by ML Rose
“Missus! Missus!”
It was Edna, and her tone was raised, urgent. Rebecca spun around and grabbed the banisters. Edna was coming up the staircase rapidly. She stopped when she caught Rebecca’s eyes, and pointed in the direction of the road. “There’s vans outside, parked opposite. People with cameras. I think they’re reporters.”
Anxiety lurched inside Rebecca’s stomach. She rushed to one of the upper-floor windows facing the street. She counted five vans, two of them with satellite dishes on top. Three photographers were setting up tripods on the road, with telephoto and zoom lenses focused on the house. Jeremy swore loudly and smacked one fist into another.
“That’s all we need! I’m calling the police right now.” He stormed off towards his study. Rebecca glanced at Edna, who had come upstairs and was standing on the landing.
Edna met her searching gaze with candour. “It wasn’t me, missus. You can check my phone, and my emails. I’ve always been loyal to you.”
Rebecca held her eyes for a few seconds longer, then nodded. In her own mind, she knew who had leaked the news to the media. It was Rhys. He had returned, and was hell-bent on destroying her entire life. Now she knew he wouldn’t stop. She had to stop him.
Her jaws flexed as a new anger gathered strength inside her. Had Rhys taken Reggie? How dare he? She would show the bastard. . . .
“Get your car ready. I will hide in the back, while you drive. Don’t drive too fast; otherwise, they won’t be able to see your face. Do you understand?”
“Yes, missus, I do.”
“I’ll meet you in the garage.”
As Edna hurried downstairs, Rebecca got ready. She knew where Rhys lived. Or rather, where he used to live. He boasted of having more than one property in London, left to him as part of his inheritance. She would start with his three-bedroom house in Brixton, where she had stayed on occasion. As she got dressed, her hands shook uncontrollably. Not for fear. She wasn’t afraid anymore. But she had to confront him, and asked the devil why he had killed her son. If she died in the process, she didn’t care.
Rebecca went downstairs and opened the garage door. Her own Range Rover hadn’t moved for the last couple of days. From the dashboard she took her torch. From the trunk she extracted a small shovel kept for snow and also a screwdriver from the wheel well. Edna came in, nodded to her, and raised the boot of the Ford Mondeo. Rebecca got inside. It was large enough to fit her comfortably as she pulled her knees to her face, then nodded at Edna. The housekeeper slammed the boot shut, then fired up the engine.
As the car pulled out on the road, Rebecca heard the muffled shouts from the reporters. She knew that Edna would follow her instructions. She heard the cameras clicking, and hoped the paparazzi were taking photos of the back seat as well. Nothing to see here, you vultures.
As the car gathered speed, she breathed in relief. After driving for a few blocks, Edna pulled into a side road and parked. She opened the boot and helped Rebecca out. She looked around, making sure she wasn’t followed.
“Go back home,” Rebecca instructed Edna. “Not immediately. Take a detour. I’ll be back in an hour or two, not more than that.” She breathed out, and focused on Edna. “If I’m not back in three hours, call the police.”
The elderly woman swallowed hard, concern creasing the corners of her eyes. “Where are you going? Is it safe?”
“Don’t worry about me. I think it’s safe, but I won’t know till I get there.”
Rebecca put the small shovel, torchlight and torchlight into her shoulder handbag. She waved goodbye to Miss Mildred, who stood watching her as Rebecca walked to the bus station across the road.
CHAPTER 35
Rebecca was dressed in a waist-length black coat which had a large hood. She had large dark glasses over her eyes and wore gloves on her hands. She wore sensible flats and clutched the shoulder strap of her handbag tightly as she walked.
Brixton hadn’t changed a great deal, she thought as she walked. The Victorian-era terraced buildings were charming enough, but the entire area had a grey and weary look, accentuated by the overflowing rubbish bins, unemployed youth lounging on street corners, and police cars patrolling the streets in watchful circles.
She dodged a dump truck and a group of men standing outside a barbershop. She avoided eye contact, knowing they were checking her out. Her feet moved swiftly, till she came upon the street she wanted. She stopped at the corner and swept her eyes up and down. If memory served her correctly, it was a mid-terrace house. The number was thirty-one and it had a green door.
She walked past a couple of boarded-up windows and a car with its windows smashed in. She kept moving till she came to number thirty-one. To her surprise, the door was ajar and the curtains were open. It was late afternoon, and lights were coming on in the surrounding houses. But number thirty-one remained dark. She walked to the end of the street, then did a loop.
Tendrils of cold breath rose in front of her eyes, shaped like question marks. Her lungs moved rapidly, heart cannon-balling against the ribs. She took her gloved hands out of her pockets and held them rigidly by her side. She could do this.
She had to do this.
Rebecca opened the rusty gate that was leaning to one side. It creaked noisily as she went in. The tiny front yard, no more than ten by fifteen feet, was overgrown with weeds. She remembered coming here. They had shared nights of passion in the bedroom upstairs. It was all dusty, distant memory now, replaced by this derelict, desolate reality. With a shaking hand she nudged the door. It opened wider without a sound. She stood for a while, prepared for someone or something to come barrelling out. Nothing happened. She heard no noise from inside. She swallowed hard, then stepped through the doorway.
The smell of damp and rotting wood hit her nostrils. The carpet was threadbare, and the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. Wallpaper peeled off the walls, showing thin plaster that had crumbled in places. To her left the staircase rose up, getting lost in darkness.
The radiator on the wall to her right was stone cold. The silence was absolute, as was the freezing cold. Her teeth chattered. Fear drummed inside her heart, but she had come too far to walk away now. It was obvious this place was uninhabited. No one had lived here for years. There was no furniture in the living room, the shelves barren, the carpet stained and torn up in places. The dining room behind was the same, and from the kitchen next to it came the acrid stench of either rotting food or a dead rodent.
Rebecca stepped back, nausea curdling in her guts.
She took out her torch and shone it up the stairs. The hallway upstairs was deserted, as expected.
She raised her voice. “Rhys? Rhys Mason? Are you there?”
Nothing but silence greeted her words. She called out again, but there was no answer. She climbed the stairs slowly, shining her torch around. In the other hand she held the spade.
She was braced for a figure to appear out from one of the rooms. But nothing happened. She got to the landing and flicked on a light switch. It didn’t work. There were three rooms in front of her, and a bathroom. All the doors were open and when she shone the torchlight inside, she saw nothing but old carpets and dirty walls. The furniture was gone. She turned the beam to the ceiling, and saw the square opening for the loft space. It was shut, and she had no intention of going up there.
“Let’s get this over and done with,” she whispered to herself. She crept forward and entered the first, and largest bedroom. If memory served her, this was the room where she and Rhys had. . . . She banished the memory from her mind with a shake of her head.
Like the other rooms, there was no furniture here. She shone the beam around the corners and stopped at the far left. The carpet had been lifted in the corner and wasn’t properly nailed down. She went over to it and crouched. She looked over her shoulder once to make sure she was alone. Then she put the torch down and grabbed the corner of the carpet with both gloved hands. It came up easily, revealing a piece of floorboard that had been sawn off.
She lifted the torchlight and flashed it inside.
Her mouth opened in shock as she realised what she was looking at.
Her fingers loosened, and the torch almost fell into the hole. The humming was louder in her brain again, bombarding the inside of her skull like a manic drilling machine. She shrank back, almost falling. She leaned against the wall, waiting till her breathing quietened. Then she looked inside the hole again.
She reached inside and pulled out a blue cloth. She knew this cloth very well. It had ‘Reginald Stone’ embroidered in golden letters in the bottom-right corner. She put the cloth to one side and looked down the hole again. She found a pair of man-sized trekking boots. With a shaking hand, she pulled the boots out. The jagged edges of the cut floorboard got in the way, and she dropped them once. She had to pull them out one by one. Then she leaned against the wall, gasping. The torch beam flickered on the two items, lying side by side on the carpet.
The blue cloth that had covered Reggie when he disappeared.
A pair of boots with dry, caked mud all over them.
CHAPTER 36
Light was fading from the December sky, a slow suffocation as the grip of dark clouds tightened over the dead, one-eyed gaze of a useless sun. The heavily pregnant woman had ventured out into her garden as she heard a noise. Must be the foxes again, she thought.
Martha looked out from the glass panel of the back door, towards the garden fence. Like most Londoners, she lived in the latticed framework of terraced houses that crisscrossed the city.
Behind her back garden fence laid the railway lines. There was also a path that ran alongside the lines. Often foxes came into her back garden, and she had to shoo them away. Her eyebrows creased as she looked around her small, twenty-by-thirty-feet back lawn.
The grass was hoary with frost, which was starting to melt. She couldn’t see the fox, but was sure she’d heard something. Martha was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, and as she got heavier, movements were increasingly laborious. She held the base of her baby bump and wished he would arrive quickly. Yes, it was a boy; the scan had verified that. A tiny expectant smile hovered on her lips as she took the kettle off the boil.
She had her antenatal classes this morning, but just didn’t feel up to walking to the bus stop and taking a ride to their community centre. Her friend, Kylie Denham, had asked her last night if she was going, and she had replied yes at the time. But this morning she felt slower and heavier than usual. A few Braxton Hicks contractions had also occurred, which her midwife had said was normal at this stage.
Her husband left for work early in the morning, and bless Tony, he had offered to start late so he could give her a lift to the antenatal class. She had refused, because even the midwife acknowledged that at this late stage, rest was more important. She had to stay active, however, because blood clots in the leg veins could easily occur at this point of the pregnancy if she didn’t keep her legs moving.
Martha heard the sound again, and this time it was a knocking sound against the wooden steps that went down into the garden. Pesky fox.
She picked up the broomstick that lay in a corner, meaning to rattle it against the stairs to give the fox a scare. The animal was probably sniffing around below the patio. She opened the back door and stepped out onto the small patio that led to the three stairs that descended into the garden. She banged the broomstick, hoping that would get the fox out from underneath.
She tried to look through the cracks, but it was dark under there. Martha advanced towards the stairs, wondering where the fox was. She heard the sound again and, a split second later, from the corner of her eye, the blurred image of a black shape came into view. It was a man, and he was upon her so quickly she didn’t have time to breathe. Before she knew it, he had clamped his hand over her mouth and was pushing her back towards the open door. Fear bulged inside her in a crimson wave and her eyes widened with shock. The man was dressed from head to toe in black running gear. His face was covered in a ski mask and the dark glasses over his eyes gave him a ghostly, demonic appearance.
She screamed but the hand was clamped tightly over her mouth. The man marched her back to the door, then shoved her inside. Martha landed on her back. A shattering spasm of pain ripped across her abdomen, making her cry out in agony. The door slammed shut.
Wave after wave of pain engulfed her, and she could barely see. Bile rose in her stomach and trickle down the side of her mouth. She opened her eyes in fear. The man was still there, and he was crouching next to her. His hands were covered in dark plastic gloves. In his right hand he held a kitchen knife, its gleaming tip shining brightly.
“Now,” the figure said, in a surprisingly light, almost sing-song voice, “give me your baby.”
*****
Kylie Denham had driven to Martha Smith’s house to check on her. Kylie didn’t attend the antenatal class either, but had come to see Martha instead. She was worried about her friend, who wasn’t responding to phone calls or text messages.
That was unlike her. Martha was normally a chatterbox, only too glad to speak to her. Kylie knew Martha stayed alone at home while her husband went to work. They had gotten to know each other quite well over the last seven months. Apart from Arla Baker, Martha was the best friend Kylie had made through the class. Arla hadn’t replied to her text either, but she knew Arla was busy with work.
She called Martha and again there was no response. The landline rang till it went to the answer phone. Kylie got out of the car. She heard the rattle of the railway lines behind the row of houses. To her surprise, the front door was ajar. She pushed it and the door fell open. Across the narrow hallway she could see the kitchen, with the windows and back door looking out to the garden. The house was silent, but soon she heard a sound. It was a grunting, moaning sound, as if someone was in pain. It made Kylie shiver, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention.
“Martha?” she called out. She got no response, but the grunting sound came again. It was coming from the kitchen, and Kylie trembled as she felt her heart rate go through the roof.
She stepped closer to the kitchen, noting the moaning sound was getting louder. Then she saw the feet on the ground. Then the pool of blood spreading around Martha, who lay on the floor. Kylie’s eyes opened wide in shock as she stumbled backwards.
She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. There was enough blood to fill an entire bathtub. The kitchen floor was soaked in blood, and all of it came from Martha’s abdomen. It had been hacked open and the abdominal cavity was a mangled mess of blood and tissue. There was a hole where the large uterus had been, and the baby was missing. The placenta lay collapsed, like a ruptured balloon, and an artery still pulsed out blood from within. Martha lay with her eyes closed, her face white as a sheet.
Kylie scrambled backwards, reaching for her phone. Her fingers shook, but she managed to dial 999.
“My friend, my friend. . . . She’s been stabbed to death; her baby’s been stolen. Please help.”
CHAPTER 37
“Bloody hell!” Arla whispered as Harry drove the car down Baskerville Avenue.
Vans lined both sides of the road, several with satellite dishes on top. In front of two vans, journalists were reporting, with a camera and soundman in front of them. Several reporters leaned against their vans, smoking. An electric spark seemed to touch them as soon as they saw the black BMW. They straightened, getting cameras ready.
Harry parked the car on the road, as the drive was already full. Rebecca’s Range Rover was outside, as was another Audi SUV that Arla hadn’t seen before. She glared out of the window at the reporters who now stood outside the car. Harry opened her door, then reached out a long arm and pushed away the microphones that were thrust in Arla’s direction.
“Are you Detective Inspector Arla Baker?”
“Inspector Baker, do you suspect anyone in the family?”
Arla’s jaw muscles bunched tight as she tried to hide her shock and disbel
ief. How on earth did they know her name? She didn’t know exactly what the media knew, and the media liaison officer, with whom she’d had a meeting before she left, wasn’t any wiser.
Arla had reassured Johnson that it wasn’t any of her team, and she doubted that on such a high-profile case it would be any other policeman. Reporters never revealed their sources, but if a copper was a snitch, word got out eventually. Even Justin Beauregard wouldn’t dare leak anything on a case like this.
Which meant the person who had informed the media also knew who she was. That left a bitter taste at the back of her tongue. An unease that lay coiled, like a dormant serpent with sharp fangs. She couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that the same person was behind this chain of events. Alerting the media was the best way to pile pressure on the Stone family.
Now the perp was dragging her into it as well, and she couldn’t help wondering if their paths had ever crossed.
The reporters clamoured for her attention, snapping photographs and firing questions. Harry shielded her with his broad back and arms outstretched like a giant condor, and she turned and walked towards the house. The front gate was unlocked, as the family had been informed that Arla was on her way. The media had to stop there as well, but they became even more voluminous.
“Detective Baker, when will you make an announcement?”
“Is Rebecca Stone a suspect? What about the husband?”
“Is Grant Stone inside?”
The iron gates shut, but the media vultures kept taking photos through the grills of the gate. Finally, they withdrew as Arla and Harry entered the house. Jeremy Stone opened the door for them, then slammed it shut. He stood there with arms folded on his chest, feet spread wide. His eyes were blazing and open hostility was carved into every line of his face.
