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TWENTY-NINE
Gabriel Roth pulls up outside Thornecroft’s front entrance, grabs two suitcases from the boot, climbs the porch steps and rings the bell. When no one answers, he holds his thumb against the button. Instinct tells him Teri Platini is inside.
A minute later, he’s proved right. The door opens an inch; then, falteringly, it swings wide. Teri stares at him with large, dumb cow eyes.
He pushes past her into the entrance hall and drops the suitcases beside the stairs. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’
Teri blinks. ‘Sorry?’
‘You don’t live here any more. Take those cases, pack your things and get out.’
‘You can’t just—’
He swipes at her, a clubbing open hand that strikes her cheekbone and knocks her sideways. She crashes into a console table, splintering its legs. The huge vase perched on top hits the floor and shatters. Daggers of sharp porcelain slide across the marble.
Gabriel shakes the sting from his fingers. He retrieves his wallet and pulls out a wad of cash.
‘Here,’ he says, bending over her. ‘For a hotel.’ Teri kicks her legs and tries to scoot away from him, blood pouringfrom her mouth. He presses the money into her hand and closes her fingers around it. ‘Four and a half minutes.’
He still hasn’t heard from Angus. These last few days, the universe has seemed increasingly bleak – as if the scales of a cosmic balance have tilted, upsetting the equilibrium. Everything is starting to feel wrong: the sky; the air in his lungs; the beat of his heart in his chest; even the skin on his knuckles and his scalp.
A few hours ago, at Erin Carver’s house, he’d seen Joseph Carver’s expression as he walked into the living room. The man should never play poker, because he’d reacted to Gabriel as if to a doppelganger, the horror etched deep into his face.
Minutes after leaving, a car Gabriel had spotted on the Carvers’ drive overtook him on the road towards Crompton, driving recklessly fast. He’d followed it to an address in Saddle Bank, where he’d watched Joseph Carver race inside as if pursued by a pack of hungry wolves. Whatever Carver had done in there, he’d clearly wanted to finish it before an estate agent arrived to show the place.
His nose twitches. From somewhere he smells smoke. Going to the orangery, he sees something burning outside. Throwing open the doors, he crosses the lawn to his brother’s barbecue. On the grill he discovers what’s left of the boudoir image Teri had given Angus for his birthday. The remains of a lingerie set is smoking in the ashes.
It’s certainly a statement.
Gabriel returns to the house. In the hall, Teri and the two suitcases have disappeared. He hears her moving about upstairs, checks his watch. Ninety seconds left. He flexes and unflexes his fingers.
Teri comes down the stairs, dragging the two suitcases behind her. One side of her face is swelling. The blood from her mouth has spilled down her sweatshirt.
‘You didn’t give me enough time!’ she gasps. ‘I’ve got an entire wardrobe of clothes up there that I—’
‘Buy new clothes.’
The look she throws him is pure murder. She leaves the suitcases by the front door and limps to the dining room, where she snatches a business card off the table.
Gabriel’s eyes glide over her. He has no difficulty visualizing what lies beneath Teri’s hoodie and leggings, but it no longer interests him. During his last visit, he’d forced her to show him Angus’s birthday present. He’d wanted to see it because he wanted her, and before he left he’d intended to have her.
But the fake sensuality he’d seen in that image had turned his lust into revulsion. No wonder his brother had gone elsewhere.
Sixty seconds.
Teri comes out of the dining room. On all fours by the smashed console table, she searches through the wreckage for her car keys. Then she drags her suitcases to the front entrance.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Gabriel says.
Teri fumbles with the latch. But when she tries to pull open one of the huge half-arched doors, her luggage gets in the way.
‘Ten seconds.’
She sobs, a sound of distilled humiliation and rage. Finally, she manages to haul the door wide, but the gap isn’t wide enough for both suitcases. Panicking, she tugs in vain at the carry handles.
Gabriel takes three steps and kicks Teri hard in the backside. She shoots forward, hands tearing loose of her luggage. Pitching off the porch’s top step, she hits the gravel and slides across it face-first.
He picks up the first suitcase and bounces it off Teri’shead. The second suitcase lands on her back, driving the breath from her lungs.