Fall From Grace (55 page)

‘And Franks never knew?’

A snort. ‘Leonard never showed a moment’s interest in what I did. Not a moment. He never once came to see me when I was at Scotland Yard, even to say hello. Towards the end, Melanie was exactly the same. They knew I’d spent years doing contract work at facilities all over the country, but if either of them had made any effort, if Leonard had spent a single second asking me about my work, he would have found out I was down at Bethlehem. He’d have realized I was down there at the same time Casey was being treated.’ He studied me, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead. ‘But you know what the most damning indictment of him is? He never even bothered asking
Casey
who her doctor was. If he had, he could have stopped all of this before she confessed. She gave him Poulter’s name back at the start, but Leonard never bothered asking again. That was so typical of him. He loved her, don’t get me wrong, but I think a part of him was happy, knowing she’d been packed off to the nuthouse, unable to create any problems for him – the sort of problems she’d created for him when she’d tried to kill herself.’

‘And Reynolds?’

‘I kept in touch with Neil,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘even after he was fired, because I saw something in him that I might be able to use later on down the line. He was angry, but he was disciplined. And when the time was right, I told him all about Casey and Leonard, about their son – and he told me about his own suspicions.’

‘You mean about Franks killing Simon Preston?’

He nodded. ‘And you think
I’m
the bad guy.’

‘You’re both pond life.’

‘He’s the one who killed Casey.’ He drifted for a second, and for the first time it was like he’d lost his focus. ‘I liked Casey. She was smart. She was a challenge to get at. I spent over five years trying to get to know her, how she thought, why she was so willing to let her life drift by while she lived with worthless dogshit like Simon Preston. And then, when she finally told me about Leonard, about everything that had happened, when I found out that
that
was the reason – that she was, in her naivety, protecting Leonard, and his reputation – I sort of …’ He stopped; a genuine flash of pain. ‘I sort of felt betrayed.’

Clunk
.

Garrick didn’t move, even as the sound came again. I looked around at the warehouse: to the spaces beyond the empty shelves, to the loading doors, back to the corridor. When I turned again to face him, he’d come forward, gun up in front of him. There was about eight feet between us.

Too far to try to go for him
.

‘Well, I guess this is the end,’ he said. ‘I had to be quiet when I got rid of Melanie because gunshots tend to arouse suspicion in suburbia. But here …’ He looked around. ‘It’ll just go down as industrial noise.’

Clunk
.

It sounded right on top of us, and this time there was a minor movement of his head, eyes swivelling right, as if the proximity of the noise had surprised even him. And, as his body adjusted, the gun moved fractionally side to side.

This is my chance
.

Ducking, I charged him.

A gunshot sounded.

It happened so fast I barely had time to think, and it was only as I made contact, knocking him into the table, both of us going sprawling across the floor of the warehouse, that I felt an old pain bloom in my shoulder, forking across my chest like a lightning strike. He was six feet from me, on his side, facing away, the gun beyond his grasp. He started scrambling to his feet. As I moved, my chest heaved. I was struggling to breathe. I went at him again, straining every sinew, using the table – on its side now – to get to my feet.

This time my direction was off, but I got enough of him. I grabbed him as he bent for the gun, and we stumbled forward, past the kiln, into the back wall. We hit it hard, Garrick in front of me, face on. I’d managed to use part of him to cushion the blow, but as I rolled away – feeling the heat of the fire above me – I still felt dazed: blood leaked from a wound in my arm, old bruises were throbbing, my head lurched like a sinking ship. I looked across at Garrick: he was slumped, blood on his face, his nose bent and broken from hitting the wall face-first. His eyelids fluttered briefly, as if his body were trying to restart.

He was alive, but unconscious.

I forced myself on to all fours, sucking in deep breaths, then paused there for a moment, trying to suppress the nausea in my throat.

It’ll pass
.

It’ll pass
.

It didn’t, not fully, but as I used the half-wall circling the kiln to get to my feet, I stood and breathed in again. Gradually, I started to gain control of myself.

And then I noticed something.

Under the kiln was a switch.

87

The switch was between two sets of runners. It hadn’t been visible when I’d been at the front. I bent down and shuffled in closer: it was like a light switch. No markings. Just on or off. I reached forward and flicked it down.

Clunk
.

The kiln began to move.

It made a gentle whine as it shifted back, the fire still burning inside it. For a few seconds – as I stood there, holding my shoulder – all I could see was more of the polished concrete floor. But then, slowly, a thin black line started to show itself. Inside five seconds, the line had become a rectangle.

Inside ten, the rectangle had become a hole.

The kiln reached the end of its runners with another
clunk
, and revealed all of the hole: four feet square, the blackness showing a set of rickety wooden steps.

I moved to the lip of the hole.

There was nothing visible beyond the halfway point of the ladder. I looked around the warehouse for a torch, but Garrick hadn’t brought one with him, and all I had was a torch app on my phone. Something soured in my throat as I dropped on to my backside and placed my foot on the first step of the ladder. Not nausea any more: disquiet, growing and clotting every moment I looked down at what lay beneath me. Gingerly placing my foot on to the next step down, I realized why Garrick hadn’t bothered bringing a torch.

On the wall, just inside the hole, was a light switch.

I reached in and turned it on.

Below me, a single light bulb erupted into life, scattering a creamy glow across a concrete floor. There was dust everywhere, debris from the kiln too: flecks of paper, tiny chunks of wood, pieces of discarded electrical equipment. On three sides, the walls were close up to the ladder. On the fourth, a thin corridor snaked off into the shadows.

I paused there for a moment, my arm crackling with pain, my lungs feeling like they might be about to close, and looked across the warehouse to where Garrick lay.

What have you done now?

I headed down.

The further I got, the colder it became. By the time I was on the ground, the heat of the kiln was completely gone. Ahead of me in the shadows, despite the light from the bulb, it was hard to see anything, but somehow I got the sense the space was big. As I inched forward, my footsteps echoed slightly and the walls felt like they parted, dropping off into the darkness. A few feet further in and I started to be able to smell something.

It was sweet, not sickly: not perfume exactly, but something close. And, on the back of that, there was something more familiar. At first, I couldn’t quite place it.

Then it clicked.

I stopped, goosebumps scattering up my arms.

Fast food
.

I felt something change inside the room, as if the air had been disturbed, like there was a shift in the shadows – and then a hand grabbed at my face. Nails clawed at my skin as I stumbled back, clipping a wall. When I lost my balance, a weight came with me, one hand still clamped on to my jaw, the other trying to dig their way into my neck.

I hit back: one punch to whatever part of the body I could get to, and then another. Whoever was on top of me wheezed, the air shooting out of them, but it was only after I managed to push them off – scrambling back into the light – that I realized something.

It was a woman
.

I removed my phone and shone it out into the darkness. In the far corner, she was lying on her side, in the foetal position, a half-eaten burger, an empty packet of fries and a plastic cup of Coke four feet away from her toes. She was dressed in what amounted to rags: torn jeans, a frayed fleece, one sock, no shoes. Her hair was a mess: greasy, dirty, a tangle caked to her face. At her left ankle was a chain, secured to the rear wall.

As she lay there crying, I moved closer.

‘It’s okay,’ I said to her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

Above her was a series of metal pipes.

She’d been hitting them. It wasn’t just the movement of the kiln making the noise. It was her trying to get someone’s attention
.

I held out a hand.

‘It’s okay,’ I said again. ‘It’s over now, Casey.’

88

I spent Christmas with Annabel and Olivia in Devon, and when – the day afterwards – they began a slow tour of their extended family, I ducked out, headed back to my parents’ old cottage and sat at the window, watching the sea. I imagined my mum and dad in the same place years before, sitting across from one another at the same table, admiring the same view.

On 27 December, I took a drive along the coast. It was a freezing cold day, wind buffeting the car as I wound my way down to Keel Point beach, and once I’d parked I kept the engine running, turned the heaters all the way up and switched on the radio.

They were still talking about Leonard Franks.

The police hadn’t yet confirmed charges against him, but they would come soon enough. He’d been all over the TV for a week, his taped confession playing on repeat, and now Garrick’s involvement had elevated it to something even more. The story had burned brightly for seven days – now it was going supernova. For the media, there was no better tale than a twisted, deadly family feud, and this was all that and more. The victims along the way – Craw, Casey Bullock – were almost footnotes: heading news bulletins, dominating front pages, was the story of Leonard Franks versus John Garrick.

As I looked out at Bethlehem, like a shipwreck in the channel, I kept returning to the moments after I’d found Casey Bullock in the cellar. I’d managed to free her of her binds, prising the ankle clamp away with a pair of shears from the warehouse, and for a moment we paused there, either side of the room, her eyeing me, waiting for me to come at her again. When I didn’t, when I kept telling her she was safe, repeating it over and over, there was finally a shift in her expression, a soft acceptance, and she began to cry. I didn’t approach, just waited, and then – a couple of minutes later – she regained some of her composure, and I asked her if she felt ready to leave.

She said that she did.

In the warehouse, she’d paused, staring at Garrick, still slumped against the back wall, unconscious. By then, we could already hear sirens: I’d called the police while I’d been looking for the shears. She ran a hand across one side of her face, mud and tears smearing, long strands of matted hair slick against her skin, and then she turned to me, eyes narrowing, as if she couldn’t understand why I would come here and do this.

‘What’s your name?’ she said.

‘David.’

She didn’t reply straight away, her gaze moving between me and the hole she’d been kept in. ‘I thought no one would ever find me. I thought I was going to be there for ever.’

‘Do you know how long he kept you down there?’

‘What date is it today?’

‘It’s 22 December.’

A hint of more tears. ‘Fourteen months.’

And then she told me about the day Reynolds had come for her – at the place Franks had set her up in – and how her neighbour had started knocking on the door.

‘Except it wasn’t my neighbour,’ she said.

‘It was Garrick.’

She looked at me, wondering how I’d made the leap, but it suddenly seemed so clear: he’d sent Reynolds to get rid of her – but, ultimately, Garrick hadn’t been able to go through with it.
I liked Casey. She was smart
. He’d denied he felt anything deeper for her, and maybe that was true, but he’d become emotionally invested in her as a person, her decisions, her life; and the line between doctor and patient had blurred.
When she finally told me about Leonard, about everything that had happened … I sort of felt betrayed
. It was such a mess, so complex: he liked the woman who loved the man he hated. He knew what had to be done, but he couldn’t go through with it – so, instead, he told Reynolds he would take care of her. And how else could he hide her from view, without hurting her, than by making her a prisoner?

I doubted Reynolds knew she was still alive – even when he was occupying the warehouse himself – otherwise he surely would have seen the risks and attempted to do something about it. So, as far as he was concerned, the day Garrick took her away from her hiding place was the day Casey Bullock died.

When the police finally arrived, I watched them enter the warehouse, looking at me, at Casey, at the boxes of files and photographs waiting to be burned, at Garrick on the floor, his breath hoarse, and I had a moment of clarity. All the death, all the lies, all the suffering, and what it came down to in the end was loss: for Franks, the woman he loved but couldn’t have, and the son he knew only in passing; for Craw, the father she’d idolized and would never know again; for Garrick, the wife who abandoned him, and the father-in-law who rejected him; and for Bullock, the life she’d dreamed of, and the death of a son she’d loved, above all else.

A trail of wreckage.

A map of broken hearts.

Before I headed back to London on 28 December, I made two phone calls. The first was to Carla Murray to see how she was. She was abrupt, unemotional, unwilling – even now – to speak ill of Franks. But her pain, her sense of betrayal, was there, unspoken, unmissable. She said she’d talked to Jim Paige on the phone, that he was calm and rational about everything, but we both knew it was a show. It was all a show. The two of them had been hurt badly.