The house hunt, p.20
The House Hunt, page 20
I found myself staring at a photograph of a handsome young man in outdoor gear. His hair was windswept. His skin was flushed. He was smiling with a moorland scene behind him. I got the impression the photograph had been taken during a hike.
Seeing him increased the churning in my blood.
I didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t as simple or as concrete as that. But I felt something. A stirring. An intangible sense of a connection, somehow.
A pressure was building in my head, like the beginning of a migraine. A strange tingling across my skin.
And then a bright flash behind my eyes. Stinging. Blinding.
And . . . something.
‘What is it?’ Donovan asked. ‘What’s happening to you?’
I groaned. Pressed the heel of my hand against the side of my head.
I didn’t want to white-out again.
I couldn’t.
But I also sensed I was close to something.
‘Talk to me,’ Donovan said.
I bared my teeth and squinted at the photograph again.
The man featured in it – Oliver – looked tall and physically imposing. Like the blurred, dark figure who’d attacked me.
With the metallic rasping voice.
‘I’ve been watching you.’
Another painful flash.
And a flicker of darkness behind it.
In my mind’s eye I glimpsed a smudged and indistinct vision of a face, of movement, of someone crowding in on me.
Was it possible that Oliver had been the man who’d assaulted me in the bathroom?
‘Louise?’
I winced and massaged my temples.
I didn’t know if it was possible, but if it had been Oliver, then it could explain something else. Part of the reason the attack had been so frightening was because it had been apparently motiveless. But perhaps it had been inexplicable because the man who’d attacked me had been tragically unbalanced. Perhaps he’d lashed out because it had been the precursor to a more terminal crisis.
‘How do you know he was pushed?’ I asked.
He tensed. ‘You’re suggesting he jumped?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s where the police got to. Oliver had some issues. A history of clinical depression. They decided he could have got the blood under his fingernails another way.’
My way, I thought. With what happened to me in that bathroom.
‘So they stopped looking.’ His jaw stiffened as he put his phone away, still gauging me intently as I stopped rubbing my temples and lowered my hands. ‘Nobody’s been looking into this properly until I got back from my posting.’
He twirled the knife around some more, the blade grinding against granite.
‘But I know he didn’t jump. I know he was working through his problems. And he had a lot to live for. Everything a young guy could possibly want. He’d just moved into an apartment he shared with his sister. My sister, too, as it happens. That’s why I know he had to have been pushed. Because Oliver was my little brother.’
81
I got up off my stool.
I didn’t know why.
Maybe I sensed the situation was even more volatile now that it was personal to Donovan.
Or perhaps I instinctively understood that I needed to alter the dynamic. Pull his focus elsewhere.
Which I did by accidentally toppling my stool as I climbed off it.
I slumped and nearly fell, but Sam grabbed me and caught the stool at the same time.
‘Sit down,’ Donovan told me.
I didn’t say no but I didn’t do as he asked.
I pulled clear of Sam and reached for the countertop, moving along to my right, away from the end of the island unit where Donovan was watching me from.
My head felt too heavy on my shoulders. My temples were pulsing. I felt sickly and hot.
The apartment.
The party.
The scratch on my arm.
It all made a strange sense until it didn’t.
I tried to concentrate. Tried to push past the blockage in my mind and remember what had happened to me more clearly.
But I couldn’t.
The blockage remained stubbornly in place.
In my mind’s eye, it was a white elastic film. Opaque, with a hint of shadows moving on the other side, but the details remaining too shady and vague for me to decipher.
I could push on the film, poke at it, but it always stretched and held. I couldn’t pierce it to see what was on the other side.
One day that film may just snap.
Sam had told me that. What he hadn’t told me was if I would snap with it when it did.
It felt like there was a crazed whirring in my brain. A febrile energy. A humming like the drum of a tumble dryer spinning out of control.
Oliver. Oliver Downing.
I repeated the name in my head but it made no difference.
It meant nothing to me.
I moved further along the countertop, hand over hand, shimmying backwards to pass the next stool along.
I was getting nearer to the end of the island unit. Closer to the Crittall doors behind me and the garden beyond that.
But when I snatched a look at the doors I saw something that chilled the blood in my veins.
The key that had been there earlier was missing. He must have taken it, too.
I couldn’t bolt out into the back garden and scream for help.
And even if I got out there, I couldn’t escape to raise the alarm. The fence panels we’d installed on top of the walls were too high.
‘You know,’ Donovan said, switching his attention to Sam, ‘my brother was a student at LSE. Economics, not psychology. You ever meet?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I just wondered. Because he had some issues, like I said. And that got me thinking: where might Oli have gone for help? And then I found out about your support groups. I actually sent an email about it. Maybe you saw it?’
‘We’re not able to discuss the support groups. University policy. There are privacy rules.’
‘That’s pretty much what the reply I got told me. The reply came from an administrator in your department. I tried talking to her on the phone, explaining the situation, even met her in person. She told me anyone who joined your support groups had to sign a consent form but she wouldn’t let me see them.’
Sam swallowed. He really didn’t seem to get where Donovan was going with this.
‘But I’m the persistent type and I waited until one of your support groups finished up. I thought about talking to you directly but not right away. I watched you instead, followed you home. No real reason except habit. I’m used to gathering intelligence. Usually a lot of it is wasted. First thing I noticed was your house was for sale. Second thing I noticed was it wasn’t just you living here.’
He reached into the hip pocket of his trousers and removed what looked like a crumpled piece of paper. It was light blue with a glossy finish. Folded until it was about the size of a credit card.
He flung it towards me.
It twirled through the air, over the sink, hit the countertop and bounced and skidded my way.
‘What is this?’
‘Take a look.’
I exchanged a lingering glance with Sam.
He was still holding on to the stool, a little absently, almost as if he’d forgotten he had caught it. I saw a deep line form in the middle of his eyebrows. A flicker of disquiet at the corners of his mouth.
I reached for the piece of paper and carefully unfolded it with shaking hands.
‘That was in Oliver’s bedroom,’ Donovan told me. ‘His things got boxed up after he died. I was the first one to pay attention to it.’
It was a flyer for a business.
The stock was high quality. The font was simple but elegant.
It had been folded over so many times there were multiple creases. The edges were scruffy and furred.
Louise Patton Home & Interior Design
There was a photograph of . . . me on the front.
A headshot.
Only I looked quite different. My hair was long and tied up in a ponytail. I appeared to be wearing a businesslike blouse and blazer, a broad and confident smile.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What is it?’ Sam asked.
I held it up between my fingers and thumbs and showed him. There was also a website address and a telephone number on the front.
The reverse was blank.
After looking at it for a few seconds, Sam gave Donovan the same confused look that had formed on my face.
‘Did you do this?’ I asked him.
Donovan simply watched me. His lips had thinned. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was concentrating on something or if he was suppressing another dose of pain.
‘Is this supposed to convince me of something?’ I continued. ‘Because it doesn’t.’
‘The URL for that website is dead,’ Donovan told me. ‘The mobile number is disconnected.’
Sam shifted a little to Donovan’s right and Donovan immediately lifted the knife and pointed it at him, twisting the blade sideways in the air.
‘How about you put down the stool, Sam?’
Sam looked at it, nonplussed, then slowly put down the stool and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Donovan returned his focus to me, drawing small circles in the air with the point of the knife.
‘I did some digging into Louise Patton. I spoke to some of her former clients. One of them was pleased but a little frustrated to hear from me. They said she’d just been starting on a job for them when she stopped responding to their messages. Eventually they gave up and hired someone else.’
‘This isn’t mine,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where you got this. I’ve never seen it before.’
‘The client also told me they’d gone so far as to look for Louise at her day job. They said she worked part-time at a furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road.’
I didn’t say anything to that.
It didn’t make any sense.
‘I took that flyer to the same shop,’ he continued. ‘Showed it to the manager. She confirmed you’d worked there. But she said you quit. By text message. She said she’d tried contacting you. Left a voicemail. Never got an answer. She’s had staff who have treated her that way before. People can be funny about quitting.’
I shook my head.
I had left my job when I’d moved in with Sam but I’d spoken with Corrine, my manager. She’d wished me well and told me I was always welcome back in the future if things didn’t work out for me.
‘Ask me when the text message was sent,’ Donovan said.
I glanced at Sam again.
There was something else in his face now.
Not just worry but a puzzled look of distress and disquiet.
‘No?’ Donovan said. ‘Then I’ll tell you. It was sent the day after my brother was pushed off that roof.’
82
I let go of the flyer.
It fluttered downwards onto the countertop as I retreated further back around the end of the kitchen island.
I didn’t understand this.
I didn’t know what he was hoping to achieve.
‘Lucy?’ Sam asked.
There was a different quality in his voice. An uncertain modulation.
I looked at him and immediately felt something inside me begin to disintegrate.
The puzzled and scared expression on his face had developed into something more like panic and doubt.
‘Lucy, what is this?’ He reached up and clutched at his hair. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s a stunt,’ I told him. ‘A lie.’
I stared furiously at Donovan, ignoring the flyer, daring him to say something more.
‘Louise,’ Donovan said, fixing on me doggedly. ‘Her name is Louise.’
Tears filled my eyes.
The humming inside my skull was getting louder, more intense. It wasn’t just making it hard for me to hear my own thoughts, it was making it difficult for me to trust them, too.
I didn’t like the way Donovan was watching me. He wouldn’t look away. He seemed to be using every trick he could think of to apply more and more pressure, the same way he’d relentlessly squeezed my wrist upstairs.
‘Sam, he’s lying.’
But another piece of my heart seemed to crumple and flake away when I saw the way Sam was looking at me.
He was clearly anguished and upset and scared.
But it was also apparent that he was having difficulty trusting me.
And he was glancing between myself and Donovan repeatedly, as if he was asking himself why – if I was really who I said I was, if I really didn’t know what was happening here – Donovan had ended up inside our home.
‘Lucy?’ He stopped himself, closing his eyes for a second, as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. ‘Look, if you have something to tell me, if there’s any truth to this at all . . . Jesus.’ He lowered his hand from his hair and cupped it to the back of his neck. ‘I mean . . . he has a knife.’
Four small words but they said so much more.
Because it wasn’t just Sam’s way of reminding me Donovan had a knife. It was also his way of saying that he didn’t want Donovan to use that knife on me, or on him.
Especially if I’d been deceiving him.
Particularly if, by telling the truth, I could somehow lessen the danger we were in.
He has a knife.
And that was the whole point, wasn’t it?
Donovan had the knife so he had the power.
He could say what he liked about me, no matter how outrageous, and the knife would lend credence to his words.
It could turn me into a liar in Sam’s eyes.
A murderer.
A fake.
Which is why I reached down, opened the wine cooler in front of me and removed a bottle of white wine by its neck.
83
I raised the wine bottle up next to my shoulder like a club and stepped out from behind the end of the kitchen island. One long pace until I was facing Donovan with nothing between us except two or three big strides.
‘That’s a bad idea,’ Donovan told me.
It probably was.
If I was thinking logically, if I was calm, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
But I wasn’t thinking logically. I wasn’t calm.
I was exhausted.
And frightened.
And I couldn’t take a second more of this.
‘Put the bottle down. Take a moment to think about everything I’ve been telling you. Think about Oli.’
I didn’t put the bottle down.
The green glass was beaded with moisture. It was cool and slick in my fist.
And I’d done too much thinking already.
Donovan sized me up for a careful moment, then slowly held the knife out in front of him. He was favouring his right side, using his other arm to cover up his wound.
‘You don’t want to do this,’ he told me.
Tremors coursed through me. I felt spent and exposed, as if I was standing in a gale.
The open door to the basement was behind me. I could feel the darkness oozing out from within, coiling around my ankles, dragging me back.
I took a small step.
‘Lucy, be careful,’ Sam warned.
His voice was tight and pitchy. He looked very unsure and very afraid.
Donovan half twisted to face him, the knife moving with him, an appraising cast to his face.
Sam slowly reached out for the kitchen stool again. Fitting his hands around the wooden seat, he jerked it a few centimetres off the ground and held it warily, angling the legs towards Donovan as if he hoped to use it like a shield.
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to him. But you need to get out of our house.’
The wine bottle was wavering in my fist. My arm radiated a shimmery energy. I took another small step forwards and watched as Donovan gauged me again, peering at me as if he was looking through a thick mist.
‘I can’t do that,’ he told me carefully. I hated how he was talking to me. As if he was the calm and reasonable one and I was badly overreacting. ‘I go when you go. We’ll be leaving here together. You’re coming with me.’
How, I wondered? Where? Because people would see if he tried to take me away from here. Even if he waited until the middle of the night, he’d be risking a witness spotting us. And I was not going to leave with him willingly. Not if I could help it. I’d rather shout and scream and take my chances.
And what about Sam?
I go when you go.
Did that mean he thought he could leave Sam behind? And Bethany, too?
‘All day, every day, my mother torments herself,’ he told me. ‘She asks herself why Oli jumped. What did she do wrong? What did she miss? She’s suffering, too. It’s killing her. I’ve seen her shrink away from life, grow so fragile. Oli wasn’t the only victim of what happened that night. So you’re going to come with me, you’re going to look her in the eye, and you’re going to tell her the truth. That’s what I want. You’re going to give her the answers she needs.’
‘I don’t have the answers you want,’ I told him.
‘You do. You will. We’re going to go soon.’
‘No.’
I lunged towards him, swinging for his face.
The bottle flitted through the air.
He ducked backwards with a bark of pain.
Then impact.
An explosion of glass and wine.
I’d missed him and hit the hood over the range cooker.
Wine doused the stove top. It foamed and fizzed.
Chunks of glass clattered down.
My arm went light.
I was still clutching the bottle neck but now all that was left was a short, jagged curve.
I stared at it.
Donovan looked at it, too.
I saw the anguish cross his face.
I was pretty sure he was thinking of how I’d stabbed him with the shard from the jug, maybe also calculating that his long arms and the blade of the hatchet knife would give him much more reach than the broken snub of the bottle would give me.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You’re making a mistake. You need to—’
