The Silent Ones: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller(74)

Lizzie had been working at Dana’s house all day. She was trying to get a new business venture off the ground, something to do with a referral service for health professionals. She had fully explained it, but to Dana’s shame, her mind had been too full of the case to take it all in properly. She’d make it up to Lizzie tonight and push the case out of her head. There was nothing more she could do for Maddy Fletcher after today.

Infuriatingly, when Dana drove into her road, she saw that the guy who’d moved in next door about a month ago had again parked his Kawasaki motorbike in front of her house. He had a black BMW motor too, which was taking up the space in front of his own house.

Muttering to herself, she parked a few doors down and walked back, opening the front door quietly and shutting it softly behind her so she could surprise Lizzie, who’d set up her office for the day on the kitchen table at the back of the house.

She crept past the stairs and was just about to shout out comically, ‘Honey, I’m home!’ when she realised Lizzie had her phone clamped to her ear.

‘I’m so sorry, Juliet,’ she was saying, her voice breaking with compassion. ‘It sounds like you’re going through hell.’ She fell silent again as she listened. ‘Yes, I suppose so, but it’s like dripping-tap torture, isn’t it? It just keeps going, never stops… OK, well if you don’t want Josh to come to the juvenile centre, then you could pick him up from my place. Shall we say in twenty minutes? Are you coming alone? I really need to speak to you about something anyway. It’s time… it has to be today.’

Dana stood for a moment, speechless. Trying to piece it all together.

Lizzie and Juliet knew each other? How could that be? Possible connections wouldn’t come.

Lizzie made another call.

‘Hello, is that the Herald? Can you put me through to the news desk, please? I have some new information on the Bessie Wilford case.’

Dana stepped back into the shadows, spotting Lizzie’s handbag on the hall table. If her heart continued pounding at this rate, it would surely burst. She felt sick to her stomach as she heard Lizzie’s bright, confident voice speaking again.

The way the press seemed to get to know everything about the case in record time… Dana herself had fed Lizzie the details. Why on earth had Lizzie got herself embroiled in the case like this? Why was she playing a double game with the press and Juliet? More to the point… how did the two women even know each other?

She started putting together seemingly unrelated incidents.

The day Dana had met Lizzie at the spinning class had been a complete accident… hadn’t it? She was a psychologist, for God’s sake, she would have known if someone was pretending to be genuine. Besides, that had been at least two weeks before the attack on Bessie Wilford, so it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it.

Maybe Lizzie was just one of those people who found intense pleasure from playing the puppeteer role. Controlling events from behind the scenes and then reacting to them, like tipping off the press and then appearing to be as shocked as anyone else and offering comfort to Juliet. Had she engineered ‘bumping into’ her at some point, too?

Dana picked up the handbag and moved stealthily back into the front room, where she checked that her own phone was on silent and wouldn’t give her away.

Lizzie’s handbag was well organised, unlike Dana’s, which she’d been threatening to clean out for the past year. A hairbrush, another phone, which she saw was locked with a passcode, a bunch of keys, a black leather purse and a foil packet of paracetamol tablets. She fished out the purse and quickly unfolded the front section. Nothing unusual there: credit cards, debit cards – and a driving licence.

She pulled it out and glanced at it. Elizabeth Chambers.

Strange seeing Lizzie’s full name like that, and something buzzed in her head, like she’d heard it before.

A strap of some sort had hooked itself around the purse, and Dana shook it free impatiently. It was attached to a laminated lanyard. She extracted it from its tangle and inspected it. It featured a familiar black and bronze colour scheme.

Ashfield Angels

Carer name: Beth Chambers





Beth Chambers had been one of Bessie Wilford’s carers. And wasn’t she also Juliet’s friend who was taking care of her son and the business?

Checking that Lizzie was still on the phone, she replaced the contents, put the bag back on the table and then, her whole body trembling, she let herself back out of her house as stealthily as she’d entered.





Fifty-Eight





Juliet





I calculate I have enough time to sort this out with Beth before Maddy’s final interview in about an hour’s time.

I drive to her house on automatic pilot. I don’t register the journey at all as my thoughts are focused on Maddy probably being charged today. It’s all I can do to keep breathing.

Beth had sounded a bit weird on the phone, and she’s looking after Josh. I haven’t spoken to him since she picked him up and it would be just like Beth to keep something from me – like if he was unwell – to stop me from worrying.

I pull up in front of her small terrace and rush around to the back door. It’s ajar.

‘Beth,’ I call urgently. ‘Beth?’

She appears at the kitchen door, smiling. I take a deep breath.