Charlie (52 page)

‘I don’t know for certain,’ she said, trying hard to keep smiling in the face of his displeasure. ‘It might have been a Mr Peterson. Or a Miss Dexter. He’s over sixty, tall with white hair. Miss Dexter is in her forties, and dark, a handsome woman. She rides horses.’

‘So they all do,’ he said dismissively. ‘Can’t say either of those sticks in my mind. Best thing you can do is go down the Maidstone Road past the recreation ground, then turn into the lane up beyond it. If you keep on going you’ll come round in a big circle, and there’s quite a few big houses that way. Ask a farmer if you see one. They know mostly everyone.’

Charlie bought two drinks and a big bar of chocolate. She thanked him and hastily left his shop.

Her spirits lifted as she turned into the lane the newsagent had spoken of; it was steep and overhung with trees. It smelled woody and earthy and reminded her poignantly of back home walking up Beacon Road towards the footpath to Paignton.

Common sense told her that even if she was lucky enough to be on the right road, what would be just a few minutes’ ride in a car could be a very long walk. Finally the hill levelled out and seeing a footpath into a field, and a view of the valley she’d just climbed out of, she sat down to rest on the stile.

She was surprised by how much beautiful open countryside there was here in Kent. Back home in Devon people spoke about the South of England as if it was one gigantic housing estate. Looking down at Borough Green she could see its dreary straggly appearance was due to being cut in half by such a busy road. But sitting up high above it, watching a faint hazy mist rising from the fields, hearing birds singing and smelling the sweet fresh air, she could see exactly why people did rush out of London to buy up houses here.

Refreshed after a drink, Charlie walked on. There were a few houses, a cluster of old farm cottages here, a bigger farmhouse there, but nothing like the house Rita had described. She walked and walked but saw no one, and no cars passed her either.

At midday Charlie’s optimism had left her entirely and her feet were aching. As she stood at a crossroads, wondering whether she should give up and take the quickest route back to the station, a man on a tractor pulled out of the field to her right. He was young, possibly only in his early twenties, his face and bare forearms tanned a deep mahogany, and he looked questioningly at her.

As she walked towards him, he stopped his engine and jumped down. ‘Are you lost?’ he called out.

Charlie quickly explained what she was looking for and asked if he knew such a house.

‘Oh, I know that one right enough,’ he said in a rich country-sounding burr. ‘It’s a tidy old step to it, but go on straight ahead. Mind you watch out for it, though, the gates are almost hidden by big trees.’

Her heart quickened. ‘Do you know the people who live there?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I think they only use it for weekends and holidays. I’ve only ever seen a man cutting the grass.’

‘Is he late sixties, white-haired and kind of distinguished-looking?’

‘No, nearer forty or so. He’s probably only the gardener,’ he said, then pausing to look at her again and perhaps realizing she was tired, he smiled. ‘If you can squeeze up on the tractor beside me, I’ll take you there, I’m going down that way.’

Over the noise of the tractor it was impossible to hold any further conversation. After a couple of miles the man stopped by a gate and jumped down. ‘This is as far as I’m going,’ he said, holding out his arms to help her down. ‘But it’s only about a hundred yards or so further. Just round the bend. Sorry I can’t take you the whole way, but there’s nowhere for me to turn there.’

‘It was very kind of you to take me this far,’ she said with a wide smile as she reached the ground.

He swung the gate open and climbed back on to his tractor. Charlie stayed just long enough to shut the gate again behind him, waved goodbye and went off down the road.

The moment Charlie turned the bend and saw the iron gates and the house beyond, she knew with absolute certainty she was at the place Rita had described. Stepping back under the cover of some bushes on the other side of the lane, she paused to take a good look at it.

It wasn’t dilapidated. The tall gates were newly painted, the drive was new-looking gravel, but the large trees Rita had spoken of still made an arch to drive through, and the house was kind of Gothic with its arched mullion windows, and covered in ivy. It was both splendid and chilling at the same time. The garden was manicured, neat box hedges of uniform size surrounded a lawn like a bowling green. Even a curved flowerbed up by the steps to the front porch was laid out with precision.

‘The Manse’ was the name on a discreet green plaque with raised brass letters attached to one of the gateposts. The gates were padlocked.

After such a long search it was thrilling to have finally found it, yet at the same time she felt a kind of dejection because she didn’t know what she should do about it. Reason told her to go back to London, then ring Detective Inspector Hughes and ask him to check the place out. But what explanation could she offer for such a request? She had no proof Daphne Dexter owned it, and without telling him about Rita’s ordeal here she had absolutely no grounds to claim Andrew might be being held here either.

Loath to return home without something concrete to offer him, she decided that a discreet look at the back of the house from the fields would do no harm. Yet after a long trawl around the wooded boundary she was even more disappointed. The trees and bushes were so dense and tall that even the barbed wire fence, let alone the house, was totally concealed. Then just as she was about to give up, she spotted a small gap beneath the wire. It looked as if it had been dug recently by badgers, and she couldn’t resist crawling through it.

Getting under the wire was the easy part; from there, thick undergrowth, stinging nettles, brambles and piles of old sticks made it almost impenetrable. Yet having got this far, she inched her way forward until eventually she could see the garden and the house beyond.

To her astonishment this rear view was in complete contrast to the neat splendour she’d seen from the road. The garden was a vast jungle of waist-high weeds and clearly hadn’t been touched for at least a decade. As for the house, that looked almost derelict and much larger than she’d expected.

Keeping well back in the bushes she studied the scene carefully, wondering at the mentality of the owner who had put all his or her efforts into keeping up a mere façade. From the road, she’d had the impression it was a typical early Victorian family house with just a few large rooms on two floors, but even that was a false one. The house had been extended at the rear at a later period, and judging by the ugly standardized metal window-frames it could have been used as some kind of institution in the Thirties. There were in fact four floors from this angle if she counted the basement and attics. She thought it might have as many as twenty rooms in all.

There were a great many outbuildings to one side of the house. From where she stood they could well be stables, though there wasn’t even the faintest waft of horse manure to substantiate this.

Remembering that the front gates had been padlocked and there was no car on the drive, and seeing that all the windows were closed, she decided there couldn’t be anyone in residence and perhaps no one lived here any more anyway. But her curiosity wouldn’t let her turn and go, she felt she had to go closer and peep into some of the lower windows. Crouching down below the level of the tall grass, she made her way across the bottom of the garden to the far side, then up towards the house.

Close up she found there was a sort of narrow alleyway down in the basement. Apart from one window on the right, she couldn’t get close enough to look in any of the others. That one window was a large kitchen. Its modern styling with cream Formica units and built-in double ovens suggested it was a recent improvement. But it was bare and clinical with not a pot plant, teapot or shopping basket to spoil the almost showroom image. She crept down the steps to the basement area to check that out.

The view through the wired glass on the top half of the door gave her no further insight to the owners of the house. She could see a bare, black and white tiled area, with only one door off it open. Through that she could just glimpse what looked like a laundry room. She came back up the steps and paused for a moment, torn between going back the way she had come and going on further round the house.

Going on won. So creeping on tiptoe across an area of broken paving stones, she made her way towards the side of the house and the outbuildings. A small barred window on the side caught her attention. It was just too high to see in, but spotting an abandoned beer crate nearby she pulled it up to stand on it.

The view through the window was partially blocked out by what appeared to be tea chests, but by clinging to the bars, she hoisted herself up a little higher to see past them. There were more tea chests, piled almost up to the ceiling, but curiously, on one of them was perched a large brass Buddha. Had it not been so similar to one they’d had at home at ‘Windways’ she probably would have jumped down immediately, but instead she scrabbled up further and saw other things very like those her father had dealt in: a red lacquered bureau partially concealed by the tea chests and in the far corner what looked like a heap of rolled-up Oriental rugs.

Curiosity overcame caution and she scrabbled higher still to see better, but her hand slipped on the bars and she toppled and fell back to the ground, knocking over the crate as she did so. The thump of the crate against paving slabs frightened her, and in alarm she leapt back to her feet and bolted, her heart thumping like a steam-hammer.

She heard something as she ran. A movement, a door or window opening, she couldn’t tell what, or from what direction it came. In her panic all common sense left her and instead of making off down the garden the way she had come in, she ran towards the outhouses instead.

‘Oi, come ’ere!’ a rough male voice called out behind her, and as Charlie turned momentarily to look, so she realized she was effectively cornered between walls and the thick hedge. She froze. The man looked like a gardener in a red checked shirt, soiled work trousers, heavy boots and a flat cap.

’What you up to?’ he asked, and before she had a chance to even think about dodging past him, his arm shot out and he caught her firmly by the shoulder.

‘I’m s-s-sorry. I got into the garden by mistake. I was walking in the f-f-f-field and I saw the woods. I thought it might take me back to the road,’ she gabbled. ‘I’ll just go the way I came in.’

His other hand grabbed her other shoulder, and he looked her full in the face for a moment. His eyes were a cold blue and he had a missing front tooth. ‘You were snooping. Suppose you tell me why?’

‘I wasn’t snooping,’ she retorted, but her mouth was so dry she could barely get the words out. ‘I was lost, I told you, I thought it was a wood.’

‘Come off it!’ he snorted. ‘Do I look stupid enough to believe that? Come with me.’

It wasn’t a request but an order. He twisted one of her arms up behind her back and pushing her in front of him nudged her back round the house towards the steps which led down to the basement. Charlie tearfully tried to plead with him, but he remained unmoved.

‘Save it for the police,’ he said, nudging her down the steps and into the black and white tiled hallway she’d seen earlier. Before she could protest any further he’d opened a door to the right, pushed her in, and slamming the door on her, locked it behind him.

Chapter Seventeen

As Charlie sat hunched on a chair, berating herself for being stupid enough to trespass on private property and wondering what on earth she’d say to the police when they got here, her jailer was equally deep in thought. He was sitting in a swivel chair up in a small study on the first floor. He’d taken off his boots and made himself a cup of tea. Now he was trying to weigh up what he should do about the girl.

With a deep sigh he reached for the phone and dialled his brother’s number in Islington. ‘Look, Baz, I’ve just found a chick snooping round the back,’ he said. ‘She claims she was trying to get to the road through the woods, but I don’t believe ’er. I told ’er I was going to call the filth, and I’ve put ’er down in the old storeroom for now. Whatcha reckon I ought to do with ’er?’

‘Dunno,’ Baz replied unhelpfully. ‘You’d better ask Daph. She’s ’ere, just come round.’

Mick lit a cigarette as he waited for his sister to come to the phone. His stomach was rumbling, it always did when he expected trouble.

Michael and Barrington Dexter were identical twins and it was often said behind their backs that they had only one brain between them too. No one dared say such things to their faces, though, for what the boys lacked in intelligence, they more than made up for in aggression and strength. There was only one person who could insult them and get away with it, and that was their older sister Daphne.

In 1934 they were six, Daphne nine, when their mother ran out on them. Their home was two squalid rooms in Wapping in the East End of London. Their docker father, Danny Dexter, claimed his wife ran off with a fancy man, but young as the children were, they knew the real reason. Their father was a drunken brute, who when he did get a full week’s work in the docks, spent most of his wages at the pub before he staggered home to beat their mother.

Even before their mother left, the children were already well used to extreme poverty. Quite often the only meal of the day was a slice of bread and dripping; shoes and clothes invariably came from charities. If Daphne hadn’t been fiercely determined to hold things together in their mother’s absence, she and the twins would have starved, or ended up in an orphanage, for even in an emergency it was clear to her that Danny wouldn’t change the habits of a lifetime and provide for his family.

The twins had never forgotten how Daphne sat them down and explained the situation to them. She said they weren’t to tell their teacher their mother had gone, nor were they to try and cadge food from neighbours, which might bring a social worker round. She said she had thought of a way she could make enough money to keep them. Her plan was that every day after school they would walk to the City to beg money from the toffs who worked in banks.