“Where was this taken? Is it nearby?”
Nikki had picked up another photograph. This one was of a cold-looking beach, the sky a flat gray and the sea a steely band flecked with white foam. There was a rugged romance to the scene, and an odd building sat off to one side. Heather took it from her friend to get a closer look.
“Ah,” Bert raised his eyebrows. “It is, it is. Beyond Fiddler’s Wood, if you go far enough.”
“And what’s this?” Heather tapped the building. It was a tall structure of warm brownish stone, marked here and there with narrow leaded windows. It stood alone, a tower on the edge of the land.
“Fiddler’s Folly, they call it round here. The family up at the big house was responsible for it, and there were lots of rumors about it, what it was for, why they built it.” He grinned, looking at them with his head tipped to one side. “But no one knows, not really. It’s standing empty now.”
When they’d finished their tea, Bert walked them to the front door. The sunshine had gone, to be replaced with a blanket of thick clouds, dark with potential rain.
The old man peered up at the sky, smiling faintly. “Well, it looks like the sun is over for you.” He turned back to look at Heather. “Take care, won’t you?”
CHAPTER36
THEY MADE IT through the first stretch of woods and then it began to rain heavily, in the steady sort of way that suggests it is planning to hang around all day. Deciding to try a short cut, umbrellas brandished above them, they walked through another, sparser set of trees, and came across an ancient looking caravan. Once it had been white with a red and a brown stripe along the side, but now it was camouflaged with patches of rust and a thick covering of dead leaves and forest debris. At some point someone had attempted to fence the thing off with wire panels, but those had mostly fallen down, and thick tangled bushes had grown up around its wheels.
“Hey, that’s got to be from the commune. Do you want to have a look inside?”
Nikki grimaced. The rain was getting stronger all the time, the ground under their boots rapidly turning into mud. “Can we come back later? We should go and get the car.”
“You go. I’ll join you in a bit.”
“Are you sure?”
Heather nodded. “Go on. I just want to have a quick poke around, and then I’ll head back to the cottage. I think our exploring is done for the day.”
When Nikki had trudged away toward the clearing, Heather picked her way across the wild undergrowth until she reached the flimsy looking door. It came open with one fairly solid kick, and, collapsing her umbrella, she stepped inside.
It was dark, the only light filtered through a series of small, dirty windows, and it smelt powerfully of damp and moldy clothes. Heather took out her phone and turned on the torch function, slowly turning around to take in the whole scene. There was a kind of sitting room, seats with padding that could be flipped to turn into beds, storage units and a fold down table. Further back was a tiny sink, with more cupboards lining the available wall space, and then at the far end, a closed door leading into another room. Here and there she could see more evidence that the place was more than forty years old—orange and brown wallpaper with a familiar ornate flower pattern; stickers on the cupboard doors that demanded the government “ban the bomb,” several on the fridge that were of the Smurfs, their blue faces mottled with damp. More interestingly, there were signs that the owners had been interested in an alternative lifestyle of sorts. Heather spotted what could only have been a very old bong lying sideways in the sink, and an ancient poster on the wall detailed the months and signs of the zodiac, as well as phases of the moon and other esoteric advice.
Heather moved down through the van, the stench of the place coating the back of her throat. The rain was growing heavier, drumming on the roof in a persistent roar. She opened one of the little cupboards with her free hand and grimaced at the thick spiderwebs inside, but the cupboard above that one was full of small brown glass bottles with white tops. Bringing the phone closer, she tried to read some of the labels, but they were all blurred and warped with age. She did see several needles at the back, old-fashioned-looking bulky things, plastic packets of what looked like condoms and ancient plasters.
“You’d think kids would have been in here and had all this stuff years ago.” She paused, thinking better of it. “Mind you, maybe kids aren’t that stupid.”
Moving down the small space she came to the little work area next to the sink. Here, a stained wooden chopping board had been left, its surface crisscrossed with deep knife marks. On the floor next to it was a big tea chest, painted with pentagrams and runes in paint that had probably been silver once. Heather smiled slightly, imagining the hippies that had once lived in this cramped little space, and reached down to open the lid. Disappointingly it was empty, but just as she was flipping it closed again Heather spotted a tiny corner of white sticking up from the bottom panel. She leaned down and took hold of it with her fingernails. When she tugged, a false panel in the base of the chest popped up, revealing a small recess filled with old Rizla papers and bits of foil. Underneath the old drug paraphernalia were
