by Diane Saxon
The watery shadow of someone approaching filled the small square of thick frosted window and shot her pulse into an erratic rhythm of nerves.
She reached up to run her fingers through the length of her straight, blonde hair.
What would she say?
Tell him everything. Tell him how you feel, how sorry you are, how much you love him. He’ll understand. He’ll know the truth of it the moment he sees you again. Why wouldn’t he? The hoarse whisper instilled her with the conviction that wavered for a short moment.
The little woman who swung the door open made the words Emily had ready to pour forth stick in her throat as her jaw dropped to leave her open-mouthed and speechless.
Nothing like she’d expected. Petite, delicate. Much younger than Zak. Stunningly beautiful with big brown eyes brimming with happiness and a face flushed with pleasure.
That happiness should be yours, the voice sneered at her, its disgust a slithering darkness in her stomach. She’s snatched away your happiness. Your future. Are you going to allow it?
The young woman raised her chin to look up at her, her perfectly plump lips tilted up at the edges in a friendly smile. ‘Hello.’
In the silence, the woman’s lips quivered uncertainly before the smile fell away.
‘Can I help you?’
Emily battened down on the spike of fury that refused to be completely contained. It simmered away while she assessed her adversary, narrowing her eyes to take in the skinny, flat-chested woman whose head barely reached Emily’s chin.
She stretched her lips in a wide smile, bright enough to chase away the shimmer of doubt that lurked for a brief flicker of time in the other woman’s eyes. ‘Is Zak home?’
‘Zak…?’ The woman’s gaze skittered skyward to above where the noise came from before it settled back on her. ‘He’s busy. Can I help? I’m Imelda,’ she grinned with overexaggerated delight, ‘his wife.’
His new wife. The conceited bitch. How dare she flaunt her fortune in your face.
Emily tilted her head to one side, flickered her gaze down to take in the prissy gingham tea towel Imelda clutched against the distinct rounded bump of her belly.
Fire raced over Emily’s skin to shoot up her neck and into her face in a blaze of fury.
His wife! the voice shrieked in her mind, setting her teeth on edge. The little bitch is pregnant!
‘No!’ The voice burst from her constricted throat in a threatening growl, deep and feral.
Sly and insidious, the voice grated in her ear. That’s how she got him. She tricked him. He’ll know. The moment he sees you he’ll know what a mistake he made. You just need him to see you. Make her get him.
Emily breathed in through her nose and towered above the slighter woman. ‘I said I want Zak!’
Imelda’s long black lashes fluttered over deep brown eyes filled with shocked uncertainty as she took a step back. Her lips popped open as she reached out with one delicate hand for the door.
Emily clenched her teeth against the rise in fury as instinct kicked in and she snatched at the smaller woman’s hand before Imelda could swing the door closed against her. Grasped it in her much larger one, she gave her fingers a squeeze.
Got her. You’ve got her, now. The voice breathed its encouragement.
The jolt of pleasure warmed her insides at the fear churning through the other woman’s expression.
She placed one foot inside the hallway and leaned in closer.
‘I want Zak.’ She couldn’t make it clearer.
What does the woman expect? He belongs to you. Not Imelda. The soft purr filled her with conviction.
‘Get him for me now.’ She didn’t need to raise her voice. It was deep, clear and there could be no misunderstanding.
Imelda twisted her hand around but failed to prise her slender wrist from Emily’s hard grasp. She took another step back, and Emily followed her into the hallway as it widened out into a neat little square of cracked and broken red chequerboard Victorian tiles.
‘Get out!’ Imelda’s eyes widened with panic. ‘Get out of our house.’ Imelda yanked at her wrist, but Emily held firm, determination and focus in her grip.
Recognition flashed over Imelda’s features. ‘I know who you are.’
The dark thrill of the other woman’s fear kicked Emily’s adrenaline up, sending her heart into a fast, uneven rhythm to overpower the small wash of drugs her body still retained.
‘I know you.’ Imelda jerked her head back, the edges of her faded smile turned downwards, she made a quick scan from head to foot. Annoyance replaced the fear in her gaze and instead of backing away, she took a step forward to bring their faces close together as she peered up into Emily’s eyes. ‘Zak told me all about you when we first met. All about you. And no, you can’t see him. You need to leave. Right now, before I call the police.’
In the face of the other woman’s anger, fury whipped up without warning and Emily let out the pained yowl of an injured animal as the sound of the electric tool vibrated through the house, filling her head with white noise. A noise she was all too familiar with.
Too late, Imelda realised her mistake in provoking Emily and the bravery washed away to be replaced with terror as she stepped further back into her hallway, her wrist still in the firm vice of Emily’s fingers.
A red haze blanketed Emily’s vision.
She tightened her fingers around her car keys, raised her hand and with one, hard jerk she had Imelda stumbling forward as she slashed at her face.
Dark satisfaction throbbed through her veins as the other woman’s skin unzipped and scarlet bloomed to run from the thin gash on her cheek down the side of her neck. Her distressed cry was little more than a squeak as Imelda whipped her hand to her cheek, shock streaking over her face as she removed her blood-streaked fingers to stare at them.
Imelda teetered backwards, her petite body no real measure for the power of vibrating fury.
Filled with unsatisfied blood lust, Emily’s fist connected with Imelda’s face once more, vicious and focused, all semblance of sanity evaporating in the crimson cloud of rage.
She punched a third time and caught the woman on the end of her chin and grinned as Imelda went down.
Not an elegant crumple to her knees but a poleaxe.
The wet smack of Imelda’s head as it made contact with the tiles would have made a lesser heart contract, but too intent, too focused on the woman who had stolen her soulmate, Emily never flinched.
Flat on the floor, Imelda’s delicate body prone, the gentle bulge in her stomach drew Emily’s gaze.
Incensed, rage boiled in a seething lava.
Get her, the voice roared in her head.
Unleashed, her temper erupted and she launched herself on top of Imelda, her knees either side of the woman’s bloated belly.
She grabbed at the perfect chestnut locks and heaved the woman’s head up until their noses almost touched, then slammed it down onto the hard surface.
Smack!
Smack!
The thud of it roiled around in Emily’s stomach to give her nothing but satisfaction while the electric thrum from upstairs filled her mind to spur her on.
Silence dropped like a white blanket over the house as the whine and drone from the electric equipment overhead cut off to leave the distant throb of Jordan North’s BBC 1 jingle drifting from upstairs.
Emily raised her head, breath soughing through her chest as she unravelled the thick hair from around her fingers. Her lips curled with distaste as she flicked off strands she’d ripped from Imelda’s scalp.
Through eyes cleared of the raging hatred, she rested back on her heels, her backside on Imelda’s skinny thighs.
Unsure, confusion stuttered through her at the scene.
Slicked with sweat, her blood-stained keys rattled in her sticky fingers as she raised her hands to her cheeks, her voice hushed and rusty.
‘What have you done? Oh, Emily, what have you done?’
With no reply f
rom the voice, she held her breath and waited. Where was it? Where was the support when she needed it most?
Her gaze focused on Imelda’s face as the slow spread of blood pooled out from around the woman’s head and drizzled from the gash on her cheek. Brown eyes wide, blank and staring up at the ceiling, frozen in death.
‘Oh, you’ve killed her, Emily. What have you done now? You’ve killed her.’
She raised a trembling hand and covered her mouth, numb to everything as her world ground to a standstill to leave her in a vacuum of her own making.
She tilted her head to one side and held her breath.
The vague strumming of a child’s song filtered through her consciousness to make the hairs on the back of her neck give a warning tingle as she became aware of another presence.
Heart pounding so loud, all other noise was blocked out, she turned her head in slow motion, her fingers gripping tight to the car keys, her one grasp on reality.
Her lips parted as the weight of her jaw pulled down and her mouth dropped open. Her breath stuttered out in faltering little puffs as her attention centred on the intent gaze pinning her in place.
As the plump-cheeked child stumbled forward with the awkward, drunken motion of someone who has just learnt to walk, Emily’s breath came back in a rush of heart-rending love.
Dark curls tight to its head, violet eyes, so like its father’s, were instantly recognisable.
Emily’s heart soared as the child slipped its forefinger from between plump, wet lips and stared her straight in the eye. ‘Mama?’
5
Sunday 11 July, 11:10 hrs
Damn, but it was hot.
Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan dabbed a bead of sweat from her top lip and then flopped her forehead onto her arms, where they rested on her desk in Malinsgate police station.
Some cheeky sod had whipped her fan from her office for their own relief from the overwhelming heat. If only they had CCTV, she’d find out who the culprit was and whip their arse for them.
Overheated, she shuffled her backside in her chair.
She needed to buy herself some new black trousers. She’d yanked on her winter ones in the blur of her rush that morning. Far too warm for the current weather, but who the hell knew they were about to have a heatwave of epic proportions with the suddenness of a desert storm?
She blew out a breath designed to cool herself, but all it achieved was to make her fringe flutter above her damp forehead for a moment before it settled back to stick to her skin.
Plain-clothes she may be, but black trousers were the unofficial uniform for her and most of the other officers. She very rarely wore anything else. If her head hadn’t hurt so much, she may well have made a different choice. One she’d not have regretted. A good-fitting pair of black trousers were smart, practical and, should the need arise, they never showed the blood or urine stains if she happened to get into a tussle with a suspect. Puke was a different matter, but who could live with the smell of that for more than five minutes in any case? In her position, she’d not been puked on for a number of years now, but the chances of it still made her think twice about her clothing choices. From a purely practical side, although she rarely got in a fight these days, when she did, she didn't want her knickers on display by wearing a skirt.
She rolled her forehead from side to side, the thin film of sweat rubbed off on her cooler forearm as she huffed out a breath.
The temperature had kicked up with unexpected suddenness, sending the whole country into a heatwave. And here she was, on her supposed day off, having to come in to cover for DS ‘lazy arse’ Stevens’ shift in a compact office where the air con had given up the ghost and no one could fix it until Monday, at the earliest.
No surprise Stevens had called in sick, yet again, on his allocated Sunday. The man hadn’t completed a full shift since he’d remarried earlier that year, evidently preferring a nine-to-five job.
The call at 6:05 that morning had done little to endear him to her. Her head, still fuzzy from the bottle of wine she’d consumed, stayed that way despite taking another cold shower and inhaling a single piece of toast before she dashed out of the door, travel mug full of coffee in hand.
She felt like shit, she’d probably feel like shit for the rest of the day, or at least until she finished at 6 p.m.
Jenna raised her head and pressed her fingertips into her eyelids.
She leaned to one side and peered through her open door into the main office. Quiet on a Sunday morning, barely even hushed voices as officers sat at their computers taking advantage of the time to process the paperwork that got side-lined during the week when they were busier.
From what Fliss had told her, she’d most likely see Mason later, and possibly Ryan catching up on paperwork, but currently none of the people on duty were in her team.
The last of the Saturday-night revellers had already been roused, interviewed or cautioned, processed and sent home. The most awkward was the old gentleman who’d recently lost his wife and thought that dropping his pants in public was quite acceptable. A telephone call to his daughter had set the cat amongst the pigeons. She was horrified. Threatened to put him in a home.
Not that a home would do the poor old guy any favours. He wasn’t sick, just horribly lonely and very sad, not understanding what he was supposed to do now his wife of fifty-seven years was gone. His kingpin, his anchor.
Jenna tapped the screen of her iPhone and stared at the time: 11:38. At least she was on an early. She’d be off by 6 p.m. She'd possibly just go home and lie in the back garden with a cool glass of Pinot Grigio and a packet of Walker’s crisps.
Recovery.
She’d let the early evening sun beat down on her while Adrian read his papers in preparation for a court case the following week. Birmingham-based, much of his time since they’d known each other had been taken up by a major case in London. Still on-going, it divided his time. Time with him she’d come to appreciate more and more. Time she should have spent with him today at the beach. It was a good job the man was understanding.
Something inside her warmed each time her sexy chief crown prosecutor came to mind. And he was hers now. Not that she was possessive, but they’d established their relationship. They were exclusive.
They’d only known each other for nine months, but from the first moment they’d met, there’d been an instant bond. Not a simple attraction, but something much deeper, possibly connected with the situation. With her own sister’s disappearance, Adrian had leant Jenna not only his support, his shoulder to cry on and his shared love of a good coffee, but also a solid, unwavering understanding of her deepest, darkest fears. Fears neither of them felt the need to discuss, but both of them were aware of.
She took comfort in the soft touch of his hand against the small of her back on those occasional moments when the dark wave of fear of what may have been, threatened.
For several precious moments, Jenna allowed her still hazy mind to drift.
It would have been lovely to watch the ripples of muscle move under the deep golden skin of his broad, shirtless back as they sat on beach towels in the sun today. Adrian had a gorgeous back. She sighed as the image of it flashed into her mind, and she almost reached out to stroke it as she did in the middle of the night.
With a little spark of irritation, Jenna pushed herself upright and picked at the sliver of nail she’d managed to catch on something.
Fliss had plans for her and Mason to take Domino out walking the Shropshire Hills for the morning with backpacks and a picnic. Too hot to go elsewhere, they’d be trekking through the shaded woodlands, enjoying the cooling breezes. Lovely plans.
Her own plans shot to shit by an inconsiderate colleague.
She glanced at the computer screen and tapped in the few last words on the email she'd been composing before she hit the send button. Satisfied she’d moved another piece of administration from her pile to someone else’s, she picked up her coffee and took a swig at the last dregs in the
bottom to finish it off just as Airwaves – the force radio – sparked to life.
She murmured in the back of her throat as she reached out. ‘Please don’t let it be anything time-consuming.’ She’d enough of a backlog to get through without some petty fraudster interfering with her current workload.
‘DS Morgan.’ The whisky-soft Welsh tones of Morris King, the civilian telephone operator, melted her and if she could carve the contrasting image of his short, rotund baldness out of her head, she might just fall in love with his voice. Despite that, he still managed to bring a smile to her face as she answered.
‘Go ahead, Morris.’
‘We just had a 999 come in, Sarg. One Zak Cheetham-Epstein. There’s a powerful name, don’t you know? He claims to have found his wife dead in the front hallway of their home in Coalbrookdale. He could barely speak, Sarg. Sounded like he was in shock. Front door wide open, he claims. Mr Cheetham-Epstein says there's blood everywhere and he can't believe she's just slipped over and bashed her head. He’s frantic, Sarg. He has no idea why the door was open.’
‘Paramedics?’
‘Just arriving.’
‘Address?’
As he reeled it off, Jenna surged to her feet, already slipping her iPhone into the back pocket of her over-thick trousers and reaching for her small crossover handbag. She slung the strap over her head as she made for the door and glanced around the main office with a soft cluck of disappointment.
‘I’m on my way, shouldn’t be any more than fifteen minutes.’
‘Uniform are on their way, Sarg. ETA approximately three minutes, but this isn’t a straightforward one, which is why I’ve tapped you. Inspector Davies is on his refs.’
‘Not a problem, Morris.’ Everyone was entitled to take a break. ‘It was too quiet for my liking anyway.’ The lie came easily to her lips. He didn’t need to know how disgruntled she was with the other sergeant, Stevens, who’d bunked off just because it was a Sunday, and his new wife couldn’t do without him. She could only hope DI Taylor would have a gentle word in his shell-like, because if it became her responsibility to sort it, gentle would possibly not be the way of things.