The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  When she’d finally run out of words, Jake stayed silent for so long that she was convinced he’d terminated the call in disgust. ‘Hello?’ she said in a panic.

  ‘Still here,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just thinking about a bunch of stuff.’

  She’d forgotten Jake’s lengthy pauses for thought. She waited and eventually heard him take a breath.

  ‘OK, here’s the first thing,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe there is anything on this earth that could permanently damage the connection you’ve got with those girls. You met them at a murder scene. Y’all have been through fire together, and these are not the kind of friendships people just throw away. Trust me on that, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she whispered.

  ‘Second, you need a break. You need to take time out, get away from all of this for a while. How would you feel about taking a trip somewhere with me?’ he added, so abruptly that she almost dropped the phone. ‘I’ve got to come back to see Mimi’s solicitor in a couple of days, and I’d been thinking of driving up to the Lake District. That day we had in the Cotswolds really made me want to see more of the English countryside. There’s a lakeside hotel in Ullswater that takes dogs. I could book us a couple of rooms. A few days of peace and quiet, mountains and lakes, wood fires, good food, long country walks with Bonnie for your chaperone – what do you think?’

  She nodded dumbly, then realized Jake couldn’t see her. ‘Yes,’ she managed. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  They talked for a few minutes longer, then Jake had to go and meet some possible future clients.

  After Anna had ended the call she opened Bonnie’s cupboard and gave her a treat because she needed to celebrate with someone, and who said dog owners had to be one hundred per cent consistent? ‘We’re going on holiday,’ she told her, ‘with your Jake!’

  Having crunched up her treat in double-quick time, Bonnie gave the short sharp bark she used when she was excited.

  ‘I know!’ Anna said. She didn’t understand how it had only taken a single phone conversation with Jake McCaffrey to restore her perspective, nor did she care exactly how he’d worked his magic, only that it had worked. An hour ago her life had been over. Although, her previous misgivings about Jake still applied; he presumably still had a not-so-ex. He was still based on the wrong side of the Atlantic. But just at this moment none of these things seemed nearly as important as the compelling fact of Jake himself. She had never felt such an intense connection with a man – and they had never even kissed! But I’d like to, she thought, and she felt her skin flush as she imagined other things she’d like to do with Jake.

  But right now she had an overwhelming need to crawl into her bed. She went up to her bedroom, pulled off her boots, fell on to her bed fully-dressed and gave herself up to sleep.

  When she woke it was pitch dark and she felt more rested than she had for days. She checked her phone and saw that it was half-past midnight. She’d slept for eight or nine hours! She’d have been tempted to turn over and sleep some more except that she was suddenly famished. She showered, quickly towel-dried her hair and slipped into her flannel robe. She was just tying up the belt with sleepy fingers, wondering without much hope if there was anything in her fridge that could be made to resemble a late-night snack, when she heard a loud ‘clunk’ from the kitchen. ‘I can hear you, you know!’ she called. ‘If you’re messing up my clean cupboards, there’ll be big trouble!’

  She padded out on to the landing in her bare feet, not bothering to turn on the light. She could see her way to the stairs by the glow from the street lamp outside the window. She had taken two or three steps, when she felt her right foot almost skid out from under her. She’d stepped in something warm and wet. Now that she looked down she could see it, a glistening liquid trail. The dog flap must have malfunctioned as it had occasionally done before. Anna had been dead to the world for hours, and Bonnie hadn’t been able to get out.

  She groped for the light switch so she could assess the extent of the puddle and whether any rugs were involved. For a moment she stared down, unable to process what she was seeing, then with a moan she backed away from the ominous pool. But it was too late; her feet were covered with blood.

  The hall was suddenly rushing away from her like smoke. It was happening again. She flashed back to Lily’s blood-soaked bed. The sticky black-crimson mess, the same ferrous tang making her nostrils flare.

  Sick and shaking, Anna somehow dragged herself back to the present. This wasn’t then; it was now. Whatever this was, it was real and new.

  She forced herself to look further down the hall and felt her heart almost leave her mouth as she saw the huddled white shape lying near the front door. Bonnie.

  Anna scarcely noticed that she had to walk through her dog’s blood to reach her. She was just suddenly crouching over her, fighting down waves of shock and nausea. Someone had stabbed her in her side. Fresh blood was still flowing, staining Bonnie’s snow-white coat. She was panting with stress and fear. The instant she felt Anna bending over her she made a valiant effort at wagging her tail, almost breaking Anna’s heart. That was the moment when she knew just how much she loved her brave beautiful dog. ‘You’ll be OK,’ she told her, putting all her love and belief into her voice. ‘Everything’s going to be OK. Just try to hang on, and I’ll get help.’

  But why would someone break in and hurt Bonnie? And how had they got in?

  She hadn’t set the alarm. She’d been such a mess when she got home that she hadn’t set the bloody alarm. Lulled into a childlike illusion that Jake had somehow made the whole world safe, she’d slept while someone had broken into her house and attacked her dog.

  She heard a floorboard creak. Still in a crouch, she whirled around, fists raised, adrenalin surging through her veins, to see Huw Traherne standing over her with a bloodied knife.

  In her heightened terror it felt as if floodlights had turned on in her brain, and she saw him, the real Huw, his veneer of humanity ripped away.

  ‘You’re causing me much too much trouble, Anna,’ he said in a bored voice. Reaching down, he grabbed her by her shoulders. He was far, far stronger than she’d thought. He partially lifted her off the floor, then slammed her into the wall sending an agonizing pain shooting through her collar bone and jarring every last bone in her body. The force of the impact sent a picture crashing to the floor. Winded and bruised, Anna tried to sit up, sucking in her breath as tiny shards of broken glass stung her palms. For the first time she saw Laurie’s box by Huw’s feet. She started to struggle towards it, but Huw was too fast.

  Pulling her up by the front of her robe he pinned her shoulder to the wall with his free hand. A heartbeat later, she felt the sharp point of a knife being pressed to her throat a few millimetres above Kit’s pendant. For a moment she was confused by the unnatural waxy whiteness of his hands, before she realized he was wearing gloves.

  There was a kind of slowed-down dreamlike rightness to it. This was how Anna’s story was always supposed to end. She was meant to have died along with everyone else. She’d just had to wait sixteen years to get what she deserved. Once it would have been a relief. A few months ago she’d have begged him to get it over with, to just kill her, put an end to her long lonely nightmare and be done.

  But when Anna looked up at this pale, normal-looking man who had killed Laurie, she understood that she couldn’t just submit, not without a fight. She couldn’t leave Bonnie to bleed to death all alone.

  ‘Aren’t you going to scream and struggle and beg?’ Huw sounded almost petulant. Without warning he pushed the point of the knife under her pendant in a short, sharp upward thrust, and she felt the silver links snap. The broken chain slithered from her neck, carrying Kit’s little winged bee with it. She instinctively moved to save it, but he slapped her hand away. ‘You stupid cow! You have no idea, have you?’

  ‘I know you killed Laurie!’ she flashed back, surprising herself with the sound of her own voice. In dreams her vocal chords were always paralysed. In dr
eams she was still sixteen.

  ‘Oh, that. I had to do that,’ he said carelessly. ‘I couldn’t just let him ruin everything. Laurie Swanson and my mother almost destroyed my father’s reputation once before. I couldn’t let him do it again!’

  ‘Laurie and your mother?’ Anna said blankly. She could feel Huw’s rage vibrating through the knife and into her flesh.

  Huw was still talking. ‘I did go to see Laurie; you were right about that. He was pathetically pleased to see me, said he’d never meant to hurt me.’ He laughed. ‘Creepy little pervert. Even so, I’d almost made up my mind to let him live. Didn’t see the point of taking stupid chances, not when Nature was already fucking him up the arse! And then, on my way out, that little black nurse with the huge tits thanked me for coming to see him. She said it did him good to have visitors. She said this lovely young woman had come to see him the other night with her dog. She could tell Mr Swanson had liked her because he gave her that beautiful box he kept his special papers in.’

  Huw slightly shifted position, and Anna felt the pressure from the knifepoint ease. ‘I asked her if this lovely young woman was anyone I knew,’ he said, ‘and she told me your name.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I guess she was off sick the day they did the security module!’

  ‘So you went back and killed him.’ Anna could smell Huw’s subtle sandalwood aftershave, a smell she’d always loved until now.

  ‘He was three-quarters dead already. It wasn’t hard!’ For a moment he sounded like a sneering little boy. ‘I had some creative fun with his death bed though.’

  ‘To make it look like your mother’s suicide?’ The words jumped out.

  Huw stepped back, still pointing the knife, genuinely shocked. ‘How could you possibly know that? That wasn’t in the papers!’

  ‘It must have been,’ she said quickly, ‘or how would I know?’

  ‘True,’ he admitted. ‘You’re not nearly devious enough to be able to access that kind of information.’

  Anna wondered if he’d registered the crucial space he’d left between them. She could knock away his knife now and run to Bonnie. But then he’d just come after her and do to her what he’d done to her dog.

  ‘My mother didn’t commit suicide, anyway,’ Huw said carelessly. He looked down at the knife in his hand, and she saw his coldly knowing smile.

  Anna’s brain refused to take it in. It was horror piling on horror. She thought of Audrey, luminously beautiful in her hippy smock. ‘You killed her?’ she said numbly. ‘But … she was your mother.’

  ‘I had to. She didn’t give me a choice.’

  Anna thought she heard a movement behind her. Bonnie! She was still alive! Hold on, she told her silently. Just hold on, and I will get us out of this.

  ‘My mother had been seeing a new therapist,’ Huw said. ‘I imagine you know quite a bit about therapists yourself, don’t you Anna?’ he added spitefully. ‘Well, this particular therapist was big on family openness and sharing. Some might say over-sharing.’ He gave another of his cold laughs. ‘So one day, shortly before I’m due to go up to Oxford, my mother announces that she and my father had both been living a lie, and she had given him her blessing to go and live with my best friend Laurie. She said she was going to move to London and it would be a fresh start for all of us. Didn’t give a flying fuck about the effect it would have on me, what they were doing to me. Of course I had to kill her.’ His face twisted with hatred.

  He still hadn’t tried to close the gap. If Anna ignored the throbbing pain in her shoulder, and the fact that she was only wearing a short robe with nothing underneath, she could unbalance him by hooking her foot around his ankle and sending him crashing to the floor.

  ‘Women, Nature’s biggest disappointment,’ Huw said, in an almost sing-song voice. ‘You’re all mad manipulative bitches. Take Sara, telling me I was the man of her dreams. I’m stuck with the barren bitch for now, sadly.’ He shot Anna a vicious smile. ‘Happily, I’m not stuck with you – or not for much longer!’

  To Anna’s bewilderment, Huw dropped the knife, kicking it away from him. He slid something narrow out of his pocket, something that glinted under the electric light. With a clutch of fear she saw that it was a syringe. ‘Sedative to keep you quiet later on,’ he explained coolly. ‘But it’s not time for you to meet your maker just yet.’ Without turning his head, he called in a bored voice, ‘Isn’t it your turn now?’

  In childhood nightmares people Anna had trusted in waking life – good, kind, familiar people – suddenly turned on her with unmistakably evil intent. When Kit stepped out of her sitting room, calm and smiling, it felt so exactly like those dreams that she thought her heart would stop. Snapping a pair of latex gloves in place, he bent down to pick up a tiny object from the floor, holding it out to her on his palm. It was the silver bee.

  ‘You really didn’t remember it, did you?’ He saw her bewilderment and shook his head. ‘I thought girls noticed little fripperies like that! It came off her bracelet in the struggle,’ he explained. ‘I kept a few for souvenirs.’

  Naomi’s charm bracelet. Anna remembered the cold burn of the metal against her skin as Kit fastened the charm around her neck, and the horror almost made her black out.

  ‘Such a witty, prickly, faux enigmatic girl, aren’t you?’ Kit said with a sigh. ‘Yet when it came right down to it, such a complete fucking pushover! Admit it, Bee Girl, my little present totally charmed the pants off you! Assuming you wear any, that is? From where I’m standing, I’d say probably not! Huw and I both look forward immensely to finding that out, don’t we, Huw?’

  Behind her, Anna heard Bonnie start to keen, the same high-pitched sound she’d made that morning on Port Meadow. She knows I’m in danger.

  Anna felt blank with shock. She’d known something was wrong with Huw. But she hadn’t let herself see the rottenness in Kit. Seduced by his flirty humour, the fact that he’d come so warmly endorsed by Isadora, she had let herself be played like a gullible teenage girl.

  ‘She’s not quite so witty now,’ Kit said to Huw in fake disappointment. ‘I think it’s finally penetrated – if you’ll excuse the tasteless metaphor, darling!’ He flashed his smile at Anna, the smile she’d once found so appealing and which now seemed as predatory as a cruising shark. ‘I’m not really into screwing women when they’re unconscious, by the way,’ he added casually. ‘That’s more Huw’s thing. I wouldn’t have minded a crack at Naomi though, in other circumstances. But DNA is such a bloody passion killer!’ He laughed. ‘Imagine my surprise when that local nutter claimed responsibility for doing her as well as the others!’

  Numb from Kit’s betrayal, Anna’s brain could only process what he’d told her in successive shock-waves. Kit Tulliver had murdered Naomi. Then he’d gone back to his life as if nothing had happened. Taking a life was nothing to Kit, she understood then. Anna’s life would be nothing. She might have been able to fight Huw, but she couldn’t fight them both.

  ‘Poor baby, we’ve scared her out of her wits!’ Kit said, amused. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told Anna. ‘You’ll feel nicely relaxed after we’ve shot that stuff into your veins.’

  ‘How do you think you’ll get away with it?’ Anna said, finally rediscovering her voice. ‘No matter how careful they are, people always leave DNA behind.’

  ‘I didn’t with Naomi,’ Kit said.

  Huw sniggered. ‘Oh, come on, mate, you’ve got to admit you got seriously lucky with that one!’

  ‘Besides, Anna, you and I were practically dating, and who knows what else?’ He mimed a grotesque pelvic thrust. ‘It’s perfectly reasonable that I, or even my best friend Huw, come to that, could have been in your flat.’

  Huw let out a snort of laughter.

  They were like adolescents, Anna thought – crude, lecherous, over-privileged adolescents. At some point they must have recognized something in each other, she thought – something demonic and depraved. Huw had always lived in his father’s shadow. He’d even lost Laurie, his friend and
almost-brother, to Owen. He must have felt he had no control whatsoever over his life. And then he’d found a new, darker brother in Kit.

  ‘Kit can tell you we always get away with it. My fucking mother.’ Huw shot Kit a look. ‘That pathetic little oik, Aidan.’

  ‘Still trying to pay you back for that one, mate,’ Kit said carelessly. ‘I’d have been sent down!’

  Behind Anna’s back, Bonnie had been painfully inching along the floor. Anna only knew this when she felt the unmistakable warmth of her dog’s body pressing against her bare foot. Bonnie’s soft keening intensified, an eerie sub-vocal protest that was impossible to ignore.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, shut up!’ Kit yelled at the dog. He directed a kick at Bonnie’s head, and she let out a yelp of mixed terror and pain.

  When Anna saw Kit hurt her helpless dog, a red mist filled her head and she launched herself at the knife. Kit quickly snatched it up and came towards her, grinning.

  It was then that she remembered. She had seen the real Kit: that cold look in his eyes at the book launch. She’d felt it again when she kissed him. Some primitive part of Anna’s brain had instantly smelled out what he was. But she had overruled it because she wanted to be happy and normal, to fall in love and be loved.

  Anna felt it surge through her like a lightning strike, a sudden furious will to live. She had the optimum space now to execute the flying kick she’d learned from her Krav Maga instructor, so that’s what she did, sending Kit sprawling and knocking the knife from his hand. ‘Did you say you like us to struggle?’ Anna asked him, before briskly head-butting Huw in the face. By this time a furious Kit was scrambling to his feet. Before he could get his balance, she spun around, kneeing him viciously in the groin.

  The men were blocking her path to the front door so she fled down the stairs. She’d escape out through the back. She’d run to Dana to get help.

  Downstairs all the lights were blazing. Her kitchen smelled of cold air and autumn leaves. The wind had blown them in through the open French windows. That’s how Huw and Kit had broken in.