Blood Falls (12 page)

She broke off as the bell over the door jangled and a man entered the cafe. He was young and smartly dressed. Joe had a feeling he was one of the men he’d seen last night, leaving the pub with Cadwell.

He didn’t pay Joe much attention, but when he saw Alise he flinched as if he’d been slapped. After ordering three coffees and a hot chocolate
to take away, he glared at them both, then began tapping out a message on his phone.

Alise picked up her handbag and took out her purse. ‘I must leave now.’

There was a good-natured dispute over the bill. Alise wanted to settle it in full, because she’d eaten lunch prior to Joe’s arrival. They agreed to go halves, and Joe tried to ignore the wrench of pain as another tenner disappeared. He now had roughly forty pounds left.

Once outside, Alise said, ‘That is Ben. He works for Cadwell.’

‘I thought so.’ Joe followed Alise along the pavement, both of them squinting in the bright sunlight. Alise indicated a large building on the corner of the block.

‘The gallery. But it is shut this afternoon.’ She went up on tiptoe, peering over Joe’s shoulder. ‘Ben is leaving,’ she whispered.

Joe turned, saw the young man crossing the road, carrying his drinks in a tray made of paper pulp. He got into a Vauxhall Astra that had been parked on double yellow lines next to the harbour wall.

‘You said Cadwell was one of the people who gave Leon an alibi?’

‘Yes. But there is more than that. Much more.’

Alise’s tone seemed unnecessarily dramatic. Joe wondered if she was embellishing certain aspects of the story in order to secure his help.

‘The job he does,’ she said quietly, almost hissing at him.

Joe nodded. A gruesome idea had been floating at the back of his mind for the past few minutes. If Kamila had been murdered – which was surely the unspoken assumption – then a man in Cadwell’s line of work could be very useful when it came to disposing of the body.

‘If you mean what I think you mean, that’s quite an accusation.’

‘He would help Leon do anything,’ Alise said, fearfully looking around. The street was quiet, a handful of tourists drifting along the promenade. ‘He has no choice. Leon knows his secrets.’

‘What kind of secrets?’

Alise watched Joe closely, perhaps anticipating a sceptical response. ‘Things he does … with the dead.’

‘What?’

‘Leon hid a camera in the funeral home. So now Cadwell must do anything for him.’

Joe gave her the reaction she must have expected. ‘If that was true, he’d lose all his business overnight. No one would go near him.’

‘They are careful with this secret. Very few people know.’

‘Then how did you find out?’

She’d been expecting this question as well, forlornly shaking her head. ‘I cannot tell you.’

‘You’re asking me to take a lot on trust here.’

‘Please, Joe. I cannot tell you,’ she said again. ‘But I know it is true. I swear it.’

Twenty-One

JENNY FOSTER
.

She had a name, an identity and a raging thirst.

She had a full recollection of who she was but not – thankfully – of what had been done to her.

The wound between her legs was healing. She knew that because her captor had told her so. But while it healed, it stung and burned and throbbed. When it was touched she felt as though she’d been set on fire.

She knew that because he’d touched her again. He had tried to rape her, but the screams had put him off. Even when he stuffed a rag in her mouth, the scream emerged through her whole body: it vibrated along her bones and poured from her skin like sweat.

‘Couple of days,’ he’d said after he climbed off, giving her a bad-tempered kick while he zipped up. ‘Then you’ll be good as new.’

He had visited her twice. The first time, the attempted rape, he brought with him a battery-operated torch. Its illumination was weak but had an incredible effect on her. She was almost willing to suffer the pain he inflicted, if only because he had rescued her from the darkness.

She had practically no sense of time. His visit might have been hours after she first recovered consciousness, but she thought it was
probably longer: a day or so. When he left, he took the light with him. She was bereft.

The second visit, by contrast, seemed much sooner: only hours after the first. Her mind was clearer, despite the rhythmic bass-drum-and-cymbal clash of a dehydration headache. She knew who she was. She understood, at least partially, what had happened to her.

This time, as well as the light, he brought water in a bucket, a towel, and some food.

‘All right?’ he growled. Unhappy about something.

Jenny realised she was making noises: sobbing, whimpering. She forced them to stop, and he grunted and put the bucket down at her side, slopping water over the rim. The cold splash of it on her skin caused her to gasp and turn towards him. He kicked her savagely, and she screamed, her mouth wide open but making no sound.

She wasn’t to look at him. She had learned that on the first visit.

‘You stupid bitch,’ he said. ‘Drink some of this, then clean yourself up. Afterwards, use it for a toilet.’ She felt him crouching, bending over her, his breath hot on her face. ‘And wash the blood off your tits. Haven’t you got any self-respect?’

He opened the door and she sensed the dim light bobbing in the darkness, moving away from her.

‘Leave me the torch.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘So I can see, to clean myself. Please.’

In his hesitation, she understood what this represented: the chance to open a tiny chink in his armour. A small but significant repositioning in the balance of power between them.

He set the torch down, strode out and slammed the door behind him.

Jenny waited a few seconds, then wept with joy at the scale of her victory.

Twenty-Two

JOE WALKED BACK
through the town and then followed a different route from the one he’d taken that morning, winding his way up the hillside. He hadn’t actually committed himself to helping Alise. This was purely a way of killing time, he told himself. No harm in it.

Eventually he reached level ground and found a sign urging him to sample the thrill of the Shell Cavern, a hundred yards further on. He was back in the wealthy neighbourhood, but Alise’s description wasn’t precise enough for him to distinguish Leon’s property from the other large homes, all shielded by high walls and dense foliage.

For lack of a better idea, he wandered towards the tourist attraction. The site was on a small plot of untended grass, thick with nettles, bordered by a chain-link fence. No car park, but there were several cars and a minibus parked on the street outside.

The visitor centre was housed in a ramshackle windowless building, possibly an old cattle shed, made of weathered stone and with a moss-encrusted roof. Joe pushed through the double glass doors into a room about thirty feet square, with poster-sized photographs and display units, and a gift area with tables selling the usual tourist fare: pottery and ceramics, exotic stones and crystals, mugs and postcards and overpriced confectionery.

The room’s only occupant was a member of staff, a tall, rangy man
in his fifties with greying blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He gave Joe a cautious appraisal before nodding a greeting.

Next to the counter, an open doorway beckoned. Joe eased his way over and peered in. A set of stone steps dropped twenty feet or so, then curved out of sight, lit by a series of weak bulbs strung along the roof of the cave.

Joe shuddered. Not his thing at all.

‘I guarantee you’ll be awed,’ the man told him. He spoke with the deep, calm gravitas of a counsellor or clergyman. ‘For some, it’s a life-changing experience.’

Joe smiled, but shook his head. ‘Another day, thanks.’

He made his exit, feeling slightly foolish. What had Ellie said about holding his hand?

Hmm. She was a prickly woman, unlikeable in many ways, and decidedly catty where Diana was concerned, and yet …

She had definitely stirred something in him. Something that had lain dormant for a long time.

He sucked air between his teeth and carried on walking.
And yet
was dangerous, he thought.
And yet
could get him into trouble.

Joe soon discovered that the road led nowhere. It ended in a bulbous turning circle, beyond which lay a thick copse of trees and unwelcoming thickets of brambles and blackthorn.

Retracing his steps and passing the Shell Cavern once again, he noticed a narrow footpath that he’d missed the first time. It was overgrown with weeds but Joe eased his way through them. A noise grew in volume as he followed the path through several twists and turns: the roar of rushing water.

The bushes on either side towered over him, blocking his view until a final abrupt turn brought him out in a small clearing. A steel fence, eight feet high, had been erected across the path. It bore a plethora of warning signs:
NO ENTRY
and
PRIVATE
and
DANGER: LANDSLIP
.

The path appeared to continue beyond the fence, dropping away steeply as it weaved through the rocky, tree-covered hillside. Joe guessed it might lead to the sandy beaches east of the town. If so, the views during the descent would be spectacular.

He stepped close to the fence and looked through. To his right he caught glimpses of the shore and a slice of tranquil sea. Directly ahead there appeared to be a deep but narrow cleft in the hillside, which was almost certainly the location of the pounding water.

Then he caught a flash of light: sunlight reflecting on glass. A house was poised on the edge on the gully, with a veranda running along the rear and a timber deck on one corner, jutting out to form a viewing platform. Joe could see steel supports angled into the rock face beneath the platform.

There was a man on the decking, wearing what might have been the uniform of an LRS guard. He lifted a pair of binoculars and directed them at Joe, who waved, somewhat sarcastically, then made a point of admiring the view for a minute or so before slowly turning away.

Back at the road, Joe was grudgingly impressed to find an LRS van waiting for him.

The driver was a heavyset man in his thirties. Shaved head, goatee beard and the needlessly aggressive bearing of a nightclub bouncer. He was standing on the pavement, arms folded across a barrel chest.

‘Path’s closed,’ he said.

‘I gathered that.’

‘And it’s private property.’

‘Not where I was.’

‘You were intent on trespassing.’

Joe shrugged. He saw no sense in arguing with someone who was intent on a fight. Better just to fight and have done with it.

The man jerked his head towards the van. ‘Get in.’

‘What?’

‘The owner of the property wants to see you.’

‘Why?’

‘He’ll tell you that himself.’ He took a step back, opened the passenger door and jerked his head again:
Get in
.

‘Who’s the owner of the property?’

The man scowled, making it clear that he ought to be beating Joe’s face to a pulp rather than answering his questions.

‘Leon Race.’

Twenty-Three

THE JOURNEY TO
Leon’s home took less than two minutes, and most of that was spent turning the van round.

Joe could have refused to go, but he guessed that might cause more problems in the long run. If what he’d heard so far was true, it seemed likely that he would show up on Leon’s radar at some point during his stay. Despite the van driver’s thuggish demeanour, Joe didn’t regard himself as in any particular danger, and his instincts for these things were generally reliable.

The entrance to the property was marked by a set of steel gates. A wide gravel drive cut between leaf-strewn lawns. Mature trees ran along the high perimeter wall, which was constructed of a weathered yellow stone.

The house itself, built from the same pale stone, was a solid, symmetrical Georgian mansion, with a dark slate roof and thick chimneys at each end. The ivy that crept towards the upper windows gave the sense of a building that was long rooted in the landscape and might one day be consumed by it.

To the right of the house another high stone wall enclosed a kitchen garden. A modern ugly car port had been erected against the wall, with several cars and vans parked beneath it. Joe’s immediate reaction was to wonder how the owner had managed to obtain
permission to build such an eyesore – and then he remembered who the owner was.

The van rolled to a halt behind an E-class Mercedes, and Joe climbed out. Another guard was waiting for him in the doorway. He looked about nineteen, thin and pimply, with dark red hair and a ferocious shaving rash on his neck.

‘Leon Race?’

The man gawped, until it registered that Joe was taking the piss. ‘I’m Kestle.’

Joe shrugged:
As if I care
. Stepping into a large entrance hall, he was instructed to leave his bag and remove his jacket.

‘I have to pat you down,’ Kestle said.

‘You’re joking.’

‘That’s the rules.’ The guard turned his head, as if seeking reinforcements. With perfect timing, an obese middle-aged man came waddling towards them, dress shoes clopping on the flagstones. He wore pinstriped trousers and a pink shirt, his neck bulging over the collar like a cake spilling from its mould.

‘Just a small courtesy to Mr Race,’ he said. He had a soft local accent, and a voice that sounded like his sinuses were blocked. ‘I’m Clive Fenton.’

They shook hands, then Joe allowed Kestle to perform a quick, ineffective search. He missed several places where Joe could have concealed a weapon.

Fenton led him across the hall and into what Joe guessed was a secondary living room. It had a polished wood floor with several Turkish rugs, a collection of sofas and armchairs, a mid-sized plasma TV, but little sign that it saw much use. There was a coffee table with a stack of newspapers, mostly tabloids, and a large metal tambour cupboard that looked more like it belonged in an office. No pictures on the walls, no ornaments or personal belongings.