“As if this wasn’t all creepy enough already.”
Halfway up the corridor to the living room she paused, a cold hand curling around her heart. Her mother’s perfume hung in the air, strong and unmistakable; violets and lily-of-the-valley, strange and sweet—the same scent from when she’d knocked the bottle over in her mother’s bedroom. Every Christmas, Dad had bought her a new bottle of it, and when he’d died, she bought it for herself. It was the only perfume she would ever wear, despite the old woman fustiness of it.
Heather stepped into the living room, sniffing, and just as abruptly the scent was gone.
Perhaps I’m having a stroke, Heather thought as she threw her satchel on the sofa, wincing at the clank as the biscuit tin crashed against something else in her bag. Sighing, she sat down next to it, sinking into the overstuffed cushions. “They say you smell odd things as your brain is turning off the lights.”
Thanks to the chintzy pattern on her mother’s sofa it took her a few moments to spot the three brown feathers, lying against the soft fabric. Three feathers, small and faintly downy looking, their ends speckled with darker spots. Heather jumped up and looked around the room, although she couldn’t have said what she was looking for.
“Is someone here?”
She left the living room and quickly skirted around the house, poking her head into the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, the utility room—nothing. Upstairs was a similar story, each room sitting in its own little pool of silence, everything undisturbed. Was it possible she had just missed the feathers before? It seemed unlikely. Without her mum to tell her off, she had eaten most of her meals in the living room, a plate propped on her knees and some old film on the television. After a moment’s further thought, she went around and checked all the windows, but they were shut, too. It seemed unlikely that a bird could get in, shed a few feathers on the sofa, then find its secret way back out again. Eventually, she returned to the living room and stood looking down at them.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said aloud. The house kept its silence, only the faint hum of the fridge breaking it. But they were brown. Brown feathers, the rounded ends speckled with black. She couldn’t help feeling like she’d seen them before, years ago—that these were the exact same feathers…
Heather shook her head sharply. The image of her mother, her head all caved in and wet sand on her shirt, gleefully leaving these feathers for her to find, was too sharp and clear. Her mother, still smelling of violets and lily-of-the-valley even though her brains were trickling down her neck, had held the brown feathers stiffly between her broken fingers.
Heather made a small, gagging noise in her throat. Her mouth turned down at the corners, she went back into the kitchen to get a bit of kitchen towel. She used that to pick up the feathers, and then she threw them in the toilet and flushed them away. Once that was done, she washed her hands and turned all the lights on, before pouring herself a large glass of lemonade to settle her stomach.
Calm down, Heather. It’s just your imagination and an afternoon spent googling serial killers. It’s ok. There’s no such thing as ghosts, she told herself.
She had just started to convince herself that she had been overreacting when her phone rang, startling her badly enough to slop her drink down the front of her shirt. Going to the sink to put down her dripping glass, she pressed receive on the phone. It wasn’t a number she recognized.
“Yeah?”
“Miss Evans? It’s DI Parker again.” He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “Thank you for sending through the images so quickly.”
“No problem.” Heather licked a drop of lemonade from her hand. “Are they of any help?” She and Nikki had spent some time trawling the Internet for more information, and a woman called Elizabeth Bunyon had been named as the latest victim of the so-called Red Wolf copycat. They had looked at the same photo of the woman, on so many news sites, until Heather felt she’d never forget her face.
“Yes, and no. We have copies of some of them already, of course, as everything Reave sends and receives in prison is monitored.”
“I saw that,” Heather broke in. “The stamps.”
“But the earlier letters are interesting, at least. Miss Evans, I think the key to this isn’t in the letters, but more his reaction to them. He didn’t know your mother had passed away.”
A cold shiver walked down the back of Heather’s neck. “You’ve told him? What did he say?”
There was a beat of silence as DI Parker took a breath. “Very little, really. Michael Reave rarely says anything much, which has long been a source of frustration. But we need him to talk, and quickly. I’m sure you understand why.”
In the kitchen, Heather frowned, wondering where this was leading.
“I can imagine.”
“He didn’t know about you either, that Colleen Evans had a daughter. When your name came up, his behavior changed. I …” DI Parker cleared his throat again. “I know we spoke about it briefly earlier, but would you really be willing to come in and speak to
