The House on Cold Hill (31 page)

‘Like you, Dad. I thought it was you. He said we should all have left, but it’s too late now.’

He hugged her again. ‘Is that how you feel?’

Jade shook her head. ‘I like it here now. This is where we belong.’

‘We do, don’t we?’

‘We do,’ she nodded, then moments later was fast asleep, standing up in his arms.

Gently, he eased her onto the sofa, beside Caro, who sleepily pulled the duvet over her daughter and put a protective arm round her.

Ollie lay down again on the other sofa, with the light on, listening to his wife and his daughter sleeping. Thinking again, as he had earlier. Full of guilt for bringing them into this.

What a sodding mess.

Ghosts.

Bruce Kaplan had no problem with ghosts.

Hopefully, after tomorrow, he would not either. There would be no ghosts here any more. Benedict Cutler would deal with them.

Lay Lady Matilda finally to rest.

And then they could get on with their lives.

It was going to be fine. Really it was. Exorcisms here might not have worked in the past, but hey, the past was another country, wasn’t that what they said? This was today, 2015. Peeps felt different about stuff, as Jade might say.

And this was their dream home. You had to try to live your dreams. Too many people went to their graves with their dreams still inside them. And that was not going to happen to him. Life presented you, constantly, with idiots. But, just very occasionally, if you opened yourself up to the opportunities, life presented you with magic, too.

They mustn’t lose the dream. He would make this house safe and happy for Jade and Caro. Somehow. They’d find a way. It would begin tomorrow. This house was magic. He listened to his daughter and his wife breathing. The two people who meant more to him than anything else on earth.

The two people on this planet he would die for.

52

Monday, 21 September

The Monday-morning traffic into London was shit, with the M25 and then the Edgware Road clogged, and it was almost midday when Ollie finally arrived at the swanky Maida Vale premises of Charles Cholmondley Classic Motors.

As he pulled into one of the velvet-roped visitor parking bays, he stared, covetously, at the array of cars behind the tall glass wall of the showroom. A 1970s Ferrari, a Bugatti Veyron, a 1950s Bentley Continental Fastback, a 1960s Aston Martin DB4 Volante and a 1960s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. All of them gleamed, as spotless and immaculate as if they’d spent all their years wrapped in cotton wool and had not yet been exposed to a road.

On the way here he had managed to speak to his builder’s foreman, frustrated that his calls yesterday hadn’t been returned, and asked him, urgently, to have someone climb in through the tiny window to see what was there between the blue and yellow bedrooms, and left another voicemail for his plumber to investigate the sudden dampness of the walls in their bedroom. Then he spent twenty minutes on the phone trying to pacify Bhattacharya. He wasn’t sure he had succeeded, although the restaurateur had at least accepted the possibility of a malicious hacker – albeit one malicious to Ollie, not to himself. Someone with a grievance against Ollie, he told him. Very unfortunate, but was he willing to take the risk of someone whom Ollie had upset damaging his own business? He told Ollie he would think about it.

Seated in Cholmondley’s oak-panelled office, which was adorned with silver models of classic cars and framed photographs of exotic car advertisements from decades ago, overlooking the showroom floor, the discussion did not go so well. The car dealer himself was the very model of unctuous charm. He gave a reasoned explanation as to why he was not going to pay his bill, accompanied by expansive arm movements, and periodic flashes of his starched white double cuffs and gold links. However, he told Ollie, if he was prepared to waive this bill, in lieu of damages caused, he would be prepared to consider retaining his services going forward.

Leaving Maida Vale shortly after 1.00 p.m., having been offered neither tea, coffee nor water, Ollie was parched and starving. He’d barely eaten a thing yesterday, and he’d only managed to swallow a couple of mouthfuls of cereal for breakfast today. His nerves were jangling, his stomach felt like it was full of writhing snakes, and he was feeling light-headed from lack of sugar.

He pulled onto a garage forecourt, filled up with diesel, then bought himself a ham sandwich, a KitKat, and a Coke. He returned to his car and sat, listening to the news on the radio, while he ate.

The traffic was better than earlier but still heavy, the rain not helping, and it would be touch and go whether he made it to Jade’s school in time to pick her up. He decided to ignore the route the satnav was suggesting, which would put him outside the school ten minutes late, and short-cut his way down through Little Venice, White City and then Hammersmith, and cross the Thames there.

Suddenly his phone rang. He saw it was Bryan Barker. ‘Hi, Ollie, sorry I didn’t call you back yesterday, we’d gone over to my sister in Kent and I left my phone behind. How was your weekend?’

‘I’ve had better.’

‘Wish I could give you some good news now to cheer you up, but I’m afraid every time we look behind anything at the house, we find another problem.’

‘So what’s the latest doom and gloom?’

‘There are some nasty-looking cracks around the base of the tower, below your office – we’ve only found them since chipping away some of the rendering.’

‘What’s causing them?’

‘Well, it could just be slight movements of the earth – changes in the water table, the soil beneath drying out. Or it could be subsidence.’

‘Subsidence?’ Ollie said, knowing full well what that would entail. Cripplingly expensive underpinning. ‘Why didn’t this show up on the survey?’

‘Well, I’m looking at the relevant section of the survey now. It warned of possible movement but inspection wasn’t possible without removing some of the rendering. It says they brought this to your attention and you told them to leave it.’

‘Great!’ Ollie said, gloomily. ‘Just one thing after another after another.’

‘Should have bought yourselves a nice little brand-new bungalow if you wanted an easy life!’ Barker said.

‘Yeah, great.’ Ollie concentrated on the road for a second. He used to know this part of London well – his first job was for a small IT company down the skanky end of Ladbroke Grove, on the fringe of Notting Hill – and he cycled everywhere then. He drove along with the canal on his right.

‘Oh, and another thing,’ Barker said. ‘That window you asked us to take a look through – there’s a bit of a problem.’

‘What?’

‘I climbed up this morning – we put two ladders together – but I couldn’t see in – there are metal bars blocking out the light.’

‘Metal bars? Like a prison cell?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So is it a room?’

‘I don’t know – we’d either have to cut away the bars or go in through a wall.’

‘How long are you going to be there today, Bryan?’

‘I’ve got to leave early today – I’ve got a site visit to make, and it’s Jasmin’s birthday – I’ll be in big trouble if I’m late!’

‘I’ve asked the plumber, but if you have time could you also take a look in our bedroom? I think we may have a serious damp problem there.’

‘OK – and you’ll be at the house in the morning?’

‘Yes, I’ll be working from home all day.’

Ollie ended the call and drove on, immersed in his thoughts. At least he had a resolution, of a kind, with Cholmondley. He was going to have to accept the bastard’s deal, he knew, because it was still a gateway to other classic car dealers. And he had a lot of damage limitation ahead with the other dealers who’d been copied in on the vile email that had gone to Cholmondley. With luck, Bhattacharya could be salvaged. And tonight the vicar and Benedict Cutler were coming.

He had a good feeling about that.

Fortinbrass seemed a very human man, concerned and interested. He and Benedict Cutler would help them clear whatever malevolence was in the house. It was 2015, for God’s sake. Ghosts might have terrified people in past centuries, but not any more. This evening was high noon for any spectral guests at Cold Hill House.

The thought made him smile. He was nearing Gatwick airport on the M23, in heavy rain, and was only about twenty-five minutes now from Jade’s school. He would get there with a good ten minutes or more to spare. He leaned forward and switched channels to Radio Sussex. He liked listening to the Alison Ferns afternoon show.

The three o’clock news came on and he turned the volume up a little. The announcer, in his sombre, clear, unemotional BBC voice, stated there was more controversy over the wildcat French industrial action in Calais causing further Eurostar cancellations. There were fresh airstrikes against an ISIS stronghold. A family doctor was questioning the effectiveness of flu vaccinations. Then, suddenly, Ollie stiffened as he heard:

‘Two people who died today when their Volkswagen Golf was in a head-on collision with a lorry, on the B2112 Haywards Heath to Ardingly road, were named as Brighton solicitor Caroline Harcourt and her daughter Jade.’

53

Monday, 21 September

Ollie swerved off onto the hard shoulder and slammed on his brakes, switching on the hazard lights, the wipers clouting away the raindrops. He sat for a moment, drenched in perspiration, his entire body pounding. The Range Rover rocked in the slipstream of a lorry that thundered past, too close, inches away from his wing mirror, as he stabbed Caro’s direct line on his speed-dial button.

It rang once, twice, three times.

‘Answer, please answer, please, please, please, darling.’

Then, with an immense surge of relief, he heard her voice, the professional tone she always adopted when at work. ‘Hi, Ols, I’m with a client at the moment – can I call you back in a while?’

‘You’re OK?’ he gasped.

‘Yes, thank you very much. I’ll be about half an hour.’

‘Jade’s not with you?’

‘I thought you were picking her up from school?’

‘Yes – yes – yes, I am. Call me when you can.’

Another lorry rocked the car.

Had he imagined it?

He must have. Unless, he thought with growing terror, it was another time-slip. Something he had seen that had not yet happened? More evidence that he was going insane?

But he wouldn’t let Caro drive the Golf, nor take Jade anywhere, not for a few days, not until he was absolutely certain he’d just imagined this.

He checked his mirror, accelerated and pulled out onto the inside lane. He was still shaking uncontrollably, perspiration running down the back of his neck.

He didn’t calm down until he saw Jade trotting out of the school gates, rucksack on her back, cheerily chatting with a group of friends. She headed over towards him and climbed up into the car.

‘How was your day, lovely?’

She shrugged, pulling on her seat belt. ‘Mr Simpson was really annoying.’

‘Your music teacher? I thought you liked him.’

She shrugged again. ‘I do, but he can be sooooooo annoying!’

He smiled. But, inside him, a storm was still raging.

When they arrived home shortly before 4.00 p.m., the rain had eased to a light drizzle. The only trade vehicle parked outside the house was the plumber’s black van. As Jade went up to her room, Michael Maguire came out of the kitchen, his face grimy.

‘Ah, Lord Harcourt!’ he greeted him.

‘What did you discover about the bedroom walls, Mike?’

Maguire shook his head. ‘A mystery.’

‘But they’re damp, right? Where’s it coming from – upstairs again?’

‘They’re hardly damp – a tiny bit, I suppose – enough to loosen the old wallpaper paste.’

‘A
tiny
bit? They were sopping wet last night. We had to move down to the drawing room and sleep on the sofas.’

The plumber shook his head again, looking baffled. ‘We’ll go up there, if you like?’

Ollie followed him up the stairs, and into their bedroom. He went over to each wall in turn, laying the palm of his hand flat against the paper, and across to where the strips had fallen. Maguire was right. The walls felt almost bone dry. ‘I don’t understand – they were sopping in the middle of the night. They can’t just have dried out, it’s been raining all day.’

‘I spoke to Bryan Barker earlier,’ Maguire said. ‘He’s got a meter for measuring damp, and we’ll do some checks tomorrow if I get time. Got a busy day – the new boiler’s arriving first thing. You won’t have any hot water for a few hours, but I’ll make sure it’s all up and running by the evening.’

‘Do you have a sledgehammer?’ Ollie asked, suddenly.

‘A
sledgehammer
?’ Maguire looked surprised.

‘Yes.’

‘Planning to crack a nut, are you?’

‘Something like that.’ Ollie gave him a weak smile.

‘I’ve seen one lying around . . .’ The plumber frowned, pensively. ‘I think there’s one down in the cellar.’

‘Great, thanks.’

Ollie stared around at the two bare patches of wall which the paper had fallen from, and several other places where it had begun to peel. He walked around the room as he had done in the middle of the night, placing the palm of his hand against the wall.

Maguire was right. The dampness of the middle of the night had gone.

How?

But he had a bigger worry at this moment. He perched on the edge of the bed, pulled out his phone and went to the
Argus
online, which carried the latest Sussex newsfeeds. He searched down through them for Traffic. There was a three-car accident on the A27 at Southwick which had happened an hour ago. A pedestrian was in critical condition after being struck by a van near the Clock Tower in central Brighton at midday. An elderly man had been cut out of an overturned car at the Gatwick intersection of the A23 earlier in the day.

No fatalities.

No mother and daughter in a collision with a lorry.

His mind playing with him again?

Or a deadly time-slip?

The two cats, Bombay and Sapphire, came into the room, and both in turn nuzzled against him.