She moved to him and put a hand across the back door.
‘You knew I wouldn’t go down there, didn’t you?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You knew that I would keep away, after what happened to… to… my beautiful boy.’
‘Joe, Mum. JOE. You want to know something? Your beautiful Joe was a sadistic little bully.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Your son. Was no angel.’
‘You!’ she spat. ‘You’re no son of mine.’
Darryl leaned in close, and said in a low voice: ‘Joe and the other boys would wait for me in the woods after school, then hold me down, and piss on me, and then Joe would make me do things to them…’
‘NO!’ cried Mary, and she put her hands to her ears like a small child.
‘Yes! Yes, YES!’ shouted Darryl, grabbing at her hands and pulling them away. ‘Joe hung himself because he was sick. He was evil. He told me he wanted to go.’
‘You said you found him.’
Darryl shook his head.
‘No. I watched him do it. I could have stopped him. But I didn’t.’
Mary launched herself at him, clawing at his face. He swung the barrel of the shotgun up and round and hit her over the head. She went down on the floor and remained still.
Darryl stared at her, his heart pounding. He reached out to touch her face, then pulled his hand back.
He picked up the shotgun and left the house.
Chapter Eighty-Five
It was still raining hard when Erika and Peterson drove up to Morris Cartwright’s lock-up. It sat amongst fields at the end of a long bumpy track. The building was spread out and made up of four huge asbestos arches with a large wooden frame. It looked odd, like a piece of East London landscape had been plonked in a muddy field.
Peterson pulled up onto an overgrown concrete platform, and they got out of the car. The windows running along the top were dark. Peterson put a hand on her arm.
‘Erika, if we go in, how do we link Morris to her? He could say it was nothing to do with him. That he didn’t know anything about it. We have no proof.’
‘Beth Rose could be in there. She’ll be in a bad way; isn’t this about saving someone’s life?’ Erika replied. Peterson looked over at her, her hair flat against her head in the pouring rain. He wiped his face and nodded. ‘Call for backup: ambulance, police. We don’t know what we are going to find.’
Peterson called in for backup, as Erika pulled a pair of bolt cutters from the boot of the car. They moved over to the row of doors.
‘It was this one, the first?’ she asked.
Peterson nodded. Erika snipped the chain easily, and they unwound it. The door pulled back with a squeal.
It was empty apart from a small pile of sacks in the middle of the concrete floor. The light shone through a window high above.
‘Fertiliser,’ said Peterson, kicking the pile.
‘We need to move them; there could be a trapdoor…’
They shifted the small pile, but there was nothing. They moved along the line, opening the other three lockups, which were similarly full of gardening equipment, an old car, and the last lockup held a speedboat with its engine lying strewn across the floor.
They went back to the car and got in, just as three police cars arrived with sirens blaring, together with an ambulance and fire engine.
* * *
After an embarrassing exchange with the emergency services, Erika and Peterson set off back towards the police station in Sevenoaks. Their mood was dark in the car, and they listened to the police radio as it was communicated to control that it had been a false alarm.
They’d just reached the village of Dunton Green, and were passing the local pub, when one of the police officers came over the radio to say that they’d been to check out Morris Cartwright with his previous employer at Bradley Farm.
‘Spoke to a funny old girl,’ he was saying. ‘They’ve got a bloody huge dog. It went ballistic.’
‘You okay? Did you get bitten?’ joked the police officer on control.
‘Almost. And I wouldn’t have fancied my chances. Weird breed it was, it had a big white face like a bull terrier, but spotty like a Dalmatian.’
A thunderbolt realisation hit Erika as they carried on chattering. A big white bull terrier with spots… Where had she seen it? That kind of breed. The photo in the Genesis office. It had been of a big wide-faced dog with spots.
‘Stop the car!’ she cried.
‘I’m on a junction, at lights,’ said Peterson.
‘Reverse, pull in at the car park.’
They parked, and Erika got on the radio to Moss.
‘It’s me, officers have just been out to Bradley Farm in Dunton Green. Tell me who is registered as living there.’
Moss came back after a moment. ‘There’s a Mary, John, and Darryl Bradley.’
‘Have you got the employee list from the HR woman at Genesis?’
‘Yes. I’m just working through it.’
‘Darryl Bradley, is he there?’
The wait seemed to go on forever as Erika sat in the car park with Peterson, the phone poised in her hand.
‘Yes, Darryl Bradley. He lives at the farm, and he works for Genesis!’ said Moss.
‘It’s there. That’s where he’s holding Beth Rose,’ said Erika. She held onto the car dashboard, as Peterson roared out of the car park, hoping they were not too late.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Darryl ran through the rain and the mud with the shotgun under his jacket. He passed several of the farmworkers sitting with his father, sheltering under the barn from the rain, drinking tea from a flask. They watched with their steaming plastic cups as he dashed past, oblivious to their gaze.
‘He’s not right up top,’ said John, tapping his head.
They watched as Darryl reached the gate and vaulted it, almost slipping over as he landed on the other side and carried on running.
‘You think ’e’s, well, you know?’ said one of the older farmhands, indicating a limp wrist. He was an old man with bristly grey hair poking out from under his flat cap.
‘Oh lord, I hope not. I’d rather he was a murderer,’ said John, taking the flask and filling up his cup.
* * *
The fields were waterlogged, but Darryl slipped and plunged on along the muddy track. When he came close to the Oast House, he heard the rain hammering on the top of the tower. He stood for a moment to catch his breath, and then he opened the large sliding door. He moved inside, staring at the lights – which were on – and at the open furnace door. The sight of the empty cage shocked him. The chains lay coiled in the centre of the grubby rug, with the three padlocks. He went to one and saw two halves of a safety pin protruding from the lock, which was streaked with blood. He moved back out of the furnace chamber, gripping the shotgun.
Then there was movement, and he saw Beth coming at him, a scalpel in her bloody hand. He managed to react in time, and deflect her with the barrel of the gun, and she crashed into the wall.
How the hell? What the hell?
He stood over her as she scrambled to her feet, blocking her from running to the sliding door.