The Crossing Read online

  “I found the light. It’s on the other side of the wall.” She peered down the staircase. “There’s another door down there. God knows what we’ll find behind it.”

  “I’m going to look but I don’t want you to come with me. If we’re both trapped in here, we’ll never get out. Prop that door open, go into the office and call for back-up and an ambulance.”

  “Shouldn’t you wait for them to arrive?”

  “No. Whoever’s down there could be in a bad way. A few minutes might make all the difference.”

  “I don’t think you should go in alone and unarmed. You don’t know . . .”

  “The sooner you get help, the safer we’ll both be. Give me back that crowbar.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  No. Please God, no.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  TIM WAS AT the foot of the staircase fiddling with another keypad. He was methodically trying the combinations Juliet had come up with for the other two locks. The third of these worked. Still dazed from the encounter with the dog, he wasn’t sure which order of digits had succeeded.

  The door creaked open haltingly: it didn’t run as smoothly as its counterparts. Stepping beyond it, he found himself in a dimly-lit cavernous area with a low ceiling. Chairs and a television stand rose like squat statues from the shadows. He could make out a sink set into a kitchen unit, a ghostly fridge and a cupboard with shelves above it. There was an intense smell of fungus. The place was clammy, airless and ice cold. He shuddered, less from the cold than from a gnawing sense of dread.

  He moved forward cautiously, gripping tight the crowbar. One area of wall was concealed by a plastic curtain. He flicked the curtain back with the crowbar, dislodging a copious scattering of black mould. His scalp crawled. While trying to wipe the muck from his face with the back of his hand, he uncovered a vile toilet and a handbasin overhung by a contraption that he guessed was a makeshift shower.

  Deeper in this cavern two more doors stood side by side. A light was showing under the nearest one. Suspecting that the room in darkness might conceal an assailant, he plunged towards the further door first, kicking it open as he turned the handle. Inside was the outline of a made-up double bed. He tore back the covers to check that no one was hiding beneath them, raising a plume of stench, and briefly dropped to his knees to search beneath the bed. Nobody. There was nowhere else in the room to harbour an attacker. Tim turned his attention to the other room.

  He stood with his ear close to the second door, marshalling all his senses. He thought he heard a small sound – not a voice speaking, more a cry or mewling noise – but it was so faint he could have been mistaken. He adopted the same surprise tactic as before, leaning on the handle as he kicked vigorously with his foot, but this time the door didn’t yield.

  “Fuck!” he thought. “If there’s anyone in there, they’ll know I’m coming now.” He had to act swiftly. He jammed the crowbar between the door and its frame and leant on it with his full weight. The wood was sturdier than he’d expected, but he’d caused some damage. He repeated the action, and then again. No reaction came from the room beyond, no attempt either to repel or assist him. He had another go, this time breaking the lock into pieces.

  Tim pushed the door, fearful of what he might find, yet in a strange way relieved. One way or another, the search was almost over.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  THE POLICEMAN IS too late. He should have come sooner.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  TIM HAD STEELED himself to find three corpses. In his mind he’d played out the following sequence of events: Ariadne Helen had died; Helena Nurmi, Cassandra Knipes and Philippa Grummett were murdered by Matthew Start; Matthew Start had killed himself.

  What he actually discovered shocked him to the core.

  Two of the women in the room were alive and unharmed. They sat in opposite corners, as far away from each other as possible, separated by a narrow child’s bed. One of them was weeping silently. The other rocked to and fro, murmuring under her breath. She didn’t pause when Tim entered or indicate she’d registered his presence. Her rhythmic rocking was obsessive, vacant.

  The weeping woman looked up at him, staunching her tears so she could speak.

  “I had to do it,” she said imploringly. “Please understand. She was her father’s daughter. She was selfish and cruel. She killed Diana. And I had to save Cassandra. After I failed with Ariadne, I had to save her.”

  The woman looked past Tim at a spot concealed by the open door, eyes wide with fear. Tim edged round it. The corpse he saw lying crumpled there turned sightless eyes to the ceiling. Its face was purple; its tongue bulged from the mouth. The legs were wide apart and pointing in opposite directions, ­unnaturally immodest.

  Tim dropped to his knees to feel for a pulse in her wrist, in her neck, but he knew it was hopeless. Philippa Grummett’s body was already growing cold.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  THE EGREGIOUS MR Dixon had departed, saying that he could wait no longer and would return on the Monday. Superintendent Thornton had let him go, but was adamant that Start should be detained. The Councillor would be spending the night in the cells.

  Weary and shocked, Tim was thankful that he wouldn’t have to contend with the slippery Councillor and his likely even slipperier lawyer that evening. However, he now had an unexpected visitor whom he’d agreed to see as soon as he found out who it was.

  “Mr Cushing.” Tim greeted the sombre little man, who had stood to attention when he and Juliet appeared. “Please sit down. Before you say any more, Mr Cushing, I should warn you that, although you have come here of your own free will, I am about to file charges for some very serious crimes. It’s my belief that you may be mixed up in some of them. We therefore have to caution you and advise you of your right to have a lawyer present.”

  “I still want to tell you what I know. Caution me if you like.”

  Tim glanced at Juliet.

  She cleared her throat and said in a distinct voice, “Mr Cushing, you do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” She paused for a short time. “I’m going to tape the interview. For the purposes of the tape, it is now 23.08 on Sunday 8th February 2015. Present in the room are DI Yates, DC Armstrong and Mr Peter Cushing.”

  “Ask me any questions you like. But I’d like to tell you what I know first.”

  “Go ahead,” said Tim. He settled in his chair, his fatigue evaporating. Juliet, too, felt the adrenalin kicking in.

  “Nearly twenty-five years ago, I was employed by Start Construction. I was a draughtsman. I got on well with the boss and he asked me to teach his son how to draw plans, so we spent some time together.”

  “You mean Matthew Start?”

  “Yes. The Starts were quite an odd family. Fred’s wife left him just after I joined Start’s and he and Matthew both took it hard. Carol Start had custody of the daughter – she was much younger than Matthew – but she came to stay with them quite often. That’s why they had the au pair the year that Matthew started working for the firm. Helena, her name was. Helena Nurmi.”

  “What was she like?”

  “To be honest, she was a bit odd as well. To me, she didn’t seem well-suited to looking after a kid. She was quite gloomy and a bit alternative, like, and she didn’t say much. Seemed to me to have something to hide.”

  “Did Elizabeth like her?”

  “Who? Oh, I’d forgotten that the girl’s name was Elizabeth. I’ve no idea. I don’t remember seeing her much. What I do remember is that Matthew and Helena spent a lot of time together. There were weeks and weeks when the girl didn’t come, so I guess she was at a loose end. I’d put them down as an item before the winter was out.”

  “What makes you say that? Matthew denied she was h
is girlfriend after she disappeared.”

  “I saw them out once or twice. I wasn’t that much older than them, remember. We went to the same places. I don’t know how she felt about him, but he was keen as mustard on her. Then she disappeared. Or so we were told later. At the time, Matthew and Fred said she’d gone home, back to Finland. There was no reason not to believe them. It was quite a long time after she left that the police started to enquire about her. Everyone at Start’s was questioned. We knew Matthew was under suspicion for a while. Then it all seemed to blow over.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing, for a while. I set up my own business, but I kept friendly with Fred. He often put work my way. He’d started a kind of club, a group of local businessmen who supported each other, and he asked me to join it. It was a bit like the Masons. Sailed close to the law, sometimes, but nothing major – back pocket jobs, the odd scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours type of thing. Funnily enough, a lot of us were chapel – that’s how Fred met most of the others.”

  “He called the group The Bricklayers?”

  “Yes. I was flattered to be asked to join. I’m no saint. And we didn’t do anything that worried me particularly. Not then.” Cushing’s mouth set in a grim line. “Four or five years after Helena Nurmi left, Fred asked some of us round for a meeting at his house. He’d moved: he’d given Matthew the house in Blue Gowt Lane. Matthew was there, too. He was in a funny mood.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He was kind of wound up. Like a cat on hot bricks. But hyper with it, if you know what I mean. He was married by then, to one of the teachers at the High School.”

  “Veronica. Was she there?”

  “God, no. Fred wouldn’t have asked a woman to the meetings.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Only a few of us. Fred didn’t ask everyone. There was the Methodist minister, Victor Hames – he’s since passed away. Frank Shields, who ran a haulage company that Start’s often used. David Grummett, a businessman in Boston who was one of Fred’s old school buddies. And me.”

  “So six of you altogether?”

  “At the time, yes. Matthew started to tell us what it was about. He said that he and his dad had helped Helena Nurmi to escape from the police because they were trying to get her deported back to Finland on a murder charge. All that stuff about her disappearing had been a trick. Matthew didn’t believe she was guilty of the murder. He said she’d been in an abusive relationship and someone had tried to frame her, so they couldn’t risk letting her go back. Fred had found her a job in another part of the country and set her up with a flat and a new identity.”

  “You believed all of this?”

  “Yes, it sounded a bit far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. And Fred sat there nodding and agreeing with everything. What they said fitted with what I knew of the girl. As I’ve said, she was strange, as if she was hiding something. Anyway, Matthew carried on by saying that she’d gone off the rails a bit, got in with a bad lot and had a baby. She was panicking now because the false identity they’d given her wouldn’t stand up if she had to register the birth. He said she wasn’t up to looking after the kid. He didn’t say why, but he gave the impression that she was on something.”

  “And you believed this, too?”

  “I’m not sure I believed all of it. I thought he was broadly telling the truth, but that he’d probably got her into trouble himself. Judging from how he used to be with her.”

  “So you went along with it. What about the others?”

  “Well, Victor never saw any harm in anyone. He thought the sun shone out of Fred’s arse, so he was onside straight away. Frank Shields would do anything that Fred said: most of his business was built on deals Fred had helped him to set up.”

  “Like yours, in fact?”

  “Yes, if you want to put it like that.”

  “What about David Grummett? He’s related to Bob and Ivan Grummett, I think.”

  “Yes. They’re all brothers. He’s an oddball, but he’s not like the others. He spent quite a lot of his childhood having treatment for a bone disease. He lived in a residential hospital where he got his schooling. He turned out quite different from the rest of the Grummetts. It was something that interested him. That was what Fred capitalised on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “David was obsessed with the nature / nurture argument. He was always talking about it. Still is. He doesn’t have kids himself – something to do with whatever was wrong with him – and he’s a rich man. Richer even than Fred, probably. So when Fred said we should help Helena by putting the baby out for adoption and share the costs of it, he jumped at the chance. He had a friend whose wife was desperate for a child and suggested that he might be a good bet. He wanted the kid to be brought up carefully by well-off parents, see if she turned out well.”

  “She?”

  “The baby was a girl.”

  “You’re talking about Cassandra Knipes?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you say ‘share the costs’, what costs were they, exactly? Arthur and Susannah Knipes surely had enough money to bring up a child.”

  “Yes. But they were very chary of the idea at first. They only went along with it because they had no alternative. The adoption societies thought they were too old, and Arthur was already disabled. Actually he was a lot less keen than Susannah. She was the one who talked him round. The Bricklayers helped by paying for a false birth certificate and various other things that put the girl on the map – we got a health visitor on board, that kind of thing. Fred organised all of this. The rest of us just paid a contribution.”

  “How much?”

  “It was more than you’d think. David paid most of it. But Cassandra was just a drop in the ocean compared to the next ones.”

  “You say next ones? How many were there?”

  Peter Cushing’s face contorted.

  “Two. Twins. A couple of years later, Matthew came back to us with the same story. He said Helena was pregnant again and needed our help again. None of us were interested this time except David – not even Victor. I think we all felt we’d gone too far first time round. But Fred said we were in it up to our necks now and we had no option but to do the same thing again. I wish I’d stopped there, even so. The second lot turned into a nightmare.”

  “The second girl was Philippa Grummett? You’re saying she had a twin?”

  “Yes. Diana. David was really chuffed when we found out it was twins. He’d been reading up on something called the Minnesota Study, where twins are separated as babies and brought up by very different kinds of family. He was dead keen on trying this out. He wanted one of them to go to a poor family, the other to one that was much better off. His brother Bob and his wife agreed to take one of them. They’d got a girl just a bit older – Kayleigh, you’ve met her – and it was unlikely they’d have any more kids. There was no chance of them paying for her, though. They said they’d need us to provide for her. David and Fred agreed to pay most of it: the rest of us would just chip in a bit. The Grummetts were supposed to be taking Diana, but David and Fred couldn’t find anyone who’d have Philippa – in fact, Fred almost came to grief after he approached someone and they threatened to report him. So they decided to leave the twins together for a few months, wait until it died down, and try again. Apparently this suited David – he had some notion about giving them what he called a ‘folk memory’ of each other when they grew up, a vague recollection that they’d been together without actually being able to put their finger on it. I can tell you, I was shitting bricks by this time. David’s ideas struck me as diabolical.”

  “What happened to Diana?”

  “She died. It was a cot death, the Grummetts said. That’s all I can tell you. Fred told them to get rid of the body. He said the rest of us didn’t want to know what they did with it.
”

  “Did you find out how they got rid of it?”

  “No. God knows. The Grummetts kept Philippa and David’s little experiment was spoilt – except that he could still compare Cassandra with Philippa. That’s what The Bricklayers’ meetings turned into – comparisons between the two. And Ivan Grummett joined us. David’s idea. The Knipes avoided us as much as they could, so he’d use Ivan to spy on Cassandra. The original Bricklayers – the group set up for business purposes – no longer existed. We were all about David’s experiment now. I know that Victor was as horrified as I was. He was supposed to have died of natural causes, but I’ve always wondered if he topped himself. He and Frank and I knew we were trapped, locked into it, especially after Diana died.”

  “Presumably it wasn’t a coincidence that you moved to a house just up the road from the Grummetts?”

  “No. I wanted to keep an eye on her, as much as I could. It was criminal, really, putting that girl with Bob and Ruby. Bob’s OK, but as you’ll have seen, he’s only half sharp. And Ivan’s a really nasty piece of work. I’ve got more than an inkling that he was blackmailing the Knipes, taking money from them in return for keeping quiet about where they got Cassandra. Bob was probably in on it: He’d do anything Ivan told him to.”

  “And Ariadne?” Tim shot the question out before Cushing could ponder.

  “Who?” Tim observed Cushing closely. He didn’t think he was pretending.

  “We’ll come back to her. Did Frederick Start get rid of Alex Cooper because he was unco-operative about using the school for meetings?”

  “Yes. He brought in Richard Lennard – or persuaded the other governors to appoint Lennard, anyway. He’s got something on Lennard. Paid off his gambling debts, or something.”

  “But why was Start so keen on holding the meetings at the school?”

  “Respectability. Fred’s all about respectability and his place in the community. He had to make his weird son fit in.”