Dont let him in, p.21
Don't Let Him In, page 21
They drove out of town to a quiet pub on a country road with only a farmhouse nearby. It was the kind of place that prided itself on the food, with local fish on the menu, as well as home-made steak and ale pies and sausages from regional farmers. The place was only a few miles from Eriston but it was so quiet out here that it felt a world away.
They talked easily over lunch and she decided to take the opportunity to ask Alan outright if he had been seeing anyone lately. ‘Not recently, no,’ he told her. But that didn’t entirely satisfy her curiosity.
‘Anyone special in your life before now?’
‘There have been one or two, obviously, but I wouldn’t say they were special.’
‘No one you’d take home to meet the parents?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘I never met them,’ she reminded him.
‘I did not want you meeting my father,’ he said firmly, and this came as a surprise to her.
‘Why not?’
‘I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,’ he admitted, ‘but he was a miserable, hard-hearted old bastard with a violent temper, and to be quite honest I was ashamed of him.’
‘Fair enough.’ Then there was an awkward moment when she did not know what to add following his outburst so, instead, she changed the subject completely and said, ‘Dominic told me he thought something was going on down at the lighthouse.’
‘Talking of people with shitty fathers,’ he said. ‘What kind of something?’
‘Something bad.’ And she explained the policeman’s suspicions. She finished the account at the point when he had called in back-up and been humiliated.
‘I remember that,’ said Alan. ‘Police cars speeding up and down between the town and the lighthouse. We wondered what was going on. Some people thought they’d found a body but there were no reports of one.’
‘And Dominic took the blame for wasting everyone’s time,’ she said.
Rebecca wondered if Alan might be dismissive of this or unsympathetic but instead he said, ‘It did have a bit of a vibe about it.’
‘What did?’
‘The lighthouse,’ he said. ‘Not when we used to go there, but later.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I remember we went to a party,’ he said, ‘this was years back. I must have been about nineteen or twenty, and a couple of my mates wanted to go there but it was boring, so we left. The town was dead too, so somebody suggested we get some cans and go down to the lighthouse one last time before they fenced off the Point for good. We walked all the way down there but …’
‘What?’
He looked sheepish. ‘This is going to sound strange.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The closer we got to the place, the more I started to feel bad about it.’ He shook his head. ‘I know it’s daft but the atmosphere that night was very odd.’
‘Are we talking ghosts or werewolves?’
‘I told you it was stupid.’
‘I’m sorry. You couldn’t expect me not to take the piss but I am listening, really.’
‘We got to the old drystone wall between the road and the Point and by then I was thinking, I really don’t want to go any further. It was strange because we used to hang out there all the time but, all of a sudden, I started to feel like wild horses couldn’t drag me inside but I didn’t want to bottle it in front of my mates.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I didn’t say a word and we stopped there and looked at the lighthouse and no one moved, then one of my mates said something like, “I don’t know. It doesn’t look that great.” And the other guy was like, “Yeah, this is a bit lame. Maybe we shouldn’t.” And I was bloody relieved. We turned and walked all the way back into town.’
‘Do you think they felt the same way you did?’
‘They definitely did. Everyone knew it and no one wanted to say anything but we didn’t hang about.’
‘What do you think it was?’
‘I can’t really explain it. There was just this atmosphere and we all felt it.’
‘Do you think someone was there?’
He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know, maybe, yes.’
They sat in silence for a while and Rebecca thought about this. ‘Alan,’ she said eventually, ‘how would you feel about going down there now?’
She told him to say if he felt uneasy or didn’t want to actually approach the lighthouse but he assured her it was OK because it looked different in the daylight and the place lacked the atmosphere he had felt as a teenager. They walked the perimeter, which was marked by a tall wire fence that cordoned off the whole area round the lighthouse, including a large clump of land that jutted out from the coastline, cutting it off from the mainland. The Point.
Alan nodded at a track that was on the other side of the fence and said, ‘There’s the old path.’
You could still just make out the dirt track generations of kids and teenagers had walked along to get to the lighthouse, though it was overgrown now. Rebecca followed the track with her eyes as it led all the way to the lighthouse, which stood on higher ground by the cliff edge.
‘You can’t get to it,’ said Alan, but when he turned back to Rebecca she was already gone, making her way round the far side of the perimeter fence. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s got to end somewhere.’
‘I think the whole Point is cordoned off, so it ends at the cliff.’ But she didn’t stop walking, so he followed her.
Alan caught up with Rebecca and they carried on to the very end of the fence, until it finally halted right at the end of the Point, only ceasing when there was no more land to mark. If you tried to go beyond the fence, you would be stepping off the cliff, and there was a sizeable drop below to the rocks. To Alan’s alarm Rebecca began to move along the fence right to its end until she was standing very close to the edge, while holding on to a thin concrete post that marked its finishing point. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘There’s a gap.’ Rebecca had discovered that the fence post was set back a few inches from the very end of the land, presumably to avoid it falling into the sea if the clifftop eroded. ‘I can get round it.’
‘Jesus, are you sure, Rebecca? That does not look safe to me.’
‘It should be fine.’
‘You know that part in the movie where the girl slips and the guy manages to grab her just in time before she falls?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s not do that, eh?’
‘I’ll be careful,’ she reassured him.
Rebecca took a firm grip on the post, then swung herself out and round the fence, until she could plant a foot firmly on the other side while trying not to think about the rocks below. She then lifted her other foot up and swung herself round. She was more relieved than she let on to find herself with two feet safely on the ground on the other side of the fence.
Rebecca looked back at him questioningly. ‘OK,’ he said doubtfully, then he gingerly followed her actions, and she stepped back to avoid getting in his way. ‘Easy …’ he said, when he was done, ‘… in theory, but actually quite terrifying.’
‘Now let’s check it out,’ she said.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘I don’t know.’
Maybe there would be nothing here at all but perhaps something would provide them with a clue to … what? The forbidding atmosphere of the lighthouse at night? The strange noises that could be heard from a distance, which might be a woman’s screams but could just as easily be the sound of gulls squawking or strong winds whistling through the broken shutters on the lighthouse windows? It all seemed a bit ridiculous now in daylight, when logic was back in control, but something had bothered Alan that night years ago and Dominic Green had been so convinced by the sounds that he had called in carloads of back-up.
It had been a dozen years since Rebecca had been up here and Alan was with her that day too. Straight away she noticed something had changed.
‘Where’s the door?’ she asked. ‘There used to be a door.’
‘I guess it rotted away or they took it.’
Rebecca remembered walking into the lighthouse and her friends closing the door, trapping her inside. It was a game. You put up with it for as long as you could bear until you banged on the door to be let out. Rebecca had coped with it for far longer than most, because she already lived in one of the creepiest houses in town.
As they grew older, the game evolved, and you went inside in couples for a few minutes of breathless snogging and anything else you had the nerve to do while knowing your friends could burst in on you at any moment. She wondered if Alan remembered that.
He had already stepped through the open doorway to check the place out. Rebecca followed. ‘It hasn’t changed,’ he said.
Why would it? she thought. There’d be no point in making the place look any better when it was officially designated as a hazard. They were standing just inside the gap where the door had been, looking down into a drop of several feet, where the floorboards used to be. There was nothing suspicious here, no evidence of anyone’s presence since the place had been fenced off. There was no litter, no broken bottles or the remnants of a campfire. In short, it looked like a wasted trip.
Round the dip caused by the missing floorboards, there was a lip made of stone, which the boards must have rested on, so you could walk all the way round in a circle at floor level. When you looked down from there, there was a drop of about six feet to a stone floor that must have been part of the foundations. The flagstones were almost completely obscured by sand that had drifted in and settled there over the years. Large and ancient solid-metal rings were set into the walls but Rebecca could only guess at their original purpose because they were now as redundant as the rest of the lighthouse.
Rebecca remembered this dip as the place where teenagers used to climb down to ‘cop off’, because it afforded a little more privacy. Alan turned to her and smiled. It was an impish, mischievous smile and she knew why. He remembered too.
‘Look at the stairs,’ she said quickly, and pointed upwards. ‘Even worse than before.’
‘There’s barely anything left.’
The stone steps still clung to the inner walls of the lighthouse, long after the floors they once supported had disappeared. Now they led to just one place, the very top of the lighthouse, where the floor was made entirely out of stone to support the additional weight of the huge light that was once housed there.
‘Do you remember the dares?’ he asked, as if that particular memory was unpleasant.
‘I do.’ She could still recall her terror when she had been the latest in a long line of kids challenged to climb as far as they dared up those partial steps. It was fine to begin with. The stone steps were wide enough to accommodate you but as you went higher they narrowed and had large pieces missing that had flaked away over time and fallen down into the sandy pit below. Once you reached a height where you could be injured if you fell, the whole exercise became way more frightening. Rebecca hadn’t gone that high. Few did and none had ever reached the top, which was just as well, because a fall from that height would have been fatal, and the stairs were capable of giving way at any moment. It was a ninety-foot climb to the room that housed the light, only accessible through a rotted wooden hatch in the centre of the stone ceiling, more than half of which was missing. It was a tantalizing notion to climb up to that room to explore it, particularly as you would automatically achieve legendary status for the achievement, but Rebecca never came close to attempting it.
‘I didn’t even get halfway,’ admitted Alan.
‘I gave up after a few steps,’ she said. ‘I don’t like heights.’
‘I thought it might feel smaller, now we are older,’ he said. ‘But it’s still a very long way.’
‘It’s scary.’
‘We had some good times here, though.’ He jumped down into the sandy pit below them, reached back and offered her his hand. She gave him a questioning look but decided to go with the moment for once. She slid down and joined him and, before she could say anything, he drew Rebecca to him and kissed her. This time she did not try to stop him.
35
So much for her intention to take things slowly with Alan. She realized how ridiculous that sounded now, as she adjusted her clothing.
Rebecca laughed. ‘I can’t believe we just did that. You are a very bad man.’
‘You led me astray,’ he replied.
‘What?’
‘I only pulled you down here for a snog and you completely took advantage of the situation.’
‘Really?’ She laughed. ‘So now you’re blaming me.’
He grinned then. ‘I’ve missed you, Rebecca Cole.’
‘I’ve missed you too, Alan Miller.’
Rebecca might have missed something else as they were leaving. She could have easily, in fact, now that she was feeling both light-headed and distracted by Alan’s attentions, but on their way out she noticed a slight gap in the bushes behind the building, just wide enough for someone to pass through if they were not too broad and went sideways. ‘I’ve never noticed that.’
‘Neither have I,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it was there before, only bushes. Maybe someone cut them back and went through it to put the fence up?’ he offered.
Rebecca was already heading through the gap. Almost as soon as she emerged, she had to stop abruptly when she was confronted with a sheer drop from the cliff down to the rocks below and she almost lost her footing on the wet stone. Instinctively Rebecca took a step back from the edge. Alan joined her, placed a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Careful.’ It was then that she noticed the path didn’t actually end here but went off to the left and sharply downwards, into a series of weather-worn, stone steps. They glanced at one another and, wordlessly, decided to explore.
The stone steps were wet and slippery and had been eroded by centuries of biting winds and salt water but they were still just about manageable, if you trod carefully. It only took a few moments to reach the bottom where, disappointingly, they seemed to lead nowhere. They emerged at sea level on a platform of shingle-covered rock that must once have served as a jetty. It jutted out into the sea for a few yards before ending abruptly.
‘The steps are only accessible by boat, and a small one at that,’ Alan said. ‘They might not have been used for years.’
‘We just used them and it does prove one thing. The lighthouse isn’t entirely fenced off at all.’
She left the rest of her thoughts unsaid because she didn’t really want them to be true. Until now she couldn’t imagine how anyone could have escaped from Dominic that night but here was a way out. What if someone had been bringing women here after it was fenced off and Dominic had been right all along? What if they were still doing it?
Rebecca had surprised herself. She looked back on those moments with Alan at the lighthouse and wondered at their daring. She might have described what they had done as teenage, if it wasn’t for the fact that she would never have done anything like that when she was an actual teenager. They’d had sex in the same spot where they had once simply kissed and fooled around, their clothes in disarray and the cool air on her skin. Rebecca felt a strange combination of freedom, exhilaration and embarrassment as she recalled what they had done.
She was distracted for much of the following day. As she read the last of her father’s notes on the Eriston Rose case, she kept having to stop and go back, because she found she hadn’t taken a word in. Eventually she gave up on reading altogether and reached for her phone, then sent a hasty text to Alan.
Get here now. I’m waiting.
And she sat back to wait. Would he be turned on by that? Was he as excited by the memory of the previous day as she was?
When she didn’t get an immediate response, Rebecca told herself he was busy and couldn’t get to his phone. But after ten minutes she’d convinced herself he wasn’t as into this as she was and cursed herself for sending such a blatantly unsubtle message.
After an hour she threw her phone into the corner of the sofa in frustration and went for a run. Afterwards, she showered, then checked her phone again. Still nothing.
The letterbox rattled then and she retrieved a brown envelope sticking from it that was addressed to her. The letter looked quite formal and was on headed paper and she wondered if she had finally received a reply from Simon Kibbs. On opening it, she saw the letter was actually from Connor Owen and he was inviting her to come and see him to discuss the purchase of the house.
Great minds think alike, Connor.
At least this would save her the trouble of having to arrange an appointment to question him about Rose McIntyre. Connor Owen must have thought that bringing Rebecca to his office would be a more successful tactic than accosting her at her father’s funeral or during a meal. Rebecca had taken an instant dislike to Connor and nothing she had seen or heard of the man since their first ignominious meeting had altered that view of him, especially now that she had confirmation of his affair with Rose McIntyre from DI Hall.
The dilemma for Rebecca was that Connor might possibly be the only one interested in purchasing her father’s house, particularly when a private buyer might be scared away by his intentions for the neighbouring properties. Rebecca had no income and this house was the sole legacy from her father who, by the look of his bank account, was living a hand-to-mouth existence at the time of his death. Like father, like daughter, she thought ruefully.
Rebecca told herself there were good reasons to go ahead with the meeting even if she turned him down. Alan had predicted he would increase his offer, so at least she would have an idea of the property’s worth. More importantly she had been wondering how to ask the property developer about his relationship with Rose McIntyre. She was highly sceptical of his alibi and doubted he would be keen to answer her questions but now she had an official invitation to come and see him.
