The alarm woke me with a start and that strange feeling of a day that isn’t like a normal day, a day when you have an exam or the beginning of a holiday, a wedding or a funeral. As I sat up, Aidan stirred and murmured. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
‘Hi, honey,’ he said.
I got out of bed. I wanted to get into the shower, but I couldn’t. He might have joined me and that would be disastrous. I went into the bathroom and quickly washed my face and under my arms. That would have to do. I returned to the bedroom and pulled on knickers and jeans and a tee shirt.
‘I’ll make coffee while you’re in the shower,’ I said as casually as I could manage.
‘Sounds good.’
I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. When I heard the shower, I ran to the front door. The envelope was there. I felt a tremor of alarm, but it was in a slightly different position. I closed the door once again as quietly as I could. After some desperate fiddling and rearranging Aidan’s jacket, I looked around. There was nothing else, was there?
Just one thing.
I picked up my mobile and dialled 999.
‘Which service?’
‘Police,’ I said. There was pause. Please hurry, please hurry, I silently prayed. I heard a voice. I gave my name and my address.
‘I’m in terrible danger. My partner has said he’s going to kill me. I’m going to be killed.’
‘Is your partner in the room?’
‘He’s in another room. He’ll come in any second.’
‘A car’s on its way. It’ll be there in a few minutes. Can you leave the premises?’
‘No, I can’t. It’s not safe.’
I repeated my address to make sure they’d got it right.
‘Another thing: you need to contact Inspector Kelly Jordan and Inspector Ross Durrant. Kelly Jordan and Ross Durrant, in charge of the investigation of Skye Nolan. They must come as well. It’s really important. Have you got that?’
‘Why?’
‘Just give them the message. Say I’m in danger. Matter of life and death. I’ve got to stop, I think he’s coming.’
I put my phone down on the table. I could hear Aidan, up in the bedroom. He was dressing and while he was dressing, he was humming something. The kettle had boiled, but I ignored that. I opened one of the drawers and took out a pair of kitchen scissors. I pulled the collar of my tee shirt away from my neck and cut through the seam. I put the scissors back in the drawer. I grabbed the cut pieces of the shirt with both hands and tore the material, just an inch or so. It wasn’t really necessary, but it might help in the first couple of minutes.
Aidan came into the room, all fresh and scrubbed from the shower. He looked like he was glowing. He moved into the space like he owned it.
‘Is the coffee ready?’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was in another world.’ I wasn’t going to make any coffee. ‘What time do you need to be at work? I can make you breakfast. Would you like some toast or I could fry some eggs and bacon. I think I might have some pastries in the freezer.’ I had no bacon, I had no pastries. I could have said anything: kippers, eggs benedict, kedgeree, devilled kidneys. We weren’t going to have any kind of breakfast.
He looked puzzled. ‘What happened to your shirt?’
I looked down at it as if I had only just noticed it. ‘It got torn.’
‘I can see that. But you only just put it on. What happened?’
‘It got caught on something.’
He continued to look puzzled, but also the first stirrings of suspicion showed on his face. ‘Is something up?’
For a moment, I was at a loss. Why weren’t they here yet? Hadn’t they heard my message properly? Could they have taken it down wrong? I’d said it twice. Was this all about to go in utterly the wrong direction?
‘No, everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘So what do you want for breakfast?’
‘I don’t know. Just a piece of toast. And coffee.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll make them.’
I wondered whether I was going to have to go through the performance of finding bread and grinding coffee when I heard a car outside and heard voices and footsteps and then a ring on the door.
‘What’s going on?’ Aidan asked.
I didn’t answer. I opened the flat door and then the front door to two uniformed police officers. I stepped aside and gestured them inside. They were tall men and they bowed their heads as they entered, as if the ceiling was too low for them. In fact, the two of them in their visibility vests with all the straps and buckles and paraphernalia did make the room look small. They stared around quizzically. Aidan stared at them, his face almost comical with surprise.
‘There was a call,’ one of them said.
‘It was from me,’ I said. ‘My name is Tess Moreau.’ I gestured at Aidan. ‘This is Aidan Otley. He said he was going to kill me. He said he was going to kill me, the way he killed Skye Nolan and Peggy Nolan.’
Aidan gave an uneasy laugh.
‘Is this a joke? A crazy sick joke?’
‘No,’ I said. I felt tall and strong.
Aidan’s eyes flickered between me and the policemen; his mouth was pulled into a kind of quivering smirk.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Ridiculous and insane. She’s insane. I didn’t say anything like that. I haven’t killed anyone. This is all rubbish…’ He pointed at me. ‘That shirt. She did that to herself.’
The two officers looked at me.
‘What’s all this about?’ said one of them.
‘Two detectives are on their way,’ I said. ‘They should be here soon.’
‘What do you mean? Why are they on their way?’
‘Just wait.’
The two officers didn’t seem happy about the idea of just waiting. They started to ask Aidan some questions, but he was dismissive.
‘This is all rubbish,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you’re even here. I’m going to be late for work.’
‘Apparently this young woman reported an emergency.’
‘When?’
‘About ten minutes ago.’
Aidan opened his mouth and closed it. He looked behind him towards the bedroom and the shower and then back at me. He stared at me directly and gave a very slight shake of the head. Even with the two police officers there it made me shiver.
‘What have you done, Tess?’ His voice was gentle.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look at him.
It was a few minutes before I heard a car pull up outside. I hoped it would be Kelly Jordan or at least the two detectives together, but it was Ross Durrant on his own and he didn’t look at all happy to be here. He had a murmured conversation with the officers during which he occasionally looked over at Aidan or at me. When he was finished he walked across to me, leaned in close and spoke in a whisper: ‘I swear that if you are playing games with us – again – I will arrest you and charge you with perverting the course of justice. Do you understand?’
‘Is Kelly Jordan on her way?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘When she gets here, I’ll explain everything.’
This seemed to make Durrant even angrier. He asked Aidan to take a seat, but Aidan said he was happy to stand.
‘Why are you here?’ Durrant asked him.
‘I spent the night.’
‘Were you and Ms Moreau intimate.’
‘Oh yes.’ And Aidan turned his head and smiled at me.
‘Was the encounter consensual?’
‘It was.’
Ross Durrant looked round at me.
‘None of that matters,’ I said.
‘Is he lying?’
‘Wait until Kelly Jordan gets here. Then I’ll explain everything.’
His face had gone red with anger.
‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Five bloody minutes. Then we’ll talk, whoever’s here.’
Kelly Jordan arrived in three minutes. She didn’t look much more pleased than her colleagues to be here. She made no attempt at a greeting and she didn’t smile.
‘What’s this about?’ she said.
This was it. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Now that it had come, I felt tranquil, even though everything depended on what I was about to say.
‘Aidan Otley threatened to kill me,’ I said. ‘He said he’d kill me just as he’d killed Skye Nolan and Peggy Nolan.’
‘This is all rubbish,’ Aidan said in an almost amiable tone. ‘I never knew these women. I’d never even heard of them.’
‘Aidan said that he had trophies. He had a trophy from Skye Nolan’s flat and he had a trophy from Peggy Nolan’s house and he had kept them in his flat and he would show them to me as a sign of what he would do to me.’
There was a silence. Aidan looked at me in shock and then his expression changed to a smile. He actually laughed.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I get it. Two objects?’
‘That’s right.’
‘One belonging to Skye Nolan and one belonging to Peggy Nolan?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at the two detectives. ‘She thinks she’s framed me. She’s put two objects in my flat and then she’s phoned the police with this completely made-up accusation.’
‘What do you mean framed?’ I said. ‘When would I have done that?’
‘You’ve been there. Or you could have got in when I wasn’t there.’
‘I don’t have a key to your flat. I’ve never had a key to your flat.’
‘You could have managed it somehow.’
He looked back at the two detectives.
‘Do you want me to tell you about those two trophies?’ Aidan closed his eyes, clearly trying to remember. Then he opened them. ‘Yes, that’s it. The mother gave Tess two presents and she showed them to me. One was a bracelet that had belonged to her daughter. It was copper with swirly engraving on and some kind of light blue stones on it. The other was a square little clay thing, enamelled on top, yellow and green. It’s the sort of thing you’d put a hot drink on, what’s it called?’
‘A coaster,’ I said, in a low voice.
‘That’s right, a coaster. It had the daughter’s initials carved into the clay at the back. Tess kept them here, but somehow I don’t think they’re here anymore. I think they’re probably in a shoebox under my bed or in a shelf in my cupboard, somewhere a bit hidden but easy to find. Do you want the police to have a quick search or is it a waste of time?’
I started to speak, but Aidan interrupted me.
‘I’ll save you the trouble. She keeps them in her knicker drawer.’
I looked at him sharply. ‘Have you been going through my things?’
He only shrugged. ‘I needed to check on you,’ he said. ‘And it’s lucky I did. And when you don’t find them, we can go and retrieve them from the place in my flat where Tess put them.’
‘Any objection?’ Ross Durrant said. ‘Not that it matters what you think.’
‘If it doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘you’d better go ahead.’
One of the officers – the red-haired, fresh-faced one – left the room and Aidan looked at me.
‘When this is over,’ he said, ‘it feels like we’ve got a thing or two to talk about.’
Ross Durrant looked at me coldly.
‘Anything you’d like to correct?’ he said.
‘Do you mean these, sir?’ said a voice behind me.
I turned. The young officer was standing with outstretched hands. In one was the bangle with lapis lazuli and in the other was the coaster. Aidan looked like he had been punched in the stomach.
‘You bitch,’ he said. I waited for the words Poppy must have heard him say to Skye, and sure enough, he said them. ‘You fucking cunt.’