The Retreat Read online

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I have to admit I was disappointed.

  Edward’s text arrived a minute later.

  I looked up at Nyth Bran and shivered as I remembered my half-dream, the bleeding walls, the sense that the house was alive.

  I ought to be in there, writing. The problem was, I had an itch now. I wanted to know what had happened to Lily, and not just because I couldn’t resist a mystery. I imagined myself finding her, bringing her to Julia, the tears and the joy that would follow. Even if the chance of that happening was a thousand to one, the image was powerful enough to compel me to do something.

  I called the number Edward had sent me.

  Zara Sullivan wasn’t busy. In fact, she told me she could meet me in Beddmawr in two hours. While we were on the phone, she looked up cafés in the town on TripAdvisor and told me she’d be at Rhiannon’s Café at one o’clock.

  ‘I’ll be wearing a red baseball cap,’ she said, then hung up.

  I stared at my phone. Was she for real? Or was Edward playing a joke on me?

  I arrived at the café five minutes late. It was the kind of place I’d usually avoid, chintzy and dimly lit, all pots of tea and scones, frequented and staffed almost exclusively by the over-sixties. There were a number of paintings on the walls depicting mining scenes: men heading down the pit, women with babes in arms watching them go. Among these, the same picture that hung in the pub. The woman in red among the trees.

  Sitting in the corner with a pot of tea before her was a woman in a red baseball cap. She took it off as I approached and shook out her hair, which was blonde and stringy, hanging around a moon-shaped face. It was hard to tell how old she was – somewhere between thirty and forty, though she was dressed like a teenager in a black puffa jacket. She really didn’t look like a private detective, but then everyone said I – with my reddish hair and ‘friendly’ face – didn’t look like a horror novelist.

  ‘I listened to your book on the drive here,’ she said. ‘The first hour of it, anyway. Not bad.’

  ‘Er . . . thanks.’

  ‘I’m sure the more you write, the better you’ll get.’ She raised a hand and beckoned over the waitress, a spritely woman in her seventies. I ordered coffee.

  ‘Let’s discuss terms,’ Zara said, not wasting any time. Her hourly rate was more than I’d expected, but still reasonable. ‘I could travel in from Telford every day, but it would be easier for me to stay here,’ she said. ‘If you’re willing to pay. I like to immerse myself, get to know the locals.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Luckily, I have an FWB in the police in Wrexham.’ That was the nearest large town, where the investigation into Lily’s disappearance would have been centred.

  ‘FWB?’

  ‘Uh-huh. A friend with benefits. More than one benefit, in this case.’ She grinned and slurped her tea. ‘Have a Welshcake. They’re scrummy.’

  Producing a notebook from her messenger bag, she said, ‘Right. Can you tell me everything you know?’

  ‘Before I start, there’s one condition. I don’t want Julia Marsh finding out I’ve hired you to do this. I’ll tell her if you find anything but I don’t want to get her hopes up. So you need to be discreet.’

  ‘Discretion is my middle name.’ She readied her pencil over her pad and raised her eyebrows.

  The café was busy but the hubbub masked our words as I told her what I knew.

  She wrote it all down, then closed her notepad. ‘Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow with a progress report.’ She stuck out her hand. It was sticky with cake residue. ‘Let’s find out what happened to little Lily.’

  I spent the afternoon working on my novel. It was about a father who believes the world is coming to an end. He takes his family – his wife and daughter – to live in a shack in the middle of a forest, away from danger. The twist is that the world really is ending, a plague is sweeping across the planet, turning people into hungry monsters (I avoided using the word ‘zombies’). And these monsters begin to close in on the family in the woods . . .

  After dinner, I went into the Thomas Room to find something to read. Julia had an impressive collection of books – mostly classics and contemporary literature, with the occasional thriller dotted around the shelves. I could see a line of brightly coloured spines on the top shelf.

  Intrigued, I climbed the library ladder and saw that most of these books bore the Jackdaw logo. That was the publisher Julia had done most of her work for. Standing on the middle rung, I took down a book called Twelve Little Beasties. It was, indeed, illustrated by Julia Marsh, a parade of comical monsters in bright colours. I was impressed. Julia was talented. If she’d stopped work, that only compounded the tragedy of what had happened to her.

  At the end of the shelf, a book with a tatty spine stuck out at an angle. Feeling compelled to straighten it, I pulled it out and found an illustrated edition of Edward Lear’s poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.

  The book looked old and I wondered if it had belonged to Julia when she was a child. I turned to the first page to see if there was an inscription, but the title page had been torn out.

  I flicked through the book, and something fell to the ground beneath me. I descended the ladder and picked it up. It was a faded Polaroid of a couple: a tall, skinny man in his forties standing stiffly beside a shorter woman. Despite their late-seventies/early-eighties haircuts and clothes, they reminded me of the couple in that painting American Gothic. I studied the photo, trying to work out where it had been taken, but the background was too dark, the colours muted and blurred.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  It was Max, coming into the room with Suzi. They appeared to have made up. I slipped the Polaroid back into the book and stuck it between two books on the nearest shelf.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Max eyed the bookcase. ‘I’m sure if we pushed this in the right place it would rotate to reveal a secret passageway,’ he said. ‘It’s that kind of house.’

  ‘Like something from The Famous Five,’ added Suzi.

  ‘No, creepier than that,’ said Max. ‘Like something from one of Lucas’s books.’

  They sat on the sofa and I perched on the armchair opposite.

  ‘Someone told me this house is cursed.’ I explained what the taxi driver had said.

  Max’s eyes shone. ‘How exciting. I love stories like that. Modern folklore. A friend of mine comes from Hastings, where Aleister Crowley lived. Apparently, he cursed the town so it’s impossible to leave unless you take a pebble from the beach with you. Nonsense, obviously. But fun.’

  ‘Where’s Karen?’ I asked.

  ‘I think she went up for a smoke.’

  ‘Maybe we should join her,’ Suzi said.

  ‘Good idea. What do you think, Lucas? Shall we go and see if Karen’s willing to share her stash?’

  He was so naff, but I nodded. ‘Why not?’

  Upstairs, Max knocked lightly on Karen’s door. I was a little embarrassed. We were acting like a group of naughty schoolchildren, sneaking around the dorm.

  I wasn’t expecting to hear a gasp of fear from inside the room.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Karen cried.

  Max and I exchanged a worried glance.

  ‘Karen?’ I said through the door. ‘It’s Lucas. Are you okay?’

  I heard footsteps, then the key turning in the lock. Karen pulled open the door and stuck her head out, looking left and right.

  ‘Come in,’ she hissed.

  We trooped into the room. Karen had retreated to the edge of her bed, clenching her fists. The window was open but the room stank of cannabis. Karen’s pupils were huge, dilated like black pools.

  ‘Shut the door,’ she said. ‘Lock it.’

  Suzi sat beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Somebody was trying to get into my room.’

  Automatically, I looked at Max.

  ‘Hey! It wasn’t me,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Suzi. ‘He’s been with me
the whole time.’

  ‘Karen,’ Max said, ‘are you sure you didn’t imagine it? What exactly are you smoking?’ There was a little bag on the bedside table. Max picked it up and held it to the light, as if he’d be able to tell how strong it was.

  Karen continued to stare into space. ‘They whispered something through the door.’

  ‘Really? What did they say?’

  ‘You’re not welcome here.’

  We all looked at each other.

  ‘Male or female?’ I asked, thinking about the singing I’d heard.

  But Karen appeared to have gone into a stupor, staring in terror at the door. Her face was as pale as the moon that shone through the window.

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’ She rushed from the room and we heard her running down the hall towards the bathroom.

  ‘She’s stoned, that’s all,’ Max said. ‘Pulling a – what do you call it? A whiteout?’

  ‘A whitey,’ I said.

  But Suzi had gone almost as pale as Karen. ‘I wasn’t high when someone tried to get into my room.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Max, ‘it wasn’t me.’ He seemed concerned for a moment, then laughed. ‘It’s the curse. The ghost of the dead miner. Wooo!’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Max.’ But Suzi laughed too.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not you doing it?’ Max said, and I was so deep in thought that it took a moment to realise he was talking to me. ‘Maybe you’re conducting research for your next book. Some kind of meta-experiment.’

  ‘I was downstairs with you, remember?’

  ‘Hmm. Well, anyway. It’s all quite exciting, isn’t it?’

  We left Karen’s room. Max headed back downstairs, and Suzi said she would wait to check that Karen was okay.

  I went to my room. The most likely explanation was that Karen was stoned and imagining things, almost certainly triggered by what had happened to Suzi. And Max was lying – he had tried to get into Suzi’s room but wouldn’t admit it. It was all perfectly rational.

  So why did I lie in bed, unable to sleep again, imagining a figure on the other side of my door, trying to get in?

  You’re not welcome here.

  I finally went to sleep with those words echoing in my head.

  Chapter 9

  The atmosphere at breakfast was subdued. Karen seemed embarrassed by the incident the previous night and still looked a little green around the gills. Max tapped at his phone throughout, apparently conducting a Twitter spat with someone who’d made an ill-judged joke about depression. Suzi hadn’t come down; I guessed she was still asleep, or working in her room.

  I took my used breakfast things into the kitchen, where Julia was stacking the dishwasher, the cat snaking around her ankles.

  It was another cold day, frost sparkling on the lawn. Rhodri was in the garden, fixing a section of fencing that had blown down in the strong winds the previous week.

  ‘Did he come with the house?’ I asked, nodding towards Rhodri.

  ‘Huh? Oh, you mean did he work here before we moved in? Apparently so. He introduced himself to Michael as soon as we got here, but Michael told him we wouldn’t need his help because he was determined to do all that stuff himself. That was part of the appeal of coming here.’ She closed the dishwasher. ‘He had so many plans for this place.’ Her eyes shone with emotion.

  Rhodri must have sensed us watching him, as he raised a hand before turning back to the fence.

  ‘What was the previous owner like?’ I asked, thinking of the Polaroid I’d found the night before.

  ‘I have no idea. An old woman lived here. When she died she left the house to a children’s charity. We bought it from them at auction.’

  On my way up to my room, my mobile rang. It was Zara.

  ‘I met up with my friend last night.’ I assumed she meant the one with benefits. I hoped she wasn’t going to add condoms to her expenses. ‘He told me a few interesting things. Very interesting things indeed.’

  I agreed to meet Zara by the river, at the spot where Lily had gone missing. I found her sitting on a fallen tree trunk, smoking a cigarette and gazing out at the water. Mist hung low among the shrubbery on the opposite bank.

  ‘My policeman friend remembers the case very well,’ Zara said, stubbing out her cigarette and slipping the butt into a little plastic bag. ‘He repeated what you already told me. That they were initially convinced she fell into the river. They spent a lot of money searching. They had helicopters out, frogmen, the whole works. You name it. All without success.’

  ‘I knew all that,’ I said.

  ‘But what do you know about bodies in water? You wrote a book about it, didn’t you? I’m assuming you did lots of research.’

  I avoided her eyes. ‘Hmm. A bit.’

  ‘Ha. Well, my friend explained it to me. When someone drowns, the air in their lungs is replaced with water, which makes them sink. They stay underwater for a while. And assuming nothing eats them, the bacteria and enzymes in their chest and gut start to produce gas. Methane, carbon dioxide, some other gas that I can’t remember the name of.’

  ‘And the gas makes them float to the surface.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She produced a Mars bar from her coat pocket and unwrapped it. ‘Want a bit?’

  ‘This conversation isn’t giving me much of an appetite.’

  She snorted and sang a jingle from our childhood. ‘A Mars a day . . . makes your teeth rot away. Where was I? Oh yes. Lily Marsh didn’t float. The police were convinced she would pop to the surface of the lake. But they waited and they waited. And still no sign of little Lily.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Now, there’s nothing in that lake that could have eaten her up. No monsters living in the woods round here, Mr Radcliffe. So if she did go in the water, she must have been weighed down – which didn’t fit with her supposed accidental drowning – or she got caught on something under the water.’

  ‘Supposed accidental drowning?’

  ‘Yes. If she was weighed down, it must have been murder. But that didn’t fit either, because her body would almost certainly be on the riverbed, not in the lake.’

  A pair of moorhens drifted by.

  ‘When Lily’s body didn’t appear, the police turned their attention to the mother.’

  I was shocked. ‘To Julia?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Think about it. There were no witnesses, other than Mrs Marsh. They only had her word for what happened. My friend said her distress seemed genuine, but maybe it was an accident, one that she tried to cover up.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  The world around us was eerily quiet and still. A songbird called out from a tree above our heads. The water made a rushing sound as it rounded the bend. Apart from that, all was silent.

  Zara crumpled her chocolate wrapper and stuck it in the pocket of her puffa jacket. ‘Julia admitted to the police that all was not well in the Marsh household. She had to, because they’d had a massive row in the supermarket just before Christmas. In the alcohol aisle. The police found a witness who reported seeing Julia yelling at Michael about the amount of booze he’d put in the trolley. Something about broken promises, about Christmas being ruined. Lily was there, watching.’

  I thought about Julia’s alcohol ban at the retreat. Had Michael Marsh been an alcoholic?

  ‘When they did the autopsy, the pathologist found high levels of alcohol in Mr Marsh’s blood. So he’d been drinking that day. Here’s a theory: what if Julia and Michael had another huge row when they were down by the river, and she pushed him in?’

  I thought about it. ‘That’s possible, I suppose. But what about Lily?’

  ‘The police thought maybe Julia chucked Lily in too, because she was the only witness.’

  ‘That’s ludicrous!’

  ‘Or maybe she planned to kill them all, including herself. Murder-suicide. But she chickened out when it was her turn. Or how about this? Julia pushed her hubby into the water and their daughter jumped in to try to save him. Julia ca
n’t swim, so she couldn’t do anything to help.’

  The bird in the tree had stopped singing.

  ‘But that still doesn’t answer the question: what happened to Lily’s body?’

  Zara shrugged. ‘That’s where the police got stuck too. They had cadaver dogs out searching the woods, looking for a grave, thinking that if Lily didn’t drown maybe Julia killed her and buried her somewhere. They searched the house too.’

  ‘So Julia knew she was a suspect?’

  ‘I guess they used the old “exploring every avenue” line. But they didn’t find anything, and Julia never slipped up. So they went back to square one. The most likely explanation was that it all happened exactly as Julia described, and Lily’s body is stuck somewhere at the bottom of Bala Lake.’

  I mulled over what Zara had told me. Could Julia be responsible? No, I was sure her distress was genuine – and it wasn’t guilt. Unless she was the world’s greatest actress – a psychopath – she genuinely didn’t know what had happened to her daughter.

  ‘So, basically,’ I said, ‘you haven’t really made any progress.’

  ‘Except I’ve done what you asked. Checked the police took it seriously, that they did indeed pull out all the stops. Maybe, Lucas, it’s one of those mysteries that will never be solved. Like the Mary Celeste, or those UFO nuts who may or may not have jumped off Beachy Head a few years ago.’

  I blinked at her.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  I stood up and paced around the copse, hoping the movement of my feet would trigger my brain.

  ‘Did the police interview local sex offenders? Paedophiles?’

  ‘Yep. It’s a small community. There weren’t that many guys for them to talk to, but they got them all in, checked their alibis, searched their houses. Nada.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t search hard enough. Especially if they were fixated on this theory that Julia was responsible or it was an accident.’

  Again, she shrugged. ‘That’s possible. You want me to do some digging?’