Poole was at the Grange; it had been half stripped since the discovery of the women’s bodies and had an even more baleful air in its semi-naked state. It had always been a house that had made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, but now it had been pillaged it seemed even creepier, as if the location of so many deaths needed the extra atmosphere.
The SOCOs had been busy. The huge bookcase that had dominated the corridor to the attics had been moved, revealing the other entrance to the room that had held the bodies of Estelle Hall and the unknown woman. Poole had thought it odd that anyone in the house would have had to scramble through the junk upstairs to reach the room, and it explained the optical weirdness from outside where the ivy-clad wall seemed to be missing a window. It was now clear that the bookcase had been a recent addition, its original home having been one of the unused upstairs rooms – the ghost of its outline could still be seen on the blowsy wallpaper. They had speculated that the monstrous thing had been moved recently; a smear of dried blood adhered to its back just below a splintered patch of wood. Someone had caught their finger during the move. More DNA for the harassed FE to consider, but Poole would bet the splinters on Estelle’s clothes would be a match, and he’d take a punt on the blood matching either her or Bob Silver. They were drowning in DNA, with more results than people on the database. DNA was a fabulous thing, providing the person that owned it was on record. Unfortunately for him, it seemed the inhabitants of Essen Grange had evaded the swab despite the evidence that they had been up to their necks in dirty deeds over the years.
The woman’s prison-like room was in the oldest part of the house, the seventeenth-century heart that had been added to and hidden by subsequent Hendersons, each with their own version of what made a house a home. From what Poole could see, “mia casa” Henderson-style was a clandestine, higgledy-piggledy, hotch-potch of additions inadvertently designed to confuse the orientation of random visitors. It was the moneyed people’s equivalent of hanging new wallpaper over old because you couldn’t be bothered to start from scratch. Such things covered a multitude of sins. In the Hendersons’ case they had covered up the tiny, ancient centre of the house. Like a pearl inside an oyster, the existing house had swallowed up an irritant and surrounded it with layer upon layer of nacre in the form of additions and extensions.
Beyond the Victorian door, previously hidden by the bookcase, was a small passage with one door that led into the squalid little room and another opening onto a staircase which was well used, surprisingly clean and which led straight down into a vestibule with a rough oak door. That door led straight into the rear courtyard of the house and nestled into the wall benignly next to the kitchen.
Poole had seen the door before, but assumed it to be a storage room. There was no access to it via any of the house’s downstairs rooms so it had just appeared to everyone as a typical glory hole or possibly an old coal cellar. The discovery that it had direct access to the hidden room was quite a revelation. The more recent discovery of fresh blood was… profoundly worrying. What it meant was that anyone with a key could come and go unseen by anyone else. It was a discovery that raised as many questions as it answered. It certainly explained why Maura Lyle hadn’t known she was sharing the house with a corpse. But she had shared it with Buster, the poor animal who’d lost his master, been pushed from pillar to post and abandoned now to the mercies of the animal shelter. Poole had no idea why, but he’d retrieved Buster from the rescue shelter, offering to take him on himself – sheer madness for a man who lived in a flat and had never had the inclination to care much for himself, let alone another creature. But Buster was in situ, shedding on the carpets, drooling on the sofa and eating his own body weight in biscuits. The vet at the shelter had given him a good bill of health, but had said Buster was old, erring on bad eyesight and had almost completely lost his sense of smell, even if he hadn’t lost his curiosity and enthusiasm. His hearing, however, was perfect.
Poole had felt an affinity for the dog; he too felt old and seemed to be losing his instincts. So he’d taken Buster on the premise that birds of a feather should stick together. Buster hadn’t picked up the smell of the body, just as Poole had failed to sniff out the human rats populating Essen Grange, though he felt as though he was knee-deep in their droppings.
He felt his mouth twist into a wry smile as he thought about the dog. He wondered if Buster was missing Maura too and felt as sad as he did. Of course, the dog had barely known her either, but he’d place a decent bet the poor old guy felt her loss. He doubted the dog was as frightened by her absence as he was, though.
Kelsoe had come to the Grange with him. He’d have liked to bring Gallan but he hadn’t been around. She stuck her head around the kitchen door. ‘Come in here a minute, would you? I might have found something,’ she said.
Poole pulled his attention away from the old door and followed her into the kitchen. Once inside she drew his attention to the list of phone numbers stuck to the side of the fridge under a horribly ironic decorative magnet that read “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps”.
‘Who’s Mary?’ Kelsoe asked, pointing to a name that had been crudely scribbled out.
The other names on the list were all relevant to the Grange, from Bob Silver, to the doctor, to the butcher who provided the meat and the company that supplied the heating oil. Whoever Mary was, she was equally important.
Poole peered at the name; the phone number that followed it was still legible, though it had been struck through with biro, altering some of the numbers so it wasn’t entirely clear whether the sloping sevens might be ones. ‘Good call, let’s find out, shall we?’ he said, giving up a silent prayer of thanks that they might finally have found someone who could give them some insight into what might have gone on in the house and why. He was hoping they’d found his Grace Poole.
The moment the phone rang I knew. There was no one left at the Grange to call me, yet its number flashed onto the screen like a taunt. That house, it draws them all back whether they like it or not. They’d found me, but not until I wanted to be found.
If it wasn’t for Jamie I might have run years ago, but I couldn’t leave him. I never could leave him for long. He’d only just come home, sodden with drugs, sitting in the chair like a drooling zombie, me having to wipe his chin and feed him while his fingers twitched and plucked at the arms of the chair. It broke my heart. It’s always broken my heart to see him like that – my beautiful boy wrecked and ruined by the demons in his head. Me wrecked by the demons in mine. She killed him, that nurse – promised him she’d be there, promised us she’d help. Then she left him to die by his own hand while she got on with her life. Just like them at the Grange got on with theirs while my lady lay dying. You don’t get away with that. You don’t get away with leaving me your dead and expecting me to do nothing about it.
We’ve done OK over the years. I worked three jobs to keep us – I never wanted to be a drain like my own mother was, or a feckless wanderer like my father. He died, you know, in his chair, holding a picture of me when I was the innocent one, just a kid. Just a child full of trust and hope. I don’t remember that child any more. He did, though, him and his rose-tinted glasses. I think he died of shock when I told him who I was. I’m Mary now, but I used to be his little Mary Lou. Until he learned to hate my mother and I became just Lou.
Saved me a job by dying. Though I think it was me who scared him to death that day. All those years and he never knew me. The times he’d stood next to me in the shop, smiled at me, held the door open and never once called me Lou. You know you’re invisible when even your own father doesn’t see you, even when you’re coming and going from the place where he works. More interested in that bloody dog and his next bottle of cider than he was in his own daughter.
He was a crap handyman too: never cut the ivy, never wondered why there was never a job to do in the attic corridor, or what the door was for next to the kitchen. My father couldn’t have found his own arsehole with a torch and a map and a drill sergeant shouting directions at him. I could have told him who I was, a hundred times I could have said, but I never wanted to see him search my face and try and find the kid he’d left behind. Yet we were the same, I suppose. He’d lost his ear to my mother’s temper, I’d lost my face – a pan of chip fat, scalding and melting my skin because that’s what happened to little girls who didn’t do as they were told. That’s what happened to Mary Louise Silver when her daddy didn’t come home and rescue her. I am what happens when you grow up with that. I fed him that bloody photograph, shoved it in his sorry mouth as he was dying. No heartfelt reunion for us.
The phone has rung fifteen times now, a hollow, sorry sound. I ought to answer. Come in Mary Lou Silver, your time is up.
I don’t answer it. I don’t answer to anyone any more.