Legacy of Lies

by Jane A. Adams

  He pushed the door. Naomi, taken by surprise was shoved off balance. Angry now she pushed back only to find something was blocking the door’s return. Damn the man, he’d put his foot in the way. She swung her full weight against it and pushed harder. ‘What the hell do you want?’

  The man leaned in close. He seemed unconcerned about the pain she must be causing to his trapped toes. She could feel his breath on her face and smell his aftershave. It smelt expensive, she noted almost absently, and didn’t gel with the rest of her experience of him. She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘I asked you what you wanted.’

  ‘Rupert Friedman owed me money,’ the man snarled. ‘As I see it that means the bloke he left it all to owes me on his behalf. Now let me inside.’

  ‘No way,’ Naomi told him. She released her pressure on the door just for an instant and then rammed it back against the intruding foot. The man pushed back. Her hand pressed hard against the edge of the door, but Naomi was startled to feel his fingers curl around hers. He tugged her grip free and started to pull on her hand.

  Naomi felt panicked, then angry. Just before he dragged her hand through the gap in the door, she leaned in and bit him. His skin felt rough against her tongue. She bit harder. He swore and let go. She slammed again against his foot. This time that too moved away.

  ‘Little bitch. I’ll have you!’

  She slammed and locked the door. Pressing her ear against the heavy wood she could still hear him swearing and cursing as he stamped upon the gravel. Then a sound that chilled her to the bone. He’s coming over the gate.

  She knew the way easily now. With her hand against the wall as a guide she almost ran back through the house and slammed the French doors closed, locking them with the old key. Footsteps on the terrace told her that he was round the back and a moment later he was banging his hands against the French doors. Naomi knew they wouldn’t hold for long. Not if he was determined to get inside.

  She heard a crash as he smashed the breakfast tray from the table on the terrace. Naomi turned and headed back through the house. She had not expected this, not this level of violence. Most people took time to ramp up. This man obviously had a very short and very dangerous fuse.

  The safest place to be? Where would be the safest place?

  Calling Napoleon she began to climb the stairs. Rupert’s study was next to the guest bedroom she and Alec occupied. It had a heavy, solid door and a decent lock. Below in the dining room, wood splintered. What the hell was wrong with this man? It had dawned on her that he might have been watching the house and seen Alec leave. It had also occurred that there might be two of them. The footsteps on the terrace had sounded different, now she thought about it. Lighter, faster. She had gained the impression from the man at the front door that he was heavily built.

  Stumbling on the top step, Naomi reached out to find the wall, searching for the wood panel and the dado rail that separated the panelling from the paper above. She hauled herself up and then moved towards the study door, relieved to feel the solidity and reassuring weight as she swung it open and then slammed it closed. Alec had left the key in the door as, he’d told her, Rupert had always done. She turned it now, then stepped back from the door and stood, listening to the sounds coming from below – crashing and splintering and breaking glass.

  She fumbled in her pocket for the mobile phone and dialled the three nines.

  ‘I need the police,’ she told the controller, horrified to hear the shake and sound of barely controlled terror in her own voice. ‘Someone’s broken into my house and I’m alone. Yes, they’re still here. I’ve locked myself into a room upstairs and it sounds like they’re wrecking the place.’

  She listened to the calm voice of the controller on the other end and a surge of impatience, driven by pure fear sharpened her tone as the panic rose. ‘Look, I need someone now. Please.’ And then she broke her own unwritten rule. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m blind. I can’t see.’

  The controller stayed on the line, her calm voice meant to reassure. She was playing a role that Naomi had played many times in her days as a police officer, before the blindness had taken her career and transformed her life beyond recognition. She spoke gently and firmly, telling Naomi that help was on its way, keeping her on the line and asking for reports of any sounds she could hear, any movement through the house.

  ‘He’s coming up the stairs,’ Naomi whispered. ‘I can hear him on the stairs.’

  ‘You’ve locked the door?’ the woman on the line confirmed.

  ‘Yes, I’ve locked it and it’s a heavy door but …’ She could hear him now, standing at the top of the stairs, then two steps to the study door, rattling the knob.

  ‘I’ve called the police,’ Naomi yelled at him. ‘I’ve called the police and they’re on their way.’

  She backed away from the door and bumped into the desk. The controller was still talking to her but Naomi could no longer hear. Napoleon whimpered, sensing her anxiety. He nuzzled at her hand and Naomi slid down beside the desk and gathered the big black dog close to her.

  ‘Naomi, are you listening to me?’

  Naomi lifted the phone to her ear. ‘He’s outside the door.’ She tried to stay calm. She took long controlling breaths. Damn it, she told herself, she’d been in tight spots before and not panicked like this. She’d been trapped in a burning building, taken hostage in a bank siege, almost been thrown off the roof of a building, but she had never felt like this.

  The difference, she decided, was that at those other times there had been other people to think about. Other concerns. In the fire, Patrick had been with her and she had been more worried about getting him out than she had been scared for herself. In the siege too, she had taken control then, fallen back on her training and pushed her own fears aside in order to calm other people.

  This time, apart from Napoleon, she was truly alone.

  ‘I’ve called the police,’ she shouted once more, then strained to listen. The door knob creaked again and weight thudded against the wood, then a muffled shout from down below.

  So, he wasn’t alone.

  She heard the footsteps again, but this time they turned back to the landing, becoming muffled on the carpeted stairs.

  ‘I think they’re going away,’ she whispered into the phone. ‘I think they’re going away.’

  ‘Officers will be with you in just a few more minutes,’ the controller informed her. ‘Stay where you are.’

  Naomi had no intention of leaving the illusory safety of this room.

  She strained her ears, praying that the men had really left but angry that they might now get away. ‘Tell them to hurry. Please.’

  ‘Just hang on and stay put. They’ll be with you in no time at all.’

  Still straining her ears, Naomi caught the sound of an engine and car tyres on gravel. ‘They’re getting away. I can hear the car.’

  A moment later and the sound of distant sirens had her gasping in relief. She heard the cars in the drive, arriving at speed and tyres spinning in the gravel.

  ‘They’re here,’ she told the controller, trying hard to keep the tears from thickening her voice. ‘Thank you, they’re here.’

  She stumbled from the room and down the stairs, falling over the debris that the intruders had left in the hall. The front door banged open as she reached the hall and she cried out more in shock than fear.

  ‘Police,’ a voice announced. ‘It’s all right, love, you’re all right now.’

  Hands rested lightly on her arms and someone led her towards the door. ‘Let’s get you sitting in the car, shall we?’ His accent was local, thick with burr and drawn out vowels.

  Naomi allowed herself to be led outside and seated in the car. ‘In you get, big fella,’ the voice continued and Napoleon scrambled up inside, resting his big head on her leg.

  Naomi leaned her head back against the seat and allowed the tears to flow.

  Eight

  Alec arrived about a half hour after the police. Naomi
had, in the end, refrained from calling him and the policewoman now sitting beside her in the car had concurred. No point in risking an accident because he had driven back too fast.

  She heard his car come into the drive and skid to a halt. He ran across the gravel, calling her name and she heard the officer who had been first through the door asking who he was.

  ‘It’s Alec,’ Naomi told the woman sitting beside her, and a moment later Alec had replaced the WPC and was inside the car with his arms tightly around her.

  ‘What the hell happened? Are you OK? Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she reassured him. ‘Just a bit shaken up. A man came, just after you left. He banged on the door and—’

  ‘You let him in?’

  ‘No, I didn’t let him in. I’m not that stupid.’

  Alec was contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just—’

  ‘He or another man broke in round the back. Dog and I locked ourselves in Rupert’s study and I called the police.’

  Quickly, she filled him in on other details. Alec, reassured that she was all right, had switched, she noted, into policeman mode. He asked her questions, looked for more detail then, hugging her again, he got out of the car. ‘Stay there, love. I’ll be right back.’

  Naomi sighed and leaned back into the seat once again. Her head hurt and, unaccountably considering the circumstances, she was now ravenous. She wanted to get away from this place, check into a nice safe hotel and find some breakfast or brunch, or whatever it was time for.

  Panic and fear, Naomi noted, not for the first time in her life, promoted hunger. Vaguely, she wondered if this was a common reaction and decided that it probably was not.

  It seemed that she had almost been forgotten now. She eased herself from the police car and stood listening to the conversations. SOCO had been called, but no one knew when they’d arrive. Alec had explained who he was and was now in deep discussion with the first officer on scene. Hand resting on Napoleon’s head, Naomi now made her way over to where Alec stood.

  ‘You feeling better, love?’ the other officer asked her. ‘I still think you should get checked out by the doc.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m OK,’ Naomi told him. ‘Have they done much damage inside?’

  ‘Right mess, I’m afraid,’ he told her. ‘I’m DS Fine, by the way. We didn’t get a chance for proper introductions earlier.’

  Naomi held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said as he shook it, aware that this was all just a little bit surreal. His handshake was firm and the hands slightly calloused. She remembered the man who had put his hand around the door frame and grabbed her own.

  ‘I bit him,’ Naomi said. ‘I bit hard, I think I might have drawn blood. There might be trace on the door frame.’

  ‘Trace?’ Fine was clearly surprised by her technical use of the term.

  ‘Naomi was a DI,’ Alec explained. ‘Until …’

  ‘I had an accident,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She smiled. ‘Life happens. Look, I’m ready to make a statement now.’

  ‘Sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Best now, while it’s still fresh.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to drive you both to Epworth.’

  ‘I’ll drive us,’ Alec told him. ‘I think we’d better find ourselves a hotel, too. Can I get some clothes and such together?’

  ‘He … they … didn’t go into the bedroom,’ Naomi said. ‘The man that came upstairs stood outside the study door and turned the knob, then he was called back downstairs. I shouted at him that I’d called the police. I think they knew they’d better leave.’

  ‘Right. OK. Alec, DC Roland over there has laid out our path, so you’d best let him show you where you can go. We’ll secure the place before we leave and someone will hang on here until SOCO arrives.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Alec said. ‘Could you help Naomi and Napoleon to my car and I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Sitting in the front seat of a familiar vehicle, selecting her favourite channel on the radio and allowing Rachmaninov to soothe her nerves, Naomi closed her eyes as she still always did when trying to shut out extraneous thoughts.

  She replayed the time from when she had first heard banging on the door right through to when the police arrived. It hadn’t, she realized, been that long. Ten, fifteen minutes, perhaps from start to end, but it had seemed like an eternity.

  Napoleon woofed a greeting as Alec dumped their luggage in the boot and then got into the car. He took Naomi’s hand and squeezed.

  ‘It’s a right mess,’ he said. ‘But you’re all right. That’s what matters.’

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘they must have been looking for something. Rupert owing money might be true, but I don’t think that was the important thing. They wanted to get inside the house and I’m sure they saw you leave. I think they might have assumed I’d gone with you and were just checking things out by banging on the door.’

  ‘Speculation,’ Alec said. ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘No, I can’t and I’ll just stick to the facts in the statement. I know the drill. There was a strange thing though, Alec. The man who came to the front door. He got so angry so quickly that it was almost unnatural. It was as if he’d already worked himself up and what I did just tipped him over.’

  ‘Whatever the truth of the matter,’ Alec said, ‘we won’t be going back to Fallowfields for a little while, I don’t think.’

  ‘But we won’t be going back home either, will we? Just as well you booked more time than you thought you’d need.’ Just as well there was nothing dramatic happening back at work either, she thought.

  Alec sighed. ‘I think if we had doubts before about Rupe being in trouble they’ve now been well and truly swept away. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Nomi.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But if you want to go.’

  ‘Right. I’m really going to clear out now, aren’t I. You know me better than that.’

  He reached out and squeezed her hand again. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you in any more danger.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m not keen on being on my own in strange places just now, but apart from that …’

  ‘You think I’m going to leave you alone ever again?’ Alec half joked. ‘You can’t be trusted. Trouble magnet, that’s what you are. Always have been.’

  Naomi smiled but she could hear the anxiety in his voice and her own mind replayed the violence the men at Fallowfields had exhibited. What would have happened, she wondered, had they been given time to break down the study door?

  Nine

  Naomi’s head was aching but she was beginning to feel better. A shower, a change of clothes and the promise of a late lunch helped in that regard.

  They had checked into the hotel that Marcus had taken them to and considered themselves lucky to get a room this time of year. Alec had gone downstairs while she finished dressing, to order lunch and try and remember what the wine had been called. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, even in the safety of the hotel room, but Naomi had insisted. She knew she had to be alone, just for a few minutes, to get back her nerve. The longer she put it off the harder it was going to be. Alec would come back up and escort her downstairs but she needed that few minutes alone just to prove to herself she still could.

  Behind her she heard Napoleon shift and snuffle. He was lying contentedly in a patch of sunlight that flooded in through the bedroom window. ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ she told him. ‘You’re not staying up here on your own. I’d come back and find a hole eaten in the bedspread.’

  Napoleon beat his heavy tail on the floor and grumbled to himself. ‘Well, no, I’ve never actually known you to eat bedspreads, but there’s always a first time.’

  She fumbled for her eye shadow and applied it carefully, blending the two shades, and smudging the lighter one away into nothing. A tiny piece of masking tape stuck to the compact reminding her which wa
s the darker of the two green-grey shades. She had given up wearing make-up for quite some time after the accident, but her sister had insisted she learn how, sitting with her in front of the mirror because that was the way she had always done it before the accident, and coaxing and coercing her into trying out new shades and methods. Naomi was truly grateful for all the fond bullying her sister and her friends had done, though at the time it had seemed so terribly hard and so unfair. Now she applied her ‘face’, as her sister called it, with almost as much confidence as she had in her sighted days and, with a bit of practise, she had even mastered lipstick, and recently had begun to trust herself to apply the richer, deeper shades that went so well with her dark hair.

  Alec opened the door and announced himself. ‘It’s me. You ready, love?’

  She nodded and stood up, turning to face him. ‘I look OK?’

  ‘You look great.’ He inspected her as he always did. She was still slightly paranoid about going out in badly matched clothes. ‘I like the new eye stuff.’

  ‘Thanks. Thought I’d try something new. I’m starving.’ She called Napoleon and allowed herself to be escorted downstairs. ‘We should tell Marcus what happened,’ she said.

  ‘I tried to phone him, but just got some woman who said she was looking after the shop today and he’d be back this evening.’

  ‘Right, he’s going to be upset by all of this.’

  ‘Hmm, and Reg Fine, the DS you met at the house,’ Alec continued, ‘he’s going to arrange for us to be taken to where they found Rupert.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Hopefully tomorrow. All we are going to do today is eat and rest. Doctor’s orders.’

  ‘What doctor?’

  ‘Doctor Friedman.’

  Naomi laughed. Alec seated her at their table and settled Napoleon. ‘Seriously love, you had a really bad fright. I want you to be all right.’

  ‘I’m fine. What I’d really like is to have lunch then go for a walk and just have some unwinding time. We’ve not had a proper chance to look around yet. Let’s make like tourists for a while?’