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Synopsis
'Bruce is doing for Cambridge what Colin Dexter did for Oxford with Inspector Morse'Daily Mail
DC Gary Goodhew is intelligent, intuitive and the youngest detective at Cambridge's Parkside Station. He is the first on the scene when the body of a young woman is discovered on Midsummer Common and for the first time in his career is given the chance to work on a murder investigation.
Soon there is an identity for the victim: Lorna Spence. Richard Moran, her boyfriend and employer, has reported her missing and is distraught to discover that she has been killed. He claims she was loved by his staff and his sisters, reserved Alice and vulnerable Jackie. He says she had no enemies but it isn't long before Goodhew discovers plenty, including her high maintenance colleague Victoria and Goodhew's reckless former classmate Bryn.
They both swear that they have nothing to do with Lorna's death but Goodhew knows someone is lying. Then there is another brutal murder and Goodhew knows it is time to use his own initiative to flush out the killer, even though it means risking his job and discovering the truth about the one person he hopes will be innocent.
'A gripping tale of murder and mystery'Cambridge Style
'Menacing and insidious, this is a great novel' R J Ellory
Release date: July 22, 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 304
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Cambridge Blue
Alison Bruce
Alison Bruce is the author of two non-fiction crime books. This is the first Gary Goodhew novel.
Alison lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband Jacen, and their two children.
Alison Bruce
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2008
This paperback edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2010
First US edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2009
This paperback edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2010
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © Alison Bruce, 2008, 2009
The right of Alison Bruce to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-264-5
US ISBN: 978-1-56947-877-6
US Library of Congress number: 2008028447
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
For Jacen, Mum,
Natalie, Lana and Dean
Jackie Moran opened her eyes and stared up at the underside of her duvet – pulling it over her head was the last thing she remembered doing the previous night. One of her
pillows now lay cocooned alongside her; the only sign that she’d moved in her sleep.
Unless someone else had put it there.
The faint orange glow of her night light leached through the edges of the duvet. She guessed it was still some time before dawn.
Motionless, she watched the graduated shades of ochre and grey, trying to persuade herself that there was no movement on the other side of the covers, but she was scared to look out, sure that
someone would be waiting for her if she did. She listened, but the more she strained to hear, the more she was convinced that someone was breathing quietly in time with her. She held her breath and
listened. Nothing.
She waited until the sound of her heart palpitations filled her ears, then began to breathe again.
Jackie moved slowly, turning her wrist just enough to see the fluorescent glow of her watch face. The trick would be to do it without disturbing the bedding. 4 a.m.
It was no surprise; every night without sleeping pills went this way. The same fear and paranoia. The same cold sweat that drenched her neck and breasts. The same feeling that her world was flat
and she was sliding ever closer to the edge.
She shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep, counting her heartbeats and trying to ignore the familiar uneasy feeling that hovered above her, realizing that, today, it had become far more
intense.
She woke again at 6 a.m. with her hair tousled and tangled as though she’d tossed her head from side to side in her sleep. Her duvet lay on the floor. She couldn’t
remember what she’d dreamt; she refused to dwell on her nocturnal self-torture.
By 6.30 a.m., Jackie Moran had been out of bed for a full half-hour. She still wore her nightshirt; grey and thigh-length with the words ‘Personal Trainer’ across the front in pink
lettering. She had been amused by the thought that she could one day be fit enough to work in a gym.
Her cottage originally had two bedrooms, but she had decided to have the second refitted as a bathroom. She kept the first floor heated throughout the night – it was one of her luxuries in
life, allowing her to pad around with bare legs and feet. Pulling on her jeans and thick socks was always the last thing she did before going down to the cold downstairs.
She made up the bed, drew open the curtains, then crossed the small landing between the bedroom and bathroom. She called downstairs to her Border collie, ‘Bridy, walk in five
minutes.’ She turned a blind eye to her dog spending nights on the settee.
In the sitting room, Bridy uncurled herself and slid on to the stone floor. She dutifully took her place at the bottom of the stairs and waited for her mistress.
Jackie’s clean underwear was drying in an orderly left-to-right queue on top of the radiator. They had come from the same home-shopping catalogue as her nightshirt. It was only the second
time she had worn them, and already she could see that the quality wasn’t great.
She ran the basin’s hot tap until the water steamed, then dropped the polished plug into place and left the basin to fill. She pulled off her nightshirt, folding it as she made her way,
naked, back to the bedroom to leave it under her pillow. Jackie glanced at herself in the dressing-table mirror; she had no objections to her figure. She had long since accepted that it was her lot
to be boy-like rather than womanly. Perhaps she would have paused longer if there had been anyone to see her naked. There wasn’t.
Dressed in her ski jacket and jeans, Jackie opened the cottage’s side door on to the Fen Ditton morning and checked the weather for the first time. Not that it mattered: barring a change
of boots for floods or unexpected snowfall, there was no British weather that would prevent her from taking Bridy on her morning walk.
A damp chill hung in the air. She put Bridy on the lead, and the dog trailed at her heels, grey muzzle close to her left hand.
This was the village at its best; fresh with a new morning and blissfully few people. Not that she disliked people, but they were likely to be a distraction, and she needed space to think.
Bridy paused to snuffle in the verge. Jackie rattled the choke chain and made a clicking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Not yet, Bridy.’
Bridy responded with a sneeze, then continued to trot alongside her.
Jackie cast a concerned eye over the war memorial. A delinquent had defaced the ‘Lest We Forget’ by changing the ‘L’ to a ‘B’. The press had inevitably jumped
to the defence of the youth. The Cambridge News had done a survey of local schools and reported a ‘commendable knowledge of the two World Wars amongst local teenagers’.
Words are cheap.
Mr Mills at the post office had actually done something about it. He had campaigned for a custodial sentence, which had apparently scared the lad witless in the process.
She walked past the post office, its windows polished and paintwork immaculate; she had a great deal of respect for Mr Mills and his determination to care for the village. The idea of standing
up in public like that was impossibly daunting and she’d been glad when the press’s brief interest had died.
She checked herself. Wasn’t she suddenly sounding middle-aged? The point of her whole routine had been to make her daily life more efficient, but she could now see it had merely caused her
to become set in her ways. She was touring the village complaining about other people, when perhaps she should look at her own life with the same critical eye.
Jackie wasn’t about to dwell on all the things she’d once thought she would be able to accomplish by the age of thirty. She didn’t need to list them to know that she’d
ticked none of the boxes, and with only one month to go they were most likely to remain unrealized. But was this it, then?
Damn, what if it was?
At the Plough public house, the road curved to the right with a tractor-width mud track diverging to the left. She let Bridy off the lead and followed this trail in the direction of the river
path, walking between the tyre tracks on the raised strip of stones and divots.
Once clear of the pub and its family gardens, she enjoyed her favourite view of the village: the mercurial Cam flowed on her left, grey and swift today; like cold, molten metal.
On her right, beyond the paddock, stood a telegraph pole fanning out cables to the surrounding houses. Villages were still supposed to be places of community, even if the neighbours didn’t
know one another anymore. For the umpteenth time in her adult life, Jackie wondered how different it would have been if her mother had lived; the cottage could have been less of a comfort and more
of a joy.
She diverted her attention away from the houses to where, in the paddock itself, a grey and a roan wore matching royal-blue head collars and New Zealand rugs. The grey raised his head and
watched the pair of them pass. Jackie paused to pat Bridy.
It started to drizzle, the tiny rain droplets making silent dimples in the river, adding to the waters flowing through from Cambridge and out towards Ely, and eventually the Wash.
Two eight-oared boats nosed around the bend ahead, pulling upstream, rowing back to the college boathouses. They came and went in seconds, each man puffing warm white breath and breaking the
peace with grunts of coordinated exertion. The oars skimmed and creaked past Jackie and she knew that they were concentrating far too much to notice the figure she had just glimpsed, standing in
the shadows.
The man waited in the drizzle, a quarter of a mile further along the banks of the Cam, leaning on the fence that ran beside the footpath, sheltering under the bare branches of the overhanging
trees.
As far as she knew, she was the only one who’d ever noticed him. The first time she’d passed him, she thought he looked strange, standing alone under a tree. He looked like a
labourer waiting for the team van. Except there was no road; and she happened to know he had his own van.
That had been three weeks ago, when she’d heard him trying to start it as she walked back home. It had taken several disruptive attempts before the van’s starter motor stopped
rasping like a distressed saw and reluctantly allowed the engine to fire. It had driven past her as it whined and pinked its way back out of the village, puffing oil-tinged blue smoke from its
exhaust.
She’d written the registration number on her memo board, where it had stayed until she’d overwritten it with the date of her dental appointment.
She was less than 100 yards from him when he glanced at her. Today he had his black woollen hat tugged tight over his cropped ginger hair. In fact, all his clothes were dark and, somehow, that
made him loom larger on her path ahead.
She turned to Bridy; it gave her an excuse to look away. Bridy snuffled in the hedgerow, interested in the smells drawn out by the rain.
‘Come on, Bridy.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally bright, brittle even. ‘It’s too cold to stop.’
Britain, she decided, had become a country full of women looking for rapists and muggers down every alley, and she wasn’t about to become the next victim of a nation’s raging
paranoia. But goose-bumps still rose on her neck and scuttled up on to her face. Suddenly she wanted to turn round and go home.
He stared at her as she approached; he’d never made eye contact before but, she reminded herself, he’d never done her any harm before either. His face glowed moon-white, punctured by
dark, dilated bullet holes for eyes and nostrils exuding short blasts of steam.
She ignored the way her heart was thumping as though it wanted to escape her chest. Besides, she was not prepared to change her routine for anyone.
Jackie forced herself to keep walking, even though every instinct told her to turn and run. She drew deep breaths, hoping they’d calm her, but the harsh chill in the air only felt like an
in-draught of terror. Her muscles seemed to have atrophied. Her head felt giddy and all she could think was run, run, run. She thought it until she was too close to change course.
She passed within two feet of him and heard a sharp crackle of movement from the hedgerow. She didn’t turn to face him, but the first wave of fear arrived even before she felt his hands at
her throat. It paralysed her. Sucked her inside herself to a place where her body was no longer her own and where her last seconds would be torn from her as easily as tearing paper. His grip was
ferocious, compassionless, crushing her windpipe, making the pain scream in her ears and silencing the rest of her world.
She saw Bridy, just a tumble of black and white. Then a second wave washed over Jackie, but this time it was adrenalin that surged through her. And Bridy rushed again, barking and buffeting his
shins.
‘Shut up,’ he snarled, and lashed out with his boot. Bridy was faster and dodged the kick. His grip slipped, and Jackie threw herself sideways, grabbing at the undergrowth; anything
for escape. She tried to roll away, but he lunged at her legs, grabbing her at the knees, pulling her back to the ground. One hand reached up and his fingers grabbed the belt buckle on her jeans;
he hauled himself on top of her, working his way up her body. His face drew closer to hers, his breath hot. She had no room to manoeuvre now, and for one long moment it seemed that neither of them
moved. His weight pressed down on her, chest to breast, pelvis to pelvis, pushing her legs apart. With one free hand he reached downwards, and she expected to feel his fingers tugging at the zip on
her jeans, but instead he felt for something in his own back pocket.
Bridy renewed her barking, just as Jackie saw the knife in his hand. He lashed out his leg once more. This time the dog launched herself, grabbing the hem of the man’s trousers between her
teeth. She pulled hard. He extended his foot and attempted another kick. ‘Fuck off,’ he yelled, but Bridy held tight and growled as she yanked at his outstretched leg.
The knife sprang from his fingers, landing silently in the long grass. As he reached to grab it, Jackie wriggled one arm free, slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and grabbed for
Bridy’s collar and lead.
Still on the ground, the man hauled himself towards the knife, heaving the weight of Bridy along with him. His fingertips brushed the handle, but he was still not close enough to take hold of
it. She knew that if he reached it, he would finish the job.
The choke chain still ran in a loop and, with one movement, Jackie hooked it over his head. His reaction was delayed: it seemed several seconds before his body jerked, then he let go of her and
his hands shot up to his own throat.
She dragged on the lead and he pulled it back towards him, slackening the chain momentarily. It’s him or me. Him or me.
His eyes were still wild, but now they bulged with fear. Jackie kicked out. One leg, then the other, pulled free of him and the hard toes of her boots drove into his abdomen and chest. He hung
on to the metal links of the lead, but she refused to release her grip. Then her knee connected with his jaw, cracking against the bone and sending his teeth into his tongue.
Finally she found the foothold she sought and pushed hard on his sternum. Her body flexed rigid and she pulled the lead tight until the links slipped out of his fingers and the chain had all but
disappeared into an engorged welt around his purpling neck.
Bridy let go first, but by then the man was dead.
Jackie Moran retreated. Standing with her back in the hawthorn, she stared down at the body. Two questions screamed at her. Who? Why?
Bridy looked up at her, waiting for her to decide what to do next.
Something bright caught her eye. She stepped past Bridy and looked down at it. It was the knife, its blade poking up at the angle of a shark’s fin. She knelt beside it; it was a kitchen
knife, not an everyday folding pocket kind that some men carried.
Jackie picked it up, holding it with the tip of its blade between her forefinger and thumb, before taking it by the handle and testing its sharpness. It would have been an efficient murder
weapon. She stroked the flat of the steel. This man had deliberately brought it with him to use on her. She wasn’t surprised when a familiar nausea began to stir inside her. This had been no
random attack. This had been the lingering and diseased fingers of the past clawing at her just when she’d dared to think about the future.
The edge of the water was about eight feet away. Heavy tufts of grass topped the bank, and from there she knew that the eroded sides dropped sharply into the deep river just beyond. She threw
the knife and watched it disappear below the ripples.
She could have handed it over to the police, of course, but she pictured the familiar doubtful expression, and that look it turned into: part pity, part disgust. She closed her eyes and when she
reopened them, she couldn’t locate the spot where the knife had sunk.
The riverbank remained deserted, and she guessed a body could be buffeted some distance before it was eventually discovered. Then she shook her head, not fully believing what she had just
done.
She rolled him over to the water, reminding herself of a single truth: it was now too late to look for help.
He slipped in head first, making a wave of water which slopped back against the bank. He descended gradually, turning slowly from man to a ghostly shadow to nothingness.
Jackie stepped back from the edge and reached out for the warmth of Bridy. She rubbed the soft fur at the base of Bridy’s ear. ‘Good girl, we’re safe now,’ she whispered
shakily. ‘It’s all over.’ But in her own voice she heard the unmistakable sound of a lie.
Rolfe Street was only a short walk from the heart of Cambridge, but it was a perpetual backwater, seeing no accidental visitors and few daytime inhabitants.
A lone man stood on the pavement waiting to speak to Lorna Spence: the same woman who was spying on him from her first-floor window. So far he’d knocked twice, but she had no intention of
letting him know she was at home.
She stood behind a carefully placed ruck in the curtains. She knew he couldn’t see her but, even so, she kept perfectly still in case he glanced up and caught the flicker of her
shadow.
Lorna Spence had gone to bed wearing nothing but yesterday’s knickers, and that was all she wore now as she studied the top of his head.
He took a few short steps towards the door, and then a few towards the street. Again he ran his hand in an impatient foray through his hair, completing the gesture by clasping it across the back
of his neck. He drew closer to the door, leaning in towards it and listening. His hand, still on his neck, massaged the rigid muscles which locked the top of his spine.
He was obviously stressed.
She imagined him swearing under his breath. He took a step back and his gaze shot up to her window, boring into the gap between the curtains. He seemed to stare straight into her face, but she
didn’t blink.
A tingling feeling sprang across her bare skin, racing in waves across her shoulders and trickling across her small, freckled breasts. Only her chest moved, rising and falling ever quicker;
trying to keep pace with her heartbeat.
Lorna waited for him to knock again, but instead he stepped away and out of sight of her little spyhole. She moved closer to the gap and crept around until she had a view of the closed end of
the cul-de-sac. She soon located him again. He stood on the edge of the kerb with his hands on his hips.
‘Go away. Go on, get in your car and drive away,’ she whispered down to him.
His attention had settled on the rows of parked vehicles flanking each side of the road. She knew he wouldn’t recognize any of them.
Then he left, walking briskly towards his own car at the end of the street. He’d accepted what she already knew: that he had no reason to believe she was at home.
She waited. He started the engine and let the postman pass without cross-examination. Then he pulled away and drove out of sight. But she still waited, watching the road until she’d
counted to one hundred and was sure he wouldn’t return.
And then she exhaled with a long puff. Her heartbeat gradually slowed and her pulse steadied.
The letterbox creaked as it opened and there was an echoing snap as it shut. The junk mail made a heavy thud as it hit the hallway’s tiled floor. She leant over the handrail and checked,
in case an unexpected letter looked tempting enough for a dash downstairs.
A large holiday brochure lay face down, obscuring any other post that may have been underneath. A photo of a caravan park and the words ‘Family Entertainment’ jumped out at her
through the clear plastic envelope.
‘Why me?’ she groaned. Last week the mail had been sit-in baths and stair-lifts. What a waste of time.
Her dressing table was a wide antique pine chest of drawers with a reproduction pine mirror on top. She only owned the mirror and the battery clock next to it. It was 8.35 a.m. and she was going
to be late for work.
In the circumstances, late would be a good thing. But not too late, she couldn’t afford trouble at the office as well. She padded into the bathroom, pulled off her knickers and threw them
into the corner with the rest of the week’s laundry. She ran the hot tap until the water flowed warm, and meanwhile damped down her short, ash-blonde hair, working her fingers through the
feathered strands at the back so they lay close to the nape of the neck.
She dressed quickly and chose Warm Mocha lipstick. She ran it back and forth across her lips, then dabbed it on to her cheekbones, rubbing it in to give the approximation of blusher. That would
do.
She checked her reflection, aware that the skim of freckles across each cheek and a lucky gap between her two front teeth gave her face more character than any layer of make-up.
She grabbed her bag and hurried downstairs. As she reached the bottom stair, she could see other letters buried under the brochure.
Five pairs of her shoes were lined up beside the door; in two-inch heels she made five foot five. Just.
She reached for the post, slipping her feet into her highest shoes as she turned the envelopes over. There were four. She flicked through them. Mobile phone bill, bank statement, credit card
bill. Then the fourth. White, A5, and emblazoned with an advert for a bank loan. But it was the addressee’s name which caught her eye. Miss H. Sellars.
Lorna frowned. A chill tickled her scalp, then vanished. How strange, she thought. She shook her head and smiled. What an amazing coincidence. She suddenly wondered whether the holiday brochure
was similarly addressed. She slid it from under the other post.
The black print on the white label jumped out at her. Instant fear washed the smile from her lips. She recoiled and the post scattered, tumbling from her fingers on to the floor. The corner of
the clear envelope hit the mat, bounced and landed, slapping down flat on its face.
She opened the front door and hurried away down the street. Behind her, the hall tiles stayed cold, rebuffing the unanswered ring of the telephone upstairs.
The punting station was quiet. A few ducks paddled on the river but the punts were stationary, and tightly moored to one another.
Most of the buildings around the cobbled quayside square had been converted into cafés and restaurants. Some had flats above; luxury apartments with romantic views of the river and
discreet street-level entrances. One of these doors, however, bore a chrome plaque which read ‘The Excelsior Clinic’.
As Lorna crossed the quayside, she was already forty-five minutes late for work. The wind blowing along The Backs made it too cold to sit outside, but tables and umbrellas cluttered the
pavement. No doubt trying to entice people inside. Lorna knocked over a chair as she hurried through. It clattered on to its side, then clattered again as she paused to haul it back on to its
feet.
The outer door was unlocked and Lorna hurried up the steps to where a woman with a prematurely grey, middle-aged haircut sat behind the reception desk. She wore half-moon glasses and her blouse
was buttoned up to the top.
Lorna slapped her hand on the oak counter-top. ‘Morning. Are you from the agency?’
The woman nodded and introduced herself as Faith Carver. That figured: nothing more glamorous would fit.
Lorna smiled, reached over and shook her hand. ‘I’m Lorna. I do the accounts through there.’ She pointed at the frosted-glass panel behind Faith’s chair.
‘Oh, good. I have lots of messages for you.’
Lorna swung up the hinged end of the reception counter and slid back the glass partition which led to her office. She worked alone in a twelve-foot-square space that contained two desks, two
phones, two chairs and one kettle. ‘Give me a minute to sort myself out and I’ll be with you. Tea or coffee?’
‘Not for me, thanks. I’ll wait until eleven.’
The corner of Lorna’s mouth flickered with the hint of an ironic smile. That made a change; a temp with a work ethic.
Though Faith remained on her side of the open door, Lorna chatted to her as she organized her morning drink. ‘When I first worked here, I thought Excelsior sounded like a brand of condom.
After a while, I realized how appropriate it was too.’ Lorna stole a quick glance at Faith’s ring finger and saw that she wore a wedding band. ‘This business is all about
sex,’ she added.
Faith raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it?’
‘Yup. I’ve been here two years and nearly every treatment that we perform is cosmetic. The dental department does caps and whitening, the eye clinic does laser treatment so people
can chuck out their glasses, and that’s nothing compared to the surgery lot. Have you heard of Botox?’
Faith shrugged. ‘I’ve heard the name.’ She sounded vague.
‘It costs three hundred and fifty quid for a ten-minute session. And for that, Mr Moran injects them, paralysing their facial muscles with shots of purified botulism. It’s nearly all
women, and they roll out of here feeling like sex kittens.’
Faith picked up a notepad and tore off the top sheet. ‘Dr Moran is one of your messages.’
‘It’s Mr, not Dr,’ Lorna corrected and carried on cheerfully, ‘I think there’s nothing like tossing money around to boost a woman’s libido.’ Mr
Moran’s schedule lay on the top of her in-tray. She checked it: no cancellations. She ran her finger down the list, making a rough total of the bills to be issued. Almost £12,000.
‘Same tomorrow, too. Twelve grand for one day’s work.’
Faith shook her head. ‘I don’t think I need to know all of this.’
Lorna paused. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound indiscreet, but I find it fascinating. Besides, you work here now. And I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve his
success. He often works ten-hour days so he can. . .
Alison lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband Jacen, and their two children.
Alison Bruce
Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2008
This paperback edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2010
First US edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2009
This paperback edition published by SohoConstable,
an imprint of Soho Press Inc., 2010
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © Alison Bruce, 2008, 2009
The right of Alison Bruce to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-264-5
US ISBN: 978-1-56947-877-6
US Library of Congress number: 2008028447
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
For Jacen, Mum,
Natalie, Lana and Dean
Jackie Moran opened her eyes and stared up at the underside of her duvet – pulling it over her head was the last thing she remembered doing the previous night. One of her
pillows now lay cocooned alongside her; the only sign that she’d moved in her sleep.
Unless someone else had put it there.
The faint orange glow of her night light leached through the edges of the duvet. She guessed it was still some time before dawn.
Motionless, she watched the graduated shades of ochre and grey, trying to persuade herself that there was no movement on the other side of the covers, but she was scared to look out, sure that
someone would be waiting for her if she did. She listened, but the more she strained to hear, the more she was convinced that someone was breathing quietly in time with her. She held her breath and
listened. Nothing.
She waited until the sound of her heart palpitations filled her ears, then began to breathe again.
Jackie moved slowly, turning her wrist just enough to see the fluorescent glow of her watch face. The trick would be to do it without disturbing the bedding. 4 a.m.
It was no surprise; every night without sleeping pills went this way. The same fear and paranoia. The same cold sweat that drenched her neck and breasts. The same feeling that her world was flat
and she was sliding ever closer to the edge.
She shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep, counting her heartbeats and trying to ignore the familiar uneasy feeling that hovered above her, realizing that, today, it had become far more
intense.
She woke again at 6 a.m. with her hair tousled and tangled as though she’d tossed her head from side to side in her sleep. Her duvet lay on the floor. She couldn’t
remember what she’d dreamt; she refused to dwell on her nocturnal self-torture.
By 6.30 a.m., Jackie Moran had been out of bed for a full half-hour. She still wore her nightshirt; grey and thigh-length with the words ‘Personal Trainer’ across the front in pink
lettering. She had been amused by the thought that she could one day be fit enough to work in a gym.
Her cottage originally had two bedrooms, but she had decided to have the second refitted as a bathroom. She kept the first floor heated throughout the night – it was one of her luxuries in
life, allowing her to pad around with bare legs and feet. Pulling on her jeans and thick socks was always the last thing she did before going down to the cold downstairs.
She made up the bed, drew open the curtains, then crossed the small landing between the bedroom and bathroom. She called downstairs to her Border collie, ‘Bridy, walk in five
minutes.’ She turned a blind eye to her dog spending nights on the settee.
In the sitting room, Bridy uncurled herself and slid on to the stone floor. She dutifully took her place at the bottom of the stairs and waited for her mistress.
Jackie’s clean underwear was drying in an orderly left-to-right queue on top of the radiator. They had come from the same home-shopping catalogue as her nightshirt. It was only the second
time she had worn them, and already she could see that the quality wasn’t great.
She ran the basin’s hot tap until the water steamed, then dropped the polished plug into place and left the basin to fill. She pulled off her nightshirt, folding it as she made her way,
naked, back to the bedroom to leave it under her pillow. Jackie glanced at herself in the dressing-table mirror; she had no objections to her figure. She had long since accepted that it was her lot
to be boy-like rather than womanly. Perhaps she would have paused longer if there had been anyone to see her naked. There wasn’t.
Dressed in her ski jacket and jeans, Jackie opened the cottage’s side door on to the Fen Ditton morning and checked the weather for the first time. Not that it mattered: barring a change
of boots for floods or unexpected snowfall, there was no British weather that would prevent her from taking Bridy on her morning walk.
A damp chill hung in the air. She put Bridy on the lead, and the dog trailed at her heels, grey muzzle close to her left hand.
This was the village at its best; fresh with a new morning and blissfully few people. Not that she disliked people, but they were likely to be a distraction, and she needed space to think.
Bridy paused to snuffle in the verge. Jackie rattled the choke chain and made a clicking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Not yet, Bridy.’
Bridy responded with a sneeze, then continued to trot alongside her.
Jackie cast a concerned eye over the war memorial. A delinquent had defaced the ‘Lest We Forget’ by changing the ‘L’ to a ‘B’. The press had inevitably jumped
to the defence of the youth. The Cambridge News had done a survey of local schools and reported a ‘commendable knowledge of the two World Wars amongst local teenagers’.
Words are cheap.
Mr Mills at the post office had actually done something about it. He had campaigned for a custodial sentence, which had apparently scared the lad witless in the process.
She walked past the post office, its windows polished and paintwork immaculate; she had a great deal of respect for Mr Mills and his determination to care for the village. The idea of standing
up in public like that was impossibly daunting and she’d been glad when the press’s brief interest had died.
She checked herself. Wasn’t she suddenly sounding middle-aged? The point of her whole routine had been to make her daily life more efficient, but she could now see it had merely caused her
to become set in her ways. She was touring the village complaining about other people, when perhaps she should look at her own life with the same critical eye.
Jackie wasn’t about to dwell on all the things she’d once thought she would be able to accomplish by the age of thirty. She didn’t need to list them to know that she’d
ticked none of the boxes, and with only one month to go they were most likely to remain unrealized. But was this it, then?
Damn, what if it was?
At the Plough public house, the road curved to the right with a tractor-width mud track diverging to the left. She let Bridy off the lead and followed this trail in the direction of the river
path, walking between the tyre tracks on the raised strip of stones and divots.
Once clear of the pub and its family gardens, she enjoyed her favourite view of the village: the mercurial Cam flowed on her left, grey and swift today; like cold, molten metal.
On her right, beyond the paddock, stood a telegraph pole fanning out cables to the surrounding houses. Villages were still supposed to be places of community, even if the neighbours didn’t
know one another anymore. For the umpteenth time in her adult life, Jackie wondered how different it would have been if her mother had lived; the cottage could have been less of a comfort and more
of a joy.
She diverted her attention away from the houses to where, in the paddock itself, a grey and a roan wore matching royal-blue head collars and New Zealand rugs. The grey raised his head and
watched the pair of them pass. Jackie paused to pat Bridy.
It started to drizzle, the tiny rain droplets making silent dimples in the river, adding to the waters flowing through from Cambridge and out towards Ely, and eventually the Wash.
Two eight-oared boats nosed around the bend ahead, pulling upstream, rowing back to the college boathouses. They came and went in seconds, each man puffing warm white breath and breaking the
peace with grunts of coordinated exertion. The oars skimmed and creaked past Jackie and she knew that they were concentrating far too much to notice the figure she had just glimpsed, standing in
the shadows.
The man waited in the drizzle, a quarter of a mile further along the banks of the Cam, leaning on the fence that ran beside the footpath, sheltering under the bare branches of the overhanging
trees.
As far as she knew, she was the only one who’d ever noticed him. The first time she’d passed him, she thought he looked strange, standing alone under a tree. He looked like a
labourer waiting for the team van. Except there was no road; and she happened to know he had his own van.
That had been three weeks ago, when she’d heard him trying to start it as she walked back home. It had taken several disruptive attempts before the van’s starter motor stopped
rasping like a distressed saw and reluctantly allowed the engine to fire. It had driven past her as it whined and pinked its way back out of the village, puffing oil-tinged blue smoke from its
exhaust.
She’d written the registration number on her memo board, where it had stayed until she’d overwritten it with the date of her dental appointment.
She was less than 100 yards from him when he glanced at her. Today he had his black woollen hat tugged tight over his cropped ginger hair. In fact, all his clothes were dark and, somehow, that
made him loom larger on her path ahead.
She turned to Bridy; it gave her an excuse to look away. Bridy snuffled in the hedgerow, interested in the smells drawn out by the rain.
‘Come on, Bridy.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally bright, brittle even. ‘It’s too cold to stop.’
Britain, she decided, had become a country full of women looking for rapists and muggers down every alley, and she wasn’t about to become the next victim of a nation’s raging
paranoia. But goose-bumps still rose on her neck and scuttled up on to her face. Suddenly she wanted to turn round and go home.
He stared at her as she approached; he’d never made eye contact before but, she reminded herself, he’d never done her any harm before either. His face glowed moon-white, punctured by
dark, dilated bullet holes for eyes and nostrils exuding short blasts of steam.
She ignored the way her heart was thumping as though it wanted to escape her chest. Besides, she was not prepared to change her routine for anyone.
Jackie forced herself to keep walking, even though every instinct told her to turn and run. She drew deep breaths, hoping they’d calm her, but the harsh chill in the air only felt like an
in-draught of terror. Her muscles seemed to have atrophied. Her head felt giddy and all she could think was run, run, run. She thought it until she was too close to change course.
She passed within two feet of him and heard a sharp crackle of movement from the hedgerow. She didn’t turn to face him, but the first wave of fear arrived even before she felt his hands at
her throat. It paralysed her. Sucked her inside herself to a place where her body was no longer her own and where her last seconds would be torn from her as easily as tearing paper. His grip was
ferocious, compassionless, crushing her windpipe, making the pain scream in her ears and silencing the rest of her world.
She saw Bridy, just a tumble of black and white. Then a second wave washed over Jackie, but this time it was adrenalin that surged through her. And Bridy rushed again, barking and buffeting his
shins.
‘Shut up,’ he snarled, and lashed out with his boot. Bridy was faster and dodged the kick. His grip slipped, and Jackie threw herself sideways, grabbing at the undergrowth; anything
for escape. She tried to roll away, but he lunged at her legs, grabbing her at the knees, pulling her back to the ground. One hand reached up and his fingers grabbed the belt buckle on her jeans;
he hauled himself on top of her, working his way up her body. His face drew closer to hers, his breath hot. She had no room to manoeuvre now, and for one long moment it seemed that neither of them
moved. His weight pressed down on her, chest to breast, pelvis to pelvis, pushing her legs apart. With one free hand he reached downwards, and she expected to feel his fingers tugging at the zip on
her jeans, but instead he felt for something in his own back pocket.
Bridy renewed her barking, just as Jackie saw the knife in his hand. He lashed out his leg once more. This time the dog launched herself, grabbing the hem of the man’s trousers between her
teeth. She pulled hard. He extended his foot and attempted another kick. ‘Fuck off,’ he yelled, but Bridy held tight and growled as she yanked at his outstretched leg.
The knife sprang from his fingers, landing silently in the long grass. As he reached to grab it, Jackie wriggled one arm free, slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and grabbed for
Bridy’s collar and lead.
Still on the ground, the man hauled himself towards the knife, heaving the weight of Bridy along with him. His fingertips brushed the handle, but he was still not close enough to take hold of
it. She knew that if he reached it, he would finish the job.
The choke chain still ran in a loop and, with one movement, Jackie hooked it over his head. His reaction was delayed: it seemed several seconds before his body jerked, then he let go of her and
his hands shot up to his own throat.
She dragged on the lead and he pulled it back towards him, slackening the chain momentarily. It’s him or me. Him or me.
His eyes were still wild, but now they bulged with fear. Jackie kicked out. One leg, then the other, pulled free of him and the hard toes of her boots drove into his abdomen and chest. He hung
on to the metal links of the lead, but she refused to release her grip. Then her knee connected with his jaw, cracking against the bone and sending his teeth into his tongue.
Finally she found the foothold she sought and pushed hard on his sternum. Her body flexed rigid and she pulled the lead tight until the links slipped out of his fingers and the chain had all but
disappeared into an engorged welt around his purpling neck.
Bridy let go first, but by then the man was dead.
Jackie Moran retreated. Standing with her back in the hawthorn, she stared down at the body. Two questions screamed at her. Who? Why?
Bridy looked up at her, waiting for her to decide what to do next.
Something bright caught her eye. She stepped past Bridy and looked down at it. It was the knife, its blade poking up at the angle of a shark’s fin. She knelt beside it; it was a kitchen
knife, not an everyday folding pocket kind that some men carried.
Jackie picked it up, holding it with the tip of its blade between her forefinger and thumb, before taking it by the handle and testing its sharpness. It would have been an efficient murder
weapon. She stroked the flat of the steel. This man had deliberately brought it with him to use on her. She wasn’t surprised when a familiar nausea began to stir inside her. This had been no
random attack. This had been the lingering and diseased fingers of the past clawing at her just when she’d dared to think about the future.
The edge of the water was about eight feet away. Heavy tufts of grass topped the bank, and from there she knew that the eroded sides dropped sharply into the deep river just beyond. She threw
the knife and watched it disappear below the ripples.
She could have handed it over to the police, of course, but she pictured the familiar doubtful expression, and that look it turned into: part pity, part disgust. She closed her eyes and when she
reopened them, she couldn’t locate the spot where the knife had sunk.
The riverbank remained deserted, and she guessed a body could be buffeted some distance before it was eventually discovered. Then she shook her head, not fully believing what she had just
done.
She rolled him over to the water, reminding herself of a single truth: it was now too late to look for help.
He slipped in head first, making a wave of water which slopped back against the bank. He descended gradually, turning slowly from man to a ghostly shadow to nothingness.
Jackie stepped back from the edge and reached out for the warmth of Bridy. She rubbed the soft fur at the base of Bridy’s ear. ‘Good girl, we’re safe now,’ she whispered
shakily. ‘It’s all over.’ But in her own voice she heard the unmistakable sound of a lie.
Rolfe Street was only a short walk from the heart of Cambridge, but it was a perpetual backwater, seeing no accidental visitors and few daytime inhabitants.
A lone man stood on the pavement waiting to speak to Lorna Spence: the same woman who was spying on him from her first-floor window. So far he’d knocked twice, but she had no intention of
letting him know she was at home.
She stood behind a carefully placed ruck in the curtains. She knew he couldn’t see her but, even so, she kept perfectly still in case he glanced up and caught the flicker of her
shadow.
Lorna Spence had gone to bed wearing nothing but yesterday’s knickers, and that was all she wore now as she studied the top of his head.
He took a few short steps towards the door, and then a few towards the street. Again he ran his hand in an impatient foray through his hair, completing the gesture by clasping it across the back
of his neck. He drew closer to the door, leaning in towards it and listening. His hand, still on his neck, massaged the rigid muscles which locked the top of his spine.
He was obviously stressed.
She imagined him swearing under his breath. He took a step back and his gaze shot up to her window, boring into the gap between the curtains. He seemed to stare straight into her face, but she
didn’t blink.
A tingling feeling sprang across her bare skin, racing in waves across her shoulders and trickling across her small, freckled breasts. Only her chest moved, rising and falling ever quicker;
trying to keep pace with her heartbeat.
Lorna waited for him to knock again, but instead he stepped away and out of sight of her little spyhole. She moved closer to the gap and crept around until she had a view of the closed end of
the cul-de-sac. She soon located him again. He stood on the edge of the kerb with his hands on his hips.
‘Go away. Go on, get in your car and drive away,’ she whispered down to him.
His attention had settled on the rows of parked vehicles flanking each side of the road. She knew he wouldn’t recognize any of them.
Then he left, walking briskly towards his own car at the end of the street. He’d accepted what she already knew: that he had no reason to believe she was at home.
She waited. He started the engine and let the postman pass without cross-examination. Then he pulled away and drove out of sight. But she still waited, watching the road until she’d
counted to one hundred and was sure he wouldn’t return.
And then she exhaled with a long puff. Her heartbeat gradually slowed and her pulse steadied.
The letterbox creaked as it opened and there was an echoing snap as it shut. The junk mail made a heavy thud as it hit the hallway’s tiled floor. She leant over the handrail and checked,
in case an unexpected letter looked tempting enough for a dash downstairs.
A large holiday brochure lay face down, obscuring any other post that may have been underneath. A photo of a caravan park and the words ‘Family Entertainment’ jumped out at her
through the clear plastic envelope.
‘Why me?’ she groaned. Last week the mail had been sit-in baths and stair-lifts. What a waste of time.
Her dressing table was a wide antique pine chest of drawers with a reproduction pine mirror on top. She only owned the mirror and the battery clock next to it. It was 8.35 a.m. and she was going
to be late for work.
In the circumstances, late would be a good thing. But not too late, she couldn’t afford trouble at the office as well. She padded into the bathroom, pulled off her knickers and threw them
into the corner with the rest of the week’s laundry. She ran the hot tap until the water flowed warm, and meanwhile damped down her short, ash-blonde hair, working her fingers through the
feathered strands at the back so they lay close to the nape of the neck.
She dressed quickly and chose Warm Mocha lipstick. She ran it back and forth across her lips, then dabbed it on to her cheekbones, rubbing it in to give the approximation of blusher. That would
do.
She checked her reflection, aware that the skim of freckles across each cheek and a lucky gap between her two front teeth gave her face more character than any layer of make-up.
She grabbed her bag and hurried downstairs. As she reached the bottom stair, she could see other letters buried under the brochure.
Five pairs of her shoes were lined up beside the door; in two-inch heels she made five foot five. Just.
She reached for the post, slipping her feet into her highest shoes as she turned the envelopes over. There were four. She flicked through them. Mobile phone bill, bank statement, credit card
bill. Then the fourth. White, A5, and emblazoned with an advert for a bank loan. But it was the addressee’s name which caught her eye. Miss H. Sellars.
Lorna frowned. A chill tickled her scalp, then vanished. How strange, she thought. She shook her head and smiled. What an amazing coincidence. She suddenly wondered whether the holiday brochure
was similarly addressed. She slid it from under the other post.
The black print on the white label jumped out at her. Instant fear washed the smile from her lips. She recoiled and the post scattered, tumbling from her fingers on to the floor. The corner of
the clear envelope hit the mat, bounced and landed, slapping down flat on its face.
She opened the front door and hurried away down the street. Behind her, the hall tiles stayed cold, rebuffing the unanswered ring of the telephone upstairs.
The punting station was quiet. A few ducks paddled on the river but the punts were stationary, and tightly moored to one another.
Most of the buildings around the cobbled quayside square had been converted into cafés and restaurants. Some had flats above; luxury apartments with romantic views of the river and
discreet street-level entrances. One of these doors, however, bore a chrome plaque which read ‘The Excelsior Clinic’.
As Lorna crossed the quayside, she was already forty-five minutes late for work. The wind blowing along The Backs made it too cold to sit outside, but tables and umbrellas cluttered the
pavement. No doubt trying to entice people inside. Lorna knocked over a chair as she hurried through. It clattered on to its side, then clattered again as she paused to haul it back on to its
feet.
The outer door was unlocked and Lorna hurried up the steps to where a woman with a prematurely grey, middle-aged haircut sat behind the reception desk. She wore half-moon glasses and her blouse
was buttoned up to the top.
Lorna slapped her hand on the oak counter-top. ‘Morning. Are you from the agency?’
The woman nodded and introduced herself as Faith Carver. That figured: nothing more glamorous would fit.
Lorna smiled, reached over and shook her hand. ‘I’m Lorna. I do the accounts through there.’ She pointed at the frosted-glass panel behind Faith’s chair.
‘Oh, good. I have lots of messages for you.’
Lorna swung up the hinged end of the reception counter and slid back the glass partition which led to her office. She worked alone in a twelve-foot-square space that contained two desks, two
phones, two chairs and one kettle. ‘Give me a minute to sort myself out and I’ll be with you. Tea or coffee?’
‘Not for me, thanks. I’ll wait until eleven.’
The corner of Lorna’s mouth flickered with the hint of an ironic smile. That made a change; a temp with a work ethic.
Though Faith remained on her side of the open door, Lorna chatted to her as she organized her morning drink. ‘When I first worked here, I thought Excelsior sounded like a brand of condom.
After a while, I realized how appropriate it was too.’ Lorna stole a quick glance at Faith’s ring finger and saw that she wore a wedding band. ‘This business is all about
sex,’ she added.
Faith raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it?’
‘Yup. I’ve been here two years and nearly every treatment that we perform is cosmetic. The dental department does caps and whitening, the eye clinic does laser treatment so people
can chuck out their glasses, and that’s nothing compared to the surgery lot. Have you heard of Botox?’
Faith shrugged. ‘I’ve heard the name.’ She sounded vague.
‘It costs three hundred and fifty quid for a ten-minute session. And for that, Mr Moran injects them, paralysing their facial muscles with shots of purified botulism. It’s nearly all
women, and they roll out of here feeling like sex kittens.’
Faith picked up a notepad and tore off the top sheet. ‘Dr Moran is one of your messages.’
‘It’s Mr, not Dr,’ Lorna corrected and carried on cheerfully, ‘I think there’s nothing like tossing money around to boost a woman’s libido.’ Mr
Moran’s schedule lay on the top of her in-tray. She checked it: no cancellations. She ran her finger down the list, making a rough total of the bills to be issued. Almost £12,000.
‘Same tomorrow, too. Twelve grand for one day’s work.’
Faith shook her head. ‘I don’t think I need to know all of this.’
Lorna paused. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound indiscreet, but I find it fascinating. Besides, you work here now. And I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve his
success. He often works ten-hour days so he can. . .
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