by Jodi Taylor
‘What,’ said Jones.
‘I’m not sure. There’s grief and loss and … loneliness.’
‘Where?’ He looked around. ‘Where’s it coming from?’
I was reluctant to tell him, but he was waiting. ‘From the chair.’ And waited for him to laugh.
He didn’t and I was almost as irritated as if he had.
‘Well, go on – laugh.’
‘If it was anyone else, Cage, I’d be rolling about – either that or taking the bottle away from you – but this is you, so I’m not.’
I said nothing, biting my lip.
‘What? What’s the problem?’
I was reluctant. I had a horrible feeling I knew what I had to do and I really didn’t want to do it – but there was so much hurt here. How could I not?
I smoothed my hand over the worn velvet and there it was again. That indefinable something. Calling to me. Trying to attract my attention. Which, let’s face it, was what it had been trying to do all along. If ever a chair could shout ‘Look at me. Look at me,’ that was what this one had been doing, almost since the moment I arrived. Even so …
Jones was watching me. ‘You don’t have to do it. I can ring for a taxi and you could be back in Rushford by breakfast time.’
‘I think I do have to do it. I think that’s the whole point. If I don’t …’
‘Yes?’ he said with interest. ‘What if you don’t?’
‘I don’t know exactly, but it’s like …’
‘Yes?’
‘Like an unhealed wound. An unscratched itch. An unfulfilled need. I have to do it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can do it.’
‘OK, off you go then. Shout if … ‘
‘Shout if it all goes badly wrong and my brain explodes.’
‘Just what I was going to say,’ he grinned. ‘How well we know each other.’ But I noticed he was standing close enough to get to me in a hurry should he have to.
I walked around the chair and gazed at it for a moment and then sat. Resting my head against the back, I closed my eyes …
… The room seemed bigger. Now there were alcoves on both sides of the fireplace. A cheerful fire burned in the grate. The driftwood fire crackled, burning blue and green. Everything was quiet and peaceful. If only it was always like this. I looked up. She was sitting on the other side of the fire, pretending to sew. I watched the needle ply, pulling the red silk through the white fabric. Flowing like blood. She’d rammed pins into the arm of her chair. Her chair. Where she sat every night, thinking her unclean thoughts. Weaving her filthy ideas into the very fabric of our home. Rendering everything unclean just by her very presence. So quiet, so serene, so … innocent. Only I knew better. Only I could see the evil existing inside her. Waiting. Just waiting for the moment when I let down my guard. Waiting for me to look away for just one moment. And then it would unleash itself upon me. Or so it thought.
I watched my hand reach down to take the log from the basket. An old, gnarled hand, scarred and hard. The hand of a man who’d worked all his life. I looked at her hands, white and soft. Watched the red thread pool against the white silk. Like splashes of blood. Felt myself stand up slowly as if to place the log upon the fire. Felt the good, hard wood in my hand. There would never be a better chance. Her blonde head was bent over her work. She was offering herself to me. She wanted me to do it. Did she recognise her own evil? I should set her free.
I swung back, surprised at my own strength. The blow sent a shock wave all the way up my arm.
She fell sideways across the arm of the chair, her sewing slipping from her fingers. I swung again – and this time there was blood. Warm, sweet blood. She shuddered. Not dead yet. I raised the log and brought it down as hard as I could. And again. And again. On and on and on and on. Until my arm ached with the effort. And then there was silence in the room again. Except for the crackling fire. And my own breathing, loud in my head.
Now she was dead.
She’d fallen onto the rug. Neat and tidy, even in death.
No time to lose. I had to act now before the evil inside her was free to find another victim.
I rolled her up in the rug. And then again in the plastic sheeting I’d set aside for another task. I shoved her back in her chair and pushed the both of them into the alcove. They fitted exactly. More than ever I was convinced this was meant to be. A bit of plaster board tomorrow. A coat of paint. Burn the log … A tale of her visiting relatives and it was done. Now, finally, I could be at peace.
And then … and then … the plastic crackled. There was a tiny movement. No. How could she not be dead? I picked up the poker …
I erupted out of the chair, gasping with terror, straight into Jones’s arms.
‘It’s all right,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re safe. It’s all right. You’re back. Sit down. Wait.’
He dragged out a dining chair and I sat down with a bump.
‘All right?’
I was staring at my hands. My perfectly normal, clean hands with straight fingers and neat fingernails. I remembered again the rage. That red, roaring crescendo of violence in my head.
He fetched me a glass of water. ‘OK? How are you feeling?’
I sipped and slowly the terror began to fade. I sipped again and waited for my heart to subside.
‘So tell me, Cage. What did you see?’
I closed my eyes and told him what I’d seen. ‘She’s over there. Behind that wall.’
‘So that’s why there’s no corresponding alcove on this side of the fireplace,’ he said thoughtfully, tapping away at the walls. Well, it’s definitely plasterboard and every other wall is solid. Back in a minute.’
He disappeared only to reappear a minute later with a small sledgehammer.
I leaped from the chair in alarm. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Next door’s shed. Don’t worry – it wasn’t locked. I didn’t have to break in.’
That wasn’t the point I’d been trying to make.
‘But what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to have that wall down. Stand back, Cage. You’ve had a rough enough night without a wall falling on you as well.’
My heart started up again. ‘But it’s not our wall. What will the owner say?’
‘I should imagine he’ll say, “Bloody hell, you bastard, what have you done to my wall? That’s going to cost you.” Unless he’s fleeing to South America to escape justice, of course. Stand back now.’
I didn’t move. ‘You can’t just knock down people’s walls willy-nilly. What if there isn’t a body there after all. What if I’ve got it wrong?’
‘Then I shall blame you and disappear, leaving you to make whatever feeble explanations you can muster. And reimburse poor old Jerry for his security deposit, of course. Out of the way now.’
Whoever had put in this false wall hadn’t made a very good job of it at all. Two or three solid blows from the even more solid Michael Jones made a huge hole in it. I braced myself for an unpleasant smell but apart from a certain amount of mustiness, it wasn’t too bad.
He picked up his torch and shone it inside. ‘Ah.’
‘What? You can’t just say “Ah,” and leave it at that. Is there a body?’
‘Yep. Well, I think it’s a body. There’s an old red armchair and a plastic clad bundle on the floor. Looks as if it’s fallen out of the chair. Want to see?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s not gruesome, I promise you.’
I sighed. He held the torch and I peered inside. The space was very small and taken up mostly by the chair which looked as good as new. Slightly dusty but otherwise fine. I stood on tiptoe, craning my neck to look around the small space.
‘Hang on,’ he said. A couple more blows and the wall was almost completely destroyed. The chair and sinister plastic wrapped bundle were exposed. I bent forwards.
‘Don’t touch it, Cage.’
As if I was going to rip i
t asunder and pillage the contents.
He went to his jacket, hanging off the back of a dining char and pulled out his phone.
‘Wait. Wait.’
Suddenly, something was very important. The thing that had been hammering on the door of my attention finally made itself heard. I looked at the indentations in the floor. I looked at the chair in the alcove. A smaller and lighter twin of the one that had given us all this trouble.
I turned back to the old red armchair. ‘You did this.’
‘Um, Cage, are you talking to the chair?’
‘You did this. That booming noise at night wasn’t the waves on the shore, it was you bumping yourself against the wall trying to show us where she was hidden. You’ve been trying to attract my attention since the moment I got here. All the time you’ve been trying to tell me where she was, haven’t you?’
‘OK, Cage, you’re frightening me now.’
‘Look – one chair is slightly bigger and heavier than the other. The other is more slender. The legs are curvier. You said it. His and hers. Male and female chairs. One for him and one for her. Made goodness knows how long ago when there were real fires to sit beside in the evenings. The master in one chair and the mistress in the other.’
I wondered how long they’d been together. And they hadn’t started out in this little cottage, I was sure. A rich merchant’s house somewhere. Maybe even in Rushford, and then sold on as they became older and shabbier, but always together. Until …
Until they’d been split up and the remaining chair had … had what? Moved heaven and earth to attract my attention. Done everything in its power to tell us where she was. I had a feeling that the body was incidental. It was the chair that was important.
I looked at the body on the floor. It was too late for her but not too late for …
I heaved at the chair again.
‘Cage, what are you doing?’
I puffed. Even the smaller chair was heavy. ‘Tampering with the evidence.’
He nudged me out of the way. ‘That’s my girl, but why?’
‘Because this is what it’s all been about. Help me.’
He didn’t argue.
I shoved the sofa against the wall where it looked perfectly natural. Jones placed the female chair to the left of the fireplace and we heaved the other one to the right. They both looked as if they’d been there since the beginning of time.
‘Right,’ he said, and picked up his phone again.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We’ve found a body, Cage, remember? I’m calling the police.’
I panicked. ‘Right. OK. Don’t panic. We need to get out of here. Now. No wait. We need to put the plasterboard back. No wait. Fingerprints. We need to clean the house from top to bottom. Our fingerprints will be all over it. And our DNA. And we need to clean out the drains because of hair and things. We’ll need bleach. Lots and lots of bleach. I’ll go shopping while you try to repair the plasterboard. And pack. And we can’t take a taxi because they’ll remember us so we’ll have to walk. Don’t pack – you won’t be able to carry your case. Leave everything you don’t need. Or better still – burn it. Burn everything. Because of our DNA. But not in here. Burn it out there. Tell people you’re having a clear out or something so they’re not suspicious. Or a better idea, throw your case into the sea. And then we leave tonight. While it’s dark. So no one will see us. We’ll catch a train to a big town and disappear. Why are you laughing?’
‘Sweetheart, this is nothing to do with us. We’re not guilty.’
‘But they’ll think we are.’
‘The body’s been here for months. Years.’
‘But you’re … I paused but couldn’t think of another phrase … on the run.’
And your hare-brained scheme will have us both on the run. We’ll be prime suspects. There’ll be a national manhunt and they’ll have us before tea time.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You go now and I’ll put the plasterboard back and we’ll pretend we never saw it. I’ll catch you up in a couple of days’ time and then we can go abroad.’
He put his hand over mine. ‘No.’
‘But …’
‘No.’
‘So … what do we do then?’ Trying to reconcile this suddenly law-abiding citizen with the Jones I knew.
He pulled out his phone and dialled. ‘Police, please.’ There was a pause and then, with a note of panic in his voice, he said, ‘Hello, yes. There’s a body. In our cupboard. It’s horrible. I think it’s been dead for ages. Oh yes. David Southey. Number One, Cliffside Cottages. The first one. The pink one. Can you come? My wife is very upset.’
He closed his phone. ‘You’re very upset.’
‘I am now,’ I said, grimly. ‘Who’s David Southey?’
‘I am.’ He fished for his wallet and showed me his driving licence. David Southey.
‘So who am I?’
He smiled. ‘Well, one day I hope you’ll be Mrs Southey, but I think we both have a long hard road to travel before we get there, don’t you?’
To cover my confusion, I went to get dressed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I watched the two police officers walk slowly across the car park. Their colours were very similar – a gentle blue grey. They liked their job and they liked each other. They were friendly and relaxed and obviously not suffering any of the personal traumas usually conjured for them by over-imaginative screen writers.
We’d left the kitchen door open for them, but they tapped politely anyway. Jones, rightly guessing that my experience in deceiving the forces of law and order wasn’t anywhere near as great as his, had sent me outside to sit on the bench in the sun. I could hear the murmur of voices and then the female police officer came to sit beside me. She asked me how I was feeling and was so kind I felt quite ashamed of myself. Moving the chair had not been the action of a responsible citizen. I don’t know what my dad would have said.
Beyond verifying my details and asking me to tell her what had happened, she said very little. Apart from the question I’d been dreading.
‘What on earth made you knock down the wall?’
Jones’s suggestion that we had heard a noise behind the wall and thought a bird or an animal might be trapped was the best we could come up with and I delivered it to the best of my ability.
‘But you knocked down the entire wall,’ she said.
‘Oh no. Not really. Well, not to begin with. My husband only knocked the tiniest hole, shone his torch through, and said, Oh my God … Rachel … there’s a body in there.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I thought he was joking, so he knocked down the rest of the wall and made me look,’ I said, thinking I might try for the sympathy vote.
‘And then what did you do?’
‘He telephoned the police – that’s you – I said, remembering my little woman role. And I came out here. I don’t have to go back inside, do I?’
‘Not at the moment, no.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, in genuine gratitude.
I could hear voices inside and a crackling radio. Cars and vans were pulling up the little lane. Soon there wasn’t room for me to be inside, even if I’d wanted to. They were getting stuck in and obviously they wanted us out of their crime scene, as soon as possible, so we gave statements, details of where we could be contacted, packed up the few belongings they allowed us to take away and were driven to a small hotel able to take us at short notice. As Jones said afterwards, there was nothing like being chauffeur driven from the crime scene you’d just contaminated. I was nearly speechless with agitation and guilt by now and definitely in no state to argue.
The Linden Hotel was down a street narrow even by Rushby’s standards. There was no vehicular access – which seemed to be a recurring theme in my life – and we trundled our suitcases down yet another narrow, cobbled street.
They were waiting for us and our room was ready, for which I was extremely thankful. We were too late for lunch, th
ey said, watching Jones hand over his David Southey credit card. I held my breath, but he was amazingly relaxed about the whole fake credit card thing, reassuring me on our way up in the lift that the card was genuine, the account was genuine, the user slightly less so, but the hotel wouldn’t be the loser by the transaction. I tried to feel reassured.
‘Right,’ he said, unlocking the door to our room, Number Eight. ‘You unpack, shower, do whatever is necessary for you to look a little less like an abused spouse, and I’ll come and collect you in … say … thirty minutes.’
‘I think I’d just like to lie down and rest for a couple of hours,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said with decision. ‘A walk in the sunshine and a nice lunch somewhere will leave you feeling much more refreshed than an afternoon nap. And it will help you sleep tonight. Off you go. Don’t dawdle.’
I scowled at him but he was parking his own suitcase by the wardrobe. ‘See you later.’
He disappeared down the corridor and I turned to survey yet another room that wasn’t where I lived. For someone who just wanted to live quietly at home, I was seeing a good number of strange rooms recently.
I appreciated him giving me some privacy but that didn’t stop me having a small rebellion and showering before unpacking. I must remember to tell him I disobeyed his instructions. And, while I was on the subject, also tell him that he was overbearing, dictatorial and despotic. And anything else I could think of.
Since we appeared to be doing the harmless tourist thing, I changed into a pretty top, light jeans and comfortable sandals, whipping the door open just as he was poised to knock.
His colour looked much stronger today, streaming towards me as usual. ‘Pretty,’ he said, referring to my top, I assumed. ‘Are you in a better mood now?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘No bodies concealed in the wall, no high-handed spies getting me into even more trouble. Actually, it was quite dull. Although I did enjoy your absence.’
‘Shrew,’ he said amiably, piloting me towards the lift. ‘I wonder if Sorensen realises what a lucky escape he’s had.’
