Heather blinked. This was exactly what she had wanted, when she had initially brought up the idea with Nikki, but now that it was being presented to her on a plate, she felt wrongfooted.
“He’ll talk to me?”
“He wants to talk to you.” Parker gave a small grunt of wry amusement. “You’re the only one he will talk to. And as I said Miss Evans, we desperately need to find out what he knows about these new … incidents. If he knows anything at all.”
Heather looked up at the kitchen window, catching sight of her reflection. Her face was pale and her eyes were lost in dark shadows. She found herself thinking of her last day on the newspaper, and the feelings of strength and rage she’d had before it all went to shit. That Heather wouldn’t even hesitate.
“Can I see the other letters? The ones my mum sent to him?”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “… That may be possible.”
Heather nodded to herself. It was a start.
“When can I come in?”
CHAPTER9
THE FIRST THING that was wrong was the cat.
Normally, when Fiona let herself in after a long day of persuading sulky teenage girls to throw a netball at each other, Byron would be immediately on ankle duty, curling himself enthusiastically around her trainers until opening cans of cat food was the only option. But as she let her shopping bag collapse onto the hall carpet—sloppily ejecting a rogue cabbage—the slinky devil was nowhere to be seen. The house was quiet. No ugly rattle of cat litter from the kitchen, and no guilty thump as he removed himself from the kitchen units.
“Byron?”
Muttering to herself, Fiona wrangled the shopping into the kitchen, flicking on lights as she went. Byron was a housecat, much too fancy, expensive, and, let’s face it, stupid to be allowed outside unsupervised, but he did occasionally find some new hiding place in the house, vanishing for hours. Once he had managed to squeeze himself into the open suitcase rammed underneath her bed. It was unlike him to pull a fast one at dinner time, however.
Fiona began rattling around in the cupboards, making more noise than was necessary to remove a can of shredded chicken and empty it into a plastic bowl. Normally, these exact noises would bring Byron out of his hiding place at light speed, but the house remained quiet. She placed the plastic bowl on the floor and waited. Nothing.
“Byron? You little sod.”
At that point she thought of the wonky window she’d been meaning to fix for the last few weeks. He shouldn’t have been able to wriggle his way out of that, but what if he had? Pushing that thought from her mind, Fiona headed upstairs. May as well check everywhere before she started to panic.
The second thing was the smell. It hit her on the staircase, a wild and unnerving funk, like cages at a zoo. She frowned on the landing, thinking that perhaps Byron was ill and had thrown up somewhere, although cat sick was never nearly so powerful.
“Byron, you little sod, are you all right? That food is expensive you know, I’d appreciate you not puking it up every …”
The words dropped into nothing, eaten up by silence and the stench.
“Byron?”
She stood by her bedroom door, a sick feeling building in her stomach at the sight of the evening’s deep shadows. The smell was worse in here. It was too easy to imagine terrible things waiting for her in the darkness—Byron dead on the bed, his little kitty brain overheated and his fur covered in vomit. Or something else, something worse. A figure in the dark perhaps, watching her.
Abruptly annoyed with herself, Fiona flicked the light switch, watching with no small relief as the big ramshackle room was revealed; cupboard doors half hidden under hanging clothes, the huge bed that was far too big for her, covered in cushions; the nightstand with its pile of dog-eared romance novels. She crossed to the bed and sat down, yanking at the laces on her trainers.
“You’ve found a mouse, I expect,” she said aloud to the room. “You killed it and made a mess, and now you’re too guilty to face me. That would explain the stink.”
Free of her trainers, she leaned down to pick them up—just in time to see a hand sneak out from under the bed and curl around her ankle.
The fright and the shock were like a hammer blow to her entire body. Fiona made an odd, whuffing sound—terror seemed to snap her lungs closed in an instant—and she tried to jump clear, but the hand around her ankle had a strong grip, and it yanked back viciously, causing her to lose her balance and crash to the floor. She hit the floor chin first, padded only slightly by the thick carpet, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was aware of a great weight on the back of her legs. Whoever it was who had been hiding under the bed was climbing out, crawling up her rapidly. Fiona bucked wildly, attempting to throw them off, but they were bigger than her, stronger. She turned, catching a glimpse of a face hidden in a black woolen mask, and then there was another blow to her head, turning the edges of her vision dark and uncertain.
“NO, no, no …”
She brought her arms up and struck him again and again, horrified by the strange weakness in her shoulders. Fright had sucked all the strength from her, and he pushed her back onto the carpet, using his weight to pin her there. For an odd, elastic moment, Fiona remembered putting the benches away with her year seven’s: they did it in teams of three, but Fiona could lift one herself, because she was strong, so strong despite her height, everyone said so, everyone said … With another clench of horror and shame, she realized she’d wet herself.
“Get OFF
