The Secret of Crickley Hall (44 page)

'Look, Gabe,' DI Michael had said this morning almost exactly a year later, 'I don't think you should bring your wife with you. Come on your own, will you?'

'She's gonna want to be there.'

'My firm advice is that you don't let her. Your son or not, either way, it would be too distressing for her. I don't think she needs to be put through an ordeal like this.'

'Okay. You're right. Someone has to look after Cally anyway—we can't drag her all the way back to London. And Loren's at school, she doesn't get home 'til around four. I'll make Eve see sense.' His shoulders were hunched and he consciously forced them to relax. 'Eve's out, but she'll be back any minute. When I've told her, I'll be on my way. Look, just to be certain, you're talking about the canal that runs past the park, right?'

'Afraid so. The body was trapped a mile or so further on, which was why the divers found nothing when they searched before.'

'You say trapped?'

'Yes, it was inside an old pram—one of those big perambulators—someone had dumped in the water probably years ago. Apparently it was lying on its side among a lot of other junk on the canal bed. There's a council estate along that stretch and residents have been dumping stuff for years. Yesterday, the Underwater Search Unit was searching the area because a local known villain was seen tossing a gun over the canal wall as he was being chased by uniformed cops.'

So, the body had been discovered by chance. Gabe suppressed any cynicism he felt.

'Kim,' he said quietly. 'What do you think?'

'I can't lie to you, Gabe, but it looks bad for you. The clothes—'

'Okay. Where do I meet you?'

'At the mortuary.' The detective gave Gabe the address as well as the mortuary's phone number in case he got lost. 'You've got my mobile number, so ring me when you're approaching London. It'll give me time to get there before you.'

Gabe had hung up. Cally was at the top of the stairs, rubbing sleep from her eyes with her knuckles as she looked down at him.

•

Surprisingly, when Eve had returned from the harbour village she had taken the news calmly; perhaps it was because she was almost totally drained, had little more emotion left. Also surprisingly, she had agreed to stay at Crickley Hall while Gabe made the trip to London. She seemed to see the logic of remaining behind with their daughters.

Now, Gabe pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator, keeping to the outside lane, flashing his headlights at other drivers who blocked his way, forcing some to pull over into the middle lane by tailgating them.

Anxious already, Eve's reaction made him even more so. He had feared the finding of a child's body so close to the park where Cam had been lost would leave her broken, hysterical at least, but she had been composed, albeit a brittle type of composure. Her one condition for staying, though, was that he phone her immediately he knew whether it was the body of their son or not. She had kissed Gabe and leaned into him so that he could enfold her in his arms. That was the moment he thought she might break, but she had only trembled against him, and when he lifted her chin with the crook of his finger, she had gazed back with dulled eyes. He realized she was in shock, a numbing kind of shock. He was loath to leave her like that, but he'd had no other choice, he had to find out the truth about their son. And if it was Cam? Right now that was too painful to contemplate.

He kicked down hard on the accelerator once more to get past a lorry that was throwing up spray from the middle lane. The wet greyness of the day closed round him.

52: SECOND VISITOR

Iris ushered the visitor into Magda's room at the nursing home.

'There now, Magda, aren't you the popular one? You've another person come to see you. That's two more than you've ever had since you've been here.'

Magda ignored the nurse's prattling and took in the man who had entered.

Oh, she knew him. He had visited her once before, but in the other place, where they kept a person locked up all the time. But that was a long while ago and he was much younger then, a young man and not the awkward boy she used to know.

'You can sit in the armchair, if you like.' The blue-uniformed nurse indicated the lumpy soft chair in the corner. 'Magda won't move from her one unless it's to be put to bed. Sometimes I think she's stuck to it.'

The visitor gave Iris a genial smile before making himself comfortable in the armchair, altering its position so that it faced the elderly resident. The nurse left the room and he waited for her footsteps to recede down the corridor before speaking.

'Hello, Magda,' he said. 'Do you know who I am? Do you recognize me after all this time?'

Of course she did, you fool. Maurice Stafford. Who could forget such a devoted boy?

She remained silent.

'I came to see you a long time ago when you were in the other place. They don't call them mental asylums any more, did you know that? But then so much has changed since we sat on that cold and wet station platform.'

When he'd left her alone and frightened, too frozen with fear to get on the train with him when it came the next morning. He never even pleaded with her. He was just gone. Gone for ever, she'd thought. But now he was back for the second time and she wondered why.

'Won't you speak to me? Won't you say hello to your old friend?'

Speak? She'd not spoken a word since that day, not even when they found her alone at the station. Why should she drop her guard now?

'Still refusing, eh, Magda? Is it a game you're playing so you don't have to confess? Either way it's good, it's very good. You can't tell tales on your brother, can you? People would never understand why Augustus did the things he did, especially nowadays. Discipline is an old-fashioned concept.'

He leaned forward and peered at her intently, his cruel eyes searching for any sign of recognition, of recollection. She remained impassive.

She remembered many things though, dear Maurice. How he had spied on the other children, reporting their misbehaviours to either herself or Augustus. And she also remembered what she and Maurice had done to the young teacher whose prettiness was marred by the ugliness of her withered arm. Oh, they had taken good care of her, the prying, interfering little wretch, but it was Maurice who had killed her, creeping up behind the silly girl and bashing in her head with one of the stouter logs piled on the boiler-room floor for winter fires.

'You remember what we did to the teacher, Magda? How we killed her next door to the cellar? I was, shall we say, agitated afterwards, but then I was a mere child of twelve years. You took charge, you knew what had to be done to conceal the crime. We carried Nancy Linnet's body back into the cellar and dropped it into the well. You were brisk and efficient, utterly cold—if there was any trepidation, you hid it from me.'

Yes, she had hidden her panic: she'd had to be strong for Augustus, she could not allow him to be betrayed. It was only at the very end, on the night of the fierce storm, that she'd had to desert her brother in his madness. She had fled with the boy, Maurice Stafford, braving the storm because they were too afraid of Augustus to stay, terrified that in his insanity he would turn on them.

'The game was up that last night, we both knew it. Augustus could no longer be protected from the outsiders, the snoopers, the government people—he had gone too far. In the end, he wreaked havoc, didn't he?'

Those street urchins only had themselves to blame! They were
bad
boys and girls, incorrigibly wayward! They had planned to run away from Crickley Hall that night and they had to be stopped
!

Magda sat perfectly still on her hard chair.

But in the end it was she and Maurice who had run away.

'We defied the storm and reached the train station. We sat on the platform bench, bowed and shivering, until the next morning when the storm had ceased and all was calm once more. But when the train came along, quite early, you refused to get on it with me. You had sunk into yourself, Magda. You refused to speak and you wouldn't be moved. At the last moment I caught the train myself. Your face was as expressionless as it is now. Like stone. I could tell you how I survived in the city on my own for almost a year before I found someone to take me in, but I'm afraid it wouldn't mean a thing to you.'

He rose to his feet.

'You really are mad, aren't you?' he said.

Certainly not. She was just… just cautious, that was all. She could talk if she wanted to, couldn't she? Of course she could. It was safer this way, though. They left her alone now, didn't even try to coax her to speak. To confess. Oh, she could talk all right, but this way was best. This way they thought she knew nothing and could tell nothing. Hah! Fools, all of them.

'You're harmless, I can see. I came today because I was curious after all these years. I saw you once—what was it, thirty years ago?—when they kept you in a locked cell, and you were as silent as you are now. You've grown old, Magda. You must be at least ninety-three, ninety-five? I don't suppose you even remember me and I doubt you remember anything about those days in Crickley Hall.'

He walked to the door, paused and turned back to regard her.

'Let me assure you,' he said with a faint smile, I've never forgotten Augustus Theophilus Cribben and all the things he—and you, Magda—taught me. I hear his call even now. He won't be denied, do you know that?'

Magda refused to look at him. She went on staring at the blank wall.

'At least, Magda, you seem to be at peace in your lunacy.'

The visitor left the room.

A lunatic? Yes, perhaps she was. Perhaps all the years of silence had finally made her that way.

But she wasn't as mad as Maurice. His madness shone from his eyes.

Magda listened to his footsteps fade away. Inwardly she smiled, but her face did not change expression. Someone might be watching.

53: THE MORTUARY

Detective Inspector Kim Michael was waiting for Gabe at the mortuary entrance, which was in the basement of a huge teaching hospital. They shook hands in a perfunctory manner, both men wanting to get through the ordeal of viewing the body as quickly as possible.

DI Michael was just below average height but fit-looking, with dark-brown hair and intelligent greeny-brown eyes that softened his tough features. From experience Gabe knew the policeman was a good listener, whose sound advice and quiet encouragement had helped Eve and Gabe through the bad times after Cam's disappearance. He looked at Gabe sympathetically now.

'How was the journey?' he asked as he led the engineer down a long sloping corridor with pale two-tone green walls.

'I used the motorways, made good time, although the rain didn't help,' Gabe replied.

DI Michael nodded. He stopped before black plastic swingdoors, pushing open one side and ushering Gabe through. The engineer found himself in another but broader corridor with doors left and right, all of them closed except one, the nearest.

I've got the clothes ready for you,' the detective said, indicating the open doorway. 'Let's see how you do with them before we try anything else.'

Gabe entered and found himself in a viewing room, a long plain table on one side, a few metal chairs set against another wall. To his right was an interior window, the drapes behind the glass closed. It was a viewing window and he wondered if the child's corpse was already lying there beyond the curtains. There was a door beside the window.

On the long table was a semi-clear plastic bag in which items of clothing were bundled. Gabe could just make out a faded reddish jumper lying on a blue anorak.

DI Michael went to the bag and began to pull the rumpled clothing out, laying each item along the table. The woollen jumper was ragged and now closer to pink in colour; when Cam had worn it, the jumper was a vivid red. Gabe almost choked. There were holes where the wool had unravelled or had been nibbled by scavenging fish. He managed to get a grip on himself before moving on to the blue anorak. The colour had paled but it was truer to its original tone than the woollen jumper. Next to this was a tiny vest that had been white but was now a dirty grey, as were the small underpants close by. The material of both was torn and punctured as though river fish had gnawed through to get at the meat beneath. That image caused Gabe to waver and the detective held on to his arm to steady him.

Gabe forced himself to continue looking. The little pair of shrunken jeans came next; they were so drained of colour they were almost white in places.

'As I told you on the phone,' Kim Michael said, 'the shoes are missing, but I forgot to say the socks were gone too. We think the underwater currents took them away. As far as the pathologist can tell, there are no signs of violence on the body before drowning.'

'You're sure?'

'As sure as we can be after all this time…'

Gabe could not tear his eyes away from the shrunken, damaged garments displayed on the table. He wanted to sink to his knees before them and wail his son's name, wanted to scream denial. But there was no doubt—the clothing had been Cameron's. Now, as if to confirm the gut-wrenching truth of it, he noticed the tiny crocodile logo stitched to the jumper's chest, some of the stitching broken, the crocodile no longer green but a colourless smudge with only the outline defined. Cam had loved that little cartoon emblem.

'Gabe?' DI Michael had dropped his hand away from the engineer's arm, but he angled his head, trying to look into Gabe's downcast eyes. Gabe knew what was expected of him.

'The clothes belong to Cam,' he said without apparent emotion.

'You're sure?'

He nodded. 'Pretty much.'

'If you are certain, there's no need to see the body.'

'I got to.'

'It's been in the river for a year. Sorry, Gabe, but it's been eaten away, as well as spoiled by the polluted water. It isn't necessary to put yourself through any more. We've got the clothes—you've identified them.'