The Mercer's House (Northern Gothic Book 1) (17 page)

‘Ah,’ he said in sudden understanding. ‘That’s why you asked about my phone. You thought it was me. It wasn’t,’ he added, when she didn’t deny it. ‘I know things can be a bit quiet around here but that’s not how I get my kicks.’

There was dry humour in his voice and she gave a little hiccup of laughter.

‘I didn’t really believe it was you,’ she said. ‘You just happened to be there. To be honest, I don’t know whether there was anybody at all, or whether I just imagined it.’

‘Do you normally imagine things?’

There was nothing in the question, but Zanna hesitated. She wanted to tell him about the messages, and about the dead seagull, but it all seemed so absurd, so unreal, as they sat here now, in her comfortable room at the Coach and Horses, with the sound of loud music thumping up from downstairs. Would he believe her? She wasn’t even sure she believed it herself any more.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I was sure there was someone there.’

‘Then there probably was,’ he said. ‘But they might not have been looking for you. They might have been there for some other reason. Do you want to call the police?’

‘And tell them what? That I was on the beach in the pitch dark and someone came and stood next to me? I think they’ve probably got better things to do than listen to hysterical women.’

‘You’re not hysterical,’ he said. ‘You were genuinely scared out there.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean there was anything to be scared of,’ she said. ‘It was probably just me being stupid. Like you said, even if somebody was there, it might have been for a perfectly innocent reason.’

But she knew as she said it that it wasn’t true. Now that her terror had subsided, she was logical enough to admit that nobody could have seen her easily enough in that inky darkness to pursue her, and that it was only panic that had made her run, but someone had been there for her, she was sure of it. But why?

‘There,’ said Will, as he wrapped the last piece of tape around her left hand. ‘They should stay on for a day or two, until the grazes start to heal.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. She got up and went across to the dressing table, to where she had put her phone. As she plugged it in at the wall to charge it she glanced at her email inbox and was not entirely surprised to find that the last email from Helen was no longer there. It had been there this morning, she was sure of it, because she’d reread it to see if there was any clue she’d missed. Or had that been yesterday? She couldn’t be certain. What
was
certain, though, was that now she had no evidence of her mysterious stalker other than the log of the phone call she’d had this evening—if that was still there. She checked, and found the number still stored in the memory. She hadn’t imagined that, then—although since she couldn’t remember whether the number was the same as the one from the first call, it wasn’t exactly useful.

‘My hair’s a mess,’ she said, examining herself in the mirror. She sat down on the dressing-table stool to brush out the tangles, but her hands were too sore to hold the brush properly, and after struggling for a minute or two she gave up and sagged in defeat.

‘Here,’ he said. To her surprise, he took the brush gently from her hand, then sat down on the bed just behind her, and motioned to her to turn her head back to the mirror. She sat there obediently as he began to brush her hair carefully, teasing out the knots little by little, pulling only slightly, until it was smooth. The gentle motion of the brush against her head soothed her and made her forget the smarting of her hands and knees. Gradually her thoughts faded into a pleasant fuzziness, until only immediate sensations remained uppermost in her mind. When he had finished she raised her eyes to the mirror and met his reflected gaze, and at that moment she became acutely conscious that here they were, alone in her bedroom, and that nobody else knew where they were. The music had stopped now, and people were shouting and laughing in the street below as they emerged from the pub and set off for home, but up here there were just the two of them, and stillness, and their sudden awareness of each other.

‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said at last.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

There was a long pause, then with a deliberate movement he lifted the brush and began again—even though there was no need, even though all the tangles were gone—brushing, brushing, brushing, with long, rhythmic strokes, from her scalp to the ends of her hair, and now the dark and the beach and the fear were all forgotten in the slow movement of his hands, and in the tingling it set off everywhere inside her. Still, he kept on, and for a long while there was no sound but that of the brush as it rasped through her hair, and that of their breathing—his slow and regular, hers increasingly shallow and rapid. He was totally absorbed in his task, and though his hands barely touched her, every stroke set off a crackle of shockwaves down her back and across her skin, until her very nerve-endings sang. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, lips parted, and wanted to say something, but no words came. He was sitting so close behind her that she could smell the subtle scent of his aftershave, feel the warmth of his body, and all she could think was that if he didn’t make a move soon she would be forced to beg him, but she was tongue-tied, and could only silently will him to read her mind and take the matter into his own hands without her needing to speak.

And then it was too late, and the moment was lost, as a loud hammering came at the door. Zanna jumped, and Will looked up, then put down the brush and went to answer. It was Garrett. He glanced from one to the other of them suspiciously, then said:

‘Someone said you’d hurt yourself. Are you all right? What happened?’

‘I got lost on the beach when the lights went out,’ said Zanna, folding her arms across her body. ‘It was nothing. I’m all right now.’

‘What happened to your hands? Is she OK?’ he said, turning to Will.

‘She’s fine,’ said Will. ‘She just had a bit of a scare, that’s all.’

‘I fell over on the rocks and scraped my hands,’ said Zanna.

‘You’ve got a black eye,’ said Garrett accusingly.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Zanna. ‘I bruised my cheek a bit when I fell over. It’s fine.’

‘But what were you doing out there in the first place?’

‘I went outside to make a phone call,’ she said, ‘and I ended up on the beach. Then Will found me and brought me back here. That’s all.’

She hadn’t meant to say those last two defensive words, but Garrett was looking so suspicious that she couldn’t help herself. Garrett looked again from Zanna to Will, then opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘I’d better go,’ said Will, taking the hint. ‘My dad’s probably wondering where I’ve got to.’

He walked to the door and opened it. Zanna got up to see him out.

‘Thanks for everything,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll see you again before we go.’

She was aware that Garrett was watching them closely, and so kept her tone purposely light and cool.

‘I doubt it,’ replied Will. ‘I have to be back in Edinburgh by ten tomorrow morning, so I’ll be starting off early. I’ll let you know what’s happening once I’ve spoken to Lou. You gave her your email address, didn’t you? You should probably hear from her next week.’

He sounded and looked as reserved as ever, and had it not been for the slightest brush of his fingers against hers as he left, which she was sure was deliberate, and which sent a tingle all the way up her arm, she would have thought that the past ten minutes had never happened. Suppressing the urge to run after him and say something she might regret later, she shut the door, then turned round and saw Garrett looking at her with raised eyebrows.

‘OK, now tell me what’s really going on,’ he said.

‘I
TOLD you what happened,’ said Zanna. ‘The streetlights went out when I was on the beach and I got lost.’

‘But why did you go to the beach to make a phone call?’ said Garrett. ‘And who did you need to call so urgently?’

‘Helen phoned me again,’ she said. ‘She didn’t leave a message, so I called her back and left a voicemail saying that she’d better leave me alone or I’d call the police.’

‘Did you, now?’ said Garrett. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘And I didn’t mean to go on the beach. I only ended up there because it was too noisy outside the pub. Then I decided to take a little walk to get some fresh air, and got stranded when the lights went out.’

‘You decided to take a little walk,’ he repeated. ‘By yourself?’

‘Yes,’ she said patiently.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Why do you look like you’ve been beaten up? You haven’t had much to drink tonight, so you can’t have been brawling again. Come on, what is it?’

It was late, and she was tired and sore and frustrated, and even though she knew she had the perfect right to do whatever she liked with whomever she liked, she still felt horribly guilty at what Garrett had so nearly interrupted between her and Will, and so without having intended to, she told him about her invisible pursuer on the beach. He listened to her in dismay—and, she couldn’t help thinking, disbelief.

‘But are you sure there was someone?’ he said. ‘I mean, how could they have seen you if it was that dark?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I saw a light from a mobile phone, and I felt him there in front of me, but I didn’t see him.’

‘You felt him there,’ he said, and she could see his scepticism clearly enough.

‘I know it sounds stupid, but I was sure of it at the time. Of course, I might have been wrong—I was already in a panic, running away from the voices—’

Here she stopped and bit her tongue. She had never told him about the voices, had never intended to tell him. He seized upon it immediately.

‘What voices?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that. Forget I said anything.’

‘I can’t forget it. You said it, and I heard it. What voices?’

‘They’re just voices I hear on the beach sometimes. They’re probably not really voices—I mean, I can’t hear what they’re saying or anything, so I’ve always just assumed it was the sound of the sea on the rocks.’

‘You hear voices but you think it’s just the sound of the sea on the rocks,’ he said. ‘How often do you hear them?’

‘Not often. I’ve heard them a few times since I got here.’

‘And do you hear voices anywhere else?’

‘No,’ she said wearily. ‘They aren’t anywhere else. They’re here. It’s the ghost, isn’t it?’

‘Do you have any idea how deranged you sound?’ he said.

‘I’m obviously not explaining myself very well,’ she said.

‘No, you’re not. Why don’t you try again?’

‘I just meant that lots of people hear voices on the beach here, and it’s meant to be the ghost of Sarah Humble. I don’t know whether it is or not, but it’s not just me.’

‘And you heard the voices again tonight?’ said Garrett.

‘Yes, but this time I was scared, because it was dark, so I ran away, and then I saw this man—this person—whoever it was, standing just ahead of me, and he had a light, and I thought it might be you so I called your name and he switched the light off straightaway. Then he came closer and stood there and didn’t say anything, and all of a sudden I got frightened and ran away, and then I fell on the rocks and hurt my hands, and then I bumped into Will and he brought me back here and bandaged my hands for me. And that’s all.’

Again she had said ‘that’s all,’ without meaning to. If she had hoped to avoid sounding defensive about Will, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

He walked about the room, running his hands through his hair, not looking at her. She sat down on the bed and watched him.

‘Where’s your phone?’ he said finally. ‘I want to look at the call log.’

‘It’s still there,’ she said. ‘I checked before. The email has gone, though.’

‘Again?’ he said, in concern.

‘Have a look if you don’t believe me. But you saw it, you know I didn’t imagine it.’

‘No,’ he agreed. He threw her an odd look, but didn’t comment, and merely put the phone to his ear.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Calling her again.’

‘It’s after midnight.’

‘Which is why I’m getting voicemail,’ he said, and put the phone back. ‘So you say you phoned this number and threatened to call the police? Are you sure this is the same number as the first call? I mean, if they didn’t leave you a message this time it might just have been a wrong number, which means you threatened them for no reason.’

‘No, I’m not sure,’ she said, disconcerted. ‘I just thought—’

She fell silent. He was right. The number might be anybody’s. Garrett took a long look at her and came to sit beside her on the bed.

‘Zanna,’ he said carefully. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you quite sure you got these phone calls at all?’

‘Of course I’m sure. You just phoned them back yourself.’

‘Sorry, my mistake. This one, yes. I meant the first one. The one that disappeared from the call log.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said.

‘It’s just that—well, you
were
a bit drunk that night, and people do funny things when they’re drunk.’