Chapter 1
Gerald Halliday opened his eyes, and the nightmare started again. Another body, more blood and another knife. Halliday moved his hand and felt the warmth of blood, and another wave of nausea swept over him. But he knew he had to move.
He looked up at the bedside table, their two empty coffee cups, and beside him, his toolbox. Gerald eased his legs into a foetus shape, then tried to lift himself. As he did so, the body of Rebecca Greenwood screamed at him. The disgusting sight of his work knife in her stomach and blood – so much blood.
Then he was on his knees and in the distance a noise. A fire engine, or ambulance, it was getting louder and getting closer, and the racket spurred him to action.
Despite the pain, he eased himself onto his knees, one leg up, then the other, and he sat down on the bed and tried to stop the bedroom spinning. But the siren was getting louder, and he knew what it meant.
He needed to run, and he needed to run now.
‘Come on, Sunshine, you don’t need to be here.’ Gerald shouted at the empty room.
He grabbed his toolbox and the biscuits off the plate, took one last look at Rebecca, and stumbled downstairs. Gerald ran into the kitchen and glanced at Rebecca’s handbag on the worktop.
‘My needs are greater than her’s now.’ And he grabbed the purse.
Gerald pumped the accelerator peddle and turned the key.
‘Fucking battery.’ He hit the wheel with the palm of his hand. But the siren was coming closer. Ahead of him was the back driveway, an unmade, potholed lane across the backs of the gardens.
He put his foot flat on the floor and flicked the switch again. This time the engine spluttered into life.
But now, the sound of the siren was so loud it overwhelmed him. The inescapable, claustrophobic grating of the two-tone horns was so loud he couldn’t think. But thinking was essential. He slipped the van into gear and eased along the backs of the gardens. Over the potholes, past garages, and overgrown gardens.
‘Slowly, I must drive slowly.’ He mumbled over the unbearable racket, knowing they could hear him. They could always hear him.
As he turned his van away from the seafront, a flash of blue light seared through his cab; the ambulance was arriving. But he was driving away, and he was free.
Two minutes later, he stopped the van on a side road, took off his boiler suit, and ate the biscuits.
As the sugar rush ran through his system, he tried to work out what to do. But the more he wanted to think, the more confused he became. Five minutes later, he did what he knew he had to.
Get as far away from the house as possible.
In his flat in Chelmsford, he had some money, his bank card and some spare clothes. Gerald pulled out his wallet and counted his cash. There was the fifty pounds Rebecca had given him for putting up the small shelf and his business bank card.
On the seat next to him was Rebecca’s purse. For a second, he looked at the red leather, slightly worn and scuffed from use; it was an old favourite.
‘I might be low, but I’m not a thief.’ He opened the glove box and tossed it in; even touching it made him feel guilty.
Gerald put the van into gear and headed for the A127, out of Southend. Forty minutes later, he sat in the car park at the back of his flat in Patching Hall lane and looked at the other cars. Nothing seemed out of place. At the back of the car park, the weeds around two old cars were untouched. An old settee was still waiting patiently on the flower bed. The rubbish containers were nearly full, as they should be on a Monday.
As he drove up the main road, Gerald half expected to see a squad car storming after him, then as he got closer to home, he knew the score.
They would wait. They knew where he would go; there was no need for drama. As Gerald pulled through the driveway into the car park, they would arrest him. But nothing happened, and ten minutes later, he had packed a small bag, collected all his money, picked up two packs of chocolate biscuits and double-locked the front door of his flat.
Back in the car park, he stripped the magnetic sign off the side of his van and wondered where to go. He needed a plan, but the one thing he knew was that he was not going back into prison.
Twenty years inside, and he had hardened enough to survive. Learnt enough to cope and knew that another spell for murder would see him coming out to draw his pension. He couldn’t do that.
He sat, wishing he smoked; this was the moment to be rolling a cigarette. His fingers, doing something mechanical while his brain worked through the options, and as he thought this, a memory drifted in.
It was a warm afternoon sitting on the beech beside his father in a deckchair. Gerald watched him go through the ceremony of rolling a cigarette, the old man gazing out to sea, keeping his eye on his brother, thrashing in the water, out of his depth. His fingers were manipulating the paper and tobacco automatically before licking the edge to finish it.
‘Look at Mikey. He’ll kill himself one of these days.’ He’d said.
‘He’s out of his depth.’ He remembered his mother saying.
‘Mikey’s always out of his depth.’ Gerald had looked up at his father, and he was smiling.
‘Yeah, Mikey was Dad’s favourite. Always was.’ Gerald mumbled to himself. ‘But it wasn’t seawater that killed Mikey; a knife in the back did the job just as well.’
Thirty years earlier, the family had enjoyed a holiday in Sherringham.
It was as good a place to start as anywhere.
