Roots of Evil (34 page)

The speed at which Sallis refused this offer indicated very strongly that he had no more liking for Edmund than Edmund had for him. But he was perfectly courteous about it. He said, ‘Please don’t go to that trouble. I really don’t want to disrupt you, and I think I’m beyond phoning local hotels to find a room. I’m quite happy to stay at the house. It’s warm and comfortable, and the gas and electricity are still on.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Edmund, his eyes on the road as they drove along. ‘The phone’s been disconnected, but everything else is on.’

‘And I can get a taxi to the station tomorrow morning – I’ll phone British Rail presently and find out the times.’

‘What? Oh, there’s a train around eleven. Straight through to Euston.’

‘Good. The car can be collected later – if I still can’t drive by the weekend I can probably get the AA to help out.’

‘I suppose it would be all right,’ said Edmund, still sounding reluctant.

‘Believe me, I’ve slept in worse places than that house,’ said Michael smiling. ‘Or are you forgetting I work with homeless teenagers for most of the week?’

‘I was forgetting that for the moment,’ said Edmund.

‘But if it’s not a nuisance, could you just stop off in the town so that I could pick up some bread and milk – oh, and a toothbrush and a razor—’

‘Of course I can,’ said Edmund. ‘And I’ll come into the house with you to make sure you’ve got everything you’re likely to need.’

Edmund bought the bread and milk and other things himself from the local supermarket, waving aside Michael’s attempts both to come into the shop, and also his attempts to pay. He felt entirely responsible for what had happened, he said; Sallis must at least allow him to make this small reparation. Was he really sure about staying at the house? Why not let him try a couple of hotels in the adjoining town?

‘There’s no need,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll be absolutely fine here. Food, drink and shelter. All I need.’

To the modest provisions, Edmund had added a half
pound of butter, some cooked chicken from the delicatessen which he had asked them to slice up, some crisp eating apples, a wedge of cheese, and half a bottle of Scotch. Scotch was as good a pain-killer as he had ever found, he said.

‘That’s very generous of you.’

‘And you’ll be warm enough? The central heating’s been on the “Frost” setting, so the house hasn’t got really cold or damp since my aunt died. But you can turn the thermostat up, of course. It’s in the kitchen, on the side of the—’

‘I know where it is. I’ll turn it up if I need it. You’ve been very kind,’ said Michael, with an obvious effort.

‘Not at all. But at least once you’re in the house you won’t need to go out again,’ said Edmund. ‘I expect you’ll take the hospital’s pills and just crash out.’

‘I expect I will,’ said Michael.

Edmund had enjoyed that last remark to Sallis – ‘Once you’re in the house you won’t need to go out again,’ he had said. In fact, once Sallis was in the house, he never would go out again, not alive, not if Edmund’s plan worked.

It would work, of course. He had thought it all out carefully and logically, paying attention to every tiny detail. Crispin had always said that was the essence of a good plan. Never neglect the details, Crispin said.

As well as not neglecting the details, Edmund had made sure that if anything did go wrong he could not himself be implicated. Michael Sallis had been successfully isolated – cut off from all methods of communicating with anyone,
including his mobile phone; Edmund had been very cunning about that phone, and he was rather pleased with himself. Everything that was going to happen tonight would afterwards be put down to unfortunate accident. Misadventure.

In a way it was a pity that Alraune’s ghost would not be around for Michael’s murder; Edmund would have quite enjoyed the irony of that. But since the afternoon at Quondam Films, he was accepting that Alraune might not be a ghost at all; Alraune might be alive and living a normal life somewhere in the world.

But Crispin would be there, and that was really all that mattered. As he drove home, Edmund knew that Crispin would enjoy watching Alraune’s son die.

Michael had spoken honestly when he told Edmund Fane he was used to far worse sleeping quarters than Deborah Fane’s empty house; his work had frequently taken him into the squats and the hostels of London’s East End, and from there into deeper, sadder worlds where people lived in shop doorways and tube stations.

But after Fane left, Michael felt vaguely uneasy. There was no logic to this feeling: he had been in this house several times already – once after Deborah Fane’s funeral, and two or three times after that, stage-managing the various surveys and reports that had to be prepared for CHARTH. It had in fact been at this house that he had met Francesca. Francesca. Even with his hand a grinding mass of agony Michael felt a smile curve his lips at the thought of Francesca. In a moment he would phone her; he was furious and disappointed at not being able to get back to London tonight for their dinner, but hopefully
they could meet tomorrow evening. It would be good to hear her voice – thank goodness for mobile phones.

He switched on the rather old-fashioned electric fire in the small room overlooking the lane and closed the curtains. He liked this room; it had a friendly atmosphere, and it looked as if it had been used as a study; there were bookshelves and a little writing desk and a rather weatherbeaten sofa near the window. Had Lucy and Edmund done their homework in here during school holidays? It was still odd to think that Lucy was his cousin – that Alraune had been half-brother to Lucy’s mother. Michael wondered how Lucy got on with that dry stick, Edmund Fane. Had they had a teenage romance, as distant cousins sometimes did? Had people in the family speculated about whether they might one day marry?

Michael’s own childhood, once he had left Pedlar’s Yard and once he had found Alice, had been extremely happy. He had loved living in the old stone house set amidst the ancient fenlands, and it was a measure of Alice’s own charm and energy that there had never been any boredom. But he thought he would have liked to have Lucy as a small cousin, part of his growing-up years. And Edmund, said his mind wryly. Don’t forget that Edmund would have been a cousin as well. Oh yes, so he would. Only a distant one, though.

He might as well spend the night in the friendly little study rather than go foraging around for sheets and pillows. The sofa was wide and deep, and there would probably be a travelling rug or an eiderdown somewhere upstairs.

To counteract the rather brooding silence he switched on the radio, tuning it to Classic FM. A request programme was on and the ordinary announcements for music and the breaks for advertisements and news went some way towards dispelling the unsettling atmosphere.

He went along the hall to the back of the house. The kitchen had been more or less completely cleared, but a kettle stood on the top of the cooker. Filling it was awkward – Michael had to disentangle his hand from the sling to do so, and he acknowledged with annoyance that the doctor had been right about not driving. But he managed to make a cup of instant coffee which he drank gratefully, swallowing one of the painkillers with it. The label recommended two every six hours, but Michael loathed the vague muzziness that even an aspirin caused. He would take one pill now, and if necessary he would take the second one later.

Now for the call to Francesca. He smiled again, thinking he would say that if she was free tomorrow evening they would still go to the Italian place, because he could spoon up pasta with one hand. It was good to imagine the two of them in the restaurant, Francesca seated opposite to him, her eyes wary and defiant most of the time, and then suddenly and disarmingly intimate when she smiled.

His jacket was in the hall, flung over the stair rail, and he felt in the pocket for his mobile phone. It was at this point that he remembered Edmund Fane using the phone to call the local pub to book a room for the night. Fane had had to get out of the car to make the call because the signal was weak, but it had only taken
a few minutes, and then he had got back in.

But what had happened to the phone?

It took the best part of half an hour, and an awkward, one-handed search of the downstairs rooms, before Michael finally accepted that the phone was not in the house and that it must therefore still be in Edmund Fane’s car. Blast Edmund Fane and his spinsterish outlook and his unfamiliarity with mobile phones! Dear me, am I using this right? he had said. I don’t possess a mobile phone, you know – I’m afraid I’ve always found them rather intrusive.

And now Fane’s dithering uncertainty had resulted in Michael being stranded out here with no means of communicating with anyone. At the moment he did not much care if he never communicated with the entire western world again, but he did care about not communicating with Francesca. Would she think he had stood her up? Was there any way he could get to a phone? Was he, in fact, sure that the phone in this house really was disconnected? He tracked down the two extensions, one in the largest of the bedrooms and one in the hall. Both were dead. Hell’s teeth.

He went back into the study and sat down to review the situation. From what he had seen on his previous visits this house was at least a couple of miles from any other buildings. Could he walk that far in his present state? The painkiller was already starting to kick in, and he was feeling unpleasantly light-headed. And even if he did manage to reach a house, could he be sure he would be allowed in to use the phone? His mind flew ahead,
seeing himself knocking on the door of a house where some lone female lived (it was a safe bet that the first place he tried would have a solitary woman there!) and making the classic horror-film request. ‘I’m stranded and I wondered if I could possibly use your phone.’ And the bandaged hand, and the blood on his shirt-cuff, and his dishevelled appearance all contributing to the sinister image.

How about a public phone-box? He tried to remember if he had seen one along the road, and could not. But how often were phone-boxes working nowadays? How far away was the White Hart? Not far, surely?

This was ridiculous. It was the twenty-first century, and it was possible to contact most of the world with the touch of a phone-pad, or the press of a computer key, or the activating of a fax machine. And here he was, stuck in this old house, as cut off from the world as if he had been transported back a hundred years!

He glanced at his watch. It was coming up to six o’clock. Would Francesca be home from school by now, perhaps taking a shower and deciding what to wear for the evening? Did women bother about that kind of thing these days? Michael had not exactly fought shy of women, and women had not exactly fought shy of him, but he had backed away from the deeper emotional involvements. He did not want to back away from Francesca, however.

Probably most women just took dinner dates on the wing, saying, Oh, this is the first thing that fell out of the wardrobe, and it’ll do for a plate of spaghetti and a glass of red plonk.

Francesca had changed her mind about what to wear tonight three times already. She had finally decided to play safe with a black silk sweater (it was fairly low-cut, but not tartily so), a chunky gold necklace, and some rather jazzy silk palazzo trousers that Marcus had once sneeringly said made her look like a refugee from a circus.

It felt peculiar but exciting to be preparing to go out to dinner with a man after so long. Fran thought she would have been nervous if it had not been Michael, which struck her as a peculiar way to think. She had set the bottle of brandy and glasses on the low table, and had laid the fire so that she need only put a match to it when they got in. Would Michael see through the small scene-setting ploy, and would he smile the three-cornered smile that made his eyes slant upwards at the corners?

Just on six. Fran experienced a small lurch of pleasure, because there were only a couple of hours left until he arrived. She would take a long hot bath, with an extravagant allowance of scented bath oil, and after she was dressed she would go back downstairs and wait in the armchair in the bay window. From there she would be able to see him drive up to the house.

Michael had decided to make for the White Hart in his car. He acknowledged that he could not have managed the journey to London, but surely to God he could drive the short distance to the village. Quite apart from contacting Francesca, he needed to arrange a taxi to the railway station for the train journey home tomorrow.

He was glad he had only taken one of the hospital’s
pills and he thought he could keep the worst of the drowsy light-headedness at bay. Remembering he had had no lunch, he had eaten a clumsily made chicken sandwich and an apple, after which the world seemed slightly less unreal. But it was strange how the house had passed from being a welcoming place – a place that a few hours ago he had been regretting not having known in his childhood – to something quite different. Watchful. Menacing. The kind of feeling you got if you knew you weren’t alone…The kind of feeling he had had all those years ago, crammed into a dank, bad-smelling cupboard under some stairs…Praying that a man whose eyes had been gouged out would not find him…

Oh, for goodness’ sake stop it! You’ve had a bash on the hand and it was hard enough to crack a bone and damage a tendon, and your mind’s playing tricks from the pain and the pill, that’s all!

He turned off the radio and the light and he was about to switch off the little electric fire when he caught a sound from outside. He went out into the hall and listened carefully. Nothing there. Imagination. He was about to go back into the study when the sound came again. And this time it was not imagination. This time it was the soft but unmistakable crunch of footsteps on the gravel path outside.

Michael stayed where he was. Someone was definitely out there. Someone was walking around the side of the house, and whoever it was was moving very stealthily indeed.

Might it be an ordinary, innocent caller? It was only
six o’clock in the evening, after all. But local people must surely know that Deborah Fane had died and that the house was empty. A salesman, then? Somebody flogging encyclopedias or religion or canvassing for votes? But the house was a quarter of a mile from the road, and unless you knew it was there you would go straight past the turning.

That left the very sinister possibility that it was a burglar. Someone local who knew the house was empty and was going to take a chance on getting in and grabbing anything valuable or saleable. This was such a strong possibility that Michael felt a chill of fear for his own vulnerable condition. He glanced about him for something to use as a weapon. Or would discretion be the better part of valour, and would it be better to simply beat the hell out of it? His jacket, with the car keys in the pocket, was still in the hall; he could grab it and be through the main front door inside ten seconds. He tried to remember what kind of lock the front door had. An ordinary Yale, wasn’t it? Then all he had to do was flip it back and turn the latch. A dozen paces to his car and he could be away.

The footsteps had stopped, but the feeling of an unseen presence was still frighteningly strong. He’s still out there, thought Michael, and with the thought came a movement beyond the uncurtained kitchen window that sent his heart hammering against his ribs. A figure, unrecognizable from here, pressed up against the pane, and a hand came up and tapped lightly on the glass – so lightly that only someone near to the window could have heard it.

As an antidote to a damaged hand and a hefty dose of painkiller, the sight of that indistinct figure and the soft, fingernail tapping was electric. Michael forgot about feeling light-headed, and he forgot about the pain in his hand. His mind went into overdrive, because he had been right – there was a prowler out there, and he was looking in and making sure the place really was empty before breaking in. In another minute he would lever open the back door, or smash the window and climb through. Michael was no coward, but in his current state he was not sure if he would be able to deal with some desperate house-breaker, who might be high on drink or drugs.

Was it possible to sprint down the hall and be out through the front door without being seen or heard? He was just considering this when the most chilling sound yet reached him. A key was being turned very slowly and very carefully in the lock of the garden door. As Michael stared in horrified disbelief, the door began to inch open.

That sprint to the front door was no longer an option; Michael stepped back into the study, and got behind the door. There was a heavy pottery vase on a side table; if it came to a fight he could probably make use of it. But with luck the prowler would see the light from the electric fire, and would realize someone was in the house and beat it back into the night.

The small room was hot and claustrophobic and there was a smell of burning dust from the electric fire. Michael’s heart was beating so furiously that he had the absurd idea that the burglar would hear it. Like the Edgar Allen Poe story where the murdered heart beat so loudly it betrayed the killer.

He had expected the intruder to come into the hall, and every muscle of his body was tense with anticipation. But the intruder did not. He moved around the kitchen for a few moments, and then there was the unmistakable sound of the garden door opening and closing again, and of the key being turned in the lock. The stealthy footsteps went down the gravel path once more.

Michael let out a huge breath of relief, and after a moment went across to the window, opening the curtain the tiniest chink in order to look outside. Was the man walking down the lane to the main road? There had not been the sound of a car – or had there? The radio had been on and this was an old and solid house; he might not have heard a car driving up.

The intruder had not come in a car, or if he had, he had parked it near to the road. He was just coming around the side of the house, doing so quite briskly as if he had just completed a necessary task, and heading towards the lane. But as he came out of the shadows cast by the old beech trees, he paused and turned to look back. Michael froze, praying not to be seen.