I move away from the cliff towards Cleo and she takes a step back.
‘Come on,’ I dare her. ‘Come and get me. You want to, don’t you? I know you’re good at pushing people to their death – I’ve seen you in action. But then I’m pretty good at it myself.’
Cleo is staring at me again, wondering what I mean. I’ve thrown so much her way, I don’t know if she will work it out, and I no longer have the strength to tell her.
I’m talking about Mia, of course. She was in the way – coming between me and Mark just as I was ready for him – so I had to get rid of her. I had been watching the house for a few weeks, looking for an opportunity. And then I saw it. I waited for Mark’s taxi to disappear down the drive and then posed as a pool maintenance girl, turning up a day early to add the chemicals that Mia was too lazy to add herself. She buzzed me in, but came to the top of the basement stairs to meet me and escort me down to the pool. I had taken a knife, but I didn’t need to use it.
‘After you,’ I’d said, allowing her to go in front of me.
She’d shrugged and moved to go ahead. The technique was well known to me, of course – God knows, my bastard uncle tried it often enough – and I quickly edged my foot between her leading and trailing ankles. I remember the momentary look of surprise on her face, but it didn’t last long as she tumbled head first down the stairs and onto the tiled concrete floor below, her neck snapping as she hit the ground. I didn’t expect it to be so easy, and then all I had to do was to untie one of her trainers.
But I’m not going to tell Cleo all this.
It’s getting cold on the cliff now, and while I’ve been deciding how much to reveal, I haven’t taken my eyes off her face. It’s taken a while for her to understand what I meant about my expertise in pushing people to their deaths, but finally she gets it.
‘Mia?’ Her voice is hoarse, worn out with emotion. I raise my eyebrows and nod.
‘I was there, Cleo – hiding in the boiler room when you stormed into the house itching for a fight. I heard what you said when you saw Mia’s body. “Jesus, Mark, what have you done?” Why did you make that assumption, I wonder? Did you think “Like sister, like brother?”’
I can see she’s had enough. It’s all become too much, and if I push her further she will collapse in a heap. That’s no good.
‘As I said – today one of us is going to die. Who is it going to be?’
Cleo stood her ground as Evie walked towards her. For days she had thought she had nothing left to live for, but now she didn’t want to be the one to die. She needed to live, to tell the world that her brother was an innocent victim.
‘Come on,’ Evie dared her. ‘Come and get me. You know you want to.’
Evie was right. Cleo wanted her dead, and nothing would give her more pleasure than to rush at Mark’s killer, drag her to the edge and force her over the cliff. What did she have to lose? Mark was gone, Lulu was lost to her – even if she lived out her days in prison, the world would be rid of the evil that was Evie Clarke.
She took a step forward, her heart thumping.
Jump, Evie. Jump, she begged silently.
She took another step. Then another.
So this is how it ends.
It is clear to me now: one of us has to die.
And with a roar, she charged.
72
Finally, after half an hour stuck in traffic, Stephanie raced up the track to the white wall of the house where Mark North’s bloodied body had been found, shards of stone flying sideways as her tyres skidded over the rough surface.
Cleo’s car was there – parked outside the door. Stephanie knew the whole story now. Cleo had been a witness to the death of Evie’s brother. She had tried to save him, the report said. Had Evie believed that, or had Gus been right to think there was more to Mark’s death than a bad ending to an abusive relationship?
She slammed on the brakes and felt the back end of the car slide on the gravel. She didn’t care. This meeting might be entirely innocent, but Aminah Basra had been worried – and Stephanie couldn’t ignore what her instincts were telling her.
Running towards the door, uncertain whether her knock would be answered, she saw the garage door standing open, and remembered a distraught Cleo telling her it was possible to get into the house this way.
She sprinted to the garage and stopped. Everything might be fine. She couldn’t just charge in there – she had to be calm. She took a deep breath and moved towards the open door leading to the garden.
There was no-one to be seen, so Stephanie walked towards the window of the house, expecting to see signs of life in the kitchen or living room. But it was empty and had a look of desertion about it, as if – like its owner – the beautiful room had died too.
Above the thunder of the waves and the call of gulls circling overhead she heard the sound of high-pitched laughter, and she breathed out. If they were laughing, it was all going to be okay. She had panicked for nothing.
She walked quietly across the lawn, and peered around the corner of a tall beech hedge towards the cliff edge.
A woman stood there alone, looking down at the sea pounding on the rocks below. A burst of spring sunshine reflected off her bright bleached hair and she raised her hands up to the heavens, tipping her head back as if giving thanks.
Epilogue
The boy is standing on the sea wall. He's showing off, pretending it's dangerous even though the top of the wall is flat and wide. He doesn't see the danger when it comes rushing at him with such violence. All that is left is the dying echo of his scream.
As I wait for my visitor to arrive, knowing what she is going to say to me, I look around my new home, at the four walls that crowd me, seeming to grow ever closer, crushing me between their shiny surfaces. I presume the gloss paint makes them easier to clean, but it glares harshly in the over-bright lights.
I will have plenty of time to think – to consider everything I have done. I’m sure I am supposed to feel remorse, but I feel nothing.
I’ve told the police it was an accident. I have repeated it time and again, but I know the odds are stacked against me.
I have been charged with murder, and I doubt I can prove otherwise, but for now I have no more time to wonder what is going to happen to me. I can hear the sound of footsteps coming towards me, and the door to my cell is opened to reveal the sour face of my prison officer.
‘Your visitor’s arrived,’ she says, flicking her head to the right to indicate I should follow her. The officers don’t like me because they believe I’m a killer. I don’t much care what they think.
I’m taken to a private room – the room reserved for inmates and their lawyers – and as soon as I sit down the door clicks open again. Harriet James strides into the room. Her face is a mask and I’ve no idea what she’s thinking. It’s not long before I find out.
‘I’m not going to ask how you’ve been, because frankly I don’t give a shit,’ she says, spitting out the words. I realise now that her features are being held steady as part of a strategy to ensure that her anger doesn’t erupt.
I say nothing. I doubt she will act for me. She sees me as the enemy, but she’s good so perhaps it is worth a try.
‘I’ve come to see you because you asked for me, but I have no intention of defending you. What you did was monstrous. You killed an innocent woman.’
I return her gaze, refusing to flinch beneath the force of her anger.
‘She wasn’t innocent. She murdered my brother.’
‘I’m not even going to waste my breath trying to convince you that you’re wrong.’
I consider telling Harriet about the confession on the cliff top, but I know she wouldn’t believe me, so I remain silent. Harriet hasn’t even sat down and it’s clear she won’t be staying.
She leans forward, her hands grasping the back of the chair, her knuckles white. ‘Nothing to say?’
‘Nothing that would mean anything to you, no,’ I answer.
She gives a
tut of disgust. ‘Do you have any idea of the damage you have done? Somewhere out there is a woman being abused who might genuinely lose control and kill her partner. The fear of what might happen to her may have been lessened slightly by the famous “Evie Clarke case” – but the press are going wild with delight at the latest developments.’
I sympathise with her anger. This was supposed to be her moment to bask in the glory of all she had achieved, but given how things have turned out I expect clients might be more hesitant about seeking her services. The news is full of speculation and nobody knows what to believe.
I’ve seen to that.
‘So,’ she says, picking up the briefcase that she put down only a couple of minutes ago, ‘if you’ve nothing more to say, I’ll leave you to it.’
She turns and walks towards the door.
‘She fell, Harriet,’ I say, without raising my voice. ‘It was an accident.’
Harriet spins round and walks back towards the table. ‘That’s not true and we both know it. The evidence is too strong – the churned-up ground, the fibres on her clothes and yours, the scratches, the bruises. She fought back. But she lost.’
The plan had worked well, it seemed. Too well. And she’s right not to believe me, of course. The end, when it came, wasn’t as simple as I have claimed.
For a while it had seemed as if nothing was going to happen. We stood staring at each other, both waiting for the other to make a move. She killed my brother. I killed hers. Which of us should die?
She decided it had to be me. First I saw confusion in her eyes – then indecision. But in the end the hatred and fury that had been festering within her burst free and she made her move.
Harriet reaches the door and opens it.
‘Goodbye, Evie,’ she says. ‘I hope you rot in this place for the next twenty years.’
It doesn’t matter to Harriet that I had intended to die that day. She would be sorry I failed, I’m sure, because then her reputation would be intact, everyone continuing to believe that I was a victim. But I didn’t die, and the world now believes I am – and probably always was – a killer.
The irony is that I didn’t murder Cleo. She charged at me, and I simply stepped out of the way, an instinctive act of self-preservation that I neither wanted nor expected. As the ground slid beneath her feet she reached for me and grabbed a handful of my hair. The wig came off in her hand as she tumbled to her death on the rocks below.
The carefully prepared grounds for her conviction – the blood under my fingernails, the fibres on my clothes – are now evidence of my guilt.
I hadn’t been lying when I told Cleo I was ready to die that day. I didn’t think I would ever be free of the memories that sicken me, and my carefully planned revenge had done nothing to lessen the bitterness that had poisoned me for so long.
Strangely, though, I feel as though Cleo’s death has set me free. Maybe I am destined to spend the rest of my life in here, but I dream of days on a winter beach with my beautiful Lolula, watching the waves wash the sand clean of every mark, every memory of those who walked there before us.
Nobody saw Cleo die. There are other possible interpretations of the evidence.
Maybe this isn’t the end after all. Maybe it‘s just the start of something new. Maybe one day I’ll look back and I’ll know: This is where it all began.
*****
To discover more novels by Rachel Abbott, please click here
A letter to my readers
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read And So It Begins. As a writer, each time a new book is launched I feel a mixture of delight that my story is out there and terror in case readers don’t enjoy it.
In many ways, this book was the most difficult to let go of because it’s a little different from all my previous novels. There is no DCI Tom Douglas! The novel also takes place in Cornwall instead of Manchester as I knew when I came up with the idea for the story that it had to be based close to a dramatic seascape. But when I started to write it, the strong central female character of Sergeant Stephanie King drew me in. I wanted to know more about her and understand both her past and her possible future. I hope you feel the same, as there will be more books in this series!
The idea for And So It Begins came when I was speaking at a women’s prison. I was talking to their very enthusiastic book group, and I couldn’t help thinking of the hard lives that some of them had experienced and wondering what might have brought them to be there. And that was where the germ of a story outline came to me. I hope you like the way it turned out.
Of course, as always, the very best thing about publishing a book is getting a response from you – the reader – and I have been delighted by the amazing feedback I’ve received over the last few years. I keep in touch in many different ways - Facebook, Twitter and I have recently set up a Facebook Group – Rachel Abbott’s Partners in Crime. This is a great place to chat to other readers of crime. Or you can sign up to my newsletter to receive regular bulletins and get access to special features on the website. I’d be pleased to welcome you and keep you up to date with new releases, special offers and other goodies. Just go to www.rachel-abbott.com/contact and submit your details.
Of course, I’d love to know what you think about And So It Begins, so feel free to tweet me, leave me a message on Facebook or a review on Amazon. Every author loves getting reviews, and I’m no exception.
Thanks again for taking the time to read And So It Begins.
Best wishes,
About the author
Rachel Abbott was born and raised in Manchester. She trained as a systems analyst before launching her own interactive media company in the early 1980s. After selling her company in 2000, she moved to the Le Marche region of Italy.
When six-foot snowdrifts prevented her from leaving the house for a couple of weeks, she started writing and found she couldn’t stop. Since then her debut thriller, Only the Innocent, has become an international bestseller, reaching number one in the Amazon charts both in the UK and US. This was followed by the number-one bestselling novels The Back Road, Sleep Tight, Stranger Child, Kill Me Again and The Sixth Window, plus a novella, Nowhere Child, which was top of the Kindle Singles chart in the UK for over two years.
In 2015 Amazon celebrated the first five years of the Kindle in the UK and announced that Rachel was its number-one bestselling independent author over this period. She was also placed fourteenth in the chart of all authors.
Rachel Abbott now lives in Alderney and writes full time.
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Also by Rachel Abbott
Have you read them all?
COME A LITTLE CLOSER
They will be coming soon. They come every night.
Snow is falling softly as a young woman takes her last breath.
Fifteen miles away, two women sit silently in a dark kitchen. They don't speak, because there is nothing left to be said.
Another woman boards a plane to escape the man who is trying to steal her life. But she will have to return, sooner or later.
These strangers have one thing in common. They each made one bad choice - and now they have no choices left. Soon they won't be strangers, they'll be family…
When DCI Tom Douglas is called to the cold, lonely scene of a suspicious death, he is baffled. Who is she? Where did she come from? How did she get there? How many more must die?
Who is controlling them, and how can they be stopped?
Praise for COME A LITTLE CLOSER:
'Clever, creepy and compelling.' - Sharon Bolton, author of The Crafts
man
'Come a Little Closer is a brilliant crime read. Rachel Abbott is already one of the Queens of Crime, but this dark tale of manipulation, danger and lies adds to her reputation for outstanding storytelling.' - Kate Rhodes, author of Hell Bay
‘No-one blends a psychological thriller with a police procedural like this woman and although I'm emotionally exhausted every time I finish one of her books I am equally hungry for more. Captivating! Sinister! Twisty!’ - Angela Marsons, author of Silent Scream
Other novels by Rachel Abbott
ONLY THE INNOCENT
A man is dead. The killer is a woman. But what secrets lie beneath the surface – so dark that a man has to die?
THE BACK ROAD
A girl lies close to death in a dark, deserted lane. A driver drags her body to the side of the road. A shadowy figure hides in the trees, watching and waiting.
SLEEP TIGHT
Sleep while you can - you never know who’s watching.
STRANGER CHILD
One dark secret. One act of revenge.
They say you should never trust a stranger. Maybe they’re right.
NOWHERE CHILD
Someone is looking for Tasha. But does she want to be found?
A standalone novella featuring the same characters as Stranger Child.
KILL ME AGAIN
When your life is a lie, who can you trust?
Another woman will die soon, and it might be her.
THE SIXTH WINDOW
Every instinct told her to run.
Would she ever feel safe again?
Acknowledgements
I am always staggered by the generosity of people when it comes to answering book research queries, and with this novel I needed more expert advice than for any other.
In particular I would, as always, like to thank my wonderful police advisor, ex DCI Mark Grey, who somehow seems to cope with questions that range from the most mundane to the most complex. He never lets me down.
And So It Begins Page 30