Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

‘It’s a lot bigger than it looks, isn’t it?’ said Amy, hoping to strike a down-to-earth note, willing Gran to snap back to her normal self.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Gran was holding Amy’s arm. ‘This is the room I told you about.’

Amy said, ‘But there’s a bolt on the door.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gran, and gave Amy a push so hard it sent her stumbling forward. She half fell, knocking over an old gramophone, but before she could scramble to her feet, Gran had pushed her flat to the ground and was twisting her hands behind her back and tying something round them. Amy fought and kicked out, but Gran was frighteningly strong.

‘It’s the camera strap that’s round your wrists, in case you wondered,’ said Gran. ‘I took it out of your bag before I followed you up here. It’s leather, so I don’t think you’ll be able to break it.’ She gave a vicious tug to the strap, jerking Amy against the window wall. Amy’s shoulder banged against one of the iron bars, and she gasped at the sudden pain. Before she could recover, Gran said, ‘I’m looping the strap round one of the bars. I’m wondering whether I ought to gag you as well so you can’t shout for help. I don’t think anyone will come out here – the police have finished all their investigations – but I don’t think I’d better take the chance. I can use my scarf. It was Veronica’s, so it won’t matter if it’s found.’

Trying to sound as normal and as calm as possible, Amy said, ‘You don’t need to do any of this. Untie me and we’ll talk about it. I’d like to hear about everything.’

‘Oh, I can’t do that,’ said Gran at once. ‘I can’t risk you talking to anyone ever again. You know too much.’

‘But you can’t leave me here,’ said Amy, incredulously.

‘I can,’ said Gran. ‘I don’t want to leave you to die if I can help it. Of course not. And if I can think of another way of keeping you quiet, I will. But for the moment you’ll have to be kept out of the way. I made sure you left your bag with the phone downstairs, you notice? And I might decide you need to die. I’m not ruling it out. It’ll be quick and clean, if so.’ But Amy saw the sudden doubt in her eyes.

‘Someone will find me,’ she said quickly. ‘So we’d be much better to go home and sort this out.’ Jan will find me, she thought.

‘No one will find you,’ said Gran, in eerie echo. ‘Not now I’ve killed him .’

‘Who?’ A lurch of new fear jabbed at Amy.

‘The man from the church. All these years and he was there all the time. You wouldn’t think it was possible, would you? But it’s true. He saw what happened when Mother killed Serena Cadence, you see. That’s why I had to get rid of him. He might have talked – told what he saw.’

‘Your mother killed Serena Cadence?’ I’ll keep her talking, thought Amy. And she’ll see that she’s got to release me. ‘Tell me about your mother,’ she said. ‘I never knew her.’

‘She didn’t mean to kill Serena Cadence,’ said Gran. ‘It was an accident. But she sat there in a chair, dead, staring at me with dead eyes. And her skin was… there was some sort of disease on her skin. It was terrible. I never forgot how terrible she looked that day.’ Her eyes were glazed and staring, as if she was seeing something terrible. ‘ He was there as well – he saw it. He could have thought it was deliberate. I was afraid he would tell people my mother was a murderer. They’d have put her in prison – they might even have hanged her. People were still hanged in those days. I couldn’t have that.’

‘No, of course not. You couldn’t have been very old when that happened.’

‘I was nine. If my mother had been hanged they’d have put me in Bramley Gate Orphanage,’ said Gran. ‘Where they put children nobody wants.’

‘Awful for you,’ said Amy. ‘I do understand. Who was the man who saw you?’

‘I never knew. I thought I’d killed him, but he’s still here. I found that out today. I saw him inside the church. Imagine it, he’s been living in this poisoned village all these years. It’s extraordinary. That stuff they dropped burned my mother. It scarred her dreadfully, even after just half an hour in the village. It didn’t burn him , though. I don’t understand it.’

The body they found, thought Amy. Oh God, that’s who she’s talking about.

‘I heard him a while ago, playing his music in the church,’ said Gran. ‘That’s how I knew he was still alive. So I hid in the manor. That’s what we did all those years ago, Clem and Veronica and me.’ Incredibly and eerily there was a faint childlike note to her voice now. ‘We thought we’d be safe in there, but we weren’t. He came looking for us that day. He came looking for me today as well – I saw him come out of the church.’

‘Gran, that wasn’t your man, that was Jan Malik! I was there with him.’

‘No, it couldn’t have been. Because of the music, you see. That other time when he came after me, I pushed him and he fell. But I really have killed him this time. I strangled him with Veronica’s scarf.’

Amy’s mind was tumbling in horrified disbelief. She had not sorted out all the threads of this mad narrative, but one thing stood out starkly and clearly: Gran had heard the music Jan had tried to play on the dead church organ, and somehow linked it to a man she had killed fifty years ago. And so she had killed again, identifying him with the same man – the man who had seen her mother cause Lady Cadence’s death. Amy felt a bleak cold despair close over her at the possibility of Jan being dead, and for a dreadful moment she did not care if Gran left her here to die or not.

‘And now,’ said Gran, ‘I think I had better gag you.’

Amy discovered she did care about living after all. She fought for all she was worth, kicking and writhing, but she was hampered by having her hands tied behind her back, and also – she had not bargained for this – she was hampered by it being Gran she was fighting. But in the end the scarf was over her mouth and knotted at the back of her head. It felt soft and light and it had a faint expensive scent in it. But it stopped her from making any sound.

Gran stepped back and considered her handiwork, then nodded to herself, and went across the room. The door slammed shut and Amy heard the bolt slide home. For a moment there was silence, but Amy could sense that Gran was still there. Was she considering whether she was doing the right thing? Would she come back and free Amy?

Then there was the sound of Gran’s footsteps crossing the landing and going back down the stairs. Silence closed down over the old lodge.

Jan came back to consciousness slowly and painfully. At first he was not sure where he was – it seemed to be somewhere shadowy and dank-smelling – and it felt as if a thick band was clamped around his throat and his chest.

Memory began to trickle back in little threads. He was in Priors Bramley and he had gone into the old manor house, hoping to find the person who had been outside the church so he could explain about the music. There had been muddy footprints, which he had followed, and then hands, impossibly strong, had clutched at his neck and wound something around it, pulling it tight. A scarf? Yes, there had been a glimpse of orange and brown. He remembered struggling and trying to tear it off, then he thought he had passed out, presumably from lack of oxygen. So what had happened to his assailant? Had he panicked, or had he assumed Jan to be dead and run off? Jan got cautiously to his feet, wincing as a jag of pain went through his throat. For a few moments the floor tilted, but he held on to a piece of masonry and waited, and the dizziness passed. Had he been mugged? But when he felt for his wallet it was still there, and so too, when he checked, were his money and credit cards.