Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (18 page)

‘I’m visiting
Connor and Tris.’

‘Tris?’ His eyes narrow, looking searchingly
from me to the empty farmhouse. ‘Thought that boy was in the nick. On suspicion
of murder.’

‘Tris hasn’t done anything wrong,’ I say
sharply, and take a step towards him. ‘The police wanted to ask him some more
questions, that’s all.’

Dick Laney shrugs, looking unconvinced. ‘Whatever
you say. Is Connor in, then?’

‘Nobody’s in.’

‘That’s a pity. I’ve got a delivery for him
from the garden centre.’ Dick jerks his head towards the back of the van. ‘But
I suppose it won’t matter if he’s out. I’ll leave it outside the garage as
usual.’

He turns off the radio and gets out of the van,
his frizzy hair wilder than ever. Now the radio is silent, the farmyard feels
quieter and lonelier than ever before. Again that sense of unease prickles down
my spine, and I begin to wish I had indeed called Connor before setting out.
Then I would not be here on my own with Dick Laney.

‘Help me with it, would you?’ he asks in that
thick Cornish accent, not looking at me.

It’s
only thanks to my dad that I don’t sound the same as him and Jago, I suppose. His
family came from the Midlands, so I grew up with a flatter accent than the rest
of my friends. ‘Never quite proper Cornish,’ Hannah calls it.

‘It’s
not heavy,’ he adds, ‘just awkward to lift on my own. I prefer to get Jago to
come with me on a two-man delivery job. But there weren’t no one else to shut
up shop for us. So I’m on my lonesome today.’

He throws open the back doors of the van, then
looks back round at me with a slow, crooked smile as though well aware I
dislike feeling so vulnerable. ‘Well? You going to help me or not? I thought
you feminists didn’t mind getting your hands dirty?’

I
meet his eyes, then nod. ‘Of course I’ll help.’

With
a consciously nonchalant expression, I step round to the back of his van, and
hope a spanner to the side of the head isn’t waiting for me.

I
immediately see the reason for that knowing smile. Besides his tool box and a
pair of soiled gardening gloves, there’s nothing inside but a vast roll of thick
wire fencing. I don’t know what I expected. Duct tape, perhaps, or a length of
rope. The kind of thing you find in most serial killers’ vans.

Dick nods towards the garage door, locked with
its shiny new padlock. ‘We’re heading over there with it. Can you take that
end?’

I don’t have much choice. ‘No problem.’

Together we wrestle the unwieldy roll of wire
fencing out of the van and carry it across the yard, depositing it on the
cracked concrete in front of the garage.

Dick nods, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘Ah,
thanks, that’ll do nicely. I told Connor I’d be delivering it after work today,
so I expect he’ll be back soon enough.’

‘But what does Connor want all this fencing
for?’ I ask, perplexed.

‘He said something about a vegetable plot over
at the old mill. Wants to keep them thieving rabbits out, I should imagine. He
had a few sacks of sand and topsoil delivered a few weeks back too.’

‘The old mill?’

Dick Laney scratches his sweating forehead. ‘Not
much left of it now, I would suppose. It was a tumbledown ruin last time I saw
it. Must be fifty years at least since anyone worked the mill wheel.’ He waves
vaguely across the open fields behind the house. ‘There’s a footpath down past
those trees. It was sold with the farm here when his dad bought it, a job lot. I
expect he’s trying to make a go of the land, get some profit from the old place.
Maybe do it up and resell to some filthy-rich Londoner for a second home.
That’s the way to make money round here. You should tell your dad to do the
same. No point him hanging on at Eastlyn Farm if he isn’t going to finish those
renovations.’

I look at him with distaste. ‘I’ll let him
know.’

‘Ah,
you do that.’

I
look across the fields at the gnarled trees he pointed out. Could there be a
path there? I remember some talk of an old mill in the village, but never
realised it was this far along the stream.

He looks at me, his crooked smile back, one
gold tooth showing. It’s the face he uses at the garden centre when he’s trying
to be friendly to a wealthy customer. ‘It’s a long walk back in this hot sun. I’ll
give you a lift in the van, if you like?’

My
skin crawls at the thought of being alone in the van with him. ‘No thanks,’ I
say quickly, ‘I’ll take the footpath back the way I came. It’s only a fifteen
minute walk, and I like the sunshine.’

Dick shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. Causes cancer
though. Nasty death, that.’ He looks at me oddly. ‘Pete Taylor died of cancer.
They say he weighed less than a sack of potatoes at the end.’

Pete
Taylor. He must mean Connor and Tris’s dad. I’m not sure that I ever knew his
first name.

Without
another word, he climbs into the van, backs it up with Radio Cornwall blasting
out at top volume again, and a moment later he’s gone, leaving a cloud of dust
behind as he accelerates out of the yard.

My
fingernails are digging into my palms. I relax them slowly, surprised by myself.
Strange reaction. Dick Laney can be creepy, but he’s not exactly dangerous. I
doubt he’s done much more exercise than lugging sacks about for the past ten
years. I could take him in a minute. Seconds, even. No contest.

I wait until I can’t hear the van engine
anymore, then tread round to the back of the garage.

He said
something about a vegetable plot over at the old mill. Wants to keep them thieving
rabbits out, I should imagine.

Connor and Tris are born defrosters. They don’t
eat fresh vegetables; they open a can or throw a ready meal in the microwave.
The idea of Connor on a health kick, breaking his back to grow his own veg,
makes me grin. No way, no way in hell.

I clamber through overgrown brambles to peer
through the back panes of glass, which are filthy. Through the darkened window
I can see old sacks on the concrete floor, some still fat, others empty.
Chicken manure? Topsoil? Dick Laney mentioned delivering a few sacks of that
recently. The garage interior is surprisingly clear of junk, though the wall
shelves and the workbench are both in disarray, pots and debris tumbled
everywhere. A broken-looking lawnmower stands next to two old bikes, both
rusting, one with the chain hanging off.

No spades. No sign of gardening equipment:
seeds, labels, garden twine, potting compost, bamboo stakes. But maybe Connor’s
storing it all down at the old mill. That would make better sense than lugging
it back and forth every time he wants to do some gardening down there. Trouble
is, I don’t know what I am looking for, nor even why.

But
there is something about the garage door that makes me curious.

I
walk all the way round the garage around, picking a path gingerly through patches
of young nettles, and stare at the padlock.

It’s brand-new. A shiny new padlock on an
ancient door. With nothing of much value inside, from what I can see. And
thieves are hardly queuing up to break into isolated rundown farmhouses out
here on the edge of the moor. So why would Connor and Tris suddenly decide the
place needs to be locked up?

The house stands silent behind me. Nobody at
home. No one to answer my suddenly urgent questions.

I climb up the earth bank at the back of the
house again and stand there, listening.

Nothing.

I balance along the earth bank until I am
standing directly below the part of the kitchen that juts out – the old
fireplace, I expect – and use the window ledge to lever myself up.
Standing on tiptoe, I reach up and grab the bathroom window ledge above, then
swing myself onto the flat roof to the right of the kitchen. After months of
demonstrating techniques on the bars in the school gym, it’s the work of a
moment.

The flat roof is made of corrugated plastic,
filthy and covered in patches of moss where the guttering above leaks. It
judders as I begin to crawl forwards, creaking violently under my weight. I
freeze on hands and knees, holding my breath. The laundry room is directly below
me, and for a terrifying moment I imagine myself crashing through onto the
concrete below.

I close my eyes and tell myself not to be so stupid.
Tris’s bedroom window is almost within reach, just a few more feet to crawl.

Slowly, I crawl across the creaking and
protesting corrugated roof until I reach the window ledge to Tris’s bedroom. To
my relief, the old sash window is not locked and opens easily enough when I
pull down. I struggle over the top and into his bedroom, knocking something off
the window ledge inside and landing on the floor with a painful thump.

I clamber to my feet and hurry to the door. I
open it slightly, listening. But the interior of the house is dark and silent.

No one is at home.

If anyone deserves to be arrested, it’s me. For
breaking and entering. Well, not breaking. But certainly entering. It’s Tris’s
house though, and I’m not here to steal anything. Except secrets.

Despite their
constant jokes about the state of our cottage, I discover that Tris and Connor
are not great housekeepers either. Tris’s room is an horrendous mess. I came up
here quite a few times as a teenager, to hang out and play board games with him
and Connor, but it was far tidier then. He’s totally let it go since those days.
The bed’s unmade, his crumpled sheet half pulled away from the mattress, duvet unbuttoned
and slipping out of its plain black cover. One of his pillows is lying on the
stained carpet, as are most of his clothes. A lone sock dangles from a dusty
bookshelf. There are some old posters on the wall, peeling off: hardcore rock
groups from when we were kids, most now disbanded. The wardrobe door is open
and there’s nothing inside but an old pair of black trousers. Everything else
has been hung up on the floor.

I look around, vaguely disappointed. What was I
hoping to find? Some kind of clue that would tell me if he’s guilty or not?
There’s nothing here but dirty clothes and old socks.

I
should not be here. And yet I am.

I
catch a reflection of myself in the rectangular mirror set into the back of the
wardrobe door. Shoulder-length brown hair hanging loose about my face – I
released my ponytail when I got home from work – and big eyes. A
determined expression.

Did
I really come all this way, climb into my friend’s bedroom, tiptoe through his
empty house, to go home meekly without any answers?

I
cross to the door again. It creaks as I go through it. The landing is unlit,
the stairs gloomy.

I
creep along the landing and peer into the next bedroom along. It’s Connor’s
room. I have never been in there but it’s obvious. There’s his olive-green,
waterproof jacket draped over the back of a chair, and I recognise the shoes
kicked off in a corner. His room is neater than his brother’s, but only
marginally. A question of degree. No rock posters, but some old maps of Eastlyn
on the wall, and one Ordinance Survey map of Bodmin Moor, with campsites
circled. He and Tris used to go camping alone on the moor when they were
younger, sometimes for several days. I suppose their father must have trusted
Connor to take care of Tris, because they could both only have been teenagers
at the time.

I
try the third door, but it’s a room full of junk. A bed pushed against the wall
and piled with bags and boxes. Their parents’ bedroom. Though their mother
walked out when they were both quite young, and their father was gone now too. So
this is just dead space. A store room for things they don’t want but can’t
bring themselves to throw away.

There’s
a photograph on the wall. Framed, the glass dusty. It’s of a man and woman, arms
around each other, smiling at the camera, sitting on a car bonnet outside a
handsome building in sunny weather. Their parents in happier days, clearly. I
don’t recognise the place. But I feel uneasy.

I
look at their father, then move on to study the woman’s smile. Is it my
imagination or does she look unhappy behind that fixed smile?

It
feels a little unnerving to be standing in a dead man’s room looking at his
personal items, so I go out again and close the door with a quiet click. The
only other room on this floor is the bathroom, so I head downstairs.

The
stairs creak.

Again,
this proves unnerving in an otherwise silent house.

The
hall and living room are not immaculate, stacks of newspapers and junk mail
lying about, unfinished meals congealed on plates, beer cans on the floor, but they
are still tidier than upstairs. I wonder if I ought to offer to come round with
cleaning wipes and a bin bag.

The
kitchen is grim. I back out with my lip curling.

There’s
a door under the stairs.

A
cellar?

I
try the handle tentatively. It’s locked. I bend to check the make. I look about
nearby for a matching key, but there isn’t one, so I head back into the kitchen
and force myself to open the drawers. I find a few old car keys, and a vast,
black, wrought-iron key that looks like it would open the Addam’s family vault.
But nothing that would fit a Yale lock.