Killing a Stranger

Contents

Cover

Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Epilogue

The Naomi Blake Mysteries

KILLING A STRANGER

LEGACY OF LIES

BLOOD TIES

NIGHT VISION

SECRETS

GREGORY'S GAME

PAYING THE FERRYMAN

The Rina Martin Mysteries

A REASON TO KILL

FRAGILE LIVES

THE POWER OF ONE

RESOLUTIONS

THE DEAD OF WINTER

CAUSE OF DEATH

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in 2006 in Great Britain and the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

This eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2006 by Jane A. Adams.

The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Adams, Jane, 1950–

Killing a stranger. – (A Naomi Blake mystery)

1. Ex-police officers – Fiction

2. Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14 [F]

ISBN-13: 978-0-72786-357-7 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-681-6 (ePUB)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

Many thanks to Catherine and Rob Davies

(
www.echurch-uk.org
) for their information

and support. Bless you both.

H
e was covered in blood, his hands, his face, the open jacket and white T-shirt beneath.

‘Mum!'

He staggered in through the open door and fell in a heap on the hall floor.

‘Mum, he's dead. I killed him.'

Clara couldn't absorb the words; they were too alien, too meaningless. ‘You're hurt,' she said. ‘Oh, Rob, Oh God, what have you done?'

She knelt beside him, pulling him into her arms, her hands moving over his body as she sought the wound that was producing so much blood.

‘It isn't me,' he whispered. ‘Mum, I killed him. He's lying there, dead, and I did it.' He turned to look at her, his face grey with shock, eyes stricken, filled with such horror that Clara could hardly bear to look into them.

‘Rob? Rob, darling, what are you talking about? You're hurt, Rob, let me help you.'

Even as she spoke the words, Clara was aware of how inadequate they sounded. She still couldn't comprehend what was happening, but her brain was telling her that this was bigger, more terrible than anything she had ever imagined could happen to her son, and her stomach tightened, gut writhing in fear.

Somehow, she helped him to his feet and they staggered together into the kitchen. Clara pulled a chair out from the table and sat him down. Again, she moved her hands across his body, searching for the wound. Rob being hurt, even badly hurt, was easier to think about than that other thing. That thing he kept telling her.

‘Mum …' More of a wail now, despairing, horrified. ‘I'm scared, Mum.' A child's cry, a child waking from a nightmare and finding that it hadn't gone away.

‘It's all right,' she told him. ‘It's all right, whatever it is, we can work it out.'

What should she do? She pulled him close to her and stroked his hair. Her hands came away red and sticky and she couldn't hold back the little whimper of horror.

He jerked his head back and looked up at her. She could see the hurt in his eyes, that little cry of disgust and horror, he interpreted as disgust with him. Horror at what he had done.

‘Rob, no, no, it will be all right.' She reached for him again, thinking, once more how inadequate the words were in the face of such anguish, such pain. But words were all she had and she knew that something had to be done. ‘Rob, we've got to …'

Got to what? Making tea, finding biscuits, the usual recourse in times of upset didn't quite cut it this time. Stiff drink? She had some whisky in the cupboard, stored, ready for Christmas. Should she get it?

‘You've got to phone the police,' Rob whispered. ‘Mum, I killed a man.'

Gently, almost as though he were now that adult, he pushed her away from him and pointed towards the hall. ‘Phone them, Mum, please. I can't. I don't know what to say.'

‘Rob?' Clara could feel the tears pricking her eyes, then, next moment, trickling uncontrolled down her cheeks. She brushed them aside, then nodded mutely and backed away from him through the kitchen door and out into the hall.

She wasn't sure how she kept her hand steady enough to dial or her voice even enough to reply to the operator. ‘Police,' she asked. Police and ambulance, still clinging to the faint hope that it was Rob's blood.

‘He says he's killed someone,' she whispered. ‘He says … and oh, God, there's so much blood.'

She caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. Tears still flooded her eyes and poured down her cheeks, tears running rivulets through smears of red. She dropped the phone, raised her hands again to brush the tears away, to wipe the stains from her face, but the blood was on her hands and she only spread it further, smeared it across her cheeks and temples. Her eyes.

‘Oh, Rob!'

The operators voice, dim, but insistent sounded from the phone but Clara didn't hear. She swung from the mirror as she heard the back door slam. Running through to the kitchen, she was in time to see him stumbling through the garden gate.

‘Rob!'

But he was gone. She stood at the gate peering through the gloom, listening to the sound of his footsteps as he ran away from her and knew she'd never catch him now.

The police found her crouching by the garden gate, shaking and weeping and calling her son's name, her face and hands still smeared with blood.

‘I
saw the police car and the ambulance and they took Rob's mum away and then I left. I didn't know what to do.'

Becky's face crumpled with distress. Charlie was scuffing his feet against the mud and gravel of the towpath, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his back half turned to them. Patrick recognised the body language of extreme discomfort and knew he'd get no help from that direction.

He managed to ask, ‘You said you went back this morning?'

Becky, who had already reprised her story several times, nodded emphatically. ‘I knocked at the door and then went round the back. The gate was open; Clara never leaves the gate open. I went and looked through the window and, like I told you, there was this policeman in the kitchen and this guy in a white overall, like you see them on the telly.'

Patrick nodded. ‘SOCO,' he said. ‘Scenes of Crime Officer.'

‘I know who it was. I watch CSI, don't I?'

Charlie laughed. ‘They don't wear white overalls on CSI, they go around in their posh clothes contaminating the crime scene. Isn't that right, Patrick?'

Charlie was hiding behind the incidental again, just like he had all morning. Patrick just nodded. ‘Where the hell did Rob get to?' he fumed. ‘I mean …'

Becky hunched her shoulders deeper into her coat and shivered. ‘It's cold,' she said. ‘They didn't take Rob away, just Clara.'

She got up, angry with herself. ‘I should have asked them, should have gone up and told them I was looking for my boyfriend and that they were taking his mam away. I should have gone up to Clara and talked to her.' She bit her lip hard enough to blanch it where her teeth pressed down. Patrick could see the tears about to start again.

‘Mum and …
Him
…'
Him
Patrick knew, was her step-father.

‘Mum and Him, they said I should keep out of it and if the police came round I was to say nothing. Just to tell them Rob was at the party and then he left and I don't know where he went.'

Charlie's laugh was harsher this time. ‘Well, you
don't
bloody know, do you? I mean, none of us bloody do.'

Patrick sighed and got up from his cold seat on the iron bench. He slid an arm round Becky's shoulder. They'd been good friends now for almost a year and he felt that a brotherly arm was ok. She seemed to think so too because she laid her head against his shoulder and swore softly at the unfathomable pain of it all.

Patrick towered over her now, while only six months or so ago he had been eye level. He was still skinny as a lath though, attempting to disguise the fact with baggy shirts and skater jeans and, lately, a long leather coat that had been an early Christmas present from his mother and step-father in America.

Patrick liked his step-father and his stepbrothers. It would never have occurred to him to think of Ray as
Him
. He spoke to his mother once a week and the new husband and surrogate brothers always joined the conversation on the speakerphone they had set up in the living room of the large bungalow they owned a few hundred yards from the beach.

It was a striking contrast to the tiny little house – two up, two down, kitchen and bathroom tagged on the back – which he shared with his dad. His dad, Harry, had been a bit put out with the gift of the coat, but, as Patrick said to him, ‘Mum and Ray can
only
buy me things. I'm not there, am I?' He thought his dad had understood. The coat was too cool to send back anyway.