The Deceit

41

The steps were so narrow that Karen had to descend them like ships’ stairs, face to the rungs, carefully placing one foot beneath the other. What was she going to see at the foot of these steps? Her emotions spiralled but she closed them down.

Karen reached the bottom and turned around. She was in a kind of musty brick vault with a low wooden ceiling. It was empty, lit by the melancholy yellow light of a dozen little bulbs strung along the ceiling on dangling wires.

‘Eleanor?’ Karen called. ‘Eleanor?’

Her voice echoed, and died. The only noise she heard was a dog barking along the passageways. The vault ended at a wall of thin red bricks, old and mossed, and then a further low door, barely four foot high, which, from what she could dimly perceive, led into another stone chamber.

It must be medieval, she thought. The whole of this corner of London was medieval in origin, threaded with narrow passages and wine cellars and storage vaults: that was one reason it was favoured by gold and silver merchants into the twenty-first century: they could store the bullion safely in stone-built chambers.

Her thoughts disappeared into the horror of reality. Where was her daughter?

Ellie’s voice had seemed to come from directly beneath her, when she was in the room above. And yet — not.

He was still playing tricks.

Karen didn’t even bother looking for the speaker. She knew it would be here somewhere, secreted in the dripping stone work, concealed behind a loose, five-hundred-year-old stockbrick.

‘Mummy.’

It was Eleanor again. Beckoning. Muffled yet near, distant yet needy.

‘Mummy, help me!’

The voice was inviting her into the next chamber, through the tiny stone door. Karen wondered, for a slice of a second, if she should resist, turn back, give up, refuse to play her ordained role in this satanic charade; but of course she couldn’t. She had to go on. Rothley was probably elsewhere, with Eleanor, dead or alive. Yes. Halfway across London, halfway across the world, and this was all a joke. Yet the tiny scintilla of a chance that it wasn’t a joke, that Eleanor might be down here, forced her to go on.

‘I’m coming!’ Karen called. ‘Eleanor, I’m coming!’

‘Mummy I’m in here, the door thing, help me. I’m scared, I, Mummy—’

Karen crouched through the door, having to kneel and squeeze left and push through sideways, the door was so small.

The next chamber was bigger. Wider and longer, and it had several doors. It was also empty. The ceiling was stone and low, Karen could not stand upright but had to bend and shuffle through. She looked left, down one yellow-lit passage. Water dripped. Shadows capered.

‘Lal moulal shoulal.’

That was him. Rothley. The chanting was distinct; it seemed to be real. Just a few yards away, inside one of these doors.

Karen began to cry. She was bewildered and broken: it was too much: she was beaten. Rothley had beaten her. Maybe this was what he wanted. He desired her like this: defeated and sobbing, and then kneeling on the floor, tormented into submission.

The dog barked again. She looked right, and saw it: a small black dog, running across the doorway, down yet another passage, glimpsed and then gone. What the hell was a dog doing down here? Karen stepped through this door. The light was even dimmer here; there were passages leading on, some lit by yellow bulbs, others dark.

‘Mummy …’

She could see something. The voice was coming from a bundle in the next dingy brick chamber. Karen stepped inside.

The bundle was a roped and rolled tartan rug, lying on the damp stone floor. The voice was coming from the bundle. It was the shape and size of Eleanor: she was in here! Her daughter was here, wrapped in this rug!

‘Mummy help me. I … Mummy!’

She leapt at the bundle. But it was roped and tied. And as soon as she lifted it, she realized that whatever was inside it was stiff.

Karen felt the dread creeping inside her. Stiff. She didn’t believe in God but now she fiercely prayed it wasn’t Eleanor. She would give her human soul for this not to be Eleanor. What was in this thing? Some dead dog? Some slaughtered animal? With trembling hands, Karen undid the knots. The thin grey ropes fell away and the rug at last fell open, and revealed a child’s face.

It was Eleanor’s face.

And it was as white as two-day-old ashes. The lips were faintly purpled. Eleanor was dead, stiff and cold. The eyes were half open but rigor mortis had set in. She’d obviously been dead for hours.

Karen clutched the body of her daughter to her breast. And now she wept, and wept, and wept, rocking back and forth, lunatic in her grief.

‘Eleanor, Ellie, Eleanor, I was too late I was too late, I tried I tried I tried.’ She kissed her daughter’s cold lips, her cold face, her coldness. The stiffness was unbearable. Everything was unbearable now. From now and forever.

‘Eleanor … Ellie …’

The feeble yellow lights glimmered above her.