‘You have this one,’ the tattooed woman said softly to Keri as a taxi pulled up. ‘You look like you’re having a bad day and could do with some kindness.’
Keri stared at her and started to cry.
52
The kindness of the woman with her strange tattoo was almost Keri’s undoing. She managed a mumbled, tear-choked ‘thank you’ before climbing gratefully into the taxi.
The driver tilted his head waiting for directions. He pulled away when she waved at him with one hand, the other clamped over her mouth to stop the sobs that were lining up to escape.
Perhaps the taxi driver had experienced a similar situation before. It was almost five minutes later before Keri was back in control. She unhooked her handbag from around her neck, dropped it on the seat beside her and sat back with a final snuffle.
The taxi was moving. She wasn’t sure she cared where they were going. It took another five minutes for her to realise they weren’t, in fact, going anywhere. The driver was doing the circle of Victoria Street, Lower Grosvenor Place, Bressenden Place, back onto Victoria Street and around again. Around and around.
Perhaps she should let him continue, put her head back and get some sleep. It was tempting. With a sigh, she sat forward. ‘Thank you. Now, if we could go to Northampton Park.’
‘Good. I was getting dizzy.’
Keri rested her head back and shut her eyes, not to sleep, that was a distant hope, but to try to get her thoughts in order. Once she was home, she’d ring DI Elliot and ask him to call around. Tell him about the Stone Federation investigation, the email they’d received. The detective could put it all together, maybe it would help him catch whatever maniac was out there still searching for revenge.
A maniac who knew where she lived.
She opened her bag to search for her mobile. It would be better if Abbie and Daniel stayed elsewhere but she knew they’d want to be with her, especially if they thought she was in any kind of danger. It would need clever planning. She rang Daniel’s number first, grunting in annoyance when it went to voicemail. Rather than leaving a message, she tried Abbie’s number. Something was going her way, it was answered on the first ring.
‘Hi Mum, you doing okay?’
‘I’m fine, Abs, how about you?’
‘Up and down. You were right though, it was better to come back to lectures.’ Her sigh was long and sad. ‘People are being nice.’
Keri heard the pain in her daughter’s voice and wished she could magic it away. She couldn’t, but she could keep her safe. ‘That’s good. I’m on my way home. You were right, it was too soon to go into the office, but I don’t want to hang around the house either so I’m going to stay with Philip and Louisa for a couple of days. They said you and Daniel are welcome to come too, but I wondered if you’d prefer to stay with your friends. You still have some of your belongings with them, don’t you?’
‘Yeeesss.’ Abbie drew out the one word as she wondered if there was something behind what Keri was saying. Always wary. She and Abbie were so alike it was scary.
‘Just for a few days.’ Keri stopped herself saying more. Gilding the lily would make her daughter more suspicious.
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am. I can sit and chat to Louisa and Philip. You and Daniel sit and talk to your friends. It will help us all. In a couple of days, we can go back home and start adjusting.’
‘Right.’ It was obvious Abbie wasn’t convinced.
‘I’ve tried to get Daniel but he’s not answering, can I leave it to you to talk to him?’
‘Sure, I can get hold of him. He’ll be okay, he’s got good friends.’
‘Okay.’ Keri wanted to tell her daughter to stay safe, to avoid isolated places, to watch out for strangers. For monsters. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow, make sure you’re okay. Love you, darling daughter.’
‘Love you too, adorable ma.’
Keri hung up and sat back with a smile. Adorable ma. The smile faded. How adorable would Abbie think if she knew Keri had cheated on Nathan.
At least Keri was going to be spared that horror. Nobody would ever need know about Barry Morgan.
The traffic was heavy and it was another twenty-five minutes before the taxi pulled up outside her home. ‘Thank you,’ she said, handing the driver the fare plus a healthy tip for his kindness. She was on the footpath, the car door shut behind her before she thought to ask the driver to wait until she was inside. Stupid fear. She hesitated too long and as she turned to make the request, the taxi pulled away.
The street was empty. Not a person in sight. But it didn’t mean there wasn’t someone hiding behind one of the gate pillars or garden walls, even hunkered down behind one of the many parked cars. Hiding and waiting for the right opportunity to pounce.
Inside, she’d be safer. The house looked as it always did: a family home that had been filled with love and happiness.
It looked the same but it was different. Abbie and Daniel would no doubt spend more nights at home for a few weeks, but they’d soon adjust to their new normal. Then, with the resilience for which youth is famed, they’d get on with their lives. Spend more time with their friends. Maybe they’d move into a place of their own. They would hesitate and she’d have to give them that final nudge, unwilling that they should sacrifice their futures for her past.
She opened the garden gate and climbed the steps to the front door, carefully avoiding the one where the wreath and rat had been left. By the time she’d reached the top step, she’d made a decision. The house needed a family, not a lonely woman rattling around the rooms. She’d sell up and buy an apartment. A penthouse maybe, with a view where she could sit, drink wine, and reminisce.
Maybe she’d get a cat. She’d always wanted one but Nathan was… had been… allergic.
She fished in her bag for her house keys. Two locks, two separate keys. Then she was pushing the door open into her big, lonely, silent house.
Silent?
It shouldn’t be. There should be a beep beep from the alarm.
53
Keri had put the house alarm on, hadn’t she?
She was religious about doing so. Nathan used to laugh that she’d put it on even when going to the local shops only ten minutes’ walk away. Always.
But had she done so that morning with all that was on her mind? Maybe the combination of grief and guilt had impacted on her ability to think straight.
She shut the front door and tossed her handbag on the bottom step of the stairs. The silence of the house was almost overpowering, pressing down on her shoulders, making her feet heavy so that each step required a huge amount of concentration. In the living room, she flopped down on the sofa and dropped her head back, eyes gritty from too many tears.
Nathan. How was she going to live without him? What was the point? Whether she was rattling around in this big house or sitting in a fancy apartment looking out over a view she’d nobody to share with.
It would get easier. The pain would fade, the spiky edge of it filed down to a weary continual numbness. Was that preferable? A long slow decline rather than a sharp sudden descent. She shut her eyes, dislodging a hot tear. It trickled down her cheek and plopped onto the collar of her jacket.
A loud bang made her eyes fly open and stare unblinking at the ceiling. They’d lived in this house for almost twenty years. She knew every creak in the floorboards, every rattle of the plumbing, the low hum when the heating clicked on, the squeak of the antique wardrobe in the spare bedroom. Nothing made a loud bang.
Unless… had she left a window open? Or maybe Abbie or Daniel had. She was constantly warning them to shut them before they left their bedrooms but normally Keri would go to check. Just in case.
She hadn’t that morning.
And had forgotten to put the alarm on.
Grief was making her stupidly forgetful, maybe she needed to start making lists.
Top of her mental to-do list was to ring DI Elliot to tell him about the email to the Stone Federation
and her fears that she or her children or both might be next in someone’s plan for vengeance.
She had reached into her pocket for her mobile when the bang came again. From where she sat, she could see the wind blowing through trees in the back garden, the branches swaying with alarming abandon. She’d better go to find what window was open and shut it before something got broken. With her mobile in one hand, she shuffled to the edge of the sofa and got to her feet.
The stairway of the old Victorian house ascended eight steps to a return where the main bathroom was situated, then it swung upward several more steps to the first floor. A separate spiral staircase led from the landing to the attic den.
Keri had started on the second set of steps when she heard a squeak.
You should squirt a bit of WD-40 on the bathroom door hinges. Was it only last week she’d said that to Nathan? He swore by the stuff, would walk around the house armed with it, squirting it willy-nilly.
But maybe he’d forgotten or got waylaid by something more important. Or maybe he’d run out of the damn stuff. ‘How many tins of that do we go through?’ she’d asked him once when she’d seen him with a can in hand. Critical, complaining. She wished she’d bought more. A gallon of it. Several gallons. She’d never get the chance now to make him happy.
It was seconds before fear broke through her sorrow. Why was the bathroom door squeaking? It only did so when it was being opened and it was shut when she’d passed it. She resisted the temptation to turn. Instead, she bounded up the last couple of steps and ran across the landing to her bedroom. She slammed the heavy pine door shut behind her and reached without stopping for the key to lock it top and bottom.
Fear was deafening, numbing, overwhelming. Keri could do nothing except slump to the floor and tremble.
She tried to think rationally. There had been no sign of a break-in. Perhaps the bathroom door hadn’t been shut tightly and a breeze had squeezed through the big sash window to give it enough of a nudge to make it squeak.
It was possible, she wanted to believe it, but terror had her in its grip, reminding her that her death was probably the next step in a madman’s plan for vengeance.
54
If there was someone on the other side of the door they were being quiet. Keri pressed her ear against it, but all she could hear was the wind swirling leaves against the bedroom window behind her. It whistled down the chimney too, an eerie sound that Nathan had said gave him the shivers. She used to laugh at him, but she wasn’t laughing now as she stared over at the fireplace waiting for an intruder to slither down like an evil Santa Claus.
Fear and anger jostled for first place, anger winning by a small margin as she thought of all she’d been through in the last couple of weeks. She banged a fist on the door. ‘Is there someone there? What do you want?’
There was no answer. Nothing to be heard. She rested her forehead against the smooth wood, frustration coursing through her. Perhaps she should face whoever was out there, take back control of something.
It was Abbie and Daniel that kept her strong. If Keri thought that her life would be the end of this crazed person’s need for revenge she might have opened the door and got it over with. She wasn’t sure if she believed in life after death. But in death, she’d be in the same place as Nathan, and that had to be better than being here without him.
But she’d do anything to save her children.
She’d stay locked behind this door until the police arrived. Her mobile was in her hand, she lifted it to ring and looked in disbelief at the blank screen.
Irrationally, she blamed the intruder but then the truth hit her. She hadn’t charged her phone recently.
Despair swallowed her, the darkness of it blinding her so that more precious time was lost before she remembered the rarely used landline. The phone was on her bedside table. She hurried across to it, picked up the handset and pressed 999. Her eyes never left the door as she waited for the call to connect. The house was old, the original doors heavy, the lock set in the top and bottom designed to make the door almost impenetrable.
Nathan insisted the house was impregnable. Front and back doors were double-locked. Every window had a lock, plus stops to prevent the sash windows from being opened more than two inches. Impregnable. So, how could someone have got inside?
Was she simply being paranoid?
She supposed she was allowed to be a little wary considering everything that had happened recently and she’d nearly reached the conclusion she was being silly when she realised her call hadn’t been answered. Had she dialled? Swearing softly, she pressed 999 and held the phone to her ear. No dial tone. No nothing. She looked at it in horror. Tried again. Nothing.
The eerie ghost-story whistle of wind blowing down the bedroom fireplace startled her into dropping the useless handset on the bed and taking a step backward, then another until she was at the window. Turning, she stared out. Should she open the window the two inches allowed and shout for help? But even if she could make her voice heard over the howling wind, there was nobody on the street to hear her.
Leaves were pirouetting along the middle of the road, branches of trees bowing in admiration. Dark clouds dropped a curtain of heavy rain, making the day unusually dark and adding to the dread that was seeping into her bones.
She tried to shake the feeling away. It was a storm. Maybe that was why her landline was dead and doors were banging and squeaking. It was nothing more menacing than British weather.
With a final look up and down the street in search of a saviour, she turned back to face the room. Her mobile charger was downstairs. She should go down. Grab it, lock herself into the utility room and phone for help.
Paranoid, stupid and pathetic. She sat on the corner of the bed, running a hand automatically over the silk bedcover she and Nathan had bought in a shop in India two years before. They had been dazzled by the colours and fabrics and found it impossible to choose between different patterns. Nathan had come up with the perfect solution. He’d insisted on buying one of each and had them shipped home.
‘We’ll have them forever,’ he’d said when she’d remonstrated and frowned at the cost.
Forever. Wasn’t it supposed to last more than two years?
She sank back onto the bed, spreading her arms out. The sound of the wind outside was louder, the whistle down the chimney a shrill, off-tone accompaniment. Keri shut her eyes and fanned her fingers over the silk of the bedcovering.
Memories came swirling back. That shop in India. The kaleidoscope of colours as the assistant shook each of the covers out and let them float down onto the pile that was building on the carpeted floor. The dry dusty smell. Nathan’s dazzling smile. His sheer enjoyment in everything they did.
Life for him was a continuous adventure and if she baulked at something, he was there to grin and drag her onward.
He’d swing her around in his arms and insist they had to make the most of every minute.
Even in her dreams she wept for the minutes she’d not listened to him.
55
The room was in semi-darkness when Keri woke, her face slick with tears. Disorientated, she struggled to get back to sleep, to a dream where Nathan was still alive, but it faded away, as dreams do, and as it did fear slithered back. Unable to believe she’d fallen asleep, she lifted her head to look round the room. Had she imagined someone was in the house?
The curtains were open and the street lights illuminated the furniture but the edges and corners of the room were dark. The bedroom door was locked, she reminded herself. Impregnable. There was nobody waiting in the shadows.
No intruder waiting anywhere in the house.
But the alarm had been off.
She pushed that thought aside, reached out for the bedside lamp, and switched it on, flooding the room with light. And clarity. She’d been tired. The conversation with Tom Radstock had put her on edge and worry had done the rest, sending her into a spiral of paranoia. She lifted her wrist to check her watch, surprised to s
ee she’d slept for two hours.
Maybe now she’d find it easier to get her thoughts together. First thing on her to-do list. Ring DI Elliot.
The storm appeared to have passed. With a lick of hope, she reached for the landline handset but it was still dead. That didn’t mean anything, storm damage could take hours, even days to repair.
Everything was okay. She’d been stupid. This room, the house, they were impregnable.
‘Almost a fortress.’ She continued to reassure herself as she pressed her ear to the door for a long time before lifting a hand to undo one lock, then the other. She listened again before turning the door knob to open the door an inch, peering through, listening again. On high alert, all her senses intensified, she opened it fully.
The house was quiet.
Remembering the initial bangs that had startled her, she slipped along the landing to Daniel’s room. Inside, she saw she’d been right, his window had been left open enough to have caused a draft. End of that mystery.
Keri managed a laugh when she thought of how frightened she’d been. How embarrassing it would have been had she managed to get through to the police. They’d have had to break down the front door to come to her rescue. With a shake of her head at how easily she’d been reduced to a trembling wreck, she picked up her dead mobile and went downstairs.
The hallway light had come on automatically but the kitchen and living room were in darkness when she pushed open the door. Her hand slid up the wall for the switch, the room flooding with light that made her blink.
In the seconds that took her eyes to readjust to the brightness her brain had taken in the sight of the person sitting at the breakfast bar holding a long sharp knife. Keri recognised it as one of a set she’d bought. They were viciously sharp.
Lethal, Nathan had called them when he’d sliced a finger the only time he’d used them.
The Couple in the Photograph Page 19