They sat on the sofa together in silence for more than two interminable hours, as dusk then gradual darkness pressed against the small square panes of the cottage windows. Where the hell was Gemma?
Caitlin had the gun in one hand in her lap and the TV remote in the other, her eyes glued to the screen. At one point she even slipped off her unattractive sandals and put her bare feet up on the coffee table, a warped facsimile of domesticity. When Meredith caught the first whiff of cheesy odour she felt bile rise in her throat and had to swallow hard not to gag.
Instead, she forced herself to concentrate; alternating between glancing at the gun and keeping her attention outside the cottage – Leonard sometimes popped in on his night rounds, for a chinwag and a cup of tea. She didn’t love the unannounced visits, since Leonard had a habit of wittering mindlessly on until Meredith had to feign a yawn and tell him she needed to get to bed, but she tolerated him doing this as she could tell the man was lonely. And he only dropped in occasionally – anything past the orchard and vegetable gardens wasn’t, strictly speaking, in his patrol remit.
She’d have given anything to hear his footsteps on the gravel now though – but would that just precipitate something worse? Caitlin didn’t seem like she would be reluctant to use that gun. I can’t be responsible for another death, Meredith thought.
She needed to pee, but guessed that Caitlin would insist on coming into the bathroom with her. That was too humiliating to contemplate. She’d just have to hold it.
Finally, as Big Ben bonged on screen to signify the ten o’clock news, Caitlin put down the remote and fished a mobile out of her skirt pocket, tapping out a text with her free thumb. The phone was on silent but a reply must have come almost immediately, as she nodded with satisfaction and hauled herself off the sofa, pushing the gun into Meredith’s side and sliding her feet back into her shoes.
Shit, Meredith thought. She’s got an accomplice. It would be two against one, assuming that Pete was in some way incapacitated.
Oh God, perhaps it was the man from the Luton van … Meredith’s bowels contorted in a twist of terror.
‘Righty ho, time to go. Hey, that rhymes!’ Caitlin cackled. ‘Let’s go visit your precious twinny. I’m sure he’s missing you. And guess what? He’s only five minutes’ walk away!’
Meredith stared up at her. ‘Pete’s here, on the estate?’ she croaked. ‘You know we have security. CCTV cameras everywhere. Night security guards.’
Her thoughts immediately turned to the ice house, Ralph’s body in the pond. There had been a round-the-clock police cordon put on the ice house now it was a crime scene. Caitlin had some nerve, coming back here.
Unless she had disposed of the police guards … And even if she hadn’t, how could she, Meredith, raise the alarm? The ice house was a ten-minute walk away.
‘Is he in the ice house?’ Meredith tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but the feel of the gun barrel pressing into her liver was as petrifying as that night in the van; as if the gun’s mouth was literally tapping into her terror; it was somehow more visceral like this than seeing it trained on her face.
Caitlin just smiled, an infuriating little smirk that pushed her cheeks into two puffy cushions and made her eyes almost vanish. ‘I know all about how good your “security” is, Meredith.’
She gave a manic thumbs-up, like someone about to watch a favourite TV show, something she’d looked forward to all week. It was impossible to imagine Samantha in a relationship with this insane woman, thought Meredith.
But then Caitlin had been young and gorgeous once too. Perhaps Samantha was just as bloated, her strawberry-red hair now dulled and grey, her teeth as misshapen and stained as Caitlin’s. For a furious moment, Meredith wished Samantha was there, standing in front of her right now. She’d grab Caitlin’s gun and kill her without hesitation, for all the pain she’d blithely inflicted for so many years.
But first she had to rescue Pete.
The fear returned, and Meredith realised it was fear for Pete, not for herself. That helped, in a small way: took it outside of herself, gave it a name and a purpose.
‘Hey,’ Caitlin said as they left the house, pushing Meredith ahead of her and closing the door behind them. ‘I love your dungarees, where did you get them?’
What the fuck? The woman was off her head. Meredith didn’t answer, shoving her hands into the deep pockets of the dungarees as they walked along the gravel path in the shadow of the huge old wall of the vegetable garden. The moon was bright, illuminating their way, and the gentle hoot of an owl felt very slightly reassuring.
‘Charity shop,’ Meredith muttered at last.
‘Ew,’ said Caitlin. ‘How you can wear other people’s cast-offs I just don’t know. Disgusting. You might find anything in the pockets.’
Meredith almost stopped in her tracks. A huge jolt of fresh adrenaline swept up and down her body. The pockets! Could it still be in there? Very, very slowly, as Caitlin walked behind her, she crept the fingers of her right hand up towards her belly button and a few inches higher, to feel through the denim at the bottom of the dungarees’ bib pocket.
It was still there! Caitlin hadn’t thought to check that pocket when she’d been frisking/slapping her – perhaps she hadn’t realised there was even a pocket up there.
She had a weapon! Albeit a very small one, but it was better than nothing; a tiny claw of a gardening knife, folded in on itself like a curved penknife. It had been in the side pocket of the case of the faulty secateurs. She’d forgotten all about it until Caitlin had unwittingly reminded her.
With her right elbow pressed close to her side, since Caitlin was slightly to the left and behind her, Meredith sneaked her fingers into the pocket and fished out the knife. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She dropped it into the more accessible side pocket of the dungarees, then slid her hand in after it, clutching it tightly until its plastic shaft was as warm as her feverish skin.
Caitlin hadn’t noticed.
Meredith’s heart pounded so hard that she could feel its throb in her throat, like a drum beat on the cool summer night air. If she could flip open the knife fast enough, and undetected, there was hope.
They walked for five minutes or so, downhill, towards the fringes of the Minstead Estate, through the orchard and out the other side to where the rough parkland began. They were heading, Meredith realised, towards the tennis court and the old swimming pool. On one of the first Lady Minstead’s whims, the pool had been built quite far from the house – apparently she wanted the daily walk through the grounds to get to it, and didn’t want it to be visible from the house. The Minstead House Trust had latterly decided that, since it was of no interest to the general public, it wasn’t worth maintaining, and it had been abandoned once the House had been opened to the public two decades before. Meredith often thought what a shame that was; she’d have loved a lunchtime swim during her workday.
Nobody had played on the tennis court for years either. It stood, net-less, weeds sprouting from fissures in the tarmac, the white lines blurred and obscured by time and bird crap. Meredith and Caitlin walked across it now, the light from Caitlin’s phone screen bobbing ahead of them. Meredith could see another faint flickering light coming from the window of the pool house. Her heart leaped in anticipation then cramped with pain. Was this where Pete had been all this time, so close by, practically hidden in plain sight? Why hadn’t the police searched the grounds? Why hadn’t she?
Caitlin heaved open the heavy pool house door, one of those old lead-paned glass ones. It gave an exaggerated haunted-house creak. ‘We’re here,’ she called out, quietly, presumably to the person who’d sent her that text earlier.
A candle flame wavered in a jam jar on the side of the empty swimming pool, the only pinprick of light in the cold musty air of the place. Meredith felt a deep chill – the temperature seemed to have dropped by ten degrees from the summer night air of the grounds outside. At first she couldn’t make out anything apart from the tiny flickering light – Caitlin had switched off the torch function on her phone.
Where was her own phone, Meredith wondered? Was it still in Caitlin’s pocket or had the woman left it behind?
The pool house seemed so still. Caitlin must have thought so too because she called again, a faint tone of irritation in her voice: ‘Graeme!’
Graeme? Who was Graeme?