AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In his office at the station, Hal reads an email from his press officer:
A local journalist, Dave Gittins, is getting persistent seeking info about the investigation. I know Jen spoke to him already, and I’ve asked him again to hold off. Not sure how long he’ll be willing to, but he owes me a favour, so fingers crossed.
He replies:
Thanks. Let’s buy as much time as we can.
On the other side of his desk, Jen is sitting and reading Anna Creed’s journal. He’s read it already. Her eyebrows are raised, and he’s not surprised. It’s a hell of a story.
‘Did you get to the end yet?’ he asks.
She doesn’t look up. ‘Almost.’
‘What do you—’
She shushes him. ‘I’m nearly there.’
When Anna Creed handed over her journal, Hal felt irritated. Why couldn’t she tell them what it contained, instead of making them read it? How much time did she think he had? But she left immediately after handing it over, saying she had to get back to the Manor and looking as anxious and browbeaten as when she’d arrived, so he had no choice but to dip in if he wanted to know what was in it.
‘Done,’ Jen says, closing the journal. She hands it back to him.
‘The ending,’ she says.
‘I know. But let’s start at the beginning. What do you think?’
‘It’s shocking in a few ways. And there’s a lot to corroborate.’
She’s not wrong. ‘That’s an understatement,’ he says. ‘Is it the work of a fantasist?’
Jen shakes her head. ‘I don’t know, but I’m leaning towards believing her. We’ve seen this kind of coercive control in so many domestic abuse cases. Olly and Sasha put in just as much time and dedication to controlling Anna as an abusive partner would. The journal lays out in black and white how they became intimately involved in her life and created an emotional dependency on them in order to use her.’
Hal nods. ‘But isn’t it a bit of a stretch to believe they persuaded her to change her name?’
‘People do. Maybe not in domestic cases but there are cults that use similar methods of control, where an integral part of belonging is shedding your original identity and taking on anew one. It can be the culmination of a process of cutting people off from friends and family, from the entire outside world. I see that happening in the journal. When Anna writes about how “supportive”’ – Jen mimes the inverted commas to Hal with her fingers – ‘they are, she’s really describing how they exploited her vulnerability, isolated her and never gave her a chance to get perspective on what was happening to her. Once she’d invited them to move in with her, they notched the manipulation up.’
‘So that she works for them now. Under another name. The name of the former housekeeper.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m worried she’s unreliable,’ he says. ‘When she writes, it seems intelligent, but in person, I’m not so sure.’
‘Believing her is high stakes,’ Jen says. ‘If she’s right—’
He cuts in. ‘Then we’re going to be running two murder investigations.’
She nods. ‘If it’s true, those people are monsters.’
I’m a little bit in love with her, Hal thinks. No, not a little, a lot. But she’s a colleague and she’s too good-looking for me. It’s not worth trying.
‘As I said, I’m leaning towards believing her at this point,’ Jen says.
He reopens Anna’s journal and finds the final paragraph. It’s only about a third of the way through the little notebook. There are plenty of blank pages after it. He rereads Anna’s last entry:
I haven’t seen our housekeeper Kitty since the night we confronted her. When I woke late the next morning, nobody wasin the Manor. The yoga guests had left. I found a note on the kitchen table from Sasha. ‘At the Coach House,’ it said. I walked down there, nervous. The night had been so ugly. I felt as if I had a hangover, even though I hadn’t drunk any alcohol at all.
A lot of the furniture had been pulled out onto the gravel at the front of the Coach House. The curtains had been washed and were drying on the line. I went inside. Sasha was on her hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom floor. The place stank of bleach. The washing machine was turning with Kitty’s bedlinen inside. Cupboard doors were open, the interiors spotless. The other floors were clean and striped with damp.
‘I want every trace of her removed,’ Sasha said, when she saw me.
