A Room Full of Bones (28 page)

‘Glad you think so,’ says a voice from the doorway. Len Harris is standing there, next to Caroline. Both are holding guns.

The voices have started. Voices coming from the sea. Nelson knows that he mustn’t listen to them. If you listen, you are lost. If you answer the knock at the door, you are lost. He sets his mind against the soft, beguiling whispers from the deep. Michelle, Ruth, Laura, Rebecca, his mother.
Always women’s voices. He mustn’t give way to them. He must keep walking along the beach, walking beside Cathbad. One foot in front of the other. But it’s hard, the hardest thing he has ever had to do.

‘This way,’ says Caroline politely. An effect slightly ruined by the gun, which she is pointing directly at Judy’s chest.

‘You’re making a big mistake,’ says Clough, blusteringly, to Len Harris.

‘No, you’ve made the mistake,’ says Harris. He doesn’t sound out of breath at all. Has he just run through the woods or did he have a car waiting outside the gates? It must have been Caroline, Caroline who locked the gates and then opened them again for Harris, driving him round to her house as calmly and efficiently as a taxi. Caroline, Trace’s friend, whom Clough said they could trust.

Harris is smiling now, his leathery gnome’s face transformed into something far less benign. A goblin or a troll perhaps. ‘You wandered into the yard,’ he is saying, ‘and, sadly, became the victim of a tragic accident.’

He looks at Caroline. ‘The walker?’ she says.

‘Perfect.’

‘This way,’ he points the gun. Judy and Clough have no choice but to follow. Clough considers turning on Harris and trying to force the gun out of his hand, but the trouble is, if it works, Caroline will probably shoot Judy. If it doesn’t work, Harris will definitely kill him. Both of them look like people who know how to handle guns. He curses himself for not arranging back-up. He curses Judy even more.

They cross the yard, silent except for the sound of the wind. Judy thinks about shouting for help but who would hear her? The horses? The cat? The donkey? She wonders where Randolph and Romilly are, not that they’d be much help. Their feet squelch in the mud as they approach the horse walker. What is Harris planning to do to them? Surely if he wanted to kill them he’d have done it by now. Or does he have something more exciting in mind?

Harris kicks open the door of the horse walker and Judy and Clough are pushed into one of the compartments. They hear the door being locked and footsteps going away. They look at each other. They are shut in a triangular wooden box, just wide enough, at its widest, for two people standing abreast. Clough hurls himself against the door. The wood creaks but holds.

‘Have you still got your phone?’ asks Judy.

‘No. That bastard took it.’

‘What are they going to do to us?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Clough grimly.

‘I can’t believe Caroline’s in it too.’

‘Nor can I. Trace told me that she was a real airy-fairy type, loved all the birds and the little animals, that sort of thing. Wait till I tell her.’

They are both silent, both thinking the same thing. Will Clough ever have the chance to tell his girlfriend about Caroline’s perfidy? Funnily enough, Judy finds it harder to imagine Clough being killed than it is to imagine her own death. Is this because she feels so guilty that, in some way, she thinks she deserves to die?

The sound of hoof-beats recalls Judy to life. She looks
at Clough, who tightens his lips and clenches his fists. He looks quite formidable. All these years Judy has deplored her colleague’s Neanderthal tendencies; now she’s glad of them. The hooves come closer. Then the door is unlocked and Len Harris stands in front of them, gun in hand. Next to him is Caroline, holding a large black horse by the halter. The horse arches his neck and paws the ground, reminding Judy of Nelson.

‘We’ve brought The Necromancer to keep you company,’ says Harris. ‘So sad. Two policemen, sorry police
people
, trampled to death by a wild horse. And, believe me, he is wild.’

Judy believes him. Close up, The Necromancer looks huge and very frightening. His eyes roll and he stamps his great hooves. In a few seconds they will be trapped in a tiny space with him. Clough looks terrified, all his swagger gone. He flattens himself against the side of the compartment. Harris sends the horse forward with a slap on his rump. Caroline drops the halter and the massive animal is inches away from Judy. She can see his red nostrils and rolling, hysterical eye. She smells his woody animal smell, the scent she remembers from her own pony and which, oddly enough, still has the power to comfort her.

‘Have fun!’ shouts Harris. The walker starts to move forward. Judy falls to the floor. The great horse looms over her.

The stairs are suddenly just there, white stairs leading up from the black beach. And he’s climbing them, Cathbad just in front, purple cloak flapping. And even in this dream state or whatever the hell state he’s in, he knows that stairs have got to be a good sign. Going up has to be good. It’s not like the tunnel. Every fibre of his being told him that the tunnel was a bad idea. But stairs –
white
stairs – that’s got to mean progress, surely? And then, without warning, a great wave breaks over him. He staggers, losing his footing and then he’s drowning in the black water and there’s no one to save him.

Michelle thought the frenzied activity was bad but this sudden silence is worse. ‘What’s going on?’ she shouts, but no one answers her.

Judy struggles to her feet. Beside her Clough is panicking, battering at the wooden sides of the horse walker. The Necromancer turns on him, teeth bared, ears back.

‘Clough!’ shouts Judy. ‘For God’s sake, stay still. You’ll scare the horse.’

‘
I’m
scaring
him
?’ But Clough stops flailing about. He edges next to Judy, breathing hard. The Necromancer twists his head, snake-like, and tries to bite him.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Stay still.’

Judy tries to call on all her old horse whispering skills. ‘It’s OK horse,’ she says. ‘It’s OK.’ The Necromancer puts one ear forward but he still looks furious. The walker lurches forward. The horse kicks out angrily and they hear wood splintering.

‘It’s OK,’ says Judy but with less conviction. The Necromancer is trying to turn in the small space, getting angrier and angrier. Judy and Clough find themselves pressed into the apex of the triangle. A hoof flashes out, catching Clough’s leg. He yells and falls to the floor. The Necromancer kicks again and Judy only just pulls Clough out of his reach. But the horse is turning, getting closer. All they can see in the darkness is the white stripe on his face and the whites of his rolling eyes. Judy thinks of the other horses that she saw writhing in agony. Has The Necromancer been drugged? He is certainly more vicious than any horse ought to be. Now, fatally, he turns his back on them, preparing to kick out with those powerful quarters. Judy and Clough huddle together, trying to protect their faces. It’s all they can do.

They are both flung forward as the walker stops. The Necromancer staggers too, momentarily distracted. Then
the door is opened and a voice is saying, with much more authority than Judy could manage, ‘It’s OK, boy. It’s OK.’ Instantly the horse’s ears go forward and he drops his head. Judy, cowering in the corner, is only aware of the sudden space and silence as the horse is led away. She straightens up. Randolph Smith stands by the open door, stroking The Necromancer’s nose.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘Never better,’ answers Clough, who is limping badly. They stagger out of the walker into the cold night air where the wind is still blowing through the trees. Randolph’s black hair and The Necromancer’s mane both stream out behind them.

‘Did Harris shut you in there?’ asks Randolph.

‘Harris and Caroline,’ says Judy. ‘They’re in it together.’

‘Caroline’s here,’ says Randolph. Judy is suddenly aware that a woman is standing in the background, a tall woman with long dark hair. Judy squints at her in the darkness.

‘Then who …?’

‘Tamsin,’ says Caroline. ‘You saw Tamsin. She looks very like me.’

Is it possible? Judy thought she recognised Caroline but she’d only seen her once before. And because she was expecting Caroline, she’d hardly looked at the dark-haired woman who’d opened the door. Clough, by his own admission, had never met her before.

‘Tamsin,’ Judy repeats.

‘I was due to meet her at the pub this evening,’ says Caroline. ‘But she never turned up.’

‘She and Harris are both tied up in this drugs thing,’
says Randolph. ‘We’ve suspected for some time, haven’t we, Caro?’

‘We suspected something,’ says Caroline, ‘but we weren’t sure …’ Her voice dies away.

‘Where are they now?’ says Judy. ‘They’re both armed. We’ve got to call for back-up.’

‘They’re not at the big house,’ says Randolph. ‘We’ve just come from there.’

‘Can we stop chatting and call for back-up,’ says Clough. His voice sounds strained, as if he’s in pain.

‘Come to my house,’ says Caroline. ‘I can give you something for that leg.’

‘I’m going to search the park,’ says Randolph. ‘They won’t be far away. They must have been planning to come back and check on you.’ And without another word he vaults onto the back of the great seventeen-hand horse. The Necromancer cavorts like a charger, arching his neck and swinging his quarters round. Randolph just laughs. The horse has no bridle, only a halter. A few seconds ago he was a raging mass of muscle and fury. Now he looks like the perfect mount, spirited but in complete control. ‘See you later,’ says Randolph, and with a clatter of hooves he and The Necromancer gallop off into the night.

Judy watches, open-mouthed. ‘I thought that Randolph didn’t know anything about horses.’

‘Who told you that?’ says Caroline indignantly. ‘He’s a wonderful rider.’

Ruth watches from her bedroom now, still holding Flint. The wind is louder than ever, the stunted trees in the
garden blown into a frenzy. Bob finishes another circuit of the embers, then he pauses and, unmistakably, raises his staff in her direction. Is it a salute or a threat? Ruth doesn’t know, because Bob turns and forces his way back through the low bushes into his own garden. The fire is almost out. Ruth looks at the clock by her bed. Nearly two o’clock. She thinks of the hospital, miles away across the storm-tossed night. What’s happening to Nelson? Is he alive or dead? Isn’t three a.m. the low point for the human soul, the hour when most people die? Flint meows and she puts him down. She can hear him wandering crossly around the room as she gets into bed. She thinks that she will lie awake for hours, but when she closes her eyes sleep comes instantly.

Judy rings for an armed response unit from Caroline’s mobile phone. Tamsin was right about one thing; the telephone lines are down. Judy also rings Whitcliffe, who asks a million awkward questions (‘How did you come to be there in the first place?’) and says he’ll be on his way. Judy also sends a unit to Len Harris’s flat and a Met patrol car to Tamsin’s house.

‘But her children …’ says Caroline, her face crumpling.

Tamsin should have thought of that before she started drug smuggling, thinks Judy. But aloud she says, ‘They’ll be very discreet.’ How discreet can a knock on the door at two a.m. be? She sees the time on Caroline’s mantelpiece clock, a strange chrome contraption resembling Dali’s famous floppy timepiece. It fits with the surreal nature of the night. Has she really been threatened at
gunpoint, rescued by Clough and trapped in a confined space with a mad horse? But it must be true. Clough is here now, having his leg bandaged by Caroline. The Necromancer’s hoof took a chunk out of his shin and it’s bleeding copiously. Caroline says he’ll need a tetanus jab, Clough grunts sceptically. Judy thinks that Caroline is pleased to have something practical to do. She seems quite calm and organised, looking round for antiseptic cream and cotton wool, but as soon as the bandaging is done she collapses in a chair and buries her face in her hands. Judy pats her shoulder.

‘It’s OK.’ But this is as unsuccessful with Caroline as it was with The Necromancer because it’s not OK, is it?

The sound of hooves outside adds to the unreal atmosphere. The Highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door. Judy learnt that poem at school. It ends badly, she seems to remember. The door is flung open and Randolph strides in, looking rather highwayman-ish in his jeans and white shirt, soaked to the skin, his black hair wild.

‘No sign of them.’

‘Len’s car’s still outside,’ says Caroline.

‘Which is his car?’ Judy can’t help asking.

‘The Ferrari.’

Bingo.

‘I couldn’t see Tammy’s car anywhere. The back gates are padlocked shut.’

‘She locked us in,’ says Judy. ‘Tamsin locked us in so that Harris could finish us off. He sent me a text message pretending to be from you asking me to meet him by the old gates. When I got there he pulled a gun on me.’

Randolph looks at her curiously for a minute. ‘How did you suspect about the drugs?’ he asks.

Judy tells him about the mules and the condom in the horse manure. Clough laughs out loud at this point but Randolph and Caroline are still looking stricken. Randolph starts to shiver and Caroline gives him a blanket which he wraps round his shoulders.

‘But what about the other stuff?’ says Randolph. ‘The snakes and the men in the woods? I didn’t make that up, you know.’

Caroline makes an odd noise that is halfway between a laugh and a wail. ‘That was me.’

‘
What
?’

‘I put the snakes over The Necromancer’s door and on the kitchen step. I wanted Dad to give the skulls back. It was outrageous that he should keep them. A crime against humanity. I used snakes because I knew he was scared of them and because of the Great Snake, the Rainbow Serpent. But then he died and I felt so guilty …’ She collapses in tears again.

‘Did Cathbad know about this?’ asks Judy sharply.

‘Oh yes,’ says Caroline, looking up with swimming eyes. ‘We performed a smoke ceremony in the woods, me and Cathbad and Bob. It was meant to make Dad give the skulls back, not kill him.’