by Clare Chase
Murder on the Marshes
A gripping murder mystery thriller that will keep you turning the pages
Clare Chase
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Hear More From Clare
Author’s note
A Letter from Clare
Acknowledgements
For Charlie, George and Ros – and new beginnings
Prologue
The house had been clean. Even now, the smell of bleach brought flashbacks with it.
But almost all the details of that day were still clear. It was as though shock had fixed them – like a permanent negative print in the brain.
There was the silence. An emptiness that was wholly unusual and unnerving. Going from room to room revealed an almost clinical atmosphere; the place was so bare.
The kitchen taps had gleamed. That came back clearly.
And then a feeling of time slowing down at the sight of each vacant room, until there was just one door left unopened. Memories of looking at the unturned handle were suffused with a feeling of dread. ‘A cold sweat’ wasn’t just an expression.
And then the sound of the door creaking, and the scene inside. She was in there, of course, hanging. Her face was in shadow; the curtains were drawn. It was just her outline, her feet dangling, her hair long and as limp as she was. A shell.
It was impossible to move, forward or back. The horror extended from seconds into minutes. And then the voice came from behind.
‘Come on, it’s the end she deserved.’ It was said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You must have known this was coming. It’s better this way in the long run.’
One
Twenty years later
It was the hooded figure that shocked Tara out of her alcohol-induced haze that night. She’d travelled the length of Riverside without noticing her surroundings – too bound up with the events of the day, its edges blurred by several shots of vodka. The sight of the person, standing perfectly still ahead of her, brought her back to reality. It was just a silhouette in the distance, almost invisible in the shadows of Stourbridge Common. She stared, but it was impossible to resolve the dark shape into anything more detailed. Someone from one of the houseboats? Or heading back towards Fen Ditton after an evening out in Cambridge? Perhaps they’d stopped for a pee or something. Behind them the open ground stretched on, empty and fading into blackness.
Tara glanced at her watch. Just past eleven thirty. To her left the river Cam looked inky black in the moonless night. A couple of sleeping swans floated motionless on the water, their heads tucked under their wings. To her right, the few houses in the terrace just before the gate that led onto the common were already in darkness, their windows blank. Her own home was still ahead of her – a tiny Victorian cottage, built on no-man’s-land, surrounded by the meadows – across a dark expanse of open space. Closer to the figure.
Pretty much everyone had warned her against buying the place, but too much good advice could be annoying. It had been years since she’d had any trouble, and all things being equal, she liked her own space.
Not taking her eyes off the figure, she pushed the rusty swing gate open to make her way onto the common. Its creak was loud and jarring in the hot, silent night.
She ploughed on towards home, waiting for the person to move off.
They didn’t. They were beyond her house still, not so far off now.
What on earth were they up to? Was this someone playing games? Wanting to scare her?
They stood there, absolutely still, facing dead in her direction. Then suddenly she was dazzled by a beam of light. There were no lamps on the side path where the figure waited, so the glare from their torch stood out, strong and startling. They adjusted the beam slightly – down onto her T-shirt – and then straight back into her eyes.
And then they did it again.
Gut instinct took over. The taste of fear was all too familiar, despite the passing of time. Her breathing turned quick and shallow. She swallowed as a shiver overtook her. Fight or flight.
She glanced to her house, then to the figure, then over her shoulder to Riverside. Her house was nearest. Better to get there and lock herself in than run back the way she’d come and risk being outpaced. She could knock on a door for help, but the houses that were in darkness might be empty. And in the time it took to check, the figure would get closer still. In a second the beam of the torch dropped – fully this time. All she could see was the long grass in front of where they stood.
She strode forward, towards her home. It was sectioned off from the rest of the common at the back by a half-rotten wooden fence, and at the front by nothing more than a knee-high brick wall. She was ready to run if the stranger did. As it was she kept to a fast pace, up on her toes, primed – watching, always watching. She was damned if she was going to let them see she was scared. Unless she had to…
As she propelled herself on, she felt for the personal alarm in her jeans pocket. Useless. Who would hear it, out there on the common? And didn’t people always assume alarms had been triggered by accident, anyway? She did. With her right hand she fished her keys out of her other pocket, ready.
She kept her eyes on the figure as she approached the house. They’d started walking and she upped her pace. They were getting closer. But she was almost there now. She took a gulp of air as she rushed through her front gate and shifted her focus to the door’s Yale lock. She pushed the key home and turned it. In the last second before she disappeared inside she looked over her shoulder. The hooded figure had moved quietly and rapidly forward.
She pushed the door shut behind her and leant against it, listening. For a moment all she could hear was her own ragged breathing. After she’d controlled it, she listened again. Nothing.
If she went to the sitting room she’d be able to see them – whichever way they were heading.
As she stepped forward she realised there must have been something on the edge of the doormat. She heard it slide off onto the wooden floorboards just after she’d kicked it. But she didn’t stop to pick it up or turn on the light.
From the bay window in the sitting room she was able to peek at the figure from behind one of the inherited chintz
curtains. It was still on the move. They’d gone beyond her house now, towards Riverside and town. They’d be off the common in seconds, ready to disappear down any one of the many side streets and into a rabbit warren of Victorian terraces. Pointless to call the police. They’d never be able to identify the right person, even if they could make it in time. And besides, shining a torch into someone’s face wasn’t exactly an arrestable offence. Maybe the figure had never been following her in the first place? Maybe they’d always been intent on making their way through to Riverside, and she’d given them a fright.
But then they paused at the common’s gateway and turned once more in her direction. The beam of their torch swung towards her window. They knew she’d be watching.
She felt her heart rate ramp up again. It wasn’t fear now, but anger – anger that they’d had such an effect on her. She’d had enough of being played to last her a lifetime.
She went back to the hall, switched on the light and pushed off her Converse without bothering with the laces. It was only then that she remembered the thing she’d kicked off the doormat. It was a packet – an A4-size Jiffy bag with her name and address printed on the label. She thought again of the figure and goosebumps rose on her arms. Had they left her a present? It was hardly usual to get something hand delivered on a Tuesday night. Her fingers trembled as she picked it up, making her grit her teeth.
She carried it through to the kitchen by one of its corners. First things first. She needed to clear her head. She put it down on the table and went to fetch a glass from the dresser. She’d probably been dehydrated when she’d started her pub session with Matt – another hack on the publication she worked for. Shit. She should have stopped about three drinks before she had. Not that she ever got crazy drunk; that would be too reckless. She’d let down her guard that evening after a testing meeting earlier with Giles, her editor. If it weren’t for him she would be sober – or at least more sober – and she wouldn’t be getting so freaked out over some stranger in the dark.
She went to the freezer and half-filled a tumbler with the contents of her ice tray before topping the glass up with chilled water from the fridge. She drank it down straight before she went back to the table to look at the packet. It had been years, but still the standard checklist came back to her. No sign of any grease or powder on the outside of the envelope. No strange smells. The advice that a ticking sound, protruding wires or exposed foil were bad signs had always struck her as supremely unnecessary… This package had none of those things, but it was lopsided. That had been on the checklist. She risked feeling the shape gently. It was soft, but firm; rounded, and bulkier at one end than the other.
She sat down and carefully peeled back the sticky seal of the envelope. Looking inside, she frowned.
It was a doll.
She put her hand in to pull it out. The moment she saw the thing clearly she dropped it on the table.
The doll was made from cloth, neatly hand-sewn, with black wool hair reaching down to its waist. It was dressed in a nondescript white top and blue skirt, but that was the only normal thing about it.
Around its neck was a noose – pulled tight – and its white cotton face had been dusted with some kind of blue powder. It ought to have looked ridiculous – the details the sender had added, coupled with the doll’s bright, fixed smile and her big blue eyes, both of which had been stitched in satin. But the combination made it all the more nightmarish.
On its feet were embroidered blue shoes that matched the skirt.
The shivers were starting up again. She couldn’t stop them. She gripped the sides of the chair she was sitting on and tried to focus on controlling her body’s reaction. Breathe in for four, count four, out for four. The combat breathing Kemp had taught her. But already she was feeling light-headed and a little sick.
It took a minute before Tara was ready to go back to the packet. At last she picked it up again and looked inside for any other enclosure. She found one single sheet of paper with a typed message.
It was a warning. This is a warning.
Two
Tara considered getting the hell out. She could try to find a cheap hotel. She didn’t want to. Didn’t want someone controlling what she did. Though if she ignored the most sensible options just out of bloody-mindedness that was still letting them win. But heading out would mean crossing the common again, even if she called a cab to pick her up. There was no vehicular access to her house. She could use her bike, but that would involve fiddling about in the dark outside, which could put her in danger. And if she went for her own car she’d have to enter that same network of streets that the figure was probably walking that very moment. Parking in the Riverside area was a free-for-all. Her Fiat was halfway up Garlic Row. It was better to shore up her defences where she was. Shame she hadn’t got as far as doing any maintenance on the house since she’d moved in.
She focused hard on practicalities, moving from door to window, checking each lock and catch, making sure they were all as secure as their state of repair would allow. Once she knew she’d done all she could she called the police.
The operator sounded calm. She supposed that to him someone posting a rag doll with a threatening note through a letterbox sounded more like an unpleasant prank than something serious. And of course, he could be right. But when she told him about her past he seemed to warm up a bit.
The guy asked if she lived alone, and then if she could call someone. (She could, but no one who could help.) Then he asked her to check that the figure with the torch hadn’t come back. She walked to the sitting room window and tweaked the curtain marginally to look out. The lamps that ran next to the Cam gave the pathway below an eerie glow. All around, everything was still. A few of the swans from the river were standing up on the bank, asleep, like the ones on the water. But away from the path and between the pools of sickly light there were shadows. She went back to the kitchen to look towards Fen Ditton. There, the night had an even greater hold.
‘I can’t see anyone,’ she said, but that wasn’t saying much.
He promised that an officer would be round to talk to her about the ‘incident’ the following day and told her to call again if she was worried. Then he mentioned the idea of going to stay with friends. She didn’t bother explaining the practical considerations.
Instead, she went to the kitchen drawer and took out all the cooking knives. She wasn’t planning on using them herself – she of all people knew run-ins could lead to trouble – but equally she didn’t fancy leaving a Sabatier around for an intruder’s convenience. She carried them upstairs carefully, watching their blades as they glinted in the pale landing light. For a second she looked around, thinking, but then she remembered the lockable suitcase she’d got in her bedroom cupboard. She stowed the knives away and put the key in her bedside drawer.
Then she walked around the house, looking for anything that might be useful. The wedge she used for the kitchen door. Hairspray. Some unopened scented body powder. Marbles from an elegant solitaire set she’d succumbed to at an antique fair. A selection of tin cans. Foil. She put the marbles on the bottom two steps of the stairs once she was beyond them. After that she set about bunching up the foil in pleats and spreading it over the small landing before turning out the light. If anyone trod on it, it ought to be enough to alert her. The cans, hairspray and powder went by her bed. Bombarding an intruder with a combination of the three should buy her some time. Finally, she shut herself into her bedroom and jammed the wedge under her door to make it hard to open from the outside.
At last, she slumped down onto a chair she’d pulled up close to the window.
Why me? Why me again? She blinked hard and pushed the thought away. Self-pity was a waste of time.
She’d sit up until the first dog walkers, rowers and joggers appeared outside. After that she’d sleep.
If she could.
As she waited, her eyes wide and dry, she thought of the precautions she’d taken. The marbles, the talcum powder. Kid
s’ stuff. At last, she got up stiffly and went back to her bedside drawer, took out her suitcase key and went to the cupboard.
Moments later, she was seated again, gripping one of the kitchen knives tightly in her right hand. As she stared ahead into the night, she felt a tic start up in her cheek.
Three
At seven in the morning, DI Garstin Blake was standing in the fellows’ garden of St Bede’s College, Cambridge, looking at a dead woman.
The heat that had oppressed the city for weeks now was already building. Blake felt a wave of it wash over him. For a second, instead of the stranger’s body, he saw his wife’s. Two months earlier he’d imagined killing her and the vision still haunted him. It had been short-lived – a split-second image of a blow packed with the force of all his feelings. In an instant it had gone – his rage doused by despair – but he’d still had it. That could never be undone. How much distance was there between him and a killer? Did you just have to be standing opposite the person who’d driven you to the brink when that feeling of rage took over? What if you were holding the right weapon and added drugs or alcohol to the mix?