What Hides in the Cellar, page 1
WHAT HIDES IN THE CELLAR
ALSO BY GRAHAM MASTERTON
HORROR STANDALONES
Black Angel
Death Mask
Death Trance
Edgewise
Heirloom
Prey
Ritual
Spirit
Tengu
The Chosen Child
The Sphinx
Unspeakable
Walkers
Manitou Blood
Revenge of the Manitou
Famine
Ikon
Sacrifice
The House of a Hundred Whispers
Plague
The Soul Stealer
Blind Panic
The House at Phantom Park
THE SCARLET WIDOW SERIES
Scarlet Widow
The Coven
THE KATIE MAGUIRE SERIES
White Bones
Broken Angels
Red Light
Taken for Dead
Blood Sisters
Buried
Living Death
Dead Girls Dancing
Dead Men Whistling
Begging to Die
The Last Drop of Blood
THE PATEL & PARDOE SERIES
Ghost Virus
The Children God Forgot
The Shadow People
THE NIGHT WARRIORS
Night Warriors
Death Dream
Night Plague
Night Wars
The Ninth Nightmare
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Days of Utter Dread
GRAHAM MASTERTON
WHAT HIDES IN THE CELLAR
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 2023 by Head of Zeus,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Graham Masterton, 2023
The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781801104036
ISBN (XTPB): 9781801104043
ISBN (E): 9781801104067
Cover design: Ben Prior
Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For my friend Piotr Pocztarek, for running my Polish website grahammasterton.pl so brilliantly.
Contents
Also by Graham Masterton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
1
Kenneth pushed open the front door with his shoulder and called out, ‘Gemma! I managed to find some of that baharat spice you were after! You know that Greek shop on Ada Street? They had some in there!’
‘You found what?’ came a hoarse voice from the end of the hallway.
Kenneth frowned into the darkness. He could just make out a squat figure standing between the staircase and the living-room door.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded. He set down his two bulky shopping bags, and then switched on the overhead light.
He was confronted by a short, wide-shouldered man in a camel-coloured Crombie overcoat with its brown velvet collar turned up. The man was wearing a brown trilby hat so that his face was hidden beneath the shadow of the brim, although Kenneth could see his eyes glistening like an animal hiding in a cave.
‘Excuse me!’ he snapped, although his voice sounded higher than he had intended. ‘Who the hell are you and what the hell do you think you’re doing here?’
‘You what?’ the man retorted. ‘I could ask you the same bleeding question. Here I am just about to take meself off down the pub and you come barging in here like you own the gaff, shouting out some load of old bollocks. I hope it’s not my missus you think you’re going to be meeting up with, because you’re in dead trouble if it is.’
Kenneth approached him, breathing hard. The brim of the man’s hat reached up only to Kenneth’s chest, but he had a threatening spring-loaded tension about him. Now that he was closer, Kenneth could see that he had a pink cord-like scar that ran all the way from his right cheekbone to the side of his mouth. His coat reeked of cigarette smoke.
‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,’ Kenneth told him. ‘All I can say is that you had better make yourself scarce, right now, because if you don’t I’m going to call the police.’
He took his phone out of his pocket and held it up.
The man tilted his head left and right, looking up and down the hallway.
‘Oh, yes? Call the filth, will you? And how are you going to do that?’
Kenneth said, ‘Dial nine-nine-nine, of course.’
‘Oh, yes? How? There ain’t no phone here that I can see.’
‘What do you think this is?’ said Kenneth, holding his phone right up in front of the man’s face.
‘How the fuck should I know? Some kind of fancy fag lighter? Now get your arse out of here before I get really lairy.’
‘Right! That’s it! Gemma! Gemma – where are you? Gemma!’
‘I’m just getting out of the shower, Ken!’ called a faint voice from upstairs. ‘What’s going on down there?’
‘We’ve got an intruder! He won’t go so I’m calling the police!’
The man jabbed Kenneth in the breastbone, twice.
‘No, mate, you’ve got it wrong. You’re the one who’s leaving. You and whoever that bird is you’ve sneaked in upstairs.’
Kenneth started to prod at his phone, but even though the man didn’t appear to know what it was, he knocked it out of his hand and it clattered onto the floor.
Kenneth bent down to pick it up, but without any hesitation the man pushed him roughly against the side of the staircase, so that his head knocked against the newel post. He stood up straight again, dabbing at his right earlobe, and his fingertips came away with blood on them.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’re out.’
He had never been in a fight in his life, but he had taken three ju-jitsu lessons when he was working for Newham Council. He seized the lapels of the man’s overcoat and tried to swing him around so that he could force him along the hallway and out of the front door. But the man was far too heavy and far too strong, and he seemed almost to be glued to the floor. He pushed Kenneth again, even harder this time, so that Kenneth lost his grip on his lapels and fell over backwards.
As he tried to climb back up onto his feet, the man reached into his overcoat and tugged out a large black automatic pistol. Holding it in both hands, he pointed it directly up at Kenneth’s face and said harshly, ‘I warned you, didn’t I, mate? I fucking warned you! Don’t say I didn’t!’
He pulled the trigger and there was a deafening bang. Kenneth’s nose was blown inwards and the back of his head exploded, so that blood and glistening beige lumps of his brain tissue were sprayed up the striped wallpaper behind him.
‘What’s happening! What was that noise?’ screamed Gemma from the bedroom. ‘Ken – what’s happened?’
Kenneth collapsed onto the floor, with gun smoke curling lazily above his head. As the man pushed his automatic back into his overcoat, he shook his head and tutted, as if he were disappointed that Kenneth had forced him to take such drastic action. Then he bent down, took hold of the collar of Kenneth’s anorak, and started to drag his body along the hallway.
Gemma had hastily wrapped herself in her pink dressing gown, and she came to the top of the stairs just as the man reached the front door.
‘Stop!’ she screamed. ‘Stop!’
The man stopped and turned around, staring back up at her. The expression on his face was enough to freeze her. Although he was so stocky, she was struck by how disproportionately short his legs were. He seemed to be wearing no shoes. In fact, he appeared to have no feet. When he turned back and started to bump Kenneth’s body over the front step, she could see that his trouser turn-ups were trailing along the floor.
She stumbled down the stairs, but she was too late. The
She rushed outside, too shocked and horrified even to scream anymore. She looked frantically up and down the street, but the pavements were deserted, and there was no sign of the man anywhere.
She dropped to her knees beside Kenneth’s body, whispering, ‘Ken… Ken… can you hear me?’
His face was a grisly mess, although his eyes were open. But then his body rolled over and she saw the back of his head and her whole world fell inwards.
2
‘I’m sincerely hoping you haven’t had your breakfast yet,’ said the lead crime scene investigator, leading them along the hallway.
He was totally bald with bulging green eyes and enormous ears, and in his baggy white Tyvek suit his head appeared to be too small for him. His name was Derek Grant, but Jerry had always thought that he looked like an alien from a 1950s sci-fi movie, so he called him the Martian.
‘Actually, I was planning on having beans on toast, but the bread had gone green,’ Jerry told him. He paused when they reached the living-room door and said, ‘It’s one of those, then, is it? A PYGU.’
‘Well, it’s unusual, I’ll give you that. I’ve never come across anything like it, and I’ve been doing this for fifteen years now.’
Edge said, ‘Maybe I’d better wait outside. I had chicken biryani.’
‘You’re having a laugh! For breakfast?’
‘I fell asleep last night before I’d finished my takeaway. Anyhow, I like cold curry.’
‘Jesus. I thought your breath was a bit on the ripe side. But don’t think you’re not coming in to see this too. If you puke your guts up, too bad.’
Two uniformed officers had met them outside when they arrived and had now followed them into the house. One of them said, ‘Puke your guts up? You will, mate. I guarantee it. I did. The return of the well-chewed bangers.’
The other one said, ‘I thought DI Baker was handling this one.’
‘He is, but he’s been delayed,’ said Jerry. ‘He’s just had a baby.’
‘Freddy Baker? I didn’t know he had it in him.’
‘He didn’t. His wife did.’
Jerry and Edge were already wearing plastic overshoes, but now they hooked surgical masks behind their ears. The Martian led them into the living room. The curtains were drawn but the living room and the dining room next to it were both brightly lit with LED spotlights on tripods.
‘Blimey,’ said Edge. ‘This looks like my gran’s house.’
The living room was wallpapered with brown chrysanthemums and furnished with a tired-looking brown sofa and two equally exhausted armchairs, as well as a coffee table with a frayed lace cloth draped over it. Above the brick fireplace hung a framed print of The Singing Butler by Jack Vettriano, a swanky couple dancing on a rainy beach while their maid and their butler held umbrellas up in the wind.
‘Jesus,’ said Jerry. ‘That picture’s enough to make me chuck up. My wife used to love it.’
‘Victim’s through here,’ the Martian told him.
He pushed back the sliding glass door that separated the living room from the dining room. Three other investigators were standing around the dining-room table, two men and a woman, taking photographs and videos and making measurements. Jerry recognised the woman from several previous shouts, even though she was wearing a face mask. He wiggled his fingers at her, but she was too busy taking a picture of the victim’s left arm to notice him.
‘Gordon Bennett,’ said Edge, and pressed his hand over his mask.
The victim was lying on her back on the table. She was naked, a white woman in her late thirties or early forties, Jerry would have guessed. She had frizzy hair, a dark ginger colour, and a narrow plume of pubic hair the same colour. She was plumpish, with large breasts and a slightly sagging stomach, but she wasn’t so fat that Edge would have described her as lardy.
There was no question how she had been killed, or what had been done to her before or after her death. Hopefully after, thought Jerry, for her sake. Her wrists and her ankles had been lashed to the table legs with nylon washing line, so that she would have been unable to struggle, no matter how much agony she was suffering.
Her throat had been cut, all the way down to her vertebra, so that her head had tilted back and her neck was gaping open. She had also been sliced from her face to her feet in a herringbone pattern, with deep diagonal incisions that went right through to the bone, each about two inches apart. Her breasts had been sliced in the same way, right down to her ribcage, like two jammy puddings.
She had bled copiously, although all of the blood had dried now, and that indicated to Jerry that she had probably been cut up while she was still alive.
‘Body temperature indicates time of death around midnight last night,’ said the Martian, his voice muffled behind his mask. ‘She’s been sexually assaulted, although there’s no traces of semen. All we’ve been able to find so far is some footprints on the carpet and some gritty residue that may have been carried into the house on the soles of the perpetrator’s shoes.’
‘Do we have a name?’
‘Yes,’ said one of the uniformed officers, from behind him. ‘Kathleen Hartley. Supply teacher, apparently, for Lavender Hill School. She’s the daughter of the couple who own this house, and she’s been staying here to look after it while they’re on their holidays in Tenerife.’
‘What else do we know about her? Is she married, or in some kind of partnership?’
‘Single. That’s all we’ve been able to find out so far. She shares a flat in Elsley Road with another teacher, but her flatmate’s away at the moment.’
‘Any idea when she was last seen alive?’
The officer shook his head. ‘She wasn’t needed at the school today, apparently. We’ve already had a word with the neighbours we met outside, but they hadn’t seen her for a couple of days.’
‘Oh, well. We’ll just have to do some door-to-door and check any CCTV. Most of the local shops have closed-circuit cameras.’
Jerry turned back to Kathleen Hartley’s body, with its bone-deep slices. He had seen victims who had been tortured by their murderers before, but he had never seen mutilation like this. He could have believed her assailant had been a butcher or a chef, because she looked as if she had been prepared for display in a butcher’s window, or for roasting in an oven.
‘Sorry, Jer, you’ll have to excuse me,’ said Edge, and let out a crackling burp. ‘I think the biryani’s on the way up.’
Jerry gave him a thumb’s up. He hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast himself, but the sight and the smell had brought up a mouthful of acidic, coffee-tasting bile. He had swallowed it back down again, but he could only hope that it was going to stay there. His stomach was clenching and unclenching as tightly as a bookmaker’s fist.
He looked around the dining room. Like the living room, it was wallpapered with faded brown flowers. Apart from the dining table and six mismatched dining chairs, the only other furniture was a cheap varnished sideboard and a spindly three-tier plant stand with two spider plants and a peace lily. Everybody in the room was reflected in a large distorting mirror that hung over the sideboard.
The woman investigator said, ‘Excuse me,’ and came around the end of the table with her camera to photograph Kathleen Hartley’s legs and feet. Jerry had to step back, and he bumped into the plant stand. He caught hold of it to stop it falling over, but the peace lily pot tipped over and a bent cigarette end dropped out of it.
‘Here,’ he said to the Martian. ‘Somebody’s put out a fag end in here.’
The Martian came over and peered into the pot. ‘Yes, right, we’ll test that,’ he said. ‘Presumably the Hartleys aren’t smokers. There’s no ashtrays around here and the house doesn’t smell of smoke. It doesn’t look like our victim smoked either. No nicotine stains on her fingers, or her teeth.’
He asked the woman investigator to take several photographs of the cigarette end, and then he carefully picked it up with a pair of tweezers. Before he dropped it into a plastic evidence bag, he pulled down his mask and sniffed it.
‘Woof,’ he said. ‘That is one seriously pungent cigarette.’
He held it up so that Jerry could smell it too.
‘Blimey. I never smelled a fag like that before. That’s well ripe, that is.’
