The Forgotten Room: a gripping, chilling thriller that will have you hooked

Maura could hardly contain the snigger that threatened to unleash Cheryl’s further wrath. ‘You’ll be good company, won’t you, boy?’ she said to the dog, ignoring the puce colour that had started to creep into Cheryl’s face.

The woman’s temper dissipated as quickly as it had boiled. ‘Well, yes, I suppose he can stay – but I won’t have him on the furniture and I don’t want him upstairs. She won’t tolerate it if you let him upstairs.’

A moment later it was as if it had never happened. Buster lay on a blanket under the table while Cheryl poured her trademark weak tea and Bob speculated on the identity of the body.

‘Eh, what if it’s her? What if the old boy did her in and stashed her in the woods?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, man. Drink your tea.’ Cheryl was having none of it. She turned to Maura. ‘Don’t you go listening to any of his nonsense. There’s enough going on without any of it getting furled by gossip.’

Maura gave Cheryl a weak smile and wished she would bugger off so she could ask Bob what he meant. He seemed somewhat excited, as if something had rattled him and made him overanimated. She got her wish a few minutes later when, noticing that Bob was making moves to leave, Cheryl seemed to decide it was safe for her to get on with her work. Once she was out of the kitchen, Maura was free to ask. Bob’s response was not what she’d been expecting.

‘His missus – Gordon’s. She disappeared, oh, I dunno, twenty, thirty-odd years ago? Perhaps longer. Maybe it’s her. Maybe she didn’t leave him. Maybe he bumped her off and buried her down the way. There’s plenty of gossip about it in the village, I can tell you.’

She was completely taken aback by this, not least because she couldn’t imagine Gordon ever having been married. Despite his mental health issues, he displayed an eccentric streak of obvious long duration and, in Maura’s opinion, seemed to operate from a place fuelled by a deep-seated self-obsession. Not that these things precluded marriage, but they made it less likely in her experience. ‘Did you know his wife?’

‘Me? Nah, know of her, though. It’s Connie you want to talk to. She knew her. Have a chat with her, she’ll tell you all about the Hendersons. You don’t want to listen to them in the village – I only said that to wind Cheryl up.’ He said it with a conspiratorial wink, as if it was Maura’s one desire to go digging into the family’s past and irritate Cheryl. ‘Look after the old boy, won’t you? Me and him been pals for a long time, haven’t we, Buster?’ The dog thumped his tail against the floor at this. ‘Gonna stay with the nice lady and keep her company, aren’t you, boy? Your old man’s got things to do.’ Buster ambled over and allowed his master to fuss him, revelling in the attention and slobbering to prove it.

‘I’ve never had a dog, Bob. What do I do with him? And who’s Connie?’

Her question made Bob chuckle and shake his head from side to side in a motion that smacked of bemusement. ‘Keep him off the furniture when Cheryl’s about if you can and for God’s sake don’t let him upstairs or she’ll do her nut. Other than that, not much – he’ll potter around after you. I brought some food for him. He’ll have that in the morning and evening, but other than that, not too heavy on the treats – don’t want you getting fat, do we, boy?’ He petted Buster again, who responded with the kind of adoration only a dog can display. ‘I’ll pop in to take him on his W.A.L.K in the mornings. If he’s whining by the door it means he want a pee, or the other… I’ve left you some poop bags too. He won’t stray far from the house, he’s a good old boy.’ He bent to stroke the dog’s head. ‘Connie is Cheryl’s mum. You should go and have a chat with her – she loves a natter – only don’t let on to Cheryl. They don’t see eye to eye most of the time. Funny set-up that, never could fathom it.’

Maura nodded. She didn’t relish having to pick up the poop – it was bad enough having to deal with Gordon’s toilette. ‘Thanks, Bob, you’ve been really kind.’ He had been, and she did appreciate it despite her reservations about caring for Buster, who was the least aggressive creature she’d ever come across – as a child she’d owned more terrifying guinea pigs. As for Cheryl’s mother… well, that might be something she’d willingly avoid if talking to her would irritate Cheryl. Besides, she wasn’t sure she did want to know anything more about the Hendersons. There were some stones it was better not to turn over.

Bob shrugged and put his hand on the door handle. ‘Don’t take much, does it, love? Not enough of it about in my opinion and it’s a rare thing around here. The Hendersons don’t deal much in kindness.’

Maura watched him leave and admitted he was right: there wasn’t enough kindness in the world. She should know; she’d been one of the worst culprits in its demise. She had been kind to no one in recent times, least of all herself. She had spent far too long hating the world and thinking it hated her too. But that’s what happened when the people you loved dumped on you and then died on you. You got depressed and you got mean. It was time for that to stop.

She glanced down at the dog and smiled at him ‘Time to ring the agency, I think, mate, and find out what the flipping heck is going on here.’

Having retrieved her phone, she sat in her car for a long time while Buster snuffled around in the undergrowth. She hadn’t called the agency; instead she had picked up a message from her older sister, Denise. Well, less of a message, more of a lecture. Denise had demanded that she let bygones be bygones. She demanded that Maura forgive Sarah, who was truly sorry, and insisted that Maura had to tell her where she was immediately. Finally, she had stated that she expected Maura to pull herself together after all this time and move on with her life.

Maura had listened to it twice, just to get the full nuance of her sister’s righteousness. Denise had always been bossy, had always defended Sarah and had always assumed some weird form of older-sibling dominion over Maura’s life. At thirty-eight, Maura had had enough. She sent a text saying it was none of Denise’s business where she was, that she was moving on, and that Sarah was Denise’s problem, not hers. She pressed send with grim satisfaction.

Once the text was sent she scrolled through to the number for the agency and hesitated. Breaking her contract would mean going back home, having to sit in that house, waiting for Denise to ring or visit with a list of demands and instructions that suited everyone but Maura. It would mean having to sit with the black bags that contained Richard’s belongings, wondering whether she should burn them or take them to a charity shop. It would mean going back to being unable to make the decision to do either. It would mean crawling back into the rut she’d been trying to escape for months.

It would mean leaving the Grange just when things had started to get interesting.

Chapter Six (#ulink_195319d2-51ae-5e06-9443-48d216f2847f)

Little heaps of pills stood like small cairns on the kitchen table; Maura had been trying to make sense of Gordon’s medication. He was asleep again and, apart from the one peeing incident shortly after she’d arrived, was proving to be the model patient. Too model. So model she was beginning to question why she had been engaged at all. Gordon didn’t appear to need a nurse, just someone who could prepare his food to his exacting standards and who could also dish out his pills in the order he preferred. And what a variety of pills there were. So far she had identified two major tranquilisers, an old-fashioned antipsychotic, two different benzodiazepines, a statin, a low-dose aspirin, what appeared to be a proton pump inhibitor, three possible sleeping tablets and a load of herbal nonsense she couldn’t identify at all. There were no packets or bottles to help, and neither was there any prescription or list – just a blue box with different compartments for various times of day, all of which were stuffed to the gunnels with pills. There wasn’t even a sticker on the box to tell her which pharmacy had dispensed the medication. All she did know was that the man she was caring for was being doped to buggery and beyond. He was barely able to maintain a simple conversation and it struck her that this had less to do with his mental state than it did with the fact that he was perpetually drug-addled.

After Cheryl had gone off to the supermarket that afternoon, Maura had rung and asked to speak to Dr Moss, only to be unhelpfully told he’d gone on leave. Her call to the local GP and request to speak to an NHS doctor had been met with a casual and patronising “I’ll see what I can do”. It had angered her, not only because she wanted to discuss Gordon’s medication, but also because she knew the receptionist hadn’t taken her seriously. No one did any longer, or so it felt. She was known at the surgery, previously as a professional, but more recently as a patient. Her rather spectacular “breakdown” had set the grapevine on fire. Now, rather than indulging in the usual banter, the staff at the surgery tended to frown at her sympathetically, speak quietly and pat her on the head (in a metaphorical sense) until she went away and stopped bothering them. It seemed to Maura that, if the mental-health nurse went mental, a point of no return had been reached. She doubted, even if a court of law had declared her sane and issued an edict, that Barb and co., guardians of the reception desk, keepers of notes and makers of appointments, would have believed it. In their eyes Maura was irreversibly flawed and permanently delicate – not to be trusted and to be treated with kid gloves for evermore.

With a sigh she piled the pills back into their little plastic reservoirs and closed the box. Without the say-so of a doctor, she could take no decisions regarding which ones she should cut out. It was an ethical dilemma she had no choice but to tolerate for the time being. Just as she’d had to tolerate Poole that day. What kind of twisted bastard was fate to put him in her path again, for crying out loud? The same kind of twisted bastard that allowed human remains to be uncovered at her place of work, she supposed. Her grandmother had often been known to use the phrase “there’s no peace for the wicked”; though Maura knew it to be prophetic in meaning, she often wondered if it was also retrospective. She felt she must have been abominably wicked in some former life to be experiencing so little peace now. Perhaps this was purgatory after all.

Now she’d had time to absorb the fact, knowledge of an unexplained death and the presence of the bones weighed heavy. Someone had lost their life near the Grange and had been buried on its land, and in the not-too-distant past. The thought brushed her spine with icy fingers and fluffed the hairs on the back of her neck, making her shudder. A movement that engaged the attention of the drooling Buster, who nudged at her elbow and whined for her to get up and follow. His pawing at the back door made her realise he needed to go out.

Not entirely confident that Buster wouldn’t go haring off into the back of beyond, and that she would have to face Bob and explain the loss of his dog, she quickly checked that Gordon was still asleep and that no one had left the gas on before following the dog outside.

The air was crisp and quiet, the low hum of the building site no longer intruding on the peace. Even the birds seemed to have sensed that something had shifted in the fabric of the landscape, and though she could see them flitting through the trees, she couldn’t hear their chatter. All she could hear was Buster, sniffing and snuffling in clumps of weeds and occasionally raising his leg to pee on them. She guessed at foxes, that they had left their scent in the yard and that Buster was establishing his territory in a vain attempt to obliterate their smell. She hoped to God he didn’t find any fox poo; her last experience of dog-sitting had involved a shit-covered dog, an extensive, all-pervading stench, and scrubbing the house for an hour while a soggy, freshly shampooed dog ran riot around her. She definitely didn’t “do” dogs.

Bored of the yard, Buster began clawing at the gate. Not having explored the outside, Maura was curious as to what lay beyond it too. Once through the gate, Buster bounded down the path, ears bouncing and flapping as he cantered ahead. It was obvious to Maura that he knew exactly where he was going and she followed dutifully, wondering if their roles hadn’t been reversed. Wasn’t she supposed to lead the way?

It didn’t take long for her to realise that Buster was going home. They were in the orchard, a scrubby, neglected place full of gnarled fruit trees with more canker than leaves. Bob’s bungalow wasn’t difficult to spot, though the word bungalow suggested far more glamour than the ramshackle structure she was confronted with. The building was essentially a badly rendered cinder-block box with a pent roof and some mismatched windows. In fact, it looked more like a large garage than a home.

Outside the door, Buster began to sniff the ground, showing that somewhere in his mongrel mix there might be a bit of ancient bloodhound. It took him a moment or two to find the scent of his quarry, but once he had he was locked on and running. Maura quickened her pace and followed, fervently hoping that he hadn’t scented rats or rabbits or something else likely to lead them both an un-merry dance. Fortunately, the object of his focus was Bob, who was leaning on a fence post, puffing on a shoddily rolled cigarette and obscuring the view with pungent clouds of smoke.

‘I think he wanted to come home,’ Maura said as Bob turned.

‘Did he now?’ Bob said as he bent to scratch the dog behind the ears, his face pinched as he squinted against the smoke leaching from the drooping cigarette that clung to his lip. ‘I been watching the goings on down there,’ he added, pointing at the building site where Maura could see that a large area had been cordoned off. ‘Not much going on at the moment. They’ve put a tent up over the bones by the look and there’s a load of bods in white overalls milling about.’

‘SOCOs I expect,’ Maura said.

‘Eh, whatto’s?’

Maura laughed. ‘You need to watch more telly, Bob. Scene of Crime Officers. They make sure any evidence is handled properly and that the scene is preserved while investigations take place.’

‘Ah, right. I don’t watch much telly – bit of snooker when it’s on. Don’t mind a bit of that Attenborough feller sometimes, though. Mind you, they’re going to be dealing with another body soon by the looks of him.’ He pointed to a heavy-set man in a long coat. Maura could see by his stance that he was riddled with tension, and his face was red with barely contained frustration. He looked like a football manager who’d just seen his team relegated by a series of own goals in the last match of the season.

‘Who is he?’

‘Perlman, the landowner. Not happy that proceedings have come to a halt by the look of him, not happy at all.’

Maura had to concede that the man looked like he might explode at any moment. ‘Definitely not happy. It looks like the press have started to turn up,’ she said, as an inappropriately dressed woman, followed by a cameraman, picked her way across the mud towards the cordon. ‘We’ll be famous in a few hours.’

Bob chuckled. ‘Hope she don’t try to interview Perlman. By the look on his face, they’ll have three bodies to deal with, not one!’

Maura smiled, but felt a pang of guilt at the gesture. Someone was dead and she and Bob were observing the scene with amusement, not even having the grace to show detached curiosity. ‘I suppose we ought to be a bit more dignified about this. Perhaps we should go before that reporter spots us and thinks a bit of local colour might enhance the story.’

Bob nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Don’t feel real, though – to think I’ve been living in spitting distance from that body all this time and never had a clue.’

‘Why would you?’ Maura was puzzled. There was a strain in Bob’s voice that didn’t fit his casual and detached words.

Bob shrugged, ‘Dunno. But I must have walked across the top of it a million times. When the land belonged to the Grange, that is. I’d be trespassing now. I’m surprised old Buster never caught a sniff of it – he likes a bone. Poor sod’s got a lousy sense of smell, though; just goes through the motions these days, bit like me.’ He laughed, but the humour was thin and taut, like an elastic band at the point before it snaps.

They had reached the “bungalow” by then and Maura had to suppress a shudder at the thought of Buster dragging a muddy femur up the path with drooling relish.

‘Coming in for a cuppa?’ Bob asked.

‘Better not. Cheryl will be back soon and she’ll have a ten-ton hissy fit if I’m not there too. Besides, his lordship will be awake soon, demanding his fish-paste sandwiches for tea. I think it’s fish paste today anyway.’

Bob rolled his eyes and gave her a weak grin. ‘A woman’s work is never done, love.’ He reached inside a small lean-to that seemed to serve as a porch and produced a lead, which had a sobering effect on Buster, who hung his head as if in defeat. ‘He don’t like the lead but it’s the only way you’ll get him back with you. Best have him there tonight. I’ve fixed the window but the putty’s still wet, so it isn’t secure. Not that it stopped that rock before.’

He bent and clipped the lead to Buster’s collar and handed it to Maura, who thanked him and towed the reluctant dog back towards the house. All the way back her mind was on Bob. He seemed haunted and she couldn’t help but feel for the man.

If it hadn’t been for the dog suddenly perking up and showing interest, she might have missed it. A sudden flash of movement in the trees near the gate that induced a low, menacing growl from the dog and caused him to strain on the lead. The vegetation was dense near the house. The remains of a garden had sprawled in the absence of tender, loving care, creating an abundance of leggy shrubs and greenery that anything could lurk in unseen. After the previous night’s fright, Maura was wary and called out ‘Who’s there?’ but there was no reply, despite Buster’s continued growling insistence that something of interest was in the bushes. Maura rationally decided to assume it was a squirrel or a cat that he’d sensed, though her instinct told her it had been much bigger. She could hardly claim to have seen anything as such – but the flash of perception had settled in her brain as more than just a stray cat on the prowl. Eager as Buster seemed, she dared not let him off the lead. There wasn’t time to go haring after him again, and whatever it was seemed to have gone. She could sense no further movement and doubted anything other than an animal could have remained so still. With some effort she dragged Buster through the gate and bolted it behind her, on principal more than anything else. One bolted gate could not secure an area that was open to the world on the other side.

Buster seemed to settle once beyond the gate, but she didn’t let him go until they were inside the kitchen and were being greeted by a surprisingly benign and cheerful Cheryl.