The Lost Child (31 page)

The door was ajar and swung wide open at his touch, revealing the house to be as empty of life as the rest of the village. Brodie’s clothes were strewn over the back of a chair and used cups sat on the table. Upstairs, the bed had been slept in and Elaine’s bag sat on the floor, though the only thing she had unpacked was the one-eyed, mouldering dog that had been her childhood companion. It sat on the bedside table, the remaining eye fixing Dan with a vacant stare. The sight of it made him feel hopeless, as if whatever he had come here to achieve would be a losing battle. It would be harsh to expect Elaine to relate to him if she couldn’t even relate to herself.

He was about to sit down on the bed and nurse his despair when the oppressive silence was broken by the shrill wailing of an emergency vehicle moving at speed through the village. Thirty seconds later it was followed by another. The bedroom window only gave a view of the churchyard, so Dan wasn’t able to see where they were headed, or know whether they were police or paramedics. All he could see was the passing flash of blue lights announcing an emergency.

***

Brodie was finding it hard to breathe. She was convinced that the axe-wielding maniac had broken her ribs. She had no idea how long she had been there, poleaxed and waiting for his blow to fall, but it had seemed like an eternity. The fact that her scream was still echoing round the walls told her that it couldn’t have been – it had been seconds at most. She tried to stand, but the pain in her chest wouldn’t let her so she was forced to lie in the dark, panting for breath. The candle had blown out and she couldn’t see a thing, but she sensed movement and it terrified her. Something was moving in the dark, grunting and huffing as it groped about. Fearful that it was the lunatic about to make his second bid she tried to push herself back and further into the tunnel, away from the fingers of candlelight that might reveal her if he re-lit the flame. The movement was too much and she saw stars as pain coursed through her like a tidal wave. She and Elaine were going to die in here and there was nothing they could do.

She heard scritching as a match was dragged across the stone. She closed her eyes before it flared, not wanting to see the coming of her own demise. It was seconds before she dared open them, compelled against her own fear to at least glimpse the grim reaper. She allowed a tiny crack of light to enter through her eyelids, then opened her eyes wide as she registered that the grinning face that loomed above of her belonged to Derry.

Tears of abject relief blossomed, bloomed and fell as she took in the scene. The man with the axe lay prone on the floor behind Derry. What looked like copious amounts of blood seeped from his head and mingled with the dirt of the floor in a congealing sticky mess. From where she lay Brodie couldn’t see Elaine, but she could hear her moving on the marble slab. ‘Untie… her,’ she gasped, the pain in her chest booming with every breath.

Derry nodded and moved out of her line of sight, so that she was left to stare at the prone body of the axe man. He didn’t appear to be moving, but she couldn’t be sure. Tears were blurring her vision. The pain was making her dizzy and the fear that at any moment he might rear up and drag them all back into the nightmare was making her crazy. From the corner of her eye she saw Elaine’s legs swing down as she slithered from the marble slab, landing in a shaking heap on the dirt floor. She crawled towards the prostrated form and barely looked at Brodie, instead taking her own undone bonds and with sobbing, shaking fear using them to tie the unconscious man’s hands behind him.

Brodie noted that she had done a lousy job, but that it would be enough to slow the fucker down if he tried to get up. Only when Elaine turned to her, reaching out for her hand did Brodie realise what he had done. Elaine’s face was an unrecognisable mess of swollen, bloody flesh. She tried to speak but was damped into silence by a strident voice bolting like a coursing hare along the tunnel.

‘Derry Tyler, so help me God if you’re down here messing about again I’ll have your ruddy arse! You know what the police said – NO BLOODY ENTRY!’ The voice resounded, flooding the passage with furious confidence.

Brodie couldn’t think of a time she had ever been more grateful to hear someone’s anger. She tried to call out, but all the breath she had couldn’t be afforded on speech.

Rosemary Tyler rounded the bend, her torch beam bouncing and playing over the walls. She spotted Derry crouching on the ground with his hands over his head. ‘There you are, you great lump. I swear you’ll be the death of me!’ she boomed, having not yet noticed what lay beyond her cowering brother. Brodie’s gasping drew her attention and she wheeled round, the light from her torch revealing the havoc that had taken place. It was a rare moment for anyone to witness Rosemary Tyler struck dumb.

*

Dan’s day was becoming more and more surreal. He had followed the sound of the sirens only to see a stream of black clothed people, some clutching what looked like sandwiches, following a vicar, Benny Hill style, across the grounds of Hallow’s Court.

The bizarre tag team appeared to be heading towards the ruined chapel, where the oscillating lights of an ambulance and a police car played across the ravaged stones making it look like the venue of some sinister rave.

He spotted Miriam amongst the crowd of funereal voyeurs. A feathered fascinator hung drunkenly from her hair, its bedraggled feathers making limp attempts to draw attention in the feeble breeze. A paper serviette dangled from the front of her dress.

‘What’s going on?’ He wondered if she was in any fit state to tell him.

She shook her head causing the fascinator to slide down even further, where it clung precariously, looking like it had just sprouted from her ear.

‘I don’t know, we were having Esther’s wake and all of a sudden there were sirens blasting past the house. The vicar went out to see and everyone followed him. Where are the girls?’ she asked, looking behind him as if he had concealed them from her sight with his large frame.

He was about to shrug when he caught sight of two paramedics emerging from the ruins of the chapel carrying a stretcher. Brodie lay on it, he recognised her from her hoodie. Behind them a police officer was helping a woman over the fallen stones. He saw that it was Elaine, though he wouldn’t have known it by her face, which was swollen beyond recognition. Only her clothes gave her away.

‘Over there’ he said, pointing his finger in the same direction in which Miriam’s astonished stare had been drawn.

Another ambulance roared and screamed its way into the clearing, suggesting that there were more injured people on the scene and only adding to the confusion of what was going on.

Dan ran forward in a bid to reach Elaine and Brodie but was held back by a burly, strident copper who barred his way in no uncertain terms, ‘Stand back sir, no one is to go past this point.’

Dan tried to argue, to push past whilst willing Elaine to look over and call him. The uniformed protector cut him dead and shoved him back, bawling at the rest of the observers to move back and let the professionals do their jobs.

Forced to just stand by and watch the scene unfold, Dan waited with the twittering throng until the second team emerged from the ruins carrying another stretcher. No one could see who lay on it; the brace around the person’s head obscured their view.

Next to emerge were Derry and Rosemary Tyler. Derry had been handcuffed and Rosemary was shouting obscenities at the two officers who were guiding him over the uneven terrain. She was waving a torch in one hand and held a mobile phone in the other. More police cars arrived, scattering the gathering crowd and adding to the speculation.

Then the most bizarre thing of all happened. Ada Gardiner-Hallow strolled out of the trees carrying a shotgun nestled against her shoulder. She stalked towards the group, which parted before her as if she were Moses on the banks of the Red Sea.

For Dan everything seemed to slow down, becoming an ambiguous blur of movement. The only people he could see clearly were Ada and Elaine. The barrel of Ada’s shotgun was pointing straight and true towards Elaine. Screams and shouts surrounded him, blunted and burbled as they filtered through the torrent of adrenaline that was coursing through his body. He tried to move, tensing every muscle against the sensation that his feet were made of lead and were stuck firm in a pool of thick tar.

Derry moved into his line of vision, placing himself in front of Elaine like a shield of flesh and bone. He took the full force of Ada’s shot, which boomed around the clearing like the retort of a cannon fired from the battlements of a castle.

Everybody dropped to the ground as if their strings had been cut, all except Elaine, Ada and Derry, who hovered for a moment, looking down at his ruined chest as if surprised that he wasn’t bullet proof after all. His mouth formed an O of shock as he fell forward onto his knees, his body sagging towards the earth like a sack of coal falling in slow motion.

Blue uniforms flashed past like streaks of ink across the otherwise frozen scene, but it was Elaine who got there first, leaping over Derry as his life force ebbed away and wrenching the shotgun from Ada Gardiner-Hallow’s hands barrel first. Ignoring the heat of the hot metal she swung it round, bringing the stock crashing into the old lady’s shoulder and felling her like a sapling. The whole move was accompanied by a bellow of rage so primal, so fuelled by fury that it made the still echoing gunshot sound as innocent as the popping of a balloon in comparison.

Dan watched transfixed, as Elaine dropped the gun and looked at her hands, which had been branded by the searing heat of the metal. It was only then that she looked up and met his eyes, her gaze traversing the chaos and revealing that she had sunk to the absolute depths of despair. In the hell that was breaking loose around them, it seemed like she was at the epicentre, burned and burning in a fire fuelled by the sins of others.

A police officer scooped her up and bundled her into the back of the ambulance, as others forced everyone back in order to secure the scene. There was so much noise, a cacophony of shouts, screams and demands. Such was the chaos the scene, had someone thought to record it, would have looked like a misguided collaboration between Hieronymus Bosch and Jackson Pollock. In the midst of the pandemonium Dan fragmented, deafened and defeated as his world fell apart. It was all he could do to stay on his feet in the midst of the furore.

Chapter Nineteen

Derry’s funeral took place a fortnight later. Half the village had turned out to see him off. Much to the open indignation of Rosemary, who stood to the side of his open grave with the other mourners at her back. She stood upright and stern faced, radiating hostility. Her black suit was creased, and her grim set jaw refused to allow her eyes to shed a single tear. It wasn’t from a lack of sorrow; losing Derry had ripped her to her core. It was the other mourners who determined her pride. She would be damned if she would let them see that she was weak.

Across the yawning hole she could see Elaine, clinging to Dan’s arm and looking down at her shoes. At least he’d had the courtesy to ring and ask if they could attend. Apparently, he’d been worried that she would hold Elaine responsible for Derry’s death. Angry though Rosemary was at the injustice of his demise, she didn’t blame Elaine. She blamed herself, she blamed Esther Davies and she blamed Ada Gardiner-Hallow. But mostly she blamed Fern Miller.

Derry had been her responsibility from the day he’d been born and one look at his soft features had forced their mother to reject him. From that minute he had been Rosemary’s baby. The appellation nearly forced a smile. Rosemary enjoyed a joke, no matter how incongruous it might be, but even she drew the line at smiling at a funeral.

She missed him. Derry’s absence from her world was so painful, so acute, Rosemary felt as though Ada had blasted that hole through her own heart, not her brother’s. She set her jaw more firmly. She would not cry, not in front of these two-faced bastards anyway.

The vicar droned on, using words she didn’t care for and issuing sentiments she could have no truck with. Rosemary did not believe in his God. God was love, and her God had died with Derry.

When she was prompted to throw the handful of earth she held clutched in her hand, it hit the lid of the coffin with a heavy thunk. The pressure of her grip had moulded it into a hard pebble and it rolled across the wood without breaking. At that point she knew she was supposed to walk away and allow the other mourners to make the gesture. But she didn’t, she stood sentinel at the graveside and watched each and every one hurl their handfuls of hypocrisy onto her brother.

Only Elaine’s contribution made her falter. She had thrown down a little toy dog. It was a grubby looking thing, and it only had one eye. At first Rosemary felt affronted by the gesture, assessing the tawdry little offering as an insult to her brother. Then she thought about it. The dog was exactly the kind of thing that Derry would have coveted. It occurred to her that Elaine was probably the only other person at the funeral who understood who Derry had been. It was an oddly comforting thought.

There was no wake, she would be damned if she was going to feed the buzzards with tea and cake. Nope, they could take themselves off to the village pub where they could make her ears burn with their gossip.

As the mourners walked away in scattered, whispering groups she hesitated. Dan and Elaine had remained. She contemplated inviting them back for a cup of tea, but thought better of it. She had nothing to say, and by all accounts Elaine hadn’t spoken much since the day Derry had died.

No, it was a bad enough day for it, without two women sitting in silence brooding on the presence of the elephant in the room. She didn’t mean Derry, he’d been a clodhopping giant it was true – she meant Jean.

For Rosemary the elephant was the lie she had told and the promise she had never broken. It was such an old lie she hadn’t thought of it in years. The lie and the promise had become part of the fabric of her reality, and in her mind had mutated into truth and loyalty with the passage of time. The only challenge to it had been Elaine’s appearance at the cottage just a few weeks before.