Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(71)

Fifty-One





Erika and Isaac stayed at the hospital until late in the afternoon.

‘He seems very stoic,’ said Isaac, as they drove back to Slaithwaite.

‘It’s a northern thing. People are much nicer than in London, and they have a much more sensible way of looking at life.’

‘What did the doctor say?’

‘They won’t let Edward back home until they can see he’s able to look after himself, or it’s a nursing home.’

‘Shit.’

‘I need to clean his house, and try and get things working again. I can’t have him being discharged to the place in that state, and what would social services say about it?’

They stopped at the supermarket on the way home, and stocked up on food and cleaning products. The sun was going down when they approached the village, and it looked cosy, with the golden light twinkling off the snow.

‘I’ll see if I can get the fire going,’ said Isaac when they came inside. ‘I think it’s warmer outdoors.’ He started working on the stove, emptying it out and cleaning the grate.

‘Mystery solved about the gas,’ said Erika, finding and opening a pile of mail. ‘Looks like Edward changed over his provider, and they don’t have the right bank details…’

Isaac was holding a match to a pile of paper and logs, but nothing was happening.

‘And the same with his phone. It looks like one of those comparison companies persuaded him to switch over all of his utilities, but they’ve got the wrong address, the wrong bank details… Bastards,’ she said, picking up her phone. Isaac watched in amusement as Erika tore into the utilities companies, registering a complaint and getting Edward reconnected.

They spent the rest of the evening scrubbing and cleaning Edward’s house. An engineer came out very quickly, and the gas supply was back on around 8 p.m., so they were able to get the central heating working, and more importantly they were able to wash. Isaac took a shower, and then Erika ran a bath in the newly clean bathroom. As she eased into the hot water, she felt her aching body relax, and the cold which had dogged her for the last few days started to ease away. She’d lit candles, and they gave the bathroom a homely, cave-like feel. Edward’s bathroom had been the same for years, with its lavender-coloured tiles. There was a set of shelves above the toilet, with a stack of boxed Pears soap, a knitted Spanish se?orita toilet roll holder, boxes of talcum powder, and hair dye in ‘conker’, the shade Mark’s mother used to use. Erika hadn’t dared throw anything away on the shelves when she’d cleaned. They seemed sacred; they were the remnants of Edward’s life with Mark’s mother, Kath. Erika thought back to Mark’s mother, and how kind and innocent she had been. She’d lived in her own little world, wrapped in the protection of Edward and Mark, in this cosy little Dales village.

As she shifted in the hot water, there was something about that shelf – a memory that niggled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite access it. The steam floated up to the ceiling and made the candle flames flicker and fizz. She tipped her head back against the cool tiles, and her eyes began to lull shut in the warm water.



* * *



Erika found herself back in Forest Hill, on Foxberry Road. It was late at night, and the road, which was usually busy with rows of parked cars, was empty. Snow was falling, but it felt hot, like she was breathing in steam. She crouched down, and scraped away the snow: there wasn’t tarmac underneath the snow, there were tiles. Lavender bathroom tiles with white grouting. She scraped more of the snow away and saw the road was laid with tiles as far as she could see. The silence was broken by a crunching sound, footsteps on snow. She turned. A tall man dressed in black was walking towards her. He was wearing a gas mask. The slick, shiny leather of the hood reflected the streetlights above. He slowed and stopped a few feet from her. He lifted his head and sniffed the air, the long breathing drum of the gas mask reminding her of a dog’s snout. He seemed to stare around her, but not see her, like she was invisible. She moved closer, so close that she could hear his breathing, and see the reflection of the streetlight on the hood as his head moved. She looked into the glass eyeholes, but couldn’t make out a face, it was a swirl of black. As the vapour streamed out from the breathing drum, she caught a strong chemical smell, intoxicating and metallic…



* * *



Erika jolted awake as her mouth and nose hit the cool water. The steam had cleared, and her fingers had started to prune. She got out of the bath, and wrapped a thin towel around her. Standing on the mat, she stared at the shelf above the toilet. The Pears soap and the hair dye… Just after she and Mark had got married, they’d come to visit Edward and Kath, and Mark had gone up to use the bathroom. The rest of them were having tea in the front room, when Mark had come back down holding a small black bottle, with the words RELAX-FUN’ written on it in red.

‘Mum, why have you got poppers in the bathroom?’ Mark said. Kath looked up from rearranging Eccles cakes on her best cake plate.

‘What’s that, love?’

‘You’ve got an open bottle of poppers in the bathroom. I started to get high just having a wee.’

‘That’s a room deodoriser,’ said Kath. ‘I got it down the market. It’s for keeping rooms nice and deodorised. Only cost a quid. There were quite a few young lads there. One of them mentioned he was having a party… I suppose he wanted his house to smell nice for his guests. Although, I’m not sure about the smell.’