A Twist of the Knife (36 page)

Laura turned for comfort towards her sleeping husband. Bill stirred fleetingly. She smelled the raw animal smell of his body, of his hair. He was the rock to which her whole life was anchored.

Christmas Eve tomorrow. It was going to be just the two of them together this time and she had been really looking forward to it. She snuggled closer, wiggled her toes – hoping faintly that he might wake and they could make love – pressed her face against his iron-hard chest and began to feel safe again.

In the middle of the next night, Laura woke again, startled by a sharp rapping. The room was flooded with an eerie sheen of moonlight. Odd, she thought, that she hadn’t drawn the curtains.

Then she heard the rapping again and her scalp constricted in terror. The face of the old gypsy woman, a ghastly chalky white, was pressed against the bedroom windowpane.

‘Look at my face!’ she hissed. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face will be the day you die!’

Laura turned to Bill with a whine of terror, but he was still sound asleep. ‘Bill,’ she whimpered. ‘Bill!’

‘Urrr . . . wozzit?’ he grunted, stirring.

‘Someone’s at the window,’ she said, her voice so tight it was barely audible.

She heard the sound of his hand scrabbling on his bedside table. Then a sharp click and the room flooded with light. She stared fearfully back at the window and a wave of relief washed over her. The curtains were shut!

‘Wozzermarrer?’ Bill grunted, still half asleep.

‘I had a bad dream.’ She turned towards him, feeling a little foolish, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

In the morning, Bill brought them both breakfast in bed. Then he gave her a huge card and three gift-wrapped packages. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, and blushed – he was never very good at sentiment.

Laura gave him his presents – an expensive bottle of aftershave and the cordless screwdriver he’d hinted at wanting – then she opened hers.

The first package was a sweater with daft-looking sheep appliquéd on the front. It made her laugh and she kissed him. The next was a bottle of her favourite bath oil. Then she saw his eyes light up in anticipation as she gripped the final package. It was small, square and heavy.

‘I . . . er . . . hope you like it,’ he mumbled.

With mounting excitement she unwrapped a cardboard box. It was filled with sprigs of heather. Buried in their midst was a small porcelain figurine.

Laura froze.

Bill could sense something was wrong. ‘I . . . I got it yesterday,’ he said. ‘For your collection of Capo di Monte peasants. I thought it had . . .’ his voice began to falter, ‘. . . you know – a real presence about it.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘A junk shop. Something made me stop there – I just knew I was going to find the perfect present for you inside.’

Quite numb, Laura stared at the black, piercing eyes of the hag that leered up at her with lips peeled back to reveal sharp, rat-like incisors.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said flatly, seeing how hurt he looked. ‘Really lovely.’

Laura kept the figurine on her dressing table over that week, to please Bill, but the thing’s presence terrified her.

The following Sunday, he left to drive his container lorry to Italy. She didn’t start back at her office until the day after next, so she busied herself with housework. As the afternoon drew on, she felt increasingly uncomfortable.

Finally, she made a snap decision, went to the bedroom, put the figurine in its box, took it outside and dropped it in the dustbin.

Feeling better, she ate supper on a tray and watched a weepy movie on television, wishing Bill was home.

Shortly after eleven, she went upstairs. As she switched the bedroom light on, her eyes fell on the dressing table, and a slick of fear travelled down her spine. The figurine was back, sitting in exactly the same position it had been that morning. Laura’s eyes shot to the undrawn curtains, then returned to the dressing table. The floor seemed to sway. She backed unsteadily out of the room, clutching the door frame to stop herself falling, then slammed the door shut.

She stumbled downstairs, pulled the sitting-room curtains tight, switched all the bars of the fire on, curled up on the sofa and listened, petrified, for a sound upstairs. She lay there all night, finally dozing for a brief spell around dawn.

In the morning, she put the figurine in the boot of her car, drove to the tip three miles away and threw it on to the heap. She watched it fall between the discarded fridges, busted sofas and tangle of rubble and old tyres, until it finally disappeared beneath a fire-blackened cushion.

When Laura finally got home, she realized that it was the first time she’d felt at ease since opening that damned present. At two in the morning, she was woken by a sharp rap. The room felt as cold as a deep freezer. As she switched on the bedside light, she let out a curdling yelp of terror. The figurine was back on her dressing table.

Laura sat up the rest of the night, too frightened to sleep. Next morning, she carried the dreaded figurine out on to the patio and smashed it to smithereens with a hammer. She carried the fragments in a rubbish bag to her office, and during her lunch break dropped them in the incinerator. All afternoon she felt elated, as if she’d finally freed herself. When she finished work, she drove to the outskirts of town and went to Safeway to do her weekly shop.

As she pushed her trolley down the aisles, she found she was smiling to herself. Smiling at her little triumph and smiling, too, at her own stupidity. Probably the figurine hadn’t looked anything like the old gypsy, it was just her wild imagination, the same way she must have imagined throwing it in the bin and on to the tip but hadn’t.

‘Got spooked by the old hag and now I’m cracking up.’ She grinned to herself. ‘Silly fool.’

It was nearly dark as she left the store. There was no sign of the gypsy woman, but even so, Laura looked carefully at the back seat of the car before climbing in and quickly locking the doors. She reached the exit, pushed her ticket into the slot and the barrier rose up. As it did, a sudden movement in her rear-view mirror caught her eye. The temperature plunged. Goose pimples as hard as rivets spiked her skin. In the mirror, she could clearly see the piercing black eyes watching her out of the darkness. The dream flooded back. She remembered how she’d accelerated helplessly and she found her right foot pressing down now. The car surged forward as if it had a will of its own. Laura let out a tiny whimper of fear, and saw the rat-like teeth grinning at her in the mirror.

‘Got to stop this somehow. Got to change the dream. Got to break the spell.’

Gripping the wheel with both hands, her heart thrashing, she turned to face her tormentor. There was no one there, just the empty rear seat.

I imagined her, she thought, with immense relief. I imagined her!

The blare of a horn filled her ears. As she spun her head back to the road, she saw, far too late, the blazing headlights of the oncoming truck. In that last split second before the little Toyota exploded in a fireball, Laura remembered the gypsy’s words. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face will be the day you die!’

Roy Grace had that nightmare again last night. The one in which he woke up on Christmas morning and realized he’d forgotten to buy his beloved wife, Cleo, a card or any presents. It was the same dream he used to have regularly a week or so before Christmas, all those years back before his first wife, Sandy, had disappeared.

But the Sussex Detective Superintendent was in better shape than usual this year. At least he’d made a start, and had bought Cleo a card and a few silly bits for her stocking. But he wanted to buy her a nice piece of jewellery, and he had in mind a silver bracelet, which he’d seen in the window of the jeweller Stanley Rosen, in Brighton’s Lanes. He still had time, it was Friday today and Christmas Day was not until next Tuesday.

The current murder enquiry into a woman found dead on the beach, which his team had been working on for the past two months, was winding down after a successful conclusion, with the suspect charged and on remand in Lewes Prison. Friday afternoon, and an air of frivolity had settled on the normally sombre major incident room where his team was housed. Glenn Branson, Emma-Jane Boutwood, Guy Batchelor, Norman Potting and all the rest of them were unwrapping their Secret Santa gifts. This was their last day all together before the Christmas holidays, although some of them would remain on call over the holiday period.

Norman Potting eagerly unwrapped his gift, then chortled, as he held up a knitted willy warmer. Roy Grace grinned at his, an ancient copy of a Ladybird Easy Reading Book entitled,
People at Work – The Policeman,
wondering which of his colleagues had bought that for him. He felt in a relaxed mood. For the first time in many weeks he had a free weekend ahead – and tomorrow he planned to nip down to the Lanes and buy the bracelet. Although he was well aware that as the on-call Senior Investigating Officer, there was always a risk of a major crime occurring. In particular, levels of domestic abuse rose around Christmas time. Tensions could run high. Last year there wasn’t even a let-up in the number of 999 calls made during the fifteen-minute duration of the Queen’s Speech. Fights, accidents, vehicle thefts and even robberies.

There was one shadow on his mind as he drove home, taking a detour past the swanky homes of Dyke Road Avenue to enjoy the Christmas light displays outside some of the houses. Some miscreant the press had nicknamed Scrooge had committed several attacks on displays in the main shopping precinct. Hopefully he would be caught soon by Brighton CID, who had deployed undercover officers in an attempt to apprehend him before he hurt someone, or by the city’s network of CCTV cameras.

Then, as he drove down towards the clock tower in his unmarked Ford Focus estate, he saw a long tailback ahead. As he pulled up, a patrol car screamed past him on blues and twos. He frowned, wondering what was happening. Clearly a major incident. He turned up the volume on his police radio and called the duty Ops 1 controller, Inspector Andy Kille, to ask what was happening.

‘
The Christmas tree in Churchill Square has fallen over, sir,’ he replied. ‘Reports of two casualties.’

‘I’m close by,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll attend and take a look.’

The spectacular tree, one hundred feet high, was the biggest the city had ever erected. Visit Brighton, the city’s tourist board, had decided to give its retailers a recession-buster of a Christmas this year, and they had really gone to town on the street decorations. Tomorrow afternoon the city was having its biggest ever Yuletide event. A concert on the Hove Lawns, headlined by local superstar celebrity Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim. And the highlight of the day was going to be Santa Claus arriving by parachute. A crowd of twenty thousand was expected, and he was planning on taking Cleo and their baby, Noah, to see what promised to be a spectacular occasion.

The Detective Superintendent switched on his blue lights and siren, pulled out and raced down to the clock tower, then made a right turn into Western Road. Ahead was a blaze of strobing blue lights. He could see several police cars, two fire engines and an ambulance. Two uniformed officers were taping off the road ahead of him.

He climbed out and saw the mayhem in the square. The massive tree was lying on its side, some of its lights still twinkling, and part of the tip lying through the shattered shop window of WHSmith, surrounded by demolished festive displays of books. Several of the crowd of onlookers were taking pictures with their phones. He ducked under the tape and walked up to the figure of Bill Warner, the duty Inspector.

‘What happened?’ Grace asked.

‘Evening, sir. I have reports from two witnesses who saw a man rush up with a chainsaw, cut through the base of the tree and run off. Hopefully we’ll get something from CCTV. We have two injured – a mother and her small boy, neither serious – and several in shock. One of the undercover CID officers gave chase, but lost him. It appears Scrooge is stepping up his attacks.’

‘I was just heading home. Anything I can do?’

‘I think we have it under control, thank you, sir.’

The Inspector took him over to see the severed tree stump. ‘What a miserable bastard,’ Grace said, staring at the clean cut, and the raw, fresh wood that was exposed.

‘My thoughts exactly. I think John Street CID can handle this. I’d go home if I were you.’

‘OK, but keep me posted.’

Bill Warner promised him he would.

*

Half an hour later, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt in Cleo’s town house, he was helping her put the finishing touches to the tree. There were bowls of festively scented pot pourri around, and several beautifully wrapped presents around the base of the tree, which reminded him of his shopping task tomorrow. Cleo was making sure that Noah’s first Christmas was going to be special indeed, even if he was too young to appreciate it.

Noah, in a striped onesie, was lying on his play mat, blinking up at his Christmas mobile under the watchful eye of Humphrey, their black rescue Labrador-Collie cross. Marlon the goldfish was circumnavigating his bowl, as ever. Must be a bit dull for a fish, he thought. At least a dog could get excited by wrapping paper and appreciate a few extra Christmas treats. Maybe Marlon could at least enjoy the Christmas lights, he wondered. He stared lovingly at Cleo, her long blonde hair clipped up and looking gorgeous, and suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling of happiness. Their first Christmas together and their baby son, Noah’s, first ever.

Then his mobile phone rang.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, his heart sinking. He hoped desperately this wasn’t going to be a fresh murder inquiry, which would put pay to all his plans. To his relief, he recognized the friendly but serious voice of Chief Constable Tom Martinson. Although it was unusual for the Chief to be calling him personally, it would not be about a murder.