Your Deepest Fear Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Acknowledgements

  Extract from Don’t Make a Sound

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This one’s for Peter,

  Who deserves much more

  1

  The regrets will come later.

  She will wish she had responded to the light more quickly. The tiny blinking light, insistently proclaiming the reason for its existence.

  But then she will reason about this, and accept that it would have made no difference. The outcome would have been just as devastating.

  If she had come home a day earlier, though – yes, that might have been a completely different matter. Or if she had not gone at all. She hadn’t really wanted to go. If the situation had been happier here, she wouldn’t have left. Either way, she would have been here to take the call, and maybe, just maybe, she could have intervened.

  But then she will realise that real happiness would have meant not needing to take the call in the first place. He would have been here, with her.

  She will wish she had tried much harder with him. She will wonder if she surrendered him to his fate too easily.

  Those thoughts will haunt her for ever.

  But before the regrets will come the anger.

  And before the anger will come the tears.

  *

  Sara Prior smiles when the house comes into view. It always has this effect on her.

  It’s a small detached cottage on the outskirts of Halewood, long neglected by the previous owners when she and Matthew bought it. She visualised the potential as soon as she saw it. Its isolation worried her a little, but Matthew craved the peace and quiet.

  The house can hardly be called grand or even noteworthy in appearance, but it is her home. Their home. She and Matthew put a lot of effort into getting this place into shape. Hour upon hour each evening. They made it perfect.

  Matthew is here. He is everywhere in this house. He is in the doors he stripped, the floorboards he mended, the wiring he installed. When they met, he knew nothing of DIY. When he left, he had become an expert.

  When he left . . .

  She sighs. Wishes he were inside the house as he always used to be, waiting excitedly at the window for her return, then racing to the front door to greet her, all wide eyes and daft grin.

  One day soon, she thinks, it’ll be like that again. If only he could use his DIY skills to fix himself.

  She parks the car on the patch of gravel in front of the house and gets out. She opens up the boot and takes out her case. Cabin baggage, to avoid having to wait at the airport carousels.

  She locks the car and drags the case to the house. Finds her key and opens up. Picks up her post and free newspapers from behind the door.

  Inside, the smell is familiar and welcoming. A Molton Brown diffuser on the sideboard in the hallway. Next to that, a light on the telephone is winking at her, notifying her that she has messages on the answering machine.

  They can wait. They will be automated sales calls, or reminders to pay bills. That’s all they ever are.

  She leaves her case in the hall and proceeds to the kitchen. Tea is her top priority. The lukewarm brown muck they served her on the flight didn’t qualify.

  While the kettle boils, she takes off her coat and opens her mail. Junk, mostly, but also two tickets for West Side Story at the Liverpool Empire. A surprise for Matthew. She expects him to say no, but she’s going to try anyway. He likes musicals. And if he does say no, she’ll find someone else to go with her.

  No. She won’t do that. It’s Matthew or nobody. If he says no, she’ll give the tickets away. That’s the truth of it.

  Her father wouldn’t understand. He has never hidden his dislike of Matthew. He regards her husband as weak and spineless. He wanted her to marry someone more stereotypically macho.

  She nearly did, of course. It wasn’t to be.

  She thinks that sometimes these things happen for a reason. Good can come out of bad. Matthew was the good.

  ‘Why are you even going back there?’ her father asked last night. ‘He left you. You could come back to live with us. Or I’ll buy you a place of your own. What has Liverpool got to offer you now?’

  She made it clear to him that she has no intention of moving back to Copenhagen. She has her own life now. She likes it here.

  Besides, this is where Matthew lives, and she’s not giving up on him just yet. Tomorrow she will call round to his place with the tickets. She will talk to him, because she thinks that’s what he really needs. It has been four months now, and she still doesn’t fully understand why he felt the need to move out.

  She thinks he needs her. She brought him out of himself. She taught him about life, about living. She gave him purpose and happiness. She even schooled him in sex.

  And then something happened to him. Something he won’t talk about.

  She has made it her mission to find out what it was.

  She drinks her tea and tries to recall the contents of her freezer. She doesn’t really want to go shopping. The four-day trip to Copenhagen has drained her. She knew it would, which is why she put it off for so long. Her parents had wanted her there for Christmas and New Year, but there was no way she was going to be so far away from Matthew then. The festive period is a trigger for so many to commit suicide.

  No shopping today, she decides. I’ll make do.

  She heads back into the hall. As she reaches for her case, she notices the blinking white light on the phone again.

  She reaches across and jabs the play button on the phone’s base station. A voice tells her that she has three new messages.

  She lays the bag down and starts to unzip it.

  The first message plays. It’s the tail end of a recording informing her of the benefits of a boiler replacement scheme.

  She shakes her head, then starts pulling her dirty clothes out of the case.

&n
bsp; Second message: the gas company, asking for the householder to call them back. Their phone number is announced twice, just in case she has forgotten how to replay messages.

  She makes a mental note to pay the gas bill. Gathers up her clothes. Walks back towards the kitchen.

  Halts when she hears the next voice.

  What stops her is not just that it’s Matthew’s voice, but also that his words are being fired at her in a tone of sheer unadulterated terror.

  ‘Sara! Remember! Victoria and Albert. All I can say. They’re here! They’re— Sara, I love you. I—’

  It is interrupted by a fumbling noise, and then what sounds like the beginning of a blood-curdling scream . . .

  And then the line goes dead.

  2

  Sara turns slowly on her heel, the clothes still clutched in arms that are now dotted with goose pimples.

  What the hell was that?

  And then she is flinging the washing onto the floor, racing to the phone, scanning the infernal device for the buttons that will make it replay the latest message.

  She stabs out what she thinks is the correct sequence, praying that it doesn’t delete anything. She holds her breath . . .

  ‘Sara! Remember! Victoria and Albert. All I can say. They’re here! They’re— Sara, I love you. I—’

  And then the noises again. As though someone snatched the phone out of his hand. And as though they . . .

  They were hurting him. Someone was hurting my Matthew!

  Her brain is filled with questions about what the message might mean, but right now is not the time to dissect it. The pleading in Matthew’s voice overrides all that. Now is the time to respond, to act.

  She plucks the receiver from its cradle. Flicks through her contacts until she finds Matthew. Presses the call button.

  She listens to the maddening chirrup as Matthew’s phone rings.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ she urges.

  But she gets no answer.

  She ends the call as another thought occurs to her. She replays Matthew’s message again, but this time she is more interested in what the answering machine has to say about it.

  Just after ten o’clock this morning. That’s when the call came in. And now it’s – she checks her watch – past two o’clock.

  That’s four fucking hours!

  She races back to the kitchen. Grabs her coat and keys. Dashes out of the house and leaps into the car.

  As she drives, she makes use of the hands-free to call Matthew’s number. Again and again she calls him, and each time she fails to get a response.

  This is bad, she thinks. This is so, so wrong.

  I knew it! I knew I shouldn’t have gone to fucking Copenhagen. What the hell has Matthew got himself involved in?

  She breaks all the speed limits, and yet still the journey to Matthew’s house seems to take far too long. Why did he have to move all the way to a shitty little terraced dump in Aintree?

  She knows the answer to that one. It wasn’t just because it was all he could afford. It wasn’t, as he claimed, that it was closer to his place of work in Bootle. It was because it put distance between them. That was the real reason.

  When she finally screeches to a halt, she leaps out of the car and dashes up to the white PVC front door. She rings the bell, pounds the knocker.

  There is no response.

  She drops to her knees, flips open the letter box and looks inside.

  It is eerily quiet in there. No sign of life whatsoever.

  She brings her mouth to the letter slot. ‘Matthew! Are you in there? Come to the door!’

  Again nothing.

  And now she’s not sure what to do. Call the police? Get them to knock the door down?

  Maybe. But first . . .

  The house stands next to a beauty parlour, shuttered and closed now as it’s a Sunday. On the other side is an alleyway.

  Trust Matthew to pick somewhere without immediate neighbours!

  Sara moves down the alley to the rear of the house. She tries the yard door. It’s locked.

  She looks up and down the alleyway. Nobody watching. The other buildings visible here are mostly shops, their walls topped by broken glass or barbed wire. Sara walks away from Matthew’s wall, turns.

  And then a sudden sprint. A leap. Her hands just manage to grasp the top edge of the wall. She clings there as she walks her feet up the brick wall, wishing she were wearing jogging bottoms and trainers instead of the smart trousers and shoes she still has on.

  She swings one leg over the wall, straddling it for a second, then brings the other leg over and drops down on the other side.

  Matthew’s backyard is tiny. Mostly concrete, but with a rectangle of lawn so small it seems pointless.

  The house appears lifeless. Sara steps up to the kitchen window and peers inside.

  It’s a wreck.

  Many of the drawers and cupboards are open. Much of their content – cutlery, tins, household cleansers – has been pulled out and is littering the tiled floor. Boxes of cereal have been tipped out onto the counter.

  Sara continues up the yard, stopping at the window looking into the living room. It’s just as chaotic in there. Cushions have been sliced open. Books have been taken from the shelves and tossed to the floor. Pictures have been ripped out of their frames.

  She turns to the back door, and that’s when she knows for certain that the madness inside wasn’t caused by Matthew in a fit of rage.

  One of the panes of glass in the door has been smashed.

  Someone broke in to this house.

  Sara feels the goosebumps returning. She reaches for the door handle. Turns it. The door opens.

  She steps inside, hears the fragments of glass crunching beneath her feet. She pauses there for a second, listening, alert to any signs of danger.

  She looks again at the devastation in the kitchen. The freezer door has been left open, and the appliance is emitting an irritating beep as it complains about its temperature. On the floor in front of it is a pile of boxes and packets of food, sitting in a puddle from a bag of melted ice cubes. The sink is full of a mixture of pasta and rice and flour, the empty bags tossed aside onto the draining board.

  Sara sees a knife block on the counter. She moves quickly across to it and slides out the biggest knife it contains.

  Her heart pounding, she exits the kitchen. In the hallway are two doors to her right and a stairway to her left. She steps quietly up to the first door, which is partly open. It leads to the living room she observed from the yard, so she knows there’s nobody in there. All the same, she pushes the door open and gives it a quick once-over.

  The next room is a different matter. Again, the door is slightly ajar, and she can hear nothing from inside, but she’s taking no chances.

  She brings her eyes to the narrow gap, checking for moving shadows on the other side. As she does this, she searches her memory in an effort to build a mental map of the room before exposing herself to possible danger.

  She flattens herself against the wall so as not to present a clear target in the doorway. Knife tightly clutched in one hand, she nudges the door with the other.

  It opens more swiftly than she expects, but then stops with a thud, followed by the clatter of objects tumbling to the floor.

  Shit!

  She risks a glance inside. Then another. Finally she steps in, knife at the ready.

  There is nobody here.

  Sara sees that the door has hit a small table that had been shifted away from its usual position. The collision caused a lamp and wooden ornament to topple to the floor, but that’s the least of the turmoil in here. Matthew has an extensive collection of CDs, collected over many years, but Sara can see that every CD case that once sat on the shelves has been opened and flung onto the floor.

  Sara stares down at the heap. Sees album covers that unreel threads of memory in her mind. Those were good times. Seeing all those shared songs tossed away like this brings a lump to her th
roat.

  But now is not the time for sentimentality. There may be people in this house. People who have heard the noise she has just made, and who are now awaiting their opportunity to break her skull open.

  She leaves the room and approaches the staircase. Slow, careful steps.

  She pauses there for a few seconds, listening intently. Then she begins her ascent, her gaze glued to the landing above.

  When she reaches the top of the stairs, she halts and performs another scan. The door to the small bathroom is wide open, and she can see that nobody is in there. That’s one room down, two to go.

  The door to the rear bedroom – the spare one that Matthew uses as an office – is fully closed; she can’t get in there without making further noise.

  She decides to leave that room till last.

  She treads softly along the landing. When she gets to the front bedroom, she takes some deep but quiet breaths, then repeats her earlier manoeuvre of squashing herself against the wall while she pushes the door open. It opens with a slight creak, but there is no sudden rush of intruders towards her.

  She slides silently into the room. Sees that it’s like the others. Sheets and mattress on the floor; clothes dragged out of the wardrobes; drawers tipped upside down.

  So, on to the final room.

  She retraces her steps along the landing, then stares long and hard at the closed door. She presses her ear to the varnished wood, but hears nothing on the other side. She stares at it again, then grabs the handle and takes some deep breaths.

  Here we go, then.

  She turns the handle, pushes the door open.

  Straight ahead is Matthew’s computer desk. The drawers have been turned out, and there is no sign of his laptop.

  Sara leaps into the room, knife arm in front of her. She is ready. If they are here, she is ready to fight, to maim, to—

  No.

  She is not ready for this.

  Please, God, not this.

  Matthew is here.

  She goes to him. Puts the knife down, freeing up hands that she doesn’t know what to do with in this situation. She doesn’t know how to help. This is beyond anything she has ever experienced, and she has experienced much.

  Matthew is on the floor. He is naked and spreadeagled.

  And dead. Very dead. She has seen enough of death to know that.

  For Matthew, it is probably a blessing. He has been nailed to the floor. Huge steel nails have been driven through his arms, his legs and even his genitals. Rivulets of bright blood have coursed across his pallid flesh and pooled beneath him. His mouth is open, as if in a final agonising scream, and his eyes have rolled back in their sockets.