I stood right in front of him, cutting out the sunlight, and his skin that had seemed orange in the blast of light looked dark and dirty now.
“Gus,” I said.
“Who the hell are you?” he said. “Was that you I spoke to on the phone?”
And it wasn’t Gus’s voice. It was similar, but not the same.
“Where’s Gav?” he said. “Where’s Becky? That was just Gav being Gav with the funeral crap, right? But where are the kids? Who are you?”
“Jessie Constable,” I said. “And you’re the sculptor who made that pram, aren’t you? Jesus Christ, a twin pram. You’re the other one. That’s what Steve said. The other one. You’re Gus King.”
I turned and watched the sun slip down into the long ribbon of cloud on the horizon. It was easier to talk once the light was low.
“Where have you been?” I said at last.
“Thailand,” he said. “Idiot. I couldn’t stay here after Dave died. I thought ‘Thailand for me!’ Nothing but a load of wee girls on their gap year with their daddy’s gold card. Still. Gave Gav and Becky a break, house-sitting for me.”
“Oh Jesus,” I said. “It was more than that. Gav’s been life-sitting for you.”
“Eh?”
“I met ‘Gus King’ a week ago. He even showed me round his studio.”
Gus put his head in his hands and groaned. “He’s harmless,” he said. “Never going to win the husband of the year award, mind you. Poor Becks. But she loves him. She talks about leaving, but she’ll never do it.”
“Not now she won’t,” I said. “But I think she was going to. She had a friend, a lawyer, that was going to help. You might even know her. Ros, from the caravan site?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Becky really did die last week. Car crash. It’s down as suicide-”
“She’d never leave the kids.”
“But-I’m really sorry to say this about your brother-I think he might have… ”
“Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me,” said Gus. “Jesus, wee Becky.”
“You said he was harmless!”
“Harmless as long as Becky stayed, and I thought she’d never leave. I knew if she walked, anything could happen. He must have totally flipped.”
I sat down beside him. Not too close. It was frightening to see that familiar face, tanned brick-red but otherwise just the same, and to hear that nearly identical voice.
“He didn’t flip,” I said. “He planned it for months.” I saw him turn to stare at me. “He stalked me. He built that thing in there. At least, I’m assuming he built it. It wasn’t you?”
“What thing?” said Gus.
“Breeze block,” I said. “A… crypt, I suppose you’d call it. I think Ros’s body’s inside.”
“In there?” He had sprung to his feet. “Seriously? There’s a body in there?”
“I think so,” I said. “I haven’t got a key.”
But it only took him a minute, four or five good kicks, to burst the hasp free of the wood and get the door open. He gazed at the wall in front of his face, looked from side to side.
“I’ve been right round,” I said. “There’s no way in.”
Then he backed up, took a run at it, and scrambled until he had got the upper half of his body up on the top of it. He swung his legs up too and disappeared.
“Nothing,” he called back. “Except there’s a wire, there’s a box or something. Like a… ” I heard a snapping sound and he reappeared and threw a bright blue and yellow object down towards me.
“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s a booster-you know-a hub. It’s for a baby monitor. I think she was alive when he put her in there.”
He landed beside me, stumbled, and then was gone. He kicked down the door of the other workshop and I could hear him crashing and banging around, dragging something heavy, small things hitting the floor, smashing.
“Can I-”
But he was back, trailing a flex, plugging together the extension and the… it looked like a drill. Of course it was, and he fired it up and set it against the mortar between two bricks.
That was when the night descended to hell. The last of the glow was gone from the sky and the cold was seeping up from the ground and the noise of it, brutal and whining, the dust and the stink of the motor getting hotter and hotter and the look on his face, running with sweat and grit and I could only stand there, waiting and praying. Please God, please God, please God. Was there any chance?
“Go through and get the claw hammer,” he shouted at me. I ran to the other workshop and stared around. A claw hammer? Where would it be? But I found it quickly enough, and a pick axe too, so I brought that with me, and when I was back by his side he threw down the drill and picked up the hammer and clawed a brick out of place, put his hand into the hole, and bellowed with rage and frustration. I shone my phone light and saw metal gleaming. He whacked it with the claw end of the hammer and grunted.
“Zinc,” he said. “Not steel. We’re back in business.” And he was right. He got the drill through it, pulled with the hammer, pulled it into a hole, and drilled the second brick, the inner layer of this hellish thing Gus-no, Gav-Gav the bampot, Gav the black sheep, harmless Gav-had built.
And once there was a hole right through, the work went faster. He clawed a brick out and punched and drilled and pulled the metal away and clawed out another brick, and when there were four or five gone and the space was the size of a drain, he threw down the hammer and tuned to me.
“Go in,” he said, shoving me. “I’ll keep working. In you go.”
Of course it made sense. I was smaller, but for a just a minute I hung back, staring my horror at him. Then I shook myself into courage. Remember your granny, I thought. Time to do good, Jessie. Time to go.
I knelt down and put my hands through the hole into the darkness, breathing in the smell that plucked me back through time to that night on the quilt with the ropes round my wrists and the thing on the floor that wasn’t Granny anymore. Then I closed my mind and pulled until my shoulders and head together were jammed into the tiny space, scraped by the jagged edge of the zinc and the rough cobbles of mortar. I twisted, one shoulder first, my face buried in my arm, and wriggled my chest forward, breathing out, compressing my ribs, trying to shrink myself. I had to get through now. I couldn’t go back. I was stuck. I was jammed like a cork. Then I forced my arm to go behind my head, I heard my elbow pop but it made some room, and I inched myself farther and then I was through! My shoulders were through and my waist and hips and legs followed until I flopped down onto the floor. I sat up, looked back through the hole at Gus’s filthy purple face, and then clicked my phone light on and turned away.
All I could see was bricks. Blocks and mortar and a concrete floor. I summoned the courage to roll the light around. A toilet. There were plastic bottles and bits of cardboard and packets ripped to shreds. A pile of cloth. Nothing else in there at all.
That pile of cloth. It had to be. I walked slowly over and saw it become, in the pin of light, two halves; denim and wool and a foot in a sock and a head of dark hair curled away from me. So still. I put out my hand, expecting the wooden shock of a corpse, but when I touched her shoulder, she was soft. And she was shaking.
I crouched.
“Ros?” I said. “It’s all right. You’re going to be okay.”
She moved as slow as a tree growing, turned, showed me that round face and the dark eyes.
“Are you here?” she said. Her voice was a rasp. “Are you real? Where are they?”
“I’m really here,” I told her. I put my hands on her cheeks and let her feel the warmth from my skin.
“I thought I was dreaming again,” she said. “You’re really here? Are they okay?”