Destroy Me by Karen Cole (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

curl up on my bed, finally giving in to tears. I cry like I haven’t cried in years – big sobs that shake my body and leave me breathless. I cry until I’m all cried out and then I sit up and wipe my eyes, fetch some toilet paper from the bathroom and blow my nose. I feel as if I’m under siege. It’s so unfair. What did I do to deserve this?

This isn’t going to stop until the police find the real killer. But when will that be? I could be waiting for ever. They’ve made no progress as far as I can tell and they are wasting their time interviewing people like Gaby, Luke and me.

Staring in the mirror at my red, swollen eyes, I experience a sudden clarity. I can’t afford to wallow in self-pity and wait for Littlewood to ride in on her white charger and rescue me. If I want this to go away, I’m going to have to do something about it myself. I need to find out who gave the police the photofit and who murdered Charlie for myself.

I ignore the discouraging voice inside my head that says, Who are you kidding? What makes you think you would find anything the police have missed? But I have something the police don’t have, and that’s motivation. Clearing my name; it doesn’t get much more motivating that that. Where should I start though? I brush my teeth, get undressed and climb into bed, thinking all the time. Of course, the answer is obvious. There’s really only one place.

Twelve

It’s Friday – a week since Charlie was murdered and I am standing on the pavement in front of her house. From the outside Cecily House hasn’t changed much since I was last here. It’s is a large, elegant Georgian building perched at the top of the hill on the edge of the Bathurst estate – or the big park, as we used to call it. You would never guess from the old stone façade that it’s been divided up into flats inside. The only changes are subtle and in keeping with the historic character of the house: a small extension has been added, blending discreetly with the stonework and there’s a ramp curving around the stairs up to the front door, but otherwise it seems much as I remember it from when Charlie and I were kids.

I do a one-eighty, taking in my surroundings. There’s a large, black wrought-iron gate to the park and a wide footpath leading up to the monument. Opposite Cecily House is a row of smaller houses. They have a clear view of the entrance. Anyone in those houses could have provided the police with that photofit or it could have been someone walking up the hill into the park, or someone in Cecily House itself . . .

Bathed in September sunshine, the house looks pretty, not menacing at all, but even so, I suppress a shiver as I approach the entrance and the nightmare I had the other night comes back to me in vivid detail. Images of Charlie dead and dying crowd into my mind. Charlie’s eyes bulging as she begs for mercy. The blood on her shirt spreading like an ink blot.

Quashing the voice inside my head telling me this is a bad idea, I press the buzzer for number one, Adam and Charlie’s flat. After a couple of seconds, the intercom crackles.

‘Who is it?’ asks Adam.

I clear my throat nervously. ‘It’s Catherine Bayntun. We spoke on the phone the other day? I have an appointment for a consultation.’

He hesitates for just a second. ‘Sure, yes, come on in,’ he says and buzzes me in. I push my way through the heavy door, and it swings firmly shut behind me. Finding myself suddenly enclosed in a dark, windowless corridor, I fight a wave of panic. What if Adam recognises me from the ­photofit? Or what if my mother is right and he killed Charlie? What kind of danger am I getting myself into?

‘Hi, Catherine, come on in,’ Adam says, opening the door to his flat and making me jump. He looks a little older and scruffier than the photograph on his LinkedIn profile. Less put together and handsome, and paradoxically less like a serial killer. And he looks taller than in the pictures on TV. Of course, Charlie had that effect – of shrinking a person; most people seemed diminished in her presence. She was always so bright and so vibrant.

His eyes are slightly bloodshot, I notice, as he ushers me into the living room, and he smells strongly of aftershave.

‘You look familiar,’ he says, doing a double take as I step into the light from the living-room window. ‘Have we met before?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I say cautiously, putting a self-conscious hand up to my face. I should have done more to disguise myself. What if he works out where he’s seen me before? I hold my breath. Then sigh with relief as he shrugs.

‘Maybe not.’

‘I’ve got that kind of face,’ I say lightly. ‘I’m always being mistaken for other people.’

‘Take a seat,’ he says politely. ‘Would you like a drink? I have a selection of herbal teas or coffee.’

‘Do you have peppermint?’

While he’s making drinks in the kitchen, I perch nervously on the edge of the sofa and look around the room. It’s exactly the kind of place I would have expected Charlie to live in. There are brightly coloured rugs on the floor, battered old books on a bookshelf, a tree painted on one wall, a guitar flung on the armchair and a keyboard dominating one corner of the room. They must be Adam’s, unless Charlie learned an instrument after she left school. That explains the attraction, I think. Charlie was always a sucker for a musician. I remember when we were thirteen, she was obsessed with the drummer in the school band. Despite the artful, cosy chaos, the place is scrupulously clean and there’s a faint odour of bleach.