The Retreat(80)

I crouched beside the shroud and, after counting to three, pulled it back to reveal a white, moon-shaped face.

I fell back, dropping the flashlight and sending it spinning in a circle. Light danced around the crypt, ramping up my dizziness and nausea. I grabbed the flashlight and got back up onto my haunches, directing the light at the human face.

Her eyes were closed. She looked almost peaceful. But this wasn’t a child. It wasn’t Lily.

It took a few seconds for my fear-stricken brain to make sense of it, to figure out who I was looking at. And the relief was replaced by guilt. She was here because of me. Because of something I’d started.

Zara.

There was no blood. No visible sign of injury. I had peeled the shroud back just far enough to see the shoulders of her black puffa jacket. I could see her feet too, poking out: trainers with mud creeping up over the soles. I covered her face and stood up.

I heard the door above me open. Julia. I was about to tell her to stay where she was, but before I could speak, she was falling. She fell onto her back, sliding down the stone steps, landing on the hard ground of the crypt and rolling onto her side.

I rushed over to her. She lay panting, looking up at me, wincing with pain.

‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

She pushed herself to a sitting position, rubbing her back. ‘I’m just bruised. I’m okay.’ She tried to get to her feet, but her face contorted and she fell back onto her bottom. ‘I’ll be all right, I just need a minute,’ she said. Then she caught sight of the body beneath the shroud. ‘Oh!’

‘It’s okay,’ I said hurriedly. ‘It’s not Lily.’

The meaning of what I’d said sunk in. ‘Is it a child?’

‘No. Her name’s Zara Sullivan.’

‘What? You know her?’

‘Knew her. She was the private investigator I hired.’

She drew in a breath.

‘Why did you come down? I told you . . .’

‘What? I didn’t come down. Didn’t you see what happened?’ She looked up the staircase and I followed her gaze. The door was shut.

‘I was pushed,’ she said.





Chapter 40

I climbed the steps as quickly as I could. I grabbed the rusty door handle and rattled it. The door moved an inch but then stopped. There was something blocking it. I pushed harder, but it wouldn’t budge. Something was wedging it shut.

I tried not to panic. We were trapped in the crypt of an abandoned chapel, as night was drawing in. Did anyone know we were here? Yes . . . but only Ursula.

Ursula, who had to be in on this. Whatever this was.

I banged on the door and called out, ‘Hello? Let us out!’ I pressed my ear to the wood, but it was too thick to hear anything outside.

I made my way back down the steps to where Julia was sitting, as far from the body as she could get. She had dragged herself across the floor, her face screwed up against the pain in her back. I sat down beside her.

‘Tell me what happened,’ I said.

‘You were taking ages,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I was going out of my mind, sitting up there, waiting for you to tell me if Lily was down here. I couldn’t wait any longer so I went to the door, to the top of the steps.’

‘And somebody pushed you.’

She nodded. ‘I felt hands on my back. Luckily, I managed to twist so I went down on my back rather than face first.’

‘Did you see them?’

‘No. They must have come into the chapel while I was standing there. They were fast because I was only there a few seconds before they pushed me.’

I searched her eyes. Part of me thought she was lying, that she’d thrown herself down. A scenario played out in my head: Julia had killed Lily. She was responsible for all the weird stuff that had happened in her house. She was the person Max and I had followed down to the river, the person who’d attacked us. None of this had anything to do with what happened thirty-five years ago. Julia was a murderer. She had killed her daughter and her husband. Then Max. Maybe she had killed Zara too after finding out, somehow, that I’d hired her.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

I pinched the bridge of my nose, tried to shake the dark thoughts away. It couldn’t be Julia. Not unless she was the greatest actor on earth. Her grief, that was genuine. The way she’d acted when she found the extinguished birthday candles.

Unless she was insane and didn’t know what she’d done . . .

I stood up and paced the small space, staying clear of Zara’s corpse. I told myself not to be so stupid. It wasn’t Julia. She was innocent. I couldn’t have misjudged her that badly. Could I?

Julia tried to get to her feet again, but her eyes watered and she swore. ‘Ah, my back.’

I looked into her eyes, at the pain there – both physical and emotional – and told myself again that I was being stupid, that she wouldn’t have thrown herself down those stairs and hurt herself. This time, I believed it.

‘Is the rucksack still up there?’ I asked. ‘The shears?’

‘Yes. I—’

A yell came from above us. Then a series of thumps.

‘What the hell?’

Now I believed Julia one hundred per cent. I ran up the stairs and pressed my ear against the door. I could hear scuffling. A voice cried out in pain. Then all went quiet.