Paternoster (33 page)

Wayne screwed up his face and tilted his head from one side to the other while the cogs clunked round. ‘Could be,’ he said, finally.

Aidan rearranged the pens on his desk into size order and counted them. Then he found the middle pen, and counted the pens each side. Put them in pairs, then threes, then bundled them all together and started over again.

‘All right, Aidan?’ Trev asked. A blob of tomato sauce clung to the edge of his lip and there was a smear of grease on his sleeve. The office stank of the bacon butties the team had brought in to kick the week off to a good start. Aidan had barely managed a bite of his; his stomach was sour after the emotional weekend. He bagged the remains of the butty ready for the bin; revolted when Trev snaffled it and scoffed it.

Aidan scooped the pens together in his fist. ‘Just thinking about something.’

‘You going to the coroner’s court this morning?’

‘I’d better get over there.’ He gathered his papers together and bundled them into a document case.

‘Will that Lisa be there?’ Trev asked. ‘Bit of all right, isn’t she? I wouldn’t mind being stuck in a trench with her.’

‘She’s all yours, Trev, and good luck to you,’ Aidan muttered.

He stewed as he drove to Gloucester for the coroner’s inquest into the skeletons they’d unearthed the week before. Of course Lisa would be there, keen for a day out of the lab and a chance to wind him up. And knowing him, he’d fall for it. Again. He was thirty-six, he should be better with women by now, understand them more, but no. He was a complete twat who didn’t have a clue how their minds worked and managed to fall foul of every single trap they set him.

Eden didn’t set traps, a small voice at the back of his mind told him. She never lied, she just didn’t give you the whole truth in a bucket when she first met you. It was Lisa who stirred it up, and you let her.

He thumped the steering wheel. He was a total loser. Lisa had insinuated herself into his life, dropping poison just as she had years ago when they were a couple. She’d gone to work on his insecurities. How well do you know Eden? Where did she go to university? Has she got brothers and sisters? She knew just how to get to him. It was the same when they were students. Going away on a dig in Italy, her cunning remarks about how handsome and attentive the Italian men were, worming away at his jealousy until he saw rivals everywhere. Totally toxic.

Now she wanted him back. Or if not him, then his child, and she’d quickly realised that Eden stood in the way. So she chipped away at him, undermining his relationship with Eden. No doubt hoping his imagination would do the rest and before long he and Eden would be history. It had bloody well worked.

Aidan groaned, certain that if he’d told Trev what Lisa had said, he’d have laughed heartily, clapped him on the shoulder and announced, ‘The cunning bitch! She’s trying to split you up. Tell her to fuck off, mate. I would.’

Knowing – or not knowing – about Eden’s background hadn’t been an issue until Lisa waltzed in with her questions and arch disbelief. He simply enjoyed Eden’s company. She didn’t think he was weird, she teased him affectionately about his obsessions and seemed interested in the myriad odd facts he’d squirrelled away over the years. Eden didn’t mind walking over a field with a set of dowsing rods, hunting for deserted mediaeval villages. Or rummaging through second-hand book shops searching for a particular translation of Pliny that he’d set his heart on.

And he’d lost her. She was bright and intelligent and fiercely independent. She never questioned him about his friends or where he went when he wasn’t with her. She didn’t cling or nag or insist their weekends were spent in shoe shops or looking at clothes. She didn’t expect him to spend all his free time with her, nor did she see a daily phone call as her due. She never gazed meaningfully into jewellers’ windows, as Lisa had, urging him with her eyes to propose marriage, simply, he now suspected, so she could have the triumph of refusing him. No, Eden was above all that, she led her own life, and let his dovetail with hers just sufficiently that neither was stifled. And yet it was her independence, the thing he respected the most about her, that had curdled the whole relationship.

He had to get her back. Had to prove she was special to him, that he was sorry and would never, ever, do anything so crass again. He had to earn her trust.

Lisa was waiting in the reception area at the coroner’s court. He bid her a brisk good morning and strode past. She let him go, but when he bought a coffee from the vending machine, she materialised at his elbow, peppering him with questions about his weekend and what he and Eden had got up to.

‘You’d think they’d do these things by video link-up,’ he said, not even bothering to face her. ‘Save everyone a lot of time.’

He slid the cup of grey sludge from the machine and went to talk to the site foreman. When they were called in, he gave his evidence clearly, describing how he’d received a call to give an initial assessment of the skeleton that had been found, and how another skeleton had been uncovered during its retrieval. The coroner asked a few questions, then Lisa was called.

He barely heard her evidence, though he was aware that she cast a glance in his direction and simpered every so often. He was thinking about Ezekiel Proudfoot’s diary, about the research he’d done in the records office, and about the Paternoster Club. When the coroner stood and dismissed them, he sprinted from the court and drove straight to the records office. Suddenly he knew how to win Eden back.

‘Can I have another look at those plans you showed me last week?’ he asked the archivist. ‘Plans of Greville House.’

‘I remember. It was the plans for the pleasure gardens, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but also the plans for the house itself, please.’

‘Take a seat, I’ll have to dig them out.’

When she brought them, in a huge roll, he wished his older brother was there. Patrick was an architect, and he could read these plans effortlessly. Aidan squinted and peered at them, trying to orientate the interior plans with the exterior drafts of the pleasure gardens. He stared until he saw what he was searching for.

A quick scout round the room to check he wasn’t observed. The other researchers were absorbed in their reading. He drew his phone out of his jacket pocket and quickly photographed the sets of plans. He checked the photos captured what he needed, then thanked the archivist and headed back to Cheltenham with his heart quickening.

He had something that Eden would kill for.

The streets were empty this late in the evening, not even a solitary dog walker. Eden parked her car away from the arc of the street lamps, zipped up her dark jacket, and stuffed a torch in her pocket. The pavement sparkled with frost and a halo glowed around the moon. She was glad to wriggle her fingers into thermal gloves and tug on a woollen hat.

She hunched her shoulders against the cold and hurried to the Park School. The stagnant JCBs loomed as denser patches against the black. She skirted them, sprinting up the driveway to the school. The upper windows were lit but the ground floor skulked in darkness apart from a single lamp burning by the front portico. None of the pupils lived in the main house, she’d found out, but a couple of the teachers had bedsits there. It must be them, burning the lights in the upper storey.

She made a quick tour of the outside of the building, checking in case anyone was lurking. No one was about, not even a teacher grabbing a crafty fag. The satellite buildings were in darkness, but she thought she saw a light far off in the gardens, then it was extinguished.

There was a small, frosted-glass window round the side of the main building. A sash, and someone had left it unhooked. Maybe the school now had a fake Vermeer they wanted to claim on the insurance. Too easy to slide up the window and climb inside. She dropped down on to a linoleum floor, flexing her ankles and knees to land cleanly and quietly. She strained her ears for footsteps coming towards her. Silence. She clicked on the torch. She was in a small lavatory: an old fashioned cistern with a chain, and a washbasin on a wrought-iron stand. She snapped the torch off again.

Easing the door open, she peeked out. A short corridor led to the main entrance hall, where a magnificent staircase curved up towards a domed skylight. Rosalind Mortimer’s office lay through a doorway to one side of the huge stone fireplace. A door on the other side bore a brass nameplate that stated ‘Reception’. The far side of the entrance hall had a door marked ‘Common Room’. She went in.

The room was gloomy: the curtains had been drawn but were thin and didn’t quite meet in the middle. A vague light came from outside, enough to make out a fireplace, sofas and chairs arranged in clusters, a bookcase and a stack of magazines. The room smelled of old upholstery and toast, and the ghosts of many cigarettes from long ago.

Eden padded across the room, imagining where Wayne and his light-fingered friend might have hidden. Possibly behind this large sofa. She crouched down to establish his field of vision. She could see the door from there, but nothing else unless she stood up. Wayne said that he heard the girls and the man with them pass him by, then a door opening. There must be another door. She was crawling out from behind the sofa when a hand grabbed her shoulder.

She stifled a scream. Clutching the hand on her shoulder, in one move she twisted down and away, springing to her feet with the stranger bent over, keeping the arm taut and the wrist under pressure.

‘Eden, let me go, please. You’re breaking my wrist.’

She was so astonished she dropped his hand. He curled away, rubbing his arm. ‘That really hurt.’

‘Aidan!’ she hissed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you.’ She saw his teeth flash in a smile. ‘Where else would you be on a Monday night but breaking into Cheltenham’s most exclusive school?’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Front door was open. You?’

She flicked the torch briefly, and scowled at his grin. ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.

‘Looking for you. I’ve found something I think you’re going to like.’

‘Sh!’ She stiffened. ‘A car. Quick.’

She pulled him down behind the sofa as a car’s headlights swept across the windows. Voices outside; doors opening and slamming. She ducked down further as the door to the common room opened.

‘Right, girls, in you go,’ a male voice said.

Long, pale bare legs passed inches in front of her. Three girls in school uniform, dragging their feet, stumbling and unsteady. She held her breath as the footsteps moved down the room. A door opened and closed, and the air in the room flowed back in to fill the gap.

Slowly she raised her head. The room was empty. She turned to Aidan and pressed her fingers to her lips.

‘Do you want to follow them?’ Aidan mouthed.

She nodded. ‘Give them a few minutes. I’m not sure what we’re getting into here but I suspect it’s not going to be nice.’

‘Should I have brought my service revolver?’ Aidan asked, ‘so I can be Watson to your Holmes?’

‘Do you have one?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘Not any more.’ She sighed. ‘You’d better go home, Aidan, this could get nasty.’

‘You’re not doing this on your own.’

‘It’s my job and my case. And I’ve had training for this sort of thing.’

‘Whereas I can’t even break into your flat without your knowing.’ He caught her hand. ‘I’m a complete shit, and I’ll piss off out of your life if that’s what you want, but only after we finish this. You might hate me but I’m not letting you go in there on your own.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have an idea what they’re up to,’ he said. ‘And I love you.’

She got to her feet and moved about the room, hunting for a doorway, tapping on the panelling and running her hand around the decorative mantelpiece.

‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ Aidan said, at the far end of the room, holding a door open. It was hidden behind a bookcase, a front of leather-bound tomes that swung out into the room.

‘How did you know where it was?’ Eden asked.

‘Looked up the architect’s plans this morning. Come on.’

The door led into a dark passageway that ran a short distance along the side of the house, then dipped down a flight of stone stairs. They inched down them, deeper and deeper, until they reached a hard floor. Eden pointed her torch down and flicked it on and off, just enough to make out a narrow tunnel stretching in front of them. They stood silently in the dark for a moment, listening. No sound of the girls or the man.

‘Where does this lead to?’ Eden asked, her mouth close to Aidan’s ear.

‘To the Temple of Venus on the other side of the gardens,’ he whispered back.

‘The Paternoster Club,’ Eden said. ‘Donna wrote P.N. in her diary every Monday. I thought it stood for Paul Nelson.’

She gripped the torch firmly and set off down the tunnel, keeping one hand on the slimy stone wall to steady herself. She daren’t switch on the torch. With Aidan close behind, they crept along the tunnel until they bumped into another set of stone steps, leading up. At the top of the steps was a small room lit by two candles. The meagre light revealed more than enough. Every inch of wall was painted with grotesque images.

‘Regency snuff,’ she breathed, her stomach churning. A year working on illegal pornography hadn’t hardened her to face this. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Aidan flinching.

On the far side of the room was a doorway. A line of light seeped underneath it. She edged towards it and bent her ear to the door. Voices and moans. Girls crying. She counted the different voices and her heart sank.

‘Four men,’ she told Aidan in a whisper. ‘I’ve got to go in, those girls are in danger. Go back through the tunnel and call the police. Tell them it’s a Code Tango Sierra. Got that?’

‘No, we’re going in together,’ he said.

‘Aidan, I’m serious.’

‘So am I.’

One glance at his face showed her he wasn’t going to budge.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘On my signal. Ready?’