The Hiding Place(55)

Except, I know damn well that they won’t have found what they were looking for.

I walk wearily upstairs. My mattress has been slashed and eviscerated, the clothes in the wardrobe pulled off hangers and dumped in a heap on the floor. I bend down to pick up some shirts and I can immediately tell, from the dampness and acrid smell, that they have been liberally pissed upon.

I check in the bathroom: shower curtain yanked down for no apparent reason, the top taken off the cistern and smashed. I could have told them that nothing they could do in here could disturb me more than the things I’ve already encountered.

Finally, I check the spare room. Ben’s room. I open the door. I stare at the lacerated mattress, the ripped-up carpet, and feel a slow burn of anger. I limp back downstairs.

I find Abbie-Eyes in the wood-burning stove, along with the folder that I discovered beneath the Angel. I crouch down and take them both out. They’re dusty and black but they haven’t been set alight. I wonder why? I place Abbie-Eyes on the coffee table. After a moment’s consideration I slip the folder inside one of the slit-open cushions, just to be on the safe side. Something is bothering me. Why didn’t Fletch’s lads burn them? Had they got bored of their destruction by this point? Seems unlikely. Did they run out of time?

Or was it something else? Were they disturbed, interrupted?

I suddenly have a very bad feeling. There’s a creak from the kitchen. I straighten and turn.

“Evening, Joe.”


—



I sit on the cushionless sofa. Gloria perches delicately on the armchair. Flames crackle noisily in the wood-burning stove. This is not as homely as it sounds. Gloria wears black leather gloves and holds a poker in one hand.

“What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on your welfare.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She laughs. My bladder cramps.

“I saw you had some visitors today.”

“You met them?”

“They were leaving just as I arrived. We didn’t have a chance to chat.”

She glances around. “It strikes me that they were searching for something. Perhaps the same thing that you were hoping your old friend might stump up a wad of cash for.”

“They didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have what they’re looking for. Not here.”

She considers this. “I have found, in my line of work, that it is beneficial to be in possession of all the facts.”

“I’ve told you—”

“You’ve told me FUCK ALL!”

She slams the poker down on the coffee table. Abbie-Eyes flies into the air and lands near my feet. A crack splits her plastic features. Her loose eye spills out of the socket. It stares up at me from the floor. Sweat gathers at the base of my spine.

“Fortunately,” Gloria continues, “I’ve done a little research of my own. It was interesting.”

She stands, walks over to the wood-burning stove, bends down and opens it.

“Let me take you back twenty-five years. Five schoolfriends. You, Stephen Hurst, Christopher Manning, Marie Gibson and Nick Fletcher. Oh, and your little sister, Annie. Never told me about her.”

She sticks the end of the poker into the stove, wedging it deep inside the logs. The flames crackle louder.

“One night, when you were out with your friends, she went missing. Disappeared from her own bed. There were searches, appeals. Everyone thought the worst. And then, miraculously, after forty-eight hours, she came back. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what had happened to her…”

“I don’t see—”

“Let me finish. Happy ending, except, two months later, Daddy crashes his car into a tree, killing little Annie and himself and leaving you critically injured. How am I doing so far?”

I stare at the poker. In the fire. Out of the frying pan, I think wildly.

“Like you said, you’ve done your research,” I say.

Gloria begins to pace. “Oh, I left a bit out—a few weeks after your sister’s return your friend Christopher Manning falls from the school English block. Tragic coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Life is full of tragic coincidences.”

“Fast-forward to now, and you return to the village where you grew up. You plan to blackmail your old schoolfriend Stephen Hurst for a large amount of cash. What do you have on him? What is he hiding?”

“Someone like Hurst has plenty of secrets.”

“I’m beginning to think you do too, Joe.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I like you.”

“You have a very odd way of showing it.”

“Put it another way then—you interest me. Not many people do. For a start, you’re one of the least likely teachers I’ve ever met. You’re a drunk, a gambler. But you have a vocation. You choose to impart knowledge to children. Why is that?”

“You get a lot of holidays.”

“I think it’s because of what happened here, twenty-five years ago. I think you’re trying to make amends for something.”

“Or just trying to make a living.”