‘Call him off, Felicity! Call him off now!’ John bellowed his demands.
I shook my head and folded my arms. ‘I don’t think I shall, John.’
He sneered at me. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? What? You think this is some kind of payback for me putting worms in your hair? Grow up, Felicity or I’ll do much worse when I get down from here.’
I shook my head back and forth. Ever ready with a threat. He hadn’t changed a bit since school. Well, he could try to get down and deal with me, but my money was on Buster. If John attempted to get off the car, he was going to get his ankles mauled to death. With that belief ringing in my ears, I ran to the house.
The front door was hanging open, I pushed through it and ran upstairs, confident John had hurt Derek and I would find Joanne and Tamara up there.
I was wrong though. I found the master bedroom easily enough, but it was empty. An additional single bed had been set up against one wall. The sheets were stained a little; Derek’s terrible skin condition leaking plasma constantly. Next to his bed, a small table held cream and pills to treat his condition and a brandy decanter with two crystal glasses.
But where was Derek?
I heard voices outside and ran to the balcony. That it was open on a late autumn day was odd. The room was far too cool for a person to be comfortable in bed but looking over the edge of the balcony and into the garden, I saw a sight that took my breath away.
Derek was lying on the ground below. Half on the patio and half on the lawn, he wasn’t moving and looked to be dead. Tamara was checking his pulse, one shaking hand to her mouth as the other felt his neck.
I pushed away from the balcony and ran back downstairs.
From where she stood in the kitchen, Joanne saw me reach the foot of the stairs and turn into the hallway. She shot me a surprised look but said nothing because she was on the phone to the emergency services. With her phone to her left ear, she was doing her best to explain herself to the person at the other end.
Terrified tears were streaming down her face.
Unsure what to do, I came up close to Joanne and waited. In the first ten seconds I heard what had happened.
‘Yes, he pushed him!’ Joanne cried into the phone. John hadn’t returned to apologise for his earlier outburst. He returned to kill his partner. Joanne listened for a few seconds before adding. ‘No, he’s lying in the garden. No,’ she sobbed. ‘No, I don’t know how badly he is hurt. He was already desperately sick. Dying we think.’
Feeling like I ought to be doing something to help, I left Joanne to continue talking on the phone and ran through the house to find Tamara. She hadn’t moved since I saw her from above.
A sound behind me, made me jump but it was Tamara’s mum, Joanne, returning. ‘The police are coming along with an ambulance,’ she announced, rushing around me to get to her husband.
I was a fifth wheel but as Joanne knelt beside her husband and daughter, I said, ‘I blocked your driveway.’ The two women swung their heads my way. ‘I heard the scream,’ I explained. ‘So I used my car to stop him escaping. He did this?’
Tamara sobbed, holding her father’s unresponsive hand, and it was Joanne’s wavering voice that answered my question. ‘We heard a shout and then this awful thump …’ she had to stop talking; the words just too painful to get out. She sucked in a lungful of air and tried again. ‘It was like a sack of wet sand hitting the floor,’ she sobbed, barely able to speak.
Abruptly, she stood up, a juddering huff of breath stilling her body as she looked away from her husband and back toward the still open patio door. ‘You said you trapped him here?’
She wasn’t really asking me to confirm my claim, nor was she waiting for an answer. She was stalking back through the house, heading for the front door, and pausing only to grab a brass candlestick from a mantlepiece on her way by.
I could only guess what she meant to do with it, and now torn between attempting to help Tamara with her stricken father, and stopping Joanne from doing something that would only make things worse, I chose the latter.
‘Joanne!’ I called after her, running through the house to catch up. ‘Joanne, let’s not do anything rash. You said the police were on their way.’
John Ramsey was still on the bonnet of his Range Rover. He was missing a shoe and the bottom three inches of his left trouser leg had been reduced to ribbons.
‘Come down,’ barked Buster.
‘Call off your something dog!’ John demanded, resorting to profanity yet again.
Joanne advanced across her gravel drive, a determination in her gait and the candlestick still gripped firmly in her right hand.
‘Why?’ she screamed. ‘Why? You couldn’t wait for natural causes to take him?’
‘I didn’t push him!’ John shouted in reply. ‘I already told you that!’
‘You lied!’ Mrs Bleakwith spat in response, the hand holding the candlestick twitching and shifting. I couldn’t tell whether she was going to attack him or the car or both or neither. I also wasn’t sure what I might be able to do to stop her if she did.
I’m five feet five inches and a hundred pounds plus some change. There just isn’t a lot of me. Joanne had to be close to two hundred pounds and was six inches taller.
John Ramsey had an imploring look on his face when
