A Fatal Obsession: A gripping mystery perfect for all crime fiction readers

Just eight minutes to go.

Even though the young man’s swagger and joking manner had suggested he really didn’t take the threat seriously – as, indeed, most of them didn’t – he must still, nevertheless, feel just a little trepidation, surely? Knowing that someone, somewhere, had vowed to kill you when the hands of the clock both stood straight up would be enough to make anyone feel a cold chill up their spine.

In some respects, the situation reminded her a little bit of the film High Noon. With herself, the Sergeant and Rodney keeping an anxious eye on the clock while waiting for something explosive to happen. Except that Anthony Deering was no Gary Cooper! And he certainly wasn’t expected to face any gunmen alone.

Even so, she still maintained he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t feel a little bit scared. And she knew for a fact that his parents definitely had the wind up for, inside the sunroom, Lady Deering, a tall, sparse woman with a rather long face, paced restlessly up and down, while her husband pretended to read the newspaper. Sergeant O’Grady glanced at her as she came in, smiled briefly, and continued to survey the expanse of fields outside the house.

Trudy glanced at her watch once again – she couldn’t help it. Barely five minutes to go now.

Was it really possible that someone was outside, watching them, waiting to make their move? That, despite the police presence, they had figured out some fantastic way to end Anthony Deering’s life right under their noses? Perhaps by setting up a booby trap of some kind? Or might they have simply decided that brute force was by far the easiest way, and would simply come in, guns blazing?

The thought of the possible carnage that would result if such an unlikely scenario came to pass made her feel sick, and she only hoped the women in the kitchen would have the good sense to stay hidden if anything bad did happen.

But, of course, nobody really believed it would. DI Jennings, the Sarge and even that plank, PC Broadstairs, were all sure it was nothing but a mare’s nest. Which was reassuring, Trudy supposed. Even so, she knew her nerves weren’t the only ones being stretched.

Outside the door, she heard Rodney Broadstairs’ voice, and that of Anthony Deering answering him. In the next moment, both men stepped into the room.

Sir Marcus looked up from his paper and nodded. ‘Sit next to me, Anthony, will you? I’ve saved you the crossword puzzle.’ And he pulled out a section of the paper and handed it, along with a pen, to his son, who accepted both offerings, indulging him.

‘Fine,’ he said briskly, casting his father a wide smile. ‘But at five past twelve I’m off to the kitchen for lunch, and then I’m going to Oxford, to catch a matinee at the cinema.’

Sir Marcus frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t, son.’

‘Yes, why can’t you stay here? At least for the rest of the day,’ his mother insisted nervously.

Anthony sighed theatrically. He’d changed out of his riding clothes and now wore a tweed jacket with dark-grey flannel trousers. ‘Oh, come on! This lunatic threatened to bump me off at twelve noon. Once we’ve got past that, I’ll be fine. After all, why go to the trouble of specifying a time so precisely and then not stick to it? It doesn’t make sense. Either something will happen at twelve o’clock, or it never will.’

‘That’s hardly guaranteed,’ Sir Marcus muttered, unconvinced by such spurious logic.

‘Nothing in life’s guaranteed, as you well know,’ his son shot back pithily. ‘Come on, old fella, you can’t expect me to hang around the old homestead forever,’ he joshed his father. ‘Buck up – we all know this is just some sad, silly person giving us the runaround. Nothing’s going to happen!’

Sir Marcus sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall. Four minutes to noon.

Jonathan McGillicuddy paused, stretched, and put his palms in the middle of his aching back. Another hour and he’d take a break and go back to the van for his sandwiches and flask of tea.

He picked up a handsaw and bent down to tackle a particularly knotty and thick branch close to the ground. Despite the damp chill of the day, he’d managed to work up quite a sweat.

He didn’t hear footsteps approaching him from behind, as the harsh scraping noise of the saw, and the soft, damp grass smothering the sound of booted feet, served to keep him in ignorance of the figure creeping up on him.

Away to his left, Jonathan McGillicuddy heard the mellow tones of the bell of the village church begin to strike twelve.

It was the last thing he ever heard.

Lady Deering began to laugh. Out in the hall, the grandfather clock chimed the last of the twelve strikes. The silence after the last one seemed profound.

Trudy felt like laughing too. Had she ever seriously imagined that some madman would burst in, spraying gunfire? Now she felt vaguely ashamed of her fears.

Anthony Deering looked up from his nearly completed crossword puzzle and grinned at his mother. ‘Feeling better now?’ he asked.

‘Much, darling,’ Martha agreed.

‘See, Dad…’ The young man turned to his father. ‘I told you nothing would happen!’

It was six o’clock and fully dark before Mavis McGillicuddy began to really worry. It wasn’t like Jonathan to work this late. It had been fully dark for nearly two hours. Where on earth could he be?

At nine o’clock she nipped next door and asked her neighbour if she wouldn’t mind sitting with Marie for a while. The little girl had gone reluctantly to bed, but Mavis feared she might be naughty enough to get up, claiming she wanted a drink of water, and she didn’t want her to find the house empty.

Marie, too, had expected her father to be home in time to read her their usual bedtime story, and Mavis wasn’t sure her granddaughter had believed her lies about his arranging to meet with some friends and have a drink with them at the local pub.

The desk sergeant at the police station listened patiently to Mavis’s report, then told her that her son, in all likelihood, probably really was currently drinking in some pub somewhere, just as she’d told his daughter, and that it was far too early to panic just yet. Only after Mavis had vehemently insisted it was something he’d never done before did he promise to check there had been no road-traffic accidents reported, involving Jonathan’s van.

And more to get rid of her than anything else, he then rang around the local hospitals to see if anyone of Jonathan’s description had been brought in.

No such reports had been made.

Eventually, knowing she had to get back home, since she couldn’t expect her neighbour to sit in her house all night, Mavis forced the sergeant to promise that, first thing in the morning, he’d send a constable round to the garden where her son was currently working. Just to check all was well there.

On nearing her house, her footsteps quickened with hope. Surely she’d find that Jonathan had come home while she’d been out? He’d be full of sheepish apologies on finding their neighbour in residence in the sitting room, and she would tell him off roundly.

But when she got there, there was still no sign of him.

Not surprisingly, Mavis didn’t sleep a wink that night.

Mavis McGillicuddy was up with the dawn, and was sitting dry-eyed and hopeless in the kitchen, her hands feeling as cold as ice even though they were wrapped around a hot cup of tea, when she heard the knocking on her door.

She dragged herself to her feet and out into the hall. Through the frosted glass in the front door she could make out a large, ominous shape. When she opened it, it was to find a policeman looking back at her solemnly.

It was only then that she began to cry.

Sir Marcus Deering rose that morning with a cheerful whistle on his lips and ate a hearty breakfast. The whole mood in the house was jubilant now, and faintly shamefaced, as if acknowledging they had been silly ever to have worried.

Anthony was once more out on his beloved horse, since he was due back in London soon and was determined to make the most of a dry, if cold, day.

By nine-thirty Sir Marcus was seated behind the desk in his study, reading the morning post. There had been no green-inked missive to worry him, and if any more came, he would simply toss them, unread, into the bin. The poison pen had shot his arrow and missed by a mile. And never again would Sir Marcus be foolish enough to be conned into worrying about ‘doing the right thing’.

When the telephone on his desk rang he reached for it absently. He heard his secretary telling him there was a woman on the line who insisted on speaking to him but wouldn’t give her name.

‘Oh?’ Marcus frowned. ‘That’s odd.’ His daytime calls were invariably with other businessmen or their secretaries – none of whom was unwilling to identify themselves. ‘Well, put her through.’

‘Yes, sir,’ his secretary said. There was a short delay, a beep, and then he heard a tentative, tearful voice.

It took a moment for him to realise who it was on the other end of the line, and when he did so, his first instinct was to look furtively at the closed door of his study. ‘I told you never to call me here,’ he hissed angrily into the receiver, getting automatically to his feet. ‘If my wife were to…’

But the voice frantically overrode him – something that had never happened before. And as he finally took in what was being said, all the anger washed out of him, along with the colour in his face, leaving him sitting white and shaken in his chair and fighting the urge to be sick.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_8c0f8f29-f0e3-543f-b360-9fb48a3b2126)

At St Aldates police station, DI Jennings looked gravely at the faces turned towards him.