Death Sentence

by Sheryl Browne

  Gulping back hard, Rebecca nodded, and prayed she wouldn’t vomit, as he came back to stand in front of her.

  ‘Better?’ he asked, as the blood rushed to her hands like a thousand burning needles.

  Rebecca stared at him, horrified. He was smiling again, looking at her as if he might be indulging a child. He was completely insane. The smidgeon of hope that he might let her go faded. She stood no chance. Absolutely none. She was going to die, here, in this cold, lonely place. And her baby? Her hand straying instinctively to the soft round of her tummy, Rebecca closed her eyes, forced back the tears that welled up inside her, and then snapped them wide open as she felt the flat of his hand close over hers.

  ‘You don’t have something you’d like to share, do you, Mrs Adams?’ he asked, amusement now dancing in his cruel, grey eyes. ‘A happy upcoming event possibly?’

  ‘No!’ Rebecca croaked, too quickly. Much too quickly.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Rebecca dropped her gaze. ‘No,’ she repeated, shaking her head vehemently.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and paused.

  Her heart twisting with a new kind of terror, Rebecca looked warily back at him.

  ‘Shame.’ He smirked. ‘We could have occupied ourselves thinking up baby names while we wait for your white knight to ride to your rescue. Not to worry, we’ll just have to think of something else to occupy us, won’t we?’

  He lowered his gaze, his loathsome eyes eating her up as they trailed over her.

  ‘Nice tits,’ he commented appreciatively. ‘Adams likes them like that, does he? Firm and fulsome.’

  Rebecca gagged, as he reached out, cupped one of her breasts and squeezed hard.

  ‘I’ll get you some water,’ he said suddenly, pulling his hand away. ‘You look a bit pale. Don’t move,’ he instructed and took a step to his side. ‘It will be worse for you if you do.’

  Her mind racing, her whole body shaking, Rebecca glanced towards him as he crouched to ferret in a large canvas bag, nestled against one of the side walls.

  ‘You know, if you ever did want to share, I’m a good listener,’ he offered, as he pulled a bottle of water from the bag. ‘My daughter’s always confiding in me. Mind you, some of it would make your hair curl, I swear. Kids nowadays …’

  He tutted and rambled on, making conversation. Making conversation! Rebecca felt her head swim. Desperately, she looked from him to the door, and then, her pulse racing, her heart thrumming wildly against her ribcage, she took the only chance she might have, and flew towards it.

  It was hopeless. She knew it was, but … She had to try. A petrified sob escaping her throat, she twisted the key, her other hand swiping at the top bolt … and then he was on her, grabbing her hair, yanking her head back, dragging her back through the dust and the dirt, forcing her round to face him.

  ‘Did I say don’t?’ he roared, a globule of spit at his mouth, his face so close to hers she could see a blue-grey vein pulsing at his temple.

  ‘Did I?’ His eyes bulged with rage, as he pushed his face closer.

  ‘Stupid bitch!’ he spat. Then, bringing his hand back, he landed a searing blow to her face and shoved her away hard.

  ‘You just don’t learn, do you?’ Wiping his hand over his mouth, he loomed over where Rebecca lay sprawled on the floor.

  ‘Next time my aim will be lower.’ His gaze moved meaningfully to her midriff. ‘Now … do … not … move!’

  ‘Oh God …’ Rebecca sobbed, realising the enormity of her mistake. Now, he would take no chances. She should have waited. She should have talked to him, tried to reason … There was no reason. No reasoning. None. ‘Why are you doing this? What do you want?’

  ‘Your husband,’ he said calmly. Then, yanking the key from the door, he turned back to his bag. ‘Now, come on, let’s get you up and dressed properly, hey? You’ll want to be looking your best when he sees you, won’t you?’

  As he turned back to her, Rebecca’s horrified gaze dropped from his ludicrously smiling face to his hands, in which he held a pair of blood-red stilettos.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Taylor?’ Patrick tapped on his daughter’s bedroom door. Getting no answer, he knocked again and poked his head inside. ‘Hi, sweetheart, how you doing?’ he asked, glancing to where she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her earphones in and her eyes glued to her phone. Patrick might have guessed. Kids nowadays, they spent their whole lives plugged into some gadget or other. Couldn’t be healthy, he thought, shaking his head as he walked across to her. ‘Hello, earth to Taylor.’

  Taylor glanced up at him from under her eyelashes.

  Bleedin’ long eyelashes, Patrick thought. ‘You wearing falsies?’ He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

  ‘Yerwhat?’ Taylor gave him a look. That look. The one that told him she thought her old man was past it and out of touch.

  Well, he wasn’t. Patrick was very much in touch with what eighteen year old girls got up to. And he wasn’t having any of it. Taylor was destined for better than hanging out on street corners with delinquent tossers. Patrick’s mind drifted briefly to the teenagers he was happy to see hanging out on street corners, but he dismissed the irony of it. Privately educated, Taylor was destined for better things. She was going to uni to get a proper degree. None of those mumbo-jumbo ten-a-penny business studies or creative crap ones either. The Royal Veterinary College, University of London, was where Taylor was going, to get her foundation in veterinary nursing, he reminded himself proudly. Then quashed a surge of anger as he remembered he wouldn’t be seeing much of her, all thanks to Adams, at least not until he’d got himself sorted and settled in his villa. And then it would depend on Taylor wanting to spend her holidays in Spain. She’d have a new life beckoning here, after all, new mates. Yes, she would, Patrick told himself. Loved her old man, his clever little girl.

  Course, she could have gone for veterinary medicine if she’d stop fannying about with her girlfriends and put her mind to it, he also reminded himself.

  ‘The eyelashes.’ Patrick jabbed a finger towards his own eyes.

  ‘Oh, those.’ Taylor turned her attention back to her phone. ‘They’re all the rage. Do you like them?’

  ‘No, I do not like them,’ Patrick informed her, shoving his hands in his pockets, as he studied her. She was growing up too fast. Much too fast for his liking. Boys sniffing around, after whatever they could get. Well, no one was going to break his little girl’s heart, not unless they fancied a broken neck.

  ‘They look like tarantula legs,’ he said, a shudder running through him as he visualised actual spider legs. He hated the bloody things. ‘Get ‘em off. And the lipstick while you’re at it.’

  ‘Dad!’ Taylor looked back at him, wide-eyed and clearly peeved. ‘It’s Elizabeth Arden’s, Rustic Red!’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s Queen Elizabeth’s pure gold. Wipe it off. You look like a tart. If you have to cake your face in crap, wear something lighter, pink or peach or something.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Taylor rolled her eyes, twanged her earphones out and shuffled off the bed. ‘You are so outdated, Dad, you’re practically prehistoric.’

  ‘And the falsies,’ Patrick reminded her, as she stomped past him towards her en-suite. ‘Take ‘em off.’

  Taylor turned back. ‘I can’t. They’re attached. See?’ With which she plucked at her eyelashes, pulling her lid away from her eyeball. ‘I have to get them done at the salon, unless you want me to blind myself trying.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Patrick relented. In truth, if she’d batted her eyelashes, false or not, he’d have given in anyway. ‘They can stay, for now. The lipstick goes though. It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘God, honestly, you’d think I was about two,’ Taylor muttered huffily and turned to flounce onwards.

  Patrick couldn’t help wishing she was still two. There were a lot of perverts out there, ready to take advantage of an innocent young g
irl. He sighed, forgetting the minor fact that he was one of them.

  ‘So how’s Saffron?’ he asked after the horse that had cost him an arm and a leg.

  ‘Yeah, good.’ Taylor sounded more cheerful, as she splashed water in the en-suite. ‘She’s doing really well in the arena. I got her up to a canter the other day.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you be careful. Horses can be temperamental, you know.’

  ‘Dad,’ Taylor came back to the bedroom, dabbing at her face with a towel, ‘I have had a bazillion riding lessons? I do know what I’m doing.’

  Patrick smiled, pleased to see his girl looking less like she did actually hang about on street corners. ‘I know, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You’re a natural with animals. Beautiful and talented, that’s my Taylor.’

  He wrapped an arm around her, giving her shoulders a squeeze, as she padded back across the room.

  ‘I’m glad you’re progressing with her. We might have to get Saffron stabled for a while, though,’ he said, broaching the subject he’d actually come up to talk to her about.

  ‘Why?’ Taylor’s eyes grew wide again, as she plopped down on the bed, this time with ready indignation.

  Patrick glanced down, rearranging his face to suitably grieving. ‘Chelsea’s left,’ he explained, shrugging sadly. ‘Taken off with some prat.’

  Taylor looked disbelieving for a second, then, ‘Good,’ she said, tucking her feet up.

  ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’ Patrick was surprised, genuinely. He’d known Chelsea and Taylor weren’t exactly best friends, but still, he wasn’t used to his baby being bitchy.

  ‘I tell you she’s buggered off and you say “good”?’

  ‘Well, let’s face it, Dad, she was loads younger than you, and if ever there was a tart …’

  Patrick considered, for all of two seconds. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ He sighed stoically.

  ‘You should get someone your own age, Dad,’ Taylor suggested. ‘I mean, it is a bit embarrassing, you running around with fake-bake babes all the while. You should find someone genuine who really loves you. You know, for who you are, not for your money.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Patrick pondered demonstrably. Not, he thought. He couldn’t abide all that soppy stuff, doe-eyed women telling him they loved him, thinking they were offering him some prized possession if they opened their legs. And he certainly didn’t want some flabby fat cow his own age. Firm and toned was Patrick’s preferred choice. His thoughts drifted to the rather tasty Mrs Adams, who actually wasn’t that young, but who’d obviously looked after herself. Nice ankles, good bone structure: high cheekbones, which were always a sign of natural beauty. Shame he’d had to bruise them. Her eyes were something else, huge, like bloody great headlights in her head. She’d looked like a petrified gazelle when he’d left her. Worried, obviously, that she’d riled him. And so she should be.

  ‘Did you argue?’ Taylor interrupted Patrick’s contemplation of whether, and how, he should punish the woman. He really would prefer to save the good stuff until Adams turned up for the show.

  ‘Some,’ he admitted. They’d argued on average at least once a day lately. Taylor wasn’t likely to believe that they hadn’t.

  Taylor’s gaze flitted to the bruises adorning his chin. ‘Did she do that?’

  ‘What?’ Patrick gawked. ‘Do us a favour, Taylor. If she had, I’d have floored her.’ He had floored her, in actuality, but Taylor didn’t need to hear details. ‘I told you, I went into the back of someone, cracked my chin on the steering wheel. Painful, it was, too.’

  Patrick’s hand strayed to his face, his thoughts back to Adams and the many ways he’d been considering giving the jumped up little detective his due payback.

  ‘So, why does Saffron have to be stabled?’ Taylor’s tone was back to defiant.

  ‘I have to go away. Business,’ Patrick said, with an apologetic shrug. ‘I’ve had a word with your aunt Suzie in Brum. She said you could stay—’

  ‘Uh-uh, no way.’ Taylor shot off the bed, ready to throw a major moody. ‘She’s totally common. And her house is the absolute pits. Can’t I just stay—’

  ‘No, Taylor.’ Patrick eyeballed her adamantly. ‘There’s no way I’m going to leave an eighteen year old girl in this rambling great house on her own.’ In fact, there was no way he was leaving his daughter anywhere in the vicinity until he’d cleared his debt with Tony Hayes. Some people would sink to any level to make their point, and Hayes was one of them, ruthless bastard.

  ‘I could get Hannah to stay,’ Taylor tried, as he headed for the door. ‘We could—’

  ‘No, Taylor! Not this time.’ Patrick’s word was final.

  ‘That is sooo unfair!’ Taylor shouted after him, as he headed back along the galleried landing. Patrick pressed his forefingers against his temples, a misty aura drifting into his vision warning him of another impending migraine. He hated upsetting his daughter. This was Adams’ fault. All of it.

  Patrick stormed onwards and then stopped, and paled. If that was one of Taylor’s false eyelashes, he thought, squinting down at the cream Axminster carpet, it was a bloody big one. Petrified, Patrick stood frozen to the spot, perspiration breaking out on his forehead. His fight or flight instinct told him to run, but there was nowhere to run except back the way he’d come. And then the little bastard would scurry off, its hunched legs gambolling over each other as it scarpered under one of the beds to reappear God knew when and where; probably when he was sleeping.

  His heart palpitating, Patrick ran his tongue over his dry lips and then jumped back a step, as it moved. ‘Fuck! Taylor! Here, now!’

  It was watching him, Patrick would swear it was, ready to come at him like greased lightning. ‘Taylor!’

  ‘What!?’ Taylor said moodily behind him. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘Spider.’ Swallowing, Patrick nodded towards his worst nightmare.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dad?’ Taylor stomped up behind him.

  ‘Shit, it’s moving.’ Patrick almost dove over the stair rail as she squeezed past him.

  ‘It’s not going to hurt you.’ Taylor sighed and rolled her eyes, and then bent to pick the thing up. Patrick almost had a heart attack there and then, as she did.

  ‘It’s more frightened than you are.’

  ‘I’m not frightened.’ Patrick pulled himself indignantly up. ‘I just didn’t want to flatten it and make a mess on the carpet.’

  Cupping her other hand over it, knowing better than to show it to him, Taylor laughed, possibly the only woman in the world who could get away with it. ‘Yeah, right. You should see your face, Dad. You’ve gone a pale shade of white.’

  ‘That’s because I have a migraine,’ Patrick pointed out and tried to look marginally less terrified. ‘Put it well away from the house,’ he reminded her, as she went downstairs with it. The ugly little fucker would only come back in if she didn’t.

  His heart rate returning to somewhere near normal, Patrick glanced worriedly around, lest there were any other spiders lurking. He couldn’t stand them. Even the word gave him the heebie-jeebies. That was his old man’s fault. What kind of father locks his kid in his bedroom with a house-spider as big as the house and then taunts him through the door? Patrick could still hear his drunken drawling.

  ‘Cissy’, he’d called him, humiliating him. Always humiliating him. No one calls him a cissy. Deserved all he got, evil old sod.

  Course, he might have seen the thing lurking on the landing just now sooner if not for the migraine, which was undoubtedly down to the stress Adams had caused him. The man had a lot to answer for, Patrick seethed inwardly. And answer he would.

  ****

  ‘Yep, wassup?’ Steve answered his phone, over a wide yawn.

  ‘Sorry, did I wake you?’ Matthew turned to give Ashley a reassuring nod, as he let himself out of Melanie’s front door. Ashley wasn’t too thrilled at being dumped there, but she’d accepted it was better than the alternative
.

  ‘Nah,’ Steve assured him. ‘I’m still up, dedication to duty and all that. I’m just going through that case I mentioned. It’s almost identical: little in the way of evidence to go on, one shoe missing. The crime scene was somewhere near Oxford. Hold on, I’ll pull up the details.’

  ‘No, no need,’ Matthew said quickly.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Steve sounded surprised. ‘So why the call? I assume it’s urgent at this time of night?’

  Climbing into his car, Matthew took a breath. ‘I need you to drop it, Steve,’ he said, no other way to say it than how it was.

  Steve made a glugging sound, as if choking on a beer. ‘Scuse me?’

  ‘Your investigations, I need you to put them on ice.’ Matthew waited, guessing Steve wouldn’t be very impressed.

  Steve hesitated, and then, ‘Would you like to run that by me again, boss, cos I’m not sure I’m following.’

  Matthew massaged his forehead. ‘Steve … Look, I need you to trust me on this. I want you to drop it, no questions.’

  ‘No questions?’ Matthew could hear the incredulity in Steve’s voice. ‘You are joking?’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ Matthew assured him.

  ‘But there’s a clear link, for Pete’s sake. We place Sullivan in the area, start checking out his alibis, and—’

  ‘Not happening, Steve,’ Matthew stated forcefully. ‘Just leave it. OK?’

  ‘Right.’ He could almost feel the man’s frustration in the ensuing short silence. ‘You’ll bring me up to speed, I assume, at some point?’

  ‘As soon as I can,’ Matthew promised, wishing he actually could. He’d never felt so alone in his life.

  ‘Right,’ Steve said again, his brusque tone indicating he thought it was far from right. ‘I’ll catch up with you then?’

  ‘Will do. Steve …’ he said quickly, before Steve had the chance to end the call, which he probably was about to do pronto. ‘There’s something else I need you to do.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Steve’s tone was now wary.