The Man in the House

by Emmy Ellis

  “Google is your friend.”

  She glanced in the rearview. A red car was right up her arse. She went a bit faster; so did they. She slowed; same for them.

  “We’ve got a tail,” she said.

  Andy peered in the wing mirror. “I see it.” He recited the number plate over and over while getting his phone out to access the note app, then plugged it in. “I’ll ring the station.”

  “Wait for a bit, see if they follow us in here.” She turned into the leisure centre car park and pulled up in one of the spaces closest to the building.

  “They’re over there,” Andy said.

  “I saw.”

  They got out, Helena ready to go over there if need be and ask what was going on, but the occupant of the car stepped out.

  “Fucking Marshall,” she said.

  “Want me to say anything?”

  “No, he uses this gym. That’ll be his excuse for being here.” She told Andy what had happened last night. “So he clearly thinks I’m shagging you and Zach.”

  Andy held up his phone and took a picture of Marshall. “This’ll help matters. If he keeps this up, I’ll have a fair few images we can use against him.”

  “Thanks,” she said, locking the car. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  They headed towards the glass double doors, and Helena glanced over her shoulder.

  Marshall swiped a finger across his neck then pointed at her.

  Helena pushed inside, determined not to let him get to her. She’d experienced scarier men than him in that storage container, so if he thought he could compete with their brutality and mental cruelty, he had another think coming, the twat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He stood outside the back of the flats where Suzie and Jacob had been taken, the early morning nip in the air chomping at his cheeks. His gloves kept his fingers warm, though. He couldn’t be doing with them getting stiff. Not with what he had in mind. As with Callie, he had his trench coat and hat on. A sense of importance filled him whenever he slid his arms into the sleeves and covered his hair with the fedora. He was that foster bloke from years back then, Mr Jeffs, or like him anyway, important, someone who had the ability to make or break a life.

  He’d been obsessed with Mr Jeffs’ outfit from the moment he’d first seen it. He didn’t wear it often, it was too distinctive, and his girlfriend—well, his ex now, he supposed—had roared with laughter when he’d turned up in it, asking him if he thought he lived in the nineteen-twenties.

  He hadn’t liked that. He’d got mean with her, stroppy, and she’d stared at him oddly, as though she’d finally seen what he’d successfully hidden inside while with her. The darkness. The skill to hurt and maim and hate and…

  Murder.

  The system hadn’t treated him kindly in his first thirteen years. He’d been shoved from pillar to post, looked after—or slung up, not brought up—by a series of ‘parents’ who didn’t deserve that title. He’d acted out, understandably so, according to his young case worker, Mrs Featherstone, and when he’d been shipped to the Walkers, he’d found his forever home. He’d been touched too many times to count and hit until bruises covered him before then, and Mr and Mrs Walker had been the perfect parents.

  The resentment towards their kids had festered, though, turning him sour.

  Stop going back to the past. The future is what matters.

  He tapped on the bedroom window, just a slight series of raps, knowing she’d wake. She was a light sleeper, and he’d made that so. He’d changed her and her sisters’ sleeping patterns from the time he’d moved in to the time he’d moved out and beyond. The Walker girls had been his project, him punishing them for having a proper family when he’d never had one. Jacob—now he was a tosser, a fat little prick who hadn’t liked sharing his bedroom with him for the years he’d been with the family. Jacob would get what was coming to him and all. Just by not having his parents and sisters, he’d know what it felt like to have no one to call your own.

  To make that a complete task, he’d have to kill the bratty twins, but he had to draw the line at some point. Kids were off-limits when it came to death. But for other things…never.

  I said, stop thinking about it.

  He tapped the window again.

  “Wake up, you little bitch,” he whispered. “I’m here for you.”

  * * * *

  Suzie jolted awake for about the tenth time. It had been a shit night’s sleep so far, and she was about to lose her temper. The flat was so quiet compared to their place, where the main road behind it had traffic even in the dark hours.

  Something knocked.

  She sat up and stared around the unfamiliar room, then at Robbie beside her. He was snoring, so she got up and went to check on the boys. They were splayed out, eyes closed, mouths wide open, catching flies as Dad used to say.

  Then she had a look in the living room—nothing there or in the bathroom. Kitchen? She padded in, glancing around in the gloom. With the flat being so bare, there was nowhere for anyone to hide and not much furniture to imagine as someone hiding in the shadows.

  So she flicked on the light.

  And saw him.

  He was at the back door, staring through the glass, that fucking awful hat on and his creepy mac. She stared, eyes going wide, and reached out to grip the worktop to steady herself, slapping her free hand over her mouth.

  How had he found her?

  What did he want?

  A policeman was on the other side of the front door, sitting on a chair, keeping an eye out. If she just went to him and told him, he’d be caught, and all this would be over.

  He shook his head, though, as if he’d poked around inside hers and knew what she’d thought. Then he opened his mouth and breathed on the glass, creating a cloudy patch. In it, he wrote: COME HERE.

  Conditioned, frightened, she walked towards the door, and he twirled his finger as if to tell her to unlock it. She couldn’t. Her boys were here—he mustn’t be allowed to get to them. His forehead bunched.

  He breathed on the glass again, a wider patch, and wrote: JUST TO TALK.

  Part of her believed him. After all, at times, he’d chatted to her fine when he’d dropped round for a cuppa. But the other half screamed: No, don’t do this!

  Suzie didn’t know which one to listen to.

  He rolled his eyes as though he thought her a bit daft, then waved and walked off, shrugging, past the kitchen window, towards Jacob’s flat. No, he couldn’t take her brother, too. Not poor Jacob, who struggled to cope with life in general, and God only knew how he was managing with Callie and Emma gone. He wasn’t allowed to kill him, that hadn’t been in the agreement. Jacob had never featured in all this.

  Gathering her courage, she steeled herself to go out there and confront her tormenter. This had to stop, and if it meant she was the one doing the killing this time, then that was how it would be. If it kept her boys, Jacob, and Robbie safe, it was better that he was dead and she was in prison, wasn’t it?

  She quietly opened the drawer and took out a knife—it was one for bread, but it would have to do; there weren’t any sharp, pointy ones. At the back door, she turned the key slowly, a millimetre at a time, so it wouldn’t make a noise and wake Robbie or alert him as to what she was doing. She could creep up on him and…

  “Do this. Just get on with it,” she muttered, scared to death but at the same time so angry she couldn’t think straight.

  There was another knock, fainter. Was he tapping on Jacob’s window?

  “No, you’re not playing your sick games with him.”

  Suzie opened the door and stepped outside, the path freezing and gritty on the soles of her feet. Her cotton pyjamas weren’t thick enough to keep the chill out, and she was quickly cold. She glanced to the right, and there he was, his back to her, leaning his shoulder on the outer wall of the flats between Jacob’s kitchen window and the door. Locking her family inside, she lowered the key to the ground then straightened up, hol
ding the knife out in front of her. She walked forward, attention trained on his silhouette. Heart racing, she lunged, sweeping her arm across to slice the back of his head, but she wasn’t quick enough, and he was facing her now, gripping her wrists so tight her fingers went limp. The knife dropped, landing on the path with a clatter.

  “You should have done as I asked, when I asked, Suzie,” he whispered.

  With his hat brim pulled low, she couldn’t see those hateful eyes of his, but they’d be darkening with his fury—going as dark as his blackened, demon-infested soul.

  He shoved her against the wall of the flats, her cheek pressed to it, pain shooting down the side of her face, nodules of brick scraping her skin. Then he yanked her arms behind her and wrapped one of his large hands around her wrists. She vaguely registered she hadn’t screamed, hadn’t cried out for help, but hadn’t that always been the way? Hadn’t she always been silent and let him do whatever he wanted?

  She fought the years of grooming, fought complying, fought that strange spell he’d had over her since she’d been a little girl, but it was as though she’d been transported back to being small again, and this big, mean hulk of a boy from the care system had infiltrated her and her sisters’ minds and bodies as though he had the right.

  Angry again, she struggled to throw him off, but she was out of shape and wheezing, her lungs constricting through fear and her inability to pull in a proper breath.

  “Don’t fight it,” he whispered. “You knew it would come to this.”

  “But…but…” she gasped out. “I didn’t…say a word. I…didn’t…tell.”

  “I know.”

  “Then…” Oh God, she was going to have an attack. It was coming at her, chest seeming a rock-hard boulder, heavy without air. “Why are you here if I didn’t…didn’t tell the secret?”

  “I lied.”

  His low chuckle terrified her, the same as it always did, and she wished she’d taken the initiative and moved them all away from here after she’d spoken to Emma about it. They should have packed a bag each and gone somewhere safe, then told the police. Instead, Emma was dead, and it looked like Suzie would be next. Then Jacob? Her boys? Robbie?

  Oh God, no, please, not my boys…

  “This is all Jacob’s fault,” he said, voice barely there.

  What? She didn’t understand. Jacob didn’t know about any of this, did he?

  “Please… I can’t…breathe,” she said.

  “I don’t know why you’re worried about that. It’ll all be over soon.”

  He pushed his body into her back, and his…oh, fucking hell, he was getting off on this. He had an…

  She shuddered with revulsion.

  If she wasn’t panting, she might be able to scream, but she couldn’t take in enough air to give her what she needed to make the noise. A cold spear went through her, but it didn’t hurt, it just sucked the miniscule remains of breath from her lungs. Then another spear, seeming to go in reverse. Pain came then, shocking in its intensity, and he stepped back, letting go of her wrists. She stagger-turned to face him, and even in the darkness his smile was visible—wide and wicked, the leer he always gave when he got what he wanted.

  She dipped her head, and a black stain spread on her pyjama top. If it wasn’t sevenish on a winter morning, but summer, with a modicum of light, that stain would be red.

  He held a knife up—not the bread one, but another, long and thin—and waved it in front of her face. “That’s it, Suzie. Job done. Now Jacob will know what it’s like to be me. He should have been happier about me sharing his room. Like I said, this is all his fault.”

  Suzie frowned, but it only camped out on her forehead for a second, her muscles going slack right along with her legs. She sank to the path and absurdly wondered if the brick behind her had a blood smear on it, showing her journey south. Her head felt as though it would burst—she needed oxygen, but her body wasn’t in any state to help her out there.

  She looked up at him, seeing the spiteful bastard for what he was—a maniac who’d been ruined in care and had been too broken for Mum and Dad to fix him. The damage had already been done before he’d tromped into their lives, and although he’d maintained an outer shell of being on the road to recovery, Suzie and her sisters had known better.

  She closed her eyes and imagined kissing her boys for the last time. One more kiss before she had to leave them behind. One more brush of her lips against their soft cheeks. She wasn’t going to make it, wasn’t going to get out of this, she knew that. Then she kissed Robbie, thanking him for taking her away from the monster, the demon, and keeping her safe up until now. And Jacob, her dear brother, who would have no family left. She could only hope Robbie would look after him, get him help for his addiction.

  So this is how it ends.

  He slashed her throat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In her office, Helena sat in her chair and winced at her slightly aching muscles. She hadn’t been to the gym for a while because of wanting to avoid Marshall—there was only one in town, so she’d seen him anyway—and now she was paying for it.

  She should have known it wouldn’t work out between them. Her life experiences in the force meant she had a more mature outlook on life compared to him. Come to think of it, she didn’t know much about him really, just a few anecdotes from his past that didn’t add up to anything she could patch together to glean what his life had been like before he’d met her. He’d talked at length about his girlfriends he’d been with prior to her, which was a bit strange to go into so much detail when you were with a new bird, but no names had been mentioned. He was a closed book, and she should never have started anything with him. But he’d won her over with his charming approach in The Blue Pigeon one night when she’d gone in for a swift voddy at the end of a particularly gruelling day.

  They’d talked for a good couple of hours, and one vodka had turned to four, and going home alone had turned into him joining her, sharing her bed, her toothbrush in the morning—which had given her the shivers but she’d shrugged it off—and they’d met up often after that.

  Now she thought about it, they hadn’t actually said out loud they were a couple. They’d just drifted together, one date or meeting flowing into the next until the night he’d first got pissy with her and she’d asked herself what the hell she’d seen in him.

  The aftereffects of finishing with him had turned nasty. Him doing what he’d done outside the leisure centre earlier had all but told her he wasn’t going to let her go so easily. When she’d arrived at work, she’d gone through the rigmarole of sorting a restraining order. Louise had dealt with it, thankfully, and promised to look into him at some point today to see if anything weird came up.

  Helena should have done that herself before she’d agreed to keep seeing him, but there hadn’t seemed any need at first—and she’d wanted to be a normal person instead of relying on the database to check him out. Still, the wheels were in motion now, and once he was served with the order, he might back off. Mind, she knew more than anyone that restraining orders were a waste of time. Unless he actually harmed her, there wasn’t much that could be done. He basically had carte blanche to follow her around all he liked and get away with it. That should change. The amount of women she’d dealt with who’d had an order out on someone and they’d ended up being beaten by their exes…

  Bastards. Who did they think they were?

  She was sifting through the paperwork from the past two days, reading what she’d written regarding Callie and Emma. It seemed so bizarre, what had happened, and with it down in black and white, it was like a bloody film plot. Someone out there had an agenda, and she needed to find them before anyone else got killed.

  It wasn’t looking likely at the moment.

  Her desk phone rang, and she picked it up. “Yep.”

  “It’s me, Louise.”

  “Oh, that was quick. Did you find anything on him?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to nose—a few p
eople were brought in for booking. A call just came in. Suzie Walker has gone missing. Clive started his shift and went into the flats to check if everyone was all right, and it woke Robbie and the kids. They’d obviously slept in. So Clive asked where Suzie was, and Robbie called out to her…”

  “Shit a brick. That isn’t good. What about Jacob?”

  “He’s fine. Clive sent Robbie and the children into his flat for now because theirs is being treated as a crime scene.”

  “Why?”

  “Um, out the back, in the communal garden, there’s a knife and blood.”

  “Oh no…” Helena’s heart sank. There had been no copper in the garden keeping watch. Shit. “That poor woman. I knew this was going to happen. How the fuck did they get found? Clive took their phones away, so they couldn’t have contacted anyone.”

  “I don’t know, guv. There are a couple of uniforms on the way there.”

  “Right, ring Clive for me and tell him not to touch anything, same for the uniforms. Have you arranged for SOCO?”

  “No, thought I’d ring you first.”

  “Okay, do that now, and I’ll go down there with Andy. Also send officers round to Suzie’s actual address. We need to establish if anyone has been there. I’ll speak to you soon.”

  She rushed out of her office and into the incident room. Olivia and Phil had their heads bent, concentrating on their computer monitors. Olivia had a list of something or other on hers, and Phil was scrutinising CCTV, probably for about the third or fourth time.

  “Guys, Suzie Walker is missing. There’s blood at the scene, so I’m imagining the worst.”

  “Blimey,” Olivia said.

  “Where’s Andy?” Helena asked.

  “In the loo,” Phil said.

  “What are you up to, Ol?” Helena stared at Olivia’s back.

  Olivia turned in her chair. “I’ve been looking at the past, digging a bit into the Walker family as a whole. I’m just on the schooling part at the moment. Might be an idea to collect all the names of kids in their classes and see where they are now—see if they match to the friends on their social media accounts. If any live around here still, they might remember spats the kids got into, someone with a bloody long grudge. It’s all I can think of to do now. We’ve had dead ends so far on everything.”