Notes on a murder, p.1
Notes on a Murder, page 1
NOTES ON A MURDER
B P WALTER
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author Q&A
The Locked Attic
The Locked Attic: Extract
Thank you for reading…
About the Author
Also by B P Walter
Credits
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About the Publisher
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2023
Copyright © B P Walter 2023
Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Cover photographs © Henry Steadman/Arcangel Images (ink); Shutterstock.com
B P Walter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008618711
Ebook Edition © November 2023 ISBN: 9780008618704
Version: 2023-11-21
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
― The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,
Edgar Allan Poe
We have such sights to show you!
― The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker
Prologue
I stood very still, trying to calm my racing mind. Trying to focus. Trying to fully understand the choice before me.
The light from the setting sun bathed the room in gold, shining in from the window behind me. The glasses on the table glinted. The smooth polished surfaces gleamed and then, as the sun continued its descent, started to dim.
I can’t stay here too long, I told myself. I needed to decide. I knew whatever choice I made wouldn’t just affect the person who died. It would change me too. I’d already gone through so much, seen so much. Everything that had happened over that summer felt like it had led me to that moment. The moment I truly held the powers of life and death in my hands.
In the end, I had to take a look. I stepped out into the hall that led towards the veranda. I could see my three choices before me: the person who had brought me here, the elderly man who was nearing the end of his life, or you. You, who had occupied my thoughts, reshaped my existence and stolen my heart.
I could have stayed there for hours. Deliberating. Considering my options. Putting off making my decision. But I decided to put a stop to it.
I made my choice.
I prepared the coffee, placing the steaming mugs on a tray. Then I opened the small vial of clear liquid I’d been given.
Less than an hour later, I would have to face the consequences of what I had done. Watch as you closed your eyes, knowing it meant I would never again see their piercing blue depths staring into me. And on my journey across the water away from the island back to the mainland, all I would see was you. The person who entered my world and turned it upside down.
The person I killed.
Chapter One
NOW
I’m sitting by the window when I see you. I had been enjoying a quiet moment of early morning reading with my breakfast, but one of the other guests here – a young woman – got a bit too chatty for my liking, so I decided to relocate. I’m not an unfriendly person, as you know – at least, I don’t think I am – but I do like my own company. I’ve always been good by myself. Good at coping with things, making decisions, sorting out problems. Or I was, until things became difficult and I ended up here.
It’s another cold, misty October day and I’ve gravitated towards the foyer after breakfast for a view of the impressive front lawn and drive. Although I prefer summer, I enjoy the look of the deep, dense mist lying low over the grounds. The scattered dark-brown carpet of leaves across the grass. It’s both haunting and beautiful, in its own way. I’m on a comfortably padded window seat and move my gaze to the well-manicured signage marking the entrance: Wood View Wellness Centre. I’ve found focusing my attention on little things – like nature, the view, the weather – a good way to keep my urges at bay. My addiction. The pills I’d purposefully left at home when I came here, locked in a desk drawer, hopefully never to be opened again.
The building is curved, so from my position at the end of the foyer, I can see both the front of the building and down the gravel drive, which disappears into the mist as if there is nothing beyond. Complete oblivion. That’s where the car comes from. Oblivion. One moment there’s nothing to disturb the view, then shining headlights are breaking through the darkness. It’s a taxi, with stickers on the back windows, and I notice it has a dent in the side. It looks rather shabby and ordinary, in contrast to the luxury of this place.
But the person who gets out is anything but shabby and ordinary. Despite the distance, it’s clear that your beauty is still there, ready to be appreciated. It’s nearly twenty years since I first saw you. Back when we were both twenty-one. Blonde hair, lighter than mine, not curly but not straight either, framing your face – a picture of precise, sculpted perfection.
I almost fall off my seat, and clutch the corner of one of the open curtains, feeling every muscle in my body tense. I hear a ripping sound as I pull on the material, but I don’t look up. I don’t care.
It can’t be you.
You can’t be here.
The secretary at the front desk has been overseeing the refilling of a water cooler, quietly lecturing a younger member of staff on the process. I see her glance my way as she walks back round to the desk. She pauses. ‘Are you OK, sir? Is there anything…anything I can get you?’
I shake my head quickly, blinking fast, hoping the crisis within me isn’t as visible as it feels.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, as I get up, loosening my grip on the curtain and letting it fall. ‘I’m fine.’
I walk slowly but purposefully out of the foyer.
I’m not fine. Nothing could possibly be fine. Not when one is seeing dead people. Or rather person, singular. A person I watched die in front of me on a hot summer’s evening on a Greek island, twenty years ago.
Chapter Two
THEN
The party was in full swing when my brother Douglas arrived home. Looking around him, he grinned at me. ‘Now this is more of a party.’
‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘I think I may have invited too many.’
‘How do you know all these people?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You seem to spend most of your time alone in your room or wandering around the grounds, now suddenly you manage to put on this different hat and be king of the bloody ball. Well, you’d better try to dilute the numbers before Mum and Dad get home.’
I pulled a face. ‘Finn and Stephan brought their girlfriends and they brought a group of their friends. It’s a bit awkward; some of them I’ve never even met before.’
Douglas smiled at me sympathetically. He knew I got a little nervous around large groups of people I didn’t know. ‘And anyway,’ I continued, ‘what am I supposed to do? Throw people out? I just wanted a small get-together before we’re kidnapped and forced to spend the rest of the summer in Greece.’
We walked through the hall towards a group who had gathered in the library.
‘Oliver, I must break it to you, but you don’t have to come – I think being twenty-one allows you to stay home alone, you know?’
Someone turned up the volume on the stereo from within the connecting living room. Douglas pulled me into the library, laughing, and tried to get me to dance (I hated dancing) and when I pulled back and shook my head he stopped. ‘Actually, we should talk,’ he said. ‘Can we go outside?’
I frowned at him. ‘Er, yeah, why?’
Douglas didn’t say any more – he just opened the French windows, saying, ‘Excuse us, sorry,’ to a girl we’d both known from our schooldays who had been trying unsuccessfully to catch Douglas’s eye ever since he’d walked in. Ignoring her slightly put-out expression, he led me out onto the patio.
‘What’s this about?’ I asked, frowning at him.
‘I…just…I don’t know…I wanted to warn you about Mum and Dad. Things have been tense since I got back from London.’
‘Well, it’s probably due to you losing your job and being chucked out of your flatshare,’ I said, my memory flitting back to my mother’s phone call a few weeks ago, when she complained at me for nearly an hour as I desperately tried to focus on my final university project.
‘I wasn’t chucked out, I was asked to leave because weird Jeremy decided to move in his stoner girlfriend.’
‘OK, OK,’ I said, feeling impatient.
‘It’s not just me, honestly, it’s something to do with Dad. He’s worried about something, I can tell. He’s never been secretive about his work. But he’s now having a lot of hushed phone conversations, or going out for long periods of time, even at weekends, and coming back looking worried and irritable and snapping at Mum, which then makes her upset and she gets into one of her states. You know what she’s like.’
I sighed. ‘Everyone has work stress. Maybe he’s worried about money?’
Douglas raises an eyebrow. ‘If he is, that would be bad news for us.’
I turn to go back inside. ‘Our inheritance isn’t our inheritance until it’s our inheritance.’
Douglas tutted. ‘When did you become all grown-up and understanding?’
‘I’m sure everything’s fine,’ I said, ‘but I’ll pack plenty of books and suncream, that way I can just ditch them for the beach if their company in the villa gets too stressful.’
Things ended up getting stressful sooner rather than later. As Douglas had predicted, our parents arrived home from their theatre trip to London less than impressed to find the house filled with friends roaming about, drinking beer, getting off with each other and (the worst crime, based on my father’s reaction) leaving lit cigarettes balanced precariously on priceless antique furniture.
‘Do you know how much that sideboard cost?’ my father bellowed, pointing in the direction of the library.
‘Don’t shout, Hugo,’ my mother said, nudging an empty Budweiser bottle aside with her foot, staring at it as if it were a particularly horrid insect.
‘There is a piece of furniture in that room,’ he continued, ‘that is probably worth more than a small house and I found a youth in the library using it as a bloody ashtray! It is now sporting three,’ he held up fingers to support his point, ‘cigarette burns.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to look suitably chastised, then added, ‘How was the Globe? Was Shakespeare worth the four-hundred-year wait?’
‘Don’t give me that cheek!’ he roared. The remaining guests who hadn’t vacated the house yet rushed past him. I noticed the young woman from earlier shooting a regretful look at Douglas, who had draped himself over an occasional chair nearby, before she hurried out the front door.
‘Oh, I quite liked the Globe,’ my mother said, surprisingly brightly. ‘Very good seats. Although I’ve never really understood Henry V as much as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I told one of the ticket people they should do that one next.’
‘Bloody waste of money,’ my father barked at her. ‘The whole country’s going to ruin with those new smirking socialists in charge. And talking of money,’ he rounded on me again, ‘you can forget about us bankrolling you through a master’s if this is the way you act when you come home. Christ, it’s like you’re still sixteen.’
I’d finally had enough of my father. I turned and walked away from them all, up to the bedroom I’d had since I was a child. Once there I slammed one of the posts of my bed out of anger, tugged off my clothes and fell on top of the covers. I was cross with myself for not predicting this would be how the evening would play out, cross with my parents, cross with the world. Nothing ever changed, I thought as I snatched my pillow and dragged it over my head.
Chapter Three
THEN
In my bad temper, I was half-expecting to lie awake for hours, but I ended up drifting off to sleep very quickly. In what felt like seconds I was being shaken awake by Douglas saying, ‘Oliver, get up.’
I blearily looked at my brother, my vision hazy. ‘What do you want? What time is it?’
‘I didn’t know you were still asleep,’ he said. ‘We’re about to leave.’
‘What?’ I said, jolting upright.
‘Get dressed and downstairs as quick as you can. Dad’s about to leave you behind. I woke up late too, but I didn’t know they’d just left you sleeping.’
‘I haven’t packed,’ I said, pulling myself to my feet, ‘or at least haven’t finished.’
‘I’ll go and delay them,’ Douglas said as he left the room.
I threw on some clothes as fast as I could, then tugged open my suitcase that I’d half-packed the day before, checked I had my passport and then went to my chest of drawers and threw handfuls of shirts and shorts into my case, along with a stack of random books from my desk.
I found my parents in the entrance hall standing at the foot of the stairs, exactly where I’d left them the night before. If it hadn’t been for the blazing sunlight and their change of clothes, it would have been as though no time had passed.
‘Why did no one wake me?’ I grumbled, letting my suitcase thud down the stairs behind me.
‘Oh thank goodness you’re here, Oliver,’ my mother said. She was in the middle of fastening a long coat, as if she were heading to a Nordic forest in winter and not Santorini in the summer. To say she always felt the cold would be an understatement. ‘Your father kept distracting me when I went to wake you.’
‘I didn’t think you wanted to come,’ my father said in a faux-conversational sort of way.
‘When did I say that?’ I asked, immediately irritated.
My father let go of his own travel case, letting it hit the floor with a loud clatter. ‘I’ve reached the end of my tether. I had to deal with this sort of humiliation all the time when you were at school. I know you say it was just a phase and you were led astray by a bad group of boys and the like, but it wasn’t fun to get letters home and phone calls saying you’d gone walkabout in the woods at night or were sneaking around the library after dark – it played merry hell with your mother’s nerves.’ I could see a red flush starting to illuminate his face in a way that was almost comical, his moustache starting to twitch like a character from a comic strip. I wasn’t in the mood for laughing, though.
‘Don’t blame me,’ my mother said, looking mortally offended.
‘I’m not at school anymore, Dad, I’m twenty-one,’ I said, feeling the stinging prickle of anger rush over me. ‘And I’m tired of you still acting like I’m a child you can tick off. Douglas was right – you really are even more tetchy than usual.’
I saw the surprise at my words in my father’s eyes. Then they narrowed, hardened and furious, and turned to look at Douglas, who was standing by the front door, just in time to see him mouth What the fuck? at me.
