by C. L. Taylor
‘Let’s look over there.’ Fiona gestures for us to head towards Gordon’s cottage, the whitewashed building next to the mausoleum.
I nod and we both break into a slow jog. By the time we reach the cottage we are both soaked to the skin and breathing heavily. We stand shoulder to shoulder in the small porch, our backs against the door, and stare across the lush green grass towards the mausoleum a few hundred metres away.
‘At least they’re warm and dry in there,’ Fiona says.
‘And dead.’
‘There is that.’
I turn to look at her. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Has Joe talked to you about his brother, the one who died?’
I hold my breath as she continues to stare at the mausoleum. I fully expect her to say no, or to tell me she doesn’t know the details. Instead she turns her head to look at me.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘How did he die?’
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and I fight to keep my breathing under control. This is when she tells me that he died in a car crash.
‘He hung himself. In a prison cell.’
All the air rushes from my body and I double over, gripping my thighs. Fiona says nothing but I can feel her watching me.
‘Are you sure?’ I straighten up again. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
‘That’s what he told me.’
I pause over her words. That’s what he told me. It doesn’t mean it’s the truth.
‘What else did he tell you about him?’
She shrugs. ‘That his name was Will and he was a drug dealer. Apparently he’d had a gambling problem. It started at university when a few of his friends suggested a poker night and Will got lucky and won the pot. He played again, and again, and then, when his mates lost interest, he started going to a local casino on his own – chasing the high, you know?’
I nod, even though I don’t. The only time I’ve ever gambled was on the Grand National and I vowed I never would again after I found out how many of the fallen horses had to be shot.
‘Anyway,’ Fiona continues, ‘apparently, Will became convinced that he could work the system and he all but dropped out of university to keep gambling. He did okay for a bit, then his luck turned and suddenly he’d drained the last of his student loan and stretched his overdraft as far as it could go.’
‘He told Joe all this?’
‘Yeah, he asked him to lend him some money but Joe was between jobs and Will was too proud to ask his parents to help him out. That’s when he started dealing drugs to make a bit of cash on the side. Only selling drugs and making money was as addictive as the gambling, according to Joe. Will started off selling weed to his mates but there was more money in cocaine, GBH and ketamine, so he started dealing those too. When the police raided his house, they found thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs: heroin, crack, the lot.’
‘Jesus.’
I don’t know if it’s the amount of detail in the story or because it seems so plausible but it sounds true.
‘Did you believe him? Joe. When he told you all this?’
Fiona brushes her hair out of her face and gives me a look. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Sometimes people aren’t who they say they are.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing.’ I look past the mausoleum and out to sea. I was convinced that Joe was my stalker but everything Fiona’s just told me has thrown doubt on that. But if it’s not him, then who is it? Maybe it’s not even a guest at all. Maybe it’s someone who’s been hiding out and watching us, sneaking in while we’re all asleep.
Fiona touches my arm, making me jump.
‘So,’ she says irritably. ‘What happens now?’
I tap the door behind us. ‘We’re going to find out if Trevor’s in here.’
Fiona twists the door handle. ‘Locked.’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s not in here. If he was, one of the windows would be smashed and there’s no sign anyone’s tried to break in.’ She walks over to the window, presses her nose to the glass and cups her hands around her face. ‘Nothing looks disturbed inside either.’
I leave her with her face still pressed to the dark glass, then shout her name as I round the cottage. She comes running.
‘Look!’ I point at a small, opaque window. The glass is smashed and the window is unlatched and open an inch. ‘Someone’s been in here.’
Fiona pulls her sleeve over her hand, opens the window fully and looks inside.
‘It’s a toilet and the door’s open to the hallway.’ She lifts a leg as though she’s about to scale the wall. ‘I’m going in.’
‘No.’ I step forwards. ‘Trevor trusts me. I’ll go in.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘He won’t do anything. He knows I want to help him.’
Her gaze drifts to my sling, visible beneath my half-on, half-off coat. ‘What about your arm?’
‘It’ll be fine. And anyway, you’ll be right outside. I’ll shout if I need some help.’
Chapter 41
Mohammed
As his parents stroll into his room, positively brimming with positivity and cheery smiles, Mohammed turns his head and looks in the opposite direction.
‘You all right, love?’ His mum rounds the bed and takes the seat nearest his head, forcing him to look at her. She reaches for his hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Sorry we’re a bit late. The traffic was awful. Wasn’t it, Ali?’
Mo’s dad nods. ‘Murder. How are you, son?’
Mohammed doesn’t respond. He knows what they’re hoping he’ll say – that he’s feeling well in himself and positive about the future. But that wouldn’t be true. He feels like shit in himself, he hates the rehab centre and its crippled, broken people and the future is a big, dark hole. He can’t tell them that though. His parents look as though they’ve aged ten years in the last three months.
‘Any word from the doctor about when you might get out?’ his mum asks.
He sighs. It’s not his mum’s fault that she asks him that each time she visits. It’s a question he’s been asking almost daily and the most he’s been able to get out of his consultant is ‘it might be a few more months yet’.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not yet.’
‘Any more sensation in your right leg?’ his dad asks. ‘You said you could twitch the muscles in your thigh last time we were in.’
That development is the only glimmer of hope in Mohammed’s dark world.
‘I can still twitch the muscle,’ he tells his dad. ‘But I can’t move either of my legs.’
‘Did you see the news?’ his mum asks, glancing up at the television screen fixed to the opposite wall.
Mohammed’s throat tightens and all he can do is nod. He felt sick with fear when the headlines flashed up and he saw Steve Laing being bundled into a police station. For one terrible, horrifying moment he thought it had been Anna who had been stabbed and he was almost relieved when he realised it was the lorry driver, Donna Farrell. Watching the story unfold he remembered Freddy’s father sitting by his bedside ranting about the injustice of the trial and how, if Donna Farrell had walked into a shop and stabbed two people, she’d be inside for the rest of her life, not a measly two years. Falling asleep at the wheel wasn’t a defence, he told Mo. An articulated lorry was just as much of a weapon as a knife. Mo had no idea, as he’d lain back against his hospital pillows and made sympathetic noises, that Steve Laing wasn’t trying to come to terms with what had happened to his son; he was planning a murder of his own.
Now, Mo closes his eyes and a single tear dribbles into the hairline by his ear.
‘Mo?’ His mum tightens her grip on his hand. ‘Talk to me, love. What’s upsetting you?’
He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk but the guilt he feels is burning away at him, charring the person he used to be.
‘I’m no better than Steve Laing,’ he says, his voice little m
ore than a whisper.
‘Sorry?’
‘She asked me …’ He swallows down the lump in his throat. ‘She asked me if I wanted to see Anna.’
‘Who, love? Who asked you?’
He hears his mother’s question but he needs to keep speaking. If he doesn’t say it now it’ll keep burning away at him, making him feel like the worst kind of person.
‘She thought I’d want to see Anna but I said I didn’t want to see her, that the crash was all her fault and that I wished …’ His mother doesn’t speak but he can hear her holding her breath, waiting for him to continue. ‘… I wished she was dead.’
Chapter 42
Anna
It’s dark and cramped inside the small cottage and when I flick the light switch in the kitchen the faint glow from the bare lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling does little to lift the gloom. The kitchen units were probably white or cream once but they’re yellowed with age, or tobacco, and split and peeling. There’s a wooden table in the centre of the room holding a bowl of shrivelled apples, a book on birds of the British Isles, a pad and pen and a pile of post. I reach for the letter on the top. It’s a letter to a Mr Gordon Brodie from the Bank of Scotland, telling him his ISA containing £2,367 has matured. There’s a mug, bowl, plate and assorted crockery on the draining board by the sink, a fridge containing a bottle of milk well past its use-by date, a pat of butter and some cheese and ham that’s curling at the edges. And that’s it. There’s no personality in the small room, no trinkets, photographs or ornaments. It feels unloved. I walk over to the kettle and touch its rounded belly. Cold. Nothing in the room is out of place but one cupboard door is open. I crouch down and look inside: tins of baked beans, soup, chicken curry and tomatoes, their lids grey and dirty. In the space at the front of the cupboard are six circles, ringed with dust, where more cans once sat. From the complete lack of dust inside the circles the cans must been taken recently.
‘Trevor?’ I push open the heavy wooden door to what I assume is the living room and listen for signs of life before I walk inside. This room is as neglected as the kitchen. There’s a thick layer of dust on the television, a saggy green sofa that’s seen better days and a rug that doesn’t look as though it’s seen a vacuum in a while. I touch the vents at the back of the television. Cold. If Trevor did break in he didn’t stay long. It’s unlikely anyone else has been living here since Gordon left, which discounts my theory that the person who wants to kill me might not be a guest. I don’t know whether to be relieved or more scared.
‘Everything okay, Anna?’ Fiona’s voice echoes faintly around the cottage.
‘Yeah!’ I walk back through the kitchen to the small downstairs toilet.
‘Found anything?’ Fiona props her elbows up on the white window frame. She looks desperate to get inside.
‘I think Trevor might have taken a couple of cans of food but that’s the only sign he’s been in here. Oh,’ I point at the empty toilet roll hook, ‘and some toilet roll maybe. I’m going to go and look upstairs now.’
An expression I can’t read passes over Fiona’s face, then she smiles tightly. ‘Good luck.’
I take my time climbing the rickety wooden stairs, gripping the banister as I test my weight on each step. There’s a frayed carpet runner up the middle but some of the tacks have come away and it slides around under the soles of my boots. The landing is small and cramped with three doors leading off it. I push at the first one. It swings open to reveal a small bathroom, the shower curtain spotted with mildew and toothpaste stains on the sink.
I push at the next door with my foot but it doesn’t open.
‘Trevor?’ I turn the handle and brace myself.
But there’s no one inside, just a double bed with a plain blue duvet, a bedside table holding a lamp, an abandoned hairbrush on an old oak chest of drawers and a pine wardrobe. As I turn to leave a strange scrabbling noise makes me whip back round. I listen for it again, my heart pounding in my chest. It sounded like it came from across the room, beyond the bed.
‘Trevor?’ I step into the room, keeping my eyes fixed on the space between the chest of drawers and the far side of the bed. Is he hiding down there, lying face down on the floor, out of sight?
‘It’s Anna, from the hotel. Katie told us what you’re going through,’ I say as I move closer. But there’s no one lying on the threadbare carpet on the other side of the bed. I don’t know what I heard but it definitely wasn’t—
I scream as something small, brown and furry rushes out from under the chest of drawers and darts under the bed. It was too big to be a rat. I drop to my knees, my heart still trying to beat its way out of my chest, and peer under the bed. Two terrified green eyes stare back at me.
‘It’s okay.’ I reach out a hand as the cat backs up against a suitcase, its fur on end. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
I like cats but I haven’t got the first idea how to look after one. I can’t leave it here though. God knows how it got in or how long it’s gone without food. I didn’t see any food or water bowls in the kitchen and I’d be surprised if Gordon left his pet behind to fend for itself. Unless he didn’t mean to stay away this long and the storm has stopped him from getting back.
‘Come on.’ I make a squeaky, cooing sound but it does nothing to calm the cat, which retreats further beneath the bed. I can’t lie flat on my stomach because of my arm so I have to twist onto my side and inch towards it, my good arm outstretched. As I do I hear the squeak of stairs and heavy footsteps pounding the floorboards outside the bedroom. I shuffle backwards but, before I can get out from under the bed, a hand grips my calf.
‘Anna?’ Fiona says as a gasp catches in my throat. ‘Jesus. What the hell happened? I heard you scream, then the next thing I know you’re face down on the bedroom carpet.’
‘There’s a cat.’ I get onto my knees and stand up. ‘Under the bed. I think it might be Gordon’s. We need to take it back to the hotel. God knows when it last ate.’
‘A cat.’ She presses her lips together and exhales heavily through her nose. ‘Great.’
‘I can’t believe you hate cats,’ I say as we leave the cottage and head back towards the cliffs, Fiona struggling to keep the squirming lump in her coat under control.
‘I don’t hate them. I just don’t trust them. It’s the way they follow you with their eyes. I can’t walk past a cat on a wall without worrying that it’s going to jump on me.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No …’ She gives me a sideways look. ‘Yes, but don’t tell anyone. If you don’t like animals people think there’s something wrong with … ow!’ She unzips her top and glares down at the small, furry brown head that peers up at her. ‘The little bugger just bit me.’
‘Probably just wanted a better view.’
She doesn’t laugh and neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes. After Fiona wrestled the cat from under the bed, I quickly searched the cottage for anything useful. I was hoping for a satellite phone or a mobile with signal. I didn’t find either but I did find an empty cat food bowl behind the kitchen door and some cans in the back of the cupboard.
‘Do you think there was a satellite phone and Trevor took it?’ Fiona asks now.
‘Unlikely. There’s so much dust in there I think we’d have noticed if anything had been taken and…’ I freeze and point into the distance. ‘Is that him? On the edge of the cliff. Is that Trevor?’
Fiona stops walking too and raises a hand to her eyes. ‘Is what Trevor … Oh, God.’ The expression on her face morphs from confusion to panic. ‘I think he’s going to jump.’
In Memoriam
In Memoriam
In loving memory of Eileen Cutherbert, wife, mother, sister and friend. Those who have a mother, treasure her with care, for you never know how much you love her until she is not there.
The older I grew, the bolder I became. I’d sneak out of bed and sit cross-legged at the top of the stairs and gobble up the morsels of my parents’ con
versations that drifted up from the open living room door. Most of it was mundane gossip about the neighbours (gleaned from my mum’s curtain-twitching habit) or tales of woe and illness (from Dad’s surgery) but one night, after one of Mum’s more difficult days, I swallowed something huge. I discovered why I had no grandparents or aunties or uncles on my mum’s side of the family. I’d met my dad’s parents when I was three, not that I could remember the event. They lived a long way away, he said, and it was hard to arrange a visit because they were too old to travel and Mum was too fragile. ‘Fragile’, that was one word for her. ‘Neurotic’ is another.
‘I can smell smoke,’ Mum cried one night as I sat at the top of the stairs. ‘Gerald, I can definitely smell smoke.’
I sniffed at the air. All I could smell was the faintest whiff of body odour from my twelve-year-old armpits.
I heard the low rumble of my dad’s voice in reply. He was my hero. My big, strong father in his tailored suit with his big black bag. There was magic in that leathery case – lotions and potions, pad and pens. He’d let me play with his stethoscope. I’d press it to his chest, then mine, and marvel at the rhythmic thuds of our hearts. But mostly I loved my dad because when he arrived home from work, I knew it wouldn’t be long until Mum fell asleep. She called them Dad’s ‘special pills’. They took the pain and heartache away, she said. I was always so disappointed when she woke up. I think Dad was too.
‘The house is not on fire, Dorothy,’ I heard him say, as clear as a bell. ‘No one is going to die.’
‘I miss them,’ my mum wailed. ‘I wish I’d died too.’