Let the Dead Speak: A gripping new thriller. Jane Casey

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СКАЧАТЬ She didn’t know if it was because she was so slow or if he was like that with everyone.

      ‘I don’t need a lift.’

      ‘Course you do. You’ve got that heavy bag.’ He was smiling at her, his eyes fixed on hers. She stared at the bridge of his nose, unaware that it made her look slightly cross-eyed. ‘How come your mum didn’t pick you up?’

      ‘I can manage.’ It wasn’t a proper answer, and Chloe’s palms were wet from the fear he’d ask again, but there were good things about being thick and not having to answer questions properly was one of them.

      ‘Now you don’t have to manage. Stick your bag in the back and jump in.’

      There was no point in arguing, Chloe knew. She trailed to the other end of the car and put her hand on the latch for the boot. It clicked and she tried to lift it. Nothing happened. She returned to the window.

      ‘It’s locked.’

      ‘Not the boot. Put it on the back seat, I meant.’ He bit off the ends of the words, obviously annoyed. And he hadn’t said the boot, Chloe thought, mortified. He’d said the back and she’d assumed he meant the boot. She’d got it wrong, as usual.

      She fumbled one of the doors open and dumped her bag on the seat, then opened the passenger door and hesitated.

      ‘Get in. What are you waiting for?’ He was checking his mirrors, scanning the pavements. Getting ready to drive off, Chloe thought, remembering that and not much more from the three humiliating lessons that were the sum total of her driving experience.

      She got into the car, scrambling to close the door and get her seatbelt on before he got annoyed again. He helped her with the seatbelt, smoothing it out carefully across her lap before he slid the metal tongue into the lock. The belt flattened the thin, sodden material of her T-shirt against her body and she thought he was staring at her chest for a second, but he wasn’t, probably. That was just her stepmother and what she’d said. He was a dad, after all. He was old.

      ‘So where’ve you been? Away somewhere nice?’

      ‘Dad’s.’

      ‘Oh yeah?’ Mr Norris went quiet for a minute, concentrating on the road. It didn’t occur to Chloe that he was choosing his words carefully. ‘See much of him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I’ve never actually met him.’

      Chloe stared out of the window, not thinking about her father and the last time she’d seen him, not thinking about how angry he would be now, now that he’d realised she was gone. Not thinking about that took up all of her mental energy. He might have phoned her mother, she thought with a sudden lurch of fear. She hadn’t thought of that.

      Mr Norris was talking, words filling the air in the car, telling Chloe about his weekend, about Bethany and what she was doing during the school holidays, about nothing that mattered to her. She stopped listening, drifting a little as the windscreen wipers sang across the glass, until something touched her knee – Mr Norris’s hand was on her leg. She stared at it in mute panic until he moved it away.

      ‘We’re here.’

      The car had stopped outside her house, she realised, the engine still running.

      ‘You can get out here. I won’t make you run across the road in this weather.’

      ‘OK. Thanks.’ She reached down to push the seatbelt’s release button but he got there first. ‘Thanks,’ she said again.

      ‘No problem.’ He was frowning at her. ‘Chloe, love, are you all right? You look a bit—’

      ‘I’m fine.’ She pulled on the door handle and it didn’t open and her heart rate went spiralling up like a bird spinning through clear air but he reached across her and gave it a swift shove and it came open. His arm brushed against her chest as he drew it back, but that was just an accident, the contact brief.

      ‘Needs a firm hand.’

      ‘Oh,’ Chloe whispered. Her ears were hot, her pulse thudding so hard that she could barely hear him, but he was still talking. She got out of the car without waiting for him to stop, slamming the door on him. She turned to scurry up the path, glancing up at the house to see Misty in the window of the front bedroom, her paws braced on the glass, miaowing with all her might. The horn blared behind Chloe twice, very loud. It made her jump but she didn’t look back, her whole being focused on her need to go inside without saying anything else, or crying, one two three four five six seven at the front door eight nine ten eleven keys out twelve thirteen the right key in the lock and the door was opening and she almost fell through it into the narrow, long hallway but she got it shut behind her in the same moment and that was it, she was alone except for Misty, and she could collapse or scream or crawl into a corner and shake or chew her nails until they bled again or any of the things she’d been holding back for days now.

      Misty hadn’t come down the stairs yet, she registered, and as if in response a thunder of scratching – sharp-clawed paws on wood – echoed through the still, silent house. The cat was shut in, then. Mum had shut her in. Chloe put her keys on the hall table. She should let the cat out.

      Unless the cat wasn’t supposed to be out.

      Chloe started towards the stairs.

      Unless.

      She stopped.

      There was a mark on the wall. A big one. A smear, with four lines running through it like tracks. Chloe’s eyes tracked from the smear to the ground, to the droplets that ran down the wall and trickled over the skirting board and puddled on the ground. It was dark, whatever it was. Dirty.

      Mud.

      Paint.

      Something that would make her mother furious.

      Maybe that was why the cat was shut in, Chloe thought. Maybe that was it. Misty had made a mess. She started up the stairs, one hand resting lightly on the banisters, and it felt wrong, it was rough, as if something had dried on it, some more of the same dirt. Chloe looked down at it, at the stairs, and then at the hall below, and her legs were still carrying her up but her brain was working, trying to make sense of what she saw and what she felt and what she smelled and the carpet, the carpet was ruined in the hall upstairs, it was dirty and soaked and smeared and the pictures were all crooked.

      Behind the closed door Misty set to work, digging her claws under the wood, splintering it as she scraped.

      Let her out.

      What had happened? The bathroom door was open but it was too dark in there, darker than it should have been. The whole house was dark. There was no reason to look, Chloe told herself.

      She didn’t want to look.

       … scratch scratch scratch …

      Let her out.

      Because if not, she’d damage the door.

      Damage.

      Let her out.

      What СКАЧАТЬ