A Night With No Stars

by Sally Spedding

  Blitz WG

  Elec. Board quote

  Ironing

  Eyebrows

  And just to gather together old cleaning cloths, bin liners and the litre carton of bleach she’d bought on Monday, restored the sense of purpose she’d lost.

  However, as she lugged the clobber down the hallway, Hector stepped out of his study. His face, already pale, reflected the bright yellow of the new wall paint. He looked ill.

  ‘Are you crazy, girl?’ He placed his body between her and the front door. Gin filled the air between them. ‘You stay here.’

  ‘You succeeded in stopping Mark but you can’t stop me. Sorry.’

  ‘You don’t understand . . .’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘You’ve just said you needed us.’

  Damn.

  She paused, wishing she was hard enough to deny it.

  ‘Why don’t you and Mark just sort your problems out and leave me to mine? I’ve done bugger-all of what I’d planned. I’m like a hamster on a wheel here. Round and round and bloody round. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with something positive.’

  ‘Give me a ring here in half an hour.’

  ‘What on earth for?

  ‘Just to say all’s well down there. That’s not asking for the world, is it?’

  She dragged her cleaning gear even closer to the door. He could say all he liked. Nothing was going to hold her back.

  ‘I’m only glad I never had a daughter,’ Hector finally stood aside to let her by.

  ‘Why’s that then?’ as she unbolted the front door.

  ‘Because I’m a coward, see. I couldn’t bear to lose her . . .’

  For a moment she was stuck for words and once she’d stepped outside, turned to see tears beginning to well up in his eyes. Then Richard came to mind.

  ‘But you lost a son, and nobody says a dicky bird about what’s happened to him on the other side of the world . . .’

  Suddenly behind her, the door slammed hard against its frame – loud enough to scare a solitary raven from the nearby beech tree. Loud enough to remind her, as if she needed reminding, that she’d hit a raw nerve and those shifting sands she’d felt under her feet from day one, were in fact still alive and well.

  And just then, as she struggled down towards Wern Goch with the broom dragging along behind on the stones, the sneaking drizzle turned to rain.

  Having scrubbed and dried the gruesome salting slab, without managing to remove the stains, she sat down on it to draw breath, suddenly not caring what had lain there before. For a start, there was nowhere else to park her bum in this gloomy kitchen, and secondly, that slam of the Hall’s front door symbolised a powerful full stop to all the ifs and buts she’d endured for long enough. Mark had gone to work, and she was doing the same with Anna’s encouragement still ringing in her ears.

  She rolled up her sleeves, because this is exactly what her friend would be doing. ‘Up and at it, girl,’ she’d said, and here she was, obeying, because deep down she believed she was right. Apart from the numerous sheep droppings everywhere, the filthy area around the range and beneath the old brick flue would be a good place to start next, and that meant a shovel which she’d spotted in the barn twelve days ago.

  She sloshed her way through the standing water outside and, upon reaching the old building and pushing open its unwilling door, stood stock still in amazement. Someone had cleared out all the junk and now there was heaps of room for plants and possibly animals to be housed. Even a sizeable office space.

  Her heart leapt at these possibilities while she paced around the old lime-washed walls, touching the solid ancient stones beneath as she went. Mark must have worked his butt off to do this, she thought, finding a stack of cleaned implements in the far corner next to the five double-glazed windows. She reached for a square-headed shovel, feeling gratitude mingled with shame that she’d taken him too much for granted, and that if tomorrow with Paul turned out to be a no-no, then who knows? Before leaving, she took a final look round at the transformation. ‘I want you to stay’, it seemed to say to her. ‘Please, for me . . .’

  She was poised to make her way outside again when suddenly, she detected another noise which appeared to come from the left side of the barn where the reedy grasses began. It was nothing to do with rain, more as if the skin of mud out there was catching on the soles of someone’s boots . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . followed by the defensive croak of ravens.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she edged forwards, shovel at the ready. But when she stepped beyond the doorway there was nothing to be seen. No human, no birds. Just the rain and that perpetual fount of water from which she’d earlier filled her bucket, curving from the bank.

  ‘That’s bloody odd,’ she muttered, looking towards the Hall, the river and the empty fields. Unless there was some other explanation – that she was cracking up.

  Nevertheless, once again in Wern Goch’s kitchen, and still unwilling to inspect the cauldron, she began to sift great mounds of compacted soot from around the range, making sure that at all times she could at least see the scullery door. Having filled four bin liners with the vile-smelling stuff she paused for a breather and decided, after all, to give Hector a ring as he’d suggested.

  ‘There is a fault with the line. There is a fault with the line . . .’ replied a computerised voice.

  Another odd thing, she thought, returning the phone to her bag. Perhaps he’d not noticed anything amiss and yet he’d been making calls earlier.

  She soon refocused on the job in hand until gradually, and to her great surprise, the shovel’s end scraped away the muck of ages to reveal a block of terracotta tiles surrounding the range. She knelt down for her damp cleaning cloth to finally expose their beautiful rich colour. She ran a hand over the smooth cool surface, aware of a deep joy filling her heart.

  But little did she know two hours later, as she made her way back to the Hall to shower and change, that the watcher from the chestnut trees’ damp shelter was noting her every move.

  Hector’s van was still there, so he must be around, Lucy reasoned as she let herself in and left the front door unbolted for his return. She was minging, as Anna would say, and a hot cleansing shower couldn’t come too soon. Her hair and skin were filthy, while her fleece was now more grey than pink. It went in with her to the bathroom as no way was she letting it out of her sight for even one second.

  Once undressed and inside the frosted glass cubicle, Wern Goch’s grime sluiced down her arms to her feet and when she freed her ponytail, yet more of the same appeared. What she didn’t notice however, as she turned round to train the shower on to her head, was the bathroom door slowly begin to open.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The fiery red-head is raising her hand, sniffing the air which smells to me like a stale sea . . . Her chant of a Threefold Death to come rises like some evil echo, snaking into what’s left of my soul, strangling, strangling . . .

  My embalming skills aren’t needed here of course, for the dead float naked and lost until the promised Re-Birth. I never believed in that sort of hocus-pocus before and I don’t believe it now, because why are Lord Howells and his grandson still here? And why has my Mary given up . . .?

  *

  Well, well, well. Here’s the meddler at last. I had to see her; didn’t I? On my terms only, of course . . .

  The voyeur with rain in his hair was less than two metres away from the one who held his future in her hands. Her body tantalisingly visible – sfumato style – behind the steamed-up semi-opaque glass as if Leonardo da Vinci himself had painted her in that pose. It was a word he’d learnt in school once while the class had been studying the Mona Lisa.

  This time, the work of art was Mona Lucy, her flesh softly pink, her nipples pinker still. Her sex, her buttocks all there for him to gaze at. And to hate. But not for too long. He had to be careful. Especially now. It had been bad enough climbing up to her dodgy window and prising it open.
Bad enough too that a piece of broken guttering had cut his right hand.

  He found the shower cap and its contents inside her fleece pocket and then exited as silently as he’d arrived before creeping along the landing and downstairs to the hallway and the cellar.

  Mission accomplished. In part, he reminded himself. Don’t get too cocky eh? Because there was still one vital item missing. His old hunting knife.

  He squeezed his way out through the one opening window which lay just above the wet back yard. Forget your clothes, he told himself. They’d soon dry off once he’d finished, and on his way back to his wheels he scooped up a handful of earth from the whore’s nearby grave and with one swift movement, deposited it on the middle step leading up to the Hall’s front door.

  *

  Pathetic little copy-cat, thought the one who’d seen everything. Even after all these years . . .

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I could murder that woman making passes at my husband. Poor fool. So easily flattered, he is. Always has been a sucker for red-heads has John.

  John . . . John Thomas . . . I’d not seen his for years, mind, before we came to this place. Now I have to laugh because it looks so stupid, sticking out like that. But he can’t hear me or see me, because this is her Hell, and already I’ve forgotten all my prayers. Forgotten everything . . .

  Still no sign of Hector, just a faint musty smell which seemed to linger in the stairwell. However, after her shower, and despite the new more pungent gel, Lucy felt human again. She changed into clean jeans and a blue sweatshirt, went down to the scullery to deal with her health-hazard fleece. Having checked its washing instructions – 40 degrees with a warm iron later – she was just about to load it into the machine when she suddenly remembered what was in the pocket.

  Dammit. How could I ever have forgotten? Her hand groped for the shower cap in first the right then the left one. Dammit again. Her heart started playing tricks, her throat suddenly dry. Where the hell had that gone? She’d guarded it with her life, for God’s sake. Could Hector have taken it? Or Mark? Whoever it was, must have seen her in the shower. Seen everything . . .

  She checked again. Nothing doing. Anger made her shove the fleece into the machine for a hot wash, any wash. She didn’t care.

  ‘Hector?’ she shouted, then moved out into the hallway. ‘Are you there?’ She stared up at the stairwell and the dark cobwebs looped in its high ceiling corners. There wasn’t a sound. Not a floorboard creaking or a loo chain flushing, even the familiar clink of a glass from his study. Hector had disappeared. So had his van, she noticed. With Mark gone too, she was on her own, with her pulse thudding in her neck.

  With no time to waste, she hurried to the scullery then pulled her mobile from her bag. She had three calls to make. All vital. The first, via Directory Enquiries was to Parc-y-Nant Mental Hospital to find out if Mark had ever been a patient there. However, when a BT answerphone replied, she punched END and swore in frustration. Next, she tried reaching his female boss at the forestry who, to her surprise, confirmed he’d not been to work at all.

  What the hell . . .?

  With her stomach churning, she then phoned the police in Rhayader.

  ‘It’s Lucy Mitchell here. Ravenstone Hall. I need to speak to DC Pugh urgently please,’ she kept her eye on the kitchen door. ‘The fact is, I’m scared.’

  ‘I’ll put you through to his mobile. One moment.’ In fact it took ten for her to mentally sort everything into some kind of order, so that when Pugh finally answered, her story tumbled out like the Wye in full flood, sweeping away her resolve to let sleeping dogs lie and to even forgive them. Her time had come. She was no longer the trusting novice buyer, prepared to give her fellow human beings the benefit of the doubt. She had finally turned betrayer. To save her life.

  She could tell the detective was recording it all, from Mark making the ravens attack Simnai Williams last Thursday – and how frightened the man had seemed to be when she’d phoned him – right up to the bread knife in Mark’s van and her being aware of someone lurking around Wern Goch. Finally, details of the bloodied fabric in the plasters box, stolen from her fleece while she’d been taking a shower ten minutes ago . . .

  ‘We’ll have someone over there within the hour,’ he reassured her.

  ‘An hour? For God’s sake . . .’

  ‘We’re doing our best, believe me. Like I said, all our resources are tied up with the Williams case for the moment.’

  Her sigh must have been audible because his tone brightened. Trying to help her stay positive, she thought. But all too late. ‘By the way, Miss Mitchell, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but, seeing as how you’ve been very helpful to us, I’ve got some good news for you.’

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘Yes, but just between you and me. Is that clear?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He was used to this, she thought. Keeping the informer sweet, so don’t get too excited. Nevertheless, her heart joined her stomach in turmoil. ‘Go on, please.’

  ‘Our young lady from the waterfall has come out of her coma. She’s been speaking to one of our WPCs. Very interesting I must say, even if somewhat cryptic.’

  ‘And?’ realising she was now trembling. Feeling sick. Being a turncoat had no rewards at all.

  ‘Apparently her abductor, someone called Phil, claiming to be a lawyer, told her to pass on the fact that someone called Richard has landed and wants revenge,’ Pugh went on, ‘whatever that means.’

  Richard? Revenge? Whatever that means? She stared at the open kitchen door, a certain grim mantra hammering in her head.

  YOU’RE NEXT . . . YOU’RE NEXT . . .

  Then she understood. That name he’d just mentioned was no mere coincidence.

  ‘Are you still there?’ the officer asked, clearly disconcerted by her silence.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now then,’ he added in an even firmer tone. ‘Stay calm. Do nothing to attract attention. Go to your car now, lock yourself in, lie low and wait for us. Understood?’

  But there was no reply.

  Her legs bore her unsteadily along the hall, where that wet clothes smell still hung in the air. Familiar enough from those days when she’d attended author events with the public coming in off rainy streets . . . Maybe it originated from her sooty gear bundled up in the Dorothy’s Dresses bag ready for the next time. If there was a next time . . .

  She grabbed one of Hector’s old coats off the stand, noticing that his duffle was still there. Automatically, she searched all its pockets but fluff and more fluff was all she found, until something more solid met her fingertips. A pink ball of toilet paper. Carefully she unravelled the two joined sheets and recognised not only that it was the same as from the bathroom but the few handwritten letters were identical to those on the postcard pieces.

  R’S BACK.

  She recognised the writing as the same on that postcard. But it couldn’t be. Could it? And if R did mean Richard, then where was he? What did he look like? And crucially, would she recognise him if he showed up?

  She held her breath, her thoughts racing, then instinctively glanced behind her. The Hall was suddenly too silent and, once on its top step, she checked the drive and distant fields for any signs of life. There were none and her nerves kicked in big time. This wasn’t just Crossgates and Elan all over again, but all the other menacingly silent places she’d been to.

  The drizzle put everything in soft focus, muffling all sounds of the outdoors, even an aeroplane heading west overhead. There was no breeze, no stray leaf falling from the nearby beech tree and the alders along the Mellte stood as still as a distant waiting army.

  Anything could happen.

  Besides, where was Mark if he wasn’t at work? And why did that short walk to the Rav feel like so many tense scenes she’d seen in those Westerns Jon liked? Or more specifically, the final scene of High Noon? Her legs felt boneless and her churning stomach suddenly leaden as she recalled DC Pugh’s instructions. Th
e police knew what they were doing, didn’t they?

  Well, here goes.

  With car keys ready, Lucy gripped her shoulder bag as if it wasn’t just a piece of BHS mock leather but also a lifebelt. However, just as she reached the middle step, she spotted a pile of red-brown earth lying there, just like before. Instead of sidestepping it, she kicked the soil with her trainer toe and scattered it wherever it fell. That small act of defiance made her feel much better.

  Then something which almost made her miss her footing on the bottom step. A group of ravens were perched on her car’s fabric roof, just as they’d done on Wern Goch the first time she’d been shown round. Her first reaction was to send them packing by yelling and clapping her hands but she remembered Pugh’s advice. Besides, the way their avian eyes stared at her put them fully in control.

  As she stared back at them, at least six more arrived and faced her way. Of course, she reasoned to herself, Mark had willed them there to protect her. That in the midst of all this open land and an apparently vengeful brother on the loose, lay a place of safety. Thankfully the rain had eased off as she slotted her key into the driver’s door lock. But she needn’t have bothered, because to her consternation, the Rav was already open and when she opened the driver’s door, a smell, entirely different from the one she’d noticed at the Hall eked out. She thought of that first time she’d seen the salting slab. This was bird blood, alright.

  Ugh.

  She hesitated, trying not to breathe in. After that forestry trip, she’d forgotten to do that one thing which her pernickety landlord Mr Shah had banged on and on about in Albany Villa. Namely, lock up or else. She covered her nose with one hand as she settled in her seat. Was some dead raven inside the car? Rotting even? Where the hell was that smell coming from? She didn’t dare get out again to look in the car’s other areas; instead she checked the rubber-matted floor around her and the glovebox, but all seemed normal. To distract herself from retching, she switched on the radio. Company at least until the police arrived. She then watched helplessly as yet more birds settled on the bonnet. Bringing fear not comfort.