Chapter 72
SEVENTY-TWO
She ran up to the children’s rooms. Will was still reading, but Tilly’s light was off. Flicking it on, she saw to her relief that she was there and all right.
‘I need you to wake up, darling. I don’t have time to explain now, but I need you and Will to go into Daddy’s office and lock the door.’ The attic room, directly above the children’s bedrooms, was one of the few that had a lock.
Tilly started to protest, but Will, bless him, was already coming into her room. ‘I’ll take her. C’mon, Tills, we’ll be fine,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Kate dashed up to the next floor, to check the attic room was definitely empty, before going back downstairs.
She wondered if she should arm herself with something – a kitchen knife, say.
But it had always been drummed into them, back in London, that carrying a knife, even one you didn’t intend to use, was what led to people getting stabbed.
Even so, she felt very exposed and vulnerable as she checked the downstairs rooms one by one. He could be hiding anywhere—
But he wasn’t hiding. He was in the sitting room, standing with his back to her, looking out of the window.
All you could see out there was black, flecked with occasional gobbets of snow that the wind was already flinging at the glass.
But perhaps he was remembering what it had been like before, when he lived here.
He glimpsed her reflection in the glass and turned. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
‘Saw you on the doorbell,’ he said at last. ‘Taking Mum to visit his grave. How dare you? How fucking dare you? That’s my job.’
Of all the things she’d done, all the reasons to hate her, to focus on that seemed bizarre. ‘She wanted to go, and the roads aren’t safe. So of course I gave her a lift.’
‘They won’t bury you there,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Only proper locals get the graveyard. Our name still counts for something here. Despite your efforts to drag it through the mud. Emailing my schoolfriends. Spreading vile rumours about Dad.’
He took something from his pocket. It was a knife, she saw – the whittling knife Paul had given Will. It seemed a lifetime ago, now.
‘This is mine.’ He pulled it out of its sheaf to examine the blade. ‘Dad had no right to give it to you. Just like this place.’
He seemed oddly calm – detached, even; the rage she’d sensed in him ever since his father’s death strangely muted. Almost, she thought, as if the time for emotion was over, and this was now something else entirely.
‘The tragedy is, all this could have been avoided,’ he added. ‘If you’d never invited them to spend Christmas here – if they’d never said they’d rather do that, than come to mine . . . I probably wouldn’t have come back. So, you see, you’ve only yourself to blame.’
‘You need to put that down and get out of my house,’ she said firmly.
He snorted. ‘Or what? You’ll call the police?’ He gestured outside the window. ‘How fast do you think they’ll get here in this? No, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. Quite literally.’
He held up the blade. ‘The children go first. I’ve thought quite hard about that – whether it’s worse for you to die knowing they’re dead, or that I’m about to kill them. Tough call. But, in the end, I decided they go first.’
He was serious, she realised with a flash of horror. ‘You must know you’d never get away with it.’
‘You think?’ He considered. ‘Fresh snow covering my tracks, an alibi from the most prominent landowner in the area . . . I’d say I have a pretty good chance. And you’ve been getting death threats, haven’t you? Anonymous notes in the post. That should keep the police busy for a while.’
‘That was you,’ she realised.
He nodded. ‘Matt will definitely sell up after this, won’t he? Can’t see him living all alone in the house where his family was butchered. I’ll probably get it for next to nothing. Nothing like the murder of some poor innocent kids and their mum to drive down the price.’
She couldn’t help it – she glanced up at the ceiling, in the direction of the children. Her attention was only away from him for a second. But when she looked back, he’d vanished.
There was another door at the far end of the sitting room – once, in Trade Cottage’s perplexing layout, the house’s back door, although now it gave into the corridor. He must have gone through that. But to where?
She searched for him again, but it was like some terrible game of hide-and-seek, with him using his knowledge of the house to evade her.
Drawing a blank, she went to the foot of the staircase.
It didn’t matter where he went, so long as he didn’t go up there, to the children. So this was where she’d stay.
A sudden gust of icy air swept past her. He must have opened an outside door. But why? It seemed unlikely that he’d simply given up and gone away again. What was he playing at?
She went into the captain’s study and, without turning on the lights, peered through the oriel window.
The wych elm was thrashing in the wind, the last few leaves ripping from the bare branches, the shrubs tossing and straining from the ground as the storm intensified. Where the hell was he? And why?
Suddenly, he was there, right outside the window, grinning at her through the glass. He slid the ladder down from the scaffolding with one easy pull and scurried up –
The scaffolding. He’d realised he could use it to bypass the inside of the house completely. He’d see the children’s bedrooms were empty, but it would only take him moments to climb to the next level, to the attic room where they were hiding –
She dashed to the open door. The wind, freighted with wet snow, hit her like icy surf breaking over her.
She struggled to the ladder, then followed him up.
The metal poles were freezing to the touch, the whole structure moaning and swaying precariously in the wind.
As she climbed, she looked for something she could pull loose, to use as a weapon, but each pole was secured to the next with clips.
She reached the platform of wooden planks outside Trade Cottage’s first floor. He wasn’t there – he must have already gone up to the higher level. She took the next ladder more tentatively, in case he was waiting for her at the top.
He was standing at the attic room window, feverishly levering at it with his knife. Seeing her, he grinned wolfishly and pointed the blade in her direction, daring her to come and tackle him. When she paused, trying to work out what to do, he turned back to the window.
Inside, she heard Tilly scream. Desperately, she did the only thing she could – she put both hands against Trade Cottage’s wall and pushed as hard as possible.
For a moment, she thought nothing was happening, that the scaffolding wasn’t going to give, but the savage wind was helping her and she felt movement underfoot.
She wrapped her arms round the metal corner bar and got her feet against the wall, putting her back into it, trying to ignore the huge clots of icy snow pelting her face, and with a sudden wrench she felt the scaffolding peel away from the house, ripped off by the wind, the metal poles flying like matchsticks, the wooden planks collapsing under her feet.
She saw his look of incredulity and shock, and then they were both falling, in a blur of wood and metal, a cascade of spars and planks and debris, and she mentally braced herself for the impact that was about to come.