I’ll tell you no lies

by Norman Wills

  After three days Lucy had noted what a lazy bastard he was, not once had he gone out on foot. She quickly picked up on the fact that he went out for his lunch every day at twelve noon, probably to a local pub. This took between an hour and one hour fifteen minutes. His only other daytime jaunt was to do a shop at the local supermarket on Friday afternoon, again in the car. At no time during the whole week did he have any visitors, male or female.

  She’d had enough, he was a creature of habit, lunchtime it would be.

  The following Monday she parked her van sixty yards from his house at ten minutes to twelve and sat there with her back to his house, waiting for his car. He didn’t disappoint, just after twelve o’clock a flash of blue 4x4 raced past her right on cue. She watched it turn left at the crossroads, just as expected, then climbed out of the van slinging the laptop computer bag over her shoulder of her maternity dress.

  Making sure there was nobody on the road she went up his driveway and rang the bell. Thirty seconds and still no answer. She went around the back of the semi-detached property, pulled on her latex gloves and took the bunch of keys out of her bag. Seven keys in total, some obviously keys from work, she found the right one at the second attempt. She turned the key and opened the door. A buzzer immediately sounded; a pre-warning of an imminent alarm. That very same buzzer that says, ‘turn me off or run like hell, come on do it now sucker!’

  She had thought of this, and she knew she had only one chance. She raced through the house to the front door and found the alarm panel conveniently situated, flashing at her to hurry up. One chance only, she keyed in the numbers six, eight, zero, four. The buzzer went silent, Sally-Anne had been right the four digit number written on the back inside cover of the address book had been the alarm code.

  Thank you, Sally-Anne.

  No problem, it was either the alarm or the PIN number for her bankcard. We had a fifty-fifty chance at worst.

  And at best?

  It depends how you look at it. Synchronicity Lucy, can’t you feel it? This was meant to happen. Anyway, you have to take a risk at times, especially when the prize is so good. Come on let’s not waste any more time.

  Had that four-digit number, innocuously written at the time, been anything other than the alarm code Lucy would now be walking away from the house. Just slow enough so as not to raise too much suspicion, her plans, their plans in tatters.

  As it was, Lucy ran upstairs, found the study where Keith pored over his personal finances seven hours a day, five days a week, and opened her computer bag.

  Look at this place, the guy’s a pig, but walk into the study and it’s like walking into a show home. Be careful not to leave any trace of our visit.

  I wasn’t planning on doing, Sally-Anne!

  Okay, okay, keep your hair on.

  Very funny!

  The first thing to come out of the bag was two A4 sized pieces of printing paper, bog standard, nothing fancy; the same generic type of paper currently residing in ninety five percent of the U.K’s home printers. These she placed into the printer carefully, making sure she didn’t disturb anything.

  One down.

  The second one was going to take a little longer. The computer that Keith used daily was still switched on. He was as lazy as she’d expected him to be.

  Come on, come on, hurry up Lucy said to herself.

  Calm down, we’ve only been here five minutes, everything’s okay.

  Another five minutes and Lucy had registered Dawn Waterson with a Hotmail e-mail address, via Keith Waterson’s, own computer registering her address as the one her son Keith now owned, or very nearly owned.

  Two down.

  She took an old lipstick out of the pocket of the laptop bag’s external pocket. The laptop she hadn’t needed because Keith had been so lazy. It was Dawn Waterson’s old lipstick.

  Find her bedroom, Lucy. It shouldn’t take too long, only two to choose from.

  The bedroom she wanted was at the rear of the house. It was neat, definitely a woman’s touch, but in need of a good dust and polish. She sidestepped the bed and closed the curtains, switching on the bedside lamp to see by and was finished shortly afterwards.

  Three down. The Key Lucy, lock the door on your way out. That’s going to confuse him.

  Looking at her watch she could see the whole escapade had lasted no longer than twenty minutes. They decided to have a last look in the study to make sure nothing was out of place then a quick glance in each of the other rooms, a sort of recce just in case they needed to come back at a later date.

  At twenty-eight minutes past twelve she reset the alarm. Sneaking out of the back door she relocked it, removed the gloves, and walked around the side of the house as bold as brass, down the road, and into the van. If anybody saw her they wouldn’t have dreamed that a heavily pregnant woman could be up to no good. She gave nothing away with her body language; she could walk confidently with the best of them. It was, after all, what she’d been trained to do. And didn’t everyone always tell her she’d been born to do it? She was a natural.

  See? It was easy.

  That should give the little shit something to chew over.

  They stayed parked on his street, in the van, just to check on his regularity. At ten past one the 4x4 came past and shortly afterwards swung into the driveway.

  Give it another five minutes. Let’s just see if he gives any sign of having noticed anything wrong.

  When five minutes had passed she switched on the ignition and drove away. Nobody had noticed anything to cause them any concern, not even Keith Waterson. By that time Keith was back in his study, computer still booted up; ready to play the markets oblivious to what had happened while Lucy drove away.

  The markets were slow that afternoon, the FTSE had barely moved all morning. Keith had what he called his bankers, the shares that would make money over a twelve-month period compared to the rest of the market, generally the blue chip companies. These were the ones that he knew he needed to stop himself from being in too high a loss at any one time. What he really liked though was to get the short-term gains that can be had by buying just at the right time and selling shortly afterwards. A bank raid was how he thought of these investments, quickly in, take the cash, and then run. It didn’t always work, sometimes he got it wrong, but his experience was paying dividends. He knew what to look for in the company reports, he was adept at being able to read between the lines and pick the winners.

  That afternoon the markets were flat and so was he, too much lunch maybe, his mind just wasn’t on it. He spent time looking at the local papers. The estate agents in particular were what interested him that afternoon, which one to choose when it came to selling his inheritance. In the end he rang two agents and arranged for valuations later that week. He wanted to get an idea of where the property market stood. He’d only sell at the best time; he was good at that. And after all, the house was only part of his portfolio, it wasn’t a home, it never had been as far as he was concerned.

  The first thing he noticed was when he went to bed later that night. He hadn’t noticed anything earlier when it was daylight but he couldn’t fail to notice the faint strip of light coming from beneath his mother’s bedroom door in the darkness. He wasn’t too scared by this, he was a pragmatist, there had to be a reasonable explanation. Lights just don’t switch themselves on he knew that much for sure.

  He hadn’t been in his mother’s bedroom since the day he’d moved back in. There had been no point; he just closed the door on that part of his previous home life, literally.

  He was curious, no more than that really to see what was making the light come through the bedroom door. Maybe a neighbour had installed some floodlight system to the rear of their house and it was just shining through the window, it was always dark at night back there. Or maybe it was a particularly strong full moon that night. Whatever the cause he thought he’d have a look.

  It was only when he tried the door and couldn’t get in that he started to question his
pragmatism. He’d never locked the door; in fact he couldn’t remember any door ever being locked in this house. It had been his mother’s idea to keep the original keys in all the doors; she’d said it was a quaintly Victorian thing to do, dating back to the times when people had been more modest than in these modern times. The doors were an original feature of the house, the keys stayed.

  Okay, he thought, the door has swelled somehow and become stuck, no problem. He then decided to take a look outside, see if he was right about the lighting or the moon, just to satisfy his curiosity more than anything. It was only when he got outside in the dark that he realised the moon was behind clouds and the rear of the house was no more lit by extra lighting than it had ever been.

  Strange, he thought. It was only when he looked up at the window and saw the curtains closed and faintly lit from within that his heart skipped a beat. Fuck, he thought, someone’s been in. But that made no sense whatsoever, he hadn’t noticed anything missing. If anybody were to go to the trouble of breaking in surely they would steal something, the television, his computer, anything. But nothing had been taken, nothing of value anyway. The only thing he was certain of was that someone had been in his mother’s bedroom.

  The question of calling the police at this point never even entered his head. He’d had his fill of the boys in blue. The last people he was going to invite into his house willingly were the police. Before he re-entered the house he opened up the garage and retrieved a hammer and a bolster chisel. He was going to get into that bedroom one way or another, and if he weren’t alone then at least he’d have a weapon. He could feel his heart pumping; it was what Saturday afternoons had been like on match day, he was beginning to relish the thought of an interloper in his house. He actually wanted to confront someone and defend his property, maybe give that person a good kicking like the good old days. He was well up for it by now.

  He rushed back indoors and locked the front and back doors. If there was somebody there they weren’t just going to run out of the house and escape from him that easily. He ran up the stairs, his mission well fixed in his mind, his resolve as firm as it had been for a couple of years.

  He tried the door again just in case he’d been wrong. Putting his shoulder into it this time it still didn’t budge. Taking the hammer and chisel he gave a warning, “Whoever you are, be afraid, I’m coming in.” It took him six blows with the hammer and chisel before the lock gave way and the door swung open on its hinges. Keith was in there immediately with the hammer poised. What he saw when the red mist had settled was far worse than he’d expected. The light source had been his mother’s bedside lamp. That wasn’t what shocked him though. On his mother’s dressing table mirror somebody had written a message for him in lipstick.

  I’m back, Keith. Back from the grave.

  Don’t think you can get rid

  of me that easily.

  Your ever-loving mother!

  He dropped the hammer to the floor in his surprise.

  No body had ever been found. She wasn’t necessarily dead. She could still be alive after all this time. He spotted a key on the floor and picked it up, now he was even more confused. Whoever had locked the door had locked it from the inside, but how? He thought. There was no one but him there. The duvet and the pillow had an indentation, as if somebody had lain down for a rest, but where were they now?

  The key had been Sally-Anne’s idea, it wasn’t the bedroom door key but the key to the gift shop storeroom, the same gift shop that had once been managed by Keith’s ‘ever-loving mother’. Keith wasn’t to know that though, it looked like the same type of key as in each of the others in the house, but it had been one of the seven keys on the key ring in Dawn’s handbag.

  Keith was totally confused; what had just happened? What did it all mean?

  Was his mother still alive? Well if she was back, as she’d put it, she certainly wasn’t here now.

  And why did she leave the message? Don’t think you can get rid of me that easily. What did that mean?

  Keith had been as convinced as everyone that his mother had died. How she’d died he didn’t have the faintest idea. The only thing he’d known for certain was that it hadn’t been anything to do with him.

  How do you lock a door from the inside and escape? That was his next thought. Ladders maybe, he just couldn’t see his mother climbing out of an upstairs window in order to confuse him. He opened the curtains and looked for evidence of escape, there wasn’t any. The window ledge was covered in dust, which had obviously never been disturbed. Nobody had been through the window, he even tried to open it and it was locked; now that would have been a good trick, he thought.

  The idea that his mother’s spirit had come back to haunt him was a preposterous one at best and just plain ridiculous. He didn’t believe in all that spiritualism crap, as far as he was concerned when you died it was the end of the story, no epilogue.

  What to do next though? If he’d had thousands of pounds worth of goods stolen he would have to call the police for insurance purposes. Nothing had been taken as far as he could see. The last thing he wanted would be for the police to be reading the message written in lipstick on his mother’s dressing table mirror. He could just imagine them rubbing their hands together with glee.

  ’Don’t think you can get rid of me that easily’, and what exactly do you suggest your mother means by that Mr Waterson?”

  No, he didn’t want to go there again. He wiped the message off the mirror, getting rid of any trace of the fact that it had ever existed. He put the lipstick in the bedside cabinet and promised himself that he’d replace the lock on the door prior to any future viewing by a potential buyer.

  He closed his mother’s bedroom door and went to bed. He didn’t sleep very well that night; he couldn’t get his mother out of his head. When he did eventually drop off into a restless slumber he had a dream about his mother. He couldn’t quite remember the details when he woke; he thought it might well have been a nightmare judging by the sweat covering his body and the state of his bed linen.

  After taking a shower he looked in to see what a mess his mother’s bedroom was in after the previous night. The door lock was broken but otherwise the room was pretty much how it should have been. There were no more messages on the mirror, no more indentations in the bedclothes. He made his mind up there and then that he’d sort out the bedroom door lock, and he’d have the front and rear door locks changed all at the same time. It wouldn’t be cheap, but then he didn’t want another night like last night in a hurry. While he was at it he’d find the manual for the alarm system and change the code for that too. If somebody had broken in yesterday, and he was now preying that had been the case, then the sick bastards wouldn’t find it so easy in future.

  He wasn’t sure what had happened the previous evening. He’d only been out for his lunch, an hour at the most, and when he came home everything had seemed normal enough. There had been no forced entry, no alarm trip registered on the panel, nothing. It was as if…He didn’t want to even consider the possibility.

  Lucy waited. She was going to give him a week or so before reinforcing the fact that he wasn’t alone any more. He was about to do it all by himself though. His problem would be one of not knowing who was paying him all the attention, his dead mother, or his living mother. Try as he might he could never believe that his mother would ‘abscond’, without a word, only to return nearly a year later, dead or alive. But return was a strong word, he hadn’t seen her, he hadn’t even heard her. If she was still alive why didn’t she just come home? He was quite willing to move out again, start afresh elsewhere, it just meant his inheritance had flown south but so what. The other alternative, the one where his mother was dead was unthinkable. If that was true, he thought, his mother’s ghost was now haunting him.

  On the Thursday of that week, with the markets looking flat at best, Keith decided to print off some research. He had been tracking a couple of small companies for the past two weeks with a view to investin
g, so he printed off the latest copy of each company financial reports to read at his leisure. He was fairly certain he was on to a couple of winners; he just wanted to check the reports again before committing himself.

  As the printer churned out the reports he sat back and put his feet up. He hadn’t seen any evidence of his mother’s existence, alive or dead, since Monday. He’d had the locks changed on Tuesday and that had seemed to put an end to the matter. He wasn’t exactly overcome with joy at the fact that it had happened in the first place, but at least it hadn’t happened again.

  When the printer went silent he reached for the two reports and sorted them into order. It was the last two sheets that caught his eye, caught his eye and squeezed his heart. His whole world stopped for a moment while he took in exactly what he was seeing in his hands. Just the minute before he’d been thinking he was rid of the problem when up it popped, raising its ugly head yet again.

  It appeared that whoever, or whatever, was doing this to him was happy to allow him to become comfortable with life once more before firing another shot. It was as if his mother had gotten into his head and was reading his thoughts. Printed at the top of the first two sheets was a message for him, from his mother. It was not like he could miss it either, printed in large bold black lettering.

  Hello again son!

  I know what you are

  I know what’s in your head

  I know who caused my death

  That was the message printed on top of page one.