Page 138 of The Love Letter

‘My name’s Simon Warburton. I’ve come to identify Ian Simpson.’ Simon flashed his identification card.

‘I’m Sean Ryan and I’m glad to be seeing you. Your man’s given us trouble ever since he arrived. He’s not happy to be here. Not that any of them are, to be fair.’

‘Is he sober?’

‘I’d say that he was, yes. We gave him a breath test and he was under the limit.’

That makes a change, Simon thought. ‘Right, let’s go and take a look at him then.’

He followed Sean down a short, narrow corridor. ‘I had to lock him in the back office, Simon, he was acting up so. Watch yourself, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Simon replied as Sean unlocked the door, then stepped aside to let Simon enter first. A man was slumped over the desk, his head resting on his arms, a Marlboro Light burning to its filter in the ashtray. The man looked up at Simon and let out a sigh of relief.

‘Thank God! Maybe you can tell this ignorant bunch of Paddies that I’m not Ian bloody Simpson!’

Simon’s heart sank. ‘Hello, Marcus.’

Joanna parked the car on a grass verge just opposite the coastguard’s house, turned off the engine and reached for her torch, galvanising what was left of her shredded nerves to get out of the car and cross the causeway to the house.

She opened the door and switched on the torch, her legs feeling weak beneath her. She shone the torch beam onto the sandbanks and saw the tide had begun to come in, filling the estuary with water. She knew the only way to get inside the house was to wade through it, climb up the wall and slip in through the kitchen window.

As she made her way down the steps and into the sea, she gritted her teeth against the shock of the freezing water that reached up to just below her knees, the pelting rain soaking the top half of her body. Wading across to the steeply sloping back wall, she shone the torch upwards to locate the kitchen window. A few more feet and she was just beneath it. She reached up to grab the top of the wall with her fingertips, then pulled her body upwards, her muscles straining with the effort as she struggled to find a foothold. She cried out in pain as she lost her grip and nearly toppled over backwards into the water. Another three tries and her foot managed to find an indent in the brick so she could haul herself up.

Panting hard, she lay on top of the wall. Standing up carefully on the slippery ledge, Joanna shone the torch and located the broken windowpane. Realising the width was too small to shimmy through, she pulled down the sleeve of her jacket and, covering her hand with it, punched at the bottom corner of the remaining glass, which splintered, then eventually fell away, until there was enough room to climb in. Knocking the remnants of the glass from the frame, she launched herself inside head first.

The beam of the torch showed her the floor of the kitchen was three feet below her. She reached down, her legs still hanging out of the window, and her fingertips touched the damp floor beneath her. She tumbled forwards with a sharp cry, landing with a thump on the hard floor, and lay there for a few seconds, feeling something furry tickling the side of her face. Joanna sprang up, shone the torch down and saw the dead rat on the floor.

‘Oh God! Oh God!’ she panted, her chest heaving in shock and disgust, her shoulder aching from the brunt of the fall.

As she stood there, the atmosphere of the house curled around her. Every nerve ending in her body sensed the danger, the fear and the death that seeped out of the walls. Instinct told her to get out and run.

‘No, no,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Just get the letter. Nearly there now, nearly there.’

Her hands shaking so hard that the beam of the torch wavered erratically in front of her, Joanna located the kitchen door, opened it and found herself in an entrance hall with the stairs before her. She mounted them slowly, hearing the storm reach its zenith outside. Each stair creaked and groaned beneath her weight. At the top, Joanna paused, her sense of direction paralysed by fear, uncertain of which way to turn.

‘Think Joanna, think . . . She said it was the room directly overlooking the cottage.’ Getting her bearings, she turned left, walked down the corridor, and opened the door at the end of the passage.

‘Damn it, Simon! Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’ Marcus followed him to the car, parked outside, and slumped into the passenger seat.

‘We believed an . . . unsavoury character named Ian Simpson had come across here after Joanna. We presumed you were him.’

‘For crying out loud, Simon, I know about Ian and I knew he was on her tail, that’s why I flew over here too! But don’t worry, Joanna’s gone home, she’s safe. Margaret told me. I was just about to check out and follow her back to London when the officers picked me up.’

‘She didn’t depart from Cork airport. I waited for her there and she never showed up for her flight.’

‘Christ!’ Fear was written on Marcus’s face. ‘Do you know where she is? What if that bastard’s got her – Jesus, Simon, he’s an animal!’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll track her down. Look, I’ll drive you back to the hotel. I want to check Joanna’s room anyway.’

‘I’ve wasted all this time locked in the bloody police station, when I could have been looking for her! Those idiots had an entire cache of credit cards with my name on them and they still wouldn’t believe I was me!’

‘You also had Ian Simpson’s pen with his initials engraved on it by your bed.’

‘Jo left the pen at my flat and all I did was pick it up! What a bloody mess.’

‘Apologies for the misunderstanding, Marcus. The most important thing now is to locate the real Ian Simpson, and Joanna.’

Marcus shook his head in anguish as Simon parked in front of the hotel. ‘Christ knows where she is, but we have to find her before he does,’ he said as the two of them entered the hotel.