They both giggled.
‘You’re a dropeless hunk?’ Cindy laughed.
‘I meant hopeless drunk,’ Melissa told her. She made a concentrated effort to say the phrase accurately this time. ‘I think I’m getting my words muddled. I might have had one too many this evening.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ Cindy promised. ‘I won’t tell Richard you’re a dropeless hunk.’
Melissa placed a hand on Cindy’s shoulder.
‘You’re not the cow I thought you were going to be,’ she sniffed.
Cindy laughed. The sound was deadened by the kitchen’s flat acoustics. Her mirth sounded forced and strained and not wholly appropriate. Cindy wasn’t sure she found Melissa’s comment funny but nervousness and the alcohol combined to make laughter the only response she was able to manage. ‘Why the hell would you think I’d be a cow?’
‘Dicky jus’ goes on about you so mush,’ Melissa told her. She retrieved the hand from Cindy’s shoulder and made a pathetic attempt to straddle the stool at the breakfast bar. The task might have been accomplished if she had dared to let go of her highball. Instead, after one ungainly lurch that almost had her falling to the floor, she shook her head and belched.
Blushing, placing a hand over her mouth as though that would retract the sound, she flashed an apologetic glance in Cindy’s direction and said, ‘I think I need to go to the loo and freshen up.’
Cindy nodded. She sipped at her drink and was thankful there were no ice cubes in this one to give away her nervousness. Even through the veil of alcohol-induced fug, Cindy knew that Melissa’s trip to the loo could be the last journey the woman ever made. She tried to sit still in her chair, not wanting to make any movement or gesture that could alert Melissa to her impending doom.
Melissa staggered towards the door with far less style and composure than she had exuded at the beginning of the evening. Every step was an exercise in reluctant and overcompensating balance. She used the worktops for support on her journey and then clung to the door as though she would fall if she didn’t grip its handle with vicious ferocity.
Cindy pushed her stool back and tried to stand up. The feet of the stool dragged noisily against the tiled floor. The sound was like a giant’s dry fart. Cindy giggled as the simile crossed her thoughts. She looked up to find Melissa glaring at her with unconcealed suspicion.
‘You’re not following me, are you?’
Cindy stifled a moment’s panic as she shook her head. She was still intending to go ahead with Richard’s murderous plan. In a moment of drunken paranoia she silently hoped that nothing she had said or done had given away her intentions. Seeing the penetrating glare that Melissa shot her, she thought it was likely she had said or done something to reveal the secret.
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I wasn’t following you. I was just needing to–’
‘You’re not tryin’ to follow me upstairs, are you?’ Melissa demanded.
She lurched back towards Cindy. She had one hand gripped in a tight fist around her glass of JD. Her other hand reached out in a talon of polished, glossy fingernails. Hastily, she clutched at Cindy’s shoulder.
‘You’re not tryin’ to follow me to my bedroom, are you?’
The question was accompanied by a wet spray of spittle that spattered against Cindy’s jaw and décolletage. Her breath was a wet rush of ripe bourbon fumes. ‘Did you intend gettin’ me alone and makin’ a pash at me? Is that what you were plannin’?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Shame.’
Melissa pushed herself away from Cindy. Without needing to rely on the worktops for support this time, she managed to make it to the kitchen door. Cindy watched her disappear from the room, and then shook her head in disbelief.
Melissa had been coming onto her.
Making lewd suggestions.
And the idea had not been wholly repellent.
If she was being honest with herself, Cindy could feel a tingle of fresh warmth nestling in her loins as she thought of herself and Melissa kissing, embracing and slowly undressing. She’d never had sexual thoughts for a woman before, but she figured if she was going to have them about any woman, it was as well to be having them about a woman as perfect and beautiful as Melissa.
She swigged the remnants of the bourbon from her glass and then put the highball down by the side of the sink. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts she remembered that nothing was going to happen between herself and Melissa. If his last text message had been correct, Richard would now be waiting at the top of the stairs, ready to push Melissa to her death. Cindy was no longer sure if that was something she thought Melissa deserved but she also knew the decision did not belong to her.
This was Richard’s home.
It was Richard’s wife.
And it was Richard’s murder plan.
All she had to do was sober up whilst they waited for the authorities, explain that it had been a horrible, tragic accident, and do her best to look upset, confused and surprised. If Richard really did pluck up the courage to push Melissa down the stairs, Cindy did not think it would be difficult for her to look upset, confused or surprised.
Slowly and quietly, Cindy crept out of the kitchen.
‘DICKY! Dicky! Are you up there?’
Cindy rushed stealthily down the unlit corridor that led to the hall of Melissa Mansion, following the sound of Melissa’s plaintive voice. Melissa hadn’t bothered to turn on any of the house’s lights. She climbed the stairs in darkness. When Cindy reached the hall she saw the whole scene being played out with Melissa as a moonlit silhouette walking through midnight darkness.
Her eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of light.
She could see Melissa’s frail figure laboriously mounting the stairs. The woman still held tight to her glass of JD with her left hand. With her right, she kept grabbing at the banister and then hauling herself up to the next step on the staircase.
Squinting into the shadows, trying to make sense of the charcoal, black and navy shapes she was seeing, Cindy noticed that Melissa’s oversized wellies were making the ascent precarious.
Cindy held her breath.
She wondered if Melissa was going to make it to the top of the stairs. Considering the way her boots kept slipping from each step, Cindy thought there was a good chance Richard would have no need to push her down the stairs. It seemed more likely that the stupid bitch would fall backwards and save him the trouble of having to become a murderer by breaking her own stick-thin neck on the staircase.
‘DICKY!’ Melissa screamed. ‘Where the fuck are you, Dicky?’
Although it was dark, Cindy could see that Melissa was a mere couple of steps from the top of the staircase. She glanced at the long and curving route that the stairs followed and felt suddenly ill at the idea of Melissa’s body bouncing down such an unforgiving descent.
The idea of shouting out to Richard crossed her mind. Cindy had no idea what she could shout, but she wanted to tell him that she was having second thoughts about the murder plan. She thought it would be best if they found a way for him to escape from his marriage without resorting to such extreme measures. But it was impossible to think how she could call that message up the stairs without alerting Melissa to the truth of what they had intended.
‘DICKY!’ Melissa bellowed.
‘I’M HERE!’ He screamed.
Cindy saw his shadow loom at the top of the stairs. She watched Melissa stagger back in surprise. Unwilling to watch the inevitable, Cindy closed her eyes. She waited in claustrophobic darkness to hear the sound of Melissa’s agonised scream, or the gut-churning clatter of broken bones bouncing against marble steps. In the black silence she was almost deafened by the pulse beating just behind her ears.
‘You arsehole,’ Melissa shrieked. ‘You absolute fuckin’ arsehole!’
Cindy opened her eyes and saw that somehow – she had no idea how – Melissa had managed to keep her place on the top step. The woman teetered there like an unnervi
ng exhibition of tightrope walking.
But she hadn’t fallen.
Cindy released a sigh of grateful relief. The lights came on. They were as spectacular and wonderful as the mood lighting that illuminated the kitchen. Cindy could see the whole scene with disturbing clarity. Richard’s face was flushed. The tendons on his neck stood out like cords. He leered over Melissa from his position at the top of the stairs, looking like he still intended to push her.
‘You scared the shit outta me,’ Melissa bellowed. ‘I coulda fallen and broken my fuckin’ neck’’
‘That was the intention,’ Richard snapped, bitterly.
She stared at him with pained eyes. There was an instant where Cindy felt a rush of genuine sympathy for the woman. Melissa-who-had-everything was suddenly faced with the reality of discovering that her husband wanted her dead. It was a single pinprick that burst the balloon of her whole shallow existence. Her shoulders fell and her face crumpled.
‘You don’t mean that,’ Melissa whispered.
‘I fucking do,’ Richard roared.
She retaliated with a speed that was surprising. Going from defeated to defiant in the space of a heartbeat, Melissa raised a hand and aimed it for the side of Richard’s face. Taking a step back to place extra weight behind the blow, she lost her balance and began to topple down the stairs.
Cindy drew a shocked breath.
Melissa went back in an arc that was almost graceful. With one leg extended, and the other folded behind her, she looked vaguely like a ballerina as she swooned back and down. It wasn’t until her skull met a marble step midway down the flight that her movement looked anything less than choreographed and composed.
Cindy heard a brittle sound that reminded her of autumn twigs breaking underfoot. It was a crisp and brittle clip, accompanied by Melissa’s soft grunt of protest. The woman’s legs continued to fly through the air, even though her head remained lodged against one single step. The angle of her head in relation to her shoulders went from looking pained to impossible. Then, when her feet had finished their idle curve, her head flipped up and she began to re-enact the first fall. This time she clattered down the remaining stairs without the polished finesse of her first attempt.
She’s like a human slinky. The idea threatened to inspire a manic wave of giggles. Cindy suppressed the sounds before they could make her appear insane. But still, the thought would not go from her mind: Melissa the human slinky.
As if to prove Cindy wrong, Melissa collapsed into a semi-foetal ball on her second full impact with the stairs. She rolled to the bottom of the staircase, bashing from the banister rails to the wall. The sickening sound of snapping bones seemed to accompany every jarring thud that the woman made against the stairs. She lay there for an instant, covered in a pall of deathly silence.
‘Fucking hell,’ Cindy gasped.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Richard echoed.
In the same instant they both ran towards her fallen figure.
‘She went down like a sack of shit,’ Richard muttered as he hurried down the stairs. ‘She just went arse over tit, and down and–’
‘Melissa?’ Cindy called. ‘Melissa? Are you OK? Are you all right?’
‘She’s dead,’ Richard said. He managed the last few steps with a lack of effort that made a mockery of Melissa’s ungainly descent. ‘She has to be dead after a fall like that,’ he insisted. ‘No one could survive a fall like that. She went down like a sack of–’
‘Dicky?’
They both stopped dead when they heard Melissa’s voice. Exchanging a swift glance, neither of them sure if they had heard the word or imagined it, Cindy glared at Richard. She silently urged him to do something manly.
‘Dicky,’ Melissa sighed. ‘I think I’ve spilt my drink. Can you get me another one?’
As one, Cindy and Richard rushed to Melissa’s side.
Melissa’s expensive dentistry now looked like it had been a waste of time and money. Her brilliant, whiter-than-white smile had become a bloodied and shattered grimace. Her perfectly sculpted nose was flattened and gushing blood over the right side of her cheek. One leg was twisted under her body at an angle that a contortionist would never have managed. The other looked like it had miraculously developed a second knee, allowing it to bend in conflicting directions.
‘Only a drunk could have survived a fall like that,’ Richard marvelled.
‘My drink, Dicky,’ Melissa wailed plaintively. ‘I need another drink.’
‘I didn’t even have to push her.’ He sounded incredulous. ‘I just–’
‘I saw what happened,’ Cindy told him.
‘Why won’t one of you get me a fuckin’ drink?’ Melissa complained. ‘I need a drink after doin’ that. Get me a drink.’
‘Should I phone an ambulance?’ Richard asked.
Cindy glared at him again. She was surprised he couldn’t see what so obviously needed to be done. She was more surprised that he seemed unable to finish the plan he had set in motion. ‘No, Richard,’ she said patiently. ‘You can’t phone an ambulance yet. Melissa’s not dead.’
A puzzled frown crept over his stunned features. ‘What do you mean?’
Cindy nodded towards the fallen woman at their feet. It looked as though Melissa was finally beginning to register some of the pain that had to be racking her body. Her eyes looked wide and frightened. Instead of demanding a drink she was now starting to whimper. The sound came out of her bloodied lips on half-chugged breaths.
‘Dicky?’
Richard ignored her. Glaring at Cindy he asked, ‘What do you mean?’
Cindy could see he was no longer going to be any use in the situation. Realising the onus of getting the job done properly now rested on her shoulders, she stepped behind Melissa and urged Richard out of the way.
‘What are you doing?’ Richard demanded.
Cindy placed a hand under each of Melissa’s armpits and began to lift.
Melissa groaned.
‘What are you doing?’ Richard insisted. ‘Cindy? Will you please tell me what you think you’re doing?’
Cindy managed to drag Melissa up one step before pausing and turning to glare at him. ‘I’m getting this job done properly,’ she explained. ‘And, since that first fall down the stairs didn’t kill her, I’m going to drag her back to the top and throw her down again until it does kill her.’
Richard stared at Cindy with wide-eyed disbelief.
Melissa moaned. ‘Dicky,’ she murmured softly. Her words were muffled with blood and the threat of tears. She struggled to escape the hold Cindy had on her but it was a futile and uninspired attempt. ‘Dicky,’ she sobbed. ‘I think I’ve broke a fingernail.’
20
For Cindy, the nightmare began on Wednesday morning.
Her mobile emitted the familiar shrill beep that said she had received a text message. Cindy had elected not to go into the office on Monday or Tuesday, accepting Raven and Skull’s unexpected offer of a brief period of compassionate leave. Obviously, she hadn’t been related to Melissa but she had been in the woman’s home when she died and, contrary to popular opinions, Raven and Skull was not operated by unfeeling monsters.
Cindy drove to the office alone. She parked in the spot reserved for carpool sharers, like herself and Richard, and then went through the process of getting to her desk and trying to remember how to do her job.
It was not easy.
The events of Friday night continued to wend their way through her thoughts in an unwanted slow-motion replay. She saw herself peeing in front of Richard. She revisited the moment where he blessed her with a passionate and penetrative wet kiss. Then she was sitting in the kitchen with Melissa and the huge fridge and the hidden bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She was thinking of using the meat cleaver on the woman. And then she was watching Melissa tumble down the stairs again and again.
Cindy massaged her forehead with her fingertips, trying to ease away the threat of a headache that nestled there. Her upper body ached as though she�
�d overdone it at the gym. Her shoulders were stiff. The muscles of her chest felt sore, tender and bruised. Her first thought was that she’d caught some sort of cold or the flu. Then, when she remembered the exertion of dragging Melissa’s damaged body up the stairs, Cindy realised her aches were attributable to nothing more than simple muscle strain. The thought made her clutch a hand over her mouth.
She called Tony Wade and told him that, due to his bereavement, Richard would be off for the rest of the week. Tony said that Roger Black had already informed him about the incident .
‘Of course,’ Cindy said. Not wanting to ask the question, but feeling sure she should show some degree of compassion, she asked, ‘How’s Mr Black taken the news?’
There was silence from Tony’s end of the telephone. ‘You know Roger Black,’ he said quietly. ‘The guy looks permanently angry. He gives the impression he would kill an admin assistant for bringing him coffee with milk or sugar.’
‘Yeah,’ Cindy agreed.
Her mouth was dry.
It was suddenly difficult to form words.
‘Mr Black was pretty fond of Melissa,’ Tony went on. ‘She was his only niece and I think he’s ready to make someone suffer. I know I’ve been staying out of his way since I found out about her death.’
Cindy’s stomach tightened.
‘How are you bearing up?’ Tony asked.
Cindy and Richard had decided, in order to best conceal their secret, they needed to be as open and honest about all that had happened as circumstances would allow. They would tell anyone who asked that Cindy had been at the house on the Friday evening. They would not try to hide the fact that she’d been drinking with Melissa and they’d tactfully allow that Melissa had drunk one too many before she made her final fatal descent on the stairs. Richard had pointed out that they wouldn’t be lying if they said Melissa had lost her footing at the top and tumbled back down. The only parts of the story they were going to keep secret were the details about Richard trying to startle Melissa into falling and the pair of them twice dragging Melissa to the top of the stairs to throw her back down.
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