Page 73 of Her Last Walk Home

‘When they identify her, and they will, they’ll discover where she was last seen and who she was seen with. Ring any bells in that skull of yours now?’ Her face flared red, her hands curled into fists and he continued to cower like a poor dog about to be struck.

‘Oh, I see.’ And he did. He straightened up a little. Shit. She was right. Again. He had totally fucked up this time. He watched as she extracted the knife from its sheath and wondered if he would survive the day.

Instead of lashing out, though, she marched around slapping the flat side of the blade against her thigh, working herself into a frenzy. ‘I’ll have to spend ages figuring this out because of you. It’s all right for you. You can sit on your arse in that fucking shed all day, doing sweet fuck-all, leaving me to sort out the messes you make. I don’t know why I bother with you, you useless sack of shit.’

Her words wounded him. He knew he wasn’t any great shakes, but he did have a job. He was a driver and a gardener. He usually did his work before she left and after she came home. It meant there was always one of them in the house to make sure nothing went wrong there. A thought struck him as she banged the front door behind her: how come she trusted that he would not run? Maybe because he had nothing, and nowhere else to go.

She took deep breaths in the car. She had to calm herself. Driving helped her to decompress. It wouldn’t do to draw suspicion her way. Not that she could be linked to anything that had happened. She was clever. She kept her hands clean. And she had an escape plan along with her fall guy if everything went pear-shaped. Which was looking more than likely.

How could he be so stupid? Then she realised that was the reason she’d kept him. He bowed to her every whim and rarely asked questions. She had such a hold over him, and the thought of this filled her with a power so great she almost had an orgasm in the front seat of her car.

As she pulled away, she looked up. Magenta was staring at her from the top window. She gave the child a chilling smile. As if things weren’t complicated enough, she knew she’d have to keep a close eye on her.

She’d spent her life looking over her shoulder, and it seemed that she now had to look at those she’d surrounded herself with too.

55

McKeown had taken over from Boyd and Kirby to complete the warrants for the Right One database and the financial records for Laura Nolan and John Morgan. Superintendent Farrell had insisted on changing some of the wording, and it was taking forever to find a judge who was free to sign them. While he waited, agitation gnawed at his gut.

He had to be doing something. The wheels were turning too slowly. With little or no evidence in any of the murders, they had no real suspects. He pulled up the footage they’d received from the cinema and retail businesses at the complex. He’d already gone through it, but there had to be something he’d missed. No one could leave a body out there without being captured on some sort of security camera. Then he remembered they’d just been sent footage from the football club located across the road from the entrance to the retail park.

The recording started little over an hour before the body had been found by the café worker. He watched, eagle-eyed. And that was when he saw the child – was it a boy? – walking along the footpath and stopping at the wall before climbing over and disappearing.

McKeown stamped his foot on the ground, banging his knee on the underside of the desk.

‘God Almighty!’ He rubbed his knee, more in excitement than pain. At last. Something.

He rechecked the tapes from the businesses in the complex, but they were all located around the corner from the cinema. At the front there was nothing to see after the cinema had been shut at eleven and the gates locked. Why not? Laura’s body had to have been left there some time after everything closed for the night. Maybe the football club had footage from earlier that night. The tape he’d been sent began at six a.m. Or they might have cameras with different angles. He lifted the phone and called the club caretaker.

‘Did you see the weather that night?’ the caretaker grunted. ‘We had a power outage. Must have been caused by the heavy rain.’

‘You have nothing before six a.m.?’

‘Nah. I came in and reset the trip switches.’

‘Any other cameras?’

‘There’s one at the rear. It faces our car park behind the clubhouse. Not much use to you. All were down.’

‘Thanks anyway.’ McKeown hung up.

The killer had been inadvertently lucky. It was too much of a stretch to think he had caused the power outage himself, wasn’t it? But they couldn’t take the risk of ignoring the possibility. He called the electricity company and got confirmation that the power had been out at that location for a number of hours.

He rewound the tape to the little boy with the school bag on his back.

‘Who are you, son? Can you tell us anything?’

This was a development. He’d have to inform the boss. An alert would be issued for the boy. And then he had anotherthought. Why was a young child out alone at that hour of the morning?

‘What’s your name?’ the little girl asked as she licked soup from her spoon.

Shannon stopped in the middle of the floor, hands loaded with dirty dishes. They must have been on the table since breakfast time, because cereal had set rock hard to the bowls. The man, his face dour and down, had let her out of the room. Without a word, he’d pointed to the mess, gone out the back door and locked it.

Her memory was beginning to return. A scene had flashed in front of her in full technicolour when the man had entered the room and flicked on the light switch. It came to her in movie frames. He had given her a lift last night. She’d got into his car. Willingly, it seemed. And then… what? He hadn’t looked scary then, but now he did.

Another scene flashed up. She’d tried talking to him, begging him to let her out of the car, but he’d struck her with the back of his hand. She must have passed out. She recalled waking up as he parked the car. Then he’d clamped a cloth to her mouth and she remembered nothing else, until now.

Was she supposed to clean the kitchen? If only she hadn’t such a raging fever. She felt like she was about to pass out. Glancing at the little girl, she estimated she was about seven or eight. Scarecrow-looking. Angry spots had erupted on her face. Chickenpox, like Davy had. Maybe she should try to make this child her ally. To help get her out of here.

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