Home Before Dark (23 page)

Stormypetrel: DADDY? Stormypetrel: WE
YOU
THERE?

That was all.
I felt the impact of those words as a psychic attack. My
gorge rose. It was like suddenly I was at sea standing on a
wildly pitching deck. I knew, of course, this wasn’t Sophie.
For one thing, she never called me 'Daddy’.
And yet, and yet . . . you don’t stop hoping.
'Who are you?’ I typed back. The feeling of queasiness had
quickly turned into anger. 'What the hell do you want?’
There was no reply.
I heard a scraping noise outside, then a small crack, like a
branch or a twig snapping underfoot. I quickly turned off
the desk lamp, the only light I had on in the library, and went
over to the windows.
As I peered out into the garden, I couldn’t help thinking,
if only for a warped, gut-wrenching second, 'She’s come back.’
Then, glancing over at the screen behind me, I saw that
whoever it was had written something more.

Stonnypefre;
WHY
DID
YOU
KILL
HER?

38

I left the house quietly by the side door that leads onto the
terrace and walked down the sloping lower lawn towards the
lake. The sky was overcast, but I knew the way well enough
and my eyes soon adjusted to the dark. I followed the path
around the edge of the lake, an area of blackness that seemed
to absorb what little light there was, trees and clumps of
bushes barely standing out against the water.
Every ten yards or so I stopped to listen, convinced that
Sophie’s killer was somewhere in the grounds; nothing
stirred. All I could hear was the distant mutter of the TV
in George’s bedroom. Under one arm I carried a loaded
shotgun.
I don’t know how long I stayed out there, tense and alert,
waiting for the prowler to reveal himself, for something to
happen. I was startled once by the loud croak of a bull-frog
that came from the direction of the island, but the hush of
the summer’s night soon returned, deeper than before.
After a while, I gave up and wandered slowly back to
Greenside, accepting that I’d probably over-reacted. The sense
of threat eased but never really went away. Those messages
from Stormypetrel had left me feeling shaken and exposed.
Whoever sent them knew how to cause maximum anguish.
'
WHY
DID
YOU
KILL
HER?'Who was I supposed to have
killed? What did they mean, why
Before going indoors, using a torch now, I checked the
stables and the outhouses. In the garage I pulled the tarp off
George’s quad bike and the sight of its gleaming chrome and
red bodywork made me think how easy it would be to tamper
with. I decided that even if this had been a false alarm, I
needed to do more to protect my family.
On the steps outside the front entrance to the house, making
one last check, I swung the torch beam down the long meandering
driveway. I could just make out the stone obelisks that
flank the gates to Greenside. About fifty yards further along
the road, where Jura had been found earlier, I saw the red
tail-lights of a car winking between the hedgerows. I knew
instantly it was him.
I wanted to jump in the Mercedes and drive off in pursuit,
but it had been put away in the garage. The keys were in the
hall. I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of catching up. In
seconds, the car’s lights were out of sight.
Then it struck me, as I pushed open the front door, that
while I’d been searching the grounds, hunting for prowlers
down by the lake, he could have been here in the house. I
left the shotgun on the hall table and sprinted upstairs.
The television was off in George’s room, but I could hear
water running, the sound of a bath being drawn. I spoke to
him through the bathroom door, trying not to let him hear
I was short of breath. I had to stop myself saying, 'Are you
all right?’
When I looked in on Laura, she was sitting up in bed
reading. I couldn’t think of any way of asking her if she’d
seen or heard anything, not without causing panic.
She glanced up from her book. 'Where have you been?’
'I had to get a breath of air,’ I said, then promising I
wouldn’t be long, I went back downstairs. There was nothing
out of place in the main rooms, no sign anywhere of an
intruder. More than once I picked up the phone to call the
police, but I knew there was little point. The truth was I
hadn’t actually seen anything. Couples often parked in the
lane on a Saturday night.
In the library, I poured myself a stiff whisky and went back
to my computer. I didn’t touch the keyboard, just sat there
staring at the screen.
The dark blue message tab for ST was flashing. I had
another message.

39

'You know what gives me cause for concern?’ Campbell said,
talking to Ed Lister on his cell phone from a deckchair at
the beach. It was Sunday.
'I’m listening.’ Ed sounded a little stressed.
'Hold on a second.’ Campbell adjusted the umbrella to
keep the sun off Amy who was playing in the sand next to
the ice box. After church he’d driven the family out to Sand
Key Park, their favourite spot on the Gulf Coast, halfway
between Clearwater and St Pete. His client had called him
at ten to twelve by his watch.
'Don’t go away, Ed.’ He put a hand over the mouthpiece
and said to his wife, 'Honey, you feel like taking Amy down
to the water?’ He didn’t want the little girl to overhear anything
she shouldn’t.
Kira lay on her back on a mattress a few yards away. She
had on a black bikini and black sunglasses. Her skin, startlingly
pale, slathered with high protection sun-block, glistened like
alabaster. No response. He came back to his client.
'Listen, whoever messaged you last night may or may not
have known that Sophie’s screen-name was still on your
contacts list. What concerns me is the fact they knew you were
online. That means either they have remote access to your
computer, which we know is not the case, or they were nearby,
watching you.’
There was silence the other end.
Campbell glanced at his wife, who hadn’t stirred. He
covered the mouthpiece again. 'Dish?’ It was his pet name
for her, but it didn’t do the trick. He knew how tired she
was and felt guilty for asking.
Amy, already on her feet, said, 'I can go swimming by
myself
Campbell shook his head and mouthed 'No’ at her.
'I got the feeling somebody was prowling around outside.
I heard a noise, went out and searched the grounds. There
was nobody there.’
Amy was pouting now, digging a toe in the sand and
hopping around it on one leg, trying to get his attention. She
looked cute in her pink and navy polka-dot swimsuit with
matching ribbons on her pigtails. He signed that he would
take her in a minute.
'But I could’ve been wrong, just imagined I heard something.’
'You
were on edge, dude, it’s understandable. “Why did
you have to kill her” That was it, nothing more? You think
she was referring to the dog?’
'She? For Christ’s sake, it was my daughter’s screen-name.
I assumed the message came from Ward and that he killed
the dog.’
'A bitch, right?’
'Yes. She belonged to Sophie.’
'Well, pets and cars don’t mix. We lost a dog once when
I was a kid in Hong Kong, a springer spaniel called Run
run . . .’ Campbell looked at Amy and tailed off. 'Why did
you try to call me last night?’
'I wanted you to trace the user while he was online.’
'If it was Ward he’d have covered his tracks, but you were
thinking along the right lines. Sooner or later he’ll make a
mistake.’
'I wish I could share your confidence.’
He smiled a little. 'So you grab a shotgun and run out of
the house. After a half-hour or so you hear a car taking off.
And when you get back?’
'I made sure my wife and son were all right.’
Campbell frowned. He looked over at Kira and Amy,
instinctively checking on them, then let his gaze drift down
the sand to a group of adults and children milling by the
water’s edge. Out in the Gulf two tankers and a white cruise
ship stood motionless on the horizon. He wondered how
many miles apart.
'No messages from Stormypetrel?’
'Nothing more, no.’ He heard the slight hesitation in Ed’s
voice. 'I’d really like to know where you think this investigation
is heading.’ Getting off the subject a little too fast. 'And, by
the way, I never killed anybody.’
Campbell stood up and stretched his legs. He walked over
to where Kira was basking on the mattress. He could tell by
the rise and fall of her chest that she was asleep. He bent
down and touched her burning shoulder, still talking into his
cell. 'You had a chance yet to read the stuff I sent you on
synaesthesia?’
She didn’t move.
'I glanced through it. Even if you’re right and Ward does
have the condition, I wouldn’t exactly call it narrowing the
field.’
'Wait till you hear this,’ Campbell said, giving Kira a little
nudge. He saw a frown of annoyance cloud her forehead.
Wake up, Dish.
'Okay, yesterday I spoke with Claudia Derwent at Yale she’s
the leading authority on synaesthesia in the US. She
told me something that got my attention. It seems that when
synaesfhetes taste a word or feel a sound or see numbers as
colours – to them it’s real. These are sensed phenomena, not analogies or metaphors, okay? The theory is they’ve kept the
extra neural connections we are all born with but most of us
lose in childhood. But get this – a synaesthete’s inter-sensory
associations remain constant over a lifetime. In other words, if
the word “ocean” is clocked by the subject as, say, a bunch
of flowers, he or she will never experience it any other way.
For a person with coloured hearing, a certain sound will always be blue, green or whatever. It’s like a signature, dude
. . . you can’t fake it.’
He crouched down beside his wife, thinking now about a
swim before lunch. In the cooler they had cold shrimp,
marinated chicken, mixed salad and a bottle of Chablis.
'I still don’t see how that reduces the odds.’
'It doesn’t. . . until you find other examples of a particular
signature. Sight and hearing are most commonly involved in
cross-over sensory experiences. The majority of synaesthetes

“see” words and numbers as colours and shapes. But there
are many different permutations in the linking of the senses
and a few that come close to being unique. Derwent believes
our guy may belong in the last category.’
'I see.’ Ed sounded doubtful. 'Did she happen to explain
how she reached that conclusion? Or is she just guessing?’
Lister could be such a pompous jerk.
'It’s stronger than guesswork. I sent Professor Derwent the
text of Ward’s webcast. She called me back yesterday evening
from home to discuss the material. What she said kept me
awake half the night.’
There was a pause. 'You better tell me about it then.’

The neurologist had been guarded at first, understandably
perhaps, given the unsavoury nature of the webcast. Campbell
had told her he was investigating a case of cyber-harassment
for
WHOA
(Working to Halt Online Abuse) and that any
information she volunteered would be treated in strictest
confidence.
'There isn’t enough evidence,’ she’d begun hesitantly, 'to
establish beyond doubt that “M” is a synaesthete. Having
said that, I don’t believe the examples in the text can be read
as allusion or metaphor – a phrase like “words with an iron
shape” is not a rhetorical trope – which to me suggests a
neuropathic disorder.’
What interested Professor Derwent was that if M’s brain
was indeed cross-triggered so that one sense fired another,
then he belonged to an unusual category of synaesthete.
'Among the various synaesthetic pairings,’ she went on, 'where
sight, for instance, induces the sensation of touch or sound
a perception of colour, it is extremely rare for taste to be
either a trigger or the response.’
The significance of this was not lost on Campbell.
Nationwide surveys showed the incidence of synaesthesia
in the general population to be around one in a hundred
thousand – the chances of 'M’ being part of any sample were
no better than fair, but the fact that he’d left such a distinctive
'print’ on the webcast, in theory at least, dramatically narrowed
the search. In the twenty-five years since she’d started collecting
data, Derwent told him, she had only come across a handful
of cases where taste induced a secondary sense experience
of colour and shape.
Claudia Derwent had records of just three 'tasters’ in her
files, two female, one male. The latter had been referred to
her in the early days of her research, when she was collecting
cases of synaesthesia in the northeastern United States. Her
correspondent was a country physician from Norfolk,
Connecticut, a village in the Berkshire foothills that was once
popular with society folk as a summer resort.
The subject, unusually, was a nine-year-old boy. She’d
never met the child, only receiving his case-notes in 1990,
ten years after the doctor had lost touch with him. There had
been no follow-up.
His mouth dry with excitement, Campbell had asked for
the boy’s name, which Professor Derwent had been unable
to supply – her survey had been conducted anonymously but
she’d seen no reason why she shouldn’t put him in touch
with Dr Joel Stilwell in Norfolk.
It was possible he’d still have some record of the 'taster’.

Ed was silent for a moment.
'When do you plan to go?’
Campbell moved a little way along the beach so that Kira
wouldn’t hear his answer. She wasn’t too happy about his taking
off and leaving her with Amy at such short notice. They’d got
into a big fight over the childcare issue, which made it impossible
now to have that talk he needed to have with her before he left.
He still hadn’t told Kira about the money.
He had just five days left to come up with the full amount,
before 'Cholly’ would be stopping the clock. He said quietly
into his cell, 'I’m booked on a Southwest flight tomorrow. I
should be in Norfolk late afternoon.’
Kira propped herself up on her elbows and said, 'Where’s
Amy?’
'Call me when you get there.’
Campbell turned his head and took in at a glance their
little encampment under the green and white shade umbrella
where until a moment ago Amy had been playing.
For an instant panic surged through him as he scanned
the beach, then as quickly melted into relief when he spotted
a blur of fluorescent pink moving between the tan bodies
down by the water’s edge.
'Looking for cowry shells.’
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, thinking he was
getting jittery over nothing; then throwing a reassuring 'I got
it covered’ grin in Kira’s direction and, still talking into his
cell, he strolled towards the Gulf.
'We may not have a lot of time,’ he said.
Ed had already hung up.