Behind A Twisted Smile (Dark Minds Book 2) (19 page)

I asked Gary Mitchell, the police inspector, if she died in pain, and if so, how long she would have suffered. I noticed he gave me an enquiring look, so I explained our last phone call to each other. Could I have prevented it by getting there earlier?

“We’ll never know for certain. She would have felt some pain, but your sister must have been in a positive mind to do what she did. She knew exactly how to make the cuts without severing any tendons. And as she cut down through the veins, it would have been over quite quickly. Did she work in hospital theatres by any chance?”

“Not recently, but she had during her nursing career. She spent a lot of time in A and E.”

I thought he was about to add something else, but someone knocked on his office door at that moment, saying the chief wanted to see him, so I knew our short discussion was at an end.

Jon brought me back to the present by asking if I wanted a refill, and I handed him my glass. As he walked away, my thoughts drifted back to that awful afternoon.

Evie said Martyn wouldn’t be there. I tried to remember what her exact words were. Something like,
“No, he won’t be here. He said he’ll be back in about two hours’ time after calling in to work. I…I want to talk to you. Sister to sister. Without him being here. He knows I’m going to speak to you, though. He suggested we talk.”
It was as near as I could recall
.

So what had she meant? Or was I so desperate, I was reading something into it that didn’t exist? Was I so keen to be exonerated from guilt? I knew I wanted Evie not to have killed herself, not to have been in despair over…what? What was I thinking? Everything was so muddled.

Jon returned with our fresh glasses, and we stood quietly, immersed in our thoughts. A few minutes later, Faye and her sister, Kate, walked into the room. Faye caught my eye and, catching hold of Kate’s arm, dragged her over to us. Jon, I noticed, shrugged and wandered off into another room.

“Hi, Kate. I didn’t know you were back from the States.” Kate was only a year younger than Faye and in the year below us at school. Like her bigger sister, she opted for working abroad as soon as she could.

“Moya, how are you? I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t know Evie as well as Faye and Simon did, but she always treated me well at school. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”

We hugged and I mumbled my thanks, banishing the fresh tears which threatened to undo me. Once I had composed myself, we drew back to take stock of one another.

She looked fabulous. I hadn’t seen Kate for about six months, and I was keen to know what had been happening in her life. Unlike Faye, she married and then divorced. The last I knew, she was PA to some hotshot in New York. Kate was always vivacious, and she soon filled us in with what had happened since we last met. I suppose talking to someone not involved with Evie loosened my tongue, and for a few minutes, I was able to almost relax and forget where we were and why we were there. I brought up the subject of her wealthy entrepreneurial boss.

“Oh him,” she said with a curl of her pretty, gloss-covered, top lip. “Wayne and I have parted company. He was too…too possessive over an employee, and besides, it was time to come home.”

Faye gasped. “You were fired? You never said.”

Kate tossed her curls away from her face; unlike her dark-haired sister she had long naturally honey-blonde hair. She let rip a hearty laugh, and considering where we were and the occasion, I cast a quick look round to make sure we weren’t upsetting anyone. About ten feet from us and across the room, I noticed Martyn was standing alone and watching us. Our eyes met, and I glanced away quickly but not before I saw his face screw up.

“You never asked. Actually no, I wasn’t fired, I just walked. And you know what? It feels so good being my own woman again.”

Ignoring Martyn, I turned back to Kate. “But what about your job? Will you stay here and look for something else? The job market’s not very buoyant at the moment.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve enough money from my nuptial agreement to last me years.”

I could see Martyn out of the corner of my eye. He had half turned away and hunched forward, his forehead held between his hands.

Kate started to say something else when she stopped and dropped her voice into a loud whisper. “Who’s that? Is it the husband? Aw! That’s too bad. Faye, introduce me. I can’t bear to see a man so upset.”

Faye flicked a wary glance my way and hesitated. When I shrugged, she walked over to Martyn with Kate by her side. Faye laid a hand on his arm and then moved closer, draping an arm round his shoulders and giving him a hug. Martyn stood with his head bowed for half a minute before raising his chin and giving the two women a tearful but brave smile, his eyes lingering for more than a brief moment on Faye and Kate.

His gaze flitted from one woman to the other, and I saw that he straightened up and fingered his midnight-blue silk tie as if shy and lost. With his dark good looks and tall slim figure, he stood out: handsome and proud. It was a momentous moment, a wonderful cameo piece. What woman could fail to be anything but impressed?

By the expression on her face and with a feeling of great hopelessness descending over me, I knew Kate was spellbound.

Chapter 25

Later that week, Jon was recalled to San Francisco, and apart from the company of his dog, Tango, I had another lonely weekend to look forward to. I visited the gym, worked out vigorously and took longer runs than usual to pass the time and help get Evie off my mind.

For some reason, I felt nervous and agitated as if I was waiting for something awful to happen but hadn’t a clue what it could be. One thing I was grateful for was that my mind was losing the frightful fuzziness I experienced ever since discovering Evie’s body. At long last, the murk was lifting.

I kept busy every day. I did my best with Darcy. Picking her up in the evening when I was free, kept tabs on her after-school activities and generally acted like a Rottweiler around her. Martyn and his choice words had scared me. I had no way of knowing if he had attempted anything with Darcy. I knew she was over sixteen, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that he was a predator of the worst kind. I had lost one sister to him, and I as sure as hell wasn’t going to lose a second.

I suddenly stopped what I was doing and thought.
I had lost one sister to him
.

What exactly did I mean? Yes, Evie had married him, but did my inner sense detect something more sinister? I sat down on a park bench. It was cold and damp, lichen grew between the struts, and the gun-metal sky promised rain, but I wasn’t ready to go home to an empty flat just yet. Closing my eyes, I forced my mind to take me back to that fateful afternoon. Something jarred in my brain.

Evie had been taking diazepam, apparently, a known sedative and used for anxiety disorders amongst other things. But as far as I knew, it wasn’t an anti-depressant. Because Evie committed suicide, it was assumed she was depressed. So why hadn’t she gone to her doctor and got some proper medication for it? According to the police, her GP said she hadn’t been to see him with this problem.

I went over the weeks preceding her death, as far back as when I visited her after my holiday. I remembered her being lethargic, and come to think of it, spaced out. She must have been taking it then. But if her doctor hadn’t prescribed it, then where had it come from?

I
knew
Evie. She may have been a bit of a scatterbrain, but when it came to her vocation, she couldn’t be faulted. I was almost one hundred per cent sure she would never have stolen drugs from the hospital. She would have held anyone who had done so with contempt. Whatever her faults, she was an honest person.

As I sat lost in thought, another idea came to me.
She
called
me
. She asked me to go to her home. Why, oh why would she have done that and killed herself, knowing that it would be me who would find her body? I’m sure she didn’t dislike me that much. She said Martyn wasn’t due back for—what was it, two hours? No. Despite our rows and her hatred of me, I truly didn’t think she was spiteful enough to have killed herself purely for me to find her like that. Never ever in a million years would she have been so cruel, so diabolical.

But I knew one person whom the cap fitted. Martyn.

It still didn’t make sense, but the more I thought about it, the more alarmed I grew. So many odd happenings over the few preceding months fell into place. Even the wild accusations Amanda, the police clerk, had voiced seemed to fit in.

My God! What if Martyn had planned it all along? I stood up, stretched my chilled legs and started moving towards home. I decided the best thing would be to write it all down in order, and if it looked feasible and not the ramblings of some mad woman, I would take it along to Gary Mitchell at the police station. I gathered earlier on that he was fairly new to the area. He didn’t seem chauvinistic; maybe he would take my ideas seriously if I put a good enough case to him. Should I have talked to Amanda and enlisted her help? I said I would keep her in the loop and let her know how I got on after speaking to the inspector.

But Martyn was clever. Could I be cleverer and catch him out? If I approached the police, would he have a strong enough case to say I was obsessed with him? Would my plan backfire?

By the time I reached home, I was a bundle of nerves. I felt as if I was being pulled first one way and then the other. The very idea of Martyn doing something so atrocious filled me with utter terror, although I remembered Amanda saying he was perfectly capable. He
was
a qualified nurse, and he too could have had access to drugs. He was manipulative and a liar. Although the police hadn’t found any diazepam in the house, I could picture what he had done: persuaded Evie she was run down and needed a boost. Had he presented her with a vitamin tonic laced with the drug? I wondered whether the police had checked the fridge. Had they found what I was imagining? Surely they would have said.

Okay, so Martyn had drugged Evie over the weeks. He made her pliable and willing to go along with his suggestions. No one was more surprised than me when they upped and got married in Gretna Green. So, by making Evie compliant, he made sure he was one of the two names on the house deeds, a house my mother had helped pay for. I bet his pending ‘funds’ not only never arrived, they were non-existent.

Inside my flat, I stripped off my running strip and strode into the bathroom. I was shivering, and it wasn’t only from the cold. My thoughts were turning even more horrific.

If Martyn had managed to make Evie so docile, so drugged, then he could easily have persuaded her to take her own life. Was it possible she hadn’t known what she was doing?

In the shower, with hot water beating down on my neck and shoulders, I couldn’t stop sobbing. My tears flowed freely, mingling with the soap and sweat. I thought I had cried so much recently, that I had no more tears left. But these fresh ideas, the thought that Martyn had coerced my sister into suicide in order to get his hands on her money was more than I could bear.

But I also knew I would have a hard time proving any of it. Nobody believed me when I said
I
had finished the brief fling with Martyn; they preferred to go along with
his
version.

When I found the graffiti on my house walls and the dog’s mess in my mail basket, the police didn’t take it too seriously, either, suggesting it was the work of local yobs. And when I said my house had been broken into, they looked down their noses at me and virtually accused me of asking for trouble by leaving one of my back doors unlocked. My fault again!

One thing I was certain of. If and when I did visit the police with my suspicions, I had to give them all the facts this time. No half measures.

Chapter 26

I decided to run my ideas by Faye. She was, after all, my longest standing friend and we shared everything together, from our first crushes at school, the day our periods started and when we lost our virginities. There wasn’t anything I would have kept from her, and I knew she felt the same.

“So what do you think?” I asked. We were sitting in her kitchen, sharing a bottle of wine I had taken round.

“Christ, Moya. I don’t know. You said it didn’t go very well last time.”

I was stung by her words.

“Yes, but I was overwrought and jet-lagged. I’d just got back from Antigua and found someone playing nasty tricks on me. He must have had a key. This time, I have more evidence.”

She winced and took a sip of wine before answering. “
He
? There you go again, jumping to conclusions. Have you really got any evidence, or is it all circumstantial? I know you think Martyn’s done some awful things, but you have no proof. Okay, you say his name is on the house deeds, but Evie must have agreed to it. She did marry him.”

“She must have been coerced,” I burst out.

She sighed, shook her head and gave me a weary smile. “I don’t want to pour cold water on your ideas, but the police might think you’re being, well, a tad obsessed over Martyn. Remember, they interviewed him before and found nothing untoward. Don’t you think it’s about time you started believing them and left Martyn out of the equation?”