‘Ms Marshall?’ I hear the vet say in my ear. ‘Are you still there?’
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ I manage to say, then hang up.
Crouching on the floor next to Mustard, I open the app on my phone that allows me to connect to the cameras. It takes what feels like ages to load up and in that time I can hear footsteps echoing in the hallway downstairs. Uncle Gary’s not even trying to be quiet and that terrifies me, because if he wants me to be aware of his presence, he must not care what will happen if he wakes me. For the first time it hits me how naive I have been – tonight isn’t just about me proving to everyone that he’s Limey Stan, it’s also about me surviving the night so I can. How far will he go to shut me up? Did he somehow sneak a sleeping pill to Mustard to make sure he didn’t bark the house down while he does it? Or, I think, my panic accelerating, did Lisa do that while she was here earlier – is she in on this too?
The app begins to function and, shaking like a leaf, I click open the feed for the camera hidden by the doorway to the front room. Nothing else is visible in the darkness beyond the hazy outline of the sofa and coffee table. Still, I can hear noises coming from downstairs though, and my heart seizes in my chest as I hear the creak of a foot treading heavily on the bottom stair. I push against Mustard’s back, hoping to wake him, but he slumbers on, blissfully unaware his owner is terrified and in trouble. I can barely hold my phone, my hands are sweating so much, but I manage to click on the feed for the cameras I have placed in the hallway. One is at the bottom of the stairs pointing upwards; the other is on the windowsill at the top pointing down.
I select the feed for the bottom camera and instantly realise I’m wasting my time: all I can see are the soles of Gary’s shoes as he slowly ascends the stairs. I scrabble to open the other feed and when the screen flickers alive and focuses from above, I let out a scream.
It’s not my uncle coming up the stairs.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Cara
Shock pins me to the carpet. I cannot believe what I am seeing on my phone screen. Climbing my stairs, bold as brass, is Ian Leonard.
The estate agent hesitates as he reaches the landing – the camera catches him looking at each of the closed bedroom doors, as though he’s debating which one to open first. This galvanises me to my feet and before he can reach for the door handle to mine, I yank it open. He reels backwards in surprise, as though I am the last person he expects to see standing here.
‘What the hell are you doing creeping around my house in the middle of the night?’ I shout at him.
‘Oh, thank God, you’re okay,’ he exhales.
‘What are you doing here?’ I repeat, my voice a shriek.
‘Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve been worried about you. You’ve not answered any of my messages––’
I am so livid, I might explode. ‘So you thought you’d break into my house at night to bully me into selling up?’
‘God, no, not at all,’ he says, mortified. ‘I’ve been downstairs ringing the doorbell for ages. Didn’t you hear it?’
That calms me a fraction. ‘It must’ve stopped working,’ I say gruffly.
‘No, it was definitely making the usual sound, I could hear it inside the house,’ he states. ‘I started to worry when there was no answer, so I tried the back door, found it was unlocked, so I came in.’ His face reddens. ‘I’m really sorry, Cara. I should’ve realised me showing up like this might scare you, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was sat at home thinking about how things had soured between us and I wanted to make amends. Crazy, really, given how late it is. Then, when I got here, I thought something must be seriously wrong for you not to answer the door. I thought you were hurt.’
My body is trembling from the shock of seeing him on the stairs, but I am calmer. He is clearly embarrassed by his actions.
‘Do you often make house calls to your clients after midnight?’ I ask, my voice steadying.
‘Only the ones I like on a personal level … Which, ah, makes you the only one.’ His cheeks flush an even deeper red.
It takes a moment for his comment to sink in. ‘Oh. Right. This isn’t a good time for me though.’
He smiles benevolently. ‘No, now most definitely isn’t, but what about another night? To go for a drink, I mean. Not for me to scare you walking around your house in the dark.’
On saying that he leans over and flicks on the landing light. He looks different, standing there in jeans and a casual jacket, younger than he usually does, and suddenly I feel a bit shy and don’t know what to say.
‘Shall we go downstairs?’ he suggests.
I nod, then follow him downstairs, slipping my phone into my back pocket. I expect him to head for the front door, but instead he turns on his heel and heads for the kitchen and opens the fridge.
‘Got any wine? We could have a quick drink now.’
‘It’s getting on,’ I say. ‘Let’s leave it for another night.’ The late hour does not bother me really, but I want him to go so I can turn the lights off again. If Uncle Gary sees us moving around downstairs, he won’t risk coming inside. To emphasise to Leonard that I want him to leave, I go over to the back door to open it. But when I pull the handle, the door doesn’t budge and I realise it’s locked.
‘That’s weird. I thought you said this was unlocked?’ I ask him.
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. You said you came in the back when I didn’t answer the front door. But why is it locked now?’
‘Oh, that’s right, I locked the door after I came in. Otherwise anyone could get in.’
I don’t say that was the whole point – I’d left it open for Gary to get in. ‘Well thanks.’ Then it dawns on me my keys are upstairs in my bedroom.
‘There’s no key down here. How did you lock it?’
I turn round and see Leonard is no longer standing by the fridge but has moved over to the sink and he’s holding up a key.
‘I used the spare you gave us,’ he smiles.
My stomach drops to my feet. ‘I never gave you one,’ I say slowly. ‘I had the locks changed and I was meant to drop a key off at your office before the viewings started, but I never got round to it.’
Leonard stares at me, then forces a sigh.
‘You know, it would have been so much easier if you’d never come back to Heldean in the first place. Then I wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble to get rid of you again.’
I stare at him, dumbstruck, and in that moment I know.
Gary isn’t Limey Stan – Ian Leonard is.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Cara
‘Do you know how frustrating it is to deal with someone who won’t take a hint?’ Leonard goes on. ‘It’s not been easy letting myself in while you’ve been here, but thank god for those panic attacks.’ He smiles malevolently. ‘You really should get help for those. And get a better guard dog. It’s amazing what that mutt will eat when it’s pushed through the letter box.’
‘You killed Matty,’ I say, my voice breaking. ‘It was you.’
He says nothing, but advances towards me. A low moan escapes my lips, but it sounds distant to my ears, like a noise underwater. I try to back away, but I’m already backed up against the locked door – there isn’t anywhere left for me to go. As he raises his hands, my mind gropes for a way out, a means of escape. Physically he is far bigger than me and if I try to fight him, I will lose, so I need to think of another way to stop him hurting me.
‘Why pretend to be Limey Stan again?’ I ask desperately. ‘I was going to sell the house anyway, why go to the risk of being found out after getting away with it for all these years?’
‘Because you moved in,’ he answers tetchily. ‘That wasn’t part of the plan. You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question. Why start up Limey Stan again?’
‘Your dear departed mum threatened to expose me after she died and I suspected how she was going to do it was
somewhere in this house. So I needed to get you out of here so I could find it myself and what better way to scare you off than to resurrect our mutual friend?’ He waggles his fingers at me and makes a ghostlike wooing noise, then laughs. ‘God, you’re naive.’
I think about the postcode on Matty’s ID bracelet. ‘You lived in Limestone Road back then, didn’t you?’
His eyes narrow. ‘What of it?’
I was right: my sleep-deprived nine-year-old mind really did translate Limestone Road into Limey Stan. But I feel no triumph now, only terror.
‘How did you know my mum?’ I ask.
‘How do you think?’ He says this with a leer that sickens me to the core. ‘She was my family’s housekeeper, we got talking one day and, well, I’ll let your imagination decide what happened next.’
‘But you were so much younger than her,’ I say, appalled.
‘I was seventeen. Old enough. Anita didn’t care about my age, put it that way. She was quite the teacher. We had a lot of fun together, your mother and me,’ he smirks. ‘It carried on even after mine caught us together. She went mad and sacked yours, obviously.’
My growing anger is making me less scared of him. How dare he stand in this house and act like what happened here was no big deal?
‘Was it your idea to blame me for Matty’s death and send me away?’
He pulls a face. ‘The latter was nothing to do with me. The night your brother died, I said I’d kill you too if Anita ever told the police about me – I said I would come back and finish you off somehow, make it look like an accident.’ He says it with such smugness, I want to smack him. ‘So she decided to get you out of the way to make sure I could never carry out my threat. Quite inventive how she did it – I never expected her to go that far. But letting you take the blame for your brother was my idea, yes.’
Grief twists my insides. What a decision Mum was forced to make – to send me away like a criminal or risk losing me in an even worse way.
‘I used to visit her after you’d gone to make sure she was keeping to her word. She hated me coming round, but what could she do? I even went to her funeral: I snuck in the back to make sure she really was dead.’ He steps forward again. ‘Now it’s time I dealt with you.’
I know he’s only telling me all this because he thinks it will go no further – he’s going to make sure I’m silenced for good tonight.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I say, my back pressed against the door still. ‘I won’t tell anyone about you, I swear, because who would believe me if I did? I’ve just admitted to a reporter that I made up Limey Stan because I wasn’t well and it’s been printed everywhere – no one would believe me if I suddenly turned round now and said it was you.’
Doubt taints his expression for a moment, but it quickly dispels. ‘All things considered, I don’t think I’ll take that chance. I’ve worked for years to build up my business and make a name for myself in this town. I am not letting you take that away from me.’
‘I don’t want to!’ I plead.
‘You want to clear your name though, and the only way you can do that is by going public with mine.’
Before I can react, Leonard grabs me by the left arm and yanks me forward with such force that I skid across the tiles and fall onto my knees. Then he drags me into the front room. I try to resist, but fear has weakened my muscles and I am as malleable as a soft toy as he heaves me forward.
Then I hear it, a tap-tap-tap at the window. I know it can’t be the rose, as I cut it back, and my heart soars: someone’s tapping because the doorbell really isn’t working. ‘Tishk!’ I scream. ‘Is that you?’
There are scuffling sounds outside, then a hammering on the front door and Tishk calling out, ‘Cara, are you okay? Let me in!’
Leonard is peeved at the interruption. ‘Wait here,’ he orders.
I am fearful of what he might do if I disobey him, so all I can do is sit and listen, petrified, ears straining, as Leonard answers the front door to Tishk. There is a low mumble of words being exchanged, then I hear them both coming along the hallway and through the kitchen together.
Tishk steps into the front room, Leonard close behind. I hurl myself at Tishk, grabbing the front of his jumper in both hands.
‘It’s him!’ I shout. ‘He’s Limey Stan!’
I see the wine bottle in Leonard’s hand, but there’s no time to warn Tishk. A split second later, Leonard swings the bottle at Tishk’s head, catching him on the temple. The bottle smashes and Tishk crumples to the floor. He’s laid out cold and I can see blood seeping from a deep gash, slowly at first, then quickening as Tishk falls deeper into unconsciousness. I crawl over to him and try to stem the blood with my fingers, but Leonard pulls me away.
‘Change of plan, I think. I was going to leave you down here in the bay window, make it a family tradition. But with him here,’ he nudges Tishk’s body with the toe of his shoe, ‘the ambience is ruined. So, upstairs it is.’
I am crying so hard now I can barely see where I’m going. But I know I have to make Leonard see sense before it’s too late.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ I plead with him. ‘The police will find your fingerprints on that bottle and they’ll know you hurt Tishk. They’ll know someone else was in the house. You broke in.’
‘No I didn’t. I have a key, don’t forget.’
‘But how did you get it?’
‘Don’t you know how easy it is to get a key cut from a photograph? That day I came round to do the valuation you’d just had the locks changed, but you left the new keys by the front door, so I pretended I needed to use the toilet and took a photo of them with my phone.’
He hauls me into the kitchen, where he pauses for a moment. Resting on the worktop is a coiled-up length of white electrical flex I have never seen before. Leonard grips my arm with one hand and grabs hold of the flex with the other.
‘What are you going to do with that?’ I ask, horrified.
‘You did me a favour with that interview. When they find your body, they’ll assume you killed yourself because you weren’t right in the head. Admitting you made up the ghost just proved it.’
He sends me up the stairs first, pushing me when I stumble. I kick out, hoping it will send him flying backwards, but he has a solid footing and retaliates by shoving me onto the landing. My legs are so rubbery they can barely support me, but as I force myself to stand, my gaze lands on Matty’s door and the football stickers that are such a reminder of him – and there and then I know I cannot let Leonard get away with this. I will not die to protect him.
I spin round, lashing out, but Leonard is ready for me. He lassoes the flex around my neck like a noose and pulls it tight. I desperately grab at it, trying to slide my fingertips beneath it to stop me choking. All the while, Leonard is pulling tighter, his face a mask of determination. Then he begins to shuffle me towards the balustrade and I realise how he plans to end this: he is going to push me over so it will look as though I hanged myself.
I have to act fast. I manage to hook two fingers of my left hand under the flex and pull it free by an inch so I have some breathing space and with my right hand I grab the slack Leonard doesn’t have hold of yet but will need to tether me to the balustrade to let me hang. Just at the point he reaches down to gather up the slack, I raise my right hand and wrap the flex around his neck too and pull it tight. His eyes bulge when he realises what I am doing, but it is too late. I topple backwards – and take him over the top of the balustrade with me.
My body screams with pain as we ricochet off the opposite wall and bounce down the staircase. I have no way of telling which way is up, I just pray for it to be over quickly. My fingers yank beneath the flex and I feel them break. Then the flex around my neck suddenly loosens – Leonard has let go of it to try to save himself, but we’re tumbling too fast. Suddenly we reach the bottom of the staircase, then roll across the hallway and crash into the front door – and I realise I’m the lucky one because it is he who break
s my fall and not the other way round. Groggily, I roll off him and he cries out.
‘My legs,’ he screams. ‘I can’t feel my legs!’
I look over and see they are angled awkwardly beneath him.
‘Help me,’ he begs.
Every instinct tells me to crawl away and leave him to suffer, but I can’t. My body throbs with pain as I shuffle over to him. ‘Don’t move,’ I say. ‘You might have broken your back. I’ll ring for an ambulance.’
Leonard is crying now, tears pouring down his cheeks as his hands grope his legs for any sensation but find none. His upper body slumps back against the floor. ‘I never meant for Matty to die,’ he sobs. ‘I was trying to help him. He was already suffocating in the curtain when I got to him …’
Ignoring him, I drag myself away. My left ankle is swelling rapidly and I can’t put any weight on it, so I half-stagger, half-limp into the kitchen and then into the front room to check on Tishk and to retrieve my phone. The blood loss from his head wound has slowed to little more than a trickle and when I stroke his face and say his name, he begins to stir.
‘Cara?’ he whispers with a moan.
I rest my hand against his cheek and shush him to be quiet. His eyelashes flutter as he contemplates opening his eyes, until the pain shuts them again.
‘I’m calling for help. Stay still.’
‘What happened?’ he asks.
‘It’s over,’ I whisper. ‘I caught Limey Stan.’
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Cara
The next couple of hours pass in a blur of sirens and blue lights as police officers and paramedics swarm the house. Leonard is removed from my hallway strapped to a board to keep his spine and neck immobile, while I’ve escaped virtually unscathed by comparison with a sprained ankle and two broken fingers that I’ve already had strapped up. Tishk would accept only roadside assistance too, brushing off his injury as an inconsequential bump on the head and refusing to go to hospital because he does not want to leave my side. The two of us are in the front room now, forcing ourselves to sip the insipid tea an officer in uniform made us so we don’t appear ungrateful.
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