by Jen Williams
A DARK AND SECRET PLACE
A NOVEL
JEN WILLIAMS
For Juliet, the devil on my shoulder who whispered: ‘write a scary book’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS BOOK ESSENTIALLY owes its entire existence to my brilliant agent and friend, Juliet Mushens. We had long shared an interest in true crime, swapping stories and Wikipedia links, and one day, when I joked about passing off all my dodgy internet activity as book research, she fixed her eye upon me – via Whatsapp – and said, ‘well why don’t you write a thriller, Sennifer?’. Thank you, Juliet, for being the kick up the bum I needed, and of course for being one of my dearest, wisest friends.
So, A Dark and Secret Place was a new genre for me, and never has a single book taught me so much. I’ve been lucky enough to have an extraordinary team of excellent minds to lead me through it and very kindly teach me all the things I needed to learn. Huge thanks to Natasha Bardon at HarperFiction, who saw through to the bones of this book immediately and made it work. Enormous gratitude also to the team at Crooked Lane Books, who made me feel so welcome and have kept on top of everything with such enthusiasm – Faith Black Ross, Melissa Rechter and Madeline Rathle, you all rock. Many thanks also to Jenny Bent, another agent who has had my back at every step.
I happen to be writing these acknowledgements in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, which is certainly not a sentence I ever expected to write, to say the least. We’ve been in lockdown for around three months now, and it’s not an easy time to do anything creative, let alone write fiction. The two brilliant bookshops where I work, Clapham Books and Herne Hill Books, haven’t seen me for a while, but my colleagues have been so supportive and brilliant during a period that has not been the best of times (for various reasons). Nikki, Ed, Sophie and Roy – thank you so much.
As ever, I am grateful to have had the backup, moral support and effervescent company of a bunch of writer friends. Den Patrick, Andrew Reid, Adam Christopher, Alasdair Stuart, and Peter Newman – thank you for being the best sounding boards and drinking buddies. I would also like to give a shout out to the Onesies; I hope to get back to adventuring with you soon. And, of course, unending gratitude and love to my mum and the rest of my family, some of whom might even read this book because it has murders rather than dragons!
Lastly, all my love to Marty Perrett, my partner and best friend, who I think has always been slightly concerned by my interest in missing persons and body disposal. It turns out it was all for a book, after all. Love you babe.
CHAPTER
1
BEFORE
LIGHT FROM THE doorway fell across the boy’s face, and for the first time he did not turn away from it. His arms and legs were too heavy, the cuff at his throat too solid, too tight. And it wasn’t as though turning away had ever saved him before.
The figure in the light paused, as if noting this change of habit, then knelt to undo the leather strap with sharp, jerking movements. The cuff fell away and she reached for his head, grasping a thick handful of his black hair, close to the roots.
Years later, he would not be able to say what had been different about that particular time. He was starved and tired, his bones heavy and his flesh bruised, and he had thought that every inch of him was resigned to the reality of his existence, but that time, when her fingers twisted in his hair and her fingernails scraped against his scalp, something in him woke up.
“You little brute,” she said absently. She filled the cupboard doorway, blocking out most of the light. “You filthy little brute. You stink, do you know that? Dirty little shit.”
Perhaps at the very last moment she did realize what she had woken, because for the briefest second a flicker of some emotion animated her pale, doughy face; she had caught something in his eyes, perhaps, a look that was alien to her, and he saw quite clearly the panicked glance she gave the cuff.
But it was too late. The boy sprang to his feet, his jaws wide and hands hooked into claws. She leapt backwards, yelling. The landing stairs were directly behind her—he dimly remembered this, from the time before the cupboard—and they went crashing down them together, the boy howling and the woman screaming. It was so brief, that moment of falling, but for years he would remember several sharp impressions: the hot searing pain as she ripped a fistful of hair from his temple, the yawning sensation of falling into space, and the wild delirium of gouging her skin with his claws. His nails.
They hit the floor. There was silence. There was, the boy realized, no one else in the house; no raised voices, no sharp fingers, no alarming flash of red. The woman, his mother, lay underneath him in a collection of strange angles, her throat cocked and bared as though she were trying to appease him. Her right arm had snapped halfway down her forearm, and a bone, shockingly white against her grayish skin, pointed toward the window. The sleeve of the yellow smock she wore was caught on it.
“Muh?”There was a thin stream of blood running from her nose and mouth, and her eyes—green, like his—were looking at point above his head. Carefully, he put his hand over her mouth and nose, and pressed, watching with fascination as her flesh slid and wrinkled. He pressed harder, leaning his whole weight on his arm, feeling her lips mash against her teeth and split and …
He stopped. He needed to be outside.
* * *
It was a cold, gray morning, he guessed autumn. The light hurt his eyes, but not as much as he had been expecting. In fact, he seemed to drink in the light, staring around at the bleak landscape and the sky with a growing sense of peace. There were the woods; he had played in them once, and the leaves were turning brown and red. There were the fields, dark now with recent rain, and there were the old out-buildings his father had let fall into disrepair. Somewhere beyond them, there was a paved road, but it was a long walk. His mother’s body, which he had dragged out onto the scrubby grass with him, looked more beautiful already—away from the house she was something else. Taking hold of her ankles, he dragged her a little further, across the dirt track and into the fallow field opposite.
“Here.” He opened his mouth to say more, but couldn’t. The grass was wet, framing his mother and cushioning her, and he could feel the life of it; tiny flies and beetles, the bright interest of worms. The boy moved so that he was kneeling next to her, and he felt his body fill with an anger that was so flat and so enormous it was like a landscape inside him, a rage that filled his every horizon. For a time, he came untethered from himself, seeing nothing but that flat, red rage, hearing nothing but thunder. He did not come back to himself until a polite cough from behind him made him jerk with surprise. His arms were bloody to the elbow, and his mouth was thick with the taste of pennies. There were things in his teeth.
“What is this then? What do we have here?”
There was a man in the grass, tall and sharp-angled. He was wearing a hat and he was watching the boy with a kind of gentle curiosity, as though he had come across someone making a kite or playing conkers. The boy went utterly still. The man wasn’t from the house, but that didn’t mean the boy wouldn’t be punished. Of course he would be punished. He looked down to see what he had done to his mother, and the edges of his vision went gray.
“Now then. Don’t take on so.” The man took a step forward, and for the first time the boy saw that he had a dog with him, a huge black dog, covered in shaggy black fur. It steamed slightly in the cold morning air and looked at him with yellow-brown eyes. “You know, I had completely forgotten the Reaves had a boy, but there you are. There you are, after all.”
The boy opened his mouth and closed it again. The Reaves, the Reaves were his family, and they would be angry with him.
“And what a creature you are.” The boy winced, rememberi
ng how his mother had called him brute and beast and filth, but the man sounded pleased, and when the boy looked up, he was shaking his head gently. “You’re to come with me, I think, my little wolf. My little barghest.”
The dog opened its mouth, letting loose a long pink tongue. After a moment it began to lick the blood from the grass.
CHAPTER
2
COLD AND TIRED and in no mood for awkward pleasantries, Heather forced a polite smile on her face. A moment later she reconsidered, and just as forcibly removed it—smiling too much at a time like this would be seen as inappropriate, and she was already well aware that she was about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.
“Thanks, Mr. Ramsey, for waiting in for me. It’s very kind of you.”
Mr. Ramsey glowered at her.
“Well, if you had been around here more often, I dare say you would have had your own set of your mother’s keys.” He sniffed, communicating in one bronchial sound everything he thought of Heather Evans. “Your poor mother. It’s … well, it’s all very sad, I’m sure. Very sad indeed. Just a terrible situation all round.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely that.” Heather hefted the keys in her hand, looking at the towering bushes and trees that hid her mother’s house from the road. “Don’t let me keep you, Mr. Ramsey.”
He stiffened at that, the pouches under his eyes turning a slightly darker shade of gray. She kept quiet, letting the silence spool out into the overcast morning, and soon she could see him wondering if he shouldn’t give her a piece of his mind. But in the end, he turned and marched back to his own house.
Heather stood for a moment longer, taking a deep breath and listening to the quiet. Balesford was a place of residential sprawl, of detached houses and high fences, of eerily similar faces and the same accent everywhere you went. It was technically London, nestled as it was on the very border of Kent, but a very anemic strain of it—no color, no life.
She sighed, jangling the keys in her hand before taking a deep breath and marching up to the gate, half hidden by the vast, evergreen bushes. On the other side was a neat lawn with slightly overgrown flower beds and a gravel path that led to the house. There was nothing special about it, certainly nothing unusual, and yet despite this Heather felt her stomach tighten as she walked up the path. It was not a welcoming building, never had been; the bleak pebbledash merged with the blank windows to suggest a place that was closed and would be closed forever. The door was painted a dreary magnolia, and on the ground next to it was a fat terracotta pot. It was filled with black soil, and on the smooth orange surface a rough heart had been scratched, the lines jagged and overlapping. Heather frowned at it slightly—she’d never thought her mother as one for the rustic look—and why was it empty? It was very unlike her mother to leave something unfinished … which was ironic, given how things had ended. For a long wobbly moment Heather thought she might cry, right there on the doorstep, but instead she gave her arm a swift pinch, and the tears retreated. No time for that. There were a few gray feathers on the doorstep, probably belonging to a pigeon. Grimacing, Heather kicked them away with the toe of her trainer and pulled the right key from the bunch.
She let herself in to a hallway ticking with silence and dust, a few letters and a slippery pile of junk mail skittering away as she pushed the door open. It was late morning but the gloomy September sky and the tall trees outside meant that the place was busy with shadows. She hurriedly flicked on all the light switches she could see, blinking at a chintzy lampshade that leapt into pastel life.
The living room was tidy, and dusty. There were no dirty cups, no half-read books propped on the sofa. There was an old red coat slung over the back of a chair, its thick wool pilling at the sleeves. The kitchen was in a similar state; everything cleaned and put away. Her mother had, Heather noticed, even turned the page over on the calendar to show September, despite knowing she wouldn’t be seeing the rest of the month.
“What was the point, Mum?” She tapped her fingers against the slick pages, noting that there was nothing written in the little boxes, no notes saying: “cancel milk/kill self.”
Heather stomped up the stairs, her footfalls muffled by the thick carpet. The main bedroom was as tidy as the rest of the little house. Her mother’s dressing table was clean and neat, glass jars of cold cream and bottles of perfume in rows like soldiers, while a pair of brushes lay next to an old-fashioned hand mirror. Heather sat down and looked at the brushes. Here, her mum had been less careful, less fastidious. There were strands of hair caught in the bristles, wisps of blonde and the occasional streak of wiry gray.
Organic material, thought Heather. For some reason the phrase seemed to settle in her chest, heavy and poisonous. You left behind organic material, Mum. Did you mean to?
The only thing out of place on the dressing table was a screwed-up ball of slightly yellowed paper, covered in a close-set typeface. In an effort to distract herself from the hairbrushes, Heather picked it up and smoothed it out, half expecting to see a page from one of her own articles—her mother might not have been in touch very often but Heather was sure she still kept a critical eye on her daughter’s career—but she quickly saw that it was a page from a book, possibly quite an old one, judging from the texture of the paper and the font. There was an old, woodcut illustration that at first she couldn’t get her head around—it seemed to show what looked like a goat, or possibly a lamb, standing over another animal. A dog, perhaps? The dog’s belly had been cut open, and smaller goats were pushing rocks inside the suspiciously clean opening. Heather’s eyes skipped to the text, which informed her that when the wolf woke up, he was thirsty, and he went to the river to drink …
It was a page from a book of fairy tales, but what her mother was doing with it, she had no idea. Colleen had never liked the older, gorier tales; story time when Heather had been little had involved a strict diet of happy ponies and girls at boarding school. The page made her feel uncomfortable: the strange picture, the way it had been crumpled up and left on the table. Did her mother even mean for her to see it?
“Who knows what you were thinking, right? You must have been … you must have been out of your mind, I don’t know …”
Suddenly, the room seemed very warm and close, the silence too loud. Heather stood up, a little shakily, crashing hard enough into the dressing table that a bottle of perfume fell over—the stopper tumbled from the bottle, startling her further.
“Shit.”
The scent filled the room, flowery and thick. It made her think of the morgue, and specifically of the waiting room, which had featured several tasteful flower arrangements, as though that could distract you from what you were about to see. She shook her head. It was important not to fixate on it, that’s what her housemate Terry had said. Don’t think about the smell, don’t think about the wind whipping along isolated cliffs, and definitely don’t think about the particular effect that a very long drop will have on the organic material of a body …
“Shit. I need some air.”
Heather shoved the crumpled paper into a drawer where she couldn’t see it and headed back downstairs. She was on her way to the backdoor when the doorbell rang out through the house.
Instantly, the sick, tight feeling in her chest was replaced by anger. It would be someone selling something, or collecting for a charity, or chattering about god. Or it would be Mr. Bloody Ramsey. She swept to the door, already savoring the look on this interloper’s face when she said can’t you see I’m grieving, how dare you, and was startled to find a tall, well-dressed older woman on her doorstep. She didn’t have a clipboard or a donation box, but she did have a covered casserole dish in her hands and an expression of sympathy.
“Er, can I help you?”
“Heather? But of course it is.” The woman smiled, and Heather found her anger fizzling into nothing. She had very short gray hair, cut into a style that would be quite unflattering on most people, but she had strikingly good cheek bones and a long, handsome face. H
eather could not guess her age; she was clearly old, older than her mother, but her skin was largely unlined and her bright eyes were clear and sharp. Mary Poppins, thought Heather wonderingly. She reminds me of Mary Poppins. “I’m Lillian, from up the road, dear. I just wanted to pop in and make sure you were coping.” She lifted the dish up, in case Heather hadn’t spotted it. “Can I put this down somewhere?”
Heather jumped back from the door. “Sorry, of course. Come in.”
The woman moved smoothly down the corridor, heading straight for the kitchen, her confidence suggesting she was familiar with the place.
“It’s just a stew,” Lillian announced as she put the dish down on the counter. “Lamb, carrots, onions, and so on. You’re not vegetarian are you, dear? No, I thought not. Good. Heat it slowly in the oven.” Catching the expression on Heather’s face, she smiled again. “I know what it’s like when you’re dealing with something like this. It’s very easy to forget to eat properly, but that will do you no favors at all. Make sure you get something hot in your stomach, every night. Colleen was a dear friend. She’d be pulling her hair out if she knew you were wasting yourself away over this.”
Heather nodded, trying to catch up with the conversation.
“It’s very kind of you to think of me, uh, Lillian. You knew my mum well? Colleen, I mean. You said you live round here? You must have moved here in the last few years?” She was trying to remember Lillian from her own childhood, or her infrequent visits as an adult, but she couldn’t place the woman.
“Just round the corner,” Lillian was looking around the kitchen, as if she could spot every bit of dust Colleen would have been mortified about. Although Mr. Ramsey had instantly inspired Heather’s contempt, the idea of disappointing Lillian was oddly alarming. “Colleen and I used to spend afternoons together sometimes, drinking tea and talking about old lady things.”
