Death at Rainbow Cottage, Jo Allen [top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT] 📗

for a moment on the pavement, staring up at the sky, with one hand inside her coat.

Always alert to the unusual, Ashleigh reached for her phone. ‘Jude.’

‘Ashleigh. Good.’ His voice was terse. ‘Glad to hear from you. Where are you?’

‘I went down to see Faye. I’ve just left. But I’ve just seen something really strange. It’s Natalie. She’s here. Not running.’

‘Here?’ He almost snapped at her. ‘Where?’

‘Brunswick Square. Outside Faye’s house.’

He turned away from the phone and she heard him issuing muffled instructions to someone. ‘Don’t approach her. Unless you have to.’

Fifty yards away, Natalie stood erect, staring at Faye’s house from the other side of the street. ‘Has something happened?’

‘She’s killed Claud, and it looks like she killed the others, too. I spoke to her on the phone and she mentioned Doddsy and Faye before she cut me off.’

‘Is Doddsy—?’

‘He’s fine. Can you see if she’s armed?’

Moving as carefully as she could, Ashleigh manoeuvred herself so that she got a better view of Natalie. ‘She’s got something under her coat.’

She almost heard him groan. ‘Call Faye, if you can, and warn her. Tell her not to answer the door and then get somewhere safe as fast as you can. I’ve got someone on the way, and I’m coming along myself. Ten minutes, with the blue lights.’

Natalie waited, still staring at the sky, her brows concentrated into a caterpillar of thought. Above Faye’s house a rainbow intensified, its vibrant colours deepening against a bruise-grey sky. Aware of Jude’s warning, aware of the danger and the close presence of an unbalanced mind, Ashleigh nevertheless sensed that the woman cared for nothing except what was behind the front door of the house. She moved along the pavement towards her, as casually as possible. Her fingers slipped on her phone as she dialled. Impatiently, she swiped the number and dialled again.

Thirty yards away, Natalie still stared at the sky. Ashleigh checked her watch. Ten minutes? One, maybe two, of those had already ticked away, but would Natalie really stand staring the sky for all that time?

As she paused, her pulse racing, the rainbow spread to a double bow, throbbing with light. The phone rang and rang and went to voicemail. ‘Faye. It’s Ashleigh. Natalie’s outside and she might be armed. Don’t answer the door.’ Would she pick it up, or ignore it?

She was beginning to type a text when Natalie gave up on the rainbow, strode up the path and raised her hand to the door.

Over Faye, she’d have the advantage of surprise. Over Ashleigh, she would not. And against the two of them, she had less chance of doing whatever her unbalanced mind intended. Ashleigh dialled again. For God’s sake, Faye, answer!

In her hand, the phone rang and rang and flicked to voicemail. Faye must have seen her number and chosen to ignore it.

The first wail of sirens split the distance. Natalie raised her hand to the bell again. If Faye didn’t answer the door what choice was there but to intervene?

The figure moving behind the glass pane in the door — thank God, slowly, as if again she was afraid it might be Ashleigh — forced her hand. She broke into a run and arrived at the gatepost as the door opened and Faye appeared on the doorstep.

‘Faye! Look out!’ She lunged up the short path as Natalie’s elbow drew back prior to a strike, grabbed at the arm, gripped it, lost it, hurled herself at Natalie and brought both to the ground to one woman’s screams of fury and the other’s of pain and shock. But the scarlet-bladed knife spilled from Natalie’s hand and onto the path and Ashleigh pinned the killer down as the first police car screeched to a halt beside them.

Chapter 26

‘All right,’ Jude said, trying not to scowl at Natalie, knowing that if he gave her solicitor any cause for argument there would be trouble, because this time he wasn’t dealing with Colleen Murphy but with some bumptious young man who was barely out of law school and felt he had something to prove. ‘Can we go through this again? I want to be clear. You are confessing to four murders and one attempted murder.’

Natalie was sitting opposite him at the table in the interview room, bolt upright, and with her hands folded on the table. She didn’t look at him.

He sat watching her, always conscious of the clock which had somehow ticked on past seven. Mikey’s party would be getting under way. He’d had no chance to call and cancel and his phone, when he switched it back on, would bombard him with messages of reproach — from Mikey, from his mother, even from his father who’d once again ended up watching the football with an empty seat beside him and no explanation for his elder son’s no-show that afternoon.

‘Natalie.’ Ashleigh was in coaxing mode now, and he sensed that even in the aftermath of four lost lives, she’d been able to mine some vein of sympathy for a killer. Such sympathy might not be entirely professional, but a sideways look at the solicitor showed he was sufficiently taken aback to accept it at face value. Fine. If Ashleigh wanted to play the good cop, let her. Maybe it would get them out of the place earlier than otherwise. ‘It’s better for everybody if you tell us why you did it.’

The stubborn silence with which Natalie had begun the interview was giving way. In front of their eyes she resolved to tell the truth. ‘I need help.’ Her eyes filled with tears, but she stayed upright and made no attempt to wipe them away. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I did it. Oh God. I can’t believe I killed Claud. But I was so angry. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But he hurt me so much.’