Wednesday, 8th of November
Costello pulled her car up outside the big house. It looked cold and dead in the bright winter sunshine, rays glinted off the ivy-covered slates giving a sparkle to the bricks of the red chimneys. She looked at the stained-glass window, the multi-coloured mosaic of Botticelli’s Primavera was just visible through the reaching branches of the monkey puzzle tree. Behind the tall wrought-iron gates the grass was verdant, the pebbles still raked into the neat furrows that had impressed Archie Walker. On that day.
That dreadful day.
The trees were tall and mature, even devoid of leaves they cast long spindly shadows over the wide road, old-fashioned, gently cambered. The kind of surface that leant itself to roller-skating, so Costello’s granny had once told her.
She turned the Fiat’s engine off, slipping down in the seat, thinking about the night she saw Malcolm try to climb out the window above the porch, attempting to get away from his father. And Costello was convinced that was exactly what the boy was doing. The message Malcolm had left on her phone? A twelve-year-old wanting help to escape from a monster.
She’d got the voicemail the following morning. When it was too late.
Six hours later Malcolm’s body had been found in this house, curled up on the beige carpet at the foot of his parent’s bed, his mother’s arms still wrapped round him, holding him close, giving her only son some solace as his short life slipped away. No doubt her own last breath had swiftly followed.
That image was seared into Costello’s memory, the bodies and the speckles and spatters of crimson blood on the mirrored wardrobe doors. She could recall the events up to that, walking into the house, opening the unlocked back door; the first warning sign. Then the music floating from above; ‘The Clapping Song’. The element of theatre. Then upstairs past the little teardrop of blood on the magnolia wallpaper, the stain he thought he’d cleaned away. Then into Malcolm’s bedroom, too quiet. The Star Wars posters on the walls, the smooth R2D2 duvet cover decorated with a Celtic top, a pair of black leggings, two woollen socks, the trainers. They were arranged as if the child had been lying there, dressed and then spirited away, shedding his clothes and leaving them behind.
In the car, Costello wiped an angry tear from her eye, remembering how she had paused on the top landing, alert to the smell of blood. She had hesitated, not wanting to go any further but the door of the master bedroom was open, intriguing and beguiling. And all the time that song was playing.
Clap clap.
Standing in the doorway she had seen the blood on the doors, the walls, the ceiling. She had to force herself to carry on; she gripped the steering wheel. It was hard to think past the iron-rich stench of the blood, the sweeter mulch of faecal matter. Her last memory was of Abigail lying curled, her arm up and over the smaller figure of her son; his hands wrapped round her elbow, his fingers still gripping the lilac silk of her blouse.
She had presumed she would have tomorrow to sort it out.
She had been wrong.
What would happen if she didn’t act now? What if they ran out of time?
She looked back at the gates, closed now to keep the media away from the ‘Monkey House Of Horror’. What secrets had those gates kept?
Costello had only to wait twenty minutes before she saw some movement through the bare branches of the beech hedge. She had been following George Haggerty for a couple of weeks; she knew his routine. He would be going north to see his father in Port MacDuff now. She slid down further in her seat as the garage door opened, the gates swinging wide, the white Volvo rolling out majestically to park on the street. The driver’s door opened and Haggerty, casually dressed for him in jeans and anorak, got out and walked back up the driveway, his shoes making no noise or indent on the gravel. True to his routine, he re-emerged a couple of minutes later, locked the gates closed behind him and walked briskly back to the car where he stopped and turned. He looked straight at Costello and smiled, clapped his hands together slowly twice, and climbed into the car.
Clap clap.
He drove away, without looking back.
George Haggerty was getting away with murder.
And Costello was going to stop him, even if it killed her.
Or him.