Little white lies sometimes conceal deadly secrets.
Jimmy doesn't believe depression led his elder brother to kill himself. The police ignore his urging to reopen the case, and instead, direct him to the local busybody, Meinwen Jones. But when the self-proclaimed witch agrees to help him gather evidence of foul play, they uncover more than just white lies.
Meinwen discovers the brother had connections with one of her old friends, and his penthouse apartment doubles as a sado-masochist's dungeon. While Jimmy is struggling with the revelations, Meinwenís instant attraction to him compels her to establish herself as his dominant. Meanwhile, her friend from Wales arrives and he's not averse to a bit of friendship with benefits, either. As Meinwen navigates the pitfalls of a three-way relationship, another murder occurs.
Will Meinwen and Jimmy uncover all the secrets beneath the white lies in time to prevent another death? Will she choose Jimmy or Dafydd? One of them might turn out to be the love of her life.
John Fenstone’s eyelids flickered with trepidation.
It was sunny outside. One of those warm, end-of-summer afternoons where all he’d wanted to do was leave the office early, go to the park and lie on the grass. John had done the former, but instead of relaxing in the open air, now knelt naked in this hot attic room where the half-shuttered Venetian blinds left bands of alternating sunlight and shadow across the polished wooden floor.
His breath rasped in the silence, beads of sweat formed across his chest and back, nodules of coolant destined for the sea inching across the broad plates of his shoulder blades and the swell of his pectorals. Every minute or so some would join and make a sudden dash for the floor. He shivered with the sensation. John willed his heartbeat to slow, his breathing to become silent.
There. The soft tread across the floor, the tang of aftershave. Red Morocco, a gift bought for his last birthday. He felt the touch of Richard’s hand against the back of his neck, coarse fingernails scraping the skin as of John’s throat, the lightest pressure against his windpipe. John could feel the beating pulse in his throat. He had to force himself to remain calm. Since there were no restraints it would be so easy for him to move, to resist. He willed himself not to.
“What would you do for me, hmm? What would give me if I asked for it?”
Richard’s voice came as a whisper next to his ear causing John’s skin to pucker with sudden gooseflesh. John answered without hesitation. “Anything, Master, and my life.”
“Anything and your life. Exactly.”
Richard’s fingers around his throat were replaced by a forearm smelling of sweat and the heady, warm-Camembert scent of recent sex. A second arm was braced against John’s back as the choke hold was applied. John fought to remain conscious and not struggle as his blood became starved of oxygen. His vision began to recede as he blacked out, the border between conscious and unconscious drawing ever closer.
The pressure eased off, allowing him to take a gulp of breath. He snapped his eyes open, the lines of shadow across the yellow oak freeze-framing across his lids. Black-white. Light-dark. Love-hate. Live-die. He swallowed, the action catching against the bruise already forming across his larynx. He could feel the steady thump of blood at his temples.
His nostrils flared as the arm tightened again. He had the sudden fear of perhaps this would be it. Perhaps this time the game would go too far. Had he made a will? No space for thought. Just the pressure, pressure, pressure of the game. A simple code–three taps on his master’s arm–would end it. John fought to keep his hand still. The pressure released.
“Good.” Richard’s lips brushed his shoulder. Teeth grazed his flesh. A silent promise spoken directly to his loins. John breathed deeply, calming himself as sweat rolled down his back and into the crevice between his buttocks. Somewhere far away, a dog barked.
John’s cock hardened as Richard applied the pressure again. How near to death could he get and still remain obedient? His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
Chapter 1
Jimmy Fenstone paid the cab driver and stepped onto the pavement, reaching into the back seat to retrieve his bag. He closed the car door and gave the roof two quick taps. “Thanks, mate.”
He turned to the house as the car sped away down the road. Fifteen Ashgate Road hadn’t changed in ten years. It was the same door, the same color, the same windows as he remembered. It looked older, though, unkempt, like an old man who’d forgotten to shave. The front yard, such as it was, covered in waist-high weeds with pink flowers, some of them already spreading milk-white clouds of feather-headed seeds. His dad would have hated that. He’d kept the garden regimentally neat.
Jimmy hadn’t lived here since the day of the funeral, when he and his brother John had sent their mam out through the front door into the waiting hearse, following it to the church in a car provided by the funeral company. All the neighbors had taken the shortcut through the park and arrived at St. Pity’s before them. He’d told John at the time they should have done it themselves with a handcart and a black sheet. They’d have saved a small fortune.
He strode up the path and around the side of the house to the back door, surprised to find no lights on. He tried the handle. Locked. There was tape on the outside of the door, stretched between the two sides of the frame. Jimmy knew the stuff all too well and didn’t need the dim light from the street behind the house to recognize it. Blue-and-white diagonals. CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.
His heart beating faster, he thumped on the door. “John? Are you in there?”
A shoulder push did no good. Age had not lessened the security of the lock. They’d made doors to last in those days.
He was relieved to see the shed still standing exactly as he remembered and dropped his bag on the step. When they were kids, their mam used to leave a key in the shed for them. She never trusted them to have one of their own, tormenting herself with visions of them losing it and being murdered in the night by thieves whenever one of them brought the subject up. It never occurred to her to worry that all the neighbors knew about the hiding place. The shed had a simple bolt on the door and, Jimmy was relieved to find, a light inside that came on when the door opened, like a fridge. The key was just behind the door, where it had always been kept, though the shed bore little sign of use. Cobwebs covered their dad’s prized tools and the stacked bags of peat were drier than dust. John had never been one for gardening.
Jimmy slipped back to the house and tried the key in the door, half expecting the lock to have been changed in the last decade but the key turned and he slipped the door open, pushing his hand through the gap to fumble for the light switch.
“John?” Fear etched his voice as he called out, ducking under the tape and stepping into the kitchen for the first time in ten years. The kitchen was different. It had been green and white when he left. White floor and cupboards and green accents. Kettle, tea caddy and so on. Now it was a light yellow. Butterscotch with a hint of neglect. A small stack of unopened letters lay on the small table. Jimmy flicked through them, Bills from the gas board and the BBC, both addressed to his brother, He dropped them again and crossed the floor to the darkness of the hall.
“John?”
There was still no reply. Jimmy reached for the light switch, finding the right spot without even looking, but despite clicking it several times the hall remained shrouded in darkness. He could see the front door at the end, the semicircular fanlight highlighted by the urine-colored streetlight beyond and a lighter patch of gray where the door to the sitting room had been left open. The illumination from the kitchen splashed only onto the wall to his right, showing the door to the under stairs cupboard where their mam had kept the vacuum cleaner.
Moving slowly, inching his foot forward for fear of falling over something in the dark, Jimmy crept into the hall, his arms held out to either side, his hands brushing the walls. He reached the sitting room without incident, snaking his hand around the door frame for a switch.
Light flooded the room and he stepped inside, releasing the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. A new, hardwearing carpet replaced the swirls of pastel flowers their dad had laid when they were nippers and the walls were no longer covered in diamond-patterned wallpaper but a smooth neutral off-white. A modern forty-inch television hung where the horses-running-through-waves picture their mam had given pride of place. The three piece suite was new, too. Smart red leather instead of half-timbered foam with the holes where dad had fallen asleep and dropped his cigarette. Jimmy looked up. The ceiling had been painted, too, and was now a dusty white instead of nicotine yellow.
The sideboard was still the same. Jimmy crossed to it and opened the door, half expecting Mam’s knitting to fall out but pleased to see one side was still used as a liquor cabinet. He poured himself a generous measure of scotch and downed it in one gulp. He poured a second and took another sip.
“John?” Still no reply.
He left the glass and bottle on top of the sideboard and, emboldened by both the whiskey and the light spilling from the doorway, reached the bottom of the stairs. The light over the stairs worked.
He headed up, one hand on the banister and the other trailing along the wall like he used to as a kid. Photographs of old family members lined the stairs. Aunt Margaret and Uncle George, Nana Beskin, Nan and Granddad Fenstone, their sister Faye the year before she died and, right at the top in a considerably newer frame, Mam and Dad standing in the garden outside. Mam was holding a tiny bunch of sweet peas, and Dad leaned on his spade. A wigwam of bamboo canes to his left indicated a bean trench. Jimmy ran his finger over the glass as if he could bridge the years and stroke his mam’s long, dark hair.
He took a deep breath and turned, seeing nothing changed in the landing. The wallpaper was just the same, though shabbier for the intervening years, still showing twin lines where John had run his toy train along it and cut the paper under its sharp wheels. The carpet runner was threadbare, the boards showing at its edges covered in dust and footprints. He entered the bathroom, pulling on the light and nodding at the familiar cast-iron bath, the heavy taps, the stone sink and above-head cistern. Mam’s creams and lotions had been replaced by shaving soap and men’s deodorant but otherwise he could have been back in the nineties, leaning over the sink to keep his teeth-brushing dribbles off the floor.
The first bedroom used to belong to Jimmy and his brother. They’d had bunk beds at one end and a strict dividing line down the middle, Jimmy’s the side with the door since he was the younger and less deserving of the extra three feet of space. Now it was full of cardboard boxes, most of them sealed shut and labeled with tags showing the contents. Iron Man issues 1-256, British-issue Spiderman 1992-94, Toxic Comics and so on. Oddly, there was also a set of stepladders.
The second, main bedroom used to be their mam’s. Jimmy reached in and switched on the light. The same built-in wardrobes with the mirror in the middle, the same dressing table, the same wicker chair covered by the same crotchet blanket their Aunty May had made before she died. Different bed, though. Jimmy wasn’t surprised. Their mam had died in that bed, cutting her wrists the day after Faye’s funeral, unwilling to face life after her daughter had been killed. John had gone for a simple divan. Probably from the first shop he’d gone to after the house had fallen to him. Jimmy took a step further in. There was a family portrait in a frame next to the bed. A photograph of Dad and the three of them taken in Torquay when he was ten, John twelve and Faye five. His mam would have taken the picture. Happier times.
He pulled open a drawer. John’s things. Cufflinks, an old watch, a tie pin. The wire for a mobile phone. Nothing of Mam’s. The same with the wardrobe and dressing table, although the top drawer still held a trace of her perfume. Jimmy closed his eyes and inhaled, a memory of her in her best coat on the way to church coming unbidden to his mind. He opened his eyes again. There was a faint layer of dust on the remote control for the television. It hadn’t been touched for a while. When he crossed to the bed, the sheets felt vaguely damp from disuse.
The last room–more the size of a large cupboard built out over the stairs and barely able to house a bed and overhead clothes rail–used to be Faye’s. The bed was still here, as well as a framed picture of her with the horse she used to ride once a week at the stables, but the room was otherwise bare and covered in dust. Jimmy was probably the first to go inside in years.
He backed out and returned to the top of the stairs. He could see no evidence of a crime. Had the place been burgled? Had John done something and been arrested for it? That would explain the air of neglect the house had suffered. Surely John would have called him, though, or had his solicitor do so.
Perhaps he’d been hurt.
Jimmy clattered back downstairs to the sitting room and picked up the glass of scotch, taking another gulp as he carried both it and the bottle into the kitchen. He put the bottle down on the table and opened the fridge. Bacon, cheese, eggs, margarine. A four-pint plastic bottle of milk in the door. He unscrewed the lid and took a cautious sniff. It was only just on the turn, indicating John hadn’t been away for more than a few days and expected to return. He was always careful about perishables.
Jimmy found bread in the cupboard and made himself a cheese sandwich, heedless of using a cutting board and ignoring the plates in favor of clasping the uncut round in his hand and wolfing it down, savoring the taste of the sharp cheese against the slightly stale bread. Funny. Before he’d left he’d have turned his nose up at a cheese sandwich. Now it tasted like a meal fit for a king. He opened the freezer compartment and pulled out a frozen curry, glancing at the cooking instructions before slamming it into the microwave oven.
A sudden banging at the front door startled him, but not as much as the muffled shout of “This is the police. Open up.”
He bolted for the back door but found a copper there as well. The man held a baton in his right hand. “Good evening, sir. Can you explain what you’re doing at a crime scene?”
“This is my house.” Jimmy looked behind the copper trying to see if his brother was there. “What do you want?”
“We had a call alerting us of suspicious activity. Can I have your name, sir?”
“Jimmy–James–Fenstone. Where’s my brother? What’s happened to him.”
“Your brother, sir?”
“Yes. John Fenstone. He’s lived here for years.”
“Oh, right.” The copper looked uncomfortable. “You don’t know then?”
“Everything all right, Perce?” A second copper appeared behind the first. Probably the one from the front door.
“This here’s Jimmy Fenstone. The brother. He doesn’t know.” PC Perce slid his baton into a loop on his belt.
“Oh dear.” The second copper sucked his cheeks in, shaking his head.
“Know what?” Jimmy looked from one to the other. “Where John? What’s happened to him?”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but I’m afraid your brother’s dead.”
“No.” Jimmy half laughed, searching their faces for a sign they were pulling his leg. “You’re having me on.” Their faces only tightened, and as they shared a glance he felt a lump of grief growing to the size of a golf ball in his throat. “Please tell me this is some kind of joke.”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Hung himself last Friday. Upstairs. Tied a rope around a roofing beam and dropped himself through the loft hatch.”
The microwave oven pinged.
Chapter 2
Meinwen Jones shifted her leg an inch or two and tilted her head to the right, relieved to hear a crack as the bones realigned from her hour of motionless vigil. She pulled her cape around her, trying and failing to close the gap where her belly had outgrown it. At least the dawn had crept slowly over the chalk, backlighting the heavy clouds that had poured rain onto her for the past thirty minutes.
She looked up into the dome of her umbrella, the rainbow segments barely visible against the sky. She’d rigged it to a tripod with a series of adjustable clamps, figuring that if the Goddess wanted her wet, she wouldn’t have given her the idea. Meinwen rubbed her face and yawned. She’d also had the idea of using a tent, one of those fisherman’s tents with an open front the garage sold at a discount with a tenner’s worth of petrol. Would that be cheating? Would the Goddess deem her an unworthy supplicant and send a cat to piss all over the carpet like last time?
It hadn’t really been fair. She’d researched the ritual carefully, piecing it together from clues scattered in half a dozen seventeenth century texts. It was supposed to grant clear vision to one’s heart’s desire which at the time had been to lose forty pounds and about ten years but she’d had to substitute five pink candles for a hand of glory because honestly, where could one get the desiccated hand of a hanged man these days? The substitution had sent her an incontinent tomcat instead. She wouldn’t have minded so much if she didn’t rent the house. She’d had little to offer a cat and it had soon stalked off to find easier pickings at the Catholic priest’s house next door.
“Christians have it easy.” She spoke the thought aloud, momentarily tempted to convert from her fifteen-year practice of Goddess worship to the simpler once-a-week luxury of an indoor church. It would make vigils a damned sight easier. She’d have to be Anglican, though. Her only other choice would be Catholic and she couldn’t be doing with feeling guilty about everything. St. Jude’s wasn’t as fancy as St. Pity’s but it was more in touch with the life of the town.
It was also drier than sitting out here on the top of a hill.
Meinwen checked her watch. Eight twenty-three was long enough after sunrise to have officially done her duty to the spirits of Nature and the Sun. She’d kept the vigil all night and the sun had officially appeared on the autumnal equinox. She was cold, tired and very hungry. The cheese sandwich and thermos of nettle root coffee hadn’t lasted past midnight.
She stood, pulling the hood of her parka tight over her curls and stamped her feet against the wet earth to get the circulation going. Christianity was becoming more attractive by the minute. She stretched her fingers and made fists several times before packing up her supplies in her voluminous bag, taking the umbrella off the stand and dismantling the tripod. The little fire had gone out ages ago, a victim of the sudden downpour at two in the morning. She folded the blanket and slung it over the top of her bag. She’d give it a wash and sell it on as a genuine prayer blanket. Couldn’t get much more genuine than an all-night vigil for the Holly King.
She stumped down the hill past the waterfall known as Lover’s Leap. People really had jumped into the foaming depths but it was rare for any of them to survive. There had been a warning sign here, once, but the enamel had chipped off and all it notified passersby of now was “Gazza” in yellow spray paint.
The path dipped steeply, as if it was racing the river to the bottom of the hill, leaving Meinwen grateful for the flint and tree roots that made natural steps every few yards and the occasional handrail that served to curtail the gradual increase in speed the slope encouraged. Without them she’d have been running pell-mell down the slope and come to a sticky end in the river at the bottom.
Meinwen was just passing the plunge pool, where the waterfall crashed and roared into depths it had cut from the rock over the course of the centuries when she slipped on a patch of slick, wet mud, falling on her ample posterior and releasing her hold on her bag. The contents scattered across the path but the tripod, weighing more than anything else in the bag, seemed to make a willful beeline for the water’s edge.
Its suicidal plunge was stopped by the leather-clad foot of Mr. Jasfoup, one of the gentlemen from Laverstone Manor on the other side of the river. He leaned to pick it up, then held out a hand to Meinwen. “Are you quite all right, Ms. Jones? That was quite a tumble you took. Alas that I was powerless to prevent it.”
Meinwen accepted the hand and hauled herself upright, looking down at her mud-encrusted form in dismay. By contrast, Jasfoup looked immaculate in his gray suit with hardly a speck of mud on his soft leather shoes. He looked to be out for a stroll on a sunny afternoon in Provence rather than tramping through wet fields in Wiltshire. “Thanks. I got all the way down without so much as a slip and go head over heels on the last part.”
“The last bit is always the hardest.” He handed her the tripod and stooped to gather the rest of her belongings. “What have you been up to? Making sure the sun comes up?” This last said with a smile, his tone mocking but a twinkle in his eye suggesting a tease.
“What if I didn’t keep a vigil and it didn’t come up? What would you have to say then?”
“I’d apologize from the bottom of my heart and offer you a candle to light the darkness.” He offered her a short bow. “Then I’d pull all my investments out of solar energy.” He smiled. “I need you to keep the sun rising, Ms. Jones. It makes me a goodly sum in dividends.”
“Perhaps you should give me a proportion then.” Meinwen couldn’t help smiling back.
“Ha! Very good. May I think about it?” He stooped again to pick up her thermos. His face fell as he rose and he shook it experimentally. “I’m afraid your flask has warmed its last. I hope no tea was wasted?”
“No. I’d finished it.” Meinwen took it from him and stowed it in her bag. “It was nettle coffee, anyway.”
“Marvelous. Two of my least favorite things in the world combined into one disgusting concoction.” He shuddered. “Chances are the flask committed seppuku rather than risk carrying such a dreadful brew again.” He looked her up and down. “Oh, dear. You are exceptionally muddy, you know. Would you like to come back to the house to wash up? Perhaps Julie could do something about the dirt. She’s a marvel with Marigolds and a wet sponge.”
“No, that’s fine, thanks. I’ll scoot home.” Meinwen pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at what she could see. “I’d rather just get out of these wet things and into the shower.” She looked up, momentarily unnerved he was still watching her. “What brings you out here?”
“Me? I was walking the dog.” He looked about and whistled, then shrugged apologetically. “She’s probably found a rabbit trail and hared off.”
“Ha-ha” Meinwen forced a smile. “Thanks for the help, Mr. Jasfoup.”
“My pleasure. Can I give you a hand with your bag at all?”
“No. I’ll be fine.” Meinwen gave him a final nod and walked on, soon passing the little bridge marked Private that led to Laverstone Manor. The dog Jasfoup had referred to, a breed that looked more wolf than dog, lay on the bridge, rain pelting down onto its fur as it worried at a bone between its paws.
Meinwen swallowed and hurried past. The bone looked fresh enough to be a kill and large enough to be human. She could feel the animal watching her as she headed between the sheltering oaks.
The path took her to a point where she could turn left to come out on Oxford Road or right to enter the park. She took the latter fork without pausing, for beyond the park stood the spire of St. Pity’s and just past the church was home. The spire wasn’t much more than a shadow against the dull gray of the mist and the clouds beyond.
The park was quite busy for a wet Thursday morning, mostly with mothers leading children to Pity’s infant’s school, dog walkers and people hurrying to jobs in town. Margaret Holdstock was just opening the Museum Café as Meinwen walked past and she waved a greeting.
“You’re out early.” Margaret stood in the shelter of the porch, her arms folded and clasped against the chill. “You been out researching?”
“Something like that.” Meinwen shifted her bag to the other side and rubbed her shoulder. “I’ve been at the Leat stone all night.”
“All night?” Margaret shook her head. “You’ll catch your death looking for goblins and pixies all the time. Do you want a cuppa? I’ve got the kettle on.”
Meinwen sucked air through her teeth, grinned and shook her head. “I can’t say I’m not tempted but I’ll get off home. What I really want is a hot shower followed by poached eggs on toast and a pot of tea, then about six hours sleep.”
Margaret uncrossed her arms, obviously relieved by the answer. “As you will then, pet. See you later.” She gave Meinwen a final nod and withdrew to the warmth of the café’s well-appointed kitchen. There was already a gaggle of young mothers approaching the door.
Meinwen plodded on, passing the school just as the bell went, forcing her to battle against a minor tide of young mothers and grannies as they swept away from the school gates. She recognized most but acknowledged only those who said hello first. Many people didn’t want it spread about that they frequented the witch’s shop on Knifesmith’s Gate.
It wasn’t until she’d actually pushed open the entrance to her cottage and marched halfway up the long path that she noticed the man lurking at her door. Her step never faltered despite the thrill of fear. If he meant her harm, he wouldn’t skulk about in full sight of the street, surely? Besides, he was quite attractive, in an action-hero kind of way. He had a classic inverted triangle body shape, broad shoulders topping a narrow waist. She was willing the bet he was well muscled under the shabby shirt and jacket. Big hands, too. Big hands generally indicated a big cock. She took a breath to . . .
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