The Dinner Party

by R. J. Parker

  How long would he have to ride this one out? Till tomorrow, for a few days or whenever the argument broke? He finished at the sink and switched off the light.

  The lamp was on at Juliette’s side of the bed, but she’d clicked it off before he got in. That didn’t bode well. Juliette always snuggled down and read her Kindle, only her hands protruding from the duvet, and usually only turned off the lamp when the screen had fallen against her nose. But suddenly her warm hands held his face.

  ‘I love you,’ her minty lips kissed him in the darkness. Then she released him.

  ‘Love you too.’ But he sensed she didn’t want him to try to find her mouth again.

  Juliette turned her back to him, as if she wanted him to nuzzle her shoulders. He did and her body nestled into him.

  Ted felt relief but was sure her eyes remained open as well.

  He was still checking the time at three o’clock and knew Juliette was too. But not long after 3.40 her breathing became shallow and Ted fell asleep.

  At 4.02 they were both wrenched awake. After a moment, Ted realized it was the sound of their landline ringing. It very rarely rang now, and Juliette had suggested they disconnect it as most people used their personal numbers. Ted scrabbled for it on his side of the bed.

  ‘Quick, before it wakes Georgie.’ Juliette sounded groggy.

  Ted knocked a framed photo of him and Juliette off the bedside, as he frantically searched for the handset. Sounded like the glass had broken. He squinted at the phone’s glowing green keys and tried to remember which one was answer. It had already rung a good few times. He focused and punched the pick-up button. ‘Hello?’

  The line was dead.

  ‘They hung up,’ he explained.

  They both hated getting phone calls in the middle of the night. The last one had been about Juliette’s father. Ted heard her swallow.

  Then a muted buzzing started.

  ‘That’s mine.’ Juliette sat up.

  ‘Where is it?’

  Juliette turned on her lamp, scrabbled naked out of bed and grabbed her phone from her handbag on a dressing table chair under the curtained window. ‘One missed call. Hello?’

  Ted hinged upright, his circulation thudding between his eyes.

  ‘Evie?’ Juliette frowned. The only sound was muffled shouting on the other end of the line. ‘Wait, slow down.’

  Evie. Why the hell was she calling at this hour?

  ‘Evie, take a breath.’

  Even from the bed, Ted could hear Evie’s voice yelling in Juliette’s ear. What was going on?

  ‘OK, OK. Tell him I’m coming. I’ll talk to him about it. We’re on our way. Evie?’ Juliette glanced at the screen. ‘She hung up.’ Juliette speed-dialled her number. ‘It’s gone to message.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Juliette shook her head and tried again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Any update?’ Ted emerged from the bathroom wearing the taupe shirt and black jeans he’d had on earlier.

  ‘She’s still not picking up.’ Juliette had put on grey slacks and a navy sweatshirt.

  ‘Let me try Jakob.’ Ted speed-dialled with his phone but got his message. ‘No luck. So what exactly did she say?’

  ‘Just that Jakob had gone berserk. I couldn’t understand anymore.’

  ‘Should we call the police?’

  ‘She called us. If we were having a fight, would you want the police turning up?’

  ‘So they’re definitely having a fight?’

  ‘From what I could understand.’

  ‘I’d better get round there.’ Ted scanned the bright room for his shoes.

  ‘I’m going too. Evie’s my friend.’ She slipped on some black suede ankle boots.

  ‘We can’t leave Georgie on his own.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Zoe. She’s on her way round.’

  Ted shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have disturbed her at this hour.’

  ‘She was up with Pip anyway.’

  Their next-door neighbour had an eight-month-old daughter, so she and Juliette often babysat for each other. ‘That’s a big ask.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll return the favour.’

  Ted slid his feet into his leather shoes. ‘All right, I’ll get the car.’

  ‘You can’t drive. You were still drinking a couple of hours ago. I’ve ordered a cab and it’s nearly here.’

  ‘That was fast work.’ As he’d thrown water in his face to wake himself and then dressed he thought Juliette had been talking to Evie.

  Juliette picked her phone up from the bed and checked the cab’s progress. ‘Let’s be ready to go as soon as it arrives.’ She tucked the phone in her back pocket and headed for the door.

  Ted followed and they both paused at Georgie’s. No sound from within.

  ‘We won’t wake him,’ Juliette whispered. ‘Zoe can let him know what’s happening when he does.’

  Ted kept his voice low too. ‘Hopefully, we’ll be back before he’s up.’

  Juliette said nothing and stepped carefully down the stairs.

  As they reached the bottom somebody knocked lightly on the front door. Juliette crept up the hallway runner and opened it. ‘Hi Zoe, you should have used your key.’

  ‘I didn’t like to when you were in.’ She whispered too. Zoe Cabot was a young single mother, in her mid-twenties. She was gently bouncing her new baby. She wore a paisley headscarf and a worried expression. Her pale eyelashes rapidly blinked. ‘Everything OK?’

  Juliette nodded. ‘Just a little emergency, friends of ours in Ibbotson. I’ll phone you when we know what’s going on. Help yourself to anything you want. Georgie is usually up at seven on Saturday.’

  Zoe nodded gravely at Juliette and then put on a warm smile for Ted. ‘Don’t worry about anything here.’ She dumped down a changing bag.

  A car beeped.

  ‘Really appreciate you doing this.’ Ted stood aside so she could squeeze by, grabbed his leather coat from the rack and hurried out into the dark. There was a frost on their small front lawn, and he zipped up and shivered as he trotted to the car outside the gate. Juliette remained inside, so he greeted the driver of the white Seat, sat in the front and pulled his door shut.

  ‘Ibbotson, please. Just waiting for my wife.’

  The young Japanese driver nodded and there was a short awkward delay until Juliette dropped into the back seat.

  ‘Zoe all right?’

  Juliette closed her door and didn’t answer Ted immediately. ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘You OK?’

  Again her response was delayed. ‘Yes, just worried about Evie.’

  The driver pulled out.

  ‘They’re only fifteen minutes away. We’ll soon find out what’s going on.’ But Ted suspected it was serious. Evie had never called them like this before. It was difficult to imagine them even raising their voices to each other. Who knew what went on behind closed doors though? Jakob had been very quiet when they left and pretty unsteady on his feet. ‘Try her again.’

  Juliette did, then shook her head and hung up.

  The driver turned left at the end of the street.

  ‘What was Jakob doing?’

  ‘I told you I don’t know.’

  ‘So what’s “it”?’

  Juliette leaned forward and replied in the ear furthest from the driver. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Ted turned. ‘When you were on the phone to Evie you said you’d talk to him about “it”. What is “it”?’

  ‘She just said he’d gone berserk. The rest was incoherent.’

  ‘There’s nothing you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Why would there be?’

  Ted wondered if there was a little too much mortification in her response. ‘You just seem so determined to come with me.’

  ‘I told you, she’s my friend.’

  ‘Has this happened before. Them fighting?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Ted turned front again. He couldn
’t imagine it. There was sometimes sniping between them, but Jakob always seemed to be a gentle giant.

  They drove the rest of the way to Ibbotson in silence.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The small hamlet that Evie and Jakob lived in had very few streetlights and the narrow road that ran through it was often manned by retired residents taking speeding drivers’ registration numbers. Ted had been caught on more than one occasion and had received stiff letters through the post. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find pensioners with clipboards lurking in the hedges even at this hour of the morning.

  The driver took the sharp right into Fencham Place and the headlights illuminated a tall hedge that bordered the left side. Evie and Jakob’s redbrick Victorian house was opposite the crossroads at the end. Lights burned in the downstairs and upstairs windows.

  ‘This is it. Just drop us in front of here,’ Juliette instructed.

  The driver did and she paid him.

  ‘D’you mind waiting?’ Ted asked.

  ‘It’s OK.’ Juliette gave him a tip. ‘We might be a while.’

  As soon as they got out, he pulled away without a word.

  They both crunched up the long, gravelled driveway. Ted studied the lit panes for either of their friends, but there was no movement.

  He rang the bell. No sound of anyone coming to answer it. Ted tried again and Juliette thumped the panel with her fist. He stood back from the door and scanned the windows above.

  ‘Evie!’ Juliette yelled and banged a second time.

  ‘Call her again. I’ll try Jakob.’

  She did but shook her head.

  He left a message. ‘Jakob, let us in. We’re outside your front door and we’re worried about Evie. Please ring me straight away.’ He hung up. ‘They don’t have a landline?’

  ‘No. Let’s try the back.’

  Ted felt uneasy as he followed Juliette down the side of the house to the rear of the property. Maybe they were upstairs having a tête-à-tête, but surely they would have heard them at the door. Something felt badly wrong.

  The glass door to the kitchen was wide open. The light was on, the room empty.

  Ted peered at the darkened lawn. ‘Anybody out here?’ he said loudly. His breath drifted back to him, but the only response was the muted sound of the motorway.

  Juliette had already stepped over the threshold and edged across the wooden tiled floor to the breakfast bar in the middle of the kitchen. The polished tiles were Jakob’s pride and joy. He’d rescued them from a gutted church nearby and lovingly laid them there, all the way through the hall and into the dining room.

  ‘Evie? Jakob? We’re coming in!’ There was a nervous tremor in Juliette’s voice. She reached the sealed door into the hallway and paused. ‘I’ll try her again.’ She hit Evie’s number.

  A loud extract of Funktown America’s ‘Celebrate Good Times’ made them both jump and their attention shifted to the phone vibrating on the floor in the kitchen.

  Ted walked over to where it lay beneath the sink unit, then froze.

  ‘What is it?’ Juliette joined him there and examined it more closely too.

  There were dark smears over the handset.

  ‘That is blood, isn’t it?’ Ted straightened.

  Juliette nodded and turned back to the sealed door.

  ‘Wait. We should be careful.’

  There was panic in Juliette’s eyes. ‘Call the police?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ted took out his phone.

  A series of thumps from above them. They both looked upwards. Sounded like somebody walking across the floor.

  Juliette hurried to the door, but Ted intercepted her there. ‘I’ll shout up the stairs. If there’s any sign of trouble we should both leave.’

  Juliette nodded.

  Before Ted could open the door they heard more thumping. ‘They’re coming down the stairs.’ He swung it wide and they hastened along a darkened passage with three open doors off it that led to the hallway. They glanced into each deserted room they passed. The third was the familiar dining area where they’d spent many an evening, the chairs tucked neatly under the long table at its centre.

  When they reached the hallway, they heard the front door click shut. The light was on, but nobody was at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Have they just left?’ Juliette rushed to the front door and opened it.

  They could hear the sound of receding footsteps on gravel.

  ‘Evie! Jakob!’ Juliette shouted.

  They both held their breath and under the sound of his thudding circulation Ted heard the footsteps falter and stop.

  ‘It’s Juliette!’

  They both gazed into the pitch blackness.

  Then the footsteps started again and picked up speed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Maybe that wasn’t Evie or Jakob,’ Ted said as soon as the footfalls had faded.

  Juliette turned to Ted in alarm and then directed her attention back to the hallway.

  Ted closed the door.

  ‘Evie!’ Juliette called up the stairs. ‘Jakob!’

  No response.

  Ted clenched his stomach, put his palm on the banister and took the first couple of steps slowly, their boards creaking under the dark-blue carpet. His mouth was already dry.

  Juliette was right behind him. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered.

  She was right. There could still be intruders in the house. Maybe Evie and Jakob were lying injured upstairs. His pace quickened. But they were there because of an argument between the couple. Could there really be anyone else involved?

  They reached the landing and found five closed doors.

  ‘Evie?’ Juliette’s voice sounded loud in the enclosed space.

  Ted had never been upstairs in their house. There was a downstairs bathroom, which they used when they visited, so he’d never had any reason to.

  ‘Jakob?’ Juliette said quieter.

  ‘Look.’ Ted pointed.

  There was a long smudge of blood at shoulder height along the right-hand wall.

  They both halted.

  ‘Ring the police.’ Ted whispered and didn’t take his eyes from the stain. All he could hear was their breathing.

  Juliette took out her phone and dialled. ‘Police,’ she hissed.

  While she relayed the specifics, Ted seized the nearest door handle.

  Juliette put her hand firmly on his. ‘OK. As fast as you can though.’ She hung up. ‘They said we should leave the house immediately and wait for them outside.’

  ‘But they could be hurt.’

  ‘They’re sending an ambulance.’

  ‘God knows how quickly that will arrive though.’ Ted kept his grip on the door. ‘Somebody fled. I’m not leaving if either of them could be bleeding up here and need our help.’

  ‘Nobody’s answered us.’

  ‘They could be unconscious.’

  She bit her lip.

  He could tell how shaken she was by what they’d found but already knew what her reaction would be to what he suggested next. ‘Go and wait outside while I look.’

  Juliette shook her head resolutely. ‘We do it now, quickly.’

  ‘Sure?’ But Ted knew it was pointless arguing.

  ‘Evie?’ She called again.

  They both listened to the silence for a moment.

  Both their breathing stopped as he depressed the handle, the spring in the mechanism creaking as he pushed inside.

  The large sparsely decorated space looked like an office, with only a table and swivel chair skulking under the window. The blinds were sealed. An open laptop glowed on the desk and illuminated the empty room. There was nobody here.

  They moved down the passage and Juliette opened the next right-hand door.

  It was a spotless bathroom: nobody inside and no signs of a disturbance. The heat from the towel radiators and an aroma of tea tree oil rolled out at them.

  Ted was at the third left door first. These had to be the bedrooms. ‘Jakob.’ B
ut he didn’t wait for an answer.

  It was a spare room. A double bed made up, but lots of paperwork and magazines stacked on the duvet.

  Juliette had already moved to the last two doors at the end of the passage. ‘Evie?’

  Ted opened the one nearest to him. It probably used to be a bedroom but now it was a generous changing room with doorless wardrobes along the right wall. Evie’s clothes took up considerably more space than Jakob’s. He recognized the outfit Evie had been wearing lying on top of a laundry basket. A familiar feminine scent hung around the room. No trace of a struggle in here either.

  There was only one door left to open and they both paused outside. This had to be the main bedroom.

  Ted yanked the handle down but stayed where he was as the panel swung wide. It bumped against the wall as they took in its interior.

  No Evie or Jakob and the king-size was still made.

  Juliette switched on the light and the bulb buzzed overhead.

  ‘So the argument started before they went to bed.’

  ‘Look.’ Juliette nodded to the far side of the room.

  There was brown blood smeared on the long radiator under the window.

  She crossed to examine it and Ted joined her there. On the oatmeal carpet in front of it were more dark red patches. The heat from the radiator had dried the fingerprint stains but the ones on the floor still looked wet.

  Ted scanned the rest of the carpet. ‘Let’s not touch anything.’

  ‘We’d better go outside.’ Juliette gulped. ‘I don’t want to be in here.’

  Ted was about to move when the light in the room changed. He turned to the window and realized the security light had come on at the rear. A cat was slinking across the back lawn. ‘Motion detector.’

  But Juliette moved her face closer to the pane. ‘Is that …?’

  Ted followed her gaze. Somebody was lying on the frosted grass by the summerhouse.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ted and Juliette raced back down the stairs, across the hallway, along the passage and through the kitchen to the lawn. Just as they reached it the security light went out shrouding them in darkness again.

  Ted waved his arms and it lit up once more. The person lying on their back by the summerhouse was about thirty yards away and as his feet crunched over the crisp grass he could see dark footprints leading to them.