Michael Brewer again got out of the car, and moved to one side of the thicket. Carole couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but she got the impression he was pulling at something, a rope perhaps.
The effect was astonishing. Like a transformation scene in a pantomime of Sleeping Beauty, the mass of undergrowth slid to one side, revealing a narrow opening into the wood.
Michael Brewer didn’t get back in the car, but motioned her with his gun to drive ahead. There wasn’t far to go. Less than ten yards in, she found herself in a small clearing, surrounded by trees. Behind her, she was aware of the masking undergrowth being replaced. Suddenly, the depths of the wood were very dark.
The driver’s side door was opened, and Michael Brewer gestured at Carole to get out of the car. She stood in the lightless wood, wondering whether this would be the last place she would see in her life. She had expected dankness, but a soft breeze filled the clearing with the smell of the fields. In spite of its closeness, so far as Carole was concerned, that fragrant open space could have been on another planet.
Michael Brewer reached down behind a tree, and produced a large yellow torch. He switched it on, keeping the beam focused down on the ground. He gave a flick of his head, indicating that Carole should follow him. Since her capture, he had said nothing beyond giving directions.
She did not have to follow him far – the whole coppice was probably no more than fifty yards across – then the torch beam revealed the ragged outlines of an old building. Once perhaps a shepherd’s hut, its roof had long ago fallen in, the walls had crumbled, and bricks had been displaced by encroaching trees and their disruptive roots. Little of the remaining structure was more than waist-high.
The beam of light directed Carole to follow Michael Brewer through an old doorway into the space inside. So unworried now was he by the chance of her escaping that he put the gun in his pocket and passed her the torch, as he bent down to shift a couple of rotting but substantial rafters that lay across the floor. Then he kneeled, and seemed to be scrabbling for something in the dirt.
There was a metallic clang as he pulled upwards, rising to his feet as he did so. He took the torch back from Carole and directed its beam. The light showed a battered metal trapdoor lifted back to reveal a brick-walled opening in the floor, and steps leaning downwards. –
At last, he said something. “Not the kind of place you’d imagine to have a cellar. I thought there was a good chance it’d still be here after thirty years. Nobody comes this way.”
And the torch beam flicked across to Carole, showing her the way down. Michael Brewer, staying at ground level, lit the individual steps as she descended, then flashed light across to an old chair. “Sit there.” Carole did as she was told.
But he didn’t follow her down. The cellar smelt musty and damp, and she got no impression of what else was in the space.
“I’ll be back soon. Just got to check we’ve covered our tracks.”
And Michael Brewer slammed the metal trapdoordown. Carole heard above her the scrape and thud of the massive rafters as they were replaced over the opening.
The darkness in the cellar was total.
Grand’mère looked frailer when Jude and Gaby arrived at the home the following morning. They got there about ten, but were told they should have come earlier. “I sleep little. I am awake from five.”
She was not on the balcony, but propped up on her bed by a heap of cushions, and she seemed peevish. Maybe she was in pain, suffering from one of the many infirmities of age. She greeted Gaby warmly, but kept Jude at a distance.
The reason soon became clear. “I had a call from my dear Robert last night. He wanted to see that I was well, and that you had arrived safely. And he was a little cross with me, you know.”
“Why cross, Grand’mère?”
“Well, cross with you too. He says it is bad for me to talk of the past, that dreadful time when Janine Buckley died. And he is right. What we spoke of yesterday did make me upset. Last night it is a long time before I got to sleep. And then, as I say, I wake so early. I do not sleep well now. I long to have a proper night’s sleep.”
Gaby tried to shift the old lady’s mood with talk of her wedding plans, but here again she met with a reproof. “It is not good that you marry in an Anglican church. You have a duty to your Catholic faith.”
“I lost my faith, Grand’mère. A long time ago.”
“That is no good, to say that. You speak of your faith as if it were just a handkerchief or something, that you can lose and it does not matter. If you are brought up a Catholic, you can never properly lose your faith. It is always a part of you.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like a part of me.”
“I do not like you to say that, Pascale. You should have a proper Catholic wedding ceremony. But even if you don’t do so, you must give me your word that, if you have children, they will be brought up as good Catholics.”
“I don’t think I can give you my word about that, Grand’mère. Steve and I have talked about these issues in great depth, and it would be hypocritical for us to – ”
Seeing the rising fury in the old lady’s face, Jude decided that a tactical change of subject might be in order. “Did Robert say whether the police have recaptured Michael Brewer yet?”
“No. My son does not talk to me of such things. He knows they upset me, and cause me to lose sleep.”
To Jude it seemed that Robert served the same function for his mother as he did for his sister, insulating them both from the unpleasant realities of life.
But Gaby decided that some realities had to be faced. “Grand’mère,” she said, “I know that Howard Martin was not my real father.”
The old lady’s reaction was so instinctive that itcould not have been anything but real. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he was your father.”
“But – ”
“Oh, I know it is common for young girls, when they are in their adolescence, to have fantasies that they were born to something greater than the lives they lead, but, really, Pascale, you are no longer a child. You should no longer be having these silly thoughts.”
“Grand’mère, it is important that…”
But, cued by a small shake of Jude’s head, Gaby did not pursue her argument.
“Howard was your father. There is no question about that.” This was spoken with the unbreakable conviction of someone who totally believed it, or who, a long time ago, had made herself believe it.
If she was going to find out more, Jude knew she had to risk the old lady’s displeasure. Her son did not want her to be upset by talk of the early nineteen-seventies, but there were still details Jude needed to find out. And her window of opportunity with Madame Coleman was closing fast.
“I know that Robert does not want you to talk about unhappinesses of the past, but there is one question that I do have to ask you.”
“You may ask. I, however, retain the right not to reply unless I wish to do so.”
“Very well. Knowing what you do of Michael Brewer, do you think he was capable of killing Howard?”
Her reaction was as immediate as the response to Gaby’s doubt about her real parenthood. “I have no doubt in my mind at all. Michael Brewer is the nearest I have ever encountered in a human being to pure evil.”
Thirty-Six
There was now a light on in the cellar, and Carole could take in its contents. Michael Brewer kept things tidy, there was a monasticism about the place, or maybe it was an echo of another kind of cell. From hooks on the walls hung old threadbare waterproofs, cartridge belts and rabbit snares, dating from the occupancy of thirty years before. But since his release from prison Michael Brewer had stocked the room with boxes of tinned food, packs of bottled water and Camping Gaz cylinders. He could live out a long siege here. He also had a mobile phone and a modern laptop with a large supply of battery packs. There were also plastic crates filled with cardboard files. Stuck on the wall in front of a makeshift desk were press cuttings covering the murders of Howard Martin and Barry Painter.