Blood Relative (16 page)

Yet the bitterness and resentment I now felt were no less toxic. And still a hope remained in me that, even now, some explanation could be given that would explain it all and give me reassurance that my love had not been in vain.

I must have dropped off to sleep some time around two in the morning.

I came to with a start. The numbers on my digital alarm clock read 3.27. I propped myself up on one elbow, blinking as I tried to get my bearings. What had woken me? I listened hard but could not detect any sound of movement within the house. My immediate instinct was to lie down again and try to go back to sleep, but I was awake now, my nerves on red alert and demanding answers. Muttering swear words to myself, I got out of bed and went to the window.

I looked out across a back garden lit by a full moon strong enough to cast shadows across the frostbitten lawn. There was no one there. To my left were the outbuildings in which I had my studio. My eye was caught by the brief glimmer of a moving, flickering light against the studio window. Was it coming from inside? Or was it just the twinkle of reflected moonlight? The light vanished. I watched the window for a couple more minutes. The light did not reappear. I told myself it must have been the moonlight playing tricks on my senses and went back to bed, rolled onto my right side, drew the blankets up over my shoulder and waited for unconsciousness to rescue me again.

No such luck. My mind resolutely refused to switch off. The words of the anonymous email went round and round in my brain: ‘Consider your personal safety … bad things can happen …’ My skin continued to crawl with the prickle of undischarged adrenalin. Then I heard a very faint, muffled ‘chunk’ from downstairs: just once, then silence again. It sounded very much as though the front door had been unlocked and opened. I lay there, trying to find reasons not to gather up the courage to investigate, my previous nervous tension now transformed into full-blown fear. Someone was in my house. I was sure of it. What was I going to do?

I got out of bed a second time. If I was going to confront an intruder, I wanted to be partially dressed, at the very least, and as well armed as possible. But with what? I wasn’t an American. There was no loaded pistol in my bedside drawer. I’d have to make do with something all too English.

I pulled on the jeans I’d discarded on the bedroom floor and padded across to the wardrobe, my ears straining for any sound suggesting that someone was coming upstairs. On the top shelf of the wardrobe, right at the back, was an old leather cricket bag filled with gear I’d barely touched since I left school. I reached up, stretching towards it, leaving my back totally exposed to any attack.

My fingers groped in the near total darkness, feeling their way past Mariana’s old hatboxes and a pair of my cowboy boots until, at the absolute furthest extent of my reach, they touched the soft, cracked leather of the cricket bag. I stopped and cast my eyes back into the room, searching through the gloom for any sign of the intruder. I could see nothing, but that did not mean he was not there, lurking, waiting for his moment to strike.

I told myself not to be so melodramatic. All I was doing was making myself even more scared than before. I stretched up again, grabbed the cricket bag and very carefully pulled it out, making sure that I did not bring an avalanche of boxes and boots down with it. The bat was in there. It seemed absurd to be setting out to confront a burglar who might have a knife or even a gun gripping an ancient Gray-Nicolls, but it was a great deal better than nothing, and a full-force blow could do some serious damage. I knew the layout of the house better than any intruder and there was a very strong likelihood that I’d be bigger than him. ‘Come on,’ I told myself. ‘You can do this.’

I pulled back my arms so that the bat was over my right shoulder, ready to strike, and made my way out of the bedroom. I stopped as I reached the landing, which ran across the house with rooms on one side and a gallery, looking down onto the living room, on the other. The visibility was a little better now, the interior of the house cast in a palette of greys, blues and black by the moonlight coming in through the glass wall. I could see at once that I was alone on the landing and all the doors to the other rooms were closed. Very slowly, cautiously, I edged out onto the landing, forcing myself to step into the open. I had to get close enough to the gallery edge to see down into the living room itself.

There was still no sound of anyone else in the house; no footsteps on the stairs; no onrushing attacker; nothing to stop me getting to the handrail and looking over it.

That’s when I discovered that I was wrong. There was not just one intruder in the house. There were two shadowy figures, dressed from head to toe in black, their trousers tucked into boots, their faces masked and their forms rendered oddly robotic by lights that shone at the very centre of their foreheads.

One of them was sitting on the leather sofa, just as Andrew must have been on the night he died.

The other was standing over him, holding something in his right hand, some kind of tube, maybe thirty centimetres long: not far off the total length of a kitchen knife. With calm, deliberate movements, the second figure was raising his hand and bringing the tube down onto the upper legs and torso of the other man.

They were recreating the killing.

I opened my mouth to shout at them but I could not make a noise emerge from my throat, still less form any coherent words. My legs were shaking so much I had to take one hand off the bat-handle and grip the handrail to keep myself upright.

It was the calmness of the exercise that was so eerie and yet so mesmerizing. After a number of blows had been struck, the one on the sofa held up a hand to pause the exercise and fractionally altered his position. Then the second one repeated the slow-motion stabs, but this time the one on the sofa got up and staggered towards his mock assailant.

This cool, calculating re-enactment of my brother’s death sparked the anger I needed to overcome my fear and inhibition. My shout when it came was little more than a strangled, ‘Hey!’ but it was enough to get their attention. The two little lights turned as one towards me. They remained still for a couple of seconds as I advanced towards the stairs. Their stillness conveyed an impression of absolute confidence. I might panic, but they would not. They knew that they were in full command of the situation.

Then the one who’d been playing Mariana’s role, the smaller of the pair, turned to the other as if to give or receive instructions. The light on his forehead briefly illuminated the shoulder of his companion’s black, military-style combat jacket, a black balaclava and a small, burka-like glimpse of the face beneath. He turned back and raised his right hand, holding the tube out towards me, apparently about to shoot.

I scrabbled backwards, trying to escape, but it was not a bullet that hit me but a dazzling beam of light, strong enough to force me to screw up my eyes. I tried to feel my way along the handrail towards the stairs, but the beam followed me, still focused on my eyes so that I could not open them fully or see what was happening below me. Then, as suddenly as it had struck me, the torch was switched off. I opened my eyes but could see nothing: the dazzle had destroyed my night vision. If the two men attacked me now I would be completely helpless. But there was no rushing patter of rubber-soled boots on the stairs. In fact, the only noise I heard was that of the front door being opened and then closed.

I could see a bit better now and was able to negotiate the stairs. Somewhere in the distance a car engine started. I turned on the lights. The house was empty. There was no sign whatever that anyone had been there. The invasion was over.

For the second time in less than a week I dialled 999, this time asking for the police. No, I said, the intruders were not still on my premises. No, I had not been harmed. No, they had not appeared to be carrying any weapons. Nothing seemed to be damaged or stolen.

‘Well, then, there’s nothing we can do,’ said the operator. ‘If you do discover that there has been any damage or loss to your property, call the station on Monday morning, make a formal report and you will be issued with a case number for insurance puposes.’

‘But I think this may be linked to a murder enquiry. It’s being conducted by Chief Inspector Yeats.’

‘In that case, sir, I suggest you call him. Goodnight.’

24

‘Thanks,’ said Yeats when I called his mobile number a few hours later. ‘You just made me a hundred and forty quid.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Taking a call out of hours gives me an automatic four hours’ overtime. Great stuff. So, how can I help? Have you had another email?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s something else, something real this time.’

I ran through the events of the night before, adding a discovery I had made when I’d finally risen from another, equally restless couple of hours’ sleep: ‘Someone had a look at my laptop. It was in the studio where I worked. I’m sure they were in there before they came in the house. I left it closed, I’m certain. But it was open when I went in there just now.’

‘Maybe, but looking at someone else’s computer isn’t exactly a capital offence. These intruders don’t seem to have committed any crime that’s worth investigating, not the way our budget and manpower are at the moment.’

‘But it has to be linked to Andy’s death. I mean, they were acting it out in front of my eyes. And this happens a couple of days after someone sends him a threatening email. There has to be a connection.’

‘Possibly, but it could just be a coincidence. I mean, I can see how this must all be very disturbing to you, so soon after you’ve suffered a very traumatic loss, but I still don’t think it has any relevance to my investigation. Nothing you have told me has any bearing on your wife’s case. There’s no new relevant evidence. And those intruders could just have been a couple of crime freaks out on a jolly.’

‘Breaking into someone’s house and acting out a murder – what kind of jolly is that?’

‘Not one you or I would consider, maybe. But you’ve got to understand, Mr Crookham, a lot of people have very strange ideas about crimes and criminals. Women write fan mail to rapists. Sadistic killers on the run get help to hide them from the police. So would it surprise me if a couple of idiots decided to sneak into the house and re-enact a murder they’d read about in the papers? No, not at all. And if they gave you a nasty surprise, it was probably no worse than the one they got seeing you appear at the top of the stairs. Chances are they thought the house was still empty.’

‘What about my computer, then?’

‘I don’t know … maybe they hoped they’d find some snaps of your wife they could flog to the paper. If you can show me that a crime has been committed, of course I will take appropriate action. Until then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.’

I drove down to Kent that afternoon, stopping for coffee every fifty miles or so, desperately trying to stay awake as the endless motorway rolled out in front of me. All the way down I tried to think of a better explanation for the identity of the intruders than Yeats had come up with, but without any joy. Why on earth would someone who had made threats to Andy, thinking that he was alive, then try to act out his murder? It was madness, but then so was everything else. So far as the police and the lawyers were concerned, my wife had killed my brother out of the blue, for no reason that anyone could explain. All the evidence appeared to agree with them. The sheer insanity of that was still more than I could handle. I could barely drive straight, let alone think straight.

I was due to meet Vickie at the gastropub where I’d booked a room for the night, just to give her Andy’s belongings and talk through arrangements for Andy’s funeral the following morning.

Vickie was everything Mariana was not, in ways that had once seemed to put her at a disadvantage, but now looked more like qualities to be admired. She was a redhead, and shorter and plumper than Mariana, with bright-blue eyes hidden behind glasses because, as she had told me on one of the few occasions we’d met, ‘Contact lenses are much too fiddly for my sausage fingers and I’m bloody well not having laser-guns fired at my eyes.’

That was Vickie all over: practical, energetic, down-to-earth and, under any remotely normal circumstances, full of warmth and good humour. She’d never dieted in her life, could not give a damn about the latest fashions, and was totally unimpressed by wealth or celebrity. For a man like Andy – completely focused when he worked, but completely hopeless in everyday, practical living – she must have been the perfect partner.

There wasn’t much sign of good humour about her now, though. Her hair was tied back in a straggly, unwashed ponytail and the eyes with which she looked at me with such bitter suspicion were red-rimmed with too much crying and too little sleep.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, struggling to find the words to make things better. ‘You know, for …’

For what, exactly? I’d committed so many offences so far as Vickie was concerned, I didn’t know where to begin. ‘For everything …’

Vickie said nothing, but just by the look on her face the message was unmistakable: you can do better than that. I took a deep breath: ‘I know I screwed up. Not just in the past few days – though that was bad enough – I mean for years.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she replied. Then something seemed to distract her. I followed her line of sight and saw that there was a mirror on the wall behind me. Vickie had seen her own reflection.

‘I look such a mess,’ she said.

‘I’m not exactly at my best right now, either,’ I replied. ‘Here, let me get you a drink.’

‘No thanks,’ she said, rubbing a hand across her eyes. ‘I’m not really in the mood for it.’

‘Sure? Well, we’d better get this over and done with, then. Andy’s stuff is all in the back of my car.’

I led her back outside. As I opened up the back of the Range Rover I reached in to get the two bags and then stopped. There were a few unanswered questions left over from Andy’s Berlin notes: things I’d never got round to following up. I handed Vickie the bin-liner containing his overnight bag then said, ‘I’ve got his computer with me too, but is it OK if I hold on to it, just till tomorrow? There are a couple of things from his trip to Berlin that I just want to check. I’ll give it back to you right after the funeral, I promise.’