Dead Tomorrow

122

Shortly after four o’clock, in the failing daylight, the sky was leaden with sleet and Mal needed to put the MG’s headlamps on. The deeply rutted track, which was mostly mud peppered with flint stones, had a heavy coating of leaves from its overhanging trees, and he drove slowly, not wanting to ground his exhaust, or kick up dirt at the police car following behind him.

He was trying to think how many years it had been since he’d last come up here. They’d sold when Lynn and he divorced, but two years later he’d seen it was on the market once more, and had brought Jane up here in the hope of buying it again. But she took one look at it and rejected the idea flat. It was far too isolated for her. She said she would be terrified on her own.

He had to agree that she was right. You either liked isolation or you didn’t.

They passed the main farmhouse, occupied by an elderly farmer and his wife, who had been their only neighbours, then drove on for another half-mile, past a cluster of tumble-down barns, a partially dismembered tractor and an old trailer, then wound on into the woods.

He was worried sick about Caitlin. What the hell mess had Lynn got into? Presumably it had to do with the liver she was trying to buy. He still had not told Jane about the money, but at this moment, that was a long way from his mind.

The police would not tell him anything, only that Caitlin had run off and her mother was desperately worried about her failing health – and the opportunity of a liver transplant, which had come up and she was in danger of missing.

A ghostly slab of white shone ahead, as they approached a clearing. It was Winter Cottage, once their dream home. And the end of the track.

He angled the car so that the lights were fully on the little house. In truth, behind the ivy cladding was an ugly building, a squat, square two-storey affair, cheaply built in the early 1950s out of breeze blocks to house a herdsman and his family. In the farming slump of the late 1990s they’d been made redundant and the farmer had put the place on the market to raise some cash, which was when he and Lynn had bought it.

It was the position that had appealed to them both. Utter tranquillity, with a glorious view of the Downs to the south, and yet it was only fifteen minutes’ drive to the centre of Brighton.

From the looks of it, the place was derelict now. He knew the couple of Londoners they’d sold to had big plans for the place, but they had then emigrated to Australia, which was why it had gone back on the market. It had clearly not been touched for years. Maybe no one else had come along with the cash or the vision. It certainly needed plenty of both.

He grabbed his torch off the passenger seat and climbed out, leaving the headlights on. The two police officers, DS Glenn Branson and DS Bella Moy, climbed out of their car too, each holding a switched-on torch, and walked up to him.

‘Don’t suppose you get many Jehovah’s Witnesses around here,’ joked Branson.

‘That’s for sure,’ Mal said.

Then he led the way, along the brick path he had laid himself, up to the front door and around the side of the house, under a holly archway that was so overgrown all three of them had to duck to avoid the prickles, and through into the back garden. The brick path continued past a rotting barbecue deck, and then on, along the side of a lawn that had once been his pride and joy and was now just a wilderness, through an almost-closed gap in a tall yew hedge, into what Caitlin used to call her Secret Garden.

‘I can understand why you needed to come with us, sir,’ Bella Moy said.

Malcolm smiled thinly. He felt a tightening in his gullet as the beam of his torch struck the wooden Wendy house. Then he stopped. Nervous suddenly.

In a way, he was surprised it was still there, and in another way, he wished it wasn’t. It was too much of a reminder, suddenly, of the pain of his split with Lynn.

The little house was made from logs and supported on stubby brick legs at each corner. He had rebuilt it himself as a labour of love for Caitlin. There was a door in the middle, with steps up to it, and a window either side. There was still glass in both of them, although the beam of his torch could barely penetrate the coating of dust through to the interior. He was pleased to see that the asphalt roof was still in place, although curling at the edges.

He tried to call her name, but his throat was too dry and nothing came out. Flanked by the two police officers, he walked forward, reached the steps, turned the wobbly handle and pushed open the door.

And his heart leapt for joy.

Caitlin was sitting on the floor at the back of the little house, all hunched up like a bendy doll, staring down into her own lap.

A tiny green glow came from her iPod, which rested on her thighs, and in the silence he could hear a refrain that went, ‘One… two… three… four…’

He recognized it. Feist. Currently one of her favourite singers. Amy liked her too.

‘Hi, darling!’ he said, trying not to dazzle her.

There was no response.

Something lurched inside him. ‘Darling? It’s OK, Dad’s here.’

Then he felt a restraining arm on his shoulder.

‘Sir,’ Glenn Branson cautioned.

Ignoring him, he hurried across, dropping down on to his knees, putting his face up close to his daughter’s.

‘Caitlin, darling!’

He cupped her face in his hands and was shocked how cold she was. Stone cold.

He raised her face gently, and then he saw that her eyes were open wide, but there was no flicker of movement in them.

‘No!’ he said. ‘No! Please, no! No! NOOOOOOOOO!’

Glenn Branson raised his torch, stared into her eyes, looking for any movement of the pupils or lids or lashes. But there was nothing.

Desperately, Mal laid Caitlin gently down, pressed his lips to his daughter’s and started giving her the kiss of life. Behind him, he heard the voice of the female detective radioing for an ambulance.

He was still frantically trying to resuscitate Caitlin twenty minutes later, when the paramedics finally arrived.