by Rob Sinclair
I stared out into the eerie darkness behind the house, but I wasn’t really looking. My senses were focused only on any sounds coming from behind me, within the house. At first there was absolute silence. But then I heard creaking and straining as the draught from the outside wind coursed through the old structure. The house was charming and handsome on the outside, but it had always been somewhat creepy and noisy on the inside.
After a few moments I was satisfied that the sounds were nothing more than the wind. And the noise didn’t seem to have alerted anyone, if there was anyone to alert at all. I unzipped my jacket and took it off. But as I turned around to face into the kitchen, my heart lurched when I spotted the outline of a person standing just a few yards in front of me.
A light snapped on and I stared, aghast.
‘Ben,’ Dani said. ‘What the hell is going on?’
CHAPTER 58
I placed my jacket down on one of the dining chairs, making sure the plastic bag inside remained out of view. Dani stared at the jacket and for a fleeting second I wondered whether she already knew.
‘Where’s Gemma?’ I asked.
‘Asleep,’ Dani said. ‘At least I think she is, though it’s hardly been a relaxing night.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m worried about you. We all are.’
‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Yeah, you always thought that. Even when we were kids you were too stubborn and naive to see that you can’t always take on the world on your own.’
‘I’m not a child anymore.’
‘No, you’re not. I’m glad you realise that.’
‘Where are Harry and Chloe?’ I said.
‘At their grandparents’ house.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, they’re not my kids.’
I walked toward my sister, toward the doorway that led to the hall. I expected Dani to step aside but she held her ground.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, taking a step back, giving myself some space.
‘I’m not letting you disturb Gemma. She’s sleeping. It’s been a rough night for her already.’
‘This is my house.’
‘Where have you been tonight?’ Dani said.
My mind was on high alert; my eyes were darting here, there and everywhere.
‘Where have you been, Ben?’ Dani said again.
Her tone made me feel like I was a teenager being berated by a worried parent. Except Dani wasn’t really worried about me.
‘You care about me all of a sudden?’ I said.
‘Of course I care about you,’ Dani said.
‘I was in the hospital. Did you not hear about that?’
‘Yes, I heard. I called you as soon as I found out. I called you countless times. I went to the hospital too. My colleagues said you just upped and left. We’ve been looking for you since.’
‘Well, here I am.’
‘And where have you been in the meantime?’ Dani said, her tone nothing but distrustful. A rich attitude coming from her.
‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘Getting my head straight. It’s been a rough night.’
‘Are you aware that Callum O’Brady was murdered tonight?’
I stared at Dani, trying not to betray any emotion. I was on edge for sure. Yet hearing my sister confirm that O’Brady was indeed dead made me feel elated.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know. But I can’t say I’m sorry.’
‘So you wouldn’t know anything about what happened to him?’
‘No. Why would I?’
We both stood in silence for a few moments. Dani’s glare was unyielding. I questioned whether she would come back at me as good cop or bad cop. But she just stared and didn’t say a word.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘In my house. With my wife.’
‘I was looking for you,’ Dani said. ‘You’re getting yourself in deeper and deeper, Ben. I hate to stand by and watch you throw your life away. O’Brady … I mean … I really hope you had nothing to do with that. I can’t bail you out of something like that.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ I said.
‘Don’t buy what?’ Dani said, looking genuinely confused.
‘What are you doing here again? I don’t see you for years, then all of a sudden you’re best chums with Gemma it seems.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.’
‘You know.’
‘I really don’t. There’re police out all over looking for you. After your stunt with O’Brady and the phone, and the attack last night, we knew you were now a target for O’Brady and his crew. We wanted to protect you.’
‘I asked for protection before. You told me there was no threat.’
Dani remained defiant. No offer of an apology for what had happened to me. Or Cara.
‘I’m here because I needed to find you,’ she said. ‘Before something really bad happened to you. And if it wasn’t me here in your house, it would have just been another officer.’
‘But it’s not someone else. It’s you. Where’s Gemma?’
I went to move past Dani but she held firm, blocking the doorway, and pushed me back. I squared up to her and waited for her next move. I wasn’t backing down this time.
‘Spit it out, Ben,’ Dani said, glaring at me. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I know what you did,’ I said, my words edged with hatred. ‘I know what you did to Alice. You poisoned her against me. I won't let you do it again.’
‘You’ve lost it,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you would even say that.’
‘She told me, Dani. Alice told me everything.’
And then her demeanour changed. Like something had clicked into place.
‘Why did you come back here?’ Dani said, the suspicion in her voice even greater than before.
She took a step back, beyond the doorway, into the hall. Her gaze never left me. Her confidence was fading for the first time in the conversation. Dani the superstar, the high-flying detective, the perfect daughter. The perfect sister.
Yet she looked … scared.
And she was right to be. She was my twin after all. She knew everything about me. She really should have figured it out before now. Or maybe she had. Maybe she’d figured it out long ago and was just in shock or some sort of denial.
Dani shook her head. ‘Ben, just think about this. Think it through.’
‘Oh, I’ve been thinking this through for years. Waiting for this moment.’
Dani took another step down the hall. I followed her every move. A stunned look now covered her face.
‘You and Alice were the two people who were closest to me in the world,’ I said. ‘You knew how much she meant to me. You turned her against me.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Dani said. I knew she wasn’t really. ‘It wasn’t to hurt you.’
‘No? I still trusted her after her affair with Fletcher. I trusted that she loved me. She did love me. Until you started meddling with her mind.’
‘You were sleeping with Gemma, Ben! You destroyed what you had, not me.’
‘I’ve always been in awe of you. Everything in life has always been so easy for you, hasn’t it? But you’ve never really cared for anyone but yourself. You don’t care what you do to other people.’
‘That’s just not true.’
‘When I found out what you’d done, I wanted to erase it from my memory and move on like it had never happened. I loved you, Dani. But you stabbed me in the heart. I always thought you had my back.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you. But I had to do what was right for Alice!’
‘Yet look where that got her. If you’d only kept your damn mouth shut.’
‘You didn't deserve her!’ Dani shouted in anger - or was it jealousy? I'd excelled over my twin sister at one thing in life - I’d found a soulmate, someone to start a family with - and Dani s
imply hadn’t been able to take it.
‘Do you know what hurt most?’ I said. ‘The way she rubbed my face in it. Taunting me with what you’d said to her. My own sister saying I wasn’t good enough for my wife. My own twin doing everything she could to convince my wife to leave me. Maybe if Alice hadn’t been so nasty that night, I wouldn’t have been so angry. I would have been able to control myself … I would have been able to stop.’
A look of horror swept over Dani’s face. She finally got it. She finally understood what had happened. What had to happen.
‘It was you,’ Dani gasped.
CHAPTER 59
I didn't say anything. No confirmation, no denial. I just waited to see what Dani would do or say next.
‘It wasn't Egan,’ Dani said. ‘He killed Hayley Lewis, I’m sure of that. But Alice …’
‘Did you really never know?’ I said, managing a wry smile. I’d always had my doubts about that. Dani was so close to both us. How could she not have spotted it? ‘I loved Alice more than anything. She was the one. You took her away from me. You and Gemma both.’
Dani reached into her trouser pocket for her phone. I had no doubt she was calling her colleagues – a request for immediate assistance, or whatever the police’s technical term was. Her movements were fast and frantic. She was a bag of nerves. I wasn’t going to let her make that call.
‘Put it down, Dani,’ I said.
‘No, Ben. It’s over.’
‘Put the phone down!’ I yelled.
Dani cowered at my words, but a second later a hard-nosed resolve broke across her face.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I'm done looking out for you, Ben. You’re not my brother. Not anymore.’
They were her last words.
I lunged for Dani. She only positioned herself for the oncoming attack at the last second. She was too focused on making the call. After everything that had happened, after everything I’d said, she should have anticipated what I was about to do. Perhaps she really didn’t think I had it in me. As a child she’d always seen me as weak and in need of her care. As an adult she’d always looked down on me too. Pitied me even. Well, I was about to show her exactly what I was capable of.
Dani brought her free arm up and hunched down, protecting her face and body. She dropped the phone and went for a defensive counter-attack, probably aiming to put me in a hold again. She was nowhere near as strong physically as I was, but I knew she was trained to subdue people twice her size. Not this time, though.
Out on the street, with all the space she needed and in full policewoman mode, I was sure Dani would have quite quickly outmanoeuvred me. But stuck in the doorway she simply didn’t have the space. Or the time. And despite everything, she still wasn’t expecting me to fight dirty. Her mistake.
With the momentum of my body behind me, I thrust a knee up into Dani’s stomach. She exhaled and doubled over in pain. Yet just a split-second later, Dani was already recovering and reaching out to me.
I wouldn’t give her even a glimmer of hope.
I threw an open hand toward the side of her head. With Dani caught in the narrow hallway, I had the perfect weapon right there. I slammed her skull into the wall and Dani collapsed to the floor.
The fight had lasted barely five seconds. Just like my dad would have done when he was a kid. Act fast. Deliver the first blow. Don’t allow the other guy – or girl as the case may be – to even get started.
I was panting, hunched over, ready to take on any attack that might be coming from Dani. But there was nothing. She was breathing. She was awake. But her fight was already gone.
She let out a long groan. Tried to turn over. Tried to reach her phone. I heard a muffled and crackled voice coming from its speaker. The call had connected. I grabbed the phone and quickly killed the call. Dani’s body slumped, her last hope taken away.
Looking down on her, I was reminded of the age-old wisdom that it’s better to put a wounded animal out of its misery than to let it suffer. That’s what Dani, lying helpless on the floor, looked like to me. A wounded animal.
I picked up a small stone statue from the sideboard next to where Dani lay. Gemma and I had received it as a wedding gift from one of her hideous aunties. The ornament – some sort of modern art depiction of a man with a dog – was equally hideous.
Holding the torso of the stone man in my hand, I looked down at my sister once more. Her eyes made contact with mine. She knew what was coming.
She finally realised what I was capable of.
I swung the ornament down and the thick stone base crashed into the side of Dani’s head. It cut into her skin, taking a chunk of flesh with it. Dani’s body jolted on impact. Her wide eyes stared up at me. Her face and clothes were spattered with her own blood.
I hit her again.
I imagined her skull caving in from the vicious blow. Dani’s body twitched and then, after a few seconds, went still.
CHAPTER 60
I heard a creaking noise. Coming from upstairs. From my bedroom. Gemma.
I placed the ornament back on the sideboard, stepped over the unmoving body of my sister and moved along the hallway. I ascended the stairs quickly, not wanting to lose any of the impetus I now had. Not wanting the flow of adrenaline to stop. And not wanting my conscience – if it still existed at all – to suddenly intervene.
I walked along the landing and pushed open the door to my bedroom. My hands were shaking from anticipation and adrenaline and something else I couldn’t quite place.
Gemma was sitting up on the edge of our king-sized bed in a cotton nightie, facing away from me. Her bedside light was on. I got the impression she’d just woken – maybe because of the noise from me fighting Dani downstairs.
I didn’t announce my arrival in the room. In fact I’d tried to move as silently as I could up the stairs and along the landing. But Gemma must have sensed my presence. She spun around and jumped up off the bed.
‘Ben,’ she gasped.
She looked shocked by my being there. My own wife, in my own bedroom.
‘What have you done?’ she said as she looked down at my clothes, my hands, spattered with blood. A look of panic spread across her face. She took a step backward, toward the door to the en-suite.
‘What have you done, Gemma?’
She simply shook her head in response.
I began to walk toward her. Gemma took another step back.
‘Don’t come any closer!’ she screamed.
I stopped and feigned confusion. ‘What do you think I’m going to do to you?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know what you’re capable of anymore.’
‘What I’m capable of?’
‘Where’s Dani?’
‘Downstairs. Having a … rest.’
I smiled. Gemma cupped her mouth in horror.
‘Just one question, Gemma: did you really never suspect me?’
‘Suspect what?’
‘Suspect what happened to Alice that night.’
It only took a second for my words to click.
‘No, no. You couldn’t …’
‘What happened to her … it was because of you.’
I sprang forward two steps. Gemma did nothing but cower away as I reached out with both hands and grabbed her around her throat. She grimaced and snatched my wrists, trying to free herself. I held strong and Gemma soon became frantic, her body twisting and writhing as she tried to fight me off.
Her strength in desperation surprised me. For a moment I thought I might not be able to hold her. I roared as I used all my strength and fury to lift her off her feet and heave her onto the bed.
The terror in her eyes when I landed on top of her said everything. She knew she wasn’t getting away.
I squeezed as hard as I could. Gemma was rasping for breath but her attempts quickly became more and more pathetic.
A sudden jolt, a stabbing at the front of my head, took me by surprise. I squeezed my eyes shut and my mind took me somewhere I’d long tri
ed to forget.
To me and Alice. In our home. In our bedroom. Her on the bed. Me on top. My hands around her neck. The look in her eyes a perfect mirror of Gemma’s.
With Alice, it had been pure impulse. No premeditation. I just hadn’t been able to stop myself. Something had taken over my mind and my body in those few fateful moments.
We’d moved on after her brief affair with Craig Fletcher. At least I’d thought we had. I’d forgiven her. I’d wanted things to go back to the way they had been before. But they never had. Gemma had found her way into my life.
Gemma was a mistake. Yet I couldn’t get away from her. She would corner me whenever she could, taking any opportunity to rip off my clothes and pleasure me. She was insatiable.
I should have been stronger. I should have said no.
With renewed hatred, I opened my eyes. Together with Dani, Gemma had wrecked my marriage with Alice and ruined my life. If it hadn’t been for them …
I squeezed Gemma’s neck even harder. Her face was red and contorted and looked like it would explode at any second. My mind once again took me back to how I’d felt as I’d choked the life out of Alice.
I’d never meant to hurt her. If there had been a way to take it back, I would have done. I’d reacted on instinct. Alice had said she was leaving me. She wanted a divorce. She no longer loved me. She said my own sister had finally convinced her!
As I brought my focus back around, I realised Gemma had stopped moving beneath me. I released my grip. The rings of white flesh around her neck were a perfect imprint of my hands. Her ghostly eyes were staring back at me.
With Alice, my first feelings as I’d looked down at her lifeless body were intense regret and grief. Looking at Gemma, I felt relief. I felt freedom.
I turned my back on her and walked over to the sink in the bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I saw … nothing. No emotion. No humanity. I had given my everything. I was done.
After Alice, I’d broken down in tears, but quickly resolved that I would fight on. I’d been determined to prove that I could still make a life for myself.