The Sister (38 page)

Her mother would never have left the tin like that. Now that it was her turn to look after the tin, she wouldn't have left it like that either, she was obsessive about things like that. Terri would never have left it like that either. She was obsessively compulsive. It was a big problem for her.

Standing on a chair, she stretched up to get the tin. She lifted the lid; it was all there, no cash missing. How strange, could it have been a mouse? Shuddering at the thought, she put the tin back and faced it the right way. She continued to think about it, and it played on her mind. Maybe she
did
borrow a bit of cash without telling her and then put the money back without putting the tin back properly. No, she'd never have done either of those things; she would have definitely put the budgie back facing the right way. It was like having her mum looking out over them. "No way!" she said it aloud, hoping to break the circle of repetitive thoughts; they retreat for a moment before regrouping in her head.

She thought about asking her, but then realised she would only freak out. She played out part of the scenario in her head. Terri would be saying. "
Hang on - If I didn't do it and you didn't do it, who did?"
She took a deep breath and fought to control the rising panic she felt. By the third deep inhalation, she'd finally managed to put it to the back of her mind.

The following day, when Terri let herself in, Theresa was just finishing a telephone call. The two of them signalled each other with a series of shrugs, hand gestures and facial expressions as she passed on her way up stairs. Once out of sight, she called down, "I'm just having a quick bath, Mum."

Theresa replaced the receiver on the wall-mounted phone.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall next to it and teased her hair, flicking her fingers through it. She leaned in on tiptoes to examine her teeth. The ornate mirror was another hand-me-down from her mum, the bronze coloured latticework that surrounded it always had notes weaved into it. While pulling the old ones out, she noticed Terri had a doctor's appointment the coming Monday.

"Okay, I'm coming up to see you, how was it last night?"

"Oh, Mum, you wouldn't believe…"

Theresa was three steps up the stairs when the phone rang; she was in two minds whether to answer it. It had already rung five times that morning and every time she answered; silence greeted her. It had to be a wrong number, or one of those auto-dial services.

She turned and went back to the phone, a sense of foreboding unsettled her as she picked it up. Something bad was about to happen.

As she lifted the receiver to her ear, she remembered a trick one of her friends had taught her.
Always let the caller speak first. That way if it's someone you don't want to talk to, you can just say, wrong number and bang it back down.

"Trie? Is that you?" The caller said.

The way he said her name caught her off guard. No one had called her that since her husband died. Trie, as in Tree, he was so drunk the first time they met; he couldn't say her full name. She found herself thinking about him; an affectionate smile graced her lips. She couldn't remember him calling her anything other than that.

It had to be someone who knew her.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but no one she knew would do that to her. Something was wrong; she sensed it; she couldn't explain. Her chest began to tighten, her mouth suddenly dry.

"I don't know who you are, but please stop calling me Trie," her tongue ran over her lips, nervously moistening them. She looked upstairs, half expecting her daughter to come out on the landing, to find out where she was, why she was speaking so quietly. The moment seemed to linger, hanging on what would happen next.

"Oh, I think you
should
know who I am, Trie. I'm the person that paid you a little visit yesterday. Did you not notice I'd been? I left you a clue, Trie; I thought it was only fair." He puffed theatrically on his cigarette, three little sucking sounds. "What an interesting lady you are, Trie, and oh, what a lovely daughter you have . . ." The soft tone of his voice was completely at odds with the menace he generated.

Her mind was racing.
It was him! He had turned the tin!

"How did you get my number, it
's ex-directory?" she whispered, watching the stairs.

"Oh, Trie," he sounded disappointed. "I got it from the front of your telephone."

Okay, but how did you know my pet name?
She kept the thought to herself. What happened next put her in a daze.

Terri called down from upstairs, "Mum, where the hell have you put all my underwear?"

Her blood ran cold.

She wanted to put the phone down immediately and call the police, but something inside stopped her.

"I'm on the phone, Terri!" She surprised herself at how well she suppressed the anger and anxiety in her voice; she stared hard at Terri, willing her to go away.

"Okay, Mum, calm it!" she said, and rolling her eyes, turned away sharply and sloped off.

Theresa regained her composure. "What do you want from me?"

"Trie, I want you to listen very carefully, your daughter's welfare depends on it." He veiled his threat behind a softly spoken voice. She suddenly realised how he knew her pet name. He'd read the letters from her late husband…

She listened.

"Three things, Trie, just three small things, that's all I want from you," his voice was soft and persuasive. "Now I know you are probably considering calling the police, or thinking you could tell your boss about this conversation, but that wouldn't be wise, Trie, not at all. You know; they've been looking for
me
since before I cannot tell you . . . a very long time. They won't be able to
find
me, let alone stop me and you telling them about our little situation - Well, it'll only spark a series of problems for you and I know with Terri's
condition
, you won't want that and believe me, you don't want me coming after you." He reeled it off like friendly advice; she felt an involuntary shiver of revulsion run through her.

"Just get on and tell me what it is you're after," she said, "I'm listening."

When he'd finished telling her, she weighed the options. What he was asking her to do seemed so innocuous. She felt guilty, but when push came to shove, Terri came first. To agree was the easiest thing to do and while she knew it wasn't right, something she'd once heard popped into her head. It was about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It puzzled her when she first heard it, but this must be exactly the type of situation they meant when they spoke about it.

"Okay…" She felt a weight lift from her shoulders.

"I'll get the things to you." He exhaled with a low barely perceptible blow.
He's smoking;
she thought, as if that explained everything.

"When will you do that?"

He disconnected her.

She didn't see that Terri had come halfway downstairs. Terri watched her mother on the phone. The way her mum's face crumpled, as the conversation changed direction was impossible for her to conceal. Terri took the last few steps down and stood in front of her mum. "
What's wrong?"
she mouthed. Her mother shooed her away with her hand, but she stood her ground. When she put the phone down, she smiled a little crazily at Terri. "I just heard an old friend died. They're going to let me know when the funeral is," she said smoothly, as she turned on a sad face.

Terri viewed her suspiciously. That wasn't a sad face. That was a worried face and if it was . . . Why did her mother just lie to her?

"Oh," she said.

Chapter 75

When Theresa unlocked her car Thursday morning, she noticed a plain manila envelope on the front passenger seat. She unwrapped it and inside was a folded newspaper in a clear plastic sleeve and separately, in a resealable polythene bag, a mobile phone.

How on earth did he manage to get into it?
The spare key?
He must have taken it!
She'd checked nothing else was missing after he stole Terri's underwear, but hadn't thought to see if her spare keys were missing.

She remembered what he told her. "Don't touch any of the items. Tip the newspaper out onto a clear area of his desk, the boot print must be facing up and pointed towards his chair," he sucked hard on what she assumed was a cigarette and inhaled noisily. "Are you with me so far, Trie?" another deeply drawn inhalation. "The phone, you must put that above his desk in the ceiling void."

"How am I supposed to do that?" she asked.

The caller issued her with a set of instructions.

Theresa arrived at work a few minutes before 9 a.m.

Contractors had been working in the voids above the suspended ceilings, and the works had been going on for weeks. The builders had set the project up to be completed in such a way as to cause the minimum of inconvenience, but as the project manager had said, when he was defending the things that had gone wrong so far. "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs!" They were constantly creating dust and setting off smoke sensors, which in turn triggered fire alarms, which in turn led to evacuations. There were broken eggs, but not an omelette in sight.

She pressed the buttons of the mobile through the plastic, as the caller instructed, and waited apprehensively as the phone rang. A male voice answered. Met with silence, the voice demanded. "Who
is
this? Make it quick, I'm busy!"

Theresa stayed silent; the phone went dead after a few choice expletives. Barely a moment had passed before the man called back. She answered, but said nothing.

"It's you again isn't it?" The voice said, "You think you can play games with
me?
When I find out who you are, you're a dead man, do you hear me!" Theresa cut him off.

Out of curiosity, she decided to check the call history. There were ten or twelve numbers recorded there, including the last two calls. Then she spotted something; her telephone number was in the call directory too. Panicking, she made another wrong decision. She deleted her number.

Next, she climbed onto the desk, pushed up a tile and unfastening the bag containing the phone, tipped it out on top of the adjacent ceiling.

Getting back down, she was surprised how her heart hammered hard in her chest, scared that, at any moment, Kennedy, or someone else might come in. If they did, she'd say she thought she heard something vibrating up there. Lastly, she allowed the folded newspaper to slide out onto the top of the desk. Packing the empty sleeves away and smoothing her clothes down, she wondered what kind of game the caller was playing.
How did you get yourself involved in this?
She reassured herself, if things unfolded badly; she could always come forward and explain.
He put me in an untenable situation . . . I needed to buy time for my daughter's sake. I didn't understand what he was up to. I had to keep him off my back, while I tried to figure how to bring what was happening to light
.
They'd understand.

"After this, there's just one more thing to do, Trie, I want you to get some information for me. I'll call you Monday evening."

He didn't say what it was that he required.

She was more nervous about this final demand, than she'd been about the ones he'd made before.

She wondered if this last thing would reveal his intentions more clearly. It didn't matter, once she did this; she'd be free from his demands.

You don't realise how much you miss normality until you don't have it anymore.

Theresa couldn't wait to get back to normal. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Chapter 76

When Kennedy arrived at his office, he walked all the way round to the other side of his desk before he noticed the white detritus scattered across the surface.
What on earth . . .?
Curious, he crumbled bits of the debris from the desktop between his thumb and fingers and looked up at the ceiling. There was no light fitting above his desk. That ruled out the electrician doing maintenance. A tile looked as if it hadn't seated correctly. He climbed up onto the desk, and pushed the grid up to adjust it, trying to get it to sit right. When that didn't work, he lifted the tile clear. He wasn't tall enough to see over the grid into the void, even on tiptoes. Finding it difficult to balance, he placed a hand each side of the grid and manoeuvred a book into position with his foot, and using the extra height it gave him, peered in and saw something that looked out of place. He picked it up. It was a mobile phone.

After climbing down, he scratched his head.
How did it get there?

The last time they refurbished the offices, they'd put in new ceilings. From what he recalled, the void was about two feet high, and there was no way the grid would support a person's weight, so the phone hadn't fallen out of a contractor's pocket.