by Sibel Hodge
I shook it off. The case was finished. I put the box down, found the filler and paint, and headed to the till.
Carrying my purchases in a plastic bag, I wandered down to Vicky’s shop. The bell chimed as I opened the door. It was busier than it had been the last time I was here. There were a few girls cutting hair and one dabbing dye on to a woman’s roots. The same receptionist was there, giving me the same smile.
‘Hi.’ I glanced around, looking for Vicky. ‘Is it possible for Vicky to fit me in for a trim?’
‘Oh, sorry, but Vicky’s left. You’re the policeman, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She glanced down at the open appointment book on her desk. ‘Tina can do it if you want to hang on for about twenty minutes.’ She looked back at me.
‘When did Vicky leave?’
The beaming smiled wilted to a sad one. ‘Well, she didn’t come back after what happened with her best mate being killed. She phoned up the boss and said she was leaving. She said that nothing was keeping her here any more so she wanted a new start and she was going to move somewhere else. I’ve been trying to get hold of her on the phone, actually, but it’s just been going to voicemail. She left some things here in the staff room, and I left her a couple of messages about it, but she hasn’t been back to pick them up.’
‘Right.’ I nodded, thinking I’d better check up on her at her flat. ‘She was very upset about what happened. I should just make sure she’s OK. Do you want to give me her things and I’ll take them round to her?’
‘Oh, great, thanks. The boss wanted me to throw them away if she didn’t come in by this weekend. I told her that in one of the messages, but maybe she’s not bothered about them.’ She disappeared into a door marked ‘Private’ and returned a few minutes later with a large white carrier bag stuffed full. ‘Here you go.’
I took the bag and headed back to my car. As I opened the boot to put it inside, the handle split, spilling some of the contents out. A single black glove fell out, along with the sleeve of a black puffy jacket. I stared at it for a while, and something Vicky had said flashed into my head.
It’s hard not to love Alissa.
What had the receptionist just told me? She said that nothing was keeping her here any more.
I pushed everything back in the bag, shut the boot, and started the engine. The feeling started as a tiny niggle, but it mushroomed the closer I got to Vicky’s flat, the more my mind raced. Was Max’s murder not about money and deception and stealing someone else’s identity all along? Was it really about love? Had I focused too hard on Samantha and got it all wrong?
I parked in the communal car park and pressed the buzzer on the intercom system for Vicky’s flat, a prickle of unease running through me.
No answer.
I looked around the car park, not knowing which car she drove and wondering if it was still here, or whether she’d disappeared now.
I buzzed again.
Nothing.
I tried a few different buzzers, and when someone answered, I said, ‘Police. I need to get in to talk to someone.’
‘Well, why don’t you buzz them, then?’ a cocky male voice said.
‘I’ve tried.’ I attempted to dampen my growing frustration. ‘Can you just let me in, please?’
‘How do I know you’re really police and this isn’t a scam?’
‘If you come down to the entrance, I’ll show you my warrant card.’
A pause on the other end. Then they must’ve thought better of getting involved, and the door unlocked.
I swung it open and took the stairs to Vicky’s second-floor flat instead of waiting for the lift.
I strode down the corridor and banged on her door. Waited.
I pressed my ear to the wood. There were no sounds coming from inside. Was I too late? Had she done a flit?
I banged again. ‘Vicky? It’s DS Carter.’
There was no letter box because there were postboxes downstairs in the hallway for mail. Nothing to look through to check if I could see anything.
I banged again. ‘Vicky! Open up, please.’
I knocked on her neighbour’s door, and a thirty-something woman opened it.
‘Hi, I’m DS Carter. I’m looking for Vicky Saunders. Your neighbour.’ I pointed to Vicky’s door. ‘Have you seen her recently?’
She tilted her head, thinking. ‘Um . . . yes, I saw her yesterday. She was taking a load of rubbish bags down to the bins outside.’
‘Do you know what car she drives?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘OK, thanks.’ I went to Vicky’s door again and shouldered it while the neighbour watched me.
The door didn’t budge.
‘Hey! Are you allowed to do that?’
I ignored her and put all my body weight behind it. It groaned a little under my weight, but wouldn’t open.
I whipped my phone from my pocket and called the control room, asking for a unit to come up with a battering ram.
‘What’s going on?’ The neighbour leaned against her door frame. ‘Is she in trouble or something?’
‘I think you should go inside,’ I said. ‘I may need to speak with you later.’
She stood there for a few more minutes before reluctantly heading back into her flat and closing the door.
I waited by the communal entrance for uniform to arrive, fidgeting. When they got there, we legged it back up the stairs, and they made light work of the door.
The smell hit me as soon as it was open. I recognised the stench of death straight away. ‘Stay here,’ I told the young constable, and left him hovering outside in the hallway.
I walked down the narrow corridor into the first room, which was the lounge.
And there she was. In her bra and knickers on the sofa, just how Alissa had been left when she was killed, in what I thought must’ve been her final tribute to the woman she loved. Packets of empty tablets littered the floor and coffee table. A pint glass had fallen from her hand and rested against her thigh. Her eyes were glassy, dead.
I grunted out some kind of sound.
‘Have you found her?’ the PC called from the doorway.
‘Yeah.’ I sighed. ‘Looks like suicide.’ I walked back towards him. ‘Have you got any gloves?’
He opened a pouch on his equipment belt and pulled out a pair of latex ones.
I slapped them on. ‘Thanks. Can you let the control room know?’
I left him there speaking into his radio as I wandered around the flat. I opened the door to her bedroom and stopped dead.
Framed photos of Alissa were all around the place. Hanging on walls, standing on the bedside cabinets. It reminded me of Russell’s spare bedroom where he worked out in front of Alissa’s picture, except worse.
I sighed again and opened the cupboard, searching through it.
There was nothing incriminating in the house. Nothing that proved she’d killed Max, apart from the black jacket and gloves downstairs in my car that she’d thought would be thrown away by the staff at A Snip in Time. Of course not. She’d want Samantha to take the fall for it – the ultimate payback for killing Alissa. But I thought I knew exactly where to look.
I called SOCO and they arrived fifteen minutes later while I was eyeing several overflowing, industrial-sized wheelie bins in the car park.
‘Oh, God.’ Emma Bolton scrunched up her face when I told her I needed all of it checked. ‘I hate rubbish. I’d rather deal with a dead body than all that crap.’
An hour later, Emma called me over to a bag she’d been removing the contents from. ‘Think you’ll want to see this.’ She held up a balaclava and a pair of black combat trousers with a tiny fragment of now dried bracken caught around the button of the leg pocket, bracken that I knew without a doubt had come from the woods at the rear of The Orchard. The same stuff that had collected on my trousers when I’d run through the woods to Russell’s house. She bagged it as evidence and then retrieved an open box of shoe covers with the same packagi
ng as I’d seen in the hardware shop just down the road from Vicky’s salon.
‘What’s that?’ I said, as Emma pulled out a black book from the bottom of the bag.
She handed it to me. The pages were soggy and stained, but still readable. As I flicked through, words caught my eye here and there. She has to be with me . . . Get Max out of the way . . . Now it’s only a matter of time . . . Love Alissa more than anything. I turned the pages to the last entry.
I can’t go on now she’s not here. I can’t recover. She was my world. And I don’t want to live in a world without her.
I knew that feeling well.
I’d been wrong all along. Yes, I’d caught Sam the Psycho. But I’d been so hell-bent on proving I was right that I’d been blinkered, just like Wilmott.
I was right about one thing, though. Love was both a blessing and a curse. Love could destroy you. If you let it. But maybe the biggest curse was not losing your love, but never being loved at all by the one who stole your heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Firstly, I’d like to say a huge thanks to readers, reviewers, and book bloggers for choosing my books! The idea for Duplicity first came about when I was thinking about identity theft. But what if it went a step further than just stealing your online presence or your credit cards and ID documents? What if they stole your life, too? There was only one way I could see someone pulling off a deception like that, and that’s what unfolded in the pages of this story. I hoped you enjoyed the outcome, and if you did enjoy it, I would be so grateful if you have time to leave a review or recommend it to family and friends. I always love to hear from readers, so please keep your emails and Facebook messages coming (contact details are on my website: www.sibelhodge.com). They make my day!
For anyone familiar with Hertfordshire, the village of Waverly is a figment of my imagination! It might not be the ideal place to live, anyway, with a stalker and a murderer on the loose!
A massive thanks goes out to my husband, Brad, for supporting me, being my chief beta reader, fleshing out ideas with me, and putting up with me ignoring him when he’s trying to talk and my brain’s overloaded with plot noise.
Big thanks to D.P. Lyle, MD, for all of his information on knife wounds, and for all the amazing advice he gives freely to authors on his blog and in his books.
Thank you to Jenny Parrott for all of her editing suggestions, and to John Marr and Alex Higson for catching all the things I didn’t. Big, big thanks to Emilie Marneur for all of her help, advice, and support over the last few years, along with Sammia, Sana, Hatty, and the rest of the Thomas & Mercer team. It’s very much appreciated.
And finally, a loud shout out and hugs to all the peeps in The Book Club on Facebook for your enthusiasm, fun, and amazing support of authors!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sibel Hodge is the author of UK and Australian #1 bestseller Look Behind You. Her books are international bestsellers in the UK, USA, Australia, France and Germany. She writes in an eclectic mix of genres, and is a passionate human and animal rights advocate.
Her work has been nominated and shortlisted for numerous prizes, including the Harry Bowling Prize, the Yeovil Literary Prize, the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition, The Romance Reviews’ prize for Best Novel with Romantic Elements and Indie Book Bargains’ Best Indie Book of 2012 in two categories. She was the winner of Best Children’s Book in the 2013 eFestival of Words; nominated for the 2015 BigAl’s Books and Pals Young Adult Readers’ Choice Award; winner of the Crime, Thrillers & Mystery Book from a Series Award in the SpaSpa Book Awards 2013; winner of the Readers’ Favorite Young Adult (Coming of Age) Honorable award in 2015; and a New Adult finalist in the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America’s International Digital Awards 2015. Her novella Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave has been listed as one of the top forty books about human rights by Accredited Online Colleges.
For Sibel’s latest book releases, giveaways and gossip, sign up to her newsletter at www.sibelhodge.com/contact-followme.php.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
PART ONE OBSESSION
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 1
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 2
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 3
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 4
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 5
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 6
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 7
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 8
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 9
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 10
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 11
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 12
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 13
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 14
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 15
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 16
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 17
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 18
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 19
PART TWO REVENGE
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 20
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 21
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 22
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 23
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 24
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 25
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 26
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 27
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 28
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 29
PART THREE DUPLICITY
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 30
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 31
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 32
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 33
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 34
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 35
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 36
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 37
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 38
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 39
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 40
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 41
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 42
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 43
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 44
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 45
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 46
THE DETECTIVE Chapter 47
THE OTHER ONE Chapter 48
PART FOUR LOVE
THE ONE Chapter 49
TWO WEEKS LATER THE DETECTIVE Chapter 50
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
