She Lies Hidden: a spell-binding psychological suspense thriller Read online

  She Lies Hidden

  C.M. Stephenson

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Epilogue

  A Note from Bloodhound Books

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2018 C.M. Stephenson

  The right of C.M. Stephenson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  To Doreen, Jacky and Mel.

  Prologue

  January 1973

  It’s one o’clock Monday morning. Alice tosses and turns, the flock mattress a mess of lumps that seem to rub the very skin off her back. Threadbare sheets and worn woollen blankets fail to stop the cold creeping into her bones; she feels older than her sixty years.

  A harsh January wind pierces the rotting window frame; the curtains flutter open and shut like a moth on a light. Heavy rain slashes against the window.

  She cannot sleep; her granddaughter is still out. The alarm clock taunts her with every tick.

  Veronica, barely eighteen, out on the town again, five miles away. The last bus long since been and gone. No idea of how she’ll get back. The fear makes her feel sick to her stomach. Her fingers tug at the sheets and knot into a fist.

  What’s keeping her—I’ve had enough of her staying out all night. I’ll give her what for when she turns up.

  On top of the blankets, the cat stretches itself the length of her legs, Alice slides out her arm, scratches the nape of its neck.

  Tomorrow, I’m putting a stop to this. It’s not fair – I’m not her mother.

  She turns onto her side, dozes in and out of consciousness. The cat shifts to the end of the bed.

  Downstairs the grandfather clock chimes three times.

  A feeling of despondency settles upon her chest; her tears soak into the pillow.

  Where is she? By two o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday—that’s what she promised me, that’s when she said she’d be back. I had dinner all ready.

  She ate it herself in the end, unwilling to let good food go to waste. No fridge to keep it in.

  I should have made her go back home, let her mother deal with her.

  ‘Please Gran, I promise,’ she’d said. ‘Just let me stay. A few months, that’s all.’ Veronica took hold of her hand, ‘You know you miss me, anyway.’

  And she had.

  This was last April, it was lovely at first, just the two of them together. Then things had soured, someone had turned her head. Someone from college. From then on, bad habits had wrapped themselves around Veronica. She was either wide-awake or half dead.

  Alice watches the shadows flicker across the wall. Her eyelids droop then close again.

  The wind picks up, freezes, hailstones pelt against the window. Alice stirs, peers myopically at the alarm clock. The luminous hands glow in the dark, it’s half-past four.

  I’ve had enough now.

  She gets out of bed, slips on her glasses, makes her way across the room. Takes her rosary off the hook beside the door. Its wooden beads and plastic cross give her comfort. In the shadows, Pope Paul VI looks down on her from a wooden frame on the wall. She kneels by the bed, clings onto the frame with one hand, runs the beads through her fingers with the other. Whispers the words, over and over again.

  ‘Please Lord, bring Veronica back home, please let her be safe.’

  The cat reaches out, claws at her fingers. Alice stays on her knees and waits, ears cocked, as though expecting an immediate miracle. After a while

  she gets to her feet, gazes out of the window. Dark shadows flood across the street; opposite, a tall leafless beech shudders and sighs.

  The cat, unsettled yet again, bites at her toes as she pushes them beneath the blankets. Alice returns her glasses to their place on bedside table. Eyes closed, she on the edge of sleep, her body shifting restlessly, the discomfort of the mattress unending.

  Light seeps through the curtain, it’s gone eight o’clock. The cover on Veronica’s bed lies untouched. The cat, now sitting on her chest, pats her face with its paw.

  ‘You want to some food, do you, Blacky?’

  It waits for a tickle behind its ears, just as it does every morning.

  Alice lets it snuggle into her hand before setting it down on the floor.

  She reaches for her glasses, throws back the bedcovers, sniffs – a dank musty smell fills her nostrils. Her eyes trace the ceiling above Veronica’s bed. They settle on a large patch of grey plaster.

  Oh, God. The rain must have found its way in again.

  There’s no money to fix it.

  The cat scurries past her as she takes the stairs. The house is silent. The living room stone cold. Veronica’s coat isn’t hung behind the door. Her shoes aren’t abandoned in front of the fireplace.

  At nine o’clock Alice goes to the shop, her eyes scan up and down the street for Veronica. A police car speeds by, then another a few minutes later.

  Arlene, the shopkeeper, hands Alice a quarter of ham. Eyebrow arched, she leans forward.

  ‘A girl has gone missing, a teenager,’ she rubs her earlobe, then points through the window, ‘a farm
family, up on the tops. The Albrights—the mother comes in here.’

  Slipping the ham into her bag, Alice’s mouth goes dry. ‘Missing?’

  ‘Yes, when they got up this morning, she’d gone.’

  Alice says nothing about Veronica, scurries back to her small two-bedroom cottage. Perhaps she’s gone straight to college, she thinks to herself. Then waits another seven hours for her to come home.

  The ham and pickle barm cake that Alice makes Veronica for tea dries out.

  As always, there’s a queue outside the telephone box. Change clinking in her pocket, she stamps her feet, tries to get warm. Next in line, the door bangs shut, she jumps. Hands shaking, she dials 999.

  The next day, a detective turns up on the doorstep, dishevelled, tired, disinterested. He looks around the room, at the hand-me down furniture, at the bare flagstones in the kitchen, at the wallpaper peeling from the ceiling. He was turning his nose up at her, and not even bothering to hide it.

  Fifteen minutes later, he tells her that Veronica is likely a runaway, and nothing Alice says moves him from that theory. He pushes back in his seat, rubs his hands on the elbows of the chair, tells her he’ll call in on the parents. His eyes narrow as he looks into her face.

  ‘They go from staying out at the weekend to staying away for weeks. She’ll probably turn up sooner or later.’

  Two weeks later the headline of the Bolton Evening News shouts out.

  ‘Missing girls not yet found.’

  Six months later, the same newspaper runs another headline.

  ‘Missing girls presumed dead.’

  1

  Sunday, 10 January 2010

  There are days when she doesn’t think about the stuff. She no longer dwells on it. She has tools and techniques that help her block it out, learnt years ago on a course for therapists. That’s what she does now, she’s a therapist.

  She tells me these things, I’m her best friend. Her only friend. She’s not one for closeness. She’s only close to me, and we are very close indeed.

  I can read her like a book, like on the rare occasions she gets angry. Her pale cheeks, the pink flush on her chest that turns red as it works its way up her chin. The way she flexes her fingers, stretches them out then makes a fist. The pacing about. The grinding of her teeth as she drops off to sleep. And then, much later, the whimpering, the flickering of her eyelids. She can’t keep the nightmares out, no matter how much she tries.

  She doesn’t use her full range of emotions, she has no self-compassion. I can’t believe I’ve just said that. Where the hell did that come from? Those books I bet, those self-help ones she reads, she’s got hundreds of them. Some of it must be sinking into me.

  She blocks bad thoughts out by busyness. That’s my word for it, I made it up and it fits perfectly. She’s Miss Busyness. She rushes here, rushes there. Finds jobs to do, re-does jobs. Cleans things, cleans clean things. Scrubs and rescrubs. Anything to keep the dark stuff out. Even though it hurts her hands. He broke three of her fingers that night, too.

  Talking of cleaning, I think it’s time I came clean. She didn’t tell me any of those things, I’m just surmising. We aren’t best friends – our relationship is different. Special. Two minds intertwined. Destined to be together forever.

  She feels old today. I can tell. It’s the way she woke up. She pushed off the bedding, sat still for a moment, gathered her thoughts, stretched out the bones in her spine, one by one. Even her jaw hurt.

  Her knees were sore, too. All that running on concrete pavements, rarely going off-road. Like she says though, it’s always handy to be able to run as fast as you can.

  I wish I’d done that, when I was younger, learnt to run fast.

  It started when she signed up for the self-defence programme back in 2002. She got super-fit. Four weeks of unarmed combat run by a young thing from Warrington. Ex-Forces, slim, lightning fast and an expert in Wing Chun and Aikido.

  Miss Therapist says that running is a way to create something positive out of something negative. Says it’s good for your mental health. She says she started running years ago and hasn’t looked back.

  That’s not true—she’s telling a lie. She’s always looking over her shoulder.

  ‘You can run away from your problems and run towards a better future.’

  That’s what she tells her clients. Which is ironic – it truly is.

  You see, you can run as fast as you like but one day your past will catch up with you.

  Yesterday, ours did. A dirty great big black stain spread through our lives. Hers and mine.

  Guilt.

  And no amount of scrubbing will get rid of it.

  2

  Friday, 8 January 2010

  Thomasine Albright sprints up three flights of stairs, two at a time, her lanyard and ID card flapping around her neck, lungs bursting, her right arm straining on the bannister as she pulls herself up.

  I’m too old for this.

  She hurries down the corridor as fast as she can, the heels of her sodden boots scratch and slip on the hardwood floor. A thin trail of sweat makes its way down her spine.

  Through plate-glass windows, her eyes snatch glimpses of the outside world. Heavy clouds filled with snow sweep across the sky, decanting their load as they go.

  The text message had been short and to the point: Team Briefing @ 7.30 a.m. – Room C154, 3rd Floor, GMP HQ.

  Yesterday morning the remains of a body had been found in woodland at the base of Anglezarke Moor. She expects to be Family Liaison Officer if forensics can identify the victim.

  C152, C153, C154!

  She cocks her head against the door, her senses tune into the muffled sounds emanating from the other side. The sharpness of a female officer’s voice rises above the chatter, calling them to order, with an ‘Oi, let’s get on with it.’

  Thomasine nudges the door open, attempts to render herself invisible, slips in behind a six-foot-five copper with a shaved head and swirling tattoos down his arms.

  The room is crowded, every seat taken, a mix of black T-shirts, dark suits and white cotton blouses. The light in the room brightens, murmurs turn to silence, the overhead projector hums in the background then cuts out. Whatever presented on the wall now hidden from view.

  She waits for the first utterance of contempt; someone must have noticed her sneaking in. Where are the comments about her being part-time, how lucky they were to be graced with her company? All barked out and laden with sarcasm. The usual.

  Nothing. No one takes the piss; they always take the piss. It is as though the sound has been sucked out of the room. A bright red flush blotches her neck and chest. The DCI conducting the briefing acknowledges her presence with a narrowing of her eyes and a nod of her the head.

  ‘Chief Super wants to see you, Thom,’ someone whispers from behind. ‘Now.’

  It’s Jon Fisk. She’d know that thick citrus smell anywhere – the super-strength gel that keeps his hair bolt upright.

  ‘What about?’ she says under her breath.

  Her question goes unanswered, his voice gives nothing away, ‘Tenth floor, he’s been waiting a while.’

  ‘A while? Great,’ she hisses out, ‘bloody great! I wish someone had told me.’

  As she rushes towards the stairs, a feeling of discomfort swirls in her stomach. Why did he want to see her? If he has anything to say he feeds it down the chain, why hasn’t he? Her Detective Chief Superintendent wouldn’t have called her in unless it was personal, and even then…

  It can’t be to do with our Karen – I would have known. She pushes the notion out her mind.

  His office is seven floors up; her legs weaken at the thought of using the glass box that is the lift. She takes the stairs again, feels the energy sap from her thighs.

  The elevator slides up and down seamlessly, taunting her, the large glass panels a witness to her dishevelled state. As she reaches the tenth floor, she pauses for breath, the corridor stretches out before her, abstract works of art line t
he walls.

  So, this is how the top half live.

  Room numbers are replaced by names and job titles. DCS Timothy Hardacre’s office is the fourth on the right.

  His secretary tells her to wait; he is on the phone, won’t be long. Then carries on as before, her vermillion painted lips pursed in concentration, her fingers striking the keyboard at speed.

  Thomasine sits in silence, the minutes ticking loudly inside her head. Her mind wanders back to the Incident Room, the vacuum of sound. She’d been in there less than a minute. It felt like a lifetime.

  The shrill of the phone jars her back to the present, three solitary rings; the secretary nods her head, gestures for her to go inside. As her fingers reach for the handle, it twists, the door is wrenched open. Hardacre’s tall frame looms over her, his thin, pale face wearing a cheerless look, a pair of slate grey eyes steady on her. He’s not angry, she relaxes a little.

  God, they’re going to offer me early retirement.

  ‘Sorry to have called you away from the briefing.’ His voice has a sad note to it.