Table of Contents
Cover
Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams From Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Epilogue
Footnotes
Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House
The Naomi Blake Mysteries
MOURNING THE LITTLE DEAD
TOUCHING THE DARK
HEATWAVE
KILLING A STRANGER
LEGACY OF LIES
SECRETS
GREGORY’S GAME
PAYING THE FERRYMAN
The Rina Martin Mysteries
A REASON TO KILL
FRAGILE LIVES
THE POWER OF ONE
RESOLUTIONS
THE DEAD OF WINTER
CAUSE OF DEATH
PAYING THE FERRYMAN
A Naomi Blake Novel
Jane A. Adams
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
This first world edition published 2014
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Jane A. Adams.
The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Adams, Jane, 1960- author.
Paying the Ferryman. – (A Naomi Blake mystery)
1. Blake, Naomi (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Ex-police officers–Fiction. 3. Blind women–Fiction.
4. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. 5. Detective and
mystery stories.
I. Title II. Series
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8424-4 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-532-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-576-5 (ebook)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland
PROLOGUE
Sarah was woken by angry voices from downstairs and the sound of her little brother crying in the next room.
For a moment she was disoriented. Her mum and stepdad never yelled at one another like that and then never left Jack to cry. Vic, her stepfather, would occasionally growl a bit but he was the most even-tempered person Sarah had ever known – which, she’d always figured, was one of the big reasons her mum had fallen for him.
Another moment and she recognized the third voice rising up to her from the room below.
‘Shit!’ Sarah said. What the hell was he doing here? In that moment, she was absolutely convinced that the voice belonged to her father.
Sarah pulled on her dressing gown and slippers and padded quietly into the next room. Fifteen-month-old Jack raised his arms to her and she picked him up, found a tissue and wiped away the snot and tears from his face and dressing gown collar. Her mum always put him to bed in his dressing gown. He was such a wriggle-wort that he always managed to throw the covers off and then he woke up cold. He snuffled against her shoulder and then stopped crying as she hugged him tight, stroking the fluffy blond head.
‘There, that’s better then,’ Sarah said softly, soothing the little boy. She had been listening hard to the continued friction downstairs. Her dad hadn’t been around in years, thankfully, but she remembered the last time she’d seen him. The threats, the violence, the police.
They’d moved just a little while after that – then moved again and again – and then … and then good things had begun to happen. Her mum had met Vic and, after a very cautious start, had fallen for him big time, and for once in her life she’d made a good decision.
So what the hell was her father doing here now? He sounded, even to Sarah’s ears, madder than ever.
She crept out on to the landing and stood at the head of the stairs, listening.
‘What kind of mother keeps a father away from his kid?’
‘A mother who wants to keep her child safe,’ Vic told him. He still wasn’t shouting, Sarah noted, but he sounded angry, tense and – scared.
Vic never sounded anxious or scared.
Something else was said, but Sarah couldn’t catch it. The voice had lowered and the words were lost.
And then she heard her mother scream and her stepfather shouting, ‘Run, Sarah, run! Just run!’
And then two loud bangs that seemed to fill the house.
‘Mum!’ Sarah cried out, but she knew. Her mother was gone, Vic too, and there was only one thing left for her to do. Obey her stepfather’s final words and run.
The toddler had begun to whimper again, scared by the noise and by Sarah’s sudden tension. What to do, what the hell should she do?
She could hear his footsteps in the hall; another moment and he’d be coming up the stairs. Sarah backed away looking for a way to escape. There was no way she could climb down from the window with her brother in her arms. She had to find some means of getting down
the stairs and outside.
He was on the stairs now and Sarah did the only thing she could think of: she dodged into her parents’ room and hid behind the half open door, willing her little brother to stay silent and still.
The slow tamp of footsteps rose up the stairs and on to the landing. Her father never said a word. As he came on to the landing she could see that he was still holding the gun she had heard fired downstairs. It gleamed in the light coming from Jack’s bedroom, his little plug-in night light turning the harsh metal a soft, petal pink. Sarah dared not breathe.
Please, go into my room, she prayed. Go into my room. It was the furthest down the hall and would give them just a little time to get to the stairs.
So little time.
She wasn’t sure whether her father intended to kill her or abduct her – Sarah wasn’t sure which was worse – and then there was Jack to think about. Her father had killed Jack’s parents without a second thought. There was nothing to make her believe he would spare the child.
Sarah had been unable to help her mother or Vic but she was not about to let this man hurt Jack.
Her breath hurt in her chest. Slowly, she exhaled and then cautiously drew the air back into her lungs. She was certain he would hear her.
He moved along the landing towards her brother’s little room. Surely he must realize they weren’t there, Sarah thought. Or did he no longer think logically? Did someone who had just killed two people really even think?
Through the crack between door and hinges on her parents’ bedroom door, she saw him go through the half closed door and then push it wide. Then her father stepped inside and Sarah knew it was now or never. He might move down the hall to her room but he could just as easily turn the other way and that would be an end of things. She just knew it.
Moving as softly as she could and just praying that Jack would stay quiet, Sarah stepped around the door and out of the room. She could not see her father and guessed he must be standing somewhere in the middle of the room or maybe even by the window. She kept close to the wall, away from the creaky floorboards that Vic was always trying to silence by adding more nails.
She made it to the top of the stairs and now she could see him, a shadowy figure standing beside Jack’s empty cot and looking down into it, the gun still in his hand. Sarah moved on to the stairs, hurrying down them as fast as she could on slippered feet. He only had to turn, now, and he’d have a clean shot at them.
Her heart hammered, breath rasping as she tried hard to control it. Jack now felt very heavy in her arms. They were half way down the stairs when she heard the shots.
Sarah couldn’t help herself. She screamed, and only as the sound escaped did she realize that though the shots had come from Jack’s room they were not aimed in their direction.
Not yet.
As she leapt down the last two steps she heard him come out on to the landing and start down the stairs.
Sarah’s thoughts seemed to come very fast. The front door? No, he’d have a clear view of her and the bolts were heavy and difficult to move.
The back door then; hope her mother hadn’t locked up for the night.
Sarah charged through into the kitchen, slamming the door closed behind her, even while a little bit of her brain laughed that it was hardly going to be able to stop a bullet.
The key had been turned in the back door lock but had not been removed. She turned it, glancing down to ensure the bolt had not been thrown, thankful beyond words to find it hadn’t. Jack was yelling now and she yanked the back door wide just as the man with the gun came into the kitchen.
Out into the garden. Rain pounded down fierce and cold and she held Jack tighter, screwing up her eyes against the force of it. She pulled the garden gate wide, then Sarah ran and ran.
Behind her a shot blasted through the cold night air and the pouring rain and she felt the pain of it. Sarah staggered, almost hit the floor. Jack was quiet now, still heavy in her arms. She tightened her grip; her side was on fire and her right arm didn’t want to work. Somehow, she stumbled on.
Lights came on behind her, but Sarah was unaware of them. Reality, consciousness, for her it was all about putting one foot in front of the other and keeping Jack safe. But she knew where she was going now.
The house backed on to fields. The fields belonged to a farm. Across the fields was a barn. She lost her slippers in the sucking mud of the ploughed field but somehow made it into the barn.
Hay bales and farm equipment. Faint light from outside filtered in and memory supplemented it. She had been here several times, been chased out by the farmer more than once. She could just make out the massive thing with hooks that she had seen the farmer drag behind his tractor: spikes that looked like weapons, that looked like defence … A tarpaulin tossed beside the bales looked like potential shelter. Sarah crawled behind the machine and laid her brother down. Jack didn’t move and Sarah could just make out the dark spread of blood staining the pale blue of his dressing gown.
She looked down at the crimson stains on her own and prayed that all the blood was hers. That Jack was all right.
She thought she heard a sound coming from outside. Her last act as she lost consciousness was to pull the tarpaulin across them both. Then she heard nothing more.
ONE
They brought the bodies out at dawn. The rain had ceased and the sunrise lit a pale scene, washed down with grey and bleakly cold.
Figures in white overalls handed over to men in black suits. Together they wheeled the gurneys with their weight of soot-dark plastic out towards the waiting cars. The gurneys were collapsed, body bags were slid inside, the doors were closed.
He counted them.
Only two. Only two bodies, he thought. Did that mean …? But he’d seen no ambulance arrive, heard no sirens, and no one had spoken of living victims being taken away.
A little cluster of people huddled at the end of the street behind the cordon. Those who had not been brought out by the rumours of gunshots had been evacuated by the police. An emergency shelter had been provided for them at a nearby church, but some had wandered back, curiosity and concern dragging them here to the end of their little road. One of them voiced what he had been thinking.
‘Only two bodies. Does that mean the kiddies—?’
‘Oh, God willing. Poor little buggers. He’s such a little mite.’
‘And she’s a lovely girl. Always polite, always with a smile. I see her go off to school of a morning and she always waves.’
‘The mother’s a nice woman. I don’t know him more than to say hello to, but she’s always got a word, you know.’
‘And they’ve not been here five minutes. Such a terrible thing.’
Three years, he thought. They’ve lived here for three years. Sarah had come to his school just after. She’d been a nervous little first year then and he’d been in the year above. She was now fourteen and Joey was just over a year older.
He stood a little apart from the rest, separated by his youth and by the fact that he didn’t live in their street. There was curiosity about this teenage boy in his Puffa jacket, jeans and trainers who had arrived a couple of hours before and not moved since.
His bare hands were thrust into the depths of his pockets and he wished he had the nerve to ask the neighbours more about what had happened, but that would draw even more attention his way and there was enough of that already. Instead, he sank his chin further into his collar, tried to ignore the raging earache he now had – he’d rushed out without his hat – and watched intently, expecting other bodies to be brought out of that red front door, to be slid so quietly and efficiently into the waiting mortuary cars.
He heard the engine start, and a police officer walked up towards the cordon to open it for the vehicle to pass through. The officer eyed the watchers with that strange mix of criticism and compassion the boy had noticed earlier. He didn’t approve of the gathering, but he understood it, and Joey wondered if he’d have joined them had it been his street.<
br />
The officer glanced his way. Joey’s youth and stillness and silence were marking him out from the rest and Joey knew this was perhaps his only chance.
He took a hesitant step towards the policeman, breaking the habit, if not of a lifetime, then certainly of years. Policemen were not people he would usually talk to. ‘The girl,’ he said. ‘Sarah. Is she OK?’
The officer scrutinized him. ‘And you are?’
‘A friend. She’s my friend.’
‘And your name is?’
He thought about lying, but the little knot of locals had turned their attention towards him now and he just knew that at least one of them would know his dad. Everyone knew his dad. ‘Um, Joey,’ he said. ‘Joey Hughes. I go to school with Sarah.’
The mortuary car prowled up to the cordon and the police officer waved people aside. Joey thought that would be it. He’d get no response now.
‘Christ sake, Matthew,’ one of the neighbours said. ‘Tell the boy. It’ll all come out soon enough. Is the lass dead or not?’
The officer called Matthew scowled. ‘There’ll be a statement later,’ he said.
‘I’m sure there will, lad, but you’ve been asked a civil question, and times were you’d have given a civil answer. Just because you’ve got a uniform doesn’t mean we don’t all know you.’
Joey glanced gratefully at this unexpected ally, an elderly man with a raincoat belted tight over his pyjamas and dressing gown and a woollen hat tugged down over his ears.
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