The Devil's Chair (2 page)

She waited for the caller to make his or her decision.

‘Don't rightly know.'

Man or woman?

The caller continued, ‘There's a car gorn orf the Burway. Wrecked. Someone's inside 'urt. A woman.'

Sian's hand immediately pressed fire engine, ambulance and police.
Ring-a-ding-ding
. This would get the lot. She knew the Burway, had watched her father back gingerly into a passing place and almost swallowed her heart as she'd looked down the long, steep drop into Carding Mill Valley below.

‘Is the woman still breathing?'

‘Aaagh.'

‘I need your name and contact details.'

There was no response.

Sian glanced at the caller ID. It was a landline. Good. That would make identifying the caller easier. As she tapped out the details into the computer, she smiled to herself. It never failed to surprise her how many callers were reluctant to reveal their identity. She tried again. ‘I need your name, caller.'

Again, no answer. She glanced at her screen. He, or was it a she, was still on the line. She tried once more. ‘Is the woman in the car conscious?'

The question provoked a chuckle. ‘You'll have to come and see tha-at for yourselves.' Sian gave a deep, exasperated sigh. How could anyone even think this was remotely funny?

Try doing my job, wanker.

She tried again. Her performance would be monitored. ‘Is the person alive?'

This time not only was there no answer but the caller had hung up. The screen was now blank.

Great, Sian thought. If this was a hoax she would personally make sure
the caller
paid a ruddy great big fine.

Afterwards, Neil would try and grasp the memories but they were hazy, unclear with large black patches preventing continuity, slippery as eels. If he closed his eyes he could see Tracy's drunken fury, her repeated accusations about him and Lucy. Shouting rang in his ears. The smell of alcohol, of stale cigarettes. And then the piercing scream of the child as her mother raised her from the cot. He squeezed his eyes tight shut. He needed to clean his teeth. Another scene: Tracy running up the stairs.
Thump, thump, thump
, anger in every step. The child's screams melting into pathetic crying. And then, abruptly,
silence
.

Then
thump, thump, thump
. She was coming back down the stairs. In her arms was the child, in a pink dressing gown.

He stretched out his arms for her. ‘Daisy,' he said softly. ‘Daisy.'

But Tracy whirled past him like a banshee, the child struggling, holding her arms out back to him. He thought he heard Tracy say the name of her friend, Wanda.

Another blank patch. Somehow he was outside, in the road, reasoning with her, pleading with her.
You're not fit to drive. At least leave Daisy behind.
And then … The car door slammed. The door frame swallowed him up. He fell backwards into the house, still trying to reason with the empty room.

‘Don't go,' he said. ‘Come back here.'

And then the sofa curled him up into her arms.

He was vaguely aware of the child's fright and felt a fizz of anger. Trace could do what she liked, his angry, fuzzed-up brain insisted. But Daisy, well, that was different. She was just a kid.

It was his last coherent thought. The last thing he remembered hearing was the hollow slamming of a second car door and then an engine revving up too hard.

T
he day had started with a chilly drizzle that shrouded the approaching spring and mocked the citizens of Shropshire, reminding them that winter was a ghost always chasing behind them and spring was out of arm's reach. They could not have it – yet. The spectre of the ghost was gaining on them however hard they ran.

Maybe this year spring would not come at all; neither would summer. Like Narnia under the grip of the white witch, it would remain forever winter.

Just to rub it in, on the great rounded hump of the Long Mynd it had snowed early on Sunday morning. A light powdering iced its summit, turning it into a huge round cupcake. This, of course, was a great challenge to climbers. The intrepid would have climbed right into the snowline and beyond except that the police had closed down the entire area. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning it had been the scene of a serious car crash. The driver was in a coma in hospital.

Martha could always tell from Jericho's demeanour when he had important information to ‘impart'. (Impart being one of his favourite words, usually said with intense emphasis and deliberation). However, this morning was patently
not
one of those mornings, Martha observed as she walked through the door. Jericho obviously had little to
impart
and it was visibly pissing him off. His head jutted forwards, his chin on his chest, his shoulders bowed and his face contorted into a deep and sullen scowl. Martha had seen this before. This was Jericho sulking because he was not ‘in the know'.

She smothered a smile as she closed the door softly behind her. Her officer was so easy to read. ‘Good morning, Jericho,' she said briskly.

He hardly looked at her. ‘Mrs Gunn,' he mumbled and she eyed him. This was a real and very deep sulk.

She waited. Jericho was not great at keeping secrets. He would soon spill the beans. And so he did.

‘Car rolled down the Burway late Saturday night, early Sunday morning,' he said, almost accusingly. ‘I heard it this morning on Radio Shropshire.'

Oh, this was a disaster. For Jericho to learn of such dramatic news on the local radio station? Oh dear. No wonder he was in such a deep and intractable sulk.

She cast her mind back to Saturday night. It had been a wet, cold spring night, dark before eight, the weather threatening a terrible summer even before it had begun, with whispers of dark events lurking in the future: floods and landslips, disasters that were brewing in the clouds, waiting to drop on an unsuspecting, vulnerable, but ever-optimistic population who dreamed of the balmy season promised in the word
summer.
But the word altered in meaning when you inserted the adjective
British
in front of it. On Saturday night she had been glad to draw the curtains to shut out the mist that tried to roll right into the house and, in spite of the month, she had lit the log burner. Some time during the night there must have been a drop in temperature. By Sunday morning the damp rain had turned into treacherous ice and on higher ground a powdering of snow.

‘Little girl's missin',' Jericho continued. ‘Seems to have vanished into thin air. They's been lookin' for her all through yesterday. No sign of the child.'

‘And the driver?'

‘Drunk, they say.
She's
in intensive care,' Jericho deliberated, ‘in a coma.'

Martha hid a grimace. Ah … so this explained it even clearer. A woman in intensive care was not yet a candidate for the coroner – or for her assistant. Once she had reached the haven of the hospital staff who were trained to pull people back from
the brink
, the chances increased that their driver would survive. And Jericho would feel he had been cheated. She eyed him closely and read resentment in his eyes – and something more. His eyes were not quite meeting hers, and his face had a heaviness about it that wasn't explained by the car wreck followed by a hospital admission. Her curiosity was stirred. She herself knew nothing. After the rigours of the working week she had long ago decided that Sundays were to be a family day and news-free, whether the events were good or bad. So unless there had been a major catastrophe on a Sunday she would remain unaware of it until arriving at an empty office on Monday morning, serenaded on her journey in by Classic FM
.
She needed, even for one brief and contrived day a week, to see the world as a place of harmony and peace, without grief. It was an old habit, one she had inherited from her mild mannered, chapel-going Welsh father.

Keep Sundays sacred.

So whatever had happened on Saturday night/Sunday morning on the Burway, she knew nothing about it.

But now Jericho would soon
enlighten
her – to the best of his ability.

‘She seems to have vanished into thin air,' he said again, his eyes now lifting to hers, still holding a heavy and puzzled grief. ‘Daisy, her name is. It were her mum who were driving. Four years old, Mrs Gunn. That's all she was. She were in the car and now she's missing, they say. They can't find 'er anywhere.' He shook his head before continuing. ‘People's been lookin' since early yesterday mornin'.' He paused for breath before speaking again, his frown deepening. ‘I'd 'ave joined 'em if I'd known.' He shook his head, his grey locks twitching. ‘That Burway.' He practically spat the word out. ‘Nasty bit of road that. Narrow and treacherous. Made for accidents.'

‘Even late at night when there's unlikely to be much traffic up there?'

‘Unlikely. Not impossible.' He paused for a moment. ‘When it's misty the Devil himself's sittin' up there in his own chair laughin' at us, it is said, and it would have
bin
misty that early Sunday mornin' round about two a.m.' He glanced quickly across at Martha, wondering how far he could push it before she told him off for his superstition. ‘Some say it's Him that deliberately rolls in the mist and the wicked weather to 'ide 'imself when he's sittin' in his chair. It's a devilish place, Mrs Gunn.'

She wanted to scold him, to tell him not to be so ridiculous, but she had driven up the Burway towards the Long Mynd late one evening, not long after Martin had died. The twins had been howling in unison, almost as though they had absorbed some of her grief and feelings of hopelessness and panic. How on earth was she going to cope with life in the future? As they had wailed in misery she had known they would not settle. And so she had strapped them into their car seats and taken them up the Burway to sit on the wild and blustery top and try to calm herself with the huge, 360 degree panoramic view, as though sitting on top of the world would help her. But instead of calming her and the twins they had started screaming even louder, a note of terror in their little voices which had made her aware of the raw menace of the place. She had recalled the ancient legends and had driven back down the narrow, winding road in even more panic. She had not stopped until she had reached home and had not relaxed until the twins had stilled and were safe and asleep in their cots, and all the doors were locked and bolted. Checked twice. Three times. And even then she had fancied that something of the chilly evil of the Long Mynd still seeped underneath the door and clung to the air in the house.

So how could she laugh off Jericho's superstition when she knew how easy it was to believe in myth and magic in such an area?

Jericho carried on, determined to say his piece. He stuck his chin out and put his face close to hers, his eyes bouncing superstitiously off the walls as though he was afraid someone was listening in. ‘It might belong to the National Trust these days, Mrs Gunn,' he said in a whisper, ‘but that don't civilize a place, do it? You get two stroppy drivers what won't give way on the Burway and you tumbles all the way down to Carding Mill Valley and almost certain death. You'd have to be as lucky as the Reverend Carr to survive that.'

The story of the Reverend E. Donald Carr was an interesting one. It was no myth or legend but the honest and true story of a minister who had walked between his two parishes, Ratlinghope and Wolstaton, over the Long Mynd, and was caught up in a vicious snowstorm. Miraculously, some would say, he had survived in spite of snow blindness and losing his shoes, and was found the next morning by children in Carding Mill Valley who were terrified by the sight of a snow-clad man emerging from the mountain. Encouraged by friends, the Reverend Carr had written down his story of the surreal Disney colours of snow blindness and losing both shoes and gloves, using the frozen body of a mountain pony as a landmark and witnessing hares who bobbed in and out of his vision before he plummeted down near-vertical snow walls clutching his Bible. The story had subsequently entered into the folklore of Church Stretton and the Long Mynd.

‘But our driver did survive it,' Martha pointed out. ‘She's in hospital.'

‘Ah,' Jericho conceded, his eyes gleaming with drama and anticipation, ‘she's in intensive care. But the real problem, Mrs Gunn, is where is little Daisy?' He paused for effect before continuing. ‘The police and the public have been looking for her for more than a day and a night and they haven't found her. Not so much as a hint of her. So where is she?'

‘Is it certain she was in the car?'

‘The woman's partner says so.'

‘She might have been thrown from the vehicle.'

‘She'd have to have been thrown a mighty long way for them not to find 'er. Them's searched the area and is still searching,' Jericho said.

‘Then they'll find her.'

‘Not if—' But even Jericho had the sense not to complete this sentence.

He shrugged and left the room, while Martha crossed to the window. Her view was north, towards the town of Shrewsbury, but in her mind's eye she looked south and saw instead the rounded humps of the Long Mynd rising from the Shropshire plain like whales basking in a flat sea rather than, as legend suggested, piles of earth dropped by an angry giant. Though sometimes it is easier to believe in myth rather than the fact that the Shropshire hills are the result of volcanic activity millions of years ago. Martha stood for a moment, tossing her thoughts around, recalling the night when she had imagined herself and the twins exposed to the malevolence of the place, and shivered when contemplating the fate of the little girl. So far, it was another sinister mystery which could be laid at the foot of the Stretton Hills.