Behind Closed Doors (Season One: Book 7) (Jessica Daniel) (30 page)

And then it had all come tumbling down.

Jessica gently pulled the covers away, struggling not to shiver from the coolness of the air and the after-effects of the drenching. She turned the phone back off, tucking it under her mattress,
before pausing and standing still as Heather rolled over. Jessica counted to ten silently and then crept across to her wardrobe, putting on the softest pair of shoes she had and creeping into the
hallway.

The clouds and rain had cleared, leaving the crisp white moon in its place again. Jessica could have spent the evening watching it but knew she had work to do. Remembering the creak of the
banister from earlier, she kept to the centre of the staircase, moving one step at a time until she was at the bottom, and then heading directly towards the games room.

Each noisy floorboard made her stop and wait until she was certain there was no one around. Then she continued, moving past Moses’s office and the games room until she reached the stairs
that led only to a platform, rather than another floor. She had thought it was strange on the tour with Heather but assumed it was some sort of storage cupboard. It wasn’t as if it was the
only piece of odd decoration in the house.

The key pilfered from Glenn was old-fashioned, with a long stem and a small square of teeth at the end. Jessica slipped it into the lock, twisting it one way unsuccessfully and then the other.
The only time she’d ever had to use a key like this in the past was for her parents’ back door before they had everything redone. That was equally old and unforgiving if you
didn’t have the key in the exact sweet spot. Trying again, Jessica lifted it slightly, feeling it slot into place, and then turned it slowly until she heard the satisfying click.

Inside, it was dark but Jessica could see from the moonlight in the hallway that the door opened directly onto stone steps. She pushed it closed, blocking out the light, and then slowly made her
way down, using the wall to guide her. She stumbled as she reached the bottom, only just managing to keep her balance by stretching out and grabbing onto something that felt like a filing cabinet.
Her legs were unsteady, the crack to the back of her knees a memory all too vivid. She still didn’t know if it was Glenn or Ali who had kicked her.

Jessica felt around the wall, until her fingers touched upon a light switch.

Overhead, there was a ding as the strip lights fired into action and then Jessica found herself blinking rapidly, trying to adjust to flickering white lights as a low humming sound enveloped the
room.

As everything came into focus, Jessica realised she was in a sort of reception area, a narrow room that led into another.

She made her way into the next area, taken aback by the lack of size. Jessica suspected the basement would be as large as the house but it was only twice the space of the bedroom she shared with
Heather. Off to one side was a mirror the entire width and height of the wall. Jessica moved towards the centre of the room, staring at herself, concerned by how thin she had become. The clothes
she was wearing were the smallest in the store that Zipporah and Heather had shown her, yet the trousers still hung limply around her waist, the shirt making it look as if she had no curves
left.

She looked horrible.

Jessica lifted her shirt, eyes fixed on her abdomen, wondering what might have been.

Only a clunk from the lights made her remember what she was supposed to be doing. Although she had been in the room for a few minutes, it had taken until that moment for Jessica to realise what
surrounded her. Aside from the mirror, the other three walls were covered with padding. She stepped across, pressing her hand into it, which felt like the fake leather on cheap sofas. It was
squishy, with button-sized indents at regular intervals. Even the inside of the door she had entered through was covered in the material, while, above her, in between the lights, there was more
padding.

Jessica moved back to the centre of the room, running her hand across two pillars, both of which were also covered. She stared at herself in the mirror again before taking a risk.

‘Hello,’ she called out.

There was a slight echo but nothing like as loud as she’d have expected. The floor was hard and smelled of disinfectant.

Jessica headed back to the room at the bottom of the stairs, where there was a wooden cabinet built into the wall.

She gasped as she opened it; the insides contained a toolkit utterly different to the ones in the cupboard on the floor above. Jessica ran her fingers across the instruments, pressing the metal
of each to see if it was real.

There was a row of three saws: a thin-bladed hacksaw, a solid-looking tenon saw and a full panel saw. Next to those, there were three types of hammer, then different-sized sets of pliers, hand
drills, a crowbar, thick masking tape, small scissors and large bolt cutters with thick, curved jaws.

At the far end was a set of handcuffs with two keys on separate hooks next to it.

Everything was meticulously organised; clean, gleaming in the overhead light and smelling of detergent, rather than any work they might have been used for.

Jessica breathed in sharply, closing the cupboard doors, knowing exactly what she was looking at. This was a custom-built torture chamber, put together by someone intent only on hurting others.
Kevin had been brought here but allowed to leave. She assumed Wayne had not been given that luxury. Perhaps even Liam had been brought here before being drowned.

Returning to the main room, Jessica knew she still didn’t have enough to call Charley in. Everything had been cleaned by someone who knew what they were doing, leaving no trace that Wayne
or Liam had ever been here. Yes, it was strange, but Jessica had heard of odder things. Who could prove beyond doubt that this wasn’t simply a weird-looking workshop?

Jessica continued to peer around the walls before realising she had missed something obvious. The walls and ceiling weren’t just padded, the padding was entirely made of a dim green
material. When Moses had asked Glenn if he needed anything else for the greenhouse, he hadn’t been talking about some glass structure outside, he had been talking about this place.

Jessica knew there had to be something else, approaching the mirror until she was close enough to see the dark bags under her eyes. Her skin was whiter than she had ever seen it and she looked
so unlike herself that even if Ali, Moses or anyone else had a photo of her from a few years ago, then they probably wouldn’t be able to say for sure it was her.

Turning to the side, she noticed there was a crease in between two sets of padding on the wall. Jessica dug her fingers into the space, running them down until she found a hidden mechanism. The
door clicked open with barely a sound, opening into another darkened corridor. Jessica turned until she was facing the direction of the mirror, following a dim glow until she found herself directly
behind it in a hidden room.

Suddenly, the receipts made sense.

The mirror only worked one way and Jessica could see through to the other side, into the greenhouse. On a tripod was a video camera facing the space too, a cable running from the back along the
floor, connecting to a computer on a desk.

Jessica sat in a leather swivel chair, watching the lights blink on the front of the computer case, before leaning forward and turning on the flatscreen monitor.

The artificial light from the monitor felt like an old friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been on a computer. She hadn’t used the laptop in months, let alone her PC
at work. Looking at the list of icons along the bottom of the screen felt like a reminder of something in her past. She glanced at the bottom right-hand corner for the time – twelve minutes
past four in the morning. She knew she should be tired but this discovery was keeping her alert.

Next to the time was a spinning globe, indicating there was an Internet connection.

Jessica clicked to open a browser window, waiting as the cursor spun, considering whether to respond to her request.

Everything about this place was so planned that Jessica wondered how long it had been going on for. Perhaps Wayne and Liam were only the start? In the same way that Wayne had apparently been a
fraction away from ending up in landfill, perhaps that was what had happened to others? Maybe they were buried in the woods she had been taken to?

That was something for Charley and her team to deal with. For now, Jessica had to give her enough of a lead to get her here.

The browser window finally appeared, showing the homepage for a news site. Jessica had an urge to check all her old favourite websites, which she hadn’t done in months. She could only
guess how many emails there were waiting for her; probably the usual set of advertisements for casinos, plus various enlargement surgeries and pills she used to forward to Adam for a laugh.

She didn’t know how the house had an active Internet connection considering Charley didn’t know about it and there was no apparent phone line but she guessed there must be a bank
account somewhere set up to pay for it.

Not knowing what she was looking for, Jessica continued to hunt the home screen for any programs that could provide clues but there was nothing except for the browser.

Jessica flicked back to it, opening up the history, which was empty except for two items: the news homepage and a site she had never heard of.

Holding her breath, Jessica clicked to open it, the screen turning black before asking for a username and password. The username was already typed in, with a row of asterisks in the password
field. Clearly whoever used the terminal wasn’t very good at remembering pieces of information.

As the site loaded, Jessica could barely bring herself to look at the screen. There was a long list of video clips, each promising various degrees of torment and degradation.

She left the cursor hovering over one from the day Wayne had been assaulted in the garden, knowing she had to press it but not wanting to. When she finally composed herself, Jessica covered her
eyes, listening to the terrifying sound of a drill before finding the strength to open one eye and watch as Wayne was tortured in the room in front of her.

Jessica removed any trace from the history of what she had done and closed the browser window. She felt sick, barely able to peer through the window into the room ahead,
knowing what had gone on in there. She could have continued hunting through the website’s contents but that would be the job of some poor investigator from Charley’s team. Jessica
turned the monitor back off and then moved around the side of the mirror towards the door.

She was about to exit into the greenhouse when she noticed another door ahead of her. She felt drained, unable to believe that she had been upstairs at a time when a masked, hooded figure was
inflicting such pain on another human being for their own amusement. They weren’t too tall, with Glenn the only real candidate Jessica could think of. The other option was that it was being
done for the money. The website likely had some sort of pay system, so it could be making a fortune, offering a service to viewers for whom a Hollywood movie was not enough.

Jessica approached the door, opening it to see what appeared to be a cleaning cupboard. The light was dim, but she could see a mop and bucket, a sink built into the wall, and two large
containers of cleaning product underneath. She was about to turn to leave when she noticed a light switch. She wanted to get out of this place, feeling the weight of everything that had happened
here upon her.

But knowing that it must be there for a reason, Jessica flicked the switch, turning to see the room was much bigger than she had first thought. Stacked floor to ceiling were rows of tightly
packed bags. Jessica walked towards them, realising that they didn’t just run the full length of the room but that the bags were at least four deep too. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
compacted bags of ammonium nitrate.

They were all living on top of a bomb big enough to bring down the entire building and kill every person inside.

Jessica knew she had two things to do: call Charley and then get out.

But could she leave so many innocent people here on top of something that in the wrong hands could do so much destruction? Whether it was Glenn or Moses who had set it up, Jessica had to assume
they knew what they were doing. If she was going to go around the bedrooms getting people out, who should she trust? She knew Heather had betrayed her, but that didn’t mean it was right to
leave her here. The same could be true of Ali. And what about Naomi or Zipporah? How could she get them away without alerting their husbands?

Jessica stood staring at the fertiliser bags, not knowing what it took to make a bomb from one. The only reason she knew the danger of what she was looking at was because they had all been on a
two-day anti-terrorism training course. At the time, she’d thought it was a complete over-reaction; now she was relieved she had paid a modicum of attention.

Wires ran from the bags but she didn’t know if that signified some sort of trigger. Slowly Jessica turned, almost tripping over the cleaning bucket. She flicked the lights off and closed
the door, entering the greenhouse and pulling the padded door into place.

Each step she took across the hard floor felt like she was trampling on somebody’s grave in the way she had as a child in the cemetery close to her home. Then she was oblivious to it, now
she was sickened.

She closed the other door, checking the tool cabinet one final time, and then headed up the stairs, locking the basement door as quietly as she could.

Jessica didn’t want to leave anyone behind but figured if she could get hold of Charley, a police team could be sent along before anyone woke up. She remembered what Cole had told her,
knowing he was right – ‘Sometimes you have to help yourself’. Could she really walk away from the house and leave Heather and everyone else behind? Perhaps she had to?

Keeping to the centre, Jessica raced as softly as she could up the stairs, taking two at a time even though the backs of her knees still hurt.