Dead in Time (The Sara Jones Cycle Book 1) Read online

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  Be quiet, Rhoddo, please be quiet.

  Sara heard a rustling from the kitchen, then noticed her mother’s shadow in the hall from the corner of her eye. It was still.

  ‘It’s true,’ Rhoddo said, his voice now light with gleeful superiority. ‘You know I don’t need that school – but you need an obedient son, so everyone in Aber will admire you!’

  ‘Rhodri,’ his father barked, ‘you’re trying to make me angry now, aren’t you?’

  Rhodri snorted. ‘Truth always makes hypocrites angry,’ he taunted.

  Before he could say anything else, his father’s hand had flown up and struck him across the cheek. Sara, who had been pretending not to see the altercation, cried out. ‘Daddy!’ She felt helpless, wanting to protect Rhoddo from her father, but unable to do anything more than weep.

  ‘You be quiet,’ he snapped, and Sara bit down hard on her lip.

  ‘You fucking bastard!’ Rhoddo cried, tears in his eyes. He raised his hand to the side of his face, which was mottled scarlet.

  Their mother leapt to the doorframe. ‘Rhod, that’s enough!’ she shouted at her husband. She held her arms out to her son, who ignored them.

  Mr Jones was breathing heavily now, glaring at the boy. His face was redder than Rhoddo’s, burning with shame. Hitting Rhodri had been out of character, a sign of growing loss of control over his son. ‘Go to your room,’ he rasped.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Rhoddo spat, sweeping up his jacket and pushing past his mother.

  ‘Rhodri!’ she cried.

  The door squeaked open and slammed shut, and the motor of the motor scooter snarled in the cold night air.

  Rhodri Jones Senior composed himself, and squeezed through the doorframe past his wife. With furious conviction, he slid shut the heavy steel bolt on the front door, and turned and moved towards the kitchen, to do the same to the side door.

  ‘If he wants to stay out,’ he muttered, ‘then he can stay out all bloody night.’

  For the better part of the last hour, Sara had listened to the muffled crescendos of her parents’ argument down the hall. The recriminations had died slowly, as they lapsed into furious silences, then drifted into sullen sleep. Sara itched with the urge to run downstairs and unbolt the doors – but that was something not even her mother dared to do. Besides, she knew that Rhoddo had other ways to get into the house.

  Sometime around midnight, she heard his motor scooter buzz up the lane, then grind to a halt on the stone driveway outside. Seconds later, dull thumps struck the house as her brother climbed onto the flat roof extension, then eased open his bedroom window.

  After he had pulled off his boots and jacket, Rhoddo crept along the hall and nudged open her door. ‘Sara?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m awake,’ she said.

  She watched him enter the room, and slump onto the edge of her bed. She slid up the mattress until she was resting with her back on the padded headboard. ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  Rhodri blew air between his lips dismissively. ‘I’m not worried about him,’ he said, tilting his head towards their parents’ bedroom. ‘He’s like this whenever they’re pissed off at each other. Did they fight when I left?’

  ‘Once they thought I couldn’t hear.’

  Rhodri laughed, then winced in pain.

  ‘How’s your face?’ Sara asked. She reached out her fingers tentatively, and stroked his cheek tenderly.

  ‘Doesn’t hurt,’ he said, pulling away.

  They sat silently until Sara noticed her brother’s shoulders shaking. ‘Hey,’ she said, wrestling the covers off her legs, and crawled forward. Rhodri’s face was streaked with wet trails that glimmered in the orange glow of the nightlight.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. He half-turned to her, and they hugged until he could swallow thickly and draw in a deep, irregular breath.

  ‘Where do you go?’ Sara whispered. ‘On your bike, I mean.’

  Rhodri shrugged. ‘Around. I drive on the lanes.’

  ‘Isn’t it cold?’

  ‘Yeah. But it’s better than being here. This place is so ... cloying.’ He ran his hand down Sara’s arm until it rested on her wrist. He squeezed it gently. ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’

  She nodded shallowly, frightened to make such an admission, even to Rhoddo.

  ‘If you weren’t here, I’d go crazy,’ he whispered.

  Sara felt her throat constrict, and feared she might cry if she answered. After a time, she drew a deep breath and grasped his hand.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said to her older brother. ‘We’re both going to be just fine.’

  ‘Good God!’ Ceri gasped. ‘What the hell is this repulsive thing?’

  Sara stepped over an obstacle course of boxes to see what Ceri had discovered. By the time she got to the other side of the stable, her friend had picked up a shrivelled papier mâché skeleton from the box. It had real human hair glued to its head, and a foul-smelling sachet tied around its neck with a frayed leather thong.

  ‘A gift from a witch doctor,’ Sara said.

  Ceri glared at the object with increased distaste. ‘A real witch doctor?’

  Sara chuckled. ‘Who’s to say? He was a big help on an investigation, though, and he promised me that it would ward off evil spirits.’

  ‘I’m not sure which I’d rather keep out of my house,’ Ceri replied. ‘Evil spirits or this thing.’ She placed the wizened doll on the cement floor and rooted through the box. ‘What else have you got?’

  She pulled out a silver dagger, its handle topped with a horned devil, and inscribed with a combination of Hebrew lettering and magical sigils. ‘Another souvenir of your other career?’ she asked, her nose wrinkling.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Sara replied. ‘They’re not things I’d collect for fun.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ Ceri huffed.

  ‘If you don’t like them, don’t dig any deeper. You haven’t come to the voodoo dolls yet.’

  Ceri shook her head and looked at the box with incredulity. ‘Well, I suppose you can’t stop the weirder bits of your life from resurfacing forever,’ she said.

  Sara chuckled and grabbed a tape gun. She imprisoned the bizarre objects in their box, and resealed it with thick, brown packing tape.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she said.

  That evening, Jamie sat with Sara in her living room. She had turned the overhead light off in favour of three candles, which glowed on the mantle. Spicy cinnamon wafted through the room. An Annie Ross track played softly from a Bluetooth speaker while Sara, curled on one side of the love-seat, sipped red wine. In a chair opposite, Jamie – officially off duty – nursed a tumbler of bourbon.

  After they left the Spar shop earlier that day, Sara had invited him around for drinks in the evening. He had taken it as an act of forgiveness for overstepping the line at lunch the day before. Now he badly wanted to perceive the candlelight and soft music as permission from her to say what, until yesterday, had seemed unsayable.

  There was a part of him that warned against trying, especially in the wake of that faux pas. The room’s ambience, he knew, did not necessarily imply that Sara wanted to have a personal conversation: she simply preferred candles to artificial light, and enjoyed sultry jazz. Yet still, there had been moments since his arrival when Jamie imagined catching in his peripheral vision a fond glance, an intimate smile. Every time, they had seemed to fade like a mirage.

  And Sara was talking about the case.

  ‘Everything I learned today,’ she said, ‘suggests that my theory about the killer is plausible. You have to admit that.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jamie said. ‘I agree with you now. He might well have been trying to avenge those people.’

  He could feel an inane grin frozen onto his face, and loathed himself for it. Perhaps he was being overly cautious, having slipped into his defensive posture of affability, his non-threatening willingness to keep to neutral topics.
r />   ‘I have to admit, though,’ Sara continued, ‘there are some troubling questions. He’s chosen a pretty strange collection of villains to target. Especially for a vigilante who thinks he’s psychic. I can almost understand executing a rapist – but what about a man who hits his wife? That makes him a coward, sure, but he didn’t deserve to die.’

  Jamie nodded, wishing he could find a suitable way to change the topic.

  ‘And what about Aled Morgan? I found nothing to explain why he would target a teenage petty thief.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘The poor boy. Ceri blames his mother for his death, but I don’t think that’s fair.’

  Sara stopped short, as if by mentioning Ceri’s name she had changed the rules of engagement. The silence seemed to challenge Jamie to fill it.

  ‘Speaking of Ceri ...’ Jamie began hesitantly, ‘I’m sorry about what I said.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Sara said with a relieved smile. ‘It’s understandable.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He took a deep pull on his drink. ‘Still, I have to admit, it’s puzzling.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The last few months, I mean. If it’s not Ceri’s influence, why haven’t you been willing to speak to me?’

  For a moment, Sara sat very still – then she raised her eyebrows. ‘I wasn’t ready to talk about it,’ she said. ‘It’s been hard for me, Jamie, surely you know that?’

  Jamie nodded. ‘Times have been rough,’ he said finally, ‘but you can’t bury your head in the sand forever.’

  Sara straightened on the love-seat, placing her feet flatly on the floor. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying, at some point we need to talk about how things stand.’

  Sara squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head back in frustration. ‘Forgive me for finding that ironic, coming from you,’ she snapped. ‘Maybe you could tell me how things stand?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are we engaged or aren’t we?’

  Sara raised her head slowly from the back of the chair and stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘I don’t remember withdrawing my proposal,’ he added.

  He watched her expression soften, her lips part, her eyes widen helplessly.

  ‘I had no idea you’d still want to,’ she said, haltingly. ‘Everything’s changed so much.’

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ Jamie said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I didn’t love you.’

  Sara drew a long, apprehensive breath, and looked down at the floorboards. A breeze blew softly through a window and made the candle flames dance. The shadows shifted. ‘I’m not sure what to say,’ she whispered finally. ‘I think I love you too.’

  Jamie had been waiting months to hear Sara say those words, and now they had come so easily. He sat dumbfounded for the longest second of his life, then rose and moved slowly to the love-seat. He took her hands in his. ‘Say that again,’ he whispered.

  ‘I love you,’ she repeated.

  ‘Then ... you will marry me?’

  She closed her eyes as if in pain. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not now.’

  She pulled her hands from between his, and squeezed his fingers. ‘It’s hard to explain. You told me I shouldn’t bury my head in the sand ... well, I’m worried that marrying you might be doing just that.’

  His expression was pained. ‘Because you’d be running away from your past?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Sara, you wouldn’t be! For God’s sake, I’m part of your past now! I’m so tied up in your history, you couldn’t untangle me if you wanted to.’ He reached a hand up to her chin, and angled her face towards his until they were eye to eye. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know more about your parents than you think I do. When you told me about their deaths, I ... well, I needed to know more, to understand you.’

  Sara’s eyes widened and she blinked slowly. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I searched online, the very day after you told me. I did everything I could to understand what you’d been through. I don’t claim to know everything, but I want to help you resolve all those questions that are stopping you from enjoying your life.’

  Sara licked her lips pensively and took a breath through her mouth, as if she wanted to speak but did not have the words. Jamie leaned towards her and kissed her softly on her open mouth; she pulled away slightly, her lips remaining slack, until he pressed more firmly and she relaxed into his embrace. She kissed him then with a desperate sort of passion, until finally her face slid down to his shoulder, her fresh tears soaking into his shirt.

  Jamie’s thoughts turned again to Ceri Lloyd, and for the first time he admitted to himself how competitive he had been feeling towards her. He envied how well she understood Sara Jones’ life.

  ‘You don’t have to say you’ll marry me,’ he whispered, ‘not now. Just promise me one more thing.’

  Her head shifted; she looked up.

  ‘I want you to take me to your old home.’

  Her watery eyes widened, tears glistening in the candlelight. ‘My old home?’

  ‘Sara, the last thing in the world I want is to upset you, but I think you understand how important this might be, for both of us.’

  He tightened his grip on her. ‘I want to see where your parents were murdered.’

  NINE

  Murder, after all, was what had brought them together.

  The school bully, stabbed by Paul Sullivan in Mill Hill, had died the day after Sara and Jamie met. Suddenly, the hunt for two troubled teens became a murder investigation. Nonetheless, that evening, Jamie Harding had taken time to honour his promise, and take Sara to dinner.

  Their time together – in a restaurant in Fitzrovia – was strained. Yesterday, they had shared the frisson of initial attraction and small, revealing glimpses of each other’s history. Today, their new relationship was hampered by the case, which stood between them like baffling. The reality of a dead student and two disturbed teens on the run made their chitchat sound hollow.

  Then, before the main course had even arrived, Jamie’s phone had rung. He did more listening than talking, but Sara could tell by his face, and his monosyllabic responses, that dinner was already over.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Jamie said dully. ‘They’ve found her body.’

  Sara’s throat constricted, and her lungs froze mid-breath. ‘Vivian? Where?’

  ‘The basement of a construction site in the East End. She’s been stabbed.’

  Sara closed her eyes as a wave of nausea rolled through her as she saw the impish face of that young girl, both as she was in Sara’s office, and in the horror-show make-up of the photograph. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said as Jamie threw money onto the table and gathered up his things.

  ‘There’s no reason for you to,’ he replied.

  ‘I want to.’ She stood. ‘You’ll need someone to talk to the Loxleys.’

  He shook his head. ‘They’ve been informed.’

  ‘By a constable?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Damn it,’ she breathed, ‘that’s no way to tell parents their daughter has died. Jamie, I was their therapist – and I was with them only yesterday! I could have –’

  ‘You would have been a better choice.’ Jamie interrupted. He stuffed his wallet into his breast pocket. ‘But what’s done is done. Go home; I’ll call you later.’

  Before she could reply, he dashed from the restaurant, just as the waiter brought their food.

  Like her office, Sara’s Pimlico flat was a place of deliberate contrasts. Primitive paintings hung on the walls; boldly coloured, highly textured rugs covered the floor, and tribal art stood on every surface: a Shona headrest from South Africa, a Peruvian pot, a Maori wooden figure. She lay on her living room sofa, trembling, staring at it all. The effect was so different from the casual disarray of the Loxley residence that they might have existed on two separate worlds. Yet the wave of bitter emotions that undoubtedly was breaking in that house, just an hour’s drive away, was affecting Sara,
even in the calming familiarity of her own things, her own life.

  Why did Vivian Loxley’s tragedy resonate so strongly? Did the thought of a vulnerable teenage girl remind her of herself twenty years before? Did the girl’s waywardness, the thrall in which someone else was able to hold her, hark back to her brother’s problems at that same age? Was it simply that Sara identified with the circumstances: violent death strikes a cosy family home?

  Or was it that Sara felt a sense of personal failure? She had let that troubled girl slip away, eighteen months too early, and fall into the arms of an unstable loser named Paul.

  Sara jumped when her phone rang. She reached for the receiver so quickly that she knocked it on the floor, and hand to fumble after it.

  ‘Yes? Hello?’

  ‘Hey – it’s Jamie.’ His voice sounded tired, and very far away. Hearing it caused an unexpected sting of petulance to spear Sara. He should have taken me with him ... I should have told the Loxleys ... he should have needed me more ...

  She closed her eyes and forced those unworthy emotions away. She braced herself. ‘Okay – describe it. I want to know how she died.’

  Jamie hesitated. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Agent Harding, I am a doctor,’ she snapped.

  She heard him sigh. ‘Miss Loxley died from a single stab wound to the chest. It was a deep blow, very forceful and without hesitation. She was lying down at the time, on the dirt floor, in the basement of a new office development. There are no signs of a struggle. Around her body are symbols, drawn into the dirt, almost certainly inscribed by Paul after her death. Nobody here knows whether he’s made them up, or got them from somewhere.’

  ‘Copy them,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know. You say she was lying down without a struggle – you mean she didn’t try to defend herself?’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t know what was coming. Or maybe she was high on something – we’ll learn that from the toxicology report.’