by Thorne Moore
Shadows
Thorne Moore
© Thorne Moore 2017
Thorne Moore has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 1
I was sitting in an interrogation room when Leo Mardell hanged himself.
He died alone, but I shared it with him. I didn’t realise I was doing so, because I was intent on D I Overly’s questions.
‘So, just to go over this again, Mrs Lawrence, you knew nothing at all about the handling of these funds?’
If Overly had been anything but a policeman, I might have found him droll and likeable. But he was a policeman, so I refused to melt. I was furious with my boss Leo for involving me in his mess, furious that I hadn’t walked away the moment I realised something in the company was fishy. Now I was furious with D I Overly for his insinuations.
‘I repeat: I’ve worked for Leo Mardell for less than three months, I deal with clients and I deliver the service they pay for. Period. I have no idea what happens to their money once it reaches the accounts department. It never occurred to me to ask.’
Which wasn’t true. I’d nagged Leo about it from day one. The last time I’d spoken to him, I’d been so blunt, he was sweating and grey round the gills. Why on earth had the idiot chosen to mess up a perfectly good and thriving business? And worse, involve me?
For a moment, trapped in that police station, I was drowning in irrational despair, as if an endless succession of locks were snapping shut around me.
Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Kate Lawrence. You’re not the one in the shit. This must be Overly’s interrogation technique getting to you.
‘All right, Mrs Lawrence.’ Overly rocked back in his chair and pressed his thumbs together, grinning ‘Or can I call you Kate?’
‘No, you can call me Mrs Lawrence.’ Beneath my righteous indignation, I again felt that rising tsunami of hopelessness.
‘Madam?’ he suggested.
‘You dare!’
Then it happened. For the smallest fraction of a second, the universe turned upside down, and when it righted itself, something was missing. The panic, the guilt, the trapped despair were gone, and with them Leo. As I sat there, facing D I Overly, Leo Mardell vanished from existence. The universe swung back round to hit me in the solar plexus. A familiar nausea swept through me. My hand shook on the coffee-stained interview table, though I fought to still it.
‘Mrs Lawrence? Are you okay?’
The policewoman who was chaperoning us had her hand on the back of my neck, ready to force my head between my knees.
‘Mrs Lawrence?’ Overly’s face was alarmingly close. I could see his consternation. ‘Are you feeling faint?’
‘What?’ I shook myself free. ‘No, I’m fine. Sorry. Just – it’s hot.’
‘I thought you were going to pass out.’ Overly sighed with relief. ‘All right, Mrs Lawrence, I don’t think we need to continue this interview. Get yourself into the fresh air.’ He opened the door for me. ‘We may need to speak to you again, after we’ve re-interviewed Mr Mardell.’
‘Yes.’ Good luck with that, I thought. You can interview Leo all you like but he won’t reply. Because he’s dead.
I’d felt him die. That’s what I did: I felt Death. It’s not a party trick I’d recommend. Not remotely entertaining. All it had ever done was make my life a hell.
I walked out of the police station, my guts twisting themselves in knots, and I went home to wait for the news.
*
The police found him hanging. He left a suicide note. More of an extended essay, excusing his own fall from grace, blaming his ex-wife, the Inland Revenue, over-litigious clients and an international conspiracy of bankers. I suppose I was expected to be pleased because it exonerated me.
Legal exoneration. It’s good in theory, but it never quite cuts through the smoke of innuendos and doubts that trail behind it. In the following days, I sat mourning the hopeless man and listlessly appraising my CV, wondering how to word the latest addition in something approaching a positive light.
I wasn’t rushing to look for something new, while I had Leo’s death to work through. Too late to realise that the despair I’d experienced at the police station had been his, echoing across the city to me in his last frantic moments. Could I have stopped him? I was sick to think that my harsh words might have helped push him to the edge. That was why I felt obliged to agree to the request to go to his home and sort out his things.
The fact that there was no one else, no family or close friend, just a temporary work colleague, to take on the duty, only increased the poignancy of his death.
The moment I turned the key in the lock of Leo’s Pimlico apartment, I knew I’d made a mistake. The chaos created by Leo or the police, hunting for incriminating papers, was lost on me. All I could focus on was the wall where he’d been hanging.
I didn’t need the chalk marks, the stain on the floor, to tell me where it was. That coil of panic and screaming regret, tightening around me in the police station, had burst from his body the moment he’d died, to career round the room, seeking dispersal on the wind. But there had been no escape, so it had turned back on itself and eaten like acid into the plaster and brick. It was enshrined now in the fabric of the building, waiting for me. No one else, just me. Because I was the one freak in the world who could feel it.
I didn’t want to feel it. I’d already shared Leo’s final pathetic spiral into the dark. I couldn’t face reliving it, while he was dead and free. I turned and ran. Back to my clean, safe home, empty of shadows.
Empty of people, living or dead. All my life, I’d striven to keep my weird experiences buried so deep that no one would guess what I was feeling, and the result was this: I was alone in an empty house. I’d trained myself to keep quiet, but sometimes the need to share was so strong it left me sick with longing. Except that now there was no one left to share.
Not my husband Peter. I’d frozen him out of my life by my silence and he’d found solace elsewhere.
Friends? Absolutely not. They never stayed, once I’d let slip about my little peculiarities.
How about D I Overly? ‘That day when you were interviewing me, when you thought I was going to faint? That was me feeling Leo Mardell die.’
‘Yes, Mrs Lawrence, of course it was.’ An instant freezing of that flirtatious friendliness; Alert! Batty cow in the room. ‘How about you have a nice cup of tea and we’ll call a doctor.’
And what would a doctor say if I tried to explain? ‘I feel people die, Doctor, even if they’re a hundred miles away. Or I stand where they stood and I share their last horrors, even if they’re a hundred years dead.’ I could guess the reaction. It was probably the solution. Maybe I’d be better off lobotomised.
I wanted someone to tell me that all would be well, and I had no one.
Except…
I had Sylvia! Of course. No matter what, there would always be Sylvia. In my chill loneliness, I ache
d for her blithe, unquenchable optimism.
I phoned and heard her voice, from a world away, in green and rural Pembrokeshire. ‘Kate! How lovely! Mike, it’s Kate. How are you, darling? How are you coping? I do wish—’
‘Sylvia, I’m fine,’ I cut my cousin off before she could drown me in her irrepressible chatter. ‘You and Michael both well?’
‘Oh we’re wonderful, aren’t we, Mike? Having a lovely time. It’s a dream here. We’ve got such plans—’
I interrupted again. ‘Is the job offer still open?’
‘Job? You mean the partnership? You’ll come here? Mike! Mike, she’s going to come here. Isn’t that wonderful? Kate’s coming to join us.’
Chapter 2
‘In one hundred yards, turn right. Turn right.’
I turned right, over a narrow stone bridge and saw the pub sign, the Cemaes Arms. Sylvia had told me to watch out for it, but without my sat nav, I doubt if I would have found it in the maze of North Pembrokeshire. I took the next left fork, as instructed, along a narrow lane winding up through the trees from the river.
I wasn’t running away, I told myself. I wasn’t fleeing to the bosom of my family in a cloud of self-indulgent misery. I was doing what I was good at, embracing new and challenging avenues. This was a business opportunity and a chance to clean out all the chaotic irritations in my life. Like my wrecked marriage. Like my death thing. I was going to slap it in the face and put it back in its box, while I took control of Sylvia’s business dreams and worked miracles. Order, organise, arrange. Passionless efficiency, oh yes, that was me.
‘In three hundred yards you will have reached your destination.’
I rounded a bend and there was Sylvia, jumping up and down on the verge and waving her arms.
My cousin Sylvia. Billowing crushed-velvet skirt, voluminous mohair jumper and Wellington boots – Rossetti at Cold Comfort Farm. A comfortable middle-aged plumpness about her now, and a halo of silver in her unruly yellow hair, but still overflowing with life.
‘Clever, clever girl! I knew you’d find us.’ She tugged at my door as I pulled the handbrake. ‘Any trouble? Of course not. You never get lost. Well then, come on, come on. Let me see you.’ She swamped me in her bear hug, then held me at arm’s length to take a long look at me. ‘Too thin. We’ll have to feed you up. How are you, darling? What a horrible time you’ve had, but you’re going to love it here, I promise you. Come on, let’s drive up to the house.’
‘This isn’t it then?’ I nodded at a cottage, standing guard over rusting wrought-iron gates. Sylvia had promised me a mansion, but I knew her capacity for hyperbole, and the cottage did have Palladian pillars and a pediment. Four rooms could be a mansion in some books.
‘No, no, this is just the lodge, but isn’t it unbelievably twee? I’m going to get working on it soon.’
‘I am impressed.’
Sylvia, already clambering into the passenger seat, urged me on. ‘Come on. Wait till you see the rest.’
I returned to the wheel and manoeuvred the car through the gates and up across steepening pasture, round banks of rhododendrons. As the neglected drive turned alongside low, stone estate buildings, Sylvia clutched my arm in mid gear change. ‘There, there, look!’
The great house, Llys y Garn.
No hyperbole after all; it was a bona fide mansion, a dark confusion of wings, gables and chimneys, enfolded in its own shadow as the sun slipped down into the west. The track divided, the right fork circling to a terrace fronting the formal façade of the house, washed by evening light. The left passed through an archway into a dark cobbled courtyard.
‘In there, in there,’ urged Sylvia, as I edged in under the arch and parked up in the gloom between a Volvo estate and a Ford Fiesta.
Sylvia waved to figures at a lighted window. ‘Here she is! Come on, here’s Kate.’ She turned back to me, face alight with enthusiasm. ‘Didn’t I tell you it was wonderful? You’ll love it: it’s oozing with atmosphere. Just your cup of tea.’
My cup of tea. Ah, yes. Five minutes after phoning Sylvia, I’d remembered that this house she and Michael had bought would be exactly the sort of place I’d always avoided. A house so old that echoes of death were guaranteed. For a moment I’d thought of crying off. Then I’d decided; if I really wanted to conquer it, this had to be my golden opportunity. I’d run in panic from Leo’s apartment, just as I’d run from a hundred places before, but now I was going to stand my ground. This house was going to be my Battle of Britain. I’d take it on and win.
I wouldn’t be explaining this to Sylvia. She knew that I felt ‘things,’ and she’d decided it must be a wonderful gift. Everything was wonderful to Sylvia. But then, who could understand what a curse my ‘gift’ really was? Peter had claimed to understand, long ago before our romance froze to death, but Sylvia never. Curses weren’t in her vocabulary – and that was what I loved about her. She was my refuge, my utterly uncomprehending cousin, with whom I could relax in undemanding intimacy, despite the fourteen-year difference in our ages.
Michael Bradley emerged from the house and proffered his hand. I took it, amused at the formality, and turned the gesture into a hug. It was impossible not to like Michael. Nothing big or loud, no star qualities, just a slightly neglected one-eared teddy bear, or a comfortable old slipper, quiet and affable. In his former existence, he’d been the senior chemist in a petroleum multinational, but he looked far better suited to life as a rural woodworker. He’d been with Sylvia for three years now, and they fitted together like an old married couple; lovers and business partners.
‘Glad you could come,’ he said, smiling, a little shy of my embrace.
‘I am glad too. Really glad.’
‘Hi, Kate.’ Tamsin, Sylvia’s youngest child, sidled round Michael to receive the obligatory peck on the cheek. She’d been the baby of the family for eighteen years, but a couple of terms at university had begun to break the bonds.
‘Tammy, you’re looking gorgeous. How’s Bristol?’
‘Great! Well, you know.’ She whispered a correction. ‘Taz.’
‘Taz. Sorry.’ I’d forgotten. ‘I’ll remember next time.’
She laughed self-consciously. ‘Whatever.’
‘Come and help with Kate’s bags,’ said Sylvia, heaving suitcases from the boot with Michael’s aid. Rooks rose wheeling into the white sky, their caws echoing around us.
I followed Sylvia through the house, up a darkly grand staircase into a dim corridor. ‘Here we are,’ she shouted over her shoulder, as a door opened onto the last rays of the setting sun. ‘I thought you’d like this one.’ She ushered me in. ‘Remember, it’s all yours now, so do whatever you want with it. Express yourself!’ She gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Bathroom’s just round the corner and through the arch. Take a deep breath and then come down.’
I sank onto the antique brass bed and tried a discreet bounce. The mattress was reassuringly comfortable.
A lofty room, with gracious fireplace, polished oak boards and two tall sash windows facing west over a leaded porch roof. Golden light flooded in, liquid as wine, streaming with motes of dust onto the white tulips Sylvia had placed on the massive chest of drawers. No other frills. I understood: I was to transform it into a purely Kate Lawrence room, minimalist and composed.
With what? I didn’t do totemic trappings. There was nothing of deep significance in the heap of suitcases containing my thirty-four years. Did my lack of personal detritus make me challenging, positive and forward-looking, or just sad?
I knelt on the wide sill to look out. Beyond the gravel terrace, pasture rolled down into the forested valley, no hint of green yet on the tangled boughs. The far rim of the valley blazed as the sun disappeared from view and the depths were cast into darkness. The March sky, promising frost, faded from indigo to palest golden green, huge and cleansing.
It certainly wasn’t London.
I surveyed the room again, open to any shadows that might come seeping through the plaster. But if anyone had
died in this room, they’d done so peacefully, without fear, leaving nothing but a slight creak in the floorboards. I could live with this.
*
‘Have a bit more,’ said Sylvia. ‘You need feeding up, doesn’t she, Mike? Look at her, she’s thin as a rake.’
‘She looks fine,’ smiled Michael.
‘And really, I’m full,’ I insisted. Michael had cooked the lamb casserole, as he did all things, with undemonstrative perfectionism, but the pear and almond tart was Sylvia’s offering, and she was easily distracted. My arrival had been a major distraction. ‘It was lovely though,’ I lied.
‘I think I might have added the sugar twice,’ Sylvia laughed. ‘It is rather sweet, isn’t it?’
‘Well I like it,’ said Tamsin, helping herself to another slice.
‘I’ll make the coffee,’ said Michael, squeezing Sylvia’s hand and turning his attention to the espresso machine. It was the only contemporary touch in the Victorian kitchen. High ceiling the colour of nicotine, the walls arsenic green, a vast utilitarian pine dresser occupying the whole of one wall and an antique Rayburn roasting off the spring chill. Complete antithesis of the hygienic brushed steel of my London home, with my unappetising and uneaten microwave meals.
For a moment, despite the sugar overload, I felt a surge of happiness.
Then Sylvia said, ‘We’ve been terribly worried about you, you know. The things that man put you through!’
I squirmed, recalling my last conversation with a disintegrating Leo. Surely the issue was what I’d put him through.
‘Abandoning you for that – that hussy!’
I laughed. ‘Oh, you mean Peter.’
‘He’s a bastard, he really is. I told Sarah to cut his balls off if she sees him.’
‘Oh Mum!’ complained Tamsin.
‘Well why not? Men are all shits, the lot of them.’
I smiled at Michael, as he reached for four mugs, his brows raised in benign exasperation. ‘Does she allow any exceptions?’
‘No, but she can’t afford to throw me out.’