Killing Kate. Alex Lake
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‘Great,’ Kate said. Awfully badly, she thought. And why did I just lie?
‘Would you like a drink? Orange juice? Coffee? Tea?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Beer?’
‘What?’ she said, her voice little more than a croak. ‘Are you kidding?’
He grinned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’
Kate blushed. ‘Right. Sorry. Of course you are. I’m feeling a little delicate.’
‘Me too. They make strong drinks here.’ He drained his coffee, then untucked his foot and stood up. ‘I think I need a refill. You want one?’
She didn’t. Even though they hadn’t, in the end, had sex, she still didn’t want to spend a single minute more here. The grubbiness of her hangover mixed with the memory of throwing herself at him and produced a horrible self-loathing. But she also didn’t want to be rude; he looked so hopeful. And a coffee did sound good.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Maybe a quick one. Then I have to get going.’
‘If you need to be somewhere, I understand,’ he said. He had a neutral accent which was hard to place, although she thought she detected the flat vowels of the north. Lancashire, maybe. ‘You don’t need to hang around if you don’t want to.’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘It’s fine. A coffee would be nice. Thanks.’
He crossed the white-tiled floor to the kitchen and took a mug from a cupboard. He filled it from a stove-top coffee maker. He was wearing chinos and an olive green T-shirt and was maybe ten years older than her, in his late thirties, with a lean, wiry body. His movements were precise and deliberate, but graceful – almost balletic – and he was handsome in a severe, school-teacherly kind of way. He was very different to Phil, a stocky, broad-shouldered rugby player who was anything but precise and balletic. His friends called him clumsy; he said he was too strong for his own good. Either way, it was one of the things she had loved about him.
There was a carton of milk open on the worktop. Mike picked it up and gestured towards the freshly filled cup.
‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please.’
He poured some in and passed her the cup. ‘It’s that UHT stuff they have here,’ he said. ‘Not fresh. But the coffee’s good. Some local brand. Nice and strong. Perfect after a late night.’
It was good. Hot and rich and heady. She only wished she could enjoy it more, that she was drinking it on a café terrace by the harbour with her friends, watching the morning sun glint off the water.
‘So,’ Mike said. ‘Here we are.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’
There was an awkward pause. She sipped her coffee. Mike sipped his. After a moment he broke the silence.
‘Where are you from?’ he said. ‘Back home?’
She didn’t want to tell him. Didn’t want him to know anything about her. It wasn’t him – he was pleasant enough, considerate and relaxed, and in other circumstances she might have quite liked him – but she didn’t want any reminder of the night before.
‘Stockton Heath,’ she said. ‘It’s a small town. Village, really. It’s near Warrington, in Cheshire.’
His eyes widened.
‘No way!’ he said. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Did we talk about this last night? And now you’re messing with me?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We didn’t.’
‘Are you sure I didn’t tell you?’
She would have thought it was impossible for her mouth to get any drier, but that was what happened. She sipped her coffee. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Where I live.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Where do you live?’
‘I’m your neighbour,’ he said. ‘I live in the next village along. I live in Moore.’
She stared at him.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m from Newton, originally. But I live in Moore now. I’m often in Stockton Heath. Where in the village do you live?’
She told him; she was in the centre, and God she was glad he lived a few miles away. It wasn’t far, but it was something.
‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘What are the odds of meeting someone from the same neck of the woods over here? I can’t believe it.’
Neither could Kate. This was getting worse. She didn’t ever want to see him again, never mind have him bump into her in her hometown. It was unbelievable. And there was something familiar about him, now she thought about it, but that could easily be the fact that she knew now that they were from the same place.
‘Did you grow up there?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Born and bred.’
‘I like the area,’ he said. ‘Quiet, but I like living in a sleepy village where nothing ever happens. It feels safe, insulated from all the craziness in the world.’
Kate bridled at the suggestion that her home was so boring; she thought it could be quite lively, especially on a Friday night, but then he was older, and probably didn’t participate in the nightlife of the village to the degree that she did. Besides, before she’d left for Turkey there had been a big local story.
‘It wasn’t so sleepy last week,’ she said. ‘They found that body.’
It was the biggest news in the village Kate could remember. A woman her age had been killed only a few days before she left for Turkey. A dog walker – a magistrate out with his new puppy, Bella – had found a body stuffed into a hedge near the reservoir. It was a young girl, Jenna Taylor, in her late twenties. She’d been strangled, there was speculation that she had been raped, too, although the news reports had been vague, which only served to fuel rumours that something really sick had taken place.
‘I heard,’ Mike said. ‘I read about it online. I haven’t been following it, though. It happened about a week after I got here, and you know what it’s like on holiday. You tend to switch off. One of my friends has been keeping track of it. He said they still haven’t found whoever did it.’
‘I heard they arrested her boyfriend,’ Kate said. ‘One of my friends is addicted to reading about it, but she’s like that with every news event.’
‘Did you know the victim?’ Mike said. ‘She was about your age, wasn’t she?’
‘She was,’ Kate said. ‘But I didn’t know her. She moved from Liverpool a few years ago. We would have been at high school together though, if she was from Stockton Heath.’
What she didn’t say was what her friends had been teasing her about ever since: she and Jenna Taylor could have been sisters. They had the same long hair, lithe figure and dark eyes. It was no more than a coincidence, but still, she didn’t like it. It wasn’t the kind of coincidence that you found intriguing; it was the other kind, the kind that you found disturbing.
Mike shook his head. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘I go away for a few weeks and all hell breaks loose.’
Kate gave a half smile.