by R. J. Parker
Elliot looked as if he was in two minds about releasing him and then nodded. ‘Open the door!’
Leah lifted the handle of the passenger door, but it was locked. The car had been open. She’d just locked it again. She pressed the fob again and yanked the door. ‘Put him in the back.’
Elliot was already shoving her father inside.
Leah knew she had to use the knife again. She turned back to the house, but Tate had already arrived.
He swung the implement in his hand. It was a rake and the edge of the heavy metallic teeth caught her in the left side of the jaw.
Leah was on the ground, white pulses of light in her eyes. She could hear Elliot shouting. And the knife was no longer in her hand. ‘Dad!’ She heard her voice scream, but it sounded like she was yelling in her own ear.
She had the key. They couldn’t drive away. Leah was on her feet but slewed sideways and her face hit a wall.
A hand gripped her shoulder.
‘Stay down. I’ll finish here,’ Tate’s voice gurgled.
‘Leah, get the knife!’ Elliot cried.
Get up. Back on your feet.
Had she blacked out? She used the edge of the wall to haul herself up and turned. But the action seemed to continue and the struggle in front of her appeared to repeatedly zip by as if she were on a carousel.
Tate was climbing into the passenger side and she could hear Elliot.
‘Get the fuck off us!’
Her eyes dropped to the ground. Where was the knife? But the dark dirt track lurched up at her and she put out her hands. Was she falling again? She staggered, directing herself at the car.
Her hands were around Tate’s shoulders. The passenger door on the other side was open and her father was lying on his back on the ground. Elliot was half out, his torso on the dirt but his legs still inside.
Tate had hold of them and was trying to pull them back in.
‘Let go of me! Leah, he’s got the knife!’
Leah climbed onto his back and put her hands around his hot throat.
He tried to shake her off but as hard as she squeezed, he wouldn’t let go of Elliot’s legs. She slid her hand further down and found the wound in his throat. She put her two fingers inside its warm and moist interior.
Tate bucked underneath her, rose and slammed the back of his head into her face.
She was looking up at the car ceiling, realised she’d fallen and turned so she was lying on her spine between the back and front seats. Leah could hear Elliot’s feet pedalling in Tate’s grip, striking him in the face.
She hinged up and rolled over, preparing herself to jump on his back again, but her shin smarted as she put her weight on it and against something solid. She reached for it.
It was the wine bottle. She gripped it by the neck.
Leah straddled Tate and brought the bottle down on the back of his head as hard as she could. It clunked and she felt the full impact reverberate painfully in her wrist. She hit him with it again.
The third blow broke the bottle, but his hands were still on Elliot’s thigh. Her father was motionless.
The jagged neck was still in her hand. ‘Stop.’
He wasn’t going to.
Leah fell onto his back and ground the bottleneck into the side of his neck.
Everything froze.
She pushed it further. Heard the glass crunch inside him.
Leah could smell the sweat in Tate’s scalp, could feel his circulation pounding.
Pounding but gradually slowing.
As Elliot slid free, she waited there. Waited until Tate’s heartbeat had weakened and stopped.
Leah didn’t release him until the last clouds of his dying breath had floated away.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Leah didn’t want to open her eyes. Sitting on the floor of the shower, the slight pressure of water on her scalp and knees, she clenched her shins a little tighter to herself and listened to the flow over her ears and the trickle into the plughole.
It was their first day home and they’d arrived mid-afternoon. She’d left Elliot perched on the edge of the couch flicking through the TV downstairs while she escaped to the bathroom.
They’d called in to see her father on their way from the hospital. He was the first to have been discharged and had insisted on going home. Leah had been against it but realised that, ironically, it was the one place where he felt secure. He’d already completely forgotten what had happened there.
He had his usual carer with him until Leah had packed some things and headed over later that evening. She was going to stay there with him for a few weeks and suspected she wouldn’t be returning home.
She’d been treated for concussion and had remained in hospital while Elliot had been in the ICU. Thankfully, his face only needed six stitches, with a further fourteen on his torso. Most of the razor cuts Tate had made while he was torturing him would heal. Elliot’s face was entirely concealed by bandages though.
Leah wondered if he was as glad of that as she was.
Did he resent her for ever knocking on Alice Booth’s door? They hadn’t begun to process the consequences of that, and every exchange they’d had since what had happened at her father’s cottage had been about nothing but practicalities.
Once her father had been settled, once all the interviews with DI Byrne were over and they were finally approaching a semblance of normal life again, where would they begin on themselves? How far would they have to go back to find the point when it had fallen apart? Years before the deer on Plough Lane.
Here she was again, sitting in the shower, washing away the trauma of what had happened and thinking about Olivia and how her death had moulded the life she’d settled for. Martin Tate had effortlessly perceived that.
She opened her eyes and turned her head to the closed bathroom door as if he might be standing there again.
The droplets built up on her eyelashes and rolled down her face. She blinked them away, kept her gaze on the door. He’d wanted her to free herself. However repulsive his actions, he’d genuinely believed he was helping her. What had he planned for her beyond that? Was she simply the new promise he’d made to himself? His new purpose and hope after he’d dealt with his other failures? Maybe even the inhuman needed that too.
She could vividly recall the moment their lips had touched. What would have happened if she hadn’t allowed it? But she was sure Tate would have brought mayhem into her and Elliot’s life regardless. She could still feel his body stiffening as she held him and pushed the glass into his throat. She knew she would never be the same person again, even though that seemed like the actions of someone else entirely. A person Tate had extracted from her. Leah would remember that look of triumph on his face when she’d stabbed him as sharply as the sensation of his life ebbing away and the aroma of his scalp as he’d died underneath her. She’d had to do it, to save her father and Elliot. But why hadn’t Tate finished Elliot? The knife had been in his hand.
Tate had easily abducted her husband on his walk to the station. Asked him to help him bump-start his car and led him to a car park before knocking him out. Did Elliot feel humiliated by that? But why had he been getting on a train if Katya lived a few streets away from their home? Was he really going to stay with a friend, or had it been Gaynor or Allegra or Nicola he was on his way to see? One infidelity was an affront to everything they’d built together but the notion that there were four women he’d been intimate with was something she still couldn’t conceive of.
She wondered if he’d lied to them as much as he had to her. All this time Leah had lived with somebody she’d naively assumed she’d known. Some wounds would never heal. There was nothing left for her here. Had Martin Tate’s intervention precipitated her acceptance of that?
Martin Tate wasn’t his real name. The police were still trying to find out exactly who he was. They could start with Alice Booth. Trace him back to the person who’d been in love with her. Had it all been lies though? She suspected not. Ever
yone was a product of what was denied to them.
Her father had hidden it for decades. But as his personality was gradually eroded, he could no longer spare Leah from the hurt of their family loss. She had to honour all the years he’d done his utmost to spare her feelings, though, even if he hadn’t always succeeded.
Leah stood and turned off the dial. It was good to be alone, however briefly. She dried herself and slipped on her towelling robe, deliberately busying her mind with the packing she had to do and making a mental inventory of what she would need to set up her office at her dad’s cottage.
She walked barefoot onto the landing but paused on her way to the bedroom.
She could hear the noise of the TV downstairs, but something held her there. She opened her mouth but couldn’t bring herself to call his name. Leah padded down the stairs.
She crossed the tiles and runner in the hallway and entered the lounge.
‘Elliot.’ Now she could say it.
Elliot was lying motionless on his back in the middle of the room.
She ran to him and knelt beside him. ‘Elliot?’ She shook him and his bandaged head fell to one side.
She took hold of his face and looked into his eyes. There was no life in them. She knew he was dead before she shook him again, tried to revive him and then checked his pulse.
His hand was outstretched. A glass of red wine had spilt along the oatmeal carpet and rolled against the leg of the sofa.
Leah looked over at the bottle on the table. This was Tate. She was certain of that. He’d orchestrated her presence at each crime scene he’d created, manipulated her the whole time. But now he was no longer the spectre she could point her finger at, who would believe that Leah didn’t want to punish Elliot for all of the wrongs he’d done her?
Was that why Tate hadn’t killed Elliot during their struggle in the car?
Elliot’s eyes looked blankly at her from beneath the bandages on his face.
Leah took his hand. It was still warm. She was back at the roadside, touching the deer, touching her sister before her dad dragged her away. The warmth ebbing and her parents’ love leaving with it.
She released Elliot, as if doing so could prevent what had been triggered again.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Three days and three hours earlier
Tate made his way along the track at the rear of Leah’s house for the second time. In the morning light, he could see the stream on the left-hand side of the reeds clearly. There were ducks there, some of them on the bank, the others in the water.
There was nobody at the rear of Leah’s place, so he paused at her gate and recalled watching her through the bathroom window and then going inside the house. He scolded himself for being so impetuous but the image of her sitting on the floor in the shower was still imprinted on his mind.
Some ducks quacked noisily behind him and he turned and spotted a hen surrounded by three drakes. They weren’t too interested in her just yet. In spring they would be on her back, trying to mate and pecking her head until it was bald. He’d observed the brutality of that ritual before.
He was about to open Leah’s gate when a thought occurred to him. He climbed over the fence to the stream and most of the ducks waddled away. One drake was defiant though and it was a drake he wanted. He grabbed the bird’s body either side of its wings, his palms lightly compressing it through its fluffed-up feathers. It wasn’t as plump as it looked, and it struggled a little, so he waited for it to realise it couldn’t escape. Tate laid it on his chest and held it to his body with his left hand firmly over its neck.
With his free hand, he let himself into Leah’s garden again and briefly surveyed it in the daylight. He’d watched her go out in the car after Elliot had left for his run. Skirting the overgrown lawn, he made for the passage at the right side of the house that he’d accessed the night before. When he reached the end of it, the hedge along the edge of the front drive concealed him completely.
He put his hand under the edge of the garage door and opened it sufficiently to slip under.
Again, he entered the kitchen through the side door of the garage. There he deposited the drake and it seemed unperturbed as it walked unsteadily across the tiles to the locked French doors.
When she found it, Tate wondered if Leah Talbot would understand the significance of the discovery, of a new drake imposing itself on the territory.
Then he saw the bottle of red wine on the counter next to the bowl of red and green peppers. About a quarter of it was missing and the lid had been replaced. Could he?
Tate took the syringe out of his jacket pocket and removed the cap from the needle. There was a full cylinder of yellowish liquid. A small amount of it was tasteless. He’d planned to administer it to Alice Booth to allow him to work on her but it hadn’t been necessary.
Tate unscrewed the bottle lid and depressed the plunger into the wine.
He knew Leah didn’t like red. Only one person was likely to drink this.
A double dose for Elliot. In fact, may as well empty the syringe. Tate replaced the lid, put the cap back on the needle and slipped it into his jacket.
Would Elliot be alone when he died here? Would he know that he’d lost Leah, that her new life would never again include Mr Absentee Valentine?
He considered how he would abduct Elliot and take him to the old pig farm. Maybe he’d let him escape. Maybe that was a gift he’d give to Leah. But after all that Elliot had done, he enjoyed the notion of him fleeing with his life only to lose it again to something as innocuous as a bottle of wine.
Tate left the drake with the run of the place and slipped back out.
THE END
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Don’t miss While You Slept, a nail-biting thriller posing one chilling question: what would you do if you woke up in your home … but it wasn’t your home at all?
* * *
Get your copy here!
Acknowledgments
A debt of gratitude to you, the reader, for letting this story in. I hope you don’t ever encounter a house guest like Mr Tate.
A huge thank you, as always, to my gorgeous wife, Anne-Marie, who allows me to entertain sociopaths in my imagination from 9 to 5. Also to my supportive Mum and Dad, who gave me the freedom to live in my head from a very early age.
And now to the talented crew at One More Chapter – Hannah Todd, my perspicacious editor, who jumped on this story from first submission; Bethan Morgan, Assistant Editor, who has again expertly guided my project through the fine edit process; Charlotte Ledger, Publishing Director, for co-ordinating and running a tight ship; Melanie Price, Digital Marketing Manager, for her online interviews and quiet magic; Lucy Bennett for such a smart and striking cover; and Claire Fenby, indefatigable Digital Marketing and Publicity Assistant.
And, as ever, I can’t underestimate how grateful I am for the time spent by reviewers and bloggers who are such a vital cog in every author’s career and convey their passion for books by shouting about the ones they love. Thanks for your generosity online but, moreover, for giving up your valuable time to point readers towards a wealth of great writing. A special salute to Karen Cole, Jen Lucas, Nicki Richards, Claire Knight, Sarah Hardy, Liz Barnsley, Melissa Suslowicz Bartz, Donna Maguire, Zoe-lee O’Farrell, Nigel Adams, Suze-Clarke-Morris, Kaisha Jayneh, Amanda Oughton, The Book Cosy, Louise Mullins, Carole Whiteley, Rachel Broughton, Alison Drew, Magdalena Johansson, Diane Hogg, Martha Cheeves, Joyce Juzwik, Amy Sullivan, Kelly Lacey, Rebecca Pugh, Chelsea Humphrey, Ellie Smith, Steve Robb, Emma Welton, Stephanie Rothwell, Cleo Bannister, Abby Fairbrother, Sheila Howes, Linda Strong, Maxine Groves, Joanne Robertson, Susan Hampson, Malina Skrobosinski, Shell Baker, Fran Hagan, Mandie Griffiths, Jo Ford, Marilina Tzelepi and Scott Griffin. Special thanks also to fellow author and crime writing doyenne, Noelle Holten, for her continued support.
Please swing by my website for all the latest: richardjayparker.com or find me on Instagram (@bemykiller), Twitter (@Bookwalter) and Facebook (@RJParker
UK).
Thank you for reading…
We hope you enjoyed The Good Neighbor!
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Don’t miss R. J. Parker’s other nerve-shredding thrillers…
The Dinner Party is an addictive and twisty psychological thriller about the insidious lies festering beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful neighbourhood: eight friends, eight secrets, one killer.
Get your copy right here!
While You Slept is a nail-biting thriller posing one chilling question: what would you do if you woke up in your home … but it wasn’t your home at all?
Get your copy right here!
Be sure to follow R. J. Parker on Twitter @Bookwalter, on Facebook @RJParkerUK and check out his website richard-parker.com for all the latest updates.
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