“Ouch!” she yelled, letting the torch fall. It hit the ground with a thud and rolled along the floor before she could grab it.
“What was that?” said a man’s voice. It was uncomfortably close.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Well, I did. I think there’s somebody down there.”
Verity moved as far to one side of the trapdoor as she could and held her breath. Juliet, now motionless, was still lying on the dusty floor.
“Can’t be. But if there is, we’ll cook their goose for them,” said the first voice, with a throaty chuckle. Heavy footsteps crossed above. The two policewomen heard the trapdoor bolt being yanked into place. The footsteps receded. The outside door banged and clicked shut.
Verity exhaled noisily.
“Thank God, they’ve gone,” she said.
“Yes. But we’re trapped in here now. We’re going to have a job getting out, unless we can tell someone.”
For a moment Verity looked at Juliet in wide-eyed horror. Then she put her hands over her face and started screaming.
Chapter Sixty-Two
CASSANDRA IS LYING on Ariadne’s bed, her face like ash. The poor air is making her ill. She’ll have to lie motionless and rest until it gets better. It’s happened to me so many times that I’d forgotten how frightened I used to be. She’s been crying, but she’s quiet now, collapsed like a wounded bird. Her face is without expression, tear-stained but calm at last. I catch a fleeting glimpse of Ariadne, as if I can see the negative beneath a photograph. But Cassandra’s cheeks are firm, her forehead smooth, her blue eyes clear and bright. She has the sweetest voice I have ever heard. Her silvery hair is tied back at the crown and cascades over her shoulders. She is tall and strong. She won’t look at me. She has turned her face away from me. She closes her eyes.
Philippa is still squatting on the floor. The lack of oxygen hasn’t affected her. She’s wary, like a wild animal. She trusts neither of us and snarls when I try to speak to her. She’s told me to keep away from her. When she raised her clenched fist to me she reminded me of her father. Is she also riven with broken emotions? She’s shorter than Cassandra, but as beautiful. They are heartbreakingly lovely. My girls. My wonderful girls.
Chapter Sixty-Three
KATRIN HAD ARRIVED and was in the meeting room beginning to construct the storyboard. Tim left her with Ricky MacFadyen and called the tracing squad again. When he heard they’d had no luck in locating the two phones, his patience ran out. He stormed up the stairs, resolved to bulldoze his boss into giving permission to search Spalding High School. He met the Superintendent coming out of his office.
“Ah, Yates, I hear your lady wife is here. Excellent. I was just on my way to have a word with her. Any news of Armstrong and Tandy?”
“No, sir. As I’ve explained, the school is barred from receiving cellphone signals by a mobile jammer device. I’m convinced they must be in there and that’s why we can’t reach them.”
Tim was expecting a battle, but the Superintendent merely looked grave.
“I see.” He consulted his watch. “How long is it since you last saw either of them?”
“Getting on for three hours.”
“All right, I agree there’s cause for concern. Call Richard Lennard and ask him to let you into the building to search it. Take someone with you.”
“I suspect that Lennard will be mysteriously unavailable when I call him. Then we’ll need a warrant, which will take hours.”
“Not necessarily,” said the Superintendent unexpectedly. “If you have a good reason to force your way into the building without a warrant, I can authorise it. And I’m willing to do that. But just make damned sure you find them in there, because it’ll be your head on the block. And call Lennard first.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, I’m going to see if Katrin needs any help.”
“From you, sir?”
The Superintendent arched an eyebrow.
“Yes, from me, Yates. Nothing strange about that, is there? I’m at least as familiar with the details of this case as you are. And, it strikes me, a damned sight more committed to finding those girls unharmed, beguiling though sideshows of disappearing policewomen may be.”
He brushed past Tim and set off down the stairs.
Tim took out his mobile and called the number Lennard had given him. To his surprise, Lennard answered immediately.
“Mr Lennard? It’s DI Yates. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to return to the school to let me into it. I’ll have a colleague with me. The two policewomen I told you about still haven’t turned up and we have to make sure they’re not trapped in the building.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes, if you meet me outside.”
Tim was astonished. It seemed there’d be no need for another battering-ram drama or for Superintendent Thornton to risk being hauled over the coals by the Police Complaints Commission.
Andy Carstairs came running up the stairs.
“Any news?” he asked. “Of Juliet, I mean.”
“No, but Thornton’s just said I can search the school and, miraculously, Richard Lennard has agreed to let us in without a warrant. I’d like you to come with me.”
“Sure. Do you need anyone else?”
“Ideally, yes, but we can’t take anyone off the main case at the moment.”
They headed for the car park. To Tim it seemed an eternity since he and Juliet had walked the same way early that morning.
“How’s Veronica Start?” he asked, as he started the engine of the BMW.
“She’s had a head X-ray and the hospital seems to think she’ll be OK. She’s got a nasty bruise and there is evidence of other, older, bruising. She wouldn’t let the doctor she saw examine the rest of her body, but the weals on her forearms were hard to hide when they took a blood test. My guess is she probably has other scars she won’t tell us about.”
Tim winced.
“I’ve read about battered wives syndrome,” he said. “I guess we all have. But I don’t pretend to understand it. Is she at the refuge now?”
“Yes. A WPC from Peterborough came to collect her. She’s going to spend the night there with Veronica in case Start turns up.”
“I think that’s unlikely.”
“So do I, but as you said we can’t afford to take chances. And I still think there’s something odd about her.”
“There’s a lot that’s odd about the whole Start family.”
“Yes, but apart from the obvious. I’ve had the feeling all along that she’s holding something back. Unless it’s just that she’s afraid of Start and traumatised by him.”
“Here we are. And there’s Mr Lennard, as good as his word.”
Tim was still incredulous that Lennard was being so co-operative. He hoped they weren’t walking into a trap.
Richard Lennard was all smiles. After an initial greeting he opened the main door of the school and ushered them inside.
“Do you want me to show you where everything is, or would you rather be on your own?” he said, unctuously. Tim’s instinct was to get rid of him, but he realised that Lennard could probably save them some time, and if he was planning some kind of trap, it would be better to have him where they could see him.
“Thank you, sir. That would be helpful.”
“Where should we start?”
“With the hall,” said Tim, making Lennard meet his eye. Lennard stared back at him with childlike candour.
“As you wish.” He led the way.
The hall door was unlocked. Tim and Andy followed the headteacher into the huge room, where a canvas cover was stretched across the floor. Several chairs had been set out on the stage, turned to face the wings on the left hand side. A screen had been suspended from the ceiling in front of the wings.
“The Bricklayers h
eld their meeting on the stage?”
“Yes, that’s what they usually do. The caretaker puts out the chairs for them.”
“There’s a screen but no AV equipment that I can see. Has it been removed?”
“They don’t use the school’s equipment. They always bring their own.”
“Have you ever been to one of their meetings?”
“No.”
Tim walked across the canvas to the far door and gave it a push.
“This door’s locked.”
“Yes. The Bricklayers asked for it to be locked. It leads to the changing rooms. They didn’t want anyone to come through the changing rooms and disturb their meeting. The caretaker will unlock it first thing on Monday morning.”
“I’d like you to unlock it now, please.”
“All right. I’ll have to look for the key. It should be on a board in the staff room.”
While he was gone, Tim paced up and down the canvas floor covering several times before moving to the windows. He drew back the vertical blinds from one of them and looked out. If Juliet had walked along the path that skirted the rear of the school, she might have been observed from this window. Had someone followed her? If the door to the changing rooms was locked, where might she have entered the building?
Richard Lennard returned, still wreathed in smiles, bearing a ring from which several keys were suspended.
“It should be easy to find the right one. The caretaker’s marked them all with tags.”
He worked round the ring of keys before selecting one and inserting it in the door. It turned immediately.
Tim followed him into the changing rooms. In the first, there were lockers ranged round the walls and three racks of empty pegs with cages for shoes beneath them. Beyond were showers and two separate toilets. Tim pushed open the toilet doors while Andy searched the showers.
“Where does that door lead to?”
“Just outside again. Would you like me to open it?”
“Yes. Are these two doors the only way of getting in and out of the changing rooms?”
“Yes.”
“What about the hall? Are there other ways of getting in and out, besides the doors we’ve used?”
“The windows open to the ground. And there’s a sliding door through to the canteen.”
“Go and have a look in the canteen, will you, Andy? I’m going to follow this path round. Mr Lennard, will you come with me? I might need you to use your bunch of keys again.”
It was beginning to snow. Tim turned up the collar of his coat. Lennard was still dressed in the suit that he’d been wearing that morning. He shivered as he left the building.
“Would you like to fetch a coat? I’ll wait here for you.”
“I’m OK. It won’t take long, will it?”
Tim found the headteacher’s newfound co-operation suspicious, but he was impatient to get on and didn’t reply. Lennard walked along tentatively at his side, almost but not quite a companion. They turned the corner of the building. Tim saw at once that the visitors’ car park was deserted. He almost missed the small door set back in the L-shaped groove in the building.
“Where does that lead?”
“Just into a lighting store. Spotlights for the stage.”
“Can you open it?”
Again Lennard worked methodically through his bunch of keys.
“I think it’s that one,” he said. He handed the bunch to Tim, who opened the door without difficulty.
“Is there a light?”
“I suppose so. I’ve never been in there myself.”
Tim fished in the darkness until he found the light switch. It was as Richard Lennard had said: the room was full of lighting equipment. Lennard remained standing outside.
“There’s no other way into or out of here?”
“No. It’s just a store room.”
Tim prodded the straw in which one of the lights was nestling. He removed the box from the pile to inspect what lay beneath it. The boxes were piled two high, the ones on the ground containing the larger lights. He could find nothing unusual and there was nothing to suggest that the room had been used recently. He replaced the box.
As he was turning to leave, he knocked against one of the big tripods propped against the wall opposite the boxes. It fell to the ground with a clatter.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, scooping up the contraption – it was surprisingly heavy – and shoving it back against its fellows. He took one last look around and left the room, locking the door behind him.
Chapter Sixty-Four
JULIET SPENT TIME calming Verity Tandy down before she tried to text again. Verity’s howls had gradually subsided and she was now propped against one of the wooden uprights, her eyes closed, occasionally letting out the aftershock of a sob like a distressed child.
When Juliet finally tried re-sending her short message, ‘no network’ came up on the screen immediately.
“Do you know anything about mobile jammers?”
Verity opened her eyes.
“I understand what they do, but not how they work. They put some kind of force field round a specified area to stop electronic signals getting through.”
“A specified area such as a school, you mean?”
“Oh my God . . .”
“Stop it, Verity. I won’t put up with that again. We’ve got to work through this together if we’re going to get out.”
“I’m sorry. Yes, some schools do use them,” said Verity, concentrating hard. “They do a reasonable job, but they’re not entirely reliable. There might be areas near the edge of a building – a window, say – where they don’t work properly and a signal sometimes still gets through.”
“Not many windows to choose from here!” said Juliet with a grim attempt at humour. Verity didn’t answer.
“I’m going to crawl all the way round this space and see if I can find anything at all that will help us. There might be something that we can use to bust the trapdoor at the other end. This one isn’t going to budge.”
“What shall I do?”
“Just stay here and keep your cool. If you hear any sounds overhead, shout and bang on the trapdoor as loudly as you can.”
“What if it’s them coming back?”
“I think that’s unlikely, but’s a risk we’ll have to take. If you can bear to do it, turn your torch off. I’m going to have to use mine and we need to keep the batteries live for as long as we can.”
Juliet began to crawl beyond the area beneath the trapdoor, keeping as near to the wall as the wooden joists would allow. It was much dirtier away from the main thoroughfare used by the lighting crews, and the floor was rougher. She felt the splinters sliding with vicious precision beneath the skin on her hands and knees.
It took longer to reach the far side of the under-stage than she’d expected, given the relatively small area she had to cover. Doggedly, she turned right and began her slow journey along its outer length. Now she was ploughing through great drifts of rank and sooty-smelling dust. This place must be a fire risk, she thought, before banishing the images the thought conjured up in her imagination. Her throat and nose were very dry, causing her to cough wretchedly. She felt nauseous. Her eyes were smarting and she was desperately thirsty. She knew that Verity hadn’t yet contemplated what it would be like to spend the night here without water. She herself was afraid to think further ahead than that.
She’d almost reached the furthest limit of the underfloor space when she saw a piece of card sticking out of the dust. It was in front of her, but beyond her reach unless she moved to her right and crawled into the network of joists. It was probably just some item of ancient rubbish and she debated whether it was worth expending her flagging energy on retrieving it. Logically she knew it wasn’t, but, spurred on by a hunch and her natural curiosity, she wormed herself deeper into th
e network, inflicting another splinter on her knee as she did so, and reached out to grab the card. When she lifted it from the dust she realised it was bigger than she’d thought, a faded oblong cardboard envelope which, as she grasped it, swung open to let fall several squares of paper.
“Shit!” she muttered. Levering herself up on one elbow, she plucked one from the dust and shone her torch on it. It was a photograph of a small girl with very blonde hair. The child was seated, with a hideously fat girl, perhaps two years older than she, standing beside her. Juliet gazed at the photograph for some minutes.
“Philippa and Kayleigh Grummett!” she exclaimed. “It has to be.”
She began scrabbling furiously through the dust in search of the other photographs.
“Juliet! Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’ve just found something, that’s all. I’ll be back with you in a few minutes.”
“I think I can hear someone up above.”
“Well, shout! Bang on the trapdoor with your torch!”
“I think they’ve gone again. I heard the door close.”
“Did they say anything?”
“Just ‘shit’. That was all I could hear.”
There’s a coincidence, Juliet thought grimly. She wondered if it could have been Tim. She was suddenly desperate to get her message to him. Abandoning the photographs, she crawled beyond the area under the second trapdoor as fast as she could. Although she knew there would be no window, it was the nearest she could get to an outside wall. There was just a chance that this would be enough to weaken the effect of the mobile jammer.
Shining her torch meticulously up and down the wall, she noticed something had been set into it low down. Moving closer, she saw it was an air brick. Reaching it would be awkward: she’d have to haul herself over several of the criss-crossed joists. She flung herself into the task with a gusto born of desperation.
“Please!” she whispered to herself, “Please let this work.” She launched herself full-length across the joists and lay with her head as close to the air brick as she could, clutching her phone in one hand. She found the message with shaking fingers and pressed ‘re-send’. Miraculously, it didn’t bounce back. Dozens more messages came flooding in. Then the phone rang.
The Crossing Page 29
