The Order of Things (36 page)

‘I’ll get someone there.’

Suttle grunted, asked her to hang on. The phone wedged against his ear, he was pulling on a pair of trackie bottoms and wondering what he’d done with his car keys. Then he was back on the phone.

‘I’ve got an open line, boss. She must have left her mobile on. I’ll come straight in. Get me a contact number for whoever responds. Have them wait outside. Nothing happens until I give the word. We need to let Caton talk herself out. Yeah?’

‘So you’re going where?’

‘St Leonard’s. The Plantation.’

Houghton rang off. Suttle, back in the kitchen, retrieved the other phone. Then he headed for the door.

Trussed hand and foot with cable ties, Lizzie lay naked on the bed. Michala had pulled the curtains across the window. The nearest neighbours were way beyond screaming range. Thank God no one had spotted the live phone.

Gemma Caton was sitting on the bed. She was wearing an army surplus camo top over an oversize pair of jeans, her big hands crammed into a pair of tight-fitting black leather gloves. She wanted to know what Lizzie had done with the information about Kelly Willmott. Lizzie said she didn’t know what she was talking about.

‘You’ve been to the police, right?’

‘No.’

‘So why did they pull Michala in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You do, my child. You do. And soon you’re going to tell me.’

She leaned forward, her huge face inches away. Lizzie could smell spearmint on her breath again. Then she felt the big hands closing around her neck, squeezing and squeezing. She tried to scream. Nothing happened. Then the pressure suddenly relaxed.

‘You wanna tell me now? Do yourself a favour?’

Lizzie nodded. Keep her talking, she thought. Just keep her talking. Play the journalist. Pretend you’re not looking at madness. More questions. String this out.

‘What does Michala say?’ She was staring up at Caton. ‘What did she tell them?’

‘Nothing. And my beautiful girl never lies.’

‘So why do you think I’ve been to the police?’

‘Because you played games with us. Your little trick with the closet? The soapstone carvings? You’re denying any of that?’

Lizzie shook her head. Michala had edged closer. Her eyes were wide in the paleness of her face. Lizzie stared up at her. She realised at last that she’d got this woman badly wrong. She was the cuckoo in the nest. She’d rung Caton, probably opened the front door to her.

‘I was right all the time, wasn’t I?’ Her eyes strayed towards Caton. ‘You’re her slave.’

The blow caught Lizzie by surprise, smack in her mouth. She screamed with the pain, felt her eyes watering.

Caton’s face hung over her again.‘We’re talking choice here,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever call me unreasonable.’

‘Choice?’ Lizzie forced the word out. Her lips felt like rubber, swelling already under the force of the blow.

Caton had bent even closer. She was chewing gum.

‘Number one, you tell us how much the police know. Or number two, we burn your house down … with you inside it.’

Suttle was already on the long hill climbing out of Exmouth. The road was empty. He was driving flat out, the crest of the hill approaching. Then came a call on his work phone. He’d anticipated this. He hauled the car to a stop in the forecourt of a fuel station. Covered the live phone with a cushion. Answered the call.

‘PC Billington,’ a voice said. ‘We’re in position outside your missus’ property. Light in the top window. Await your call. Out.’

Suttle pulled out onto the road again, trying to visualise exactly what had happened to Lizzie. Assuming she was at The Plantation had been a punt but a good one. A prisoner in her own bedroom, at the mercy of someone as deranged as Caton, she’d somehow mustered the presence of mind, the sheer balls, to play the scene for all she was worth. Suttle knew exactly what she was doing and he wondered whether – in the same situation – he’d be performing as well.
Fair play
, he thought, removing the cushion from the phone.
Keep talking
.

Caton, to Lizzie’s horror, was serious about burning the house down. She’d dispatched Michala downstairs to look for cardboard, old newspapers, anything to start a fire. She’d noticed logs and kindling in a big basket beside the open fireplace. An old place like this, she was assuring Lizzie, would go up in minutes. Windows open downstairs for a draught. Bedroom door open to funnel air upstairs. Bedding loosened, the sheets and the duvet trailing into the flames. Lower the big sash window and the fire would take care of itself.

She said she was sorry about smacking Lizzie in the mouth. She’d been a little wound up. A little provoked. Needn’t have happened. A misunderstanding on both parts. Not a classy thing to do.

She reached down and touched Lizzie lightly on the cheek. Lizzie turned her face away. She felt numb with shock. She was going to die in her own bedroom. Burned alive like some heretic witch.

Caton, as ever, was ahead of the game, taking a visible pleasure in spelling out what Lizzie might like to anticipate.

‘Think Viking funeral, baby. Think Hindus beside the Ganges. Think
purification
.’

‘Purification? What have I done?’

‘You played us for fools. No one does that.’

‘I asked some questions. That’s all I did.’

‘Sure. And what will you do with the answers? You think we can take a risk like that? Think again …’

She got off the bed and left the room. Moments later she was back with a leather bag. She produced something the size of a smallish torch, wrapped in tissue paper. Inside was a carving. She held it in front of Lizzie’s face. There were tiny primitive marks on the carving, maybe a face at the top.

‘Soapstone.’ Caton was stroking it. She named an American Indian tribe. ‘Headwaters of the Fraser River. They carved these like they carved totem poles. They were talking to the spirits, to the gods of the river. They gave them to the women. The women used them whichever way they wanted. If you made love to the soapstone, the tribe won the blessing of the spirits. That way the tribe got through another winter.’

‘Why do I need this?’

‘Because you need to make friends with it. That way it will keep you safe on the journey.’

‘You’re crazy. This is crazy talk.’

‘You think so?’

Caton made a space on the bedside table for the carving. Erect in front of Lizzie’s pile of paperbacks, she could almost believe it had a presence. She closed her eyes. Naked in the draught from the door, she was trembling with fear and with cold. This wasn’t happening, she told herself.
Please God, someone help me
.

Suttle was on the edges of Exeter within ten minutes. Aside from a near-collision with a van delivering milk, a flash of white in the darkness, the road had been empty. St Leonard’s lay on the southern edges of the city centre. Busting through a series of red traffic lights, Suttle slowed for the turn that would take him off the main road and into the cul-de-sac that led to Lizzie’s property. Already he could see a couple of marked cars parked up in the looming shadow of a hedge, invisible from the house. Top work, he thought.

His personal phone pressed to his ear, he slipped out of the car. A uniformed PC met him beneath the hedge. They talked in whispers. He had two guys around the back of the premises. Another had tested the front door and confirmed it was open. What now?

Suttle was still listening to the phone. He made a tiny gesture with his other hand. Wait.

Michala was back in the bedroom, her arms full of twists of newsprint. Watching Caton scatter the newspaper around the bed, Lizzie cursed her habit of keeping back numbers of the
Express and Echo
. She’d always told herself that – over time – these would serve as an archive for stories that might find their way onto her website. Now they were going to cook her alive. Caton’s mention of Hindu funerals beside the Ganges had nailed itself to the inside of her head. She’d watched footage of these rituals of passage. The images were all too graphic. The body’s fat fuelled the leaping flames. First you charred. Then you caught fire. Then you melted.

‘Logs, angel?’

Michala departed. Caton was back beside the bed. Lizzie had run out of questions. She was terrified.

Caton was looking down at her. She’d pulled the duvet up, tucking the top around Lizzie’s neck, apologising for the cold. She might have been a care attendant at one of the dodgier nursing homes: roughly solicitous, keen to keep the patient in the picture. Information is power, honey. You better believe it.

‘You want to know what we do next? We let you say goodbye. We light the fire. We make sure the spirits feed the flames. And then we leave.’ Caton smiled in the semi-darkness. ‘They’ll find your little bedside lamp on the floor. Crap electrics. A lesson for us all.’

‘Say goodbye?’ Lizzie managed.

‘To the spirits.’ Caton’s gloved hand had descended on the soapstone carving. ‘You want to kiss him? Just gimme the word. Only time’s running out, sweetie, and there’s no way we’re leaving him here.’

Lizzie shook her head. Michala was back with a huge armful of logs and kindling. She was much stronger than she looked. Caton watched her building the fire, then turned back.

Lizzie stared up at her. What the hell. ‘You killed her, didn’t you?’

‘Killed who?’

‘The doctor. Harriet.’

‘Not me, angel.’

‘Then who?’

‘The spirits. We’re nothing on this earth. We’re empty. We’re the empty urn. Tap us on the outside and what do you get? An echo. The echo of emptiness. When the spirits will it, when the time is right, we do their bidding. And the urn fills up.’

‘And they told you to kill Harriet?’

‘They told me the salmon were lost. They told me the salmon were waiting.’

‘So you killed her?’

‘I listened. I acted. Ask Alois. He knows.’

‘And afterwards? After this … ? ’ Lizzie nodded towards Michala. More logs. More kindling.

‘We go to Scotland. All three of us.’

‘But Alois is under arrest. They’ll charge him. He’ll go down.’

‘All three of us,’ she repeated. ‘Me, Michala, the baby. It helps in life to count.’

Lizzie was beyond counting. She stared up at Caton. The scene had become surreal. She was looking at her own death, her own mad funeral, her own disappearance. Just ashes, she thought. And a pile of bones. Did burning hurt? Did the pain get worse and worse until all your fuses blew and you melted away into unconsciousness? Was that why fire and brimstone had tormented the conscience of the guilty? Was this God’s final judgement on her for losing Grace and haunting Jimmy? Was this the real meaning of wrath?

‘A favour?’ Lizzie’s voice was no more than a whisper. ‘Please?’

‘Anything.’

‘Can you kill me first? Suffocate me? Strangle me? Whatever?’

Caton thought about the proposition for a moment, then turned to Michala. Michala nodded, turned her head away. She had a lighter in her hand. She was kneeling at the foot of the bed, in the teeth of the draught from the open door.

‘The window,’ Caton said. ‘Open the bloody window.’

The rumble of the sash window carried on the night wind. The PC heard it. Suttle too. The phone still to his ear, he’d lost the final part of the conversation. The voices were too low, the words indistinguishable. All he knew was that Lizzie was still alive, still conscious. Evidentially, he thought, they’d reached the end of the line.

The PC had heard enough to understand what lay in wait. Already, with Suttle’s blessing, he’d alerted the fire brigade and an ambulance. Twice he’d suggested intervening, and twice Suttle had shaken his head. We need more, he’d said. We need the whole story.

Now the PC was close to making his own decision. Suttle gazed across at him. He still had the phone to his ear. He was still listening.

‘Give me another minute,’ he said. ‘Leave this to me.’

Lizzie had resigned herself to whatever happened next. Fear had numbed her, stealing her wits, and now terror had robbed her of everything else. She could scarcely think properly. Her life, all too literally, was in the hands of a mad woman – the second one she’d encountered – and now she couldn’t take her eyes off the black leather gloves. At the end of it all, she dimly realised, death is pitiless, a sequence of actions with only one end. Thick black fingers, flexing in front of her face. A pair of eyes from a horror movie. The shadow of Michala in the background, her lighter ready, a wraith at the foot of the bed.

Her turn next, Lizzie thought. Should I warn her? Should I tell her to get out of here, to leave this woman, to squirm free of the force field? Or should I take advantage of the open window – one last chance – and just scream?

The latter was all she had left. She opened her mouth, filled her lungs, but Caton had read her mind again, clamping her swollen lips with one huge hand, pressing down and down, the other hand circling her throat, squeezing harder and harder. Once again Lizzie fought for her life, trying to loosen the cable ties, trying to wriggle free beneath the crushing weight of Caton, but her strength had gone, and her resolve with it, and in the end she just relaxed, an act of acceptance, the feeblest gesture in the face of what was to come. The flames, she thought, licking around the bed. The roar as the fire took hold. Please let me die before I burn.

Suttle pocketed the phone. The PC had two officers from the other car staking out the back garden. They could smell smoke.

‘Go,’ Suttle said.

He and the PC burst through the garden gate and ran along the trail of paving stones towards the front door. The PC’s oppo had already kicked it open. The smoke was thicker now, coiling out of the upstairs window. Suttle plunged into the darkness of the hall, trying to remember where he’d find the stairs, aware of the crackle of flames above his head. Lizzie’s bedroom had been last on the left along the landing at the top. The door was wide open, the fire sucking the draught up the stairs. The lights were out, but the flames were reaching for the bed, the room full of smoke, the small shape of Lizzie motionless beneath the duvet. Of Caton and Michala there was no sign.