Page 47 of Her Deadly Promise

‘Did you know about Nathan?’

Nadia nodded. ‘Yes, and no. She mentioned she was seeing someone in passing but she didn’t tell me much about him. She had a lot of short-term relationships, so I rarely got introduced to her boyfriends. Do you want to get a drink at the leisure centre?’ Nadia was well aware that her hour on the court was up, and she’d have to make way for the tennis players that were loitering on the other side of the fence. The attendant was grimacing while staring at his watch, obviously wanting her to hurry.

‘No. I’m okay.’

‘I’m really sorry for your loss. Please pass on my thoughts to your family and little Kayden. And tell Kayden that William is missing him.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Maybe she had it coming. Whatever Billie had turned in to, I certainly didn’t know her any more.’ She cleared her throat and grabbed her gym bag. ‘I have to go.’

As Serena ran off the court, Nadia called after her but, in a flash, the woman was gone. Serena’s words stuck in her thoughts. To say that Billie had it coming was unforgivable but then again, so was Nadia’s spreading of Billie’s secrets. Billie had been let down by everyone. Billie had also let Serena down. Ed had let her down. Nadia pondered about how imperfect humans were and she placed herself at the top of the list.

She tried to call Ed again. He should have been out of the police station by now or even home. She called the home phone and his other mobile and there was no answer. Swallowing, she wondered if he’d gone to see Meera, where they’d be cooking up more plans to ruin Nadia’s life. She opened the tracking app on her phone, but it was showing that the last place he’d been was Meera’s mother’s road, then the tracker went offline. Her tablet had finally run out of charge. She checked her fitness tracking watch. She could go home, take a long shower and have a rest until she had to pick William up. In the meantime, she’d keep trying Ed. At the very least, she’d annoy him into answering. He was meant to call her to tell her how he got on at the police station. She should have known better than expect him to do anything he said he would. Her phone beeped.

I know your secret!

‘We need the court,’ the leisure centre attendant called out.

Panic rising in her throat, she gasped for breath as she hurried off it. She needed to get home, now.

‘You okay?’ one of the tennis players asked as she passed.

She ignored him and continued to run. There was only one secret she didn’t want to come out and the messenger knew what it was. Face red in the burning sun, she leaned over and fought for breath. She had a feeling something horrible was going to happen, but she couldn’t work out what or when. Only two people knew that secret, her and Ed. This pretending had to stop. This game had to stop. It was killing her.

She had to get home and find that bloodied knife, the one that screamed guilty. That was her only way out of this huge mess. If she didn’t find it, the consequences were unthinkable. She had blood on her hands, there was no denying that fact. Ed knew and Ed was making her pay. Holding her hand over her mouth, she heaved slightly as she relived the moment when the tip of the knife pierced into soft flesh. Gasping, she ran towards her car as she tried to rid her mind of the bloody image that was haunting her. Blood on your hands, blood on your hands. Her inner voice wouldn’t shut up. It was right and Ed was making sure she knew it.

THIRTY-TWO

NADIA

She slammed the front door and headed straight to the garage. Nadia had searched it repeatedly for the knife, but she’d spotted a little bit of loose plaster against one of the walls. As for the house, she’d searched every nook and cranny. Checking her phone, she could see that Ed hadn’t tried to call her but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be back any minute.

She flapped her arms, trying to prise her T-shirt from her damp underarms. The coolness of the house made them feel stickier. Right now, having a shower and a change of clothes wasn’t on her immediate agenda. Time was of the essence. Ed had piled a whole stack of boxes against the back wall. She pushed William’s little bike out of the way, then Ed’s racer. Peering into the box on the top, she could see that it was full of his corporate brochures. As she slid it off the box underneath, it crashed to the concrete floor, catalogues splaying everywhere. Next box, she slid it off and placed it to the side, dumping it on the catalogues.

The boxes weren’t worth her time. What she needed to do was to expose that wall. Three more boxes later and with several piled up, she stared at the grey wall. Its stone paint as cold looking as what was probably secreted in the wall. If she could get hold of the knife, she could clean her prints off it and dump it somewhere far away. Maybe she’d drive to another county and bury it in the woods. Had Ed left the photos with the knife, the evidence he’d so proudly dangled under her nose?

She began to pick at the plaster, but her nails weren’t strong enough to dig much out. She’d be there all day. A droplet of perspiration dripped from her nose. Grabbing a screwdriver from the workbench, she began to stab at the wall and a chunk of plaster flew out. Squinting, she leaned in close to try and see what was buried in the hole. There was only one way to find out what was there and that was to slip a couple of fingers in, see if she could feel the cold metal tip of a knife. As she pressed her soft flesh against the jagged plaster, a slight cut began to trickle down her wrist and she grimaced. All she could feel was paper.

Damn, it wasn’t paper she was after. Slipping it out, she unrolled the scroll. Shaking, she stared at the emoji, placed the note on a box and cried. A laughing emoji with the words ‘Got you’ written underneath. He’d played her again. She kicked the empty boxes and trod on them with everything she had, pounding on the cardboard in her trainers as she screamed with rage. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,’ she yelled.

One of the doors in the house creaked. She held her sobs. ‘Ed?’

Creeping out of the garage she entered the utility room and went back into the kitchen. Another creak, but this time it was coming from the snug.

‘Ed, I’m not laughing.’ She was distraught and his game playing had to stop. If it was his intention to drive her insane, it was working. Maybe she should turn herself in, tell the police and admit her wrongs. Maybe they’d actually believe her side of the story. Billie had been such a good friend and Nadia knew she had been awful to the woman. How had things gone so wrong between them? ‘Ed?’

She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, then placed her hand on the wall outside the snug, smearing it with a drizzle of blood. As she opened the snug door, Fluffball darted out with a meow, heading straight for the cat flap. It was no one. The cat had been trapped all day in the snug. She pushed the door open and checked the floor for little accidents. That’s when she spotted the mess in the corner of the room.

There was nothing she could do now but get ready to collect William from school. Ed would have to come home eventually. First, she needed to clean up before the snug began to really smell in the heat. She jogged back to the utility to grab a bucket and some disinfectant, that’s when she spotted that the garage light was off. Had she turned it off? Slowly, she leaned in and peered around the dark room. Hands trembling, she leaned further and reached for the light switch. As the room lit up, she could see that the brochures were still strewn all over the floor and the boxes were as she left them, all crushed and stomped on. It felt as if the hole in the wall was an all-seeing eye that was watching her intently, telling her that it knew what she’d done.

Her breath came in short bursts as she stepped in and gazed around. ‘Ed, you’re scaring me.’ The light went off and the door to the utility slammed closed. Before her eyes could adjust to the tiny strip of light that came from the bottom of the garage, she felt a puff of warm breath on her neck, then a flash of white-hot pain hit her head.

As she fell to the concrete floor, open-mouthed in the plaster that she’d dug out, she tried to crawl along the ground. Grabbing anything she could reach. Her attacker sat on her back, splaying her flat as her head pounded. Her aggressor leaned over and moved the stray hairs away from her ears and whispered, ‘Nadia, you know that secrets have to come out, right? Billie’s have and now it’s your turn.’ Her attacker had to mean the knife. The one she’d failed to find.

‘Please, don’t hurt me.’ She knew exactly who that voice belonged to, but her strength had gone with that hard blow. She knew she needed to get up and try anything to stop what was happening, but she had no fight in her. That blow had taken her completely off guard. All she could do was think of William as another sickening blow came. The light of the doorway faded to black, and she wept as she thought of her little boy. They came for Billie, now they’d come for her.

THIRTY-THREE

Gina stood at the head of the incident room in front of the boards as she tied up their afternoon briefing. ‘I’ve heard back from O’Connor who is still in attendance at the post-mortem. Nothing further to add that will help our case. Nothing good has come of the CCTV footage outside the library but it barely covered the one path. We know we are still looking for the murder weapon and no searches have turned it up yet, which means it’s still out there. All units are still on the lookout for Shaun Brock. He is currently our prime suspect and there is a warrant out for his arrest. Anything else?’

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