Mind Games
Authors: Hilary Norman
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This title is part of The Murder Room, our series dedicated to making available out-of-print or hard-to-find titles by classic crime writers.
Crime fiction has always held up a mirror to society. The Victorians were fascinated by sensational murder and the
emerging science of detection; now we are obsessed with the forensic detail of violent death. And no other genre has so captivated and enthralled readers.
Vast troves of classic crime writing have for a long time been unavailable to all but the most dedicated frequenters of
second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing means that we are now able to bring you the backlists of a huge range of titles by classic and contemporary crime writers, some of which have
been out of print for decades.
From the genteel amateur private eyes of the Golden Age and the femmes fatales of pulp fiction, to the morally
ambiguous hard-boiled detectives of mid twentieth-century America and their descendants who walk our twenty-first century streets, The Murder Room has it all.
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Where Criminal Minds Meet
Hilary Norman
FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 1998
The Robbins’ housekeeper, Anita del Fuego, arrived at work same time as every morning at the house on Pine Tree Drive: six-thirty. She enjoyed the short walk from the K
bus stop, liked the cool fragrance of the tall double line of pines that bisected and gave the exclusive Miami Beach road its name. A morning person by nature, Anita was singing softly as she let
herself in through the side entrance, hung her bright floral polyester jacket on its hook, took down the white pinafore – fresh washed and pressed, just the way Señora Robbins liked
her to wear – and changed into her white, soft-soled nurse’s shoes. Still singing, she made her way into the kitchen – and stopped.
Something was not right.
The house was too quiet and too dark. The blinds in the kitchen were shut and there was no aroma of fresh-perked coffee. Señor Robbins always made the first pot about a half-hour before
Anita got to work; sometimes she found him still peaceably sitting at the kitchen table, though more often than not he was either upstairs getting dressed or had already left for business.
Whichever, the
señor
always opened all the blinds and drapes on the first floor before the housekeeper’s arrival.
Not today.
Anita went out into the hallway and listened. Quiet. It was way too quiet.
She lifted her wrist close to her face to peer at her watch, checking that she hadn’t made a mistake about the time. The watch said six-thirty-five. High time for young Cathy to be up and
about, getting showered and dressed for school.
Her skin prickled. She had a bad feeling.
‘
Ridículo
, Anita,’ she rebuked herself, softly. All this was, probably, a case of everyone oversleeping, and when she went upstairs and knocked on Cathy’s door
she would find her lying curled up on her side under her comforter, the way she always slept.
Encouraged, Anita started up the stairs. That was all this was. First she would wake Cathy, then the girl could go rouse her
momia
and
papá
. . . Or maybe Señor
Robbins had left the house
real
early to go to the market for his restaurants, too early to make coffee and open the drapes – and the
señora
had forgotten to set her
own alarm clock. That was all.
So why did she still have such a bad feeling?
Cathy was not in her bed. The bathroom door was open.
‘Cathy?’ Anita called softly.
No answer.
She went to the door and looked inside. The shower curtain was open and dry, and the pale pink bath towel was neatly folded over the warming rail.
Anita’s palms grew clammy. She didn’t know why she was so afraid, but something was gnawing at her mind, growing by the second, something dark and nasty, something she had a powerful
urge to run away from. She opened her mouth to call out a second time, more loudly, then shut it again, silenced by the stillness and that feeling inside her head.
Cobarde
, she chastised herself. Coward.
She turned around, left Cathy’s empty room and walked along the corridor to the
señor
and
señora’s
closed bedroom door. She knocked, twice,
tentatively. The silence grew heavier. She knocked again, gripped the door handle in her fingers, felt its coolness against her own rising heat. For another moment she wavered – and then she
opened the door.
It was very dark in the room. The thick drapes were still closed. Anita took two steps inside and stopped, waiting for her eyes to grow used to the dimness.
Slowly, the bed came into focus. She could see vague shapes. Humps and lumps. Black waves. Motionless waves. Anita stood very still, trying to listen past the air-conditioner’s hum.
She began to tremble.
There was a smell in the air.
It was unmistakable. Hot and animal, somewhere between the scent of her own monthly
regla
and the heavy odour she smelt whenever she saw her cousin Bobby who worked at the meat
market.
A sick sound of revulsion was muffled against her lips even as it emerged, squashed flat by her right hand. Seconds passed. Still scarcely daring to move, still half-blind, Anita tilted her face
slightly towards the windows. To open the drapes she would have to walk across the room, to pass the bed and those humps beneath the quilt that looked so black in the dark.