The Sister (37 page)

Chapter 72

Midnight had no qualms about setting someone up. A few nights before, when he'd seen what he had in his flat, he'd had no doubt whatsoever; he was doing the public a service. "Sweet mother, this man is a pervert,"
he muttered beneath his breath, adding certain items he'd taken in with him, to those belonging to Bletchley.

He located the garage at the end of the garden. The access to it was down a wide alleyway littered with muddy craters. Someone had filled the worst of the potholes with broken brick and chunks of concrete. He made his way down the strips of concrete that people had laid outside their own garages, until he reached the one he was looking for. The back gate number confirmed it was the right one. The garage had its metal vehicle door in the alleyway. Beyond the fence, in the garden, a single door led out of the garage, and a concrete pathway ran up to the house. Most of the houses, like this one, were in darkness.

He reached over carefully to unlatch the gate.

Tuning his ears, he listened for any unusual sounds. His eyes had already adjusted to the dim light of the back garden. He shifted the rucksack off his back and squatted by the back door into the garage. He was about to pick the lock, when he tried the handle.

It was unlocked.

Carefully, he opened it. The hinges creaked, but not loud enough to be audible from more than a few feet away. He stole inside, drawing it shut behind him, he clicked on his infrared penlight. There was no car; just a stripped down motorbike, the parts scattered around in a half circle that the mechanic had left to give himself room to work in.

The rest of the concrete floor was clear. There were rows of shelves with labelled boxes containing nails or screws, and adjacent to where he'd just entered at the far end, was a workbench. The bench had a shelf midway between the top and the floor and underneath that, an old army ammunition box. He took a cardboard box out from the rucksack, turned it onto its narrowest side, and carefully slid it out of view, pushing it right back against the wall. Under the shelf, he moved a pile of discarded greasy rags to allow the box to pass behind them, the glass inside rattled, as he adjusted its position, finally satisfied it wasn't visible at a cursory glance.

It contained twelve jars originally; he had reduced the number to seven before he brought the box with him. Of the seven kept elsewhere, one had already been used. Only four more were needed and then he was done.

He crept back out the way he came in. His victim had a window of opportunity. Check. One move he can still make. After that, there won't be a thing he can do about it. Checkmate.

He paused to look at the back of the house from the other side of the fence. A light switched on in one upstairs room, then in another. It gave the house the appearance of two big square eyes, staring out of a dark face, looking out into the night.

"I'm coming to get ya, Kennedy,"
he whispered.

Then he shrank away from the fence and made his way back along the alleyway.

Chapter 73

Early hours, March 7th

As the last lights turned off in the bungalow, the intruder remained in the shadows by the garden summerhouse. He stayed in the same place for a full hour. The frosted window of the bathroom in the house next door came on. The colour of naked flesh caught his eye; it was a dark haired female form, coming close enough to the glass as she cleaned her teeth for him to make out her breasts as they swayed pendulously. A minute later, the light went out.

He moved silently, withdrawing the ladder that he knew was behind the storage shed.
These people that keep unsecured ladders lying around, where would we be without them
? Shaking his head, he rested the ladder against the wall. It was just long enough to project above the roofs edge. He climbed up and formed an opening just above the eaves line, removing only enough tiles to enable him to squeeze through.
Twenty-four inches square should be enough.
He slid them up twisting them out, laying them down, restrained by thin steel anchor straps that he inserted into the tiles either side of the opening. When he'd finished, he would use the same straps re secure the tiles in their original position, to bridge across the void he'd made, then he would put the ladder back as he found it. The tiles would hold, at least until the next strong wind.

He cropped through the exposed timber battens with heavy loppers and sliced a flap through the felt underneath. With his penlight torch in his mouth, he silently squeezed in between the rafters at the far end of the bungalow, away from the bedrooms. Pulling the loose felt down behind him, and then taking the torch from his mouth, he shone it onto the boarded out roof space before him, and then crouched low to avoid banging his head on the timber cross beams, moving forwards slowly; easing his feet down, he shifted his weight with each step, listening intently for tell-tale creaks that might alert the occupants in the rooms below him.

He knew there was little danger he would wake either of them because when he'd scouted the outside of the house the night before, the bins revealed that both of them took something to help them sleep; in the case of one, from the empty whiskey bottles in the recycling, it was alcohol. In the case of the other, it was Tramadol.

The area of the loft closest to the access hatch had shelves built for storage. Stacked in rows of boxes, from the looks of it, were the entire family archives. If he had the time, he would quite happily spend all night and day reading up on them and their dealings, absorbing it all for some future campaign. One day, he might come back.

He passed the torch beam across the shelves. All the boxes were labelled with the details of their contents and archived in date order –utility bills, bank statements, appliance guarantees, old vehicle documents and then to one side, two boxes similarly labelled, but marked 'Johns Records' 1963 - 1981 and 1982 - 1992. He peeled the tape off the top of the latter box and lifted out a lever file; he ran his latex covered fingers through the contents.
Not this one.
Pulling another out, he realised the contents were listed on the spine. He had moved a dozen files before he found what he was looking for. The box was full of pay slips, bank statements, old cheque stubs and paying in books, dating back fifteen years or more. He removed a paying in book. A couple of unused slips remained inside; he put them in his pocket. Returning everything to the way he found it, he spotted an old newspaper encapsulated in a clear plastic sheet; the print still looked crisp and fresh. 'Kennedy Assassinated'. After quickly reading the page, he withdrew it from its preserving sleeve and folded it into his inside jacket pocket.

There was another box on the shelf marked 'newspapers and magazines'. It was heavy. Inside, were dozens of True Crime magazine, more newspapers, clippings, scrapbooks. He opened one. The childish scrawl told him who had written it and when.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Fall 1976.
"Somebody's been reading too many American magazines, eh Kennedy?" he whispered to himself as he put the box back.

Shining the torch across the floor, he located the loft access hatch; he levered the sides up with a screwdriver lifting it clear, setting it down quietly, he leaned down and listened . . . the sounds of two people deeply snoring reached his ears. Each had a distinctive sound. Lowering himself down onto a coffee table, almost slipping on the cloth that covered it, he regained his balance in an instant, then reaching up, replaced the access cover. Stepping down, he crossed the hallway, looking in on both sleepers. Old man Kennedy was flat on his back, mouth open, throat half closed, throttled by the weight of his tongue. Across the passageway in her room, his wife was propped almost upright, snoring through gritted teeth, like waves rolling on the shore. He resisted the temptation to root around in their rooms while they slept.

After a few minutes spent searching the other rooms and hall, he finished with a quick scout through the kitchen cupboards and the bathroom cabinet; there he found an array of medication. He noted that Kennedy senior was on Beta-blockers.
Better not to wake the old git up
.
I'd not want him to have a heart attack.

When you tune in to an environment, a sudden silence acts the same way as a warning shout. One of them had stopped snoring . . . he strained his ears. A creak . . .
Movement!
Someone was getting out of bed; he cleared out of the bathroom into the spare bedroom with seconds to spare. He heard the soft fall of feet on carpet, then the pad of naked feet on the vinyl in the bathroom, followed by the sound of urination, a hawk, and a spit, then the padding of feet again. Five minutes later, the old man's tongue was choking him in his sleep again.

Finally, he found Kennedy junior's room. It was a shrine to someone who had not died, someone who was perhaps expected to arrive back home from college, any day now. Baseball posters covered the walls and the shelves stocked with youthful memorabilia, racing cars, figurines from Marvel comics and Star wars. He opened the wardrobe, and a stale smell of uncirculated air wafted out, the smell of clothes that needed airing and old shoes; he crinkled his nose as the smell caught in his nostrils. Satisfied he had all that he needed, he opened the window and climbed out. He reached back in as an afterthought, to retrieve an object that rested against the wall by the window. Pulling the window behind him, the friction hinges held it closed.

Chapter 74

Late afternoon, Wednesday 7th March.

Theresa Hunter saw the road works traffic build-up just too late to turn off. She cursed herself under her breath.
Why didn't you pay more attention to the advance warning signs when they went up!
The date just had not registered. Now she was in the wrong lane, the other was moving faster - she craned her neck round and seeing a gap hopped the car into it, almost slamming into the back of the car in front. The lane she
was
in started moving ahead. If she'd stayed where she was, she would be ten cars further down by now and still it kept moving. She remained stationary.
Damn!

Determined to keep moving, she indicated to change lanes again. No one would let her in. Her temperature began rising. There was a slight opening a few cars back; she could see the lorry driver looking at a map or newspaper. The gap widened further, and she geared herself up to cut into it. She always used to be so critical of other people that lane-hopped, for the first time she understood how saving even a few seconds seemed worth the extra risk.

Terri would soon arrive home from college, and she didn't want that to happen until she was there. If she could have, she'd have picked her up from the college gates, or even a pre-arranged point round the corner, but to do so, would have alerted her to the fact that something was wrong, and the poor kid had had enough to put up with since her father died.

She switched in front of the lorry and congratulated herself on her perfect timing. The lorry driver let her know he didn't agree with a sudden deep, bass blast on his horn and thundered up close behind. She put her slender hand out of the window, and lifted it to say sorry, hoping the realisation that she was a woman would persuade him to back off.

He remained inches from her boot lid, uncomfortably close, intimidating her. The rumbling engine noise and diesel fumes invaded her car, making her wish she'd stayed where she was. Having made his point, he dropped back. With a sigh of relief, she opened the other windows to allow the fumes out.

Ahead, a car had broken down. Beyond that, both lanes were moving steadily. She realised she'd been holding her breath. Emptying her lungs, she inhaled long and deep.

Never one to let problems build up, somehow since the burglary and the subsequent wrong decisions made, she'd done exactly that. For the sake of a quiet life, to shield Terri from any involvement, knowing the anxiety she would feel, she succeeded, but only amplified the effect on herself. She found herself thinking about the past two weeks.

Was it really only two weeks ago . . . is that all it was?
It seemed as if an eternity had passed since she walked in that evening. It wasn't so much that anything was obvious; there was no sign or clue that anything was amiss. The only thing odd that she recalled now was how her mother's old tin had been turned around. Joey, the blue and yellow budgerigar whose picture adorned the tin, was facing the wrong way.

She thought about her mother, how she'd always told her from when she was a little girl that while the bird faced outwards, he was looking out for us. Theresa would watch as she reached up to the tall shelf where 'Joey' lived and after she'd taken money from the tin; she was always so meticulous about putting it back
exactly
as it was. That way, she could tell if her no good husband had gotten his hands on it. Sometimes, a terrible row followed, and he would say, "I never took no money out, I was only looking to see how much—" and her mother would retort, "If you
ever
as much as look at that tin again . . ." She let the words trail . . . the rolling pin she brandished, completed the thought for him.