Authors: Rachel Abbott
‘Lily, the man you saw in the garden. What did he look like?’
Lily’s eyes were like saucers as she turned a serious face up towards her.
‘He was white, with black eyes and an orange nose.’
Josh dropped Lily’s hand and let out a bark of nervous laughter. ‘Lily, you idiot, that’s the snowman.’
Lily gave Josh a fierce look.
Maggie sagged with relief and bent to hug both children to her. One fear may have evaporated, but it didn’t do anything to help the greater worry that there might already be somebody in her house or the garage.
‘Let’s find as many candles as we can, light them all, and then get that torch.’
By the time they had located candles, matches and a not very impressive torch, Maggie’s heart rate had dropped a little, but she wasn’t looking forward to what was ahead. One thing was certain: she was not going out into the garage to check the fuse box without full-on illumination. A feeble torch or Josh’s iPad wasn’t enough. If it was a fuse, it could wait
until morning and they could all barricade themselves in the sitting room with candles until it was light.
Maggie didn’t want to leave the children alone while she searched the rest of the house, but she had checked all the downstairs rooms and anybody hiding upstairs would have to pass her to get to them. A part of her knew she was being neurotic, but another part of her was screaming that twenty-four hours ago she wouldn’t have believed any of this was possible – and if the man on the phone had been watching the house he would have seen them go to the shops.
The rest didn’t bear thinking about. Neurotic or not, she had to know they were safe.
‘Okay you two. Just sit quietly at the bottom of the stairs while I see if there’s anything stopping the lights from coming on upstairs.’ She couldn’t think of any other way of explaining why she was searching the entire house.
‘Can I watch the television, Mummy?’
"No, Lil. It won’t work, darling. Sit with Josh, okay?’
Slowly, not knowing if she should be stealthy or should stamp her feet, Maggie made her way up the stairs to the first floor.
She went into Josh’s room and flashed the feeble torch around. Nothing. She walked across to his wardrobe and paused. She had to look inside. She waited, counted to ten, reached out and wrenched the door open then jumped back, shining her light directly into the cupboard. Standing leaning against the wall was a toy sword. She picked it up and used it to push the clothes to one side, but there was nobody there.
With relief she turned, knowing there was one last place to look. She dreaded getting down on her hands and knees. The door was open behind her. She was a perfect target for anybody who wanted to jump her. But she had to check under the bed. She could only do it by counting. She knew when she got to ten she was going to have to get down on the floor and prod under the bed with the sword.
‘Eight, nine, TEN,’ she said and fell to her knees, immediately lifting the covers and poking underneath. The sword didn’t go far. It met resistance – something that gave slightly when touched. Maggie nearly screamed. She shone the light under the bed and fell onto her hip. ‘
Jesus
,’ she muttered as she looked at the giant panda they had bought Josh when he was little. She had forgotten it. There wasn’t space for anything else under there.
She stood up slowly. There was a flash of light and she almost jumped out of her skin. But it was the power coming back on.
Thank God
. It really had only been a power cut. Or had
somebody switched the power back on in the garage? No. She had to believe it was a power cut.
After the terror of the last thirty minutes, the rest of the search felt relatively easy. It wasn’t until she was coming downstairs that she remembered the loft. And with that thought came a memory of a television drama that had frightened her half to death. A woman was walking unafraid towards her bedroom, pulling off her blouse, getting ready to take a shower. Behind her head, two legs appeared, dangling from the loft hatch. A man had been up there, hiding, waiting for his moment.
Maggie stopped on the stairs and gazed at the hatch. What should she do?
Nothing. She was being ridiculous. There was no reason at all to suspect anybody was in her house. She had to hold fast to that belief. Feeling more than desperate for a glass of wine and cursing Duncan for his rule that no alcohol was kept in their home, she almost collapsed from fear-induced exhaustion on her way downstairs. She had never known her husband to drink anything alcoholic, and if she had more than two glasses of wine he could be distant with her for days. Tonight she would have drunk a whole bottle if it wasn’t for the responsibility of looking after the children. But one glass would have been good.
She let Josh and Lily stay up for longer than usual that evening, and in the end she settled them both in her bed. She climbed in with them and softly sang a few of the silly songs they always sang in the car on long journeys. Lily joined in for a while, but gradually her voice faded and Maggie knew she was asleep. Josh was silent, but his body was too rigid for him to be sleeping. She lowered her voice a little and carried on singing, stroking his curly mop of hair gently. Finally she felt his body relax.
She had to decide what to do next. Even though her earlier fear had gone, it had been replaced by a fear that her husband was involved in something – something bad – and terror of what the caller was planning to do. What was he expecting Duncan to do? Why did her husband only have one more chance? What was happening to her life? How long was she prepared to let this go on before she took control – whatever the consequences?
Every curtain in the house was tightly closed, but somehow that didn’t make her feel safe. Gently extracting herself from her position between the children, she tiptoed over to the bedroom window and pulled back a corner of the curtain to peer out into the night. She could see footprints in the rapidly melting snow, but they could have been theirs from the shopping trip. She couldn’t see anything on the lawn at the front of the house, and the
cul-de-sac seemed empty. There was something about a deserted street after snow. It always seemed eerily and unnaturally silent to Maggie.
Realising that she couldn’t get out of bed every five minutes to check if anybody was about, she decided to pull the curtains wide open. If she sat up in bed, she could see the road and watch for anybody walking towards the house. Making as little noise as possible, she pushed a chest of drawers across the door. Nobody was getting in.
As she climbed back into bed to take up her vigil, it felt to Maggie as if the air around her was charged, and she could no longer ignore the fact that something was terribly wrong.
She had no choice. She had to do something. Maybe she could report the threatening phone calls but leave Duncan out of it? But they would ask what the man had said, and it was all about Duncan. If she told them everything, she could see the headlines now:
LOCAL PLUMBER
, D
UNCAN
T
AYLOR
,
WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH MURDERED WOMAN
. What would that do to her children? Duncan couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it, but nobody would ever trust him again. And what if Duncan was in trouble and she made it worse?
What should she
do
?
Resolving to tell the police only that her husband had left her, but that since he had gone she had received threatening phone calls from somebody, Maggie picked up the house phone, dreading the conversation ahead. At that moment her mobile buzzed. A message. No number shown, so it had to have come via a website.
With a shaking hand she lifted her phone. If the man had somehow got hold of her mobile number, it could be him. But at least she would have some evidence for the police.
It wasn’t him
‘Mags, please, I beg you, don’t go to the police. I can and will explain everything. I’ve done nothing wrong, I promise, but it might be difficult to prove. Please, Mags, trust me. Dunc xx
21
Friday
The words of Duncan’s text had been spinning in Maggie’s head all night. At least she knew he was alive. She missed him so much, but why had he hidden his number? Why wouldn’t he speak to her? He wanted her to trust him, to keep away from the police. But how could she trust him when he had disconnected his phone, left her without a word and been sent a photo of a dead woman? And somebody was making threatening phone calls, somebody who clearly knew Duncan. How
could
she trust him?
But he was her husband – the father of her children. How could she
not
trust him? She wanted to scream.
At least it was daylight now, and the fear of last night had retreated to a dark, distant place in her mind. What she was left with was confusion and a low ache of dread – a combination of alarm at the phone calls, the horror of believing that her husband had left her forever and shuddering unease that he was somehow mixed up in the murder of a young woman.
There was something she felt compelled to do. Yesterday, before the horrors of the evening, she had gently quizzed Josh. What time did Daddy pick you up? Did you come straight home? What time was it when he went out again? That wasn’t the only thing she had done. She’d gone into Duncan’s work diary on their shared calendar on her laptop. On Wednesday he had been fixing a boiler for a Mr Jackson. Maggie had jotted down the man’s number and decided to call him before he left for work. He sounded groggy with sleep.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early, Mr Jackson,’ she said. ‘My name’s Maggie Taylor, and I believe my husband fixed your boiler on Wednesday – is that correct?’ The man grunted a confirmation. ‘He's misplaced one of his tools, so I’m going through his diary trying to work out where it might be. Have you found a pipe cutter, by any chance?’
She waited for him to say no before asking the critical question. ‘Do you know what time he left?’
She knew this last question was a complete non sequitur but Mr Jackson didn’t comment. He muttered that he thought Duncan had left at about three o’clock in the afternoon and hung up.
According to Josh, Duncan had picked him and Lily up from school at four. Josh said they had been in the after-school club for about half an hour. He could have been wrong, but since getting his first watch he was fairly keen on checking it regularly. That meant it had taken Duncan an hour to get from Mr Jackson’s house to the school. She quickly opened Google Maps and checked the journey. It should only take twenty minutes. That left forty minutes unaccounted for.
He had brought the children home and left again at around 6.30 after receiving the image on his phone.
Although the woman’s body was found in the morning the police believed she had been killed the evening before and the body moved to its final location during the night. They estimated the time of death to be before six pm, but depending on where the body had been kept in the intervening hours – inside or outside – it could have been earlier.
What had Duncan been doing in those missing forty minutes?
The ringing phone made Maggie jump.
‘Maggie? Are you there?’ It was Suzy. ‘Is Duncan back?’
Maggie’s heart slowed to its normal speed. But the relief at it not being her anonymous caller coupled with disappointment that it wasn’t Duncan reduced her to tears.
‘He’s not back. I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost.’
‘Have you tried calling him?’
Maggie choked out a mirthless laugh. ‘What do
you
think? But his phone’s been disconnected. I just get a long tone. He sent me a text, though – at least, I think it was from him.’
‘How did he do that if his phone’s cut off?’
‘I don’t know, Suze – there was no number, so perhaps he sent it from his laptop. Too much has happened since I spoke to you. I don’t know where to start.’
Slowly, over the course of the next ten minutes, Maggie told her sister the whole tale. She left out nothing but felt like a traitor when she mentioned the photo of the woman on
Duncan’s phone. To her credit, Suzy didn’t make it sound any more dramatic than it already was.
‘There’s bound to be an explanation, Maggie. Don’t panic – it won’t help. Look, I’ll catch the first train north tomorrow. I can be with you by the afternoon. We’ll sort it out. Have you called the hospitals?’
Maggie recited everything she had done, but much as she loved Suzy, she didn’t want her here. It would make it so much more difficult for Duncan to come home if he knew he had to face her too.
‘Suzy, please don’t come. I’m sure it will all blow over, whatever
it
is, and what about the kids?’
‘Ian can have them. He’s been a complete twat recently. He’s cancelled so many times. Let’s see how Rampant Ruthie copes with that, shall we?’
Maggie knew her sister was still struggling to deal with her ex-partner’s betrayal. The hurt shone through each time she mentioned his name.
‘Look, I’ll call you if I need you to come. Okay?’
‘If you’re sure. Just a thought, though. Did Duncan take his passport or any of his other papers?’
Maggie’s breath caught.
Why didn’t I think of that?
‘I’ve not checked. Look, sorry Suze, but I need to go. I’ve got to get the kids to school and go to work. I can’t take another day off – you’re expected to turn up even if you’re dying. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
She ran up the stairs, glad to have a sense of purpose. All of their papers were kept in the bottom of their wardrobe in a locked tin box. She retrieved the key from the top drawer of her bedside cabinet, knelt down and pulled it out from under a pile of shoe boxes. Opening the lid, the top item in the pile was Duncan’s passport, and she breathed again.
Thank God
.
Slowly she went through the papers. Everything seemed to be there, but there was no birth certificate for Duncan. Then she remembered – he had used his passport as evidence of his name and date of birth when they got married. He said his birth certificate had been lost.
She stared at the information page in his passport, which had been renewed a couple of years ago. It occurred to her that this was all she knew of his past – his date of birth and where he was born. She realised she didn’t even know what his mother had been called, and Duncan said his father had never been part of his life.