Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller

by Kernick, Simon

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Kate. ‘But I will do. I wanted to see you first. You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?’

  Roper shook his head. ‘God, no. I would never do that to you. You’re all I’ve got left.’

  ‘What about your son?’ demanded Diana. ‘What about him?’

  ‘We’ve had this conversation already,’ he said to her. ‘He’s dead to me. You know that. If Burns was behind this, then he was working for someone else.’ He stared at Diana pointedly.

  ‘He was definitely working for someone else,’ said Kate. ‘It wasn’t this man Burns on his own. It was another attempt to make me admit that I was in some way responsible for Alana’s death. He made me take a lie detector test. And I’m damn sure he was the same man who came to kill David and me all those years ago.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that either, I promise,’ said Roper.

  Kate turned back to Diana. ‘But she does, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I had nothing to do with any abduction,’ snapped Diana. ‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d made the whole thing up just to get some attention and sympathy.’

  ‘How dare you talk to me like that, you bitter old bitch.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you exactly how I want. You don’t scare me. You’re just a nasty little commoner with plenty of cunning but not an ounce of class.’

  ‘Do not speak to her like that in my house, Diana!’ shouted Roper, his voice booming round the room, the effort taking it out of him.

  But his appeal had no effect. Diana was unleashing her wrath now, swinging her glass round as she spoke. ‘You’re pathetic, Hugh,’ she snarled. ‘You always were. What kind of man rewards his daughter’s killer with an inheritance and leaves his son hanging out to dry?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her!’ yelled Kate.

  The atmosphere was toxic and I had a feeling that anything could happen. The two women were facing off like banshees, the fury evident in both their expressions, and Roper was in no shape to stop them. I wasn’t sure anyone would have been able to. But Kate was the woman I loved, and the mother of my child, so I felt compelled to intervene even though everyone was ignoring me.

  ‘Please, let’s all calm down,’ I said, stepping forward to get between the two women, and then Roper stopped me dead with his next comment.

  ‘You don’t have the right to speak,’ he spat, looking at me with an expression of utter disgust on his face. ‘I know all about you, Walters. Where you were last night, for instance? With your ex-girlfriend. Did you tell Kate about that? Because I’ve got the pictures to prove it in case you didn’t.’

  Kate looked at me. ‘Is this true, Matt? You said you were out with friends.’

  ‘It’s not like it sounds,’ I said, thinking I could still keep this from getting out of hand, because I hadn’t actually done anything with Geeta.

  But that was before Roper spoke again.

  ‘You didn’t meet Kate by chance either, did you? You were hired by my son Tom to go out to Sri Lanka.’

  This time Kate’s eyes widened as if she’d been slapped. She stared at me incredulously. ‘Is this true? Tell me it isn’t.’

  ‘Of course, he’s an actor,’ crowed Diana. ‘It was me who had the idea to hire him. I saw him on that awful TV show.’

  ‘No one hired me, for Christ’s sake!’ I shouted, desperate to regain some control over the situation. And then, turning to Diana: ‘And I’ve never clapped eyes on you in my life before.’

  ‘That’s right, you haven’t,’ she answered, wearing a triumphant smile. ‘But you’ve met my son, Tom. He was the one who paid you to ingratiate yourself with this bitch. To get some answers from her about Alana. Something you singularly failed to do.’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ I said. I turned back to Kate, pleading with her to believe me. ‘I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, I promise. Don’t believe her. She’s just trying to poison you against me.’

  ‘Tom told me the same thing,’ said Roper. ‘About hiring you.’

  ‘Check his bank account if you don’t believe me,’ Diana said to Kate. ‘He was paid five grand in August last year, plus we bought his flight for him. Sri Lanka via India so it looked like he’d been travelling. Less suspicious that way. I’ve still got the electronic receipt.’

  Kate was staring at me aghast. Roper was still wearing the same expression of disgust. Diana just looked pleased with herself, as if her investment had just paid off. ‘I think the receipt’s somewhere on my phone,’ she said, going to the desk and removing it from her handbag.

  ‘Tell me they’re lying,’ said Kate.

  I’m an actor. A much better one than I’ve ever been given credit for. But I was faltering. You see, I haven’t been entirely truthful. Yes, I was hired to meet Kate and, if possible, become part of her life. I never knew the identity of the people hiring me. I never knew that Kate was related to Sir Hugh Roper. I wasn’t told what information to glean from her. Just to get her to open up about her past, and to report back regularly. But I fell in love. And that’s the truth. I realised then that there was no way I could betray her, and that was why I dropped all contact with the man who’d paid me. I wanted to put the whole sorry episode in the past, because I was ashamed of what I’d done. Instead, I wanted to look forward, to start a family, to lead a completely new life. With Kate.

  And that’s the truth.

  But how was that ever going to happen now?

  ‘It’s not what you think, darling, I promise,’ I said, taking the only approach I could, given that Diana was now checking her phone and would at any moment provide the proof that she had purchased my plane ticket. ‘I’m in love with you. I always have been. You’ve got to believe that. We’ve had an amazing, incredible year together . . .’

  Kate put her drink down on a nearby table and took a deep breath. ‘You filthy, rotten, lying bastard.’ The words were delivered like slow, heavy punches to the gut, and I knew then that I’d lost her. Whatever happened, there was no way back from this.

  But I had to try, because every bridge I had was already burned. ‘Please. Don’t do this. We’ve got something . . . Our baby, our family.’

  Her expression seemed to lose its anger and become almost vacant. ‘Get out of my sight. I never, ever want to see you again. Go.’

  I stood there in a state of complete shock as Kate – the love of my life – turned her back on me.

  But Diana, it seemed, wasn’t finished yet and she walked over to Kate, holding out the phone. ‘See,’ she was saying, ‘it’s on here, the receipt—’

  ‘Fuck off, you old bitch!’ roared Kate, shoving Diana backwards with both hands, sending her tumbling onto her behind, the phone flying into a corner of the room.

  Kate looked down at her with an expression that I can only describe as pure hatred, while Diana sat there regarding her with the same savage loathing. And then she said something that made even me flinch. ‘No wonder your daughter committed suicide, having a mother like you. She always hated you, you know.’

  Diana was on her feet with the speed of someone half her age. ‘What do you mean, she committed suicide? You said she fell.’

  ‘She jumped,’ said Kate coldly. ‘And she always told me how much she hated you.’

  Everything happened very fast then.

  ‘I’ll kill you for that!’ screamed Diana, and rushed at Kate, the brandy glass clutched in her hand like a weapon.

  At the same time, Kate reached over and grabbed a poker from a stand by the fire and swung it one-handed like a baseball bat straight into the side of Diana’s head, with such force that it knocked her sideways and into Roper, who was moving in to intervene. Both of them fell over in a heap.

  Diana rolled off him and came to rest on her back near me. Her head was bleeding profusely from a deep wound and her eyes were closed. I didn’t know if she was dead or not, but she wasn’t moving at all, and if I’d had to take a guess (a
nd remember, I’d seen no fewer than four corpses in the last twenty-four hours), I’d have bet a lot of money that she was number five.

  I didn’t even try to find a pulse. I was still rooted to the spot, finding it hard to believe what I was seeing. I looked at Kate. She was staring down at Diana, the rage gone from her face now, with shock taking its place, the poker hanging loosely from her hand.

  I didn’t know what to say. Or to think. It was as if this nightmare I was trapped in, which I couldn’t imagine getting any worse, somehow always did.

  ‘My God,’ said Roper, sitting up straight like he’d had an electric shock. ‘Is she . . .’

  Kate nodded, her features crumpling. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean to do it. She . . . she . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, starting to get to his feet. ‘We’ll sort this somehow . . . we’ll sort this.’

  Feeling once again like a voyeur watching someone else’s performance, I took a step towards Kate. ‘Honey, put the poker down and let’s all work together to—’

  The glare she gave me stopped me dead, and her grip on the poker actually tightened. ‘I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again. Now get the fuck out of here.’

  I considered persisting. Usually I’m pretty good at the art of persuasion, but the key’s to know when you’re beaten, and right then I knew for certain that not only did I have no chance of persuading Kate to change her mind about me right now, but that staying put might even result in serious injury.

  So with a last glance down at Diana, who still hadn’t moved, and whose blood was now soaking into the carpet, I turned and walked out of the study, moving quickly just in case Kate suddenly decided to lash out at me with the poker too.

  There was no one out in the entrance hall, and I strode through it and out of the front door, eager to get some fresh air and try to make sense of what had just happened, and decide what the hell I was going to do now.

  It had started to rain again, and I stood on the steps, my anxiety building, as I realised this was the end of the road. I had nowhere left to turn except the authorities. I tried to get my breathing under control, but I was terrified of what was coming next. My fiancée didn’t want me, and everything I’d striven for had gone up in smoke.

  I walked slowly over to the rental car, stopping beside the driver’s door and reaching into my pocket for the keys. But before I got to them, I broke down in sobs, leaning against the car and allowing the tears to flow.

  Which was unfortunate timing, because I never heard the footsteps until they were right behind me.

  Feeling my heart leap with a mixture of fear and hope, I swung round just as the blow struck me on the temple. My head snapped back and I fell back against the car, and bounced off again, just in time for the second blow, which broke something in my face.

  Before I could focus on my attacker, or even catch a glimpse of him, my vision darkened and I had a vague sensation of sliding gently down the door into unconsciousness.

  After that, I really don’t remember anything until you arrived.

  62

  DCI Cameron Doyle

  ‘That’s not how Kate tells it,’ I say, when he’s finished.

  Walters looks genuinely affronted. ‘What’s she saying then?’

  ‘What do you think?’ asks Tania.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answers, exasperated. ‘I’ve just told you what happened.’

  ‘She says you killed Diana Roper-King.’

  Walters snaps upright, shaking his head. ‘That’s bullshit. It’s lies. I had no reason to kill her.’

  ‘Well that’s not quite true, is it?’ I say. ‘According to Kate’s statement, Diana had just exposed you as an actor who’d been hired to get Kate to fall in love with you. She was about to show Kate – who was understandably very upset by this revelation – proof of your duplicity when you grabbed a poker and struck her once round the head with such force that she was immediately knocked unconscious. You then struck her twice more as she lay dying. Which is consistent with her injuries.’

  ‘No! No! No!’ he cries out, his voice rising several octaves as it carries round the enclosed room. ‘That’s not how it happened. Kate did it.’

  ‘Apparently you tried to flee the premises but were overpowered by Sir Hugh Roper’s chauffeur, Jonathan Wolfrey, and he and Kate tied your hands and placed you in a locked pantry, which was where you were when the first officers arrived on the scene, responding to Sir Hugh’s emergency call.’

  ‘Sir Hugh confirms Kate’s version of events pretty much word for word,’ says Tania.

  ‘He’s lying. They’re both lying,’ says Walters. His eyes dart from me to Tania and back to me again. ‘They’re covering up the fact that Kate killed her. Why don’t you check the murder weapon for prints?’

  ‘We did,’ I tell him. ‘Yours were the only fingerprints on the handle.’

  ‘And Roper’s chauffeur’s statement also backs up their version of events.’

  Walters shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. ‘Does Kate say the kidnap was all bullshit too?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. She’s told us about her abduction, and her story tallies with yours there, although she never saw the body of the woman you claimed to have found lying in your bed. We think Kate was kidnapped by Nigel Burns, who was a former employee of her father and whose body we’ve now recovered from the building where he was holding her. We also think that Burns was working for Diana Roper-King, who believed Kate was responsible for her daughter Alana’s death.’

  Walters looks sick. ‘This is a set-up,’ he says, downing the glass of water on the table in front of him. ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  And the fact is, he may well be. The problem is, I don’t know. Nor does Tania. We’ve got to go with the evidence, and the evidence says that the most likely culprit is Matt Walters. There may not be enough to convict him of Diana’s murder, but that doesn’t matter because he’s almost certainly going to go down for the murder of Piers MacDonald anyway. That means Diana’s case will be closed, with him being attributed as the killer whether he was or not.

  I don’t like it. Kate White has questions to answer. She had traces of Diana Roper-King’s blood on her when she was arrested, but claimed she got splashed with it when Walters struck Diana the first time. She also had a strong motive for killing her, given that she blamed Diana for the murder of her former boyfriend, David Griffiths, and suspected that she was behind the kidnapping too.

  But the fact is, we’re never going to prove it, whereas with Walters we’ve got a chance of a conviction. And I’ll be honest with you, we need some sort of a result here. We’ve got five dead bodies and a media who are going to be baying for villains to pin them on. Put bluntly, Walters fits the bill. And so it looks like Roper’s going to go to his grave a free man.

  That bugs me. But something else bugs me even more. As I’ve told you already, we’ve always suspected Roper of being behind the murder of David Griffiths and the attempted murder of Kate, and he knows full well about our suspicions. So it would have been easy for him to pin the blame on Diana by pretending that she confessed to Griffiths’ murder during their conversation in his study. But he didn’t. His statement says that she denied it, just as he himself has always done. Like a lot of things about this case, this doesn’t make sense. Because who else could it have been?

  I’ve been a copper thirty years – a detective for twenty-five of them – so I understand that not every loose end is going to be tied up and not every narrative makes perfect sense. But this seems especially wrong.

  And I’m still thinking about this particular loose end when, two hours later and with a surprising sense of reluctance, I charge Matt Walters with the murders of Diana Roper-King and Piers MacDonald.

  63

  Matt

  In the end, I knew they were coming. The murder charges.

  After hearing the last of my testimony, the two detectives – a craggy guy in his fifti
es who looked like he’d seen it all before, and a younger woman who pretended to be sympathetic but clearly wasn’t – had asked me several times if I just wanted to come clean and tell the truth, suggesting that my story was never going to cut it with a jury. I’d stuck to my guns and finally demanded access to a lawyer.

  One had duly been appointed for me – a young guy, probably not even out of his twenties, the only legal aid solicitor available at such short notice – but it was clear from the look on his face when I told him my story that he didn’t believe it either.

  But I wasn’t going to admit to anything I hadn’t done, because the fact remained, I was telling the truth. So my lawyer, acting on my instruction, had told the police to either charge me or let me go.

  Even knowing what was coming, it was still a shock to sit there and hear myself being charged with two murders I hadn’t committed by the lead detective, his monotonous, almost bored tone the very antithesis of the dramatic flourish in which the charges were read out to the bad guys on Night Beat.

  And I’m innocent. I really am. Everything I’ve said in this room has been true. And yet no one is going to know the truth, or that I was set up and turned into a scapegoat by the woman I’d sacrificed everything to save.

  The room fell silent and I leaned forward over the desk and put my head in my hands, as if by doing so I could somehow escape the disaster that was swamping me.

  And my life as I knew it, with its many downs but some good ups, ended not with a bang but a whimper.

  Six weeks later

  64

  Kate

  So here I am, back in the world, and I can finally speak freely.

  Question: do I feel bad for setting Matt up to take the rap for Diana’s killing (which I wouldn’t describe as murder, more justified homicide)?

  Answer: a little, but not enough to cause me lack of sleep.

  That’s not because I’m a monster. Far from it. But Matt betrayed me. And it wasn’t a small betrayal either. What he did – inveigling himself into my life purely for money, playing with my emotions, taking advantage for his own selfish ends – was, and is, unforgivable. I’d had my suspicions of him in the early days, the way he rocked up out of the blue at the hotel, a very handsome man travelling alone, and how he seemed to fall very quickly in love. I kept him at bay for a while because I thought he might be some sort of gold-digger – not that at the time I had a great deal of gold – and because he was the kind of pretty boy who’d be way too shallow for someone like me, and who’d almost certainly continue to have a roving eye.