The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  The young woman at the reception desk was busy on the phone, so Anna went over to look at the large black and white photographs on the walls. All the pictures were of Owen except for a portrait of a touchingly young Owen and Audrey. With her long hair falling over her shoulders, Audrey looked as if she’d just that minute hitch-hiked back from some hippy festival. The photographer had posed them in a country lane, white and frothy with May blossom, making it seem as if Nature herself had decided to give them a wedding.

  The girl at the desk finished her call. But before Anna could state her business, she saw Sara hurrying towards her. Dressed in faded denim jeans and a navy sweater, she was as skinny as an adolescent. Anna could see the sharp edge of her collarbones as she took a breath. ‘You should go now,’ she told Anna in a low voice.

  Anna felt her stomach go into a slow dive. For the first time she understood that Sara was more than just bitter and unhappy. She was scared.

  ‘I mean it, Anna, just go,’ Sara pleaded.

  ‘Well, this is good timing on your part!’ Huw arrived beside them, smiling his usual taut smile. ‘Sara was just making coffee, weren’t you, darling?’

  Sara nodded and smiled, but her eyes signalled, Run!

  ‘No coffee for me, thanks,’ Anna said. ‘I’m here because I want to clear something up.’ This was not how she’d meant to begin, but with Huw standing just a few feet away her nerve-endings were sparking like loose wires. She resisted the urge to touch her cheeks, which were suddenly burning.

  ‘That sounds very mysterious,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Should I be sitting down?’

  ‘Did you go to see Laurie?’ Anna heard her voice shake. ‘Did you go to his house before he died?’

  The smile was instantly wiped from Huw’s face. ‘I didn’t even know where Laurie was living,’ he said brusquely. ‘We hadn’t spoken for years.’

  ‘Laurie’s nurse recognized you at the memorial,’ she said, fighting for calm. ‘She said you came to his house. She heard you talking.’

  ‘Then Laurie’s nurse, whoever the hell she might be, is mistaken,’ Huw flashed back, and Anna felt his cold fury like a physical force in the room. Not disappointment, not stress, she realized in that moment, but a raging need for control, a need that would stop at nothing.

  Huw was hiding something, she was completely sure of that now.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ she said, playing a hunch. ‘You knew about Laurie and your father!’

  She saw him go paper white around his eyes. ‘That’s it!’ Huw’s voice was like a whip. ‘I want you to leave this building now.’

  ‘Oh my God, you didn’t even ask me what I meant! What did you do?’ she hissed at him. ‘What did you do to Laurie?’

  ‘Get out!’ Huw ordered. He was shaking with rage. ‘Get out before I call the police.’

  ‘Go ahead! Because that’s where I’m going next!’

  The police station was just a few streets away. She ran all the way, heart thumping, a wild euphoria rushing through her. She wasn’t mad. She’d been right to suspect Huw. She hadn’t been able to find the person or persons who had murdered her family, but she could do this. She could put this right.

  Bursting through the doors Anna pushed to the head of the small queue of people waiting to talk to the duty sergeant, ignoring their protests. ‘I’ve got to talk to Inspector Chaudhari,’ she demanded, breathless.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, but you’ll have to wait your turn,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘I can’t!’ she almost yelled. ‘I think I know how Laurie Swanson died!’

  But the stolid sergeant held his ground. When it was finally Anna’s turn, he told her with polite regret that Inspector Chaudhari had left the building some time ago. He couldn’t say when he’d be back.

  Anna took one of the moulded plastic seats. Pressing her trembling knees together, she prepared herself to wait. Her heart was hammering like a rabbit’s. It’s OK, she told herself fiercely. She just had to keep it together a bit longer. She could keep it together for Laurie. After that it didn’t matter if she fell apart. It wouldn’t matter.

  At last Liam Goodhart appeared. He smiled, but it wasn’t, Anna felt, a completely convincing smile. ‘The sergeant says you have important information about Laurie Swanson?’ he said.

  She sprang up. ‘Yes! Yes, I do! Is Inspector Chaudhari here?’

  Liam led her downstairs to an interview room. Anna thought it was the same one, but maybe there were dozens of featureless rooms down here. She took a chair and Liam leaned against the wall, and they waited in uneasy silence for Inspector Chaudhari to join them.

  When he walked in, he exchanged a private look with Liam, and she felt a jolt of fear. She had burst in babbling about Laurie. They thought she was nuts. Anna couldn’t blame them. She even looked nuts. She was so freaked that one of her knees had taken on a jiggling life of its own, and she was fighting a losing battle to keep it still.

  In her panic Anna started to pour out what she’d discovered: that Huw Traherne had been seen visiting Laurie; that he’d needed to silence this man, his father’s secret lover, before the news could get out and wreck his Foundation. Or that’s what she tried to say. But she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts in any kind of order. Like startled birds they scattered as soon as they’d formed. ‘I’ve got evidence,’ she heard herself say over and over like a mad bag lady. ‘Please, you’ve got to believe me!’

  When the wound-up spring inside her had finally run down, and Anna had stopped talking, sick with humiliation, Inspector Chaudhari made a quick note of something on his phone, then he passed his hand over his thick black hair and gave her a look that somehow combined concern with reproof. ‘Mr Traherne has just called the station. Your accusations have made him extremely upset. I am therefore giving you an official warning not to go round to his home or to his offices or to try to contact him again.’

  Her hands flew to her head. Too late she remembered that this was the classic pose of the mentally unwell and returned them to her lap. ‘But what if he killed Laurie?’ she said in a pleading voice.

  The inspector drew a breath. ‘Anna, listen, however strongly you feel, you can’t afford to go throwing these kinds of serious accusations around.’ He gave her a long look. ‘Not with your history.’

  Anna felt her blood drain from her face. When she was seventeen, a restraining order had been taken out against her by the family of a boy she’d believed partly responsible for the deaths of her parents and siblings. She’d been wrong. She’d been off her head. She wasn’t wrong this time, but to the inspector she would always be that teenage girl whose disturbed ramblings they still had recorded somewhere on their files.

  The inspector went on to say a few other things. She was tired and upset. It might be time to think about talking to a professional counsellor, get some help. Anna could hear the sympathy in his voice, the kind of tone you might use to soothe a skittish pony. Summoning the last of her strength, she opened her mouth to plead one last time, then was overcome by a sense of utter futility.

  ‘My sergeant will show you out,’ the inspector said.

  When they reached the reception area Anna was bewildered to see a tense-looking Tansy waiting by the desk. ‘I called her,’ Liam said. ‘I thought you might need a friend.’

  Like a humiliated child, Anna waited as Liam handed over his car keys so Tansy could drive her home. Exhausted and wrung-out, she followed Tansy out to the car.

  As Tansy drove, she kept darting anxious looks at Anna. ‘I feel so terrible about this,’ she burst out at last. ‘Liam said he took the call – you know from that arse Huw?’ She took a breath. ‘Remember when we came back from London? You said we just need to be normal?’

  Anna didn’t see the point of saying that this was normal for her.

  When they arrived outside Anna’s door, Tansy said, ‘I don’t feel happy about just dropping you off, but I’ve got to return Liam’s car then go back to finish my shift.’ She flashed Anna a grin.
‘When I left, Julie looked as if she was about to have a stroke, so it’s not all bad news!’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Anna muttered. She felt sick with shame. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘Isadora’s got some big dinner party tonight,’ Tansy said, glancing at her watch, ‘but if it’s not too late – actually, even if it is – we’ll pop over and make sure you’re OK.’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, don’t worry. I just need to sleep.’

  To sleep and also to sever every last connection to the outside world. Though cutting her connections wasn’t going to be a problem, she thought wearily as she let herself into her flat. She caught herself unconsciously fingering Kit’s pendant. She wouldn’t let herself think about Kit Tulliver. She’d blown it for all time with him. No matter how much she tried to explain, she knew he would never forgive her for publicly denouncing Huw.

  She went down to her kitchen where Bonnie was already waiting expectantly at the foot of the stairs. Anna knelt beside her. Wrapping her arms around Bonnie’s solid warmth, she buried her face in her snowy coat. At least I’ve got you, she thought. No matter how mad people think I am, I’ve got you, you sweet, beautiful dog.

  TWENTY

  Despite what she’d said to Tansy, Anna didn’t take herself off to sleep. She daren’t. That she wouldn’t actually dissolve into sea foam like the Little Mermaid, just because she’d relaxed her vigilance for an hour or two, made no difference. If she let go now, she was afraid she’d fall all the way to the bottom, and this time she might not be able to fight her way back up.

  Instead she filled a bucket with hot water, found kitchen cleaner and an abrasive pad and made herself clean the fronts of her kitchen cupboards. She did it through a fog of tiredness and misery, but the important thing was that she did it. Cupboard by cupboard, door by door she was restoring order to her life. Her therapist had been right. The repetitive chore made Anna feel … not normal – she was several miles to the left of normal by now – but as good as it was possible to feel now that her last chance of ‘normal’ had gone swirling down the plughole.

  Eventually, she’d worked her way round to the cupboard where she stored Bonnie’s forbidden treats. Bonnie’s repeated assaults had left a Jackson Pollock spatter-effect of grubby paw marks. Seeing Anna scrubbing away at her special cupboard, her White Shepherd casually ambled over with a hopeful glint in her eye. Dogs were such ridiculously hopeful creatures. ‘No way!’ Anna told her sternly. ‘You’ll get treats when I say, or you will have a waist like a – dog with no waist.’

  Bonnie lay down with a disappointed sigh, but kept her eyes pointedly on Anna, the dispenser of treats and walks.

  Encouraged by her gleaming cupboards, Anna decided to tackle her grandmother’s china. One by one she lifted down the eggshell thin cups and plates, hand-washed them in warm soapy water, rinsed and dried them and returned them to their original positions on her shelves. Anna must only have been eight years old when her grandmother had decided she could finally be trusted to help with this near-sacred task. At that age Anna had still been a trusting open-hearted child, seeing magic in everything. Before puberty hit and turned her into every parent’s worst nightmare.

  ‘Don’t,’ Anna told herself sharply. She looked around for another mindless task. Bird feeders. She hadn’t checked them for days. She took bags of peanuts and sunflower-seed into the garden and refilled the half-dozen or so feeders. Until now she hadn’t even noticed what kind of day it was. She’d been too obsessed with Huw. For the first time she properly registered the overcast skies. Fitful gleams of sunlight came and went through the thinning leaves. A smell of bonfires drifted to her on the breeze.

  By the time she’d filled the last and smallest feeder, a blackbird and several blue-tits were queuing up along the fence, waiting for her to leave. She walked back into the kitchen just as her landline started to ring. She checked the caller’s ID, in case someone was calling from Bramley Lodge, and recognized Jake’s number. At the last possible moment she snatched up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Anna, I wasn’t sure if you’d be home. How’s it going?’ The sound of his warm southern voice saying her name was so good that she had to close her eyes. ‘I had a gap between meetings. Thought I’d find out what our girl’s up to.’

  ‘Where are you?’ She wanted to be able to pinpoint him in time and space.

  ‘Where am I? Hold up! Let me look out the window – I think it’s Berlin. Yes, yesterday was Zurich, so today has to be Berlin.’

  ‘Sounds like a hectic schedule.’ She tried to sound upbeat, not like a hysteric who’d accused someone of murdering his father’s gay lover.

  ‘Yeah, well, hopefully we’ll get a few good contracts out of it, then I can decide where I’m going to be living for the next few years. So how’s our treat thief? Attempted any more break-ins?’

  ‘Actually, she’s just been watching me remove her mucky prints from the crime scene,’ Anna said. ‘She might have been experiencing a moment of guilt, but I think it’s more likely she was hoping I’d open the cupboard and give her a treat.’

  He laughed. ‘So that’s Bonnie. How about you?’

  ‘Me?’ She felt herself falling. Jake’s innocent question had pulled the rug out from under her, and underneath there was just – terrifying space. ‘I’m – I’m actually not very – I’m – I’m sorry!’ To her horror she heard her voice rising like a child’s as she fought and failed to contain the storm that had been building for so long.

  She fumbled for the button that would sever the connection. She could hear him saying, ‘Anna? Are you still there?’ And she just stood holding the phone, listening to his voice saying her name, as if he was her lifeline.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said softly. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. You’re gonna be OK.’ Jake sounded concerned, but he didn’t sound dismayed. Maybe that’s why she could finally tell him the truth.

  ‘I’m not OK, Jake,’ she almost whispered. ‘I’m a mess.’

  And then she told him about the night that had turned her into this messed-up person. She didn’t tell him everything, she wasn’t sure if she even remembered everything that had happened, but it wasn’t the cleaned-up version she’d told Isadora and Tansy. She described finding her little sister Lottie in her blood-soaked bed and colliding with someone on the landing who had stabbed her, then stumbling, half-falling, downstairs, clutching at her stomach with both her bloody hands. And as she told her story, she was seeing the sixteen-year-old Anna, she was feeling her mindless terror and the stinging pain from her stab wound, running frantically from the house where her parents and her two young brothers lay dead. They had been brutally slaughtered, their bodies scarcely recognizable, as though the killer’s primary need was to punish, tearing into their soft innermost parts like wolves, except that wolves kill for food or to defend their young, and there was no sense to this killing, none at all. And each time she thought she’d reached the end of the horror, there was more, until she felt like her own entrails were being dragged out and exposed.

  ‘The police suspected everyone,’ she said. ‘Kind normal people who’d babysat me and my brothers, and whose kids came to our house for sleepovers; people we’d been on holidays with. Then the tabloids jumped on board, digging up dirt about my parents’ sex lives, my dad’s finances. I was a suspect at one time, even though I’d been stabbed …’ Anna’s hand went instinctively to the puckered little scar. ‘I knew some bad people in those days,’ she said, her voice faltering. ‘They thought I’d brought them back to the house, to get money for drugs.’

  It was like hurtling along on some kind of confessional roller-coaster. It was terrifying, and compulsive, her sudden violent need to be heard by this man. But after a while she noticed that, though Jake was listening with close attention, he showed absolutely no sign of surprise. She sat down abruptly on a nearby stool. ‘You knew,’ she said flatly. ‘Did Isadora tell you?’

  ‘She told me some.’ Jake sounded matter of fact. ‘There’
s quite a lot about you online.’

  ‘I don’t – as a rule I don’t tell—’ she started.

  ‘Why should you have to?’ he said. ‘It’s nobody’s business but yours.’

  ‘Yet you looked me up,’ she said, very quietly.

  ‘True, but I had a vested interest.’ His voice was suddenly so warm that it felt as if he’d put his arms around her. ‘Also, I admit that it had occurred to me that, if the day was to come when you decided you could trust me to know you a little bit better, it might be helpful to arm myself with some basic facts.’

  She caught sight of her reflection in her kettle and was surprised to see tears streaming down her face. As soon as she saw them she could feel them slipping down her cheeks, running into the neck of her sweater. How long had she been crying? She swiped the tears away. ‘I did a terrible thing today,’ she told him. ‘I think I’ve blown it with Isadora and Tansy.’

  And Kit, she thought, touching the silver bee at her throat. It was strange; for a while Kit had seemed like the more realistic possibility. But she could never have talked like this with Kit Tulliver. She couldn’t say how she knew. She just understood, deep in her bones, that it was true.

  ‘Why do you think you’ve blown it?’ Jake asked.

  She told him about Laurie’s mysterious visitor and how Anna had worked out that it had to be Huw. Then she described what she’d found out about Aidan Rose and how she’d confronted Huw in his office, then rushed straight to the police, given a prize-winning performance as a nut-job and been told to have nothing more to do with the Trahernes. Almost worse than her failure to convince the police of Huw Traherne’s involvement in Laurie’s death was emerging from the interview suite to find an embarrassed Tansy waiting to take her home. It wasn’t the first time Anna had been picked up from a local police station in disgrace, but that only made it more, not less, humiliating.