The Memory of Midnight (47 page)

‘Too small. Ah, I have it!’ Ralph clapped his hands. ‘We’ll use the secret stair.’ He strolled over to the corner of the room by the window overlooking the garden
and began feeling around for another hidden latch. ‘Another papist alteration, but one I confess I have found useful when not wanting to advertise my night-time . . . travels.’ The
teeth flashed again, bone white in the flickering candlelight, as a heavy click announced that the panel was open. ‘A shame to close it up, but worth it, I feel. I’ll get John Tyler in
to brick up the door into the garden. He doesn’t need to know why.’

Fastidiously, he brushed the dust off his fingers. ‘Well, then, now that’s decided, we can get on.’

Without more ado, he and Janet picked up a struggling Nell and bundled her into the priest hole. It was so small that the process was not without difficulty, but they managed with some shoving.
At the last moment, Ralph ripped the bonds from her wrists.

‘I like the idea of hearing you fighting to get out,’ he told Nell. ‘And you’ll be able to hear exactly what I’m doing.’

And with a last gleam of his teeth, he closed the panel on her. A dull click as the wood slotted into place and Nell was alone in the smothering dark. The cobwebs clung to her lips and eyes, and
the blackness licked its lips, slavering at the prospect of eating her up. But worse than all that was the inhuman cry that came from her daughter, left alone with the monster that was her
father.

Even though it would please Ralph, Nell couldn’t help herself from beating on the panel. She couldn’t bear to listen, but neither could she bear for her daughter to think that she
had abandoned herself to her own terror without thought for Meg’s. Her beating would bear witness that Meg was not alone. So she ripped at the implacable wood until her fingers were torn and
splintered and behind the filthy rag that covered her mouth still she cursed Ralph and Janet from the bottom of her heart.

Meg was whimpering now, calling for her mother, her moans punctuated by the sound of Ralph grunting, and the slap of flesh on flesh. Every now and then he called out: ‘Can you hear,
Eleanor? Can you imagine what I’m doing to her?’

And she could. God help her, she could. Wrapped as she was in blackness, Nell could see with agonizing clarity: Ralph beating Meg. Ralph hurting Meg, stinging and slicing her tender flesh. Ralph
forcing Meg to his vilest and most degrading pleasure while Janet groaned and shuddered with delight.

And Nell could do nothing.
Nothing.
She was trapped in the dark, with horror and grief and rage and despair and a desperate, wrenching guilt her only companions and she swore that she
would pursue Ralph into Hell and beyond until her daughter was avenged.

She could hear Meg begging: ‘Please . . . please . . . please . . .’ but her cries grew fainter and fainter until Nell was straining to hear her. She continued to beat and tear at
the wood, long after the only sounds were of the lash of the whip, and of Ralph and Janet gasping and groaning in ecstasy.

Finally, exhausted, depleted, Nell’s ruined hands slid down the wood in despair. She would have slumped, but there was no room for her legs to do more than buckle, and the pain blotted out
all but the most dreadful knowledge that speared dagger sharp through it all.

Her daughter was dead. Tom was dead. Nell was ready to welcome death, but horror had not done with her yet. It had its hands around her throat, and her heart jerked agonizingly as the darkness
crushed her. It was pressing in, pressing on her mouth, on her ribs, on her mind, blotting out Ralph and Janet and even Meg at last, until there was only Nell, alone with terror and pain and the
beast that was horror.

It suffocated her with its fetid stink. It gnawed at her flesh with its razor-sharp teeth, and fed on her belly, tearing at her entrails and clawing its way up inside her until it latched at
last onto her heart and tore it apart with a bright shriek of agony that blotted out all awareness.

It was the only mercy shown to Nell that day.

Her eyes flew open with a wrenching gasp for air. He was backing away from her, bafflement and unease warring in his expression.

‘What’s happening?’ he said, glancing over his shoulder, then back at her. ‘Why are you looking so strange? What’s going on?’

She was free! She raised a hand to her mouth but the filthy rag Janet had tied around her was gone. There was no tie around her ankles.

Her fingers were torn and bleeding, but she could breathe. She could
breathe.

Exultation filled her, coursing along her veins with every breath, and she straightened like a leaf unfurling. The room was strange and everything was out of kilter, but the darkness had gone
and the light was dazzling her eyes.

And the author of her horror was standing right in front of her.

‘You,’ she said softly. ‘I told you I would follow you to Hell and beyond.’

‘Stop it, Theresa!’ His voice rose. ‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Stop it? I will not stop. I will never stop until I have avenged my daughter!’

‘Daughter? What daughter? What’s wrong with you, Theresa?’

She threw back her head and laughed, a harsh sound that jangled through the clammy air in the room. ‘
You
are wrong! You are monstrous. What evil lives in your head that you would
kill your own daughter?’

‘Theresa, that’s enough. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t like it!’ His eyes widened as they fixed on her bloody fingers. ‘Christ,
what’s happened to your hands?’

A quaver of fear rippled through his voice, and she rejoiced in it.

‘Are you frightened?’ she asked, stepping towards him, holding her ruined hands up before her so that he could see the blood. ‘Is your belly turning to water?’ she asked
as he backed away before her. ‘Is terror squirming up your throat?’

‘Theresa, for God’s sake!’

‘Good,’ she said, smiling. ‘Now you begin to learn what it is like for your victims.’

‘I don’t have any victims! This has gone on long enough.’ Gathering himself, Martin advanced on her, pure aggression, and caught her across the cheek with the back of his hand.
The impact slammed Tess back into her body, and she doubled over, disorientated by the blow and the realization of who she was.

Martin stood over her, satisfied to be back in control. ‘You asked for it,’ he told her as if she had objected. ‘I’ve wanted to do that for years, and I should have done
it sooner. Now, what the fuck is going on here, Theresa?’

‘You tell me, Martin,’ she said, straightening again with difficulty. Tentatively, she dabbed at her cheek, but she looked him straight in the eye. She had died, survived the worst
horror imaginable. There was nothing he could do to her now. ‘What’s that strapped to your chest?’

He was clearly taken aback by her change of tone. He didn’t like her looking at him like that. The bomb had done its work up to then. It had kept her conciliatory, eager to please, but now
she was defiant again. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my family together,’ he blustered.

‘Including threatening to kill your own child?’ Her own anger was feeding off Nell’s. She despised herself for giving in to Martin’s bullying for so long. She had put
Oscar in danger.

‘What’s got into you, Theresa?’

‘
What’s got into me
? You’ve terrified my son and threatened to blow all of us to kingdom come and you ask me what’s got into me?’ Her eyes blazed, and she
balled her fists as she stepped nose-to-nose with him so that she could jab her finger into the padding above the switch.

Martin flinched. ‘Be careful, woman,’ he said holding out his hands, palms upstretched to keep her off as he backed away, but Tess followed him.

‘No, I won’t be careful. I’ve been careful for years, tiptoeing around your obsessions, terrified of provoking you, not realizing that you can’t be careful with someone
whose mind is so small and warped and scared that he can’t function without someone to control so he can feel big!’

‘Theresa, I’m warning you, this thing will go off!’ Martin was practically in the fireplace, and the tremor was back in his voice.

Tess ignored him. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she said contemptuously. ‘A strong man isn’t afraid to talk and to listen, but you’re too weak to do that. You decide to
strap a bomb to your chest and threaten to blow everyone up instead. You know what?’ she said, still jabbing at him. ‘You go ahead!’

‘You’re crazy!’

His face was morphing, sliding grotesquely into Ralph’s, and as his teeth grew and his lips thickened and the angle of his jaw changed, Tess felt Nell surge back into her. She was swirling
in disgust and horror and hate. The air was thick and viscous with it.

She jabbed at him again and again until he stumbled back against the chest that filled most of the fireplace. His eyes were wild with terror at the strange voice coming out of her lips and the
stranger looking out of her eyes. The air was pressing around them, like the suffocating darkness in the priest hole.

‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Pull the switch and die.’

‘You’ll die too, you mad bitch.’

‘I’ve died before, I can die again,’ she told him. ‘And I’ll see you in Hell.’

Martin was scrabbling at the front of the device in terror. He was panicked now, beyond thinking, and there was a moment when everything went very still. Nell was sucked back into the past, and
Tess found herself staring at the switch on the front of the device as Martin’s finger moved inexorably towards it.

It was green, she thought in a strange detached way. That was all wrong. It should be red, surely?

And then she thought: I need to run.

It was hopeless. The knowledge that she was too late exploded in her brain, but she turned anyway. She flung herself round in slow motion and then there was a roaring in her ears and a great
bang and she was falling, falling into smoke and darkness.

A great weight was pinning her head down. She was being crushed like Margaret Clitherow and panic fluttered behind her eyelids as she struggled to breathe.

‘It’s all right. It’s over now.’ A voice she recognized, but couldn’t put a name to. A voice she trusted. A warm hand around her wrist.

Its grip was all that kept her from being dragged back down into the dark. She wanted to cling to it but there was something wrong with her hands. They were wrapped in bandages and she
couldn’t bend her fingers.

When she swallowed, her throat felt as if it were lined with sandpaper, and her tongue stuck horribly to the roof of her mouth. Forcing her eyes open, she saw a man sitting beside her and
holding her hand. Above his beaky nose, his brows were drawn together and in spite of the steadiness of his grip, she sensed a churn of anger and fear.

Luke. The name spread like a drop of cool water over her mind.

She wanted to ask why he was so afraid, but it was too hard to string the words together.

‘Thirsty,’ she managed instead.

His expression cleared at her cracked whisper, and a smile that started right at the backs of his eyes slowly spread over his face, dissolving the fear.

‘You’re back.’ He filled a plastic cup of water and helped guide a straw between her lips so that she could drink without lifting her head.

Back
? Tess’s head was pounding. A sense of horror was prowling around the edges of her consciousness, but she wouldn’t go there, not yet. As it was, her mind was swirling
and stumbling occasionally over odd clumps of memory: Martin’s eyes widening in terror; his fingers moving towards the switch; rage pulsating along her veins; Oscar’s expression as he
hesitated at the door at the bottom of the stairs.

The thought of her son brought her fully awake. ‘Oscar?’ she croaked.

‘He’s fine. He’s with your mum.’

It was an effort to focus, and Tess still couldn’t lift her head. Her eyes slid around as she sucked gratefully at the water. She was lying high in a complicated steel bed and attached to
a drip. Bandages swathed both hands which lay on the cellular blanket. A bank of machines stood ready beside her and a curtain was pulled around, isolating her and Luke from the room beyond. It was
the smell that made the connection first, though: an unmistakable scent of antiseptic and tension.

‘I’m in hospital.’

The corner of Luke’s mouth lifted as he took the cup away. ‘There’s no getting anything past you, Sherlock. You had a nasty blow to the head and your hands are pretty torn up
but otherwise they seem to think you’re going to be fine.’

He hesitated. ‘Not sure if I should be asking you this yet, but what do you remember?’

Her mind was sludgy, a dark, ominous river where memories lurked. Tess frowned with the effort of grasping at them. ‘Martin was there . . .’ Her eyes widened as she tugged one to the
surface. She tried to struggle up but she couldn’t use her hands and Luke pressed her back onto the pillow.

‘Hey, just lie still,’ he said.

‘Oh my God, the bomb! The bomb went off!’

‘No.’

‘But I saw him pull the switch! I thought I was going to die. What . . . what happened?’

‘I think the police were hoping you could tell them that,’ said Luke. ‘We all heard a God-almighty bang outside and we just froze. It came out of nowhere. I thought that
bastard had done it too. I thought he’d blown you both up.’

Luke’s face worked and his fingers tightened around Tess’s wrist. ‘I thought I’d lost you all over again, Tess. I was first up the stairs, with the police shouting at me
to stop, and I saw you lying on the floor in your bedroom with a sodding great block of masonry nearby, but I could feel a pulse and I felt . . .’

His expression cracked and he tipped forward to rest his forehead on the sheet beside her. He drew in a breath, let it out.

‘I felt so fucking useless,’ he muttered without looking up. ‘Standing outside, knowing you were in there with him on your own, nothing to do but hold onto Oscar.’

Very gently, Tess lifted her poor, bandaged hand and touched his hair. She wished she could feel it, stroke it for comfort, the way she did with Oscar sometimes.