The Attic Room: A psychological thriller - Huber Linda - Страница 10

The doorbell rang and she trailed through to answer it. Two police officers were standing there, a grey-haired older man with a comfortable face and a blonde woman who looked very severe but was probably only twenty-five or so. They introduced themselves as Detective Inspector David Mallony and Detective Constable Sabine Jameson. Nina led them into the kitchen where they stood beside the table, reading the letter where it lay, their faces grim. DI Mallony pulled on gloves and eased both envelope and letter into plastic folders.

‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Must have given you quite a shock. And this John Moore is - ?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Nina, feeling better now she could hand the letter over to experts. ‘He died last week and I’ve inherited this house, you see. I didn’t know him and I’m not sure what relation he was to me. His – my lawyer’s finding out about that today.’

It sounded strange as she said it, but DI Mallony merely nodded.

A sudden idea came to Nina and she sat straighter. Maybe science could help her. ‘Is there a test I could get done to find out about the relationship, even though he’s dead? A DNA test or something?’

David Mallony sat down, his expression giving nothing away. ‘There is, but if it’s a distant relationship it can take a while to get the results. It’s not like a paternity test which is back in a day or two.’

‘Could you arrange for me to take a paternity test?’ said Nina. A negative result would be exactly what she wanted, much better than an old marriage certificate or family tree.

‘I think you’d better tell me why you want it,’ said David Mallony, staring at her over the table. ‘Is there any doubt about who your father is?’

Nina took a deep breath. All she could do was tell the truth. She was in the middle of explaining when the doorbell rang and Sabine Jameson went to let Sam in. He touched Nina’s shoulder and sat down beside her.

David Mallony listened without speaking, his face grave. ‘I see. Well, we can certainly arrange a paternity test though I imagine you’ll have to pay for it yourself.’

‘Nina – I’ve heard back from the GRO. They traced your birth certificate. John Robert Moore was your father,’ said Sam, putting a hand on her shoulder again.

Nina winced. How stupid, her own birth certificate – it was the logical starting place; she should have thought of that herself. It must be at home, in the folder where Claire kept all the important documents, but for the life of her Nina couldn’t remember ever seeing it. And why on earth that should be was difficult to understand.

She glared at Sam. ‘Hell. But that can’t be right. There must be some mistake. I still want the test.’ She raised her eyebrows at David Mallony.

‘Of course.’ His voice was quite neutral.

Nina nodded. Thank God he’d agreed. Surely the test would show that she wasn’t John Moore’s daughter. And when she was safely back on Arran she would research Robert Moore’s side of the family. It might be something Naomi would enjoy helping with, too.

Sam leaned towards her. ‘You’re doing the right thing; a test’ll give you certainty. Oh, and the cremation’s organised for 10 a.m. Wednesday,’ he said, and David Mallony took a note of the details. Nina was silent. A cremation with no service, no mourners, no funeral flowers. How tragic. A sordid end to any kind of life. But oh, God, what had John Moore done? Was there any truth at all in that blackmail letter?

David Mallony asked several more questions about John Moore, the house, and if she had noticed anyone hanging around since she arrived. Nina answered as well as she could, wondering all the time if she should tell them about the moment when she’d felt she remembered crying up in the attic room. But it was so vague – what child didn’t cry at some point? Yet the phrase ‘screaming my poor little head off’ had stirred something deep inside her, some long-forgotten terror.

Say nothing for the moment, she thought. She could tell the police later if she remembered anything more concrete. Anyway, there was nothing to say that the accusation in the letter was true, and even if it was, John Moore was beyond prosecution now.

The two detectives had a look round the house, spending quite a long time in the study, then left, taking John Moore’s laptop with them and telling Nina to go to the police station for a cheek swab later that morning.

Nina closed the door and turned back to the kitchen, where Sam was making coffee.

‘Are you all right, Nina? What an ordeal.’

‘I want to go home,’ she said, sinking onto a hard wooden chair and rubbing her face with both hands. She would phone Beth as soon as Sam had gone, and – but dear God, she couldn’t tell her friend over the phone that she thought she remembered screaming in the attic owned by a man who might turn out to be her father and who had now been accused of being a paedophile… She would break down and howl before she’d said six words. A sob escaped before she could suppress it.

Sam put a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘Nina, talk to me. I can see there’s something more.’

She turned her face away. This was way too personal to tell someone she’d only known a few days, even if he was her lawyer and ‘nice’. And fancied her. Especially if he fancied her.

‘It’s nothing,’ she tried to say, but the words came out in a cracked whisper.

…screaming my poor little head off… Fuck, fuck, that was a memory, she could remember screaming, there had been a lot of screaming…

What had happened to her?

Sam tried to grasp her hands and she yanked them away, conscious that she was shaking all over now.

‘Nina, you can tell me, or you can tell the doctor. Whatever this is you can’t deal with it alone. Which do you want?’ He was holding his mobile, thumb poised to tap.

Nina stared at him, bleary-eyed. She didn’t want to confide in him, but perhaps she should. She needed an impartial opinion, and telling Sam would be better than having him summon yet another stranger here.

‘I – when I read the letter I remembered screaming too, upstairs in the attic room,’ she whispered, not looking at him, unable to stop her teeth chattering.

For a moment there was silence, then Sam reached out and squeezed her hand very briefly. Nina fought for control over her breathing. It was a relief to have told someone, though Beth would have been a better someone.

‘But Nina – if that’s an accurate memory then - ‘

‘Then the allegations in that letter could well be true,’ said Nina bleakly. She took a deep, shaky breath, then another. ‘Sam, I know. It’s so horrible – I just don’t remember enough. Hell, I was only three years old when we left this house, nobody would - ‘

She broke off, yet more horror flooding through her as she realised what she had said. This house… it had been this house, her gut instinct was shrieking that now.

Another thought crashed into her head. This could be the reason for Claire’s flight from Bedford and the Moore family. Maybe they hadn’t left because Robert Moore died – Claire could have been running from an abusive John Moore. But how could she find out, all these years later? Nina swallowed, her throat dry and painful.

And of course, of course, hell – this would be why Claire took over the application for both their passports so firmly. Nina closed her eyes, remembering. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time; she signed the appropriate pages and left the bundle with Claire to ‘send off with all the paperwork’. Shit. She’d been twenty-two, Naomi was a toddler, and Claire had ‘done the donkey work’, as she called it. Did she do it to prevent Nina noticing her father’s name on her birth certificate? Nothing seemed more likely now.

Dear God, where was this going to end?

‘I think you should go to a hotel,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t forget, whoever wrote that letter is out there somewhere.’