Afterwards, when I was back in the room, I felt terribly vulnerable and I remember telling him that I hadn’t meant to push Alana over the edge, that it had all been an accident.
He’d told me it was okay, that I was safe confiding in him, and I’d genuinely believed him. But although we’d continued the sessions for another couple of weeks, things between us had changed. He tried to get me to talk more about my feelings of guilt, but I clammed up and soon stopped going.
All the memories had come flooding back after I’d paid him for my files and had listened to those sessions. It made grim listening. Even if you took out my single admission that I’d killed Alana, there were so many things I said that pointed to my guilt. Anyone listening would know what I’d done. None of it would be admissible in court, of course, but given that I was standing to inherit a huge amount of money, the recordings were dynamite.
And someone, somewhere still had a copy. Yet whoever it was had yet to make their move, which meant either that it had indeed been Diana, or that perhaps whoever it was would be willing to let it lie.
But life never works like that.
I was barely out of the front door when who should appear from behind the very same tree that I’d sheltered behind earlier but Edward. He walked purposefully towards me, an irritatingly knowing smile on his face.
‘We didn’t really get a chance to talk earlier,’ he said, drawing alongside me.
‘There’s nothing for us to talk about,’ I told him without slowing down, heading for the side of the house and the back garden.
‘I think there is,’ he said, pulling something from his trouser pocket and opening the palm of his hand so I could see it.
In spite of myself, I looked down. It was a flash drive.
‘Recognise this?’ he said. ‘You probably don’t. But I’m sure you know what it contains. I do.’
The look in his eyes said it all, and I wondered if he’d shared its contents with Dad, then dismissed the thought just as fast. Dad would never have told me he loved me if he knew about this.
I stopped. Edward stopped too. He was still grinning. I felt like wiping it right off his face. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing that you can’t manage,’ he said in his irritatingly high-pitched voice. ‘You’ll be the largest shareholder in Peregrine Homes, so for starters you’re going to make sure that I become the next CEO. Then you’re going to gift me a manageable percentage of the shares, no more than ten per cent, in lieu of the inheritance I never had. After that, you’re going to vote for any changes I want to make.’
I looked down at the drive in his hand then back at him. ‘Make whatever’s on there public, I don’t care. I’m inheriting anyway.’ If I had to, I’d rush back upstairs and smother Dad just to make sure he didn’t make a last-minute change to the will, but I knew it wasn’t going to come to that. This little prick could do nothing. He was just a chancer.
But he was still smiling, and I didn’t like that.
‘Yes, you might be able to weather the reputational storm if it came out about you killing Alana, and I very much doubt that it would lead to a conviction in court, although it would be a lot worse than you think. But I also have something else.’ He reached into the pocket of his suit trousers with something close to an amateur magician’s flourish and pulled out a phone. He pressed a couple of buttons, then handed it to me. ‘Have a look at this. It makes gripping viewing.’
The screen showed a still from a video taken inside Dad’s study, the angle suggesting the camera was high up on the main bookshelf facing the door. There were four people in shot, standing round in a rough circle. It was clear there was a discussion going on between them, but there was no sound. I recognised them all instantly: me, Matt, Dad and Diana. And the footage was from the night of Diana’s murder.
I pressed the play button, and Diana, who had her back to the camera, immediately rushed towards me. As she did so, you could quite clearly see me grab the poker from by the fire and strike her with enough force to send her hurtling sideways.
I turned away from the screen and shoved the phone back into his hand. I felt sick. There was no way of sugar-coating that. The evidence was all there.
‘How?’ was all I managed to say.
‘I’ve had the camera in Father’s study for months,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I needed to know what he was up to vis-à-vis the business. It was just blind luck that it caught your little escapade.’
He’d trapped me. My mind worked furiously to think of a way out. There was only one solution. Edward had to die.
But it seemed he’d already planned for that. ‘Please don’t think, Kate, that just because you have the killer instinct – and I know that you do have it – you can get rid of me somehow. It doesn’t work like that. I’m very well prepared. If anything happens to me, all of this will automatically be made public via three different lawyers in three different countries. You will not only face ruin, but life imprisonment too. However . . .’ he paused, his smile growing even wider, like that of a little boy pulling the wings off a fly, ‘if you do what I ask – and I think you’ll find it’s very reasonable under the circumstances – none of this will ever see the light of day. Nor will there ever be anything linking you to Alana’s death. I have control of all the copies made by Piers MacDonald. And since he’s dead, and so is the poor detective who followed you to your meeting with him, no one can put any of it together. I’ve thought of everything. My only concern about the whole thing was Nigel Burns. I had to pay him a lot of money to kidnap you and I thought he might prove to be the kind of loose end it’s hard to get rid of. But you managed that for me, so thank you.’ He gave a little bow.
I didn’t know what to say.
‘I can see you’re shaken up by all this,’ he continued, ‘and I can understand that, but you’ll be doing the right thing. I’m more than ready to head up Peregrine Homes. My stepfather might not have believed it, but as you can see, I too have the necessary killer instinct. In fact, I think we’d make a great team.’ He leaned forward and patted me on the arm, his hand lingering, his face close enough to mine that I could see the fluffy hairs above his upper lip and smell his fish-paste breath. ‘You’re a very attractive woman,’ he whispered into my ear, ‘and one who needs to make sure I stay alive, healthy and, of course, happy. And what would make me happiest right now is if you’d agree to join me for dinner this evening. I have a reservation at eight p.m. at the Waterside Inn in Bray. Usually you have to wait a year to get a table, but I pulled some strings. What do you say?’
He stared at me with far more confidence than was warranted for a man like him, his teeth bared in a predatory leer.
I had no choice, and we both knew it.
‘Of course,’ I said, trying and failing to smile back, wishing I could smash his face into a bloody unrecognisable pulp with the same poker I’d used on Diana.
‘Good,’ he said, giving my arm a squeeze. ‘And make sure you wear stockings and a nice pair of heels. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’
He turned on his heel and walked away with a jaunty little wave, leaving me standing there rigid with shock and disgust as all my chickens came flocking back home to roost.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear Alana’s bawdy laughter echoing down the years in mockery as she finally had her revenge.
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Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Contents
About the Author
Also By
About the Book
Praise for Simon Kernick
Dedication
prologue
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Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 28