No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (top 10 non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📕

What the hell was going to happen?

There were more houses strung along the road, and then they were at a junction with another road, where David turned left and went on a few paces before stopping and wheeling round to face him. ‘Of course I’m not going to the police,’ he hissed, his face contorted with rage. ‘How can I, when you’ve got Kirsty mixed up in it? I dob you in, that’s my wee girl going down for what she did. What you made her do!’

Bram took a step back.

But David just shook his head in disgust and marched off.

Bram watched him disappearing into the dusk.

He had to make David understand. Surely, after what had happened with Owen, David could understand what it was like to be caught up in a moment of madness? But it was hopeless trying to reason with him when he was in this mood.

Coward.

As if his mood was going to get any better any time soon.

Unless Bram could explain.

He made himself start walking again, after David. Into the gloom of the trees and then out again. The sun was setting now, all the colours of the rainbow streaking the sky, making David’s bald head glow a weird orange. He had stopped and seemed to be waiting for him. Bram could hear the roar of traffic – they must be near the A95. He passed between a pair of bollards and up an incline in the road, which had become less of a road and more of a track at this point, grass encroaching on either side. And then he realised where they were.

That wasn’t traffic he could hear. It was water, roaring under them.

There were on a bridge.

Oh Christ! Was this the Old Bridge of Spey? Where David had killed Owen?

David was shaking his head. ‘You say Finn came at you.’

‘He did!’ Bram looked around them, but there was no one else in sight. Should he make a run for it? But David, despite the age difference, was much fitter than Bram. He would catch him. And anyway, why would David intend him any harm? Okay so he was angry, but surely not homicidally so?

‘And so you killed him.’

‘I keep trying to tell you: I didn’t mean to! The same thing happened as when you encountered him, and hit him with the rifle. It wasn’t like I even meant to… to assault him. There was a fight. In the heat of the moment… I suppose I went too far. Obviously I went too far… bashing his… his head off the shed like that.’

‘Until he was dead.’

It wouldn’t help matters to bring up the whole he-wasn’t-actually-dead thing. The clip had ended after Bram and Kirsty had dragged Finn’s body – what they’d thought at the time was his dead body – into the shed. Presumably Max had stopped watching at that point.

Bram nodded.

‘Until he was dead?’ David repeated.

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a groan.

David’s expression seemed to change.

In the low light, Bram thought he was smiling – but surely not?

‘Thanks, Bram.’ He held something up in his hand. His phone. David’s voice came from it, tinny and distorted:

‘You say Finn came at you.’

And then Bram’s own voice:

‘He did!’

‘And so you killed him.’

‘I keep trying to tell you: I didn’t mean to!’

David stabbed a finger at the phone to cut the recording and pocketed it. ‘That should do the trick. We don’t want the police seeing that footage, after all, do we? Not with Kirsty on there. Now they won’t have to.’

Bram felt his legs weaken, and backed up against one of the bollards. ‘Okay.’ He took a huge breath. ‘But please, David… Let me go to the police myself, and tell them what happened. I’ll leave Kirsty out of it.’

David took three steps to close the distance between them, and Bram shrank back, but David put an arm round his shoulders, giving him a shake. ‘Good man.’

Bram let out the breath he’d been holding.

And then he was staggering in David’s arms, trying to break free as David hauled him across the bridge.

‘No! Oh, God, no! David! David?’

David half-lifted him.

Slammed him down on the parapet.

His back exploded in pain.

Bram was shrieking, he was clawing ineffectually at David’s jacket, he was shouting something, he was trying to rip his arms free of David’s grip. The sound of the water below was so loud it seemed to be inside Bram’s head, and David was yelling over it, yelling into his face:

‘You’d never withstand a police interrogation, would you? Once they started asking about your movements?’ He screwed up his face, putting on a high voice. ‘And didn’t your wife realise you were gone half the night, Mr Hendriksen, disposing of an inconvenient corpse? You’d land Kirsty right in it, guaranteed, whether you meant to or not. You fucking useless twat!’

‘No! No, I wouldn’t!’ Bram babbled desperately, twisting in David’s grip.

‘This way’s better. Poor Bram lost it after I’d got the confession out of him. Broke down and ran off. No idea what happened to him after that.’

‘But they’ll know!’ The words came out as a whimper. ‘After what happened to Owen, they’ll know!’

‘But they don’t know what happened to Owen, do they?’

‘Kirsty will tell them!’

‘Yeah, grief does weird things to people, eh? Poor Kirsty’s out of her mind. But she’ll get over it. She’ll soon see she’s better off without a useless wee parasite latched on her back, sucking the lifeblood out of her.’

His mouth widened in a grin as he heaved at Bram, and Bram felt his feet leave the ground, the solid stone parapet under him slip away as the top half of his body was pushed out into space, nothing under it, and when he tried to throw himself forwards, back onto the bridge, David flung his whole bodyweight at him, and there was nothing for Bram to hold on to but David himself.

His only hope now was David, that solid, muscled body, and he clung to it.

He locked