Broken Mirrors (ARC)

by C S Duffy

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Untitled

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Claire Duffy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Praise for Claire Duffy

  Well, well, well this book makes for a rollercoaster of a ride. This book throws you around like washing in a tumble dryer. Throwing twist and turns at you until right at the very end. When the author is ready to lay out what has exactly been happening in this book and then boom everything makes sense. Wonderful.

  - Karen W

  A brilliantly twisted psychological thriller that kept me guessing right to the end. The plot was dark and complicated, yet easy to read. There were twists aplenty and secrets in abundance. The characters were well thought out and original, their background was revealed slowly, adding to the suspense. The descriptive writing transported me with ease to another country and culture. A really good read.

  - Sarah K

  I loved this book. The story was compelling and fairly easy to follow. The story although complex is enthralling and I didn't work out 'the whodunnit' until near the end. Definitely a good read. I will look out for more by this author.

  - Lenore S

  Ellie, Ellie, Ellie. What a ride. Behind Blue Eyes by Claire Duffy seductively draws you in and then tosses you around like a sock in a dryer. I loved how descriptive the setting was. It was easy to get completely lost in the twisted tale. I can’t wait for the next in the series.

  -Rachelle S

  Broken Mirrors

  UNPROOFED COPY - NOT FOR RESALE

  Claire Duffy

  CS Duffy

  1

  Long after midnight, when the corporate events are over and the bars have emptied, the hotel sinks into silence with a contented sigh and Irina likes to imagine the guests fast asleep above her. Deep into the night she tidies the reception desk, lining up the pens and notepaper just so, ensuring the various computer cords aren’t tangled, carefully polishing a single smudge on the gleaming walnut desk.

  The stressed woman in the conservative business suit whose hand trembled as she signed her check in forms, Irina hopes she had a long, hot bath before slipping between the sheets and drifting into a sound sleep. The quiet guy in the leather jacket — some sort of musician, Irina gathered, from her younger colleagues — with the exhausted eyes and lost smile. She imagines him enjoying the late night burger he called down for in front of a cheesy movie he’s seen twenty times already. The couple, older even than Irina, who held hands as they checked in, confided it was their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Irina sent them a complimentary bottle of champagne and wonders if they are still whispering in the dark, reminiscing about their wedding, the births of their children, long summers and Christmas dinners.

  It is six o’clock in the morning, though in deepest winter, dawn is still a long way off. Irina delivers her handover report to the young man with the suspiciously shiny teeth who never quite looks her in the eye, then wraps herself warmly in her ancient winter coat. She carefully tucks her scarf into her collar so that not so much as a wisp of bitter air can invade, tugs her sleeves over her gloves and pulls her thick woollen hat as low as it will go over her ears. It's her favourite hat. She crocheted when she was on bed rest with her third daughter and bored out of her mind for four months. Last winter, she thought she had lost it for several weeks and was more than a little embarrassed by just how heartbroken she was.

  Despite all these preparations, she lets out an involuntary gasp when she steps through the revolving door and a sharp gust of icy air hits her windpipe. Minus fifteen at least, she judges, taking a couple of slow, deep breaths to adjust to the cold. The tightness in her chest relaxes, and she decides, again, that she doesn’t need to see a doctor just yet. Everyone is suffering this winter. It is only the second week of January, and already she can’t remember when she felt a temperature above zero. It is good for her old lungs to have a little challenge, she tells herself grimly as she takes a step and her feet sink into deep, soft snow.

  It has snowed heavily in the night, another half a metre or so. By the time she reaches the corner at the far end of the square she is sweating heavily with the exertion of wading through knee high snow. She stops for a moment, reminding herself that the T-bana stop is only another block or so away, and that in just over half an hour she will be at home in her cosy little apartment in Midsommerkransen. She will make a cup of hot tea and some buttery toast and take it to bed with her as a treat, she decides. She doesn’t have to pick up her grandchildren until 3pm, she has plenty of time to sleep.

  Cheered by the thought, she makes her way across Sankt Paulsgatan. Beneath the fresh snow is a layer of ice, several centimetres thick. She misjudges a step and skids and almost falls to her knees, cursing herself for not having the hiking poles she normally uses at this time of year. Enticing smells waft from the little bakery on the corner. Irina can just glimpse the rosy glow of the ovens behind the counter as she passes, baking the day’s breads and buns.

  Later, she will explain to the police that she has no idea what causes her to her turn around. She can’t recall hearing a noise that caught her attention. She isn't thinking of anything in particular, except how much she was looking forward to getting home to tea and toast and bed, when she glances back at the square and her breath catches in her throat.

  The figure is standing in the patch of grass next to the children’s playpark. From across the road Irina can't tell whether it is a man or a woman, she can’t even be certain it’s a person. She creeps closer, barely noticing when snow drifts over the top of her snow boots and seeps into her trousers, though her arthritic knee will punish her later.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls when she reaches the path that separates the children’s park from the patch of grass. ‘Are you alright?’ Her daughter would scold her for intruding, she thinks. Leave people alone unless they ask for help, mamma, Linda would tell her crossly, but Irina can’t help it. Sometimes people are afraid to ask for help.

  The figure doesn’t respond, and Irina glances around with a little prickle of nerves. It’s well after six now, she thinks with a flash of irrational annoyance. People should be up, getting breakfast, on their way to work. She should
n't be alone in the dark with this strange figure. What on earth is everyone doing still lying in bed?

  The figure leans back slightly, their arms aloft in the air as though they are waving for help on a desert island or conducting an invisible orchestra. Irina’s heart starts to beat faster as she sees that the figure is covered in snow, even its face. They must have been standing still during the entire blizzard.

  That’s ridiculous. She laughs, shaking her head, glad that no one was around to see an old lady get such a fright. She can't believe she thought it was a person standing there in the dark. It must be a statue, some kind of an art project or prank.

  Probably something to do with the kids from the nearby high school, Irina thinks with a chuckle, annoyed at herself for making her journey that tiny bit longer and forcing herself to cross the treacherous road three times. At least the bakery opens at half past six. Seven more minutes and she will be able to get a coffee and a cinnamon bun fresh from the oven to warm the rest of her journey. That's what she'll do, in fact. She should thank the kids that played the prank, she thinks with a wry smile as she turns to cross the road a final time.

  This time, she knows what catches her attention. Some snow, disturbed by a little flurry of birds flapping by just above the figure’s head, crumbles to the ground, exposing its face. Irina’s chest tightens again and she sees little black dots dancing at the edge of her vision.

  The woman is beautiful. Delicate cheekbones, flawless skin glistening a pale blue in the moonlight. She stares with black eyes, watching coldly as Irina staggers towards her. 'There, there, it's okay —' Irina gasps, her chest tightening like a vice grip. 'I will call for help — you poor thing, what happened to you?' The woman must be trapped, somehow. Why won't she move? She is standing, her eyes are open, she must be conscious.

  Fumbling in her panic, Irina struggles to get her coat off, dusts snow from the young woman's shoulders, wraps the coat around her. She moans out loud when her fingers brush her bare neck. The skin is so icy it almost seems frozen solid as Irina strokes her cheek, brushes her hair back from her face as she did to Linda when she was a little girl. 'You're alright now, I've got you,' she murmurs frantically as her heart pounds and the world spins. 'There is nothing to be afraid of. I'm here.'

  The baker glances out his window and comes running. He finds little Irina, shivering uncontrollably without her coat. Her arms are wrapped around the dead girl and she is stroking her hair, promising her over and over that everything is going to be okay.

  2

  Icy air sawed at the back of my throat and I regretted everything. What on earth had possessed me to take up running, for heaven’s sake? I had always held a healthy disdain for that province of creepy keen people who also stocked their kitchens with food they wouldn’t be eating in the next few hours and were known to refuse a final glass of wine because they had had something called 'enough.' Clearly, this disdain had been entirely correct.

  'Come on babe, look alive!' called my friend Maddie, from about a mile further down the road.

  Last summer, Maddie had adopted me at a newcomers in Sweden club she ran. She and her girlfriend Lena had been there for me when I found a dead body on a remote archipelago island in the Baltic Sea that turned out to be my boyfriend's former girlfriend. I'd eventually unmasked one of his best friends Mia as the killer, but after I confronted her she disappeared. Five months later, she was still on the run.

  Maddie was now studying to qualify as a personal trainer and dragged me out to exercise on an alarmingly regular basis. I was reasonably confident that she would kill me one of these days, but with one thing and another, I felt I owed her.

  I had always vaguely liked the idea of being the sort of person who went for runs. Not enough to ever go for one, you understand, but I had occasionally pictured myself striding along through chilly afternoons, blood pumping, endorphins raging, just me, the elements and my thoughts. Turned out that the main thought I had was fucking hell I hate running and I want to go home..

  'Are you not qualified enough to take on clients who actually want to do this yet?' I huffed when I finally caught up to her. 'Are you quite certain you still need to practice on me?'

  'Positive,' she shrugged with a grin. 'I've got another set of exams yet, then there's a wait to find out if I've made the cut.'

  'And you definitely don't want to become, like, a fire fighter or a candlestick maker?'

  Maddie had been a lawyer in Australia. She insisted she had once been a corporate madam who'd strutted about Sydney in little suits with 'an actual bluetooth headset surgically attacked to my ear like a wanker,' but looking at her now, I couldn't picture it. Maddie was like a little ginger pixie with short red hair that poked in a billion different directions and whose dress sense was part vegan world traveller, part comedy tramp from black and white movies. She always looked a little bit mad and interesting, and I felt ever so slightly dull next to her, with my standard hair that just sort of hung more or less to my shoulders not doing anything interesting, and jeans and a jumper.

  'I looked into doing some kind of legal consulting with firms who do business in Oz back when I first got here,' she'd told me once. It must have been early autumn, Johan was still in hospital after the fire during which Mia escaped. Maddie and I were sitting by the window of a coffee shop on Götgatan watching rain bouncing off the cobblestones outside. It was startling now to think that had just been a few weeks earlier. This winter had been so harsh that sometimes it felt as though the world had been frozen as long as I could remember.

  'Obviously I can't fully practice here given that my Swedish seems stuck on telling people my name and that the sun is shining today,' Maddie continued, 'but I might have been able to keep my hand in somehow, work remotely or something if I'd really wanted to.'

  She'd shrugged, toyed with a forkful of her carrot cake. 'But Lena suggested I just chill and settle in for the first few months, and by the time I started thinking about work I realised that Stockholm-Maddie doesn't wear little suits or care about a comma in clause 17.4.b until three in the morning, and I really prefer Stockholm-Maddie. I had long hair back in Sydney,' she grinned, running a hand through her short, spiky red hair. 'The money I've wasted on bloody blow outs over the years, it makes me want to weep. I Skyped my mum right after I got it cut and she burst into tears, said I looked like the real me. She's right. It's mad that I found the real me half a world away, but it is what it is.'

  I'd looked away then, focussed on the glorious caramel-marshmallow-brownie concoction that was already making my teeth itch, trying to ignore the little wave of sadness that had washed over me.

  I’d been a journalist since I left school, working my way up through making coffees and photocopying for what felt like eons, gradually scoring the odd freelance gig, before finally nabbing a staff job on a tiny local rag in North London. It was so far from my stomping ground of Wandsworth that as the Northern Line trundled endlessly beneath the city I half expected to cross at least one passport check and be ordered for inoculations. A couple of years later, I made it on to the crime section of the Evening Standard and swore blind I would never step foot on the Northern Line as long as I lived.

  I’d done alright. I’d paid my dues, got myself a handful of decent scoops that ensured commissioning editors accepted my calls when I went freelance a couple of years ago. I loved it. The thrill of chasing a story, the jubilation when a hunch comes together, the satisfaction of seeing some smarmy bastard nailed in black and white because I’d refused to give up. It was the only thing I’d been good at in my entire life, and I bloody loved every second of it. Then I met my dreamy Swede and hopped on a one way flight to Stockholm without a backwards glance.

  It's not quite as pathetically anti-feminist as it sounds, though maybe don't ask me to explain precisely how just at the minute. In fairness, I had fondly imagined that long-distance freelancing would be a bit more doable than it had turned out to be. Problem was, for crime you need to be on the ground, d
oorstopping witnesses, thumbing through dusty archives that no one would ever get around to digitising, gathering outside the Old Bailey to see the accused with your own eyes.

  I wasn’t around to do that in London any more, and the language barrier meant I couldn’t do it in Sweden. I’d padded my dwindling savings over the past few months with the odd bit of glorified blogging about life in Sweden and one series of corporate articles about anti-flammable chemicals which had paid a few bills and made my brain melt in despair and drip out of my ears. If I was going to stay in Sweden, I was going to have to figure out what I was going to be when I grew up, and pretty sharpish.

  Obviously I was going to stay in Sweden, I mean. I just needed a job.

  It was fine. I’d only been in Stockholm a few months, really. I was still finding my feet.

  'What's going on there?' Maddie said now as she jogged alongside me. She was basically going in slow motion while I was pretty sure I was running for my life. My legs trembled and my lungs burned. The sweat on my forehead appeared to be frosting over, which was the most confusingly uncomfortable sensation ever.