She could hear shouting, and she wanted to see Mummy and Daddy, and be safe with Ruby. She wanted to hide with Ted in the cupboard.
Her muscles trembled with the effort of holding herself in place. Almost there. Her foot slid from beneath her again, making her gasp, but finally she reached her big sister’s window. Carefully, oh, so carefully, she wedged the fingers of one hand beneath the sill, then let go of the brickwork with the other hand and went to tap against the glass.
Screaming. A big bang. Deafening. Hurting her ears.
Mouse slipped in shock, slippered feet scrabbling at nothing but air. The trellis – Daddy had torn it down. One slipper fell, tumbling to the ground with a soft thump.
Mouse hung on to the ledge with one hand. Arm hurting, fingers burning and breaking.
‘Mummy! Daddy!’ she screamed.
Nails clawing at nothing as she fell.
The air shocked from her as she hit the stone slabs.
Pain.
Darkness.
One Hundred
Benjamin heard the shot. Heard the screaming. So did Harry. Both froze, glaring at the closed bedroom door. Benjamin recovered faster. Despite the drugs that were shutting down his system, the urge to get through that door and help his wife and children overwhelmed, pushing him on.
Muhammad Ali had a quote that would help. If only he could remember it. Something about only a man who has suffered defeat being capable of reaching right down into himself to find that extra ounce of strength to win an evenly matched bout.
Yes, that was Benjamin now.
For his wife, for his children, he dug deeper than he had known possible.
His body felt as wobbly as water, his vision swam. He lurched towards the Tiffany lamp. Raised it high. Brought it down with a sickening crunch onto Harry’s head.
Harry didn’t see it coming. He had his head turned and suddenly – wham. There were no stars, no ringing bells, only silence as the carpet rose to meet his face. His lips pursed, trying to form a single word. Ruby. After two blinks there was only darkness.
The man-child crumpled onto the lush carpet that Benjamin would never be able to pay off. Benjamin’s strength had all but gone. That last blow took everything he had. He fell beside Harry, panting with effort.
Dying. He was dying. He knew that with certainty, even though he couldn’t feel any pain. In fact, that was the most worrying thing, the total absence of agony; instead, he felt light as a feather, calm, and… what was the word? Serene, yes, serene.
He shook his head – why hadn’t he been able to think of the word? Why was he even trying to think of words? He’d been doing something, going somewhere…
Ruby’s bedroom. The shot.
With a huff of effort, he stood. Wobbled. Sank to his knees, crying in frustration. He tried to stand, tried to get his legs to do what his brain was saying. He went on all fours and tried to push up using his hands. They shook with effort. No strength in them. They felt strangely disconnected from the rest of him. It almost made him laugh – which was strange because his face was wet with tears.
Jelly legs. That’s what he had. Like a drunken teenager. Try as he might, he couldn’t stand, couldn’t get his legs firm and strong. He remembered the Christmas he and Dom had got drunk and danced all night in their tiny flat. Then made love on the scratchy sofa. He remembered the terror and joy of Ruby’s second Christmas, when she had taken her first steps and he had felt that already she was growing up and he would lose her. He’d run around their home putting cushions on every sharp corner, trying to protect her. He thought of reading bedtime stories to Amber, until she had got so good at reading that she had started reading them to him instead, until her eyes closed. He thought of the best days of his life, and not once did an expensive watch, or fancy pen enter his head.
He needed to reach his family now. He needed to protect them.
Benjamin blinked, eyes going in and out of focus. Sometimes everything seemed so sharp. As though he could see for the first time. Every lush fibre of the expensive carpet stood out clearly.
His face hit the floor. He let out a breath. Another. Softer than the last. Shallower, less substantial.
Fingers twitched, a mere reflex now. He had lost all control of his body. Mind skittering away.
Life was so short. It was over so quickly. And he had wasted it. Benjamin would never get old. He would never see his children grow up, or walk them down the aisle. He wouldn’t get to become a better person with their help, and put right the wrongs he had done. He wouldn’t be there for them in tough times, or share their triumphs and happiness.
Because he had put money before everything else.
What had he done?
* * *
The last thing to go through Dominique’s head, apart from the tight spray of shotgun pellets, was the image of her teenage daughter’s face. Ruby’s expression was so innocent as she stood before her mother. So young and wiped clean of the anger that had twisted it until so recently.
Ruby looked like Dominique’s little girl again.
It had been a long time since she saw her daughter, truly saw her, and the mother’s heart lifted.
Then she saw the shotgun slipping from Ruby’s grasp, her finger snagging, and being twisted with a crack, pulling the trigger back, even as Dom pushed her out of the way with a warning shout.
She knew what would happen. Knew that she was putting herself into the line of fire. It was the only way to save her daughter. Dominique was going to do exactly what she had promised – step up, protect her family, save Ruby.
In the final fraction of a second before the shotgun pellets exploded from the muzzle, Dominique gazed at her daughter and felt joy. Ruby knew she was loved, at last. There was no more hurt and bitterness on her face. Dom’s only regret in dying was that she wouldn’t be able to share Ruby’s bright future.
Then the pellets tore through her flesh and bone.
She died before the dusty, faintly sulphurous smell of shot wafted into the air.
* * *
What happened played in a loop over and over in Ruby’s mind. Accelerating with each viewing. Every time, she hoped it would stop. Normality restored. All one big, horrible mistake.
Faster, faster, faster.
‘Ruby, move!’ her mum screamed.
The teenager felt a blow to her side that sent her falling onto the bed, just as a deafening shot rang out. Mum’s head snapped back. A mist of vermillion filled the air. Hung momentarily, before creating a constellation pattern on the wall and ceiling, as Ruby’s mother slumped to the floor.
She was dead. Clearly. But Ruby couldn’t believe it. She tried to untangle her ruined finger from the trigger, causing it to go off again, pellets embedding into the ceiling. With an agonised whimper of terror and denial, she broke free at last. Dropping it, she rushed towards her mother, screaming.
There had to have been a mistake.
Ruby tumbled to her knees, and hauled her mum’s limp body into her arms. Held her, rocking, begging. So much blood, her skin sticky with it.
‘Come back to me, Mum. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it…’
A dusty, metallic smell hung in the air. Coppery. Ruby’s ears giving a tinnitus scream, eardrums damaged from the deafening blast. eeeeEEEEEEeeeee.
The shotgun stared at her. Hard. Cold. Unforgiving.
* * *
Mouse lay very, very still. She didn’t even breathe. It hurt to breathe. Finally, she stopped, and floated away on a cushion of blue, up, up and away, free as a bird. Like magic. Like all the best things she had read about.
Mummy was there, with Aslan. Waiting. Hugging her.
‘You’re no mouse, you’ve got the heart of a lion,’ Mummy whispered.
She felt warm and snuggly. She never wanted to leave.
‘I will always be here for you, sweetheart, watching. Even if you can’t see me, I’m there.’
What was Mummy talking about?
She wanted to hug her back, but couldn�
�t make her arms move. Mouse felt like she did when she swam underwater. The water made sounds all muffled and funny. And when she looked around everything seemed wiggly, and the colours weren’t right because she was looking through the waves. That’s how everything was now.
Mummy stopped hugging and pressed on the side of Mouse’s neck, firm. But when she spoke, her voice was like a man’s.
‘No, sir, nothing. She’s gone.’
Sir? Was she at school?
Everything around her started to fade. Like Mummy wasn’t real. Mouse managed to lift her hands up, trying to hold onto her, but somehow Mouse was on the bottom of a swimming pool and Mummy’s hands were on her chest, pushing down painfully as she counted.
‘One, two, three…’
The man’s voice joined in. Took over.
Mouse knew what she had to do now. She fought her way to the surface, kicking against the current that seemed to want to drag her back down, remembering Mummy’s words that she had the heart of a lion. Mouse fought and fought and…
‘Twenty-nine, thirty.’
A breath blew her upwards.
‘Wait. There’s a pulse,’ shouted the man.
He sounded very happy, like he’d just opened the best Christmas present ever.
One Hundred One
Chief Inspector Paul Ogundele did a dance of relief inside as he realised his CPR had done the trick. The child was alive! The only outward sign he gave, though, was a slight upturn of his mouth. An armed response officer hurried over to him.
‘All clear, sir. We’ve checked the place and it’s safe.’
A nod. ‘Get the paramedics in, now,’ he barked.
Florescent outfits overran the place in seconds. The little girl was taken away first, crying gently.
‘Will she be okay?’ Ogundele called.
‘Hard to say, but she doesn’t seem to have any broken bones. It’s a miracle. The fact she’s got the energy to cry is actually a good sign. I’m confident,’ replied a paramedic as he rushed by.
The teenage boy left next. He needed an urgent CT scan, and possible blood transfusion.
‘What about the father?’ the chief inspector asked.
‘Indications are he has overdosed, whether deliberately or not, we can’t say. He’ll have to have his stomach pumped, and until we ascertain what exactly he’s taken, we can’t be sure how to counteract the medication he’s ingested,’ a medic replied. ‘If he’s overdosed on paracetamol, there’s probably nothing anyone can do to stop his organs shutting down.’
‘Fingers crossed it’s ibuprofen or sleeping tablets, then,’ Ogundele replied. He was about to ask another question, but one of his officers sidled over.
‘Guv, we’ve got a problem regarding the mother.’
The scene up in the bedroom hadn’t changed at all. The teenager, Ruby Thomas, still lay prone over her mum. Blood still decorated the walls and ceiling. An officer stood nearby, looking lost and awkward.
A keening sound, so small and sad, drifted into the air.
Ogundele sighed, and a tiny part of his heart that still hadn’t hardened after years of service broke a little more. He was going to have to somehow persuade her to leave her mum. He backed out, grabbed a protective forensic suit, overshoes and gloves, then returned. Bent over the girl, voice low.
‘Hey, Ruby? My name’s Paul. Would you mind if we had a look at you, to see if you’re hurt?’
No movement. The only sound was sobbing.
Ogundele mouthed to the crime scene photographer, checking that everything had been recorded, then reached out and stroked the girl’s hair. She was floppy, shock robbing her of her ability to move or speak. He had seen it before.
‘Come on, Ruby. Your mum would want us to look after you. Can you look at me? That’s it.’
It took a lot of slow coaxing to make the girl let go of her mother’s body. He led Ruby down the stairs, away from the bloodbath, feeling her shaking as she leaned against him. At the moment, she couldn’t speak to anyone, but Ogundele was keen to get her down the station for a statement. First, she would have to be checked over for injuries, and an appropriate adult found to sit in on the interview, as she was underage. A colleague was calling a family friend named Fiona who was down as an emergency contact.
Ogundele didn’t make snap judgements, he had learned better than that over the years. He would let the scene tell its tale, allow the blood spatters to reveal what on earth had happened here. From his experienced eye, though, despite the diary condemning the teen, the blood and gore patterns did not add up to her standing in front of her mother and blasting her away. It looked like a terrible accident, particularly as Ruby’s trigger finger was bent at a strange angle, clearly broken. As for what other tragic series of events had taken place in the house, the truth would come out, eventually. It always did.
* * *
He watched the final ambulance pull away into the pre-dawn darkness and gave a sigh. The forensic team would be going over the house for hours before Dominique Thomas’s remains could be removed. Detectives would arrive soon to start their investigation. But this would be a Christmas Day the chief inspector wouldn’t forget in a hurry – and neither would the neighbours. He scanned the crowds of shocked faces at windows, rain tracking down the glass like tears. Those who had gathered soggily behind the cordon looked the same, too. Pale, open-mouthed, glassy-eyed beneath the street lamps and the twinkling fairy lights of neighbours’ outdoor decorations.
A guttural staccato call of a bird rang out. That magpie again. It made Ogundele pause and look around once more.
Wait. One person’s reaction looked different from everyone else’s numb shock. A blonde woman, crying and shaking. She caught his eye and turned away, but not before Ogundele spotted something flit across her features. Panic and guilt.
Ogundele got that tingling sensation again; the one he relied on during all his years of policing. Sadly, hauling someone in for questioning required more than a tingle.
One Hundred Two
Saturday 11 February
TWO MONTHS LATER
Black char chased an orange flame along the paper. Kendra watched, holding onto Ben’s farewell note as long as she could before dropping it into the sink of her new flat in the New Town district of Edinburgh.
Kendra certainly had never imagined in her wildest dreams that she was putting so much pressure on Ben that he’d try to kill himself. Finding the note had been horrifying. She had only sleepily nipped to the loo that awful Christmas Eve, now seven weeks ago, and spotted it shoved under her door. Thinking it was a festive love message, she had ripped it open. The contents made her vomit. She had rushed straight to his house to try to stop him, but the police cordon was already in place.
Standing there in the rain, watching Ben and his family being carried out to ambulances, had been agonising. Rain had pattered on Kendra’s head, creating a tattoo of guilt that trickled down her face and joined her tears as she waited, waited, waited to find out what was happening. Stretching her neck to see over the other onlookers, as rumours flew through the crowd.
As painful as it was, she had decided there and then to walk away.
Kendra had breathed a huge sigh of relief when she discovered Ben had pulled through, after several days in intensive care.
It was a shame Dominique had lost her life. Even more of a shame that Ben, now free of his wife, was on bail facing all kinds of embezzlement and fraud charges. It looked as though he’d be going down for a few years, even with his guilty plea and mitigating circumstances. From what she had gathered from the newspapers, he was staying with his sister, while the children were looked after by that best friend of Dom’s, Fiona someone or other – the lawyer woman. Apparently, she was now their legal guardian, and they were getting counselling alone, and also as a family with Ben. According to the papers, anyway.
Kendra truly hoped they sorted themselves out. What had she done? All she had wanted was to force Ben’s hand. To make life at home so mis
erable that he would willingly run into her open arms. They loved each other, they should have been together. Why couldn’t he have seen that? Why had he clung to his family?
Why had she pushed Ruby so hard?
When Kendra had discovered Jayne went to the same school as Ruby, it had seemed the perfect way to find out more about Ben’s kids. But Ruby had sounded such a pain. Jayne had confessed to Kendra that she couldn’t stand the stuck-up teenager. She sounded a nightmare. Kendra worried she and Ben’s eldest might not get on. Ruby sounded the type to act up and potentially make Kendra’s perfect new life a misery.
One day Jayne had broken down in front of Kendra.
‘I – I’ve done something awful. I’m so ashamed. What should I do, should I tell my mum?’ she begged, those muddy brown eyes piggy pink with tears.
‘What on earth is it?’
‘That girl I told you about… Ruby. She got beaten up and someone filmed it. I got hold of the video and…’ She sniffled incoherently.
‘Take your time.’
‘I’ve shared it with everyone I know. Got them to share it all over, too. It was just stupid jealousy. I can’t believe I’ve been so mean. And now, she looks totally miserable. We all feel bad about it. Should I tell Mum? Should I apologise to Ruby?’
It had taken a lot to persuade the girl to leave things be, and not even apologise. But Kendra had managed it, buying her conscience with soothing words and a lot of impromptu presents such as lipsticks and eye make-up. Why? Because the mistress had realised Ruby was the key to Kendra’s own dreams coming true.
If Ruby continued to play up, then it would put Ben under increasing pressure at home. At the same time, Kendra would show him what a safe haven her own place was for him. Eventually, he would leap at the chance to leave his miserable marriage and nightmare kids, and begin again with the young lover. Before you could say ‘Bob’s your uncle, Ben’s my husband’ he’d have proposed.
Her Last Secret: A gripping psychological thriller Page 30