’
Tina’s words. ‘Boxer’ll jump blind.’ Over the obstacle … over the edge … Laura, given to running away with her pony, would be found dead at the foot of the cliff.
She stumbled on, knowing she couldn’t reach the spot before they did, knowing they must be there already.
But she’d heard no scream. Surely they’d scream when Boxer with all that training flew over that tiny obstacle and took them both to their deaths far below.
Oh, but he wouldn’t. A sudden surge of hope. Concrete blocks were lions, too. For all Mally’s hard work he’d only ever jumped that fence in the colonel’s garden.
And Mally … Kay … Clearing the path. Christ, that’s what they’d meant. Kay had recognized it at once. And Mally had gone to pieces. Couldn’t cope with what her father had planned.
What sort of mind planned that? As she slid and staggered over the rutted ground, Annie knew she hadn’t worked it out because it could never have been the plan to frighten the pony over the edge with Laura on its back. But that was what would happen. She knew the answer was there for her to think out. It didn’t matter. No time. All she could think was that she was too late.
Laura’s fate lay with Mally and Kay now.
The clay grabbed her shoes and clung on, weighing her down. She cursed the rain that flew into her face, salty and stinging, obscuring everything ahead.
A sheet of lightning flashed across the sky. For a second the scene lit up like day. They were there. Further away than she’d realized. All of them. On the slope near the edge. She caught half a glimpse of a pony struggling on its side in the mud … three small figures. Then the black of night and the pounding of the rain swallowed them, leaving the image imprinted on her mind.
‘They’ve made it!’ She turned to the colonel in triumph. ‘Boxer fell in the mud. We were heading the wrong way. We have to get to them.’
‘Yes,’ said the colonel. Just yes.
A tiny gap opened with the relief of seeing them all alive; a gap through which another thought was able to snake in. Mally’s father. It needed no thinking through; the idea arrived fullyformed in her mind.
He’d been away … seen nothing of the Showcross … wasn’t a welcome visitor at his father-in-law’s house. Why would he embezzle money to spend on his ex-wife’s house after such a messy divorce? Who had sat and watched those girls with Boxer … up and down … up and down … Who had control of Elizabeth Atkins’s money? Terry Martin and his obsession with the church wardens …
And how had a man in the throes of a heart attack kept pace with her?
In the fraction of a second it took for the story to slot into place in her mind, Annie tried to turn.
Strong hands gripped her arms from behind, twisted her body till her feet were almost off the floor.
She screamed out. At once the world tipped from under her and she found her face pressed into the mud. No room for any thoughts except how to breathe. He’d suffocate her here. She felt herself gag on the pooled rainwater. The pain of his weight on her back speared through her as it forced her into the ground.
At the moment of panic, as she tasted salty clay, his grip slackened, the weight was gone. She had enough leeway that instinct almost had her struggle to her feet.
No. She clung to the security of the muddy ground.
He’d fooled her long and often enough. At last – too late? – she could read him. He needed her on her feet so he could drag her the last metre to the edge. She mustn’t suffocate in the mud. Modern forensics were too good to risk that. But if she was found dashed to pieces by the waves, who could say what made her fall? He was so strong. No glimmer of the frail old man she thought she’d come to know.
He’d used Mally to lure her up here but he’d arrived too late to trap her; hadn’t expected her to free Laura.
He might not be frail, but he was old. He held still. Getting his breath back. Annie clung to the security of the muddy surface alert to the hands that held her. Both hands. While both hands held her down, he couldn’t hit her.
‘Is that what you did to Terry Martin? Hit him first then toss him in that hole?’
She spoke into the mud with no expectation of being heard, but his voice answered her. Down here close to the ground, they’d found their own refuge from the storm.
‘Good Lord, no. Leave things to chance? Hit him in the first place of course. Had to silence him. He wasn’t a drinker, you see. Couldn’t have got it down him easily if he’d been fully compos mentis.’ He laughed softly. The sound sent bolts of panic through her. ‘Clever forensics might have found an earlier head wound, but they wouldn’t find a mismatched time of death. Died maybe ten minutes before his so-called fall.’
Poor, foolish Terry. Annie knew now why he’d gone to the colonel, even knew who had sent him. Mally, who’d seen him ‘threeish’ on the Sunday, had sent him to her grandfather and to his death. She remembered the fractured conversation as the colonel had prevented Mally’s answers to Annie making any sense. Terry had spent his missing hours comatose in the colonel’s house, or maybe his daughter’s.
It was you on that scaffolding, Colonel.
Irrationally, she wanted to scream it at him. You that Doris saw up there, loosening the metal rail as a reason for Terry’s fall. But Terry was already dead below.
She remembered the look in Tremlow’s eye as he’d said, ‘I saw him plain as day’. Glasses or no, Tremlow knew who he’d seen.
Her mind flitted from point to point across the things she now knew. Where was his weakness, what could she say to distract him, to put him off balance?
The track blocked with harmless silver glitz was a trap for Boxer, not for Laura. He intended the pony to gallop up there to leave its tracks for someone to find. If Boxer, frightened, went over the edge, all the better. If not, he would have made his way back tired and soaked. It would have taken nothing to carry Laura up to the edge and throw her over into the darkness of the storm.
She’d had a few more hours than Terry Martin and Tremlow to get the alcohol out of her system. Terry Martin and Tremlow could die drunk without undue comment: a girl like Laura couldn’t.
‘But Colonel, she’s just a child.’ She hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud; knew better than to plead with him. ‘It’s too late, Colonel. The police are on their way.’
