Paternoster (34 page)

As they burst into the room, she had a split second to take in the candlesticks burning along each wall; two girls, huddled together in a corner, crying; the sadism depicted on every wall; and a long velvet chaise in the centre of the room occupied by a man in his early fifties and a girl of about fifteen. She was screaming.

Aidan lunged at the man and dragged him off the girl. Eden was aware of the two men grappling on the floor, but before she could help another man leapt at her. She swung the torch and smashed it into his temple. He staggered and came at her again. This time she cracked him hard across the face, spinning him back against the wall. He crumpled against it and lay still.

Arms clamped round her arms, dragging her backwards, lifting her off her feet. She snapped her head back and her skull connected, hard, with bony skull. Dazed, it was a moment before her vision cleared but the grip around her body had loosened. She hooked her foot behind her and twisted it around his ankle. Jabbing both elbows down with as much force as she could muster, and stabbing her heel into his instep, she managed to topple him. They both crashed to the floor. She heard the explosion of air as he landed hard on the stone floor, but his arm was still round her neck.

As the pressure on her windpipe increased, stars exploded in her eyes and the edges of her vision narrowed. Stretching behind her head, she rammed her fingers into his eye sockets. He screamed and the pressure on her neck released just enough for her to wriggle round. Sitting astride him, she swung the torch across his face, busting his nose in an arc of blood, and sending a tooth flying. His head lolled. She swung again, but the fourth man grabbed her wrist, bending it back until she released the torch. It rattled away across the floor.

He dragged her to her feet. She ducked and twisted, pain searing her shoulder socket, but it loosened his grip. She chopped the back of his neck and he let go of her. Straightening, she found herself looking at the blade of a knife.

‘Game, set and match to me, I think,’ Greg Barker said.

Two of the men were still unconscious on the floor. She glanced round for Aidan. He’d gone. So had the man he was fighting. Her guts twisted with fear.

Don’t look at the blade. That’s what she’d been taught. Look them straight in the eyes. She fixed her gaze on Greg’s eyes, chilled to find nothing there. His eyes were blank and cold and devoid of emotion, like a shark.

‘Why did you kill Paul?’ she asked, playing for time. Please God let Aidan be calling the police right now. ‘Didn’t you want him to join your little club?’

‘Of course we didn’t want him!’ Greg laughed without humour. ‘Do you really think he’d fit in here?’ He cast a glance at the paintings on the walls: a vision of hell.

‘So why invite him to join?’

‘We didn’t. He found out about the Paternoster Club, found out that members enjoyed a certain level of business success. He thought it was some sort of networking group, business leaders working together for the common good and inspiring each other with entrepreneurship.’ He laughed again. ‘That’s not what we’re about. But he’d heard about the club so we went through with a certain amount of formality, for form’s sake.’

‘An initiation ceremony,’ Eden said. ‘You killed him.’

‘That kind of talk’s slander.’ The blade swung close to her eyes. She fought the urge to step back. Play for time, keep him talking. Where the hell was Aidan? Please God, let him be safe.

‘Not if you have proof,’ Eden spat back at him. ‘Paul was killed with a lucky bean, a Paternoster pea. It’s poisonous if you chew it. You didn’t tell him to swallow it whole.’

‘A lucky bean? A poisonous pea?’ Greg mocked. ‘Where would I get such a thing? A fairy tale?’

‘Your wife’s necklace. Those red and black beans are Paternoster peas. The necklace broke. You didn’t throw the beans away, did you?’

‘You have no proof.’

‘It’ll be in your house, Greg. And your wife still has the matching bracelet.’ Her vision swam. ‘Did Donna Small tell you to kill Paul?’

‘Donna! What a pain she was. No, she wanted Paul to join the club, thought it was a good business idea.’

‘She knew about the planning applications, didn’t she?’ Eden said.

‘Yeah,’ Greg sniffed, ‘and she made me pay. I paid for her gormless son to go to the Park School, paid her credit card bills every month and by God could that woman spend.’

‘What happened?’

‘She fancied herself as Paul’s new wife, spending his money as well as mine. Thought if he joined the Paternoster Club, he could keep her in style. Thought telling him about it was a way to win him back.’ He shook his head. ‘Silly bitch.’

Eden let her gaze travel round the room. The two men were stirring, lifting their heads and rubbing blood from their eyes. She didn’t have long.

‘Did Donna know about the girls?’ Eden asked.

‘No, she challenged me about Paul, and started blabbing about seeing something suspicious at the school.’

Wayne was wrong: Donna had listened to him. If only she’d gone to the police instead of confronting Greg, she would still be alive.

‘So you strangled her.’

Greg flashed his teeth. He stepped towards her, and pressed the blade against her throat. ‘Donna didn’t approve of our little love nest here.’

‘I wonder why.’ Eden fixed her eyes on his as the blade pushed cold against her skin. ‘Now!’

At her word, a candlestick crashed down hard on Greg’s skull. He staggered and fell, the knife clattering from his hand. Gasping and brandishing the candlestick, stood one of the girls.

‘Well done, Chelsea,’ Eden said. The girl collapsed in tears on the floor. Eden wrapped her arms around her and stroked her hair. ‘It’s fine, you’re safe. You’re all safe.’

Eden yanked the belts from the three men and pinioned their arms to their sides. Greg cursed as she fastened him to the chaise in the middle of the room. Chelsea helped her secure the men, tugging the belts tight, tears dropping from her eyes as she worked. Her left eye was swollen, a cut splitting her eyebrow like a burst plum. The other two girls hunkered in the corner of the room, eyes staring, too shocked to move.

‘You must be daddy Sussman,’ Eden said, pulling the belt so tight around him that his eyes popped. ‘And you must be Zamir. Nice family business you’ve got here. The people trafficker and the paedophile.’

In the distance came the sound of sirens. Thank God, Aidan must’ve called the police. Eden straightened and spoke to the girls. ‘I’m going to give you a few moments alone. You don’t have long: the police will be here soon.’

She stepped out of the temple into the cold night and watched the blue lights swarm up the driveway. She didn’t hear three terrified girls taking revenge on the men who’d brutalised and sold them. She didn’t hear the men screaming or the girls swearing. She didn’t hear a thing.

She was giving a brief summary of the evening’s events to a police officer when Aidan returned, dishevelled and bleeding. His coat was torn and his lip split open. She ran into his arms, choking with relief.

‘I lost him,’ he said.

‘James Wallis is the man you’re looking for, officer,’ she said. ‘And you should arrest the headmistress, Rosalind Mortimer, too, for defrauding her insurance company over a faked Constable painting, and she knew about the girls being brought here.’

‘How do you know?’ Aidan asked, touching his tip of his tongue to his lip and wincing.

‘When the skeletons were found, she assumed there’d been a murder. Her reaction was to say “the girls”, not “the pupils”. I think she assumed one of the trafficked girls had been killed.’

‘What would have happened to the girls after tonight?’ Aidan asked.

‘Sold on,’ Eden said, shuddering inside.

She looked across at the flashing blue lights, where Zamir, Greg and Don were being loaded, handcuffed, into a police van. The three girls, cocooned in silver blankets, were in the back of an ambulance. They had the rest of their lives to try and forget what happened that night. She understood how that felt.

‘Take you home?’ Aidan asked quietly.

‘Yes, please,’ she said, slipping her hand in his. ‘Take me home.’

The girl at the water fountain wore a mob cap that slipped down over her eyes. She smiled constantly as she poured glasses of water and handed them to patrons, hardly seeming aware of their grimaces as they drank the foul stuff.

Rachel received her glass of water and slid her penny on to the cool marble counter. She carried the glass away from the braying crowds and sucked in a deep breath before she downed it. Over the weeks she’d been coming to the spa for the waters, she’d experimented with a variety of ways to drink the water: sipping it down drop by drop, glugging it in stages, and now, sluicing it down in one. She tipped the glass back, closed her eyes, and swallowed.

When she came up for air, her eyes were smarting and she fought the urge to shake her head like a dog that’s been fed mustard. She shuddered as the water caught the back of her throat and the whole lot threatened to reappear in a rainbow on the spa’s marble floor. She probably wouldn’t be the first person to be sick after drinking the water. The clenching in her stomach receded and she breathed easily. Another dose done. If only it would have some effect.

She glanced around the spa, at the women wincing as they sipped the water, at the men guffawing and affecting bravery, and misery washed over her. Nineteen, pox-ridden and in need of the mercury cure; a whore held captive by Mrs Bedwin’s evil tongue. She suddenly yearned for her old life: poor, simple and hard though it was. For a second, Rachel wished the water would be the end of her.

The mood passed as quickly as it had come when she saw the women eyeing her gown and reticule. Fine fabrics in the latest colours, not like these frumps. She smoothed her gown and affected not to notice their stares. As she gazed steadily in the opposite direction, her attention was caught by a familiar figure. Darby Roach. She twisted away but it was too late, he’d seen her.

‘Rachel. Miss Lovett,’ he said, trotting up to her side and bowing.

She bobbed a curtsey. ‘Mr Roach.’

‘What are you doing here?’ He saw the glass in her hand and his eyes widened. ‘You’re not ill?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, smiling prettily, pushing aside thoughts of the sores blooming under her hair. ‘The water is said to keep you young and beautiful.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

He wasn’t taken in. ‘I would have thought you’d know more tricks than evil tasting water for that,’ he said. He gripped her arm and pulled her aside. His mouth was so close to her face, she could smell violet cashews on his breath. ‘Only I’ve heard some people take the waters if they have the pox.’

He stared meaningfully at her. She stared back, defying him to contradict her.

‘Is that why you’re here, Darby?’ she asked.

That wrong-footed him. ‘No, no,’ he said, releasing her arm. ‘Meeting my banker. My building plans are going so quickly I need to withdraw more funds to pay the builders.’

‘So you’ll be rich soon?’

‘I’m rich now,’ he said.

Rich now? Then where was the house for them, with the maid and the carriage and the prettiest furniture money could buy?

He didn’t notice her silence, but continued, ‘There’s some upstart trying to get into the game. Wants to buy some land and start building.’ He laughed. ‘The club will see to him.’

‘Oh?’

‘He can’t buy unless he’s in the club. The club controls who buys and sells the land.’

‘Isn’t that up to the person who owns the land?’ she asked.

Darby snorted. ‘Poor innocent Rachel! The club can be very persuasive, if you understand me.’

A look she didn’t like shivered across his face, and she recalled a rumour of a local farmer who refused to sell his land being found hanged in his field. The coroner’s verdict was suicide, but the land passed to his son, who immediately sold it to Mr Ellison. Rachel tugged her shawl tighter around her.

‘And will you let this new man into the club?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Darby said scornfully. ‘He’ll have to pass the initiation, and we’ll make sure he doesn’t.’

‘How?’

Darby wheeled her away from the crowds. Speaking in a low voice, he said, ‘You remember the part with the bean in the glass of wine?’

She nodded.

‘It’s poisonous,’ Darby breathed.

‘Poisonous? Then how did you manage to eat it and survive?’

His breath sent ice across her skin as he whispered, ‘It’s only poisonous if you chew it. They told me to swallow it whole. This new fellow … well, they might forget his instructions.’

It was Rodney he was talking about, she knew it. Poor Rodney. Dear, kind Rodney, who loved her and who wanted to take her away from all this. She’d sent him to Mr Ellison, led him straight into the lion’s den. Poor booby probably thought it was all just a bit of high jinks, like boys at school. Little did he realise the danger he was in. She had to warn him, and soon. The next meeting was that very night.

Mrs Bedwin cast an experienced eye round the girls and selected Roseanne and Felicity to attend Greville House.

‘I’ll go,’ Rachel said. ‘I don’t mind.’ She had to get in there somehow, she had to warn Rodney. She couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him. It wasn’t just his promises to take her away, set her up in her own house, she loved him. She loved him and she’d sent him into the jaws of death. All because he wanted to be rich enough for her.

I’d have him even if he was poor, she swore to herself, as she begged Mrs Bedwin to let her attend Greville House that evening.

‘You is too lascivious for words,’ Mrs Bedwin declared, her brown hairpiece waggling. ‘And greedy. You only went the last time because Daphne got herself in a state.’

‘No, truly, Mrs Bedwin,’ she said, but Mrs Bedwin wasn’t having any of it.

‘It’s Roseanne and Felicity, and that’s an end to it. You can look after the regular customers here. Make your twenty guineas that way.’ And she went off cackling.