No One I Knew by A McDine (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📕

it would be locked. The sixth sense was right. Irritation coursed through my veins like a shot of adrenalin and I welcomed it with open arms.

‘Sheila!’ I yelled through the keyhole. ‘This is ridiculous. You need to let me out. Now!’

Silence. I hammered on the door with the palms of my hands. ‘Sheila, for fuck’s sake, open the bloody door!’

Nothing. She was ignoring me or had gone out and left me locked in the house.

I marched to the window and tore off the newspaper. The window was double glazed white uPVC with a fixed pane on one side and a window with a lock at eye level on the other. I pressed the lock to release the handle, but it didn’t move. The bloody woman had locked the window, too. I punched at it with my fist, crying out in pain as my hand bounced off the toughened glass.

Irritation morphed into rage and I picked up the coffee table and bashed one leg hard against the window, aiming for the bottom right-hand corner. Even though the impact sent a shock wave through my arms and shoulders like the kickback from a rifle, the glass remained stubbornly intact. I kept going, using a swinging motion and the weight of my body to pound the glass, blow after blow. After half a dozen hefty wallops, the first pane shattered. I stopped to take a breath and push the hair out of my eyes, then started the battery again until sweat ran down my face and my shoulders were screaming. Eventually the second pane yielded, leaving a circle of jagged glass as lethal as a shark’s jaws. Using the table leg, I pushed out the shards, then draped the duvet over the opening, set the coffee table on the floor underneath the window and climbed out.

The sun was high in the sky and the air without a breath of wind as I jumped down, landing awkwardly in an overgrown flowerbed. I scanned the garden, but the only sign of life was Bill, Sheila’s tabby cat, sunning himself under the bird table. I marched around the side of the bungalow, clenching and unclenching my fists. I had never raised a hand to anyone in my life - I won arguments with intellect, not violence - but I knew that if I walked into my secretary right now, I’d happily punch her lights out.

I stopped to look through Sheila’s bedroom window. The blouse with the fussy collar I’d seen hanging from her wardrobe the previous day had disappeared, and I wondered if she’d gone to work as if nothing had happened. Because, as the fog in my head cleared, it was becoming obvious she’d had no intention of letting me phone the police. She hadn’t locked me in her box room by accident.

I continued on my way to the front door. As I passed Sheila’s mother’s room, I stubbed my foot on something hard. Reaching down to rub my toe, I saw an old iron lying in the long grass. The cord was frayed, and the soleplate was scorched black. I’d seen it before in Sheila’s hallway. Unconsciously, my hand crept to the bump on the back of my head. She wouldn’t have, would she? And then I laughed at myself. The woman had strangled Niamh. Of course she was capable of hitting me over the back of the head with an old iron.

I picked it up, winding the cord around my hand, noticing for the first time that the salmon-pink curtains in Sheila’s mother’s room had been drawn closed. Perhaps I was wrong to assume Sheila kept the room as a shrine and she’d appropriated it when her mum died. I peered through a chink in the curtains. The walking frame was still there, slotted between the wardrobe and the chest of drawers. A couple of the roses had blown, their petals discarded on the polished wood like pieces of pink confetti. A shape was huddled under the floral bedspread. Something about its form made my heart rate quicken. Something achingly familiar. And I remembered what Bill had said before he died. She’d do anything to have even a little bit of me.

But it couldn’t be, could it?

I took one last lingering look at the figure under the covers and sprinted to the front door.

Chapter Forty-Six

The door was locked, as I knew it would be, but with a swift swing of the iron I smashed one of the stained glass panels, felt inside and turned the latch. Inside the hallway, I paused as I tried to get my bearings. To the right were doors to the front room and dining room, and the kitchen was ahead. The bedrooms were all on the opposite side of the house. I sidestepped a teetering pile of boxes and followed the hallway as it turned left and narrowed. Every door was closed. Aware Sheila could be crouched behind any of them, my grip on the iron tightened.

I calculated Sheila’s mother’s bedroom must be the first door on the left. I tried the handle and pushed the door with my shoulder, but it didn’t budge. If I was right, Sheila would have locked it, of course she would. I considered trying to kick the door down, but I had a feeling it wasn’t as easy as it looked in the films. Think like the enemy, I told myself, as I gazed around the cluttered hallway. Whenever I asked Sheila to lock up my office, she always left the key on top of the doorframe. ‘Out of harm’s way,’ she said the first time she’d done it. I set the iron on the floor, stood on tiptoes and felt along the top of the frame, grinning when my fingers came into contact with a key. Bingo.

The key turned smoothly in the lock, and suddenly I was in the bedroom. The air was heavy with the scent of the wilting roses. I crossed the room in a second,