Avril looked back over her shoulder but kept pounding on the door. ‘Gran! It’s me. Please.’
Charles walked slowly towards us. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I just want to talk. To sort all of this out. I want to—’
Before he could complete the sentence, the pub door opened.
Brenda stood there, and Avril bundled past her, vanishing into the pub. Behind her, I heard Avril say, ‘They killed Mum. They want to kill me.’
Brenda stepped back inside and slammed the door.
Charles strode over, ignoring me, and banged on the door. ‘Let me in. I just want to talk.’
I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I should get back into the Jeep, drive the short distance back to the visitors’ centre and PC Williams. That seemed like a good option.
But then Charles went back to the Land Rover, reached in and took out his rifle. He aimed it at the pub door and shouted, ‘If you don’t let me in I’m going to shoot the lock out.’
There was no response. I guessed Brenda and Avril would be cowering inside, not that it was easy to picture Brenda cowering. Surely she would be on the phone to the police. Susan would be here in minutes.
Charles kept yelling. He had lost it. His face was almost purple and sweat flew off him, his eyes bulging. He suddenly remembered I was there. He swung the rifle towards me, and fired.
The bullet flew past me, striking the brick facade of the pub. I guessed anyone in the village would think it was another firework going off. But I didn’t hang around to speculate about that or anything else. I ran into the little alley between the pub and the house next door, convinced Charles would pursue me.
But he didn’t. He went back to banging on the door and shouting for Brenda to let him in.
Still fearful that Charles was going to come looking for me, I headed for the back door of the pub. It was locked, but there were bricks on the ground nearby. I grabbed one, waited till Charles started yelling again, then used it to break a pane of glass in the back door, reaching through to unlock it.
I let myself in, finding myself in a hallway at the back of the pub. I could still hear Charles shouting and swearing and threatening to blast the windows in. I expected Brenda to yell back, but she was quiet.
I headed past the kitchen, thinking I would reach the bar at any moment. But as I passed another door I heard a bang– not from the front of the pub, but beneath my feet. I paused. This appeared to be the door to the cellar. The bang came again. Brenda and Avril must be hiding down there.
I tried the door and it opened.
I ran down the stairs, surprised to find the room in darkness. I groped around me and found a light switch on the cold stone wall, flicking it on.
I blinked several times, convinced I must be hallucinating.
There was a woman tied to a chair in the corner with a gag in her mouth, eyes screwed shut against the sudden brightness.
‘Jasmine?’ I said.
45
I removed the gag from her mouth and the first word she said was, ‘Water.’ There was a plastic bottle on the floor beside the chair and I lifted it to her lips. As she drank I spotted a couple of empty barrels lying on their side close to the chair. It seemed that she had managed to shuffle over to a nearby stack of beer barrels and knock a couple of them loose. That was the banging I’d heard.
‘I thought you were her,’ she said. ‘That woman. The landlady.’
‘Brenda? She put you down here?’
‘I didn’t do it to myself.’
I worked on the rope that was securing her wrists. The knot was tight and difficult to untie.
‘Everyone’s been going mad trying to find you,’ I said. ‘Especially Charles. We all thought…’
‘I was dead? She brought me straight down here and tied me up. She comes down every few hours to give me water and rant about how much she hates Charles. She’s insane. I thought she was going to kill me.’ Her voice was croaky. ‘I heard shouting upstairs. Is that Charles?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did he find out where I am? Is that why he’s here? Why you’re here?’
