The Attic Room: A psychological thriller (5 page)

‘Stratford. Guided tour plus ‘A Merchant of Venice’. I’ll
text you a picture, shall I? Then first thing Monday morning I’ll get on to
your business, and I’ll call to tell you what’s happening as soon as I know.
What’ll you do tomorrow?’

‘I guess I’ll start clearing. Clothes, books and stuff. I’m
not going to keep the house.’

The decision had made itself, so it must be the right one.

Sam didn’t sound surprised. ‘The estate shouldn’t take long
to settle. You can have it on the market by the autumn.’

Nina closed the door behind him and trailed through to the
kitchen. Hopefully, by the autumn this house would be a distant memory and John
Moore’s millions would be safely in the bank on Arran.

Monday, 17th July

The blackmail letter arrived sometime between eight-thirty
and nine-fifteen on Monday morning.

By half past eight Nina was scurrying towards the local
supermarket, huddled under one of John Moore’s better umbrellas and trying to
avoid the worst of the puddles. The easterly wind blowing a gale against her
added to the misery; controlling the big umbrella was challenging to say the
least. If she hadn’t needed some basic necessities like bread and bin bags, she
would never have attempted it and how she was going to manage the return
journey, with full shopping bags, she had no idea.

The river was full and flowing more swiftly than she’d seen
it so far, its waters brown and muddy to match her mood. Her sojourn here had
been bearable in sunny summer weather with Sam around to talk to, but after
thirty-six hours in her own company Nina felt tired and jaded.

Being an heiress isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she
thought, scraping damp strands of hair away from her eyes. She had all that
money, yet here she was, staying in a pretty sordid house, and now she had to
go out in a monsoon – or it would be if it wasn’t so bloody cold – and buy her
own bread. Talk about Monday morning. She was doing something wrong here. And
thank heavens, here was the supermarket.

The rain had slackened off to a drizzle when she emerged
clutching her bags of provisions, and Nina pulled up her hood and left the
umbrella to its fate in the stand by the door. There were at least another
three in the coat rack at ‘home’.

The letter was on the mat when she opened the door, and Nina
stared at the single envelope. John Moore’s held-back stuff was supposed to be
coming this morning; surely there should be more post than this. She lifted the
thin envelope and went on through to the kitchen.

Oh – this hadn’t come by post. Nina stared at John Moore’s
name printed in Times New Roman on a sticky label on the envelope. There was no
address, no stamp. From a neighbour, maybe – or one of John’s elusive friends?
But why the label? She sat down at the table to open it, and pulled out a
single A4 sheet, folded in four. The print here was Times New Roman too,
large-sized and italicised.

Horror chilled its way through Nina as she read.

Did you think you’d paid me off? Did you
think I’d go away? Wrong both times, paedo. You don’t have enough money to pay
for what you did. Do you think I don’t remember screaming my poor little head
off while you and your paedo mates got off on it? Pervert, paedo, and now you
can pay. It’ll cost you double this time. £4,000. And I’ll be back for more.
Like you were, pervert.

Nina dropped the letter on the table and leapt to her feet,
hands over her mouth. Dear God, what a disgusting letter. John Moore – a
paedophile? Could that be? Shit, shit, what on earth should she do now?

Phone the police, the rational part of her brain said
immediately. Blackmail’s an offence, no matter who did what, and the police
could find out if there was any truth to the allegations.

Feeling sick to her stomach, Nina hurried through to the
study for the phone directory she’d noticed there, and looked up the number of
the police station. The person she spoke to was calm and reassuring, told her
someone would be round in fifteen minutes, and warned her not to touch the
letter again. Nina broke the connection and called Sam’s number. He should know
about this too. Loneliness crept through her as she waited for him to connect.
If only Beth were here and not hundreds of miles away. And oh, if this had all
happened a few short weeks ago she’d have had Claire to call on both for help
and for information about John Moore. The images the letter was conjuring up
were appalling. Nina squinted at it on the table.

…
screaming my poor little head off
…

Dear God but she had done that too, up on the top floor of
this house… she had screamed too…

Nina dropped her phone on the table and stumbled to the
downstairs toilet where she vomited hot, burning liquid into the bowl. When the
spasm was over she splashed water on her face and stared at her reflection,
sheet-white in the rust-marked mirror. Get a grip, woman, the police’ll be here
any minute. They’ll know what to do. And Sam, hell, what must he be thinking,
she’d called his number, dropped her mobile, and ran.

He was shouting her name down the phone when she picked it
up.

‘I’m on my way,’ he said when she told him. ‘I’ll be with
you in ten, okay?’

‘Yes,’ she said dully. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’

A muffled thud in the hallway made her jump, but it was only
the postman. Nina’s fingers shook as she sat in the kitchen, sifting through
the bundle of letters and ads from the past couple of weeks. But thank God,
apart from the gas and electricity bills there was nothing here that needed
attention.

The doorbell rang and she trailed through to answer it. Two
police officers were standing there, a grey-haired older man with a comfortable
face and a blonde woman who looked very severe but was probably only
twenty-five or so. They introduced themselves as Detective Inspector David
Mallony and Detective Constable Sabine Jameson. Nina led them into the kitchen
where they stood beside the table, reading the letter where it lay, their faces
grim. DI Mallony pulled on gloves and eased both envelope and letter into
plastic folders.

‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Must have given you quite a shock. And
this John Moore is - ?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Nina, feeling better now she could hand
the letter over to experts. ‘He died last week and I’ve inherited this house,
you see. I didn’t know him and I’m not sure what relation he was to me. His –
my lawyer’s finding out about that today.’

It sounded strange as she said it, but DI Mallony merely
nodded.

A sudden idea came to Nina and she sat straighter. Maybe
science could help her. ‘Is there a test I could get done to find out about the
relationship, even though he’s dead? A DNA test or something?’

David Mallony sat down, his expression giving nothing away. ‘There
is, but if it’s a distant relationship it can take a while to get the results.
It’s not like a paternity test which is back in a day or two.’

‘Could you arrange for me to take a paternity test?’ said
Nina. A negative result would be exactly what she wanted, much better than an
old marriage certificate or family tree.

‘I think you’d better tell me why you want it,’ said David
Mallony, staring at her over the table. ‘Is there any doubt about who your
father is?’

Nina took a deep breath. All she could do was tell the
truth. She was in the middle of explaining when the doorbell rang and Sabine
Jameson went to let Sam in. He touched Nina’s shoulder and sat down beside her.

David Mallony listened without speaking, his face grave. ‘I
see. Well, we can certainly arrange a paternity test though I imagine you’ll
have to pay for it yourself.’

‘Nina – I’ve heard back from the GRO. They traced your birth
certificate. John Robert Moore was your father,’ said Sam, putting a hand on
her shoulder again.

Nina winced. How stupid, her own birth certificate – it was
the logical starting place; she should have thought of that herself. It must be
at home, in the folder where Claire kept all the important documents, but for
the life of her Nina couldn’t remember ever seeing it. And why on earth that
should be was difficult to understand.

She glared at Sam. ‘Hell. But that can’t be right. There
must be some mistake. I still want the test.’ She raised her eyebrows at David
Mallony.

‘Of course.’ His voice was quite neutral.

Nina nodded. Thank God he’d agreed. Surely the test would
show that she wasn’t John Moore’s daughter. And when she was safely back on
Arran she would research Robert Moore’s side of the family. It might be
something Naomi would enjoy helping with, too.

Sam leaned towards her. ‘You’re doing the right thing; a
test’ll give you certainty. Oh, and the cremation’s organised for 10 a.m.
Wednesday,’ he said, and David Mallony took a note of the details. Nina was
silent. A cremation with no service, no mourners, no funeral flowers. How
tragic. A sordid end to any kind of life. But oh, God, what had John Moore
done? Was there any truth at all in that blackmail letter?

David Mallony asked several more questions about John Moore,
the house, and if she had noticed anyone hanging around since she arrived. Nina
answered as well as she could, wondering all the time if she should tell them
about the moment when she’d felt she remembered crying up in the attic room.
But it was so vague – what child didn’t cry at some point? Yet the phrase ‘screaming
my poor little head off’ had stirred something deep inside her, some
long-forgotten terror.

Say nothing for the moment, she thought. She could tell the
police later if she remembered anything more concrete. Anyway, there was
nothing to say that the accusation in the letter was true, and even if it was,
John Moore was beyond prosecution now.

The two detectives had a look round the house, spending
quite a long time in the study, then left, taking John Moore’s laptop with them
and telling Nina to go to the police station for a cheek swab later that
morning.

Nina closed the door and turned back to the kitchen, where
Sam was making coffee.

‘Are you all right, Nina? What an ordeal.’

‘I want to go home,’ she said, sinking onto a hard wooden
chair and rubbing her face with both hands. She would phone Beth as soon as Sam
had gone, and – but dear God, she couldn’t tell her friend over the phone that
she thought she remembered screaming in the attic owned by a man who might turn
out to be her father and who had now been accused of being a paedophile… She
would break down and howl before she’d said six words. A sob escaped before she
could suppress it.

Sam put a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘Nina, talk to me.
I can see there’s something more.’

She turned her face away. This was way too personal to tell
someone she’d only known a few days, even if he was her lawyer and ‘nice’. And
fancied her. Especially if he fancied her.

‘It’s nothing,’ she tried to say, but the words came out in
a cracked whisper.

…
screaming my poor little head off
…
Fuck, fuck, that was a memory, she could remember screaming, there had been a
lot of screaming…

What had happened to her?

Sam tried to grasp her hands and she yanked them away,
conscious that she was shaking all over now.

‘Nina, you can tell me, or you can tell the doctor. Whatever
this is you can’t deal with it alone. Which do you want?’ He was holding his
mobile, thumb poised to tap.

Nina stared at him, bleary-eyed. She didn’t want to confide
in him, but perhaps she should. She needed an impartial opinion, and telling
Sam would be better than having him summon yet another stranger here.

‘I – when I read the letter I remembered screaming too,
upstairs in the attic room,’ she whispered, not looking at him, unable to stop
her teeth chattering.

For a moment there was silence, then Sam reached out and
squeezed her hand very briefly. Nina fought for control over her breathing. It
was a relief to have told someone, though Beth would have been a better
someone.

‘But Nina – if that’s an accurate memory then - ‘

‘Then the allegations in that letter could well be true,’
said Nina bleakly. She took a deep, shaky breath, then another. ‘Sam, I know.
It’s so horrible – I just don’t remember enough. Hell, I was only three years
old when we left this house, nobody would - ‘

She broke off, yet more horror flooding through her as she
realised what she had said. This house… it had been this house, her gut
instinct was shrieking that now.

Another thought crashed into her head. This could be the
reason for Claire’s flight from Bedford and the Moore family. Maybe they hadn’t
left because Robert Moore died – Claire could have been running from an abusive
John Moore. But how could she find out, all these years later? Nina swallowed,
her throat dry and painful.

And of course, of course, hell – this would be why Claire
took over the application for both their passports so firmly. Nina closed her
eyes, remembering. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time; she signed
the appropriate pages and left the bundle with Claire to ‘send off with all the
paperwork’. Shit. She’d been twenty-two, Naomi was a toddler, and Claire had ‘done
the donkey work’, as she called it. Did she do it to prevent Nina noticing her
father’s name on her birth certificate? Nothing seemed more likely now.

Dear God, where was this going to end?

‘I think you should go to a hotel,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t forget,
whoever wrote that letter is out there somewhere.’

Nina stared out of the kitchen window. Rain was dripping
from the ivy growing up the garden wall. ‘There’s no reason to think he’d harm
me. All I want is to finish up here as soon as I can and then go home, Sam.
Back to Arran.’

‘I’ll do everything I can to get you on the first possible
plane north. Let’s wait and see what the police say when they get into John
Moore’s computer. They might find an explanation there.’

Sam left soon after and Nina set her shoulders. She was
going to get on with things here. First stop was the police station for her
cheek swab, and then she would continue what she’d started yesterday, bagging
John Moore’s stuff.

But how scary it was that John Moore, whether or not he was
her father and whether or not he was a criminal – had known about her all the
time. The thought made her feel invaded, as if he’d been snooping about in her
life.

By evening she’d made good headway clearing John Moore’s
possessions and organised with a charity shop in town to take some bits and
pieces. It felt good, having a menial task to do, and it gave her time to
think. Either John Moore was her father – and she was still hoping he wasn’t –
or he was a more distant relation. He may have abused the letter-writer in the
past, but it was also possible that the writer was nothing more than a mean
chancer after the money. After all, a sick, single man might pay up simply to
stop someone making a false allegation.