Bad Sister(62)

‘How long you been watching me? You freak,’ she hissed, lurching towards the door wearing only her bra and knickers, slamming it shut. The noise filled his ears, along with the echo of her words.

Why was she so cruel? He only wanted to talk to her.

He needed to know.

Was it him they’d been talking about in hushed whispers the other night, as he suspected? What were they planning on doing with him?

He sat on the bottom step of the stairs, his knees tucked up, his chin resting on them. He could hear her shrill voice even through the closed door. Shouting. She was on the phone. Talking to his dad? Telling him how she’d just caught the ‘little freak’ watching her naked again. ‘He’s not right in the head.’ He hoped his dad might stick up for him, but he didn’t usually. She carried on shouting down the phone. He was probably agreeing with everything she was saying. He wouldn’t go against what his precious Rosie said. She meant more to his dad these days than he did.

He couldn’t bear to listen to any more. His legs were heavy as he wandered outside. To the shed. To where he knew he could release the hard ball in his stomach.

Reaching in the tin marked ‘tea’, he took out the lighter.

His muscles relaxed. His heart rate settled, the pain in his chest evaporating.

It always ends in fire.





CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN


Connie


Connie was yet to sit down following Brett’s exit, choosing instead to pace the room, arms crossed, a hard line creasing her forehead. What was she meant to do – allow him to come and trample over Steph’s memory and replace it with accusations that she’d been lying?

But what if Brett was telling the truth? Her head throbbed.

Miles Prescott might have been right about Steph all along. Although he’d been wrong about her background; her family. Instead of becoming clearer, the whole situation was clouding, like a mist rolling in from the sea. Everything distorted by the haze.

Connie stopped walking and reached across to her laptop, pressing the music icon. Enya’s ethereal tones filled the space. Anything was better than the sound of her own thoughts. She was the only person who believed the account Steph had given. Was she being naive – had she been taken in by Steph? She snatched her mobile phone and scrolled through her history until she found the number. It rang and rang. She was about to hang up when she heard a click.

‘Yes?’

‘I wanted to ask you to … er … come back,’ she faltered, having to take a steadying breath, ‘for a proper counselling session. I was, well, a bit surprised by what you said. I didn’t give you a chance to talk it over.’ Connie stopped talking. Waited. She heard Brett’s breath – slow, steady, on the other end.

‘Thank you, I’d appreciate that. I only want to be heard.’

‘Yes, well, I can see you first thing Monday. Nine thirty?’

‘Sure. That’d be great.’

She couldn’t swear to it, but she sensed he was smiling when he spoke.

Probably laughing at her. Thinking he’d won her over.

He hadn’t. Not yet, at least. She’d give him time to explain his side of the story, but she wasn’t ready to give up on Steph and Dylan. She owed it to them to find out the truth. And the only person who could supply her with the evidence she needed to take to Wade and Mack was the murderer himself.

Content that she’d done the right thing, Connie settled at her desk to work. She had some client notes to type up and a session to plan for.

Her afternoon was clear. No more sessions. No new clients. As had become usual in these gaps during her working day, Connie’s mind wandered. Tattoos had dominated her thoughts since seeing the bird on Niall’s arm. She retrieved the paper with the code from her desk drawer, together with the sketches she’d done of what she recalled from the official police photographs. She studied them again, her eyelids squinting in concentration.

The code: U2X51 still stumped her: letters and numbers that had no significance yet. But a sudden spark of memory tugged on her consciousness when she looked at the drawing she’d done of the lines and crosses. Relax your mind. She closed her eyes, taking slow, deep breaths, digging deep and dredging her memories. She’d seen it, or something like it, before.

Her eyelids flew open. Yes. That was it.

She picked up the paper, staring at it again. It was missing the words, but that was it, she was sure. Not a random pattern, but part of an emblem.

Her dad’s business emblem. The one he’d started when she and Luke were young, primary-school age. His first big venture. Around that time, Connie had become addicted to the game Scrabble. She recalled being shouted at because she’d used her dad’s headed note paper to write their scores. ‘You’ve got plenty of scrap paper, stop using mine,’ he’d yell. It was an antiques business, the same as now, as far as she remembered. She’d check with her mum, rather than directly with her dad. She needed to call her anyway; she’d forgotten to return her text. Her mum would remember, was bound to. If she recalled correctly, there’d been many an argument when he’d begun that business. She’d assumed it was over money, the time spent away from his family – hours spent at the ‘gentleman’s club’. That’s what most of the fallouts had been about.

Was that why the mystery photographer included a photo of him? Why, though? What the hell did her dad have to do with a murdered prisoner? Supposedly, the killer had left his handiwork as a clue. But to what? His intentions were far from clear, but this was beginning to look as though this was personal to her. Just like the memory stick. Was that linked to the investigation after all?