House of Bones (10 page)

“Well … I don't know,” said Courtney. “But all right, then. Go and take a look at the house if you want to. If Cleaty comes back, I'll tell him you're out with a client.”

“You believe us?”

“I don't know. But I've always thought there was something fishy about Mr Vane and his special list, and even if he hasn't been murdering people I'd like to know what it is.”

Abingdon Gardens was a quiet side street off the main Mitcham Road. While the rest of the area had been taken over by discount tyre companies and kebab restaurants and the pavements were cluttered with newspapers, Abingdon Gardens had retained most of its suburban gentility. The houses were
large redbrick family properties screened from the road by laurel bushes, and almost all of them had names like “Windermere” and “Ivanhoe” and “The Laurels”.

Number 112 was right at the very end, and much more neglected than any of the others. It had a
For Sale
sign outside, with the added instruction to “contact Mr Vane personally”. The laurels were overgrown and weeds sprouted up between the red and white tiles of the path.

“Perhaps we shouldn't do this,” said John. Now that they were actually here, he was beginning once again to feel that terrible sense of dread. Even on a warm summer day, this house had an atmosphere that was even more unwelcoming than 93 Madeira Terrace.

Lucy took a deep breath. He could see that she was just as frightened as he was. But she gave his hand a quick squeeze and said, “Come on. We have to. Nobody else is going to do it if we don't.”

John climbed out of the car. He waited until Lucy had joined him and then he went across the weedy grass and peered into the garage window. It was very dark inside, but he could just make out the shape of a large car, draped in tarpaulin.

“Look at this,” he said. “Who leaves their car behind when they move?”

“I don't know. What if they haven't moved?”

“You mean—”

“What if they're still in the house?”

“In the walls, you mean? Like Liam, and all those other people in Norbury?”

John stepped away from the garage and looked up at the house. “Perhaps we shouldn't do this,” he repeated. But he knew that they had to.

They tried to see in through the living-room windows. “Looks empty,” said Lucy.

John said, “We're going to have to tell somebody about Liam sooner or later.”

“I know. But not yet. Not until we can prove what happened to him. And this is the only way we can prove it.”

They made their way through long grass and brambles to the back garden. At the far end there was an overgrown strawberry bed and a tennis court with a sagging net. A stone Cupid had fallen on his side and a snail was leaving a silvery trail across his cheek. Most of the rear of the house was taken up by a conservatory. Inside they could see two or three frayed basketwork chairs and a row of earthenware pots containing black, shrivelled cacti.

John tried the conservatory door handle but it was locked. He stepped back into the garden and looked up at the first-floor windows. “Maybe I could try climbing up on to the conservatory roof and opening that small skylight.”

“Too dangerous,” said Lucy. “If you fell through that roof you could be killed.”

“Then how are we going to get in?”

They were still thinking when John thought he saw one of the upstairs curtains moving. Then – for a terrible split-second – he thought he saw a white face looking down at them.

“There's somebody in there!” he said, pointing up at the bedroom. “I saw them! There's definitely somebody in there! Run!”

Without any hesitation, they ran back through the weeds until they reached the front garden. Lucy had scratched her arm and it was beaded with blood.

“I saw a face,” John panted. “A really white, white face.”

“Perhaps it's a squatter, or a tramp or something.”

“I don't know. I didn't see it for long enough.”

Lucy held a handkerchief over her scratch. “So what do we do now?”

“Forget about it. Go back to the office.”

“No, come on. If it's only a squatter…”

“But supposing it isn't?”

“What else could it be?”

“I don't know,” said John. But he kept thinking about the calm, ivory-faced statue, and the man in the dark suit who had followed them up towards Brighton station.

Lucy took out her car keys and turned back to the car. But then she said, “No. This is stupid. We've come this far. We owe it to Liam.”

“Lucy, I don't want to go in there.”

“Well, I don't, either. But we could try ringing the doorbell first. Perhaps your white-faced man will come downstairs and answer it.”

John didn't say anything. He knew that Lucy was talking sense, but his reluctance to go back to the house was so strong that he didn't even know if his legs would take him up to the front door.

“Come on,” said Lucy, and together they walked up to the porch, although John kept his eyes on the first-floor windows. They remained empty, like the eyes of somebody who has forgotten their reason for living.

John reached out at arm's length and pressed the doorbell. They could hear the bell ringing somewhere in the house. They waited for a while, and then John rang again, and again. Still no reply. Still no sign of life.

“Perhaps you didn't see what you thought you saw,” Lucy suggested.

“It was a face, I'm sure of it.”

“Well, let's go round to the back and have another try. I don't think there's anybody here.”

They returned to the back garden and John pointed up to the window. “It was there. Only for a second.”

Lucy moved her head from side to side. “There
is
something. But I think it's just a reflection. There must be a dressing-table mirror in there, or
something like that. Look, it's oval-shaped. You could easily mistake it for a face.”

“I'm sure the curtain moved, too.”

“Oh, come on. We've both got the jitters, that's all.”

John shaded his eyes and looked up at it again. Lucy could be right. And after all, there was no sign at all that anybody was living here.

“The key's inside the conservatory door, still in the lock,” said Lucy. “I vote we break the glass.”

“That's breaking and entering.”

“No, it's not. It's an estate agent's security check. We just happened to be passing one of our company's properties and thought we saw an intruder. We broke in to make sure that our property wasn't being used by squatters.”

John suddenly remembered that Liam had come up with a similar excuse for breaking into 93 Madeira Terrace, and he felt a shiver of foreboding, as if they were repeating the opening lines of a play that always ended in the same horrific way.

Lucy dislodged a brick from the edge of the patio and handed it to him. Underneath, the brick was crawling with woodlice, and he had to knock it against the step to get them off.

Oh God
, he thought.
What if I break the window and the white-faced man comes after me? What if we get into the house and he traps us inside? What if
—

“
Hurry up
!” hissed Lucy.

Cautiously, John went up to the conservatory door. It was divided into six glass panels so at least he wouldn't have to smash it all. “Go on,” Lucy urged him. “Go on before anybody sees us.”

John hesitated for a few moments more. Then he swung back his arm and hit the window as hard as he could. It shattered with an ear-splitting crack that he was sure could be heard three miles away, and the glass fell to the conservatory floor like a carillon of sleigh-bells.

They waited to see if anybody had heard them, but the suburban noises went on just as before: children screaming in a playground, lawnmowers, the rattle of a distant train. John reached inside and turned the key and the conservatory door opened with a shudder.

They crossed the conservatory and tried the double doors that led to the sitting-room. “Locked again,” said John, rattling the door handles. Without a word, Lucy handed him the brick, and this time, he smashed the window with no hesitation at all.

The sitting-room was furnished with a huge, shapeless three-piece suite covered with dust-sheets. There was a brown tiled fireplace with a coal-effect electric fire, a tall mahogany standard-lamp with a mock-parchment shade and a magazine rack still stuffed with yellowing copies of the
Radio Times
.

One of the chairs must still have had some lumpy cushions on it, because it looked to John as if somebody was sitting in it, utterly motionless, concealed beneath the dust sheet. He watched it out of the corner of his eye as he walked across the room, in case he saw it move in and out to the rhythm of somebody's breathing.

He ventured into the dining-room while Lucy went into the kitchen. There was a hefty 1930s dining-table and a huge maple-veneered sideboard with a dusty octagonal mirror hanging above it. In the window stood a faded display of dried flowers and bracken.

“Anything?” he called out to Lucy.

“Not in the kitchen. But there's tins of peas and carrots in the larder, and a loaf of bread in the bread-bin that's practically turned to stone.”

John opened the drawer in the top of the sideboard. Inside, tarnished silver cutlery lay like a shoal of goldfish. Whoever had lived here had left almost everything behind. It was as if they had just walked out of their life and never returned.

As he closed the drawer, he thought he could see a reflection in the mirror of a dark, pale-faced figure standing in the hallway behind him. He was so frightened that he felt as if cold fingers were running down his back. He didn't even dare to turn around. Instead, he reached up with a trembling hand and wiped the dust from the
mirror so that he could see the apparition more clearly.

When he did so, however, it disappeared, and Lucy came in through the door as if there was nothing there at all.

“What's the matter?” she asked him.

“I saw it again. The statue.”

“Where?” she said, looking nervously around. “I didn't see anything.”

John pushed past her and went out in the hallway. He looked left and right, and then he looked upstairs. A weak light filtered through net curtains the colour of cold tea. “I saw it. I swear I did.”

“John, that statue was solid wood. It weighed a tonne. Nobody could carry it around even if they wanted to.”

“That's the point. It wasn't being carried around. It was alive.”

“
Alive
?”

“I saw it standing behind me. I swear it.”

Lucy said, “Enough, John. You're really letting this get to you.” But he could tell that – for all her reassurance – she was just as scared as he was.

“I swear to you I saw it. It was right there, standing in the hallway.”

“Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we'd better go.”

John said, “Wait.” A sudden thought had occurred to him and he went back into the sitting-
room. The chairs were all still covered by their dust sheets, and the lumpy one apparently undisturbed. Yet where else could the figure have gone so quickly?

John approached the chair with his heart beating hard.

“You don't think it's under
there
?” asked Lucy.

John was too frightened even to answer her. He bent down and took hold of the trailing edge of the dust sheet. He lifted it up a little way, and then he gave it a sharp sideways tug. Lucy squealed in terror, and John jumped back, stumbling against the arm of the sofa.

In the chair were two braided cushions, a rolled-up mat and an anglepoise desk lamp. Lucy pressed her hand over her heart in relief.

“Let's take a very quick look upstairs,” she said. “Then I think we'd better get out of here.”

John's instinct was to leave there and then, but he followed Lucy to the bottom of the stairs. They both looked up to the landing. On the walls were six or seven small landscape paintings, all of them depicting deserted heathland or rainswept mountains.

There was something infinitely depressing about these pictures, and John noticed that in each of them there was a small group of figures dressed in cloaks, like monks, and in some of them there was a tall dark figure with horns.

“Don't you just hate these pictures?” said Lucy, as she followed John up the stairs.

The stairs didn't creak, but John stopped halfway up to listen.

“Did you hear something?” he asked.

“An aeroplane, that's all.”

“No, it wasn't that. It was something like a really heavy blanket being
dragged
.”

Lucy listened, wide-eyed. “No … I didn't hear anything.”

John listened for a moment longer and then continued upstairs. They reached the landing and looked around. All of the bedroom doors were closed, and there was the dead, warm and airless smell of a closed-up house in summer.

John opened the first door on the right. It swung back silently and swiftly, almost as if somebody were opening it from the inside. The room was in semi-darkness because the curtains were drawn. It was wallpapered with florid pink flowers. He could see the end of a bed covered in a brown candlewick bedspread, and an upright wooden chair. “Nothing,” he said, and he was just about to close the door again when Lucy pointed and whispered, “
Look
.”

“What?” he said. “I can't see anything.”

“Down by the bedside table.
There
.”

John frowned into the gloom and then he saw what Lucy was pointing at. At first he had thought
it was just another flower on the wallpaper, but as his eyes focused he saw what it really was.

A human skull, half-buried in the wall, its eye-sockets revealing nothing but wallpaper, its mouth stretched wide as if it were screaming at them.

John pushed the door open a little wider and stepped into the room. He bent down a respectful distance from the skull and peered at it intently. “That's horrible. It's not very big, is it? It must be a woman or a child.”