The Wake: an absolutely gripping psychological suspense Read online

  The Wake

  Vikki Patis

  Copyright © 2020 Vikki Patis

  The right of Vikki Patis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2020 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-913419-92-9

  Contents

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  Also by Vikki Patis

  Prologue

  Part I

  1. The Celebrant

  2. The Daughter

  3. The Daughter-in-Law

  4. The Mistress

  5. The Deceased

  6. The Daughter

  7. The Celebrant

  8. The Daughter-in-Law

  9. The Daughter

  10. The Deceased

  11. The Mistress

  12. The Celebrant

  13. The Daughter-in-Law

  14. The Daughter

  15. The Deceased

  16. The Mistress

  17. The Daughter-in-Law

  18. The Celebrant

  19. The Deceased

  Part II

  20. The Mistress

  21. The Daughter

  22. The Deceased

  23. The Celebrant

  24. The Daughter-in-Law

  25. The Deceased

  26. The Daughter

  27. The Mistress

  28. The Daughter-in-Law

  29. The Celebrant

  30. The Deceased

  31. The Daughter

  32. The Daughter-in-Law

  33. The Deceased

  34. The Mistress

  35. The Daughter

  36. The Deceased

  37. The Daughter-in-Law

  38. The Daughter

  39. The Daughter-in-Law

  40. The Deceased

  41. The Mistress

  42. The Celebrant

  43. The Deceased

  44. The Daughter

  45. The Deceased

  46. The Daughter-in-Law

  47. The Deceased

  48. The Daughter

  49. The Daughter-in-Law

  50. The Celebrant

  Part III

  51. Eleanor

  52. Lexi

  53. Skye

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the publisher

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  Also by Vikki Patis

  Girl, Lost

  In memory of Norma

  Prologue

  The blood is not the first thing their eyes are drawn to. They look around them as if in shock, eyes wide and disbelieving, hands running through hair as they take in the overturned chairs, the table on its side by the window, the sausage rolls scattered across the floor, pastry flakes coating the floorboards. Red liquid drips down the wall, the dark glass of a bottle clustered on the floor beneath, and the stem of a wine glass clatters against the floorboards, finally coming to rest against the side of the bar.

  The staff hide behind the thick wooden barrier. They are not paid enough to deal with this; minimum wage and the odd free lunch is not enough for them to be involved in the events that are unfolding before them. One woman has a phone pressed to her ear, her mouth moving as she sounds the alarm, calls for help. A man with a tea towel slung over one shoulder turns to take a nip of whisky straight from the bottle, his fingers trembling as he sets it back down with a thud.

  The air is eerily silent, the call to the authorities ended, the cordless phone hung up with a beep that echoes around the room. The air is full of breath, chests rising and falling in the silence. The door swings open suddenly, the wind catching it and throwing it against the wall, and something in the air skitters, the crowd jumping in unison. But still no one speaks. Still, no one moves.

  Outside, the rain lashes at the windows, the early December chill invading the room through the door, the hinges creaking as it blows open and closed. The sky is leaden, clouds full of the promise of never-ending rain. A flash of lightning illuminates the room, bringing to life the faces of the people who sit or stand or lean against the wall, hearts beating wildly. They do not look at one another. They stare at the floor, or at their trembling hands. Anywhere but at the face of their neighbour. They are family, friends, acquaintances. They have had coffee together, dinner parties, arguments. Some were present at the birth of others; some went to school together; some made vows to have and to hold, for better, for worse. Some made vows to get revenge for past wrongs.

  Another lightning strike ignites the picture of the person they have come here to honour, the flash lighting up the features of the deceased, the dead man whom they all have in common. It is a good photo, they thought as they’d filed into the room hours before. It shows him as he was. Husband, father, grandfather. Friend, colleague, teammate. Taken too soon, a tragic loss. These are still the thoughts of some as they stare up at his face, one grey streak through the front of his hair, the usual twinkle in his blue eyes. He was a handsome man, even in his fifties. Always a hit with the ladies, that roguish charm never leaving him. He was a generous friend, a good man.

  The thoughts of others are not so charitable. Ex-husband. Estranged father. Tormentor. So many versions of the truth; so many versions of one man held in the minds of others.

  A wail cuts through the air and heads snap up, eyes drawn towards the closed door at the end of the room. A child cries out, Mummy! and another voice shushes them, lifting them up and holding them close. Another wail, low and full of pain, animal-like, or is it the wind again, howling to be let in? All eyes are now on that door, on the trail of blood staining the floorboards, the scarlet handprint on the cream wall.

  Sirens. The world turns blue as tyres crunch over the pebbled beach beneath the pub, small stones skittering. The next cry is drowned out and heads turn away now, towards the approaching vehicles and the people who have come to save them. Wipers battle against the furious rain, the water bouncing off the top of the blue flashing lights. The room is lit up by them, the faces of the mourners turned pale and ghostlike. A door opens, slams. Footsteps running up the stairs, boots pounding against the wood. The cavalry has arrived. The open door suddenly slams shut, as if barring their entry, and the people jump again, their nerves jangling.

  As a gloved hand presses against the glass of the front door, the door at the other end of the room is flung open, a woman appearing in the doorway. The cavalry step inside, water dripping from their boots, their gaze casting over the crowd until they settle on the woman, and they move towards her, their eyes fixed on the blood on her hands.

  ‘In here,’ she says, her eyes wide and full of fear. ‘Please, hurry.’

  Part I

  The Funeral

  1

&nb
sp; The Celebrant

  This will be his last funeral.

  James has had enough, has seen too much, and he cannot bring himself to carry on. It was not the child last month, the six-year-old boy killed by a drunk driver; it was not the twenty-four-year old woman who died of breast cancer, leaving behind a four-month-old daughter. It was not even his own father, eight years before, taken by the respiratory disease that ravaged him for almost a year. No. It was not a funeral that has happened which has spoiled his taste for the job, but rather one that will happen in the near future.

  His mother has been dying for three years. It is an odd term, he thinks, dying. Are we not all dying? From the moment we are born, we are moving closer to our death, some slowly, some hurtling like a train, the length of our lives already determined as soon as we take our first breath. James has seen a lot of death, has helped friends and family to honour and celebrate the lives of their dearly departed, but he knows he could not bear that one.

  Dementia has already taken her from him, turning her from the energetic, enthusiastic woman he has known and loved his entire life into an unrecognisable shell. The woman who took him in when he was two, abandoned on the front steps of her church like an unwanted kitten, and loved him as if she had chosen him herself.

  ‘You were given to me,’ she often said, her eyes watery, her fingers wrapped tightly around his. ‘It was meant to be.’ And though he did not believe in God or fate, he believed in his mother’s love for him, and that had been enough.

  He knows it is unusual for a fifty-eight-year-old man to still live with his mother. He knows it is unusual for a man to do everything with his mother, and for them to still be so close. But she is all he has left, the only one who has always accepted him for who he is, and he needs to bask in her love for as long as he can.

  James clears his throat, shuffling the papers in front of him. He has put his all into this funeral, all except his heart, but he intends to see it through. He reads his words back to himself, the notes written during his last meeting with Fiona, the widow of the deceased. He has known Fiona Asquith, née Woods, for almost forty years. They met while they were both studying – she in her first year, he in his third – at a society meeting and pub crawl. It was summer, he had one final exam left to sit, and he already had a job lined up for September. He remembers her huge hair, backcombed within an inch of its life and set with an entire bottle of hairspray. And her smile. It was a kind smile, open and full of warmth, and he found himself talking to her for most of the night, laughing like they were already old friends.

  They went home together, back to the flat he shared with his friend, but not for the usual reason. When he was fifteen, James realised that he loved women, but not in the way his friends loved them. He was most comfortable around women; he enjoyed their company, even preferring to spend time with them over his male friends, but he was not attracted to them. And while he thought Fiona was beautiful – a wonderful, captivating soul – he was not attracted to her either.

  No, James took Fiona home that night because she had lost her keys and daren’t anger the warden at one o’clock in the morning. He gave her his bed, changing the sheets for her and setting a glass of water on the bedside table, and spent the night on the sofa, a crick developing in his neck.

  She seemed to know immediately that he was not a threat. Women have a way, James believes, of knowing, of seeing him for who he truly is, and Fiona maintains to this day that she figured it out within the first five minutes of meeting him. Although Plymouth in the eighties was not the most diverse of places, James never thought to hide it from anyone. Why should he be ashamed of who he was? He accepted his friends’ ribbing with aplomb, giving back what they dealt to him, always with a smile. But for all their jokes, his friends always had his back. When he was attacked outside a pub in his early twenties, his friend Andrew smashed a glass into one of the men’s faces and ended up with a police caution. When a group of teenagers vandalised his car, Fiona helped him clean it, scrubbing at the words scrawled across the windscreen while singing along to Whitney Houston at the top of her voice.

  He has to give this service his best. She deserves that, even if the deceased doesn’t. He knows what it is to be widowed, to be left behind.

  James met Tom when he was two years into his career as a teacher. Tom was working as a library assistant at the university, and, when James asked for the latest George RR Martin novel, the grin on Tom’s face sent something shooting through him. He hadn’t believed in love at first sight, not until that day. Not until he met Tom.

  They began to have lunch together every day, and walked to and from work together, their houses being not five minutes apart. He met Tom’s parents and Tom met his, his mother fussing about the meal for two weeks beforehand, panicking that Tom was a closet vegetarian. Tom moved in when James’s newly married flatmate moved out, and life was, for a time, peaceful. They spent Sundays with James’s parents, Tuesday evenings at the bingo with Tom’s mum, and Fridays at the pub with friends. They spent their spare time walking along the Barbican, cooking elaborate meals which often went wrong and ended in James flapping a tea towel at the smoke alarm while Tom ordered a pizza. They spent lazy evenings reading together on the sofa, legs entwined, forgotten cups of tea going cool at their elbows. Life was perfect, until everything was torn apart one cold, bright morning in 1992.

  James remembers being woken by a hammering on the front door. He shot up in bed, a hand flying out to touch Tom’s shoulder, but his side of the bed was empty, the pillow still plump, the sheets cool. The pounding came again, and James flung the covers aside, wrapping himself in a dressing gown and shoving his feet into slippers before padding down the hall and opening the door with no real sense of urgency. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t answered the door that morning, had stayed in bed, safe in his ignorance. Sometimes he wishes he had never woken up at all.

  The officers delivered the news with sombre faces, hats tucked under their arms. Tom had been attacked after the football match he’d attended with friends the evening before. James had cheerfully waved him off, looking forward to an evening of finishing his jigsaw puzzle in front of the soaps, before a hot bubble bath and an early night. He was pronounced dead at the scene, the stab wound to his chest killing him instantly.

  His vision blurs as the memories engulf him, almost thirty years of pain washing over him. He remembers clearly the journey to identify Tom’s body, the smell of antiseptic in the corridor, the coldness of the floor as he collapsed, his forehead pressed against the linoleum. He remembers the way Tom’s mother wailed as he held her, her body shaking as she sobbed out her grief. He remembers the tears in his own mother’s eyes, the way his father cleared his throat over and over again, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. And he remembers the funeral, the way the vicar skimmed over the reason for the attack, refusing to acknowledge James as Tom’s partner, his handshake at the end short and without warmth.

  A few weeks later, James left his teaching job and began his celebrant training. With no faith in a god who could have allowed Tom to be taken from him, he turned away from religion and focused on the human element of death. Funerals are for the living, James knows, not the dead, and he has spent the past twenty-five years holding up the widowed, the grieving, the people left behind, absorbing their pain and steadying them as they said goodbye to their loved ones.

  Looking down at his notes, James wonders if anyone will need a steadying hand tomorrow at the funeral of Richard Asquith, a man he has known for over thirty years, and has despised for almost the same length of time.

  2

  The Daughter

  Water sprays the side of the ferry, the waves wild and full of fury, and I feel myself leaning into the wind, droplets splashing my hair and face. I close my eyes and taste the salt on my lips, and I think of him, the man I haven’t seen in over a decade. My father, whose funeral I am on my way to attend.

  I remember the look in his eyes when Mum told him to leave
, all those years ago. I was eleven, peering through the banisters as he lifted his suitcase and strode out of the front door without a backward glance. I remember the way she cried after, her face buried in her hands at the kitchen table, a photo of Saffy laid out before her.

  ‘Hasn’t he been punished enough?’ his wife, Fiona, said the last time we spoke on the phone, almost two years ago, her prim voice setting my teeth on edge. ‘You need to move on, Skye.’

  But I can never move on. My sister is still missing, my sister who next year should turn thirty, our shared birthday tethering us together forever. Lost on the beach on an overcast day in June, my father’s back turned as he took a call from someone who was more important.