Читать книгу Her Sister’s Secret - E. V. Seymour - Страница 20

“YES?” A lorry driver had just cut me up and boxed me in. I was so bloody strung out and exhausted, I’d failed to screen the call.

“I owe you a huge apology.”

His voice was the equivalent of chucking a bucket of crushed ice over my head. I checked my rear-view, flicked on an indicator, shoved my foot down hard and pulled out. Fuck you. Let Mr Noble dig himself out of the hole he’d dug.

“It was unforgivable.”

“I’m not in the business of granting absolution.” To be fair, I had one too many sins of my own.

“I completely understand but I wanted to apologise for my rude behaviour and say how sorry I am for your loss.” The sentiment sounded respectful and genuinely meant. Creep. “You caught me unawares, I’m afraid. I know what it’s like to lose someone.”

I only felt marginally less pissed off. I definitely didn’t appreciate him doing an emotional number on me.

“Long time ago.” And yet from the tone of his voice, I reckoned it still felt like yesterday to him. Is this how I would feel in ten or twenty-years’ time?

“Does it get better?” I wanted him to assure me that it did, that this raw, helpless feeling would one day disappear, that the guilt would shift too.

He paused, appeared to choose his words with care. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise, but you never get over it. In time, it doesn’t feel so powerful and overwhelming, but the pain is still with you. Always. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of.” I had no idea.

“I’m calling about my grandmother’s house clearance.”

I pulled a face. What a selfish prick.

“It’s pretty small but she had a lot of stuff.”

Stuff was right up my street. A stranger’s crap my bread and butter, I was the human equivalent of a magpie. Occasionally, I unearthed gems. But Holy Christ, what was I thinking? My sister was dead. My parents needed me. Nate needed me. I needed to fathom why Scarlet would have the name and address of a murdered man zipped inside her rucksack.

About to open my mouth to reject his business offer, he reeled off an address on the Wyche, a village and suburb of Malvern, the name derived from the fact that it was once part of an Iron Age salt route. “Drop by any time after five. Any day this week is fine.” With which, he killed the call.

“How did it go, this morning?” I was with Mum, after driving straight to my parents, following my alarming trip to London.

“Grim. Painful. Horrible.”

She looked so bereft, I felt bad for letting the side down. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

She made no comment, simply carried on as if she were talking to the dead. “We took her favourite roses from the garden. The verge was a sea of flowers. She was loved by so many. Such a bright, intelligent girl.”

Mum was right about that. Out of the three of us, Scarlet had been the only one to go to university and get a degree. Zach, who was extremely bright, could have surpassed her academically, if only he’d applied himself, but drugs and taking the piss came before education. Me? I’d floundered. Briefly consumed by my own sense of inadequacy, I almost missed Mum’s next remark.

“Most were for the police officer that died.” A deep note of recrimination etched her voice. “And did they have to be so awful?”

“Who?”

“That man’s colleagues. We felt like lepers.”

Dad’s words echoed in my ears. It could have been a friend of Richard Bowen. “Feelings are running high right now. It will pass.” I said neutrally.

“Will it? I know how we were made to feel. I was there. You weren’t.”

Red-faced, I stammered an apology.

“Oh Molly,” she said abruptly contrite. “It’s me who should be sorry. We mustn’t fall out with each other.”

I blindly agreed. I had no such reservations about my brother.

“Truly, I’m glad you weren’t with us this morning,” she continued, trying to make amends. “I still can’t understand what happened.”

A thought flickered in my temple. “Did you see tyre marks on the road?” I needed to know if Scarlet had tried to brake or swerve, basically to avoid what happened.

“None on Scarlet’s side. It’s odd, isn’t it?”

Scarlet’s death, or rather her life, had created questions with no slick answers for all of us. My sister wouldn’t be the first person to die and leave a legacy of secrets behind, yet the questions that remained over a murdered man, a loan asked for and rejected, together with the carnage in my carport that morning elevated Scarlet’s death to a whole new level. Neither a sick joke, nor retaliation for a life lost. Was the dumping of roadkill symbolic? A message to back off, a warning? It was small consolation that the individual responsible had made his first mistake. For who in their right mind would, a little less than twenty-four hours since Scarlet’s death, act with such reckless and ruthless speed? It spoke of someone running scared and intent on issuing a warning, for reasons as yet unknown. That person banked on a blatant threat intimidating me. Who else knew that I had misgivings about the accident? What was it they feared? But that didn’t quite make sense because only I knew what was going on inside my head. I’d expressed my reservations to nobody. As hard as it was to admit, my wild imagination was probably getting the better of me. Strung-out over Scarlet’s death, I was thinking ‘threat’ rather than ‘sick joke’.

Either way, as shaken and frightened as I was, it was the biggest come-on ever.