In the Still of the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  ‘I’m sorry. I was so worried about you, I wish I had known – oh, God, Johnny, why didn’t you let me know where you were all those years? Why didn’t you sign your name in the Valentines?’

  ‘You aren’t supposed to sign Valentines, Annie.’ His tone was gently teasing. He smiled at her quite naturally and she swallowed hard. ‘And it was just as well I didn’t sign them, and always printed the messages, or your mother would never have let you see them. I used to get them posted from outside the prison by a prison officer who was a decent sort.’

  ‘That must be why my mother let them through, because she never identified them as coming from a prison – and by the time the first one arrived I was getting lots of fan mail, including Valentine’s cards.’ She went on working the whole thing out aloud, frowning. ‘So it was you who broke in here that night and left the rose on my pillow?’

  His eyes glowed passionately. ‘You looked so lovely in your bed, I was dying to stay and make love to you, but I was afraid if I woke you up you’d be scared stiff and start screaming. And, anyway, I’d planned to see you again for the first time as a reporter – I needed to know how you felt about me, if you still cared.’

  She swayed, white as paper and so cold she couldn’t stop trembling. He looked at her anxiously. ‘You aren’t going to faint, are you? Hang on, I’ll get that tea and the brandy.’

  Johnny hurried out and she put her hands over her face. What was she going to do?

  A hoarse, muffled sound made her jump. Her hand dropped and she looked in shock across the room at Sean. His eyes were open; he was twisting on the floor, trying to free himself. He jerked his head at her, the signal obvious. He wanted her to untie him. She half rose but then heard Johnny coming back. She sank down again, giving Sean a warning look. Sean had heard Johnny, too. He shut his eyes and lay still again.

  Johnny came over to her with the cup of tea and held it to her lips. She drank it eagerly, needing the brandy as much as the heat of the tea. She didn’t normally take sugar in her tea, but her body fiercely needed it now. Johnny put an arm round her and she fought not to show her horror and fear. Deliberately she leaned on him and closed her eyes, felt him softly stroke her hair.

  ‘Darling Annie, I’d do anything for you, you know,’ he murmured. ‘I love you as much as I loved my mother. You’re very like her. She was delicate and easily hurt, too. I used to get so angry when I heard my father hurting her. That last time I crouched on the landing, crying, feeling so useless because I was too small to hit him the way he was hitting her. She was screaming and begging him to stop, crying, saying, “Please stop … don’t …”

  Annie listened, aching with pity and horror.

  Johnny’s face was white and fierce with feeling. ‘Then he came out of their bedroom and saw me. He glared at me and said, “What are you looking at you, you little bastard?” He hit me across the face and then he started to go downstairs. I went up behind him and I kicked the back of his legs. He looked round at me.’ Johnny’s voice was strange, hoarse. ‘He looked so surprised … scared … but he couldn’t save himself. He toppled forward, grabbing for the banisters, and fell all the way down, crashing from one wall to the other, screaming. The noise seemed to go on for ever. Then he lay at the bottom, staring up at me, but he never moved again. My mother came out sobbing. She knew at once that I’d done it. She said to me, “Oh, Johnny, what have you done?” She kept crying, she was so scared, and there was blood everywhere. I was scared, but it was easy to lie to the police. After all, I was only six – how could I have killed my father?’

  He grinned at her with something close to triumph. She couldn’t take it all in; it was too disturbing, especially after realising he must have killed Roger Keats. Oh, God, who else had he killed? She whispered, ‘Johnny, have you seen the news?’

  He frowned impatient over the change of subject. ‘The news? No, why?’

  ‘Your house … the house … burnt down last night.’

  She felt his shock, the stiffening of his body. ‘Burnt down?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Johnny. They think the fire started because the wiring was so old.’

  ‘Was it badly damaged?’ His voice was thick with disbelief.

  ‘I’m afraid so. It’s a ruin, Johnny. It was insured, though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I never thought … my lawyer might have kept up the insurance, if there was one. I haven’t.’ A silence, then he broke out hoarsely, ‘I never have any good luck. Everything goes wrong, all my life everything has gone wrong. There was only ever you – I suppose I had to pay for getting you, my one wonderful piece of luck.’

  He smiled at her with that radiance that always turned her heart over, but she had to tell him the rest.

  ‘Johnny, there’s something else,’ she whispered. ‘They … they found a body – under the floorboards in the cupboard under the stairs.’

  He was very still.

  She hurried on, ‘They identified it, Johnny. There was a letter in the lining of the jacket.’

  Bitterly, he said, ‘And it survived the fire! You see – luck again. No matter how well you plan, you still get caught out by sheer bad luck. When I killed him I was taking his body to the house to bury it when that copper stopped me. I had the body in the boot of my car. I couldn’t let the nosy bastard find it, could I? I had no choice. I had to knock the copper out – I hit him harder than I meant to, that’s all. Then I drove to the house, but the business with the cop had made me jumpy. I was afraid the guy would remember my number plate, so I had to hurry. I remembered the loose floorboards in the cupboard, so I shoved the body in there and drove away again. I had to lose that car. I’d stolen it, it might have been reported by then, so I headed down west, and sure enough the police picked me up a couple of hours later, and chased me until I crashed.’

  She fought not to cry, said in a voice salted with misery, ‘You killed Roger because of what he’d done to me, Johnny, didn’t you? So this is all my fault. If you’d never met me none of it would have happened. You wouldn’t have killed him, or gone to prison. It was all because of me.’

  He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head, kissed her on the mouth warmly, softly, then smiled at her.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, darling. He was a dirty, rotten bastard. He deserved to die. When I went to see him he was alone, at home. I rang up first, asking for his wife, and he told me she was at the prize-giving at their two daughters’ school. So I knew he would be alone. I worked out my plan there and then. It was all very carefully thought through.’ He sounded so rational and down to earth, as if he was discussing a business project rather than a murder.

  ‘I didn’t intend to kill him in his own house, of course, that wasn’t part of my plan. I told him I knew what he’d done to you, and I wanted him to come and apologise to you, and he laughed. He was vile, said you’d enjoyed it, you’d wanted it but you’d been angry because he had other girls, so you shopped him to the governors at the school. I lost my temper, I hit him. Too hard, again. It’s always a mistake to lose control. You start making mistakes. I started beating his head in with a poker, I went mad and couldn’t stop – there was blood everywhere, it took me ages to clear it up.’

  She felt his hands on her, the hands that had killed Roger Keats and Derek and Mike … and were stroking her so tenderly. She had to fight not to scream. She had to keep calm. He must not guess how she really felt.

  ‘I didn’t want the body found too soon,’ he said conversationally. ‘I had to hide it, cover my tracks. I’d stolen a car. I backed it into his drive, wrapped him in a plastic sheet, and put him in the boot. It all went smoothly after that – my plan worked well. I should have known it was too good to be true. Sure enough, when I was only ten minutes from the forest I got stopped by this copper. If I hadn’t I’d have gone back later and buried the body in the forest – that’s what I meant to do. But I never got the chance. I can’t think why I forgot to do it once I got out of prison.’

  T
he matter-of-fact voice was making her nerves jump with horror.

  Johnny seemed unaware of her reaction. He clicked his tongue like someone who felt he had made a silly but forgivable mistake. ‘That’s what I should have done. I had every chance to bury him in the forest without anyone seeing me, but I’d forgotten he was there, you see.’

  Forgotten! she thought dazedly. How could you forget that you had killed someone and buried them under the floorboards of your house?

  He looked down at her, his finger stroking her cheek. ‘Once I got out, all I thought about was you, of course.’

  He didn’t look mad, those dark blue eyes were wide and clear, but she would never be able to look at him again without remembering that they had made love in that house – and all the time Roger Keats had been buried under the floorboards. Horror darkened her sight.

  ‘I hate violence, but I couldn’t let Keats get away with what he’d done to you, Annie. When I was in a prison up north I shared a cell with a sex offender. The first day they moved him in with me he looked at the pictures of you on the wall and made some gross remarks about why I had them there. I wasn’t having that, so I went for him. I half killed him before they got me off him. I was put in solitary for weeks, and it set my parole back.’

  ‘All because of me,’ she thought aloud, her hands clenched. ‘I suppose it was you who killed Derek, too?’

  ‘He was blackmailing you, and he was the one who paid for you to have the abortion – if it hadn’t been for him you would never have had it. That’s why I left the parcel with the bootee in it on his dressing table.’

  She started. ‘He said Marty Keats had given it to him!’

  ‘Maybe she did – but I left it in the dressing room that had his name on it when I visited the studios.’

  ‘But Marty got a phone call from Roger!’

  He laughed. ‘If you whisper through a handkerchief it’s impossible to tell whose voice it is. You gave me the idea when you kept saying Roger was still around. I thought, well, why not throw all the blame on him? I only said a few words, very quickly, so that she didn’t have much chance to identify the voice, anyway.’

  ‘But the police said a woman was with Derek the night he died.’

  A grin appeared on his face, making her sense of horror deeper. He looked so boyish, pleased with himself.

  ‘Something else I learnt in prison – we had a dramatic society. Of course some of us had to play women. Make-up, a wig, clothes … simple. I can even walk like a woman, in high heels.’

  ‘You were the woman?’ She was incredulous. ‘And Derek didn’t notice you were really a man?’

  ‘He was too drunk. He was past noticing anything.’ Johnny’s mouth twisted. ‘I made up to look like you – he was so interested in that that he didn’t think about anything else. I wanted to tell him why he had to die, but he was too drunk to listen. It was a death for a death. He murdered our baby.’ His eyes flashed. ‘And you let him, Annie.’

  She shut her eyes, swallowing, terrified. ‘I’m sorry, Johnny, oh, God, I’m so sorry.’ But even with her eyes shut she could still see the pain in his face, and the anger. Fear dragged at her; he might love her, but she sensed he half wanted to kill her, too, that he was torn between his love and his rage over the death of their baby, and what he saw as her betrayal of him.

  Is he going to kill me, too? she thought, trembling.

  He bent and kissed her. ‘No, don’t look like that, darling. I was angry with you for a little while, but I can’t bear to see you unhappy. Don’t worry, I’ve forgiven you. You didn’t want to kill our baby, you loved me and you wanted my baby, you told me that. I know who was to blame. They talked you into it, they lied to you, Fenn and your mother.’

  Her eyes opened again in shock. ‘Johnny … my mother …’ Somehow that was the biggest shock. She loved her mother, and she knew Trudie loved her too. Whatever Trudie had done had been for her. ‘Did you try to kill her too?’

  He looked quickly at her, a shade of anxiety in his face. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I had to, you know. She hated me.’

  ‘But … she said … a nurse …’

  ‘Oh, I’d been working there part-time on night duty ever since I got out of prison. I told you I worked in the hospital prison, didn’t I? I’d taken some of the nursing exams while I was there.’

  ‘So you are a qualified nurse?’ She was taken aback and Johnny laughed.

  ‘Of course not, but I knew enough to get by in practice, because I’d done the job for a couple of years, and it’s easy to get forged papers. I learnt a lot in prison, including how to get forged official documents. I borrowed a set from a nurse I’d met in prison and had them forged by someone else, a guy who’d shared my cell for a year. Clever guy; he can forge anything, money, documents, even paintings. Annie, I needed the extra money. The magazine I was working for didn’t pay me enough to live on. It was a coincidence that your mother turned up on the ward.’

  ‘Was it you she saw the day she wandered out and went to that park? Did you try to kill her that day?’

  ‘No, not that day. I saw her walk off down the road in her dressing-gown. I was worried about her, would you believe that? I liked her then, I thought she had liked me. I followed her and she turned on me. It was only later that I found out what she’d done, how she’d made sure you never got my messages and letters. She told me about the baby when she was on the ward, and I nearly killed her then, but once I’d talked to you and realised just what she had done to me …’ He put his cheek down, on Annie’s hair, murmured, ‘She hated me, darling. And she hurt you, just as Fenn had hurt you, and Roger Keats. I would never let anyone hurt you and get away with it, Annie. I’ll always look after you. When we’ve got rid of Halifax we’ll go away together.’

  She couldn’t take it all in; how many people had he killed? His father, Roger, Derek.

  ‘Mike?’ she thought aloud.

  ‘Waterford?’ He nodded. ‘I saw him on breakfast television, sneering about you, making those vile suggestions about you and Fenn. And you’d told me how much you hated him, so I knew you would want him to pay. I’ll always protect you from men like that – men like Fenn, and Waterford, and Halifax here, men who try to abuse you and hurt you, the way my father hurt my mother.’

  What was she going to do? He was mad. And she still loved him. But he had to be stopped. If she didn’t stop him he would kill Sean. And she couldn’t let him do that. He mustn’t kill again.

  Johnny frowned, sighing. ‘A pity about the house … I meant us to live there forever; we would have been so happy, wouldn’t we?’

  He looked at her and she managed a quivering smile, nodding. ‘Yes, Johnny, we’d have been happy.’

  His eyes burned. ‘And we still will, I promise. I’ll find us somewhere else – somewhere better. We’ll be together, Annie, just the two of us, and I’ll take care of you and make you happy.’ He bent and his mouth searched hungrily, caught hers, held it. Annie surrendered, fighting the shudder that ran through her entire body. She knew she would feel the touch of his mouth for the rest of her life.

  When he lifted his head she asked him, ‘Could I have some more tea, Johnny? I need another drink.’

  He got up, took her cup. ‘More brandy, too?’ he asked, smiling down at her as if she was a child, teasing her.

  She nodded, watching him with an aching heart. ‘I love you, Johnny,’ she said, and his eyes blazed with answering love.

  ‘Darling. I know you do. Of course I know. You wouldn’t betray me, the way your mother did, you wouldn’t lie to me.’ He glanced at Sean. ‘Don’t go near him, darling. Just pretend he isn’t there. I’ll get him away soon.’

  He walked out and as soon as he had gone Sean opened his eyes, jerked his head peremptorily, lifting his arms to ask her to untie his hands.

  She didn’t get up. She ignored him, the way Johnny had told her to, and Sean made stifled, angry sounds, his body struggling violently.

  Annie opened her handbag and got o
ut the gun Sean had made her put there. He saw it, his eyes widening, and he was suddenly still.

  Annie held it the way she had been taught, her finger on the safety catch, watching the door to the kitchen.

  Johnny walked through it a second later. He halted mid-step, seeing the gun. ‘Where did you get that from?’ His eyes rose to stare at her face – he looked startled but not afraid. ‘Guns aren’t a good idea, too much blood … I told you, we mustn’t have any blood, it’s so hard to clear up, it takes too long to make sure you’ve got rid of every trace. Better give the gun to me.’

  He held out his hand, coming towards her. She was shaking. She’d never been so cold in her life, she could quite literally hear her teeth chattering. But she clicked the safety catch off and Johnny heard it, went very pale.

  ‘Annie, for God’s sake … what are you doing? Stop pointing it at me. Don’t play silly games, guns are dangerous.’

  ‘I can’t let you kill anyone else, Johnny. You can’t go on killing people.’

  His eyes went oddly blank as if he didn’t want to hear what she was saying.

  ‘But I did it for you, Annie – I couldn’t let anyone hurt you and get away with it. I stopped my father hurting my mother, and I’ve stopped Keats and Fenn and Waterford too – they had to be dealt with. I was only taking care of you, darling. Tomorrow we’ll go away together, we can cross over to France on the ferry and wander across Europe like gypsies. Do you remember how we used to talk about doing that, in front of the fire?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and her finger tightened on the trigger. ‘There won’t be any tomorrow for us, Johnny.’

  She saw his face change, the realisation coming into those dark blue eyes. ‘Annie … Don’t, Annie!’ he cried out, springing forward.

  She had been trained by a first-rate marksman. She killed him with her first shot, but she couldn’t stop firing. Her finger was frozen on the trigger; the crash of the shots echoed inside her head, and she knew she would hear them for the rest of her life.

  Johnny was flung backwards violently, his body arching, his arms thrown back. The cup smashed, tea soaking into the carpet.