Dangerous Secrets Read online

  Dangerous Secrets

  By

  Chrissie Loveday

  Julia Renton returns from a trip to Kenya to discover her mother is dead – evidently having committed suicide. Her brother Ryan is equally devastated and the pair rushes to their cottage in Cornwall to escape their cold and unforgiving father.

  Soon, a body is discovered in an outhouse and things start to go wrong, including the presumed murder of one half of an elderly pair of sisters, and the Renton’s cottage burning down.

  Trying to move on, Julia takes employment with Bryce Davies, a local holiday and property dealer. There seems to be something major in the pipeline and Bryce is involved, but his intentions with the Rentons are possibly less than innocent.

  When strange things start happening to Julia, she realises someone has made themselves involved in her life – and closer than she originally thought.

  It was dark inside the outhouse.

  He groped around the floor and his hands felt several boxes. His heart quickened with excitement as he pulled open the flaps of cardboard. His fingers encountered the unmistakable shape of wine bottles. He almost shouted out his triumphant pleasure.

  He pulled a bottle out and took it towards the light. He couldn't read the French label but it was undoubtedly wine. Fancy someone being so stinking rich they could keep boxes of wine in a lousy outhouse, not even bothering to lock it. He conveniently forgot the padlock and hasp he had prised away to gain entry. If someone could afford a place like this, just for holidays, they could afford to lose their wine. Probably wouldn’t miss it.

  He dumped the two plastic bags containing his worldly goods and laid his brightly coloured umbrella outside the door. Pulling out an old penknife from the ragged layers of his clothing, he carved his way through the cork and took a long deep swig from the bottle. He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sat to enjoy his treasure. Château-bottled wines were wasted on him. The effect was the same whether it cost many pounds a bottle, or was just cheap cider. He slumped down between the cases of wine, blissful and oblivious

  Contents

  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 One

  Pale-faced and red-eyed, Julia stared at her brother in total disbelief.

  ‘You’re saying she committed suicide? My mother committed suicide? No. You’re wrong. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’

  ‘She was my mother too, don’t forget. She was very sick, you know. She had no chance of getting better and didn’t want everyone to see her gradually withering away. I’m sorry but you had to know.’ Ryan’s voice wavered as he spoke but he gritted his teeth.

  He felt tears burning his eyes but he knew he mustn’t cry. A harsh voice from somewhere deep in his past was telling him that boys don’t cry. He swallowed the tears away and wished he hadn’t been born a boy, now a man. But still he wasn’t allowed to cry. He had dreaded this moment. Telling Julia the truth.

  Julia listened in horror, her eyes burning with tears. This new information from her brother could not be true … whatever her mother had been, she was not a coward. In Julia’s eyes, anyone taking their life was cowardly. In any case, didn’t people taking their own lives always leave a note? Something to explain their actions to those left behind. But her mother had left nothing.

  ‘And how exactly was she supposed to have done it, if she was so ill?’ She forced herself to speak.

  ‘The pills. She saved them up for a few days and took the lot in one go. It seems quite certain. Father had employed a nurse and she said it was the only possible conclusion. Mum was far too sick to write a note. You didn’t see her at the end. She was shrinking to nothing. You should be glad that your memories of her will be as she was. Not what she had become.’

  Despite his words, there was no accusation in Ryan’s voice. Those days had been desperate, as he and his father had desperately tried to contact Julia. The speed of his mother’s decline had terrified him and he desperately needed his big sister to be there to share the burden. His father would have poured scorn over him if he once allowed his emotions to show.

  Julia’s trip to Kenya had put her out of reach for several weeks and it was only pure chance that she had phoned home the day before the funeral. Despite a dramatic dash across country, she had failed to get a flight home in time to join the mourners. While her mother was being cremated, she was weeping bitter tears of remorse somewhere over the ocean. She had wept for the loss of her mother and, just a little, to salve her own conscience.

  The trip abroad to work as cook to a luxury camping tour was her rebellious escape from her father’s dominance. It had denied her the chance to share the last few days of her mother’s life. If she had been with her mother surely it could never have happened? She would have looked after her mother properly. They would never have needed the nurse. The nurse.

  ‘What about this nurse? Who was she? Another of Dad’s little friends? Do we know anything about her? She could have fed the pills to Mum.’

  ‘Unlikely. She was at least fifty and large with it. Dedicated and unemotional. Not at all father’s type,’

  Ryan answered, his voice carefully controlled.

  ‘I don’t understand how it could all have been so rapid. Mum wasn’t all that well when I went but she said it was nothing serious. I would never have left her if it was.’

  Overcome, Julia went outside. She stood silently, staring out into the lush garden of their Buckinghamshire home. The mass of spring bulbs had no business looking so cheerful without her mother there to see them. She had planted banks of them everywhere. Julia would never again look at a daffodil without remembering her mother. Damn her father. Damn the pompous prick he was. Always so cocksure of himself. Always knowing what was best for everyone. Now he’d won, as usual. He’d tried to stop his daughter going on the working holiday. It had made him feel uncomfortable and out of control. What was it he’d said? ‘Heavens, girl. If you suddenly have some urge to see wild animals, I’ll pay for you to go on a safari. You don’t have to work your passage. Tell me what you want and I’ll write you a cheque. Take a friend with you.’ He never listened. Never took time to understand. Never realised the effect he had on his family. He was always too busy making money, building his precious business. His trips. They’d always been a joke and were assumed by the family they provided excuses to go and screw every tart he could lay his hands on. It had been a family saying for years – Father’s little friends. Mum had pretended not to care nor gave a clue that she knew. Even when challenged with the truth, her mother had always made excuses.

  ‘I’m happy with my home and family. I couldn’t want more. If it keeps your father hap
py when he’s away, whoever he is with, it’s fine by me. He comes home in the end. He provides for us very well. You’ve both been to the best schools and university and when you decide what career you want, he will help you with that as well.’

  ‘But I want to do some things for myself. Take a few chances and even make a few mistakes … mistakes that Daddy can’t buy me out of. I want to enjoy something I have accomplished by my own efforts. I have to take this job. Two months. A chance to make my own decisions. You do understand don’t you, Mum?’

  And it seemed she had understood. For once, she had supported her daughter against her husband. Julia could clearly remember the sense of pleasure she had gained from the expression on her father’s face. His jaw had dropped in disbelief and his eyes had narrowed. He’d shrugged his shoulders and walked from the room.

  ‘Does that mean he agrees?’ she had asked her mother.

  ‘Looks like it, darling. But you will keep in touch, won’t you? Phone home as often as you can.’

  ‘You’re all right with this aren’t you, Mum?’

  ‘Of course, darling. I understand what you’re saying and why you want to do it.’

  Had she sounded a bit frail at that time? Julia tried to remember. Maybe there was something in her voice … a clue she should have picked up on. But Julia had made up her mind to stand firm for once and her father was not going to change it.

  Despite her promises to keep in touch, it hadn’t been that simple. Her phone had been stolen on her first day in Nairobi and, from then on they had been camping out somewhere deep in the African country. The villages they had visited rarely had a telephone at all, let alone one she could have used. It was an adventure holiday after all and she was enjoying every minute of it. She’d achieved exactly what she wanted … anonymity and freedom from her father, but at what cost?

  ‘I had to go, Ryan. I had to get away from his eternal control. He never lets us make any decisions for ourselves. Thinks he can buy us off all the time. I’m twenty-five, for Heaven’s sake. Why should I feel guilty?’

  ‘Because he can control us. He’s made us depend on him for every penny but we have enjoyed our lives so far, haven’t we?’

  ‘I suppose.’ She fell silent as she thought about their lives so far.

  Even university had been a mockery. She’d spent three years gaining a low grade degree because she had never needed to fight for anything. This final fiasco of the trip to Kenya proved it. Her urge to rebel had turned sour with a vengeance. She had lost her mother for ever. She glanced around their beautiful home and began to hate every last well-chosen artefact; every perfect item of expensive furniture.

  ‘I’ve got to get away from here.’ Julia rushed out of the room. She needed time on her own. She stuffed an assortment of clothes into a holdall and grabbed a few provisions from the kitchen, driving away at a speed endangering anything in her way.

  ‘You’re a spineless twit,’ Gerard Renton informed his son when he discovered Julia’s absence. ‘Why didn’t you stop her?’

  ‘I am not my sister’s keeper. Why should I stop her from leaving? There’s precious little here for her now.’

  ‘You’re a wimp. Doesn’t anyone think of my feelings? I’ve lost my own beloved wife remember, under very tragic circumstances.’

  He wiped away a tear, marginally before it had formed.

  ‘Where’s Julia gone? That dratted cottage, I suppose.’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest. But it sounds like a damned good idea.’

  Ryan ran from the room and charged out to his car. Like Julia, he wished he wasn’t quite so reliant on his father’s money but it did provide decent cars and a comfortable life. At least the Cornish cottage was now their own, thanks to their mother’s will. It was a place of refuge, a place filled with memories untarnished by adulthood. He had no doubt that Julia was driving there at this very moment. He felt confident that she would welcome him to what was now their own home.

  The small village of Trengillyn was set in the larger Porth Bay on the South Coast of Cornwall. There was a narrow, rather bumpy lane leading from the main part of the village along the side of the sea. A number of properties made this an exclusive area, far enough away from a car park to make it a peaceful place for the residents. Crofters, the Renton’s cottage, was right at the end of the lane overlooking the magnificent bay.

  At nine o’clock next morning, brother and sister walked along the deserted beach. The air smelled clean with a faint salty tang as the waves crashed endlessly on the beach, reliable and comforting as childhood itself. The March wind ruffled their dark hair. They were alike and with only a year between them, were often mistaken for twins. They had common interests bred from a childhood spent closely together. They had adored their gentle, loving mother and both shared a growing dislike of their father.

  Not even his sister realised the true depths of Ryan’s hatred. As long as he could remember, his father had poured scorn on the sensitive boy, so unlike himself. As a teenager, he had discovered poetry and loved painting. According to his father, this stopped him from being a man so he had learned to keep it hidden. His time at public school had been a nightmare, comparable to a prison sentence in the boy’s mind. He always talked about “serving his time” for seven years. It had indeed been a sentence, with humiliations he had tried to forget. His father’s disappointment in him had eroded any self-confidence that might have developed. Gradually he assumed the role of “The Wimp”, as suggested by his father.

  ‘Hope you didn’t mind me coming after you?’

  ‘Glad you decided to follow me.’

  Ryan and Julia spoke at precisely the same moment. They smiled before Julia spoke again.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to face it all on your own, you know, Mum and everything. Perhaps I should never have gone on that trip. It was only to get back at Dad. I can’t help feeling that if I hadn’t gone, I might have prevented everything that happened. If I’d been here to listen, Mum might have talked to me.’

  ‘She was in a very bad way, Jules. You weren’t to know. Christ, she wasn’t even that ill when you left. Just a few weeks and she went from a minor ailment to … well, full blown collapse. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If modern medicine and any amount of money couldn’t help, I’m damned sure there was nothing you could have done.’

  ‘But that bastard has got his way. Now he’s free to do whatever he wants.’ Her face twisted with pain. It was so unfair. Her mother had always been so perfect and she’d died so horribly.

  ‘Even his money and strong will-power could never have controlled Mum’s illness.’ He paused, frowning and seemed to push away some unpleasant memory.

  ‘Let’s get breakfast. Come on, Sis, race you.’

  Like two carefree youngsters for a brief moment, they scampered across the beach. They reached the steps near the bottom of the garden and clambered up, remembering idyllic holidays at the cottage and briefly forgetting their loss.

  ‘Thank Heavens, this place was Mum’s own,’ Ryan said, biting his toast. ‘And that she left it to us. Dad would have insisted on selling it. Actually, I was thinking we might invite some friends down. Cheer us up.’

  ‘Suit yourself. As long as you look after them. I’ve done my share of cooking for other people. Don’t you fancy a bit of peace and quiet for a bit though?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you’d rather, we could be alone for a bit.’

  ‘No. You’re probably right. A few people might liven things up a bit. I don’t really mind.’ She knew she needed to do something or go mad but she still needed a few days to allow the gentle Cornish way of life begin its healing process.

  ‘Hey! Where’s the telly gone? And the DVD player? We didn’t take them back last time did we?’ he asked, noticing the gaps.

  ‘The microwave’s missing as well. Good Lord. Check and see if there’s anything else. With any luck, that ghastly collection of CDs will have gone. Our dear father has the worst taste ever in music. Oh dear, no such lu
ck – the thief obviously had taste. He just took the system and left the disks.’

  They looked around and exclaimed as they realised how many items were missing.

  ‘I suppose we’d better call the police. We should make a list of everything that’s gone. What a bore. I expect there’ll be hours of interviews and statements. ‘We could just go and buy more stuff. We’ve got credit cards.’

  ‘Till dear Daddy cancels them. But that’s not the point,’ Julia protested. ‘If someone’s broken in once, they could get in again. No windows are smashed or doors damaged. They must have found the key. Give me your mobile.’

  He switched it on and it rang immediately. He listened. Three messages, all from their father. He deleted them. He handed her the phone. She dialled the police and reported the losses.

  ‘We’ve got to stay here till they arrive.’

  Sergeant Trekellis drove up an hour later.

  ‘You’re absolutely certain these items were left here?’ the local policeman asked. They both nodded.

  He was an elderly man, slightly tubby and obviously Cornish born and bred. ‘When did you discover they were missing?’

  ‘We didn’t arrive till late last night and went straight to bed, so not until this morning. And yes, they were left here. Always are. But surely, stuff like this would hardly be worth the effort of breaking in? They couldn’t get much for it.’

  ‘We’ve had a right spate of thefts lately. Doesn’t look like much individually, but add them all up and we’re into significant money. Probably youngsters that don’t know what they’re doing. They target holiday homes like this one. They take what they can carry. Small electrical goods and the like; owners replace them all with new from the insurance pay-out and the sods break in and grab the new lot. Mind you, it’s well organised and like yours, the properties don’t show signs of any actual break-in. Very clever they are. People sometimes leave keys hidden and they know where to look. Now, if we can just check outside. Anything gone from the outbuilding?’

  ‘We haven’t looked,’ Julia replied. ‘There’s an old outhouse but I don’t think there was much there. Just the usual garden furniture and a few tools.’