The Ties That Bind (33 page)

He sensed the presence behind him a second too late. The blow was low on the back of his skull. It flung a hot bolt of pain throughout his body, felt for an instant and followed by darkness.

Chapter 49

The second – or was it third? – time he came back into consciousness, the rank damp smell was overlaid by the sugary tang of his own urine. It cooled on his jeans, turning his internal thermostat from cold to freezing. He was thirsty, beyond thirsty, he was only thirst. The cloth that stuffed his mouth had swollen and scoured his tongue, and it tickled his gag reflex. He was ignorant now of surrounding and circumstance. His brain was loose in his skull and felt as though it might fall through the crack in the back of his head. The ropes at his wrists and ankles burned like acid.

Think. Remember.
Think
.

Pain chopped fact, notion and remembrance into fragments and tumbled them like shards of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope. Memories came to him in disordered flashes. A deep foreign voice telling him that Jasper Patten was dead. Digging in the flowerbed. Running along the seafront. In which direction, from where to where?

Think. Remember.
Try
.

Sandy. He had been running from Temperance Place to Disraeli Square, but why?

Try
.

The garish colours of a pizza menu. A ringing phone. Sandy, crying. Grand’s car outside her house. The narrative of Luke’s recollections began to coalesce but it had a dreamlike quality that he did not quite trust. It felt like he was watching someone else check the wardrobes, try all the doors, thunder down the stairs and . . .

He knew exactly where he was. The certainty of it shot adrenaline through him, jerking him as upright as his bonds would allow. The knowledge did not satisfy him but unsettled him further; there was something else, lodged deeper in his memory than he could access. Why did he keep thinking about metal, about bronze and brass, a tiny spinning silver disc? He was weak with the effort of thought but his brain was broken. If the pain made recall difficult, thought and theory were impossible.

Somewhere overhead a door creaked, then another. There was the flick of a switch and light shone through the hood, painting the inside of his eyelids red. Luke froze in his restraints, afraid even to shiver. It was only the faltering tread that recalled to him the rickety staircase and its rope rail. Then there were hands pulling at the hood – which, he now realised as the section that covered his glasses came peeling away, was a length of material that had been stuffed into his mouth and then wrapped around his head like the bindings on a mummy. He found himself staring straight at the bulb and went blind. He screwed his eyelids closed but not before a violet blob, the shape of a pear-drop, branded itself on his retinas and began to float repeatedly from right to left.

He could not see his saviour but he would know her scent anywhere; a combustible blend of Elnett hairspray and cigarettes. He was torn between relief that Sandy was unhurt, gratitude that she had come back to save him and exasperation that she had put herself in danger to do so. She continued to fumble with the scarf, as though looking for the end. When she found it, she pulled it swiftly away. The cloth that had packed his mouth was ripped from his throat, bringing with it skin from the insides of his cheeks and his tongue.

‘Sandy, thank God you’re OK,’ he said, or tried to say, but the words came out in a long desiccated croak that scratched his throat and split his lips. The salty metallic taste of blood caused saliva to flood his mouth, restoring speech. He tried again. ‘We need to leave, get somewhere safe. Help me.’

He risked opening his eyes. A parade of light-bulb blobs continued to march across his vision. Long fingernails nudged his askew glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, and a paper-soft palm cupped his face.

‘Oh,
Luke
,’ she said. The lack of urgency in her voice was maddening. Now was not the time for comfort. He had to get out of this hole and they could run to safety – even if they could just both get into the open sanctuary of the square.

‘Undo me,’ he said. ‘They’ll be back any minute.’ He looked down and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His legs, pinned behind his back, seemed to disappear at the knee. It was only an optical illusion but it was sickening nonetheless.

‘Didn’t I
tell
you that if you got involved with Joss Grand you’d end up in a mess?’

So she knew. The parallel columns he had gone to so much trouble to keep apart had toppled and crashed into each other. If Sandy knew that he had been talking to Grand, did it follow that Grand knew the extent of his involvement with Sandy?

‘I don’t know what he’s told you but it’s going to be all right, as long as we get out of here now. I got the whole thing on record. Well, not the bit about you,’ Luke began, ‘but I got him to confess to killing Nye. It’s all on my . . . oh.’ His guts dropped as he realised that they had his phone.

‘Why couldn’t you just leave it alone, you stupid boy?’ He couldn’t blame her for being angry. It was far from ideal that she had found out this way, so much sooner than he wanted, and from Grand. Right. OK. Well. It wasn’t the end of the world now he had the confession, not if she could get him out in time. There was much to discuss, and he would have to give the apology of his life afterwards. But not
now
, for fuck’s sake.

‘Look, we can go over this later. Sandy, can you undo these knots, or cut them? We need to go. They’ll be back.’

She took her hand away from his cheek and sat back on her heels. Why wasn’t she helping him?

‘Luke, I’m sorry. It’s gone too far. I
can’t
. I tried to warn you.’

‘Jesus, Sandy,’ said Luke. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t
want
to get me out of here.’ He had meant it as a joke and scanned her face as he waited for an answering laugh or at least a denial, but none came. He hacked his way through thickening terror. ‘Please don’t tell me you put me here,’ he said, suppressing manic laughter at the ridiculous image the words conjured, of Sandy giving him a fireman’s lift down the steps. The only other way for her to get him onto the cellar floor would have been to throw him, and sore as he was, he did not think he had the broken limbs or ribs that an eight-foot drop to concrete would have caused. Something scuttled and scratched behind the bricks of the wall.

‘Come on, Sandy, tell me I’m being paranoid.’ He could hear the lack of conviction in his own voice. ‘Sandy?’

She did not answer him, only checked her watch and looked up at the top of the staircase as though she was waiting for someone. Luke followed her gaze, not knowing who he expected to see. The doorway was a perfect oblong of white light, but in the absence of a figure, Luke’s attention snagged on a reflective surface just inside the door. The silver disc spinning in his mind matched the one on the wall, and he saw now with perfect recall the little plaque that was above it. He spoke before he had time to guess, his voice breaking on every word.

‘Sandy, this is a Joss Grand house.’

Still the denial he wanted did not come. She didn’t take her eyes off the doorway. A new and monstrous idea hit Luke like a train on a level crossing. Sandy was here not behind Grand’s back but with his permission, with his
blessing
. Far from widening the divide between the old enemies, by double-crossing both of them he had somehow united them. He could not say why, but it made sense. It made sense of Sandy’s reluctance to free him and it made sense of how he had got down here. She could not have tied him up like this, but Grand knew how, and had someone close by who could knock Luke out and carry him down those steps as easily as if he had been a child.

Chapter 50

The pain of talking made words as precious as water in cupped hands, each one a drop he couldn’t afford to spill.

‘Sandy, are you waiting for Grand?’

‘Oh Luke, do keep up,’ she said briskly, not even bothering to turn her head his way. ‘I haven’t spoken to Joss Grand in over a decade. He doesn’t know you’re here. He’ll be up on Dyke Road in his slippers at the moment. Jesus, he’s the
last
person I want to know you’re here.’

Luke’s new theory was washed away, leaving in its ebb a greater confusion that drove the breath from his body.

‘But he’s . . . is he your landlord?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t
rent
the house. Joss and I have an understanding. He lets me have it in return for my continued silence.’

There was a five-second time lag, then understanding punched him in the guts.

‘Are you
blackmailing
him?’

She pouted like a child. ‘Blackmail implies that I don’t deserve it. You can’t tell me he didn’t owe me.’

It was all too much. A small weak part of him longed to give in to the exhaustion battering at his door.

‘But . . . Sandy, how
could
you blackmail him?’ he rasped. ‘He threatened your family. He
terrified
you. And even if he hadn’t, it would have been your word against his.’

‘Not quite,’ she said. She stood up – he heard the bones in her knees crunch – and began to shuttle back and forth across the cellar floor. Her pacing heels click-click-clicked on the concrete floor, a metronome tick that lent her babbling voice a kind of poetry. ‘Do you know, I’m usually quite a ladylike drinker. I know I drink too much, but I don’t get
messy
, not like the young girls today. I can count the number of times I’ve been sick through drink on two fingers.’

Her ankles were in his eyeline. Their rhythmic to-and-fro was dizzying. ‘The first was the night on the pier. The second one was when you came over waving your bottle. I hadn’t been that pissed since I was a girl and I got ill at just the right moment. I like to think it was my subconscious saving me from myself.’

‘Sandy, stop talking in riddles.’

Click, click, click. ‘I was this close to telling you what happened to the glasses. This close.’ She held the thumb and forefinger of her right hand an inch apart and came to a standstill above Luke. She was silent for a handful of heartbeats, appearing to consider something. When she spoke again, there was a chilling lightness to her voice. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in you knowing
now
. I can say
anything
now.’

Luke’s skin became slick with hot sweat as he realised why she was speaking so unguardedly. Not friendship this time, not trust, not drink. She had the careless tongue of someone who knows that their witness would soon be silenced for ever. She wouldn’t. She
couldn’t
. Not to him. Not to a friend. An icy sluice of panic was quickly chased by a warm feeling of acceptance – no,
surrender
– and a dangerous comfort stole over him.

‘When I told you the story of what I saw on the West Pier that night, I didn’t tell you all of it. Do you remember, I told you that his driver threw his glasses into the sea?’

He tried to nod.

‘Well, that did happen, but so quickly that he didn’t see what
I
saw. One of the lenses skidded across and landed right under the toe of my shoe. When they were looking at Jacky’s body, I bent down and picked it up, then I wrapped it in my headscarf and put it in my pocket. I’ve kept it to this day. I’m the only person who’s got the one thing that puts Grand at the scene of the crime. His lens – his prescription, probably his fingerprints as well – matching the glass in Jacky Nye’s hand and covered in his blood. You’ve virtually touched it. My heart was in my mouth.’

She was animated now, unable to disguise her joy at finally playing her trump card. His throat hurt too much to talk, so he looked the question at her.

‘It’s part of my museum. Rolled up in silk in a little drawer. You fingered the scarf like you were going to pull it out and contaminate it all. I was ready to snatch your hand away. I aged a decade and then you went for the one with the diaphragm instead.’

Luke tried to remember the incident. He tried to recreate in retrospect some kind of tingle or fizz that should have told him what he was up close to, but he couldn’t even remember a scarf. Was it another of Sandy’s delusions? Everything now was branded with betrayal and lies and he no longer knew which were deliberate and which were not.

Doubt came out in an amphibian croak. ‘Sandy, I don’t even know whether to believe you any more.’

‘I wouldn’t lie about this!’

Indignation creased her face, and in answer she turned on her heel and began to climb the stairs, unsteadily at first, heels catching on the slats. She was his captor, no longer his friend, and might yet become his killer but still he cried out, ‘Don’t leave me!’

He thought he saw her hesitate before closing the door behind her.

Alone in the freezing cellar, Luke tried to keep his one-fingered hold on consciousness by making an inventory of everything he could see. It was an effort; images were smudged even through his glasses, a strange wavy blur that was different to the soft-focus of dirty lenses. A folded blanket leaned next to a crumbling wall. It was probably sodden with mildew but still he craved what warmth it might give. A rodent skeleton crouched at its base. There was some smokeless fuel and a bag of plaster that had presumably been used for the bad repair job on the crumbling far wall. Damp pervaded everything; Luke watched the spots and splashes of mould that smeared the whitewash to form figures and faces that swam in and out of definition. He awoke again to find her back, two fingertips closing in on his neck as though about to check his pulse. The relief in her face must have reflected the surprise in his.

‘Gave me a fright there,’ she murmured. The tenderness was a chink in the armour of her madness and he seized upon it.

‘Sandy, this isn’t you.
Please
, can you at least loosen my wrists? I’m desperate here.’

She gave no sign of having heard him. She kneeled down next to him and unfurled a scarf with a garish geometric print. The fabric fell to the floor where it puddled next to the coarse cotton strip that had recently bound his own head. With the scarf covering her fingertips she held up to the light a dull greasy pebble of glass, gazing in wonder like it was a raw diamond. Those thin black lines that threaded its surface must be dried blood, decades old. Jacky Nye’s blood. Luke gave a reverential shiver.