The Dinner Party

by R. J. Parker

  As the three of them descended the stairs Juliette was silent. Ted knew there was still a significant conversation to be had but now the only priority was getting out of the house.

  ‘Where are you parked?’ Kathryn peered out of the front window.

  Ted reached the bottom. ‘Near Juliette at the far end of the street.’

  ‘Be a good idea if you both leave the way Juliette came in. Go out the back door and up the lawn. There’s an overgrown path at the rear behind the back fence. Follow it round and it should bring you out near your cars at the far end of the road.’

  Juliette’s expression was pensive.

  ‘Juliette?’ Kathryn snapped her out of it. ‘You’re going out through the kitchen. Quickly. There’s a jacket and some of my shoes there. Use those.’

  Juliette’s face was blank.

  ‘Wait on the decking. I’ll keep watch through this front window and give you the word when I’m sure there’s nobody in the street to see you get in your cars.’

  After Juliette had reluctantly picked up her refuse sack of clothes from the lounge, they walked through the kitchen to the back door.

  They both glanced back at Kathryn standing in the hallway and she gestured them through. Juliette slipped on the tan oilskin jacket and green clogs.

  ‘Come on.’ Ted opened the back door and they stepped out into the cold air.

  The smell of compost hit them as soon as they were outside. It seemed so much darker than when he’d entered, and their short sharp breaths clouded in front of them.

  ‘We’re doing the right thing,’ Ted reassured her and closed the door, leaving it open a crack so they could hear Kathryn.

  Juliette shivered and checked the frosted pane. ‘Please, come with me back inside.’

  ‘We’ve done that discussion. We have to go.’

  Her eyes met his. ‘Please …’

  Ted squinted to the fence at the far end of the lawn. Only trees lay beyond it. He saw the gate to the rear path there. They could leave undetected and he assumed it led to the end of the short road. ‘We’ll talk at home.’

  ‘Let’s go back in.’

  He felt his stomach quaking against the cold and what he’d just seen upstairs. ‘There are still questions you need to answer.’

  ‘Please, Ted. I really think we should go back inside.’

  Ted ignored her plea. ‘Like why the hell you would be buying Rohypnol from Grant Tulley.’

  Juliette’s features froze and then her gaze slid sideways.

  Ted turned and realized that there was a figure stood behind the frosted pane of the back door. Wasn’t Kathryn meant to be shouting from her position at the front window? The door was swiftly tugged open.

  ‘No!’ Juliette yelled.

  Ted held up a hand to block his attacker, but all he could do was watch as the kitchen knife jabbed down hard, straight into the middle of his chest.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Ted emitted a gasp and looked down at the handle jutting from his chest and then up at Kathryn. Her revulsion for what she’d done was quickly replaced by panic. The blade was stuck in his sternum, the metal lodged in bone. He went to grab the weapon, but she lunged forward and pulled it out to stab him again.

  Ted rammed his way back into the kitchen, using his body weight to repel her and protect Juliette. But Kathryn already had a proper grip on the knife, and he felt the blade thrust into his stomach. He heard himself grunt but kept moving forward.

  Kathryn’s bare feet slipped on the tiles and she slammed hard on her back, the knife sliding deeper into Ted as he landed on top of her. The air was squeezed out of her lungs and sour breath was in his face.

  Kathryn’s eyes were wide open, and she gagged for air as his body pressed down on hers. But Ted remained motionless. He didn’t want to move or let the blade go any deeper. He reached down between them and firmly grasped the handle with his right hand.

  He closed his eyes as he felt the warmth there. Juliette was screaming at Kathryn, but he focused on remaining still.

  Kathryn released the handle and he felt her trying to wriggle out from under him. Ted fought to keep her pinned there but her nails were digging into his face. She growled and applied more pressure. He felt the points pierce his cheeks, but Ted just prayed she wouldn’t do the same to his eyes and used his free left hand to hold the blade even tighter.

  Kathryn slipped away and he took his weight on his knees and looked up to see Juliette harshly grabbing the bun of Kathryn’s hair before she could get to her feet.

  ‘Get off him!’ Juliette used both hands to wrench Kathryn’s head back.

  But Kathryn punched up at her and caught her hard under the jaw.

  Briefly stunned, Juliette let go of her hair with one hand and Kathryn seized her opportunity and stood upright, twisting her head and slugging Juliette full in the face. Juliette staggered back and Kathryn immediately went for the knife block on the breakfast bar.

  If she got hold of another blade, Juliette was dead. Ted reached out with one hand and snagged her ankle. He dragged her away from the block.

  Swivelling on the other foot she leaned against the bar and kicked at his face. Ted tucked his cheek against his shoulder as she stamped at his skull with her heel. It felt like a sledgehammer and his teeth squeaked as he gritted them against the assault.

  After the fourth or fifth blow Ted heard a fizzing noise in his ear and knew he wasn’t going to be able to take much more. He didn’t want to move from his spot though and disturb the steel that was in his gut.

  The pummelling ceased and Ted looked up to see Kathryn reaching around for one of the knives in the block. Juliette had fallen against the oven and there was blood streaming from her nose.

  Ted yanked hard on Kathryn’s foot and she fell onto her back and groaned with the impact. She immediately rolled and started getting up again.

  Ted had to move fast to intercept her. He rose and stumbled with her to the bar. Reached out and grabbed a knife handle. As her fingers extended to the block he pushed the whole thing forward.

  The block slid across the bar and clattered over the other side, the handle remaining in his hand revealing the weapon he was holding. It was the thick blunt steel for sharpening knives.

  Ted felt the knife judder in his stomach as Kathryn jerked back against him, trying to break free. He couldn’t allow her to get to the other side of the bar. Her uncoiled hair was in his face, her spine pressing the blade as he tried to hold it in place with his other hand.

  ‘Kathryn …’ Juliette was groggily trying to get up again.

  ‘Let me go!’ Kathryn was about to break free.

  There was nothing else for it. Ted swung the sharpening steel against the back of her head. Once. She was still fighting him. Twice and harder, she stopped. On the third strike she crumpled.

  He lurched back and let her body drop hard to the tiles. For the first time, Ted looked down at the knife handle lodged in his stomach. A huge patch of dark red saturated his blue shirt; his fingers were completely coated as well. As the room canted, Ted felt his legs tremble and give way.

  ‘Ted!’ Juliette caught him as he collapsed sideways and lowered him to the floor.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance. Ted!’

  Ted opened his eyes to see Juliette crouching on her knees beside him, still wearing the tan oilskin jacket. He was lying on his side.

  ‘Don’t move.’

  A large pool of blood had crept away from him across the granite tiles to where Kathryn lay motionless. He could see dark red in the roots of her hair. Had he killed her?

  ‘I don’t want to pull the knife out. Hold on. They’ll be here soon.’

  He felt freezing and could vaguely feel Juliette’s hot fingers gripping the top of his arm. ‘You knew … you knew she was going to attack me.’ He only hissed.

  ‘Don’t speak. Stay still.’

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me what—’ he tugged in a painf
ul breath.

  ‘Please, don’t speak.’

  ‘You talk then. I don’t know if the ambulance is going to be here in time.’ Ted watched as his blood inched forward again.

  ‘Ssshhh. You’ll be fine,’ Juliette’s voice trembled.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said sharply and felt his fingers slip around the handle. ‘Grant Tulley …’

  Juliette said nothing but squeezed his arm. ‘It was for Orla,’ she eventually whispered.

  Ted shook his head.

  ‘Connor was working late all the time and she was sure he was sleeping with other women. She went out one night, met another man. He drugged and raped her. She didn’t tell Connor.’

  Ted looked up and she was staring at Kathryn.

  Juliette wiped caked blood from her nostrils with the back of her hand. ‘Kathryn told me about it, about what she and Evie were going to do to get even for Orla. I wanted to be part of it. I went with Evie to get the Rohypnol from Grant Tulley first. The next night Evie went into the same nightclub where Orla had met the guy who raped her. Orla, Kathryn and I waited in the delivery yard at the back. Evie got talking to him and sent us a photo of him with her phone. Orla confirmed it was him. His name was Steve North. He was a sleazeball.’

  That name sounded familiar to Ted.

  ‘Evie slipped the Rohypnol into his drink. Then she led him out to the yard. He was out of it and Orla beat him black and blue. Took it too far. He was lying on the floor while she stamped on him, all over his face. He stopped moving.’ She swallowed. ‘We left him there. Next morning the local news said his body had been found.’

  Ted recalled it. The guy – a petty thief and a dealer – had died of head injuries behind McCoy’s nightclub. The police suspected a gang. It was the story that had given Georgie nightmares. When was that, a couple of weeks ago? That coincided with the distinct change in Juliette’s mood.

  ‘Orla withdrew, like she hadn’t even been part of it. She hadn’t begun to absorb what she’d done. What we’d all done. Evie suggested the game.’

  Ted thought of them sitting in the hospital waiting room earlier that day and Juliette assuring him that they could survive the secret that he’d needed to confess. ‘You knew, before the evening began?’

  Juliette didn’t respond but a tear rolled down her cheek.

  ‘And Georgie overheard you in the kitchen planning it with Evie beforehand.’ Ted couldn’t feel the handle of the knife anymore. ‘So Jakob hadn’t attempted suicide before.’

  ‘No. Evie was going to crack because Jakob knew there was something wrong. She wanted to play the game to absolve herself, all three of us did. That’s why we didn’t want Renton to know about us playing it: one of us was bound to slip up. When I spoke to Evie early that morning, after the dinner party, she said she’d put all the Rohypnol she had left in a drink for Jakob when they got home. She’d drunkenly told him part of what had happened at McCoy’s but then panicked. He was already pretty out of it and she wanted him to forget their conversation because of what it would mean for the rest of us. But he had a bad reaction to the Rohypnol and started getting violent.’

  ‘Who went to their house before us?’ But Ted already suspected.

  ‘Kathryn. Evie called her first, so she slipped out while Rhys was still sleeping. When she arrived, Evie had left the door on the catch for her. Jakob had chased Evie onto the back lawn and was strangling her. Kathryn hit him with a garden ornament, but it was too late. Before she left, she tried to find Jakob’s drink with the drug in it. She looked all over the house for it, but Evie must have poured it away. That’s why she was upstairs when we arrived.’

  Ted remembered the person coming down the stairs and slipping out through the front after they’d entered the house.

  ‘But she needed Rhys to lie to the police when they were asked about the phone call that Evie made to them.’

  ‘So, that story about her having an affair with Rhys’s brother …’ he croaked.

  ‘A lie. I was meant to be seeing her on Monday morning. She was worried about her interview with Renton. But she confessed to Rhys about what happened at Evie and Jakob’s. He was beside himself, wanted her to go to the police, but she couldn’t face the notion of a prison sentence and leaving her girls. It turned into a fight. That’s when she hit him with the jug.’

  The room dimmed and Ted considered the intricate story Juliette had told him about Kathryn’s affair and what had happened after Rhys had supposedly struck him. ‘And Kathryn wanted you to cover things up.’

  ‘The rest is true. She wanted to convince you that Rhys was still alive while she got rid of him. I shouldn’t have convinced her to carry on when she got here tonight. I knew exactly what she meant just now when we were upstairs and she said she’d handle things.’

  Ted wondered at what point Kathryn had decided she had to kill him. When he’d just been outside the back door and said he knew about them buying the Rohypnol from Grant Tulley, had that made her mind up? ‘But if she had killed me, then what?’

  ‘She talked to me about setting the house on fire with Rhys inside.’

  ‘And maybe me as well.’ Ted felt his head getting heavy.

  ‘She was only thinking about the girls and how she couldn’t let them go. That’s why I wanted you to agree to helping her: so that she wouldn’t harm you.’

  Ted’s blood trickled further towards Kathryn. His eyelids drooped and it felt like he was melting into the floor. Where was the ambulance?

  Her hand gripped his arm tighter. ‘Just hold on.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Something yanked Ted back. Was Juliette speaking to him again, trying to keep him conscious?

  But as he focused, Ted could see the soles of Juliette’s bare feet. They’d lost Kathryn’s green clogs and were red with blood. She was lying face up and Kathryn was sitting astride her chest with her back to him, her shoulders tensed and head quaking. She was strangling Juliette.

  A smothered exclamation, a long strain of exertion.

  Ted couldn’t tell if it was Juliette’s or Kathryn’s. Ted stirred his muscles but felt the pain of the blade like he was being stabbed again. He groaned and the energy immediately drained from his limbs. He could scarcely move.

  Ted could see his blood had been smudged around the tiles by Juliette’s thrashing legs. His mouth opened to scream at Kathryn, but he stopped himself. She must think he was still out cold.

  Kathryn’s shoulders locked and the exclamation halted.

  She was squeezing the last breath out of Juliette. Ted managed to slide himself forward, but his body felt as if it were starting to dissolve. Covering the distance seemed suddenly impossible.

  Juliette’s legs were slowing as the life left her limbs and Kathryn maintained the pressure.

  Ted put his one hand beside him, and his fingers slipped in his cold blood.

  Juliette stopped kicking but kept twitching. Kathryn remained rigid as she waited for her to be completely motionless.

  Leaning on one hand Ted curled up his legs and then pushed himself forward, his bulk sluggishly slithering along the wet tiles so that he was almost upon them. But he was still over two feet away.

  Kathryn turned to see him crouching there. There was no alarm on her face. She kept her stolid eyes fixed on him while she waited for Juliette to die.

  Ted’s perspective shuttered and went black. He had to stay awake. Gripping the knife handle hard the agony brought him round. He pulled the blade from his stomach, felt the metal draw across his innards and a gush of warm liquid as the point came out. He heard himself gasp.

  But Kathryn just watched him, calculating whether he was really a threat or if he was about to pass out again. ‘I had to do this, Ted.’ A tear glistened in her left eye. Juliette had stopped moving. ‘Like Evie, that night on the back lawn. She wanted to go to the police. I’d already slugged Jakob. Thought he was dead. The ornament was still in my hand. I had to stop her too.’

  She’d murdered Evie. Ted felt
as if everything was slowing down. He was on the verge of sliding back into unconsciousness. Was Kathryn going to set fire to the house as Juliette had said? What new lies would she use to justify what she’d done? But the peril Juliette was in and his reaction to it seemed to be receding.

  Had to help her.

  A weight was pressing him to the floor; the burden of staying awake was too much.

  Kathryn clenched her jaw. Lifted herself to completely crush Juliette’s throat.

  He gathered all his strength and lunged, struck Kathryn hard in the back.

  They were on the floor, all three of them. Where was the knife? It was no longer in his grip. He clasped Kathryn’s leg.

  Kathryn was reaching up, yanking on the drawer.

  Its loud crash to the floor was like a depth charge, the room and its vivid detail brightly flooding Ted’s vision.

  There was cutlery and utensils scattered around them. Hands including his were scrabbling for a weapon.

  Kathryn seized something.

  Ted registered it was a long metal prong with a small black box with a digital screen attached. It was a stainless-steel skewer for testing the temperature of meat.

  As Kathryn turned and brandished it, he held up his palm for protection and felt the sharp end pierce it. He scarcely registered the injury, just needed to disarm her as blackness crowded everything out. He kept hold of her leg but could feel his fingers weakening.

  Ted felt the prong jab hard in his back and his whole frame stiffened against the acute sensation of the new wound. He tried to rise but couldn’t. How deeply had it been planted in him? Was he paralyzed? He could still move his arms.

  ‘Let go!’ she spat.

  He wasn’t about to. He clung hard to her leg, dug his nails into her warm calf and skated forward on his front through the smeared blood on the granite tiles. If he relinquished it he knew the outcome that already felt so imminent would arrive even sooner.

  Their three bodies thrashed around on the tacky floor and noisily scattered utensils.