Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (40)

Erika and Peterson laughed.

‘Only kidding, buddy,’ added Crane to McGorry. ‘Good work.’

‘I’ve found the house on Google Maps,’ said McGorry. He had the image on his screen with a satellite view of a vast peninsula by the sea. ‘She owns a house on the coast with six acres of land.’

‘A good place to hide,’ said Erika, rubbing her tired eyes. This whole case was getting so complicated. She looked at her watch. It was coming up to 1pm, and she was hungry again for another sandwich. ‘Okay, let’s ask for the local police to drop by Cilla’s house ASAP, and see what’s going on.’





26





Time seemed to jump forward. One moment Vicky was standing on the beach, and staring out to sea, and the next, she was looking down at plastic bottles littered on the sand along a tall fence with razor wire spooled on top.

The wind was whistling through the wire, and her hands and face were numb with cold. On the other side of the fence was a block of sand and a long low building in the far distance, and there were signs with MINISTRY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY – NO ACCESS printed on them.

She heard Nutmeg bark, and she turned to see him running in the other direction. He twisted his head back to look at her and barked again. How long had they been walking? She’d gone quite a few miles up the beach, and she couldn’t see Cilla’s house anymore. There was just a line of mist where they’d come from.

Nutmeg barked again. Vicky looked at her hands. Her fingernails were blue. She thrust her hands into her pockets and headed back with Nutmeg.

It took an hour to get back, and it seemed such a slow trudge now that she was cold and hungry. Slowly, Cilla’s house appeared again through the fog.

The silence was haunting Vicky. It should have been an oasis here on the coast surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, but the silence only amplified her fears and the voices in her head. It allowed the nightmares and terrible images to encroach on her brain.

She knew now that she was in a perilous place, fleeing a crime. She was afraid to do anything, but the longer she hid, the worse things were getting for her. She’d started to have crazy thoughts. She could implicate herself. If she was accused of killing Sophia, she’d be arrested and placed on remand. He couldn’t get to her in prison. She’d be safe in a prison cell.

She was grateful that Cilla hadn’t asked many questions of her, beyond the fact she knew Vicky was in some kind of trouble, but what would her reaction be when she heard there was a dead girl?

Cilla didn’t have a TV, but she had a laptop. Vicky purposefully hadn’t checked the news.

The house appeared on the horizon, and Nutmeg had run far ahead. He was probably hungry and tired. The walk back seemed to take an age and by the time she was at the base of the steps leading up to the house, she was exhausted. At the top of the stone steps, and next to the house, there was a small patch of gravel where a smart black BMW was parked.

Vicky took a deep breath, and went in through the back door into the kitchen.

Colin and Ray were sitting at the long wooden kitchen table, and Cilla was opening what looked like a second bottle of wine.

‘Vicky! Darling! I was about to send out the search party for you,’ she said. ‘You remember Colin and Ray.’

‘Hi,’ she said. Nutmeg went running to his bowl of water and started to drink noisily.

‘Victoria Clarke, I remember those expressive eyes,’ said Colin, standing up and offering his hand. He was a handsome, tall thin man with a full head of dark hair, despite his age, which Vicky knew to be late fifties. He wore a blue woollen three-piece suit with a wine coloured Cravat. His hands were very soft and he carried with him a delicious scent of aftershave. Vicky took his hand. ‘My word, you’re frozen.’

Ray was the opposite of Colin. Short and balding with a grey goatee. He had been the dance teacher at school. He wore baggy jeans and a blue Adidas sports top. He smiled with a set of crooked teeth, and somehow still managed to have a sexual magnetism about him. Vicky wasn’t sure if it made her feel entirely comfortable.

‘Hello. We don’t know each other quite as well, but I remember you,’ said Ray.

‘I didn’t take many dance classes,’ said Vicky.

He tutted and smiled again.

‘Shame on you,’ he said with a wink.

‘We’ve started early,’ said Cilla, holding up the freshly opened bottle of wine. ‘How about a glass to warm you up, Victoria?’

‘I don’t want to intrude.’

‘Nonsense. Here we are,’ said Cilla, pouring her a hefty measure in a tumbler. There was a faint sound of a car engine and it grew louder.

‘You expecting anyone else? Planning on making this a five-way?’ said Ray, winking at Vicky again.

‘Raymond, you need to behave yourself,’ said Cilla, admonishing him with a twinkle in her eye. From outside came the sound of a car pulling up into the driveway. Colin took a sip of his wine and kept his eyes on Vicky, watching her. Doors slammed and Cilla went to the window.

‘Good lord, it’s two police officers,’ she said. The doorbell rang and Cilla pulled her long cardigan around her.

‘I wonder what they want,’ she said, leaving the room. An image came to Vicky, of being chased, out of breath, across the flat wet sand to the water’s edge until she was tackled by two police officers. The image felt so real. She could feel the sweat on her brow with the cold wind, and the feeling of her lungs burning with the effort of running.