The Secret of Crickley Hall

Gabe tried to concentrate on the road ahead as he joined the motorway that led straight into the heart of the capital. Rain lashed the windscreen, keeping the wipers busy, but when he glanced out of the side window he saw there was worse to come: huge grey-black clouds had assembled in the north-east, great over-burdened bulks that were steadily progressing across the country, portents of punishment yet to come. His mind kept wandering back to the conversation with the police detective, the same questions and the same replies repeating themselves like a script that had to be learnt.

A little over three hours ago he had been standing in the great hall, the phone shaking in his hand, while the world shrank around him. He had endeavoured to remain calm as he spoke to DI Michael.

'Have you seen the body itself?' he had asked the detective.

'Yes, I have.'

'What… uh, what kind of condition is it in?'

'Gabe, come on. You don't want to know. It's been in the canal for a long time. The pathologist reckons it's been in the water a good few months, possibly a year.'

'For as long as Cam's been missing.'

Silence at the other end.

Then, Gabe: 'Tell me, Kim.'

'It's badly decomposed. As you'd expect.'

Gabe had thought for a few moments, the news taking time to sink in even though he had been expecting— fearing—something like this since Cam had been gone.

'Thing is,' the policeman said slowly, 'we need you to ID.' More quickly: 'You don't have to see the body, Gabe, you could just identify the clothes. They're worn and ragged, and the colours are faded, but you should be able to recognize them. The shoes are gone. Eve gave a fair description of what Cameron was wearing the day he disappeared, so no doubt you'll know yourself.'

Of course he'd fucking know: he was there when Eve described the clothes to the police for about the hundredth time. He remembered getting the phone call at the office, Eve too distraught to make it herself, a WPC doing it for her. The fast drive home to be with Eve, hoping, praying—he had more faith in God back then—that they would have found his little boy by the time he reached the house. The panic in Eve's eyes, her body-rattling weeping, throwing herself into his arms the moment he walked through the door. Yes, he remembered—that day was seared into his brain.

'Look, Gabe,' DI Michael had said this morning almost exactly a year later, 'I don't think you should bring your wife with you. Come on your own, will you?'

'She's gonna want to be there.'

'My firm advice is that you don't let her. Your son or not, either way, it would be too distressing for her. I don't think she needs to be put through an ordeal like this.'

'Okay. You're right. Someone has to look after Cally anyway—we can't drag her all the way back to London. And Loren's at school, she doesn't get home 'til around four. I'll make Eve see sense.' His shoulders were hunched and he consciously forced them to relax. 'Eve's out, but she'll be back any minute. When I've told her, I'll be on my way. Look, just to be certain, you're talking about the canal that runs past the park, right?'

'Afraid so. The body was trapped a mile or so further on, which was why the divers found nothing when they searched before.'

'You say trapped?'

'Yes, it was inside an old pram—one of those big perambulators—someone had dumped in the water probably years ago. Apparently it was lying on its side among a lot of other junk on the canal bed. There's a council estate along that stretch and residents have been dumping stuff for years. Yesterday, the Underwater Search Unit was searching the area because a local known villain was seen tossing a gun over the canal wall as he was being chased by uniformed cops.'

So, the body had been discovered by chance. Gabe suppressed any cynicism he felt.

'Kim,' he said quietly. 'What do you think?'

'I can't lie to you, Gabe, but it looks bad for you. The clothes—'

'Okay. Where do I meet you?'

'At the mortuary.' The detective gave Gabe the address as well as the mortuary's phone number in case he got lost. 'You've got my mobile number, so ring me when you're approaching London. It'll give me time to get there before you.'

Gabe had hung up. Cally was at the top of the stairs, rubbing sleep from her eyes with her knuckles as she looked down at him.

•

Surprisingly, when Eve had returned from the harbour village she had taken the news calmly; perhaps it was because she was almost totally drained, had little more emotion left. Also surprisingly, she had agreed to stay at Crickley Hall while Gabe made the trip to London. She seemed to see the logic of remaining behind with their daughters.

Now, Gabe pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator, keeping to the outside lane, flashing his headlights at other drivers who blocked his way, forcing some to pull over into the middle lane by tailgating them.

Anxious already, Eve's reaction made him even more so. He had feared the finding of a child's body so close to the park where Cam had been lost would leave her broken, hysterical at least, but she had been composed, albeit a brittle type of composure. Her one condition for staying, though, was that he phone her immediately he knew whether it was the body of their son or not. She had kissed Gabe and leaned into him so that he could enfold her in his arms. That was the moment he thought she might break, but she had only trembled against him, and when he lifted her chin with the crook of his finger, she had gazed back with dulled eyes. He realized she was in shock, a numbing kind of shock. He was loath to leave her like that, but he'd had no other choice, he had to find out the truth about their son. And if it was Cam? Right now that was too painful to contemplate.

He kicked down hard on the accelerator once more to get past a lorry that was throwing up spray from the middle lane. The wet greyness of the day closed round him.

52: SECOND VISITOR

Iris ushered the visitor into Magda's room at the nursing home.

'There now, Magda, aren't you the popular one? You've another person come to see you. That's two more than you've ever had since you've been here.'

Magda ignored the nurse's prattling and took in the man who had entered.

Oh, she knew him. He had visited her once before, but in the other place, where they kept a person locked up all the time. But that was a long while ago and he was much younger then, a young man and not the awkward boy she used to know.

'You can sit in the armchair, if you like.' The blue-uniformed nurse indicated the lumpy soft chair in the corner. 'Magda won't move from her one unless it's to be put to bed. Sometimes I think she's stuck to it.'

The visitor gave Iris a genial smile before making himself comfortable in the armchair, altering its position so that it faced the elderly resident. The nurse left the room and he waited for her footsteps to recede down the corridor before speaking.

'Hello, Magda,' he said. 'Do you know who I am? Do you recognize me after all this time?'

Of course she did, you fool. Maurice Stafford. Who could forget such a devoted boy?

She remained silent.

'I came to see you a long time ago when you were in the other place. They don't call them mental asylums any more, did you know that? But then so much has changed since we sat on that cold and wet station platform.'

When he'd left her alone and frightened, too frozen with fear to get on the train with him when it came the next morning. He never even pleaded with her. He was just gone. Gone for ever, she'd thought. But now he was back for the second time and she wondered why.

'Won't you speak to me? Won't you say hello to your old friend?'

Speak? She'd not spoken a word since that day, not even when they found her alone at the