Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (28)

‘Actor,’ corrected Tess. He shot her another stare, rolled his eyes.

‘Has Vicky gone away without telling you before?’ asked Erika.

‘Where would she go? She never has any money,’ said Jasper. ‘Tess has become this support group for her, supporting her, feeding her, lending her money. We often don’t do things because Vicky is coming too and she doesn’t have any money so we all have to go without!’ He stopped himself.

‘A day has gone by, and she’s out there, missing,’ said Tess, turning to Erika with a pleading look on her face. ‘Please do everything you can to find her… I thought I’d lost her once, I couldn’t bear to lose her again.’





18





Vicky Clarke crouched on the mattress hugging her knees to her chest. The storm raging outside had woken her, and she was scared and disorientated. It had taken a moment to remember where she was. The wind whistled and groaned and seemed to rock the house. A crash of thunder was followed by a bright flicker of lightning. The room was small, and there were no curtains. Lightning strobed again, illuminating the clouds behind the thick bars on the window. Bars on the window, she thought with a shudder. A heavy wooden wardrobe was at the base of the bed, and in the mirror, Vicky caught sight of her reflection. She looked like a scared animal, crouching on the mattress with her knees drawn up to her chest.

The ceiling creaked and something outside the door rattled. She shivered and pulled the long folds of the nightgown around her cold legs.

With another strobe of lightning, Vicky was seized with dread when she saw the high-backed chair next to the bed was empty. A cold sweat broke out between her shoulder blades. She’d gone to sleep with her backpack on the chair. Where was her backpack? Then she saw with relief that it had fallen off the arm, and now lay between the chair and the wall. There was another, long rumble, and a crash of lightning. She got up and retrieved the backpack, fumbling with the straps to get it open. She felt around inside, amongst the change of clothes she’d grabbed at the last minute, the wallet with her passport and money, her toiletry bag, and there, tucked at the bottom, was the small computer hard drive, the size of a glasses case. It was cold in her hand, and just seeing it filled her with an overwhelming fear.

There was a knock at the door, and she jumped. She pushed the hard drive back to the bottom of the backpack, and fastened the straps.

‘Victoria?’ came a woman’s voice, raised above the storm. The knock came again. ‘Darling, are you okay?’ Another crash of thunder made the glass in the windows judder.

‘Yes,’ she replied, her voice croaky. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes. I’m okay.’ She moved across the room, feeling the cold stone floor under her feet, and she unlocked and opened the door.

Her friend and ex-teacher, Cilla Stone, was standing in the corridor. She was in her early sixties and dressed flamboyantly in a long mink fur coat, and a black character turban. She held up an old-fashioned oil lamp, which cast a warm orange glow around her and made the fur coat shine.

‘I can’t sleep in this beastly storm. Can you?’ said Cilla. Her voice rang out in the corridor with a soft Scottish brogue that Vicky had always found so calming.

‘No,’ said Vicky, smiling weakly.

‘Come on, sweetheart, I’ll get the fire going in the living room, and we’ll have a nip of something. Ride out the storm together!’

Cilla smiled dramatically, and Vicky noted that even though it was the middle of the night, she had applied fresh scarlet lipstick. Vicky followed Cilla and the light of the glowing oil lamp down a corridor lined with bookshelves. Thunder seemed to tear and rip at the house above, and Vicky’s teeth started to chatter loudly. Cilla turned at the sound, and stopped at a large heavy wooden wardrobe. She opened the door. The lamp light shimmered across a line of fur coats hanging inside.

‘You’re frozen! Go on, grab yourself a wee fur coat… They’ve already kicked the bucket, you know. Help them fulfil their destinies, and let them warm ye up!’

Vicky was an uninvited guest, having shown up unannounced on Cilla’s doorstep early on Tuesday morning, and she didn’t feel like she could protest. Cilla grabbed a long brown mink coat off a hanger. ‘Go on. Put it on. You’ll catch your death.’

Holding her breath slightly at the smell of animal pelt, Vicky pulled the long heavy fur around her shoulders, and was suddenly glad of the warmth. She followed Cilla through into the living room, which was an Aladdin’s cave of opulent furniture and antiques. A fire glowed in the grate.

‘You feed the fire, and I’ll make us some cocoa.’

Cilla went padding away with the lamp, leaving Vicky in darkness. The curtains were open on the two large bay windows, and the storm crashed and flickered, lighting up a vast empty beach where the waves pounded the shore. Vicky felt comforted by the fur coat and the strong heat from the embers of the fire pressing against her face. She knelt in front of the wood basket, found two pieces of kindling, and leant into the heat, pushing them into the embers. A moment later the room was lit up by the flickering flames, and she placed a bigger log on top.

She sat on the floor with her back leaning against a large squashy sofa. Cilla’s house was kooky, not a word Vicky often used. It felt like a cosy haunted mansion. She huddled down in the fur coat, and was glad that she had this moment, far away from London, to draw breath and work out what to do next. The violence of the storm seemed to be abating, and in between soft rumbles, she heard the sound of the rain falling against the windows and drumming on the roof. The warmth of the fire seemed to reach out and envelop her, and she tipped her head back, feeling the strong pull of sleep. She was jolted awake by the violent image of the young woman, lying dead on her bed in a seeping lake of blood.