One Night (30 page)

‘Aw, I needed something decent –
and your birthday was the perfect excuse.’ He kissed me warmly. I felt the soft
nuzzle of his beard. ‘Happy birthday, beautiful girl.’

‘Thank you, my knight in shining
new clothes.’ I took the flowers and found a vase. Fussed in the kitchen while
he sat on the couch. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed him place an
envelope and a small gift on the table. A little box.

I went to sit opposite him. ‘Must I
open this now?’

‘No, actually – ’ he reached
forward and put it back in his pocket. ‘I’m going to save this for during
dinner.’

‘Oh, very mysterious. May I read
the card?’

‘Of course. But we can’t delay too
long. The table’s booked for eight. And they’re very popular. They’ll give the
table away if we’re more than ten minutes late.’

‘Then I’ll get my jacket.’ I picked
up the dark pink envelope. ‘I’ll put this beside my bed and read it in the
morning.’

I went through to the bedroom,
picked up my jacket, slipped the envelope under the base of the bedside lamp.
My name across the paper in neat gold writing was highlighted by the lamp’s
circle of light.

Happy Birthday, Casey Blaydon
.

My heart slowed.

My hand moved towards it, and then
away. Then back again. I felt someone was suddenly dancing a violent jig in my
stomach.

Because I knew this writing. This
exact writing.

I opened the envelope, took out the
card – but I didn’t read the message. My eyes were fixed instead on the writing
itself: a small, round childish hand that had puzzled me in Barton cottage in a
note left like this, under the lamp.

Time seemed to sharpen and slow.
The warm comfort of my own room seemed suddenly alien, as though I was in a
different space, a different world; a bright, clinical harshness that left me
no place to hide. My mind wheeled me back to that little shed, its single light
bulb gently swinging, and the naked form of death in the cupboard, dark eyes
staring. And I began to configure places, times and purpose. Horror and
madness. Practicality and possibility. It was as if I were shining a cold light
on a place where no one had thought to look, and in that unforgiving glare was a
beast with red eyes fixed on me, utterly intent, utterly foul.

Nausea swam in my stomach. My legs
trembled. My ankles, poised on the stiletto heels, felt broken. Blood slowed,
muffled my hearing. My eyes burned. My heart seemed to break so literally it
was as though it had been physically torn apart. Pain clawed at me in shock that
was still too fresh, too harsh for tears.

I knew who had killed Mona Spears.

And I knew why.

I went to the doorway and stood staring at him.

He pulled to his feet when he saw
me. ‘Don’t you have a jacket?’ he asked. ‘It’s not warm outside.’

I stared, unmoving.

He hesitated. ‘What’s the matter?’

I stood. We were on a darkened
stage, players in a gloomy theatre. The lights were low, the curtains a
backdrop, the coffee table a centerpiece with the vase of flowers, an ashtray,
and the brass statue of Buddha. Outside a car hooted, a dog barked. Someone
shouted. But here we were in a closed-in place where truth and lies tangled in a
dark-edged view. I stood, transfixed by the thought of his hideous crimes, the
enormity of his deception. The depth of my trust betrayed. The feeling that I
had bent to taste the fleeting nectar of happiness and had found myself licking
the bottom of somebody’s old boot. The disgust rooted me, sent fear stabbing up
my spine, anger hot as acid through my trembling body.

‘It was you,’ I said.

His eyes widened. ‘What are you
talking about?’

‘I’m talking about Mona. You killed
Mona. You found her alone in the cottage and she wouldn’t tell you where Brent
was. What she
did
tell you was that they were in a hurry to go some
place, and I assume – on your kind inquiry about the welfare of the dog – she told
you her friend was coming up to spend the night.’

I paused. The light swirled. Jake
stood watching me in his smart new suit. Tall and perfectly still in the
maelstrom that was pouring towards him from every corner of the room.

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ I asked,
my voice oddly steady. ‘That’s what really happened. You killed her. Stripped
her to make it look like a sexual attack. Hid her body in the shed. Wrote a
note to me to keep me happy. So things would look right. So nobody would
suspect that she hadn’t genuinely gone away. In trying to be perfect you made a
mistake.’

When he spoke his voice was
deceptively mild but I had seen the tightening of his stance, his body lining
up for any sudden movement.

‘Are you mad? Why on earth would I
kill Mona?’

‘Because she
recognized
you,
didn’t she? At some point, something connected and triggered memory of a face
at a window – a face etched in her memory like a brand.’

I remembered the scrapbook and the
repetitive attempts at drawing a perfect face. Jake Adler had been almost there
on that paper. Mona had given up too soon.

He was staring at me in shock.
‘You’re off your rocker.’

I went on, ‘For years she feared
meeting that face. And then in the lonely woods there’s a man on her doorstep.
How long did she take before she let you know she knew? At some point she must
have given herself away. She couldn’t contain her fear and loathing. Which was
unfortunate because there was no one to hear her scream.’ I was shaking so much
now, I had to lean against the door jam. ‘Then you stole Brent’s car. But it
conked before you could get very far. So you came back for Mona’s.’

My mind hopped a little. I needed
to get my phone and lock myself in the bathroom. The phone was behind me in my
bag on the bed. From there, two steps to the bathroom. I could do it if I was
fast.
Perhaps I could do it...

I took a tiny step backwards. ‘You’re
the Patterson murderer, aren’t you? On the run for all these years. No wonder
you didn’t want to brush with the police. How you’ve escaped until now is
nothing short of miracle. Ah, the blessing of an average face.’

He was a mass of angles and shadow,
an alien creature in my home. ‘You’ve lost your mind.’

‘Have I? You going to leave now in
a sulk? They’ll have you in an hour, you know.’

‘Yes.’ There was regret in his
voice. ‘If you want to cause trouble over some misconception on your part, then
yes, they’ll have me in the hour.’

‘I intend to cause trouble.’

Still we stood unmoving. The room
seemed to eddy and sway as though my blood was not flowing freely through my
head. I said, as though I was talking down a long dark tunnel to this quiet,
soft-eyed stranger in my living room, ‘Why did you kill Julia Patterson? She
was only seventeen.’

For a moment he was silent. And
then, perhaps because he had already planned his solution, he finally gave up
his secrets: ‘Because she wouldn’t pay for the drugs.’

Enlightenment came. ‘So the whole
thing about Brent and the drug framing was a load of baloney. You were part of
the package from the get go.’

‘Brent ratted on me to save his own
skin.’

‘But you deserved your jail time
after all.’

He remained silent.

‘Seventeen, Jake. How could you do
that?’

‘She threatened to report me to her
parents and the police. It was too big a risk.’

‘And you fixed it?’

‘It wasn’t my first choice.’

‘Oh, you negotiated?’

For a moment irritation marred the
handsome face. ‘Believe me, I tried every persuasion I could. She was in a
mood. She was difficult. Determined to cause trouble.’

‘That’s us women,’ my words bit at
him ‘always ready to make trouble.’

He took a step forward. ‘Don’t do
this, Casey.’

‘You murdered my friend – a
beautiful, delightful, clever young woman with her whole life ahead – and you
expect me to say nothing?’

‘You don’t understand, Casey. I
love you.’

It was truly bizarre. He really
thought I would brush Mona’s death aside and fall into his arms because he had
professed love? It made me realize that insanity had too many levels, woven so
deeply in some people that disentanglement was impossible. For one curious
second, I remembered the tired, patient look in Dr Mensen’s eyes.

And I knew I was in deep, deep
trouble.

There was a crystalline moment. Silence reverberated. There would be no going
back to that merry evening of champagne and roses…life would now be measured on
how fast either one of us could move. And we both knew this.

‘I want you to leave my flat.’

I could hardly get the words out.
After all my attempts at circumventing danger with regard to Todd Pennington,
here it was clear and present a few feet away; a darker evil than I could have
imagined.

He gave a slight sound, a laugh.
‘And let you phone the police?’

‘I’ll give you a fair chance.’

He snorted. ‘Aw, Casey. Don’t be
naïve.’

‘Why would a third murder be
helpful to you?’

‘Because the first two served their
purpose.’

The words were callously
indifferent. My death would only make him a little more bland, a little more
secretive. I saw now that his peaceful aura was nothing of the sort; it was purely
a lack of visible emotion; a façade that hid the real dark heart of him,
unreachable, unknowable. A wasteland.

I balanced, inched backwards,
trotted out the futile cliché of helpless people: ‘You won’t get away with it.’

‘No?’ He smiled. ‘Why not? If the
stories you tell me about Todd Pennington are true, then I suspect he will have
a lot of explaining to do.’

Shock almost made me stagger. He
was right. There were a number of witnesses already lined up and waiting for
Todd. Unless he had a watertight alibi he would be the first suspect. And Jake
had saved me in the forest, I had testified to that fact. And why would he do
that if only to kill me here? It would make no sense. Because if I died, nobody
would know the truth about Mona.

I whirled, reached my bag on the
bed, raced for the bathroom.

I was at the door, pushing it open,
my hand on the lock.

My shoe slid. I grabbed the door
handle for support, pushed up…had to slam the door, to turn the lock…the
lock
…
dammit
…the
lock
…must hit the lock before he hit the door…

There was a strange moment of
utterly terrifying silence while I fumbled. And then he was there, the shape of
him in shadow like a huge black bird swooping out of the sky. His hand closed
over the knot of hair at the back of my head. He kicked my feet from under me.
The treacherous, spiky shoes toppled.

And he was dragging me by my hair towards
the bed.

I couldn’t scream, couldn’t make a
sound. My mind was so closed up with terror I couldn’t think of anything but
that imminently I would be dead, nothing more than a contorted waxwork on my
own bed. The brightness of this image weakened me. My violent, futile
scrabbling was pointless. He would win anyway. I would tire…and then his big
hands would be around my small throat…

I reached up to his eyes, bit down
on his hands, using every strength of energy I could find to fight him. He
landed a blow to the side of my head that came like a lead bar hitting my
skull. My teeth chattered as though racked by a sudden chill. I fought like a
wildcat. Viciously, I pulled a lump of his hair out, I left a score of blood on
his cheek. I kicked up between his legs. His hold loosened fractionally and I
fell backwards onto the bed. In a second he fell on me, his weight pinning me
down. I let loose one terrified shriek before his hand covered my mouth. His
fist smashed violently into my jaw. I saw blood spatter on his face, the
strange cold light in his eyes. I thought of Mona deep in the lonely woods,
fighting for her life just like this…fighting that desperate battle to find a
weapon…and I pressed back…arms flailing.

I remembered the knife under my
pillow.

As he levered a knee up to hold me steady, I slid my hand under a pillow,
praying I would hit the right spot. I only had seconds to save myself. In a few
moments I would be incapable of moving. That was his sole intention. I could
hear him breathing heavily, on a surge of high focus. He was looking down at my
face, concentrating on stilling my wriggling body, wanting nothing else but to
close my wild, staring eyes forever.

My fingers found the cold steel of
the knife, closed tight. Pain was now beginning to transmit to my brain. Anger
ripped through the terror. All I wanted was revenge…to wreak a terrible punishment.
It gave me the strength I needed.

I whipped out the knife and slashed
forward. I aimed for bare flesh because I didn’t want the obstruction of
clothes to ruin my strike. The knife slashed deep across his neck but not deep
enough to hold. Blood welled in the cut, poured along the collar of his new
blue shirt. It was enough to shock him but not enough to seriously wound. I had
achieved surprise but not death. But the unexpected had its advantage; he
flinched backwards, letting me go.

I stabbed again and he slid away,
an arm raised in defense.

‘You fucking cunt!’ he almost wept.

I kicked him in the face with one
spiky shoe. He reared away, bloodied, yelping in pain.

I chased him down with the knife,
struck again. The blade thudded into his arm. I leapt off the bed. He caught my
hand and jerked me back. The knife flew across the room. He was on his knees. I
slammed a spiky shoe into his crotch. There was a high-pitched screaming. I
wasn’t sure if it was his or mine.

His hand slipped.

I ran.

In the living room the spiky shoes took their turn with me. Between the couch
and the coffee table, my ankle cracked sideways. Bone thumped to the floor. The
pain was excruciating. I fell sideways onto the couch and Jake caught me there,
slamming his knee into my stomach. He was making whimpering sounds, his teeth
bared. The look of cold calculating assurance was gone. This had become a fight
to the death for which he was unprepared. His big hands reached for my throat.