What She Saw

by Diane Saxon

  Her gaze stayed on the drip of blood. It would be justice if she died. After all, it was her fault. She’d as good as killed Aiden when she’d persuaded him to come back inside.

  Her chest tightened and she hitched in another painful breath as tears leaked from her eyes.

  She loved him.

  The trail of blood came from the thin, soaked T-shirt she’d wadded up and jammed between her arm and her chest to try and stem the flow.

  She squeezed her elbow tighter against her side and drew in another staggered breath as she clenched her teeth until they ground to stop the hysterical sob lodged at the back of her throat from escaping.

  Silent. She had to stay silent in case he came back to check. Back to shoot her again. Finish the job he’d started.

  She needed to move. Check on the others. Make sure the little ones hadn’t been disturbed by all the crashing around. She’d drag Josh away from his gaming and ask him what they should do. He was good. He knew how to handle Daddy. When she wanted to challenge, Josh was the voice of reason.

  She rubbed her forehead. This was different. Josh couldn’t change things, but he’d help her. If they called the police, Daddy would go to jail and they’d blame her. There had to be another way.

  Before she moved, she needed a moment to drag oxygen into her deflated lungs.

  She had no idea where Daddy had dragged Aiden’s body, but what she imagined was the muffled bump of her boyfriend’s head bouncing along the hallway had stopped.

  She’d managed to yank on a pair of fleecy pyjama bottoms without much effort but drawing a top over her head and getting her arm through the armhole had proved a different matter. After the struggle, she’d flopped back on the bed, breath soughing through her burning chest, wild spirals of light shooting behind her closed lids.

  After a brief struggle, she’d managed to prop herself up to listen.

  The house was silent.

  The house was rarely silent. Even in the dead of night, there would be creaks and groans. It was as though it knew, as though it waited.

  She swung her legs off the bed and with a grunt of pain, slipped to her feet. And there she was, head reeling and barely a memory of how she’d come to be propped against the doorframe.

  Poppy pressed her hand to where she’d slipped her mobile phone into her pocket and stared unblinking down the length of the brightly lit hallway until her eyes stung. She concentrated on the end wall where it took a right-hand turn down another length of hallway to her brother’s room. That’s where he was. Where he’d taken Aiden, she was sure. But not so sure she didn’t hesitate. What if he was in the twins’ room next to hers, or Mum’s?

  A blink released a torrent of tears that washed down her cheeks and dripped off the end of her chin, but she quelled the desperate desire to sob, to run screaming into her mum’s room. There would be no point.

  She pushed away from the door jamb and took three tentative steps towards the area above the stairs where the landing widened into a large square with her mum’s overstuffed antique chaise longue placed against the back wall so it overlooked the split staircase and galleried hall.

  She drew in an anguished breath. It was her fault. If she hadn’t persuaded Aiden to stay, her daddy would never have killed him.

  Whether he’d meant to shoot her or not, she couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was only Aiden he’d wanted to kill, but the deadened glaze over her daddy’s eyes lent her no hope.

  She skimmed her shoulder against the short stretch of wall between her room and the twins’ just to give her balance and a sense of direction as her head whirled.

  Reluctant to wake them, but conscious she needed to do something, check they were asleep before she went to Josh, she edged their door open slow enough so it didn’t creak. Please don’t let them be witness to Daddy’s violence.

  Exhausted with the effort, she leaned against the doorjamb as her energy drained from her as surely as her blood did. If only she had the strength.

  A muffled thud had her whipping her head around to scan the hall.

  Was Daddy coming back? Had he heard her?

  Her breath stuttered in her throat, stuck there as the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of her heart filled her ears before she blew it out again in a violent rush.

  She pushed away from her support to stumble into the room, and edged the door closed behind her before she took three faltering footsteps into the pale golden circle of light from the nightlamp the twins still insisted on having.

  Poppy held her breath as she moved deeper inside the room. She reached out trembling fingers to touch Geraldine’s soft cheek and froze.

  Horror gripped her at the sight of a small neat hole in the centre of Geraldine’s forehead as the thick trickle of damson red blood pooled in her closed eye sockets.

  Rasping in a small breath, Poppy swung her head to look at Talisha. With almost perfect precision, the exact hole bled out, but this time left a trail of blood which dripped crimson onto her sister’s pristine white broderie anglaise pillowcase.

  Poppy sank to her knees by the side of Talisha’s bed and pressed a hand hard against her mouth to stop the sobs from erupting.

  Her stomach pitched and threatened to throw up the ribeye steak she’d been obliged to eat for the sake of keeping the peace with Daddy earlier that evening. While he was out of the house, she went pure vegetarian, but it had been his birthday, his meal choice. His insistence that it was a treat. But he knew she didn’t like to eat meat. It was his little show of power, superior strength of mind.

  She screwed her eyes shut until plumes of white light exploded behind her eyelids. She didn’t want to open her eyes again. Didn’t want to see, but she had no choice.

  Swallowing the bile, she kept her eyes downcast as she opened them again so she didn’t have to see her sweet little sisters.

  Miss Tilly, Talisha’s raggedy doll lay in a crumpled heap on the floor by the bedside. One of a pair their grandma had bought for the twins when they were born. Talisha had cherished hers, even more precious since grandma had died the previous year. Unlike her son, grandma had been warm and generous to a fault.

  Poppy took hold of Miss Tilly and rocked as she hugged her, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. She didn’t deserve to be alive. It was her fault. She’d killed her baby sisters through her thoughtless selfishness. All because of a boy.

  Clutching the doll, she pushed up from the bed, the sharp stab of pain shoved its way between her ribs and her knees turned to water, but she forced herself to swivel around without looking again. She wrenched open the door, no longer caring whether she made a noise or not, and beat a quick exit, but blood and desperation drained from her to sap her energy.

  Along the landing, Poppy stumbled to a halt. Hesitated. She leaned her left hand against the pristine white balustrade as she pressed the T-shirt hard against her wound, knowing it made a difference to staunch the flow. She’d taken her St Johns Ambulance lessons. She knew what to do. Her teeth gave an involuntary chatter. It wasn’t the same as in class. That was controlled, calm. Her head juddered. It wasn’t the same at all. The class instructor never mentioned how hard it would be in real life. With real blood and real dead people.

  Exhaustion washed over her. She rocked on her heels as the weight of her head became too much for her to hold upright while wave after wave of blackness welled up to darken her vision.

  The boom of a shotgun exploded from the direction of her brother’s bedroom at the far end of the hallway. The house shook and Poppy reared back her head, the swift rush of adrenaline pumping through her system to lend energy to her flagging body.

  With no further thought of checking on her mum, Poppy shoved away from the balustrade, leaving the bloodstained print of her hand. Terror spliced through her heart. Her fingers gave a spasmodic twitch, letting Miss Tilly drop to bounce down the stairs ahead of her as she threw herself after the soft doll.

  Away from the sound. Away from the fear. Away from Daddy.

  A chorus
of pain rocked her body as her knees gave way and she careened down the stairs, rebounded off one side of the railings to bounce against the other. Agony tore through her as she jammed her hip against the rail, stabbed her elbow on the white wood. All the time panic clenched like a fist as her feet skimmed over the thick navy-blue-patterned stair runner, barely keeping her upright while she gripped her trainers in one hand.

  White-hot pain shot through her chest as she reached the bottom step and skidded through the wooden hall. She heaved in small snatches of air.

  Confused, she stared at the partially open front door offering a view of their brightly lit driveway. An invitation to run out. Straight into Daddy. He must be there, why else would the door be open?

  She backed away from the light and glanced back up the broad stairway, frowning as her nostrils burned with the acrid scent of fuel. A thin plume of smoke wafted from the right side of the landing above, then a trail of yellow flame raced along the hall onto her mother’s chaise longue and burst into a dynamo of fire.

  Horror chased through her and, without hesitation, Poppy whipped around and raced along the hall to the kitchen that dominated almost the entire back of the house, overlooking the perfection of their landscaped gardens.

  The security lights would be on there too, but it was a short sprint to the woods which curved around the rear of their property in a wide expansive sweep all the way to Much Wenlock.

  Breath rasping with agony, Poppy dropped her trainers on the floor and slipped her feet into them before she wrenched open the back door and staggered out into the cool night air.

  To escape.

  To run as far as she could.

  So he’d never find her.

  So they wouldn’t blame her.

  4

  Saturday 18 April 2355 hours

  Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan flung herself upright, desperate to squeeze a lungful of air past the constriction in her throat and dispel the terror that held her firmly in its grasp.

  She knocked the dead weight of an arm that had her pinned down from around her waist and blew out a gusty sigh.

  ‘Jesus.’ She cupped her hands over her face.

  ‘It’s okay. Sshh.’ Adrian Hall, Chief Crown Prosecutor, who’d recently taken to sharing her bed when time and distance allowed, sat up beside her, hitching the covers up against the cool of the night.

  Mortified, Jenna squeezed closed eyes that had sprung open. She’d been crying in her sleep.

  ‘It was just a dream.’ She swiped the heel of her hand across her face and scrubbed away the tears.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ The soft smokiness of his sleep-filled voice soothed as he’d intended.

  ‘No. It’s okay, I was just…’ Trapped. Darkness pressing down on her.

  She sucked in a breath and held it until her lungs almost burst. Their relationship still too new for her to trust enough. Since they’d met during her sister’s abduction a few months earlier, matters of the romantic type had taken a back seat and only recently made any kind of advancement.

  Gentle hands turned her, and Jenna pressed her face into the welcoming, naked skin of Adrian’s neck and took the silent comfort he offered her, grateful he understood. She breathed in his calming warm scent as her heart rate stumbled back to normal. Despite Adrian only staying over a couple of times, there was no awkwardness, no need for words as she snuggled into him, no desire to pull away, but she wasn’t yet ready to divulge her darkest fears to him.

  The strident ring of her mobile phone almost shot her through the ceiling, her heart ratcheted up to full pelt as she dragged herself out of Adrian’s arms, flipped over and grabbed the phone before the jarring noise alerted the damned Dalmatian. Her sister’s dog. He’d be in there like a shot, leaping all over the damned bed, given half a chance.

  ‘Jesus, that’s loud,’ Adrian’s sleep-husky voice grumbled from behind her.

  ‘It has to be when I’m on call otherwise I’d sleep straight through it.’ The light stabbed her in the eye as she flicked the phone case open and punched the green answer button. ‘DS Jenna Morgan.’

  ‘Sergeant Morgan. Sorry to disturb you this evening. It’s PC Ted Walker here.’

  Surprised, Jenna glanced at the dim glow of her bedside clock. She’d barely been asleep an hour, she’d thought it was the middle of the night. Technically it was, as she’d been on earlies for the last week. Up at 5:00 a.m., work for 6:00 a.m. Bedtime became a skewed 9:00 p.m. She’d been later that night to accommodate the arrival of Adrian for dinner.

  ‘No worries.’ She shuffled herself upright in the bed and leaned back against her pillows, bringing her knees up to stop herself from sliding back down. If she did, she may just fall straight back to sleep. She’d only just dipped into that deep rejuvenating sleep when she’d been hauled back out of it by the dream. ‘What have you got, Ted?’

  ‘A fire, Sarge.’

  Brain still blurred from sleep, Jenna reached up and scrubbed her hand through her short, choppy hair. ‘A fire?’

  ‘A bloody big one, Sarge. Out at Wenlock Edge, just past Farley. A place called Kimble Hall, Sarge. Looks like the whole bloody lot’s gone up in flames.’

  Her brain kicked into gear and shoved the fog away in an instant. ‘Fire service?’

  ‘Already there.’

  ‘Ambulance?’

  ‘In attendance.’

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘It’s gone up like a tinder box.’

  ‘Great. Witnesses?’

  ‘None to speak of. The neighbour called it in. It’s a fifty-acre property. Remote. By the time they saw anything, the whole house was ablaze.’

  ‘Survivors?’

  ‘Can’t tell, Sarge. At this stage, the fire crews are still arriving, they’re telling me they can’t even get near the premises, the fire’s burning too hot. They’re already talking arson, but it’s a really old house, it could just be an accident. We don’t know if anyone is in residence. There’s certainly no one here coming forward.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She slipped naked from the bed and headed to her small en suite, already wide awake and in work mode. ‘I’ll be there shortly. Can you text me the postcode?’ She glanced over her shoulder and shot Adrian a regretful smile as he flopped back on the pillows, his eyes already closed.

  ‘Can do, but honestly, just drive towards Much Wenlock, at Farley head for the orange glow lighting up the whole bloody sky, Sarge.’

  ‘Right. Thanks. I’ll be there shortly. See you soon.’

  The text beeped through just as she finished peeing. She ran the tap until the water was warm enough to wash her hands and then splashed it over her face to rinse away the last remains of sleep. Sleep she’d just been deprived of for the foreseeable future.

  As the cool night air stroked over her skin, Jenna shuddered and reached for her dressing gown to wrap it tight around herself, before she blinked at her reflection in the mirror.

  With a long drawn-out groan, she grabbed the overpriced moisturiser her younger sister, Fliss, insisted she use now she was on the sharp rise to being thirty. She sneered at herself as she smoothed the heavy cream over her skin and refused to acknowledge any of the fine lines feathering out from her eyes, and the deeper ones bracketing her mouth.

  Fliss was the reason she had them. Not that Jenna blamed her. Her sister had been a victim of circumstance. Kidnapped and held in a dank, dark cellar until she’d found the inner strength to haul herself out. She’d saved herself and filled Jenna with a deep sense of pride and admiration for her younger sister. But the taste of true fear had stayed with her to haunt her in her weak moments.

  Memory of the dream shuddered through her with a mild sense of relief as the pieces of the dark puzzle fell into place. A reflection of her fear. Fear of what was to come. Not for herself, but for the safety and sanity of her own sister.

  After Frank Bartwell had attended Kidderminster Magistrates Court and pleaded not guilty for the abduction of Fliss, he’d been committed to
Stafford Crown Court and the case was finally due to start the following Tuesday.

  No matter how hard Jenna pushed it to the back of her mind, the sinister evil of it still touched her and gnawed at her insides that Fliss would have to relive the ordeal of her kidnap. She’d have to face the man who had murdered his mother, wife and child. Allegedly in the eye of the law, but Jenna and Fliss both knew it was true. Horrific in itself, but the element that he’d almost killed Domino, Fliss’s faithful Dalmatian, and kidnapped Fliss, coming after her a second time once she’d escaped, had made it personal. They’d both been there for the final confrontation when Frank, the trusted intel analyst at Malinsgate Police Station, had broken into Jenna’s house with the sole intent of killing Fliss.

  Fliss was in for a rough ride, but Jenna would be by her side every moment of every day in court.

  Jenna let the buzz of the electric toothbrush lull her for the full two minutes it took for apparent ultimate cleanliness, then spat and rinsed.

  She pulled open the door, and hesitated. Adrian no longer occupied her bed, he’d gone, leaving her bedside lamps on to cast a golden glow over the room. They’d not yet had the opportunity to become familiar with each other’s personal routine or work schedules, although he had known what he was getting into with a police officer. Routine and schedules were two words she rarely used and there’d never be a time when it became familiar.

  She ran her gaze over the smoothed-out duvet and plumped-up pillows with a twinge of disappointment. She appreciated his consideration in making the bed, but he could have stayed long enough to say goodbye.

  With a twinge of regret, she yanked on her clothes. It would have been nice to have had one last kiss.

  Jenna stole downstairs in her stockinged feet, so she didn’t wake her sister and dog as she headed towards the white gleam of light Adrian had left on for her in the kitchen.

  It took a split second longer for the inviting aroma of rich dark coffee to register and send her senses into a riot. She wondered if it was that or the sight of her half-naked Chief Crown Prosecutor standing barefoot in her kitchen that had a curl of warmth building in her stomach and the delight that he hadn’t left without saying goodbye. He’d been taking care of her as he seemed to time and again. Subtle, understated.