One Perfect Witness: a gripping psychological suspense
Page 1
One Perfect Witness
Pat Young
Contents
Also By Pat Young
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Author’s note and Acknowledgements
Copyright © 2018 Pat Young
The right of Pat Young to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also By Pat Young
Till The Dust Settles
I Know Where You Live
Praise for Pat Young
"An accomplished plot, plenty of twists and turns and excellent characterisation made this book a real page turner." Kate Moloney - Bibliophile Book Club
"Till the Dust Settles is an intriguing read and one I actually flew through in one sitting." Joanne Robertson - My Chestnut Reading Tree
"Loved it from start to finish." Jo - Goodreads Reviewer
"This is a you gotta read book, a brilliant debut. Really excited about this lady’s writing. Superb!" Susan Hampson - Books From Dusk Till Dawn
"'Till The Dust Settles' is an intense, powerful and heart-wrenching read about love, loss and ultimate devastation." Kaisha Holloway - The Writing Garnet
"What a clever book, I couldn't put it down." Cariad - Goodreads Reviewer
"It was suspenseful, thrilling, addictive, captivating and left me guessing the whole way through." Dash Fan Book Reviews
"A gripping read to keep you on the edge of your seat." Misfits farm - Goodreads Reviewer
"...it has the author's excellent attention to detail and great writing style and I loved the lot." Donna Maguire - Donnas Book Blog
"Another stunning thriller from Pat Young ..." Livia Sbarbaro - Goodreads Reviewer
"OMG! I have just devoured this book in almost one sitting apart from time to get some shut-eye!" Sharon Bairden - Chapter In My Life
"Pat Young's 'I know where you live' is a thrilling read and makes the reader do abit of soul searching along the way." Susie - Goodreads Reviewer
Dedicated to the memory of
Marg and Mal Brierley
who left us far too soon.
1
Brackenbrae Holiday Park, Ayrshire, Scotland
Sunday 27 May
Today was the worst ever.
They stopped talking when I walked into the kitchen. That’s always bad.
Mum’s face was pink, as if she’d put on too much of her blusher stuff. ‘Have you washed your hands?’ she said, in her snippy voice. I tried a smile. At school they tell us a smile’s infectious. Mum didn’t catch mine.
Dad was at the table, pouring wine. ‘Hello, Charlie. Had a good day?’
‘He was swimming,’ Mum said, as if I’d done something wrong.
Dad smiled. ‘Ah, you’ve been swimming?’ He sounded like a kids television presenter I used to love. When I was five. I wish he’d stop speaking to me like that.
‘Ask him if the pool was busy,’ said Mum, and I understood.
I held up one hand and one finger. Actually, there was only me and an old man but I know it’s never good to hold up two fingers.
Dad frowned but still managed to sound like Jolly Joe. ‘It’s early in the season,’ he said, with a kind of chuckle.
Mum turned from the oven and gave him a look. ‘It’s a bank holiday weekend, Richard, and we had five people in the swimming pool?’
‘Six, if you count Charlie.’
‘Charlie doesn’t count!’
Dad carried on as if she hadn’t said anything wrong. ‘It’ll get busier once the weather warms up. Don’t fret.’
The casserole banged onto the table and the dishtowel flew at Dad’s face.
‘Don’t fret?’ Mum said, through her teeth, kind of low and threatening. ‘Christ! You’re like a bloody ostrich.’
She doesn’t usually swear when she knows I’m listening, but she didn’t say, ‘Sorry, Charlie.’ In fact, she didn’t even seem to remember I was there.
Dad said nothing. He does that a lot, instead of arguing.
‘How long are you going to carry on with this charade, Richard? Pretending everything’s just fine. Barging on with your obsession?’
Ostrich, charade, obsession? I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I reached for some bread and sank down into my chair to munch it. Dad took a chunk too but he didn’t eat his. Just picked out the soft, white centre and rolled it between his finger and thumb till it turned into a grey bullet. ‘This is neither the time nor the place,’ he said quietly.
It was like they were speaking in a secret code.
Mum passed me my plate and snapped at me, ‘Sit up properly.’
‘Viv, please. Don’t take it out on the boy. It’s got nothing to do with him.’
I watched the steam rising from the stew. I was starving, and I love beef stew. Even though it burned my tongue, I shovelled it in, so I could get away.
‘Don’t gobble your food, Charlie. Have you forgotten all your manners?’
‘Come on, Vivienne. That’s not fair. Let’s have a nice family dinner and we’ll talk about this later.’ He reached for Mum’s hand but she snatched it off the table. He gave a little cough and moved his fork instead. Then, in his Jolly
Joe voice, he said, ‘The summer staff arrive tomorrow. That’ll be fun.’
I smiled, to please him, and took another piece of bread to dip into the gravy.
Dad’s good at choosing nice summer staff. ‘Natalie’s coming back to run the Kidz Klub. Charlie, you remember Natalie?’
How could I forget Natalie?
Mum said, ‘The pretty one who plans to be a schoolteacher?’
My cheeks started to go all warm.
‘I think our Charlie might be a little bit in love with Natalie,’ said Mum. ‘Look, he’s blushing.’
I didn’t mind being embarrassed, if it made them happy. It was good to hear them laughing for once. Trying to look cool, I jabbed a piece of meat on my fork and stuck it in my mouth, like a cowboy at a campfire.
Mum stopped eating. ‘Hang on. One leader for the kids?’
The bad atmosphere sneaked back into the room, sly as a cat.
‘We need to save money, Richard, but that’s a risky way to go about it.’
‘I’m not trying to save money and you’re right, she can’t run Kidz Klub on her own. The boy from Paris will help.’
‘What boy from Paris?’ Mum was all snappy again.
‘I found us a champion swimmer.’ Dad looked pleased with himself. ‘Ideal for pool duty and he sounds like an excellent Kidz Klub leader.’
‘Sounds like? When did you meet him?’
Dad doesn’t look so confident now. ‘I didn’t, actually.’
‘How come? You told me you’d sorted the summer staff months ago.’
‘I did, but then the guy I’d taken on for the pool phoned. He’s got a permanent job in his local Asda. Good for him but it left me in a bit of a pickle, time-wise. I’d kept Sebastien’s application letter, he was my second choice, remember? So I offered him the job.’
‘Without an interview? Are you off your head? He could be a total psycho.’
‘I’m sure he’s not. Anyway, how can you interview someone who’s in Paris?’
‘Skype? FaceTime?’ Mum’s lips went all screwed up. Like she was eating an apple before it was ripe. ‘You’ve never set eyes on this guy and you’re taking him on for the whole summer. This is going to cause trouble,’ she said. ‘I can sense it.’
‘It’ll be fine.’ Dad took a sip of his wine.
Mum made her tutting noise. ‘For God’s sake! As if we don’t have enough to worry about, you’re taking on randoms to look after the kids.’
‘Give me some credit, please, Viv. He’s on a two-week trial and it’s not as if he’s some guy who just walked in the gate. All the appropriate checks and paperwork have been completed. We agreed, didn’t we, that it makes sense to have workers who speak different languages if we’re aiming at a European clientele?’
She chewed and swallowed for about a minute. ‘You’re going to have to abandon Phase Five.’
‘Absolutely not.’
And off they went again, arguing, as if they were the only ones with stuff to worry about. I wish they knew. Wish I could tell them.
I left the table, missing pudding, and it was apple crumble, my favourite. They were so busy arguing they didn’t even try to stop me. No one noticed me slipping out the door. That’s when I decided I had to do something.
Now it’s bedtime and I’ve got Dad’s gun hidden under the mattress.
Tomorrow they’ll notice me.
2
Ayr, Scotland
Monday 28 May
Seb stirs, glad to escape his troubled dreams. He cautiously raises one heavy eyelid. Light, sharp as a laser, hits the back of his eye and sparks a headache. It can’t be time to get up and yet the room is filled with light.
He remembers his landlady’s advice about closing the blind and the curtains if he didn’t want to be awake at 5am.
A pressing need to go the toilet and a simultaneous desperate longing for a glass of water force him to open his eyes. The effort of sitting up makes his head pound. He presses the heels of his hands deep into his eye sockets, setting off a starburst. Head spinning, he stumbles to the tiny en suite and empties his bladder.
He turns to the basin, scooping water greedily into his mouth before he even thinks of washing his hands. Hearing Mother’s reprimand in his head, ‘Sebastien, please, a glass!’ he removes a plastic beaker from a metal hoop above the basin. It smells of dried toothpaste and something even less savoury, but Seb doesn’t care. The water’s cold and refreshing. He refills the little tumbler twice and glugs it down, thankful.
His stomach seems less grateful for the sudden icy downpour. It heaves threateningly and Seb moves towards the toilet bowl, wondering if it’s time to get on his knees and prepare for the worst. His mouth fills with hot saliva. He swallows and waits.
When he’s sure it’s safe to leave the toilet, he fills the beaker a fourth time and takes it into the bedroom, being careful to place it on a little mat on the highly polished bedside cabinet. ‘See, Mother,’ he thinks, ‘I’m not a complete slob.’
Seb locates his rucksack at the foot of the bed and rummages in a pocket till he finds a foil of paracetamol. He presses two capsules into his hand and throws them down his throat before grabbing the plastic tumbler and washing them down. He flops back onto the bed, hoping to sleep while the painkillers take effect. Maybe the nausea will have worn off by then too, if he’s lucky. Too late, he remembers the curtains and lies awake, wondering what the hell he’s doing here, all alone in a country whose people and customs seem strange. A sudden pang of homesickness makes him long for Paris. Home seems very far away and his parents even more distant.
He counts the days in his head. Can it really be three weeks since Father dropped him at the airport, still offering to pay for first class to Glasgow and a taxi to Ayr? Seb had been grateful but determined to do it his own way. A cheap flight to Manchester then north under his own steam, seeing the Lake District en route, walking or hitching rides from anyone prepared to pick him up. Sleeping in his little one-man tent wherever he could find a place to pitch it, or in hostels and cheap B&Bs when he found himself near a town. His only problem had been that bull near Dumfries who taught him to never assume a field is empty.
Everything has gone according to plan, even his arrival in Ayr, timed to perfection. So why the hell did he have to go and get drunk on his last night on the road?
He remembers scoffing a ‘fish supper’, straight out of a yellow polystyrene container, thinking Mother would have a fit if she knew. Defiantly, he’d licked the salt off his greasy hands, disappointed to finish the last chip and crumb of batter. The smell of vinegar stuck to his fingers for hours.
He found himself on a long promenade and took a stroll along the beach, feeling like a holidaymaker. The tide was out, and the shoreline seemed endless, curving off around the bay towards a castle on a cliff-top. He sat on the sand as the sun dipped behind an island, and watched the embers of the dying day turn the sky to burnt sienna. What a pity he couldn’t take a photo to send home.
When the sun finally slipped from view he got up and kept walking, loath to return to his B&B. A stone pier jutted into the water and Seb couldn’t resist its draw. He couldn’t wait to wake up each morning and look out over the sea. Half a dozen fishermen stood silhouetted against the umber sky, their rods tracing fine arcs. Seb stood and listened to the sound of the waves gently breaking.
One of the fishermen looked up from his line and nodded. ‘Right, mate?’
Seb thought for a moment then said, ‘Fine, thank you.’
‘Fish are no biting. I’m packing it in. Anybody fancy a pint?’
‘Of beer?’ said Seb, before he realised the invitation had not been meant for him.
The man laughed. ‘Vodka, if you like. All the same to me, mates’ The fisherman packed away his rod then turned to Seb. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me, pal. You comin or no?’
‘Yes, please. I’d like to.’
The man looked Seb up and down. ‘You foreign?’
‘French,’ sa
id Seb.
‘Great football players, the French.’
Seb nodded. ‘Your rugby team is very good, I believe.’
‘Rugby’s for posh boys. Nae offence. What’s yer name?’
‘Seb.’ The man didn’t offer his name and Seb thought it best not to ask.
They followed the river, passing modern flats and a leisure centre. A faint whiff of chlorine stirred years of memories.
‘See that there?’ The man was pointing at a high crumbling wall. ‘Ever heard of Oliver Cromwell?’
Seb nodded.
‘He built that. A fort. Hard to believe, eh?’
As they walked, the man told Seb about Cromwell building a citadel in Ayr.