Every family has its secrets…

Two dead bodies. A lifetime of secrets.

When Rachel Porter’s estranged mother dies, she returns to her family home filled with dread about having to face her past, and the people who populated it.

Little does she know that there are dead bodies waiting to be discovered, and a lifetime of secrets are about to unravel.

Secrets kept by her mother, the liar.

Also by Ann Troup

The Lost Child

The Silent Girls

The Forgotten Room

My Mother, The Liar

Ann Troup

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Also By

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

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

Endpages

Copyright

ANN TROUP

Lives by the sea in Devon with her husband and dog. Two children have been known to remember the house, which they call home, but mainly when they are in need of a decent roast dinner, it’s Christmas or when only Mum will do. In a former incarnation she was a psychiatric nurse, an experience that frequently informs her writing and which supplies a never-ending source of inspiration. You can contact Ann on Facebook or at anntroup.wordpress.com

Acknowledgements

As always it’s the readers and reviewers who make it all worthwhile so my thanks go to them first. I won’t name names, the list would be longer than the book and you know who you are.

Gratitude to Charlotte Mursell and Nia Beynon at HQ for some awesome author wrangling and telling me I’m a pleasure to work with and (almost) making me believe it.

Last but not least, to the usual suspects for all the virtual gin and hugs!

Dedication

To Julia, Lesley and Sue — sisters of the less psychotic kind…

Chapter 1

Rachel’s mother had been fond of blanket statements that set others indelibly in their places. Proud of her insights into the characters of others, she had set out her children’s traits like a script. As if they were pickles in jars, all three of her daughters had been permanently labelled and preserved by her assertions. Frances was the clever one, Stella was useless, and Rachel was just downright difficult.

Did all parents like to define their offspring, leaving their children floundering and typecast? Rachel felt imperfectly moulded by her family, an inconvenient, bit-part player in the sometimes drama that had been her life. It had made her bitter.

Now her mother was dead. Valerie was no more and Rachel wasn’t feeling much of anything except antipathy.

She would have known about Valerie’s death weeks before, but she’d quietly ignored the first letter from Frances, knowing that it couldn’t contain good news. The Porters didn’t trade in good news. The slanting, deeply etched handwriting on the envelope had said enough: Frances could ooze anger even when writing a simple address. She’d used green ink, which Rachel was inclined to think had been distilled from her sister’s bile.

It had taken a second letter containing the expected diatribe of accusations and sour grapes to make Rachel finally take notice. She had already missed the funeral. Frances had been brutal and unforgiving about that. Rightly so in Rachel’s mind – missing your own mother’s funeral was pretty shabby in anyone’s book. Even if your mother was Valerie Porter.

She might not have gone back at all if she hadn’t been required to assist with the application for probate. Without that she’d have carried on burying her head in the sand and ignored them all for ever. It was Valerie Porter’s final revenge to force her to go back.

When she was sitting on the train, when it was too late to turn back and take refuge again, she allowed herself to think about the consequences of going back. Of what she’d have to face.

Who she’d have to face.

There were people more dreadful than Frances who populated the past.

While the train took her relentlessly towards ‘home’, she pulled out the second letter and reread Frances’s words.

‘I am patently aware that you still harbour resentment about the past; however, the house is a joint responsibility and whatever grudges you still bear, I feel you should put them aside for once and show a little loyalty,’ Frances’s letter baldly stated. ‘Stella is nowhere to be found and I’ve been left to deal with this alone. You have a legal obligation to carry out Mother’s last wishes at least. I will expect to see you at the soonest opportunity. I shan’t say at your convenience because that would mean waiting for ever

Rachel could imagine the gritted teeth and grim expression that had fuelled those words. It had been a sense of stale guilt and obligation that got her to Paddington Station, plus curiosity and a strange, unpleasant yearning for something she couldn’t define, which had made her get on the train. Since when had Frances ever needed anything from her?

With every mile that took her closer to home she felt an increasing sense of apprehension. Given the circumstance of her departure all those years ago, it was bizarre that Frances would contact her at all, let alone request her help – they both knew that there was no love lost between Valerie and Rachel; they hadn’t spoken in years.

The only logical conclusion she could draw was that her physical presence was needed to allow the sale of the house because no connection between sisters, or mothers for that matter, would have driven Frances to write otherwise. Given that for most of Rachel’s life, Frances hadn’t been able to bear being in the same room as her for more than a few minutes, there couldn’t be any other reason.

Frances wanted the money. Nothing else on earth would have forced her to make contact, not even the truth. That was something none of them could bring themselves to face.

***

By the time Rachel arrived at the house Frances had already sold everything of any remote value that Valerie hadn’t, and had resorted to burning what was left on a large bonfire in the overgrown garden. Things that couldn’t be burned, like the ancient enamelled cooker that their grandmother had bought in 1959, and the six broken vacuum cleaners that had languished in the attic for years along with numerous other aged and dishevelled domestic items, were to be taken to the local tip by Sid, ‘The Man With A Van’ and his monosyllabic sidekick, Steve.

Sid and Steve were cheap, available and discreet. Frances valued discretion and economy above most things – including false sentiment. She showed none of that when greeting her sister, merely offered her a pair of rubber gloves and a black bag and told her to pick a room, any room, and get on with it.

Rachel received a warmer welcome from Sid.

The amiable Sid explained that he and Steve had been at the house for days, repeatedly loading the van and making trips to the local landfill site as Frances steadily forced the large old house to disgorge its contents and bare its mouldering soul.

Rachel arrived with barely enough time to salvage Stella’s meagre belongings from the purge, and only just managed to stop Steve feeding yet another box of books onto Frances’s pyre. They were Stella’s books, children’s classics that Stella had kept from her own childhood and had read to Rachel during hers.

Frances argued that if Stella had wanted the books she would have taken them with her; Rachel shrugged and said that she was keeping them anyway. One of the rare pleasures of her childhood had been listening to Stella read those stories, so even if Stella didn’t want them, she did. Besides, monstrous though Frances could be, what kind of person could burn books?

Frances had been so eager to clear the house that she hadn’t really left much that Rachel could do, except stand by and wonder at her sister’s vigorous enthusiasm for incinerating every last stick the house had ever contained. It felt as if she were only there to witness the destruction. It was Frances’s way of punishing her, she supposed.

‘I’ve spent too many years being oppressed by all this junk!’ Frances yelled above the crackling bonfire, eyes blazing as bright as the fire as she watched the flames consume yet another chunk of their past. ‘It’s liberating, don’t you think?’

Sid, standing next to Rachel, shook his head and said, ‘I dunno, seems a shame really – could have got a few quid for some of that stuff on eBay. Sacrilege,’ he added, bemused. He looked back at the house. ‘Must really have been something in its day. They don’t build them like that any more.’

Rachel followed his gaze and looked back at the mock Tudor sprawl she’d once known as home. ‘Probably,’ she said, her voice dull. Not that she could ever remember it being anything other than dark, damp, cold and gloomy. By the time she’d been born, The Limes was already suffering from serious neglect. Valerie had been too mean to heat the rooms they didn’t use and mildew had taken hold, running riot over the walls. The negligence had been an open invitation for rot and decay to come on in and have a ball. Even in winter it had sometimes been warmer outside than in – a childhood full of blue noses, chilblains and chipping the ice from the taps had left its mark on Rachel. She still couldn’t bear the cold.

The house had eight bedrooms. In Rachel’s memory only four had ever been regularly used. Of the four bathrooms, they had all shared one, and out of the study, drawing room, morning room and reception room, they had only ever used the morning room as it was close to the kitchen and easier to heat. The attics and cellars had been no-go zones for so long that she had almost forgotten they existed other than as repositories for the things Valerie had been too lazy to throw away.

As far as Rachel was concerned, The Limes was a mausoleum that housed a bitter past. If it had ever had a heyday it was so far back in the mists of time she would have to squint to imagine it.

Much in the way that she needed to squint at Frances through the billowing smoke. She was prodding the fire with the end of a garden hoe, her eyes glinting and flickering with reflected flames, making her look like a reject from the legions of hell. The fire had brought out a demonic glee that made Rachel instinctively shudder despite the heat that rolled across the neglected lawn.

‘Right, that’s going nicely,’ Frances called. ‘Stephen, you come with me and we’ll tackle the outbuildings and, Sidney, you can go with Rachel and make sure there’s nothing of value left inside.’

A brief flicker of panic crossed Steve’s face as he looked at Sid. Sid had quietly confided to Rachel that both men had fallen foul of Frances’s imperious temper over the past few days and it was considered the short straw if one of them had to work alongside her. ‘Come on, chop chop!’ she shouted, clapping her hands as if Steve was a refractory Pekingese.

Rachel watched them go. ‘I suppose we’d better follow orders,’ she said to Sid, preparing herself to go back into the near-naked house.

Free of its clutter, the house was even more cavernous than she remembered, all its strident objections to old age and infirmity amplified by the lack of furnishings. With nothing to soak up the sound and attract the eye, it looked bare and ashamed of itself. Rachel almost felt sorry for it. Nobody loved it, and she couldn’t remember anybody ever having been happy there. As a home its heart had been hollowed out by acrimony and now it was being finished off by arch indifference.

She and Sid ascended the stairs, the bare treads creaking in protest now that they had been stripped of carpet. They checked the bedrooms, finding them damp and empty, until they entered Valerie’s room.

Their mother’s room had always been sacrosanct, an oasis of calm and solitude that Valerie had often retreated to – usually complaining of a headache and clutching a medicinal bottle of sherry. Rachel couldn’t recall ever having been allowed inside, and it surprised her that she’d never thought it strange before that moment.

Now only a few black sacks stood against the wall ready for Sid’s next run to the tip. This first and final ingress into her mother’s secret chamber – the room that had been the inner sanctum, the room that had been the container of Valerie’s personal misery – was a frank disappointment for Rachel.

As a child, she had often spied by squinting through the keyhole like a woebegone urchin, imagining that beyond the locked door lay another realm. The wardrobe in the corner might have been the entrance to another dimension, where Valerie existed differently and found the peace she had so often demanded before shutting the door against the needs of her family. Although, in Rachel’s imagination the White Witch had always had much more of a resemblance to Valerie than had been entirely comfortable. Stella’s books had stirred some lonely and uncomfortable memories.

Though Valerie’s presence still echoed in the hollow room, Rachel could not for the life of her imagine what peace of mind her mother had ever found from lying on the bed staring drunkenly at the blowsy roses scrambling across the wallpaper beneath the dust and cobwebs. Those keyhole-shaped memories had suggested something exotically different from the chilly, mildewed reality she now faced.

The only piece of furniture not yet consigned to the tip, or dispatched to be consumed by the flames of Frances’s blaze, was the wardrobe.

Rachel walked over to it and touched its mirrored door, which opened with an ominous creak. She gave it a wry smile, unsurprised that it wasn’t filled with fur coats and melting snow after all.

‘She said I could have that,’ Sid said, apparently afraid that Rachel might condemn it to the fire. ‘I was saving it for when we finished. That way I can put it on the van and take it straight home.’

The faintest aroma of mothballs belched out as she shut the door. ‘I’ll lock it so it’ll be easier to move. You should hang on to the key. They’re always better when they still have their keys.’ The door was a little warped, and she had to shove it hard to make it fit properly, promptly dislodging the prized key in the process. ‘Bugger!’ she said. The key had bounced on the bare floorboards and hidden itself underneath the wardrobe. On hands and knees, Rachel peered into the murky spider graveyard that lay beneath. ‘I can’t see it. We’ll have to pull the bloody thing out.’

Sid obliged, and together they coaxed it into a reluctant slide across the wooden boards. As Rachel bent to retrieve the key, something prodded at the edges of her awareness. ‘I didn’t know that was there,’ she murmured, standing up and looking at a door that had been hidden from view.

‘Built-in cupboard,’ Sid pronounced knowledgably. ‘What d’you need a wardrobe for if there’s a built-in cupboard?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘More junk for you to get rid of I expect,’ she said, prising open the cupboard door and cringing as the hinges squealed in protest.

The cupboard was surprisingly empty given the rubbish that had always cluttered the rest of the house. A faint flurry of fetid air wafted into their faces as they peered into its dark recesses. On the lone shelf, there stood a biscuit tin and on the floor stood a metal box. Rachel took down the biscuit tin and levered off the lid. Various bits of paper and old photographs nestled there – mostly showing Frances as a young child. The papers proved to be old school reports, all describing Frances’s attributes in glowing terms.

Rachel couldn’t recall Valerie keeping a record of either her or Stella’s school records – though Frances probably would have burnt them if she had. As Rachel rifled through, it occurred to her that she had never seen a photograph of herself as a child anywhere in the house. Probably because there weren’t any to see.

Under the photographs was a small red book: the type that had a tiny lock. She took it and the photographs and stuffed them into her back pocket. Maybe Frances would want them, maybe not. The rest she put back in the tin and threw the whole thing into one of the black sacks that flanked the room.

Sid grabbed the metal box. ‘Bloody hell, this is heavy. Hey, perhaps we’ve found the family jewels!’ he quipped.

Rachel responded with a sardonic smile. The box was little bigger than a bread bin but looked like it weighed a ton. Sid placed it at Rachel’s feet, grunting with the effort.

‘Want to do the honours?’ he asked.

She shook her head, watching as Sid attempted to release the lid. Though the metal had been galvanised, some substance had affected it, causing rust to scab the edges and eat into the structure. Sid took out a Swiss Army knife and used the screwdriver bit as a lever, giving a satisfied grunt as the orange crust gave way. He lifted the lid, revealing the contents. ‘It’s full of sand,’ he said, puzzled.

‘Sand?’

‘Hang on, there’s something poking out of it.’ He tugged, dislodging a torrent of dry, gritty matter as the object shifted.

It was some kind of parcel, wrapped in dirty cloth. Sid unwound the material, causing more sand and grit to fall and litter the floor as each layer of fabric came away and disintegrated in his hands.

‘What is it?’ Rachel asked, peering over his shoulder at what appeared to be some type of shrivelled, leathery doll.

Sid didn’t speak. His skin had turned a ghastly shade of grey and all Rachel could see as she peered at his stricken face was his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a fishing float as he fought for the words to describe the thing that was now lying on the floor.

***

Frances’s scream was so piercing it rattled the glass in the rotten window frames, buffeting Rachel’s eardrums and snapping Sid out of his shocked stupor as effectively as if it had taken tangible form and slapped him in the face.

Once the sound receded, everything became horribly quiet as if there had been a sudden solar eclipse and the birds had stopped singing in deference to the dark. Time became elastic as seconds extended themselves into blurry, suspended pockets of disbelieving minutes.

Sid’s mobile phone began to ring, the tinny, incongruent tones of ‘My Way’ shattering the silence and stirring him into action. When he finally answered the thing after fumbling for it in every pocket, Rachel could hear Steve’s high-pitched voice. With escalating panic, he told Sid about the scene outside. Rachel doubted that Steve had ever uttered so many words in one hit before. Which was probably why he sounded confused.

She could have sworn she heard him say that they’d found a dead body in the shed.

Chapter 2

Rachel didn’t know who to deal with first: the paramedics who had arrived by speeding up the drive, sirens blaring, or the police who were wandering around shouting things into their radios and telling everyone what to do.

Sid still didn’t look a good colour and was being tended to by a pretty detective constable, who had given him a blanket and a cup of tea. Steve wasn’t faring much better. He was standing in the middle of the melee staring at his bloodstained hands like a confused Lady Macbeth. Frances was out cold and was being loaded into the back of an ambulance and all Rachel felt able to do was watch the barely credible scene unfold.

Steve was trying to explain that Frances had taken one look at the contents of the trunk in the shed, had staggered backwards, tripped over a black bag, fallen backwards, and bashed her head with a sickening thud on the edge of the door. Only when he’d dragged her out and put her in the recovery position had he realised that the blood on his hands was coming from a patch of her exposed skull. He had finally lost the plot when he had spotted a piece of hairy scalp dangling neatly from the latch of the shed door. At that point, he had regurgitated his lunch all over Frances’s cashmere sweater.

Incongruously, all Rachel could think of was that it was a good thing Frances had been unconscious at the time; she could be a bit obsessive about things like that.

Apparently spotting Rachel’s bemused demeanour, the DC left Sid and gently led her into the kitchen. ‘You’ve had a bit of a shock, love. Let’s get you a cup of tea,’ she said, her voice soft as she took Rachel’s trembling hand. Rachel never drank tea, but accepted a cup anyway, and sat there in the tired kitchen staring into the tea’s murky depths as if scrying for an improved view of her world.

***

The last time DC Angie Watson had set foot in a house like this had been ten years before when her history teacher had dragged a group of them around some National Trust pile. Angie had found the whole thing so stultifying that she couldn’t even remember the name of the place now, but she did remember that it had been a lot like this, only bigger and much, much cleaner.

The only nod towards the twentieth century in The Limes was the kettle she had used to make the tea. Everything else in the room was straight out of a museum. Angie’s taste in kitchens and furniture leaned more towards IKEA than Antiques Roadshow and she looked around the room with barely disguised distaste. No wonder these people always appeared to have money – by the looks of it they never bloody spent any.

She had recently taken out a ten grand bank loan and had used every penny of it to have a new kitchen put in, and if the look of this one was anything to go by, it would be money well spent. There was no way that she would ever stand at an old stone sink doing the washing up and dumping it on a wooden draining board, not when some genius had invented the dishwasher.

Finished with critiquing the kitchen, she turned her attention to the woman at the table, who was trying to read her own tea leaves without realising she had to drink the stuff first. Other than giving her name as Rachel Porter and her date of birth, she hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived and had just stood there, staring at everyone as if she was a bit vacant.

When they’d got the call Angie hadn’t expected to find herself babysitting a spaced-out, scruffy forty-year-old woman who didn’t know what to do with a cup of tea other than stare at it. It was hardly the cutting edge of crime fighting and for her first foray as a fully-fledged DC she found herself frankly disappointed. This case had all the flavour of Murder, She Wrote rather than Criminal Minds. Not quite what Angie had had in mind when she’d joined the team.

God, she hoped she didn’t end up looking like Rachel Porter by the time she was forty: no make-up, shapeless clothes, and hair that hadn’t seen the good edge of a pair of scissors for God knows how long. It was a nice colour though – brown, the shade of conkers. Those split ends needed to go, she thought, absently running a hand through her own straightened and highlighted hair. She might get the shit jobs, but at least she could look smart while she did them.

Rachel was skinny, as if she hadn’t had a decent meal in years, which always made women look haggard and drawn in Angie’s opinion. This observation made her feel better about her own propensity to gain weight by merely thinking about food. It might at least save her from looking a wreck in years to come. Christ, that was a shallow thought – she was on a case and thinking about the size of her arse in comparison to another woman’s. She straightened up and tried to look professional.

She supposed that she ought to try to get Rachel talking, but considering that Ratcliffe would be in here any minute, there didn’t seem a lot of point. Might as well leave it to the boss to sort out. It was hardly as if she was going to crack the case in five minutes flat. Besides, looking at the state of Rachel Porter, the only thing she looked like she was capable of murdering was a good meal.

As if on cue, DS Ratcliffe strode into the kitchen and sat down on a kitchen chair. Angie pretended not to notice his blush as the chair groaned under his weight. He was well built, her boss. He smiled at Rachel and introduced himself. ‘Miss Porter, I’m Detective Sergeant Mike Ratcliffe. Would you like a fresh one of those?’ He looked hopefully at Angie whilst nodding towards the kettle.

Rachel shook her head. ‘It’s gone cold.’

‘I know. Would you like another?’ To his obvious disappointment, she shook her head again. He sighed as Angie set the kettle down and shot him a smug look. ‘Your sister should be fine. We’ve contacted her husband and he’ll meet her at the hospital. I’m sorry you weren’t able to go with her, but we do need you to answer some questions.’

Rachel nodded at him then turned her gaze back to her tea. If Angie didn’t know better, she’d have sworn the woman was stoned.

‘Do you know how we can contact your other sister, Stella?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘She’s gone. She should be here; Stella’s always been here.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘October nineteenth 1996.’

‘That’s both very precise and a very long time ago. I’m told that your mother recently died. Did you see your sister at the funeral?’

‘No, I haven’t seen either of them since ’96. I didn’t go to the funeral.’

‘Why not?’

Rachel showed surprise at the boldness of his question. ‘We had a row; I was excommunicated from the family. It happens. I don’t even know what I’m doing here now to be honest. I should have stuck to my guns and stayed away.’

‘Why are you here now?’ Ratcliffe asked. Angie thought it odd and a little mercenary to ignore the funeral but turn up to pick over the family bones. It was more than obvious they’d been clearing the house. Maybe this would turn out to be more interesting than she’d first thought.

‘Frances asked me to help sort out the house. I wanted to see it again, see if it was as awful as I remembered.’ She paused and looked around. ‘It is.’

Angie had to agree with that. The house was oppressive and gloomy, not exactly a place anyone would want to call home.

Ratcliffe wanted to know why they had all fallen out.

‘Money. Always money isn’t it? My aunt died – she left me her flat and some money. My mother and Frances thought I should share and share alike. I didn’t want to, so we fell out.’

Her answer had been too trite, too neat for Angie’s liking. She hoped her boss would pursue it. ‘What about Stella? What did she think?’ Ratcliffe asked.

‘I can’t recall her being given the chance to say what she thought,’ Rachel replied. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with the fact that dead bodies seem to be popping up all over the place?’

Ratcliffe leaned back in the chair. Angie heard it moan again as the weak joints adjusted to the shift in weight. She could see him thinking and wondered if he shared her thoughts. Her guess would be that Rachel had been a kid when someone had murdered an adult and a baby, covered them in sand, and hidden them away. Still, that didn’t quite explain Rachel’s flippant and detached response to the situation. ‘Yes, about that,’ Ratcliffe said, tapping the table with the tips of his fingers. ‘The bodies. Do you know who they are?’

Rachel wasn’t looking too good; her face was ashen and a slick of sweat was making her forehead shine like oiled alabaster. Angie watched with mounting concern as the frail woman put her head in her hands and said, ‘I don’t know,’ in a voice that was almost slurring. It looked as if she was physically trying to swallow down the distress and confusion of what was happening. Angie had never seen someone turn so grey so quickly. Without warning, Rachel’s eyes rolled back and she slid off the chair onto the floor where she began to jerk and twitch like a thing possessed.

No one had been expecting that.

‘Get Ferris in here now!’ Ratcliffe yelled. A sound that sent Angie scurrying for the door.

Angie knew Julia Ferris as a woman more accustomed to dealing with dead bodies than live ones at that stage of her medical career, but she was still a doctor and immediately recognised that Rachel was having an epileptic seizure.

‘She’s having a seizure,’ she said with her usual cool detachment. ‘Given that she’s wearing a MedicAlert bracelet, I suspect she suffers from epilepsy.’

‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ Angie asked, worried that they’d be sued for negligence if Rachel was injured. They already had one damaged Porter sister on their hands.

‘Other than move that chair so she doesn’t smash her face on it, no. She’ll be out of it in a minute or two. Just let her settle and give her some water. She’ll probably be a bit sleepy too, so let her rest if she needs to. You can check with her whether she carries medication and has taken any today. Now, does anybody mind if I get back to the dead guys now?’ Ferris said peevishly. Angie knew she would have to get garbed up in another paper suit to go back to the crime scenes, and she’d have been pissed off too in Ferris’s shoes.

Angie was a little shocked by the doctor’s nonchalance but Ratcliffe just appeared relieved that Rachel wasn’t having a stroke or a heart attack. So far, they had two dead bodies, one witness in hospital, a potential suspect (who was fuck knows where), and a second witness who was writhing on the floor like a demented snake.

Just as Angie’s anxiety was beginning to rise again, the rigors torturing Rachel’s thin body started to lessen and slowly she stopped jerking and grew progressively limp. ‘Get her some water will you?’ Ratcliffe asked as he bent down to help Rachel sit up. ‘You had me worried for a minute or two,’ he said, helping her into a sitting position. Angie watched as Rachel fought to compose herself, shame spreading across her features in the same way that urine had spread across her trousers during the fit. Angie couldn’t help but feel for the woman.

Rachel took the water and drank it down quickly. ‘Sorry, that one seemed to come out of nowhere,’ she said. ‘Haven’t had a fit in ages.’

‘Are you OK? Do you need anything? Can I get your medication?’ Angie asked, her heart rate only just beginning to settle back to its normal pace after the drama. She passed Rachel the blanket that had slipped off when she fell, hoping to at least help her preserve some dignity in front of Ratcliffe. She might have encouraged the poor woman to go and change, but the house was practically empty and it was clear there weren’t any clean clothes lying around. Angie watched as Rachel wrapped the blanket around herself.

‘More water please – took my dose this morning,’ she said, still looking disorientated. Having drunk the second glass straight down, she explained that she suffered from epilepsy and had since she was a child. Though usually well controlled, the fits could be brought on by stress. ‘I think you would agree that my day has been stressful,’ she said to them both with a feeble laugh.

‘Just a bit. Look, if you need to take a break we can pick this up later,’ Ratcliffe said, genuine concern showing on his face.

‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘I want to get this over with as soon as possible and get back to my room please.’

Ratcliffe looked as doubtful about that as Angie felt, but decided to press on. He helped Rachel back onto the chair and motioned to Angie to put the kettle on. ‘When your sister saw what was in the trunk in the shed, she called out before she fell. The young man out there said that she called out the name “Roy”. Does that mean anything to you?’

Kettle in hand, Angie watched as Rachel blinked at him for a moment whilst she absorbed his words.

‘Roy? Roy was Stella’s husband. Are you saying that’s him in the shed?’ she asked, screwing her eyes up in an attitude of dazed disbelief. ‘Roy walked out on Stella thirty years ago, just upped and left, said he was going out to buy cigarettes and never came back. It can’t be him.’ She screwed her face up in what might be disbelief. With the state of her it was hard to tell. ‘I’m sorry, but I think I’m having another one,’ she mumbled before she went down again.

***

It was no good. By the time Rachel came out of the second fit, she was so exhausted they would have been hard pressed to get her name out of her in any sensible form. The only reasonable thing they could do was get someone to drive her to the hotel she was staying at and call it a day.

The only useful information they’d gained from the whole interview was gleaned from Rachel’s parting words as she walked wearily out of the door. ‘By the way, if the body in the shed has a gold tooth, a canine, then it is Roy.’

***

Julia Ferris was in the yard discussing the logistics of moving the trunk complete with sand and body with the Crime Scene guys when Ratcliffe and Angie approached her. ‘Does our victim have a gold tooth?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, a canine – why?’

‘’Cos I think I know who he is, and given that his wife is missing, I think I can make a conservative guess at who killed him. The deceased may well be one Roy Baxter, husband of the eldest Porter girl.’

‘Stella,’ Angie added for clarity.

Ferris frowned. ‘Doesn’t mean she killed him, if it is him, which I admit is likely but we don’t actually know yet. What about the baby? Any ideas?’

‘Not a clue, yet. Anyway, what’s with the sand? I don’t get it.’

Ferris stripped off the latex gloves she had been wearing and wiped a powdery hand across her forehead. ‘Whoever did this to them attempted a rudimentary form of mummification by the looks of it. It’s sharp sand, the kind builders use, so it contains salt. Salt absorbs the moisture that bodies release as they decompose. It’s also a good preservative. Whoever did this didn’t do a bad job – the bodies are in pretty good nick.’

Angie suppressed a shudder. ‘But why mummify them? Why not just dig a hole and bury them?’

Ferris shrugged. ‘Could be anything: keeping them as trophies à la serial killer maybe, or couldn’t be bothered to dig the hole. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to tip sand in a box than it is to dig a grave deep enough to bury a body without risking being seen – or the body being dug up by a curious dog or an overenthusiastic gardener. Dunno – you tell me? There’s one thing: mummified bodies don’t smell so bad. It’s why they don’t decay. They don’t attract flies and bugs and so don’t betray their presence so easily.’

Ratcliffe nodded thoughtfully. ‘Gruesome though, implies a lot of thought. How long do you think they’ve been there?’

‘I’m not sure, but a fair few years. When did your Baxter guy disappear?’

‘Quite a long time ago, we think,’ Angie said. Hopefully the sisters would help them pinpoint the exact time period, and she and Ratcliffe might be able to corroborate it by finding other witnesses. Unfortunately, what the sisters hadn’t helped with was the preservation of the crime scene and potential evidence. Anything that might have offered clues to what had happened had more than likely been burned or was now languishing somewhere on ten acres of landfill site.

The clearance guy, Sid, had been more than happy to tell them of Frances’s enthusiasm in disposing of her family’s belongings. Information that told Angie that Frances wasn’t going to be an easy woman to deal with.

So far, all they had managed to salvage were a few boxes of Stella’s possessions, some kids’ books, an old and seriously ugly wardrobe, and some bags of rubbish. With so little to go on, Angie suspected they weren’t going to find out anything worth knowing any time soon.

Chapter 3

At half past four in the afternoon when Rachel finally reached her hotel room, she could barely keep her eyes open and flopped, fully dressed, onto the bed. The next time she looked at the clock it was ten past eight. It wasn’t until she opened the heavy curtains that she realised she was looking out of the window onto the beginnings of a bright new day rather than on the quiet twilight she had been expecting.

There were two things she liked most about hotels: the anonymity that was afforded by them and the oodles of hot water that allowed a bath to be drawn in minutes. In the rare moments when she felt as though she might like to rejoin humanity, she would just book a room for the night and pretend she was a tourist. On a whim, she’d walk into a random hotel in London, get a room, and spend the time there watching TV, ordering room service, and having baths. For a night or two she could make believe that she wasn’t lonely, that she had purpose, that she had a life.

It wasn’t that Lila’s flat didn’t have a bath – it did, a huge, deep, claw-footed cast-iron thing that emptied the tank at five inches and chilled the water within seconds. Maintaining personal hygiene at the flat was a puritanical experience, akin to self-flagellation with cold water and rough towels. Having the option of a proper soak in hot water was more than a small pleasure. With this in her mind she opened the taps in the beautifully modern bathroom, perched herself on the edge of her rented bath, and watched the steam rise with comforting anticipation.

The epileptic fits of the day before had been an unpleasant surprise; it had been a long time since she’d had to face the humiliation of having a seizure in public, even longer since she’d experienced one so bad that she’d wet herself. The medication she took daily had kept them in check for years, and if she had one at all, it was when her defences were down and she allowed dark thoughts to run riot. More often than not, the fits were transient partial seizures, which to anyone else would look like daydreaming or drunkenness. A full-blown fit was so rare she could remember the exact day the last one had happened, but she didn’t want to think about it.

Dwelling on that period of her life was something she actively avoided, doing anything she could to distract herself. Coming back had brought some things way too close for comfort already, but questioning herself about why she had come in the first place was pointless. It didn’t matter; she was where she was. What did matter was how soon she could get away.

Soaking in the bath, she chose not to think about anything other than coffee and food. Fits made her hungry, and she needed caffeine before the headache that had begun to niggle at her turned into a full-blown howler. She bathed quickly and only half dried her hair before she dressed and went out of the door in search of breakfast.

As she wandered up Westgate Street, towards the cathedral and to the only café she could remember, she thought of Stella and wondered where she had gone, and why. Perhaps Frances had finally managed to drive her out. As an accomplished escape artist herself, Rachel didn’t question why her sister had disappeared. Anyone who had known their family would have been able to answer that.

However, she was utterly puzzled as to where Stella might have gone. To the best of Rachel’s knowledge, Stella had spent the last nineteen years looking after Valerie. She didn’t have friends or a social life, or a bolthole like the flat. She was hardly the type to reinvent herself in the way that Frances had. Besides, she was the quiet type – timid, nervy, and not the sort of person who could disappear easily. She was probably avoiding Frances, a motivation that Rachel could entirely understand.

Once inside Café Milano, she immediately experienced a rush of nostalgia. The place had hardly changed since the days when she and Stella had lingered over their milkshake and coffee, pretending for an hour or so that they didn’t have to go home. She took a breath, filling her lungs with the scent of vanilla and fresh-ground beans, smiling as she recalled that she had discovered Italian coffee in this place, long before the big chains had flooded the world with their skinny lattes and pretentious chai.

There was a seat at the back, half hidden behind a bamboo screen, a perfect place to people-watch without being seen herself. She ordered coffee and a bacon roll, then sat back and looked around at the other customers, soaking in the normality of them and hoping it would rub off a little. Then she saw him, a tall man striding across the room. The way he moved was painfully, heart-stoppingly familiar and the recognition sent a cold shard of fear slicing through her gut. He was heading straight for her and her only escape was the bad wiring in her brain and the way it could opt out of trouble whenever it saw fit.

***

He was sure this time. He had caught glimpses before, the turn of a head, or the sound of laughter so painfully familiar that it induced a sensation of time grinding to a standstill. His heart flip-flopped and fluttered pointlessly like a moth battering at a light bulb. So many times over the years he’d found that it wasn’t her after all. Just some woman who thought he was a weirdo freak.

Now he was holding up the queue at the cashpoint as he stared at the café door, one hundred per cent sure that Rachel had just walked through it.

‘You asking to be mugged?’ a woman said aggressively, pushing in front of him so that she could get to the machine.

Charlie had been so rapt by the realisation that Rachel was back that he’d forgotten that he was standing in the middle of town with a hundred pounds in crisp twenties just sitting in his hand, looking ripe for the picking.

‘Arsehole!’ the woman hissed as he moved away, hastily pushing the money into his pocket ready to launch himself across the road.

He got as far as the café door before chickening out and turning towards the newsagent’s instead. If he were going to go in and confront her, he needed to gather his thoughts. He would buy a paper, something to hide behind when he pretended that his being there was just an accident.

A lot was at stake. If he had any sense he would walk away and make himself believe that he hadn’t seen her at all. He would pretend it was the same as all the other times he’d felt a faint glimmer of hope, only to see it fade and die as soon as he’d called her name and been given an odd look by a complete stranger. As his mother would say, only one good thing had ever come from dealing with the Porter family and that was Amy. Everything else that touched them always turned to shit.

However, he’d been waiting a long time for this moment, and he was going to have his say now.

The woman in the shop wanted to chat and he just wasn’t in the mood.

‘Comes to something doesn’t it?’ she said with a cynical shake of her head.

Charlie hated random statements. ‘Pardon?’

‘In the paper. Bodies. Here, right on our doorstep and the woman who did it has gone missing. Not that they’re saying that, but it’s obvious isn’t it? If she’s done a runner, she must have done it. Doesn’t bear thinking about,’ she said, shuddering as she handed him his change.

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but accepted his change with a tolerant smile and glanced down at the paper. His eyes were immediately drawn to the left-hand column on the front page. The names stood out like two nuns in a brothel. Porter and Baxter. He scanned the article, and exhaled slowly.

No wonder she was back.

***

Rachel knew that he had come in looking for her. His movements were too purposeful for this to be a coincidence. She ought to have known that this would happen, but had stupidly hoped that she could avoid it. If the police hadn’t insisted that she stick around she would have been back in London by now, instead of sitting around and wondering why fate was such a relentless bastard.

Of course Charlie had aged; they both had. She just looked old, but on him greying hair and lines around the eyes had enhanced the air of artless charm he’d always been blessed with. She watched helplessly as he ploughed an inexorable path through the crowded café towards her table.

Had there been a back door, she would have bolted, but she was trapped. Stomach pitching and rolling, she could do nothing but wait for the moment she had been dreading for nineteen years.

He had spotted her easily; she was only half-hidden behind the bamboo screen and he was moving towards he like a guided missile. Pushing past the other customers, he made his way to her table and slapped a newspaper down in front of her. ‘I didn’t think anything would bring you back, until I read this. It’s been a long time, Rachel,’ he said, his voice rank with bitterness.

She forced herself to look down at the paper, the sea of words blurring underneath the stark headline – Two Dead in Local House of Horror.

Until that point she had almost convinced herself that the events of the previous day had been a surreal nightmare, the kind that lurked and clung long after waking. The kind that left an unpleasant taint that was impossible to ignore. Every word of the headline sent a slug of reality into her brain. Each time a blurred sentence unravelled itself and landed in her grey matter, her senses began to fizz and pop like a damp firework, until the whole thing short-circuited and she felt herself going down.

***

The whole café held its breath as Rachel hit the floor. Even the hiss of the coffee machine halted for a second or two. As she’d fallen she’d taken the tablecloth with her, dragging everything with it and sending a mesmerising cascade of sugar skittering across the floor like a million microscopic diamonds, which were swiftly crushed under Charlie’s feet as he rushed to move furniture out of the way. Someone shrieked as Rachel’s body began to twitch and jerk, and almost everyone panicked as Charlie dropped to the floor and started to yank at Rachel’s neck in an attempt to loosen her scarf.

‘Oh my God!’ the waitress yelled, trying to pull him off.

Charlie shouted, and shrugged her off. ‘Get off me, you silly cow, and move the bloody tables out of the way. She’s having a fit!’ All his old, familiar instincts had kicked in as soon as he’d seen the warning in Rachel’s eyes before they had glazed over and rolled back into her head like a couple of milk-white marbles.

Adrenaline surged through his body as he struggled to loosen her scarf while trying to ignore the chattering voyeurs. The waitress was twittering on about calling an ambulance, but he told her no, even though she shrieked again as blood began to dribble from Rachel’s contorted mouth. ‘She’s bitten herself – it’s nothing. She’ll be fine in a minute. Just give her some space will you, and tell those bloody people to stop gawping,’ he shouted.

‘Are you a doctor then?’ the terrified girl asked, only to have her question completely ignored.

Rachel’s body began to relax and Charlie found himself trembling with relief. He hadn’t had to deal with one of her seizures in a long, long time. He sat back, stretched out his legs, and pulled her limp, exhausted body into his lap, propping her head against his chest, and stroking the damp hair away from her pallid face. He wasn’t sure which one of them was more traumatised. ‘Can you get her some water please?’ he asked the shocked waitress.

The girl nodded and scurried off, briefly pausing to turn and ask, ‘Still or sparkling?’

Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘Tap,’ he said impatiently.

The girl returned with the water and the proprietor of the café in her wake, a sensible-looking woman who offered to pull the screen across and give them some privacy. Charlie accepted gratefully and took the water, holding it to Rachel’s mouth and making her drink though she was still disorientated.

The café woman ushered the waitress away. ‘Can I do anything? Should I check her bag, call a relative or something?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘No thanks, it’s fine. I’ll look after her.’

The café woman frowned, looking unsure of him. ‘Not being funny, but do you actually know her?’ she asked, shifting her posture to demonstrate that she wasn’t to be trifled with if he turned out to be some random weirdo.

Charlie closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. He supposed it did look somewhat strange. ‘You could say that I do.’

The woman peered at him, suspicion rippling across her face. ‘Are you a relative?’

He looked down at the pale, thin woman who lay against his chest giving everyone the perfect impression of a limp rag. To this day he still didn’t understand how they’d come to this. All those years and here she was, still able to hurt him with a single look.

‘I’m her husband,’ he said.

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