Her Last Secret

by P L Kane

  William stared at her blankly.

  ‘Good, isn’t she?’ Jake felt the nudge, looked over at the man standing beside him. DS Burton, who looked like he’d walked out of the fashion pages of some magazine with his blond, tousled hair and good looks. ‘Like a dog with a bone when she gets going, is our Erica.’

  Jake nodded. ‘Channing doesn’t seem too pleased about it.’

  ‘That tosser,’ said Burton, folding his arms. ‘He’s only in there because it’s better than all the earache.’

  And Jake recalled now the way Channing had bitched and moaned about Burton and Wright’s questioning of Greg Allaway – the way they’d played off each other seamlessly, like tag-team wrestling. The way they actually got results.

  Jake wanted to see Greg’s point of view, he really did. A father, like he was. He’d argued he’d just been looking out for his kid, same shit he’d said to Julie eventually. ‘I didn’t find out till a couple of days afterwards, until he called me at work in floods of tears asking me what he should do. Well, what would you have done? He’s my son! I told him to keep his mouth shut … Let Bannister take the fall. It was an accident, after all. He’s just a stupid kid.’

  Watching him in the interview room now, William seemed anything but. And it had been far from an accident … Made Jake wonder if he hadn’t got some of this from Greg himself.

  ‘Are we sure he’s Greg’s?’

  As for Julie, she was barely able to look at Jake now. Hadn’t had a clue any of this was going on under her nose. Hadn’t had an inkling her husband was lying to her, or at the very least hiding the truth. An accessory …

  Saying something about the fine and one day his son being able to clear up his own messes.

  This whole thing was one big mess, and was just as much his fault as it was anyone’s. If he’d been more forgiving, if he hadn’t walked out, none of this would have happened. It had ruined so many lives. Without that, there would have been no Greg. No William, with warped fantasies.

  He was telling Wright about them now, how he felt sure he and Jordan would be happy one day. That they could live together and how well he would treat her, in spite of the fact she wanted nothing to do with him romantically.

  Wright got up, stretching her legs, and wandered over to the glass, the mirror on her side. She raised her eyebrows, knowing that her DS could see her, as if to say, ‘What a nutter!’

  ‘Yeah, don’t worry. He’s going down for this for a long, long time,’ Burton said and clapped Jake on the shoulder. It reminded him of how Matt used to do that. Matt who’d been hiding his own secrets, but who’d saved him. Matt who was now gone, disconnected from those many machines that had kept him going.

  ‘Unexpected outcomes …’

  ‘Thanks. Do … do you have any kids of your own?’ Jake asked him then.

  Burton looked horrified at the very suggestion. ‘Not … not that I know about, no.’ Which suggested he might have a few he didn’t, and he did have that look about him: a bit of a player. ‘Not planning on any anytime soon.’

  ‘Well, if you ever find you do at some point, look after them, won’t you? Love them and try not to judge them, DS Burton. Because you don’t get that time back again.’

  The man with the tousled hair nodded. ‘You got it, Mr Radcliffe. And it’s Chris,’ he told him.

  ‘Jake,’ he said, holding out his hand for the DS to shake. ‘I’m just Jake.’

  Chapter 30

  She stood on the platform, waiting. Wondering …

  Wondering again whether it was possible to love someone and hate them at the same time. It wasn’t about Jake now – she’d barely seen him since all this kicked off, just couldn’t … Could still picture him when he found out. The hatred, the blame again.

  She probably owed it to Jake to tell him she was leaving, but simply couldn’t face the man. The one she’d hurt by leaving him at the hotel, by marrying Greg – letting him and his bastard of a kid into their lives.

  ‘Ask him about how his son murdered Jordan!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Julie whispered again, as she’d done so many times lately. Feeling numb once more, but fighting back more tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Jordan.’

  If you traced it back, of course, it all began when Jake left. If he hadn’t, then maybe … But what was done was done. She’d made a huge mistake, had no words to defend it.

  And now she was doing exactly the same thing Jake did all those years ago, the irony not lost on her. Running away because she couldn’t stay here now.

  She’d had no idea where she was heading when she got here, dropped off by the taxi she’d ordered. Even as she’d stepped up to the ticket office, she’d had no clue. Then she’d looked sideways at the screens showing departures, and one destination had caught her eye. Somewhere they’d taken Jordan when she was little, a family holiday at the coast.

  Julie bought the ticket quickly, then headed out onto the platform with the couple of cases she’d hastily packed.

  Waited for the train to arrive, wondering. Was still wondering as it pulled in and she let the passengers get off, then boarded herself.

  Was wondering if you could love and hate someone at the same time. Love, hate. But mainly hate …

  With Greg Allaway firmly in the middle.

  Epilogue

  As the man walked forward, he had one name on his mind.

  He paused when he reached his destination, where all this had begun. Where it would end. Autumn was giving way to winter, there was even the threat of a snowflake or two, so it wasn’t wise to stand out in the freezing cold at night – and yet he did. He stood looking at the square ahead of him, the rows of wooden skeletons looking like the carcasses of long-dead monsters.

  Monsters like the ones she’d been so afraid of when she was little, like the ones he’d sworn to protect her from. But the real monsters had come later, they’d been all around her in this town.

  And, of course, she’d been living with two of the worst.

  Jake stepped forward again, laid the flowers down on the stall where Jordan had passed away. He hadn’t seen her again, not since the slaughterhouse, and to be honest he wasn’t even sure he’d seen her then. That all the times he’d seen her hadn’t just been, as Channing had said, one of the side-effects of grief. In any event, he hoped wherever she was, Jordan was at peace. Hoped also that he might be able to find a little of that for himself.

  There was movement off to the side and he thought he’d spoken too soon, that Jordan had been watching him from the shadows – pale, sad face looking on. But no. As the figure came closer, Jake could see it was male. Not the policeman, either, the one he’d met the last time he was here, but someone around his age.

  ‘Mr … Mr Radcliffe?’ came the croaky voice, unsure of himself. Unsure whether the man just wanted to be left alone. But didn’t he also have the right to be here, on this night? Perhaps even more right than Jake …

  ‘Hello Bobby.’

  The youth, who had a beanie on today covering his spiky hair, joined him. He too had a bunch of flowers with him and he held them up as if asking permission he didn’t need. Then he stepped forward and placed them on the stall.

  It wasn’t a coincidence, of course, them being here at the same time on the same evening. The one-month anniversary of Jordan’s death. Had it only been a month? Jake still couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I miss her,’ said Bobby, stepping back and joining Jake – but not getting too close. Probably remembering the last time they’d met, when he’d wanted to kill the lad. But a lot had happened since then. So much.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Jake.

  ‘You know, she talked about you a lot.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Jake, turning to face him, genuinely surprised by that.

  Bobby nodded. ‘’Course. You were her dad. She … She hated the way it had gone with you two. I know she wanted to sort it somehow one day, but …’

  ‘But we just ran out of time,’ Jake finished for him.

&nbs
p; ‘She didn’t … She wasn’t as bad as you thought, you know.’ He could see Bobby bracing himself, as if expecting a whack, but he continued on regardless. ‘We … we hadn’t even—’

  Jake held up his hand. Too much information, but he appreciated what the kid was saying. ‘I know she thought a lot of you, Bobby. Wanted to be sure …’ And he still had to remind himself every now and again that when Jordan had been talking about mood swings, about someone acting weird, it had been William – Billy-Boy – she’d been referring to. When she’d written about Bobby being nice, being lovely, it had been this youth she meant.

  ‘I really did love her,’ Bobby told him, and Jake didn’t need Sam’s skills to hear the truth in that. To see that he had.

  ‘I think she loved you too, Bobby,’ he replied. There was just one last thing nagging him, and he needed to ask about it. ‘While you’re here, I heard that you had a row with Jordan about that guy, Drummond?’ It was something that had set him off on completely the wrong path back at the beginning of all this.

  Bobby looked puzzled for a moment. ‘Oh, that! Wasn’t really a row, her mates like to blow things out of all proportion …’ Jake thought about Becky and nodded; it was more than possible she had done that when he spoke to her. ‘I was just worried about Jordan spending too much time with him. Don’t know if you’ve noticed but he’s …’

  ‘A bit creepy? Yeah, I had.’

  Bobby shrugged. ‘Jordan reckoned he only hung around those places because he was trying to get back the family he’d had and lost … They used to look after him, see? He used to have a younger sister as well, I think.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  The youth shrugged again. ‘Dunno, some kind of accident I think. But it left him on his own a while back. The authorities are shit around here, they should have been keeping an eye out for him. But Jordan … I think she was trying to help him. She was kind like that.’

  Another stray, lost and in need of help; that sounded about right. If only she could have found her way herself before it was too late. ‘I’ll have a word with Sam, see what we can do about getting him that help.’

  ‘Miss Ferrara? Sure! She’s cool.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she is.’

  A silence descended that seemed to last an age, and Jake couldn’t help thinking as he looked at the stall again: If I could just go back. If I could just see her one more time.

  The cough at the side of him reminded Jake he wasn’t alone. He regarded the lad again, nothing like the monster he’d imagined. Maybe even the best of the bunch as far as Jordan’s boyfriends went. Might even have stayed with him, had a family. Who knows, he and Bobby might have become friends someday.

  Jake surprised himself then by saying, ‘Hey, do you fancy grabbing a pint or something? My round.’

  The lad looked terrified suddenly, but then smiled. Nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d like that.’

  ‘We can talk about Jordan,’ said Jake. ‘You can fill me in on some of the blanks. Some of the … happy memories I missed out on.’

  ‘Be glad to,’ he said.

  So Jake led the way, not to the noise of the clubs ahead of them – but to find somewhere a bit quieter where they could talk. A bit brighter than this market square. Because it was time, finally time.

  Time to walk away from the dark.

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  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to Belinda Toor who read this and liked it enough to commission it, and who has been so brilliant to work with. A massive thank-you also to Abigail Fenton and the whole HQ Digital/HarperCollins team. If I start to thank everyone who has helped me during my time as a writer, I’m bound to miss someone out so I’ll just say a big ‘words are not enough’ thanks to all of my dear friends in and out of the business; you know who you are. Lastly, but never leastly, I need to thank my family for their support and in particular Marie, who has always had my back. Love you all 3000.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for choosing to read Her Last Secret.

  For a while now I’ve wanted to write a story about a character who’s investigating the death of a loved one. Not a cop, but just an ordinary person who – if anything – is being hindered by the authorities. Someone driven by guilt because they weren’t there for the person who’d been killed. In fact, might even be estranged from them.

  So I started to think about possible combinations, like husband and wife or mother and child, and the one I kept coming back to was father and daughter – which, as everyone knows, can be an incredibly strong bond. So, what if the generation gap arguments of growing up drove these two characters apart, but something fatal happened before they could reconcile? That’s the basic jumping-off point for this novel, but it also focuses on the disintegration of a family – as Jake Radcliffe has to deal not only with the fact his daughter Jordan has been murdered, but also the mixed feelings about seeing his ex-wife Julie once more. Especially as she’s remarried.

  This seemed like the perfect dramatic background for a man on the edge trying to get to the bottom of what happened, to the truth of the situation – something that will put him in all kinds of danger. Set against the backdrop of the fictional northern town of Redmarket, which I’ve tried to make a character in itself, this is definitely Jake’s story but also shows the other points of view in this complex situation. A family tragedy, a murder mystery with plenty of twists and shocks. I hope you enjoyed reading Her Last Secret and, if you did, perhaps consider leaving a review … even just a line or two would be fantastic.

  Warmest wishes,

  P.L. Kane.

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  We hope you enjoyed reading this book. If you did, we’d be so appreciative if you left a review. It really helps us and the author to bring more books like this to you.

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