Human Remains (45 page)

From somewhere in the house, I heard a bang. I stood still, in case he was coming back, but there was just empty silence. Had that been the front door? Had he gone?

I went to the door, trying the handle gently. The door stayed firmly shut. I bent down and looked through the keyhole, which showed me a tiny patch of flock wallpaper on the opposite side of the hallway. He had taken the key with him.

I went back to the bed and took out the phone again. The message was still showing as pending. I tried to dial Sam’s number but all I got was a disconnection bleep. I took the phone over to the window to see if there was any signal there, but it was no better. Would they still be able to trace the phone, if there was no signal? I tried various places in the room, with no result. After that I went to the door and pulled at the handle again, turning it and tugging at the door. It gave a little, just a little, but the lock held firm.

A noise again.

I stopped dead and listened, my ear pressed to the door. Silence. And then, very faint, from somewhere – I heard a short high-pitched sound, like a cry.

I banged on the door, hard. ‘Hello?’ I shouted. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

I listened to the silence, and more silence, and then suddenly footsteps outside, fast, rustling, the key in the lock, and I leapt backwards, stumbling, over to the bed, my breath coming in gasps. I just had time to shove the phone back into my bra.

The door opened and he stood there watching me. I noticed he was as breathless as I was, as though he’d run up the stairs.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, his voice measured and steady even though he was clearly upset.

‘I don’t want to be locked in,’ I said. ‘Why did you lock me in?’

He frowned. ‘I wanted you to be safe. You need to be safe.’ He stepped towards me, into the room, and at that moment I wondered if I would have enough strength to overpower him. He was taller than me, but I was probably heavier. If I rushed at him, I could probably knock him over – but then what? Where would I go?

‘I’m scared of being locked in,’ I said. ‘I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep if I’m locked in.’

Maybe I could get away with this, I thought. Maybe there were some instincts that overrode his influence – some primal fears that were more insistent than the desire to fade away. And it occurred to me that he didn’t entirely trust me. He didn’t fully believe that I was ready to just lie down and die, after all – or else why had he locked me in?

‘You’re safe. You’re safe with the door locked,’ he said.

He was close enough now to touch me, and, although my eyes were level with his chest and I did not want to look up, he touched my upper arm – and the touch was soothing, comforting and I felt my heaving heart start to calm, felt the hollow thumping in my chest lessen. He said some other things. I did not hear them.

‘You should sleep,’ he said. ‘It will be easier when you’re asleep. You can sleep, Annabel.’

I sat down on the bed. ‘Will you be here, in the house?’

‘For a while,’ he said.

‘I am sleepy.’

‘That’s good. Why don’t you lie down?’

I lay back on the bed that smelt of damp and dust. I felt the phone move a little and, worried that it would be visible through the fabric of the blouse, I turned on to my side, away from the door, away from him.

No sounds for a moment, other than his breathing and mine. I wondered what he thought of me, lying on this strange bed in this strange house that probably held one dead body and another one that was probably on the boundary between death and life. I’d heard her cry out. That was the noise I’d heard – which meant she was alive, and she was somewhere in the house.

My heart was beating fast, the dust in my throat making me want to cough. I had my eyes closed and a tear leaked through the corner of my eye and rolled down my temple, dripping off on to the bedspread.
Help me
, I thought.
Mum, please, help me
.

And then, just as I thought he was going to stay with me, I heard his steps retreating and the door shutting behind him. I waited for the sound of the key in the lock, but it didn’t come.

I lay still on the bed for a while, not quite trusting that he wouldn’t be waiting for me to do something. I pulled the phone out of its hiding place and tried again for a signal. Nothing. I wrote another message to Sam just in case at some point it would send.

I waited a good ten minutes, playing with the useless phone, and then I stood up again. As I did so I heard another noise in the house – and then another bang. I went to the door and turned the handle carefully so it didn’t make a noise, opened it a crack, half-expecting him to be standing in the hall watching the door.

A little wider. The hallway was empty, all the other doors closed just as before. I trod carefully on the carpet, wary of creaking floorboards, but everything felt muffled, silent, as though a carpet of snow had fallen on the place rather than dust. There were flies everywhere, I noticed now – dead ones, mainly, on the carpet. A couple buzzing lazily in the fusty air.

At the top of the stairs I stopped and looked around the corner. No sign of him. The house waited for me to move.

By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs I was fairly certain that he’d left. The windows either side of the front door, filthy as they were, gave me a good view of the front driveway and I could see it was empty. The Fiesta was gone. I tried the front door, but, predictably, it was locked. I checked my phone again and this time there was a signal, just two bars but it was probably enough. I dialled Sam’s number. It rang and rang and then he answered.

‘Hello?’ I said, my voice an urgent whisper.

There was no answer though, just a crackle and hiss. ‘Sam, can you hear me?’

The phone beeped and the call disconnected. I sent another text.

Downstairs, the smell was much worse. I didn’t want to explore, but at the same time I needed to find a way out. He would be back soon, and I didn’t want to be here when that happened.

Behind me there was a noise, the same as before – a moan, rising into a wail. It sounded nearer, but still a long way off. All the doors were closed, but I tried the nearest one and found myself in a large kitchen, a wooden farmhouse table at the far end and beyond them patio doors on to the large back garden. The kitchen was tidy but not clean, and the smell had ramped up a notch. I was getting closer.

‘Audrey?’ I said, and then a little louder, ‘Audrey! Can you hear me?’

I waited, listened. Nothing. My shoes crunched on the bodies of the dead flies – so many more of them, in here. The kitchen widened at the far end into a conservatory that went in an L shape around the corner, opening out on to the main living area. It had its own door on to the hallway, I noticed, thinking that someone must have knocked a wall down and at the same moment wondering what on earth I was doing creeping around this house thinking about home improvement.

Then I saw the body.

Lying on the sofa this time rather than sitting in a chair, as Shelley Burton had been: what remained of the person was black, hollow-looking, still wearing clothes that were stained and slack against what remained. Patches of greying hair clung to what was left of the head, skull-like but still with shreds of skin clinging to the bone. Around the sofa, apart from the flies, everything was normal – but, on the sofa, what had once been a human being, with emotions and intelligence and a sense of humour, had effectively liquefied and melted into a reeking mess of decay.

I looked at the body for a long moment, without moving closer, my hand over my nose and mouth as though that would stop the smell, as though it would keep my scream and my sobs of fear and horror tight inside me. I didn’t want to do this any more. I didn’t want to be here, in this mad place, where people were dead and nobody noticed.

Enough. Stop it, Annabel. Get a grip.

I walked carefully, my back to the bright windows which gave out on to the tangled foliage beyond, to another door at the far side of the room. Some kind of utility room by the look of it, and another smell in here – not death this time, but something even worse. There were Wellington boots lined up under a coat rack, a long work surface with Tupperware on it, a tennis racket, cleaning materials in a bucket, a tray containing small pots for cuttings, twine, a watering can, wasp spray, a pair of gardening gloves, a broken drawer, a pile of old net curtains. I could see the back door, bolted at the top and bottom. I undid the bolts, easing them jerkily back and forth until they gave. The key wasn’t in the lock and I already knew the door would be locked. But, when I pushed it, it moved a little. I looked around for the key, thinking that they would leave it somewhere close by, whoever it was who had lived here, and there it was – on a hook, hanging on a rusty nail amidst cobwebs on the window frame.

I seized it and tried it in the lock. It was stiff, but this time the door opened and I pushed against the wood, warped from the rain and lack of use. Outside, the weeds were monstrous and once the door was open I could not close it again. But the fresh air, sudden after so long without it, was delicious.

Having secured my escape route, I went back into the utility room. There was another door, and when I opened it what I found behind it was, as I’d expected, a pantry: food tins lined up on shelves, jars of pasta sauce, and, on the wider shelves below, catering-sized pots and pans, wide serving platters, packs of paper napkins. Perhaps because the doors had remained shut, there was no dust in here – just a wafting smell of something bad, rotten, like the smell of the sewage outlet I’d found on a lonely beach as a young girl. A sudden assault on the senses.

There was a noise again, this time much closer, as though she was inside this space with me.

‘Audrey?’ I said. ‘Hello? Is there someone there?’

To my left, between two shelves, was a light switch. I had been expecting the electricity to be disconnected, but to my surprise when I flicked the switch a single bulb overhead came on, and illuminated a long, narrow space lined with shelves. And at the back – right at the back – another door.

It was locked, of course. And although I fumbled on all the shelves, my hands shaking, there was no sign of a key.

I went back out into the utility room and started searching in all the drawers, pulling them out quickly and slamming them shut again, and then the cupboards underneath. In the very last one I tried, there it was: an old metal toolbox, of the type that opened like a concertina at the top. I pulled it out of the cupboard, clattering it on to the terracotta tiles, tugging the creaking hinges to open it. The tools were old, rusted, but here was exactly what I needed – a big,
flat-headed
screwdriver. I went back to the pantry and the door at the end, inserted the screwdriver into the space beside the lock and levered it. I was expecting the door to pop open, but of course what happened was that the wood splintered and cracked, and from behind the door somewhere I heard wailing and crying, and finally a single, wailing, desperate word rising to a shriek: ‘No!’

I worked at the door, digging away at the wood, until finally the screwdriver came up against metal, and I dug beneath it and levered, and with a sudden shudder and a bang the door opened.

Beyond it, darkness, and a staircase leading down.

‘Audrey?’ I said.

A pause, and then a hushed, throaty voice: ‘Who are you?’

I looked for a light switch – surely there must be one? And then there it was, under a shelf loaded with tubs of dishwasher tablets. I flicked the switch and the staircase illuminated, and from below another shriek.

I went down the steps, gripping the screwdriver firmly in front of me in case Colin was going to appear from nowhere.

It was a small room, whitewashed brick, with a window high up on the left wall. The darkness it looked on to suggested that it was buried beneath weeds. There was a table, and an old divan with a mattress, a tea chest, empty boxes – and on the bed, curled into a ball, her face covered with both her hands, a dark-haired girl wearing a short satin skirt.

I felt a surge of relief. It was her; it was definitely her.

The room stank.

‘My name’s Annabel,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to get you out. Are you OK?’

‘Water,’ she said.

I went back up the stairs to the utility room. There was a butler sink in the utility room and when I ran the tap it rumbled for a second and then cold water splashed into the sink. I left it running and looked for something to hold water. In the pantry, finally, a ceramic vase. It would have to do. I filled it and turned off the tap.

As I did so, I heard a noise, a sudden bang from the front of the house.

I froze for a second, then ran back to the pantry, turning off the light, then to the door to the cellar, turning that light off too and coming down the steps blind. He would see the open doors. I’d opened them all over the house, and the one to the cellar was broken open. My only hope was that he’d think we’d escaped already through the back door.

‘We’ve got to hide,’ I whispered, my heart already thudding from the exertion of running up and down the steps. I took hold of her upper arm but she shrank away from me, curling into a tight ball.

‘I’ve got water,’ I said, ‘come, you’ve got to come!’ I put the vase down by the bottom step, felt for her again in the darkness and half-dragged, half-lifted her down off the bed and into the corner next to the steps. She was whimpering. There was nowhere to hide down here, not really. My only chance was that, if Colin looked down here and didn’t spot us, he would assume we’d gone…

‘Shhh,’ I whispered, trying to get her to look at me. ‘You’ve got to be quiet. Please be quiet.’

There was silence for a moment, broken only by my breathing and Audrey’s. She sounded wheezy. If she coughed, she would give us away.