The Sister(94)

‘Okay.’ She felt a weight lift from her shoulders.

‘I’ll get the things to you,’ he said exhaling.

He’s smoking; she thought, as if that explained everything. ‘When will you do that?’

He disconnected her.

She didn’t see Terri had come halfway downstairs. Terri watched her mother on the phone. The way her mum’s face crumpled, as the conversation changed direction was impossible for her to conceal. Terri took the last few steps down and stood in front of her mum. ‘What’s wrong?’ she mouthed. Her mother shooed her away with her hand, but she stood her ground. When she put the phone down, she smiled a little crazily at Terri. ‘I just heard an old friend died. They’re going to let me know when the funeral is,’ she said smoothly, as she turned on a sad face.

Terri viewed her suspiciously. That wasn’t a sad face. That was a worried face and if it was... Why did her mother just lie to her?

‘Oh,’ she said.





Chapter 75



When Theresa unlocked her car on Thursday morning, she noticed a plain manila envelope on the front passenger seat. She unwrapped it and inside was a folded newspaper in a clear plastic sleeve and separately, in a re-sealable polythene bag, a mobile phone.

How on earth did he manage to get into it? The spare key? He must have taken it! She’d checked nothing else was missing after he stole Terri’s underwear, but hadn’t thought to see if her spare keys were missing.

She remembered what he told her. ‘Don’t touch any of the items. Tip the newspaper out onto a clear area of his desk, the boot print must be facing up and pointed towards his chair.’ He sucked hard on what she assumed was a cigarette and inhaled noisily. ‘Are you with me so far, Trie?’ Another deeply drawn inhalation. ‘The phone, you must put that above his desk in the ceiling void.’

‘How am I supposed to do that?’ she asked.

The caller issued her with a set of instructions.





Theresa arrived at work a few minutes before 9 a.m.

Contractors had been working in the voids above the suspended ceilings, and the works had been going on for weeks. The builders had set the project up to be completed in such a way as to cause the minimum of inconvenience, but as the project manager had said, when he was defending the things that had gone wrong so far. ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs!’ They were constantly creating dust and setting off smoke sensors, which in turn triggered fire alarms, which in turn led to evacuations. There were broken eggs, but not an omelette in sight.

She pressed the buttons of the mobile through the plastic, as the caller instructed, and waited apprehensively as the phone rang. A male voice answered. Met with silence, the voice demanded. ‘Who is this? Make it quick, I’m busy!’

Theresa stayed silent; the phone went dead after a few choice expletives. Barely a moment had passed before the man called back. She answered, but said nothing.

‘It’s you again isn’t it?’ The voice said, ‘You think you can play games with me? When I find out who you are, you’re a dead man. Do you hear me?’ Theresa cut him off.

Out of curiosity, she decided to check the call history. There were ten or twelve numbers recorded there, including the last two calls. Then she spotted something; her telephone number was in the call directory too. Panicking, she made another wrong decision. She deleted her number.

Next, she climbed onto the desk, pushed up a tile and unfastening the bag containing the phone, tipped it out on top of the adjacent ceiling.

Getting back down, she was surprised how her heart hammered hard in her chest, scared that, at any moment, Kennedy, or someone else might come in. If they did, she’d say she thought she heard something vibrating up there. Lastly, she allowed the folded newspaper to slide out onto the top of the desk. Packing the empty sleeves away and smoothing her clothes down, she wondered what kind of game the caller was playing. How did you get yourself involved in this? She reassured herself, if things unfolded badly; she could always come forward and explain. He put me in an untenable situation. I needed to buy time for my daughter’s sake. I didn’t understand what he was up to. I had to keep him off my back, while I tried to figure how to bring what was happening to light. They'd understand.

‘After this, there’s just one more thing to do, Trie, I want you to get some information for me. I’ll call you Monday evening.’

He didn’t say what it was that he required.

She was more nervous about this final demand, than she’d been about the ones he’d made before.

She wondered if this last thing would reveal his intentions more clearly. It didn’t matter, once she did this; she’d be free from his demands.

You don’t realise how much you miss normality until you don’t have it anymore.

Theresa couldn’t wait to get back to normal. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel.





Chapter 76



When Kennedy arrived at his office, he walked all the way round to the other side of his desk before he noticed the white detritus scattered across the surface. What on earth? Curious, he crumbled bits of the debris from the desktop between his thumb and fingers and looked up at the ceiling. There was no light fitting above his desk. That ruled out the electrician doing maintenance. A tile looked as if it hadn’t seated correctly. He climbed up onto the desk, and pushed the grid up to adjust it, trying to get it to sit right. When that didn’t work, he lifted the tile clear. He wasn’t tall enough to see over the grid into the void, even on tiptoes. Finding it difficult to balance, he placed a hand each side of the grid and manoeuvred a book into position with his foot, and using the extra height it gave him, peered in and saw something that looked out of place. He picked it up. It was a mobile phone.