My Mother, The Liar: A chilling crime thriller to read with the lights on

God, she hoped she didn’t end up looking like Rachel Porter by the time she was forty: no make-up, shapeless clothes, and hair that hadn’t seen the good edge of a pair of scissors for God knows how long. It was a nice colour though – brown, the shade of conkers. Those split ends needed to go, she thought, absently running a hand through her own straightened and highlighted hair. She might get the shit jobs, but at least she could look smart while she did them.

Rachel was skinny, as if she hadn’t had a decent meal in years, which always made women look haggard and drawn in Angie’s opinion. This observation made her feel better about her own propensity to gain weight by merely thinking about food. It might at least save her from looking a wreck in years to come. Christ, that was a shallow thought – she was on a case and thinking about the size of her arse in comparison to another woman’s. She straightened up and tried to look professional.

She supposed that she ought to try to get Rachel talking, but considering that Ratcliffe would be in here any minute, there didn’t seem a lot of point. Might as well leave it to the boss to sort out. It was hardly as if she was going to crack the case in five minutes flat. Besides, looking at the state of Rachel Porter, the only thing she looked like she was capable of murdering was a good meal.

As if on cue, DS Ratcliffe strode into the kitchen and sat down on a kitchen chair. Angie pretended not to notice his blush as the chair groaned under his weight. He was well built, her boss. He smiled at Rachel and introduced himself. ‘Miss Porter, I’m Detective Sergeant Mike Ratcliffe. Would you like a fresh one of those?’ He looked hopefully at Angie whilst nodding towards the kettle.

Rachel shook her head. ‘It’s gone cold.’

‘I know. Would you like another?’ To his obvious disappointment, she shook her head again. He sighed as Angie set the kettle down and shot him a smug look. ‘Your sister should be fine. We’ve contacted her husband and he’ll meet her at the hospital. I’m sorry you weren’t able to go with her, but we do need you to answer some questions.’

Rachel nodded at him then turned her gaze back to her tea. If Angie didn’t know better, she’d have sworn the woman was stoned.

‘Do you know how we can contact your other sister, Stella?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘She’s gone. She should be here; Stella’s always been here.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘October nineteenth 1996.’

‘That’s both very precise and a very long time ago. I’m told that your mother recently died. Did you see your sister at the funeral?’

‘No, I haven’t seen either of them since ’96. I didn’t go to the funeral.’

‘Why not?’

Rachel showed surprise at the boldness of his question. ‘We had a row; I was excommunicated from the family. It happens. I don’t even know what I’m doing here now to be honest. I should have stuck to my guns and stayed away.’

‘Why are you here now?’ Ratcliffe asked. Angie thought it odd and a little mercenary to ignore the funeral but turn up to pick over the family bones. It was more than obvious they’d been clearing the house. Maybe this would turn out to be more interesting than she’d first thought.

‘Frances asked me to help sort out the house. I wanted to see it again, see if it was as awful as I remembered.’ She paused and looked around. ‘It is.’

Angie had to agree with that. The house was oppressive and gloomy, not exactly a place anyone would want to call home.

Ratcliffe wanted to know why they had all fallen out.

‘Money. Always money isn’t it? My aunt died – she left me her flat and some money. My mother and Frances thought I should share and share alike. I didn’t want to, so we fell out.’

Her answer had been too trite, too neat for Angie’s liking. She hoped her boss would pursue it. ‘What about Stella? What did she think?’ Ratcliffe asked.

‘I can’t recall her being given the chance to say what she thought,’ Rachel replied. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with the fact that dead bodies seem to be popping up all over the place?’

Ratcliffe leaned back in the chair. Angie heard it moan again as the weak joints adjusted to the shift in weight. She could see him thinking and wondered if he shared her thoughts. Her guess would be that Rachel had been a kid when someone had murdered an adult and a baby, covered them in sand, and hidden them away. Still, that didn’t quite explain Rachel’s flippant and detached response to the situation. ‘Yes, about that,’ Ratcliffe said, tapping the table with the tips of his fingers. ‘The bodies. Do you know who they are?’

Rachel wasn’t looking too good; her face was ashen and a slick of sweat was making her forehead shine like oiled alabaster. Angie watched with mounting concern as the frail woman put her head in her hands and said, ‘I don’t know,’ in a voice that was almost slurring. It looked as if she was physically trying to swallow down the distress and confusion of what was happening. Angie had never seen someone turn so grey so quickly. Without warning, Rachel’s eyes rolled back and she slid off the chair onto the floor where she began to jerk and twitch like a thing possessed.

No one had been expecting that.

‘Get Ferris in here now!’ Ratcliffe yelled. A sound that sent Angie scurrying for the door.

Angie knew Julia Ferris as a woman more accustomed to dealing with dead bodies than live ones at that stage of her medical career, but she was still a doctor and immediately recognised that Rachel was having an epileptic seizure.

‘She’s having a seizure,’ she said with her usual cool detachment. ‘Given that she’s wearing a MedicAlert bracelet, I suspect she suffers from epilepsy.’

‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ Angie asked, worried that they’d be sued for negligence if Rachel was injured. They already had one damaged Porter sister on their hands.

‘Other than move that chair so she doesn’t smash her face on it, no. She’ll be out of it in a minute or two. Just let her settle and give her some water. She’ll probably be a bit sleepy too, so let her rest if she needs to. You can check with her whether she carries medication and has taken any today. Now, does anybody mind if I get back to the dead guys now?’ Ferris said peevishly. Angie knew she would have to get garbed up in another paper suit to go back to the crime scenes, and she’d have been pissed off too in Ferris’s shoes.

Angie was a little shocked by the doctor’s nonchalance but Ratcliffe just appeared relieved that Rachel wasn’t having a stroke or a heart attack. So far, they had two dead bodies, one witness in hospital, a potential suspect (who was fuck knows where), and a second witness who was writhing on the floor like a demented snake.

Just as Angie’s anxiety was beginning to rise again, the rigors torturing Rachel’s thin body started to lessen and slowly she stopped jerking and grew progressively limp. ‘Get her some water will you?’ Ratcliffe asked as he bent down to help Rachel sit up. ‘You had me worried for a minute or two,’ he said, helping her into a sitting position. Angie watched as Rachel fought to compose herself, shame spreading across her features in the same way that urine had spread across her trousers during the fit. Angie couldn’t help but feel for the woman.

Rachel took the water and drank it down quickly. ‘Sorry, that one seemed to come out of nowhere,’ she said. ‘Haven’t had a fit in ages.’

‘Are you OK? Do you need anything? Can I get your medication?’ Angie asked, her heart rate only just beginning to settle back to its normal pace after the drama. She passed Rachel the blanket that had slipped off when she fell, hoping to at least help her preserve some dignity in front of Ratcliffe. She might have encouraged the poor woman to go and change, but the house was practically empty and it was clear there weren’t any clean clothes lying around. Angie watched as Rachel wrapped the blanket around herself.

‘More water please – took my dose this morning,’ she said, still looking disorientated. Having drunk the second glass straight down, she explained that she suffered from epilepsy and had since she was a child. Though usually well controlled, the fits could be brought on by stress. ‘I think you would agree that my day has been stressful,’ she said to them both with a feeble laugh.

‘Just a bit. Look, if you need to take a break we can pick this up later,’ Ratcliffe said, genuine concern showing on his face.

‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘I want to get this over with as soon as possible and get back to my room please.’

Ratcliffe looked as doubtful about that as Angie felt, but decided to press on. He helped Rachel back onto the chair and motioned to Angie to put the kettle on. ‘When your sister saw what was in the trunk in the shed, she called out before she fell. The young man out there said that she called out the name “Roy”. Does that mean anything to you?’

Kettle in hand, Angie watched as Rachel blinked at him for a moment whilst she absorbed his words.

‘Roy? Roy was Stella’s husband. Are you saying that’s him in the shed?’ she asked, screwing her eyes up in an attitude of dazed disbelief. ‘Roy walked out on Stella thirty years ago, just upped and left, said he was going out to buy cigarettes and never came back. It can’t be him.’ She screwed her face up in what might be disbelief. With the state of her it was hard to tell. ‘I’m sorry, but I think I’m having another one,’ she mumbled before she went down again.

***

It was no good. By the time Rachel came out of the second fit, she was so exhausted they would have been hard pressed to get her name out of her in any sensible form. The only reasonable thing they could do was get someone to drive her to the hotel she was staying at and call it a day.

The only useful information they’d gained from the whole interview was gleaned from Rachel’s parting words as she walked wearily out of the door. ‘By the way, if the body in the shed has a gold tooth, a canine, then it is Roy.’

***

Julia Ferris was in the yard discussing the logistics of moving the trunk complete with sand and body with the Crime Scene guys when Ratcliffe and Angie approached her. ‘Does our victim have a gold tooth?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, a canine – why?’

‘’Cos I think I know who he is, and given that his wife is missing, I think I can make a conservative guess at who killed him. The deceased may well be one Roy Baxter, husband of the eldest Porter girl.’

‘Stella,’ Angie added for clarity.

Ferris frowned. ‘Doesn’t mean she killed him, if it is him, which I admit is likely but we don’t actually know yet. What about the baby? Any ideas?’

‘Not a clue, yet. Anyway, what’s with the sand? I don’t get it.’

Ferris stripped off the latex gloves she had been wearing and wiped a powdery hand across her forehead. ‘Whoever did this to them attempted a rudimentary form of mummification by the looks of it. It’s sharp sand, the kind builders use, so it contains salt. Salt absorbs the moisture that bodies release as they decompose. It’s also a good preservative. Whoever did this didn’t do a bad job – the bodies are in pretty good nick.’

Angie suppressed a shudder. ‘But why mummify them? Why not just dig a hole and bury them?’

Ferris shrugged. ‘Could be anything: keeping them as trophies à la serial killer maybe, or couldn’t be bothered to dig the hole. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to tip sand in a box than it is to dig a grave deep enough to bury a body without risking being seen – or the body being dug up by a curious dog or an overenthusiastic gardener. Dunno – you tell me? There’s one thing: mummified bodies don’t smell so bad. It’s why they don’t decay. They don’t attract flies and bugs and so don’t betray their presence so easily.’

Ratcliffe nodded thoughtfully. ‘Gruesome though, implies a lot of thought. How long do you think they’ve been there?’

‘I’m not sure, but a fair few years. When did your Baxter guy disappear?’

‘Quite a long time ago, we think,’ Angie said. Hopefully the sisters would help them pinpoint the exact time period, and she and Ratcliffe might be able to corroborate it by finding other witnesses. Unfortunately, what the sisters hadn’t helped with was the preservation of the crime scene and potential evidence. Anything that might have offered clues to what had happened had more than likely been burned or was now languishing somewhere on ten acres of landfill site.

The clearance guy, Sid, had been more than happy to tell them of Frances’s enthusiasm in disposing of her family’s belongings. Information that told Angie that Frances wasn’t going to be an easy woman to deal with.

So far, all they had managed to salvage were a few boxes of Stella’s possessions, some kids’ books, an old and seriously ugly wardrobe, and some bags of rubbish. With so little to go on, Angie suspected they weren’t going to find out anything worth knowing any time soon.

Chapter 3

At half past four in the afternoon when Rachel finally reached her hotel room, she could barely keep her eyes open and flopped, fully dressed, onto the bed. The next time she looked at the clock it was ten past eight. It wasn’t until she opened the heavy curtains that she realised she was looking out of the window onto the beginnings of a bright new day rather than on the quiet twilight she had been expecting.

There were two things she liked most about hotels: the anonymity that was afforded by them and the oodles of hot water that allowed a bath to be drawn in minutes. In the rare moments when she felt as though she might like to rejoin humanity, she would just book a room for the night and pretend she was a tourist. On a whim, she’d walk into a random hotel in London, get a room, and spend the time there watching TV, ordering room service, and having baths. For a night or two she could make believe that she wasn’t lonely, that she had purpose, that she had a life.

It wasn’t that Lila’s flat didn’t have a bath – it did, a huge, deep, claw-footed cast-iron thing that emptied the tank at five inches and chilled the water within seconds. Maintaining personal hygiene at the flat was a puritanical experience, akin to self-flagellation with cold water and rough towels. Having the option of a proper soak in hot water was more than a small pleasure. With this in her mind she opened the taps in the beautifully modern bathroom, perched herself on the edge of her rented bath, and watched the steam rise with comforting anticipation.

The epileptic fits of the day before had been an unpleasant surprise; it had been a long time since she’d had to face the humiliation of having a seizure in public, even longer since she’d experienced one so bad that she’d wet herself. The medication she took daily had kept them in check for years, and if she had one at all, it was when her defences were down and she allowed dark thoughts to run riot. More often than not, the fits were transient partial seizures, which to anyone else would look like daydreaming or drunkenness. A full-blown fit was so rare she could remember the exact day the last one had happened, but she didn’t want to think about it.

Dwelling on that period of her life was something she actively avoided, doing anything she could to distract herself. Coming back had brought some things way too close for comfort already, but questioning herself about why she had come in the first place was pointless. It didn’t matter; she was where she was. What did matter was how soon she could get away.

Soaking in the bath, she chose not to think about anything other than coffee and food. Fits made her hungry, and she needed caffeine before the headache that had begun to niggle at her turned into a full-blown howler. She bathed quickly and only half dried her hair before she dressed and went out of the door in search of breakfast.

As she wandered up Westgate Street, towards the cathedral and to the only café she could remember, she thought of Stella and wondered where she had gone, and why. Perhaps Frances had finally managed to drive her out. As an accomplished escape artist herself, Rachel didn’t question why her sister had disappeared. Anyone who had known their family would have been able to answer that.

However, she was utterly puzzled as to where Stella might have gone. To the best of Rachel’s knowledge, Stella had spent the last nineteen years looking after Valerie. She didn’t have friends or a social life, or a bolthole like the flat. She was hardly the type to reinvent herself in the way that Frances had. Besides, she was the quiet type – timid, nervy, and not the sort of person who could disappear easily. She was probably avoiding Frances, a motivation that Rachel could entirely understand.

Once inside Café Milano, she immediately experienced a rush of nostalgia. The place had hardly changed since the days when she and Stella had lingered over their milkshake and coffee, pretending for an hour or so that they didn’t have to go home. She took a breath, filling her lungs with the scent of vanilla and fresh-ground beans, smiling as she recalled that she had discovered Italian coffee in this place, long before the big chains had flooded the world with their skinny lattes and pretentious chai.

There was a seat at the back, half hidden behind a bamboo screen, a perfect place to people-watch without being seen herself. She ordered coffee and a bacon roll, then sat back and looked around at the other customers, soaking in the normality of them and hoping it would rub off a little. Then she saw him, a tall man striding across the room. The way he moved was painfully, heart-stoppingly familiar and the recognition sent a cold shard of fear slicing through her gut. He was heading straight for her and her only escape was the bad wiring in her brain and the way it could opt out of trouble whenever it saw fit.

***

He was sure this time. He had caught glimpses before, the turn of a head, or the sound of laughter so painfully familiar that it induced a sensation of time grinding to a standstill. His heart flip-flopped and fluttered pointlessly like a moth battering at a light bulb. So many times over the years he’d found that it wasn’t her after all. Just some woman who thought he was a weirdo freak.

Now he was holding up the queue at the cashpoint as he stared at the café door, one hundred per cent sure that Rachel had just walked through it.

‘You asking to be mugged?’ a woman said aggressively, pushing in front of him so that she could get to the machine.

Charlie had been so rapt by the realisation that Rachel was back that he’d forgotten that he was standing in the middle of town with a hundred pounds in crisp twenties just sitting in his hand, looking ripe for the picking.

‘Arsehole!’ the woman hissed as he moved away, hastily pushing the money into his pocket ready to launch himself across the road.

He got as far as the café door before chickening out and turning towards the newsagent’s instead. If he were going to go in and confront her, he needed to gather his thoughts. He would buy a paper, something to hide behind when he pretended that his being there was just an accident.

A lot was at stake. If he had any sense he would walk away and make himself believe that he hadn’t seen her at all. He would pretend it was the same as all the other times he’d felt a faint glimmer of hope, only to see it fade and die as soon as he’d called her name and been given an odd look by a complete stranger. As his mother would say, only one good thing had ever come from dealing with the Porter family and that was Amy. Everything else that touched them always turned to shit.

However, he’d been waiting a long time for this moment, and he was going to have his say now.

The woman in the shop wanted to chat and he just wasn’t in the mood.

‘Comes to something doesn’t it?’ she said with a cynical shake of her head.

Charlie hated random statements. ‘Pardon?’

‘In the paper. Bodies. Here, right on our doorstep and the woman who did it has gone missing. Not that they’re saying that, but it’s obvious isn’t it? If she’s done a runner, she must have done it. Doesn’t bear thinking about,’ she said, shuddering as she handed him his change.

He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but accepted his change with a tolerant smile and glanced down at the paper. His eyes were immediately drawn to the left-hand column on the front page. The names stood out like two nuns in a brothel. Porter and Baxter. He scanned the article, and exhaled slowly.

No wonder she was back.

***

Rachel knew that he had come in looking for her. His movements were too purposeful for this to be a coincidence. She ought to have known that this would happen, but had stupidly hoped that she could avoid it. If the police hadn’t insisted that she stick around she would have been back in London by now, instead of sitting around and wondering why fate was such a relentless bastard.

Of course Charlie had aged; they both had. She just looked old, but on him greying hair and lines around the eyes had enhanced the air of artless charm he’d always been blessed with. She watched helplessly as he ploughed an inexorable path through the crowded café towards her table.

Had there been a back door, she would have bolted, but she was trapped. Stomach pitching and rolling, she could do nothing but wait for the moment she had been dreading for nineteen years.

He had spotted her easily; she was only half-hidden behind the bamboo screen and he was moving towards he like a guided missile. Pushing past the other customers, he made his way to her table and slapped a newspaper down in front of her. ‘I didn’t think anything would bring you back, until I read this. It’s been a long time, Rachel,’ he said, his voice rank with bitterness.

She forced herself to look down at the paper, the sea of words blurring underneath the stark headline – Two Dead in Local House of Horror.

Until that point she had almost convinced herself that the events of the previous day had been a surreal nightmare, the kind that lurked and clung long after waking. The kind that left an unpleasant taint that was impossible to ignore. Every word of the headline sent a slug of reality into her brain. Each time a blurred sentence unravelled itself and landed in her grey matter, her senses began to fizz and pop like a damp firework, until the whole thing short-circuited and she felt herself going down.

***

The whole café held its breath as Rachel hit the floor. Even the hiss of the coffee machine halted for a second or two. As she’d fallen she’d taken the tablecloth with her, dragging everything with it and sending a mesmerising cascade of sugar skittering across the floor like a million microscopic diamonds, which were swiftly crushed under Charlie’s feet as he rushed to move furniture out of the way. Someone shrieked as Rachel’s body began to twitch and jerk, and almost everyone panicked as Charlie dropped to the floor and started to yank at Rachel’s neck in an attempt to loosen her scarf.

‘Oh my God!’ the waitress yelled, trying to pull him off.

Charlie shouted, and shrugged her off. ‘Get off me, you silly cow, and move the bloody tables out of the way. She’s having a fit!’ All his old, familiar instincts had kicked in as soon as he’d seen the warning in Rachel’s eyes before they had glazed over and rolled back into her head like a couple of milk-white marbles.

Adrenaline surged through his body as he struggled to loosen her scarf while trying to ignore the chattering voyeurs. The waitress was twittering on about calling an ambulance, but he told her no, even though she shrieked again as blood began to dribble from Rachel’s contorted mouth. ‘She’s bitten herself – it’s nothing. She’ll be fine in a minute. Just give her some space will you, and tell those bloody people to stop gawping,’ he shouted.

‘Are you a doctor then?’ the terrified girl asked, only to have her question completely ignored.

Rachel’s body began to relax and Charlie found himself trembling with relief. He hadn’t had to deal with one of her seizures in a long, long time. He sat back, stretched out his legs, and pulled her limp, exhausted body into his lap, propping her head against his chest, and stroking the damp hair away from her pallid face. He wasn’t sure which one of them was more traumatised. ‘Can you get her some water please?’ he asked the shocked waitress.