Chloe, on the other hand had been easy. Chloe hadn’t thought to question that the quirky jewellery tycoon had both workshop and office in her basement. Myrtle had never doubted the need to waddle below ground to view the Disney collection, or that the slender, blue-haired woman leading the way was Anita Radcliffe’s daughter. And now this deluded woman is proving as stupid as the rest.
Sirocco’s flowing black form appears in the doorway as she looks nervously around. The basement is empty now, apart from the flies. The boxes of souvenirs – the women’s clothes and possessions – have long since been disposed of. Maggie is nothing if not a very careful killer. More recently, her old medical textbooks, her childhood things, have likewise been taken away. She will leave behind nothing that will link her to her former life. Or to what she has done in this one.
There is nothing in this basement room that should alarm Sirocco. From where she is standing, she cannot see the disconnected bathtub in which the bodies of three large women decomposed and drained away until their remains weighed practically nothing. Hamish had been bang on about that.
The two women stand and face each other. Sirocco looks on the verge of tears. ‘How? How come you know where Hamish is going and I don’t?’
As Maggie steps forward she feels a fleeting moment of pity for what the girl has lost. She holds out her left hand, ostensibly for the letter, really as a distraction, so that Sirocco won’t see, until too late, what Maggie has in her right hand.
The club hammer, identical to the one that killed Odi and Broon, cuts its way through the air and connects with the side of Sirocco’s head. The hard resistance of bone is more solid than Maggie expected and her arm feels a jolt of pain as Sirocco sways.
Maggie swings her arm back, ready to strike again, but Sirocco sinks to the floor, her black clothes spreading around her like a stagnant puddle. She is unlikely to be dead, not after one strike, but Maggie can waste no more time. She has somewhere else to be.
‘How do I know where Hamish is going?’ she says to the motionless form on the cellar floor. ‘I know because these letters were never meant for you, I’m afraid. You were just the postman.’
Chapter 102
HE HAS LEFT a trail for her. The fluorescent stones start at the cave entrance and lead her, breadcrumb style, into its depths. She doesn’t need them. She has been this way so many times, she thinks she can do it in the dark. She steps into the cave, leaving light behind – or maybe she did that a long time ago. Either way, her path is clear.
After a few yards, she picks up his scent. Not the one she remembers from so long ago, that heady mix of aftershave and shower gel and something that was so essentially male, so completely Hamish, but the new smell, the one born of prison and violence and frustration.
She likes them both.
The trickling of the water over the rocks sounds like music. The first time he brought her here, there really was music. He’d carried a battery-operated CD player in his backpack, along with a padded mat and blanket, cold champagne and glasses, and lots of candles.
‘I don’t like caves. They make me claustrophobic,’ Daisy had complained, when what she really meant was that she didn’t like climbing up the sides of steep hills to get to them. She didn’t like the constricted feeling of squeezing her too large body through tiny gaps in the walls.
‘You’ll like this one,’ he promised. ‘There’s a pool where Arthur and Guinevere’s wedding rings were thrown hundreds of years ago. The rock grew around them and all you can see now are two small rings of gold in the rock face.’
She’d gone willingly, after that, because who can resist a tale of enduring love. Or heartless betrayal. The legend could be read both ways.
Twenty years ago, he turned the cave into a fairy grotto with dozens of tiny, sparkling lights. She’d sat on the rug and watched in wonder as this beautiful man went to so much trouble for her. She’d known in that moment, for better or worse, she would love him until the day she died.
She hadn’t known then, of course, that it was going to be so very much for the worse.
The narrow rock passage sweeps down low and she must too, but she knows he is waiting on the other side.
The vaulted chamber is much darker than she remembers from that first time. He has had neither the time, nor the opportunity, to collect tea lights. All he has is a small torch and a travel rug, both of which are probably from the plane.
He is sitting, his back to the river, watching her approach.
‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he says.
She draws closer, reaches the rug and sinks down beside him. He is too pale, even in this weird absence of light, too thin. So much older than the boy she fell in love with, and yet so completely the man who has been in her head every waking moment for two decades. Only the sadness is different. The sadness at what she has become.
‘How long have you known?’ She asks the question, and yet knows the answer before he gives it.