Written In Blood

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Emily was on her bed, reading a book, one eye on the clock on her bedside cabinet so she wouldn't be late putting the potatoes on, when she heard the vehicle pull into the yard outside. Pushing herself up, she craned her head around to look out the window to see who it was; it was too early for it to be her dad or her brother, they were unlikely to get home until just before dinner was ready to be served.

The moment she saw the Land Rover in the yard, she leaped to her feet, pleased that Zack Wild had returned. As pleased as she was, she was also a little nervous. She knew she had caught Zack by surprise earlier, she had caught herself by surprise as well, to such an extent that she had forgotten to grab her bag when she got out of his car, and now she had had enough time to think about what she had done and realise what a fool she had made of herself.

On her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs, Emily imagined the possible reasons for his return: he could be there simply to return her bag, or he could be there to make sure she was not going to tell anyone what had happened between them; he might even be there because he had changed his mind about what he had said earlier.

She hesitated with her hand on the front door catch, a little reluctant to open the door and discover how her next encounter with Zack Wild was going to go. After almost half a minute had passed, she took a deep breath, summoned her courage, and opened the door so she could step out into the yard.

Zack was nowhere to be seen. Emily had thought to find him outside the front door, about to ring the bell, but he wasn't there. She looked around the yard but couldn't see him, which made no sense to her; she couldn't think where he might have gone. She walked to each corner of the house to see if he was there, for some reason, but there was no sign of him. Bewildered, she walked to where the Land Rover had been parked in the middle of the yard.

She wasn't normally the sort of person to go rummaging around in someone's car without permission, it wasn't polite, but on this occasion, she thought it okay since she was after her bag. Her bag wasn't where she had left it, though. It should have been in the foot-well in front of the passenger seat, but the foot-well was empty; she leaned further into the vehicle so she could search under the passenger seat and found a number of items, none of which were her bag.

The desire to find out more about the man who lived down the road, and with whom she had made such a fool of herself, made her take out each item in turn so she could examine it. She discovered little, other than that Zack Wild was messier than she had previously thought, at least initially; the first few items she pulled out were a road map of the county, an empty crisp packet, a couple of chocolate wrappers, and a hammer – she had no idea why he had a hammer under the passenger seat, it seemed a strange thing for him to have there, but it wasn't as strange as the next thing she pulled out, a pink mobile phone.

For several long moments, Emily simply stared at the phone in her hand; the phone was familiar to her, she was sure she had seen it before, but she knew it wasn't Zack's. She couldn't work out where it was she knew the phone from, and that annoyed her, because she was sure it was important; whose phone it was, and where she had seen it before, came back to her in a flash when the voice sounded from behind her.

"What are you doing?" The voice that uttered the question was curious, but evidenced no concern, until she turned around and its owner saw the phone in her hand. "Where did you get that? Give it to me," he demanded, holding out a hand insistently.

In an instant Emily knew who had killed Georgina Ryder and Lucy Goulding, and it was the last person she would have thought capable of murder. So great was her shock, she was left frozen to the spot, unable to react to her discovery except by staring at him, unmoving. Only when he lunged at her, demanding, "Give me that phone, you nosey bitch," did she recover the ability to move.