Tags:
General,
thriller,
Suspense,
adventure,
Fantasy,
Action & Adventure,
Juvenile Fiction,
Fantasy & Magic,
Mystery,
Young Adult,
Horror & Ghost Stories
brother’s question. “But then wives don’t, do they? They don’t know what their husbands get up to on their own. Gambling . . . other women . . .”
Dad mixed up with another woman? Get real, Mum!
Uncle Harold must have had the same thought, for he gave a short little laugh. “Come on, Caroline. If Ed ever so much as sneezed at another woman, I’ll streak naked down the M25. And you know what he thought about gambling. . . .”
Mum’s voice suddenly stiffened. “What I know, Harold,” she said firmly, “is that my Eddie was murdered.”
Chapter 5
E m usually slept late during school holidays. Most mornings you couldn’t wake him until eleven, maybe eleven thirty. Either way, he seldom climbed out of bed before noon, at which time he’d go down and listen carefully to his mother’s complaints about his laziness, then have breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you’d call it. But this morning he was wide-awake at six thirty, downstairs a few minutes after seven, and headed straight for the kitchen.
For some reason he was starving. Yesterday’s sorrow, last night’s worries were still with him; but they no longer rested in his stomach like a leaden ball. That lump had somehow moved aside, leaving a hollow only food could fill. He started with corn flakes, found that the milk was curdled, and doused them in orange juice instead. When that failed miserably to do the trick, he got out the frying pan.
The pork-and-apple sausages reminded him of his father’s last meal, the one he’d never eaten. So did the bacon and eggs. But there was nothing he could do about that. However miserable life was, you still had to eat. He considered opening a tin of baked beans, abandoned the idea because he couldn’t see one with a ring-pull, but found two cold boiled potatoes in the fridge. He sliced them thinly so they’d crisp and dropped them into the pan.
Something made him think of Uncle Harold, and he realized he hadn’t seen him sleeping on the living-room couch, so Mum must have tucked him into Dad’s deathbed after all. Dad murdered—where had that come from? There had been no dagger in the heart, no gunshot to the head. Just some unexpected complication with an antibiotic-resistant bug. Em decided there and then he’d never start to drink alcohol. It was doing his mother no favors, however much it dulled her pain.
He finished his breakfast feeling better and stronger than he had for days. Then he finished the orange juice as well and wandered back into the living room. He was thinking of taking an early-morning walk, maybe down to the river before there were too many people about.
But there was something wrong. For a moment Em couldn’t think what it was. Then he realized that the door to Dad’s study was ajar.
Em stared at it. He’d closed it tight when he left the study yesterday afternoon and he hadn’t noticed it open when he’d come down in the middle of the night. So Mum or Harold must have gone in there after Em had crept back up to bed. But why? He pushed the door.
Dad’s study looked as if a bomb had hit it. Books had been torn down from the shelves and strewn across the floor. The drawers of the desk were all open: one had been pulled out completely and now stood propped against a chair, its contents scattered. The standard lamp Dad used to read by had been overturned. Several ornaments were broken. One portion of the carpet had been torn up and folded back, revealing the floorboards beneath. There were pictures missing from the walls. So much for making it a shrine, Mum. But Mum had nothing to do with this. Or Uncle Harold.
They’d been robbed!
Em knew that must have been what happened, but somehow he couldn’t get his head around it. Stupidly he kept thinking that it couldn’t have happened, that it was somehow impossible. The study wasn’t just trashed; it was no longer the study at all. And Dad wasn’t there anymore.
He fought back a wave of self-pity and forced himself