She filled the bath as deep and hot as she could stand. As she sank into the water, she swore she would never venture outdoors again without appropriately warm clothing. It always surprised her how unpleasant it was to get cold and wet. She thought she would’ve remembered.
She fingered the back of her head and found the large tender area where she’d crash-landed coming out of the window. Daniela winced. There could be a concussion underneath. She was amazed she’d been able to keep moving. She definitely felt dizzy, but wasn’t sure how much was due to her head injury, exhaustion, adrenaline, or the cold.
Daniela stayed in the bath for a long time. With the lights off and the warm water cocooning her, she dozed, allowing the horrors of the day to seep out through her skin. For a brief time, she pretended none of it was real. She held her breath and slid beneath the surface. Heat prickled her scorched cheek.
All too soon the water cooled. Daniela reluctantly clambered out of the bath and wrapped the towel around herself. Despite not wanting to invade the house more than necessary, she went into the master bedroom and rifled the cupboards until she found a sweater and some jogging pants that were only a bit too big. She balked at the idea of wearing someone else’s underwear, so she opted, reluctantly, to go without.
She was pulling the clothes on when her phone rang.
Daniela went back to the bathroom, holding up the waistband of the jogging pants. Her phone was vibrating in the back pocket of the jeans she’d dumped on the floor. It was a shock to see it still working. Daniela had assumed the damp would’ve killed the electrics.
She fished the phone out and her heart dropped into her stomach. Stephanie’s number.
Daniela padded back to the bedroom and sat on the bed. The phone kept ringing: ten rings, fifteen, twenty. She wondered how long Stephanie would keep trying. The jaunty ringtone was loud in the silent house.
Finally, Daniela answered the call.
‘Yeah, I’m here,’ she said.
‘You’re where, exactly?’ Stephanie asked. Her voice sounded close, as if she was calling from the next room.
‘Steph,’ Daniela said, ‘I know how all this looks. But I didn’t do anything. I swear.’
She could almost feel Stephanie’s anger radiating through the phone. The officer was keeping her emotions reined in behind that chill tone, but Daniela knew her well enough. Daniela swapped the phone to her left ear; the touch of the screen against her face aggravated the rash from the incapacitant spray.
‘You hear?’ Daniela asked. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘What wasn’t you? What didn’t you do? Spell it out for me.’
‘For Chrissakes. Do you seriously think I’d have done anything – anything – to hurt Auryn?’
‘Convince me. Because right now you look pretty guilty.’
Daniela smoothed her wet hair back from her face. ‘You didn’t give me much chance to explain.’
‘I gave you every chance. I asked you to come with me and tell me everything.’
‘You tried to arrest me.’ Daniela heard the petulance in her own voice. She took a steadying breath. ‘Steph, I had nothing to do with what happened to Auryn. For God’s sake, I only arrived yesterday.’
‘So you say. For all I know you’ve been here for days. You could’ve gone straight to the old house.’
‘Yeah? And then what? I decide to hang around in Stonecrop, for old times’ sake? Do you think I would’ve sought you out, come and talked to you, and then fucking phoned you from Auryn’s house after I found her? C’mon. I know they’re getting complacent in police school but—’
‘I’ve seen people do worse. People acting normal, like they’ve done nothing wrong—’
‘I have done nothing wrong.’
‘—to make it seem like they’ve just come into town. Laying a false trail and hoping we’ll fall for it.’
‘You think I’d do that?’ Daniela laughed. ‘Seriously, you credit me with too many smarts.’
‘This isn’t a game, Dani.’
‘I was thinking that myself.’ Daniela lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Rain drummed against the windows.
Stephanie was silent for a moment, then asked, ‘Why were you carrying a knife, Dani?’
Daniela closed her eyes. That fucking knife. ‘Look, I know this is what you’re trained to do. Put little bits together and come up with a fitting answer. But you’re wrong. I’d never do something like—’
‘That’s a lie and we all know it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have spent five years in jail for knifing Henry McKearney and leaving him for dead.’
Daniela took the phone away from her ear. A vehicle went past on the distant road, and the reflection of its headlights slid across the bedroom ceiling from one end to the other. On the phone, Stephanie waited.
It was unfair, of course. The police made a big deal of not judging people on past mistakes. But that was on paper. It never translated to real life.
Daniela was trying to escape the past; trying harder than she’d ever tried anything before. But the past was never forgotten. Especially in Stonecrop, where time had stood still for so long that nothing was ever considered history.
It’d been a mistake to come back. Stupid to think she deserved a happy ending.
She should’ve stayed at home.
The thought twisted her mouth. For years, the old house had been home. No matter where she went or what she did, it was a touchstone in her heart. Even though she’d never wanted to come back, she’d liked knowing the house was here if she needed to return.
Now Daniela knew the truth. She hadn’t come home. She’d returned to a place where floods had washed out half the residents, and those who remained hated her, the way only family and childhood friends could. For all they cared, she could’ve stayed in prison forever.
At last, Daniela put the phone to her ear and said, ‘I never killed anyone.’
‘It’s hard to believe you,’ Stephanie said. She sounded tired. ‘It feels like I’ve been waiting for something to happen, ever since you got out. It felt inevitable. After what you did to Dad—’
‘Hey, you can’t blame me for Dad. I wasn’t even there.’
‘Exactly. You were the last straw. After you went to prison … you don’t understand what that did to him.’
‘Oh, come on. He barely cared about me.’
‘You think so? He blamed himself for the way you turned out. He blamed Franklyn for being the worst possible influence, and he blamed me for not helping you when I had a chance.’ Bitterness was a harsh tang beneath each word. ‘But he never blamed you. In his eyes, you were the victim. It was the last thing he said to me before he killed himself.’
Daniela went cold. ‘What the hell, Steph? He didn’t kill himself. It was—’
‘An accident. Yeah, I know. He went over the top banister while drunk. An accident waiting to happen, given the state of the house and how much he was drinking. Except the certifying doctor never knew about the other times he tried. The times I saw him with bruises from chucking himself down the stairs. Or when he called me because he’d jumped off the roof and broken his hip. “Accidents,” he said. Just a clumsy old man tripping on the stairs or slipping while mending a loose tile.’
‘Jesus Christ, Steph, what’re you saying?’
‘He wanted it to look like an accident,’ Stephanie said, her voice heavy. ‘To spare us.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Daniela said again. She pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets until sparks appeared. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Would you have cared?’ Stephanie asked.
Daniela thought of the letter she’d received in prison from Stephanie, the one that’d told her in stark terms that their father was dead, and Daniela was not welcome at the funeral. ‘That’s harsh. Yes, I care. You know I do.’
‘Yeah? What day did Dad die? What date?’
Daniela was quiet for too long.
‘See, there’s the issue,’ Stephanie said. ‘You don
’t have the slightest clue what it’s like, trying to hold this family together. I did everything I could to help Dad. And Auryn. But you … all you ever wanted to do was break things.’
Daniela pressed the button to end the call. She let out a shaky breath. There was a deeply unpleasant feeling in her chest, as if someone had punched her solar plexus, leaving her winded and on the verge of tears.
She touched the back of her neck. Between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae – that was where Dad had broken his spine when he fell. Daniela moved her hand to her flank, just below the ribs on the left side. That was where Auryn had been stabbed. The area was soft, vulnerable. Angling upwards, a knife blade could easily find the heart.
Seven years ago, Daniela had seen how easy it was to seriously hurt someone. In a way she’d been lucky – although not as lucky as Henry – because the knife had gone in at an awkward angle, glanced off his ribs and perforated the bowel instead of the heart. Daniela ended up doing four and a half years of a seven-year sentence for wounding with intent. Her lawyer had argued it down from attempted murder. Daniela couldn’t contest it. Eight stab wounds were difficult to mitigate.
It could so easily have been murder.
It made her sick every time she thought about it.
But the past was the past, wasn’t it? She wasn’t the same person. She couldn’t be, otherwise what was the point of her time in prison? The authorities had devoted so many hours to her rehabilitation. All those probation officers, therapists, psychiatrists … they believed it’d work, didn’t they? Or was it just a cynical game? Both sides pretending to make an effort, upholding justice and curbing reoffending, whilst exchanging knowing winks because they all knew none of it would change a thing. She’d always be an almost-murderer.
Daniela pushed off the bed. Enough. Everyone else could hang on to the past. She didn’t have to.
In a drawer she found warm socks and, in another cupboard, a fleece jacket that looked like it hadn’t been worn in a long time. Daniela pulled them on, then tidied up as much as she could. She straightened the bedcovers and shut the cupboard doors. In the bathroom, she drained the bathtub, folded the damp towel into the airing cupboard, and picked up her clothes. She removed any sign she’d been in the house. The idea of traumatising the owners made her uneasy.
Daniela transferred the contents of her pockets to the fleece jacket. Her entire worldly possessions amounted to a mobile phone and the four eternity rings she’d taken from Henry McKearney’s antique shop a lifetime ago. Her wallet, along with the last of her cash and her house keys, was in the jacket she’d lost at Leo’s house.
She came downstairs with an armful of damp clothes. Her boots were still wet inside, and she shuddered at their chill grip around her dry socks. In the kitchen, Daniela paused to drink from the tap, and to search the cupboards. She hadn’t eaten all day. She snacked on crisps and biscuits, shoving the empty wrappers into her pockets.
She carried her clothes outside, then closed the window behind her.
There would be traces, she knew. A muddy tidemark on the bathtub. Footprints on the hall carpet. Something small she’d forgotten. But Daniela hoped the owners wouldn’t notice, or would shrug it off as something they’d done themselves. There’d be more important things to worry about, after all, like the flood damage to the garden.
Outside, although it was still raining, the air felt warmer, but Daniela attributed that to her dry clothes. The wind snatched at her hair as she hurried through the garden and climbed the rear fence. The gardens backed directly onto the woods. Daniela walked some distance through the trees before finding a suitable hollow beneath some roots, where she stashed her wet, muddy clothes, including the jumper Leo had given her.
Whilst lying on the bed, her mind had grasped for a solution to her problems. She needed to get out of town. She needed to retrieve the money she’d hidden in the woods. She needed to do both without being caught.
But, more urgently, she wanted to know who’d killed Auryn. And she wanted Stephanie to believe she was innocent. Those two thoughts filled her mind.
Henry McKearney. Leo said Henry had been in contact with Auryn. Why?
Daniela had deliberately avoided thinking about Henry since she’d arrived in Stonecrop the day before. Her plan had always been to get in and out of town fast, so she’d assumed she could avoid Henry, if he was even still here. No one had mentioned him. She’d hoped he’d packed up and left long ago. But maybe not. Maybe Margaret had stuck with him, despite everything.
Maybe he was in Stonecrop right now.
Maybe he knew something about Auryn’s death.
Rationally, she knew she should leave it to Stephanie and her colleagues. That’s what they were for. But at the moment, Stephanie was the only officer in Stonecrop, and she was wasting time chasing Daniela.
By now, Stephanie must’ve contacted the station at Hackett and told them about Daniela. People would be looking for her. As soon as the weather broke for long enough for a helicopter to take off, they’d come.
They would definitely bring dogs. Attack dogs – or general-purpose dogs, whatever the hell they were called now. The idea of being chased through the muddy woods made her stomach churn.
So, she needed to be gone.
She wanted to find out if Henry McKearney was in town. But she had to consider her own self-preservation. She couldn’t help the police investigation if she was busy hiding from the police.
Daniela put her hands in her pockets and started walking. It might take her all day just to figure a way past the closed roads and swollen rivers. And she still needed to get her money.
28
She circled around the back of the old house, trying to ignore the empty, abandoned look of the property. Trying not to think about Auryn lying alone in the upstairs bedroom.
Daniela had turned off her phone, in case Stephanie tried contacting her again, and so couldn’t check the time, but it felt late. The sky had darkened to murky twilight, grey and horrid. It was still raining. The noise of the rising wind was like a battle or a riot, which easily masked any sound she made. A tree had come down across the path and she had to detour around it. The ground was littered with broken branches. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and wished she’d thought to steal some gloves.
At last she reached the hollow where she’d stashed the plastic-wrapped package. Exhaustion dragged at her. Exhaustion and residual anger. She didn’t like being chased out of town like this. But she made herself focus on the path ahead: this one last task, then the long walk south to Briarsfield. If she could get home, if she could hide the money, if she was given just a few quiet hours to get her story straight before she called Stephanie and explained everything …
Daniela closed her eyes. If she started thinking about it, she would have to admit how bad her situation was. The only solution was not to think.
She clambered down the bank into the hollow, crouched in the mud, and reached under the tangle of roots where she’d hidden the package.
It wasn’t there.
She searched the rest of the hollow, frantically at first, then forcing herself to be slow, methodical. The package wasn’t there. It hadn’t slipped loose, otherwise it would be lying in the mud at her feet. Daniela walked a circle from one side of the hollow to the other.
The money wasn’t there.
Tears prickled her eyes. No, this couldn’t be right. She was in the wrong place, the wrong mud-hole. She must have got herself turned around and was looking beneath the wrong tree.
But she knew that wasn’t true. This was exactly where she’d left the package. And now it was gone.
Frustration made her fists curl. Someone had come here in the last couple of hours and taken it. Stephanie? Leo might’ve told Stephanie about finding Daniela out here in the woods; might even have led her back to this spot. Daniela knuckled tears from her eyes. Yeah, that’s how it would’ve happened. Stephanie had the parcel, and it’d be one last nail in Daniela’s
coffin. No way would Stephanie believe Daniela was innocent now.
Daniela put her hand to the pocket of her jogging pants, where she felt the clink of the four eternity rings she’d stolen from Henry’s shop, all those years ago. They were each worth a few hundred pounds – at least, that’s what the price tags had said. That would have to be enough. She’d lost all chance of taking anything else home.
Time to cut your losses and get out.
The wind bustled and roared in the trees overhead like a living creature. Daniela crouched, listening to the noise, her eyes tracking over the rain-splattered mud. There was the slide-mark where she’d tumbled down the bank. There were Leo’s prints where he’d come to help. Her eyes roamed further. There, by the far side of the hollow, was a trail of prints, coming down the bank then back up. Wellies, definitely, but that meant nothing because everyone wore wellies in a flood. Someone moving fast, judging by the way the prints slid and blurred on the steep part of the slope.
But the trail didn’t lead back towards the flooded road. Daniela got up to study them properly. She pulled herself up the bank. At the top, she followed the prints until they reached a well-trodden path that wound through the woods towards Stonecrop.
That made her pause. Stephanie wouldn’t cut through the woods like that. She’d wade along the road and come at the hollow from the direction of the old house. And she wouldn’t be hurrying. She always walked with deliberate care, especially in these woods.
Someone else had been here and taken Daniela’s money.
She followed the path for a quarter mile until it reached the main road through Stonecrop. As she’d known it would, the end of the trail came out almost directly opposite Henry McKearney’s old antique shop.
Once out on the flooded streets around the village centre, Daniela moved cautiously. At anything faster than a steady pace, her splashing boots sent echoes bouncing up and down the length of the street, audible even over the wind. She already looked suspicious, since the last few residents had retreated into their houses, pulling the curtains and shutting the doors against the approaching night.
The Flood Page 17