Her Sister's Secret

by E. V. Seymour

  “I don’t suppose you know where he’s gone.”

  “Even if I did that information is entirely confidential.” End of.

  I thanked her and slunk out. Now what? The chance of Rocco actually being in his flat seemed remote. I tried it anyway. Pressed the buzzer. No reply. ‘You’ll know where to find me,’ he’d said, except I didn’t. So, I had a better idea.

  From Worcester, via the M5, I drove to Winchcombe and the location of a crime scene known to at least three of us. The house could have been done up and sold. In fact, it was likely, and I was hardly going to ask its new owner whether I could poke about in a fruitless attempt to look for the remains of an old well. Yet I couldn’t turn my back on where it had all started. I owed it to Scarlet and to Drea.

  I parked in a gateway not far from the phone box Zach had used that night and from which he’d sent his SOS. It was still there and in working order. I walked a little way up and turned onto an unmade drive on my left that veered off from the main road. Long and winding, up a steep incline, it almost appeared to reach back on itself. The higher I climbed, the more the noise of traffic receded.

  The drive petered out, squirming into a narrow track with high hedges. Instinctively, I looked about, my blood running a little too quickly, my breath too slow. Seemed I was alone.

  Squatting down, I examined the ground for human activity, like tyre tracks from a quad bike or small tractor, but the earth was too dry and difficult to read.

  Rounding a bend, the house appeared. A construction of brick and timber made invisible by woodland. Regarding it through Zach’s eyes, I instantly saw the appeal. Secluded, secret, out of sight, it was the perfect place for illicit and illegal activity. Strangely, I felt as if Scarlet was with me in spirit. Maybe that’s why I felt as if someone was watching. Would Mallis’ halitosis give him away if he were near? I craned my head to see if anyone lurked in the undergrowth then swivelled my gaze from the building to the surrounding web of trees. There was no wind, but I swore the leaves rustled.

  A sign, not very recent from its dog-eared appearance, warned me that demolition was in progress and to keep out. I drew near and skirted cigarette butts, used condoms, crisp packets and empty cans.

  Traditionally built, with timber weatherboarding, the front of the house had a lean-to entrance with a single window beneath an oak lintel. The door had been replaced with sheet metal, impossible to penetrate. I peered through the broken glass. Aside from a rank smell of damp, mildew and dead flies, there wasn’t much to deduce because stone walls obscured my vision and mirrored the weird Tardis effect of a house within a house that Zach had described. Even if I could climb in, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I’d find after so much time had elapsed. Like most people, I knew the value of DNA and the fact that every contact left a trace, but criminals still got away with murder. If anyone could cover his tracks, or rather Zach’s, my father could.

  I slipped round the back, my footsteps loud against dry air that hummed with insects. The back door had also been replaced with sheet metal. Every window in the back elevation was boarded up, but on the ground floor, below a stretch of guttering suspended mostly in thin air, the planks across one aperture had crumbled from damp and woodworm.

  With a couple of tugs at the rotten section, it came away quickly, yet there still wasn’t enough space for me to climb through. Banking on the fact that when wood rots, it quickly spreads, I grasped hold and, digging my heels in, used all my body weight as leverage. Sawing back and forth, two more boards came away and made a big enough opening for me to burrow through. I put my hands flat against the window-ledge and clambered up and through on my tummy, arms extended, landing headfirst.

  The gap between the new and old house spread to about three feet. Whoever had made the site secure hadn’t bargained on or allowed for the first line of defence being breached. With little room to manoeuvre, I entered the original building through the first available entrance, which happened to be the front door.

  Inside was dark and musty, and the damp organic smell increased to suffocating proportions. Fumbling in my rucksack, I took out the torch Lenny gave me, switched it on, letting the light play on the walls. I’d expected bare stone, brick and silence. Instead, the house whispered. Its walls were covered in wallpaper mottled with black mould. Holes in the fabric told me that there had once been wall lights, but these were ripped out, only wires remaining. Beneath my feet, quarry tiles, old newspapers, mail and litter.

  Doors off to the left and right were open. Mindful that the place was a death trap, I shone the torch around from the safety of the corridor. Mahogany furniture, too heavy to nick easily, glared back. In one room: chairs without seats and a sofa sprouting horsehair. An ornate gilded mirror, that must have been wonderful once, now cracked in three places, hung off the wall. Gingerly, I ignored the stairs and edged my way towards a door at the end. When I pushed it open, with a loud creak, fear zapped my spine. I had the sensation of being entombed.

  Chapter 66

  Flashing the torch across the floor revealed that it was cobbled. Taking tiny steps, I inched further into the jaws of the house. On the far right: an old range cooker and what looked like a bread oven. Hooks, presumably for pots and pans, hung from low beams over a static central unit with drawers and cupboards. Away, to the left, the room disappeared into nothingness, without shadow or form. Spooked, I focused ahead, on another door. At what I suspected was the sound of trickling water I took an insane look over my shoulder. In this house, with its shifting walls and fathomless spaces, it was hard to tell what was real and what imagined. At every step, I saw stuff that goes bump in the night. Thankfully, I did not see the ghosts of my sister or Drea Temple. Perhaps I wasn’t as far gone as I’d feared.

  Forcing myself forward, I crossed the kitchen. Darkness clawed at me, digging in its talons, hooking me by my toenails, dragging me forward. Heart thumping, I flashed the torch, saw a door and two windows ahead at what would have been the back of the original building. Guiding the light down to the floor, I could see why. The ground on this side of the house was boarded. Right in the middle, a metal mesh grille covered a hole that gaped like an open wound. This was where Drea had died and where my brother and father conspired to cover up a crime.

  A sour taste flooded my mouth. I wondered how my father had prised her out. It would have been difficult with the floorboards already unstable. Looking up, I noticed a rafter that hung about two feet from the ceiling, the same rafter that would have been spattered with blood. It looked solid enough to take extra pressure. When shifting bulky furniture up through or out of windows, I’d devised a system of ropes and pulleys. It was conceivable that Dad had applied a similar method. It would have been a painstaking task, which only told me how committed he was to covering Zach’s tracks.

  Standing still, I begged the house to give up its secrets. With fresh eyes, I pictured Drea standing before me with a lazy smile and drugged-up expression. She wouldn’t be expecting danger. So easy for me to reach out and touch her. Or strike her. Or smash something against her face, or over her head, and send her flying backwards. Droplets of blood would be bigger than a gunshot wound, smaller than a punch. How had Drea’s blood wound up on the beam and up the wall?

  I threw my right arm out in front of me, swinging it forward; registering that any blood could be cast off a weapon while in motion. Potentially, an assailant would also be spattered with blood.

  I backed away. Every muscle in my body constricted as I retreated, fearing that the house could suck me in forever. When I dived back into the light, I gasped with overwhelming relief.

  Knackered and nauseous, I pitched forward, resting my hands on my knees, taking deep breaths, my nose level with a wasteland that once would have been a garden. A weed-riddled brick path carved a route through chest high grass to apple and pear trees that stood dejected and choked by thistles and brambles. I imagined Zach stumbling out in the dark, walking a little way off to relieve himself against a tree. He
said he didn’t know how long he spent. Under the influence, he could be forgiven for not knowing his own name. As I straightened up, a spark of knowledge ignited inside me, confirming what I’d already suspected. With Zach off his head, it would be easy for someone else to approach and sneak in. With two exits and entrances, maybe whoever it was entered through the back door, while Zach and Drea had entered from the front. Yes, that would work. And Drea, in her drugged-up state, would have been fair game for a murderer. Period.

  Fear washed over me as an alternative scenario assumed greater credence. Nerves grinding, aware that in this strange and hostile place I was as vulnerable as Drea Temple, I took to my heels and ran and didn’t stop running until, out of breath with a stitch in my side, I reached my car.

  Mind teeming with images, I didn’t let up until I was safely back in Malvern. I needed light and colour and shops and familiarity, and drove into town, parked near the Winter Gardens.

  Dusty’s call came through while I was debating whether I had the bottle to climb out of my car.

  “How are you fixed for tomorrow?”

  “No problem.” Can’t come soon enough. Mallis lurked at the forefront of my mind like a demonic presence.

  “Rachel was keen to stress that she can only talk to you in general terms. She can’t give you specifics due to confidentiality.”

  Disappointment racked me. If she couldn’t do that, why bother?

  “Still want to go ahead?” Dusty said, reacting to my lack-lustre response.

  I said I did.

  “Her name’s Rachel Haran.” Dusty gave me an address in Moreton in Marsh. “10.30 a.m.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Don’t be late. She detests unpunctuality.”

  Chapter 67

  “I’m devastated.”

  I’d parked the car in the garage and was preparing to close the door when Edie door stepped me. I could tell straightaway that I was the cause of Edie’s devastation. It didn’t take a neurosurgeon to work out why. I’d opened my mouth to Chancer, and he’d had a go at his estranged wife. Shit.

  “I thought I could trust you. I thought you were my friend.” Very few women manage to pull off crying their lungs out without ending up with a red nose, red eyes and mascara down their cheeks. Edie wept with abandon and savage grace, like it was an art form, yet she did not have so much as an eyelash out of place. In her flowing sleeveless dress, all pinks and muted greens, she resembled a damsel in distress from a hundred-year-old old fairy-tale.

  “I am your friend, but I’m Chancer’s too.” And I was Chancer’s first, although I didn’t spell this out.

  “You accused him,” she sobbed.

  “I didn’t accuse him. I asked him. Anyway, if it’s true—”

  “If?”

  I took a smart step back. “What I meant is that you’re a victim, so you don’t need to take any garbage from Chancer.”

  “I told you in confidence,” she wailed.

  “Then I’m very sorry you think I broke it.” Which was a mealy-mouthed way of saying I apologise for nothing. “Look, why don’t you come in?”

  Although she did a mean line in hurt and dejection, mercifully the tears magically stopped.

  “I was so touched you came to Scarlet’s funeral,” I said with genuine warmth.

  Edie dithered, plunging her hands into the pockets of her dress, weakening. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’d like it.” Because an idea, that had hovered on the edges of my consciousness, with Edie’s help, I could net.

  “All right,” she said.

  I led Edie through the garden and up the lavender scented path. She admired my best effort at a cottage garden, a rebellious patch of phlox and old-fashioned plants like foxgloves and hollyhocks. Subconsciously, it was my response to the ordered borders at my parents. I thought again about my conversation with Mum. What could she say that would change a thing? How could she defend the indefensible?

  I opened the back door and Edie followed me inside.

  “I love the way you’ve done your kitchen. It’s modern but still cosy.” Edie, it seemed, had gone from injured starlet to gushing sycophant in the time it took me to boil an egg.

  “Elderflower or Cranberry?” I didn’t have Edie down for a Coca-Cola sort of girl – too much caffeine.

  She plumped for Elderflower and I poured two glasses. We sat across from each other and Edie took a nervous sip. She really was very pretty. I let her settle and set the pace.

  “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to have a go.”

  “I take it divorce proceedings aren’t going well?”

  Edie looked up, pain in her eyes. “I can’t bear it.”

  I have little knowledge of couples splitting up bar the obvious: good-natured people morphing into unreasonable, unhinged, irrational psychos. This either lasts for a short space of time or decades. At one of my friend’s weddings, the mother of the bride forbade her ex-husband from walking his daughter down the aisle. I viewed Edie with sympathy, but I also thought she was bloody hard work.

  “Might it be a good idea to give Chancer space?”

  She recoiled. At a loss, I ran my finger over the grain of the table, trying to look wise and enlightened. “Maybe the time for fighting is over.”

  “I’m not the one doing it.”

  I looked up, caught her exasperation. She had the demeanour of a three-year-old told that she could have a present soon, but not quite yet. I gave a hoarse laugh. “I’m not the oracle, Edie.”

  She softened a bit. What else could she do? She hung her head, her shallow chest rising and falling, as if she were about to faint. “It’s just—” Something was clearly bothering her.

  “What, Edie?”

  She looked up soulfully into my eyes. “What if he’s met someone, someone he likes better?”

  “That’s not the impression I got.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Would you like me to talk to him?”

  She didn’t answer straightaway. Her top teeth sank into her bottom lip. Chewing. Thinking.

  “I’m seeing him this afternoon.”

  The corners of her eyes flickered, and she broke into a radiant smile. “Would you?”

  I smiled back, racking my brains how best to steer the conversation. Before I had a chance, Edie drank up, stood up. “Hell, I have to go,” she said, “I’m going to be late picking up the kids from Mum’s.”

  Furious with myself for missing my chance, I said I’d see her out.

  “Thanks for being a pal.” She gave me a big hug, her scent enveloping me in spring flowers and neroli. “And, God, I’m so sorry,” she said, wide-eyed. “Here’s me blithering on about my relationship problems, completely forgetting you. How are things?”

  “Oh, good days, bad days.” Shit days, actually.

  My hand hovered over the doorknob. Edie waited, the tap of her sandal against the polished wooden floorboard her only giveaway that she was impatient to leave. Time to go for it.

  “Did Chancer ever meet a woman called Drea Temple?”

  Edie put a hand to her chest, her porcelain features turning the colour of old cement. “Oh God, so there is someone. Where did he meet her? How long has it been going on? I knew it. I simply knew it.”

  Before she had a seizure, I said, “No, no, it’s all right, Edie, I didn’t mean. I meant —” My mind scrabbled for a rational explanation. I was horribly conscious that Edie was hanging on my every syllable. “Her name came up in a random conversation,” I said clumsily. “You know how it is.”

  Breath seeped out between her lips like a slowly deflating balloon. “You completely had me there,” she said, with a jittery laugh.

  “So, the name doesn’t ring a bell?”

  She shook her head slowly; the way people do when asked for directions and they haven’t a clue. “No. Why?”

  “She was a friend of Zach’s a long time ago. I wondered whether Chancer knew her too.”

  “Well, if he did, h
e never mentioned her to me.”

  Chapter 68

  Chancer was unusually quiet as he drove, with no trace of his natural exuberance. The deep tan he’d acquired over the summer months made his eyes bluer than usual. Edie’s claim that he’d thumped her sat heavily with me.

  Like a croupier in a casino, I mentally arranged the cards in front of me. Was Chancer off his game due to divorce proceedings, the morning’s argument he’d had with Edie or a recent conversation with my brother?

  We were driving towards Welland, over the common, past old-fashioned tulip-styled lampposts. The way the sun caught the hills made them look like fire-breathing dragons. Then it was over Castlemorton Common where long-horned cattle flanked the road on both sides. Beyond: a narrow stretch and car park.

  We climbed out of the Jag, put on our boots and set off at a cracking pace up a rutted path with spectacular views behind us. The sun powered down and I was glad I’d grabbed a wide-brimmed hat to protect me. Halfway up, we passed an abandoned car, and a scattering of cottages. I let Chancer go on ahead. We didn’t speak much other than to comment on the weather and the scenery. I could tell by the way he walked, his shoulders rounded, that he was troubled. I was troubled too.

  Eventually, the path forked left, and we trudged up a narrow rocky incline, up and up, to where a monument stood on our right and the Brecon Beacons in the distance. From here, the going was better, less steep, the way flattening out a little. Only then, when a couple of serious walkers overtook us, and it was just he and I, side by side, did we pause for water and speak of anything that mattered.

  “I want to put the record straight about a couple of things.”

  I turned to him and smiled. “I’m listening.”

  He smiled back, grateful and nervous. “Edie didn’t lie.”

  “About you wanting to split up?”

  “About me hitting her.”

  “Oh,” I said. Christ, I thought.

  “I’m not going to dignify it by saying that she made me. It happened once and once only, and it shouldn’t have done, and I was wrong.”