House of Bones Page 8

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it for long enough.”

  Lucy held a handkerchief over her scratch. “So what do we do now?”

  “Forget about it. Go back to the office.”

  “No, come on. If it’s only a squatter…”

  “But supposing it isn’t?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” said John. But he kept thinking about the calm, ivory-faced statue, and the man in the dark suit who had followed them up towards Brighton station.

  Lucy took out her car keys and turned back to the car. But then she said, “No. This is stupid. We’ve come this far. We owe it to Liam.”

  “Lucy, I don’t want to go in there.”

  “Well, I don’t, either. But we could try ringing the doorbell first. Perhaps your white-faced man will come downstairs and answer it.”

  John didn’t say anything. He knew that Lucy was talking sense, but his reluctance to go back to the house was so strong that he didn’t even know if his legs would take him up to the front door.

  “Come on,” said Lucy, and together they walked up to the porch, although John kept his eyes on the first-floor windows. They remained empty, like the eyes of somebody who has forgotten their reason for living.

  John reached out at arm’s length and pressed the doorbell. They could hear the bell ringing somewhere in the house. They waited for a while, and then John rang again, and again. Still no reply. Still no sign of life.

  “Perhaps you didn’t see what you thought you saw,” Lucy suggested.

  “It was a face, I’m sure of it.”

  “Well, let’s go round to the back and have another try. I don’t think there’s anybody here.”

  They returned to the back garden and John pointed up to the window. “It was there. Only for a second.”

  Lucy moved her head from side to side. “There is something. But I think it’s just a reflection. There must be a dressing-table mirror in there, or something like that. Look, it’s oval-shaped. You could easily mistake it for a face.”

  “I’m sure the curtain moved, too.”

  “Oh, come on. We’ve both got the jitters, that’s all.”

  John shaded his eyes and looked up at it again. Lucy could be right. And after all, there was no sign at all that anybody was living here.

  “The key’s inside the conservatory door, still in the lock,” said Lucy. “I vote we break the glass.”

  “That’s breaking and entering.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s an estate agent’s security check. We just happened to be passing one of our company’s properties and thought we saw an intruder. We broke in to make sure that our property wasn’t being used by squatters.”

  John suddenly remembered that Liam had come up with a similar excuse for breaking into 93 Madeira Terrace, and he felt a shiver of foreboding, as if they were repeating the opening lines of a play that always ended in the same horrific way.

  Lucy dislodged a brick from the edge of the patio and handed it to him. Underneath, the brick was crawling with woodlice, and he had to knock it against the step to get them off.

  Oh God, he thought. What if I break the window and the white-faced man comes after me? What if we get into the house and he traps us inside? What if—

  “Hurry up!” hissed Lucy.

  Cautiously, John went up to the conservatory door. It was divided into six glass panels so at least he wouldn’t have to smash it all. “Go on,” Lucy urged him. “Go on before anybody sees us.”

  John hesitated for a few moments more. Then he swung back his arm and hit the window as hard as he could. It shattered with an ear-splitting crack that he was sure could be heard three miles away, and the glass fell to the conservatory floor like a carillon of sleigh-bells.

  They waited to see if anybody had heard them, but the suburban noises went on just as before: children screaming in a playground, lawnmowers, the rattle of a distant train. John reached inside and turned the key and the conservatory door opened with a shudder.

  They crossed the conservatory and tried the double doors that led to the sitting-room. “Locked again,” said John, rattling the door handles. Without a word, Lucy handed him the brick, and this time, he smashed the window with no hesitation at all.

  The sitting-room was furnished with a huge, shapeless three-piece suite covered with dust-sheets. There was a brown tiled fireplace with a coal-effect electric fire, a tall mahogany standard-lamp with a mock-parchment shade and a magazine rack still stuffed with yellowing copies of the Radio Times.

  One of the chairs must still have had some lumpy cushions on it, because it looked to John as if somebody was sitting in it, utterly motionless, concealed beneath the dust sheet. He watched it out of the corner of his eye as he walked across the room, in case he saw it move in and out to the rhythm of somebody’s breathing.

  He ventured into the dining-room while Lucy went into the kitchen. There was a hefty 1930s dining-table and a huge maple-veneered sideboard with a dusty octagonal mirror hanging above it. In the window stood a faded display of dried flowers and bracken.

  “Anything?” he called out to Lucy.

  “Not in the kitchen. But there’s tins of peas and carrots in the larder, and a loaf of bread in the bread-bin that’s practically turned to stone.”

  John opened the drawer in the top of the sideboard. Inside, tarnished silver cutlery lay like a shoal of goldfish. Whoever had lived here had left almost everything behind. It was as if they had just walked out of their life and never returned.

  As he closed the drawer, he thought he could see a reflection in the mirror of a dark, pale-faced figure standing in the hallway behind him. He was so frightened that he felt as if cold fingers were running down his back. He didn’t even dare to turn around. Instead, he reached up with a trembling hand and wiped the dust from the mirror so that he could see the apparition more clearly.

  When he did so, however, it disappeared, and Lucy came in through the door as if there was nothing there at all.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him.

  “I saw it again. The statue.”

  “Where?” she said, looking nervously around. “I didn’t see anything.”

  John pushed past her and went out in the hallway. He looked left and right, and then he looked upstairs. A weak light filtered through net curtains the colour of cold tea. “I saw it. I swear I did.”

  “John, that statue was solid wood. It weighed a tonne. Nobody could carry it around even if they wanted to.”

  “That’s the point. It wasn’t being carried around. It was alive.”

  “Alive?”

  “I saw it standing behind me. I swear it.”

  Lucy said, “Enough, John. You’re really letting this get to you.” But he could tell that – for all her reassurance – she was just as scared as he was.

  “I swear to you I saw it. It was right there, standing in the hallway.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we’d better go.”

  John said, “Wait.” A sudden thought had occurred to him and he went back into the sitting-room. The chairs were all still covered by their dust sheets, and the lumpy one apparently undisturbed. Yet where else could the figure have gone so quickly?

  John approached the chair with his heart beating hard.

  “You don’t think it’s under there?” asked Lucy.

  John was too frightened even to answer her. He bent down and took hold of the trailing edge of the dust sheet. He lifted it up a little way, and then he gave it a sharp sideways tug. Lucy squealed in terror, and John jumped back, stumbling against the arm of the sofa.

  In the chair were two braided cushions, a rolled-up mat and an anglepoise desk lamp. Lucy pressed her hand over her heart in relief.

  “Let’s take a very quick look upstairs,” she said. “Then I think we’d better get out of here.”

  John’s instinct was to leave there and then, but he followed Lucy to the bottom of the stairs. They both lo
oked up to the landing. On the walls were six or seven small landscape paintings, all of them depicting deserted heathland or rainswept mountains.

  There was something infinitely depressing about these pictures, and John noticed that in each of them there was a small group of figures dressed in cloaks, like monks, and in some of them there was a tall dark figure with horns.

  “Don’t you just hate these pictures?” said Lucy, as she followed John up the stairs.

  The stairs didn’t creak, but John stopped halfway up to listen.

  “Did you hear something?” he asked.

  “An aeroplane, that’s all.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. It was something like a really heavy blanket being dragged.”

  Lucy listened, wide-eyed. “No … I didn’t hear anything.”

  John listened for a moment longer and then continued upstairs. They reached the landing and looked around. All of the bedroom doors were closed, and there was the dead, warm and airless smell of a closed-up house in summer.

  John opened the first door on the right. It swung back silently and swiftly, almost as if somebody were opening it from the inside. The room was in semi-darkness because the curtains were drawn. It was wallpapered with florid pink flowers. He could see the end of a bed covered in a brown candlewick bedspread, and an upright wooden chair. “Nothing,” he said, and he was just about to close the door again when Lucy pointed and whispered, “Look.”

  “What?” he said. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Down by the bedside table. There.”

  John frowned into the gloom and then he saw what Lucy was pointing at. At first he had thought it was just another flower on the wallpaper, but as his eyes focused he saw what it really was.

  A human skull, half-buried in the wall, its eye-sockets revealing nothing but wallpaper, its mouth stretched wide as if it were screaming at them.

  11

  John pushed the door open a little wider and stepped into the room. He bent down a respectful distance from the skull and peered at it intently. “That’s horrible. It’s not very big, is it? It must be a woman or a child.”

  “This looks like a child’s bedroom, doesn’t it?” said Lucy. “A little girl’s probably. Oh God, do you think that could be her?”

  “This is the proof we’ve been looking for,” said John. “I bet all of the properties on Mr Vane’s special list are the same. People come to live in them and the houses suck them in.”

  “Yes, but who would want to come and live here? Not with something like this in the wall.”

  John felt very grim. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I expect Mr Vane gives his properties the onceover before he shows anybody around. But I wonder why this skull is sticking out like this?”

  Lucy said, “That poor little girl. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

  John thought of Liam’s last desperate appeal for help as he was sucked into the wall, but said nothing.

  Lucy knelt down close to the skull. Then she suddenly said, “Look at this. Look what she’s got round her neck.”

  John came closer. Now he could see that looped around the base of the skull was a small silver crucifix on a silver chain. The wall had taken her in as far as that but no further.

  They heard more noises. A creak, and then a sound like a door being very carefully closed. “We’d better go now,” said Lucy. “We’ve got to think what we’re going to do next.”

  “Call the police, of course, as soon as we can. But let’s make sure that we stay around here until they come. We don’t want the evidence destroyed this time.”

  They left the bedroom. Lucy locked the door and dropped the key into John’s coat pocket.

  They reached the top of the stairs and were just starting to go down them when John heard the dragging noise again. He stopped, and gripped Lucy’s shoulder. “There – you must have heard it that time.”

  “I don’t know. It sounded like—”

  She stopped, with her mouth open. Around the corner in the corridor appeared the tall, dark figure with its pale ivory face. But even though it still had the same frightening calmness, it was no longer the lifeless wooden statue that John had found on the bed. It moved towards them gracefully and swiftly, almost gliding rather than walking, its eyes unblinking, its face handsome and serene. As it moved, it was accompanied by the soft dragging noise that they had heard before: its cloak-hem, sweeping the floor.

  For a long, long second, John didn’t know how to move his arms or legs. Then Lucy made a peculiar noise, a kind of choked-up whimper of absolute fear, and the two of them hurtled down the stairs as fast as they could. Behind them they heard soft, leaping footsteps, as if the statue were coming down the stairs four and five at a time.

  “Open the door! Open the door!” Lucy squealed, as John struggled with the unfamiliar lock. He managed to open it, but the door jarred on a safety chain and he had to shut it again so that he could slide the chain free. At that moment the statue caught hold of him and threw him against the door. John dropped to the floor, stunned and winded.

  Lucy managed to wrestle open the door but the statue seized it and banged it shut. Lucy screamed and tried to dodge out of its way, but it caught hold of her wrist and held her tight, staring into her face with the same terrible lack of emotion. John managed to drag himself on to his feet, coughing and whining for breath. He lifted the heavy walking-stick out of the umbrella-stand, gripped it in both hands and struck the statue across the side of the head. The walking-stick snapped in half, but the statue released Lucy’s wrist and turned back to John.

  “Run!” John shouted, and Lucy ran – through the sitting-room and into the conservatory. John tried to duck and feint his way around the statue, but the figure was much too quick for him. It never blinked and it seemed to be able to anticipate every move he made.

  It glided nearer and nearer, one hand raised as if it intended to take him by the throat. John backed into the corner and tripped against the umbrella stand.

  “John!” shrilled Lucy, and as she did so, one of the earthenware cactus pots came flying through the air and hit the statue right in the back, exploding into fragments. The statue turned its head, and as it did so John rolled across the floor, staggered on to his feet, and ran after Lucy as if all the demons in hell were after him.

  They sprinted through the weeds to the front of the house. Brambles snatched against John’s shirtsleeves as if they were trying to catch him. They ran out of the front gate and jumped into Lucy’s car, and they were halfway down Abingdon Gardens before the pale-faced figure appeared outside the house, watching them drive away.

  “I told you,” John gasped. There was a wide crimson bruise on his left cheekbone. “I told you it was there.”

  “Well, you didn’t expect me to believe you, did you? Statues can’t come to life.”

  “This one has. And not only that, it was waiting for us. It was waiting for us in Brighton and it was waiting for us here.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” said Lucy. “No one knew that we were coming here, only us.”

  “It couldn’t have been a coincidence, though, could it?”

  “How should I know? This whole thing is scaring me to death.” Lucy was so upset that she could hardly drive straight, and when they reached the Mitcham Road junction she changed gear with a hideous grinding noise.

  “Do you think Mr Vane has guessed what we’re doing?” asked John.

  “I don’t see how. Not unless Courtney’s told him, and Courtney wouldn’t tell.”

  “Well – I know this sounds mad – but if the statue can come to life, perhaps the statue told him.”

  “What?”

  “We found the statue when we broke into 66 Mountjoy Avenue, didn’t we? It looked as if it was made of wood, but perhaps it could still see us and hear us.”

  “But if Mr Vane knows what we’re doing, why doesn’t he just warn us off, or sack us?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s too late for that. We’ve found
out too much already. I think he wants to get rid of us completely. You know –” and he drew his finger across his throat.

  “In that case, it’s definitely time to call the police.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not so sure any more. If Mr Vane knows what we’re doing, he’s going to make sure that he gets rid of all the evidence, isn’t he? And what kind of people do you think the police are going to think we are if we tell them that we’re being hunted down by a wooden statue? That’s right, nutters.”

  “Then what can we do? We can’t go back to the office.”

  “Of course we can. Mr Vane can’t murder us in broad daylight, can he? And if he openly warns us to stay away from the houses on his special list, that’s an admission that he knows we’ve been to see them, and why.” He gave a last look back along Abingdon Gardens. “No – we don’t have to be frightened of going back to the office. What we have to watch out for is that statue.”

  Lucy said, “I still can’t understand how it came to life – how it was waiting for us. It’s so scary I don’t even want to think about it.”

  Back in the office Mr Cleat was in a strange, agitated mood. As soon as John and Lucy walked in he said, “Ah!” and beckoned them over to his desk.

  “Something wrong?” asked Lucy.

  “Not exactly,” said Mr Cleat. “But Mr Vane has expressed some concern about the increasing amount of time that some of you are spending out of the office without a corresponding rise in property sales.”

  “We can’t force people to buy houses,” Lucy protested.

  “Obviously not. But Mr Vane wants to make sure that you keep your mind on what you’re doing.”

  John glanced at Lucy. If that wasn’t a veiled warning for them to keep away from Mr Vane’s special list houses, he didn’t know what was.

  That evening they had to stay late to finish their weekly rearrangement of the houses in the office window, so Lucy asked John if he’d like to go for a drink at The Feathers across the road, where Courtney was already waiting. She reached out for his hand as they crossed the road and he grasped it firmly as he helped her through the traffic. She couldn’t stand men with damp or floppy hands, she had told him. Shaking hands with Cleaty was like fondling a fillet of haddock.