Dead Dream Girl (13 page)

‘Julia? What’s the—’

Then she screamed. A scream that seemed curtailed. It made the hairs on his neck prickle. He heard a dull sound that could have been a blow, followed by a crashing noise that had to be the fall of a body. The connection was
carefully
broken.

C
rane scrambled out of his car and ran towards the arched entrance. The gates stood open as before. There was a car on the drive, just within the gates. He’d grabbed a torch on leaving the Megane. Its glow identified the car as a Honda. An Accord. His heart lurched. He ran on to the great front door. It was locked. He moved cautiously to the right, as it was so dark, and round to the back of the house to where the wide terrace overlooked the vast rear garden. He had to locate the room that had been filled with flowers.

She lay on an oriental rug before an ornate fireplace. The room was dimly lit by a single table lamp, but it looked to have been overturned in a struggle, so that its light was concentrated on her body in its black clothes, and left the man’s features in shade. But he caught a glint of fair hair and the outline of a strong frame and he knew it was Hellewell. He tried the handle of the french window. It gave. Perhaps she’d been out on the terrace earlier. That must have been how he’d got in.

As the french window opened, with a faint whine, Hellewell fled through a door that Crane knew would take him into the big hall. Crane dropped to his knees at Julia’s
side. She’d been given a blow with some object, possibly an ornament, and the wound extended from her left temple into her hair, which was matting with blood. She was breathing, but unconscious. He heard noises in other parts of the house. Was Hellewell trying to get out? And finding the doors deadlocked?

There was an antique chest of drawers on cabriole legs to the left of the door. It was heavy but not too heavy to drag in front of the door and block his return. Crane needed to do two things urgently: disable Hellewell’s car and get help. It wouldn’t be too long before Hellewell found a way out of the house, even if he had to break windows.

Crane went out to the terrace, then returned along it as rapidly as he dared in the pitch darkness. He’d seized a heavy silver candlestick from the fireplace mantel and now smashed in the headlamps and taillights of the Accord. He’d not get far without lights. He then took out his mobile and began to key 999. Hellewell appeared from nowhere, snatched the phone from his hand and flung it in the basin of the fountain. As Crane began to turn, a very hard fist struck his cheekbone in a glancing blow.

He began to run. He was a strong man and tall, but he knew Hellewell would have the edge over him, working daily on his land. He’d had one glancing blow from a fist that felt like granite, if he took a full-on blow coming out of nowhere in this darkness it could disable him. At least he still had his torch and he made his way along the side of the house and round to the terrace again, then ran down the wide steps and on to the path that skirted the pool and led into the formal garden. He’d rarely known such
darkness
as that which enveloped Julia Gregson’s immense
property, standing as it did in the lee of unlit moorland terrain.

Beyond the formal garden the land was broken, as he remembered it, by smaller gardens, the gazebo, lofty hedges, pleached archways. Beyond all this again was the boundary copse. Maybe he could make for that, then scale the perimeter wall? He moved as rapidly as he dared, with short bursts on the torch to light his route along one of the main walkways. It seemed to take for ever, but he finally reached a strip of open, well-cut lawn. He was able to race across this, as the land was even, and to reach, with a sigh of relief, the dense forest trees of the copse. He moved warily into an even denser darkness, feeling his way past the massive trunks of the ancient trees, not daring to use his torch now in case Hellewell had somehow caught up with him and spotted the brief flashes of the torch’s glow.

But he knew he was becoming disoriented as he picked his way along, with many slight changes of direction. He wondered where Hellewell was. He’d not given instant chase and Crane had heard no sounds at all of pursuit as he’d made his way the entire length of the garden. It made him very uneasy. Had he done a runner? But his car now had no lights. Would he risk using it? Maybe he’d gone off on foot. He didn’t want to think he might have gone back inside the house to finish the job he’d come for.

Crane’s plan was to scale the perimeter wall and double back to his own car, where it stood on the roadside verge, and ring for help from the car phone. But what if Hellewell had worked that out for himself, and was crouched nearby waiting for his return? It wasn’t possible to even guess how his mind would work. He put a hand to his throbbing
cheekbone and muttered, ‘Christ, Anderson, where are you when I
really
need help?’

And then, glancing behind him, he saw it. It was like the brief flickering of a single star in the vacuum of darkness. It had to be a torch. That must have been what had delayed Hellewell, getting it from the Accord and inspecting the damage to his car’s lights. At a guess, the torch had given its single burst from beyond the strip of lawn that separated the garden proper from the copse. Within seconds he’d be in the copse too. He must have plotted Crane’s course by the small amount of noise he’d made, the brief flashes he’d had to give on his own torch. He wondered if he should stay completely still. It was difficult to move silently when he couldn’t see anything. And attempting to climb the wall would have its own problems. It would be virtually impossible to manage it without giving his position away. Something fluttered to his left, as if a springy branch had been pushed aside and not released carefully enough. It sounded to be several yards away. Crane was worried now that if Hellewell had got a torch from his car he might also have picked up some weapon that could do even more damage than those stony fists of his.

He thought hard. He’d been roughly reoriented by the flash of the other man’s torch. He could detect the smallest glow of light coming from the strip of open lawn compared to the near impenetrable conditions in the copse. He decided to make for it. Take a chance that Hellewell was aiming to nail him trying to get over the wall. It could keep him occupied for five or ten minutes. Crane was certain he’d know there was a wall there, he must have made deliveries to Cheyney Hall himself in the
early days of his business. If he retraced his steps, he might be able to regain the house and ring for help from there.

It wasn’t possible to move around without being heard in the total eerie silence of the little wood. Hellewell moved along very slowly and carefully, but the occasional rustle of leaves, the soft crack of a twig underfoot,
indicated
his progress. Crane decided the stealthy noise of the other man’s passage might mask his own movements, and as Hellewell crept in what seemed to be the direction of the wall, Crane inched the other way, towards the strip of lawn. He came to a complete stop every few seconds to ensure Hellewell’s progress was still covering the sound of his. Maybe he should have made even more stops. When he halted at the edge of the copse there was a prolonged and ominous silence. And then Hellewell’s torch came on and the copse was suddenly filled with crashing sounds as he charged towards the point where Crane had been standing. But Crane was already sprinting across the lawn.

Shapes seemed marginally clearer after the pothole darkness of the copse. Crane ran diagonally to the right, the opposite side of the garden to the way he’d come. From memory again, it had seemed to offer more secluded areas where he could hide while trying to plot his next move. He came to another shade of darkness which appeared to be a tall hedge. He began rapidly feeling his way along it. It was on a curve and he remembered then. There’d been a tall yew hedge that had seemed to form a complete circle. He’d seen one entrance when he’d looked from Julia’s drawing room last evening. He reckoned there’d be others. He was right. He came to an opening shortly afterwards and slipped inside the circle, glancing
warily behind him as he did. No torchlight, only the profound silence of before.

Then another shock. There were people in the garden, standing motionless. He could almost sense them rather than see them. He shivered, as if he’d fled from one
indefinable
menace to another. He risked a fast burst on his torch. They weren’t people but topiary chessmen. His beam caught a mitred bishop and beyond it a king. It did nothing to stop him shivering. He felt at another of the shapes and decided it must be a castle, an elaborate turreted affair. He crouched behind it and listened, but could hear nothing.

What could Hellewell be aiming to do? Crane was certain he’d have killed Julia had he not been disturbed, just as he’d feared. Killed her, destroyed the diary, got another ‘friend’ to alibi him for the nights he was missing. But didn’t he realize DNA samples might tie him to the scene? It needed only a single hair, a minute flake of the skin everyone shed all the time? Perhaps he’d decided it was worth the risk. If Julia was out of it and there was no diary to tie him to Donna that night at the Raven, he might have decided the police wouldn’t have a case. Perhaps he’d been going to make it look as if Julia had surprised an intruder, keen to get his hands on costly antique
ornaments
, and had been attacked and killed. Perhaps, perhaps.…

But Crane had surprised him, and he had to have decided that whoever Crane was he couldn’t let him live either. That had to be the logical conclusion. He wished to God he could see. This great garden had become the loneliest and scariest spot on earth. If he could see
properly
he could at least put up a fight, and might even have 
a chance of winning. If he was fighting for his life he’d have to.

Where was he now? He still couldn’t stop shivering. This area of dark shapes in a dark place was spooking him like a nightmare. He couldn’t stop anticipating the oblivion that would go with a savage blow over the head from some tool. Or the appalling, gasping pain of a knife in the back.

Suddenly he knew Hellewell was there. With him in the topiary garden. His eyes were operating at their optimum capacity, and perhaps fear gave them a slightly keener edge. The shapes loomed about him like ghosts, one shade of black on another. But one of those motionless figures had a face with the faintest pallor.

He wondered if the openings in the yew hedge were at compass points, to match the precision of the overall layout. If he rejoined the footpath, which he’d left to crouch behind the chess castle, would it lead him to an opening exactly opposite where he’d come in? He got to his feet and began moving again, as quietly as he could and hunched like an animal.

He’d guessed right. The path led him to an exit from the circular garden. He kept on through it, knowing the small sounds he’d made had to have been amplified in the silent, deathly stillness. And then he heard it again, that sudden heart-stopping rush of thudding feet. And then an even more hideous noise. The crashing sound of blows. Hellewell had to be beating at the chess figures with some weapon, lashing out blindly in every direction in the hope one of those blows would connect with Crane’s skull or shatter an arm.

Crane’s stomach felt like a bag of crushed ice. He’d no
idea where the opening had led him, but as the sound of the blows receded he risked another burst on his torch. He was now on a broad walkway, where closely planted cherry trees were pleached almost to form a tunnel. Statues on plinths stood every two yards or so along the right, of the naked goddess type, with flowing hair and hands that gracefully protected modesty. The beating sounds behind him abruptly ceased and he leapt behind the third statue in a darkness as impenetrable as that in the copse.

There was a sudden brief burst of torchlight. Hellewell too would need to know where he was. The tunnel of pleached trees would look deserted with Crane hidden; would he keep on going to whatever lay at the end? There was a lengthy silence, lengthy even though the seconds seemed like minutes to Crane’s taut nerves. Then came a sudden appalling crash. He felt the ground vibrate slightly through his hands and knees, where he crouched behind the stone goddess. He felt almost nauseous with tension. Hellewell had toppled the first of the statues, which must be free-standing on their plinths. He knew then what his game was. Dislodging the statues gave him two chances. One of them either landed on Crane or badly injured him, or it flushed him out so that Hellewell could then get going with the weapon he had.

There was a second thunderous crash as the next statue went over. He would now be creeping towards the one that sheltered Crane. Crane got slowly to his feet and waited, beads of sweat trickling steadily down his back. He knew only too well that if he waited too long it would be as bad as not waiting long enough. The timing was utterly crucial. The nerve-shredding seconds fell away and
he knew Hellewell must now be very close. He could just detect the tiniest movement of his feet on the earth track. Crane breathed slowly and deeply then suddenly toppled his own statue outwards.

‘
Christ
!’ The whisper sounded almost like a shout. Crane couldn’t begin to guess what damage its fall had done to the man, but its descent to the ground had
definitely
seemed obstructed, so it must have given him some kind of blow on its way down.

He didn’t stay to find out. As Hellewell cursed and groaned behind him, he ran to the end of the lengthy
tree-tunnel
, along the beam of his torch.

The tunnel led to the main conservatory, the one that angled from the left side of the rear of the house. This meant Crane was back in the area of the pool and the formal garden. And at this point there was an opening from the tunnel that provided an escape route.

But he hesitated. He could make a dash for it, possibly even reach his car. But he didn’t know what state Hellewell was in. He didn’t sound to be out of action, as he’d hoped. His powerful hands must have been reaching for the statue even as Crane began to topple it over. The damage could have been relatively light, maybe a bruised shoulder or a damaged arm. He was no longer making any noise.

Crane tried the door of the conservatory. It wasn’t locked, but controlled by a closing mechanism to ensure it wasn’t left open by mistake. The door to the house though, at the far end, was sure to be locked. He was certain Hellewell wouldn’t believe he’d go in the conservatory. He’d think he’d now be making for his car, by some circuitous route. He crept in, glad that hinges had been
kept well oiled. Maybe he could sit it out in here until he was sure Hellewell had gone off into the great rambling spread of land beyond the pool and the formal garden, then pick his time to make for his car and phone. He daren’t risk his torch again, but to the right of the door he located what seemed to be a rough wooden table against which leant garden tools. With a sigh of relief, he grasped something with a shaft and handle that had to be a spade or a fork. He was armed. But in seizing it he dislodged some other implement. It began a sliding fall then crashed on to what must have been a concrete floor. Hellewell’s torch instantly ignited from halfway along the tree-tunnel and he began to run towards the conservatory. Bent double, Crane scuttled along one of the narrow paths that cut its way past pulpy exotics, oppressively scented flowers and fronds of greenery that touched his forehead like moist hands. He crouched behind a dense screen of foliage towards the centre of the house of glass. He heard the clatter of what could only be the garden tools being swept aside, and then the grating sound of what seemed to be the table itself being dragged somewhere. He cursed. He’d be putting it in front of the door. He grunted with pain as he did so, but the statue clearly hadn’t done him any damage he couldn’t handle.