In the Still of the Night

‘I’m sorry. I was so worried about you, I wish I had known – oh, God, Johnny, why didn’t you let me know where you were all those years? Why didn’t you sign your name in the Valentines?’

‘You aren’t supposed to sign Valentines, Annie.’ His tone was gently teasing. He smiled at her quite naturally and she swallowed hard. ‘And it was just as well I didn’t sign them, and always printed the messages, or your mother would never have let you see them. I used to get them posted from outside the prison by a prison officer who was a decent sort.’

‘That must be why my mother let them through, because she never identified them as coming from a prison – and by the time the first one arrived I was getting lots of fan mail, including Valentine’s cards.’ She went on working the whole thing out aloud, frowning. ‘So it was you who broke in here that night and left the rose on my pillow?’

His eyes glowed passionately. ‘You looked so lovely in your bed, I was dying to stay and make love to you, but I was afraid if I woke you up you’d be scared stiff and start screaming. And, anyway, I’d planned to see you again for the first time as a reporter – I needed to know how you felt about me, if you still cared.’

She swayed, white as paper and so cold she couldn’t stop trembling. He looked at her anxiously. ‘You aren’t going to faint, are you? Hang on, I’ll get that tea and the brandy.’

Johnny hurried out and she put her hands over her face. What was she going to do?

A hoarse, muffled sound made her jump. Her hand dropped and she looked in shock across the room at Sean. His eyes were open; he was twisting on the floor, trying to free himself. He jerked his head at her, the signal obvious. He wanted her to untie him. She half rose but then heard Johnny coming back. She sank down again, giving Sean a warning look. Sean had heard Johnny, too. He shut his eyes and lay still again.

Johnny came over to her with the cup of tea and held it to her lips. She drank it eagerly, needing the brandy as much as the heat of the tea. She didn’t normally take sugar in her tea, but her body fiercely needed it now. Johnny put an arm round her and she fought not to show her horror and fear. Deliberately she leaned on him and closed her eyes, felt him softly stroke her hair.

‘Darling Annie, I’d do anything for you, you know,’ he murmured. ‘I love you as much as I loved my mother. You’re very like her. She was delicate and easily hurt, too. I used to get so angry when I heard my father hurting her. That last time I crouched on the landing, crying, feeling so useless because I was too small to hit him the way he was hitting her. She was screaming and begging him to stop, crying, saying, “Please stop … don’t …”

Annie listened, aching with pity and horror.

Johnny’s face was white and fierce with feeling. ‘Then he came out of their bedroom and saw me. He glared at me and said, “What are you looking at you, you little bastard?” He hit me across the face and then he started to go downstairs. I went up behind him and I kicked the back of his legs. He looked round at me.’ Johnny’s voice was strange, hoarse. ‘He looked so surprised … scared … but he couldn’t save himself. He toppled forward, grabbing for the banisters, and fell all the way down, crashing from one wall to the other, screaming. The noise seemed to go on for ever. Then he lay at the bottom, staring up at me, but he never moved again. My mother came out sobbing. She knew at once that I’d done it. She said to me, “Oh, Johnny, what have you done?” She kept crying, she was so scared, and there was blood everywhere. I was scared, but it was easy to lie to the police. After all, I was only six – how could I have killed my father?’

He grinned at her with something close to triumph. She couldn’t take it all in; it was too disturbing, especially after realising he must have killed Roger Keats. Oh, God, who else had he killed? She whispered, ‘Johnny, have you seen the news?’

He frowned impatient over the change of subject. ‘The news? No, why?’

‘Your house … the house … burnt down last night.’

She felt his shock, the stiffening of his body. ‘Burnt down?’

‘I’m so sorry, Johnny. They think the fire started because the wiring was so old.’

‘Was it badly damaged?’ His voice was thick with disbelief.

‘I’m afraid so. It’s a ruin, Johnny. It was insured, though, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know, I never thought … my lawyer might have kept up the insurance, if there was one. I haven’t.’ A silence, then he broke out hoarsely, ‘I never have any good luck. Everything goes wrong, all my life everything has gone wrong. There was only ever you – I suppose I had to pay for getting you, my one wonderful piece of luck.’

He smiled at her with that radiance that always turned her heart over, but she had to tell him the rest.

‘Johnny, there’s something else,’ she whispered. ‘They … they found a body – under the floorboards in the cupboard under the stairs.’

He was very still.

She hurried on, ‘They identified it, Johnny. There was a letter in the lining of the jacket.’

Bitterly, he said, ‘And it survived the fire! You see – luck again. No matter how well you plan, you still get caught out by sheer bad luck. When I killed him I was taking his body to the house to bury it when that copper stopped me. I had the body in the boot of my car. I couldn’t let the nosy bastard find it, could I? I had no choice. I had to knock the copper out – I hit him harder than I meant to, that’s all. Then I drove to the house, but the business with the cop had made me jumpy. I was afraid the guy would remember my number plate, so I had to hurry. I remembered the loose floorboards in the cupboard, so I shoved the body in there and drove away again. I had to lose that car. I’d stolen it, it might have been reported by then, so I headed down west, and sure enough the police picked me up a couple of hours later, and chased me until I crashed.’

She fought not to cry, said in a voice salted with misery, ‘You killed Roger because of what he’d done to me, Johnny, didn’t you? So this is all my fault. If you’d never met me none of it would have happened. You wouldn’t have killed him, or gone to prison. It was all because of me.’

He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head, kissed her on the mouth warmly, softly, then smiled at her.

‘Don’t blame yourself, darling. He was a dirty, rotten bastard. He deserved to die. When I went to see him he was alone, at home. I rang up first, asking for his wife, and he told me she was at the prize-giving at their two daughters’ school. So I knew he would be alone. I worked out my plan there and then. It was all very carefully thought through.’ He sounded so rational and down to earth, as if he was discussing a business project rather than a murder.

‘I didn’t intend to kill him in his own house, of course, that wasn’t part of my plan. I told him I knew what he’d done to you, and I wanted him to come and apologise to you, and he laughed. He was vile, said you’d enjoyed it, you’d wanted it but you’d been angry because he had other girls, so you shopped him to the governors at the school. I lost my temper, I hit him. Too hard, again. It’s always a mistake to lose control. You start making mistakes. I started beating his head in with a poker, I went mad and couldn’t stop – there was blood everywhere, it took me ages to clear it up.’

She felt his hands on her, the hands that had killed Roger Keats and Derek and Mike … and were stroking her so tenderly. She had to fight not to scream. She had to keep calm. He must not guess how she really felt.

‘I didn’t want the body found too soon,’ he said conversationally. ‘I had to hide it, cover my tracks. I’d stolen a car. I backed it into his drive, wrapped him in a plastic sheet, and put him in the boot. It all went smoothly after that – my plan worked well. I should have known it was too good to be true. Sure enough, when I was only ten minutes from the forest I got stopped by this copper. If I hadn’t I’d have gone back later and buried the body in the forest – that’s what I meant to do. But I never got the chance. I can’t think why I forgot to do it once I got out of prison.’