She landed in a shallow lake of faeces and bodily waste and straw, mercifully upright until she began to wade her way, muck oozing over the boots, and then her feet were stuck as she tried to move and she stumbled into the filth, covering herself with it, trying not to breathe. There was life in the tank below the pig barn; she could feel something running over her arm, kept her mouth closed against the scream and waded to the side, watching the progress of small creatures scuttling ahead, swimming over the top of the slimy debris leading to daylight. Rachel reached for a beam over her head, the floor of the barn where the pigs were inaudible, and, hanging on to it, pulled one foot out of its boot, and then the other. Dense, fetid liquid squelched between her toes, but she could move. She followed the rats towards daylight and the stony surface of the muddy yard. Pure mud was good. There was something reassuring about the rats she had heard scuttling away. They were more frightened of her presence than she was of theirs. They were running away from her.
She stood by the side of the barn, not looking back at it, shaking her filthy, dripping arms, blinking in the light, breathing through her nose, not daring to wipe at her face with her poisonous hands and wanting nothing but water. Shuddering with revulsion, but free. She began to walk back towards the other barns, remembering that Ernest was due back to release the pigs and he might come this way, any time now. Ivy might have lied about that too; Ivy might only have meant to frighten her, but she would not wait to see. Ernest, she hated Ernest, the passive deceiver who let his frailty be used as bait. Grief was giving way to anger. She hated them all.
Rachel did not know a way back except by the main route, short of crawling through the fields on either side. If she saw him, she would simply run. Even barefoot, she could outrun Ernest in his heavy boots, and she thought, I could never outrun Ivy. Supposing it was Ivy who came back and found her gone and the drain open. Rachel stopped and looked around wildly, seeking shelter off the track. Somewhere just for a minute, to stop and think.
She crossed to where the incinerator stood, the hum of its engine only audible from very close, went behind it and crouched down in the nettles which grew at the back. From there she could see the track leading to the cow and hay barns and the house hidden a hundred yards behind. It was a treeless landscape, the hayfields flat after the last mowing, the trees only beginning where the land dipped towards the valley of the lake. Rachel thought longingly of the cows’ trough in their barn. She would not be afraid of the bulk of the cows; she would shoo them away with curses to get in their water. Rank as it was, it was better than this.
She had the irrelevant thought that she could now see why the smell did not matter to those who were accustomed to it. She would never in her life be as repellent as this, if she lived that long. If. If that mattered any longer.
Rachel ducked down. There was an advantage to being covered in ordure. She would merge with the landscape. It took several, itching minutes to be utterly sick of hiding. The filth was drying on her skin.
She had reached the dry stock barn and discovered her second good idea. Sanity was beginning to return, along with a slow-burning fury. She went into the shade of the barn, pulled hay from the nearest unbaled pile and wiped herself with it. Hay and straw kept animals clean. It would do for her. She plucked at more hay, rubbing herself with it. It scratched; she stopped, began more gently. So far she had not bled. Oh for water. The silence of the barn was soothing. A cooling breeze fluttered around it, echoing against the roof. Then, from nearby, she heard the sound of whistling, flattened herself in the shadow of a wall.
Ernest came into sight, plodding along the path, from the direction of the cows. He seemed entirely unperturbed. She watched as he paused in the middle of the barn and scratched his head, as if he had forgotten why he was there, uncertain of his purpose or his direction. Then he nodded to himself, looked at his watch, and plodded away again, not in the direction of the pigs, but towards the milking shed and his cows. Before leaving the barn, he moved to one side and fetched something from behind the drawn-back, roller-driven doors, and then, leaving the place as open as before, moved away out of sight, not whistling this time. He seemed so preoccupied, it seemed safe to follow. He disappeared into the milking shed. Closer, she could hear him calling to the cows. The thought of the cow trough and a depth of water receded into a dim hope. He was too close. Rachel was not afraid of Ernest out in the open because all sorts of dimly remembered lines were coming back into her mind. It would never be Ernest who did the killing. She settled back into the hay with her itching skin which she could no longer smell, and remembered a few things, all coming to connect.
Ernest never killed anything, was Grace’s complaint, but Ernest could deal with the result. He could butcher a carcass, he could put it in his precious incinerator and reduce it to fragments of porous bone meal in a matter of hours. It took a long while to get the incinerator up to heat, he did not waste money. It was humming away, ready to receive the human sacrifice of Carl. That was what he had more than hinted at down by the lake, when his mind was not so much fuddled as clear. He knew Carl was coming; he knew his instructions, or if he did not know, he had guessed, he had watched, he had listened as Grace and Ivy planned.
She thought of Grace, dry-eyed, with a cold anger and something like bitter admiration. Grace the consummate actress, so full of love it could be dissembled and turned off, who had such generosity, colour, warmth and utter devotion to no one else on earth except her child. Had Grace meant any of her warmth, ever? Sitting there, feeling the insects in the hay, Rachel wondered if Grace really knew all about Ivy. Or if anyone ever knew all about Ivy. She was coming to conclude that she did. Grace was the diplomat, Ivy the warrior. Grace would use anyone, anything for that child. She could never love anyone else, except useful strangers.
For Ivy, Rachel felt a passionless hatred and primeval fear. She remembered the lines of her naked body, and all she should have known and sensed. She felt bitterly angry for being such a fool, for ignoring what she had surely sensed, again and again. But this was not about her. She rubbed the brown skin on her arms, and saw a bloated insect settle on her bare knee. She was wearing a long T-shirt which had been white when she went to bed. The loaned dressing gown was long gone. Rachel tried to think if she had abandoned it somewhere visible.
This is not about me, or my feelings. If I don’t stop them, I may as well die now. I’ve got time.
There were so many places on a farm to hide and wait, and it was tempting to do that, sit it out. She could not tell the time by the rising sun, or work out how long she had spent in the barn, because it could have been hours. She remembered the clock by the side of her bed saying three a.m., and that was all. So by now it was morning, but not advanced morning, still early. Certainly plenty of places to hide, but none of any use, because Ivy would know them all. Rachel was the stranger here; she had no routes but the obvious, and if Ivy knew she was loose, Ivy would find her, long before Rachel could intercept Carl.
She roused herself. The main thing was to intercept Carl, for which she needed a phone. There was time; her gradually less fuddled mind, beset with images of Ivy, and Ernest, and Grace, and the contempt they felt for her, gave way to him. Carl was the reason for getting out of the pit. A good man, who had raised and saved a child not his own, travelling towards an undetectable murder by a couple of madwomen who blamed him for everything in their lives and wanted to kill him in some insane ritual which would somehow redeem them and bring back the dead. All of it fed by delusions and illusions. That this death would enable them to capture and bring home a beloved grandson for Ernest, resurrect Carl the elder, and snatch back time. They were primitives, nurtured on legends and myths, as if the century in which they lived did not exist. The sheer malice of the enterprise was as breathtaking as the delusion behind it. They did not live in an age where a boy could be suborned against his will. It did not follow from what they planned that Sam would ever love them; exactly the opposite. Would they wait for Sam to grieve for the mysterious disappearance of his father, and then appear with irresistible blandishments and condolences? They were not thinking at all. It was only revenge. They wanted revenge to relieve themselves of the curse of themselves.
And money. What dead Carl would leave, what he had promised, which would only take effect if he died. Money always played a part, but how did they think they would manage the business of getting hold of it? It was with an extra frisson of horror that Rachel realised that in their mad way, Grace and Ivy had come to believe that she might help them in that too, with the professional skills and influence in which they had blind faith, and she wondered, again with horror, what she might have been persuaded to do if their combined seduction of her had been completed, if it had gone on for longer, if her father had died. If she had been absolutely isolated, if she had no one to believe but them. She had taken the initiative too soon and what a terrible disappointment she must be to them, what a mess she had made.
She had a vision of Ivy appearing on Sam’s doorstep in all her glory, offering comfort, love, condolences, apologies, a significant part in his future, with sweet-smelling Grace standing beside her. They would be utterly convincing. She could see poor, confused Sam stepping into their arms, dazzled by them and their style, just as she had been. He might not stand a chance.
Rachel was thinking calmly now. Logic came back.
The fact that the Wiseman plan was insane and impossible to fulfil did not mean that they would listen to reason. They were hell-bent on murder; Ivy had dreamt of it, rehearsed it, and Ivy would have her dream. Rachel believed that absolutely. Carl would be held by the neck until he was dead, this very day, unless she stopped it, and if they did not also kill her, they would implicate her.
The Polish cowman was away. There was no one within a mile. It was still early in the morning. Carl was due later; there was still time.
Rachel walked round the cow barn. Ernest had been there for half an hour. After that he would go to the pigs, perhaps, then he would report back, wouldn’t he? Then Ivy would come hunting, perhaps. She walked back in the direction of the house, and into the garden. She was trying to think what she had done with her phone. She could see it in her bag, the phone Ivy must have held, looking at Carl’s number, working it out, as if she could not already read Rachel better than she could read any book. Get into the house, get the phone and the car keys, get shoes to drive, phone, go. It seemed simple before she was in sight of the back of the house and took shelter behind a tree to watch. Then she could see it was impossible. The back door was open. The sight of that open door made her shake. She imagined the sound of her own footsteps, manoeuvring her way up those stairs, which would creak, barefoot or not, even if she could get past the kitchen or in at the disused front entrance. Even if they did not see or hear her, one of them would smell her. Her own stink would go before her. It would fill the place.
She turned back, and went down the other path which led to the lake. Surely they would not look for her there. She felt she could do nothing, and there was no hiding place from which to strike back as long as she was damned with this smell. There was still time.
The morning was mild, but not warm enough for bare feet and skimpy clothes, and she hugged her arms around herself. The lake looked innocently beautiful in the morning light, although she could not appreciate the loveliness of the water, only the sinister shadows, and the posse of swans, hugging the far bank. Even they held no threat any more. Anything which did not have the shape of Ivy or Grace was nothing. She jogged down the path, and saw by the bank where she had sat with Ernest the shirt and towel she had left the day before. She picked them up: they were damp with dew, but so clean she could have shouted with joy. It was like turning a corner. Rachel peeled off the filthy shirt and waded into the water.
It was icy cold, stinging the grazes on her feet, making her gasp. She waded further out to where the water was deeper, sank down and swam towards the swans, stopping after twenty strokes, which she counted, carefully, to see if she could feel ground beneath her feet. Ernest was right: only the centre was out of her depth, and towards the swans’ bank, the ground grew shallow again, and she knelt in clean mud, scrubbed herself with her hands. Then she floated, pushing her hair back, running her fingers against her cold scalp, washing it cleaner. She knelt again, watching the roots of the trees stretching into the water, and kept very still for a moment. What was it Ernest had said, that he had taken rats to the lake? Ernest was the only person who told the truth. Ernest had a rifle.
She could hear and see nothing, swam back, stopped, scrubbed again.
She was not clean, but it would do. Now she could be positive. She was, at the very least, alive and kicking and out in the open. She was revived as she always was by the water, and the shaking with cold and dancing up and down to shake off the moisture and get warm. It did not matter that she would smell for ever.
Wearing the clean shirt and the wet towel tied round her middle, she retraced her steps towards the house, looking for a vantage point from where she could watch. One or other of them would leave it in the course of the morning, especially if Ernest came back with news of her escape. There would be a time in the next hour when she would be able to get in. She looked longingly at Grace’s old car, parked near the back door. The keys for that were on a hook in the kitchen. She wished she had the skill to jump-start a car, do anything useful. She wished she had shoes. Even get to the boots in the corner of the kitchen by the washing machine.
Think. Think clearly, think rationally. Ivy and Grace would go nowhere else this morning. They would assume Ernest had done what he was told, and they would cling to one another and get ready. Even if Ernest had not let the pigs out, they would assume that she was safely locked away, to be dealt with later. It was difficult to second-guess their minds, but she had to try. They had everything they needed; soon they would begin to prepare a meal. Then Ivy would hide upstairs; she was not supposed to be there, it was Rachel he would be expecting to see. It was the thought of what he would think once they had got him inside with the wonderful Grace welcome and Ernest’s handshake, what he would think when Ivy appeared. Carl would think, Rachel has led me to this. Rachel is Judas. That thought was unbearable. Judas betrayed with a kiss.
She wished she knew what time it was. Think, do what she should have done before, the obvious thing. Skirt round the place, go back in the direction of the lake, take the other track through the woods, cross the field, reconnect with the shady lane which led to the farm, go to the main road, stand in it until someone was forced to stop, get them to call the police. They would have to stop for a deranged woman using a towel to cover herself. Who would believe her, would the police actually come? She would say she’d been raped. Or better still, simply stand and wait at the top of the track, and intercept Carl in his car. Whichever was first. Grab a mobile and call his number, except she could not remember it, it was stored in her phone, not in her memory.
She stumbled back in the direction of the lake, taking a wide detour round the fields, moving slowly on bare feet. She wanted to be as far away from the farm as possible, in case of pursuit, but to get to the road she could see across the field in the distance. She remembered some of the layout of the land she had seen that second time, from the top of the hill. She lost her way, backtracked a bit and started again, hit an insurmountable hedge, then a field of wheat, waded through it and finally reached the road, where she walked back on the grassy verge towards the junction with the track. To call this a main road was an overstatement; it was a lonely country lane where something should come along every five minutes, but nothing did. It would, she was sure someone would. She was hobbling, trying to ignore the cuts and bruises to her feet, panting with effort, but faintly triumphant. She got to where she needed to be, at the point where the only vehicle access to Midwinter Farm met the road, where Carl was bound to pass and see her standing there with the frayed towel wrapped and knotted round her middle.
Then she looked down the narrow green avenue of trees sloping out of sight towards the farm, and there was his car. She walked towards it, staring at it, touching it to be sure. Unmistakably Carl’s old car. She knew it from the colour and the unmended dent to the wing. He had parked it carefully on the bank so that it stood at an angle, leaving room for anything else to pass. He must have decided to walk the rest of the way.
Rachel groaned out loud. All that and the judge had out-flanked them. Carl Schneider had decided to be early. Yet again, her own stupid manoeuvres had failed. She stood in the road and screamed his name. The hawthorn branches waved back in silence. There was not another vehicle in sight.
Rachel ran back towards the house.
There was nothing else she could do. If they were going to kill Carl, they would have to kill her too. It would not be worth staying alive.
Her feet gave out before her breath, a sharp stone from the recently mended potholes in the road digging deep into her bruised instep, making her wince and lurch to a halt, then go on again with a limping gait until she reached the front of the house, which gazed back innocently, that utterly hateful house which had once seemed heaven. The pain in her feet reminded her of new school shoes. She staggered into the back yard, where the kitchen door was now closed. Windows open, door closed. All quiet, as if no one was there, a faint echo of what it had been like yesterday. Hope sprang: Carl was early, they had gone out, Ivy had gone out hunting her. Carl had been early, just as she had been; Carl had detoured down to the lake, just as she had done, they were thinking alike, it was all right.
She moved to the side of the house, where the little-used living room was, the windows almost covered in ivy. The room of the rat. You know what happens to rats. The only thing Ivy’s afraid of is rats.
There was no one in that room. It was as disused as ever, the place for rats.
Rachel crawled through flower beds, round the side of the house towards the back door. Grace’s car was where it had been before, ergo, Grace was there. The towel fell off again. She knotted it back, and moved slowly round to the kitchen door, ducking below the window, trying to think. Behind the lavender bush to the left of the door, she saw what looked to her inexperienced eye like an ancient rifle, hidden behind the buzzing of the bees, and then from inside she heard a bellowing scream.
‘Where’s Rachel? What have you done with Rachel? Where’s Rachel?’
Carl’s voice, pleading and screaming. For her.
Ivy spoke loudly, with calm precision, as if he was a mistaken child.
‘Your lovely Rachel? She should be finished by now. She’s my friend, you know. She’s mine, she was never yours. She was simply there to get you here, have you got that? She hates you like we do, she was only the bait.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no.’
Rachel launched herself towards the door. If both of them were going to die, the most unbearable thought was that he should go thinking that. She hated Ivy like poison, hated her, hated her, hated her for what she had just said.
Everything that happened in this house happened in the kitchen. She should have known. The towel dropped as she went in.
There was a brief view of the tableau, before Ernest came towards her. Carl, tied to his chair by his feet, looking towards the door, one eye contused into a vivid bruise. The tying-up was improvised, not according to plan. The plan would have involved wire or rope, rather than Grace’s old washing line, but Carl had been early. Carl looked at Rachel; Rachel looked at Carl. His eyes travelled from face to groin. She had lost the towel. Grace was on the other side of the table, panic in her eyes. This was not her plan either. She screamed like one of Ernest’s pigs and put her hand over her mouth. Only Ivy was calm.
‘I didn’t know,’ Rachel said, looking straight into his eyes. ‘I didn’t know, honestly.’
He nodded. It was his feet which were tied to the chair. His hands were free, spread palm upwards on the table. There were slashes to both his wrists, which oozed blood, quietly. Ivy had the knife. She seemed to need to explain, as if recounting her symptoms to a doctor. There was no tremor in her voice, no shaking in her hand.
‘I wanted him to lose blood,’ she explained. ‘Make him weak, you see? Could have injected him with the tranqs we use for the cows, but this is better, isn’t it? So glad you’re on side.’
She seemed to be looking for approval.
Rachel turned to both of the two witches, standing either side of his chair, put her hands on her hips, spoke as if she was managing a financial strategy meeting, where she was supposed to be on the side of everyone. Nodding at them both, laying down the law.
‘That’s enough. That’s more than enough. Let’s wrap it up here, shall we? No more time. Strategy failed. This is nonsense. Load of crap. Just get him out of here, he’s learned his lesson, he’ll do whatever, give me the knife. I’ll take him home, sort him out, never a word. OK? I’m on your side. Why did the silly fucker have to be early?’
It almost worked. There was a split second when it might have worked, until Ernest came forward and spoke.
‘It’s that Rachel,’ he said. ‘Got no knickers,’ he said. ‘And she smells. She’s been fucking a pig.’
He stood up close to her, his eyes close and confused.
‘She was supposed to bring Carl. Little Carl. You get rid of big Carl, that murdering man who killed Nina and Hans, and you leave the little one behind. Where’s young Carl, then, where is he? Where’s my boy? Where’s my little man? You promised.’ He wheeled round towards Carl, pinioned in his chair, stabbing his finger towards his face. ‘Where’s Carl’s son, where’s my boy?’
‘He’s somebody’s boy, but he isn’t Carl’s,’ Rachel said crisply, full of anger. ‘Sam’s her bastard. A glorious bastard, but not Carl’s. Grandson of you, sweetheart, but not of Carl. You should see him. He’s queer as a nine-bob note, with skin darker than a gypsy, and I tell you, to know him is to love him, but he isn’t Carl’s.’
Grace began to wail.
The kitchen smelled. The prevalent smell was roasting pig. Pork, sizzling in the oven, cooked early, maybe to be eaten cold. A bowl of apples on the table. The clock on the wall said ten.
‘Well, time flies when you’re having fun,’ Rachel said with a gaiety which sounded completely artificial even to her own ears. ‘I’ll just go upstairs and put on some clothes, take this man away, and then you can get on with lunch. Or I’ll take him for a walk and then bring him back if you like.’
The moment really had passed. Ivy shook her head sorrowfully.
‘What, go and get your phone, dearest? When I’ve got it here? Anything else you want to say, you sanctimonious bitch? You BITCH.’
‘Wait a minute … He’s not Carl’s boy?’ Ernest kept repeating. He looked towards Grace, who was ashen. ‘Not Carl’s boy? Not my Carl’s boy? Where is he?’
‘Shut UP, Ernest, SHUT UP. Shut your stupid fucking mouth. Do as you’re told,’ Grace screamed. ‘It isn’t true, you silly fool. She’s lying.’
‘Rachel doesn’t tell lies,’ Ernest murmured. ‘Not … Carl’s boy. She did it with someone else. Not my boy.’
Rachel moved towards Carl. His eyes were glazed with shock, but he managed a lopsided smile. She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek. There was a length of rough rope round his neck. She bent down to untie his ankles.
Ernest grabbed her round the middle and dragged her away. Rachel kicked and screamed and over the din of her own screaming heard Carl calling her name. Ernest was stronger than her, even though his hands slipped on her skin. He dragged her out of the open door, and stood, holding her, speaking quietly as she writhed in his grasp.
‘They don’t need us, dear,’ he said. ‘They never did.’
From inside, there was another guttural, choking scream.