The team had searched the house and found nothing. Nothing, that is, other than a terrible chamber below the cellar. Little more than a hole in the ground with bare earth for the walls. Cold and damp, it reeked of fear.
Becky shuddered and made her way into Ollie’s bedroom. She could see evidence that the fingerprint team had been in here, but they hadn’t moved a thing, and her eye was drawn towards a toy, sitting in the middle of the rug. She bent down to pick it up, but it wasn’t a toy, it was a ladybird moneybox. She shook it, but there was no sound. It was empty.
As she went to put it on the chest of drawers, she noticed a tiny slip of paper, sticking out of the slot. Becky carefully drew it out. Unfolding it, she moved to the light to read it.
‘Oh God,’ she muttered, tears flooding her eyes. She knew she was going to have to call Tom, but for a moment she had to pause. She didn’t think she could say the words out loud.
To Ollie Joseph
IOU £7.36
Signed: Natasha (your sister)
Sorry x
69
Day Six
It was midday before Tom was able to get home. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had last slept, or eaten anything other than the odd chocolate bar or packet of crisps.
Mel had tried to stick to her story that there had been nobody else in her home, but Tom couldn’t go along with that. Jack hadn’t been involved directly in Guy’s death, but there was no point in lying. Paul Green knew who Jack was, and although he had committed no offence – merely acting as an informant and never actually buying the stolen gold – his past crimes were bound to come out. The fact that he had helped the Titan team to catch Guy would go in his favour, and Tom had a feeling that Jack would have happily come back to face the music. But it wasn’t the police Jack was hiding from.
Mel’s words, just before she was driven away, came back to him.
‘Jack loves you, Tom. He always called you White Hat – said you had more honour in your little finger than he had in his whole body. Everything he did six years ago he did for the people he loved, and now that Guy’s dead the only people who know Jack’s alive are a few policemen, you, me and Emma. That’s the way it has to stay. Whatever Finn has in store for me, even from his prison cell, it would be ten times worse for Jack – and possibly anybody close to him. He has to stay dead.’
Tom hadn’t been able to find any words. His throat had closed completely, and it hadn’t been the time to lose control.
He pushed open his front door, for once, the pleasure of his home eluding him. He knew he should make something to eat and then go straight to bed, but he couldn’t. He was restless, and more than anything he wished Leo was here. She must have wondered what was going on, but although it felt like weeks to him since he had seen her, to Leo there would just have been a couple of days’ silence.
He walked into the kitchen and switched on the kettle.
While it was boiling, he plugged his laptop in to charge and turned back to the worktop.
There was a ping. He stood, motionless, his back to the computer. Only one person he knew could do that. He held his breath, not knowing what he was waiting for, then slowly turned round.
In the middle of his screen was a folder – the title was ‘White Hat.’
Tom pulled up a chair, sat down and clicked. The folder contained a single file.
Sorry to have left so abruptly. I’m sure I don’t need to explain.
I’ve let you down – I know that. I let Emma down too, and now she has to deal not only with what I was, but what David is too.
I loved her. Still do.
Don’t ever change, Tom. You’re the hero of the family. I’ll be watching you from afar, but you won’t know I’m there.
The money I left you was all earned legally – so don’t panic. I know you will use it wisely. I hadn’t wanted you to discover the SD card though. I tried to get it back, but I couldn’t find it. Sorry about the mess, little brother – but I had to make it look real. Your cottage in Cheshire is wonderful by the way – especially the kitchen.
My ill-gotten gains will now be distributed appropriately – you don’t need to know the details.
Forget you saw me. My death was my choice.
Black Hat
Tom read the note and reread it until his eyes were blurred, whether with tears or fatigue it was difficult to say. He knew as soon as he touched the keyboard the note would disappear from the screen and from his computer, just as he knew Jack would never contact him again this way. It was his last link to his brother – perhaps the last ever – and he couldn’t let it go.
Did he really have to remain dead? Was there no other choice?
He had found and lost his brother today, and his emotions were too tangled to unravel.
Finally, he sat back, lifted his finger and pressed the space bar. The image disappeared, as he had known it would. He stared at the blank screen for a few moments, then pushed himself up from the chair and moved back to the worktop to reboil the kettle. As he poured the hot water into a mug, he glanced across to the phone. The message light was flashing. He should ring Leo, let her know what was going on, he thought, as he pressed the replay button. He needed her now more than ever. She was the only person who could bring him the comfort and love that he suddenly craved.
As if answering his thoughts, it was Leo’s voice that he heard on the answerphone.
‘Tom, it’s Leo.’ That almost made him smile – as if he wouldn’t recognise her voice. ‘I’m ringing to say that I’m going away for a few days. You’re obviously very busy, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to have some time to myself. I’ll ring you when I’m back.’
Tom leaned against the wall and gazed at the ceiling. Leo’s instinct to withdraw was nothing new to him, but for the first time in months he had to ask himself what he was doing with somebody who couldn’t promise to be there for him when he needed her support.
He remembered the passion, the fun, but most of all the unmistakeable love within Emma and Jack’s relationship, before his brother had been forced to end it. Even today he had seen it flash into Emma’s eyes when she thought Jack had been shot – after everything she had been through.
Had he ever had that with any woman?
Right now, he wanted somebody to hold him tight to ease the pain of his loss. But that wasn’t going to happen.
70
One month later
Looking out of the kitchen window, Emma noticed all the new growth on the plants and trees. So much had been happening that she had failed to realise that spring was now well and truly with them. It was a bright, clear day outside, but she found herself wishing that the sky was dark, and that she would see a pair of eyes reflected in the window from a young girl standing behind her. Each time she turned round, she expected to see a child with straggly blonde hair wearing an oversized duffle coat. She would have welcomed her with open arms.
She should really sell this house and move; she knew that. But she was staying for Natasha. It was the only place that the girl knew, and to leave here would give her stepdaughter nowhere to return to, if ever she wanted to. She couldn’t bear the thought of Natasha’s life ending the way her friend Izzy’s had. Tom had confirmed that the girl found in the woods was Izzy. It seemed fairly certain that she had tried to kill herself with a massive dose of ketamine, stolen from Julie’s house. Apparently the girls regularly used ketamine to anaesthetise themselves a little before the men arrived. Even though Julie’s had been shut down, other places would no doubt open to fill the gap in the market, and the thought of Natasha ending up there sickened Emma to her stomach.
In the first few days after Ollie’s safe return Emma’s emotions had swung between irrepressible joy that her baby was safe and concern – for Tasha and for David. She sat by her husband’s hospital bed for three days, holding his hand, thinking of the happy times they had spent together over the last few years, wondering what the future would bring for them both.
But he never spoke to her again. His injuries were too severe, and he died at the end of the third day. She hoped he had known that Ollie was safe; she had whispered it over and over in his ear, praying that David could hear her. She had lied about Tasha too, telling him that she was well and at home.
Emma was a realist, though, and she knew that – had David lived – she would never have spent another night in his bed. The fact that he had even contemplated putting his wife and daughter through a few hours of terrifying hell to get himself out of a hole kept hitting her, like a punch to the head. She would never have felt safe with him and would never have allowed Ollie to be left in his care. She was sorry he was dead, but her life with him had been over the minute she learned what he had done.
Emma was finding it really difficult to let Ollie out of her sight. She sat with him while he slept and had to stop herself from moving his cot into her bedroom. Just because fear ran through her each time she heard footsteps on the gravel path, she didn’t have to make her little boy feel like that.
Tom had been a source of strength, although she knew he was struggling with the knowledge that Jack was alive and out there somewhere. Just as she was.
‘I feel I should pack in my job and go and find him, Em,’ he’d said one day, sitting at her dining table. ‘But it’s not what he wants – I know that.’
He had seemed so sad since those dreadful few days. She knew he had a girlfriend; he had mentioned her briefly when she visited his house. But when she asked Tom if he would like to bring her round some time, he said, ‘Not at the moment,’ and she hadn’t been able to get anything more out of him.
Every night Emma went to sleep thinking of Jack and of what might have been. She relived the moment when he’d touched her, the feel of his body as it pressed against hers in the vault. She had been terrified, and yet there was a heat coming from him that communicated with her at some level. Even before she realised who he was, she had felt electricity fire through her. Then she had seen his eyes, and she was lost again.
Her nights were taken care of, checking on Ollie and dreaming of Jack. But there was something else that she and Ollie did, and would continue to do for as long as it took.
Each morning as they came downstairs, Emma had a quiet word with the portrait, still hanging in the hall.
‘I’m not giving up, Caroline,’ she said.
Then, most days of the week, Emma and Ollie took the car and drove into Manchester or Stockport – changing the times and the venues as often as they could.
Emma then found the most crowded place and put an upturned plastic box on the ground next to Ollie’s pushchair and climbed up on it. People always turned to stare, and that’s when she started shouting.
‘Tasha! Natasha Joseph! Come home, Tasha.’ Ollie joined in. ‘Tassa,’ he shouted.
She chose places that were busy with shoppers, thinking that small-time crooks – the kind of people that Tasha might know – would be out and about picking pockets, stealing mobiles. She stopped every child that was on the street when they should have been in school and showed them Natasha’s photograph. She took fresh sandwiches and cakes to give to the homeless – all they had to do in return was take the picture of Natasha and show it to as many people as possible. She printed thousands of posters, and gave handfuls to anybody who looked as if they might be living the same life as Natasha – or whatever she was calling herself now – asking them to find the girl in the photo and give her the poster.
More often than not, the posters would be dumped as soon as Emma had walked on – sometimes in a bin, but usually dropped indifferently onto the pavement. That was okay, because on the poster was more than just a photo of Natasha. There was a picture of a smiling Ollie with a message in a speech bubble, and the more posters floating around the windy alleyways, settling against greasy walls, lying in the dusty streets, the more chance that somehow it would reach its target and she would read the message.
Natasha Joseph – please come home to your family
Your baby brother misses you
***
About the Author
Rachel Abbott was born and raised in Manchester. She trained as a systems analyst before launching her own interactive media company in the early 1980s. After selling her company in 2000, she moved to the Le Marche region of Italy.
When six-foot snowdrifts prevented her from leaving the house for a couple of weeks, she started writing and found she couldn’t stop. Since then her debut thriller Only the Innocent has become an international bestseller, reaching the number one position in the Amazon charts both in the UK and US. This was followed by the number one bestselling novels The Back Road and Sleep Tight.
Rachel Abbott now lives in Alderney and writes full-time. Stranger Child is her fourth novel.
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Acknowledgements
As with every book I have written, the help and advice so willingly given by so many people has made a huge difference, and I can’t thank them all enough.
I had a new advisor on the police procedural aspects of this book, Mark Gray, who steered me through some very tricky sections, only holding back when I strayed into confidential areas. His response to each query was so detailed that my mind frequently strayed onto new paths and I genuinely couldn’t have written Stranger Child without him. Of course, there were times when I had to dispense with the real-life efficiency that the police would have employed and allow some personal creativity to sneak into the procedures in the interests of increased tension. So any and all mistakes are entirely mine. But thank you Mark – you have been truly inspirational.
Stranger Child introduces a new kind of specialist – the forensic linguist. I would like to thank my good friend Dr Isabel Picornell for inspiring me with the types of enquiries that might call on her unique form of expertise. She has filled me with ideas for future stories, and was rigorous with her checking of my words in the appropriate sections of Stranger Child. Who knew that a woman’s style of writing was so different from a man’s?
As always, there were many people who offered small nuggets of information on everything from Swiss bank accounts to how container storage bases work. I didn’t necessarily use all this information, but my thanks go to Nick, Patrick, Alan and Sheila for offering their help.
My early readers have – as always - been fantastic, providing excellent feedback and suggestions – in some cases throughout the whole writing process. Thank you Kath, Judith, Ann, John, Ruth, Barry, and Andria.
I would struggle to keep my head above water without my two excellent virtual assistants – Ceri Chaudhry and Alexandra Amor. Who would have thought that VAs in Hertfordshire and Canada could work so well? But both, with their own unique style, have solved so many of the day-to-day problems of being an independently published author, and I don’t know what I would do without them.
Alan Carpenter, my long-suffering designer, has produced yet another wonderful cover and this time there was no need to change the design numerous times. Thanks to great photography from Rick, and a fantastic model in Alicia (a really happy, smiley girl – and a good actress), we knew we had the cover we wanted almost immediately, and Alan turned it into something that we really hope will stand out.
Some new members of the team have been helping with Stranger Child and my particular thanks go to Lucy Ramsay for being so enthusiastic about helping to publicise the book. Helen Hart and her team at SilverWood Books also did an amazing job preparing the paperback advance review copies in such a very short time.
Finally, as always, I cannot say thank you enough to m
y agent, Lizzy Kremer – the best there is. She has been a wonderful source of support and guidance, as have the rest of the team at David Higham Associates – especially Laura and Harriet. I don’t know how many times Lizzy and Harriet read the manuscript for Stranger Child, but their help and direction, together with input from editors, Clare Bowron, Lizzie Dipple, and David Watson have made this a far better book than it might otherwise have been.
It really has been a terrific team effort, and I count myself lucky to be surrounded by the best group of professionals, friends and family there is.
Only the Innocent
A man is dead. The killer is a woman. But what secrets lie beneath the surface - so dark that a man has to die?
When Laura Fletcher approaches her home in Oxfordshire to find hordes of photographers crowding the gates, she knows there is something terribly wrong. She is faced with the shocking news that her husband is dead - brutally murdered - and according to Chief Inspector Tom Douglas, there is little doubt that the murderer is a woman.
In a marriage that has taken her from the glamorous five star luxury of London, Venice and Positano to a bleak and draughty manor house in rural Oxfordshire, Laura has learned to guard her secrets well. She is not alone. It would appear that all the women in her husband's life have something to hide.
But there is one secret that she has never shared, and when the investigation reaches its dramatic and horrific climax, she realises that she has no choice. She has to give Tom Douglas the final piece of the puzzle. And this changes everything, leaving Douglas with a terrible dilemma: whether to punish the guilty, or protect the innocent.
Only the Innocent is a spellbinding psychological thriller that will leave you breathless!
Praise for Only the Innocent
Stranger Child Page 32