Nothing but Meat: A dark, heart-stopping British crime thriller (19 page)

It was one of the many things that
kept her awake at night, her mind would run wild with the swirling frustrations
of regret and mistake that had defined her life and she silently asked herself
whether she really loved Martin or not. It was a question that shadowed all
other thoughts but the answer was even darker. It tried to force its way from
the recess of her mind and when it did she pushed it back, not even daring to
think it, but she knew in her heart that it was the only explanation. She
didn’t love Martin and she never had.

During the endless nights in the
hushed darkness of their bedroom honesty and truth won out and she managed to
snatch one single thought from the cage of crazy paranoia that Martin could
somehow hear her thoughts or read her mind across the swell of pillows that separated
them – she would ask herself; if, had she married Nathan instead, would
she have taken his surname?

Would she have become Simone West?

It was a simple question and the
answer was clear but the answer was criminal: Yes, in a heartbeat.

She wanted to whisper her name as it
could have been. Mouth the words out loud just to hear how it sounded.

Simone West.

But she didn’t dare.

17

Simone couldn’t sleep. She wrestled with
the bedcovers that tangled uncomfortably with her sweaty body and stuck her feet
out of the single bed in an attempt to cool down in the heat of the room.

It felt foreign and awkward to be a
guest in someone else’s home especially if the home wasn’t really big enough
for guests. Lucy’s spare room was more of a study than it was bedroom and
Simone knew she was in the way. Lucy and her boyfriend were forgiving and
accommodating and Simone couldn’t be more grateful for their help but she felt
that she needed to stay small and act as if she wasn’t really there at all.

She turned over and felt a pulse of
pressure in her bladder; she wasn’t desperate for the toilet but it was enough
to add to her discomfort and restlessness. Ordinarily she would have gone to
the bathroom and relived herself without even thinking about it but as she
wasn’t at home she was caught in the debate of whether to hold on until morning
or risk disturbing the home owners and reminding them of her presence.

She wondered if her bed was being
slept in – was Martin there, nursing his bruises? Nursing his pride? Or
had he chosen to stay elsewhere so as to avoid more confrontation as Simone
had?

She couldn’t have cared less if she
never saw him again but she no choice in the matter, it was unavoidable; they
had business to attend to, issues to resolve. Divorce papers to sign.

She felt empowered at the thought of
separating her life from his. The cycle was broken and she was soon to be free
from the shackles of that miserable sham of a marriage.

Being single, being alone had never
seemed so attractive to her and the idea of it filled her with a sense of
excitement and unrestrained liberation, but here in the darkness, with her mind
in turmoil she had to admit, somewhere in the mix there was also a dash of
dread.

Simone chastised herself for being so
sensitive and considered what Caroline Sheppard and Victoria Redman had gone
through and how scared they must have been.

In death we are truly alone, she
thought and the thought scared her.

Simone was deeply involved in the
most important case of her life; it was arguably the most high profile and
disturbing case the region had ever seen and she wanted to dedicate all of her
time to it, but how could she not have considerations for her private life? She
had been beaten to a bloody pulp and forced from her home. She needed to see a
solicitor and begin divorce proceedings. She needed to bring direction to her
life and try to get things in order but she couldn’t sacrifice the case. She
wasn’t going to pretend that it wasn’t a massive opportunity on a professional
level because it was, but it was more than that, she had been given a chance to
prevent more murder and to apprehend the one responsible for the
deaths that had affected her so deeply. She thought about
Victoria Redman
and knew that no matter how disastrous her own life had
become she could never ignore the fact that a young girl had been murdered and
the one who did it was still out there. The decision was made - walking away
from the case wasn’t an option.

When West told Simone that Caroline
Sheppard had been pregnant it gave the victims connection and a small piece of
the puzzle slipped into place.

The man they sought knew her, and
knew her well enough to be privy to the news of the pregnancy that was still in
its early stages. Either she or Gary Stevens had trusted him enough to tell him
the news and the knife in her belly was meant to inflict the most damning of
wounds. When Caroline Sheppard squeezed Simone’s hand as she slipped closer to
death, she was dying with the knowledge that both she and her unborn child had
been murdered.

Simone put her hands on her own belly
and imagined that one day she might experience the feeling of life kicking
inside her, but for now she felt only the ache of a swollen bladder.

18

Sylvia Croucher never imagined the day
would come when people would describe her as the grieving widow, but now they
could, and when they did they were technically wrong because she and Russ never
married.

They both knew that most people,
especially their parents, thought it strange that the pair of them remained
unmarried after nearly fifteen years, but what did that matter? They had both
married before and neither one of them had found the same level of happiness
during their respective marriages as they had since they found each other. That
wasn’t to say that they had they completely ruled out the idea of doing it
again, it just wasn’t a subject either one of them felt particularly strong
about. However they may have reconsidered their priorities had they known their
time together was to be cut short so suddenly and unexpectedly.

The day that changed everything was a
warm unassuming Saturday, the sun was sinking in the clear sky and the air was filled
with busy insects and the sound of lawnmowers whirring in the distance. Russ was
in the back garden lighting the barbeque while Sylvia prepared homemade
hamburgers in the kitchen.

When she heard the sound of breaking
glass and the clatter of steel she assumed Russ had knocked his wine glass onto
the patio, or worse still the entire bottle. She shouted out to him, something
along the lines of,
‘What have you broken
now?’
and went to investigate his clumsiness. She saw him immediately,
collapsed in a heap on the tiled patio floor next to the upturned barbeque and she
ran to him through rounds of scattered coal, broken glass and red wine. When
she got to him she checked his vitals but he was gone; Sylvia had been a nurse until
her late twenties and she knew dead when she saw it. She went back into the
house, called for an ambulance, hung up and promptly vomited into the kitchen
sink. She returned to the garden and spent the longest and worst moment of her
life sitting with him while she waited for the paramedics to arrive.

She learned shortly after that a
brain haemorrhage had taken Russ from her; a fatal event that was as
unpredictable as it was unpreventable, but at least, they told her, the end was
instant and painless. The information answered her questions but was little
consolation and although his death was instant, she didn’t believe for a second
that it had been painless.

That was three weeks ago and now
house was deathly quiet as Sylvia closed the front door behind her. She locked
it, pulled the chain across and stood alone in the darkness listening to the
silence. She had just returned home from a pleasant evening spent with friends but
as the door clicked shut all their positive distractions washed away as her
heart sank painfully in her chest and the loneliness of grief gripped her once
again in its icy fist. Being alone had never bothered her before because it had
only ever been for a few nights at a time, usually during the rare times when Russ
had been away on business, but now…well now he was never coming back and when
her doctor told her it would be a
‘…difficult
adjustment…’
she openly laughed in his face. She was offered medication but
refused; she knew that in time these awful feelings would pass, and while they
were with her they were all consuming but also strangely comforting and somehow
helped to remind her she was alive.

She found now that her imagination
was more furtive than she ever realised and her mind constantly played tricks
on her. She became jumpy at bumps and creaks late in the evening from unseen
areas of the house.

Their house.

She considered selling, but it
reminded her so much of Russ she couldn’t imagine leaving. Not yet anyway, it
was still too soon. He’d only been in the ground a fortnight. Well, he was
cremated and his ashes scattered but that’s what people say isn’t it?

Only
been in the ground a fortnight.

They lived a few miles from a nature
reserve and often went for walks there all year round. It was a peaceful place,
a huge wooded expanse surrounded many lakes where the wildlife roamed free.

It was particularly beautiful after
snowfall and she loved wrapping herself in thick layers and spending frozen
Sundays at the lakes, just the two of them together, holding hands in the
silence of a still winter day.

Winter was her favourite time of the
year, not like it was now; like the last time she was there.

She went there alone in the
sweltering heat of the hottest summer in years, summoning the strength to say
goodbye to him for the last time. The woods were alive with the hum of tiny
life and insects buzzed her ears as she made her way slowly to the edge of a
lake. When she was satisfied with the location Sylvia took the urn from the
cotton bag and hugged it to her chest. Tears stung her eyes while she waited
for the right moment, seconds passed and she wondered if there would ever be a
right time to finally say goodbye. She blanked her mind from her actions,
removed the lid and emptied the urn in one swift movement, and as the ashes
spilled from the rim a soft breeze tugged at her blouse and carried him gently
across the water. It had been the right time.

Releasing him into the wind was the
right thing to do, she wanted to say goodbye for a final time. She didn’t want
to keep the ashes; she didn’t want an urn with Russ inside. What if, as time
passed she neglected to clean it and it just sat at the back of a shelf
gathering dust? What if one day, when time had healed her wounds and her life
had moved on, she rediscovered it and considered, even if only for a split
second, to put it in the attic or even throw it away? She knew she had done the
right thing.

Apart from making their wills they
never talked about their wishes if one of them died but she knew Russ would
want her to move on, he would want her to be happy. She also knew he wouldn’t
want to become an object on a mantle-piece; nothing more than a morbid talking
point if anyone even dared mention it.

Sylvia walked into the lounge and
considered watching television but decided it was too late; she had been at her
sister’s house for dinner, it had just gone eleven and Sylvia knew that if she
started watching something she wouldn’t be going to bed until the early hours.
She needed to go to bed and try to get some sleep.

As sisters they had always been close
but when Russ passed Natasha had become Sylvia’s rock.

What to do when someone dies isn’t
something most people think about until the time comes and now it had Sylvia
was lost. There had been so much to do and Natasha had been there every step of
the way, she had gone with Sylvia to register the death and been instrumental
in organising the funeral.

The evening at her home had been one
of many engagements planned over the next few weeks. She had never had so many
dinner and lunch invitations from so many people and she was amazed and
grateful at the way her friends and family had rallied around her in this time
of grief.

She loved their company, she had
known them all for years and was under no pressure to be cheerful, and they all
understood that even though she tried her best to be enthusiastic, she wasn’t the
most upbeat of dinner guests at the moment.

She went upstairs, showered in the
en-suite and climbed into bed. She lay there for a time and watched the glow of
the bedside light on the ceiling, listening to the empty cavernous sound of
loneliness. She half expected to hear the toilet flush, for the bathroom light
to snap off and for Russ to walk into the room and to climb into bed next to
her, but she heard nothing except the creaking of a house that was now too big
for her and the beat of a heart that literally hurt in her chest. She cried
softly, but only for a short time and wiped her face with a tissue. She
whispered to herself, ‘Stop being sad,’ and turned out the light.

He waited in the dark.

It was easy to remain undiscovered in
such a large house, not like the last time; last time he was still for hours
while he waited in her bedroom. But it was worth the wait; she was so young, so
scared, such a sweet little piggy it made the cramped muscles and the tedium of
waiting all worthwhile.

This time though he could flex his
muscles and keep the blood flowing without a problem. He was hiding in one of
the spare bedrooms down the corridor well away from the master bedroom. He knew
she wouldn’t come in here tonight, why would she? She was alone now and there
was nothing of consequence in here.

He checked his watch; it was 2am and he
had been in the house for almost twelve hours. She came home earlier, probably
after work and he listened as she watched TV before getting changed and going
out for the evening.

While she was out he had studiously
kept clear of the windows and always careful to put things back exactly as he
had found them after he occupied himself with her private belongings. Her scent
was important to him.

Even when she was in the house he was
so sure she wouldn’t come into the spare room he had considered laying on the
bed and taking a nap, but there was always that slim chance that she might have
so why take the risk? He had a plan and he was going to stick to it. Focus and
patience was the key, never deviate from the plan and all would go smoothly. It
would soon be time to attack the sow. His thoughts gave him an erection and he
just couldn’t wait.

When the time was right he opened the
bedroom door. It squeaked and excitement built in the pit of his stomach. Some
part of him wanted her to hear his approach, part of him wanted her to fight
because he would have an idea of what to expect later. He doused the rag and
put on the mask; he just couldn’t wait for her to see it.

Sylvia had always been a heavy sleeper
but now she was alone her dreams had become vivid and noisy and fuelled by
grief, they caused her to drift in and out of consciousness throughout the
night and more often than not she would wake up with a headache or feel more
tired than when she went to sleep.

Her eyes snapped open in the darkness
and the tremulous nightmare silenced abruptly. She was lying on her back in the
same position she went to sleep in.

Somewhere a floorboard creaked…

…Footsteps!

Then a pipe clicked in the roof space.

She cursed her imagination, rolled
over and drifted off again.

Sometime later she woke again with
the creeping feeling that something was in the room with her. Somewhere in the
recess of her mind she could vaguely remember hearing the creak of floorboards
and the sound the bedroom door makes as it brushes across the carpet. They were
lost to a dream those sounds but they still felt real. Another sensation cut
through the confusion of sleep.

Had something touched her hair?

She sat up and stared across the room
towards the closed curtains. Was that a silhouette standing in front of them?
She wondered if it was Russ coming to say goodbye. Her eyes were blurred with
sleep as she stared at the shape, looking for definition; even movement but she
saw nothing. It was her mind playing tricks in the darkness. She considered
turning the light on but she didn’t want to admit to being scared. And what if
she was confronted with something frightful that shouldn’t be there?

Then it moved.

No, surely not?

It moved again, and as if in
confirmation there was an accompanying creak from a pained floorboard. She
gasped and snatched franticly for the bedside lamp but knocked it to the ground
as a shadow appeared in the corner of her eye. She turned; more alert now and
saw a hideous face bearing down on her, white and ghostlike. She felt material
press down hard on her face, covering her mouth and nose as another hand
pressed tightly against the back of her head. She flailed out and tried to
scream but it was futile. A thick, vaporous stench flooded her lungs, choking
her and making her gag into the cloth. Her struggles quickly weakened and she
slipped into a blackness reserved only for nightmares.