Craven (9781921997365)

by Casey, Melanie

  ‘If you say it’s not you, it’s me, I’m going to have to kill you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No, just stop. Please.’

  He fell silent, contemplating her averted face. Nothing he could say was going to make it better.

  ‘All right. Eat your toast and then call your mum. The remote’s on the coffee table, phone’s on the side table next to you. Here’s the address for this place.’ He grabbed a notepad and pen off the coffee table and jotted it down. ‘I’m heading into the study. I’ve got some paperwork to do. Call me if you need anything.’ He stood up and headed for the doorway.

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks for coming to the hospital and for looking after me.’

  ‘Any time.’ Their eyes locked for a moment. Ed looked away first, unable to hold her gaze.

  CHAPTER

  18

  I woke with a start from a nightmare where a man with no face was chasing me through endless corridors. I was drenched in sweat and I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. For a few moments I had no idea where I was. I looked around in a daze. My memory finally kicked in and I realised I was camped on Ed’s couch. I was smothered in blankets and something forgettable was droning away on the TV.

  ‘Cass?’

  I jumped. The voice was Ed’s, but my nerves were still jangled.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m OK. Why?’ I sat up.

  ‘You don’t look OK. You’re dripping in sweat.’

  ‘Too many blankets.’ I pushed them back and stood up, gripping the arm of the couch for support.

  ‘Right.’ He stood there, frowning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your hair …’ He stepped up and tucked a damp strand behind my ear. His touch made my cheek burn. I dropped my gaze, not wanting him to see that he still affected me that way.

  ‘Cass?’

  My eyes crept back up to his face. Big mistake. He was too close and I couldn’t go anywhere, the couch was right behind me. I tried to swallow but the inside of my mouth was drier than a handful of autumn leaves.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to back away but his lips descended onto mine. He wrapped his arms around me and he kissed me. I wanted to push him away but the softness of his lips gently exploring mine felt too good. I pushed my fingers through his hair and pulled his head down, kissing him back. Three months of longing banished any logical thought.

  I forced him around so that he was backed up against the couch then pushed him down onto it. He pulled me on top of him and I straddled him, feeling the hardness of him against me, our skin separated only by his trackpants and the cotton of my knickers.

  He pulled his head away. ‘Cass … your head?’

  ‘Shut up,’ I whispered, forcing his mouth back to mine.

  Still kissing me, he reached up under the shirt I was wearing to cup a hand around my breast, rubbing the nipple with his thumb in rhythmic circles making me writhe with pleasure.

  I pushed up against him, wanting him inside me. He thrust back, making me shudder with longing.

  I broke contact, moving to one side and wriggling out of my underwear before reaching for his trackpants and tugging them down. I ran my hand over the length of his penis, stroking him until he groaned.

  I straddled him again and eased myself down on top of him. He grabbed my buttocks, guiding me up and down, thrusting up to meet me. I threw my head back. He yanked my shirt open, sending buttons flying and his head descended so he could tease my nipples with his tongue. The pace of his thrusting increased until our flesh was slapping together in a frenzy of sweat and pleasure. I yelled out as my orgasm built and tore through me. A few moments later he went rigid then shuddered as he came. We collapsed into a messy heap against the tangled blankets on the couch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry for having sex?’

  ‘No, well, maybe. I meant I’m sorry for leaving.’

  I’d imagined this conversation a thousand times in the months since he’d left Fairfield and had prepared plenty of smart-arsed comments in response, but I couldn’t bring myself to say any of them. None of the conversations I’d imagined had followed hot on the heels of us having passionate sex.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Why am I sorry?’

  ‘Why did you leave, and why are you sorry?’

  ‘I needed to get away from the memories. I’m sorry because you were the best thing that had happened to me for a long time and I was too stupid to realise what I had until I’d lost you.’

  ‘That sounds like a line.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  ‘You were part of the problem.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You were the one who helped me solve Susan’s disappearance. Seeing you every day reminded me of that.’

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say. Did that mean he could never be with me without thinking about his dead wife? There was no future in that.

  ‘I want to try again,’ he said.

  ‘Try again?’

  ‘I want to see if we can make it work. I love you, Cass.’

  I blinked. He’d dropped the L-bomb on me. Whatever I’d expected, it hadn’t included that.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh? That’s it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ed. I don’t know how I feel about everything. You really hurt me. I don’t know if I can go back to how we were.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m an idiot.’

  ‘Yes.’

  His phone rang. He twisted around and reached for it. ‘Sorry, I have to answer this.’

  I sighed with relief as he took the call, then stood up and walked out of the room. I felt like I’d been running a marathon. I was glad of the few minutes to compose myself.

  By the time he came back I was sitting on the couch, sipping a glass of water and feeling halfway normal.

  ‘I just got a call from Dave. You remember him from last night?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Another body has turned up and they think it might be related to the case we’re working at the moment.’

  ‘Right.’ I wondered where the conversation was heading.

  ‘I could let Dave handle it but …’

  ‘But you really want to go and have a look for yourself.’

  ‘Yes, do you mind?’

  ‘No, I can wait here for Mum. She’ll be here in another couple of hours.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘I don’t think you should wait here by yourself.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right? We just had sex. I think I’m OK.’

  ‘No, I’m not kidding. I would never forgive myself if I went out and left you and something happened.’

  ‘Look, I’m fine, really!’ I stood up. My legs gave a treacherous wobble.

  ‘See,’ Ed said, frowning at me.

  ‘That was the sex not the concussion.’

  ‘You can come with me and rest in the back of the car. I want to have a look at the scene and get a feel for what went down and then we can come back here, OK?’

  ‘Shit, Ed, I’m not a baby.’

  ‘Please, Cass?’

  I shrugged. ‘If it’ll make you happy. It’s gotta be better than sitting on this god-awful excuse for a couch and watching daytime television.’

  CHAPTER

  19

  Five minutes later Ed pulled out of his garage. Cass was sitting in the front seat next to him rather than in the back where he’d wanted her. She’d point-blank refused to sit in the back, telling him that she wasn’t ‘bloody Miss Daisy’.

  Having her sitting with him on the way to a case reminded him of when they’d first worked together over a year ago, except this time he didn’t think Cass was some kind of kook. He pondered their conversation back at his townhouse. He’d surprised himself when he’d told her how he felt. Would she give him another chance
? She hadn’t said no.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Her voice penetrated his thoughts.

  ‘West Terrace Cemetery.’

  ‘You found a body in a cemetery? How surprising.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘This one doesn’t belong there. Will you be OK?’

  ‘I should be. Most of the people in cemeteries didn’t actually die there.’

  ‘True, but I’d really prefer it if you’d wait in the car while I take a look.’

  ‘You don’t want my kind of help?’

  ‘It’s not that …’

  ‘You don’t have to explain. I’m glad not to be helping you anymore. The last time round left a few too many scars.’

  ‘I guess it did.’

  Five minutes later he pulled into the private driveway of one of Adelaide’s most historic cemeteries. The graves towards the front were more than 150 years old. Many of them came from a time when elaborate and individual tombstones were the norm for wealthy families. Towering crosses, angels and obelisks marked the final resting places of the founding families of the city. Ed drove slowly past the rows of headstones, silent sentinels watching over the final sleep of their wards for all eternity; or at least until the lease was up.

  ‘Dave told me it’s over towards the back, on the left,’ he said.

  A few moments later he spotted the cluster of vehicles and people that signalled a crime scene. Ed pulled over behind a van.

  ‘You’ll be all right here?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘If you get tired you can always have a rest in the back. I’ll grab you a blanket from the boot. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Stop fussing!’

  He got out and spotted Dave talking to a uniformed officer next to an open grave. He walked up to them.

  ‘Hey, Ed, glad you could leave your babysitting duties. How’s the patient?’ Dave said.

  ‘Pissed off because I made her come with me. She’s in the car. So what’s going on? You said a body had been found and it was related to our case.’

  ‘Yeah, one of the groundsmen turned up this morning to do the final prep on this site. He’s a bit of a stickler for detail and he noticed something amiss with the grave he’d dug yesterday.’

  ‘You’re going to get to the point in a minute, aren’t you?’

  ‘Jesus, you’re starting to sound like Crackers. Someone beat the undertakers to it. There’s a body already down there.’

  ‘A fresh one?’

  ‘Sort of. That’s a bit interesting in itself. The crime scene tech told me the temperature’s too low. Body’s been frozen. They ran the prints. It’s Taylor.’

  ‘Taylor? That’s a bit of a bloody coincidence, isn’t it?’ Ed said.

  ‘Yep. Too much of one for my liking. We start asking questions about the connection between him and Paul Jenkins and he suddenly turns up after being missing for over a year. We must have rattled someone’s cage.’

  ‘Have you had a look?’

  ‘Yeah, the crime scene team has finished. I asked them to wait for you before they moved the body. Thought you’d want to have a look for yourself.’

  ‘Thanks, Dave.’ Ed looked at his partner and wondered if the body snatchers had done a makeover on him. Somehow the guy had turned from a schmuck into a half decent bloke in the space of twenty-four hours. Maybe the hamburger had some kind of magical properties. He could think of a few other people who’d benefit from one if that was the case.

  He walked over to the grave and climbed down the ladder. The pungent, mouldering smell of the fresh soil filled his nostrils. He could feel the damp coldness emanating from the walls of the grave. He got to the bottom and shuffled delicately around the edge of the crime scene. The body lay exposed. It was in pretty good nick, considering, with no obvious trauma. Whoever had put him there had laid him out neatly with his hands folded on his chest. He was fully dressed in a business suit and tie. Other than the body there wasn’t anything else to see, only dirt.

  Ed climbed up the ladder, keen to get back on level ground. Standing at the bottom of a grave gave him the creeps. He headed over to the crime scene team. He recognised the pathologist leaning against the van with a coffee in his hand. He was one of the better ones, and he’d made an effort to be pleasant when Ed had crossed his path a couple of times previously.

  ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ Ed said when he reached the van.

  ‘Hey, Dyson. At least this one was found in daylight hours.’

  ‘You got anything?’

  ‘Nope, only dirt up my nose and the certain knowledge that someone had this guy stashed in a freezer before they dumped him here. He’s still mostly frozen.’

  ‘Yeah, Dave mentioned that. Anything else?’

  ‘Nope, no obvious cause. No distinctive marks on the body. I’m gonna have to get him back to the lab before I can give you anything else.’

  ‘I’m interested to know if he’s got any drugs in his system as soon as you can tell me.’

  ‘So put a rush on the tox screen in other words?’

  ‘That’d be great.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. So you’ve finished down there?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s not much to see.’

  ‘No, but your partner insisted we wait until you’d had a look.’

  ‘I like to get the feel of a crime scene.’

  ‘Hey, whatever works.’ The pathologist turned and shouted, ‘Max!’

  A younger man climbed out of the back of the van where he’d been stashing equipment. ‘We can move him now, grab a sheet.’

  Ed headed back over to Dave who was talking to a gaunt man in work gear. They turned to look at him as he approached.

  ‘Ed, this is Simon Petersen. He’s the main groundskeeper here. He found the body. Simon, this is my partner, Detective Dyson. Did you have any questions, Ed?’

  Ed studied the man briefly. He was probably fiftyish but fit looking in a weathered kind of way. He had salt and pepper hair that was cut so short you could see his scalp shining through. His appearance screamed ex-military.

  ‘You’ve probably covered this already, but what made you realise there was something wrong with the grave?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Well, I dug this grave myself.’

  ‘Right, so did the body change the depth of the grave?’

  ‘No, whoever did it made sure they dug the body into the floor so it wasn’t obvious there was anything there.’

  ‘So what was different?’

  ‘I saw something white lying at the bottom and went down to have a closer look.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Just a feather, but when I got down there to look my feet sank straight through the soft dirt and I trod on the fucking body.’

  CHAPTER

  20

  I watched Ed walk over to the cluster of activity a short distance away. Something about so many people engaged in purposeful activity and talking in normal voices in the middle of a cemetery struck a discordant note.

  I closed my eyes. My head was aching despite the handful of painkillers I’d downed before we left Ed’s place. Part of my brain wanted to visit the quagmire of emotions I was feeling for Ed and wallow around there for a while, but I didn’t have the energy. There’d be plenty of time to go over the sex, scene by scene, and decide whether to congratulate or mentally flagellate myself.

  I tried to relax, but images of the thug who’d attacked me kept flashing through my mind. Who was he? Why was he out to get me? I hadn’t been in Adelaide for long enough to make enemies, surely? How could someone hate me so much just because of what I could do?

  Gran had warned me that there were people who hated anyone that was psychically gifted. There’d been a few in Jewel Bay who were frightened of my family because of their religious beliefs, but I’d never come across anyone who wanted to physically harm me.

  I heaved a sigh and opened my eyes to check on the graveside activity. I wondered if they’d thought to cancel the funeral. If they hadn’t, people wou
ld be turning up to bury their loved one only to find a gaggle of police at the graveside. It’d be a bit of a shock.

  I massaged my chest, trying to ease the band of tightness wrapped around my sternum. It was a cool day but the car was starting to get stuffy. Ed hadn’t thought to leave the keys in the ignition so I couldn’t roll down the windows. Muttering under my breath, I opened the door and stepped out into the cold winter sun. He’d told me to stay in the car but he was so busy talking to a bloke in overalls I didn’t think he’d notice if I got out for a five-minute stretch.

  I walked around the side of the van we’d parked behind to get a better view of what was going on. The crime scene team were lifting the body out of the grave. I shivered, feeling something more than the change of air. The body was wrapped in a sheet and concealed from view, but somehow that made it worse. I was imagining something beyond grim. I’d seen way too many B-grade horror movies for my own good.

  They loaded the body onto a stretcher and started to walk in my direction. I looked at the van I was leaning on and realised it was their destination. I took a couple of awkward steps backwards. The two men carrying the stretcher were upon me before I had a chance to get back to Ed’s car.

  ‘Excuse us.’ The one in front smiled. ‘Gotta get him bagged and tucked into the wagon.’

  I smiled back, feeling a bit odd. He probably thought I was a detective as well. His blasé attitude made me realise that lugging bodies around was an everyday thing for these guys. Given my affinity with death, you would have thought I’d be equally comfortable about it, but the truth was that I’d had very little to do with actual bodies. Most of my experiences were much more removed.

  As they stepped between me and the van the man at the rear of the stretcher tripped over his own feet.

  ‘Christ Max! What the fuck?’ The man at the front twisted around as they struggled to keep the stretcher level.

  An arm in a suit jacket slid into view, then the sheet fell away and I was left staring at the mottled face of a man in a suit who was sliding off the stretcher in my direction.

  On instinct I reached out to stop him from falling. My hand made contact with his arm and then there was nothing. I was staring into pitch black. My pulse was galloping and the heat was making sweat sting my eyes. I couldn’t move. I was curled into a ball in a tiny, enclosed space. My knees were tucked up and my arms were tied behind my back. Every time I moved I hit the walls of the box I was in. I kicked my feet out. A dull and muffled thud told me the walls were too solid to budge.