But on the flip side, he seemed fun; he seemed kind; he seemed interested in me (in hindsight I now know why); and of course he was drop-dead gorgeous, which didn’t hurt. And so slowly yet surely (and perhaps against my better judgement) I’d let him into my life.
And don’t get me wrong. I’d loved him. Deeply. Painfully. If I’d kept the baby and never found out about his betrayal, then it’s possible we could have had a life together back in Sri Lanka.
But then of course the abduction had happened, and everything had gone to shit, so I was in a distraught state anyway when I’d finally found out what the bastard had done. But the fury I’d felt then . . . that had been something else. When Diana had gone for me, I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing. I’d done it instinctively. And frankly, I’ve never regretted it for a moment, after all the terrible things she’d done to my family. The vicious old hag had got what she’d deserved.
I’d almost killed Matt too. I’d wanted to, but he didn’t deserve that, and I’m not the kind of person who plans a killing. Diana attacked me, so I reacted. Matt didn’t, so I didn’t kill him.
However, he might not have deserved death but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to be punished, which was why I did what I did. It hadn’t been hard. As soon as Matt had left the room, I’d told Dad that I couldn’t go to prison for killing Diana, and he said that I wouldn’t have to, but only if I was willing to sacrifice Matt.
And, of course, I was.
Dad’s chauffeur, Jonathan, had overpowered Matt and knocked him out. I’d helped drag him inside, where we’d lain him down beside Diana’s body. I struck her on the head twice more so that her blood splattered his upper body. Then we’d wiped my prints from the poker, placed it in Matt’s hand so that his were on it and, as he started to come round, we tied him up and locked him in the pantry. Dad called the police and we worked out our story. Ruthless, yes, but if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. And it had worked. Dad and I had walked free and Jonathan is now a quarter of a million pounds richer thanks to a payment into a Panamanian bank account.
And now it was time for me to begin my new life. Matt was the past. After being charged with the murders of Diana and that blackmailing rodent Piers MacDonald, he’d been remanded in custody. He’d asked me to visit several times through his lawyer, but I’d refused. There was nothing to say.
The last few weeks haven’t been easy. There’d been a shit storm of publicity surrounding Diana’s murder and my abduction. It had all the ingredients for a perfect story. Money; the mysterious death of a young woman witnessed only by her illegitimate half-sister; the bloody revenge of the mother. The murder of the mother by the half-sister’s fiancé, whom the mother had hired in the first place for a honey trap. Jesus, who wouldn’t want to read about all that?
I’d had hundreds of requests for interviews but had refused them all. I just wanted to draw a line under the whole thing, and I was thankful that nothing had come out about the fact that MacDonald had possessed the means to blackmail me.
But I still had one big problem. Who was the person behind it all? The one who’d ordered my kidnap and arranged for Matt to kill MacDonald? Because whatever you might be thinking, it wasn’t a set-up I’d arranged myself. And it wasn’t Burns either. He was just a dupe, working for someone else. And I wasn’t sure that the someone else was Diana. She’d denied it vociferously when we’d all been in the study just before she died, and I have to say I believed her. That only left two people I could think of. One was Tom, the half-brother I’d never met, although from what I could gather, he was something of a waster who didn’t have any kind of relationship with Burns, so it was highly unlikely to be him.
And so once again we get back to Dad himself. Because, ultimately, who else is there? Perhaps he really did just need to know for sure that I hadn’t pushed Alana to her death that night, and having me abducted was a foolproof means of confirming it one way or another. It would explain the use of Burns, a man he trusted, and the lie detector. It would also explain the killing of MacDonald, using Matt – a man he didn’t trust – to do it; and perhaps, most damning of all, the fact that no audiotape copies of my sessions with MacDonald have come to light. Anyone wanting to destroy my chance of an inheritance and take revenge on me would have made them public by now. But Dad wouldn’t want a scandal. If he’d thought I was responsible for Alana’s death, he would have just quietly disinherited me.
And he hadn’t done that either.
Poor Dad.
He’d gone downhill rapidly after the events of that night. I think the drama of it took most of the fight that was left in him, and he’d been bedridden at home for the past fortnight as he finally approached the end. I’d been spending several hours every day with him and had seen the pace at which he was deteriorating. It therefore hadn’t been a surprise when his doctor had told me on the phone this morning that he only had hours to live.
I parked the car on the driveway outside his house and climbed out.
It was a beautiful sunny day with a near-cloudless blue sky, but there was a biting December chill in the air that I still couldn’t get used to. My plan wasn’t to stay in England. It no longer felt like my home, if it ever truly had. It wasn’t to go back to Sri Lanka either. Now that I had money coming – real money – I wanted to travel. To see the world in style and start my new life of wealth wherever I felt comfortable. I had no interest in the business, even though with thirty-five per cent of the shares (less any tax I had to pay, which wasn’t going to be much the way Dad’s accountants had organised things), I was the company’s single biggest shareholder and had an automatic seat on the board. In the last few weeks Dad had tried to get me enthused about the world of luxury housing developments and I’d tried very hard to sound like I was. But put bluntly, once he was gone, so was I.
As I walked towards the entrance, I saw a tall blond man I recognised instantly from photos as Tom Roper, my half-brother, being led out of the building by Dad’s security man, Thomson. Tom had attempted to visit Dad a number of times these past few weeks, and Dad had always refused to see him. Their estrangement, it seemed, was complete, and I didn’t want to get involved, even though I was sure Tom blamed me for it, as if it had nothing to do with his own behaviour over the last twenty-five years.
I stepped behind a tree, not wanting to be seen, and waited while Tom stalked off to his car and drove back up the driveway far too fast. Even from some distance away I could see his face was like thunder. Alana had always said her brother was an arsehole, and she was right. He’d tried to sell his story to the newspapers after the abduction, but I’d got Dad’s lawyers to send a letter telling him I’d sue for libel if he said a single critical word about me, and coward that he is, he immediately beat a hasty retreat.
Dad’s bedroom was on the second floor, and Thomson had returned to stand guard outside by the time I got there, his hands behind his back.
‘Good morning, ma’am,’ he said with a smile. He always looked pleased to see me, but then I’d already employed him to be my bodyguard after Dad had gone, so it was worth his while. ‘Your father’s got a visitor at the moment. Shall I tell him you’re here?’
‘Who is it?’ I asked. Dad didn’t get many visitors and I couldn’t think of anyone he’d be wasting his last hours with, because when it came down to it, I was the only person he had left in the world.
‘It’s his stepson, Edward. He’s been in there a while.’
I’d never met the stepson. Dad didn’t talk about him much, and it was clear they didn’t have a close relationship, although I knew Edward was heavily involved in the business.
‘Can you let Dad know I’m here?’ I said.
Thomson nodded and knocked on the door, opening it to announce my presence before closing it again without speaking. ‘You can go in, ma’am, but he’s asleep.’
I thanked him and went inside.
Dad was propped up on the pillows of his outsized bed, looking frail
and wan. The sight reminded me of when I’d watched Mum die all those years ago. How awful it was to see someone you cared about degenerate from a healthy, vibrant individual to a bag of skin and bone. It reminded me all too much of my own mortality.
Edward was sitting in a chair by the side of the bed and stood up as I entered. He was, I have to say, a distinctly underwhelming-looking young man – slight of build, with a baby face topped with hair that was already retreating fast. I’d been told he was around my own age, but he had all the gravitas of a twelve-year-old.
‘Hello,’ he whispered, coming around the bed and putting out a hand. ‘I’m Edward, Sir Hugh’s stepson. You must be Kate. I was sorry to hear of your ordeal.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s all in the past now.’
He waited for me to say something else, but I let the silence hang there. I didn’t want to continue the conversation in case it turned to business or the inheritance. I don’t want to sound mercenary, but Edward was of no interest to me, and I had no doubt he would be a pain in the arse when he found out that he wasn’t getting anything in the will. Easier to put the wall up between us now.
‘Well, I was just leaving,’ he said after an awkward few seconds. ‘Good to meet you.’
‘And you,’ I said with a polite smile, stepping past him.
I waited until he’d left the room, then sat down on the other side of the bed so I could see out of the window. Dad looked the most peaceful I’d ever seen him, lying there with his eyes closed, breathing softly. I stared at him for a few moments, wondering how different it all could have been if he’d acknowledged my presence all those years ago. I’d only been seven when he’d divorced Diana, so we could have had a proper relationship and done the daddy-and-daughter things I’d so wanted to do when I was growing up. My life could have been fun. There would never have been the tragedies, the long, lonely exile halfway round the world. I’d fantasised about it so many times, but sitting here watching him take the final breaths of his life, I knew it was time to let go, to forget the injustices that had been visited on me, to forget the ghosts of the past like Alana and David, and to look forward for once. But there were still questions that needed answering before I moved on.
One of Dad’s eyes popped open, jolting me from my thoughts, and he smiled at me with surprising vigour. ‘Has he gone yet? He was boring me to death. Quite literally.’
I smiled back. ‘Yes, you’re safe now.’
‘Thank God for that.’ He tried to sit up, but the effort was too much for him.
‘Stay there, it’s all right,’ I said, touching his arm gently. ‘I can get you anything you need.’
‘I’m good,’ he said. ‘They’ve been filling me with morphine. I can’t feel a damn thing any more.’ He turned his head slowly and looked up at me, and there was real love in his eyes. ‘I’m glad you came.’
‘I was always going to come. We’ve wasted too much time already. There’s no point wasting whatever we’ve got left.’
He sighed. ‘I know.’
We were both silent for a long time, and I suppose that was our problem. We really had nothing in common. Our relationship had been cobbled together when I was already an adult, and in the intervening years we’d seen each other rarely. Did I love him? I wasn’t sure. Was I sad that he was dying? Yes, but nothing like as sad as I would have been if he’d at least tried to be a father to me back when I was young. And right now, I didn’t know what to say to him. Well, I did, but it wasn’t something he was going to want to hear.
‘Are you all right, Kate?’ he asked, clearly seeing something in my expression.
I took a deep breath. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What is it?’ There was a disapproving look in his pale eyes, and I could tell that he was wary.
I was going to ask if it was him behind my abduction, but somehow I simply couldn’t come out with the words, because even if it had been, I knew he’d never admit it. Not now. And maybe it was just best to let bygones be bygones.
He saw my hesitation. ‘I wasn’t responsible for Griffiths’ murder, or your attempted murder, if that was what you were going to ask,’ he said. ‘I may not have been a good father to you growing up, but I would never have done anything to hurt you, whatever anyone else might say.’ He tried to squeeze my hand, but there was only the lightest pressure. ‘I’m hurt that you could think I’d ever do something like that to you.’
I squeezed his hand back. ‘I didn’t think that. I just needed to know for sure.’
‘You thought I might make a deathbed confession then?’
I smiled wanly. ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
But of course there was no way he’d be making a deathbed confession to that particular crime. I knew he wasn’t responsible for David’s murder. And nor was Diana.
Because it was me.
There you go. It’s out there. I killed David.
It had all happened very suddenly. I’d come home from work early, because I’d been feeling under the weather, and had discovered David up in our bedroom with some photos of Alana I’d never seen before strewn across our bed. He’d clearly been sitting there staring at them – although he did make an effort to hide them when he heard me come in – and I could tell he’d been crying.
And then he dropped the bombshell. He wanted to split up. He still missed Alana terribly and didn’t feel right continuing with our relationship.
I was devastated. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been so happy and now he was ending everything, just like that. I cried and begged him to stay, but he said he was leaving. That was when I got angry. I yelled at him, told him he couldn’t go, my fury boiling over, but he pushed past me, saying he’d come back to collect his things.
And that was when I grabbed the knife I kept under the bed – because I always thought the Ropers might one day send someone to harm us – and went for him.
I don’t remember what happened after that. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed looking up at my father but I guess I must have cleared up and removed any incriminating evidence, and then, in a fit of despair over what I’d done, and perhaps as an ironic nod to Alana, I’d thrown myself out of the window.
It had taken me years to get over what I’d done, and years before I allowed myself to fall in love again. And look how that had turned out. So from now on, I was going to stay single. It was a lot easier that way.
Dad and I sat in silence for a few moments, both lost in our own thoughts.
‘So, in the spirit of confessions, can I ask you something?’ he said eventually.
I knew what was coming.
‘I know you’ve told me many times that Alana’s death was an accident, and then you said that night in the study that she actually jumped, but I want you to know that if there’s anything you want to add . . . if there was more to it, then now’s the time to tell me. It’s the past. I wouldn’t love you any less.’
I looked him right in the eye. ‘I’ve never lied about it, Dad. You have to know that. I would never have hurt her.’ I pictured her then, the spiky-haired wild elfin girl with the sly grin that always spelt trouble. We’d had good times. Some of the best I’ve ever had. ‘I loved her.’
‘So did I,’ he said. ‘I love you too.’
And then he closed his eyes, his breathing slowing as he slipped into sleep.
I sat with him a while. I didn’t know how long he’d last like this; it could be hours or even days. Eventually, though, I became restless and decided to take a stroll round the grounds.
As I walked back through the house, I felt liberated. I’d suffered ordeal after ordeal in my life, and perhaps nothing was worse than the twenty-four hours I’d been held in a filthy cell by Burns. But now it was over. I’d survived everything thrown at me.
And do you know what? I’ll let you into a secret, if you hadn’t guessed it already.
I did push her.
She’d turned on me, furious that I’d dared tell her the truth
about our relationship, talking to me like I was nothing, destroying everything we’d had with her venomous words . . . and I’d gone for her. Charged into her, sending her backwards towards the ledge. I remember her eyes widening with fear and her mouth opening to cry out . . .
And then I gave her that final shove and she was gone, hurtling through the darkness below.
Almost immediately, I’d felt terrible about what I’d done, but that was quickly replaced by a need for self-preservation. I decided on my story, accident rather than suicide, and rushed back in to tell David that she’d slipped and fallen.
The rest you know. I did feel guilt. Huge guilt. Hence my ill-fated visits to Piers MacDonald. But yes, I got over what I’d done. It was a moment of madness provoked by Alana herself, and admitting it wouldn’t have brought her back.
The problem was, I had admitted it to someone. MacDonald. It had been in one of our last sessions, when he’d put me under. The thing about hypnotherapy is that even though your eyes are closed and you’re in a trance, you’re still awake and aware of what you’re doing or saying. At least I was. On some level I needed to admit it, to tell someone, anyone. I knew I couldn’t tell David. He was convinced I’d had nothing to do with it, and would have been horrified if he’d known the truth.
I knew my sessions with MacDonald were confidential. So I just let myself go, and when he put me in a trance and took me back to that night, I told him everything word for word. It felt both cathartic and terrifying, I remember that.
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 27