An Unwanted Guest(57)

Ian nods wearily and turns to Lauren. ‘Help James back inside. We’ve got this,’ he says, indicating him and David and Matthew.

She nods, and waits as David slowly nudges James back to his feet.

Once they’ve gone ahead, Gwen trailing miserably after, the three men try to pick up Bradley and carry him. But it’s impossible. They can’t carry him and remain upright on the ice. They end up dragging him. They leave a smear of blood along the snow. Then they lift him onto the porch and inside, into the lobby.

They put him down on the floor for a minute to rest. Ian straightens, catching his breath, and looks up to see Beverly and Henry staring aghast at Bradley’s body. They are both speechless with shock. Ian looks away, back down at the body.

David tells them, ‘We’re taking him to the icehouse.’

They go back out again to look for Riley, for as long as they can stand the cold. This time they all stay very close together; they are afraid of one another. But Riley is not answering their desperate pleas. It’s bitter cold and pitch dark and the going is impossible. They can’t find her. They will never find her. She doesn’t want to be found.





Sunday, 3:10 AM


Beverly watches them return, silently, without Riley. One by one they shrug off their coats and boots and slouch towards the fire in defeat.

Beverly thinks Riley must be dead, like poor Bradley. She’s almost glad they haven’t found her because she doesn’t think she can stand the sight of another corpse. She has never been so close to death. It feels as if death is standing over her, just waiting for the right moment. It’s an awful feeling.

Beverly thought she caught an odd look on Ian’s face in the shadows, when they brought Bradley in. Something cold in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. It gave her a chill. She’s not sure – the expression was so fleeting. She might have imagined it.

Gwen slumps on the sofa, numb. Riley is out there, dead, or dying. It’s all Gwen’s fault; they shouldn’t have come. She looks down at her hands; they’re shaking. She’s beginning to realize that almost any one of them could be the killer.

Henry stares moodily into the fire. Three people are dead – and maybe Riley, too – but his wife is still here.

He failed, interrupted at the last moment. He had hesitated for too long. Coward! But they might have come back just as he’d finished bashing her brains out, and then they’d have been on him like a pack of hyenas.

His wife appears silently at his side, kneeling down by his chair, making him jump. It’s almost as if she’s read his mind.

‘Henry,’ she whispers, her voice so low that he has to lean his ear down next to her lips to hear what she wants to tell him. He can smell her breath. He wonders if she can possibly know what he’s thinking.

‘I think I know who the killer is.’

He raises his head and looks at her frightened eyes, gleaming in the dark.





Chapter Twenty-nine


IAN DOESN’T LIKE the way Beverly’s been looking at him. She’s gone over to her husband and is leaning close to him, whispering something in his ear. That’s interesting, seeing as usually she’s stayed a good distance away from her husband lately. He wonders what she’s saying. Maybe something about him.

Ian sits in the dark, thinking in the shadows.

Henry would like to figure out who is responsible for these murders. He really thought it was Matthew and David. Two unconnected murders. But Bradley’s murder changes things.

His wife has been whispering in his ear, has almost persuaded him now that it’s a madman who is doing the killings. And she thinks Ian is the killer. She thinks there’s something wrong with him. But if he committed the murders, Beverly thinks Lauren would have to know. They’re always together. She would have to know.

Henry gives this some consideration. His wife has a lot of irritating qualities, but stupidity isn’t one of them. He looks at Ian now with narrowed eyes, trying to see what his wife sees. Trying to imagine him killing someone.

He finds that he has no difficulty imagining Ian as a killer, because Henry has learned a thing or two this weekend. He’s learned that he himself has it in him to be a killer. He finds it’s not that big a leap, after all, to imagine anyone else as a killer either.

He wonders if Lauren is covering for Ian. He studies her from across the room with a new interest. He doesn’t know how far she would go for love. Love is so much harder to understand – and predict – than hate.

Lauren shifts uneasily in her spot on the sofa. The wind still howls and slams against the windows. It’s gloomy in the lobby, the oil lamp guttering softly on the coffee table, and the fire needing attention again.

How long will it be until the police come?

She surveys them all sitting around the fire. How different it is from when they first arrived, Lauren thinks, remembering cocktail hour Friday evening. How cheerful everyone had been, how relaxed. She thinks of Bradley gaily mixing drinks. She thinks of the handsome Matthew – now so changed – and his bright, shiny girlfriend, who is lying in the icehouse. She thinks of Candice, with her scarf wound around her neck.

She would like to know who David thinks the killer is.

She doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.

James reels with shock and grief. He keeps turning things over in his mind. He remembers how a couple of years ago Bradley had begun dealing drugs. He thought he’d seen an opportunity to make some easy money, but it hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected.