All Fall Down (50 page)

I had to eliminate her.

There was so much blood. I must have hit an artery or something. It was everywhere. Even my hair was soaked with it. I suppose I was in something of a frenzy, what with it being my first time. I’m much more careful now. More controlled.

Nowadays, I take my time.

Jen screamed a lot too. It was incredibly annoying. When I stuck the knife in her mouth she made this horrible gagging sound and spat blood all over my face. She didn’t last long after that. I slashed her throat. She was already dead when I made love to her. It took her a little while to go so cold that I couldn’t bear to touch her any more. It’s called the
algor mortis
phase – did you know that? The death chill. The body temperature drops until it reaches room temperature. And then …

Hmm, sorry? I was miles away.

Yes, there have been lots since Jen. Lots of women. Yes, only women – don’t worry, you have nothing to be afraid of. To be honest with you, I’ve lost count of exactly how many it is. You’d think that after all these years, and with all the opportunities the internet gives me, I would have found her by now. And, actually, you know what?

I think I might have.

Amy did not notice her sister’s email straight away. As the Mail program loaded she was idly listening to the soft
drip drip
of coffee through the filter in her mug, and trying to organize her thoughts into a prioritized list for the day ahead.

It was going to be a scorching hot day again. 7.30 a.m. was the best time to be out in the tiny garden, her laptop resting at an angle on the wobbly rusting table, dew still clutching the tips of the grass stalks and a blessed silence from the houses of the still-slumbering neighbours. The new intake of email scrolled up in bold in the mailbox, one by one, four screens’ worth.

Amy scanned a couple of the subject headings:

Wool Enquiry – Pattern doesn’t state Gauge!

Painless Quilting; Idea for Article

She was going to have to employ someone soon. The website – her baby, her passion – had boomed in popularity over recent months and the orders and enquiries kept her busy from dawn till midnight, seven days a week. As someone had once said to her, it was a quality problem.

Then she saw Becky’s email address on the list in her inbox. There was no subject heading. Her stomach gave a small flip. Rebecca had not spoken to her in over a week, after the blazing, screaming fight they’d had, a fight that oozed hatred, hitherto-unspoken resentments and lifelong grudges. Amy had wondered if Becky would ever speak to her again.

Dear Amy,

I’m going away again – and this time I might not come back. Don’t try to find me. I’m going to Asia, probably. I’ve always wanted to visit Vietnam and Cambodia. Sorry about our row. It’s not your fault. Tell Mum and Dad not to worry. Look after yourself.

Love

B

Amy tried to make sense of it. Going away to Asia? Becky was two years older than Amy, and had always been more prone to tantrums. She remembered her shouting ‘I’m running away!’ at their parents, stuffing her make-up and a multi-pack of Mars bars into a bag and storming off, but she never made it much further than the end of the village.

She read the email again.
Don’t try to find me.
That was the line that sent a little shiver up Amy’s spine. And there was something else about the email too, a little niggle that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

The time on the email was 11.27 p.m. on Sunday, the previous night, so it had probably been written and sent while drunk. She pictured Becky lying on her sofa with an almost-empty bottle of Merlot on the floor, tapping away at her phone, the TV blaring unwatched in the background. Well, she thought, hangover or not, you can’t expect to send an email like that and not get an early-morning call from your sister.

Amy rang Becky’s mobile, which went straight to voicemail, then her landline, which rang out, then her mobile again, this time leaving a message:

‘Rebecca Ann Coltman, you are a pain in the arse. What the fuck is all this about going to Thailand, eh? Call me as soon as you get this.’ o She paused.
Don’t try to find me
. ‘I love you, though. And I’m sorry about the row too. Call me, okay?’

She put the phone on the table and returned to her emails.

An hour later Becky hadn’t rung or texted back, and Amy couldn’t concentrate on her work at all. She made herself another cup of coffee and, while she waited, checked Becky’s Facebook page on her phone. It hadn’t been updated for a couple of days. She checked Twitter too. Ditto. No tweets since Friday.
‘End of term. Whoo-hoo! Six weeks of freedom. #schoolsoutforsummer’

She tried to call both of Becky’s numbers again. Still no reply. She was 99% sure that her sister was enjoying the first Monday of the school summer holidays in bed, having a lie-in. That was probably what every childless teacher in the country was doing today. But there was still that 1% niggle.

Sod it, she was going to have to go to round there. Just to set her mind at rest.

Becky’s flat was in a small boxy fifties block built in the space left by a German bomb, incongruous in a road of Edwardian semis. It took Amy seven minutes to get there on her Triumph when the traffic lights weren’t against her. This morning they were all green, and Amy arrived with the taste of coffee still in her mouth, and the day’s To Do list scrolling through her head. This was ‘to do’ number one: get her sister out of bed, find out why she’d sent such a crazy email and smooth things over between them.

She parked the bike, dragged off her helmet, and buzzed Flat 9. No answer. After a moment’s hesitation she tried Flat 8 instead. Thirty seconds later a sleepy male voice came over the intercom: ‘Yerrghello?’

‘Hi Gary, it’s Amy, Becky’s sister. Sorry it’s early. Can you buzz me in, please?’

The door clicked open in response, and Amy heard another door opening upstairs, the sound bouncing down the concrete stairwell. She strode up to the second floor, taking the stairs two at a time. Gary stood waiting for her, bare-chested in stripy cotton pyjama pants. He wasn’t bad-looking, Amy thought. He and Becky were good friends, although Amy suspected this was mostly because Gary was nifty with a screwdriver and willing to unblock Becky’s U-bend at any hour of the day or night. She remembered Becky confessing this to her in a mock-suggestive comedy accent, and grinned. For the first time she felt a real pang of worry about where Becky was.

‘Sorry,’ she repeated, taking in his bed-head hair and sleepy eyes. He smelled of morning breath and slight BO.

‘S’OK,’ he replied, scratching his chest. ‘Becky all right?’

‘Probably. Just had a weird email from her last night, and now she’s not answering her–’

‘Phone,’ interrupted Gary, and Amy instantly remembered the most annoying thing about him was his habit of trying to finish people’s sentences. She wondered if he was aware he was doing it.

‘–her mobile
or
her landline,’ she corrected. ‘Yeah. Anyway. Do you have a key? Just want to check she hasn’t had an accident.’

‘Accident,’ he agreed, ushering her into his living room and rooting around in a drawer under a black ash coffee table. ‘I think I’ve still got her keys, they should be in here somewhere.’

While Gary went into his bedroom to fetch a T-shirt, Amy put down her helmet and bike keys on the smoked glass dining table. Gary was in his bedroom for a good minute, and Amy tapped her foot impatiently. What was he doing? When he came back he didn’t say anything apart from, ‘OK, let’s go.’

They walked from Gary’s flat to Becky’s. He put the Chubb key in the bottom lock, then paused. ‘It’s not locked.’

Amy stared at it, then at Gary. ‘She always double-locks the door, even if she’s just going to bloody Sainsbury’s.’

He unlocked the Yale lock and the door swung open. Amy realized she was holding her breath as they stepped inside. The flat was dark and silent, blinds drawn.

‘It looks tidy,’ she said. ‘Becky?’ she called out, feeling foolish and strangely light-headed. She went straight to her sister’s bedroom, dreading the sight of her spread-eagled face down on the bed. But all was in order. The bed was made neatly, with a few items – a bra, a T-shirt – hanging from the bedpost at the foot of the bed. She opened the wardrobe. Clothes were crammed inside, so tightly that Amy wondered how Becky ever found anything to wear. There was no sign that she had packed a suitcase, although it was difficult to tell. Amy kept her own suitcases under her bed, and guessing that Becky would do the same – as that was what their mum had done – she stooped and peered under the bed. No suitcase, just a lot of dust balls and a couple of shoe boxes.

In the kitchen, a mug stood in the sink, rinsed but unwashed, with no other washing-up in sight. Amy opened the fridge. It was empty apart from a jar of pickles that looked like they would survive a nuclear holocaust. The freezer was empty too and appeared to have been recently defrosted. Both signs that she had planned to go away. But the boiler, attached to the wall beside the sink, had been left on.

Gary stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching her and scratching his belly.

‘When did you last see her?’ Amy asked.

Gary pondered. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while. She came over to ask me if I could fix her Wi-Fi, but that was ages ago. Maybe two or three weeks? What’s going on? What was this weird email all about?’

Amy walked into the living room, Gary following. Everything appeared to be in place in here. The TV wasn’t on standby but a copy of
Heat
was open on the armchair. ‘She told me she had gone away, to Thailand, and said she might not come back.’

Gary looked hurt. ‘She wouldn’t have gone without telling me.’

Amy picked up a framed photo from the bookcase, noting that most of the books behind it were popular erotica. The photo was of her and Becky at Becky’s graduation, ten years ago. Their faces were close to the camera, smiling into the sun. So fresh-faced, Amy having just finished her own first year, Becky planning to do her Teacher Training PGCE the next year.

‘She’ll probably walk in the door at any moment and ask what the hell we’re doing–’

‘Here.’

Amy felt cold inside. If Becky really had gone away without discussing it with her beforehand, that would hurt. And what was wrong in Becky’s life that made her feel the need to do such a thing?

‘When did
you
last talk to her?’ Gary asked.

‘I haven’t seen her for about a month. We had a fight.’

Gary was too English to ask what the fight had been about.

‘I’m really worried,’ she said, pulling out her phone and checking both her texts and emails, just in case something had come in from Becky. But there was nothing – just a load more emails from customers.

With all the contradictory signs in the flat, Amy didn’t know what to think. But it was the email from Becky that jarred the most. Something about it was
off
, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not the meaning of the message itself, but the way it was written. Despite the recent row, she and Becky were close. They emailed and texted each other all the time, and left comments on each other’s Facebook updates, so she was used to seeing her sister’s words on a screen.

She hurried across to the desk where Becky’s computer sat: a brand new iMac. Looked like Becky had been splashing the cash. She switched it on and waited for it to boot up. Despite Amy’s urgings, Becky had never password-protected any of her computers, so Amy was able to go straight into her sister’s Mail program where she checked the sent items. Because of the way the iMac synced with Becky’s phone, emails sent from either would show in the sent items of both.

There was the email. She read it again.
Don’t try to find me
. It was the last email Becky had sent, unless she (
or someone else?
a voice in her head whispered) had deleted them. She scanned the list of emails sent over previous days. There were hardly any, but she was going to need some time to sit and go through them.

One email caught her eye. It was addressed to [email protected]. The subject line was Account Cancellation.

Cupid’s Web was an internet dating site.

‘I didn’t know Becky was into internet dating,’ Amy said, surprised.

Gary, who had been peering over her shoulder, said, ‘Didn’t you? Well, everyone does internet dating these days, don’t they? Every unattached person, anyway.’ He snorted. ‘Quite a lot of married ones too.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe you don’t need to.’ He looked her up and down and she resisted telling him that her own love life was so non-existent that she doubted even internet dating could help her.

She turned back to the screen. ‘Internet dating. I wonder how long she’s been doing it?’

Mark Edwards and Louise Voss became writing partners after Louise saw Mark on a TV documentary about aspiring writers. They wrote their first thriller,
Killing Cupid
, while living 6000 miles apart, which helped prevent arguments.

Catch Your Death
followed, the first novel to feature virologist Kate Maddox, reaching No.1 on the ebook bestseller list. Louise and Mark pride themselves on writing lightning-fast page-turners and have their motto, ‘All Thriller, No Filler’, pinned above their desks.