The Housekeeper's Daughter by E.V. Seymour

Author:E.V. Seymour [SEYMOUR, E.V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty

I felt jittery. Martell’s death had spooked me. Monica was due at the police station at 10.30 a.m. God only knew where that would lead. She phoned after the first sparrow cheeped, long before she left for Birmingham.

“Gavin couldn’t get away sooner. He’s arranged to meet me tomorrow in Cheltenham.”

“I’m glad. Will you be all right today?”

“Oh yes,” she said, sounding inexplicably buoyant.

“You’ll keep me posted about what happens?”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

I wished her well, dragged myself out of bed, downed pills with coffee, and dressed in my warmest clothes. Insanely early, I had two hours before I was due at the Lodge.

Shoulders tensed, I criss-crossed through a web of side streets, past The Brewery, and joined Swindon Road fifteen minutes walk away. Dark and overcast, cold seeped into my bones.

Wandering towards one of the University campuses seemed my best bet, but there was no sign of a derelict pub, only a tranche of terraced houses with shiny double-glazed windows.

I crossed the road and ducked into a street flanked on the left by steel mesh fencing, signs of demolition, and warning notices to stay out. A sudden gust of wind picked up and billowed underneath my padded coat. It felt like an omen. Here I was, close to a busy part of town. Streets away, people would be getting up and going to work, parents dropping kids off at nursery, college kids jacking up on coffee and fizzy drinks. Yet a single darting glance over my shoulder revealed that I was utterly alone.

And I was scared.

Banging in my head. Stammering in my chest. And something, far, far worse, the reason for my breakdown, an image of Andy Johnson, Chris’s murderer, my stalker and assailant, haunting me, his face burned and blistered, eye bulging red then opaque and sightless. I pitched forward, doubled up, one hand pressed against my chest, open-mouthed, gasping. Grabbing hold of a lamppost to steady myself, I closed my eyes tight shut. When I opened them the tableau of horror had vanished.

Sweat erupting under my arms and behind my knees, I broke into a frantic run. I had to get out of the narrow street, find people and colour and normality before it, whatever it was, swallowed me whole.

My boots clattering in the early morning, a flutter of blue and white caught my eye. I slowed. Crime scene tape stretched across the entrance of a manky looking building with boarded up windows and entrances, the remnants of an old pub sign hanging like a gibbet in the breeze. Bouquets of flowers, pressed tight along the crumbling brickwork, huddled together from the bitter chill. This was Troy Martell’s last miserable and unappealing view of the world. We were right. It was no random attack. Martell had come here for a reason, to collect something, or meet someone. He would never have known that he was about to be butchered, his toned and muscled body exposed and vulnerable and broken for the entire world to see.

I didn’t dwell there.

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