Dead Alone (30 page)

They checked each antechamber, Jessie pointing her torch into the dark corners and along each curved ceiling. Most were full of wine, row upon row of cold, smoky green bottles. Masonry dust
had collected in a thin line along the length of each bottle. Some of the labels had dried up, cracked and fallen away. If Jessie hadn’t told the portly man to remain silent, they would have had the full sommelier’s tour. This collection of fortified fruit juice was his pride and joy, shame he hadn’t shown the same interest in his daughter. They came to the end of the corridor.

‘Is that it?’ Jessie asked. She remembered the door to Eve Wirrel’s secret studio, the door in the garden wall at P. J. Dean’s. ‘And before you answer me, you should know that I am aware of the existence of a hidden doorway. I don’t know where it is, but I will find it. You don’t want the police crawling all over your house, do you? Imagine the press.’ Jessie touched the wall. ‘I estimate the length of this passageway is sixty feet, which takes us just under your library. So which is the switch?
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
?
Animal Farm
?
Quater-mass and the Pit
?
Lord Jim
?
Death in a White Tie
…? Am I getting warm?’

The Viscount began to walk away from her. ‘It was built as a hiding place in case of invasion.’

Jessie told the others to stay where they were and followed his booming voice in the darkness. ‘Invasion from whom?’

‘The bloody Protestants.’

‘And what do you use it for now?’

‘Nothing.’

Suddenly she remembered the black-and-white photograph above Eve Wirrel’s bed. Chained up,
hanging from a hook, feet hovering off the ground. ‘You’re sure about that?’

The Viscount led her back up the stairs and through the house to the library. He pushed a hidden button and one section of the bookcase swung open to reveal a similar set of stone steps descending into darkness. Jessie pointed her torch downwards and stepped on to the cold smooth surface.

‘There is nothing down there,’ he said confidently.

Jessie could smell the bleach before she was all the way down the steps. The middle of the floor was damp with disinfectant, darker than the surrounding dust. There was a drainage hole in the floor and hooks in the ceiling.

‘We used to hang meat here, before BSE.’ Jessie gave him an impenetrable look and began tapping on the walls.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ he asked.

‘This place wouldn’t be much good as an escape route if there was no way out.’

‘It was a place for the Catholic priest to hide.’

Jessie carried on tapping. ‘Sally? Niaz? Can you hear me?’ No reply. She turned back to Cosima’s incomprehensible father. ‘You have destroyed vital evidence by cleaning this place up.’ And then it dawned on her. The murderer knew that was what would happen. That was why the registration number had been left on the boat. It was all part of the game. ‘The murderer relied on you doing exactly this, knowing that all the evidence would be washed
down that drain along with your dirty habits and guilt. Don’t you want your daughter’s killer caught?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

Jessie heard a noise to her left. The brick wall began to move. Then Coral slipped through the narrow gap to join them. Once inside, she stood and stared at the hooks in the ceiling.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you are doing, Coral!?’

‘We found Cosima hanging there,’ she said quietly.

‘We?’

‘Shut up, Coral! Shut up now, you stupid girl. You’re all the same!’

‘Who? Who are all the same, sir? Women?’ She turned back to the now shaking woman. ‘What were you doing down here, Coral?’

There was a long, tense silence before she answered. ‘Looking for Cosima,’ she said eventually and started to cry. Jessie went to put her arm around her, but something caught her attention and instead, she gently raised Coral’s arm.

‘Get off my wife!’

Jessie took hold of the shiny silver bracelet on Coral’s wrist and pressed the release mechanism. It sprung open.

‘Coral, get away from that woman. We hang meat in here.’

‘Meat?’

Coral was limp, her strength had seeped into
the stone floor, along with light and sound and Cosima’s blood and vomit. Jessie unclasped the other bracelet and held both wrists up to the thin beam of light. The raw markings stood out angrily on the alabaster skin of her thin wrists.

‘What sick sort of punishment do you go in for?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about. My wife hurt her wrists riding, the reins gave her a burn – didn’t they, darling?’

Jessie lowered Coral’s arm into Sally Grimes’ hand. Sally examined the injuries.

‘Exactly like the ones on Cosima’s arms.’

‘What have you done with the chains and handcuffs? Where is the tube, the funnel, the wine bottles. What wine was it?’ Jessie walked back through the narrow gap. She started reading off the wooden crates. ‘La Baunaudine ’63 Châteauneuf-du-Pape? St Emilion … Rothschild’s ’52 Claret?’ She picked up a bottle from a rack and returned to the room. ‘Chateau Lafite ’51? It’ll all come out in the postmortem.’

‘That bastard poured two crates of vintage Don Perignon down Cosima’s throat. Forty-four thousand pounds’ worth of champagne!’

‘You’re the bastard!’ shouted Coral. ‘Cosima is dead and all you care about is your fucking wine.’

‘As opposed to my fucking wife!’

‘Niaz, get him out and get forensics down here. We need to find Cosima’s car; the murderer probably drove her here in it.’ She turned to Coral. ‘Tell me you still have whatever you found down here.’

She shook her head. ‘He made me burn everything.’

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

She shook her head and sobbed. ‘I kept her dress.’

‘Good. Where is it?’

Coral was staring at the hooks in the ceiling.

‘Coral?’

Coral kept shaking her head, the horror of unknown things passing over her eyes.

Jessie took the woman’s shoulders. ‘What’s been going on here?’

‘Sugar and spice and all things nice,’ whispered Coral. Then she looked at Jessie. ‘Geoffrey doesn’t like naughty little girls. Poor Cosima, poor sweet beautiful Cosima … I loved her. She wanted those men to love her, but she was just a conquest to them. Her father never loved her. He wanted a boy, of course, so Cosima was punished for merely being alive. Running in the corridor, falling over, eating too slowly, eating too fast. Then she noticed the markings on my wrist and it all came out. I would have killed myself if it wasn’t for her. I really loved her and she loved me.’

Jessie pulled out the photograph of Cosima and the woman she now knew was Coral. ‘Do you want to tell me about Ray St Giles?’

She shuddered. ‘He wanted Cosima on his awful show.’

‘What happened?’

‘We refused. And now Cosima is dead. You get
him, you get the bastard that did this.’

‘Can you vouch for your husband?’ asked Jessie.

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Jessie led Coral up the stone steps and waited for her to retrieve the dead girl’s dress. ‘People envied her. Isn’t that ironic?’

‘Tell me, did Cosima ever receive death threats or hate mail?’

‘No, never. Just endless proposals of marriage. She used to laugh at those.’

Coral stared at Cosima’s soiled dress: Chloe. ‘When I was a nurse, I used to read all the glossy magazines. It looked like such fun – the glamour, the parties, the famous people. But it isn’t. It’s lonely and destructive and the only thing worse than going on with it, is going back. Obscurity is more feared than loneliness.’

Four cars were parked in front of the rusting iron gate of Woolwich Cemetery. It was a few minutes before dawn. South East London was ghostly quiet. Their torchlight picked out the thick, furry weeds growing in clumps around the base of the crumbling brick pillars. Majestic once. But no longer.

Jessie walked alongside Clare Mills in silence. Removing a child from the ground, when that child should have been a man of her age, saddened Jessie. Time stands still for no one. Except the dead. Shovels and spades would bring this boy
back to the world of the living, twenty years too late. Jessie put her arm gently on Clare’s shoulders as they approached the fizzing portable lights. Three chunky men leant against spades, watching them approach, next to the six foot of earth that had been removed and hidden under a blanket of acid green Astroturf. Jones peered into the hole. The wood had kept well. The coffin was still intact. Jones summoned the four morticians forward. The labourers wouldn’t touch it. This little boy had more power dead than alive, thought Jessie, watching the men and their spades withdraw to a respectful distance and light up imported cigarettes. Clare gasped when she saw the coffin.

‘It’s so small,’ she said. And it was. Chillingly small.

‘You may want to look away, Clare,’ said Jones as the mortician gathered the tools necessary to prise the lid off.

‘No. I’m staying here. With Frank.’

Jones gave Jessie a worried look. Jessie took Clare’s arm. She was ready to catch Clare when the lid came off and she saw her brother for the first time since she was eight. A genealogist was standing by. The necessary samples would be taken and compared to the samples that Clare had already given the lab. The body would be interred immediately after the samples were taken. Returned to peace everlasting.

Everyone took a step closer when the mortician bent down by the box. They took an involuntary
step back when the wood cracked open. He looked up at Clare, Clare nodded, then he lifted the lid off. Everyone stared at the contents of the child’s coffin.

Stones. Three large flint stones.

The morticians gasped simultaneously. Jessie continued to stare at the stones in disbelief. Jones tried to pull Clare away, but she fell to her knees and began to pray. ‘Thank you, thank you God …’

‘What’s been going on, Inspector?’ asked a mortician.

‘He’s alive,’ said Clare, staring into the small box.

Not necessarily, thought Jessie. They didn’t even know for sure that Gareth Blake was Frank.

‘I want an investigation into this immediately,’ said Jones angrily. He didn’t like surprises.

‘It wasn’t my Frank, after all. He’s out there somewhere, waiting for me.’

Jessie put her arm through Clare’s and pulled her up. She didn’t know what the stones meant, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

‘Don’t you agree? This is good, right, Inspector? He’s still alive?’

‘Clare …’

Jones spoke over her. ‘We need more information before we can say anything.’

‘What do you think happened to Gareth Blake?’ The question floated between the gathered
crowd. No one answered because no one could think of one good reason why anyone would fake a child’s death and bury stones in his place. Clare suddenly sobbed. ‘Oh God, no, they took him, didn’t they …’

‘Who took him, Clare?’ asked Jones gently.

‘They were all evil,’ said Clare. ‘If they could take Gareth Blake, they could’ve taken my Frank. They were too young to defend themselves …’ She pulled herself up to her full height. ‘No. I’m not going to think like that. You find him. Like you promised you would.’

Clare started to walk away.

‘Let me come with you, Clare. It’s still dark.’

‘Can I borrow a torch? My mother is buried here. Give me a few minutes, I’ll be fine, just …’

‘I’m sorry, Clare.’

Clare bit the skin around her fingernail. ‘Don’t be. Bones would have been worse.’

They watched Clare move between the crumbling headstones, her torch picking up the ageing slabs. Flashes of colour were rare; few visitors left flowers here. Jessie leant closer to Jones’ ear. ‘Ray St Giles. Mark’s right, it’s the only explanation.’

Jones seemed to be ageing before her eyes. ‘Wrong. There is another explanation, but it’s too frightening to contemplate.’ He straightened himself up. ‘Frank and Gareth may be the tip of the iceberg. If there are others, we may have dug up a previously uncovered child-pornography ring. In
which case we’ll have a great deal more to worry about, because no victim has come forward with a complaint against this department. Which can only mean one thing …’

Jessie looked sadly at the three stones. ‘They’re all dead,’ said Jessie.

Perhaps bones would have been better.

Jessie left the small coffin and the large men and followed Clare up the pathway. Daylight had crept up on them stealthily. From the crest of the hill she could see Clare kneel by a marble cross. It gleamed white against the all-pervading grey of the surrounding cemetery. Clare was crying. She held up a dry old bunch of roses, the dirty yellow petals falling from the stems.

‘She hasn’t been,’ said Clare. ‘Irene hasn’t been. It’s the first month she missed, ever.’

‘Come on Clare, let’s get you home, it’s been a difficult morning.’

‘But where is she? I can’t lose her too, not Irene,’ she sobbed.

‘These things dig up old memories. She probably needed a break, time to think.’

Clare continued to stare at the dead yellow roses.

‘As for you,’ continued Jessie, ‘most people would have cracked years ago. You’re stronger than you think. Impressively so.’

Clare took Jessie’s hand. ‘Thanks.’

‘We are with you all the way.’

‘Okay,’ said Clare, standing up.

‘Come on, let’s go and have breakfast somewhere. These early starts make me very hungry.’

‘Okay,’ said Clare again. This time she smiled. It was a small smile. With three stones in it.