Nemesis (36 page)

59

It was impossible to remain afloat. The mass of lilies helped, but every time Natalie moved, the water would ripple across the pond, splashing her face and going up her nose. But it was the water in her ears, deadening all sound, which was the most disorientating.

Where was Simon? Was he still watching? She really needed to know. He’d watched her take her clothes off without showing any kind of emotion, or even desire. It was sinister in the extreme. How could she have shared her life with him all these years, yet apparently not have known him at all?

Was he going to kill her now? Slash that blade across her throat, the same way he’d killed Sarah and
Summer
? They’d appeared so peaceful in death. Had he drugged them?

And where the
hell
were the police?
Somewhere in the dark, waiting for the perfect moment to strike?
She’d heard no sirens. Was she really going to have to face this alone?

“Simon?” she said. “Are you there?”

There was silence. She brought her legs down, struggling to find a place on the bottom of the pond to put her feet. It was so crammed with those blasted containers. She kept beneath the water to hide her body, turning slowly, trying to see where Simon had gone.

“What are you doing?” he said.

She almost screamed. He’d been crouched on the side of the pond, so close she could have reached out and touched him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to feel a path through the lily baskets with her feet, trying to move further from him without his noticing. “I found it difficult to stay on my back.”

“I don’t care.”

“Are you going to kill me?” She was so cold
now,
she could hardly form the words.

He didn’t reply, just regarded her dispassionately.

“Or did you only want to talk?”

“You can talk if you want to,” he said. “Don’t expect me to listen.”

At least she could not see the knife anymore. What had he done with it? Was it in his pocket? She took another tiny step back, hardly rippling the water, sinking down until now even her shoulders were out of sight.

Maybe playing the victim would help? “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me?”

“Would it make you feel better about dying if you did?”

The silence stretched out. Think, girl, think. Why had he brought her here?
Wherever ‘here’ was.
The ponds, the lilies, the castle garden.
In his own way, Simon was as obsessed as her. But he wasn’t stupid. There was some other connection.
Garden, pond, water, lilies.
He couldn’t take her to the castle garden, because of the police. So he’d found this place and brought her here.
Wherever ‘here’ was.

They were still in the forest, so they couldn’t have driven far. They weren’t in Port Rell, because she couldn’t hear or smell the sea. They had not got as far as Norchester, because it was too quiet. So they must be in one of the villages in between. The home of a gardener, obviously, and someone who knew and admired the landscaping of Hurst Castle - because why else would you copy a famous garden so exactly?

Unless you were obsessed.

Oh shit
…

The jigsaw puzzle fell into place inside her head.

“This is Geraint Llewellyn’s house, isn’t it?”

“Well done.” But Simon hardly seemed to be paying attention. Instead he trailed his hand in the water, amongst the pink and white flowers, as though hypnotised.

“You’re going to set up him. You failed the first time but now he’s back.”

“Aren’t murderers supposed to return to the scene of their crime? I thought it was mandatory.” His fingers curled around one lily, almost like a caress.

She shuddered. “The police know who Geraint is. They’ve been following him 24/7. They’ll know he didn’t kill
Summer
.”

“What do they know? That he lives at the Lodge,
a two minute walk
from where Summer’s body was found?”

“They’ll still be able to prove he didn’t do it. Forensics
- ”

“That’s the beauty of water, it washes everything clean.” He glanced up, hazel eyes finally meeting
her own
. “The police won’t find any forensic evidence because I’ve never left any. But when they discover you’ve gone, they’ll come here to interrogate him and find the house all locked up and your car on the drive. If they’re smart, they’ll search the garden. They’ll find you lying here in the pond - and
him
strung up from the nearest tree.
Murder/suicide.
A nice neat ending for the detective.
It’s what you wanted, remember?
Closure.”

This was the part where she was supposed to fight for her life. Flight, plead, beg … but all she could do was crouch amongst the lilies, her bravado utterly destroyed. What a fool she’d been. Why couldn’t she have left the past buried? She was going to die now, in the same way as her sister, and it was entirely her own fault.

Keep talking
,
a voice seemed to say. Was it inside her head? She no longer cared.
Keep the bastard
talking
…

“You were the man I saw waiting beneath the trees.” It came out in a rush.
“The night of the fair.”

He paused, lifting his hand from the water. “You saw me? You never said.”

“I was watching from my bedroom window, I didn’t realise it was you at the time.”

He shook the droplets of water free from his skin. “Did you tell anyone?”

“Of course I did. I told Geraint and DCI Bloom.”

He smiled. It was chilling. “Of course you didn’t.”

He shifted his weight, moving closer. Natalie tried to take another step back but the bottom of the pond was too tightly packed with baskets.

“We were going to run away together,” he sighed. “We were going to get married - did you know that? But the fair arrived in Calahurst and Sarah wanted to go. So we had a fight and she went anyway. I went to the pub and got drunk instead.”

His alibi …

“When I arrived home I found her sitting on my doorstep, completely hysterical. I thought she’d come to beg my forgiveness. Instead she told me this wild story, about how she had broken into Hurst Castle with a boy she’d met at the fair. They’d been caught by Kenzie. There had been a fight and Kenzie had broken the boy’s neck - snapped it with one twist.
Impressive, when you think about it.”

Kenzie?
Kenzie
had killed Bryn?

“I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Why would Sarah break into the castle for a few hundred pounds, when she already had thousands saved from her writing? But, as it turned out, she hadn’t earned the money from selling
stories,
she’d earned it by selling herself to Henry Vyne. She let him touch her, let him take sleazy photographs of her - and she had the cheek to say she’d done it for us. She hadn’t done it ‘for us’. She’d done it for the fucking money!”

Natalie, who had been straining her ears hoping to hear the sound of a police siren, or even a car on the drive, heard a strange scratching sound closer to hand. Simon was running the blade of the knife back and forth along the edge of the pond.

Oh dear God … She had to get out of here,
had
to. And
bugger
the police!

She shoved her foot between the plastic baskets, scraping what felt like a huge chunk of skin from her shin, and forced a way back through the tangled stalks of the lilies.

“We went indoors,” Simon was saying. “We went into the kitchen. Sarah picked up the phone to call the police. She said she was going to tell them everything. There must have been a knife left on the draining board. I don’t remember. But then it was in my hand and I pressed it to her throat. I made her tell me every last detail. How many times she and Henry had sex, how many times he’d taken photographs, and how, and when, and where.

“I made her bring me here, to his secret garden, and she told me how he liked her to pose amongst the flowers, even in the water amongst the lilies. I forced her to take off her clothes and get into the pond so she could show me - and that’s when I must have slid the knife across her throat. I don’t remember doing it but there was no one else there.”

He stared down at the knife in his hand, turning it over, and over again. “She had her hand to her throat, but the blood gushed through her fingers like something out of a horror film, and then she slipped down into the water and was gone.”

“How could you do that?” she whispered. “To the woman you loved?”

“She didn’t love me. How could she, when she’d had sex with all those men? She was only seventeen. I thought she was pure, I thought she was clean
… ”

If Natalie had been terrified before, his words took her to a new level.

How fast could she get to the other side of the pond? How long would it take to scramble out, start running through the garden?

And then what?
She didn’t even know where she was.

“I thought you were different,” he said. “You were always so honest about being seduced by James and Charles. You were very young, very impressionable. You only wanted someone to love you, I understood that. But you didn’t tell me you’d had a baby. You didn’t tell me about Lexi.” He looked directly at her. “So in the end, you were the same as all the rest.”

He made his move then, before she had the time to react. Leaning over the water, he grabbed her hair and dragged her back to him. She was knocked off balance, sent splashing beneath the water, but he hauled her up, holding her head right back, exposing her throat.

This is it, she thought and wanted to close her eyes, but somehow couldn’t. His other hand, the one with the knife, was stroking her cheek with his knuckles, his eyes softening as he gazed down at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You do understand it’s for the best?”

There was a flash of silver as he raised his hand. A second’s grace, then the knife swooped. Instinctively she raised her hands.

Bang!

She saw him flinch. The knife dropped silently into the water beside her. For a moment he seemed to be leaning over her, as though searching for the knife. But his eyes were unfocused and his expression frozen. Then the grip on her hair relaxed and he fell into the pond, landing directly on top of her.

Natalie was sent plunging beneath the icy water, her struggle for life beginning again. Simon’s weight was keeping her pinned below the surface. She couldn’t breathe. The more she pushed against his body, the further down she went.

She couldn’t breathe
…

She was losing consciousness.

Couldn’t breathe
…

She grabbed at Simon’s shoulders, giving one final, desperate push.

For a second it was almost as though someone was in the water with her. Then, as Simon’s body rolled to the side, she finally broke the surface, taking a huge gasp of air. As her arms flailed, her hand smashed against the side of the pond. She curled her fingers around the protruding stone and dragged herself to the edge. For the next few moments she could hardly do more than cough and retch.

Why was it so quiet? She pushed her hair from her eyes, forcing herself to look round. Simon was floating on his back, half-supported by the water lilies, the side of his head smashed and bloodied. Had he been shot? She searched the blackness beyond the terrace for any sign of a police marksman, of any sign of life at all.

PART THREE

Future

60

One week later

“So sorry for your loss.”

How many times had Alicia heard that today?

“How are you coping?”

Another favourite.

The funeral for Clare, Lady Vyne, was a popular event. Held at St Daniel’s Church, exactly one week after her death, Alicia had been slightly disconcerted to discover her mother had left detailed instructions for the arrangements, including contact numbers for the companies she’d chosen to arrange the flowers and provide the catering for the reception afterwards. There had even been sheet music provided for the organist.

Alicia had envisaged a small, private, family ceremony. Clare had other ideas. She’d provided a list of people she wanted invited who all expected to be put up at the castle, presumably expecting the comforts to be on a level with a 5 star hotel.

They were severely disappointed.

Clare’s coffin had lain in state at the castle, before being taken to the church. Alicia and the children followed the hearse, taking their seat in the family pew at the front of the tiny church. She deliberately left no room for James, so he was forced to sit in the pew behind.

The murder charge against James had been quietly dropped. There was still an on-going investigation regarding his relationship with Summer Cameron, but the consensus was that Simon had set him up for that too, sending texts and photos from the dead girl’s phone, just as he had intended implicating Geraint Llewellyn for her murder.

Alicia wasn’t entirely convinced. James’s relationship with
Summer
may not have been consummated but she had no doubt that the intent had been there. He had admitted as much himself. While some wives might be prepared to forgive their erring husband, as far as Alicia was concerned, if James could go as far as setting up an assignation with another woman, he obviously did not love her. And why would she want to stay with someone who didn’t love her?

She’d instigated divorce proceedings and given him notice to quit the Old Vicarage. At least he had no claim on the estate. Her father, with his finicky insistence on a pre-nup, had seen to that.

As the funeral service finished and she and the children walked back up the aisle, James fell into step beside her, resting his hand on her shoulder in what he presumably thought was a comforting gesture. He did not seem to have got the message that their marriage was over.

Unwilling to make a scene, Alicia did not brush it away. But once Clare had been interred in the Vyne family vault, and it was time to return to the castle for the reception, she closed the car door in James’s face and instructed the chauffeur to drive on without him.

James had to accept his life had changed and so, for that matter, did she. The castle and all its responsibilities were now hers and as the car drove back through that huge stone archway, and she caught a glimpse of the castle, stark grey against the blue skyline, she couldn’t quash that voice inside her which said,