Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (37 page)

They’d taken Connie’s car to the supermarket to buy food. They couldn’t use Veronica’s because it had no child seat for Alice. Then they’d driven down a grassy track and had arrived at the boathouse. Alice had been enchanted. Any child would be.

‘You’ll have to be very careful close to the water, dear,’ Veronica had said to the little girl, kneeling down so that her face was very close to Alice’s. ‘It’s very deep here, even so near to the shore.’

Then they’d gone inside and thrown open the windows to let in the air, because at that point it still hadn’t started raining. Veronica had found linen in a painted white cupboard and they’d hung the sheets over the deck rail to air.

Inside there was one big room, with two sets of bunks built into the wall. At the end without windows there was a wood-panelled cubicle with a sink and toilet and a candle on a saucer standing on a shelf. Veronica had shown them how the stove worked and they’d cooked sausages for lunch. It had been Veronica’s idea to phone Joe Ashworth, when Connie had shown her how often he’d called.

‘You don’t want them thinking you’ve got something to hide! Really, I would phone him, dear, or they’ll be looking for you all over the county.’

Then she’d driven away in Connie’s car, saying she’d leave it where no reporter would find it. She’d come back in two days’ time with more food. Though by then, of course, the murderer might have been arrested and it would be safe for Connie to move back home.

That first afternoon, after they’d watched Veronica drive away, they’d gone for a walk in the wood and Alice had loved it, balancing on the fallen logs and picking flowers that later they’d put on the windowsill in a chipped enamel mug. They’d come across a cairn made of small white pebbles that looked like a shrine, a small bunch of primroses laid carefully on top. In the evening Alice had fallen asleep immediately in the bottom bunk and Connie had read by the light of a tilley lamp, listening to the rain and imagining herself in her father’s shed at home.

The next day it had been raining and Alice had been fractious and bad-tempered. There was no television to distract her. Connie would have phoned Veronica, but the battery on her phone was flat. She’d brought the charger with her, but of course there was no electricity in the boathouse. There was a box of games on the table and they played Snakes and Ladders and Snap. The rain battered on the roof and Alice put her hands over her ears.

‘I want to go home! I hate it here!’

‘Tomorrow,’ Connie had said. ‘Tomorrow Auntie Veronica will come and we can go home. Then perhaps you could visit Daddy for a couple of days.’

There was no fridge in the hut and the fresh food had all been eaten. She cooked pasta and mixed it with a tin of tuna. Afterwards she let Alice have a whole bar of chocolate for pudding. As soon as the girl was asleep, Connie climbed into the bunk and lay flat on her back, awake for most of the night. She thought this must be what it would feel like to be in prison. Though she supposed there would be odd and frightening noises in prison. Here there was complete silence. Eventually she slept.

She woke the next morning at dawn, gritty-eyed and still tired. The curtains at the windows were very thin and it seemed, even lying in her bunk, that there was something strange about the light. It was the same light as waking up to snow, brighter than it should have been. She got up quietly, pulling the blanket from her bed around her shoulders, and looked outside. The water level of the lake had risen in the night and the house was surrounded. Little waves lapped against the decking. Everything was still, and the trees on the opposite bank were perfectly replicated in the water.

She saw at once that they were in no immediate danger of drowning, but still she felt panic rise in her stomach and almost turn into a scream. She could see how beautiful everything was – the reflected light that had made her think of snow, the composition of trees and hills in the water – but that didn’t stop her being frightened. The notion of imprisonment had become a reality. She understood how people caught in a burning building could become so desperate that they would jump to almost certain death. It wasn’t a fear of the flames, she thought, but of being trapped. She could hardly swim, but the temptation to let herself out of the door to slide into the water was almost irresistible.

She heard a noise behind her and then she did give a little whimper of fear. Perhaps it was a rat. She’d heard that rats were pushed out of their natural homes during floods. Could rats swim? But of course it was Alice, who’d climbed out of her bunk and was standing shivering beside her. And then Connie had to turn their plight into an adventure.

‘Isn’t this fun! It’s just like being on a boat. Where shall we imagine we’ll sail away to this morning?’

Even to her own ears her voice sounded desperate. Alice climbed into her arms and began to cry.

Connie heard the car driving down the track after they’d had breakfast. They were so far from anywhere, hidden by the trees, that the sound carried and seemed very loud. Once she might have worried that it could be the police. That fat female inspector, with her huge hands and her filthy feet and her questions. Now she’d have been glad even to see Vera Stanhope. But perhaps it would be Veronica. This was her territory after all. The boathouse must have flooded before. She’d know the best thing to do. Connie leaned out of the window and caught a glimpse of the car through the branches. Not
her
car. It was the wrong colour for that, and her little Nissan wouldn’t make it through all the water. But it might be Veronica all the same.

It was still early in the year and the sun, which had come out now, was very low in the sky. The emerging sun made the figure on the shore nothing more than a silhouette, appearing suddenly from the high wall surrounding the old garden. Perhaps the car had got stuck, or perhaps they’d decided to walk the last part. Connie had to squint even to see the figure as a person. It was a shadow with waterproofs and boots. She could tell no more than that.

A small dinghy that had once rested on the bank now floated on the pool, tethered by a rope. The man tugged on the rope and pulled the boat towards him. Because it
was
a man, Connie thought. The action seemed too strong and purposeful for her visitor to be a woman.

She called to Alice. ‘Look, sweetheart, we’re going to get rescued.’ And the two of them waved like mad things. The man on the shore only raised his hand in greeting.

Now he’d pulled the dinghy onto the bank and had taken out a couple of oars that must have been stowed under the seat. He pushed it back into the pool and waded in as far as his calves, then he climbed aboard.

He rowed towards them, circling towards the boathouse. The light was no longer behind him, but as he approached he had his back to them and still Connie couldn’t make out who it was. Even when he’d reached them, and tied the rope around one of the planks that made up the rail of the deck, she didn’t recognize him. Then her attention was elsewhere, stuffing all their belongings into a bag, making sure that Alice was with her and not too close to the water.

‘Just wait a minute!’ she shouted and some of the panic returned. Though that was ridiculous because their saviour wouldn’t just turn round and row back to dry land without them.

She heard him climb onto the boathouse deck. There was the creak of the planks, the splash of displaced water as his weight left the dinghy, then footsteps. He stood in the doorway and she saw him properly for the first time and recognized him. She’d seen that face before.

Vera told herself that there was no hurry. The social worker and her daughter would be in the boathouse. It would have been an adventure for them, like camping out. The girl would probably have enjoyed every minute. Vera hadn’t minded a bit of an adventure herself when Hector had first taken her on his expeditions. It was only as she got older and realized the implications of the night-time raids into the hills that she’d disliked and then come to hate them. Perhaps that was why she drove so fast, because she didn’t want the girl to have the same sort of memories of childhood that she’d been left with: the fear in the pit of the stomach and the longing to be home in a familiar place. Because there’d always been people chasing Hector: the police, the National Park wardens, the RSPB. Absorbed in his passion, he’d enjoyed the game of cat-and-mouse. It hadn’t bothered him that Vera had been terrified.

Vera felt a sort of sick excitement now as she coaxed the ancient Land Rover to greater speed. Just before the turn-off through the stone pillars with their cormorant carvings there was water across the road. A sign saying:
Way Closed. Flood.
An elderly man was trying to do a three-point turn in the narrow track to get back to the village. Or a forty-point turn. Vera pushed the Land Rover into four-wheel drive, drove it so that two wheels were on the steep verge and the vehicle was tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, then ground past the pensioner’s Volvo. The water was deep enough to seep in through the doors. She wasn’t sure the old man noticed they were there until the spray caused by their movement splashed onto his windscreen. Beside her Joe Ashworth swore.

The grass track past the formal gardens of the old house was much boggier than it had been when she walked down it a few days before. Even in four-wheel drive, she felt the vehicle slide. She kept the pace slow. It was most important now not to get stuck. She wanted to get the mother and daughter back to safety, and then she had an arrest to make. Before anybody else got hurt.

She knew Ashworth had questions, but she couldn’t concentrate on getting them to the boathouse in one piece and chat to him at the same time.

‘What’s that?’ Ashworth’s question annoyed her because she was just navigating a tricky patch, but she looked all the same. A small car stuck, water up to the bumper, the driver’s door wide open. Ashworth had the righteous indignation of the careful driver; he always seemed old before his time: ‘They must have been mad trying to get down here without four-wheel drive.’

Then Vera knew that the little girl was in danger, not of having bad dreams and tarnished childhood memories, but of not growing old enough to remember anything.

‘Out!’ she said. ‘Quick! We haven’t the time for this.’ She was wearing wellingtons, but Ashworth was still in his work shoes, newly polished every morning. He looked at the mud and slime surrounding the vehicle and hesitated. She’d already gone four paces down the track, slithering and swearing at every step. She glanced back at him, still in the Land Rover. ‘Do you want another child drowned? Get out here, man. That’s an order.’ As she spoke, she knew she was being unfair. If she’d shared her fears with him, he’d have been there before her.

They ran together past the garden with the strange statues and the tall wall covered in ivy and, reaching the edge of the pool, she thought they were too late. She saw the rowing boat, the man inside, bent over his oars and so intent on pulling his way across the water that he didn’t see them. And she saw the mother and her child on the deck, following his progress.

‘They’re all right then,’ Joe said. He was frosty with her and had every right to be. ‘He’s gone to save them.’ Implying that there was no need for the fuss and the ruined shoes.

‘No, pet, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He hates happy families.’

Vera stood watching. She was completely powerless. The boathouse was on the other side of the pond, too far away for her to shout, so she couldn’t warn Connie. Besides, what could the woman do if she heard? She was imprisoned there.

And, Vera thought, the man in the boat would be impossible to scare now. With the second murder he’d gone beyond reason. This was like one of those nightmares when you scream and no sound comes, when you try to run, but your feet won’t move.

‘It was
him
,’ Ashworth said. ‘All the time? Of course. I should have recognized the car.’

She didn’t answer. They watched the man climb onto the boathouse deck. They couldn’t see Connie or the girl, who were still inside. Ashworth slipped away from her and made his way through the undergrowth, following the line of the floodwater to the point where the boathouse was closest to the bank. No thought for his shoes now or for his Marks and Spencer suit.

I owe him an apology. He’ll never want to work with me again.

There was a high-pitched scream, so loud that Vera could hear it even at this distance. The man appeared on the deck with Alice in his arms. Connie followed. She was the person screaming. It seemed to Vera that the child was silent, frozen perhaps with fear, her only survival tactic to shut off all emotion. Frozen as Vera had been. But the scream had woken Vera up. Suddenly she found herself on the phone demanding back-up, an ambulance, a rubber dinghy and a helicopter. Screaming herself, into her mobile: ‘Now! Get them here now!’

On the deck the man was holding Alice above his head. It occurred to Vera that he must have strong muscles in his upper body to lift her so easily. Did he work out at the gym? Then she thought he looked a little like a priest. One of those grand priests in the fancy robes that you found in cathedrals, lifting the chalice for the congregation to see as he blessed it during the communion service. Or did they call it the mass? She’d never got the hang of the different denominations.

The man held his hands apart and dropped the girl into the lake. She disappeared without a splash.

Ashworth had reached the closest point to the boathouse and was already wading out towards it. Now he started swimming, his hair slick like an otter’s. On the decking Connie was struggling to get past the man, shouting and scratching at his face. But Vera kept her eyes fixed on Ashworth. He dived into the water and emerged, shaking the water from his head, holding the child. He swam on his back, clutching the girl’s body to his chest, until the water was shallow enough for him to stand. Then he held her over his shoulder and wrapped his arms around her. Vera thought she would never be rude or snide to him again. Half walking and half swimming, he carried the child to the shore.