House of Bones (11 page)

“This looks like a child's bedroom, doesn't it?” said Lucy. “A little girl's probably. Oh God, do you think that could be
her
?”

“This is the proof we've been looking for,” said John. “I bet all of the properties on Mr Vane's special list are the same. People come to live in them and the houses suck them in.”

“Yes, but who would want to come and live here? Not with something like
this
in the wall.”

John felt very grim. “Don't worry,” he told her.
“I expect Mr Vane gives his properties the onceover before he shows anybody around. But I wonder why this skull is sticking out like this?”

Lucy said, “That poor little girl. I hope she didn't suffer.”

John thought of Liam's last desperate appeal for help as he was sucked into the wall, but said nothing.

Lucy knelt down close to the skull. Then she suddenly said, “Look at this. Look what she's got round her neck.”

John came closer. Now he could see that looped around the base of the skull was a small silver crucifix on a silver chain. The wall had taken her in as far as that but no further.

They heard more noises. A creak, and then a sound like a door being very carefully closed. “We'd better go now,” said Lucy. “We've got to think what we're going to do next.”

“Call the police, of course, as soon as we can. But let's make sure that we stay around here until they come. We don't want the evidence destroyed this time.”

They left the bedroom. Lucy locked the door and dropped the key into John's coat pocket.

They reached the top of the stairs and were just starting to go down them when John heard the dragging noise again. He stopped, and gripped Lucy's shoulder. “There – you must have heard it that time.”

“I don't know. It sounded like—”

She stopped, with her mouth open. Around the corner in the corridor appeared the tall, dark figure with its pale ivory face. But even though it still had the same frightening calmness, it was no longer the lifeless wooden statue that John had found on the bed. It moved towards them gracefully and swiftly, almost
gliding
rather than walking, its eyes unblinking, its face handsome and serene. As it moved, it was accompanied by the soft dragging noise that they had heard before: its cloak-hem, sweeping the floor.

For a long, long second, John didn't know how to move his arms or legs. Then Lucy made a peculiar noise, a kind of choked-up whimper of absolute fear, and the two of them hurtled down the stairs as fast as they could. Behind them they heard soft, leaping footsteps, as if the statue were coming down the stairs four and five at a time.

“
Open the door! Open the door
!” Lucy squealed, as John struggled with the unfamiliar lock. He managed to open it, but the door jarred on a safety chain and he had to shut it again so that he could slide the chain free. At that moment the statue caught hold of him and threw him against the door. John dropped to the floor, stunned and winded.

Lucy managed to wrestle open the door but the statue seized it and banged it shut. Lucy screamed and tried to dodge out of its way, but it caught hold
of her wrist and held her tight, staring into her face with the same terrible lack of emotion. John managed to drag himself on to his feet, coughing and whining for breath. He lifted the heavy walking-stick out of the umbrella-stand, gripped it in both hands and struck the statue across the side of the head. The walking-stick snapped in half, but the statue released Lucy's wrist and turned back to John.

“
Run
!” John shouted, and Lucy ran – through the sitting-room and into the conservatory. John tried to duck and feint his way around the statue, but the figure was much too quick for him. It never blinked and it seemed to be able to anticipate every move he made.

It glided nearer and nearer, one hand raised as if it intended to take him by the throat. John backed into the corner and tripped against the umbrella stand.

“
John
!” shrilled Lucy, and as she did so, one of the earthenware cactus pots came flying through the air and hit the statue right in the back, exploding into fragments. The statue turned its head, and as it did so John rolled across the floor, staggered on to his feet, and ran after Lucy as if all the demons in hell were after him.

They sprinted through the weeds to the front of the house. Brambles snatched against John's shirtsleeves as if they were trying to catch him.
They ran out of the front gate and jumped into Lucy's car, and they were halfway down Abingdon Gardens before the pale-faced figure appeared outside the house, watching them drive away.

“I told you,” John gasped. There was a wide crimson bruise on his left cheekbone. “I
told
you it was there.”

“Well, you didn't expect me to
believe
you, did you? Statues can't come to life.”

“This one has. And not only that, it was waiting for us. It was waiting for us in Brighton and it was waiting for us here.”

“It couldn't have been,” said Lucy. “No one knew that we were coming here, only us.”

“It couldn't have been a coincidence, though, could it?”

“How should I know? This whole thing is scaring me to death.” Lucy was so upset that she could hardly drive straight, and when they reached the Mitcham Road junction she changed gear with a hideous grinding noise.

“Do you think Mr Vane has guessed what we're doing?” asked John.

“I don't see how. Not unless Courtney's told him, and Courtney wouldn't tell.”

“Well – I know this sounds mad – but if the statue can come to life, perhaps the statue told him.”

“
What
?”

“We found the statue when we broke into 66 Mountjoy Avenue, didn't we? It looked as if it was made of wood, but perhaps it could still see us and hear us.”

“But if Mr Vane knows what we're doing, why doesn't he just warn us off, or sack us?”

“I'm not sure. Perhaps it's too late for that. We've found out too much already. I think he wants to get rid of us completely. You know –” and he drew his finger across his throat.

“In that case, it's definitely time to call the police.”

“I don't know. I'm not so sure any more. If Mr Vane knows what we're doing, he's going to make sure that he gets rid of all the evidence, isn't he? And what kind of people do you think the police are going to think we are if we tell them that we're being hunted down by a wooden statue? That's right, nutters.”

“Then what can we do? We can't go back to the office.”

“Of course we can. Mr Vane can't murder us in broad daylight, can he? And if he openly warns us to stay away from the houses on his special list, that's an admission that he knows we've been to see them, and why.” He gave a last look back along Abingdon Gardens. “No – we don't have to be frightened of going back to the office. What we have to watch out for is that statue.”

Lucy said, “I still can't understand how it came to life – how it was waiting for us. It's so scary I don't even want to think about it.”

Back in the office Mr Cleat was in a strange, agitated mood. As soon as John and Lucy walked in he said, “Ah!” and beckoned them over to his desk.

“Something wrong?” asked Lucy.

“Not exactly,” said Mr Cleat. “But Mr Vane has expressed some concern about the increasing amount of time that some of you are spending out of the office without a corresponding rise in property sales.”

“We can't
force
people to buy houses,” Lucy protested.

“Obviously not. But Mr Vane wants to make sure that you keep your mind on what you're doing.”

John glanced at Lucy. If that wasn't a veiled warning for them to keep away from Mr Vane's special list houses, he didn't know what was.

That evening they had to stay late to finish their weekly rearrangement of the houses in the office window, so Lucy asked John if he'd like to go for a drink at The Feathers across the road, where Courtney was already waiting. She reached out for his hand as they crossed the road and he grasped it firmly as he helped her through the traffic. She couldn't stand men with damp or floppy hands, she
had told him. Shaking hands with Cleaty was like fondling a fillet of haddock.

Courtney was at the bar, talking to two rival estate agents – a man with a clipped moustache and a clipped accent to go with it, and a woman in a violent red dress who smoked incessantly and smelled as if she had tipped a whole bottle of perfume over herself.

Courtney made his excuses and led John and Lucy over to a corner table. It was early, so the pub wasn't too crowded, and there was nobody near to overhear what they were saying.

“So what happened at Abingdon Gardens?” asked Courtney. “Is that where you got those bruises?”

John nodded. “I know this is going to sound as if we're bonkers, but I swear it's the truth.” He told Courtney everthing that had happened at Mountjoy Avenue and at Abingdon Gardens that morning. At first Courtney started to smile and shake his head, especially when John told them about the statue, but Lucy reached out and touched his hand and gave him a look which meant
it really happened, all of it
.

Courtney said, “I'll tell you something, this is all very hard to believe. No wonder you haven't told the police.”

“It's true, Courtney,” said Lucy. “On my life, it's all absolutely true.”

“Do you think you're going to be safe? I mean, if Mr Vane's got this statue-thing coming after you…”

“We don't really have any proof that Mr Vane sent it. But so far we've only seen it when we've been visiting Mr Vane's houses. It could be a kind of guardian, you know. A watchdog. Something he uses to keep away unwelcome visitors.”

“Oh, come on,” said Courtney. “It has to be a guy in fancy dress.”

Lucy emphatically shook her head. “You wouldn't say that if you saw it.”

“So how does it know where to find you? And how does it get from house to house? Unless there are more than one of them.”

Lucy shrugged. “We really don't know. I'm not sure that we really want to find out. But I think we're going to have to.”

“Why?” asked Courtney. “Can't you just give Mr Vane's houses a very wide berth? The police are investigating all those old bones in the Norbury house and the odds must be that they'll find
some
way of connecting them to Mr Vane.”

“It's more personal than old bones,” said Lucy. “Go on, tell him, John.” And John, with his eyes fixed on the table, one hand endlessly rotating a beer mat, told Courtney all about Liam. By the time he had finished they were all in tears.

“I have to go away and think about this,” said Courtney. “This has come as such a shock.”

“I just didn't know what to do,” John told him.

Courtney said, “You should have come to me before. If the three of us go to the police they're bound to believe us. They're bound to look into it, anyway.”

“But what if they can't find anything?”

“Forget it, John. This isn't something we can handle on our own. Let's sleep on it tonight. Then we can have a meeting in the office in the morning and decide what we're going to say to the CID.”

“All right,” John agreed, and gave Lucy's hand another non-damp, non-floppy squeeze.

It was dark by the time they left the pub. Lucy said, “Come on, John, I'll give you a lift. It'll take you ages to get home on the bus.”

They drove southwards through the crowded evening traffic. “Are you glad we told Courtney?” Lucy asked him.

John said, “Yes. But I'm still worried that Mr Vane's going to get away with it. When you think of all the people who must have gone missing over the years – all of them sucked into those houses – and yet there's Mr Vane walking around free, a respected member of the community.”

They turned into John's street and drove towards his house. His father's old B-reg Morris Marina was parked outside under the streetlight. “Just stop behind it,” said John, unfastening his seat-belt and preparing to get out.

“Hold on a minute,” said Lucy, as she switched off the engine. “There's somebody standing outside your house.”

John looked up and frowned. He hadn't noticed until now that there was a tall, dark figure waiting in the shadow of their privet hedge.

“I wasn't
expecting
anybody,” said John.

But then the figure took one step forward out of the shadows and he saw who it was. Or rather,
what
it was.

“
Go
!” he shouted to Lucy, slamming the car door shut. “
Go
! It's him! He's been waiting for us!”

Lucy twisted the key in the ignition and the starter-motor whinnied and whinnied but at last it caught. She tugged the gearstick into reverse and skidded away backwards, just as the statue pummelled the bonnet of her car with its fists.

“
Faster
!” John yelled at her, and the Metro snaked wildly down the road with its transmission whining. Lucy tried to turn the car around so that she could drive away forwards, but as she did so she collided with a parked van, which jolted John so hard that he knocked his head against the window. Lucy wrestled the gearstick into first, but when she tried to drive away the tyres spun on the roadway with an acrid smell of burned rubber and they didn't move at all.

John twisted around in his seat. “Your bumper's locked!” he yelled at her. Only metres away, the
statue was coming towards them with one arm lifted, its face expressionless.

John opened his door and hurried around to the back of the car. The Metro's rear bumper was caught beneath the van's front wing. He tried kicking it free but he couldn't dislodge it. He looked up and the statue had almost reached them.

“When I say ‘hit it!' – put your foot down!” John shouted.