by Abbie Frost
‘No … Oh my God, no!’ Rosa cried. Then she screamed and ran towards him, held him in her arms, her chest heaving.
Chloe wrestled free of Lucy and ran to her mother. At first she stood staring, her face more puzzled than horrified, and then something changed in her eyes. She let out a shriek of pain, the kind of noise that might have come from the throat of a maimed animal rather than a girl.
Hannah couldn’t bear to watch, so she turned away. Lucy came with her and they stood outside in the cellar, not looking at each other. Trying to block out the awful sounds of anger and grief.
After a few minutes, the room fell silent and Hannah and Lucy came quietly back inside. Rosa was carefully examining the room. Her eyes scanned the desk, the floor beneath it, the chair, and occasionally the body in the chair. Now she turned to them, her voice cold, her face like stone.
‘He cut his throat,’ she said blankly. She had something in her hand and with a cringe of disgust Hannah realized it was the scalpel.
‘He knew it was the best way,’ Rosa said. ‘Better than cutting his wrists.’ She looked down at her hand, at the metal blade covered in congealing blood. ‘He didn’t want to fail.’
Rosa’s training as a nurse must be kicking in, helping her to hold back the nightmare.
Her eyes were wild as she stared at them, daring them to challenge her. When no one did, Rosa dropped the scalpel on the desk.
Staring at her bloody hands, as if seeing them for the first time, she walked unsteadily away and sat on an office chair beside another desk, on which stood a laptop and printer.
Chloe sat in a chair, her eyes red and swollen, staring into space. Lucy left the room for a moment and came back with a blanket that she must have got from one of the boxes in the cellar room. She held it up to Rosa who nodded and let her drape it over Liam’s body.
‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ Lucy said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here until tomorrow.’
‘Wait.’ Chloe stood up. ‘There is something we need to do.’ She rubbed her eyes on her sleeve then looked at them all in turn, her voice firm. ‘If he killed himself, he would have left a note.’
There was a moment of silence, then Hannah nodded. ‘All right, let’s look for it.’ She pointed at the laptop on the desk in front of Rosa, hoping to keep Chloe away from the body. ‘Why don’t you get that going? I’ll search the files over here.’
Chloe headed to where her mother was sitting, still just staring at the shape under the blanket. Chloe pushed her chair away from the computer and touched the mouse pad. It came to life at once.
‘This is it. Come and look,’ Chloe said, and the others hurried over.
A Word document appeared on the screen.
Dear Rosa and Chloe,
There are many reasons for the things I’ve done. One day you will understand.
I’m sorry.
Liam
No one said anything for a long moment. Rosa sobbed quietly, then Chloe broke the silence.
‘No way, that’s a lie. That’s ridiculous. My dad didn’t write that.’
Another silence. ‘He must have,’ Rosa whispered. ‘Who else did?’
Chloe’s voice was sharp. ‘The person who killed him.’
Chapter Forty-One
They all stared at each other.
‘Someone killed Rob,’ Chloe said. ‘They killed Sandeep, and now they’ve killed my dad. We need to find out who did it. I need to find out who killed my dad.’ She stood, hands clenched, daring them to disagree with her.
‘OK,’ Hannah said eventually. ‘You keep searching the laptop while we check out the other desk. See if you can access the internet. Then we can contact the police.’ What she didn’t say was what they were all thinking: that the killer had to be one of the people in this room.
Chloe quickly pressed a few keys and shook her head. ‘The internet is down in here too, and I can’t see a router. But I’ll keep searching through the files.’
Hannah nodded. Approaching the body, she had to hold her breath and keep swallowing to fight off waves of nausea. She ignored the pool of blood that covered the top of the desk and searched through the drawers.
She pulled out both the drawers and carried them over to where Lucy stood beside the door. Put one on the floor next to her and started going through the other. When she realized Lucy hadn’t moved, she pointed at the drawer.
‘Come on. Help.’ She didn’t try to hide her impatience.
Lucy crouched down by the drawer and set to work.
‘And keep things separate and in order. That might be important.’ It felt easier to treat it like a job they had to get through as efficiently as possible.
She knelt on the floor and took papers out of her drawer, one by one, glancing over them before placing them methodically on the floor.
Most of them included Preserve the Past logo, along with a Dublin address for the charity. There was correspondence with a Dublin bank, a firm of solicitors and various building and architectural refurbishment contractors. It was clear that considerable sums of money had been paid out for work on the house.
At the bottom of the drawer she came upon an odd piece of paper torn from a notepad. It contained a list of names: all charities connected with the preservation of old houses. Every single name had been crossed out, except for Preserve the Past. In fact it had a neat little box drawn around it.
She called to the others, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘Anyone heard of Save Our Heritage, Saving Historical Houses or Preserving Ireland’s Past?’
Lucy stopped what she was doing to shake her head, and Hannah wondered if the list had been made by someone trying to invent a name for the charity.
She turned the paper over and found one name repeated over and over: Henry Laughton. The name of the host they had never been able to meet, the name of the man they had messaged repeatedly but whose voice she had never heard. Each name written differently, as if by someone trying out a new signature.
Could Liam really have invented Henry Laughton and Preserve the Past? She’d heard of people stealing or creating an identity, then fabricating the signature.
‘Jesus,’ said Lucy and they all looked round. She crouched over her drawer, a pile of papers on the floor beside her. She had one folder open, but she hadn’t taken it out of the drawer.
‘What’s that?’ Hannah asked.
Lucy stared at her. ‘The deeds to this property.’
Hannah shuffled over and looked at the document in Lucy’s hands. The house belonged to Ambrose, Lord Fallon. Ownership then passed to Jane, Lady Fallon, and after another ten years to John Roper. Presumably that was when Lady Fallon died. Five years later it had gone to Preserve the Past.
Rosa and Chloe came over and sat on the desk beside them. Rosa took the document and they began to read.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. ‘That makes sense. Because the letter about my father’s death – the one that came to my mum five years ago – the date on that letter is around the time Preserve the Past bought the house. The executor of the estate told my mum there was no money left and everything had to be sold, so it must have gone straight to Preserve the Past.’
‘Hold on,’ Lucy said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? About John Roper?’
Lucy stared at her. Of course, she was the only one Hannah hadn’t told about her discovery. Lucy shuffled away from Hannah with a look of horror on her face.
‘Your father?’
‘Yes, I thought I said. I’m Hannah Roper. John – or Jack – Roper was my dad. I knew he’d settled locally, but I found evidence upstairs that he lived in this actual house. And this,’ she picked up the deed, ‘proves it.’
Chloe glanced up from the document. ‘Hannah told us about it earlier.’
Lucy stood and looked away. She swayed, then stared at Hannah, as if seeing something unimaginable, a monster she didn’t believe in, come crawling out from under her bed in the middle of the night.
‘My God. Fucking hell.’ Lucy began pacing up and down. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Her voice shook. ‘Sandeep, Liam, and now you. All connected to this place.’
Hannah went towards her, but Lucy held up her palms again. ‘Don’t – don’t fucking come near me.’ Then she turned to Rosa and Chloe. ‘You realize she has to be involved in this shit, don’t you?’
Again Hannah tried to reach out, to calm Lucy, but she moved away, her eyes darting around the room.
‘We need to get out of here. Chloe, Rosa – let’s go. We need to get away from her right now.’ She jabbed a finger at Hannah. ‘I bet this is all down to her. She’s the one – she’s the killer – and she’s going to come after us next.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Hannah tried to steady herself, tried to find the right words to defend herself, but she couldn’t speak. There was a long moment of silence, and then Rosa nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said calmly. ‘That makes sense. I guessed there was something going on with her as soon as we arrived.’
‘What? You can’t seriously believe this.’ Hannah’s hands clenched with frustration. But even Chloe was staring at her with narrow suspicious eyes.
‘And she was the one who kept that poor gardener talking,’ Rosa said to Lucy, as if Hannah wasn’t there. ‘Making sure it was good and foggy when he left, making sure he fell to his death without any witnesses.’
Hannah tried to interrupt but Rosa talked straight through her. ‘And she was constantly sucking up to Sandeep and Mo, getting them to trust her, making sure she could do what she liked.’
‘She was the first one to arrive, remember that? Who knows how long she’d been here, setting this whole thing up.’ Lucy glared at Hannah.
‘Oh fuck off, this is insane.’ Hannah turned away from them and walked to the far wall. It was useless trying to defend herself. She looked back, her voice bitter. ‘Whatever. I don’t care, do what you want. If you don’t feel safe, go upstairs. I’ll look for the generator on my own.’
They all stared at her for a moment, as the thought of splitting up settled over them like a cloud. Chloe eventually walked back to the laptop. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve checked this properly.’ Her tone was firm, mature, a far cry from the voice of the little girl who had arrived only days ago.
Lucy continued pacing the room, obviously desperate to leave, but not prepared to go alone. Hannah carried on searching through the paperwork, and the others went back to work, occasionally throwing nervous glances at Hannah, as if she might jump at them with a scalpel at any moment.
After a few minutes, Lucy came back to pick up the deeds again, staring hard at Hannah. ‘This executor, the man who contacted your mum, what’s his name?’
Taking a deep breath, Hannah forced herself to answer. ‘Declan O’Hare. I don’t know much about him – he was probably a friend of my dad’s or a solicitor. He wrote to my mum about five years ago, told her about the death, and then we never heard from him again. He mentioned they were selling off the house, to pay debts, but that was it.’
Lucy turned away, her arms wrapped around herself. ‘I don’t understand,’ she muttered. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘What doesn’t? What don’t you—’
‘Look,’ Chloe’s voice cut across the room. ‘Quick, look at all this.’ She pointed at the laptop, and everyone stopped. They all went over to her, close enough to see the screen. ‘Everything’s in my dad’s name,’ Chloe said. ‘Everything. I couldn’t find anything at first. And then I checked in this one.’
She clicked on a yellow folder marked ‘MISC’ and a series of folders appeared, all relating to Preserve the Past. Chloe opened one and a website design popped up. The only house listed was this one – The Guesthouse – and the website hadn’t been updated. It still offered just one week at a reduced price for its very first guests.
Chloe clicked on the next folder, ‘Pictures’, and various photos of The Guesthouse and the surrounding countryside filled the screen. Some of them had been used on the website. Within the folder was another: ‘Host’. And when Chloe opened it, they saw a whole series of images of solid-looking men. One of them was the man they knew as Henry Laughton, the host, although the photo showed him standing in a mountainous, forested region that looked more like central Europe than Ireland. And the dog was no longer at his side, but next to a completely different man.
‘Christ,’ Hannah said. ‘So Henry was just some random guy he found online. Then Photoshopped next to a dog.’
The final folder – ‘Guests’ – was just a simple list of names and email addresses. Hannah’s heart stumbled when she saw Ben’s name right at the top. Hers came next and then Sandeep’s and Mo’s.
‘Ben should have come with me,’ Hannah said. ‘So it’s the people who were supposed to be here this week, but none of you – or Liam – are on there.’
When Rosa spoke, her voice sounded strained, as if she were drunk but trying to hide it. ‘If Liam did this, he wouldn’t need to add his own details.’ She took a breath. ‘And he never showed me the website or anything. He said he … he said the offer popped up just when he heard about the delay to the new house.’
They all stared at her, but her eyes drifted to the body slumped over the desk. ‘We’ve been staying here free. He told me the offer was for him to be an early reviewer. Preserve the Past had chosen him to keep an eye on things and report back any problems. Then he was supposed to comment on TripAdvisor and the rest, leave his review on Cloud BNB. He wasn’t to tell the other guests, though.’
Chloe sat forward, her eyes wide. ‘Can’t you see? It’s all fake. Why would he make it so easy for us to find this stuff?’
‘But if he killed himself, maybe he wanted us to find it?’ said Lucy.
They turned this over for a moment.
‘There’s something else,’ Hannah eventually said. ‘Liam’s name isn’t the only one missing, is it?’ She pointed at Lucy, glad to be able to bite back at her. ‘Yours isn’t there either.’
Lucy sounded as tired as Rosa. ‘I booked the day before I came, so he probably didn’t bother adding my details.’
‘You said yourself that we all have connections to the place … so what’s yours?’
‘I don’t have one.’ Her voice was sharp.
‘Well that’s—’ Hannah’s voice was cut off by a loud bang.
They sat, not daring to move, and stared around the room.
‘It’s coming from in here.’ Rosa’s voice shook.
The bang thundered again, this time louder, the exact sound that Hannah remembered hearing when she stood on the stairs that very first night.
Chloe laughed bitterly. ‘I did it,’ she said. ‘It’s recorded.’ She gestured to the laptop. ‘It’s all on here, all the weird stuff we’ve heard. And I bet there are speakers in the main house. Listen.’
She clicked the mouse again and that familiar mournful crying filled the air. The room suddenly felt cold, the sound so realistic and desperate that Hannah wanted to scream. In the end it was Lucy who sobbed and turned away from them.
‘Turn it off, please,’ she said.
The recording stopped but the chill lingered, like there really had been a little girl crying beside them. Hannah thought of that horrible aftershave, imagined Liam watching them all on the monitors, torturing them with his recordings. But why?
‘I can’t stand this – I need to get out,’ Rosa said. ‘I need to wash my hands.’
She looked down at her blood-smeared hands as if seeing them for the first time. Hannah gave her a packet of wet wipes from the shelf by the door, and Rosa tried to scrub her fingers and palms. But the clotted blood lingered under her nails and in the creases of her skin.
‘It’s no good.’ She dropped the wipes with a shiver of disgust. ‘I need to wash them properly. Is there a sink anywhere down here?’
When no one responded, Rosa pointed to the door at the side, the one Hannah hadn’t dared to open
. ‘What’s in there?’ she said.
Without waiting for an answer, she went over and pulled at the door handle.
It swung open with a click. A gentle light flickered on, very different to the fluorescent glare above them. When Hannah walked over to stand in the doorway, she saw a small room illuminated by a lamp. A neatly made camp bed, with fresh bedding, in one corner, a wooden chest with a rail above it in the other. And a few shirts hanging from the rail.
‘Great, just great.’ Rosa pulled down two of the shirts and held them up. ‘Look, they’re Liam’s. They’re all bloody Liam’s.’ Bringing them back into the other room, she flung them on the floor. ‘Now will you believe me?’
She looked between them. ‘And he told me he kept losing shirts at the gym, claimed someone stole them.’ A harsh laugh. ‘I thought he’d left them at his girlfriend’s. But this … this is far worse. Oh God, I never even noticed … my Liam … what the hell was he doing?’
‘You’re wrong!’ Chloe ran to the shirts and picked them up, glaring at her mother. ‘You want to believe this, don’t you? You’d rather think he was a killer, than admit he was cheating on you.’
Rosa blinked. ‘That’s not … true, Chloe, I know about the affair. The bloody woman sent me a text to tell me about it. How do you think that feels?’ She swallowed. ‘But that’s just the start of it. He’s been ruining his life – and ours – for a long time.’
Rosa took a deep breath. ‘A long bloody time … He gambled away all our money, lost his job. He was about to be struck off, couldn’t keep his hands off his patients.’ A nerve on her neck twitched as she paced back and forth. ‘And little old me, always trying to cover for him.’
Chloe pointed to the house deeds on the table. ‘If he was broke, how could he buy a place like this?’
Rosa carried on pacing. ‘I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t the gambling that ate up our money – it was buying this fucking house. I don’t know, I don’t understand any of it.’ She stared at all of them as if they were accusing her, rather than Liam. ‘We used to be so happy. We loved each other.’
