Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(24)

“Saint Mary Mead?” she asked, when they reached her car.

“It’s the village where Miss Marple lives,” said Tristan, trying not to show his embarrassment.

“Ah, of course. You’re working tomorrow?”

“Yeah, unfortunately,” said Tristan, his heart sinking. “I could come over after work.”

“Yes. Let’s meet then,” said Kate, getting into her car.

He looked back along the seafront to the university building, which sat at the opposite end, like a medieval castle. He wished he didn’t have to go to work, taking him away from the detective agency, especially after such an exciting day of small but significant breakthroughs.





12


Kate was lost in thought about the missing young men as she drove home. The last few miles of the journey were in pitch darkness surrounded by empty fields. A bank of clouds had now come in from the sea, blocking out the light from the moon.

She thought back to her early days in the Met Police, when the head of a missing persons charity came to give a talk. The woman told them that in the UK, a missing person is reported every ninety seconds, which worked out as one hundred and eighty thousand people every year. Ninety-eight percent of them were found within a few days, but that still left thirty-six hundred people every year. That had been back in 1994, twenty-one years ago . . . Kate did the calculation in her tired brain: 75,600 people.

Joanna had been interested in David Lamb and Gabe Kemp, but why? Why had she written their names down? And why had she ended up joining them with the thousands of other people on the missing persons list?

When Kate turned onto her road, the other houses along the cliff top were dark. Three of the houses were holiday homes, and two of them were up for sale. Whatever time of the year, Myra’s house had always had a welcoming light glowing behind the curtains, and Kate missed that. There were lights for the caravan site, but there was no one staying until next week, so she hadn’t programmed them to come on.

Passing the dark windows of the office and shop, she pulled into the driveway behind her house. When she switched off the engine and headlights, she was plunged into darkness. It wasn’t until she got out of her car and moved closer to the back door that the security light came on.

She was about to put her key in the lock when she heard a rustling sound coming from behind the house, on the cliff edge. The sound of footsteps on the small sand-covered terrace. She gripped the door key in her fingers and froze. She just wanted to go inside, into her warm house, switch on the lights, and lock the doors. The security lights went out, and noise came again, a thud of someone landing on the sand, and more footsteps, coming closer.

Kate had been attacked by intruders in her home twice before, once by Peter Conway and again fifteen years later by a stalker. She’d suffered from panic attacks and PTSD over the years, and Kate felt her heart thud in her chest at the sound of an intruder. She moved back to her car, her movements activating the security light again. She got inside and locked the doors.

A tall figure came loping through the gap and came up to her window.

“Mum! It’s me. Mum!” said a voice, and it took her a moment to recognize the face looming close to the glass. It was Jake. Kate felt her body flood with relief and opened the car door.

“You scared the life out of me!” she said, feeling her heart still thumping in her chest. Jake was now nineteen, and he was over six feet tall. His hair was past his shoulders, and he had a beard. He was wearing jeans and a warm fleece jacket, and had on a huge hiking backpack. Kate and Jake shared the same genetic quirk, called sectoral heterochromia, that gave one of his blue eyes a burst of orange around the pupil.

“Just give me a minute.” She took slow, deep breaths as Jake looked on, not knowing what to do. He crouched down beside her and took her hand.

“Sorry, Mum. I thought I’d surprise you.”

“You did,” she said with a smile, concentrating on her breathing to stave off the panic. He helped her out of the car, and they moved to the front door. Her breathing was easier. Jake used Kate’s key to unlock the front door, then switched on the hall light.

“Do you want a cuppa?”

“That would be good,” said Kate, relieved that she’d managed to get her shock under control and avoid a full-on panic attack. “You look so grown up since Easter! And the beard! It suits you.”

He gave her a hug.

“I just FaceTimed Grandma. She says it makes me look like a hippie . . . I was asking her where you kept your spare key. She said to try under a flowerpot.”

Kate went to the security alarm on the wall and typed in the code.

“What planet does your grandma live on if she thinks I keep a spare key under a flowerpot?”

Jake eyed the alarm and looked guilty.

“Sorry. I’ll phone next time,” he said. He shrugged off the huge backpack and propped it up by the radiator.

“It’s so good to see you,” said Kate, grabbing him for another hug. She pulled away. “I thought you were going to stay at uni for two more weeks?”

“Four of my mates got jobs as holiday reps, and the company asked if they could start tomorrow. And Marie and Verity both have been hired back in London at the Apple Store. They’ve got to go for training. I didn’t fancy staying there on my own.”

They slipped off their shoes and came through to the living room. The house had originally come with her job as a lecturer at Ashdean University, but with her savings and inheritance from Myra, Kate had been able to buy it from the university. The furniture in the living room was chintzy, left over from a previous tenant, and an old piano sat against one wall. Kate’s favorite part was the living room and the row of windows that looked over the cliff top out to sea. The kitchen was slightly more modern than the rest of the house, with a large island, blond wooden countertops, and cupboards painted white.