It Was Her Read online

  Also by MK Hill

  The Two O'Clock Boy

  It Was Her

  The Bad Place

  The Woman in the Wood

  One Bad Thing

  IT WAS HER

  M.K. Hill

  An Aries book

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in Great Britain by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown, 2018

  This eBook edition first published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © Mark Hill 2018

  The moral right of Mark Hill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (E): 9781837931477

  Cover design by Matt Bray

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  For Pete and Doreen

  I Years had been from Home

  And now before the Door

  I dared not enter, lest a Face

  I never saw before

  Stare stolid into mine

  And ask my Business there

  ‘My Business but a Life I left

  Was such remaining there?’

  EMILY DICKINSON

  1

  After Will:

  One moment Will was there, and the next – he was gone.

  Clumps of grass trembled on the lip of the chalk cliff. An armada of cloud scudded across the thick line of the horizon where the sky met the ocean. But all that was left of Will was a ghost of a movement. An absence in the empty space where he had been, above the quivering tufts of grass and the white stone, and now – in the blink of an eye – wasn’t.

  Joel’s parents ran down the slope. Their screams and shouts were muffled in the rattle of the wind in his ears. His mum’s eyes bulged with terror as she stumbled over the uneven ground. His father roared for them to get back, step away from the edge, for god’s sake, get back. Joel saw Poppy run back towards them, in floods of tears.

  But Sarah was leaning over the edge, where the cliff dropped away to the waves lashing angrily against the jagged rock hundreds of feet below. Hands planted hard on her knees to stop her toppling, the fierce gale making her hair twist and tumble around her pretty face.

  His dad’s voice was hoarse: ‘Get away, get back!’

  ‘Will! Will!’ shrieked his mum.

  And then Sarah glanced over her shoulder at all the commotion, and her eyes fell on Joel.

  And she was smiling.

  This big smile on her face.

  One moment Will was there, and the next—

  2

  Now:

  This, she decided, was her favourite room in all the world.

  There were so many beautiful things. Sitting at the antique dressing table, she touched the bottles and containers of all shapes and sizes – magenta, turquoise, jade, every colour of the rainbow – which glimmered in the gentle light of the bulbs decorating the mirror. The bed was the biggest she’d ever seen, and piled high with pillows and cushions and throws. It was a delight to scrunch her toes into the delicate weave of the soft carpet.

  The woman walked to the wardrobe, which was set into a wall so that you hardly noticed it was there. And when the door slid open – with a sound as faint as a whisper – neat rows of dresses and skirts and blouses were revealed, and neatly stacked racks of pretty shoes: heels, flats, pumps, sandals. Hangers clacked when she took out a summer dress imprinted with pale blue flowers.

  Holding it to her body, she twirled before the dappled rocking horse in the bay window. The creature’s silver mane fell across one ear. Polished stirrups and buckles sparkled on its leather saddle. She saw approval in its painted eye.

  Yes, that one.

  If anything, this room with its gleaming walls and silver trinkets spilling from the jewellery box on the dressing table, the sparkling chandelier, and the heavy antique wall mirror with aged black spots on its faded surface, was even more lovely than the others.

  Earlier, she had soaked in the oval tub in the bathroom, relaxed in flickering candlelight, enjoying the scent of pomegranate and blueberry and winter spices from the salts and soaps and creams. Let the steaming heat lift the cares and worries from her muscle and bone.

  But then a sudden, terrible image of that poor man came out of nowhere, making her gasp and jerk upright. Water surged over the side of the bath to slap angrily on the chequered tiles.

  And just like that, her composure was shattered.

  Tension knotting her shoulders, the woman reached for the plump towel of Egyptian cotton warming on the heated handrail, avoiding her nakedness in the mirror – the pendulous breasts and heavy thighs, the sagging stomach, the thick threads of scar tissue snaking down her shoulders and back – and wrapping it around her, opened the cabinet to choose from all the lotions. The face cream she selected was cool against her flushed cheeks.

  Now, she placed the dress on the bed, careful not to crease it, to apply make-up from golden tubes and black compacts which snapped closed between her fingers. Her face, usually pale and careworn, burst into colour. Finally, there was just a lipstick to choose. Her fingers hesitated over the different shades and settled on a bright red infused with a faint sparkle, to the admiration of the rocking horse.

  Yes, it said. That one.

  The woman picked up an ivory hairbrush, its milky surface inlaid with pretty curlicues and loops, and pulled it through her hair. The brush crackled against her scalp, the static charge kinking her tangle of curls.

  ‘It’s ready,’ called a voice.

  She winced again at the thought of that man, just left there like that. It was no good, the whole night would be ruined if she didn’t do something about it, so she went to her cargo shorts balled on the floor and took out a phone with a screen as big as her hand.

  The woman hesitated. What she was about to do was a dangerous thing. But when she pressed the power button and the keypad appeared, she had no idea of the passcode.

  ‘Come on down!’

  The voice flustered her and she pressed random numbers on the screen. The phone buzzed tersely. She tried again, but it was pointless. The woman turned it off, replaced it in the pocket of the shorts.

  Walking past the horse on its bow rocker, she inched the curtain aside. In the early hours of the morning the road seemed abandoned beneath the wash of streetlight. And yet inside all those big, handsome houses, she knew, people were safely tucked up in bed, and the thought comforted her. The roar of a car receded into the distance. She wished the driver god speed and hoped they would be reunited soon with family, with the people they loved
.

  ‘It’ll get cold!’ shouted the voice.

  The dress she had chosen was too tight – she’d never be able to zip it up – but there was no time to choose another, and she went downstairs.

  The kitchen at the rear of the house was vast. A skylight ran its entire length. This room, like all the others, was a bright, happy place in daylight, and at night was infused with a cosy glow from all the hidden lighting. Sleek appliances covered every surface. A silver range cooker was set into a converted fireplace. The cabinets were the type that popped open at a touch, and the long island unit was topped with a shining granite surface. But pots and pans had been dumped in the sink, and the tap, its neck as long and graceful as a swan’s, seemed to recoil from the mess.

  Her companion was hunched over a table, forking food into his mouth, and when she sat he squeezed her hand, gazing at her in adoration.

  It was late; they were both weary, both hungry.

  ‘Eat,’ she told him.

  The prongs of his fork rang against the china whenever he speared a shell of pasta on his plate. She prodded at it, but the food was burned, rubbery. Popping a piece into her mouth, the woman tried to enjoy the ambience of the lovely kitchen, and ignore the ugly chewing sounds of her companion.

  She considered once again the twisted path that had brought her to this man, to this place.

  And then a noise made them both look up sharply …

  The door opening at the front of the house.

  They heard anxious voices in the hallway. The front door slammed. A fragment of urgent conversation. Wheels fluttered along the floorboards.

  Seconds later, the kitchen door swung open and a tanned woman in bright, loose-fitting clothes stood in the doorway. She cried out, and then a man pushed past her, dropping the handle of his case. His face was bronzed beneath steel-grey hair, but his arms, the skin on his neck, were sunburned.

  For one stunned moment, the two couples looked at each other, and then the man in the doorway demanded angrily: ‘What are you doing in our house?’

  The woman at the table felt a terrible sadness.

  She scraped back her chair to stand, its legs screeching on the tiles in the fierce silence. Beside her, the man’s fork clattered to the plate. His chair tipped backwards. He jumped to his feet, the tendons in his wrists jerking taut.

  The woman thought of this house, made into a wonderful home thanks to the care and attention, the love, of the couple in front of them.

  Tatia wished it didn’t have to end this way.

  3

  Stepping over the body was out of the question. It stretched along the hallway, one arm flung over the face, the other reaching for the stairs, fingertips pressed against the bottom step like a swimmer grasping for the edge of a pool. Simon Harrow’s pink shirt rode up over his belly, which was mottled purple. His shock of grey hair was plastered by blood to the tiled floor. One leg, the bone snapped, rested heel-up against the wall. Teeth were scattered like dice along the skirting.

  Harrow’s body caused a bottleneck. If police and crime scene examiners wanted to reach the dining room at the rear of the house, where Melinda Harrow’s body lay curled beneath the baby grand, they had to go through the living room to the left.

  ‘I don’t want to pre-empt the autopsy,’ said Detective Constable Millie Steiner. The young black officer stepped back to consider the fire poker, matted with hair and gristle, and sticky with blood, dropped at the victim’s feet. ‘But I’m guessing they were beaten to death.’

  Eddie Upson winked. ‘Top-notch detective work, Millie.’

  She shoved an elbow into Eddie’s ribs just as Detective Inspector Ray Drake stooped over the body.

  The skin on Harrow’s leg was ruptured, torn apart beneath the force of the poker like the flesh of a dropped peach. Muscle and tendon bulged from the tear; there was a glimpse of arcing white bone. Bruises, imprinted from the killer’s footwear, crisscrossed the edge of the wound.

  ‘He was brought down hard with a stamp on the lower leg.’ Tugging at the knees of his scene suit, Drake crouched to look at the victim’s crooked fingers, the lacerations and lesions across his arms and shoulders. Most likely defensive wounds from where he lay on the floor trying to protect himself. ‘And hit repeatedly with the poker.’

  Millie Steiner watched Drake examine the corpse, fascinated by his hard face, the sharp, jagged cheeks, the straight nose and tapered jaw, those pale blue eyes from which the colour seemed to drain the longer you gazed into them. Not that Ray Drake ever let you meet his eye for very long. He was a shy man, it seemed to Millie, who kept a healthy distance from his team.

  ‘The crime scene people are happy bunnies,’ she said. ‘They’re picking up plenty of fingerprints all over the house, forensic samples galore, and some new words, too. One of them told me there’s a cornucopia of evidence.’

  ‘I went to a restaurant called Cornucopia,’ said Eddie. ‘It was very pricey.’

  ‘And plenty of footprints.’

  A faint footprint yielded the best results. Bloody prints were often difficult to read. The liquid poured into the pattern, obliterating the unique signature of the tread caused by wear and tear. Every sole on every shoe was different, in the same way as every fingerprint was unique, or every gun barrel.

  ‘It’s good to have you back, boss,’ Millie said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Drake smiled, but his eyes didn’t lift from Simon Harrow’s cruel injuries. ‘This … is not your usual.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Millie. ‘Not your usual.’

  Drake considered the victim’s cotton shirt, his shorts and the boating shoes flung across the hallway. Next door, Melinda Harrow’s body was barely a foot from the phone, sat in its cradle on a cabinet shelf. Like her husband, she had almost certainly been bludgeoned to death, suffering fatal blunt force trauma, multiple blows to the head and body. Melinda was dressed in a fitted shirt and silk skirt. A single espadrille hung off one tanned foot – sky-blue nails glistened in the light – and the other was kicked against a piano leg.

  A trolley-case was on its side in the kitchen doorway, a baggage claim tag tied to the handle. A larger case – the companion part of a matching set – stood inside the front door, along with Mrs Harrow’s Hermès handbag. Two passports were tucked into a pocket, and a pair of airline boarding passes.

  Everyone knew the relief of getting home from holiday. It was good to go away, but there was a special kind of pleasure in returning home. Boiling water in your own kettle, brushing your teeth at your sink. Curling up beneath a crisp duvet, surrounded by beloved things accrued over a lifetime. But the Harrows had instead arrived home to find themselves plunged into a life-or-death struggle.

  The confrontation was swift, catastrophic.

  Two plates on the kitchen table contained half-eaten pasta. The lights were on upstairs. A dress was dumped on the floor in the bedroom. A tideline in the bathtub and a damp towel suggested someone had used it.

  Someone was here, in the Harrows’ comfortable home. Someone they knew, perhaps, minding the house. Friends, neighbours, or people they had found on Airbnb. But that didn’t explain the forced window at the side of the house.

  ‘How much do you think a place like this is worth?’ asked Millie. This was a four-floor, six-bedroomed detached home in a sought-after area in Tottenham. All the rooms were bright, spacious and immaculately decorated.

  Eddie Upson scratched at the collar of his scene suit. Sweat filmed his forehead. The spring morning was warming up. The bodies would have to be moved soon.

  ‘A pretty penny, although the asking price is plummeting by the second.’

  ‘I never thought I’d say it, Eddie,’ said Drake. ‘But I’ve missed your repartee.’

  Eddie winked at Millie. Loud voices disturbed Drake. A pair of officers stood at the front door in animated conversation about rugby with the arriving pathologist. Then the fabric of the tent erected outside lifted – Drake glimpsed squad cars and support vans parked in the street – and a small woman pushed through the men. The protective hood that framed her wide face rose unnaturally high around her head and her foot coverings were stretched tight over heavy boots. Deeply engrossed in her phone, thumbs dabbing at the screen, she barely glanced at the body sprawled in the hallway, and walked upstairs.