In a fit of fury, she threw herself at him. Her hand caught his sleeve and she wrapped herself around his arm clutching it to her chest. The more he tried to push her off the tighter she clung. There was no way she could overpower him, but she would hang on for as long as possible. As she was dragged towards the door, trying to avoid the frantic blows raining down on the back of her head, she collapsed to the ground, a deadweight. The hammer fist continued to pound across her shoulders and she felt her strength weakening. Her face was buried in the coarse tweed of his sleeve and in desperation, she sank her teeth through the wodge of cloth.
Behind her, someone was struggling towards them. The laboured breathing sounded close. Whether it was Sir Richard or Nathan, she had no idea, but it gave her the strength to maintain her limpet hold.
‘That’s enough, Barry. Give it up. There’s nowhere for you to go.’
Sir Richard’s calm, authoritative voice cut through the frenzy. For a long-drawn-out moment, everything was still. Sarah felt the fury and tension throughout Barry’s body collapse. His head drooped. The struggle was over. He was a defeated man.
The figure behind Sarah moved forward and clamped an arm round Barry’s neck. Turning her head, she could see Nathan still on the ground, but leaning up on one arm, trying to get his breath back.
‘Nathan?’ He raised a hand to wave away her concern. She wanted to go to him but she had to cling onto Barry’s arm. Sir Richard was in no state to hold him back if the maniacal hysteria broke out again.
Chapter 39
Sarah thought that they must have looked a strange procession. Nathan frog-marching Barry with his arm yanked high up his back, Sir Richard following, with her bringing up the rear. Marching like battle-weary soldiers, which they could justifiably claim to be. At the front of the house, she fell out of line and came round to unlock the door. The great staircase nearly got the better of them all and, when they reached the living room, only Nathan remained on his feet towering above the now totally deflated Barry, slumped in an armchair.
‘Have you got anything to tie him up with until the police get here?’ He asked without looking at her.
‘No need,’ she said too weary to look for something suitable. ‘I’ve put the deadlock on. He can’t get out without a key unless he’s prepared to jump out of an upstairs window.’
Nathan, a picture of exhaustion himself, remained standing over Barry for several minutes although one look at the crumpled figure indicated he was not capable of crawling, let alone running, away.
‘Why, Barry?’ Sarah asked softly, breaking the long silence. Strangely, she felt no anger, only the hurt of betrayal.
‘I didn’t set out to.’ He looked up, a pathetic hangdog expression on his face. ‘It just happened. Valerie had been on at me for months. Said if I didn’t get promotion soon she was leaving me. My world fell apart when I got that letter from The Jeremiah Peterhouse College. That job should have been mine. I had ten times the experience the other chap had. When we heard I hadn’t got it, she said she wasn’t stopping with a loser.’ The feeble voice sounded near to tears.
‘What the hell has that got to do with Sarah?’ Nathan had no sympathy.
‘I pleaded with her but she was adamant.’ It was as though Nathan hadn’t spoken. Barry was in a world of his own. ‘She told me to get out of the house while she thought things through. I went for a run. I didn’t know what else to do. When I got to the underpass, there you were, in front of me. You were the one who’d been holding me back. It was all your fault! You must have given me a bad reference.’ His voice rose to a crescendo.
‘You saw a copy of everything I sent off,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘You never raised any objection at the time. As I remember it, you were more than happy with what I’d written.’
‘But it couldn’t have been the one you sent. I had to check. I knew the disk would be in your bag. All I had to do was race past you and grab it. In the dark, with the hood pulled up, you’d never recognise me. Bags get snatched all the time. It should have been so easy. But you wouldn’t let go and you turned towards me. I had to lash out before you could identify me. When you crashed into the wall and passed out I panicked.’
‘You didn’t stop at that though, did you? And then you tried to drive me into some kind of breakdown.’
‘I thought if you were out of the way for a bit, I might have a chance to show what I could do.’
‘And when the phone calls and all those mail order offers failed, you tried to make me look incompetent.’
‘Charles Shorecross implied that most of the governors would be pleased to see you go, and that I could rely on his support if it ever came to having to appoint an Acting Principal.’
‘You listened to the wrong man,’ snorted Sir Richard.
‘I was getting desperate,’ Barry’s voice broke into a wail. ‘Valerie kept going on and on about how I’d never amount to anything and that all my promises were worthless. Then one day she took the kids and went to her mother’s.’
‘So you set about trying to kill my wife!’ The venom in Nathan’s voice made Barry recoil.
‘No,’ he cried. ‘It wasn’t like that. I thought she might just break a leg on the stairs, and I never meant for the car to crash down the slope like that. I just needed Sarah out of the college for a while.’
‘And you never meant her to starve to death in the cellar, I suppose?’ Nathan spat at him, fists clenched in fury.
‘No. I wouldn’t have left you there, Sarah. You’ve got to believe me.’ He turned pathetic, pleading eyes towards her. ‘I knew you were claustrophobic. I thought a few hours would be just enough to …’ He hung his head.
There was a long silence and, for a moment, looking at the pitiful figure, she almost began to feel sorry for him.
‘Oh you are good, Barry! You nearly had me believing your pathetic little tale of woe! But what about Eunice?’
Nathan and Sir Richard turned to look at her with puzzled frowns.
‘You deliberately ran her down.’
Barry hid his face in his hands.
‘Did she see you planting that trip wire? Is that why you had to shut her up? It must have been difficult to come up with an explanation for trying to pull that little stunt. I’m not surprised she wasn’t convinced. Did she threaten to tell everyone what you were up to? I’m surprised you didn’t wring her neck there on the stairs but then it would have been a bit difficult to explain a dead body slumped in the corridor.’
She could hear the sharp intake of breath as the others took in what she was saying.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Barry tried to stem her stream of venom. ‘She was standing at the bottom of the fire escape. Asked me what I was doing back in college. I spun her some story but she gave me that suspicious look of hers and flounced off. After she’d gone it struck me, when it came out that you’d fallen down the stairs she’d remember and I’d have some difficult explaining to do. I thought I’d better go after her. I only meant to follow her.’
‘In my car!’
‘By the time I got to the entrance, she was already out of sight. My car was in the top car park, but when I saw yours, I remembered I still had your keys in my pocket. It seemed the obvious thing to do. She’d got all the way to Broad Street before I caught up. I slowed right down and she kept looking back, then suddenly she started to run. That’s what made me do it. I didn’t plan anything. It just happened. I put my foot on the accelerator and went. I had to stop her!’ He was like a small child passing the blame, expecting them to understand.
It was Sir Richard who broke the silence. ‘How come you had Sarah’s keys?’ Even in the charged atmosphere of that dramatic scene, she noted that for the first time ever he had called her by her Christian name.
‘They were in my handbag when you stole it. It worked out rather well for you when I became the chief suspect for her murder, didn’t it?’
His eyes narrowed and he gripped the arms of the chair poised like a wild animal ready t
o spring at her. ‘Why haven’t they arrested you like they should have done?’ he spat. Nathan and Sir Richard were instantly on their feet ready to hold him back. ‘You deserved to suffer. It’s all your fault!’
‘That’s enough!’ Sir Richard’s voice was icily cold. ‘Isn’t it time you took responsibility for your own failure?’
Barry stared across at him, a look of shocked surprise on his face, then put his head in his hands and began to sob.
‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together, man!’ Sir Richard’s plea barely registered on Barry’s glazed, self-absorbed features. As suddenly as it had started the noise stopped. The bloodshot eyes blinked rapidly as Barry slowly rocked himself backwards and forwards.
Nathan caught Sir Richard’s eye, and shook his head. Barry had lost all reason.
‘He should probably be kept warm,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll fetch a blanket.’
She felt decidedly unsteady as she got to her feet, and by the time she reached her bedroom her whole body was trembling. The strain had taken its toll.
How long she sat perched on the edge of the bed, she wasn’t sure. When she looked up, Nathan was standing in the doorway. Slowly he walked over and sat beside her. He put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her gently to face him. She clung to him, burying her face into the crook of his neck.
‘It’s alright now,’ he whispered softly into her hair. ‘It’s all over.’
He was right. The nightmare was over. Now she could get her life back. She pulled back and looked into the familiar golden eyes.
‘Everything is going to be fine from now on,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied, then slowly leaned forward and gently brushed her lips against his.
The sound of the police siren brought any further conversation to a halt, and they listened as it grew to a crescendo. Someone would have to go down and let them in.
***
Thank you for reading ‘All in the Mind’. I do hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I loved writing it. Please don’t forget to write a review either on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com and on Goodreads. Reviews are crucial for authors to help find new readers so please do spend a few moments of your time. I would be so grateful. Why not tell your friends and spread the word.
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If you enjoyed this book, you may care to look at my other psychological suspense novels.
WATCHER IN THE SHADOWS
Sylvie doesn’t know she has a secret watcher intent on ensuring her innocence until the day he will claim her as his own.
Read the opening chapters below.
A DEATH TOO FAR
How can Kathy uncover the truth about her sister’s death when all she has to go on is a holiday journal and someone who will stop at nothing to stop her investigation?
If you fancy something in a lighter vein, The Fiona Mason Mysteries are cosy whodunits with plenty of edge.
BLOOD ON THE BULB FIELDS
Fiona's first assignment as a tour manager is fraught with problems. Murder and mayhem break out on the Dutch bulb fields when diamond smugglers fall out with one another.
BLOOD IN THE WINE
Murder, kidnap and revolutionary Moslem terrorists bring chaos and confusion to what should have been a peaceful tour of the Rhine Valley.
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE
Fiona’s tour of Belgium goes horribly awry when one of her passengers is found dead soon after the assassination of a British MP at a rally outside the European Parliament Building. Could there be a link between the two deaths?
COMING SOON –
BLOOD HITS THE WALL
When Peter Montgomery-Jones poses as a passenger on Tour Manager Fiona Mason’s Elbe Valley tour, she knows there is going to be trouble. She doesn’t have to wait long. The local guide in Berlin falls to his death in the hotel where her party are staying. The local police are convinced that one her passengers is guilty of his murder. Montgomery-Jones refuses to help. He has his own investigation to worry about.
Read the opening chapters on www.judithcranswick.co.uk - books
Short Story collections
ALL SORTS VOLUME 1
ALL SORTS VOLUME 2
ALL SORTS VOLUME 3
For details see - www.judithcranswick.co.uk or go to Amazon books or Kindle store.
WATCHER IN THE SHADOWS
Judith Cranswick
Chapter 1
The street is narrow and badly lit. Strange shadows lurk in the lengthy stretches between the reluctant glimmer struggling from each streetlight. The oppressive silence of the late evening is broken only by the staccato double clack of the girl’s stiletto sling-backs on the wet pavement.
At the corner, she stops to look over her shoulder. The insipid yellow glow of the sodium lamp bleaches the colour from her face. She turns to stare into the dark recesses of the doorway of the long abandoned shop on the far side of the road.
A thin drizzle begins to fall. Her shoulders twitch as a shudder passes through the taut body. She pulls up the collar of the short leather jacket, wraps its unfastened edges across her chest and hurries onward, eager to evade the long line of grey, empty-eyed houses crowding in upon her.
He shivers too. With excitement, not cold or apprehension.
It does not occur to her to glance upward. She does not see the slow twisted smirk spread over the bloodless face watching from the unlit window. No one knows of the nightly vigil he keeps at the dormer window from where he can trace her journey along the whole length of the street. She has no idea about the fantasies he nurtures in his secret place as he waits for her passing.
She is gone now but he stays in his silent eyrie. He stretches out a hand and with a crooked finger writes her name in the mist his breath has generated on the icy pane of glass.
* * *
Every now and again their hands brushed against each other in the dark as they reached into the enormous tub of popcorn. Sylvie couldn’t decide if Trevor had deliberately engineered the touch or if it was pure chance they’d dipped in at the same time. She counted to twenty and tried again. His hand went in moments after hers. Smiling in the darkness, she waited for a count of thirty and felt a tingle of pleasure when the same thing happened. How about ten? This time he sat still munching, eyes glued to the screen. Perhaps it was too soon and he couldn’t make it that obvious.
She told herself not to be so stupid and sat back trying to follow the movie. Like all action adventures, there were so many characters that she’d already lost the plot. It didn’t make it any easier to concentrate with Cheryl wriggling in the seat next to her. These wraparound cinema seats weren’t built for passionate clinches. Sylvie sighed. Perhaps agreeing to make up a foursome hadn’t been such a good idea.
Ten minutes later, Sylvie stole a look at Trevor. He seemed totally engrossed in the fight scene being played out on the screen. Even in the poor reflected light, she could see Trevor’s fists clench as the hero threw yet another punch which landed squarely on the jaw of his would-be assassin. Men were such little boys at heart. She peered into the recesses of the popcorn tub but could see nothing in the dark. Carefully she put in a hand. There were a few sticky remnants in the bottom. Strange how that mountain of confectionery had disappeared so quickly.
On the screen, the camera pulled back to reveal the hero walking down the great expanse of steps from some impressive pillared building, leaving the carnage behind. Trevor took hold of her hand. She felt a shiver of anticipation as he turned it over but all he wanted was to shake the last few pieces onto her palm. Still, perhaps not all Trevor’s attention had been taken up by the drama unfolding above them. He scrunched up the empty carton, let
it drop onto the floor then slid his arm around her and settled back. Sylvie gave a little smile of contentment and snuggled down against his shoulder. Perhaps the evening wasn’t going to be a total disappointment after all.
* * *
The days are almost at their longest but there is still a faint chill in the tiny, north-facing attic room that never sees the sun. Behind the half drawn, faded curtain, out of sight from any passer-by below, he takes up his self-appointed place. It is still too early for her return but he likes to sit up here with only his thoughts for company.
He turns to look at the pictures on the wall. A smile tugs at his lips and there is a flutter in the pit of his stomach as he fixes his eyes on the Lady of the Lake.
This is the painting that started it all, cut out from the Fine Art calendar he’d been given for Christmas. From the moment he’d first seen the pale, ethereal figure lying in the water with her hands uplifted, it made him think of Sylvie. The sadness of the picture with its sombre greens and browns appealed to something deep within his soul. He knew it was a famous painting. Ophelia, so mad for love of Hamlet, that she has drowned herself in her despair at his rejection. Not that the ashen features closely resemble Sylvie’s but that does not stop his fantasies. Sylvie as a tragic heroine dying for love. He will be Hamlet to her Ophelia.
There is another picture alongside it now. A Victorian portrait with the same profusion of wild, untameable hair with its soft copper sheen rippling around her shoulders like Sylvie’s. Perhaps he should look for more so that this room can become a true shrine. Soon it will be the longest day. The Summer Solstice. Surely that must have some major significance in the pagan year? He will mark it in some way. Find something exceptional to add to his collection and he can perform a rite in honour of its placing in this special place dedicated to his Sylvie.
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