Читать книгу Fire Damage: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked - Kate Medina, Kate Medina - Страница 9

Jeanette Bass-Cooper stood on the narrow shingle beach and looked back up the wide stretch of lawn to the house. It was faux Greek, a huge and no doubt once grand villa, resplendent with fake colonnades, plastered and painted a sickly pale lemon, the paint peeling, plaster brittle and crumbling in places. It brought to mind one of the over made-up, ageing showgirls she had seen at a burlesque show in Paris a couple of weekends ago, gaudy and brazen against the sober Arts and Crafts on one side, the Georgian on the other. But it had potential. Six bedrooms, four bathrooms, three receptions, all with huge windows overlooking the water, décor that would have to be stripped back to its bare bones and redone, but its own private stretch of shingle beach and incredible views over the upper reaches of Chichester Harbour.

It had been empty for four months and the landline was disconnected. There was no mobile reception inside, which was why she had tottered in her heels through the garden – mobile held aloft, gaze fixed on the reception icon – and down on to the skinny stone beach to call the estate agent. On one hand she was pleased there was no reception: no telephone masts to spoil this rural idyll she had set her heart on acquiring. But on the other, the inconvenience made her feel impotent. Getting away from it all was one thing, but with a commercial property business to run, being incommunicado was costly.

Signal. At last. Only two bars, but it would have to do. This wasn’t going to be a long or complex conversation. All she needed from her estate agent was an explanation as to how – when she had bought a shopping centre in Liverpool for her business, the transaction complete from beginning to end in three days – it had taken five weeks and counting to fail even to exchange on this house. The owner was dead, for Chrissakes, so it clearly wasn’t him holding up the deal.

She found Gavin Maxwell’s number on speed dial. The frustration she felt at the prospect of speaking to him had already found its way to her shoulders, which had repositioned themselves up around her ears.

‘Come on, pick up,’ she muttered, starting to pace. She glanced at her watch: 12 p.m. Don’t tell me he’s gone to lunch. Not that she would be surprised. Nothing would surprise her with this deal. ‘Pick up.’

Seaweed caught in her heel and she bent to untangle it, still clutching the phone to her ear. In tight dress and heels, she felt like a hobbled calf, had to clench her abdominals to stop herself from toppling.

Mid-stoop, she stopped.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Decomposing seaweed yes, but another overlaying it. Rotten and putrid. A dustbin full of refuse left fermenting in sun for a fortnight.

The second thing she noticed was the blackened stick, tangled in the seaweed that had snagged her heel. Had someone held a fire on the beach? Teenagers making the most of the empty property to hold a party? She grasped the stick; her fingers sank into mush.

Jesus … her eyes bulged. Was that a hand?

She sucked in a choking breath.

A hand, the fingers, entwined with seaweed, bent into a tortured claw. She ran her eyes up the blackened stick and somewhere in the recesses of her chilled brain, she realized that it was an arm.

The third thing she noticed was that the torso attached to the arm was just that. A torso. Distended. Bloated. Her gaze tracked down. There were no legs. Nothing below waist level.

‘Ohmygod!’ she groaned.

The fourth thing she noticed was the empty eye sockets above the mouth, cavities of blackened bone, nothing soft remaining. The mouth itself, a lipless hole lined with yellow teeth, opened wide in a silent, agonized scream.

Skin. Did it have skin? Or was that only muscle, sinew and bone?

‘Ms Bass-Cooper.’ A distorted voice came out of the phone.

Terror was like tin foil in her mouth.

‘Oh my God.’ Her voice thick with tears. ‘OH MY GOD.’

‘MS BASS-COOPER. ARE YOU OK?’

The phone clattered from her hand.