Blood Harvest (49 page)

Where the hell were the police?

‘You’re nice to talk to, Evi. You listen. You don’t judge. I’m going to get Millie now.’ Jenny was actually pushing her way past Evi, gently but firmly, manoeuvring herself on to a higher step. Evi turned, kept a tight hold on the banister to stop herself falling.

‘No one would judge you, Jenny,’ she said. ‘You were a child. Did you never think that perhaps you could tell your father what was going on?’

Something glinted in Jenny’s eyes. ‘You think he didn’t know?’ she said.

‘Surely not?’

‘Why do you think he was so opposed to the Fletchers buying this land? He knew they had a daughter. He knows this town isn’t safe for little girls.’

Evi was struggling to take it in. ‘But his own daughters?’

‘He sent me away to school when I was thirteen, just after Heather was born. He couldn’t turn a blind eye after that. It was too late for Christiana, of course, she was too old for school.’

Evi reached out her hand, touched the other woman on the arm. ‘Jenny, we need to tell the police all this,’ she said. ‘They have to stop him before another child gets killed. I should phone them again. Get them here sooner.’ She took a step down.

‘Wait, please.’ Now Evi’s arm was caught in a tight grip. ‘I haven’t told you everything.’

Christ, what more could there be? Evi glanced at the window that overlooked the street, hoping to see the flickering of police lights. ‘What do you need to tell me?’ she asked.

Jenny dropped her head. ‘It’s so difficult,’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d tell anyone this.’

‘How do we get him out?’ repeated Tom. Ebba’s expression didn’t change, or give any hint she’d understood him. Tom turned back to his brother and tried again to pull at least part of him up. Joe wasn’t moving and Tom realized why. The ropes that bound his brother were also securing him to the tower itself.

‘Joe, I have to go and get help,’ he said. ‘There’s a policeman downstairs. I’ll be five minutes, Joe, I promise.’

Joe’s eyes had closed. Leaving his brother in the tower was the hardest thing Tom had ever done, but somehow he made himself turn and crawl back along the roof guttering. He couldn’t hear Ebba behind him and hoped that perhaps she’d stayed to comfort Joe.

He was back at the real bell tower that led down into the church. His foot found the top step and a hand closed around his bare ankle.

The two women were sitting on the stairs. Jenny had sunk down, taking Evi with her. They were both shaking.

‘When did it all stop?’ asked Evi. ‘When you went to school?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Things got a bit better before that. He’d found someone else to pique his interest, you see. Our housekeeper’s daughter. She was blonde and pretty and very young, just what he liked.’

‘Gillian?’ said Evi. ‘He abused Gillian too?’ Was there something at least she’d been right about?

Jenny shrugged, then nodded. ‘I think Gwen Bannister guessed what was going on,’ she said. ‘She’d never have challenged my grandfather, but she got her daughter out of harm’s reach. More than anyone did for me.’

‘Did he start on you again, after Gillian left?’

‘When I was home from school, yes. And then when I was
nineteen, his luck ran out. I got pregnant too. By the time I plucked up the courage to tell Dad, it was too late to get rid of the baby so he talked Mike into taking me on. And he persuaded Tobias to sign over control of the estate to him.’

‘I can’t believe your father colluded with all this. You must have felt so betrayed.’

Jenny dropped Evi’s hands. ‘Evi, men have been selling their daughters for wealth and power for thousands of years,’ she said. ‘You think it all stopped when we got to the twentieth century? But it was good for me too. I got out. And I got Lucy.’

Tobias’s daughter. Lucy had been the incestuous child of her great-grandfather.

‘What happened to Lucy?’ asked Evi in a small voice. ‘How did she really die?’

‘I loved her so much, Evi.’

‘I’m sure you did. Did he do it? Did Tobias kill her?’

‘She was only two when he started to look at her, Evi. She was blonde and gorgeous, just like Christiana and me when we were tiny. I’d watch his eyes going over her body. He could still drive back then, he’d come up to the house all the time. I would never change her or bathe her anywhere near him, but he always seemed to be hanging around her. I knew I couldn’t let it happen again, not to Lucy.’

‘But Lucy was different. She had you to protect her. And Mike.’

‘But I knew how clever he was. I knew he’d get to her in the end. So I started planning ways to kill him. It seemed like the only way. Does that shock you?’

Evi thought she was way beyond being shocked. ‘I think it’s very understandable that you should be so angry,’ she said.

‘I thought about smothering him in his sleep, putting something in his food, pushing him down the stairs, tricking him to come up to the Tor with me and shoving him off. But then, one day, I realized. I didn’t have to kill him to stop him getting what he wanted.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No. I could kill her instead.’

Tom was being tugged downwards, his back jarring painfully on the stone steps.

‘What the fuck are you doin’?’ said a voice he knew. Two large hands grasped his waist and pulled him down more steps. ‘Back off, let us get down,’ the same voice instructed. Tom heard several pairs of footsteps retreating behind them and then he was in the church gallery once more.

‘Joe’s on the roof,’ he managed. ‘In the other bell tower, the one that everyone thinks is empty, but it’s not. He’s in there and he’s freezing and we have to get him down now.’

The four boys stared back at him, as if they’d captured an alien that had suddenly started giving them orders.

‘Your brother?’ Jake Knowles was the first to speak. ‘The one we’ve been looking for all day?’

‘On the roof?’ repeated Jake’s older brother, whose name Tom couldn’t remember.

Tom looked back at the four faces and felt like his heart had stopped beating. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You put him there.’

The older boy’s face twisted. ‘What the fuck do you think we are?’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ psychos?’

‘He’s actually up there?’ said Billy Aspin. ‘Alive?’

Tom nodded. ‘He’s tied up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get him out. I need to get my dad. What are you doing here? If you didn’t put him there, why are you here?’

‘We followed you in,’ said Jake. ‘We saw you and that Renshaw cretin running through the graveyard and we followed. Got fuckin’ lost in that cellar. Where’d she go?’

‘We have to get help. There’s a police …’ said Tom, realizing he had no idea what had happened to Ebba.

‘Come on,’ interrupted the eldest Knowles boy. ‘Let’s see what he’s on about.’

Evi felt like she was burning up. Funny, she’d heard patients talk about feeling terror many times. None of them had ever told her how hot it was. Or how it seemed to throw your brain into slow motion. Jenny? Jenny was the one who’d been after Millie the whole time. No, that couldn’t be right. She’d misunderstood something. She was overtired.

‘And the really ironic thing was, Tobias did love her.’ Jenny was clutching Evi again, making it impossible for her to move. Her face
was flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright. Evi had to get up somehow. Then what? Upstairs, to Millie’s room, or outside to the phone?

‘He was absolutely devastated,’ Jenny went on. ‘I made him watch, you see. I knew he was going to the church – he was churchwarden for years – and I followed him there with Lucy in my arms. I climbed up to the gallery and then I shouted for him.’

Sweat was trickling down between Evi’s shoulder blades. The police weren’t coming. Jenny hadn’t called them. And why did she have to be so close?

‘I’ll never forget it,’ she was saying. ‘He came out of the vestry and I was dangling her from her ankles, the way he used to do to me, and she was screaming and screaming and I could see him shouting at me, yelling at me to stop. He started running forward and I let her go, just like that.’

The smell of the woman was almost worse than the heat: alcohol and perspiration and exotic flowers. Evi knew it was going to make her retch if she didn’t move. Hands down, push hard, ignore the pain; she had strong arms, it would work.

‘It took so long for her to fall,’ Jenny went on. ‘I had so much time to think, to realize it was always meant to be this way, that I would destroy him in the end, because of what he did to me.’

Do it now. Evi rose up, was caught and dragged back down.

‘He almost made it.’ Jenny was whispering into her face now. ‘Almost caught her. But she slammed down hard on those flagstones and the blood, the blood just went everywhere, it was like I’d dropped a bubble of it. I thought some of it was going to reach me up in the gallery.’

Evi swallowed hard and fought the temptation to hold her breath. She had to keep breathing. If she held her breath, she’d faint.

‘I’ve never had any pleasure from sex, Evi, not once – how could I?’ Jenny was saying. ‘This orgasm business people get so worked up about, I have no idea what they’re talking about. But that day, seeing all that blood and watching him start to scream, I can’t tell you the pleasure I felt. I almost fainted away, right there and then, it was so intense. And the sound of the thud when she hit the tiles, like a ripe fruit bursting open, I could hear that over and over again in my head, and all the time the blood was spreading out from around her.
I could see it oozing out in waves, while her heart struggled to keep going.’

Evi knew she couldn’t scream. No one but Millie would hear her.

The two men were running down the moor, their torch beams aimed at the white ground below their feet. Through the beech wood, past the abandoned water mill, over the stream. Once Gareth had seemed himself again, a sense of panic had swept through Harry. They had to get back. It was all he could think of – getting back.

It had been forty minutes or more since they’d left the house. The police should have joined them by now. There were police cars on the roads into Heptonclough, they weren’t more than five minutes from the Fletchers’ house. If Evi had phoned them when he and Gareth had set out, they would have arrived by now. They hadn’t, which meant she hadn’t phoned. Something else had happened. It was worse now, worse than just Joe, the mayhem that Gillian had unleashed. They had to get back.

His mobile was in the pocket of his jeans. He could stop, call the police himself, phone the house. But to do that he’d have to stop running.

They’d reached a stile. Harry climbed up, jumped down and set off again, hearing Gareth doing the same thing behind him. They were in the harvest field, just above the town. Another hundred yards and they’d be passing the site of the All Souls’ Day bonfire. They reached the fence and Harry vaulted over. Past Gillian’s old cottage, the cobbles slippery with snow, buildings rising up on either side now. Gareth was breathing heavily by his side. They came to the end of the lane, had just turned into the main road when the church bell began to ring.

‘He dragged me away, of course,’ said Jenny. ‘Back to the house. We both changed our clothes and then we started the search for her. He wouldn’t go back to the church, though, he couldn’t face her again. I had to do that.’

Think now, stay calm. The police weren’t coming, but Harry and Gareth would be back. They’d have made it to the cottage by now, found whatever they had to find, they’d be making their way home. Evi just had to stay calm. Stop this woman from doing any more
harm. She had to keep her away from Millie. If only it weren’t so hot.

‘And then,’ said Evi, forcing herself to relax back on the stair, to breathe deeply. ‘Was it over then? When you’d punished him? Did you find …’ Jesus, what the hell was she supposed to say? ‘Did you find peace?’ she tried.

Jenny nodded. ‘For a while, yes,’ she said. ‘It was as though I’d taken back control over my life, can you understand that?’

‘Of course,’ said Evi, telling herself to speak slowly, the way she always did with an overexcited patient. ‘Control is very important,’ she said. ‘We all need that.’

‘I missed her desperately, of course. I still do. I never really got over it.’

‘No,’ said Evi, fighting a temptation to look at her watch, and an even stronger one to throw back her head and howl. ‘I don’t think parents ever get over the loss of a child.’

‘But I felt as though a chapter was closed, that I could move on again.’ Jenny’s eyes narrowed. She looked down at her watch, but the gesture was too quick for Evi to see the time. ‘It’s getting on,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’ll help you up the stairs.’ She stood and bent down, taking hold of Evi under the arms. Evi braced herself, but the other woman was strong. She was hoisted up and then Jenny’s arm was around her waist.

‘Come on,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m sure I heard her crying just now.’

‘Millie’s fine,’ said Evi. ‘But Jenny, this is really important.’

Jenny paused but kept a tight hold around Evi’s waist. ‘What?’ she said, and her voice had hardened. She was losing patience.

‘It’s just … the other girls,’ said Evi. ‘Megan, Hayley. Why did they have to die?’

Jenny tilted her head to one side. ‘After Lucy died, I was the one in charge,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Whenever Tobias stepped out of line, if he started paying inappropriate attention to young girls, I could stop him. Come on now, one more step, and another.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Evi. ‘I find stairs so difficult. Can we rest for a second? So he started to abuse Megan? Even after what happened to Lucy?’

Jenny’s hold on Evi relaxed a fraction. ‘Oh, I’m not sure it ever got that far,’ she said. ‘I could just see him looking at her, going out of
his way to be nice to her mother. I wasn’t having it, not after losing Lucy. I wasn’t having him forgetting her and just taking a fancy to another one.’

‘So you killed Megan?’ asked Evi. ‘And Hayley? You tried to kill Millie too?’

Jenny looked at Evi as though she were simple. ‘I’d already killed my own child,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s difficult, after that, to kill someone else’s?’

‘Then why Joe?’ asked Evi, when Jenny seemed about to turn away and head back up the stairs again. ‘Your grandfather wouldn’t be interested in him. Why did you take him? You did take him, didn’t you?’