Lorna
Hollis was dead. They had suspected it this morning when he couldn’t be found. They had feared it. But they didn’t want to believe it. Now, they all knew it. Hollis was dead, and they would have to deal with the consequences. Hollis was dead, and if Hollis could die, any one of them could be next. Lorna stared at the card in her hands and listened to the others.
Maeve, closest to her, kept muttering, “We have to ring the police. We have to ring the police. We have to . . .” Oliver was doubled over, head between his knees, groaning like he had a stomachache. Ellie remained the farthest from them, sitting with her back to the wall and knees pulled to her chest, running a hand over her arm, muttering something only she could understand.
“We have to ring the police,” Maeve repeated yet again, her voice bordering on hysteria. “There’s been a murder! We have to ring them. We have to get them involved. We—”
Oliver crossed the hall and slapped Maeve across the face. She cradled her cheek, apparently too stunned to say more.
“Stop saying that!”
“Oliver!” Lorna cut in.
“We can’t contact the police!”
Maeve took a step back, palm pressed to her face. “Why? Because you’re the one who killed him?”
Maeve flinched when he raised his hand again, but he did not strike.
“No. I mean we won’t be able to reach them. Have you tried using your phone lately? Ellie, what about you?”
Ellie continued her silent conversation with herself.
“I haven’t had a reason,” Maeve answered. She looked to Lorna for support, but Lorna didn’t know what she could say.
“No texts? No emails? No chats with your online boyfriends?”
“That’s enough, Oliver. Tell her.”
With the air of a father at his breaking point, Oliver explained about the empty box he and Lorna had discovered in the basement.
“We didn’t find the jammer,” Lorna added. “But my phone’s not working and neither is Oliver’s.”
Maeve pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen. “You’re right,” she said. “It says the last time my email updated was 5:32 last night.”
Oliver folded his arms, his anger giving way to the smug satisfaction he used to wear so well. Trim a few pounds, add a few hairs, and he could be the same cocky son of a bitch he once was. Almost. Age had done too much damage. And there was too much fear in him now, despite how he tried to cover it up with his voice.
“Caskie must have thought we’d ring the police the first chance we got,” he said.
“Caskie?” Lorna asked. “You think Caskie killed Hollis?”
“Contrary to popular opinion, Lorna, I’m not as thick as a slice of French bread. Of course I think Caskie did it. This is his house, yes? He has access to every room. Knows the house inside and out, which means he knows where to hide stuff. For example, a dead fucking body. That fucker ruined our cars and murdered our mate and now he’s after us.”
“Language,” Ellie whispered, rising from the floor. Shock had settled on her the longest, and she was only now beginning to shake it.
“Sorry. Look, we all agree we saw a car driving away last night, right? But none of us saw who was in it. And even if it was Caskie, who’s to say he didn’t come back in the night when we were sleeping? It fits. He crept back in the night, damaged the cars, killed Hollis, and is hiding somewhere waiting to finish us off. Maeve herself said she thought she saw someone.”
“I thought I heard someone,” Maeve said. She looked again at Lorna, then down at her feet, whatever she wanted to say left unspoken.
“We heard something in the dining room just now, which obviously wasn’t Hollis,” Lorna added.
“You did?” Maeve asked. “Was it in—”
“Ellie,” Lorna interrupted, “can you tell us what happened? Did you see who hurt you?”
“She was by the attic,” Maeve said. “We were about to search the attic.”
“Thank you, Maeve,” Oliver said, “but I think Ellie can speak for herself.”
Ellie looked as if she were about to contradict him, but after several shuddering breaths, she managed to speak.
“Maeve’s right. I went up to the attic. The door was unlocked, so I went up there to search. But it was very dark. And I couldn’t find the light.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. Lorna leaned in, as though willing Ellie to speak faster. “I’m not sure what happened next. I bumped into a stack of boxes and then something—someone—leapt at me. Almost pushed me down the stairs. I ran.”
“You didn’t see what—who—it was?” The anxiety Lorna had felt last night upon her arrival returned. She glanced up and down the hall as if Ellie’s attacker might suddenly appear. “Was this before or after Maeve thought she heard something?”
“It must’ve been after,” Maeve said, “Because I heard it before Ellie started screaming. That’s why I—”
“And you ended up in this room?” Lorna asked Ellie, interrupting again. Oliver held out a hand, indicating Lorna should take it easy, but she ignored him.
“It was the first door I could open.”
“But it wasn’t unlocked when you first searched this floor?” Lorna asked.
“I . . . I don’t know. Maeve was checking the doors on that side of the hall.”
“And Maeve,” Lorna said, turning to her, “you were where?”
“Down the hall there.” Maeve pointed.
“And that’s where you thought you saw someone?”
“Heard someone. And I did hear them. I’m sure of it now.”
“But when you first passed this way,” Oliver said, “you didn’t realize the door was unlocked? You didn’t check this room?”
Maeve shrank back, hugging her arms around her waist. “No. I mean, I don’t think the door was unlocked. I mean, it could’ve been. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Convenient, that, don’t you think, Lorna? Ellie just happens to be attacked while Maeve’s off somewhere else, and Maeve just happens to think she saw someone, and Maeve just happens not to notice an unlocked room with a dead fucking body?”
“This doesn’t matter! None of this matters!” Ellie shouted. She grabbed the note card out of Lorna’s hand and tore it into pieces. “It was an accident! Callum’s death was an accident. Why are we being punished?” She shouted to the ceiling as if someone in the attic would hear her. “It was an accident!”
“We all know that’s not true,” Lorna whispered.
The silence after she spoke was deafening. She might as well have shot off a gun. The truth they’d blanketed safely beneath so many years of lies had now been aired. Spoken aloud for the first time. They might have all been culpable for some of what happened that night, but only one of them had done the act. Lorna looked at the pieces of the card now scattered on the carpet.
You try to leave when it’s too soon, you’ll die like Hollis in your room. Someone murdered Callum dear. Till they confess, you’re all stuck here.
“Hollis died because he tried to leave,” she said.
“Hollis wouldn’t do that,” Ellie said. “He wouldn’t have . . . He’s a detective. If he was leaving, it was probably to help us.”
“Was a detective,” Oliver corrected.
“Shut up!” Lorna took a breath and lowered her voice. “Sorry, Ellie, but Hollis must have tried to leave and that’s why he’s dead. Not because the blackmailer thought it was him. That he was the one who . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We don’t know either,” Maeve said. “We’ve never known.”
Wind gusted against the house, flapping a shutter somewhere nearby. They looked at one another. Lorna knew what they were thinking. Which of them was it? Who had done it? And would that person finally break now that over twenty years had passed? Would they confess? Or would they cling to their secret ever more tightly? Try to throw someone else under the bus? Mistrust flickered from face to face. Then, by some unspoken agreement, they decided now was not the time to cast blame. That might come later, but not now.
When the storm was quiet again, Oliver spoke.
“Let’s tell him it was Hollis. It can’t do Drummond any harm. Not anymore.” He paled, like he knew it was a crass thing to say, even if it was practical.
“Hollis was the one who found him,” Ellie said. “And isn’t it normally the person who finds the body?”
But Lorna couldn’t let Hollis take the blame for something she knew he had not done.
“It wasn’t him, though, was it?” she asked, knowing that shifting the blame from Hollis meant she was suspicious of the others. “I mean, I never really thought . . . not him.”
No one said anything, but from the looks on their faces they all thought the same.
“Hollis had been in trouble before Caldwell Street,” she said, “but he didn’t harm anyone to get out of it. There’s no reason to think a boy who rescued baby birds and little old ladies and cried when one of his rugby heroes was injured would suddenly escalate to murder.”
“It might’ve been someone else,” Ellie said. “Someone else who was there that night. At the party.”
Not one of us was left unspoken.
“There’s always a chance,” Oliver agreed.
They all left it at that and stood there in silence, trying not to glance at one another. Trying not to send an accusatory look in the wrong direction. Right now, there was a bigger enemy to fight.
“Is there a landline?” Lorna asked. “This is an old house. It has to have a landline, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “Maeve, did you happen to see a landline while you were wandering around the house by yourself?”
“Enough.” Lorna warned. “I think there’s one downstairs at the front desk, near the hotel register. It’s possible whoever installed the Wi-Fi jammer also cut the wires, but we should check anyway.”
They all agreed with the suggestion, but no one moved. The threat of leaving this hallway was too great. The house had become a giant mousetrap, filled with hidden dangers. The narrow walls on either side gave the illusion of containment, of safety. There was nothing to harm them in this hall. Yet their time here was limited. Eventually, they would have to move, and that time was nearing. The rain and wind picked up. The lights flickered, the house winking at them.
Oliver grabbed a heavy candlestick from a sideboard in the hall and handed it to Lorna, then gave the matching one to Ellie. He pulled open a drawer and rummaged around until he extracted what looked like a stone paperweight and tossed it to Maeve, who jumped back in fright, then bent down to pick it up. For himself, Oliver chose a smaller metal candle holder that had a bit of weight at the base.
“We’ll go downstairs together,” he said, looking each of them in the eye. “Slowly. Keep your eyes open for anything. Don’t hesitate to strike. But try to keep Caskie alive. I have a few questions I’d like to ask first.”
“God,” sighed Lorna. “When did my life turn into a game of Clue?” The comment slipped out before she could stop it. No one laughed, and she knew she shouldn’t have spoken. Like too many other things in her life, she couldn’t take it back.
Ellie
Their shoes against the hallway carpet sounded louder than shattering china. Several times, Oliver stopped and pressed a finger to his lips. He’d cock his head to the side and then wave them forward. The curves of the silver candlestick dug into Ellie’s palm as the sleeve of her jumper rubbed against the scratches on her arm. This would be heavy enough to crack open the skull of whoever had attacked her. She could still feel the nails on her skin. The hot breath on her cheek as she’d torn herself away. One false step down those attic stairs and she would’ve become like Hollis, her head bleeding out on the floor. She pictured Mr. Caskie standing over her, smiling as he watched her die, and wished she could scratch his eyes out.
Approaching the great red staircase was like walking into an open wound. Ellie stared across the upper landing to the other wing, watching for Mr. Caskie to appear.
But no one came. What was visible of the foyer remained empty.
They hesitated at the top of the stairs for what seemed too long a time, no one saying a word. Their panicked selves from moments ago had been left outside Hollis’s door. If they retraced their steps, Ellie knew they would see themselves trapped in time, crying and screaming. They were hollow copies now. Empty shells propelled onward on nothing more than some primal instinct to survive.
Oliver finally moved them onward. Two by two they traveled down the two flights of stairs, Oliver and Ellie in front, Lorna with Maeve behind, every step taken with caution. When they reached the foyer, they huddled together like a pack of frightened animals. Oliver scanned the room’s corners, then placed his hand at the small of Maeve’s back and pushed her forward.
“Go on, then. Check it,” he said.
“What? Why me? Why can’t we all go over there together?”
While the front desk was visible, someone could easily be hiding behind. Maeve looked to Lorna and then Ellie for help, but they said nothing. Oliver had singled Maeve out, and Ellie wouldn’t interfere. The group meant safety, and Ellie would do whatever was necessary to remain safe.
Maeve, realizing she wasn’t receiving any support, detached from their huddle, gripping her stone paperweight above her head, ready to strike. Her feet stumbled on the final steps.
A shout.
Ellie flinched, but Maeve lowered the paperweight.
“He’s not here,” she said. A little laugh escaped, a shudder of nerves.
“Brilliant,” said Oliver. “The phone?”
“Right.” Maeve reached for it with the same hand that held the paperweight, winced, and set the weight aside.
Ellie held her breath. Caskie couldn’t have forgotten about the landline, could he? As Maeve lifted the receiver, hope wedged its way into her like a sliver of glass. If the landline worked, it wouldn’t matter that the Wi-Fi and cellular signals had been blocked.
Maeve set the phone down and frowned, an expression reminiscent of Ellie’s mother-in-law’s French bulldog.
“No dial tone,” she said.
“Did anyone notice any other phones in the house?” Lorna asked.
“Probably wouldn’t matter,” said Oliver. “More likely than not he cut the main line.”
“How far does the jammer block the signal?” Lorna asked. “Didn’t the box say a hundred meters? We can walk that far, get a signal.”
“If there’s a signal to be had,” Oliver said. “The moment I drove off that ferry, I lost service. I think there’s one cell tower that serves this entire bloody island, and in this weather?”
As if on cue, a gust of wind blew against the house. The lights flickered again.
Maeve threw up her hands. “So we can’t phone the police or anything. And our cars are buggered so we can’t go anywhere.”
“Who says we can’t go anywhere?” A rain jacket hung on a coatrack by the door. Oliver grabbed it and slipped it on. “We’ve got legs, don’t we? Lorna was right about the walking. Even if we can’t catch a signal, maybe we can catch a boat.”
“You want to walk to the quay?” Lorna asked. “That’s miles away. We’ll never make it there before the last ferry.”
“We’ll make it there in time for some ferry. If not today then tomorrow.”
“You’d stand out there all night? In this?”
Rain lashed the windows.
“It’s better than staying here with a fucking psychopath! You think Caskie hasn’t planned this all out? He’s probably waiting, just waiting, to do us like he did Hollis.”
“You saw the note,” Ellie said. “We’re not supposed to leave. If we leave, he’ll kill us.”
“And maybe no matter what we do, he’ll kill us anyway because that’s been his plan all along.”
“But I still don’t understand,” Maeve said. “Mr. Caskie is half our age. What could he possibly have to do with Caldwell Street? With us? With any of it?”
“I don’t plan on sticking around to find out,” Oliver said. No one moved. “Come on. A stormy night? A creepy house with a psycho killer? I’ve seen this film, and I’m not keen to stick around for the ending.”
The rain marked the time as the fear they thought they’d left upstairs wove its way down to them. Oliver looked at each of them, and Ellie knew that no matter how much he wanted to leave, he wouldn’t go alone. He needed a group, a following. For all his talk, someone else needed to give him the final push, like they had with Callum all those years ago.
“Caskie has what he needs to blackmail us,” Ellie said. “If we leave, maybe he can’t kill us, but he’ll hurt us in other ways.”
“So that’s it then?” Oliver asked. “You want to give in? Ruin the rest of your life?”
“No. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong that night. I have nothing to confess.”
Ellie cleared her throat. “You hit him first.”
Oliver’s eyes raged like the storm outside. He pointed at Ellie.
“Fuck you.”
He pointed at Lorna. “And you.”
He pointed at Maeve. “And you. What Caskie’s got on me, it’s not as bad as a murder charge. Maybe you can’t say the same, but I’m willing to take my chances.”
He threw up the hood of the raincoat, his steps like thunder across the floor. He turned the doorknob and yanked.
And yanked.
And yanked.
“Open up,” Oliver whispered fiercely. “Open. Up.”
He kicked the door. “Open up!”
It held firm.
“Caskie, you fucker!”
He beat on it—Ellie remembering the damage his fists could do—then stormed into the dining room, where they heard him smashing chairs and clawing at windows. He returned to reception, knuckles bloodied, and then he was gone, across to the study.
“We have to get away from him,” Lorna whispered. “You know happens when he—”
“Piece of shit!”
The sound of splintered wood exploded from the study.
Maeve ducked, though there was nothing to avoid.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Maeve asked. “We’re locked in a house with a bloody tornado.”
“Fuck you! Open up!”
“Lorna’s right,” Ellie said. “Even if we can’t get out, we need to find a safe place to hide until he calms down.”
“God fucker piece of—”
Another crash.
“I’m not going back upstairs,” Maeve said.
“The back of the house. This way.” Ellie pointed to the passage that led beneath the main staircase. “Maybe there’s a place back here we can use.”
Oliver’s anger was tearing apart the group that had protected Ellie. Now Caskie seemed the lesser of the two evils. Maybe she could find a way to say what he wanted her to say. Or at least give him enough of the others so she wouldn’t have to give herself. After all, she must’ve been special, or else the others would know as much as she did, wouldn’t they?
“I’ll kill you, you fucking bastard!”
While Lorna and Maeve hurried down the back passage, Ellie lingered by the staircase. Caskie was probably somewhere upstairs. She could find him before the others. Make a deal. Return to David and the children before anyone realized she was missing. Return while Caskie did to them whatever needed to be done. She placed one foot on the staircase.
Oliver
“I’ll kill you, you fucking bastard!”
Oliver threw one last barstool, then staggered back against the wall. His chest burned and a hoarse cough wracked his chest. He spat a glob of mucus into a potted plant and rested his hands on his knees, examining his bloodied knuckles as he tried to regain his breath. His anger—at Hollis, at Caskie, at Wolfheather House—continued to rage inside his head, but his body could no longer keep up. The anger turned inward, at his own stupidity for coming here in the first place. But before self-pity could overtake him, the girls screamed.
Oliver ran into the foyer, face red and flushed, wondering which one would be dead, but all three of them were alive, standing and staring at something on the floor. Ellie noticed him first and stepped aside.
It didn’t register at first, what it was. When he tried to speak, he was out of breath and had to take a big gulp of air before he could ask.
“Who the fuck is that?”
Ellie, paler than usual; Lorna, shaking hands betraying her steely glare; Maeve, chewing on the cuff of her jumper—none answered. And neither did the body on the floor.
The dead old man wore a green parka, mostly dry. His eyes were open, glassy and tinged red from broken blood vessels. His mouth gaping, a glob of dried spit on his chin.
“Any of you seen him before?” Oliver asked.
Each shook her head no.
“Just what we need. Another fucking body.” What remained of his chaotic rage narrowed to a pinpoint of focused anger, spurring him to action. Oliver knelt beside the man and pulled down the collar of the plaid shirt underneath the parka. A red-purple ring circled his neck, but whatever had been used to strangle him had been taken away. Oliver placed the back of his hand against the man’s cheek.
“He’s cold.” He lifted the arm and set it back down. “But not stiff. And he doesn’t smell. So rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. He’s been dead less than two or three hours.”
“And what makes you a forensics expert all of a sudden?” The waver in Lorna’s voice belied the courage in her words.
“Mum watches a lot of Forensic Files. Like, a shit ton.”
“He’s right,” Ellie said. “My daughter was studying the stages of decomposition for her GCSEs. Jilly was asking her tutor all sorts of morbid questions.”
Oliver checked the man’s pockets but found no keys. There was, however, a driving license.
“Dugal MacLeod,” he read.
“Caskie’s missing caretaker?” Lorna asked.
“Not missing anymore. His jeans are damp. It can’t have been that long ago that he was outside.” Not wanting to touch the dead man again, he tossed the ID onto the floor.
“Caskie seemed genuinely angry yesterday that the caretaker wasn’t here,” Lorna said. “What if he’s innocent after all? He left like we thought and MacLeod came back here to take care of us for the weekend.”
“The fire,” Ellie said. “Mr. MacLeod must’ve relit the fire this morning. And why would he do that unless he really was here to look after us and the house?”
“This where you found him?” Oliver pointed to the open room beside them.
“He fell out,” Ellie said. “He just . . . fell out when the door was opened.”
What might have once been an office now served as a large storage area. Cardboard and plastic boxes. Mops and buckets. Tins of paint. Bins. There was another door on the opposite side of the room. Oliver tried to open it, but it was locked. He left the junk room and returned to the others, who had started arguing.
“Maybe Hollis killed him?” Ellie asked. “Or he and Hollis killed each other?”
Lorna shook her head. “And then what? Hollis staggers up the stairs with half his head missing, somehow not leaving any blood trail? Then places a note card on his own chest—again without leaving any blood on it—before he dies?”
“There’s only one thing we can be certain of,” Oliver said. “If Hollis killed MacLeod, then someone else killed Hollis. And if it was MacLeod who killed Hollis, then someone else killed MacLeod.”
“Either way,” Ellie realized, “it means there’s someone else in this house.”
“Caskie’s letter,” Lorna said. “Remember? In the letter, Caskie said those gifts were left by our benefactor.”
“But who is that?” Ellis asked.
“Maybe someone who’s been hiding here the whole time,” Oliver said. “Or someone standing here, who hasn’t been telling the truth.”
The distrust returned and rippled through them all. He saw it in the way they moved away from one another. In the way their eyes darted from one person to the next. In the way they tensed their muscles and folded their arms. Where upstairs they had been united, now they had splintered apart.
“Who opened the door?” he asked.
He watched them as he waited for an answer. Waited to see which way the wind blew. And he couldn’t say he was surprised when Lorna and Ellie both turned toward Maeve, who, Oliver realized, had yet to speak.
“Why did you open the door, Maeve?”
Maeve’s hand fluttered to her neck, and she blinked several times before answering. “I was looking for another way out. We all were.”
“Tell me again why you were down here when you were supposed to be upstairs with Ellie.”
“I don’t know how many times you want me to repeat it. I was looking for the attic key. I mean I heard something. Someone.” Maeve backed away.
“Which was it? You were looking for the attic key or you heard something? And how did you hear something down here from all the way on the top floor?”
“I didn’t. I mean I did hear something. But I was mostly looking for the keys. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Why are you getting so defensive?”
“I’m not being defensive! You’re . . . you’re being aggressive. I swear I had nothing to do with this. With him. Lorna, you believe me, don’t you?”
“She admitted to Facebook stalking me,” Ellie said. “All of us.”
They circled Maeve, corralling her against the staircase.
“Wait. You’re twisting my words. I never said I stalked you. I said I looked you up sometimes. That’s all. And what does that have to do with a body that just fell on me?” Her voice pitched higher on each word. Lorna stepped close and squeezed Maeve’s shoulder.
“Take a breath, Maeve. I know you’re upset. Just tell us what really happened. We’ll understand. I’ll understand.”
Maeve looked as if Lorna had stuck her with a knife. “What do you mean, what happened?”
“If this was self-defense . . .”
Maeve jerked away from Lorna. “I didn’t kill that man! Why are you accusing me, Lorna?”
“You left me alone,” Ellie answered.
“You were downstairs when you weren’t supposed to be,” Oliver said.
“And you found this poor man’s body,” said Lorna.
“And you were so mad at Callum that night,” Oliver continued. “Madder than the rest of us. You were the one who—”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare bring Callum into this. I never hurt Callum. You know I didn’t. And this man? I’ve never seen him before in my life. Besides, if I had killed him, why would I open that door in the first place? That’s insane. I would try to hide it, not . . . not . . .” She wiped away tears with the back of her hand.
“Why don’t you tell us more about why you came here this weekend?” Oliver asked.
“Oh, so you can humiliate me further? I told you all last night. I thought I was meeting my boyfriend.”
“Right. Your online boyfriend. A believable story coming from you. Maybe a little too believable? Fits you a little too nicely?”
“It’s believable because it’s true. His name is Tom. He’s fifty-one, and he lives in Inverness and—”
“Then why not meet in Inverness?”
“Because he thought this would be more romantic. He said he knew this house. He’d stayed here before.” She was blubbering now, tears falling too fast to wipe away.
“And you fell for it? Come on, Maeve. Isn’t there something else? Something you don’t want to tell us?”
“That I’m an idiot? A gullible forty-year-old fat lady who tried online dating and got screwed?” She wiped her sleeve across her eyes. “Do you really think I could strangle a man? Me?”
“Why not ask Callum what you’re capable of? Oh, that’s right. He’s dead.”
Her wet cow eyes fixed on Oliver. “Oliver, I wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt any of you. You are, you were, my friends. I care about each of you. That’s the only reason why I looked you up. I missed you. Lorna, you know I—”
He grabbed her by the arm.
“Please! Oliver, I swear I wouldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t. I—”
Oliver tightened his grip, but in the struggle, Maeve’s oversized jumper caught on the corner of the banister. As she fought to free herself, a stack of cards fell from her pockets. Oliver scooped them up before she could get them.
“What do we have here?”
“Give those back! Those are personal!” She grabbed for them, but he held them out of reach.
“We know how much our benefactor loves note cards. Oh, and these are laminated! How posh. Let’s see what they say. Accept the kindness of others. Be strong, stay strong. Oh, this is a good one. You’re a good person. People like you. What kind of self-help bullshit is this?” He laughed. “So what else do you have in your pockets, eh?”
“Nothing!”
He grabbed her again.
“Stop touching me!”
And pulled a long, thick piece of twine from her pocket.
“What’s this for, Maeve?”
Then he saw the specks of red where the rough twine had cut into MacLeod’s neck as he was strangled. As Maeve had strangled him.
He looked at Ellie. He looked at Lorna. Then they all looked at Maeve.
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen it before. I don’t know how it got there, I swear.”
Oliver took three steps back and knelt by MacLeod’s body. He held the twine against the marks on the neck. It matched.
“So,” he said. “Did you suffocate Callum, too?”
But Maeve was already running up the stairs.
Maeve
The smooth cards slipped from her fingers, leaving a trail like breadcrumbs. Maeve knew she should let them go, but she couldn’t. Not yet. She managed to stuff the ones that were left into the pocket of her jeans and keep running. She wasn’t sure where she was in the house. She had gone upstairs, but one flight or two? All the halls looked the same. It hadn’t been far, but her lungs were burning. When was the last time she’d gone jogging? Sometime in her thirties with Bev, who lived next door during that brief stint in Birmingham.
Their voices sounded on the stairs.
This wasn’t the time to be thinking about Birmingham.
She tried the door nearest to her, which turned out to be a linen closet. She shut it and tried another. A guest room. She slipped inside and closed the door as quietly as she could. Her first thought was to hide under the bed. And maybe she could have when she was younger, but the years had added another layer of padding barely concealed by a John Lewis jumper. So she went into the bathroom and hid behind the door. The floor was cold and hard beneath her, but she didn’t dare move, not until the sounds quieted outside. She tried to calm down, tell herself this was like playing hide-and-seek with her niece and nephew. All she had to do was sit very quietly until those searching got bored and forgot about her. But she wouldn’t emerge to find this pack of animals watching Teletubbies.
That’s what they had transformed into again: the pack. Ravenous, rabid animals that would do anything to protect themselves, including attacking one of their own. Someone had called them that to their faces once. It had been in the spring because she could remember the rain and the green leaves outside. Who had said it, she couldn’t recall. Possibly Lorna or one of the hundreds of girls Oliver brought around during those months. Or had it been Callum? It didn’t matter. The pack had returned and singled her out as the weak link, the easy target, and they would stop at nothing until they had trapped her, and once they had . . .
Maeve lowered her head to her knees. She didn’t want to think about what would happen, but now that the thought had entered her mind, her anxiety wouldn’t let it go. Nervous energy filled her like bubbles in a shaken soda bottle, and the breathing exercises her therapist taught her weren’t working. She pictured Hollis’s body—his head split open, a piece of his skull missing, the pink-gray color of his exposed brain—and imagined her own cracked head lying beside his. How had a piece of twine she’d never seen before ended up in her pocket? How did a man who wasn’t supposed to die turn up dead?
Crouched in the bathroom, she bit her knuckle to muffle the sound of her crying as footsteps ran back and forth in the hall. Doors slammed. Once someone shouted, but the shout came to nothing and eventually Maeve heard nothing more. How long she’d been sitting there she couldn’t tell. Minutes? Hours? Long enough that her bum had gone numb and her right foot had fallen asleep. Pins and needles shot up her leg when she stood, but she stopped herself from crying out.
She hopped from the bathroom to the bedroom on one foot, shaking her leg as she went. With some relief, she lay back on the firm mattress. Her body wanted sleep, and she wanted to give in, but how long would this room remain safe? If she were at home—at Max’s home—she would be in bed, watching an afternoon documentary on the little television Max and his wife moved in for her from her nephew’s bedroom. Maybe with some popcorn and a glass of wine, the taste of which she was teaching herself to enjoy because that was what adult women were supposed to drink.
Her eyes closed against her will, her body sinking into the mattress, and she wondered if it even mattered if they found her. Why not let them take care of things once and for all? Twenty-three years was a long time. Twenty-three years Callum had lain in his grave. She remembered how they used to lie next to each other on the floor of her bedroom, staring up the ceiling, pretending the stains were stars. They’d talk about how much of a dick Oliver was being that day, plans for the weekend, where they saw their lives headed after university. It used to calm her before an exam or after an argument with her mum. Callum would reach out his hand. Sometimes she’d take it. More often, she didn’t.
Her chest rose and fell, the tears drying on her face as the memory passed her by, and she took a deep breath.
Lavender.
Maeve opened her eyes. She hadn’t imagined it. The room smelled strongly of lavender. Bottles of perfumes, lotions, and air freshening sprays lined the back of the desk. A silk nightgown lay folded on the seat of the armchair. A silver suitcase stood in the corner of the room. Maeve read its tag:
Eleanor Landon
“Shit.”
She slapped a hand over her mouth and hoped no one had heard her. Of all the rooms she could have stumbled into, it had to be Ellie’s.
Shit shit shit, she mouthed and tugged at her hair. If they got tired of the hunt, if Ellie said she needed to lie down for a little while . . . At any moment that door could open. But was it safe to move? Maybe they’d given up searching. Maybe they were drinking. Maybe they were searching the house for weapons they could use to beat her to death. Buckets to put her different organs in after they tore her apart like a pack of dogs. She bit her cheek to stop the thoughts whirring around her brain and imagined her therapist’s words:
Don’t overthink. Find a way to relax.
“Relax,” she whispered. “Relax, relax, relax. They think you’re a murderer and probably want to kill you, but relax.”
Something down the hall thumped and Maeve threw herself to the floor. She lay down with an ant’s-eye view of the room, afraid to move, and spotted a square white box leaning against the wall beneath the bed with a long cord that was plugged into the electrical outlet. Maeve didn’t have Ellie’s skinny arms, but she could reach the cord and used it to pull the box toward her. The plastic was warm to the touch, and she turned it over in her hands, trying to figure out what it was. It had no markings or product name but looked sort of like a large Wi-Fi router. Had there been one in her room? Then she remembered the signal jammer.
“Yes!”
If she had time to explain before they attacked, this could be the proof she needed to make the pack turn from her to Ellie. But could she take that risk? Ellie might return to her room at any time. With her anxiety on the rise, Maeve reached for her cards. Only one remained, the most recent from her collection: Be the shark, not the minnow.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
She left the jammer plugged in and tiptoed to the door to press her ear against the wood, listening for any sound. Hearing nothing, she opened the door inch by inch.
She peeked into the hall.
Empty.
She left the room, not bothering to close the door.
They probably were in the study, debating what to do next. She would approach them with hands raised, ask for permission to explain, then tell them what she had found in Ellie’s room.
From the top of the main staircase, she could see down into reception. When she listened, she heard voices coming from the study. They were all so predictable.
Two hands shoved her from behind.
The world somersaulted as she tumbled down the stairs. The fall seemed eternal until she stopped, eyes on the undulating ceiling. Her arm hurt, and her neck, and she couldn’t stand. One by one their faces appeared above her, Ellie, dusting off her hands, the last.
Maeve tried to say, “No, it’s her!” but garbled “Noooser” as Oliver grabbed her under her arms and dragged her across the floor. She clawed at his hand and arm but couldn’t get a hold of him. They passed the armchairs by the fireplace, and somewhere near a door opened. A cool gust of air stroked her face. Oliver released her, but she remained too terrified and in too much pain to move. He pushed her into the cellar. She managed to grab the railing and stopped herself from tumbling down the wooden stairs, but before she could get to her feet, the door closed, shutting out the light.