by Sue Fortin
‘Excellent,’ said Harry. ‘And I’m sorry if I appeared a bit distant earlier.’
‘It’s fine. I appreciate you must be busy, especially on a weekend like this where you want everything to run like clockwork.’
They exchanged polite chit-chat with the rest of the table guests throughout dinner, but Steph couldn’t help herself from thinking ahead to when they would be back at her lodge. She was under no illusion there would be the remotest interest paid to her pictures tonight. A voice of warning whispered in the back of her mind. If Sonia’s belief surrounding Elizabeth’s death was true, then Harry could potentially be involved. Steph pushed the warning away.
When they had finally finished their dessert, Steph excused herself to use the ladies’. As she got up she felt a little light-headed. It must have been all the wine she had consumed. She had tried to match one glass of wine with one glass of water, which usually worked well for her, but with her glass being constantly topped up, she must have got lost on the ratio.
As she came out of the toilets, across the hallway she could see Harry in deep conversation with his brother Dominic. She really didn’t fancy going over there just now. She didn’t like Dominic. He made her nervous and she didn’t know why, which in itself was unsettling. Instead, she opted for a breath of fresh air, hoping that would clear her head a bit before she returned.
As she crossed the hall towards the breakfast room, where she could slip out onto the terrace without being noticed, she rubbed her face, forgetting she had rather more make-up on than usual.
‘Bugger,’ she said. Looking back, she saw a mirror tucked away around the corner and hurried over to inspect her make-up. As she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue to try to remove the smudges, she became aware of different voices coming from the hallway. Hushed voices. Both male.
‘Have you got it with you?’ said the first voice.
‘Yeah, of course. I said I would,’ came the reply.
‘Come on, then. I want three g.’ The first voice sounded impatient.
‘This isn’t on credit.’
‘When have I ever asked you for credit?’
Steph inwardly winced. She couldn’t leave her spot around the corner – they would know she’d heard them talking and it was obviously a clandestine meeting. She’d just have to stay put until they were finished. She held her breath, not daring to move.
‘There – £300,’ said the second man. ‘Hurry up.’
Steph could hear the first man taking his time counting out notes. She got the distinct impression he was being slow just to wind up the other bloke. Finally, she heard him say, ‘It’s all there.’
‘Good, and there are three little bags for you. Oh, don’t snatch. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?’
‘Fuck off, Dean.’
‘Now, now, Mr Sinclair, that’s not very becoming of a man in your position.’
Steph stiffened at the mention of the name Sinclair. She’d been alert before but now she was super-alert for very different reasons. It sounded like she’d just heard a drugs deal take place involving one of the Sinclair brothers. It certainly wasn’t Harry but whether it was Dominic or Owen she couldn’t tell. She wasn’t tuned in to their voices and wouldn’t be able to recognise them just from hearing their welcome speeches yesterday. God, she wanted to know which one it was. She knew who her money was on … Dominic.
‘Nice doing business with you, Mr Sinclair. See you again soon, no doubt.’
She heard footsteps recede and then whichever brother it was utter a pretty crude insult directed at the other guy. Very slowly, she leaned back just so she could see around the corner. She really didn’t want to move her feet, frightened her heels would make a noise on the tiled floor.
As she peeked around the corner she could see a man standing with his back to her, looking at something in his hand. From his build and hair, she was pretty sure it was Owen. He began to walk back towards the hall and Steph breathed a sigh of relief and dropped her shoulders, which had been hunched up as she’d stood undetected. Unfortunately, her hand caught the corner of the wall and the mascara brush she was holding was knocked from her fingers, hitting the floor with a small but unmistakable clatter.
She stooped to pick up the mascara, aware that Owen had stopped walking. She sensed rather than saw him turn to see where the noise had come from.
‘Bloody thing,’ she muttered out loud and then looked up with faux surprise. ‘Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there,’ she said, trying her best to look embarrassed at swearing.
Owen eyed her with suspicion. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘I’ve just come out of the toilets,’ said Steph, putting the make-up back in her bag.
Owen’s eyes darted from Steph to the toilet door on the other side of the hall. ‘Just now?’
‘Yes,’ said Steph, injecting a defensive tone to her own voice. ‘Is that a problem?’
He walked back towards her and Steph felt her heart beginning to hammer hard against her breastbone. ‘Were you standing there just now? When I was talking to someone?’
‘No.’ She didn’t like the look in his eyes. The pupils were dilated and there was a slightly glazed look about them. She’d seen it before when someone was high, and she guessed Owen had already taken drugs tonight. The thought made her nervous. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She went to walk past him, but Owen moved in front of her.
‘Are you sure you didn’t hear me talking to someone just now?’
‘Positive. Now, please, can you move out of the way?’
‘Owen!’
Steph looked up. To her relief, Harry was standing in the hallway. He closed the space between them in four strides. ‘All right, mate?’ he asked, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
Owen turned to face his brother. ‘Yeah. I was talking to …’ He waved his hand as if he could pluck the name from the air.
Harry looked at Steph. ‘You OK?’
She smiled. ‘Fine. I was just going back inside.’
Harry studied her for a moment and then moved his brother aside. ‘Let our guest through,’ he said.
Owen stepped back and shrugged Harry’s hand away. Steph heard him say something in response to Harry, but she hurried off through to the dining hall before he could catch up with her. The last thing she wanted was to be confronted by Owen Sinclair again.
A short time later, Harry joined her at the table. ‘Are you really OK?’
Steph was touched by his concern. ‘Yeah. But, and this is off the record, I think your brother is high. You need to speak to him or get him out of here because other reporters might not be so generous with keeping such information to themselves.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was just fixing my make-up around the corner and heard him and some other bloke do a drug deal.’
‘Idiot.’ Harry pushed a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry.’
‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here with Owen but drugs are not my scene and I don’t want to be anywhere near them,’ she said. ‘I think it will be best if I just meet you tomorrow during the day some time and bring my pictures to you.’
He looked genuinely hurt at what she was saying, which made her feel even worse than she already did, but there was no way she was getting involved with someone who had anything to do with drugs. She might be doing Harry a disservice but she’d had too much to drink to think it through properly, let alone get into any discussion about it. Much as she liked Harry, and God knows she really did like him, she wasn’t prepared to become involved with the drug scene. She’d seen too many people in her line of work use drugs socially on a regular basis and she’d seen the devastating effect of the use turning to abuse and the dependency just to function on a day-to-day basis that followed.
‘Can we at least talk? Will you let me explain?’ asked Harry. ‘I promise you, it’s no reflection on me.’
‘I don’t know, Harry,’ said Steph, fully aware she c
ould so easily be swayed if Harry said the things she wanted to hear. ‘Not tonight anyway.’
He looked as if he was going to say something else, but then changed his mind. ‘OK. It’s your call,’ he said gently. ‘I’m not in the business of putting pressure on anyone. We can talk tomorrow. At least allow me that.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Steph gathered up her bag. ‘I’m going to turn in now.’
‘Let me walk you back to your lodge.’ Harry rose at the same time as her.
‘Thank you.’
They walked in silence back to Steph’s lodge, where she found herself once again standing on the doorstep with Harry, wishing she didn’t have to leave him. She hoped he wouldn’t try to persuade her to change her mind, as she knew she wouldn’t put up much of a protest.
Harry leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Sleep well,’ he said and then turned and walked away without looking back.
Steph let herself into her lodge. ‘Bollocks,’ she groaned as she locked the door behind her. Tonight had not ended how she had planned it to at all. She contemplated making herself a cup of tea but decided against it. The easiest way to get over the disappointment of tonight would be to go to sleep. She washed the make-up from her face and stripped off, slipping into a T-shirt and fresh underwear.
She was just drifting off to sleep when a scraping noise jolted her back into consciousness. It was a brief sound but it had been out of the ordinary and enough to startle her. Steph lay very still in her bed, concentrating on listening for any other sound.
There was nothing and she was just beginning to think she had imagined it, or even dreamt it, when she thought she heard a gentle creak, almost like floorboards. Was it just the building softly groaning in the night or was someone actually inside the lodge?
She mentally replayed her movements before she’d come to bed. She had definitely locked the front door and, although she hadn’t checked the patio doors at the rear, she knew she hadn’t opened them. She chided herself at overreacting. This was a wooden lodge in the middle of a forest, there were bound to be all sorts of noises.
Steph slipped out of bed and stepped out into the hallway. The night-light was on, casting a soft yellow glow down the passageway towards the living area. She padded along the tiled floor and into the kitchen.
A movement in her peripheral vision made Steph look round just as a large, dark figure lunged towards her from the shadows.
She didn’t have time to move out of the way, to run or even to scream. An instinctive reflex had her half-turning away from the intruder, her hands went over her head to offer protection and she hunched forward. The next thing she felt was the impact on her back which sent her off-balance, making her stumble forward.
A sharp, shooting pain pierced her head and the last thing she felt was the hard, tiled floor as she hit the ground.
Chapter Nineteen
Lodge 174, Conmere, Sunday, 12 May, 1.00 a.m.
‘Steph, Steph? Are you OK?’
The voice sounded distant, as if her name was being spoken through a handkerchief or from the other side of a closed window. Steph moved her head and winced. It felt like a bowling ball slamming around inside her skull. ‘That hurts,’ she mumbled.
‘Steph? Open your eyes. It’s me, Harry.’
This time his voice was clear and she did as he requested, seeing his face peering down at her, his eyes filled with concern. ‘Hey, you had me worried there for a moment.’
She went to raise her head, but it hurt too much and she lay back down, gradually becoming aware of her surroundings. She was lying on the sofa of her lodge, a pillow was under her head and Harry was perched on the coffee table next to her. For a moment she couldn’t think what had happened and then the memory rolled to the front of her mind. She gave a gasp and her eyes frantically scanned the room. ‘Who’s here?’ she said, looking back at Harry.
‘It’s OK. It’s just me and you. No one is here.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah. Just us. What happened?’
‘More to the point, what are you doing here?’ Despite the thudding in her head, Steph sat up and leaned back into the sofa, pulling her hand away from Harry’s. ‘How did you get in?’
Harry sat back with his hands in a surrender position. ‘It’s all right, Steph. I’m not going to hurt you. I found you on the floor. I thought you’d passed out or something.’
Steph wasn’t convinced. ‘But you went … you left me. Why did you come back?’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning.’
‘I walked you back to your lodge, remember? You came in and I went back to the gala dinner.’
‘Yeah, so why did you come back?’ she repeated. She remembered that and she remembered going to bed. She also remembered with clarity what had happened next.
Harry looked a little embarrassed. ‘I felt bad about how we’d left things. I suppose, in my wisdom, I thought I could try to explain things better so you’d realise that I wasn’t as bad as you thought I was.’ He drummed his fingers on his knee. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, but, now I’m saying it out loud, it sounds rather lame.’
‘So you came back, but how did you get in?’ Steph asked, keen to get back to the facts.
‘Your door was ajar. I called out your name and when I got no answer I came right in. Saw you flat out on the floor.’
‘Someone was in the lodge,’ she said. Her voice wavered as the realisation of what had happened to her came into sharp focus.
Harry reached out and held her hand. ‘What?’
‘Someone was here in the lodge while I was sleeping. Something woke me up, a noise from out here. I came out and then … I don’t really know what happened next … I think someone pushed past me and I slipped.’ She touched the side of her head with her hand. ‘Ouch. I must have knocked my head on the breakfast bar as I went down.’
‘Are you sure there was someone in here? Did you leave the door unlocked?’
Steph wiped away a tear as she tried to recall the chain of events. ‘I’m certain I locked the door. I’m pretty good with that sort of thing.’
‘How did they get in, then? Did you leave a window open?’ Harry looked around the room and then got up and methodically checked all the windows in the lodge. ‘They’re all closed,’ he said, before going to inspect the front door. ‘And it doesn’t look like anyone has forced the lock.’ He sat back down on the coffee table.
‘I didn’t imagine it,’ said Steph firmly, her shock making way for anger at the thought of an intruder being in the place. ‘There was definitely someone in here.’
‘You had been drinking; could you have simply tripped and fallen?’
‘No, I wasn’t drunk,’ insisted Steph, annoyed that he should imply she was too drunk to know what she was doing. Gingerly she touched the side of her head where a lump had already formed.
Harry moved her hair to take a look. ‘You need that looked at.’
‘No. I’ll be OK. It’s not bleeding. Just sore.’
Harry didn’t look entirely convinced. He got up and plucking a clean tea towel from the kitchen drawer, he proceeded to run it under the cold water, before squeezing it out and folding it into a pad. ‘At least put this on your head,’ he said, coming back over and offering her the compress.
‘Thanks,’ said Steph, wincing as she placed it to her head. ‘There was someone here, Harry.’
‘Did you see what they looked like?’
‘Not really. It was dark. I didn’t put the main light on, just the passageway light.’ She closed her eyes as she tried to envisage the intruder. ‘They were taller than me, I think, but I couldn’t see their face. I think they had a hood up. Other than that, I can’t tell you anything.’
‘Shit,’ muttered Harry and then took her hand again. ‘I’m so sorry, Steph.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she replied, allowing her hand to be held.
‘I feel responsible. You’re here as my guest and then something
like this happens. We should report it to the police.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, although in reality she had no intention of getting the police involved in case the connection to her mother was exposed. He looked at her questioningly. She continued, ‘Unless something has been taken, let’s not. I’d sooner not get the police involved; it’s pointless. Besides, it probably won’t do much for publicity.’ She didn’t add that her mind was already racing ahead and making possible connections. If the intrusion was anything to do with her being here on Sonia’s behalf, then it suggested someone had something they wanted to keep hidden and were trying to warn Steph off. Bringing the police in would only make whoever it was even more on their guard.
‘You’re being very generous about this,’ Harry said. ‘We could do without the police turning up and drawing a lot of the wrong type of attention to the place. Obviously, I’m concerned there’s someone on site who is going around trying to break in and steal stuff. I’ll speak to Security and get them to up their rounds. But first, can you check that nothing has been stolen?’
‘I’ll look properly in the morning, but my laptop is there on the table where I left it and my phone should be in my bag.’
Harry rose and picked up her bag, passing it to her. ‘Have a quick look.’
Steph opened her bag and retrieved her phone. ‘Yep, that’s here, and so is my purse and … yep, all my cards are still in there with the bit of cash I had. Nothing has been taken.’
‘That’s something at least,’ said Harry, once again resuming his position on the coffee table. ‘How are you feeling? Do you want a coffee or a sweet tea for the shock?’
‘I would really like to get some sleep. I’ve got a raging headache. I think there is some paracetamol in my bag. I’ll take a couple of those.’
Harry got up and ran Steph a glass of water.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the glass and swallowing two pills down. She let out something between a sigh and a groan.
‘I don’t think you should be on your own. I can stay with you tonight,’ said Harry, and then added quickly, ‘I can stay here on the sofa.’
