Tania Carver - The Creeper

She was still looking at him, he could feel it.

‘You look tired.’ She moved next to him. He could feel the warmth from her skin, her bare arm against his jacket. She snaked out a hand. It rested on his. ‘Are you?’

‘Let’s look at the rest of the flat,’ he said, moving away from the window and crossing into the centre of the room. He knew she was still watching him, risked a glance at her.

Fiona Welch’s head was down. She quickly looked up, saw he was looking at her, then cast her eyes downwards once more.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice small once more. ‘I was just… we didn’t get off on the right foot. I was… trying to help.’

Phil looked at her standing against the window, seemingly unaware of the light streaming round her, how it turned her thin summer dress translucent, obscuring her features but heightening her shape; the swell of her hips, her small breasts, the pinch of her waist…

She sighed and moved forward towards him, her walk fluid, flowing. She reached him. He looked at her. She looked at her watch.

‘I’d better have a look around,’ she said, dropping her wrist, her eyes back on him. ‘See if there’s anything that stands out. Anything that’ll help with my report.’ She moved away from him. ‘This is her bedroom, through here, yes?’

‘Yeah, through there…’

She walked away. He watched her go. Wondered what had just happened there. Had she been concerned for him? Trying to build bridges? Or had she started to come on to him? And if she had, would he have responded? She had stirred something within him, even though what he’d seen of her so far he hadn’t taken to. Was it opposites attracting? Or something more? Or, if he was imagining things, less.

Phil sighed, looked at his own watch. Closed his eyes, forced himself to concentrate. The clock was ticking. He could hear it, feel it inside him. There were only two things standing between Suzanne Perry and the same fate that had befallen Julie Miller. Him. And his investigation.

But he could feel the investigation slipping away from him. In giving him Rose Martin and Fiona Welch and forcing him to work with them, Fenwick’s interference in the investigation bordered on sabotage. But Phil was used to his superior officer. Normally he would have been able to work with that, found ways round it. But this time was different.

His head wasn’t in the right place. Marina and Josephina were his world. And they were no longer there. Usually he compartmentalised, kept his work and personal lives separate. But not this time. One was bleeding into the other, making his head pound, his thoughts mix and swirl. He could barely think what to do next.

Fiona Welch emerged from the bedroom.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you lot have been thorough in there. There’s virtually nothing of Julie Miller left.’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘No matter. My report will just have to reflect that. Shall we?’ She walked towards the door.

Phil followed her out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.

Thinking not of Suzanne Perry, but of Marina once more.

Marina knew she shouldn’t have come here. She didn’t know where she should have gone, but it wasn’t here.

Another beautiful day in another park. She had pushed Josephina’s baby buggy down to the play area where she now sat on one of the wooden benches, her hand resting on the handle. She knew the infant was too small to get out and join in – plus she was sleeping – but if she had gone to any other part of the park she would have felt guilty.

Something else to beat herself up over.

She closed her eyes, could still hear the sounds of children playing enthusiastically. Swings, slides, roundabouts. Children never tired of them. Backwards and forwards, in and out, up and down. Dizzy and out of breath, seconds to pause, then back in again. Shouting and laughing. The moment, everything.

Life in miniature. Or life how it should be.

And hers anything but.

She shouldn’t have come here.

Bury St Edmunds, a small, market town in Suffolk. A heritage town of old shop fronts, buildings and churches. Ruined abbeys and castles. And, more recently, an ultramodern steel and glass shopping centre that the locals, predictably, hated.

It should have been the perfect place to escape to, to think, decide. But everywhere Marina went she saw Phil. His ghost, following her around. Here, in the park, he walked between the geometrically laid out flowerbeds. Sat on a ruined abbey wall. Walked over the wooden footbridge and watched the beautifully coloured caged birds trying to escape in the aviary.

Everywhere.

In the hotel room, at the foot of the bed as she slept, when she woke up. In the French restaurant where she had eaten dinner the previous night.

Everywhere.

She had walked past the Georgian theatre but it just reminded her of him again.

It was where they had spent Christmas. Their first together as a couple. She had said to Phil at the time that if she was ever called on to do the Guardian questionnaire and had to answer ‘When and where were you most happy?’ she would have said there and then. There were things between them they couldn’t talk about, shadows cast around them, but they both tried not to let them interfere with their happiness. Thinking, they would deal with that eventually.

But they never had. And because of that she was here now, without him.

But he was with her too.

And he wasn’t the only one.

She sighed, louder than she had intended, as it attracted the attention of some of the nearby mothers. She didn’t look at them, thankful that her sunglasses hid her eyes and the wet sadness in them.

And for all that, she was no nearer making her mind up.

She stood up. The children’s voices were beginning to irritate her, stop her from thinking. From deciding, she told herself. She needed to move, to get away. Find somewhere peaceful, silent. Calm.

Marina turned, walked towards the cathedral. It would be silent in there.

He’s behind you …

Oh no he isn’t …

Oh yes he is. He’s always behind her. Waiting to jump out. Or to creep up, surprise her. And Phil couldn’t help. She was convinced Phil couldn’t help.

They had gone to the pantomime at the Georgian theatre at Christmas, her and Phil. Held hands, laughed and even sang along. Phil had looked around at the other families, placed his hand on her growing stomach, smiling the whole time. They had felt so hopeful, so confident. So filled with the future.

It seemed a long time ago. A world away.

Then at the hotel eating Christmas dinner. Being told by a waiter that was the hotel Angelina Jolie had stayed in when she was filming in the area. Ate nothing but lettuce and boiled chicken, he had said. They had laughed, looked at Marina’s stomach. Said there was no chance of anything like that happening to her.

She walked towards the cathedral gates. Thinking all the time.

Putting off her decision.

Feeling Phil with her the whole time.

Knowing someone else was, too.

Rose Martin hated the library lifts.

They were completely open, continuously in motion and with a gap between the floor of the building and the and with a gap between the floor of the building and the floor of the lift wide enough to see straight down. To get a foot caught in, even.

She took a deep breath and, cursing whoever had invented them and allowed them to be installed, stepped into one.

She had gone looking for Mark Turner. Had tried his department first, flashing her warrant card to a shocked administrator, calming her down by telling her she only wanted to ask Mark Turner a few questions about an old girlfriend of his, nothing to do with the university whatsoever. Then, once he had been located, asking her to keep this visit very hush-hush.