The House on Cold Hill

53

Ollie swerved off onto the hard shoulder and slammed on his brakes, switching on the hazard lights, the wipers clouting away the raindrops. He sat for a moment, drenched in perspiration, his entire body pounding. The Range Rover rocked in the slipstream of a lorry that thundered past, too close, inches away from his wing mirror, as he stabbed Caro’s direct line on his speed-dial button.

It rang once, twice, three times.

‘Answer, please answer, please, please, please, darling.’

Then, with an immense surge of relief, he heard her voice, the professional tone she always adopted when at work. ‘Hi, Ols, I’m with a client at the moment — can I call you back in a while?’

‘You’re OK?’ he gasped.

‘Yes, thank you very much. I’ll be about half an hour.’

‘Jade’s not with you?’

‘I thought you were picking her up from school?’

‘Yes — yes — yes, I am. Call me when you can.’

Another lorry rocked the car.

Had he imagined it?

He must have. Unless, he thought with growing terror, it was another time-slip. Something he had seen that had not yet happened? More evidence that he was going insane?

But he wouldn’t let Caro drive the Golf, nor take Jade anywhere, not for a few days, not until he was absolutely certain he’d just imagined this.

He checked his mirror, accelerated and pulled out onto the inside lane. He was still shaking uncontrollably, perspiration running down the back of his neck.

He didn’t calm down until he saw Jade trotting out of the school gates, rucksack on her back, cheerily chatting with a group of friends. She headed over towards him and climbed up into the car.

‘How was your day, lovely?’

She shrugged, pulling on her seat belt. ‘Mr Simpson was really annoying.’

‘Your music teacher? I thought you liked him.’

She shrugged again. ‘I do, but he can be sooooooo annoying!’

He smiled. But, inside him, a storm was still raging.

When they arrived home shortly before 4.00 p.m., the rain had eased to a light drizzle. The only trade vehicle parked outside the house was the plumber’s black van. As Jade went up to her room, Michael Maguire came out of the kitchen, his face grimy.

‘Ah, Lord Harcourt!’ he greeted him.

‘What did you discover about the bedroom walls, Mike?’

Maguire shook his head. ‘A mystery.’

‘But they’re damp, right? Where’s it coming from — upstairs again?’

‘They’re hardly damp — a tiny bit, I suppose — enough to loosen the old wallpaper paste.’

‘A tiny bit? They were sopping wet last night. We had to move down to the drawing room and sleep on the sofas.’

The plumber shook his head again, looking baffled. ‘We’ll go up there, if you like?’

Ollie followed him up the stairs, and into their bedroom. He went over to each wall in turn, laying the palm of his hand flat against the paper, and across to where the strips had fallen. Maguire was right. The walls felt almost bone dry. ‘I don’t understand — they were sopping in the middle of the night. They can’t just have dried out, it’s been raining all day.’

‘I spoke to Bryan Barker earlier,’ Maguire said. ‘He’s got a meter for measuring damp, and we’ll do some checks tomorrow if I get time. Got a busy day — the new boiler’s arriving first thing. You won’t have any hot water for a few hours, but I’ll make sure it’s all up and running by the evening.’

‘Do you have a sledgehammer?’ Ollie asked, suddenly.

‘A sledgehammer?’ Maguire looked surprised.

‘Yes.’

‘Planning to crack a nut, are you?’

‘Something like that.’ Ollie gave him a weak smile.

‘I’ve seen one lying around...’ The plumber frowned, pensively. ‘I think there’s one down in the cellar.’

‘Great, thanks.’

Ollie stared around at the two bare patches of wall which the paper had fallen from, and several other places where it had begun to peel. He walked around the room as he had done in the middle of the night, placing the palm of his hand against the wall.

Maguire was right. The dampness of the middle of the night had gone.

How?

But he had a bigger worry at this moment. He perched on the edge of the bed, pulled out his phone and went to the Argus online, which carried the latest Sussex newsfeeds. He searched down through them for Traffic. There was a three-car accident on the A27 at Southwick which had happened an hour ago. A pedestrian was in critical condition after being struck by a van near the Clock Tower in central Brighton at midday. An elderly man had been cut out of an overturned car at the Gatwick intersection of the A23 earlier in the day.

No fatalities.

No mother and daughter in a collision with a lorry.

His mind playing with him again?

Or a deadly time-slip?

The two cats, Bombay and Sapphire, came into the room, and both in turn nuzzled against him.

He stroked them for some moments, changed out of his business suit into jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers, then went back downstairs and into the kitchen, feeling badly in need of a drink.

He had always tried to make it a rule, apart from the occasional glass with lunch, never to have a drink before 6.00 p.m. But today he grabbed a bottle of Famous Grouse from the kitchen shelf, twisted off the cap, and necked a gulp straight from the bottle. Its fiery warmth sliding down his throat and into his belly instantly made him feel a little more positive. He took a second swig, replaced the cap and put the bottle back on the shelf. Then he went down into the cellar.

Barker’s workers had been busy here. Huge chunks of wall had been knocked out, exposing raw red brick, supported in several places by steel Acrow props. Lying by one wall was a large metal tool box, next to which was an angle grinder, a power drill, and, on the floor, a sledgehammer with a long wooden handle.

He lifted the heavy tool and carried it up, through the kitchen, and on up to the first-floor landing. Music was, as ever, coming out of Jade’s bedroom door.

Good, he thought. Hopefully, she wouldn’t hear him — or would assume it was the builders.

He entered the blue bedroom, walked straight over to the right-hand wall, and swung the sledgehammer hard against it. It struck with a dull thud, making a tiny indent, and throwing up a small shower of plaster. He swung it again in the same place. Then again. Again. The indent slowly grew larger.

Suddenly the head of the hammer embedded itself into the wall. He pulled it back and swung it again, exposing raw red brick. As he did so, he became aware of someone standing behind him in the room.

He turned.

There was no one.

‘Just fuck off!’ he shouted, then swung again, again, again, the hole in the wall steadily getting larger, more and more pieces of brick crumbling and falling onto the floor.

Finally, after ten minutes, sodden with perspiration, and out of breath again, another chunk of the wall fell away, and the hole was just about big enough to crawl through.

He stepped closer to it, his heart thudding, knelt and peered through. There was a stale smell, of old wood and damp. But the light was so dim he could barely see anything. He switched on the torch app on his phone and shone the beam inside.

A shiver ripped through him.

It was a tiny room, no more than six feet wide. Another spare bedroom — once?

Except it was completely bare.

Apart from what was on the far wall.

More shivers rippled through him.

Shit. No. No.

A pair of manacles, on the end of short lengths of rusty chain, were bolted to the wall. Protruding from each manacle were bones — part of what once would have been a hand and wrist. Several fingers were held together by black sinews, but most were missing.

And he could see where they were.

They lay scattered on the floor, along with the skull and all the other bones of the person who had once been imprisoned here. Also on the floor were the decayed remains of a blue dress, other strips of clothing, a pair of yellow silk slippers with tarnished gold buckles and a dusty fan.

He stared, shaking with shock, unsteady on his legs. Stared at the skull. At the scattered bones. He could make out legs, arms, ribcage. He stared at the grinning skull again.

He felt as if a current of electricity was running through him. It seemed as if every hair on his body was standing on end, and that a hundred tiny, ragged fingernails were plucking at his skin.

Then he felt a sharp prod in the small of his back.