Page 30

EPILOGUE

“ I cannot believe you’ve never been up here,” he said, six weeks after he got a hard-on for my bedroom wall and found the dolls.

“That carried a bit more weight the first time you said it.” I stood at the bottom of the ladder, holding it. He’d told me it was a top-of-the-range, well-balanced ladder that didn’t need holding, but I didn’t see how the extra support could hurt.

He was wearing work boots, cargo shorts, his tool belt, and a sleeveless t-shirt. His work goggles were pushed back on his head, he had his gloves on, and yes. It was doing a lot to me.

“Let’s not forget,” I continued, “you’ve had six weeks to get your arse up here and yet you’re only just doing it.”

“Been busy, Charlie,” he said mildly.

I patted his muscled calf. “Yes, you have, and the bathroom is glorious. I love it.”

The downstairs bathroom no longer held the top spot in my affections. Kevin had ripped out all the harvest-gold tiles and the pokey little shower unit in the upstairs bathroom, fixed the floor, and installed a large tub. The tiles were now a warm honey, the paintwork was a soft primrose, and as it turned out, I was a slut for baths.

Particularly if naked, wet Kevin was in there with me, which he often was.

“There could be anything up here,” he said, working the little hook that kept it latched free. It swung clear with a tiny creak.

“Junk, as far as the eye can see,” I agreed. “Like the garage.”

It had taken a whole weekend for Kevin and his friend Griffin to get rid of the rubbish that Deirdre’s heirs had left behind. Or more precisely that the dodgy house clearance company they’d hired had left behind, since the heirs were abroad and couldn’t be arsed to travel to Chipping Fairford and take care of business themselves.

“For the price I paid for this house,” I said, “I genuinely don’t give a shit what’s up there. I’ll deal with it.”

“Okay.” Kevin opened the hatch, and yelped with surprise when something slithered down and hung in front of his face.

“What!” I yelled. “What is it?”

“Chill,” Kevin said, hopping to the floor. “It’s fine, I was just startled. Look at this.” He was holding a thick black cord with a fat tassel in his hand. He tugged it gently. The hatch opened all the way, and wooden steps swung smoothly down until the ladder obstructed them. “Must be on a counterbalance.”

We stood side by side and looked at the steps. They put Kevin’s top-of-the-line metal telescopic ladder to shame. Beautiful carpentry.

Kevin moved his ladder, propping it up against the wall, and the steps glided down to touch the carpet. “You want to go first?”

“No, no. After you. You’re the one who wants to go poking around.”

“All right. Let’s get poking.” He tested the steps briefly before going up. At the top, he said, “Torch, please,” opening and closing his hand. I switched on his enormous Maglite and passed it up.

“Argh,” he said when I got him in the eyes with the beam. “Thanks a bunch.” Blinking rapidly, he went on up.

I followed close on his heels.

The loft ran the full length of the house. He aimed the beam at the shadowed roof above us. “Could do a conversion up here, Charlie,” he said, brimming with excitement. “Add a whole new floor.”

Oh boy. “Maybe after the kitch?—”

Kevin yelped again.

“What!” I yelled, clutching at him. “What now? Is it a rat?”

The beam, which had been swinging around wildly, stilled and held on a cluster of shapes lined up along the back wall.

Human shapes.

“Give me that.” I took the torch off him. My shoulders loosened. “They’re mannequins, Kevin. Dressmaker’s dummies.”

“Oh my god.” Kevin slipped an arm around my waist from behind and leaned heavily on me. I staggered and braced my feet to hold him up. “Thought it was more dolls,” he muttered.

“It’s just mannequins,” I said again, rather than what I wanted to say, which was, Holy fuck , me too. I thought that, too.

I patted Kevin’s arm.

“Can I have the torch back?” he said. “I’m gonna look for the light switch.”

“How do you know there is one? There might not be electricity up here. It’s an early Victorian, after all.”

“There’s electricity. I’ve been in your fuse box, remember? I saw the circuits.”

I passed him the torch. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” Kevin tromped about behind me. An overhead light suddenly came on, scaring the shadows away.

“It’s not a full conversion, but the old lady had a proper little sewing room up here, huh?” Kevin said. He was standing by a worktable with a sewing machine over at the other end of the loft. “Still loads of boxes of crap, though.”

“Crap?” I said, wandering over. “I do believe I was promised treasure. Great big trunks of it. Gold coins and jewels and the like.”

He pulled a face. “I was just trying to get you to let me up here.”

“No. Really? Ah, well. I fell for it.”

He squinted playfully at me, then dug around in his side pocket and whipped out his tape measure. “You can look for treasure. I already found mine.” He gestured around happily. “I’m going to take some measurements and make some notes.”

I was definitely getting another floor added to my house, wasn’t I?

I watched with exasperated affection as Kevin set about doing his Kevin things, then I put my hands on my hips and turned to survey all the boxes.

There were some cardboard boxes, some plastic storage tubs. Heaps of fabric, and what looked like bin liners filled with old clothes.

The large worktable sat directly under one of the two hanging lights. A mass of creamy linen fabric took up most of the space, roughly folded and set on top of a large green cutting mat with a yellow grid printed on it. She must have been in the middle of working on a project right before she’d fallen from the loft steps, broken her hip, and stopped coming up here. What looked like photo albums or scrapbooks were neatly lined up at the back of the table against the wall, with a hardback notebook on top. I flipped the notebook open.

As soon as I saw it was a diary I flipped it shut.

While I wasn’t about to read her diary—I’d get in contact with my estate agent, see if they had the details for Deirdre’s heirs and send them on—I was going to look through her storage tubs, since they were now my storage tubs, and there may be some interesting finds.

The first two tubs I opened had been stacked on top of a much larger one and they were filled, as I’d suspected they would be, with clothes and a handful of vintage sewing patterns. Fancy dress, from a quick glance, unless there had been someone in her life who regularly dressed like a sailor, or a highwayman, or a centurion.

I set the boxes to one side, and popped the lid off the larger one.

“…Charlie? Charlie?” Kevin was at the other end of the loft, but his voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. “Charlie? Is something wrong?”

I continued to stare down into the tub.

“What is it?” Kevin said. His voice was closer. “What’s in there? Did you find something interesting?”

I clapped the lid back on and whirled around to face him. “What? No. I didn’t. Nope. There is nothing interesting in here.” I quickly sat down on top of the tub and crossed my legs, my hands gripping the edge of the lid.

Holding it down.

Nice and tight.

Not thinking about what I was sitting on.

He cocked his head and opened his mouth.

“Hey!” I said before he could speak. “Heyyyy. I was thinking. Is it just me or are you getting hungry, too?”

“I can always eat,” Kevin said.

I bobbed my head and swallowed. “Cool. That’s cool. So cool. Let’s go downstairs and eat. Let’s go out to eat. All the way downstairs. And out. Maybe to the pub?”

“Ooh?” Kevin’s face brightened. “I could murder a nice juicy steak.”

I swallowed a couple more times. “Steak! Yummy. I’m also very much in the mood for steak. Let’s do it. Let’s leave! And take Phil with us!”

“Okay, why not? It’s a nice day. We can eat in the beer garden, then come back and spend all afternoon up here.”

No. No, we wouldn’t.

“Yes!” I said.

Kevin looked at me expectantly. “Are you coming, or what?”

“Yes, I am.” I pushed up from the storage tub and walked over to him on only slightly wobbly legs.

We went downstairs with a brief diversion to the bedroom for Kevin to grab a hoodie from the drawer that was now filled with his clothes, then collected Phil from the kitchen.

“Wow,” Kevin said as I shoved him out of the front door ahead of me. “You’re really hungry.”

“Low blood sugar,” I said, shutting the door and putting my back to it, panting lightly. “When it drops, it drops. Let’s go!”

Kevin loaded Phil in the back seat of his Land Cruiser and got in the car.

The moment he was in, I slid back out of the passenger seat. “Be with you in a minute,” I said. “I have to make a quick call first.”

“No problem.” Kevin buckled himself in and leaned forwards to play with the radio.

I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and fumbled the passcode before I unlocked it. I pulled up my contacts and stood on my lawn, staring up at the loft with my phone pressed to my ear as it rang and rang.

It went to voicemail.

I re-dialled. Again. The third time, he picked up. “Charlie?—”

“Liam,” I said, “get over here right now.”

“I’m in town working and?—”

“Liam. I need you. To come over. To my house. Right now . Bring forensics.”

I heard the slight intake of breath before he said, “ No .”

“Yes.”

“Another body?

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The loft.”

“Shit. Shit. Where in the loft? Not in the walls. Kevin said the rest of the house was solid. Forensics backed that up.” He was on the move; I heard a car door slamming. His siren gave a short whoop as he muscled into traffic.

“Nope. Not in the walls.” I decided there was no point in telling him that regardless of what Kevin had said about the walls in the rest of the house, he hadn’t actually been in the loft until today. It was moot, anyway, since forensics had. “Not under the floorboards, either. This one was in a plastic tub like Ray’s, and he was sitting right there in plain sight among all the other boxes.”

Liam was silent for a moment. If he was in town, he’d be here any minute. “Plain sight?”

“Yep. Couple of boxes stacked on top, but otherwise, there he was. Crammed in a tub. Cat litter.” Except this one was naked, because he was waiting for his costume to be finished.

Centurion was my guess.

“We were working on the theory that whoever was behind this had either stopped or died. But if that tub got in amongst your boxes, then they must be still active. Shit. They’ve been in your house. I don’t?—”

“Your theory’s fine. Those aren’t my boxes. That’s not my stuff up there. None of it is.”

“What?” The siren blipped on and off again for a short burst and I heard a horn blare. Liam was probably being a dick and forcing his way over the roundabout where the roadworks were.

The theory was better than fine, it was spot on. The perp was definitely dead. “Today is the first time I’ve gone into the loft.”

“What? ” he shouted. “You’ve been living in that house for years!”

“I am a busy man and it’s someone else’s junk!” I shouted back. “I’ve got my own life to deal with, thanks.”

“Fuck.” Liam sounded pissed off. “Shit.”

“Don’t get mad at me, Liam.”

“I’m not mad at you. It’s…shit. Kevin said he’d done a survey and?—”

“This is not Kevin’s fault!” I said.

“What isn’t my fault?” Kevin said behind me.

I whirled to face him. “Nothing. You’re blameless and I love you. Get back in the car.”

“Uh, no? Also, thank you.”

“You could even—yes, that’s a great idea. You and Phil go ahead to the pub and I’ll join you.”

He smiled at me and tilted his head to one side. “No.”

“Okay. Okay.” I set a hand on his chest, and said into the phone, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Whether Liam heard, or had already hung up, I didn’t care. I hit the red button, slipped the phone into my pocket, and put both hands on Kevin’s broad chest.

He took hold of my hips.

“Kevin,” I said.

“Charlie.”

“Okay, Kevin? I don’t want you to overreact about this.”

“Not much for overreacting, me,” he said placidly.

“Fair point. It’s one of the things I adore about you.”

“Aw. I adore you too.” He kissed my nose.

I swatted him away. “ Normally you don’t overreact. But. However. In one particular area you have, historically, gone in the opposite direction.” His brows pulled together. “And panicked. So I want to tell you right now—” I sped up as Liam’s car turned at the top of the road, “—to remember that I love you and I will not dump you. I will never dump you. Okay? Kevin? Okay?” I cupped his face.

Behind us, a car door slammed. Kevin’s wide eyes went from me, over his shoulder to where Liam was walking towards us with a stoic DS Patel at his side, back to me, then up to the loft.

He paled.

“It was just one this time,” I said hurriedly.

“Oh my god.”

“Just one.” So far.

“Oh my god .”

“This is a good thing,” I told him, stroking his upper arms soothingly.

“How can it be good? I’ve done it again! They had it right in the papers. And at the gym. Down the pub. I am Kevin the Corpse Finder.”

I let out a short laugh. He gave me a wounded look. “Technically, this time I found it. This one’s my discovery. You were way over the other side of the loft. You may as well have not been involved.”

“It’s my fault we were even up there in the first place. If it wasn’t for me pushing you into it, you could have lived there for fifty more years and never gone up!”

He wasn’t wrong. I rubbed his arms again. “It’s fine. It’s helpful, even.”

Liam came to stand beside us.

“How is it helpful?” Kevin moaned.

“One, we don’t have to spend the next however many years sleeping below a dead man.” Because the position of the tub was directly over the head of the bed. “And two, because we found a really big lead about the murderer, if not the actual murderer herself.”

Kevin blinked. Liam went on alert.

“It was Deirdre Sharpe,” I said.

“The sweet little old lady?” Kevin said. He gasped. “ Phil’s mum ?”

“You said it yourself the first time you tried to get me to go up into the loft, Kevin. She might have been a sweet old lady when she died, but she had a full, active life behind her.”

Unlike the guys she’d been playing dolls with.

“Even if she wasn’t the one to murder and mummify them, she was making the outfits and putting them in her wall,” I said, thinking of the mannequins and the sewing patterns. “That was the precious collection Phil was supposed to be guarding, not her figurines or commemorative plates.” I turned to Liam, who looked less pissed-off and more intrigued. “Better start digging for a connection between Deirdre and Ray’s house.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“Any chance I can give you the keys and Kevin and I can go to the pub?”

He laughed. “Yeah, no. I’m going to need to take some statements.”

“Fine.”

Liam eyed Kevin, who was still pale and clutching me. “Do I need to call the paramedics for him again?”

I reached up and touched his neck lightly, feeling for a pulse. “Yes.”

“On it,” DS Patel said, and lifted her radio.

“Come on, guys. You know the drill. Let’s go.” Liam tried to herd us back into the house. Kevin dug his heels in. “Kev.”

“I need to go and get Phil first. He’s in the Land Cruiser.”

“Don’t you dare get in that car and drive off,” I warned him. “I love you. You’re blameless and I love you.”

He regained a little colour at that. “Yeah,” he said softly, and leaned in for a kiss.

I met him halfway and got lost in the sensation of his hot, firm mouth over mine until Liam said, “Enough, good grief. Can we please…? Inside? And do I have to call Adam to come and get you, Charlie, or?—”

“No,” Kevin said. “Not this time. Charlie’s mine. He’s all mine.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”