Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

Before heading up to bed, Lottie checked that all the doors and windows were locked. At the front door she thought she saw a shadow move behind the glass. Boyd?

She unhooked the chain, turned the key in the mortise lock and opened the door. There was no one there. The day had been exhausting and she felt her knees creak with tiredness. Seeing things now, she told herself. The image of the two murdered women lying on slabs in the morgue wouldn’t dissipate. Must be that, she thought.

About to close the door, she decided: no, best to have a proper look. She walked down the narrow path and onto the road. No cars. No cats or dogs. The rain had eased. Silence and serenity despite the whisper of a slow drizzle.

She went back up the path and paused as light spilled out from her hallway onto the step. What was that? Bending down, she studied a scattering of small seeds spread across the concrete. Had they been there when she went out a moment ago? She swung around. No one there.

And then she knew. She knew who had left them. Were they a warning, or an invitation to battle?

A bolt of fear slashed through her body. It was like someone had cut her veins and her lifeblood was slipping away. There was only one person she knew who had an unhealthy obsession with seeds and herbs. She had discovered this fact during her investigations which led to the arrest of her half-sister.

Bernie Kelly had been outside her house.

The woman curled away from the bush across the road as the door slammed shut. She was smiling to herself.

Lottie had got the message.

Shoving her hands deep into her pockets, she hummed a tuneless song deep within her throat. She wasn’t stupid enough to sing out loud. She couldn’t sing anyway.

Turning the corner, she moved out onto the main road, keeping close to the hedges. After a year cooped up, hands cuffed to her bed more often than not, it was good to be out in the fresh air. She didn’t care how long that freedom lasted, as long as she completed the task she had set out to do.

Now it was up to Rose Fitzpatrick to play her part and deliver the second piece of the message.

And then the serious business could begin.

He’d forgotten to get the milk. But she was already asleep when he returned home, so he went straight to his room. He needed a shower, but the exertions of the last few hours had drained his energy. He stripped naked and lay on the hard mattress.

He hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains. The lights from the road shone in on the walls, and he stared at a myriad of cobwebs clinging to the light bulb in the ceiling. Just like him, clinging on to reality.

Her deep green eyes were everywhere. Her sharp nose and inquisitive lips. And the eyes. They were what he remembered most clearly. How she’d peered at him from the witness box while she stood there telling her lies. She knew they were lies, because he knew the truth.

His fingers cramped from the cold and his toes were freezing. The Raynaud syndrome was back. It was too cold to get back out of bed to fetch socks. Pulling the thin blanket up to his neck, he thought of her again. Lottie Parker. And her coven of witches who had conspired against him.

Lying awake, he tried to think up new ways to make them pay for the ten years of his life that were lost for ever.

The shower was too hot, but Tony stood under it, scrubbing and scrubbing until his skin was almost raw. When he was sure he was clean, he stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist, letting the air cool his throbbing flesh.

He missed her. On nights like this, he craved the sheen of her flesh against his. The aroma of their lovemaking. The taste of her body. The loving look in her eyes. No. Stop. She never had a loving look in her eyes. Derision and disgust. That was all he ever witnessed in the blackness. And now it made him shiver and his skin shrivel.

Eventually he dried himself, switched off the shower and the light, and padded flat-footed and naked to bed.

Bernie had left hours ago, but Rose still sat in the same position.

What was she going to do? She had to tell Lottie. But how?

She bit down on her already shredded nails and shook her head. In all her seventy-odd years, with everything that had happened to her, she had never experienced the anguish and terror that she now felt.

She could not tell Lottie what Bernie had said. But at the same time, she had to protect her daughter and her grandchildren.

She sat and pulled at her nails until the sky slowly began to light up the kitchen once again.