Nick was searching around in a kitchen drawer. I put down a bottle of wine and poured myself an orange juice.
‘Wonderful house,’ I said, when Nick had emptied the drawer of cutlery and I had his attention again.
‘Belonged to my parents,’ he replied. ‘I inherited a few years ago. I’m going to sell it to someone who can afford to renovate it just as soon as I can get it safe enough to show estate agents round. The place is falling apart.’
Someone else came over to speak to Nick and I took myself through to an oak-panelled dining room awash with old Toby jugs and willow-patterned plates. The fireplace was massive. A second later I realized it needed to be. There was practically a breeze running through the room from ill-fitting windows on opposite walls. I counted two buckets and a bowl on the stone-flagged floor to catch the rain. And this was the ground floor.
There were around a dozen people in the room and not much space for more. I carried on walking into another stone-flagged room with easy chairs, a shiny black grand piano, an even larger fireplace and, cliche though it was, the decapitated head of a large mammal on one wall. Evi was perched on a window seat at the far end. An older man was sitting next to her, leaning rather closer than would have felt comfortable had I been in her position. Evi was dressed in bright scarlet this evening: red sweater that came down to mid-thigh, black jeans tucked into red boots. Her hair had been gathered up and was held in place by a red clip. Tiny, sparkly red earrings. She had a long neck, I noticed, and she held her head high.
She caught my eye and gave me a smile. I was about to cross the room and join her when someone spoke to me.
‘Dried off, have you?’ asked a boy I thought I recognized. He looked a little older than the average student, his skin a little more papery, deeper lines around the eyes. He was about five foot seven and thin. Pinched around the face. Runty was a word I might have used, had I been feeling mean.
‘Is it raining out?’ I replied, although I knew exactly what he meant. He saw the look in my eye and almost turned away. I was being Lacey.
‘I take it you were on the green on Tuesday night,’ I said, grabbing a nearby bowl and offering it to him. He glanced down and a confused look took hold of his face. Well, I was offering him pot pourri. Curled wood-shavings and dried leaves, to be specific. Lacey would have put one in her mouth just to prove a point. Laura put them back down on the piano and looked sheepish.
‘I’m Laura,’ I said.
‘Will,’ he told me. ‘What are you reading?’
I bit back the temptation to say Dan Brown. ‘Psychology,’ I replied. ‘You?’
‘I’m doing part three of the mathematical tripos,’ he told me and I nodded, as though it meant something.
‘Who were those boys?’ I asked him. ‘The ones on the green the other night wearing masks?’ Scott Thornton I already knew about. Wouldn’t hurt to put names on the others.
He smirked and his eyes fell to my chest. ‘Why, are you planning revenge?’ he said.
‘Just want to know which shins I have to kick when I see them in daylight,’ I said, before I could stop myself. There was something about this guy that was really bringing out the Lacey in me.
‘To be honest I’ve not seen that lot before,’ he said. ‘A lot of freshers get dunked in the first few weeks but not usually by Lone Ranger lookalikes. So did you enjoy the experience of being chained up?’
God, this bloke was a twat. Fortunately, at that moment, people began appearing with loaded dinner plates.
‘I’m starving,’ I muttered. ‘Catch you later.’
Evi had been abandoned by her admirer. ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ I offered. She started to shake her head, then seemed to change her mind.
‘That would be great,’ she said.
Back in the kitchen I joined the small queue. The curry I could smell was a mildly spiced pheasant casserole served with roasted root vegetables. People were still tucking into the first course, though, which was some sort of pate.
I cut Evi a slice of pate, found some bread and a knife and carried it back through, meaning to ask her how long she’d known Nick Bell and, if I could do it discreetly, what she thought of him. It probably wouldn’t hurt to find out how good his IT skills were.
It wasn’t to be. Two men were talking to her now. She was beautiful and fragile, like a princess in a fairy tale. They just couldn’t help themselves. I reached around one of them to hand over the plate.
‘Thanks, Laura,’ she said. ‘Can we catch up later?’
I left her to her admirers and went back to the food. The pate was great, then the dark-haired woman started serving the casserole. I made polite conversation about nothing with people near by and was just wondering whether second helpings were acceptable when my host reappeared.
‘How you doing?’ he asked me.
‘Bursting out of my jeans but otherwise fine,’ I told him. ‘Fabulous food.’
‘Liz and I have an arrangement,’ he said, nodding towards the dark-haired woman. She caught her name being mentioned and gave him the sort of look a son gets from a mother who is just a little too fond of him. ‘I kill it, she cooks it,’ he went on. ‘What we don’t eat she sells at the Third Tuesday Farmers’ Market.’
I was not in Kansas any more.
‘When you say kill it, you’re speaking figuratively, right?’ I said. ‘You mean you pop down to Waitrose, stalk the aisles in a predatory fashion and wrestle the last piece of frozen chicken from a single mum with toddler twins.’
‘You’re in the country now,’ said Liz, who’d crept closer. ‘Jim wouldn’t eat a piece of meat that’s seen the inside of a supermarket.’ She nodded towards a wiry, silver-haired man by the window and Lacey had an urge to ask if Jim were her husband or her brother, or both. Laura, though, gave her a tight-lipped smile. Without returning it, Liz picked up a stack of dirty plates and left the room.
‘So you’re a killer?’ I asked Nick, looking into his eyes, trying to see if there was anything not quite right in there. They looked steadily back, a rich golden brown. Beautiful eyes. With a light in them that I couldn’t interpret.
‘Got a problem with that?’ he asked.
‘Depends what you kill,’ I said. ‘And, I guess, on how you do it.’ Oh, I had to be careful. Lacey was standing on tiptoe, arms outstretched, desperate to be out of her box, and if this man had anything to hide I was probably putting him on maximum alert.
He was a cool customer, I had to admit. He gave me a very wide grin and took my empty plate from me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you my lethal weapons.’
*
Jessica Calloway opened her eyes to find she was no longer in her room at college, the scene of so many dreadful nightmares lately. She was in a forest. She got to her feet slowly. She could see stars shining down through impossibly tall trees. The ground was covered with a soft sprinkling of frost that gleamed silver in the starlight.
‘Jessica,’ called a voice from somewhere among the trees. A high-pitched, tinny voice that didn’t sound quite human. This was just another bad dream. She’d wake up soon, trembling and sweating and screaming, but awake and safe.
She was standing on a rough path that had been formed by the constant passage of footsteps. Every few yards or so a small light was half hidden amidst the undergrowth, each giving off a soft glow. The lights seemed to invite her on, deeper into the woods.
A movement above her head made her jump. She looked up to see a creature, a very large bat, swooping down from the trees towards her. Jessica started, then stared at it in astonishment. The bat was the palest shade of blue and it left behind a trail like a silver moonbeam. As Jessica watched, the bat disappeared and the trail shimmered away to nothing.
In the boot room, Nick was holding out an oilskin coat for me. I slipped my arms into it and we stepped outside to find that snow was falling. I felt a flurry of nerves and told myself to chill. We were surrounded by people. This was his home. Nothing was going to happen.
‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ he said. ‘Stay close.’
