Corridors of the Night (30 page)

‘It’s less now,’ he answered. ‘But you said it was all right to talk about it sometimes, and I wasn’t a coward because it still scared me.’

‘It is all right,’ she said quickly. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No. But is it true, what you said, that it’s not silly to talk about it sometimes, and not being a baby if it still feels real, and bad?’

‘Of course it’s not silly. Why would you ask that? Have the dreams got worse?’ Now she looked so worried he was afraid he had gone too far.

‘No, they haven’t,’ he said quickly. ‘Hardly ever happens any more. But I know what it’s like. I was thinking about them little kids. Are they going to have dreams too, d’yer reckon? Or did you stop that ’cos yer were there so they weren’t never alone?’

Hester smiled a little hazily. ‘I’d like to think so. At least most of the time. They’ll be back with their mother and father soon. When they’re stronger.’

‘But was their mother really pleased to see them?’ he pressed.

‘Oh, yes.’ Now her voice was definitely husky, as if she were fighting back intense emotion. ‘Yes, she was. It was as if someone had turned on all the lights inside her.’

Scuff was quiet for a moment, tasting the happiness of it. Then he took a breath. ‘You could talk about it, too. I can listen. You taught me how to do that. I wouldn’t think you were silly. Sometimes it’s silly not to be scared.’

She smiled properly this time, and the tears came to her eyes again. ‘Thank you,’ she said huskily.

‘So tell me about it.’ He kept his voice firm. ‘I’m not going to leave you alone, not till Monk comes back. I’m going to sleep in the armchair in your room, so if you wake up in the night I’ll be there.’

‘You don’t have to do that!’ she protested.

‘Yeah, I do. I remember how scared I was, and when I woke up in the night you were always there, until I was all right again.’ He stared at her, meeting her eyes, and she did not look away. He saw that she had been badly hurt, because of the children she couldn’t save, and because she thought she would die and not see Monk again, or him, or anyone she loved. He knew that was what he saw because it was what he would have felt.

‘It’ll get better,’ he promised. ‘Even if they don’t hang Mr Rand, something’ll happen to stop him, or we’ll make it happen.’ He had no idea if that was true, but he reckoned that was what she needed to believe. ‘I promise,’ he added.

She reached across and kissed him very gently on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I would like it if you slept in the chair. That way I don’t think the bad dreams will dare to come.’

He felt a rush of pleasure like a warmth inside him. This must be what belonging was, not here because people were sorry for you, but because you were worth something too.

That night Hester still dreamed, and it was of reunion, of families together. It was not Charlie, Maggie and Mike seeing their mother again and knowing they could go home, it was of Adrienne and the restored and vigorous Bryson Radnor.

Had Adrienne known he would make that dramatic entrance in the trial? That was what had saved her, and incidentally also Hamilton Rand. Had she known he would do that? The terror in her face suggested not. Was that so no one would suspect, or had Radnor not even thought of it until the moment when he acted?

She would rather have assumed that he had, but glimpses kept coming back to her of Adrienne and Radnor together both in the hospital, and later in the cottage. He was impatient with her, condescending, sometimes even dismissive. Had that been his illness speaking, his fear? Or his nature?

Did Adrienne understand him, and it did not matter?

Or did she depend on him too deeply even to fight back?

Hester slipped deeper into dreamless sleep without an answer.

Monk and Hooper took a far smaller cart to Redditch this time, and a horse that could keep up a pretty good pace. They called in very briefly at the local police station, to let them know they would be at the cottage, looking for further evidence to do with the case. It was not only a courtesy, but a necessary precaution in the circumstances. Another necessary precaution was to take a pistol each, just in case the gardener with the shotgun, and now with a very real cause for vengeance, might still be on the property, or in the woods nearby.

‘If he decides to shoot at me, he could say he thought I was a rabbit,’ Hooper said drily.

Monk looked Hooper up and down. ‘And expect to be believed?’ he said incredulously.

Hooper grinned. ‘Maybe not, but it would be a bit late for me then,’ he pointed out.

They arrived in the golden autumn morning. Many of the fields were already harvested and the stooks stood sharp in a bucolic kind of beauty. After rubbing the horse down and giving it shelter and water, which was plentiful in the old stables, Hooper gave it a small portion of the oats they had brought for it, and then they turned their attention to the house.

‘The local police have already been right through it,’ Monk said thoughtfully as they stood in the kitchen. ‘What could we see that they missed?’

‘Something we know is here and they didn’t,’ Hooper replied without hesitation.

Monk thought for a moment, turning round slowly, staring at the walls, cupboards, storage bins. ‘Food,’ he said. ‘The local shop should be able to tell us what stores were bought, over the last few years. Let’s look for laundry supplies. Sick people need a lot of laundry doing. They also need the place clean. You don’t clean the house every day if there’s no one living here. We’ll see what there is, what sort, what amounts. Old cartons could tell us a lot. How much bed linen is there? Later we can look for a workshop and the tools where Rand made the machine that delivers the blood drip by drip.’

‘Right,’ Hooper agreed.

‘And another thing,’ Monk added. ‘Maybe this one isn’t his first machine. If we can find the remains of another, older one, that would be evidence of his trying this for a long time.’

‘Not proof by itself,’ Hooper pointed out ruefully.

‘It is if there are traces of blood in it,’ Monk retorted. ‘Let’s start looking for bits and pieces that would have been parts. Notice everything with that in mind. It might look like a hosepipe or part of the plumbing now.’

Hooper rolled his eyes, but he did it with a smile, albeit a wry one.

They worked until it was dark, then lit the oil lamps and did what little could be done in their light. They found enough bed linen to offer changes for eight beds. Some of it was very old, as if it had been there when Rand was a child. Similarly they found a few toys in the boxroom that could have belonged to anyone in the last half-century. There was even an old rocking horse.

There was not storage for more food than three or four people would need, but the gardener grew potatoes, carrots, green vegetables, onions, lots of beans and most of the herbs that were common. The orchard was laden with apples, pears and plums, and there were wild berries in the hedges. There was a milking space in the cow shed, although the cows had gone, but perhaps not so long ago.

‘Perfect place,’ Monk said with a touch of bitterness. ‘But what the hell proof is there of anything? All the experiments could have happened here.’

Hooper pointed to a pile of odd pipe lengths, plumbing joints, valves and lengths of wood sitting in the corner. ‘He certainly used his workshop. Could have made the machine in the downstairs bedroom in here easily. But I couldn’t find proof that there was an earlier one, although I believe there was. Maybe several.’

‘If he’d any sense he would have got rid of the bits,’ Monk agreed. ‘Probably buried them. He’s got acres to choose his spot. We’ll get an early night. Can’t search much with a lantern. Let’s start questioning the villagers tomorrow; see who they remember being here.’

Hooper’s face was bleak. ‘See how many kids have gone missing that were never accounted for.’

‘That too,’ Monk agreed softly. ‘If this is where he did earlier experiments then there’s got to be something.’

But the villagers could tell them nothing that was definitive. Many were willing to stand in the street and recall all that Monk and Hooper would listen to. Yes, this person or that had gone missing, but usually it was easily explained. This one had gone on a drunken spree and returned home without any recollections of where he had been. These two had eloped. Heard to be living a few miles away. That one had joined a travelling fair, so they said. Of course there were those no one could account for, but that was always so. Maybe more of them than might be normal were young and healthy. This was always very sad, but such things happened. Was it more here than happened in any other village? Who could say?

Monk and Hooper had a stroke of luck at the local pub. Both were weary and by now also disheartened. Talking about it only made it worse.

Monk was considering returning home. He hated having to tell Hester that they had found a dozen things that were indicative, but even taken all together, they proved nothing. There was no witness who could testify to anything, and also no signs of the gardener. He had apparently gone to recuperate from his misadventures with a relative over a hundred miles away, they learned.

‘Wish I’d known that when we arrived,’ Hooper said unhappily, when he and Monk had returned to the cottage. ‘I wouldn’t have been looking over my shoulder half the time.’

‘He’ll come back,’ Monk said, standing near the potting shed. ‘These tools are worth a fair bit. And well kept. No dirt on any of this, all clean, practically polished.’ He walked over to the rack where spades and forks were neatly arranged. ‘Lot of them. He must do a fair bit of digging. This one’s got a brand-new head on it.’

‘Digging,’ Hooper repeated the word thoughtfully. ‘Lot of garden here, but only so much digging you can do. Mostly a weeding and raking sort of thing, except when you dig up the potatoes. I’d do that with a fork, myself, not a spade.’

A horrible thought crept into Monk’s mind, making him cold in the pit of his belly. He looked at Hooper, and saw the same thought in his eyes.

‘What do you suppose they intended to do with the bodies, if they had to kill the children, or Hester?’ Monk said.

‘Bury them,’ Hooper replied without hesitation, as if saying the words were somehow drawing their venom.

‘Where?’ Monk looked around.

‘Not here!’ Hooper said quickly. ‘Somewhere that no one would notice the disturbed earth. Somewhere that the grass would grow thick and green over it quickly, and where that wouldn’t be noticed either. New green is easy to see.’

‘Pretty thick grass in the orchard,’ Monk said thoughtfully. ‘But it’s all a bit lush and untended in there. Some of the apple trees look as if they could do with pruning.’

‘You know about that?’ Hooper asked with surprise.

It must be somewhere in the lost part of Monk’s memory, which was all his life up to the point of the accident. Bits of knowledge came now and then, unattached to any experience. He did not want to remind Hooper about his mysterious past just now, though. All that mattered was proving Rand’s guilt.

‘Apples grow near the sea,’ Monk said with as much of a smile as he could manage. ‘Let’s take the spades and look for likely places. Not close to the roots. It would be much harder work. And if they cut a root the tree might show it. The gardener’d know that.’

‘Reckon he was in on it?’ Hooper asked, taking one of the spades and following him.

‘Have to be,’ Monk replied, leading the way to the orchard gate and opening it. ‘Couldn’t risk having him find out by accident. He would feel betrayed and could be dangerous. He’d see the spades, anyway, just as we did, and work out what they were for. Keep him implicated, and he’ll be twice as good a guard. Never betray them, or he’d be betraying himself as well. Rand’s quite clever enough to have thought of that.’

Hooper grunted his agreement.

Once in the orchard they walked on the grass between the trees, which were haphazardly planted. There were no straight rows. All the grass was deep, as if scythed no more than once a year, but entirely unevenly. If there were any undisturbed patches they would be hard to find.

It was quarter of an hour of steady searching before they found a place lush enough to raise a hope.

‘Could be a dog,’ Hooper said with a shrug. ‘Lots of people would bury an animal in a place like this.’

‘Didn’t see any sign of their having had a dog.’ Monk was determined to believe in success. ‘If they had one, it would belong to the gardener, and he doesn’t live in.’ He started to dig, driving the blade deep into the soft earth, still damp in the shade of the trees.

Hooper started several feet away, still in the greener grass. They worked in silence, just digging a spade’s depth, taking out the earth, then another. It was hard work, using muscles they did not normally exercise so hard. Hooper could not hide the fact that his arm still ached from the injury.

It was Hooper who struck something hard first. He stopped suddenly, his face pale in spite of the exertion. He stared at Monk. Then they both put their spades down and bent to their knees to search with hands in the rich loam.

It was a thick bone, about a foot long, completely without flesh.

Hooper laid it on the grass. ‘Could be an animal,’ he said. His voice was soft, as if he were trying to keep the excitement out of it, the hope, but he still trembled very slightly.

‘Could be,’ Monk agreed, rising to his feet and picking up his spade again.

Be careful,’ Hooper warned him unnecessarily. ‘Don’t want to break anything if there’s more.’

It took them another hour, moving slowly, always finishing with hands now caked with soil. Eventually they found all the rest of the bones of an old, disintegrated skeleton. It was beyond question that of a child of about ten or eleven years old.

‘Do you suppose it’s the only one?’ Hooper said, his face grim, and smeared with mud and sweat. He wiped his hand across his brow, making it worse.

‘Probably not,’ Monk said unhappily. He had wanted to find exactly this evidence, but now that he had, all he could think of was how the child died, whether he had been terrified, in pain, even if he had been killed quickly. Had his parents ever known, or was he simply lost, still grieved over, still a mystery? If it had been Scuff, or even Worm, would he ever forget? Hester wouldn’t.