Full Dark House(131)

May picked out the boy’s twisted features with his beam. Todd released a despairing bellow of pain as the light seared his eyes.

‘All right, wait.’ May moved the circle of light lower, over the boy’s chest, until he had grown calmer.

‘I didn’t want to hurt her,’ he called back, ‘the dancer, she was so beautiful, but Mother poisoned her. Then she started the lift and it ruined everything. She wanted to shock the outsiders. Poor precious feet, I threw them from the window of the smoking salon, hoping someone would see. But outside was all black, there was no one about.’

‘The air raid,’ murmured Bryant. ‘You weren’t to know.’

‘My mother says it is too dangerous to go outside, there are bombs falling from the sky. But I’ve been out. I know how to drive a bike.’

Todd reached down and picked up something that looked like a length of oak. May lowered the torch and saw that it was a sledgehammer.

‘She’ll leave me, and I will have to stay here alone in Hell, with Eurydice.’ He shifted his weight until he was standing astride something grey and heavy, and raised the sledgehammer in his broad fists.

‘Don’t go any closer, Arthur.’ May’s torch picked out the object at Todd’s feet, an absurdly bomb-like thing with tail fins, spattered in white dust, in a round steel case as tall as a man, tapering to a point. How it had reached the basement was a mystery; the ceiling above it was intact.

May had seen enough photographs of unexploded bombs in the Evening News, with proud ARP men standing beside them. By the end of the war, fifty thousand would have been defused in streets, factories, shops and homes. Sixty years later, they would still be discovered and deactivated.

‘We’ll all go together, to the real Hell, not one made of paint and plaster,’ said Todd sadly. ‘It’s for the best.’ He raised the sledgehammer higher over his head.

‘No’—Bryant threw up his hands—’don’t do it, Todd. Remember all the girls above us, the young dancers, like the one you didn’t want to hurt.’

‘None of them will have me. Who would want me? I’m a man, not a child. I have no face. I have no life. Can’t go. Can’t stay. And now I am a murderer.’

‘Todd, please.’ A sense of dread flooded over Bryant. He was horribly aware of Maggie’s warning, that death would come from an unexploded bomb. He held out his hands. ‘Please,’ he begged the boy again. May was standing right in its path.

The muscles in Todd’s arms flexed, and he swung the sledgehammer down into the bomb with all his might. Bryant and May threw themselves down onto the floor.

The only sound that followed was a violent splintering of wood. May groped for the fallen torch and twisted its beam back towards the boy. The head of the sledgehammer was lodged firmly inside the bomb case.

‘It’s a prop, a bloody balsa-wood stage prop,’ cried May.

‘Blimey.’ Bryant rose clumsily to his feet as May ran past him. He saw his partner wrestling with the boy, then watched as they fell with a crash that jolted aside the torch beam. Grunts and shouts filled the enveloping darkness. A few moments later came a terrible cry. Bryant thought of Maggie’s death warning again.

‘John!’ he shouted, but there was no reply. Nothing but silence in the turgid claustrophobia of the darkened underworld.





60

THE MOON IN A BOX

Biddle pulled a Woodbine from behind his ear and kept his eyes on Elspeth Wynter as he dug around for a light. He didn’t like the look of her. Panic was flickering in her eyes. She was searching for a way out. From the street outside came the familiar whine of the siren mounted on the roof of St Anne’s Church. For a moment he thought she was going to drop in her tracks.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Wynter, our lads will find your son. Everything’s going to be fine.’ It was the reassurance everyone gave each other throughout the war.

‘He’s very strong,’ she warned. ‘I feel a little faint. Do you mind if I sit down over there, where it’s cooler?’

‘Here.’ He took her arm and helped her to the stool in the box-office booth. ‘They timed the raid well tonight. The show’s just turning out.’

Behind them, the ushers opened the auditorium doors as the sound of applause billowed into the foyer. Moments later, they were engulfed by members of the audience, leaving quickly to obey the warning of the air-raid siren. Biddle took his eyes off her for only a second. When he looked back at the booth, Elspeth Wynter had gone.



‘John, where are you?’ called Bryant. ‘Shine your torch.’ He heard a strangled grunt in the dark. Water was dripping somewhere.