She shook away the hurtful memories and looked at those same hands. Yes, the blood was still there. Blood was everywhere.
Laura heard a noise. The faintest of sounds. Her heart quickened. Someone was in the house. Not far away.
She bent and picked up the bloodied knife from the tiled floor and rose to her feet. The deep slashes on her arm dribbled blood down to soak her hand, down the long blade in thick rivulets; dripped steadily to the floor to splash in a trail of little scarlet rosettes as she padded barefoot to the door.
Ray Steele turned his torch on. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this.
There was an empty wooden cot pushed against the wall; above it there hung a mobile of chunky, wooden ducks on strings; a tiny chest of drawers decorated with flowers was placed near the cot, sitting on top of this a pile of neatly-folded baby clothes; there was a teddy-bear on a stool, its coal-black button eyes watching him; a spinning-top lay beside a carefully arranged set of children’s building blocks on a rug; a small bookcase was filled with children’s story books; the wallpaper was printed with hot-air balloons and birds.
There was nothing odd or special about this room at all. No valuables, no safe. It was a nursery. A nursery without a baby.
He shook his head and smiled to himself, crept quietly over to the cot. It had a name painted on its wooden side: Alex. He squinted against the gloom, played the torch over the cot; there looked to be something inside beneath the soft, woollen blanket. He bent down, peeled the blanket back to reveal a tiny, pink head.
It was a doll. He was getting jumpy over a damned doll!
The scream, shrill and from the depths of the soul, caused him to start violently and he accidentally dropped the torch into the cot. It lit up the blue plastic eyes of the doll.
‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ Laura exclaimed, bounding over to the man. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ She lunged at him with the knife, narrowly missing his head and spattering his face with droplets of warm blood from her arm. She screamed loudly, yelling unintelligible words at him.
Ray Steel ran for the door, pushing against Laura, his hand catching the knife and he yelled out in pain as the blade scored deep into his fingers. Laura was at his back in an instant, the room filled with her strident yelling. In the dark, Ray reached out to steady himself on the banister. He felt the searing pain from his bloodied hand, which slid down the banister on the blood as easily as if the thing had been greased. It caused him to lose his footing on the stairs.
He tumbled momentarily into a black void,
and then
his head crashed against the hard, wooden treads, his body cart-wheeling uncontrollably down the stairs, his ears filled with the sound of a devilish, screaming banshee.
And then he came to rest and all was silent. He was on his back, his head facing down the stairs and he could just make out the strange, unnatural angle of his broken arm. But he could feel no pain. He should be feeling pain!
‘Help me,’ he said plaintively. ‘Help me.’
He was aware of a shadow looming over him. He couldn’t make out the features of her face, but her hair was like a ragged halo, her breathing deep and heavy. He saw the knife in her hand. ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ he said, sobbing. ‘And my arms – I can’t feel those either. I can’t feel anything!’ He could feel tears though, as they ran hot down his temples to his ears. ‘’I think I’ve broken my back… You’ve got to help me!’
‘Who are you?’ she said, her voice hoarse.
‘Please help me – I could die!’
She looked at the knife. ‘Yes, you could, if you didn’t get help soon. It was you who broke into my house before, wasn’t it?’ He was blubbering. ‘I knew someone had been in. Tell me it was you and I’ll call for help. You might have all manner of internal injuries. You might be bleeding to death.’
‘Don’t let me die,’ he pleaded. ‘I beg you – I don’t want to die!’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he panted, ‘it was me.’
‘So why did you do that? Nothing was stolen.’ She bent down, closer to his face. Her breath warm on his cheek. ‘I’m sticking the point of my knife deep into your arm. Can you feel it? I’ll bet you can’t.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t! I can’t! Please…’
‘But something was stolen, wasn’t it?’
He nodded quickly. ‘Yes, I stole one of your old clubs from the study.’
Laura sat down on the step beside him. ‘One of my father’s war clubs? Whatever for?’
‘He paid me to do it.’
‘Who paid you to do what?’
Help me, please…’
‘Who paid you to do what?’
Martin Caldwell – he paid me.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Martin Caldwell,’ she said.
‘He’s the manager at the Empire cinema. He paid me to kill Katherine, the woman who tried to con you. He told me to make it look like you’d done it, because he said he knew you’d been harassing her.’
‘Go on,’ she said evenly.
‘Get me some help! I’m not saying anymore!’
‘Then you’ll die here on the stairs.’
He tried to make his arms and legs move, but failed, gasping. ‘He wanted people would blame you,’ he said. ‘So I stole one of your clubs…’
‘What of Katherine? Have you killed her?’ She said it matter-of-factly, which terrified him. ‘I’m not saying any more!’
She plunged the knife into his arm at a point where he could see it. ‘Look how deep it’s going in, and yet still you can’t feel any pain.’
‘OK, OK, I used the club to kill her tonight. She’s dead. The plan was to plant the club with her blood on it here then alert the police in some way. They’d find the club and put two and two together. It’s downstairs, in the study inside a chest. Martin wanted to get rid of Katherine once and for all – she was blackmailing him, and he wanted you to take the rap. Now please phone for an ambulance. You have to help me!’
‘You soiled my baby’s room,’ she said hollowly. ‘You defiled it. You might have woken the baby up.’
‘There is no fucking baby!’ he said, coughing on blood. ‘It’s a doll!’
‘Keep your voice down. Little ones are such light sleepers.’ She began to sing a lullaby, rose to her feet and ascended the stairs, dropping the knife. It bounced down the stairs and landed near Ray Steele’s anguished face.
‘Where are you going?’ he said, his voice choked. ‘Don’t leave me here. I need an ambulance! I’ve told you everything – you’ve got to help me!’
‘
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall
…’ sang Laura, going to the blue-painted door. She went inside, slowly closing the door behind her. ‘…
and down will come baby, cradle and all
…’
* * * *
The clod of earth thumped against the coffin lid, the hollow sound like that of someone kicking against a door, he thought. The next handful of dirt tossed into t
he grave sounded like rice being dropped
onto an open umbrella. It fascinated
him. He
had been like this all morning – no real emotion, no sadness, just a series of vacuous observations, almost as if he weren’t part of the events taking place around him. Some kind of heavenly spirit sent down to observe the comings and goings of earthly mortals.
For Vince Moody this was his first funeral. A rite of passage he could tick off his list. He’d been to weddings and christenings and this was the final piece of the trilogy. Poor Laura. He didn’t have to attend, of course. He wasn’t family. He never really knew her and she never knew him.
Their lives had only brushed by each other for brief moments in the Empire cinema. Ships in the night, and all that. But he was over Laura Leach now, thankfully. It had been a passing phase, a temporary madness from which he’d recovered, and Edith had been crucial in helping him down the recovery road.
Edith was standing beside him, looking down at Laura’s coffin. He thought she looked even more beautiful dressed in black, with her hair tied up into an elegant knot, not unlike Audrey Hepburn from certain angles. She moved her hand closer to his and he felt her cold fingers enmesh with his. Their breath came out in clouds to mingle, become one, breath that drifted gossamer-like over the open grave.
She’d been eager to attend the funeral, and he’d no idea why. Perhaps she wanted to make sure she was gone from their lives, see it with her own eyes; eyes which were curiously moist, he thought.
Laura had been found dead in the stream near
Devereux
Towers
. She’d taken her own life a few weeks after she’d told the police everything. No foul play suspected, they said. She was depressed, on medication, had been for years. She’d been in
Bartholomew Place
for a long time. Inevitable, was a word someone used. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. In her will she’d left all her money to a children’s home somewhere, which Vince thought was very thoughtful of her.
Devereux
Towers
was up for sale and already a prospective buyer was interested in turning it into a hotel. But he couldn’t dredge up a single ounce of the feelings he once had for Laura. Why was that? Surely there should be something he could let her have, a last tear, a final tiny morsel from his heart? But no, not a single thing could he release for her, and maybe it was because Edith had become the centre of his attentions now; she soaked up everything he had like a black hole swallows up light.
Before the funeral service in church, Edith had told him how handsome he looked. She openly admired his new haircut, his new shirt, his new suit. How different he looked, she said. A real change had come over him, and it was a change for the good. He was manager now and looked the part, too.
His promotion had come as a surprise to him. It was, in part, recognition of his long service with the cinema, his positive actions on the night of the flood when his manager was asleep and drunk in his office – actions Edith had been all too eager to embellish when interviewed by the bigwigs from HQ. But of course they also needed someone to replace the thoroughly disgraced Martin Caldwell, a safe pair of hands. They wanted to lay the memory of Martin Caldwell to rest as quickly as they tumbled earth into Laura’s grave.
The police arrested
Caldwell
within a day or two of the flood and the discovery of the two bodies in the well. They charged him with their murder. The evidence was clear – pregnant Monica had been blackmailing him – Vince had told the police as much, told them all he knew. And they found his missing Oscar statuette in the well, its base dented from where it had caved Monica’s skull in before he disposed of her body. And the other body, the man’s, this belonged to the guy whom
Caldwell
was living in fear of. Caldwell’s sordid past came flooding out as quickly as the water did from the well; how he’d used the fire-axe by the door to finish-off Felix before dumping him in the well too. They say he wasn’t dead when he was pushed in, but that he drowned. The fire-axe was also found in the well. The thing was,
Caldwell
might have evaded detection hadn’t a botched attempt to frame Laura for the murder of Felix’s girlfriend sealed his fate. The man who broke into
Devereux
Towers
with the intention of planting the murder weapon, confessed everything to the police.
Caldwell
denied everything, very convincingly, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. They had motivations, they had murder weapons, they had bags of evidence from interviews with Empire employees, and now Martin Caldwell was about to serve a life sentence for committing three murders. Who’d have thought it?
Poor Laura; she’d suffered so much at their scheming hands, had no idea what she was involved in, what part she was to play. And now she was dead, just like Ophelia, said Edith. Vince had no idea who Ophelia was, but didn’t say anything so as not to betray his ignorance. But he ought to forget Laura now, because Edith and he
were together now
,
a couple,
a unit; they were soul-mates. They even whispered tentatively of marriage in a year or two. In the meantime Vince was taking driving lessons, and by the end of the New Year he hoped to have passed his driving test. There was a lovely MGB-GT he had set his sights on. A beauty, only a year old. As manager of the Empire he could afford to take out a bank loan now. By Christmas he’d be driving around
Somerset
in his very own sports car. Who’d have thought that, too? Even his mum and dad started to smile at him when they spoke, and finally began to say encouraging things about him to other people.
HQ had suggested that once Monica’s body had been released for burial Vince should attend the funeral. He didn’t have to, they said, not really, but now he was manager he had obligations. She had been an employee. He should show his face, for outward appearances if nothing else. After all, it had been a tragic affair, and no one deserved to get murdered, not even Monica. Buy a wreath, on behalf of the company. Not too expensive though, because budgets were tight, what with the planned refurbishment and all. So he’d get to go to his second funeral soon.