The House Across the Street Read online

  There was no doubt he was a good-looking man, if you went for that dark hair, soulful eyes and chiselled cheekbones look. He reminded her a bit of Anthony Perkins, only not as creepy as he’d been in Psycho – and much older, of course. She recalled going to see the film with Jilly twice, and both times they’d been scared out of their wits.

  ‘I came in to ask what you want to eat. Not to be insulted,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, sorry! But you bang me on the head and lock me up here and you expect me to be really nice to you? What choices do I get for food?’

  ‘Fish and chips, or sausages and chips.’

  ‘Good job I like them both,’ she said and gave him what some men had called her disarming smile.

  To her surprise he laughed. ‘You are a very unusual girl, Katy. But you don’t want to upset me. I can be very nasty.’

  ‘So I believe. Why did you pick on my dad to frame for killing Gloria Reynolds and her daughter? He hadn’t done anything to you.’

  ‘Mind your mouth,’ he said.

  Katy had to force herself not to flinch as he came closer to her. ‘You can’t expect me not to ask such a question,’ she said, more bravely than she felt, ‘especially when I’m hungry and cold. So get me sausages and chips, and bring back the other things I asked for.’

  His eyes widened momentarily in surprise. Then they narrowed, and his mouth tightened. Katy quaked inwardly, but he turned and walked out, locking the door behind him.

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ she said to herself. ‘No food, no nothing. You always go too far.’

  Charles rushed into St Pancras station and caught the 5.15 p.m. train to Broadstairs by the skin of his teeth. He had to stand, as the train was crowded with commuters going home, but he couldn’t have gone earlier because he was in court.

  It was Tuesday evening now, Katy had been gone for almost forty-eight hours and so far the police hadn’t got any leads. They had searched along the road in Hammersmith for clues – a dropped shoe, or anything they could identify as belonging to Katy – but found nothing. One police officer asked Charles how many dark red Jaguars he thought there were in London, if he wanted to check them out one by one? Charles didn’t have any idea how many there were, and the figure he was given of 7,000 did make it a very difficult investigation.

  Yesterday morning Charles had telephoned Michael Bonham, who was horrified to learn of Katy’s disappearance. It was only today that he’d managed to persuade Edna she had to talk to Charles and tell him all she knew. So that was where Charles was going now, to Claire, to Edna’s daughter’s home.

  Michael Bonham had also taken upon himself the unenviable task of contacting Katy’s mother. ‘Mrs Speed hardly reacted at all,’ Bonham had told Charles on the phone. ‘She just said, “So like Katy to think she knows best.” I ask you! What sort of a mother doesn’t at least show some emotion that her daughter has been abducted? If it had been my daughter, I’d be distraught, but also proud of her for having the courage to try and help her father.’

  They’d had a little lawyerly discussion about their constant surprise at human behaviour. Then Michael had gone on to say how frail and scared Edna was.

  ‘Her daughter claims she’s aged twenty years overnight. She said she shakes with fright whenever someone rings the doorbell. She is torn between wanting to help Katy in any way she can, and fear that the man might come after her again. She’s also frightened to tell us what she can remember about the women she and Gloria helped, in case it endangers her and her family in any way.’

  ‘Quite understandable,’ Charles had said. ‘But we must make her see she is endangering more women’s lives by keeping quiet. If her abductor has got that notebook, and I think it’s certain he has, it might not just be his former wife he wants to hurt but all those women who left their men.’

  ‘I agree,’ Michael had said. ‘I think you must visit her, Charles, and persuade her. I have tried and failed. She says she remembers none of the details from her notebook, but I don’t believe that.’

  So now Charles was on his way to Broadstairs, and he was pinning all his hopes on Edna recalling something useful. She must surely remember the more serious cases of battering; the names of the women, and where they came from. In his line of work he didn’t forget the worst cases, though he often wished he could.

  Bonham had been concerned about the need to tell Albert Speed of his daughter’s disappearance, too. Charles had asked him for a couple of days to find her first. It seemed incredibly cruel to tell a man in prison that his daughter was in the clutches of a murderer. But Bonham had managed to get a phone number for Rob, Katy’s brother, from their mother and he’d already rung him. Rob had suggested he should come down to Sussex and visit his father to tell him. He had wanted to go to London, to try and help find his sister, but Bonham had talked him out of that, saying for now he’d be more useful staying with his mother and visiting his father. As chilly as Hilda Speed seemed, she might actually be in a bad way and need Rob’s help.

  Smugglers, the small hotel owned by Mrs and Mrs Unwin, Edna’s daughter and son-in-law, was probably very picturesque on a summer’s day with tubs of flowers by the door and an uninterrupted view of the sea. But in the dark and rain, peering out from the taxi window, it just looked old and a bit shabby; even the lights were sparse and dim. Charles wished he hadn’t agreed to stay the night now. He expected a slightly damp, lumpy bed and a shortage of hot water in the morning.

  The door was opened by a small, attractive dark-haired woman in her late twenties.

  ‘Mr Stevenson?’ she asked, and when he said he was, she opened the door wider in welcome. ‘What a filthy night to visit us,’ she said, her dark eyes twinkling. ‘I told Mother that she should be honoured to have a London lawyer coming down to see her. Normally our guests tend to be a little dull. You’d be hard pressed to have an exciting conversation with any of them.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find my conversation very exciting,’ he said with a smile, already liking this unexpectedly jolly woman. ‘But I’ll try very hard not to be too dull.’

  ‘Mother is up in her room. I’m afraid she is too scared to be down here with us. But then, if I’d been run off the road purposely and nearly drowned in icy water, I think I might want to stay in a locked room.’

  ‘I’m with you on that,’ Charles said. He hesitated before asking, ‘So shall I just go up to her now?’

  ‘No, you’ll have a cup of tea, or something stronger with us first,’ Claire said. ‘She’s just having her supper at the moment.’

  Charles hadn’t met Edna before. But even so, when he went into her room, he saw for himself how badly her close brush with death had affected her. She looked like a woman in her sixties, her eyes were dull, and she was wringing her hands nervously. As he went closer to her chair to shake her hand and introduce himself, she recoiled with fear.

  ‘Don’t be frightened of me, Edna, I’m here to try and help,’ he said gently and squatted down beside her chair, putting his hand on her arm comfortingly. ‘You’ve had a terrible ordeal, and I’m so sorry for that, but now we think this man has abducted Katy. So I must ask you to try and get beyond your fear, for her sake.’

  ‘I want to,’ she said in a small voice, her lips trembling. ‘I liked Katy very much. If only I hadn’t given her the notebook! I intended her to hand it over to the police or Mr Bonham, not to go out looking for the man alone.’

  ‘I think we have both recognized now that Katy is reckless. But she did it for all the right reasons, so we have a duty to help find her.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Edna asked.

  ‘Try to remember some of the worst cases you and Gloria came across. Particularly those where, as far as you know, the women didn’t go back to their husbands.’

  Edna closed her eyes and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I find this is the best way for me to unlock the past. Go down to Claire and have some supper. I’ll jot down what I remember.’

  Downstairs, Claire greeted him
warmly and he related what her mother had said.

  ‘She’ll come up with something, she always does,’ Claire said. ‘It remains to be seen, though, whether she remembers the right monster. From what she’s told me in the past, they all sound like the Devil’s disciples. But sit down, Mr Stevenson.’ She waved at the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to dish up in a minute, but how about a gin and tonic? Or would you like to see your room first?’

  ‘The room can wait, a gin and tonic sounds wonderful,’ he said.

  Claire turned out to be a tonic, too. The drink hit just the right spot, the kitchen was warm and inviting, and she was the best of company, funny, irreverent and caring.

  ‘My real job is a social worker,’ she admitted. ‘We bought this place so that when I decide to throw in the towel, I’ve got something to fall back on. It’s easy to run; we’ve only got four guest bedrooms, and no one but you tonight.’

  ‘So you followed in your mother’s footsteps?’

  ‘Yes, and Mum and I seem to be magnets for the desperate, dispossessed and damned. It may be because of what she went through with my father, and my feelings of guilt at having watched it going on. People imagine a lovely little place like Broadstairs won’t have problems like wife beaters, child molesters, cruel parents and all the other nasty things humans are capable of. But believe you me, there’s plenty of them here, too.’

  Charles agreed. ‘Yes, clients who need defending come from every social class and area. It seems we have the dastardly all around us.’

  Claire grinned. ‘I love that word “dastardly”! Now tell me, what is your connection with Katy Speed? I know you aren’t her father’s brief.’

  ‘Katy recently joined our chambers as a legal secretary. Against all chambers’ rules I took her out for a drink last Friday.’

  ‘Are you trying to help because you feel something for her, or is this a sense of duty?’

  ‘You are direct.’ Charles smiled. ‘It isn’t my normal practice to admit to such a thing, but yes I do feel something for her.’

  ‘Well done, it’s always good to establish people’s feelings straight off, and I’d say it gives you more determination to find her than the police will have. What are they saying about Katy’s disappearance?’

  ‘That it’s too soon to be sure if she was abducted. As if Katy would just disappear for no reason!’

  ‘I suppose people do sometimes, but with her father being banged up for a crime he patently didn’t commit, and my mother suffering an attempt on her life too, I would’ve expected them to pull out all the stops to find the real killer.’

  They had just finished their supper when Charles heard a bell ring upstairs.

  ‘That will be Mother,’ Claire said. ‘I think it means she’s remembered something for you.’

  Charles thanked Claire for the delicious meal and rushed up the stairs.

  Edna had a notepad on her lap, and the whole page was covered in her writing.

  ‘It became a bit easier once I recalled what we called “our first”. She wasn’t the first woman we helped, but the first to never go back to her husband. She was called Sonia Birchill, from Kentish Town. She moved to Brighton, with our help, and changed her name and the children’s to Patterson. Nasty as Mr Birchill was, I don’t think he could be our man. He couldn’t drive, for one thing, and they lived in a council flat with very little money. So even if he learned to drive, I doubt he’d be able to afford a Jaguar – and he wasn’t very bright, from what Sonia told us.’

  ‘Have you heard from her since she settled in Brighton?’

  ‘Yes, she always sent us a Christmas card. And about four years ago she wrote and said she had a lovely man in her life, and that her two children were doing well at school.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember either Sonia or her husband’s address?’

  ‘He lived in a block of flats called Denyer House. On the second floor, but I don’t recall the number. Sonia lived quite near to the railway station in Brighton, but I can’t remember the address; she never put it on her cards or letters. That was a piece of advice we gave all our women, to never trust anyone from their past with their new address. It was safer that way.’

  Charles nodded. ‘The police should be able to check them out with just what you’ve given me. Now what else have you got?’

  She gave him nine names in all. To Edna’s credit she had remembered all of the women’s married names and, if not the actual address of the marital home, she was sure of the neighbourhood it was in. She remembered their children too, surprising Charles by reeling off their names and ages when she helped their mothers. She recalled some of the names the women adopted, and some of the places they moved to. Charles thought she’d done amazingly well, under the circumstances.

  One thing she did remember very clearly was the kind of injuries all these women had when they came to her. Charles shuddered when she told him about the imprint of a red-hot iron on one woman’s back. Another had her face smeared with paint stripper, and her husband had held her arms until it burned right in so she couldn’t wash it off immediately. Broken limbs, weals from being hit with a stick, black eyes, teeth knocked out, and one pregnant woman thrown down the stairs. She lost the baby the following day.

  ‘Ghastly, isn’t it?’ Edna said when she’d finished, and she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. ‘Of course, Gloria and I had received much the same treatment from our husbands, and each time we met one of these poor women we relived it. The police should be made to act in such cases; it makes me so angry to hear how they refer to it as “a domestic”. Even if they do arrest the husband, he’ll get bail and he’s back home in a few hours to give his wife another dose.’

  It had been a long, exhausting day and Charles knew he must get to bed to be up early in the morning.

  He stood up, leaned over and kissed Edna’s cheek. ‘You are a very brave, kind lady, and an inspiration,’ he said. ‘I will do my utmost to get this man not just behind bars but hanged. Also, from now on, you’ll find me banging the drum to get help for abused women.’

  She smiled up at him and took his hand in hers. ‘I’ll be praying Katy is found alive and well, and that something good comes out of all this for the pair of you. But I’ll be holding you to your promise to bang the drum for abused women; I believe you are the man who could help change attitudes and laws.’

  11

  Katy was so hungry she thought she could eat a live mouse, fur and all, if one should come into the room. She wasn’t merely hungry, she was ravenous, and her mind kept turning to gross and ridiculous things, such as eating that mouse. She wondered whether that was a precursor to going mad.

  In books people who were hungry or thirsty always seemed to be in hot places. They saw mirages of dripping taps or fountains. But she was so cold that she wanted to imagine being hot. Unfortunately, she found that impossible. She could easily imagine icy wastes, but she tried not to as that made things worse.

  When Reilly had stomped off, she thought he would leave her for an hour or two to punish her for being so demanding. But she’d expected him to come back with food eventually.

  But he hadn’t come back, and she was fairly certain, despite having no clock and being unable to see daylight, that at least forty-eight hours had passed since then. She had tried to sleep but couldn’t, because of the cold. With nothing to do to pass the time, her imagination had taken over. She saw herself getting thinner and thinner until she couldn’t stand or walk any longer. Also she had begun to think about the terrifying prospect that he might not come back at all. It was obvious he could solve the problem of what to do with her by just leaving her here to die.

  How long did it take to die of starvation? She knew people said you could only survive about a week without water, but she’d never heard how long without food. She supposed it was probably weeks.

  The thought of that was truly horrible. Her stomach was already so empty it hurt, and food dominated her thoughts: sausages sizzling in a pan, Sun
day roast with golden-brown roast potatoes, or cheese on toast, butter dripping out from under the cheese. She remembered how, when she was about fifteen, she used to read books about life in prison camps and how each day there was a quest for something to eat: a crust of bread, or some potato peelings. When she was reading that, it had never crossed her mind she might one day experience it for herself.

  To try and take her mind off food she thought about home in Bexhill. Seen now, while cold and hungry, her home seemed like the most luxurious palace, her mother perfect and loving, cooking meals that were a feast.

  Then there was the office in Bexhill, with cakes on someone’s birthday, nipping across the road for a sausage roll from the baker’s, the lunch breaks spent in the Wimpy Bar; she could smell the fried onions right now, and it made her mouth water.

  She had tried very hard to think of something else, but she couldn’t, her mind always turned back to food. Yet now and then her thoughts did flit to Charles. Reliving his kiss could take her mind off her hunger for brief moments, as could daydreams of how it might have been if she hadn’t gone looking for the red Jaguar. She thought too how upset her father would be to hear she’d disappeared. She knew he would rather spend the rest of his life in prison than have freedom without his daughter.

  Even her mother might cry – something Katy had never ever seen. She wondered why it had never occurred to her to sit down with her mother and insist she explain why she was so chilly and sharp. What was it that had made her that way? Now that Katy thought about it, she realized she knew next to nothing about her mother; she had no idea where she’d grown up, or how she had met Albert. What was she like as a young girl? What were her parents like? It was just one big blank.

  Remaining scrunched up under the blankets to try and keep warm made her ache all over. She forced herself to get up, to stretch and try to do some exercises, but it made her feel faint, so she lay down again and pulled the blankets back over her.