Chapter 35
IT WAS A MAN outside the door, Gini was certain of that. The footsteps, punctuated by long periods of silence, were too heavy to have been a woman’s, but beyond that they told her little. She could not tell, always, where he was: Sometimes he would sound close, so she expected the door to open at any second, then he would seem to be moving around farther off. Then she would think he had left, and then—after another long and terrifying silence—she would hear him move again.
The darkness seemed to magnify sound and distort it. Was that breathing, or the wind moving through a branch? The night was filled with tiny rustling and scuffling sounds; there was an eerie intermittent whistling noise, thin and high above her, which she thought must be the wind seeping through the tiles of the roof.
She had lost all sense of time, and when she finally began to believe that the man had gone, that she might be alone, she had no idea if half an hour passed, or more, or less. Her heart was beating painfully fast. She edged against the wall and felt for the light switch. Whether the man had gone or still remained, she could bear this absence of light no longer. She counted to ten, then pressed the light switch behind her. Nothing happened. She gave a low moan of fear and slid down the wall into a crouching position. She remembered the noise of that outbuilding door being opened and shut—a shed that housed the circuit breaker, or even a generator. The power had been shut off.
She crouched there, trying to think. Then she remembered: There were other power sources in this house. There was the paraffin stove, and the gas stove in the kitchen. If lit, both would provide some light. She had no matches, but there were matches upstairs, on the floor by the sleeping bag. She started quickly across the kitchen and felt her way into the living room. She banged into the table, gave a cry, and felt for the wall. She found the door to the stairs, and the faint light in the room above gave her hope. Her hands were shaking: When she picked up the matchbox, she almost dropped it. Slowly, slowly, she said to herself. She opened the box: There were four matches left. She tried the gas stove first. There was a hissing, then, at last, as she touched the match to the burner, some light.
It was bluish and wavering, but it steadied her at once. She listened. Still silence. She looked at her watch. She stared at its hands, unable to believe what they told her. It was past five. She’d been here more than an hour: more than an hour since that door had been slammed and locked. The realization made her frantic.
She tried the back door first, then the front. Both were heavy and reinforced with thick paneling, not normal old cottage doors. Why had she not noticed that? She tried pulling and pushing with all her strength: Neither budged by so much as a centimeter.
She edged back to the kitchen. The gas was still burning well. She opened a cupboard door next to the stove, and found the gas canister there. She looked at it fearfully, and tried to move it, but it was too heavy. It had no gauge. She had no way of telling how much gas was left.
She could not bear the thought of the gas expiring, of being without light. She began a frantic search for some other source of power—a flashlight, candles. There was none. Then she steadied herself and forced herself to become calmer. The doors would not open, the skylight was unreachable, the only means of exit were the windows—and the windows were boarded up.
There was a window in the kitchen, above the sink. She levered herself up onto the counter and examined it. As with all the other downstairs windows—two in the living room, the one here—the boarding-up had been carefully done. The windows were completely covered with thick chipboard, nailed into their frames on the inside. The nails were at one-inch intervals all around the frame; the chipboard itself was in one thick sheet.
She climbed back down to the floor and drew her coat tighter around her. It was bitterly cold, and any residual heat that there had been had worn off.
She made her way back through the bluish flickering darkness to the living room, and eyed the paraffin stove. She had never used one, and she tried to remember how McMullen had lit it the evening they came here. There had been a little door on its side, which he opened, and some mechanism for turning up the wick. She worked out how to do it, finally, and lit it.
She adjusted it as she had seen McMullen do, so the smoky yellow flame burned a clean blue. The light in this room was now a little stronger. She searched both it and the kitchen carefully, going through every cupboard and every drawer. She laid out the array of implements on the kitchen table: three dinner knives, three forks, one teaspoon, a can opener—no tools of any kind.
She climbed up on the countertop again, and tried the knives first. She was breathing hard now, trying to keep her hands steady. She found she could insert the thin blade of the knife between board and window frame—but that was all. She slid the knife back and forth to try to loosen the board, but the blade was too weak. Growing more desperate, she pushed the blade right in, then tried to lever with the handle. Nothing happened. She wrenched harder. The blade snapped.
She gave a cry and threw the broken handle down. She tried again, with a fork this time, first inserting the prongs under the board, then, when that proved useless, the thicker handle end. But she could not thrust the fork under the board far enough to get any leverage. She pushed harder, growing frantic, and her hand slipped. The fork juddered, and the prongs impaled her palm. With a cry of pain she dropped it. Blood welled, and dripped down her fingers into the sink. She slid back down to the floor and went to run the water in the sink. She turned the tap, but there was no water: just a trickle, then a dry, gurgling sound.
For some reason, that terrified her. She stared around her and saw these rooms now as a trap. She had no water and no food. The gas and the paraffin would last only so long. This house was remote, unused, closed up. No one knew she was there. She could be there for days, weeks. Panic swept into her mind, swamping any ability to think. Blood dripped from her hand into the white of the sink. The air in the room was now dry and acrid from the gas. She slumped against the sink, fighting down the fear, telling herself to be calm. She found a cloth and wrapped it around her bleeding hand; she lowered the flame of the gas, and of the paraffin stove, so that their fuel would last longer, and she made herself think.
It wasn’t true that no one knew where she was. Pascal knew. He might not know precisely, because she had not mentioned the cottage to him, but he knew that she had been going to the rail line below. He was expecting her in London at six. When she did not return, eventually, he would take action. He would work out where she might have gone. It was foolish to think of being trapped here for days or weeks—that was not going to happen. She would be found, and released. But she had no intention of waiting that long: She was going to get out of this place by herself.
She thought of Pascal. She saw his face and heard his voice. He felt suddenly very close, and this sense of his closeness gave her courage. She climbed back up onto the counter and felt the edge of the board carefully. Halfway down on the right-hand side, one of the nails was driven in at a poor angle. It was looser than the others. Slowly and carefully this time, she inserted the blade of the second knife. She began to lever it gently, back and forth, back and forth.
It took hours. For hours she worked away at the one loose nail, that tiny section of board. She levered it just a fraction, first with the knife blade, then, when the gap between board and window frame was a fraction wider, with the fork. As she worked, concentrating on that tiny section of wood, she thought carefully back over the events of that day. One by one they clicked into place. McMullen was not dead, she was now certain of that. He had been here. It was he who had bought that newspaper, lit the paraffin stove, and opened that envelope of photographs. It was McMullen, she thought, who had been here when she herself arrived, and McMullen who had locked her in. Now he had left—which suggested the place was of no further use to him. He had left, but where would he have gone?
She stopped her levering for a second and stared straight ahead. Her skin went cold. He
had received the photographs, and they must have been a devastating blow to him. He had left them behind, but he had taken with him both that heavy army rucksack, and the container of gun oil.
She looked down at her watch. It was past eight o’clock. Only four hours of Saturday remained. Why would McMullen stage his own death—and she was now certain that he had done just that—unless he wanted to buy himself a little time, lull John Hawthorne into a false sense of security? Suppose, as Pascal had suggested, McMullen had decided to kill Hawthorne? When would he have the best opportunity? When everyone believed him dead. Of course, she thought, on the Sunday, on the third Sunday of the month—that date might well appeal to McMullen, and that Sunday was now just four hours away.
She levered frantically at the board again, then steadied herself. She suddenly remembered something Hawthorne had said to her the previous evening. It was after she had mentioned Venice. Don’t believe all the lies, Hawthorne had said. Just give me a few more days.
She stared at the board in front of her. When he said that, Hawthorne must already have known about that body on the rail line, and must have assumed McMullen was dead. He must have believed that with McMullen dead the rest of the lies and allegations could be quickly cleared up—that was why he had felt able to speak to her as openly as he did. But if McMullen were not dead, then Hawthorne could be in danger He might have not a few days, but only a few hours, left.
As she thought that, she pushed hard on the board, and at last, at last the loose nail was dislodged; she could get more purchase on the board. She began to work at it, first with the fork, then with the can opener, the handles of which were stronger, then—when the space widened—with her fingers. The board creaked, resisted, cut into her hands. Gini cried out, almost fell, tugged harder, and the board split.
Even then it was still a slow, hard task. She had to break the board away from the window bit by bit. Sometimes a large chunk could be ripped away, then only a tiny sliver. But gradually she could see moonlight outside, then an angle of wall through the glass, then the flagstones. Her hands were bleeding now, and stiff with cold and exertion, but she fought with the board, hating herself for being a woman with weak muscles, bitterly aware that a man, Pascal, could have ripped this board away in minutes. She tugged and ripped and pulled and pushed: Freedom felt so close. She could see the moonlit yard clearly now, and beyond it the darkness of the woods. Her car was there, just sixty yards down that slope. In another half hour she could be in that car and away from this place. She could find a phone, call Pascal, call Hawthorne too, yes, she must do that. Hawthorne had to be warned that McMullen was not dead.
She caught hold of the last large section of board remaining and hauled on it with all her strength. Suddenly it buckled and broke off in her hands. She half fell, almost toppled to the floor, then steadied herself. The window was now clear, surrounded by a jagged edge of broken board. She grasped the catch, levered, pushed—and nothing happened. It was fastened, she saw, in three places, with security bolts.
She climbed down. Her legs and arms were shaking from her exertions. She could smash the glass, but the window—narrow and upright with two panes of glass separated by one horizontal bar—needed to be broken open completely. The actual panes were too small to squeeze through. She would have to break the glass in both panes and smash out the bar between them. Then, at last, she could climb out.
The gas was burning alarmingly low now. She turned it up a fraction. It sputtered and hissed. I must be quick, she thought, I must be quick.
She carried a chair from the living room and smashed at the glass with all her strength. One pane broke, the other cracked. She hauled herself up onto the counter and began to hammer at the glass, half sobbing, breathing hard with the effort. She wrapped the dish cloth around her hand and began to snap off the jagged shards of glass piece by piece. She hammered the chair against the dividing bar, then rammed at it with her shoulder as hard as she could. It gave a little, but still held. She went on, fighting with the bar, fighting with the shards of glass. Her arms were trembling with the effort, and her hands were cut and bleeding. She mopped at the blood, which was making her hands slippery, and saw that her watch face was smashed. The watch hands were jammed, unmoving. She held the watch face close to her face and peered at it in the semi-darkness. Hours had passed—far more time had gone by than she’d realized. According to her watch, it was now half past eleven—but how long ago had the watch stopped?
She gave a moan of anger and frustration. It could be Sunday now. She must get out of this place. She threw herself with her full weight against the dividing bar, and at last it splintered, then snapped. The sense of freedom was intoxicating. She drew in a deep breath of icy air. Leave the heater, leave the gas, but bring the photographs, she thought, and began to struggle through the broken window. She pulled her thick coat around her, but it caught on the jagged glass. She felt glass catch at her hair and cut her face. Then, awkwardly, painfully, she was free. She dropped down the few feet onto the flagstones of the yard, and almost collapsed.
Her whole body ached with strain; her legs were unsteady, but she could feel a rush of exhilaration now, pumping through her body. Her car was close, very close, just ahead of her through the trees and down the slope. She ran across the yard and into the undergrowth, peering ahead of her for the track.
She ran down it, slipping and sliding. Twice she tripped and fell full-length. She heaved herself up, ran on, and reached the clearing. Then she stopped, staring around her wildly. She could feel blood running down her face; she could taste blood on her lips. It hurt her to breathe. She staggered forward a few more steps, peering into the darkness under the trees, unable to accept the obvious. She ran this way and that; she ran a little farther down the track, then turned back, breathing hard. Moonlight and shadows moved around her.
The car was not there. The car had been taken.
It was Sunday now, it must be Sunday, and it was a good three miles to the nearest road. An hour, she thought; it takes an hour to walk three miles at an ordinary pace. Then she turned, and half running, half stumbling, began to make her way down the track.
She saw the lights, and heard the noise, when she was only halfway down the track. It was coming from her left, from the valley below to her left, from the direction of John Hawthorne’s house. She could not see the house from here, halfway down the hill, surrounded by pine trees, but she could hear cars, men’s voices.
She could glimpse lights moving beyond the trees. She hesitated, then plunged off the path to her left, making for the voices, making for the lights. She ducked under branches, and felt brambles catch at her clothes. She shielded her face from the brambles, tripped on tree roots, and ran on. She came out on the slope of the hill, at the edge of the woods, and stopped.
Open fields lay between her and Hawthorne’s house. That house was as bright as a hallucination. The road in front of it, the gates, the drive, the house itself, were all floodlit. The buildings stood out in an unearthly greenish halogen glow, staining the sky above. And there were people—so many people. She could see police cars, and other cars slewed across the road below, parked in the driveway; she could see three, no four, long black vehicles drawn up in front of the house itself. She could see men too, moving along the road, and across the lawns on either side of the drive. She stared, and gave a low cry of panic and fear. Something had happened; something was happening. Could McMullen already have made some attempt on Hawthorne’s life? Was Hawthorne here, in Oxfordshire, tonight? If so, was he alive, or dead?
She began to run then, faster and faster, struggling for breath, across the plowed fields, making for the road below. But the fields were wet and muddy from weeks of rain, and the mud sucked and pulled at her feet. She took a more indirect route, keeping close to the hedge, where the ground was firmer. Down through one field, then a second. She could see the road ahead now, and the entrance gates to Hawthorne’s home. She staggered, slipped, and increased her pace.
br /> The men in the roadway heard her approach. She was dimly aware of them turning, looking up, beginning to move toward her. She heard a voice say something sharply, and heard the sound of running footsteps, but all she could think of was the field gate straight ahead of her, the road, the entrance, and the drive beyond that.
She pushed the gate open, and half fell into the roadway, gasping for breath. The light was now dazzling; three, no four, five dark figures were in front of her. She stared at them, and they stared at her. One of them, she realized, the one to her right, was wearing an ordinary police uniform. She began to turn to him to speak, but a man not in uniform, a man in a dark suit, moved quickly between them. “My people will deal with this,” he said curtly to the policeman. He took her arm and looked down at her face. He was very tall, heavily built, crew-cut.
“Ms. Hunter, ma’am?” He was still staring at her. “It is Ms. Hunter, yes?”
Gini looked up at him. The air gusted; the road dipped and swayed. Then she recognized him. He had an alert, an intelligent face. It was the security man who had been at Mary’s party, Malone. His grip on her arm tightened as she swayed. She thought the police officer to her right said something, but Malone cut him off.
“Get a car,” he said to one of the dark-suited men next to him. She saw the man move away fast, and the others bunch around her. Then the car was there, and Malone was helping her into it He slid into the backseat beside her, and before his door was closed, the car was already moving off. Through the entrance gates, into the drive of Hawthorne’s house.
Gini began to speak, and with a quick gesture Malone cut her off.
“Not here, ma’am,” he said quietly and firmly. “It’s all right. Wait. Let’s just get you into the house.”
Chapter 36
PASCAL HAD LOST ALL sense of time. It could have been one in the morning, or two, or twelve-thirty when he shot back the bolts and slammed out of the St. John’s Wood house. He stood outside in the street, breathing in the cold night air, staring up unseeingly at the night sky. In the gothic house in the cul-de-sac beyond, John Hawthorne and his wife remained. Pascal no longer cared what they did to each other behind closed shutters; he no longer cared whether they remained there five minutes or the rest of the night. Disgust washed through him, with Hawthorne, with Lise, but above all with himself.