Charlie (54 page)

Andrew could see no more of the man than half a shoulder and a powerful-looking arm, but the hand was the size of a ham, and the glint of the knife was enough for him to know he didn’t stand a chance of getting out in one piece. Besides, he was weak with hunger, and he had to have that food. ‘Just tell me why you’ve got me here,’ he asked as he backed down the stairs. ‘I haven’t done anything to anyone.’

Mick took the chain off the door, opened it wider and swiftly slid the tray on to the top step. ‘You’ll soon find out,’ he said as he closed the door again.

‘People will be looking for me,’ Andrew yelled back as the lock was turned. ‘I gave the address in Tittmus Street to two friends. And I left the letter from Martha Grimsby with one of them. The police will have that by now.’

There was no reply. He heard the footsteps retreat and another nearby door close too. Once again the house was silent.

Andrew had convinced himself during the long weekend alone that these people were intending to leave him in the cellar till he starved to death. He had finished the bottle of water ages ago, and felt dizzy with hunger. Now that he’d been brought food and a fresh bottle of water, that was ruled out. Perhaps they weren’t intending to kill him, or why bother to feed him?

Feeling a little more cheerful, after only the most cursory peering at and smelling of the tea and cheese sandwiches, he sat down and ate them, forcing himself to take it slowly, savouring each mouthful. They tasted wonderful.

The man’s words
you’ll soon find out
must mean something was going to happen shortly. Maybe with food inside him he’d be strong and alert enough to escape.

Andrew couldn’t actually remember what he’d done with the letter from Martha Grimsby. It was most probable that he’d had it in his jacket pocket and they’d removed it with his other belongings, but he could have left it in his coat in the back of the scooter, or even in his room at the pub. He fervently hoped it was one of the last two possibilities, that way there was a chink of hope someone had already found it.

Being trapped in silence, cold and hungry for so long, had turned his mind in on itself. He had visualized every person that he cared about, listing their strengths and weaknesses, and then scrutinized his thoughts about them.

He had so often resented his parents for being so tight with money. All his friends got the odd tenner sent to them from time to time, but he never did. When he went home to Oxford, their council house seemed so poky and dull. He would sneer at his mother for her provincial ways, her lack of imagination and roll his eyes with irritation at his father’s constant nagging to work harder, to stay away from drink, drugs and bad company.

Now, faced with the possibility of never seeing them again, what once seemed like nagging looked more like love and wisdom. He saw to his shame that he’d become something of a snob through mixing with students from wealthy, well-connected families. Why else hadn’t he ever invited a friend up to Oxford for a weekend or during the holidays?

He saw now that honest, hard-working people like his parents were the foundations of a good, strong, law-abiding society. Certainly not something to sneer at. He felt heart-sick that he’d barely noticed all the many sacrifices they’d made for him. They’d never been able to afford a car, yet they’d paid for driving lessons for him. They never had real holidays, just a week in July with Aunt Beryl, yet he’d been sent on every foreign trip from school. He got a stereo when his father longed for a power-saw, his mother wore the same old clothes, week in week out, but her son got a whole new wardrobe when he went to university, just so he wouldn’t feel out of place. Andrew vowed to himself that if he did get out of this, he would work harder, and make sure he got a first-class degree so that their selflessness would be rewarded.

He thought too about the heroic way his Aunt Beryl had managed to run that pub while nursing a sick husband for several years, without a word of complaint. Then there was Ivor, so much sadness in his life, yet he’d found room in his heart to help Charlie. He fervently hoped that he could acquire such compassion and be as content as they were.

But Charlie had dominated his thoughts. He thought back to all the trials she’d borne so bravely, her single-mindedness in working for her exams when she was all alone and hurting, her spirit of independence and her ability to charm everyone she met. He had fallen in love with her face, body and personality, and when she turned her back on him, it was those things he ached for and missed the most. Yet now he could see a bigger picture of her, her soul, mind and spirit. He knew now that the kind of love he felt came only once in a man’s life. It was a treasure beyond compare. If he did get out of here, then somehow he was going to win her back.

So many times in the past days and nights he’d closed his eyes and pictured her face. The slant of her almond eyes, the way they crinkled up when she laughed, the curve of her lips and the delicacy of her cheekbones. Lying on the hard stone floor, he tried to warm himself by imagining her body curved into his. He could smell her skin, her hair, feel the smoothness of her breasts in his hand. He thought how many soldiers must have had such images in their heads on the eve of a battle, knowing they might not return, and wondered too if it was that which gave them the courage to fight.

Daphne hardly said a word to Baz as he drove her down from London into Kent. She was rarely thrown by any problem, somehow the solution always seemed to spring up at her effortlessly, but if this girl Mick had caught was Charlie Weish, then everything she’d planned was in jeopardy.

The scheme to dispose of Andrew Blake was already underway. Within minutes of talking to him back in Shepherd’s Bush on Friday, he had told her enough about his troubled relationship with Charlie and his background for her to see that a carefully faked suicide was the perfect way of getting rid of him.

Right now she had a young man in her employ, of similar colouring, age and build, posing as Andrew, using his identity, cheque-book and wearing his clothes, moving from guest-house to guest-house along the south coast. In each one he was carefully building up an appearance of a man in distress. He would be last seen close to Beachy Head. Meanwhile Andrew would be taken there too, dressed again in his own clothes, and thrown off the cliff.

So maybe this girl down at The Manse wasn’t Charlie Weish and she was worrying unnecessarily. But if it was, how did she find the place?

The only people who knew Daphne owned it were her own two brothers. The solicitors who’d handled the cash purchase of it back in 1964 knew her as Mrs Jennifer Randall. The telephone, rates and every other service were in the same name and she never had visitors there.

Nine years ago it had been her intention to turn it into a grand country house hotel. It had seemed perfect then, within easy reach of London, but remote enough for reclusive weekends and holidays. She’d intended to extend the stables, add a swimming pool and gymnasium. But a shortage of funds had halted her plans, and as time went on and her circumstances changed, she found she’d lost the impetus to start such a venture, and now only spent occasional weekends there. Thanks to a sudden boom in property prices, however, she was about to put it up for sale. She would stop seeing it as a mistake when she made a good profit.

‘What are we gonna do if it is’ er?’ Baz said suddenly, interrupting her thoughts.

‘I’ll have to find out how she found the house before I can decide that,’ she answered crisply.

Baz turned in his driving seat to look at her, his expression one of extreme anxiety.

‘Don’t look like that,’ she said sharply. The twins often reminded her uncomfortably of their mother. Not in looks – they’d got their father’s squat features, his brawn and his knack of getting women to keep them. It was more the weakness in their mouths, the pleading in their eyes, she’d seen her mother with that expression so many times when Danny came back from the pub drunk. ‘I mean talk, that’s all. I got the boy to open up, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, but—’ he stopped abruptly. He shared his brother’s views about his sister, sometimes he could swear she wasn’t human. He wanted to say that at the end of the day it would be he and Mick who’d be chucking the boy off the cliff, and she’d be sitting safely miles away. He had a feeling if this girl was Charlie Weish she would end up with a similar fate too. But right now it probably wasn’t a good idea to irritate Daphne with incidentals. She was, when all was said and done, the brains in their family. But for her, he and Mick would have nothing.

‘Trust me,’ she said, laying one cool, beautifully manicured hand on his and giving him that heart-stopping smile that reminded him of when they were kids. ‘Haven’t I always done the best for all of us?’

Mick saw the red Mercedes coming up the lane from the study window and ran downstairs to open the door. He was surprised the lad didn’t call out again, he’d made enough noise first thing this morning to wake the dead.

As Baz drove in and stopped, Mick opened the passenger door for his sister and bent down to speak to her. ‘It is ’er! Charlie Weish,’ he said. ‘I done exactly what you said. I kinda made out I felt sorry for ’er. But it’s gotta be just a fluke she came ’ere. She can’t know about us or she wouldn’t ’ave told me ’er real name.’

Daphne sat there thinking as Mick rattled out the whole conversation. ‘What yer gonna do, sis?’ he asked finally.

‘Give me time to think and change my clothes,’ she said. ‘You two go through to the kitchen and wait for me there.’

Daphne waited until her brothers had gone through the door from the hall into the back of the house, then, taking off her shoes, she tiptoed across the hall and up the stairs. She didn’t want the boy to know there was a woman in the house too.

Her bedroom was a vast and beautiful room at the front of the house, furnished with opulent antique furniture, which included an exquisitely carved seventeenth-century four-poster bed. The room reflected her aspirations at the time she’d bought the house. She had wanted to be lady of the manor then, with horses in the stables, crystal chandeliers in the hall and drawing room and servants kowtowing to her. But that dream vanished when Ralph refused to marry her. Without his wealth to pour into the place she had never got beyond transforming this room.

The rest of the house was an acute embarrassment to her – still so many empty rooms left as they were from the time it was an isolation hospital in the Twenties, the back garden overgrown. It was impossible to heat adequately, every window at the back needed replacing, all she’d managed to do was create a façade of country house living by keeping the front neat and tidy. She hated the place now and couldn’t wait to get shot of it.

Stripping off her black business suit, she stood for a moment in front of the cheval mirror wearing only her black lacy underwear and appraised herself. She was forty-six, but her body was still almost as good as when she was twenty: firm, full breasts, a tiny waist, curvy hips and long slender legs. All her adult life people had remarked on her beauty and likened it to Elizabeth Taylor’s. She could see the similarities – the black wavy hair, eyes that dominated her face – yet felt she had the edge on the actress for there was no vulnerable little-girl weakness in her perfect features, she was also taller and slimmer.

Moving nearer to the mirror, she examined her face closely. There were a few fine frown-lines on her forehead, and tiny puckers round her eyes and mouth; she would need to do something about them before long.

Bringing herself back to the job in hand, she went over to the walk-in wardrobe, switched on the light and began rummaging through the rails to find something suitable to wear to deal with this girl.

Back in her days of owning property in Paddington she had often adopted a disguise to get information about her tenants. In her time she’d been a district nurse, an official from the National Assistance Board, even a canvasser from the Labour Party. This was why being Martha Grimsby for an afternoon posed no problem to her. Yet she couldn’t see how a disguise would help this time, not if the girl was wily enough to find this place.

As an idea came to her, she pulled out a pair of slacks and a black sweater and slipped them on. She would keep out of it. Mick might be as thick as two short planks, but he had already got the girl to reveal her real name, so that suggested she believed his story about being Mrs Randall’s gardener. After being locked up for over two hours, she’d be frantic; with a little friendly persuasion she might very well be ready to spill out exactly how she came upon this address, and how the police were reacting to her boyfriend’s disappearance.

Daphne smiled to herself. Once she had that information, a solution would present itself, it always had before.

Charlie leapt up from her chair as the door opened at last. In the two hours she’d been waiting she’d gone from extreme fright to indignation at being locked up like a criminal, and then sunk into a kind of numb state because she thought she’d been forgotten.

But on seeing the man again, still alone, she felt angry. ‘Where are the police?’ she shouted at him. ‘You can’t keep me here like this. I haven’t done anything.’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘They’ve just rung me to say they’ve got a big job on and they’ll be along soon. So why don’t you come on upstairs with me, ’ave another cuppa and we’ll have a little chat. If you can give me a good enough reason for poking around in the garden, I might just drive you down to the station and let you go without waiting for them.’

Charlie’s anger was wiped out. He was just a working man doing the best for his employer, he was being reasonable, so she must be too.

‘Okay,’ she agreed and forced herself to smile. She wondered if she could persuade him to give her something to eat too, it was half past three and apart from the bar of chocolate she’d had nothing to eat since the night before.

Yet as he led her up a narrow bare wood staircase into the main part of the house, and they didn’t arrive at the big Victorian hall Rita had described, she felt disorientated and uneasy. He led her down a long, gloomy magnolia-painted corridor, with several doors leading off it, but everyone of them was shut. She surmised by the modern panelled doors on her right that they opened on to rooms at the back of the house. Therefore the more solid, older ones on the left led to the front. The corridor gave it a very institutional, spooky appearance, and it struck her as a peculiar home for an old lady living alone.