In the Spider's House Read online

  In the Spider’s House

  Sarah Diamond

  FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  I FIND IT VERY HARD to look back to the time before it all started. When the name Rebecca Fisher meant no more to me than it did to anyone else. A blurred black-and-white photograph in the public domain, a name from yellowed newspaper cuttings and out-of-print true crime novels, from people’s darker recollections of the late 1960s. The name Rebecca Fisher had a faded notoriety; a name you never heard spoken but somehow recognised.

  Imagining it scrubbed clean of resonance is virtually impossible, these days—in the light of what came later, it verges on the surreal. But at a cerebral level I’m well aware that, once upon a time, I’d never given a conscious thought to the Teasford murder. While I was vaguely aware of its place in a long list of anonymous horrors—the nurse who’d killed more than eighty patients, the man who’d left work smiling one evening, gone home and bludgeoned his family to death—it held no special significance to me.

  So much for an author’s intuition. For better or worse, however, my memory’s a lot more impressive than my sixth sense. Even now, when I look back to the evening it began, I can remember every detail: the blustery, dispiriting March of 2002, Carl’s preoccupied mood when he got home from work. It’s a scene that comes back to haunt me rather too often. A memory that feels like being trapped in someone else’s body, seeing through someone else’s eyes.

  Anna, he says during dinner, laying his cutlery down. I’ve got something to ask you.

  Remembering the way I’d felt then is worse than anything—like looking at a photograph of myself laughing at a party, knowing I’d been paralysed for life on the drive home. At last, I say cheerfully. What is it?

  He looks awkward. Look, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but anyway…

  He keeps talking. In my memory the scene goes to slow motion, and takes on a nightmare quality. I’d give anything to reach back and tell myself what’s going to happen—scream at myself that, if I say what I did before, it’s all going to start unfolding again. It’ll put me on a direct collision course with Rebecca Fisher, and the murder of Eleanor Corbett, and the truth.

  And the words I’m dreading at last, in my own offhand, unsuspecting voice. Well, I wouldn’t mind moving. Not if it means that much to you…

  CHAPTER ONE

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, and the end of an era. Four years and five months that seemed like half a lifetime: melting summer afternoons eating lunch on a bench outside this building, windy autumn mornings travelling in here by bus, winters when I’d have given a week’s wages for another hour’s warmth in bed. An infinity of trips to Boots in the lunch-hour, of phone calls to and from Carl during the day. Ringing telephones and familiar faces and a reception area I knew as well as the flat I lived in. When today was over, I’d almost certainly never be here again.

  Everything was done. The next few hours were as pointless as the front row of seats in a cinema, as necessarily unoccupied—couldn’t take any more work on, and I’d finished tying off the loose ends so the new PR officer wouldn’t be stuck picking up after me on Monday morning. But I couldn’t leave before six, when they’d be giving me my card and leaving present and expecting me to make a little speech. All I could do was enjoy the sunshine through the window, and say a last private goodbye to this broom cupboard of an office.

  I looked around as if making a final inventory—the personal leaving cards I’d arranged round the monitor in a riot of colour, the desk that was usually buried under sheaves of paperwork. Time passed too slowly and far too fast, as the minutes ticked out on the wall clock. When the knock at the door yanked me abruptly from reverie, I had to make a conscious effort to get my feelings under control. It had been a good job, but it had only been a good job; it was ridiculous that the prospect of leaving it should stir such a complexity of emotion.

  ‘Come in,’ I called.

  My immediate boss entered, present and card under his arm. A dozen or so of my colleagues followed him, crowding into the confined space and plugging the doorway. My little exclamation of gratitude and joy was unfeigned, but still seemed to tell only half the story; behind it was something diffuse and tender and nameless, the feeling of something long-term and well-liked, coming to a formal, inevitable end.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to stop off at the pub for a quick one?’ asked Kim. ‘I know we went out for a drink this lunchtime, but still…’

  We were walking out of the building together, Naomi and Kim and myself; the kind of amiably casual workplace alliance that didn’t quite extend into personal lives, that limited itself to lunchtime gossip and the occasional drink after hours. Deep down, I knew it wouldn’t survive my leaving, and felt the bittersweet pang return—this was probably the last I’d see of either of them, and they’d soon be filed under Memories.

  ‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ It was the truth—sharp regret pricked me as I spoke. ‘I’m meeting someone in fifteen minutes: you know Petra, I must have mentioned her hundreds of times. It’ll be the last we see of each other before the big move.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Naomi. ‘Still, we’ll have to stay in touch. You’ve got our email addresses, we’ve got your home one. It’s going to feel weird without you, to be honest…the place just won’t be the same.’

  ‘It’ll probably be better organised.’ But, while I spoke flippantly, I couldn’t quite disguise my feelings. ‘I’m going to miss you too, as it happens. Both of you.’

  ‘What did you think of your leaving card?’ asked Kim unexpectedly. ‘It was our idea to do it like that, you know, looking like the front of your novel and all. I thought the IT bods did a pretty good job on it.’

  ‘They did a great job,’ I said, ‘I loved it.’ The first part was true, but the second wasn’t, not entirely. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Naomi comfortably. ‘Just think, now you’re becoming a lady of leisure, you’ll be free to start another novel. You’re going to, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, who knows?’ My voice sounded natural enough—still, I couldn’t help being a little evasive. ‘I’ll just have to wait and see if another idea turns up, I suppose.’

  We said our last goodbyes outside t
he big shopping mall that provided my short-cut into the town centre, all awkward hugs and take cares and vaguely anticlimactic finality. At last, I turned and walked into the near-empty mall. Its dead quiet implied a lot of people in pubs and heading home—empty escalators trundled up to an equally deserted café area, a desolate plastic forest of bolted-down seats and tables. The piped music was reedy, echoing.

  I stopped by the escalator, where a fountain ran on and on in a place of lush fake greenery, in front of a closed chocolate shop. The music seemed louder here, a tinny instrumental version of ‘Your Song’. I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the square-edged, mirrored pillars nearby—too tall, too skinny, too much curly dark hair. Plus ça change.

  Taking my leaving card from under my arm, I extracted it from its envelope and looked at it again. The cover of my first and only published novel, a moody black-and-white shot of a streetlight next to a house. Where the original said A DEEPER DARKNESS, a near-identical font spelt out GOOD LUCK. And, in place of ANNA JEFFREYS, the card spelt out ANNA HOWELL—my married name, the one I worked under. It touched and flattered me that they’d gone to so much trouble to make it look authentic. However, it wasn’t quite what I wanted to be reminded of. Replacing the card carefully in its envelope, I tried to ignore a subtle sense of regret. I’d get another idea sooner or later, I told myself. I was bound to.

  Then I was walking on, tucking the envelope under my arm, hurrying on to meet Petra in the Fez and Firkin.

  ‘So I’m meeting up with him tomorrow, in Murphy’s,’ Petra was saying. ‘Jim and that lot from work are going to be there too, so it should be a good night.’

  We were sitting by the window, over our first drink. As always, Petra’s voice was slightly too loud, but not in a jarring, strident way that would make occupants of nearby tables smirk and raise dubious eyebrows at each other. Even in a pub crowded with strangers, she had the air of a well-liked insider—the kind of size fourteen that looked curvy rather than fat, with dark-blonde shoulder-length hair and a sweet, round, snub-nosed face. Petra Mason was the only person I’d ever met who lent immediate physical reality to that tired old cliché, twinkly-eyed. ‘He seems really nice, anyway,’ she continued. ‘Fun. Sexy.’

  ‘You said that about the last one,’ I reminded her dryly. ‘Right up to the point where you dumped him.’

  ‘Oh, Rob—he wasn’t right for me. And it was getting too serious. I still feel way too young to settle down.’ Her expression was suddenly and comically horrified. ‘I can’t believe we’re both twenty-seven. And you’re married; you’re going to be a full-time housewife.’

  ‘Full-time writer.’ My affronted dignity gave way to something else almost instantly, something frank, humble, rueful. ‘Well, sort of. It’s like Rebel Without a Cause—Writer Without a Story.’

  ‘Sort of? Come on, Anna. You’re published, for God’s sake—got good reviews as well, didn’t you?’

  ‘For all the good it did. I’ve lost count of the number of people from work who told me they couldn’t find my book anywhere, as if they thought I’d really want to know.’ I waged a brief but desperate battle against the black gloom such acknowledgements always dragged along with them—this was a time for laughter and togetherness with my closest friend. ‘Anyway, I won’t be hearing bad news from them any more. Won’t be hearing anything from them. I can’t quite believe I’ve seen the last of Reading Borough Council.’

  ‘Wish I could say the same for the Evening Post. So much for my dreams of Fleet Street.’ We laughed, but it tailed off uneasily. I saw Petra looking at me closely. ‘You are looking forward to moving, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know I should, but… I really haven’t got a clue how I feel.’ It was maddening, as ever, a kaleidoscope of feelings and impulses and instincts: I’d love the country, I’d loathe every minute there, it would be a whole new life, it would be the end of everything I’d known. ‘Still, you never know,’ I said, with determined cheerfulness. ‘Dorset might just inspire me.’

  ‘Worked for Thomas Hardy.’ Petra smiled, rose from the table. ‘Anyway, my round, isn’t it?’

  She went off to the bar while I sat and gazed out of the window. Beautiful early evening quietness looked back at me: closed shops, rosy shadows, occasional people passing—too convivial to be suburban, too reassuring to be at the sharp edge of big-city life. Martha and the Muffins were playing on the jukebox. There was something nostalgic about the old song this evening—as if, already, I could feel the world around me turning into a haunting memory. This time tomorrow, I’d be somewhere else completely…

  Then Petra was returning to the table with two bottles of Becks, and I dragged my eyes and mind determinedly back to the here and now.

  ‘So what’s the new house like?’ she asked curiously, as she sat down. ‘You haven’t said a word about it.’

  ‘It’s—well, sort of a cottage, I suppose. Two bedrooms. Big garden.’ I was amazed by how little I could really remember of it, the all-important details that made a place three-dimensional in the mind. I had no real sense of it at all, and no idea what it might be like to live in. ‘It was a real bargain,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s a lovely house.’

  ‘You’ll have to invite me down one weekend, when you’ve settled in. Could do with a trip to the country.’ Her voice was amiable and throwaway until, noticing my expression, she spoke more seriously. ‘Don’t worry about it, Anna. You’ll have a great time there. Be right at home in no time.’

  We talked about this and that for a little longer, topics that had no real resonance in either of our minds, that had the advantage of distracting my thoughts from tomorrow. Setting her drink down, Petra suddenly glanced at her watch. ‘God, look at the time. I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run—I’m supposed to be having dinner with the family.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I told Carl I’d be home by eight.’

  We finished the last of our drinks, and walked out into cooling sunlight. Words kept assembling themselves in my mind, and I kept forcing them back awkwardly before realising they’d have to be spoken. ‘Listen, I’ll give you a ring when we’ve moved in, okay? I can give you our new number then.’

  ‘Of course.’ Petra laughed. ‘You don’t have to sound so apologetic about it, Anna. I’d be really pissed off if you didn’t.’

  ‘Well, great.’ We were approaching my stop now. As we reached it, I turned to her. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘have a great weekend.’

  ‘You too, and best of luck with the move. I’m going to miss you—we really have got to stay in touch.’

  It was Petra who initiated the hug, and I returned it awkwardly—her side of it was fluid and impulsive, my own as stilted as bad stop-motion photography. Over her shoulder, I couldn’t help but be relieved at the sight of the bus drawing in. ‘That’s mine,’ I said, pulling away. ‘Well. Better go.’

  By the time the bus set off, she’d vanished from sight. It was perfectly natural that she should have done, but still, her absence intensified an unease that had haunted me for hours. As if my last permanent link with this place had stopped existing. Looking out of the window, I watched the town centre fading around me for the last time, and waited for home and Carl to arrive.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MY HUSBAND was the only man I’d ever wanted that I’d actually got. Partly, that was to do with him—he was a great guy, and I adored him—but maybe, just maybe, it had more to do with me.

  I knew a lot of people, perfectly normal people with no apparent forcefield of wealth or glamour or brilliance to protect them, who could extend an invitation to lunch or bed or the beginning of a friendship or relationship as casually as offering a packet of crisps. The idea of doing that terrified me. I found it too easy to imagine the face falling behind the bright social smile; at best the quick scramble for a convenient excuse, at worst the cruel and stinging rejection that would haunt me for weeks. It wasn’t natural to me as dark eyes and long fingers were; I knew enough about psychology to
understand that, to realise my shyness had been etched into me like a scar. Still, understanding why and how it had been created didn’t stop it existing—from early childhood, I’d only ever been confident from a distance.

  I suppose it was no real surprise that, throughout my life, every single one of my close friends had been built along the Petra lines, the sort of people who meet someone new and quite like them, and—sensing a potential friend or boyfriend—have absolutely no trouble asking them if they’d like to come and see that new film some time, if they’d like to meet up for a drink over the weekend, whatever. If I met someone like me, we’d both be too scared of rejection to do any such thing, and would inevitably drift straight back out of each other’s lives. And, now I come to think of it, that had probably happened quite a few times.

  With friends, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, it was like getting something for Christmas you hadn’t asked for, and realising it was exactly what you’d wanted. But when it came to boyfriends, different story. I’d been told I could seem difficult to approach, and it meant I got the kind of men who approached the kind of girls who seemed difficult to approach. This type of man came in all shapes and sizes—intelligent, dull, handsome, ugly—but they invariably had two things in common: the Teflon hide of the truly inspired double-glazing salesman, and an honest belief that they were God’s gift to womankind.

  The first time I met Carl with Petra’s brother, I knew straight away he wasn’t going to ask me out. It had happened to me too often before—a lively conversation with an attractive male friend-of-a-friend, a smiling goodbye, a backward glance. A lingering sense of regret. He was tall, blond and blue-eyed, with a nice smile and straightforward good looks that seemed to imply other qualities: intelligence without pomposity, confidence without egomania, sense of humour, but serious about important things. I’d never understood women who complained such-and-such was too nice or too conventional. It was all I’d ever wanted in my perfect man—from an early age, my subconscious probably figured I had enough hang-ups for both of us.