The ladder on which he stood had been placed across that narrow section of the hall. The legs on one side were lodged in the angle between the floor and the panelling at the side of the stairs. Those on the other side were against the bottom of the closed living-room door. Under the legs hard up against the living-room door a white cloth had been placed flat on the shiny parquet flooring.
The ladder’s legs were not restrained by a safety rope.
Declan Creeney was looking at me. There was a strange, excited gleam in his eyes. Despite the cloth gag that was tight enough to wrench his mouth out of shape, I could see he was trying to smile. Then he nodded, slowly, and his eyes closed and I thought I saw his chest heave in an immense sigh of relief.
Every detail of the hellish scene was branded indelibly in my brain in that single, frozen moment when I stepped through the front door and time stood still.
Then Calum opened the living-room door.
EPILOGUE
It was as if the hangman had pulled the lever that dropped the heavy trap from under Declan Creeney’s feet.
The living-room door was driven inwards as Creeney’s weight bore down on the ladder and its legs shot apart on the polished floor. There was a crack and a grunt in the living-room as the door hit Calum. Simultaneously there was the sickening crack as of a wet branch snapping, and Declan Creeney slack body hung spinning at the end of the orange rope. The toes of his slip-on casuals were inches from the floor. His head lolled to one side, driven to a terrible angle by the big hangman’s knot that had broken his neck.
Sian hadn’t moved.
Calum stepped out of the living-room. There was a red bruise high on his cheekbone above the grey of his beard. He reached out a hand, steadied Creeney’s slowly rotating body. Looked at me, then up at Sian.
I nodded my understanding.
Behind me I heard running footsteps, then someone gagged, choked as they tried to say something, and I remembered the light coming on down the road, the front door opening.
I turned. A man was standing in the path in slippers and a white towelling dressing-gown, his hand over his mouth, his eyes huge.
I said, ‘Cal, would you go with that gentleman and call the police. I’ll stay here, see what I can do….’
Calum brushed past me and I heard his soft voice reassuring the man as they made their way to his house and a phone. But I knew that the stranger had read a different meaning in my words. He had seen the body swinging slowly at the end of a rope and assumed I would cut him down, search for signs of life, but the only person I could do anything for in that house was Sian and I eased the front door shut then trod softly across the parquet floor to sit close to her on the stairs, on the outside, placing myself between her and Declan Creeney.
I took the can of polish from her hand and stood it on the stairs and took her cold fingers in mine.
‘What was all that about, Soldier Blue?’
‘Fifty-fifty,’ she said, her voice odd.
‘As in…?’
‘One of two things could happen, so that’s fifty-fifty, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Like Russian roulette, but with the odds even.’ She chuckled at the sound of that, but the chuckle was cold and I could feel the tremor within her that was unceasing.
‘Mm. One thing or the other. And he thought he’d made it. There was something in his eyes when I kicked open the front door. A flood of relief. He tried to smile. Because he’d watched me, and it was his plan so he knew from experience if someone came in through the front door he’d live, but if they came through from the living-room….’
‘But it wasn’t fifty-fifty, was it?’ she said. ‘I should have known the way you and Calum would work it. One front, one back, exploding in on a given signal. He didn’t stand a chance.’
‘There was no signal,’ I said, ‘because Calum didn’t know what was going on, didn’t know how the trap worked.’ I squeezed her hand gently, reached out a finger and tilted her chin so that her empty blue eyes were looking at me.
‘How did Creeney get up the ladder, Soldier Blue?’
‘How would you get up a ladder?’
‘Well, I’d put one foot in front of the other and climb.’
‘There you are then.’
She was right, of course. Left foot, then right foot, one after the other all the way to the top. And what did it matter anyway. A killer had stood at the top of the ladder with a noose around his neck and, just as a young woman had done seven days ago, he had waited in deathly suspense, and then he’d died.
But the answer wasn’t quite what I was pressing for.
I knew that Sian the survival expert could have forced Creeney up there, first breaking his will by the use of exquisitely sensitive pressure points to leave him writhing in agony, then lashing his hands and driving him upwards to the waiting noose with the threat of more pain. But it was also possible that she had deliberately placed herself in the position of disinterested bystander, walking in through the patio doors and across the hall when Creeney was setting up his bizarre suicide then sitting on the stairs and dispassionately awaiting developments.
Yet no matter how it began, the end could have been so different. Pricked by conscience, suddenly appalled by what was happening, Sian could have leaped to open the front door when I hammered on it, or screamed out a warning to Calum as the glass shattered and he walked towards the living-room door.
She had done neither. A man’s life had been in her hands, and she had let it slip away.
But could I be certain of that? Could I be certain of anything? Well, I thought I could, on one point at least: Calum Wick, who had come bursting into the unknown, could no more take the blame for Creeney’s death than could Joe Creeney for the death of his wife.
Impossible hangings. A woman and a man had died – but by whose hand?
‘You did well,’ Sian said, watching me.
‘We always do.’
‘We?’ Her chuckle was dismissive.
‘Together,’ I said huskily. ‘Always and forever.’
She clutched my hand, squeezed hard.
‘I know. Really I do. And I also know that, with another tricky one solved, quite soon there’ll be one of those mysterious phone calls requesting your help because word’s getting around about this brilliant private investigator….’
I shushed her with a finger placed gently on her lips.
‘Bumbling private investigator,’ I said, ‘and his brilliant team.’
And again I turned her head towards me and this time, as she looked at me with blue eyes that had softened, had regained some warmth and life and now shimmered wetly, I leaned forward and kissed her softly on her damp forehead.
We were like that, fingers tightly interlocked, our faces pressed together and the salt of her tears on my lips, when I heard the wail of a siren and I knew that the uniforms were going to arrive before Haggard and Vine and that although there was still a myriad questions to be asked by a burly detective inspector who smoked king-sized cigarettes and a dapper sergeant who was a closet novelist obsessed with words, one way or another, it was over.
But of course, Sian was right about the phone call.
By the Same Author
NON FICTION
Modelling Toy Soldiers
Practical Short Story Writing
Creating Suspense in Fiction
Writing Crime Novels
FICTION
A Confusion of Murders
A Bewilderment of Crooks
The Clutches of Death
Copyright
© John Paxton Sheriff 2007
First published in Great Britain 2007
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0564 6 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0565 3 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0566 0 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8280 4(print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebo
oks.com
The right of John Paxton Sheriff to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Deathly Suspense Page 21