Sleight Malice

by Vicki Tyley

  Grant folded his arms, the seams of his fitted black jacket pulling under the strain. “If that’s the case, why didn’t she let you or somebody know where she was going? Doesn’t she trust you?”

  Fergus had wondered the same thing. He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. The thought that she had been forced to leave against her will did cross my mind, but then I doubt the security system would’ve been armed.”

  “If she has her mobile phone switched on, we could try triangulating its position,” Kim said, looking at Grant. “There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work – we found it once.”

  “It would be a breach of privacy.” Grant wiped a hand across his mouth. “We don’t have just cause—”

  “Of course we bloody do!” Fergus snapped, almost, literally as well as figuratively, leaping down the DI’s throat.

  Grant fixed him with a hard stare. “If you would just let me finish, I was going to say there is a way around it.”

  Somewhat chastened but unrepentant, Fergus shut his mouth and waited.

  “She’s not suspected of being implicated in any crime, but if you’re prepared to report Ms James as a missing person, stating you hold grave concerns for her safety and welfare, then we can act.”

  “What are we waiting for? Do it.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The woman who stood before her was a stranger – a stranger who had turned Desley’s life inside out. “Why?”

  Brandon wrapped a protective arm around the woman Desley now knew to be Nicole Moore.

  “Why?” Desley repeated. She didn’t know who had betrayed her more: her own brother or the woman she had loved like a sister. Both had deceived her.

  “Please believe I never meant to hurt you,” Nicole said, reaching out a hand.

  Desley backed away from the outstretched arm. “You lied to me. You led me to believe you were someone you weren’t. Screwing my brother is bad enough, but screwing your own? That’s just sick.”

  Dismay flashed across Nicole’s drawn face. She shook her head. “No, you have it all wrong.”

  “I do? Go ahead, enlighten me.” Desley started to shake, couldn’t stop shaking as a barrage of conflicting emotions engulfed her: relief, anger, sorrow, disbelief, resentment, disgust. She clutched the veranda rail, her legs not strong enough to support her on their own.

  Her brother whispered something to Nicole, waiting until she had gone inside before turning to Desley. “I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be, but please just listen to what she has to say.”

  “Why, Brandon?” Why? Why? Why? The word looped through her head, making it hard for her to think of anything else.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I love her.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the first time I met her.”

  “No, you had a crush on her. Love is different. How can you believe anything she says? She had me fooled for years. What makes you think you’re any different?”

  “You don’t know her like I do.”

  Desley clenched her fist. She wanted to unleash her hurt on Brandon, on Nicole, on the world, on anyone. “She really has got inside your head, hasn’t she? What are we talking? Days? Weeks? Months?”

  “Please, Desley, come inside where it’s warm and we can talk.”

  She blinked back tears, determined not to fall apart. Trapped in the middle of nowhere with the two people she had thought she could trust most, she had never felt more alone. She fingered her mobile phone inside her pocket and pulled it out.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling someone I can trust.” As she held it up to check the signal strength, he snatched it from her. “Brandon, give it back.”

  “No. You can’t tell anyone where we are.”

  “This is getting way beyond a joke. You can’t keep me here against my will. I refuse to be a part of this… this insane game of yours.” She held out her hand for the phone.

  “I want you to hear Laura’s side of the story before you pass any final judgments. Do that and I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Deal?”

  What alternative did she have? Without the keys to the rental vehicle, she couldn’t escape, even if she wanted to. Nor could she survive outside for much longer, the chill wind already cutting her through to the bone. She relinquished her hold on the veranda rail and followed her brother inside.

  Bypassing the cupboard-sized kitchen and meals area, he led her through a passageway into a tiny lounge room, where Nicole – or Laura as Brandon still insisted on calling her – sat in one of the two shabby, brown overstuffed armchairs, a blue cushion resting on her lap. The only light in the dim room came from one small window in the end wall and the glow from the electric fire in the corner. At another time, Desley might have thought it cozy.

  “Brandon, why don’t you go and put the kettle on while I talk to Desley,” Nicole said.

  “It involves me as well.”

  “Of course it does, but I just want to talk with your sister woman to woman. You understand, don’t you?”

  If the glum expression on her brother’s face was anything to go by, he might have understood, but he wasn’t happy. Nevertheless, he didn’t argue and left the room.

  Nicole gestured at the well-worn leather sofa pushed up against the wall opposite. “Please.”

  About to refuse, Desley changed her mind and took a seat at the end of the sofa closest to the door. Though she needed all the advantages she could get, her legs were too shaky to stay standing. Deciding attack was her best defense, she launched straight in. “How do I know that what you’re going to tell me isn’t just another pack of lies? You’ve obviously mastered the skill.”

  “You’re right,” Nicole said with a wistful smile, “you don’t. But I want to set the record straight anyway. Maybe you’ll understand then. How much has Brandon told you?”

  “And that’s another thing. If it’s not enough that you’ve pretended to be someone you’re not all these years, you then manipulate my little brother into helping you.”

  Nicole sighed. “We fell in love, Desley. It wasn’t planned; it just happened. For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to be in love. I never set out to hurt you.” She paused. “Or Brandon.”

  “So what was it with Ryan if it wasn’t love? Lust?” Desley shuddered, the thought of brother and sister engaged in any sexual act repugnant.

  Nicole snickered.

  “I’m glad someone’s finding this amusing.”

  “No, it’s not that. I did love Ryan, more than words can say, but not in the way you think. What I would give to have him back.”

  “Brandon told me Ryan was dead. I’m sorry.” And she was. Desley wouldn’t wish the loss of a brother on anyone. No matter what he or she had done.

  “Thank you.” Nicole bowed her head. “That means a lot to me.”

  “So you’re telling me you and he were never...” She searched for the right word.

  “Intimate? No. You may think me capable of many things, but that isn’t one of them. I can’t blame you for thinking that though – you only know half the story.”

  “Well then, start by telling me who killed your brother? And why haven’t the police found his body?”

  “Jeremy Stillson murdered him. I doubt his body will ever be found.”

  “Then who killed Jeremy Stillson?”

  Nicole stared at Desley, her expression unflinching. “I did.”

  In the next instant, scalding liquid splashed the back of Desley’s hand; tray, coffee pot, cups and sugar crashing to the floor next to her.

  “I’m sorry, Brandon,” Nicole said, looking past Desley to the doorway. “I wanted to tell you; I really did. This is not how I planned it.”

  Brandon didn’t say anything. Desley twisted her head around to peer over her shoulder at her brother. His stunned expression mirrored her own.

  For a few long seconds, time stood still.

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nbsp; “C’mon, we’re going,” Brandon said to Desley, positioning himself between her and Nicole while his sister got up.

  “Sit down,” Nicole demanded, whipping out a gun from under the cushion on her lap. “Now! Both of you.”

  Desley floundered backward onto the couch, cowering each time Nicole waved the gun in her direction.

  “Sit I said.”

  Brandon eased past Desley and sat next to her on the sofa, his right shoulder and back angled in front of her like a shield. Two defenseless people against an armed self-confessed murderer. She only hoped her brother wouldn’t try anything heroic. Or stupid.

  “Now, where were we? That’s right, I was about to tell you why I killed that murdering son of a bitch.” Nicole kept the gun trained on Brandon. “Oh why couldn't you leave things alone? No one except Stillson was meant to get hurt.”

  “No one else has to,” Desley said, her fingernails biting deep into her clenched palms.

  “I’m not going to prison.”

  “They can’t convict you for murdering a dead man.”

  “No? It doesn’t matter now anyway. All I want is a chance to tell my story. Where do you want me to start?”

  Desley took two quick, sharp breaths. “The beginning?”

  “Once upon a time… Scrub that, that’s only for fairytales with happy endings. Sixteen years ago, Ryan Andrew Moore, the best brother anyone could wish for, left Perth for his big OE and was never to be seen by his family again. Mum and I received the occasional postcard, letter and even the odd collect phone call but then it all stopped. Nothing for weeks, then months. Not a word. We reported him missing and despite everyone’s best efforts, there was no trace of him. That is, until we heard that he was in the UK, but wanted no contact with us. It killed Mum; it broke her heart. They said it was a heart attack, but I knew better.

  “Every person I had ever loved had been taken from me. I had to find Ryan to let him know Mum had died and find out why he had abandoned us like that. I flew to London and spent months searching for him. Do you know how many Ryan Moores live in the UK?” Nicole didn’t pause, so Desley guessed the question was rhetorical. Her voice had taken on a trance-like quality. “I had almost given up hope when, quite by accident, I came across a Ryan Moore with the same date of birth as my brother. I was temping at a recruitment agency helping to vet job applicants when his CV landed on my desk. At first, I was elated: I thought I had finally found my brother, but the photograph in the copy he had attached of his Australian passport didn’t look anything like him.

  “But then I got to thinking. What were the odds of there being two Australian Ryan Moores with the same middle name, and the same date and place of birth living in the UK? Adopting the name Laura Noble, I contrived to meet this man who shared so much in common with my brother. It wasn’t hard. I knew where he worked, where he lived: all I had to do was wait for the right opportunity. When I bumped into him, spilling my drink at a bar he frequented, he of course offered to buy me another a drink.

  “He told me that night his father had been killed in a car accident, but that he had a mother and sister, Nicole, still living in Perth. But he didn’t sound Australian, he sounded Canadian, and he was telling me about my own family. Then he told me about working as a deckhand on a yacht sailing from the Caribbean across to the UK. It felt like my heart had been ripped out and shredded into little pieces, yet I couldn’t let him see that. I had no proof, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this man had stolen not only my brother’s identity, but his life, too.”

  Desley felt Brandon tense and lean forward, his gaze on the gun in Nicole’s relaxing grip. She grabbed the back of his shirt where Nicole couldn’t see and twisted, willing him not to try anything.

  “Do you know how sick to the stomach it made me feel to be with him? I had to put that out my mind though, because I had to make him pay for what he had done. I had to be two people: the woman he would fall madly in love with and Ryan’s avenger.”

  Desley was unable to suppress her gasp of surprise.

  Nicole smiled. “Yes, the man you first thought was my lover then my brother was in fact Jeremy Stillson, my brother’s killer. He never suspected a thing. You should have seen his face when I told him who I was. It was worth every sickening minute I had to spend with him.”

  “But why did you wait so long?” The words were out of Desley’s mouth before she could stop them.

  “My plan had to be foolproof. Nothing could go wrong. I wanted to destroy him slowly and make him suffer. But to do that, I needed to find out who he really was. Then I discovered he had a Swiss bank account containing hundreds of thousands of US dollars.” Nicole snorted. “The bastard must have been naïve to think he could hide files on his laptop from someone with an IT degree.”

  So that’s where the money for the Escotts came from, thought Desley. Nicole was trying to right another of Stillson’s sins.

  “I knew he must have stolen it,” Nicole continued, “so I employed an investigator in the US to compile a list of major robberies and frauds for around the same time my brother went missing. It didn’t take long to narrow down the list. A photo of the illustrious dead Jeremy Stillson clinched it.

  “Of course, for the plan to work I had to sacrifice my brother’s reputation. Because if everything had gone to plan, Ryan Moore would’ve been branded a murderer, his victim a man already presumed dead. The insurance policies, everything, was designed to incriminate the man those in Melbourne knew as Ryan Moore. Payback from beyond the grave.”

  Silence.

  Desley gnawed her lip, not knowing whether to say anything or what to say.

  “Of course, if that stupid tart hadn’t turned up at the cottage when she had, neither of you would’ve been dragged into this sorry mess. In fact, I should’ve already been out of the country, starting life afresh as the real me.”

  “Hey?” Brandon blurted. That was evidently news to him.

  “Sorry, Brandon honey. Please know that I do love you, but—” Nicole leapt to her feet. The gun still trained on her captives, she backed to the window and looked skyward.

  Desley heard it, too: the soft whump-whump of a helicopter’s blades chopping through the air just audible in the distance. She glanced sideways at Brandon, but his gaze was focused squarely on the gun being pointed in his direction.

  The louder the sound grew, the more agitated Nicole became, brandishing her firearm like a sword. “Keys. Give me the car keys,” she demanded, her left hand opening and closing in a snapping action. “Hurry up. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Brandon leaned forward in his seat, his hand reaching behind him.

  Nicole jumped back. “No funny business.”

  “Do you want the keys or not?”

  “Yes, yes.” She waved the gun in Brandon’s face, snatching the keys from his hand as he pulled them from his back pocket.

  Unable to watch, Desley closed her eyes for a moment, imploring Nicole not to pull the trigger – accidentally or otherwise. She felt the air move as someone or something passed in front of her face. Biting down hard on her lip, she opened her eyes.

  Nicole stood in the doorway, her gaze cold. “Don’t move! Believe me, if you try to stop me, I won’t hesitate to shoot.”

  Desley believed her. She had nothing to lose. The woman whom she had once thought of as her best friend had already killed.

  The cottage walls shuddered, the sound of the helicopter overhead drowning out any further conversation.

  Desley put her arm out in front of Brandon, holding him back. “Not yet,” she mouthed.

  Shoving aside her arm, he crept toward the door. She followed, not knowing if the thudding in her chest was her heart or vibration from the helicopter.

  From the relative safety of the cottage, Desley and Brandon watched as Nicole darted across the open ground to the rented four-wheel-drive. She made it, but seemed to be having trouble opening the doors.

  “Wrong keys,” Brandon yelled in Desley’s ear.r />
  Nicole kicked the driver’s door, yanking on the handle as if her life depended on it.

  Leaving Brandon watching Nicole, Desley went in search of an east-facing window, the direction from which she could hear the helicopter. She found what she was looking for in the laundry. A blue-and-white helicopter with POLICE emblazoned on its tail had landed in a clearing not far from the cottage, its rotor blades idling.

  How? thought Desley. How had the police known where to find them? She shook her head. That wasn’t important. The main thing was that they were there.

  Uniformed police officers piled out of the helicopter, firearms at the ready. Desley rushed back to Brandon, praying Nicole wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  A shot rang out.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Before she could get to Brandon, he had the door open and was already halfway across the deck.

  “Nooooo!” Desley watched horrified as in what felt like slow motion, Nicole crumpled.

  Brandon reached her first, sinking onto the stony ground to cradle her head, tears streaming down his face. Seconds later, Desley joined him, falling on her knees next to the wounded woman.

  Nicole’s eyelids flickered. “Sor…ry…” she stammered, blood oozing from the corner of her mouth.

  Desley squeezed Nicole’s right hand. “Not now. Stay still. You’re going to be all right. We’re going to get you help,” she murmured, not sure who she was trying to convince.

  Nicole gave one final gasp, blood bubbling from her nose and mouth. Her body went limp, her hand falling away from her right side to reveal a gaping wound. She had paid with her life.

  EPILOGUE

  Hundreds of orange lilies, yellow gerberas and white roses filled the small bluestone church, the air heady with their sweet scent. Spring, Desley thought, a time of new beginnings.