The room fell silent and Marnie turned to find Rowan with her head buried against Conway’s chest, he wrapped his arms around her and mouthed the word ‘thank you,’ as Marnie bowed her head, the tears spilling from her eyes and falling to the floor like silent rain.
101
‘Are you sure about this?’ Marnie asked.
Her mother turned and smiled. ‘I’m positive.’
Marnie looked out towards the twin graves smothered with flowers. It had been five weeks since the terror in the house, three weeks since Tom Conway had succumbed to the cancer. She watched as Rowan stood between the graves of her father and godfather, the two men she had loved the most in all the world – now gone.
‘Listen, Marnie, I know you promised you would do all you could for Rowan but that doesn’t mean giving up your job. Besides, she’s settled with me and she needs the stability, especially at a time like this.’
‘I just feel as if I’m letting her down,’ Marnie said, as the sun broke through from a bank of cloud.
‘So, letting her live with me is letting her down?’ Susan Hammond said, and smiled as Marnie looked at her, embarrassed.
‘You know I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Look, she has no family but she’s old enough to make up her own mind, thank God, otherwise she would be lost in the system and—’
‘I would never let that happen,’ Marnie replied, thrusting her hands into her pockets.
She felt her mother pat her arm. ‘And how are you?’
Marnie sighed. ‘I’ll live.’
‘I don’t doubt it but that’s not what I asked.’
Marnie looked at her mother, she could see the similarity between her and Abby, the same slender bone structure, the same coloured eyes.
‘Clarisse Wold is still in hospital, according to my boss she’s refusing to speak, refusing to acknowledge anyone.’
Susan Hammond’s face showed the strain as she listened to her daughter, the hatred she had felt for the man named Boland now magnified to encompass Wold.
‘Listen to me, Marnie, you can’t let that animal rule your life—’
‘But what about Abby?’ Marnie blurted the words out. ‘She knows what happened to her and yet she won’t say, won’t put us out of our misery.’
Susan sighed. ‘I came to terms with what happened to Abby a long time ago and the fact that you caught the man responsible and now his sister brings me a kind of closure.’ She looked at her daughter and knew that Marnie would never find any peace, not until she knew exactly what had happened to her sister.
‘All I’m asking is that you don’t let it change you, because if you do then they’ve won and you will live a bitter life, Marnie, one without hope and—’
‘Rowan’s on her way back,’ Marnie interrupted.
Susan looked up and then shook her head. ‘Saved by the bell,’ she whispered as Rowan crossed the short grass towards them.
‘Right, I don’t know about you two but I’m gasping, so how about we head into town and grab one of those fancy coffees, my treat,’ Susan said.
Rowan looked at Marnie as if waiting for permission to answer.
‘What do you reckon, Ro, frothy cappuccino OK with you?’
Rowan nodded and then the three of them walked away, after ten yards Marnie looped her arm around Rowan’s shoulder.
Susan Hammond smiled.
102
Marnie sat with her hands resting on the wheel, her mind running over the past few week’s events. She thought of Rowan – who now had Marnie’s old bedroom – and was being fussed over by her mother. On her days off, Rowan would come over and stay with her and they would sit together on the sofa and Marnie had held her as she wept for her mother and father and her Uncle Tom. Sometimes Marnie would hear her sobbing through the paper-thin walls but something had told her that this was all part of the grieving process, a way for the mind and body to adjust to such traumatic loss.
She thought about her conversations with DCI Reese and she was still amazed that she was in a job, but Reese never mentioned the night in Jimmy Rae’s house, according to him it was all over and done with.
She’d questioned him about Wold but like her, his theories had been sketchy at best.
‘But what about the other men she mentioned? Marnie had asked as they sat in a local pub.
Reese had taken a sip from his pint of lager, his eyes watchful. ‘We’ve been through the house on Maypole Hill and apart from the cellar the place is virtually empty.
Marnie had nursed her brandy, her hands wrapped around the glass. ‘She controlled people and the only way she could do that was if she had the dirt on them,’ Marnie said, as the familiar anger started to build.
‘Look, Marnie, I know we’ve found nothing so far but we’ll keep looking until we do.’
They had looked at one another across the table and then Marnie had nodded in understanding.
Now, she eased forwards in her seat and peered up at the building, her eyes searching out the solitary light that shone behind the glass.
Closing her eyes, she pictured Wold lying in the hospital bed, her face bruised, her face pale against white linen. No doubt the nurses were aware of who she was and the things she had done, after all, an officer was always on guard outside her private room, though Marnie had no doubt that one or two would look at the woman on the cusp of old age, her face battered and bruised and feel sympathy for her.
Marnie’s hands tightened on the wheel, her eyes glaring up at the window.
‘This isn’t over,’ she whispered, starting the car and driving away, her mind resolute, the need for revenge burning inside.
‘Isn’t over,’ she repeated, as it started to rain again, the bitter tears sparkling in her dark-brown eyes.
The End
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Keep You Near
Are you looking for an explosive serial killer thriller which will have you gripped? Then you'll love Robin Roughley's best-selling Keep You Near.
How far would you go to find your missing sister?
A normal day in the park turns into a nerve shredding nightmare for eleven-year-old Marnie Hammond when she find herself in a desperate chase to stop the 'bad man,' from abducting Abby.
Fifteen years later, Marnie is a Detective Sergeant but the memory of her missing sister still haunts her dreams.
When it becomes clear that someone is stalking the streets of Kirkhead DS Hammond has her hands full, and after remains are discovered buried in dense woodland, Marnie fears the worst. But this is only the start of a nightmare that will unearth more bones, more victims and the terror that Abby might be among the dead.
To stop the monster Marnie knows she must break the rules, but when the twisted killer turns his attention on her it becomes a fight not only for the truth but for her sanity and her survival.
Can Marnie catch the murderer and solve her sister’s disappearance?
Order Your Copy Here
Cut The Threads Page 34