It had taken over forty minutes to locate his keys. Barefoot and dressed only in his jeans – hardly ideal clothing for a cold December early morning – and without his mobile phone, Noah had been forced to ask for help from his neighbour.
He had lived next door to Suzie Arnold for the last couple of years, knew she had a soft spot for him that he played on now and again. As she ushered him inside, she hadn’t seemed at all put out that it was not yet five in the morning, insisting on making him tea that was too weak and too milky, and fussing around him while he called Daniella, relieved she had a number he had been able to memorise.
While he waited for his partner to arrive with his spare key, he learnt that Suzie had been curtain twitching, that she thought he could do better than a ‘haughty madam’ like Olivia, and that she had recently ‘dipped her toe’ back into the dating world, registering with a number of online sites.
Noah had declined the offer to see her profile pictures, not liking the way she kept blatantly staring at his chest.
Thankfully Daniella hadn’t kept him waiting and, having endured death stares from Suzie for relieving her from her caretaking duties, she had let Noah back into his house, chuckling to herself about how Suzie must have thought all of her birthdays had come at once when he had knocked on her door.
As Noah went into his office and slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut, she lingered in the doorway.
‘You might as well say it, Dan. I know you are desperate to.’
‘Well.’ She stepped into the room, dropped into his office chair, and swung around to face him. ‘I did warn you this would happen.’
‘I was going to tell her.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because of this… exactly this. Tomorrow is the anniversary. I need to keep her safe. I swear I was going to tell her after.’
‘Well, that’s gone tits up, so what’s your plan now?’
‘I don’t know.’ Noah scrubbed his hands over his face. He had feared this would happen, couldn’t believe he had been stupid enough to leave his keys out. Now Olivia hated him, no longer trusted him, and that gave him zero chance of keeping an eye on her, of making sure she was safe.
Skulking upstairs he finished dressing, then torch in hand he went outside, Daniella hot on his heels, to find his keys.
While he appreciated her bailing him out, he was tired and irritable, and not in the mood for her perkiness and smug ‘told you so’ attitude this early in the morning.
‘You would be best to wait until daylight rather than hunting around in the dark,’ she pointed out from the sidelines as he rooted through an overgrown border.
‘Actually, what would be best is if you could perhaps give me a hand looking for my keys, instead of just standing there dishing out advice.’
‘Ooh, you’re all about using up the favours this morning, aren’t you?’ Although she grumbled, it was good-natured, and she pulled out her phone, using the torch, to help him look. ‘You owe me breakfast after this.’
Noah grunted a non-committal response. Breakfast would have to wait. His only focus was on finding the keys and getting over to Olivia’s to fix the mess he had created.
‘You’re planning on going after her, aren’t you?’
Add ‘mind reader’ to Daniella’s list of annoying talents.
When he didn’t respond, moving on from the border he had been searching in and casting his torch beam further down the garden, she took that as a yes. ‘You need to let her cool down, Noah. There’s no way you’re going to resolve anything while she is still worked up.’
‘There isn’t time to let her cool down.’
‘She won’t talk to you. It’s too soon.’
‘Just keep your nose out, Dan. I can handle it myself.’
‘Of course. Because you’re doing a great job of handling things so far.’
Noah ignored her sarcastic comment and they worked in silence for a while as he brooded over what had happened and tried to figure out how the hell he was going to resolve everything.
His brooding was eventually interrupted as Daniella triumphantly snatched up the keys. ‘Now you definitely owe me breakfast.’
When he went to grab them from her, she held them out of his reach. ‘Promise me, Noah, you’re not going to drive over there. You need to leave things, let her simmer.’
‘Give me the keys, Dan.’
‘Look, at least give her a few hours. I know you’re worried about her, but she’ll be going to work in a couple of hours. While she’s there she’s safe and she will also have time to process what happened. Go meet her after she has finished. Hopefully she might have calmed down a bit and be ready to listen to what you have to say.’
It annoyed him that she was right. Olivia hadn’t been interested in listening to him as she was running out of the house. He needed to wait until she had blown off some steam.
Grudgingly he agreed to Daniella’s suggestion. ‘Okay. I’m not cooking you breakfast though.’
‘Hell no. You need to thank me, not punish me. I’ll put the kettle on while you go clean up, then you’re taking me out to eat.’
She had done it to make sure he kept his word, sticking with him (and annoying the hell out of him in the process) until he had calmed down, aware that if she turned her back on him, he would probably go straight to Olivia. She had been right to do so.
He bought her breakfast, knew he owed her, and over two plates of full English she rationalised with him, helped him come up with a practical approach to win Olivia back, then went over the details he had learnt from Fern, their former colleagues in the police, and trusty Google.
‘Fern St Clair is key to this. She was the ringleader and whoever is doing this knows that. That’s why she is being left till last.’
‘Along with Liv,’ Noah pointed out, sipping at his second cup of coffee, the caffeine finally kicking in and helping him feel more alert. ‘That’s the bit that still doesn’t make sense. She was Margaret’s friend, so why is she being targeted?’
‘That’s what we need to figure out. It would help if we could talk to Janice’s friend, the one who messaged her about the Zumba night, find out what happened.’
‘Good luck with that. No one can find her.’
‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Gretchen Self.’
Daniella was silent for a moment and Noah could see her mind buzzing.
‘You said that Fern had a case packed, that she was planning on leaving.’
‘What about it?’
‘Did she say when?’
‘Imminently, I guess. Why?’
Daniella nodded. ‘I think we need to speak with her again. Let’s see if we can catch her before she leaves.’
Olivia had tried her best to be quiet when she arrived home, creeping into the house and softly closing the door, but she had still managed to wake Molly. Her lodger had appeared at the top of the stairs in her pyjamas, her sleep-heavy eyes quickly widening when she realised things were wrong.
‘Livvy, it’s the middle of the night. What’s going on?’
Olivia had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, knew Noah didn’t deserve her tears, but the anger and the harsh realisation of what he had done to her, made it impossible to hold them back.
She wished she had punched him before she had left wanting him to hurt as much as she was hurting now and cursing herself for being foolish enough to fall for all of his lies.
‘Livvy, what the hell is wrong?’ Molly had rushed down the stairs, quick to console, their earlier fight forgotten as the truth had come spilling out.
‘He was investigating you?’ She sounded horrified. ‘I thought he ran a security business?’
‘So did I. Apparently that is just part of what he does.’ Olivia’s tone was sarcastic, anger rising again as she recalled seeing the stack of business cards in his office, the words ‘Private Investigator’ clearly typed under his name.
‘But why you? Have you done something that I don’t know about? Who would be hiring him?’
‘Someone called Adam Somerville. His name was on the Post-it note and in the file.’
‘Adam Somerville?’ Molly repeated slowly. ‘Do you know who he is and why he would be wanting you investigated?’
‘No.’
Olivia was kicking herself. She should have brought that file home with her. She had only read the first few pages, enough to see all the notes Noah was keeping on her, the photographs he had taken as he followed her. Then the red mist had taken over, fuelling her rage. When she had taken the file upstairs to confront him, she hadn’t planned on throwing it at him. If she still had it, it may have offered more clues as to why Adam Somerville had hired him. Certainly, it would have given her the man’s contact details. At the very least she should have jotted down his mobile number.
She was such an idiot, acting without clearly thinking things through. She could see Molly’s mind working overtime. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Those cameras he fitted. He couldn’t wait for an excuse to install them. Do you think he has been watching you, us?’
Olivia hadn’t thought about that, but Molly was right. If Noah had been following her, taking photos, he had almost certainly put the cameras up to keep tabs on her. She had believed he had done it to protect her, to keep her safe, but no, the truth of his betrayal was becoming worse by the second.
Backhanding away tears she got up from the sofa and went through to the kitchen, Molly close behind. ‘Livvy, what are you doing?’
Holding the hammer from her toolbox, she unlocked the back door and stepped outside so she was facing the camera positioned over the door. ‘Are you watching me now, you bastard?’ She raised the hammer and smashed it into the lens repeatedly.
‘I think it’s dead,’ Molly commented dryly after Olivia had hit it half a dozen times.
Olivia stepped back, let out a breath that was shaky with anger, and went to the front of the house, Molly following and watching as she repeated the process on the camera above the front door.
‘Do you feel better for that?’
‘I do.’
There was no way she could sleep, so instead Molly sat with her until daylight finally broke, agreeing with her during the moments of rage and offering words of comfort when the fresh tears came.
Noah didn’t expect to find Fern home, assumed after their talk yesterday she would be long gone, so he was surprised to see her car in the drive.
When she didn’t answer Daniella’s persistent knocking at the front door, they made their way round the back. Alarm bells went off when they spotted the open patio door and the food spilling from a plastic bag across the kitchen floor.
Noah glanced at Daniella, before using the arm of his jacket to ease the door open, stepping inside. ‘Fern?’
He waited a beat, walking further into the house when he was met with silence. He urged Daniella to follow. They found Fern’s suitcase in the hallway, her bag beside it and her mobile phone on the side table. Her keys were in the front door.
‘We need to alert the police.’
Noah nodded in agreement. ‘I’ll make a call from the car. Tell them I spoke to her and think she’s a flight risk.’
He picked up Fern’s mobile, saw a message on the screen. It was from someone called Meg.
Have a safe trip.
He swiped the screen, but a lock code came up. Knowing he didn’t have time to break it, he wiped the phone clean of prints and set it back down on the table.
A quick check round the rest of the house established that Fern definitely wasn’t there, and they made their way back to the car.
‘You think he has her?’
Noah glanced at Daniella as she started the engine. ‘Yeah, I do.’
And he didn’t like that one bit. If the killer now had Fern, Olivia would be the next target.
It had taken a huge effort for Olivia to drag herself into work.
She was exhausted, her eyes were stinging and the thought of spending the day with Roger, Jeremy and Esther filled her with dread, but she had already had too much time off recently. Besides, work would help take her mind off Noah. He hadn’t called, messaged or shown up banging on the door. Of course he had been locked out of the house and Olivia had no idea how long it had taken him to get back inside, but she had expected to hear something by the time she left for work. But there was nothing. No apology, no attempt to argue his case.
In the harsh light of the morning she understood that there would be no contact because the feelings hadn’t been real. She had just been a job to him.
Touching up her make-up in the car, trying her best to disguise her red-rimmed eyes, she gave herself a pep talk. She was stronger than she realised. Toby’s betrayal hadn’t floored her and neither would Noah’s. She would put on her big girl pants, go into work, and be professional, not let on to her colleagues that anything was wrong.
Aside from Jeremy, who gave her a few sly glances, no one seemed to suspect anything was wrong. Olivia kept her head down, initially throwing herself into her work, though as the morning wore on, lack of sleep caught up with her and she found it tough to keep her focus.
Her phone was on silent, hidden out of sight beneath her monitor stand. She couldn’t help herself checking it every so often. She was not sure if she was relieved or disappointed that Noah hadn’t tried to make contact.
She really hadn’t mattered to him at all.
Even though it had all been a lie, the finality of it hit her hard.
Knowing she couldn’t concentrate on work, she decided to Google Adam Somerville. Who was he, and why the hell had he hired Noah to look into her?
There were a handful of people with that name, none of them local to Norfolk, and only three she could find who were based in the UK. She read up as much as she could on each of them, looking at websites and social media. One Adam was based in Wales, another in Yorkshire, while the third was down in Oxfordshire. It was while looking on Facebook at the third Adam and scrolling through his mutual friends that she made the connection.
Adam Somerville was friends with Kelly Dearborn. She recognised the name, realised it was the same Kelly she had met at Black Dog Farm all those years ago.
She clicked on Kelly’s profile, recognised her immediately. Adult Kelly didn’t look much different to child Kelly, with her dark hair and long, narrow nose.
It was after studying her picture that she spotted ‘Remembering’ above Kelly’s name. Shock reverberated through her as she realised it was a memorial page.
Scrolling through comments under photos that people had shared, she soon learnt that Kelly had died eighteen months ago. She had been killed in a house fire.
For a moment Olivia couldn’t breathe.
‘Are you okay?’ Esther had her glasses lowered, was looking across the room at her with a mix of suspicion and concern. Her question had Jeremy and Roger raising their heads too.
Olivia quickly minimised the Facebook page, managing a smile. ‘Just a dizzy spell. I’ll be fine.’
She gulped at the glass of water on her desk, grateful when they all turned back to their work. Then she discreetly slipped her phone in her jacket pocket and got up to go to the loo.
Once locked in the cubicle, she pulled out her phone, clicked back on to Adam Somerville’s Facebook page and flicked through his photographs. Had he been involved with Kelly?
There were pictures of him with a woman, but it wasn’t Kelly. She looked familiar though and the tag was of a Rachel Colton.
The tag was inactive though, didn’t link through to a profile.
Olivia scrolled through the photo comments.
‘Thinking of you.’
‘Call us if you need anything.’
Was Rachel Colton Rachel Williams? Why would Rachel’s boyfriend have hired Noah to look into her?
She googled ‘Rachel Colton’, already having a bad feeling about this.
The top stories that appeared, confirmed her suspicions.
Rachel Colton had been killed in a freak accident after her car caught fire.
This was bad. Kelly, Rachel, Gary and Howard were all dead, and Janice was in the hospital.
Noah had to have known about Rachel and about Kelly, yet he had played along, pretending he was helping Olivia figure it all out.
Did he know who was threatening her? Or why she was being targeted?
A sharp knock on the toilet door made her jump. The phone almost slipped from her grasp.
‘Olivia?’ It was Esther. ‘Roger wants to know if you’re okay. You’ve been in here awhile.’
‘I’m fine.’
She slipped her phone back into her pocket, made a show of flushing the chain. Somehow she was going to have to get through this afternoon, then once she was home she would see what else she could find out about Rachel Colton and Adam Somerville.
Tempting as it was to go straight to Olivia’s workplace and insist on taking her somewhere safe, Noah knew it would only cause a scene, would likely get her in trouble with her boss, and probably earn him a punch in the face.
Daniella was right. It was too soon after their fight and Olivia would still be reeling from the revelation that he had lied to her.
Instead he drove home, following up on a couple of leads for the job they were currently working on. Then his intention was to be waiting outside Olivia’s office when she left work.
She wouldn’t like it, but he would come clean about everything and make her hear him out. It was the only way he knew he could keep her safe.
With a couple of hours still to kill before he needed to leave, he returned to her case and the list of the victims, and went over everything he knew about them.
Kelly Dearborn had been the first to die, in a house fire eighteen months ago. She had lived alone, had a drink problem, and from the few family and friends Noah had spoken to, she was very much a loner, spending a lot of time in therapy for anxiety and depression.
The fire was supposedly an accident.
Noah had tried to track down the two doctors who had treated Kelly. Doctor Phillips had been the first and she had been his patient for a number of years before he was taken ill, eventually passing away. She was then referred to Doctor Miller, who was currently on gardening leave. Not that it really mattered. Patient confidentiality meant he would never learn why Kelly had been seeing a therapist.
The last person to see her alive had been her brother, James. He had visited her at home and expressed concern about her drinking. They had fought and Kelly had kicked him out.
The next to die had been Rachel Colton, six weeks after Kelly. Again, the fire that killed her had been ruled an accident. The last person to see Rachel had been her fiancé, Adam Somerville. She had left his to go home where she was planning on meeting a woman, Peggy Wick, who was purchasing some items Rachel had been selling through a Facebook group. A freak accident with her car had caused it to explode on her driveway. It was unclear if the buyer had ever shown up.
Then there was a sixteen-month break before Gary Lamb had died. It was unclear who had been the last person to see him. There were rumours he had a date the night before his death with his girlfriend, Rita Works.
Howard Peck was supposed to be on a break with his girlfriend, Daisy Angel. The last person to see him alive had been the receptionist, Grant Savage, who had checked him in and given him the keys to the cabin.
Then Janice had been lured to her local community centre, supposedly by her friend, Gretchen Self, while Fern had vanished, her last known contact with anyone had been a WhatsApp exchange with someone called Meg.
Noah went on to Fern’s Facebook page and looked through her friends. A Meg Gentile was the only Meg or Megan showing. He jotted the name down. Studied the list, rearranged it.
Realisation dawned.
Never did he think a childhood growing up in a strict religious home would pay off.
He ran a Google search to confirm his suspicions and the first clue finally fell into place.
Turning his attention to the Grimes family, he again ran searches on Malcolm and Alice, coming up empty, before turning to Gerald and Marie Grimes.
Gerald had been an only child, but Marie had two sisters. He ran searches on them both.
There was little information on the older sister, but Christine Hargreaves, the youngest, was active on Facebook. Her friends list was set to private, but several of her photographs could be viewed.
He scrolled through them, quickly tiring of the endless selfies. Christine in the garden, Christine out with friends, Christine eating dinner.
He almost didn’t persevere, would have clicked off her profile if he didn’t have time to waste, still needing a distraction from Olivia.
It was a photo posted in 2009 that stopped him in his tracks, one of several that Christine had posted when she had first joined Facebook, so Noah estimated it had been taken a couple of years earlier. It was Christine’s wedding to her third husband and there was a shot of her posing with a man he recognised to be Gerald Grimes. There were three other people in the photo; a woman and two teenagers. Marie, Alice and Malcolm Grimes. It had to be.
He studied the photo, almost did a double take, saved it to his desktop and zoomed in close.
It couldn’t be.
Heart in mouth, he closed his MacBook and grabbed his car keys.
