by S M Hardy
When we reached the end of the cliff path and walked out into the lane we stopped to kiss again, and I hoped this meant she’d be coming back with me. I slipped my arm around her waist and she leant her head against my chest as we carried on walking, and when we reached the end of the lane she didn’t stop or turn towards the village centre and the pub, she automatically turned towards the cottage. I kissed the top of her head and she snuggled up against me.
We’d almost reached the turning into my lane when from behind us I heard the sound of an engine. The road was narrow, so we broke apart and stepped to one side to allow the car to pass. Lucy took hold of my hand as we waited, and I smiled down at her before looking towards the passing car. Two pairs of eyes appeared to bore into mine and I could feel the smile slip from my face.
Darcy Garvin’s expression was of haughty disapproval, which was mirrored by her sister’s, though as soon as she saw me looking their way Miriam smiled and waggled her fingers at us. Then they were gone, and Lucy was putting her arm back around my waist, blissfully unaware of the feeling of foreboding sinking into my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As I opened the front door to the cottage, I tried to push the Garvin sisters out of my head, at least temporarily. I would phone Jed tomorrow morning to discuss what I’d learnt, there was no immediate rush. I had new locks on the doors to the front, back and bedroom. Anyway, they’d have to be mad to try anything so soon.
Once again, I had to stop myself and wonder what the hell I was thinking. They were two middle-aged women, for goodness’ sake, though the evidence did appear to be stacking up against them. There had to be a logical explanation, I told myself, there just had to.
Yeah – like you’re totally losing it!
There was that too.
‘Ground control to Major Jim,’ I heard Lucy say, and I realised she was halfway up the stairs and I’d ground to a halt on the first step.
‘Sorry, just wondering whether I should bring the wine and cheese up now,’ I improvised.
‘Hmm, wine would be nice, we can get the cheese later.’
‘I’ve only red, I’m afraid.’
‘Red’s good.’
‘You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’
I hurried into the living room to grab a couple of wine goblets and a bottle of red from the drinks cabinet, then hot-footed it up the stairs. Lucy hadn’t got very far, she was standing just inside the bedroom doorway.
‘Wine all sorted,’ and then I saw what had halted her progress into the room. On the wall above the bed scrawled in crimson paint or maybe lipstick was one word. CUNT.
‘What the fuck?’ I said.
‘Who? Who would?’ Lucy’s voice was shaking.
‘How, is more the question. I’ve had new locks fitted,’ then belatedly realised that was something I should have probably kept to myself.
‘You’ve had trouble before?’
‘A bit,’ I admitted, thinking quickly. ‘Probably kids.’
‘Have you told the police?’
‘No point, nothing was taken.’
‘But that,’ she pointed at the wall, ‘that looks personal. Like someone’s having a pop.’
She was probably right, but unless I could find a forced window there was only one explanation – or two, if I didn’t discount that I could be going mad and doing these things in some sort of fugue state. Whoever or whatever kept moving the whisky bottle and glass had written the message on the wall.
‘I’d better go and get a cloth and some cleaner,’ I said, putting the red wine and glasses down on the bedside table.
‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’
‘Do you really think they’d be interested?’ I said, walking to the door, then as an afterthought I took my mobile out of my pocket and took a picture. ‘Just in case.’
I stomped down the stairs. This wasn’t at all the end to our perfect day that I’d planned. I couldn’t imagine Lucy’d feel particularly amorous now, and definitely not in that room.
I rummaged under the sink and found a couple of new dishcloths and some strong cleaning spray. If it was lipstick I was in with a chance; if it was red paint I was buggered. When I stood up and turned around Lucy was behind me.
She held out her hand. ‘Here, let me do it while you have a look around and figure out how they got in.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, handing her the spray and cloths. ‘If it’s paint give us a shout and I’ll see if I can find some white spirit.’
I followed her out of the kitchen and watched her walk upstairs, thinking that she really did have a nice backside. She must have felt my eyes upon her, as when she reached the top, she half-turned her head and said, ‘You’ll go blind,’ which made me laugh despite everything.
I started in the living room. I was really only doing this for Lucy’s sake as, since almost being murdered in my bed, my paranoia had me checking windows and doors every time I left the house or went to bed. I’d checked them last night and I’d checked them this morning before we left – but I hadn’t. I’d been in a hurry because I’d overslept.
Still, I had checked them the night before and the night before that. So they would be locked. Definitely.
Being an old cottage, most of the windows had sash cords. The Morgans or their predecessors had obviously been pretty security conscious as each window had been fitted with a fairly basic but efficient security device, which effectively screwed the window shut. This obviously could be unscrewed if you wanted the window open. I’d never unscrewed any of the devices. Since the incident with the gas, I’d checked they were screwed up tight, but never had I unscrewed them. In fact, as far as I knew, they were all seized up. Even so, I checked them.
Then I went along the corridor to the dining room. I only ever went in there to check the windows as I always ate at the kitchen table. There were two windows, both with sash cords, both screwed shut. I tried to tighten the screw on each window and neither would move even a fraction.
It was exactly as I thought. No one could get into this house unless they had a key.
I was about to walk away, but as I turned from the window I caught a glimpse of red outside in the garden. I spun around, laying my hand against the window and moving in close to peer outside, but there was no one there. I let out a shaky sigh. God help me, I wasn’t sure whether I had wanted to see a small figure waving at me from the lawn or not. I think deep down inside I did.
I lifted my hand from the windowpane and it gave a little judder. I’d have thought no more of it – they were old windows, they weren’t a tight fit – but something made me stop. I leant in close to try and tighten the screw a little more and the bottom windowpane moved, but the top one to which it was meant to be screwed did not.
I peered at the screw, then grabbed it between my thumb and forefinger and gave it a tug. It moved and once again the top pane didn’t. My stomach gave a little flip. I took a deep breath, reached for the catch in the middle of the window and pushed it to open. It moved with hardly any resistance at all. I pressed my hands against the frame and pushed upwards. The window slid open with barely a sound. Someone had cut through the security screw and now I knew how someone had been getting inside the cottage. All it would take was a thin blade or strip of metal pushed between the window frames and slid along to push open the catch.
Lucy was cleaning the last of the scrawl off the wall when I returned to the bedroom. ‘You haven’t got some other girlfriend somewhere who has a grudge?’ she asked. It had been lipstick and it’d left a stain on the paintwork, but it was better than what had been there before. ‘Mind you, she must be some old dragon to wear a colour like this.’
‘I thought red was popular.’
‘With supermodels and old ladies. Mere mortals like me would look stupid. Or worse – tarty.’
‘Never in a million years,’ I said, though with all that was whizzing around in my head I was surprised I was capable of coherent conversation, let alone flirting. It was
suddenly like there was two of me, one stumbling around in total confusion while the other was cool, calm and collected, saying the right things, going through the motions.
Lucy sprayed a bit more cleaner onto a fresh cloth and attacked the pink smear that now coloured the wall.
‘I don’t think it’s all going to come out,’ she said, kneeling back on the bed to peer up at her handiwork.
‘I’ll repaint it.’
‘Find out how they got in?’
‘Not a clue,’ I said, the lie tumbling from my lips with frightening ease.
Jim, you have to stop lying to people you love.
It was true – I did, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. How could I? It would lead to me having to explain a whole load of things that I could barely comprehend myself. Seeing dead children being the least of it.
‘That’s a bit of a worry.’ She glanced over her shoulder to look at me, ‘they must have got in somehow.’ She scrambled off the bed. ‘Come on, let’s take another look around.’
I was about to try and dissuade her, but the calm calculating side of me stepped in. If she finds the window lock that’s been tampered with, in her mind she’d have solved the mystery; if she doesn’t, what does it matter?
I took the ruined dishcloths and cleaner in one hand and she grabbed hold of my other and led me from the bedroom and down the stairs. We started in the kitchen, and while I threw the cloths away and stowed the cleaner under the sink, she checked each window and the door.
‘You sure do lock up tight, don’t you?’ she commented upon seeing that the back door was not only locked but bolted at top and bottom.
‘Comes from living in London,’ I said.
‘Hmm.’
She stalked off into the hall and into the lounge. She checked each window thoroughly and I noticed that not only did she check the screw locks, she also tried rattling the windows in their frames.
‘I can’t see that they could have got in through any of these,’ she said as she slid past me and back out into the hall and made for the dining room.
She went through the same rigmarole and upon reaching the last window she noticed that there was something wrong within a nanosecond and had the window open.
‘Little sods,’ she said. ‘They’ve cut through the lock.’
‘How on earth did you notice that? I had no idea.’
Jim! I know, another lie.
‘Well, at least you can screw it shut for the time being.’
‘I’ll get Jed to take a look at it tomorrow,’ I said.
‘I don’t suppose they’ll come back tonight,’ she said, ‘if it is kids.’
‘Who else could it be?’
She closed the window and took a step back from it, her brow creased into a worried frown. ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
I obviously wasn’t as convincing a liar as I thought. ‘I’ll see if I can find a drill and a screwdriver.’
She followed me out into the hall, where I poked around in the cupboard under the stairs. I was sure I’d seen a rusty, old biscuit tin in there containing various bits and pieces, including a few tools.
‘Ah, here we go,’ I said, seeing the tin wedged into the corner at the back. I took it into the kitchen and placed it on the table to prise off the lid.
‘Anything useful?’ Lucy asked.
‘I have a drill, at least,’ I said, holding up a hand-operated contraption that had probably been invented at the time of the ark.
Lucy screwed up her nose. ‘I could always pop home and borrow something off my dad.’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ I laughed and lifted it up, furiously turning the handle.
‘It’ll take you hours.’
‘Have you something better to do?’
Her lips curled into that very sexy smile of hers. ‘Now you mention it …’
‘I’ll be quick.’
‘I hope not.’
‘With the screwing.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
‘Of the window,’ I said with a chuckle.
In the end it took about twenty minutes and I had it screwed so tight they’d never be able to push anything between the two frames to cut it through. I’d go around all the other windows in the morning when I was alone. I didn’t want Lucy to know I was worried.
Surprisingly enough, Lucy wasn’t at all put off by what had been scrawled across my bedroom wall. Now that it had dried the resultant mark wasn’t so obvious. It would still need repainting to cover the rose-coloured smear, but I didn’t have time to worry about that as Lucy was giving me more pressing things to occupy my mind.
Later, when we were sitting up in bed drinking red wine and eating cheese and crackers, Lucy’s eyes wandered back up to the stain on the wall.
‘Do you really think it was kids?’
‘Who else? Nobody much knows me here and I can’t imagine I’ve pissed anyone off so badly in only two weeks that they’d want to break in and write obscenities on my bedroom wall.’
‘I s’pose not,’ she said, popping a piece of cheese into her mouth.
‘I mean, to do something like that you’d have to be more than a little crazy, wouldn’t you have thought?’
Lucy shivered. ‘Is that meant to make me feel better?’
‘I was only joking,’ I said, lying through my teeth as, yes, to do something like that, you would have to be crazy and it was as scary as hell.
At about eleven she climbed out of bed to get dressed and go home.
‘Can’t you stay?’ I asked.
‘Mum and Dad are fairly broad-minded, you have to be running a pub, but where his little girl is concerned, Dad can be a bit …’ She paused for a moment thinking about it. ‘Let’s just say – overprotective.’
‘I can’t say I blame him,’ I said, climbing out of bed and pulling on my jeans.
‘You don’t have to get up.’
‘I’m not letting you walk home alone.’
‘What about you, walking back all alone?’
‘That’s different.’
‘I’ve not had anyone breaking into my house and writing obscenities on the wall.’
‘Kids,’ I told her, ‘just kids.’
‘But still …’
‘No arguments. If your dad found out that I’d let his little girl walk home alone, I doubt he’d be well impressed.’
‘Hmm, I guess that’s true enough,’ she said, hooking her hands around my neck and giving me a kiss.
‘I thought you were going home.’ I laughed.
When we reached the pub there were still lights on in the bar. ‘Dad waiting up, I expect,’ she told me. ‘Most regulars are gone by ten on a Sunday night.’
‘Shall I come in?’
‘Nah. Maybe tomorrow night. That’s if you’re free tomorrow evening?’
‘I’ll have to check my hectic schedule.’ She thumped me on the arm.
‘Dad’s given me tomorrow night off.’
‘OK, I’ll take you out somewhere for dinner.’
She grinned at me. ‘How about I come and cook for you? Then we won’t waste half the evening driving around South Devon.’
‘Are you sure? It’s a bit of a busman’s holiday.’
‘Totally. See you about six?’
‘Looking forward to it,’ I said, and she melted against me. When she pulled away, I felt like she’d taken a little piece of me with her.
I watched her go inside, waited until I heard voices, then started back to the place that, despite everything, was beginning to feel like home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I spent the morning going around all the windows putting in a second screw. It took a while with the old hand-turned drill and manual screwdriver, but I found it therapeutic. I was doing something to protect myself. I was taking some kind of control. Once I’d completed this task, I walked around the outside of the cottage, checking each window. Visibly nothing had changed, but when I tried forcing a thin-bladed knife up bet
ween the window frames it was nigh on impossible.
Satisfied with my morning’s work, I set about giving the kitchen a bit of a clean. If Lucy was taking the trouble to cook for me, I could at least make a bit of an effort to clean and tidy the place.
I did have another go at the bedroom wall, but nothing was going to shift the remainder of the lipstick stain, so it looked as though I’d either have to repaint or lose my deposit.
By eleven-thirty I’d put off the inevitable as long as I possibly could. With a heavy heart I rang Jed. I didn’t have a choice; pretending that nothing was wrong, when very clearly something seriously was, wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all me. I was the one with the problem – no one else.
His phone rang six times, then went to voicemail. I would have phoned Emma, but I didn’t have her number. I decided to give it twenty minutes. After procrastinating all morning, I was now feeling anxious and desperate to speak to them. After ten minutes I tried again. Six rings and again to voicemail.
‘Fuck it, Jed, where are you?’
Ten minutes later six rings and to voicemail. Something was wrong. I was absolutely sure of it.
I didn’t know Jed’s address, but I did know where Emma lived.
I grabbed my keys off the hall table and strode out of the house. By the time I reached the end of the lane I was running.
I stopped outside Emma’s gates. They were wide open and the feeling of foreboding I’d had from the moment my first call to Jed had gone to voicemail almost overwhelmed me. Something terrible had happened.
As I walked up the drive, I heard the peacock cry from the back of the house. Usually its call made me feel at peace, this time it sounded plaintive, desolate even. By the time I reached the front door my heart had worked its way up into my throat, and I was so afraid I could hardly stop my hand from shaking as I reached for the doorbell.