‘That’s probably not too hard either. There’s a kitchen lad whose bike I should be able to borrow. I can meet you at Fullers.’
‘That’s a hell of a way to cycle. There must be a lay-by where I can wait.’
‘There is. I’ll point it out.’
‘You’ll still have to drive. I’ve got to text Jan, remember.’
I quite enjoyed it. No, I really enjoyed it. He was a bit surprised when I pulled up at Ashford’s big B&Q, but was happy to fork out for a tool belt and a couple of items to hang from it.
The helpful young pseudo-Frenchman who’d pointed out I was booked in for five nights was on duty, smiling. In a genuine Frenchman, it would have been the sort of smile that tells me he knows I didn’t come home the previous night and that he hoped the sex had been good. As it was, it just looked seedy. ‘And will you be requiring a reservation for dinner this evening, Madame?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I flicked a glance at my watch. ‘I’ve got a shocking headache. I may just lie down with an aspirin.’
It didn’t take me long to change yet again, this time into clean jeans – goodness knows why – and the least vivid top I could find. Slipping the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the doorknob as I left, I headed not for the lift but for the stairs. With luck they’d continue beyond the reception floor into some sort of basement. Yes! I made the acquaintance of huge bales of what I presumed was dirty sheets and pressed on. More stairs the far side. These definitely led to the kitchens: someone was cooking something involving garlic, and I nearly dribbled. Maybe I should have had that afternoon tea after all. Hell, the smell was so inviting I’d have dribbled anyway.
There was no way the kitchen would be empty. I’d just have to hope everyone was too busy to notice me. In any case, it dawned on me that provided I looked purposeful enough, it didn’t matter if I were seen. Someone had left a wad of paper – yes, laundry lists – on one of the bundles. I stalked through the kitchen reading it so intently I nearly collided with a chef with a mega-knife, the sort I’d have liked, come to think of it, hanging from my belt. There propped against the railing was the bike I’d used before. The little rat had bought not lights but a chain! Arms akimbo, I turned back into the kitchen, still clutching my fistful of paper.
‘That bike!’ I bawled. ‘Whose is it? I said, whose bike is that?’
At last Mal sneaked forward. I pointed with what I hoped looked like authority: outside.
Once there, I held my hand out. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ he asked sullenly.
‘Keys.’
‘It’ll cost you –’
‘It’ll cost you – your job if you cheat on the deal. Fifteen quid you had, to buy lights.’
He threw the keys in the air. ‘Seems like a seller’s market to me.’
I grabbed them as they fell. ‘All’s fair in love and keys. Don’t worry. You won’t have to walk home.’
He came and stood over me as I fumbled with the lock. ‘How could you get me the sack?’
Cheat he might be, but he was clearly a few spokes short of a wheel.
‘You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?’
‘Let’s draw up some ground-rules,’ I said. I probably wouldn’t have got away with that but Todd had just wrestled the wretched bike into the Range Rover and was a touch breathless. ‘The first is that you stay in the car and sound your horn if there’s any sign of trouble.’
‘And the others?’
Bother. ‘I don’t take any risks.’
‘And you come back and report if you find anything interesting. Promise? But that’s not as important as the no risks rule.’
‘For either of us,’ I conceded. ‘What does Jan say?’
‘A lot. It’d be an exaggeration to say she gives us her blessing, but I think she understands.’
‘I’m sure she does,’ I said, ironically. ‘I’m sure she loves the idea that her husband is larking round the countryside in the company of an ex-whore hell bent on smashing up her beloved house.’
‘But not as violently as the police would,’ he said. ‘OK. And we’re in luck! No police presence!’
‘In that case back in – so you can make a quick getaway if they do appear. Which I’ll bet they will, somehow. And keep your eyes peeled. And if in doubt – Todd, I really, really mean this – save your own skin. I know the house well enough to hide until you can get help. Unless they try to burn it down,’ I added under my breath.
He looked around at the mess left by the explosion, the fire and the removal of the caravan. His face set. He said suddenly, ‘We need someone else. Two inside and one out here. I’ll call Paula.’ His jaw set and his thumb was already pressing buttons.
‘OK,’ I agreed, buckling the belt. Yes, hammer, long thin screwdriver, a couple of chisels. ‘If she wants to join me, she can. But it’ll take her – what – forty-five minutes to get here. Assuming she’s free, of course. I’m going in now. Just in case anyone’s got wind of what we’re up to.’
‘You really are paranoid, Caffy.’
‘Yeah. But that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.’ I was just going to let myself in when I looked back. He’d sagged against the driver’s door, looking older than I’d ever seen him. Old and worried. I ran back and hugged him. ‘It’ll be all right. You’ll see.’
He kissed the top of my head. ‘Of course it will.’
OK, that was two of us who were scared witless. But I really couldn’t understand why I was. I was doing the easy bit, after all – simply trying to find a room used years ago to save lives. Persecuted folk, like me. I didn’t know much about the religious ins and outs – school and I hadn’t been very well acquainted, remember – but I pitied anyone having to hide, knowing that if their hunters caught up with them they’d be roast meat. Literally. OK, eventually – after a show trial and a spot of torture. I didn’t see torture as high on Moffatt’s list of leisure activities. But then, if he was employed by Granville, he’d do as he was told. Granville had had one go at my tum. There was no doubt he’d enjoy repeating the experience, with the extras he’d promised. I wouldn’t. I was sure of that. Dead sure, you might say.
I shook myself, almost literally. First of all I went up to my eyrie, bundling everything up and taking it back to Todd. We both knew I wouldn’t be staying in precisely the same circumstances again: if all went well, I could set up a proper room there. If it didn’t, well, I didn’t want Jan or Todd to have to pick over a pitiful mess of odds and ends, as I’d had to for some of my friends in the past.
Off I set again. This time I tapped and knocked in the library. If there was any decorative embossing, I tweaked and twirled it. If there was a panel out of true, I pressed it. Then I realised I’d missed the obvious. There was a loose bit of skirting. I prised it away, and there it was. A big, empty space. The torch showed me it was big enough for a stout man, assuming he could get in in the first place.
So was that it? Just a large coffin? I’m not given to claustrophobia, but I wouldn’t have fancied being stuck in there for long, with nothing for company but a bottle of water and a piss-pot. No, he wouldn’t need the piss-pot. He’d got a loo. What was a loo called in those days? A garde-robe, that was it, on the grounds that the stench of ammonia was good for your clothes. This was a bit more civilised than the hole in the floor you get in some old castles. It was actually a raised bench with a hole in it, the sort of thing old cottages used to have in their outside privy. This was rather a small hole. How on earth could you sit on it without cracking your skull on the coffin lid?
Answer, you didn’t sit. You shoved your hand in the hole, and pulled up the whole seat. And it was a good job I hadn’t been tempted to take a quick leak, because underneath there wasn’t any plumbing, but a staircase – crude, uneven, but a staircase.
I was heading down when I remembered my promise to Todd. Backing reluctantly out of the hole, I sprinted to the front door. He’d love to see it!
He would indeed, but it was cle
ar he wasn’t going to get a chance for some time. He was being manhandled by a load of roughnecks into a police car. What if some of their colleagues took it into their heads to check the house?
I was back in that hole before I knew it, blessing the workmanship of whichever of my predecessors that had provided an easy to grasp handle to pull the skirting back in place. One satisfying click and I knew I was safe.
Safe-ish, Caffy. Those cops would have all sort of unpleasant ways of prising off skirting if they thought they were on to something. They might even know what they were on to. At least the chance beam of my torch had shown me what someone wanted very much. Polythene bags of what looked very much to be like cocaine. Big ones. It wasn’t me they wanted, but them.
Possibly.
I was down those stairs faster than was safe. But even as I scuffed my shins and caught my arms on the rough brick, I stopped to pull back the loo seat. And then I set off wherever the beam of that good lantern torch would take me. With luck they’d be so busy checking those bags they wouldn’t bother with me.
The torch beam took me for what seemed miles. Mostly the corridor was dry, testimony again to the skill of the early builders. Once or twice, as I listened to sounds of pursuit, I had time to run my fingers over the old bricks, the mortar neat even if they didn’t expect anyone ever to see it. Yes, even Helen, thin scared Helen, was part of that tradition, painting beautifully parts that could only be seen if you lay on your back and used binoculars. Helen, who felt like my favourite niece in this family I’d found. Two families. Not just Paula’s Pots, but the Daweses too. Pray God – yes, it seemed easy to say that, as I hid where old men of God had hidden – that Jan’s meeting with whoever had all those deputies would take place soon.
There was still no sound except that of my own breathing, not to mention the relentless thudding of my heart. Come off it, Caffy: you’ve been reading too many books. You need to have a relentlessly thudding heart. If it stops, that’s when you’re in the shit.
I paused a while to slow it, at least. Playing the torch beam along the floor, I realised that mine weren’t the only feet recently to have come this way. Trainers, boots – a forensic scientist with all his modern gizmos would have a field day.
What if I took my trainers off and went on in my socks?
Daft idea, Caffy. They’d pick up sock fibres, and you’d get sore feet. Bruised toes, too, probably. By now the passage was sloping quite steeply away from the house, steeply enough to have little ridges built into the floor – the sort of things you see on some canal towpaths so horses can climb the suddenly steep gradients of the approaches to bridges. Was it wide and high enough to accommodate horses? I was too much of a city girl to know much about a horse’s dimensions, but I’d have thought a donkey might fit more easily through a passage this size. Or perhaps they had smaller horses then.
Speculating about that got me another hundred yards. Whoever built this had been very determined.
As were – yes, I could hear the sounds of angry hammering echoing along the passage – the people now chasing me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There’s nothing like finding yourself at the end of a long, low, narrow corridor with people in pursuit to make you discover whether it’s a dead end or not. The wall I was staring at certainly looked pretty permanent, still with the original pointing. The bricks underfoot were beautifully even: they’d not been disturbed since they were laid. Which left, in my book, the roof. Yes. A trapdoor. And someone had oiled the huge bolt securing it so that it opened without as sound as I pulled it back. But it didn’t drop down. You had to push it up, which was another matter altogether. I reckon that an escaping priest would have had to be doing regular weight-training to shift it. It was a good job I’d been lugging about ladders and dealing with windows that didn’t want to open. But it was tough even for me. And once one last heave had got the trapdoor open, it was damned hard to pull myself up, especially as I had the extra weight of the tool belt to fight against. I thought my arms would come out of their sockets. However much I told myself it was no worse than pulling myself out of the hotel swimming pool if someone had taken away the steps, I knew I was lying. It was far worse than that. Then I realised if I turned towards the end face of the tunnel I could walk myself up. And did.
Better shut the trapdoor.
I’d scarcely enough breath or energy. But I managed. And then, for good measure, I collapsed on top of it to catch my breath. I’d be invisible should anyone be looking – surrounded by gorse or something, whatever it was was really thick and prickly, ready to tear me apart when I crawled through it. Not to mention my jeans and top. And while I could grow new skin…
I wasn’t far from the Royal Military Canal where I’d seen – how long ago was it? – that human cargo being loaded into the vans. The canal meant the wide footpath this side and the road other. Should I risk running along the road – OK, struggling along it – or should I stick to the canal bank, using the reeds as cover? Against that, I must balance the risk of slipping and falling in. And it was one thing to manage a few lengths in that shallow little hotel pool, quite another to take a dip in water that might be deep or weed-choked. There was always the canal path, of course, but that was far more exposed and I’d be very vulnerable, not knowing where I should cross the canal if I had to.
OK, decision time.
I chose the road. Despite all the obvious things against it, it was safer underfoot for a tired walker. Dog-tired, and very hungry. I thought fleetingly of those posh afternoon teas. Which brought me to Todd: how was he, dear, innocent, naïve Todd, getting on in the hands of the police? I mustn’t think about him, or about anything bad happening to him. No: even though not everyone recognised him, he was still too much of a public figure for anyone to take risks with him. If he kept a cool head he’d be all right. Please God he’d be all right. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything bad happening to him. It didn’t help to think that he was probably worrying himself sick about Jan and me.
Back to the situation I didn’t have to speculate about. My own. So far, so good. At least being in the country meant that there were no nasty kerb-crawlers so far. But what about other cars, police cars in particular? Surely, even if a stray police car picked me up, Jan would have bent someone’s ear by now. Chewed it off, more likely. Todd and me – we’d both be safe soon.
For some reason I chose to head north-east, towards Appledore and ultimately Hythe and Folkestone. I don’t know why. Rye would have been just as good. Good for what? I’d no idea. I just kept plugging along. Cars passed in both directions. I pretended I was invisible.
Soldiers must have patrolled along here for years, fearing a sight of Napoleon and his Froggie army. Or in my grandparents’ lifetime, keeping an eye out in case Mr Hitler wasn’t kidding. At least they were protected by cannons or by hand weapons.
I had nothing. No ID. Nothing except my toolbelt, which didn’t seem to be doing anyone any good. But it was well made, and I hated waste, so I kept it on, telling myself that joggers bought weights to make them fitter faster. Good for them.
So why weren’t there police cars looking out for me? After all that fuss and palaver, I’d have expected a helicopter with a searchlight, the sort that had disturbed my sleep with terrifying regularity back in Brum, or, come to think of it, what I feared most – dogs. A fugitive can outface most things, but not dogs. And here I was, walking unhindered along the road.
Things were beginning to make no sense at all.
At last I could see the lights of Appledore. There were pubs there, two of them. The first with a payphone would get my custom. I knew several phone numbers off by heart, Taz’s and Jan’s for starters. One of them would reply. Or there was even Paula’s – harsh-tongued, safe Paula, who might already be heading this way anyway, in response to Todd’s original phonecall. I needed to warn her fast.
The Black Lion. Perhaps I didn’t look as bad as I expected: no one turned to stare at me. At least, not fo
r long. But the payphone did nothing except swallow my change.
The barmaid looked very concerned, refunding it without question. She was less keen on letting me use the bar’s phone, though.
‘Please. It’s a matter of life and death,’ I gasped. She took another look at me, eyes widening. ‘And I’m happy to pay.’ I pressed the coins she’d given me on the bar. That clinched it.
Paula’s phone rang and rang. There wasn’t much point in leaving a message, was there? Hell. Before I could try Jan’s number, the bar phone rang. I stepped back to let the barmaid answer. Rolling her eyes, she passed it back to me.
‘Where the hell are you? And where’s Todd?’ Paula was not in her sunniest mood.
I told her.
‘You’re joking.’ She was very quiet.
‘No.’
‘Would you like me to come and get you?’
‘Could you?’
‘We’ve come this far; we might as well finish.’
The barman – maybe he was the landlord – looked at me oddly. I ordered a tomato juice and a packet of crisps and gestured to the phone again. OK? No reply from Taz. Heart tight, I tried Jan. Nothing. And no wonderful incoming calls, either.
Leaving my drink and crisps on a table, I withdrew to the loos. Hmm. At least they had paper towels, not just a blower: I dabbed away the worst of the blood and more or less returned to the human race. I was only surprised no one had remarked out loud.
The landlord looked much more approving when I returned. ‘I had a fall,’ I volunteered.
‘Will you be wanting to eat?’
One wall was covered with blackboards listing a huge regular menu and a load of mouth-watering specials. Knowing it was a waste of time, I checked my pockets. No: I’d only brought enough for emergency phones, hadn’t I?
‘I’ll see what my friend says, thanks.’
Scar Tissue Page 22
