Page 133 of Her Last Walk Home

She hugged her grandson to her chest so tightly he whimpered. She had tried to protect a child thirty years ago and it was obvious she had failed. She had failed to protect Laura too. She had to protect Aaron at all costs.

This time, failure was not an option.

93

The fear was real now. Terror swept through Shannon’s body like a blazing fire. She sat alone in the small room – her cell, she called it. The woman had taped her mouth and tied her hands to the bed. She wanted to scratch the pulsing spots sprouting on her body. She needed to relieve the itch. No salve had been offered. She had to suffer.

Her situation was impossible. That word burned and burned without fading.Impossible.

The house seemed quiet. Had they all gone out? She knewhewent out at night. Prowling. Hadn’t he abducted her on her walk home from the pub? Didn’t he have a taxi sign on the top of his car? That was why she’d got in with him. Dumb bitch.

A door opened and shut somewhere within the house. Sounds were muffled. The room must be padded, she thought. A footstep. Outside her door. The bolt being drawn back. A key in the lock. The door opened ever so slowly.

Shannon hoped it wouldn’t be the woman. She disliked the constant darkness in her eyes. The dread she caused in her soul. The fidgeting hands when she talked, as if she wanted to throw something at you and would do so if she had anything in her hand to throw.

But perhaps it’d be him. With that browbeaten look he wore in the house. The persona the night he took her was totally different. He was like two people in one body. That was the only way she could describe him if asked. And she knew who manipulated his various transformations.

Or maybe it would be little Magenta, with her soft voice and menacing eyes. The voice that could turn loud and nasty in an instant. The pair had moulded the little girl into something terrible, and though Shannon thought Magenta was her only hope of escape, she realised she was just as terrified of the child as she was of the other two.

She missed her nephew, Davy’s soft hand in hers. Missed pushing him on the swing in the park. She even missed her annoying brother. She missed her old life so much, a life she hadn’t respected or cherished, and it made her want to cry and cry and cry.

The door opened a crack and someone slipped inside. A shimmer of light shone in from the hallway. A lighter sort of darkness. And then she was plunged into the pitch blackness as the door closed. A soft footstep on the floor. The rustle of clothing. The sound of a breath close to her ear. The smell of something dead. Not being able to see who was so close to her magnified her fear and defencelessness.

She’d have screamed if she could.

But she was powerless in every sense of the word.

94

Gordon Collins knew he shouldn’t have left his home that morning. It made him look guilty. Now that he was back, the house felt like a prison. The walls seemed to draw in on him, consuming him, even with the magnificent glass doors and the kitchen blinds left open. Should he ring one of his daughters to come stay with him? No, he might be putting her in danger. Was he in danger? He wasn’t sure, but he did need Dutch courage to get through the night.

Opening a bottle of Kilbeggan Irish whiskey, he poured a generous measure, swallowed it, then poured another. He turned down the lights and sat in his Eames lounge chair in the dark, sipping and staring out at his shadowy garden with the lake somewhere in the distance. He wanted to ask himself where everything had gone wrong. A rhetorical question because he could pinpoint with precision the date and time. He sensed the growing knot in his stomach, the rapid beating of his heart and the rising heat in his face.

Draining the glass, he flung it at the triple-glazed floor-to-ceiling window. The Waterford crystal shattered. The reinforced glass pane did not.

‘Angry, are we?’

The voice behind him startled him more than the splintering tumbler.

Jumping up, he swivelled round, steadying himself with his hands on the back of the moving chair. ‘What the fuck? How did you get in?’

‘You gave me the code, remember? Or have you just marked me up as another proverbial notch on your bedpost.’ She laughed. It was forced, with an underlying sinister tone.

She had a child with her. This caused him to momentarily baulk, but eventually he found his voice. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know what you’re up to. Killing all those people.’

‘I did not kill anyone and you know it.’

‘Oh Gordon, I know nothing of the sort. They all had a connection to you. I really don’t think you can talk yourself out of this one.Youkilled them. And I’ll make sure the guards believe it.’

He felt perspiration bubble up on his forehead and trickle down the creases on either side of his nose. He knew she was smart, and now she was dangerous. ‘There’s no evidence of any such thing.’

‘There’s plenty of evidence.’

‘Then go to the guards, why don’t you? Or is there a reason you have to barge into my home making daft accusations against me?’

‘You bankrolled that slut in recent years. Oh, I know. She told me. Have you no conscience? No sense of right and wrong?’

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