The House Across the Street Read online

  In films detectives could find anyone, anywhere. But how could anyone find her, when no one had the faintest idea of where she’d gone today?

  She was sure she wasn’t in a cellar under Reilly’s house in Hendon; this place had only one storey, and there were no street lights. Besides, they’d been driving for far too long to be in London. He could kill her and dispose of her body long before anyone could find so much as a clue to his home address, let alone this place.

  Her stomach lurched and she had to run to the lavatory to vomit. As she bent over the pan, one moment freezing cold, the next sweating, she wished more than anything else in the world that she’d defied Edna and taken that notebook to the police to check out the addresses. How arrogant was she, to think she could solve the crime?

  Katy had no choice but to wrap herself in the stinking blankets, as she was so cold. Her head was throbbing and she still felt queasy, but it was the fear which was the worst thing. How would he kill her? Would it be quick? She already knew he’d had no problem burning two people alive, and then he’d tried to kill Edna by running her off the road. What was he cooking up for her?

  Katy must have slept. But with no watch, and no window to see if it was light, she couldn’t work out whether she’d been asleep for one hour or eight.

  Then suddenly, as she lay there, she heard Reilly come through the top door, lock it behind him, then come down the stone stairs to the second door. In panic she leapt off the bed, her eyes desperately scanning the room for a weapon, even though she already knew there was nothing, not even her shoes.

  The door opened and, although Katy had thought for a second or two she could spring at him and knock him down, she couldn’t move when she saw him.

  ‘Hello, Katy. I’m sorry I had to hit you to get you into my car. But really, you shouldn’t go poking your nose into things which don’t concern you.’

  His deep, pleasant voice seemed more appropriate for a doctor or a solicitor than a wife-beating murderer.

  ‘My father is being held in custody for a crime he didn’t commit. Wouldn’t any woman try to prove his innocence?’ she managed to get out.

  He smiled, his dark eyes and white teeth utterly disarming. ‘Only some women, the kind of resourceful, brave women I normally like the best,’ he said. ‘But sadly, your actions are likely to make me lose my freedom, and I can’t have that.’

  For a brief moment Katy felt she was in a film. He made her think of one of those Nazi officers in war films. Of course he wasn’t blond but, in fact, she thought he’d look the part in any uniform. She knew he was a very cruel, evil man, but he didn’t look or sound like one.

  ‘Why kill me? I might be of use to you,’ she said, hardly able to believe those words came out of her mouth.

  He laughed, and passed a carrier bag to her. The bag was hot, and looking inside she realized it was fish and chips, and a can of Coke.

  ‘Is this the last supper?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘So enjoy it.’

  He turned away then, without another word, leaving Katy stunned.

  As a totally confused Katy was opening the parcel of fish and chips, back in Hammersmith the telephone rang.

  ‘Maybe that’s her,’ Joan said to Ken. ‘I don’t think it can be Jilly, she’ll be travelling home now.’

  Ken was always irritated by the way his wife constantly surmised who was phoning, instead of getting up and just answering it. He’d been tense all day, waiting for news, and Joan had made it worse by wittering on about Katy’s strange family, even asking him if he thought her father really could be guilty of setting the fire and killing two women.

  ‘Then I’d better answer it, in case you say something tactless,’ he snapped at her.

  As he went out to the hall he saw Joan’s shocked expression. Just this once he didn’t intend to apologize.

  ‘Hammersmith 4371,’ he said.

  ‘Is that Ken?’

  Ken assured him it was.

  ‘This is Charles Stevenson. Please forgive me for addressing you by your Christian name, but Katy didn’t tell me your surname. May I speak to her if she’s in?’

  ‘Ken is just fine. Are you the lawyer at the chambers she works at?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad you telephoned, Charles, because Katy has disappeared. She left here yesterday evening at seven thirty to meet our niece from work. But she didn’t show up.’

  ‘You haven’t seen or heard anything from her in twenty-four hours?’ Charles asked.

  ‘No, we kind of hoped she’d gone off to meet you. But our Jilly insisted she wouldn’t do that, not without ringing to tell us where she was. I don’t know if I should call the police. Don’t people have to be missing for more than forty-eight hours before they’ll do anything?’

  ‘Yes, usually. But it does sound fishy to me. Is Jilly there, could I speak to her?’

  ‘She had to work today, but she’ll be back within twenty minutes,’ Ken said.

  ‘Would it be alright if I came to your house?’ Charles asked. ‘I’d like to talk to Jilly.’

  ‘You mean now?’

  ‘Yes, please. I know it’s Sunday night, and you probably don’t want a stranger there, but I can probably pull a few strings with the police. I need to speak to Jilly first, though.’

  ‘Of course you can come,’ Ken said. He rattled off the address. ‘To be honest, it will be a relief to talk to someone rational.’

  As Ken went back into the sitting room, Joan glowered at him. ‘I’m not rational, then?’

  ‘You haven’t been today,’ he said. ‘According to Jilly, Katy’s dad is one of the kindest men on earth. She says no one who knows him believes he’s guilty, and I’ve got a sneaky feeling that Katy’s disappearance is something to do with that fire. So don’t bad-mouth him, Joan. It would hurt Katy, if she found out – and Jilly won’t like it, either.’

  Joan just pursed her lips, and Ken sighed. She was a great one for getting the wrong end of the stick and holding on to it.

  The sound of a key in the door was very welcome.

  Ken went out into the hall and saw it was Jilly. ‘Thank goodness you are home!’ Ken took her coat, as it was raining hard, and went to hang it up in the kitchen to dry. ‘No word from Katy, then?’

  ‘No, Uncle Ken,’ she said, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Shall we go to the police now?’

  Joan came out of the living room. ‘You’ll have your dinner before anything else, and that man from Katy’s work is coming over, so we’d best let him report her missing.’

  ‘You mean Charles, the man she had a date with?’

  ‘Yes, he phoned just now to speak to her and I told him what had happened. So he’s coming over right away.’

  ‘Does he think she’s already dead?’ Jilly asked, rushing to her uncle’s arms for comfort.

  Ken held her and rubbed her back comfortingly. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t,’ he said softly. But the sinking feeling in his own stomach suggested that might be exactly what the lawyer thought.

  10

  ‘I want you to tell me exactly where Katy said she had been on Saturday,’ Charles demanded of Joan, once he had established Katy had spent the day exploring London alone.

  They were all in the living room now, Ken and Joan on the sofa, Jilly and Charles facing each other from the two armchairs.

  ‘She said she liked Hampstead,’ Joan said. ‘In fact, she said she wanted to go there again one day with Jilly to look in the shops properly.’

  ‘That suggests she was too busy doing something else to look in the shops,’ Charles said. ‘Did she give you any clue what that might be?’

  Joan shook her head.

  ‘What about you, Jilly?’ Charles asked. ‘Girls usually tell each other things.’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to speak to her, not in the morning, as she was still sleepy and didn’t say what she was planning to do. Then of course she didn’t turn up in the evening as planned.’
/>   ‘At work she was looking in a battered notebook,’ Charles said. ‘She had an A to Z too, and she was jotting down addresses from it. I asked what she was doing and she said she was going to look up a friend in Bexhill’s relatives or something. I knew she was lying. I said I thought she was being a detective to find the person who had framed her father for murder.’

  ‘She certainly hadn’t told me that,’ Jilly said indignantly. She felt a bit hurt her friend hadn’t told her, yet she’d revealed all that stuff about her father to a man she’d only just met. But then Jilly was rushing off to work, so maybe she couldn’t have told her. ‘What was this notebook? I’ve never seen it!’

  ‘Later, when we were having a drink, she told me she’d been given it by Edna, the lady who was run off the road and nearly killed. I’m sure you know about her?’

  ‘Yes, we hoped that would exonerate her father.’

  ‘Well, it seems she gave the notebook to Katy. It held all the addresses and details of women Edna and Gloria had helped to start a new life after being beaten by their husbands. Katy finally admitted to me she had the idea of going through that book and checking which of the husbands had a dark red Jaguar.’

  ‘Heavens! Jilly exclaimed. ‘Why on earth didn’t Katy tell me? So you think she was snooping around them on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Worse still, I think it’s possible she found the house of the right man, but he saw her and followed her back to this house.’

  ‘Then he snatched her when she left here?’ Jilly gasped. ‘Oh no, he could kill her!’

  ‘Let’s not leap to that conclusion just yet. Now, Jilly, do you know where that notebook is?’

  ‘No, but I’ll go and look for it in our room,’ Jilly said, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘If she’d told me what she intended, I wouldn’t have let her do it.’

  ‘Katy is one determined young lady,’ Charles sighed. ‘If it’s any comfort, Jilly, I don’t think anything you or I or anyone else said would have stopped her. She was desperate to prove her father didn’t set that fire.’

  ‘Poor Katy,’ Ken said sadly, as Jilly left the room. ‘I wish I’d realized what was going on in her head. If nothing else, I’d have offered to go with her to these addresses. This is all going to affect our Jilly too, as they are inseparable. But what do we do now?’

  ‘I’ll go to the police,’ Charles said. ‘Hopefully, with that notebook – if Jilly finds it – the police can check out the addresses and car owners.’

  Jilly was gone some twenty minutes and came down empty-handed, looking very worried. ‘It’s not there. I’ve looked in the bed, under the mattress, in every drawer and the wardrobe. There is nowhere else to look.’

  Charles’s heart sank. Without that book he didn’t have a clue where to look. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, suddenly overcome by heat. Or maybe it was panic. ‘She must have kept it on her. I’ll go to the police station now, anyway. But first, Jilly, you must give me Katy’s details: date of birth, home address, and a photograph too, if you have one.’

  ‘I’ve only got one of us taken in a photo booth,’ Jilly said, taking it out of her handbag. ‘It was from last summer.’

  Charles looked at the small black-and-white picture for a moment. It didn’t do Katy justice – it couldn’t capture that pink-and-white complexion, her pretty eyes and her glorious hair colour – but the two girls looked so happy. This was the kind of picture people kept to remember the moment. He just hoped and prayed they would all get to see her again soon, and have many more memorable moments with her too, but he had a sinking feeling they weren’t going to.

  ‘I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve reported her missing,’ Charles said, after he’d jotted down Katy’s details. He wrote down his telephone number, at home and at chambers, and handed it to Jilly. ‘Ring me if you hear anything, if you find the notebook, or if you just need to talk. I won’t always be available during the day, as I’m often in court, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  Jilly looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘He’ll kill her, won’t he? He wouldn’t have taken her if that wasn’t what he intended.’

  Charles couldn’t bring himself to admit he thought that was the most likely outcome. ‘Katy struck me as being very brave and resourceful, so there is every reason to be optimistic,’ he said, with more authority than he felt.

  As Charles got into his car to go to the police station in Hammersmith, his heart had never been heavier. If Katy had left that notebook at home, it would be relatively plain sailing to find her. But without it, the old cliché ‘finding a needle in a haystack’ sprang to mind. He would, of course, find and speak to Michael Bonham. And maybe this other woman, Edna, might remember at least some of the names in the notebook. But that was a long shot.

  He wished he didn’t feel so involved. It was ironic that he had spent his whole adult life avoiding such feelings. There had been a long list of women, too. And yet he’d always held back from any kind of commitment. He hadn’t made any commitment to Katy, either. How could he, after only one evening together? But he had spent the whole weekend thinking about her, which was why he’d rung her tonight. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to rest until she was found. He just hoped that she was still alive.

  Not knowing whether it was night or day, or what time of day it was, made Katy’s imprisonment even worse. She had eaten the fish and chips Reilly brought her, and after that she was so cold she wrapped herself in the blankets and eventually fell asleep. But once again, whether she had been asleep for an hour, or a full eight hours, she didn’t know.

  She began to cry once she was awake. Her situation was hopeless; she was going to die soon. And she doubted he’d make it a quick and relatively pain-free death. On top of that, she was numb with cold. He might not come back, and she’d die of starvation. What if he came back to torture her?

  But after getting the crying and regrets over and done with, she got off the bed and forced herself to do some exercises until she was warmer. Star jumps, bicycling exercises on the bed, even ballet stretches she remembered from when she was much younger.

  Once warmer, she felt slightly more hopeful. There were some things she knew. The first was that they must be within ten minutes or so of shops, purely because the fish and chips were so hot. It was also reasonable to suppose that he’d brought them for her around seven in the evening too, as most fish and chip shops opened at that time. That would not include shops in the country – few, if any, of them opened on Sundays – so she was probably on the outskirts of a town.

  He also wasn’t a stereotypical killer. Even as she thought that, she almost laughed. What did she know about killers? Absolutely nothing! But he didn’t look or sound brutish. He was the kind of man she saw daily on the train to work, with a decent haircut, clean-shaven, neat and tidy. He had knocked her out to get her here, then brought her food a little later, rather than killing her right away, which suggested he didn’t know how to dispose of her body; it was always said that was the biggest problem in killing someone. Or it could be that he wanted to play with her? In much the same way a cat will play with a mouse or a bird for some time before finally killing it.

  She hoped it was the latter, and she decided that was what she should focus on. The longer she could keep him interested in her, the greater were her chances of being found alive. But how could she keep him interested? Maybe by not looking or sounding scared of him?

  She remembered Edna saying something about men bullying and beating women to cover up their own inadequacies. She had said she wished she’d fought back or walked out, the very first time it happened. But she didn’t, because she believed that she was in some way responsible for her husband’s anger.

  So what if she acted like she didn’t mind being his prisoner? She could insist he get her a heater and some warmer clothes, for a start, rather than begging him to release her. That might disarm him.

  Just thinking about that made
her feel optimistic. Crying and banging on the door wasn’t going to achieve anything.

  It seemed at least two days or more before she heard his feet on the steps outside the door again. She doubted it was really that long, or she would’ve surely fallen asleep? But never in her life had she experienced such excruciating boredom for so long. Nothing to do, read, eat, listen to or look at, with a huge side helping of sheer terror thrown in. No cups of tea, no little snacks. She was beginning to understand why solitary confinement sent people mad. And the cold was awful; however much she wrapped the stinky blankets round her, she still shivered.

  But the sound of feet on the stairs made her sit up and smooth her crumpled dress, ready for what she hoped would be an Oscar-winning performance of making demands, being charming and showing no fear.

  ‘Hi,’ she said as he came through the door. ‘You must get me a heater and some warmer clothes, it’s arctic in here. And by the way, these blankets stink.’

  He stopped in his tracks, not even turning to lock the door behind him. His expression was one of total bafflement.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, spurred on, because she felt he really was stunned. ‘You expected to find me sobbing? Sorry, I don’t do crying. I thought it would be better if we got along. I’ll tell you what I want – food, heat, warm clothes and some books – then you can tell me what you are expecting of me. Oh yes, and I’d like my handbag back as it’s got my make-up and hairbrush in it. I also need a toothbrush and toothpaste.’

  ‘Who on earth do you think you are?’ he asked, and Katy sensed she heard a tiny bit of admiration in the question.

  ‘Katy Speed, legal secretary, that’s who I am. Who do you think you are? The new Acid Bath Murderer? John Christie? Who?’