by S M Hardy
And he was unshaven with a dark shadow of stubble upon his chin and upper lip. A bit like he’d been on an alcohol- or drug-fuelled bender. I recognised the look; a couple of times I’d seen it reflected back at me in the bathroom mirror.
I spooned some coffee into the mug, poured in the just-boiled water, then slopped in a drop of milk and wished it was a measure of something stronger. Just for medicinal purposes. A small snifter won’t do you any harm.
I leant back against the sink and took a sip nearly burning my tongue. I cooled the coffee down with another drop of milk and sat down at the kitchen table.
So what now? Good question.
I reached out for the mug and my hand was shaking. I clenched my fingers into a fist a couple of times, then tried again. Better – my fingers were still trembling but not so much I was in danger of spilling my drink all down myself.
I leant back in the chair and took a sip from my mug. It occurred to me that in my dream I’d been sitting like this but nursing a tumbler of malt. What was it Kat had said? What you have to do is look at the clues you’ve been given.
Clues? What clues?
She’s trying to tell you something and you must listen.
What? What is she trying to tell me? I thought about it for a few minutes. It was true that several times she or her dog had appeared when I’d been in danger. And the flowers – they were obviously … There had been a carnation on my bed. I jumped to my feet and headed for the hall. Was that an indication that I was right about the flowers and the person who had left them? Was she telling me I was on the right track?
I ran up the stairs. The hatch to the attic was still closed at least. I hesitated, looking up. Was the carnation on my bed her way of telling me that it was she who wanted me to go and look in the loft? But then why had my mobile rung to stop me? Maybe the carnation was telling me that my nemesis had been up there waiting. But then why not finish me off while I was sleeping?
This was getting me nowhere. I stalked into the bedroom. The carnation was still on the pillow next to where I had laid my head. I sat down on the bed and picked up the flower. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Krystal?’ I asked, rolling the stem around in my fingers as I studied the curled petals. ‘What is it you want me to do?’
Of course, there was no answer, only silence. One thing was certainly becoming apparent, there was more than one force at work: Krystal and her dog, who so far had saved me in times of peril, and the man in grey, who whether alive or dead was trying to drive me to drink. I couldn’t believe it was Krystal who had been responsible for the moving bottle of Scotch and glass.
Clues, Kat had said. The flowers at Krystal’s grave were definitely a clue. If I could work out who had left them, I was pretty sure I would be well on the way to solving the whole mystery. Unfortunately, I’d blown it; he or she would never risk visiting the churchyard again, at least not while I was still living in Slyford.
I frowned down at the flower in my hand. Why were they still leaving flowers? It was over two years ago since she’d died. Was it guilt? Whoever was at the graveside, although dressed in a long grey coat, wasn’t ‘the man’. The solitary mourner was tall and slim, I could see that much; ‘the man’ was big and bulky.
Then it hit me. It was a woman! I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to see the figure in my head and how they hurried from the grave and along the path. I’m pretty sure it was a woman. Now we were getting somewhere. I’d cut the potential candidates down by approximately half.
If you’re right.
I know a woman’s walk when I see one.
She was dressed like a man.
She was wearing a long grey coat; she could have been wearing anything underneath!
She was wearing trousers.
So? Some women wear hardly anything else. Jeans, slacks, trouser suits. In fact, I’d only ever seen Emma wearing trousers. And that made me pause for thought. Emma was tall and slim. Could it have been her at the churchyard? Could it be Emma who had been leaving flowers on Krystal’s grave? She had obviously been fond of Krystal and her parents.
I went back downstairs, taking the carnation with me and avoiding the living room. I rummaged around in one of the kitchen cabinets until I found a fairly small glass and filled it with about an inch and a half of water as it seemed a shame to let the carnation wither and die before it had to. Then I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Eventually I stuck it on the window sill, where it would at least get some light, and turned my back on it to sit down. I leant back in the chair to get back to thinking.
If it had been Emma at the church, she’d have stopped when I called out. She’d have come and spoken to me. Why wouldn’t she?
Maybe she didn’t want you to know.
I thought on it some more. No, it couldn’t have been Emma. She would have spoken to me. Anyway, why would she drive to the church? She only lived about ten minutes away, tops.
Maybe she was on her way back from getting the flowers. There isn’t a florist in the village.
I took a deep shuddery breath. If it had been Emma leaving the flowers − and it was a big if − why wouldn’t she want me to know it unless she did have something to hide?
She didn’t want to come into the cottage that morning, did she?
I frowned into my coffee cup. No, she didn’t. At the time it had appeared almost like she’d been waiting for me outside the gate. I thought on it some more. A weird expression passed across her face when I’d invited her in.
I frowned into space. No, Emma was nothing to do with all this. Whoever tried to kill me had broken into her house straight after leaving the cottage. She was as much a victim as I.
But was she?
Someone broke into her house.
So she said.
Someone had broken into her house after leaving mine. She called Jed and he’d frightened them off.
Leaving an empty bottle of your whisky.
So?
My inner voice went silent and my mouth was suddenly very dry. Emma wouldn’t. Why would she?
Unless she did have something to hide.
I gave a little shiver and I could feel goosebumps prickle my skin like someone had walked over my grave. Was it possible Emma had a key to the cottage? She’d been a friend of the Morgans. But why would she try to kill me? And what would have all the business with the whisky bottle have been about?
A drunken man with psychological problems breaks into an acquaintance’s house, gets chased off, goes home, realises what he’s done and in a fit of alcohol-fuelled remorse tries to gas himself, not realising it wouldn’t work. He falls asleep or unconscious and when he comes to inadvertently blows himself up by switching on a light.
It all made a horrible kind of sense. But there was still the one big question – why?
I heated some milk in the microwave. I doubted it’d help me to sleep, there was too much stuff whizzing around inside my head, but I could do with a drink and milk was better than coffee. My gut was burning, and it didn’t need any more caffeine. I was dyspeptic enough already.
If Emma was involved, was Jed part of this weird conspiracy too? He was a big hulking man. Was it him on the cliff top?
Then it occurred to me – the night of Emma’s party he couldn’t have been inside the house and outside the window at the same time. If anyone had really been there in the first place. I’d already more or less put that episode down to either my overactive imagination or another ghostly apparition like Krystal.
I just couldn’t believe Emma or Jed were anything to do with what was going on with me. I’m pretty much sure Emma wouldn’t hurt a fly. She was a kind, decent person. And Jed – for all his blather – was a kind and decent man.
No, I wouldn’t believe it. One tall, slim woman putting flowers on a grave didn’t make my friends murderers. There were probably lots of tall, slim women in Slyford, I just hadn’t met any of them yet.
But I had, at Emma’s party. There was Kathy what’s-her-face; she was a tall
, thin redhead with slightly buck teeth, and there was Darcy, I mustn’t forget her. Come to think on it, most of the women there were slim if not tall, other than Miriam and another woman whose name escaped me, but I recalled her husband was a retired banker.
Little by little my anxiety levels began to drop. I’d been working myself up and seeing shadows where there were none. Instead of making mountains out of molehills, I should be trying to find out who was leaving the flowers, though I’d probably missed that chance.
I washed the mug and left it on the drainer, checked the back door and window were locked and, after taking one last glance around making sure everything was as it should be, switched off the light and then went through the whole rigmarole again and again throughout the whole house.
When I was finally convinced the cottage was locked up as tight as it could be, I used the bathroom, decided against taking a Bisodol for my burning stomach, and crossed the hallway to my bedroom, keeping my eyes down and averted from the trapdoor hatch above me. I was not going up there without a flashlight, and as the only one I’d had in the cottage had mysteriously done a vanishing act I wasn’t about to be investigating up there anytime soon.
As I reached for the light switch just inside the bedroom door, I heard a child’s giggle. I stopped, hand outstretched, and waited, listening hard. I was sure I’d heard a giggle, but it had been light and wispy, like it’d been tugged away by a gust of wind.
I clicked on the light and took a look around the room. It was as I’d left it. Covers rumpled, one pillow indented where I’d laid my head, a pink carnation lying on the other.
I started to pull my shirt up over my head and stopped, pulling it back down and jerking around to look at the bed. A pink carnation lay on the second pillow.
I wrapped my arms around myself. This was all getting too weird. Think, Jim, think. I’d definitely taken the flower downstairs. I’d put it in water, for fuck’s sake. I turned to leave the room and stopped.
Little bitch playing with my head. Treating me like I’m fucking stupid. I’ll show her. Little bitch.
The anger drained away, leaving me shivering. It was like before, it hadn’t been me. It’d been like someone else had been inside my head. Even so …
I fumbled in my pocket to pull out my mobile phone. From now on I wasn’t going to let them play with my head. Krystal or the mystery man. I took a couple of pictures of the carnation from slightly different angles and checked to see how they’d come out. Two pictures, both good, both showing a single pink flower lying on the pillow.
I stalked from the room and hurried downstairs. Clicked on the kitchen light and strode over to the sink. A small glass half-filled with water sat on the window sill – but there was no pink flower.
Little bitch.
I scrunched my eyes shut. I didn’t want him inside my head.
I let out a shuddery breath and opened my eyes. There was still no flower. I lifted my phone and took a picture. Maybe I should have thought of this earlier when there actually was a flower in the bloody glass.
I shoved the phone in my pocket, grabbed the glass and strode out of the kitchen, switching the light off as I left and went back up the stairs to bed. I half-expected the loft hatch to be open again or the torch to have magically reappeared on the landing.
Neither had occurred. Nor had the carnation disappeared; it was still there on the pillow where I’d left it.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I muttered, picking up the flower and popping it into the glass of water and thumping it down on the bedside table. ‘Krystal, if you want to tell me something just tell me, or at least make it obvious what you what me to know or do. I’m sick of playing games.’
I pulled off my clothes, throwing them in a heap on the floor. Not my usual way, but I was tired and fractious. The horrible irrational anger had gone, but I was left feeling irritable. I wasn’t even scared any more. I just felt like I was the butt of some awful joke that everyone thought was funny but me.
I pulled back the duvet, dropped down on the bed and flopped back, wrapping myself up in a cocoon. I glanced at the bedside clock before pulling the cover up over my head. It was past midnight and I was too damn grumpy to sleep.
My last conscious thought was that I could smell the carnation even with my head under the covers.
I awoke to bright sunshine slotting under the curtains and the sound of birdsong, and when I rolled over to look at the bedside clock, the first thing I noticed was the glass containing a single pink carnation.
I supposed at least the damn thing hadn’t disappeared again and I wondered whether the torch would turn up sometime today.
As it happened, I felt more cheerful than I had in days. Then I remembered the dreams. But that was just what they were, dreams. I’d worked myself up into a stew and it had given me nightmares, that was all. I wasn’t about to let them bring me down. If I was having a breakdown it was of my own making. I had to pull myself together; I had to get on with my life. I couldn’t bring Kat back and although I would never forget her, I couldn’t make her the excuse for my life falling apart. That was all down to me.
I had to pick myself up, brush myself down and start all over again. Wasn’t that a line from a song? I used the bathroom and cleaned my teeth with the line running through my head over and over again as I tried to remember the tune. By the time I bounced down the stairs I was whistling.
The whisky bottle was in the centre of the kitchen table along with two glasses, one in front of where I’d been sitting in my dream, the other where Kat had been. Mine was empty, hers had an inch in the bottom. I stopped in the doorway, staring at them as my good mood evaporated like a good malt will if left uncorked. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It didn’t do any good.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and took a picture before stepping into the room and almost skidding over.
I looked down at the floor. The tiles were wet. They were wet. I rubbed my hand across my face. How could they be wet? I tried to think. I’d been in the kitchen since the dream. I’d had a cup of coffee. I’d been up and down a couple of times, once to put the carnation in water and once to collect the glass when the flower had somehow got back upstairs and onto my pillow.
I glanced at the window sill by the sink. No glass, no carnation – I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. I turned around and went out into the hall to the cupboard under the stairs. I was sure I’d seen a mop in there propped up in the corner. Sure enough there was, one of those with a sponge head and a handle-like contraption so you could squeeze it out into a bucket. There was one of those too – red, shiny and plastic with a white handle.
As I mopped the floor I wondered where all the water had come from. It hadn’t been there last night, I was sure of it. In the end there wasn’t that much, really. It came to barely an inch in the bottom of the bucket. I propped the mop up by the door outside in the garden to dry, then checked for leaks under the sink. I knew I wouldn’t find one.
That just left the whisky and two glasses on the table.
I had not poured it – I knew I hadn’t poured the inch of liquor that sat there beckoning to me.
Are you sure?
Positive.
Someone did.
But not me.
I went to pick up the glass and hesitated, my hand hovering above it. It wasn’t even nine yet for God’s sake, but – I could almost taste it.
No! In one fluid movement I picked it up, turned and tipped the inch of whisky down the sink. I’m not saying it didn’t pain me – it was a waste of good booze – but it was better than the alternative.
I washed and polished the glass, picked up its twin from the table along with the whisky bottle and took them back to where they belonged. The cabinet was open with the key in the door.
I locked it and took the key across the room and dropped it into a small blue and white patterned dish on the mantelpiece. I was about to walk away but changed my mind. If it was the ghosts of the dead m
aking my life a misery, they would find the key wherever I left it. If it was some unknown person who was still somehow getting into the cottage to mess with my head despite the change of locks, I should make it difficult for them. In fact, maybe I should make it difficult for me.
I did consider freezing the key in a block of ice and hiding it at the back of the freezer, but I didn’t really want to have to explain that to Jed if one night he came back for a swift one. In the end I taped the key to the back of the small carriage clock on the mantelpiece and left it at that.
Now Jed had changed the locks, no one but I should be able to get in and out of the cottage. And Jed; he’d kept a key. Which had me starting to wonder all over again, were Jed and Emma both playing some weird sort of game with me?
No – they couldn’t make me see dead children and priests. Anything that was going on was either all in my head or … or it was real.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On the spur of the moment I decided to forgo breakfast and coffee – I was drinking too much caffeine anyway – and take a drive over to Chalfont. I could always pick up something at the small cafe I’d visited with Jed. Basically, I just wanted to get away from the cottage. I wanted to mix with everyday, normal people. I wanted to get some semblance of a normal life.
I parked in the same small car park as before and stuck forty pence in the meter. A couple of hours would be more than enough and if I wasn’t ready to go back, I could always drive on somewhere else.
I wandered up and down the high street window-shopping. The toyshop was still all kitted out for Halloween and some of the other businesses had put carved-out pumpkins, black paper bats and witches’ hats in their windows getting ready for the celebration, although it was still over a month away. I popped into a small general store and bought a newspaper. I hadn’t seen or read any news since I’d been in Slyford St James, and with a jolt I realised I’d more or less cut myself off from the outside world.