Spider Light (32 page)

Donna saw the wheel almost at once. It had black spokes and jutted up about a foot from the floor. It was quite near the door leading underground. What looked like the spline key was lying nearby.

She walked slowly forwards, her eyes fixed on it. It would not work, of course: the mechanism would long since have seized up. And even if, by some slight chance, it did work, the culvert would have rotted away years ago. She glanced overhead. Yes, there was the culvert, just as she remembered from that last summer here.
The clay had broken away from most of it, but it might be still be watertight.

She picked up the spline. It felt cold against her fingers and the surface was pitted with age. Presumably you slotted it down into the wheel’s centre, as her father had said, and then turned it using the t-shaped handle. The splines would force the wheel’s mechanism to rotate. It really did look as if it worked on the corned-beef-tin principle.

The wheel was about two feet across. Donna leaned down and tried the key in the centre. It slid home obediently, and she grasped the t-handle. Just a tiny pressure, just to see if the wheel was still capable of rotating. She turned it slightly to the right, encountered resistance, and then tried it the other way. This time the whole shaft of the key seemed to engage, and the wheel moved to the left. Only a little–barely the distance of one of the spokes–but Donna instantly felt an answering tremor. Like thunder growling far away. And had the oak floor shivered briefly at the same time, or had that been her imagination?

Her hand was still on the key. She was not going to take this much further, but if she could just know how workable the mechanism was…

The wheel turned a little further, and this time there was no doubt about it; an unmistakeable tremor went through the floor, like the accounts you read of the start of an earthquake. At the same time a breath of something stagnant and cold seemed to brush against Donna’s skin.

If the sluice gates were raised, hundreds of tons of water would tumble down into Twygrist from the reservoir, and the waterwheels would begin to turn.

The light shifted suddenly, and there was a new sound behind her–a sound that had nothing to do with the struggling old mechanism. Donna spun round, and in the centre of the floor, watching her with puzzled eyes, was a woman of thirty or so, with shoulder-length fair hair.

After a moment the woman said, ‘I didn’t realize anyone was
here.’ But her eyes were on Donna’s hands, still grasping the sluice wheel. ‘That’s awfully old machinery,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s probably a bit dangerous to be too close to it.’

‘Yes,’ said Donna straightening up. ‘Yes, it is dangerous.’ She removed the spline key from the sluice wheel, and held it between her hands thoughtfully.

There are moments in life when your body thinks ahead of your mind, and when sheer instinct takes over. Donna knew this woman had seen her rotate the sluice wheel, and she also knew that the woman was not going to forget it. She would talk about it, telling people about seeing Donna here. Not necessarily accusingly, but mentioning it as a curious incident. And people would remember, they would
remember
…

On the crest of this thought, Donna moved towards the woman, slowly, keeping the heavy iron shaft of the key in her hands.

As if trying to smooth over an awkward moment, the woman said, ‘It’s a macabre old place, isn’t it? I haven’t lived here very long–my husband’s come up here to work–he’s one of the curators at Quire House, and they’re thinking of taking on some of the other old buildings in the area. So I thought I’d take a look at Twygrist for him. I didn’t expect to find anyone in here, though.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Donna, and bounded forward.

The old mill worked with her again, exactly as it had done years before, and the woman fell backwards in a surprised tumble. Donna felt a shiver go through the oak floor and saw the woman fling up a defensive hand across her eyes. Too late, of course. The sluice-wheel key was heavy and powerful; it swung up over Donna’s head and then came smashing down. There was a crunch of bone, and the woman fell forward. Dead? Oh, who cared, she would be dead very soon. Donna dragged her across to the half-rotted tank enclosing the lower waterwheel, and by dint of pushing and lifting, finally tipped her over.

She fell down inside the tank, hitting the giant cogs of the waterwheel as she did so. There was a faint menacing thrum from the old iron and oak, and then a shallow muddy splash. The
stench of the sour water rose up, and the old rotting timbers groaned, and splintered slightly at the bottom. Donna, one hand over her mouth to shut out the sour breath of the splashing water, waited to see what happened next, but the only sound was from the wheel, still vibrating slightly from the impact. The sound stayed on the air for what seemed to be a very long time, but eventually it died away, and Twygrist sank back into its brooding silence.

Donna stood on tiptoe to peer down into the tank, to make sure that even if the woman was not dead, she would not be able to get out. She was reassured. Nobody–and certainly nobody who had been given such a crunching blow to the head–could possibly get out of there.

Later that night, reviewing what she had done, she was glad to know she had been able to deal quickly and efficiently with getting rid of the unknown woman who might have spoiled the whole beautiful plan. Also–and this was the important thing–she had done it without getting caught.

She had not been caught when she killed Greg Foster earlier tonight, either.

Curled into the dark attic, Donna speculated on what would be happening at Quire House. It was not likely that Weston would be actually suspected of the boy’s death–she would have no connection with him, and the police would find that out very quickly. It was probable that the killing would be put down to a burglar; it was a safe bet that Dr Toy and Professor Remus would have reported the missing items which Greg had taken. It was also possible that some drug connection might be found; so many teenagers were into drugs these days, and Greg had looked just the sulky ill-mannered type who would think it was cool to be part of a drugs-ring. But Donna did not really care what conclusion they reached.

If by some outside chance Weston was suspected–if she was found guilty and sent to prison again–it would not be disastrous;
it would simply delay the reckoning. Time meant nothing in all this. Donna would wait for twenty years if she had to.

She flicked on the torch to check her watch. Nine o’clock. She settled down to wait for Antonia to return to the cottage, and for night to fall.

After Inspector Curran had left, Charity Cottage felt oddly unfriendly. Antonia stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him walk across the park, then closed and locked the door. He had not seemed to think the murderer would return tonight but she had not needed his final reminder to lock the doors. After she had done this she went systematically round the house, placing chairs and stools directly in front of the doors and the downstairs windows. If Greg Foster’s killer–who was presumably the same person as Antonia’s intruder–did try to get in, he would trip over the chairs and the noise would alert her. If that happened she could shut herself into the bathroom with the mobile phone and summon help; Curran and his officers were only across the park at Quire. And if the killer sustained a viciously painful injury trying to get in–a pulled hamstring or a chair-leg jabbed into the groin–it would be no less than the bastard deserved.

This reasoning made her feel better, and she made a cup of tea and then switched on the television for the late-night news. She did not take in very much of it, but it gave her the feeling of being still a part of the ordinary world. There was probably not much point in trying to sleep tonight, and to go to bed was unthinkable: she would lie awake listening for the sounds of
someone trying to get in. It was annoying to find that she was counting how many hours there were before Jonathan reached Amberwood. This was purely because he was a good friend, and would continue to be a good friend no matter what she was thought to have done. He would come in to bat on her side–he always had done.

After thought, she decided to spend the night on the sitting-room sofa with a book. There might even be a late-night TV film she could watch. She could keep the sound turned down very low so as to hear any stealthy footsteps outside, or the sounds of doors being tried or locks being tampered with. With any luck she might even manage to stop seeing Greg Foster’s body with the knife sticking out of his chest where someone had stabbed him in exactly the same way Don Robards had been stabbed when he had attacked her that night. And exactly as Richard had been stabbed. The music was there as well: don’t forget that Richard’s music was lying next to Greg Foster’s body. Whoever he is, this madman, he knows all about me. He knows all the vulnerable spots. Antonia spent several fruitless moments wondering about the identity of the man but could not come up with any useful possibilities. If Don Robards had had family she might have speculated whether this could be some warped revenge-plot, but all through his clinic sessions he had been definite about not having anyone and certainly no relatives had been called at the trial.

But it would be better not to think about Don tonight. She went upstairs to pull on a tracksuit which would be comfortable if she did fall asleep but practical if the killer came back. The bedroom was cold, and glancing out of the window Antonia was aware again of the dark isolation that surrounded Charity Cottage. The Inspector had said his men would be around for some time, but Antonia thought it would not hurt to check the barricades again. She went round the rooms, making sure that everywhere was locked and bolted and that the stools and chairs–in one case a clothes-airer–were all firmly in position. If Sergeant Blackburn could see her, he would file her under N
for Neurotic, or even M for Mad, and Oliver Remus would probably agree. Antonia did not care what the professor thought. She did not care what any of them thought.

The sitting-room was warm, and the mobile phone was comfortingly within reach. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel. It ought to have been a soothing sound, that rhythmic ticking, but somehow it was not. Antonia was dizzy with exhaustion but she was too frightened to give in to the need for sleep. Every creak of the cottage’s timbers sounded like a furtive footstep, and twice she sat bolt upright, the first time thinking she had heard a door being stealthily pushed open, the second time that someone had walked across the bedroom floor overhead.

She lay down on the sofa again, and finally began to relax. Sleep was starting to drag her eyelids down–dare she give in to it? The table lamp was on, so anyone prowling around would assume she was awake and think twice about breaking in. In any case, he’d fall over the clothes airer, thought Antonia, and aware how absurd this sounded finally allowed herself to sink into a sleep.

It was not a very peaceful sleep. It pulled her down into a disturbing world of bleak asylums with harsh treatments and venal matrons in charge, where an unknown, un-named patient pressed down into a cold stone floor, as if trying to escape the light. And from there into a world where a madman played music that trickled menacingly through the night, and where a hangman’s noose swung slowly back and forth, ready to strangle a murderer. Where the ticking of clocks somehow changed pace and became soft footsteps that sounded exactly like the stealthy sounds of someone creeping down a darkened staircase…At this point Antonia woke with a gasp, abruptly aware that the sounds were not in her dream: there really was someone coming down the stairs.

There was no chance to snatch up any kind of weapon or to reach for the phone or even to make a dash for the front door. The
intruder was here, he was inside the cottage–I locked him in with me, thought Antonia in horror. He’s been in here all the time.

The door opened and the figure was there–dark, quite slenderly-built, wearing some kind of mask over its face. Antonia leapt up, but before she could do anything the intruder was upon her. Eyes, glittering and filled with hatred, framed by blackness, glared down at her.

A voice–an unmistakably female voice, said, ‘This is all for Don, you bitch. It’s to punish you for killing Don.’

Before Antonia could even cry out an arm was lifted and something came crashing down on the top of her head. There was an explosion of pain and a brief blinding flash of light behind her eyes. She spun straight down into a black gaping void where there was nothing at all.

From the dark attic Donna had heard Antonia return around eleven, and she had heard the murmur of a man’s voice. Then the police had come back with her! She lay down under the travelling rug at once, willing herself not to move, hearing the sounds of doors opening and closing and then of footsteps on the stairs. Oh God, oh God, the man was searching the cottage. Looking in the bedrooms–checking cupboards and wardrobes. Would he come up here? Would he even see the trapdoor over the landing? It seemed to Donna that hours crawled by while she waited, and that the whole world shrank to this dark stuffy attic where she crouched.

But it was all right. The footsteps had gone back down the stairs, and there was the murmur of voices again, and then the sound of the front door opening and then closing. After that came the unmistakable rushing of water from the plumbing as the tap downstairs was turned on. Donna dared to sit up, and risked a quick flick of the torch to see the time. Half past eleven. She visualized Antonia making herself a last cup of tea or coffee before going to bed. A pity the creature could not be tricked into drinking arsenic along with it.

Several times in the hours that followed she had to cautiously stretch her limbs to ward off the beginnings of cramp. Once she risked standing up, but the old floor timbers creaked so loudly that she froze and did not dare move again.

The hands of her watch crawled around to two, and Donna cautiously pushed the rug aside, sat up, and checked that she had everything she would need. She had fixed on two as the best time to make her move. The police were unlikely to be around at that hour–they had had five or six hours to pursue their investigations and they would hardly be searching the grounds in the pitch dark. The only real risk facing Donna was getting Antonia out of the cottage and into her car, but the car was parked close to the front door and she did not think the risk was so very great. It would mean driving down the narrow access road and onto Quire’s main carriageway but she thought she could do that without switching on the car’s lights and the cottage was far enough from the main house for the engine not to be heard.

She half-crawled, half-slid across to the trapdoor, and working with infinite patience, lifted it out and set it down on one side of the opening. It made the barest scrape of sound–nothing that could possibly be heard below. She secured the hooks of the rope-ladder to the edges of the opening, and climbed down. This was not an entirely silent manoeuvre but she prayed Weston would be asleep. Once on the stairs she took the sandbag from her anorak pocket. Now for it, you murderous bitch!

It was briefly disconcerting to discover the bedroom was empty. Donna stared at the unoccupied bed. Had Weston gone back to Quire House to sleep, and Donna had not heard her go? No, she was still here, Donna had heard her making tea and moving around. And she could feel her presence in the cottage now. She began to steal down the stairs.

As soon as she saw the spill of light from the sitting-room she understood that the creature had remained downstairs for the night in case of a break in. Very clever, Dr Weston, but not quite clever enough. This is it, Donna. This is what you’ve
waited five years to do. Her heart racing with a mixture of nervous tension and pulsating excitement, Donna pushed the door wide and went into the room.

There was a deep satisfaction in seeing Weston’s terror as she started up from the sofa, and there was an even deeper one in bringing the sandbag smashing down on Weston’s skull.

She went down as easily as Greg Foster had done, and an emotion so overwhelming and so vast gripped Donna that for a moment she was quite unable to move. She stared down at the unconscious figure. She had never seen Antonia Weston close to; she was smaller than Donna remembered from the trial, and she was thinner.
Older.
But even though Donna knew she must move quickly, she could not stop looking at the woman who had killed Don. She had not known she would feel like this–exalted and excited–and she had not known that she would hiss those last words to Weston. ‘All this is for Don,’ she had said, because it suddenly seemed vital that Weston understood why she was being punished. Had that been a touch foolhardy? Not really. Antonia would not be able to tell anyone; she would not speak to anyone ever again.

Donna sprinted back up to the landing, and climbing onto the bathroom stool again, dislodged the rope-ladder and slid the trapdoor back into place. She returned the stool to its rightful place, and coiled the rope ladder around her waist; it could easily be burned or flung into the Amber River later on.

She opened the front door, and glancing round to make sure no one was about, unlocked the door of Antonia’s car. Then she hooked her hands under Antonia’s arms, and dragged her out, tumbling her onto the back seat. She fell in a twisted huddle that looked painfully uncomfortable. Good. Donna went back into the cottage and looked round. Had she left anything that might provide a clue? No. She closed the cottage door, hearing the lock click home.

Her own car was parked about half a mile from Quire, well off the road and hidden by trees. She would have preferred to be driving it now for this difficult, risky journey, but it might be
seen and recognized, or traced afterwards. It did not matter very much if Antonia’s car was seen although it must not be seen before she was clear of Quire’s gates. Hardly daring to breathe, Donna fired the ignition and steered slowly through the darkness onto Quire’s main carriageway. Nothing stirred anywhere and she went through the gates without mishap. Then she switched on the headlights and drove towards the road that led to Twygrist.

At first Antonia was not sure where she was.

She thought, to begin with, that she had fallen asleep on the sofa of Charity Cottage. There had been a clock ticking. Then she thought she was back in prison, huddled onto the thin bed in her cell, dreading the morning.

But as consciousness returned, she realized she was in neither of these places. She seemed to be lying not on a bed or a couch, but on a hard cold surface. The smells were all wrong for prison or the cottage, wherever this was, it was filled with a stifling sourness, like the soot from a very old chimney.

She opened her eyes to nothing. The pitchest of pitch blacks. Panic swept in instantly. I’m blind, she thought. No, I can’t be. But surely nowhere could be as thickly dark as this. She brought her hand up in front of her eyes, and could not see it. Panic clutched her all over again. I
am
blind. I’ve been ill or I’ve been in an accident–a road smash–and my head must have been injured because it’s aching dreadfully. I don’t know where I am, but I don’t think there’s anyone here with me.

Her mouth felt dry, but she called out, ‘Hello? Is someone here?’ and heard her words whispered eerily back to her.
Someone here…S-s-someone here…here…HERE…
And then they died away, and there was only a feeling of emptiness. Then I really am on my own. Oh God, where is this?

Some semblance of reasoning was starting to come back. She thought she could not be blind because the blackness was too absolute; blind people almost always had at least a slight perception of light and shade.

She sat up cautiously, but when she tried to stand a fresh jab of pain skewered through her skull. An injury then. But no bandages from the feel of it. She put up a careful hand to explore and found a lump on one side under her hair.

Memory was starting to return with agonizing slowness, and in snatches, like a jerky, badly cranked old film. Being in the cottage after that boy’s death. Locking all the doors against the murderer. Only the murderer had already been in there–hiding, waiting to creep out. Antonia remembered those hate-filled words: ‘This is for Don, you bitch. All this is to punish you for killing Don.’

A woman’s voice. ‘This is for Don.’ And then that crunching blow on her head. Had it been a girlfriend of Don’s? Family that he had not admitted to? Whoever it was, was she going to come back?

Antonia was not going to sit here meekly, hands folded, waiting for her captor to come back. She made another attempt to stand up and, although it made her head throb, this time she managed it. It was horribly disorienting to stand in absolute darkness like this, but it would have to be endured. She would find a wall so she could feel her way along it. It would be something definite to do, and concentrating on it might help her to ignore the darkness and the silence.