Whoever you were, I hope to God you were dead when somebody crammed you in there, thought Antonia. Or were you trying to escape? Whatever you were doing, I don’t like that split-second image I had of you pressed up against the oven door, as if you had hammered against it to get out…
Summoning all her resolve, she sat on the edge of the open oven, and swung both her legs into it. Easy enough. Like levering yourself onto a low window ledge. The light was definitely coming from above. Antonia crawled deeper in, hating the grittiness under her hands, like little piles of instant coffee granules. But they were only the dried-out cinders of decades.
She stood up, very cautiously. The chimney shaft was deeper than it had looked, although it seemed to narrow quite a lot as it went up. But cool air was brushing her face, and if she could get up to where the light was, she could yell for help. It looked as if it was daytime–although which day it might be, Antonia had no idea. But with reasonable luck there would be people within earshot.
Now for the real test. Was there any way of climbing up towards that light. Rungs embedded in the wall? Surely the chimney must have needed cleaning from time to time, in the way of all chimneys? What about those poor little Victorian chimney-sweep boys? She began to examine the surrounding wall, inch by painstaking inch, scraping at the encrusted soot and dirt, trying to dodge the worst of the clouds of soot she dislodged.
After what felt like a very long time, but was most likely only about half an hour, she forced herself to accept the fact that there was no means of getting up the chimney shaft.
Donna had not been able to resist that last jibe at Antonia Weston with the music. She crept onto the old ceramic floor over the kiln-room ovens, and played the Caprice suite on the battery-operated CD-player. The floor was covered with a thick layer of concrete but there was a reasonable chance that Weston would hear. If so, she would do so through a nightmare of uncertainty and fear.
It had been quite difficult to drag the inert body down into Twygrist’s bowels, but Donna found a discarded trolley, rather like a wheelbarrow, and managed to tip Antonia into it. She was wearing gloves and a tracksuit and the same balaclava she had worn in Antonia’s car, with the hood of her anorak tightly pulled over it. When Weston’s body was eventually found–as, of course, it would be–these tunnels would be combed for DNA evidence. And among the fragments from tramps and winos, somebody might just match up a single stray hair, or a thread of skin, and see that it was from the daughter of Jim and Maria Robards, both killed here, and the sister of Don Robards, murdered by Antonia.
So she was very careful indeed, and only when she had got Antonia into the kiln room, and shone her torch around to make sure there was no way of escape, did she begin to relax.
It was almost over. She had achieved what she had set herself to do all those years ago, and perhaps now there would be some peace.
She went back to Antonia’s car, which she had parked well off the road, and drove it away from Twygrist. Her own car was just a mile further along. She was simply going to leave Antonia’s car parked on the roadside, and drive her own car away. Antonia’s car would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to link it to Twygrist.
After today there would be nothing to link Donna with Twygrist, either. She had got away with it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT