Tell Me Your Secret Read online

  Sazz takes a deep breath in like she is going to speak, then relaxes out. Nothing more. She’s not going to engage. I wonder what is going through her mind, what she thinks is going to happen next.

  ‘Nothing? That is a disappointment. Especially when your rival here made such an impassioned plea.’ Callie frowns. ‘You’re so young. You have so much to live for. Maybe you should tell me that you’ve secretly hated working for Pieta all this time and her son’s a real brat, and you would mind very much dying for her. Because that’s what your rival has done.’

  ‘I didn’t do that,’ Ned says. ‘I was . . . I want . . . never mind. I wasn’t doing what you said.’

  ‘Come on, Ned, tell me what you want.’

  ‘I take photos because I’m always looking for perfection. I took so many photos of you, so many. Ask Pieta. I have hundreds, possibly a thousand or so, of you, because you are so close to perfect. And then I find out that beneath how you look, you’ve wielded so much power. It’s intoxicating. It’s like the final piece of your picture has slotted into place and I can see you are complete perfection.’ He stares right at Callie. ‘I want to be a part of that.’

  Sazz gasps again. I think I do, too. DI Foster doesn’t gasp, but from the way she holds her body, I can tell she is alarmed. Not because of what he says, but the way he says it. He means it. He’s not playing, he’s not messing about. He wants this.

  Callie, despite her inability to feel empathy, hears it too. She is very still for a moment.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I want . . . I want in. I want to take your brother’s place.’

  Pieta

  Saturday, 13 July

  Callie laughs, the sound is loud and harsh as it hits the air. ‘You want in? You want to take Brett’s place?’

  ‘You’re not taking me seriously,’ he says. ‘Fine. Forget I mentioned it.’ He sits back in his seat and stares desolately at the ground.

  ‘I’m supposed to believe a goody two shoes like you has suddenly decided to come along and join my world? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Like I said, forget I mentioned it.’

  Doubt flitters across Callie’s face. She’s not sure now if he’s serious or not. I’m not sure, either, and I’ve spent more time with him than Callie has; I’ve been intimate with him.

  ‘All right, if you’re in, you have to prove to me that you’ll do anything I want.’

  Ned sighs before he lifts his upset, hurt and angry face to look at her. ‘How?’

  She and I are thrown again by his sudden change in demeanour and attitude – both of us are starting to think maybe he does want to join her after all.

  ‘You have to kill the nanny.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No. No. He can’t do that.’ I lean forward to get a better look at Ned. ‘You can’t do that.’

  Ned doesn’t even glance in my direction. ‘Why should I?’ he says to Callie, ignoring me.

  ‘It’s something my brother would never do. I had to kill them. He would do all of those sick, depraved things to them, he would brand them, but he would never end them. That was always my job, something he called me to do. If you want to join me, if you really want to join me, you have to kill, too.’

  ‘Ned, you can’t do that. You can’t,’ I implore. There is real panic in my voice and I don’t care if Callie hears it and knows she’s won.

  He holds out his hand. ‘Give me the gun and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ Callie replies. ‘You think I’m just going to hand you the gun? You think I’m that stupid? No. You have to do it another way.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Succinylcholine. Sux. My drug of choice. It’s far less messy. One injection and we’re done.’

  ‘Just tell me where it is.’

  She marches over to me, places the barrel of the gun against my left temple. It is disconcertingly cold and heavy sitting against my head. ‘Over there on the coffee table, in that black foldout bag, there is one syringe left. Go and get it. And just so you know, if you’re faking and try something, I’ll pull the trigger so fast your little girlfriend won’t know what went through her brain. You break the syringe, I pull the trigger. You squeeze it all out, I pull the trigger. Try anything and I pull the trigger.’

  ‘You can’t do this, Ned. Just tell her you were messing with her. Trying to get into her head.’ I watch him walk across Sazz’s living room. It is calm, serene in here, everything placed and decorated to be very much Sazz. It feels like it was her sanctuary, her escape from the outside world. And we’re violating, ruining it.

  ‘Ned, please,’ I say. ‘Don’t do this.’

  He examines the syringe, which has a band of black around the top of its bright-red label. Then he begins the journey back across the room.

  ‘Ned. Ned, listen to me. We’ve shared so much over the last couple of days. I don’t believe it was fake. I don’t believe the man who said all those things to me, who made me feel better, would do this.’

  He stops then. And I sigh in relief. He turns to me with eyes that are flat, cold, lifeless. ‘You don’t know me, Pieta. You only got to know what I wanted you to see.’

  I have to do something. I have to stop this. But I am frozen, frightened still by the gun to my head, terrified of never seeing my son again. How will I face him knowing I let his friend die because I was too scared to do anything? I want to run at him and knock the needle away, but my body will not move despite how much I command it to. I am literally petrified.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sazz. I’m so sorry,’ I say.

  ‘I do this and we get to be together, right?’ Ned says to Callie.

  ‘You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?’ she says, suddenly seeming to catch on that Ned isn’t trying to trick her, he isn’t simulating an interest in joining her. He wants to do this. He is going to do this.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to do it. But how do I know you won’t shoot me afterwards?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve killed before, what’s to stop you watching me kill her and then killing me to double Pieta’s pain?’

  ‘Oh no, only one of you has to die. In fact, only one of you can die. I need her to watch and experience that pain, and then I need the other person to be a permanent reminder. I need seeing the other person die to be so painful, she won’t want to be around the survivor.’ She shrugs happily. ‘It’s win–win for me. One of you has to end up dead. And it’s looking like her long-serving, loyal nanny is the one who gets it today.’

  ‘And we get to be together afterwards, right?’

  ‘Yes, Ned. If you actually do it, then we get to be together.’

  Happy now that he’s been reassured that a psychopath will keep her word, he returns to Sazz. He roughly moves her plaits aside, exposing the soft brown skin of her neck.

  Sazz begins to struggle, now that he’s touched her and she knows what he’s going to do. I remember that feeling of horror so well. At the end of the seventy-two hours, he injected me again. I remember in the seconds when his fingers brushed my neck, clearing a space to put the needle in – a savage terror spiked in my stomach. I’d cried out when he stuck the needle in. I thought that was it, that it was over and I wouldn’t wake up again.

  Sazz struggles, but her legs are tied to the chair, secured so tightly she can’t do anything to stop Ned as he pushes her head to one side and raises the syringe.

  Tears are leaking down my face, but I still can’t move, my body will not do as I tell it and let me run across to save her.

  Ned turns to me. ‘Say goodbye,’ he says before he brings the syringe down and fully depresses the plunger in one move.

  ‘No!’ I scream. ‘No!’

  Ned drops the syringe, takes a step back in shock at what he’s done, how it will change everything. He manages to turn his head, to grin affectionately at me before he collapses.

  ‘No,’ Callie whispers, horrified, completely blindsided by what he has done. The gun slackens against my head, then
falls away as she lowers her hand in shock.

  I can move now. I can whip back my left armwarmer and take out the sharp little potter’s scalpel I hid in there earlier, then I can jam it as hard as I can into her thigh, aiming for where the femoral artery is. Straight away I follow that with a punch to her stomach, driving my fist so far into her, she doubles over. She loses her grip on the gun, it clatters to the floor while she falls to the ground.

  Callie moves to try to get her gun but I manage to kick it away, out of reach and towards DI Foster. Instead, Callie grabs my ankle and yanks me down with her. I fall hard, the impact winding me. She pounces on me, even though the scalpel is still in her thigh. Her punch is powerful, hard, and it knocks stars behind my eyes. I reel for a second, but block her follow-up punch and instead manage to grab the scalpel, dig it further in then pull it out.

  She howls in pain, then rolls off me onto the floor, blood spurting out as the artery is uncorked. I scrabble to get up, and then go for her. I punch her once, twice, three times. Each blow finds its spot, splitting the skin on my knuckles.

  We roll around, grappling with each other, trying to gain the upper hand, trying to hurt the other one enough for them to stop.

  ‘Untie me!’ DI Foster barks suddenly. ‘Pieta! Untie me!’

  I glance in her direction and Callie uses the distraction to hit me, push me off, then start to crawl away.

  DI Foster has the gun. I want to go to Ned, to take him in my arms and cradle him, but instead I pick up the bloodied scalpel and crawl over to where the policewoman is tied up. It takes a few attempts to cut through the cable tie, but finally she’s free.

  ‘Where is she?’ DI Foster asks once she has ripped off her blindfold.

  Breathing heavily, on the verge of screaming and crying, I shake my head. I don’t know, I don’t care. Ned is dead. Ned is gone.

  ‘Call the police. Call 999, but say officer needs assistance, OK? Tell them it’s Detective Inspector Jody Foster, call sign number BNAI125.’ She stops, grabs me by the shoulders. ‘Pieta!’ she shouts. ‘Did you hear me? Call sign BNAI125, it’ll get a quicker response.’

  ‘I, erm, I don’t have a phone. She broke it.’

  ‘Stay here!’ she orders and takes off running.

  I sit heavily, staring at Ned. I can’t comprehend that he is gone.

  ‘Pi-R, Pi-R, what’s happened?’ Sazz says.

  ‘The policewoman has gone after her. But Ned . . . Ned killed himself.’ The last man I was with lies motionless on the floor, his hazel eyes wide open, not moving. ‘He killed himself instead of you.’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ she says. ‘Listen to me very clearly, if it really is Sux she used, then he’s not dead yet. Untie me and I can help him.’ She speaks so calmly, so reasonably, as though the whole world hasn’t recently exploded around her. ‘Come on, Pi-R, untie me so I can help him.’

  I go to her, use the bloody scalpel to cut the cable ties around her ankles and her wrists. She takes the blindfold off herself. She drops to her knees by Ned and looks him over, checks the syringe, then runs out of the room without saying another word.

  She returns seconds later with a black medical bag. She throws herself on the ground again. I’ve never seen her like this. She’s always animated, fun, ready with a joke and a laugh. But now she is serious, authoritative.

  ‘It was a massive dose,’ she says while rolling Ned fully onto his back. ‘He’s a big bloke, that will help mitigate it, but that was a huge dose . . .’ She gently tips his head back, then covers his face with a green-tinged plastic breathing mask. Expertly and quickly, she attaches a large balloon-like airbag to it and starts to pump at it. ‘You’re going to have to take over, Pi-R,’ she says to me. ‘I need to check his heart rate.’

  I skittle over, grab the bag and start to pump. ‘Slowly,’ she says. ‘Rest your hand lightly on his cheek, so your hand doesn’t get tired, and then pump like I was doing.’ I do as she tells me and she reaches for her stethoscope. ‘What we’re trying to do is breathe for him until the drug wears off. If we don’t, he’ll suffocate.’

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’

  ‘He can hear you,’ she says pointedly. ‘He can hear everything you say.’ So don’t ask again if he’s going to be OK, she adds silently. ‘I need to call an ambulance. Do you have your phone?’

  ‘She smashed it. And his.’

  ‘And mine. Broke the house phone, too. I need you to keep breathing for him while I run to my neighbour’s house, OK?’

  I nod.

  ‘Talk to him. Let him know everything’s going to be OK. And keep pumping.’ Sazz dashes from the room before I can remind her to call the police.

  After the violence and the shouting, the blood and the threats, it’s quiet, it’s nearly silent. And it’s just Ned and me.

  Like last night. When we got together.

  I don’t know how I feel about him, but I know I don’t want to live without him. I don’t want it to be like this.

  ‘Ned, it’s me. Pieta. I need you to hang on, OK? You are not going anywhere until we’ve sailed round the UK. Erm, about that, by the way, I don’t think I mentioned I get seasick, did I? I’m sure it’ll be fine though. Of course it will. Yes, that’s the sound of a woman trying to convince herself, isn’t it? I obviously haven’t told you . . .’

  There’s a clock in here, ticking. It turns my stomach, but I have to keep going, I have to keep talking and breathing for him, I have to keep trying to keep Ned alive.

  Jody

  Saturday, 13 July

  I tear out of the house, run to the end of the front garden path and stop, searching this way and that for her and trying to get my bearings at the same time. I was unconscious when they brought me here, and I’m not from round here anyway so it’s no use trying to work out where I am in relation to the police station, the flat or the centre of Brighton.

  We’re on a crescent-shaped road, near the apex of the curve so I can see quite far in both directions, but the right turn disappears out of sight first. I can’t see her, there’s nobody on the road. She’s not getting away from me. I heard her say she killed her brother, so he’s taken care of, but she is the brains behind it all and she does not get to escape this.

  Blood. There was so much blood on the living room floor and the corridor. I look down, and there’s a small pool of fresh blood at my feet. She probably stopped here, deciding what to do. The white van is nowhere to be seen, but there aren’t any empty spots on this densely populated road so I don’t think she’s driven off.

  Spots of red go off to the right, and that’s the direction I take off in. The blood is quite bright, the spots quite large. Pieta Rawlings must have injured her in a serious way. As I run, the spots turn into splatters, turn into pools, showing she’s losing more blood. It doesn’t seem to be slowing her down, though. At the curve of the road I can see further down the rows of large, semi-detached and detached houses but nothing – there’s no one on the street at all, let alone her.

  The parking is just as densely packed at this point of the road, and I can’t see her. I can see her blood, though. Bright red, splashed on to the pavement at regular intervals. She must be bleeding heavily, but she seems to be able to carry on.

  My head is still fuzzy from where she hit me. I don’t know what she bashed me with, but it knocked me out in one go. I always thought that was a bit of an urban myth – something off the telly – because I’ve been hit plenty of times before, very hard and on the head, but I’ve never been knocked out.

  Suddenly, a wave of nausea rises up from the pit of my stomach at the same time the Earth seems to stop spinning and I have to stop to violently sway. Concussion, probably. The pounding I can take, the nausea I can handle, the wooziness, I can’t.

  I have to stay still, hold my eyes shut for a few moments to steady myself. When I open them again, things are still blurry, still listing from side to side. But I look up and there she is.

  She’s limping, clutching her left leg as
she moves. Is that a real image or a fantasy conjured up by my damaged brain? I shake my head, blink, shake my head again. It’s still there, she’s still there, running away. Thinking she can leave all of this behind.

  I force aside the swimming sensation and take off again. This time knowing I’ll catch her. She has to pay for what she’s done. I have to get revenge on her for what she did to Jovie, what she did to all those other women. Harlow, Shania, Gisele, Freya, Bess, Yolande, Sandy, Robyn, Ioana, Carrie, Tonya, Jolene. And the others, the ones we don’t know about. From all over the country, she’d said. I hadn’t found any when I searched, but they may be dead, they may never have reported.

  She doesn’t get away with this. Any of it.

  She’s in sight, I’m getting closer and closer. She hears me, realises she’s being chased and tries to speed up. But her leg seems to be getting worse, leaking more blood that drains away onto the street.

  I stop a few feet away from her, plant my feet in the ground and raise the gun, holding it in two hands. ‘ARMED POLICE! STOP RIGHT THERE!’ I bellow at her.

  My voice shatters the peace of the road, and will have several people running to twitch their net curtains. Hopefully one or more of them will call the police. We are on a flat, wide section of the road and Callie stops. She doesn’t raise her arms, she just stops after trying to limp on a bit longer.

  ‘Turn around,’ I order.

  She doesn’t move. Her hands are still out of sight and it occurs to me that she might have another gun. I could shoot her right now. Say I thought she had a gun. But I won’t do that. I won’t shoot her in the back. I want to see the whites of her eyes, the twist of her mouth when I put a bullet or two in her.

  That’s shocking, isn’t it? That makes you baulk, but this is where I am. This is where all of this has been leading to. Revenge, true revenge, means being willing to take that killing blow if you can.

  ‘I SAID, TURN AROUND!’ I shout.

  Trembling, still clutching her leg, Callie rotates on the spot. The wound in her leg is gushing blood, Pieta Rawlings must have nicked an artery, but the fact Callie is still going after such blood loss tells me a lot about her will to survive.