Paternoster (31 page)

Rachel watched in terror as Darby tipped the goblet to his lips and started to drink. Don’t die, Darby, she thought. We’ve only just found each other again. You’re going to make your fortune and take me away from all this. I want to be your own sweet Rachel again. Don’t die, please don’t die.

Darby drained the goblet and held it aloft, triumphantly.

Rachel clutched the girl’s arm, petrified that at any moment, Darby would choke and fall down dead at her feet.

‘Now choose your prize,’ the ram’s head instructed him.

Darby paced the temple, sizing up each girl in turn. He paused in front of Rachel and she tipped up her face to his. He gazed down at her, his eyes glinting. He knew her. Her lips parted to whisper his name, then he stalked past her and chose one of the chained girls and led her away.

She hardly knew what happened next. A man picked her: she neither knew nor cared who he was. Her heart seethed with anger. How dare Darby choose another girl, when he knew it was her in front of him. When he’d said he loved her and wanted to set her up in a house of her own in London. With a carriage, and a servant, and all her furniture back.

She braced herself against the chill stone wall and vowed revenge. She’d teach Darby Roach to overlook her.

‘Rodney, you must speak to Mr Ellison. He’s the one who controls the land around here.’

He was lying, sated, against her pillows. They didn’t have long for conversation and tenderness. Soon Mrs Bedwin, aware that the bedroom percussion had stopped, would evict Rodney and set Rachel to work satisfying another hungry customer.

Rodney frowned. ‘It doesn’t seem right. All men are free, after all.’

Rachel dragged herself off the bed and went to the washstand to sponge herself down. Free! All very well for him to speak of freedom.

‘But that’s not so, Rodney, dearest,’ she said, biting back her irritation. ‘There are the slaves, and men who cannot leave their masters’ employment.’

And whores who can’t escape from Mrs Bedwin’s clutches for fear they’ll be hanged.

Rodney pouted at the mention of slaves. ‘In America, yes. But not here in England.’

Rachel sensed they were moving away from her purpose. ‘It’s how it is, Rodney. I’ve heard about it from … people in the town.’ No point reminding him that she wasn’t exclusively his. Not yet, anyway. ‘Mr Ellison is the one who says who can buy land, and who can build.’

‘I heard he was a devil worshipper,’ Rodney said, sprawling naked on the bed, his penis a soggy worm glued to his groin. ‘The Hellfire Club meets at his house. Human sacrifice, that’s what they’re saying.’

Rachel’s hand stilled. What had happened to the girl that Darby had taken away at his initiation? They had disappeared back into the tunnel, and she hadn’t seen either of them again. The other girls – the stolen girls – had watched them go, a deep sigh rumbling from them all. Was it relief? Knowing that their lives were safe for now.
We never see the girls again
. That’s what they’d told her, that first time. And the girl wasn’t there last time she went back. Maybe they set them free, let them go home? Deep in her bones she knew this wasn’t so. Maybe Darby had saved her life by not choosing her at his initiation.

‘Rachel?’ Rodney had risen from the bed and had his arms about her waist. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

She twirled in his arms and kissed him. ‘You’re my sweet Rodney, and I can’t wait until we can be together, forever.’ She gazed at him meaningfully.

‘Neither can I,’ Rodney said, burrowing his head in her neck. ‘I want us to have our own little home.’

‘Not so little,’ she murmured, ‘what with you being a rich man, surely.’

‘It’ll be as cosy as a cottage if you’re there,’ Rodney declared. ‘Though it might have silk curtain and golden pillars and chairs that the king himself would be proud to own.’

That was more like it. Rachel smiled at him fondly and stroked his hair. ‘In London, of course.’

‘You want to leave here?’

Rachel lowered her eyes. ‘I want to forget about all of this,’ she said, sweeping her hand about the room.

Rodney followed her gaze and blushed. ‘Anything for you, my sweet Rachel,’ he said.

‘Then you’ll speak to Mr Ellison?’ she asked.

‘I’ll call on him this afternoon.’ Rodney puffed out his chest and strutted about the room collecting his clothes. Rachel clasped her hands together and gazed at him with her most adoring expression from her repertoire.

When he left her, she kissed him tenderly and whispered, ‘Until we can be together forever, my darling.’

Rodney thundered downstairs, filled with new resolve. Rachel watched him go, her heart fond and her mind working.

The first time Aidan had had a migraine, she’d teased him.

‘You men!’ she’d said, exasperated. ‘You never have a cold, it’s always flu. A headache’s always a migraine, or a brain tumour.’

‘It’s not a tumour,’ he’d mumbled, ‘they checked me out for that. Did one of those scan things where you’re locked in a metal tube.’ He shuddered.

‘When was that?’

‘Years ago. They tested me because I get these headaches, and because I see patterns. You know.’

She glanced at the peculiar order and neatness in his flat on a scale way beyond tidiness. ‘So it really is a migraine, then?’

He nodded and winced. ‘Ow. Yes.’

‘What do you need?’

‘Darkness, quiet, and something cold to put on my eyes.’

She slipped from the room, found a washcloth and soaked it in cold water, folded it, and pressed it on to his forehead.

‘Thanks,’ he whispered. ‘It’s just about to hit. I might not be able to speak for a while.’

He groaned as the first wave of the migraine crashed over him, and clasped the pillow around his head. Eden stroked his back and replenished the cloth with cold water. It was the only thing that seemed to ease the pain for him. She sat beside him in the gloom, desperate to comfort him, fetching cold drinks when he croaked out a request, standing sentinel over him while he slept.

At one point he woke, asked, ‘What happened to Katherine Parr’s daughter by Thomas Seymour?’ and fell back on the pillow.

When Aidan came round, several hours later, she fed him tomato soup and toast soldiers, regretting her scorn when he’d said his headache was a migraine. He was putty-coloured and weak, and slurred his words as if drunk.

‘My mum used to make this for me after I’d been to the dentist,’ he said. He leaned forwards and kissed her forehead. He smelled stale and poorly. ‘Thanks for looking after me.’

‘That’s all right. You gave me a puzzle to sort out, anyway.’

His brow creased.

‘Katherine Parr’s daughter, Mary Seymour, probably died when she was a toddler.’

‘Katherine Parr?’ He scrubbed his palms in his eyes. ‘My brain was swirling. I’ve been reading a biography of Henry VIII. It must’ve come from that.’

When he felt better, he explained to her how the migraines affected him, how his thoughts went into freefall and he could see them swirling and making connections, asking questions that would never normally occur to him.

‘Even when I’m in agony my brain’s trying to put everything into patterns,’ he’d said, ruefully.

Now Eden rang and asked if he was back in the land of the living.

‘I’m much better,’ he said, sounding terrible. ‘Just a bit fragile. I’ve worked out your list.’

‘What list?’

‘The list of property developers you left here. I’ve worked out the link. Want to come over?’

He was pale and sick, but upright, at least, and able to contemplate food again. When she held up a bag of croissants for brunch, he didn’t blanch. As she unpacked butter and eggs, and set about hunting for a pan, her eye caught a notepad he’d left on the table. On it, in scrawly writing, was a single word:
Paternoster
. The sight gave her a jolt.

‘Aidan, what’s this?’ She held it up.

He glanced at the paper. ‘I knew I’d seen the word Paternoster recently. There used to be a Paternoster Club in Cheltenham. A sort of Hellfire Club. Secret meetings and orgies.’

‘Where did you find that out?’

‘A diary in the records office, written in 1795. I was doing some research into the Park School, trying to find out where those skeletons came from. In 1795, the Park School was Greville House, and it hosted the Paternoster Club.’ He tickled the back of her neck and whispered close to her ear. ‘The townspeople were scandalised. And a bit jealous, I suspect.’

Eden frowned while she thought. ‘Paternoster is the last thing Paul said before he died,’ she said. ‘And Paternoster is the name of what killed him. The love bean or lucky bean, is also called the Paternoster pea.’

Aidan snapped his fingers. ‘Trial by ordeal!’

Eden blinked at him. ‘Are you still having a migraine?’ she asked.

‘Probably. Paternoster pea – it was made into rosaries, but in trial by ordeal, the victim swallowed one of the peas and if they lived they were innocent.’

‘And if they died?’

‘They were obviously guilty. Sometimes they tipped off the victim to swallow it whole. The poison’s only released when it’s chewed.’

‘Where the hell did you learn that?’ Sometimes Aidan’s magpie mind blew her away and she felt dull beside him.

He shrugged. ‘History classes at school. The teacher had to find some way to make it interesting. We did a lot on executions and battles.’

Eden chewed the skin at the side of her thumb. ‘So why would Paul say Paternoster before he died?’ she mused aloud. ‘Did he recognise what killed him?’

‘Or perhaps the Paternoster Club still exists.’

‘An orgy club in Cheltenham?’ Eden said. ‘That wouldn’t be Paul’s scene at all. Donna Small, perhaps: the barman at the singles club said she was a bunny boiler, maybe she was a swinger, too.’ She paused as a fleeting thought snagged and slipped away. Her mind chased it, sure it was something about Donna’s diary, something she’d missed. The thought eluded her and she pressed her fingertips to her eyes. She turned to Aidan. ‘You said you’d cracked the list?’

He powered up his laptop while she scrambled eggs, snaffling chives from the pots on his windowsill and chopping them into the creamy mix. They sat side by side, the laptop between them on the table, forking up scrambled eggs and buttery croissants, and Aidan showed her the spreadsheet he’d devised.

‘Every planning application for all of these companies on the list,’ he said. ‘Now watch.’

He sorted the data columns by property developer. Three applications accepted, one rejected; five accepted, two rejected; seven accepted, two rejected. He re-sorted the spreadsheet to show the results for a different developer and the pattern repeated. One by one he went through the list of companies. The pattern was there for every single one.

‘My God,’ Eden breathed. ‘This isn’t a coincidence.’

‘I checked what happened to other planning applications, from companies not on the list, and none of them follow that pattern. Evidently these companies know the pattern, because when they know it’s time for one to be rejected, they always submit an application for a much smaller project.’

‘So it looks as though the planning process is fair and impartial, but actually these companies have got it sewn up.’ She ran her finger over her plate, scooping up the remains of the melted butter. ‘Donna Small saw what was going on, and wrote it all down, just in case.’ She sucked the butter off her finger. ‘Why these companies, though?’

‘I wondered that,’ Aidan said, whisking the plates away and moving the laptop so she couldn’t touch the keys with her buttery digits. ‘All the names on that list are property development companies: not extensions and garages turned into granny flats, but major building projects. If you trace back the parent companies and directors of each company, they’re all owned by one company, Peterman Developments, and it’s all in the hands of three men.’ He unfolded his diagram of how all the companies were linked in front of her.

She traced the lines on the diagram and read out the names of the three men. ‘Greg Barker, James Wallis, Don Sussman.’ She puffed out her cheeks. ‘Greg Barker, head of the planning committee, raking it in while no one knows he part-owns the companies.’ She shoved back her chair and stretched her arms high above her head, feeling a snap in her spine. ‘Cup of tea?’ she offered, already heading into the kitchen. ‘My brain’s starting to ache with all of this.’

‘That’ll be grand,’ Aidan called back.

She took the canister of tea down from the shelf in the kitchen and fetched the teapot from the cupboard. The shelf held twelve identical mugs regimented in three rows of four. She smiled fondly at the twelve handles all pointing the same way. Typical Aidan, brilliant and infuriating.

The tea canister needed filling, just a few black grains in the metal seam at the bottom. Trust him not to deign to use a teabag like normal people. She collected a fresh packet of tea from the pantry, and rummaged in the kitchen drawer for scissors to cut it open. The scissors were wedged at the back behind a grater. As she groped for the scissors, her hand closed around a set of keys. She drew them out and stared.

Her keys. Her spare keys, the ones she kept in her flat. Main door, front door, door to the balcony. The blue plastic tag mangled on the ring. She’d never given Aidan keys to her place, yet here were her keys.

‘Aidan.’

‘Um-hum?’

‘Why have you got my spare keys in your kitchen drawer?’

He stood in the doorway, flushing to the roots of his hair. ‘I meant to put them back,’ he said, foolishly.

‘I asked why have you got my keys.’ The menace in her voice was unmistakeable.

Aidan recoiled. ‘I wanted to find out more about you. When you said you weren’t really called Eden, I felt I didn’t know you at all. Lisa had said the same thing, and it bothered me.’

‘So you stole my keys? Why?’

He hesitated. ‘I went to your flat and had a look round. Trying to understand you.’

The world tilted. For a moment she was so shocked she couldn’t speak. ‘You broke into my flat and searched it?’