Линда Ла Плант - Cold Blood

‘Could I just go to her room, please?’

Rooney and Lorraine stood in the centre of the dead girl’s bedroom as Mr Brown opened the doors on to the low, metal-railed balcony. Mrs Brown had started weeping again, and her husband was angry at the intrusion, but Lorraine refused to leave. Rooney was embarrassed at the couple’s obvious distress, and he was very uneasy. Lorraine looked bad, her bruised eye had swollen and was still closed.

‘Maybe we leave it until the morning,’ he had said quietly.

‘No. If that cab driver was telling the truth, then Anna Louise Caley came here that night.’ Lorraine stepped out on to the balcony and pointed to a narrow metal stairway leading down to the garden. ‘You don’t have a dog, do you?’

‘No, we don’t.’

She looked across the garden. ‘So if someone did come here at night and crossed the lawns, they could easily walk up to this balcony?’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but why would they want to?’

‘If they didn’t want to be seen, Mr Brown, and if they also knew the layout of the house, knew by looking up at this window that Tilda was here, someone could have come and gone?’

Mr Brown pursed his lips and then suddenly rounded on Lorraine. ‘What exactly are you trying to suggest? That my daughter had someone up here, someone she didn’t want us to see?’

‘No, Mr Brown, maybe that someone did not want to be seen. Could you leave us alone for ten minutes? I’d appreciate it.’

The Browns left Rooney and Lorraine alone, but it was quite obvious they did not approve, and said they would wait in the drawing room for ten minutes and no more. As the door closed, Lorraine turned to Rooney.

‘What you thinking?’

He sat down on the dead girl’s bed. ‘Not a lot, so Anna Louise came here and left. We got almost four missing hours before Robert Caley and his wife contacted the police, so she could have met with Tilda Brown, but after that God only knows what happened to her.’

Lorraine picked up the white Polar bear, and tossed it back on to the bed. ‘If she left, she didn’t take a cab, no record of her doing so, and the taxi she came in had already left. Bill, what if she never left here?’

‘What?’

Lorraine walked out on to the balcony and stared across the gardens. Just to her right was the playhouse, the place where the two girls had played as children, now locked up, and suddenly Lorraine knew. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

‘I don’t think she did.’

‘What?’ It was Rooney’s turn now.

‘Come on downstairs, Bill.’

Mr and Mrs Brown sat in their drawing room in subdued but angry silence as Lorraine walked in, but before they could ask her to leave she pointed to the window with its expensive slatted blinds.

‘The playhouse in the garden, I noticed it was padlocked, can you tell me why?’

Mrs Brown looked at her husband in confusion, but he only frowned in response.

‘Did you padlock it, Mr Brown?’

‘Not that I can recall. Did you, honey?’

‘No, I thought perhaps you had done it. Maybe Tilda did.’

He stood up. ‘I didn’t, in fact I avoid looking at the thing, it brings back such memories. Are you sure? Padlocked?’

Lorraine shrugged. ‘Well, I saw the chain when I was here in daylight, maybe I’m wrong. Do you have a flashlight?’

Rooney plodded after Lorraine, Mr Brown walked ahead with the light.

‘Can you tell me what the fuck we’re doing, Lorraine?’ Rooney whispered.

‘You tell me. Everybody else on this street has security cameras, they don’t, they leave their gates open and put a padlock on a kids’ playhouse? Doesn’t make sense.’

The faint beam of the flashlight showed there was a padlock, and quite a heavy one.

‘Perhaps the gardener is storing equipment in there?’ Mr Brown suggested.

‘Do you have bolt-cutters or something we can get the lock open with?’

‘Why?’ asked Mr Brown.

Lorraine hesitated. ‘I want to see inside.’

It was another ten minutes before they had prised open one of the links in the thick chain. Lorraine eased back the child-size door and stooped low to enter.

‘Can you shine the light inside, please?’

Two chairs and a small matching table set with plastic tea cups and saucers, and a tiny cot-like bed with two dolls tucked under a blanket were all that could fit inside.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Rooney said.

Lorraine took the flashlight from Mr Brown and shone it around the house, then down to the plastic sheeting that covered the floor.

‘Can you smell anything, Bill?’

Rooney sniffed, leaning in from the tiny door. ‘Just mildew.’

‘I’m rather cold,’ Mr Brown said, standing outside, behind Rooney. Lorraine suggested he return to the house, and after hesitating a moment he walked away. She shone the yellow beam slowly over the interior, sniffing, until she got down on her knees and sniffed closer to the ground.

‘Mildew, you sure?’

Rooney sighed, and bent low to get inside. He sniffed. ‘Yeah, mildew, like moss or mould or something, but that’s natural. It must be hot as hell when the sun shines inside here, it’s all plastic and it’ll sweat with the heat. What you doing?’

‘Hold the goddamned light, Bill, I’m gonna pull back the ground-sheet.’

‘For God’s sake, Lorraine, why don’t we come back in the morning?’

‘Because we’re here now, so do as I say.’

Rooney was on his hands and knees, shining the flashlight as Lorraine began to pull back the plastic ground-sheet. She pushed the little chairs and table aside, and crawling on all-fours, dragged back the sheet. She sat back on her heels, reached over to the table and took one of the small plastic plates.

‘What you doing?’

‘Digging, what do you think it looks like? Keep the light up for chrissakes, I can’t see.’

Rooney crouched down, watching as she scraped the earth away from beneath the ground-sheet.

‘Ground would be dry in here. It was February, right? So if something was buried under this sheet it’d stay dry, and being inside, you said it stinks of mildew. Well, if a body was hidden under here we’d expect a lot of mould, same smell as mildew.’

Rooney held up the torch, then moved its beam to spread further over the tiny floor space, leaving Lorraine in darkness.

‘What you doing?’

‘Looking for droppings, rats’d be clawing their way in here if there was a body, and there’s nothing, Lorraine. Plus they got raccoons in these parts, they’d have torn the place apart.’

She continued digging with the plastic dish, her hands and nails filthy, and Rooney shone the torch, watching. One inch down, two inches down, and still she shovelled the earth, making a deep hole. Then the beam from the flashlight began to fade.

‘Batteries are running out,’ he said.

Lorraine began to scratch and dig the earth with her bare hands, and then she sat back. ‘There’s something here, come closer. For God’s sake, get closer, I can’t see. And it’d help if you gave me a hand.’

Rooney crawled towards her, the flashlight beam now just a faint yellow. ‘What is it?’

‘I dunno, I can’t fucking see. You dig, I’ll hold the light.’ She leaned back and took it from him as he began to dig harder. He used one of the plastic cups, scooping up the earth. Soil sprayed over Lorraine, and she brushed it aside.

‘Shit! You’re right, there is something.’ Rooney dug for a few more minutes and then squinted at the hole. They could just see a corner section of a black plastic trash bag. Rooney lifted up his hand; white maggots were clinging to it, covering the cuffs of his jacket. ‘Aw shit, there’s millions of them, maggots, fucking white maggots.’