The sound of someone approaching caught Kelly’s attention, and she looked up to see Tara walking toward her across the grass. Even in the dark her hair looked like it was glowing. She could probably get a part time job as a bloody lighthouse if she put her mind to it. Tara approached to within a few metres of where Kelly stood, her face pinched with concern. That consternation provoked a surprising sense of relief in Kelly, as though she recognised that Tara was as uncomfortable doing this as Kelly was, which perhaps removed the possibility of foul play. Then again, if she was about to pull out a gun and blow someone’s head off, Kelly figured she would be a touch edgy too.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Tara said. ‘I didn’t think that you would.’

  ‘Nor did I,’ Kelly lied in reply. It sounded good.

  Tara glanced around them, as though checking that nobody was listening.

  ‘No Felix?’ Kelly asked. ‘Got you to do his dirty work for him?’

  ‘He’s at a rally at his public school down the road,’ Tara said by way of an explanation.

  ‘Convenient,’ Kelly said, as she recalled Jason mentioning Felix’s big event at Priorsfield school that evening. She stepping closer to Tara. ‘So, what’s he offering then?’

  Tara seemed to take a pensive breath before she replied.

  ‘He’s said that he will transfer fifty thousand pounds to an account in your name, in return for a signed affidavit from you promising that you will remain out of our lives and will do nothing to affect either his political aspirations or my role alongside them.’

  Kelly hadn’t been sure what to expect, but she knew damn well that she wasn’t going to just roll over and play dead for a lousy fifty grand. As desperate as she was for money, she wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Seriously, that’s it?’ she uttered. ‘You drag me out here in the cold for a crappy offer like that? And here I was thinking that you could be taken seriously for once. Tell Felix he can take his fifty grand and shove it up his ar…’

  ‘After he has supplied you with a suitable home to live, the deeds to which will be signed over to you,’ Tara added quickly.

  Kelly fell silent. A home. Her own home. Owned by her. In which to live. The temptation to sign up for that was considerable and she instantly began to worry about the legality of it all. Could one be effectively signed the rights to ownership of a home just like that? Weren’t there contracts involved, deedships or something? Felix had powerful lawyers of course and it was quite possible that something of that nature could be achieved. Didn’t film stars divorced by their spouses often give up homes to them and such like?

  Kelly wondered again if Felix had been unfaithful to her during their marriage. The evidence she possessed could potentially throw doubt on the proximal cause of their divorce and the court case that had accompanied it. Felix’s testimony could be proven false, and she could potentially stand to gain a great deal more than what was being offered now.

  ‘A hundred thousand, plus the home, and I’ll think about it,’ Kelly replied.

  ‘It’s not open to negotiation Kelly,’ Tara said. ‘We have money but it’s not a limitless pit.’

  ‘It’s not yours at all,’ Kelly delighted in reminding her. ‘You married into money, Tara, you didn’t bring it with you.’

  ‘So did you,’ Tara countered. ‘We all stand to gain what we want from this, Kelly. What we need from this. The question is, are you going to do the smart thing and let this whole thing go, walk away into a new life with a property behind you and money in the bank? Or are you going to stamp your feet and keep fighting?’

  ‘Fighting, for the truth?’ Kelly shot back. ‘Or sell out for lies. That’s what you really mean, Tara. Am I going to become a liar for money, just like you?’

  ‘I know what kind of man Felix is,’ Tara replied with quiet resilience. ‘I demanded that he allow me my freedom to do and to see whom I please in return for my silence,’ she said. ‘I have my life back.’

  ‘That’s what you call a life?’ Kelly uttered in disbelief.

  Tara ground her jaw but said nothing, her hands shoved into her pockets against the cold. Kelly could see that she was losing her temper and she was mindful that there was a lot of money on the table here, but what if this was still a ruse and they were baiting her, perhaps even recording everything so that they could use it as evidence that she was nothing more than a money–grabber?

  ‘You seem to think that I’m desperate for money, for a life,’ Kelly said, hoping to bait Tara.

  ‘You lost your job,’ Tara said, ‘and your boyfriend. You can’t live where you are right now. This is a great way out of your predicament, Kelly.’

  Kelly’s eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know that I lost my boyfriend?’

  Tara opened her mouth to speak, but then she hesitated. ‘Felix told me.’

  Kelly’s mind briefly went blank. Kelly had known that Alicia would probably take great delight in telling Felix that she had been fired, but Alicia knew nothing of Paul other than the fact that he existed. Paul had left on the previous afternoon but apart from Detective Stone she had told nobody about it.

  ‘How could he know?’ Kelly uttered. ‘Nobody knew, he only went yesterday and I didn’t tell a soul until an hour ago because I haven’t seen anybody, apart from you.’

  Tara seemed genuinely mystified, confused.

  ‘Maybe someone at your firm? Maybe Alicia?’

  Kelly felt her nerve endings tingling, something on the verge of her awareness like a word on the tip of her tongue that wouldn’t go away. Alicia could not know about Paul to know that he had walked out. The only way someone could know something about that would be if they were watching her all the time, listening in all the time. Then they would know literally every single thing that had happened in the apartment and…

  Kelly fought the sudden urge to vomit. She reached for the cell phone in her pocket.

  ‘Felix’s offer isn’t the only thing that I have working for me,’ Kelly said quickly. ‘You have no idea what he’s been up to Tara. I can show you, the video of him hitting you isn’t the only video I have. I have proof right here!’

  ‘Proof of what?’ Tara asked, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Felix is lying to you,’ Kelly said as she pulled the phone out and accessed the screen. ‘Look, it’s right here, he’s been…’

  Tara’s eyes widened and her face collapsed in shock, even as Kelly realised that she wasn’t looking at the phone’s screen but past Kelly’s shoulder. ‘No!’

  ***

  32

  Kelly felt something tickling her skin, as though insects were running across her face in the darkness. A pulse of horror surged through her chest as she opened her eyes and saw nothing but utter blackness. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out as she fought for air, and then she heard the wind and the traffic nearby.

  Kelly say upright and her head pounded with pain as stars and whorls of light flickered across her field of vision. Nausea poisoned her innards and her left hand felt heavy and cold. She looked down at it, and vaguely registered the iron crowbar lodged between her cold, numb fingers.

  Kelly blinked as her vision cleared, and she saw something on the ground in front of her. She stared for a moment as her weary, addled brain tried to figure out what it was, and then the nausea intensified.

  Tara lay on her back in the grass, her lips wide open and her tongue lolling out of it. Her vivid red hair snaked across the damp grass, thick with blood from where her skull had been stoved in by repeated frenzied blows. Her eye socket was shattered, several teeth missing and one eyeball glared accusingly sideways out of her skull at Kelly.

  ‘No,’ Kelly gasped in a whisper.

  She looked down at the crowbar in her hand, smothered in blood, and then she felt something trickle down her face onto her lips. A metallic taste tainted her tongue and she suddenly retched as she dropped the crowbar and scrambled back from the corpse in front of her.

  ‘Jesus, no.’

  Kelly’s heart battered its way up out of her chest and tried to climb out of her throat as she staggered to her feet and looked down at herself. Her coat was splattered with blood, as was her face and hands. She stared at them in horror and disbelief, then back to Tara’s diminutive body. She could tell that Tara was dead. She didn’t know how but she just knew that she wasn’t unconscious. Still, she had to call someone.

  She reached into her pocket for her phone, and then froze.

  Her mobile was gone.

  ‘No!’

  She frantically searched her pockets, but the mobile was nowhere to be found. Kelly whirled, her head spinning as she did so and pain bolting through her skull from where she had been struck. Suddenly, she knew that the entire meeting had been a ruse to bring her out to the common with her videos and to take them from her. She stared in terror at Tara’s ruined skull, at the blood glistening black in the darkness.

  No words came to her. Tears filled her eyes but she could not cry, her mind utterly overwhelmed with despair at what had happened. Tara was dead. Someone had killed her. And here she was, with the murder weapon in her hand. Suddenly all of the things that had happened over the past few days flew through her mind; trespassing on Tara’s front lawn, arguing with her at the fundraiser, the harassment claims on the television and the accusations of mental instability, the argument in the restaurant and her hitting Tara.

  ‘Oh god, no.’

  Kelly had texted her location just minutes ago.

  She began to stagger back and away from Tara’s remains, and then she heard a shout from across the common.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  A man’s voice, someone walking his dog. Kelly backed away into the trees as the man in the distance came closer.

  ‘We heard a scream? Is everything all right? Is there anyone there?’

  Kelly stumbled backwards behind the memorial and then she turned and fled down the darkened paths toward the building site. Her mind buzzed with terror, shock and grief. She didn’t know where to run or where to turn. She couldn’t begin to think straight and she had no idea what was going to happen when…

  ‘Oh my god!’

  The man’s voice reached her through the darkness behind as he stumbled across Tara’s corpse and she heard another scream moments later. Voices yelled in the darkness as Kelly ran through the trees and into the night.

  She scrubbed at her face with her coat, felt blood smear down her face as she staggered out of the woods and alongside tall barriers that ringed the new building site. She made her way out of the woods and then turned, following darkened streets back home. She climbed the piss–scented steps, stepped over Old Al’s body and made it to her front door, then opened it and hurried inside.

  Her legs gave way and she slumped to the floor, shivering as her stomach flipped over and over inside of her. She could see only Tara’s mutilated body in her mind’s eye, staring at her with one shattered eye, blood smothering her face. Kelly threw her hands over her mouth and eyes, trying to block out the horrific sight, and then she smelled the blood on her hands and she bolted for the bathroom.

  She retched into the sink, coughing and spluttering as she looked up at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was smeared with blood visible in the glow from streetlights outside the bathroom window. She looked down and saw bloody hand prints on the sink.

  Kelly switched on the bathroom light, her head pounding with pain. In the sudden stark light she looked every inch the killer, splattered with blood, dishevelled, her eyes wild, untamed. She turned on the taps and began scrubbing the blood from her hands and face. She drenched her hair in the bath and saw the water spiral away, tainted with crimson ribbons of Tara’s blood.

  Kelly began to cry, her entire body shuddering and convulsing. She knew that she would be arrested, that they would take her clothes and forensically examine them, would find Tara’s blood. She looked down at her hands and saw blood under the fingernails, flecks of white material there that could only be skin. Tara’s skin.

  Phone the bloody police, Kelly! Call Emma!

  She turned and staggered into the living room, headed straight for the phone. Tell them everything, every last thing before it’s too late. The police would be at the scene by now, and God only knew what conclusions they would come to. She reached out for the phone and almost leaped out of her skin when rang loudly.

  She peered at the number but didn’t recognise it, although she could tell that it was a mobile. Maybe a police mobile? She picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kelly? It’s Jason, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you?!’

  ‘I’ve been trying to call you for a day! Where the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m in town, near the public school. Felix is giving a speech at nine to the great and the good, and it’s the perfect place to drop your bombshells on him. Can you meet me there in ten minutes and bring the videos with you?’

  Kelly’s shoulders sank.

  ‘Jason, my mobile phone has been stolen.’

  ‘It’s what?!’ Jason yelled. ‘You lost the footage? Didn’t you store it anywhere else or upload it to the cloud? I told you to keep it safe!’

  ‘Jason, I was attacked. They stole it from me.’

  ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’

  Kelly nodded, her mind numb. ‘I’m all right, but Tara Levitt–Hugh, she’s been murdered Jason, and I think whoever did it has set me up.’

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line. When Jason spoke, his voice was deadly serious.

  ‘You need to call the police, right now, and tell them what happened.’

  ‘I’m going to.’

  ‘What about a laptop or something?’ Jason asked. ‘Didn’t you upload the footage anywhere else?’

  Kelly almost fell over as she remembered that she had uploaded the footage to her laptop. She turned to reach for it, and then froze. It was gone from where she had left it on her mantlepiece.

  ‘It’s gone, Jason,’ she said, panicked. ‘I left it here and it’s gone!’

  Jason’s voice remained calm.

  ‘Okay, listen to me. Felix is behind this, that much is obvious. Get down here to the school. If he’s got your laptop he must have it with him, maybe your mobile phone too. Maybe we can turn this to our advantage.’

  ‘But we should call the police,’ Kelly pleaded, ‘right now before it’s too late.’

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ Jason said. ‘But if they arrest him while he’s still in possession of your videos, his lawyers might make moves to prevent them from ever being released to the public. We need this to happen now, Kelly, for once and for all. Get to the school, please, and I’ll make sure the bastard pays for everything that he’s done.’

  ***

  33

  Detective Emma Stone got out of her car and stared at the myriad blazing hazard lights lining the edges of the park. Burgess moved to stand alongside her as they looked at the crime scene in the distance. From here it looked oddly festive, like Christmas come early to the town.

  ‘One victim, right?’

  ‘One dead on arrival. The victim is one Tara Levitt–Hugh, found by a local resident out walking their dog who heard shouts of distress from the common.’

  ‘Did they see anyone else?’

  ‘Yeah, they described seeing another woman in a long, dark overcoat in the park who fled the scene. Murder weapon was found beside the victim, an iron crowbar. She’d been beaten to death.’

  ‘Any description of the suspect?’

  ‘Too dark to make out, just definitely female, dark hair. You’re not going to like what I found out.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Emma said.

  ‘I checked out Kelly Lawson’s movements. Turns out she punched Tara earlier in the day in a restaurant in town. No charges were pressed, lots of witnesses though, and the restaurant manager confirmed that Miss Lawson was heavily intoxicated. A bar opposite the restaurant had booted her out already.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Emma uttered as they walked across the field. ‘So, she finally flipped?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Burgess agreed. ‘Can’t be sure of course until we confirm her whereabouts. I’ve sent uniforms to her home to see if they can locate her.’

  ‘Oh Kelly, what have you done?’ Emma said as they walked toward the crime scene.

  There were television units already in place filming from a distance, held at bay by a police cordon surrounding half the entire field. Uniformed officers stood guard at key points, but waved Emma through as she walked to where a pair of hastily erected evidence tents rippled in the cold wind.

  ‘Which one was Mrs Levitt–Hugh in?’ she asked, and Burgess pointed her toward the tent on the right, around which were several forensics officers.

  Emma was allowed to peer inside, but as the forensic team were still conducting their work she could not enter for a proper look. The officer commanding the site filled her in as she looked inside to where harsh LED lamps cast white light onto sodden green grass stained with blood.

  ‘One female victim found with severe head injuries,’ he said, ‘consistent with a physical attack using a metal device. We found a crowbar near the body, stained with blood.’

  ‘Any idea if the perpetrator was male or female?’ Emma asked as she stepped out of the tent.

  ‘The victim was struck at least five times with considerable force, the second of the blows likely the one that killed her as far as we can tell. It’ll take time to be sure, but right now we’re thinking right handed. We can’t presume male or female as most of the blows appear to have landed while the victim was already on the ground, making it hard to determine the attacker’s height.’

  Emma nodded and turned away from the scene.

  ‘I spoke to Kelly only an hour or so before this happened,’ she confided to Burgess. ‘She was just heading out, wearing a long dark overcoat.’

  ‘And she didn’t give away anything of what she intended?’

 

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