by A J Waines
Don’t You Dare
A.J. WAINES
Copyright © 2018 A.J. Waines
The right of A.J. Waines to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Contents
Also by AJ Waines
1. Rachel
2. Rachel
3. Rachel
4. Beth
5. Rachel
6. Beth
7. Rachel
8. Rachel
9. Beth
10. Rachel
11. Rachel
12. Beth
13. Beth
14. Rachel
15. Beth
16. Rachel
17. Beth
18. Rachel
19. Beth
20. Rachel
21. Rachel
22. Beth
23. Rachel
24. Rachel
25. Rachel
26. Beth
27. Rachel
28. Beth
29. Rachel
30. Rachel
31. Beth
32. Rachel
33. Beth
34. Rachel
35. Beth
36. Beth
37. Rachel
38. Beth
39. Rachel
40. Beth
41. Rachel
42. Beth
43. Rachel
44. Beth
45. Rachel
46. Beth
47. Rachel
48. Beth
49. Rachel
50. Beth
51. Rachel
52. Rachel
53. Beth
54. Rachel
55. Beth
56. Rachel
57. Rachel
58. Beth
59. Beth
60. Rachel
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
About the Author
Also by AJ Waines
Standalones:
The Evil Beneath
Girl on a Train
Dark Place to Hide
No Longer Safe
The Dr Samantha Willerby Series:
Inside the Whispers
Lost in the Lake
Writing as Alison Waines
The Self-Esteem Journal
Making Relationships Work
1
Rachel
Wednesday evening, March 8
I knew something was wrong the moment I slipped the key into the lock.
A light was visible through the keyhole. I teased the door open a fraction and stopped dead. The fluorescent strip light wasn’t the source, instead there was a dim glow at the far end of the cellar. I edged the door open another couple of inches with my foot, holding it firm against the self-closing spring. The beam was coming from behind the empty stainless-steel kegs stacked on the floor under the trap door. Was there a cleaner here with a mop? The landlord fixing a leak? It couldn’t be. The landlord was in Marbella and the pub had been shut for nearly two weeks for refurbishments. No one had keys but me. There was only one explanation. An intruder must have got in and was snooping around with a torch.
I stood frozen on the top step, torn about what to do. If I backed out now I’d attract attention – the door always made a juddering sound when it closed. If I called the police from where I stood, I might be overheard. I had my eyes fixed on the light the whole time, hardly daring to blink, waiting for the beam to bob around to see which direction the burglar was moving in. Except the light didn’t move.
A man groaned, then came a scuffle, then a woman whimpering.
‘No. Let me go…get your filthy hands off me!’
Beth.
I didn’t need to hear anymore. I knew my daughter’s voice anywhere and could tell instantly what was going on. In that split second, my mind was on one thing and one thing alone.
I hurried down the remaining steps, not caring if I made a noise. I found Beth half-naked, shivering, her hair roughed up in a black tangle as a man I’d never seen before leant over her, his trousers down, gripping her struggling torso from behind.
‘No…no…stop!’ she yelled.
I rushed towards the pair of them, no words forming in my mouth, instead letting out a primaeval scream that must have sounded like a tortured horse. Something terrible was happening to my daughter and I had to save her. Rescue her from the brute who was forcing himself on her, his hands on her bare back, shoving her over a wooden chair. I charged at the figure as he straightened up. Bastard. My reaction came from a place of outrage, of maternal protection, from a gushing surge of rage and horror. I was doing what any mother would have done without a second’s thought.
I’m strong. I carry kegs and crates down to the pub cellar every day and when I’m on a mission, there’s no stopping me.
I threw myself at him, lashed out with my tight fists. His face was caught in an expression of dumb surprise and he was off balance, his legs trapped by the trousers caught around his ankles. He toppled backwards and there was a loud crack as his head struck against the protruding tap on a full cask of pale ale. Then he went down.
I thought I was saving Beth. I thought I was doing the right thing. I stormed in to save my daughter from being raped. Only I got it all wrong. Badly wrong. And now a man I’ve never met is lying dead a few inches from my feet.
2
Rachel
I’ve rerun that scene in my mind so many times since and I still don’t think I overreacted. It was only later that I realised the source of the light I could see was a lamp. The pretty table lamp from my sitting room to be exact, with a silk shade the shop assistant had described as ‘eau de nil’. Who on earth brings a lamp down into the grubby cellar of a pub?
If I’d asked myself that question at the time, events could have taken an entirely different turn.
All I saw were clothes strewn on the floor and my daughter facedown over a kitchen chair…and a stranger’s bare behind, his shirt tail flapping around, holding her down as she writhed and cried out. I mean…what was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to do?
I’m not a bad person and during the period that followed, I didn’t even do a bad thing – well, not at the outset. I responded in what I thought was the only possible way under the circumstances. Beth was shouting No…no…stop!, but if I’d taken the time to look at her, I’d have realised she was yelling at me, telling me to stop. But all my focus was on him, this crazy, vile maniac who was attacking her. I didn’t hesitate. Not for a moment. I flew at him and knocked him off his feet. I shunted him with all my might.
I keep seeing the look on his face, winded and aghast like he’d been hit by a truck before he caught his head on the tap. And that was that. He crumpled instantly to the floor.
‘Mum! What the hell have you done?’ Beth screamed, tugging off the ropes that had been tied around her wrists. I’d been expecting to see utter relief on her face, but instead she looked horrified. After freeing her hands, she pulled down the blouse that had been ruckled up around her neck and ran over to the half-dressed man lying on the flagstones.
My hand went to my mouth. ‘Oh, God…’
He hadn’t moved since he fell and his eyes were slightly open, his mouth sagging and his tongue hangi
ng out. She crouched down beside him, scooped his head and shoulders into her arms and smoothed away strands of hair from his eyes as though she cared for him.
‘Carl…speak to me, Carl? Please…’ She stroked his cheek, gave it a gentle tap.
‘You know him?’ I gawped at the shape on the floor and back to Beth, confused. ‘I thought he was…raping you…’ I whispered.
‘He’s...not moving…oh my God,’ she said.
I bent down alongside her and took his wrist. Having worked in a pub most of my adult life, I know the basics of first aid. I’m used to seeing customers merrily propped on a stool one minute, slumped on the floor the next. But I’ve never once been unable to find a pulse. I shifted my fingers over the veins running into his hand, then tried his neck, waiting to feel his blood pumping back at me, sending out a signal that he was still with us. Only it never came.
Ten minutes have gone by since then. I pumped up and down on his chest and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he hasn’t moved an inch. His eyes remained open a fraction, his gaze never faltering and before long a glaze like raw egg-white formed over the corneas, so I gently pressed them shut. It was too late to call an ambulance.
Beth is sitting on the chair making herself small, snivelling quietly with tears rolling down her face. She’s pulled on her jeans but hasn’t got as far as putting on her sandals. I went upstairs to the bar and found a woollen blanket to wrap around her shoulders and brought another to cover the body on the floor, making sure it hid his face.
‘Who’s Carl?’ I asked, standing over him.
‘Peter introduced him to me at a party a few months ago,’ she said, as if I should know.
Peter is Beth’s fiancé, a well-respected producer in the film business. They’d met in London when Beth was a runner for a TV company last year. They’re getting married in April – in five weeks and three days’ time to be precise.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What were you two doing down here?’
‘It was a kind of game,’ she said. ‘We were acting out a scene from a film.’
I dropped my head in my hands.
Beth wants to be an actress. She finished drama school nearly two years ago and has had numerous auditions, but no call-backs. Following her brief period in London with the TV company she’s now come back home and is biding her time as a quiz show researcher. She’s waiting to get noticed, hoping for her big break, but her dream is slipping further and further away from her.
‘I borrowed your spare keys,’ she said, pointing to a bunch on the table next to the lamp that she’d also borrowed. ‘We were improvising a scene from Basic Instinct.’
I let out a despairing breath. That was meant to explain everything, was it? It was make-believe. How was I to know they were playing roles from a movie? It all looked pretty real to me.
‘I take it this wasn’t the first time, then?’
‘No…’ she replied sheepishly.
Until now, Beth has been in a gormless trance driven by shock. All of a sudden, she gets to her feet.
‘We should call the police,’ she says. She reaches for her phone lying beside her slingbacks on the floor.
I move towards her. ‘Wait…’ I glance at the bundle beside us and realise the only sign that this terrible thing has happened is Carl’s body. There’s no blood, not a drop, on the flagstones.
I think quickly.
There will be fingerprints, of course, and DNA. The cask tap will need cleaning, but if the police don’t know to look down here, it can easily be wiped away.
I take the phone, put it down on the table and gently hold both her wrists, like I’m about to lead her in a dance.
‘Who knows you’re here?’ I ask.
‘Er…no one,’ she frowns, ‘as far as I know.’
As if this appalling nightmare is only just dawning on her, she starts quivering. She pulls away from me and paces around, her sobbing escalating into hysterical shrieks.
‘Shush! Be quiet. For goodness sake sit down. We need to sort this out.’
She sinks down gingerly.
I point at the shape under the blanket and back to Beth. ‘Is this…an affair…a fling…or what?’ My voice comes out sounding harsher than I want it to.
Her eyes are unfocused, her hands trembling as she leans forward, hugging her knees. ‘It was a secret,’ she moans. ‘He’s married.’
‘How did he get here?’
‘He walked…’
‘From where?’
‘The train station. His wife thinks he’s still at the theatre. That’s why he’s in Winchester.’
‘And you?’
‘I walked over from home, as usual.’ The King’s Tavern is only ten minutes on foot from our house.
‘Did you meet anyone coming over here? Did anyone see you?’
She narrows her eyes. ‘I don’t think so.’
She glances at her phone again. ‘We must ring 999,’ she says, reaching for it.
‘Let’s stop and think about this first.’ I peel open her hand and let the phone rest inert in my palm. ‘You realise what will happen if we ring the police, don’t you?’ I say. ‘All this will be splashed across the front pages of the papers.’
She erupts into another spate of howling.
‘Beth! Keep it down,’ I hiss at her.
She glares at me and, in that instant, some recognition that she needs to pull herself together settles on her and she sniffs loudly and looks up.
‘Why were you here anyway, Mum? The pub’s all closed up. No one’s supposed to be here this late.’
‘Marvin rang me from his holiday to ask me to re-set the heating.’
She straightens up. ‘We could say someone broke in and it was self-defence. I could pretend I don’t know him.’
‘Except you just said Peter introduced you.’
She blinks, looks away, then back at me again. ‘I’ll say I didn’t recognise him, then.’
I shake my head. ‘There’s nothing to suggest a break in. There are no broken windows. Besides, he’s half-dressed and drenched in after-shave. Hardly the disguise of a burglar.’
‘We could pull his clothes back on, smash a window at the back or something…make it look like he got in…’
‘But why would he break into an empty pub that’s part way through being refurbished?’ I scan round at the stacked up bar stools, tins of paint, paint trays and rollers, bundles of dust sheets. ‘It’s a tip in here. There’s nothing to pinch.’
‘He wouldn’t know that though, would he?’
I let out a sigh. ‘Who is this Carl, exactly?’
‘He’s a businessman. Carl Jacobson. He’s involved with films.’
‘Did he take advantage of you? Did he use his position to promise you things?’
‘No way!’ she huffs. ‘It was consensual, believe me. I was the one who made it happen the first time. We were just trying stuff out. He said I was talented.’
I bet he did…
I watch her ‘faking a burglary’ idea shrivel to nothing in the light of her description of him. ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘Why would someone like Carl break in? It doesn’t make sense. We’ll have to tell the police the truth,’ she says. ‘You came in to sort out the heating and you misread the situation…you overreacted…’
My mouth falls open. ‘Excuse me…overreacted?! Beth…do you…can you..?’
Words fail me.
I take a breath. ‘If we come clean about this, you know what will happen, don’t you? There will be an enormous scandal. Are you prepared to lose Peter just like that?’ I snap my fingers.
‘Oh, God…’ She frantically chews her thumb nail, her mind twisting about trying to see what other options we could possibly have.
‘I’ve just killed someone, you realise that, don’t you?’
I glance down at the blanket and shake my head, unable to believe what I’ve just done.
‘But they must see it was a mistake…an accident…’
&nbs
p; She gets up and slips on her sandals this time, ready to get moving. Beth is tall and willowy and still has the look of a teenager. She fixes her green eyes on mine waiting for a better solution. They’re stunning eyes, easily surprised and full of affection and allure, but no doubt I’m biased.
‘What if they don’t?’
‘But they will, of course they will, when we explain everything.’
Now isn’t the time to go into the real reason I can’t own up to this. We can’t tell the police anything about it. Full stop.
‘Even so, you’d be ruthlessly cast aside by the rich and proper Roper family. Are you ready to give up your marriage, your future – the security it would bring you, the arms Peter could twist to get your feet finally on that red carpet? It would all be over.’
Using the threat of losing her career is the strongest leverage I can think of to get her to hold off.
My stomach is bubbling. ‘God, Beth, what were you thinking?’ I plough my fingers into my hair.
‘It was just a bit of fun. Carl is…was…’ She licks her lips but doesn’t seem able to put what she has to say into words, or at least not into words she’s prepared to share with me.