Dead of Winter (9 page)

Issie shivered and pulled the grimy eiderdown more tightly around her body. It was cold in the caravan despite the heater in the other room and she was finding it hard to keep warm as dusk fell on her third night of captivity. Her head ached and she felt nauseous, no doubt as a result of whatever drugs had been forced into her. She wasn’t hungry but her thirst was becoming unbearable.

As she lay on the stained mattress in the tiny space that passed for a bedroom Issie tried to work out exactly how long she had been there. She had left the school on time for the rendezvous. He had been late but only a few minutes and they had come straight here, driving carefully on icy roads. Every time a car came near them, he had pushed her head down below the dashboard. She had thought it exciting.

At no time in the car had his behaviour made her worried, not even when they pulled up and she realised that their tryst wasn’t to be in a country cottage somewhere as he had promised but in a shabby caravan that looked as if it should be condemned.

‘Here?’ she had asked, shivering in the bitter air as they left the car and walked to the concrete stand on which the caravan leant at a slight angle, one end supported by breeze blocks.

‘Why not?’ he had insisted, grabbing her around the waist as he pulled her up the makeshift steps. For the first time she noticed that she had cut her wrist somehow and winced as it hit the door frame.

Issie touched the inflamed skin tenderly as her thoughts tripped back to Monday night, images running in a continuous loop inside her head as she relived the nightmare.

It had been dark inside the caravan but warm in comparison with the bitter cold of the night. Thin curtains were drawn across the windows. She could just make out random shapes of furniture in the gloom.

‘This way.’ His voice was low, as if he were afraid of being overheard even though they were miles away from anywhere.

He pulled on her arm and she followed blindly, bumping into something that made her yelp with pain.

‘Quiet,’ he’d hissed. ‘Come on, we’re using the back room.’

‘Where are we?’

‘My brother’s place; don’t worry, he’s not here.’

The idea that someone might stumble in on their lovemaking banished the last shred of Issie’s romantic dream.

‘I don’t want to!’ she had blurted out in a hushed squeak.

‘Don’t worry; I’ll lock the bedroom door.’

He kissed her again and pushed her through a gap in the panelling that divided the front of the caravan from the back. Issie took an uncontrolled step forward and fell onto a narrow bed, banging her head on the wall on the other side. The room must have been less than six feet across.

‘Ow! Gosh, it’s cold in here. Can you turn on more heat?’

‘I’ll soon warm you up, don’t worry. Here, have a drink; you’ll be toasty in no time.’

He passed a bottle to her and she took a mouthful, spluttering as the alcohol hit the back of her throat. The liquor made her eyes water but it warmed her so she took another swallow, more careful this time, savouring the heat of the oily liquid as it slipped down her throat.

‘What is it?’

‘Absinth; we get it direct from Marseilles; my brother goes there sometimes.’

‘Why?’

‘Never you mind.’ He kissed her, banishing any further questions. The taste of the absinth on his tongue was comforting but when his fingers groped for her she tensed.

‘Relax,’ he said, stroking her, ‘you’ll like it, I promise.’

Issie’s self-esteem was so low that she took his interest in her as a compliment. She stroked his neck tentatively, making him shudder.
This is going to be OK,
she told herself,
not like
…

‘Don’t tense up, there’s no need to be afraid,’ his words were gentle as his fingers moved across her face and down to the hollow of her throat. Issie concentrated on living in the moment and pushed other memories aside.

He pulled the cardigan from her shoulders before she could stop him and started to unbutton her shirt. Issie protested that it was too cold but he carried on anyway. Her skin glowed white in the dimness of the room and he started to devour her with small bites, his cheeks rough, unshaven since the morning. He pulled down her jeans.

‘Wait! It’s so cold, can we go somewhere else, please?’

‘Drink some more of this while I find us a blanket.’

Issie sipped the absinth and felt the beginnings of the familiar fuzziness of intoxication. She had her eyes closed when he returned with an eiderdown and wrapped it around her. It was to be his last gesture of tenderness. What happened next was rough, unsatisfying – at least for Issie – and short. While it lasted she shut her mind and told herself it would get better but it didn’t. At least it was soon over.

Afterwards he rolled off her taking most of the eiderdown and his breathing deepened. It was too dark to see her watch but she guessed it was well past one o’clock. She waited for him to suggest that they should be getting back but instead he started to snore. From the other side of the door there was a rustling sound and Issie froze. It came again and she stopped breathing but then there was silence. She risked a nudge to his ribs.

‘It’s late and I have to be back.’

‘Ngh,’ he grunted, his back to her.

Issie lay by his side, shivering.

‘Please,’ she hugged his back for warmth, ‘I want to go back.’

‘Arnggh.’

‘I mean it.’ Issie raised her voice.

‘Baby,’ he whispered in his sleep.

‘Come on, wake up.’

‘Ooh, darling,’ he murmured and reached for her. Her heart jumped; this wasn’t what she wanted. Once was enough, she could tell herself it hadn’t happened, but twice …

‘Wake up!’

He sat up abruptly and shoved his hand across her mouth.

‘Ssh!’

‘I have to get back.’ She mumbled into his palm.

‘Keep your voice down, you little idiot.’ Issie had subsided into shocked silence. The room became still. From outside they both heard the unmistakeable shuffle of feet across the floor of the central room.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

Issie huddled into his back, her eyes fixed in a dry gaze where she imagined the door to be. For a moment there was silence within the chilly space, then, unmistakeably, came the sound of the door being opened. With an emotion approaching horror Issie realised that he hadn’t relocked it after fetching the eiderdown.

‘Who’s there?’

The coarse bass voice made Issie jump. Worse, she noticed her lover do the same.

‘Only me, bro,’ he said nervously.

‘Whatya doin’ here?’

‘Needed a place, y’know how it is.’

‘You alone?’

‘Course.’

Issie stiffened beside him and his left hand stretched out to touch her thigh, almost comforting. Instinctively she held her breath,
hoping her silence and the pitch-dark would fool his brother but the hulk in the doorway took a step into the room so that his leg touched the mattress. Issie shrank back even further. There was a sniff.

‘I smell a girlie.’

‘Nah, I’m on my own. Just needed a place to kip.’

Another sniff.

‘Fresh and sweet. You holding out on me, bro? Y’ knows the rules. Share ’n’ share alike. My place in exchange for a bit of yours.’

Issie’s eyes opened wide in alarm. There was silence. She could hear the brothers’ breathing, one slow and careful the other rapid and scared; the realisation terrified her.

‘Swear to me that you’re on your own. On our mother’s life and – God willing – our father’s grave. Swear.’

She heard a guilty swallow that said it all.

‘It was only for an hour, that’s all.’

‘No,’ she had moaned into his ear, so low and desperate that he patted her thigh again.

‘Then move over, little man. It’s big brother’s turn. Is she hot or does she need some warming? There’s good shit here if she needs it. You know how I like them.’

‘No!’

‘Ssh! Don’t antagonise him.’ He whispered into her ear. ‘Just pretend it’s me.’

‘Noo.’ Her voice was a whine, childish and afraid.

‘Oh, she’s young. Well done, bro, I like them tender.’ The lumbering shape took another half step and fell onto the bed.

‘NO!’

Issie grabbed her jeans and bolted for the door, ducking low to avoid what she imagined were huge, outstretched arms. She almost made it; in fact she managed to touch the handle before he pulled her back, up and off the floor as if she were no more than a kitten. He laughed and the fumes from his breath made her want to retch.

‘No! Badger!’ It was her secret nickname for the man who had proven such a useless and dangerous lover.

‘Badger! What sort of poxy name is that? I kill badgers, I do; smoke ’em out of their sets, poison their young, crush their skulls like eggs with me spade. There’s good money in badger pelts.’ His hands were holding her tight about her chest and stomach; his face nuzzled her hair.

‘Oh, she smells so clean. Is this your first time, honey? Don’t worry about Badger’s brother; I’m better than he is. Call me Brock; older, wiser and so much bigger. You’re in for a treat.’

‘No, please, I need to get back. I’ll be missed; I should be in my room, please!’

Issie twisted her head away as his slobbering mouth lunged towards her. His lips connected with her ear and his tongue lunged into it, aggressive, penetrating, disgusting. She reached out a hand towards Badger, begging for help but he was no longer there. Alone in the bedroom she was thrown on to the mattress, the lower half of her body bare, her blouse half-open from the earlier sex. She could smell him; sweaty, musty, hot. As his body loomed over her she had shut her eyes and turned her face away.

At some point during the long night she had been allowed to use their bathroom, a five by five-foot cubicle that stank of unprocessed sewage. On her return she had been given water and absinth and at some stage there were drugs, what and how much she had no idea. By then she was past caring. She had a vague memory of the brothers sharing her and remarking on it as if she were some dumb sex toy. Just before dawn Issie had passed out. They woke her a few hours later with a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich, still warm inside a bag from a local café.

At some point she had been sick. Badger had cleaned her up and made her another mug of tea. He must have put something in it because Issie passed the rest of the day semi-conscious, drifting into an uneasy sleep as Tuesday dragged into Wednesday.

When she had woken up she was on her own. There was mist outside the tiny window of the back room. She had tried the door but it was barred from the outside. Issie started banging on it and then on the window but the noise disappeared into the empty
clearing she could see dimly through the thick Perspex windows and claustrophobic fog. She remembered the long track they had driven down, the isolation of the caravan sitting in the middle of woodland.

A bottle of coke and two packets of crisps had been left at the end of the bed. She ate and drank as she tried to work out what time it was. She noticed that her watch was missing. It was the one her father had given her, that showed the date and phases of the moon, as well as the time in two time zones.

Surely the school would be searching for her by now?

She had been desperate to relieve herself and eventually had to give in. She tried to collect her pee in the empty coke bottle but a lot went on the carpet and the smell now filled the room. She was thirsty, hungover, very sore and desperately lonely. Her wrist hurt where she had cut it and she knew she should clean it when she could find fresh water. She kept banging on the door, the effort warming her body against the steadily penetrating cold. As the grey day crawled past she was forced to stop, exhaustion overwhelming her.

Issie longed to see her mother and tried to imagine their reunion, how she would make sure everything was all right again between them. The memories of their arguments, of how she had refused to speak to her mum the last time they had seen each other added to her misery. Scared and feeling very little, Issie tugged the eiderdown more tightly around her shoulders against the cold evening and started to cry.

Fenwick found his way to the arts block with the aid of a torch and let himself in. He fumbled for the switch and fluorescent light flooded the corridor making him squint. The door to the main studio was locked and it took him several attempts to find the right key, an old cast-iron thing that turned slowly and with great reluctance so that when it opened he felt he was being admitted to a place of secrets.

The calm of natural daylight from bulbs that were used to help the students see true colour was soothing. He walked quickly to the other side of the room and up an iron spiral staircase to a half-loft that was bordered by a waist-high rail.

Issie’s artwork was stacked to one side, weighed down by an abstract sculpture that looked as if it captured the memory of a dream from hell. He lifted the moulded clay to one side, suppressing a shudder, and crouched down to examine her work.

On top was a still life; a random assortment of wild plants pushed into a wide-necked earthenware jar of the sort his mother had used to salt runner beans in the days before she gave in and bought a freezer. Despite the innocent subject matter the picture radiated violence. It was sketched in aggressive charcoal strokes,
the stems one bold sweep, the leaves dashed off with careless smudges that nevertheless conveyed their form with menace. There was a toadstool at the bottom, bruised where it had been pushed against the rim of the container. He recognised the species from one of Bess’s nature books: fly agaric, highly poisonous. When he peered closely he saw a dead spider under the cap.

Above the agaric was a cluster of dark flowers on thin stems that looked almost prehistoric. Foxgloves arched over them, their spotted throats hungry and gasping, next to stinging nettles in bloom. Delicate trailing flowers rimmed the arrangement but he wasn’t fooled. He had been warned of their danger as a child and had passed the caution on to his own children: never touch deadly nightshade. Belladonna, lethal to a child. A snail crawled up the stem towards a glistening seed pod; death waiting.

An innocent still life but Issie had loaded the picture with images of death.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ a voice called out. ‘Come down or I’ll call the police.’

‘I am the police,’ he said mildly and looked over the rail to see Miss Bullock bundled into a ludicrously opulent fur coat and brandishing a poker. He could see the hem of a dressing gown even though it was only eight o’clock. Her long hair fell about her shoulders like grey silk.

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Fenwick,’ she said, lowering the poker. ‘Thank goodness, I thought you were an intruder. I saw the lights from my apartment.’

‘You should have called the incident room, not come out to investigate on your own.’

He hadn’t meant it unkindly but she blushed crimson.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Studying some of Issie’s work. It’s deeply disturbing.’

A look of concern flashed across her face, putting him on alert.

‘What have you got there? No wait, I’ll come up – unless you want to go and see the headmistress, that is. She’s just arrived and your colleague is about to see her.’

‘One thing at a time, Miss Bullock.’

‘Very well.’

She was beside him in a moment, saw the picture he was looking at and her face cleared.

‘Oh, that thing. It’s far too traditional to show off her creativity.’

‘Traditional? Hardly; this is a picture of death dressed up as a summer bouquet.’

She looked at him keenly, a half smile on her face, and bent down to study the drawing. Fenwick caught a waft of sandalwood and something deeper, more exotic.

‘Of course you’re right; it is an allegory of death. With the agaric, deadly nightshade, digitalis and aconitum …’

‘The flowers at the front?’

‘Yes, monkshood; beautiful and deadly, but not all the plants are poisonous. See, there are nettles, peppermint, vitex berries and raspberry leaves, all well-known tonics; and this is rosemary.’

‘So what is the message?’ he asked standing up to put more distance between them.

‘Well there is one, you’re right. It’s a sketch she did two summers ago. At first I dismissed it as a practice piece but I too found it disturbing and when I looked again I saw what you realised at once: that it is a very angry picture. There’s a possible explanation, though.

‘When she was fourteen, Issie decided she wanted to be a white witch. It was a fad that lasted all of two terms and was never harmful; in fact it increased her interest in biology and helped her achieve an A-star grade. I had various books on herbal remedies that I loaned her while the phase lasted. When I saw this picture I used the books to identify the healing ingredients and realised that they were a coded message.’

Her cheeks coloured again.

‘Only one remedy I found uses all the herbs in this picture.’

‘What is it for?’

She broke eye contact as she stood up.

‘Loss of male libido.’

‘Libido?’

‘Yes; I think her message was very clear: she was wishing death or impotence on some man with a vengeance.’

‘Any idea whom?’ Her analysis helped to explain his deep unease about the picture, though he was a resolutely unsuperstitious man.

‘Her stepfather, possibly. They’d had some sort of falling out while on holiday.’

Now that she was standing he knelt down to go through the other pictures but nothing else shouted a message to him. He sensed there was something missing.

‘What have you done with them, Miss Bullock?’

‘Pardon?’ She turned and started to walk down the stairs, the soft soles of her shoes slapping against the metal rungs.

‘You know what I mean; Issie’s pictures, the best ones. Where are they?’ He bent and rolled up the flower drawing and placed it under his arm.

‘I most certainly do not know what you mean,’ she said, affecting indignation.

‘If you don’t answer me, I shall ask you to accompany me to Guildford police station and detain you while I secure a warrant to search your rooms.’

Fenwick looked down on her from his vantage point, unaware that his face was even more threatening than his words. Her cheeks went white. For a moment she looked towards the door, as if about to run, then her shoulders sagged.

‘How did you know? Oh, never mind. Come on.’ She turned away, defeated and he followed.

Miss Bullock lived in a set of rooms at the top of the original schoolhouse. When he walked into her apartment he smelt spice and saw candles in the sitting room. She hadn’t spoken since leaving the studio. When they entered she left him and disappeared into a room to the right. Glancing over he saw the corner of a bed.

The sitting room rose double height into the eaves. One wall was lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling, with a library ladder attached to a rail. Interspersed among the books were small statues,
some cast bronze, others intricate carvings in a dark-green stone. Most of them were startlingly lifelike representations of animals and children; a few were abstract. He found them unsettlingly personal, as if he were intruding on someone else’s thoughts.

There was a fireplace set into the wall behind a glass door. The fire inside needed tending. The faint smell of woodsmoke mingled with the aroma of sandalwood and spice from the candles, warm and relaxing. Music played softly, a Chopin étude that he recognised. A pile of wood was stacked neatly in a basket next to the hearth.

The rest of the walls were covered with original paintings in oil and acrylic lit from above by angled recessed spotlights. Some of them seemed to be very good. He bent down and selected sticks for the fire. When it was blazing he threw on a split log and watched as the flames licked around it hungrily. He closed the door quickly on sparks that shot from the dry bark. There was still no sign of her.

The herbals she had mentioned were easily identified, including a number of ancient editions that looked to be collectors’ items. Next to them were volumes of botanical drawings, mostly nineteenth century, with leather bindings and quaint names. The comfort of the room stole over him, making him drowsy. Despite his intentions he felt himself sucked into a state of semi-intoxication as the heat, fragrance and flickering of the flames cocooned him. After the freezing cold of the night outside he was overwhelmed by the desire to sit down, loosen his tie and relax. Fenwick shook his head and the drowsiness passed.

There was a noise and he turned to see Miss Bullock staggering into the room under the weight of three large canvasses. He helped her set them against the wall.

‘This is all I have, other than a few pieces of her sculpture in my garage.’

He turned the first painting around and couldn’t stop himself gasping. The picture was painted in an ironic surrealist style – melting trees, an improbable moon and planets in a black sky – but what drew the eye was the scene of a girl being raped by a
goat-man in the foreground. The girl’s face was blurred but her expression still managed to convey a mixture of hatred and anger that dared the viewer to pity her. He looked at the next picture. It was the goat-man again, the yellow eyes flat and evil, with vertical slits for pupils. Around his neck was a gold chain and medallion with an inscription in Latin.

‘It says “
All things evil will be cast into a lake of fire
”,’ she said as he bent to read.

‘
Revelation.
Who is this goat-man?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you report this?’

‘I didn’t see them until after she’d disappeared. Issie had been working on something secret for months, painting them only when on her own. She kept the canvasses covered in the studio and made me promise not to look at them. I respected her wishes … until she disappeared.’

‘And you didn’t think it relevant? You’re an intelligent woman; how could you cover up something like this?’

Louise Bullock bridled.

‘I did it to preserve Issie’s privacy!’

‘Privacy? If this is an expression of her own experience, then the girl’s been abused!’

‘You mean it might be why she’s run away?’

‘Or been abducted, or killed to stop her talking.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation as Miss Bullock sank onto the sofa and covered her mouth with her hands.

‘I never thought of that, I mean … Her work had become more violent, really dark and menacing, but ironically it was better than ever. This one, see,’ she pulled out the third picture, ‘it’s absolutely brilliant. I wanted to keep it for her A-level submission but Issie said it wasn’t good enough.’

Fenwick studied the painting. It was titled, innocuously, ‘
Bonfire Night’
. An eruption of white light like a supernova dominated the top-right corner, with a smaller yellow starburst away in the distance to the left. The bottom of the canvas was consumed in a swirl of
flames from a bonfire, which silhouetted the cluster of people gathered about it. Instead of being a cheerful celebration, to Fenwick it depicted a scene from hell, the fires ready to consume the damned.

‘She has real power, doesn’t she?’ Miss Bullock said with pride.

‘Yes, but I’m not here for art appreciation. I need to find Issie. Every minute she’s missing in this weather she’s closer to death, assuming that she’s been kept alive.’

‘I was certain that she’d run away. I sympathised with her need for privacy – sometimes one needs that. She has her own right of self-determination and I respect that, even if her parents don’t.’

Fenwick looked at the teacher in exasperation as his patience snapped.

‘Self-determination? I don’t know whether that’s naive or just plain stupid! What right do you have to make a judgement like that when a girl’s life is at stake? Her rights; her privacy? How about her
life
? You need to get your priorities sorted, Miss Bullock.’

Lulu Bullock hugged herself and looked away. He could see moisture in her eyes and thought
I hope you lose sleep tonight.
It wasn’t very Christian but then he didn’t feel like forgiving anybody until Issie had been found.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shamefaced, finally daring to look at him. ‘How can I help?’

‘Tell me everything you know. Start with Issie’s drug habit.’

‘You know about that?’

He lied and said yes.

‘Of course you would. It was pot mainly, though she told me she’d tried a tab of E once and didn’t like it.’

‘Why didn’t you report her?’

‘I did better than that; I found her some proper help. There’s a clinic I know. Last weekend I took her there for an appointment. She was going back again after Christmas.’

‘You have a duty to her parents, to the school. It wasn’t up to you to decide how to help her.’

Miss Bullock rounded on him with an anger that almost matched his own.

‘Why do you think the poor kid had problems in the first place? It was her parents that drove her to find an easy way out. She was living a nightmare since her mother remarried.’

‘But she’s only a kid, you just said so yourself.’

‘A turn of phrase. Issie is eighteen this term, legally an adult. I knew what she needed; her parents would have had no idea and neither would the school.’

‘What made you so certain that you understood her when no one else did?’

She stood up.

‘I need a drink; can I get you one?’

He shook his head.

‘Answer my question.’

Bullock concentrated on opening a bottle of red wine, leaving him time to speculate.

‘We’re running background checks on everyone, including a search for previous convictions.’ He paused. ‘Want to tell me now or wait for us to find out officially?’

She gulped some wine and looked at the ceiling.

‘It was a long time ago. I was young, in trouble, everyone did it back then.’

‘Did what?’

‘Drugs.’

‘What sort of drugs?’

She rested her head against the wall.

‘LSD. I thought it improved my creativity. Instead it nearly killed me. If it hadn’t been for Brian it would have done.’

‘Brian Mattias; Issie’s father?’

‘Yes. He helped get me straightened out, then he set me up financially – not that I did a lot with his generosity; I had other problems by then.’