The Good Samaritan: A heart-stopping and utterly gripping emotional thriller that will keep you hooked

by C J Parsons

  ‘That’s OK,’ Carrie said. ‘We’ll be home in a few days, and everything will go back to normal.’

  ‘Is Josh coming too? Is he still having a sleepover at our house?’ Sofia’s eyes shifted to Josh, addressing her next words to him. ‘Can you keep staying with us and making bagels?’

  Carrie smoothed the damp curls, trying to think how best to answer. Her daughter needed to accept that the current living arrangement was only temporary, not become too attached. Because, sooner or later, the investigation would wrap up and either the danger would pass – or they’d learn to live with it. Then Josh would go back to Clapham and he and Carrie would resume the rhythms of a normal courtship.

  So she was about to tell Sofia: no, Josh wouldn’t be with them much longer; he had his own house and would be returning there soon.

  But Josh spoke up before she had the chance.

  ‘Of course I’ll keep staying.’ He gave Carrie’s fingers a squeeze. ‘We’re family now.’

  ‘So?’

  Alistair shrugged as he looked at the sheet Juliet had just placed in front of him. She leaned over his shoulder and tapped the signature fifth from the top.

  ‘Yes, yes, I saw the name. I’m just wondering why you think it’s significant. His job must put him on sign-in sheets for pretty much every architecture firm in London. It would almost be weirder if he hadn’t visited a high-profile firm like Wescott. And more to the point, we’ve already ruled him out. He has an alibi.’

  ‘I know that.’ Juliet frowned down at the cramped, square signature. ‘But given the timing, I’d like to dig a little deeper into his background.’

  Alistair shrugged again as he handed back the sheet. She had the distinct impression he was starting to lose patience with this little detour away from the prime suspect.

  ‘Suit yourself. Meanwhile, I’ll finish ploughing through these.’ And he sighed louder than was necessary before returning his attention to the pile of sign-in sheets on his desk.

  Thirty-one

  It was late by the time they arrived home from hospital. Sofia had fallen asleep in the car, so Josh carried her inside.

  ‘I’ve got her,’ he said over his shoulder, as Carrie followed him up the stairs. ‘Why don’t you crack open a bottle of wine while I put her to bed? God knows we deserve it after everything we’ve been through.’

  ‘No. I want to come.’

  In the bedroom, she pulled aside the unicorn duvet as he gently lowered Sofia onto her mattress.

  ‘I’ll change her into pyjamas,’ Carrie said, opening a drawer, eager to reinstate normality – to throw herself into routine’s warm embrace. But Josh placed a restraining hand on her arm.

  ‘Why don’t we leave her be, rather than risk waking her?’

  ‘She won’t wake,’ Carrie said, throwing off his hand as irritation zipped through her. She began flipping through the stack of pyjamas. ‘She’s a deep sleeper.’

  ‘In that case, it won’t matter to her whether she’s wearing pyjamas or leggings and a T-shirt. I say we grab the chance to relax for a moment, just the two of us. Put ourselves first for a change.’

  ‘Sofia comes first,’ Carrie said, selecting a set of pyjamas covered with scenes from Peter Rabbit. ‘She always has and she always will.’

  He was silent after that, as she gently lifted the T-shirt up, hurrying through the part where the cloth passed over her daughter’s mouth and nose. Sofia shifted and sighed in her sleep but didn’t wake. Then Carrie carefully put her arms through the PJ top, pulling it down into place, exactly as she’d done a thousand times before, the simple ritual telling her that everything was as it should be. A feeling of warmth blossomed in her core, spreading outward.

  When she turned to pick up the bottoms, Josh was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, staring at Sofia with his eyebrows pushed together, making the skin between them buckle. When he saw her looking, his face reconfigured into a smile.

  ‘This is clearly a one-person job, so why don’t I leave you to it and go open some wine? I’ll wait for you downstairs.’

  Carrie gave him a brief nod before picking up the PJ bottoms and returning her attention to her daughter.

  Tragic Son Runs into Flaming House in Failed Bid to Rescue Mother

  A teenage boy suffered smoke inhalation and burns after risking his life trying to save his mother from a house fire at The Vineyard, just south of Abbotsbury.

  Josh Skelter, 17, was found unconscious inside the front door. Celebrated architect Lena Skelter, 42, died, along with her partner, Angus Michaels, 36, after they became trapped inside the flaming building.

  Detective Inspector Aaron Wilde described the fire as a ‘tragic accident’.

  ‘Michaels ingested alcohol and then fell asleep on the sofa with a lit cigarette,’ Wilde said. ‘The resulting fire reached an open bottle of whisky lying beside him, which acted as an accelerant.’

  Lena Skelter was asleep upstairs when the fire broke out. She shouted out the window to her son, who tried to convince her to jump to safety from the first floor. But she refused to leave without her partner. The award-winning architect ran downstairs to try to save Michaels, but was quickly overcome by smoke.

  ‘That’s when the boy ran into the burning house, ignoring the risk to his own life,’ Wilde said. ‘Josh Skelter is a hero.’

  Juliet parked her feet on her desk as she reread the clipping the Abbotsbury Courier had sent over. The front-page story was illustrated with two photos. The largest showed an oddly-shaped house being consumed by fire. Flames licked through cracks in the plate-glass windows on the main floor, obscuring the row of smaller windows running along the level above. Below was a smaller picture: a close-up of a young Josh Skelter lying in the back of an ambulance, his skin stained with soot, an oxygen mask strapped over his mouth and nose. Juliet stared at that face for a long time, seeing shock and horror there. Stunned disbelief.

  She had spoken to Osman Baig, and now knew why Skelter’s name had appeared on the Wescott visitors’ list. One of Carrie’s designs had won a prize sponsored by the magazine, so he’d gone there to research a profile piece on the company to run alongside the main award story. The original plan had been for Josh to interview Carrie as well as Osman. But she’d had to run off early that day, after the school called to say that Sofia had fallen off a swing and banged her head.

  Osman had told Juliet all about it, and even showed her a copy of the London Architects’ Monthly article.

  So Alistair was right: the visit made perfect sense. But something was nagging at her, buzzing around at the back of her skull liked a trapped wasp, driving her to go on to Google Earth and locate Eva Skelter’s house. To look up the number of the police station that would have dealt with the fire.

  She took one last look at the face of the boy in the ambulance.

  Then she picked up the phone and began to dial.

  Thirty-two

  ‘What the hell is he doing here?’

  Simon was standing just inside the front door, looking past Carrie’s shoulder to the kitchen, where Josh was making coffee. Simon hadn’t taken off his rucksack, which normally meant that he wasn’t planning to stay long. Aside from that, she had no clue what his intentions were, given that he had dropped by without calling first.

  ‘Josh is staying here.’

  Simon stared at her for a moment longer, apparently waiting for more. Then he sighed. ‘Explain to me.’

  Explain to me. She’d almost forgotten how those three words had punctuated their relationship, passed back and forth between them. She would say them while waving an open hand in front of his face, to show she needed him to translate his expression (‘That’s bemused affection, Carrie’, ‘faint surprise mixed with cynicism’, and, towards the end: ‘weary resignation’).

  Simon had used them to signal that she had failed to provide him w
ith enough information. (‘How are you Carrie?’, ‘Frustrated and angry’, ‘Explain to me’; ‘I need to ask the doctor if the baby will be like me’, ‘“Like you?”’, ‘Yes’. ‘Explain to me’.)

  Hearing them now, she weighed her response, trying to work out exactly what he wanted, how much more information was required.

  ‘Josh offered to stay in the spare room for a few nights. I accepted his offer.’

  ‘Because you’re in a relationship?’

  ‘No, as an added security measure.’

  ‘But are you?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘In a relationship with . . .’ He waved his hand towards the back of the house, where Josh was pouring coffee into two mugs. ‘Him. Mr Good Samaritan.’

  ‘His name is Josh Skelter. Yes, we are in a relationship.’

  Josh carried the two mugs to the dining table. ‘Shall I make some more coffee for our guest?’

  ‘I’m not a guest,’ Simon said, leaning on the ‘s’ so that it sounded like a snake-hiss. ‘I’m Sofia’s father, checking on my daughter’s recovery. If anyone’s a guest around here, it’s you, matey.’

  Josh pulled back a teak chair and sat down.

  ‘Well, Sofia is asleep. If you don’t wish to join us for coffee, we can call to let you know when she wakes up, so you don’t have to hang around the house waiting.’ He picked up his mug and took a sip.

  Simon’s features contorted and reddened. Carrie circled her palm in front of his face.

  ‘Explain to me.’

  ‘Absolute fucking fury.’ He spat out the words, as though they were spoiled food. ‘I am outraged that I wasn’t notified about this change to my daughter’s living arrangements. Also deep concern that you have invited a virtual stranger into her home, on the strength of the fact that he just so happened to stumble across Sofia on a deserted path.’ Simon’s eyes jumped to Josh, narrowing. ‘Or so he claims.’

  Josh put down his cup and stretched out his legs, crossing his feet at the ankles. His features appeared completely flat as he said: ‘I’m sorry my presence here displeases you. I had hoped that my staying here for a bit would make everyone feel more relaxed, but it’s clearly having the opposite effect where you’re concerned. As for your implication that I’ve been duplicitous in some way . . . my account of events surrounding the abduction has already been verified by the police. Unless . . . perhaps you think the police are in on it? A conspiracy of some kind?’ He smiled, which seemed odd to Carrie, given what he’d just said. ‘Well, finding out about your daughter’s meningitis must have come as a shock.’ He shook his head. ‘A terrible shock. So no one could blame you for being thrown a little . . . off balance. Especially given your history.’

  Carrie looked back and forth between the two men, noticing the way Simon was clenching and unclenching his fingers, turning them from fists into empty hands and back again.

  ‘Do not try and make this about me and my condition. Yes, I have experienced occasional episodes of psychosis. But I’m not having one right now. I am seeing things exactly as they are.’ Fists-hands-fists-hands. ‘And I have to say, I’m impressed. In the space of just one month, you’ve managed to install yourself in my daughter’s home. Fast work.’

  Josh folded his arms.

  ‘As I’ve already explained: I am only here temporarily, to make everyone more comfortable while Sofia’s abductor is still at large.’

  ‘Funnily enough, discovering that a man I know almost nothing about is staying under the same roof as my child doesn’t give me a great deal of comfort.’

  Simon turned to Carrie, who had been following the conversation like a tennis game, head swivelling back and forth between the two men, trying to read the situation. He spoke in a low voice.

  ‘I don’t like him being here. I have a bad feeling about it.’

  ‘I know all about your bad feelings. I have witnessed your experience of them. And taken Sofia to hospital to repair the damage.’

  Simon’s features scrunched together. He sucked air through clenched teeth.

  ‘But you admit that when I’m . . . myself . . . I have good instincts. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, don’t you trust them?’

  ‘No.’

  Her attention must have been completely focused on Simon, because she hadn’t registered that Josh had left the table until his arm brushed hers. She turned to find him standing right beside her.

  ‘I think we’re done here,’ he told Simon quietly. ‘Time for you to go.’

  For a few seconds, the two men just looked at each other in silence. Then Josh took a step forwards, so that they were only a few inches apart. Simon gave him a mouth-only smile.

  ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll go. But just so we’re clear: I’ll be watching you.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Josh leaned forward, until there was no distance between them. ‘Because I’ll be watching you too.’

  Aaron Wilde was dead. He’d keeled over at work seven years earlier clutching his chest, turned blue and been carted away, never to return.

  What struck Juliet was the station sergeant’s complete lack of emotion as he shared these details: chair tipped back, fingers laced across his domed belly.

  Ed Keane’s office spoke of a lacklustre life, both on and off the force. An outdated computer shared desk space with a potted cactus and a framed photo of a Labrador puppy. The walls were bare aside from a large map of Surrey behind him. No commendations, trophy newspaper articles or photos of handshakes with grateful politicians.

  Juliet had decided to take as few notes as possible – partly to promote a guard-lowering sense of casual conversation, partly to allow her to watch his face. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant face to watch: thin lips and hooded eyes; a nose mapped by veins telling of too many hours at the pub; a salt-and-pepper horseshoe wrapped around a sweaty scalp.

  The chair tipped forward as he shifted his weight, planting meaty hands on the desk.

  ‘So you said on the phone you wanted to discuss a case I worked with DI Wilde. Care to tell me which one?’

  It was obvious that Keane didn’t fancy her in the slightest, so when his eyes did an up-down flick, she concluded that he wasn’t best pleased to find himself being questioned by a younger woman of a higher rank – especially one with her skin colour.

  ‘Before we get into that, can I ask: did you and DI Wilde work together a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’ His lip curled as he said it.

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you?’

  The answer was obvious, but she was curious to see how he’d react, how candid he’d be.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ He leaned back again, the chair creaking in protest. ‘He was a dick.’

  She waited for him to add a caveat about not wanting to speak ill of the dead, but he just sat there, staring across at her, his head framed by the map of Surrey. It occurred to her that her ethnicity might actually work in her favour this time. Because although she could feel the resentment coming off him in waves, he hadn’t told her where to stick her nosey questions, that his relationship with a dead colleague was none of her damned business. The fact was, there weren’t that many senior officers who looked like her in this part of the country – certainly nowhere near as many as in London. Keane was probably worried about letting his prejudices show, or of breaking one of the new rules surrounding the treatment of women and minorities. And it was making him overcompensate, revealing more than he had to.

  ‘In what way was he a dick?’ She flicked him a smile. ‘I’ve found there are many different kinds.’

  He scratched the pouch of skin under his chin, making it wobble.

  ‘Egotistical, stubborn, closed-minded. Not interested in anyone’s opinion but his own.’

  Juliet took the Abbotsbury Courier clipping out of her satchel, pushing it acro
ss the desk.

  ‘Is that how you would characterise his approach on this case?’

  Sergeant Keane picked up the page and squinted at the words, then held it further away. Juliet watched with vague amusement as he moved it forwards and back, trying to bring the print into focus. He needs reading glasses, she thought, but he won’t admit it. Wilde clearly hadn’t been the only egotistical, stubborn man working at this station.

  Keane’s face suddenly lit with memory.

  ‘Yes, I remember this fire.’ His eyes widened and narrowed a few more times as he struggled to see the photos. ‘It was just bad luck that the mother – what was her name again?’ He must have given up on deciphering the newsprint, because his small eyes drifted memory-searching right. ‘Amy? Avery?’ He nodded to himself. ‘That was it. Avery. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She came back early from some architecture conference.’

  Juliet decided not to correct him about the mother’s name. She suspected she’d get further by appealing to his ego.

  ‘I’m impressed that you can recall so much about the case, given that it was dismissed as an accident twenty years ago. You must have an amazing memory.’ She sighed. ‘I wish mine was as good.’

  Her words had the desired effect. The sergeant’s chest puffed.

  ‘It was one of my first cases. I’d only been on the job a couple of weeks. And as for it being an accident . . . let’s just say, I had my doubts.’ The words made Juliet’s spine straighten. ‘But would Wilde listen to a word I said?’ He scoffed, tossing the clipping back across the desk. ‘No fucking chance.’

  Juliet’s heart was gaining speed, but she kept her tone light and casual.

  ‘What made you doubt it was an accident?’

  ‘I interviewed the neighbours. One of them said the boyfriend had quit smoking a month earlier. They used to see him having fags in the front garden all the time, but then he stopped. He told them that Avery – what was her surname?’ He ran a palm over his exposed scalp, frowning.