Her Final Hour: An absolutely unputdownable mystery thriller

by Carla Kovach

She tried to twist the cord and loosen it. With every movement her heart rate increased. The room began to move and every word her deranged husband spoke seemed to blast her eardrums. The grogginess she’d felt when he’d woken her had been replaced by a need to escape, to break free.

  Her husband hurried along the hallway with the phone pressed against his ear, until he was out of sight. ‘I know about what was on the news. Okay, it was me. That bitch followed me and was threatening to destroy my life so, yes, I killed her.’ Bruce paused. ‘Yes. I’ll be here, waiting. Thank you. We will all get through this.’

  ‘Who’s coming over?’ she shouted.

  ‘Someone needs to help me clean this mess up.’

  As she tugged, she realised there was no escape. Her yells echoed through the kitchen but her husband didn’t answer. Someone was coming to clean her away. The key moments in her life flashed through her mind. She’d never see Craig again. Her boy, her son, the grown-up man he now was. She would never see him marry, have his own children or graduate. Her husband would get away with her murder, just like he’d got away with everything he’d done so far.

  She trembled as she thought about death. Many times in the past she had considered ending it. She’d imagine herself staring at her reflection, a sight she detested with a passion. She’d smash the mirror into a thousand pieces, take a shard of glass and slice her wrist with it, watching the deep crimson liquid slipping out with ease, draining her of life. She’d mostly wanted to end it all on the days she had been too scared to leave the house, when she’d dwelled on the past and all the opportunities she’d missed out on. The days after Craig had left for university, leaving her feeling lonely and hollow. The days when her anxiety had hit with a crippling force, totally imprisoning her. She now knew it was all carefully engineered by the man she trusted, the murderer who now paced in the hallway, awaiting back up, to end her life. She wanted to fight. She would fight them to the end. It wasn’t her time to die, it was her time to fight. She closed her eyes and imagined that mirror, scattered on the floor. Slowly, she visualised the pieces of mirror floating back up, slotting into place until it was once again whole and perfect. In her mind the mirror could be fixed and she was going to fight to fix it once and for all.

  He ended his call and paced back over to her. ‘Swallow it.’ She shook her head and pursed her lips. He’d kept her in a drug-induced trance for years. She didn’t want another pill, not now. She wanted to live. He clasped her nose between his thumb and finger. She couldn’t hold her breath in any longer. As she gasped for air, he threw a sleeping pill down her throat, almost choking her as he held his hand over her mouth. She swallowed the dry pill as tears fell down her eyes. ‘You’re a devious bitch.’ He snatched a roll of tape from the top drawer and wrapped a strip over her mouth and all around her head. ‘There will be no spitting that one out.’ Soon the world started fading away and she was being dragged along the hallway with no idea where she’d wake up, if indeed he’d ever allow her to wake up again.

  Sixty

  Natalie’s eyes flickered. She wanted so much to wake up but her eyelids still felt heavy. One minute she was aware of someone creeping around her, the next she’d fall into a slumber.

  * * *

  She was falling and falling until she awoke to find herself lying in their new garden. She knew it was unkempt and she’d been convinced that she’d be well enough to eventually get out there and make it beautiful. She brushed a clump of dried mud from her hair and stood.

  There were some amazing trees, mostly small fruit trees. In the summer, apples, plums and apricots would adorn them. The brambles would provide an abundance of blackberries. In her dream it was a beautiful, late summer’s day. The sun was high and she was wearing a hat. She watched as a bee buzzed amongst the honeysuckles that bordered the garden.

  The gate rattled. Startled, she turned. It rattled again. She wouldn’t venture as far as the gate. It was too risky. That gate was the only thing that protected her from the dark woods. The entanglement of trees with all the chaos that they brought would trap her in their branches, suffocating her as they tightened, squeezing the life straight out of her. She would never open the gate – never. She wasn’t about to let in whatever evil resided behind the gate.

  The gate banged and banged, almost coming off its hinges. Something was trying to ram its way into her garden. As the banging boomed through her head, rain fell, then hailstones, then snow, until the whole garden was coated in a dusting of white. The life that filled the garden was now all dead – all killed without warning. She gasped but couldn’t catch her breath. The gate creaked opened, revealing a framed tableau of darkness. Branches weaved in and out of each other until they spilled into the garden, displacing the snow. They surged closer to the house like an uncontrollable tsunami, chasing her to the door. Just as she felt that her heart was about to fail, the branches grabbed her by the feet, lifting her high into the snow-filled skies, taking her further and further away until she could see nothing but white. The pain in her chest stabbed away. Heart attack – that’s what it had to be.

  * * *

  ‘Shh. It’s okay. You’re perfectly safe,’ came the gentle voice of the woman in white. She tried to open her eyes further. She wasn’t wearing all white, she was wearing a white jumper. It wasn’t just white, it was pristine, exactly how a brand new white jumper would look.

  A phone rang. Natalie’s heart was humming away. Was she still dreaming? The woman scrutinised the screen, swore under her breath and dismissed the call.

  Natalie attempted to speak through the tape over her mouth. The woman reached over and ripped it away, tearing a piece of skin on her top lip. ‘You have to get me out of here. My husband, he’s gone mad. Untie me,’ she called as she began to struggle.

  The woman nervously looked away. ‘I’m just looking after you until he gets back. He said you’re sick.’ She sat back in the chair in the corner of the bedroom. Natalie was back where she started, tied to the bed in their guest room.

  ‘You don’t understand. He’s keeping me here against my will. I need to get out of here. He’s killed a woman. We’re in danger.’ As her eyes focused, she couldn’t see any binds on the other woman. She didn’t even recognise the other woman. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You’re not well. I’m trying to help you. I’m just here to care for you.’

  Was she seeing an angel? The woman’s hair was beautifully pinned up in a classic French pleat. Her fitted jeans complimented her perfectly slim frame with precision. She was quite short, with the most petite of features. The woman pulled the bed sheet back up to Natalie’s chin, revealing her French manicured nails. She’d never seen anyone so perfect, not outside of a magazine anyway. Maybe this woman was a figment of her imagination, the woman she’d like to be. ‘You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real,’ she kept repeating.

  The woman began humming a tune she didn’t recognise as she picked up a sheet of blood red material and began to sew. It was all too bizarre. She needed to wake up. No way was there a pristinely dressed woman in her spare room, sewing. She clenched her eyelids shut and tried to go back to sleep, to block out the surreal situation that was slowly appearing to be real.

  ‘When you marry someone, you promise to honour and obey. Wedding vows are very important, you know. A good wife should know her role.’

  Natalie wanted the voice to go away. She never used the word obey in her wedding vows. They’d had a modern ceremony in a hotel. ‘No. Get me out of here. You need to untie me before he comes back. We’ll both be in danger if he sees you here.’

  ‘A good wife is never in danger. Don’t worry about me. I’m perfectly safe. It’s not too late, you know, to become a good wife. He just needs your understanding at the moment. He has a lot to attend to with your illness. He’s told me how poorly you are.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Natalie writhed in the sweaty bed sheets. She was covered up to her neck and the heat was unbearable. She needed to free her wrists from
the posts and pull the bed covers down before she melted. Her heart began to pound – louder and louder. She panicked as the hotness radiated from her core to her numbing extremities and she began to hyperventilate.

  ‘There, there. You go back to sleep. A rest will make it all better. You’ll see everything more clearly when you wake up properly.’ The woman began to stroke her brow.

  ‘Untie me now,’ she yelled as tears flooded down the sides of her face, soaking her ears and hair.

  ‘I’m disturbing you. I’ll sit outside the room. Just get some rest and you’ll feel much better.’ The woman wiped her damp hair from her face, turned the lamp off and left the room, taking her sewing with her. Natalie stared at the window and watched as little droplets of rain tapped against the pane. Shadows from the woodland trees danced around the room, leading her gaze everywhere. She felt like she was being watched; by whom, she had no idea. As the room began to turn, she clenched her eyes closed and tried to think of better things but it was proving difficult. She had to get out of her binds. She tugged and tugged at the blue cord. She’d keep tugging, even if she lost a layer of skin along the way. As long as she could break free, she didn’t care. If she didn’t get free, she was dead.

  Sixty-One

  Gina held the phone to her ear. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said as she dropped the phone on her desk. Knowing she had a sprained wrist was one thing, remembering not to use it was another. The pain throbbed as far as her fingers.

  ‘What happened, guv?’ Wyre asked.

  ‘Just my wrist. I’ve swapped hands now. Go on.’

  ‘I managed to speak to Jennifer Munro earlier. Jennifer swears she left husband, Lee Munro, getting ready for his friends coming over on the night of Melissa’s murder. She can’t however provide an alibi for him. She was at her friend’s all evening. He did text her that evening saying that all was going well, that they hadn’t wrecked the house. She’d also replied, promising that she wouldn’t be later than they’d agreed, that she’d be back by one in the morning. She showed me the messages.’

  A heaviness crept over Gina, forcing her to close her eyes while they continued their conversation. She wanted nothing more than to be at home wearing more comfortable clothing in her warm house. Her shoulder had stiffened almost to a freeze. ‘How about the Stepford Wife?’

  ‘Mrs Dixon.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I called her house and her husband answered. He said his wife was on a shopping day in Worcester and she was apparently stopping off at a friend’s house before coming home much later. I have her mobile number. I tried to call but it went straight to voicemail. I’ll keep trying. It’s all really strange, guv.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jennifer Munro is just like Selina Dixon. Weird. It’s like walking into another era. The way they talk, the way they dress and their demeanour. It may be that I’m as working class as they come but Mrs Munro was arranging flowers while wearing the most pristine apron I have ever seen. I know I’m neat but this woman was perfect, like she was trying really hard to impress, but she carried it off with ease. Lee Munro’s slippers were placed on the floor, perfectly aligned and ready for him to step into. The newspaper was placed on the kitchen table and the seat was out at an angle, like she was ready for his homecoming and the set up was all part of a ritual. The coffee pot had a filter in it and there was a cup next to it, containing milk. She was prepared for him coming home at any time. When I asked her what time he’d be home, she said he finishes anytime between two in the afternoon and six, depending on how busy he was with work. Get this. I checked with her friend, Penelope Lewis, an old friend of her mother’s. She said that Jennifer Munro was with her all that evening. The friend did however say their night-time get together was a rarity, that Lee Munro didn’t like her going out of an evening and forbade it most of the time.’

  ‘Forbade it? What century is this?’

  ‘Exactly. It doesn’t sit well with me but, as yet, we have nothing on Lee Munro. He is also too tall to be your attacker but that’s not to say he couldn’t be party to what has happened. There’s still no getting over that he has alibis.’

  ‘Alibis I don’t trust. The more I think about it, the more it all seems too convenient. It’s no good me thinking all this though, we need to find a crack in the story, a breakthrough in evidence. Any matches on the tyre tracks as yet?’

  ‘No. We do know the tyres are badly worn down though. There’s hardly any tread on them – totally illegal.’

  Rain pelted against the window. The April showers were out in full force. ‘When you eventually track down Mrs Dixon, give me a call and tell me what you find out. I want to know where she was on the night of Melissa’s and Ellie’s murder.’

  There was a tap on her office door. ‘Come in.’ She yawned.

  ‘Tired, guv?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Groggy and lightheaded. Any information on the black saloon car?’

  Jacob sat in the chair opposite and dropped his notebook on her desk. ‘None of Darrel’s associates currently own a black saloon car. No black saloon cars are registered at any of their addresses. Rebecca Greene doesn’t drive. No one working at the Angel Arms owns one either. I’m clutching at anything here.’

  ‘We only have the lorry driver’s word for it. Any black saloon cars showing up on CCTV in the area?’

  ‘As you know, there’s hardly any CCTV outside the centre of Cleevesford. The park is nowhere near the centre. Nothing useful as yet but we’ll keep looking. I went over to James Phipps’s flat. He was absolutely hammered earlier today and was unable to say much when I questioned him about where he was at the time Ellie was murdered. He had a bit of a shiner though and a sore on his chin, don’t know how he got them. The press that are camped outside his block of flats are having a field day with that. As it stands, we have nothing more to bring him in on at the moment. He claims to have never heard of Ellie and when I showed him her photo, he said he’d never seen her before in his life. He wasn’t looking good though and I could barely follow what he was saying. He was in an unbelievable state.’

  Gina squeezed her shoulder and closed her eyes, willing the aching to go away. The more she willed it away, the worse it got. ‘He’s too much of a convenient scapegoat. Again, everything’s coming back to Darrel for me. Darrel was very conveniently in the Angel Arms when his wife was killed. Get this, Wyre refers to Selina Dixon and Jennifer Munro as the Stepford Wives. Maybe Melissa Sanderson didn’t fit their expectations. She wasn’t pretending to be happy within her marriage to Darrel. She was drinking alone, depressed and having an affair. We know she was confused if we’re to believe Phipps. He wanted her to leave Darrel and be with him, but instead she finished it with him. She’d confided in him about Darrel’s friends – then I was attacked. I was the one who made the decision to remove Mia from Darrel’s care. Doesn’t it all seem like a coincidence? I want Darrel brought in again and questioned. If he did have anything to do with his wife’s murder, we’re going to nail him.’

  ‘Shall I get on to that now?’

  ‘No point delaying.’ Gina almost cried out as she turned. ‘I’m not feeling so good.’

  Jacob walked around the desk and kneeled beside her. ‘You okay, guv? Look at me.’

  ‘It’s okay. I can see you fine. The doctor said I’d feel like this for a while. I’m feeling a bit nauseous. Can you drop me back home? I’ll base myself at my kitchen table for the day.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll drop by Darrel Sanderson’s house on the way back and I’ll let you know what happens.’

  ‘I’ll give Briggs a call when I get home, tell him I’m basing myself there. Has anyone contacted Bruce Garrison yet?’

  Jacob opened the office door. ‘Tried to. I tried his house, no answer. I went to his accountancy firm also. His receptionist, a woman called Sylvie, told me he was out at a client’s that day. I asked who, but she was unable to tell me. The only thing he’d put in his diary was on-site auditing for the next
two days. She had no idea where. She said they have hundreds of clients and she couldn’t just guess where he might be. She also said, as he’s the boss, he didn’t have to account for his whereabouts like the rest of them. He’s proving to be a hard man to track down.’

  ‘Keep trying. Do we know anything about him?’

  ‘Forty-five, wife called Natalie and a son aged twenty called Craig who’s away at university. He has a Facebook profile but never posts and has very few friends. He owns an accountancy firm in Stratford and has recently moved back to Cleevesford, the town he grew up in.’

  ‘How recently?’

  ‘The house sale went through two weeks ago, so any time since then.’

  ‘We need him in. I need you to keep calling, will you do that?’ Jacob nodded. ‘Call me when you’ve made contact with either him or his wife.’

  As Jacob left, her phone rang. ‘Harte.’

  ‘How’s the investigation going?’ asked Briggs.

  ‘Jacob’s dropping me home. I’m going to take some pills and change into something more comfortable, then go over all the case notes. There has to be a clue in all this somewhere. It’s all just a mess at the minute. Every time I think it could be someone, someone else comes into light. Or maybe it’s just my concussed head playing tricks on me. Either way, I need to be at home. I’ll be back in first thing.’

  ‘When’s your appointment with the counsellor?’

  ‘Next Monday. The only problem with my head is the pain but as you made it a condition—’

  ‘For good reason. I want my team to be at their best and that’s the end of it. I’ll pop over to yours on my way home, check how you’re doing. I could bring a bite to eat? Nothing funny, we can just talk about the case.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks. And thanks for listening the other night. I really don’t need counselling but I know you have to do what you think is right. And, yes, there’s a few things about the case I’d like to bounce off someone else and, yes, to the food. These people are strange, odd, and another pair of ears and eyes might help. We can run through Wyre and O’Connor’s interviews.’